Segregation Makes A Comeback

As I’ve said before, 2016 was a watershed year in Western politics. Brexit coupled with Donald Trump’s victory told leftists they’d lost large sections of the (white) working class.

This resulted in a desperate search for a replacement ‘proletariat’. Groups and issues that had been around for a while were cleaned up, eagerly adopted, and zealously promoted. Which explains many things.

Among them, the rise of climate hysteria, a career criminal named George Floyd achieving something close to sainthood, and otherwise intelligent people pretending to believe that men can have babies.

It also explains why Wales is rapidly falling apart, as the intellectually debauched denizens of Corruption Bay turn their backs on the real world, preferring to serve the Globalist’s Woke-Green-Left agenda.

CITY OF MY DREAMS GIVING ME NIGHTMARES

There’s an outfit in Swansea called BAME Mental Health Support (BMHS). For those unfamiliar with the term, BAME stands for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic. (Here’s the Companies House entry.)

A clumsy term applied to all who aren’t white. Pretending that every non-Caucasian shares similar problems in mental health or anything else is absurd. The UK government agrees, having dropped the term a couple of years back.

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This crew in Swansea could, more honestly, call themselves the Nigerian Mental Health Support CIC, for all involved hail from that West African country.

They’re based on the High Street, sharing with the trade union Unite and Swansea council’s Housing Options, next door to Not Only Sofas Clearance Outlet.

So who’s who at BMHS?

ALFRED THE GREAT

The driving force is Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya. His wife Nancy Buka is the secretary. I’m told she has a hairdressing establishment nearby, specialising in beads, braids, and extensions.

The couple achieved fame, of a sort, when they met Simon Cowell and David Walliams. Though the remark about, “doctors spreading conspiracy theories“, has not aged well. (Unless you swing it 180 degrees, perhaps.)

Oyekoya was awarded an MBE in this year’s New Year’s Honours List.

His Linkedin page tells us he got a Master’s in Accounting and Finance from Swansea University. He’s also worked for the ‘Welsh Government’ and a WG-funded outfit called Inspire Training.

Now he’s treasurer for the Books Council of Wales.

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All of which suggests that Alfred Oyekoya is well thought of in Corruption Bay.

And when he finds time he also works for the MoD in Bristol. Which either means a long commute from his Swansea home, or else he works from home.

THE REST OF THE GANG

As I’ve said, Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya is an accountant. We find two other bean-counters among the directors; Adewale Dare and Monday Noutouglo. Dare lives in Nigeria, Noutouglo lives in Canada.

Why does a mental health outfit in Swansea have an accountant in Canada, and another in Nigeria? Or, to rephrase it, what possible use can they be to people suffering mental health issues in Wales?

What also struck me was that these two joined BMHS on the same day, 12.01.2023.

Fortunately, there are doctors on board.

Though Dr Adesola Samson Ademiloye is a lecturer. With a company registered to him that links back, by a tortuous route, to this private equity firm.

Then this suggests he’s a civil engineer. While this page from the Swansea University website mentions ‘biomedical engineering’.

Is any of this relevant to mental health?

While Dr Oluyinka Emmanuel Olutunde might be a medical doctor, and allowed to practise in the UK. But if this is him, then he’s certainly not registered as a GP.

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To confuse matters further, I found a Linkedin profile for an Oluyinka Olutunde, a paediatrician, who seems never to have worked outside Africa. But then, I also found this. Is it the same picture?

THERE’S MONEY IN BOOKS

New Audiences‘ is a funding scheme launched a couple years ago by the Books Council of Wales.

Below you see how the grant to BMHS was listed in the projects for 2022/23. Together with a couple of grants from 2023/24 to give you a flavour of how the scheme is going.

Does being in a room with a lesbian make someone ‘lesbian-adjacent’?

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Which means that Alfred Oyekoya joined the Books Council in October 2021. Less than a year later we find his own brainchild BMHS trousering a £39,000 grant.

Do you find that mildly troubling?

Another BMHS funding source I found was foodbanks in Swansea.

But I can’t see what books or food have to do with BAME mental health; though no doubt a good book and a full belly help people feel better.

But you could make a case for sex, alcohol and a nice holiday. So if I’m feeling a bit down can I apply for a week in Tenby with a bodice-bursting slapper and a crate of Malbec?

What passes for the BMHS accounts (‘unaudited statutory accounts’) gives a turnover of £183,000 for y/e 31.03.2023, but ‘turnover’ refers to un-itemised grants and donations. ‘Administrative expenses’ totalled £164,000.

And while there was just one employee the previous year, this had risen to four in the latest accounts. What do these ’employees’ do?

BAME Mental Health Support is a misnomer in every sense. All involved are Nigerian. And it might have little to do with mental health.

WARPED PRIORITIES

But this happens when the Woke lead the none-too-bright.

We’ve reached a stage where two Haitians in Tonypandy could launch The Haitian Anti-defamation League, demand ‘Welsh Government’ funding, and then get rat-arsed every night in The Gartered Gombeen, before rounding the evening off with sweet and sour bat (with fried rice) from the Star of Wuhan.

To ask them to account for how they spent the grant money would amount to racism. And you will be reported to – The Haitian Anti-defamation League.

Getting serious again (unless of course there are two Haitians in Tonypandy thinking along those lines) . . .

What we see at the Books Council of Wales is an organisation having to spend a bigger portion of reduced funding on Woke twaddle, of interest only to narcissist ‘artists’ and a few equally unhinged admirers.

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And everywhere we look in Wales we see the same thing: services being cut, and what is specific to Wales and its people treated with less respect than is given to assorted grifters, especially those shrieking about climate, race, or gender.

GRIFTING AT THE GRAND

What I’m writing about is an imagined victimhood that can be a nice little earner for those who’ve figured out how to manipulate politicos and others into funding them.

An example might be British Virgin Islander Nkechi Allen Dawson, director / trustee of the African Community Centre (ACC), at the Grand Theatre’s Multicultural Hub.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Nkechi Allen Dawson works for Coleg Gwent, as a Diversity, Inclusion and Well-being manager.

How did we manage before such jobs were invented?

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ACC’s 2023 ‘accounts’ show £258,665 in readies, and 7 employees (3 in 2022), but no indication of where the money came from. And the website is no help – it’s ‘being updated’.

Fortunately, we can turn to the Charity Commission, which tells us that in the past two years ACC received £263,560 in ‘government grants’. That information should be available in the ‘accounts’, and on the website.

Incidentally, the African Community Centre has 7 directors / trustees. We’ve met the two from the BVI, then there’s a Kenyan, but the other four are Nigerian.

Also appointed a director of the ACC on the same day as Nkechi Allen Dawson was another woman from tax haven BVI (Pop: 31,000), Charlotte Ajomale Evans,

BLACK SWIMMING

Charlotte Ajomale Evans’ Linkedin profile tells us she works full-time for the Black Swimming Association (BSA).

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Yeah, that’s the way to ‘break down barriers’ – segregated swimming. Didn’t Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and a host of others fight against that sort of thing?

But then, everywhere you look in the world of DEI you encounter self-serving hypocrisy and doublespeak.

Here’s where BSA’s funding came from in year ending 31.08.2022.  (RNLI = Royal National Lifeboat Institution. LMCT = London Marathon Charitable Trust.)

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RNLI, eh? Do drowning black people have to be rescued differently to drowning white people?

Here’s the explanatory note for the RNLI in the BSA accounts, page 23:

Funds received for consultancy services, including research and
development, and community engagement.

No surprise there, because so many of the Wokie scam outfits I’ve looked at over the years have minted it from ‘consultancy’ fees.

Just think of Stonewall, which virtually blackmailed public bodies into paying to be lectured (and misinformed) in order to be a ‘Diversity Champion’.

We’ve largely freed ourselves from that particular nightmare, but there are plenty more lurking out there.

GROWING CONCERNS” AND “UNCONSCIOUS BIAS”

And now a report from Arise News, a Nigerian site I’ve never quoted before, and probably never will again. I do so this time because it’s about Alfred Oyekoya. It begins:

Amidst growing concerns surrounding fair treatment for ethnic minorities in the Welsh workforce, Alfred Oyekoya MBE . . . has advocated for the implementation of labour laws to tackle discrimination and unconscious bias faced by Nigerians and other ethnic minorities in Wales.

That opening paragraph gives the clear impression that racism or discrimination against “ethnic minorities” is rampant in Wales.

Or, rather, that’s the impression given to Arise News by a man who studied at a Welsh university, who’s worked for the ‘Welsh Government’, who’s treasurer of the Books Council of Wales, whose company has received tens of thousands of pounds in public funding and, on a recommendation from within Wales, got an MBE!

A man who’s been treated better since he arrived in Wales than most Welsh people ever will be – repays us with accusations of racism.

Let’s look at another worrying element of the paragraph I quoted – “unconscious bias“. It’s mentioned twice.

Legislation can tackle overt discrimination, the kind of thing perhaps exemplified with the old lodging-house sign. We’ve had such laws for 50 or 60 years.

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But Oyekoya’s “unconscious bias” takes us beyond overt discrimination. I think it even takes us beyond ‘thought crimes’, to somewhere rather scary.

For I think we’ve arrived in a place where you can be accused of prejudices you weren’t aware of, and of which you are innocent – because someone claims to know you better than you know yourself!

If “unconscious bias” can only be observed or detected by others then this will encourage false testimony from those with an axe to grind, and those who can benefit from such accusations.

And of course, an accused person will have no way to prove their innocence. If that’s not Kafkaesque, then I don’t know what is.

Just think of The Trial, which begins: “Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.”

FINAL THOUGHTS

Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya MBE needs to explain the interview he gave to (or the piece he submitted to) Arise News. From what I can see, Nigerians in Wales are doing very well. As are members of the BVI diaspora.

And I’d like to hear his explanation for, “Labour laws to tackle discrimination and unconscious bias faced by Nigerians and other ethnic minorities in Wales“.

Is Alfred Oyekoya dreaming of what we see in the States, where white people are barred from applying for certain federal government and other jobs, some colleges, and preferential treatment is given to minority groups?

So don’t be surprised if certain lobbies and individuals start demanding ‘affirmative action’ legislation to combat a problem that doesn’t exist. Legislation that they will help write, and from which they will benefit.

Let us be vigilant against any movement in that direction. And let us also ensure that the Corruption Bay Clown Show isn’t persuaded to add “unconscious bias” to the list of Wokie ‘crimes’ in another desperate attempt to appear ‘progressive’.

We don’t want some poor bugger dragged off by the Unconscious Bias Squad.

It could be me!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Bute Energy And Friends: Corrupting Wales

For a second week running, I’m focusing on Bute Energy. This time, looking at its links with the Labour party, and how, through that and by other means, Bute encourages corruption and spreads discord.

This will also serve to bring those who haven’t been following the Bute saga up to date.

THE FLOODGATES OPEN!

I first became aware of Bute’s links to Labour when I was told that someone was visiting people close to a planned wind farm. This was (the now abandoned) Moelfre site inland of Colwyn Bay, a real outlier from Bute’s other projects.

This Bute representative was David James Taylor, Labour insider who’d been Spad to a number of high-profile figures; UK government minister Peter Hain and Wales first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones.

In 2016 Taylor stood to become the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner. After losing maybe he considered his career options. Or perhaps he was approached, for Labour was already helping wind farm developers.

We saw this when Anna McMorrin lobbied Powys councillors on behalf of Hendy wind farm in April 2017, just a month before she was elected Labour MP for Cardiff North.

Taylor formed three companies in October 2018: Moblake Wind Ventures Ltd (which became Moblake Ltd 11.11.2020); Moblake Energy Trading Ltd (folded 2020); and Moblake Associates Ltd (now being struck-off).

The timing is intriguing, because Taylor’s companies were formed a week before his friend and colleague, Lesley Griffiths, set the precedent of over-ruling a planning inspector to give Hendy windfarm planning consent. She did so using the relatively new Developments of National Significance (DNS) legislation.

DNS made it clear that Wales was free range for wind turbines; free of interference from locals, their council representatives, or even planning inspectors.

Taylor was rewarded by Bute with shares in Windward Enterprises Ltd (now Windward Energy Ltd), both in his own name and that of Moblake Associates Ltd. He was also a (non-designated) member of Grayling Capital LLP.

Money magically appeared in Moblake Ltd, which Taylor then paid to himself in ‘loans’ totalling over £600,000 that did not need to be repaid.

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There was an attempt to liquidate this company a couple of years ago, but the liquidator was removed last August. Since when there’s been no further news.

Taylor was useful to Bute because of his closeness to Lesley Griffiths, and his insider knowledge of the Labour party machine.

Which is why it’s suggested that Taylor’s personal payment came in shares and other ways; and that most if not all of the £600,000+ was really a donation from Bute to the Labour party.

‘YOU SAY VISTRA, AND I SAY, ER . . . VISTRA‘?

Someone has contacted me arguing there are two companies called Vistra, and in last week’s post I conflated them. One is a big Texas energy company, the other is a provider of secretarial services.

To explain . . .

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) is funding Bute through CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd, owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd. All holdco shares owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure V SCSp, which has its address at 16 Rue Eugene Ruppert, L2453, Luxembourg. At the same address is ‘Vistra’.

Now I took this to mean the Texas energy firm, but my contact insists it’s the other one. He’s probably right. But in my defence:

Vistra Company Secretaries Ltd of Bristol (which you’ll read about in a minute) was, until April 2019, Jordan Company Secretaries Ltd. The Vistra name was adopted because it was taken over and joined many companies under the Vistra banner.

Vistra is now owned by Sweden’s EQT, an equity outfit big in green energy.

So there are two Vistra companies. But with both involved in ‘renewable energy’ projects, often the same projects, confusion was almost inevitable.

Especially when we see BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard behind both.

THE GANG OF FOUR

Soon after landing in Wales, and perhaps in an attempt to establish Welsh credentials, Bute set up a Welsh Advisory Board. You can see the members in the image below.

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Left to right: Derek Vaughan, redundant MEP; Dr Debra Williams, businesswoman and academic; John ‘Cwmbetws’ Davies, man of many hats and big shot in the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society; John Uden, partner of Jenny Rathbone MS.

THE NEATH PORT TALBOT-BRUSSELS-COPENHAGEN CONNECTION

Derek Vaughan was leader of Neath Port Talbot (NPT) council and would certainly know Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, the Port Talbot seat.

Vaughan was an MEP from 2009 to 2019, preceded by the late Glenys Kinnock. The wife of former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and mother to Stephen.

Stephen Kinnock MP is married to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Danish PM. She serves as a director of Danish wind turbine producer, Vestas, reputed to be the biggest in the world.

From Windpower Monthly of March 2024. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In 2020 Vestas took a 25% stake in Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. As you’ve just read, CIP is the conduit for funding the Bute projects.

Derek Vaughan’s political background and contacts explain him being chosen as the chairman of Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board. He was a ‘good fit’.

THE ACADEMIC BUSINESSWOMAN

I can’t tell you much about Dr Debra Williams other than the fact that she was managing director of Confused.com. Now she’s taken a gig at Lampeter, which some might view as a step backwards.

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That said, since Jane Davidson landed there after ‘leaving’ Corruption Bay, Lampeter has tried to re-invent itself as a centre for alternative living. And why not, there are enough ‘alternatives’ in the shacks, tepees, and OPDs thereabouts.

Even so, I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing about Dr Williams, unless she was viewed by Bute as their entry to what passes for the Welsh business community.

GALILEO AND THE FAVOURED SON

A number of sources have told me that Bute has assiduously courted the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society (RWAS). Which makes sense, for the RWAS gives access to many of the landowners on whose property Bute would like to erect turbines and pylons.

And this explains Bute’s recruitment of John Davies, who from 2012 was RWAS chairman. As I read through his other appointments I recalled Harri Webb’s reference to, “the public men on the boards and panels“.

Put it all together and it made him very attractive to Bute.

I have been told that John Davies was instrumental in seeing Aled Rhys Jones appointed CEO of the RWAS. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with a man of John Davies’s standing promoting a protégé. But there may be more to it.

As you might have read in the link, Aled comes from, “the family’s hill farm near Cwrt-y-Cadno in North Carmarthenshire“. To be exact, Tyllwyd, which I’m told the family still owns, but rents out.

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The thing about this area is that it’s being targeted by other wind farm companies in addition to Bute. As I wrote last November, in ‘A Change Of Tack?

One of those companies is Galileo Green Energy UK, eyeing a site at Bryn Cadwgan. With another Welsh site planned for Mynydd Ty-talwyn.

The parent company, Galileo Green Energy, is headquartered in Zurich.

Curiously, when based in Bristol – at the Vistra address – Galileo was known as GGE Machynlleth Ltd. Now it’s using a Cardiff office and the name has changed to Galileo Empower Wales Ltd.

From what is now Galileo Empower Wales Ltd documents filed with Companies House when it was knowns as GCE Machynlleth Ltd.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

A quick shufty at the directors will tell you how Welsh it really is.

Anyway, I hear that Aled Rhys Jones, CEO of the RWAS, stands to gain financially from the Bryn Cadwgan wind farm. A map I’ve been sent shows the outline of the wind farm in red, with the Tyllwyd land edged in green.

You’ll see four turbines planned on Tyllwyd land. With access to the others perhaps over Tyllwyd land. All perfectly legal, but it don’t look good.

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The forested land is owned by Natural Resources Wales, which will mean mature trees felled to accommodate wind turbines, access roads, cable trenches, etc.

That’s protecting the environment, that is.

Correction: Just received some clarification: ‘I am informed: There are two machines on Tilhill managed land, but nearly all the others are on ——— — ——– (Ilchester Estate) plantation, with a few on Tyllwyd and other individual land owners.’

THE MAN FROM GOD KNOWS WHERE

The fourth member of the quartet is John Uden, whose only qualification is being the partner of Senedd Member, Jenny Rathbone, who sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.

And so to understand why Bute recruited Uden we need to focus on Rathbone.

Rathbone was born in Liverpool and is a member of the Rathbone dynasty, once very influential in that city. The influence continues through Rathbones Wealth & Investment Management.

Jenny Rathbone and other family members are looked after from the investments made. This presumably accounts for the shares in her Register of interest.

An earlier declaration of Rathbone’s says that Uden was getting payment from Bute, but that’s absent from the latest Register. So is he working for free, or is payment being made in some other way?

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Interestingly, he set up John Uden Consulting Ltd in March 2020. A company that (apparently) has never turned a penny. Was he planning to go down the same route as Taylor, but backed off after I first mentioned Taylor and Moblake (August 2020) in Corruption in the wind 2, Labour snouts in the trough?

I shall conclude this section by dazzling you with yet another example of propinquity.

A fascinating connection revealed itself shortly after I put out the previous piece. Copenhagen Offshore Partners A/S has an office at 10 George Street, Edinburgh. In the same building we find Rathbone Investment Management (£60bn assets).

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It’s probably just another of the coincidences that plague the Bute saga.

SLICING THE PENSION POT TURKEY

As an example of how Wales is ripped off by the pushers and pimps of the ‘renewable energy’ industry, the Wales Pension Partnership investment takes some beating.

The Welsh local government pension pot (WPP) is investing at least £68m in Bute Energy. Reading the article on the WPP website you might think this money is going directly from the pension fund to Bute. For no intermediaries are mentioned.

Yet the WPP was ‘advised’ by law firm Burges Salmon of Bristol. Then this article in renews.biz gives more names: ‘WPP has been advised by independent clean energy asset manager Capital Dynamics and by the law firms TLT and Burges Salmon’.

That is, Capital Dynamics of London, Birmingham and various cities around the world. Top man is Thomas Kubr, who can be found at the Zug office, south of Zurich.

The registration with Companies House tells that Capital Dynamics has 49 outstanding charges, and is heavily indebted to if not controlled by State Street.

TLT is another Bristol law firm. (It’s s shame we don’t have lawyers in Wales.)

QUI BONO?

After all is said and done, do we really know who owns the wind farms in Wales? For as I suggested in last week’s piece, Bute Energy, run by Oliver James Millican, is an offshoot of the property and investment company Parabola, run by his father, Peter John Millican.

Also, in last week’s piece (and elsewhere in recent years) I mentioned Njord Energy Ltd and Steven John Radford, the man behind Hendy wind farm, where we earlier met lobbyist – now Labour MP – Anna McMorrin.

Another of Radford’s projects, not far away, was Bryn Blaen. The ownership history is instructive. It starts with Radford leaving Bryn Blaen Wind Farm Ltd in February 2020.

Bryn Blaen is now said to be owned by Elm Wind Holdings Ltd. Which leads back to Elm Trading Ltd, where the latest accounts say:

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But does this apparently leaderless outfit have any connection with a foreign entity of the same name registered on the Isle of Man?

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Or is this just another coincidence?

If so, then maybe we should focus on the labyrinth of companies linked with Elm Trading at the London address. Companies like Time Nominees Ltd, which holds all the Elm Trading shares and is controlled by Alpha Real Property Investment Advisers LLP. Which is owned by Philip Sidney Gower of Guernsey.

Who’s Gower? Well, he’s described here as a ‘serial entrepreneur’.

The point I’m making is that when it comes time to dismantle, recycle, or bury, the clapped-out wind turbines on Bryn Siencyn, and restore the site to its earlier condition, the ‘Welsh Government’, the local council, and Natural Resources Wales, will be met with, ‘Nothing to do with us, squire, we sold it to a company on an island somewhere‘.

And we’ll have to pay for dozens of Bryn Siencyns.

CONCLUSION

But the immediate danger remains the corruption engendered by wind farm ‘developers’.

Through the influence they wield inside ‘Welsh’ Labour, where corruption is endemic. As we’ve been so recently reminded by the new first minister. Now the poison has spread to Plaid Cymru, exposed to the world when Carmen Smith, Bute lobbyist, was made a peer.

Beyond politics these ‘developers’ cause resentment within the farming industry by making some farmers offers they can’t refuse – a position into which many have been manoeuvred by the ‘Welsh Government’s war on livestock farming.

And finally, there’s worry and division inflicted upon communities across Wales.

It really pisses me off to see the country I love reduced to third world level; where a few chiefs can be bribed so the rest of us can be exploited, our country wrecked.

We’re in this mess because leftists believe they’re fighting the evils of capitalism by buying into the climate scam dreamed up to further the ambitions of the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations on Earth.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Bute Energy: Who’s Really Behind It?

I’m returning to the ‘Bute’ stable of companies, a subject I’ve ignored for a while. More especially, some aspects of Bute’s operations that may have been overlooked.

1/ How did investment company and property developers the Parabola group, from which Bute emerged, learn about the opportunities offered by wind turbines in Wales?

2/ We’ve been told the funding for Bute’s projects will come from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and the Wales Pension Partnership. But is that true?

I’m starting with some background, which I think sets the scene. So please indulge me there before we move on later to the ‘meat’ of the piece.

THE TRAILBLAZER GETTING A LITTLE HELP FROM THE COMRADES

Before the boys from Parabola ever heard of Nant Mithil, Waun Hesgog, or Blaencothi, other nobly-intentioned businessmen, alarmed by the impending climate crisis, were trying their damnedest to cover central Wales in wind turbines.

I’m going to focus on one of those wind farms; Hendy, to the east of Llandrindod.

Planning permission was refused by Powys County Council in April 2017, and that decision was upheld by a planning inspector a year later. But then, Lesley Griffiths, Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ intervened, to ignore the inspector’s decision and give Hendy the green light.

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Prior to this, an inspector’s decision was almost the final word. But now it was being over-ridden using the legislation that gave us Developments of National Significance.

From now on ‘Welsh Ministers’ had authority to rule on electricity generation projects with an installed capacity of 10MW to 50MW. Below that, responsibility lies with local authorities; and above, it’s the UK government.

Which means that developers pitch their projects in the 10 – 50MW ‘sweet spot’.

The main director of Hendy Wind Farm Ltd was Stephen John Radford. He had other wind companies including, in Wales, Rhoscrowther Wind Farm Ltd, on the Haven, and Bryn Blaen Wind Farm Ltd, near Llangurig.

Radford was very close to, if not fronting for, the U+I group. Though it seemed he also had his own piggy-bank in Njord Energy Ltd.

Lobbying Powys councillors on behalf of the Hendy wind farm was Anna McMorrin. She was seen at a meeting on 27 April 2017, desperately trying to hand a note to councillors considering the project.

She was working for Invicta Public Affairs, which has its headquarters in Newcastle, but also a presence in Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

She had been working as a Spad in Corruption Bay, for which she was rewarded by being selected as the Labour candidate for Cardiff North. In June 2017 she became the MP.

Maybe this is the first instance of someone working simultaneously for the Labour party and wind energy developers. There have been many more since Anna McMorrin.

Once they got to know each other, I’m sure Radford made the boys from Parabola understand that to get anything done in Wales you must have people working for you inside the Labour party.

THEY MEET, AND THE BOYS FROM PARABOLA BECOME BUTE

In September 2018 Windward Generation Ltd was launched; the name changed to Bute Energy the following month, and finally became RSCO 3750 Ltd in March 2020.

The founding directors were Oliver James Millican and Lawson Douglas Steele, who were joined a week later by Radford. The man from Hendy left in December 2019 and was replaced by Stuart Allan George, who’d left Parabola with Millican and Steele.

But I want to go back a little further, and consider the ‘Windward’ name.

Just before Christmas 2014 Windward Enterprises Ltd was launched. This company’s stated business was ‘Financial management’. The sole director was Oliver James Millican, using secretarial services in Edinburgh, but a Newcastle office address for himself. (Newcastle being where Parabola started out.)

This was a long time before any interest was expressed in wind turbines.

In November 2016 the address switched to Broadgate Tower in London, where we now find Parabola; and the company name changed in August 2018 to WELN1 Ltd.

We encounter the ‘Windward’ name a number of times early on in this saga, but what if it has nothing to do with wind power, and instead refers to the Windward Islands in the Caribbean?

I’m thinking now of tax havens. Just a thought.

If you study the timeline of company formations, you’ll see that the first ‘Bute’ company, Windward Global Ltd, wasn’t formed until May 2017. This is now the holding company for the Bute empire, controlled by Oliver James Millican.

Millican’s father, Peter John Millican, runs the Parabola property empire, with more companies under the umbrella than I was able to count. As we’ve seen, son Oliver ceased being a director at Parabola late in 2017.

Steele was employed as Investment Director at Parabola. He left in October 2017.

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Stuart George was also a Parabola employee.

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And there seems to have been a fourth departure. For on 31 May 2018, in addition to Windward LS Ltd (Lawson Steele), and Windward SG Ltd (Stuart George), a company called Windward BW Ltd was launched.

The ‘BW’ is Barry Woods. I can’t tell you much about him, except that he’s Irish, and he’d also worked for Parabola. In fact, he was a designated partner, along with Parabola Real Estate Investment Management LLP, in Parabola Partners LLP.

Just like Millican, Steele and George, Woods quit Parabola in November 2017.

He then seems to have parted company with the other three on 24 September 2019. The last trace of Woods sees him running Woods Investment Management Ltd in Edinburgh, which folded after a couple of years, in March 2021.

So we have four men, all in their thirties, and all working for a major property and investment group (one of them the boss’s son); but late in 2017 they apparently hear the planet calling, sever their ties with Parabola, and go off to erect wind turbines in Wales.

Do you buy that?

Something else that gives off a bit of a whiff is that if the four of them had started up on their own, I would have expected to see them as partners. But Millican Junior in control suggests a continuing link with his father’s business empire.

Using the Parabola address at the Broadgate Tower, 20 Primrose Street, London EC2A 2EW is also a bit iffy.

It’s far more likely that, in 2017, the four turbineers started setting up companies in Wales, ultimately owned and controlled by Parabola, to capitalise on the ‘How many turbines would you like, duckie?’ DNS system.

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

Funding is a vital consideration because more than 20 wind farms, an unknown number of solar arrays, at least 6 Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), and mile after mile of pylons, requiring connectors and other whatsits, do not come cheap.

Admittedly, nothing has yet been built, but even so, Bute employs dozens of people, rents or leases office space, and promotes itself relentlessly by sponsoring everything from the Ystradgynlais Wet T-shirt Olympics to the Llanfair Caereinion Refuge for Distressed Ferrets.

So where’s the money coming from to fund this unrivalled extravaganza of bird dicing?

We can (perhaps surprisingly) rule out the Development Bank of Wales, a soft touch that throws moolah at magic bean salesmen and landfill-owning friends of politicians.

Instead, our attention must turn to the two stated funding sources: Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), and the local councils’ Wales Pension Partnership (WPP).

The WPP involvement is a bit of nonsense that it’s hoped will give the impression Wales is benefitting from wind power. Though on a more practical and political level I suppose it gives Bute even more leverage in Corruption Bay.

I’m going to focus on Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and see where that takes us.

Now the first thing to make clear is that CIP is not a bank, it does not provide funding. The clue appears to be in ‘Partners’, for it seems investors looking for green projects go to CIP, which then finds them the right fit.

Or it could be t’other way around. Either way, we can be sure CIP takes its cut.

The funding from CIP for Bute is channelled through CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd. This is owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd. Both companies are based in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

The latest accounts for CI IV Dragon Holdco (y/e 31.12.2022) give a list of ‘Subsidiary undertakings’ (page 20) in which the company holds a ‘golden share’. These are Bute companies, including Green Generation Energy Networks Cymru Ltd, which wants to build a network of pylons.

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And as you can see below, since October last year all 79,000,000 shares in the holding company are in the possession of Copenhagen Infrastructure V SCSp.

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Which can be found at 16 Rue Eugene Ruppert, L2453, Luxembourg, the EU’s internal tax haven.

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And at that address we find an outfit called Vistra. So who are they? It turns out they’re a Fortune 500 company from the Lone Star State. Well, Ye haw!

Vistra is big itself in electricity production and supply, but it also ‘partners with suppliers’, which would presumably include Bute.

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But why is Bute dealing with Copenhagen Investment Partners which is dealing with a US company working out of an office in Luxembourg? Especially when Vistra has offices in the UK.

Among them, a very familiar address in Edinburgh. In fact, if you close in on this Google maps capture you’ll see the Vistra plate, top right.

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The name Vistra was vaguely familiar, but not in connection with Bute. It was linked more with the Bristol address you see above, and Galileo, which wants a wind farm at Bryn Cadwgan, to the east of Lampeter.

All explained in this piece from last November, A Change Of Tack?

Galileo is based in Zurich, Switzerland. It began life locally at Vistra’s Bristol office before moving to Edinburgh. But there’s also Galileo Empower Wales Ltd which has a presence on Cathedral Road in Cardiff.

Its directors are Italian, German, Scottish and Irish. A typical ‘Welsh’ company.

The Bute companies are fronting for Vistra of Texas through Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The ‘golden share’ in so many Bute companies means that those projects are effectively owned by Vistra.

With an obvious connection via Oliver Millican to his father’s Parabola group. Which we must assume is also getting a cut.

The sequence would appear to be: Parabola spawns Bute, Bute goes to CIP, CIP finds Vistra, and Vistra either puts in its own money, or it finds funding from . . .

UPDATE 30.04.2024: A reliable source draws my attention to another link between Copenhagen and Vistra. There are many more.

UPDATE 2: 30.04.2024: Another source reminded me there are many Njord companies. Often linked to CIP. A little digging brought up yet another, and an intriguing connection.

Copenhagen Offshore Partners A/S has an office at 10 George Street, Edinburgh. At the same address we find Rathbone Investment Management (£60bn assets). A member of the Rathbone family is Jenny Rathbone MS, who sits on the Climate Change Committee.

Her Partner, John Uden, was recruited (for no obvious reason) to sit on Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board.

I think we’re at the stage now where so many Labour people (some I’ve never mentioned) are benefitting financially from Bute / CIP  that an independent inquiry is needed.

CONCLUSION

The situation is that through Developments of National Significance, and now the Infrastructure Bill, Wales is being desecrated and exploited by foreign corporations.

The ferrets of Llanfair Caereinion notwithstanding, there are no real benefits for us; nothing in terms of jobs, or anything else.

The real beneficiary is England, where communities can and do object to wind farms. Which is why, as reliable sources of electricity generation are phased out on the orders of Globalist ‘environmentalists’, electricity generated in Wales must go to England, and this explains the need for so many pylons.

The wind farms, solar arrays and pylons in Wales (and Scotland), are also needed to help the UK / England meet its Net Zero commitments. Which I suppose raises the possibility of political pressure being applied from London.

What’s happening is so obvious that I even find myself in agreement with the leftist(s) who wrote, ‘Neoliberalism Has Quietly Flourished Under Welsh Labour – It’s Time To Break The Silence‘. (The comrades love slick and catchy titles!)

Joking aside, and looming over all other considerations, my biggest worry is that even though we can now identify Bute, and Parabola, and CIP, and Vistra, we still can’t be sure where the money for these projects begins its journey.

Which provides two major headaches.

If the Bute funding needs to be ‘filtered’ so many times (with everybody taking a slice) then it raises suspicions that the original funder may not be entirely acceptable.

And if we don’t know who ultimately owns the installations, then how do we get these sites restored when they come to the end of their working lives?

Instead of being suckered by those fronting these projects those pretending to run this country need to establish who is ultimately funding each and every project operating in Wales or proposed for Wales.

We also need to look into the relationship between Bute Energy / Parabola / CIP / Vistra and the ‘Welsh Government’. In particular, how it’s grown to the point where Bute has a position close to being a state-sponsored monopoly.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill

This is my submission to the Reform Bill Committee regarding Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill. The attempt to hijack ‘Senedd reform’ with a closed list system that even hopes to keep candidates’ names from us.

Stripped of the self-serving bullshit it’s a crude attempt by the Labour party to guarantee itself permanent rule. With full support from Plaid Cymru.

I urge everyone to make a submission to SeneddReform@senedd.wales.

EXPERT PANEL

I shall start with the appointment of the Expert Panel in February 2017. Set up to look into reforming and enlarging the (then) Assembly.

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The group reported in November 2017. Here is a link to their report. On page 29, the report recommended three electoral systems. The favoured one being the Single Transferable Vote.

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

Yet this is the system now being proposed.

COMMITTEE ON SENEDD ELECTORAL REFORM

This group was set up in January 2020, and comprised Huw Irranca-Davies MS, Dawn Bowden MS, and Dai Lloyd MS. The first two representing the Labour party, the third Plaid Cymru.

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Here’s the Committee’s Report from September 2020, and here’s a summary of its recommendations. Note that it agrees with the Expert Panel in recommending the Single Transferable Vote.

Though it also makes a reference to diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”, without making it clear what these ‘characteristics’ might be.

SPECIAL PURPOSE COMMITTEE ON SENEDD REFORM

Now we move on to October 2021 and a new group, with Huw Irranca-Davies MS providing continuity.

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Their report, ‘Reforming our Senedd: A stronger voice for the people of Wales’ was published on 30 May 2022. Here’s a link to that report.

The Expert Panel’s favoured system of the Single Transferable Vote, endorsed by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, was rejected by this latest group because it:

. . . was an unfamiliar system in Wales and that the method of translating votes into seats would be seen as complex and difficult to explain.

Which means that electorates around the world manage to cope with STV, but it seems Welsh voters are uniquely stupid!

The reasoning is so absurd, and insulting, that it suggests something else was going on beneath the surface. With hindsight, we know this to be true.

After considering the three options of the Open List, the Flexible List, and the Closed List, the Special Purpose Committee recommended the least representational of the three.

And when comparing the respective merits of the d’Hondt and Sainte-Laguë divisor systems the committee opted for d’Hondt, which is, again, the less representational.

Now we come to the most remarkable and worrying thing I encountered in all 92 pages. Scroll to page 38, and there you’ll see . . .

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We would anticipate . . . some of the names . . . of candidates will appear . . . “.

There was clearly an attempt from somewhere, by someone, to promote the idea of giving only the party name, and not naming the candidates!

Which means that from the Single Transferable Vote system recommended by the Expert Panel what is now being offered is 16 huge and impersonal constituencies*, and a closed list system using the less representational d’Hondt system. Even an attempt to have anonymised lists.

*The Boundary Commission has recommended that Wales in future has 32, not the current 40, seats for Westminster elections. The proposals being discussed ‘pair’ these 32 constituencies to give us 16 ‘super’ constituencies, each electing 6 Members by the closed list system.

REFORM BILL COMMITTEE

This group was established in July 2023. Its role was to go through the Bill that resulted from the report of The Special Purpose Committee on Electoral Reform. Making recommendations where it felt the need.

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The Reform Bill Committee’s report was published in January, and debated in the Senedd 30 January (No 8).

In his Introduction, the chair, Labour’s David Rees MS, makes clear that he is unhappy with the proposed closed list system.

“We have not reached consensus on all matters . . . But, we are unanimous in our concerns about the proposed closed list electoral system . . . We believe the link between voters and the Members who represent them is paramount.

We therefore urge all political parties in the Senedd to work together to ensure the electoral system in the Bill provides greater voter choice and improved accountability for future Members to their electorates.”

The closed list system was by now drawing fire from many quarters, and from outside of Wales. One notable contribution was from former Labour Home Secretary Lord David Blunkett, in a letter to the Western Mail.

I naturally wondered what the report had to say about ballot papers.

On page 105 the ‘Member in charge’, Mick Antoniw MS, defends the recommendations of the Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform.

When asked by David Rees (page 111) why the Bill being presented to the Senedd does not state categorically that candidates’ names will appear on the ballot paper, Antoniw responds that it is being dealt with in “secondary legislation”.

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On page 129 David Rees MS makes it clear that he believes candidates’ names on ballot papers should be stipulated in the Bill itself, not left to secondary legislation.

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A search of the published Bill for ‘ballot paper’ will draw a blank.

CONCLUSION

What may have started out as a genuine attempt to ‘improve democracy’, and by doing that make Wales a better place to live and work, has been subverted by the Labour party, willingly assisted by Plaid Cymru.

To hide the true nature and purpose of the exercise it must be dressed up in self-serving distractions such as ‘gender equality’, but with 26 out of 60 AMs being women we almost have gender equality now, without any special legislation.

Let me explain what I believe is behind this emphasis on ‘women’. For on the Senedd website, under ‘Information about the Bill’, we read: “Require all candidates on a party’s list to state either whether they are, or are not, a woman”.

I think we’re now in the realm of self-identification, and are no longer talking about biological women. I suggest this because the Welsh Government is the largest single funder to the trans activist group, Stonewall, and Labour and Plaid Senedd Members have made their positions quite clear.

Last year Dawn Bowden MS and colleagues insisted we allow biological males to play rugby with and against women and girls – if they identify as women.

You’ll recall that she sat on the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform which talked of “diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”.

And this goes some way to explaining the attempt to keep candidates’ names off the ballot paper. Because men pretending to be women will not be elected. Unless they can stand anonymously.

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I suspect that another reason for trying to keep candidates’ names off the ballot paper is to facilitate the election of lobbyists, and members of the pressure groups that now seem to direct both Labour and Plaid Cymru.

Again, these would be unlikely to get elected if voters saw their names on the ballot paper and could check on their backgrounds and associations.

Seeing as so many of these ‘campaigners’ are alien to and ignorant of our country, if elected they would simply push their agendas. No matter how damaging those were to the interests of Wales.

We already see it, with Stonewall, but also with 20mph, with the constant attacks on our farmers, and in a host of other ways; serving narrow agendas, but not Wales.

RECOMMENDATION

As it stands, I consider the Bill to be the most dangerous and damaging piece of legislation in 25 years of devolution. A naked power grab.

For in addition to the issues already dealt with, the Bill also makes it more difficult for smaller parties and independent candidates to be elected. This is no accident.

It would have been bad enough if we’d arrived at this point through a mistake, or even incompetence, but I believe we are where we are because this was always the destination.

The Expert Panel was pure window-dressing. It’s hoped we’ll believe that what’s now being offered is merely a ‘tweaking’ of the Panel’s recommendations.

This deception has presented us with a Bill that has nothing to recommend it, and there is nothing of it worth salvaging. It is a step backwards; an affront to common sense, and a threat to democracy.

It must be scrapped.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas

This is a follow-up to last week’s piece on the enviro-shysters blaming farmers for everything wrong with our rivers, and those behind them hoping to get their corporate claws into farmland.

MERGERS

First, let’s make sure you know where our five wildlife trusts are located. On the image below you can also see the difference in the sizes of the areas they cover.

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Given the other mergers that have taken place over the years it might be worth asking why Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire didn’t join with Breconshire to form a Powys trust? For until 2018 there was a Brecknockshire Wildlife Trust, but then it merged with the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

The Wildlife Trusts Wales Ltd, the umbrella body, dissolved itself 22 March 2022 and the individual trusts joined the English Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. (Trading name: ‘The Wildlife Trusts’.)

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The WTW charity de-registered.

What had been the Welsh umbrella outfit may even have joined the English body as a separate and individual trust. Certainly, that’s what the website seems to tell us.

When the end came for WTW, the funds were distributed to the five trusts, which makes sense. But I was surprised to see an inrush of grants in the final year.

Why was that, and why couldn’t the money have been given directly to the individual trusts? Finally, what the hell is a ‘Strategic Allocation Grant’?

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Anyway, that’s how we got to where we are now, Wales has five wildlife trusts. Also, Wildlife Trusts Wales, existing is some kind of limbo.

WILD THINGS

Let’s stick with finances, which suggest to me that wildlife trusts have recently been ‘repurposed’. Let me try to explain . . .

There seem to be three main sources of income for wildlife trusts: One is donations or legacies, and a bequest of £1,000,000 in 2003 must have helped keep Brecknock afloat for a while.

The others sources are, either the Lottery (which is little more than disguised UK government funding), and grants and contracts from our ‘Welsh Government’. The table below might help.

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Amazing figures. While total income for the five trusts increased by 133% between 2019 and 2023, for the same period ‘Welsh Government’ funding went up by 760%.

In fact it was more. I didn’t include Radnorshire because I wasn’t sure how to express that increase as a percentage. Should it be 579,620%?

Below I use Charity Commission graphs that I find very helpful. (Here in pdf format.) You can see them individually by clicking on these links: North, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, Gwent, South and West.

The other tabs bring up further information.

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For the South and West there’s been little discernible increase. There’s been no startling increase for Montgomeryshire or Gwent either.

Though Montgomeryshire has been getting money for old rope through the Wild Skills Wild Spaces project, worth £700,000 and which, from what I can see, does little more than show people how to go for a walk.

The big jumps in funding are clearly in Radnorshire and the north. In percentage terms Radnorshire really stands out. But why?

One reason may be that the local trust now has a farm, Pentwyn, which is planned to become ‘Wilder Pentwyn‘. The Trust is well-favoured in Corruption Bay, and gets visits from Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary?), helping her promote the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).

The SFS demands that all Welsh farms give over 10% of their land for trees, and a further 10% for ‘wildlife habitat’. Farmers are, understandably, resisting. And things may be coming to the boil.

But it could get worse, for in its latest annual report the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (RWT) demands that by 2030: ” . . . 30% of land and water in Radnorshire is managed in a way that creates extensive natural habitats for a wide variety of species”.

How will RWT achieve that target in just six years, considering it owns only one farm?

And how much input did RWT have to the Sustainable Farming Scheme?

Here’s an interesting group photograph. Unfortunately, I don’t have a date, but it can’t be that old. We’ll work left to right:

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Far left is Martin Wilkie, another environmentalist who’s come to tell us how to look after the country we’ve been looking after for over 2,000 years. Wilkie was with the RWT but has now branched out on his own with Wild Borders Ecology.

Next to him of course is Lesley Griffiths.

In the centre is James Hitchcock, RWT CEO.

To his right is Jenny Chryss, an investigative journalist. I’m told she broke with RWT when the Trust became, as my source put it, “corporate shills“. Chryss now fights Bute’s wind farm plans.

Far right is Rachel Sharp, CEO of Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW). No friend of farmers, that one.

And talking of WTW, let’s not forget Tim Birch. A few years back he was virtually run out of Derbyshire for his extreme views . . . so he came to Wales, where he was welcomed with open arms by the ‘Welsh Government’.

For as I pointed out not so long ago, the ‘Welsh Government’ has regular chats with Extinction Rebellion.

Birch did somersaults when Lee Waters announced the end to road-building in Wales. This legislation was the brainchild of Dr Lynn Sloman, author of ‘Car Sick‘ . . . who lives in London but drives to her holiday home near Machynlleth.

These are the people deciding the future of rural Wales.

They don’t give a toss about us. For them our country is just one big experiment to see how many of their lunacies our idiot politicians will implement.

What we’ll see with Radnorshire Wildlife Trust at Pentwyn (and with others elsewhere), is that nature reserves will have a few sheep, a couple of cows, a rescued donkey for kiddies to pet – and they’ll be hailed as “the future of farming in Wales“.

In fact, that’s exactly what it says on the website: “A new model farm for the future“.

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I believe Radnorshire has been chosen by the ‘Welsh Government’ for a number of ‘initiatives’, and it’s been thrown open to all-comers.

For example, a source drew my attention to Protect Earth, a charity that’s applied for a grant to plant 14,000 trees at Goytre wood, near Knighton. No matter how it’s dressed up, this is just another carbon sequestration scam – and we’ll pay for it!

Protect Earth seems to have other projects in Wales.

Staying in Radnorshire, another new venture is Wilba Conservation Ltd, formed in April 2022, and also into ‘silviculture’. So more carbon sequestration scams.

Wilba is owned by Marches Business Group Ventures Ltd, which itself was formed just a month earlier.

When Wilba need a professional ecologist they turn to Martin Wilkie of Wild Borders Ecology. Ain’t it cosy?

‘Environmentalism’ has become a racket.

As I explained, Wildlife Trusts Wales Ltd was dissolved as a company 22 March 2022, and is no longer registered with the Charity Commission. Yet the website is still active and quotes the defunct registration numbers.

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Rachel Sharp’s LinkedIn page confirms she’s still with WTW, and we know Tim Birch works with her. How many more work for this non-existent outfit?

Seeing as Sharp and Birch serve as the ‘Welsh Government’s attack dogs I’m beginning to wonder if WTW is now ‘in-house’, funded by Lesley Griffiths and her gang.

Here are three questions for The Wildlife Trusts Wales:

  • What is the legal status of Wildlife Trusts Wales?
  • Where does the money to run it come from?
  • Where can I examine the accounts?

WHAT BORDER?

A few years back I was surprised to learn that the Shropshire Hills AONB might be extended into Wales. Here’s one reference from 2019. The article also suggests that the current AONB might be elevated to National Park status.

But if it were to cross the border, where would it go?

To help answer that question I’ve been busy on Photoshop. And when you fit the pieces together it makes a lot of sense, it even ties in with what I described earlier.

On the right in the diptych below we see a tourist map of Shropshire with the AONB shaded in darker green, in the south west. While on the left, I have fitted that map into the wildlife trusts map I used earlier.

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Any extension into Wales would affect both Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, but more so the latter.

Which I’m sure would make Trust CEO James Hitchcock ecstatic. For he is on record as saying: “We’re in the Welsh Marches. The Marches is a mindset and a cultural identity. Nature does not heed boundaries.”

And let’s remember that before crossing the border Hitchcock was CEO of Herefordshire WT. Which presents a puzzle.

When Hitchcock left Herefordshire that trust was pulling down an average of £1.6m a year. By comparison, Radnorshire wasn’t scraping together a third of that. So it could be argued that Hitchcock took a step down when he started his new job 1 February 2021.

Two months after Hitchcock laid out his pens on the CEO’s desk Wildlife Trusts Wales decided to dissolve itself, with the individual trusts joining the English body. Is that just a coincidence?

No.

I believe Hitchcock was recruited to promote the ‘Welsh Government’s agenda. (Maybe a bigger agenda.) And this explains why he and the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust are feted by Lesley Griffiths and other denizens of the Bay.

Yes, I’m flying a kite by theorising on why Hitchcock came to Wales, but extending the Shropshire Hills AONB into Wales came from somewhere else. And it all ties in perfectly with the ‘Wilder Marches’ project.

But plans for new National Parks and AONBs do not end with a cross-border extension of the Shropshire Hills.

You must be aware of the decision to make the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB into Wales’s fourth National Park. Here are some details from Natural Resources Wales.

An argument I’ve heard used to justify the new NP is that the south east has one with Bannau Brycheiniog; the south west has the Pembrokeshire Coast; the north west, Eryri; so it’s only fair that the north east should also have a National Park.

But if the ‘geographical fairness’ argument has been accepted, then there’ll be just one area without a National Park – central Wales. And why not make it a cross-border National Park?

Co-operation, innit? ‘Hands across the Dyke’ an’ all that.

UPDATE: A comment to this blog reminds us that the area covered by the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust and it’s Montgomeryshire neighbour is almost the same as the area of  Severn Trent Water.

Given that environmental groups and river ‘saviours’ in other parts of Wales have been used (and funded) to blame farmers, in order to cover up for Dŵr Cymru’s spillages and other misdemeanours, might that also be happening in Powys?

CONCLUSION

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with National Parks, AONBs, wildlife trusts and nature reserves. But they’re no longer just about protecting landscapes, nurturing flora and fauna. They have been politicised, and funded, to serve other agendas.

And the attacks against farming keep coming. Saturday saw the contribution below from Jenny Rathbone MS. And if you want a full tote bag of Green-left hysteria then here it is. And here’s the link to the article she quotes.

She brings Brexit into a truly weird conspiracy theory. Most absurdly she seems to believe that putting our farmers out of business somehow guarantees food security. What do these people have between their ears?

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And what “nature catastrophe“? Things have never been  better. Hasn’t she heard that ospreys are nesting on the farm her government bought for £4.25m?

Though we won’t know if they’re coming back, or not, until Vaughan Gething is safely installed as the new Labour leader. Phew!

But they were definitely there last year, oh yes . . . even though nobody saw them. And no photos or videos have emerged.

By “food security” what Rathbone means is an endless supply of free range radishes from the OPD that daddy bought for Guy and Clarissa.

Rathbone herself is sprung of a wealthy Liverpool family and does well from her cut of the various trusts and other bodies bearing the Rathbone name.

She sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. Her partner, John Uden, was given a no-show job by Bute Energy, the Scottish company wanting to throw up a few dozen wind farms in Wales.

How the other half lives, eh!

I was directed to another Saturday posting on X, this one from Jeremy Clarkson.

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Other people have the same problem, Jeremy. And the explanation is that the ‘Welsh Government’ tells porkies.

Lesley Griffiths, Julie James, Jenny Rathbone et al say they’re saving the planet, fighting a “climate catastrophe“, but in reality they’re forcing farmers out of business so that big corporations can buy the land, and make yet more money, from carbon sequestration, wind farms, and other scams.

With ‘environmentalists’ disguising this land grab and hoping to be rewarded with vast acreages for rewilding and other anti-human activities.

And that’s why only 3% of farmers trust the ‘Welsh Government’. (Though I’m surprised it’s that high.) It also explains why the protests have started.

This dishonest behaviour is not confined to agriculture,

Last year the ‘Welsh Government’ introduced it’s 20mph legislation. The justification was road safety. But Lee Waters and the rest also want to sneak in legislation on noise, and emissions; to make ‘idling’ an offence, introduce road charging.

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‘Safety’ was just the pretty wrapping – it is ultimately about taking away our cars, and keeping us penned in 15-minute ghettos.

Environmentalism and restoring biodiversity are also pretty wrapping for something more sinister. And it’s not just farmers under attack.

The ‘Welsh Government’ is implementing the Globalists’ de-growth agenda. And among other targets this agenda wants to destroy traditional farming and food production because if they can control the food supply, then the Globalists will control the world.

Don’t let it happen. The farmers’ fight is your fight. Stand with the farmers!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Labour And Plaid Cymru Plot To Destroy Welsh Democracy

In this post we’ll look at the proposed Senedd ‘reforms’, focusing on the closed list system, the method of counting the votes, the design of the ballot paper, and then I’ll try to explain it all.

There have been calls for many years for a bigger Senedd so that it can give better ‘scrutiny’. That may have been the original intention, but I believe other considerations came into play. And these account for the deviations from the original proposals made by the Expert Panel in 2017.

At present, we have 60 Senedd Members. One from each of our 40 Westminster constituencies, elected by first past the post; the other 20 from 5 regions, each returning four Members, these elected by the less than perfect d’Hondt system. Explained here by Labour MS Mike Hedges.

Wales’s representation at Westminster is being reduced to 32 MPs. Those controlling Senedd reform have decided to ‘pair’ these seats to give 16 huge and unwieldy constituencies each of which will elect 6 Members by the d’Hondt method.

1/ THE EXPERT PANEL

The process that brought us to this point seems to have begun with the appointment in February 2017 of an Expert Panel (EP) to look into expanding the (then) Assembly.

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This group reported in November 2017. And among other things, suggested three possible electoral systems (p 129). These were:

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The system favoured by the Panel was the Single Transferable Vote.

You’ll perhaps note, by it’s absence, any mention of the closed list system that has been decided upon, and is now being widely criticised.

Or rather, the closed list was mentioned, and rejected (p 128).

This EP report was studied by our esteemed tribunes, its recommendations initially accepted, before being cast aside. Not because it wasn’t a fine piece of academic work, but because, as time went on, it could not deliver changed priorities.

Making the whole EP exercise a waste of time. Unless the hope was that the public would think what politicians subsequently came up with had the imprimatur of those experts.

2/ COMMITTEE ON SENEDD ELECTORAL REFORM

The next step was the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, which first met in January 2020. The Committee was dissolved following a debate on its report on Wednesday 7 October 2020.

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Here’s the Committee’s Report from September 2020, and here’s a summary of its recommendations. Note that it agrees with the Expert Panel in recommending the Single Transferable Vote.

Though it also makes a reference to “diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”. I think we can guess where that’s heading.

3/ SPECIAL PURPOSE COMMITTEE ON SENEDD REFORM

Now we move on to October 2021, when a fresh Committee was established to take things forward, with Huw Irranca-Davies providing continuity.

Here are all the members. From what I can see, the only Conservative, Darren Millar, soon distanced himself. I guess he could see the direction of travel.

The remit and the committee. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform published its report ‘Reforming our Senedd: A stronger voice for the people of Wales’ on 30 May 2022. Here’s a link to that report. Let’s pick out a few choice bits.

In the ‘Recommendation’ (pages 9-12) two that caught my eye were . . .

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In 14 we read that all political parties are to be ‘encouraged’ to publish “a diversity and inclusion strategy”. More ‘diversity’!

I found 17 remarkable in that it says those framing these proposals fear being referred to the Supreme Court. Suggesting that what they’re proposing may be unlawful.

Moving on to ‘Electoral System’, on page 26, where we read, solemnly inscribed: “Electoral systems are one of the fundamental building blocks of democracy”.

Too bloody right, Comrade! Let’s all remember that.

The Expert Panel’s favoured system of the Single Transferable Vote, endorsed by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, was rejected by Huw Irranca-Davies and his new playmates because it, ” . . . was an unfamiliar system in Wales and that the method of translating votes into seats would be seen as complex and difficult to explain”.

In other words, electorates around the world may have got used to STV, but Welsh voters are uniquely stupid.

So why not elect three Members from each of the 32 new constituencies in the same way we elect councillors? It’s a system we twp Taffs are familiar with.

Jane Dodds (Liberal Democrat) favoured STV, so did Siân Gwenllian (Plaid Cymru), but, “in the spirit of achieving the supermajority required to deliver Senedd reform” Siân Gwenllian fell into line.

Not a whimper of dissent was heard from Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru).

So the Committee rejected the Single Transferable Vote, also the other two options  recommended by the Expert Panel. Instead, and for no obvious reason, went for what it calls, “the closed proportional list” system.

Certainly, the current method for electing our regional list MSs is a closed list, but does any country elect all its politicians by the closed list system?

When it comes to working out who gets to go to Corruption Bay the EP looked at two methods. The d’Hondt and Saint-Lagué divisor systems. The latter gives a more proportional outcome, and also gives more of a chance to smaller parties and independents.

Irranca-Davies and his friends of course plumped for the d’Hondt method.

Now we come to the most remarkable and worrying thing I encountered in all 92 pages. Scroll to page 38, and there you’ll see under ‘Ballot Papers’ . . .

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We would anticipate . . . some of the names . . . of candidates will appear . . . “.

ALL candidates’ names on the ballot paper should be a ‘given’. That it’s even being discussed strengthens my suspicions of the true motives behind this exercise.

So, let’s recap . . .

This Committee not only rejected the voting system recommended by the Expert Panel and accepted by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform in favour of the closed list, it also opted for the less proportional system for allocating seats, and finally, it even suggested not naming candidates.

How the hell does this improve democracy in Wales?

Moving on . . .

4/ REFORM BILL COMMITTEE

A Reform Bill Committee was established 12 July 2023. In the panel below you can see the Committee’s remit and its members.

The role of this group was to go through the Bill that resulted from the report of The Special Purpose Committee on Electoral Reform. Making Recommendations where it felt the need.

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The Reform Bill Committee’s report was published last month, and debated in the Senedd 30 January (No 8).

The motion: ‘To propose that Senedd Cymru in accordance with Standing Order 26.11: Agrees to the general principles of the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill.’ was passed by 39 votes to 14. All Conservatives voted against.

It’s a weighty tome, 224 pages, and you can read it if you’re so minded. But I’ll focus on the issues I’ve already discussed, and see what, if anything, has changed.

In his Introduction, the chair, Labour’s David Rees MS, has this to say:

We have not reached consensus on all matters . . . But, we are unanimous in our concerns about the proposed closed list electoral system . . . We believe the link between voters and the Members who represent them is paramount.

We therefore urge all political parties in the Senedd to work together to ensure the electoral system in the Bill provides greater voter choice and improved accountability for future Members to their electorates.

He’s clearly not happy with the closed list. Neither is former Labour minister Lord David Blunkett. But as things stand, we’re stuck with it.

Next, I went to check on the design of the ballot paper, which Huw Irranca-Davies’s Committee had suggested need not carry the names of the candidates.

On page 105 I found what you see below. The ‘Member in charge’ is Mick Antoniw MS, Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution, who defends the recommendations of Huw Irranca-Davies’s group.

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If the closed list is used in 2026 then it’s unlikely it will ever be changed, because those who’ve benefitted from it, and then control the Senedd, will not vote to change it.

On page 111 Antoniw is pressed as to why the Bill being presented to the Senedd does not state categorically that candidates’ names will appear on the ballot paper. He gives the mealy-mouthed reply that it didn’t need to be set out in the Bill, but the matter will be addressed in “secondary legislation“.

On page 129 David Rees makes it clear that he believes candidates’ names on ballot papers should be stipulated in the Bill itself, not left to secondary legislation . . . which may never happen:

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In fact, a search of the published Bill for ‘ballot paper’ draws a blank.

I cannot believe that we have got this far in the passage of a ‘reform’ Bill that won’t promise candidates’ names on ballot papers.

But then, Antoniw is Zelensky’s man in Corruption Bay. And Zelensky’s not a big fan of democracy; he’s banned opposition parties and closed churches. But we’re still expected to believe that he’s fighting the Ivans in defence of democracy.

MAKING SENSE OF IT

When this process started, back in early 2017, with the appointment of the Expert Panel, there may have been a genuine intention to ‘improve democracy in Wales’.

Somewhere along the way the focus changed, it became more politicised, more partisan, and less democratic. I believe we can pinpoint when this happened. And also explain it.

It happened some time between the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform reporting in September 2020 and the Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform publishing its report 30 May 2022. A year and a half in the time of Covid.

And here’s why it happened . . .

There’s a phenomenon I’ve reported on more than once and why, last June, I published, Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups.

Pressure groups and organisations, some global, others organised on a UK-wide basis with a Welsh branch, but all pushing the Globalist holy trinity designed to destabilise and weaken the West:

  1. A climate-nature ‘crisis’ that demands a ruinous drive to net zero
  2. Constantly reminding White people how evil and privileged we are
  3. 101 genders that means men can have babies by ‘chicks with dicks’

This also explains calls to constantly lower the voting age. For children who’ve come through a school system influenced by Stonewall and other groups may be unable to read and write but they’re more likely to be suckered by a charlatan pushing the Globalist agenda.

The so-called ‘Welsh Government’ is now controlled by Agenda-loyal pressure groups. Having just mentioned Stonewall, you can see from this table that the ‘Welsh Government’, whether directly or through bodies it controls, is now that group’s largest single UK funder.

Another worrying feature that I’ve observed recently is the ‘Welsh Government’ taking over various organisations that should be independent. This is invariably achieved through funding, in the form of loans or grants, which is then used to justify ‘appointees’.

We’ve seen it across the board, from the Welsh Rugby Union and the Football Association of Wales to Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. I wrote about this dangerous trend, also last June, in ‘Taking Control, Of Everything‘.

What we see happening with the subverting of the Senedd reform process is a synthesis between the growing power of pressure groups and the increasing control freakery of a Labour party wholly committed to the Globalist agenda.

It will give Labour bosses control over the electoral system, and Senedd seats for pressure group parasitoids. Making the Senedd less representative because it will have more Members for whom the interests of Wales will be largely irrelevant.

It will also give the Senedd a near-permanent left / far left majority.

The only way to achieve a Senedd that works solely in the the interests of Labour and its rural variant (Plaid Cymru) is through a closed and anonymised list system.

Such a system also makes Plaid Cymru more of a hostage than a partner.

CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION

Until I started flicking through the various reports and other documentation I hadn’t fully appreciated how corrupted and dangerous the ‘reform’ plan had become.

Ask yourself – would anyone believe that in a European democracy in 2024 politicians could seriously propose closed list elections that are also anonymised?

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Why recruit an Expert Panel and then reject all three of its proposals for organising elections? And then, after comparing the d’Hondt and Saint-Lagué divisor systems, why choose the one that’s less proportional?

The answer is obvious, and so I repeat – these ‘reforms’ are not to make Wales more democratic, or provide ‘greater scrutiny’. They’re intended to give the leftist political class total control through an electoral system that can almost ignore the wishes of the people.

It’s a very obvious power grab. 

Power to serve The Agenda, that will demand the end of farming; 10mph (or no traffic at all to allow for daily Pride parades); 15-minute ghettoes; butchering confused 12-year-olds on the NHS; re-writing history; more foreign-owned wind farms; ‘inclusivity’ that will exclude most Welsh people, etc., etc.

While away from the noise of articulated idiocies and the din of clashing egos, out ‘there’, in the real Wales, people die in ambulances outside hospitals, and kids go hungry.

What has been stitched up by Labour and Plaid Cymru is so obviously anti-democratic, bordering on the dangerous, that it must be fought all the way.

To the Supreme Court, if necessary.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Miscellany 30.01.2024

For the first time in quite a while I’m putting out a Miscellany, an assortment of unrelated stories. There’s one from Wales and then we’re off to the USA, Ireland and the Eastern Front.

This is longer than recent posts but it’s four separate pieces with a wee monologue to end. So it should be easy enough to manage.

ASPIRING TO INSPIRE

Let’s start with someone who tried to cash in on the culturally destructive tourism afflicting Eryri by offering ‘adventure’, in the form of ‘bonding’ weekends for the staff of companies like Shyster and Scumbag (UK) Ltd of Rickmansworth.

Working backwards, this story takes life with a report that came out last week about fund-raising hikers left stranded near Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania. The trip had been organised by Aspire Adventures Ltd, which left the 26 hikers stranded in Africa after they’d paid the company as much as £3,500 each.

Aspire Adventure and Expeds Ltd is now filing for liquidation. Though the company was only formed last April.

The mountain man involved is Jason Rawles. Let’s go to a site called Tales to Inspire, and this piece from November 2021. (Here in pdf format.) The article is presumably written by Rawles, but the foreword, the passage in bold print, this I assume has been added by the site publishers.

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What follows is an intriguing story about a kid from the slums . . . of St Albans. Doesn’t have the same menacing ring as the Gorbals, but there you go. The article, and the style, suggests someone with . . . well, I suppose the mot juste would have to be ‘imagination’.

What I find interesting is that although the Aspire company we’ve just looked at wasn’t formed until last year, Rawles was using the name back in 2021. So what’s his business background?

It’s clear that he’s unlucky when it comes to money. Here’s a report from October 2020 telling us that Rawles lost £250,000 overnight! (When his mattress caught fire?)

This earlier piece from September 2015 mentions a company called JR Mountaineering. But I can’t find any such company. Nor can I find a record of mountaineering / outdoor companies using the ‘Aspire’ name other than what looks to be an entirely unconnected outfit in the Peak District.

The only other company I can find is The Rawles Group Ltd, currently in its death-throes at Companies House. And it’s the company number for the Rawles Group that’s given at the foot of the website for the Aspire Leadership Academy. (Here in pdf version.)

And that’s about all I can find by way of companies: the Rawles Group and the outfit set up last year to arrange the Kilimanjaro jaunt. And I would guess that this second company had to be set up because the old one was heading down the Swannee.

But why did nobody check him out, especially after the allegations in 2021?

The address given for the company organising (or not, as the case may be) the Kilimanjaro trip is, Caban Cyf, Brynrefail. A village to the east of Caernarfon and just north of Llyn Padarn.

There is a company by that name that recently changed to a community interest company (CIC). Though Rawles doesn’t seem to be involved. It looks as if he was using the old school building as an accommodation address.

In the Caban building itself you can find Climb Snowdon, North Wales Sports Massage, and the Snowdonia Society. And within ice axe throwing distance, there’s Rock and Sea Adventures, Martin Chester – Guiding: Consulting : Coaching, Outdoor North Wales, and Gradient Adventure.

This helps explain how Coed Carreg y Fran becomes “The Mushroom Garden”, and Crib y Clogwyn Du turns into “Senior’s Ridge”.

For the area seems to have been invaded by fleece jacketed hearties of the kind destroying Welsh communities with their belief that Wales is England’s playground.

I’m sure they all know Jason Rawles. Maybe they’ll chip in to help him out.

TRUMP ON A ROLL

As I’ve mentioned a number of times, November sees the US presidential (and other) elections. At the moment it looks like Biden v Trump. But that could change.

Mainly because an increasing number of Democrat power-brokers, and others, know Biden can’t win, and some of them will be in trouble if Trump becomes president.

The Iowa caucus earlier this month, with Republican voters braving snow and ice, gave Trump 52% of the vote and 98 out of 99 counties. This was enough to make second-placed, Florida governor, Ron DeSantis abandon his campaign and get behind Trump. The result also pushed the other challenger, Nikki Haley, into third place.

It was argued by Trump’s opponents that Iowa is not ‘typical’ – but which state is?

Next it was New Hampshire, where Haley was expected to do better, and perhaps even win. In the end, and despite Democrats and Independents being allowed to vote for her, she ended up 11 percentage points behind Trump.

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Next up is South Carolina, Haley’s home state, on February 24. If she doesn’t win there by a big margin, then it’ll be all over, and Trump can be crowned.

Many in the Republican party distrust Haley. They think she’s a RINO (Republican In Name Only), or an agent of the uniparty Washington establishment, which amounts to much the same thing.

Among the other runners who have now pulled out is Vivek Ramaswamy, who impressed me greatly. He too has thrown his weight behind Trump. If he has a fault, it’s verbosity, but that can be curbed.

Remember the name.

Another great contribution was made by actor Burt Thakur, after Haley tried to play on the fact that she’s part-Indian. (Not that anybody had noticed or mentioned it.)

Ramaswamy and Thakur remind us of the contribution being made to the USA by Hindus. They work hard, they obey the law, they respect the country that has welcomed them, they don’t kill and rape its citizens.

It’s the same with Buddhists, Jews, Confucians, Sikhs, Taoists, Zoroastrians and the followers of Shintoism.

Incidentally, the tweet that contained the put-down from Thakur came from the X account of Simon Ateba, which I follow. Ateba’s African, and he’s rather conservative. The establishment hates him!

Ramaswamy, Thakur, Ateba and others expose the patronising basis of liberal-left race politics. Which says that anyone who isn’t White must be a victim of colonialism, slavery, white privilege, or whatever slogans are currently being screeched on campus.

Few things drive a Wokie crazy quicker than a non-White person saying, ‘Well, actually, I don’t feel oppressed. I worked hard in school, I got a good degree. Now I’m doing quite well. I believe in the USA, the nuclear family, and I think Donald Trump talks a lot of sense’.

The left-liberal response is wonderful to behold.

IRELAND: NO MORE WOMEN, NO MORE FAMILIES

I have mentioned Ireland a few times lately. There the Globalist agenda is being enthusiastically implemented and supported by the three main parties (Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin) and of course the Greens, who’ve gone so far down the rabbit-hole as to be at risk from dingoes.

Sinn Féin gained the most votes at the last general election (February 2020) and to keep them out of power an unlikely coalition was cobbled together between traditional rivals Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, plus the Greens.

Despite being excluded SF agrees with almost everything coming from the government, especially on climate, race, and gender. And of course, on the big issue in Ireland, mass immigration.

The opposition to the Globalist agenda comes from a growing number of politicians who’ve broken with their parties, and ‘insurgent’ parties such as the Irish Freedom Party and the even newer Farmers’ Alliance.

Irish Freedom Party Manifesto. Nothing there I would disagree with if applied to Wales. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The European elections in June might indicate how much support there is for the new parties, and how much opposition to the establishment. Then again, getting new parties off the ground is not easy, and in Ireland, as elsewhere, the ‘mainstream’ media is in the Globalists’ pockets.

But before those elections, Ireland has a couple of linked referendums in March on changes to the Constitution. This is how the Electoral Commission explains it.

The first vote is being seen by many as an attack on the nuclear family; certainly, the nuclear family as most people understand it, which is a married heterosexual couple and their children.

It wants to replace family with the concept of a ‘durable relationship’. Which might seem acceptable, but as ever, the devil is in the detail. And the Electoral Commission didn’t help with this suggestion.

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So if young Dermot and the bird who’s now dumped him get a Christmas card addressed to both of them does that mean the relationship is back on? Mmm.

I have a long relationship with a number of Argentinean wine producers – does this make us ‘family’? (I hope so!)

It’s clear that the definition of ‘family’ is being extended beyond the heterosexual couple and their children to the “durable relationship”.

At which point the whole farce degenerates into a lawyers’ benefit fund. I mean, how do we even define “durable” – surely not by Christmas cards?

The second proposal removes “woman” from the Constitution. This might not arouse suspicion were it not that those proposing the change are the usual suspects who cannot define a woman but still think anyone can be one.

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Erasing “woman” from the Constitution has nothing to do with liberating adult human females and everything to do with pandering to deranged and dangerous men who want to be allowed to pretend to be women in any situation they choose.

Critics see another potential problem.

As I’ve said, the big issue in Ireland now is uncontrolled immigration. The arrival of large numbers of unvetted and almost exclusively male migrants. And it really is pushing people to the edge. A few weeks ago Mayo County Council in the west voted to refuse future cooperation with the Department of Integration. (i.e. immigration.)

If the proposals are accepted, then there’s little to stop each of these migrants bringing in others with whom they’ll claim a “durable relationship” of the kind the State says it will “strive to support”.

With or without Christmas cards.

PRODDING THE BEAR

Last week a former deputy commander of NATO, General Sir Richard Shirreff, suggested that the UK might need to bring back conscription.

Britain’s current numero uno, General Sir Patrick Sanders, chipped in by telling his troops to prepare to fight and beat Putin’s armies in a European land war.

This is pure Strangelove. I was half-expecting mention of bodily fluids. Then I learnt that the same calls were being made in other countries.

Clearly, there is a campaign to get people used to the idea of WWIII.

Germany, I can understand – but Australia! Click to open enlarged in separate tab

To explain what’s happening I think we need to start in Ukraine.

You know my take on events there. I set out my views soon after the conflict started. I haven’t updated it or changed anything.

To describe Russian action in Ukraine as ‘unprovoked aggression’ is like mistreating a dog over a long period of time and then feigning shock and outrage when it bites you.

Or maybe repeatedly poking a bear with a stick.

I say that because Russia didn’t want war in Ukraine, the Globalists wanted the war, the same people who engineered the 2014 coup, and then they despatched Boris Johnson to scupper the chance of peace.

It was hoped that by sending money and armaments to Ukraine a combination of Russian casualties and hardships at home would turn the people against Putin.

But the plan has failed. Ukraine is being bled white and is unlikely to hold out much longer. While the Russian economy may actually be stronger due to new markets, alliances, and trading partners. So a fresh approach is needed.

Which fits with US and Western foreign policy since WWII – engineer conflict and instigate regime change for corporate gain. We can trace this strategy back to at least 1953 and the removal of Mossadeqh.

(Cheeky blighter thought Iranians should benefit from Iran’s oil!)

The truth is that Russia lacks the manpower and other resources needed to mount an attack on Western Europe. And I don’t believe she plans to invade the countries that were formerly within the Soviet Union, or part of the Eastern bloc.

So rest easy, you won’t have telnyashka-clad Ivans larging it in your local.

By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Link

But the facts remain. The Ukraine ploy has failed; so have sanctions; so maybe all-out war, or the threat of war, is the only way for the Globalists to get their hands on the wealth of Russia.

And note the number of times the issue is personalised. The message to Russians, from the highest-ranking general to the most wretched babushka, is clear: ‘Putin is the problem. Replace him with somebody we approve of, and there’ll be no war’.

If there is a land war with Russia, it will not be about ‘security’ or ‘deterring aggression’; it’ll be an asset grab, the biggest of all.

And of course, Russia cannot win a lengthy land war fought on a number of fronts. But she has new allies . . . and the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world.

So for God’s sake, somebody rein in these nutters!

But if you’re happy for your children, your grandchildren, to die for BlackRock, Vanguard and the WEF, then keep swallowing your daily dose of misinformation from the mainstream media.

Which is of course owned and / or funded by BlackRock, Vanguard, Bill Gates . . .

EPILOGUE

In recent years I have defended Western civilisation against the Quisling Left, Black racists, Islamists, and assorted muppets who portray all White people as descendants of slave-owners and colonialists, enjoying unspecified advantages over other races.

That’s the easy bit. For the benefits the White man has bestowed on humanity are incalculable and ubiquitous. Only twisted and embittered fools, or followers of a death-cult, would try to argue otherwise.

Much more difficult is defending the empty and battered shell of the modern West, hollowed out by anomie. A condition brought on by endless war, constant ‘threats’, ever-rising prices, engineered societal fractures, falling standards in public life – all serving to further enrich the already rich and give them more power over us.

The only way to break this cycle of decline is to return to those values that made the West great, and the world a better place.

Fundamental to any reformation must be an understanding of truth, a sense of right and wrong; and it’s almost irrelevant whether that’s premised on the Hellenistic tradition, the Judaeo-Christian, a simple form of dualism, or even Pinocchio.

What matters is knowing.

It begins with the individual who, in return for guarantees of personal freedom and security, abides by the laws agreed on by the elected representatives of the society in which he lives. And only those laws.

The individual will be part of a family, that most precious of all associations; always a target for dictators and totalitarian regimes.

Then we arrive at the nation. A number of people who, for whatever reason, feel a strong enough bond to regard themselves as a distinct grouping.

Nations may enter into any form of free and mutually-beneficial association, from which they should be free to withdraw at any time.

Truth, personal liberty, freedom of speech, the family, the nation, are all threatened by Globalism. Which is why it must be defeated, and not just for the benefit of those of us who see the threat but also, and perhaps more importantly, for those poor souls trapped in their silly cults about climate, gender, race.

So join the fight, even if it just means doing something simple like switching off the BBC, rejecting the Globalists’ political puppets, or supporting the farmers.

This is a fight we must win. Lose, and we may not get a second chance.

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2024

Landfill Is A Murky Business

Our story begins in Pembrokeshire, to the north of Haverfordwest. To be exact, at Withyhedge landfill site. Which lies to the east of the A40 and just south of the railway line to Fishguard.

WHERE?

You can see the site for yourselves in the OS map below. Circled towards the top.

I believe the site was originally managed by the county council. Then, 1995 saw a new arrangement involving Resources Management UK Ltd. This company was taken over by SITA UK – now Suez Recycling and Recovery UK – from whence it transferred to the Potter Group of Welshpool, Wales’ biggest recycling company.

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In March 2022 Potter sold Resource Management UK to the Dauson Environmental Group Ltd of Cardiff, helped by a loan of £1,143,000 from Walters Land Ltd of Hirwaun. (Though this may have taken the form of writing off a debt incurred in January 2020 by Potter.)

Throughout changes of ownership Resources Management UK Ltd has remained the registered operator of the Withyhedge site. Here’s the Land Registry title document complete with plan. (Which needs to be updated.)

It may be worth mentioning that some three years ago Walters extended the Withyhedge site for the Potter Group. And as the Walters Linkedin page tells us, “As a result of delivering this project, Walters have been awarded a new landfill cell construction project (by Potter) in Telford.”

Walters Land is part of the Walters Group of Hirwaun, which has a history in opencast mining but is now rehabilitating itself with the planet-botherers with wind turbines. Even wind turbines on former opencast sites.

Anyway, that’s the background, so let’s push on.

WHAT’S NEW?

I’m writing this because people living in the vicinity of the Withyhedge landfill site have had enough of the increasing smells from the site, suspected water pollution, and the traffic problems caused by a constant stream of trucks bringing waste from Cardiff and even from England (via Cardiff).

As if that wasn’t enough, a local farmer has even told me, “This site is why so many of us have gone down with (Bovine) TB in the last ten months! Cleared the woods and disturbed all the (badger) setts.”

Here are some very recent reports of locals complaining and politicians getting involved.

The Pembrokeshire Herald on December 21. Western Telegraph from the day after Boxing Day. And then a statement last week from Natural Resources Wales, which may have resulted from a complaint made by local Senedd Member Paul Davies.

In addition to the noise, the traffic, and the smells, there was also a fire on the site in July, 2018.

The image below shows trucks queuing up to dump their rubbish at Withyhedge. The blue trucks belong to Atlantic Recycling Ltd, part of the Dauson Group which, as we’ve seen, owns the site.

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The Dauson Group itself is owned by David John Neal of Rumney, Cardiff. Who runs many companies.

Neal seems to have been in this business for a long time and, perhaps inevitably, has had his brushes with regulatory authorities. Here’s a case from May 2013 involving the sensitive Gwent Levels.

Neal was in court again in November 2017 for having done nothing to clear up the mess he’d made. “Neal was fined £30,000, ordered to pay £20,000 costs, and given an 18 week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.”

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I must confess I hadn’t given landfill much thought lately, I assumed it was being phased out in favour of recycling. Because you don’t have to be an enviro-loony to think that putting thousands of tons of waste into the ground may be a bad idea.

So I was surprised to find so many landfill sites in Wales, and so many operators. Here’s the list provided by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’. (Updated 16.08.2023.)

One that caught my eye was the site at the old Tir John power station in Swansea, where I had family and friends working. The site is operated by Enovert South Ltd of Stafford. There’s also an Enovert North Ltd, which runs the Hafod landfill in Wrecsam.

Both companies are owned by Enovert Management Ltd, which is in turn owned by Brad Scott Huntington, a Canadian living in the Cayman Islands.

In fact, most companies operating Welsh landfill sites are based over the border. Making me wonder if these sites are used for local waste, or if they’re taking – as at Withyhedge – garbage from England.

It seems obvious that David John Neal would not have been interested in the site unless there was money to be made. Either in the form of an extended lifespan for the site, or an increase in capacity. Maybe both.

And indeed, I’m told that a new 250,000 tonne extension has been issued. It is even suggested that old waste is being dug up to make way for new deliveries, and that this accounts for the recent deterioration in air and water quality in the vicinity.

What’s more, local sources say that last year the site accepted 44,000 tonnes more than its permit allowed.

CONNECTIONS

Despite the bad odour around landfills, and his record, Corruption Bay – in the form of the Development Bank of Wales (DBW) – has been generous to David John Neal and his many companies.

Despite the damage caused to the Gwent Levels DBW has made three loans since 2020 to Neal Soil Suppliers Ltd, one of the companies named in the court proceedings.

There are other outstanding DBW loans going back to 2013.

As we’ve seen, a name that crops up regularly in connection with David Neal and this saga is Dauson. The Dauson Group owns both the Withyhedge site and the ‘Atlantic’ trucks that deliver there.

I knew I’d seen the Dauson name before, and so I did a bit of digging. Sure enough, I turned it up – on this very blog!

Back in October 2019 I wrote about ambitious plans for the old Ferodo site in Caernarfon. Scroll down to the section ‘Brakes off at the Ferodo site’.

The Ferodo plant in Caernarfon in its hey-day. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

As originally written, this was a complicated story, a number of players. I’ll try to keep this recap simple, but you can read the original piece if you want the fuller picture.

So to cut a long story short . . . after the successor company to Ferodo pulled out, and the plant finally closed, the site passed into the possession of the ‘Welsh Government’. (Here’s the title document.)

In April 2009 there was an agreement between our respected tribunes and Bluefield Caernarfon Ltd, a company formed July 2007. There was also a Bluefield Caernarfon Management Ltd.

Both companies dissolved in January 2016. With Bluefield Caernarfon leaving four outstanding charges.

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A familiar name because Bluefield Land Ltd, formed in 2004, is another David John Neal company. With five outstanding charges with the Julian Hodge Bank.

Neal did not figure among the directors of the Bluefield manifestations in Gwynedd. He may have been represented by associates. But he definitely held shares.

The 100 shares for Bluefield Caernarfon were split 35 for Bluefield Land and 65 for Twenty20 Homes Ltd of Bridgend, which also dissolved in January 2016, the same month as the Bluefield Caernarfon companies.

A majority of the shares in Twenty20 Homes was held by Macob Property Holdings Ltd, also of Bridgend. Macob finally went belly-up in January 2020, though an administrator had been appointed as early as March 2014, just 26 months after formation.

We seem to be looking at considerable shuffling around and interplay between companies destined to fail.

One of the Neal ‘associates’ I find particularly interesting is Gary Goodman of Liverpool. Interesting because all the others involved are from south east Wales.

Goodman was a director of both Caernarfon Bluefield companies and the Cardiff company of the same name. But more than that, Goodman was also a director of Bluefield Sandbach Ltd.

And among the other directors of Bluefield Sandbach I saw a name I’d noticed earlier in the research for this piece, Daymion Jenkins. In fact, he seems to have had a Nap hand of Bluefield companies.

His Linkedin page mentions Bluefield but would have us believe he quit in 2009. But as we’ve just seen, according to Companies House he hung on until April 2014. Why the discrepancy?

Bluefield Sandbach also threw up a new name, Howard Wyn Evans of Haynes Watts, accountants of Cardiff. And yet another Bluefield company in Bluefield Energy Ltd. Though I can’t see any connection to David Neal.

Evans has been director of quite a few companies, many in the ‘renewables’ sector. One that caught my eye was Sundorne Products (Llanidloes) Ltd, owned by Potters Waste Management Ltd of Welshpool.

Remember Potters, former owners of the Withyhedge landfill site in Pembrokeshire? Small world, innit!

CONCLUSION

As I was writing this I kept thinking of the remarkable case of Stan ‘The Pies’ Thomas and the publicly-owned land he was able to buy at knockdown prices.

I wrote about the case early in 2016: Pies, Planes & Property Development, and Pies, Planes & Property Development 2. (I try to be imaginative in naming follow-ups.)

Back then, I and others tended to point the finger at the Regeneration Investment Fund for Wales LLP (RIFW), which had responsibility for disposing of public land for the best possible price. Or so we were led to believe.

Fingers were also pointed at one of the LLP partners, Amber Fund Management, and valuers Lambert Smith Hampton.

Following the Stan Thomas fiasco, RIFW was reorganised, with now just two partners (Amber was given the heave-ho), and has some £50m in the bank. What it actually does nowadays is open to question.

But thinking back, I can’t help wondering if instead of – even in addition to – dodgy dealings there might have been political intervention in favour of Stan Thomas. And perhaps others.

For over the years I’ve come to suspect that certain businessmen, in and around Cardiff, in positions to smooch Labour politicians, get favoured treatment. Maybe ‘pointed’ in certain directions.

This obviously works against those further from Cardiff, and those who would prefer not to get too close to those reptiles.

Looking back, with all we now know, there’s also something of a whiff about the Ferodo deal; the site being gifted by the ‘Welsh government’ to people who couldn’t find Caernarfon on a map – but were already known to Corruption Bay.

And when we learn that the principal in this case, David John Neal, was so generous towards his local Assembly Member you have to fight your rapidly elevating eyebrows.

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For God’s sake, three donations, from three different Neal companies, to Vaughan Gething’s 2018 leadership campaign! Was making it look like three separate funders supposed to help Gething?

Will Dai Neal be contributing to Gething’s current leadership campaign? Why not!

As a much-loved sitcom character might have put it – ‘Lubbly jubbly!’

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Come Fly With Me . . . But Not From Llanbedr

For those of you wondering where Llanbedr is, it’s a village in Eryri, just to the south of Harlech. There is a small airfield between the village and the coast.

Llanbedr has made the news in recent years due to it being cursed by a 17th century bridge carrying the A496 road through the heart of the village. The so-called ‘Welsh Government’ promised the area a bypass, but reneged in November 2021.

Then, in April this year, the Transport Minister, Lee Waters, told locals the ‘Welsh Government’ would now support “sustainable transport measures“. Which seems to have been the 20mph restrictions introduced across Wales a couple of months ago.

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As I went through the previous offerings on Llanbedr I realised what a complicated story it is. So rather than deal with peripheral characters, like the alleged money-launderer of Venezuela and Miami, and various dead-ends, I shall instead focus on the main players, ownership and leasing arrangements, and recent developments.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, I shall proffer a possible explanation for what is reported to be happening at Llanbedr airfield now. And if I’m anywhere near right, then this poses questions for officialdom, especially our ‘Welsh Government’.

AIRFIELD PURCHASE AND THE FIRST LEASE

The story so far . . .

The airfield was originally a military site, but bought for £700,000 in March 2006 by the Welsh Development Agency, and then passed to the Welsh Assembly. (Here’s the freehold title document.)

The site was leased for 125 years in July 2012 to Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP (since renamed Snowdonia Aerospace LLP) with the lessee getting loans from the Secretary of State for Defence and the Welsh Assembly Government. (The leasehold title document.)

The first named director of Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP / Snowdonia Aerospace LLP, in July 2008, was Putney Investments Ltd, registered on the Isle of Man in 1991, and also giving a desirable Gold Coast property as an address.

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A few days later Putney Investments was joined at Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP by others, including Lee John Paul. But for some reason there’s a four-month gap between the company being launched and the first directors being appointed. Very odd.

Paul had been involved with another Welsh airfield in Pembrokeshire. He joined Brawdy Business Park Ltd in September 2003 and it went belly-up in April 2013, but the writing must have been on the wall before the collapse

Does the shambles at Brawdy explain why Putney Investments took the lead at Llanbedr? For the Incorporation document for Llanbedr Airfield Estates is signed by Michael ‘Digger’ Cole, representing companies called Lapcrest Ltd and Cromring Ltd. Both launched in 1998 and both Dissolved in March 2022.

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Brawdy Business Park collapsed with a number of outstanding debts, one with the Welsh Development Agency. Yet the last accounts filed with Companies House suggest almost four hundred thousand pounds in the kitty, so where did that go?

At the end, all the Brawdy shares (see here) were owned by Solutions For Storage Ltd (since renamed Ocean Park Investments Ltd), and this company is ultimately owned by another Lee John Paul company, Inspired By Ltd.

From a filing made with Companies House just last month we know that seventy of the Inspired By shares are owned by the Paul family, with the remaining 30 with a family called Lane, who I suppose could be related.

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As I’ve said, Putney Investments was registered in the Isle of Man. The early directors of the company seem to have been a mixture of local agents and businessmen favouring arrangements even more opaque than what Companies House offers.

PUTNEY INVESTMENTS AND GUNMEN IN SIBERIA

Among these ‘businessmen’ is Philip Mark Croshaw, who gets a big mention on the Offshore Leaks website. Another is Simon Peter Elmont, who also favours jurisdictions with relaxed attitudes to regulation. Such as Cyprus. He too gets mentioned by Offshore Leaks.

Below you’ll see Croshaw and Elmont linked in the November 1997 IoM Annual Return for Putney Investments Ltd. The third name is Gillian Norah Caine. We’ll see her name again in a minute.

The directors listed for Putney Investments in the Annual Return of November 20, 1997. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

On this same Annual Return (full document available here), the two shares are split between Aston Corporate Trustees Ltd and Susan Christine Cubbon, both giving the same IoM address.

We shall also see Ms Cubbon’s name again in a minute. In fact, we’ll see Croshaw, Elmont, Caine and Cubbon named in US court documents.

Another company where Croshaw and Elmont would have been found together was International Securities Investments Ltd. They joined and left on the same dates. That said, they’re not Siamese twins; for both men have been separately involved with many hundreds of companies. Croshaw more than Elmont.

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Though there seems to have been a break around 1998/9. Did it have anything to do with a Siberian oilfield and Kalashnikov-wielding thugs working for a couple of oligarchs?

Or could it be Croshaw being disqualified. This certainly explains why Croshaw ceased being a director of Putney on 26 January 1999. (Though not why Elmont should also resign on that day.) Ms Cubbon was left holding the fort.

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Did Croshaw give up the excitement of wheeler-dealing in exotic locales to devote himself to good works? I think not. I believe he carried on, perhaps operating in the IoM through proxies and fronts.

We know he didn’t retire because in 2013 he was called before the BVI Financial Services Commission. What the hell do you have to do to upset them!

Philip Mark Croshaw is clearly a bit of a lad, and all will be revealed in a tick . . . Of course, this does not reflect well on those with whom he associates. And certainly not on Putney Investments Ltd.

What I was referring to by introducing Kalashnikovs and US courts is a case brought by Canadian oil company Norex against, primarily, two Russian oligarchs named ‘Len’ Blavatnik and Victor Vekselberg. Here’s how CBC reported it in July 2001.

And here’s a Guardian report from July 2003. Note the reference to the Isle of Man at the end of the second paragraph. To cut a long story short, Norex lost out by a decision made in a New York court in August 2015. And the case seems to have been finally put to bed in June 2017.

I introduce this fascinating episode because of the IoM reference. And although the court papers (page 2) do not mention Putney Investments, we know that those named were all involved with Putney. And one of them, Philip Croshaw, had by then been barred from holding directorships on the Isle of Man.

Under the names Croshaw, Elmont, Caine and Cubbon we read what each is  accused of or is said to know. Scroll down and you’ll see that a few of the other defendants gave addresses on the tiny island of Sark. What does it mean?

Well . . . the ‘Sark Lark’ is explained here, and it actually mentions Croshaw. Here’s a similar report from The Sydney Morning Herald.

Croshaw, and probably Elmont, sign up as directors of companies in order to hide the true identities of those involved. It’s reasonable to assume this is what they did with Putney Investments, so who is really behind Putney at Llanbedr?

And what happened to Putney after Croshaw and Elmont left in 1999? Well, in January 2002, the shares passed from Ms Cubbon and Aston Corporate Trustees Ltd to Garwood Ltd and Tanwood Ltd. Though Ms Cubbon was still involved, signing for Premier Secretaries Ltd. Gillian Norah Caine works or worked for the same company.

In the Annual Return of November 2008 we see that the Putney shares passed in April of that year to Michael Cole and Christine Cole, resident in Spain. But the Annual Return for 2012 tells us that the Coles are now living on Queensland’s Gold Coast, at the bonzer little property shown in the previous section.

Though that was not Michael Cole’s first flirtation with Putney Investments. For there was a company of that name registered from an address in Hampshire. Cole became a director in December 2003, giving his address in Spain.

Control of that Putney Investments was exercised by Cromring Ltd, which Cole and his wife joined as directors on St David’s Day 1999. This was very soon after Croshaw and Elmont left the IoM Putney Investments. Coincidence, no doubt.

The Coles remained the shareholders of the IoM Putney Investments until April this year, and then, after a brief interval, Putney passed to the Kean brothers at Eximia. A company set up 2 February 2021.

I believe the Coles were also involved in the ‘Sark Lark’. Fronting for others and getting paid handsomely for it.

Anyway, I’m all Manxed out. I’m going to leave it here . . .

Putney Investments on the Isle of Man was a vehicle for Philip Mark Croshaw and Simon Peter Elmont to represent others who wished to remain anonymous.

But what did those wishing to remain anonymous have to hide?

The IoM company and the ‘other’ Putney Investments, linked to Michael Cole, were the same scam registered in different jurisdictions, which is why Cole and his wife became directors of the IoM Putney.

And this indirectly connects Croshaw and Elmont (and God knows who else) with Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP / Snowdonia Aerospace Ltd.

PUTNEY INVESTMENTS, THE SECOND LEASE, ENDGAME?

So let me don my Columbo disguise and try to sum it all up.

Putney Investments was formed on the Isle of Man in 1991. We know that two very colourful characters, Philip Mark Croshaw and Simon Peter Elmont, of the ‘Sark Lark’, were involved, and implicated in a strange affair in the howling wastes of Siberia.

Then, Putney Investments appears, using an Antipodean address, as the first director of Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP (later Snowdonia Aerospace LLP), a company that leases Llanbedr airfield from the ‘Welsh Government’. We know it’s the same company as the IoM manifestation because it uses the same IoM registration number, 54168C.

Putney Investments is still busy at Llanbedr.

For in April 2020, a second lease was taken out against Llanbedr airfield, this one by new entity Snowdonia Aerospace Estates LLP, for £1,275,000. (Title document.) With the funding coming from, so we are told, Compass Point Estates LLP.

Since 1 October 2020 control over the new outfit has been exercised jointly by Putney Investment (sic) Ltd and Lee John Paul.

As we just read, the funding for the second lease came from Compass Point Estates LLP. But the ultimate owner, and therefore the lender, is Inspired By Ltd, which we also met earlier. A company in which the Paul family holds a majority of the shares.

Which means that by a convoluted mechanism Lee John Paul is lending himself money, pretending that the loan comes from an unrelated source. Now why would he do that?

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The loans made to the original company, Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP / Snowdonia Aerospace LLP have been paid off, but that company still holds the lease on the airfield until 2137.

But now there’s a sub-lease, for 30 years, to Snowdonia Aerospace Estates LLP.

Yet it’s the same people – Lee John Paul and Putney Investments Ltd – holding both leases, and controlling both companies. So what’s the point of this arrangement?

I suggest that the second lease, the sub-lease, gives Putney and Paul far more freedom to do as they wish at Llanbedr. Even to the extent of stripping the place bare and flogging off the assets. Which is what I’m told is happening.

And indeed, this paragraph in the ‘Details of Charge’ from Companies House would seem to support that theory. Putney and Paul, as lenders, could get heavy with their borrower selves – and clear the site of ‘chattels’.

It may already be happening, for I’m assured that the bowsers (fuel tanks) from Llanbedr are now at Shoreham (Brighton). The cabling for the runway lights and other facilities has been dug up and is ready for sale. With the trenches they came from now filled.

It seems Llanbedr airfield is being stripped of its transportable and saleable assets.

Which should make us ponder the legality of the sub-lease. Something I was reminded of when I saw the paragraph below in the title document.

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Which serves to remind us that the airfield is still owned by the ‘Welsh Government’ – and that’s us. So do the terms of the first lease between ‘Welsh Government’ and Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP / Snowdonia Aerospace LLP allow for sub-leasing?

And if it’s not allowed, then what will those clever people in Cardiff do about it?

But if Corruption Bay did give permission, then why didn’t they realise that it was the same people who already leased Llanbedr airfield taking out that second lease while pretending to be somebody else?

Is anybody going to ask the awkward questions? Or are they afraid of the answers?

UPDATE: Six hours after this post went public the following report appeared in the Cambrian News, Centre secures funding to test space tech in Cardigan Bay.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

Lies, Damned Lies, Opinion Polls

Here’s another ‘off the cuff’ kind of post; but what I’m going to write about illustrates a growing problem. Growing due to the increasing unpopularity of the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

WELSH MEDIA: FASCISTS AND FOREIGNERS OPPOSE 20MPH

The big issue this week has been the introduction of the 20mph speed limit across the country. I wrote about it in last weekend’s posting, ’20mph, A Disaster Unfolds’.

But perhaps the legislation has been overshadowed by ‘that’ petition, which at the time of writing is heading towards 400,000 signatures. Though the so-called ‘Welsh’ media has tried hard to discredit it and those who’ve signed it.

Here’s an example from yesterday’s Western Mail. Despite 95% of the signatures coming from within Wales, Llais y Sais wants us to know that people in 51 countries have signed.

There’s even an insert headed: ‘Where the global opposition has come from’. Seven from Germany, one from Hungary . . .

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But what that rag is attacking is in fact perfectly reasonable. Welsh people living abroad, and English people in the Marches and elsewhere who regularly drive in Wales, are perfectly entitled to voice their opposition.

Then, at the bottom of the page, there’s a carefully worded piece inviting us to think that opponents of the 20mph restrictions are violent individuals. Probably ‘far right’.

This is not journalism; this is naked propaganda.

But then, when, like the Western Mail, you depend for financial survival on public notices and advertisements paid for by the ‘Welsh Government’, What ya gonna do?

But it was ever thus. It’s just a bit more obvious now. And it’s moving up a notch.

Which is the cue for me to tackle the meat of this issue.

NUDGE, NUDGE – WHO’S THERE?

For this week also saw the release of a bizarre poll showing that more people support the 20mph restrictions than oppose them. And it was odd for a number of reasons.

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First, there’s the ‘slanted’ question, worded to achieve a desired outcome. Hoping “Where cars mix with pedestrians and cyclists” will conjure up images of boy racers screeching through pedestrianised areas, knocking over old ladies and kiddies on bikes.

This is called ‘nudging’. But even this doesn’t fully account for the ‘findings’.

By way of comparison, here’s a survey from WalesOnline. It certainly overstates the strength of opposition, but it’s closer to the truth than the survey we just looked at.

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Then there’s this YouGov poll, which still shows an almost two to one majority against.

No survey I have seen, and no other form of evidence, suggests anything other than a big majority against widespread 20mph speed limits.

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The other thing I found strange was that the survey doesn’t tell us who commissioned it, which is normal practice. So who produced that slanted survey?

The answer would appear to be Redfield & Wilton Strategies. So what can we learn about them? Well, not a lot. Individuals named Redfield and Wilton may not exist.

Which takes us on to the next section of this post. Follow me . . .

‘WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE REALLY THINKING’

Companies House tells us that Redfield & Wilton Ltd was formed in January 2020 by Bruno Augusto Kormann Rodrigues. He remains the majority shareholder and the sole director.

So why is the company called Redfield & Wilton? Is it to make it sound more English? Whatever the answer, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that it’s an attempt to deceive. Which is not good for an organisation trading on credibility.

Even so, it’s reasonable to assume that Rodrigues has background in polling and market research? Well, er . . . no.

For Rodrigues is a solicitor. Here’s his entry from the Solicitors Register.

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Cassadys, mentioned above is a debt-ridden company that’s escaped compulsory strike-off for late returns more than once. The company is named after its founder, an Indian named Kaizad Cassad.

Rodrigues left at the end of October 2020. Just before launching Redfield & Wilton.

Around the same time, on 1 January 2020, Rodrigues took over BR Services Europe Ltd from Pakistani Umar Aqueel. A ‘Management Consultancy’ company, that was just bumping along financially.

The other entity mentioned in the Solicitors Register is the Brooke Consultancy LLP. Which seems to be a genuine sort of legal partnership, and it provides a useful profile of Bruno Rodrigues.

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That profile tells us he specialises in immigration law, and he’s also into, “the niche area of fashion law“. What the hell’s that? Does it mean I could get arrested for wearing the wrong socks?

But, strangely, no mention of his new venture of opinion polls. Come to that, here’s his Linkedin profile (here in pdf format), and there’s no mention of Redfield & Wilton here either.

I find that very, very strange. If ‘niche’ interests can be mentioned, why not a new company being regularly quoted in the media, and apparently being used by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic?

One more company needs to be mentioned. This is Alghanim Capital Ltd. Rodrigues was a director along with Kuwaitis Abdulwahab Alghanem and Fahad Alghanim who, despite the slightly different spellings, I take to be related.

Abdulwahab is described on the Companies House entry as a ‘civil servant’ in Kuwait, while Fahad is said to be a student in the USA.

Their line of business was: ‘Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet’. Mmm.

Alghanim Capital was formed in October 2018, and folded without seemingly doing anything. So why was it formed at all? This is the sort of company behaviour that gets my whiskers twitching.

But even if it was all innocent, how did Rodrigues meet the Kuwaitis?

VOX POPULI, VOX DAI

When I put out a tweet asking why we weren’t told who’d commissioned the Redfield & Wilton survey, I got a response containing an image from the R&W website.

Well, I assume that’s where it comes from, but my quick search didn’t find it. Though I’m sure it’s genuine, because the font and the colouring match, and the rascal who used it seemed to think he was putting me down, or weakening my case.

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Self-commissioned“? Does that mean that Bruno Rodrigues and his little team decide amongst themselves what surveys to do, and then publish them? Or maybe get some media outlet to pay for their whimsical and random findings?

I don’t buy that. I certainly don’t think it accounts for all of their output.

The more I’ve thought about Redfield & Wilton the stronger the possibility has become in my mind that this outfit may not do any research or polling. It simply acts as a channel for what others want to promote.

Let’s say you want to push the message that more people in Wales support 20mph restrictions than oppose them, then you engage Redfield & Wilton in order to make the message look more credible than if it had come from a source that is obviously biased.

Though the R&W record is not impressive. Because for an organisation dealing in statistics, Bruno and his pals are not very good at figuring. They often seem to get things horribly wrong.

Which, when coupled with their pro-Labour bias (pro-Democrat in US polls), makes them look rather stupid. Here’s a recent example.

Bookies, as we know, like to have facts and reliable figures because there’s always money riding on them. So I was amused to read this piece in PoliticalBetting.com expose how horrendously wrong Redfield & Wilton got a recent Scottish poll.

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So who in Wales might have been desperate enough to ask R&W to put out this phoney 20mph survey?

Obviously, there’s the ‘Welsh Government’. But would they run the risk?

A more likely possibility must be the company that Drakeford and his clowns have employed to promote the 20mph restrictions. I’m referring now to Lynn Global. For this is their line of work.

This brainwashing outfit appeared in last week’s post on the 20mph fiasco, and Lynn also appeared in a couple of posts last month. ‘It’s Getting Sinister‘ and ‘Lynn Global Pushes Globalist Agenda‘.

Lynn would regard what I’m suggesting as ‘countering misinformation’ and therefore perfectly legitimate. Even desirable. To most people it would be lying to get your own way.

If I’m right, then we are on a dangerous path. Let me explain why.

CONCLUSION

It’s common knowledge that in recent years opinion polls, especially on politics, have been used to influence public opinion rather than to gauge it and report it.

This explains why so many polls have been spectacularly wrong; on Brexit, on Trump’s victory in 2016, on the size of the Conservative majority in 2019. All because too many pollsters allowed their left-liberal or woke prejudices to intrude.

Returning to the Redfield & Wilton survey, as I see it, there are two alternatives: either the poll result is distorted with bias, or else it’s completely and deliberately fabricated. Neither option should be acceptable in an open and democratic society.

Good governments can stand on their records, on what they’ve delivered for their people. Only liars, incompetents and aspiring totalitarians need a bought media, ‘behavioural sciences’, and phoney surveys.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

20mph, A Disaster Unfolds

Well, here we are, on the eve of a great experiment. Are you excited about 20mph speed limits? Enthused? Or do you just roll your eyes skyward in the way that typifies modern Wales?

I suppose I could have gone about this post differently, by looking at the costs, and examining the various claims more closely, but I leave that to others, confident that I’ll return to this subject once the excrement starts moving upward.

And so what I’ll do in this post is expose the propaganda campaign (that we’re paying for); then give the local history of this 20mph madness; before explaining where I believe it’s taking us.

LABOUR’S VERY OWN PROPAGANDA BUREAU

Early last month I published It’s Getting Sinister, in which I drew attention to a relatively new PR/’nudge’ outfit called Lynn Global. The following week I brought out Lynn Global Pushes Globalist Agenda.

What we learnt was that Lynn was being paid to push the ‘Welsh Government’s 20mph restrictions for Welsh roads. And it paid well. For Tory leader Andrew R T Davies was told that Lynn had received £738,593 from ‘Welsh Government’ since 2021.

The figure for ‘2023-24 (to present)’ is £185,164. But is that figure for the calendar year or the financial year? I suspect it’s the financial year, beginning April 6, and I say that because Lynn received almost half a million pounds last year, and with the 20mph roll-out taking place this year, I think it’s reasonable to assume that 2023’s figure will be close to, or in excess of, last year’s figure.

Bumping up the costs will be Lynn’s ‘Misinformation Fact Sheet‘ for the ‘Welsh Government’. This attempts to anticipate and refute the objections raised to 20mph speed limits.

It was produced by Lynn’s very own Misinformation Cell, headed by Stefan Rollnick.

This is odd. When I wrote this on Thursday the online Linkedin page was available, but on Friday it seems to have disappeared. Fortunately I saved a pdf version last month.

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So if you’re plagued by fake news, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, flatulence or scurvy, then Steff is the boy to contact. For having worked for Labour in London and Cardiff he knows all there is to know about bullshit.

In fact, Rollnick tells us he was . . .

Assisting the Office of the First Minister with its preparedness for misinformation outbreaks and developing a broad, proactive strategy for bolstering the spread of good information, with a specific focus on tackling anti-vax misinformation.

Ah! “good information“. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for?

The terminology used by these people is superficially reassuring, but anyone who’s studied history, particularly totalitarianism, knows exactly what’s being said. And it’s sinister.

‘We have a monopoly on the truth. Accept what we say, or suffer’.

Then, having dutifully carried out the orders of ‘Dr’ Bill Gates, in September 2021 Rollnick transferred his devious talents to Lynn . . . but still working for Drakeford’s clown troupe.

But enough background on a propagandist masquerading as a purveyor of truth, let’s get back to the origins of 20mph.

For Lynn was recruited to push the 20mph nonsense, but the story doesn’t begin there. So where do we need to go to find its origin?

THE LONG MARCH

One culprit might appear to be the pressure group, 20’s Plenty for Us; which has quite a presence in Wales, and may even have sent ‘missionaries’. Such as Fiona Andrews, who moved with her partner Piers Graham Partridge to Llandudoch from Bristol in 2018.

She got a mention in the piece I did back in June, Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups. And here she is in a BBC report from July 2021 lauding 20mph restrictions, that had already been introduced in two Welsh communities.

One being Llandudoch, to which Andrews had so recently moved!

The other, was St Brides Major, in the Vale of Glamorgan. This video, released last Thursday by the ‘Welsh Government’, features a few brainwashed kids and a couple of other well-rehearsed locals.

If you’re convinced by that then contact me about some beans.

The BBC item about Fiona Andrews provided a link to a report that told us the Senedd had initially backed 20mph limits in July 2020. This followed a report from a group set up by the Senedd Member for Llanelli (who prefers to spend his time in Penarth).

The Wales 20mph Task Force Group was formed on the direction of Lee Waters, the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, in May 2019.

We aren’t told the individuals who sat on this panel, just the organisations they represented. (Appendix A, page 36.) Among them I noticed Sustrans, of which Lee Waters used to be boss-man for Wales.

The whole tone of the procedure and the report screams ‘Done deal!‘.

But can we go back any further in tracing the genesis of the 20mph restrictions?

Something I dug up (or I may have been directed to) is a report from August 2018 by Dr Adrian L Davis of Bristol. What I found significant about this was that the report was immediately promoted by . . . the ‘Welsh Government’.

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In fact, it was available on the ‘Welsh Government’ website on the first day of August, so it must have been available as soon as it was officially released. Perhaps before?

In Appendix A, which lists papers quoted by Davis, we see a reference to, ‘Twenty miles per hour speed limits: a sustainable solution to public health problems in Wales‘. Authored by Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt.

This US site gives a brief synopsis, which saved me having to splash out £38 to buy it.

Though I was amazed by the claim that imposing 20mph limits will aid the fight against obesity. Surely driving slower gives fat people more time to get out of the way?

But if driving slower makes us slimmer, then what about hair loss? And flatulence?

20mph is beginning to sound like snake oil.

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The main conclusion arrived at in 2016, that bringing the speed limit down to 20mph would save 6 – 10 lives per year, and 1200 – 2000 casualties, is now being repeated verbatim by the ‘Welsh Government’.

So who are the authors of that 2016 report, Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt?

Well, I found them both on the Hinkley Point C stakeholder reference group. In some interesting company.

Chairing the group is former Labour Assembly Member, mastermind of the Future Generations legislation, and mother of the OPD, Jane Davidson. Who does more work for the party and the ‘Welsh Government’ now than when she sat in Corruption Bay.

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Cardiff University, that partner with ‘Welsh Government’ in so many quixotic ventures, has two representatives. Possibly a third with Sarah J Jones.

There is another ‘Welsh Government’ spokesperson in Rachel Sharp, CEO Wildlife Trusts Wales, who appeared on this blog in The Alliance Against Livestock Farming.

She has worked assiduously for ‘Welsh Government’ and Dŵr Cymru in blaming farmers for everything in our rivers that shouldn’t be in our rivers. No surprise then to learn that she also sits on Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel.

Which seems to be another secret society; for when I asked Dŵr Cymru for the names of panel members I was refused and, as with The Wales 20mph Task Force Group, told to scroll down the page to the logos of the organisations represented.

Though we are told that the panel is chaired by “Mari Arthur, director of Cynal Cymru”. But she was secretary of Cynal, not director . . . and she left in July 2018.

It looks a bit of a shambles.

Here’s how I see it. The anti-car, restrict human movement element of the Globalist agenda, takes root in the Bay. ‘Welsh Government’ insiders Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt are told to knock out something in support of introducing 20mph speed limits.

In the hope of disguising its origins, Adrian Davis of Bristol is roped in, and ‘Welsh Government’ quotes him rather than Jones and Brunt directly. As we saw in a response to a Freedom of Information request earlier this week.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Davis supports 20’s Plenty, Just Stop Oil, and the UN’s climate liars at the IPCC. Not only that, he also dreams of re-joining the EU, and he’s 100% opposed to fossil fuels.

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What we have with Adrian Davis is an archetypal member of Globalists’ Woke-Green-Left. Yet in the FoI response just mentioned he is the sole authority quoted by the ‘Welsh Government’ in support of imposing 20mph restrictions.

In whose universe is Davis an impartial and unbiased scientific authority?

How do his conclusions square with those of the Alliance of British Drivers?

But this kind of ‘Tell us what we want to hear‘ behaviour is all too familiar, as I’ve tried to explain on this blog over and over. Let’s just close this section, and jog your memories, with one recent example.

Back in March, in Nicola Sturgeon: Her Fall In Context, I considered the malign influence of pressure groups.

A few weeks before that article appeared the ‘Welsh Government’ announced that all new road projects were ‘paused’. This report from Llais y Sais told us the decision had been made by the Welsh Roads Review Panel headed by Dr Lynn Sloman.

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I made enquiries about Dr Sloman and this is what I wrote at the time.

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.

This is how the ‘Welsh Government’ operates. It recruits people it calls ‘independent’ to undertake studies guaranteed to come to the desired conclusion. Then it employs propagandists like Lynn Global, or uses the tame media, to push that message.

There is never an independent voice, nor genuine public consultation.

WHERE IT ENDS

Before I start, let me make it clear that I’m sure there are people who genuinely believe 20mph restrictions will get mamgu on her bike, zooming ’round the neighbourhood frightening animals and knocking kids over.

Just as there are people who believe the planet is doomed unless we get rid of human beings. Or that men can have babies, and women have todgers. That White people are evil. And that every criminal who lands in Europe in a small boat must be looked after cos he is a ‘refugee’.

Such people are fools. But more dangerous by far are those who know these things to be lies, but promote them for other reasons. Which brings us to the Great Manipulators.

For perhaps more than any other administration and political establishment of which I know, Corruption Bay has surrendered itself to the Globalist agenda. And by so doing it is prepared to sacrifice us, the Welsh people.

This sacrifice means imposing restrictions in the name of public health, or saving the planet, or to promote inclusivity / diversity, and generally protect us from ourselves. For we are both stupid and evil.

Wales is now being subjected to the most odious form of paternalism. Odious, as it claims to be done for our benefit, but it’s not.

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Because if you understand what I’ve been saying then you’ll realise that making us drive at 20mph has absolutely nothing to do with road safety, or air quality.

This legislation is part of a wider strategy against the private motor car. Or rather, it’s to deny private transport to poorer people. For Net Zero is a war against the poorest in society waged by the middle class on behalf of an elite seeking global domination.

Further proof comes in a ‘Welsh Government’ document updated just last month, where you’ll read it spelled out, on page 45 . . .

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Just think how insane that is. They want to take away your car, on environmental and health grounds, but there’s no public transport, so you’re effectively stuck at home.

So wise up,

20mph legislation is part of the same package as ditched road-building projects, 15-minute neighbourhoods, compulsory injections with untested vaccines, the assault on livestock farming, and CBDC to keep check on every penny you spend.

If Wales had more devolution, giving Labour and Plaid Cymru the power (God forbid!), they’d introduce legislation such as we see proposed in Ireland, where there’s a Bill to impose a ‘Hate Speech Act’ . . . that fails to even define hate!

It’s censorship pretending to be something virtuous.

Should that law be introduced then a grifter from a protected group will just need to say they feel offended (or that great favourite, ‘unsafe’), and the Guards will be kicking somebody’s door down in no time.

They will even be encouraged to feel offended, and have explained to them the most lucrative ways to be ‘offended’, and ‘unsafe’, by the shysters in NGOs and pressure groups currently wreaking such damage on Ireland.

Wales would also see legislation against ‘misinformation’ and its even more evil twin ‘disinformation’. Which in practice could mean the ‘Welsh Government’ employing Lynn to police us all.

Even me!

Not a welcome prospect for those of us who believe in freedom of movement, and freedom of expression. But somehow, ‘progressives’, acting as shouty foot-soldiers for Globalist totalitarianism have convinced themselves they’re engaged in a noble struggle against fascism!

At some point in the near future historians and political commentators will marvel that, having alienated the working class, the left then shot itself in the other foot by attacking the poorest and most vulnerable in society on the orders of the world’s biggest corporations and richest individuals. 

An encapsulating irony with which to end might be that those who now fight to protect animals we breed to eat, especially perhaps battery hens, have sided with those wanting humans to live in a very similar fashion.

The ‘Welsh Government’s 20mph legislation is a step in that direction. Only a fool would see it for anything else.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

Lynn Global Pushes Globalist Agenda

This is a follow-up to last week’s piece about the brainwashers and silencers of Lynn Group Ltd and Lynn Global Ltd. The latter company seems to have superseded the former, for the website is now Lynn Global.

And the piece was very popular. It got a record number of hits the day it went out, with even more hits the following day. Maybe someone was trawling through my output for ‘wrongthink’. If so, I’m done for!

RECAP

That earlier piece, ‘It’s Getting Sinister’, was inspired by a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, the response to which told us there had been a lot of interaction between Lynn and the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, in the year from July 1, 2022, relating to the imposition of the 20mph speed limit.

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Clearly, Lynn was working for the ‘Welsh Government’, using ‘behavioural science’ to promote acceptance of WG’s imposition of 20mph speed limits. Behavioural science is shortened to ‘BS’, which you’ll realise is hilariously appropriate.

Naturally, learning of this connection piqued my interest, and so I did some more digging. Since then, others have helped. Including someone who keeps me updated on Bute Energy and its grandiose plans to cover Wales in wind turbines.

UPDATE

This source directed me to an article on a site, We Are The City, where in February you might have read, Inspirational Woman: Shayoni Lynn CEO & Founder, Lynn, a piece that, interestingly, mentions Covid.

In answer to the question, ‘Have you faced any challenges along the way?’ Shayoni Lynn responds:

I launched Lynn just weeks before the Covid pandemic took hold. . . . Behavioural science was critical to both Covid response and recovery. . . . Lynn was able to establish itself as a firm that deeply understood human behaviours and then embraced, interpreted and integrated these into creative communications to drive persuasive content and calls to action to deliver change for good.

We know that Lynn Group Ltd was Incorporated October 7, 2019, as Lynn PR Ltd (a name it kept until May 5, 2022). The first admitted case of Covid-19 was in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The first confirmed case in Wales, according to Wikipedia, was February 28, 2020.

So Shayoni Lynn formed her new company just in time for Covid. Such propinquity! The answer above seems to suggest that Lynn might even have had some involvement in fighting Covid.

Would that have been in Wales? And if so, might it help explain both the ‘Welsh Government’s reluctance to have an independent, Wales-only inquiry and also its refusal to answer the FoI about its dealings with Lynn?

Possibilities strengthened by learning that the company had a contract from January to April 2021 with Cwm Tâf Morgannwg University Health Board to help the board combat, “anti-lockdown sentiment and hesitancy“.

Nice work if you can get it for a company with no track record. But then, this contract would not have been awarded without the OK from Corruption Bay.

Sticking with the same February article, under the section, ‘What has been your biggest achievement to date?’, we read something explaining how Lynn and others in the field operate:

. . . most meaningfully, provided innovative behaviour change solutions that have measurably improved and saved lives.

Behaviour change solutions” in the sense of telling people what to think and how to behave. But most importantly, telling people who and what to believe.

And it should go without saying that dictating to people “measurably improved and saved lives“.

And if you believe that then they’ve got you by the balls!

GOODIES AND BADDIES

Let’s kick off this section with a mercifully short film that’s nevertheless revealing about where Lynn stands politically. In the video below the company claims to be “empathetic“, “objective“, and “packed with integrity“. (The final phrase borrowed from Amazon?)

Clearly, the good guys.

In contrast, Trump and Putin are cast as pantomime villains, by being rather crudely associated with “misinformation“. Boo!

We read the boast that, “Our campaigns have improved vaccine uptake by 77.8%.

Given all we know now about Covid, the lies about its origin, the damage caused by lockdown – especially to children’s health and development – and the surge of deaths caused by untested vaccines, I’m amazed that video hasn’t been taken down.

 

What it lays out is a political position, a world view. The Globalist agenda.

The agenda of the United Nations, the World Economic Form, the European Union; assorted asset managers like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street; various multi-billionaires like old money Rothschilds and Rockefellers, joined by arrivistes like Bill Gates, George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg.

Something else that turned up after the original piece was written is an article from the Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA) website entitled ‘How Disinformation Arrived in Wales, and Where It’s Going Next‘.

Published last September, lead billing was given to Adam Belcher, deputy head of Lynn’s Misinformation Cell; with his boss, Stefan Rollnick, also credited.

A ‘Misinformation Cell’! Bloody hell! And here it is on the Lynn website.

I can’t be sure who Adam Belcher is, and for some reason he doesn’t appear in Team Lynn (has he left?), but Rollnick has a predictable background for this work. Here’s his Linkedin page. (Pdf format.) One section tells of his time at the ‘Welsh Government’.

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It may be nothing, it may be something . . . Rollnick started working for Drakeford within a month of Lynn getting the health board Covid contract. Then he went to work for Lynn.

The IWA article might strike you as unremarkable, if slightly hysterical, but read between the lines and it betrays the nature of the beast. And it’s oh so predictable.

It’s the Globalist agenda of those listed above, promoted and defended by shills or useful idiots like those at Lynn.

We are presented with the sole accepted narrative, this is the one pushed by Lynn and others, such as Big Tech, and the mainstream media, either owned or funded by Globalists. Anyone contradicting or challenging that narrative will be guilty of “misinformation” or “disinformation“.

Or smeared in other ways. Such as we see in the IWA article, where the term “far-right” is used no less than eleven times to describe those with whom Lynn’s Disinformation Cell disagrees. Eleven bloody times!

A frame of mind perfectly illustrated by this cartoon I saw on Twitter / X when I was writing this piece. The workings of serendipity, eh!

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It’s easy to ridicule brainwashed youngsters who may genuinely believe in the nonsense they spout, but those who’ve brainwashed them, and those whose agendas they promote, are not to be laughed at.

They are a threat to the democratic system, and to the liberty of the individual.

Take this segment highlighted in the IWA article. Read it and think about it.

Our major political parties have a duty to be the first line of defence, not adopting adversarial narratives for opportunism’s sake or political popularity

Adversarial narratives” competing for “political popularity” is the lifeblood of healthy democracies. It’s almost the sine qua non of a democratic society.

Lynn wants a single, unchallenged voice; in other words, totalitarianism; yet still argues that attacking and silencing those who challenge this totalitarianism is defending “democratic institutions“.

How fucked up does your head have to be to push such bollocks?

And look who these threats to “democratic institutions” are!

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Little old ladies protesting about giant wind turbines killing skylarks must be vilified and silenced because they’re opposing “large-scale green infrastructure projects“. When and how did such projects achieve sacred status?

For those who still don’t get it, let me explain . . .

The Globalists instil fear over an imaginary climate crisis in order to enforce compliance with the Globalist agenda.

Get people to believe in the ‘climate crisis’ and those behind the lies can make billions of dollars by enforcing Net Zero, and renewable energy, energy that they will of course own and control. And when they’ve forced farmers off the land they will also control the land, and the food supply, and have us eating insects and lab-made ‘meat’.

We face a future of engineered hardship and shortages designed to give more power to the Globalists, and to take away our control over own lives; whether it’s by restricting our movements with 20mph and 15-minute neighbourhoods, climate lockdowns, vaccine passports, or by removing cash so that every penny we spend is recorded, and we can be punished by a CBDC system if we step out of line.

It’s a return to feudalism, but it will be 21st century feudalism enforced by facial recognition technology and digital passports rather than private armies. (But don’t rule ’em out!) And the people at Lynn Global, together with similar companies and organisations, are the prophets and the praetorians for this New World Order.

But only if we submit, and allow it. And believe BS outfits like Lynn Global.

CONCLUSION

Of course, there will be those who’ll reject what I say about the Globalist agenda and the New World Order. Perhaps because what I’m suggesting sounds too far-fetched. And there’ll be some who don’t want to believe it for fear it might be true.

Others may seek comfort in a reassuring analogy. “Come on, Jac, it’s just persuading people – like adverts on the telly, mun“. But is it?

If my wife doesn’t like Daz she can buy Persil, or Bold, or some other detergent. If I’m looking for a bottle of wine I’m spoilt for choice even in Tywyn Coop. With Lynn and its behavioural science it’s a case of, “We have a monopoly on truth, you must therefore accept what we say.”

Which means that my wife has choice over washing powder, but left to Lynn and their ilk none of us would be allowed to hold divergent views on the major issues affecting us and the world around us.

We are living under a creeping form of totalitarianism, and like all totalitarianism, from the Inquisition to 20th century Communism, it allows no divergent views.

At the moment Wales seems badly afflicted by these Green-Woke-Left servants of the New World Order. And much of it stems from Cardiff University. Which is where Shayoni Lynn would have been found ere she donned her armour to confront the twin evils that have dominated this article.

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And yet, I find it revealing that Shayoni Lynn doesn’t actually want to confront them. The excuse given in ‘The Dangers of Debating Disinformation‘ is:

 . . . debunking misinformation requires a careful and nuanced approach in the battle against falsehoods, with hidden risks to addressing false claims directly . . .

This is the kind of approach adopted towards a child who’s caught an adult lying, or proven an adult wrong. The little smart-ass is either ignored, ordered to shut up, or banished to the naughty step.

But the bigger problem is that behavioural science – i.e. censorship – now pervades political and public life in Wales. We see it manifest its ugly self all the time. We saw it in recent posts on this blog about Extinction Rebellion and other pressure groups with far too much influence over the ‘Welsh Government’.

A term I picked up, used by Extinction Rebellion, and then adopted by the ‘Welsh Government’ itself, was “trusted messengers“. The passage below is from page 24 of ‘Climate Change – A Strategy for Public Engagement & Action (2022-2026)‘.

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I translate the opening phrase as, “We’ll only engage with people who agree with us. People who’ll tell us what we want to hear“.

It crops up a number of times in that document I linked to, and in many other ‘Welsh Government’ publications. And whaddya know – on the Lynn website Shayoni herself presents a wee opus on trusted messengers.

Wales has a government failing on all fronts and still pushing what’s becoming an increasingly discredited Globalist narrative, which means those politicos are forced to rely on the pyscho-spivs at Lynn, with their ludicrous ‘behavioural science’.

And this explains why we’re fed so much BS.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023