Slaoightearachd
The article is nothing but an English chauvinist rant - is the author trolling for reaction or is he really sufficiently stupid to think like that? Anyway, the title of this comment is quite a good description of the article's content, and of most of the earlier comments too.
It's a long time since I could get any Gaelic radio or TV, but back then Eorpa was the best current affairs programme on British TV in any language and according to friends who can get it it still is. That programme on its own would justify spending what is spent on Gaelic TV (about as much as a tasteless non-entity like Jonathan Ross gets paid for polluting the air); but of course it can be justified in many other ways.
I can't resist replying to this comment (from an AC, which suggests the author may be more sane than his comment suggests as not wanting to be known as the author of that comment is surely a sign of sanity):
"Gael's well tell you want a lovely language it is, and how you can't sware in Gaelic as it has no profanities. What they are not so keen on is the fact it is a fairly modern language, a cleaned up and transcribed version of the original Earse which had no written tradition. Earse meaning Irish."
Well, it would be nice if people would comment in English instead of whatever that is - but it's evidently some language fairly closely related to English as I can work out roughly what it means.
I can swear in Gàidhlig when I want to, so someone has been misleading that commenter.
Every language which has native speakers living today is a modern language - no-one speaks Early modern English, Middle English, AngloSaxon, proto-Germanic, or PIE any more. Perhaps the commenter would agree that English is just a cleaned up and transcribed version of Anglo-Saxon which had no written tradition (well, we have rather less written Old English than written Common Gaelic aka Old Irish)? I suspect the commenter would have more difficulty laying his hands on a copy of Beowulf than I would getting a copy of Compert Con Culainn
Of course no-one's ever heard of "Earse", he must means Erse (a word whose use would buy him a bunch of fives in most bars in Ireland, I think). Understanding that the relationship that Gaoluinn, Gaeilge, Gàidhlig, and Gaelk have with Common Gaqelic is much the same as the relationship that German, Dutch, Friesisch, Flemish, English and Scots have with Old Plat Deutsch is presumably beyond him. And he presumably isn't aware that it was the Gaels (not Augustine; and no greengrocer's apostrophe, please) who brought Christianity to barbarian England and who retained knowledge of classical and bilbical languages and classical literature when the rest of Europe was busy with its "dark ages", and brought that knowledge back to much of the rest of Europe.
I wonder if the anti-Scottish (and anti-Irish) and anti-Gaelic chauvinism shown so often by the English has a very simple reason: they hate us Gaels because we changed the English barbarians, free to rape and pillage to their hearts' content , into Christians who were expected to have a conscience so they couldn't have all that fun any more.