Any, Any, Any Old Iron?

On By JacIn Business and Commerce, Bute Energy, Colonialism, Renewables, Wind Turbines149 Comments

A bit of a departure, this one. And certainly not what I advertised last Saturday. Though that element does figure in this bigger picture.

Rather than focus exclusively on Bute’s windfarm plans in Wales, the infiltration of the Welsh political class (especially, but not exclusively, the Labour party), or alleged links to those who sent the tanks into Tianmen Square, I’m going to look into a possibility suggested to me by someone with a keen interest in Bute and associated companies.

In this piece, after the first section, I’m going to look into the companies named as being involved with a new venture at Port Talbot in this press release from Catapult Offshore Renewable Energy. Which seems to tie in with the ‘Celtic Freeport‘, split between Port Talbot and the Haven Waterway.

From one angle, the plan we’re going to look at seems to be, make wind turbine body parts in the electric arc furnaces promised for Port Talbot, from scrap metal, then put them together in Pembrokeshire before mooring them offshore.

That might be the assumption to make, but the press release from Catapult Offshore Renewable Energy clearly states “onshore wind turbines“.

Which might suggest confusion.

Whatever, the companies named in the Catapult press release are Tata Steel UK, RWE, Bute Energy, Hutchinson Engineering, and Ledwood. So I’ll deal with them in the order they’re mentioned.

But let’s start with Catapult itself.

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OFFSHORE RENEWABLE ENERGY (ORE) CATAPULT

This outfit, the one apparently pulling it all together, looks to be an extension of Innovate UK, a government-funded body. Google AI says this:

Innovate UK provides substantial funding to ORE Catapult to drive offshore renewable energy innovation, including a recent £85.6 million capital investment for testing facilities.

Note, again: “offshore renewable energy“, yet as we’ve seen, the statement from Catapult clearly says “onshore wind turbines“.

That said, Catapult claims a presence in Pembroke Dock. In a building otherwise known as the Bridge Innovation Centre.

There’s not much more to tell about ORE Catapult, so we’ll move on.

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TATA STEEL UK

Indian company Tata Steel is the owner of Port Talbot steelworks. The coal-based blast furnaces have closed and it’s promised they’ll be replaced with a £1.25 billion electric arc furnace. Due to be fully operational by the end of next year.

The project has already received £500 million in UK government funding.

Which means that Tata’s role seems fairly clear. It will produce the steel needed for the onshore and offshore wind turbines, from scrap, much of which will be sourced abroad, as will be explained in the section about Ledwood.

UPDATE 20.04.2026: This article on the feasibility of scrap metal electric arc furnaces appeared in the Western Mail, taken from The Conversation. The authors seems to argue that the supply chain for scrap steel doesn’t exist, and UK electricity prices might make the whole project unviable.

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RWE

As many of you will know, RWE is a huge German company involved in ‘renewable’ energy. Let’s also remember that RWE is a big player in Wales.

RWE is the largest power producer and renewable energy generator in Wales, with more than 3GW of energy across 12 sites. Brechfa Forest West Wind Farm comprises of 28 turbines – enough to power 40,000 homes. The site has produced over 1.05TWh of energy since it was commissioned in 2018.

RWE’s Head of Onshore Development: Wales & England is Eleri Davies. She also sits on the UK government’s Onshore Wind Industry Taskforce. As we are reminded in this press release from her company:

As a member of the Government’s newly created Onshore Wind Industry Taskforce, it was incredibly valuable to show the Prime Minister and First Minister how RWE works with and for local communities, harnessing homegrown talent and supporting local communities.

UK Operational Manager for RWE is Nia Griffiths. So there’s a definite Welsh flavour to RWE. At least in senior staff. Of course the money goes back to Germany.

And it seems RWE already has a presence in Port Talbot at the Baglan Innovation Centre. While in 2022 it struck a deal with Associated British Ports, owners of Port Talbot docks, an agreement that also covers Milford Haven.

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BUTE ENERGY

Bute Energy appears for obvious reasons. First, wanting to plaster rural Wales with wind turbines and pylons. Second, because this company has bought up ‘Welsh’ Labour and is not without influence within the party at UK level.

But for the purposes of this piece, I think we should concentrate on warehouses.

I touched on this subject briefly with a post back in August 2024 after receiving information from Scotland. It’s here in Parabola Bute Energy, Scottish Echoes. The Bute Boys, using the company Windward Titan Ltd, bought a huge warehouse (below) near Glasgow, then sold it three years later, for double the price paid, to the Lothian Pension Fund; essentially, Labour-run Edinburgh City Council.

Does Bute getting money from Labour-controlled pension funds sound familiar?

Further information received last month, from a different source, suggested Bute companies – often under the ‘Windward’ label – have quite a few warehouses ” . . . in Wales and Scotland filled to the rafters with BESS and pylon materials“.

These have been bought with the help of private bank Brown Shipley & Co Ltd, ultimately owned by the Al Thani family, which also owns Qatar.

I dealt with this a few weeks back in The Windward-Bute Empire, Fresh Insights.

So the question is, why would Bute need all this space, and why are some of these warehouses chock full of pylon components and other equipment for onshore wind turbine installations?

Also note, the insider who contacted me last month made no mention of the actual turbines. Neither towers nor blades. For which I might have an explanation.

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HUTCHINSON ENGINEERING

This company has also appeared on this blog quite recently. In a piece I put out in January. (Skip the first section.)

I started out back then by wondering, in a post on X, why a company in Cornwall called Inyanga Marine Energy Group had received £2,000,000 from our wonderful, and now thankfully departed, ‘Welsh Government’.

The man behind Inyanga, Richard James Parkinson, has other companies named HydroWing and Sangoma. All hoping to generate power from wave energy. Explained in the earlier blog piece I’ve linked to. But there seems to be no money, apart from public funding, and little sign of activity.

Though I did find this piece in the Falmouth Packet, which introduces Hutchinson.

Inyanga Marine Energy Group, based in Penryn, has tasked Hutchinson Engineering with constructing its HydroWing tidal energy device.

The 20 MW HydroWing tidal energy array will be deployed at Morlais, off Anglesey in Wales.

Naturally, my attention then turned to Hutchinson Engineering of Cheshire. Here’s the Companies House entry. You’ll see that ownership rests with Modernuser Ltd. In turn owned by Dean Clark Drinkwater.

And here’s Dean, a fan of both Starmer and Miliband!

What’s more, Drinkwater has also been appointed to the UK Government’s Onshore Wind Industry Taskforce, chaired by ‘Mad Ed’ Miliband.

It would appear that Dean is another who’s well in with the Labour party.

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LEDWOOD

Ledwood Mechanical Engineering Ltd, based in Pembroke Dock, is owned by Ledwood Protective Coatings Ltd, which is in turn owned by Nicholas David Revell, and may rely to a great extent on a loan from the ‘Welsh Government’-controlled Development Bank of Wales.

Another Revell company is Ledwood Holdings Ltd. Revell has a further company, LSM Holdings Ltd. (‘Ledwood Scrap Metals’?)

I suggest that name due to this reference in the LSM accounts, and where it leads.

Nick Revell, also gets a mention in this press release from January 2025 from the Wales Office, not ‘Welsh Government’. Again, the “Celtic Freeport” is mentioned.

Bluecap Resources Ltd, highlighted in the clip above, is based in Newport. But with its R&D in Penryn, Cornwall where, you’ve just read, we also find Inyanga, builder of wave energy machines, and beneficiary of ‘Welsh Government’ largesse.

The company is owned by:

 . . . a consortium of European shareholders from the natural resources industry, both corporate and individual, including two publicly-quoted companies . . .

(Here are the Bluecap Resources shareholders.)

Yet the website tells us very little. But if we turn to the filings with Companies House we see big share issues in recent years – all in US dollars.

Bluecap is in the business of “extraction and recovery“. That it uses US dollars suggests to me it conducts much of its business outside of the UK. A belief reinforced by the company Bluecap Poland Ltd, formerly known as Bluecap Turkey Ltd.

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THE THEORY

Someone who’s given the consortium some thought has suggested to me a theory. Which, after doing some research of my own, I find both elegant and plausible.

It all hinges on the electric arc furnace at Port Talbot. On it being built, and then on that furnace using scrap material. This explains Tata Steel’s presence in the consortium.

The scrap will be provided by Ledwood-Bluecap. And will almost certainly come from outside of the UK. That’s why they’re involved.

That scrap material will be smelted at Port Talbot, a magical process to transform it into the “UK Steel” promised in the headline of the Energy-pedia article.

Next, it will be knocked into the shapes and sections desired for 250 metre tall wind turbines by Hutchinson Engineering of Cheshire, who might set up an operation in Wales, or co-operate with a locally-based company.

If my Bute source is correct about the warehouses being “filled to the rafters with BESS and pylon materials”, then Windward-Bute can supply pylons and the Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). This is one reason why Bute is involved.

RWE might provide the motors and other mechanisms required by the wind turbines. Then again, as a major player, RWE may be thinking ahead to replacing its clapped-out turbines, even erecting new ones.

Alternatively, the blades might come from somewhere else.

For the largest manufacturer of turbine blades in Europe is Danish company Vestas. A director of Vestas is former Danish PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Her alter ego is Mrs Kinnock, for she’s married to Stephen Kinnock MP, in whose Aberafan Maesteg constituency we find Port Talbot steelworks.

Furthermore, Vestas has a 25% stake in Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), which seems to be Bute Energy’s main financial backer.

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CONCLUSION

Let’s start by remembering that in the Ore Catapult press release we read that the consortium involved is “largely based in Wales“.

Yet Tata Steel is an Indian company. RWE German. Bute Energy is Scottish. Hutchinson Engineering is an English company. Ledwood and Bluecap have addresses in Newport, but source their scrap metal from God knows where.

Pushing this lot as Welsh is like describing the German army in September 1939 as Polish because it was “largely based in Poland“.

And as if that idiocy wasn’t enough, remember that almost all the electricity that’ll be generated will go to England!

If the theory is correct, or only partly correct, we can clearly see who’s going to benefit from turning scrap metal into wind turbine parts, and who’ll make money from supplying whatever else is needed.

It’ll be the same faces that have been ripping Wales off for too long.

There might be a few hundred jobs at Port Talbot, small compensation for the thousands lost. A few hauliers might get contracts. The turbines and pylons will be erected by specialist crews brought in from outside.

But let’s not forget – it might keep Kinnock Jnr in a job.

Yet we’ll have to put up with the ugly bloody turbines and pylons, and you can bet your sweet life that whatever the colour of the ‘Welsh Government’ after May 7 – we’ll be paying out plenty in public money.

All done so that demented individuals in Plaid Cymru, for whom politics is all gestures, who prefer ‘positions’ over policies that would benefit the long-suffering Welsh people, can claim that Wales is a “world leader” – in being exploited.

For God’s sake, don’t vote for these clowns!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Looking Ahead To Senedd Elections

On By JacIn Conservative and Unionist Party, Corruption Bay, Devolution, Elections, Far Left, Greens, Gwlad, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Reform, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour73 Comments

In this piece I shall look towards the May 7 Senedd elections. Rather than delve into party manifestos, or expose the peccadillos of individual candidates, I’m adopting a broad brush approach.

Impressions and perhaps even informed generalisations. Digressions guaranteed, but not without a touch of whimsy and a few doses of ironic humour.

This offering is a bit longer than normal, but as it’s broken up into sections, one for each party, you can nibble a bit at a time. Like your Easter eggs!

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‘WELSH’ LABOUR

I’m starting with Labour, if only because this party has been running the show since devolution began in 1999. The name’s partly in quotes because there’s no such thing as a separate Labour party in Wales, it’s just a branch of the Islington-controlled gang we’ve know since Blair, Brown, Mandelson and a few others sat down to create New Labour.

This was the plan to broaden the party’s appeal beyond the traditional working class support. A strategy that ultimately led to the alienation of much of the working class. Labour in Wales managed to maintain the pretence longer than most party branches, but has now been found out.

But Labour, run by the Fabian Society, never really cared much for the working class, they were simply the means to power. The post-industrial age, Brexit and other factors, has seen Labour turn on the indigenous lower orders with a vengeance. Even to the extent of offering euthanasia.

For culling the poor, the sick, the disabled, the hopeless, was always Fabian Society policy. Find half an hour to watch this video.

LABOUR’S FIRST MINISTERS 1999 – 2026

One of the saddest features of this deception was seeing traditional, even generational Labour voters, in some of the most deprived communities in Wales, taken for granted by a party that had abandoned them and their communities.

A case of: Vote Labour – and we’ll keep kicking you in the nuts!

But chickens come home to roost.

And that’s why Labour finds itself facing humiliation thanks to an electoral system it conjured up believing this system would guarantee a permanent Labour-Plaid love-in, with the comrades always on top.

It says a lot for Labour’s foresight, and arrogance, that they couldn’t factor into their calculations the possibility of defeat. I described the system, and how it came about over two years ago, in Labour And Plaid Cymru Plot To Destroy Welsh Democracy.

But here we are, with Labour at 11% or 12% in the polls and fighting with the even more unhinged Greens for third place behind Plaid Cymru and Reform.

Because the problem for Labour is that having abandoned the working class it now relies for much of its support on racial and religious minorities (of which Wales has few), brainwashed students and ex-students, middle class liberals (another small group in Wales), third sector and other chisellers who’ve done well from Labour cronyism and patronage (a sizeable group regrettably), and the far left.

But many even in those groups are deserting Labour for Plaid Cymru and the Greens.

NOW LISTEN, STARMER, HERE ARE YOUR ORDERS

And if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s Starmer and his clueless, lying crew of Globalist puppets. Who’ve betrayed those who voted for them, and torn up their own manifesto, in order to serve those who came over to give them their orders soon after the 2024 election. (See above.)

A meeting of minds. For Gates’ plan to reduce the human population is pure Fabianism. And Starmer, like all previous Labour PMs, is a staunch Fabian.

Problems compounded in Wales by the growing perception that Labour has been bought by Bute Energy and other foreign companies (perhaps even the Chinese Communist party) wanting to exploit Wales in the name of ‘saving’ a planet in no real danger.

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PLAID CYMRU

This party will obviously be the main beneficiary from the collapse of the Labour vote.

And so Plaid is now doing what it always does when an election approaches – pretending there’s a gulf between them and Labour. But Plaid and Labour have been in bed too often and for too long for that deception to work.

Plaid Cymru might benefit from voters wanting to rebuke Labour without changing the general direction of devolved politics. Making Plaid the soft option for mildly disgruntled Labour supporters.

But they should be careful what they wish for. Especially those unhappy over Labour’s obsession with Net Zero, DEI, gender politics, Gaza, Trump, and all the other ishoos that often alienate left-leaning but socially conservative voters.

I say that because Plaid Cymru seems to have gone further down the fact-free rabbit-hole of Wokery than Labour. On a host of issues. And there’s no longer any attempt to hide it.

Here’s Plaid’s leader in the House of Commons (and my MP), Liz Saville Roberts, in London on March 28. At a march that brought together the far left, Islamists, environmentalists, and others.

Of course it was billed as a march against hate. The problem most people had in accepting that claim was the marchers chanting about killing Jews, threatening opponents of the murderous theocracy in Iran, condemning anyone who thinks men can’t have babies, and dancing dementedly in attempts to fight the climate crisis.

In fact, so much hate was generated by this gathering that a big profit was waiting for anyone who could have bottled it and sold it to a third world dictator.

Which perhaps brings us to Plaid’s real problem – a form of schizophrenia.

We have a party in recent times appealing to the radical left, while trying to hang on to its traditional, more socially conservative rural core vote. This is a difficult balancing act. But then, Labour got away with a similar deception after abandoning its traditional working class voters, so maybe Plaid will be lucky.

Because it takes a while for many voters to catch up with the new reality and ditch old habits. At least, that’s what Plaid Cymru is hoping.

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REFORM

Reform UK is next because in all recent polls it comes in second behind Plaid Cymru. Which seems to surprise many people, who want to believe this strand of politics is new to Wales, even an unwanted import.

The truth is that Farage’s earlier creations – UKIP, Brexit party – have been around for a few decades, and have performed well in Welsh elections, particularly the last two elections to the EU parliament. Here’s a table I drew up a few years back for a piece on the blog that should prove my point.

You’ll see that in 2014, with the Brexit referendum two years in the future, UKIP came a very close second to Labour. And in 2019 the Brexit party, combined with UKIP hold-outs, won comfortably with almost 36% of the vote.

This final EU election, after the 2016 referendum, might be seen as a victory lap for the Brexit party, yet the fact remains they won it very comfortably. But then, Wales voted Leave. Though parties on the left want to ignore this, talking of “alignment“, even re-joining. With no mention of consulting the people, let alone a referendum.

As I hinted earlier, the problem for leftist parties is that most people in Wales, as elsewhere, are socially conservative. They want policies the left is either unable or unwilling to deliver. But which Reform promises.

This goes some way to explaining why a ramshackle and often incoherent group like Reform is riding high in the polls. Topping polls in England, second in Wales.

There are identifiable groups from where Reform can expect support. First, former Labour voters awake now to the nature of modern Labour. Then, disaffected Tories, wondering what happened to their party. And the sizeable percentage of the population pissed off with establishment politicians prepared to give Reform a go. Finally, those who reject all manifestations of Welshness, from devolution to bilingual road signs.

But I see two clouds on the horizon for Reform. Perhaps only one of which will damage the party in May’s elections.

I’m referring to the reported parachuting in to Welsh seats of ex-Tories and others from outside the constituency in which they’re standing, even from outside of Wales. As this newspaper report from earlier this week illustrates.

Other fractures also seem to be appearing.

And yet, the factors just mentioned are less likely to count thanks to the absurd voting system; which means candidates 4, 5 and 6 on the party list could drop out with no effect on the outcome. And because it’s a party list system many voters won’t even know who the candidates are anyway! (Explained below.)

Perhaps a bigger threat, in the longer term, and on the UK level, is Rupert Lowe and his fledgling party Restore Britain, only launched in February. This very recent poll puts a party most people have never heard of on 8%. And I think I know why.

Farage is smooth, glib, a bit of a lad with the pint and the ciggie, and yet . . . I’ve never been able to shake the impression of the spiv. I keep waiting for him to roll up his sleeve to show us all the watches he’s flogging.

Whereas Lowe comes across as ‘serious’; what’s more, it’s that “Don’t fuck with me” kind of seriousness. Which many people respect. And I don’t see an armful of watches.

In the short term, and the context of the Senedd, I suppose we must accept the polls and prepare for Reform to come second.

Meaning four years of pantomime, with leftist luvvies clutching their pearls as they theatrically exit the chamber singing Kumbaya if a Reform MS questions net zero, or wants to end the £3,000,000 a year funding for the Dowlais branch of Hezbollah.

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GREENS

There was a time when the Greens were regarded as harmless eccentrics. Perhaps another incarnation of the brown bread and sandals wing of the Liberal party from the 1960s. (For younger readers . . . Look it up yourselves, you lazy little sods!).

But how they’ve changed!

From what I can see the modern Greens have little interest in the environment; now they seem to have positioned themselves somewhere to the left of Pol Pot. (Though I’m sure PP was a better dancer than ‘Zack Polanski’.)

Everything about the Greens in 2026 is false and/or dangerous.

Starting with party leader, ‘Zack Polanski‘, whose real name is David Paulden. Not so long ago he was a hypnotist, claiming he could enlarge women’s breasts. Did women pay him for this?

Some may think I’m being unfair, pointing out that he’s the UK leader, and we have our own leader in Wales, in Anthony Slaughter. Which is nonsense, because we don’t have a Welsh Green party.

When Green party members in Wales had the chance to form a separate Welsh party in 2018, they chose to stay as the Green Party of Englandandwales. Because most Green Party members in Wales are not Welsh. They tend to be good-lifers and others for whom Wales is nothing more than a nice place to live.

Recently the Greens have been pandering to Muslims, just like other parties of the left. To the extent that Polanski’s deputy is Mothin Ali, who recently attended a rally supporting the murderous theocracy in Iran – with critics labelled “Islamophobic“.

But try to make sense of it. Polanski is Jewish, and gay. Has he ever sat down with Ali to discuss his deputy’s religion and its attitude to both Jews and homosexuals? And does Ali have any interest in environmental matters?

It’s insane; Polanski’s relatives have said they’d leave the UK if he became PM.

The real worry should be the Islamic block vote transferring to the Greens because Labour is finished, if only in the short term. If so, then this is worrying; because on both the Welsh level, after May 7, and the UK level after the next general election, the Greens could be power-brokers.

So who in their right minds will vote in the Senedd elections for a party led by a former hypnotitist and his Islamist sidekick?

Just imagine if the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senedd, and the word comes down from Green Party HQ – “Tell Gareth Wyn Jones them sheepdogs gotta go“.

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CONSERVATIVE

What to say? Conservative politicians at every level have kept such low profiles in recent years they’ve become almost invisible. To the point where some might wonder if the party is still in existence.

In Wales, those who haven’t been kicked out of the party seem to have joined Reform. But nobody’s really noticed!

I mean, can you name the Tory leader in the Senedd? (It’s Darren Millar.)

And yet, despite the party’s near-invisibility the Conservative vote seems to be holding up. Certainly better in percentage terms than the Labour vote. Though I suppose it could be argued that Labour had more votes to lose.

Another way of looking at it might be to say that the Tories should have benefitted more from the collapse in the Labour vote. But it hasn’t. Possibly because so few people know what the Tories stand for nowadays. What is the message?

At this point – seeing as I have so little to say about the Tories! – it might be worth entertaining you with an opinion poll published in Nation.Cymru on April 1.

The accompanying article was written by Martin Shipton, who so recently had a wake-up call when an “eight-strong team from the counter-terrorism division of the Metropolitan Police“ kicked his front door down at 6am.

The survey sample was so small that I’m not sure it can be trusted; but seeing as it was commissioned by N.C, funded with ‘Welsh Government’ (i.e. our) money, I shall pick through the bones.

We see that the Tory vote is around 9/10%, which is not bad for a party that’s almost invisible. While some of the other ‘findings’ defy belief.

Though not the finding that among younger voters Plaid is very popular, and the Greens lead in the under 12 age bracket.

Though one of the more intriguing figures was this:

For people aged 35 to 54, Reform leads with 35%, ahead of Plaid Cymru on 21%, Labour on 16%, Greens 13%, the Conservatives and Lib Dems both on 6%, and others on 2%.

This is where we find those who are working, struggling to pay mortgages or rent, wondering if they can afford to light and heat their homes, bringing up children. Reminding us of what I’ve argued elsewhere – those living in the real world want real world solutions to real world problems.

Though I’m sure Martin ‘China’ Shipton and his ilk would dismiss this 35% as racists, climate deniers, etc., etc.

But this section was supposed to be about the Conservative and Unionist party, and I’m ignoring them. Yes.

I may have had a sneaking regard for their economic and social policies at one time. But that was forfeited when Boris Johnson flew to Kiev in April 2022, to ensure the little clown didn’t sign a peace deal that would have jeopardised their Globalist masters’ money-laundering operation.

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LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

If I had little to say about the Conservatives I have even less to say for the Liberal Democrats. They’re almost an irrelevance. A poll in this week’s Cambrian News suggests they won’t win a single seat on May 7.

Though I have to say that’s a strange poll, also predicting the Tories will win just one seat. I’m sure it’s wrong. Certainly at variance with the poll I quoted in the previous section.

The fact is that the Liberal party started going downhill after Lloyd George, in the 1920s, which of course coincided with the rise of the Labour party. Though my paternal grandparents were still voting Liberal into the 1950s, because they saw it as the party of the chapel, the ‘Welsh’ party.

The party we know today came about following a merger in 1988 between the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party, formed by four who’d split from Labour a few years earlier. “The Gang of Four“; David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers, were among the smuggest buggers you could ever wish to meet.

NICE TIE, WOY

I was once thrown out of a meeting addressed by ‘Woy’ in the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea, when he was still in Labour. Back in the late ’60s. The great man was on stage telling us that he too was Welsh; so a young Jac, in a flush of patriotic fervour (possibly influenced by beer), jumped up shouting “You’re no Welshman“.

I was then assailed by an old crow sitting behind me, who laid into me with her umbrella. A signal for the heavies to move in: “We knows ew, ew’re a trouble-maker, ew are“. And so young Jac, scarred for life by a gamp bought at Swansea market, was forcibly ejected.

Happy days!

What do the Lib Dems stand for nowadays? Your guess is as good as mine. But they’re ‘progressive’; so If Plaid needs an ally for its popular front against the far-right, Trump, climate deniers, Putin, transphobes, and other demons torturing the Globalist-Woke-left imagination, the Lib Dems will be only too glad to help.

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GWLAD

I’ve saved the best ’til last. As you probably know, I had a hand in launching this party, and I’m very proud of that. But why?

Basically because I’m a Welshman, and I’ve always wanted the best for my people, and for me that meant independence. It still does. Yet I’d hoped devolution would at least improve things. But it’s been a total failure. And it’s easy to see why. In fact, I’ve explained why in my assessments of the other parties.

Every successful country needs a functioning, indigenous economy that encourages and rewards hard work, innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit. And thereby creates well-paid jobs. But for 27 years devolution has been ruined by politicians and their hangers-on who did little but make gestures and squander money in slavishly serving agendas that divide us and make us poorer.

By comparison, those running Gwlad include people who’ve started their own companies, given people jobs, and hope, and have worked all over the world. I can’t stress this enough – they come from the real world.

By which I mean they are not professional politicians.

Not like those who did politics in uni, went to work in PR, for a pressure group, or for a politician; then got elected to the Senedd thinking that running a country is nothing more than mixing with others from the same background, having debates informed by ignorance, and choosing to die on hills far away that should have no resonance in Wales.

This political clique, this Corruption Bay bubble, regards the rest of us with contempt. The ‘progressive’ parties want us to believe that about Reform. But they’re no different, not even Plaid Cymru!

Question open borders, or challenge discrimination against the indigenous Welsh, and this makes Wales “the racist capital of the UK“, says a Plaid Cymru candidate.

To believe Elin Hywel we Welsh are an evil people that needs re-educating.

But we’re not. We’re good people ruled by clowns who’ve lied to us and lied about us for too long. So on May 7 vote for candidates who don’t belong to this isolated and self-elevated political class that looks down on the rest of us.

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CONCLUSION

The system being used in this election is complicated and corrupt, unlikely to be used again in any country wanting to be considered a democracy.

To start with, ‘we’ shall be electing 96 Senedd Members instead of 60 previously; in 16 huge constituencies, lumping together areas with nothing in common. For example, Swansea docks is in the same constituency as Llandrindod Wells.

Each elector will have one vote. Which means you’ll be expected to blindly vote for a party, while leaving the selection of candidates, and the order in which they’re ranked, to the party machines.

A system designed to benefit Labour and Plaid Cymru, also intended to make it very difficult for small parties and independent candidates to get elected. An affront to democracy.

And it could have been worse, for Labour was hoping to get away with not even naming candidates!

So as you walk to the polling station on May 7 remember 27 years of devolution under Labour, aided by Plaid Cymru or Lib Dems.

Remember net zero (15-minute cities and 20mph): running the NHS into the ground (while ‘decolonising’ midwifery); Covid (Drakeford believing it all and getting drunk on the power it gave him); covering the land with foreign-built wind turbines (also foreign owned and involving massive political corruption); waging war on farmers (to save the planet); welcoming the closure of Port Talbot steelworks (carbon, innit); promoting transgenderism (with the ‘Welsh Government’ being Stonewall’s biggest funder); using a film of 12-year-old girls to welcome migrants; brainwashing kids from shit-hole estates and abandoned post-industrial communities about their white privilege; and a host of other insulting imbecilities, from wanting Welsh schoolgirls to wear hijabs, to ‘decolonising’ the evil Welsh cake.

It would be masochistic to vote for Labour, Plaid Cymru, or Greens. You know what kind of dangerous nonsense bordering on evil you’ll get from them. Tories and Lib Dems are an irrelevance. And don’t vote Reform unless you’re so desperate to avoid the known failures that you’re ready to take a leap in the dark. (Or buy a knocked-off watch.)

When you reach the polling station, say to yourself, “Enough! Wales needs a fresh start, a new direction“. Then take the pencil in your hand and put a cross next to the Gwlad candidate’s name.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Caveat Emptor!

On By JacIn Business and Commerce, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour45 Comments

Over the past year I’ve written a few times about companies in Wales profiting from the UK government’s ECO4 scheme, through cavity wall insulation, solar panels, heat pumps, etc.

Most recently, I’ve had to write about one of these companies going belly-up leaving dissatisfied customers; either suffering from poor workmanship that needed remedial work, or else jobs left unfinished.

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A BIT OF BACKGROUND, AND THE FIRST UPDATE

The first piece I put out was Saving The Planet – The Globalist Way! in July last year. This was followed by ‘Corruption Bay’ Living Up To Its Name? in December. Then, following the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions, the next piece, in early January, was Grab The Money And Run!. Finally, towards the end of January, it was Cairngorm Capital – The Kiss Of Death.

Consumer Energy Solutions was part of a group of Welsh companies ultimately owned by Cairngorm Capital of Edinburgh through Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd. (Or, more likely, someone else owned them but operated through Cairngorm.)

But now there’s a new kid on the block in the form of New Dragon Holdco Ltd. The three directors of this new company, formed January 22, can be seen below. They all work for Oaktree Capital Management.

I used to see photos like those hanging up in cinema foyers when I was a kid, there from the days of silent movies. Where’s Rudolph Valentino?

Oaktree’s based in Luxembourg for its European operations, but can be ultimately traced to an address in Los Angeles. Though registered in the state of Delaware, which serves as a kind of internal tax haven in the USA. But it’s not straightforward, as the group accounts filed with Companies House for Oaktree Capital UK Ltd make clear.

Oaktree is another of those companies that makes nothing, grows nothing, and performs no service for the benefit of mankind. Just another gang of sharp-suited spivs shuffling around other people’s money to make themselves rich.

The parasite capitalism that bedevils and seeks to control the modern world.

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FURTHER UPDATE

In those earlier posts, another company that came into the frame was Quidos. Or rather, a number of companies operating under that name. Quidos seemed to provide training and accreditation for the ECO4 ‘retrofit’ companies listed in the panel above.

Originally based in Bath the Quidos companies trace back to the group through the involvement of Nick Pritchard of Bangor. Here’s a list of Pritchard’s many companies. Though now it needs updating, because a new name has appeared on the Companies House register as a minority controlling interest in Quidos Pure Ltd.

That name is Philip John Stanley. So what can I tell you about Mr Stanley? Let’s start with his Linkedin page. (Not sure about that waistcoat.)

To begin with, and to judge by the addresses of his previous companies, he lives in Liverpool. In fact, I compiled a list of companies with which he’s been involved. Here it is in pdf format.

The companies he’s formed since 2013 have a number of things in common. Most noticeably, that none of them ever turns a profit. They either fold without filing accounts or they return losses. How does the poor man survive?

And then there’s the strange matter of two companies with the same name, Love to Feel. Now I’m fairly sure that’s not allowed by Companies House. But Stanley got around it by naming one Love to Feel Ltd and the other Love to Feel Limited.

But why would anyone do that? It’s guaranteed to cause confusion.

The ‘Ltd’ company is based in Liverpool, and files as dormant. The ‘Limited’ company – Dissolved in May 2024 – gave its address as Bryn Derwen, Parc Menai, Bangor.

But the reason Philip John Stanley is appearing here is because of what seems to be a real departure for him, both in the line of business, and in locations.

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CONSUMER RIGHTS

If you go to the table I linked to above, you’ll see two Community Interest Companies (CIC). Now a CIC is not supposed to make a profit and, as the name suggests, it should serve the public interest.

One advantage of a CIC is that it’s easier to set one up with Companies House than it is to register a charity with the Charity Commission. Fewer questions are asked.

Consumer Rights Ltd was launched in November 2021, in Liverpool. It converted to a CIC January 12 2023, and the following day moved to Bryn Derwen, Parc Menai, Bangor.

Though Bryn Derwen appears to be holiday accommodation. Consumer Rights CIC seems to bounce between this address and the Business Centre, Llys y Bont.

There is a Consumer Rights website. (Here in pdf format.) At first sight I though it was an official government site. It has that ‘look’ to it, even similar colours to the Ofgem website.

Might this confuse people, like the two Love to Feel companies?

Less than a week after Consumer Rights CIC moved to Bangor Stanley launched Consumer Rights (Scotland) CIC. Giving an address in Leith, Edinburgh.

Does it link with Consumer Energy Solutions and the other companies in the group being – for public consumption – owned by Cairngorm Capital of Edinburgh?

A director in both Consumer Rights companies was James Joseph Rimmer. Here’s his Linkedin page. He spent over 17 years with Experian, one of the ‘big three’ credit bureaux. Major stakeholders in Experian are BlackRock and Vanguard.

Clearly, Rimmer would know how to use databases.

And Quidos Pure moved its address last month from Bath to Bodlondeb, Conwy, the old council offices now leased by Pritchard.

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REMEMBER NEV?

Another name we encountered in the table of Stanley companies I linked to, was Neville Wilshire. Which may sound familiar; if so, it’s because he was the star of the television series The Call Centre. He died in December 2021.

Which might answer the question: What’s the relationship between Consumer Rights CIC and the companies shown in the panel at the top? Including Consumer Energy Solutions, with its dissatisfied customers and unpaid former employees?

There clearly is a connection, for Stanley is a person with significant control of Quidos Pure Ltd. Majority control of Quidos Pure rests with Quidos Holdings Ltd, controlled by Pritchard. And Pritchard links with the other companies.

Also worth remembering that CES was based in Swansea. Like Nev’s call centre.

The company that links Neville Wilshire with Philip John Stanley is EAGA Card Ltd. It was originally based at these salubrious offices in downtown Chepstow, with accountants Macario Lewin. Which also has a presence in Swansea.

After moving its address to Llanelli EAGA Card Ltd was Dissolved in December 2022, after Neville Wilshire’s death. So I got to wondering about the EAGA or Eaga name.

There was a company of that name in Newcastle “supplying energy efficiency products“, bought up in 2011 by Carillion, and the name then disappeared, according to Wikipedia. There was also an EAGA Charitable Trust, which ceased in 2020/21.

But it seems the name was revived by someone in the same line of business as the Geordie original. And by January 2021 people were being cold called.

That may have been Neville Wilshire’s company. Or perhaps it was Philip John Stanley. For by then Stanley could have learnt how to use databases from Rimmer, and call centre know-how from Wilshire.

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THOUGHTS

Consumer Energy Solutions Ltd (CES) has departed this mortal coil, and last month the Administrator issued a Statement of Affairs. Assets available for “preferential creditors” amounted to £307,915. Yet the claims from employees alone amounted to £586,185.

Certainly, there are some creditors that’ll hardly notice the loss, such as American Express, owed £689,536. Or HMRC, owed £1,188,925. But many creditors are small local suppliers.

The total deficit was £112,671,723. With almost all that owed to ‘Alter Domus Trustees (UK) Ltd (Oak Tree)’. Presumably referring to Oaktree Capital Management, mentioned above.

This, I believe, is a debt spread across the group. Where the picture is no rosier. For all the shares in CES are held by Diversity Network Holdings Ltd, of Cardiff Business Park, Llanishen, where a Receiver was appointed February 11.

As you can see, the trading name appears to be Heatforce, or Heatforce (Wales) Ltd, which is still in business. Certainly, that’s how it appears. But the most recent accounts, up to year ending January 31, 2025 (showing a loss), acknowledged “difficulties“, restructuring, and the involvement of Oaktree.

But of course, these accounts were filed with Companies House before Consumer Energy Solutions went bust.

You’ll notice other companies mentioned in the restructuring. City Energy Network Ltd is still with us, as is City Energy Facilities Management Ltd, and so is Laver Group Ltd.

Of the other companies in the group panel at the top, accounts are now overdue with Companies House for those that haven’t officially gone into liquidation or receivership.

UPDATE 25.03.2026: First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off has been issued against City Training Group Ltd, Simply Electric Metering Ltd, and Advance Energy Services Ltd.

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CAIRNGORM CAPITAL, A PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION

As you’ve read, Cairngorm Capital of Edinburgh is central to the collapse of CES and other companies in the group.

I earlier made a reference to “parasite capitalism” to describe Cairngorm, but maybe a better description would be ‘slash and burn’.

We invest in profitable companies that have the potential for transformative growth.

That’s Cairngorm’s business model; and yes, bankruptcy is certainly “transformative“.

In January I put out, ‘Cairngorm Capital – The Kiss of Death‘. In that piece I looked at other companies, outside of Wales, that got involved with Cairngorm. And found a very similar story with them.

One was Sentry Doors, near Doncaster. And I recently received a message from a former Sentry Doors employee. You can read it here.

That is a very unhappy ex-worker.

And yet it gives a personal insight into the Cairngorm business model we’ve seen in Wales – take over, put in (or buy) accomplices, treat the workers (and customers) like shit, run the company into the ground, grab what you can, do a runner.

The reference made to ‘ESW Knowles’ is to a linked company in Birmingham, that last June changed its name to Sentry Fire Safety Group Birmingham Ltd.

The directors there work for Cairngorm, and this company is covered by the same charge with Oaktree Bank PLC as covers Sentry Doors.

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CONCLUSION

A big part of the problem is that when governments have shovel-loads of cash to throw away on schemes like ECO4, with poor regulation and oversight (if any at all), then such schemes will draw people who, to put it kindly, will be less than honest.

And this will involve both local companies and foreign investors. With the former being used by the latter to grab the loot.

Here’s perhaps a personal example of what I’m talking about. Just last week the leaflet below came through my letter-box.

I phoned the number given, on Sunday, and again yesterday. Both times I got an American voice telling me the number was disconnected. What’s the point of distributing a leaflet with a non-working number?

The QR code links to the website. Which suggests a company called ‘FTCH Wales’. Using the same, unobtainable phone number. The Companies House registration gives the address of a Colwyn Bay solicitor.

(As for the ‘accreditations’ on the bottom – ignore them. Yer pays yer money and yer gets yer little badge, no questions asked. Or you just copy and paste.)

Googling the phone number brought up a link to FTCH Group, in Liverpool, possibly above an Italian eatery. (FTCH stands for First Time Central Heating.) The website provides the following message:

Yeah, I know the feeling.

In view of what happened to Consumer Energy Solutions (Reminder), and given the web of linked companies, some collapsed, the shady foreign investors, the missing money, the cold calling, there should be an official investigation.

But there won’t be.

Because the ‘Welsh Government’ is utterly useless. When it comes to money, business, or running an economy, those virtue-signalling clowns in Corruption Bay have been out of their depth since devolution started on May 6 1999.

They were always easy prey for sharks and shysters. But let’s look ahead.

After the Senedd elections on May 7 Labour will be out of power. Plaid Cymru looks likely to emerge with most seats, but not enough for a majority, so that’ll mean a coalition or some kind of agreement.

Things can only get worse.

A hell of a lot worse.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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The Windward-Bute Empire, Fresh Insights

On By JacIn Bute Energy, Corruption Bay, Renewables, Welsh Labour63 Comments

I had something else planned to go out on Monday, but I’ve held it back in light of fresh information I’ve received about the activities of Bute Energy. Information that raises wider considerations.

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INTRODUCTION

Let me start with an apology. I’ve been writing about Bute’s activities in Wales for seven or eight years. This meant ignoring projects elsewhere, and overlooking Bute and Windward companies that had no obvious Welsh connection.

That may have been a mistake. And in view of recent events suggesting dubious links with China, no longer tenable. Dealt with on this blog.

Apology made, one company I have mentioned, one I could never make sense of, was Storagefolk Ltd. Presumably involved in . . . warehousing?

Launched 23.09.2017 Storagefolk appears to be the oldest surviving Windward-Bute company apart from Windward Enterprises Ltd (until very recently Windward Global), the ultimate holding company, where Oliver James Millican, capo di tutti capi in the W-B world, is in sole charge.

But what’s its purpose, and how does it fit into the wider empire? Information received offers some answers. And opens up a new line of inquiry.

As you can see from the Companies House entry for Storagefolk the address is in Mayfair, that upmarket district of London. The sole director is Millican. But he gives his address as Hodge House in Cardiff, where we find virtually all the companies relevant to Wales. Or at least, those we know about.

Listed as ‘person with significant control‘ (PSC) is Windward Global Ltd.

Though if we go through the main CH listing for Millican’s companies we see Storagefolk using the Hodge House address. (More Millican companies are listed here, here, here, and here.)

At the address in Curzon Street, hosting Storagefolk, we find Turcan Connell Company Secretaries Ltd. Scottish legal eagles with their HQ in Edinburgh. A company regularly used by Millican and his mates.

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MY! WHAT A BIG WAREHOUSE YOU’VE GOT. AND SO MANY OF THEM!

Of the companies registered at that address, we’re interested in the ones shown in the panel below. Particularly those to which I’ve been directed. (Storagefolk appears on the previous page.)

Beginning with Windward Eurocentral MD Ltd. Sole director Oliver Millican. PSC is Windward RE Holdco Ltd (more on this company later). PSC for Windward RE Holdco Ltd is Windward Enterprises Ltd, the ultimate holding company mentioned earlier.

Turn to the charges and you’ll see one taken out in July 2023 and satisfied in April 2025. The lender was private bank Brown Shipley & Co Ltd. Brown Shipley is owned by Quintet Private Bank (Europe) SA of Luxembourg, which is in turn owned by Precision Capital:

Precision Capital is a Luxembourg-based holding company that represents the private interests of members of the Al-Thani family of Qatar.

The charge was against a building just to the east of Glasgow, close to the M8 that runs to Edinburgh. A property offering 127,000 square foot of space.

The next company is Windward Badentoy Ltd. Directors are Millican and TC Directors Ltd with an Edinburgh address. ‘TC’ of course is Turcan Connell again. The PSC is Windward RE Holdco 2 Ltd.

The charges, again with Brown Shipley, refer to industrial storage units such as this one, all near Aberdeen. Plus a floating charge.

The third is Windward RE Project Co 1 Ltd. Here are the players. It’s the Mayfair address with PSC again being Windward RE Holdco 2 Ltd. There are/were two outstanding charges with Brown Shipley. One a fixed and floating charge, the other refers to three properties in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Another company worth looking at is Windward Z3B Ltd, with the same pattern. Funding from Brown Shipley for two more storage facilities on industrial or technology parks around Aberdeen.

And there was another company, one that I wrote about in August 2024. And other warehouse not far from the M8.

It was reported on October 2, 2018 that the Titan warehouse had been bought for £6.5M by Grayling Capital. This is Grayling Capital LLP, formed just over a year earlier.

David Taylor, one of those recently questioned by police in relation to China ‘spying’, was made a partner in Grayling Capital LLP in September 2019.

I could go on, but you should get the picture. Companies in the W-B empire have, for perhaps a decade, been buying up big warehouses, often borrowing from a ’boutique’ bank owned by an oil-rich family in Qatar.

A name mentioned in connection with W-B’s activity in the Aberdeen area is IKM. Said to be a tenant of properties owned by Windward-Bute. Here’s a piece from December last year and the Aberdeen Press & Journal.

In another major milestone, IKM Testing UK today opens its third facility as it pushes ahead with plans to expand into international markets, the renewables sector and increase its UK decommissioning work.

But IKM only accounts for some of W-B’s real estate, so the question remains: Why does it need all this storage space?

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PLANNING AHEAD?

First, let me clear up the purpose of Storagefolk before telling you how Windward-Bute buying up vast areas of storage space was explained to me:

(Storagefolk) is purely a negotiating shell for projects in Scotland and NE England; it is used in proposals to financiers, a distinct legal entity is then formed post-investment decision to ring fence properties and interests – and distance from the risk of course.

As for the warehouses, it seems that W-B has been importing parts and components for turbines, solar installations, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) for quite a few years.

This stockpiling is in anticipation of a crackdown on imported parts for ‘renewable’ energy projects. This seems plausible as the opposition mounts to increasing energy prices resulting from ‘Mad’ Ed Miliband’s Net Zero death-wish.

The real estate arm of the Windward portfolio . . . is working with multiple overseas businesses and at least one national government to house interests and commodity items relating to renewables infrastructure. There are warehouses in Wales and Scotland filled to the rafters with BESS and pylon materials – rented and landed for resale exclusively to the UK market to artificially appear to restrict overseas procurement and brand it as available when supply chains pinch in the late 2027 to early 2029 drive.

Is it just forward planning, or is there more to it?

As an example of ‘more to it’, can we assume these imports come from China? I’d put a few quid on it. And if I’ve picked the right nag, then this explains a few other things.

For as we’ve recently learnt, it’s impossible to escape the China connection when dealing with Windward-Bute. So I was not surprised to be told that two of the Big Three (Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George, and Lawson Douglas Steel) have even stated they’d sell to “interested parties from China at the right price“.

But none of these machinations would be possible without political influence, and that influence is not confined to Labour in Wales.

Let’s remember that Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the UK Labour party, now Baron Watson of Wyre Forest, is a non-executive director of Windward Energy Ltd, where he’s listed as plain old Thomas Anthony Watson.

It’s suggested this provides a good connection through Great British Energy to ‘Mad’ Ed Miliband himself, the apostle of Net Zero, de-industrialisation, and electricity consumer impoverishment.

To sum up: there is a concerted effort not only to increase expenditure and reliance on ‘renewables’, but also to remove cheaper and more reliable alternatives. This explains why the UK is closing down North Sea oil and gas . . . only to buy from Norway, which extracts from the same North Sea source.

Proving it has sod all to do with saving the planet.

This is the ugly world inhabited by Windward-Bute. It’s not limited to wind turbines despoiling landscapes, it’s about using political influence to remove competition providing more reliable and cheaper alternatives.

In Wales, this has resulted in the infiltration of the Labour party to the point where it’s hopelessly compromised. Election posters for May’s Senedd elections should read: ‘Vote for Dai Jones – your Bute Welsh Labour candidate‘.

We know W-B is also making inroads into Plaid Cymru. The Greens were always on side. But does it end there?

Maybe not.

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TITBITS, THOUGHTS

In this section I’ll look at a few other items that have come my way and how they perhaps fit with what we already knew.

First, I’m told that Nigel Farage had a closed-door meeting in January with Windward Energy Ltd Chairman Steve Scrimshaw. So let’s have a statement from Reform on where it stands on ‘renewable energy’ and rising electricity prices.

More closed door negotiations preceded the decision by the Wales Pension Partnership to invest £68m (for starters?) in Windward-Bute. A source says that very influential in the ultimate decision was Cardiff Lib Dem councillor Rhys Taylor.

Taylor of course sits on the council’s Pensions Committee, but I bet you can’t guess where his day job is. Let me help . . .

So we see that Windward-Bute also has its claws into the Lib Dems.

Leaving Gwlad the only honest party left.

I’m told the investigations into Taylor and Aplin might result in a number of Senedd Members, MSPs and MPs being invited to ‘help police with their inquiries’.

Understandably, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), the main funders for W-B’s renewable energy projects, is said to be pissed off by the recent news and allegations of spying for China.

Which provides yet another link to ‘Welsh’ Labour. Through Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Danish PM, her directorship of Vestas since 2019, and that company’s 25% stake in CIP.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt is the wife of Stephen Kinnock, MP for Aberavon Maesteg. He is of course the son of former Labour party leader now Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent, and the late Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, long-time Member of the European Parliament.

Her seat on the Brussels gravy-train was taken by Derek Vaughan who, following Brexit, was given a non-job by Windward-Bute on its Welsh Advisory Board.

Kinnock the Younger’s constituency is home to Port Talbot steelworks, so recently and shamelessly allowed to die. Welcomed in certain circles because it reduces Wales’ output of some evil dreamed up by Greenhairs.

∼

I’m going to throw out an idea that might sound outrageous, yet it’s plausible. Just think about it.

Millican, Steele and George all worked for real estate outfit Parabola, where Millican’s father Peter is head man. They all left Parabola towards the end of 2017. (Or that’s what we’re encouraged to believe.)

They had no experience in ‘renewables’; and to my knowledge they’ve still not erected a single turbine. Certainly not in Wales. But is this missing the point?

They now have sites designated, landowners signed up, planning applications submitted, politicians and others bought, financial backing for the projects arranged, and warehouses stacked to the gunwales with the wherewithal to complete the projects.

So if Windward-Bute only gets half or less of the planning consents applied for – even no planning approval at all – they could still sell up and make a massive profit. Especially if the anticipated crackdown on (recently) imported parts comes into play and the components they bought years ago rocket in price.

Maybe that was always the business model. Not actually building anything.

If nothing else, it’ll be a very lucrative fall-back position.

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CONCLUSION

Windward-Bute has corrupted Welsh political and public life. And it was so predictable.

With a form of devolved government designed to fail. And with ‘progressive’ politicians too stupid and gullible to have made even a good model work.

Made worse by those same politicians seriously believing Wales alone could save a planet being destroyed by humans – and their farting cows!

Politicians believing that lobbyists and pressure groups should determine policies, and that they should be able to do so free from regulation or restraint.

Resulting in overlapping and incestuous circles in one relatively small city, circles of perhaps no more than two or three thousand people in total, damaging the lives of over three million people.

This shit-show was bound to attract the kinds of ‘developers’ we’ve seen over the past 27 years. With Windward-Bute perhaps the worst, the most pernicious example.

Windward-Bute already has the shadow of ‘China spying’ hanging over it, and the stain of buying political influence, but it doesn’t end there.

The West’s lemming-like rush over the cliff of ‘renewables’ isn’t just good news for China, on which we depend for everything from rare earth minerals to completed solar panels; it’s also welcomed in the oil-rich Gulf states because ‘renewables’ are also unreliables, and need back-up.

Some might think that a UK-based company or individuals enriching themselves from helping de-industrialise and impoverish the West is tantamount to treason.

And I would agree. For ‘renewables’ are a response to nothing but avarice.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Labour Apparatchiks Associated With Bute Energy Arrested In China Spy Probe

On By JacIn Bute Energy, China, Corruption Bay, Welsh Labour, Wind Turbines66 Comments

You must know what this is about. But in case you’ve been sleeping for a week . . . three men, with close ties to the ‘Welsh’ Labour party, were arrested last Wednesday “on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service“. They were released on bail the following day.

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WHO’S INVOLVED?

The first, is David James Taylor. Originally of Ruthin, now perhaps London. But he spent most of the intervening years working as a special advisor (spad) to a number of prominent Labour politicians.

These were Rhodri Morgan, first secretary of Wales between 2000 and 2009. Peter Hain, one-time anti-Apartheid campaigner, MP for Neath, who held a few posts in the UK government, and now sits in the House of Lords. I seem to think Taylor might also have done a stint with Morgan’s successor, Carwyn Jones.

Around a decade ago Taylor got himself involved in wind energy. More on this later.

Last year he started working for Asia House. (It’s been taken down from the website.)

Next up is Steven Jones. He has already been removed from the website of the lobbying group Camlas Cymru, for which he works in Cardiff. He definitely worked for Carwyn Jones. As this report makes clear.

Also non-personed by Camlas is the third man arrested last Wednesday, Matthew Aplin.

‘Camlas’, I suggest, might be translated into English as canal or channel.

Camlas was founded, as Positif Politics Ltd, in January 2006 by Daran Hill and his wife. But Hill was sent down in July 2023 for sharing images of child abuse.

Hill links with Taylor through a company called (after a couple of name changes) Leckwith Ltd. This was started by Taylor in November 2011 and taken over by Hill on New Year’s Day 2018. Leckwith was Dissolved just over a year after the exchange.

Was Hill killing off a possible competitor? If so, how much did he pay Taylor?

Whatever, Taylor then became a client of Hill. As I found out in a DM exchange back in August 2020. (Full version here.)

The other individual named in media reports, but not arrested, was Taylor’s wife Joani Reid, Labour MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven. The grand-daughter of Jimmy Reid. (Despite his politics, I always had time for him.)

They might have met when Reid was a councillor in Islington from 2014 to 2022.

Reid claimed no knowledge of her husband’s business activities. But why would she link the arrest to his business dealings? He was arrested on suspicion of spying.

Following Taylor’s arrest, Reid said in a statement that she is “not part of” her husband’s business activities.

So what have we got? A young MP, only elected in 2024, on the right of the Labour party, and certainly not privy to state secrets.

Of the three men, none is a nuclear scientist, or a high-ranking military officer, so I think we can rule out slipping the Chinese Communist Party important information.

Which leaves me to conclude that what they’re suspected of is commercial in nature. Unless of course, the CCP is planning to take over the ‘Welsh’ Labour party. But if the comrades in Beijing rummage in the drawers, and check down the backs of the sofas, they might find a receipt for that shower.

Whatever they paid – they wuz robbed!

Let’s proceed on the assumption that any offence committed is of a commercial or financial nature.

UPDATE: 01.04.2026: This incredible story just took another crazy turn with the suggestion that Joani Reid had ‘relationships’ with two captains of nuclear submarines. Read it for yourself.

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MORE ON DAVID JAMES TAYLOR, INTRODUCING BUTE ENERGY

For perhaps ten years David James Taylor has been involved with renewable energy. More specifically wind power. His involvement is due to developers realising how useful he is through his contacts in the Labour party that’s run the Welsh parliament for 27 years, either alone or with a junior partner in the Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru.

All this is covered in the many, many pieces I’ve put out on Bute Energy.

A good place to start might be Hendy Wind Farm, not far from Llandrindod. Where nary a turbine has turned. The eponymous company was launched in May 2011 by Matthew Simon Weiner, Graham Prothero, Michael Henry Marx, and Charles Julian Barwick.

There were linked projects at Bryn Blaen, near Llangurig, and Rhoscrowther on Milford Haven waterway.

Behind it was an outfit called U+I, taken over late in 2021 by Landsec.

The original directors were joined in August by Steven John Radford who, in May 2011, had launched Njord Energy Ltd. This company is in the process of being wound up. A new Radford company launched last year is Njord Wind.

Planning permission for Hendy was refused by the local council in April 2017, and this decision was upheld by an inspector in May 2018. At the council meeting a lobbyist tried to hand a note to the councillors and she had to be ushered away.

The woman was Anna McMorrin, working for Invicta Public Affairs of Newcastle. A Labour stalwart, she became MP for Cardiff North in the general election of June 2017.

As I say, permission for this windfarm was refused; but then came a strange incident that defied – and still defies – explanation. In October 2018, Lesley Griffiths, the Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ said she would ignore the planning inspector’s decision and allow Hendy Wind Farm to go ahead.

By this time David JamesTaylor had developed an interest in wind turbines (which may link with his failure to be elected North Wales PCC in May 2016). Taylor’s an ally and friend of Griffiths. Here he is campaigning for her.

A month before Griffiths’ bizarre decision a company was launched called Windward Generation Ltd. Later re-named Bute Energy Ltd, then RSCO 3750 Ltd, and Dissolved in September 2023.

The original directors, from Scotland, were Oliver James Millican and Lawson Douglas Steele. They were joined six days later by Radford.

Bute Energy has since spawned many companies planning windfarms, solar arrays, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), and pylon runs from central Wales; one to just south of Carmarthen where it’ll meet the main grid from Pembroke running through the south and on to England, the other running north east and over the border near Oswestry.

The ultimate holding company for them all is Windward Global Ltd, formed 16 May 2017. The only shareholder is Oliver James Millican. He’s the son of Peter Millican of real estate company Parabola. Millican, Steele, and the other member of the Bute troika, Stuart Allan George, had all worked for Parabola, and all ‘left’ at the same time.

Taylor was soon involved. Becoming a partner in Grayling Capital LLP. And holding shares in Windward Energy Ltd, both in his own name and that of his company Moblake Associates Ltd. These shares seem to have been sold in July 2022.

But why was Taylor given these shares in the first place? Why was he a partner in the LLP? What was he doing for Bute?

I’ll conclude this section on Taylor by saying that in the Moblake Ltd accounts for year ending 30 April 2021 we find this entry.

There’s no explanation of where the money came from that he gave himself as a ‘loan’. Even though it’s before the sale of the Windward Energy shares I still assumed this money came from Bute, for services rendered.

Moblake soon went into liquidation.

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POSITIF, CAMLAS, BUTE

In the first section I mentioned David Taylor’s link to child pornography fan Daran Hill, and Hill’s company Positif. Since renamed Camlas. And we saw that the other two men arrested with Taylor are Camlas employees.

Camlas is owned by Rhodri ab Owen. Rhodri’s brother is Senedd Member Rhys ab Owen, who sits as an Independent following a minor lapse that saw the pearl-clutchers of Plaid Cymru distance themselves.

These brothers are the sons of lifelong Plaid activist and Assembly Member the late Owen John Thomas, with whom I had a few jars back in The Good Old Days when the party prioritised Wales and Welsh interests before going far left then Woke.

Camlas seems to be another Plaid-Labour hybrid. (Like Deryn.) For as we’ve seen, and despite Plaid ownership, there’s plenty of Labour involvement. Another from that quarter worth mentioning is Naomi Williams, the partner of Labour SM Jack Sargeant, who did 14 years with Positif-Camlas and ended up as Managing Partner.

Another Camlas-Labour connection is provided by Matthew Hexter. He worked for Camlas for over three years, as a Senior Political Consultant, before becoming a Special Adviser at the Wales Office.

Bute Energy is a client of Camlas. And as I’ve established above, Taylor has a lengthy association with Bute. But Taylor’s now moved on, and since September last year he’s been Head of Programmes for Asia House in London.

I don’t know much about Asia House, but it has many contacts in China. That’s almost inevitable, with China being the largest Asian country. And there needn’t be anything suspicious about it. Except that China is a country controlled by a Communist regime with its hand in everything.

Taylor’s most recent company is Earthcott Ltd. Launched 1 September 2021. The latest accounts, to year ending 30 September 2024, show a big increase in assets and cash. And, as we saw earlier with Moblake, there’s no explanation for where it comes from.

Is this to be paid to himself as a loan that doesn’t need to be repaid?

Idly flicking through the Asia House accounts filed with Companies House, I soon came upon the capture you see below, which rang a bell. But why?

Rathbones is a major investment company, with its roots in Liverpool. Like most asset and investment companies nowadays it’s keen to make money from ‘renewable’ energy. But let me explain why I found Rathbone’s involvement interesting.

The Rathbone family still benefits handsomely from such investments. One member of the family sits in the Senedd, Jenny Rathbone, SM for Cardiff Central since 2011. As Wikipedia tells us:

Rathbone descended from the Rathbone family, with many members being notable merchants and politicians. Rathbone’s great aunt is Eleanor Rathbone, one of the first women elected as a Member of Parliament.[16][17][18] Her great grandfather was William Rathbone V, who was Lord Mayor of Liverpool.[19]

Jenny Rathbone is a big supporter of ‘Renewables’. And “sits on the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee“. But it don’t end there.

Her husband, or partner, John Uden, who knows bugger all about wind energy, had a sinecure created for him by Bute Energy on its ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ a few years back. Another member recruited was redundant Labour MEP Derek Vaughan.

In fact, Bute has been hoovering up people with influence in the Labour party for some years. A recent addition is Sophie Howe, former Future Generations Commissioner, who’s now a director of Bute Energy Ltd.

And it seems to have started with David James Taylor, because the boys from Edinburgh didn’t know anybody here until they recruited him.

But now, with the wind in their sails, Plaid Cymru seem to be the target. One notable recruit being 29-year-old Baroness Carmen Smith. She was selected for the Lords by the party hierarchy over the members’ choice of former MP Elfyn Llwyd.

Did Bute have a hand in that? Because Smith works for Bute.

◊

UPDATES

Martin ‘Shippo’ Shipton, of ‘Welsh Government’-funded Nation.Cymru, had his door kicked in just after 6am last Wednesday by an “eight-strong team from the counter-terrorism division of the Metropolitan Police“. As he reports here.

To believe him this was all a misunderstanding due to a completely innocent visit he made to Hong Kong, with David James Taylor, to meet representatives of the Chinese Communist Party.

Fair enough, squire . . . except that Shippo has made his admiration for Communist China clear on a few occasions.

He sounds like a visitor to Stalin’s Russia in awe of the grain harvest.

And on Friday the Western Mail gave him a big spread. Though I was initially confused by the reference to “top Welsh journalist“.

Shipton is a biased lefty propagandist subsidised with our money. If it was up to me I’d have him ‘cuffed, dragged off to some quiet place, where he’d be encouraged to respond to the gentle persuasion of a rubber hose.

But, then, I’m a far-right bastard . . . who respects democracy, who wants to defend freedom of speech, who rejects censorship and Digital ID, who realises that Net Zero is a Globalist scam, who knows that Covid was engineered by some truly evil bastards.

Just another nobody who loves his country, and realises who its real enemies are.

And I’ve got a sense of humour!

In other news, Taylor’s wife, Joani Reid, has resigned the Labour whip.

Another property has been searched. So who is it? Well, he’s a former aide to Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the Labour party, who now sits in the House of Lords.

Watson became a director of Bute company Windward Energy Ltd in September 2024.

I could go about Labour party connections with Bute. For example, funding is said to be coming from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, where we find a former Danish PM, who happens to be the wife of Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon.

With more investment coming from the Welsh local government pension pot.

◊

CONCLUSION

Welsh politics is corrupt. It’s a cess-pit. There could be no other way after a century of Labour party dominance and the cronyism and nepotism that goes with it.

With devolution third-rate politicos have been bossed around by spads and advisers, civil servants answering to bosses in London, and bullied by lobbysists and others. All of whom have more influence in Corruption Bay than we, the people they were elected to represent.

Which explains so much. Such as why Wales is the only country in the Western world without a register of lobbyists. Because the lobbyists didn’t want it!

In recent years, new players have added to that corruption.

Among these new players, Bute Energy is prominent. It wants to plaster rural Wales in 250-metre-tall wind turbines, cover good land with solar panels, and destroy what remains with pylons.

And Bute’s done this through buying political influence. The boys from Auld Reekie know how the game is played. And it was so easy when you’re dealing with thick-as-shit politicians, with no business sense – but stupid and gullible enough to believe that human beings are destroying the planet!

And for what? Unreliable and expensive ‘renewable’ energy. While China builds one coal-fired power station after another. While supplying us with components for wind turbines and complete solar panels.

And there is already Chinese interest in ‘renewables’ in Wales. Brenig wind farm, in the Clocaenog forest, is owned by the China General Nuclear Power Corporation of Guandong Province.

Wales & West Utilities is Chinese owned. After trawling through a labyrinth of ownership you eventually come to West Gas Networks Ltd. Check out the shareholders. Tracing back to Li Ka-shing.

It would relatively easy for China to begin a takeover of the UK energy market in Wales. There’d be little or no oversight from incompetent politicians who’d dress it all up as ‘diversity’ or ‘foreign investment’, or some such nonsense.

With the mainstream media, aided by the likes of Martin ‘China’ Shipton and Wee Willy Hayward, denouncing critics as racists and Sinophobes.

I don’t want it to look like I’m picking on Bute Energy, but it’s certainly a link between those who were pulled in. Bute, and of course the ‘Welsh’ Labour party that Bute’s so successfully infiltrated.

On top of which, people are telling me that Bute, perhaps due to mounting local opposition to its plans, is looking to sell up.

I’ll say no more. Form your own conclusions from the evidence I’ve presented.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Devolution Is Cardiff Council On Stilts

On By JacIn Cardiff, Cardiff Bay, Corruption Bay, Devolution, Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour23 Comments

To explain the title . . . Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was any talk of a Welsh Parliament, Home Rule, or devolution, one of the arguments used against the idea was that such a creation would just be “Glamorgan County Council on stilts“.

The implication being that other parts of Wales would be ignored. That investment, jobs and other goodies resulting from self-government would be concentrated in that area.

In this piece I’ll try to persuade you that what we’ve seen since 1999 is even worse.

◊

FIRST SECRETARY, FIRST MINISTER

I’m going to begin by looking at the first secretaries and first ministers we’ve had since the beginning of the devolution experiment.

The first, said to be Tony Blair’s choice, even “Blair’s poodle“, was Alun Michael. He was never very popular, either within the Labour party or the country at large, and was first secretary for just nine months, until May 2000.

A former Cardiff City councillor, he later served as Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth. Then Regional Assembly Member for Mid & West Wales. And PCC for South Wales.

Michael was replaced by the much more popular Rhodri Morgan. Who stayed in the first minister role until December 2009.

Cardiff-born Morgan was MP (until 2001 GE) and AM for Cardiff West from 1999.

Next came Carwyn Jones. Despite being born in Swansea, and practising law there for a number of years, he represented the Bridgend constituency. His Cardiff connection was established by being a tutor for a few years at Cardiff University.

I’ve said it many times on this blog, and I’ll say it again, Cardiff University is joined at the hip to the local Labour establishment. The School of Journalism should be renamed the School of Globalist-Left Propaganda.

Jones stood down as leader in December 2018. He now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Jones of Penybont.

He was succeeded by Mark Drakeford, a former South Glamorgan County councillor who became the Assembly Member for Cardiff West in the May 2011 elections.

Drakeford was born and raised in Carmarthenshire, but moved to Cardiff over 40 years ago. And was a lecturer at Cardiff University.

From 1985 to 1993, Drakeford represented the Pontcanna ward on South Glamorgan County Council, with fellow future Welsh Assembly members Jane Hutt and Jane Davidson as his ward colleagues.

(Jane Davidson was at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Labour AM for Pontypridd (1999 – 2011), and wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that enforces ESG and DEI in every aspect of Welsh life.)

Drakeford stood down as first minister in March 2024. He will not stand again in May.

Then came the brief tenure of his successor Vaughan Gething. After serving as councillor for the Butetown ward on Cardiff City Council he became the Senedd Member for Cardiff South & Penarth in 2011.

Gething is also standing down.

Gething was succeeded in August 2024 by the current incumbent, and former MEP, Eluned Morgan, the Regional Member for Mid & West Wales.

Born and raised in Cardiff she sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Morgan of Ely.

So we see a Cardiff connection with all first secretaries or first ministers Wales has known in 27 years of devolution. And with five out of the six a strong connection.

Given that Cardiff makes up some twelve per cent of Wales’ population, this statistic is truly remarkable. And should be concerning.

◊

SOME INTERESTING SENEDD MEMBERS

Beginning with Bridgend, where we find Sarah Murphy. Who was born and raised in Pontypridd then, after Reading University, worked in Seoul and London. She came back to Cardiff; held posts with the Labour party, and the University. More exactly, the School of Journalism.

Next, Cardiff Central. The patch of uber wealthy Jenny Rathbone since 2011. She’s a member of the Rathbone dynasty of Liverpool, where she was born. Her knowledge of Wales is on a par with that of a stay-at-home Eskimo. Limited to Cardiff and the area around her holiday home up in Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr.

Hubby, John Uden, who knows as much about wind power as the heretofore mentioned Innuit knows of Wales, somehow managed to get on the ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ of Bute Energy. Which was handy, seeing as Mrs Uden sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.

She’s standing down in May. Her vacuous wittering will not be missed.

Cardiff North is where we find Julie Morgan, widow of Rhodri. Cardiff born and bred, she is a former South Glamorgan and Cardiff City councillor, and was elected to the Senedd in 2011 after losing the Westminster seat of Cardiff North in 2010.

She is also standing down.

Cardiff South & Penarth is held by former first minister, Vaughan Gething. (See above.)

Cardiff West is held by former first minister Mark Drakeford (See above.)

Cynon Valley brings up Vikki Howells, who was born and raised in the constituency, and attended Cardiff University.

The SM for Llanelli Lee Waters is definitely a member of the Corruption Bay in crowd. A former ITV Wales journalist, director of think tank IWA, then director-lobbyist for bike charity Sustrans, he’s the man responsible for the 20mph restrictions.

Despite being SM for a seat west of Swansea, he lives just outside Cardiff.

He’s standing down in May.

Now we head up to Merthyr where the local representative is Bristol City fan Dawn Bowden. Another Bay insider who worked her way up through union ranks but who knows as much about the Heads of the Valleys as the denizen of the frozen north I mentioned earlier.

But that doesn’t matter – she was promised a safe seat.

Which she’ll thankfully vacate in May.

Another carpet-bagger can be found in Pontypridd in the form of Mick Antoniw. He came to Wales to study at Cardiff University, and stayed. One of those who drove through the absurd and corrupt voting system we’ll be using in May.

Of Ukrainian descent, he’s made a number of very public trips there to deliver ‘aid’. If Wales was independent he’d want us to declare war on Russia.

Another one standing down.

A odd one now, in Julie James, SM for Swansea West. Odd, because even though she was born in Swansea, travelled around a lot in her early life, she was involved in the Gilestone farm saga before being elected to the Assembly in 2011. As a solicitor working against the then owners, which paved the way for the land to be bought by someone’s chosen buyer.

Also standing down.

Moving east to Torfaen, ‘though born in Merthyr, Lynn Neagle is definitely part of the Bay Bubble. Wife of former Labour AM Huw Lewis.

Neagle has worked for, “Shelter Cymru, Mind and the CAB. She was Carers Development Officer with Voluntary Action Cardiff and also worked as a researcher for Glenys Kinnock MEP“.

And, finally . . . Jane Hutt, who sits for the Vale of Glamorgan, is another who moved to Wales to involve herself in charities and third sector bodies: National Co-ordinator of Welsh Women’s Aid, South Glamorgan Women’s Workshop, Tenant Participation Advisory Service and Chwarae Teg (Fair Play) . . .

Thankfully, she’s also standing down.

◊

REGIONAL SENEDD MEMBERS

Due to winning so many seats in the south and the north east Labour has just three Regional SMs. One in the North. Here are the two from the Mid & West.

One of course, is Eluned Morgan, the current first minister. (See above.)

The other is Joyce Watson. And she may be unique among Labour SMs because her official bio says: “Joyce has run several small businesses – public houses, restaurants and retail outlets – in Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.”

But did she own them?

But even that ray of hope is dimmed by the usual charity/third sector involvement: “Joyce managed the Wales Women’s National Coalition . . . senior member of the Wales Gender Budget Group . . . NHS Equality Reference Group”.

Watson is another jumping the sinking ship of devolved politics in May.

◊

WHAT IT MEANS

Let’s start with a statistic. The population of Wales grew between the census years of 2001 and 2021 by 6.8%. In the same period Cardiff saw growth of 18.7%. According to some, Cardiff is now the fastest-growing city in the UK.

Most areas of Wales saw negligible growth, with some even recording a fall. Ceredigion, Blaenau Gwent and Gwynedd have declining, and ageing, populations; while Merthyr and a few other areas struggle to maintain their numbers.

Newport’s population increases steadily since charges on the Severn Bridge were abolished, which allowed buyers from England to access the cheaper housing in south east Wales and commute daily to Bristol, or even further. While in many rural areas population increase is due to retirees and good-lifers moving in.

But turning Newport into a Bristol suburb and rural areas into al fresco retirement homes is neither desirable nor sustainable.

Welsh life is increasingly focused in Cardiff, for the benefit of Cardiff. This can be explained by a number of factors. The first, quite obviously, is political power. Then there’s the third sector, charities, pressure groups, which both feed off and feed into the political system.

A political machine serviced by regiments of spads, assistants and researchers, whose loyalty can be guaranteed by the carrot of a council seat, or, for the very lucky – a seat in the Senedd.

But let’s not overlook other beneficiaries, such as those to be found among the movers and shakers of the local business community.

An example would be the Thomas brothers, of the pie and pasty dynasty. It’s universally accepted that the ‘Welsh Government’ paid way over the odds to buy Cardiff airport. But who was the vendor?

And who bought that criminally undervalued land on the outskirts of Cardiff?

In both cases the lucky boy was Stan Thomas. Hot pies all round!

If you want a fuller picture, read a couple of pieces I put out ten years ago. Pies, Planes & Property Development, and Pies, Planes & Property Development 2.

But it’s not just the Thomas brothers. There are others.

Then there’s sport. Through funding, the ‘Welsh Government’ effectively took control of the Football Association of Wales and the Welsh Rugby Union.

Which explains why, when Cardiff Rugby went bust the WRU stepped in to buy it. And why the most successful region, the Ospreys, based in Swansea, is threatened with extinction.

The last-but-one owner of Cardiff Rugby was the late Peter Thomas, Stan’s brother.

The clowns currently wrecking Welsh rugby are political appointees, and they’ve been told to prioritise the interests of Cardiff. To the detriment of Welsh rugby as a whole.

Finally, there’s the media. Based in Cardiff and little more than a mouthpiece for those I’ve described above.

And all the while, our economy and our essential services decline and decay.

◊

WHAT MIGHT THE FUTURE HOLD?

If polls are to be believed then Plaid Cymru will emerge in May with most SMs, but not a majority. This will mean Plaid going into coalition, or having an ‘agreement’, or an ‘understanding’, most likely with Labour, possibly with the Greens.

We might even see a ‘progressive’ alliance of all the Globalist-Woke parties. It really won’t make much difference. (But what a nightmare that could be!)

Now some might think that with so much of its support being in the west and the north Plaid Cymru will adopt a different approach. And there might be a few moves away from the obsessive focus on Cardiff, but Plaid would be no real improvement.

Because Plaid wants to take Wales further than Labour on ‘ishoos’ such as Net Zero, trans ‘rights’, DEI, Gaza, ‘Islamophobia’, and decolonising Welsh cakes. And faster down the road of economic implosion and civilisational decline.

Party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth may be the Senedd Member for Ynys Môn, the seat furthest from the Bay, but he’s a former BBC journalist. He was educated at Cardiff University and he’s lived in Cardiff.

And ap Iorwerth may be a figurehead; for many believe the party is still controlled by the acolytes of a previous leader, the PoundShop Pasionaria of Penygraig.

Whatever the outcome in May in party terms, it won’t make much difference. Plaid, Greens, Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, they’re all just differently-badged elements of the Globalist Uniparty. That’s why they repeatedly tell us the upcoming election is solely about defeating Reform.

Is it?

Then again, Labour might welcome a ‘break’. Shun any co-operation, then come back untainted and refreshed in 2031. Hoping electors will have forgotten their record in the Senedd.

And who might lead the Labour comeback? If I was a betting man I’d put a few quid on Huw Thomas. If you’ve never heard of him, let me introduce him.

Huw Thomas, courtesy of Getty Images

He’s 41 years old and from Aberystwyth, he’s bilingual, and he’s been leader of Cardiff Council for nearly 10 years. In May, he’s top of the Labour list for the Caerdydd Penarth constituency.

He’s guaranteed to be elected because Cardiff is an area where Labour will do well.

UPDATE: Soon after posting this article at 9am I went to Tywyn, picked up a Western Mail, read it while having my first coffee of the day. In this article Huw Thomas gets a mighty plug.

If it comes to pass as I predict, and Labour gets back into power in 2031, under his leadership, then everything will revert to the status quo ante Plaid, with Cardiff grabbing the lion’s share of investment and jobs.

Which, to respectfully amend Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, will mean a return to: Government of Wales, by Cardiff, for Cardiff.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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The Latest Enviro-scam – ‘Celtic Rainforests’

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Farming, Public Funding30 Comments

I ended last week’s piece on the purchase by Tir Natur of land in the Elenydd, the beautiful ‘wilderness’ between Lampeter and Llanwrtyd, by saying that I was waiting for further information on what was planned to have been the second part of that offering.

Well, I’ve since had a response from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, but it’s not entirely satisfactory. More on that in part two. But first . . .

◊

TIR NATUR AND ‘CELTIC RAINFORESTS’

I pointed out last week that the land bought by Tir Natur, is in the Cwm Doethïe-Mynydd Mallaen Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Which means it is already protected, and in the care of Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

That being so, why does it need ‘rewilding’? Well, I have since learnt that this SSSI is one of four sites in Wales already appearing on the Celtic Rainforests (Wales) website. (Maybe someone should tell them that ‘Snowdonia’ is now Eryri.)

So why isn’t the rainforest aspect mentioned on the Tir Natur website?

Of the others, Eryri is of course a National Park; Elan Valley is owned or managed by Dŵr Cymru; and Cwm Einion (aka ‘Artists Valley’) is another SSSI that runs up behind Ffwrnais in north Ceredigion.

Which means that all four sites so far chosen for restoration to their imagined pristine state of ‘Celtic Rainforest’ are under some form of public agency control. So why can’t the bodies involved do the work themselves?

Perhaps I’ve given the game away in the title to this week’s piece. The Celtic Rainforest baloney is just another way for ‘environmentalists’ to grab land, and for big business to make money.

Checking the background of Celtic Rainforests I ran across this advertisement put up by Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW). This is the name of a body that abolished itself on 31 March 2021. So it has no official registered or regulated standing

Before that date the individual Welsh Trusts had been represented by WTW in dealings with the Englandandwales Wildlife Trusts (WT). Now they belong directly to WT, just like English county Trusts.

Attributable to the almost complete absence of Welsh involvement in ‘Welsh’ wildlife trusts.

Getting back to the Celtic Rainforests, The manager vacancy was filled by Gethin Davies, who also works for Parc Eryri. Which, if nothing else, explains why the project is based at the Park’s HQ in Penrhyndeudraeth.

Anyway, seeing as this land bought by Tir Natur is already a SSSI, and is to be planted with native trees, how much rewilding will actually happen? Or does planting trees count as rewilding?

To finish this section let me introduce one of Celtic Rainforests volunteers, who believes, ” . . . systemic racism is built into the way we view and use land; how it’s parcelled up and managed.”

For someone I can confidently locate on the political left she’s strangely blind to the class dimension to land ownership. Instead, she prefers a more simplistic, black and white interpretation. Literally! White people bad, everybody else good.

This Rainforests volunteer condemns colonialism but seems blind to a ruling group’s middle class, aligned with corporate capital and serving Globalist aims, working against an indigenous ethno-cultural minority.

Are there any depths of idiocy this anti-white bullshit can’t plumb? Perhaps not; for to believe a US academic this week, drinking cows milk makes you a Nazi.

Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at NYU, criticized The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on January 14. In a blog post, Caplan claimed that whole milk has been used as a symbol by white supremacists.

As you can guess, I’ve had a gutsful of this nonsense. Despite being difficult to take it seriously at times it’s still racism. It must be called out and defeated.

But of course, in this context, it’s another weapon in the anti-farming arsenal.

◊

RHOS-FARCH, PENNAL

If the name sounds familiar it’s because I wrote about this farm in July last year, in the piece, ‘Farming’ – The Globalist Way!’. So this is by way of an update.

Last July I told you it was suspected that Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust had bought Rhos-farch, a farm of 625 acres overlooking the historic village of Pennal. Here’s how Savills describes the holding.

And here’s a map to help you further. Rhos-farch is coloured in pink.

I can now confirm that Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust (MWT) received £3,000,000 to buy Rhos-farch. Certainly, that’s what’s suggested in the accounts. The clip below says the money came from Aviva via the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.

Note “restore it to Celtic Rainforest“. This is the reason for the funding.

But that clip above also says that Rhos-farch will be “open to visitors as a MWT nature reserve“. We can almost guarantee that some visitors will get lost, or think the nature reserve extends over neighbouring farms.

Seeing as Savills had priced the property at £3,500,000 I wondered if MWT had received money from anywhere else. So I wrote to the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, asking if any money had come from that quarter.

The answer was no. But I was sent copies of email correspondence, from last summer, between interested parties. Despite redactions we can assume the ‘Welsh Government’ was a participant, if only because it was holding the copies.

Other participants that can be clearly identified from the emails are Wildlife Trusts Wales (conduit for the Aviva money), and the Celtic Rainforest Creation Manager (Wales). Confirming that even though Rhos-farch is not mentioned on the Rainforests website it is obviously lined up.

The wildlife trust’s purchase is not welcomed by locals. Certainly not by local farmers.

One reason for that is the farms in the area, including Rhos-farch, benefit from a local shoot, a useful addition to their income. Of course, Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust will not allow shooting, and this will impact negatively on other farms.

The issue even got an airing in Nation.Cymru last year, which reported retirees and good-lifers trying to impose their views on locals. The giveaway was the paragraph beginning, “I was upset when moving here that there seemed to be an us and them atmosphere in the village.”

(Of course it never occurs to these buggers to ask how this division arose.)

Thankfully, the answer came later in the piece:

I and all my family are Pennal born and bred, and it winds me up terribly that incomers want to change our way of life and also tell us what we can and can’t do. If all the anti shooting brigades in the village don’t like what we do in the countryside, maybe they should move back to where they came from.

I find it interesting that Nation.Cymru should run this article around the same time as the emails I’ve mentioned were being exchanged. And perhaps as the Rhos-farch sale was being finalised. But N.C is extremely well connected in Corruption Bay.

Though seeing as Rhos-farch is not mentioned on the Celtic Rainforests website, how many other farms, other sites, are being lined up?

One final thought. Rhos-farch was never in Montgomeryshire, or Powys. It was in the old county of Merioneth, now in Gwynedd. So why was it bought by the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust?

Is it because the vendors, one of them a senior ‘Welsh Government’ civil servant, live in the old county of Montgomeryshire?

◊

CONCLUSION

If it was simply about preserving and perhaps enhancing rainforests, then I’d be fine with that. We could ban felling, clear the rhododendrons and other invasive species, plant more trees – and then leave it to Nature.

Given that the rainforests I know locally are typically dark, dank places, steep slopes and narrow valleys, no good land would be lost and no one would be inconvenienced.

And the website agrees with me.

You are never far from the sound of cascading water, and with the huge boulders and ravines galore, these forests are an ideal place for adventures.

“Adventures“?

That description also tells us these sites are unsuitable for the grazing that is constantly advocated! Though bear in mind that what these areas might have known in the past was not the right kind of grazing.

For that’s how it works when ‘environmental’ arguments are used against Welsh farming. It starts with dreaming up ways to make money, grab land – and then comes the excuse.

Step 1: Think of imaginative ways to achieve the objective.

Step 2: Dream up a ‘problem’ to justify what you’ve decided on.

Deception is the essence of the ‘climate crisis’; responsible for Net Zero impoverishing the West through ruinous electricity bills that drive industry away and make life more difficult for ordinary people.

Feeding off this prime lunacy are associated disorders such as the ‘threat’ from CO2! All too predictably, this is one of the justifications used for the Celtic Rainforests scheme.

It should go without saying that the World Economic Forum (WEF) is to the fore in connecting trees with corporate money-making.

Pushing the same message on the UK level is the Climate Change Committee. Here’s an extract from a CCC report on Wales published less than a year ago.

“Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere“! Life on Earth depends on carbon dioxide. Remove it, and everything – including we humans – dies.

Seeing as we’re talking of rainforests it’s worth remembering that this all started decades ago, in attempts to save the Amazon rainforest, and the rainforests of south east Asia. But more recently, someone realised it could be brought nearer home and used in the Globalist-environmentalist war on farming.

And remember! “Just 4.3% of the entire rainforest landscape is ancient woodland“, says the State of Wales Rainforest Report (page 8). So plenty of room to expand. Plenty more farms to buy.

And who’ll decide what must be ‘restored’? A fair question – because most of Wales qualifies as “Rainforest Zone”.

The map comes from an article in Nation.Cymru in October 2022. It seems to be attributed to Guy Shrubsole, whose name crops up a lot in such discussions. The article even names the Elenydd.

Shrubsole is said to have founded Right to Roam, a gang of self-entitled narcissists who feel they have the right to traipse wherever they damn well please. Among their number we find the ‘racist countryside’ woman we encountered earlier.

In conclusion . . . I often watch Neil Oliver’s monologues on YouTube. Neil’s persona non grata with the Beeb for challenging Covid, climate change, and all the other lies. He rambles a bit, and he’s not always right, but he’s a sincere guy.

Anyway, and as Neil Oliver always says: “It’s never about what they say it’s about“.

How true that is. Bear it in mind.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Land Of Our Fathers, But Not Our Children

On By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Farming, Wind Turbines46 Comments

This post is about what’s described as “Wales’ largest rewilding site“. I suspect it’s about more than ‘rewilding’. Because there’s usually big money involved with ‘environmental’ schemes nowadays.

◊

TIR NATUR: WHO’S WHO?

I’ve written about this outfit a few times in recent years. But to get you started, here’s the Tir Natur website, and here’s the Charity Commission entry.

When I first encountered Tir Natur it seemed to be a very amateurish outfit, but now it appears more professional. (That’s not always a compliment.) And there also seems to have been an almost complete change of personnel.

The name I recall from the beginning was Stephen Jenkins. And he gets a mention on the website, telling us he’d left:

The capture above confirms that Tir Natur was formed in 2021. But not actually registered with the Charity Commission until June of 2022.

The only founding member still with Tir Natur might be Gwenan Jenkins-Jones. She’s had training in how to spot money laundering. Which might come in useful at a ‘rewilding’ charity.

These changes are also reflected in the address given.

For the address now shown with the Charity Commission is Moat Farm, Trimsaran, to the west of Llanelli. Though the old address, Y Beudy, Lanlwyd, Pennant, Ceredigion SY23 5JH, also appears on the website.

The Pontyberem address is perhaps where we’ll find the chair of the trustees, Tatatia ‘Tash(a)’ Reilly; for one of the farm owners is a Lindsey Reilly.

Tatatia was the director of a company called Dashtan Ltd. In the business of ‘Residents property management’, which was formed and folded in less than a year. A phenomenon which, as you know, always gets my antennae twitching.

Her co-director was Bogdan Edward Staniaszek. The company address was given as this property not far from Swansea city centre.

Did this in any way link with Tir Natur’s activities?

I suspect those living at Moat Farm are relative newcomers to Wales. ‘Nice little place in the country’ and all that. Same applies to a number of other Tir Natur trustees. I see two smallholders among them.

Definitely getting a whiff of good-lifers here. Though these are the ‘farmers’ Tir Cymru claims to be working with. None are real farmers.

Then there’s a couple of eco loonies who also come from outside of Wales. James Hitchcock, formerly of Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust, and now Rewilding Britain. And Tim Birch, still looking over his shoulder for the Derbyshire gamekeepers he smeared, and now involved in just about every enviroscam.

Next, Bronwyn Jamie Bunt-Brown, who may be American. And was living in Surrey when she ran this short-lived company. And there was another company that never filed accounts, or seemed to do anything, before being struck off.

Bronwyn became a trustee 25 March, 2025. Someone who joined on the same day was Pamela Louise Noakes. While Bronwyn seems to have moved to Wales Pamela sill lives in London, where she works for M&C Saatchi Group.

This company has worked with Rewilding Britain. Fancy! And is keen to offset its carbon emissions. Noakes’ role is Global Director of Sustainability. Curiously, this day job is not mentioned in her Tir Natur bio. Why would that be, I wonder?

Turning to the ‘Executive Team’, those who run Tir Natur day to day, presents very much the same picture, with the obvious exception of Gwenan Jenkins-Jones. I hope she’s getting well paid, because her mere presence is invaluable to this scam.

To help her provide a Welsh gloss there’s Dr Elen Robert, whose full-time job is as a translator for Natural Resources Wales. Is NRW – that is, us – paying her to do translation work for Tir Natur?

Kilner’s the one on the left, I think

Dan Ward’s day job is with North Star Transition, another interloper organisation.

I could go on, but I’ll just mention David Kilner who, as Development and Programme Lead, might be the top man. Dai is also involved with Climate Cymru, where ‘diversity’ seems to be more important than the climate or the environment.

I say that because you may recall it was the BAME department of Climate Cymru, back in 2024, that called for dogs to be banned from the countryside because they offended a certain group that really should start adapting and integrating.

◊

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY?

With money from somewhere, Tir Nature has bought (or “secured“) 1195 acres of Ceredigion. Here’s a report on the purchase from the County Times.

And here’s a video put out by Tir Natur.

According to an article last week in Nation.Cymru half of the £2.2m has been raised. Farmers Weekly talks of “a philanthropic bridging loan”

The Charity Commission website shows that over £900,000 appeared from somewhere before the end of June last year. But where?

Less than two years ago Tir Natur was skint. Though there is now at least one active Crowdfunder page. And there seems to have been an earlier Crowdfunding attempt that closed about a year ago after raising £60,000.

With a sizeable donation in match funding coming from Aviva which, as we know, works with BlackRock. Here’s more information on the Aviva Communities Fund, which has donated £28,264, that we know of.

One of the reasons I’m focussing on the money is because there are many examples of ‘rewilding’ projects and the like that have gone financially awry, perhaps taken on burdens that became too heavy.

One example of overreach would be Highlands Rewilding, which may be the model being followed by Tir Natur. This outfit struggled to pay off the bank loan.

If it’s not overreach then ‘rewilding’ is often a front for milking government schemes.

An example of this would be another case from the Highlands. With Aberdeen Investments being honest about the motives behind the company’s interest in ‘rewilding’.

The estate was acquired by abrdn three years ago for £7.5m as a way to offset carbon emissions from its property portfolio.

The Highlands now are over-run with investment funds and asset managers looking for ‘environmentalists’ to front for them so they can rake in the money from carbon capture and other wheezes.

And there are plenty willing to play the acceptable public face of corporate greed. New groups sprout quicker and better than any fungi they claim to grow.

Just yesterday a good contact drew my attention to Wild Cymru, which is rewilding 210 acres of Ceredigion, at Cefn Garthenor, near Tregaron. The farm is owned by Neil Alistair Hughes of Savoir Beds.

The Chair of Wild Cymru is Daniel Gruffydd Jenkins-Jones. Might he be related to Gwenan Jenkins-Jones of Tir Natur?

A few days earlier a different source told me about another outfit also operating in Ceredigion. This is Oxygen Conservation, which now owns the 300 acres of Esgair Arth.

The guy who seems to own the company, Roy Barry Bedlow, has a string of similar companies. And it’s all about investment, not the environment.

A number of his companies carry the ‘L C’ handle, which stands for ‘low carbon’. One of those companies is L C Energy, which supplies woodchip. But don’t worry, this isn’t shipped across the Atlantic, it’s all “sustainably sourced within the UK“.

Biomass is a scam within a scam. Get big grants to plant native hardwood trees, instead plant quick-growing foreign species, grab the grants and subsidies, chop ’em down, flog off the wood as ‘renewable energy’, sell the land, move on to the next scam.

It should go without saying that Roy Barry Bedlow is based in Jersey.

Finally, a worrying possibility raised by someone who knows about these things, is that this Tir Natur project might qualify for payments under the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS), which would not have been the case under the old Basic Payments Scheme.

This would be wrong, and can be avoided if the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ insists that food must be produced for any land or landowner to qualify for SFS payouts. Otherwise, it’s not farming, is it?

◊

NEIGHBOURS

Let’s take a closer look at the land in question, and its surroundings. Such as the planned windfarms. Didn’t I mention the windfarms! How remiss of me.

The map shows four planned windfarms and the land Tir Natur is claiming. As you can see, they are very, very close. (I am indebted to the group that provided the map.)

The orange access road running south from Bryn Cadwgan goes over National Trust land to the village of Pumsaint. This is the only viable access for the turbine parts and the vast amounts of concrete needed for each turbine base. I covered this issue in November 2023 in The Road To Hell.

Now you might think that the peace and tranquility promised by an area returned to nature doesn’t sit well with an industrial site next door. With work going on for years.

But it doesn’t end there. Word I’m getting from locals says Bute is scouting more land over towards Teifi pools and Pontrhydfendigaid, north east of Tregaron.

And then there are the three farms in the area reportedly bought by the Foresight Group, which has been been busy in recent years buying Welsh farms and planting trees for investors.

But now it gets rather curious. Because I’m told the farms sold to Foresight had not long before been bought by a stranger to the area who’d made his pile in pet cremations! Yes, honestly.

This man, James Uys, is originally from Stroud in Gloucestershire. He played rugby and cricket for the local teams, and is big in sheepdog sales.

His business was almost certainly Limekiln Pet Crematorium, sold to Pet Cremation Services. Pet Cremation Services Ltd is the trading name for Time Right Ltd.

I don’t know how much Uys got for the pet cremation business, but he seems to have sold it in November 2017. And subsequently sold Limekiln Farm in September 2023 for a stated £3,000,000.

Some locals think Uys is a stalking-horse for Foresight, maybe others. Which would be odd, given what he’s on record as saying.

The value of agricultural land is hitting record highs as rich people seek loopholes to avoid inheritance tax, it is being reported.

Wealthy investors who have discovered the legal technicality are snapping up fields – and as a consequence prices are soaring to around £11,000 an acre, making life difficult for farmers. One newspaper reported on the case of a 50-year-old farmer from Gloucestershire who is in the process of selling his hundred-acre estate so he can buy a larger plot elsewhere. James Uys says he hopes to make £3m from the sale.

Did Uys move west, where land is cheaper, to find that “larger plot“. For in addition to what’s discussed here, I’m also told he’s bought a farm near Rhandirmwyn.

Bizarrely, the most recent report I have of Mr Uys is that he is the new tenant of Penlan Farm, Upper Chapel, near Brecon. There were 22 other candidates, including many young locals.

The farm is owned by the Penllergaer Estates in Swansea. Which has an interest in solar farms, as I reported in November 2021. (Scroll to the section ‘Follow the Money’.)

UPDATE: As this section is headed ‘Neighbours’, here’s two of Tir Natur’s supporters talking about the project. One is Jon Moses of Right to Roam. The other is Alasdair Campbell, Executive Director of Somerset Wildlands.

Campbell talks dismissively of “these guys“, who are of course the local farmers. Believing, it would seem, that people like him should have more say about what happens in Wales than local people.

Two arrogant outsiders. Which about sums up ‘rewilding’ in Wales.

◊

CONCLUSION

Whatever Tir Natur may say, I believe they’re fronting for somebody else. Somebody hoping to make lots of money. I say that for a number of reasons.

First, the land Tir Cymru claims to have acquired is, as the video I linked to tells us, already a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is already protected. For Tir Cymru to want to take it over can only mean they want to make changes.

Perhaps ‘reintroduce’ species like the Eurasian lynx.

‘I’m going to live in Wales’

Second, and in addition to be being an SSSI, the Elenydd is perhaps the last true wilderness in Wales. Consequently, to suggest it needs ‘rewilding’ is absolute bullshit. Like suggesting the Mona Lisa would be improved with a moustache and sunglasses.

Only those with a hidden agenda would insult our intelligence in this way.

But let’s take the claim at face value. If ‘developers’ have their way this ‘rewilded’ area will be surrounded by wind turbines. How will the constant hum and vibration, the flicker, affect wildlife? The lynx and other species will move out.

And the large, slow-moving birds that Tir Natur hopes to attract won’t stand a chance against the blades of the wind turbines.

Going back to the video again, the commentary claims to be “celebrating Welsh history and culture” – while snidely condemning that heritage for the bad farming practices Tir Natur wants to remedy.

Tir Natur promoting themselves as knights in shining green armour coming to save the Welsh environment – from those who have cared for it for over two millennia.

The video talks of bringing in Carneddau ponies. But a contact who knows the farmers that look after these animals says they’ve had no approach from Tir Natur. Which makes me remember a ‘rewilding’ scheme, near Machynlleth, that talked of “reintroducing” Welsh  horses – then they brought in a Polish breed!

Put it all together and you might understand why I’m a wee bit cynical. Why I don’t buy the story that the land Tir Natur has acquired in the Elenydd is just a ‘rewilding’ project, and nothing more.

I believe there’s much more to it.

FOOTNOTE: This week’s piece was to have been in two parts. The second part about a 625 acre farm on the Gwynedd side of Machynlleth bought by Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust with Aviva-Blackrock money. I’m waiting for further information.

But that’s the state of rural Wales today. Those with roots in this land are being elbowed out by recent arrivals and groups serving the Globalists’ anti-human agenda. With many of them funded and supported by the ‘Welsh Government’ to do the elbowing.

It’s a form of Clearance.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Wales Ruled By The Wampis?

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism26 Comments

I am indebted to a good source for introducing me to an outfit I’d never heard of, called Local Partnerships LLP. Here’s the website, and here’s the Companies House entry.

Sticking with the CH filings, we see three names under ‘Officers’. The Designated Members are H M Treasury and the Local Government Association, but the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ is just a ‘Member’.

◊

INTRODUCING THE WAMPIS

Let’s start with the Local Partnerships website, which tells us . . .

Our purpose is to help public sector organisations face the ever-increasing challenge of meeting rising demands for services, with shrinking budgets.

Last week Local Partnerships brought out their Wales Annual Impact Report 2025. So let’s go through it, see what joys it offers up.

In Chair Keith Fraser’s Foreword, in the very first paragraph, we read a reference to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Insane legislation, the authorship of which is claimed by privately-educated, globe-trotting climate fanatic, former Assembly Member for Pontypridd, and now good-life smallholder, Jane Davidson.

Though I’m persuaded there was much input from others.

This Act now dictates everything done by the ‘Welsh Government’, public bodies, local authorities, and just about everybody else. Forcing Wales to commit economic suicide on the false premiss that we are threatened by an anthropogenic climate crisis.

But now it gets rather strange. For as the Introduction to the Act itself says:

No disrespect to the Wampis . . . but are we seriously expected to run a complex, post-industrial society by following the example of a Stone Age Amazonian tribe?

And if you’re wondering about “the Seventh Generation Principle“, it also comes from Native Americans, this time the Iroquois, whose territory I believe straddled the eastern border between the USA and Canada.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting the strong whiff of bollocks here with all this “indigenous wisdom“. It echoes all the other ‘wisdom’ and advice attributed to sage old Indians . . . that was made up by LSD-dropping hippies in the 1960s.

Despite the patronising ‘noble savage’ trope being widely debunked it inspires and infuses the 2015 Act; and even though it’s hailed as an “example to the world” . . . the Act remains, eleven years on, an example nobody has been daft enough to follow.

Who’s gonna tell the Wampis!

◊

GEMS FROM THE REPORT

As I pointed out earlier, on the surface, Local Partnerships describes itself as a body helping public sector organisations. But I don’t think that’s strictly true. Let’s delve into the Report again.

And let’s go to page 11, where we encounter a rather curious juxtaposition:

Sustainable Farming Scheme business case approved for a national, multi-year programme

new National Park in Wales progressed toward designation.

What public sector bodies or small local projects are being aided here?

The Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) is designed to reduce farming in the name of saving the planet. (On the advice of the Wampis?) And it’s being pushed by the ‘Welsh Government’ in its war against the Welsh family farm.

The truth is that it’s a policy to free up land for investors and the wildlife trusts and other bodies said investors control or influence through funding and other means. But this ambition doesn’t confine itself to land. For those behind it want to put a value on everything, including the air we breathe – and then make us pay for it.

The new national park proposed for the north east, provisionally named Glyndŵr National Park, is rejected by local authorities and most people living in the area.

Proven by the fact that in a survey conducted by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) most of the support for the idea came from outside the area affected, even from outside of Wales. And it still only managed 53% backing.

The groups that want the new park are the usual suspects, like the Open Spaces Society, urging its largely English membership to show their support. But this is supposed to be a decision made within Wales.

Despite local objections, and external interference, it seems to be a done deal.

Whatever happened to ‘local democracy’? Well, that concept is only invoked when it supports a pre-determined outcome. Which, in this case, means it’s disregarded.

The SFS crops up again, on page 23. In fact, it gets the whole page. And it’s mentioned again on page 24.

Is Local Partnerships helping with local projects or dictating ‘Welsh Government’ policy?

On page 17 we find a reference to “Re:fit“. Does this refer to what I think it refers to? I suspect it does because later in that same sentence we see ” . . . fuel poverty and energy efficiency programmes including Warm Homes, NEST and ECO“.

Was Local Partnerships involved in the ECO4 fiasco that led to the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions, which I wrote about last month in, ‘Grab The Money And Run!‘?

Climate bullshit in a domestic setting

Next, a remarkable map of where Local Partnerships operates. Now I’m not very good with figures, but I don’t need to do any counting to see that the bulk of the projects being helped and funded are in Cardiff, or within 15 or 20 miles of Corruption Bay.

So many dots that some have to be located out to sea!

Pembrokeshire has a single project! Conwy two. Gwynedd three. Yet this is how devolution works. This is how devolution was always supposed to work. Cardiff gets the lion’s share of everything.

Preferential treatment that even extends to rugby.

Page 17 mentions the UK government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC). I know it describes itself as an “independent advisor“, but that’s a smokescreen.

Here’s a letter from the CCC, in July last year, to Huw Irranca-Davies SM, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs. It says:

We recommended that the Fourth Carbon Budget should be set to require average annual emissions over the five-year period from 2031 to 2035 to be at least 73% lower than the 1990 baseline, including Wales’ contribution to international aviation and shipping.*

I suppose 73% lower than the 1993 baseline is achievable, if you close the odd steelworks, stop people driving cars, etc. But why do we need to make this reduction?

And what the hell is Wales’ contribution to “international aviation and shipping“? Are they suggesting Powys closes Llanfair Caereinion International Airport?

Later in the letter we read:

Carbon units, also known as international carbon credits, represent a reduction or removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Under the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 (‘the Act’), the Welsh Government has the option to purchase international credits to help meet Wales’ emissions targets.

So not only are we expected to pursue the self-destructive idiocy of Net Zero, and swallow the scientific illiteracy that says CO2 is destroying the planet, but if Wales falls short ‘we’ can buy ‘International carbon credits’ to make up the shortfall.

Where would the ‘Welsh Government’ get these ‘credits’? Has it bought any?

Throughout the Local Partnerships document there’s hardly any reference to jobs, or the economy; just the fabled ‘green economy’, and the equally mythical ‘green jobs’.

Why am I not surprised!

◊

CONCLUSIONS

It seems to me that the “close cooperation” Local Partnerships claims with the ‘Welsh Government’ means ensuring that Wales follows the Westminster line. It may even mean that Wales is used to test certain ‘initiatives’ before they’re rolled out in England.

So much for devolution, you might say. But again, this was always a purpose for which devolution was intended.

Here’s another thought. One of the two full partners in Local Partnerships LLP is the Local Government Association (LGA) which represents local authorities. Local Partnerships bangs on relentlessly about green energy, and how we must invest in it.

So did the LGA have a role in Welsh local authorities investing £68m of their pension pot in Bute Energy? Will there be further investment?

Finally – and I make no apologies – I’m returning to the Future Generations legislation, and the reference in the Act’s preamble to taking direction from “indigenous wisdom“.

The Act to which all other legislation, initiatives, polices, must submit or conform, and predicated on the claimed ‘wisdom’ of Indian tribes in the Americas.

Or look at it this way . . . What about the genuine wisdom of Welsh farmers, whose families have been on the land for generations? Wisdom that’s more relevant to Wales than that of Wampis and Iroquois.

So why are our farmers ignored, even vilified?

Only a fool, or an enemy of Wales, would ignore our farmers and claim to be guided by those who’ve never heard of Wales. Unfortunately, there are too many fools and enemies dictating what we must do in our country.

Which makes Local Partnerships suspect in my book. So watch out for it in future.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Plaid Cymru – Party Of Nowhere

On By JacIn Plaid Cymru, Welsh Nationalism26 Comments

I’ve been meaning to write this, or something like it, for some time. So, with the Senedd elections roughly three months away, now seems as good a time as any.

In some ways I suppose this is an update to a piece I put out in February 2019, back when I was young, handsome, and gay: ‘Wales: nationalism ethnic and civic‘.

◊

THE PLAID CYMRU THAT ONCE I KNEW

The party I joined in the mid-Sixties was unambiguous in its call for independence. This was based on the belief in a distinct Welsh identity, coupled with the perception that Wales didn’t get a fair deal from the UK government in London.

We believed that independence was the only way to respect and protect Welsh identity while also improving the economic and other conditions of our people.

But I also flirted with ‘fringe’ groups. Though back in the heady days of the 1960s it was possible to see Plaid Cymru as the political wing of  a wider movement that included ‘militant’ groups like Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru and the Free Wales Army.

Maybe that’s stretching it a bit, but there was certainly ‘rubbing along’, maybe an acceptance that we were all on the same side, wanting the same thing. Here’s an image that might be seen to capture this acceptance, from Cilmeri in 1982, the 700th anniversary of the killing of Llywelyn II.

On the left of course, is Gwynfor Evans, then leader of Plaid Cymru, and former MP for Carmarthenshire. With two good mates of mine. In the centre, Peter ‘Gun’ Williams, and on the right, Gareth ap Siôn.

I often wonder what was going through Gwynfor’s mind when he found himself in such company. That bemused look is intriguing.

Happy days!

Plaid luminaries are rarely seen at such events now. Maybe like those they align with they view Llywelyn as a ‘medieval war-lord’, an ‘oppressor of the people’.

For history can cause Plaid Cymru bouts of confusion and convenient amnesia, with this applying to even modern history. As I was reminded in 2015 at the 50th anniversary of the drowning of Capel Celyn.

Plaid MPs and others were there reminding us how awful it had been: “Liverpool Corporation . . . Welsh-speaking village . . . injustice . . . something should have been done . . . blah . . . blah“.

But no mention of those, risking life and liberty, who actually tried to do something.

A TASTER FOR THE SECTION THAT FOLLOWS

I’ve taken this trip down Memory Lane as the first step in explaining how Plaid Cymru has gone from being a nationalist party with policies to improve Wales to the benefit of the Welsh into just another bunch of Globalist-Woke-left sloganistas.

◊

EPIPHANY, AND THE NEW BELIEF SYSTEM

The year 2021 was a watershed for me, and for many, many others. To begin with, there was Covid, and the vaccines. Once the lies involved in that whole episode became clearer, I saw many things in a new light.

(And now we learn that Bill Gates, global emissary for Big Pharma [in which he’d judiciously invested], caught the pox from Russian whores he met through Jeffrey Epstein. What a role model!)

Around the same time, in Wales, my eyes were opened to another threat. I’m referring to the takeover of ‘independence movement’ YesCymru by some of the weirdest and most unhinged people I’d ever encountered. (And believe me, I’d known a few!)

I knew such creatures were ‘out there’, but until they were all gathered together in the spotlight I hadn’t appreciated how fucked up they really were.

For until then I held the views from my formative years; which meant that I still believed ‘the opposition’ was fairly rational, and though wrong, still wanted the best for Wales.

I suppose I was still thinking of the socialists I’d grown up with, even within my own family. Decent people who’d read their Marx and Lenin, with deeply held views they could rationally (if unconvincingly) defend.

But the events of 2021 made it clear there were new kids on the block. Unread, incapable of rational debate, who could only deal in insults, defamation, and even death threats. (This episode was covered extensively on this blog.)

They wanted Communism . . . to give them freedom to do whatever they wanted!

It’s difficult to explain to anyone unfamiliar with those events how ugly some of these interlopers into adult debate really are. But here’s an attempt. This stuff’s water off a duck’s back to me, but like rabid animals they could turn on anyone.

Even a youngster who’d had the temerity to like a tweet of mine!

A key to understanding – or appreciating – this change between what I’d been familiar with and the new Woke left is the differing attitudes towards the working class.

Old-style socialists eulogised the working class. The Revolution would be achieved by them, and it would be for them. To the Wokies, and certainly after Brexit, the working class was the enemy, for the proletariat is socially conservative and rejects neo or cultural Marxism.

In simple terms: level-headed people in the real world want sod all to do with Wokism.

I’ve dealt here with YesCymru because it’s Plaid Cymru in a different wig. It was almost as if Plaid Cymru was using YesCymru, and other groups, to float some of the crazier ideas they weren’t quite ready to put in their election manifestos.

Just to familiarise us with them.

Admittedly, there was a guy up on the north coast claiming to represent ‘Labour for Independence’, though I suspect Bob Lloyd (bless him!) was founder and sole member.

What considers itself today to be the ‘broader independence movement’, includes not only Plaid Cymru, and YesCymru, but also fruitcake gangs like Melin Drafod, the Welsh Underground Network (should an ‘underground’ group have a social media presence?), and then there was mercifully short-lived Undod.

Did I say ‘broader‘! (Slaps wrist.) For these people independence is only worth having if it delivers a Marxist shit-hole implementing the Globalist-Woke agenda

And the same applies to Plaid Cymru.

The lone voice of sanity is Gwlad.

◊

A CLOSER LOOK AT PLAID CYMRU TODAY

The party that is Plaid Cymru today may be at its highest point in the polls, and predicted to win May’s Senedd elections, but I believe it’s also at a crossroads, perhaps a high-water mark it will never achieve again.

Such a bold declaration obviously requires an explanation. Let’s start with a few facts that I challenge anyone to dispute.

First, Plaid is riding high in the polls because enough voters belatedly realise that the Labour party in Wales (and beyond) is a bunch of lying, posturing, hypocritical incompetents. Many see Plaid as an acceptable alternative.

Second, there is a drive among the ‘progressive’ parties and the Globalist-run media to ‘Stop Reform!‘. As if we’re in some existential struggle with the forces of darkness. Plaid Cymru, seen as the best chance in Wales, will benefit hugely from tactical voting.

Neither of these can be considered positively voting for Plaid Cymru.

But switching from Labour to Plaid Cymru is pointless anyway. For closer inspection reveals that Plaid is very little different. On all the policies that have made Labour unpopular Plaid Cymru is in agreement, or would go further.

Let’s start with Net Zero. Plaid Cymru wants more investment in ‘renewables’ such as wind turbines. When confronted with local hostility to the exploitation of Wales and the blighting of our landscapes by foreign companies Plaid retreats to a position that argues against pylons – but still in favour of wind farms!

The only way to square this circle is to bury all the cables so we don’t have pylons. Which will incur further costs that will inevitably be passed on to commercial and domestic consumers. Result: Higher bills and even more job losses. Misery all round.

If you haven’t seen it yet, watch Plaid Cymru SM for Mid and West Wales, Cefin Campbell, and lead candidate for Carmarthenshire in the upcoming elections, get savaged at a recent public meeting organised by the CPRW. It’s painful.

On the issue of open borders and excessive immigration, party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, has said that Wales – or maybe parts of Wales – must have more immigrants.

The justification for this position seems to be “depopulation“, and the effect this has on schools and services. But what about jobs for the parents of the kids he wants to fill rural schools?

Depopulation, in almost any area, at any time, is invariably an economic issue. Which can only be remedied in one way.

And that is to build a rural economy to retain and draw back the indigenes.

Or else disguise the problem by bringing in a new population that will not seek work, in order to massage the population figures. This has been widely practiced in rural areas for some decades.

But ap Iorwerth wasn’t thinking about the retirees and good-lifers we’ve known. He was thinking of a new population from places more exotic than Edgbaston and Esher.

So there’ll be no economic strategy for the rural areas of Wales.

Then there’s the debilitating anti-white racism, and Islamophilia.

Listen to former Plaid Senedd Member Bethan Sayed complain about too many white people on Welsh language television channel S4C. I would guess that 98% of Welsh speakers are white. But who cares about silly facts?

More recently, she’s suggested that Welsh schoolgirls should wear hijabs.

The sensible approach would be to remind new arrivals and those from other backgrounds that the obligation is on them to adapt to the country they live in, rather than to take girls from the host community back to the 7th century and a foreign culture.

Any attempt by new arrivals to impose their ways, their values, on a host community, is a form of colonialism. I would expect Plaid Cymru, of all parties, to realise that.

The modern left’s flirtation with Islam reminds me of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. But this time the scorpion will get to the other side before stinging the frog.

(Fittingly, this story may have originated in medieval Persia as the scorpion and the turtle. Fitting, because in 1979 middle class leftists cheered the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran . . . then they were dealt with.)

With gender, it should go without saying that Plaid is right there, on message. Here’s another Senedd Member, Sioned Williams, imploring us to remember “transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.”

How many are there? And how do the numbers stack up to all the school shootings and other killings carried out in the USA by unhinged individuals claiming to be trans?

The fundamental problem is that Plaid Cymru has lost the common touch, and with it its sense of what people in the real world want. It’s no longer a case of, ‘What does Wales need?‘ Now it’s, ‘What have we been persuaded to believe Wales needs?‘.

Because what’s important for Plaid is meeting with the approval of those whose opinions they care about – the campaigners, the pressure groups, the minority interests. For Plaid’s politicians, staff, activists, move in closed circles, echo chambers where their own prejudices are confirmed and their errors reinforced.

Go back and watch Cefin Campbell floundering when confronted by real people voicing genuine concerns about something that really impacts on their lives.

◊

CONUNDRUM

Plaid Cymru has swallowed the Woke agenda, accepted the Globalist narrative, and is ready to play its part in implementing the New World Order. This means a world without borders, and of course, without nations.

The Globalist agenda to de-industrialise, destabilise, limit individual freedoms, control the food supply. Then take over completely.

Which is why the Globalists work with those who share that agenda, Neo/cultural Marxists and Islamists. Who also want to bring down the West.

Yet to its traditional supporters, Plaid Cymru pretends it still believes in Welsh identity and nationhood. While assuring its new members and activists that it wants open borders, Welsh schoolgirls in hijabs, and replacing St David’s Day with a day of mourning for ‘trans victims’.

Unless you’re a Cossack, riding two horses rarely ends well.

And the economy? Our essential services? Not important when there are gestures to be made, lobbies to be pandered to, and dangerous minorities to prioritise over your own people.

◊

CONCLUSION

The point I hoped to make earlier about Plaid Cymru is that the party I knew was more easy-going, more welcoming. It was a broad church rooted in the real Wales.

Despite my ‘colourful’ associations in the 1960s, and a conviction in 1968 for trying to decapitate a statue, I was still accepted as a candidate more than once for local elections in the early 1970s.

But since then, and certainly in the past decade, Plaid Cymru has become a hard left party. One in which no deviation from the Globalist-Woke agenda is tolerated.

This combination of Stalinist mindset and extreme Wokism will be the hallmarks of a Plaid Cymru government in the Senedd. Which is why anybody thinking of voting for the party in May, as an improvement on Labour, and better than the other options, would be making a huge mistake.

Think again!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Cairngorm Capital – The Kiss Of Death

On By JacIn Corruption, Globalism18 Comments

This is a follow-up to my previous piece on the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions Ltd (CES), owned by Cairngorm Capital. I suspect CES will be followed by linked companies that have also been taking advantage of the UK government’s ECO4 scheme, due to end in March.

Even before the scheme ends MPs are calling for an investigation into the shambles into which it degenerated. Demanding the Serious Fraud Office be involved.

Cairngorm is a private equity firm using leveraged buyouts. In other words, borrowing money to buy companies, loading the debt onto those companies, bumping up their value, then getting out as quickly as possible with as much loot as they can.

A business practice many regard as unethical, even a form of asset stripping.

◊

QUICK RECAP

Here’s the group of companies we’ve looked at in earlier posts.

Cairngorm’s arrival was soon followed by loans or Security Accession Deeds with Alter Domus Trustees (UK) Ltd. Which is in turn owned by Alter Domus DCM (UK) Ltd.

A Security Accession Deed is a legal document used to add new parties—such as borrowers, guarantors, or lenders—to an existing security trust deed or loan agreement.

Following the ownership trail brings us – according to latest accounts filed with Companies House – to the Eighth Cinven Fund. Cinven is another private equity firm.

This fund raised $14.5bn. Here’s the Cinven website. Most of the money came from pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. For example, $280m from New York State Common Retirement Fund. A further $167m from California State Teachers’ Retirement System.

It all links up when we see that Alter Domus is listed as one of Cinven’s ‘portfolio companies’. Cinven has offices across Europe, but prefers to be based in, and subject to the easy-going regulations of, Luxembourg and Guernsey.

BlackRock may even be involved.

Alter Domus, the leading global provider of tech-enabled fund services for the private equity, real assets and private debt sectors today appointed Mark Wiseman as Chairman. Mr. Wiseman is the former Head of Active Equities and Chairman of BlackRock’s Alternatives Business, as well as President & CEO of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

All that said, the latest accounts filed with Companies House by Alter Domus DCM (UK) Ltd tell us what you see below:

Cortland is based in Chicago. Which might explain Alter Domus US LLC. Also involved, and mentioned in this 2017 article, is Permira Funds. This latter entity is ultimately owned by Permira Holdings Ltd of Guernsey.

That’s enough links!

So . . . these Welsh companies pocket lots of money from the ECO4 scheme, get involved with Cairngorm Capital, and more money is pumped in from God knows where.

Which could mean that the pension fund to which Minnie Schwarz, retired teacher of Indian Falls, New York State, belongs, may have been used to do Mrs Jones’s cavity wall insulation in Llansamlet.

Cos it’s a small world.

◊

A LITANY OF ENGINEERED FAILURE

The first link in the chain after our local boys is obviously Cairngorm. And given that these Welsh companies are either already up Shit Creek or heading at full-speed in that direction, I decided to look at other companies with which Cairngorm has become involved.

Mindful of what I found on the Cairngorm Linkedin page.

Going through the Cairngorm website I turned up this list. So, naturally, I checked out these companies.

First, Bromborough Paints. And it’s quite an interesting tale.

Let’s start with this report from October 2022, telling us that Bromborough Paints had got involved with Cairngorm in March 2021. Then, after takeover, it rebranded to Paintwell.

And there were loans taken out. With Cairngorm acting as security agent.

Bromborough Paints had been in business for 60 years. The last accounts before the involvement of Cairngorm show a gross profit of £5.9m (Net profit £1.06m) on a turnover of £16.9m. And total equity of £12.4m.

Finally, Paintwell went into administration and was taken over by Brewers Decorator Centres. It’s alleged there is £30m in unsecured creditor claims.

‘Unsecured creditors’ are often redundant employees, local suppliers, the little people, not institutional lenders.

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Next it’s Building Supplies Online Ltd. If it’s this company, then it was dissolved in September 2023. Though this article from June 2025 mentions CMO Group Ltd, also in Plymouth. CMO began life in June 2021 with a share issue of £50,000.

Against CMO there are two outstanding charges with Clydesdale Bank.

Not sure what’s going on here but, rather like some women I’ve known, it don’t look good from any angle.

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Moving on to E-Zec Medical. (CH entry.) Where, by a long and tortuous ownership route (maybe a dozen companies!) we arrive at Emil W. Henry Jr of 717 Fifth Avenue, Suite 12a, New York, New York, United States. He took control in February 2025.

So who is he? Well, I found this:

Mr. Henry is the CEO and Founder of Tiger Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm focused on infrastructure investment opportunities. Prior to founding Tiger Infrastructure Partners, he was Global Head of the Lehman Brothers Private Equity Infrastructure businesses, where he oversaw global infrastructure investments

Here’s the website for Tiger Infrastructure Partners.

Along the way, while chasing the ultimate owner, I noticed loans from Glas Trust. A name that’s cropped up on this blog more than once. Control of Glas Trust probably rests with yet another private equity firm, Levine Leichtman.

The most recently filed accounts for EZEC do not paint a healthy picture.

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No 4 on the list is Grant & Stone Group. Which Cairngorm took over in November 2019. And things looked good, expansion followed.

Grant & Stone is now owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners III LP. I got that from the most recent accounts filed with Companies House, up to 31.12.2023. Companies House is still waiting for the latest accounts.

There are, predictably, two outstanding charges with Alter Domus Trustees (UK) Ltd.

I suspect Grant & Stone is another one about to bite the dust.

∼

Next up is Independent Builders Merchants Group Ltd. Here’s what Cairngorm has to say. Though it needs updating. Again, two outstanding charges with Alter Domus Trustees (UK) Ltd.

At the time of writing, the accounts are overdue with Companies House.

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Now we move on to MRO+ Solutions Group Ltd. This began life in December 2017 as Cairngorm Acquisitions 5 Bidco Ltd. It’s now owned by two-year-old Zinc Group Topco Ltd. Though ownership ultimately rests with Martin Green.

MRO is now losing money, and there are of course outstanding loans.

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Millbrook Healthcare is the next stop. Bought by Cairngorm in 2019. At the top of the Millbrook ownership pile is Millbrook Healthcare Holdings Ltd, owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP.

To my untrained eye, this is not a company in good financial health.

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Fasten your seatbelts as we look at National Timber Group. This report from just last November might explain where we’re going. However, it seems there was a very recent ‘rescue’ by a Welsh company.

But don’t get carried away, because top of the ownership pile here seems to be National Timber Group Topco Ltd. Owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners II LP. With accounts overdue with Companies House. The most recent accounts filed (y/e 31.12.2023) show turnover dropping and, after returning a small profit in 2022, a whopping loss of £22,738,3045 in 2023!

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On now to Sentry Doors. Sentry Doors Holdings Ltd was Dissolved in July last year. Though other companies in the group, such as Sentry Fire Safety Group Ltd, seem to retain the semblance of life. Though I’m not convinced.

Not clear which is the top company, but I am sure that everything is ultimately owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners II LP.

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The next entry is Verso Wealth Management. Things seem to be chugging along quite nicely. Though I’d watch for the two outstanding charges with Glas Trust.

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The penultimate case study is Whyte Bikes. Here’s the website.

This company was owned by Cairngorm until very recently, then sold to Irish company Causeway Capital. This entry below, listed under ‘Post Balance Sheet Events’ on the most recent accounts suggests the association with Cairngorm was not to Whyte’s advantage.

There are four outstanding charges, two with Cairngorm. So don’t build your hopes up.

∼

Finally, a comment to my blog directed me to this Linkedin post. It’s worth reading. As are some of the comments. Not least because it gives us yet another company with which Cairngorm Capital has been involved. So let’s check it out.

The company is Customade Group Ltd. Dissolved at the end of 2019. I suggest the name to focus on among the directors is Neil Andrew McGill. Here’s his Linkedin page. And here he is getting a special mention from Cairngorm in December 2018.

McGill is now Group CFO at Verso Wealth, which we looked at just now.

Note the four outstanding charges. Two with Cairngorm.

∼

So there you have it. The companies Cairngorm gets involved with are rarely unalloyed successes. In fact, there may not be one success among them.

There’s more chance of finding someone in the WRU hierarchy who understands rugby, and knows something about Wales, than there is of finding a Cairngorm success story.

But then, it all depends how you gauge ‘success’. Somebody, somewhere, is making a packet, but it won’t be the workers at the companies getting shafted by Cairngorm. Nor the small local suppliers left with unpaid bills.

◊

ASSET MANAGEMENT & PRIVATE EQUITY

The financial world in recent decades has seen the rise of those who make nothing, grow nowt, contribute little to the wealth of nations, but become extremely rich, and politically powerful.

I’m referring to asset managers, most of which are US based. The Big Three being BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. There are many, many others, like Alter Domus and Emil W Henry Jr.

They invest pension funds, personal savings, sovereign wealth funds, and money from other sources, with only one intention – making money. Which may be good news for Minnie Schwarz in Upstate New York, but is often bad news for those at the other end of the chain.

Which always seems to be us.

And while Cairngorm may protest they don’t invest in “distressed companies“, the companies they invest in soon end up in that state.

As for Consumer Energy Solutions, I’m convinced that what happened there couldn’t have been done without the cooperation of some of the directors at CES and the wider group.

So while I support MPs’ call for the Serious Fraud Office to look into the abuse of the ECO4 scheme, I also believe we need our own investigation in Wakes into the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions and the behaviour of the wider group.

Focusing in particular on certain prominent individuals.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Grab The Money And Run!

On By JacIn Corruption Bay, Public Funding, Welsh Business Community31 Comments

In this piece I’m going to look at the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions (CES) earlier this month, ask what could have gone wrong, and consider what the future might hold.

◊

BACKGROUND

There is a group of companies in south Wales involved in ‘retrofitting’ homes with cavity wall insulation, solar panels, loft insulation, heat pumps, etc., capitalising on the UK government’s ECO4 and related schemes.

They’ve experienced rapid growth in recent years. Most seem to be still in business, but the largest among them, in terms of turnover and profit, is in administration.

These companies are all owned by Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd, which is in turn owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP, part of the Cairngorm Capital group of Edinburgh.

I’ve written about these companies a couple of times. Most recently with, ‘Corruption Bay’ Living Up To Its Name? just last month. I urge you to read it so you understand better the background. Also, the histories of some of the principals involved.

It’s quite fascinating.

◊

CONSUMER ENERGY SOLUTIONS

Something I remarked on last month was the huge increase in turnover and profits being reported by CES in its returns to Companies House. Here’s a clip from the most recent accounts (to 31.01.2024) which will explain what I’m talking about.

By any criteria, in any sphere of business, these figures are remarkable. So where did all the money go? And why is CES in administration?

Go to the accounts and scroll down to Note 25, where you’ll see under ‘Related party transactions’ that £74,326,749 came as revenue from City Energy Network. You’ll also see mention of the companies we’ll be looking at in a minute.

The directors who must claim credit for these profits have all now left the company.

The three I wish to focus on are: Ahmud Saleem Furreed, Lewis Edward John, and Stephen Mark Williams. All joined CES 19.01.2016, when the company was formed. They left either in June or September last year.

What are these talents of the retrofitting business up to now?

Before proceeding, it might be worth throwing out there that Furreed is a Labour party donor. I can’t speak for the political affiliations of the other two.

Here’s the Companies House list of Furreed’s companies. I’ll ignore some of the older ones and start with Assure Connect Ltd, where we find the three I’ve just introduced.

This company was formed in September 2019, has filed no accounts, uses as its address the old Evening Post offices in Swansea, and is presumably facing strike-off.

Next up is Majasala Ltd. And now it gets interesting. Formed in March 2023 this company’s ‘investments’ jumped from zero in year ending 31.03.2024 to £4,443,982 in a year! Furreed is the only director and sole shareholder of this ‘management consultancy’.

Though thanks to ‘creditors’ Majasala returned a deficit of £447,961.

Now we turn to WRYL Ltd, also based in the SA1 Waterfront district. This outfit was born 10.03.2023 and buried unmourned 20.08.2024. During its brief existence Furreed, John and Williams were the directors. It filed no accounts.

But before its demise, WRYL was taken over, in March 2024, by View Investments Ltd. Where we find Nicholas Simon Pritchard! (More on Nick later.) View Investments was formed 19.10.2023, yet in is first accounts, 30.10.2024, Pritchard’s company could declare assets of £5,486,684.

Where could it have come from?

We now turn to Secret Squirrel Property Ltd. What a lovely name! Is it a reference to squirrels hiding their nuts? This company was launched 18.11.2024, so it hasn’t needed to file accounts yet.

But a confirmation statement tells us that each of the following owns 1,000 shares: Majasala Ltd (which we’ve already looked at), LEJ Holdings Ltd, and TWE Partnership Ltd. So let’s see what entertainment they can provide.

LEJ Holdings, launched 9 March 2023 is, as the initials suggest, the company of Lewis Edward John. The most recent accounts paint the following picture.

Total assets of over ten million pounds, all arriving between the end of March 2024 and the end of March 2025, but virtually all wiped out by creditors. With the  accounts saying only, “owed to related parties“.

TWE Partnership Ltd paints a similar picture. Some five million pounds in assets, most of it accounted for by ‘debtors’, with creditors leaving just £217,000 in the piggy-bank.

Back to Furreed, and his most recent venture, Claimwise (UK) Ltd. Launched three days before Christmas just past. Four directors; Furreed, a younger man of the same name, perhaps his son, plus his regular partners, John and Williams.

The younger Furreed has a real estate company, JFurreed Property Network Ltd, formed in August last year. And just before Christmas he started up JFurreed Holdings Ltd.

So . . . after the most recent accounts for Consumer Energy Solutions, and before it was announced that the company had gone belly-up, ∼£25,000,000 appeared in the accounts of companies run by the three individuals who’d been directors of CES, and another company that was transferred to Nick Pritchard.

Companies that had virtually, or even literally, nothing before these windfalls.

You can draw your own conclusions on these rags to riches stories.

UPDATE 03.02.2026, RUMBLING ON:

This article is from today’s Western Mail. It also appeared in the Daily Post.

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CAIRNGORM CAPITAL PARTHERS AND THE ‘LAST MAN STANDING’

Earlier I wrote, “These companies are all owned by Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd, which is in turn owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP, part of the Cairngorm Capital group of Edinburgh“.

But as the website tells us:

Cairngorm Capital is a specialist private equity firm providing investment capital, strategic insight and sector-specific expertise to leading UK companies. We invest in private mid-market companies that have the potential for further substantial growth.

Which suggests that Cairngorm can act as a conduit between investors looking for “companies that have the potential for further substantial growth” and companies that fit the bill and need investment.

And that might be the case with Consumer Energy Solutions and the linked companies in the group. But if so, then where might the money be coming from to begin with?

After doing work like this for a few years I’ve noticed that ‘background’ companies will often have a representative serve as a director and/or a senior officer within the company invested in to keep an eye on things.

With the retrofitting group we’re looking at, we saw Cairngorm Capital LLP had its representatives in the forms of Matt Anstead, former managing director, and Andrew Steele, managing partner.

Steele succeeded Anstead on the board of holding company Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd just before Anstead left to join Benoil Services Ltd.

When we look at who’s left in the companies subordinate to the Topco, we see one name, the sole director, and that name is Robert Benjamin Nathaniel Brodie. So it’s worth asking if Brodie might be representing someone else. And if so, then who?

One possibility – and admittedly I’m flying a kite here – is the company he left in March 2024, Ensera UK Bidco Ltd. Which for some reason is not listed in his Linkedin page.

This company is owned by Stark UK Topco (Guernsey) Ltd, owner of Jewson, the builders supplier. Which is where it gets a bit messy. For Google AI tells us:

Stark UK Topco (Guernsey) Ltd is part of the larger Stark Group, a major building materials distributor, and is ultimately owned by CVC Capital Partners Fund VII, a global private equity firm that acquired the STARK Group in 2021. CVC manages investments for various global institutions, including pension plans, meaning it’s owned by many investors worldwide. 

And there seems to be little doubt about it. “Fund VII will have over €16 billion of equity capital available to invest. It is the largest European fundraising on record.”, says Simpson Thacher.

Though there has been the odd hiccup.

We are clearly dealing with major investors. And serious money.

But the point is that Brodie was tied up with this lot, then joined the retrofitting companies we’re looking at. So let’s look at when Brodie joined the companies that were out in the field, as it were, doing the work. Which excludes the ‘Dragon’ companies. (Click on date for details.)

In all these companies he is now the sole director. After leaving Ensera UK Bidco Ltd, ultimately owned by CVC Capital partners Fund VII, on March 22, 2024.

Diversity Network Holdings Ltd 28.05.2024.

Advance Energy Services Ltd 28.05.2024.

City Energy Facilities Management Ltd 28.05.2024.

Simply Electric Metering Ltd 28.05.2024.

City Training Group Ltd 28.05.2024.

Consumer Energy Solutions Ltd 31.05.2024.

City Energy Network Ltd 24.06.2024.

Heatforce (Wales) Ltd 01.07.2024.

Still clutching the string of my ever-so-pretty kite . . . Robert Benjamin Nathaniel Brodie could be representing those behind CVC Capital Partners Fund VII, who’ve been investing in these Welsh companies through Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP.

If I’m wrong, then why did Brodie get involved in the first place, and why is he the last man in the wheelhouse when everybody else has abandoned these sinking ships?

UPDATE 20.01.2026: A fresh comment to my earlier post on these companies suggests that getting involved with Cairngorm often results in going bust. So I checked. And it’s true. Here’s what I put out on X.

◊

WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

Earlier I mentioned Nicholas Pritchard, Bangor City ultra, businessman. To help you appreciate what a busy boy he’s been, I compiled a list of companies he’s been involved with for the piece I put out last month. Here it is.

There have been a few developments.

When writing last month’s piece I was particularly intrigued by Pritchard’s involvement with the company Quidos of Bath which, as you’ll see from the image below, provides both training and accreditation.

Some might think that a company wanting to take advantage of government schemes, and then send out untrained – but ‘accredited’ – operatives to do sub-standard work, would find a company like Quidos attractive.

There is now a long list of Quidos companies, some even giving Welsh addresses. Such as Quidos AI Ltd, Quidos Capital Ltd, Quidos Facilities Ltd, and Quidos Protect Ltd. These new companies or acquisitions were launched, or changed name, less than a year ago.

Control is often exercised through Quidos Holdings, or another Pritchard company giving an Essex address, where Quidos Group Ltd is based. Just look at who’s funding Quidos Group – Pritchard himself and View 2 Investments Ltd.

The latter, a company set up in October 2024, is due to be struck off by Companies House for not filing a confirmation statement.

Think about it . . . View 2 Investments, set up 29.10.2024, is lending money to another Pritchard company, Quidos Group, formed April 2024, and giving a Romford, Essex address, to buy substantial semi-detached properties in Holyhead!

Another Pritchard company giving an Essex address is Hathaway House Holdings Ltd.

In the address given for a number of Pritchard companies you will have seen the name ‘Bodlondeb’ a few times. This is the fine old council building in Conwy, now leased to Quidos Investments Ltd.

I wonder what Pritchard has planned for the old pile?

Enough! I’m going giddy.

◊

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Let’s think again about the 25 million quid we looked at earlier; will Furreed, John, Williams and Pritchard really be keeping it, or is it going somewhere else? Maybe after they’re taken their cut?

And let’s not forget they have shares.

The three CES directors were paying themselves big salaries, and also paying CES money into their private companies. It was probably the same throughout the group. And “close family members” were recruited as “subcontractors“.

But beyond the financial, there are other considerations.

Not least, the customers left in the lurch. With shoddy work that needs fixing, or jobs that have simply been left unfinished. Disgruntled customers even have a website. Here’s how it reported ‘The Collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions‘.

One homeowner with whom we are in contact felt forced to sell their home after the devastating impact of a CES install. Another was moved into a care home pending restoration of their heating. And another family with an ill child claims to have been temporarily rehoused by their local authority

We’ve looked at the possible role of Quidos in training and accrediting those who worked for CES. But what about TrustMark, which seems to be funded and owned by the very companies it should be monitoring?

And local authorities that put companies like CES on their ‘Approved’ list? We know that Ahmud Saleem Furreed is a Labour party donor in the Merthyr Tydfil & Aberdare constituency, are there other political connections?

The reason for the collapse of CES and the other companies is almost certainly the impending end of the ECO4 scheme, scheduled for March 31. With so much public money having been allocated, there should be a forensic investigation of whether the money was well spent.

Seeing as we’ve been looking at Welsh companies that operate across the UK, and have gained a bad reputation, for themselves and for Wales, it should be a matter of concern for our politicians. And our media.

But our politicians are virtue-signalling clowns who spend most of their time trying to outdo each other in Wokery. While our media regurgitates their vapid utterances, trying to make us believe such laughable posturing will do anything to improve the real world we poor mortals inhabit.

There should now be a thorough investigation into what went wrong with CES and associated companies. But it won’t happen. There may be attempts to put right the botched work, the unfinished jobs – which will use up more public money.

But otherwise, there’ll be little more than hand-wringing and platitudes.

That’s due to the fact that too many of those who should have been monitoring the activities of these companies, protecting the public interest, were either negligent, or complicit.

Because that, gentle reader, is the state we’re in.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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