sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com: June 2020

Monday, 29 June 2020

WALES IS OPEN

The scenes at Offa's Dyke today as Mark Drakeford lifts the lockdown and the tourists flock over the border after being denied their ice cream in Llandudno and their bag of crack in Rhyl for 3 whole months.

We all thought this was going to be a proper pandemic when all this kicked off. A third bubonic plague, not this half arsed affair that has confused the fuck out of the world and his wife.

You can meet outside whilst clapping for the NHS with one hand behind your back. You can shag in your emotional support bubble as long as its a member of your family. You can now travel up to 10 miles in Wales if your emotional support sheep is that far away. Confused tae fuck bruv!

Everybody UK wide had been so good until Dominic Cummings brought his tombola table out to the Downing Street rose garden and proceeded to put the national glass eye to sleep and then everybody thought "Fuck it, I'm off down to Dundle Door or Bournemouth and Southend with my fam and the estate and we iz gonna shit in our takeaway boxes"

In Wales, people with pokers up their arse were posting pictures of Bournemouth next to Barry Island. "Look at us, aren't we good? Aren't we better than them. Look at us observing lockdown". You fools, you wait till the Bank Holidays in August. If the rumble in Ogmore is anything to go by there are fun times ahead in Gwalia.

What chance does a nation of 3 and a half million people have in proclaiming its independence buffered up against 65 million straining at the leash to sample the delights of Aberaeron, Gower, Sir Benfro,Y Wyddfa and Hay on Wye. It's only the locals who go to Barry Island and Porthcawl mun!

Personally I think tourism and its effect on the Welsh economy is over-hyped. What has its effect on the Welsh Language been over the last 100 years?

When I have been a tourist in other lands, I am the tightest, meanest bastard on God's earth, looking for the cheapest deals and the cheapest food. My bum bag is welded to my torso and if you want to know where the local population of moths have gone, they have congregated around my wallet. I cannot be the only one. The people carrier loaded up at home. Everything you could possibly carry on your wagon as you head off to Bermo or Borth like the Beverly Hillbillies. How can I blame you?

Come the Senedd elections in May 2021 (if we haven't been wiped out by a second wave of a proper pandemic) and the Nationalist vote has been split between Gwlad, WNP and Plaid Cymru thus enabling the disablers, the Abolish the Assembly Party, political pundits will be in agreement, whatever his deficiencies in a post pandemic Wales, they will say that Mark Drakeford "He had a good lockdown"

Tuesday, 16 June 2020

Progressive 🌈 Alliance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_alliance_(UK)

What if all parties joined together to defeat the Tories?#BlackLivesMatter
Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Greens, Workers Party of GB and any I've missed out,
instead of fighting each other, join together for a Progressive 🌈 Alliance.
— David Williams (@davidredbutton) June 15, 2020

Well everybody is at it so why not I or should that be me? Don't worry, I wont be asking you to join anything or to send any money. After I googled progressive rainbow alliance this morning after tweeting about it last night, I saw that my hero Jeremy Corbyn had rejected the idea of an alliance with other parties for the 2017 General election before he got stabbed in the back by his own people.

The idea has been around awhile. A coalition of political parties to take on the Conservatives with a chance of winning. I've written about it on here before. I must feel strongly about the idea and prospect because I've written about it here as well.

Corbyn has gone, along with a swathe of the membership to the Workers' Party GB. I have a problem with the descriptors Great Britain & United Kingdom. They do not describe these islands upon which we live.

What I am asking you to do in this blog post is to cut up your tribal membership card and commit to a Progressive Alliance because you know, the shrewd political commentator that you are, that there is no future to the Tory/Labour hegemony in British Politics.

Nationalism both Scottish and Welsh, whilst it has its obvious appeal, a lifting of the Westminster yoke of oppression, has the danger of repeating the failures of centralised government on a micro level.

We are all citizens of the world and we were all affected by the murder of George Floyd in America. It is time for radical, progressive, socialist, green, black lives matter politics to challenge the Conservatism of Boris Johnson and the Labour of Blairism which will creep back under Starmer unless we are alert.

Tuesday, 9 June 2020

Gese East Anglia

"A shield of three golden crowns, placed two above one, on a blue background has been used as a symbol of East Anglia for centuries. The coat of arms was ascribed by medieval heralds to the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia and the Wuffingas dynasty which ruled it. The arms are effectively identical to the coat of arms of Sweden."

Dipping my toe in the Eastern waters I am and wondering if there was to be a movement called 'Gese East Anglia' that lobbied and marched and made speeches with the express intention of declaring Independence from the rest of the United Kingdom. I am wondering what the reaction would be?

Would Gese(Yes in Old English)Norwich expect Gese Ipswich to dance to their tune? After all they are at different ends of the region which hopes to become an Independent country. How would the good burghers of Cambridge feel about this? What about Peterborough?

"The East Angles spoke Old English. Their language is historically important, as they were among the first Germanic settlers to arrive in Britain during the 5th century: according to Kortmann and Schneider, East Anglia "can seriously claim to be the first place in the world where English was spoken."

Giving Wikipedia a break, how about this article  from the Eastern Daily Press. Light and Jolly. An Independence movement that doesn't take itself too seriously. How refreshing.

"It used to be a small independent monarchy known as the Kingdom of the East Angles comprising the North Folk and the South Folk."

People are generally fed up of the Westminster Bubble and the calls for Independence from the United Kingdom appear to be getting louder and louder in the shark fisherman's home country ironically as we get closer to the lifting of the lockdown and who has the keys to that kingdom but Mark Drakeford, arch devolutionist of Cardiff West via Carmarthen. He is against Independence but for a stronger voice for Wales. Is he devo max or devo light?

Does Wales have any more right than East Anglia to call for its Independence? It is like its Eastern counterpart one land mass but perhaps like Norwich & Ipswich aluded to earlier the people of north and south Wales are different. They have come under different influences. A common language unites some. These are the ones who mostly want Independence and they want it badly. There are not many Welsh Speakers who specifically do not want Independence for Wales but First Minister Mark Drakeford is one of them. Although historically not Socialist in their running of Wales affairs you could say that Welsh Labour were closer to an Independent mindset than their true blue Conservative counterparts. Their leader, Paul Davies, another Welsh speaker definitely doesn't want Independence for Wales.

Unfortunately for the Welsh Independence movement, party politics and tribal loyalties have historically been the order of the day and that is why Yes Cymru although heavily supported by Plaid Cymru was greeted with such enthusiasm as an umbrella body to co-ordinate a united under one banner push for Independence. They have not been without their teething troubles with internal politics and re-grouping.

I write as a Corbynite who has had his own Damascene moment all be it slower than Paul the Apostle. Moving from hard line Plaid to a Socialist who wants fair play for East Anglia as much as he wants it for the citizens of Wales.

I realised very recently that individual human life was more important to me than an Independent Wales. The mental health of somebody in South East London is more important to me than whether Wales can pull up the drawbridge to Westminster. It would be a different matter if it was the Welsh Language but I see no evidence that Welsh as a living language is guaranteed to be in a stronger position post Independence.

I wish them well but as I age and mature like an old smelly cheese I feel distant, removed and aloof from an 'in yer face movement' who appear focused on Independence at any cost.