John Osmond discovers that appreciation of the national game is the strongest experience uniting the people of Wales:

Welsh passion for the national game is renowned, but new BBC audience figures, comparing our involvement with the other home nations, underline the extraordinary extent of our engagement.

The most startling statistic is that while the recent international between Wales and England at the Millennium Stadium attracted a 33 per cent audience share in England (that is, the proportion of the total number of people watching television at the time) the Welsh figure was more than double, at 67 per cent.

The comparisons in audience share for the Wales and Scotland international at Murrayfield a week earlier are equally striking. While the audience share in Scotland for this home game was 35 per cent, in Wales it was 68 per cent.

And we watch more than anyone else, even when we are not playing. The figures for the other international matches last weekend were:

• France versus Scotland: 48 per cent in Wales, 32 per cent in Scotland, 29 per cent in Northern Ireland and 26 per cent in England.

• Italy versus Ireland: 46 per cent in Wales, 34 per cent in Northern Ireland, 21 per cent in Scotland, and 21 per cent in England.

In terms of actual numbers of people the 67 per cent Welsh audience share (which, incidentally, includes S4C viewers) means 817,000 people watching the game in Wales. That was the average throughout the game. The number of viewers peaked towards the end of the match when BBC Wales calculate that 896,000 people were watching. Across the UK as a whole, the average number watching the game was 7,000,090.

However, it is the Welsh statistic that is so striking. When you add the 75,000 who actually attended the game in person at the Millennium Stadium, then getting on for a third of the nation’s entire population watched the match. The English equivalent would be more than 16 million people. By comparison, according to MediaGuardian, the most watched English soccer cup final in recent years was Millwall versus Manchester United in 2004, which attracted 9 million viewers (across the whole of the UK).

In Wales we normally emphasise the things that divide us, whether it be devolution referendums, the distance between north and south and the mountains that block a rail route, or the differences in the Welsh experience determined by whether we speak the language of heaven or not. Here, courtesy of television, is a cultural experience in which, one way or another virtually the whole population participates. More to the point, there can be no doubt that the whole population is also unanimous in wanting the same outcome: in this case beating the hell out of the old enemy.

John Osmond is Director of the IWA.
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The 'Bank of Wales' title should be reclaimed, according to Geraint Talfan Davies:

Because of the scale of the merger between HBOS and Lloyds TSB to form the new Lloyds Banking group, few will have given thought to the fact that sitting in a drawer in an HBOS office in Edinburgh are the deeds to the Bank of Wales that was swallowed up by the Bank of Scotland 20 years ago, before it, too, succumbed to the consolidation virus. Could this be the moment to ask for them back?

It is now 38 years since the Bank of England gave its permission, on 9th February 1971, for Sir Julian Hodge to register the title ‘Commercial Bank of Wales’. The word ‘Commercial’ had been inserted to avoid giving the impression that a new national bank was being created, and may have had something to do with regulatory nervousness about the whole venture. James Callaghan’s friendship with Julian Hodge was thought to have been of crucial assistance.

It wasn’t until 1st December 1986 that the bank was allowed to drop the word ‘Commercial’ and start trading as simply the Bank of Wales. Despite the change of title it remained primarily a commercial rather than a retail bank, with only five offices – in Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Carmarthen and Deeside.

It always operated at a modest scale, and few were surprised when it was eventually bought out, although it wasn’t until September 2002 that the Bank of Scotland decided that the Bank of Wales should cease to trade under that name. Four years later, on 14 December 2006, it was finally re-registered from a plc to a private dormant company.

Why bother, you might reasonably ask? Who would want the title deeds to a dead bank these days? And even if the deeds could be prised from the HBOS vault, what would anybody do with them?

As a sign that optimists survive even in these gloomy times, the magazine Business Week recently pointed out – under the headline ‘This may be the ideal time to start a bank’ - that no fewer than 72 new banks opened in the US last year, although the number was down from 127 the previous year. Many of these small, locally focused new banks – in places like Alabama, New Jersey and Massachusetts - have been concentrating on small business loans from which the bigger banks have retreated.

Ben Levisohn of Business Week put forward a simple argument: “Unlike existing banks, those born after the bust don’t have bad assets threatening their books and earnings. This frees them up to make fresh loans. And banks can do so at a tidy profit right now because they an borrow money at ultra-low interest rates and charge borrowers hefty premiums.”

Britain, some will say, let alone Wales, is not America. The notion of local financial institutions has been dead for a while in his country. It is hard to see even the wealthiest of Welsh people chancing their arm on such a private venture. By now the Hodge financial interest is centred on a successful niche bank – the Julian Hodge Bank. Sentiment alone will not revive a Bank of Wales.

But something else is stirring in the forest. Local authorities have started to talk of opening local banks as a way of getting credit flowing in their own backyard. Peter Mandelson, the business minister, is talking of turning post offices into banking centres. In Scotland, there is a debate opening up about the borrowing powers of the Scottish Parliament, or rather its current lack of borrowing powers.

In this new situation the title Bank of Wales might have a real future value for society and government in Wales. After all, it is a name that has too much of a public resonance to languish as a discarded private pawn. It should be regarded as a Welsh national asset.

The issue is, rather, about the best use we could make of it. That is a matter beyond my expertise, but a number of options have been put to me by well-informed people in recent days:

• a Welsh development bank, perhaps part-owned by the Assembly Government – not such an outlandish thought in days when most large British banks are part-owned by the state;

• a ‘people’s bank’, a kind of super-mutual at arm’s length from government and perhaps retailing through post offices;

• or lastly, a trading bank that could save our 22 local authorities and other public agencies substantial sums by aggregating their currently fragmented funds and helping to manage their cash flows more efficiently. The local authorities receive around £4bn from Welsh Assembly Government, as well as handling their own receipts from council tax and their substantial pension funds – an improvement of even a percentage or two would be well worth having.

We might at least try to find a model that enabled us to generate some Welsh self-help focused on small business development, housing improvement, public transport, or rural development, not to mention building indigenous financial expertise.

Since the British Government owns 43% of the Lloyds Banking Group, perhaps now is the moment for Rhodri Morgan to ask Alastair Darling to secure the deeds and make a gift of them to the Welsh nation. It would be a longer-lasting legacy project for the First Minister than the Ryder Cup.

Geraint Talfan Davies is Chair of the IWA.
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Peter Finch considers the Welsh Language LCO currently in progress:

At Cardiff Central the station sign reads Caerdydd Canolog in railway green and, under that, Cardiff Central in motorway signboard black. If you arrive from the east then you know you are in another country. Over the tannoy a voice sounding rather like the Welsh-language poet Grahame Davies announces perfectly pronounced valley destinations for the next train leaving platform chwech. In the 70s when Cardiff Council were busy trying to drag us out of a post industrial slum a research team came up with the notion that visitors would increase in number if they felt that they were travelling to somewhere truly different. Like another country. The previously uniformly monolingual city signboarding turned bilingual almost overnight. Cardiff started to actually feel like the Welsh capital, a status it had held, a little against the grain, since 1955.

The Welsh language, regarded by some as a financial drain on the whole of society, was now making economic sense. Could the Halifax Building Society, Boots, W H Smith, and a whole raft of other national yet private providers be persuaded to offer a genuine bilingual service? It took a long campaign of letter writing, sitting down with banners and the fixing of locks with metal glue to get some change on that.

The reality, of course, is that a bilingual nation such as ours needs to be just that. Bilingual. Bilingualism doesn’t work when only partially implemented. It fails when it is accommodated rather than embraced. Usage needs to be expected rather than enjoyed. Resentment among the many (and often those who write in vociferously to the South Wales Echo and the Western Mail) needs to be overcome. Much can be done to assuage fears and level objection simply by making bilingualism the norm. The sort of thing you see every day. Taxi Tacsi. Library Llyfrgell. Plumber Plymwr. Pub Tafarn. Corner Shop Siop Gornel. Vacuum Cleaner Repair Service Gwasanaeth Atgyweirio Sugnwyr Llwch. Golf Course Maes Golff. Half Price Bacon Today Cig Moch Hanner Pris Heddiw. Council Tax Increase Imminent Cynnydd yn Nhreth Cyngor Ar y Gweill. And that, I suppose, is the problem. How do we afford this? Actually there’s no argument. We simply have to.

The new powers sought by the Assembly will, I’ve heard, give both English and Welsh equal official status and will require a much larger swathe of enterprise (including, rather controversially, any organisation receiving more than £200,000 annually from public sources) to make their operations bilingual. The devil will be, as ever, in the detail. In the jargon what the Assembly are seeking are “the powers to legislate in order to promote and facilitate the growth of the language and to make us a truly bilingual nation”. Will this mean a Wales world of fully functioning two-way streets? Bilingual street preachers. Cardiff City football programmes in Welsh as well as English? The Cyfansoddiadau (the annual programme of results and adjudications from the National Eisteddfod) in English as well as Welsh? I’m not sure those things will arrive overnight. With this aspect of nation building there’s a distance to go yet.

Peter Finch is Chief Executive of Academi.
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Rhodri Davies introduces the Wales Air Ambulance service:

Wales Air Ambulance is a registered charity providing emergency air cover for those who face life-threatening illness or injuries. Since its launch on St David’s Day in 2001, the three red helicopters stationed in Mid, North and South Wales respond to around 1,500 emergencies a year, saving countless lives across Wales.

Owing to the diversity of the landscape in Wales, the service is vital for reaching both the remote countryside and busy towns and cities when time really matters. From mountain tops to back gardens, the helicopters can be anywhere in Wales within just 20 minutes.

In heavily congested urban areas, the ability to land within close proximity of the patient has proved critical in response to road traffic accidents. Equally, a helicopter can make a vital difference in rural locations, saving valuable time in areas where a land ambulance simply can not reach.

It is widely believed that a patient’s chances of survival and early recovery are significantly increased if they receive the right care within the first hour, otherwise known as the ‘Golden Hour’. The fast response times of the air ambulance crews and their ability to reach such difficult locations increases the chances of a patient receiving definitive care within the this crucial hour.

Wales Air Ambulance is funded by the people of Wales, relying on the public support to help keep their three helicopters flying 365 days a year. The charitable service does not receive direct funding from central government. Additionally, because of its role as an emergency service, it also fails to qualify for National Lottery funding. The money is therefore raised through charitable donations, fund raising events and membership of their 'lifesaving lottery'.

For more information on Wales Air Ambulance and how you help please visit the website or contact your nearest fundraising office on 0844 85 84 999.

Rhodri Davies is Regional Development Manager for Wales Air Ambulance.
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