Sunday, September 28, 2003
Swing low
The Wales on Sunday unveils an 'exclusive' about the Welsh Liberal Democrats. Under the headline "It's a Dem cheek!" it reveals "English anthem sung in Welsh Conference gaff". It is at times like these that I bury my head in my hands and mourn the death of good Welsh journalism and even the inability of journalists and sub-editors to write grammatically correct sentences. It seems that Welsh night at the Federal Conference featured as one of the last songs, a sing-a-long of "Swing low sweet chariot". Why everything has to be brought down to a tribal level in the Welsh press defeats me. Even delegates having a good time now have to be politically correct it seems. The fact that Welsh night has as one of its strengths the fact that it features all nationalities including the Scottish and the Irish and that undoubtedly their national songs were also sung as they have been every year, eludes the author of this sad and sorry tale. In this instance the offending sing-a-long was led by an English delegate and being the polite Welsh people we are, we joined in. So what? Having seen how effective a high quality Scottish media can be earlier this month I despair when I read page fillers like this. This sort of petty, narrow minded and misplaced nationalism just panders to the lowest common denominator. It is cheap and it is intellectually bankrupt.
