Why Manchester United legend Ryan Giggs is no red-blooded Welshman

Anyone who thought Welsh football wizard Ryan Giggs would end his self-imposed international retirement and play against England on Saturday must have been dreaming.

Because when it comes to the Land of His Fathers, Giggs and patriotism have never been particularly close partners.

I’m a big football fan. I am also proudly Welsh. But when it comes to Giggs and his contribution to his country’s cause, that’s where I grab my little red ranting hood.

When our best player Gareth Bale had to drop out of the squad for the England game, the cry went up for Manchester United legend Giggs to step in. He did - but only to show his face and perhaps offer some friendly advice during a family holiday in Cardiff.

Had he been as dedicated to the cause as any true red-blooded Taffy, he'd have stripped off for action there and then. The golden boy may be 37, but he is still as good as any player in Gary Speed’s Wales squad.

The problem is that throughout his career, the Cardiff-born star’s loyalty to the land of his birth has been tenuous, to say the least. And there was as much chance of him saying yes as there was of Speed calling ME into the squad!

Ryan Giggs: No hero for Wales

Giggs opted out of international football three years ago - and Wales said goodbye to a tragic dragon rather than the magic one who has graced Old Trafford for the last two decades.

For me, it was a case of good riddance because I can count the number of outstanding performances he made for his country on one hand, if not one finger.

Those who do not know the full facts believe Giggs chose to play for Wales rather than England.

The reality is that our Ryan was born in Wales of Welsh parentage and has absolutely no English blood.

So the option was never there…even though he did qualify for England Schools courtesy of being educated in Manchester (where I am assured Welsh was not on the curriculum).

Look at the contribution Giggs has made to his ‘beloved’ Wales since leaving his native Cardiff at the age of seven and began speaking more like a Salford scally than a true Taffy.

Like myself and millions of other Welsh patriots, I’m sure he is proud of his blood line. But the reality is that everything about him, from his upbringing to his education and subsequent career, is pure English.

I was born in Birmingham but my Welsh father and English mother moved back to Wales when I was a baby and I will always by loyal to the country I regard as my homeland. Giggs is almost the reverse of this…so it would surprise me if his loyalty outside football is entirely to Wales.

I cannot imagine he supports Cardiff  Blues at rugby and Glamorgan at cricket, as I do - and I’d just love to know which side he favours when Wales play England in the Six Nations!

Admittedly, the guy has played some blinders for United - and is right up there with the greats of the Premier League. But all those comparisons with George Best are ridiculous - George had tricks Giggs couldn’t live with and unlike his Welsh counterpart, he could do them with both feet.

The thing that irks me about Giggs’s Wales career is that when he condescended to don the real red shirt he invariably either went through the motions or developed a mysterious injury which incredibly cleared up before United’s next game.

For nine years from 1991 he refused to play for Wales in friendlies - missing 18 matches, many of them important build-up games towards major tournament qualifiers. Had he played in even half of those, Wales’s 49-year spell without qualifying for a major tournament may well have ended years ago.

Patriotic Welshmen simply do not refuse to play for their country without a very good reason. Mind you, it might all have been at Sir Alex’s instigation. Now that is a thought.

I’ll have a think about that one...and then maybe I’ll grab my hair-dryer and head for Old Trafford.

Is a 65mph speed limit the answer to Britain's soaring fuel costs?

The answer to the ever-spiralling fuel costs facing British motorists could lie on the roads...of Spain.

As petrol prices continue to soar in the wake of the political chaos in Libya and other oil-producing countries, pressure is mounting in the UK for a cut in petrol duty, which with VAT accounts for two-thirds of pump prices.

But tax cuts are one thing David Cameron's government simply cannot afford in the current depressing economic climate.

The solution? Well, one way would be to follow the Spanish government's example by cutting the motorway speed limit and reducing rail fares to encourage drivers to become public-transport passengers.

I know 65mph on the M1 or M6 seems a ridiculously inhibitive limit but if it saves the average motorist 10p a litre, it surely makes sense. After all, if the government were to reduce petrol prices by 10p, there'd be whoops of delight from the AA and RAC.

My good friend Mike Thornton is sales manager of the BK Executive chauffeur-driven car-hire firm, whose fleet of luxury vehicles include Rolls Royces and Bentleys. And he is well aware of how much fuel can be saved by reducing speed by just a few miles per hour.

''By slowing down from 70 to 65mph, the average motorist would use 10 per cent less petrol,'' he says. ''There are considerable savings to be made and if the government won't reduce the price of fuel, then this is another way to put some money back in the motorist's pocket.''

As someone who tootles around at a moderate speed and rarely uses motorways, I suspect my own savings would be minimal. But the revved-up racers who bomb around at the speed of sound could obviously save themselves a packet (not to mention the odd life or two)  if they actually had the sense  to slow down.

But the rocket men need not worry about having to come off their accelerator pedals because Britain is unlikely to adopt an idea that has been thought up by Johnny Foreigner.

I've grumped about it before, but one of the biggest weaknesses of the British psyche is our refusal to acknowledge that other countries sometimes do things better than we do. And in this case the Spanish have beaten us to the punch.

Earlier this month, they reduced the maximum speed on motorways and dual carriageways from 120kph (74.5mph) to 110kph (68.3mph) as a temporary means of saving energy.

The price of rail tickets on suburban and medium-distance services has also been reduced temporarily to offset the economic consequences of the rise in the price of crude oil.

These two limitations will be maintained while tensions in north Africa continue, and deputy prime minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba is working on further measures like reducing street lighting and the energy costs of public buildings.

The Spanish authorities claim that the reduction in the speed limit could save drivers up to 15 per cent in petrol and 11 per cent in diesel.

Rubalcaba insisted that the tensions in north Africa do not pose a problem to supplies - but something had to be done to reduce the effect of rising fuel prices.

“Every ten-dollar rise in the price of a barrel of oil increases Spain’s energy bill by some 6,000 million euros,” he explained.

In 2008, a Daily Telegraph survey in 2008 found that of 27 European countries surveyed, Britain had the highest fuel taxes. Some 57p of the cost of a litre of petrol was tax, compared with 31p in Spain, 45p in Italy, 48p in France and 52p in Germany.

Nature's vengeance: From my article published the day before the Japanese earthquake/tsunami

To me, life is all down to Mother Nature – the ultimate artist, sculptress, designer, you name it. The sole creator and also a fearsome adversary who is clearly on some sort of  mission in these times of political and physical upheaval.

Certainly the surfeit of natural disasters which have devastated the world over the past couple of decades suggests that something is changing dramatically in Mother Nature’s household.