This began as an update to the piece I put out a few days ago. But it grew too big. So I had to admit that the only way to do it properly was as a follow-up, a second part. Which explains what you’re about to read.
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LEO FROM THE OLD SCHOOL
A source, someone who’s given me some good stuff in the past, tells me a name to watch for in relation to the Tramshed and other matters is Leonora ‘Leo’ Thomson. She already plays a big role, and may have an even bigger role in future.
Leonora Thomson was educated at Oakham School, and then Leeds University, where she did philosophy. Yet another product of a public school helping to fill the thinning ranks of Labour in Wales.
One day I might put aside some time and see just how many of them there are. For now, I’ll just remind you of two.
There’s Senedd Member Jenny Rathbone of the uber wealthy Rathbone dynasty, who goes big on the environment, and whose partner, John Uden, was given a sinecure by Bute Energy, which wants to cover Wales in wind turbines and pylons.
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And of course, there’s the Green Goddess herself, Jane Davidson, who wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that dictates so many of the restrictions on our personal freedoms, and also the damage being done to our economy.
What was once the party of the Welsh working class has to keep applying an increasingly unconvincing Welsh veneer as it falls further under the control of pressure groups, fanatics, sexual deviants, and career politicians.
Among them we find the privately-educated, conflicted between guilt at their privileged upbringing and the old impulse to shout at the natives.
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WHAT LEO DID NEXT
To help you start, here’s Leo’s Linkedin profile. It’s all media, arts, PR. Also a brief stint with the Metropolitan Police, plus 8 years as a Labour councillor in Ealing. All in London until she arrived in Cardiff, December 2015, to become managing director of the Welsh National Opera Company (WNO).
If you go to the About panel on Linkedin, and click on ‘see more’, you bring up what you see below. I’ve highlighted parts that I’ll be referring to as you read on.
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There’s nothing listed after she ended her stint with the WNO in August 2019. What followed is partly explained in the image above, with the rest filled in as we go along. But now, let’s turn to another line of enquiry.
The oldest active directorship is with English Touring Opera Ltd. She joined 7 June, 2021. Less than two years after leaving the WNO.
On 18 November, 2021 Leo became a director of the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales Ltd. Well, when I read that you could have knocked me down with an illegally-released-into-the-wild beaver!
Yet nothing I see in her background suggests an interest in flora and fauna. Truth is, this was a political appointment to an organisation the ‘Welsh Government’ wishes to use in its war on livestock farming.
Once you read, “fairer and more equal society” you know it’s about leftist propaganda rather than theatre. More ‘Waiting for Gramsci’ than anything Beckett wrote.
Can’t help wondering where the money comes from, cos I’m damn sure Omidaze don’t pay for itself.
Monk Racing Ltd is an odd one. Formed in 2000 it’s always filed as dormant. The key to Thomson’s involvement is probably Anthony Kenneth Lewis, who was a founding director, and is the joint owner with her of a house on the Taff Embankment.
Lewis resigned from Monk Racing 9 April, 2023. Thomson joined 27 June, 2023.
There have been two stints where Leo served as a Labour councillor. The first you’ve already read about, from 1998 to 2006 in the London Borough of Ealing; and now, from May 2022 for the Riverside ward in Cardiff.
Given the Philistines in Labour’s ranks, both on Cardiff council and in the Senedd, I’m sure the comrades have deferred more than once to Thomson’s knowledge of the finer things in life.
‘How do ew spell opera, love?’
Though I’m beginning to wonder if Leonora Thomson is bad luck. Let me explain.
In March we learnt that Thomson was joining as interim CEO. Having already served as Interim Joint Chief Executive from October 2019 to June 2021. And now NTW has moved to the Tramshed, a nest of Labour cronies and insiders.
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Another body to lose funding recently was the WNO. Where Thomson was managing director for almost 4 years until August 2019. (Though I believe she returned in some kind of temporary capacity.)
Which means the WNO lost funding after Leonora Thomson had been involved, and while she was Chair at English Touring Opera. Seeing as the WNO performs at English venues some might see the WNO and the English company as competitors.
Though it’s difficult to explain these cuts to two such important cultural bodies as the WNO and NTW when one of their main funders, the Arts Council of Wales, saw its income increase by more than 50% in just 4 years.
One organisation linked to Leonora Thomson suffering a funding cut, I could dismiss; two, I might, just, accept as coincidence; but three, and in such a short space of time? Do me a favour!
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UNDERMINE, TAKE CONTROL
What we’ve just looked at is a phenomenon I’ve seen regularly in recent years. I wrote about it a year ago in Taking Control, Of Everything. I focused then on the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) and the Football Association of Wales (FAW).
It’s the ‘Welsh Government’s method for taking control of an organisation.
The first stage is to discredit and undermine the target organisation, maybe also those running it. (Sometimes with inside help.) Stage Two is the reduction or withdrawal of funding. Stage Three, the takeover; done through a combination of restored / increased funding and the appointment of politically loyal or malleable individuals to the organisation.
A bit like the CIA handbook for regime change.
What we’ve seen done to the WNO, NTW and RWCMD could only have been achieved with the assistance of the Arts Council of Wales; which had already undergone the same treatment.
I wrote about it back to August 2021.
First in Corruption Bay and a tale of Cymrophobia (23.08.2021). In which I reported that the Arts Council and the National Museum commissioned three reports in June 2020 to look into ‘widening engagement’.
To make sense of it, remember that George Floyd died the previous month and there was fierce competition as people fought to honour his memory capitalise on his death.
The three groups commissioned were:
An unregistered entity run by Labour insiders Lu Thomas and Jon Luxton.
The third outfit commissioned was The Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union (WAARU). Which had no presence anywhere – yet its anonymously submitted report was accepted!
And remember! 31 other applicants were rejected in favour of these three.
And then (06.09.2021) Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union unmasked, in which I identified those behind WAARU. The usual mix of chip-on-shoulder race grifters and middle class leftists trying to live out their slogans.
Woke employees of Welsh national institutions collaborating with their Woke allies outside to discredit and undermine the organisations they worked for.
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FINALE: FITTING LEO INTO THE BIGGER PICTURE
The evidence might suggest that Leonora Hope Thomson has been employed by the ‘Welsh Government’ as some kind of hatchet woman; sent in to various bodies and asked to recommend ‘economies’ and ‘restructuring’.
Part of a pattern that sees ‘Welsh Government’ / ‘Welsh’ Labour, take control of our public, artistic, and sporting life. Done at the behest of the shrieky and the unhinged to promote the Woke agenda.
Which explains how we see Leo, and National Theatre Wales, of which she’s interim CEO, joining the migration to the Tramshed. Which is of course good news for the owner, Cardiff council (Labour); and the lessee, the Count of Abbasock (also Labour).
And it contributes to the circular economy of which I wrote in the previous piece.
Welcome to socialist Wales 2024. The circular economy, benefitting those lucky enough to be in the ‘circle’. Where there’s no private investment, and everything is state funded, but only those close to the ruling party can benefit.
And having mentioned Cardiff council, it’s worth adding that even though she was only elected in May 2022, Thomson, who hardly knows Cardiff, is now Chair of the council’s Labour group.
I wonder who decided to give her such rapid promotion?
I suggest we watch Leonora Hope Thomson, and the Tramshed with which she’s now linked. Both might have roles in the political and public life of Wales.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Leo’s name isn’t already pencilled in on one of the closed lists for the 2026 Senedd elections.
Finally, what I found perhaps most disturbing when writing this was that I had difficulty telling the Labour party and the ‘Welsh Government’ apart. They should be two clearly separate entities.
That they’ve effectively merged is, for me, confirmation that Wales is a one-party state.
This piece is about corruption and mutual back-scratching in and around the Labour party. ‘So what’s new?’, you ask. Well, this piece introduces some new faces, and connections that may surprise you.
And with an election on July 4, I will take any and every opportunity to put the boot into Labour and its fellow-travellers.
Sharp’s been joined at the (officially non-existent) Wildlife Trusts Wales by Extinction Rebellion’s Tim Birch, a real extremist who was chased out of Derbyshire.
Then I saw that WEL is now based at ‘Tramsheds Tech Ltd, Unit D, Tramshed, Pendyris Street, Cardiff CF11 6BH’. So I made a quick delve (as you do) and decided there was a bigger and fresher story at the Tramsheds.
Fresher, because I haven’t written about it before.
Here’s the Companies House entry, and at the time of writing compulsory strike-off action was in progress because the accounts were almost two months overdue.
The Tramsheds Tech directors are Louise Margaret Harris, CEO and co-founder, Labour peer Lord Evan Mervyn Davies aka Lord Abersoch, Simon John Dixon, and Thomas Gwyn Davies (who I take to be Abersoch’s son).
Staying with the People tab, we see that control over Tramsheds is exercised by Tramsheds Holdings Ltd.
Harris is also a director of a company based at Tramsheds, Partneriaid Oleia Cyf, along with media types Huw Eurig Davies and Kevin Tame. Until January this year, control of the company was exercised by Tramsheds Tech, before passing to Davies and Tame.
When it began life, in March 2021, all 300 shares were held by Lord Davies. The situation as reported March 27 was what you see below. Though Huw Eurig Davies ceased being a director 28 February, and Mark Prosser John was never a director.
To save you reaching for the abacus . . . the other four combined hold one share more than the noble lord.
The only company he’s involved with now is BLC (Wales) Ltd, based at Tramsheds Tech, where the other director (and secretary) is Louise Margaret Harris; accounts are overdue with Companies House, and the most recently filed accounts do not paint a rosy picture.
So, we have directors of what appear to be linked companies, all based in and connected with the old Tramshed on Pendyris Street.
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‘THE SCOURGE OF LEASEHOLD’ (AS LABOUR REGULARLY SAYS)
Inevitably (cos I’m a nosy bugger), I got to wondering who owns the Tramsheds building. And so I popped over to the Land Registry website for the title document and plan for the site. You’ll see that it’s owned by Cardiff council.
Or to be absolutely clear, Cardiff council owns the freehold, but an agreement was entered into, in December 2014, to lease the building to DS Properties (Pontypridd) Ltd for 999 years.
But after the appointment of an Administrator in February 2018, this company was finally dissolved in June last year. At the end, ownership lay with DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd. So that’s our next stop.
DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd is owned by Simon Malcolm Baston, the sole director. He has a number of companies that specialise in renovating and converting old buildings, most of which have been taken over by the local council, which is always Labour controlled.
Gwenno Jones donned a hi viz jacket and a hard hat for a photo op, otherwise she’s togged up for a night out.
Tramshed Tech will be running the revamped Palace when it’s completed by Simon Baston and DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd, or whoever’s actually doing the work.
There may even be local firms getting a look in!
To recap: the Tramshed building is owned by Cardiff council. It was leased late in 2014 / early 2015 to DS Properties (Pontypridd) Ltd, which was owned by another Simon Baston company DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd.
Baston duly renovated the Tramshed, and converted much of the building into flats. These flats – 31 by my count – were then sold on 250-year leases in 2016.
The Tramshed Café and the Dance Studio were also leased for 15 years.
Then, in May 2021, the site, or part of it, seems to have been sub-leased for £2,850,000, to Tramsheds Cardiff Ltd. Scroll down on the title doc for the title numbers of the individual leases. And, at the bottom, the plan of the site.
Here’s the other title involved in the same deal. For a very narrow strip of land, probably a pathway.
We seem to have come full circle. But what have we learnt? Let’s go through it.
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FOLLOW THE MONEY
Wherever we look in this story, which takes us across south Wales, we find ourselves dealing with former commercial or industrial properties owned by Labour-run councils.
I’ve focused on the assorted ‘DS’ entities and linked outfits, but there may be other companies in the same business, with other buildings. But I just don’t have the time or the resources to check.
What I also found to be interesting was that the outstanding loans against DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd are with: Swansea council (Labour), Cardiff council (Labour), Welsh Ministers, Principality Building Society, and the ‘Welsh Government’-controlled Development Bank of Wales.
Another lender was the Julian Hodge Bank in Cardiff. For younger readers . . .
Hodge was a big man in Cardiff, very pally with Jim Callaghan Labour MP, and PM, and George Thomas, another of the City’s Labour MPs, who went on to become Lord Tonypandy. They had hopes of Hodge’s Commercial Bank of Wales becoming a recognised bank like Lloyds or Barclays, but the regulators knocked it back.
L to R: Julian Hodge with Jim Callaghan; The Rhuddlan penny, that was used as the bank’s logo; George Thomas with Julian Hodge. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
Now I’m not saying that this building society is tied to the Labour party. But I will point out that when the ‘Welsh Government’ was toying with the idea of Banc Cambria, it was the Monmouthshire Building Society involved.
What’s beyond doubt is that behind all the DS companies is Simon Baston, and so it’s reasonable to assume that – like Vaughan Gething’s benefactor, David Neal – Baston looks favourably upon and is in turn favoured by Labour.
And as I said earlier, on January 16 Gething launched his leadership campaign in Tramshed Tech’s Newport operation. I quote the South Wales Argus: ‘He kicked off his speech by thanking Tramshed Tech for hosting him in “this fantastic space they’ve created in the heart of Newport“.
And to complete the image of comradely solidarity, the Count of Abbasock has returned to the land of his fathers. After apparently turning his back on Wales at an early age, for none of his other companies has any connection with his homeland.
So why has the Tramshed drawn him back? And will his reawakened interest end with the Tramshed, or will it expand?
We’ve seen the charges against Tramshed Tech but I’m certain there’s other money coming in that might not even be shown in the accounts. (When they’re filed.) For example, I unearthed this article on UKTN about money coming from the British Business Bank.
What an odd amount. What currency was the donation made in, euros, dollars, or even roubles? Do the rules say owt about donations from beyond this Scepter’d Isle?
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FINAL THOUGHTS
As I’ve suggested, The Tramshed gets a lot of positive coverage in our uncritical media; bright young things being innovative and ground-breaking, etc., etc.
And yet, maybe that’s just froth, for the real business and the real money may be in the leases for the 31 flats, and the café, and of course the 1,ooo capacity music venue.
Welcome to socialist Wales 2024. The circular economy, benefitting those lucky enough to be in the ‘circle’. Where there’s no private investment, and everything is state funded, but only those close to the ruling party can benefit. So that Tramsheds can play ‘diversity’ games, and provide a base for outfits like Wales Environmental Link, favoured by the regime because it works to destroy Welsh farming.
And as we’ve seen in this Tramshed saga, Labour, the party that has promised so often to do away with leasehold, will actually encourage and extend the use of leasehold – when Labour insiders benefit.
Devolution has been a disaster. And it couldn’t be much better under a different party. To stamp your little feet and yell that Wales should be a full-blown Marxist state suggests to the adults in the room that it might be past your bed-time.
And yet, in the election on July 4, Labour will win more Welsh seats than any other party. A painful reminder that I belong to a nation with too many fuckwits.
As I’ve said before, 2016 was a watershed year in Western politics. Brexit coupled with Donald Trump’s victory told leftists they’d lost large sections of the (white) working class.
This resulted in a desperate search for a replacement ‘proletariat’. Groups and issues that had been around for a while were cleaned up, eagerly adopted, and zealously promoted. Which explains many things.
Among them, the rise of climate hysteria, a career criminal named George Floyd achieving something close to sainthood, and otherwise intelligent people pretending to believe that men can have babies.
It also explains why Wales is rapidly falling apart, as the intellectually debauched denizens of Corruption Bay turn their backs on the real world, preferring to serve the Globalist’s Woke-Green-Left agenda.
A clumsy term applied to all who aren’t white. Pretending that every non-Caucasian shares similar problems in mental health or anything else is absurd. The UK government agrees, having dropped the term a couple of years back.
They’re based on the High Street, sharing with the trade union Unite and Swansea council’s Housing Options, next door to Not Only Sofas Clearance Outlet.
So who’s who at BMHS?
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ALFRED THE GREAT
The driving force is Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya. His wife Nancy Buka is the secretary. I’m told she has a hairdressing establishment nearby, specialising in beads, braids, and extensions.
The couple achieved fame, of a sort, when they met Simon Cowell and David Walliams. Though the remark about, “doctors spreading conspiracy theories“, has not aged well. (Unless you swing it 180 degrees, perhaps.)
His Linkedin page tells us he got a Master’s in Accounting and Finance from Swansea University. He’s also worked for the ‘Welsh Government’ and a WG-funded outfit called Inspire Training.
All of which suggests that Alfred Oyekoya is well thought of in Corruption Bay.
And when he finds time he also works for the MoD in Bristol. Which either means a long commute from his Swansea home, or else he works from home.
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THE REST OF THE GANG
As I’ve said, Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya is an accountant. We find two other bean-counters among the directors; Adewale Dare and Monday Noutouglo. Dare lives in Nigeria, Noutouglo lives in Canada.
Why does a mental health outfit in Swansea have an accountant in Canada, and another in Nigeria? Or, to rephrase it, what possible use can they be to people suffering mental health issues in Wales?
What also struck me was that these two joined BMHS on the same day, 12.01.2023.
While Dr Oluyinka Emmanuel Olutunde might be a medical doctor, and allowed to practise in the UK. But if this is him, then he’s certainly not registered as a GP.
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To confuse matters further, I found a Linkedin profile for an Oluyinka Olutunde, a paediatrician, who seems never to have worked outside Africa. But then, I also found this. Is it the same picture?
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THERE’S MONEY IN BOOKS
‘New Audiences‘ is a funding scheme launched a couple years ago by the Books Council of Wales.
Below you see how the grant to BMHS was listed in the projects for 2022/23. Together with a couple of grants from 2023/24 to give you a flavour of how the scheme is going.
Does being in a room with a lesbian make someone ‘lesbian-adjacent’?
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Which means that Alfred Oyekoya joined the Books Council in October 2021. Less than a year later we find his own brainchild BMHS trousering a £39,000 grant.
But I can’t see what books or food have to do with BAME mental health; though no doubt a good book and a full belly help people feel better.
But you could make a case for sex, alcohol and a nice holiday. So if I’m feeling a bit down can I apply for a week in Tenby with a bodice-bursting slapper and a crate of Malbec?
What passes for the BMHS accounts (‘unaudited statutory accounts’) gives a turnover of £183,000 for y/e 31.03.2023, but ‘turnover’ refers to un-itemised grants and donations. ‘Administrative expenses’ totalled £164,000.
And while there was just one employee the previous year, this had risen to four in the latest accounts. What do these ’employees’ do?
BAME Mental Health Support is a misnomer in every sense. All involved are Nigerian. And it might have little to do with mental health.
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WARPED PRIORITIES
But this happens when the Woke lead the none-too-bright.
We’ve reached a stage where two Haitians in Tonypandy could launch The Haitian Anti-defamation League, demand ‘Welsh Government’ funding, and then get rat-arsed every night in The Gartered Gombeen, before rounding the evening off with sweet and sour bat (with fried rice) from the Star of Wuhan.
To ask them to account for how they spent the grant money would amount to racism. And you will be reported to – The Haitian Anti-defamation League.
Getting serious again (unless of course there are two Haitians in Tonypandy thinking along those lines) . . .
What we see at the Books Council of Wales is an organisation having to spend a bigger portion of reduced funding on Woke twaddle, of interest only to narcissist ‘artists’ and a few equally unhinged admirers.
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And everywhere we look in Wales we see the same thing: services being cut, and what is specific to Wales and its people treated with less respect than is given to assorted grifters, especially those shrieking about climate, race, or gender.
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GRIFTING AT THE GRAND
What I’m writing about is an imagined victimhood that can be a nice little earner for those who’ve figured out how to manipulate politicos and others into funding them.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Nkechi Allen Dawson works for Coleg Gwent, as a Diversity, Inclusion and Well-being manager.
How did we manage before such jobs were invented?
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ACC’s 2023 ‘accounts’ show £258,665 in readies, and 7 employees (3 in 2022), but no indication of where the money came from. And the website is no help – it’s ‘being updated’.
Incidentally, the African Community Centre has 7 directors / trustees. We’ve met the two from the BVI, then there’s a Kenyan, but the other four are Nigerian.
Also appointed a director of the ACC on the same day as Nkechi Allen Dawson was another woman from tax haven BVI (Pop: 31,000), Charlotte Ajomale Evans,
Yeah, that’s the way to ‘break down barriers’ – segregated swimming. Didn’t Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and a host of others fight against that sort of thing?
But then, everywhere you look in the world of DEI you encounter self-serving hypocrisy and doublespeak.
Here’s where BSA’s funding came from in year ending 31.08.2022. (RNLI = Royal National Lifeboat Institution. LMCT = London Marathon Charitable Trust.)
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RNLI, eh? Do drowning black people have to be rescued differently to drowning white people?
Funds received for consultancy services, including research and development, and community engagement.
No surprise there, because so many of the Wokie scam outfits I’ve looked at over the years have minted it from ‘consultancy’ fees.
Just think of Stonewall, which virtually blackmailed public bodies into paying to be lectured (and misinformed) in order to be a ‘Diversity Champion’.
We’ve largely freed ourselves from that particular nightmare, but there are plenty more lurking out there.
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“GROWING CONCERNS” AND “UNCONSCIOUS BIAS”
And now a report from Arise News, a Nigerian site I’ve never quoted before, and probably never will again. I do so this time because it’s about Alfred Oyekoya. It begins:
Amidst growing concerns surrounding fair treatment for ethnic minorities in the Welsh workforce, Alfred Oyekoya MBE . . . has advocated for the implementation of labour laws to tackle discrimination and unconscious bias faced by Nigerians and other ethnic minorities in Wales.
That opening paragraph gives the clear impression that racism or discrimination against “ethnic minorities” is rampant in Wales.
Or, rather, that’s the impression given to Arise News by a man who studied at a Welsh university, who’s worked for the ‘Welsh Government’, who’s treasurer of the Books Council of Wales, whose company has received tens of thousands of pounds in public funding and, on a recommendation from within Wales, got an MBE!
A man who’s been treated better since he arrived in Wales than most Welsh people ever will be – repays us with accusations of racism.
Let’s look at another worrying element of the paragraph I quoted – “unconscious bias“. It’s mentioned twice.
Legislation can tackle overt discrimination, the kind of thing perhaps exemplified with the old lodging-house sign. We’ve had such laws for 50 or 60 years.
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But Oyekoya’s “unconscious bias” takes us beyond overt discrimination. I think it even takes us beyond ‘thought crimes’, to somewhere rather scary.
For I think we’ve arrived in a place where you can be accused of prejudices you weren’t aware of, and of which you are innocent – because someone claims to know you better than you know yourself!
If “unconscious bias” can only be observed or detected by others then this will encourage false testimony from those with an axe to grind, and those who can benefit from such accusations.
And of course, an accused person will have no way to prove their innocence. If that’s not Kafkaesque, then I don’t know what is.
Just think of The Trial, which begins: “Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.”
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FINAL THOUGHTS
Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya MBE needs to explain the interview he gave to (or the piece he submitted to) Arise News. From what I can see, Nigerians in Wales are doing very well. As are members of the BVI diaspora.
And I’d like to hear his explanation for, “Labour laws to tackle discrimination and unconscious bias faced by Nigerians and other ethnic minorities in Wales“.
Is Alfred Oyekoya dreaming of what we see in the States, where white people are barred from applying for certain federal government and other jobs, some colleges, and preferential treatment is given to minority groups?
So don’t be surprised if certain lobbies and individuals start demanding ‘affirmative action’ legislation to combat a problem that doesn’t exist. Legislation that they will help write, and from which they will benefit.
Let us be vigilant against any movement in that direction. And let us also ensure that the Corruption Bay Clown Show isn’t persuaded to add “unconscious bias” to the list of Wokie ‘crimes’ in another desperate attempt to appear ‘progressive’.
We don’t want some poor bugger dragged off by the Unconscious Bias Squad.
For a second week running, I’m focusing on Bute Energy. This time, looking at its links with the Labour party, and how, through that and by other means, Bute encourages corruption and spreads discord.
This will also serve to bring those who haven’t been following the Bute saga up to date.
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THE FLOODGATES OPEN!
I first became aware of Bute’s links to Labour when I was told that someone was visiting people close to a planned wind farm. This was (the now abandoned) Moelfre site inland of Colwyn Bay, a real outlier from Bute’s other projects.
This Bute representative was David James Taylor, Labour insider who’d been Spad to a number of high-profile figures; UK government minister Peter Hain and Wales first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones.
In 2016 Taylor stood to become the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner. After losing maybe he considered his career options. Or perhaps he was approached, for Labour was already helping wind farm developers.
We saw this when Anna McMorrin lobbied Powys councillors on behalf of Hendy wind farm in April 2017, just a month before she was elected Labour MP for Cardiff North.
The timing is intriguing, because Taylor’s companies were formed a week before his friend and colleague, Lesley Griffiths, set the precedent of over-ruling a planning inspector to give Hendy windfarm planning consent. She did so using the relatively new Developments of National Significance (DNS) legislation.
DNS made it clear that Wales was free range for wind turbines; free of interference from locals, their council representatives, or even planning inspectors.
Money magically appeared in Moblake Ltd, which Taylor then paid to himself in ‘loans’ totalling over £600,000 that did not need to be repaid.
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There was an attempt to liquidate this company a couple of years ago, but the liquidator was removed last August. Since when there’s been no further news.
Taylor was useful to Bute because of his closeness to Lesley Griffiths, and his insider knowledge of the Labour party machine.
Which is why it’s suggested that Taylor’s personal payment came in shares and other ways; and that most if not all of the £600,000+ was really a donation from Bute to the Labour party.
Now I took this to mean the Texas energy firm, but my contact insists it’s the other one. He’s probably right. But in my defence:
Vistra Company Secretaries Ltd of Bristol (which you’ll read about in a minute) was, until April 2019, Jordan Company Secretaries Ltd. The Vistra name was adopted because it was taken over and joined many companies under the Vistra banner.
Soon after landing in Wales, and perhaps in an attempt to establish Welsh credentials, Bute set up a Welsh Advisory Board. You can see the members in the image below.
THE NEATH PORT TALBOT-BRUSSELS-COPENHAGEN CONNECTION
Derek Vaughan was leader of Neath Port Talbot (NPT) council and would certainly know Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, the Port Talbot seat.
Vaughan was an MEP from 2009 to 2019, preceded by the late Glenys Kinnock. The wife of former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and mother to Stephen.
Derek Vaughan’s political background and contacts explain him being chosen as the chairman of Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board. He was a ‘good fit’.
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THE ACADEMIC BUSINESSWOMAN
I can’t tell you much about Dr Debra Williams other than the fact that she was managing director of Confused.com. Now she’s taken a gig at Lampeter, which some might view as a step backwards.
I suppose ‘Top things to do in Lampeter’ is part of the Creative Writing course. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
That said, since Jane Davidson landed there after ‘leaving’ Corruption Bay, Lampeter has tried to re-invent itself as a centre for alternative living. And why not, there are enough ‘alternatives’ in the shacks, tepees, and OPDs thereabouts.
Even so, I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing about Dr Williams, unless she was viewed by Bute as their entry to what passes for the Welsh business community.
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GALILEO AND THE FAVOURED SON
A number of sources have told me that Bute has assiduously courted the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society (RWAS). Which makes sense, for the RWAS gives access to many of the landowners on whose property Bute would like to erect turbines and pylons.
Put it all together and it made him very attractive to Bute.
I have been told that John Davies was instrumental in seeing Aled Rhys Jones appointed CEO of the RWAS. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with a man of John Davies’s standing promoting a protégé. But there may be more to it.
As you might have read in the link, Aled comes from, “the family’s hill farm near Cwrt-y-Cadno in North Carmarthenshire“. To be exact, Tyllwyd, which I’m told the family still owns, but rents out.
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The thing about this area is that it’s being targeted by other wind farm companies in addition to Bute. As I wrote last November, in ‘A Change Of Tack?‘
Curiously, when based in Bristol – at the Vistra address – Galileo was known as GGE Machynlleth Ltd. Now it’s using a Cardiff office and the name has changed to Galileo Empower Wales Ltd.
From what is now Galileo Empower Wales Ltd documents filed with Companies House when it was knowns as GCE Machynlleth Ltd.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
A quick shufty at the directors will tell you how Welsh it really is.
Anyway, I hear that Aled Rhys Jones, CEO of the RWAS, stands to gain financially from the Bryn Cadwgan wind farm. A map I’ve been sent shows the outline of the wind farm in red, with the Tyllwyd land edged in green.
You’ll see four turbines planned on Tyllwyd land. With access to the others perhaps over Tyllwyd land. All perfectly legal, but it don’t look good.
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The forested land is owned by Natural Resources Wales, which will mean mature trees felled to accommodate wind turbines, access roads, cable trenches, etc.
That’s protecting the environment, that is.
Correction: Just received some clarification: ‘I am informed: There are two machines on Tilhill managed land, but nearly all the others are on ——— — ——– (Ilchester Estate) plantation, with a few on Tyllwyd and other individual land owners.’
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THE MAN FROM GOD KNOWS WHERE
The fourth member of the quartet is John Uden, whose only qualification is being the partner of Senedd Member, Jenny Rathbone, who sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.
And so to understand why Bute recruited Uden we need to focus on Rathbone.
Rathbone was born in Liverpool and is a member of the Rathbone dynasty, once very influential in that city. The influence continues through Rathbones Wealth & Investment Management.
Jenny Rathbone and other family members are looked after from the investments made. This presumably accounts for the shares in her Register of interest.
An earlier declaration of Rathbone’s says that Uden was getting payment from Bute, but that’s absent from the latest Register. So is he working for free, or is payment being made in some other way?
I shall conclude this section by dazzling you with yet another example of propinquity.
A fascinating connection revealed itself shortly after I put out the previous piece. Copenhagen Offshore Partners A/S has an office at 10 George Street, Edinburgh. In the same building we find Rathbone Investment Management (£60bn assets).
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It’s probably just another of the coincidences that plague the Bute saga.
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SLICING THE PENSION POT TURKEY
As an example of how Wales is ripped off by the pushers and pimps of the ‘renewable energy’ industry, the Wales Pension Partnership investment takes some beating.
That is, Capital Dynamics of London, Birmingham and various cities around the world. Top man is Thomas Kubr, who can be found at the Zug office, south of Zurich.
The registration with Companies House tells that Capital Dynamics has 49 outstanding charges, and is heavily indebted to if not controlled by State Street.
After all is said and done, do we really know who owns the wind farms in Wales? For as I suggested in last week’s piece, Bute Energy, run by Oliver James Millican, is an offshoot of the property and investment company Parabola, run by his father, Peter John Millican.
Also, in last week’s piece (and elsewhere in recent years) I mentioned Njord Energy Ltd and Steven John Radford, the man behind Hendy wind farm, where we earlier met lobbyist – now Labour MP – Anna McMorrin.
Another of Radford’s projects, not far away, was Bryn Blaen. The ownership history is instructive. It starts with Radford leaving Bryn Blaen Wind Farm Ltd in February 2020.
Bryn Blaen is now said to be owned by Elm Wind Holdings Ltd. Which leads back to Elm Trading Ltd, where the latest accounts say:
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But does this apparently leaderless outfit have any connection with a foreign entity of the same name registered on the Isle of Man?
The point I’m making is that when it comes time to dismantle, recycle, or bury, the clapped-out wind turbines on Bryn Siencyn, and restore the site to its earlier condition, the ‘Welsh Government’, the local council, and Natural Resources Wales, will be met with, ‘Nothing to do with us, squire, we sold it to a company on an island somewhere‘.
And we’ll have to pay for dozens of Bryn Siencyns.
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CONCLUSION
But the immediate danger remains the corruption engendered by wind farm ‘developers’.
Through the influence they wield inside ‘Welsh’ Labour, where corruption is endemic. As we’ve been so recently reminded by the new first minister. Now the poison has spread to Plaid Cymru, exposed to the world when Carmen Smith, Bute lobbyist, was made a peer.
Beyond politics these ‘developers’ cause resentment within the farming industry by making some farmers offers they can’t refuse – a position into which many have been manoeuvred by the ‘Welsh Government’s war on livestock farming.
And finally, there’s worry and division inflicted upon communities across Wales.
∼
It really pisses me off to see the country I love reduced to third world level; where a few chiefs can be bribed so the rest of us can be exploited, our country wrecked.
We’re in this mess because leftists believe they’re fighting the evils of capitalism by buying into the climate scam dreamed up to further the ambitions of the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations on Earth.
I’m returning to the ‘Bute’ stable of companies, a subject I’ve ignored for a while. More especially, some aspects of Bute’s operations that may have been overlooked.
1/ How did investment company and property developers the Parabola group, from which Bute emerged, learn about the opportunities offered by wind turbines in Wales?
I’m starting with some background, which I think sets the scene. So please indulge me there before we move on later to the ‘meat’ of the piece.
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THE TRAILBLAZER GETTING A LITTLE HELP FROM THE COMRADES
Before the boys from Parabola ever heard of Nant Mithil, Waun Hesgog, or Blaencothi, other nobly-intentioned businessmen, alarmed by the impending climate crisis, were trying their damnedest to cover central Wales in wind turbines.
I’m going to focus on one of those wind farms; Hendy, to the east of Llandrindod.
Planning permission was refused by Powys County Council in April 2017, and that decision was upheld by a planning inspector a year later. But then, Lesley Griffiths, Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ intervened, to ignore the inspector’s decision and give Hendy the green light.
From now on ‘Welsh Ministers’ had authority to rule on electricity generation projects with a maximum installed capacity of 10MW to 50MW. Below that, responsibility lies with local authorities; and above, it’s the UK government.
Which means that developers pitch their projects in the 10 – 50MW ‘sweet spot’.
Radford was very close to, if not fronting for, the U+I group. Though it seemed he also had his own piggy-bank in Njord Energy Ltd.
Lobbying Powys councillors on behalf of the Hendy wind farm was Anna McMorrin. She was seen at a meeting on 27 April 2017, desperately trying to hand a note to councillors considering the project.
She was working for Invicta Public Affairs, which has its headquarters in Newcastle, but also a presence in Edinburgh, and Glasgow.
She had been working as a Spad in Corruption Bay, for which she was rewarded by being selected as the Labour candidate for Cardiff North. In June 2017 she became the MP.
Maybe this is the first instance of someone working simultaneously for the Labour party and wind energy developers. There have been many more since Anna McMorrin.
Once they got to know each other, I’m sure Radford made the boys from Parabola understand that to get anything done in Wales you must have people working for you inside the Labour party.
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THEY MEET, AND THE BOYS FROM PARABOLA BECOME BUTE
In September 2018 Windward Generation Ltd was launched; the name changed to Bute Energy the following month, and finally became RSCO 3750 Ltd in March 2020.
The founding directors were Oliver James Millican and Lawson Douglas Steele, who were joined a week later by Radford. The man from Hendy left in December 2019 and was replaced by Stuart Allan George, who’d left Parabola with Millican and Steele.
But I want to go back a little further, and consider the ‘Windward’ name.
Just before Christmas 2014 Windward Enterprises Ltd was launched. This company’s stated business was ‘Financial management’. The sole director was Oliver James Millican, using secretarial services in Edinburgh, but a Newcastle office address for himself. (Newcastle being where Parabola started out.)
This was a long time before any interest was expressed in wind turbines.
In November 2016 the address switched to Broadgate Tower in London, where we now find Parabola; and the company name changed in August 2018 to WELN1 Ltd.
We encounter the ‘Windward’ name a number of times early on in this saga, but what if it has nothing to do with wind power, and instead refers to the Windward Islands in the Caribbean?
And there seems to have been a fourth departure. For on 31 May 2018, in addition to Windward LS Ltd (Lawson Steele), and Windward SG Ltd (Stuart George), a company called Windward BW Ltd was launched.
The ‘BW’ is Barry Woods. I can’t tell you much about him, except that he’s Irish, and he’d also worked for Parabola. In fact, he was a designated partner, along with Parabola Real Estate Investment Management LLP, in Parabola Partners LLP.
Just like Millican, Steele and George, Woods quit Parabola in November 2017.
He then seems to have parted company with the other three on 24 September 2019. The last trace of Woods sees him running Woods Investment Management Ltd in Edinburgh, which folded after a couple of years, in March 2021.
So we have four men, all in their thirties, and all working for a major property and investment group (one of them the boss’s son); but late in 2017 they apparently hear the planet calling, sever their ties with Parabola, and go off to erect wind turbines in Wales.
Do you buy that?
Something else that gives off a bit of a whiff is that if the four of them had started up on their own, I would have expected to see them as partners. But Millican Junior in control suggests a continuing link with his father’s business empire.
Using the Parabola address at the Broadgate Tower, 20 Primrose Street, London EC2A 2EW is also a bit iffy.
It’s far more likely that, in 2017, the four turbineers started setting up companies in Wales, ultimately owned and controlled by Parabola, to capitalise on the ‘How many turbines would you like, duckie?’ DNS system.
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MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
Funding is a vital consideration because more than 20 wind farms, an unknown number of solar arrays, at least 6 Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), and mile after mile of pylons, requiring connectors and other whatsits, do not come cheap.
Admittedly, nothing has yet been built, but even so, Bute employs dozens of people, rents or leases office space, and promotes itself relentlessly by sponsoring everything from the Ystradgynlais Wet T-shirt Olympics to the Llanfair Caereinion Refuge for Distressed Ferrets.
So where’s the money coming from to fund this unrivalled extravaganza of bird dicing?
We can (perhaps surprisingly) rule out the Development Bank of Wales, a soft touch that throws moolah at magic bean salesmen and landfill-owning friends of politicians.
The WPP involvement is a bit of nonsense that it’s hoped will give the impression Wales is benefitting from wind power. Though on a more practical and political level I suppose it gives Bute even more leverage in Corruption Bay.
I’m going to focus on Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and see where that takes us.
Now the first thing to make clear is that CIP is not a bank, it does not provide funding. The clue appears to be in ‘Partners’, for it seems investors looking for green projects go to CIP, which then finds them the right fit.
Or it could be t’other way around. Either way, we can be sure CIP takes its cut.
The latest accounts for CI IV Dragon Holdco (y/e 31.12.2022) give a list of ‘Subsidiary undertakings’ (page 20) in which the company holds a ‘golden share’. These are Bute companies, including Green Generation Energy Networks Cymru Ltd, which wants to build a network of pylons.
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And as you can see below, since October last year all 79,000,000 shares in the holding company are in the possession of Copenhagen Infrastructure V SCSp.
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Which can be found at 16 Rue Eugene Ruppert, L2453, Luxembourg, the EU’s internal tax haven.
Vistra is big itself in electricity production and supply, but it also ‘partners with suppliers’, which would presumably include Bute.
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But why is Bute dealing with Copenhagen Investment Partners which is dealing with a US company working out of an office in Luxembourg? Especially when Vistra has offices in the UK.
The name Vistra was vaguely familiar, but not in connection with Bute. It was linked more with the Bristol address you see above, and Galileo, which wants a wind farm at Bryn Cadwgan, to the east of Lampeter.
Galileo is based in Zurich, Switzerland. It began life locally at Vistra’s Bristol office before moving to Edinburgh. But there’s also Galileo Empower Wales Ltd which has a presence on Cathedral Road in Cardiff.
The Bute companies are fronting for Vistra of Texas through Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The ‘golden share’ in so many Bute companies means that those projects are effectively owned by Vistra.
With an obvious connection via Oliver Millican to his father’s Parabola group. Which we must assume is also getting a cut.
The sequence would appear to be: Parabola spawns Bute, Bute goes to CIP, CIP finds Vistra, and Vistra either puts in its own money, or it finds funding from . . .
UPDATE 2: 30.04.2024: Another source reminded me there are many Njord companies. Often linked to CIP. A little digging brought up yet another, and an intriguing connection.
Her Partner, John Uden, was recruited (for no obvious reason) to sit on Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board.
I think we’re at the stage now where so many Labour people (some I’ve never mentioned) are benefitting financially from Bute / CIP that an independent inquiry is needed.
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CONCLUSION
The situation is that through Developments of National Significance, and now the Infrastructure Bill, Wales is being desecrated and exploited by foreign corporations.
The ferrets of Llanfair Caereinion notwithstanding, there are no real benefits for us; nothing in terms of jobs, or anything else.
The real beneficiary is England, where communities can and do object to wind farms. Which is why, as reliable sources of electricity generation are phased out on the orders of Globalist ‘environmentalists’, electricity generated in Wales must go to England, and this explains the need for so many pylons.
The wind farms, solar arrays and pylons in Wales (and Scotland), are also needed to help the UK / England meet its Net Zero commitments. Which I suppose raises the possibility of political pressure being applied from London.
Joking aside, and looming over all other considerations, my biggest worry is that even though we can now identify Bute, and Parabola, and CIP, and Vistra, we still can’t be sure where the money for these projects begins its journey.
Which provides two major headaches.
If the Bute funding needs to be ‘filtered’ so many times (with everybody taking a slice) then it raises suspicions that the original funder may not be entirely acceptable.
And if we don’t know who ultimately owns the installations, then how do we get these sites restored when they come to the end of their working lives?
Instead of being suckered by those fronting these projects those pretending to run this country need to establish who is ultimately funding each and every project operating in Wales or proposed for Wales.
We also need to look into the relationship between Bute Energy / Parabola / CIP / Vistra and the ‘Welsh Government’. In particular, how it’s grown to the point where Bute has a position close to being a state-sponsored monopoly.
No, this is not a homage to the founder of Rock ‘n’ Roll, but I’ve used the title of his timeless classic because it kinda fits. But my use of it is not an endorsement of the original (and thankfully expunged) lyrics.
Truth is, I used the song because Tutti Frutti can of course refer to ice cream. It’s Italian for ‘all fruits’.
To explain . . . About a month or so back someone drew my attention to an article in the Daily Post about an ice cream company on Ynys Môn coming back from the dead.
This report can be read as written, though my source hints there’s more to it than meets the eye. So I delved, and it took me on quite a journey.
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MAYDAY! MAYDAY! RED BOAT SINKING!
The company you’re going to read about is The Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd. Set up 9 December 2012. The two shareholders / directors, Anthony Green and Lynda Green. Presumably husband and wife.
Seeing as it’s always filed as dormant it might be a ‘spoiler’, set up to grab the ‘Red Boat’ name. Which would account for the brackets in the other company’s name.
The Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd (hereinafter referred to as RBICP) was put into administration on January 30. After which things moved very quickly.
And for a small company there are interesting players involved, some as far away as San Francisco; and considerable governmental involvement.
I just hope I can make sense of it all. Anyway, sit back and enjoy!
There was a Maes Hyfryd Cyf, of Mold, formerly known as Cyfrifwyr Hill & Roberts Accountants Ltd (until 31.10.2019). The directors were Hilary Baines, Ffion Eleri Hampson, and Richard Andrew Roberts.
But let’s not overlook HB Accountants, found behind another Mold doorway. This one 8A Chester Street, next-door to and above the constituency office of Bob Roberts MP.
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Heading into the sunset, I also found a Hill & Roberts office in Bala. At 76 High Street, behind the war memorial.
The entities not using ‘Ltd’ or ‘Cyf’, are almost certainly partnerships. Perfectly legal, but confusing when we see the same people pop up in different combinations and under slightly different labels.
But what might cause me some concern would be that the companies registered with Companies House (apart from Hill and Roberts Ltd) seem to be very short-lived, and file hardly anything.
Anyway, let’s zip along the A55 back to Beaumaris.
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REARRANGING THE DECK CHAIRS?
As the article I linked to explains, to get around the financial difficulties afflicting RBICP, a new company was formed in January this year. This was The Artisan Gelato Group Ltd (TAGG). When formed, with a single penny share, the sole director was named as Kelly Donald Pattullo.
TAGG then bought RBICP. To quote the Daily Post article . . .
KBL Advisory approached in January. After discussions it was decided that a pre-pack administration was the best way forward . . . A formal offer was received by (sic) Artisan Gelato Group Ltd.
This was recommended for acceptance by JPS Chartered Surveyors. It was sold to them for £42,000. Employees were transferred over to the new business . . .
So, in February 2024, RBICP went into receivership owing trade creditors money; £213,000 to the ‘Welsh Government’s Development Bank of Wales, and over a hundred thousand to solicitors, administrators, and other professionals.
RBICP’s two outstanding debts with the Development Bank of Wales seem to have transferred to TAGG.
So who is Kelly Donald Pattullo? Well, that’s a good question. And while I may not have the full answer, I can at least give you some more information.
It seems Kelly Frances Donald-Pattullo and Samuel Malcolm Pattullo now own the premises used by Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd at 34 Castle Street in Beaumaris. They bought it at the end of May 2022. The stated price being £525,000.
From the Administrator’s report / proposals for Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
A year later the Pattullos formed 34Castle Ltd, a company involved in the ‘Manufacture of ice cream’. So what’s the relationship between the Pattullos and the Greens?
There has to be one. And it must go back to at least the May 2022 purchase of 34 Castle Street. Almost two years before Kelly Pattullo formed TAGG and took over Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd.
Yet to read the documents filed with Companies House one might think that TAGG came out of the blue.
(Seeing as we’re talking of Italian ice cream, and in case you’re thinking the ‘Pattullo’ name is Italian, it is in fact Scottish. I believe the first element is Pictish, the second Gaelic.)
In the documents filed with Companies House, and specifically the Administrator’s report, we read that Covid is claimed to have played a big part in the RBICP downfall. But the company was already in trouble before the Covid virus was released from a Chinese laboratory.
This is shown in the accounts up to 31 March 2020. These figures cover the summer of 2019 when people were sauntering around Beaumaris enjoying their ice creams.
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The accounts suggest that the little Red Boat was heading up Shit Creek at a rate of knots. Just look under ‘Creditors’ (page 2). That figure, £524,678, has gone up over half a million quid in one year!
And while much of it will be accounted for by the DBW loans most, I suspect, refers to the LDF-White Oak hire purchase loans. For it ties in with the rise in ‘Tangible fixed assets’ (page 6) from £246,829 in 2019 to £648,006 in 2020.
The unaudited financial statement submitted by Cyfrifwyr Hill & Roberts of 8a Chester Street, Mold, does not identify the tangible fixed assets, nor does it tell us on what the borrowed money was spent.
As you’ve read, the Administrator’s report of February 2024 says: ‘In May 2022, the Company sold one of its former business premises to support the cash position.’
This has to refer to 34 Castle Street, sold to the Pattullos for £525,000. This influx of cash should then show in the accounts up to 31 March 2023. But I can’t see it.
Where did it go?
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THE RESCUE SHIPS TAKE ON SURVIVORS!
Once it started pulling away from the doomed craft the good ship Artisan Gelato saw many changes on board in a short space of time.
To begin with, two weeks after launch, Kelly Pattullo was joined at TAGG by Anthony Green, who’d presumably swum from the Red Boat. Then we learnt that Green had taken control of the new company at the start of February.
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But of more interest, maybe, was the piping aboard of Richard Elmitt. (Am I overdoing the nautical references? “Yes, Jac”.)
But of more interest to us is that he joined BIC Innovation Ltd, a management consultancy. This outfit is based in Gaerwen, on Ynys Môn. (Though the Linkedin page says Bridgend.) ‘Significant influence’ is exercised by Huw Geraint Watkins.
The thought of those socialist buffoons in Corruption Bay directing any ‘strategy’ for our SMEs is quite terrifying. Especially as the Industry Wales website doesn’t seem to have been updated for years.
You may recall Nicola Kneale, a director of RBICP from January 2016 to January 2018, when she worked for Denbighshire County Council. This was likely connected with RBICP leasing the Roundhouse on Prestatyn prom from the council.
I’m fairly sure there’s a connection between Local Partnerships, owned by the Treasury, LGA, ‘Welsh Government’; Industry Wales, owned by ‘Welsh Government’; and BIC Innovation on Ynys Môn, where the Treasury is a major shareholder.
On the surface, all would now appear to be hunky-dory. Everything and everyone has been salvaged, spruced up, and the re-named Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd is ready to sail serenely on as The Artisan Gelato Group Ltd.
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CONCLUSION
Fundamentally, I believe we are dealing with a kind of deception; not necessarily illegal, but still naughty.
Clearly, the Greens of Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd and Kelly Pattullo of The Artisan Gelato Group Ltd knew each other from at least May 2022, when she and Samuel Pattullo are said to have bought the ice cream shop at 34 Castle Street, Beaumaris.
Next, I believe it was decided to do away with RBICP. A speedy disposal via a pre-pack administration deal was decided upon, and at the start of 2024 the company was ‘put up for sale’.
Along came TAGG, with sole director Kelly Pattullo, snapping up RBICP for a bargain-basement price of £42,000. Soon after, Anthony Green of RBICP became a director, and now he controls the new company.
But with Tony Green in charge of The Artisan Gelato Group Ltd since 1 February he effectively sold Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd to himself.
That was always the intention. The ‘sale’ was a charade.
Another worry concerns 34 Castle Street. Was it really sold in May 2022, or was it simply a ploy by a company in financial difficulties to remove a valuable asset from the reach of creditors?
Which would make sense if the property wasn’t really sold, but merely transferred under some clever arrangement to disguise ownership. These things are done.
So many questions. If you know any of the answers, stick ’em in a bottle and chuck it in the sea. I’ll get it eventually.
Though this is not quite the piece I originally promised. Perhaps I’ll return to the sweat lodges and other joys in the ‘Bhutan of Wales’ (“ample parking space“) at some later date.
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ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN NEWTS
What you have to understand about modern environmentalism, certainly in Wales, is that it’s no longer fleece-jacketed innocents protecting red squirrels or tagging birds. It is now intensely political. And financially lucrative.
Lucrative, as long as it promotes a certain interpretation of the world.
Which means, in practice, that environmentalists work for BlackRock and other Globalist corporations; Bill ‘jabs and bugs’ Gates, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
And even if environmentalists don’t realise it, if they’re just useful idiots, then that don’t matter none – what matters is that they do what they do.
And as I suggested, they’re getting paid handsomely for it. Here’s one example.
Total income for the North Wales Wildlife Trust went up from £1.83m in 2019 to £6.17 in 2023, a rise of 237%. But in the same period, funding from the ‘Welsh Government’ rose from £309,480 to £3,760,000, an increase of 1,115%.
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Similar increases in the funding awarded to the other wildlife trusts, river groups, etc, correlates with the ramping up of the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.
Which meant blaming just about anybody other than Dŵr Cymru for river pollution.
But environmentalists weren’t confining themselves to persecuting cows, and matters scatological; for they were also pushing the anti-car agenda.
Which is fine with me because that’s the raison d’être of environmental groups. But if opposing M4 improvements was ‘Welsh Government’ policy, and if ‘WG’ funded various groups to support that policy, then that puts a different complexion on things.
. . . of climate change and transport specialists . . . led by Dr Lynn Sloman MBE, a transport consultant based in Wales
Despite what the ‘Welsh Government’ wanted us to believe, Dr Lynn Sloman is not ‘based in Wales’; she actually lives in London, where she sits on the Transport for London board, headed by mayor Sadiq Ulez Khan.
Dr Lynn Sloman is, predictably, an anti-car fanatic. And her connection to Wales is a holiday home in Cwm Einion, near Machynlleth. To which she presumably drives.
This impacted on just about every part of the country, and deprived communities of long-awaited and much-needed, improvements. It meant no third crossing of the Menai, no by-pass for Llanbedr, no by-pass for Llandeilo.
This was of course welcomed by both Rachel Sharp, CEO of the officially defunct Wildlife Trusts Wales; and her trusty henchman, Tim Birch, of Extinction Rebellion.
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But there is one issue on which environmentalists could and should be more vocal.
We’ll ignore the energy consumed in manufacturing wind turbines, then the damage inflicted on the environment from shipping them to Wales; widening roads, felling trees, ripping out hedgerows to get them to where they’re being erected.
Instead’ let’s just focus on the damage they cause in situ.
Wind turbines destroy peat deposits. They scar hillsides with access roads and cable trenches. Hundreds of pylons are needed to carry whatever’s generated in Wales to England. The turbine blades kill birds, bats, and all manner of insects.
There are also threats to human health from infrasound, flicker, and worrying over your home losing value due to its proximity to wind turbines.
Yet environmentalists have little to say against wind turbines. That’s because their ‘outrage’ can be switched off and on, as required, by their paymasters.
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THE ‘FOXES’ OF ENVIRONMENTALISM
We often hear: “Farming occupies around 90% of ‘our’ land“, as if it’s something undesirable. It’s very revealing, because those who say it seem genuinely horrified that so much of Wales belongs to hairy-arsed peasants.
Smith wants us to believe that carbon emissions increase global temperatures when there is no link whatsoever, and then rather gives away his own position on SFS with:
Trees, it seems, aren’t welcomed by most farmers.
This obsession with the amount of land held by farmers seems most prevalent among politicians and middle class enviro-grifters who want Welsh farmers off the land they and their corporate patrons covet.
I say that because no one has ever come up to me in a pub, a supermarket, or any other setting, grabbed me by the lapels and shouted – ‘Isn’t it bloody awful that farmers have so much land?‘
Nobody. Honestly!
Which makes the support these spivs get from Welsh socialists difficult to fathom. And the support from those socialists who claim they want independence inexplicable.
Maybe this subservience can be explained by something I read last week. Someone was trying to explain why Sinn Féin has fallen for the Globalist-Woke-Left agenda.
It is a lingering symptom of what Ruairi Ó Bradaigh once described as the intellectual inferiority complex of men who were absurdly impressed by . . . bourgeois lefties and liberals
I think that explains a lot of what we see in Wales. Particularly the insecure among us, who can’t resist a bit of flannel delivered in a ‘posh’ accent.
What Ruairi Ó Bradaigh called “the intellectual inferiority complex” always lurks in the Welsh psyche. And it seems to afflict socialists far more than it affects those of us on the political right.
Welsh leftists like to see themselves as ‘progressive’, which then leaves them wide open to the blandishments of the ‘foxes’ Malcom X refers to here.
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ANOTHER WARNING FROM IRELAND
For some time now I’ve been paying closer than usual attention to what’s happening in Ireland, where the uniparty establishment has enthusiastically signed up to the Globalist agenda. It’s been open borders, war on farmers, and recently, referendums that hoped to re-define ‘woman’ and ‘family’.
Both referendums were heavily defeated, and the preening, obnoxious, Varadkar soon resigned in the hope of salvaging his political reputation. Because he fears there’s worse to come as the people wake up and fight back. (Something the Irish have a history of doing.)
And the Irish people are waking up. And demanding a return to sanity. Especially when they look around and see who’s been allowed into their country.
For example, one result of open borders is that Ireland is now home to the Nigerian Black Axe gang, which deals in romance fraud and other online scams . . . with a little murder, drugs, and extortion thrown in.
Just think about that. A Nigerian criminal network is actually based in Ireland. How the hell was that allowed to happen!
Well, as I just mentioned, because the Irish establishment obeys the Globalist agenda; and no-questions-asked immigration is an integral part of that agenda, designed to destabilise western societies.
You can read the whole publication if you like. But the opening paragraph tells you exactly where it’s going. And how it’s justified.
Moving Together . . . a commitment in the Climate Action Plan 2023 . . . to alleviate the impacts of car-dependency
Someone wants the Irish countryside emptied, and populations concentrated in urban areas. Now why should that be?
Wales may be heading in the same direction.
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THE WAR ON CARS II
I say Wales may be headed in the same direction because the ‘pieces’ are already there, we just need to put them together to see the bigger picture.
Earlier, we looked at environmentalists, funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ or Globalist corporations and multi-billionaires, campaigning against road improvements. In league with former Sustrans rep in Wales, and until so very recently, chauffeur-driven deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters.
Waters welcomed the halt on new road projects with:
As the review points out the by-pass that was demanded to relieve congestion often ends up leading to extra traffic, which in time brings further demands for extra lanes, wider junctions and more roads
I suggest Waters and his allies stand for half an hour one summer day outside the ‘Vic’ in Llanbedr, or The Castle in Llandeilo; and ponder that the shit forming a skin on their iced tea, the shit they’re also inhaling, comes from cars and trucks in low gear inching their way through a traffic bottleneck.
And it could all be avoided with a by-pass!
Consider this, gentle reader: the man who can ignore the effects of low-gear emissions on human health – because it serves an element of the agenda – can also impose 20mph speed limits, guaranteed to increase harmful emissions – and justify doing so on health and safety grounds!
But when it can be used to serve another element of the agenda, air quality becomes a consideration. For Nicola Lund recently reminded us in ‘Message to Wales – On Yer Bike (Part 2)‘ that the Welsh Government’ is also promising air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’.
So where might that lead, if we put it all together?
Let’s look at Llanbedr, which sits on the A496 running up the coast from Barmouth. A busy road, and especially so in summer.
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With a combination of no by-pass, air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’ in place, many people will give Llanbedr a miss. Some will avoid that road altogether.
The map above shows that travellers between north and south will still have the A470, so the effects would be very localised, but highly damaging.
There’s one more consideration I want to throw into the mix.
I have consistently supported plans to raise council tax on holiday homes and restrict numbers of holiday lets*. And I will continue to back measures that might return domestic properties to local use. But . . .
Tourism means cars, camper vans, etc. So are the measures against the worst excesses of tourism doing the right thing for the wrong reason? By which I mean, are they just part of the bigger plan to restrict car journeys in Wales?
Putting it all together – and irrespective of the stated justifications – what we’ve just looked at will result in a seriously damaged rural economy, and could lead to the kind of rural clearances being talked about in Ireland and elsewhere.
Yet it all fits perfectly with the Globalist-environmentalist agenda.
Where the Globalists have been clever is in funding or promoting ideas, organisations and lobbies that push their agenda.
This includes, cyclists, vegans, renewable energy enthusiasts, advocates of CBDC, and of course, environmentalists.
We’re at a stage now where an environmental lobby is waging war on our farmers while also working with the ‘Welsh Government’ to make us view cars as something evil, to be done away with.
But what’s being targeted is not really farmers and motorists, but land and freedoms. Which is the essence of the Globalists’ power grab – promote fear and confusion in order to seize assets, restrict freedoms, and exert control.
As I said earlier, ‘environmentalists’ are no longer fleece-jacketed innocents. So see them for what they really are. Who they work for. And treat them accordingly.
Stripped of the self-serving bullshit it’s a crude attempt by the Labour party to guarantee itself permanent rule. With full support from Plaid Cymru.
I urge everyone to make a submission to SeneddReform@senedd.wales.
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EXPERT PANEL
I shall start with the appointment of the Expert Panel in February 2017. Set up to look into reforming and enlarging the (then) Assembly.
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The group reported in November 2017. Here is a link to their report. On page 29, the report recommended three electoral systems. The favoured one being the Single Transferable Vote.
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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.”
Yet this is the system now being proposed.
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COMMITTEE ON SENEDD ELECTORAL REFORM
This group was set up in January 2020, and comprised Huw Irranca-Davies MS, Dawn Bowden MS, and Dai Lloyd MS. The first two representing the Labour party, the third Plaid Cymru.
Though it also makes a reference to“diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”, without making it clear what these ‘characteristics’ might be.
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SPECIAL PURPOSE COMMITTEE ON SENEDD REFORM
Now we move on to October 2021 and a new group, with Huw Irranca-Davies MS providing continuity.
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Their report, ‘Reforming our Senedd: A stronger voice for the people of Wales’ was published on 30 May 2022. Here’s a link to that report.
The Expert Panel’s favoured system of the Single Transferable Vote, endorsed by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, was rejected by this latest group because it:
. . . was an unfamiliar system in Wales and that the method of translating votes into seats would be seen as complex and difficult to explain.
Which means that electorates around the world manage to cope with STV, but it seems Welsh voters are uniquely stupid!
The reasoning is so absurd, and insulting, that it suggests something else was going on beneath the surface. With hindsight, we know this to be true.
After considering the three options of the Open List, the Flexible List, and the Closed List, the Special Purpose Committee recommended the least representational of the three.
And when comparing the respective merits of the d’Hondt and Sainte-Laguë divisor systems the committee opted for d’Hondt, which is, again, the less representational.
Now we come to the most remarkable and worrying thing I encountered in all 92 pages. Scroll to page 38, and there you’ll see . . .
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“We would anticipate . . . some of the names . . . of candidates will appear . . . “.
There was clearly an attempt from somewhere, by someone, to promote the idea of giving only the party name, and not naming the candidates!
Which means that from the Single Transferable Vote system recommended by the Expert Panel what is now being offered is 16 huge and impersonal constituencies*, and a closed list system using the less representational d’Hondt system. Even an attempt to have anonymised lists.
This group was established in July 2023. Its role was to go through the Bill that resulted from the report of The Special Purpose Committee on Electoral Reform. Making recommendations where it felt the need.
In his Introduction, the chair, Labour’s David Rees MS, makes clear that he is unhappy with the proposed closed list system.
“We have not reached consensus on all matters . . . But, we are unanimous in our concerns about the proposed closed list electoral system . . . We believe the link between voters and the Members who represent them is paramount.
We therefore urge all political parties in the Senedd to work together to ensure the electoral system in the Bill provides greater voter choice and improved accountability for future Members to their electorates.”
The closed list system was by now drawing fire from many quarters, and from outside of Wales. One notable contribution was from former Labour Home Secretary Lord David Blunkett, in a letter to the Western Mail.
I naturally wondered what the report had to say about ballot papers.
On page 105 the ‘Member in charge’, Mick Antoniw MS, defends the recommendations of the Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform.
When asked by David Rees (page 111) why the Bill being presented to the Senedd does not state categorically that candidates’ names will appear on the ballot paper, Antoniw responds that it is being dealt with in “secondary legislation”.
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On page 129 David Rees MS makes it clear that he believes candidates’ names on ballot papers should be stipulated in the Bill itself, not left to secondary legislation.
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A search of the published Bill for ‘ballot paper’ will draw a blank.
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CONCLUSION
What may have started out as a genuine attempt to ‘improve democracy’, and by doing that make Wales a better place to live and work, has been subverted by the Labour party, willingly assisted by Plaid Cymru.
To hide the true nature and purpose of the exercise it must be dressed up in self-serving distractions such as ‘gender equality’, but with 26 out of 60 AMs being women we almost have gender equality now, without any special legislation.
Let me explain what I believe is behind this emphasis on ‘women’. For on the Senedd website, under ‘Information about the Bill’, we read: “Require all candidates on a party’s list to state either whether they are, or are not, a woman”.
I think we’re now in the realm of self-identification, and are no longer talking about biological women. I suggest this because the Welsh Government is the largest single funder to the trans activist group, Stonewall, and Labour and Plaid Senedd Members have made their positions quite clear.
You’ll recall that she sat on the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform which talked of “diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”.
And this goes some way to explaining the attempt to keep candidates’ names off the ballot paper. Because men pretending to be women will not be elected. Unless they can stand anonymously.
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I suspect that another reason for trying to keep candidates’ names off the ballot paper is to facilitate the election of lobbyists, and members of the pressure groups that now seem to direct both Labour and Plaid Cymru.
Again, these would be unlikely to get elected if voters saw their names on the ballot paper and could check on their backgrounds and associations.
Seeing as so many of these ‘campaigners’ are alien to and ignorant of our country, if elected they would simply push their agendas. No matter how damaging those were to the interests of Wales.
We already see it, with Stonewall, but also with 20mph, with the constant attacks on our farmers, and in a host of other ways; serving narrow agendas, but not Wales.
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RECOMMENDATION
As it stands, I consider the Bill to be the most dangerous and damaging piece of legislation in 25 years of devolution. A naked power grab.
For in addition to the issues already dealt with, the Bill also makes it more difficult for smaller parties and independent candidates to be elected. This is no accident.
It would have been bad enough if we’d arrived at this point through a mistake, or even incompetence, but I believe we are where we are because this was always the destination.
The Expert Panel was pure window-dressing. It’s hoped we’ll believe that what’s now being offered is merely a ‘tweaking’ of the Panel’s recommendations.
This deception has presented us with a Bill that has nothing to recommend it, and there is nothing of it worth salvaging. It is a step backwards; an affront to common sense, and a threat to democracy.
This is an unplanned ‘quickie’ that I want to get out while the humour is on me and before I lose the details. It also needs to be said before the ‘Welsh Government’s campaign goes any further.
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‘FAR RIGHT’ SUPPORT
I’m going to start by looking at a piece from the BBC Wales website a few days ago. Written by an S4C reporter it worried that the farmers’ campaign against the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) was being exploited by far right elements with hidden agendas.
The article even provided a photograph of the ogress Katie Hopkins. Whatever one may think of her (and I don’t think about her at all) I suggest she’s rather too public to have anything hidden.
But just mentioning her name is guaranteed to get the comrades hyperventilating, and finger-pointing. Though providing a picture as well may have got a few spluttering to a point where their mams would have been seriously concerned.
(Unless of course they were out. Then it might be a three-day wait for an ambulance.)
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As I say, the report was written by a journalist from state-funded S4C. And by pure coincidence, one of the two farmers quoted has a gig with the same broadcaster! The other farmer had a beef with something Price had said about the Welsh language.
The farmer with the S4C job was quoted:
A responsible government will listen. Because no government’s role is to make the life of its citizens more difficult
But this is Wales. The ‘Welsh Government’ only listens to, and is then directed by, pressure groups and other fanatics. If S4C wants to find ‘hidden agendas’ then that’s where it needs to look.
If you want proof just look at who’s on the Active Travel Board, plotting to get private cars off the roads of Wales – three cycling organisations, plus Sustrans!
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Which of those lycra-clad wankers is supposed to speak for me?
I don’t believe that ‘farmers’ fear the wrong kind of support. They’re sensible enough to spot it. What I know a number of them really fear is a black propaganda campaign being mounted against them using ‘far right’ accusations.
And that’s exactly what this story was all about. It was a contrived and distasteful attempt to discredit the farmer’s protests using the most tenuous connection with somebody the left despises.
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LE PETIT TRIANON SUR ELWY?
The next report I’m going to use came out last night. Again, on the BBC website, and it actually says ‘climate change’ in the headline. (So there’s no arguing, right!)
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There were two journalists involved. Erin Sharrocks Lister is yet another English journalist taken on by BBC Wales, with Eirian Jones presumably serving as her native guide on this assignment.
(Unnecessary doubling up, and you’re paying for it.)
On a superficial level this story was about a farming family – Alex and Sam Kenyon – that had coped, in a very nature-friendly way, with increased flooding of their land caused by climate change. But so many buttons were being pressed in this story that it soon became a dizzying whirl of digits.
For example, we read:
With advice from Natural Resources Wales and the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), Sam discovered a method to preserve the riverbanks
Can you not see the cavalry coming over the hill and splashing through the flood plain? What a sight it was!
Sam then consulted her notes from Lesley Griffiths, and we read:
Sam said she was very determined to show nature-based solutions were practical and can benefit farmed landscapes and their biodiversity, especially in the face of climate change
And on consulting the instructions he’d received from Lesley (and Gary?), Phil Carson, head of policy at NFFN, said:
We need government schemes that reward farmers to take these actions, alongside the right training, advice and support for farmers to embrace them with confidence
You know me, I got to wondering about Alex and Sam Kenyon.
I quickly found the website for Glanllyn farm. On it, Sam Kenyon describes herself as a “goat servant“. I don’t know any genuine Welsh farmer that would use a phrase like that. Come to that, I don’t think I know any genuine Welsh farmers that keep goats.
After starting the business in 2016, she built the farm up from scratch on land that her husband, Alex, inherited from his family
I don’t wish to be too critical, for I see the name Hanmer in Alex’s bloodline. But the fact remains, the Tyrell-Kenyons are not representative of Welsh farmers.
Perhaps a generous interpretation might be the one I allude to in the section heading. That of Marie-Antoinette playing a shepherdess at her ‘cottage’ in the grounds of Versailles.
Whether Sam Kenyon knew she was being used to push a policy deeply unpopular with real farmers, I just don’t know. But we’ll leave it there.
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‘PSST, WANNA HEAR SOME MISINFORMATION?’
Not a lot of people know this, but the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ uses a private company as a propaganda unit, to push its message and slander its opponents. And of course, this is done with your money.
The company I’m referring to is Lynn. It seems to have begun with Lynn Group Ltd. Though another company formed more recently is Lynn Global Ltd. The deadline for submitting the first accounts for Lynn Global is March 20.
The sole director of both companies is Shayoni Sarkar Lynn.
Shayoni Lynn. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
‘BS’ in the make-believe world of ‘nudge’ units stands for ‘behavioural science’. And that, in practice, means getting people to accept what their better judgement tells them is the other kind of BS.
In other words, and as George Orwell put it in 1984:
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command
Which means that Lynn Global serves as the ‘Welsh Government’s Ministry of Truth. But instead of a questioning Winston Smith we find an enthusiastic Stefan Rollnick.
Though since he starred on this blog, Stefan’s presence on Linkedin has disappeared. Fortunately, I saved it ere it drifted off into the ether, for both posterity and your delectation. Here it is.
The briefest perusal of Rollnick’s background makes it clear that he’s Labour through and through. Which makes his job of defending the shower in Corruption Bay and slagging off their opponents almost instinctive.
What’s striking is that the term “far-right” is used a dozen times in this relatively short article. “Conspiracy” is there six times. But nowhere do we see ‘far-left’. What does this tell us . . . apart from the fact that it’s a bit of a leftist rant?
Well, on one level, we have a website funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ putting out BS from another outfit funded by Drakeford and his crew. (Will you miss him?) So no surprises there.
But as I suggest, there is a dangerously ideological – and therefore divisive – edge to everything put out by the ‘Welsh Government’, or by Lynn, BBC and other mouthpieces.
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CONCLUSION
The message we are being force-fed is that the ‘goodies’ of the Globalist-Green-Left are trying to save the planet, but are being opposed by the wicked ‘far-right’, and these villains are now manipulating farmers protests.
Come on, this is pure pantomime.
Why would I, a creature of the rational and reasoning right, a man who has loved nature all his life; who has children, grandchildren (and soon, great-grandchildren), want to destroy nature and the planet on which we all live?
It makes no sense.
What does make sense is a man who’s been around a bit, studied human nature, known quite a few con men (friends, some of them), many liars, a few sociopaths, understands how politics and control operate, and recognises a dirty campaign when he sees it.
And so I’ve put out this unplanned and rather hasty post to warn people that there are dangerous and unscrupulous actors pushing the ‘Welsh Government’s message.
They are prepared to lie, to vilify decent people, and to do just about anything to promote their agenda. So be warned!
And remember! Behavioural science and bullshit have the same initials, and they amount to the same thing.
And that’s where you’ll find the true ‘hidden agendas’.
‘The Family Amendment‘ was seen as a move away from the heterosexual nuclear family towards the vacuous “durable relationship“, with the added worry that illegal aliens could use the change to bring in just about anybody, claiming there was a relationship.
The vote was 67.7% No.
The ‘The Care Amendment‘ was presented as rejecting the ‘old-fashioned’ thinking of a woman’s place being in the home, but widely seen as rejecting motherhood altogether, and opening the door to other interpretations of ‘woman’.
The vote was 73.9% No.
The highest No vote ever recorded in a referendum. Higher even than that against the suggestion to reduce the age of eligibility for election to the office of President to 21.
The timing was rushed, the rationale unclear, the propositions confusing and the campaigning lacklustre.
Of course. If only things had been better explained . . .
Whereas the Guardian would have us believe: “Critics said they (the government) ran a lacklustre, confusing campaign that perplexed voters and alienated progressive allies“.
Both use “confusing” and “lacklustre“.
The problem for the Irish Times is that it’s part of the problem, in that it belongs to the metropolitan elite. Which means that to honestly address the problem, and the reasons behind the referendum defeats, would need a degree of self-examination that might be too painful.
For the truth is that, in Ireland, as throughout the Western world, the uniparty Globalist system supported by the Irish Times is cracking, and the disconnect between rulers and ruled has rarely been wider, except in those periods prior to revolutions.
In Ireland, that uniparty is made up of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, Labour, and of course, the Greens.
I’m sure that in Dublin’s better restaurants, this elite looked at returns like those from Donegal and Mayo, and gave each other the kind of knowing looks it was hoped would convey sagacity, but in reality merely confirmed their prejudices.
Because they’re unlikely to learn from these votes. The bubbles in which they live, across the Western world, are linked to each other, support each other, reinforce the Globalist message – and are hermetically sealed against the views of the people.
But their problems were not confined to the rural West, for working class Dublin also said No very forcefully. As did other urban centres like Cork, Galway, Wexford, Limerick, Waterford.
Even the posher parts of the capital went rogue. It was left to the outlying southern suburbs to return the only Yes vote. And that was by a hair’s breadth.
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One explanation I heard – and we’ve all heard this one before – was that unpopular governments shouldn’t give the mob a chance to vent their anger with by-elections and referendums.
But that simply reinforces how out of touch Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s government is. For they didn’t seem to realise that a lot of people out there really hate them.
And let’s remember that the whole uniparty political establishment urged a Yes vote.
And yet, we can see why this disaster happened. For in addition to a political class and its hangers-on talking to no one but themselves, even those they trusted to inform them got it badly wrong.
I’m referring now to the opinion polls. Below you see polls conducted weeks and days before the votes predicting comfortable Yes votes. Who the hell were they asking?
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Are opinion polls also part of the problem? Or are they just a waste of time, completely unreliable?
The unity of the Irish political establishment was in marked contrast to referendums I remember in Wales: joining the EU, Sunday opening of pubs, devolution in ’79, devolution again in ’97, the Brexit vote.
For these, political parties often lined up in opposition to each other, and we even saw divisions within parties.
That’s why these Irish No votes are so significant. A monolithic political establishment, its loyal media, and the serried ranks of its NGO grifters, was told to go away unto a far place, and there do unspeakable things to themselves and to each other. (Shudders!)
The size of the anti-establishment majorities in these referendums could mean that the proposed hate speech legislation is now dead. Because the establishment always knew it was unpopular at home, and drawing critical attention abroad.
So it will perhaps be shelved. I mean, they can’t push it through as if nothing has happened. And they certainly can’t afford another referendum.
Time to go into laager.
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IS SINN FĒIN ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY?
Few things brought home to me the almost surreal nature of unfolding events more than the leader of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald, being called “a traitor to the Irish people”.
And in Dublin Castle of all places!
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To understand what I’m getting at, you have to remember that for centuries Dublin Castle was the centre of British rule in Ireland. To the point where “The Castle” could even be used as a synonym for British rule.
McDonald’s predecessors would not have seen the inside of Dublin Castle unless they’d been taken in for the kind of ‘questioning’ that sometimes ended with a bullet or a noose. In the Civil War (1922-1923) it was the turn of IRA men to be tortured and killed by Free State forces.
Modern leftists will put a class spin on the Civil War, but those who fought on were holding out for what had always been the objective – a 32 county Republic completely independent of England. They remained true to their ideals.
Whereas those who’d sold out, accepted Partition, Dominion status, and the rest, liked to portray themselves as realists, or pragmatists.
Armed anti-Treaty members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Grafton Street, Dublin during the Irish Civil War. (Photo by Walshe/Getty Images) Click to open enlarged in separate tab
Nothing should show how much things have changed from the days of British rule than a leader of Sinn Féin strolling around Dublin Castle to public acclaim. I stress should – but Mary Lou McDonald was heckled by Irish nationalists!
Another reason for that hostility was the elephant in the room – immigration. Large numbers of undocumented young men being imposed, hundreds at a time, on towns and villages across the land. Sinn Féin supports open borders.
With no pretence any longer that those arriving are refugees.
They now apply for international protection status. You start your trip, then before arriving in Ireland you destroy your documents, when interviewed you claim some nasty men back home want to kill you, and bingo! – you get a house and hundreds of Euros every week to stroll the streets making a nuisance of yourself. Or worse.
Said to be the best deal in Europe.
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The Dublin Castle incident links with immigration to inform us that a new kind of nationalism seems to be emerging, one that’s more focused on Irish identity than the ‘progressive’ mish-mash that’s corrupted Sinn Féin.
Immigration is increasingly described as the new ‘Plantation’, with all that that implies given the history of Ireland.
But then, traditional Irish nationalism, Fenians, Republicans, always spoke primarily for the Gaelic Catholic Irish. Even Connolly, the socialist, talked of “the Irish race“.
Certainly Tone, Emmett, Parnell and others were Protestant, and there was always an open (if unrealistically optimistic) invitation to northern Unionists; but fundamentally, it was Ireland for the indigenous Irish.
We seem to have come full circle. It’s now ‘Ireland for the Irish’ again.
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And why not! How can our leftist brethren (whom I cherish, dearly!) shout that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians yet argue that Ireland belongs to anyone other than the Irish?
But that’s exactly what they do argue. For according to them only the ‘far right’ believes in nations . . . well, European nations, anyway.
And, finally, what’s happening in Ireland now throws up another bizarre twist, in that through its rejection of the Globalist agenda, and its reaffirmation of eternal verities, the new Irish nationalism is finding admirers among Six Counties Loyalists.
As people wake up to the Globalist agenda for the West; with Net Zero, the ‘de-growth’ strategy, the promotion of cultural Marxism, and waves of migrants, we shall see many alliances that would once have been regarded as impossible.
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THE YEAR AHEAD; IN IRELAND AND BEYOND
Next for Ireland are the European elections and the local council elections, to be held on the same day in June, but at a date yet to be announced. (Maybe the uniparty will only tell its own supporters the date, to avoid another hiding!)
Here’s the current state of the parties.
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While I’m hoping for the best, I still worry that contesting national elections may be too much, too soon, for the Irish Freedom Party and the Farmers’ Alliance. I hope I’m wrong. I’m certainly more confident after the referendum results.
I know the IFP is standing candidates for the Euro elections, but I’m not sure about the locals. Nor am I sure if the Farmers’ Alliance is standing in any elections.
Of course, the elections across the EU will be fascinating because of the anti-Globalist surge, and the (correct) perception that the EU is part of the problem, facilitating the Globalist agenda through legislation, funding, and other means.
Then there’s the UK general election at some time in 2024. With the WEF’s choice for prime minister, Rishi Sunak, finally facing the electorate. But in Westminster Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Greens form a uniparty with the Tories, so the only option is to vote for Reform.
Then, as if I needed to remind you, in November it’s the US presidential elections. Donald Trump has seen off all challengers for the Republican nomination, while Joe Biden never really had much opposition. Which would worry me if I was a Democrat.
(But also keep an eye on the Independent candidate, Robert F Kennedy Jr.)
Biden cannot win a fair election against Trump. A Trump victory should mark the beginning of the end for the Globalists’ plans. And this is why I fear that those with most to lose might try something stupid, and sell it to their lapdog media and their cultish supporters as ‘defending democracy’.
For, yesterday, after both men’s nominations were confirmed, someone got Sleepy Joe to say, “the threat Trump poses is greater than ever“. ‘There you go. If Trump is such a ‘threat’, then maybe the rules don’t apply.
Whatever happens, I’m reasonably sure we’re at the high-water mark of Globalism. From now on it must ebb. Too many people have woken up.
The only question is whether Globalism goes out with a bang, or a whimper. And that is a very big question.
In this piece I’ll explain that the ‘Welsh Government”s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) is just the latest in a long series of attacks on the Welsh family farm, and all that that means.
The SFS demands that 10% of every farm be given over to trees, with a further 10% to ‘habitat’. Many farms will become unprofitable. Which is the whole point of the SFS – to release more land for other uses.
Today’s piece is bigger than others I’ve put out recently, some 3,400 words; but it’s broken up into sections, so take it a chunk at a time.
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2008: ONE WALES: ONE PLANET
I’ve chosen to start in May 2008 with the publication One Wales: One Planet. Sub-titled, ‘The Sustainable Development Scheme of the Welsh Assembly Government’. You’ll find a revealing extract below.
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Let’s look at the first bullet point. Who decides Wales’s “environmental limits“? Who calculates our “fair share of the Earth’s resources“? Who measures our “ecological footprint“? (I’m a size 9.) And how can anyone work out, “the global average availability of resources“.
This is the kind of gobbledegook you can only get away with when you live a very sheltered life, mixing only with others in your bubble.
The final paragraph (below, my emphasis) leaves us in no doubt that everything that’s done in Wales from now on will be predicated on the belief that human beings are killing the planet.
To achieve this, sustainable development (the process that leads to Wales becoming a sustainable nation) will be the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government, and we will encourage and enable others to embrace sustainable development as their central organising principle.
But as I’ve explained, there’s something more sinister behind it all. Which is not to say that those pushing the nonsense don’t believe it, I’m sure many of them do. But there are also many who go along with it because it’s become the accepted wisdom of the circles in which they mix.
Before I forget, chapter 8 is headed: ‘The Wellbeing of Wales’. (Now there’s a clue!)
The administration at the time was a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition, and to jog your memory, here’s a cabinet group photo. The minister for environment and sustainability was Jane Davidson.
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2010: TECHNICAL ADVICE NOTE 6, ONE PLANET DEVELOPMENTS
July of 2010 brought joy unbounded with the announcement that hippy encampments, thrown up illegally (but with a nod and a wink from Corruption Bay), were now to be legitimised
Making TAN 6 little more than a general amnesty, or granting retrospective planning approval.
Dressed up as ‘sustainable living’, ‘self-sufficiency’, and God knows what else, they were in reality just a way around planning regulations for hippies and others to build ugly shacks in open country.
There were conditions attached, of course, not least, being able to prove that these impositions were to some degree self-sufficient . . . but nobody ever checks.
Interestingly, OPDs came to the notice of the World Economic Forum, which exposed the fundamental contradiction by urging people to move to Wales.
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For OPDs were justified by arguing they’d reduce Wales’ carbon footprint. But this could only happen if local people moved out of traditional dwellings into OPD shacks. That never happened.
Instead, people moved from England to previously unused land . . . where they kept farting animals, burned wood, and drove old diesel vehicles; so that by these and other means increased Wales’ carbon footprint.
In a recent publication I noticed that DEI had been added to the chicken entrails in the voodoo stew. This news came from Sophie Howe herself, just before she stepped down as Future Generations Commission in 2022:
I am pleased to see the emphasis given to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, a key component of sustainability . . .
But despite the posturing, OPDs remain exclusively English, White, middle class.
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2011 OCTOBER: ALUN DAVIES AND ORGANIC ARABLE FARMING
Then there was the plan to help farmers go organic.
Alun Davies, deputy minister of agriculture, announced that priority would be given to arable farmers, and those converting to arable farming . . . in a country where climate and topography dictate that livestock farming will dominate.
But let’s not be picky, for I’m sure this news was welcomed in the pomegranate groves of Pembrokeshire and the broccoli orchards enhancing the Vale of Clwyd, but it offered sod all to most Welsh farmers.
This initiative might reveal the growing vegan influence. For these had been brought in from the fringes to serve the Globalists’ plan to eliminate livestock farming and take control of the land and the food supply.
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2013 DECEMBER: ALUN DAVIES AND HIS TWO-PILLAR TRICK
The above date was when Alun Davies, now farm minister, announced that funding from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Pillar 1 (direct payment to farmers) would be moved to Pillar 2 (‘other rural activities’).
Davies could have transferred anything up to 15%. Almost inevitably, he opted for the full whack. Defending the decision by saying Pillar 1 should not be seen as a “never-ending subsidy“.
To understand Alun Davies, and the socialist attitude to farming, here’s an outburst from him in October 2014.
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The former minister in the Labour ‘Welsh Assembly Government’ (for he was sacked in July 2014) rails against ‘subsidies’; yet his administration had built up a vast third sector of cronies – all living off public funding!
And things have got worse, for now the ‘Welsh Government’ throws millions of pounds at Sustrans, Stonewall, wildlife trusts, and other pressure groups.
Clearly, in the eyes of Labour politicians there’s nothing wrong with subsidies per se, it all depends who’s getting them.
2015: WELL-BEING OF FUTURE GENERATIONS (WALES) ACT
This legislation was a long time in the planning, but we know who wrote it.
For this article from Sustainable Brands (scroll down) tells us it was Jane Davidson, who we met earlier as the minister for environment and sustainability in the 2007 – 2011 Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition.
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The article also says Davidson, ” . . . had her damascene moment at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992“. But I don’t buy that.
For at the time she was a researcher for Labour MP for Cardiff West, Rhodri Morgan, who of course went on to become first minister of the Assembly. So was she representing him, or the Labour party, at Rio?
I think she’d already had her ‘damascene moment’, and she was there as one of the converted.
When she became Assembly Member for Pontypridd in 1999 Ponty was her ticket to more power and influence to push the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative.
The significance of the Well-being Act is that, as was hinted in One Wales: One Planet in 2008, all other considerations must be subordinated to fighting the so-called ‘climate crisis’.
And this being the socialist hell that is Wales, the Act introduced yet more pointless bureaucracy and more opportunities for virtue signalling, with Public Services Boards for each of our 22 local authorities. (Yes, that’s right, 22 local authorities for a country of 3.2 million people.)
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Perhaps the real lesson Wales could teach the world is how to bring a country to its knees. For this is the Globalist plan for the West.
The politicians and their pet parasites who achieved this resent giving money to farmers and others, who actually work, and produce necessities.
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2016 SEPTEMBER: START OF NVZ ‘CONSULTATION’
A Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) is, according to the ‘Welsh Government’, “an area of land draining into ground or surface waters that are currently high in nitrate, or may become so if appropriate actions are not taken“.
It had always been accepted there was a problem, but it had also been understood that the problem was very localised, and seemed to be associated with dairy cattle.
The map above, produced by Natural Resources Wales (NRW), shows that Water Framework Directive (WFD) catchment areas covering some 90% of the country reported 0 – 4 incidents in the period 01.01.2010 to 01.01.2016.
The problem was clearly very localised.
Which is why NRW suggested increasing the area covered by NVZ legislation from 2.4% (750 farm holdings) to 8%. But, and here I quote from:
The (now) Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths, responded to the consultation replies a year later, in December 2017. She said she was “minded to introduce a whole Wales approach”.
Truth is, that had been the plan all along.
As an example of politicians going out of their way to make life more difficult for farmers – because of course there would be more expense and increased form-filling – the handling of NVZ legislation would be difficult to surpass.
This is how NFU Cymru described it:
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As things stand, the ‘Welsh Government’ has been forced to be marginally less vindictive. With slightly less punitive measures being introduced in stages, the next due in August.
Wales voted to leave the European Union 23 June 2016.
That is, the people voted to leave. The political class was outraged at the stupidity of the hoi polloi. The media agreed. While the ever-multiplying legions of third sector parasites were aghast at the thought of losing such a lucrative funding stream.
In response the ‘Welsh Government’ produced ‘Brexit and our Land‘. Wherein we read (page 3) what was to replace the CAP.
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But how can it talk of “food production” when we know Labour’s attitude towards farmers? While the reference to timber did not mean developing a genuine timber industry, it referred to what I’m now going to highlight.
Idly flicking through the annual accounts of Stoke engineering firm Goodwin Plc the other night I found this, on page 17.
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The site of this enviro-colonialism is north west of Llanwrtyd. But it’s happening all over Wales.
This is how it works: Land is bought and trees are planted by investors like Goodwin, who will own the land, the trees, and the carbon they capture. This carbon can not be included in Wales’ carbon inventory.
Which means that outside investors could buy up 50% of Welsh land, make billions from carbon capture, none of which would contribute to Wales’ national figure (or economy) – and the ‘Welsh Government’ would pay them to do it!
The rest of rural Wales, and the post-industrial areas, will be surrendered to foreign-owned wind farms whose owners will dole out beads and blankets to the desperate inhabitants of doomed communities.
And it’s all built on a scam, for carbon is no threat to the environment.
As for “Public Goods“, this is a phrase picked up from the bad company Welsh politicians keep. It can mean whatever the person using it wants it to mean.
Just think of it as bollocks; usually delivered in Estuary English.
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2018 AUGUST: SUMMIT TO SEA
This project links with Brexit, and the publication you read about in the previous section. It’s ‘environmentalists’ seeking to capitalise on the new reality to grab a huge swathe of Welsh land.
The project began before the date I’ve just given, but I used that date because it’s the first time I mentioned the project on this blog. Click here and scroll down to the section ‘Re-wilding’.
In essence, a number of individuals and organisations came together and hatched a plan to requisition 10,000 hectares, from Pumlumon up to the Dyfi estuary, and out to sea for a few miles.
Below you’ll see two maps. The one on the left was produced by those behind the project; the one on the right tells us who’s really behind it. But I’m not sure who produced the second.
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Admittedly, this was not a ‘Welsh Government’ policy . . . but I believe those involved had discussions with politicians and civil servants, and had been assured that Brexit could be the excuse used to withhold or ‘redirect’ farm subsidies.
Those involved were so confident of success, so arrogant, that they saw no need to engage with those whose land they wanted to appropriate. For it was a done deal.
Among the partners with Rewilding Britain was the Woodland Trust (WT). Here is Natalie Buttriss of the WT being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today in October 2018. And she plays the admonishing memsahib for all she’s worth.
Summit to Sea met its Waterloo at a public meeting in Talybont, north of Aberystwyth on 31 July 2019, when locals made their feelings unmistakably clear to even the thick-skinned individuals involved.
Partners such as Ecodyfi and Rewilding Britain soon withdrew, and the project was then taken over by the RSPB. The organisation that cares so much for birds, but has no issue with bird-killing wind turbines. (I wonder how much that silence costs.)
The Woodland Trust is still taking over Welsh land to plant trees and profit from the carbon capture scam you read about earlier. But all done of course to save the planet.
Summit to Sea was an attempt by ‘environmentalists’ and ‘conservationists’ to grab Welsh farmland using the threat of subsidy withdrawal. So it’s no surprise to learn that many see the Sustainable Farming Scheme as Summit to Sea repackaged.
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LATE 2018: TIT-BITS
In September, Lesley Griffiths, Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs, was in Frisco, at a UN bunfight giving business leaders a chance to impress politicians from the sub-national level.
A month later the Daily Post produced this article in which farmers accused wildlife groups of lying about bio-diversity loss in order to grab farm funding. I include it because it introduces an important new tactic into the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.
Hoping to hide the source of the attacks the Corruption Bay establishment was now funding wildlife trusts and other groups to do the dirty work. I wrote about this just last month, in Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas.
Quoted in the DP article was Katie-Jo Luxton of the RSPB:
Writing in today’s Daily Post, RSPB Cymru director Katie-jo Luxton said it was in farming’s interest to work with wildlife groups – and take what’s being offered.
Only by doing this can the industry justify its receipt of taxpayers’ money, she said. Otherwise the industry risks losing out in the post-Brexit scramble for public funding.
That sounds like dialogue from a very bad Mob movie! “Dis is da best deal ya gonna get, Louie, take it – if ya knows what’s good for ya!”
Also note, another reference to “taxpayers’ money“, and “the post-Brexit scramble for public funding“. They’re all reading from the same script.
Having pissed off many, many people, Luxton left the RSPB towards the end of 2021 and joined BirdLife International.
In four years between 2018 and 2022 BirdLife’s income shot up from £22 million to over £40 million. Another indicator of how governments and corporations are using wildlife groups and conservationists to undermine agriculture globally.
Wildlife trusts here saw their income more than double between 2019 and 2022. But income from ‘Welsh Government’ grants and contracts rocketed from £769,310 to £6,821,800 in the same period.
As might be expected, planting trees and making life even more difficult for farmers figured big in this mercifully short document.
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The reality is that despite all the grandstanding, no other country on this doomed planet has allowed OPDs, created the useless post of Future Generations Commission, or declared a climate emergency.
There’s a message there.
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2019 OCTOBER: ‘WALES MAY BE A SMALL NATION . . . ‘
Among the world-renowned climate experts attending was “ITV weather presenter Ruth Wignall“. Further down we read:
For every attendee at the conference a tree will also be planted in Mbale, Eastern Uganda, as part of the Welsh Government’s Wales for Africa programme.
Farmer Nimrod Wambette, from Mbale, will speak at the conference about how his home region is already feeling the impacts of climate change.
After enjoying an expenses-paid trip to Cardiff and a bit of pocket money Nimrod could be guaranteed to stick to the script.
It’s just more of the same, a rather sad and desperate combination of hyperbole and hysteria for which, in kinder and saner times, people would have received treatment. But what really caught my eye was this sentence:
Representatives from Extinction Rebellion will be attending to share some of their ideas about how we should be responding to the climate emergency
This new legislation is designed to increase the influence of ‘environmentalists’ and ‘conservationists’ over Welsh farming. How do I know? Because the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) takes credit for influencing it.
We launched and led a successful campaign to help put the climate and nature emergencies at the core of the new Agriculture (Wales) Bill. Through a survey of rural Wales, an open letter signed by more than 50 organisations, a petition and more, WWF Cymru’s Land of Our Future/Gwlad Ein Dyfodol campaign advocated for agroecology to be central to the bill
Those experts on Welsh farming, the British Mountaineering Council, signed the WWF petition . . . but our farming unions did not.
And so we come to the Sustainable Farming Scheme, for which ‘consultations’ end on Thursday. Though I suspect that, as with NVZ and other proposals, it’s a done deal.
To leave us in no doubt about Labour’s hatred for farmers Anna McMorrin, (former?) partner of Alun Davies, called hard-working Welsh farmers extremists, climate deniers, and conspiracy theorists in the House of Commons last week.
I could have introduced other examples of the ‘Welsh Government’s contempt, such as the refusal to do anything about bTB . . . other than to order the killing of cattle.
But I’ve given enough clues for you to guess how I see the big picture.
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Wildlife and environmental groups, and more recently the ‘Welsh Government’, tell us that 80/90% of Wales’s land is taken up by farming. There’s a reason for that.
By ‘farming’ they mean livestock farming. But it’s not really about farming, it’s about the land used by farming. The talk of farting cows, dirty rivers, biodiversity loss, etc, are the excuses used to destroy farming and to facilitate a land grab.
Land that’s wanted for carbon capture trees and rewilding. Which go together. Can’t have beavers without trees. And almost all the critters planned to be re-introduced are forest dwellers.
UPDATE 05.03.2024: I’ve been sent a pro forma letter that English ‘environmental’ groups have asked members and supporters to submit to the SFS consultation.
In the first line of the second paragraph: ” . . . upwards of 84% of land in Wales managed for farming”. It really chokes them, all this land – and they want it!
This also explains the involvement of vegans, and the backing for organic arable farming. Meat will be an imported luxury item that most of us will be unable to afford. (We’ll be offered insects, and factory-made ‘meat’.)
The countryside of the future will belong to an elite that will justify its advantages, and the restrictions placed on the rest of us, car-less in our 15-minute, constantly-surveiled cities, as being necessary to save the planet.
Having submitted to this cult-agenda, Labour politicians will destroy Welsh farming as we know it. And with it, a culture, a language, and a way of life.
This is a follow-up to last week’s piece on the enviro-shysters blaming farmers for everything wrong with our rivers, and those behind them hoping to get their corporate claws into farmland.
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MERGERS
First, let’s make sure you know where our five wildlife trusts are located. On the image below you can also see the difference in the sizes of the areas they cover.
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Given the other mergers that have taken place over the years it might be worth asking why Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire didn’t join with Breconshire to form a Powys trust? For until 2018 there was a Brecknockshire Wildlife Trust, but then it merged with the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.
What had been the Welsh umbrella outfit may even have joined the English body as a separate and individual trust. Certainly, that’s what the website seems to tell us.
When the end came for WTW, the funds were distributed to the five trusts, which makes sense. But I was surprised to see an inrush of grants in the final year.
Why was that, and why couldn’t the money have been given directly to the individual trusts? Finally, what the hell is a ‘Strategic Allocation Grant’?
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Anyway, that’s how we got to where we are now, Wales has five wildlife trusts. Also, Wildlife Trusts Wales, existing is some kind of limbo.
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WILD THINGS
Let’s stick with finances, which suggest to me that wildlife trusts have recently been ‘repurposed’. Let me try to explain . . .
There seem to be three main sources of income for wildlife trusts: One is donations or legacies, and a bequest of £1,000,000 in 2003 must have helped keep Brecknock afloat for a while.
The others sources are, either the Lottery (which is little more than disguised UK government funding), and grants and contracts from our ‘Welsh Government’. The table below might help.
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Amazing figures. While total income for the five trusts increased by 133% between 2019 and 2023, for the same period ‘Welsh Government’ funding went up by 760%.
In fact it was more. I didn’t include Radnorshire because I wasn’t sure how to express that increase as a percentage. Should it be 579,620%?
The big jumps in funding are clearly in Radnorshire and the north. In percentage terms Radnorshire really stands out. But why?
One reason may be that the local trust now has a farm, Pentwyn, which is planned to become ‘Wilder Pentwyn‘. The Trust is well-favoured in Corruption Bay, and gets visits from Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary?), helping her promote the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).
The SFS demands that all Welsh farms give over 10% of their land for trees, and a further 10% for ‘wildlife habitat’. Farmers are, understandably, resisting. And things may be coming to the boil.
But it could get worse, for in its latest annual report the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (RWT) demands that by 2030: ” . . . 30% of land and water in Radnorshire is managed in a way that creates extensive natural habitats for a wide variety of species”.
How will RWT achieve that target in just six years, considering it owns only one farm?
And how much input did RWT have to the Sustainable Farming Scheme?
Here’s an interesting group photograph. Unfortunately, I don’t have a date, but it can’t be that old. We’ll work left to right:
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Far left is Martin Wilkie, another environmentalist who’s come to tell us how to look after the country we’ve been looking after for over 2,000 years. Wilkie was with the RWT but has now branched out on his own with Wild Borders Ecology.
Next to him of course is Lesley Griffiths.
In the centre is James Hitchcock, RWT CEO.
To his right is Jenny Chryss, an investigative journalist. I’m told she broke with RWT when the Trust became, as my source put it, “corporate shills“. Chryss now fights Bute’s wind farm plans.
Far right is Rachel Sharp, CEO of Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW). No friend of farmers, that one.
And talking of WTW, let’s not forget Tim Birch. A few years back he was virtually run out of Derbyshire for his extreme views . . . so he came to Wales, where he was welcomed with open arms by the ‘Welsh Government’.
These are the people deciding the future of rural Wales.
They don’t give a toss about us. For them our country is just one big experiment to see how many of their lunacies our idiot politicians will implement.
What we’ll see with Radnorshire Wildlife Trust at Pentwyn (and with others elsewhere), is that nature reserves will have a few sheep, a couple of cows, a rescued donkey for kiddies to pet – and they’ll be hailed as “the future of farming in Wales“.
In fact, that’s exactly what it says on the website: “A new model farm for the future“.
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I believe Radnorshire has been chosen by the ‘Welsh Government’ for a number of ‘initiatives’, and it’s been thrown open to all-comers.
For example, a source drew my attention to Protect Earth, a charity that’s applied for a grant to plant 14,000 trees at Goytre wood, near Knighton. No matter how it’s dressed up, this is just another carbon sequestration scam – and we’ll pay for it!
Rachel Sharp’s LinkedIn page confirms she’s still with WTW, and we know Tim Birch works with her. How many more work for this non-existent outfit?
Seeing as Sharp and Birch serve as the ‘Welsh Government’s attack dogs I’m beginning to wonder if WTW is now ‘in-house’, funded by Lesley Griffiths and her gang.
Here are three questions for The Wildlife Trusts Wales:
What is the legal status of Wildlife Trusts Wales?
Where does the money to run it come from?
Where can I examine the accounts?
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WHAT BORDER?
A few years back I was surprised to learn that the Shropshire Hills AONB might be extended into Wales. Here’s one reference from 2019. The article also suggests that the current AONB might be elevated to National Park status.
But if it were to cross the border, where would it go?
To help answer that question I’ve been busy on Photoshop. And when you fit the pieces together it makes a lot of sense, it even ties in with what I described earlier.
On the right in the diptych below we see a tourist map of Shropshire with the AONB shaded in darker green, in the south west. While on the left, I have fitted that map into the wildlife trusts map I used earlier.
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Any extension into Wales would affect both Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, but more so the latter.
Which I’m sure would make Trust CEO James Hitchcock ecstatic. For he is on record as saying: “We’re in the Welsh Marches. The Marches is a mindset and a cultural identity. Nature does not heed boundaries.”
And let’s remember that before crossing the border Hitchcock was CEO of Herefordshire WT. Which presents a puzzle.
When Hitchcock left Herefordshire that trust was pulling down an average of £1.6m a year. By comparison, Radnorshire wasn’t scraping together a third of that. So it could be argued that Hitchcock took a step down when he started his new job 1 February 2021.
Two months after Hitchcock laid out his pens on the CEO’s desk Wildlife Trusts Wales decided to dissolve itself, with the individual trusts joining the English body. Is that just a coincidence?
No.
I believe Hitchcock was recruited to promote the ‘Welsh Government’s agenda. (Maybe a bigger agenda.) And this explains why he and the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust are feted by Lesley Griffiths and other denizens of the Bay.
Yes, I’m flying a kite by theorising on why Hitchcock came to Wales, but extending the Shropshire Hills AONB into Wales came from somewhere else. And it all ties in perfectly with the ‘Wilder Marches’ project.
But plans for new National Parks and AONBs do not end with a cross-border extension of the Shropshire Hills.
You must be aware of the decision to make the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB into Wales’s fourth National Park. Here are some details from Natural Resources Wales.
An argument I’ve heard used to justify the new NP is that the south east has one with Bannau Brycheiniog; the south west has the Pembrokeshire Coast; the north west, Eryri; so it’s only fair that the north east should also have a National Park.
But if the ‘geographical fairness’ argument has been accepted, then there’ll be just one area without a National Park – central Wales. And why not make it a cross-border National Park?
Co-operation, innit? ‘Hands across the Dyke’ an’ all that.
UPDATE: A comment to this blog reminds us that the area covered by the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust and it’s Montgomeryshire neighbour is almost the same as the area of Severn Trent Water.
Given that environmental groups and river ‘saviours’ in other parts of Wales have been used (and funded) to blame farmers, in order to cover up for Dŵr Cymru’s spillages and other misdemeanours, might that also be happening in Powys?
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CONCLUSION
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with National Parks, AONBs, wildlife trusts and nature reserves. But they’re no longer just about protecting landscapes, nurturing flora and fauna. They have been politicised, and funded, to serve other agendas.
She brings Brexit into a truly weird conspiracy theory. Most absurdly she seems to believe that putting our farmers out of business somehow guarantees food security. What do these people have between their ears?
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And what “nature catastrophe“? Things have never been better. Hasn’t she heard that ospreys are nesting on the farm her government bought for £4.25m?
Though we won’t know if they’re coming back, or not, until Vaughan Gething is safely installed as the new Labour leader. Phew!
But they were definitely there last year, oh yes . . . even though nobody saw them. And no photos or videos have emerged.
By “food security” what Rathbone means is an endless supply of free range radishes from the OPD that daddy bought for Guy and Clarissa.
She sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. Her partner, John Uden, was given a no-show job by Bute Energy, the Scottish company wanting to throw up a few dozen wind farms in Wales.
How the other half lives, eh!
I was directed to another Saturday posting on X, this one from Jeremy Clarkson.
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Other people have the same problem, Jeremy. And the explanation is that the ‘Welsh Government’ tells porkies.
Lesley Griffiths, Julie James, Jenny Rathbone et al say they’re saving the planet, fighting a “climate catastrophe“, but in reality they’re forcing farmers out of business so that big corporations can buy the land, and make yet more money, from carbon sequestration, wind farms, and other scams.
With ‘environmentalists’ disguising this land grab and hoping to be rewarded with vast acreages for rewilding and other anti-human activities.
‘Safety’ was just the pretty wrapping – it is ultimately about taking away our cars, and keeping us penned in 15-minute ghettos.
Environmentalism and restoring biodiversity are also pretty wrapping for something more sinister. And it’s not just farmers under attack.
The ‘Welsh Government’ is implementing the Globalists’ de-growth agenda. And among other targets this agenda wants to destroy traditional farming and food production because if they can control the food supply, then the Globalists will control the world.
Don’t let it happen. The farmers’ fight is your fight. Stand with the farmers!
This began as an update to the piece I put out a few days ago. But it grew too big. So I had to admit that the only way to do it properly was as a follow-up, a second part. Which explains what you’re about to read.
