Author: Jac

‘For Wales, See Will Hayward’

On By JacIn Corruption Bay, Welsh Media43 Comments

Let me begin by saying that I have nothing personal against Will Hayward, never met the boy. But I can’t help wondering why this graduate of Cardiff University – where else? – is accepted as an expert on a country he ‘knows’ only from brief forays out of Cardiff.

And of course he writes for the Guardian. A bit like someone from Turkmenistan who never leaves London or the circles of the metropolitan elite being accepted as an expert on England. In Turkmenistan.

But the spur for this piece is something Will put out on Sunday. In it he claimed the real immigration problem for Wales is not arrivals from overseas, but retirees from England. Though he’s keen to say:

Before we go any further we need to be very clear, this is not about blaming older people or in any way suggesting that people in other parts of the UK don’t have every right to retire wherever they like.

In a sense, he’s right, but the article falls short of giving the full picture. Partly due to ignoring certain factors operating in Wales, and also the knock-on effects in Wales of changes happening outside.

Will Hayward’s article was about people moving into Wales, and falling birthrates, so I’ll take the opportunity to fill out the picture.

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IMMIGRATION TO WALES

For the purposes of this piece I’ll break immigration down into a few categories.

RETIREES: Will is right in saying that Wales attracts retirees from England, with some areas getting more than others. Not for nothing was the north coast long ago dubbed the Costa Geriatrica.

But even in Conwy, the worst-affected area, only 15.8% of those moving in are retirees. (In Cardiff it’s just 2.8%.) Clearly there are other factors at play. So let’s look at them.

GOOD-LIFERS: Here I’m referring to those who’ve “moved to the country“, from English towns and cities, for a better quality of life or some such. Whether true or not, that’s often the reason given.

BUSINESS BUYERS: This category covers those who’ve bought existing businesses or moved here with capital to start their own. This trend has increased exponentially with the advent of the internet and businesses being sold online.

STUDENTS: This could be students who remain in Wales after graduating. Like Will. Or those who stay in the area around the institutions from which they did not graduate. For want of a better term, the drop-outs.

JOB TAKERS: What it says on the tin. And with the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ insisting that 20% of its future recruits must come from minorities – with Wales’s BAME percentage at just 5 or 6% – there’ll be thousands more in future.

This anti-white discrimination has been engineered by pressure groups that profess to believe the countryside is racist, dogs should be banned, and the Welsh cake needs to be decolonised. (I’ve been thrown out of a number of caffs for demanding decolonised Welsh cakes.)

SOCIAL HOUSING TRANSFERS: Social housing providers must give priority to certain categories of applicants. This results in people with no connection to any part of Wales being allocated social housing ahead of locals.

‘WHITE FLIGHT’: Those who’ve moved from England’s increasingly ‘diverse’ and unsafe towns and cities to live in safer areas. Will and his friends might call such people racists. But they’re not. I know many of them, almost all are decent people who wanted something better for themselves and their families.

But if that rationale of racism is accepted, then it must apply to those who form their own enclaves in England’s towns and cities, to live amongst people like themselves. And in some cases create no-go areas for those outside the group.

The point to be made here is that immigration to England – legal and illegal – has a knock-on effect in Wales. To link retirees with ‘asylum seekers’ and use that to argue the latter category has no effect on Wales is wrong.

But seeing as we’re talking about people moving from England . . .

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FALLING BIRTHRATES AND THE HOUSING ISSUE

A linked thread in Will Hayward’s piece about retirees was the ageing population and the falling birthrate. Valid points. But again, taking them in isolation, and linking the latter with the former to the exclusion of other factors, is simplistic.

Predictably, an ageing population and a falling birthrate is used to justify overseas immigration! Now where have we heard that before?

Unless people in Wales start procreating a lot quicker, we are going to need those overseas immigrants, especially given the difficulties we currently have in attracting people to the social care profession.

A major issue, for decades, has been the inability of many local people in rural areas, young Welsh people, to buy a home in their communities. And this phenomenon is influenced by all the factors I mentioned in the previous section.

Despite this, the easy target is holiday homes. Fair enough. But if holiday homes is not the sole cause of the problem then penalising them cannot solve the problem.

In fact, focusing solely on holiday homes has more than a whiff of ‘tax the rich’ to it.

Hayward’s article spotlighted the 65+ age group. These are his ‘retirees’. But people can retire as young as 50 nowadays, certainly 55. And these are not going to move into The Fading Memories Retirement Home. They’re going to buy a place of their own.

But they’re unlikely to have children helping keep the village school open. And well-heeled early retirees are also unlikely to be looking for jobs in the “social care profession“.

With all the various pressures on local housing stocks, private and social, many young people find it difficult if not impossible to find somewhere to live. So they move out of the area. Maybe out of Wales altogether.

This is one explanation for the falling birthrate. And another reason for the lack of recruits for the “social care profession”

Even those who stay, and marry, might not have children if they have to live with parents. Those who do marry, buy a house, and even with husband and wife working in order to pay the mortgage, are less likely to have children.

The housing problems in rural Wales, as they affect young locals, could be viewed as a form of birth control. If not in intent, then certainly in effect. This obviously helps explain the falling birthrate. And closing village schools.

Which means it’s wrong to pile in on retirees in the 65+ age bracket. Poor dabs!

But these facts throw up a solution that Will Haywood and his mates will reject. Ironically, it’s one where Will’s friends line up with Reform and others.

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THE FAILURE OF DEVOLUTION

If Wales is to solve the problems of too many elderly retirees and a falling birthrate, then we must accept that these are parts of a multi-faceted problem affecting, but not confined to, rural Wales.

With the losers every time being the indigenous Welsh. Which then suggests we need to consider differentiating between those posing the threat, and its victims, in order to protect and promote the interests of the latter.

Which can only mean some form of preferential treatment for locals.

But those on the Unionist right will object, saying that we’re all citizens of the UK and must be treated equally.

While Will and his confreres will be uncomfortable with the idea because the bigger agenda to which they’ve aligned frowns on nations and national identity, certainly for white people. They call it ‘ethno nationalism’.

They can call it what they like. I’m Welsh, this is my country, and that’s the way it is.

For those with whom Will associates, ‘Wales’ is just a platform from which to lecture us, and an administrative unit within which they can give free rein to their pet lunacies. Like decolonised Welsh cakes.

But nationhood? Go wash your mouth out with WEF-approved carbolic!

Getting back to falling birthrates and young people leaving means we can’t ignore economic factors. Because away from the rural areas we see falling birthrates in the Valleys and Swansea Bay, where there’s little retirement from England influencing the picture. (Apart perhaps from Gower.)

The only areas with more births than deaths are Cardiff and Newport. But these are growing cities, with healthy economies, reasonable wages, affordable housing, and few retirees moving in. Though migrants from outside of Europe will also contribute to their birthrates.

We must also factor in jobs being concentrated on the south east coast, which draws in young people from other areas of the country. This of course links with the problems discussed earlier, and exposes a major failing of devolution.

The picture below provides an insight into the workings of both devolution and Corruption Bay. (Will Hayward is on the far side in the dark blue shirt.)

It was taken at a soiree organised by PR/lobbying firm Cadno. Which acts as a link between clients wanting to do business in Wales and politicians and decision-makers who can help their dreams come true.

Made easier by the fact that ‘banana republic’ Wales has no register of lobbyists.

As George Carlin used to say: “It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it“.

◊

CONCLUSION

Will Hayward may be a man born out of his time. I say that because I think Will should have been an old-style correspondent, sending amusing skits from far-flung corners of the empire back to London publications.

You think I’m being unfair? Just read this, from December 2024, when Will bravely ventured into the uncharted wastes of the Llynfi Valley. (Maesteg, to be exact.)

Here’s his profile of the local matrons:

They pounced with questions from all sides. “Where you from?”, “Who’s your mam?”, “Do you have a girlfriend?” Google, Facebook and Apple have nothing on the old women of the Llynfi valley for data harvesting.

“Who’s your mam?” FFS! (I was surprised not to read, ‘look you, indeed to goodness’.)

Rarely, in the history of journalism, has a single paragraph hosted such an epic tussle between cliche and stereotype.

Will Hayward moves in a certain ‘progressive’ milieu; he picks up tittle-tattle, or he’s fed information, which he then knocks into articles. He’s essentially a propagandist for the Corruption Bay establishment.

Which helps explain why people wonder whether he supports Labour or Plaid Cymru. The fact that so many have difficulty figuring that out reminds us the Uniparty is real, and all that matters is pushing the agenda.

This Uniparty is a political class in hock to pressure groups, many of which are extreme, and some of which are insane. Which means that this political class has for 27 years of devolution been steadily distancing itself from 95% of the Welsh population.

When he isn’t writing favourably about his friends Will Hayward’s attacking those on the other side.

The other string to his bow is reassuring the metropolitan elite, via the Guardian, that the political class in Wales is on-side. (That’s when he’s not wandering off into the bush.)

Maybe socialising with people I find repulsive gets Will Hayward ‘insights’. But he knows nothing about the real Wales.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Net Zero, Pressure Groups, DEI, Cultural Marxism

On By JacIn Climate, DEI, Environmentalism, Far Left, Globalism, Greens, Public Funding, Renewables, Rugby, Sport, Wind Turbines20 Comments

I’m thinking of taking a summer break, but whether I do or not, I want to put this out; based on things I’ve understood for a while, but prompted by cases that have come to light over the past week.

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FUTURE GENERATIONS COMMISSIONER

This job was created by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. All Welsh legislation now must adhere to the guidelines laid down by this Act. I covered it recently in the second part of Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse.

A wee digression to explain how we got here.

The driving force behind Well-being, and the woman who claims to have authored its bible, is former Labour Assembly Member (for Pontypridd) Jane Davidson. Before taking up the post she’d created for herself, in 2007, Davidson had already damaged Welsh education with climate scam brainwashing and other nonsense.

Davidson was at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, organised by the UN, where the guidelines for ‘sustainable development’ were laid down. They placed the blame for “Climate Change, Desertification and Biodiversity Loss” at the door of Western nations.

This global crisis had to be tackled. When it was pointed out that developing nations were increasingly contributing to the problem it was argued that they must be allowed to catch up. As Google AI puts it:

. . . climate frameworks, like the UN Paris Agreement, operate on the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. This acknowledges that wealthier nations historically produced the majority of greenhouse gases and must take the lead in cutting them, while giving developing economies more time and leeway to transition out of poverty.

Developed nations paying for this ‘differentiation’ exposes that ‘saving the planet’ is just another form of occidentophobia, or “anti-Western sentiment, prejudice, or hostility toward Western culture, values, and institutions“.

But I’ve never understood why Davidson was in Rio. The Times Higher Education supplement says: “She entered politics in 1994 as a researcher for Labour MP Rhodri Morgan, later the assembly’s second secretary.”

She’s described that Rio trip as her Road to Damascus moment, when she was converted to the Green gospel, thereupon becoming an apostle. But if she was not already a convert in 1992, and not involved in politics, why was she in Rio at all?

Was she on holiday, and just popped in out of curiosity?

I believe Davidson was already involved in the climate scam; and came back from Rio with the blueprint for turning Wales into the wind turbine, solar panel, anti-farming, DEI, brainwashing kids, 20mph hell it’s become.

The first Future Generations Commissioner (FGC) was Labour insider, and at the time, deputy PCC for South Wales, Sophie Howe. Before that she’d been a Cardiff councillor and a special advisor to cabinets led by Labour first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones.

She was succeeded in 2023 by Derek Walker, another Labour insider. He had a background in the TUC, trans lobbyists Stonewall, and in the 12 years before becoming FGC he’d been CEO of Cwmpas (formerly Wales Co-operative Development & Training Centre Limited), a “development agency for social enterprises and co-operatives”.

Latest accounts show income of almost £7 million, almost all of which came from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, and most of which went on salaries. Basically, another publicly-funded job creation scheme for Labour insiders and keffiyeh wearers.

Most people will never have heard of Cwmpas. Or the many similar outfits.

The reason I mention FGC Derek Walker is due to a report in BusinessNewsWales last week that began: “The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Derek Walker, is announcing a review into energy policy and decision-making in Wales.”

I read it, and a few questions came into my head. Let me list them.

“Project Ynni is a new initiative“. OK. And how many other ‘initiatives’ are out there? How many ‘initiatives’ have come and gone? How much public money have they swallowed? What have they achieved?

Where does this man’s legitimacy come from? Who voted for him?

What business qualifications does he have, or what expertise in energy or climate studies?

We all know the answers. He’s a Labour time-server, given a job created solely to promote climate hysteria and control our behaviour.

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THE EVILS OF PRIVATE TRANSPORT (OTHER THAN BIKES)

Another piece that caught my eye last week was a report about increased parking charges in Cardiff, a move that many believe will damage the city’s economy.

Quoted in the piece was Ruth Billingham of Living Streets, an anti-car pressure group that has a pass to all departments in Corruption Bay. I remembered Living Streets from its role in the imposition of 20mph speed limits.

Here she is again, in November 2024, with other pressure groups telling the ‘Welsh Government’ to push “active travel“. But the more people are forced to cycle, or walk, the fewer people there’ll be travelling anywhere.

Is there a lobby group for a nation-wide, cheap and reliable, public transport system?

Doing a little digging soon found that Ruth Billingham had for seven years, until May this year, been involved with Cynnal Cymru-Sustain Wales, which describes itself as “the leading sustainability charity for Wales“.

In reality, it’s just one of hundreds. And all costing us money.

Until March, Cynnal Cymru had been part of the group structure of Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA), though its status now is unclear. The WCVA is a body used by the ‘Welsh Government’ to disburse public funding.

Cynnal Cymru is based at Sbarc/Spark, part of a big Cardiff University complex on Maindy Road. Where we also find Cwmpas, which we just looked at, formerly headed by Derek Walker, now Future Generations Commissioner.

Sbarc claims to be . . .

Bringing academics and entrepreneurs together in a spirit of innovation, enterprise, and collaboration

We can see that it’s home to publicly-funded organisations, so I wonder how many genuine entrepreneurs can be found there?

I’ve always said that Cardiff University is almost an extension of the ‘Welsh Government’ and the Bay establishment; so we shouldn’t be surprised to see it provide a home to lobbyists and leftist groups reliant on the the public purse.

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‘I JUST HEARD SOME BANTER – PASS THE SMELLING SALTS!’

Here’s how DEI is often implemented in Wales. The ‘Welsh Government’ will claim to have received reports or complaints about a certain organisation that warrant investigation. The ‘investigation’ will always conclude that changes are needed that can only be achieved by imposing a far-left Woke agenda.

One example would the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service (SWFRS). A ‘Culture Review’ was held into the Service, headed by “human rights” lawyer Fenella Morris KC.

The Report unearthed countless horrifying examples of cannibalism, human sacrifice, and officers wearing odd socks. I jest, of course. What was found was racism, misogyny, and “banter“. Yes, honestly, banter.

The pearl clutching continued by condemning legitimate opinions on immigration. Even “inappropriate behaviour outside of work”! But who gets to decide what’s legitimate and what’s inappropriate?

The report also criticised the Service for not ‘taking the knee’ for George Floyd. When I first saw that on social media I thought it was the kind of ‘misinformation’ against which I am ever alert.

So I found and downloaded the report, and there it is, on pages 121 and 122.

Think about that for a minute. Firemen in Merthyr Tudful were expected to take time off their duties to kneel for a career criminal who’d died from the drugs in his system, while being lawfully arrested, five thousand miles away.

Also, to show support for the fraud associated with Black Lives Matter (even in the UK!), sympathise with calls to Defund the Police (with whom the SWFRS work on a daily basis), and turn a blind eye to the murder, arson, and looting – always looting – that followed Floyd’s death.

Following publication of the Report Chief Fire Officer Huw Jakeway resigned and ‘Commissioners’ were installed by the ‘Welsh Government’. These included Kirsty Williams former Liberal Democrat Assembly Member for Brecon and Radnorshire.

Here’s Williams demanding “anti-racism” in schools. (She was Minister for Education 2016 – 2021.) It’s less than two minutes long. Go on, have a chortle! (But don’t let Fenella Morris catch you!)

It’s a word salad of highfalutin bollocks designed to undermine the self-worth of Welsh kids by making them feel guilty about evils dreamed up by their enemies.

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WELSH RUGBY UNION

Another example of ‘Welsh Government’ enforcing the Woke agenda is the Welsh Rugby Union. Most people realise the WRU is now a shambles, but few understand how it came about.

Let me see if I can explain it with a timeline.

October 2021: In a BBC report from April 2025 it’s stated that:

In October 2021, a BBC investigation found that the Welsh government had adopted Stonewall’s interpretation of equality law in some of its policies, offering protections not provided for in law.

Hardly surprising seeing as the ‘Welsh Government’ was a major Stonewall funder.

“Early 2022”: Labour MP, and former Wales women’s rugby international, Tonia Antoniazzi, raised concerns with Dawn Bowden, ‘Welsh Government’ Deputy Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, about misogyny and sexism within the WRU.

September 7, 2022: It’s reported the WRU bans biological men from playing rugby against women and girls. For obvious reasons of safety and “in line with World Rugby guidance“.

September 23, 2022: The Sun reports Tonia Antoniazzi criticising the Scottish Rugby Union for allowing biological men to play against women and girls.

October 2022: Dawn Bowden, and Hannah Blythyn, Deputy Minister for Social Partnership (what that?), wrote to the WRU expressing “concern” about its ban on transgender women competing in female-only games. (Reported here March 2023.)

January 23, 2023: BBC Wales Investigates put out a 30-minute programme supporting allegations of “sexism, bullying and sexual harassment at the Welsh Rugby Union“.

January 28, 2023: It’s announced that Sport Wales – sponsored and largely funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ – has stepped in to “advise” the WRU.

January 29, 2023: Steve Phillips resigns as WRU chief executive.

February 2023: The WRU – under new management – set up a panel, chaired by Dame Anne Rafferty, to look into the allegations. This panel’s report is dated November 13, 2023.

Before the report is delivered the ‘Welsh Government’ takes advantage of the chaos it has created to appoint a new chair and CEO to the WRU. Around the same time ‘Welsh Government’ appointees also took over the Football Association of Wales (FAW). Both cases covered in this blog post.

January 3, 2024: It’s reported that Bowden has been ‘liking’ posts on X hostile to Antoniazzi.

April 16, 2025: UK Supreme Court rules that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

April 24, 2025: Back to the report I touched on earlier when, in the House of Commons, “Tonia Antoniazzi claimed that the Welsh government and some other institutions had previously been “captured” by LGBT charities promoting the idea that sex can be changed.” (Still held prisoner, Tonia.)

September 12, 2025: Sport Wales signs up to the Brighton plus Helsinki Declaration, which we’re told “supports the development of more fair and equal systems of sport and physical activity for women and girls“.

In Principle 1 of the Declaration we read a reference to “sexual orientation or identity“. Orientation I take to mean heterosexual or homosexual, but identity is almost certainly a reference to self-identification and trans ‘women’.

July 20, 2026: Nation.Cymru runs a piece headed ‘WRU signs international declaration on gender equality in sport‘. The piece quotes the Brighton plus Helsinki Declaration.

So what really happened?

My interpretation is that Tonia Antoniazzi and others raised legitimate concerns with the ‘Welsh Government’ about sexism, homophobia, and misogyny in Welsh rugby.

The Wokists in the Corruption Bay bubble seized on the opportunity to extend these complaints about the treatment of women to include trans ‘women’. Because, as we all know – “Trans women are women!“.

Sport Wales, the WRU, and perhaps other sporting bodies signing up to the Brighton plus Helsinki Declaration is an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court decision of April last year.

All done in the name of promoting women’s sport. It’ll only take one woman to be injured by a 19-stone psycho calling himself Daisy to put women’s sport back decades.

The new Plaid Cymru administration needs to get a handle on this. Pronto!

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CONCLUSION

What we’ve looked at here; net zero, the power of shadowy pressure groups, and the imposition of the Woke agenda, are part and parcel of something bigger designed to weaken and undermine the West.

We could add open borders, calls to empty the prisons, and other lunacies. Not because Marxists care about immigrants and criminals but because they appreciate the potential of such groups to damage societies, countries, and Western civilisation.

And we must confront the reality that those promoting Cultural Marxism have reached positions of power in countless organisations. With anyone trying to curb the spread of this poison paying the price.

And yet, it’s almost funny. Here’s an exchange in a House Oversight subcommittee hearing this week, in which Republican Congressman Brandon Gill of Texas questions the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History director Anthea Hartig.

He asks why her organisation lists politeness as a “defining characteristic of white supremacy culture“. The question is almost absurd. But nowhere nearly as absurd as promoting the idea that politeness is a form of racism – to be condemned.

You can see where this leads. If people stop being polite to each other, then arguments result, leading to conflict and violence, fractured societies. Which obviously serves the bigger agenda.

Treat yourself to another chortle with the marks by which ye shall know the beast that is white culture: the nuclear family, objectivity, planning ahead, etc. Basically, everything that has progressed humanity to where it is today.

It doesn’t matter whether you trace it back to the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the Cultural Marxism threatening us believes that to bring down the evil capitalist West it must go for the foundations. To attack the beliefs, structures and realities that underpin the West.

These might be Christianity, the nuclear family, patriotism, freedom of speech, rejection of state over-reach, or believing that only women can have babies.

But what’s really funny is that those promoting Wokeness, those who indoctrinate our kids in school and university, may be stupid enough to genuinely believe they’re creating a better world in which they’ll have some leadership role.

When in reality they’ve become someone else’s useful idiots. For Cultural Marxism has for some time been funded and manipulated by individuals and corporate interests that want to own everything and control everybody.

If the Globalists succeed then those you’ve read about here might be dealt with in the same way Hitler dealt with the Brownshirts when they’d served their purpose.

Now that’ll definitely be worth a chortle or two!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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The Destruction Of The Elenydd

On By JacIn Bute Energy, Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Globalism55 Comments

I suppose I’d better begin by explaining where we are when I talk of ‘the Elenydd’. It’s the wild, and largely unpopulated uplands shown on this Google Earth capture.

The last true wilderness in Wales. Now it’s being industrialised and destroyed by the ‘renewables’ industry, all foreign-owned companies.

With other parcels of land being bought by ‘environmental’ groups and other sheep in wolf’s clothing. (That is not an allusion to the Fabian Society.) One of these groups gives the appearance of being Welsh, the others are the usual suspects; National Trust (NT), Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) . . .

Here’s how Google AI describes the Elenydd:

The least populated and wildest area in southern Britain . . .

The largest continuous tract of blanket mire in the Welsh uplands, designated as a Special Area of Conservation supporting rare birds like red kites, merlins, and diverse upland flora.

Clearly, we are dealing with a very special area – one that should be left to those who have cared for it for generations. But that would mean farmers and others, now viewed as the enemy by those who have elected themselves our saviours from evils as diverse as the climate crisis and the threat from the far-right.

For the two are invariably linked. Those dictating how we behave, even what we eat, in response to the ‘climate crisis’, are often the same people telling us what’s acceptable thinking in the political sphere.

Because it’s all about control. Controlling us.

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FURTHER BACKGROUND

I’m going to start with a document produced by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ back in 2019, called Future Wales The National Plan 2040. There, in amongst this melange of hopes, dreams, incoherent ramblings and utter bullshit, on page 94, we find a map showing the areas set aside for wind farms.

They’re numbered and bounded in black. Roughly speaking, the Elenydd is north east of the area 8 panhandle and east of area 6.

Whatever the original purpose of this map showing ‘pre-assessed’ areas, it soon proved worthless and misleading.

A fact illustrated by the map below, produced by Caru Teifi, a group protesting against the pylon runs needed to take the electricity intermittently generated by wind farms to the grid connection point south of Carmarthen.

In the south it appears that most of the turbines built (light blue), and planned (dark blue) are outside the ‘pre-assessed’ areas.

And as you’ll see in a minute. it’s the same – or worse – in the area we’re looking at.

So what was the point of the ‘pre-assessed’ areas in the 2019 National Plan if the ‘Welsh Government was simply going to allow a “near enough” approach that borders on a free-for-all?

Time now to look at the wind turbine projects on the Elenydd. The known knowns, the known unknowns, the unknown unknowns, and the unknown knowns.

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WHAT’S PLANNED

We can safely identify four projects. Three we’ve known about for a few years, with another announced this year.

The first involves Scottish company Bute Energy Ltd. Their project is Lan Fawr. There was another project nearby labelled Bryn Brawd, but it seems they’ve merged. Now it’s one sooper-dooper project with 55 turbines up to 800ft in height. Labelled 1 in the image below, and in two parts.

Next is Belltown Power’s Waun Maenllwyd project. Just 4 to 6 turbines. Labelled 2 in the map above. It’s suggested the Belltown project might be taken over by Bute. Alternatively – and I find this interesting – that the Foresight Group, which is behind Belltown, might take over Bute!

Number 3 is Galileo Empower UK’s Bryn Cadwgan project. Galileo has it’s UK office in Edinburgh (and an outpost in Cardiff), but is owned by investors and pension funds from just about everywhere, as far away as New Zealand.

Lastly, we take a brief look at the newest of them, EDF’s Nant y Maen. This straddles the Tregaron to Abergwesyn road. It’s definitely in the pipeline; confirmed by this ‘WG’ document. EDF is wholly owned the French Government.

Local sources insist there are other projects yet to be unveiled. Two, it’s believed.

Access to these projects is planned from the A482 at Pumsaint. Something I covered in The Road To Hell back in November 2023. Then it’s over the old Dolaucothi Estate, now owned, like far too much of Wales, by the National Trust.

After Pumsaint, it’s anyone’s guess, but I guarantee it will involve new roads, hundreds or thousands of trees felled, and massive disruption to the environment over an extended period of time.

But before reaching Pumsaint the turbine columns and blades will be transported on huge diesel smoke-belching trucks along country roads from Swansea docks.

Disruption and destruction all the way so that foreign investors can make money.

Unless, of course, you’re stupid enough to believe that this is all being done to save the planet, and Wales will somehow benefit. Are you that stupid?

◊

‘WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE NEWTS!’

In the intro I referred to a couple of recent purchases in the Elenydd by rewilders and others. So let’s look at them.

First, is one I covered in Land Of Our Fathers, But Not Our Children, in February. This concerned the purchase of 1195 acres by an outfit called Tir Natur.

The area bought is shown in this map by Caru Cymru I linked to earlier. It’s the dull green area below EDF’s Nant y Maen project. (I urge you to consult the Caru Teifi website maps and use the layers available to see what’s what in the area.)

Quite a purchase, and achieved with, according to Farmers Weekly and other sources, a “philanthropic bridging loan“. Wasn’t that nice!

Earlier this month, we learnt that the RSPB had bought 96 hectares at ‘Galltybere’ or ‘Gallt-y-Bere’, which is shown on OS maps (see above) as Craig Alltyberau. This adjoins the planned Galileo Empower Bryn Cadwgan wind farm.

And whaddya know – this purchase also received a “philanthropic loan“.

I wonder where these ‘loans’ come from? Can I have one?

Now for a detour, but not really a digression. We’re going to Scotland, sticking with the RSPB – and there’s more magic money!

Down the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh, not far from North Berwick, rising from the North Sea is the volcanic plug of Bass Rock. A home to many birds, and the largest colony of Northern Gannets.

These are magnificent birds, with a wingspan of six feet or more. While searching for prey they soar or glide until folding back their wings to dive into the sea.

Not far away is the Isle of May. This is home to 50,000 puffins, plus guillemots, razorbills, and other birds.

Hanging over this avian idyll is the threat of 307 wind turbines, in a project approved last year. As might be expected, RSPB Scotland objected. Stating:

Berwick Bank is a gigantic windfarm. To put it in perspective, it would take up an area four times the size of Edinburgh with more than 300 turbines – each the height of six Scott Monuments. 

But then something strange happened. Operating through the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the UK government made a grant of £586,000 to RSPB Scotland – to buy Bass Rock!

I can’t help thinking that what was really being bought was the RSPB’s silence.

◊

CONCLUSION

You don’t need to be cynical to believe that when there’s billions of pounds, dollars, euros or whatever in profits to be made, certain measures will be taken to guarantee those profits. Among those ‘measures’ will be neutralising the opposition.

Unless they’re powerful and well organised, local groups can be largely disregarded, developers can even play one off against another. The same principle applies to landowners and farmers. But when it comes to groups that are well-established, with a national or even international structure, and have the ear of politicians, then a different approach is needed.

And this might explain the magic money that appears regularly in the accounts of wildlife and environmental groups. Sometimes it’s out in the open.

Aviva, the institutional investor owned by Vanguard and others, has given just shy of £40m to the Wildlife Trusts to restore Celtic Rainforests along the western edge of Britain. Much of this money will be coming to Wales. Some already has, and it’s gone to the Elenydd.

I dealt with this February, in The Latest Enviro-scam – ‘Celtic Rainforests’.

In fact, it seems most 0f Wales is a rainforest. Who knew?

Though the Elenydd seems to be in the ‘Oceanic Climate’ zone rather than that described as ‘Hyper Oceanic Climate’.

At the risk of coming across as a cynical old bastard I’ll spell out what I think might be happening in the Elenydd. Shyster ‘developers’ want to destroy an almost pristine wilderness for profit, and have, by one route or another, given money to environmental groups to buy adjoining land.

The developers will then argue that wind turbines, and the work associated with them, pose no threat to wildlife or the environment. If they did – then surely their neighbours like Tir Natur and RSPB would be complaining. “Stands to reason, squire“.

For their part, the recipients of this largesse will tell themselves that sacrifices must be made for the greater good and the bigger picture.

For you must remember that those I’m describing have bought into the climate scam, making their position ambivalent. And rarely have I seen it more evident than in the RSPB Scotland statement I linked earlier.

We can unlock a future where Scotland’s already struggling seabirds are helped to recover, while producing the renewable energy needed to help fight climate change.  

So, for the greater good, sacrifices must be made. But that’s OK, as long as it’s the dicky birds making the sacrifice.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Bute Energy, Connections & Partners

On By JacIn Bute Energy, Climate, Colonialism, Ireland, Renewables, Wind Turbines58 Comments

This piece is in two parts. The first takes us to Ireland, the second . . . well, I’m not quite sure, maybe into a war zone.

For anyone new to the blog, or this topic, Bute Energy is a Scottish company with a Cardiff address planning a dozen or more windfarms in Wales, plus the pylon runs needed to connect them with the main grid. Also solar arrays and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).

The head man is Oliver James Millican who, along with the other Bute principals, Stuart Allan George and Lawson Douglas Steele, left Millican’s father’s Parabola property company towards the end of 2017. They may still be working for Parabola.

◊

‘IF YOU EVER GO ACROSS THE SEA TO IRELAND, THEN MAYBE . . . ‘

To begin with, I recently learnt that Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), Bute’s main funder up to this point, is now operating in Ireland. Taking advantage of Ireland’s Strategic Investment Fund.

The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) has committed €200m to specialist greenfield renewable energy infrastructure investor, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (“CIP”) latest flagship strategy, Copenhagen Infrastructure V (the “CI V”)

When I saw ‘CI V’ it rang a bell, because this is (or was?) the CIP fund behind Bute Energy. Mentioned more than once on this blog. Specifically, CI V Dragon Lender Ltd (launched 23.12.2021). Other companies with the CI V Dragon name are; CI V Dragon Topco Ltd (16.03.2023), and CI C Dragon Holdco 2 Ltd (07.12.2023).

All three are still in business, with directors I believe to be working for CIP.

There was a fourth company, CI V Dragon Holdco Ltd, formed 23.12.2021, with CIP directors. Two of whom left in November 2023, but two hung on until June 2025, when they were replaced by Oliver Millican. A liquidator was appointed in January this year. This outfit was clearly replaced by Holdco 2.

A lot of money went into the now-departed company, over £60,000,000. Which seems to have been used in payouts to Bute directors. This has been widely covered in the media; including Nation.Cymru. There are suggestions of, dare I say it – can I even spell it! – jiggery-pokery.

Here’s what Google AI says. Nation.Cymru is quoted, but the info came from this site.

Though a reporter for a London newspaper, who’s been in contact recently over Bute’s activities, tells me his ‘paper’s bean counters are not convinced Bute’s done anything illegal. Devious, maybe, but not, strictly speaking, illegal.

Whatever the answer, it seems that the money was doled out thus: Millican £47.56m, with George and Steele each getting £4.64m, and a few million going to minor players, one said to be Millican’s brother-in-law.

Much of Millican’s money was used to buy real estate in Scotland, often warehouses, and dealt with in this blog in March. Here’s a quote I used then from a Bute insider:

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

Windward is another name used by Bute companies, Windward Enterprises Ltd being the ultimate holding company for the Bute empire. Sole director and shareholder Oliver Millican.

A new director of Windward Enterprises, since June 1, is given as ‘Thomas Anthony Watson’. (Companies House was notified June 25.) A name common enough to be ignored. He is in fact, Labour peer, Baron Watson of Wyre Forest.

Last month Windward Enterprises took out a loan with private bank Brown Shipley & Co Ltd, ultimately owned by the Al Thani family, which owns and runs Qatar. This family also owns some £40bn of real estate in London, including Selfridges, Harrods, The Savoy, Claridge’s, Heathrow Airport . . .

◊

BUT WHY THE INTEREST IN IRELAND?

With Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners investing in ‘renewables’ in Ireland I naturally got to wondering if Bute Energy is similarly involved.

In an idle moment I typed ‘Bute Energy Ireland’ into Google, and it suggested a “corporate address” down by Anna Liffey. Here to be exact: 2nd Floor, Riverview House, 21-23 City Quay, Dublin, D02 AY91.

Which turns out to be the Dublin address of SYSTRA Ireland, part of a big French company, with projects around the world.

Next, I searched for ‘Bute Energy Systra’, and turned this up:

Bute Energy is a Welsh developer spearheading over £3 billion of onshore wind projects. They collaborate with global infrastructure and consulting firm SYSTRA. SYSTRA provides lifecycle services, electrical grid/infrastructure planning, and engineering for Bute’s energy parks to speed up the transition to a low-carbon grid.

“Welsh developer“! So there is a link. But why had I never heard of SYSTRA before? Next, my trembling digits tapped in ‘Welsh Government Systra’, and this came up:

SYSTRA is a prominent transport and engineering consultancy that frequently partners with the Welsh Government and Transport for Wales (TfW) to modernize public transport, boost regional connectivity, and achieve net-zero climate targets.

Then I found this on the SYSTRA website. Nice to see another Welsh company getting contracts from the transition to the wonderful Green economy.

On the Systra website I also unearthed these specific projects. A franchised bus service for Wales and an energy from waste facility on Deeside. Are there others?

Despite these contracts in Wales SYSTRA doesn’t even bother with the Bute ploy of having an office here. It seems Wales is handled from Bristol or Birmingham. Though there is of course an office in Edinburgh, which will be handy for the Bute boys. (In fact, SYSTRA’s Edinburgh address looks somehow familiar.)

AI coming up with SYSTRA’s Dublin address for Bute Energy is no real surprise. It’s pretty obvious this French company has its feet under the table with the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

So, Bute is already linked with SYSTRA and CIP, both are now operating in Ireland, with Systra also well in with the ‘Welsh Government’. It’s therefore reasonable to assume that Bute may also be active in Ireland.

Which brings me to another reason for looking at Irish connections. I’m referring to the pylon runs from windfarms planned in central Wales (many by Bute) to Llandyfaelog, south of Carmarthen, where they connect with the main grid running from RWE’s Pembroke power station to England.

This has been covered extensively, both my blog and on the CPRW website.

While England was always the presumed destination for the electricity generated, it could just as easily go west to Ireland, thanks to the new Greenlink Interconnector at Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire.

This short (2:12 mins) news clip from RTÉ explains it.

The demand for electricity in Ireland is soaring, with some 80 AI data centers already, and more in the pipeline. Understandably, the state electricity board, EirGrid, is getting nervous.

No surprise then, that in addition to the connection from Pembrokeshire there’s another from Bodelwyddan to somewhere near Dublin, with MaresConnect. This is owned jointly by Etchea Energy, with offices in London and Dublin, and our old friends in the Foresight Group.

UPDATE: Bodelwyddan is mentioned in this announcement of an offshore development “entirely in Welsh waters“, between BP and Japanese company Jera, with a “proposed connection to the Bodelwyddan National Grid substation“.

As for Foresight, you may remember this lot attracting bad publicity in recent years for buying up Welsh farms on which to make money from planting trees to offset ’emissions’, or some such corporate bollocks.

And then there are the governmental contacts. Here’s a joint statement issued a year ago after first minister Eluned Morgan visited Dublin to meet Tánaiste Simon Harris.

Forums have enabled us to hear directly from Irish companies including ESB, Simply Blue and DP Energy, who are investing in energy projects in Wales. During the 2023 forum, ministers also visited the Morlais tidal stream energy project on Anglesey in North Wales

Last month, the new Plaid first minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth, was in Dublin.

And the links don’t end with politicos doing photo-ops. Here’s one between French giant EDF and Irish state-owned ESB. This offshore wind project’s called Gwynt Glas. The only thing Welsh about it is the name. (But that’ll be enough to please some.)

So Irish companies, with others from Scotland, England, and further afield, invest in renewable energy projects in Wales. A country that already produces more electricity than it could consume if we all drove electric Humvees and left our lights on 24/7.

But it doesn’t end there, because there’s also electricity being shipped down from Scotland. This was supposed to be taken by a lengthy pylon run from Pentir near Bangor to Swansea North, on the line from Pembroke to England.

Then again, it might not run down to Swansea at all; perhaps it – or some of it – could be sent to Ireland via the Bodelwyddan link. However you look at it, Wales is being covered in windfarms and other installations we don’t need, and criss-crossed with transmission routes going elsewhere.

Something noted by CPRW, which last month put out a press release warning that ‘Wales Must Not Become England’s Energy Corridor‘. Agreed. But I repeat, the way things are shaping up Wales is just as likely to become an energy corridor serving Ireland as well.

All the while those treacherous clowns in Corruption Bay mince around looking smug, and preparing their spare rooms for ‘refugees’ (or maybe not) – cos we is saving the planet, innit.

And anybody who objects is a climate-denying fascist. Well, I guess that’s me.

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JUDGED BY THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

Another development concerning Bute worth reporting is the funding from Dutch outfit Rabobank. Here’s the Rabobank website.

There are maybe two points to make about Rabobank. First, it’s big in agriculture and food . . . and buying farmland. Second, it has a rather worrying record.

When it comes to buying farms and land Rabobank operates through the subsidiary Rabo Farm and local intermediaries. These are often corrupt local officials. Worth asking if these officials were always corrupt, or was it the prospect of Rabobank money that corrupted them?

Come to that, how did Rabobank make contact with local officials in remote parts of Poland and Roumania? Did they have intermediaries with good contacts? I mention that Latin outpost because of a scandal just over a decade ago that saw local farmers learning they no longer owned their land. Read about it by clicking on the image below.

Rabobank has strong links with top-tier Globalists the Rothschilds. Maybe the latter rely on Rabobank’s expertise in food supply and pricing to help them towards the Globalists’ wet-dream goal of controlling the food supply. And with it, us.

Rabobank is also believed to be active in that most corrupt of eastern European countries, Ukraine. But the law there states that only Ukrainian citizens and entities can own land. Up to 10,000 hectares.

What this means in practice is that those close to the Cokehead Clown of Kiev often act as intermediaries for foreign investors. This goes some way to explaining the Bugattis, Lamborghinis and Bentleys with Ukrainian plates in Monte Carlo.

Rather cruelly they’re known as the “Monaco Battalion“. Which must be a great consolation to Ukrainians dying at the front to defend their corruption.

But then, dying on the front line nowadays is reserved for little people.

But the question is, why is Bute Energy involved with Rabobank at all? The new funder may now be branching out into ‘renewables’, but the primary interest remains land, farming, and foodstuffs. Are the two connected?

By which I mean, is Rabobank’s link-up with Bute connected to Bute owning ‘Welsh’ Labour, also now buying influence in Plaid Cymru; and Rabobank realising that both these parties want to end livestock farming. Which will bring many farms onto the market.

A Powys farmer confided recently, regarding Rabobank:

From my perspective, the concern is that this extremely powerful financial institution with deep expertise in agricultural land are now also financing infrastructure that competes for that land.

Whatever the answer, Bute Energy linking up with a company with Rabobank’s record should set alarm bells ringing.

◊

CONCLUSION

As I’ve said a few times in recent posts on the subject, I (and others) may have focused too much on Bute’s activities in Wales at the expense of the bigger picture. Which now seems to be emerging.

A picture that, first, confirms the electricity generated in Wales is for consumption somewhere else. I’d assumed that ‘somewhere else’ to be England. But that’s only part of the picture.

Electricity generated in Wales, and off our coasts, is also likely to be going to Ireland. This accounts for the interconnectors from Bodelwyddan and Freshwater West, and it might also explain the Irish companies investing here.

Will electricity generated by Irish companies in Wales be reserved for Irish consumers? I ask because while I appreciate there are interconnectors everywhere, and electricity can flow both ways, consumption in Ireland seems to be outpacing generating capacity.

Then there’s the power coming down from Scotland. It’s not for Welsh consumption. So why can’t it go directly to England and / or Ireland?

Do you remember Alexander Cordell’s book, Rape of the Fair Country, about the 19th century exploitation of Wales by Victorian industrialists? What we see today is the Globalist-Green rape of Wales . . . but without the jobs or any other tangible benefits.

It’s clear beyond doubt that Mam Cymru is being used, and abused. How much longer do we just stand by and let it happen?

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Gilestone And Other Developments

On By JacIn Abergavennyshire, Civil Service, Colonisation of Wales, Farming, Globalism, Greens, Welsh Government25 Comments

For those who don’t know the story, or have chosen to forget, Gilestone farm, near Talybont-on-Usk, was bought in 2022 by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ for £4.25m.

The excuse given was that Gilestone was to be a new home for the Green Man Festival, which holds its knees-ups not far away on the Glanusk Estate. They got away with it for a while, but the story was never really convincing.

Then ospreys appeared at Gilestone – the first sighting of these birds in southern Wales for over 200 years! Some said they’d been attracted there to cover the collapsed Green Man deal and justify ‘Welsh Government’ imposing access restrictions.

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GILESTONE, WATER, FARMING

As you might have guessed from previous postings on this blog, I soon stopped believing that Gilestone had been bought for the Green Man Festival. Especially after talking to a previous owner who claimed her family had been forced out of Gilestone by the (then) Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, using a solicitor in Swansea who soon after became a Labour Assembly Member.

Another factor for rejecting the Green Man explanation was learning that a new group called the Beacons Water Group (BWG) had been formed (May 2020), and among the directors were the owner of Gilestone, and his neighbour across the River Usk. And that this group had travelled to Upstate New York to study how the Watershed Agricultural Council manages the water supply to the the Big Apple.

Given the regular talk of moving water from Wales to southern England, and the fact that both the River Usk and the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal flow across Gilestone land, I concluded that the answer to why the farm was purchased lay in water supply.

A suspicion firmed up by learning of another group formed by Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water (DCWW) following the US trip (and a reciprocal visit). This was the Bannau Brycheiniog Mega Catchment group, copying what was found in the USA.

Matters covered in these posts: ‘Green Man, Red Herring?‘; ‘Gilestone Revisited‘; and ‘Gilestone: Thinking Outside The Box‘;

And there was definitely a political dimension to it all.

I say that due to the involvement of ‘Welsh Government’ civil servant David Ashford. He’d been working on “sustainable land management policies to replace the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Wales“, was then seconded to Dŵr Cymru just after the US visits (in the same month the BWG was formed), before returning to WG to work on the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).

Why would a senior civil servant dealing with farming spend two years “Developing new partnerships to improve water quality and a range of other benefits across water catchments within the Brecon Beacons” . . . unless farming was involved?

And of course it was. Those who formed the Beacons Water Group were all farmers. Water quality figures prominently in the SFS (and other) legislation.

The US example contains powers of compulsory purchase (‘Eminent domain’ in the USA) to guarantee water quality. Compulsory purchase is not mentioned in the Welsh SFS legislation but it is covered in the UK government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Part 5), which became law in December last year. The Sustainable Farming Scheme in Wales launched the following month.

And let’s remember that the prominent Globalist, and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon was, in April 2023, openly calling for compulsory purchase “for wind and solar builds“.

So while the visit from the Watershed Agricultural Council in March 2018, and the visit to the Catskills in June 2019, followed by the formation of the Beacons Water Group CIC and the Bannau Brycheiniog Mega Catchment group, were ostensibly about water quality, farming was inextricably involved.

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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS, ABERGAVENNYSHIRE LINKAGES

A very recent development was the launch last month of Beacons Rural Energy Ltd (BRE). Three of the current seven directors of the Beacons Water Group are found among the nine directors of the new company.

But what’s the purpose of Beacons Rural Energy Ltd? Here’s what the Certificate of Incorporation filed with Companies House tells us:

So it’s “smart renewable energy projects“. But how will they produce, transmit, distribute and trade electricity? Being in a national park rules out large wind turbines and fields filled with solar panels. So what’s left?

Well, “Hydro” is mentioned. Which takes us back to water. And of course, DCWW.

Clearly, there’s a connection between Beacons Water Group and Beacons Rural Energy, and I believe it extends beyond the principals involved in both; Richard James Roderick (of the farm next-door to Gilestone), Keri Howell Davies, and David Stephen Thomas. Other links would be the Brecknockshire Agricultural Society, the National Farmers Union (NFU), and Farming Connect.

In February 2022 the NFU stated it would “do its best” to meet the 2030 net zero target. John Davies, outgoing NFU Cymru president, reminded us, “we were the first farming organisation to set the goal of net zero by 2040“.

The clip below is from the current NFU website. Rowing back a bit?

Our position remains that journeying towards net zero must not compromise food production, farm profitability, or export emissions overseas by replacing British food with imported food produced to lower standards of environmental protection.

As for Farming Connect, this is run by the ‘Welsh Government’ as a kind of club for farmers who go along with Corruption Bay diktats. Either from Ministers, or from civil servants, like David Ashford, answering to their bosses in London.

Maybe some of the ‘good’ farmers from Farming Connect and Beacons Water Group will be helped make some money through renewable energy projects.

But will these projects be economically viable? And will public funding be involved?

One name among the directors of Beacons Rural Energy, Andrew Geoffrey Matthews, was new to me. But I think I found him in this document of the Aberhonddu Lodge of Freemasons. It may be ten years old, but it’s still informative.

In addition to Worshipful Master Bro Andrew G Matthews you’ll see that I’ve also highlighted Steward Richard J Roderick. There may be others involved with the Lodge, it’s not easy to tell with so many common Welsh surnames.

Think about it, here we are in 2026, after 27 years of ‘progressive’ administrations in Wales; and a bunch of men who like to dress up and spout nonsense in a men-only group still have influence with politicians and civil servants.

Then again, in Globalist-left Wales, men in funny outfits spouting bollocks are almost the norm. Certainly accepted. And influential.

Back to the bigger picture.

Abergavennyshire has proved very attractive to left-liberal do-gooders with ideas on how to save the planet – usually with our money. And how to make better human beings of us all – but only if we listen to them.

They’ve been colonising the area for a few decades. Which would be bad enough in itself, but they also have political clout. The results are everywhere. So are the linkages.

A director of BWG is Anthony Hugh Martineau, who has, or had, connections with Coleg Soros in Talgarth. The current chair of the trustees there is Chris Blake. Here’s his Linkedin bio.

One of his current ventures is The Green Valleys (Wales). Below is a clip from the most recent accounts filed with Companies House, for year ending 31.10.2024.

I’m not sure what happened, but it don’t look good. Turnover and profits slumped, and it all seemed to go tits up. Then, the other directors left last month. Among them Grenville Ham, former capo in the Greens, who switched to Plaid Cymru when the Greens refused to set up a Welsh party.

Green Valleys would appear to have folded. Is the recently-launched Beacons Rural Energy some kind of replacement?

◊

CONCLUSION

One of the attractions of the Abergavennyshire and Bannau area is of course its scenic beauty, helped by the absence of wind turbines and vast acreages of solar panels. But this is problematic for the ‘Welsh Government’, which wants every area of Wales to be seen to be saving the planet.

The maps below might help. On the left is the official map showing areas “pre-assessed” for industrial scale wind turbines in southern Wales. On the right, a map produced by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW), showing existing or planned windfarms. (In the case of the latter category, those that are known about.)

The red lines on the CPRW map are pylon runs.

Outside and to the east of area 6 there are a number of projects planned. These are in the wild, unspoilt Elenydd. Reminding us that the “pre-assessed” areas are just a rough guideline, but national parks are still off-limits . . . for the time being.

Which must also vex the fanatics who want Wales to have more ‘renewables’. Clearly, something else, a different approach, is needed. Which is where the various outfits mentioned above may give a clue.

Because I still believe water is the key to understanding the developments we’ve seen over the past eight years or so, and that includes buying Gilestone. So with wind turbines and the rest ruled out, are the Bannau to become a hot-spot for hydro schemes?

Another hoped-for advantage of focusing on doing good things with water resources might have been generating good publicity for Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Unpopular with the public at large but long defended by the ‘Welsh Government’, Natural Resources Wales, and environmental groups.

Who, for differing reasons, blamed farmers for every discharge or spillage.

If so, then it failed. Because too many recent cases have made everyone aware of what many of us always knew. Here’s a recent case that resulted in a £45m fine.

But then, what’s one more lie added to all the rest? As George Carlin used to say in explaining how shadowy forces control things: “It’s a big club – and you ain’t in it“. (This short video is worth a watch.)

Difficult to believe that was recorded over 20 years ago. He was right then. And it’s a hell of lot worse now. R.I.P. George Carlin.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Plaid Cymru Turns Against The Dragon

On By JacIn Far Left, Globalism, Plaid Cymru41 Comments

I wish I didn’t have to write this, but it needed to be written. Not least because it highlights how Globalism, through the capture of leftists and their organisations, like Plaid Cymru, promotes its agenda.

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GLOBALISM, SUMMARY

Globalism is very wealthy families and individuals, supranational bodies and major corporations that hope to benefit from an undemocratic form of world government that imposes censorship and other controls on the population at large.

They target the West because, for obvious reasons, China, Russia, India and other big players are beyond their control. Though China is perhaps the inspiration. In that it’s the perfect combination of a one-party political system and almost unfettered capitalism.

To help enforce its agenda, by weakening the West economically, Globalism has for decades used an invented climate crisis demanding net zero and other costly sacrifices. Also, and certainly since 2016 – Brexit and Trump’s election – open borders.

Immigration is needed partly to replace the working class support lost by leftist parties. And also to justify censorship and creeping authoritarianism through a two-tier policing and justice system deemed essential to combat “racism” and the “far-right“.

To help them achieve The New World Order Globalists recruited Marxism and Islam. These have been co-opted because they share a desire to destroy the West. Which then explains the alliance between them we see today.

The obstacles to the Globalists’ ambitions are freedom of speech, family, private property, people’s pride in national identity, cultural homogeneity, social cohesion, Christianity, and any other focus of loyalty or affection.

These must all be vilified.

Globalism is further facilitated by ‘the long march through the institutions’ (© ‘Red’ Rudi Dutschke) defended and protected by Globalist control of the ‘legacy’ media.

Globalism often employs bribery or kompromat. More likely to be the latter with many politicians, certainly the current UK prime minister.

Though the tactic of capture is not without humour. Perhaps the funniest example is The Green Party, which used to be about saving the whale; now it’s open borders, trans rights, and the crusade against Islamophobia.

Watching these clowns is now more entertaining than anything put out as ‘comedy’ by the BBC.

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THE MIND READERS OF WRECSAM

My attention was drawn to this issue by a piece in the Western Mail on Monday. I don’t think I was aware of the matter before this; but after reading the article I naturally got curious.

It seems to link – or certainly that’s the allegation made – with a planned hostel for ‘refugees’ or illegal migrants in Rhosllanerchrugog, famous for its male voice choir, and memorably described by Harri Webb when the Cross Foxes ran dry.

The council objected, and the plan was dropped. This was all back in January. It’s claimed this episode led to Welsh flags being put up around the city. Certainly, that’s what’s alleged in a petition launched May 18. Here it is: Remove illegally placed banners from lampposts in Wrexham.

The wording of the petition is fascinating, and worrying. Let’s begin with the opening paragraph.

Recently, our beloved community in Wrexham has been under siege by a wave of illegally placed banners and flags that have appeared on lampposts and other public fixtures. These banners, adorned with national symbols, have been commandeered by right-wing agitators and racists, turning what should be a representation of pride and unity into tools of fear and intimidation.

Wrecsam “Under siege“! Banners “Adorned with national symbols“. No, it’s our national flag. And it’s a dragon. But then comes the assumption that these flags have been “commandeered by right-wing agitators and racists“.

But if they were “commandeered“, then who put them up in the first place?

And if a flag is “a representation of . . . unity“, then surely it doesn’t matter who put them up. Rally ’round the flag, boys!

The clear message here is that the Welsh national flag – our flag – is only acceptable when it’s flown by people approved of by whoever worded the petition. That is, leftists.

The second paragraph reads:

The situation is particularly distressing for our vulnerable immigrant communities, who feel targeted and alienated by these divisive displays. The right of every citizen to feel safe and welcome in their own neighbourhood is fundamental, yet this basic right is being undermined by a few with harmful agendas.

Why are the immigrant communities “vulnerable“? Are they under attack from the same marauding horde that’s put the whole city “under siege“? After diligently searching, but failing to find le mot juste, I’ll dismiss this claim as hyperbolic bullshit. Where’s my violin?

Though I agree that every citizen should feel safe in their own neighbourhood. But if the allegations made are true, and the flags link with the property in Rhos, then doesn’t the indigenous population also have a right to feel safe?

Or are natives of Wrecsam concerned about such hostels, and the threats they pose, automatically “right-wing agitators and racists“?

Why shouldn’t they be concerned? For as we know, there’s far more likelihood of a local being attacked by an immigrant than there is of a migrant being beheaded by Tyrone from Caia Park.

The change.org website gives the “petition starter” as ‘Lower the Flags Wrexham’.  But who’s behind it?

Someone named in the article I linked to at the top, and a number of other reports, is Iolanda Banu Viegas. Originally from Mozambique, and a Portuguese citizen. I suspect she’s involved.

Iolanda was a Plaid Cymru candidate in 2017, and again in 2022. She’s also the Regional Coordinator and TSPC representative for North Wales / Community Support Officer for North & East Wales in Race Council Cymru. A body that relies heavily on ‘Welsh Government’ funding.

She was also involved with Black History Wales. That rather desperate exercise that tried to make us believe a few black individuals scattered here and there, over centuries, amounted to a distinct historical narrative.

Inevitably, perhaps, she was involved with BLM, mourning and celebrating the drug overdosed career criminal George Floyd.

Clearly, Ms Viegas has something of an obsession with race. And it seems she rarely misses a chance to tell us Welsh what racists we are.

But at the end of the day, what is a flag? First and foremost, it’s a form of identification. It says: ‘This is who I am, this is where I belong, this is my country’. Whereas raising a flag, or removing one, is symbolic of resistance, change, even conquest.

I know that. And so do those wanting to take down my flag.

I can’t help but compare this flags farrago to a certain demographic objecting to people having dogs.

◊

THE LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS

I mentioned this in the first part, and now I’m going to explore it a wee bit more. Perhaps I first became aware of it back in 2021, with the capture of the independence movement YesCymru by people wanting to subvert that group into a bullhorn for the Woke agenda. (Covered extensively on this blog.)

By ‘Woke agenda’ I mean the climate scam, trans rights, DEI, CRT, and all the rest mentioned earlier. And there’s always something new, a new minority, a fresh evil to be combatted. These are ever changing in order to confuse.

The takeover of YesCymru was noticeable because of the speed and the manner of it. But it had already happened to Plaid Cymru. And to Welsh language bodies from nursery group Mudiad Meithrin to the Urdd and the National Eisteddfod.

When I looked into it I was even given names of individuals whose poison-spreading paths could be traced from one group to another. With the message backed up by the threat of ‘Welsh Government’ funding being withheld from any body not falling into line.

Another example of Plaid Cymru and Labour working hand in glove.

For many of the intellectual lightweights pushing the Woke mind virus it’s a case of seeing how much they can get away with before the adults in the room tell them enough is enough.

Just look at the class clown smirk on the face of new Plaid Senedd Member Sarah Rees. Read the article. Sarah Rees was of course involved in the YesCymru fiasco.

Meanwhile, up in the House of Commons, Plaid’s four MPs voted to oppose single-sex spaces for women. Cos it would be transphobic.

Despite all the pre-election promises about the economy, education, the NHS, infrastructure, etc, Plaid’s priority seems to be figuring out a way to ignore the Supreme Court’s decision that sex is biological.

And why did South Wales Police put out an instruction to its officers that they should record non-crime “instances of anti-Muslim hostility“?

After a letter from the Shadow Minister for Equalities Claire Coutinho SWP has agreed to withdraw this ‘guidance’. But why issue it in the first place? The answer is that senior ranks of the police service – and the Police College – have been captured.

◊

CONCLUSION

The broad church Plaid Cymru was when I joined in the 1960s is long dead. The drift to the left began in the 1980s under the leadership of Dafydd Elis Thomas then, under Antifa-supporting Leanne Wood, we saw a moderate, almost reasonable kind of socialism, degenerate into the name-calling and label-attaching silliness of Wokery.

But it mustn’t be dismissed lightly because the fuss over flags in Wrecsam is simply a bigger production scaled down for a local stage. We’ve seen Antifa and other fanatics burn flags in the USA; or it’s councils in England tearing down Union flags or St George crosses because the permanently offended claim to feel ‘unsafe’ or ‘threatened’.

Now it’s come to Wales.

Remember that the council rejected the plan for the Rhos hostel in January, and the plan was dropped. That should have been the end of it. But in mid-May a petition was launched claiming the Welsh flags flying in Wrecsam were linked with the hostel, they were intimidating minorities, and they should be removed.

Does that make sense?

No, but it fits into the bigger picture of the ideological capture of Plaid Cymru. Plaid now promotes the idea that only people on the left care about Wales. Or, perhaps more worryingly, that only leftists are allowed to care about Wales.

Plaid has set itself up as the arbiter of who can, and who can’t, fly our national flag.

Thus delegitimising the views of anyone to the right of centre. Even someone like myself; who’s always defended Wales, Welsh identity, and always wanted independence.

This can only be explained by realising that Plaid Cymru is a hollowed-out sham. It claims to want ‘independence’ – in order to give it away by rejoining the European Union, submitting to the United Nations . . . and the Globalist agenda.

That agenda includes the ending of borders and the erasure of national identities.

Submit to this insanity in Wrecsam and those behind it will be emboldened. They’ll be able to claim that any Welsh flag, anywhere in the country, is the work of racists and the far-right, offensive to somebody or other, and demand it be taken down.

Because that is the bigger agenda to which Plaid Cymru has submitted. Oblivious to the irony, the contradiction, in preaching that Wales is open to all – but only certain people are allowed to fly the flag.

How long now before Owain Glyndŵr is ‘re-evaluated’? For a start, he was far too white. Those who followed him were not diverse. Then there was the fighting, clearly a case of toxic masculinity. And he was obviously straight – all those kids!

◊

FINAL WORD

It’s been strange writing this because when I joined Plaid Cymru we were struggling to get Y Ddraig Goch flown on public buildings and elsewhere. Now that same party is campaigning to have our national flag removed.

Let me say to anyone who’s arrived in Wales, from Mozambique or Manchester . . . If you find my flag objectionable, or if you feel “targeted and alienated” by it, you really should ask yourself whether Wales is the place for you.

But any attempt to tell me I can’t fly MY flag in MY country because my wider political stance doesn’t align with that of Woke activists will get a crisp, two-word response.

And the second word will be “off!“.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Ishoos, Word Salads, Manufactured Grievances

On By JacIn Globalism, Public Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Government29 Comments

A couple of people have contacted me, suggesting I take a look at an outfit operating in Carmarthen. A town close to my heart. Many’s the pint I sank there when I was younger.

Have a skinful in the old Ceffyl Du, and if we couldn’t find a party, or no student fell for my manifest charms, then it was the milk train back to Swansea High Street in the early hours and the long walk home. Happy Days!

This piece wasn’t really planned, and so it’s quite short, around 1,100 words.

◊

INTRO

The outfit in question is called LocalMotion. Here’s the main website. And here’s the website for the Carmarthen operation. Read it, look at the pictures, and you’ll see why I chose the headline.

If we go to the main website – HQ, as it were – we find, explaining the genesis of LocalMotion, the first example of a word salad. Translations are invited. Though I doubt if it makes sense in any language.

It’s all there: “collective . . . funders . . . collaborating . . . deep-rooted challenges . . . communities . . . shift power . . . decision-making . . . transformative change . . . “. If I wanted to take the piss out of a bunch of chancers looking to squeeze money from charities or the public purse I’d use exactly the same words and phrases.

But these people are being serious!

When I look at a crew like this I always check how and where it’s registered. Is it a company? A charity? Or what? Also, when it was registered.

First stop was the Companies House (CH) website, where I turned this up. You’ll see that CH directs us to the Charity Commission, where the registration is very recent – December 2024 – and what’s listed is ‘LocalMotion Enfield‘.

All rather confusing. Especially as an organisation named LocalMotion seems to have been operating in Carmarthen as early as May 2020. Certainly, according to this piece put out in 2022 by the Carmarthenshire Association of Voluntary Services (CAVS).

How could that be?

And if the charity registered is LocalMotion Enfield, and it tells the Charity Commission it operates only in Enfield, why the hell is it in Carmarthen?

There’s clearly something not right about LocalMotion.

But let’s finish this section with a bit more information on CAVS. Most of its funding comes from the ‘Welsh Government’. And half of this income goes in salaries, expenses and pensions. The woman with the biggest lanyard is on £60,000+ per year.

Grants also received to take out a lease on this building at the top of Castle Hill.

Basically, a publicly-funded job creation scheme for the otherwise unemployable.

And, boy! Has Wales got plenty of such schemes!

◊

WHO’S WHO IN LOCALMOTION?

Looking at the Charity Commission entry we see that the chair of LocalMotion Enfield is Parin Bahl. Who was formerly a director of Combining Opinions to Generate Solutions CIC, which was Dissolved in July 2025. Also a trustee of this CIC was Noelle Skivington, who’s joined Bahl at the charity LocalMotion Enfield.

The third trustee is Alex Tambourides. He’s CEO at Mind in Enfield and Barnet.

So was LocalMotion operating previously as Combining Opinions to Generate Solutions CIC? If not, then how do we explain the reference to an organisation operating in 2020 that didn’t officially exist until December 2024?

On the ground, in Carmarthen, we find Owen Griffiths, described as ‘Carmarthen Coordinator’. Griffiths is local to the area, and a recognised artist, having led the project to re-purpose the old Vetch Field in Swansea. (Such memories!)

Here’s a clip from his Linkedin page.

‘Peak Cymru’ is registered with the Charity Commission as Peak – Art in the Black Mountains. Here’s the website. Basically, another bunch of good-lifers and ‘artists’ who’ve washed up in Abergavennyshire, and now rely almost exclusively on our money – in the form of ‘Welsh Government’ funding – to lecture us on this, that and t’other.

There is, inevitably, a Corruption Bay connection on the Peak Board. Two, at least. There’s Sarah Dickens, former BBC journalist and communications advisor to the first minister. And Jenny McConnel, “Sustainable Development Advisor at the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales“.

Together we shape a creative programme that addresses social, environmental and racial justice in the context of South Wales

“Racial justice” for South Wales. Yeah, I lose sleep over it. People in the Heads of the Valleys worry about nothing else. I’m told there was a BLM march in the Gurnos last weekend.

Owen Griffiths’ link to the Centre for Alternative Technology is interesting. If you were sitting next to me now I’d be tempted to go: “Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, squire”. Because in recent decades few money pits have had more dosh thrown into them by the ‘Welsh Government’ than this one.

UPDATE 06.06.2026: Did I say money pit? Here’s another £1.5m to ’empower people in face of climate crisis’.

I clicked on the email address the website gives for Owen Griffiths and this is what opened in MS Outlook:

Owen Griffiths is there to give the scam a Welsh gloss. And provide connections.

Two others are named in connection with LocalMotion in Carmarthen. The first is Project Coordinator Mariana Lopez Rojas, from Mexico.

It seems that Mariana’s full-time job is in Swansea, helping “asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants“, with The Centre for African Entrepreneurship (CAE). Though the website failed to provide any evidence of entrepreneurship. Unless milking the public purse is now seen as a legitimate business.

I’m so surprised to see “wellbeing” mentioned below! And as for “The Welsh Dream“? Shouldn’t that read, ‘nightmare’?

When she’s not helping asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants at CAE in Swansea, you might find Mariana at the Make and Mend Workshop CIC in Carmarthen.

The other named principal at LocalMotion Carmarthen is Ali Franks. Who seems to work as The Reconnection Coach. Is that on the NHS?

◊

CONCLUSION

Apart from Owen Griffiths, who may be no more than a figurehead, there is clearly nothing local about LocalMotion.

It’s just another gimme gimme bunch, demanding funding to spew out word salads that mean fuck all to real people. Money to organise one conference after another, workshops without end, seminars stretching into the distant future.

But most importantly from their perspective, is the promise of being allowed into schools, where they can lecture kids from sink estates about their white privilege destroying the planet, and their farm labourer ancestors’ responsibility for slavery.

LocalMotion uses a mission statement so hackneyed, and a template so well worn, that it’s clear they’ll simply duplicate the work (work!) of dozens if not hundreds of other groups already operating in Wales.

I would be very disappointed to see these buggers get a penny from Corruption Bay or County Hall. If they do, I’ll be digging deeper and writing about them again.

Let them sod off back to Enfield with their word salads and their insulting bullshit.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse

On By JacIn Climate, Corruption Bay, Environmentalism, Far Left, Globalism, Plaid Cymru, Renewables, Senedd220 Comments

First, a brief look at the new Plaid Cymru administration. Then an analysis of ‘Well-being’. Before looking at the looming threat of AI data centers.

This piece is bigger than usual, some 2,700 words. But you know it’ll be worth it!

◊

PLAID CYMRU IN POWER

Plaid Cymru emerged from the May 7 Senedd elections as the largest party, winning 43 out of the 96 seats contested. So we have a minority government that will almost certainly need support from Labour (which won 9 seats) to run things.

And even though the Guardian might view Plaid as “centre-left“, I see a far-left party. Which might not be too bad, if it was an old-fashioned left wing party intent on improving the condition of the working class and governing in the interests of a majority of the population.

But the working class, normal people, level-headed people, are now the enemy for the Antifa Irregulars and the Hamas Support Brigade so influential in Plaid.

Let’s start by looking at the cabinet selected by new first minister Rhun ap Iorwerth.

OMG! Where’s the diversity?

Perhaps the only one in whom I might have confidence is Llŷr Gruffydd who, if nothing else, seems to understand rural issues. But then I curb my enthusiasm by remembering that before May 7 he was the SM for the largely rural North Wales region; whereas he now represents the smaller Clwyd constituency, dominated by the urban fleshpots of Rhyl, Prestatyn, and Colwyn Bay.

And then we must consider the description of his ministerial role: Cabinet Minister for Rural Resilience and Sustainability.

‘Sustainability’ for Plaid Cymru, Labour, Greens and the Globalist left generally means: net zero, Agenda 2030, wind turbines and solar panels everywhere; while promoting veganism and using various deceits to get farmers off the land for the benefit of corporate investors.

But what the hell is ‘Rural Resilience‘? Does anybody know?

Even just skimming over the rest of the bunch is really depressing.

For example, in newly-elected Mark Hooper, Deputy Minister for Transport, we have a man on record as saying that “private car travel is a massive problem“. His colleague, also new, Dr Dafydd Trystan Davies, Cabinet Minister for Government Effectiveness(?) and the Constitution, is equally if not more hostile to the freedom bestowed on us peasants by private transport.

For Davies is a sanctimonious planet saver; determined to punish those going to work, dropping the kids off at school, or running granny to her chiropodist appointment.

If these sinners paused for a moment in their attempts to make ends meet, or hold the family together, and instead gaze up to the moral high ground (just above the sunlit uplands), they’d see Dr Daf, wagging his finger admonishingly.

This saintly individual has for some time been a big wheel (spoked, and fully pumped) in the 20mph Sustrans outfit, now renamed Walk Wheel Cycle Trust.

And don’t get me started on Sioned Williams and some of the wimmin. If former Plaid leader Leanne Wood was Medusa they’d be the snakes. One of the new intake, Sarah Rees, admits to being “a campaigner at heart“, perhaps to explain why she’s never done a real job. Perfect for the Senedd!

Despite the widespread ‘optimism’, Plaid Cymru seems as much in thrall to pressure groups and ishoo pedlars as Labour. The useful idiots of Globalism, a form of capitalism so ruthless, so anti-human and authoritarian, that it would repulse the most heartless 19th century ironmaster or coal owner.

◊

BEING TOLD TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT BEING POORER. AND THE ENDGAME

Now I’m going to focus on something I’ve mentioned in connection with other topics. It’s the vast superstructure built on the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015.

Everything done in Wales since then must follow the stipulations of the Act. It’s used to influence everything. I’ve seen planning applications contain phrases like, ‘This development accords with Future Generations legislation’.

So let’s give Well-being itself more attention. With this section inspired by Nicola Lund, and this piece she wrote back in October 2023.

Nicola’s work is impressive, and extensively researched. So I won’t go over the ground she’s covered; but it’s worth noting her references to the usual suspects: Club of Rome, WEF, EU, WHO, and others.

The way I see it . . . national and individual wealth has traditionally been gauged by metrics such as GDP, disposable income, home ownership, number of private cars per head of population and other determinants.

But by following the Globalist agenda we in the West are becoming poorer by those traditional ways of assessing wealth. Consequently, something was needed to hide the reality and change the focus. This is where Well-being enters the frame.

Let’s go through the ‘Welsh Government’ graphic you see above.

Starting with, at the top, ‘A Prosperous Wales’. So vague as to be meaningless. And how does a country de-industrialising while simultaneously being trampled on by the new robber-barons of the ‘renewables’ racket and the digital age become prosperous?

‘A Resilient Wales’. That word again. But what does it mean? Taking all the crap forced on us without complaining?

‘A Healthier Wales’. Yeah – with the NHS on its knees.

‘A More Equal Wales’. Which means what, DEI and anti-white discrimination?

‘A Wales of Cohesive Communities’. Impossible when you destroy the economic foundations that made communities cohesive. And how does welcoming illegal immigrants to the Nation of Sanctuary aid community cohesion? This is delusional.

‘A Wales of Vibrant Culture and Thriving Welsh Language’. I suspect ‘vibrant’ here means diversity. Again. As for the language, no one who’s destroying farming, a bastion of the language and the economy in so many areas, should be taken seriously.

‘A Globally Responsible Wales’. Probably means student politics and virtue signalling. More bollocks. The sole responsibility of any ‘Welsh Government is Wales.

“Forget about the kids going hungry, Mrs Evans – improve your well-being by thinking about the non-binary lynx we’ve released in the area. Look, there’s one now, making off with little Carys’s rabbit!”.

Once you accept the fundamental lie of the ‘climate crisis’, and agree to the sacrifices demanded, then you’ll accept the resultant decline. But it’ll be you making the sacrifices, not those asking you to make them.

And because the threat is global it must be tackled globally. Which inevitably means trans-national bodies taking control. The next step will be a kind of world government. But you’ll have no say in electing this world government. For elections will be things of the past.

We’re already on our way to an unelected world government with what masquerades as electoral politics in the West today. At a stage where it matters little who you vote for; as most politicians – the Uniparty – sing from the Globalist hymn sheet.

Another feature of such systems is the ‘Chosen One’. Often a graduate of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders programme.

Back in 2024, in Canada, when it became clear that Justin Trudeau had been rumbled by the electorate, Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England and arch Globalist, appeared from nowhere. Carney wasn’t even a sitting MP, but it had been decided, somewhere, by someone, that he would be the next prime minister of Canada.

First, he was made leader of the ruling Liberal Party, then a seat was found for him and he was elected for Nepean, Ontario, in the general election of April 2025.

Over here, Starmer’s a dead man walking. And so a suitable replacement had to be found. The one chosen is mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham. But like Carney, he’s not even an MP. So a Labour MP has stood down and now there’s a by-election in Makerfield on June 18.

If Burnham is elected he’ll become party leader and therefore prime minister. He might be worse than Starmer, but he’ll be a fresh face to fool the plebs for a bit longer.

What I’m describing is not old-fashioned party intrigue, or political jockeying. Because Carney and Burnham were not chosen by their respective parties. (Let alone the members of those parties.) They were chosen by people you’re not supposed to know about; and the role and power of these oligarchs will never be discussed in the media they control and want you to rely on.

To implement their agenda of wealth and asset transfer, Digital ID, Central Bank Digital Currency, and Universal Basic Income, you must be brainwashed into believing that not only are the sacrifices you’re making unavoidable, but also that you should feel good about making them.

Which is all you need to know about the Well-being scam.

◊

AI DATA CENTERS

This part puts me in debt to David Powell. Specifically, this piece he put out last November. Scroll down to the part dealing with AI data centers planned for Wales. Mainly in the south, which is a designated AI Growth Zone.

Here’s a section:

One facility matches a city of 50,000’s water consumption, straining drought-hit valleys and jacking up Dŵr Cymru rates for everyone else.

What’s clear, and what no one denies, is that data centres consume vast amounts of water and electricity. So let’s consider water first. For as David Powell tells us, “One facility matches a city of 50,000’s water consumption“?

Though Google AI suggests the demand will be even higher:

A typical large data centre consumes between 11 million and 19 million litres of water per day—roughly equivalent to the daily usage of a town of 30,000 to 50,000 people. Facilities dedicated to Artificial Intelligence (AI) demand even higher volumes.

Do we have that much water to spare? The answer is obviously no, so it’ll be existing consumers, in the urban south, that’ll find themselves going without. And paying Dŵr Cymru more for less.

In Ireland, there’s even talk of transferring water from the River Shannon, in the west, to the AI data centers in Dublin, on the east coast. Here’s a follow-up article from Gript. (Paywall, I’m afraid.)

But what’s the purpose of these date centers? Listen to Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, speaking at the BlackRock US Infrastructure Summit.

But we see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.

Clearly, AI data centers will need vast amounts of water that the current system will struggle to supply. But electricity will perhaps be even more of an issue.

Parts of England ran dry last week

Those who support ‘renewables’ argue wind and solar will make a huge contribution to supplying AI data centers. That’s wishful thinking; an intermittent supply from wind farms and solar installations, even with their unreliability mitigated by Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), isn’t going to cut it.

UPDATE: It’s estimated that AI data centers use 22% of Ireland’s electricity.

Though there are many BESS planned for southern Wales. One by RWE at Pembroke, alongside the power station. Another on the site of the old Uskmouth power station in Newport. A second Newport site is at Quinn Radiators. One is in Cardiff. Finally, one at the old Ford engine plant in Bridgend.

There are many other projects, including those planned by ‘Welsh’ Labour’s favourite company, Bute Energy. Additional to the BESS installations incorporated into the various ‘Energy Parks’ (windfarms & solar soil destroyers) Bute’s formed BESS companies that specifically name; Cilfynydd, Rhigos, Carmarthen.

But BESS are springing up everywhere. One I’m just hearing about is Castell Llwyd, just west of Ystrad Mynach. The company behind it, Qair, is French owned.

No doubt there are others in the pipeline. For as Google AI tells us:

Wales is rapidly developing into a major UK hub for AI and cloud computing, driven by billions in inward investment, massive hyperscale data center construction, and official AI Growth Zone designations by the UK and Welsh governments

Yes, of course there’s a National Grid. But AI data centers are springing up in England, too, increasing the demand on a system that, like the water supply, will struggle to cope. And will struggle even worse the more it relies on ‘renewables’, the price of which is set to double by 2030.

Then there’s the impact on health. Data centers emit a continuous noise. Here’s David Powell again:

Vantage’s Cardiff operations clock 46-48 decibels at the doors – officially “minor adverse” per standards, but stack multiple facilities in clusters and it becomes a symphony of sleepless nights and shattered quality of life.

Google AI suggests it’s even worse:

AI data centers are notoriously loud. Driven by the need to cool thousands of dense servers, they produce constant, 24/7 noise pollution that can reach 55 to 85 decibels—and sometimes up to 100dB right next to the facility.

A problem exacerbated by the back-up generators:

On-site diesel generators or natural gas turbines used during power grid shortages sound like low-flying planes

All this can affect property values close to the centers.

But do AI data centers have a purpose over and above that outlined by Sam Altman?

Fundamentally, AI data centers are being built so someone, somewhere, can collect as much information as possible on as many people as possible: So as to know what they do. And what they buy. Their reading and viewing preferences. What they think. And what they say.

Information is power.

And this power, in a world where oligarchs are trying to take control through making a sham of democratic politics, will not only know your views and your preferences; for when combined with Digital ID, CBDC, and UBI it will be able to control you.

You’ll find that expressing certain views not only loses you your internet connection, it will also mean you’re unable to access your money. (Cash will already be outlawed.)

You’ll become a non-person except to those you can interact with on a physical level. But you’ll find that few will want to be seen talking to you due to the ubiquitous cameras.

◊

CONCLUSION

‘Well-being’ is obviously a deceit. A form of manipulation that expects people to put up with less or worse for a noble objective that, when analysed, itself turns out to be a lie.

Now let’s have a few final thoughts on AI data centers. Because powerful voices are coming out against them, and even those behind them are getting nervous.

First, the Pope has spoken out. In fact, His Holiness issued an encyclical. And Pope Leo didn’t mince words.

Some of the Pope’s strongest imagery in the document related to slavery, warning parallels between the historical tragedy of traditional slavery and the emerging threats of “new digital slaveries”.

It should be noted that Leo XIV is the first Pope from the USA. I mention that because another American is worth quoting in this context – Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO and Interim Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum.

As you might guess, Larry and his multitudinous investment arms have put a whole lot of money into AI data centers. But Larry fears the peasants will rise up, and attack the data centres with cheap drones! (An update to pitchforks and blazing torches?)

Here’s Neil Oliver’s take on it. It’s worth watching.

Neil also reminds us that the power and reach of “Caesar” Fink’s empire is built on the savings and pensions of millions of little people. Which means that Joe Schmuck in Ohio and Dai Williams in Ponty pay for their own “digital slavery“.

Will the new Plaid Cymru administration stand up for Wales, and humanity, and against the proliferation of AI data centres and the misery they’ll inflict?

And what about the inconsistency – many might say hypocrisy – of allowing AI data centers to drain the electricity grid and monopolise water supplies while constantly hectoring us mere mortals into consuming less of everything?

Thankfully, more and more people see the nature of Globalism, and the threat it poses. While Wokism is increasingly rejected as a load of dangerous tosh. Now the UN has pulled back on its more hysterical climate claims. While NASA shows CO2 greening large areas of the planet, thereby making attempts to reduce or ‘capture’ it insane.

Wales can’t continue in a cartoon world created by brainwashed or unhinged useful idiots where cows are a threat to the planet and Welsh cakes must be decolonised.

Wales has more than enough real problems. Plaid Cymru must tackle them.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Who Runs The White House, Abersoch?

On By JacIn Business and Commerce, Corruption, Development Bank of Wales, Plaid Cymru, Public Funding, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour38 Comments

Don’t panic, this isn’t about US politics. Following information received it’s an update to something I wrote back in 2020.

As you will understand, I’m sure, what I’d promised for Monday, ‘Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse’, will now be delayed. (And anyway, I’d forgotten that Monday is a Bank Holiday.)

◊

RECAP

In December 2020 I put out Lucky Gwynedd – More ‘Investors’! Scroll down to ‘The Phoenix Hotel, Abersoch’ and you’ll get the background to what you’re going to read.

In a nutshell, chancers from N W England had bought the old White Hall Hotel in Abersoch and had big plans, expensive plans. I wrote in that earlier piece:

This establishment closed in 2004 or 2005, inevitably fell into disrepair, and was eventually demolished in the early part of 2016.  In the report I’ve linked to we read, “A 40-bedroom hotel and spa will now be built in its place and is set to open in 2018”.

Well, 2018 came and went. It’s now 2026, and it’s still not finished.

Two of the principals behind the project were: Charles Marshall Openshaw and Anthony John Hayton. Each had a string of failed companies to their name. I mentioned one of Openshaw’s companies, Rooftop Solutions Ltd, going bust in 2012 and owing almost half a million quid.

And yet, it seemed that Messrs Openshaw and Hayton were welcomed by Cyngor Gwynedd and certain agencies in Corruption Bay as bona fide investors with a string of glittering successes to their names.

And also getting positive, uncritical write-ups in the local media.

UPDATE 24.05.2026: You can get your very own piece of Abersoch – a beach hut is for sale at £200,000.

◊

CON MEN, POLITICIANS, BANKRUPTS

Let’s start the update proper with a piece that appeared last July in Boutique Hotelier. The property is now known as Tŷ Gwyn. The article mentions a series of delays, and suggests that the original plan may have been to lease or sell the individual rooms.

This of course is a model we’ve encountered before, perhaps most notably with con man Gavin Lee Woodhouse, from Yorkshire. He bought run-down hotels from Llandudno to Tenby, and was the inspiration behind the Afan Valley Adventure Resort which now employs thousands. Or maybe not.

To jog your memories, here’s something I put out around the time I was writing about Woodhouse.

Labour got hammered earlier this month in the Senedd elections, but you’ll be delighted to hear that Skates and Irranca-Davies were both re-elected. No doubt Plaid’s new team will be seeking advice from these financial whizz-kids.

In the Boutique Hotelier article, you’ll see that the sooper-dooper new “hotel and apartment complex” at Abersoch will be run by Bespoke Hotels of Warrington.

Problem is . . . Bespoke Hotels International Ltd was Dissolved in January. Then again, it might be Bespoke Hotels (North West) Ltd, Dissolved in February ’22. Or maybe it’s . . .

And what of the two entrepreneurs who kicked off this project, Charles Marshall Openshaw and Anthony John Hayton?

Well, it’s sad news there, too. Both were declared bankrupt just before Christmas. Below are the notices from the The London Gazette.

So who’s running things now? Who owns the Tŷ Gwyn hotel and apartment complex?

According to the Land Registry title document the property is now owned by Providence Gate Abersoch Ltd. But in March this year the company’s name changed to Abersoch Development Ltd.

◊

INTRODUCING ANIL KUMAR PITALIA

Abersoch Development Ltd, which bought the project in July 2022, is owned by Anil Kumar Pitalia. Here’s Pitalia’s Linkedin profile. He has many companies. Not all successful; here’s just a few of those that have gone to the wall.

The latest accounts for Abersoch Development Ltd (year ending 31.03.2025) show a ‘total equity’ deficit of £4,945,191. This might be accounted for by the loans, which are worth looking at.

The first two loans came from an outfit in Preston called E3C Solutions Ltd, 14.07.2022. Since renamed Quarry Rock Solutions Ltd. Another two from Gemini Finance Ltd, 23.08.2022, another back-street lender, this time in Liverpool.

All four loans, against the White House Hotel in Abersoch, were settled 05.04.2023. Then four more loans were taken out. Let’s look at the new loans.

The first, 14.03.2023 – three weeks before the first four loans were paid off – was with Crossbaron Ltd of Bolton. A company owned by – Anil Pitalia! Always nice when you can lend yourself money. Was this used to pay off the earlier loans?

The next, 21.07.2023, was with Lyell Trading Ltd of Cheltenham.

Closely followed by two loans, 25.07.2023, from Development Bank of Wales (DBW).

Which is somewhat confusing, because this response to a FoI request, dated 03.06.2024, says nothing has been offered.

I can only assume the FoI request went to the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ rather than to the DBW. In which case, the response is, strictly speaking, true, even though the DBW is controlled by the ‘Welsh Government’.

Was it a bit naughty not referring the inquirer to the DBW? Anyway . . .

Anil Pitalia has also branched out into charity work. Which always warms the cockles of my cynical old heart. His particular charity is The Pitalia Charitable Trust – previously The Visionary Charitable Trust – bringing succour to those in distress in the mythic Englandandwales . . . also India.

At the risk of sounding unkind, the objectives look a bit, well, pro forma; like they were downloaded from the internet. Or found in a solicitor’s drawer.

Turning to the finances, for the period ended 05.10.2022 we see a huge leap in the charity’s income.

This is accounted for in the accounts filed with the Charity Commission as you see below. Wasn’t that nice of him! Though I suppose it might be reasonable to ask, why so much in one dollop? Why so little before or since?

And perhaps, where did it come from?

So, I got to wondering what might explain this outpouring of charitable zeal. And the timeframe is interesting: Pitalia paid over four million pounds into his charity around the time he paid off loans and took on new ones.

He was a busy boy in 2022/23.

Whatever, and moving on . . . I couldn’t find a website for this charity, but the accounts filed with the Charity Commission for the years following the arrival of that huge sum tell us this:

Little seems to be going out to worthy causes; the charity could even be mistaken for an investment vehicle. But if so, then what might it be investing in?

◊

THE DEVELOPMENT BANK OF WALES

However we got here, the fact is that Anil Pitalia, through his company Abersoch Development Ltd, has obtained loans from the Development Bank of Wales, a body owned by the ‘Welsh Government’.

Over the years, I’ve been critical of the DBW, and ‘Welsh Government’ funding in general. Getting good publicity often seems to be more important than acting wisely; or of doing background checks on the companies and individuals seeking funding.

This approach has led to so many mistakes over the years. Earlier I mentioned Gavin Lee Woodhouse, con man and instigator of the Afan Valley Adventure Resort. One of the properties he bought was Caer Rhun.

And the ‘Welsh Government’ agreed a tourism grant of £500,000. That’s a grant, not a loan. Nothing to be repaid. (Though it was later insisted that no money was ever handed over.)

I’m convinced that the word is out among a certain class of ‘investor’ that Wales is a soft touch for getting your hands on public money. All you have to do is buy some old pile, send a press release to the media, promise investment/jobs/visitors, have your photo taken with a politician or two, and wait for the money to roll in.

Such people will inevitably be attracted when they hear of organisations desperate to get money out the door as proof they’re doing their job, coupled with an almost total absence of serious checks.

With the result that Welsh public funding that could have been better used will be wasted.

As for the Development Bank of Wales itself, I went to the accounts, to see what I could turn up. Not easy because what’s filed with Companies House (or certainly what appears on the CH website) is a sometimes messy photocopy.

But if I’m reading it right, then profit for the last financial year was half of the previous year. (Full accounts available here in pdf format.)

I believe the Development Bank of Wales is a dysfunctional body. I also believe that description extends to the grant-awarding system throughout the administration.

◊

CONCLUSION

My belief is that a competent and legitimate businessman or businesswoman coming to Wales with a viable project should be able to find funding from the usual commercial sources.

Too many of those who’ve been awarded loans or grants, or been given publicly-owned land, and other forms of help over the years, have been out-and-out crooks.

But even when the recipients of funding are genuine, there’s always the danger that money given to be spent on a project in Wales will be lost through some intra-group dealing and end up somewhere else.

The ‘Welsh Government’ and the Development Bank of Wales should therefore focus on funding identifiably Welsh businesses and Welsh entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs, operating solely within Wales.

Because building up an indigenous Welsh economy must be a priority. Also, building on what we already have, such as agriculture. Will the new Plaid Cymru administration do better than its Labour predecessor in this regard? Not a hope.

Because Plaid’s SMs know little and care even less about business. And anyway, when you’re saving a planet, while simultaneously fighting fascism and defending women with penises from genocide, you don’t want distractions like the economy, and jobs.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Senedd Elections 2026: Picking Through The Bones

On By JacIn Conservative and Unionist Party, Greens, Plaid Cymru, Reform, Senedd, Welsh Labour68 Comments

Where to start? A truly momentous result. But will it make much difference? Join me as I ramble through the results.

◊

THE VOTING SYSTEM

Let’s start with the widespread and growing feeling that the party list system, in 16 vast constituencies, was a mistake, and one that must not be repeated. But how did we end up with this monstrosity?

It started well enough, in February 2017, when the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ appointed an ‘expert panel’ of academics to look into various electoral systems and come up with recommendations. Which the panel did. But Labour (possibly also Plaid Cymru) didn’t like those recommendations.

The panel favoured the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. And it specifically rejected the system used last Thursday. In this piece I put out a couple of years ago, I wrote:

On page 128 of the report we read the ‘closed list proportional representation’ system was rejected. It’s ‘weakness’ spelled out as, “No choice for voters between individual candidates. No accountability for individual Members directly to voters.”

Through a series of further – more political – groups, we arrived at the abomination forced on us last week. Based on the understanding that Labour would be the biggest party, with less than 40% of the vote in a low turnout, propped up by Plaid Cymru.

To put that into context: In 2016 Labour won 30 out of the 60 seats with 34.7% of the vote. Plaid Cymru came third with 11 seats and 20.5%. The turnout was 45.3%.

Never was it imagined that Labour would finish many lengths behind in third.

But it’s happened; and now Plaid Cymru needs to promise something better before the elections of 2031. With Wales now having 32 Westminster constituencies one obvious option is to elect three Members from each.

A simple system that would mean:

1/ Parties putting up three candidates in each constituency. Giving each party a total of 96, the same as we had on May 7.

2/ This  system would be far more representative in that it would allow voters to pick and choose from candidates. Even vote for three different parties 1, 2, 3.

3/ It would be fairer for smaller parties and independent candidates.

But will Plaid Cymru want to change the system that gave them victory, at last?

◊

PLAID CYMRU, REFORM, ALSO-RANS

Not for nothing do people say of me: “That bloke’s no curmudgeon“, and now I’m going to prove it . . . without getting carried away, you understand.

The victory last Thursday eclipsed everything Plaid Cymru has achieved in its century-long existence. Without wishing to sound ungracious, I believe Plaid did so well, in part, from negative voting. Because much of the Plaid vote was against other parties.

There’s an irony here. In campaigning ahead of the election Labour and the rest of the ‘progressive’ parties urged us to vote against Reform; but Labour didn’t appreciate just how many people also wanted to vote against them.

Now if people decide to vote against Reform and Labour – where they gonna go?

This can be seen in my home city. Swansea has been a wasteland for Plaid for decades; no councillors, hardly any presence whatsoever. Yet in the Gŵyr Abertawe constituency, corresponding roughly with the old seats of Swansea West and Gower, Plaid Cymru won 3 of the 6 seats, but with just 31.9% of the vote.

Another factor in the Swansea results was the feeling that the city has been short-changed by Cardiff-obsessed Labour governments in Corruption Bay. I’ll return to this aspect of the picture later, when I address what Plaid should do to live up to the hopes of those who voted for the party.

Especially those who voted Plaid for the first time. Hoping for real change.

It might be worth mentioning that of the Plaid intake 27 are women and just 16 are men. Plaid has been pushing ‘equality’ for a long time, but it appears they might have gone too far.

For as George Orwell warned us in 1984:

It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

Substitute Globalist-Woke agenda for Party.

Reform UK could have done better. Had they remembered this was an election in Wales, to the Senedd. Not a lot to ask, you might think. But it seems to have been too much for Reform. And many of their candidates.

What Reform offered was the usual England/UK spiel with a few unconvincing tweaks, offered by candidates many of whom seemed unsure where they were.

And yet, Reform got a good vote with 29.3%, and 34 of their candidates elected. With a better campaign Reform might have come out on top. If nothing else, the vote for Reform reminds us that we’re in uncharted territory.

And nothing shows this change more than the collapse of Labour’s vote. But this was long overdue. For too long Labour relied on the ‘hereditary’ vote in post-industrial and urban areas. Appeals to remember Nye Bevan and other emotive distractions from the embarrassing reality of modern Wales.

Throw in ‘Two-tier Keir’, and 27 years of failure from the Bay, and maybe Labour should be thankful they got 11.1% of the vote and 9 seats.

The Conservatives were almost squeezed out of the debate, and this wasn’t helped by the party’s woeful recent performance in Westminster. That said, 10.7% and 7 seats is not to be sniffed at. Just 0.4% behind Labour.

Reminding us that the Tory vote may be low, but it’s always there. Had things worked out differently they could have come third and been the junior partner in a coalition. That may be stretching it a bit, but an arrangement of some sort might have been agreed with Reform.

A month ago the Greens looked set for 7 or 8 seats, but recent revelations about the leader and some of his cronies put paid to those hopes. It’s all very well being weird, but when you’re weird and dangerous, then people will turn away.

The Lib Dems got their one seat with Jane Dodds in that ‘camel’ of a constituency, Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd. Nationally, they managed 4.5% of the vote.

I won’t dwell on the minor parties and independent candidates except to show you this from the Welsh Communist Party statement. It was put out after the election. I show it because it tells us what’s wrong with Wales. (I didn’t know we had a Welsh Communist Party!)

“Fair, green and socialist Wales“. . . “progressive coalition between Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour” . . . “extra-parliamentary pressure“.

In other words, more of the same. Too many thinking that way explains why Wales is in the mess she’s in.

◊

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW?

Plaid Cymru has a golden opportunity – and a popular mandate – to put right the mistakes of the past 27 years.

For the first time Plaid can genuinely claim to be ‘The Party of Wales’, for it now has a better geographical spread in its support than Labour ever enjoyed, having been confined to the south (east of Llanelli) and the north east.

As I mentioned earlier, many in the Swansea area voted Plaid because they feel the city has been neglected by Labour administrations in Cardiff. This feeling is not confined to the city of my dreams.

Because administrations in the Bay have behaved as if they were an extension of Cardiff council. I pointed out a few months ago that five (of six) first ministers had served on the city council. (Carwyn Jones is the only exception.)

The leader of Cardiff’s Labour-controlled council, Huw Thomas, was elected last Thursday, the party’s only successful candidate in Caerdydd Penarth. No doubt he’s being lined up for bigger things. Or he was.

Remembering that they sit in Senedd Cymru not Senedd Caerdydd will be a big test for Plaid Cymru. But it’s essential.

On one of the post-election programmes former Plaid leader Dafydd Wigley was asked what the party should focus on in power. His answer was short and simple: “Economy, economy, economy“.

And as BusinessNewsWales reported on the Monday following the election:

‘Joshua Miles, Head of Wales at the Federation of Small Businesses calls on the new Welsh Government to provide “a clear economic strategy, with achievable targets and genuine accountability”.’

‘Russell Greenslade, Director, CBI Wales, also called on the new government to focus on partnership working, including with business.’

If Plaid Cymru is to honestly focus on building up the Welsh economy then they’d have the support of other parties. Certainly Reform. Or would they reject that to stay on the same path of failure with their soul-mates in Labour and Greens?

In her powerful farewell speech outgoing first minister Eluned Morgan faced her Ceausescu moment by arguing that Labour needs to re-connect with the working class. This is the working class that relies mainly on jobs provided by the business sector.

We need to go back to being the party of the working-class. We need the Labour Government nationally to change course. We need the wealth of this nation to be more equally distributed away from the South East.

Though working with business would be unpalatable to many in ‘progressive’ parties who have neither experience nor knowledge of real world economics. Worse, many believe job provision should be the preserve of the state, local councils, third sector, and nationalised industries.

With workers ‘represented’ by trade unions answerable to the state.

But the real obstacle to fulfilling Eluned Morgan’s vision is that the Labour party, like socialist parties elsewhere in the West, lost a large component of working class support through net zero costing jobs and raising bills; then further alienated the toiling masses with open borders, CRT, self-ID, and all the other ishoos from the Student Activist Toolkit™.

Fundamentally, Plaid needs to distance itself from all the things Labour did wrong.

One worth mentioning is the obsession with Wales saving the planet single-handed which, in practice, meant allowing windfarms and solar complexes, BESSs and pylons just about everywhere, all to benefit foreign companies providing no jobs.

Plaid talks the talk on community ownership of renewable energy projects. Give it a go; but to walk the walk community projects must be more than vehicles for activists to push their political hang-ups and soapboxes for enviro-nut good lifers.

Oh yeah, and make sure there’s a reliable backup supply.

◊

DR DAF GETS ON HIS BIKE

So will Plaid Cymru be an improvement?

Worth asking because Plaid may be more Woke than Labour; and even more in hock to the pressure groups, the lobbyists, and the single-issue fanatics.

Too many of Plaid’s intake view business – and the jobs it provides – as the capitalist enemy. Of the 43 Plaid SMs I doubt if more than a handful have experience of the real world economy.

Telling me that Plaid will follow the same disastrous path as Labour, forcing on us unpopular policies dictated by pressure groups. One such policy will be the war on private transport and the undesirable freedom it gives individuals.

As I pointed out in my previous piece Who Ya Gonna Vote For? Labour SM Lee Waters had worked for cycle group Sustrans (now Walk Wheel Cycle Trust), and he was the driving force behind 20mph speed limits, even on rural A roads.

Waters stood down last week, but he has a successor in newly-elected Plaid SM for Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf, Dr Dafydd Trystan Davies. And it didn’t happen yesterday.

And what a performance Dr Daf put on in his acceptance speech! He talked of the climate emergency, and he promised to go everywhere by bike, train, bus, or else he’d walk. But if it was pouring down and the bus didn’t turn up then he might resort to a car – but he’d record it so everybody would know what a good boy he is.

I’m sure most of the 151,198 registered voters in his constituency wanted to hear something better, hope for the future; but all they got was this sanctimonious little bugger telling them nothing is going to change.

And let’s remember that much of Plaid’s support is still in rural areas. Where there are few trains, sparse bus services, and ageing populations; so how will “on yer bike” be received?

Bad enough; but the whole concept of ‘Active Travel’ has been an expensive failure.

◊

CONCLUSION: PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE

Devolution has failed Wales because for 27 years Labour, either alone or in alliance with Plaid or Lib Dems, has ignored the economy, the NHS, and the real needs of the people. Choosing instead to play student politics; making gestures and taking ‘positions’.

Jo Stevens MP for Cardiff East and Labour’s Secretary of State for Wales, agrees. She also agrees with me that, “Plaid’s victory in this Senedd election was not a reflection of nationalist fervour or a genuine enthusiasm for independence. It was a rebuke of our own performance and a vote to stop Reform in Wales.”

IMAGE: @20NPHartleyHare

Those responsible for Labour being ‘distracted’, and the only ones to benefit from it, have been gangs of swivel-eyed activists. The “extra-parliamentary pressure” demanded by the Welsh Communist Party.

In the process, this failure created, and is now perpetuated by, a new political class that Djilas would have recognised. Members of this class were brainwashed in school and university. They then got jobs as spads and advisors to politicians. Or they joined lobbying outfits and pressure groups. Maybe they worked in the third sector and for other bodies reliant on the public purse. Some became ‘journalists’.

This political caste, this New Class, is increasingly distanced from the people, and is now entrenched. It’s become generational. It’s self-perpetuating. And it’s concentrated on the left. A very real threat to representative democracy.

Plaid Cymru won because people want change. But if Trystan Davies is any guide they’ll be disappointed, as Plaid will make the same mistakes Labour made.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Who Ya Gonna Vote For?

On By JacIn Conservative and Unionist Party, Corruption Bay, Devolution, Elections, Globalism, Greens, Gwlad, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Reform, Scotland, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour52 Comments

Well, we’re almost there. Thank God! Because this has been the most uninspiring and negative election in the history of devolution.

Never have so many deadbeats, activists posing as ‘journalists’, party hacks, and nut-jobs, wasted their time trying to rouse a people who’ve just lost interest.

◊

RUNNERS AND RIDERS IN HEAVY GOING

This election was doomed to be uninspiring and confusing once Labour rigged the voting system. (Almost certainly with the connivance of Plaid Cymru.) It’s a party list system that no one understands, contested in 16 vast and insane constituencies.

An affront to democracy.

I detailed the various stages of the process just over two years ago in Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill, explaining how better and fairer voting systems were rejected in order to arrive at today’s abomination.

For one thing, it’s designed to make life as difficult as possible for smaller parties and independent candidates. Jac Larner of Cardiff University calculates the system imposes a threshold of 14% before a party can hope to win a seat.

Given the quality of the debate, and the paucity of credible candidates, the election has been uninspiring. But this is to be expected. If a Senedd of just 60 Members attracts only people who’d struggle to run a stall at a village fete, what hope is there of improving the quality when the numbers are increased by over 50%?

And this couples with the negativity I also referred to in the intro. The Globalist Uniparty, the self-styled ‘progressives’, Labour, Plaid Cymru, Greens, Lib Dems, have had little to say beyond – Stop Reform!

There has been nothing positive on offer. Certainly no inspiring vision for the future. But this is only to be expected. Because with the exception of the Greens these are the parties that have failed Wales for 27 years of devolution.

Adding the Greens to the mix – and a potential coalition with Plaid – only offers something worse. While the other components of the Uniparty promise more of the same, the Greens want to double down on the mistakes of the past 27 years, and force on us new ones.

It’s also been a very ‘British’ campaign in that Welsh issues have been crowded out. For the London media has tended to lump the Senedd elections in with the Scottish Parliament and English local authority elections.

Their focus has been London-centric in debating whether Starmer will survive bad results “across the UK“. Treating May 7 almost as a general election, or a vote of confidence in the Labour party in Westminster.

And yet, this neglect of Welsh issues serves the interests of some parties. Plaid Cymru, for example, can blame Labour for the mess Wales is in, while claiming a vote for them is also a vote against the most unpopular PM ever.

Ironically, this is Labour’s old election tactic of urging punters to, “Send a message to London“. Which is what many will be doing, but now it’s working against Labour.

Reform can neglect Wales to focus on the issues that figure with the mainstream media and social media; small boat migrants, net zero, anti-Semitism, high taxes, benefit payments, knife crime, etc. Giving out mixed messages about their attitude towards devolution doesn’t do them any harm either.

The Greens have the advantage of being an unknown quantity, something different. But the Greens are universally and correctly described as ‘the Watermelon Party’. Green on the outside, red on the inside. And now attracting Islamist support.

Plaid Cymru has also been dipping its toe in that toxic oasis pool for some years. Though I’m not sure Mrs Evans in Pencader will take kindly to being told she has to wear a hijab to Capel Sion or else be branded Islamophobic.

As for the Lib Dems, does anybody know what they offer? In Wales it’s that strange Jane Dodds, with the party led at UK level by Ed Davey, who backed the Post Office in persecuting postmasters when UK Postal Affairs Minister from 2010 to 2012.

In short, and Reform excepted, various forms of that curious beast, 21st century Western left-liberalism divorced from any concerns for the once-idolised working class.

Offering socialism that can only run an economy for as long as other people’s money lasts or – as we’re now learning from Minnesota and elsewhere in the USA – if it can tap in to official funding which taxpayers thought was being properly used.

Few issues lay bare the deceit and duplicity more clearly than race. Here are a couple more things I picked up over the past week on X.

On the left we have Plaid Cymru dreaming of a multicultural Wales in which it seems white people are a minority. On the right, someone claiming that “Cymru belongs to us, not Reform“.

Now I don’t know Siân Parry, so I can’t say for sure that she’s a Plaid supporter, but she’s certainly on the political left. But what is she trying to say? Come to that, what is Plaid Cymru trying to say? Let’s attempt a synthesis.

An illegal immigrant can be Welsh; but someone who is Welsh to their core, speaks the language fluently, ceases to be Welsh – if they support Reform?

How insane, and offensive, that is. And all in the service of some transitory Woke nonsense. But too many put socialist dogma and childish obsessions above the interests of Wales.

To continue down this path Plaid risks becoming a full-blown anti-Welsh party.

For that’s the course it seems to have charted, with a Gwynedd councillor suspended for not appreciating that the false god of inclusivity is more important than the Welsh language and the community he was elected to represent.

So sod the Uniparty. And with Reform increasingly looking like controlled opposition, I’d avoid them too.

◊

STUDENT POLITICS AND DYING BIRDS

Twenty-seven years of virtue-signalling, ineptitude, and failure have taken their inevitable toll.

It’s an uphill task for those who’ve run devolution for 27 years to persuade people to forget about bills and hospital appointments, and instead take pride in Wales being the first country to declare a climate emergency, the first to have a Future Generations Commissioner, and to remember that Wales is working to be Anti-racist by 2030.

It’s student politics. And it’s explained very well by a young man named Owain Williams, whose one-minute video I stumbled upon last week.

When I saw “Confederacy” my heart soared!

Now student politics is all very well in its place, but the real world is not that place.

Digression alert!

There’s a little quote from Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man that was popular with the left in my younger days. Paine was responding to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which Burke floridly defended the Ancien Régime. (But still a great read!)

Paine condemned Burke for being more concerned with the pomp of Versailles than with the wretchedness of most French people. It was a radical responding to a conservative, telling him to ignore the ephemeral and focus on the realities.

Paine wrote: “We pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird“.

We can turn this on its head in 21st century Wales; for here it’s the radicals, the progressives, who obsess over the plumage, the ephemeral. But who ignore the dying bird, Wales.

And things won’t get better if we let Plaid Cymru take over. For Plaid, either alone or in alliance with their new wobble-headed pals in the Greens, will only push us harder and faster down Disaster Road.

But on the plus side . . . breast enlargement will be available on the NHS from fully-trained tit whisperers, all accredited by the Zack Polanski School of Woo-Woo.

Let’s be honest, devolution has been a disaster for Wales, and so replacing one bunch of bullshitters with another won’t make a bit of difference. And people know it. This piece from last week’s Western Mail says it all.

“A majority of voters in Wales are either indifferent to devolution or opposed to it . . . only 27 per cent of those asked said they supported devolution“. A majority of those polled couldn’t name the first minister.

But what do you expect after 27 years of failure that has alienated people from the whole idea of devolution, and they see no hope of improvement?

◊

IS DEVOLUTION EVEN DEMOCRATIC?

A fundamental problem of devolution, and the main reason for being subjected to policies for which there is little public support is the hangers-on, the influencers, the pressure groups, the lobbyists, that attach themselves to the politicians, to by-pass and subvert the democratic process.

You vote for a party that promised this that and t’other but you end up suffering legislation that was never in the manifesto and on which you were never consulted.

That’s because most of the Uniparty members in the Senedd went into politics to promote their pet ishoos rather than represent the constituency for which they were elected. Many came from charities, pressure groups, and lobbying organisations.

The aptly-named ‘Swamp’.

Take Lee Waters. Ostensibly the Labour Senedd Member for Llanelli (though he actually lives in Penarth). Waters had worked for cycling charity Sustrans (renamed Walk Wheel Cycle Trust), and was instrumental in bringing in the 20mph legislation.

There was a petition opposing 20mph that raised almost 470,000 signatures – but the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ ignored it.

While other petitions, with little support, result in legislation – because the issue promoted lines up with the Uniparty agenda. You even get your photo took with some gurning politico in a presentation ceremony!

On the left in the image below is Mike Hedges, Labour SM for Swansea East; on the right, Natalie Buttriss, who’s represented a number of bodies trying to grab Welsh land under various ‘save the planet’/’biodiversity’ guises.

Red carpet treatment – and a chance to meet Mike Hedges! – for just 2,385 signatures!

That’s democracy, folks; the Voice of the People . . . being ignored.

Saying loud and clear that devolution is a sham. But we’re expected to believe it’s going to get better because – just like socialism – it hasn’t been properly tried yet.

Worse, there are those believing Wales could survive as an independent country with the same calibre of politicians pursuing the same policies.

This goes beyond the definition of insanity attributed to Einstein.

At present, all the lunacies we endure from Corruption Bay are funded by the block grant from Westminster. Take that away with independence, and give full powers to politicians who understand nothing about economics, but who will be determined to pursue the same Globalist-Woke agenda, and Wales will go broke within 5 years.

Then it’s into the clutches of the EU and the World Bank; allowing land and other assets to be bought up by BlackRock and the like to give the impression of economic activity, or inward investment.

Socialism has never worked as an economic model. Which explains why the only ones pushing it are either still wet behind the ears or have jobs for life on the public payroll.

◊

CONCLUSION

Plaid Cymru believes that a few years of the party running the Senedd will win people over to the idea of independence. Thinking of Scotland. They’re wrong.

After the SNP took control in 2008 (as a minority government) it increased its popularity under the leadership of Alex Salmond. To the point where it almost won the 2014 referendum on independence.

But Salmond, in addition to being a very astute politician and a great debater, was an economist. You know, the real world economy. He persuaded many Scots, and many economists, that Scotland could be better off as an independent country.

And it almost worked. I was in Scotland for the referendum, and I know that the polls just before the vote were showing a majority for Yes. The London parties panicked and came out with ‘The Vow’, promising Scotland just about everything short of independence.

That swung it and the vote was 55 – 45 against independence.

Worth noting that the Labour leader at the time was Ed Miliband. Who – like Cameron and Clegg – understood that a great part of the appeal of independence was the promise of oil and gas revenues staying in Scotland. So maybe him closing down North Sea oil and gas fields isn’t just about saving the planet.

Whatever, and to get back to Wales, Plaid Cymru knows nothing about economics; I think the last genuine economist in their ranks was Dr Phil Williams, a good old stick despite everything, but he died in 2003.

Wales has no oil and gas fields to speak of. And there’s been no attempt to develop an indigenous economy over the 27 years of devolution. Funding cronies and charities to run make-believe ‘businesses’, and allowing carpetbagger companies to exploit Wales, is a third world economy.

All Plaid Cymru offers is more of the same, with a different spin. Because while Rhun ap Iorwerth may come across as an affable sort of guy, behind the scenes, still running the show, are dark forces from Plaid’s recent past.

And if Plaid gets power, especially in a link-up of some description with the Greens, then even nastier specimens will start popping up.

Wales needs radical change, in the form of a return to the eternal verities and facing up to economic realities. The Uniparty will never be allowed to provide this. Reform gives no thought to Wales beyond getting votes to pursue a different agenda.

Here’s Owain Williams again. I don’t know his politics, but I suspect they’re not a million miles from my own.

UPDATE 04.05.2026: Well, bless me! Young Owain is the son of Rhodri ‘Billions’ Williams, former boss of S4C and various other bodies. Owain is, or was, a Labour stalwart. The doubt might be justified by the party excluding him from being selected.

The only sensible option is a party that puts Wales first and foremost. One that prioritises the economy we all need. That understands Wales needs real jobs not more gesture politics. That teaches our children to think for themselves rather than brainwashing them. That won’t wage war on the family farm. Or the family unit.

The only party that fits the bill is Gwlad. Of course, Gwlad can’t win this time round, they don’t have the strength yet. But they’ll grow and, with fair media coverage, be back stronger next time. In the meantime, I’m sure Gwlad will be fighting for Wales in council elections and other ways.

The only Welsh party willing to address people’s real world concerns is Gwlad.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Any, Any, Any Old Iron?

On By JacIn Business and Commerce, Bute Energy, Colonialism, Renewables, Wind Turbines163 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

Which might suggest confusion.

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

But let’s start with Catapult itself.

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OFFSHORE RENEWABLE ENERGY (ORE) CATAPULT

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

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

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

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

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

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TATA STEEL UK

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

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

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

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

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RWE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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BUTE ENERGY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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HUTCHINSON ENGINEERING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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LEDWOOD

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

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

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

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

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

The company is owned by:

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

(Here are the Bluecap Resources shareholders.)

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

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

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THE THEORY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alternatively, the blades might come from somewhere else.

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

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

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CONCLUSION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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