A young woman on 'Punchin'' says Wales is close to London so it may as well be England, and suddenly etiquette becomes geopolitics. The real offence is not that she is ignorant, it is that she is confident in that ignorance, which is a trait the internet rewards like a tipped waiter. Wales has its own legislature, the Senedd, and its modern settlement did not appear by magic; it came after a referendum on 18 Sep 1997 and the Government of Wales Act 1998. Those are dry facts, but they explain why people bristled. Add the history she tripped over, the Welsh Not in schools and the Tryweryn flooding in 1965, and you are no longer dealing with a cute joke about football qualifiers. She apologised and claimed she educated herself, which is better than doubling down. The sensible outcome is a sharper public literacy and a duller appetite for ragebait, not a long campaign of cruelty. If you must perform outrage, at least perform it in the direction of those who actually make decisions.
