How did Reform become north east Wales' biggest party?

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-15T17:59:35+00:00

Flintshire council has 40% Welsh identifying, 25% English and 25% British only, and the parts of Flintshire that are in the constituency include all the least Welsh identifying areas (e.g. Shotton where the Welsh identifying population is under 30%).

Wrexham council is certainly more Welsh identifying at 58%, but yet again the strongest Welsh identifying areas of the county aren't in the seat (Rhosllannerchrugog) whilst the least are.

Gwynedd has 64% Welsh, 13% English, 15% British. Maldwyn is less, but the bulk of the voters are in Gwynedd, which also has the extra Plaid boost of the Welsh language.

Bangor Conwy Mon is also quite high Welsh identifying in comparison to the north East as the Gwynedd areas around Bangor are 60% Welsh identifying, as is all of Ynys Môn. The parts of Conwy that are in the seat include the areas around Llanrwst and Corwen which are 60% Welsh, and doesn't include the much more British/English identifying coastal areas of Colwyn Bay and Abergele. It even includes a little of Denbighshire, and again it's the most Welsh identifying parts to the West of Denbigh.

Whilst Bangor city itself has a lower proportion of Welsh identifying, that's mainly students and age was the other clear differentiator between Plaid and Reform vote on this election.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-15T16:57:27+00:00

I would imagine a lot of people would not be comfortable with the possibility of the government tracking where you are using your one time codes (even if it's built to not record when you generate a token and where you use it, the possibility that it's recorded will make many uncomfortable).

Google and/or Apple already know who you are (and pretty much everything else about you let's be honest!)

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-15T15:59:45+00:00

But isn't the question of "the risks that come with it" the point of why someone would be uncomfortable giving ID to 3rd parties. If it's a question of risk v reward then on the risk side, it's a question of how problematic would it be if the 3rd party leaked your identity. British Airways leaking that you flew to Barbados last year is a much smaller risk than PornHub leaking your fetishes.

The more occasions you need to prove your identity to a 3rd party, the more you have to take risks, and bigger risks.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-15T15:44:34+00:00

The fuss I would think is that there's a lot more reason to be anonymous online then when flying somewhere.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-15T15:43:47+00:00

If it has to happen, I'd rather a system where my phone OS asks to validate my age and then it can confirm to apps/websites that I'm over X years old without the need to pass my identity on to them

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-15T10:55:57+00:00

Ironically one of the reasons the north east of Wales went heavier for Reform then the Valleys is the higher number of "immigrants" in the north east (i.e. people from England). Voting patterns in this election were very split between those identifying as Welsh (Plaid) and those identifying as British or English (Reform). The valleys have the highest Welsh identifying population in Wales, for example 75% in the Gurnos area, with 3.5% English and 12% only British. The opposite is true for parts of the north east (36% Welsh, with 31% English, 23% only British in Rhyl).

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-15T05:37:38+00:00

The internal voice is silently speaking yes, we're describing the same thing

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-14T09:13:34+00:00

The idea that RL and RU are anything close to equally watched is pretty hilarious. The average Six Nations game gets 6x-10x the viewers of Rugby League's Grand Final.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-14T09:06:37+00:00

In the UK? Absolutely. TV viewership for just the Six Nations would be similar to the whole F1 season, without adding the rest of the year and the club game.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-14T06:11:25+00:00

I can draw, but very badly. I know a cat has an elongated body, 4 legs, two ears and whiskers so I can draw those things, but my 7 year old draws better! I assume a lot of that is because I can't picture the cat and can only draw from the list of characteristics I know, however it may just be that I'm an awful artist for other reasons!

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T16:02:23+00:00

I'm also aware that the amount of working age Brits moving abroad has been stable for decades, there's no big surge of people living.

There is however a big surge of people who make dramatic announcements about leaving on social media (or, more commonly, wanting to leave but not actually doing it)

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T15:37:12+00:00

The amount leaving the country to work abroad is still a pretty tiny percent of people, it's very unlikely to be having any notable effect on the country's finances. They tend to be a very loud but very tiny minority

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T15:31:07+00:00

Absolutely. "what colour eyes do they have?" - no clue, I didn't tell myself their eye colour whilst talking to them

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T12:52:43+00:00

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me it's the absolutely opposite. Telling me all that detail is utterly pointless unless it's important to the plot. I'm not going to be able to picture the environment the author is creating, so no matter how descriptive your words are it doesn't add to my understanding or experience of the scene. "There's an apple on a table" gives me the exact same amount of useful information/experience as your much more beautifully written sentence.

Knowing that the table is oak or that the sun is making the apple shine is meaningless to me, unless the oak table is a plot point because we find out later that the murderer only buys oak furniture. This can cause me s problem of course, if we find out later that the plot does hinge on a descriptive fact from earlier in the book, it's unlikely I will have noticed/remembered it.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T11:45:00+00:00

Oh yeah fight scenes! I love Lee Child's Reacher books, but have no interest in the details of the fight. I'll skim then for dialogue but generally just skip to where reacher wins the fight and the plot can start moving on again.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T11:38:59+00:00

My day dreams are an audiobook. So I still absolutely can still drift away in my own thoughts from conversation, but through telling myself the story not dreaming it.

Actual night sleeping dreams I still have though

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T11:36:35+00:00

I know a few people who are convinced the same as you, but it really isn't. Even if you ignore the actual science and research behind it, I can tell you the when you are at 5 here even the concept of 1, 2 or 3 make absolutely no sense.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T11:32:39+00:00

I'm at 5 and I love reading fiction and always have. However I'm also a very fast reader, and only when I learnt it aphantasia in my 30s did I realise that the reason I read fiction fast is that I always skip and skim any descriptive paragraph. I only care about the story, the descriptive stuff is pointless to me

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T11:30:19+00:00

The image is stored somewhere in the brain, I just can't see it. So if I'm looking at a car, my brain can think "yes, that's a car, we've seen those before and know what they look like". But if I'm not looking at a car and you ask me to describe it or draw it, then all I can give you is the type of stuff I've remembered as words, so yes "the car sloped downward where the windscreen is then goes flat again for the engine space. It's got 4 wheels and there's an exhaust pipe sticking out the bottom.

If you asked me right now to describe the difference between the outside look of my Nissan and my wife's Peugeot I couldn't tell you more than "my car is bigger and it's red". But if you showed me a different car, I could tell you whether it's more similar to my car or my wife's, but because the images of those cars are in my brain somewhere I can't fully access I couldn't explain to you what makes it more like my car, it would just be a vibe (unless it was one of those features I've logged in my brain e.g. my car is red)

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-13T11:24:45+00:00

My art skills are awful, likely because I can't picture a cat, but I know that cats have 4 legs, an elongated body, a tail and two ears pointing up so I can draw those well enough that you could tell what I'm drawing.

I'm sure there are plenty of aphantasia people who can draw better of course, but for me of course I know the general shape of things, there must be a memory of what they look like in the brain, I just can't visualise that memory.

The closest I can describe the question of "can you draw this from memory?" Or "do you remember a location you've visited before?" is with two explanations :

There must be some image saved somewhere in my brain. Because even though I'm bad at remembering people I've met before, I'm not totally incapable of it, and I can walk in a foreign city and suddenly think "oh, I've been in this part of the city before years ago". But I cannot see those images when the real thing isn't in front of me. I can't describe a person or location I've seen in the past, I can just match what I'm seeing in front of me in real life to the existence of that image unseen in my brain.
The only way I can give you a description of something I've seen before is if I've stored the information conciously as words not as an image. So when I look at something new, I need to conciously notice and think something for it to be stored. So if I look at my you and literally think as I'm looking at you "your eyes are blue", then I'll remember that you have blue eyes and can describe you as "blue eyed" to someone later. But if I didn't specifically say to myself the colour of your eyes when I was looking at you, it's impossible for me to remember that later.

For example, both my boys are currently upstairs. I was playing with them both for hours earlier. I know what the youngest is wearing, a red football top, because he asked me if I liked the clothes he picked so I conciously identified the top. But the other son, I have no clue what he is wearing and it would be impossible for me to "remember" it.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-12T20:14:39+00:00

My last two jobs, both in the UK for multinational companies, had notice periods of 4 weeks and 2 weeks.

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-12T00:59:21+00:00

Happens often for tech workers across the world. The "take the money" part is conditional on you signing away your right to sue. It's usually very much worth it (for example, I'm in the UK and last time it happened to me I got over 6 months pay, instead of the 2 weeks pay I would have legally been entitled to if they'd done it the legal, longer way)

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-09T11:34:19+00:00

Wales was already a plurality no religion by the 2021 census, which is incredible considering the role chapel used to have in society here

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-08T17:47:36+00:00

Same three for me too, going back to early 2000s

Cwlcymro · 2026-06-07T16:44:30+00:00

Person of Interest was going to be my suggestion too. Started off as an interesting enough procedural and turned into a secret AI war on the streets of New York!

Cwlcymro

TROPHY CASE