Column, November 1, 2005

IT is a good job that we have someone as hard-faced as Dr John Reid as defence secretary.
Only he could claim high employment was the real reason that army recruitment was at an all-time low and that the ongoing scandal of Deepcut barracks and a highly unpopular and vicious war in Iraq were mere sideshows.
Still, at least he couldn’t keep his face that straight and had to admit that the deaths of four young recruits, including Cheryl James, of Llangollen might have something to do with the fact that the infantry is now 1,859 men under strength and the Territorial Army was 6,000 below target and at its lowest point since it was founded in 1907.
Dr Reid may well have the figures at his fingertips, but I’m guessing that between 1907 and now there were other times of high employment, and yet it is now that the forces are struggling so badly.
And is it that much of a surprise? No-one joins the Army thinking they might not have to get involved in a fight. The British Army has not stood by idle when there is fighting to be done and has thrown itself, with the exception of Suez, pretty successfully into everything that has been asked of it since the Second World War.
Even in retreat the British Army has covered itself in glory, witness the renaming of an unknown hill in Korea after the ‘Glorious’ Gloucester Regiment who withstood the might of the Chinese Army, fighting to the last bullet an when the bullets had run out making do with fists.
Whether it is putting a stop to the brutality of drug-crazed militias in Sierra Leone or winning back the Falklands from a murderous military dictatorship, there has been nothing beyond the capabilities of our armed forces.
Which is why Deepcut should have been taken more seriously from the very beginning.
It is a stain on the good name of the British Army. Something was rotten at the heart of that establishment. Something that should have been cut out with the efficiency for which the army is so famous.
It was not and now it has become a festering wound. A blot on the roll of honour otherwise occupied by men and women who have given their lives for this country.
But let’s not pretend that the Army is a bed of roses, it’s a tough life. The men and women who join need to train hard so that when they go into battle they are as well prepared as they can possibly be. They need to be able to look after themselves, their mates and what’s more they need to get the job done.
It’s the Army’s job to train them up to do just that. That is going to involve a regime which toughens them up, gets them used to physical and mental exertion and yes, sometimes, discomfort and pain.
Some people can cope with the demands of being a soldier, some cannot. It is the Army’s job to find those who can and make them into good soldiers. It is also the Army’s job to find those who cannot cope and train them so they can, or else come to a parting of the ways in an honourable manner.
It is not the Army’s job to bully people who are barely more than children.
Next week we will mark Remembrance Day and the Remembrance Sunday when we pay our respects to those who gave their lives so that we would be free.
Do you think that they died on some foreign field so that 60 years later some bully boys in training barracks could drive young recruits to such a point of despair that they took their own lives?
Do you think that they would think their memory is being well-served by the Army in which they served?
I think they would be ashamed.
And I wonder whether they would allow their children or grandchildren to enlist in an Army that, at Deepcut, seems to have forgotten the traditions and values it has defended for so long.
I think they would tell them to do anything other that join an Army that had sullied its name.
Unless and until the Government ends the scandal of Deepcut Barracks by having an independent public inquiry then Dr John Reid does not deserve one single recruit more.


THE thing with brainstorming sessions is that their success, or otherwise, rather depends on the brains that are being stormed.
If the storms are not illuminated by flashes of lightning brilliance, and instead you get a lot of drizzle and murk, then its unlikely that such sessions will produced anything of any value.
No great surprise then that the product of the government’s latest brainstorming is to tackle the all-pervading evil that is alcohol on trains.
Something must be done, they say, after a meeting chaired by Tony Blair, which came up with 40 bright (as in cheap, 40-watt bulb) ideas to tackle anti-social behaviour.
Now, as someone who travels by rail every day, I have to say that the worst drink-related incident I have seen so far was four squaddies burping their way to the town that was home of their barracks. The language was a little fruity too, but otherwise we managed to survive the journey.
Once again a government that has run out of ideas comes up with something that penalises the many for the offences of a very, very few.
This is an example of a brainstorming session that has just got out of hand. They’re tackling a problem that simply doesn’t exist.
And they also fail to see the fairly obvious irony in banning drinking on trains while creating a Wild West free-for-all on the high street.
So you can drink 24 hours a day in a pub, but you can’t get a beer or a glass of wine on a train.
Makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? No. Welcome to government by New Labour. It’s back-of-a-fag-packet policy-making, or it would be if they hadn’t banned smoking.
They’re quite happy to see teenagers tanked up on alco-pops making our city centres a no-go area, but they want the railways to be a temperance zone, take the pledge as you buy your cheap day-return.
Because, of course, no-one intent on getting tanked up will think of doing so in the plethora of bars that have sprung up on every major station concourse in the country will they?
And just how are they going to police this anyway – search your bags and sniff every drink container on the way onto the train?
I don’t know what is more depressing about all of this – that there seems to be no-one in a once great party who has the courage to stand up to the intellectual pygmies in command, or that the Tories in the face of such idiocy still have not managed to put together a credible opposition.

What movie are you?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

There are a multitude of these things out there and I don't normally blog them, but as I turned out to be one of my favourite films I thought I'd include this.

Strangely enough, I do love the smell of napalm.

Column, October 25, 2005

IT is rather apt that the latest threat that the sky is about to fall in should have a chicken as its source.
All over the country normally healthy people have been struck down by a terrible condition. The symptoms are obvious, the brain to cease functioning at a normal level and sufferers begin to flap.
Far more virulent than any bird flu, Chicken Licken Syndrome has entered the country and spread like wildfire causing journalists and health ‘experts’ alike to run around like…..well, headless chickens.
Avian flu has arrived in the UK and you would think it had already filled the hospital wards and mortuaries to overflowing. Instead its only victim thus far has been one ex-parrot.
There is no doubt that avian flu is a terrible threat. The flu pandemic that cost millions of lives just after the Great War is evidence of that and that was probably an avian flu.
But we appear to have lost our heads over one dead parrot.
Firstly, this avian flu has yet to cross the species barrier easily. Thousands of people are not being infected by birds and dying. A handful of people who came into close proximity with birds have died.
So far H5N1 has claimed the lives of just 100 people. Global pandemic? Not yet.
Secondly, if this disease were suddenly going to hop across the humans it would not be doing so because one parrot had died in quarantine in the UK.
It will do it in the vast flocks of birds in South East Asia where there are lots of humans with flu and lots of birds with flu and where there is a chance that the flu strains can swap genetic material and become a pandemic virus.
So, can we all just calm down a little.
The fact is that normal everyday flu is a huge killer already and it grim reaps our elderly every year and yet we have not panicked about that.
Is it because it’s ok for OAPs to die of flu, but anything that threatens the young and healthy, well, something must be done?
Also, there’s another cast-iron, proven, certain killer in our midst which we’re turning a blind eye to.
Every year 114,000 people die from smoking-related disease. That’s a certainty, that’s definitely going to happen.
That’s not some remotely possible epidemic that will only happen if the right genetic and environmental circumstances allow it. The hospital beds will be packed by people whose lives will be ended because of exposure to tobacco smoke.
And are we stockpiling nicotine patches and quarantining anyone with a 40-a-day habit who insists on smoking in public like an incendiary Typhoid Mary? No, we’ll make noises about banning smoking and we’ll make eye-catching adverts that show the effect of smoke on a baby, but in the meantime we’ll happily allow the tobacco companies to make a mint from killing people.
And when we finally get around to making the West an uncomfortable place for them to trade we will happily wave them off to Africa or China where billions of customers await their pernicious products.
But you may say smoking is not really a proper disease like flu. Fair enough, let’s take a real disease then, like malaria.
Between 350 and 500 million cases of it every single year, killing one million people every year.
Again, that’s not some theoretical possibility based on enough chickens and humans coming into contact to produce a killer strain. Malaria is doing this right now, across the globe.
And yet how many Western tourists jet off to exotic destinations and then forget to take their malaria medication, or else ditch it because it gives them a dicky tummy?
Yet put the same person next to a chicken that looks a bit under the weather and they would have a fit of the screaming ab-dabs.
We need to get a grip of risk.
A man who keeps birds of prey was on the radio yesterday saying that he was ‘incredibly worried’ about avian flu.
The nightmare scenario for him was a little migratory flu-carrying bird finding its way into his cages where it would be eaten by his birds who would promptly fall off the perch.
So, never mind that this is a disease which flourishes among chickens, who, the last time I checked, do not migrate very far. Never mind the fact that out of the billions of birds worldwide it is more likely that his aviary would be hit by a meteorite than by bird flu.
No, never mind all that, let’s all get incredibly worried shall we?
You are not at risk, at the moment, from bird flu. If your neighbour sneezes in your vicinity do not book yourself in to the doctor for a course of Tamiflu.
Yet while we are all terrified of catching flu, once we have caught any disease we behave in an utterly bizarre manner.
How many people, once they have caught some bug, instead of doing the decent thing and taking to their bed, dose themselves up with something lemony and then struggle in to work to infect their colleagues?
They’ve all seen the advert, the bloke who sniffles at home loses his job to some eager beaver. The message is, get some paracetamol down you and get yourself behind that desk, otherwise you might soon be clearing it.
And every year bosses organisation moan about the number of sick days taken by staff and yet they’re probably the very bosses who are encouraging their staff not to go off sick, so creating the pool of infection that causes their staff to go off sick.
Better to lose one worker to flu for a week than have them struggle in and infect your whole shopfloor.
So, if you catch anything this winter, it will probably not be bird flu, it will be plain old earthbound flu.
If you do, take to your bed, keep warm, plenty of fluids, and try not infect the whole neighbourhood by heroically struggling in by bus.


MY sometime correspondent Hannah contacts me to have a few words about Tryweryn.
She’s none too pleased with my suggestion that the present administration of Liverpool and its people have nothing to apologise for and that the real blame lies in a political system which rendered Wales powerless to resist the flooding of the valley.
This, says Hannah, makes me English, a scouser and a racist.
The English and scouser bit I can understand. After all, if you’re blinkered enough to believe Liverpool owes Wales ‘reparations’ then you’ll resort to any sort of name-calling.
But the racist bit, where did that come from?
Hannah continues: “What has happened to the Irish, aren’t they on the map any more.”
I’m afraid she’s lost me there. Just how are the Irish relevant to this and why is my apparent deliberate snubbing of them in relation to Tryweryn racist?
Answers on a postcard marked Barmy please.

Column, October 18, 2005

A WISE man once said sorry is the hardest word.
Well, actually, it was Elton John, but bear with me.
The burghers of Liverpool may be feeling the same way this week.
There they go saying sorry for an injustice that has been a festering wound in English-Welsh relations ever since 1966.
We’re sorry for Tryweryn they say.
Quite what they are sorry for I’m not sure, as they had entirely nothing to do with the decision to flood Trwyeryn and displace those living in and around Capel Celyn.
Anyway, I’m sure they’ve regretted even considering an apology now, given the ill-mannered way it has been received and the reactions in some quarters which verge on the barmy.
But what’s behind the Liverpool apology? Is it a genuine desire to acknowledge an injustice? Or is it out of some misguided desire to curry favour, in the hope that the Eisteddfod will be tempted there, thus shoring up the city’s claim to be a capital of culture?
If it’s the latter, then it certainly seems to have blown up in their faces when you look at the way some Welsh people have reacted.
An apology, it would seem is not good enough.
The city of Liverpool should apologise and stump up to help fund the £100,000 monument to be built on the shores of Trwyeryn to commemorate the drowning of the valley.
And by the by, £100,000, what are they making it out of, gold?
For some that’s not enough though, they’ve got to apologise and pay for the monument in its entirety.
And in the unlikely event that Liverpool has £100,000 in loose change hanging about doing nothing, step forward Dafydd Iwan to push demands that were already teetering on the edge of the cliffs of daftness over the edge to be dashed on the rocks of insanity below.
“It’s payback time,” he declared, suggesting that Liverpool should also shore up the ailing economy of Meirionydd because of the economic benefit it has derived from Welsh water all these years.
I will skip over the cruel irony to us claiming compo from a city whose occupants are so often linked with a culture of claims, surely this was Mr Iwan’s sense of humour getting the better of him.
Why make demands that are so utterly unreasonable of a city which obviously cannot afford them? Everyone knows things have been hard in many Welsh communities, but if you think the streets of Liverpool’s sink estates are paved with gold you’re sorely mistaken.
It would seem that by placing completely unreasonable demands on the city of Liverpool, there is a desire to make sure the controversy surrounding Trwyeryn lingers on.
Sadly, the truth is that Tryweryn has served a purpose ever since the water lapped over what was left of the roofs of the houses there.
It has served as a beacon for those who believe, and with some justification, that Wales has been treated as serf nation by Westminster governments.
Such a powerful symbol cannot be abandoned lightly and any acceptance of an apology might weaken its power as a totem to Welsh nationalist sentiment.
There is little doubt that Trwyeryn remains one of nationalism’s greatest recruiting sergeants. That sort of symbol is not to be abandoned for a mere apology from city councillors who had nothing to do with its drowning in the first place.
Tryweryn remains the nuclear option in any argument with a disbelieving English person about the ruthless manner in which Wales has been dealt with over the years.
We’ve all been there, you get into a discussion with an English person who seems bewildered at the sense of bitterness that sometimes pervades the Welsh.
The Welsh Not and Trwyeryn are the Little Boy and Fat Man that blow away their arguments, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki that leave their comfortable views in burning tatters and asking where to sign up for Plaid.
But too often we fall into the trap that Scots have, over-sentimentalising past injustices. They weep into their porridge and wrap themselves in their tartan as they recall clearances that happened hundreds of years ago, when in fact many of them are descended from the lowland Scots who actively connived in the clearances.
Tryweryn was a tragedy only for those who were forcibly evicted from their homes. For the rest of Wales its significance was purely political and it was a timely wake-up call to those who thought our best interests were served by a London government.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not an argument for the forgiveness of what happened at Tryweryn. Nothing can change the powerlessness that meant Wales could do nothing to stop what happened back then. You can’t ‘forgive’ a political system that was, and to a lesser extent, still is, weighted against Wales.
Then again, you should not bear your grudges against a city whose present inhabitants had nothing to do with what happened back then.
Save your anger for a Westminster government which continues to deny Wales its right to self-governance, instead installing, however ineptly, a puppet government in charge of a toothless parliament.

IF anyone was in any doubt just how out of touch the Conservative party is you only have to look at the way David Cameron has been treated over the issue of drugs.
There can be few families in the country who have not been touched by hard drugs and their dreadful effects.
Furthermore, if you are in your 40s and you have managed to grow up without any contact whatsoever with cannabis, then I would suggest you’ve lived a very sheltered life.
That, or you’re hoping to get on a shortlist for a safe Tory seat and you’re pretty sure no-one saw you inhale.
David Cameron would seem to be that rare thing in Tory circles, someone a non-Tory voter might just one day consider voting for.
So what do his opponents do? Get their spin doctors to brief against him like mad in the hope that some mud, however undeserved, might stick.
All we have found out is that someone connected to his family had a heroin probl;em and that person has undergone treatment.
That he hasn’t wheeled that poor soul out for the cameras to boost his campaign is to his credit.
If anything the experience will probably make him better at coming up with policies to tackle such problems.
And an electorate who are all too familiar with what his family have gone through might respond somewhat more kindly than some members of the Conservative party have.
That is if he gets a chance. It is the Tories’ grey men in grey suits with grey ideas and squeaky-clean pasts who will continue to render them completely unelectable.

Blog Cymru

The little Blog Cymru icon over to the right will take you to a blog aggregator set up by Aran Jones to collect English language blogs about Wales - he also set up blogiadur.com, which aggregates Welsh-language blogs.

If you want to add your own blog to blogcymru, you'll find instructions how there, as well as code for the little icon.

You'll also find a whole bunch of blogs, all of which are more diverting and miles more technically proficient than this.

So I'm not sure why I'm directing you there in the first place. In fact don't go there, move along, nothing to see.

Column, October 11, 2005

AS military disasters go it is unlikely that the cancellation of Operation Pilgrim’s Progress will merit a mention in the history books.
After all, when it comes to things going awry for the poor bloody infantry (as well as the sailors and airmen) a brief perusal of history books yields plenty to choose from.
Whether it’s the Charge of the Light Brigade, Dunkirk or Dien Bien Phu, we all enjoy disaster, retreat and heroic defeat as much, it would seem, as we do victory.
But the battle of Carmarthen, when the crack troops of the FUW met, matched and routed the Army’s top brass, should not go down in the annals of glory.
The farmers wanted to make a point about hunting, namely that they were unhappy it had been banned. And they made that point by banning the Army from, using their land for a nine-day SAS recruiting exercise called Pilgrim’s Progress.
The exercise which would have taken place in an area stretching from Aberystwyth to Carmarthen has now got to find another home after the farmers’ fit of pique.
Because that’s what it was. A collective spitting of dummies simply because they don’t like the hunt ban.
Now, the farmers have every right not to like the hunt ban, and of course they are perfectly within their rights not to allow the Army onto their land.
But what on earth was the point that they thought was being made by this action?
Do they think that urgent dispatches were sent to Whitehall where ashen-faced officials informed the minister who took the news with all the gravity of a man being informed of the fall of Singapore?
Do you even think this fit of petulance even registered on the radar of the Ministry of Defence?
We’re talking about a Government which fights a war with one hand while cutting back the Army it uses to fight that war with the other. They could not care less what access the SAS have to land to train on.
Do you think Dr John Reid’s brow furrowed in even the slightest to hear of the FUW protest? No it will have been business as usual – which regiments are we axing and which are we sending to Iraq?
The only people this protest will affect is the soldiers who were due to take part in it, no-one else whatsoever.
I’m sure the SAS will find another home for Pilgrim’s Progress, but that’s not really the point is it. What sort of message are you sending to our armed forces if you are not prepared to allow them to train on the most rugged terrain available?
We’re happy for them to fight for us, to die for us, but not to crawl across our mountains training to do so?
I’m sorry, but that’s a pretty poor thing to say to a soldier who, in the next few months, may be facing down a baying mob intent on separating his head from his shoulders.
No matter how wrong you believe the hunt ban to be, that does not justify taking out your opposition on soldiers who have no part in making government policy and who probably oppose it themselves.
I appreciate the frustration that farmers must feel faced with a government that is so out of touch with rural affairs, and what is more, a government that does not really care about that because it knows that it has got enough votes sewn up in the cities to carry it to power.
But if protest is to do any good whatsoever it needs to have an electoral effect. Blair and his cabal will pay no heed to anyone who cannot deliver, or withdraw, enough votes to make a difference at the next election.
I’m afraid that stopping a few troops from exercising on your land will not cause the collapse of this government.
Of course if enough landowners stop enough of them training all over the UK then the end result might mean more of them dying – which could have an effect of the odd by-election.
But I’m not sure even the most ardent huntsman would say that was a price worth paying just to chase a fox.


WORDS I thought I’d never hear myself speak: Robyn Lewis has a point.
He rightly draws my attention to the fact that a Welsh gold medal winner would ascend the rostrum to the dirge that is ‘God Save The Queen.’
If we do not have our own Olympic team then that is what we have to face should one of our sporting countrymen and women win the ultimate prize.
That can’t be right, even though we know that in their head they’d be humming Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau and in their mind’s eye it would be a Dragon fluttering in the breeze, not a Union flag.
So, though I have grave reservations about it ever getting off the ground, and though I think that athletics is unlike rugby in the way it is supported, I’m prepared to see the argument of those who want a Welsh Olympic team.
But on musical grounds only.


IT is encouraging, but a little foolhardy from Assembly ministers to promise that an e-coli outbreak ‘will never happen again’ in Wales.
Yet this is exactly what they are promising will be the outcome of the inquiry into what has happened that allowed schoolchildren to be fed food that poisoned and killed one of their number.
It shows a worrying lack of understanding of just how e-coli infections happen and how Assembly ministers feel they are going to eradicate bacteria that have thus far avoided all measures to do so is a bit of a mystery.
However, increasing the number of environmental health inspectors and increasing the frequency and likelihood of random inspection of premises might be a step in the right direction.
Oh, and as long as you pay a pittance for school food you will get what you pay for, despite all your promises of a new healthy regime for children’s dinners.


WELL done to Anglesey County Council for listening to reason over the issue of school bus fares.
It was a lot to expect families to find £60 at the start of term and it would have caused great hardship to some.
Now families on the island can look forward to a daily panic to find that elusive 20p for the bus fare.
My advice – down the back of the sofa is always a safe bet if you don’t mind your bus fare covered in fluff and a toffee wrapper.

Column, October 4, 2005

WHEN the Tories’ enthusiasm for selling off state assets reached its height even their own elder statesmen blushed.
Lord Stockton, Harold Macmillan as was, neatly exposed the Conservatives’ car boot sale, accusing them of selling off the family silver.
But at least they were selling off things like railways, telephones and gas suppliers.
Even they drew the line at radioactive material – but perhaps only because they hadn’t thought of it.
Now, we hear, that the decommissioning arm of BNFL is up for grabs and this will affect ownership of Wylfa nuclear power station.
Splendid, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water because Wylfa and others were being decommissioned, BNFL decides to flog off the operation to clean the place up.
Because that’s who you want decommissioning a nuclear power station isn’t it? Not a company answerable to government, but a private sector firm answerable first and foremost to its shareholders.
After all, hasn’t the private sector just covered itself running the rest of our former nationalised industries?
Trains for instance, they might not run on time, they might run on a clapped-out network that causes horrendous crashes, they might cost you an arm and a leg to travel on – but hey, you can plug your laptop in while you travel, so that’s alright.
And while we’re on the subject of trains, have you noticed the way they announce trains earlier now. The station announcer will tell you the train approaching platform 5 is the 10.15 to Auchtermuchty, thus fooling you into thinking it’s on time. Of course it’s not approaching at all, it’s still 20 minutes away, having been delayed by loose leaves or the wrong kind of snow.
Recently I heard an announcer say that a train was late ‘because of a late departure from Edinburgh.’ Wonderful, so it’s late – because it’s late.
Wildebeest, it’s about the only excuse I’ve not heard them use for train delays – the 4.15 to London is late because of the annual migration of wildebeest across the line in Coventry, we would like to apologise to all passengers for the delays caused by migratory beasts beyond our control. It’s only a matter of time though.
And can anyone say they pay less now for their gas, electricity or phone and they get better service as a result of it all being hawked off the back of a lorry by Thatcher’s Traders?
I know you’ll be told that ‘in real terms’ you’re paying less. You’ll be told that ‘in real terms’ the power companies are practically paying you to take their gas and electricity.
Here’s a little tip about the phrase ‘in real terms.’ It is a phrase that is only, ever, used by politicians and that should tell you something about it for a start.
It means ‘I’m lying but I’m going to use this important sounding little phrase in an effort to keep a straight face and not give away the fact that I’m telling contemptible porkies.’ You watch the next politician who uses the phrase, I swear their nose grows when they do.
So no, my heart does not leap with joy when I hear the private sector will be bidding to do the clean-up at Wylfa.
This is how a private sector company will deploy the cash set aside for the clean-up, all £1.7bn of it.
“One billion for the shareholders, half a billion for the directors’ bonuses….erm…what were we meant to be doing with it again? Ah yes, the clean-up, can it be done with a really long brush?”
You see though, for politicians this is a no-brainer, clearing the Wylfa site will take another 30 years and none of them will be around to deal with the mess, but our children will.
Whoever is in power at that time can blame it on the previous, previous, previous Government. And then they’ll find something else to sell.


THE treatment of heckler Walter Wolfgang is depressingly typical of a party that has lost the plot.
There was a day when a Labour politician in the bear’s den of conference would have shrugged off a heckle like Mr Wolfgang’s exclamation of ‘nonsense.’
There was a time when a politician on the conference platform would not have even been able to hear such a heckle above the near-riot going on as the extreme left wing of the party tried to storm the platform and turn it into a burning barricade.
So it’s really rather a poor show that someone, somewhere, at conference felt Jack Straw needed protection from a solitary pensioner telling him he was talking nonsense.
Of course the frustration felt by Mr Wolfgang and others is understandable. We are, after all, involved in armed conflict in Iraq and it’s not unreasonable to expect the party that sent our forces there to be prepared to talk about that.
It wasn’t.
But then Jack Straw did not order the stewards in to deal with Mr Wolfgang, he probably hadn’t even heard him.
Nor do I believe that the stewards decided of their own volition to turf out a pensioner.
Someone within the ranks of the party made that decision and it tells you quite a lot about the calibre of person this party is attracting now.
People who care nothing for free speech, the sort of person happy for our Army to fight a war, but unhappy to hear it even talked about, the sort of person who cannot even handle someone saying they are talking nonsense.


CAN anyone explain the collective madness that seems to have gripped Plaid Cymru over the Olympics?
One would have thought that Plaid, given its failure to exactly set the polls alight recently, might have been focusing on matters closer to home and closer to the hearts of voters.
I don’t think many people wake every morning in Wales with the thought “If only we were fielding our own Welsh Olympic team, my life would be a whole lot better.”
Yet that is exactly what Owen John Thomas is suggesting should happen when the Olympics comes to London in 2012.
Mr Thomas points out that, if you judge medals gained per head of population, Wales came fourth at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002.
Because that’s how people judge Olympic success isn’t it? You can just hear David Coleman’s voice as he tallies up the medal tables and announced that brave little Azerbaijan have trounced the mighty China and the USA put together.
Yet another pointless idea that will never happen from Plaid.

Column, September 27, 2005

THE life of a soldier is not without its risks, as a glance at any war memorial should confirm.
It is not as if, when you take the Queen’s shilling, or whatever it is they pay a young man (or woman) nowadays to abandon their hoody for a short back and sides, that you think you’re signing up for kindergarten class.
Although the Army’s ad campaign which focused solely on ‘learning a trade’ and skilfully avoided the bit about fighting in far-flung climes against your country’s enemies was a little economical with the truth.
Now the ads are a little more accurate, in that they actually show soldiers in battle, which is, after all what soldiers are for – fighting, and, sometimes, dying doing so.
It is not the lot of a soldier to question whether or not he or she should do battle, it is invariably a case of following orders and getting stuck in.
Tennyson had it right – “Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do & die.”
But Tennyson was writing about the Charge of the Light Brigade, a military disaster that covered its participants in glory, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the poetic Lord T.
There is little poetry to be had from the disaster that is unfolding in Iraq, and which claimed the life of another Welsh son, Fusilier Stephen Jones, from Denbigh.
Too tired to function he turned over his Land Rover as he wiped sweat from his eyes as he drove south of Al Amarah last year. That is not a soldier’s death, to be worn into the ground until you cannot function properly and then to die in a crash.
He had been married to his wife, Zoe, for just a month before he was sent to Iraq.
The coroner at his inquest, Nicholas Gardiner, rightly questioned the hours that troops have to endure on active service.
Another question might well be to the politicians who have sent the troops there in the first place. Politicians who have been indecently willing to send our troops in to battle alongside our US ‘allies’, but who don’t want to pay the bill for having an Army that can cope with the demands placed upon it.
The Army has had to deal with cut after cut under a government more willing than any since the last war to throw it into battle.
Tony Blair and his acolytes pay solemn lip service to the heroism of our armed forces, then in the next breath they merge regiments and discard the traditions that built an Army capable of doing the many jobs they see fit to give it.
There will be more Fusilier Joneses to be commemorated before we extract ourselves from the nightmare that Iraq has become.
And if you doubt that it is a nightmare, if you believe the flannel emerging from Downing Street about things ‘getting better’ out there, consider this.
Last week the new Iraqi police force arrested two British SAS soldiers, they promptly handed them over to local militia who, we can reasonably confident, would shortly have beheaded them, with video footage to be shown soon after.
Their rescue involved some of the most extraordinary scenes of the Army in action since this conflict began as soldiers leapt from flaming Warriors and then knocked a prison down.
In a nice piece of Army understatement it was said that a ‘negotiation’ had taken place at the prison. It does tend to concentrate the mind of someone you’re negotiating with if you’ve just driven a Warrior through his wall and he’s not staring down the business end of its barrel.
But let’s just back up a little – the police handed these two men over to the militia – that’s the police that we’ve put in place to make things in Iraq ‘better.’
That’s what they sang when Labour came to power wasn’t it ‘Things Can Only Get Better’?
Perhaps they sing it in Iraq now, on the grounds that when your police force works hand in hand with a murderous militia, it’s hard to see how things can get any worse.


IT is good to see that the tourism partnership in North Wales is not in the habit of examining the dentistry of gift horses.
They expect North Wales to enjoy £2.8m of extra money from visitors when Liverpool if the European Capital of Culture.
They’re even putting their hands in their pockets to fund a worker at Liverpool City Council to develop links in the run-up to and during 2008.
“Wales can’t afford not to have a presence at what will be a global platform in 2008,” said Dewi Davies, partnership director. Never a truer word.
So all the more stinging is the slap in the face delivered to Liverpool when it had the temerity to invite the National Eisteddfod there.
No final decision has been made and I hope cooler heads will prevail at the Eisteddfod and realise what a fantastic opportunity this is to show the world, not just Liverpool, that Welsh culture is very much alive.


REAMS have been written about Tony Blair and his four-letter outburst when the Welsh didn’t duly elect the donkeys wearing red roses, sorry candidates, Labour fielded for the Assembly.
I can’t get too worked up about a Prime Minister not liking us because we didn’t vote for him, despite the fact he had given us the Assembly in the first place. An interesting idea on the part of Mr Blair though – I’ll give you democracy, but you’d better vote for me.
But mostly, I actually like being, as he bluntly put it, “f***ing Welsh.” Not a nation of cuddly, neutered, cod-Celts who weep into our whisky, about a mythical past and who can be relied upon to trot though the polls and vote Labour – but a spit-in-your-eye, troublesome reminder that not everyone can be doctored by spin.
Because the day we stop being the effing Welsh as far as the likes of Tony Blair are concerned is the day we’ve lost the streak of independence that sets us apart.
Better to bite the hand that feeds you than be thought a lapdog. It’s a lesson Tony should learn when dealing with President Bush.

Blair's Outburst (Slight Return)

Hywel Williams has written an excellent piece about the Blair business, in the Guardian here.

Newcastle and lon152

As the one man and his dog who read this blog will have seen, someone calling himself, or herself, lon152, is making a point about Newcastle.

What are they on about you might wonder?

Well, what lon is referring to is the fact that I work in Newcastle Upon Tyne - a long way from Wales.

Contrary to what he has said, I'm not from Newcastle, I'm from Hawarden, a little village on the border with England in Flintshire. I grew up there and lived there for 34 years - apart from my time in Liverpool studying law and Cardiff studying journalism.

lon clearly thinks that Welsh people living outside Wales have no business commenting on Welsh affairs. He's entitled to think that if he wants.

I would just point out that I'm not the first Welsh person whose career has taken them away from Wales and I'm sure I won't be the last. Whether what I write about Wales is worth reading I'll leave others to judge.

Who lon is I'm not certain, other than knowing he is based at the National Assembly, as he used its server to access my blog. Other than that, like so many people making comments on Welsh sites these days, he is anonymous. He set the identity up this month and this is his first appearance anywhere.

It might be nice to know his thoughts on Welsh matters, but that is a little difficult as he has no blog of his own.

But he is part of a pattern of comment being made on Welsh blogs by person or persons unknown who choose to do so from behind a cloak of anonymity.

Some people might find it a bit odd that someone paid by the public purse, or else by one of the political parties at the Assembly, should spend their time on something as pointless as this.

Still, into every life a little rain must fall.

You choose who you think has more to say about the state of Wales.

Column, September 20, 2005

BE careful as you read these words.
I am, it would seem, a recruiting sergeant for the homosexual cause.
By the time you’ve made your way to the bottom, oops there I go again, of the page you might not be the man or woman you thought you were.
All of a sudden a passion for Judy Garland, questionable moustaches and a penchant for comfortable footwear might seize you.
It’s a heavy responsibility I bear.
I’ve been taken to task by Amanda Woodruff, who has set herself up as guardian of public morality and who was not too taken with what I had to offer last week on the utter hypocrisy that lay behind Victorian values that so many people espouse.
Amanda is a worthy successor to my previous correspondent on these matters, the doughty Frances Summerbee, who memorably referred to me as the ‘Daily Post’s pro-homo spokesman.’
It’s not long before Amanda’s thoughts take her to the bedroom, or rather what other people, perverts the lot of them, do in the bedroom, and elsewhere for that matter.
Read on:

“David, you're an immature little boy, who loves courting attention. Am I right or am I right? Your latest piece de nonsense concerns Victorian values? Well, at least they had values. True, they could not live up to many of them, alas. But this present generation has no values at all. No benchmark, no yardstick, and precious few morals and inhibitions. Let me give you just two examples.

There was recently a procession of around 20,000 homosexuals and lesbians through Cardiff. They were parading their depravity before all and sundry. That is the crucial difference between now and then. And they did so with a £5,000 cheque from the Welsh Assembly Government and considerably more from Cardiff Council. And where were the Police? Actively taking part! And what would your advice be to these sad cases? Go and seek some help? No way - you would give them every encouragement to continue in their sordid lifestyle. Or you would not be a Daily Post columnist for long.

Take the government's attitude towards alcoholics and druggies. These freeloaders sign on for what is philanthropically known as 'Incapacity Benefit', which grants its claimants a minimum of £75 a week, which is much higher than JSA, plus rent and council tax paid for by the state. They are not required to even look for work. All they do almost every day is drop into the local off-licence and pub, take a few bottles of cider home, and cause a good deal of hassle to their long-suffering neighbours. And all at the taxpayers’ expense. They are even given an allowance by the welfare state to buy their booze. What a farce.

There was much hypocrisy a hundred years ago. But, hey, look all around you today - the country has gone to the dogs. You mention a 'veneer' of respectability. That veneer separates us from savagery. As the saying goes - 'hypocrisy is the due paid by vice to virtue.' Now even that veneer has been stripped away, thanks in no small part to the efforts of misguided social engineers like yourself. You and your left-wing ilk have much to answer for.”

I have to say that in six years writing this column I have yet to feel the dread hand of the editor on my shoulder and a kindly word suggesting what I should or should not write. Nevertheless, I wonder should I adopt “Homosexuals – encourage them in their sordid lifestyle’ as a mission statement.
Anyway, Amanda gave me pause for thought. Had I spent the past six years campaigning on behalf of the gay community? Had a generation of young Welsh men and women come bursting forth from the closet, empowered by my weekly blather?
Do readers find themselves unaccountably humming ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ every Tuesday morning? Do men, having read my words, not only find they have something sensible to say to their wives about shoes, but realise that it’s not entirely unreasonable to own more than a dozen pairs?
I wondered myself and so set about searching the archives to see, however subliminally, I had been promoting the love that dare not speak its name.
The truth was shocking.
I have written in excess of 300 columns since 1999 and in that time I have tackled gay issues no fewer than five times – six counting today. It’s a wonder they don’t give me my own float at Manchester’s Mardi Gras. Me, in a sequinned dress and a dodgy wig, surrounded by oiled-up hunks, belting out ‘I Am What I Am’ – that would draw a crowd.
Inevitably Amanda, like Frances before her, and a bravely anonymous contributor who decided I was a ‘campaigning homosexual’, suggests that I may be gay myself because of my ‘outpourings over the years’ (five columns, it’s hardly a Dickensian output, but then one is probably one too many for Amanda).
This will come as news to Mrs Banks, who has been trying and failing to get me interested in curtain fabric for months – now I’ll have no excuse.
Thanks Amanda.

AFTER Amanda’s acerbic remarks it was time for a more pleasant diversion.
Up pops another regular correspondent, but this time on a far more pleasant subjects.
Welcome back Alison Jones with another example of ‘The Size Of Wales’ – the ongoing campaign to have Wales recognised as the standard unit of measurement for something that’s ooh, quite big.

“Things have been a bit quiet on this front recently but 'Coast', BBC2 did come up with the fact that the Fens are 1/5th the size of Wales.
I don't know whether to be pleased that Wales was chosen to be fractionalised rather than them searching for somewhere which was just right, or not.
Visualising something the size of Wales is quite hard anyway. I can readily visualise something the size of, say, a white delivery van of 'whitevan man' fame, or even an elephant if told whether it is Indian, Africa, baby or full grown.
These are things within my comprehension, but I am starting to have problems with the enormity of life today.
But hard as it is for me to embrace the full meaning of something the size of Wales, to then ask me to cut this up into 5 pieces and see just one of these pieces floating in front of my eyes..... well, all meaning seems to be lost.”

Indeed, Alison, but it’s yet another mention for Wales in connection with a subject it has nothing to do with whatsoever. That’s the sort of advertising even the Wales Tourist Board can’t buy.

Blair's Outburst

Column will be blogged tomorrow, but I've not bothered with Blair and the "F****ing Welsh".

Does anyone actually care that much? Do you expect a politician, in private, to say anything else when results go the wrong way?

I just cannot get worked up about it in the slightest, so I've written about something else and left others more exercised by his language to comment.

In the grand scheme of things, I think taking us to war yapping around the heels of the USA ranks higher in his list of crimes and misdemeanours than does a few ill-tempered words about us.

Counter

I appreciate that the eight-figure counter in the bottom right may be a little of the optimistic side, and that it's perfectly possible to change it to a more realistic three-figure sum, or perhaps two.

But just getting it there was a major achievement, so it's staying.

Click on it to get your own, it's actually quite easy, and free.

Column, September 13, 2005

THEY want to open a sex shop in Llandudno.
You can see why, it’s an untapped market. The only thing that passes for erotica there is a dawdle through the underwear section at M&S and then you run the risk of having your collar felt by a security guard should you linger too long amid the lingerie. Not that I’m speaking from experience, oh no.
But the burghers of Llandudno are having no truck with an emporium selling erotic DVDs and videos. The town’s mayor said that to do so would ‘bring Llandudno down to Rhyl’s level.’
Hostilities have inevitably broken out over this insult to the good town of Rhyl with explanations demanded, denials issued and letters flying back and forth as if both towns’ councils do not have better things to do.
Whether a sex shop is more suited to Rhyl than Llandudno I will leave you to judge, personally I have thought that Rhyl’s tackiness was of the innocent kiss-me-quick variety rathe than do-something-X-rated-to-me-quick, but there you go.
No, what stopped me in my stride was Coun Parry’s explanation as to why Llandudno was not a suitable venue for a sex shop.
“We don’t want that sort of thing in Llandudno,” she said, “We are a Victorian town, what would our ancestors think? The Victorians had good standards and principles.”
Just which Victorians is she referring to?
The only Victorians I’m aware of consumed pornography on an epic scale. When the new technologies of photography and then the cinema were in their infancy it was not long before Victorians were using them to produce pictures and films of women with not very much in the way of clothing on at all.
The peep show is a gift to us of those straight-laced Victorians.
And if pornography wasn’t enough, prostitution was rife and what’s more child prostitution at that.
Those who claim the Victorians had high standards are confusing the austere image of Queen Victoria with her subjects, who were at it like rabbits.
She may have spent her latter years in widow’s weeds, but her subjects were engaging in debauchery on a scale not witnessed since the fall of Rome.
The Victorians might have had an outward appearance of principle morality, but it was a thin veneer that concealed the suppressed perversion that lurked beneath.
And those who regard the Victorian era as ‘the good old days’ might like to remember that for many working class children it was a time of malnutrition, forced labour, rampant disease and an early death.
Those who hanker for a return to Victorian values really don’t have the first idea what those values were.
Yes the Victorians left us a magnificent civic legacy with the buildings and other works that were built during that time.
But to argue that their morality is in some way superior to ours now is to ignore what a hard, miserable, short life many people endured then.
So, in actual fact, if Llandudno is to be an authentic Victorian resort, it really should be encouraging the proliferation of sex shops.
It might also consider legalising prostitution, bringing back child labour by sending the little hoody-wearing hoodlums up chimneys, and look into the reintroduction of a few Victorian diseases like rickets, cholera and typhoid.
A dark, satanic mill belching a cloud of noxious smoke over the Great Orme would also add to the authenticity.
It might not do the tourist trade much good – but then, they could always go to Rhyl.


IT would be nice to say Anglesey County Council has seen sense in its row with parents over the £60 up-front fee it was demanding for bus fares.
Splitting it £30 now and £30 in January might, to the councillors, seem like a reasonable compromise.
But if you’re a parent you’re being asked to shell out in September, when you’ve just paid for school uniform and all the other essentials, and then again in January, just when you’ve paid for Christmas.
It does make you wonder just how in touch with reality the council is.
The council claims it has listened to representations of those involved. Listening is one thing – taking a blind bit of notice it quite another.
I’ve yet to hear any sort of reasonable explanation offered by the council as to why parents can’t pay on a much more manageable daily or weekly basis.


WATCHING the Ashes this summer , it has been nice to see a set of England supporters who have been able to have a few (or more) drinks and not then go on to riot.
The banter has been barbed, but good natured and the spectacle will have won many new fans for the game.
Channel 4 should take the lion’s share of the praise for this as their coverage has been informative, witty and entertaining throughout. A real lesson that coverage of a sporting event does not need to dumbed down, overloaded with graphics and/or a musical soundtrack.
What a shame then when the English have found something which helps define them as a nation that the whole lot is sold off to Sky where they’ll have to pay through the noise for a satellite dish to see it from now on.
An example of stupid greed by the England and Wales Cricket Board who should have been capitalising on new-found interest in the game by keeping it on free-to-air TV.
But while I’ve enjoyed watching the series, I’ve yet to join the hordes expressing a new-found love of the game. Silly mid-off is as much a mystery to me now as it was when the Ashes began.

Column, September 6, 2005

WHO should care what appears on an obscure little website set up to attack Welsh nationalists?
Not many of us, perhaps, but now someone has lost their job because of this site’s activities.
The Natwatch site published an e-mail from Rhodri Tomos, who worked at Gwynedd Council. It was perfectly obvious from its content that Mr Tomos would find himself in some difficulties if it was published.
Whoever it is that runs the website decided that he or she could not care less about the consequences though, and published it with Mr Tomos’s name attached.
As a result Mr Tomos has resigned from his position as research and information officer.
Natwatch had published his e-mail on its website in which he suggested there was more to the refusal of the Pwllheli marina deal than met the eye.
And what should happen next? Lo and behold the Labour party turn up like flies around…well, we all know what flies gather around, demanding an inquiry.
Last month Aled Cottle found himself on the receiving end when an intemperate e-mail from his address was sent to the Natwatch site and Labour was as keen then to make capital out of the situation.
Which leads to the question, just who is running the Natwatch site? It would seem, given their keenness to ride on its coat-tails that the Labour party are very familiar with its content.
Perhaps they’re just avid readers of the web and spend their days trawling sites like Natwatch on the off chance it will give them material about their opponents. Or perhaps they know more about the site and its creator than they are letting on.
It would be reassuring to see the Labour party distancing itself from the actions of this site rather than using it as a stick with which to beat their political opponents.
It’s fair enough targeting political parties like Plaid, they’re big enough to look after themselves. But when you cause someone to lose their livelihood simply because you don’t like their politics or they won’t give you the information you want then it’s no longer a bit of fun on a website.
But then to rub salt in the wound, after causing Mr Tomos’s resignation, the Natwatch site describes him as a “brave whistleblower.”
“This man had the guts to stand up to his employers over a poor decision that would have transformed the Pwllheli area for the better,” says the site.
Contrast that with their communication when Mr Tomos offered them the information in the first place, in which they said: “We can easily survive without the support of a nat (nationalist) with a chip on his shoulder.”
Now the site weeps crocodile tears for Mr Tomos and calls for his reinstatement, when it was its actions that caused him to lose his job in the first place.
The really stupefyingly dumb thing about the site though, is that there might have been something to the story.
What if there was more to be told about the Pwllheli marina? Instead of finding out, whoever the half-wit is that runs the site simply outed Mr Tomos as its source.
If there is anyone who knows more about the marina story, you can bet they won’t be going to Natwatch with the information given its scant regard for confidentiality of sources.
And then we get Labour lumbering in its wake calling for all correspondence of the matter to be published. Brilliant, like that’s going to get you anywhere.
Both Aled Cottle and Rhodri Tomos were foolish to communicate with this site and put themselves in jeopardy as a result.
If anyone out there is thinking of doing the same then I suggest you be very careful about concealing your identity.
Better still, contact the Daily Post, the journalists here are bound by the Press Complaints Commission Code to respect confidential sources.
You’ve seen how the Natwatch site betrays its sources, it’s your choice.

THE latest Wales Tourist Board promotion dropped out of the Sunday paper when they were delivered at the weekend.
Included in the leaflet extolling the virtues of Welsh mud in its many forms – from that applied as a beauty treatment to that which flies off the wheels of your mountain bike – was the fascinating fact that the sea off Wales is warmer in October that it is in June.
I suppose it’s just the temperature on the beach after your dip that might be a bit off-putting then.
But can the WTB explain why they keep banging on about a visit to Wales being and ‘honest’ experience.
Some marketing whizz has told them that this is the latest buzz word in holidays and they are wearing it out, I’ve heard it so often.
But what does it mean? What is an ‘honest’ experience? More important, what is a ‘dishonest’ experience.
Other than that I think the marketing is spot on and they’re doing a good job of showing the variety of holidays available in Wales all year round.

MUCH as I adhere to the view that footballers are a bunch of overpaid nancies who deserve a good slap, I can’t see the sense in what the Wales fans did at the weekend.
Booing someone’s national anthem, no matter how much of a colonialist dirge it might be, serves no purpose other than to pander to the fans whose knuckles scraped the floor as they entered the Millennium Stadium.
Really, did they expect Beckham to dissolve in tears and go back to the dressing room when he heard the first boo accompany the first bar?
All it achieved was to fire up an England side, who, given the narrowness of the victory, could have well done without firing up at all.
Just think, if you were there and you’d kept your trap shut, you might have been celebrating a victory instead of mourning yet another defeat.
It’s nothing to do with respect, its whether you want to go on losing, or whether the occasional victory might just lift the gloom.

Column, August 30, 2005

CORRECT me if I’m wrong, I often am, but did the sky fall in this past week?
I only ask because Plaid Cymru have been doing a pretty fine impression of Chicken Licken.
The cause of their distress is a plan by Gordon Brown to sell off the entire housing stock of North Wales to the moneybags English who are going to salt away every bit of brick and mortar between Connah’s Quay and Holyhead in their burgeoning pension funds.
The Iron Chancellor has gone a bit soft on the idea of second homes and second homes, as we all know, are the work of the Devil.
While the housing crisis in rural Wales, and any other bit of the UK with a view of a field for that matter, is undeniable, Plaid should really keep their powder dry for battles that are worth fighting. And this one isn’t.
Instead they go yapping like Pavlov’s dogs at the mere mention of ‘second’ and ‘home’ in the same breath. You have to respect politicians who stick by their guns and are consistent, it makes such a change from the present incumbent of Number 10, but now and again you have to check yourself for being consistently wrong. Yes, I can hear the tramp, tramp, tramp of hostages to fortune when I say that, but as I’ll explain I think Plaid are making a fuss over something which will hardly affect Wales.
I hesitate to mention the word pension, as in most people, myself included, it causes an immediate desire to jam fingers in ears and hum loudly until whoever brought it up has gone away.
I’m with those who think the endowment fairy will see me right when I become too old, short-sighted and mad to continue writing. Two down one to go.
But basically the changes in pensions introduced by Gordon Brown mean that people can buy buy-to-let properties and put them in their pension pot. The advantage of this for high-income earners is that with tax breaks they basically can get 40% of the cost of a second home back if they’re putting it in their pension.
Ah, say Plaid Cymru, yet another ruse for the English to buy holiday homes in North Wales and now they get a tax break for doing it.
On the face of it that might seem what will happen, and the Affordable Rural Housing Commission is also worried saying that this scheme will drive up prices in the countryside.
But there’s a great big spanner in the works of those who want to buy holiday homes and then put them in their pension pot.
Namely that if you do that, you have to pay your own pension fund a commercial rent for the time that you spend in the property.
Lots of people like holiday homes, but I’m pretty sure they would not be keen to pay themselves for the privilege of staying there, especially when they’re already paying for the place with a mortgage as well.
All of a sudden 40% off doesn’t seem so attractive when you’re having to stump up rent. And the rent will be determined not by you, but by your pension fund trustee who by law will have to enforce a proper market-value rent and we all know how high they can be in summer in Wales.
For these investment properties to be effective as well they need to be occupied most of the year, and given the fact that many refer to our holiday-home-owning friends as ‘swallows’ because they’re only here for the summer, we know that isn’t the case in North Wales.
The idea that the hordes that make their way down the A55 to their holiday homes will soon be doing it with a fat tax break too just doesn’t hold water.
This new system will drive up house prices, but mainly in cities where there is housing stock that the buyers do not want to live in themselves but that they will rent out on a long-term basis. Simple as that.
Plaid should pick a better battle than this one.

IT would seem that the law has not served the family of Richie Davies very well.
He was killed in a hit and run accident, and the car’s owner, who was a passenger in it at the time, has hidden behind his right to silence and refused to name the driver.
The courts have been powerless to extract that name from him and so Richie’s killer walks free today.
But only for today.
I hope the Davies family will take some small crumb of comfort from the fact that, on as is blatantly evident from the court case, we are dealing with low-life scum here.
They should remember that there is little honour among these people and their loyalties shift like the wind.
The killer, is relying for his liberty, on a network of people who are not talking….for the moment.
But things change, relationships with girlfriends end, best friends become worst enemies. When that happens all of a sudden the police start getting helpful phone calls.
I’m prepared to bet that the killer’s friends are people that are ‘known to police’ as it were and I’ll bet too they’ve got a pretty good idea who it might be.
The next time any of the killer’s cohorts are up on a string of offences they might be looking to cut a deal by giving the police a bigger fish to fry.
And Chief Constable Bernard Hogan-Howe is on the case as well.
I trust the killer is enjoying his liberty, because I think his days are numbered.

CHARLOTTE Church, we hear, disapproves of the behaviour of Abi Tittmuss on Celebrity Love Island.
For those of you lucky enough not to have encountered her yet, Ms Titmuss is a model famed for not wearing many clothes.
Charlotte was once famed as a singer, but is now better known for not wearing many clothes on holiday where she is pictured with surprising frequency. I wonder how on earth the photographers always seem to know where she is, particularly when she has a new album or single out.
I’m not sure I have space in my brain to care what Ms Church thinks of Ms Titmuss but I am tempted to say strand the pair of them on a desert island and let them fight it out between them.
But then Channel Five would probably get a 10-part series out of it.

Column, August 23, 2005

I FEEL it is something of an achievement to have attained the age of 40 and not, as yet, been made the subject of an asbo.
I only mention it because it would seem they are handing them out like Green Shield stamps nowadays.
Getting your first asbo seems to be as much a rite of passage as passing your driving test or convincing unwitting off-licence staff that you really are 18 despite your soprano voice and could you have two crates of the blue alcopops please.
Even OAPs are getting in on the act.
There was a time when eccentricity was a celebrated trait in this country. Every community had its fair share of crusty old fogies who would go off like a bottle of pop if you so much as cast a shadow on their front gate.
They were generally left to their own devices on the grounds that most of them had fought in wars for our freedom so the least we could do is leave them in peace to cultivate a garden full of weeds and develop a smell indistinguishable from that of their large dog that looked every inch capable of tearing your throat out should you have the temerity to knock on the front door.
Harmless? Well, very probably not, in fact a little bit dangerous and unhinged, but such is life.
It would be a very dull world if everyone was nice, middle-class, middle-aged and in possession of a full set of marbles.
But that is, apparently, the kind of society that we are trying to produce with our courts handing out asbos left, right and centre.
Of course there are some people whose lives are made a misery by anti-social behaviour and they should be protected by the law. However, you have to wonder just how effective asbos are when week after week you read of youths up in court having breached theirs for a fortieth time and that finally the courts have got round to thinking a period of detention might just curb them.
This government likes asbos, you can tell by the way they let all and sundry hand them out. Quite why they haven’t seen the sense in giving traffic wardens and lollipop ladies asbo powers is anyone’s guess – no doubt it will be in the next Queen’s Speech.
But now the police have even wider powers to deal with the youths that lurk on our streets in their dangerous hooded tops.
They can now seek a dispersal order for an area where there is nuisance behaviour going on. That means they can order anyone there to leave and not return for 24 hours and they can forcibly return under-16s to their homes if they are unaccompanied by an adult.
The question is what constitutes nuisance behaviour? For many of these youths there is little else to do other than to hang around in groups. And for some people of a nervous disposition it would seem that any group of more then three over-12s is as threatening as the Mongol Horde riding into town, only this time they’re on BMX bikes.
The simple solution is to ban them and force them back into their homes, where I’ve sure their parents will be absolutely delighted that an evening’s peace is disturbed by the early return of a truculent teenager accompanied by the Old Bill.
Is it altogether surprising that teenagers hang around in groups and try to buy alcohol when the alcohol industry targets them so ruthlessly?
After all, alcopops were hardly invented as an alternative tipple for the real ale brigade were they? You don’t get beardy chaps of a certain age walking into their local tavern and foregoing their usual pint of Ostlethwaite’s Dark and Peculier and going for something blue and fizzy instead do you?
They’re bombarded with advertising that says alcohol is cool and pubs are allowed to open 24 hours a day to sell it, yet we expect them to behave like they’re Trappists until they’re 18.
They may look sullen, but they’re not that stupid. They know they’re missing out on something and so they’ll do their best to try it. Show me a teenager who hasn’t got drunk before their 18th birthday and I’ll show you a very, very bored child.
All asbos do is sweep teenagers and mad old men under the carpet. We all know the problem is there, but it looks like we’re doing something about them if we slap an asbo on them.
The reality is that we’re just moving the problem round, not solving it.

THE burghers of Rhyl getting in a froth about comedian John Sparkes would do well to remember Oscar Wilde’s thoughts on the matter.
Thoughts on being talked about that is, not Rhyl – he had many memorable aphorisms, but I don’t think he ever passed judgement on Rhyl.
Unlike South Walian Mr Sparkes, whose routine includes a grandfather dying on a trip to Rhyl whose relatives are consoled with the thought that he has ‘gone to a better place.’
Wilde said that ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not.’
Or to put it another way, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
No-one is going to cancel a trip to Rhyl because of a stand-up comedian’s act and the more it gets talked about the more likely people are to visit to find out what all the fuss is about.

Column, August 16, 2005

IN less enlightened times the insane would be displayed for public entertainment in the infamous Bedlam asylum.
Sometimes I feel this column fulfils the same purpose.
It seems that those who feel that to say out loud quite what the voices in their head are telling them might attract the attention of the men in white coats often feel that dashing it off in a letter to me will do just as well.
I’m happy to help, but you do worry a bit about folie a deux – that to be exposed so often to those to whom Mr Sanity is only an occasional caller might lead to barking at the moon myself.
Witness the two letters which dropped on my doormat this week – from opposite ends of the spectrum, as you’ll see, but both delightfully barmy in their own very special way.
The first is from, well, we’ll just leave her name as H shall we? She knows who she is and I’m not sure it’s wise that her neighbours should know who she is and what she’s writing about them.
H is unhappy at my support for Liverpool in its offer to host the 2007 National Eisteddfod. Here goes, you were warned.
“Dear Mr Banks,
After living next door to a couple from Liverpool for 43 years I have not got a good thing to say about Liverpool. Most of the time I kept out of their way, they were evil, they hid behind curtains watching me all the time.
I was quite sure someone was paying them for watching me, they had quite a few crooked friends around. I could go on and on 25 times and more.
She had men going to see her, found out that she was saying that they were coming to my house, whom to I just don’t know, not me that’s for sure. How evil can you get?
The reason why they blame me for everything is because I’m Welsh and a Welsh speaker and proud of it, and I wouldn’t go bowing to them.
If I had money I’d give it to Flint to hold the National Eisteddfod of Wales there. I’d hate to see it going to Liverpool. When I hear people saying that Liverpool is the capital of North Wales I shiver. I think of Caernarfon as the capital of North Wales, I was born in Caernarfonshire.
I can’t think of one good thing to say about Liverpool after 43 years of hatred, they left their hatred behind to the woman that’s living there now, her family are from Liverpool.”

Well, H, all I can say, and I think it’s inadequate in the face of such an onslaught of bitterness, is that it’s time to let go of the hatred. Whatever your neighbours did or didn’t do to you, it’s a little unjust to think ill of a whole city on the basis of two people who happen to come from it.
I dare say there are one or two rum coves in your beloved Caernarfon, but you wouldn’t write off the whole town because of them would you?

The next is another from my new-found correspondent in Rhyl. You know the one, he thinks the Welsh Not never happened and he has, incredibly, found a pub in Rhyl where everyone switches to Welsh to talk about him when he walks in.
A friend e-mailed to point out that it’s a little puzzling to make such a claim, because if you don’t speak Welsh, how do you know everyone is talking about you?
Anyway, without further delay, here’s the next instalment from Rhyl:
“David,
Who are you to criticise my spelling!!
You can’t wrote, it allways goes pear shaped in that s*****e (here he even manages to misspell an expletive) paper!
And get your facts right I sent the letter days before that muppet Cottle said what he said. I’m 100% genuine, problem is Welsh nationalists like you don’t like the truth!!
The pub in Rhyl I went to is near my flat in West Rhyl they won’t serve me cos I’m English.
and about that resuvror (he means reservoir, we established his inability to spell it in his first letter) it had to be built cos people wanted water, where do you think it should have been built? Moon? Mars? No-one lived there anyway cos it was full of trees and sheep.
I won’t be writing again so I bet you won’t publish this letter.
From a proud Englishman”

If I were a betting man I’d say that, despite his promises, this is not the last we’ve heard of him, more’s the pity.


LEIGHTON Andrews writes of take me to task for crediting him with being the first AM to draw attention to the Natwatch website.
This honour, he points out, was not his, but the Lib Dem AM Peter Black got in there first and would I mind setting the record straight?
I am, of course, happy to do so and confirm that a whole day, 24 little hours, before Leighton Andrews pointed people in the direction of the Natwatch site, Mr Black had got in there before him.
So that’s clear then.
What is not so clear is who is behind Natwatch. It could be a private individual with an intense interest in Scottish and Welsh politics, particularly those of a nationalist persuasion.
On the other hand, as has been suggested, it could be a little project by political opponents of parties like Plaid and the SNP.
While you’re perfectly at liberty to say what you want about any political party, if you do so from behind a cloak of anonymity, you shouldn’t be entirely surprised if people wonder who you are.

AS I’ve mentioned recently, I moved house in the past couple of months.
Having been invited to dinner by our new neighbours this week it was revealed to us that the lounge of my new home was, until we took up residence, used for meetings of the local Conservative party.
Just think of it. In my house they were toasting Maggie’s election victory; glasses were raised to the defeat of the miners. They probably had a wild party to celebrate the introduction of the poll tax and who knows what debauchery ensued after John Major’s against-the-odds victory in’92.
I was wondering whether to have some sort of exorcism.
Or should I just welcome them back and offer them tea and sympathy?
Your suggestions are welcome.

Column, August 2, 2005

AS contributions to political debate go, the one tapped out by Aled Cottle is hardly the most helpful.
Wales has had more than its fair share of great orators, men and women who were often able to sway public opinion solely through the power of their words.
Lloyd George, Nye Bevan, Gwynfor Evans and Neil Kinnock have all made their mark on the character of this country through their speeches.
It’s fair to say that Mr Cottle’s memorable, albeit brief, remarks were about as useful as Corporal Jones of Dad’s Army who often volunteered of the enemy that they: “Don’t like it up ‘em.”
Writing to a website so obviously partisan as Natwatch, the one to which Mr Cottle is said to have fired off his intemperate e-mail, was a mistake.
Pointing out that the Anglo Saxons originally came from Holland/Germany was about as useful to a 21st century audience as telling them that Julius Caesar arrived here from Rome.
Using abusive language rather negated whatever mixed up point was trying to be made in the first place.
It’s easy to see why a website set up to expose “the failure, mendacity and xenophobia of nationalists in Scotland and Wales” would stir up hostility in some quarters. But to respond with a tirade like that is simply playing into their hands.
What a shame there was no-one there to say in the finest traditions of bar-room brawls: “Put down the keyboard Aled, they’re not worth it.”
It was a brave move of Labour AM Carl Sargeant to call for Mr Cottle’s job. I trust he will be insisting this set a precedent and that AMs and MPs, all of whom, like Mr Cottle, are paid from the public purse, should forfeit their jobs if anything other than honeyed words are uttered by them. Unfortunately at the moment we have to wait until an election to remove them if we are offended by their words or deeds.
It’s good to see Mr Sargeant taking a stand over the decline in political debate though and I’m sure he will be insisting his political colleagues live up to the same standards that he sets for Menter Iaith staff like Mr Cottle.
But what of this site Natwatch. Well you can see it for yourself at www.natwatch.co.uk/blog and make your own minds up.
You’ll notice though that all of its messages are by the conveniently anonymous “price4president” and that while the site is keen to expose the mendacity of nationalists, it’s not so keen on debate, as you cannot post a message to the site yourself, unlike many other Blogs.
It’s latest contribution to the Welsh political scene is this: “Tomorrow Nat Watch will be gate-crashing Seimon Glyn's annual family holiday. Yes, you've guessed it. We're sending a correspondent to the Eisteddfod (lucky her!). We will bring you a series of special reports from the maes, at the biggest Welsh nat festival of the year.”
You and I thought the Eisteddfod was a cultural festival where all shades of political opinion were present. It would seem price4president knows better.
And it is interesting, very interesting, that the two AMs who have drawn our attention to a site that has only been running since May are both Labour AMs. First Leighton Andrews and now Carl Sargeant. How very public-spirited of them.
If you want the alternative view, log onto natwatchwatch.blogspot.com which has a healthier attitude to debate.




AND talking of unhealthy contributions to debate, this missive recently arrived after a recent column.
Now, I have to preface it with a health warning – I don’t believe someone could be stupid enough to hold these views.
It’s timing, coming so soon after the Cottle e-mail scandal is somewhat suspicious as well. Almost as if it were intended as a diversion. Make your own minds up anyway.

“David
I read your column last week, I agree 100% with Chris Bryant , cos no one cares about Welsh language, no one speakes it, I moved here 10 years ago from London and I’ve heard little Welsh. We are in Britain don’t these thickoes speak English?!
Its not a real language anyway, it should be BANNED! Only sheep*******s speake it! And for your information Welsh not never happened, its just propaganda from nationalists who should be shot. So a valley drowned for a resov resouvir, who cares?
If I had my way I’d drown the whole f***ing Wales! And you’re ignorant, cos I walked into a pub other nite in Rhyl and everyone turned Welsh – all talking about me! Why don’t you wright abot that.
From a PROUD Englishman”

Dear God almighty where to start, where to start?
Well, 14 errors of spelling, grammar or punctuation in the space of 135 words does rather make one wonder just what this little man is so proud of. These ‘thickoes’ probably do speak English, and I’m prepared to lay money that they have a better command of it than the rather loose grip he has of its intricacies.
They’re my asterisks, not his, this is, after all, a family newspaper and there might be children reading, and I’m already exposing them to his atrocious spelling, best to spare them his appalling language as well.
While claiming in his first paragraph that no-one speaks Welsh, he says as he signs off that when he walked into a pub in Rhyl everyone started speaking Welsh and they were all talking about him. A contradiction which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t strike our letter writer all that readily.
It does rather make one wonder which pub though, because Rhyl is hardly a heartland of the language. If it did happen, I’m sure that if the letter’s author looks as mad as he sounds most people were indeed talking about him and one word would have been on their lips – NUTTER.
I’m taking it that a ‘resouvir’ is a reservoir, and as for drowning all of Wales, well you had a go not so long ago and gave up. But I would point out that Wales is generally a good bit higher than England and so if you ever succeeded then England would sink below the waves long before we did.


ONTO a far more rational correspondent. This is from Stan Granton, a reader from Anglesey, who like many parents is fighting the council’s decision to make parents cough up a lump sum to pay for children’s bus fares.


“Dear David,

Thanks for highlighting the plight of Anglesey parents, of which I am one. This ridiculous new charge is horrendously high, I have two children at high school and one more going in Sept 2006, yes that magic £180 comes to mind.
There is a side of this situation that I think some people have missed. Many parents such as myself, will choose to do the school run themselves, I am in a position to be able to take and collect my children on a daily basis.
I know many more from Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, who will also be doing the same. Can you imagine the congestion at approximate. 8.30am and 3.30 PM, dreadful, and I suspect that other parents on Anglesey with children at the other high school will do the same.
This will go against both UK Government, Assembly Government and police policies. We parents are forever being told to stop the school run in order to reduce early morning and early afternoon congestion.
I am unable to comment on the situation at the other high schools on the island, but I do know that Ysgol David Hughes's site will struggle to cope with the numbers that will be involved.
Just to give you the figures relating to Ysgol David Hughes, 600 children between Llandegfan and Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. Yes that £36,000 for school transport should we all be mug enough to pay.
I would be grateful if you could ask parents of Anglesey, both high school and junior level(after all they will one day be affected if we do not stop this) to write to Anglesey Council Education and Leisure Department to protest.
The more of us that do this the more they will realize that this situation is going to get out of hand should they go ahead. I for one do not have the ability to keep £180 a year spare with three growing children around, getting them back to school and though the year is expensive enough without this added cost.
I reckon I spend approximately £1,830 per year on my children's requirements for school, (uniform, trips, shoes and coats, dinner money and school equipment.)
Hoping that you are able to help and thanks for your comments in your column lots of us are affected and support form someone such as yourself is grateful appreciated.”

The decision by Anglesey is bad for children, bad for education and bad for the environment and it is time that someone with an ounce of common sense on that council got a grip of the situation and revoked what is a bad policy.

Column, July 26, 2005

UNTIL now the travails of the country landowner are not something that have furrowed my brow unduly.
Having lived in a flat where the sum total of the acreage under my control amounted to one balcony; followed by a Victorian terrace where, were I cruel enough to swing a cat, it would have bashed it head against the four walls of a tiny back yard – I have been untroubled by the onerous duties that rest on the shoulders of the landowner.
But then I moved house. Now I have gardens, or, as I like to refer to them when getting ideas way, way above my station, grounds.
Hedgerows, a rose garden, stone walls, lawns, and even a small woodland comprise Banks acres. I can now order someone off my land and it will involve a longer walk than them stepping out of the front door.
Since acquiring the spread I have come over all bucolic and it can only be a matter of time before the Country Landowners Association come a-calling offering me honorary membership, or even life presidency.
Our nearest neighbour is a farmer, we’re surrounded by fields, and our two-year-old having spent his summer in the great outdoors, has acquired the bronze perma-tan of a horny-handed son of the soil rather than a pasty-faced son of a hack.
I was half-wondering whether I could set aside the front lawn and claim EU subsidy for it and is a tractor really out of the question as a second car?
My agricultural credentials duly established I feel I can hold forth with farmers on an equal footing. While my fortunes are not so wedded to the vagaries of oil seed rape prices as are theirs, nevertheless I feel their pain.
So it was that conversation on Saturday fell, as it does when you’re a custodian or our rural heritage, to the subject of hedgerows and when to cut them.
I was feeling rather proud to have neatly-trimmed my rambling row, but my farming acquaintance revealed that he could not tackle his until the end of the summer.
This wasn’t because other farming duties took precedence, but it was because of something called cross compliance.
I can see your eyes glazing over, and so were mine, you’re thinking here’s another whinging farmer aren’t you? And you wouldn’t be wrong, but he was whinging with good reason. Furthermore he drove a modest Ford Mondeo, not a large, new Volvo.
Here’s how it works. To get his full subsidy he must comply with certain environmental regulations – and hedgerow cutting is one of them. No cutting between March 15 and August 31 in Wales, March 1 to July 31 in England.
This is to allow birds to nest, breed and for the young to fly the nest.
This all seems to make perfect sense if you’re a bird lover and who can argue against such a regulation, even if it means untidy hedges?
Well, my new farming mate could give you one or two things to think about.
For a start the dates apply from the southernmost tip of the UK to the northernmost. You’re not telling me that birds in the balmy southern climes of Kent nest and breed at exactly the same dates as those on the Llyn, or in Northumberland are you?
Secondly, my new-found friend said that a hedge cut now produced a dense, thick hedge which was accessible to small hedge-nesting birds, but was impenetrable to predators such as magpies. By leaving the cutting until later, the hedge was loose and so the magpies can get in and kill the very birds that the rules are trying to protect.
Thirdly, by the end of the summer the thorns on hedges like hawthorn have hardened, and so when they’re cut they get into the hooves of livestock causing suffering to them, which they wouldn’t if they were cut earlier when the thorns are still soft.
All of this is as a result of well-intentioned rules being imposed on a on-size fits all basis. We all know that the climate of North Wales is different from that of the South East of England and yet the rules are being applied across the board instead of allowing for some local leeway.
This is just a small example of the sort of bureaucracy that farmers have to cope with now when dealing with the minefield that is subsidy.
Of course, you might argue that they shouldn’t be getting subsidy in the first place, but without subsidy we’d be paying more for our food, so take your pick.
Some cynics might argue that if farmers were allowed a free hand there wouldn’t be a bird left and every hedgerow in sight would have been grubbed up in the name of profit.
But if you’re going to have rules, surely it’s better to have rules that make sense and work rather than ones which endanger the very species you’re trying to protect.

I’M not surprised parents on Anglesey are less than thrilled at the council’s latest cost-cutting wheeze.
Making parents stump up £60 to pay for the school bus fares must have seemed a stroke of genius to whoever it is that counts beans at the council, but if you’re the one who foots the bill you might not be as impressed by a display of penny-pinching that would make Scrooge blush.
Imagine if you’ve got three kids of school age – that’s £180 that you’re expected to find in one go.
As father-of-two Eddie Gardner not unreasonable asks, why can’t the kids still pay on a day-by-day basis, even if the fares go up?
The council spokesman, while neatly passing the buck to the Assembly, does not explain why they want the cash in one, difficult to find, lump sum, rather than allowing children to pay the fares on a daily basis.
Surely they knew this would create hardship, or are they so out of touch with their own electorate that they imagine a family with three kids has £180 lying around doing nothing in particular?
Bringing up kids is expensive enough without ill-thought-out policies like this one making life even harder.
The end result of this will be children walking to school because their parents simply can’t afford to fund Anglesey’s ham-fisted attempt to cut costs.
And when a child gets knocked down walking on an unsafe route to school, where will those who made this decision be then?
My best guess is: Nowhere to be seen.
The council should reconsider this decision immediately and allow parents to pay fares on a daily basis.

Column, July 19, 2005

IS having a form in Welsh the biggest issue to face our country?
Well, I suppose some might say it depends on what’s on the form. I rather think it does not matter a jot what’s on the form unless you are simply paying, if you’ll pardon the pun, lip service to us being bilingual.
Elfyn Llwyd thinks it matters and asked Tony Blair why pub landlords in Wales had not been given the opportunity to have new licensing forms in Welsh.
Blair replied that urgent discussions were going on between the secretary of state for Wales and the culture secretary on that very matter.
One imagines that the discussion might have gone something along the lines of:
Welsh sec: “What do you bloomin’ well mean you didn’t know we spoke a different language here – get typing.”
You can perhaps, just about, forgive tourists venturing here for the first time and who are initially thrown by bi-lingual road signs. But for a whole ministry to forget we speak a different language is beyond the pale.
One person who, apparently, did not think it so important was Chris Bryant, MP for the Rhondda valley.
You can I suppose, understand, if not forgive him not being that bothered about the lack of a Welsh language form. There would not be that many votes in it in the Rhondda where the closes they get to the language is to correctly pronounce the double-d.
“Was the availability of a Welsh language form the biggest issue in Wales?” he asked, having jeered at Mr Llwyd while he was asking his question of the PM.
Perhaps it isn’t.
I’m fairly certain that Wales will get up tomorrow and get on with the business of being Wales, unhindered by the absence of a Welsh language form for licensees.
But it’s just another little chip away at our identity, another inconvenience to be overcome by those who choose to use the language of their birth.
This is how languages die.
No one, not even Chris Bryant, is going to introduce the Welsh Language (Kill It Stone Dead) Bill to parliament. But what they do, which is just as bad, is ignore it, forget it, fail to take account of the fact that people want to speak it.
The days of the Welsh Not are, thankfully, so far behind us now that I’ve met many English people who seriously doubt it ever existed. But if the pub licensing forms are allowed to stand then the Welsh Not is replaced with the Welsh Can’t. Instead of being punished for speaking Welsh it is just made more and more invonvenient.
To protect the language against death by a thousand cuts like this it needs guardians more vigilant than Labour’s Chris Bryant.
But to return to his question – is this the biggest issue in Wales at the moment? Perhaps not.
Are we to take it then that Mr Bryant spends his Parliamentary time dealing with matters more weighty than this?
Well, he is very busy voting that’s for sure and he’s only disagreed with the Government nine times in 1,007 votes thus far, giving us an altogether new definition of lobby fodder some might say.
But he’s full of bright ideas and came up with an Early Day Motion on a very important matter only a month ago.
His EDM read: “That this House commends the Registrar-General, Len Cook, on his recommendation to relax the rules governing the list of readings, songs or music that contain reference to a god or deity in civil wedding ceremonies; and looks forward to the Government bringing forward new guidelines as soon as possible.”
Now, of the availability of Welsh on licensing forms is a pressing issue, then I’m surprised that what you can and can’t sing at a civil wedding has not been the subject of a Panorama special.
Superb. Worth £1,000 – the usual cost of an EDM – of anyone’s money. Only this time it wasn’t anyone’s money it was the taxpayers’ wasn’t it?
But nice to know what a New Labour loyalist views as important in Wales. The language – not very, but what you can sing at a civil wedding – that’s important enough to waste taxpayers’ money and parliamentary resources on.
If I were Elfyn Llwyd, in the face of such mighty intellects, I would rather be jeered than cheered.

IN the aftermath of the London bombing London’s commuters continued with life as normal as they could.
Our stout allies in the war on terror – the US air force, was told to stay out of London, but hey, they’ve got a track record of hanging about on the fringes of things before getting stuck in haven’t they?
But quite a few people were wary of going back on the Tube, and in the wake of the atrocity they were less than keen to get on a bus either.
Cars are expensive and you get hit with the congestion charge and taxis are exorbitant.
So what did they do in their droves? Went out and bought bikes.
Cycle shops reported huge increases in sales in the days after the London bombing as those scared of going underground sought other ways of getting into work.
The cycle shops – unlike London’s hotels who profiteered their way through the bombing by shoving up room prices for one day only – sold bikes at massive discounts so they were not profiting from the atrocity.
But did no-one whisper in the ear of these new cyclists one little statistic.
Last year in the UK 134 cyclists were killed in accidents on the road. The toll of the London bombs stands at 55. It doesn’t take a genius to work out who is the biggest threat to you.
It’s not terrorist atrocities, it’s the driver behind you who’s taken his eye of the road.

Column, July 4 2005

Sorry I've been remiss.

Here's one from July, more to follow.

If there's anyone out there reading them that is.

I’M sorry I’ve been busy in the last week but can you tell me which day they found a cure for cancer?
And my attention must have strayed quite a bit, because apparently they also saw off heart disease.
Respiratory diseases became a thing of the past while I nipped to the shops and didn’t have my eye on the game.
Strokes were solved while I was having a nap.
Medical miracles every one and this can only explain why the British Medical Association’s illustrious membership turned their mighty collective brain to the subject of that other mass killer – cycle helmets.
Or rather, that is, the lack of cycle helmets.
Cyclists venturing out without the benefit of a large lump of expanded polystyrene was something up with which the BMA would not put.
I tell you, they must blooming well hate that Alexander Fleming chap, he had it easy didn’t he? Grew a bit of mould on a few melons, found it patched up cuts something marvellous and hey presto he’s got penicillin and he’s saved half the planet.
They’re running out of fixes like that one, hence they turn to cycle helmets. Whichever member of the Brains Trust it was that put this on the BMA agenda, I suspect he’ll be waiting a while before the Nobel Committee come a calling.
But why get so worked up at what seems a very sensible idea? Helmets are bound to make you safer as a cyclist aren’t they?
Well, this is where it gets bit complicated, but basically the answer is yes, but only some of the time.
And why should we get worked up about it in Wales, especially if we don’t go biking? I’ll get to that in a minute, stay with me.
A helmet only protects you from certain types of impact, and if your brain gets rattled about enough there’s nothing a helmet will do to protect you. Sadly some cyclists don’t realise that and they think a helmet makes them indestructible – it doesn’t as they and their next of kin find out.
Secondly, a helmet makes motorists think you’re indestructible and they drive even more recklessly around you.
Thirdly, and this is where the BMA should have been really paying attention instead of seeking to grab headlines. Where they have made cycle helmets compulsory, such as parts of Australia, people gave up cycling. And what happened then? The rate of heart disease went up.
Fewer people got on bikes, they got fatter, they got coronary heart disease and they died. All because an Australia politician thought it would be a great idea to make everyone wear helmets.
Which brings us back to where I started. In 2002 there were about 500,000 deaths in the UK. Of those deaths 39 per cent – 195,000 – were due to coronary heart disease.
And how many cyclists died on the roads that year? 130.
Now, even if every one of those deaths could have been prevented by the using of a helmet, and I’m prepared to bet that quite a few of those killed were actually wearing helmets, you have to wonder at the BMA’s sense of priorities.
Instead of focusing on the UK’s number 1 killer they decide to wade into something they clearly have not read the research on, and, after a particularly short and ill-informed debate, they decide they want cyclists to be compelled to wear helmets.
Because heart disease is a much tougher nut to crack. They’re going to have to get us to change our whole lifestyle. Instead of laws to compel cyclists to wear helmets I’d like to have seen the BMA try to ban chips. They’d need more than a good bedside manner to push that through.
Now, you might be tempted to trot out the well-worn cliché “Well, if it saves one life….etc, etc” Just don’t, we’ve already shown that for all the lives it saves, more will be lost because people won’t take up cycling and they’ll die of heart disease as a result.
Which brings me round to Wales. Why should we care here more than anyone else?
Because we’re trying, and succeeding, in cornering the activity holiday market in the UK.
As was revealed last week, for every £1 spent on promoting Wales as the great outdoors, tourists spend £25 in return, which is better than most of us do on the lottery every week.
So just as we win a hard-fought battle for visitors, the BMA starts putting them off cycling by telling them that if they do it without a helmet some policeman should nick them. And I’m sure the police are well pleased with the BMA for handing them that victimless crime to pursue in the masses of free time they have left over from tackling the binge drinkers who really are filling most hospitals’ A&E units.
Still, who am I to stand between the BMA and another headline? After all, it probably won’t be this generation of doctors who will pick up the pieces. It will be the next, whose wards will be full of even more cardiac patients whose presence could have been avoided if the BMA had listened to sense instead of its own prejudices.

GREAT concerts, great bands, wonderful cause and Sir Bob, eh, well, he’s a saint isn’t he?
Well, let’s leave aside the crushing irony of some of the world’s most fabulously wealthy rock stars telling us we should do something about world poverty.
Let’s skate over the fact that more than a few of them will have teams of accountants working for them to help them evade tax which goes, amongst other things, toward overseas aid.
And let’s turn a blind eye to the fact that amongst their number may be a fair few tax exiles whose convenient country of residence may not even pay overseas aid at all.
And let’s just imagine that the G8 leaders will give two hoots what was said at the Live8 concerts even though they know full well that if they cut us a tax break come election time we will troop to the polling booths like loyal little voters no matter how many starving Africans fill our TV screens.
So how do we make poverty history. Well trading fairly might be a start, and let’s take the example of sugar.
The EU grows masses of it, and it subsidises its farmers who grow it to the tune of €1.5billion a year.
It closes its sugar markets to third world imports and then dumps its excess production onto markets in the rest of the world, preventing developing countries from getting a decent price for their sugar.
So lets make poverty history, lets trade sugar fairly. To do so will mean some revision to the Common Agricultural Policy and as we’ve seen recently, that’s not going to happen overnight.
Making poverty history is the noblest of causes, but it is not a cause that is served well by a bunch of overpaid rock stars getting up on stage and saying it’s an easy thing to do.
That sort of trite reasoning invites the same sound-bite response from the G8 leaders and that is the last thing that those in poverty need.