Wales

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Two polls to please the Tories

There have been two polls today which are worth mentioning belatedly.  The first is YouGov’s voting intention poll for Wales, which Anthony Wells has analysed here and here.  It’s not often you see a Welsh voting poll – which is a shame – and the results of this one are striking.  Labour are on 34 percent; the Tories are on 31 percent; Plaid Cymru on 15 percent; Lib Dems on 12 percent.  Overall, that’s much better news for the Tories than it is for Labour: the last time the Tories scored 31 percent in Wales was in the 1983 election. The second is the ComRes poll which appeared in today’s

Sunday

Alex Massie

Men of Harlech

It’s a bank holiday weekend, so what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than by watching Zulu one more time? Granted, the movie is riddled with historical inaccuracies but so what? ‘Tis grand, stirring stuff. And the “sing-off” between the Zulus – “Well, they’ve got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that’s for sure” – and our Welsh heroes is splendid, ranking behind only the superb rendition of the Marseillaise in Casablanca. Here it is:

Wednesday

Byron Rogers

Boldly for restoration

Wales, by Simon Jenkins Last year, having been to Scotland, I called on the mother of an old friend. Mrs Molly Jones of Carmarthen, I found to my great surprise, was very enthusiastic about Scotland. It was so unlike Wales, she said. All those castles . . . ‘But Mrs Jones, there are castles at six-mile intervals from where you’re sitting.’ ‘Yes, but they’re so . . . well . . . dilapidated.’ The first delightful thing about this gazeteer to what his publishers describe as ‘the best Welsh buildings’ is that Simon Jenkins is quietly, and sometimes not quietly at all, of her persuasion. This is Jenkins on Caernarfon,