What I actually suggest is that this touring ‘home nations’ occasional side is superseded by a standing European team which would play a series every two years, alternately home and away, against a Southern Hemisphere XV: a sort of Ryder Cup for rugby. I have to confess that my motivation for this is half sporting, half identity-politics. For me, it’s difficult to identify fully with a Lions side which even with the name change in 2001 is something of a (crooked line-out) throw back to a by-gone imperial age ...This kind of posturing really gets on my wick. This son of Rhys is AM for Carmarthen East, a constituency which, like all of South-West Wales, is being transformed by English refugees moving along the conduit of the M4. Culturally, linguistically, demographically, the area is being changed - becoming less and less Welsh.
This guy is supposed to be a nationalist. One who doesn't care about what happens to his people or their land, but thinks its really important that the Lions shouldn't be 'British'.
And if you can't identify with this (no matter that I'd like to see more Welsh players) then I don't think you actually love rugby.
(via Sam Tarran)
10 comments:
He is against a by-gone British imperial age, but in favour of a modern European imperial age?
Thats the problem with these Welsh and Scottish nationalists and why I have absolutely no respect for them, they are not real 'nationalists' they are purely anti British leftists.
Anyone who claims to be a nationalist (in Britain) and against rule from distant Westminster and then turns out to be an uncritical fan of the EU is a joke and should be regarded with total contempt.
Plaid is chock full of Marxists and petty little nationalists. They are a joke. It shows how shit Labour are that even Plaid are picking seats up from them.
An independent Wales would be an economic calamity. It would be hard even with a nation with a history of entrepreneurism, but Wales does not have that, in fact the culture has historically been against this. Bright sons became doctors and teachers, not businessmen.
Add to this culture a permanent socialist administration, whether Labour (in Wales, old Left) or Plaid (hard Left) and a legacy of massive welfare dependency in Valleys towns and there is no way the country could be financially independent. It would swap dependency on English subsidy for dependence on EU subsidy. In other words, partnership with a country with which it shares a long history, or 'partnership' with a political entity with which it shares very little.
Oh, and he's a twat. Forgot to add that. A typical modern middle-class professional politician, vexed by such testing questions as this one.
Fiddling while Dinefwr burns. Twat. Again.
''It would swap dependency on English subsidy for dependence on EU subsidy''
Bigger trough I suppose
Men of Harlech....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjvKZHJeayg
It won't move Mr Pryce, but then nothing will.
"Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, this is my own, my native land.."
Rubbish version, try this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1csr0dxalpI&feature=related
Rob,
Quite agreed; the Welsh Nats would really prefer an illusory Vichy independence under Brussels to the historical bonds with the rest of the UK. They posture over "independence" from Westminster but bend over and whimper "do it to me harder" when it comes to directives from the EU, the whole point of which, for them, is that it allows them to adopt a non-British identity.
You're also right about the economics; an independent Wales would be Albania with rain.
"an independent Wales would be Albania with rain"
Come on. Swansea and Cardiff excepted, the tradition of the blood feud is nowhere near as developed in Wales, Dduw diolch.
If they left the EU, sealed the borders and rebuilt Offas Dyke, they could make a fortune selling citizenship to wealthy English refugees.
The Great Lie
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