Any excuse

Iolo Webb

On the evening of August 14, phones across Wales and England received an emergency alert message, warning of the risk of wildfires and advising residents, landowners and visitors against any activity that could cause fires.

Here in bilingual Wales, we received this message first in our only de jure official language, Welsh, and then in English four minutes later.

This inevitably and predictably brought the English supremacists out of the woodwork to complain about receiving a message in a language they can’t (and don’t want to) understand.

One of their ringleaders, Andrew RT Davies, became redder than ever in the face and demanded that the law be changed to put English first, quoting some story about English pub-goers in Bae Colwyn “scrambling to find a Welsh speaker”, when they could have just taken a screenshot on their phones and used Google Translate (or waited four minutes).

‘Reform UK Wales’ called the prioritisation of Wales’ indigenous language “dangerous” (which actually seems rather mild coming from them). Various other xenophobes exploded, including a former Liz Truss adviser, Ben Ramanauskas, who tweeted “it’s time to give up on Welsh” and went on to whine about how confusing it is to find the right train, thanks to bilingual signs.

God forbid he should travel overseas – although, ironically, his surname is Lithuanian in origin, while Lithuania itself has been subjected to cultural repression numerous times. It is incredibly hypocritical to talk about Welsh in the same way that Russian imperialists would talk about Lithuanian! (His post was so laughable that I thought I’d give him a special mention.)

No, this wasn’t the Plaid Cymru Welsh Government “giving Welsh speakers a head start”. The Emergency Alerts system is a UK Government system – these alerts were issued by the UK Government, with First Secretary of State Louise Haigh confirming that the Government had taken the decision to send them to Wales and England.

Bilingual

The alert in Welsh was sent at 18:57 in Wales only, while the alert in English was sent at 19:01 in both Wales and England. Previous test alerts sent on April 23, 2023 and September 7, 2025 have been bilingual in Welsh and English (although the weather warning on December 7, 2024 was in English only), proving that it is perfectly feasible to send them bilingually.

However, it appears that on this occasion, someone in the UK Government couldn’t be bothered to combine two short messages into one bilingual message in Wales, with ‘scroll down for English (or Welsh)’ at the top, or to note that the message in English would follow, or even provide a button for translation. (Hopefully it wasn’t done like this deliberately to cause trouble – we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.)

Either way, the fault lies with the Labour UK Government (which may explain why Welsh Labour have kept quiet for once). Get your act together – bilingualism is not rocket science. (Or better still, devolve emergency alerts to our own government.)

Wait

And even if future messages should come separately one after the other, all non-Welsh speakers need to do is … wait! I studied in Austria for a year, and the whole country received an emergency alert for thunderstorms last October, in German. I speak German, but many of my international friends don’t. Nobody panicked – they simply waited for the English version to follow.

There are many foreign visitors in Wales at present, and I’m pretty sure that tourists from Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland or elsewhere wouldn’t complain about an alert in Welsh – they too would wait for the English version.

Once again, Andrew RT Davies and other no-good zealots are trying to belittle their own country’s language with baseless arguments, just to earn a pat on the head from their imperial masters.

They’ll try any excuse, won’t they?

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