Any Questions?

Sitting here I was last night as per usual, wasting my life on Facebook, paying the occasional visit to the twitterrati and with Radio 4 on in the background. I don't have a Television Set and haven't had one since 2006 so when someone asks me "Have you written for Television?" Well I've tried but not very seriously. It is not a medium that delights me but it pays well apparently. My aim is to break through with the Playwriting and then I'll await the knock on the door from TV Producers rather than TV Detection Vans. I'd heard the trailer for any questions and my heart sank when I heard that it was coming from Neath, a town that I don't know why, but I don't like it. The Shark Fisherman can state here quite publicly that he doesn't like Neath, whether it was because I canvassed there for Dr Dewi Evans, the Plaid Cymru candidate in the 1989 Bi-election. The people were generally quite kind and pleasant apart from two men in a van who stopped and shouted out "what are you selling there butt?" I said Plaid Cymru, they revved the engine and shouted 'bloody rubbish'. I then went to a residential home for the elderly to try and sell the joys of an Independent Wales to people with dementia and alzheimers. A man washing his car said "I''ll vote for you cos we remember what Peter Hain did at the St Helens Rugby Ground, putting tin tacs down". I didn't know who Peter Hain was apart from being the Labour candidate but I found out that it was in protest at a visiting South African rugby team. 

Now 25 years on I probably agree with the two men in the van but because it was my first time canvassing I was a bit taken aback. I remember seeing Captain Beany in Neath once in his full regalia and by now my politics is closer to his than to Plaid Cymru.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Beany

Last night I was listening to Jonathan Dimbleby pronouncing Castell Nedd 'chwarae teg' and listening to David Steel (Liberal), Carwyn Jones (Labour), Michael Fabricant(Conservative) and Jill Evans(Plaid Cymru) Everything was mundane and boring as per usual when the whiney, nasally question of one Cerys Bevan came across the wireless like Lord Haw Haw 'ers llawer dydd'. The question was something along the lines of "Can we blame the Welsh Language for the poor showing of our schools and education in the PISA tables?"
Loaded or what!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03qfzh7
I knew the type of person this was. I had met many on my travels. The Welsh Quislings who blame the Welsh Language for all of societies ills. These are people who didn't enjoy the experience of learning Welsh in school, they didn't like their Welsh Teacher, they don't see the point in it, there's too much money spent on it, they are the minority, they get all the best jobs, it alienates children, nobody speaks it round here, blah di blah di blah like a toy with a string in its chest.  By this stage I was standing, shouting at the radio as if I was shouting at every one of these I had ever met. The most sensible answer was Lord David Steel when he declared 'No Comment'. You could hear the ripples of approval and the folded arms from the audience when Cerys went on "I am not a Welsh Speaker and I am obviously biased towards the English Language". This is why the language is in such dire straits because so many of the Anglo Welsh have an ambivalent nay poisonous and resentful attitude to something which is the pure essence, the nectar of communication for the country. They would rather their children learn French or German than Welsh because they are bound to be going on their holidays there...at some point. "You live in fucking Wales Cerys, Welsh is the indigenous language of Wales".  I would like to see Cerys in years to come singing the National Anthem like John Redwood. I did what any self respecting Beany would do, I went into the kitchen, opened and ate a cold can of baked beans and as Jonathan Dimbleby declined to say 'Castell Nedd' brow beaten by the 'Cymraeg Dissaprovers' in the audience at the end of the programme. Even the Scottish continuity announcer declined. This is not a fucking joke. I went up to the radio and farted into the speaker. I think this is why I don't like Neath.