Views of Wales
Labour and Plaid must defeat Tory austerity
AS branch secretary of Carmarthenshire County Unison I read with interest and more than a little incredulity Martin Shipton’s article, Labour and Plaid clash over pay cap, dated September 6.
Unison is calling for a 5% pay rise for all council and school workers along with other publicsector unions. We believe this is overwhelmingly justified given that our members are working harder and harder as more than 20% of jobs in local government have been lost in the last few years due to cuts.
At the same time in real terms the value of pay for the average local government worker has declined by around 20% since 2009. The Tories have imposed austerity and cuts on us to line the pockets of their rich friends, but it is true that the Labour Welsh Assembly Government choose to meekly pass on these cuts to local government and the NHS etc. in Wales.
However, it is also true that Plaid AMs in the Senedd, including Leanne Wood AM, voted with Labour to pass the budget that they full well knew meant voting for passing on damaging cuts. So the claim by Leanne Wood that “Plaid Cymru has opposed austerity every step of the way and we will continue to do so” is incorrect. At a local level the Carmarthenshire County Plaidled council is implementing Tory cuts. They (Plaid) plan in the next three years to pass on £35m in cuts to council services and jobs, with £14m of these cuts in schools!
Both Plaid and right-wing Labour in Wales have failed to mount any serious campaign to oppose Tory austerity and cuts. If councils implemented legal No Cuts Budgets and with the WAG launched a mass campaign to defeat the cuts this could be the beginning of the end for this weak Tory government.
What we need from Plaid and Labour in Wales is not empty words, spin or excuses, but action and support to defeat the pay cap and Tory austerity. Mark Evans Branch Secretary Carmarthenshire County Unison
Many Welsh-speakers prefer to use English
ROBERT Williams, Letters, September 9, “Welsh-speakers must have bigger families”, makes several good points. Only last week the Welsh Government released school statistical data that showed that in Welsh schools just 8.3% of pupils spoke Welsh fluently at home. The total is 32,473 and only 18 secondary schools have a majority of their pupils who speak Welsh fluently at home; 12 are clustered in Gwynedd and Anglesey.
It is these children and their fluent Welsh-speaking parents who are the future of the language because people who acquire Welsh as a second language, either in school or through adult learning, use their first language for preference, thus the Welsh-language Use Survey found that 58% of people who could speak Welsh preferred to use English. The demand for Welsh-language services comes from 4.4% of the population who are “more comfortable” speaking Welsh, but most of those
people are elderly; the younger population is comfortably bilingual or prefers to speak English.
Among the rapidly growing immigrant population only 4% speak Welsh and their children are less likely to attend Welsh-medium schools. In Cardiff 11% of pupils in Welsh-medium primary schools are not “White British”, while in English-medium schools the figure is 39%. In Swansea 2% of primary school pupils are not White British in Welsh-medium schools and the figure is 17% in English-medium schools.
We may, as Carwyn Jones desires, have one million able to speak Welsh in Wales in 2050 yet hear not a word of Welsh spoken on the streets. J Jones Benllech, Anglesey
Funds for autism must be used wisely
I WOULD like to present my opinion as regards how to improve the method of financing services for autistic people in Wales.
There is more awareness of autism in this age and there is significant attention being given towards the condition, thankfully. I would like to inform you that there is a proposed plan by the Welsh Government to give a sum of £13m to finance a new body. The new body, called the National Integrated Autism Service, will focus mainly on giving a diagnosis to individual people. But this isn’t ideal when it could be better.
As an individual living with the condition, I can explain how to make better use of the Assembly’s money. I live near Cardiff, where I receive help from a charity called Autism Spectrum Connections Cymru. The purpose of the charity is to support and advise adults with autism; without it, the people living with the condition would have great difficulty managing everyday problems.
The charity provides an invaluable service in South East Wales. I am completely dependent on the provision, and as a result I beg the Assembly to finance the charity, which currently depends on funding from the lottery and donations. Populated areas of Wales should have access to similar provision, in my opinion. How many people in Wales would benefit from this resource?
As well as financing the official body that gives diagnosis, it is important to finance what happens post-diagnosis. Both are equally important. Without the two it is as if a doctor tells you that you have cancer but there is no money available for the required treatment.
I believe that the £13m earmarked for autism should be used for every aspect of autism provision in Wales – for diagnosis and post-diagnosis.
At the moment there is a consultation on the autism bill at the Assembly. I urge everyone reading this letter to respond, mentioning the importance of financing the provision for autism in the third sector in Wales.
To view consultation visit http://www.senedd.assembly.wales/mgConsultationDisplay.aspx?ID=274 . Aled Thomas Penarth
9/11 collapse truth must be revealed
IT’S now been more than three months since the horrendous fire at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, a fire which burned so fiercely that the authorities still cannot give us an accurate idea of how many died in the inferno.
However, the steel framework of the building is still standing, stark and unbuckled, a permanent reminder of those who perished that night. This is what one would expect as the melting-point of the steel is far higher than the temperature of the flames, however furiously the fire raged.
We are now also just past the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, where the three towers – World Trade Centres 1, 2 and 7 were destroyed and collapsed completely into their footprint. Buildings 1 and 2 , we are told, were hit by hijacked aircraft and building 7 was set alight by burning debris falling from the other towers.
There have always been many things that were very odd or inexplicable about 9/11 2001. Thousands of architects and engineers are disputing the official version and have formed a movement called Architects and Engineers for 9/11Truth. The very way in which Building 7 collapsed into its footprint, almost at freefall speed, when there was little sign of fire, defies physical laws, let alone the previous world history of no other towers collapsing due to fire.
Even TC1 and TC2 were designed to withstand impacts from a Boeing 707, and a relatively soft aluminium-skinned aircraft should have disintegrated on contact with the towers, starting fires, but not substantially deforming or weakening the reinforced steel structures.
As the towers collapsed vertically downward into their footprint we have to believe that each vertical load-bearing steel girder would have melted instantaneously and simultaneously along its whole length.
If that’s hard to believe, the alternative is a controlled demolition, of the type we often see in films of derelict buildings brought down by experts. But it takes days or weeks to wire up such a demolition.
Did anyone know in advance that this was going to happen and was given the time and privacy to proceed undetected?
It shouldn’t be too difficult to find out, unless there’s a conspiracy from the top to conceal the facts
Denver Thomas Pontcanna, Caerdydd