Toni Schiavone will face a third trial for refusing to pay an English-only parking charge notice
Language campaigner Toni Schiavone will face a third trial on Friday 26 January for refusing to pay an English-only parking charge notice.
Dismissing the Welsh language
According to campaign group Cymdeithas yr Iaith, translating the notice, and avoiding the three court cases over a period of three and a half years, would have cost between £60 and £70.
Schiavone received the original notice in September 2020 for not paying for parking in a car park in Llangrannog, Wales. Although the court case has already been thrown out twice, parking company One Parking Solution is once again appealing over the notice. The company failed to be present for the first case and the second case was thrown out of court as it was introduced late and under the wrong conditions.
Speaking ahead of his trial, Schiavone said:
If One Parking Solution provided me with a Welsh copy of the notice as many other parking companies already do, I would be fully prepared to pay it. Instead, they insist on taking me to court again and again to try to force me to pay the notice in English.
According to the company, since I understand English, they don’t need to respect my right to use my own language in my own country. It is utterly offensive.
read more: https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2024/01/24/welsh-court-case-parking-fine/
How can the company expect to be paid—for people to even know they are expected to pay—if they send out notices that aren’t in the language of the country they’re in?
It’s in the UK, English is the de facto official language across the country (there doesn’t seem to be a law or act making it official) but Welsh has been an official language in Wales (where that story happened) since 2011. So technically it’s not like if the company gave tickets written in English in Turkey, but it’s still interesting to see someone try to get the region’s official language act respected.
England can de fac itself, even if its suppression of Brittonic tongues was de jure.
That’s exactly what it’s like. English is not the iaith of the pobl or the gwald. It is a foreign tongue. Was it not enough drowning Hafod Fadog, these people now need be drowned in gibberish as well?
If you asked the Parliament to select an official language for the country as a whole what do you think it would be?
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that Welsh is the official language in Wales, but even their act recognizing it as such makes it clear that it’s the official language along with English and that both need to be treated as equals, not that Welsh is the only official language.
Why would I ask Westminster a damn thing?