Our Heritage

Just been informed that Huw Lewis is our new education secretary. One of Neil Kinnock's disciples, as are most of the 'valleys' A.M.s; doesn't bode well for our language & heritage. When one thinks back to when the Vale was invaded by the Normans the valleys managed to keep the native language & laws with little interference. At least getting on doesn't necessarily mean getting out any more, and we are an officially bi-lingual country. A lack of objective education over the last 100 years or so has people believing that English (or Wenglish in its transitional form) is the language of the valleys, whereas in reality it's only become the prime medium of expression in Merthyr for example since the '20s, and in some parts of the borough only since the 60s. Unbelievable to listen to some people from the western valleys wantonly replacing their heritage & culture with that of a neighbouring country, throwing out thousands of years of history & literature; shame that the only world renowned Welsh poets such as the two Thomases, R.S. & Dylan were the first to write in that foreign Germanic/Latin tongue we refer to as English; without Cymraeg (Welsh) we wouldn't hear of perhaps the greatest romantic poet of the middle ages - Dafydd ap Gwilym. But there again it isn' our language is it; what blatant propagandist non-historic nonsense. I can only despair at such a wanton denial of a heritage that gave us Roman emperors, the second Pope, the first university; romantic poets of the middle ages, all before the English language existed. A heritage second to none that we shouldn't be afraid to shout about from the roof-tops & the hills (obviously we wouldn't) but where's the education, and who's the new education minister? I repeat 'I despair."