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DO THE LITTLE THINGS


"In my opinion, it is completely inappropriate that a television channel whose primary purpose is to provide Welsh language programmes for the population of this nation remains under the control of Whitehall mandarins within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport".


“If safeguarding the future of our national television channel is a burden to ministers in London then devolve the responsibility, devolve the money and put it in the hands of the people of Wales. We deserve better than to see a London government gambling with the future of our Welsh language channel behind closed doors.”

Given this, you have to wonder why it has taken someone within the One Wales Government so long to make such a statement? 

Perhaps it is because the culture minister remains adamant that he is not in favour of "devolving S4C on its own", a point he repeated in an interview with the excellent Felicity Evans on Dragon's Eye on Thursday night. 


"if the Assembly is to have powers over the Welsh language, then it must also have responsibility for the one organisation that has possibly done more than any other to preserve the language over the last twenty five years". 

St David once said, 'gwnewch y pethau bychain' (do the little things). 

Rather than holding out for devolving the whole of broadcasting, shouldn't the One Wales Government start with S4C, given its importance to the nation? 

More relevantly, can we now expect for Carwyn Jones, as the First Minister of this nation, to make such a request tomorrow morning? 

I think we all know the answer to that question.

Comments

Anonymous said…
"I think we all know the answer to that question".

I think we do. The chances are somewhere between slim and zero and slim just left town

We also all know that Ieuan and Ffred knew full well that if S4C had been devolved before the ConDem government had been elected, they would have had to have made difficult decisions themselves over S4C's funding i.e. do you cut funding to the WNO, museums, sport or to S4C? Now they can simply try and pass the buck. S4C should be devolved now to WAG and let our AMs make the decisions over where priorities lie.
November 07, 2010 10:34 am
Anonymous said…
Just seen the Politics Show and the report on the rally yesterday. It was a good turnout and one can only admire the sincerity of Menna Machreth and others who campaign every day to save the language. But the most stomach churning moment was Paul Flynn reading out a letter from Peter Hain. What did this man do to help the Welsh language during his years as Secretary of State? More to the point, why didn't he devolve broadcasting to Wales when he had the chance? Labour opportunism at its worst and it devalued the whole event.
November 07, 2010 1:36 pm
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