We have ways of making you speak Cymraeg

I don’t make a habit of commenting on Welsh matters, with my knowledge of the principality being (very limited) to the Anglophone south-west of Pembrokeshire. Generally speaking, they can do what they like between Offa’s Dyke and the Landsker as long as I’m not subsidising it.

Apparently the Welsh Assembly’s governing coalition of nationalists and socialists (now where have we heard that combination of politics before?) are considering measures including forcing businesses to provide Welsh speakers for their customers.

Now I know I’m only an accountant so can’t be expected to know much about business and stuff, but surely a firm with a significant proportion of Welsh-speaking customers will not remain a business much longer, if it does not meet the desires of its customers by providing their services in the Welsh language. Why do they need another law? Why should (as Nigel Evans correctly pointed out on Radio 2 on Tuesday (listen again, until 10th July)) a business in, say, Monmouth, where only about 12% of people speak Welsh, be forced to provide those services? Has the Assembly got an economic death-wish? Who would want to open a business in Wales with this sort of pointless regulation being piled on? Only one perhaps which was going to open up in a predominantly Welsh-speaking area anyway, so the English speaking areas can go hang… Ah, I think I get it.

I could go on about how wrong it is that the UK taxpayer has been funding the artificial boosting of Welsh as a language: a language that the Welsh people had collectively rejected (“voted with their tongues” perhaps) in favour of English, but I’m hungry and late for lunch.