Wales Leading The Way Again !

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-34219546

Come on England...catch up !

[mikey4444]

NJ...I wouldn't disagree with you, but it is enshrined in the Law these days.

[New Judge]

Yes I know, Mikey, but I simply cannot understand why it has not been addressed.

The Welsh Language Act is more than 20 years old. (Dated 1993, so I cannot even blame a Labour government :-)

This is its opening gambit:

“An Act to establish a Board having the function of promoting and facilitating the use of the Welsh language, to provide for the preparation by public bodies of schemes giving effect to the principle that in the conduct of public business and the administration of justice in Wales the English and Welsh languages should be treated on a basis of equality,…”

Well that was all fine and dandy in the heady days of the Nineties. Today it’s different story. I imagine more people in the UK speak Polish than speak Welsh (it will not be too long, I imagine, before more people in Wales speak Polish than speak Welsh).

I know it is a different principle, but part of the government’s strategy in encouraging newcomers to integrate with those already here is to persuade them to learn English. Yet here we have a specific Act of Parliament encouraging precisely the opposite. Practices have grown from this Act (dual signage, etc.) Imagine a “Polish Language Act”. I simply do not understand why a language spoken by fewer than one in a hundred people in the UK receives such specific support. It is one of the great mysteries of our time.

There you are, rant over !!!