WESTM NSTE HAUL
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I KNOW how Tony Marlow feels, for like him I have often driven down the M4 to Newport. And like him I have not been over-impressed by what he calls "those great cinemascope screens" at the approaches to the town where I spent my youth.
For I do not belong to what the Member for Northampton North truly called the relatively small proportion o. the population in that part of the work who actually speak Welsh, and so thos( road signs in English and Welsh ar( half unintelligible to me.
But 1 can't go along with his sugges tion that they could lead to a certair amount of confusion and danger, an am not able to back up his argumen that in the interests of road safety m more bilingual signs should be put ur Now if they all ended up in Welsh, a some nationalists would no doubt likE that would be a different matter.
Anyway, how come that an English man, representing an English consti tuency, dared to intrude into Wels question time in the Commons?
He admitted that he did so with great deal of humility and trepidatior but revealed seven reasons for an int( rest in Wales — a Welsh wife, five hal Welsh children and a Welsh rugby ir ternational father-in-law.
These assets, combined with a gre2' admiration for the Welsh culture an language, emboldened Mr Marlow ju! enough to point out that traffic sigr were basically to give direction t people from faraway places.
Welsh Under Secretary Michael RI berts was not at all put out at a sound of an Englishman straying ovi the border, and answered politely th; the signs were there for the benefit both visitors and Welsh people, ar there was no evidence to suggest th( were a source of danger.
Dr Roger Thomas was not so eas going — indeed he showed a singul lack of Welsh respect for someone r lated to a man who had once worn th sacred red shirt.
"We take it very much amiss that outsider should be stirring things up Wales," he declared — sentimen which could not have been bettered the man he unseated at the last elE tion, the Plaid Cymru president.
They resulted on this occasion in instant, if metaphorical, slap on t wrist from Mr Roberts. He did not gard a motorist from England or T Marlow in any way as an outsider.