I have never been away from my native country, Wales, for so long before. Six months. But it is a country that's increasingly difficult to exist in.
There is no 3G, let alone 5G in the vast majority of the country, and twenty years after the establishment of the internet, vast swathes of the country have paltry access to the web. Ten years ago I had decent broadband, today I can barely collect email.
Frankly, it has become a fifth world country thanks to its pathetic politicians, who have been so distracted in destroying health provision in the country that gave the world the NHS and in ruining education in what used to be the most literate country on earth that they are happy to let some roll out date in some future century for proper broadband to serve as their policy for the most important single issue that the nation needs to embrace.
So, you cannot run a business in rural Wales any more. At best it's where you play around in kayaks and mountain bikes and eat lobster and lamb. The tourist board ads reinforce this. But no one can work, build a business or employ people because you can't get online.
Wales is a failed nation: anyone who has any nous gets out as fast as they can (to somewhere with broadband), leaving behind fifth rate politicians who never get beyond their local political club (unlike the Scots who have been dominant in UK politics). Small minded, stupid people who hark over bygone eras - the Tories for the Victorian years where the mine owners ruled supreme; Labour over their glory days on pickets at the head of the mines; the LibDems over when the farmers all voted for them, and Plaid for a time when there was a real passion for the language and culture, now diluted to some quasi socialist valleys parody. And UKIP are standing in Wales with no sense of irony, a party of English immigrants who oppose immigrants...
As Scotland stand high and cast a depressing shadow over the UK, Wales is a cowering idiot, reflecting the psyche of its political class.
Now Wales is the land of Dr Who and Question Time, of highly subsidised BBC and S4C TV production and no broadband. Nothing depresses me more than returning to my poor native country and its inability to grow up and enter the 21st century.
There is no 3G, let alone 5G in the vast majority of the country, and twenty years after the establishment of the internet, vast swathes of the country have paltry access to the web. Ten years ago I had decent broadband, today I can barely collect email.
Frankly, it has become a fifth world country thanks to its pathetic politicians, who have been so distracted in destroying health provision in the country that gave the world the NHS and in ruining education in what used to be the most literate country on earth that they are happy to let some roll out date in some future century for proper broadband to serve as their policy for the most important single issue that the nation needs to embrace.
So, you cannot run a business in rural Wales any more. At best it's where you play around in kayaks and mountain bikes and eat lobster and lamb. The tourist board ads reinforce this. But no one can work, build a business or employ people because you can't get online.
Wales is a failed nation: anyone who has any nous gets out as fast as they can (to somewhere with broadband), leaving behind fifth rate politicians who never get beyond their local political club (unlike the Scots who have been dominant in UK politics). Small minded, stupid people who hark over bygone eras - the Tories for the Victorian years where the mine owners ruled supreme; Labour over their glory days on pickets at the head of the mines; the LibDems over when the farmers all voted for them, and Plaid for a time when there was a real passion for the language and culture, now diluted to some quasi socialist valleys parody. And UKIP are standing in Wales with no sense of irony, a party of English immigrants who oppose immigrants...
As Scotland stand high and cast a depressing shadow over the UK, Wales is a cowering idiot, reflecting the psyche of its political class.
Now Wales is the land of Dr Who and Question Time, of highly subsidised BBC and S4C TV production and no broadband. Nothing depresses me more than returning to my poor native country and its inability to grow up and enter the 21st century.