Remember Tryweryn? How about remembering the pennies?

Dwylo Cerrig remembers Tryweryn and asks if the writing should be on the wall for government sponsored graffiti.

Recession ensures that government policy is the language of priorities. Balancing the books, picking which pet project deserves feeding, often leaves ministers between a rock and a hard place. That is, unless you’re Alun Ffred Jones, and your priority is a rock in a hard to find place (the A487).

It is a peculiar trait of Celtic national sentiment that stones become rocks of ages, geological ties to either times in the sunshine or paperweights holding down a page of colonial history ad infinitum. The Scots have one. The Irish, being the ones with the beadiest eye on the tourist dollar, have one as well. Ours is obviously a bit more modern than our cousins to the north and west. And it’s the only one that can claim to be a forerunner of Banksy.

Is it really the job of government to spend taxpayers money save a piece of graffitied wall? Is that what Welsh government is all about? Tryweryn does hold an important place in the Welsh national psyche, and rightly so. If only to demonstrate the importance, natural justice, and need, for Wales to be more self-confident and ensure that everyday government decisions should be taken by those who are directly accountable to the people of Wales.

But why can’t the people of Wales raise themselves to reach the £80,000 needed to save the wall? Is this not a classic case, and a Welsh disease, of apparently caring so much about something but actually not enough to do something about it? Why does the Eisteddfod keep needing government handouts, we all want a pluralistic Welsh media and complain that the London papers ignores us yet we all still buy the Sun, Mirror, Telegraph et al in our hundreds of thousands. The list could go on and on.

The wall is strong monument to an ill-thought out and insensitive episode in the relationship between our nation and one of the foremost historic outposts of Wales outside her borders. Let’s keep it, but let’s dig into our own pockets, and not continue to demonstrate our immature dependency on state handouts

Related posts:

1. Remember when Tories used to drink 14 pints a day?