When it comes to the Welsh language, people can harbour some very strange ideas, writes Clive Betts from the National Assembly press gallery.

The latest and strangest is that 80 per cent of AMs are Welsh-speaking.

The upshot of that claim, as made by a letter-writer to the Western Mail, is that the Assembly should be deprived of any right to take any further powers over the Welsh language because the institution is “unrepresentative”.

The gentleman, writing from that very strange town of Cardiff – where the Assembly unfortunately happens to be located – is that “political parties clearly tend to select their candidates because they can speak Welsh”.   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now if Mr Welton, a well-known Welsh surname, knew a little more about the relationship between politicians from various parties and the Welsh language he would realise he is speaking out of his backside.

Simply because, for the Labour party, ability to speak Welsh has usually been a negative factor, often strongly so.

Not nowadays, perhaps. But senior figures in any party originate in an earlier generation. And in the past, Labour has been tremendously anti-language in almost all parts of Wales.

That attitude continues to this day. Certain fluent Welsh-speakers never, or hardly ever, address the Assembly or its committees, through Welsh, despite the existence of continual simultaneous translation.

The Tories have been better inclined towards the language – although that party has always possessed a predilection towards looking towards the great and the good. And these people either hailed from across the border (as does the party’s present MEP, although she is in fact Welsh-speaking); or they had lost the language in previous generations when only the lower classes clung to Welsh. And such Tories of course seldom mixed with the lower classes.

The Lib Dems are a wee bit thin on Welsh-speakers; they wish they could attract a few more. They currently have to rely on Eleanor Burnham, the North AM. Sometimes they wish they could find someone else to appear on Welsh radio and TV because her comments sometimes make ones hair curl.

If a “Welsh-speaker’s dictatorship” (the words of the letter-writer) exists in the Assembly, it is strictly restricted to the ranks of Plaid Cymru. And it doesn’t extend too far in that party either, as a number of senior AMs speak little or no Welsh – or certainly don’t use it in public forums.

The Assembly has 60 members. How many can be counted as Welsh-speakers ? If you speak of members who use the language naturally, you would come up with a grand total of 19 – one Lib Dem; three Tories; five Labour and 10 Plaid.

Is that 80 per cent ? No, that is 31 pc.

Admittedly, there are a couple of AMs who have learned the language very well – but they are mostly included in the 19.

There are several more who are LEARNING it. But that’s very different from speaking it.

Unless of course you are an anti-language fanatic, and ignorant at that. Just like a few people who live in Cardiff and pontificate. But who, when questioned in detail, admit they have hardly ever come across a Welsh-speaker, and have certainly never encroached upon a Welsh-speaking area.

Some people would criticise the Mail for having printed this letter.

But that would be wrong. The writer in Cardiff is only using the same sort of distortion which is second-nature to the extremists of the British National Party.