Yma o Hyd

I guess the first post is always the hardest. Anyone who's actually reading this knows nothing about me, and if you're still reading, I'll be surprised. I guess I should start with the basics. I'm 16 years old (go - discriminate me, I dare you), and I attend Rhydfelen, South Wales' first Welsh medium comprehensive school. Those on the ball will have therefore guess where I live. And if you don't now where Wales is, you will by the time I've finished with you. Ok, that's the dodgy introduction over. I might as well start saying something relevant, or the people who aren't even reading will have gone.

I created this blog after a particularly violent conversation on MSN Messenger. There must have been about 10-15 people there, and, as far as I could tell, all but two (myself and my friend who had added me), were fascists. And, despite my insistence that I was Welsh (I even started speaking Welsh, although that might have made things worse...), they were adamant that I was from Pakistan. I was then branded an "immigrant", the irony being that the Celts were on the British Isles long before the Anglo-Saxons (I also happened to be the only person using proper English, and not this "txt" newspeak). And out of that conversation, three aspects stood out:

Patriotism: Everyone in that conversation was patriotic. Myself, for standing up for my homeland, and not allowing their comments to dent what I felt. Them for insisting that I leave the country. And the blog title, "Yma o Hyd" is the title of a Dafydd Iwan song, a Welsh patriotic song. It translates as "Still Here", and it's meaning is that despite all the oppression the Welsh have suffered, we are "Still Here".

Socialism/Capitalism: Right, I'll say it now - I'm a Socialist. Not a Communist, I wouldn't go that extreme, but left wing enough to see Capitalism as selfish, arrogant, and greedy. Not hard to guess who was what in that conversation, especially after they all declared to vote for the National Front. Sad fools.

Pessimism: I was never going to convince them. Yes, I'm a pessimist and a cynic, but it was easy to see that these people would just refuse to acknowledge my arguments, or my opinions. Which is the worst thing you want to do to me.

Either way, it made me realise that there was more wrong with the world than I had ever considered before. Yes, I know that every government is corrupt, and they always have been. Yet there was always that voice of "reason", of optimism that held me back. No longer.

I doubt this blog will be extensively read, if at all, but if just one person reads it, and agrees to do something about it, surely that's all that matters?

Ah, crap, that was a cliché...