Category: politics
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What’s wrong with BBC news?
Nowadays I seldom choose to watch or listen to ‘national’ BBC news programmes. I’m certain I’m not alone, to judge from personal enquiries and listener statistics: the Today programme lost 800,000 listeners between August 2017 and August 2018. Some of this listener loss could be down to the changing shape of media – there are…
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Cymru yn cynhesu
Ydy, mae’n digwydd Erbyn hyn does dim amheuaeth. Datganodd yr IPCC (UN International Panel on Climate Change) y mis yma fod tymheredd y blaned yn rhwym o godi’n sylweddol. Y brawddegau allweddol yn yr adroddiad yw’r rhain: Amcangyfrir bod gweithgareddau dynol wedi achosi tua 1.0°C o gynhesu byd eang yn uwch na lefelau cyn-ddiwydiannol ……
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Carmarthen to Aberystwyth by train
It’s our first time on the Gwili Railway – thanks to a nearly-three year old boy obsessed with trains, or, more accurately, steam locomotives. We spend several hours pottering back and forth along the four mile track between the Railway’s current termini, Abergwili Junction and Danycoed, on two trains, one pulled by a steam engine,…
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The Mundaneum
Until last week I’d never heard of the Mundaneum. But it’s such an exceptional institution that it deserves to be much better known. To visit the Mundaneum as it is today you need to go the Wallonian city of Mons and search out the Rue de Nimy. There, in an adapted department store, you’ll find…
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Tories go to Hell
After a week of poisonous anarchy among our Tory rulers it seems apt to give space to a cartoon in Welsh, issued in Llanrwst as a woodcut print in around 1834-36 (according to Peter Lord). The artist is James Cope. Almost nothing is known about him, except that he was born in Caernarfonshire in 1805…
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To Soweto by way of the Plough & Harrow
Of all the Great Causes we pursued back in our days of hope in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was only one that came to an unambiguously good end: the abolition of apartheid in South Africa. Wales was blessed with one of the most active Anti-Apartheid Movement organisations anywhere, and the cause united…
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Yn eisiau: Arlywydd Cymru
Mae ein Brenhines cyn wydn â lledr. Nid yw’n dangos chwaith unrhyw awydd i ildio ei lle’n fuan. Ond yn hwy neu’n hwyrach bydd ei gorsedd yn wag, ac oni bai am ddamwain, neu benderfyniad annhebygol iawn, Charles Windsor a fydd yn dilyn ei fam, fel Brenin Charles III. Neu fel ‘George VII’, os nad…
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Who is the happiest of us all?
The answer, of course, is Finland. Cris Dafis, in this week’s Golwg, reminded us about the World Economic Forum’s recent report on the ‘happiness’ of people living in individual countries. In this country we still judge national success in traditional, narrowly economistic ways – typically in terms of GDP or economic growth or productivity. From…
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On the naming of bridges
Unsurprisingly the announcement this week by Alun Cairns, Secretary of State for Wales, that the Second Severn Crossing is to be renamed the ‘Prince of Wales Bridge’ has caused uproar. Perhaps it was intended to. Some have even suggested that the move is a dry run for the future announcement of a Welsh investiture of…
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Iaith a Brecsit
Er Mehefin 2016 mae llawer o bobl yn cynnig llawer o resymau er mwyn ceisio esbonio pam dewisodd mwyafrif o bleidleiswyr Prydeinig i adael yr Undeb Ewropeaidd. Rhesymau economaidd – yr awydd i gadw swyddi a chodi cyflogau, i sicrhau masnachu rhwyddach gyda gweddill y byd, i wario rhagor ar y gwasanaeth iechyd. Rhesymau gwleidyddol…