Who The Hell Are These People!

Another article begins with an apology . . . and I can’t even blame the drink! But the fact is that I have more information on Extinction Rebellion (XR), including its Welsh roots. Well, not really Welsh, just in Wales, like so many of these buggers.

I was also sent something by a regular reader who’s been invited to a conference in Cardiff next month so he can sit for six hours being told that deep down he’d really like to be in the Ku Klux Klan. (I suspect he will not be attending.)

At less than 2,200 words this is quite a bit shorter than recent offerings.

EXTINCTION REBELLION, AGAIN

In the previous episode I told you that ER was officially launched on October 31, 2018. But I didn’t tell you where, or by whom. The driving force behind the launch was Julian Roger Hallam, and at the time he was living on a smallholding in Carmarthenshire.

This WalesOnline report from September 2019 is headlined, “The Welsh farmer who became the mastermind of Extinction Rebellion“. Mmm. He may regard himself as a farmer, and he might live (part-time) in Wales, but if he’s a “Welsh farmer” then I’m a Chinese astronaut.

The second paragraph says, “His small 10-acre farm near Llandeilo sounded like something out of a John Steinbeck novel”. If the journalist is referring to The Grapes of Wrath then I must assume she hasn’t read the book.

But let’s not be too picky.

Hallam seems to have been elbowed out of XR when the others realised what an Olympic standard narcissist he is, who’ll say and do anything to draw attention to himself. And that includes trivialising the Holocaust.

Others have darker suspicions about Hallam, and XR. Touched on in ‘Roger Hallam – Extinction Deception‘, a long read but worth it for the insights it gives into the lunatic fringes of the environmental movement.

Here’s a taster.

From the piece linked to in the previous paragraph. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Hallam is gone to Just Stop Oil or wherever, but Extinction Rebellion is still with us, hardly less extreme, and with its claws firmly into the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

What follows either complements or supplements what I’ve already told you in Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups and Wales, Idiots And Envirogrifters. So let’s try to pick up where we left off . . .

You’ll remember that Extinction Rebellion e-mailed Climate Minister Julie James July 13, 2022, and the message was headed: “URGENT REQUEST FOR A MEETING”. (Here’s a pdf version.)

There may have been no response because another e-mail was sent on August 1, and re-sent the following day. It’s worth picking out some points. (Here I may indulge in a little imaginative paraphrasing)

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

First paragraph. “OK, so we know you’re on holiday, and you’re probably surfing down Rhossili, but we gotta meet”.

Second paragraph: “This glorious summer weather gives us the perfect opportunity to scare people shitless by exaggerating the temperatures and pretending people are keeling over in Llandudno from sunstroke. We were appalled to hear your boss Starmer talk about ‘Growth’! Bloody hell! that’s the last thing we want on our Long March to turnip-munching medievalism”.

Third paragraph: “So get your skates on or Wales will not achieve the nirvana we just tantalised you with. Because if we can achieve it, then important people will flock here in private jets to fly over and admire Welsh people singing in close harmony as they work the collective turnip patch”.

In case you find some of the images I’ve just conjured up a little unsettling we’ll quickly move on to this document. Which was almost certainly influenced by XR.

It’s important for a number of reasons, not least because, as it runs from 2022 to 2026, it’s happening now. Or rather, and despite having ‘Public Engagement’ in the title, it’s a period in which others are making decisions for us, and around us.

For as it says at the foot of page 13 (and top of 14), in the section headed ‘Audience’, what the ‘Welsh Government’ is seeking is a partnership with pressure groups to spread the gospel of Net Zero to tackle ‘climate change’.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Though I’m not sure who else is on “Team Wales“.

I was also struck by the term “trusted messengers“. Which cropped up again on page 24, and again, with “Team Wales partners“.

Click to enlarged in separate tab

But what really intrigued me about this section was the admission, at the end, that there is little public support for Net Zero. And that the ‘Welsh Government’ believes it must rely on it “partners“, like Extinction Rebellion, to push the message.

In fact, Julie James makes a very similar admission in her introduction, on page 7. (My emphasis.)

Delivering technology and infrastructure solutions to some of the key barriers to public action on climate change is also urgent. We know that households across Wales need affordable tools and solutions to make the change, and we know that many of these are out of budget-reach for many households.

XR doesn’t just have access to politicians, it also pokes its collective finger in the chests of civil servants. From reading XR”s own output I get the impression that these extremists can access all areas of Corruption Bay.

But the fundamental problem for politicians, civil servants and envirogrifters remains – saving the planet don’t come cheap. And when ignorance, apathy or half-hearted acceptance are replaced by outright hostility, when Dai Public realises how much it’s gonna cost him, then the whole scam is in serious trouble.

We are witnessing the first real signs of that with the growing resistance to the 20mph speed limit – even before it’s introduced. There will almost certainly have to be a big and face-losing climb-down.

I have more information on XR but much of it is in the form of screenshots which are out of context and undated. If I can put them into some kind of order I’ll return to the subject.

Though one thing that shines through clearly from the exchanges between the ‘Welsh Government’, Extinction Rebellion and others is that they’re desperate to give the impression of having consulted the public, and enjoy public support for their lunacies . . . without ever consulting the real Welsh public.

As I’ve suggested, it’s done by ‘consulting’ colleagues and sympathisers, assorted pressure groups and carefully selected ‘panels’, in order to give the required outcome.

It’s called ‘consultative democracy’. The term is misleading, and the process is undemocratic.

SENEDD INSIGHT / THE KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE

I was surprised to receive a rather curious document that had been sent to a regular reader, inviting the recipient to attend a conference in Cardiff. (Here it is in pdf format.) You’ll see that it originates with summat called Senedd Insight.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Senedd Insight has a website. A Twitter / X account. And a Linkedin page.

Given the name, I naturally assumed that this outfit is in some way connected with our wonderful, talent-packed Senedd. But no.

Further perusal of the available information revealed that “Senedd Insight is a division of The Knowledge Exchange Group Ltd“.

Hold on for the ride!

The Knowledge Exchange Group has a website, and the company of that name is registered with Companies House. The address given, 1 Northumberland Avenue, off Trafalgar Square, sounds impressive. But we’re in the realm of “flexible office space“.

The latest accounts reveal a deficit of £96,089 and a debt with HSBC.

Until 2018 The Knowledge Exchange Group was known as Knowdata Ltd, and used an address at 18 The Ropewalk, in Nottingham. Which has a number of brass plaques, including one for an accountant.

So who’s behind Senedd Insight? Well, I can tell you it’s a one-man band, and that one man is named Neil Kamal Kharbanda.

Kharbanda had another company called Government Knowledge Ltd, formerly Government Knowledge Training Ltd. Which could have been the precursor to The Knowledge Exchange Group.

After it too relocated to Northumberland Avenue Government Knowledge went down the Swannee owing a lot of money. Over a hundred grand to HMRC. Disregard the “Intercompany Loans“, these are often imaginative attempts to salvage something from the debris. The ‘loans’ themselves may be entirely fictitious.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Neil Kharbanda had yet a third company, this was The Public Service Directory Ltd. It departed this Vale of Tears in May 2017, some £76,000 in the red.

At the risk of sounding unkind, that is not a business record to inspire confidence. But let’s give him a chance, what else can we learn?

Turning back to the invitation sent out, I have to say it looks quite impressive . . . if you don’t think about it too much. There’s certainly a lot of speakers, the usual mix of academics, third sector / pressure group chisellers and others reliant on the public purse.

There are one or two who don’t fit that description, such as, “Amari Smith-Samuel,  Diversity and Inclusion Lead, Network Rail Wales & Western“.

But still, most of those attending will have their fees paid from the public purse. I mention this again because attending this festival of chip-on-shoulder ranting don’t come cheap. Here are the rates.

And, remember, it only runs from 9:30 to 3:30, with perhaps an hour for lunch.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Let’s average it out at £350 a head and say 200 attend, that’s £70,000. Even taking out fees for the speakers that’s not bad for a day’s work.

Of course the venue will need to be paid for, which raises another interesting point, because in the invitation received by my source the venue hasn’t yet been booked. It just says: “The full-day conference will take place in a centrally located conference venue in Cardiff. The venue will be confirmed shortly.”

That brings back memories, for I used to go to meetings like that back in the ’60s, often after a summons like this:

“We are meeting in Carmarthen on Saturday. Be in Nott Square at 11:07, with a folded copy of the ‘Ferret Fanciers Monthly’ in your left hand. There you will be approached by an Oriental female who will whisper the location of the venue into your right ear. Pay close attention because her English is poor and she has a lisp.”

Ah! but happy days!

Returning to the Knowledge Exchange Group . . . the latest accounts report a deficit of £70,000, yet it claims 17 employees at the “flexible office space” off Trafalgar Square. Can that be right?

Maybe they aren’t in London, for I think Neil Kamal Kharbanda of Northumberland Avenue is also Neil Kamal Kharbanda of GroData Solutions LLP in Delhi, India.

I believe they are the same man because Knowledge Exchange Group shows on the very basic GroData Linkedin page.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But there remains so much we don’t know, which is why I have a list of questions addressed to no one in particular. And in no particular order.

  • Given the name, most people would assume a connection between Senedd Insight and Senedd Cymru. Is there a link?
  • If so, what is that link?
  • If there’s no link, how does the Senedd feel about its name being used in this way, for after all it is the only ‘Senedd’ in the world?
  • How does the ‘Welsh Government’ feel about paying so much in fees, either directly or indirectly, to a man with a worrying business record?
  • If asked, would the Senedd provide facilities for a Senedd Insight conference?
  • Are all those speakers really signed up?
  • Will the money made from this conference in September be used by Mr Kharbanda to pay off his debt to HMRC?
  • How many conferences are there every year at which we, the Welsh people, will be excoriated by those whose salaries we pay? 

If I had the time I’d contact the organisations for which the speakers work and ask why they’re supporting an event promoting ethnic differences and racial antipathies.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I hate to be bringing more bad news, but come on, this is Wales. Where’s the good news?

Wales, where those who claim to run the country are clowns, and those who really run the show are fanatics like Extinction Rebellion. And then, feeding off this shit-show we have people like Neil Kamal Kharbanda.

Who, as we know, is not alone. Wales has more parasites than the mangiest, most flea-bitten creature on Earth. If Wales was a dog it would be put down.

There’s so much material here for Franz Kafka or Dario Fo if they were still alive. But they’re gone and so there’s no one to tell the world this tragi-comedy of leftist fuckwits given money every year and making a country worse than it was the year before . . . or the year before that . . . or the year . . . .

Think about that – more money yet they make things worse! There’s a special talent in play here. It should be studied by anyone wanting to run a country into the ground.

Because, unfortunately, that’s what’s happening to Wales.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

Wales, Idiots And Envirogrifters

Yes, I’ve postponed the piece on the Globalists, again, but it’s a story with no real deadline. Whereas what I’m offering below is a kind of follow-up to a piece I put out in June: Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups. And I want to get it out before this year’s Show in Llanelwedd becomes a distant memory.

This is another biggie, but it’s segmented. So, as Buddy Holly sang, Take Your Time.

EXTINCTION REBELLION, AN UPDATE

In the piece I just linked to I established that the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ (‘WG’) has been meeting with the extremists of Extinction Rebellion since at least May 2019.

I can now confirm that first minister Drakeford himself met with Extinction Rebellion in July 2019. Did he meet them even earlier, because the letter below doesn’t say it was their first meeting?

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I can’t take it back further (unsurprising seeing as XR didn’t launch until October 31, 2018), but I can reinforce the point that XR and WG are close, and establish beyond any doubt that the pressure group is giving orders to our elected representatives.

Exhibit A, M’lud: An e-mail from XR Cymru to Julie James, who’d been re-elected in the May 6 Senedd elections and made Minister for Climate Change. Basically, the message says, ‘You’re not going far enough or fast enough’.

The message ends with a reference to, ” . . . the good relationship with Welsh Government developed in the last few years”. On the right you’ll see Julie James’ response.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The next communication I have is from XR Cymru Political Circle and it’s to Julie James and Llyr Gruffydd, Plaid Cymru chair of the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee, and it’s dated December 7, 2021.

I should add that the highlighting is not mine. And I was unable to locate the attachment referred to. (Yes, you’re welcome to try.)

Extinction Rebellion, with nary a vote to their name, tell the ‘Welsh Government’: “Of course there are areas where we want to see more action and faster responses“.

I’d tell them to fuck right off . . . but then, that’s me.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The next billet-doux was sent on July 13, 2022, at 7:26 in the morning! From XR Cymru Political Circle to Julie James, and the subject matter, in upper case, read: “URGENT REQUEST FOR A MEETING”.

This is an interesting (and amusing) communication. For it might suggest that Julie James was not giving XR the personal attention they thought they deserved. In fact, it reads as if she fobbed them off with her deputy Lee Waters, and they weren’t impressed.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

There is the usual ‘Must do better! reprimand, but what I really want to focus on is the reference, in bold type, to “Behaviour Change Strategy“. Also, the introduction of Claire Chappell, who is said to be ” . . . working as quickly as possible with substantial resources . . . “.

So who is Claire Chappell?

Her Linkedin page (here in pdf) describes her as, ‘Head of Brand Performance’ at the ‘Welsh Government’, and she’s been in the job for more than 8 years. But what is the job? And what is ‘brand performance’?

Well, I found this explanation, and if the definition below is to be believed, then Clair Chappell and her employer are dismal failures.

Brand performance marketing, also known as brand purpose marketing, focuses on improving your brand’s reputation and of course, its performance.

Finally, we’ll read this e-mail from December 13, 2022. From XR Cymru Political Circle to Julie James and Lee Waters, cc Mark Drakeford and Llyr Gruffydd.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Again, that reference to “behaviour change“. How exactly are we supposed to change? And change into what – mugs taking orders from Extinction Rebellion channelled through the ‘Welsh Government’?

Here endeth the chapter on Extinction Rebellion. I’m hoping the ‘Welsh Government’ and Plaid Cymru now remember that we are judged by the company we keep.

Though I suppose that advice could also be given to Extinction Rebellion.

MISCELLANEA

In this chunk of the opus I want to deal with stories that either made it into the news recently, or else came to my attention by some other route. Some of these broke at the Show, others lead on from things that broke at the Show.

That make sense?

RULE OF SIX

I’m referring to the Six Principles, and Extinction Rebellion was also involved in this nonsense from before the May 2021 Senedd elections. It’s in the form of an appeal to politicos to sign up to six principles somebody’s dreamed up at their Pilates class.

Here’s a composite of the appeal, the six principles set out, and a list of the signatories.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

One of the six organisations involved is Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Which I was delighted to see, for we really must stop the annual slaughter of dolphins at Abergele, and scupper the Aberaeron whaling fleet.

Also among the signatory bodies is CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. When did Wales become ‘overseas’? Or why does CAFOD keep cropping up in these envirogrifter pronunciamentos?

THE ENVIROGRIFTERS’ MILITIA

Now we’re expected to fall into line with the National Nature Service, and I bet you didn’t even know we had one. Neither did I.

I just can’t keep up with all these new bodies, overlapping, duplicating each other’s work, the same people popping up wearing different hats, and all in receipt of public funding and / or time that politicians and civil servants should be spending on real problems.

Clearly following the third sector model.

And just like the third sector envirogrifters will identify a ‘problem’, and demand funding to solve said problem; but never actually solve the problem because that would mean the end of the funding. That’s how this scam works.

I described this plan on Twitter as a militia for hobby farmers and hippies, and I see no reason to change that view. With perhaps XR providing the commissars. Just scroll down here and see who’s involved in this latest scam.

Now think about it, here we have an organisation promising to revitalise rural Wales, and yet the two farming unions are not involved, and neither is the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales.

What we see instead, are the usual suspects. Envirogrifters, Swamp dwellers, and ‘Welsh Government’ departments.

Which makes this capture from the militia website dishonest. Unless of course it refers to hippies and hobby farmers. Which I suppose makes a certain sense, given that the ‘Welsh Government wants these to replace traditional Welsh farming.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The website is very basic and uninformative, giving it a work in progress feel but, unsurprisingly, we read that the previous Future Generations Commissioner had a big hand in its production.

Though the Commissioner is only the Welsh agent for a bit of UK-wide silliness, as we read below. The links will tell you more.

The process is being organised by the Wales Inquiry of the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission, with support from the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner, under the auspices of the Green Recovery Task Group – a cross sector group convened to act quickly and creatively in response to the impacts of the pandemic.

The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales included the proposal to create a national nature service in her Fit for the Future Programme for Government

Envirobollocks piled so high it’s in danger of blocking out the sun . . . Hang on! – is that the cunning plan?

NFU REJECTS ‘WELSH GOVERNMENT’ TREES PLAN

One of the big stories of the Show was NFU Cymru rejecting ‘Welsh Government’s demand that farmers set aside 10% of their land for tree planting. Hedgerows do not count, but possibly trees in hedgerows do count!

The proposal might work on some farms, but not others. Which is why the ‘Welsh Government’s blanket approach reveals the failing of inflexibility that we see time and time again.

We saw it with the NVZ legislation, brought in to tackle a very localised problem, yet the politicians adopted a sledgehammer and nut approach and made the legislation both national and unreasonably strict. Though the ‘Welsh Government’ has subsequently backed down a couple of times.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But then, Labour politicians in Wales know little about farming or the countryside. Theirs is a party of cities, post-industrial areas, chip-on-shoulder minorities, and agitators with useless degrees and colourful hair.

To compound the problem Labour politicians are advised by civil servants – like Lesley Griffiths’ former paramour Gary – who’ve been shipped in from England to run down Welsh agriculture.

Further, the draconian NVZ rules were based on the false premise that farmers are solely responsible for poor water quality. Because, for reasons given elsewhere, it suited a number of agendas to give Dŵr Cymru / Welsh Water a free ride.

Among the agendas served was that of environmental / river groups, in receipt of public funds and, in many cases, seeking to appropriate farmland.

FUTURE GENERATIONS COMMISSIONER LOOKS INTO THE, ER, FUTURE

Now we turn to one of my favourite sites, Nation.Cymru. Though the unkind among you dismiss it as just another ‘Welsh Government’ propaganda outlet.

And after reading ‘We need a new long-term vision for food in Wales‘ I can see why.

This little gem was penned by Derek Walker, the new £95,000 a year Future Generations Commissioner; and just like his predecessor, Sophie Howe, he got the gig not because of any particular talent, but because he’s a trusted Labour insider.

Not only that, but Derek worked for Stonewall. In fact, he helped Stonewall set up in Wales. How much more of an insider can you be?

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

So what did Derek have to say?

High food prices mean one in five people in Wales are hungry, disproportionally affecting more disabled people, Black, Asian and minority ethnic people.”

Mmm. Does that mean Derek thinks it’s OK for able-bodied White people to starve? Is this another example of ‘inclusivity’ that discriminates against the majority?

But let’s give the boy another chance. Carry on, Derek . . .

Agricultural waste pollutes our rivers” Oh dear, that may be the party line, but I was expecting better. But alright, one more chance.

And the boy comes good with: “Farmers are critical to our nation’s health, rural communities and a thriving Welsh language – they helped maintain the food chain through the pandemic, play a leading role in restoring nature and reducing emissions, and should be a vital part of this long-term food plan.”

But it raises the obvious question – if you think our farmers are so important, Derek, why is your government making life so difficult for them?

Finally, we read:

This autumn, I will publish my priorities for my role for the next seven years, and the long-term questions I’m exploring include – how can we involve communities to shift diets to meet the nature and climate emergencies and create green jobs?

What does “shift diets” mean, Derek? Because I suspect it means away from meat. I suspect that because you link it with “the nature and climate emergencies”, which I further suspect alludes to farting cows.

In a country of livestock farming you want people to stop eating meat?

And as for “green jobs” this often means hobby farmers, OPDs, etc., which don’t create many jobs. Or cheap food. It’s also used to describe greenwashing . . . often on land that was previously productive farmland.

All in all, Derek, your piece shows the confused if not contradictory thinking we’ve come to expect from Corruption Bay. Which resulted in it being cliched and vacuous.

DEVELOPMENTS OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE

I’ve had occasion to commend the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW) recently and I am delighted to do so again. On Monday we saw the release of a map compiled by the CPRW showing Developments of National Significance.

Here’s a link to the press release, and here’s a link to the map. Understandably, the map is big, and detailed; so set aside some time to make sense of it. And remember, these are just the projects where planning applications have been submitted.

There are many more in the pipeline, including quite a few of Bute Energy’s 23 known projects.

This was a useful exercise by the CPRW because the ‘Welsh Government’ seems unable or unwilling to produce such a map. But also because it exposes the hypocrisy of those we are dealing with.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

It’s become obvious in recent years, and perhaps especially in Wales, that as the threat of ‘climate crisis’ loses its power to frighten people the message has linked with ‘biodiversity loss’ or ‘habitat loss’. This coupling is clear in all the documents I’ve linked with and organisations I’ve mentioned.

Taken at face value it says there has been a depletion or degradation of the natural habitat, with a resultant loss of species or of numbers within a species. And yet . . .

Those who now trumpet climate crisis and biodiversity / habitat loss refuse to criticise tens of thousands of acres of pristine upland being ruined by wind farms, or fertile lowland by solar arrays. 

For example, the RSPB refuses to acknowledge the problem despite birds being killed by turbines, especially larger birds, often belonging to rare or endangered species.

And there are wider issues. Such as China’s near-monopoly of the rare earth metals needed to produce turbines and solar panels. Transporting materials and finished products vast distances by ship. Finally, the fact that neither wind turbine blades nor solar panels can be recycled.

How environmentally friendly is all that for intermittent and very expensive power!

It’s clear that for environmentalists biodiversity loss is restricted to farmland. Explained, again, by support and funding they receive in order to follow Labour’s anti-farming agenda and thereby grab farmland for themselves.

An agenda the envirogrifters are increasingly dictating!

CONCLUSION

We are lumbered with a bunch of third-rate politicians elected in the main for no better reason than, “My nanna would turn in her grave if I didn’t vote Labour”. Blind loyalty allowing Labour to win with the support of just 20% of the electorate.

Being third-rate they tend to be impressionable. Not only did they buy in early to the Globalists’ Fear = Control agenda but went for broke by implementing legislation to prove that, “Wales can show the world . . . ” . . . how a country can impoverish itself by adopting a Green policy of degrowth.

In the early days, this idiocy came from within the administration, from people like Jane Davidson, Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing from 2007 – 2011, and now chair of Wales Net Zero 2035.

But as word spread others took notice. By 2018 the principal Globalist organisation, the World Economic Forum, was advising envirogrifters to move to Wales!

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But let’s go back to the trees for a minute. The 10% of farmland for trees demand is a condition of ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme, a replacement for EU funding.

Speaking last year, just ahead of the Llanelwedd Show, Mark Drakeford said that subsidies to Welsh farmers must be justified to Bangladeshi taxi drivers in Cardiff.

To suggest that the views of a small immigrant community are more important than the views of thousands of Welsh farmers looks like another example of ‘inclusivity’ at the expense of the indigenous majority.

Ask yourself – would Drakeford suggest consulting Ceredigion farmers if taxi drivers in Cardiff wanted to increase their charges?

Wales, a country being run into the ground by clowns who prioritise feelings above biological reality, preach economic gibberish, practice discriminatory ‘inclusivity’, and have been suckered by a global power grab calling itself “the climate crisis”.

How much more of this are you going to take? How much more can Wales afford?

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

Stonewall And The ‘Welsh Government’

I hadn’t planned on writing this, but I’m on something of a crusade to make people aware of the connections between the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ and pressure groups.

It’s bad enough when these groups have their fantasies legitimised as ‘Welsh Government’ policy, but our children being involved takes it to a different level.

The promised piece on the Globalist threat will now appear next week.

STONEWALL

Stonewall takes its name from the Stonewall riots in New York City’s Greenwich Village, in the summer of 1969; that began with a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar owned by the Genovese crime family.

(It seems there’d been a foul-up in communications between cops and Mob who were normally tipped off if NYPD was about to visit.)

The organisation that resulted from the riots was the Gay Liberation Front, designed to protect the interests of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. But there were a number of similar groups.

Stonewall Inn, NYC. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The 1980s saw the AIDS epidemic which was believed by many in the gay community to have led to in increased hostility towards homosexuals. It was out of such perceptions that Stonewall was founded in 1989.

First, as The Stonewall Lobby Group Ltd, and then, from March 16, 2004, as Stonewall Equality Ltd.

Stonewall grew, gaining in acceptance and respectability, and going almost mainstream as a political lobbying group. Everything was coming up roses.

Until 2015, that is, because when Stonewall “became trans inclusive”, things changed. What had been a LGB organisation became LGBTQ+. To the point where many people – including gays and lesbians – thought Stonewall was obsessed with ‘trans rights’.

As a result of which, many gays and lesbians have disassociated themselves from Stonewall, and formed other groups. Chief among these is perhaps the LGB Alliance.

From gay friends I hear that one reason for them rejecting Stonewall is that gay boys confused about their sexuality (as they were) are pushed towards surgery to turn them into infertile, incontinent, and miserable ‘girls’ prone to thoughts of suicide.

Which makes sense; and speaking as a straight man, butchering confused kids doesn’t strike me as progress in any direction. It sounds more like regression to something that might have been performed at an Aztec religious ceremony.

Another objection was the pretence that men who dressed as women, even rapists, must be regarded as ‘transwomen’.

However we got here, in the past few years Stonewall, once the darling of left-liberals everywhere, has hit a rocky patch.

Its Diversity Champions Programme raised millions of pounds from private companies, charities, government departments and other bodies, desperate to get the Stonewall seal of approval.

But that scheme started failing as people realised that promoting child mutilation and trying to erase women was not that appealing to the public.

There was also a growing suspicion that the year-long Pride month, talk of “minor attracted persons”, and the promotion of drag shows for children, were just means for softening people up to accept paedophilia.

All of which helps explain why the skids are now well and truly under Stonewall.

But despite it all, the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ remains true in its support for what has degenerated into a dangerous organisation.

‘WE’LL KEEP A WELCOME . . . ‘

From the documents available on the Companies House website, the first payment I can find from the then Welsh Assembly Government to Stonewall was in 2003. Though before that, individual donors are not listed.

The accounts for 2003 tell that WAG gave £50,000 for “lesbian and gay equality work”. In addition, Stonewall received £13,371 from Comic Relief for “a media project in Wales”.

Which suggests that Stonewall asked Comic Relief to fund a project specific to Wales. Why would it do that? And does anyone remember what that media project was?

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In recent years, as other funders pulled back from Stonewall, the ‘Welsh Government’ continued to fund this now subversive organisation. Between September 30, 2017 and March 31, 2022 ‘Welsh Government’ and the Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA), controlled by WG, gave Stonewall £728,381.

Below you’ll see Stonewall’s grant funding for the past five years, the funding from Wales highlighted. The purpose for which grants are made is no longer stated, so there may be grants from organisations outside Wales intended for projects within our country.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

So why has the ‘Welsh Government’ given so much more to Stonewall than the Scottish Government? We can see that NHS Scotland contributed separately, but the combined Scottish figure is still less than that for Wales.

The problem of the ‘Welsh Government’s links with Stonewall go beyond money. Because if it was confined to funding for a hands-off organisation then there’d be fewer complaints.

But as we know, Stonewall, especially in Wales, is not hands-off. Stonewall has influence throughout Welsh life; most worryingly, with the education curriculum for our children.

So how did Stonewall achieve its position of influence in Wales? Well, I suppose the answer is, partly due to politicians desperate to be seen as onside with every Guardian issue, and partly due to the ‘easy-going’ attitude towards probity and impartiality found in Corruption Bay.

Here’s a relevant example.

Back in 2021 a few activists pulled together a group calling itself the LGBTQ+ Expert Panel and presented its ‘findings’ to the ‘Welsh Government’.

Here’s the opening paragraph of the ‘report’:

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

These findings were published by the ‘Welsh Government’. Suggesting this was another example of the Corruption Bay Clown Show approaching a pressure group and basically asking: “What would you like us to do for you?”

When we look at the composition of the group we can see how unrepresentative it is. To begin with, membership is confined to those who agree with Stonewall. Then, it’s geographically limited to Cardiff. Finally, there’s the mis-labelling.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I’m referring now to Lu Thomas, who is described as ‘Independent’. Independent of what, or whom? To help you understand Lu Thomas, read this article.

And of course, she’s a Labour insider who, over the years, has landed a number of profitable gigs by, er . . . well, by being a Labour insider. On official documents Lu usually becomes ‘Rebecca Louise Thomas’.

But her Linkedin profile (here in pdf format) reveals none of this. Indeed, from that source it’s difficult to see how she keeps the wolf from the door of her dream home in Penarth.

For five years she was chair of Pride Cymru. Was that a paying job? Then, “Managing Director of Final Say Wales” sounds grand, but what the hell was it? I assume it linked with the ‘Welsh Government’s attempt to overturn the Brexit vote.

But again, was there a salary?

Because there’s nothing using the handle ‘Final Say Wales’ registered with Companies House, the Charity Commission, or the Financial Conduct Authority (for Mutuals).

Next up, Lu Thomas claims to be a director of a company called Re:Cognition. There is indeed such a company, with a turnover last year of £11.5m, but Lu Thomas has nothing to do with it.

She’s referring to a tuppenny-ha’penny outfit run by another Labour hack, Jon Luxton, Re:Cognition Training CIC. But Thomas isn’t a director. Never has been.

Since April she’s been Director of Gypsies and Travellers Wales. Which is intriguing, because I was unaware of her having any Gypsy or Traveller background.

Here’s a stab in the dark.

We know the ‘Welsh Government’ is taking over countless organisations, perhaps an insurance policy to – should the worst happen – make life difficult for an incoming non-Labour administration. I wrote about these takeovers recently in Taking Control, Of Everything.

Is Gypsies and Travellers Wales another takeover? The ‘Welsh Government’ is not currently listed among the organisation’s funders, but I bet that’ll change now that Lu Thomas is on board. Though there’ll be a price to pay.

Can’t you see it: “You must give up the Range Rovers and the £100,000 trailers and go back to the horse-drawn caravan – picturesque and environmentally friendly”.

And ‘trans rights’ should go down a bomb with a socially conservative group.

Then again, there are many Gypsy and Traveller groups, and so I wonder how representative of the community the one Lu Thomas has joined really is.

I’ve got nothing personal against Lu Thomas. I mention her because she represents so much that is wrong with devolution. Without a vote to her name she can access and direct public funding, and influence ‘Welsh Government’ policy.

So to whom is she and the others like her accountable?

UPDATE: I was directed to these Minutes of the LGBT(Q)+ Expert Panel held in January, February and March 2021. These are the Minutes of the meetings that led to the document I linked to earlier.

They make interesting reading in a number of ways. For example, this paragraph seems to confirm our worst fears.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The first meeting is chaired by Alyson Francis of the ‘Welsh Government’s Communities Division’. Lu Thomas is listed, but not representing any organisation.

For the second meeting we read: “Alyson explained that a suggestion had been received for Lu Thomas and Alyson to co-chair the group”. We aren’t told who made the suggestion, or why it was made.

In the third meeting, Lu Thomas welcomes everyone, and seems to be in charge, despite co-chair Alyson Francis also being at the meeting. Lu Thomas appears to have taken over from a WG official, but on what authority?

The other thing that struck me was the absence of any representatives of Glitter Cymru in the three monthly meetings, yet three are listed in the final report as being members of the Expert Panel.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

One of the three, Ourania Vamvaka-Tatsi, attended all the monthly meetings, but representing ‘MEAD Cardiff University‘.

WE’RE COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN

There can be no doubt that Stonewall has a great deal of influence within the ‘Welsh Government’ and its associated agencies. The generous funding Stonewall receives is proof enough of that.

And yet, this is no more than we’ve come to expect in Wales – pressure groups forcing their agendas onto an administration with few ideas of its own and a pathetic desire to comply with the Globalists’ Woke-Green-Left agenda.

And the pressure groups actually get paid for it! Like a comedian’s gag writers.

But over and above the money is the worry about Stonewall’s influence on the education system, and our children. Though it’s strange that those involved with Stonewall and similar organisations are so concerned about children, considering so few of them have children of their own.

(If anybody thinks the previous paragraph is homophobic, or transphobic, or any bloodyphobic, well, “Frankly, my dear . . . “.)

In particular, I’m referring to the new Curriculum for Wales, and especially the Relationships and Sexuality Education Code (RSE). Which is explained as you see below. And it’s wrong on so many counts.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Fundamentally, “the world around us” remains very much the same as it has for millennia. Human males inseminate human females, who have babies, and most children are still brought up by a mother and father within a wider family network.

It’s still the case that women do not have penises, and men can not have babies.

Yet attempts to undermine the nuclear family still come from Stonewall and other pervert-friendly groups that are far too close to the ‘Welsh Government’.

Small wonder that more parents in Wales are choosing to home school their children, as this interview (in Welsh) confirms.

As Catherine says: “They’re my children, not Mark Drakeford’s children, or (education minister) Jeremy Miles’ children”.

She might have added, “And they’re certainly not Stonewall’s children“.

I expect children to be taught the irrefutable: The Earth is round, 2 + 2 = 4, Moscow is the capital of Russia, etc. Beyond that I would want children to be taught critical thinking so they can make up their own minds.

A balanced, “But on the other hand . . . “ approach.

But that’s not happening because there are so many pressure groups demanding input into the education system, and so many brainwashed teachers, that we are producing programmed kids who believe that regurgitating slogans and prejudices is thinking for themselves.

A word that’s always intrigued me is ‘stakeholder’. It’s all the rage, you see and hear it everywhere, but who or what is a stakeholder? How do you become a stakeholder?

I posed that question to a regular contact who directed me to a list of the ‘stakeholders’ involved in the education of Welsh children. And there are some surprising, even worrying, names among them.

Here’s the ‘Welsh Government’s Education Strategic Stakeholder Group. (It doesn’t seem to have been updated since July 2019, so we have to assume it’s still correct.)

The first thing that struck me was the number of trade unions on that list. Ten, by my count. But what input do trade unions need to our education system? Or, to put it another way, how do our children benefit from any such input?

And why so many voices for the ‘Welsh Government’? Are those different departments in competition?

Then I noticed three BAME outfits. Race Council Cymru (BAME Alliance), Race Equality First (BAME Alliance), and EYST. What’s their contribution – “White people are evil“? Because that seems to be all they have to say nowadays.

I would almost bet my house on the fact that ALL the organisations on that list have been won over or coerced into accepting the Globalist Woke-Green-Left agenda. So where is the balance of an alternative interpretation?

And do you know what else I don’t see there – an organisation representing parents. You know, those ultimately responsible for children.

CONCLUSION

The Western world is in a bad place at the moment. For we live in a dictatorship. It might still be a relatively benign dictatorship, but a dictatorship nonetheless.

We went through a Covid lockdown in order to inject us with God knows what. We are allowed to hold only certain views, and if you move beyond this groupthink then you will be deplatformed, blocked on social media, and even lose your job.

This is because we have very rich and powerful individuals seeking to control what we eat, what’s injected into us, where we live, who lives among us, how far we can travel, and of course, what we think.

For as Nigel Farage found out, thoughtcrime can leave you without a bank account.

“We’ll provide the crises – and the solutions!”, says Klaus Schwab.

Click to open enlarge in separate tab

To further their ambitions the oligarchs have on their side people who pretend to believe or – God help them! – may genuinely believe that anyone opposing The Agenda must be far right or fascist, racist, transphobe, climate denier, etc, etc.

We seem to have reached a point of maximum lunacy. Biology can be denied. History can be re-written. Climate records can be changed.

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

The problem for the Globalists is that they regularly come into contact with reality – and lose. Though the loss can usually be covered up by their apologists, especially those in their bought media.

Nowhere is the lie more obvious just now than with ‘refugees’. I’m referring to the thousands of young men, many of Muslim and African backgrounds, who land in Europe every day.

Everyone knows they are not genuine refugees, even those defending them. So we have to deal in euphemisms; ‘migrant’ being the current favourite. But we are still asked to believe that they are fleeing war or persecution or natural disaster.

Which is why recent events at the Stradey Park Hotel in Llanelli have been so fascinating, and revelatory.

To cut a long story short . . . the UK Home Office, working with the hotel’s owners, decided to move 300 undocumented ‘migrants’ into the four star Stradey Park Hotel.

The locals decided they didn’t want it to happen, and so they protested, and blocked the entrance. There has been a stand-off for a few weeks, and at the time of writing, no ‘migrants’ have arrived.

These locals are now far right, fascists, racists, etc.

Image Richard Tice. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And yet, who are the real extremists?

Is it decent, hard-working, law-abiding Welsh people defending their community, or is it left wing fanatics driven by a corrupt ideology who don’t give a damn about Llanelli and have been bused in from as far away as Bristol?

The answer seems obvious to me.

The bigger message should also be clear. If you want to save your kids from Stonewall, if you want to protect your communities from unvetted ‘migrants’, if you want to retain your freedom of thought and movement – stop voting for socialists.

Because when it gave up on the White working class the left transferred its allegiance to the Globalists and their pressure groups. You only have to look at the state of Wales today, and where the money goes, to realise that.

A ‘Welsh Government’ that can’t find money to feed the poorest kids can still find money for those who’d like to expose themselves to those children.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This is twenty-first century ‘socialism’. It offers nothing. Wake up! before it’s too late.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

Wales, Where Democracy Came To Die

If the title strikes you as over-stated, just hold your judgement until you’ve read what I have to say. And if you still disagree with me, then you can claim your refund from the Reimbursements Unit of the Finance Department at Jac Towers.

Seeing as last week’s offering was a little long, at over 3,000 words (and there were complaints!), I’ll try to make up for my previous verbosity with this shorter piece.

TON UP LABOUR

Last year Labour celebrated a century of being the political party sending the most MPs from Wales to Westminster.

Since the advent of devolved government in 1999 it’s been a similar picture in the Senedd (formerly Assembly), with Labour always the largest party.

According to Professor Richard Wyn Jones of Cardiff University this makes Labour in Wales “the most successful party in the democratic world”. But he can only be right if ‘success’ is judged solely on electoral victories.

Because if we gauge success by making life better for people, or by improving a country, then it’s a different story.

Because since we’ve had devolution Wales has fallen behind the other countries of the UK in economic performance and in education; our health service is falling apart, and our standing-room-only, no refreshments, blocked toilets trains would shame a third world country.

On top of which, money is diverted to lunatic schemes while essential services suffer.

At the most recent elections, in May 2021, Labour won 30 of the 60 Senedd seats, all of them in the south and the north east, with 39.9% of the vote, an increase of 5.2% points on 2016.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But that was from a turnout of just 46.6% (which was still an increase of 1.2% on 2021.) In 2003 the turnout went as low as 38.2%, and in 2011 it was just 42.2%

Which means that in the 2021 Senedd elections Labour gained the support 18.6% of those eligible to vote. But thanks to an electoral system favouring the largest party Labour took half the seats, and further strengthened its grip through an alliance with Plaid Cymru, a party that has become almost a Labour subsidiary.

A control that Labour now intends to make permanent. Partly through taking over national institutions and other bodies, partly through introducing a new electoral system that will favour Labour even more.

More on the first tactic in the next section, more on the vote rigging later.

TENTACLES

Over the years I’ve explained how Labour holds onto power through the use of lobbyists, a tame media, opposition parties incapable of mounting effective opposition, crony-run third sector organisations and other bodies the ‘Welsh Government’ funds to tell it what it wants to hear.

Recently, I published ‘Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups‘ (12.06.2023) in which I gave examples of the influence exerted over our tribunes by outfits like Extinction Rebellion, 20’s Plenty for Us, WWF, Friends of the Earth and Sustrans.

The advantage of this relationship for the ‘Welsh Government’ is that it can quote these organisations as “experts“, in order to push on with plans and projects that had already been mutually agreed.

These groups are international in nature, or just English. But they send somebody down to Cardiff, rent a cupboard, stick ‘Cymru’ in the name, and pretend to be Welsh – with our best interests at heart!

I followed up that piece on pressure groups with ‘Taking Control, Of Everything‘ (19.06.2023) where I outlined my observations that the ‘Welsh Government’ also seems to be taking over a number of national institutions and other bodies.

Referring to recent events at the Welsh Rugby Union I wrote:

After creating what was reported by a loyal media as “turmoil” in our sporting bodies the ‘Welsh Government’, with the help of certain individuals ‘on the inside’, was able to engineer a situation that saw people parachuted in who are dependent on ‘Welsh Government’ patronage.

If I had to link the two pieces I would say that this is straight out of the World Economic Forum playbook. The WEF invents or exacerbates problems in order to capitalise on them and offer solutions; then, through this deception, exercise control.

The big WEF threat of recent decades has of course been climate hysteria which, because it’s global, can be used in attempts to control human behaviour around the world. Of course, there is no climate crisis. But it serves its purpose.

When you realise that the WEF grew out of the Club of Rome then this section from a 1991 CoR publication, ‘The First Global Revolution‘, makes perfect sense.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Other than partnerships with pressure groups and taking over national bodies the ‘Welsh Government’ tries to extend its reach and enhance its credibility in other ways, too many to list here.

We’ve seen how the ‘Welsh Government’ pretends it’s been ‘advised by pressure groups and other bodies it’s in cahoots with, but this deception extends to bodies it has itself created, such as the Welsh Youth Parliament.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against listening to kids, I’ve got teenage grandchildren. But how much weight are we supposed to give to the views of children with no experience of life, who’ve been brainwashed by an education system influenced nowadays by people some of whom are unsavoury and some of whom are positively dangerous?

Again, it’s a case of, “I’m listening . . . but only if you tell me what I want to hear”.

The most recent example of controlling the narrative was the announcement that the ‘Welsh Government’ will fund a journalist to cover proceedings in the Senedd. This reporter will of course be totally independent.

Are we really expected to believe that?

Click to open in separate tab

It’s as if those who inhabit the Bay bubble have become so self-engrossed, and so dismissive of opinions outside their little world, that they’ve lost all sense of reality.

FIXING THE ODDS

Since the inception of devolution in 1999 we’ve heard politicians say that with just 60 members the Assembly / Senedd is too small to do its job properly. An argument not without merit.

These voices have got louder as Corruption Bay gained more powers, which admittedly makes the case stronger for having more members.

Things are now coming to a head.

Before I start explaining this, let me say that I can only hope I’ve got all the details right, because the subject is not easy to follow on the ‘Welsh Government’ website, and I don’t think the media has given it the attention it deserves.

I’m referring to the plan to increase the number of Senedd Members, but more importantly, the way it’s proposed this should be done.

Let’s start May 10 last year, with the announcement that first minister Mark Drakeford and Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price had agreed on major changes. These were . . .

The Senedd should have 96 members. Elected from 16 constituencies, these achieved by ‘pairing’ the 32 new Westminster seats; with each one electing 6 MSs by the “closed proportional lists” system. These changes should in place for the 2026 Senedd elections.

The 32 new Westminster constituencies that it’s proposed to ‘pair’ for the 2026 Senedd elections. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This may have been agreed by Drakeford and Price, but few others were in favour.

For example, even before publication of the report by the Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform the body had lost one member in Tory Robin Millar, who’d resigned. As you’ll read, he wasn’t the only one unhappy with what Labour and Plaid had come up with.

The report itself concedes (page 37 [86]) . . .

The Expert Panel previously noted that higher district magnitudes create greater potential for proportionality, and that if constituencies become too big, it can result in ‘hyperproportionality.’35 Hyperproportionality describes the circumstance whereby a party that gained a very low level of public support nevertheless secures seats in the legislature- and thereby the legitimacy of elected platform

But these misgivings were dismissed. Of course they were!

The Electoral Reform Society commented:

While there are positive elements of this deal, there are also those that require further thought . . . concerns remain about the use of closed lists due to the lack of choice voters will have. This system was rejected by the Expert Panel on Assembly Electoral Reform who said it left “No choice for voters between individual candidates” and “No accountability for individual Members directly to voters”.

The decision to use the D’Hondt method of allocating votes also threatens the proportionality of this new system, by creating a high bar for smaller parties to reach to ensure representation and see members elected. The use of D’Hondt is likely to make the end result only as proportional or even slightly less than the current system.

And, finally, Professor Laura McAllister, who is co-chair of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, and previously chaired the Assembly Expert Panel on Electoral Reform, referred to above.

Her piece on The Constitution Unit Blog was headlined: ‘Wales needs a larger Senedd, but a closed list system is not the best way to achieve it‘.

The concerns are over the “closed proportional lists“, which are not proportional. In each of the 16 mega-constituencies voters will be offered a list of six candidates for each party. You will vote for the party, and get all six candidates.

The Electoral Reform Society warned that the proposed system is, “likely to make the end result only as proportional or even slightly less than the current system”. What this means in practice is that Labour could win a majority of the seats with an even smaller percentage of the vote than it achieved in the 2021 Senedd elections.

A combination of clever pairing coupled with the loss of regional seats could see the Conservatives almost wiped out.

Let’s call it what it is – it’s a stitch-up. I can understand Labour doing it, because this is how Labour has always operated; but Plaid Cymru have done themselves serious damage by going along with this corruption.

I’m dealing with it now because the Senedd is scheduled to vote on the proposals some time between now and September.

UPDATE 08.07.2023: This may be more complicated than I thought. But still designed to benefit Labour. A comment suggests that the six seats can be divided between different parties. Which means that a party winning 50% of the vote would get 3 seats. But what it also means is that there is a 16.6% threshold before a party can win a single seat. Which will of course rule out smaller parties.

UPDATE 09.07.2023: A further comment tells us there is to be an element of proportionality in the proposed system, “Within the super constituency, whichever party tops the poll gets the first seat, their vote then halved and whichever party is then top gets the second etc etc until all six are allocated”.

I begin to understand why we’ve had so little discussion – there may be few people who understand what’s being proposed. (I’m certainly sorry I started down this road.)

CONCLUSION

Devolution was sold to us as “bringing democracy closer to the people of Wales“. And indeed it could have done exactly that. But the Labour party in Wales is not very good at democracy; it never has been.

Labour in Wales has always been about power, patronage, and corruption. And because Labour has controlled devolved politics since 1999 not only have we seen our economy decline, our educational standards drop, and our NHS collapse, we’ve also seen a gradual erosion of democracy and accountability.

Despite what you’ve read some might still think I’m over-egging it by linking the World Economic Form with the Labour party, Extinction Rebellion and the rest, but hear me out.

What we see increasingly in Wales, at every level, and also across the globe, is the implementation of agendas without a democratic mandate or, in most cases, even public consultation.

After decades of grooming and influencing political leaders from across the Western world the WEF may be the most influential body on Earth. But do you remember ever voting for Klaus Schwab and the rest?

Similarly with the World Heath Organisation, an unelected body that has taken on itself the power to impose lock-downs and travel restrictions on individual countries, or the entire world. And this can be done for political as much as health reasons.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The ‘Welsh Government’ has an unconvincing mandate at the moment, but it wants to introduce an electoral system that is clearly intended to give the Labour party more power with even less support.

And then we complete the circle with the Green-Woke-Left pressure groups, most of them now funded by leading players at the WEF to ensure administrations follow the WEF agenda.

Where do you figure in all this? Where and when are your views asked for?

For Wales to be a prosperous, healthy country, and progressive in the true sense of the word, the people must have faith in those running the country, and the processes that put them in power, while also believing that the interests of Wales are being served, not those of swivel-eyed strangers imposing their damaging agendas.

That dream can never be realised as long as Labour uses a corrupt electoral system and other tactics to pursue what begins to look like a form of totalitarian control.

♦ end ♦

Bute Energy, Update, 30.06.2023

This piece has been off / on for a while, due to other matters cropping up to grab my attention. But in the end, it worked out, because new information is emerging all the time.

To avoid going over too much old ground I shall devote most of this piece to what’s new. Those wanting more information on what’s gone before can type ‘Bute Energy’ in the search box atop the sidebar.

The whole article, including quoted passages, is roughly 3,000 words, so rather than gulp it down in one you can take it a piece at a time. You know it makes sense!

BUTE ENERGY, A SHORT RÉSUMÉ

In recent years I’ve written a lot about Bute Energy and the various companies under that umbrella. This ever-expanding empire began life in London, at 20 Primrose Street, otherwise known as the Broadgate Tower in the City.

Then it used an address in Edinburgh’s New Town (above Gant), probably because the principals, Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George and Lawson Douglas Steele, seem to be Scottish, or resident in Scotland.

But over the past year we’ve seen use made of an address at Hodge House in Cardiff. This being a desperate but unconvincing attempt to suggest that Bute is a Welsh company.

Pass the bara brith, Blodwen, indeed to goodness, look you!”

This change of address simply means that the invitations to meet ‘Russian brides’, the 50p off! at Tesco vouchers, and the Vote for Dai Scroggins election leaflets get delivered to Sir Julian’s old gaff.

And let’s not forget the overseas investment, for Bute is in partnership with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The name says ‘Copenhagen’, but the money could be coming from anywhere.

Bute Energy, through a host of companies, many carrying the name of a specific project – such as Bryn Glas Energy Park Ltd – wants to build ‘Energy Parks’ the length of Wales; twenty-three at the latest count. These locations may also include solar arrays, and even hydrogen whatsits.

The map below is my best guess of where these wind farms are. I may have mis-located one or two.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Opposition has been mounting for some time to Bute’s grand designs, but resistance has tended to be localised, confined to areas immediately affected by one of the few projects for which Bute has revealed its plans.

But most of the sites remain little more than Companies House entries offering the bare minimum of information.

Resistance increased a while ago when news broke that Bute wanted to bring power from its ‘Nant Mithil’ (Radnor Forest) site along 60 miles of pylons to link up with the grid running east from Pembroke power station.

If we accept the route map produced by Bute, then the connection with the grid is to be made somewhere south of Carmarthen town.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Though when asked exactly where the connection is to be made, at a ‘Have Your Say’ meeting in the RWS showground, Llanelwedd, Bute head honcho, Millican, was unable to answer.

So let’s see if I can fill in any gaps.

What follows will be in some kind of chronological order; which means I’ve tried to present the fresh evidence in the order it became known to me.

LAND USE CONSULTANTS AND OTHERS

This first item takes us back a couple of years, but it seems to have been overlooked. It cropped up in this tweet from April 2021. (The link is broken.)

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Land Use Consultants was formed by Edward Max Nicholson in 1966. Five years earlier, with Sir Peter Scott and others, he set up the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). I guess LUC has been recruited in another attempt to burnish Bute’s environmental credentials.

Bute and LUC were together at the ‘inception meeting’ last December with ‘Welsh Government’s Planning & Environmental Decisions outfit to discuss the ‘Nant Mithil Grid Connection Project‘ (page 6).

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Intriguingly, LUC has been involved with the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ since at least 2010. As shown by this report, Research: Planning Implications of Renewable and Low Carbon Energy.

Though for other projects Bute seems to employ different planning consultants. For the Nant Mithil site itself it’s David Bell Planning, of Edinburgh; for Llyn Lort it seems to be Carney Sweeney, of Birmingham; and for Rhiwlas it’s RSK, of Cheshire.

LUC also seems to be picking up other work in Wales. I know it’s working with Natural Resources Wales on the Dark Skies project.

Which makes perfect sense. Because with the Corruption Bay Clown Show determined to switch to Unreliables it won’t be long before we shan’t need to travel to darkest Powys to escape ‘light pollution’.

TWO NEW ‘ENERGY PARKS’

Orddu is one of the new sites. As you can see on the map above, the nearest town is Bala. To be more precise, Orddu is north east of Bala and sits above the smallholding of Cwm-cywen in Cwm Main, where my father-in-law was born and raised.

A company has been formed with the usual three directors. Here’s the Companies House entry.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The other new energy park, Moel Chwa, is across the A5 and just to the east of another Bute site at Mwdwl-eithin. At the time of writing there is no company bearing the Moel Chwa name, but there is a website mention.

Moel Chwa seems to be very close to an earlier project by Clean Earth Energy Ltd called Nant Bach. Are they related?

The Companies House entry for Nant Bach Turbine Ltd suggests Clean Earth erected just a single turbine. Which the filed accounts value at £2,273,106, giving some idea of the kind of money we’re talking about.

GRIDS & NETWORKS

As I mentioned, opposition to Bute’s ambitions got a boost with news of the plan for 60 miles of pylons from Nant Mithill (Radnor Forest) to the west-east grid connection near Carmarthen.

This has been linked with Bute’s Green Generation Energy Networks Cymru Ltd.

It’s also being suggested that, in a belated attempt to make up for the past two decades in which they encouraged foreign companies – many government owned – to exploit Wales with no local returns, ‘Welsh’ Labour is now pretending it can create something like a Welsh national grid.

The announcement I just linked to came a few days after the Commons’ Welsh Affairs Committee produced ‘Grid capacity in Wales’.

And while neither document mentioned Bute Energy, many observers believe that Bute Energy is heavily involved. Some believe Bute will build Julie James’ ‘Welsh grid’.

For naked corruption would be the only other interpretation for the very close, and financially lucrative, links between Bute and a number of ‘Welsh’ Labour insiders.

From the Green Gen Cymru Network video. “Endless potential” is quite chilling. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But then, confusion abounds on the subject of networks, with Julie James, Minister for Climate Change, as confused as anyone, according to a knowledgeable contact. For this source suggests she doesn’t understand there are two different types of grid.

My source explains the difference here.

We know that Bute wants new pylons from the Radnor Forest to somewhere in the vicinity of Carmarthen, and to then take that power to Usk and over the border. This it calls “Phase 1“.

It’s suggested Phase 2 (and another line of pylons?) will start somewhere near Eisteddfa Gurig, close to the A44, inland of Aberystwyth, and run to (and here I quote my source) “Chirk Grid Supply Point’ (as yet unbuilt)“.

Although Phase 2 is still a bit hazy, there would appear to be confirmation out there. According to the documents reproduced below, Bute projects in west central and northern Wales will run to the as yet unbuilt Chirk GSP.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

References to ‘Chirk’ obviously cause confusion because Chirk GSP doesn’t exist. But what does exist is not far away at Lower Frankton. The problem here being that Lower Frankton is in Shropshire.

On this OS map the border is in purple, it shows Chirk as just about the nearest point, in Wales, to Lower Frankton. So is Lower Frankton being called Chirk to pretend it’s in Wales, and therefore boost Wales’ Net Zero credentials?

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Further evidence of grid ambitions came a few weeks back with the Infrastructure (Wales) Bill. You’ll see it talks of making it easier for the James Gang to give consent for “overhead electric lines”.

There are also links with Ireland. One comes up near Bodelwyddan, inland of Abergele. Then there’s the Greenlink Interconnector, ensuring that “Excess power can be shared between Ireland and the UK”.

Finally, let’s look at a link from Scotland. Nation.Cymru reported this last November, and parroted the National Grid’s press handout about it being to “upgrade Wales’ electricity network and take advantage of offshore power“.

In fact, and to get technical, I hear work has started on the Bangor (Pentir) to Swansea (North) 400kv double-circuit pylon line.

Let Uncle Jac explain this one . . .

England needs more electricity . . . but not the turbines and the pylons. So the turbines are in Scotland, the cables carrying the electricity run under the Irish Sea, come ashore near Bangor, go overland to Swansea, where they join the west-east line from Pembroke, and then on to England.

As my well-informed source put it, “The two grid connections out of south Wales into England currently have no constraints so it appears as if Wales is being used as a ‘transmission corridor’ from Scotland to England”.

NEWS FROM SCOTLAND

A couple of weeks ago I had an e-mail from Glasgow. As you know, I get lots of e-mails, but this is worth mentioning because it suggests that this source is keeping an eye on Bute’s operations in Scotland.

Before I tell you what it says, I’d better identify some of those mentioned.

Erik Bonino was an oil executive who joined Bute in July 2020 but left early this year due to alleged naughtiness by Bute in Senghenydd. Or that’s how I heard it.

The story made it into Llais y Sais, where Shippo covered it.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

David James Taylor was spad to Rhodri Morgan, Peter Hain and Carwyn Jones. He has profited greatly from being Bute’s entry to ‘Welsh Government’.

You’ll see that the source suggests Taylor has been replaced by the fragrant Sophie Howe, the former Future Generations Commissioner. This would fit well with her new job with Lynn. (Until May last year, ‘Lynn PR Ltd’.)

Sophie Howe has landed on her feet, again, due to her manifest and dazzling talents. Her raking it in, again, is completely unconnected with knowing everybody worth knowing in ‘Welsh Government’, ‘Welsh’ Labour, and civil service.

Happy to clear that up.

By “Reece Emmett” I think my source means Reece Emmitt. (Here in pdf format.) Though I can’t see any obvious connection with the Labour party. But after 5 years in Cardiff University that can be almost guaranteed.

There have been big divisions in Bute management. Chairman Erik Bonino lost a power struggle with Oliver Millican, the majority shareholder, now Bonino and his allies have been cleared out.

Team Millican: Stuart George, Lawson Steele, Gareth Williams.

Team Bonino: Mark Vyvyan Robinson, Gemma Hamilton, David Taylor.

Bonino was known to be nervous and raised concerns about unethical practices regarding securing land and some of the heavy legal agreements and gagging orders Bute were trying to impose on landowners and residents. He was concerned only about his own image and reputation though not about the welfare of the landowners and communities. He was also nervous about all the bad publicity Bute were getting generally and how it was impacting on him.

Bonino recruited Mark Vyvyan Robinson from EDF (where he had been for 20 years) as CEO but he left shortly after a few months. Gemma Hamilton (development director) David Taylor (comms director) were both in same camp and left soon after along with Bonino. and some junior staff.

Millican made himself chairman and installed his sidekick Stuart George as Managing Director. Both are woefully inexperienced and the whole operation is now considered a joke in the industry.

They brought in Derek Hastings from SSE to replace Gemma Hamilton. They basically are paying people 3x what they get elsewhere which is how they recruit people.

They are throwing money around and recently brought in two people to replace DT: Sophie Howe as an “adviser” to help with Welsh govt / Labour link. And Aled Rowlands a former aide to Nick Bourne to try and sort the Tories. Obviously that is failing badly cos the Welsh Tories hate Bourne.

Also Reece Emmett ex Welsh Labour apparatchik is in the comms team.

ANTZ CYMRU

I suppose we’d better start this section with the ANTZ Cymru website’s announcement of the link-up with Bute Energy. Which prompts a few comments.

First, there is no entity called ANTZ Cymru, it’s a flag of convenience for ANTZ UK Ltd of Manchester. Realising there’s money to be made in Wales ANTZ is another company that has adopted a faux Welsh identity.

A good source in Powys, sees parallels between ANTZ and something called the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT). Which says of itself, “We are the original Nudge Unit”. BIT is an international outfit with its UK office in Manchester.

Here’s a BIT website page to which I was directed called ‘How to build a Net Zero society’. I was also nudged (geddit!) in the direction of, ‘A Manifesto for Applying Behavioral (sic) Science’.

And then, from 2010, we have ‘Mindspace‘, focusing on “influencing behaviour“.

This all begins to sound like getting people to think the way you want them to think. To accept that black is white. Dare we say – brainwashing?

Will we see people stumbling out of village halls repeating, “Wind turbines are nice . . . I love pylons . . . Mark Drakeford is the most gifted and accomplished politician of his era”.

An exaggeration, I confess, but we are talking of mind games here. Getting people to think a certain way, and then there’s the careful use of language. Here’s a couple of gems from the page announcing the partnership.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

We read: “ANTZ Cymru is developing a bespoke person-centred, Social Value monitoring system on behalf of Bute Energy that tracks the individual.”

Tracks the individual! What the hell does that mean?

Then there’s this, “The renewable energy team at Bute Energy is planning to deliver a family of wind and solar farms across Wales”. A family!

“Oh look, children – there’s Daddy wind turbine, and there’s Mammy wind turbine, and all the little – 820ft! – baby wind turbines”.

Did you ever read such bollocks?

How much is Bute paying ANTZ? To judge by what my Scottish contact told us, it’s probably well over the odds.

CPRW COMPLAINT

As I’ve explained, Bute goes to great lengths in attempts to prove it’s a Welsh company serving Wales. As I hope I’ve made clear, what Bute and others are actually doing is exploiting the complicity of the Corruption Bay buffoons to turn Wales into a vast open-air power station for England.

If the wind farms planned and mooted ever get built, then Wales, apart from national parks and built-up areas, will be covered in turbines and pylons. All happening in a country that already produces more electricity than she needs!

I was encouraged therefore to read that the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW) has reported Bute to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making misleading claims.

Point 1 of the complaint (below) sums it up. Electricity produced in Wales goes into the UK national grid and thence to wherever it’s needed. Bute therefore cannot promise to supply Welsh homes with green energy.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Well done, Ross Evans and CPRW. And the very best of luck.

CONCLUSION: THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER

What you’ve read might make you despair, but that’s because you’ve been reading about Wales. Elsewhere, things seem to be looking up.

But perhaps not in Germany. Or not yet.

Though Siemens has taken a hit recently due to component problems in Siemens Gamesa wind turbines. But many believe the problems are more widespread. Not least because the components used by Gamesa are used by other manufacturers.

More on Siemens, linking with Bute Energy. And on ‘Creaky Wind Turbines’.

In fact, the German economy is in trouble. Over-reliance on Russian gas – which NATO sabotaged – closing its last three nuclear power plants, and going hell-for-leather on ‘Renewables’ hasn’t helped.

But the Germans aren’t stupid. They’ll soon realise their mistake.

Which is what appears to have happened in Sweden, where the news is much more encouraging. The government there has turned its back on the unattainable goal of 100% renewable energy. What will Greta say!

While next door, in Norway, we read . . .

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The fact is that Western governments, under pressure from the public and the dictates of common sense, are starting to reject the Globalists’ degrowth agenda and their stooges’ insistence on Net Zero.

Yet as some countries wake up to the cost of Net Zero others continue to sleepwalk towards disaster. Unfortunately, we live in one. And it has consequences.

Just before last Christmas Tata put out a press release saying it would ‘pause’ operations at its Port Talbot steel plant, the largest in Europe, and its tinplate operation at Trostre, in Llanelli, “to reduce strain on grid”.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

As we are forced to depend more and more on Unreliables the electricity supply will become more erratic; and that means jobs paying good wages, like the thousands at Margam and Trostre, will be lost.

An absurd price to pay for the unattainable goal of 100% of electricity from ‘renewables’ – in order to fight a ‘climate crisis’ that’s not happening! The only beneficiaries are the governments, corporations, and investors owning the wind turbines on our soil.

And so every wind farm and pylon run should be treated as another Tryweryn. For they mean Cymru being exploited to satisfy the greed of strangers. And to keep the lights on in England.

♦ end ♦

Taking Control, Of Everything

I hadn’t planned on writing this, but thinking about what’s happening to our major sporting bodies left me little alternative. It’s dressed up as reorganisation, or combatting sexism, misogyny, and other evils, but I believe these are a smokescreen for the true motivations.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the promised piece on Bute Energy. That will still come out early next week.

FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION OF WALES

Let’s start with an announcement made last Monday, June 11. You can see a clip below, and here’s a link to the article that appeared on the Football Association of Wales (FAW) website.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

My first thought – betraying the parochial side to my otherwise angelic nature – was, “I don’t remember any of them playing for the Swans“. I immediately slapped myself on the wrist and went on to read the article.

So who are these Independent Non-executive Directors of the FAW?

Chair Alys Carlton, on the left in the image above, was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, Edinburgh University (French, Italian), and Nottingham Trent (Law).

She is clearly a ‘Welsh Government’ insider because nobody who wasn’t well-regarded in the Swamp would be ‘Vice Chair of Welsh Government’s Expert Panel on Supporting Entrepreneurial Women’. Nor would they be, ‘First Tier Judge – Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales’.

Before branching out on her own, with Alys Carlton Consulting Ltd, in April 202o, Alys worked for Capital Law, one of the ‘Welsh Government’s favourite law firms, an outfit that sees a great deal of our money.

And I’m sure Capital Law has written to Old Jac after someone went running to them. “Tell him to stop being nasty!

Here’s Alys Carlton’s Linkedin page. (Here in pdf format.)

Alys Siân Carlton is the daughter of the late Keith James.

Next up is Sameer Rahman Syed, centre in the  above image. Here’s his Linkedin info. (Here in pdf format.)

This guy would also appear to be well-connected with the movers and shakers in that city some 40-odd miles east of Swansea. I suggest that because he is also a non-executive director of the Millennium Stadium and Glamorgan County Cricket Club. The latter being the reason Wales has no national cricket team.

And after a career in ‘Data’ he too went solo, in April 2021, with Datamonet Ltd. Things seem to be going splendidly, with our boy as CEO and, er, sole employee.

The third member of this troika is Dr Carol Bell. (No ding-dong jokes!) Though in her case, she was re-‘elected’.

A coalminer’s grand-daughter from Felindre, north Swansea, she made important contacts at Cambridge which may have helped her land a job with Rio Tinto on graduating.

A former investment banker in the energy field, now turned archaeologist, and another Welsh speaker. Here’s her Linkedin page (Here in pdf format.)

Dr Bell is as well connected in Corruption Bay as the other two, and perhaps well beyond the Bay. We see Millennium Stadium in her trophy cabinet too, along with a few intriguing appointments. Such as non-executive director at the Development Bank of Wales.

But what really caught my eye was Dr Bell being a director at BlackRock Commodities Income Investment Trust plc. Blackrock has been mentioned a few times on this blog; for its CEO, Larry Fink, is a leading Globalist, and big buddies with Bill Gates and Claus Schwab.

WELSH RUGBY UNION

We begin this section with a piece from last Friday’s Llais y Sais. As you can see below, it deals with two appointments to the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU).

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Richard Collier-Keywood is described as the WRU’s “first independent chair“. Which I take to mean that he was not elected by the Union’s member clubs, as has been done in the past.

The piece also tells us that these are “appointments“, but not who made them. Which is odd. And the WRU website makes it clear that Collier-Keywood is to take over from current chair, Ieuan Evans. So can we assume that the appointments have been made by the WRU Board?

Now, we all know who Ieuan Evans is, he’s one of our all-time great players, but most of you will be wondering, “Who the hell is Richard Collier-Keywood, and where by do he come from?”.

I can tell you it’s not from round by ‘ere. Though both sources are keen to tell us that his mother had some connection to Maesteg and he may have enjoyed an ice cream or two in Porthcawl.

I’ll have more for you on Richard Collier-Keywood later.

Alison Thorne is another interesting appointment. Her Linkedin page will fill in more details. (Here in pdf format.) I draw particular attention to the most recent of her appointments, which you can see below.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Beyond any question of a doubt we are dealing with another denizen of the Swamp. A charming lady, no doubt, but as great-aunt Fastidia would say, in her characteristically earthy way: “Shit in the same latrine and you’ll share the smell“.

She even works for the ‘Welsh Government’ on public appointments!

And wearing a different hat, she’s the chair of the National Dance Company of Wales. Which – and I kid you not! – seeks “to deliver social change through dance“. Another way of saying, ‘Straight White men need not apply’.

Finally, she is the chair of trustees at housing association Barcud. This is interesting because, in theory, housing associations are now private companies. But a control-freak administration such as we see in Corruption Bay won’t give up control of anything.

A firm grip maintained by social housing bodies either having outstanding loans, or taking out fresh loans, or acquiring land from, the ‘Welsh Government’.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

If I tell you that former first minister Carwyn Jones was considered for the WRU chair job it should help you understand where we’re heading.

Maybe someone decided that giving Jones the job would have been too obviously political. Though on the plus side, he is Welsh, and knows something about rugby.

Instead, Richard Collier-Keywood was appointed. And it’s an odd appointment. As was suggested to me by someone who was in university with him.

My source told me the WRU’s new chair was a good tennis player in his younger days, with an interest in other racquet sports. But no interest in rugby; and Collier-Keywood never mentioned Wales, despite knowing that my source is 100% Welsh.

Strange that, for a man with a Welsh mam.

Let’s be clear. These are political appointments.

After creating what was reported by a loyal media as “turmoil” in our sporting bodies the ‘Welsh Government’, with the help of certain individuals ‘on the inside’, was able to engineer a situation that saw people parachuted in who are dependent on ‘Welsh Government’ patronage.

Which is quite an achievement, considering that both the Football Association of Wales and The Welsh Rugby Union are not public bodies but private companies.

In the case of the WRU influence can be exerted because there are two outstanding loans on the Millennium Stadium (October 2020 and March 2022) with “The Welsh Ministers of the Welsh Government“. So it can be claimed that the appointees are simply there to safeguard the public interest.

This is the model alluded to earlier with housing associations. “We lend you money and to safeguard our investment we’ll have a big say in the running of your organisation“. Tony Soprano would immediately understand that model.

But is it ethical to use public assets to exercise political control, and promote a political agenda lacking public support?

It’s less clear how Corruption Bay got its claws into the Welsh FA.

But the important point is that both the Football Association of Wales and The Welsh Rugby Union are very high profile organisations. Many Welsh people can be influenced by them. Controlling them therefore becomes politically desirable.

Not least because either or both might go ‘off-message’. With fans supporting the national football team singing Yma o Hyd some people were getting worried.

Talking of using our sporting associations to influence public opinion, I wonder what Billy Meredith or John Charles would have made of what you see below, from last Saturday’s Pride parade in Cardiff?

The tweet was put out by Jason Webber, who is – and you’d never have guessed! – ‘Senior Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Integrity Manager at the Football Association of Wales’. If he’s the senior manager, then there must be lesser mortals doing similar work.

Yeah, that’ll help us qualify for Euros and World Cups.

My worry is that, “Football is for everyone” means that full-grown men pretending to be women will be allowed to play with and against young girls. And of course, they must also be allowed to share facilities.

Because on matters like this the ‘Welsh Government’ takes orders from Stonewall.

What we see at the WRU and FAW are not isolated examples of political interference. For I’ve detected a growing trend of such ‘appointments’. One I wrote about earlier this year involved the then Brecon Beacons National Park Authority (BBNPA).

These appointments were justified as being done to promote inclusivity and diversity. Woman of colour, disabled man . . .

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

We then had a contrived and very public debate over the change of name to Bannau Brycheiniog.  Which served to draw attention away from the fact that what had really changed was that Labour had now taken full control of the BBNPA.

So, on one level, these manoeuvrings increase the ‘Welsh Government’s control over public and other bodies. And then, given what I explained in my previous blog piece, it also gives easier access to pressure groups, whose diktats the clown show in the Bay will dress up as its own policies.

But there’s also a third element that becomes obvious the more we look at these appointments.

THOSE WHO WOULD BE KINGS

The rash of appointments being made in Wales obviously extends the influence of the ‘Welsh Government’, for the Swamp is the immediate and obvious beneficiary; and then there are the pressure groups, but it doesn’t end there.

The appointments are also being made in order to implement ESG. And if those letters mean nothing to you, let me explain that they stand for Environmental and Social Governance.

Companies, charities and other bodies are expected to sign up to ESG and, by so doing, follow the Globalist agenda. Here’s how the World Economic Forum (WEF) explains it.

Who could object to such desirable ambitions? Er, me. The awkward bugger at the back.

Because as with so much else produced by the WEF, you have to poke around behind the words to see what they really mean. Read the panel below, from the WEF website I’ve just linked to, and then I’ll explain it.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

. . . social justice protests have drawn attention to gaps in diversity, equity, and inclusion; and the impacts of climate change and the importance of environmental sustainability are becoming harder, if not impossible, to ignore.

Social justice protests” is a euphemism for the riots that caused death and destruction in so many US cities following the death of George Floyd during a botched police arrest.

And then we get “climate change” and and “environmental sustainability“, straight out of the climate alarmists’ handbook.

Which ties in neatly with Dr Carol Bell of the FAW working for Blackrock.

And it explains Alison Thorne of the WRU delivering “social change through dance“. (Did youse ever in yer natural read such sententious bollocks!)

The terpsichoreans seeking to deliver this social change can be found – in case you’re minded to join! – at Dance House, which is in the Millennium Stadium.

Where else!

SUMMING UP

The self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ is taking control, through appointees, and by other means, such as funding, of as many organisations as it possibly can.

Which means that a political party gaining roughly one fifth of the available votes will soon exert a stranglehold on Welsh life. With Drakeford and his sorry troupe of inadequates just puppets operated by pressure groups and Globalists lacking any mandate at all.

For betraying Wales in this way the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ will get a pat on the head from Uncle Claus in Davos. And then everybody’s happy – ‘Welsh Government’, pressure groups, and World Economic Forum.

But how do you feel about it?

♦ end ♦

Turks To Sosban?

I hadn’t planned on writing this, but you know how it is, you learn of 300 ‘refugees’ coming to a place where you’ve sunk a few pints, and then you discover a previously unknown publishing empire in the same town . . . well, it becomes difficult to turn down the opportunity.

Maybe I should explain that ‘Sosban’ is the nickname for Llanelli, after the local anthem, Sosban Fach, which was always sung at Stradey Park, the old home of Llanelli RFC, and after which the Stradey Park Hotel is named. This being the destination for those 300 ‘refugees’.

Stradey Park Hotel. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And yes, I was there at Stradey Park on the great day in 1972 when the Scarlets beat the All Blacks 9 – 3. A few of us travelled down from Harlech, stayed at the Ivy Bush in Carmarthen. I got utterly rat-arsed that night.

Happy days!

I suppose I should conclude this intro by explaining that the indigenes of ‘Sosban’, with their unique accent, are called ‘Turks’. I have no idea why. Does anybody know?

The assumption that some of these ‘refugees’ will be Turks or Turkish Kurds explains the title of this little offering. Clever, innit?

BREAKING THE NEWS . . . OR PART OF IT

Here’s a BBC account from May 25. Yesterday, the BBC also ran the story of the couple who’d planned to marry at the venue. Can’t find anything on the ITV website.

Then, yesterday, came the report below in Llais y Sais, by Branwen Jones, telling that a ‘network’ had been set up to help the “asylum seekers“. Before even reading the piece I knew what it was about – Leftists exploiting illegal immigrants to attack the working class and decent, concerned locals.

Which is how it works nowadays.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Since the Left gave up on the working class, and aligned itself with many of the biggest corporations and some of the richest men on the planet, the formerly downtrodden victims of capitalism have become ‘racists’, ‘transphobes’, ‘Islamophobes’, etc.

Not that the working class has changed. It’s just that the Left and its brainwashed followers now march to the sound of the Globalists’ drum. They don’t understand where they’re marching to, but then, the modern Left is about theatrics not socialist theory.

As the reports make clear, locals were understandably concerned by these reports of 300 or more unvetted migrants being brought into their community, and so a public meeting was held on Sunday night at the Selwyn Samuel Centre. The biggest public meeting seen in Llanelli for some years.

This report comes from In Your Area.

The BBC was invited to attend, but did not show. If anybody from the Beeb had turned up they would have heard ex-cop Steve Williams lay into the council for not informing local people about the plan, let alone consulting them. (Genuine Turk accent.)

A name you’ll see mentioned in the piece about the ‘network’ is Steve Kelshaw. Local Leftist who’s been involved with refugees in the past. (I omit the quotes because the Syrians Kelshaw was working with may have been genuine refugees.)

After reading the piece in yesterday’s ‘paper I went online to see what else I could turn up. And blow me! there was an online version of the same piece, but from last Saturday, and with a different headline; this one saying, “community unites to support asylum seekers“.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Which as we know is absolute bollocks!

For as you’ve read, the “local community” turned up in their hundreds, at the Selwyn Samuel Centre, to show how pissed off they are with the whole farrago.

But the online version was written before the public meeting. And obviously, after that meeting, there was no hope of sustaining the claim made in the original headline. So “community” had to become “network“.

Working back, the earliest report I can find is by Dylan Davies in the Cambrian News, last Wednesday, and timed at 2:50pm. Closely followed by Lucy John at WalesOnline at 18:28 of the same day. (Updated on Friday.)

The Cambrian News report is basically the one followed by the others. Except that the CN piece quoted a council spokesperson saying:

“The proposal and engagement by Clearsprings (the Home Office private housing provider) has been disappointing, giving the council no confidence that they understand the local or national context they intend to work within”.

The other reports neglected to mention the role of controversial Clearsprings.

Local journalist Robert Lloyd tells us the BBC was invited to the public meeting but did not turn up. Lloyd seems to work as an In Your Area stringer for Retch, which owns Llais y Sais and its online version, WalesOnline.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But why has he got it in for the BBC?

Because Tuesday’s Wales at Six opened with, “Some local people are protesting . . . “. Then it covered the cancelled wedding . . . . But later, it reported, ” . . . on Sunday around 400 people attended a public meeting . . . “.

But that was 6:30pm on the 30th. Lloyd’s tweet is timed at 7:10am that day. Had earlier BBC versions not mentioned the public meeting?

Anyway, let’s not get bogged down in what may be personal. We can reasonably assume that Branwen Jones of Llais y Sais got her version of the story from stringer Robert Lloyd. But if so, why didn’t she mention the public meeting?

All very confusing. But then I got to wondering who else might have been pushing the story with their own interpretation.

THE SOSBANWIDE WEB

My search of the interweb was now taking me up some blind alleys, but then I found another report from May 26, and from the Llanelli Standard.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

It’s basically a shorter version of the other ‘support network’ reports.

I must confess, I’d never heard of the Llanelli Standard. Perhaps most people west of the Llwchwr have never heard of it either. But the website says: “The Llanelli Standard is the new newspaper for Llanelli, by people from Llanelli and based in Llanelli. The Llanelli Standard is managed by Red Brand Media”.

So, it’s obviously, er, Llanelli.

But it does seem to have crossed that mighty torrent to launch the Swansea Standard. I just hope that it’s “a newspaper for Swansea, by people from Swansea and based in Swansea”.

Last thing we want is Turks writing Jack news!

The empire is completed with the Carmarthenshire Standard and the West Wales Chronicle. It was in the Chronicle that we read of Steve Kelshaw’s work with Syrian refugees.

The ‘About’ page of the Llanelli Standard is good for a few laughs. Not least this claim, for I would suggest otherwise.

The West Wales Chronicle and the Llanelli Standard are both politically neutral

And as evidence I would present the headline we read earlier suggesting that the community around the Stradey Park Hotel was preparing a carpet of fragrant blooms to welcome the Sons of the Prophet who will surely appear.

Unless of course they’re representatives of Albanian drugs gangs, or others of an  entrepreneurial bent.

The ‘About’ page also says, “The Llanelli Standard is published by Red Brand Media and owned by CETMA”. So who are they?

Let’s start here, with the website for Red Brand Media. Is there a clue to political leaning in the name? And here’s the Companies House entry. Where we learn that the controlling interest is Cetma Ltd.

From the website we learn that Cetma is funded by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, linked bodies, and the Lottery, which works closely with the ‘Welsh Government’.

Turning to the Companies House entry, the ‘accounts’ (actually, unaudited financial statement) tell us very little. Though I was intrigued by the three directors.

There’s Keith Elwyn Evans-Hurley, who in other entries prefixes his name with ‘Lord’. There’s David Jonathan Williams. And then there’s 83-year-old Eunydd Ashley Brynmor Thomas.

Interesting character, our Eunydd.

He was the Labour councillor for Llwynhendy on Carmarthenshire county council. But, in 2004, he took advantage of a scheme by the Notional Assembly for Wales to retire, and trousered a golden handshake of at least £16,000.

Everybody waved him good-bye and off he rode into a golden sunset. But bugger me! if he wasn’t back in 2008 standing as an Independent. He came bottom of the poll.

People are reluctant to vote for the undead, even in Llwynhendy.

Fellow candidate Meilyr Bowen Hughes, of Plaid Cymru, said: “It’s a loophole that should have plugged by the Welsh Assembly Government.” He added he was “very unhappy” with explanations given to him why that had not happened.

That’s enough distractions. What I’ve tried to do with these detours is open a few eyes as to how a story makes it into the national news.

THE BIT AT THE END

Given that the council knew of the plan for three to four weeks before it eventually broke it’s reasonable to assume that the council was the source of the story.

There is massive public outrage over the plan, and over the council hiding it from the public for so long. But this element of the story is either being ignored, or massaged to push the line taken by Llais y Sais and others – the burghers of Llanelli offering up their wives and daughters to comfort the eagerly-awaited ‘asylum seekers’.

Yesterday’s piece in Llais y Sais focused entirely on the Leftist support network with no mention of the public meeting. This is not balanced journalism.

Clearly, the media emphasis has shifted from protest to ‘support network’, with some wanting us to believe there are no protestors. Or that the few there are can be dismissed with the usual slanders.

Which would be bullshit. But they may be getting away with it! And that should make you wonder how much of what you are told in the ‘Welsh’ media is bullshit.

Because everything put out by the media in Wales must meet certain criteria. And so to help you – well, you know me! – here they are. But remember! they’ll be inferred or alluded to, rather than stated outright:

  • Reporting must adhere to the Unionist line. Supporting devolution is allowed but nothing going any further.
  • The Woke-Left diktats must be obeyed. Men can have babies; ‘refugees’ are all genuine, and must be welcomed; White people are usually racist.
  • The biggest threat to humankind is the ‘climate catastrophe’.

Basically, the Globalist agenda. Understand that and you’ll make far more sense of the bilge coming out of Cardiff every day.

And I’ll leave you with something else to think about. As our local press declines it is being increasingly replaced by political activists funded directly or, more usually, indirectly, by the ‘Welsh Government’ in ‘community journalism’.

But all done in the interests of “maintaining a healthy local democracy“.

More bullshit.

♦ end ♦

The Globalist Plantation Of Ireland

I’ve been following recent protests in Ireland against large numbers of unvetted male migrants being imposed on unsuspecting communities. My interest is due to a long-standing affection for Ireland and its people, together with a keen interest in Irish history.

Which explains what you’re about to read.

BACKGROUND

I suspect Ireland is being used as a testing ground by Globalist schemers. Specifically, through persuading or pressurising the Irish government and wider establishment into accepting mass immigration.

This has promoted hostile reactions in many cities and towns. From Dublin to small towns in Connacht most of us have never heard of.

Emboldened by support received from the media, NGOs, and elsewhere, the Irish government has decided to go for broke in an attempt to silence popular opposition to its open borders immigration policy with draconian legislation.

I’m referring to the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill. Legislation that has already been noted outside of Ireland, and condemned by, among others, Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr.

The mainstream media leapt to the Irish government’s defence. Musk and Trump are wrong, while lesser mortals criticising unrestricted immigration and the problems it brings are elsewhere denounced as “racists“, “fascists“, “far right“, etc.

The image is that of Michael Collins, imprisoned at Frongoch, then leader of the IRA during the War of Independence, but killed by the anti-Treaty IRA in the Civil War. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The proposal still has some way to go before it becomes law.

But if it becomes law then it will be a sad day for free speech. For those behind this attack on freedom were so desperate to silence just about everybody that diverged from the official narrative that they neglected to actually define ‘hate’!

Which might mean that ‘hate’ will be whatever the state, the NGOs, the media, or the World Economic Forum, decides it is at any given time.

As is pointed out in this long tweet by Senator Rónán Mullen.

Let’s be blunt, legislation like this – for we see it elsewhere – is designed to silence indigenous White populations being forced into accepting demographic and social change on the orders of the UN, WEF, subordinate bodies such as the EU, and governments at national and sub-national level.

And it’s one-way legislation. For let’s again be blunt, no Muslim is ever going to be arrested for calling an Irish person a “Christian bastard“; no Black African for using the term, “White c**t”.

It’s worth thinking about developments over there because what’s happening in Ireland may have ramifications way beyond that country.

‘REFUGEES’

Let’s have a little background, to establish what I’m talking about, and to help us avoid the confusion that is deliberately encouraged by those I’ll be discussing.

The discontent, protests and, on occasion, violence, has been caused by the political establishment of the Republic, its bought media, paid-for NGO bleeding-hearts, unhinged Leftists, and various useful idiots, insisting that the thousands of able-bodied young men now being brought into Ireland are genuine refugees.

Everyone knows they’re not, but no one is supposed to say it. Anyone who does say the truth – and that includes mothers pushing buggies – will be vilified as “racists, etc., etc”.

The Irish ‘far-right’ on the march. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

To make a fraught situation even more combustible, politicians, civil servants and others will tell a community it’s to receive Ukrainian refugees, “Sure, it’ll be women and children” . . . then the trouble starts when busloads of healthy young men arrive who have never seen the steppe under snow.

From the official side there is dishonesty and deception all along the line. But they can get away with it because they control both the political system and the media.

And talking of the media, here’s a piece that appeared a couple of months ago in the Guardian.

And it is purest Guardian. For rather than deal with the issues, and Irish people’s justifiable concerns, Irish journo Colin Gannon uses the article to stress links between the far right in England and what he claims to be their Irish counterparts.

Presumably in an attempt to reinforce his message he says some rather silly things.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The suggestion that it’s unfair to view young males, “because of their age and gender“, as being more problematic is especially silly. Just ask yourself who’s more likely to be violent and to engage in crime – is it children, women, older people, or young men in large groups and far from home?

Gannon then suggests that working-class communities are not “integrating refugees“. But why should they, seeing as the state makes no attempt? Unvetted young males are simply dumped on working-class communities. Often without warning and usually without consultation.

This Guardian article would not have been written a decade ago. I say that because it’s another example of how liberals and socialists now hate the once-eulogised White working class.

Which then explains why they pin their hopes for changing Western society on bringing in a new population. No matter how disruptive doing that that might prove to be.

Because of course middle class liberals and socialists – for there are few working class socialists left – will be largely insulated from the problems their zealotry causes.

THE PERFECT STORM

In addition to being lied to over ‘refugees’, Irish people are angry at the influx because the health service is creaking and there’s a severe housing crisis.

Ireland has one of the most acute housing shortages in the world. It has the lowest number of dwellings per head in the OECD, and average house prices are now eight times mean income (compared to three times as much in 2010).

In the article I’ve linked to you’ll also read, just after the clip above: “The situation is so bad that 70% of young people in Ireland say that they are considering emigrating due to the cost of living, which is mainly driven by housing costs“.

When young Irish people see ‘refugees’ being housed ahead of them, they become frustrated, and they become understandably angry. Parents also become angry at the prospect of their children having to emigrate.

For emigration has painful memories for the Irish. Economic prosperity was supposed to mean that mass emigration was a thing of the past.

As I’ve just suggested, we shouldn’t even be talking about emigration, because Ireland is now a prosperous country, with a per capita GDP and a standard of living above that of the UK, and well above third world Wales.

Which makes me wonder why those running a rich country can’t organise the housing sector better.

Or is an insufficient supply of housing also part of the agenda?

THE WHY

The mystery remains as to why Irish politicians inflict these problems on their people.

For there is no upside to bringing in tens of thousands of unvetted men who have, to date, committed many murders, countless rapes and lesser sexual offences, and all manner of other crimes.

There are now machete-wielding Nigerian street gangs terrorising Irish towns and cities. Roma tribes run criminal empires on Irish streets.

It’s all very well arguing that “only a minority” commit crimes, but none of these crimes would have been committed if unvetted migrants had not been allowed into Ireland in the first place.

For example, if the welcome mat had not been laid out for Muslim extremist Yousef Palani then the two gay men he killed last year in Sligo would still be alive.

Those arriving are not, as one officially-connected joker suggested, all doctors and engineers who will be a benefit to the country. People are quick to guess that the specimen they see shitting in the street is not a graduate of the Medical University of Vienna.

So why are the major political parties in favour of the unrestricted immigration of people they know are not refugees?

To answer that I’m going to throw out a theory that might explain why Ireland seems to be targeted by the Globalists. For we can be reasonably certain that the WEF has a hand in it.

But before that, let’s set the scene.

THE HOW

Ireland is a small, homogenous, but developed and centralised country. Which makes it very easy to control by manipulating its political establishment and media.

In addition, Ireland has a worldwide profile that is largely due to the emigration of recent centuries, certainly since the Famine of the 1840s.

Because so many Irish went to the USA . . . because Hollywood ‘adopted’ the Irish . . . because it’s almost mandatory for US presidents to visit and be photographed sipping Guinness (however contrived their Irish link) . . . because people around the world drink in what they think are ‘Irish’ pubs . . . because fountains run green on St Pat’s Day . . .

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Fact and carefully cultivated fiction combine to give Ireland a global profile like no other small country.

A profile enlarged in a darker way by the violence of The Troubles in the 1970s and 1980s.

But all combine to give a global image of a small country populated by a proud and  pugnacious people who have fought all-comers to maintain or regain control over their land and their national destiny.

A perception that makes Ireland the ideal exemplar for open borders and unrestricted movement of populations. For if the Irish, with their history, are welcoming an influx of strangers, “Why are you being so racist”?

But how would it be achieved?

THE WHO (NO, NOT THEM)

Well, let’s look at this article from the Irish Examiner in March, which tells us, “Ireland’s reliance on large multinational intellectual property has resulted in GDP for 2022 exceeding the EU average by over 130%.”

The Irish economic miracle owes a great deal to lowering the rate of Corporation Tax from 40% to 12.5%, a change phased in between 1996 and 2003. This, plus an educated, English-speaking workforce, is what attracted the multinationals.

Elsewhere, the article tells us:

Multinationals including Apple, Facebook, Pfizer, and Google, among others alone accounted for almost 56% of the so-called total value added to the economy, up from 53% in 2021, the CSO said. Sectors dominated by multinationals, including information and communications, expanded greatly.

The four companies mentioned are stalwarts of the World Economic Forum. Apple, Facebook and Google censor or take down anything too critical of the Globalist agenda. Those three are currently fighting a losing battle trying to stem the flow of bad news for Pfizer and other manufacturers of Covid ‘vaccines’.

But what if they and other multinationals contributing so much to the Irish economy threatened to leave unless the Irish establishment accepted the Globalist agenda and agreed to WEF demands on open borders?

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin have adopted their position on immigration without any pressure from anywhere.

Genuinely believing that by encouraging into Ireland Albanian gangsters, Muslim fanatics, Nigerian street gangs, Roma crime clans and all the rest, they’re doing the right thing for Ireland.

But if that’s the case, then Ireland has real problems.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

I see a resurgent Irish nationalism emerging. I say that because those protesting against what they call a ‘Plantation’ (with all that that term means in Ireland) have no hesitation in invoking the memory of those who fought against British rule.

Now this should be Sinn Féin territory, but that party is compromised by its support for the establishment’s ‘refugees’ scam.

Three of the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising. L to R: Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke, James Connolly. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In fact, Sinn Féin is in a very difficult position altogether. It may still be the largest party in the Republic, but a poll published Saturday says 75% of those questioned think Ireland has taken in too many ‘refugees’, with SF supporters especially unhappy.

Small wonder that ‘insurgent’ parties are emerging to capitalise on the disconnect.

What I also notice is that the struggle we see developing is no longer focused solely on ‘refugees’. For as the bigger picture emerges, and people understand better the Globalist agenda, other things start falling into place.

I’m talking now of the wider agenda that demands a strategy of de-growth to combat a non-existent ‘climate crisis’; that undermines the agricultural sector in order to control food production and supply; that promotes sexual deviance and targets children; that encourages anti-White racism; that attacks the foundations of Western civilisation such as nation, family, faith, culture, traditions.

Which, I suspect, explains the reference in the tweet below to “degeneracy and totalitarianism“.

Tricolours at every demonstration of resistance to Globalism. But it’s rejected by the Left-Globalist opposition – which still wears masks. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Earlier I said, “what’s happening in Ireland may have ramifications way beyond that country“. I said it because what we are witnessing in Ireland is, in effect, the World Economic Forum, United Nations and European Union being challenged.

And the challenge is not restricted to the issue of ‘refugees’. Irish farmers can see the writing on the wall, they’ve had visits from their Dutch counterparts, and they too are organising against the Globalist anti-farming agenda.

The Globalists’ anti-Western agenda is being challenged everywhere. We Welsh should study how it’s being resisted in the Netherlands, Italy and, especially, Ireland.

Because those buffoons in Corruption Bay are fully signed up to The Agenda.

♦ end ♦

Wales, Slavery, The Truth

This piece was unplanned until, on Tuesday morning, I woke, bleary-eyed, to find a DM waiting from a regular source alerting me to a piece in the Spectator (PDF version) connecting our village with slavery! This followed an earlier piece in the Telegraph (PDF version).

It all links with the UNESCO Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales project. I was involved locally in that project, and following the recent unwanted publicity I feel it’s time to give an alternative view.

And this is my own, and very personal, view.

A BIT OF HISTORY

The first exploitation of the slate reserves at Bryneglwys was undertaken by John Pughe, when he took out a lease with local landowner Lewis Morris. Pughe, from Aberdyfi, already worked a few mines in the area.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Among these enterprises was the famous Dylife lead mine, in the high, empty country between Machynlleth and Llanidloes. Dylife attracted a number of workers from the Cardiganshire mines.

There’s little left in Dylife today, just scars of its industrial hey-day, plus a few houses and the Star Inn. But at its height, almost 200 years ago, it was a community of some 1200 people.

From the road near Dylife looking south west towards Nant y Moch. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

My wife tells me she recalls reading that Pughe died relatively young and his widow then sold the business. It passed through a few hands before being bought by the McConnel family of Manchester in 1863. I shall return to this period of the Bryneglwys quarry later.

The third chapter belongs to Henry Haydn Jones, who was born in Rhuthun, in the same year the McConnels bought Bryneglwys quarry. His father died when he was 10, which led to his mother returning to Tywyn.

Young Henry worked for his uncles J and D Daniel in their ironmongery business on Tywyn High Street. He obviously prospered, because in 1911 he bought the quarry and much of the village.

Sir Henry Haydn Jones, Liberal MP for Merioneth 1910 – 1945. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The year before, 1910, he had been elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Merioneth. And was to remain the local MP until 1945, when he stepped down as Sir Henry Haydn Jones.

Sir Henry kept the quarry open long after it was economically viable. Perhaps because he had a greater affinity with the community than the previous owners.

THE MCCONNELS

The previous owners were of course the McConnel family, three of the sons of James McConnel, cotton mill owner of Ancoats, Manchester.

The reason the McConnels bought Bryneglwys quarry in 1863 was because the Union blockade of Confederate ports meant that little or no cotton was reaching Manchester.

So let’s state this clearly. The American Civil War meant that the McConnels had to find other ways to make money. They did not come to Wales as philanthropists.

They came to an area they already knew because, in 1859, one of the brothers, William, seems to have entertained dreams of setting himself up as squire, with the purchase of Plas Hengwrt at Llanelltud.

Plas Hengwrt. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The tenure of the McConnels saw a major expansion of Bryneglwys quarry, and they built most of the older houses in today’s village. But again, this was done for sound economic reasons.

It was difficult recruiting workers in a sparsely-populated rural area, and so many people had to be persuaded to move to Abergynolwyn. They could not move without somewhere to live.

The McConnels therefore built and owned their workers’ houses, for which the workers paid rent. A common enough arrangement.

And seeing as we’re discussing slavery . . . plantation owners also built accommodation for their slaves.

The McConnels laid the railway line we know today as the Talyllyn Railway, done to get the slate out to their customers. By taking it down to the coast, from where it would either be transported by rail from Tywyn or by ship from Aberdyfi.

The line also brought supplies to Abergynolwyn. With a local network taking those supplies, particularly coal, around the village. The train also brought beer for the pub!

Sir Henry Haydn Jones kept the railway open as a passenger service after the quarry closed in 1947/48.

‘SLAVERY’

I’m writing this because Abergynolwyn is the village in which I’ve lived for many years, where my children were brought up, and where my wife was born and raised. Her taid, Richard ‘Dic Bêch’ Humphreys, worked in the quarry.

But now the village is getting very unwelcome publicity due to being unfairly associated with slavery.

Here’s the Telegraph headline (29.04.2023).

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And here’s the headline from the Spectator article (14.05.2023).

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I don’t really feel particularly “embroiled“, but let’s be quite clear about this . . .

The community of Abergynolwyn has no connection with slavery other than a tenuous link provided by the McConnels, who came to Abergynolwyn when the American Civil War cut off their supplies of raw cotton.

Though it could be argued that the link between Abergynolwyn and slavery is even more tenuous seeing as the McConnels did not own slaves or plantations themselves.

Using the reasoning of extended culpability could it be argued that a baby wearing a garment made from McConnel cotton was also complicit in slavery?

And would guilt extend to someone living in a property roofed with Abergynolwyn slate?

Come on, let’s get real – this slavery accusation is just Woke bollocks. Heading in the direction of, “All White people are guilty!“.

You’ll note that the Telegraph headline mentions an “explanatory plaque“. Well, here it is, as it now appears on our Canolfan wall.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

So who’s responsible for the wording on the plaque? Is it Cyngor Gwynedd? Cadw? Someone working for the so-called ‘Welsh Government’?

UPDATE: I now learn that the text on the plaque was written by the National Slate Museum, and knocked up by Headland Design, of Cheshire. How could a Welsh institution have got it so wrong? And why did an English company get the contract?

But it doesn’t end there for David Martin-Jones, the writer of the Spectator piece – who claims roots in the area – for he thinks he’s found another issue.

But McConnel is English and a capitalist to boot. Such a background is anathema to those who currently run Wales and micro-manage the Welsh version of the cultural revolution. From this perspective, McConnel’s achievements must be re-defined to fit an ideology that reduces history to melodrama, where brutal and rapacious English capitalists despoil the Welsh landscape and immiserate its people.

He sees the McConnels as victims of “the Welsh version of the cultural revolution”. And while I won’t argue with anyone putting the boot into our hyper-Woke ‘Welsh Government’, I will take issue with the suggestion of an anti-English motivation.

Listen, Dai, try reading that plaque again. Yes, there’s a silly reference to slavery, but apart from that where’s the criticism of the McConnels?

The real problem is the exclusive and fawning focus on the McConnels.

The McConnels took over an established Welsh business and the quarry ended its working life back in Welsh ownership. But that plaque is all, “McConnel, McConnel, McConnel . . . Manchester, Manchester, Manchester”.

CONCLUSION

The plaque on our Canolfan insults the community with its unnecessary and misleading reference to slavery; while also being historically inaccurate in not mentioning the Welsh ownership.

Yet it could have been even worse.

For I understand that someone involved in designing the plaque was so keen to glorify the role of the McConnels that an earlier draft even tried to credit them with building the old village hall in 1947 – a full 36 years after they’d severed their ties with the area!

That plaque must be removed, and re-written. With the new plaque giving a more accurate resumé of the quarry’s history, and without any references that insult the memories of decent people who can no longer answer for themselves.

Because with the tourist hordes about to descend I’d hate to be approached by someone who’s read the plaque and then asks me if I’m suitably ashamed of the village’s links to slavery.

In such a situation I might let slip a naughty word. Perhaps a few naughty words.

♦ end ♦

 

The State Of Wales

I’m sorry I haven’t put out anything for a few weeks, but there’s just been too much to write about, and my lack of self-discipline has resulted in me being too easily distracted, too often.

So here goes, again. With a story that in my opinion is not being properly interpreted. What you’re about to read is my explanation for the adoption of the name Bannau Brycheiniog by the national park formerly known as the Brecon Beacons.

BANNAU BRYCHEINIOG

Unless you’ve been trapped underground, cast away on a desert island, or living in Treherbert, you’ll know that the Brecon Beacons National Park recently dropped the English version of its name to be known exclusively as Bannau Brycheiniog.

And the rebranding produced an outpouring of balderdash such as this old blogger has rarely seen.

Though few reached the depth of silliness plumbed by the Park’s chief executive, Catherine Mealing-Jones. The traditional flaming brazier logo had been discarded because it didn’t fit with these times of global warming, she wailed, as she zipped up her Eskimo Nell™ anorak to avoid the icy April blasts.

Here’s the headline from The Times.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But the ‘climate crisis’ is a global fear campaign engendered by those, in the UN and the World Economic Forum, wishing to control your behaviour.

They’ve influenced governments around the world to brainwash millions of kids. That we then have so many worried or even unhinged youngsters is used as proof of the ‘climate crisis’, when in reality it’s proof of brainwashing.

In the Bannau debate the climate hysteria angle was bad enough, but certain sections of the English media seemed to view the changes as Woke. Here’s the headline from the Telegraph.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Now you know me, nobody’s more alert to the lunacies of Wokeness than old Jac, but I didn’t quite see it that way. Worse, for some English writers, Wokeness seemed to be code for anti-Englishness.

The Daily Mail viewed with horror the prospect of Swansea ‘becoming’ Abertawe, and Aberdovey changing to the unrecognisable Aberdyfi.

Yet the name change, the rebranding, and the bollocks about climate change, was all a distraction from the real story. So pay attention!

Let’s begin by saying that in my view there’s nothing wrong with the name change. ‘Beacons’ may have been a misnomer anyway. Were there ever warning beacons lit there? If so, who were they warning? And who were they warning against?

Look out! A charabanc from Dowlais is heading up the A470!

And as a regular contact pointed out, few people will use the new name anyway. Partly because, unlike the recent name change of ‘Snowdonia’ to ‘Eryri’, it’s too long, and fewer people speak Welsh in Bannau Brycheiniog than in Eryri.

Though to end this section on a lighter note, our ‘Welsh’ TV newsreaders should provide hours of mirth with their mangled pronunciations of Bannau Brycheiniog.

THE TAKEOVER

For a few years I’ve been writing about the ‘interesting’ people turning up in south Powys, an area almost co-terminus with Bannau Brycheiniog.

There’s a temptation to just dismiss them as good-lifers, but I believe there’s more to it than that. Some are on a mission.

That latter interpretation certainly applies to those involved at Black Mountains College (BMC). An institution founded by people who had previously worked for George Soros, a man viewed by some as a philanthropist, and by others – including me – as someone on a mission to undermine Western society.

Black Mountains College is a member of Soros’s Open Society University Network.

The video below, produced by BMC, makes it clear that the college seeks to enrol those who have already been frightened witless over climate change. Attracting scared kids to Coleg Soros with the promise that they can, “re-engineer the future”.

The video also tells us: “our current predicament is man-made”. And indeed it is.

 

I believe that Black Mountains College now acts as a ‘hub’ or information exchange for climate alarmists, and this role is encouraged – and funded – by Corruption Bay. Which uses the same illusory threat as justification for imposing 20mph speed limits, waging war on farmers, and generally making us poorer, and our lives more miserable.

The hub may be needed because there’s quite a lot happening in the area.

For a start, let’s remember that Gilestone farm is just a few miles from Coleg Soros. Whatever was planned for Gilestone before the fan was overwhelmed with excrement, I guarantee it would have been justified on ‘environmental’ grounds.

Then, earlier this year, the ‘Welsh Government’ made a number of appointments to the (then) Brecon Beacons National Park Authority. This was done in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘access’, for it seems Persons of Colour and homosexuals had previously been barred from entering our national parks.

Who knew?

Nonsense of course. It was done to give the ‘Welsh Government’ greater control over the policies and direction of the national park.

The last Conservative member of the park authority, Iain McIntosh, has now resigned. Which leaves a national park authority, with control over planning and other matters, and in a constituency represented in London by a Tory MP, and in Cardiff by a Tory MS, controlled by the Labour party.

But this is how Labour has always operated in Wales. And we see it again with yet another new body ‘tacking climate change’.

The latest is the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. Below is a panel from the ‘About’ tab. It’s funny. I mean, just look at who’s involved.

Topping the bill is former Labour Assembly Member and Minister for Saving Welsh Polar Bears Jane Davidson. She it was who gave Wales One Planet Developments. Hoping to realise her vision of the Welsh countryside repopulated with frightfully nice English smallholders and OPD dwellers.

Little room for the Welsh in that vision. And there’s little Welsh presence in the group headed by La Davidson.

What we do see is the Green Heath Robinsons at the Centre for Alternative Technology, who’ve received tens of millions of public funding. Our non-Welsh universities are of course represented. As is Coleg Soros, in the form of Art Garfunkel lookalike Ben Rawlence.

Returning to the bigger picture, we can’t ignore Y Bannau, the management plan for the national park. (Full version here.)

(How many such bodies and publications does one small country need!)

It’s a strange document. A mixture of platitudes, anguished concerns for the future, and the kind of ‘Welshness’ John Ford gave us with his adaptation of How Green Was My Valley.

For example, there are regular appearances by an imaginary family named Brychan. They also have impeccably Welsh forenames – Ioan, Mair, Dafydd – in an area becoming less and less Welsh through the activities of the kind of people you’re reading about.

There’s even a Brychan family tree (page 127)! It’s truly weird. Almost unsettling.

Take the ‘Letter from Sian (sic) Brychan to her daughter Megan’, February 20th 2042 (page 75). I suppose some reading this will be reassured to think that we’ll still be writing letters in 2042. Or at least the Brychans will.

In fact, they’re writing to each other all the bloody time. Don’t they talk?

By a painful irony the Brychans are described as, “seventh generation farmers here in the Bannau Brycheiniog” . . . which makes them the very people Green zealots want to remove from the area.

Aside from the Brychans a number of old favourites appear in Y Bannau. Coleg Soros, again; the greenwashers at Stump up for Trees; the secretive Beacons Water Group; and many more favourites that have appeared on this blog.

Perhaps all you really need to know about this management plan is that the foreword comes from Julie James, Minister for Climate Change, and the document first saw the light of day in Corruption Bay, not Brecon.

This is the ‘Welsh Government’s plan for Y Bannau. And if they and their cronies can get away with it, they’ll try it on elsewhere.

There must now be hundreds of Labour-connected enviro-shysters whizzing around Wales – in cars we pay for – attending meetings where they earnestly discuss how to cut emissions and save the planet.

A planet in no danger whatsoever.

UPDATE 03.05.2023: It should go without saying that the new Future Generations Commissioner was at the launch of Y Bannau.

WHO’S A LUCKY BOY, THEN!

The most recent development in the Beacons / Bannau saga came last Friday with a fascinating article in the MailOnline.

Which tells that the genius behind the re-branding was one Jordan Thorne, who is 34 and has a company called Creo, described by the Mail as “a Cardiff-based marketing agency which has in recent years won a series of lucrative public sector contracts”. 

Including of course the Beacons to Bannau gig.

So, what can we learn about Thorne and Creo?

Starting with Creo, there seem to be three companies of that name. They are: Creo Digital Ltd; Creo Interactive Ltd; and Creo Group Holdings Ltd. Here’s the Creo website.

Where we can read Jordan Thorne telling us how he sees himself.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I get a wee bit queasy when I hear anyone say they’re ‘trapped’ in the wrong body because it puts me in mind of weirdos and perverts who pretend they can’t tell men from women.

But back to more wholesome thoughts.

Creo was acquired, in a management buy-out, just over a year ago, when Thorne and a couple of others bought out founder Richard Ward. Though Ward retains a 25% share.

As you’ve just read, the buy-out was funded by the Development Bank of Wales (DBW). Which is owned by the ‘Welsh Government’. Here’s a link to more details of that act of generosity. Just click on ‘View PDF’ for the details.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But it wasn’t the first time DBW has looked kindly on Creo, for there was an earlier example in December 2018. (Ditto.)

Let’s just flick through the accounts for the Creo companies, see if anything catches Jac’s jaundiced eye. (Though, actually, they’re skeletal ‘unaudited financial statements’.)

Creo Digital shows total assets of £300,172 but has a net deficit of -£55,253.

Creo Interactive Ltd reveals total assets of £522,250 (previous year £365,043); reducing to net assets of £466,437.

Creo Group Holdings Ltd shows total assets of £375,100, made up of fixed assets of £375,000. Taking out liabilities leaves a net figure of -£4,529.

Control over Creo Interactive is exercised by Creo Digital; and Creo Digital is, predictably, controlled by the holding company. Where the 100 shares are split equally between Ward, Coakley, Thorne and Shaw.

Maybe the fixed asset is the Creo premises in the old St Cadoc’s church at 76 Wells Street, Cardiff. Naturally, I wondered who owned it, so I shuffled over to the Land Registry website.

The freehold title document shows four owners. Two are Ward and Coakley, from the image above. A third is Personal Pension Trustees Ltd. The fourth is Andrew Paul Ashton, who was formerly a director of Creo Interactive Ltd.

Turning to the leasehold document we see the two leaseholders named as “David McLeod Lea and others” and Creo Interactive Ltd.

Lea’s another ‘creative’, who shared the old church premises for a while. He was involved with company Still Works Ltd that went bust a few years back owing Development Bank of Wales money.

I’m a ‘creative’, do you think I could get a DBW loan?

On a more serious note, seeing as it’s wholly owned by the ‘Welsh Government’, is there genuine scrutiny or oversight of the DBW? And while I’m not suggesting that Labour supporters are favoured by the DBW with its loans policy, I can understand why some might think that.

The MailOnline went big on Thorne’s politics, without properly understanding them. Though the boy has said some nasty things. As the headline put it:

Corbyn-loving Twitter troll and Welsh separatist whose vile posts tell Margaret Thatcher to ‘burn in hell’ and call Conservative ministers ‘Tory scum’

Why are modern Leftists so thoroughly unpleasant? So vindictive? So personal? The kindest thing one can say is that it’s infantile. For let’s remember that Thorne is too young to even remember Margaret Thatcher.

Clearly, he’s far left, and was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Then, like a number of other Corbynistas, he turned to Yes Cymru. Though not because he cares about Wales but because he sees Welsh independence as a vehicle for his socialism.

Jordan Thorne wants a Welsh socialist republic. Just like the other Corbyn entryists who nearly wrecked Yes Cymru a couple of years back. (I wrote about it extensively.)

I must admit that I’d never heard of Jordan Thorne. Yet it seems Yes Cymru values him highly enough to have put out a tweet in his defence on Saturday.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I believe that leaping to his defence can be put down to Thorne being a socialist, and the attack coming from a ‘Tory’ source.

Yes Cymru then tried to reassure us that it is neither left nor right, with this tweet yesterday morning. But just a few hours before, had put out the tweet below.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

What the hell has Welsh independence got to do with illegal immigrants crossing from France to England? The answer should be – Nothing.

But what the tweet above reveals is that whoever wrote it wants an independent Wales with open borders. A socialist Wales. A Wales following the Globalist agenda.

The stances taken by the loudest elements in Yes Cymru; on immigration, gender ID, climate hysteria, ‘White supremacy’, and all the other Woke nonsense only serves to alienate many in a socially conservative country, making independence less likely.

CONCLUSION

Jordan Thorne and Creo got the rebranding contract due to Labour party connections. Thorne joining Yes Cymru may be part of Labour’s infiltration of that organisation.

For there have been other attempts, such as the absurd ‘Labour for an Independent Wales‘ (linked with, ‘DUP for a 32-County Republic’). Plus individual Corbynistas and Momentum members have been identified on this blog and elsewhere.

And let’s not forget that Labour is a control-freak party that wants to run just about every organisation in the country. Labour will often use the Welsh language to placate the easily duped, and to disguise its true intentions.

The name change was the dead cat thrown on the table to distract the media and those who rely on the media to do their thinking for them. It’s really about the takeover of Bannau Brycheiniog by a political party with no democratic mandate.

Done so that it can implement the Globalists’ Net Zero lunacies, and in so doing, ‘re-model’ the landscape, the economy, even the demographics of the area.

Having succeeded in south Powys Labour can now impose its will – and its supporters – on other areas that do not vote Labour. It must be done this way because . . .

Despite its dominant role Labour is a minority party. Winning the votes of less than 20% of the electorate in 2021. This is another reason why the party must rely on corruption and cronyism to exert control. With many of the cronies imported.

In practical terms this insidious spread of Labour influence, this crony shadow state, means that even if Labour was to lose the next Senedd elections in 2026 (unlikely given the rigged ‘party list’ system it wants to introduce) it could carry on running Wales – for it would take years to dismantle the system Labour had created.

Clearly, Wales is not a democracy. Wales is run as a one-party state. Shame on Plaid Cymru for lending this corrupt system a veneer of credibility with its support.

I for one would shed no tears if Westminster chose to restore some semblance of democracy to Wales.

♦ end ♦

 

Cydweli: Where’s The Money Gone?

The so-called ‘Welsh Government’s irresponsibility with money is legendary. They speak of  little else in the bazaars of Samarkand, while the elders of Amazonian villages tut tut at the very mention.

In addition, hundreds of millions of pounds are showered every year on magic bean salesmen (and saleswomen), many of whom are from outside of Wales but can sniff easy money.

BLACK CAT COUNTRY

That heading’s a reference to Cydweli (Kidwelly). It’s explained here . . . sort of. Though I loved the reference to the “zealous Welsh” attacking the Norman castle and the town full of alien settlers.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

If the town was destroyed and the inhabitants killed then describing our ancestors as ‘zealous’ seems a little inadequate. Even trivialising. Though I’m not criticising our forbears, for all nations have the right to respond to invasion and the threat of becoming strangers in their own country.

Some of you will remember that I’ve written about Cydweli before, a little town west of Llanelli, just up the road from Porth Tywyn, where I’ve often sojourned.

In fact, this piece is a follow-up to something I wrote back in January last year. Here’s a link to that earlier post, ‘Tourism or Survival: Wales Must Choose‘, scroll down to the section, ‘Tourism Making Life Difficult for Locals’.

Last year I looked at attempts to re-vitalise the local economy through tourism, which of course brought the threat of the usual problems – holiday homes, few worthwhile jobs, the area attracting retirees and good-lifers, etc.

That attempt was called the Black Cat Tourism Strategy, and in the summer of 2021 we learnt that it had secured £270,000, “to implement a two-year strategy aimed at growing the visitor economy in Kidwelly and Mynydd-y-garreg” (a village to the north east of the town).

The money came from the Coastal Communities Fund, a UK project linked to the Crown Estate; administered in Wales by the ‘Welsh Government’ through the Big Lottery Fund.

And things seemed to begin quite promisingly.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The grant was awarded to a partnership of the town council and the ‘Hub’, run by Kidwelly Community Hub CIC. (A Community Interest Company.)

To judge by its Facebook page, the Hub has come to the end of the line. Confirmed, it would seem, by this notice from the town council.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Though I was amused by the fact that most of the comments to the Hub’s valedictory FB post last October were of the, “When can I have my – – – – back?” type, rather than, “We’ll miss you”.

If you scroll down a wee bit further, you’ll come to the FB post you see below. And this is our destination – The Gwên Gwen Festival 2022. (‘Gwen’s smile’?)

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

My information is that the bulk of the grant money spend in 2022 went on the Gwên Gwen festival, and it’ll be the same again this year. Most locals believe this is not money well spent. Few turned up last year, and this year’s event doesn’t promise to pull in the punters either.

The Black Cat Tourism Strategy has its own Facebook page, but this seems to offer little beyond Gwên Gwen.

WHERE’S THE MONEY GONE?

One person who recently contacted me was relaying the concerns of others about what the £270,000 allocated to The Black Cat Tourism Strategy had actually been spent on.

My source wrote, referring to last year’s Gwên Gwen bash:

“Tried getting answers as to where the cash has gone. A massive spend of funds where no one turned up apart from organisers families and a bunch of local hippies. Labour councillor involved and now director of CIC company for same festival this year. Council would not give me figures for cash lost.”

I tried to dig the figures out for myself. There seemed to be three obvious places to look: the town council records, the Hub accounts, and the company I assumed would have been set up to manage the Black Cat Tourism initiative.

Working backwards, the Gwên Community and Regeneration CIC wasn’t set up until February this year. (The grant, remember, was allocated in June 2021.) Thus far, the only document filed with Companies House is the Certificate of Incorporation.

Towards the end of that document we read this minor masterpiece in grant-grab waffle. It really is a gem. I speak as someone who’s read many over the years, and penned a few myself.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Moving on, what can we learn from the Hub accounts? Well, to begin with, the ‘front page’ on the Companies House entry for the Hub tells us that the last accounts filed were for year ending 31 March 2021. That is, before the grant was awarded.

Which left the town council as the last hope. The minutes tell us little, and the archived accounts seem to be intermittent, with no audited accounts after 2017.

So where is the £270,ooo accounted for? It seems unlikely the Hub will produce any further accounts, and the new company will not be required to produce accounts for the period before it was set up.

Which leads me to suggest that the onus for accounting for the £270,000, in full, must now lie firmly with Kidwelly Town Council, the surviving partner.

Another reason for me saying that is because the council has been paying Gwên Gwen invoices. That’s certainly what the Finance Committee minutes for January tell us.

WHO WAS WHO?

If we go back to the clip above from the town council minutes of October 2021, we see four names listed in connection with the Black Cat Tourism Strategy. These are: Christine Lamble-Davies, Michelle Collins, Suki Baynton, Aled Westlake.

I believe they’re in this video from March 2022, asking for suggestions. Which could be seen as being open to ideas . . . or possibly not having a clue themselves what to do.

So, in no particular order, here are brief bios . . .

Michelle Collins’ Linkedin profile (here in pdf format) suggests an aspiring artist forced to work for Caws Teifi. When she’s not studying!

But apart from that early mention, I’m not sure what role, if any, Collins played thereafter. There’s certainly no mention of Black Cat on her Linkedin. But she does get a mention here, on the Saatchi Art website.

Aled Guto Westlake, is another artistic type, who lived in Llansamlet, on the east side of Swansea, but seems to have moved to Mynyddygarreg.

His Linkedin profile suggests that he still sees himself as being part of the Black Cat set-up. This, plus his side-line in photography, would appear to be his employment.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Incidentally, there’s a Councillor Jonathan Westlake representing Mynyddygarreg ward on the town council. I’m told he’s Aled’s dad.

From the same ward we have the mayor, Councillor Carl Peters-Bond; and another Mynyddygarreg councillor in Christopher Peters-Bond.

What a cosy place Mynyddygarreg must be! Dare I suggest, incestuous?

Suki Baynton I mentioned in the earlier piece, so I might as well lift something from that to give her bio.

The Black Cat project lead is Suki Baynton, who recently arrived from the Cynon Valley, where I’m told she was Contaminated Land Officer for Rhondda Cynon Taf council. She was certainly Property Manager for Ashfield Solutions for a while.

We see Suki in the above picture, on the right, in the red coat. (See image below.)

Suki has also launched her own company, Room Publishing LtdThe website tells me it’s a load of New Age bollocks; but then, I’m a cynical old bastard who grew up in the real world.

The company, Room Publishing Ltd, was Dissolved about a year after I wrote that earlier piece, without filing anything.

Suki Baynton is on the right, in the red coat. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Which leaves Christine Lamble-Davies, the former Mz Christine Bethan Davies. Who is quite a busy girl. I’ve found a number of companies with which she’s been associated.

Though the only one where she’s still a director appears to be Malihera Ltd. But this ship has obviously been abandoned, with filings for Companies House overdue.

WHO’S WHO NOW?

The directors of the new company, Gwên Community and Regeneration CIC, are: Carmarthenshire Labour councillor Crisial ‘Crish’ Davies, Plaid Cymru’s June James, and June James’ husband, Richard.

These three are also the only remaining directors of the Hub. Davies has been a director since June 2016, Richard James since September 2022, and his wife June became a director in January this year.

From January 11 these three exercise control over whatever remains of the Hub.

Clearly, Labour councillor ‘Crish’ Davies is the continuity factor. The one who’s been there throughout.

This new company could be seen as the Hub reborn. Though why did it take so long, because the Hub didn’t expire unexpectedly?

While these three directors are presumably entrusted with salvaging something from the disaster, and seeing out Gwên Gwen 2, are any of the four we read about earlier, and saw in the video, still involved?

If not, why?

I don’t like banging on about money, but seeing it wasted annoys me. Especially when Cydweli needs money spent on infrastructure repairs and other things.

But certainly not a hippy gathering that was a disaster last year, and with not a hope in hell that this year’s Gwên Gwen will be any more successful.

Here are some photos I was sent of the town. They show, clockwise: the old town hall, falling down and resulting in detours; the town square; the field opposite the Co-op, home to the Gwên Gwen festival; and the building that was used by the Hub.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But back to this year’s Gwên Gwen festival.

Topping the bill is the Gentleman’s Dub Club, of Bristol. (I’ve got all their 78s!) Though I doubt there’s a big audience for Dub music in east Carmarthenshire. There certainly wasn’t last year when the same band played.

A few pints of Felinfoel might help. Perhaps many pints of Felinfoel.

P.S. Last year’s headline act, Kosheen, also come from Bristol.

ENOUGH ALREADY!

I don’t want anyone to think I’m picking on Cydweli. I’m just using it as an example for something that’s happening all over Wales.

My introduction gave a litany of some big scandals that got reported, but it’s also the few hundred grand here, a million or so there, that escape wider attention. Call it political patronage, call it rewarding grass-roots activism, call it anything you damn well like, but by and large it achieves next to nothing.

This system of dishing out grants to anyone with connections, or who can put together the kind of tosh we read earlier, is damaging Wales. It’s a major reason three dollops of European structural funding achieved nothing.

This was unique. All other countries and regions of Europe that received this funding used it wisely. None remained poor enough to qualify for a third hand-out.

But Labour Party stooges like the WCVA will pretend this wasted money achieved something. That’s how the system works: Labour gives money to its cronies who then produce reports telling us what good use was made of the funding.

But then, if I give my grandchildren money will they admit they wasted it?

The biggest beneficiary of EU funding was the third sector. Now that EU funding has ended – but to ensure these shysters continue living high on the hog – other budgets must be raided. (“Your promised by-pass! What by-pass?”)

Unfortunately, it’s no longer just local groups; for under devolution Wales has seen a tidal wave of gobshites preaching climate disaster, poisoned rivers and habitat loss; berating us for our racism and our transphobia – and demanding that we pay them well for their insulting rants.

But enough of those colonialist parasites, let’s finish in that nice little town where an underage Jac used to drink when him and his mates would get the train down from Swansea to go camping. Happy days!

For even if there was incompetence or worse involved, the Black Cat was probably doomed the minute the local MS, Lee Waters, stroked the poor moggie. For this is the politician who famously said of his own administration, “We don’t know what we’re doing on the economy“.

We believe you, Lee. In fact, that may be the only thing you’ve ever said that we do believe.

♦ end ♦