Today (February 5), Rhodri Glyn Thomas, Minister for Culture and Heritage in the Welsh Assembly Government, announced that the Assembly is prepared to provide £600,000 of aid to publishing a Welsh language daily paper to be spread over three years.
For those involved with Dyddiol Cyf (Dyddiol Limited) the company founded by Ned Thomas with the intention of publishing [[[Y BYD]]], this is very disappointing. For the small staff who have worked for years preparing for the launch of the paper – a date of March 3, 2008, had been earmarked for the publication of the first copy – this must be a terrible disappointment as indeed it is for those who have contributed to the £350,000 fund for the project.
It had been hoped the Assembly would contribute £600,000 a year for Y BYD, not £600,000 spread over three years.
Even more disappointing is that Rhodri Glyn Thomas announced that other companies would be eligible to tender for that money. Trinity Mirror, the company which publishes the WESTERN MAIL and the DAILY POST and a number of weekly papers in Wales, has confirmed it is interested in publishing a Welsh language daily.
This would not be a popular development in Wales. For some years the group published a Wales edition of the DAILY MIRROR called WELSH MIRROR. It was a paper remembered as very supportive to the Labour Party and vitriolic in its attacks on Plaid Cymru, the Welsh language and anything to do with Wales and the Welsh.
Rhodri Glyn Thomas has been put in an unenviable position, not least because of the Olympic Games to be held in London in 2012. The cost of the Olympics is already over three times the original estimate and the National Lottery is being asked to contribute more and more towards the Olympics. Already large funds, originally intended for arts, culture and heritage projects are being re-directed to fund the Olympics.
There are already demands on Rhodri Glyn Thomas to support worthy causes who are suffering because of the London Olympics. The situation will get worse as the estimates for the cost of the London Olympics will escalate further between now and 2012.
Y BYD will suffer because of the 2012 London extravaganza. We can only wonder at the stupidity of the International Olympic Committee in awarding the 2012 Games to London instead of Paris which had most of the necessary venues already in place. London has nothing.
Gwyn Griffiths
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