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786   18 August 2003   

"Flexibility" is getting a bad name, in politics and economics.  For the poor, flexibility means that it is too easy to become poor and stay poor.  For the Unions, flexibility means that employers can fire workers too easily.  For many citizens, flexibility means unpredictability of employment, greater uncertainty.  The coming annual conference of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) will pour scorn on "flexibility".

But the concept is an important one.  Every national economy is characterised by an underlying "trading system" of some kind, however poorly understood or described.  We recognise that there are important differences between nations in this respect, although there is no conventional framework for this form of analysis.  I like the approach of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, I think..).  They rank national economies according to their "responsiveness" - the ability of their underlying systems to adapt to external change, whether to resist a shock or seize an opportunity.

As global interdependence proceeds apace, the utility of responsive, adaptable systems increases dramatically.  For example, it is clear that the migration of call-centre and software-generation jobs to India and the Far East currently constitutes a severe threat to UK employment.  And the question is not "How can it be stopped?", but "How can our system best respond to that change, and find other ways of earning a living?"

What matters is that underlying systemic responsiveness. Every aspect of the trading system is important -

• Can funds be raised easily for new business initiatives?
• Can workers be quickly and effectively trained and re-trained?
• Can work-practices be easily re-negotiated?
• Can workers move house easily?  
• Can employers fire and hire easily?
• Can claims for payment be adjudicated and enforced quickly?

I am psychologically an "employer", having been called upon to hire and fire all my life.  And I recognise the central importance of easy hiring and firing.  The answer is not for the trade un ions to seek to prevent firing - no employer fires staff just for the hell of it.  The challenge is not to oppose employment changes but to give individual workers far, far better support when they are faced with job-loss.

Our system would be much more responsive if the sting were removed from the process of job-termination.  It is, properly understood, one part of the process of "responsiveness to change", and should be managed accordingly.  That is why I advocate a new form of Adjustment Pay for everyone faced with involuntary job-loss, whatever the reason - a six-month period-with-pay, during which every individual is assisted with job-search and related re-training.  It would replace Redundancy Payments, and would cut out thousands of Industrial Tribunal proceedings.  Further, with Adjustment Pay in position, I would abandon the concept of "wrongful dismissal" altogether.  I see no reason why an employer should not simply be able to change course without resistance, relying on the consequential support system to facilitate employment change.  Actions for discrimination would of course continue, for they do not spring from the act of termination - rather from an employer's conduct during the relationship.

New Labour has not gone far enough, in developing the responsiveness of the UK economy.   Yes - the UK is more responsive than many of the Continental systems (particularly France and Germany), and I believe that is reflected in current differences of economic performance.

• But we could do much better.

787  18 August 2003  

I spent last week in a very remote North Wales valley, on the north coast of the Lleyn Peninsula, improving my fluency in Welsh - with a tutor of brilliance, Howard Edwards, at the Welsh Language Centre at Nant Gwrtheyrn.  Yet by the end of the week I found myself asking - "What precisely are we studying?"  Can this complex sound-system, plagued as it is by a multiplicity of regional variations and elisions, really be considered a national language?   My answer is "Yes - potentially..."

But let's be under no illusions.  In spite of the great advances made by Welsh in recent years in television, radio and in both "school" and adult education, Welsh as a language is under threat.  I understand completely how the Welsh-speakers of rural North Wales feel - they see rural life eroding, and with it the seedbeds of naturally-occurring Welsh speech.  And their regret, their sense of loss, is real.  The language is one of the glories of Europe's cultural heritage, one of the oldest Indo-European languages, with a rich literature, a tenacious history, with current literary output and a weekly Press, a glorious and distinctive grammar and syntax (albeit poorly understood by Welsh speakers themselves) - it represents a cultural jewel which ought to flourish and which I will strive to keep alive.  For me, each language is like a different instrument in the orchestra - I love the violin of French, the clarinet of German, the piccolo of Italian, the cello of Russian, the trumpet of English - and Welsh really is the harp (corny, but true...)  For me, as a near-professional linguist, each language has its own register, its own expressiveness, its own emotive riches.  I wish to be able to choose my instrument, as necessary.  And I am determined not to lose the harp.

But, but... The use of Welsh as the daily medium of conversational exchange is diminishing, although the inward migration of English-speaking residents is not the only explanation.  And inward migration is bound to continue, both from England and a wider Europe.  The actual use of Welsh in the workplace is very limited: even the 20 Welsh-speaking Assembly Members in Cardiff Bay (one-third of the total), only use Welsh for 9% of their speeches.  In the workplace, many adult learners are employees merely seeking to improve their career prospects by having been on multiple Welsh courses - they will be called-upon only rarely to use the language in daily discourse, let alone serious professional analysis. The Welsh TV Channel S4C has resorted to using English subtitles for its Welsh language programmes.  The railway companies throughout South Wales get away with broadcasting the voices of English announcers struggling to read Welsh-language announcements in what is for them a foreign language, with execrable accents and little sympathy.  Road-signs are consistently spelt wrongly, revealing the most elementary incompetence on the part of their promoters.  And as for the "explosion" of Welsh in our schools, my impression is that many school-children are acquiring, at school, strangely inadequate forms of Welsh "language" which will never endure or develop as a coherent system of verbal expression.

Welsh, as a coherent and accessible sound-system (which is what a good language should be) is in a bad way - even though it is by far the most successful of all the Celtic languages.   What can be done?

• Welsh needs a new dialect - the equivalent of "BBC English" - a regularly-moderated, clearly spoken form of modern Welsh.  It is vital that we develop a form of spoken Welsh which is enunciated clearly, with a conventional and predictable grammar, and which is manifestly intended to communicate with all its listeners.  That is not the present practice.  Welsh broadcasters rush their words, abbreviating and eliding shamelessly in ways accessible only "advanced Welsh listeners" - either native-Welsh speakers (Cymraeg eu mamiaith) or very able learners.  The incredible success of the BBC World Service in encouraging the understanding of English the world over could never be matched by the present generation of mumbling Welsh broadcasters.  Their aim seems to be to keep the secrets of the Welsh language well-contained within a narrow "cultural elite", who talk among themselves in some kind of high mandarin or katharevoussa (high academic Greek, spoken only by an educational elite, and differing from the "demotic" Greek of the hoi poloi).  The tragedy is this "special language", to which I am invited to aspire, is nothing but a sloppy, garbled argot - the equivalent of which would never pass my lips when speaking in English!  I spent at least three hours last week being taught how to decipher a tape of poor, gabbled and garbled Welsh, recorded from a recent radio broadcast and presented to the students as if it was a desirable goal - it was NOT - if a BBC World Service broadcaster had served up with such rubbish, it would have meant instant dismissal.  The Welsh "educated elite" must learn to communicate much more effectively, in Welsh.

   

• Welsh needs systematic promotion.  There is no doubt that the language attracts enthusiastic students and followers from other cultures - last week, only two of the nine students were of Welsh extraction: seven had quite other motivations, including a simple fascination with the history, the music and the magic of the language - a fascination which I share.  But everyone complained of the sheer difficulty of finding where and how to start Welsh lessons.  I had already identified this problem, which is itself a further reflection of the in-group reluctance of Welsh-speakers to share their language with newcomers.   With a colleague Sion Woods I have set up a new company Mynediad yr Iaith Cyf (Access to Welsh Ltd) which we plan to develop as an "introduction agency" for Welsh courses - throughout the world, eventually.  Our business model relies on our being able to earn commissions on the actual take-up of student references - generating a modest income to meet our operating costs.  And we need an Organiser for North Wales: drop me a line.

 

• The Welsh language needs, for its survival, the creative development of new institutional formats. 

Let me give examples -

A South Wales Welsh-language weekly newspaper - to get a Welsh newspaper in Swansea, I have to buy Y Cymro, which is fine - but it is uncompromisingly "North Wales", edited and produced in North Wales, with predominantly northern material, using "northern" Welsh syntax as its norm.

Local Welsh language music and poetry societies or groups, where Welsh learners can improve through the medium of singing, and enjoy the whole process (whether as singers or listeners) - I do not pretend to have designed the right format, but I know that some new "open-ended" form of Gymanfa Ganu is needed, accessible to Welsh learners.  I do not mean a "class", in any formal sense, but a free-standing social event, building on one of the greatest cultural strengths of Wales.

A Welsh-language-only debating society, without simultaneous translation - I have an image of Y Ddadl Fawr - the Great Debate - taking place every month in different locations throughout Wales, with today's leading Welsh orators tackling all the burning issues of the day.  What is needed is the creation of new institutions (parallelling the Welsh-speaking chapel service, for a non-religious age) for which an understanding of Welsh is an indispensable prerequisite - without compromise.

A new type of Welsh Grammar, written for the adult Welsh learner, and focusing on the new form of "BBC Welsh" - a good Grammar makes its easier to learn a foreign language, not more difficult - it would introduce the learner to the full syntactical glories of the Welsh language - its astounding deployment of its so-called "verb-nouns", and the delights of its mutations, its sensitivity to light and shade, to assertiveness and submission.  I have already written such a Grammar in draft, though without having found the time to finish it - it is called Trwsio'r Bont.  Maybe I should.

Finally, the opportunity must be taken, as radio and TV channels proliferate, to increase the output of spoken Welsh on the airwaves, colonising these new media channels - to replace the village shop and the farmers' market...

You will have got this far only if you are a Welsh language enthusiast.  So why not let me know what you think?  Drop me a line

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