I was slightly dismayed this week to hear of the potential future closure of the National Museum in Cardiff when it was confirmed that at least 90 jobs will be axed at Museum Wales across the country after a big cut to their budget. If you can’t have a national museum in the capital of your own country then there’s something wrong somewhere. Can you imagine them trying to close the national museum in France or somewhere else? It would never happen, there would be absolute public uproar.
To be fair, I know a lot of people in this country who are up in arms about the news, and rightly so. It should be one of the main attractions for tourists who visit our capital city and it should be inconceivable that Wales might not have a national museum. Years ago people fought hard to get devolution in Wales and a Welsh Assembly - many people were and are for that and many people were and are against it - but for there to be a chance that we could lose our national museum in Cardiff...I just can’t get my head around it.
There are surely ways of making it work. Maybe starting to charge people a bit is the answer. I know money is tight for a lot of people but even if it was one or two pounds, I’m sure people would be happy to pay a few pounds to visit or even donate as they feel fit towards it if it meant helping to keep places like this open to the public.
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I’ve always thought it was a big mistake to get rid of the toll charges on the Severn Bridge. The amount of money that brought in could help with things like this. They should have reduced the cost so there would be enough money to maintain the bridge itself and then some which could go towards things like this, or the NHS and schools - we could really do with that income. I am pretty sure that, from what I see and experience when driving home or out of Wales, the amount of traffic tailbacks along that stretch is much, much worse now than when the tolls were in place. That’s not good for many different reasons including pollution, with the endless queues and stop-start nature of the journey for many miles.
Museums in Wales are hugely important. I’ve been to the National Museum in Cardiff as a child on school trips and I’ve also been there as an adult. I enjoy history and it‘s a huge part of who we are; it’s part of our culture heritage. Schools should teach our children our history. We of course need to educate our children about the global world around us but it should not be at the expense of our own history and culture. How can we teach them Welsh history if we are closing down the places that treasure that history?
As well as the news about job cuts in museums, there’s also a continuing concern in Wales about job losses in the steel industry. Climate change is happening, there is no doubt about that. We only need to take a look out of the window to see the weather. The seasons are changing and there’s a debate to be had about how we tackle that. Want less ads? Download WalesOnline’s Premium app on Apple or Android.
I’m not against the idea of Wales’s bid to become ‘net zero’ (negating the amount of greenhouse gases produced by human activity) and we should all try to cut emissions but are we forsaking jobs in Port Talbot only to then import steel from other countries who produce more harmful emissions in a day than we do all year. When that happens you are cutting your nose just to spite your face. The same concern is happening with food produce in Wales as well, with more than 5,500 jobs in the agriculture industry at risk too. Then we will have to import even more food from other countries. I’m really scratching my head at times.
We need to reduce emissions and be a part of the bigger picture in doing that but we also need to support our own country and our own communities as well. There’s a lot of money being wasted in Wales when there are other things that could benefit from that money.
We have the most wonderful country here - our countryside, our coastline, the mountains - and people should flock to Wales. We need to do more to encourage people to come here, not turn them away, and the museum should play a big part in that. Sometimes we are very negative about ourselves and our country, and maybe we need to do more to promote ourselves. If we are building something - be it a new stadium in Wales or whatever it is - we should be using steel made in Port Talbot or Llanelli and not steel that is shipped in at an environmental cost from all over the world. We should be putting our own communities and our own jobs first.
Nigel Owens: Museums are part of our heritage and culture and closing them should never be an option
28
10
20.04.2024
I was slightly dismayed this week to hear of the potential future closure of the National Museum in Cardiff when it was confirmed that at least 90 jobs will be axed at Museum Wales across the country after a big cut to their budget. If you can’t have a national museum in the capital of your own country then there’s something wrong somewhere. Can you imagine them trying to close the national museum in France or somewhere else? It would never happen, there would be absolute public uproar.
To be fair, I know a lot of people in this country who are up in arms about the news, and rightly so. It should be one of the main attractions for tourists who visit our capital city and it should be inconceivable that Wales might not have a national museum. Years ago people fought hard to get devolution in Wales and a Welsh Assembly - many people were and are for that and many people were and are against it - but for there to be a chance that we could lose our national museum in Cardiff...I just can’t get my head around it.
There are surely ways of making it work. Maybe starting to charge people a bit is the answer. I know money is tight for a lot of people but even if it was one or two pounds, I’m sure........
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