Wales: Is it time to close it down?

AS the Welsh first minister resigns, many feel that Wales was a brave experiment that has sadly failed. Here Charlotte Phelps and Huw Davies debate whether it should be shut down.

Cuisine

Charlotte: Wales has produced Welsh rarebit. Have I missed anything? Cawl. Which is lamb and potato stew. Heston Blumenthal must be shitting himself.

Huw: Don’t forget leeks. Admittedly it’s a bit sad to base your national identity on a giant spring onion.

Sexual satisfaction 

Charlotte: Wales isn’t really a place you go to get laid, and there’s no Welsh equivalent of the Kama Sutra – except maybe the ‘Baa-ma Sutra’.

Huw: Wales is extremely sexy. There’s Katherine Jenkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and of course the original ‘sex bomb’ Tom Jones. What lady doesn’t want sex with a man who openly dips his knob in Listerine for hygiene reasons? I’m afraid Welshmen having sex with sheep is just a popular myth. Bottlenose dolphins are the real goers.

Weather 

Charlotte: As any English holidaymaker knows, the only weather in Wales is rain. You’d be drier if you just kept driving into the Irish Sea. I genuinely believe it’s a conspiracy by the amusement arcades.

Huw: I admit we do get quite a few showers in Wales, but that could be solved with a huge perspex lid running from Llandudno to Barry. Granted it would resemble the sci-fi thriller Under The Dome, but we’re used to nightmarish dystopias. Look at Swansea.

Scientific discoveries

Charlotte: Wales invented the spare wheel and Pot Noodles. It’s not quite the atom bomb and the home computer, is it?

Huw: Pot Noodles were a quantum leap in nutrition for people too f**k-idle to use a toaster. Wales also invented the microphone, without which karaoke would just be a senseless cacophony of people shouting tunelessly in a pub. A Welshman thought of the symbol for the mathematical ratio Pi, which is loads of fun. You can calculate the area of a circle, work it out to 100 decimal places, determine the volume of a pipe – the possibilities are endless.

Politics

Charlotte: So this Drakeford guy no one knows from Adam has resigned, and the only other Welsh politician I know is Neil Kinnock. It doesn’t fill you with confidence when someone’s nickname is ‘the Welsh Windbag’.

Huw: Well, there was Aneurin Bevan. And we’re still less likely to privatise air than England.

Cultural contribution

Charlotte: Rhys Ifans. Ivor the Engine. I think that’s it.

Huw: I’m afraid you’re wrong there, Charlotte. Wales is a cultural hub responsible for Gorky’s Zygotic Mynki, Mr Nice, Sian Lloyd, Torchwood and the entire Doctor Who renaissance. Everyone loves discussing how Russell T Davies just keeps making the show better and better!

Final words

Charlotte: It seems to me Wales hasn’t done much of note since Pobol Y Cwm. Probably best to put it out of its misery.

Huw: As a proud Welshman and spiritual descendant of the great warrior king Owain Glyndŵr, I agree. Personally I would like to see us reinvent our national greatness for the 21st century by becoming the world’s largest B&Q.

Paying for parking now involves three apps, retinal scan and pledge of eternal fealty

LEAVING your car in an ordinary car park now demands not only advanced digital literacy but also the recitation of an ancient oath.

Driver Bill McKay only wanted to spend half an hour in a short-stay car park, but after completing the Herculean labours of paying, the car park, the shop he wanted to visit and all forms of local human civilisation had closed.

McKay said: “Downloading PARKMASTER 3000 was straightforward enough, although I did have to delete every other app on my phone to make space for it. Even giving the blood sample was okay. But I didn’t have a sword on me for swearing allegiance with.

“Then it said I needed another app to scan my face to check I wasn’t a robot, a pigeon, or an alien criminal hiding on Earth. Then I had to get a third app to verify that I had the second one, which also told me to throw my phone down a drain to appease the evil clown who lives there.

“Once I’d done all that, a winged angel finally descended to take payment, but he wanted £56 all in 2p coins. At this point I thought I’ll just risk getting clamped.”

A local council spokesperson said: “How else do you expect us to earn money except by sapping the will to live of the people we claim to serve? The only thing you twats consistently do, even in a cost-of-living crisis, is drive places.

“Really, everyone should do the environmentally-friendly thing and get the bus instead. Don’t worry, there’s one in two days at 6.02am.”