North Wales is, without doubt, lovely. Snowdonia is a spectacular feast of dramatic scenery and of course reaps huge rewards from a tourist industry (we imagine) gagging for some scenic drama in their lives to take away the very non-dramatic imagery of Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool that typified most of the accents we heard.
What’s odd though is that Anglesey is also beautiful albeit in a very different way. There are wonderful unspoilt beaches dotted around the island but as far as we could see most people seem to whiz over Anglesey in a bid to get onto a ferry to Ireland. It seems to us as if the good people of the island have missed a money-making trick to get people to stop there and spend some hard-earned in their community.
In my youth, I lived on Anglesey for a couple of years with my family and it’s about my time there that DM is so “outraged” as he’s been reporting on his facebook page. The outrage stems from the recollection of my schooldays on the island in a school that’s long-since been demolished. It was run by a strongly Welsh Nationalist head teacher who would not accommodate the English-speaking minority of students by teaching in English. In his view, if you went to his school, you got taught in Welsh – end of story. We spent two years there and although I did pick up some Welsh in that time, it certainly wasn’t enough to make me conversant in it now. DM is mortified that the RAF could expect their airmen’s children to be educated in a foreign language and says (probably rightly) that they wouldn’t expect airmen stationed in Germany’s families to be taught in German.
To be honest, my education was crap but DM being outraged about it isn’t going to change that. That’s no exaggeration. It was completely crap. We got shunted about from school to school, sometimes only staying in a school for two or three weeks before being moved on. Fourteen schools in ten years and one of the few relatively stable periods (two years in one place) we had was in a school where lessons were taught in Welsh. I think in anyone’s language that’s a crap education and a crap start in life really. Frankly all it says to me is that fretting about their whether or not children get into the school of their choice because “I want my children to have the best chance to succeed” is basically pointless.
My crap education did me no real harm. I did just fine in my “career” and now I’ve got the chance to get a decent education late in my life. (Well, that’s if I can finish my education because of that complete wanker Cameron who’s planning to increase fees – talk about keeping the University places for the privileged few who can afford to pay for it – yes, (quoth he) I am a rich prat, I went to Eton and Oxford, I am better than you and I’m going to do all in my power to keep you plebs where you belong – in the gutter – and keep the University places for my own children and their spoilt brat friends). Rant, rant, rant……
Back to Anglesey – a few nice places to park and access the beaches and villages wouldn’t come amiss. Why not ask people to stay a while instead of just passing through. Maybe then more folks would go home with photos of their beautiful pooches on the beaches of Anglesey.
