The answer, of course, is yes. Male voice choirs singing Cwm Rhondda, and the sound of Land of my Fathers at the Millennium Stadium, to start with, and in the last century the Welsh Revival before World War 1 and the National Health Service during WW2. Now let my transatlantic readers have no doubt they were both seriously GOOD THINGS. Sadly the revival didn't last as long as the NHS has. If it had, our western world, economy and all, wouldn't be in its present mess. (But I've recently heard things which give me hope for other parts of the world - if you don't believe me, have a look at the Transformations video clip, http://www.sentinelgroup.org/lsrclip.asp. And maybe it could happen here....).
Meanwhile don't take notice of the Tory (Conservative) Member of the European Parliament, Daniel Hannan, who is seriously off the wall. I guess his party leader regards him as a loose cannon. But he is wrong about the NHS. It's not by any means perfect. What human institution is? However I owe so much to the free access to diagnosis and care which I receive. In one sense, of course, it's not free, in that all my working life I've contributed to it via taxation. OK, I've probably subsidised people who didn't pay tax but I don't mind that. Neither did my children pay taxes. But to have healthcare available to all, free at the point of delivery, is an incredibly good thing. And when it works well, as it does for me, it's a great blessing.
Come to think of it, to have both revival and the NHS would be a great combination. Because revival would bring improved health (at least) and reduce the headache of funding the NHS - a far better option than euthanasia, for example.
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