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The sort of thing in Rochdale would get you called a biggot….
I was thinking about this thread, and the very strong vibes that you needed to learn the language to be accepted, or outsiders not welcome.
I thought about this and my home town of Bradford. Start saying stuff like that in Bradford and you are called a racist, no matter how true the statement may be about being fully integrated in to a community.
Arguably you are in the middle of a renaissance of Welsh as a central part of living in Wales
Hmm, and yet Welsh speakers still feel threatened. A slight upturn in numbers isn't necessarily enough to offset hundreds of years of overt attempts at eradication.
I'm not a Welsh speaker so my opinion on the subject is not particularly important; however I do try to listen to the complaints of those who are.
The “fear of loss” of the Welsh language is real, and the fact that my son may well be last generation of his family that can actually live his life in any way through the language of his forefathers of hundreds of years is not a nice thought I can tell you
And yet Welsh is much more widely spoken today than it was when I first visited in the 1960s. It's a very difficult balance. My family have some history as colonialists as my great-grandfather built a holiday home in Abersoch in the late 1920s. I spent my summer holidays there all through my childhood and took my children there most years right up until the house was sold a couple of years ago. I saw the poverty in the 1960s as many of the holidaymakers deserted Wales in favour of cheap package holidays to somewhere warmer, just as the small scale fishing also became unviable. And I saw some money return from the mid-90s as Abersoch became trendy again - some of this money went to the local population, but a disappointing proportion of it didn't. It's a reality that rural communities in Wales or anywhere else will never be rich, the young will always have to leave to seek their fortune. How you can ensure that the area benefits from the money incomers can bring without losing the character that attracts them in the first place will always be a difficult question. Making their children learn Welsh is certainly part of the answer, and maybe the whole picture will change as more and more work becomes location independent. But none of this is black and white, and there will always be unexpected consequences to anything you try and do.
Sorry; but all I did was look on the public internet as anyone else could have done.
No worries, a minor complaint on my behalf but I'd have more to say if there were trails there and I had built them. Everything we do, from turning Strava data into words that people can find via Google, or influencers posting videos, all amplifies already-public information which makes it more discoverable by more people.
It’s the locals putting it on Strava, do they not understand the concept of the internet?
Many people won't be aware of the heatmap feature, or won't realise the impact of their contributing to it. Regardless of who started it, amplifying IMO isn't a good thing to do.
It’s a reality that rural communities in Wales or anywhere else will never be rich, the young will always have to leave to seek their fortune.
Oh I don't know - sure, there aren't enough people for large industrial enterprises (outside the SE anyway) and there isn't the infrastructure (outside SE and the N coast) but there are people, there's fibre, and there's education. There's no reason you couldn't create high value jobs if you really wanted to.
the young will always have to leave to seek their fortune.
But can they now come back when they're reaching middle age, buy the expensive houses and WFH?
Hmm, and yet Welsh speakers still feel threatened. A slight upturn in numbers isn’t necessarily enough to offset hundreds of years of overt attempts at eradication.
Turned around by a conservative government I believe....
I would humbly suggest that those who fear for Welsh language and culture worry more about Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ than people who decide to move there and make Wales their home. The majority will have lots of goodwill and be more than keen to settle in, learning the language, local history etc. The exec's in the states won't give a toss.
As for those who don't try when they move to Wales, don't take it personally, they are exported to Spain as well.
But can they now come back when they’re reaching middle age, buy the expensive houses and WFH?
I thought that was the model for those who focus in a career in London. Make the money and connections, start a family, move away by the time the kids reach school age buying a locally expensive house in cash and working as a consultant....
Well it's what the brother in law did