nach e ainm gàidhlig a th' ann an "galloway", co-d
Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 6:37 pm
clicky
Gaelic Station Is A Turn Off For Viewers
Feb 4 2008 George Galloway
HOOTS mon, Gaels have picked the pockets of the tax payer again and Angus Og has made off with millions with the start of a new Gaelic TV station.
Idon't know why they need one when they've got BBC Scotland, where if your first name is not Farquar, Crawford or Torquil, you haven't got a chance.
There are less than 60,000 people who speak Gaelic in Scotland, yet £20million is spent on their media alone.
That's more than £50 per week per head and all to keep alive a tongue which a Scot Nat once described to me as "the tongue which has been dead for 1000 years".
Well if it's dead why dig it up again?
Language is a living thing or nothing at all if you ask me. And the rest of us, by a stroke of luck, are in possession of a tongue worth the weight of Ben Nevis in gold. The English language is our greatest asset and the government spends far too little spreading it even wider.
The money spend on Gaels and their obscure language could be spent by the British Council teaching, for example, the people of China to speak English with infinitely more returns.
There are more people who speak Punjabi in Scotland than have the Gaelic. Can you imagine the outcry if the government gave £50 per week per head to subsidise Lahore TV?
And more people speak Polish in Scotland than speak Gaelic but Gdansk TV could only dream of such a subsidy.
The new Gaelic service will also feature shinty - there's no show without shinty - and even football (from Scotland's 'lower leagues' God help us). Soon we will have bi-lingual signs, and alphabet soup on every street corner. This is what an independent Scotland would look like. Brigadoon, dark, foreboding, like a Wee Free service on a cold wet Sunday in Portree.
We are not even spending enough teaching our own kids how to speak, read and write our own language properly as the poor level of English Higher passes testifies.
I get a shoal of texts and emails from Scottish listeners to my Talksport radio show every weekend. Many of them tell how patriotic they are about Britain, but not patriotic enough to be able to spell the words of abuse they hurl at me.
We'd be better spending the money to eliminate the last remnant of illiteracy of English in our country, including the English of the immigrants we so badly need in our huge country with its tiny population with the smallest growth rate in the world.
How many have read the greatness of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson or Lewis Grassick Gibbon? Not to mention Jack London, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Gey few and increasingly they are aw deid.
If a handful of people in Scotland want to keep this obscure language alive, they can do so. Like the Amish in the United States, let them be self-sustaining.
'We're not even spending enough teaching our own kids how to speak, read and write our own language properly'
abair sar dhuine, eh?
Gaelic Station Is A Turn Off For Viewers
Feb 4 2008 George Galloway
HOOTS mon, Gaels have picked the pockets of the tax payer again and Angus Og has made off with millions with the start of a new Gaelic TV station.
Idon't know why they need one when they've got BBC Scotland, where if your first name is not Farquar, Crawford or Torquil, you haven't got a chance.
There are less than 60,000 people who speak Gaelic in Scotland, yet £20million is spent on their media alone.
That's more than £50 per week per head and all to keep alive a tongue which a Scot Nat once described to me as "the tongue which has been dead for 1000 years".
Well if it's dead why dig it up again?
Language is a living thing or nothing at all if you ask me. And the rest of us, by a stroke of luck, are in possession of a tongue worth the weight of Ben Nevis in gold. The English language is our greatest asset and the government spends far too little spreading it even wider.
The money spend on Gaels and their obscure language could be spent by the British Council teaching, for example, the people of China to speak English with infinitely more returns.
There are more people who speak Punjabi in Scotland than have the Gaelic. Can you imagine the outcry if the government gave £50 per week per head to subsidise Lahore TV?
And more people speak Polish in Scotland than speak Gaelic but Gdansk TV could only dream of such a subsidy.
The new Gaelic service will also feature shinty - there's no show without shinty - and even football (from Scotland's 'lower leagues' God help us). Soon we will have bi-lingual signs, and alphabet soup on every street corner. This is what an independent Scotland would look like. Brigadoon, dark, foreboding, like a Wee Free service on a cold wet Sunday in Portree.
We are not even spending enough teaching our own kids how to speak, read and write our own language properly as the poor level of English Higher passes testifies.
I get a shoal of texts and emails from Scottish listeners to my Talksport radio show every weekend. Many of them tell how patriotic they are about Britain, but not patriotic enough to be able to spell the words of abuse they hurl at me.
We'd be better spending the money to eliminate the last remnant of illiteracy of English in our country, including the English of the immigrants we so badly need in our huge country with its tiny population with the smallest growth rate in the world.
How many have read the greatness of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson or Lewis Grassick Gibbon? Not to mention Jack London, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Gey few and increasingly they are aw deid.
If a handful of people in Scotland want to keep this obscure language alive, they can do so. Like the Amish in the United States, let them be self-sustaining.
'We're not even spending enough teaching our own kids how to speak, read and write our own language properly'
abair sar dhuine, eh?
