Foundation Scam Supporting A Tower Of Bullshit

There’s been a two-week gap since my previous opus, A Case Study In ‘Rewilding’; so here’s a pre-Christmas treat for you to get your teeth into before those Brussel sprouts. Yum! yum!

THE FOUNDATION SCAM

Here, I am of course referring to the ‘climate crisis’. It’s foundational because if you buy into this, or even if you just silently accept it, then you help erect the ‘Tower of Bullshit’ that’s built upon it.

In this ‘tower’ you’ll find net zero, behavioural control, loss of personal freedoms, open borders, wealth transfer, anti-white racism, personal carbon allowances, and a host of other evils that George Orwell might have warned us about if he’d lived long enough to write a sequel to 1984.

The evils we see around us, the ways in which everything becomes more expensive, and our lives more miserable, can only be imposed if enough of us accept we need to make sacrifices to combat (they love that word!) their ‘climate crisis’.

Because if we buy into the climate scam then we’ll dutifully vote for uniparty politicians and parties controlled by those who dreamed up and now profit from the scam.

STORM DARRAGH BLOWS AWAY THE COBWEBS (TOGETHER WITH THE SOLAR PANELS UNDER WHICH THE SPIDERS WERE HIDING)

Among the most obvious measures being promoted to fight the ‘climate crisis’ is renewable energy. This usually means wind turbines and solar panels.

A truly disastrous combo.

On the plus side, Wales sees a lot of wind. What we don’t get a lot of is sunshine. Which is why solar panels are an insult to our collective intelligence.

To begin with, solar ‘arrays’ take up a hell of a lot of space, often good agricultural land. Which then gets poisoned. Even the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ admitted as much in this report from March 2023.

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The problems mentioned occur if the panels stay in place, but as we saw with Storm Darragh the other week, they don’t always stay in place. For the winds caused chaos at Porth Wen, near Cemaes, in the northern part of Ynys Môn.

It was soon reported in the Daily Mail, and the New Civil Engineer. But it was a full six days before the ‘National Newspaper of Wales’ got around to mentioning it.

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The problem is of course that Ynys Môn sees a lot of wind. That wind often comes straight off the Atlantic. To make matters worse, the island is relatively flat, with no sheltering hills.

So you might think it’s a good place for wind turbines. Well, no.

For as the New Civil Engineer also reported, just nearby, at Llanbadrig, a wind turbine had its blades ripped off.

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And yet, despite the obvious problems, there are plans for even bigger solar installations on Ynys Môn.

I heard of other incidents where solar installations broke up, and panel parts took wing. One incident involved Aberystwyth University’s £2.9m solar farm at Penglais.

An investment that’s inspired . . .

Four new degrees . . . International Relations and Climate Change, Biology and Climate Change, Business and Climate Change and English and Climate Change.

English and Climate Change” must have a module, ‘Selling this crap to the plebs’.

For those unfamiliar with the area . . . Penglais is a hill above the town, perfect for catching the wind coming off Cardigan Bay. Though not so good for ground-mounted solar panels, which positively invite levitation.

Penglais solar farm circled. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Even if they reach the grand old age of 20, wind turbines and solar panels will never ‘repay’ the environmental damage they caused in being created and installed.

In addition, massive subsidies are demanded. And when there isn’t enough of our money on offer, developers go off in a huff. As was the case recently in Denmark.

Governments are then advised to come up with “healthier pricing” . . . by the wind industry. If it was up to me, I’d tell them to . . .

The Danish Government must now quickly . . . adapt their auction design to market realities. The industry needs healthier pricing and fairer risk allocation

Once installed, turbines and panels offer unreliable, intermittent supply – that has to be backed up by something more reliable; usually nuclear, or fossil fuels.

And as we’ve seen with Storm Darragh – which was nothing out of the ordinary – ‘renewables’ can’t cope with serious wind.

In fact, turbines have to be switched off in anything other than a strong breeze. And of course they produce nothing in windless conditions. Solar panels obviously generate nothing at night, or when there’s no sun, or if they’re covered in snow.

Which means that on those cold, overcast, windless winter days we experience so often, ‘renewables’ contribute bugger all to the grid.

So the idea that a country can rely 100% on ‘renewables’ is utterly insane. Yet this is what ‘Mad Monk’ Miliband is demanding. Though he’s being paid handsomely to push this bullshit by those who’ll benefit.

BOLLOCKS IN THE WIND

If we’re talking of wind turbines, then we can’t ignore Bute Energy; maybe the biggest player in Wales, with many wind farms planned, plus solar installations, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), even its own power lines.

And of course, Bute is well connected with Labour in Wales, having created sinecures for party insiders. Then there’s the Danish connection, with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. Which matches funders with Bute projects.

A 25% stake in CIP is held by another Danish outfit, Vestas, and on the Vestas board is former Danish PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Alternatively known as Mrs Kinnock, for she’s the wife of Stephen Kinnock, MP for Aberavon, son of former Labour leader Neil, and the late Glenys, for many years a MEP.

(Talking of Vestas, here’s a very recent mishap with a new Vestas wind turbine in Scotland. And there have been others.)

Mrs Kinnock has her own company, Thorningschmidt Global Ltd, and she also sits on the board of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

The address given for her company is Acre House, 11/15 William Road, London NW1 3ER. Other companies at that address appeared in the Paradise Papers. This is the UK end of Rontec Group (Jersey) Ltd, the empire of Sir Gerald Ronson OBE. For those old enough to remember, Ronson was one of ‘The Guinness Four’.

Mrs Kinnock’s also worked with the World Health Organisation and the Trilateral Commission.

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I’ve made the point before that the principals involved in Bute came from property company Parabola. The holding company for the Bute empire is Windward Global Ltd. This is controlled by Oliver James Millican, son of Peter John Millican, chair of Parabola.

Is Bute just a front for Parabola? I ask, because one might need to be very generous to believe that four young executives, including the boss’s son, cut their ties with Parabola at the same time to take a leap into the unknown.

I just wrote “four young executives“, which may confuse some of you familiar with the principal players. For in addition to Millican Jr the other ex Parabola people prominent with Bute are usually Lawson Steele and Stuart George.

But there was a fourth departure from Parabola, Barry Woods. If you look at the list of related companies, you’ll see that Steele, George and Woods each had a ‘Windward’ company formed for them 31.05.2018.

Woods’ company was dissolved in September 2019 when, I assume, he broke with Bute.

If you go down that list you’ll see Windward JR Ltd. Those initials stand for John Reilly. He’s the Project Manager for Bute Energy, and a bit of a joker. For here he is quoted by NorthWalesLive in May 2023.

John Reilly, project manage . . . said: “As a nation we’re in a Climate Emergency, and a cost-of-living crisis.

The cost-of-living crisis is partly caused by Net Zero, forced on us to fight a non-existent ‘Climate Emergency’, yet Reilly tries to turn facts on their head. It’s too late for this bullshit, pal. Too many people now see through it.

The latest accounts for Windward JR, which became available to view earlier this month, show a remarkable upturn in fortunes.

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A company that never had more than a few hundred quid in the kitty now has over a million. With the filed accounts offering no explanation for this windfall. So where might it have come from?

Answers on the usual postcard.

UPDATE 22.12.2024: The accounts for Windward LS have become available on the Companies House website. They show the arrival of roughly £5 million. We can expect a similar amount to appear in Windward SG Ltd. And probably a larger sum in some other company for Oliver James Millican.

UPDATE 23.12.2024: The accounts for Windward SG Ltd (to 31.03.2024) are also now available. They show an unexplained increase in Assets from the previous year’s £87,950 to £4,722,225.

A WOMAN OF SOME IMPORTANCE

In June ’23 I put out Taking Control, Of Everything, where I tried to explain how, through funding, appointments, and other means, the ‘Welsh Government’ seems to take over bodies that should be non-political.

In particular, I drew attention to recent changes at the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) and the Football Association of Wales (FAW).

I mentioned Dr Carol Bell who, according to this bio from Chapter Zero (one of her many directorships), leads (the FAW’s) sustainability strategy“. Which, given how ‘sustainability’ operates in the wider world, will probably bankrupt Welsh soccer.

Since I wrote last year Dr Bell has taken up a number of new appointments.

In January she started Aileni Ltd, with crachach luminary Geraint Talfan Davies, and Geoffrey Hunt of Arup. In March, she became Treasurer of Glamorgan County Cricket Club. Then she got involved in three archaeological bodies. And on April 23 Dr Bell joined Bute’s Windward Energy Ltd.

She is a non-executive director of Norwegian Bonheur ASA. A non-executive director of Cyprus-based  platinum and chrome mining company Tharisa. Dr Bell’s Market Screener bio mentions Hafren Scientific Ltd, another mining and drilling company, which for some reason isn’t mentioned in her Linkedin profile. Strange, seeing as she’s the chair.

Hafren Scientific has three outstanding loans with the Development Bank of Wales (DBW), of which Dr Bell was a director until a year ago.

The first DBW loan was made in December 2014. And in that very same month Dr Bell joined both Hafren Scientific and BlackRock Energy and Resources Income Trust Plc. (Though it appears she left BlackRock in March.)

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I used to think that Dr Bell and others worked for the ‘Welsh Government’, pushing the Globalist agenda. Now I wonder if she works for a higher authority to ensure Welsh politicos follow orders.

And as we’ve seen, earlier this year, and within weeks of leaving(?) BlackRock, Dr Bell joined Anglo-Scottish investment company Bute Energy. Intriguing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

John Reilly’s “Climate Emergency“, was concocted by very rich individuals and corporate entities wanting to exercise political and social control through uniparty political systems in Europe and North America.

Their strategy is to destabilise and weaken the West from within, thereby making the Globalist takeover easier. Using tactics like DEI, ESG, CRT, Net Zero, open borders, and a comprehensive rejection of Western traditions and values.

To promote this strategy Globalists have recruited environmentalists, Islamists, vegans, sexual deviants, and of course, the Quisling Left. For all the measures designed to weaken Western societies are promoted as ‘progressive’, with critics dismissed as ‘far right’, etc., etc.

Of course, politicians come and go, whereas other institutions and structures are more enduring, even self-perpetuating. Higher education and the civil service might come into this category.

Academe is obviously in the service of the Globalist agenda, and it’s long been rumoured that senior levels of the UK civil service have been ‘captured’. More than that, it’s said they – not the politicians – now make (or convey) major policies.

It can be seen in Wales. I’ve chronicled the assault on Welsh farming for a decade or more, and it’s usually led by civil servants sent down from London by Defra. Which is believed to have devised (or conveyed) the Starmer regime’s inheritance tax.

CONCLUSION

Matters are coming to a head. The lunacies that have prevailed for too long are in retreat. We shall see major change in 2025. And it may not be bloodless.

The German government has effectively fallen, there will be elections in February. Already moves are afoot to stop the ‘populist’ AfD from winning. In France, De Gaulle’s Fifth Republic totters from one crisis to another, the country run by pygmies not fit to utter the great man’s name.

Across the West, Globalism and Cultural Marxism (Wokeism) are in retreat, and people realise the threat posed by Islam. Change is coming.

Here in the UK there’s talk of cancelling some of next year’s local council elections in England due to ‘reorganisation’. The truth is, Reform must be stopped.

As I write this, it’s rumoured Canadian PM Justin Trudeau will resign. Whether he does, or whether he clings on until next year’s elections, he’s finished.

Down in Argentina, President Milei has taken a chainsaw to bureaucracy and socialist corruption – and the country is thriving.

And finally, it’s just a month until Donald J Trump becomes the 47th president of the United States of America. And then things are really going to change.

I’m looking forward to 2025 so very, very much.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

    Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

A Case Study In ‘Rewilding’

In a sense, this is a follow-up to last week’s offering, Budget Boost For Rewilders And Globalists. This week, I’m looking at an example of ‘rewilding’ which, on closer inspection, turns out to be a tourism business – receiving funding for posing as a rewilding project.

I’ll fit this into a more general evaluation of ‘rewilding’, and what it really means.

Incidentally, last week’s piece about Tir Natur’s project got a response from ‘Welsh Government’-funded Nation.Cymru and Stephen Price, its Senior Reporter.

Price has a background “working in the third and charity sectors“, and a “voluntary role as a Keep Wales Tidy Litter Champion“. Which gives us another link between that charity and Tir Natur.

SETTING THE SCENE

This week, we’re mid-way between Abergavenny and Monmouth, the region I’ve dubbed ‘Abergavennyshire’ due to an influx of ‘progressives’ from the hell-holes of ‘Metro-Land’ and elsewhere.

(It should go without saying that Stephen Price lives in Abergavennyshire.)

Despite its distance from Corruption Bay, our politicians care more for these recent arrivals than for Welsh people. Certainly, that’s my conclusion when I consider the funding and other patronage bestowed on Abergavennyshire.

Perhaps a reward for this ingress strengthening Labour’s position as the largest party on Monmouthshire county council.

It’s here we find the Abergavenny Food Festival, Coleg Soros, Brecon Jazz Festival, Hay Festival, the many bodies arguing farmers are killing the Wye and the Usk. And of course – Gilestone farm, and the Green Man Festival. Etc., etc.

Map of Abergavennyshire. You’ll see it’s a cross-border unit because many of the new arrivals feel unsafe with thoughts of borders and nations.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Our destination today is not easy to reach. There’s no A road in the vicinity. Instead, it’s the B4233, then a track off that road, and after you’ve gone up a-ways, it’s another track to the destination.

This off-road excursion brings us to the The Grange Project. Run by Tom Constable and his wife Chloe, who bought the farm in April last year for £1.875m, without need of a loan or a mortgage.

But as the entry on Rewilding Britain tells us, there’s a lot more going on:

The vision for the site includes developing new nature-based tourism, including log cabins, alongside education and wellbeing programmes hosted in a beautiful converted barn on site. Chloe intends to use her background in clinical psychology to run courses focusing on the systemic resilience required to address the climate and biodiversity crises, while Tom will use his background in business to support ecopreneurs as they set-up and thrive on site.

Those who’ve been brainwashed, worked into a frenzy over a non-existent ‘climate crisis’, will be able to come to The Grange for treatment. At a cost, of course.

The Grange Project also does podcasts – in fact, Tom Constable is a professional – and here we find another link with last week’s piece.

You may remember Dan Ward, one of those involved with Tir Natur, was also working with North Star Transition. North Star was created by Jyoti Banerjee, who starred on the Grange podcast last week.

Small world, innit!

A CLOSER LOOK

Those who’ve given themselves nightmares from reading too much Monbiot won’t be the only visitors, for The Grange also offers corporate away days. Where the IT department of Global Gizmos Inc can come gaze at trees and stuff.

Better still . . . for the trifling sum of £10,000 you can enjoy “two bespoke corporate away days“. Read more in the Corporate Partnership Proposal.

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I tell you what . . . for half that (in ready cash) you can have two corporate away days in my back garden, There’s flower beds, and a tree, and, er, grass, and if it’s wildlife you’re after then I’ll get our cat to put in an appearance.

If it’s raining you can sit in the conservatory. The missus will lay on a cuppa and biccies. Can’t say fairer than that, squire.

I have no doubt that the companies turning up for these eco-jollies will be claiming tax deductions, which will contribute to the ‘black hole’ in the UK accounts, and be used to justify freezing pensioners this winter.

That’s the ‘circular economy’ you keep hearing about.

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And sure enough, in the Corporate Partnership Proposal we find predictable ‘quotations’.

One from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), that outfit launched by Nazis using environmentalism as the new way to seize power and cull the untermensch.

The other is attributed to ‘Native American Wisdom’. (Are people still falling for that bollocks!) Here’s some wisdom from a source as much Native American as the one quoted: ‘Big Chief Jac-on-Blog say: “Environmentalists speak with forked tongue“‘.

The Grange website also offers, “our own glamping cabins and bespoke bell tents“, and elsewhere, “off grid escapes” in caravan-type structures made by Herefordshire chippie Simon Whitfield.

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Whitfield runs The Tiny Home Company. When I tried to find it on the Companies House website I drew a blank. So I went back to the website and scrolled down the homepage, where, in the smallest font imaginable, was: “The Tiny Home Company is a trading name of WB Capital Ventures Limited“.

But it was only by copying and posting it into Word that I was able to read that. Why so small? Very odd.

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WB Capital Ventures Ltd was formed as recently as July, and I assume ‘WB’ stands for Whitfield Brothers, because the two directors are Simon Peter Whitfield and his older brother(?) John Robert Whitfield.

The twelve shares split 8 – 4 in favour of the older brother. Who maybe put up the cash. He has over a million pounds sitting in the bank account of his other company.

And talking of money . . .

In its short life The Grange Project has already trousered £26,650 from the Coetiroedd Bach scheme. I guarantee there’ll be more grants in future.

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I’ll end this section with a brief look at what’s registered with Companies House. There are two companies.

One’s Wild Grange Farm Ltd, launched as recently as September 5, with the Constables as the only directors and shareholders.

And then there’s the Community Interest Company, formed in August, Wild Grange CIC. Again, Tom and Chloe Constable are the only directors (or members) and shareholders. Which I found odd. Because with a CIC I would expect to see others named, representing the community that will benefit.

This is usually people in the vicinity. So I went to the Companies House website entry for Wild Grange CIC and the Certificate of Incorporation. Most of which is pro forma.

Though towards the end it sets out who might benefit from the CIC:

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Which is fair enough, and what I expected. But what I read earlier in the document has me thinking. I refer to Rewilding Britain, as the ‘asset locked body‘.

A worst case scenario might be . . . the farm title is transferred to the CIC, which liquidates, and Rewilding Britain takes over The Grange.

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In the clip above, the Charity number given is that for Rewilding Britain. Whereas the address is for The Trust Partnership (and associated companies), which I assume drew up the arrangement.

The mystery is company number 08943330. For it refers to Mental Mastery Ltd, of Bournemouth, that dissolved 18 months after being formed, without filing anything.

I’ll assume it’s a typo. But if not . . .

THOUGHTS ON REWILDNG

Let me be clear, there might be a role for small-scale rewilding such as we’re asked to see at The Grange.

Thinking again of my back garden . . . if I let it run wild it would sprout plants, flowers; attract butterflies and other insects, some small mammals, maybe a foraging hedgehog.

But once we talk about pine marten, beaver, wild boar, deer, wild ponies, ancient cattle, then we need more land than even the 1,000 acres Tir Natur is hoping to buy.

Because without large areas for these animals to roam and live naturally, problems such as stress, over-grazing, and in-breeding will occur.

Of course, food can be brought in, and fresh bloodlines can be introduced; but if ‘rewilding’ doesn’t create a self-perpetuating ecosystem, as in nature, then that defeats the whole object of the exercise.

One answer might be linking separated projects with ‘corridors’. I mention this because the idea features regularly in rewilding fantasies. Such as one in Cornwall called Tor to Shore. (Does that ring a bell?)

While Helman Tor sits near the top of the Par River, areas downstream are surrounded by farmland, where the project will partner with local farmers to tackle agricultural pollution and create ‘wildlife corridors’ – areas of habitat that . . . connect with other nature-rich sites, allowing wildlife to thrive beyond the reserve’s boundaries.

Rewilding Britain got its ass kicked for its involvement in a similarly-named colonialist land grab. It may be treading more carefully now, yet it’s deeply involved at The Grange, and seems to have been involved from the outset.

But how well do animals understand ‘corridors’? Not well at all; so that would mean mile after mile of fencing . . . which will inevitably get broken.

Mrs Jones will wake one morning to find aurochs feasting on her prize geraniums. And, then, when she goes out to shoo them away, and one of the buggers tramples her . . .

Or maybe it’ll be the consolation prize of tauros.

Auroch. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I haven’t mentioned predators like wild cat, lynx, and wolf. All of which appear in rewilders’ literature. Yet they have to be present, for without the balance created by their natural predators introduced prey animals will need to be regularly culled.

As deer are culled in the Highlands, due to the absence of wolves. While a shortage of prey animals will see predators going elsewhere to get a meal. (‘Look out, Mrs Jones!‘)

Which means that for a rewilding project to be viable it would need 20,000 or more self-contained acres. There would need to be enough food for a range of herbivores and foragers, whose numbers would be kept in check by predators – as in the wild.

In a small country like Wales we just don’t have that land to spare. Not if we; a) want a farming industry and b) let people access the countryside.

Which brings us to a very fundamental question, one confronting us at Grange Farm: ‘What is the real purpose of rewilding?’ This article (February 2023) asks a very similar question, and gives some disturbing answers.

A bit leftist for my tastes but it still makes good points about farms being lost, and corporate investment through middle men, agents, and front organisations.

Organisations such as Rewilding Britain, involved with three-year-old Nattergal. Below is Nattergal director and CEO Archie Struthers, panellist at Rewilding Britain’s Blue Earth Summit last month.

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Nattergal is owned by Lansdowne Developed Markets Master Fund Limited of the Cayman Islands.

One day Archie’s a ruthless investments guru, next day he’s saving the planet. These things happen. After Christmas I’m joining the Socialist Workers Party. (Yes, really!)

Archie’s a busy man for Nattergal, and the company’s mystery owner. Let’s look at three recent ventures. Starting with High Fen Wildland, where we read:

High Fen will offer wellness, eco-tourism, educational and research opportunities to provide opportunities for people as well as wildlife.

Wildlife comes last. Almost an afterthought.

The other two are Boothby Wildland, where, “Nattergal hopes to generate revenues through the sale of ecosystem services (natural capital)“. And Harold’s Park Wildland, that “will generate income from the sale of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) units and corporate sponsorship, and will support nature based tourism and recreation“.

Archie also has a couple of relatively new companies of his own, registered in Glasgow. Ardmaddy Ventures Ltd, named for his Argyll estate; and Nature Based Investment Solutions Ltd.

Make no mistake, corporate ‘investors’ are circling Welsh family farms like vultures.

There was an example just last week of farmers being ‘cold called’ by a company named Property Vision. Acting on behalf of anonymous ‘investors’.

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Rewilding Britain is involved with three projects in Wales in addition to The Grange; they are:

Cefn Garthenor, in Ceredigion. Gilfach, in Powys. Wilder Pentwyn, also in Powys.

They have three things in common:

1/ They were once homes to Welsh families.

2/ They are no longer working farms producing food.

3/ They have received substantial ‘Welsh Government ‘ funding

Always worth remembering when some clown gets all misty-eyed over ‘rewilding’.

CONCLUSION

On a fundamental level, The Grange Project makes no environmental sense due to the increased traffic emissions as engines struggle with gradients and rough tracks to even reach the place.

More environmental damage than the working farm it replaced. Unless of course you want to be really stupid and introduce the threat posed to us all by farting cows. (Fortunately, ‘Dr’ Bill Gates has a solution.)

The Grange Project is clearly a tourism project and a ‘wellness’ retreat for hysterical Guardian readers raking in extra money by presenting itself as a rewilding project. Like those we looked at earlier linked with Archie Struthers.

I believe genuine rewilding is incompatible with daily visits from the public, especially noisy children, and middle management on a raucous day out. Making it all rather phoney.

Especially if there’s ‘natural capital’ and ‘biodiversity net gain’ involved.

And let’s remember that The Grange is less than 100 acres in total. From what I can see, a few trees have been planted and pigs allowed to muddy up some fields. Is that really ‘rewilding’?

If so, then why aren’t we all offered money to let our gardens run wild? A few thousand of us, in Wales alone, could make a big contribution to the environment and biodiversity.

Because, gentle reader, ‘rewilding’, with the involvement of outfits like BlackRock, is not about saving the planet; it complements legislation and other measures intended to undermine farming, thereby freeing up land for acquisition and investment.

‘Rewilding’ is just the prettied-up face of the Globalist land grab.

Once you understand that – everything else makes sense!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Budget Boost For Rewilders And Globalists

This post is about a group I’ve mentioned before, Tir Natur. It’s not a big outfit, it was only launched in 2022. I’m writing about it again because my attention has been drawn to what might be a major development.

Which coincides with the UK government’s decision to make most family farms liable for punitive inheritance taxes. This measure will leave many farming families with little alternative but to sell up.

Which is almost certainly the intention.

For the Treasury only expects to benefit by £520m a year from this legislation. Inconsequential when set against the harm that’ll be caused to the rural economy; and in Wales, the damage inflicted on a culture and a way of life.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Here’s the Tir Natur website piece on the development. It reads:

An opportunity has presented itself to Tir Natur. A significant area of land which has been deemed unsuitable for commercial forestry and the dominance of purple-moor grass and bracken undermine its grazing value.

But is it being grazed now, or not? If it is, then do the graziers agree with that evaluation? I ask because later we’re told: “Overgrazing over the years has restricted natural regeneration and reduced not only the ecological, but agricultural value of the land“.

And yet, things can’t be that bad. For the place seems to be swarming with wildlife; on the ground, in the trees, in the water, and above our heads.

A skylark . . . over our heads . . . whilst a male roe deer, springs up . . . Pine marten are known to be neighbours whilst red squirrel are seen here . . . Otter . . . sandpipers and goosanders. Red Kite and buzzard hunt for . . . small mammals in the thick tussocks . . . osprey patrol the water . . . trout and pike abound.

Despite this picture painted of a Cambrian Eden, a paragraph or two later we’re asked to: “Imagine, then, a new approach. Ancient Welsh cattle and ponies enter the land“.

So there must be good grazing available, just not for sheep and cattle.

It also talks of pigs “disturbing tussocks” . . . presumably the tussocks wherein dwell the small mammals providing prey for kite and buzzard.

The section outlining Tir Natur’s plans concludes with looking forward to: “Ground nesters such as golden plover and curlew make their triumphant return“. How will they cope with the trampling horses and cattle, or the gobble-up-everything porkers?

From the area Tir Natur says it wants to buy. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

What is graphically described is a flourishing ecosystem, so I can’t see how Tir Natur’s vision improves on that. Am I missing something?

Maybe in writing this glorious example of bucolica the writer got carried away and ended up contradicting himself, or herself, or theyself.

And let’s bear in mind that this land could be bought by a commercial entity from outside of Wales. The new owner could then make lots of money from allowing Tir Natur to graze reindeer or anything else they fancy.

NEW ARRIVALS

When I looked at Tir Natur a couple of years back there were four trustees (of the charity), but there have been changes. One of the founders, Stephen Jenkins, is no longer a trustee, but serves as a Development Officer. Here he is with the rest of The Team.

He may be one of only two Welsh people still involved. The other being Gwenan Jenkins-Jones. She is also a trustee at Keep Wales Tidy.

This is a body becoming increasingly political, with a Woke and ‘inclusive’ emphasis. Explained by ‘Welsh Government’ funding trebling from £1.52m in 2019 to £4.71m in 2023.

(It should go without saying that Andrew Stumpf, chair of Keep Wales Tidy, lives in the White Highlands of Abergavennyshire. A sink hole for Welsh public funding)

When we look at the changes in personnel at Tir Natur it tells us by whom and for what purpose Tir Natur has been captured.

First up is David Kilner. Who’s also involved with Climate Cymru. It was this lot’s BAME section that produced the internationally ridiculed recommendation to ban ‘racist’ dogs from the countryside.

Yet another outfit in receipt of Kilner’s wisdom is Natur am Byth. Here’s a piece he penned in April last year for Friends of the Earth.

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The other member of The Team is Dan Ward. Who has worked, and may still work, for Natural Resources Wales. But for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on his link to North Star Transition (NST).

To give you a better understanding of where we’re heading, go to this post of mine from a year ago and scroll down to the section ‘North Star Transition’. Below is a clip from the NST website I used back then.

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And here’s the full article, written by North Star co-founder Jyotir Banerjee. It begins: “Large-scale investment funding is missing in action when it comes to transforming landscapes.”  (“Missing in action”! Are we at war?)

A more recent article on the NST website, by Jérôme Tagger, warns that:

There is an urgent need for large-scale funding of nature-based solutions across many landscapes if the UK is to achieve net zero, environmental, social and health transformations.

So who’s Jérôme Tagger?

Well, he’s American, based in Brooklyn, New York, and he may still be hiding under his duvet after Donald Trump’s election victory. Here’s his Linkedin profile.

You’ll see that Tagger is CEO of Preventable Surprises, and when skimming through the website my eyes were drawn to “climate finance and behavior“. He’s also co-founder of White Label Impact.

Time to turn to the Tir Natur trustees. And when you see who’s recently joined, you’ll be in no doubt as to what Tir Natur is up to.

In May 2023 Richard Wheat came aboard. He’s an ecological consultant at Middlemarch Environmental Ltd, of Coventry. Companies House tells us the company is controlled by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust.

In June this year, it was Sally Weale, documentary film maker. She was, until March 2022, a director of The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

Next, in July, it was our old friend Tim Birch of Extinction Rebellion. He fled Derbyshire a few years back with a posse of gamekeepers in pursuit. He is now a director of Wildlife Trusts Wales . . . which voted itself out of existence a few years ago to become a county branch of the English parent body.

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And, finally, on September 26, it was James Hitchcock. If that name rings a bell, it’s because he’s appeared on this blog a number of times after coming to Wales to be CEO of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.

He quit that job last month, and became Advocacy Coordinator – Wales for Rewilding Britain. Wales, a country he doesn’t even know. But he does know who’s who in Corruption Bay, and that’s what matters.

That’s quite a cast. Why are they all now involved with Tir Natur, a small outfit, with an income that last year doubled to just over twelve grand?

GLOBALIST BONANZA

You might be wondering why this Labour government would want to destroy farming, and why its supporters welcome the move. Let me explain.

Taking the supporters first . . . the Pinkhairs may genuinely believe they’re sticking it to the super-rich (and perhaps even freeing the serfs), because they really are that fucking stupid. Whereas old-style leftists may have a hazy recollection of kulaks being vilified in the smoke-filled rooms of yore.

But above all that, the government in Westminster is a Globalist tool . . . one that was not made by Keir Starmer’s father, but by some very unpleasant people indeed.

These Globalists, who I’ve identified on the blog before, want to take over (among other things) farmland. Firstly, to profit from insane subsidies and payments given to those claiming to be saving the planet. Secondly, to take them nearer their ultimate objective – control of the food supply. And by that means, to control human behaviour.

To help them achieve this they must control what we see, hear, and say. This explains their puppets demanding hate speech legislation, and laws against ‘misinformation’. Also, banging people up for social media posts.

For they must control the narrative. But it’s more difficult for them now because their mainstream media is no longer trusted, and there are channels they do not control.

Another problem they have is that the ‘climate crisis’ isn’t co-operating, and hasn’t been for years. There’s no marked deterioration in the weather, and the net zero lunacy imposed to combat this ‘threat’ is being increasingly resisted.

The fallback position is the ‘nature crisis’, or ‘biodiversity loss’, which asks us to believe that species are disappearing almost daily. And just as with the ‘climate crisis’, it’s all our fault. This looming tragedy can only be averted by us making major sacrifices – which again, will involve assaults on farming.

For to save the dormouse we must stop eating cheese.

Just as the ‘climate crisis’ relied on con men like Al Gore, and voodoo ‘science’, so, when it comes to species depletion, we are expected to heed the sermonising of those who want big dollops of cash to put things right. And of course, they also want land.

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The more I’ve learnt and thought about environmentalism the clearer it’s become why top environmentalists found it easy to work with the Globalists – because they’re one and the same.

Let’s start with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Which modestly says of itself:

Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

And I bet you’ve never heard of it! But I’m not sure you’re supposed to.

DARKER PAST

The IUCN was formed in 1948 and took up residence in Gland, Switzerland. Feeling it needed a more public face, in 1961 the IUCN helped launch the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), also headquartered in Gland.

The founder and first president of the WWF was Prince Bernhardt, consort to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Though he himself was German and had, like many other princelings, joined the Nazi Party in 1933.

Prince Bernhardt was also a member the shadowy Club of the Isles, another organisation that helped give birth to the WWF. This group of royals and business tycoons uses environmentalism to protect and promote their post-imperial interests. Especially in Africa.

Involved in both was Philip, consort to the late queen of England. His sisters all married German princes, and three of them became Nazis. In 1948 Elizabeth’s father, George VI, banned Philip’s family from his daughter’s wedding.

Among the activities of the WWF and associated movements that get less publicity than saving pandas is taking over vast areas of Africa for game reserves, and ‘parks’. When the evicted populations protest they are dealt with as trespassers, or even shot as ‘poachers’.

Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO, comes to give Starmer his orders. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

There are incredible allegations made against the WWF and those behind it, but let’s ignore the more outlandish claims – such as ‘anthropological reserves’ in Amazonia – to consider two features that are undeniable.

Firstly, there’s the link with fascism or, more specifically, Nazism. Secondly, there’s the belief the world is overpopulated.

Seeing as we’re 80 years on from WWII, we can perhaps ignore a (direct) Nazi link. But the belief in an overpopulated world is central to the modern Globalist-environmentalist agenda.

It explains so why many refer to that agenda as being “anti-human“. Critics can see it, but may not understand the background that makes their suspicions correct.

Let me end this section by explaining how the agenda is already making us poorer in ways other than immediate costs like higher electricity bills.

Earlier we looked at Keep Wales Tidy. It receives huge amounts of ‘Welsh Government’ funding, not to keep Wales tidy, but to promote the Globalist agenda. And the same applies to countless other ‘charities’, third sector outfits, even pressure groups.

It’s amazing . . . the Welsh NHS is falling apart, kids leave school unable to read and write, but Corruption Bay can always find money for organisations that are actually working against our interests. Even threatening our national identity.

CONCLUSION, AND WARNING

The West is in a dangerous place, with the Globalists controlling politicians and uniparty systems. And this control costs lives, tens of thousands of young lives in the war in eastern Europe, from which BlackRock profits hugely.

Take a few minutes to watch this 3 minute video by Robert F Kennedy Jr.

If the West is in dangerous waters, then Wales is docked up Shit Creek.

Yet I have such a low opinion of Senedd Members that I think they might genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing. They’ve certainly swallowed all the Globalist scams. But it’s not just our clowns.

Not long before they dined with Larry Fink of BlackRock, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were granted an audience with ‘Dr’ Bill Gates, of Covid fame. Look how attentive and respectful they are!

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In Cardiff, London, Brussels and elsewhere politicians are in thrall to Globalism, with the leftist majority in the Senedd pre-disposed to imposing petty regulations and restrictions on personal freedom.

Which makes them putty in the hands of kings, princes and others who are used to exercising power. Those who once marched with the workers now dance for Hapsburgs and Bourbons.

Having mentioned BlackRock a few times, here’s an example of how it operates. Some ten years ago planning permission was granted for a wind farm in Blaenau Gwent. Within months it was snapped up by you know who.

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Many suspect the wind farms planned today, by Parabola Bute and others, will go the same way once planning permission is obtained.

That Blaenau Gwent example wasn’t a one-off. The Labour party has been dealing with BlackRock for many years. In 2016 BlackRock took control of the £2.8bn Welsh public pension pot.

That’s how BlackRock and the rest operate. They don’t make or create anything, they just use other people’s money to buy up things, corporations and assets which then give them vast economic strength, and with that strength, political power.

And it’ll be the same with land acquired by Tir Natur, and all the other land from which Welsh farmers will be evicted. If it’s not BlackRock then it’ll be some other Globalist corporation working to exactly the same agenda.

Helped by BlackRock having the WWF in its pocket. It’s the same with all the other organisations, down to your local wildlife trust. Globalists have ‘environmentalists’ doing the dirty work for them, ‘greenwashing’ their activities.

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So don’t be fooled by these machinations pretending to save the planet. It’s the biggest asset grab in history. And as I’ve explained, it has worrying antecedents.

Always remember that behind the cuddly image of environmentalism lurk the shades of those who thought Hitler was the good guy. Which helps explain why Globalism is just another attempt at world domination.

Demanding reduced population levels in order to tackle the ‘climate crisis’ is no more than the ugly eugenics of a century ago made more palatable.

At root, it’s just repackaged Nazism. So wake up and realise it.

♦ end

UPDATE 27.11.2024: Today Nation.Cymru put out a piece in defence of the Tir Natur project, and almost certainly in response to the piece above I’d put out two days earlier. It was written by Stephen Price, N.C’s Senior Reporter.

Price lives in Abergavennyshire, has a background “working in the third and charity sectors“, and a “voluntary role as a Keep Wales Tidy Litter Champion“.

Which says it all.

© Royston Jones 2024

US Elections, Observations And Hopes

This is my personal take on what happened in the USA last week. I’ll give some thought to the curious electoral system. The trajectory I hope to see from now on. And I’ll conclude by briefly considering the effects Trump’s victory might have on the wider world.

THEN AND NOW

I woke around six o’clock last Wednesday morning, though I’m not sure why.

Anyway, I switched on the TV, expecting to see talking heads discussing the turnout in Wisconsin, and whether the result offered a bright new dawn for transgender Latino birthing persons, but I could tell from the faces and demeanour of the respected and impartial presenters that Trump had won.

I was amazed at how quickly the result had become known.

To understand my surprise, we need to go back four years to the events of 2020. When ballots were still arriving days after the polls closed, often in the middle of the night and from out-of-state locations.

Which leads us to the consideration of ID; whether someone turning up at a polling station should establish their identity before being allowed to vote. As we do in Wales.

For reasons I cannot fathom, Democrats are opposed to demanding ID. California even went so far as to make it illegal to ask for ID! Republicans say it should be mandatory.

It’s also being reported that Harris won all the states where voter ID is not required . . . but only those states. Not that I’m suggesting anything, you understand.

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But just think what could happen.

An unknown man goes to vote . . . then comes back 5 minutes later, to vote again. The people manning the polling station say, ‘Hang on, you voted 5 minutes ago’. Mystery man responds, ‘No I didn’t – and you can’t prove I did!’.

What went right for Trump this time? Well . . .

There’s no doubt that in 2020 there were ‘irregularities’, and these favoured the Democrats. I say that because they all seemed to happen in Democrat-controlled cities, and swing states. More on this later.

Harris getting over 10 million votes less than Biden won in 2020 takes some explaining. Seeing as there were more voters this time. And especially as this was the election to save civilisation from the Nazi hordes awaiting their cue from Donald J Trump.

And then there were the countless celebrity endorsements for Harris. Did these count for nothing? How could out-of-work coal miners in West Virginia not heed the advice of Leonardo DiCaprio?

Though it’s said Oprah Winfrey was paid £1m or more to have Harris on her show!

Earlier this year, who among you was not moved by Robert de Niro’s performance outside the New York City courthouse where Trump was being tried? The renowned thesp turned up surrounded by more heavies than in any of his movies.

Speaking in NYC De Niro says of Trump, “He doesn’t belong in my city”. Trump was born there. But when Trump deports criminals who sneaked into the USA De Niro and other luvvies will demand they be allowed to stay because they ‘belong’. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And then there was the civil fraud case brought by Soros-funded New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump for over-valuing his assets in order to get a bank loan.

This was a civil action, not a criminal case. For the bank involved, Deutsche Bank, had made no complaint!

This being New York, Trump was of course found guilty. James’s co-conspirator, the goblinesque Judge Arthur Engoron, slapped a fine of $454.2m on Trump. And even wanted him barred from doing business in New York.

But things soon unravelled for James, Engoron, and the Democratic Party.

For in its testimony, Deutsche Bank said, ‘No problemo, everybody exaggerates their wealth, or the value of their assets, to get a loan.

Managing director David Williams said the bankers viewed clients’ reports of their net worth as “subjective or subject to estimates” and took its own view of such financial statements.

This was a squalid business, even for NYC, so blatantly political. And the Appellate Court agreed.

Conclusions:

When it became clear Trump had won those who were supposed to be impartial made no effort to hide their bias. Telling us that any vestige of credibility the legacy media might have had is gone. Forever.

After cheating their way to victory in 2020, partly thanks to the fortuitous and wholly unexpected arrival of Covid, the deep state Democrats were unable to do the same again.

The average American resents being told to make sacrifices by luvvies who use private jets to fly to awards ceremonies where they tell each other how virtuous and superior they are.

Like other people, Americans want a legal system that is above politics and personalities; a system that administers justice blindly. Not a system corrupted by an evil old man.

And most Americans, of all ethnicities, reject ‘women with penises’, pronouns, anti-white racism, and all the other Woke nonsense.

When you consider the media bias, the amount by which the Harris campaign out-spent Trump’s, the celebrity endorsements, Trump being called Hitler, and everything else the president-elect had to put up with, you realise that with a level playing-field the margin of victory would have been huge.

That should be a sobering thought for leftists, liberals, the media, and their Globalist manipulators.

THE LONG SHADOW OF TAMMANY HALL

A message we heard over and over again from the media was that Trump is ‘divisive’. But which politician isn’t? And yet, when we look at the electoral map, we see the real divide in the USA.

At its simplest, it’s between urban and rural.

On the one side, the major cities, with their ghettoes and immigrant communities, their white liberal suburbs. On the other, the rest of the country.

The cities have an enormous effect on how the states vote, in ways that skew results and disenfranchise large areas. The map below shows how the states voted on November 5.

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I want to draw your attention to a few examples of what I’ve just described.

Take Illinois, where Harris – with 93.6% of the vote counted by Nov 13 – won with some 54% of the vote. The Chicago metropolitan area deciding how the state voted. Here’s a map of Illinois by county.

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This pattern is replicated across the country. Go back to the map of the states and see that Colorado went for Harris thanks to the city of Denver. In Minnesota it was Minneapolis-St Paul. But perhaps the most egregious example is found in Virginia.

In the western counties of the state, as you head up into the Appalachians, Trump polled 80 – 85% of the vote, but it was all decided in the north east, in the suburban overspill of Washington DC. Many of those who voted for Harris here are working for bloated or even unnecessary federal agencies.

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And of course, many if not most of those living in this suburban overspill were not born in Virginia. Which means they helped outvote native Virginians.

Something similar obtains on the other side of DC, in Maryland, where suburban sprawl, and the city of Baltimore, helped the Democrats easily outvote the eastern side of that small state.

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Collectively, DC and these counties in Virginia and Maryland make up the Washington metropolitan area. A conurbation that has grown apace with the reach of the federal government.

I believe the only exceptions to this winner takes all system are Maine (3 – 1 Harris) and Nebraska (4 – 1 Trump).

So why do the Democrats exercise such a stranglehold on the major cities?

Go back far enough and you come to Tammany Hall, “a blend of charity and patronage”, that delivered the vote for the Democratic Party in New York City.

The Democrats controlled the major cities through appealing to immigrant groups, organised labour, and the increasing black vote coming up from the South. In return for those votes it could arrange jobs, contracts, housing, and other benefits.

The ‘bosses’ could deliver the vote. In Boston, one of the most powerful was John Francis ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, grandfather of president John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

There was, perhaps inevitably, an overlap with organised crime. And when JFK won the 1960 election, with the slimmest-ever majority, the Chicago Outfit felt they’d made a big contribution.

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Tammany Hall may be gone, and the power of the Mafia is diminished, but the Democratic Party still controls the cities through that “combination of charity and patronage“. And still delivers the vote.

In addition to the core of each city there are the suburbs to consider. Here we find the business class, the professionals, and many of those running the agencies, funded by DC, the state, or the city, providing the goodies that keep the citizens voting Democrat.

Though it’s questionable if inner-city neighbourhoods see any tangible and lasting benefits from these arrangements.

Welsh readers might see a valid comparison between US inner cities and the Valleys, the latter abandoned and decaying, but still voting Labour. But with the real beneficiaries of this system being the chisellers of Corruption Bay, found in the nicer suburbs of Cardiff, out in the Vale, or even Abergavennyshire.

It’s a stranglehold that’s almost impossible to break. Because without political power the Republicans can’t promise the homes, or the jobs, or any benefits to woo voters. With minorities urged by their leaders to regard the party with suspicion. ‘Leaders’ who are often on the Democratic Party payroll, or otherwise catered for.

Which brings me to my final consideration in the urban-rural split.

Those who live outside of the cities, those areas that voted 70%, 80%, or more, for Donald Trump, especially in the South, the Mid West, and the Northern Plains, will differ in many ways from city-dwellers.

Yes, they’re far more likely to be white, but so are the suburbs, which is why it would be wrong to focus too much on race. The difference is that those out in the sticks are more likely to own their own home, and land; are more likely to be self-employed, and self-sufficient; and will be suspicious of government, especially the federal government.

The hicks are also far more likely to (legally) own guns. But we won’t go there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing against one person one vote. I fully support all US citizens, who can prove their identity, being given a numbered paper ballot on the day of the election, at the polling station, so they can cast their vote(s).

Does anyone object to that? And if so, why?

LOOKING AHEAD

We need here to avoid another over-simplification, that between left and right. Though I know I use these terms myself, so let me explain why, and why they’re misleading.

The struggle today is not really between right and left.

On the one hand we have those who want to tell us what we’re allowed to eat, what we can drive (also how far and at what speed), what we must believe, who our friends are, and who we must hate.

The UN’s 2030 Agenda.

They do it by hypnotising us with engineered crises / threats and while we’re fixated on the swinging pocket-watch they take our money, property, and personal freedoms.

On the other side, are those who see the threat and are prepared to resist it. Mainly, but no longer exclusively, from the political right.

I condemn the left for buying into the Globalist agenda. Most socialists and liberals because they see no further than Wokeism, taking childish enjoyment from ‘bourgeois’ angst; but for the hard-core, Globalism is a replacement Soviet Union in the old ambition to bring down the West.

And while the Globalists may be planning corporate colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, their primary targets are Europe and North America. Which is why Trump’s victory is important to us, because its effects will not be limited to the USA.

The president-elect is known to be sceptical of the EU, wary of NATO, and suspicious of the regime in Ukraine. He’s promised to reject net zero, regarding the ‘climate crisis’ as a ‘threat’ no more real than Russia, both dreamed up to promote the Globalist agenda.

But it takes more than the left to push forward the agenda.

Globalism, the deep state, the military-industrial complex, call it what you will, is supported and defended, its aims advanced, by a professional political class, and a huge bureaucracy, focused on Washington DC.

This vast apparatus is the target for the incoming Trump administration.

The man given the job of bringing down this monster is Elon Musk, who made Twitter / X more efficient, popular, and profitable, after sacking some 90% of the staff.

His deputy is former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who spelt it out only yesterday.

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The only ones who’ll object to this cull of the bureaucracy will be those who benefit from it. Those who work in these non-jobs, and those who gain politically or materially from them.

Reducing the federal budget, cutting aid to Ukraine, the UN, and other drains, making the US self-sufficient in energy, will reduce taxes and bring down prices across the board.

It must be done, not just because the American people are hurting, but because the USA may be broke. Forbes didn’t come straight out and say it, but the headline to this piece in May leaves little doubt . . . of the problem, and the cause.

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If you really want to scare yourself, just think: ‘Now, those who are bankrupting the federal government, and by extension, the USA, are controlled by the Globalists. So do the Globalists want to bankrupt the USA?’

Damn right they do. And the same applies to Europe.

The Globalists have created the monsters that can only be pacified with massive and expensive sacrifices designed to bankrupt individuals, nations, continents.

Having engineered the collapse, the Globalists will then step in with their solutions.

It’s how Hitler did it. Send out the Brownshirts to bloody the streets brawling with socialists and communists – then promise to bring law and order back to those same streets. Take power by promising to solve the problem you’ve created.

Welcome to the world of Universal Basic Income (UBI), Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC); which will mean an end to democracy, freedom of speech, and individual economic autonomy.

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You’re now a serf, because you opened the door to authoritarianism promising to solve non-existent problems and fight imaginary enemies.

OVER HERE

What happens in the USA always impacts on the rest of the world because of that country’s economic strength, military power, and cultural influence. Which is why the new administration taking control in January will impact on us all.

If Trump carries out his promises, on dumping net zero, cutting federal waste, increasing production, reducing taxation, dealing with unlawful immigration, he can make the USA more prosperous and more at ease with itself than it’s been since the 1950s.

And no matter how much the politicians and the media lie to you about it, if Trump turns the USA around it’ll be impossible to hide the truth.

People this side of the Atlantic will then ask: ‘Why are we destroying our economy, our country, our children’s futures, by following an anti-human, de-growth agenda, dictated by some of the biggest corporations and richest individuals on Earth?

And the only honest answer will be – ‘Because you’re incredibly fucking stupid!

So stop being stupid, catch up with reality, and look forward to Donald J Trump becoming the 47th President of the United States of America.

I can’t wait!

And don’t forget to support the farmers in their London protest on the 19th. Because the bastards who are coming for the farmers’ land are the same bastards coming for your car and your flight to Majorca. The same bastards who want you to go vegan. The same bastards who think your electricity bill should be at least £1,000 a month – ‘to save the planet, innit‘.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

More From Ireland Moor

The piece I put out on the 10th was quite well received, it certainly encouraged some fresh information. Which tends to put what’s happening on Ireland Moor into a wider context, and factor in fresh considerations.

At 2,600 words this is a wee bit longer than recent offerings, and maybe a bit ‘denser’, but still worth sticking with.

OWNERSHIP

In the previous piece I told of Scottish aristos the Duff Gordons, who inherited the Lewis estate at Harpton Court.

Ireland Moor is an upland grazing area to the east of Builth, around and perhaps above the pin in the map below. Bordered to the north by the A481 and the A44.

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Let’s start in 1993, when Sir Andrew Cosmo Lewis Duff Gordon (scroll down) sold some land. Here’s a Land Registry document for title no CYM427489. There may be other titles involved. If so, they’ll likely be: WA484809, WA404806, and WA667700.

There were four buyers named in the 1993 transaction. Also, three “beneficial tenants“. More information on these can be found by clicking here.

Now we go to July 2008, and a piece from Country Life informing us regular readers that Ireland Moor was for sale. A Land Registry title document from November of that year for CYM427489 probably tells us who bought the land. (We can now assume the other titles just mentioned are involved.)

Two of the names mentioned in this sale we saw among the 1993 buyers: Edward John Francis Dashwood and Peter John Horsburgh. So in case you didn’t follow the earlier link . . .

Dashwood is descended from Hellfire Club Dashwood, who was a bit of a lad.

Dashwood was a notorious rake and prankster who had once impersonated King Charles XII of Sweden at the Russian court when Charles was Russia’s great enemy. He had also tried to seduce the Russian Tsarina Anne, and he had been banned from the Papal States, all while still in his late teens and early 20s.

On the surface, Horsburgh is a devout environmentalist and trustee of the Wye and Usk Foundation. But he’s also a director of companies under the ETF umbrella, companies that profit hugely from – net zero.

Which makes perfect sense.

Organisations set up to ‘protect’ our rivers – especially in Wales – blame farmers for any and all pollution in those rivers. Environmentalists see farting cows as an obstacle to the target of net zero. Which pressurises politicians to work against livestock farming.

Environmentalism is not really about Greta Thunberg and brainwashed kids throwing paint over old masters. That’s all a distraction. ‘Environmentalism’ is major corporations seeking investments. And near the top of their ‘Dear Santa‘ list is land to be exploited for ‘carbon capture’ greenwashing and ‘natural capital’.

This Land Registry document from June 5, 2009, confirms the November 2008 sale, but without naming the buyers. Though it does tell us the four titles were involved, reveals the sale price of £900,000, gives Ireland Moor Ltd as the owner, with a Jersey company number (103322), and an address in Bristol.

Does this suggest the November 2008 buyers are now the Jersey company?

Possibly, and the third buyer might provide the clue.

CONNECTIONS APPEAR

For this is James Warren Kent, one of the ‘beneficial tenants’ in the 1993 deal. Naturally, I got to wondering who Mr Kent is, and what he gets up to.

I found he’s the sole director of Q Branch Investments Ltd. A company in the business of “letting and operating of own or leased real estate“. Though the company is owned by Benjamin Mark Peter Whitfield. Possibly living in Switzerland.

Looking more closely at Q Branch Investments I saw three outstanding charges.

One of them with the Conon Group, up in Auld Reekie, a city we visit regularly on this blog. I would guess the two directors of this financially healthy undertaking are the elderly parents of Benjamin Whitfield.

The other two charges are held by Roger Charles Adams. And this is where it gets rather interesting. For Adams is a director of RSK Environment Ltd, operating out of an address south of the river in Glasgow. Part of the RSK Group.

A bell rang when I saw ‘RSK’, “a global leader in the delivery of sustainable solutions“.

Let’s go back to this piece I put out a week before Christmas last, and scroll down to the section ‘Globalist Land Grab?’ about the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme. Where you can read:

Tracing the ownership of RSK ADAS eventually gets us to Los Angeles and “global alternative investment manager” the Ares Management Corporation. You may not be surprised to learn that among the largest of Ares’ shareholders we find both BlackRock and Vanguard.

Someone who got a mention was Canadian Dr Liz Lewis-Reddy. She’s worked for RSK for 7 years, and before that spent 11 years at Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust.

Dr Lewis-Reddy was a co-author of the ‘Welsh Government’s Potential economic effects of the Sustainable Farming Scheme.

Her career seems to be another example of getting farmers off the land so that ‘alternative investment’ corporations can make fortunes from saving the planet.

So let’s recap. James Warren Kent, who is or was one of the owners of Ireland Moor, gets loans for his company from Roger Charles Adams, a man who works for a company that does contracts for both the ‘Welsh Government’ and Bute Energy. (Yes, Bute Energy.)

What’s the likelihood of that happening by chance?

But now it gets a little more complicated.

MORE ON OWNERSHIP

I’ve mentioned Ireland Moor Ltd, the company said to own the land in the LR title document of June 5, 2009.

That checks out with the Jersey filings.

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Here’s the Jersey Document of Incorporation for Ireland Moor Ltd, May 2009. It mentions two companies holding 45 shares each.

This ‘Persons Holding Shares’ filing for January 1, 2018, informs us that Edward Warren Filmer of Venezuela is now the sole shareholder.

Finally, here’s the winding up document for Ireland Moor Ltd dated February 23, 2018.

(Let me express my gratitude to the person who dug out, paid for, and then forwarded these and other documents to me.)

There was a problem identifying Edward Warren Filmer. But he does exist. Here he is mentioned in his father’s Will as ‘Edward Warren Filmer Cabrera’.

Which suggests his mother is from a Spanish-speaking country and her maiden name was Cabrera. Which ties in with him living in Venezuela.

This Jersey company seems to have been succeeded by Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd, run by the four sons of Sir Andrew Cosmo Lewis Duff Gordon who, you’ll recall, sold the land in 1993. (And died in April 2023.)

It seems the land was sold to the Duff Gordons in December 2015. The relevant LR titles are: WA484809 (no plan available), WA404806 (no plan available), WA667700 (with plan), and CYM427489 (with plan).

Edward Warren Filmer Cabrera remains something of a mystery man. How did he get involved? I couldn’t help notice that he shares a middle name, ‘Warren’, with the guy named in the Ireland Moor purchase in November 2008, James Warren Kent.

Could they be brothers? Cousins?

We must assume that Ireland Moor Ltd of Jersey owned the land of that name because the Duff Gordon boys bought Ireland Moor from that company.

Though I’m convinced things may not be quite as they appear when it comes to Ireland Moor. I say that because there is something on the Companies House filings that’s a real puzzle.

Go to the Land Registry title documents for which I’ve given links, above, and you’ll see a panel similar to the one below. It says the sale was concluded December 15, 2015.

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Which tallies with the December 2015 date given on the company’s outstanding debt with Edward Warren Filmer and Ireland Moor Ltd.

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Yet if we scroll down that charge document, to page 16, we see the panel below. Which says the titles were transferred to Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd in May 2015!

That’s two months before Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd was formed!

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I’m open to suggestions for this curiosity. But I will not accept ‘time travel’.

Whatever the answer, with Ireland Moor Ltd dissolved, then (on paper at least) the Duff Gordons owe the outstanding debt for the land to Señor Edward Warren Filmer Cabrera of Venezuela.

Whoever he might be.

THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

The LR documents say the Duff Gordons bought Ireland Moor in December 2015, the purchase part-financed with a loan from Filmer-Ireland Moor Ltd.

This is something I’ve come across before, but usually when assets are moved between partners, or within a group of companies.

The charge dated that same month says:

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Which suggests the Duff Gordons handed over £560,000 as a down payment.

Then they took out two further loans, in December 2016 with Lloyds Bank. Normally when I see this (and almost always when the Development Bank of Wales is involved) the newer loans are used to pay off older debts. But not, it seems, in this case.

The accounts don’t help much. Below I’ve taken the ‘headlines’ from the first accounts filed by Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd.  (Actually, ‘unaudited financial statements’.)

The first ‘accounts’, to July 31, 2016, make sense. ‘Fixed assets’, £1,231,914, is obviously Ireland Moor. ‘Creditors’, at £678,158, is the debt owed to Filmer and Ireland Moor Ltd plus a few odds and ends.

But a year later, and after the loans from Lloyds Bank, the ‘accounts’ show the amount owed to ‘creditors’ down from £678,158 to £191,078.

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This could be explained by taking on the new debt and then paying off what was owed to Filmer and Ireland Moor Ltd. But that didn’t happen. For Companies House shows the Filmer-Ireland Moor charge is still ‘outstanding’.

The most recent accounts, to July 31, 2023, are equally confusing. Despite no new charge registered, the amount owed to creditors shot up from £693,676 in 2022 to £1,287,026. Almost the whole increase explained (page 7) as “other creditors“.

With the amount in the kitty going down, down, down every year. To the point where, in the 2023 accounts, Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd is in the red.

And where’s the £600,000 grant from the Powys Moorland Partnership? I can’t see that showing in the accounts.

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Seeing as, “This project is funded from the Sustainable Management Scheme under the Welsh Government’s Rural Communities Rural Development Programme”, ‘Welsh Government’ should be insisting on ‘fuller’ accounts.

Is Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd being used for purposes other than the conservation of Ireland Moor?

SEEING AS THIS IS POWYS . . .

. . . you just know wind turbines might be involved. And that means another trip to Edinburgh, where we find those behind Bute Energy. But don’t be fooled by that – for Bute is definitely a Welsh company!

Back in 2018 or 2019 our wonderful ‘Welsh Government’ commissioned Arup’s Bristol office to identify areas that would be suitable for solar and wind energy.

The approach seems to have been, ‘Anywhere outside national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty will be OK’. Which was a disaster, and betrayed Arup’s ignorance of Wales.

For example, Arup declared almost the whole of Ynys Môn to be perfect for wind turbines . . . until the RAF reminded them there are jets, helicopters and other craft taking off and landing every day.

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The mess was eventually sorted by RenewableUK, whose suggestion for the area we’re interested in (top right) was used in the final version (bottom right) of ‘Future Wales The National Plan 2040‘.

That said, the ‘Welsh Government’ and corporate investors are very ‘flexible’ when it comes to the selected areas. To put it bluntly, other than NPs and AONBs (and of course, Ynys Môn), you can put up wind and solar farms anywhere.

Which is why, despite Ireland Moor being outside designated area 7, I wouldn’t rule out wind turbines appearing.

Because not far away, on Aberedw Hill (circled on the left), which is also outside the designated area, Bute Energy is planning an ‘energy park’, and has an agreement with landowner Harry Legge-Bourke.

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Reminding us that when it comes to ‘renewables’, Wales is open range; so we can definitely add wind turbines to the mix of possibilities for Ireland Moor.

The threats afflicting our countryside are very similar no matter where we look. Though more pronounced near the central border, partly due to the machinations of the wildlife trusts in Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire.

THE PERFECT STORM

Welsh livestock farming, and with it the Welsh family farm, a supporting pillar of Welsh language and culture, is under threat as never before. That threat comes in a number of guises, but all can be traced back to the Globalist ambition to control what we eat and where it comes from.

Additionally, a whole political class has been won over to the lunacy of a ‘climate crisis’, not because it’s true, but because it gives them a ’cause’, and it gives them some kind of moral authority.

A natural-born asshole gets a kick out of bossing people around. But when saving the planet, or fighting racism, is introduced, then a natural-born asshole becomes a morally superior being . . . and a bigger asshole!

Western thought has been corrupted by these caped crusaders, and all done by stealth. We elect politicians on vague, ‘something for everybody’ manifestos . . . and then the pressure groups we did not elect get to work on them.

If it’s not the pressure groups then – and certainly here in Wales – it’s the civil servants ‘advising’ our politicians. Men like Andrew Slade, who’s been a malign influence in Corruption Bay for too long.

It doesn’t matter whether Ireland Moor sees grouse shooting, wind turbines (to supply England), rewilding, greenwashing (or a combination of the four), it’s clear they will all have political backing – because they undermine farming.

And the farmers understand the threats. This is what one wrote to me:

I can’t tell how important that grazing is to hill farmers like us, we can’t afford down country grass keep, it will reduce our flocks down to a fraction, we are running on fumes as it is. And the sheep, they are old bloodlines it’s taken generations to get them hefted and thriving, I despair, and goodness knows what horrors await us in the budget, another local boy hung himself the other day, I fear there is going to be a lot more, and all the old farmers I go and visit are about in tears thinking all they have worked for and sacrificed for will be take from them and their grand-children won’t get the chance to have roots in the area where they belong, I could bloody cry.

What we see on Ireland Moor and elsewhere is plutocrats orchestrating those they fund and control against livestock farming so as to release land for corporate gain.

Their motto is, I’m told: ‘The countryside needs hedge funds not hedges.’

The ‘Welsh Government’ agrees. Politicians who’ve spent 25 years serving agendas that sound noble in the abstract but, in practice – from Port Talbot to the Powys uplands – always work against the interests of local people.

Ireland Moor is modern Wales in microcosm. Among all those you’ve read about, the ones losing out will be the ones born and raised there, who went to school in the area, who graze their animals on the moor.

For me, the lesson from Ireland Moor – and it can be applied across Wales – is this: Socialists in Corruption Bay are driving small farmers off the land so that land can be taken over by foreign corporations, landed families, and enviroshysters.

Reminding us that socialism always was a lie. The betrayal of the urban working class, and now the war on small farmers, exposes that lie to the world.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Commoners, Toffs, Envirogrifters

This week’s tale comes from Powys. It’s an old story with a modern twist. Local farmers and others up against those with more money and political clout, with the twist being the environmental angle.

The Crown Estate is involved, and we also encounter that ultimate expression of the environmental scam – ‘natural capital’, which puts a price tag (in the form of grants and subsidies expected) on every blade of grass.

ON THE BLACK HILL

The area we’re going to focus on is roughly halfway between Builth and the border, an area containing Glascwm Hill (pinned) and the Black Hill. There are quite a few grouse butts in the vicinity.

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For reasons I didn’t query, the area is known as Ireland Moor. This contribution from the Ramblers confirms that and gives a little more information.

We’ll begin with establishing ownership of the land. And we start with a company called Ireland Moor Ltd (IM), registered in Jersey. Below is a clip from the Jersey companies registry.

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This company was wound up early in 2018, perhaps because it had been superseded by Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd (IMC), formed in July 2015. For more information, let’s turn to the new company.

The founding director was William Andrew Lewis Duff Gordon, and he was joined on June 6, 2016, by his three brothers. But Tom, the banker, left after just one day. He is with crypto outfit Coinbase.

Let’s turn to the charges for IMC, see who’s owed money.

I assume the first charge is for the purchase of Ireland Moor. The two creditors named are the Jersey-registered Ireland Moor Ltd, and Edward Warren Filmer. But if the land was owned by the Jersey company, does that mean the old company loaned the new company the money to buy the land?

UPDATE 16.10.2024: A comment to the blog tells me Filmer’s full name is Edward Warren Filmer Cabrera, and he’s linked with companies registered in Venezuela.

You’ll see four Land Registry title documents shown there, and here they are, in the order listed: WA484809 (no plan available), WA404806 (no plan available), WA667700 (with plan), and CYM427489 (with plan).

I’ve combined the two plans, but it leaves us with a problem.

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What we know is that the total price said to have been paid for the four titles was £1,160,000. (With £600,000 being mentioned as the buyer’s contribution in the legal charge.) But do these two plans cover the four titles, or are there plans missing?

Seeing as the Jersey registry tells us Ireland Moor Ltd is dissolved, then who now holds the debt against Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd? Has it all passed to the other name on the charge, Edward Warren Filmer?

The only company I can find with which Filmer’s involved is CGM Farming Ltd, formed in March 2015, just a few months before IMC.

Though ‘Farming’ is rather misleading, for this company’s in the business of, “Hunting, trapping and related service activities“. So I got to wondering about the name. Might the ‘GM’ stand for grouse moor(s)? And if so, what could the ‘C’ mean?

The Companies House filings give the address of an accountancy firm in Weybridge, Surry for CGM, but tell us Filmer lives in Wales.

There is another title mentioned on that first charge, under ‘Schedule 1’, page 16. This is against William Andrew Lewis Duff Gordon rather than the company.

Though the dates given in Schedule 1 do not tally with those given elsewhere. In fact, the dates given are before Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd was even formed! Something’s not right here.

It relates to “land lying to the south of Cwmpiben barn“. (Though I think that should read ‘Cwm-piban’.) It’s for a trifling £40,000. Here’s the title document and plan. And here it is pinned on the OS map. Not a million miles from Ireland Moor.

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The other outstanding charges against Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd are, first, with Lloyds Bank (December 2016). Another with Lloyds (January 2017), secured against the 7000 acres at Ireland Moor. With a further charge with Lloyds against ‘Gwaithla bungalow’, at Gladestry.

POWYS MOORLAND PARTNERSHIP

The problem relayed to me is that local farmer-graziers fear there are plans afoot that will adversely affect them, and this explains them being kept out of the loop.

Let’s start with the Powys Moorland Partnership (PMP). I was unable to establish when this outfit began life, but it visited Ireland Moor in September 2017. It’s funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ through the Sustainable Management Scheme.

Where we read . . .

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I’m sure you’ve clocked the £600,000. Is this the same sum we saw earlier, and which I assumed was the contribution made by Ireland Moor Environmental Ltd to the £1,160,000 purchase price of the four titles?

If so, then what I didn’t know then of course was the source of that money.

Though there’s also something odd about PMP. On it’s homepage it describes itself as a “3 year collaborative project“, but we know it’s been running for at least seven years. And in that mission statement there is no mention of the farmers who graze the land.

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So who exactly are the partners in this ‘partnership’?

Also note that the capture above, from the Powys Moorland Partnership website, talks of: “. . . nearly 20,000 acres of moorland stretching from the Llanthony Valley in the south of the county to Beguildy common in the north . . . ”

Which is 43 miles by road, and not a lot less for a fit and adventurous crow. What’s more, Llanthony is not in “the south of the county“, it’s in Sir Fynwy (Monmouthshire).

If we’re talking about just 20,000 acres, over that distance, and we know that 7,000 are accounted for on the Black Hill and Glascwm Hill, then the other 13,000 must be scattered about in disparate parcels.

Though something I noticed about Llanthony on the OS map was the proximity of grouse butts. Is that what the Powys Moorland Partnership is all about?

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Maybe the ‘Welsh Government’, through the Sustainable Management Scheme, and more locally, the Powys Moorland Partnership, has accepted, even encouraged, some kind of alliance between local sporting interests and the environmental lobby.

The Crown Estate may also be involved. The map below, by Guy Shrubsole, was available through WalesOnline. It shows considerable Crown Estate holdings in the area.

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Quite a concentration in a small area. But it all makes sense.

Because it seems the PMP is little more than a vehicle for the Duff Gordons and their circle. Men like Peter Hood who rents the shooting rights on 5000-acre Beacon Hill from the Crown Estate.

Hood of course is one of those listed in the Powys Moorland Partnership’s ‘Who’s Who’, along with his gamekeeper David Thomas. Also there is Will Duff Gordon.

I believe the owners of the uplands we’ve looked at, including the Crown Estate and the Duff Gordons, have reached an understanding with the environmental lobby. The planet savers will turn a blind eye to the killing of grouse and the critters that prey on them to view the whole shebang through green-tinted glasses.

And of course, seeing as some farms might became unviable without their upland grazing the acquisitive interlopers of the local Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (RWT) look forward to more land becoming available.

The RWT has received £1,161,740 from the ‘Welsh Government’ in grants over the past 4 years. And it rises every year! Corruption Bay has no money for farmers, but plenty for those who put farmers out of business, and the scavengers who benefit.

NATURAL CAPITAL

If we go back to the PMP website, we see a tab ‘Natural Capital’, so click on it. The opening paragraph reads:

The term ‘Natural Capital’ refers to the “stock of renewable and non-renewable natural resources (e.g. plants, animals, air, water, soils, minerals) that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people.” (Source: Natural Capital Protocol (2016).

Note the year, 2016. Which ties in perfectly with this document, prepared for the Fifth Assembly (2016 – 2021). Within it we find a contribution by Nia Seaton, asking. ‘Are we neglecting our natural capital?

I think it’s reasonable to assume the ‘Natural Capital’ bandwagon started rolling in Wales in or before 2015. Those ‘in the know’, those with contacts, would have had advance warning.

The natural capital report we’re looking at was prepared for PMP by environmental economist Phil Cryle, Duncan Royle, and Ian Dickie of Economics for the Environment Consultancy Ltd (eftec).

With the efforts of their labour reviewed by Dr Rob Tinch, also of eftec. Cosy!

Those involved clearly envision money being made available in the years ahead from exploiting ‘natural capital’. Yes, I know they want us to see it as conservation, but that’s no longer the motive.

The motive now is to put a price on, and thereby capitalise on, just about every square foot of heather, every cubic metre of soil. Even the air we breathe! And the payment won’t be a warm glow, it’ll be hard cash.

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And I’m serious about the air we breathe. For as you can see, it’s projected to be a nice little earner in the years ahead.

CONCLUSION

Yet again, we see politicians and others in Corruption Bay throwing money at anybody who can work the magic words ‘environment’, or ‘habitat’, or ‘conservation’, into their pitch for funding. Or into any other way of making money.

Which explains tax haven company Ireland Moor Ltd rebranding itself to Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd. For public money going to a Jersey-registered company would not look good.

The relationship between those two companies, and more especially the ownership of the original company, needs to be established. As does the identity and the role of Edward Filmer.

Because I couldn’t help but notice that the other projects funded by the Sustainable Management Scheme have as their ‘lead organisation’ a county council, a national park, a wildlife trust, or a Community Interest Company, but with Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd public funding was given to a private limited company with shares.

And those shares are divvied up within a very wealthy family.

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Discussions and planning by the Powys Moorland Partners (aka Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd), and certain other parties, seem to exclude the graziers.

You don’t need a crystal ball to see what’s happening here. And where it’s headed. Grouse shooting can be very profitable. And as we read earlier, the ‘Welsh Government’ is already funding gamekeeper jobs via the PMP.

Finally, let’s not forget natural capital, which can be greatly enhanced by activities such as planting trees. Or, to put it crudely, greenwashing. I’m told Aviva, partner to WWF, has been spoken of favourably, and more than once, by the Duff Gordons.

The graziers are being sold out; they and their sheep are in the way . . . and getting rid of them dovetails perfectly with the ‘Welsh Government’s desire to end livestock farming.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Laundering Offshore Money The Green Way

This is a theme I’ve dealt with before, the links between corporate funders, politicians, and environmental groups; but this time it comes from a slightly different angle.

Though the message stays the same:

‘Man is destroying the planet, and the only way to save us from the “sixth global mass extinction event” is to end livestock farming and let corporations buy the land for trees, windfarms, and other forms of greenwashing; with the environmentalists who’ve campaigned to bring us to this point given land for ‘rewilding’ and other purposes.’

The losers will of course be 95% of us, certainly in the West. Our energy will be more expensive, as will our food, which will increasingly be made up of factory-produced ‘meat’, and insects. Our movements will be restricted and the private car will be viewed as a selfish and unnecessary luxury from which we must be alienated.

You’ll own nothing, you’ll live in 15-minute neighbourhoods, and you’ll be blissfully unaware of your enslavement (thanks to whatever’s been added to your food).

QUADRATURE CAPITAL

This story starts with the revelation by Open Democracy (Sept 18) that the Labour party received £4m from Quadrature Capital, a somewhat questionable outfit to be found in that bastion of financial probity, the Cayman Islands. Here’s the company website.

The timing is interesting, because in April 2023 the Quadrature Capital shares held by founding directors, Greg Howard Skinner and Suneil Setiya, were transferred to QC Ventures Ltd. Though it took them almost a year to notify Companies House.

It’s often reasonable in such circumstances to assume the change actually took place at the time of notification, and was ‘backdated’. Which could mean that at the time the donation was made to the Labour party Quadrature Capital was still a UK-registered company.

Which might be significant because Open Democracy tells us . . .

Electoral Commission records suggest Labour received the donation in the one-week window between former prime minister Rishi Sunak announcing the general election and the start of the ‘pre-poll reporting period’ in which all political donations over £11,180 had to be published weekly . . . .

The Cayman Islands is of course a British Overseas Territory, one of many offering ‘financial services’ with no questions asked. In fact, these repositories and conduits for dirty money play a vital role in maintaining the pre-eminence of the City of London.

The excellent video below (1:17:52) explains the situation very well. More especially, how and why this system came about. I urge you to watch it.

As I’ve said, the hedge fund that gave Labour £4,000,000 is Quadrature Capital.

But we’tre going to focus on Quadrature Climate Foundation. A semi-detached company registered with Companies House, that’s also a charity, with its own declared annual income of £130m.

The four directors / trustees are, the parent company Quadrature founders, Suneil Setiya and Greg Skinner; then Neil Paul Cosgrove, with a recent recruit being Jennifer Hooke. (Though Ms Hooke had previously been a director.)

The reason I’m telling you this is because a number of Welsh links have emerged. Far too many in my view.

And even though the story of Labour donations is new, the news of Quadrature splashing the cash to environmental groups was first reported in the Guardian in June last year.

Though what seemed to vex the Grauniad was that . . .

Quadrature Capital has stakes worth more than $170m (£135m) in fossil fuel companies

Which is a fraction of Quadrature’s total assets and a lot less than the millions given to pressure groups so they could subvert democracy by influencing governments’ policies behind the voters’ backs.

This generosity was . . .

. . . worth about £175m in 2021 and 2022. They included £4m to the European Climate Foundation . . . £2.7m to the Carbon Tracker Initiative; and more than £3m to the WWF.

The amount given to the European Climate Foundation has increased considerably, as I’ll explain in a minute. Which is why we’ll soon turn to the ECF.

But before that, and to give you some idea of the links between tax haven money, the Labour party, and envirogrifter pressure groups, here are some tweets from journalist Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) last week.

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This refers to Rachel Kyte, Starmer’s climate envoy . . . and also of Quadrature. Here’s Daniel Luhde-Thompson, and here’s who I take to be his wife. She became a director of Friends of the Earth in March.

Though a woman I think is Naomi’s mother, Ursel Luhde, was a FoE director from January 2007 until October 2009. Also a director of Friends of the Earth Charitable Trust in the same period.

I know this is heavy going, so here’s some light relief . . . another journalist, Robert Peston (@Peston), put out this post on X after learning that Quadrature claimed to be paying Corporation Tax!

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All in all, there’s something not right about Quadrature.

EUROPEAN CLIMATE FOUNDATION (ECF)

Let’s start with the website of this outfit that by my calculations has had $46,127,158 from Quadrature Climate Foundation. Here’s a link to the ‘active grants’ page on the website. And here’s a link to its most recent annual report.

At the top of the ECF website homepage you read pious drivel that includes . . .

Our vision is a greener, more peaceful and democratic Europe made possible by climate action.

This seems to suggest that democracy and peace depend on Europe following the green path. And, by implication, if we deviate from that path of self-righteousness then we imperil democracy and risk war.

But that’s absolute bollocks. Net zero means more people being colder, more people being hungrier, more people being miserable, because they can no longer afford the essentials and the harmless luxuries their parents took for granted.

For the first time in generations living standards in the West are declining. This has nothing to do with a ‘climate crisis’, and everything to do with measures being pursued in response to this mirage, that in reality serve another purpose.

When we consider conflict, then man is no different to other animals. He is less likely to be aggressive when he’s content, when life is good. But net zero means shortages; and competition for scarce resources or produce always leads to conflict.

Well-fed lions loll about in the shade. Hungry lions look for something to kill.

Lower down the ECF homepage we find another gem. Click on ‘read more’ under ‘2023 annual report’, and you’ll see . . .

2023 not only tested our resilience but also underscored the critical importance of our mission, amid heightened political polarisation, a worrying resurgence of populism, and profound geopolitical upheaval.

“A worrying resurgence of populism“. Well it don’t worry this ol’ boy none.

To the ECF ‘populism’ means the long overdue awakening we see across Europe, wrongly limited by a dishonest media to ‘far right’ protests against immigration.

But the planet-savers know ‘populism’ also means people asking why net zero means the de-industrialisation of the West, making life more difficult, and more expensive.

Put it all together and the ECF is the authentic voice of the Globalist-Woke-Green-Left. Dangerously unhinged oligarchs and corporate leaders demanding censorship, and encouraging ‘women with penises’ to push the climate scam on the days when they and the comrades are not demanding open borders and supporting Muslim terrorists.

Yup, the full package (and that is not a reference to ‘transgender women’).

One of the groups funded by the ECF is the Green Finance Institute Ltd. (Formerly Green Finance Initiative Ltd.) Where the CEO is Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, who is of course Welsh, and you’ll be reading more about her in the next section.

The Green Finance Institute has also donated to Labour.

What I found interesting about Dr Thomas is that her background is in banking, not matters environmental. Dare I suggest that she may be less concerned with saving us from our selfish selves than with using the climate scam to make mountains of moolah for those with whom she normally mixes?

(Slaps self on wrist for ungenerous thought!)

GREEN FINANCE INSTITUTE & THE WELSH CONNECTIONS

What more can I tell you about Rhian-Mari Thomas, of the Green Finance Institute?

Well, for a start, she’s been accepted at Davos. And she’s a trustee at the World Wildlife Fund.

And this intriguing article from my favourite fish-wrap seems to confirm the suspicions I just aired about who Rhian-Mari represents. Unless of course her friends are offering to save the planet out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.

The chief executive of the Green Finance Institute (GFI) . . . had grown increasingly concerned about Labour’s £28bn green investment pledge.

The party should not have even considered using that much taxpayer cash, Thomas argued. Instead, it should engage with private investors who were already keen to pour money into big green projects.

The Green Finance Institute has received $3,830,267 from Quadrature Climate Foundation. I can’t find if it’s also been funded by the European Climate Foundation.

Ms Thomas is also an advisor to Aviva, which greenwashes investors’ money through wildlife trusts and other shrieker collectives. Seeing as I regularly mention wildlife trusts on this blog I found this interesting.

Another link between ‘ethical'(!) investments and wildlife trusts is Greenpeace veteran, Jocelyn Joseph Talbot Garman, of Bristol, executive director at the ECF. For since January ‘Joss’ has been a trustee of that old favourite, Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.

UPDATE: Through his paternal grandmother Jocelyn belongs to the Dorset branch of the Anglo-Norman (long resident in Ireland) Talbot de Malahide family. His father, David Edmund Talbot Garman, moved to Radnorshire around 1972, and was for many years vice-chair of Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.

A name we encountered earlier was that of Daniel Luhde-Thomson, who’s said to have given Labour £500,000 this year. The woman I believe to be his wife, Naomi Luhde-Thomson, was appointed early in 2022 to the Eryri National Park Authority by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

Another name we ran into was that of Neil Paul Cosgrove. One of the four trustees of the Quadrature Climate Foundation. I did a search, and what I turned up was rather odd, and I’m not sure what to make of it. But it’s yet another Welsh connection with offshore entities.

My search took me to the North Data site, which I find useful as it suggests various links and connections. This is what I found.

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The links to the left we know about, they’re Quadrature, but what of the others?

Greendoor Investments Ltd is based in Bermuda. And it links with Beaubridge Energist LLP, which uses an address in Hampshire but is registered with Companies House as an overseas company (OC371398). Chaffer, Rigby and Clevely are among the partners in this LLP, as is Cosgrove himself.

But it doesn’t end there. For there are other companies under the ‘Energist’ flag. One being, Energist (Holdings) Ltd, using a Swansea address. Where we find Beaubridge Energist LLP shown as the majority shareholder.

Listed among other Beaubridge companies on the Companies House website we find Beaubridge Swansea LLP. Though it’s difficult to see why it carries that name. For this is a company using the same Hampshire address and is also registered with Companies House as an overseas company (OC432171).

There are two other companies at the Swansea address. Neogen Plasma Ltd, in the business of “manufacture of medical and dental instruments and supplies“. This is owned by Belmont Investments Ltd, and Belmont is owned by Energist Holdings Ltd.

I’m concerned that companies in my home town, involved in ostensibly harmless activities, have links with offshore companies pumping money into the Labour party, while also looking for greenwashing opportunities, and funding envirogrifters to buy up Welsh land.

CONCLUSION

Another clue to the big picture comes from a Wales Environment Link (WEL) document, ‘Pathways to 2030: 10 key areas for investment in nature’s recovery across Wales’. (WEL is based in the Tramshed, you’ll be surprised to learn!)

On the first page (para 5), we read:

A recent study for the Green Finance Institute estimated that there is a gap of between £5 billion and £7 billion between the resources currently dedicated to nature recovery actions in Wales and those needed to meet priority outcomes for nature.

Here we have Rhian-Mari Thomas’s Green Finance Institute arguing that we need £5bn to £7bn to save Wales from becoming a desert.

But the ‘Welsh Government’ can’t spare that kind of money. So where might it come from? Rhian-Mari has already told us, in her reported conversation with Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Thomas argued . . . engage with private investors who were already keen to pour money into big green projects

I’m sure she’s given the same message to the ‘Welsh Government’.

Because there’s a lot of money in offshore tax havens. Not always dirty money from drugs and other criminal activities, but still, money that cannot be honestly accounted for. How best to use it?

One answer is cashing in on environmental hysteria. Because by their very nature, envirogrifters are ideal for those seeking to, er, ‘relocate’ money currently sunning itself in tax havens. Unscrupulous people who will egg on the planet savers to make ever more apocalyptic claims.

Because it’s in the interests of both corporate investors and envirogrifters. The greater the hysteria, and the more readily the politicians fall for it, then the larger the sums of money it’ll be argued are needed to put things right. Money that governments either don’t have or can’t spare.

So let me finish by suggesting that . . .

Nobody should be allowed to accept funding that originates offshore, even if it’s been ‘filtered’ through organisations like the Quadrature Climate Foundation, the European Climate Foundation, and the Green Finance Institute.

Tax haven money is too often dirty money. That’s why it’s in a tax haven. And why it’s always looking for opportunities to be laundered.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Development Bank Of Wales

The Development Bank of Wales (DBW) has been in the news a lot recently, and it’s usually bad news. About loans for individuals or companies of questionable probity and / or dubious commercial viability.

The case that’s gained most publicity was the £400,000 loan made to the generous, landfill-owning mate of our mercifully short-lived first minister Vaughan Gething.

The (R) you’ll see next to some names will be explained at the end.

BETWS-Y-COED

I should warn you that what might appear to be a simple tale of the DBW making a loan to some guy opening a hostel in Betws-y-Coed gets rather complicated. But interesting, so it’s worth paying attention.

For those unfamiliar with this large village in the Conwy valley, maybe it’ll help if I tell you the wife and I avoid it between Easter and October. It’s a tourist trap; nice for all that, but best enjoyed when it’s not choked with coachloads of wrinklies from Warrington and Wolverhampton.

The piece you’re about to read took off when a comment to last week’s posting drew my attention to this item in the Daily Post. Intrigued, I naturally got to wondering about the man named, Rowern Wong (R), so I made enquiries.

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It turns out that Mr Wong has a number of property companies, and many associates. Put together it paints an interesting picture. And opens up quite a few possibilities.

Before delving into who’s who and what’s what, I can tell you that whoever now owns Bryn Llewelyn, the change of ownership has not yet been notified to the Land Registry. So there’s little point in me showing you the title document I downloaded.

Though this Google image from May this year suggests the builders are at work.

CONNECTIONS

Mr Wong’s company is named as Base Camp Snowdonia. Here’s the website. And here’s the Companies House entry.

You’ll see that the company in Wales was formed in December last year, and has since been joined, in July, by Base Camp Hathersage Ltd. Hathersage being a village in the Peak District. Both are controlled by Base Camp Hostels Ltd, formed in April last year.

So who’s behind the parent company?

If we turn to the ‘Persons in significant control’ tab it tells us that Wong was running things until the first of January, but now there’s no one listed as PSC. This probably links with the arrival of Mr Alexander Gibbs as a director on New Year’s Day.

And who is Alexander Gibbs?

Well, if it’s this guy (R), then he’s the Principal of Terra Firma Capital Partners. Here’s the Companies House entry. And if we click on the ‘significant control’ tab, we learn that the company is owned by Mr Guy Hands, who lives in sea-girt Guernsey.

UPDATE: Alexander Gibbs left Base Camp Hostels Ltd on September 19, the day after this blog piece appeared.

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Someone who became a Terra Firma director in May was Ajay Kumar Bahl, a chartered accountant. Looking at Bahl’s other directorships, among them is Pant y Maen Wind Ltd, which he joined in July.

This company is said to be owned by Brenig Wind Holdings Ltd. Which I can’t find. I can only find Brenig Wind Holdings II Ltd, based in Guernsey. So can we guess who’s behind this?

The only other director of Pant-y-Maen Wind is Oliver Gordon Hughes, who is a very busy boy indeed. With a number of Welsh names among the ‘renewables’ companies he’s been involved with.

The most recent among them is the International Sustainable Forestry Coalition, which Hughes joined in April. This looks like greenwashing. Finding land on which to plant trees and harvest whatever grants are going. Only formed last December.

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‘Social justice’! ‘Circular bioeconomy transitions’! Did youse ever read such simpering bollocks! The company is owned by Australian Ross Hampton. The other directors are Aussies, Americans, Japanese, a few Scandinavians, a Brazilian and an Englishman.

Under the ‘About’ tab, we learn . . .

The ISFC is a Company limited by guarantee (not for profit) registered in the United Kingdom. Each member company has the right to nominate one individual to become a Director of the ISFC.

So each director of this cuddly, not-for-profit front is there representing a major corporation looking to plant trees in order to save the planet make lots of easy money out of the ‘carbon is evil’ nonsense.

Before pushing on, let’s recap. This story started with someone opening a hostel for hikers in Betws-y-Coed, and landing a £500,000 DBW grant.

But the parent company, Base Camp Hostels Ltd, links with a big-shot financier in the Channel Islands, and various green scams, quite a few of which seem to be in Wales, including Pant-y-Maen wind farm south west of Denbigh.

I’ll end this section by mentioning two other companies run by Rowern Wong.

The first, Mount Fitzroy Partners Ltd, was launched in October 2016 and dissolved two years later without apparently doing anything.

July 2023 saw the birth of Walbrook Ventures Ltd (originally The Marylebone Trading Co Ltd). Now six weeks late with the first confirmation statement.

SHARES

On the same day in April Base Camp Hostels moved its address from Wong’s pad to the second floor at 168 Shoreditch High Street an intriguing share distribution was registered with Companies House.

These are divided into Founder shares and Ordinary shares. Wong has 100,000 of the former, Gibbs 75,000.

The Ordinary shares introduce a number of interesting players. I’ll take them in the order they appear on the Companies House document. Leaving aside Wong and Gibbs, the first name we come to is:

BERNIE BOYLAN, and I think this is our boy.

BARTOSZ JASKULA (R), may be this guy. But Companies House says he’s no longer with Mergerlinks Ltd. He goes climbing with Wong.

CALLUM LAITHWAITE must be this guy.

TERANCE LI. Is it this guy?

ALEXANDER MAXWELL-SCOTT. I’m fairly sure this is him.

B72 VENTURES UG. As the name suggests, is German, based in Mannheim.

LIDEN HOLDINGS LTD, is registered in Gibraltar.

NANKILLY INVESTMENTS LTD. Is registered with Companies House.

You must admit, that is a very eclectic collection of investors in what is after all just a small company running one, possibly two, hostels. And they’re all money men.

THE MANCHESTER CONNECTION

Let’s move over now to the land of the Mancs, for Mr Wong has been busy there buying up property. Done through his company Kaltain Ventures Ltd. The other director, with an equal number of shares, is Babaola Alabi Omiyale (R).

Omiyale is also a director of Bisley Solar Ltd. I found, by a tortuous route, that this company is owned by Impax Asset Management. Which ‘pioneers’ . . .

. . . investment in the transition to a more sustainable global economy and today is one of the largest investment managers dedicated to this area.

Kaltain Ventures Ltd has bought six properties in Manchester with loans or mortgages from the Paragon Bank PLC (5) and The Mortgage Works (UK) PLC (1). Other properties might have been bought without loans, or with loans that do not need to be declared to Companies House.

But clearly, Rowern Wong and his mate Omiyale, are into the buy to rent sector. Which would appear to be something of a departure for Omiyale.

Because from his Linkedin entry it seems he’s representing planet-saving Impax at Bisley Solar. Which makes sense. But how do we explain his involvement with Wong in Manchester? Is he freelancing, making some pocket-money?

UPDATE: Interestingly, Omiyale was witness to the signatures on both DBW loans. Isn’t a witness supposed to be impartial, unconnected with either party? Admittedly, Omiyale seems not to be involved in the hostel companies, but he is certainly a business partner of Wong.

FURTHER QUESTIONS

The Development Bank of Wales loan was delivered January 15, a month after Base Camp Snowdonia Ltd was launched. Which was remarkably quick, especially as Christmas and New Year intervened.

It’s reasonable therefore to assume the DBW was dealing originally with Base Camp Hostels Ltd (launched April 2023), and perhaps advised that English company to set up a Welsh entity to avoid exciting the likes of me.

Though if we look closely at the DBW deal we see that it’s actually two transactions. There’s a mortgage for Bryn Llewelyn, and then . . .

All other freehold and leasehold property now or in the future belonging to the company together with all buildings, trade and other fixtures

July saw the launch of Base Camp Hathersage Ltd. Presumably after buying a property in the village of that name. Was it bought with DBW money? Because no charge is shown against the company.

If that is the case, then not only did DBW give an English company money to buy property in Wales, it might even have funded the purchase of property in England.

Then, and as I mentioned earlier, there’s the fact that although Bryn Llewelyn must have been bought earlier this year, the change of ownership has not yet been registered with the Land Registry.

And until the new title document is available we won’t know a) who actually owns the property, or b) if there’s another charge, for money received from some other source.

We’ve already considered the share issue at the parent company, Base Camp Hostels Ltd, in April. But what brought them all together? What’s the common denominator?

CONCLUSION

It’s a long time since I’ve written a piece with so many unanswered questions, so many loose ends. But that’s how it’s worked out. Because, I suspect, there may be a lot more going on here than just a hostel in Eryri.

Now it’s time to explain the (R) you’ve seen after a few names. And I’ll do it by showing you Rowern Wong’s Linkedin profile.

For without checking all whose names have cropped up here I was still struck by how many of those mentioned had, like Wong, worked for Rothschild & Co. Of course, it could all be pure coincidence. But maybe not.

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Returning to his Linkedin bio, we see that Wong’s day job seems to be Chief Operating Officer of an outfit called General Projects. I eventually found it on the Companies House website.

Their Linkedin profile says:

A creative-led real estate developer that builds innovative and inspiring buildings wholly designed for the new economy

What’s the “new economy“?

I also found the website. But there’s no mention of Wong. Has he left? Is he now a full-time hostelier? (Is there such a word?) Does he need to update his Linkedin bio?

On the General Projects website, under ‘Purpose’, I found this chilling statement, leaving us in no doubt about the kind of people we’re dealing with:

A commitment to be operationally Net-Zero Carbon across our whole portfolio by 2030 in addition to the supply of energy from 100% renewable sources

Which ties in with something else that struck me, almost a thread running through every involvement and angle I looked into, was corporations seeking profitable investments that could be dressed up as saving the planet.

Is there a link between Rothschild and the planet savers? If so, where might Rowern Wong fit in?

Look at it this way. If you were a company, even an individual, in the greenwashing business, and you were looking for ‘pliable’ politicians who’d already bought into the climate scam and would therefore guarantee you easy money, then Wales would be very attractive.

Maybe Rowern Wong is testing the water with his hostel in Betws-y-Coed; getting to know people in Corruption Bay, seeing how things are done. Just a theory.

But whether I’m right or wrong, given all the money men involved with Base Camp Hostels the Development Bank of Wales should not have dished out £500,000 of our money. Especially if some of it was used to buy a place in the Peak District.

Though it may be significant that the money men appeared after Rowern Wong’s ventures had been primed with DBW money.

That said, the apparent change in control of the parent company, Base Camp Hostels Ltd, may have taken place before the DBW loan.

Does the Development Bank of Wales know who it’s really dealing with?

UPDATE: As you’ll have read, I was struck by the number of times Rothschild & Co cropped up while researching this piece. And so I’m indebted to a regular reader for drawing my attention to Kerdiff boy Kevin Gardiner. Whose day job is Global Investment Strategist at Rothschild & Co Wealth Management.

Which fits well with those we’ve looked at in this post: asset / wealth investment types looking for a profitable home for their money. And few bets are safer or more profitable today than saving the planet. With few administrations on Earth more completely suckered by the climate scam than the ‘Welsh Government’.

Kevin Gardiner has been an advisor to those clowns, and is now a member of the Cardiff Capital Region’s advisory board. From these and other links we can safely assume that Gardiner is very well connected in Corruption Bay.

The Betws-y-Coed hostel may be a red herring, or a sprat to catch a mackerel. The question now might be: Is Kevin Gardiner of Rothschild & Co Wealth Management using his Corruption Bay connections to introduce his clients to Wales, and the profits they can make?

Here’s a nice group photo from 2014; also in the frame is Lord Davies of Abbasock, owner of The Tramshed. If you’ve got the right connections in Corruption Bay then Wales is your oyster!

Fill yer boots!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Whisper It In The Tramshed

This is another of those pieces I wish I didn’t have to write. Another sorry tale of political bias and incompetence, and the wasting of large amounts of public money.

WHISPER AND LABOUR

Our tale begins with two announcements.

The first came from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ last Friday. Informing us a “Wales-based” company, that televised the Paris Paralympics for Channel 4, had been awarded £800,000.

We were further informed,, “Whisper began its operations in Wales in 2018” and was then, “Named Business of the Year at the Cardiff Business Awards in 2022“.

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Which is odd. For Whisper Films Cymru Ltd wasn’t launched until September 2. Just over a week ago! So how could it cover the Paris Paralympics, which began a week before it was formed, and how could it have been so busy in Wales since 2018?

The answer is of course that it’s been operating under a different name. For if we turn to the Companies House website entry for Whisper Films Cymru, and the Certificate of Incorporation, we see that it’s owned by the parent company.

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Whisper Films Cymru Ltd is just the local label for a company of the same name based in Kingston-upon-Thames (down the lane).

Then on Monday I read Cardiff Capital Region was investing a further £1.5m. Making it £2.3m over one weekend. (Since the fall of Monmouthshire, all the councils in that region are now controlled by Labour.)

So let’s see who’s running this “Wales-based” company, Whisper Films Cymru Ltd.

The three directors are: Allan Handley, of the parent company, Whisper. Sunil Ramanbhai Patel, CEO and co-founder. And, to give a little Welsh flavour, Carys Owens.

Carys Owens is the wife of recently-retired captain of the national rugby team, Ken Owens. Which probably explains why Ken has been seen in dodgy company of late.

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Gething’s already gone and Starmer’s the most unpopular prime minister since Pitt the Positively Infantile. Keep it up, Ken.

On a more serious note . . . Ken Owens’ involvement might be linked to the ‘Welsh Government’ taking over the Welsh Rugby Union last year. I explained this in ‘Taking Control, Of Everything‘.

Is Ken being lined up for a WRU job?

So what more can I tell you about Whisper Films?

We know it’s been operating in Wales for some years without feeling the need to adopt a Welsh persona, but now that it’s gone legit there are 23 Whisper Cymru staff listed on its website.

Among them, and listed as another co-founder, is Jake Humphrey, formerly of BT Sport. He seems to be a fan of Keir Starmer.

Whisper Films Cymru Ltd is owned by Whisper Films Ltd, but we can follow the trail back to Sony Pictures Television Production UK Ltd, owned by Columbia Pictures Corporation Ltd, with everything ultimately owned by the Sony Group Corporation.

Should you be minded to write, here’s the head office address, 1-7-1 Konan, Minato-Ku, Tokyo 108-0075, Japan.

WHISPER IN THE TRAMSHED

You may not be surprised to learn that the newly-minted Whisper Cymru is based in The Tramshed, so generously funded and in other ways favoured by the Labour party.

I gave the low-down at the end of May with, ‘The Tramshed, The Loans, The Leases, The Lord’; and a few days later, ‘The Tramshed, The Loans, The Leases, The Lord 2‘.

What I established in those pieces was that, like the shop in League of Gentlemen, The Tramshed is, ‘A Labour shop for Labour people’. Outsiders are not welcome.

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But why is Whisper officially taking on a Welsh identity at this moment? One answer is obviously to get its hands on the £2.3m funding you’ve just read about. And I’m sure there’ll be more.

For I can almost smell a loan from the Development Bank of Wales. Which would have been difficult if not impossible to arrange if Whisper had remained a company registered solely in England.

I also believe it links to the July 4 election. Because if you go back to Monday’s press release about the Capital Region investment you’ll see Dame Nia Griffith MP, of the Wales Office, mentioned.

But why is she involved? Isn’t this a Welsh company getting Welsh funding?

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Maybe the explanation is that Whisper Films is favoured by those who recently came to power in London. Which might mean that this deal couldn’t have been done before Comrade Starmer got his feet under the No 10 desk.

Was Labour’s Cardiff branch instructed to help Whisper?

Handley and Patel have another company at the Tramshed, CBC Broadcast Centre Ltd, launched in March. Though until last month it was known as Furnace Broadcast Centre Ltd. (Is that Furnace, Llanelli, or the one just north of Aberystwyth?)

Control again rests with Whisper in Richmond. Understandable, for both directors live in England. It’s worth dwelling on CBC for a minute because when you see who’s involved with this outfit other things start to make sense.

Which is a cue to look at recent developments at the Tramshed, including the opening of this facility last month.

No matter how it’s dressed up, and despite being funded from within Wales, this looks like a facility for Whisper, Channel 4, CBC, and other English companies. Such as Timeline Television of London:

Timeline TV . . . will operate the space following the conclusion of The Paralympics.

I’m not disputing that Wales will get a few jobs, some training, and Cardiff will get a lot of plugs, but looking at the bigger picture, Wales loses out. Certainly if you believe that Wales extends beyond Cardiff.

It’s all very well dressing up Whisper Cymru as ‘ground-breaking’, and the new facilities at the Tramshed as ‘exciting’, but in truth, there’s nothing new here at all.

It’s just more companies from outside Wales being gifted expensive facilities and showered with public money. All done to create a few jobs and give the impression of an indigenous media sector.

Little more than the branch factory / inward investment strategy updated for the digital age. Which, by a curious twist, brings us back to Sony!

Something else that brings us up to date is Labour-controlled councils investing pension funds and similar money in companies where Labour insiders are well looked after. The Bute Energy model repeating itself.

THE SLOW DEATH OF YR EGIN

In answer to the constant claims that devolution was resulting in everything being located in Cardiff, S4C decided to build a new HQ in Carmarthen, known as Yr Egin.

Though the obvious location was Aberystwyth. Partly for its centrality, and partly because it was the most popular choice among S4C employees. It was even reported that many staff were refusing to leave Cardiff for Carmarthen.

But for reasons that were never quite clear, Carmarthen was chosen. Though good road and rail links to Cardiff and London were mentioned.

This is important because if we look at the Whisper Facebook page, we see that at the start of 2019 it tells the world that Whisper’s new home is Yr Egin. Suggesting it might have been this facility that drew Whisper to Wales in the first place.

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Is Whisper still at Yr Egin? It may have a presence, but my guess would be that Whisper is firmly ensconced at The Tramshed. That’s certainly the address used for both Whisper and CBC.

The point of Yr Egin was to take direct and spin-off jobs to places away from Cardiff. To spread the jam. Which is why Yr Egin is a failure. Yes, it’s being used, but not for its intended role.

But we’ve been here before. When S4C was established we were told the Caernarfon area would see a cluster of independent TV companies, providing hundreds of well-paid posts. Those jobs the Cofis were promised went to Cardiff.

It was the same with devolution. The people of Cardiff voted against, the movers and shakers were even more firmly opposed, but once it happened, then the Assembly had to go to Cardiff.

More than that, it had to go to the Bay, to benefit Nick Edwards and his pals in Associated British Ports. To boost their Cardiff Bay Development Corporation. In need of a boost after failing to land either an opera house or the new rugby stadium.

It was this episode that saw me coin the term Corruption Bay.

Finally, and on the political level, the new development in the Tramshed sees a socialist regime in Wales help Channel 4, whose news programmes are often compared to Romanian state television under Ceausescu.

A perfect fit!

As I’ve said, there was always resistance from within Cardiff to Yr Egin. And it went beyond staff being reluctant to move.

To begin with, the city stood to lose hundreds of skilled, 21st century jobs. Jobs that brought Cardiff a lot of money and considerable prestige.

Then, working on the assumption that Yr Egin would be full of ‘Nashies’, the Cardiff comrades could have justified The Tramshed, if only to themselves, on political grounds.

So Cardiff council set about developing The Tramshed. Using both its own money and ‘Welsh Government’ money.

Of course, WG was also supporting Yr Egin. Backing both horses in a two-horse race really is a mug’s bet.

CONCLUSION

We are now told we need 36 more Senedd Members in Corruption Bay to make Wales a better place. Bollocks! Here’s my suggestion.

Keep to 60 SMs, but move the Senedd to Aberystwyth, or Machynlleth, Llandrindod or even Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant. No fancy new building, put the buggers in a barn or a village hall. Any member of a pressure group or third sector body sighted within three miles is to be shot, and fed to the hogs. Then provide the SMs with electric bikes and oilskins to get back and forth to their constituencies.

I guarantee that a few years of such an arrangement will do more good, for more parts of Wales, than having 36 more Senedd Members living it up at our expense in the corrupt capital of a corrupt country, heading down the tubes at a rate of knots.

♦ end ♦ 

© Royston Jones 2024

To Be A Farmer’s Boy

This week’s offering is about organisations that are often little more than a name. Yet despite their lack of corporeal substance these outfits enjoy considerable support from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’.

Which is bad enough, but Wales has far too many of these organisations, and their numbers seem to be increasing monthly.

The title of this piece is taken from an old English song about a lad whose father dies leaving him, his mother, and five siblings, to fend for themselves. The lad goes to a farm seeking work. The farmer’s wife and daughter take pity on him, and he’s hired. He marries the daughter, and when her parents die, he becomes the farmer.

Here’s a good pub version from West Yorkshire.

And here’s an interesting version by Shropshire singer Fred Jordan. The old rhotic accent of the central border coming through well.

God! I spoil you.

SONS (AND DAUGHTERS) OF THE SOIL

This first section is about a shindig planned for November called the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference, at the University of Wales Trinity St David in Lampeter.

Where else? For this venerable institution is to where Jane Davidson, authoress of the Future Generations legislation, retreated after leaving Corruption Bay.

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I particularly love their use of the term, ‘Real farming’. Does it suggest those involved enjoy a monopoly in knowledge of the subject? Inferring that those beyond this coterie are wholly ignorant of farming?

So who are these enlightened ones?

The website is a minimalist creation, perhaps explained by the fact that this group comes alive only for the annual knees-up. Like some sort of Earth-botherers Brigadoon.

Here’s the line-up (from the match programme, 6d from the boys at the turnstiles):

Hazel Thomas, who might actually know something about food. But after that promising introduction it’s downhill all the way.

Laura-Cait Driscoll, University of Wales Trinity St David Lampeter. Whose life is a mystery ere she rocked up in Lambed in 2016 to work at Shapla Tandoori.

Catherine Hughes. Is it a local Plaid Cymru councillor? Or this Catherine Hughes? If it’s the second, then she works with the ‘Welsh Government’.

Alicia Miller, Sustainable Food Trust. An international organisation, reflected in its directors. Monmouthshire council among the donors tells you who’s moving to rural north Gwent, have taken over the local Labour party and, through it, the council.

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A farming source tells me Patrick Holden, founder of SFT, is a good egg, but my source fears his organisation is going the way of others, like the Soil Association, in being taken over by anti-farmer activists. Or worse.

Dr Jane Ricketts Hein, Cynidr Consulting. Is there such a company, or is it a one-woman band?  The name crops up in relation to this 2017 conference, and then, nothing. Though Dr Hein seems to be connected with Bangor university.

To confuse matters(?), there was a company called Cynder Consulting.

Lowri Hedd Vaughan, GwyrddNi, which is a climate action group . . . at a conference on food and farming?

Ieuan Davies, Natural Resources Wales. ‘Welsh Government’ representative.

I said it was downhill after the full-back, and now it starts to get slightly ridiculous.

Jackie Pearce-Dickens, Whole Health Agriculture; from Oxfordshire, which wants us to consume less meat and fewer dairy products. A perfect fit for a food and farming conference in a dairy farming area of a livestock-raising country.

Lisa Mundle, Landworkers’ Alliance Cymru. An organisation of middle-class fantasists who want to be seen as peasants, such as might be found in Asia or Latin American. Sad, really.

The group belongs to La Via Campesina. So Viva La Revolucion!

Delyth Phillips (actually, Phillipps), of Wildlife Trusts Wales. An organisation that haunts me, because – and as I’ve reported more than once – it doesn’t exist.

Wildlife Trusts Wales dissolved as a charity in 2021, and as a company a year later. Thereby surrendering Wales’ distinct identity in that sphere. But reflecting the English takeover of the ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ rackets in Wales.

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Despite lacking any legal structure Wildlife Trusts Wales carries on as if nothing happened. Led by dissembling Rachel Sharp. Ably assisted by Tim Birch, the Extinction Rebellion nut-job who was run out of the Peak District. And now, we have Delyth Phillipps.

How many more are there in this wraith-like organisation?

But do you know what’s missing from that line-up? That’s right – a farmer!

And that’s because we’ve reached the stage in Wales where conferences can be organised to discuss food production, land use, the rural environment . . . yet genuine, traditional, Welsh, farmers, are excluded.

I’ll explain this in the Conclusion.

TIR NATUR

This is a gang I’ve mentioned a few times before. And that’s despite them climbing aboard the environmental bandwagon only very recently. Here’s their website.

I think the first time Tir Natur appeared here was in July 2022, in a Miscellany post, scroll down to the section headed with the name.

But I think they’re worth another look. So let’s turn to the website, where we see Tir Natur’s vision laid out:

A Wales where beavers return to build their dams . . .  where cranes dance in the setting sun and golden eagles soar above Eryri once more.

Poetic, like, innit?

But seriously, what soul-dead ghoul among you could not be moved by the uplifting images of foxtrotting cranes and soaring eagles?

And there’s more.

A Wales where large grazing animals roam freely in natural herds . . . 

Note that Tir Natur is not referring here to cattle. If previous TN output is anything to go by, then this is a reference to European bison. In fact, an image of said beasts appears on the TN website.

Picture it! It’s 2035, and herds of bison roam from Crickhowell to Caeathro and from Crymych to Caerwys, pausing to rub themselves against the wind turbines, many of which have now toppled. Useless, unrecyclable, their owners untraceable.

The bison often wander into towns and villages, trampling people, wrecking cars, buildings, and gardens, but nothing can be done – because they’re protected. And that’s because, unlike cow farts, bison farts do no harm to the planet!

This is re-wilding. And it’s what Tir Natur is all about. So let’s get to the nub of it.

Tir Natur is a rewilding charity, set up to address the nature & climate crises in Wales. The state of nature in Wales is truly devastating . . . 

Globally, 1,000,000 species are at risk of extinction, and Wales is one of the worst culprits in the world for loss of nature. We are ranked 224th out of 240 countries for biodiversity intactness . . . but rewilding offers hope

What you’ve read there is how modern environmentalism operates. Imagine or exaggerate a problem – then come up with the solution. A ‘solution’ that will greatly benefit those who identified the problem in the first place!

Such an elegant and circular solution to the woes of the world.

If you think I’m wrong, then tell me who decided that, The state of nature in Wales is truly devastating‘, and that Wales is, ‘ranked 224th out of 240 countries for biodiversity intactness‘.

Was it some respected and impartial authority, or was it off-the-wall activists such as we find at Tir Natur? Come to that, who accepts these ‘findings’? The truth is that it doesn’t matter what you and I think; what matters is getting politicians and funders to pretend they believe this garbage.

But look around the world, for God’s sake, where forests bigger than Wales are being cleared, where species are hunted to extinction, at countries with no environmental controls whatsoever – yet we are expected to believe that little Wales, where hardly anything has changed, where regulations get tighter by the year, is ranked in the top 10% of countries suffering biodiversity loss.

Insulting bullshit. Insulting to all Welsh people, but especially to farmers, for they are the real target of these lies.

From the Tir Natur website. ‘This little piggy . . . ‘ can grow to 150kg or more, with tusks capable of ripping a human to shreds. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I was directed back to Tir Natur a couple of weeks ago because of two new arrivals.

First was Sally Weale, zoologist and maker of documentaries. She had previously been a director of The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

Weale greeted her appointment with, and very predictably:

With the loss of so much of Wales’ once abundant wildlife, I’m excited by the scale and ambition of Tir Natur’s vision

I don’t know what species have been lost in my lifetime, but I suspect it’s very few, if any. Which leads me to believe that when Sally Weale and others talk of ‘loss’ they’re thinking in a much longer timescale.

Which then allows them to include beaver, lynx, wolf, and other animals as having been ‘lost’. If I’m right, then how far back do we go? To bears? Pterodactyl?

But while using the longer timescale they still want to pretend that we, living today, are responsible. Or, at a stretch, it starts with the Industrial Revolution.

This is a deliberate and dishonest conflation designed to deceive us, and benefit them.

The other recent recruit was none other than Tim Birch, still looking over his shoulder for mutton-chopped Derbyshire gamekeepers.

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I conclude this section with another extract from the TN website. Go to the ‘About Rewilding’ tab, then click ‘What is Rewilding?’ Where you’ll be regaled with:

Here in Wales, where ecosystems are more depleted and 88% of land is managed in some way for agriculture, rewilding is about restoring the complex and dynamic mosaic of habitat that once was.

The link is now clearly made between ecological degradation, species loss, and farming. An environmental tragedy created by farming that can only be remedied by taking land away from farmers and giving it back to nature.

Well no, not really. The land must be given to organisations like Tir Natur. Who will introduce all manner of strange critters, some of which were never known in Wales. Such as the Konik horse. For as all Wales knows, from Gower to the Carneddau, we have no wild equines of our own.

And that, my friends, is ‘rewilding’. It’s a colonialist land grab by shysters who know nothing of our country, or us. But then, we Welsh don’t figure in the future they want.

CONCLUSION

Readers may have noticed that the methodology employed by the environmental and land grab scammers is remarkably similar to that used by climate alarmists. That’s because they’re directed by the same source.

I refer now to the UN, WEF, EU, assorted supranational bodies; the mega corporations like BlackRock and Vanguard; and unhinged multi-billionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates, who think their wealth is a mandate to dictate our lives.

They too operate by dreaming up a crisis, then, like magicians producing rabbits from top hats, they come up with the ‘solution’. This pattern is now established.

The ‘climate crisis’ demands we rely on heavily subsided – and therefore expensive for consumers – ‘green’ energy, reject the internal combustion engine, have fewer children, and radically modify our diets.

A number of ostensibly unconnected agencies and movements have been recruited by the Globalists to promote the ‘destabilisation leads to control’ agenda.

These include Cultural Marxists pushing BLM, ‘trans rights’, open borders, and the idea that all white people are guilty of slavery, etc. Done to encourage division and violence that will be used to justify increasing censorship and authoritarianism.

Also, environmentalists, vegans and others, who’ve been platformed in recent decades because they too serve the Globalist agenda.

Simple, really. Control the food supply, control the people.

Which is why the Globalists encourage and fund environmentalists to demand an end to farming. While simultaneously pushing the idea of eating bugs, and ‘meat’ made in laboratories.

From the Guardian, July 17. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But the Globalists may not want the land from which farmers have been evicted for themselves. Other than perhaps what they can use for carbon offsets and other scams.

The priority is to ensure that that land no longer produces food.

Now I don’t know about you, but if, after all we know about Bill Gates’ involvement with Covid and the vaccines, you’re still happy to eat ‘meat’ from his factories, then the best of luck to you.

(You’ll find his ‘meat’ factory next to his mosquito breeding sheds.)

Call me old fashioned, but I’d prefer to stick with the Welsh countryside as it is, dotted with Welsh family farms producing good, wholesome, and natural food.

And helping maintain Welsh identity.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Renaissance Men

This piece results from news I received about a court case in Sussex. I started digging, and it got to be like peeling an onion. Perhaps not pleasant, but there you go, that’s life.

Obviously I won’t comment on the case itself, or the proceedings. What I’ll do is look at the fascinating connections the accused man has across southern Wales.

And wondering how to make sense of it all. Any and all suggestions welcome.

WORKING BACKWARDS

The case I was directed to began at Lewes Crown Court in Sussex last Monday. A Syrian, living in Swansea, was charged with bringing people from Vietnam into the country illegally, through Newhaven.

Here’s how the incident was originally reported in February.

The man’s name is Anas al Mustafa, and in a previous report, his address was given as ‘Heather Crescent, Swansea’. This is on the Sketty Park estate, the road running from Sketty Park Drive up to the flats.

As you might guess, Swansea being my home town, I got to wondering about him.

My source had directed me to the Companies House website, and the company A & T Food Transport Ltd. Which made sense, seeing as the latest news report mentioned ‘a refrigerated van’.

There seem to be a number of addresses linked to this company, in Swansea and Cardiff; with Anas al Mustafa also taking us to Bedwas. So let’s see what it all tells us.

UPDATE: Anas al Mustafa was found guilty and will be sentenced on September 6.

UPDATE September 6: Anas al Mustafa was jailed for 10 years.

A & T FOOD TRANSPORT LTD

The address given for the company is 22 Caepistyll Street, which links Carmarthen Road with Llangyfelach Street, running past St Joseph’s Cathedral primary school.

There have been three directors. The man on trial in Sussex. Who is described as British. He resigned 29.09.2023. A Swedish citizen named Mohammad Mustafa al Mustafa, who might be a kinsman. He joined the company 22.11.2023. And Ahmad Farhan Hudad, who filled in between one al Mustafa leaving and the other joining.

The property in Caepistyll Street used as the company address is owned by the Coastal Housing Group, which I believe is the biggest housing association in Swansea. Here’s the property title document.

It seems that Muhammad al Mustafa from Sweden now lives in Caepistyll St. Is he the registered tenant? What do the Coastal Housing rules say about running a business from its properties?

And come to that, how does a citizen of a wealthy country like Sweden qualify for social housing in Wales?

And although the accused’s address is given in the media as being in Sketty Park, on the Companies House entry both he and Hudad give their address as 52 Ceri Road, Townhill. Which, as the title document confirms, is owned by Swansea council.

I have the exact address for Heather Crescent, where the company was based until October 12, 2023, and where the accused is said to live, but this property is privately owned and I’m assuming there’s no connection between the owners and those who probably rented it. So we’ll leave that there.

Let’s end this section by reminding ourselves that the arrested man, Anas al Mustafa, left A & T Food Transport at the end of September last year. The company is now run by the Swedish citizen I believe to be related, Mohammad al Mustafa.

THE THIRD MAN

As I’ve said, the third director of the Swansea company was Ahmad Farhan Hudad. He seems to have been holding the fort during the interregnum.

Hudad has been involved in two other companies.

One being Amana Accountant Ltd.  This company also uses the Ceri Road address. Does Swansea council have rules about running businesses from council houses?

There was never much to speak of in terms of money in this company until the accounts for y/e 31.01.2024 showed £50,000 appearing as intangible assets. (Later in the accounts described as ‘goodwill’.)

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The second company is Pure General Trading Ltd. The other director here is Hiwa Mohammed Salman Amin. He gives as his address the new company address on the Enterprise Park in Llansamlet. To be exact, Unit 1, Aber Court, off Ferryboat Close.

There’s no money in this company, it files as dormant.

These Llansamlet properties are owned by Swansea council and this particular unit was leased in March 1981 for 75 years. So it’s presumably rented from the lessor.

But Pure General Trading began life, in May last year, at 83 Mansel Street, just out of the city centre, a scruffy property next-door to a nail bar.

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No 83 is either being rented or, if it’s been sold, then the records haven’t been updated with the Land Registry.

THE CARDIFF CONNECTION

If we turn to the Certificate of Incorporation for A & T Food Transport Ltd we see the company’s address given as being in St Mellons.

While Anis al Mustafa, the founding director, gives his address as 224 Whitchurch Road.

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This Whitchurch Road property is owned by Somarz Properties LLP. Here’s the title document. Somarz seems to buy up property in and around Cardiff.

Though there’s a strange pattern to the dealings. If we check the Charges, we see that nineteen were delivered from the Principality Building Society on November 5, 2019 (one on Nov 4).

Nothing then until four were delivered in July 2022 from Arbuthnot Latham and Co (two of which were satisfied the same month), then a gap of two years until two more were delivered last month from Ultimate Bridging Finance Ltd.

But I’m having trouble making sense of it. Let me explain.

If we look at the latest (filleted) accounts for Somarz Properties LLP, to March 30, 2023, we see a massive jump in the value of ‘investments’ from the previous year. An increase of some £14.5m.

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Yet, to go by the charges registered with Companies House, the only acquisition in that period was 131A Cyncoed Road. (The smaller property at the front.) And nice though Cyncoed might be, there’s no way a house on someone’s drive runs to £14.5m.

One possibility is that this windfall came from Zafar Malik, who seems to have died late in 2022, and who I assume was related to the current Partners. He was not a good landlord. Or a good neighbour.

As I’ve said before, Limited Liability Partnerships can be used to hide a multitude of sins. And very often do.

AND SO TO BEDWAS

I’ve spent some happy hours in Bedwas, my Best Man hailed from there. Hell of a boy, Dai. Dead now.

He once told me a truly weird story from his youth, about sharing a police cell with former politician Ron Davies. It was somewhere in eastern England, typical Valleys boys on tour sort of thing. Struggling now to remember the details. Wish I could ask him.

Anyway, the man we began this tale with, the man on trial in Sussex, was also involved with a company in Bedwas. The company is still in existence, and it’s called A & B Marble Ltd.

There were two directors to begin with, the other one being Bilal Mahmoud Abou Isha. This company was launched March 4, 2020, at Aftab Foroze Consultancies Ltd in Bristol, with share capital of £10,000 split equally between the two directors.

I couldn’t find A & B at the address given, Unit B4, Pantglas Farm Industrial Estate. But at that address we do find Royal Marble. All explained by the fact that A & B Marble trades as Royal Marble. Which throws up another query.

A & B Marble Ltd is just over 4 years old, but the Royal Marble website tells us:

With over 20 years of experience, Royal Marble offers the highest quality quartz, granite and marble stone in the region.

So what was the registered company name for Royal Marble before A & B Marble?

But then the Royal Marble Facebook page says:

With over 25 years of experience, Royal Marble has offered the highest quality Quartz, Granite & Marble stone in the region.

To confuse matters further, there’s another website, this time for ‘Royal Kitchen Designs‘, explained thus:

Royal Kitchen Designs is a family-owned business, born out of the success of its sister company, Royal Marble, also in Bedwas, Caerphilly.

There’s something not right about these websites and FB page. They smack of ‘library images’, or even AI. They lack the human touch. Also lacking names.

And again, there’s little in the way of money or assets showing in the accounts, Despite all that expensive material on site and claiming to employ 5 or 6 people.

Before getting into the fitted kitchen business Abou Isha had a catering company in Neath called Damasspice Ltd, which lasted just a couple of years. It filed just one set of accounts, as a dormant company.

When Anas al Mustafa left A & B Marble he was replaced by another Syrian, Awad Mohammad Almobarack. Then he left A & B Marble in December 2021, and has surfaced again starting up two companies over in Pontypool earlier this year.

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So we have a company in Bedwas that’s been going for 20 years (or is it 25), but it’s unclear under which flag it was sailing for most of that time because A & B Marble didn’t exist before March 2020.

In fact, a cynic might wonder if A & B Marble of Bedwas was formed solely to get a loan from the Development Bank of Wales. (Didn’t I mention that!)

CONCLUSION

So many short-lived companies, with virtually no money or assets showing in the accounts (apart from one), and constant changes of address and personnel, can often look suspicious.

And so many different types of business. Such a multi-talented crew merits the title I’ve given this piece.

There’s even a sort of pattern, in that two guys form a company, then go their separate ways and recruit someone else for a new company, then it’s a case of rinse and repeat.

Virtually all those involved are Syrian. Making it reasonable to assume a Syrian link to these companies. But what is that link, and how does it operate?

And then there’s the question of how those involved managed to get social housing so easily. Did they claim to be refugees? Or did they say they was local boys, like?

And how much due diligence was undertaken by that respected institution, the Development Bank of Wales, before lending to A & B Marble Ltd?

Finally, those who preach Nation of Sanctuary, and demand open borders, really need to grow up and consider the real world consequences of being so ‘progressive’.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024