Mission Statement

The country which I love is failing.

It is an ancient country that has survived against the odds, and still retains a strong sense of itself. It is also a modern country that has recently embarked on a project of nation building and democratic self determination. It is both an engaging opportunity and a terrifying responsibility. It is a project I have followed for perhaps the last eight years, and it is largely the reason I have decided to write this blog.

The country is Wales (or Cymru in our old Welsh tongue), a small country to be found in the west of the island of Britain. It is a country with a rich history, which has in its own way shaped the history of the world (something I hope to explore a bit more in my future blog posts). But its history is largely ignored and under appreciated by many of its own people and many more of the people of the island which it shares. If the country is known by people outside of the island of Britain then it is largely as a strange mountainous land, a land of song, miners, castles and rugby players. It is also a relatively poor country that, we have been convinced, is a country with a radical and left wing disposition.

I want to write this blog to in some small way contribute to the current debates about the future of Wales, and the wider world. I am interested in a number of areas which this blog will aim to comment, including: history, philosophy, economics, science and above all politics, with a focus on Wales and Britain. I am an expert in none of these areas, but I believe in the democratic ideal of a citizenry which tries to educate itself and therefore offer challenging comment on the state of things. As Dewi Sant (Saint David) said "do the little things", it is a phrase I try to remind myself of as often as I can.

If anybody should choose to read this blog, then I hope to provoke thoughts and ideas above all else, and then to learn from any comments I receive and any debates I engage in. I have modified my ideas on a number of issues through past debates with friends and family, and by following thoughts through to their logical conclusion I have reached some uncomfortable truths. The idea of writing this blog is not to find easy answers, so I hope to submit myself to some more challenging debate.

Now to get back to the point of all of this.

Following Welsh politics can be a painful interest, but it is required work for Welsh patriots, of which I count myself one. This is the only political position (if it is one) I will say for now that I hold, for I am not currently a member of any political party and when in the past I have tried finding a position to describe my political views I have struggled to settle on any that satisfy me. One qualifying remark however, I also consider myself British, and as I consider patriotism a good thing (if not taken to extremes), then I am also a British patriot. I do not think they are mutually exclusive.

In the current circumstances though Wales needs patriots more than Britain, and therefore my focus in this blog will be on Wales. (I am also fascinated by the rest of the world, as all good patriots should be. So will also comment on things other than Welsh and British politics.)

In 1997 the people of Wales voted in favour of a National Assembly (very narrowly) and therefore a degree of political autonomy. The National Assembly began its work in 1999, and for all the years since then (14 years), the Welsh Government and Welsh politics has been dominated by one party, the Welsh Labour Party. It is my contention that they have failed Wales, and are continuing to fail us. In fact recent polls suggest that Labour will run Wales for the foreseeable future, suggesting a worrying prospect of a one party state. They have cemented their position through cleverly exploiting Welsh history and Welsh patriotism to make themselves the "party of Wales". They have made their brand of unreconstructed socialism look as though it is the "Welsh way". The truth is that Wales, like all other countries is a diverse place full of differing and legitimate ideas. The fact that most Welsh people don't really follow Welsh media (what there is of it anyway) suits the Labour party. As the Welsh public can ignore their failures and instead their anger can be vented on the evil Tories at Westminster who are far more likely to appear on their TV screens and in their newspapers.

However, my argument is that we have no one else to blame but our selves for this situation. Anyone who maintains that Wales is seriously oppressed by London/England/the Tories either has never seen real oppression or is spreading propaganda. The past is past and historic injustices should not fester in our hearts. There is fault, no doubt, that can be levelled at Westminster, but it is largely that Wales is ignored or not even considered. We are not going to change this situation just by complaining. We need firstly self confidence and to ditch any ideas of victim-hood, and secondly to assert our selves in Britain and the world in a positive way and by learning from others success (and that includes England).

I think truth is the most important thing we can strive for, and hopefully come somewhere near to through debate. So in this vain, the first thing to say is that I do believe that most politicians in Wales, from all parties, have good intentions. This may not be true (I can not make windows into peoples minds), but what is clear is that there is certainly a number of incompetent politicians in Wales. Evidence for this can be found in the state of education, health and the economy of Wales, after all a politicians primary job is to improve the lives of their constituents and their country. A lack of competition in certain constituencies is, I'm sure, part of the problem here.

We come out bottom on so many measures which compare us with other parts of the UK that something must be going wrong. In any other country the figures which we regularly hear about would be a national emergency, yet we have become so used to them we have become complacent. When the new PISA figures for Wales were released recently and showed that we were continuing to slip behind other countries, we heard Labour talking about new systems being put into place and a new emphasis on this and that, as if they had only just come to power, not been in charge of education for 14 years. It might be funny if it wasn't so tragic. The same is true of the Welsh economy, where we sit somewhere around 70-75% of the UK average in terms of GVA or GDP. But our government continue to hamper the growth of businesses in Wales through poor leadership and decisions, increased regulation or by focusing their resources on projects that in the long run wont create sustainable wealth creating jobs.

When people talk of real change and new thinking they generally don't really mean it, they go straight back to thinking what they previously thought, maybe with a slight tinkering about the edges. As Einstein famously said the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result". We need to change our political and ideological culture, learn from others who have succeeded and be prepared to change our minds. Wales cannot wait for much longer for us to go through this process.