Thanks to virtue-signalling legislation, appropriately coming into force on April Fool’s Day, all documents released by public bodies in Wales will have to be in both Welsh and English.
Beware those who flout the rules, passed last year by the National Assembly in Cardiff. Non-conformance is punishable by ‘enforcement action, county court judgments and fines’. The Welsh Language Commissioner is watching you.
The problem is that a mere 12 per cent of the Welsh population have Welsh as their first language. And they live mostly in the north of the country, which represents a major headache, or cur pen, for the English-speaking public servants of south Wales.
So much so that one educational establishment’s press office has warned staff to ‘factor in additional time for translation’ of stories.
Result: it now takes three weeks for this organisation to issue a press release. Stand by for some stale news.