Wales: Corruption and Poverty

I apologise for this post being a bit long, over 3,000 words; but it’s in four separate and distinct parts, plus a Conclusion. So you can enjoy it one section at a time.

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THE ‘BEDSIT BARON’ OF PEMBROKE DOCK

Pembroke Dock is one of those towns that most people drive past or don’t visit. I suppose if Pembroke, a mile or two inland, had grown as some had hoped, then the Dock might have played Piraeus to Pembroke’s Athens, but fate decreed otherwise.

Even so, Pembroke Dock does make the news, but usually for the wrong reasons. For it is a town in decline, having more in common with Valleys communities than with other Pembrokeshire settlements like Narberth or St David’s.

This decline should have been evident to anyone who read my recent piece Publicly-funded Poverty (under the section heading, ‘The Publicly-funded Private Sector’), where I discussed the fate of the old Coronation School.

You won’t be surprised to learn that this building made the news again last week, as the report below from the Pembrokeshire Herald tells us.

click to enlarge

It would be bad enough if this report about properties owned by that ‘Baron of the Bedsits’, Cathal McCosker, was simply reporting dumped garbage attracting rats, but we have to remember that McCosker received hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money to ‘renovate’ these properties. And he’s received hundreds of thousands more in housing benefit.

Money that many people want to see accounted for. All the while the ‘Welsh’ Government does nothing, in order to protect its European funding office (WEFO) from the scrutiny that would expose it as one of those around whom Mr McCosker danced rings, unless of course there was complicity.

Not only does McCosker make a fortune from renting properties that were, basically, given to him (with money on top), he further increases his income from those properties by acting as his own letting agent through his company e-Lettings.

That we know so much about McCosker and the manifest ‘failings’ at both county and national level is due in no small part to two blogging councillors; Jacob Williams and Mike Stoddart, the latter blogging as ‘Old Grumpy‘.

In a recent post, ‘Unknown quantities’, Stoddart dealt with data and statistics telling us that almost everyone housed by Pembrokeshire council was ‘local’. Though I’m not sure if the table below applies only to council lettings or also to those of housing associations.

Given the numbers I would guess the figures represent the ‘shared register’.

courtesy of ‘Old Grumpy’ click to enlarge

Either way, the table gives us an insight into the connection between the likes of Cathal McCosker and social housing providers (because of course the figures for ‘no local connection’ are nonsense). This link is found across Wales with private landlords great and small enjoying close working relationships with council housing departments and housing associations.

This is how it works, and how it benefits everyone . . . except of course, you and me.

If a tenant can stick it out in some grotty flat or bedsit, with drunks, paedophiles, thugs, people threatening to jump out of windows, and gets on nodding terms with the local rodent population, then after a year – and perhaps the wave of a wand – he or she is transmogrified into a ‘local’, and because they are locals in unsuitable accommodation they simultaneously soar to the top of the list for nice new social housing.

This system ensures a steady supply of tenants from outside of Wales for unscrupulous private landlords like Cathal McCosker. Some will find their own way but most are directed to places like Coronation School through many private landlords having a relationship with social services departments, probation companies and other agencies in England.

This system also guarantees a steady supply of tenants for housing associations and councils (though few councils have social housing responsibilities any longer). This is important, because with the ever-present threat of being gobbled up by a predator, or the risk of public funding being cut, housing associations like to be seen to be busy, and if this can be achieved by housing the former tenants of Cathal McCosker and hundreds like him, then so be it.

Just think about that for a minute. Or better still, think what the response might be if you tried to explain this system to someone who doesn’t know Wales.

‘So let me get this straight: you pay private landlords huge sums to bring in problem tenants from England, people that you know in advance will cost you more money by being a burden on your police forces, your health service and other facilities; then you spend yet more money buying or building social housing for these people – are you insane! Do you have money to burn?’

The only people who speak in defence of this system are those who prosper from it and those who view social housing as another tool to be used in colonising and Anglicising Wales.

A five-year residency qualification for social housing must be introduced.

We also need legislation to ensure that some scrubber from Wolverhampton who’s made herself and her kids homeless does not become a priority case for Welsh social housing, as happens now . . . all too often.

Both measures would go a long way to restoring peace to our communities and also save Wales a lot of money.

LLANDOVERY YMCA

Another subject I’ve covered more than once is Llandovery YMCA, or whatever it intends calling itself now that the YMCA has told it to stop using the label.

You can catch up with earlier writings by starting with YMCA ‘Wales’, Another Trojan Horse at the Trough, then comes The Impoverishment of Wales (scroll down to YMCA Wales), followed by YMCA ‘Wales’ and the Green, Green PasturesAncestral Turf, which was in turn followed by News Roundup 24.03.2017 (scroll down to Llandovery YMCA), and finally YMCA England(andwales).

Until quite recently there was an organisation known as YMCA Wales run, it would appear, by a woman from Northern Ireland called Mo Sykes. In 2012 or 2013 (perhaps earlier) YMCA Wales began dealing with an English charity for the homeless known as Green Pastures, run by ‘Pastor’ Pete Cunningham.

This may have been an attempt to boost the flagging finances of YMCA Wales, for Mo Sykes is said to have been ruthless in screwing money out of local YMCA operations that often left them without funds. Whatever the money was used for it didn’t save YMCA Wales from administration in 2014, after which it was taken over by YMCA England, with the major asset, the Newgale Outdoor Education Centre in Pembrokeshire, being sold in 2015 for £507,000.

Around the same time it was being reported that Mo Sykes had left in rather a hurry. Which probably explains why her publicly available Linkedin profile goes back no further than 2014.

courtesy of ‘Third Sector’

During her time at the helm of YMCA Wales (or maybe down in the bilges scuppering the ship) Mo Sykes formed a relationship with another recent arrival with a nose for easy money, a certain Gill Tatman of Llandovery YMCA.

More information on Gill Tatman and those grouped around her can be found in videos someone with a sense of humour saw fit to upload onto YouTube. You’ll find them in the posts I’ve linked to above.

By some route Tatman had come into possession of Llandovery YMCA, which had chugged along for years but was now about to take off as a ‘hub’, open to all manner of groups, from the local marrow growers (third Wednesday of every month) to the Teifi Valley branch of the Taliban (every Friday after prayers and the ritual stoning of the smokers outside the Kings Head on the way from the mosque).

Whatever function it may have purported to serve Llandovery YMCA’s real purpose was to provide a salary and a pension for Jill Tatman, and a place where her cronies could delude themselves they were doing something useful; you know, ‘contributing’.

Click to enlarge. Though a trustee – and I speak from experience – should not be paid.

But things started to go wrong last year, and led the National (Englandandwales) Association of YMCAs to remove Llandovery from its list of registered affiliates. This may or may not have been linked to Tatman’s husband being accused of having an unhealthy interest in children.

So it may have been coincidence that around the same time Carmarthenshire County Council removed the building from its list of approved youth clubs. As one former trustee was told, the council is “not supporting any provision within the old YMCA premises”.

And yet . . . Jill Tatman is still allowed to have children on the premises. It seems there’s a loophole she exploits by running an after school club open only two hours a day.

There are always loopholes, as Mr McCosker can testify, but what really surprised me was that Llandovery YMCA’s after school club is approved and advertised by an organisation called Clybiau Plant Cymru (Kids’ Clubs).

click to enlarge

Here’s more information about Clybiau Plant Cymru, which is registered with Companies House, where its latest accounts tell us it has an income of over a million pounds a year, more than 30 employees, and its biggest funder is the ‘Welsh’ Government through its Children and Families Delivery Grant.

Seeing as Tatman’s little empire has been disowned by the YMCA, blacklisted by Carmarthenshire Council, shunned by all except the most desperate local parents, why is the ‘Welsh’ Government giving it a seal of approval through Clybiau Plant Cymru?

UPDATE 02.12.2016: I’m grateful to a source for directing me to this. The photo used is old, the kids are now adults, and they go nowhere near the ‘YMCA’. For those wondering what it’s all about, this is a scheme for Co-op customers to donate money to a favourite local charity (the wife and I give to our village hall).

click to enlarge

SWANSEA TROTS

For a few years recently Swansea council had a bad dose of the Trots, in the form of Anglo-Austrian duo Bob and Uta Clay. Both now departed to pastures new, and unknown. Though given his friendship with Comrade Corbyn it was assumed by many that they were going to work for the great man.

For those seeking more information on this fascinating duo who washed up in Swansea on one tide and were gone with the next, I suggest you type ‘Bob Clay’ into the search box, whereupon you will be presented with a cornucopia of reports of Swansea Labour Party intrigue and dirty doings.

Now I hear from the city of my dreams that in the post-Clay era the Trotskyite banner has been taken up by Louise Gibbard, a Dunvant councillor. It has been unkindly suggested that not only does Gibbard share the politics of the departed Uta but also her hairdresser. (What a cad you are!)

It is further rumoured that the Trots – i.e. Momentum – are building a power base through community councils, school governors’ boards, union branches and anything else they can use ahead of an assault on reactionary and bourgeois elements within the party.

A number of MPs, AMs and councillors in the Swansea area are said to be targeted, with pride of place on Gibbard’s saddle reserved for the head of Swansea West MP Geraint Davies.

The Clays were, if only briefly, councillors for the Llansamlet ward on the east side of the river, across from Morriston, not that they knew anything about the area, its history, or its people. One of those who replaced them in Llansamlet in the May elections was Mo Sykes. Yes, the same Mo Sykes we encountered in Llandovery! Small world, innit!

But never mind her ignorance of the area, all that matters is keeping Labour in power.

Never forget that.

HIRED BULLIES

Back in March 2015 the ‘Welsh’ Government passed one of its regular ‘Aren’t we wonderful’ pieces of legislation designed to please Guardian readers and assorted lobbies on the left, while doing little or nothing for Wales.

This particular legislation was called the Violence Against Women Bill. It received Royal Assent on 29 April 2015.

In the period leading up to the vote in the Cynulliad there were persistent rumours of pressure being applied by Labour Party loyalists on women’s groups that wanted changes to the legislation. It’s covered fairly well in this WalesOnline report.

An ad hoc grouping central to the allegations was the Wales Violence Against Women Action Group, made up of various charities and third sector bodies. Scroll down to the foot of the page I’ve linked to and you’ll see the organisations belonging to WVAWAG.

click to enlarge

Among them is, top left, Bawso (formerly, Black Association of Women Step Out). In the accounts for the year covering the run-up to the vote in the Assembly Bawso received close on £1.5m from the ‘Welsh’ Government, with further amounts from various Labour-controlled local authorities taking the figure close to two million pounds.

Total donations – including public funding – came to £2,765,954. Rental income was £429,710, with room hire and bank interest taking us up to a total income for the year of £3,211,182. As is always the case in the third sector, salaries and pensions accounted for over two-thirds of that with £2,113,106

Running Bawso we find Mutale Merrill, formerly Rose Mutale Nyoni a native of Zambia. Among other companies with which Nyoni-Merrill is involved are Bawso Training and Interpretive Services Ltd, the Sub-Sahara Advisory Panel (another recipient of ‘Welsh’ Government funding), Welsh Women’s Aid (a major recipient of ‘Welsh’ Government funding), Icreatefilms Ltd and Abesu Ltd.

Her husband is Travers Merrill, and if the name sounds familiar, well, wouldn’t you know it! – he has also graced these pages before. Here he is in Welsh Poverty and ‘Welsh’ Labour’s Third Sector Money Pit, just scroll down until you come to his picture.

Travers’ claim to fame is his involvement with Rhondda Life. Though he’d rather people forgot about it.

By now you’re probably asking yourself, ‘Why is Jac giving us this history lesson?’ Well, let’s start with the fact that as a reward for silencing Labour’s critics over the Violence Against Women Bill Nyoni-Merrill was rewarded by being appointed chair of the Board of Community Health Councils in Wales.

A post in which she continued to stifle anything that might embarrass those who had been so generous to her and her hubby. Perhaps most obviously by stopping the chief executive of the Board giving interviews, on the instructions, it was alleged, of a ‘Welsh’ Government minister.

Mutale Nyoni-Merrill made the news again this week in similar circumstances, to wit, stifling criticism of the ‘Welsh’ Labour Government. Coincidence?

click to enlarge

I think not. In Rose Mutale Nyoni-Merrill OBE (yes, inevitably, she has received an ‘honour’) we have a third sector operator of the first order. She came to Wales and soon realised that there was a quick way to easy money – join the Labour Party, form some third sector organisations Wales doesn’t need, and then just keep applying for public funding.

Having sold her soul to the Labour Party she was their creature, to do the party’s bidding. This meant being elevated to posts for which she might not have been qualified or suited, but that didn’t matter, for she wasn’t given these posts to serve the public interest but to serve the Labour Party. A role we know she has fulfilled on many occasions.

The report I’ve linked to above about the Community Health Councils is dated November 26. The following day Mutale Nyoni-Merrill resigned from Welsh Women’s Aid. Or was she pushed? Is she finally becoming too much of an embarrassment?

click to enlarge

I think that from Labour’s perspective she is now damaged goods. It will be interesting to see which pasture is found for her retirement.

The irony will not be lost on readers that here we have a woman who has – for public consumption – been a staunch campaigner against bullying; and yet, that’s exactly what she is, a bully! Which is why she fits so perfectly into the culture of ‘Welsh’ Labour.

I recall being told about her back in 2012 by an employee, of how public funds given to Bawso were being spent on private purchases; and how husband, Travers, with no connection to Bawso, would avail himself of that outfit’s publicly-funded equipment and facilities for his own business.

There were even more serious allegations, and names, that I had better not mention . . . yet.

CONCLUSION

Wales is corrupt, we know that, and the source of the corruption is almost always the local branch of the UK Labour Party.

And it’s not just us that see it. Knowledge of the system has spread well beyond our borders. Just look at those I’ve dealt with here, all of them – McCosker, Tatman, Sykes, Mutale Nyoni, Travers Merrill – came to Wales because they heard there was easy money to be made.

Another example is provided by Llamau (currently receiving a splurge of free publicity in Llais y Sais). From 1999, once it was realised that a pliable and profligate ‘Welsh’ Labour government was in place, third sector shysters flocked to Wales, and among the first were those who took over the obscure John Rowley Trust in Barry and turned it into Llamau.

Llamau now has an annual income of more than ten million pounds, and of course, most of that goes on salaries.

click to enlarge

Where it has little political support Labour exercises influence through other agencies reliant on it for funding: higher education establishments, third sector bodies, housing associations (Wales & West being the most blatant), while in Plaid Cymru’s Gwynedd heartland Labour works through bodies such as the Citizens Advice Bureau and funding agency Mantell Gwynedd.

And all done, not for the benefit of Wales, or local communities, but to extend and entrench the power of the Labour Party.

The Wales Council for Voluntary Action – which describes itself as the “portal” to the third sector – serves as a government department in all but name, but it belongs to a political party not the state, and is answerable – as we have seen with Mutale Nyoni-Merrill – to none but that party.

This is how a one-party state operates. And like all dictatorships the economy suffers.

Wales is now burdened with a class of parasites that can influence political decision-making. This means that the third sector dreams up an endless stream of ‘schemes’, ‘projects’ and ‘initiatives’, plus new organisations, that have only one purpose – to feather-bed useless fuckers we wouldn’t miss if they were all abducted tomorrow by aliens.

To keep this parasitical class in the style to which it has become accustomed so that it may serve the political interests of the Labour Party means draining the Welsh public purse.

Which results in them getting richer while Wales gets poorer. This presents another irony, for these bastards, with their countless competing and duplicating organisations are supposed to be alleviating poverty, but they are in fact making Wales poorer!

I leave you with this thought: A more prosperous Wales is possible, but not with an overblown third sector beholden to a political party that relies on poverty and deprivation for its political support.

Time to wake up!

♦ end ♦

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daffy2012

Sorry….the email to this name was my first dating back years ago. It changed from Freeserve to Orange I think and I could receive messages but not send for some reason. I’ve just left it. I just use Hotmail now. I could sign up again using a new email.

Big Gee

Sorry to expose my technical ‘anorak’ tendencies here, but by way of an explanation:

Dixons (now of course mated up with PC World) launched Freeserve in 1998, and it was subsumed into France Télécom’s Wanadoo in 2000. Then France Télécom bought Orange UK, and changed its branding to Orange SA. In 2010, Orange UK merged with Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK to become EE (Everything Everywhere – unless you live in hilly Cymru!). Finally, BT bought EE for £12.5bn, completing the deal in January 2016. THAT’S when the problems started, because BT have always had a policy of running what’s called ‘closed relay’ mail servers – the monopoly loving twats – I should know, I was a technical officer with BT’s predecessor (before it got nabbed by Thatcher the milk snatcher who privatised the service) the ‘good ol’ GPO – remember them? We were all Civil Servants in those days all PROPERLY qualified to a recognised standard, with all the Civil Service perks. Lucky me – I even had to sign the Official Secrets Act in those days of sense and stability, but I digress.

Consequently BT will allow you to receive mail from any address, but to send mail you have to use their BT e-mail address that you get when you sign up with them. If you have your own domain name, and wish to use their mail servers with your personal e-mail address, then you have to go through a purposely long winded procedure to register your domain with them. If you don’t use that domain to send enough e-mails, you’ll find you can’t send mails through their servers once again. Slimy, awkward swines. My advice? Find a proper ISP that uses open relay servers – like all the good guys do. Try TalkTalk – or someone similar. My advice? Don’t touch BT with a barge pole.

According to an announcement by EE (now BT), with Orange E-mail closure, it is killing off a long list of email addresses. These include Orange.net, Orangehome.co.uk, Wanadoo.co.uk, Freeserve.co.uk, Fsbusiness.co.uk, Fslife.co.uk, Fsmail.net, Fsworld.co.uk and Fsnet.co.uk. All of them used to use open relay servers, now that they are swallowed up by BT, they of course all fall foul of BT’s closed relay mail server policy. The public and industry increasingly has to suffer because of this. Ironic really, because Thatcher blew the GPO into chunks of private industry cash cows for her Tory shareholding friends to get their hands on lots of easy cash – her excuse for doing that? She said the GPO was A MONOPOLY!!! It’s only a puppet! As some comedian once famously used to say!

Now, wasn’t that a refreshing change from posting comments about politics? See – not just a ‘one trick pony’ are we?

Dafis

here’s a chance to launch a Party with purposes other than political activities , by offering the electorate added value services instead of boring posturing platitudes ! Gee you could be the first Technical Director appointed by any political party, and have the credentials to make a real fist of it unlike some of the financially illiterate tosspots who have occupied the infamous No 11.

Big Gee

Thank you for your kind words Dafis! My fear is that Father Time will have caught up with me by the time I can accept that post! He’s tight on my heels by now. But hey! Stranger things have happened on the way to the ‘fair’.

Judging by the way some new parties on the European continent and further afield have exploded on to the scene with breath taking speed, AND got into the heart of government, who knows? With careful diligence, straight & truthful words and actions from hard working members with REAL conviction – who knows? We have to get stuck in with workmanlike conviction and then we CAN make our dream a reality.

daffy2012

Somebody said to me that Manchester Council were wanting to buy the old secondary school site in Llandysul and wanted to build on it. This surely can’t be correct?

Dafis

It occurs to me that this shoddy treatment of Carl Sargeant has opened up again a division within Labour in Wales.The fracture lines are unclear right now but I would guess that a Corbynite cluster has formed mostly among rank & file, hitherto a touch inactive but gathering momentum ( ych afi, bad pun unintended). Leighton Andrews’ contributions to the episode surprised me as I had regarded him as Blairite pal of C.J but there are obviously long standing differences there which are driving this outburst. The impact of this new found drive will depend on whether it catches on with the higher ranks of the Party in Wales as they have tended to be a very conservative lot ( small c, small c !)

How many Labour A.M ‘s would be likely to rebel against their master ? Few if any stick out as ideological rebels with intense affection for Corbyn’s ideals, so we’re back to maybe a chancer who might be tempted to think his time has come. Any bids ? I can’t see beyond Skates or Drakeford. Anyone see things differently ?

Dafis

That was the point I was making about A.M’s …..”Few if any stick out as ideological rebels….” As for people “ar lawr gwlad” I just don’t know whether there is/will be a move to a more “traditional” Labour sentiment or is that dead and gone to all intents and purposes ? The chancers down the Bay may have a feel for this and if they think it smells good then you might get a Skates ( is there anyone else so vividly oily and Blairite ?) stepping out of the fog once a lot of posturing and belly button gazing has been undertaken. The mystery surrounding the absence of any written statements from alleged victims should provide some initial ammo for any attempt to unseat the resident buffoon.

Big Gee

This story will continue to run for quite some time, despite all efforts to try to make it go away by Charismatic Carwyn’s ‘little helpers’ and of course the media, who are quietly manoeuvring the story to the back burner, in the hope that everyone will finally forget it. They won’t, because ironically the story’s legs are being kept going from WITHIN the party.

I’m of the firm belief that the volcano has yet to erupt properly. It must be like Dante’s Inferno behind those closed Labour doors.

Didn’t hear much about ‘Charismatic’ not turning up at the funeral did we? Whilst Corbyn took a trip from London to be there. It doesn’t bode well for ‘Charismatic’ I’m still of the belief that he’s a ‘dead man walking’. We should take full advantage of it, and not jump in front of him waving our arms and shouting “leave him alone” as certain female leaders in Y Senedd are doing!

Stan

That’s interesting. Cathy Owens, Director of the public affairs consultancy Deryn, hasn’t tweeted since 6 November. That’s the day before Carl Sargeant died. Somewhat unusual considering she’s a 1,000 plus tweets a year woman. On average you’d have expected around 100 more tweets by now.

Her tweet on 6th:

“Journo: come to London to talk Westminster misconduct
Me: no, but can discuss misconduct in Wales
Journo: we are not interested in that”

Hmmm. Since the only “misconduct” (sexual) we’ve heard about in the Assembly relates to the Carl Sargeant affair, I wonder if that was what she was prepared to discuss?

When that volcano referred to by Big Gee does erupt, I think it’s going to bury a lot of big names in the lava flow.

Stan

Matt Greenough hasn’t tweeted a single thing since 3 November when he retweeted this one of Carwyn’s:

“Proud to announce my new Ministerial team, which balances experience & stability with new drive & energy”.

On 31 October he was tweeting a photo of Carwyn and Theresa shaking hands on the steps of No. 10, with the tweet saying:

“Carwyn Jones wants action on sex harassment”. Looks like he got that in spades because only 3 days’ later Carl Sargeant had been hauled in and sacked.

In the press report accompanying that photo Carwyn confirmed he had received no direct allegations concerning AMs, but he did say that there are always rumours in politics. In my opinion a witchhunt mentality was developing by then in his office, in fact the whole political world seemed gripped by a hysteria that everyone with a pair of bollocks was a closet rapist. When you look at the timeline above, on 31 October, no “allegations” but referred to “rumours”. I wonder if such rumours concerned poor Sargeant and in that 3 day period someone was encouraged to turn them into allegations sufficient for Carwyn to think he had grounds to get rid of him?

Dafis

re a couple of your tweets listed today – interesting to see an aspiring Labour lad like Sion Jones fixing his bayonet and lining it up for the FM’s soft bits ( plenty to aim for within a loose definition ). SpAds are the curse of modern politics – often able, but mostly severely twisted and generally having an inflated value of theirselves. A similar axis allegedly exists within Plaid – many of them ex A.M’s who either got punched out ( by Labour) or found that they could earn even more by blowing hot air and bullshit into the ears of a daft and gullible group of A.M’s and still retain a Bay lifestyle mixing with others of an equally vacuous inclination.

As for Carl Sargeant well the whole issue should have been canned BEFORE he went and took his own life. My blood boils when I am led to believe that that cnut Jones did him on the basis of verbal accounts and that as yet no alleged victim has entered a written statement for further examination. They should all be waterboarded and horsewhipped, bunch of Grade A gutter trash.

Stan

Off topic but topical. Carwyn has just proved to me without any shadow of a doubt that he’s not playing with a full deck. Three inquiries set up, Sargeant’s inquest still to come, old RT has put more darts into him about this than Phil Taylor has put into a treble twenty, Daran Hill has called him out as a liar on Twitter, and Leighton Andrews as good as – tweeting for Carwyn to repeat remarks he made in the Senedd today outside of parliamentary privilege. Then what does the hapless buffoon go and do? Only give a prime time TV interview with Nick Servini and openly discuss the Sargeant affair. What’s he got inside that big skull of his because it’s clearly not brain cells? Remember now – this is the guy chosen by Welsh Labour as the creme de la creme. Just think for a moment how bad the others must be then.

Cantre’r Gwaelod

I notice a Plaid councillor using group1911 in his twitter handle. Diddorol.

Cant

Mark Hooper, Barry

Cant

All to be revealed soon, I imagine. The anticipation is giving me a hernia.

CambroUiDunlainge

When I first searched on twitter he popped up first – so did a few others who have now removed the tag.

Dafis

ref one of your tweets some 2 days ago a Sub Sahara Advisory Panel was set up as there was some concern that beaches in South and West Wales were being eroded and the sand might be turning up in the Sahara. Some WAG thought that the Sahara was therefore a bit like a beach and proposed that it would be very nice to study the situation for a few years to check out whether there was a real correlation or even a causal link.

The explanation of the Univ Of Worcester involvement with the Old People Dementia research is quite straight forward. Try Old Girls ( or Boys) networks – these talking heads pop up in all sorts of well funded ponds like turds in a cesspit.

DP

Dr Sally

A harsh comment I make perhaps but nevertheless rings true.

Adolf Eichmann is not recorded as having directly killed anyone but he was the administrator who signed the warrants/transport orders where others killed the “untermensch” or undesirables.

A judge recently signed an adoption order two weeks before girl/baby was killed in Cardiff. All done in secret, until the murder trial. It’s time these people were looked at through the same end of the telescope and not as goodie goodies. They cover up for themselves just as well as the Nazis who were hunted down.

The child or children would have been better off with the grandmother but no-one earns money that way.

Dafis

That’s been known for a long time. Plain common sense that the extended family is often,if not always, the safest place for a young child if the birth parents are not competent or no longer around. Instead we have an elaborate mess of “interventions” which produce these disasters with alarming frequency. Budgets and box ticking reign supreme.

DP

The fact that the adopting couple was gay playing a part has been blocked off by a High Court Judge – watch out for the serious case review if it ever gets published to entirely blame the murderer and exculpate the social services, cafcass and the judiciary and any politicos – shame on them all –

just as dr sally says –

“Yes, after Aaron Gilbert was killed not only did Swansea parrot the usual crap but they also parroted the crap that has been an add-on since the Baby P and Sharon Shoesmith case in Haringey – ‘the people who killed Aaron are now in prison. They are wicked evil people and it was not the social workers who killed him. We will never be able to stop wicked evil people murdering their own children’”

That is the new mantra.

Would we be just as well off if there was no child protection services – at least it would save a shedload of money and free up resources police, courts etc. The allegedly drug infested mother could just have easily been allowed to kill the child Elsie Hicks as the gay adopted parent!. The only difference was social services and the family court globus entity decided to interfere and let a gay carer kill her, although it seems the High Court Judge won’t let anyone say that due to his fact finding.

drsallybaker

DP – I have spent many years watching what the child protection service actually does and it is so bad that I have concluded that indeed we may as well dispense with it and save on the dosh. People really do imagine that they only get it wrong now and again – they don’t. The situation is an absolute nightmare and has been for years. It is a dreadful situation because there are a small number of people who aren’t able to look after their own kids, but the child protection system in just about every case that I know of has made things much, much worse. The outcomes for kids taken into care are absolutely dire, yet those with vested interests such as Martin Narey are now trying to tell us that is a result of the damage done to kids before they are taken into care. It is not. Kids in care are at best completely neglected, at worst abused. The only good outcomes are with children adopted by caring parents at a young age – which has now led to the dear old social services removing a huge number of kids from parents who are just having difficulties, rather than who are irretrievable or seriously abusive. No-one has the guts to admit how bad things are. Cafcass broke down completely virtually as soon as it was created – yet thousands of parents are legally obliged to use that ‘service’.

I can only compare it to the dilemma re the mental health system. It damages nearly everyone who passes through it and having had my life wrecked by it when I was younger, I advise everyone to keep well away if they possibly can – there is no positive outcome once you are involved with them. It presents a terrible dilemma for people who do become seriously ill (as I did when I was young) and really could do with help – but after 30 years of watching what they actually do to people, I conclude that no-one needs what we have at the moment. It doesn’t just need tinkering with – the provision of ‘talking treatments’ rather than drugs for example – it needs to be scrapped and something different put in its place.

I think that because both the child protection system and the mental health system are there to cater for the most vulnerable members of society who really cannot fight for themselves, there is a massive reluctance on the part of absolutely anyone to admit that once in the ‘care’ of these ‘services’ for an extended period of time, the most likely outcome is alcohol/drug problems or destitution/prostitution or prison – or premature death. I’m not over-egging the pudding – just look at the statistics. These ‘services’ take people with problems and destroy them. We are looking into an abyss here and everyone is far too frightened to admit the harsh reality.

The serious case reviews NEVER admit just how badly things went wrong. Serious case reviews are only ever carried out in the face of an unlawful killing – they’re certainly never done on the numerous people who just have their lives fucked up in such a way that the pieces cannot be picked up again, or on people who kill themselves or die through sheer negligence or lack of care – and they are always given to a ‘safe pair of hands’ to do ie. someone senior in their field who has a track record of concealing the worst shit but writing a report to make it look as though a thorough critical review has been undertaken. And I bet that they are redrafted a few times after a lawyer has seen them as well.

The safe pair of hands in the NHS for the last few years has been Sir Robert Francis QC. He has ‘done’ the inquiries into all the big medical disasters, including mid-Staffs. Francis is known to have not admitted the extent of the horror of mid-Staffs. He also ‘did’ the review into the care of Michael Stone – who’s lawyers are back in Court at the moment with new evidence which suggests that Stone is not a double murderer after all. Where that will leave Francis if the appeal succeeds I don’t know – because Francis’s report was predicated on Stone’s guilt.

Robert Francis touched my own life years ago – he was the barrister who tried to have me imprisoned on the basis of the perjury of two doctors who were concealing the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal. At the time I presumed that Francis must have believed what he was being told. Years later my lawyer obtained copies of letters that the doctors’ own legal team had written to them telling them that they had no evidence against me and imploring them to stop their litigation. The doctors ignored this advice so the legal team went ahead as requested and hired Francis as Counsel. He knew that his clients were perjuring themselves.

I also encountered Professor Robert Bluglass, the biggest name in forensic psychiatry in the UK in the 80s and 90s, who carried out many of the inquiries into murders by and deaths of psychiatric patients. Bluglass was appointed to investigate my complaint about the lying doctors who broke the law themselves in an attempt to have me imprisoned. Bluglass lied to me, he lied about me and he ignored crucial evidence and witness testimony in support of my complaint. He also failed to investigate completely all parts of my complaint against one particular doctor. Three years after ‘investigating’ my complaint, Bluglass was called upon to investigate the murder of a patient in Ashworth Hospital and was given a free hand in who to select as his team. One member of the team was a senior nurse who worked in the clinic that he managed in Birmingham, the other member was a senior nurse who worked ‘under’ one of the doctors that I had complained about who he had previously been appointed to ‘investigate’! So to investigate a murder, Bluglass chose a colleague of a man whom he knew had perjured himself and broken the law in order to conceal organised child abuse. Not surprisingly Bluglass and his inquiry didn’t manage to improve things at Ashworth and the brutality and deaths continued. But then the doctors whom Bluglass ‘investigated’ in north Wales were also the doctors who were sending patients to Ashworth Hospital. Years later I also discovered that Bluglass was chummy and had co-authored with a friend of one of the doctors whom he was supposed to be investigating in north Wales. As for the doctor whom he ignored all complaints about – that doctor’s former mentor was a close colleague of Bluglass’s at the University of Birmingham. When Bluglass ‘investigated’ my complaint ‘independently’ everybody involved in the equation were mates with each other.

I’ve kept Bluglass’s Independent Review. In the light of revelations re the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal and the mental health services since Bluglass wrote it, its quite an interesting historical document.

Years after my encounter with Bluglass, I wrote about the dangerous state of the mental health services in a broadsheet and I received a letter from a couple who described to me how their schizophrenic son was accused of a trivial offence and detained in custody until a hospital bed could be found for him. In prison, he was put in a cell with a man who had told prison warders that if he had to share a cell with anyone he’d kill them. He was ordered to share a cell nonetheless and he murdered the young schizophrenic man and ate his ear. The couple who wrote to me described how they had fought to have an investigation into the death of their son and eventually an inquiry was held. Lies were told about their son and crucial witness statements omitted. The prison was cleared of all blame. The person who carried out the inquiry was one Robert Bluglass.

A few years ago I wrote to Bluglass to tell him that I now had documents demonstrating how many lies had been told in my own case, both to him and by him, and that I intended to publish. Sometime after this Bluglass voluntarily removed his name from the medical register and resigned from his academic positions. By GMC rules, if a doctor removes their name from the register, they cannot be investigated by the GMC, no matter how serious the allegations against them. Furthermore, ‘their reputation remains unblemished’.

Bluglass has kept his professorial title and owns Compton Verney, one of Europe’s finest art galleries. His hobby is singing and he is Vice-President of the St James’s Singers, whose Patron is Dame Judi Dench.

Pity about those murders though wasn’t it Bluglass.

drsallybaker

Interesting that you refer to the orchestrators of the Holocaust DP. Back in the 90s when those who were facilitating the paedophile gang in North Wales were constantly trying to frame me for offences that I had very obviously not committed – the cases collapsed repeatedly but there was never any investigations into why so many NHS and social services staff had lied on oath – one of the prosecutors in Bangor Magistrates Court was a young woman with a very aggressive manner who used to shout at me whilst I was giving evidence ‘you’ve just made up this story to excuse yourself’. EVERYBODY knew what was happening to me and one day I asked her how she lived with herself trying to fit up people whom she knew were innocent and she actually yelled back ‘don’t you start on me, I’m just doing my job’. I heard an abusive psychiatric nurse say exactly the same thing to a patient in the Hergest Unit a couple of years later – and he retorted by yelling ‘that wasn’t an excuse at Nuremberg and its not an excuse now’. This was dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic.

I doubt that these dangerous dickwits have ever heard of what went on at Nuremberg – and they won’t have heard about Hannah Arendt’s work on the banality of evil. It should be required reading for every one of them. The Betsi Health Board featured in the Daily Post Online the other day when it was revealed that they were running an unpaid ‘work experience scheme’ for ‘disadvantaged people’ – they could work as cleaners at the Betsi for I think it was four months for no pay! Well-paid jobs are short on the ground in north Wales but cleaning jobs are always going begging even for people who have difficulty getting other jobs. ‘Disadvantaged people’ sounds to me like a euphemism for people with mental health problems/learning disabilities/drug or alcohol problems. In other words the patients that the Betsi is failing so badly. What next, a notice at the entrance of the Hergest Unit saying ‘Work Will Set You Free’? Or the reclassification of the patients with long term difficulties as ‘useless eaters’?

drsallybaker

Thanks for the info about Merril – or whatever her official name is. Christ, the Care Council for Wales and the Children’s Commissioner, don’t remind me of them. I’ve blogged a bit about them on my own site but haven’t had time to put up everything that I know about them and their connections, there is just so much! The Children’s Commissioner’s Office was rotten to the core at the point of establishment, I heard a few inside stories about that. Yes, after Aaron Gilbert was killed not only did Swansea parrot the usual crap but they also parroted the crap that has been an add-on since the Baby P and Sharon Shoesmith case in Haringey – ‘the people who killed Aaron are now in prison. They are wicked evil people and it was not the social workers who killed him. We will never be able to stop wicked evil people murdering their own children’. This does of course lead to the conclusion of ‘then why are we wasting millions on your salaries’ but also provides yet another excuse for the fuckwittery of the social services which is even worse than is ever admitted in the media.

I had not realised until recently how much of this shite led straight back to the door of Jane Hutt. Her early career was in Welsh Women’s Aid – I am trying to find out who she worked with and who helped her in her catastrophic ventures. Women’s Aid was notoriously troubled. The originator was Erin Pizzey in London who undoubtedly identified a problem but was sadly mad and unscrupulous herself. When people discovered some of what she was doing the movement became divided, a huge pitched battle began which attracted yet more mad people into the field. As with the nutters who run the psychiatry establishment the needs of the clients just disappear in such situations. I found out recently that Pizzey’s ‘research’ into people ‘who are prone to violence’ – which is what made so many people see red as victims of serious crime were told that they sought out their assailants by radar – was conducted with Dr John Gayford, a psychiatrist from Warlingham Hospital. Warlingham Hospital was closed down when it was revealed that patients were being raped and beaten by the staff. It was closed down before an investigation into something much worse had a chance to happen – the suspicious death of a mother at the hands of the hospital and the immediate sectioning of her two teenage children, by the same hospital. The two teenagers remained in the hospital for more than a year, there was an attempt to frame the boy as a sex offender and bang him up in Broadmoor and his younger sisters life was completely wrecked. Whilst they were sectioned they were relieved of their inheritance by a crooked lawyer who was working with the corrupt psychiatrists at the hospital. These young people who had spent all their lives in London were then shipped off to Bethesda in Gwynedd of all places – on the grounds that the mountain air would make them better! – where there was yet another attempt to frame them as serious offenders. They then spent the next twenty years being seriously neglected by the mental health services in Gwynedd. The girl married another psych patient – who died in the ‘care’ of the Hergest Unit.

I spent twenty five years watching all of this. There has been no investigation at all into any of the many serious crimes involved.

So Erin Pizzey had some very unpleasant associates. Was Jane Hutt one of them? Or was she one of the equally mad people who went to war with Pizzey?

Dafis

Stan Amir Khan has probably been hit around the head too often by little Mexicans/South Americans/Asians for whom boxing really is a life or death profession not just a part of a celebrity lifestyle. Earlier on in his life he was probably aware of Maggie Thatcher, and is probably aware now of Mrs May but suffers bouts of inability to link basic facts coherently. Scans of his skull are likely to show damage on a scale which will at some time render him an even bigger problem than he has currently. He should stick to TV based nonsense and stay away from Welters ( or whatever weight he shows up at ) that really mean business.

Red Flag

Amir Khan is fairly typical of working class people – especially from up in the north west of England. Most couldn’t give a toss about politics and pay little to no attention to it, with most that vote not even knowing why they vote the way they do. They rarely change voting habits and pay little attention to what the parties say – eve the one they vote for. If they do pay attention then they tend to vote on no more than 2 or 3 issues that affect them personally or their families.

Big Gee

You could easily substitute ‘South Wales Valleys’ for ‘North West of England’ there Red Flag. And guess what? Both are traditional Labour heartlands.

Stan

Yes, a lot I agree with above. However the apathy we are seeing isn’t just to do with us falling out of love with our political system and politicians. You only have to look at the zombie-like lifestyles of many people these days, brought up on a diet of MacDonalds, 24/7 Jeremy Kyle and Facebook. They are more likely to know the size of Kim Kardashian’s arse than the name of their MP. Before you look it up, I’ve done it for you and it’s an impressive 43 inches. Only this week on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, the boxer Amir Khan asked whether the UK had ever had a woman Prime Minister. Now this is rightly a huge concern for those of us that care about our young people and the future of the communities in which we live, but I reckon for those in power it’s ideal stuff. The last thing you want is for too many people to start thinking for themselves. They might ask awkward questions. They might even decide to vote – in the wrong way!

Joey Splott

It is another serious issue. The general levels of ignorance are indeed staggering but echoing the thoughts of Dr Sally to you point Stan the powers that be would probably like it that way. Watch more crap, but more crap you don’t need, re-tweet, thumbs up, don’t question politicians as they are clearly superior to you! – ad nausem, ad infintum. . .
Blimey it is depressing! Hopefully this new party might have an impact. On a related note does anyone know about this 1922 Group? Seems very hush-hush, can’t really find anything online since the Nation.Cymru article,

Joey Splott

It is another serious issue. The general levels of ignorance are indeed staggering but echoing the thoughts of Dr Sally to youe point Stan the powers that be would probably like it that way. Watch more crap, buy more crap you don’t need, re-tweet, thumbs up, don’t question politicians as they are clearly superior to you! – ad nausem, ad infintum. . .
Blimey it is depressing! Hopefully this new party might have an impact. On a related note does anyone know about this 1911 Group? Seems very hush-hush, can’t really find anything online since the Nation.Cymru article.
Spelling went out the window for my previous comment!

Big Gee

It is a manufactured state of affairs. Edward Bernays (called the father of propaganda) realised that people are not rational beings, few are rational, the vast majority are psychologically malleable. They have a herding instinct and are therefore easily manipulated, as they copy each other’s views and behaviour. It’s a ‘fashion’ thing, a trait reserved for humans and no other animal. People smirk when the word ‘brainwashing’ is used, but it’s exactly what we are seeing the product of.

All you have to do is herd them in a direction that suits your needs, and feeds their underlying desires (Freud – who incidentally was Bernay’s uncle – said that everyone’s actions are governed by subconscious desires, in other words what appears pleasurable to them) – this is surprisingly easy to do in this television, radio and social media age. It could be done decades ago by the massaging of information fed to a receptive population through newspapers and public speeches. Now it’s ridiculously easy through mass consumption of media information that is twisted, misleading and downright lies.

These views are spewed out at the direction of the establishment who wish to totally control the masses. Democracy as it’s presented to us is an illusion. The only way to fight it is with truth, principles and a desire to put things right. You also have to play the propagandists (who are brainwashing the masses), at their own game – by presenting your rational and truthful views in a manner that stimulates people’s inner psychological desire for pleasure. Thankfully, up until now, but for how much longer is unknown, we do have the alternative news sources, and the freedom to put our message out to the masses via the Internet.

These two videos will help you understand what I’m saying here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44I3pMouCnM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ddVmKS3AOo

Jonathan Edwards Sir Benfro

Phew, Jac!
Start a new party to save Wales AND you fire this 16″gun broadside.
Cardiff Bay ought to found the Jac Bureau of Investigation and ask you to head it.
But Turkeys don’t vote for Xmas I suppose.#
But congratulations – you are on fighting form!
Jonathhan

drsallybaker

Interesting that you mention a confidence problem Big Gee. At present, in Wales at least, people who have a massive confidence problem are being positively encouraged to go into politics under the umbrella of ‘encouraging women’. About two years ago now, via a charity that I was involved with, I was invited along to a do organised by the Assembly for women interested in politics. Big Gee, it was an absolute joke. All us women were herded into a lecture theatre and along came Mummy to give us all a talk about empowering us and how when she first became a Councillor she didn’t have much confidence but she got the streetlights fixed and ‘helped the mums’ at the school gates ‘with their problems’ and gosh she never ever thought that she could ever become a politician with all those Men and speak up in front of them, but she did! Who was Mummy? None other than Lesley Griffiths, who as a Councillor in Wrexham ignored the horrors of the North Wales Paedophile Ring and then as Health Minister ignored the ongoing disaster that was the Betsi Health Board – Griffiths also ignored e mails from me as I BEGGED her to help, as I was threatened and harassed after raising concerns about the serious abuse of patients and criminal activity in the NHS in north Wales. (Griffiths ignored all my e mails.) I don’t know whether Griffiths knew that I was in the audience but it took all my self-restraint not to confront her in public about what she had actually been party to.

A number of other not-at-all confident women lapped up Griffith’s patronising drivel and Griffiths in turn obviously really enjoyed her morning as a star. I’m not in favour of a return to the politics that was alleged to have pervaded the Labour Party in south Wales in the 50s and 60s, with very brutal macho men braining anyone who dared to disagree with them, but we cannot afford to have politicians – let alone Ministers – who are afraid to say boo to a goose. Griffiths did not challenge some dreadful people doing dreadful things and the result has been enormous human suffering, deaths and a bankrupt health board.

Call me a conspiracy theorist but I suspect that it is deliberate. What could be more helpful to the elites who really do run society than parliaments full of secretaries, social workers and primary teachers who STILL think of themselves as little women who mustn’t argue with a Big Man? Who actually becomes PM and screws the country? David Cameron. Eton, Oxford, related to aristocracy, very rich indeed, mates in the City who are really calling the shots. And all we’ve got to protect ourselves from the likes of Cameron, Osborne, Boris and the rest of the ruthless bastards – let alone Trump – is Lesley who helps the mums. Unless of course they are mums whose children were abused by a paedophile gang or mums who have suffered harm at the hands of the Betsi Board.

They don’t want competent people in there Big Gee. The biggest laugh is that I am someone who ticks every one of their boxes – I’m a woman, I went to a state school, I even had a serious illness when I was young which led to a degree of disability for some time. And I’ve got a fucking PhD in sociology/social policy and have written a number of books in this field. And the Lesleys and the Drakefords and the Hutts et al wouldn’t even reply to my e mails – because I blew the whistle on the most appalling misconduct that they colluded with. I really have come to the conclusion that what suits the Big Boys in Westminster is a Senedd full of these utter fools and drips who earn the sort of salaries that they simply could not elsewhere, who patronisingly tell the citizens of Wales that they’re ‘building a Wales for everyone’ – whilst the country’s infrastructure collapses. Meanwhile they’d have the rest of us sitting in bloody self-esteem raising group.

There’s no danger of Lesley jailing the bankers, absolutely none.

Joey Splott

“Lesleys and the Drakefords” – what I find interesting is that Wales has such a small ‘talent’ pool. Always the same names going around in a rotation it seems. No new blood or ideas. A totally closed shop.

drsallybaker

In terms of people – where the Labour Party are concerned – many careers can be traced to personal friendships with the Kinnocks and Rhodri’s clan.

In terms of ideas, they don’t really have any. They have tried to make health and social policy their forte but there is very little knowledge among them, very little reading, no intellectual adventurousness at all. Their idea of radicalism is to spout what was considered ‘radical’ in the mid-1980s, much of what has now been critiqued and problematized on many levels. Mark Drakeford in his academic work showed a healthy distrust of Blairite policy but Mark has a terrible problem – he is a spineless jelly who once worked as a social worker in a location in which a paedophile ring operated. He didn’t confront them and has been compromised ever since. I can understand Mark not wanting to tangle with folk like that, organised child abuse is linked to heavy criminals. But if Mark was that frightened of them, he should have butted out, not blocked a few metaphorical beds until he became Health Minister – where once again he failed to confront abuse of vulnerable people in the NHS and social services.

Lesley, Drakeford, Hutt and the gang know that they are the Emperors New Clothes, so they’re buggered if they’re going to let anything fresh in either in terms of people or ideas. It’ll be the fuckwits and drips for many years yet – after all, their children will want jobs as well…

Joey Splott

Big Gee, I think it is has to be apathy.
Pondering over it this morning and there is probably 10pc who are politically engaged in that they want more powers for Wales, independence etc. Yes Cymru et al. There is also another 10pc who are politically engaged at the other end of the spectrum, your Jaques Protic types, anti-devolution etc but that 80pc in the middle who just don’t care/don’t want to care is the real issue I guess?

Big Gee

Both you and Joey Splott are correct Drsallybaker. The key is something TOTALLY different and new. It’s evident that that 80% Joey mentioned can be tapped into, if you convince them that not only are you new , but totally different.

Leopards never change their spots, so the drivel about changing the attitudes and culture of the ‘old brigade’ from within is a nonsense – and people know it. Look around and notice the parties who have made huge strides very quickly in many parts of the world. They are all new, very different, they do things differently. People quickly realise that they are not establishment ear ticklers. They get called ‘populist’ as if it’s some kind of germ (that’s the media for you – who want to defend the old status quo). However ‘populist’ comes from the word popular, now isn’t popular with the people something that all political parties should strive to be?

It’s a difficult task in a little country like ours which is instinctively conservative (with a small ‘c’) and insecure . They fear change, mainly due to 800 years of being oppressed and treated as second class UK citizens. They have a lack of confidence problem – “Wooo eew be careful there now – things could get worse for us”. So they go out and vote Labour, because, as Stan mentions above, their father and grandfathers did that. So because of insecurity about change they do the same, instead of looking at the result of 100 years of that party messing things up in our country and getting us into this hole.

Sad to say many have a problem dragging themselves away from old conventions. We discovered that yesterday when a vote was taken in the first round poll to select a name for our new party. One of the names that drew the most votes still felt the need to use an old fashioned word like ‘party’ and many can’t get their heads around a new concept, where the labels right, centre and left are obsolete and irrelevant.

Now could you imagine a political party in Cymru adopting a name like ‘Pirate’ as they have in Iceland, and then getting into power and jailing bankers? There’s a lesson there somewhere.

Joey Splott

Spot on. I have just started reading ‘Why Wales Never Was’ by Simon Brooks and that is one of the first key points he mentions about society in Wales, instinctively conservative with a small ‘c’ and unable or unwilling to try anything new.
Shame really.
Apologies for going slightly off topic BTW.

Big Gee

Dr. Seimon Brooks, along with others, including myself were the founding members of CYMUNED. It’s little wonder we share similar views. Although we haven’t been in touch for a few years, I still admire his devotion and the energy he brings to any cause. A good friend from the good ol’ days! well actually the ‘ol days’ could have been better. We went off like a rocket, drew fantastic support and then faded away. Shame.

Big Gee

Following on from what I said above, here’s a list in alphabetical order of the names that were put forward for the first round of voting to find a name for our new party:

Cymru Fydd
Cymru Newydd – New Wales
Cymru Sofren
Cymru Sovereign
Cymru Unedig – One Wales
Cymru am Byth
Cymry
Deffro y Ddraig
Dros Ein Gwlad
Ein Cymru Ni
Ein Ffordd Ni
Ein Gwlad Ni
Ffordd
GWLAD – our future
Gwalia
Gwlad
New Wales
One Nation
Plaid Newydd
Sovereign Wales
The Reform Party
Wales First
Wales Independence Party
Wales Ourselves
Wales Unity Party
Welsh Peoples Party
Welsh Reform
Ymlaen

I think you get my drift. Many are excellent and show a lot of modern, deep lateral thinking. Unfortunately others are obviously a little bit stuck in the rut, and haven’t quite got the hang of what we’re trying to achieve here. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just a clear sign of being stuck in the past, and influenced by old, entrenched ideas . I’m sure that we’ll all be singing from the same hymn sheet soon!

If you would like to register your interest in our new party then PLEASE CLICK HERE

Joey Splott

Already have done, DM’d Jac via Twitter last week!

Big Gee

That’s good to hear Joey. However from now on things are being done slightly more formally.

Individuals are being asked to officially register as interested parties. A mailing list is managed, and each form we receive from genuine individuals we keep on record. Each individual who officially registers their interest will also be given access to our temporary ‘Interested Persons’ web-pages via a username & password system.

That way we keep a hub of information that is readily available to those who have declared their interest in our new party. That information is only available to those who have bothered to officially register their interest and support. “Oh I told Gwilym I was interested” or “I e-mailed Jac to pledge my support” is no longer adequate. This must be done in an organised fashion I’m afraid, or the exercise will fray at the edges.

Up until now everything has been loose and easy. From now on we have to incorporate a bit of professionalism, and of course a degree of security at this delicate stage.

[If you would like to register your interest in our new party then PLEASE CLICK HERE]

Red Flag

I’d drop Wales First for fairy obvious reasons. Far to easy for the press to make false connections with Britain First and publicly destroy it.

Sovereign Wales. Sovereign implies the Queen.

Wales Ourselves – To close to Sinn Feins Ourselves Alone. Many many people haven’t got the time of day for Sinn Fein/IRA and wouldn’t piss on them if they were in a gutter burning – me included.

Welsh Peoples Party – Sounds like some sort of communist thing.

And any where the Welsh name doesn’t translate to English properly and sensibly, including a sensible abbreviation.. Remember, most welsh people can’t speak welsh – and to succeed you need most welsh people.

Something simple – such as just ‘Dragon’ ? Or One Nation Wales?

CambroUiDunlainge

Anything with Party in it to mitigate any confusion with Plaid.

David Robins

‘New Wales’ reminds me of a stirring passage in Derrick Hearne’s ‘The Joy of Freedom’:

“…where the new Wales is built day by day by its young people. They will be wild young men and women, full of high spirits, and the idea of spending their leisure in front of a gadget will be incomprehensible to them. Wales, in fact, will be living in its heroic age. It will be a joy to be alive. The whole people will want nothing, but to obliterate the past. The past for us means humiliation, degradation, deformation and poverty. It means bitterness, where one man fell on his brother, where men were forced to betrayal and treachery to survive. We have to go back a thousand years before there is anything that is worth preserving. What has survived by some miracle is a certain standard of values, certain aspirations held in common, and a language to give form to them. This is all that is valuable in the past. Wales will thus certainly be living in its heroic age, a people to all intents and purposes without a past, struggling today to create a future.”

All very revivalist, but Wales could do with being revived.

Some of the other names do bother me. Gwalia is just the Welsh for the Latin for the English for Cymru. Why not eliminate all the middlemen? It also features in the name of an online discussion group, Bella Gwalia, that’s trying to be a Welsh version of the well-established Bella Caledonia. However, all the time I lived in Wales, the ONLY time I heard the name used was as that of a massive housing association known for its excellent connections to the Swansea Labour Party. Now part of Pobl Group, it uses the domain name http://www.gwalia.wales

Wales First has to be out for the reasons given by Red Flag. Some of the names that emphasise unity are also a bit ‘Ein Reich, Ein Volk’ as well. No dissent please, we’re Welsh? ‘One Nation’ is rather close to ‘One Wales’, the government Wales reportedly had under Rhodri and Ieuan Wyn. And ‘One Wales’ is a direct copy. I would hope that an independent Wales might take seriously the Plaid policy of ‘a community of communities’ and reject in principle the idea of there being ‘one’ anything. Not even the Weriniaeth itself should be indivisible in the Jacobin sense of throttling all local initiative. Leave that to Labour.

David Robins

A further thought on ‘One Nation’: it is a bit ‘One Nation Conservative’ and we know where that leads. To ONE nation. The BRITISH nation. Fight divisive separatism and all that.

Lateral thinking is needed mainly because there are so many minefields for the unwary.

Joey Splott

Here is the inherent problem though – why has nothing been done to remedy this?
Years and years we have been reading and hearing about Welsh Labour/Plaid/Third Sector/Civil Service shennanigans and corruption yet why has nothing actually been done to sort it out?
I must admit, I fear the worst for our country.

Big Gee

Two reasons. Apathy and impotency of other political parties.

Apathy caused in the main by the old fashioned impotent politics of all parties, who still do things in the way they were done in the 19th century, which has turned people away from being involved. It’s much easier for the Joe Public to moan than get off their backsides to do anything about it.

It’s not rocket science to see the support that the new breed of political parties are attracting in many parts of the world. As usual, we’re a good decade behind in these things.

drsallybaker

Big Gee – you are right that some people are apathetic, but there must be many others who would dearly love to contribute but who look at the specimens that they will be ‘working with’ if they do take part and just think Christ no thanks. I was someone who was asked some years ago – as were a number of others I know – if we’d be interested in being local councillors. We all just said no – we knew what was going on in the Council, we knew that we would be massively outnumbered by the crooks and the fuckwits and that we would be able to make no headway at all. Are you not someone yourself who was thrown to the wolves because you identified a problem that no-one wanted mentioned?

I am of the generation where if one went into national politics with either of the big two parties, in order to even survive one had to be a nasty Thatcherite Tory or a hypocritical New Labour sell out. I think it was actually my generation who filled up Parliament with the most appalling people and ensured that no-one going into politics for what used to be considered the right reasons would touch it with a barge pole.

Talking to young people now is illuminating. Those involved in campaigning and activism who in days gone by would have been thinking of politics just say no way, its them that we are campaigning against. The most able young politician in Westminster at the moment has to be Mhairi Black, clever, hard working, fighting for her constituency. She’s already talking about not standing again because she has been so appalled at what she has seen in the Commons.

National politics has become so corrupted that I fear it is not salvageable. This blog – and others like it – attract comments from numerous well-educated, politically aware people who are seething with what is going on in our Councils and various Parliaments/Assemblies. We have all given up participating – because the idiots have achieved total dominance. If there are just a few idiots, one can deal with them. But when there are many, many more self-serving not very bright pillocks screwing dissenters over, one can’t. Its why ‘failing’ hospitals/schools/universities/social services depts. can’t be turned around with ‘superheads’ or ‘dynamic leaders’ and ‘new blood’. The useless old fuckers remain in place in their droves and there’s no way that they’ll allow change to happen because they know that their own cushy numbers will come to an end.

Joey Splott

Absolutely agree. I feel as if the whole political establishment here and in Westminster is rotten to the core and does not give a monkey’s about us. On a personal note I was at university some years ago with a current standing AM and they were not the most intelligent person I have met to say the least. Makes one wonder how these people actually are able to stand for election and get voted in? I don’t know about Mhairi Black, I am and always have been very cynical of young people going straight into politics.

drsallybaker

I was mulling over the student politicians who we knew when we were young with a friend the other day who summed it up perfectly – ‘they were nasty and they were thick’. And yes some of them DID end up as grown-up politicians too. Not good. I was interested to read the other day that David Miliband – who was considered an absolute genius by even his opponents – had four not particularly good A levels. And that from a man whose dad was one of the country’s leading intellectuals who grew up in a home which made academic achievement easy. Of course I don’t judge everyone on their A level results – but once more it suggests that what really launched Miliband’s career wasn’t his allegedly supersized brain, it was his connections. He SEEMED clever to those around him in Parliament because they were frankly as thick as pig shit. David and Ed had grown up with a dad who was a thinker and had exposed them to the sort of thinking and material that most politicians don’t know exists. Its why some of the Lords are revered – they’ve actually had careers as doctors or in other fields where a degree of knowledge and thinking is required, so others in Parliament wax lyrical about their huge expertise and high ability.

The problem is that politics is made up largely of not very bright spivs and chancers from comfortable backgrounds. Another glaring omission is the dearth of people with a scientific education. This is how Parliament can collectively fall for the research fraud that was Mindfulness and endorse it as a super new therapy which will solve society’s problems. Most of them will not have been capable of reading those original ‘research papers’ that Mark Williams et al wrote and identifying the huge holes in the whole project. I know of a number of other ‘exciting new medical breakthroughs’ which are duping politicians – none of them have the education necessary to critically interrogate what is being placed in front of them, which is how they end up endorsing nonsense to be available on the NHS, or hugely expensive ‘new cancer drugs’ only to ask fifteen years down the line why we ‘haven’t won the battle against cancer yet’. I’ve lost count of the number of times that the ‘cure for schizophrenia’ has been found and that this news has found it’s way into a politicians speech. The ultimate example had to be Camila Batmanjelidh of Kids Company who waxed lyrical about ‘thermo-regulation of the emotions’, ‘self-soothing mechanisms’, ‘neural pathways damaged from emotional neglect’ and how all this was now being demonstrated by the neuroscientists that she was working with. It was utter horseshit, Camilla conned all of them, David Camerons office gave her millions and the ‘neuroscientists’ who were ‘proving’ Camilla’s theories were certainly not going to blow the whistle on it because they were in receipt of research funds. Had anyone bothered to look at Camilla’s CV they’d have seen that her background was in theatre, not neurology/neuroscience/brain structure. THEATRE – she was indeed a bloody good actor. In a colourful turban with matching robes.

I agree that a degree of life experience is very useful in a politician. But I’ll still be very sad if Mhairi does throw the towel in, although I’ll understand why.

PS. I’m now waiting for politicians to start recommending marriage for everyone after a ‘clinical trial’ discussed on Radio 4 yesterday has shown that marriage protects against dementia. That must be why some cultures enter their offspring into forced marriages before they are adults. They’re just protecting them against dementia. It’s why the landed aristocracy married off their children to other landed families – nothing to do with securing property and power, it was protecting against dementia. We’d better stop divorce and close down domestic violence refuges – or the rates of dementia will increase. It was not explained whether civil partnerships also protected against dementia or whether cohabiting with one person for years rather like getting married protected against dementia. Does one actually need the marriage ceremony itself to protect against dementia? Does a registry office or a church wedding offer the best protection against one’s neurones dying in old age? Is there a difference between churches from different dominations? What about cross-denominational marriages?

I’d better stop. Jac’s readers are not as thick as your average politician, they’ll get my drift.

Stan

Everyone in Wales should be compelled to read Jac’s eye-opening blog before being allowed to cast their votes in an election. I am sorry to say it, but even then some are so thick or brainwashed that they’d still put their cross against Welsh Labour. How many of these shysters and hangers-on are there? Imagine what the cost to the public purse amounts to. When you consider the myriad of charities, housing associations, quangos, colleges and councils there are across Wales we are probably talking of several thousands that owe their jobs entirely to nepotism and cronyism. For the size of our country, we must surely be the most corrupt nation on the planet. Even bloody Zimbabwe seems as innocent as a newborn in comparison. What an accolade. On numerous occasions I’ve had a beer out when staying with English friends. When those in the pub find out where I’m from they take the piss about our blind allegiance to the Labour Party. And you know what – I don’t blame them. I’m ashamed at our stupidity. When are our people going to see the obvious?

Dafis

When CJ heard Mugabe was losing his job he suggested that Mugabe should be retained as a consultant to develop new scams. A SpAd piped up – “we got nothing to learn from him, Master, he was busy copying some of our loyal supporters “. Boom Boom

CambroUiDunlainge

“I am sorry to say it, but even then some are so thick or brainwashed that they’d still put their cross against Welsh Labour.”

You shouldn’t say it. Lead by example, encourage others to lead by example. The condemnation of other voters serves no one. Calling people stupid or brainwashed is a sure way to not get their support and make sure their ears are closed.

Dafis

I think Stan is making the point that it’s a steep challenge. Your exortion to “lead by example” is admirable but is likely to prove just as difficult even futile when you see the level of conditioning some of our fellow citizens appear to have absorbed.
While our preferred solution is one of conversion through the normal peaceful channels of persuasive and informed politics I sometimes wonder whether a cataclysmic event – something that interferes with the bread and circuses routine of people’s mundane ( and yes, stupid) lives – would do the job more effectively and efficiently.
If Brexit proves a disaster for the less well off regions of the U.K it may just deliver the kind of catalyst for change that is needed. There is no doubt that if Brexit costs too much and damages some of the U.K economy the London-centric government will pass the grief out to the sticks and look after its own much of which is in the over heated South East of England with pockets elsewhere. In Wales CJ & Co will bleat like hell but won’t DO anything ( other than look after their own inner circle), so it will just be a case of suck it up and feel the pain for the majority who should become ripe for a change.

Stan

I may have seen it here, it might be elsewhere, and I can only recall the bare bones, I’m afraid. But it’s something like Dai is walking to the polling station and meets his mate Jim. A conversation takes place about the appalling state of the village they live in, the neglect and broken promises over many years despite all those fine things the Labour controlled council, and local Labour councillor said they’d do for the area. Dai and Jim talked about relatives and friends of those within the local Constituency Labour Party who had been looked after in getting a shot at standing for council and given work here and there. They talked of the wicked level of council tax imposed, of druggies and layabouts hanging around the place who spoke in accents that certainly weren’t local. They spoke again about the local Labour councillor who bragged on Twitter about drinking £65 bottles of Bollinger (yes – we actually have one here in Neath). They spoke of failing schools and social services in their area. They spoke of the local Labour MP giving her future son-in-law a well paid job in her office. “What a bunch of hypocritical, corrupt and lying bastards they are,” said Dai.

Then he went and cast his vote. He ran into Jim again outside. “So I suppose you voted for Plaid this time then?” said Jim.

“Are you fucking kidding me? My old man voted Labour and his old man too. And that’s what I’m always going to do. Do you think I’m bloody mad?”

Best not answer that one.

Marconatrix

Well the Scots somehow managed to kick the habit …

Anonymous

Heck – one hell of a read – the post and Dr SB’s comments. I’ve worked in the 3rd sector, including housing association for vulnerable women. There’s good work done on the ground by many, but really – yes they’re gravy trains for those at the top. Specialities at the top are writing “sexy” project proposals to secure large lumps of public money, then producing reports with photos of happy smiling end-users whose lives have been turned around (but at what cost? A lump of cash given straight to them would have worked even better……as indeed that parasitic old bitch Camila Batmanghelidjh was doing to some of Kids’ Company’s “service users”).

drsallybaker

You’re right Anonymous, there are people on the ground trying to do good work – but the corruption of the sector is making that increasingly difficult to do. It wasn’t just me who noticed what was happening – I knew many other people who volunteered for Women’s Aid/organisations for the homeless/the mentally ill/drug users, the lot, but everyone just encountered a massive con. These organisations are being given millions by Gov’ts as an answer to the failings in the statutory services – but they have exactly the same failings because they are run by people who have spent their careers cocking up in the statutory services. The same model of practice is used – including the suppression of whistleblowers and the promotion to ‘management’ of unscrupulous people who keep quiet about the swindles and the short-changing of the ‘service users’.

Camila’s Kids Company scam avoided the glare of publicity in the media because Alan Yentob, Mr Big in the BBC, was involved with the charity. The head of MIND Cymru is Sara Moseley – formerly of the BBC… People with PR skills who can keep the lid on the shit-barrel – and of course with the contacts to loosen purse strings – are far more valuable to these organisations than hard workers with knowledge and experience.

Since writing my comment this morning, I started thinking a bit more about dear old Hutt and her God-like status re huge swathes of the Third Sector in Wales. Hutt is English – her claim to fame and the basis on which she built her career was that she set up Welsh Women’s Aid. I can’t imagine that Wales at that time will have been that receptive to something like Women’s Aid – I remember Women’s Aid in north Wales in the early 80s, there were some rather odd people involved and there were problems which caused some people to walk away from them (including me, not that I had even heard of Hutt in those days, I was just a student who fancied myself as a feminist with an interest in such matters). How did a Hutt, a social worker from England, ever get something like Welsh Women’s Aid off the ground? It was pre-devolution – there won’t have been a friendly Welsh Labour Gov’t to give her money, it was Thatcher in control who won’t have given the likes of Hutt the time of day – unless of course Hutt established Welsh Women’s Aid pre-1979… Hutt must have had help from a network in England – and I bet she had some sort of help from her contacts in the social services/NHS as well. At the time that Hutt trained and worked as a social worker there was a massive problem with the abuse of children in care – it was happening right across the UK and I know a lot of mediocre people who built stellar careers by basically silently blackmailing people who needed to keep that problem quiet.

As a politician Hutt has been a complete flop, she is not too bright and has buggered up every job that she has ever had. She was mates with Rhodri Morgan and his clan and we know that people in the Third Sector whisper her name fearfully…

I think its about time I started digging re the foundations of Welsh Women’s Aid – and who assisted Hutt in that venture…

Wynne

In my humble opinion, bonfire of the Quango’s should be high on the list of policies for the new party now formed in Wales. Labour, and their associates Plaid, have had their opportunity to deliver for Wales and have failed miserably. This has to be the dawn of a new era for Wales.

drsallybaker

This is a very informative post Jac, many thanks. It has shone a light on something that was mystifying me.

I didn’t realise that Mutale Merrill was involved with BAWSO or Welsh Women’s Aid – I knew her as a leading light in the Community Health Councils. I am very rude about the CHCs because they have never been honest about the dire state of the NHS in north Wales. They advertise themselves as the ‘patients’ voice’, but they ignore very serious complaints about dangerous practitioners and ‘services’, even when serious patient harm or criminal activity has been involved. In north Wales the CHC includes among its ‘reps’: a retired surgeon from Ysbyty Glan Clwyd – whose personal blog made it quite clear that she would be using her position on the CHC to protect her former colleagues from criticism when they were under scrutiny from the Royal College of Surgeons; a retired psychiatrist from the Hergest Unit, which was one of the units that the CHC was failing to investigate in the wake of serious complaint from patients; a former manager from Gwynedd Social Services who was named in the Waterhouse Report as being one of those who failed to protect children from abuse – he misled a patient who wanted to complain about the Hergest Unit by telling them that the CHC wasn’t responsible for hospitals (it is); someone who is married to a member of the Health Board. The CHC absolutely stinks and it has done for years. I first encountered the corruption of the CHC when Jane Hutt was Heath Minister – that’s the Jane Hutt who founded Welsh Women’s Aid! The Jane Hutt who yesterday in the Senedd praised the work of BAWSO.

Wimmin’s Third Sector organisations are very big business in south Wales and all roads lead to Jane Hutt. I used to be involved in one such organisation and I noticed a few very interesting things. Now a lot of my colleagues in that organisation were very well-motivated and very capable, but something seemed to be limiting their effectiveness. It was that no-one dared do or say anything mildly critical of the Welsh Gov’t – even when the actions of the Welsh Gov’t were negatively affecting the women whom we were supposed to be representing. The funding for the organisation was coming from the Welsh Gov’t so obviously it would have been daft of us to take out adverts in the press denouncing them as bastards and telling everyone to vote Tory, but the anxiety went to ridiculous lengths. I wanted our organisation to attend an event with a speaker who happened to be a member of the Lib Dems. The rest of the Board had kittens and told me that I’d have to invite a Labour speaker as well or the Welsh Gov’t wouldn’t like it. (What about inviting a Tory, a Kipper, a Green, even a member of the BNP as well then?). I thought that the rest of the Board were just very over-anxious. But some months later, our organisation produced a report which just happened to mention that with the retirement of a number of female AMs, we were concerned that there might be a decline in the interest of women’s issues on the part of the Welsh Gov’t. A furious communique arrived ordering us to take that line out of our report. The order came from Jane Hutt. I was told that this was absolutely characteristic of her behaviour.

I noticed that there was constant in-fighting between the wimmins Third Sector organisations – this was something else that I was told was long-standing and well-known. At one point, our organisation received an insulting unsolicited communication from – BAWSO. The funds that these organisations receive are, for the most part, completely wasted. I was gobsmacked to hear that the Welsh Gov’t aka Jane Hutt had allocated £40,000 quid for us to celebrate international women’s day. FORTY THOUSAND FUCKING QUID. Just think of the help that could provide for women having a hard time. But no – this was to spent on balloons, publicity, Nicaraguan dancers and other meaningless shite ‘celebrating’ wimmins day.

The Welsh Gov’t – Jane Hutt – constantly told our organisation that we were ‘too middle class’ and didn’t have enough ethnic minorities on our Board. Our Chair was Polish – but as she observed herself she was white so was invisible in terms of being an ethnic minority. As for being middle class – yes we were. But had we done ANYTHING that would have been of interest to working class women I think that Jane might have reared her ugly head and put a stop to it. Those Third Sector wimmins organisations are being micromanaged by Hutt – a former social worker who is the daughter of a doctor – and she has no fucking idea at all of the reality of the lives of ‘working class women’. Hutt is so stupid that she doesn’t realise that working class women are far too busy trying to make ends meet, looking after the kids and the grandparents and GOING TO WORK to celebrate international wimmins day or to be Trustees on the Boards of wimmins organisations.

I DID like my colleagues on the Third Sector organisation – they definitely weren’t Hutts themselves. But nonetheless, I could see restricted views. I suggested that we should run a campaign for women who were unpaid carers. I was delighted when the rest of the Board agreed. The was organised by a few others from the organisation – and kicked off with a series of seminars held in a stately home in south Wales, ‘such a nice venue’. Yes – and unreachable by public transport. I suspect that women providing unpaid care were probably the women who cleaned the room for the seminars and prepared the buffet – they certainly weren’t going to be attending the seminars. Who were the invited speakers? A number of people from that motley crew of advisors to Hutt and co, who’s idiocy has led to the present problems in the NHS and social services which has led to such problems for unpaid carers…

Jane is currently delighted with BAWSO because they are campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation. Which is a major issue if you’re living in Somalia, but not really that important if you’re a working class woman in Wales. I do know though that yes there are Somalian communities in Cardiff and elsewhere – but most of those UK communities are not practicing FGM anymore. Nevertheless, wimmins groups are now being told that girls are at terrible risk from FGM and there are suggestions that girls from these communities should be regularly ‘medically inspected’ to ensure that they have not undergone FGM. That sounds like sexual assault to me Jane. By the way – Jane et al don’t seem to realise that when a girl in the UK IS subjected to FGM, it is nearly always done by a doctor who is breaking the law, usually in Harley Street. When I worked in a London medical school in 1990 one of the senior registrars there admitted to me that his mate in Harley Street was carrying out FGM. Everyone knew that it was unlawful but they didn’t give a stuff. The only prosecution re FGM in the UK fell apart recently because a doctor had been involved and the jury didn’t understand what he’d done – well he was a doctor wasn’t he, it was just an operation…

I was invited to an anti-FGM event by BAWSO last year. They were going to light candles in a church in Wrexham to show how angry they were about FGM. OK…

I could go on forever about it all Jac, so I’d better stop here. The problem is the huge influence that Jane Hutt and her merry band of silly old wimmin like Julie Morgan – who are still immersed in the debates of the 1980s and who were never that bright or that radical anyway – exert on the Welsh Gov’t re women’s issues and sex n violence. They are complete idiots who dominate the discourse and dictate who receives the dosh and they are causing serious problems. They have NO IDEA of the problems facing disadvantaged women and they are alienating those who have an interest and experience in this area. I and others walked away from the organisation that I was involved with because we got so frustrated with the lack of any real activity and impact. The scene re wimmins Third Sector is just one big merry-go-round of buffets and events in Cardiff or presentations in the Senedd at the request of Hutt and co that are of no interest or relevance to most women. And yes, gongs are dished out to those who behave themselves and toe the line. One of our Board – who was awarded an OBE – was selected to speak in the Senedd about the achievement of the NHS in having so many women in senior management. I pointed out that NHS management is famed for toxic bullying behaviour and is probably the worst model of management in the UK. The response was ‘ooh, that’s because they’ve modelled themselves on the men’. No, its because it’s the fucking NHS style of management, it was built into the NHS from its inception and it involved WOMEN as well as men – Matrons didn’t keep the ward ship shape, they concealed patient harm and bullied the junior staff. It was like talking to a brick wall…

Hutt and co were social workers whose colleagues were the people directly responsible for the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal of the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Hutt knows something about all that but has remained schtum. She then fucked up big time when she was Health Minister. Now she is dishing out millions to her cronies – one of whom it seems is concealing serious shit in the NHS…

Time for this toxic old cow and her mates to retire from politics. They have done quite enough damage – the only wimmin whom they represent are themselves.

David Robins

Labour wasting public money? Who’d have thought it?

The one thing the brothers and sisters always did know was how to organise a piss-up in a brewery.

DP

DR Sally

Couple of points

Mutaly Merril [her surname was different then] was also the Chair of the Care Council for Wales which was instrumental in covering up or downplaying the failures of social services/child protection at the time. One of the BAWSO agents was involved for south wales police DV campaigns as the go to person – called Una Veale.

Jane Hutt was a driver if not the architect of the introduction of a Children’s Commissioner for Wales. Another useless quango brought out now and again to promote the WG line of thinking. Actually what it does and achieves is a mystery but costs a couple of million a year. On its own doorstep [Swansea] social services were falling apart, as came out with the Aaron Gilbert case/death.? As far as I know the CC for wales did not say anything but parrot usual crap about lessons learned I bet.

CambroUiDunlainge

A poor Wales is a Wales that will vote Labour. A Wales that votes Labour will always be subordinate to Westminster. A Wales that is subordinate to Westminster will always be poor.

Something Tony Blair said recently stuck with me: that devolution kept the UK together. Since then we’ve had this vote over the Brexit veto and Welsh Labour MP’s abstained on something Labour AM’s supported… and I just thought… whats with that? Don’t they trust their own party? Or is it in preparation for the inevitability that the same could happen in Wales as happened in Scotland?

Welsh Labour only has two purposes: to keep Wales in poverty to keep the Welsh vote and to combat Nationalism for Westminster. Whether that drowning out Welsh people with imported poor people, or taking on support for the Welsh language to take the steam out of Plaid. But the fact they’re abstaining on more powers for Wales tells me they are white knuckling it.

There is discontent bubbling under the surface and they know it, they are preparing for it.

As for the third sector… the old saying of cut off the head and the body will die. Every Labour AM and MP must be ousted. I don’t agree with the vague argument of 1911 who think the Welsh political elite need to be held to account or all that nonsense because the only ones who hold politicians to account are the voters. A pressure group will never have the power to convince the voter… and I dont see why they’d want to pressure Welsh Labour who – as I said – only exists to keep us down.

There is only one way forward here… and its to put nationalists with no link to Westminster nor its institutions into as many Assembly seats as possible.

Big Gee

A pressure group will never have the power to convince the voter… and I don’t see why they’d want to pressure Welsh Labour who – as I said – only exists to keep us down.

THAT’S the operative point. The age of protest is over, in exactly the same way as the age of Unions is over.

When it comes to protest groups, it all ended when over a million people turned out on the streets of London, to protest against Tony Bliar‘s phoney Iraq war. It proved that protest is impotent in the face of the empowered establishment, an establishment that is now powerful enough to face down protests of any size. Whilst protest groups can help bring the plight of a cause to people’s attention (and even then they have to fight for exposure in the establishment controlled media) they are impotent at the end of the day.

The writing was on the wall when you look back at the miners strike in the eighties. It trumpeted in the demise of the Unions.

Governments and their establishment now realise that they have the upper hand in their eventual total control of citizens. What they are saying – by extension – is “cry and wail all you like – it doesn’t effect us”.

That’s why the only way to break this stranglehold is through the formation of a political party that can cause damage at the ballot box. As you correctly point out, “a pressure group will never have the power to convince the voter“, and history shows they never have, not just in the context of changing views about e.g. the Welsh ‘branch’ of the Labour party, but for all causes, regardless of how good that cause is.

It is also why I believe that recent groups formed here in Cymru to promote independence, freedom and economical revival, will do a fantastic job in educating and raising people’s awareness, and they’re doing a fantastic job to date. However without a truly different and radical political party that is diametrically unlike the old brigade (and I include Plaid Cymru here) for them to attach themselves to, their well meaning efforts will not change things.

To deliver what Cymru needs, there is a need for political clout – not just a loud protest voice. The two things go hand in hand. Together something truly earth shattering can be achieved. Let’s not miss the opportunity, because the volcano is starting to rumble under our feet.

Marconatrix

Do you get the feeling that Wales is approaching a critical point where things could go one way or the other? I say that because I read elsewhere that Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd (A Week in Future Wales) has just been turned into an opera of all things! The utopian part of that novel is a bit dated now but the dystopia it also describes could still serve as a timely warning of just how bad it could get if things are left to drift.

Big Gee

Do you get the feeling that Wales is approaching a critical point where things could go one way or the other?

Simply put, yes I do. It’s the very reason I’ve put my shoulder to the wheel to get our new party off the ground.