Dear Geraint ap Iorwerth
Thank you for your email to the Minister for Education, Kirsty Williams MS, and for sharing your thoughts with us. I have been asked to reply.
As I am sure you will appreciate, Covid-19 is a new virus; we are learning and adapting our strategy for managing this quickly evolving situation constantly, based on our improving scientific and technical knowledge. We have passed your thoughts about messaging on to our communication colleagues for consideration.
We fully appreciate that people in Wales and across the world will be seeking conclusive and definitive evidence in relation to what to do next. Given the unprecedented nature of this pandemic, and the virus at the heart of it, we unfortunately do not have the luxury of absolute certainty about the evidence required to make our decisions. We have, however, throughout the pandemic made decisions based on the very latest scientific and technical advice available, which in itself requires an assessment of the balance of evidence.
Please be assured that the health and well-being of the people of Wales, young and old, has always been, and will continue to be at the heart of our decision making.
Yours sincerely
Claire Smith
Education directorate
Welsh Government

9 October 2020
 
Dear Claire
 
Thanks for your reply.
 
All of us know that Covid19 is a new virus. I appreciate that governments the world over are learning as they ‘go along.’ Making mistakes in some areas and having successes in others.
 
That was not the point of my letter.
 
You mention the’ science’ and the ‘technology’ - the medical aspects of the crisis. The scientific decisions you constantly make, based on the scientific model (there are many) that you have decided to follow. Ultimately, it is a gamble. A gamble based on statistics etc.
 
That was not the point of my letter.
 
As for the ‘luxury of absolute certainty.’ Totally agree, there are no ‘absolutes.’
 
That was not the point of my letter.
 
Naturally, you and your colleagues want the best for the people of Wales.
 
That was not the point of my letter.
 
Maybe my fundamental point will be answered when one of your colleagues gets back to me on ‘messaging.’ I hope so.
 
Whether you call it persuasion or propaganda, your strategy appears to be failing in terms of keeping the majority of the public on board. People who have willingly supported your guidelines.
 
What’s more it appears that the core of this UK wide strategy is going to extend for another six months, at least.
 
And maybe even beyond.
 
A year of LOCKDOWN!
 
That is my point.
 
People may not want, or get, absolute certainty, but they want and deserve ‘some sort’ of a long-term plan. Dare I even say ‘vision’ for the future.
 
That is my point.
 
Your current strategy, in both practical and propaganda terms, is not working.
Here in the SE corner of Wales, for example, which is basically a conurbation of 1.5 million people, people are not only confused with all the ‘variations’ but also amused.
 
As for ‘Health and well-being’? Then improve the standards of care in hospitals and care-homes, for they lie at the heart of a good pandemic strategy.
 
If it is to be LOCKDOWN – in whatever form – for the foreseeable future, then be upfront about it. Let people know. Let them plan ahead. Stringing the public along week after week, briefing after briefing, is doing serious damage to their mental, emotional and spiritual health.  
 
Or, and 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

Bendigeidfran is Welsh for the The Blessed, Magnificent One.’ More about his history later – the hound I meant.

Tchaikovsky - Hymn of the Cherubim - USSR Ministry Of Culture Chamber Choir https://youtu.be/SZQzW_QfPew via @YouTube

Indeed, my indulgent friends, I will tell you - here, in this late preface, which might easily have become an obituary or a funeral oration - what I sought in the depths below: for I have come back, and - I have escaped. Think not that I will urge you to run the same perilous risk! or that I will urge you on even to the same solitude! For whoever proceeds on his own path meets nobody: this is the feature of one's "own path." No one comes to help him in his task: he must face everything quite alone - danger, bad luck, wickedness, foul weather. He goes his own way; and, as is only right, meets with bitterness and occasional irritation because he pursues this "own way" of his: for instance, the knowledge that not even his friends can guess who he is and whither he is going, and that they ask themselves now and then : "Well? Is he really moving at all? Has he still … a path before him? " - At that time I had undertaken something which could not have been done by everybody: I went down into the deepest depths; I tunnelled to the very bottom; I started to investigate and unearth an old faith which for thousands of years we philosophers used to build on as the safest of all foundations - which we built on again and again although every previous structure fell in: I began to undermine our faith in morals. But ye do not understand me?  - Nietzsche in ‘Daybreak’ (1881).

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/art-review-artemisia-national-gallery-london-wc2-l5s6glnrx

A Life of? Best book is Artemisia by Alexandra Lapierre https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0099581698/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_GngFFbNKCD97Q via @AmazonUK

DONNY QUIXOTE

Trump’s legacy will be the empowerment of Christian totalitarians

All fascist and totalitarian movements paper over their squalid belief systems with the veneer of morality. They mouth pieties about restoring law and order, right and wrong, the sanctity of life, civic and family virtues, patriotism and tradition to mask their dismantling of the open society and silencing and persecution of those who oppose them. 

This is the real game being played by Christian fascists, which since the early 1970s have been building institutions with tens of millions in corporate donations to take power. 

Donald Trump, who has no ideology, has allowed the Christian Right to fill his ideological void. 

He is the useful idiot. 

And the Christian Right, awash in money from corporations that know their real political intent, will mobilize in this election to use any tool, no matter how devious, from right-wing armed militias to the invalidation of ballots, to block Joe Biden and Democratic candidates from assuming office. 

The road to despotism is always paved with righteousness. 

This was as true for Soviet communism as it was for German fascism.

And it is true in the United States.

Chris Hedges / Orginal to Scheerpost 5 October 2020

“Why did most Christians in Germany support Adolf Hitler in the 1930's?” Future generations may well ask similar questions about US Christian Evangelicals vis a vis Mr Donald Trump .

“I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.”

In 1943 the U.S. government made an anti-fascism film - 
Does it remind you of anybody in 2020?
It was called 'DON'T BE A SUCKER"

Don't Be a Sucker" (1947) Reel America P"Doreview https://youtu.be/42X_eAOU4DU via @YouTube

Rev’d Geraint ap Iorwerth BA MPhil 
(From a Covid19 free-zone ‘near Cardiff’)
4 October 2020
 
Dear First Minister of Wales
As in any crisis, you are doing the best that you can. There was no time to prepare, and I am sure that you are already learning where and how things will be done differently in the future.

Thousands of us have supported you and our PM, even when we have strongly disagreed with some of your directives.

I don’t know who it was that came up with the term LOCKDOWN – probably the W.H.O. – but whether as a piece of advice or propaganda, it was, in hindsight, the wrong choice. Absolutely foolish, especially as we face at least another six months of the same.

I am not a prisoner. I am not a mental patient.

The lockdown mentality is, by now – day after day after day after day- ‘doing people’s head in.’

Locked-down minds produce locked-down slogans.

More and more people are beginning ‘to crack.’

More and more ‘ordinary people’ all over the UK are beginning ‘to revolt’ – and I’m not talking about ‘extremists’ and their weird ideas about the virus. I’m talking about thousands upon thousands of ordinary men and women, of all ages and backgrounds.

People who have always acted in ‘good reason.’

‘Good reason’ - now that would be an interesting court case should I ever end up in a Covid19 one! 

These are people who haven’t had to come up with ‘excuses,’ in order to honour their own consciences. People will not be prisoners in their own homes, streets and communities this long dark winter.

‘Responsible’ people who have had enough.

People who now want a different approach.

They have used, are using, and will continue to use, their own common sense, as they follow the basic steps to stop getting, and passing on, the Covid19 virus. 

It was Kier Hardy who said that “no law can give freedom to a people which is dependent upon some power or authority outside themselves for the necessaries of life. 
 
Keep promoting the ‘lockdown mentality’ and you will alienate many of the people who currently support you.

LOCKDOWN! Let’s do things differently. Let’s come-up with a more positive slogan here in Wales. Let’s be imaginative.

Back in the Spring, with hundreds of Club Security personnel, and Youth workers, for example, unable to work, we could have organised hundreds of out-door activities (in existing parks and playing fields, farmer’s fields, beaches, activity centres, nature trails etc) for our young people. I, for one, would have volunteered.

Nothing was done.

I see today that a major indoor venue in London will be holding events, with albeit limited attendance, but open stadia are not allowed to do the same.

This is totally ridiculous and will further alienate ordinary people,’ who will begin to take ‘the law’ into their own hands.

Christmas 2020? For some of us, not only Christmas but also Advent and Epiphany 2021.

I trust that you have started planning now for our 2020 Christmas in Wales.

Some of us hope to put together a 2020 version of a Dylan Thomas’s ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales,’ in the new year. With a bit of imagination, all of us can make it a memorable one.

Please help us make sure that it isn’t a grim one.

Let’s banish those ‘dark satanic mills’ that are spreading like a virus in our land.

William Blake was not primarily talking about dirty factories etc at the start of the Industrial Revolution. He was talking about not being intellectually lazy, not being slaves to our out-dated mental constructs. He was talking about freeing the human imagination.
 
Now is the time for that Imagination to be unleashed on a grand scale. And well-done to our pubs and restaurants for being truly imaginative, as they welcome back their customers.

But the majority of our children, youth and people don’t frequent these places.

Let’s get creative. Let’s get that ‘imagination’ going.

Let’s put the well-being of our children and young people at the top of the list: their mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.

Not just for the 12 days of Christmas 2020, but for the first half of 2021and its 179 days.

How will our family be celebrating Christmas 2020? We, and we alone, will decide, after an informed family discussion on the matter, using our ‘good reason’ and imagination.

William Blake was also aware of the dangers of ‘bad reason,’ and I fear that that kind of reason is also beginning to spread like a virus across our land.

A proud Welsh Nonconformist (even when an Anglican) – how much the poorer Wales and Welsh history would be without this tradition!

I fear that you are about to create many more Welsh non-conformists this winter.

I close this brief epistle with the words of an Englishman, the incomparable John Milton: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

The ‘dark lockdown mental mills’ must be banished, to make way for a new slogan, and more importantly, a new approach, to the Covid19 challenge.

We need a new, positive strategy for the coming six months

Please come up with one.

Our mental, emotional and spiritual well-being depends on it.

“Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-u snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night.

I turned the gas down, I got into bed.

I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”

Dylan Thomas ‘A Child's Christmas in Wales.’

2020 A Child’s Christmas in Wales?
“I said some words to the close and holy darkness.
And then I wept?”

I hope not.

Yours sincerely

Geraint ap

Correspondence.Mark.Drakeford@gov.wales