Not Redwood, But Deadwood

John Redwood was rightly castigated for refusing to sign letters in Welsh, a telling example of how Powellite Thatcherites are not, since the part-Welsh Powell could speak, read and write Welsh in both its modern and medieval forms, holding that, of all his many languages, only Welsh rivalled the fearsome complexity of Russian.

Well, fast forward from the last days of John Major to the present day, when none of Sinn Fein's five Ministers at Stormont will answer letters in Irish. Read that sentence over again. In this, they are true to Irish Nationalism's long tradition of hostility to the language. By all accounts, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness can barely speak it, for all their ostentation.

Perhaps responsibility for such matters would be better in the hands of an Anglo-Irish aristocrat or a Protestant clergyman, heir to the traditions that kept Irish alive? Sitting at Westminster. Not least since there would be at Westminster none of the scorn that Irish clearly experiences at the hands of any Stormont Executive including Sinn Fein.