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Post by ncsonde on Oct 13, 2014 10:01:55 GMT
...And I assure you, their children are not learning English. No, of course not - in a Welsh-speaking area, they'll start off with Welsh. By the government diktat produced under the politically correct multicultural idealism of the Blair years, that's true enough. But it's not because it's a "Welsh-speaking area", whatever that might mean. Welsh speakers have been in the minority in the area for at least well over a century; and despite such well meaning diktats, this will never change. Unless the university closes, I suppose, or the Welsh suddenly start breeding as fast as their new neighbours. You're not suggesting they have a racial characteristic of any sort, are you?
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Post by jean on Oct 13, 2014 11:23:20 GMT
By the government diktat produced under the politically correct multicultural idealism of the Blair years, that's true enough. But it's not because it's a "Welsh-speaking area", whatever that might mean. Welsh speakers have been in the minority in the area for at least well over a century; and despite such well meaning diktats, this will never change. Your friends and mine clearly disagree about the amount of Welsh spoken in the area now. But before those wretched Anglo-Saxons were allowed in, everyone spoke it, didn't they? No, I'm not. The Poles' well-attested facility with other languages is probably due more to the complexity (both grammatical and phonological) of their own, which makes learning most others a piece of cake.
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Post by Typical American on Oct 13, 2014 13:32:27 GMT
So the hunt is still on to spot racial characteristics?Will there be a prize?
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Post by jean on Oct 13, 2014 14:16:33 GMT
More accurately, the hunt is on to spot other people spotting racial characteristics.
If the hunt should be successful, the results would be triumphantly paraded as going some way to justify one's own tendency, frequently deplored by the bien pensants of the board, to spot racial characteristics oneself.
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Post by sweetjessicajane on Oct 13, 2014 15:47:09 GMT
Listened to Vince Cable the other day extolling the benefits of people coming here - and I accept there maybe some benefits but I can't really see them. I'm lucky enough to be able to afford a house, I'm not on some waiting list for social housing, the family health is fairly OK (touch wood) so NHS waiting lists aren't an immediate issue, but we not rich enough to want cheap nannys, cleaners, gardeners etc.
Immigration is rather like a surprise Christmas present, no-one asked if you wanted it, OK it maybe nice but do you really need it!
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Post by cleefarqhuar on Oct 13, 2014 15:53:09 GMT
Listened to Vince Cable the other day extolling the benefits of people coming here - and I accept there maybe some benefits but I can't really see them. I'm lucky enough to be able to afford a house, I'm not on some waiting list for social housing, the family health is fairly OK (touch wood) so NHS waiting lists aren't an immediate issue, but we not rich enough to want cheap nannys, cleaners, gardeners etc. Immigration is rather like a surprise Christmas present, no-one asked if you wanted it, OK it maybe nice but do you really need it! Immigration definitely has some benefits if it fills skills gaps that cannot be immediately met Mass immigration of unskilled low-paid workers has been shown to be of negative benefit - it costs us more in services and benefits than we receive in taxation, quite apart from establishing alien cultures in our midst
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Post by jean on Oct 13, 2014 16:03:40 GMT
...establishing alien cultures in our midst Now you know how the Welsh felt.
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Post by cleefarqhuar on Oct 13, 2014 16:38:50 GMT
...establishing alien cultures in our midst Now you know how the Welsh felt. Indeed Does this mean you know how the English people feel?
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Post by jean on Oct 13, 2014 16:45:46 GMT
It doesn't really matter, does it?
The Welsh got used to it in the end, just as the English will.
Of course the Welsh have taken remedial action to preserve the language they so nearly lost, remedial action which, ironically, is held up to ridicule above by your fellow-Little Englander Nick as an example of 'politically correct multicultural idealism'.
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Post by marchesa/rosa on Oct 13, 2014 17:27:04 GMT
They have not got used to it hence Plaid Cymru.
The Irish have never got used to the plantation of Scots Prods there, either. These feelings last for centuries. Those who try to ignore them put transient political correctness before the lessons of history.
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Post by jean on Oct 13, 2014 17:41:28 GMT
They have not got used to it hence Plaid Cymru. The majority have, marchesa. They don't even burn cottages owned by English incomers any more. Plaid doesn't advocate repatriating foreigners. But supposing they hadn't - what should be done? Would you have the English ethnically cleansed from Wales along with the alien Poles? (And, while you're here, may I ask you what you think of Nick's labelling compulsory Welsh language teaching as 'politically correct multicultural idealism'?)
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Post by cleefarqhuar on Oct 13, 2014 20:07:18 GMT
It doesn't really matter, does it? Your flippancy an be very stupid at times
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Post by ncsonde on Oct 14, 2014 4:15:12 GMT
By the government diktat produced under the politically correct multicultural idealism of the Blair years, that's true enough. But it's not because it's a "Welsh-speaking area", whatever that might mean. Welsh speakers have been in the minority in the area for at least well over a century; and despite such well meaning diktats, this will never change. Your friends and mine clearly disagree about the amount of Welsh spoken in the area now. I lived in the area for 15 years. I have no idea what you and "your friends" might be referring to by "the area", on the other hand. If you take Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire as "the area" it comes out with Welsh-speakers slightly in the majority - though there hasn't been such an official "area" on the map since at least the 13th Century. If you take "the area" as what it was when the council imposed Welsh as the first language in schools, then Welsh speakers were very much in the minority, because then the county included Pembrokeshire. The county as it is now is very slightly English - unless you count the English who are learning Welsh as Welsh-speakers, which was the usual tactic of the Welsh Language lobby (hence the claimed rise in the Welsh language speakers from 12% to 17% in the past twenty years, despite the indigineous population growing not a jot.) But - I naturally assumed you meant the area around Llanybydder, which is what we were talking about - thanks to the university, that's been majority English since it was first established as a Theological College back in the 19th Century. You mean the people who built Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, the Valley towns, and nearly every other town-sized settlement? You mean in a time when the only settlements on the map were Aberwystwyth, St.Davids, Monmouth, Carmarthen and Llanybydder, all of them with populations of a few hundred? I suppose they did, in a rudimentary sort of way, like the Scots. But don't forget that the Normans came after that - at least a fifth of Welsh derives from Norman French. You're saying it's a cultural characteristic then, are you?
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Post by ncsonde on Oct 14, 2014 4:22:58 GMT
More accurately, the hunt is on to spot other people spotting racial characteristics. If the hunt should be successful, the results would be triumphantly paraded as going some way to justify one's own tendency, frequently deplored by the bien pensants of the board, to spot racial characteristics oneself. Even more accurately, the race is on to solve the puzzle as to how someone can ascribe common characteristics to a group without very specifically quantifying exactly what that group might be and making very very clear - every time you mention that group, is the diktat - that it excludes others that might share yet other common characteristics that also need such meticulous qualification...and so on and so on...and so on... We have, after all, been informed repeatedly and most emphatically that not to do so is a criminal offence.
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Post by ncsonde on Oct 14, 2014 4:27:50 GMT
...establishing alien cultures in our midst Now you know how the Welsh felt. Something like this, apparently.
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