Welsh World Champions not valued in England

I don’t want to belittle the achievement of 11th-in-line-to-the-throne Zara Philips in winning the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award but the fact that Joe Calzaghe and Nicole Cooke both got less than 10% of the vote shows that being a Welsh World Champion counts for nothing in England.

Predictably, neither Cooke nor Calzaghe got a fair hearing in the show. Without knowing the demographics of the vote, it would be impossible to say for sure whether the result was a victory for the campaign waged last week by the Telegraph and Daily Mail but it was certainly a victory for the status quo.

Wales was reduced by the BBC, in effect, to the same status as East Yorkshire/Lincolnshire.