Antifa Unmasked

This piece wasn’t planned until I saw reports of the ugly scenes in Llanilltud Fawr (Llantwit Major) last Saturday. But most of these reports were misleading, especially the report from BBC Wales and, to some extent, the one from S4C.

The ITV Wales report was completely misleading. But I would expect no less from a channel with a pathological aversion to employing people with Welsh accents.

The report that came closest to giving the true picture may have been from WalesOnline, where we also got a picture of those responsible for the violence.

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And it obviously wasn’t the ‘Far Right’, or locals.

Putting it all together with statements put out on social media it soon became clear who had been responsible for the violence, and who had been arrested. But Antifa is a flag of convenience, a loose association of Far Left extremists.

So who was really behind it? Well, WalesOnline was kind enough to tell us: “Video footage shows officers clashing with hooded and masked Welsh Underground Network members”.

So who or what is the Welsh Underground Network? And no, I can tell you now, it’s not an association of former coal miners.

WELSH UNDERGROUND NETWORK

Like so many fringe groups the Welsh Underground Network (WUN) seems made up of disgruntled youngsters. I hesitate to use the word ‘losers’, but I doubt if their ranks contain many well-balanced individuals with a decent job and a settled family life.

All of which makes them resentful and, it has been suggested, malleable.

Here’s a WUN group photo taken on the beach in Aberystwyth a year or two back. (That’s me behind them, disguised as a seagull.)

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It seems reasonable to assume that those arrested last Saturday – a man from Swansea and a woman from Gwynedd – belong to the WUN.

They may even be in the seaside snap above.

The WUN justified its behaviour at Llanilltud Fawr by arguing that it was opposing ‘fascism’. Because Antifa means ‘Anti-fascist’, and only attacks fascists.

But that’s a self-justifying claim; in practice, anyone Antifa attacks, for whatever reason, becomes a ‘fascist’ by virtue of being attacked by Antifa.

If not a fascist, then a transphobe, or a white supremacist, or a climate denier. For Antifa reveres the triptych of woke cults, and attacks those who dare question. For there must be no dissent.

Despite their violent, anti-democratic behaviour, and their opposition to freedom of expression, a former leader of Plaid Cymru has long been a supporter of Antifa.

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I don’t want to spend too much time on a bunch of unhappy kids, who’ve been led astray, and might get into serious trouble if they carry on being silly, for I want to move on and explore the bigger picture.

But before moving on from the Welsh Underground Network aka Antifa I’d like to make an oblique observation. I’ve twice been involved with groups whose members have been arrested for the criminal offence of wearing uniforms. (I believe the Public Order Act applies, or used to.)

I would suggest that those attending gatherings in ‘Black Bloc’, acknowledged to be the uniform of a violent organisation, are guilty of the same offence.

If nothing else, just a simple question – why do they hide their faces?

Below you see Antifa in Newquay, Cornwall on Wednesday, reviling locals for having the temerity to wonder who is being moved into their town. The top image shows them facing off against locals waving Cornish flags, and the bottom one is self-explanatory.

But always with the masks!

Yet the police do have the power to unmask them. They must now use that power.

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People as convinced as Antifa that they’re on the side of the angels (not that they believe in angels!) should be proud to show the world who they are, bravely standing up to the jackbooted hordes.

Or attacking emergency workers, as happened last Saturday.

The truth is that they mask up to avoid being recognised when they commit criminal acts. Which is why wearing masks should be reason enough to arrest these clowns.

Now let’s consider the bigger picture, and then the role of the media.

THAT BIGGER PICTURE

The events last Saturday were much more complex than the media would have us believe. It was not all the locals welcoming the ‘refugees’, with fascists from elsewhere causing the trouble.

To begin with, the local community is split, and as this WUN tweet tells us, the opposition came from, ‘a coalition of anti racists from across Wales’.

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So who else might be in this ‘coalition’?

One who was there battling the fascists was Hellana Hatfield. WalesOnline told us:

‘Hellana Hatfield, a human rights activist who runs an NGO for asylum seekers, has travelled from Pembrokeshire today.

“We are here to deliver the message that refugees are welcome here in Wales and that fascists are not welcome. They have caused trouble elsewhere. Wherever they go, we will go”‘.

“They have caused trouble elsewhere”, she says. But who’s she talking about – Antifa, ‘refugees’?

And who is Hellana Hatfield, for she seems to have no online presence? Unless this is her. The hair’s certainly the same colour.

But nothing about an NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) in Pembrokeshire. Does it really exist? And if so – are we funding it!

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And it should go without saying that the Green Party of Englandandwales was in attendance. We can be sure of that because Rob Curtis of the Green, etc., etc spoke with WalesOnline. There’s even a photo of him.

But that photo pales when compared with an image of Rob and some other guy holding a banner that I’ve tried for days to make sense of. What the hell is it trying to say?

And why is the other guy holding that stripey flag? What’s that got to do with ‘refugees’.

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I thought it was global warming that was going to make us extinct. Is the banner saying that the human race is also doomed if we refuse to accept ‘internationalism’ (whatever the hell that might mean)?

Another Green speaking there was Sam Coates. Sam comes on stage at about 2:40 in the video below. I’m not sure why he’s wearing a mask. Does he still believe in Covid? Or have all Leftists taken to covering their faces in public?

It’s bloody odd.

It reminds me of an old sign behind the bar in the subterranean snooker hall I used to frequent as a teenager. It read something like, ‘Men wearing mufflers will not be served’. For younger readers maybe I should explain that a ‘muffler’ was a kind of scarf worn around the neck by working class men.

Though I could never figure out why men wearing mufflers would not be allowed to play snooker. Or billiards.

As a further aside. It was in this hallowed cellar, to a background of clinking balls and cursed miscues, that my mates and I heard JFK had been shot. (Everybody remembers where they were.)

I mention this now because the Merriam-Webster definition of muffler is: a scarf worn around the neck, b something that hides or disguises. How apt!

To get back to Sam. In addition to being a Green Sam puts himself about with Undod and Melin Drafod. The latter called the Comrades together in January for a session of foot-stompin’ and hollering in Swansea. I wrote about it.

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Ah! But I wish I’d been invited.

I’m mentioning the Greens because in recent years they seem to have almost abandoned environmental concerns to focus on matters sexual, and gender related. And they’ve really gone overboard.

If you want to know where the pressure came from for Nicola Sturgeon to take the SNP and Scottish independence over the cliff, then look no further than the Scottish Greens. As this report from The Herald (Nov 2022) makes clear.

The female penis cult has the potential to wreak similar damage in Wales. For the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ is one of Stonewall’s biggest funders, and El Drako himself one of its most loyal disciples.

Plaid Cymru is similarly hooked on this nonsense.

Which broadens out into considerations of the wider impact of the Woke agenda.

Who can forget how YesCymru was almost captured by fanatics wanting to turn that organisation into TransCymru? If they’d been successful it would have severely  discredited the independence cause.

Was that the objective?

Small wonder that I had a DM yesterday suggesting that the Welsh Underground Network are controlled by agencies seeking to discredit Welsh nationalism.

I’m not sure about that. But when we consider the disruptive and divisive effects Wokeism is having on devolution and the independence movements in both Scotland and Wales it’s worth wondering if the impressionable and the excitable are being manipulated.

For I predict with certainty that if WUN members go around masked up, insulting decent people, attacking emergency workers, whilst claiming to be advocates of independence, it will severely damage the cause in which I and others believe.

Not least because we can guarantee the media will lap it up.

THE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR MEDIA

I’ve mentioned the media responses earlier, and some were either uninformed, or deliberately misleading. Take this headline from BBC Wales. There’s only one way to interpret that.

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As we know, those arrested did not belong to the ‘far-right’.

But then, what can you expect from the state media in a state where the political leadership is owned by the World Economic Forum, a body wanting open borders in order to undermine the West? And if that wasn’t enough, Bill ‘Vaccines’ Gates also chips in with funding for Auntie.

But this is also happening in other countries.

As you may be aware from recent tweets and posts, I’m following what’s happening in Ireland with considerable interest, and the WEF playbook being used there could be written in fifty-foot high neon letters. It is so crudely obvious.

The latest resident rebellion has been in Mullingar, a town of some 21,000 people in Westmeath. This came about when ‘refugees’ were brought to the disused Columb Barracks in the centre of the town last week.

Here’s one of the recent arrivals, an Iranian named Ikramullah Khanza, who’s been to Ireland before, then left, but now he’s back, threatening locals with throat-slitting gestures. Mr Nice Guy!

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It’s being reported that the Mullingar protests have resulted in the unvetted males being moved on. But if so, then to where?

Here’s how the scam operates in Ireland.

Politicians and media say: “Ireland will provide a home for women and children fleeing war-torn Ukraine”. Irish people respond, “That’s fine with us”.

But then buses appear in Dublin and provincial cities and towns carrying lots of young men of fighting age and Middle Eastern appearance. Locals say, “Hang on, you said women and children”.

People then object to having been lied to, and protest at having unvetted young men imposed on their community.

Politicians, their NGO shills, and media, respond in chorus, “Horrible racists object to taking in refugees”.

Which everyone involved knows is a lie.

But when the official narrative is questioned critics are dismissed as ‘Far Right’, or ‘fascist’, or ‘racist’; and therefore people with whom there can be no debate.

In exactly the same way as Antifa operates: Lie about your true intentions and then vilify critics to silence them and achieve your objective.

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This is what’s happening in Llanilltud Fawr. Locals are told those arriving will be Ukrainian women and children, and to begin with they might be. But a local source tells me that, “military houses at St Athan East camp are being cleared for Afghans”.

But as I’ve written elsewhere recently, I’m more optimistic now than I’ve been for some time. For as the lies pile up the heap becomes unstable, and eventually it topples.

With Covid (and the vaccines), global warming, female penises, and the ‘refugee’ crisis all being revealed we are approaching the point of collapse. It won’t be pretty, and might even get nasty for a while.

But those of us who know the truth only need to stay firm to enjoy the victory. A victory not for us, but for humanity.

♦ end ♦

 

Globalists: The Fat Lady Clears Her Throat?

I make no apologies for returning this week to the threat to the West from the Globalists of the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organisation, and of course their little helpers, in business, politics, and the mainstream media.

IT’S GOOD NEWS WEEK!

Scotland

The removal of Nicola Sturgeon, who showed such promise before falling under the influence of the female penis cult, was soon followed by the ‘resignation’ as SNP chief executive of her Poundshop Bond villain husband, Peter Murrell.

His departure revealed that the party had lost a lot of members in recent years. Either that or, in roughly the same period, someone had, for whatever reason, inflated the membership figures.

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Another mystery to emerge was that from 2013 until 2020 Murrell’s salary is not shown in the SNP accounts. And then of course, there’s the elusive £600,000, donated by members to fight the second independence referendum.

Where did it go?

France

Emmanuel Macron always struck me as a man of straw, a weak and vain individual who only got elected because the Gaullists and the socialists had lost their appeal, with not enough people yet ready to vote for Marine le Pen.

As I write this, Macron’s France seems to be descending into chaos.

Interestingly, the mainstream media, financed and directed by the likes of George Soros and Bill Gates, wants us to believe that the sole cause of the unrest, is Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

But it goes way beyond anger at people working longer.

There’s the issue of immigration, and the resultant increase in crime. There’s the attacks on churches and synagogues by Islamic extremists (who will always be defended by the Left and its media). There’s the rising cost of living.

And let’s not forget the growing mountains of uncollected garbage on Paris streets.

And don’t ignore the increasing opposition to the corruption and incompetence of the EU, and resentment at NATO over its proxy war in Ukraine.

De Gaulle’s Fifth Republic has never looked shakier. God knows what the future holds; but as elsewhere, it looks less and less likely that the future belongs to production line politicos holding the same views under different party labels just carrying on carrying on.

I Love Paris In The Springtime.

Netherlands

Another country where the Globalist lies are being rejected is the Netherlands. There, the Dutch equivalent of Macron, Mark Rutte, took a bashing in recent provincial elections.

For the BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) or Farmer-Citizen Movement, came out as the largest party in 5 of the 12 provinces.

This will give it 15 members in the Netherlands’ upper chamber, and compromise Rutte’s plans to implement WEF instructions to put thousands of farmers out of business using the pretext of dangerous nitrogen emissions.

All done in the country that is the second biggest food exporter on Earth, as another move in the WEF’s attempt to take over the global food supply.

The mainstream media couldn’t ignore the election results in the way that those same outlets had ignored months of farmers’ protests.

Even so, something had to be salvaged from this mess, and so the ever-obedient media tried to portray it all as ‘right wing populism‘.

It’s become clear to me recently that while some media outlets re-discover their nadgers, the agencies, such as Associated Press (linked to in the previous paragraph), and Reuters, remain in thrall to the WEF and the World Health Organisation.

And, as a result, they are not to be trusted.

Ireland

One tends to think of Ireland as being, well, Irish. But believe me, there are forces at work determined to change that. And it’s not the ‘Brits’ this time.

For those who’ve ruled Ireland in recent decades bear out what I said in the section about France, being “production line politicos holding the same views under different party labels”. For Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are just two cheeks of the same business-friendly, EU-submissive, Globalist arse.

Almost impossible to tell apart. And why would anyone want to try!

Criticism of politicians has become more intense because a major issue in Ireland, as elsewhere, is the arrival of large numbers of unvetted migrants. There is no logical reason for Ireland to allow in tens of thousands of unskilled young men, too many of whom have no intention of seeking legitimate employment.

The growing resentment is exacerbated because Ireland is also experiencing a housing shortage and a homelessness crisis. People tend to notice when Michael and Maureen in Sligo can’t find anywhere to live but fresh-off-the-boat Mehmet and Mohammed have no such problems.

This unvetted influx has seen protests across Ireland, most from working class neighbourhoods bearing the brunt of the problem. Such as East Wall in Dublin.

These protests were inevitable, and equally inevitable were the responses; from the media, from politicians, and middle class members of NGOs and other bodies with a vested interest in both defending the government and in continued, even increased, levels of immigration.

Which revealed an even deeper divide. Shown in the two demonstrations below. One is of concerned citizens, the other of NGO shills. Guess which is which. Go on!

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After the protests started the Irish establishment and its tame media swung into action, vilifying protestors and defending official actions. Or inaction.

Those involved in the protests were predictably labelled, ‘Far Right’. Below you see the Irish ‘far right’ goose-stepping around Dublin. Just look at all those jackboots.

Mercy!

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To judge by the tricolours carried by the protesters, and the complete absence of Irish flags with the ‘open borders’ crew, the Left in Ireland, as elsewhere, is reverting to its traditional and unpatriotic self.

For according to Globalist gobshite and Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, Ireland has moved beyond nationalism. Which is one one way of trying to justify his own lack of commitment to the country.

And yet, when it suits, the politicians of Ireland like to portray themselves as the heirs to the men and women of 1916. In truth, they are just fronting for the latest exploiters of the Irish nation.

But while we’re on the subject . . . at what point does turning your back on ‘nationalism’ become a rejection of Irish identity altogether?

That Sinn Féin has taken the same position on ‘refugees’ does not augur well for them. For when working class Irish people openly call Sinn Féin “traitors”, then you know something is out of synch.

Also, wanting the Brits out of the Six Counties while allowing the rest of the island to be colonised might strike some as being, well, perhaps intellectually inconsistent.

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This piece from Peter Ryan in Unherd discusses the ‘refugee’ crisis, and differentiates between women and children from Ukraine – to which few Irish object – and unvetted males from Nigeria, Algeria, Albania and Georgia, to which people do object.

Stop Press: The Irish government has now brought out a National Action Plan Against Racism. This will seek to defame and discredit anyone challenging the campaign against the native Irish.

Iceland

I never thought I’d be writing about Iceland, but here we are. A country with a population roughly the same as Cardiff’s is putting its foot down on ‘refugees’.

Iceland is obviously not Ireland, or Wales, and yet there are some striking parallels. Take the headline to the report just linked to.

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Reading “highly-criticised” made me think Icelanders were out in the streets shouting, “Send us more migrants!”, but no . . . for when we click on the link we bring up this report from last year.

Which says that the opposition came from the Red Cross and UNICEF, two organisations reliant on moving people about the world to ensure their continued funding and their very existence.

Why should a small country like Iceland be expected to take in ‘refugees’ that could have passed through a dozen safe countries before landing in Reykjavik?

Why should a precious yet vulnerable identity be put at risk by Globalists and their local cat’s paws?

What right does anyone have to demand to be allowed to stay in Iceland, or any other European country? “Ah, but the UN says they have the right”.

Exactly. The UN. Made up of delegates from genocidal regimes, theocracies, dictatorships, kleptocracies and assorted shitholes, who are regrettably pandered to and bribed by major powers needing their votes.

I believe we are at a point in history when we can truthfully say that the whole political establishment in the West is corrupt. And must be removed.

THE QUISLING LEFT

In my post earlier this month, Nicola Sturgeon: Her Fall In Context I had a section titled, ‘The Quisling Left and the New World Order’, and I make no apologies for returning to that theme.

Though I don’t want to sound too condemnatory, for as much as I detest Cultural Marxism or Wokeism, Comrades of an older stamp have provided me with many laughs over the years. (And not just Wolfie Smith and the Tooting Liberation Front!)

In fact, as time went on, as the Soviet Union unravelled, as we experienced slimeball ‘New Labour’, it became increasingly difficult to take the buggers seriously at all.

Because, at least, with Communism and the Soviet Union, there was something concrete, even threatening, that both the Left (including Wolfie Smith), and their opponents, like me, could focus on.

I love this clip because I knew men like this. Decent men who’d been duped. But they stood by their people, and had not rejected their country.

But now, after a few lost decades, the hard and uncompromising Left is back, insisting we accept its groupthink . . .

Among their influences we find an over-wrought Swedish schoolgirl who really should be getting help instead of being exploited by much older men. They also support anti-White racists. And demand support for ‘women with penises’.

Instead of getting dewy-eyed thinking of “All them corn fields and ballet in the evening” the Left’s loyalty now – just like the political establishment in too many countries – is to the Globalists and their New World Order, and the corporations and multi-billionaires whose interests the WEF represents.

Bill Gates has replaced Lenin. And George Soros is the avuncular inspiration.

Does the Left really understand whose arse it’s got its head up nowadays?

HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?

Having a reasonable understanding of history, I can’t help wonder if the Globalists are working to a template.

I’m thinking now of Rome; more specifically, the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Which didn’t happen in a day, with somebody opening the city gates. It was a slower process; a combination of rot from within and pressure from without.

The rot we see around us: having to accept that men can have babies; allowing the LGBTQ+ crowd to push their boundaries to include paedophilia and other perversions; and the self-hate being forced on White people for their own and their ancestors’ successes.

All designed to weaken the West from within.

Many Barbarians of course lived within the Western Roman Empire before it ‘fell’. Some Romans even identified with them. Along with other Romans, too blind to see the danger, they even urged the admittance of more Barbarians.

But the greater threat was that Romans themselves had lost their traditional strengths and virtues, their Romanitas; too many of them were now concerned with pleasure and debauchery. Living for today, not for yesterday and tomorrow.

And yet, as the Empire in the West withered, a new empire rose in the East, focused on Constantinople, that became richer than the old Empire had ever been.

Constantinople, which lasted almost a thousand years after the ‘fall’ of Rome. The city that became the centre for the Orthodox faith. That gave humanity so much, including Hagia Sophia, built in the 530s, centuries before Europe – let alone any other part of the world – could attempt anything comparable.

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Constantinople, or Byzantium, finally fell to the Turks in 1453. The great church of Hagia Sophia is now a mosque.

The fall of Constantinople, resulting in Turkish control of the eastern Mediterranean, closed trade routes to the East, and this in turn prompted the age of exploration that gave us the great empires, the spread of Christianity and European languages.

And of course, the ‘discovery’ of the New World. America.

So maybe the Left should blame the Turks for European colonialism.

IS THE FAT LADY CLEARING HER THROAT?

In addition to the examples given of countries waking up to the Globalist threat to their very existence, the good news keeps coming in other fields, not least the unravelling of the Covid lie.

It is now clear that Covid was engineered with US help in a Chinese lab so that certain corporations could make obscene amounts of money and supranational bodies, plus politicians at national and sub-national level, could play out their wildest dictatorship fantasies.

With the untested vaccines doing more damage than Covid itself.

And now the oldest of the “Scare them into obedience” scams is losing its ability to frighten anybody. I say that, because the IPCC’s “This time we’re serious” report a few days ago was met with widespread derision.

Hardly surprising, given all the ‘last warnings’ we’ve had over the past 50 years. You can only cry “Wolf!” so often before people ignore you.

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While the Globalist threat to the West remains, more people are now awake to it. The politicians in the pockets of the WEF, the WHO, and the mega corporations, are being challenged. The insane policies and ‘progressive’ initiatives that never had public support are being rejected.

The will of the people will prevail.

The curtain may not be coming down on Globalism just yet, but somewhere, backstage, the Fat Lady can be heard clearing her throat.

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2023


Sweet Home Albania

Na’Ím Anís Paymán was first mentioned here in this post from November 2020; scroll down to the section, ‘Knighton Hotel’.

He was the new owner of that establishment in the Powys town of the same name. He’d picked up the property from the liquidators, following the collapse of the Paul and Rowena Williams property empire. (Covered in the ‘Weep for Wales’ series.)

In the belief that anyone had to be an improvement on the Gruesome Twosome, I welcomed young Na’Ím to Wales. But concluded with a warning: ‘If he takes a wrong path, then I’m sure I’ll be writing about him again’.

NORTHOP HALL HOTEL

I’m writing about Paymán again because of the publicity generated by a more recent Welsh purchase; this time, Northop Hall Hotel, just south of the village of that name. The property itself situated between Chester Road and the A55 Expressway.

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Last August this piece appeared saying that Paymán had bought the hotel, and ‘has reached out to local residents in the hope of making the hotel a “focal point of community life”.’

Yet last week we read that the plan now is to house ‘refugees’.

The purchase was not exactly straightforward, and the complicating factor may help explain the current planning application.

For in last year’s report we read: ‘As the hotel’s previous owners offered each room to individual investors on long-term leaseholds, Payman Investments will only own the building’s function rooms and land, not its rooms.’

So Na’Ím Anís Paymán bought a hotel . . . without the rooms that had made it a hotel!

Which explains what we read in last week’s report: ‘Payman Holdings 3 Ltd, based near Hull, wants to install two-storey modular accommodation for 250 people up to seven years at Northop Hall Country House Hotel. It has also applied for change of use consent for the hotel to house 150 refugees.

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People have taken out leases on rooms at Northop Hall Hotel, from which they would make money by those rooms being rented out to short-stay guests. It’s a business model I’ve dealt with a few times on this blog.

Most colourfully, with Gavin Lee Woodhouse. Though the practice is not confined to hotels. As we saw last autumn with the Chisellers From Chislehurst selling or leasing rooms in care homes.

So what’s the plan now; is Paymán going to find guests for the leased rooms, or is he hoping the threat of ‘refugees’ lets him buy the leases at knockdown prices?

Whatever . . . there are two Land Registry titles covering the Northop Hall Hotel site. Here’s the first, which includes the hotel itself; here’s the second, relating to adjoining land.

And here are the complementary plans for those two titles.

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You’ll note lots of numbers all over the hotel itself. These relate to the 150-year leases on individual rooms. All listed on the title document for CYM400243. Just scroll down.

PLAS BELLIN, ETC

But, blow me down! if Na’Ím Anís Paymán wasn’t in the news again last Saturday, with another property in Flintshire. This time, Plas Bellin, north of Northop Hall.

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The report in NorthWalesLive says that this property has been bought by Payman Holdings 11 Ltd.

Okay, so we know that young Na’Ím has at least two properties in Flintshire. Then there’s the Knighton Hotel in Powys, which I’m told is run more as a hostel than a hotel; self-service, often no service at all because there’s nothing to serve yourself with.

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Sad, really. It’s a big place in a small town, and the way it’s being run doesn’t do Knighton any favours.

THE BULGING PORTFOLIO

Despite the reference to Hull in the NorthWalesLive report linked to, Paymán Holdings 3 Ltd is in fact headquartered at 15 Sherbourne Close, Cambridge.

Where it must be very cosy with all the other Paymán companies at the same address. Here they are (ignore 17 and 18). These are / were all Paymán companies, with what look like two notable exceptions.

One is Yazdan Autohaus Ltd, s second-hand car dealership! The other, Yazdan Logistics Ltd, in the business of cargo handling and land freight. For both, the sole director is named as Pakistani Farhan Yazdan.

Though Linkedin tells us (here in pdf format.) his name is really Farhan Yazdanparast, and he is the Investment Manager at Paymán Group Ltd.

What a small world!

We’re now returning to Paymán Holdings 3 Ltd. You’ll see that the company was formed in November 2020, Na’Ím Anís Paymán is the sole director, and it’s controlled through Paymán Investments Ltd, of St Helier, Jersey.

I can’t tell you much about the Jersey company, other than that it was Incorporated December 1, 2020; here are the Articles of Association, from November 23, 2020; there was a £10,000 share issue December 22, 2021; and a change of address was notified October 5, 2022.

The new address at Kensington Chambers is in bustling downtown St Helier. (Though I hope the new owners have replaced the missing letters from the name.)

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Despite Paymán Holdings 3 Ltd owning Northop Hall Hotel and Plas Bellin(?) it filed as a dormant company on June 30 last year, with its only declared asset being a single £1 share.

Even though Northop Hall Hotel cost £850,000, and Plas Bellin had previously been marketed at £1.2m.

In fairness, the most recent accounts are dated June 30, 2022, just before the purchase of Northop Hall Hotel, registered with the Land Registry on September 23, 2022.

Paymán Holdings 3 is just one of a host of Paymán companies, many more than we encountered at 15 Sherbourne Close. According to Companies House Na’Ím Anís Paymán has been involved with 34 companies since February 2015. And the only director at almost all of them.

But there are few if any charges referring to loans or mortgages taken out against the properties bought. For example, and as I’ve just mentioned, no loans for the two Flintshire properties.

Which leads me to conclude that Paymán is a wealthy young man. Either that, or someone else is putting up the money. If it’s the latter, then who might it be?

UPDATE 10.07.2024: Mr Paymán’s solicitor informs me that most of her client’s purchases were financed with loans which have been registered as charges since I wrote the article. This I can confirm.

Because in addition to the three properties we know of in Wales he’s also buying up property in England and Scotland. Here are a few I’ve found.

In England, there’s the Amethyst Hotel at Immingham, run by Paymán Club. This explains the reference to ‘Hull’, for Immingham is just across the Humber. Then there’s the Royal Hotel in Kettering.

Another property linked with Paymán is the Lovelady Shield Hotel in the Lake District.

Also, the Maycliffe Hotel in Torquay. (Scroll down for mention of Paymán.) Someone sent me what you see below.

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In Scotland, there’s the Douglas Arms in Castle Douglas. Though the company involved here is Keezark Ltd, and Paymán himself is no longer a director. The sole director now (at the familiar Cambridge address) is 24-year-old Dr Sara Aikta Gandhi Forouhi Paymán. Wife? Sister?

Note also, as in Flintshire, the reference to ‘community involvement’: “And new owner Na’ím Anís Paymán confirmed he is keen to get the community involved.”

Keezark also files as a dormant company.

Moving further north, the Stromness Hotel on Orkney has stopped selling alcohol since it was bought by Paymán Investments. A move that will be explained in the concluding sub-section.

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Of course, this means I shall now have to rearrange the cycling tour of the Northern Isles I’d planned for next January.

UPDATE 10.07.2024: Mr Paymán’s solicitor has clarified that although his hotels do not sell alcohol, those booking the venues for weddings or other private functions are welcome to bring and consume their own alcohol.

Na’Ím Anís Paymán belongs to the Baha’i faith. “Who them?” you ask; and to be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure. All I know is that it’s an offshoot of Islam with origins in Iran. Read what they have to say about themselves.

And they don’t drink. Which is fine, I won’t force them into John Barleycorn’s embrace. But just as with the increasingly intolerant vegans, I’m getting more than a wee bit pissed off with zealots imposing their lifestyle choices on me.

I have never in my life forced a vegan to eat a rump steak, and so I will not accept a pallid, undernourished nutter equating my dietary choices with those of Hannibal Lecter.

That off my chest . . . I can’t help wondering if the Baha’i faith has wealthy, do-gooder members who believe they’re engaged in some noble humanitarian work by funding Paymán?

Is he buying these properties on behalf of the Baha’is?

Unfortunately, the Jersey Financial Services Commission doesn’t tell us who owns the 10,000 shares in parent company Paymán Investments Ltd. If it did, then we’d be closer to knowing who really owns the various Paymán properties.

We might also know where the profits go, for little or nothing is shown in the companies I’ve found.

UPDATE 10.07.2024: Mr Paymán’s solicitor wishes me to make clear that he has told her that he is the sole owner of Payman Investments Ltd and the purchase are not funded by any donor. No evidence was provided to me.

THE ALBANIAN CONNECTIONS

Na’Ím Anís Paymán gives his nationality on Companies House documents as German, and I have no reason to doubt that he is a German / EU citizen. But his ancestral roots are in Iran. And he was brought up in Albania.

Here’s his Linkedin info taking us back as far as his Albanian schooldays. (Here in pdf format.) I don’t know a lot about Albania, but I do remember the name of its former psychopathic dictator, Enver Hoxha.

Nice bloke, old Enver. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Some claim the country’s most notable export today is gangsters. In fact, Albanian gangsters are famed for their ruthlessness. We saw a recent example in Wales.

While you might not be aware of crime networks I’m sure you know that Albanians formed the largest single ethnic group found among the illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel in 2022. Up from an estimated 50 in 2020 to 12,301 in 2022.

Most of the properties I’ve mentioned here, from Torquay to Stromness are run by Paymán Club. A UK company, operating in the UK . . . so why does the Office Manager, Qazim Gega, live in Albania? Does he commute every day?

Here’s his rather sketchy Linkedin page. (Here in pdf format.)

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Another Albanian linked with Paymán Club is Megi Ibrahimi. Her equally spare Linkedin page says she’s the Operations Manager. (Here in pdf format.) I believe she is also a member of the Baha’i faith.

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UPDATE 10.07.2024: Mr Paymán’s solicitor also wishes me to make clear that her client has worked to try to prevent emigration of talent from Albania, and that he employs some remote staff in Albania.

We must also deny the Left the chance to exploit the situation by misrepresenting the situation; the kind of thing we see below from Green MP Caroline “I’m so caring!” Lucas quoting sententious Leftist twaddle.

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Confusing genuine refugees with young men looking for easy money and obliging women obviously serves the Left’s Open Borders / Disrupt Society agenda, but it does nothing for those women and children in boats we are urged to consider.

Yet by refusing to differentiate between the two the Left can’t really complain if critics of uncontrolled immigration also fail to make the distinction. (Maybe that’s what the Left wants.)

So let’s help genuine refugees, in the hope they’ll one day be able to return to their homes. But always refuse entry to the young men hoping to land a billet on Easy Street. We owe it to the former to ensure they are never confused with the latter.

And we have an obligation to the young men themselves. For after landing, too many of them will be drawn into criminal activity. We don’t want that, do we?

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2023


Nicola Sturgeon: Her Fall In Context

There’s something odd, even tragic, about an intelligent woman destroying her political legacy and damaging the cause she believes in to argue that women have penises and men can give birth.

How can anyone, let alone someone as smart as Nicola Sturgeon, believe such nonsense? The answer is that she might not believe it at all. And I strongly suspect that many of the zealots pushing this lunacy do not believe it either. Few people are that bloody stupid.

But people can be brainwashed into believing that promoting such idiocy is the right thing to do; partly because it’s ‘progressive’, and partly because it pisses off the ‘fascists’.

But what straight man could possibly object – it’s a ‘feminine penis’! Click to open engorged in separate tab

For you must remember that we live in an age when everything is ideological, and agendas are promoted for political gain and / or social change, but definitely not for the public good; which means that whether what is being propounded is true or not is irrelevant.

In the post-truth era the end definitely justifies the means.

But how did we get here?

POST-SOVIET MARXISM

Following World War Two, and the USSR’s leading role in defeating Nazi Germany, Communism enjoyed a surge in popularity in western Europe, particularly in Italy and France. There were worries in Washington that Europe might even go Red without the need for direct Soviet intervention.

That appeal faded as the economy of Europe improved. Communism lost even more of its appeal with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and its ‘freedom-loving’ credentials took a near-fatal knock in 1968 when Red Army tanks put down the wholly peaceful ‘Prague Spring‘.

By the late 1980s, with the Soviet Union losing a war in Afghanistan, queueing for bread becoming a national pastime, and Russians themselves admitting the game was up, it was clear to most people that Communism was an experiment that had failed. Certainly clear to those of us inhabiting the ‘real’ world. (And that included the babushkas in the bread queues.)

But there remained others who insisted Communism hadn’t been given a proper chance, or hadn’t been implemented correctly. Many of those who argued like this belonged to the middle classes, a disproportionate number of them academics.

Though by the late 1980s even its staunchest adherents knew Communism could never be sold as an economic model, certainly not as a replacement for capitalism – it couldn’t deliver the goods a consumer society demanded.

A change of tack was needed.

But for the diehards the objective remained the same – to undermine, weaken, and then, hopefully, take over the Western, capitalist world. But how was this to be done now that the socialist economic model was proven to be unworkable?

The answer came in the form of ‘Cultural Marxism’, succinctly explained here.

Though according to Wikipedia (and an editor who can’t spell ‘anti-Semitic’): “The term ‘Cultural Marxism’ refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.”

Ah, yes: “Far-right conspiracy theory”. Remember when the Wuhan lab origin of Covid was a Far Right conspiracy theory? Even ‘racist’? And so was the growing evidence that the vaccines did more harm than good.

Though “academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western cultures” is a rather good description of, um, Cultural Marxism. Because anyone choosing to argue that our academic institutions today are bastions of free speech has an impossible job on their hands.

But how was the grand design to be put into practice?

THE ROUTE TO THE SUNLIT UPLANDS, AND THE GUIDES TO GET US THERE

With Marxists being so influential in academe this guaranteed that in Western universities students would be indoctrinated, with the new converts spreading the gospel as they dispersed into the wider world.

For a phenomenon of the past 30 years has been an increasingly bloated higher education sector catering in the main for semi-literate and impressionable natives and rich foreigners, which inevitably couples with falling academic standards.

Little more than a production line churning out the blinkered but earnest young people needed to fill the ranks of pressure groups, third sector bodies, and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

With the result that politics today is little more than politicians implementing the wishes of these groups, usually at the expense of the people who elected them.

Which means that democracy has, effectively, been subverted. Who you or I vote for is largely irrelevant. And it’s not just pressure groups undermining democracy, as I’ll explain later.

Which brings us back to the recent debacle in Scotland.

Nicola Sturgeon, and too many others in the Scottish National Party-Green Party coalition, fell under the influence of Stonewall pushing, among other things, the self-ID agenda that said your gender is whatever you claim it to be at any given time.

What began as an absurd and almost laughable fantasy turned darker when Adam Graham decided during his trial for raping two women that he was now transgender, and as ‘Isla Bryson’ he expected to be sent to a female prison, so he could be among more, vulnerable women

The self-inflicted disaster from which the SNP is now struggling to emerge could only have come about when politicians are beguiled by a pressure group to the point where they lose sight of reality and simply don’t care what the public really thinks.

We also have this problem in Wales, in every sphere of our national life. We suffer pressure groups and campaigners – many from outside the country – pushing agendas that are against the best interests of the Welsh people.

And the politicians in Corruption Bay obey them like zombies.

A few weeks back readers of the Western Mail were treated to the headline you see below. Pay attention to the section I’ve circled. Who is Dr Lynn Sloman?

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Well, she lives in London, where she’s a board member of Transport for London. The bio I’ve linked to tells us she has a holiday home near Machynlleth. (To be exact, in Cwm Einion aka ‘Artists Valley’.)

So a cycling zealot who lives in London, and hates cars – but has a holiday home in Wales, to which she presumably drives – is allowed to dictate ‘Welsh Government’ policy.

Yeah, that’s how I imagined devolution panning out.

More recently, my attention was drawn to a ‘Welsh Government’ document with the snappy title, Wales Innovates: Creating a Stronger, Fairer, Greener Wales. When you see ‘stronger’, ‘fairer’ and ‘greener’ grouped like that you can guarantee that we, the people, are going to be shafted.

This is what I was directed to on page 45.

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Look at that phrase, ‘Mobility as a service’. No. Mobility, and freedom of movement within one’s own country, are fundamental human rights.

I want to be able to jump in my car and drive anywhere I bloody well please. I will not be deprived of this freedom by some swivel-eyed fanatic using the excuse of a ‘climate catastrophe’ that’s just not happening.

Though I’m intrigued by the possibilities opened up by ‘bike-sharing’. Does this mean different people using the same bike at different times, or can I fantasise about some buxom lovely of a playful nature astride my crossbar?

2016 AND ALL THAT

Cultural Marxism has became more shrill and divisive in recent years, and its toxicity has increased. This I believe is due to a number of factors.

In 2016 the Anglosphere suffered two unexpected political jolts. In June of that year the UK voted to leave the European Union (or rather, England and Wales voted to leave; Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted to stay).

Then came the election of Donald Trump in November.

The far left had long been losing faith in the White working class, there was clearly a lack of revolutionary zeal among these dullards who wanted a decent home for their family and a good education for their kids. Brexit and Trump confirmed the comrades’ worst fears.

A counter-offensive was needed. And the weapons needed were already to hand.

TWO OTHER DONKEYS OF THE CULTURAL MARXIST APOCALYPSE

THE ENVIRONMENT

Concerns about global warming or climate change had been gaining traction for a couple of decades, in part due to showmen like Al Gore, who understands climate as well as I understand nuclear fusion.

Who among you could not be convinced by those “boiling oceans“?

But the Far Left wasn’t really interested in saving the planet; the Cultural Marxists simply saw a problem that could be blamed on capitalism, and could be remedied by undermining Western economies.

For it was of course the West that would have to reduce its emissions to defeat those fortune cookie ‘predictions’.

Essentially, a programme of ‘degrowth’. Being discussed here in the What’s Up With That blog quoting Japanese Marxist academic Kohei Saito.

(Not for nothing are Greens called ‘watermelons’ – green on the outside, red on the inside.)

Or to put it another way, the populations of the advanced countries would have to suffer rising fuel bills, food shortages, travel restrictions, 15-minute cities . . . all for the good of the planet.

By comparison, countries in the developing world, China in particular, could build as many coal-fired power stations as they pleased. (Two a week, at the last count.) Further proof that the Left was less interested in saving the planet than with damaging the West.

The truth is that none of the absurd predictions made over the past 50 years has come to pass. The world may be warming, slightly, but it has little to do with us humans, and far more to do with the fact that we are in an inter-glacial warm period.

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Entire nations wiped off the face of the Earth! Wow! How did I miss that?

Though a more generous interpretation that crosses my mind, especially after a glass or twa of Malbec, might be that climate hysteria is a variation on Pascal’s Wager. Or, at least, that’s how it might play out.

The great 17th century French thinker argued that believing in God was the sensible thing to do. Because if there was a God, and you’d lived a good life, then you went to Heaven. If there was no God, then you’d still lived a good life, helping others, etc.

If after all the sacrifices we are being forced to make it becomes clear there is no global warming, then those who promoted climate disaster might argue: “OK, so there’s no global warming – but those sacrifices made you a better person”.

     RACE

Another tool in the Cultural Marxists’ destabilisation armoury is race; more specifically, reminding us of the terrible things the White man has done. For as everyone knows, only Europeans ever conquered other peoples, and slavery was always and only a relationship between White masters and Black slaves.

(Anyone who knows their history and tries to speak the truth is of course a ‘racist’.)

To the point where in the eyes of many, White people can do little right, and Black people can do nothing wrong. As we saw in Minneapolis when career criminal George Floyd died in a botched arrest. And that’s all it was.

But his death led to his immediate martyrdom and resulted in riots applauded by the mainstream media.

Riots that were not simply applauded but deliberately misrepresented, even when the evidence was just over the reporter’s shoulder.

The answer to rioting was obvious – ‘Defund the police!‘.

Because if the police were not there then the riots could proceed uninterrupted, the buildings burn down quicker, and everybody could go home with their looted goods.

Surely any fool could see the advantages? (Well, obviously, not the ‘racists’.)

The USA has arrived at a situation where, one hundred and sixty years after Lincoln freed the slaves (in the Confederate states he didn’t control), and sixty years since the Civil Rights Act, the Far Left is deliberately and irresponsibly reintroducing segregation and racism into the USA.

But it can’t stop over there. For as we’ve seen, ‘racism’ must be used everywhere, and interpolated into everything nowadays, even Covid.

And football. For during the recent Word Cup Finals a Black US academic, writing in the Washington Post (where else?) accused winners Argentina of being too White. Truth is that well under one percent of the Argentine population is Black.

It gets worse – for the countryside is racist! All those jackbooted farmers belting out the Horst Wessel Lied as they round up the sheep! Back in the 1940s the West fought those who sang that song. Now we fund and arm them.

Funny old world, innit!

And if ‘racism’ is to be fully exploited there must be unrestricted immigration to Western countries. Disruptive, unjustified, increasingly unpopular . . . so now these migrants are being called ‘climate refugees‘.

And if you fall for that, then you’ll fall for anything!

THE QUISLING LEFT AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The Cultural Marxism I’ve described has, in recent years, come to be known as ‘Wokeness’, or ‘Wokeism’. Before that, perhaps, ‘political correctness’. There’s no point in looking for differences between them because there are too few.

The others were just Cultural Marxism rebranded, because those pushing it knew that the ‘M’ word was unpopular, far better to hide under other labels. ‘Progressive’ being particularly popular with the Far Left today.

But whatever the tag, it remains a war on the West. And given that non-White majority countries get a free ride, Cultural Marxism / Wokeism can even be seen as racist.

And why not, for the Far Left has always been unpatriotic, so there’s no great leap needed for it to extend its hatred from individual nations and states to a whole racial and cultural identity.

It was noticeable during the Covid pandemic how eagerly the Far Left embraced the restrictions on human freedoms demanded by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) and other bodies.

Which was not surprising, for the comrades have always believed that for society to function efficiently the common herd must be directed and led by morally, intellectually and ideologically superior beings. People like Stalin. Mao. Pol Pot.

With this justified because however it might look, it’s really being done in the interests of the ruled. Little different to a theocracy. And the vision of the World Economic Forum.

I bring in the WEF because this shared belief in rule by, ‘Those Who Know Best’ has brought Cultural Marxists into alliance with mega corporations like Blackrock, Big Pharma, Big Tech, multi-billionaires, and others who want to act as an unelected world government.

Reducing our elected governments to little more than middle-men, or facilitators; implementing orders from above and obeying demands from below.

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL

The fundamental problem for Cultural Marxists is that, well, they spout bollocks. Whether it’s climate hysteria, anti-White racism, women with penises and, more recently, Covid.

Confronted with these realities Cultural Marxists, unable to defend the positions in which they’ve entrenched themselves, must resort to silencing critics before the truth can emerge. Which is why they openly advocate ‘No debate’.

Hoping to convey the message that the position(s) they have taken up are so incontrovertibly correct that debate is unnecessary.

Anyone suggesting maybe, just maybe, the world is not coming to a fiery end is a ‘climate denier’. Those who argue that cross-dressers are not women are ‘transphobes’. While those who believe that White people are not evil are, of course, ‘racists’.

But the catch-all term Leftists often reach for to slander their opponents when they’re cornered is ‘Far Right’. Which is what London mayor Sadiq Khan did last week to those protesting against 15-minute cites.

This is definitely a fascist sign. Click to open enlarged in separate tab.

These attempts to intimidate and silence opponents with silly labels is further enforced by denying a platform to those with the courage to speak. This of course is ‘cancel culture’.

Silencing critics is greatly aided by WEF control of the mainstream media and most social media. Resulting in newspapers and TV channels presenting only approved narratives, even ignoring some news stories altogether.

Now they want to introduce bans on what they – or their AI algorithms – will decide is ‘hate speech’. In other words: “All voices that challenge us will be silenced”.

It’s worth considering the role of Bill Gates in all this. For in many ways he is the public face of the World Economic Forum.

To begin with, Bill Gates is the second biggest donor to the WHO, and it was pure coincidence that during the Covid pandemic ‘Dr’ Gates was urging people to get vaccinated . . . with products from companies in which he’d heavily invested.

The same WHO that issued global directives during Covid, and now wants to take on itself the power to instruct democratically-elected governments to close their country down. Even the power to enforce global lockdowns.

Gates is also a big donor to media around the world, including the BBC. Now why would he do that? His fellow-‘philanthropist’, George Soros, another Globalist meddler, also gives vast sums to the media.

My understanding of the BBC was that it is funded by the licence fee in order to ensure its impartiality. (Don’t laugh!) So why is the BBC allowed to accept funding from Bill Gates? And who else is funding the BBC?

Bill Gates, friend of the late Jeffrey Epstein. (‘Suicide’, remember? Sad.)

CONCLUSIONS

The West is in a dangerous place. Those we are asked to believe are in control have been reduced to figureheads. Cardboard cut-outs.

As I explained, our elected politicians answer to the Globalists above them, and the Cultural Marxists below. With the latter acting as the ‘feet on the ground’ for the former. Neither source of real power has a democratic mandate.

Which results in the diktats of the unelected being ‘legitimised’ by being fed through national and sub-national governments.

But their agenda is clear: to make our lives more expensive and more miserable; with fewer freedoms, in expression, movement, and so much else.

To get a feel for the promised future read, ‘Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better‘, written in 2016 by Ida Auken, member of the Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization of the World Economic Forum.

‘No privacy’ will be dressed up as ‘smart’ and ‘convenient’.

And forget the Sunday joint, for vegans are another of the fringe outfits found among the screeching mass of Cultural Marxists. And it’s why livestock farmers are being hounded out of business around the world.

The WEF wants to control the global food supply. Vegans want us to stop eating meat. To achieve this, both will target farmers. (Though the vegans may disguise themselves as environmentalists.)

Intolerant and unreasonable vegans would never have such influence today, with a media free ride, if they weren’t carrying out the WEF agenda.

This also explains why Bill Gates is said to be the largest private owner of farmland in the USA. Not only that, but ‘Farmer’ Gates is also cornering the market in seeds.

The future is spelling itself out before our eyes.

To return to where we started . . .

Were I a cynical bastard I might wonder what really happened in Scotland. For with both Globalists and Cultural Marxists wanting to put an end to nation states why get involved with a party and a government wanting to create a new nation state?

And then I think of what happened in Wales in 2021. When a thriving organisation campaigning for independence, that had quickly gained 18,000 members, was almost destroyed by fanatics – all of a Far Left background – trying to turn YesCymru into TransCymru.

It’s a hell of a coincidence.

CONCLUSION

I believe in the family, the nation, and Western civilisation. Proud to be a husband, father and grandfather; proud to be Welsh; proud of what Europeans, people of the West, have contributed to the world.

The same West that’s being targeted today, and for a number of reasons.

Partly because Russia, China, and other states know how to deal with the kind of disruptive fanatics we’ve dealt with here. So the Cultural Marxists focus on their unfinished business with the capitalist West.

The WEF targets the West because that’s where the power and the money lies. But Klaus Schwab and his gang also understand that the obstacles to their takeover – love of democracy, respect for individual liberty, and a belief in freedom of expression – are more cherished in the West than elsewhere.

Which explains the concerted vilification of White people, and the existential threat.

No matter how it’s disguised, we are facing a global power grab. And for complete power over our lives. So let’s unite, across national boundaries, across continents, to defeat the crazies trying to ‘soften us’ up for the Bond villains.

Arise ye “useless eaters“!

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2023


Time To Call In The OPD Scam

This week I’m revisiting One Planet Developments. The system, unique to Wales, that allows people to buy a plot of land, build a house, exempt from normal planning regulations, and pretend to be farmers.

Of course, once you’ve erected your house you have a dwelling in open country for which you would never have received planning permission through the normal channels. And which can then be sold for a massive profit.

Not only is the OPD system an affront to planning laws, an insult to local people, but its very premise is nonsense. For this legislation was justified as “reducing Wales’ carbon footprint”. Yet it actually increases our carbon footprint.

For it attracts people into Wales who keep farting animals, drive old diesel vehicles, and have wood-burning stoves. With these now living on land that was previously unused.

LIVING OFF THE (FAT OF THE) LAND

This latest piece was prompted by news reaching me from north Pembrokeshire that someone was looking to buy a farm (or may has already bought one) to be split into One Planet Development plots.

The development is near the village of Mynachlog-ddu. Which explains what you see below. It was sent to me and I assume it’s a Facebook entry.

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My source was upset by a number of things; not least, the suggestion that another Welsh name was to be lost.

But the way it’s explained in the image above, by project mastermind, Wade William Heames, makes no sense. The village itself is Mynachlog-ddu (‘Black Monastery’), there is no farm of that name.

The farm that’s been identified to me is Caermeini Ganol, just outside the village, on the Crymych road. Below you see, on the left, a plan put out by Heames; and on the right, an OS map on which I’ve coloured in the land in question.

Here’s the sales guff from Savills.

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There was a Crowdfunder appeal in the name of The Edible Forest that claimed to have raised (or been promised) £650,000. But there’s no update after April 2019. Which I suppose might be explained by the appeal having reached its target.

Scroll down to the bottom and alongside Heames (‘MIQ’?) you’ll see the name ‘Rosie Maunder’. I believe this to be her. An abandoned Twitter account tells us Rosie is / was a Human Geographer at Cardiff Uni (where else?) with an interest in . . . rewilding.

But nowhere in the appeal do I see a location given for this fund-raising. Was it a case of, “Give us the money and we’ll find the land”?

What I do know is that there was a company called The Edible Forest CIC. But it wasn’t formed until five months after the last update on the fundraiser of the same name; it filed no accounts, and was voluntarily dissolved on St David’s Day 2022.

Here’s the Facebook page. We’ll return to it in a minute.

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And then there’s the name, ‘The Edible Forest’, which seems to be quite popular. I found it in Australia. Also in England. In fact, the term, ‘edible forest’, seems to be in common usage in environmental and vegan circles.

But I still don’t understand why the name was being used to raise money before the company of that name was even formed. And why fundraising ceased before the company was formed.

That seems to be a problem with Wade William Heames. Companies come and go, there’s a vagueness about what’s being purchased, we find multiple social media accounts, and commercial entities mentioned that seem devoid of corporate substance.

Such as . . .

A short-lived, one-man band, Food For Wales Ltd. Launched 12 May, 2020, Dissolved 18 October, 2022. What was its purpose? The SIC says, ‘Retail sale of fruit and vegetables in specialised stores’. So what happened?

There was also a Crowdfunder appeal for this company. Maybe it didn’t raise enough money?

It’s a strange business model. Set up a company, in which you own all the shares, and then ask for donations. Though I can see the advantages!

Someone following developments has suggested that the company actually buying land and then selling it off in parcels is Heames Ltd. A suggestion supported by the fact that nine new directors joined this company in recent months. Would these be investors?

To go back to social media for a minute. Here is Heames’ Linkedin page. But if you go to the column on the right you’ll see three other Wade Heames Linkedin pages. Which he seems to have started, and then perhaps forgotten about.

One, is for Jean Lamour Pest Control, another for Jean Lamour Environmental Services. Are these real companies, or just flights of fancy? There’s certainly nothing registered with Companies House under ‘Jean Lamour’.

Though Googling ‘Jean Lamour’, brought up a restaurant in the French city of Nancy. And it seems Heames was there in 2010, according to ‘Life events’ on this, yet another, FB page.

Is a French restauranteur branching out into catching rats and ‘roaches, with Wade William Heames his local agent? Or is it just a bit of harmless whimsy on Heames’ part?

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Another imaginary entity might be Unleash The Drones. What the hell is that about?

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It’s all very confusing, and might make it tempting to dismiss Wade Heames as a bit of a fantasist . . . if it wasn’t for the fact that one of his projects appears to be taking off. Though this is not in Mynachlog-ddu, but in Pontypridd.

To be exact, Lan farm, off Graigwen Road. (Or maybe it’s just the land.) Which he calls ‘Graigwen Farm’. Here’s the estate agent’s puff.

Read more about it as we make the promised return to the Edible Forest Facebook page. You’ll recall that the company of that name was Dissolved almost a year ago. Yet in this recent FB entry Heames promises riches beyond the dreams of avarice.

An acre of land with planning permission for a big house in a nice village or an upmarket suburb would be worth £40,000, perhaps more. Otherwise, stop dreaming. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And it attracted many unkind comments. When asked to justify the extravagant claims, and valuations, Heames’ response could be interpreted as suggesting using OPD legislation to greatly increase the value of the original purchase with a house in open country for which planning permission would almost certainly have been refused without employing the OPD angle.

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I referred just now to a rather confusing number of companies, and there seem to be intriguing women involved. You’ll remember that we saw ‘rewilder’ Rosie Maunder with the Crowdfunder appeal that claimed to have raised £650,000.

The person with significant control over The Edible Forest CIC before Heames returned to the helm was Italian Giulia Pacciotti. This lady has also exercised significant control over Heames Ltd.

Now there’s a company called Heames II Ltd. The company address is 117 Llangrannog Road, Llanishen. (The one that’s ‘rewilding’ the front garden.) Set up in February 2021, yet Wade Heames is not listed as a director. The only director is Czech citizen Vera Schweitzerova. Ms Schweitzerova is also a director of Heames Ltd.

Heames II is obviously a Wade Heames company, so where is he?

Almost every angle of investigation runs up against more questions or dead-ends. And causes for concern.

Another example is a recent entry on the Edible Forest Facebook page (January 6) suggesting that Wade Heames now intends applying to the Development Bank of Wales (DBW) for funding.

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My understanding has always been that the DBW funds businesses that will create employment and generate wealth within Welsh communities. Surely OPD plots don’t qualify? And anyway, aren’t Heames’ projects self-financing?

Does the DBW do bridging loans?

CONCLUSION

The way OPD was sold to us by Jane Davidson and others suggested it would attract relics of the Swinging Sixties, who’d buy a couple of acres of unproductive land from a Welsh farmer, and live out their twilight years in a fug of marijuana smoke and joss sticks.

All set out in the so-called ‘Welsh Government’s Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6.

The reality soon proved to be very different. Here are some examples I’ve encountered in recent years.

There’s the cult-like commune with an authoritarian leader and its own temple. (Though the planning permission was for ‘a dwellinghouse’.) The leader’s wife’s got a nice line in £185 a head ‘Day Retreat of Powerful Transformation’.

How much time is actually spent tending the organic kumquat?

Then there’s OPDs that are just used on weekends. This is unlawful by the OPD rules laid down by the ‘Welsh Government’. Yet this is what I found at Rhiw Las.

There was a couple there with the husband working in the Met Office in Bristol, while his wife was a Fellow at the LSE.

There have been other examples where both the spirit and the word of the OPD legislation has been flouted by people who soon after first contact realised that Welsh politicians would paint their arses green and chase each other around wind turbines to prove their environmental credentials.

(Try not to visualise that!)

Yet perhaps the most egregious flouting of the legislation comes in examples that are very often never registered as OPDs.

I’m thinking now of unscrupulous, sometimes criminal, operators, who buy sections of woodland and sell them off in plots for people to live on, in trailer homes or chalets: “They can’t touch you, pal – if the council comes snooping, just say ‘OPD'”.

This practice very often follows planning permission secured for a ‘forestry road’.

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The images above show chalets and trailer homes at ‘Coedfryn Woods’, near Llangynog, Carmarthenshire. None of the properties shown had planning permission when the images were sent to me in early January last year.

The council, however, showed little appetite for getting involved.

I’m aware of forest squatting elsewhere. Meidrim, in north Carmarthenshire, for example. And while most residents of these plots will never apply for official OPD status, they will try to hide behind the legislation when challenged.

Secure in the knowledge that local authorities are reluctant to instigate proceedings because OPD planning consent is assured. So both parties save time and money by accepting these unofficial OPDs as the real deal.

And how could I overlook the ‘farmlets’ in Killay, on the western outskirts of Swansea. Read about them here, just scroll down to the section ‘Back to Gower’. (Though the whole article is worth reading.)

And now we have Wade William Heames and his plans for OPD collectives in Pontypridd and Mynachlog-ddu. All funded by others, including, he hopes, The Development Bank of Wales!

It begins to look like big business. And a wee bit shady. One source described it: “Buy for £5k an acre and sell for 10” (or more). If this is really what it’s come to, then we’re a long way from the old hippy looking for isolation and contentment in his declining years.

There are few Welsh people interested in OPDs, and northern Wales seems to have escaped the plague. This is explained because even Pembrokeshire has good access, via the A48 and M4, to southern England, where OPD-lovers originate.

And so, for the reasons given here (and elsewhere), I urge an end to this failed experiment that invites abuse. And which, like too much of the legislation from Corruption Bay, serves the agendas of others, offering nothing to Wales, or to Welsh people.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023


Weep for Wales 20

Well, here we are again, with the latest instalment in this saga, and the first since Weep for Wales 19 in November 2021. As that title tells you, there were 18 previous instalments (and a few updates scattered about), so set a day aside if you want to catch up with it all.

For this latest chapter I’ve had to buy quite a few documents from the Land Registry, so why not help out by making a contribution? Just click on the ‘Donate’ button in the sidebar. (Believe me, you’ll feel better for it!)

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I should add that WfW 20 contains, inevitably, a considerable amount of update; because without understanding the past it’s difficult to make sense of the present, and impossible to make informed assessments of what lies ahead.

Though I’m hoping this contribution ends the saga; and that the current owners, and future owners, give me no reason to return to Plas Glynllifon.

BACKGROUND

Let’s start with the location. Plas Glynllifon is an impressive old pile found just outside the village of Llandwrog, on the A499, a few miles south west of Caernarfon.

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That said, it’s not that old, having been built in the decade after 1836 for Spencer Bulkeley Wynn, third Baron Newborough. But on the site of at least three earlier houses. (The eighth baron can now be found at the Rhug Estate.)

By one route or another the Glynllifon estate passed to Caernarvon County Council, then its successor authority, Cyngor Gwynedd, before it became the responsibility of Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor, which merged in 2012 with with Coleg Llandrillo and Coleg Menai to form Grŵp Llandrillo Menai.

But soon after the handover in 2001 – maybe even before – it became clear that while a further education college could certainly use the other buildings it had no need of the mansion, and so it was put up for sale.

Which saw the mansion being sold in 2003 to Glynllifon Ltd.

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Though I find it odd that this company was set up as early as 7 November, 2000, by pharmacist Dr Devendra Shah. For this was even before the site was officially handed over to Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor.

Such foresight!

But it was two and a half years after its formation when Glynllifon Ltd bought the mansion for a stated £500,000. Though by then Shah was long gone, and the only director at the time of the purchase was Pravin Gabhubha Jadeja.

Their company is still alive, with four outstanding charges. The long-departed Welsh Development Agency is owed an unspecified amount from March 2004, and Cyngor Gwynedd £130,000 from a month later. (The two may be linked.)

All the various purchases and Land Registry titles involved can be found in this table I’ve drawn up for you. (Available here in pdf format with working hyperlinks.)

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The way this 2003 transfer was done, or perhaps the way it wasn’t done, has caused confusion for many people over the years, myself included.

I say that because if we consult the original Land Registry title number CYM 8531 we see that ‘The Mansion House and Glynllifon Estate, Glynllifon, Caernarfon’, is still shown as belonging to Grŵp Llandrillo Menai. Which is obviously not the case.

Confusion added to by the real title document for the mansion, CYM127981, referring to ‘land adjoining Glynllifon College, Clynnog Road, Caernarfon (LL54 5DU)’.

The separation is explained in this document. (Scroll down.)

I’m sure this mess could be tidied up without too much trouble or expense.

Despite liabilities pushing two million pounds Glynllifon Ltd hoped to give out an impression of liquidity by valuing the mansion at £2,245,053 and claiming a share issue of £400,000.

No one was fooled. And so the company was voluntarily liquidated in April 2016 with the mansion, Plas Glynllifon, now ‘Estimated to realise’ £720,000. A third of the valuation.

What I found strange was that, despite the charges still being outstanding, neither the Welsh Development Agency nor its successor body – the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ – was listed among Glynllifon Ltd’s creditors.

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Had the debt been written off?

THE ERA OF THE CRIME FAMILIES

Now we enter the glorious chapter when Paul and Rowena Williams appear on the scene. And what a splash they made. Without going into too much detail, the Gruesome Twosome were (among other things) mortgage fraudsters.

They operated like this . . .

Step 1: Buy a property – maybe from a liquidator – for, say, £200,000.

Step 2: Set up a company to ‘buy’ that property, from yourself.

Step 3: Get a qualified (but bent) valuer to say the property is worth £1,000,000.

Step 4: Ask a bank to loan the new company £500,000 to help buy the property.

The bank is happy to lend the money in the belief that even if the company goes bust it can recoup its ½ million loan because it has first call on a property worth £1m.

The most outrageous example would be the Radnorshire Arms in Presteigne. It was claimed that Leisure & Development Ltd, in August 2015, paid £3,487,049 for this modest pub with a restaurant and a few rooms.

(After the collapse it sold, in April 2020, for £240,000.)

By the time Paul and Rowena Williams bought Plas Glynllifon for £630,000 in April 2016, their property empire was in big trouble; the Radnorshire Arms and the Knighton Hotel had both closed suddenly.

With the closures explained by those and other properties having been sold for £11m to their associate, convicted fraudster Keith Harvey Part(d)ridge.

Leisure & Development Ltd went under with 12 outstanding charges against it for various properties, owing millions to the National Westminster Bank. And more again to Together Commercial Finance Ltd.

The panel below, from the Administrator’s report of July 2020, tells us that of £6.2m loaned to Leisure & Development Ltd by the NatWest, only £1.7m was repaid (realised from the sale of the properties against which the loans had been secured), leaving a shortfall of £4.5m.

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But spare a thought for the unsecured creditors, owed £306,961.36, who got sod all; these were the employees, the tradesmen, the suppliers, and all the small people who lost out to Paul and Rowena Williams, and their equally crooked associates.

Plas Glynllifon was bought through a new company, Plas Glynllifon Ltd. Which soon racked up debts with the ever-obliging Together Commercial Finance. Eight charges in all, unpaid when that company went into liquidation in January 2022.

Before liquidation, with the whole scam now being exposed, help arrived in the form of Myles Cunliffe, described at the time, by Paul Williams, as a “finance guy”.

Which would be one way of putting it. For Cunliffe and his mentor, Jon Disley, were certainly involved in money, and on an international scale.

One of their specialities was targeting companies in trouble. How this might have operated, with more on Cunliffe and Disley, in Weep for Wales 11 – 19. They even advertised for struggling businesses through their stable of ‘Goldmann’ companies.

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One of the ‘Goldmann’ companies was Goldmann and Sons (Thailand), which became The European Clothing Company Ltd, run by Danish con man Benny Falk. Being a con man it was inevitable that Benny would get involved in ‘Green’ energy.

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Eventually it all turned to dark comedy, especially after Paul and Rowena Williams fell out with Cunliffe and Disley, with each pair suggesting the other was dishonest. Well, laff!

But the poor buggers working for the new management saw no real change. For just like those the Williamses had abandoned in Powys and elsewhere, the staff at Seiont Manor were left high and dry, unpaid, just before Christmas 2019.

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This hotel was owned by Rural Retreats & Development Ltd, another Williams family venture, with Cunliffe also on board for a while. Although over three years behind with its accounts it’s still active on the Companies House register. Perhaps kept from liquidating itself by creditors.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

We left off with the media telling us the new owner of Plas Glynllifon was David Savage of Dragon Investments Ltd. But as I explained, that was not true.

David Savage and Dragon Investments were simply a front for David Russell and his Property Alliance Group Ltd.

The first development to report is that Seiont Manor and its ‘gatehouse’ property, Llwyn y Brain Lodge, which were owned by Paul and Rowena Williams and then the Disley-Cunliffe gang, have now been separated from Plas Glynllifon. These properties are situated just outside the village of Llanrug, north east of Caernarfon.

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They remain in the possession of David Russell, through Caernarfon Properties Ltd. Which is owned by Dragon Investments Ltd. With Dragon in turn owned by Russell’s Property Alliance Group Ltd.

Though the ever-loyal front man David Savage is the only director of both Caernarfon Properties and Dragon Investments.

As I explained in the table I drew up, the mansion itself was owned by Cowm Top Properties, a company launched by David Russell in September 2014.

He was relieved of his post by Savage in July 2020, and Savage left two years later to be replaced by Christopher Stephen Nedic. Which means that Nedic is now the owner of Plas Glynllifon.

So who is he? Well, the Nedic family, headed by Christopher Stephen Nedic, seems to have a few different lines of business.

On the one hand, they have a heavy haulage operation in Wolverhampton, with Nedic Transport & Plant Hire. Here’s the Companies House entry. But then there’s Shadwell Park Estates, which is a quarrying company.

And there are a few of what appear to be caravan / chalet sites, such as Cotswold Grange. Perhaps also Nedic Park Estates Ltd. Though the two Nedic sons seem to have behaved irresponsibility on at least one occasion.

Finally, there are the film companies. Arcade Films 4 LLP, Chelmer Films LLP, and Swale Films LLP, all of which Christopher Stephen Nedic has been involved with for over a decade.

The address given for these companies is, ‘The Khyber, Holyhead Road, Kingswood, Albrighton, Wolverhampton’. I couldn’t find that establishment, but I did find an Indian eatery on Waterhouse Lane, off Holyhead Road, named The New Khyber. A successor?

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I have no idea what the Nedic family’s plans are for Plas Glynllifon, but last June they set up a new company, Glynllifon Estates Ltd. So, given their established interest in caravans and chalets, maybe this is the future planned for Plas Glynllifon.

Watch this space?

God knows, the old pile has suffered enough indignities in recent years, often at the hands of television. Also social media. The latter culprit includes this 37 minutes of faux terror and bullshit by some silly buggers with American accents making money out of videos for even sillier buggers.

We can but hope that the future for Plas Glynllifon is an improvement on the recent past. But this cynical old bastard is not optimistic.

And the problem is not limited to Glynllifon, for there are big, unloved old houses all over Wales.

One in the news of late stands where once stood a house that Glyndŵr knew. For Nannau is the estate where legend says the great man killed his traitorous cousin Hywel Sele, and stuffed the body into a hollow oak.

But Nannau is owned by somebody in England who doesn’t care, or doesn’t have the money to save it, and so it’s falling down.

It Nannau had belonged to Horace FitzLandgrabber, and if he had killed and cleared the Welsh off the land, no doubt our ‘Welsh Government’ and Cadw would be throwing money at it.

Maybe if the name was changed to ‘Gilestone‘ . . .

DIGRESSION-CONCLUSION

We have a problem in Wales that too many people would rather ignore. That many have never even thought about. I’m referring to the ownership of domestic property and smaller commercial buildings, also farms and land.

So many issues could be resolved by addressing that problem with a simple piece of legislation. Legislation that has been introduced in other countries.

A recent example is the Balearic Islands, part of Spain with a devolved administration. This interesting article cites both independent states and sub-national territories where such legislation exists.

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There is a system in the Channel Islands that divides the housing market into ‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ sectors. A majority of domestic properties is in the ‘Closed’ sector, which is restricted to local buyers.

To qualify for ‘Entitled status’, ‘You must live on Jersey for a combined period of 10 years before you’re 40’. Which seems designed to rule out retirees.

By restricting ownership of domestic property and smaller commercial property to permanent residents of Wales, with a qualification period of 10 years, we could, in one fell swoop, solve a number of current problems. Such as . . .

  • The ‘Welsh Government’ has empowered councils to increase council tax on holiday homes to 300%. But even if raised to 300% these new provisions will only reduce the numbers of holiday homes not eradicate them altogether. 
  • A bigger obstacle to Welsh people being unable to buy a home is those moving to Wales as permanent residents. With too many of these falling into the older age brackets, with the inevitable strain on our NHS and other services.
  • Thanks to climate hysteria and the scams it encourages we see Welsh farms bought by hedge funds for ‘greenwashing’. Welsh farms now owned by money-shufflers who can’t even pronounce the names of those farms! 

I can already hear the Conservative and Unionist Party, and other defenders of England’s hegemony, tut-tutting and dismissing the very idea. One argument I guarantee we’d hear would be that the property market would collapse.

But it wouldn’t. Because its effects would be gradual. And in some areas of the country the impact would be minimal.

What’s more, in the early stages few would notice because no one would be thrown out of their home, or off their land. And we could allow properties to be passed on to (inherited by), but not sold to, non-residents.

Flexibility would be one of the keys to making the policy work. Flexibility without losing track of the objective.

Obviously, domestic property prices would fall, allowing many Welsh families to buy a home. Perhaps their first home. Who could object to that?

Just think, Gwent could be saved from degenerating into the outer suburbs of Bristol. And the north would be spared any more commuter communities linking to the A55.

But legislation such as I’m advocating would obviously have its greatest impact in our rural areas, where the indigenous Welsh population is on the point of becoming a minority. In some areas it’s passed that point.

Whereas in our cities, major towns, and post-industrial areas, where property is more affordable, and incomes generally higher, there would be less impact because there’s less cross-border ownership.

I’m open to suggestions, even criticism; but let’s at least debate the idea.

If nothing else, it would mean that I wouldn’t have to write about any more of the con artists, money launderers and other crooks I’ve written about over the years. I could instead turn my hand to embroidery.

Which is what I’ve always wanted to do . . .

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2023


Merthyr Ski Slope 3

After writing about this project in September 2017 I didn’t think I’d be returning to Rhydycar West. But here we are in 2023 and it’s been resurrected. If you’ve got 3 minutes to spare, there’s even a video.

Though it would definitely help you follow this piece if you read what I put out in 2017. Here are links to Merthyr Ski Slope and Merthyr Ski Slope 2, Slippery Customers.

BACKGROUND

The area we’re talking about is called Rhydycar West because it’s on the west side of the A470 from Rhydycar, and up towards Heolgerrig.

The site of the project is roughly in the centre of the image below; the image itself comes courtesy of Ordnance Survey.

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I can’t give you much history other than it’s an old industrial site, once owned by the National Coal Board, containing a considerable amount of waste.

The first mention I can find in this century says that in 2001 the 600 acre site was sold by owner Celtic Energy Ltd for £2m to Merthyr Village Ltd, formed in July 2000.

That 2001 report also says: ‘The plans include a 15,000-seater football stadium, more than 300 executive houses, two hotels, a 12-screen multiplex cinema, bowling alley, swimming pool, new leisure centre, 3,000-seater multipurpose hall and shopping units.’

No mention at this stage of skiing, snowboarding, and the like.

The first directors of Merthyr Village Ltd were the family of Wynford Holloway, who had bought the town’s football club a few years before; also local entertainer Lynn Mittell (Owen Money); and ill-starred solicitor William Snowdon.

The central element was clearly the stadium, to be built in the hope that Merthyr Town FC would gain promotion to the professional English leagues. That never happened.

And because Merthyr rejected the Welsh set-up it now plays in the Southern League Premier Division South, going knee to knee with giants of the game like Hartley Wintney and Hanwell Town. (What do you mean, you’ve never heard of them!)

The final blow to the project was the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ calling it in in 2007.

That might have appeared to be the end.

UPDATE 18.01.2023: Merthyr Village Ltd is in liquidation.

A PASSION FOR ISLANDS

Before the Merthyr Village project was called in, and perhaps intended as a consolation prize, a development was announced for the other side of the A470. And the report I’ve linked to tells us Merthyr Borough Council (or someone) awarded the contract to Atlantic Property Developments Plc of Cardiff.

This company is owned by Peter ‘The Pies’ Thomas, a Merthyr boy originally, but now firmly part of the Cardiff establishment, and owner of the Cardiff rugby outfit. (Does it still pretend to be a region?)

I love the Companies House entry that has his name as ‘Obe Peter Thomas’.

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Did the committee chaired by Carwyn Jones call in the Merthyr Village project to give Peter Thomas’s scheme a clear run? An ungenerous thought, maybe, but this is Wales.

Peter Thomas and brother Stan have prospered mightily in the age of devolution. Do you remember how Stan was able to buy publicly-owned land at knock-down prices thanks to incompetence or corruption at the Regeneration Investment Fund for Wales?

The Thomas brothers had a big stake in Cardiff airport, and then the ‘Welsh Government’ paid an absurdly inflated price for that deathly pale pachyderm when . . . Carwyn Jones was First Minister.

I wrote about the land deals back in March 2016, in Pies, Planes & Property Development, followed up with Pies, Planes & Property Development 2.

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The company, Merthyr Village Ltd, hung on, but the only director since October 30, 2013, has been Richard Frank Arnold of Colchester, Essex. He who now wishes to bring Méribel to Merthyr.

In the first part of this (to date) trilogy I quoted a September 2017 WalesOnline article. It told us that the project was a collaboration between Marvel Ltd, represented by Canadian Leigh Gerald Large; and Snowsport Cymru Wales, represented by Robin Kellen.

I found a number of UK-registered companies with which Large was associated, but Marvel was not one of them. In addition to the companies I’ve just linked to, Large had companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.

But then, Large gets about. He may originally be from Victoria, British Columbia; but he’s also lived in Sweden, England, and has business links with Guernsey, Cyprus, and the Isle of Man.

To cut a long story short, I eventually tracked down Marvel Ltd in Guernsey. (Though it also used the address of a Wimbledon solicitor.) The company was formed 9 September 2013. Though Marvel eventually ‘migrated’ 26 July 2021.

But by an amazing coincidence, there was another company with the same name in the Isle of Man, which was also registered 9 September 2013!

Having companies with the same name in different jurisdictions, or even the same jurisdiction, seems to be the way of doing things for those involved with the Merthyr ski project.

Another example would be ‘Cavendish’, which crops up in various forms. Such as Cavendish Trust Company Ltd, and with an address just a few doors away at 31 – 37 North Quay, is said to be Marvel’s agent.

Though Companies House tells us there is also a Cavendish Trustees Ltd sharing the 34 North Quay address with Marvel. Also at 34 we find Cavendish International Ltd. And Cavendish Secretaries Ltd.

A second entry for Cavendish Secretaries Ltd gives us a few more companies using the 34 North Quay address.

And then, to complicate things even further, there is an entry for Cavendish Secretaries at 31 – 37 North Quay.

I shan’t dig for any more. I’ll only say that so many companies, using the same name in the same or different jurisdictions, should not inspire confidence. How are you supposed to know who you’re dealing with?

And it might be about to get worse.

WHO’S BEHIND IT?

When confronted with the problem I just outlined I often find that it helps avoid complete confusion by seeing who runs or owns those companies.

So let’s look at Cavendish Trustees Ltd of 34 North Quay, Douglas. The ‘Beneficial Owner’ is listed as James Cunningham-David.  But I had trouble finding him.

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Because his name is really James Nicholas Cunningham-Davis. And with the correct name a few companies appear. One still extant is Infinity Gaming Solutions (UK) Ltd.

And while it too is based at 34 North Quay in Douglas it also uses as an address 66A Reigate Road, Ewell, Epsom, Surrey. A little bungalow looking out over a roundabout and some kind of industrial estate.

There’s nothing in the kitty to bother us with Infinity Gaming Solutions but I’d like to turn your attention to another of the directors, Pritesh Ramesh Desai. Apparently a resident of the Isle of Man Desai is now a director of Pine Fields Private Ltd, which has been involved at Rhydycar West for a few years.

Desai and Cunningham-Davis may have attended the same school. I suggest that because they are the only trustees of the Old Epsomian Club 1952 Trust Fund.

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Also bringing Desai and Cunningham-Davis together is Inquba Group Holding Company Ltd, which was taken over in October last year by Cavendish Trustees Ltd of 34 North Quay, etc.

This link gives a few of Desai’s older companies.

Here’s Desai’s Linkedin profile. (Here in pdf format.) Though it’s amazing how few of the many, many companies he’s been involved with get a mention.

Desai joined Pine Fields in May last year. And if we scroll down on the company directors page we see that a previous director was Richard Frank Arnold. We met him earlier, he being the only director of Merthyr Village Ltd since October 2013.

And in the recent press release he is the project spokesman.

We also see that Leigh Gerald Large, who fronted the bid back in 2017, was drummed out of Pine Fields in July of that year.

If we check who now exerts control over Pine Fields we see that it’s Cherry Blossom Global Ltd. And although this outfit gives the familiar address on North Quay, and has been registered on the IoM since May 2010, I suspect it’s also berthed in the British Virgin Islands.

We have now established links between Rhydycar West and assorted entities hither and yon . . . but are we any wiser?

It doesn’t end there.

For Pritesh Ramesh Desai and entities with which he’s associated predictably appear more than once in the Offshore Leaks Database. One entry suggests he himself has links with Iran! Perhaps less worryingly, he also has links with Cyprus, Malta and God knows where else.

WHO OWNS WHAT?

Time now to try to figure out who actually owns the site at Rhydycar West.

Originally, of course, it was Merthyr Village Ltd, which bought the site from Celtic Energy. But as we’ve seen, that project got knocked back by the ‘Welsh Government’.

Image courtesy of Google Earth. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Even so, according to Companies House there are still two charges outstanding against Merthyr Village Ltd. The one that’s relevant to us is, ‘F/H Land at Colliers Row Merthyr Tydfil t/no CYM6191.‘ (It’s actually Upper Colliers’ Row.)

However, the Land Registry title document shows that ownership is now in the hands of Marvel Ltd, of 58 High Street, Wimbledon (though there is no title plan available at the Land Registry). The address given seems to be an office of estate agent Knight Frank.

Marvel may be squatting on Wimbledon High Street due to it being Guernsey registered. Formed on September 9, 2013, just a couple of weeks before taking possession of the land at Colliers’ Row.

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A later entry on the Land Registry document for CYM6191 tells us that just over a year ago, in December 2021, control of the title was taken by Goco International Ltd. This entity is also incorporated in Guernsey, and also uses an address we’re all familiar with – 34 North Quay, Douglas, Isle of Man.

Which appears to the headquarters for Pritesh Ramesh Desai.

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I can’t tell you much more about Goco as I can’t afford to buy documents from the Guernsey Registry. Though I turned up nothing in the Offshore Leaks Database for Goco.

Before finishing this section I’d better identify what are probably a few more relevant land titles.

One is ‘Land at Heolgerrig‘ (scroll down for plan). Title in the name of Pine Fields Private Ltd. We met this lot earlier in this sprawling narrative. Although the company has been around since August 2010 we saw that Pritesh Ramesh Desai joined in May 2022.

This land was sold by Merthyr Village Ltd in July 2009 to Crystalrock Ltd, where the only director left is Richard Frank Arnold. It then transferred to Pine Fields Private Ltd in August 2011 for a reported £450,000.

The other title worth considering is ‘Land lying to the North of Upper Colliers’ Row’ Title number: CYM536607 (scroll down for plan). This was transferred in two lots from Merthyr Village Ltd to Crystalrock Ltd, and then passed on to Pine Fields Private Ltd.

Those titles, I think, cover the land involved in the project. Though I’m not 100% certain.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This project can be viewed in three stages.

The first was obviously the initiative linked with the local football club, promoted by Merthyr Village Ltd, that, for reasons we can only guess at, was scotched by the ‘Welsh Government’ in 2007.

That said, Merthyr Village Ltd is still in existence, looks financially healthy, and while Richard Frank Arnold is the only director, ‘significant control’ is exercised by solicitor William Snowdon, who is connected to the original Merthyr Village directors through them all being directors of Merthyr Tydfil Football Club Ltd.

Which is another reason I suspect the directors of Merthyr Village Ltd may retain a financial interest in the ongoing and modified project.

The second attempt was the one reported in 2017. This was promoted by the footloose Canadian, Leigh Gerald Large, representing Marvel, registered in Guernsey.

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For whatever reason, that project also failed to take off.

Which brings us up to 2023, and the third attempt. Again, it’s Marvel, but this time fronted by Richard Frank Arnold.

My belief is that the real difference this time around is the involvement of Pritesh Ramesh Desai. Plus his partners and contacts in assorted island tax havens around the world.

I now expect our tribunes, at both local and national level, plus our ever-vigilant media, to politely ask of those pushing the snow fantasy who’s really behind the project, to explain the galaxy of companies, and the games of musical chairs.

And then there’s the money – where’s it coming from? Surely not from the fun-loving Ayatollahs to whom Desai might be linked! And how much money, because I’m pretty sure those behind this project anticipate a hefty dollop of Welsh public funding.

So many questions!

FOOTNOTE: After e-mailing Mr Desai on January 5 I had a response late last night from Andy Coleman, signing himself, ‘CFO Rhydycar West’, offering to discuss the project.

Given the choice between delivering this post as promised today and delaying it until after I’d spoken with Mr Coleman I choose the former option.

But as I made clear in my reply to Mr Coleman, now that this post is published, he or anyone representing the project is welcome to comment. I’d welcome it.

But I want straight answers, not a stroll down Flim-flam Lane.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023


Welsh Independence And The Left

I’m kicking off 2023 with thoughts on independence; more exactly, the kind of independence being offered by those who’ll be gathering in the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, on the 28th of this month.

Ah! the Brangwyn Hall. I remember being slung out of there many years ago. It was a Labour Party do, with that son of Abersychan, Roy Jenkins, topping the bill. (Ere he and others left to form the SDP.)

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Anyway, Woy had got to the bit in his peroration where he proclaimed to the assembly that he too was Welsh . . . at which point a young Jac jumped up and shouted ‘You’re no Welshman!’ (My outburst may have contained an expletive attributive.)

I was immediately attacked by some old crow sitting behind me, who laid into me with her umbrella! A possible headline from the Evening Post flashed through my mind – ‘Nationalist yob beaten to death by umbrella-wielding Labour granny’.

I was saved from this undignified and premature fate by the ‘stewards’ (i.e. Labour heavies) dragging me off towards the huge front doors. With a few reminders along the way that my contribution was not appreciated. (‘Troublemaker, ew are!’)

Happy days!

‘PROGRESSIVE’ MELIN DRAFOD

In this section I shall refer more than once to the briefly successful far Left takeover of YesCymru in 2020 and 2021.

I wrote about this extensively at the time and so, to catch up with what I wrote, type ‘YesCymru’ in the search box atop the sidebar.

The event later this month in the Brangwyn is organised by think tank Melin Drafod. And you don’t need to think too hard to realise what anyone attending is likely to hear.

All the speakers are on the Left. Or the far Left. Or the Woke Left. Call it what you will.

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But ‘progressive’ is the label behind which they all hide nowadays. Such a nice word, harmless and unthreatening. Who among us could object to ‘progress‘?

Me. Because I recognise rebranded Marxism.

Helping me appreciate that the ‘progress’ demanded by those who’ll gather where a young Jac was assaulted by a Bolshie harridan is worrying.

But let Melin Drafod speak for itself:

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‘Not independence for its own sake’. What is that trying to say – patriotism is not enough? Or is it a veiled threat to scupper any form of independence that doesn’t meet with the approval of the far Left?

There is so much to read into that section.

My views on ‘climate change’ are well known – it’s not happening. The myth is being kept alive by ‘environmentalists’ and others who’ve staked their reputations on it and can’t afford to backtrack, with supranational bodies thinking ‘global warming’ gives them the excuse to control human behaviour worldwide.

And does anyone seriously believe that racism is a ‘scourge’ in modern Wales? Who but the seriously unhinged could insult us by equating Wales in 2023 with Arkansas or the Transvaal a few decades back?

Only perhaps those with a vested interest in using the allegation of ‘racism’ to slander political opponents and to promote their own interests.

The latter might apply to Melin Drafod National Committee member Harriet Protheroe-Soltani, of the Wales Refugee Council. Like all third sector bodies, this one thrives by inventing or exaggerating a problem – and then demanding funding to tackle that problem.

Ms Protheroe-Soltani of Momentum was also employed by YesCymru when it fell briefly under the control of the far Left in 2020 / 2021.

Sam Coates is another member of the National Committee.

His Twitter account tells that he is a socialist first, then a Welshman. Which would appear to bear out that for these ‘progressives’ Wales comes second to their ideological priorities.

Significantly, perhaps, there’s no mention of independence.

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And, again, it’s worth returning to the far Left takeover of YesCymru, for Coates wrote this essay in July 2021, and it’s revealing. (Available here in pdf format.) Not just about Coates but about the others who’ll be at the Brangwyn later this month.

He writes: ‘In 2017, I rocked up to the Hen Coleg yn Aberystwyth on a baking hot day to attend YesCymru’s AGM. It was a friendly room of about 50 people, mostly middle age, and mostly white.’

‘Mostly white’ – in a country that is 95% White! Would Coates and the comrades be happier if YesCymru was a majority non-White organisation, and therefore grotesquely unrepresentative of Wales?

As unrepresentative as those who’ll be at the Brangwyn Hall.

Referring to the rigged YesCymru elections of May 2021 that saw the far Left briefly take control, Coates writes: ‘Hundreds of members attended the online event, and used a voting tool used by many other political organisations to choose members of the new Central Committee’.

It would appear that when he wrote of those ‘hundreds’ voting Coates had forgotten that a few paragraphs earlier he’d talked of YesCymru having 18,000 members. Presenting us with the obvious question: why were just 2-3% of the members able / allowed to vote?

But let’s remember some of the tweets from ‘progressives’ celebrating victory!

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Coates’ whole essay is an apology for an attempted far Left takeover; and it’s riddled with inaccuracies, misrepresentations and outright lies.

The other members of Melin Drafod’s National Committee seem to be Plaid Cymru members, and others who were involved in the near-destruction of YesCymru in 2021. I’m thinking of Llywelyn ap Gwilym, and Siôn Jobbins, Chair of YesCymru who eventually jumped ship.

Then we have Elin Hywel and Colin Nosworthy of Undod, the source of so much of the poison that almost finished off YesCymru.

And of course there are one or two on the National Committee from the Labour Party.

WHO’S COMING TO THE SUMMIT AND WHO’S NOT INVITED?

Let’s start by listing those political parties and organisations that are not invited by Melin Drafod (or whoever) to the portentously dubbed ‘Independence Summit’.

First off, there’s the party to which I belong, Gwlad. Then there’s Propel. There’s also the Sovereign Party / Plaid Sofren. So without going too far, we’ve already found three registered political parties, with councillors, made up of serious and experienced people, with all three parties committed to Welsh independence.

So why didn’t Melin Drafod invite them?

The listed speakers are advertised as follows . . .

‘Anthony Slaughter (Wales Green Party Leader), Adam Price MS (Plaid Cymru Leader), Cllr Rachel Garrick (Welsh Labour for Independence), Sam Coates (Undod), Gwern Evans (YesCymru), Luke Fletcher MS, Mirain Owen (Cymdeithas yr Iaith) and others’.

So let’s begin with Slaughter, and remind everyone that there is no Wales Green Party! There is only the Wales branch of the Green Party of England.

In 2018 Green Party members in Wales had the chance to create a separate Wales Green Party, they voted not to. The main reason for that was that most Green Party members in Wales are English.

Then, last year, the Green Party of England in Wales claimed to be in favour of Welsh independence! Plaid Cymru fell for it and was happy to enter some sort of agreement with them.

No individual, group, or party, sincere about Welsh independence, should even talk to a colonialist outfit that refuses to even recognise the existence of our country.

Plaid Cymru I’ll leave until last.

‘Welsh Labour for Independence’ (WLfI) is another piece of nonsense. Labour is a Unionist party. Any Labour member who wants independence is in the wrong party. Maybe some now realise that.

But is (WLfI) the same as Labour for an Independent Wales (LfIW)? Or, and this is the frightening bit – are there two of them!

During the struggle for YesCymru LfIW was prominent in undermining sensible committee members and replacing them with some real nutters. Working from the shadows was Rob Lloyd of Prestatyn, while out there on the Welshpool barricades was Benji Gwalchmai.

Where are they now? How I miss them!

We already know all we need to know about Sam Coates and Undod.

Luke Fletcher is a Plaid Cymru Senedd Member. With a beard.

YesCymru is represented by Gwern Gwynfil Evans. He was announced as YC’s first-ever full-time CEO in September. The piece I’ve linked to says he has ‘a business background’. Which is true; one of his companies was Dissolved in the very month he was appointed.

Yet he brings another Aberystwyth connection to the party. Which I’ll explore shortly.

Cymdeithas yr Iaith is not worth dwelling on. Hopelessly Woke it overlaps with Undod and other far Left groups like Plaid Cymru’s youth wing, Plaid Ifanc, where pronouns are of paramount importance.

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So, finally, let’s give some thought to Plaid Cymru which, in most people’s eyes, is ‘the nationalist party’, and the leading voice for Welsh independence.

On the one hand, Plaid activists seem to be more at home at Gay Pride parades than at marches for independence; while the party is being eaten away from the inside by a combination of back-stabbing and sexual misbehaviour.

The party tries to keep things under wraps but news of the obsession with other people’s ‘bits’ inevitably reaches the public domain.

MS Rhys ab Owen was suspended a few months ago for unwanted sexual advances to a female. But he was only suspended after the party had sat on the case for some time in the hope the complainant would go away.

Last month, the party’s chief executive, Carl Harris, finally stepped down after it emerged he had made unwanted sexual advances to a young party worker.

When it’s like this at the top of the party – and I mean, the very top – then no one should be surprised that lower down the pecking order we find bizarre behaviour.

The image below (which I pixelated) is of someone who works for a Plaid Cymru MS showing what he proposes to do when he catches whoever is behind an anonymous ‘I know what you did!’ Twitter account accusing him of . . .

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And, yes, that is a crowbar.

No wonder a former Plaid Cymru Police and Crime Commissioner recently called on party leader Adam Price to resign.

Plaid Cymru is a mess, however you look at it, and from top to bottom. To say it’s lost its way would be wrong . . . for that would suggest Plaid’s leadership in recent decades ever knew where it was going.

I think Plaid Cymru is now too far gone for the change of leadership Arfon Jones calls for to make any difference. My view is that Plaid should do the honest thing and merge with Labour.

They deserve each other.

RUM, REGGAE, AND ‘AN UNTAINTED, LEFT-WING, WELSH ALTERNATIVE’

I mentioned earlier that Aberystwyth businessman, Gwern Evans, is CEO of YesCymru. And he’s not the only one speaking at the Brangwyn bash from that lovely town where a dashing young blade spent a weekend in the police cells.

Happy days!

For Melin Drafod Chair, Dr Talat Chaudhri is mayor of the town. Also living in Aber’ is secretary Mererid Boswell, and former chair of YesCymru, Siôn Jobbins.

UPDATE: I am indebted to Jon Coles for telling us that Colin Nosworthy is a press officer for Aberystwyth University.

And there may be others with Aberystwyth connections. Not Sam Coates, obviously; not after his chastening experience of stumbling into a gathering of the Llanbadarn chapter of the Afrikaner Broederbond.

However you cut it, Aber’ will be over-represented at this Swansea gig. And then I came across something last week, which is intriguing, but needs an intro.

There is an intermittent column in the Cambrian News by a Gareth James.

This was the piece drawn to my attention, last November. It contained this line: ‘Like it or not, mid Wales is woke, for mid Wales is about sharing mid Wales with everyone’, plus a few passages that the source interpreted as threats against those who refused to accept Wokeness.

Then, a couple of weeks later, came this extraordinary piece calling for Dyfed Powys Police to be more ‘woke’, following what the writer interpreted as racial profiling that targets his sons. (Here in pdf format.)

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You’ll also see, at the top of the article ‘The View from the Vaults’, these being the Weston Vaults pub in Aberystwyth. Now renamed Irie’s Rum Bar and Reggae Lounge.

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Gareth James, the man in the picture, runs the bar. This piece from the Cambrian News last September makes that clear. What you see above is something of a resurrection, for Irie’s closed in March 2016, apparently for good.

The building that houses the Rum Bar is owned by Cyngor Ceredigion. Do councils normally buy pubs? This other Land Registry title document tells us that a lease was taken out (or taken over) in April 2015 by Irie’s (Aberystwyth) Ltd.

Aberystwyth is a fairly small town, so I’d be surprised if the ‘progressives’ of YesCymru, Melin Drafod, etc, don’t frequent a bar run by a man who wants Plod to be more Woke.

A consideration that brings us to the most recent contribution from Gareth James, that appeared in the Cambrian News last week. (Available here in pdf format.) Also available on Irie’s Blog.

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Another long, rambling piece, but when I read the final paragraph a light went on in my head – a new political party that is ‘an untainted, left-wing, Welsh alternative’.

Is Gareth James trying to tell us something?

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Is this what Talat Chaudhri, Sam Coates and the rest have in mind? Is this what Melin Drafod is hoping comes out of the Brangwyn Hall meeting?

Whether it’s a new party or simply closer co-operation between existing far Left groups, this Independence Summit looks like another attempt by the far Left to take over the independence movement.

If so, then it becomes the duty of those of us with a broader view of Wales to challenge these people. For if it became accepted among the general public that these fanatics are the only ones wanting independence then Wales is finished.

Independence must promise, and deliver, the inclusivity the far Left always demands of others but never practices itself.

CONCLUSION

I have warned many times before, and I make no apologies for doing so again, that what these Green-Woke-Leftists want is independence for a small country whose politicians can then be bullied and blackmailed into implementing their fantasies.

This capture from the website of Labour for an Independent Wales reminds us that, for them, independence is simply the route to socialism.

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It’ll be something like the Wales we know today: a country falling apart at the seams because weak politicians are dominated by lobbyists, pressure groups and third sector organisations. But it’ll be a hell of a lot worse!

There’ll be nothing in it for you and me, Dai. For our people; or for our Wales.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2023


A Property Empire

This piece took root in my head when I read in late September that Aberllefenni had been sold. This small village not far from me had been on the market since 2016.

If you want to get there, just pass the Slaters Arms in Corris and keep going ’til you can’t go much further. That said, if you bear right after Aberllefenni there’s a nice drive that brings you out in Aberangell.

The extensive media coverage, from Cambrian News to the Times reported that the buyer was a London company, Walsh Investment Properties Ltd.

That was my first disappointment. For I assumed that a big-spending London property investor would have a top-notch website. But there’s nothing.

I’ve drawn up a list of the properties bought by Walsh Investment Properties Ltd. It’s in pdf format with working links. You’ll need it to help you understand what follows. Not least, the captions accompanying the images.

RHYL! MAIS OUI

Then I learnt that the address in London is just a post box, for the eponymous Mr Walsh actually lives in Rhyl, or thereabouts. So I got to wondering what other companies he might have been involved with.

Here’s a list I drew up of the companies I found. (Available here in pdf format with working links.)

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You’ll see that Christopher Paul Walsh has tried his hand at a number of ventures over the years. Both the oldest and the most recent companies see him in partnership with Sion Joseph Suckley.

The table also tells you the first of them was North Wales Hydroponics Ltd. Now hydroponics is an interesting line of business. You can grow all sorts of exotic plants by that method.

Though I suppose buying up property across northern Wales might be viewed as quite a departure from hydroponics. Then again, maybe not. Whatever . . .

As I’ve hinted, Suckley and Walsh were partners in North Wales Hydroponics Ltd, which ran dry in November 2013 with debts to the tune of £76k.

Suckley’s interest in hydroponics continued with Gaerwen Hydroponics Ltd, which also suffered desertification in November 2013, without ever filing anything.

Suckley next seemed to try his hand at the courier business, with two companies in Rhyl. The first was S & C Couriers NW Ltd, formed in May 2015 and voluntarily struck off in March 2016.

2 Berwyn Crescent, Prestatyn (property No 6). Google Maps image from September 2022. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The next company was HCS Couriers Ltd. Again, Sion Suckley is the only person named and this company lasted just over a year, collapsing in August 2019.

The final Suckley company was Crypto/And Investments Ltd Ltd. (Yes, ‘Ltd’ repeated.) This company didn’t last much longer than the courier outfits, with the big difference being the claimed share issue of £100,000.

Why so much for a one-man band destined to fold the day it was formed? Again, Sion Suckley is the only person named in connection with this company.

Walsh also went solo in hydroponics with The Hydroponic Warehouse Ltd.

He also entered the building business in May 2014 with EMW Developments Ltd. Again, there’s no website, just the Companies House entry.

The most recent creation brings Walsh and Suckley back together in Clewistion Cars Ltd Incorporated last December. And there is a website.

Clewistion Cars seems to have taken over part of the site occupied by Mountainview Cars. Both specialise in upmarket used motors.

Clewistion Cars on left. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Hydroponics, courier services, a building company, a burgeoning property empire, and now, second-hand Beemers, Mercs and Range Rovers!

Whatever next?

UPDATE 12.11.2024: The proprietor of Mountview Cars makes clear that he has nothing to do with the Walsh company: “Clewistion cars moved onto a site next to us in 2022 also we are not on company house due to us being a sole trader“.

A LITTLE GENTLE WEEDING?

Having mentioned hydroponics, it may be worth remembering that this area of human endeavour attracts some interesting characters.

For example, a few years ago an ex-Marine was growing marijuana on a farm near Gwyddelwern in eastern Meirionnydd, not far from Cwm Main, where my late father-in-law was born and raised.

According to the Shropshire Star David Duffell was growing for his own use – though 500 plants suggests he was a very heavy smoker. He was also charged with a firearms offence.

I’m not sure who owned the property at the time of these offences, but in 2010 the farm was bought by two other men with the Duffell surname. These were Matthew Samuel Michael Duffell of Cornwall, and Andrew Michael Duffell of Huddersfield.

Here’s a copy of the Land Registry title document.

Liverpool House, Ffynnongroyw (property No 10). Google Maps image from September 2021. Click to open enlarged in separate tab.

I’m sure the three Duffells are brothers because they all carry their father’s name, Michael. And it is an unusual surname.

And then they all appear as directors in Lendlock Group Ltd. Which seems to be the Duffell family’s holding company, with group figures for 2021 showing a profit of £4.8m on a turnover of £32.4m.

The Companies House entry for Lendlock International Ltd provides more information with: ‘Nature of business (SIC) 22290 – Manufacture of other plastic products’.

Though the Lendlock website seems to be down. And there was a Health and Safety Executive notice served not so long ago.

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The other companies listed in the Lendlock Group accounts as group members are: Lendlock International Ltd, Specialist Anodising Company Ltd, Scott Closures International Ltd, Nekem Ltd, and F-L Plastics Ltd.

These companies all have the Duffell parents and sons listed as directors and, in some cases, other people as well.

But then there are companies at the Guilden Sutton Lane location, not part of the group, which have also seen the parents and sons as directors (sometimes with others): Toiletries UK Ltd (a dormant company dissolved 17.01.2017), GTL Plastics Ltd, North Wales Construction Ltd, Cynwyd Enterprises Ltd, ABC MK Ltd, and Livestock (UK) Ltd,

In a third category is MK Products (North West) Ltd, a company with two Duffell brothers as directors. Although David Duffell is no longer a director the three brothers exercise control.

This company has equity of £1.2m.

Finally, we have NI Products Ltd, a company where no Duffell has been a director, yet the three brothers are shown as exercising control.

This company has liabilities of over £2m.

David Michael Duffell has been a director of many companies since his release from prison. Mainly with his brothers, but other names also appear.

For example, another director who left North Wales Construction Ltd on May 1 2019, the same day as David Michael Duffell, was Christian Martin Suckley.

Another company where both were directors (but not at the same time) is Cynwyd Enterprises Ltd. Cynwyd is a village a few miles from Gwyddelwern, the other side of the A5. It’s the village where the Ifor Williams trailers business is based.

The Windmill Grill, Buckley (property No 22). Google Maps image from May 2022. Click to open enlarged in separate tab.

A current director of both Cynwyd Enterprises and North Wales Construction is William Ward. Who last year set up a ‘consultancy’ in Flint. (Go on! haven’t we all dreamt of a nice little consultancy in Flint?)

I can’t tell you much about Ward but Cynwyd Enterprises owns The Dudley Arms, in Llandrillo, on the B4401 between Corwen and Bala. A hostelry for which the company paid £302,500.

Though the way this pub is being run is upsetting many locals. It seems opening hours are being reduced. A prelude to closure / change of use?

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I suggest that because there are a number of interesting comments from ‘Scutler1’ to the news report I’ve just linked to; talking of, um . . . . ‘change of use’, and turning the pub into flats.

Another comment in support of the owners comes from ‘roosimpson’. Might that be Katy Simpson, the only director on NI Products Ltd, a company we just looked at, and owned by the three Duffell brothers?

The only other comment is from ‘JacksonSbollock’, the famous American painter. (Who I thought had died in 1956!)

For me, it boils down to this question: Why would the Duffells buy a pub and then argue it’s not viable as a pub? Only one answer – change of use was the plan all along.

On the ‘unaudited financial statements’ for y/e 28.02.2021, ‘Tangible assets’ for Cynwyd Enterprises reads, £849,752. Seeing as the Dudley Arms wasn’t bought until February this year ‘assets’ must refer to other properties. Where, I wonder?

And seeing as Cynwyd Enterprises loaned Walsh Investment Properties £300,000 in November 2020, to buy the Grosvenor Social Club in Shotton (No 9), I would have expected to see this loan showing in the 2021 filing as a debt.

But I don’t see it.

THE EMPIRE OUT BACK?

It’s time to look a little more closely at what’s been bought by Walsh Investment Properties Ltd. The list is too big to reproduce as an image, so here’s another link to the table I drew up. Let me explain how it’s laid out.

The column furthest left is simply a number for each loan, not for each property. That’s because some properties have more than one loan, which is why they’re shaded yellow. These loans are listed as ‘Charges’ here on the Companies House entry.

The next column gives the address of the property bought. Wherever possible the name provides a link to a Google Maps image of that property.

The third column is ‘Lender’. This provides the source of the loan. Where this is shaded orange it means the loan came from a member of the Duffell family or a company run by members of the family.

Grosvenor Social Club, Shotton (property No 9). Google Maps image from May 2022. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The fourth column is the Land Registry title number, while the fifth and sixth columns are self-explanatory.

Clearly, there is a connection between the Duffell family and Christopher Paul Walsh. To date, they’ve put up £5.6m for Walsh to buy property.

Though there’s no discernible pattern to the purchases. Walsh has bought commercial properties in town centres; pubs, clubs and shops; also houses, new and old; a care home; and then, most recently, with Aberllefenni, a whole village.

That said, most tend to be near the main highways: the A548 up the Dee estuary past Broughton, Flint, Ffynnongroyw, Prestatyn, Rhyl, and then Abergele; where it meets the A55, which has come past Broughton and Buckley before running on to Llandudno, Conwy and Bangor.

4 Hafod Road, Prestatyn (property No 27). Google Maps image from June 2022. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And yet, one thing did stand out as I checked over Walsh’s purchases.

They are either detached properties or, if they’re not detached, then they tend to have side entrances, or rear entrances, or garages. In many cases two of those features, and in a few, all three.

LENDERS

Now I want to look at some of the lenders, and a link that emerged.

Out of all the lenders, only one is a name that most of you will recognise, and that’s Barclays Security Trustee Ltd. (You’ll at least recognise the ‘Barclays’ element.)

Otherwise the lenders tend to be specialist, obscure, even exotic.

Apart from these specialist lenders, the loans have come from individual members of the Duffell family, or companies controlled by members of that family. Fourteen loans in total.

Six came from Andrew Michael Duffell. Two from his father, Michael John Duffell. Four from Livestock (UK) Ltd, and one from each of Cynwyd Enterprises Ltd and North Wales Construction Ltd.

Livestock (UK) Ltd is an odd name, and a departure, for a family involved in plastic packaging for perfumes and unguents; but for a short time, just after the company was formed, there really was a farmer (and Denbighshire county councillor) involved.

Hare and Hounds, Connah’s Quay (property No 23). Google Maps image from June 2022. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Cynwyd Enterprises I’ve already looked at, which leaves North Wales Construction Ltd. Which must be a building company, surely; employing bricklayers, carpenters, and others with building trade skills.

Well, no.

The unaudited financial statement for North Wales Construction tells us (page 3, 3) that there are no employees. Never have been. So either those working on the company’s sites are self-employed or there’s something else going on.

It’s something else.

For North Wales Construction Ltd seems to be nothing more than a conduit or a repository for money. So why that company name?

Finally, if you refer to the table I supplied, you’ll see that seven of the properties bought in the past three and half years have already been remortgaged or had second loans taken out against them.

Of this seven, six were originally financed by the Duffells. 

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS

Just over three years ago Christopher Paul Walsh set out to become a property tycoon. Since May 2019 he has bought 26 properties. Or, to rephrase that, there are charges against 26 properties.

Have others been bought without loans?

To help me understand the locations of the purchases I drew up the map you see below. It shows the number of properties in each location. (The figure for Prestatyn is inflated by four properties in one purchase, 21 & 25 in the table I linked to.)

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If Walsh is not fronting for the Duffells then why have they loaned him £5.6m, and at such generous rates of interest, sometimes no interest at all? And these are short-term loans, over 12 or 24 months.

Which means that some are now overdue, so are the debts being chased up? I don’t know, but according to Companies House not one loan has been repaid. Which means, I suppose, that the lender effectively owns the property concerned.

And is perhaps being repaid by remortgaging the properties for which they provided the original funding?

But what are we to make of the properties Walsh has bought with which the Duffells have no obvious involvement?

Another mystery is that I can’t find a connection between Christopher Paul Walsh and the Duffells prior to the loans . . . other than perhaps the Suckleys, who may be related.

We know Sion Suckley has been Walsh’s partner in a number of companies, from hydroponics to second-hand motors.

Then there’s Christian Suckley, who was a director in Cynwyd Enterprises and North Wales Construction, so was pot-growing David Michael Duffell. Both companies have loaned money to Walsh.

Christian Suckley is a known associate of Rhyl’s John Gizzi. And was sent down for 6 years 8 months for his involvement in drugs. Before that he was imprisoned for trying to run down a policeman with his Mercedes.

CONCLUSION

This production began starring Christopher Paul Walsh and Walsh Investment Properties Ltd, but as it’s unfolded the Duffells have emerged from the wings to move into the limelight.

Due to their funding of Walsh, and also the properties they’ve bought themselves in the Bala-Corwen area (and perhaps elsewhere). To the point where I’m no longer sure if the story is really about Christopher Walsh or the Duffells. Maybe it’s both.

Whatever the answer, one possibility must be that the properties have been bought to be Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs). If so, then this might link with another Walsh company, Blue Chip Accommodation Ltd.

And if that is the plan, then Wales does not need any more HMOs taking in the social rejects and misfits of north west England’s cities and towns, bringing with them the misery and the violence associated with the drugs trade.

This extravaganza began in Aberllefenni, too close to home for me to let it be bought by property speculators without comment. Over the years I’ve known people who lived there, good people, and the area deserves better.

Writing this has made me wonder what sort of society we live in when a village can be bought in this way. You’ve almost got to remind yourself that it’s 2022 not 1822, and Wales has something called devolution.

For what it’s worth.

One thing I am sure of is that many of you who’ve read this offering will have your own views as to what lies behind these property purchases. So why not get in touch?

I remain uncertain. But curious.

♦ end ♦

UPDATE: Someone has contacted me with a possible source for the money now being splashed around buying properties willy-nilly.

Richard George De Winton Wigley was a director of Lendlock International Ltd and Specialist Anodising Company Ltd, both Duffell companies.

It is alleged, in the Channel Islands, that he defrauded Can$50m. He has since removed himself to Panama. For the sunshine.

Although he lives in Panama Wigley has a company in London, Questbourne Ltd, in the business of ‘letting and operating of own or leased real estate’. The other directors are Wigley’s son and a couple named Belcher.

Michael Perry Belcher is in the plastics business, just like the Duffells.

In fact, we find Belcher and Duffells together in Plusimage Ltd, Hyde Plastics Ltd, Mackenzie King Ltd (Dissolved), Quadrant Tube Company Ltd (The) (Dissolved), M & M Plastic Industries Ltd, Atlagraph Engineering Co Ltd.

Belcher has also been a director of Duffell companies we looked at earlier.

 

The Alliance Against Livestock Farming

This week’s piece about wildlife trusts and environmental groups complements what I put out last week about the assorted river charities.

For both seem to be funded to shield Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) and others from criticism by blaming livestock farmers for all river pollution. Also, to pursue the so-called ‘Welsh Government’s Net Zero lunacy and, in so doing, serve the globalist agenda.

With a few twists.

Wildlife and environmental groups tend to contain more ‘zealots’, which results in hysteria, and a readiness to tell lies. Which in this context is often accompanied by a thinly-disguised contempt for Wales and Welsh identity.

One example might be the charity Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW) choosing to dissolve itself, while the local trusts for which it served as the umbrella organisation joined England’s Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. You’ll learn more about this as you read on.

As I say, there will be similarities with last week’s piece, but also differences. And I promise a bit more in the way of polemic. Ol’ Jac gonna let rip!

It’s fairly big, so go make a mug of something before settling down to enjoy it.

WHO’S WHO IN THE FLEECE JACKETS

Let’s start by looking at the organisational setup.

As I said in the intro, Wildlife Trusts Wales recently put itself out of business so that the five regional trusts – North, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, South and West, Gwent – could become full members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT).

Explained at the foot of page 1 in the 2021 WTW accounts.

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The clip below from the Charity Commission entry tells us that the RSWT now views Wales and England as a single unit, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland are treated separately. Even the Isle of Man gets more respect than us.

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But then, when you surrender your separate identity this is what you can expect.

And yet, the pretence of an independent existence is maintained by a Wildlife Trusts Wales website. Where WTW describes itself as: ‘one of five Wildlife Trusts in Wales’ which, again, makes no sense. Yes, there are five, I just listed them, and they’re all area specific, so where and how does WTW fit in?

It’s all very confusing. Perhaps deliberately so.

At the foot of the WTW website home page we are given Companies House and Charity Commission numbers. The latter draws a blank because the charity was closed March 31, 2021. While the Companies House entry tells us that the company voluntarily dissolved earlier this year.

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So why hasn’t the information on the website been updated? If it’s claimed WTW still exists, then what form does that existence take?

And what happened to the money?

Well, the final accounts for the WTW (y/e 31.03.2021) seem to show, at the foot of page 19, that the cash left when the company folded was divvied up among four of the five trusts I mentioned earlier.

Brecknock received nowt because it had not long before merged with the South and West Wales Wildlife Trust, which for some reason was itself left out. (Why didn’t ‘Brecknock’ make the obvious merger, with Radnorshire? Or why not a Powys trust?)

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You’ll see that £234,320 went to the ‘All Wales Conservation Strategy’. Does anyone know what that is? I’ve tried Googling but nothing comes up. Do the funders know where their money’s going?

The more I thought about this wildlife trusts reconfiguration the stranger it appeared. I mean, just think about it.

Before devolution we had local wildlife trusts with Wildlife Trusts Wales serving as the umbrella body. Yet now, when wildlife trusts deal with Y Senedd, when there’s separate Welsh funding, different legislation, they do away with their national body in order to, effectively, become English wildlife trusts.

This move makes no sense on any rational or practical level. How then can it be explained? I really would like to know.

Whatever ethereal form Wildlife Trusts Wales now takes the wraith clearly retains the strength to use a Twitter account. Here’s a gem put out on Monday.

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To describe Wales as ‘one of the most nature depleted countries in the world’ is hysterical nonsense and an insult to us as a nation.

While suggesting that farming is to blame rather gives the game away.

The image used in the tweet comes from this source, linked with Denmark farm, near Lampeter, where we find another gang of alien envirogrifters. A farming source tells me the allegation made in the image may be libellous.

The Denmark Farm Conservation Centre has gone the way of so many outfits that appear on this blog – it was Dissolved earlier this year. With two outstanding charges.

FILTHY LUCRE

We saw in last week’s piece that river charities saw a remarkable increase in official funding at the very time Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) was formulating her draconian and ‘unworkable’ NVZ legislation.

Such propinquity!

Well, no. It’s explained by the fact that Lesley (and Gary) wanted a stream of pollution stories in order to justify that NVZ legislation.

Stories that were also music to the ears of Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) bosses, because it deflected attention from the water company’s pollution.

We see something very similar in wildlife trusts.

Let’s start with the North Wales Wildlife Trust. Where total income more than doubled between 2017 and 2021. The largest element of that increase is (in various forms) government funding, up from £180,440 in 2017 to £1,970,000 in 2021.

Plus assets of around £3m.

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A ten-fold increase in government funding will support a few beavers.

The picture at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust shows a more modest but still healthy increase in funding. To which we must also add assets pushing £3m.

Moving south we come to the intriguing anomaly of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust. Intriguing for in the old 13-county arrangement you will recall that Radnorshire was quite small in size and had the lowest population of all our counties.

But the local wildlife trust paints a different picture. Total income doubled between 2017 and 2021 and there are assets of over £2m. There were no assets in 2019.

The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales has seen income increase by 50% in the period we’re looking at, but government grants increased from £21,300 in 2017 to £748,050 in 2021. Then throw in assets of some £5m.

Finally, to Gwent. Where income has increased at a more modest rate apart from a huge blip in 2018 accounted for by Heritage Lottery funding for a project on the Gwent Levels. But with assets around the three million pound mark.

So everything looks just tickety-boo on the financial front for our English-registered wildlife trusts.

BARE-FACED LIES

I am indebted to one of the few honest journalists left in Wales for drawing my attention to a disgraceful incident last November, at a hearing of the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee.

Rachel Sharp of the zombie-like Wildlife Trusts Wales and Wales Environmental Link (WEL) alleged that along with all the other evils livestock farmers are responsible for they also use growth hormones, which eventually end up in our streams and rivers.

The transcript is here (123) and the video here.

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The truth is that growth hormones have been banned in the UK since 1981. Welsh livestock farmers do not use growth hormones.

After protests from farming unions and Tory MS Sam Kurtz apologies were issued. But as we’ve come to expect from these envirofanatics it’s never an honest ‘I was wrong’. It’s always qualified, position shifting, hoping the original lie lingers.

But this time they’d gone too far, and it wasn’t just Rachel Sharp telling porkies. Also there representing Wales Environmental Link was Creighton Harvey, also a trustee of Afonydd Cymru Cyf.

Here’s how the Pembrokeshire Herald reported it.

‘The evidence of Ms Sharp’s fellow representative from Wales Environment Link was also riddled with errors.

Creighton Harvey told the Committee that agriculture was the largest polluter of Wales’s watercourses.

The largest polluters are water companies, industrial users, and domestic users’.

So who is Rachel Sharp?

Well, as we know, she’s a trustee of Wales Environmental Link. But this profile from the ‘Welsh Government’ website tells us a bit more. And it’s fascinating.

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To begin with, it keeps up the pretence of the defunct Wildlife Trusts of Wales. But concludes by informing us that Rachel Sharp is also ‘a group member of the Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel’.

So what’s that? Here’s a clue from the Dŵr Cymru website.

We’re told, ‘The Chair is Mari Arthur, Director of Cynal (sic) Cymru’. But Mari Arthur left Cynnal Cymru in July 2018, after just 4 months. Is this another site in need of updating?

Mari Arthur now runs Mari Arthur Marketing, but hasn’t yet registered it as a company. Among her clients we find Cynnal Cymru. Also, joined-at-the-hip ‘Welsh Government’ and Cardiff University.

Her other companies include Afallen LLP and Tetrimteas Cyf.

If the name Mari Arthur rings a bell it’s because she so badly damaged Plaid Cymru in Llanelli, a seat the party had been nurturing since the days of the great Carwyn James.

She was forced on the constituency party by her friends in both Plaid Cymru and Labour. For in the Corruption Bay circles in which Mari Arthur moves party labels mean little as long as you’re ‘on the right side of history’.

The Independent Environmental Advisory Panel is clearly a group that allows Dŵr Cymru and envirozealots to agree their narratives in the war on livestock farmers and draw attention away from Dŵr Cymru itself, the biggest culprit.

There should be no place in Welsh public life for Rachel Sharp of the mythical Wales Wildlife Trusts, the all too corporeal Wales Environmental Link, and the Dŵr Cymru claque in the laughably named Independent Environmental Advisory Panel.

I suspect Rachel Sharp’s mask slipped last November when she forgot where she was; because when she and others of her ilk usually talk with politicians and civil servants – and of course, Dŵr Cymru – they tend to reinforce each other’s self-serving prejudices about livestock farmers.

But she’ll survive. For she has powerful friends, among those who’ve been elected, and those we’ve never heard of.

Another name that caught my eye among the Wales Environmental Link luminaries was Natalie Buttriss, whose Linkedin profile (here in pdf) tells us she’s ‘Director of Wales The Woodland Trust’. This outfit previously used the name Coed Cadw for its Welsh operations, but this pandering to the indigenes seems to have been dropped.

Native of Bristol Buttriss was in at the start of the Summit to Sea land grab. For which she appeared on this blog four years ago in The Welsh Clearances. Her contempt for farmers was made obvious in this radio interview with the BBC’s Farming Today.

I have always believed that Buttriss was so arrogant, so dismissive of the interests of livestock farmers, because she believed she had the full support of the ‘Welsh Government’.

For in that interview she suggests that subsidies would be withheld or cut to make farmers fall into line. She wouldn’t have said that unless certain Bay politicians had promised to play the heavies.

The ‘Welsh Government’s hand was not revealed because the opposition to Summit to Sea made backers like Rewilding Britain pull out and the whole thing seemed to fall apart.

Or maybe it’s still out there, lurking in the undergrowth, waiting to re-emerge.

As we know, climate alarmists have too much influence with the media, partly through having brainwashed two generations of schoolchildren and college students, and partly through funding – ever wondered why Bill Gates gives money to the BBC?

Or perhaps, more pertinently, why the BBC is allowed to accept his funding?

But the propagandising is not confined to the BBC.

Last Friday ITV’s Wales at Six ran a piece about cooperation between the Rhug Estate and the Welsh Dee Trust. A relatively harmless little filler.

But the newsreader, Andrea Byrne, dropped into the report: “Rivers like the Wye and the Usk are virtually dead and no longer able to support an abundance of fish like trout and salmon and other wildlife“.

Bizarre, and completely untrue. But from where did ITV Wales get that lie?

 

Because if it’s true then somebody should tell Harry Legge-Bourke of the Glanusk estate; for he advertises, ‘fantastic fishing on 5 miles of double bank fishing on the River Usk offering day tickets for Trout and Salmon rods’.

No one disputes that these rivers could be healthier, but they’re far from ‘virtually dead’, as ITV Wales would have us believe.

And if these rivers are in decline, then whose fault is that? Because if the finger of guilt is being pointed in the wrong direction to protect the guilty party then things are unlikely to improve.

There is constant financial backing and other support for those who tell lies about livestock farmers from those who benefit from and capitalise on those lies.

I’m often inclined to believe in coincidences. But not this time. What I’m describing is too widespread, across too many sectors.

If it quacks like a duck, and it waddles like a duck . . . 

CONCLUSION

The environmental / wildlife / Nature bodies in Wales are like exotic organisms in a Petri dish. Forever growing, dividing, re-forming, changing appearance and colour, and multiplying through the introduction of fresh viruses.

There are many reasons why there should be no further public funding for these groups. You’ve read some of those reasons here. But Sebastian and Claudia needn’t go without because there are plenty of funding streams they could tap into.

For example, and seeing as they’re promoting the agendas of the UN and WEF, one possibility must be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Another option would be George Soros. Contact details can be had from Coleg Soros in Talgarth, where environmental and wildlife groups already have many contacts.

Bottom line, and last word . . .

It’s obscene that a country – especially our country – gives tens of millions of pounds every year for truth-averse zealots to enjoy sinecures fretting over toads and butterflies while our people die because ambulances don’t turn up.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2022


Clear Water, Poisoned Debate

For decades we’ve been hearing that water is a diminishing commodity, and with an ever-expanding global population we’ll soon be fighting over water resources.

Though these predictions often came from the same people who at different times – or even simultaneously – could predict icebergs in Swansea Bay and no snow on Yr Wyddfa.

It was the usual nonsense from the usual sources.

And yet, in Wales now, water is being used as a weapon. Not by us against our village-drowning neighbours but by politicians and others, supposedly serving Wales and Welsh interests, against a section of the Welsh population.

If that necessitates twisting the facts, and taking control of certain bodies, either through funding or placement of personnel, then so be it.

This is another big one, so I’ll say what I always say: Don’t rush it, take your time, savour it, and you’ll enjoy it far more.

BULLSHIT FOR WHICH BULLS ARE BLAMELESS

It’s been accepted for many years that there might be a problem with nitrate discharges, from some dairy farms, mostly in the south west. This highly localised problem explained why Natural Resources Wales classified just 2.4% of Welsh farmland as ‘vulnerable’.

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When asked to revisit the issue NRW produced a report in September 2016 that (on page 13) suggested, ‘Adoption of the targeted approach would mean an increase in the total area designated from 2.4% to approximately 8% which includes those areas newly identified by NRW’.

A targeted approach was obviously the sensible and fair way to go, but then the politicians got involved. One politician in particular.

The elections of May 2016 saw Lesley Griffiths re-elected for Labour in Wrecsam. Her Senedd bio then tracks her meteoric rise to voodoo doll status in farmhouses across the land. (Soon to be accompanied by Gary.)

First, she was made Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs. In November 2017 the job title changed to Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs. Then, 0n 13 December 2018, she was handed her baton as Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs.

Despite the facts of the matter, and the sensible proposal from NRW, just before Christmas 2017 Lesley Griffiths declared that the whole of Wales was at risk of NVZ pollution. Using this to announce an all-Wales regime.

After a year of being fed a diet of undiluted pollution La Griffiths announced in November 2018 that her mind was made up and she would introduce what she considered to be the necessary legislation.

After a slight delay due to Covid the implementation date was set for April 1, 2021.

But then things started to go awry for the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

Despite an (unsuccessful) appeal by NFU Cymru the debate was noticeably widening as others took an interest, and could see how disproportionate to the scale of the problem Cruella de Griff’s proposals were.

For in addition to the all-Wales approach the acceptable nitrogen level in Wales was to be 170kg/ha, compared to 250kg/ha in England and Scotland. This was so obviously unfair, in a country where farmers are, on average, less affluent than their English and Scottish counterparts, that it tended to give the game away.

Because there would of course be a financial burden for farmers. Though I’m sure that those trying to put livestock farmers out of business knew exactly what they were doing

The backtracking had begun. With Plaid Cymru taking the credit. For despite being Labour’s partner in a coalition that dare not speak its name, the reaction from Plaid’s large rural vote was giving the party’s leaders serious concerns.

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A Plaid Cymru source said their party had pushed Labour ministers to act‘.

Some cynics – not me! – might wonder what Plaid has offered in return.

The NVZ proposals couldn’t withstand scrutiny from any fair-minded observer because they had little to do with pollution. NVZ was a stick with which to beat livestock farmers, hopefully putting many out of business to release land for other purposes. Land coveted by many in the offstage chorus influencing our Lesley.

To support and legitimise this attack on livestock farming we were expected to believe that only farmers are responsible for polluting our waterways and seas.

Which meant that Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water), the worst culprit, got a free pass. How did that come about?

All will be explained later in this piece.

THE MEMSAHIBS OF KNIGHTON AND CONSIDERATIONS OF CHICKENSHIT

This section is part digression, part lead-in.

A group that has figured on this blog a few times is a coven of Green-Left-Woke crones who’ve imposed themselves on the border town of Knighton. There are a few men associated with them, perhaps even more unhinged than their female comrades.

Catch up with them in Colonialism in microcosm, or Knighton.

They perform the full far left agenda:

Rather than doing the honest thing and just staying away altogether on Remembrance Sunday they insist on making a nuisance of themselves by placing wreaths of white poppies on the war memorial. (Dressed à la mode Michael Foot.)

Are they reprising a scene from a horror movie? Click to open enlarged in separate tab

You will not be surprised to learn that these biddies have formed a Knighton and District Refugee Support Group. Reluctance to welcome with open arms complete strangers from far-off lands will see you labelled a ‘racist’.

An epithet also hurled at those not condemning the fascists of the Israeli state.

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The gang’s environmental credentials are on extravagant display with Sustainable Food Knighton. Which, in practice, is little more than a vendetta against a local chicken farm.

The attack is mounted on two fronts. One, it’s cruel to the chickens. Two, intensive chicken farms are a big, big source of river pollution.

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Without being able to consult the chickens it may be impossible to address the first point. The second is more relevant to this article because it’s used over and over again by environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (eNGOs).

Especially those that allege chicken farms in Powys are severely damaging the rivers Usk and Wye.

But what are the facts?

Well, for a start, there are more, and bigger, chicken farms in Shropshire and Herefordshire, as the map below shows. So if chicken shit is a problem in Wales then it could well be coming from over the border.

Then again, it might not be a problem at all. Or, it’s a problem that’s being exaggerated.

Knighton is circled in green. Note on which side of the border the chicken farms south of the town are to found. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

For anecdotal evidence suggests there are even more chicken farms in the Severn catchment area, the Trent catchment area, etc. But there are far fewer complaints from these areas.

Which could mean that either shit from Welsh chickens is particularly toxic – in which case every one of the little buggers should be killed immediately! – or there’s a purpose behind the lying.

It’s the latter.

A suspicion reinforced by the Environment Agency recently concluding that the bigger culprit in the Wye catchment is arable farmers, who are mainly found on the England side of the border.

Confirmed by this graphic released by the Environment Agency relating to the Wye in England. Note the section I’ve highlighted in the second level. The tributaries mentioned are also in England.

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Something also worth contributing here is that arable farmers use chicken manure as a fertiliser.

So even if chicken shit is the problem, it’s more likely to come from over the border; either directly from chicken farms or indirectly from arable farms.

And there’s yet another consideration to take into account. Certain interests are pushing us towards a meat-free diet, and in this scenario many view arable farmers as part of the solution. Which might explain them also getting a free pass.

The suspicion of an anti-livestock farming agenda being served was strengthened last month by a ‘report’ on BBC Wales about pollution on the Wye. One of the most biased pieces of television journalism I have ever seen.

Let me explain why I say that:

  • Passing references were made to sewage, but we were left in no doubt that the real culprits are farmers.
  • But only livestock farmers, with the programme focusing on one particular chicken farm.
  • There was no reference to the fact that the Wye is a cross-border river.
  • Despite being fronted by Wyre Davies the star of the show was Gail Davies-Walsh, who became CEO of Afonydd Cymru Cyf on February 22 2021, and secretary on March 11.
  • Afonydd Cymru (Rivers of Wales) serves as the umbrella body for the more local river groups.
  • Her Linkedin profile (here in pdf) tells us that until September she was Head of Natural Capital for the Wye and Usk Foundation‘. ‘Natural Capital’ seems to be code for, among other things, greenwashing. Certainly tree planting.
  •  Revealingly, Linkedin also tells us that Gail Davies-Walsh worked for Dŵr Cymru for almost 14 years, up until January 2020.
Gail Davies-Walsh. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Gail Davies-Walsh took the idea for the programme to the BBC. Which would raise more concerns about linkages, and influence.

Another who joined Afonydd Cymru recently is Harriet Alvis, (Linkedin in pdf) CEO at West Wales Rivers Trust, and co-editor of FISH, the magazine of the Institute of Fisheries Management.

More on both in a mo.

And the situation herein described is very much the same with more terrestrial eNGOs. ‘Environmentalists’ opposed to livestock farming take control of existing groups or set up new ones – and never go unfunded again!

A phenomenon reported on this blog many times. Try Enviroshysters flock to Wales for easy money, Invasion of the Enviroshysters (PG), or Back to the Land!.

TINKLING RILLS AND STREAMS OF POLLUTING CASH

Time now to turn our attention to the increasingly well-funded bodies looking after our various rivers, and we find new ones forming all the time. With the money available perhaps explaining the proliferation?

Here’s a table I’ve draw up, in pdf format (with working links) that I hope lists all the various river outfits operating in Wales. If you know one I’ve left out, then please let me know.

You’ll see that some are specific to one river while others are more general, some even claiming to be national in their scope.

Let me say at the outset, there are many genuine people involved in river trusts, boards, etc; not least, anglers, whose only concerns are for the health of our rivers, fish stocks, and other environmental matters.

But unfortunately, there are others, either looking out for themselves, or involved for a different purpose.

Go through the table I’ve linked to, particularly the ‘Comments’ section, and you’ll see substantial inputs of official funding in recent years.

Take the North Wales Rivers Trust for example. Total income in the year ending 31.03.2022 was £241,790. Of which £241,690 came in ‘Welsh Government’ grants.

From the Charity Commission entry under ‘Financial history. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And it’s a similar story with other river bodies. Though much of the increase, instead of being shown as coming from ‘government grants’ or ‘government contracts’, is disguised as, ‘Income – charitable activities’ on the Charity Commission entry.

Such as here with the West Wales Rivers Trust. The Charity Commission graph shows income soaring from just £3,750 in y/e 31.03.2017 to £541,140 for y/e 31.03.2021.

That is one hell of a jump in just four years! One way of interpreting the big increase is the ‘Welsh Government’ – or Dŵr Cymru? – paying CEO Harriet Alvis’s salary.

Because don’t you find that strange?

A river group that has meandered happily along for 15 years suddenly needs a CEO.

Equally thought-provoking is Gail Davies-Walsh becoming CEO of Afonydd Cymru.

Making me wonder if Gail Davies-Walsh and Harriet Alvis were ‘placed’ in the West Wales Rivers Trust and Afonydd Cymru to push the ‘Welsh Government’s anti-farming campaign, and also to protect Dŵr Cymru.

For there is a certain ‘circularity’ to it all. ‘Welsh Government’ and Dŵr Cymru would no doubt explain the increase in funding by the ‘state of the rivers’, which then justifies the attack on livestock farming.

A ‘circularity’ made even more suspicious by the fact that these vast increases in funding occur at exactly the same time Lesley Griffiths was hatching the absurd and punitive NVZ legislation.

If I’m wrong then maybe someone can give another reason for our river bodies being showered with cash from 2016.

Back to the riverbank . . .

On the other side of the country the wealthy Wye and Usk Foundation’s income from government grants and contracts jumped from £404,950 in 2018 to £934,670 in 2020.

Not far away is the South East Wales Rivers Trust, which also saw its income more than double between 2017 and 2021. Explained as funding from, ‘Natural Resources Wales, Welsh Water, Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, Welsh Government with European Funds’.

The ‘disguised grants’ I referred to earlier was money paid to Afonydd Cymru Cyf and then distributed to the individual water groups. Afonydd Cymru’s own accounts tell us ‘Income from government grants’ jumped from zero in 2019 to £894,700 in 2020.

Afonydd Cymru may operate like the Wales Council for Voluntary Action does in relation to the third sector. That is, acting as a conduit for ‘Welsh Government’ funding in the hope of disguising the source of the funding.

But the money filtered through Afonydd Cymru is small beer compared to the £13.8m up for grabs in the Four Rivers For Life project, administered by Natural Resources Wales. (Though £4.5m actually goes towards ‘quaking bogs’.) The four rivers being the Tywi, Teifi, Cleddau and – it should go without saying – the Usk.

This might explain the recent formation of the Save the Teifi campaign. Though information is difficult to find. For example, the social media links at the foot of the website home page don’t work.

This report in the Tivy-side Advertiser in August links the group with Ffynnone-Community Resilience and mentions ‘spokespersons’, but gives no names. Is it a secret society?

The only name mentioned in the Tivy-side article is ‘Councillor John Davies’. This must be ‘John Cwmbetws’, of Bute Energy’s Welsh Advisory Board. Bute being a Scottish company that wants to build twenty or more wind farms in Wales, some with the tallest towers yet seen on land.

Well connected, is John. In Llanelwedd, Corruption Bay, and other places.

The Ffynnone group might be trying to stay anonymous, but one name has been given to me. It’s Jessica McQuade who, I’m told, not long ago moved to Llandudoch, across the Teifi estuary from Aberteifi.

Her Twitter account confirms the link with the Save the Teifi campaign.

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What struck me was that McQuade and Harriet Alvis, the CEO at the West Wales Rivers Trust and, since last month, a director at Afonydd Cymru, are both followed by the Brecon Beacons Mega Catchment.

This is the group created by Dŵr Cymru following its link-up with the Watershed Agricultural Council in New York State, in the area that supplies New York City with water. I wrote about this group in my previous post. It’s another outfit with very little information publicly available.

But what is McQuade’s and Alvis’s connection with this Dŵr Cymru outfit? And with Dŵr Cymru itself?

Jessica McQuade’s Save the Teifi / Ffynnone group has already received ‘Welsh Government’ funding. She could be another one ‘placed’ to push the ‘Welsh Government’s anti-farming campaign / WEF’s Agenda 2030 and, of course, to shield Dŵr Cymru.

As I suggested earlier, all the money recently being splashing around, with a veritable tsunami of new funding approaching, may also explain the new groups springing up. Here are some more.

There’s the Cardiff Rivers Group, containing a few Sherman luvvies, set up in October 2020. Bay-watchers may recognise one or two of the trustees.

Then there’s the Welsh Rivers Union, which has a website, and a Twitter account from February last year, but seems to be unregistered as either a company or a charity.

Next, there’s the Wye Salmon Association, whose Twitter account started in September last year. This too seems unregistered.

Finally, and most recently, there’s Friends of the Upper Wye. Which registered as a charity in March this year.

Let me conclude this section with a tweet from Jessica McQuade who, you’ll remember, is busy with the Save the Teifi campaign since moving to north Pembrokeshire, but whose day job is with the World Wildlife Fund.

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Now why would the WWF be interested in food? And trust me – that is human food she’s referring to.

Because, gentle reader, the WWF is no longer about saving pandas; it is a full-on, far left organisation totally committed to the anti-farming and the anti-human – ‘reduce the population’ – agenda.

And also believe me when I tell you that the WWF wields great influence with the ‘Welsh Government’, and in the Bay more generally.

‘FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE FARMERS . . . ‘

The ‘Welsh Government’ – and, indeed, the Bay establishment – has bought into the UN’s Agenda 2030 and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.

Both posit that burping, farting farm animals are destroying the environment; so we should switch to eating plant-based foods, insects, and gunge marketed as ‘artificial meat’.

Obviously, this will mean many fewer livestock farmers in Wales. Perhaps none. But that’s no problem, because the land vacated is already earmarked for tree planting, rewilding, conservation projects and other activities from which Welsh people will be largely excluded unless needed for window-dressing.

To facilitate this clearance programme livestock farmers must be blamed for things that are not their fault. This frees Dŵr Cymru from criticism. An objective easy to achieve given the influence the water company wields within ‘Welsh Government’.

To ensure that everyone sings from the same hymn sheet the ‘Welsh Government’, Dŵr Cymru and other official bodies are more than willing to fund assorted eNGOs which, in return, may accept ‘appointees’.

What I’m alluding to is little different to Bill Gates funding the BBC, the Guardian, New York Times, CNN and countless other media outlets around the world. He doesn’t do it in defence of the truth, he does it to ensure the media he funds will promote his and the World Economic Forum’s agenda.

‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’.

Headlines like this, frightening people into obeying the WEF agenda, don’t come cheap. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Wales, being a poor country, and a corrupt, one-party state, with no effective political opposition, and no functioning media, is especially vulnerable to powerful forces seeking to impose an agenda.

If farmers can be defeated, and the food supply controlled by forces you will have difficulty identifying, let alone challenging, then we will have already lost. Because who controls the food supply controls the world.

It’ll be too late to complain when your car is confiscated, or when your access to your bank account is blocked because you said something on social media that somebody, somewhere, didn’t like.

So stand with the farmers, and stand up to those who threaten them. Because those who threaten the farmers also threaten you.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2022