IN the wake of bizarre calls from some quarters for Tom Jones’ “Delilah” to be banned at rugby internationals, it was great to hear Monmouth Male Voice Choir’s rousing rendition of the sixties classic at the start of the Wales-Scotland Six Nations match at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

Male voice choirs are a valuable part of our Welsh and Marches heritage and a great vehicle for developing community spirit.

I’m particularly proud that Monmouth’s has gone from strength to strength over recent years.

Keep up the good work and Pob lwc!

Monmouth’s choir does a great service to the town and county but sadly the same cannot be said for the Welsh Government’s 2016 budget.

Yes we have seen a welcome commitment to more funding for the NHS in the wake of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, but this money hardly makes up for the hundreds of millions of pounds that have been stripped out of the Welsh Health Service over the last five years.

And once again - as we have sadly come to expect - the budget falls short of a good deal for rural authorities, containing a 3 per cent cut to Monmouthshire’s funding - along with Powys and Ceredigion, the joint lowest settlement.

The Welsh Government apparently expects us to be grateful for the cut on the basis it was going to be worse at 3.1 per cent! Well sorry guys but that’s hardly reassuring.

The people of Monmouthshire and rural Wales are fed up with being treated as second class citizens.

Come on Welsh Government, get your act together. Yes we need a proper rural stabilisation grant in the short term but we need a long term commitment to a complete overhaul of the Local Government Funding Formula so that rural areas like Monmouthshire finally get the fair deal they deserve.

On a more positive note, it’s been highly rewarding taking the Save Monmouthshire roadshow out and about around Monmouthshire over recent weeks. What’s become clear to me is just what affection and loyalty there is out there for our county.

There is certainly little appetite to turn the clock back to a larger, more distant and less democratic authority.

Sign the petition at http://www.nickramsay.org.uk/save-monmouthshire today and let’s send a clear message to the powers-that-be that we are more than ready to stand up for the historic area that I and so many of my constituents are proud to call home.