The world is obviously free of anything important for the police to do – you know, arresting old age pensioners who kill off burglars and the like – for they’ve time to investigate Rod Liddle for a hate crime. An entirely heinous one of course, being beastly to the Welsh. To be honest I have some sympathy with the idea that we should stop people being beastly to them, they do after all already labour under the distinct disadvantage of being Welsh, in Wales of all places. But still not sure that making snide remarks should be a hate crime, really not sure:
Arfon Jones, the elected £70,000-a-year commissioner for North Wales, said he had been ‘inundated’ by complaints about Rod Liddle’s description of the Second Severn Crossing as ‘linking their rain-sodden valleys with the First World’
…
After it emerged both complaints were likely to be rejected, he even suggested new laws were needed to make insulting the Welsh illegal.
It would be a sad day when the constituent peoples of these isles were unable to insult each other. For if we English cannot make jokes about the Welsh then presumably they can’t call us the effete ponces we do generally get called, The Scots can no longer rail about the unfairness of our behaviour at either Battle of Alnwick – you know, cheating by winning – and the Irish can no longer mock us for our underconsumption of potatoes. Or more locally, the rest of us can no longer call the Scouse the accused when in a suit, nor wonder where all the brain cells have gone in Dorset.
For here is Liddle’s supposed hate crime in all its glory:
Anyone for bridge?
The Welsh, or some of them, are moaning that a motorway bridge linking their rain-sodden valleys with the First World is to be renamed the Prince of Wales Bridge. In honour of the venal, grasping, deranged (if Tom Bower’s new biography is accurate) heir to the throne. That Plaid Cymru woman who is always on Question Time has been leading the protests. They would prefer it to be called something indecipherable with no real vowels, such as Ysgythysgymlngwchgwch Bryggy.Let them have their way. So long as it allows people to get out of the place pronto, should we worry about what it’s called?
It’s not even a novel joke, we West Country folk have been noting that you pay a toll to enter the place, not leave, for generations now. A tax to enter, not to leave, a mistake for of course much more could be raised in revenue the other way around.
But, you know, obviously there’s no other crime worthy of mention in Wales these days so perhaps attention should be paid here. Maybe tastes have altered given that broadband and porn are now available and the sheep are safe for a change?
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Welshmen
Now that the bridge is nearly done
It was just those nasty Plaids who persuaded them to fight
And their Bassey and their Joneses are really far worse than their bite
Let’s be meek to them
And turn the other cheek to them
And try to bring out their latent sense of fun.
Let’s give them full air parity
And treat the Taffs with charity,
But don’t let’s be beastly to them, man.
It goes both ways and that’s how it should be. In Chatwin’s On the black hill the grandfather teaches the twins (born literally in a cottage on the radnorshire, herefordshire border) the welsh for dirty saxon, which though fiction, is a reflection of a welshman performing his grandfatherly duty.
Well, they gave the world Tom Jones. Other than that…eh.
… and Burly Chassis.
American blacks have also received absolution on the ridicule that the rest of us take. Surprise, blacks were not helped. Certain whites dish it out more cruelly in defiance, while certain blacks wake up thinking everyone hates them and there is no use in moving fast. No one anywhere has a problem with chocolate-colored skin. But you’d never know.
Why the complaints from North Wales when the bridge and the comment were squarely targeted at South Wales? Are they just jealous we have a bridge?
The easiest way to get from south to north Wales is to go via England, which says as much about how close the 2 areas are, apart from how we feel about the English they could almost be seperate
You just had to sneak the sheep reference in right at the end didn’t you
Well done@jgj
>For if we English cannot make jokes about the Welsh then presumably they can’t call us the effete ponces we do generally get called
It won’t go both ways. These people are not interested in consistency. The English are the oppressors, so only they will be stopped.