Welsh…I don’t want to pay for it!

November 16th, 2007 Written by Biz

Now I quite like Wales; it brings to mind women wearing long skirts and those funny tall hats with buckles. You can almost imagine them walking along with those wooden yokes carrying pails of water, clogs sparking upon the cobblestones as they wend their way up steep streets, until they finally reach their destination. Emptying their loads into a tin tub, they prepare a bath for their industrious husbands, whom upon arrival, divest themselves of their coal-dust laden jacket and flat cap and proceed to wash off the residue of the day’s hard toil.
 

Woops…sorry…it’s probably that I watched ‘How green was my valley’ one time too many as a child. My business partner tells me that for him Wales conjures up images of Charlotte Church and Lisa Scott-Lee…and I must say that I probably like his images better than my own.
 

The other thing, of course, that you think about when thinking of Wales is the Welsh language (oh…and sheep, leeks, larva bread and daffodils). It came as a great shock to me to hear then, that the BBC were planning to spend a staggering £24 million of our licence fee contributions toward setting up a new Digital Welsh Channel. WHY?
 

Now if the Welsh, god bless them, want to converse in Welsh, then good luck to them but why should I have to pay for any of this; it’s not as if I stand ANY chance of understanding any of the planned programming. It’s not for lack of trying either; I can actually speak two Germanic languages, two Slavic languages and a Latin language, but still Welsh is totally incomprehensible to me.
 

It’s not as if Welsh is widely spoken in Wales either…most Welsh people you will ever ask, will not have a clue about their own language and even if you were to attend any Welsh Assembly meetings; even they are conducted in English.
 

In mine and many peoples opinion, the BBC’s output has been declining in quality for years and even the repeats aren’t the old classics that everyone loves (Morecambe and Wise, Dad’s Army etc) yet due to a lack of funding, the BBC is on track to produce even less original programming and air even more bland repeats. In view of this why waste £24 million of precious licence money on a project that will only be understandable to a very small percentage of Wales and to no-one at all in England (or anywhere else in the civilised world)?
 

If the Welsh want Welsh programming…let them pay for it themselves. It’s no good to me…I’d rather the money be spent on things that the majority of us need…like commissioning another series of Knight Rider, because to be brutally frank, I stand more chance of understanding Kit, Michael Knight’s car, than any Welsh programs. Who knows, the Welsh would probably enjoy that a load more too, you can just picture it:
 

“Ma…Ma…there’s a car on the tele…it’s talking”.
 

“Well now…there’s interesting for you…isn’t it?”
 
 

 

 

 

Entry Filed under: Rants & Views