Thursday, February 26, 2009

"Can we trust the public yet?"

Thanks to The Stonemason for pointing me in the direction of this lecture in arrogance and superciliousness delivered by Patrick McGuinness, a Fellow of St Anne’s College and Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Oxford:
True Wales exploits the public’s current anti-politician feeling. It’s sad that the very MPs who created our cynicism about politics, now try to use that cynicism to block the development of other political forums which have proved themselves to be considerably less sleazy, opaque and tribally-obsessed.

How a forum which contains a party "in power" dedicated to the splitting up of the United Kingdom into its "original" er… tribal nations can be described as "considerably less" "tribally obsessed" than Westminster, beats me.

Anyroads, the opinions for public consumption being pumped out by Professors of French and Comparative Literature and further propagated here by Plaid Cymru AM, Bethan Jenkins:
This is not a vote on independence and the scope of this referendum is limited by the 2006 Government of Wales Act. Some people want to mislead the people of Wales about the scope of this referendum, which shows their inability to formulate constructive arguments on the issue at hand.

...are inconveniently being refuted on the ground by the activists; Harri Roberts co-ordinator of Plaid Cymru in Abertawe (Swansea) and member of its National Executive:
I happily argue for the slippery slope to Independence. The first step which we are embarking on now is to convince our people to vote YES in a referendum on what we call « full law-making powers » for our Parliament. (often seen as the same as Scotland has). Then....

Then...???

True Wales, finally, has revamped its website into something a lot more professional and can be found here and is now sitting in the Campaign section of my links list.

6 comments:

Gareth said...

He's not referring to ethnic or national tribalism, he's referring to party tribalism within parliament.

Dewi Harries said...

True Wales showing a proper respect towards the Welsh Language on their site I note.

Dewi Harries said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/wales_politics/7912263.stm

Your "True Wales" pals just might have their work cut out !!!

O'Neill said...

He's not referring to ethnic or national tribalism, he's referring to party tribalism within parliament.

He's being very selective with his definition!

O'Neill said...

Dewi,

Yet still Bethan and Co say it's not time for the referendum, what are they frightened of?

Dewi Harries said...

Bring it on -to coin a phrase.