After taking August off (and enjoying the break) I’m back to report on an event planned for later this month.
In fact, I enjoyed the break so much, and found writing this such hard going, that it might be a while before the next piece appears.
♦
HOW IT BEGAN
A couple of weeks ago someone sent me news of a gathering to be held in the Community Centre, Knighton, on September 17, when many of us will be nursing hangovers from celebrating Glyndŵr’s Day.
Knighton Community Centre has been mentioned on this blog before, after falling into the clutches of white settler Labour activists; who now wage war on local farmers, welcome refugees to an area where they themselves are not universally welcome, and generally play latter-day left liberal colonialists.
For no longer is it Bible and bullets, now it’s saving us through a combination of uplifting sermons from the Rev Monbiot and those organic thingeys they eat at Felicity’s aerobic knife-throwing class.
But I digress.
To expose the dishonesty behind this event I shall go through those named as being involved before concluding with . . . well, my conclusions. What else?
◊
CAMPAIGN FOR THE PROTECTION OF RURAL WALES (CPRW)
Let’s start with some background. The CPRW has been pootling along for almost a century as a charity, but now things are changing. Most significantly, with the formation of a company in late May this year.
Though I’m assured there’s no significance to this other than the trustees ensuring they are not personally bankrupted by legal action against the CPRW.
Which also means that, at the moment, the CPRW has two charities with the same name registered with the Charity Commission. One will soon be closed.
Previous CPRW presidents have included politician Megan Lloyd George and BBC broadcaster Wynford Vaughan Thomas. Clough Williams Ellis, of Portmeirion fame, was also deeply involved for many years as both chairman and president.
The current president of the CPRW is TV celeb Jules Hudson, who is believed to live in Herefordshire. Possibly Hertfordshire. But definitely not Wales. He’s famous for programmes like Escape to the Country and Countryfile.
In his favour, he has a Labrador called Iolo.
The chair of the Brecon & Radnor branch is Jonathan Halsey Luke Colchester, who has recently moved to Clyro. From where he runs his company, Courtenay Advisers Ltd.
I am informed by a very reliable source that the Brecon & Radnor branch of the CPRW is particularly hostile towards farmers.
That being so, why is the local CPRW branch organising a bash with the title ‘Welsh Food & Farming’? The answer to that question will become clear as you read on.
There are farmers, and there are farmers.
◊
THE FERTILE CRESCENT
One of the CPRW’s recent recruits is associated with another new outfit, Friends of the Upper Wye (FUW), registered with the Charity Commission in March this year. (Though I’m assured she’s an admirable and well-intentioned lady.)
This will no doubt complement the Wye & Usk Foundation (WUF) which is about a lot more than just angling. The WUF is based in Talgarth, close to Coleg Soros.
Over the years the WUF has received millions in funding from or via the ‘Welsh Government’, much of it handed over by an official whose attitude to money might have been compared by my dear mamgu to that of an inebriated seafarer.
An amazing episode, with apparently no oversight whatsoever. It is even suggested that some favoured bodies didn’t even need to make an application – it was a case of, “Would you like some more money?”
For the Fertile Crescent formed by the Usk and the Wye is something of a magnet for those seeking to save us benighted natives from ourselves. And for others with even less noble intent.
There’s yet another organisation, formed last year, in the Welsh Rivers Union (WRU), based on the Usk at Llanvihangel Gobion. This claims to be a collective of ‘citizen-funded’ community groups defending our rivers.
If it gets airborne it will be made up of the usual ‘community groups’ composed of people who were living somewhere else not so long ago.
Though as yet, it’s not registered as either a company or a charity. It may be just a website, and a Twitter account.
Oh, I almost forgot Afonydd Cymru Cyf, also based in Talgarth. Where income from government grants leapt like a returning salmon from £10,000 in 2018 to £894,704 in 2020.
Afonydd Cymru’s chair is Viscount Christopher Mills, of Kensington, who served as regional director of the Environment Agency in Wales (before the creation of Natural Resources Wales). Among the trustees is Joe Pimblett, CEO of the Severn Rivers Trust, based in Worcestershire.
When it comes to the Fertile Crescent even the Blesséd Monbiot has made a film, Rivercide (what a wit!), in which one of the supporting cast was Lesley Griffiths (sans Gary), and she reminded us that no matter what the facts may say, it’s always farmers wot we must blame.
St George thought the culprits were chickens, which appear at number 2, after humans, in his forthcoming opus, ‘Species To Be Exterminated If We Are To Save The Planet’. (Chickens have apparently deposed sheep in Monbiot’s demonography.)
Why this obsession with the Usk and the Wye? Is it because they’re close to Bristol? Or is their cross-border nature, demanding ‘co-operation’, the attraction?
Of course, there are rivers within Wales in far worse condition than the Wye and the Usk, so why are these ignored? Three reasons, perhaps.
First, these other rivers run through more populated areas with few stretches of open country attractive to those in search of a rural idyll, or intent on ‘habitat restoration’ (aka ‘rewilding’).
Second, while there may be areas meeting the criteria further west, there the Welsh language would be a consideration. And after the resistance to Summit to Sea the land-grabbers are wary of getting another bloody nose.
Third, they are entirely within Wales.
Never lose sight of the fact that for many, water quality is a stalking-horse, used against farmers so as to free up their land for other purposes. And the ‘Welsh Government’ wholeheartedly supports this agenda.
UPDATE: Here’s a recent example of pollution on the Wye that clearly has nothing to do with farmers.
◊
LOCAL GROWERS AND FARMERS
A source informs me that the ‘local grower’ is the bloke from the organic food shop in Knighton, where you buy the knobbly carrots and the misshapen parsnips. Ach y fi!
(Though there may be others attending, more deserving of the billing.)
As for the ‘local farmers’, it seems these will both come from Herefordshire, which may be fairly local to Knighton (/Tref y Clawdd) but are not, unless we want to be irredentist about this, Welsh.
More pragmatically, whether we view Herefordshire as the ‘lost lands’ or not, the area will not be affected by any legislation or initiatives emanating from Corruption Bay.
Even so, to help give a fuller flavour of the event, I’ll tell you who they are.
One is ‘RegenBen’, of Townsend Farm, near Ross-on-Wye. Which, as the name suggests, is on the River Wye. Ben is a director of the Oxford Farming Conference, an organisation I’m told represents big landowners, yeoman farmers and the like.
(I was also told that a famous Welsh farmer went there to speak a few years ago, and has never felt more out of place.)
The makeup of the Oxford Farming Conference probably explains why a rival was set up in 2010 called the Oxford Real Farming Conference.
From what I can see the older body caters for those with inherited land while the upstart is more attractive for Greens looking to get their hands on someone else’s land. I wouldn’t be comfortable with either.
The other ‘local farmer’ is from ‘Wild by Nature’, of Lower House farm, just over the border from Llanthoney, close to Llanveynoe. (These corrupted spellings!)
Looking at a map I see that both of them are close to the border, but neither is particularly ‘local’ to Knighton. The first is roughly 45 miles away, the second almost 50.
I suspect that both have been invited because they are well-connected, and have diversified into ‘artisanal’ food produce and other activities.
The Rhug Estate model, if you like.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve stopped many times at the Rhug restaurant and shop, and like some urchin from a Dickens novel gazed at goodies I can’t afford.
Though ‘farm shop’ really is a misnomer. It suggests Mrs Evans in a shed at the bottom of the farm drive selling goods cheaper by cutting out the middle man. In reality it’s a place where the price of everything is marked up.
Few locals can afford to shop there. That’s why the Rhug ‘farm shop’ is on the A5.
Even so, I’m sure a farm shop can be a nice little earner, and so I wasn’t surprised to learn that ‘Wild by Nature’ already has one. While RegenBen’s website tells us: ‘Our plans are to share the fruits of our labour by opening a farm shop’.
There are of course some excellent farm shops in Wales. One is Bargoed Farm / The Moody Cow, near Aberaeron, run by the former owners of Gilestone Farm, and visited very recently by Conservative Senedd leader Andrew R T Davies MS.
But how many farm shops can Wales support?
◊
SOIL ASSOCIATION
The Soil Association, headquartered in Bristol, is another of those English organisations that recognises the existence of Scotland, but not Wales. We, presumably, are part of England.
The Soil Association is registered as both a company and a charity. And with an annual income of over £23m it is no shoestring outfit. Of course the Scottish Soil Association is registered separately in Scotland.
In addition, there is The Soil Association Land Trust ‘established to acquire and maintain farmland sustainably’. Which might be worth bearing in mind, and could explain The Soil Association’s interest in Wales, a country I’m sure it will quickly recognise if the ‘Welsh Government’ offers to buy it a farm.
◊
NATURE FRIENDLY FARMING NETWORK
The company of that name was launched in July 2018. Though there has been quite a turnover of directors in the four years since then. Of the eight original directors, five have left, including two who were obviously Welsh.
NFFN has an impressive website, telling us of a Welsh Steering Group, with two group members serving as directors.
Here’s a page giving some responses from the Welsh Steering Group to the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme that emerged in July.
Hilary Kehoe, the Chair, mentions the ‘changing climate’. Rhys Evans thinks the ‘devil will be in the detail’. But Hywel Morgan was ecstatic. I was not surprised to learn that Hywel is involved with the ‘Welsh Government’s Farming Connect scheme.
The Nature Friendly Farming Network is looking to hire a £29,000 a year Communications Officer. Having recently recruited a Farmer Engagement Officer on the same salary. But who’s funding these posts?
For the financial situation is not impressive. I appreciate that it’s a company limited by guarantee, but even so, I would have expected to see more than £69 in the kitty. Which is what the latest accounts (to y/e 30.06.2021) show.
Yes, NFFN has assets of £199,317, but this sum is exceeded by money owed to creditors.
On the ‘Nature Means Business‘ page we read: ‘Right now, farm businesses are facing a multitude of challenges: climate change, unpredictable weather patterns, changes to future farm payment schemes and adjusting to new consumer demands’.
To prioritise ‘climate change’ (when it’s becoming clear that climate change has been – at the very least – exaggerated), and then virtually repeat it with ‘unpredictable weather patterns’, before mentioning farm payments, is revealing.
With no mention at all of the threat from mandatory afforestation, farms being bought for greenwashing, and restrictions applied by politicians and administrations that are blatantly anti-farming.
These priorities are evident throughout the website. The image below is from the Fund Us page. And again it’s ‘climate in crisis’, ‘wildlife declining’, ‘habitats being lost’.
The Nature Friendly Farming Network seems to be an environmental organisation that recruits farmers. There’s nothing wrong with that, farmers care deeply about the environment that provides livelihoods for them and their families.
But it’s a question of priorities. The first of which has to be supporting farmers – who will then look after the environment.
◊
STUMP UP FOR TREES
This organisation has appeared on this blog a number of times, so I won’t dwell on it again.
Based in Abergavenny Stump up for Trees is a greenwash outfit. It’s registered as a charity, and one of the three trustees is Richard James Roderick, who farms next to Gilestone.
By ‘greenwashing’ I mean that SUFT ‘saves the planet’ by planting trees in order for companies to offset their perceived ‘carbon footprint’, which allows them to go on putting out carbon. Its major partner seems to be Utility Warehouse.
Nonsense predicated on there being a ‘climate emergency’ (there isn’t); carbon being damaging to the environment (it’s not); and replacing agricultural land with sterile, monoculture pine forests making sense (it doesn’t).
Even so, Stump up for Trees seems to be well-regarded in Corruption Bay among the connoisseurs, practitioners and dispensers of flim-flam, bullshit, propaganda and other means of deceiving poor old Dai Public.
◊
ABATTOIR SECTOR GROUP
This is yet another organisation based in Bristol and set up as recently as 2020. Though it’s not registered as either a company or a charity because it’s an offshoot of the Sustainable Food Trust.
The ABS is dedicated to keeping smaller, rural abattoirs open, and what carnivore (bares fangs!) could argue with that?
Parent body, the Sustainable Food Trust, is an international organisation with a wider remit to support ‘sustainable farming’. By which I assume that it seeks to avoid the wrath of the swivel-eyed with a modified kind of farming that’s less damaging to Mother Earth.
It is, as I say, based in Bristol, and I see no mention of Wales on the website. The only Welsh connection I can find is founder Patrick Holden, an organic dairy farmer from the Lampeter area.
Holder is a founder of Sustainable Food Trust and current CEO. He was a former director of the Soil Association.
◊
OUR FOOD
You may need to pay attention with this one. For just as with the previous section we have an organisation operating under a different label. There’s even a third label.
Let’s start with the Our Food website. Scroll down and you’ll read: A project of the Conservation Farming Trust Company Number 10823532′. Which the Companies House website confirms as the number for Conservation Farming Trust.
On the Our Food website we also read: ‘This website was built with support from Monmouthshire County Council, the Brecon Beacons National Park, and the Welsh Government. It is part of a process to build a new campaign in the region to secure 1200 acres for regenerative horticulture for local markets.’
The Our Food 1200 website confirms that the figure refers to the acreage the new organisation hopes to be given. At the time of writing 24 acres had been donated. Though, in fairness, Our Food 1200 was only launched in January. It’s registered as a Community Benefit Company.
Let’s go back to the parent organisation, Conservation Farming Trust. The registered office address is in London, and the three directors live in Ireland (1) and England (2). So no Welsh connections there.
And yet, it seems the only funding Our Food gets is from Welsh sources.
This funding is presumably justified because Our Food 1200 is looking for Welsh land to be donated. This looks very much like One Planet Developments rebranded. (I’m sure I read a reference to ‘OPD’ on the website.)
As with OPDs, those we’ll find on these over-sized allotments are unlikely to be local. So why are we funding it?
And is it a safe bet? I ask because a driving force behind it all seems to be Duncan Mark Fisher, who serves as both secretary and a member of Our Food 1200. Companies House suggests Fisher’s business record is ‘patchy’, to say the least.
The Conservation Farming Trust may have no connection with Wales, but Our Land, and certainly Our Land 1200, are trying to put down roots. Maybe they’re hoping someone will buy them a farm!
More planet-savers promoting climate hysteria, with the ‘Welsh Government’ and others happy to go along with this exploitative, colonialist nonsense.
◊
LANDWORKERS’ ALLIANCE
What you’ve read thus far has been unadulterated, unsubstantiated and unconvincing bullshit (however sincere some of those promoting it), but this final section outdoes it all. For we are now with the horny-handed sons of toil, straight out of The Grapes of Wrath.
Or those who would imagine themselves so to be.
For I now direct your attention to the Landworkers’ Alliance. Scroll down and you’ll see that this crew aligns itself with the International Peasants Movement. (I’m afraid I let my membership lapse.)
When Dominic and Eugenie re-imagine themselves as peasants you know you’ve gone so far down the rabbit-hole that you run the risk of being shot by an Australian farmer.
And doesn’t it count as cultural appropriation?
The Landworkers’ Alliance was formed in 2015, and has its registered address in Dorset. Here’s the Companies House entry.
The ‘accounts’ – as with all the outfits I’ve dealt with here – are vague, being little more than unaudited statements. Though I can tell you that the latest such statement (y/e 30.09.2020) gives assets at £151,507 (previous year £66,523). But with no indication of where the money came from.
It would also appear to be a Woke organisation. For which we should be thankful, because trans peasants are never far from my thoughts. (I hope it’s the same for you!)
The directors are resident in England and Scotland with the exceptions of Katharine Anne McEvoy and Gerald Davies Miles, both residents of Pembrokeshire. The former seems to live in Newport, with the latter to be found at Caerhys Organic Community Agriculture (COCA), near St David’s.
I feel a tear well in old Jac’s eye, for we may finally have found a genuine Welsh farmer! Though whether he’ll be in Knighton is another matter.
Looking briefly at the ‘accounts’ for COCA, or rather, the ‘statement of financial position’, we see a paltry £3,154 for y/e 31.03.2022.
I suspect that COCA is a virtue-signalling side-line, with Caerhys farm itself run as a commercial – if organic – agricultural business, including bed & breakfast.
But the irony.
We have sought for centuries to escape being peasants, in our own country; now we face an invasion of land-hungry Green-Left-Woke carrot-growing poseurs wanting to play at being peasants . . . in our country.
◊
CONCLUSION
The sad truth is that farmers have been badly treated under devolution. And it’s happened in identifiable stages.
It began in 1999 with Labour taking control of the new Assembly. A Labour Party in which too many saw farmers as landowners, and therefore capitalists. Though anyone who can lump together a struggling Welsh hill farmer and the Duke of Westminster really does have a problem.
This encouraged others to join in. I’m thinking now of the environmentalists, the planet savers. Though all too often it was their own interests, and the interests of their cronies, that were being served, not those of the planet.
Chief among them was Jane Davidson, Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing from 2007 to 2011. When her Labour Party was in coalition with Plaid Cymru.
Davidson, a wealthy and privately-educated Englishwoman, was determined to impose her will on us, for the benefit of others like her, no matter what the cost. To us.
Thanks to Davidson we saw TAN 6 in July 2010, the ‘Hippies’ Charter’, which allows English drop-outs to build what they like, where they like.
In January 2014, Alun Davies, the Minister for Natural Resources and Food, announced that 15% of CAP funding would in future be transferred from Pillar One (i.e. farmers) to Pillar 2 (rural development projects).
‘Rural Development Projects’ means those self-serving ‘community’ schemes dreamed up by Jane Davidson’s friends that benefit no one else.
Wales was further blessed, just a year later, with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Here you see the Act’s objectives, with my comments.
This legislation is another example of the Left window dressing a looted store (after inciting the looters with talk of ‘victimhood’ and ensuring the police didn’t get involved.)
Bullshit dreamed up to please enviroshysters and pressure groups. Which has achieved nothing for us Welsh. But it allows the ‘Welsh Government’ to say: ‘We were the first government in the world . . . ‘.
And that, for our politicians, is all that really matters.
More recently, we saw Lesley Griffiths (and Gary), introduce legislation to curb pollution of Welsh waterways. This problem is localised, and there are many culprits, including water companies.
But Lesley (and Gary) pretended to believe that the problem is national, and that farmers are solely to blame.
If you believe that traditional farming methods contribute to anthropogenic global warming, then the sensible approach would have been to sit down with farmers and work out a better way forward.
Instead, and from the outset, Labour politicians chose vilification, lies, confrontation, punishment.
An approach that becomes inconsistent, even sinister, when we think again about Knighton on the 17th. Where ‘Welsh Government’ representatives will be rubbing shoulders with lots of . . . well, farmers.
Clearly, the ‘Welsh Government’ has no problem with farmers as such, so perhaps the problem is only with Welsh farmers.
♦ end ♦
I’ll admit it. I tipped my cap, raised a glass and was quite sad when I heard the news. But endless fawning ‘tributes’ and wall to wall BBC coverage have officially evaporated any and all sentiment I may have had. Hope they’re fucking happy, haha! Still would we expect any different from the state propaganda shit pump?
Made even worse by knowing who’s taking over. He accepts suitcases full of cash from sheiks, he’s in the pocket of the WEF, and he’s got the ghost of Diana haunting him wherever he goes. He’ll try to interfere in politics, make himself unpopular, and further damage the monarchy.
I bet that as you’re reading this there are people wondering how they can replace Charles III with his son, his son’s lovely wife, and those adorable children.
He is indeed the gift that keeps on giving to republicans like myself. Liz did the job flawlessly and was a seemingly eternal figure, and thus so much of the affection for the monarchy is inseparable from her being the incumbent. Watch over the coming years as the Commonwealth Realms drop off, one by one.
Looks like football’s been cancelled. Pathetic, groupthinking bollocks. North Korea would be proud. Watch as not being seen to be respectful enough becomes the new “Where’s yer poppy?!” Stick to beat people with.
King Charles and World Economic Forum
https://www.newsfromtheperimeter.com/home/2022/9/9/king-charles-and-the-world-economic-forums-great-reset-agenda
Imagine what sort of life he’d have if he’d fallen out of a non regal chuff. I can see him doing a bin round, or perhaps stacking shelves.
Today we enter the era of the Trusty Truss ! Sad name for someone so keen to promote an unsupported way of life ! Anyway the serious stuff. This raddled old bird, only 45 but looking like 60+, is a friend of the seriously wealthy landowning class not to be confused with people who do farming for a serious living. That distinction is important as the wealthy landowners don’t really care whether their tenants grow crops, rear livestock or build wind turbines, solar panels or glamping sites as long as the rentals are good and escalating. Throw some unbalanced “incentives” like grants or lead in payments into the pot and you can see where this will lead. Further away from food production especially as Loose Lizzie is proud to claim her part in striking some downright dodgy deals with food producers in far off places. Times are hard and they will get harder as our economy shrinks to a microdot and a small cluster of elitist cliques rake it in while the rest of us are reduced to an unemployed or under paid peasantry.
Of course Wales will remain a global leader in virtue signaling and posturing but I’ve never known that fill the bellies or meet the higher aspirations of the mass our people, just fills the coffers of those few who have inflicted this new world view on the rest of us and conned their way into those protected jobs in “public service”.
Proof positive that the cunts are terrified by the prospect of a simple majority vote in favour of independence north of the border, that they’re looking to try and tack on extra conditions.
The strange thing about all these pseudo rural organisations funded by the Welsh Government and domiciled in England is that they don’t have any basic understanding of the process of farming. The art of farming is to utilise the land with plant or livestock where the input costs are less than the sales price, giving the farm a profit, the farmer a living, and the output is food.
The issue with input costs relates to FIF in modern agriculture. Fertiliser, Insecticide and Fungicide. The last two inputs mainly affecting arable production. Due to rise in fossil fuel prices artificial FIFs is becoming prohibitively expensive, so natural FIF (organic) becomes more cost effective. Natural FIF is poo, rotation, and with livestock, breeding.
The has been no increase in the cost of rain and sunshine.
Strange then, that the Welsh Government are doing everything in their power to frustrate natural FIF. Implementing NVZs where not needed (the poo), preventing rotation with randsom acreages of land taken out of ultity (offset), and de-funding native stock quality breeding or closing plant breeding research in Wales. They are doing the exact opposite of what is required for ‘sustainability’.
Put simply, they are at war against farming and are funding this various array of non-framing charities. An insidious mix of colonial land grabbing with the sponsor of the gentry of England to achieve it. They have no concept of the framing process and are errecting barriers to sustainability rather than removing them.
The anti-farming groups now remind me of the third sector in the way they’re proliferating and duplicating. It’s like watching some primitive form of life under a microscope. One minute there’s one, you go for a pee, and when you come back there’s 32 of them!
Wouldn’t a malignant tumour be a more apt metaphor? Unordered, undirected, invasive growth; a mass which sucks in resources from the surrounding healthy environment, and catastrophic if not caught and treated in time.
I got hauled over the coals years ago for describing the situation at that time as “being invaded by vermin with alien values” . It is now the reality and the vermin are self appointed judge jury and executioners. Normal people, still the majority by far, are being marginalised, locked out of decision making processes to enable even more extreme nut case policies to advance. Anti farming, anti energy, yet still expecting their townie middle class lifestyles to be supported. Such is the balanced mindset of the new wave of crazy nihilists. Would be OK if they planned on annihilating themselves but they plan on surviving and prospering by doing away with likes of us.
FUW… Farmer’s Union of Wales. A deliberate obfuscation? If not it’s some coincidence!
Also WRU – Welsh Rugby Union.
Appreciate that WRU are a shower of Wanchors but as yet, to my knowledge, have not played any part in the attacks on farming and our rural communities. Now some of the cliquesters who move and shake in WRU circles may also move in other circles which have an interest in the modern day clearances programme/ pogrom but at this stage that is probably coincidental.
I’d put WRU down to coincidence given the unrelated domains of interest, but FUW, that’s got to be some deliberate attempt at misdirection, perhaps to snag the top spot in Google from the ‘other’ FUW?
I wouldn’t get too concerned, there won’t be any farms left in Wales in a couple of years.
They will be sacrificed on the alter of ‘Global Britain’; as the UK sells its soul to any country that offers it any form of trade deal – no matter how disadvantageous – in order to rescue the political careers of Westminster politicians.
Well, hello, Ian, long time no hear. Hope you’re well.
What you describe might be the direction of travel at the moment, but I’m convinced that after this winter food security and energy security will become priorities. The globalist project is going to collapse under the weight of its own absurdities. And with it, I hope, the WEF.
But whatever the outcome Wales will still be threatened by multifarious, multi-headed and cross-fertilising groups of environmentalists and allotment-style ‘farmers’ seeking land and funding at our expense.
Another well presented post. Keep up the good work!
Many thanks, glad you appreciated it.
Your analysis is, as ever, full. It raises fundamental questions not only about the future of rural Wales but worryingly, the attitude of the “Welsh government,” continuing to ignore the real issues and listening to the self appointed planet savers.
I ask yet again. What is the opposition doing?
There is another issue which you have raised on many occasions and one that is consistently ignored. In a parliamentary body – or for that matter any elected body that comprises elected members and paid officials – a relationship between an elected member and an official is totally inappropriate, the more so if the elected member is a minister..
And I ask yet again. Is the opposition happy with this?
Although the Senedd is officially an elected body it discharges its functions as a colonial administration. At each Assembly/Senedd election we the electorate should have been asked ” who do you wish to select to obey orders transmitted from the UK government and its horde of civil servants ?”. Rather than the implied question of “who do you want to run this country of ours ?”. Opposition parties are hunky dory with all this because they are all Unionist despite Plaid’s occasional rush of separatist outrage which are even less frequent with each passing year.
Now some shallow thinkers will protest that the Drakeford/Price alliance operates independently despite the London Tory regime. Well they do but within very narrow parameters. Much of the decision making here in Wales looks suspiciously like a series of experiments conducted by a group of damaged people. These experiments are tolerated by London because it satisfies a”devolution mandate” on the one hand, while it supplies a regular stream of good examples of what happens when a bonkers regime gets hold of even minimal levers of power !
Wales would be regarded by London as far more “dangerous” had a group of men and women, all sane and serious of intent managed to get a working majority in that Bay Senedd. Opportunity lost, several times over.
What I’ve described in this post is largely driven by civil servants and pressure groups, both are permanent features of the political landscape. It wouldn’t really matter who was pretending to run the show in Corruption Bay.
Being specific, ‘environmental’ initiatives like these satisfy London in that Dominic and Eugenie have somewhere to go, with land and funding provided; while the ‘Welsh Government’ can crow about being a ‘world leader’! It’s the same principle at work with wind farms.
It’s a modified form of colonialism in that London funds the WG on the understanding that the money is spent in certain ways. The only losers are us, the Welsh people.
We need to obliterate the perception of continuum in the populace, whereby devo is seen as halfway to the hell in a handbasket of what independence would be. Punchy, alliterative slogans like ‘Puppet Parliament’ are useful to this end.
Similarly, to counter that other stock accusation levelled in an imagined game of Indy Bingo (TM), “You just hate the English”, my locked and loaded response is to point out my belief that UK breakup will greatly benefit England as well, for several reasons.
Why can’t the Conservative and Unionist Party, those supposedly of small, non-intrusive government, of taking a step back and letting people work things out for themselves, conceive of ties of people and commerce throughout this island without the caretaking of a single, overarching state on it?
I think a major problem in the West is that the Left, then the Green-Left, and more recently the Woke-Green0-Left, could never gain an electoral majority on its own programme. But it knows this. So it has set up pressure groups, infiltrated other organisations, and through exerting pressure in that way, and with the help of a largely supportive media – especially Big Tech – it has managed to see much of its agenda adopted by political parties and implemented by various administrations.
This has happened with most people being unaware of it. How many know that Bill Gates has given millions to the Guardian? How many have heard of the WEF? Or maybe they’re aware of the problem when it manifests itself- for example, police dancing at Pride parades – but not how this was achieved.
But we’re heading for a crunch. And when people are unable to pay their electricity bills, go short of food, and this leads to political instability and maybe serious social unrest, then people will ask we got to this situation, and how we get out of it. Blaming Putin won’t work, because this has been building for years.
If fingers can be pointed in the right directions then we might finally be free of the Woke-Green-Left. But I remain apprehensive about the direction the West takes, because situations such as we might see this winter can be tipping-points that allow demagogues and extremists of left and right to assert themselves.
Whatever happens, we could be living in a very different world a year from now.
Indeed. Instead of dumping blame on Putin we need to look more closely at the useless government that presides over the UK. A prime example of ” all talk ,no action”. Many of the present leadership team were active in driving the Brexit campaign. Having won a majority, just, they should have implemeted that which they purported to represent – like economic independence, a reduced dependency on EU and other supposedly bogey nations like Russia, China, Middle East etc. That should have resulted in a renewed interest in food production, energy production and diversification of sources where home resources were insufficient in short and medium term. They did NOTHING ! Sat on their fat arses spouting garbage, rhetoric at hitherto unrivalled volumes, and facilitated record levels of waste of public funds while enabling selected corporates to fill their coffers with unjustified revenues. Our Cardiff regime is small beer in comparison although they do their best to imitate the behaviours of the London regime.
As I hinted in my reply to Dr John, I can’t recall a time when politicians, media, the establishment, were regarded with such contempt. And as I stated, this winter will be a crunch time.
People are going to die, and they won’t all be old people dying of cold. If this winter is as difficult as some are predicting there’ll be suicides. And when some guy kills his family and then tops himself because he can’t afford the energy and food bills then, no matter how much the politicians and the media try to hide such stories, they will get out.
And when these stories get out, and people realise there were attempts to suppress them, then politicians and media will be regarded with even more contempt.
Now there’s a thought, bit out there on the edge but nevertheless potentially beneficial. Perhaps as the tide turns against the net zero nonsense and the energy price scamming speculators get put in their place we might get mass suicides among those adherents of the zanier end of the green gospels. How they bump themselves off is a matter that doesn’t trouble me although I would like it to be done quietly. I appreciate that is asking a lot given how they have lived their narcissistic lives.
I agree that it’s an extremely depressing prospect, but it could unfortunately happen. But as ever, it’ll be the victims paying the price, not those who caused this crisis.
It fascinates me how Big Tech cultivates the image of Wokey-SJW-California Campus ethos, but has all its hardware made in China, and is as grasping and capitalist in its monopolising, controlling and aggressive tax avoidance tendencies as any wicked multinational. It’s as duplicitous and hypocritical as it’s possible to be, really.