This is the news from Merthyr Tudful. Not the news you'll see much about on tv, but nonetheless a week in the town.
A town where Prof. Gwyn Alf Williams was born and schooled before he went on to become one of the greatest historians and broadcasters of the last century. He doesn't even get a room in the Library named after him like our finest writer ever Leslie Norris, whose poems and stories deserve so much more than a single mention in Mario Basini's book 'Real Merthyr'. A town where Keir Hardie became the first ever Labour MP, till he was ostracized from that party, a fervent opponent of the 1st World War. A town which gave Westminster one of its most idiosyncratic and fascinating MP's, S.O. Davies, an ex-miner and leader of The Fed, a Cymro Cymraeg who was an early advocate of devolution.
News from Merthyr about our famous son , fashion designer Julien Macdonald, who has defended the place against bad press we constantly get for being Top of the League for underage smoking ( age 9 onwards), underage pregancies ( just a bit older), obesity, heart attacks, disability claimants........you've got the idea! A Merthyr boy through and through, he has spoken out against Iain Duncan Smith's hopeless advice to 'get on a bus' for work.
I happen to think Macdonald should go the way of fellow fashionik Galliano and make a swift exit! His continual use of the fur of slaughtered animals in his designs and his fervent support for emaciated models on the catwalk are appalling. When the sculpture of him appears in Pentrebach , I sincerely hope the local foxes get their revenge.
Above all, there's the terrible news coming from one of the town's oldest employers TBS, who make office furniture. They may be an established employer but, according to a friend who works there, they've treated their non-Unionised workforce like slave labour for far too long.
Agency workers have been brought in and discarded at will and their regular workers have been forced into doing overtime by being offered anti-social shifts if they didn't accept it.
It's not surprising that a week ago, 110 workers there were told they were redundant, without any warning! According to my friend there's little hope of a buyer, so the remaining 186 staff will soon be on the dole. These workers - many of whom having spent their whole lives working for that company - deserve much better than this callous treatment.
Yet good news was made by the Soar Theatre, a new venue for productions and meetings. It is a renovated chapel and stands alongside the Canolfan and if last Tuesday was an illustration, then things bode quite well for the future. On that evening alone, there was a meeting about the bio-mass incinerator which Covanta want to locate in Merthyr and, in the Canolfan, Cymdeithas yr Iaith met to hear three speeches about S4C. It shows that activism in the town of Lewis Lewis and Dic Penderyn is not dead and there are plenty of people willing to fight for both causes.
More positive news is the £4 million grant from the Welsh Assembly Gov. towards the complete renovation of the Old Town Hall. Of course, it will be a while before it becomes an Arts Centre, but there is lots of local talent to fill it.
This was shown once more at The Imp's Open Mic. on Thursday evening, with guest writer Grahame Davies, who once worked for the 'Merthyr Express'. Local poets John Williams, Bernard Harrington and Ceinwen Statter all contributed alongside others from the far reaches of Ebbw Vale and Chepstow.
Everywhere in The Imp were beer mats bearing the face of our AM Huw Lewis who resides, for the most part, in Penarth. I stood against him in the first Assembly election , myself for the United Socialists and Lewis as a convinced Blairite. Since then, he's had a role in charge of Child Poverty, he has transformed himself into an ever-so-slightly-left-leaning politician and no longer a total devo-sceptic. Left on the back benches, he would've remained an underminer!
'EWGE LEWIS'
In The Imp we can now see
his photo on every beer mat,
our A.M., our absentee landlord.
You can meet him more times
scattered on the tables there
than you'll ever see him in Merthyr.
And, remarkably, he has grown!
In the photo he's 15 foot nine,
standing next to Cefn Viaduct.
He's become 'y cawr' overnight,
probably holds surgeries at Giant's Bite
(maybe it was him ate the hillside).
He's moved from posh Penarth
(our Merthyr schools wouldn't suit
his gigantically brain-celled children),
to Brobdingnab......we're Lilliputian!
Perhaps he'll come and out a fire out
by urinating on one of our buildings?
'Ewge Lewis' we'll have to call him,
grown too big for our petty streets,
his size 30 feet would flatten.
A town where Prof. Gwyn Alf Williams was born and schooled before he went on to become one of the greatest historians and broadcasters of the last century. He doesn't even get a room in the Library named after him like our finest writer ever Leslie Norris, whose poems and stories deserve so much more than a single mention in Mario Basini's book 'Real Merthyr'. A town where Keir Hardie became the first ever Labour MP, till he was ostracized from that party, a fervent opponent of the 1st World War. A town which gave Westminster one of its most idiosyncratic and fascinating MP's, S.O. Davies, an ex-miner and leader of The Fed, a Cymro Cymraeg who was an early advocate of devolution.
News from Merthyr about our famous son , fashion designer Julien Macdonald, who has defended the place against bad press we constantly get for being Top of the League for underage smoking ( age 9 onwards), underage pregancies ( just a bit older), obesity, heart attacks, disability claimants........you've got the idea! A Merthyr boy through and through, he has spoken out against Iain Duncan Smith's hopeless advice to 'get on a bus' for work.
I happen to think Macdonald should go the way of fellow fashionik Galliano and make a swift exit! His continual use of the fur of slaughtered animals in his designs and his fervent support for emaciated models on the catwalk are appalling. When the sculpture of him appears in Pentrebach , I sincerely hope the local foxes get their revenge.
Above all, there's the terrible news coming from one of the town's oldest employers TBS, who make office furniture. They may be an established employer but, according to a friend who works there, they've treated their non-Unionised workforce like slave labour for far too long.
Agency workers have been brought in and discarded at will and their regular workers have been forced into doing overtime by being offered anti-social shifts if they didn't accept it.
It's not surprising that a week ago, 110 workers there were told they were redundant, without any warning! According to my friend there's little hope of a buyer, so the remaining 186 staff will soon be on the dole. These workers - many of whom having spent their whole lives working for that company - deserve much better than this callous treatment.
Yet good news was made by the Soar Theatre, a new venue for productions and meetings. It is a renovated chapel and stands alongside the Canolfan and if last Tuesday was an illustration, then things bode quite well for the future. On that evening alone, there was a meeting about the bio-mass incinerator which Covanta want to locate in Merthyr and, in the Canolfan, Cymdeithas yr Iaith met to hear three speeches about S4C. It shows that activism in the town of Lewis Lewis and Dic Penderyn is not dead and there are plenty of people willing to fight for both causes.
More positive news is the £4 million grant from the Welsh Assembly Gov. towards the complete renovation of the Old Town Hall. Of course, it will be a while before it becomes an Arts Centre, but there is lots of local talent to fill it.
This was shown once more at The Imp's Open Mic. on Thursday evening, with guest writer Grahame Davies, who once worked for the 'Merthyr Express'. Local poets John Williams, Bernard Harrington and Ceinwen Statter all contributed alongside others from the far reaches of Ebbw Vale and Chepstow.
Everywhere in The Imp were beer mats bearing the face of our AM Huw Lewis who resides, for the most part, in Penarth. I stood against him in the first Assembly election , myself for the United Socialists and Lewis as a convinced Blairite. Since then, he's had a role in charge of Child Poverty, he has transformed himself into an ever-so-slightly-left-leaning politician and no longer a total devo-sceptic. Left on the back benches, he would've remained an underminer!
'EWGE LEWIS'
In The Imp we can now see
his photo on every beer mat,
our A.M., our absentee landlord.
You can meet him more times
scattered on the tables there
than you'll ever see him in Merthyr.
And, remarkably, he has grown!
In the photo he's 15 foot nine,
standing next to Cefn Viaduct.
He's become 'y cawr' overnight,
probably holds surgeries at Giant's Bite
(maybe it was him ate the hillside).
He's moved from posh Penarth
(our Merthyr schools wouldn't suit
his gigantically brain-celled children),
to Brobdingnab......we're Lilliputian!
Perhaps he'll come and out a fire out
by urinating on one of our buildings?
'Ewge Lewis' we'll have to call him,
grown too big for our petty streets,
his size 30 feet would flatten.
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