Lockdown Armageddon *
 
And do those feet in present times
Walk upon Wales’s mountains green,
And does our holy man of God
Appear on Wales’s daily TV screen.
 
It is a vision so divine
That shines upon our clouded hills,
As Armageddon brings decline
With no more money to pay our bills.
 
Bring me my pen of burning gold,
Bring me a heart that’s still on fire:
I have no fear, won’t be controlled,
Here in my Chariot of Desire …
 
I will not cease from mental fight,
I’ll keep on writing day and night,
Till I have freed our Principality
From FM’s Lockdown Mentality!
 
* with apologies to the incomparable William Blake –
I think he would approve today.

FROM OVER 2 YEARS AGO!

 The bleak vision for the future of Wales laid bare in public report https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health/bleak-vision-future-wales-laid-15054023? utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

CLOSING PART OF MY LETTER TO THE WELSH EDUCATION DIRECTORATE ...

I come back to my fundamental point … 
 
You can change strategy and plan an alternative approach to tackling this serious pandemic. One that does not treat the public as automatons. One that is creative. One that will consider the holistic needs of our children, young people, parents and grand-parents in the coming months: health and fitness initiatives, youth programmes, Christmas and New Year events – we have streets aplenty, playing fields, rural fields, beaches, nature trails etc.
 
But it’s not just about the ‘messaging’ or ‘optics.’ It’s about the substance behind.
 
Our government’s public persona is mind-numbingly boring. Predictable Unimaginative. Day after day after day, briefing after briefing after briefing …
and it’s beginning to rub off on the public.
 
The creative industries should be at the heart of your strategy.
 
Without doubt they would help banish the dark lockdown mentality blues.
 
It’s like the opening graphics of ITV Wales evening news. The general ITV intro is innovative but the Welsh ‘bit’ is stale, boring, same old pictures, same old music, evening after evening after evening.
 
It’s a pity, because the news team itself is great.
 
Let’s hope we can say the same about the ‘Team-in-the-Bay’ in six-month’s time.  
 
Yours sincerely
Geraint ap
 
14/10/20
 
Dear Geraint ap Iorwerth
 
Thank you for your follow-up email and clarification of your queries.
 
We are very grateful to you for sharing your comments and taking the time to outline your concerns to the Welsh Government. I would like to assure you that I have shared your letters with our health colleagues and with our communications colleagues for them to consider as part of their ongoing work.
 
Within Education, we are working closely with all our key partners to ensure our schools and settings are secure so that children can safely attend school. We are proud of the way schools have responded and we have seen some highly creative ways schools have supported their increase in operations at the end of the summer term and their full return to school in September.
 
Finally, I would like to clarify that in response to your remarks in relation to the reporting by the BBC, the Welsh Government have no affiliation with the BBC and we therefore have no say or control over the tone of their reporting. Yours sincerely
 
Claire Smith
 
14 October 2020
 
Dear Claire
 
A brief response, this time round.
 
Your directorate has not responded to my fundamental point, namely, the whole bleak lockdown mentality approach, which is already impacting our children in many serious ways, not to mention their parents and grandparents.
 
Anyway …
 
As for remarks relating to BBC reporting … I have no idea what you are referring to! I ended my letter by comparing our government’s Covid19 public persona to ITV Wales’ evening news opening ‘graphics.’ Nowhere did I ask you to ‘control’ anyone’s reporting!
 
Yours sincerely,
 
A slightly baffled Geraint ap Iorwerth
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The barbarians around us tear apart our best powers, before they can be cultivated and only the firm, deep insight into this fate can save us, and prevent us at least from perishing in an unworthy manner. 
We have to seek what is excellent, and hold to it as well as we can, to strengthen and heal ourselves in the feeling of it and thereby to gain the strength to recognize what is raw, skewed and misshapen not only in pain but as that which it is, in its character and specific lack.  

Holderlin in a letter to his half-brother Karl Gok 4 June 1799

THE LETTER OPENS WITH THESE WORDS - 

You will find that now the more human organizations, spirits, which appeared to have most definitively formed nature to humanity, are now everywhere unhappier, precisely because they exist more rarely than in other times and places.