WE'VE written the blank cheque.

IN a couple of months we'll stare incredulously at our statements and gasp at how much of our money the Welsh Assembly hopes to trouser.

Let me make a prediction.

At the top of your account will be an item 'Welsh language education'.

It will feature very large in the debit column and have consequences in South-east Wales as yet undreamt - of in our worst nightmares.

Already we have the ludicrous situation that when you call your local council its first response is in Welsh. If you actually replied in Welsh there would be a pause and a polite voice would continue in English 'If you'd like to hold on for a second sir/madam I'll find someone to help you'.

You might be waiting a very long time. In fact probably the council would have to call you back. It's window dressing, a fictional narrative fed by delusion.

Already public bodies in their e-mails put Welsh first, an obvious absurdity.

Yet it is not without method.

The mindset is being put in place that Welsh is the official language of Welsh public affairs.

You are free not to speak Welsh of course, but when you start seeing job applications with the proviso 'Welsh speaker preferred' even if the job in question is for a dustman you will begin to get the underlying message.

In Gwent we have the lowest incidence of Welsh speakers and of support for the Welsh Assembly.

Despite what their respective supporters claim the two are intricately interconnected.

The only chance Welsh has of surviving in South Wales is if the Assembly makes it all but compulsory and conversely the Welsh Assembly's survival depends upon the support of the Welsh-speaking lobby.

The picture is one not of liberation and empowerment but of morbid introspection and decline.

A corpse with rigor mortis will not stand up by itself.

But put it back-to-back with another and it will give a spurious impression of life until at last decomposition sets in and both tumble in a mouldering heap.