Moderator: Cross posted from Normal Mouth's blog.

Normal Mouth (Rhondda, blogger): At the turn of the nineteenth century the very idea of a “Welsh question” was largely inconceivable. This was not so in Scotland and Ireland, where a strong sense of nationhood was buttressed by the relative novelties of their respective unions with England. Welshness, by contrast was identified with little more than the backward retention of an ancient language, and a wild and uninviting hinterland. Little wonder that the likes of Bishop Basil Jones of St David's declared as late as 1886 that Wales survived only as a "geographical expression".*

Industrialisation and Nonconformism gave birth to Wales’s national movement, and franchise reform gave it the means to press itself upon the consciousness of Britain's leaders. With a voice, Welsh sentiment was harder to ignore in Parliament. So emerged the radical Nonconformist wing of the Liberal Party, and through that those essential precursors of devolution - disestablishment, educational reform and Sunday closing.

Moderator: Cross posted from Normal Mouth's blog.

Normal Mouth (Rhondda, blogger): A fortnight ago Sir David Varney published the second instalment of his review into Northern Ireland's competitiveness. The first drew comment from a Welsh perspective only from Adam Price and me - suprising given that the review's remit was to investigate whether a lower rate of corporation tax would boost a part of the UK economy that has historically lagged behind others.