I don't always agree with the acerbic observations in Hywel Williams's Guardian essays. He would be disappointed if I did. I applauded heartily, however, a recent piece on the Prime Minister's cursing of the Welsh at the time of the first assembly elections, when Plaid Cymru won a few hitherto solid Labour seats. It appears that Blair is not only blind to the manifest flaws in the character of George Bush, but ill-bred and petulant into the bargain. My father would not have given him the time of day, far less crossed a street to listen to him. But then my father had standards. So disgusted was he by the nepotism and cronyism among Labour councillors that, working class and socially conscious as he was, he never voted for the party that claimed to represent his interests. His was one of very few Tory votes cast in the old Pontypridd constituency, into which that part of Gilfach Goch where we lived fell. If I haven't mentioned it before, I should put on record that, when I was growing up there, Gilfach was an electoral anomaly; with only a couple of thousand voters, it had a minuscule influence on three parliamentary seats. Since all invariably returned Labour MPs, this was of no concern to candidates or boundary commissioners. My father voted Tory because there was rarely another alternative, and because my mother would have voted Tory had she been able to reach a polling station. Her father, ...