Sacred Cows

One of the positives, if you can call it that of having 'Bipolar Disorder' is that you can get away with insulting people or institutions without having to be duly concerned about it. You have nothing to lose but your bad name. Mental Health is stigmatised anyway so why not take a few prisoners with you. Many in a new Wales are scared of  upsetting the apple cart. It might affect their job prospects, their career paths. Many folk have to compromise and bite the bullet. This used to cause me so much internal strife that in the end I didn't think it was worth keeping it in. Then it all came out and it wasn't a pretty sight.  We in Wales have a number of sacred cows, the Untouchables, usually of the Institutionalised variety. Now I haven't had a television for seven years, since my diagnosis. I think I mentioned before that I am triggered by visual stimulus! I am quickly and easily angered and over stimulated. I am over stimulated by the World News and under-stimulated by Wales Today.
In exchange for a Television Licence/Money bartering system we allow numerous visual images to invade our grey cells. The Revolution may not be televised but war certainly is.
The TV Licencing HQ is in Bristol, and one quiet soulless morning in Grungetown I was disturbed by the Card carrying Feds.
"I don't have a TV Licence!"
 " Is that a live feed to your computer?"
 "Que?"
 First and only visit in seven years. I'm surprised they don't come around every two weeks because they know that like narcotics, Television is extremely addictive.
Thankfully I am not addicted to S4C. You'd have to be desperate to be and this recent furore about not paying the TV licence because it was going to get less funding and being taken under the wings of the BBC. Now if I remember rightly it was the members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg and Gwynfor Evans's threat to fast to death that forced William Whitelaw's hand to set up the Fourth Channel in the first place. From my privileged perch of insanity it appears that many have done rather well from it. When this recent funding crisis hit again it was the young students of Cymdeithas yr Iaith who were out protesting. Where were the cast of Pobol Y Cwm, where were the celebs who have been getting fat paycheques from the UK Taxpayer. In my book, language is more important than making a fast buck. The worry is, that the Welsh Language is now in the hands of the Middle Class and these Pontcanna Triangle officianados know a thing or two about making money.  No longer 'Llais y Werin' the ghettoisation of the language amongst a people that bare very little similarity to those who speak the language in its heartlands. Sell your soul to the devil, why don't you?
I've swopped my addiction from TV to Facebook, like when I was undiagnosed and self medicating my mood disorder, I swopped booze for cannabis. All these addictions will catch you out in the end.
Amongst the 'Sacred cows' of Wales, top amongst them must be the Assembly! The body that went in and confiscated the sacred cow from the Hindu temple in Carmarthenshire and is still intent on culling the badgers of Wales. A striking building in what is now referred to as the Bay. Well it was the Docks when I first lived and worked down there and where are the Mermaids in the cold and commercial Mermaid Quay?  You can read about the Machinations of the Assembly in another sacred cow 'The Western Mail' which has been serving the people of the servile Principality for over a century. My beef (oops!) with both the Western Mail and Wales Today is that they dumb everything down. They pander to the Anglo/American Obsession with celebrity culture which again is just another displacement activity for not thinking about death and your own mortality.
So I have criticised the Assembly and the Western Mail and then you have the Welsh National Health Service also known by its other name The Welsh Rugby Union. These are Committee Men in shiny blazers who control the saline drip and the bright red blood supply of the biggest circus in town. The six nations is about to get underway and the cold, unwelcoming concrete pavements of Kairdiff will welcome the Match Day Nationalists, more concerned with raising the share value of Brains Brewery and singing 'My Hen laid a Haddock'. Sacred cows a plenty in Wales and I have just swiped a muddy hand across their brow. I don't suppose they have done anything personally to me..yet, but they are there and just like any self respecting Goliaths, they must have their Dafydd.