{"id":23188,"date":"2019-03-01T09:58:45","date_gmt":"2019-03-01T09:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/?p=23188"},"modified":"2019-03-01T17:10:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T17:10:24","slug":"happy-st-davids-day-heres-how-to-join-in-todays-celebrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/happy-st-davids-day-heres-how-to-join-in-todays-celebrations\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicians call for St David&#8217;s Day to be bank holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As Wales celebrates its patron saint today, calls have been made for the day to become a national holiday.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In Cardiff, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/events\/388672051930703\/\">St David&#8217;s parade<\/a> has just ended with a rousing rendition of the Welsh national anthem-\u00a0Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.<\/p>\n<p>There were a few hundred people in the centre, including &#8216;St David&#8217; himself leading the parade.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_23214\" style=\"width: 440px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-23214\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-23214\" src=\"http:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/St-Davids-Parade-430x394.jpg\" alt=\"'St David' himself leading the St David's Day Parade through the streets of Cardiff\" width=\"430\" height=\"394\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/St-Davids-Parade-430x394.jpg 430w, https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/St-Davids-Parade-150x137.jpg 150w, https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/St-Davids-Parade-133x122.jpg 133w, https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/St-Davids-Parade-768x703.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/St-Davids-Parade-620x568.jpg 620w, https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/St-Davids-Parade-98x90.jpg 98w, https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/St-Davids-Parade.jpg 1288w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 430px) 100vw, 430px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-23214\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8216;St David&#8217; himself leading the St David&#8217;s Day Parade through the streets of Cardiff<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Neil McEvoy AM has called for St David&#8217;s Day to become a national holiday in Wales.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The council really should be investing in St David&#8217;s Day, so should the Welsh Government,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They should give staff the day off. My office is closed today, my staff have a day off. The Council should do that. The Welsh Government should do it. The Assembly should do it. All Welsh politicians should do it; so we could have a defacto bank holiday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Councillor Keith Parry echoed the calls, &#8220;It would boost business in Wales if St David&#8217;s day becomes a public holiday.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Since this parade started in Cardiff about 15 years ago, there are now about 15 other cities and towns having St David&#8217;s Day parades and it&#8217;s become a tourist attraction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But note everyone thinks this is a good idea. Kelly Bridgeman who works at Supergarden Florist in Cardiff Market told us that it&#8217;s the busiest day for daffodil sales.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well I think for us it wouldn&#8217;t be good because the sales of daffodils are on St David&#8217;s Day, so the Market would be closed. We&#8217;d be closed. So I&#8217;d say no, I&#8217;m not for it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for the Welsh Government said that they&#8217;d really like to make it a bank holiday, but despite them &#8220;repeatedly asking the UK Government to give the powers to the Welsh Assembly&#8221;, they have been refused.<\/p>\n<p>They say they&#8217;ll continue to argue the case.<\/p>\n<p>The Office for the Secretary of State for Wales has yet to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!\u00a0 As Wales celebrates its patron saint today, calls have been made for the day to become a national holiday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[743,744],"tags":[26,1304,1718,719,1719,1720,216],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23188"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23234,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23188\/revisions\/23234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jomec.co.uk\/cjsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}