This week’s tale comes from Powys. It’s an old story with a modern twist. Local farmers and others up against those with more money and political clout, with the twist being the environmental angle.
The Crown Estate is involved, and we also encounter that ultimate expression of the environmental scam – ‘natural capital’, which puts a price tag (in the form of grants and subsidies expected) on every blade of grass.
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ON THE BLACK HILL
The area we’re going to focus on is roughly halfway between Builth and the border, an area containing Glascwm Hill (pinned) and the Black Hill. There are quite a few grouse butts in the vicinity.
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For reasons I didn’t query, the area is known as Ireland Moor. This contribution from the Ramblers confirms that and gives a little more information.
We’ll begin with establishing ownership of the land. And we start with a company called Ireland Moor Ltd (IM), registered in Jersey. Below is a clip from the Jersey companies registry.
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This company was wound up early in 2018, perhaps because it had been superseded by Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd (IMC), formed in July 2015. For more information, let’s turn to the new company.
I assume the first charge is for the purchase of Ireland Moor. The two creditors named are the Jersey-registered Ireland Moor Ltd, and Edward Warren Filmer. But if the land was owned by the Jersey company, does that mean the old company loaned the new company the money to buy the land?
You’ll see four Land Registry title documents shown there, and here they are, in the order listed: WA484809 (no plan available), WA404806 (no plan available), WA667700 (with plan), and CYM427489 (with plan).
I’ve combined the two plans, but it leaves us with a problem.
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What we know is that the total price said to have been paid for the four titles was £1,160,000. (With £600,000 being mentioned as the buyer’s contribution in the legal charge.) But do these two plans cover the four titles, or are there plans missing?
Seeing as the Jersey registry tells us Ireland Moor Ltd is dissolved, then who now holds the debt against Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd? Has it all passed to the other name on the charge, Edward Warren Filmer?
The only company I can find with which Filmer’s involved is CGM Farming Ltd, formed in March 2015, just a few months before IMC.
Though ‘Farming’ is rather misleading, for this company’s in the business of, “Hunting, trapping and related service activities“. So I got to wondering about the name. Might the ‘GM’ stand for grouse moor(s)? And if so, what could the ‘C’ mean?
The Companies House filings give the address of an accountancy firm in Weybridge, Surry for CGM, but tell us Filmer lives in Wales.
Though the dates given in Schedule 1 do not tally with those given elsewhere. In fact, the dates given are before Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd was even formed! Something’s not right here.
It relates to “land lying to the south of Cwmpiben barn“. (Though I think that should read ‘Cwm-piban’.) It’s for a trifling £40,000. Here’s the title document and plan. And here it is pinned on the OS map. Not a million miles from Ireland Moor.
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The other outstanding charges against Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd are, first, with Lloyds Bank (December 2016). Another with Lloyds (January 2017), secured against the 7000 acres at Ireland Moor. With a further charge with Lloyds against ‘Gwaithla bungalow’, at Gladestry.
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POWYS MOORLAND PARTNERSHIP
The problem relayed to me is that local farmer-graziers fear there are plans afoot that will adversely affect them, and this explains them being kept out of the loop.
Let’s start with the Powys Moorland Partnership (PMP). I was unable to establish when this outfit began life, but it visited Ireland Moor in September 2017. It’s funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ through the Sustainable Management Scheme.
Where we read . . .
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I’m sure you’ve clocked the £600,000. Is this the same sum we saw earlier, and which I assumed was the contribution made by Ireland Moor Environmental Ltd to the £1,160,000 purchase price of the four titles?
If so, then what I didn’t know then of course was the source of that money.
Though there’s also something odd about PMP. On it’s homepage it describes itself as a “3 year collaborative project“, but we know it’s been running for at least seven years. And in that mission statement there is no mention of the farmers who graze the land.
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So who exactly are the partners in this ‘partnership’?
Also note that the capture above, from the Powys Moorland Partnership website, talks of: “. . . nearly 20,000 acres of moorland stretching from the Llanthony Valley in the south of the county to Beguildy common in the north . . . ”
Which is 43 miles by road, and not a lot less for a fit and adventurous crow. What’s more, Llanthony is not in “the south of the county“, it’s in Sir Fynwy (Monmouthshire).
If we’re talking about just 20,000 acres, over that distance, and we know that 7,000 are accounted for on the Black Hill and Glascwm Hill, then the other 13,000 must be scattered about in disparate parcels.
Though something I noticed about Llanthony on the OS map was the proximity of grouse butts. Is that what the Powys Moorland Partnership is all about?
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Maybe the ‘Welsh Government’, through the Sustainable Management Scheme, and more locally, the Powys Moorland Partnership, has accepted, even encouraged, some kind of alliance between local sporting interests and the environmental lobby.
The Crown Estate may also be involved. The map below, by Guy Shrubsole, was available through WalesOnline. It shows considerable Crown Estate holdings in the area.
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Quite a concentration in a small area. But it all makes sense.
I believe the owners of the uplands we’ve looked at, including the Crown Estate and the Duff Gordons, have reached an understanding with the environmental lobby. The planet savers will turn a blind eye to the killing of grouse and the critters that prey on them to view the whole shebang through green-tinted glasses.
And of course, seeing as some farms might became unviable without their upland grazing the acquisitive interlopers of the local Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (RWT) look forward to more land becoming available.
If we go back to the PMP website, we see a tab ‘Natural Capital’, so click on it. The opening paragraph reads:
The term ‘Natural Capital’ refers to the “stock of renewable and non-renewable natural resources (e.g. plants, animals, air, water, soils, minerals) that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people.” (Source: Natural Capital Protocol (2016).
Note the year, 2016. Which ties in perfectly with this document, prepared for the Fifth Assembly (2016 – 2021). Within it we find a contribution by Nia Seaton, asking. ‘Are we neglecting our natural capital?‘
I think it’s reasonable to assume the ‘Natural Capital’ bandwagon started rolling in Wales in or before 2015. Those ‘in the know’, those with contacts, would have had advance warning.
With the efforts of their labour reviewed by Dr Rob Tinch, also of eftec. Cosy!
Those involved clearly envision money being made available in the years ahead from exploiting ‘natural capital’. Yes, I know they want us to see it as conservation, but that’s no longer the motive.
The motive now is to put a price on, and thereby capitalise on, just about every square foot of heather, every cubic metre of soil. Even the air we breathe! And the payment won’t be a warm glow, it’ll be hard cash.
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And I’m serious about the air we breathe. For as you can see, it’s projected to be a nice little earner in the years ahead.
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CONCLUSION
Yet again, we see politicians and others in Corruption Bay throwing money at anybody who can work the magic words ‘environment’, or ‘habitat’, or ‘conservation’, into their pitch for funding. Or into any other way of making money.
Which explains tax haven company Ireland Moor Ltd rebranding itself to Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd. For public money going to a Jersey-registered company would not look good.
The relationship between those two companies, and more especially the ownership of the original company, needs to be established. As does the identity and the role of Edward Filmer.
Because I couldn’t help but notice that the other projects funded by the Sustainable Management Scheme have as their ‘lead organisation’ a county council, a national park, a wildlife trust, or a Community Interest Company, but with Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd public funding was given to a private limited company with shares.
And those shares are divvied up within a very wealthy family.
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Discussions and planning by the Powys Moorland Partners (aka Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd), and certain other parties, seem to exclude the graziers.
You don’t need a crystal ball to see what’s happening here. And where it’s headed. Grouse shooting can be very profitable. And as we read earlier, the ‘Welsh Government’ is already funding gamekeeper jobs via the PMP.
Finally, let’s not forget natural capital, which can be greatly enhanced by activities such as planting trees. Or, to put it crudely, greenwashing. I’m told Aviva, partner to WWF, has been spoken of favourably, and more than once, by the Duff Gordons.
The graziers are being sold out; they and their sheep are in the way . . . and getting rid of them dovetails perfectly with the ‘Welsh Government’s desire to end livestock farming.
This is an unplanned ‘quickie’ that I want to get out while the humour is on me and before I lose the details. It also needs to be said before the ‘Welsh Government’s campaign goes any further.
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‘FAR RIGHT’ SUPPORT
I’m going to start by looking at a piece from the BBC Wales website a few days ago. Written by an S4C reporter it worried that the farmers’ campaign against the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) was being exploited by far right elements with hidden agendas.
The article even provided a photograph of the ogress Katie Hopkins. Whatever one may think of her (and I don’t think about her at all) I suggest she’s rather too public to have anything hidden.
But just mentioning her name is guaranteed to get the comrades hyperventilating, and finger-pointing. Though providing a picture as well may have got a few spluttering to a point where their mams would have been seriously concerned.
(Unless of course they were out. Then it might be a three-day wait for an ambulance.)
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As I say, the report was written by a journalist from state-funded S4C. And by pure coincidence, one of the two farmers quoted has a gig with the same broadcaster! The other farmer had a beef with something Price had said about the Welsh language.
The farmer with the S4C job was quoted:
A responsible government will listen. Because no government’s role is to make the life of its citizens more difficult
But this is Wales. The ‘Welsh Government’ only listens to, and is then directed by, pressure groups and other fanatics. If S4C wants to find ‘hidden agendas’ then that’s where it needs to look.
If you want proof just look at who’s on the Active Travel Board, plotting to get private cars off the roads of Wales – three cycling organisations, plus Sustrans!
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Which of those lycra-clad wankers is supposed to speak for me?
I don’t believe that ‘farmers’ fear the wrong kind of support. They’re sensible enough to spot it. What I know a number of them really fear is a black propaganda campaign being mounted against them using ‘far right’ accusations.
And that’s exactly what this story was all about. It was a contrived and distasteful attempt to discredit the farmer’s protests using the most tenuous connection with somebody the left despises.
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LE PETIT TRIANON SUR ELWY?
The next report I’m going to use came out last night. Again, on the BBC website, and it actually says ‘climate change’ in the headline. (So there’s no arguing, right!)
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There were two journalists involved. Erin Sharrocks Lister is yet another English journalist taken on by BBC Wales, with Eirian Jones presumably serving as her native guide on this assignment.
(Unnecessary doubling up, and you’re paying for it.)
On a superficial level this story was about a farming family – Alex and Sam Kenyon – that had coped, in a very nature-friendly way, with increased flooding of their land caused by climate change. But so many buttons were being pressed in this story that it soon became a dizzying whirl of digits.
For example, we read:
With advice from Natural Resources Wales and the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), Sam discovered a method to preserve the riverbanks
Can you not see the cavalry coming over the hill and splashing through the flood plain? What a sight it was!
Sam then consulted her notes from Lesley Griffiths, and we read:
Sam said she was very determined to show nature-based solutions were practical and can benefit farmed landscapes and their biodiversity, especially in the face of climate change
And on consulting the instructions he’d received from Lesley (and Gary?), Phil Carson, head of policy at NFFN, said:
We need government schemes that reward farmers to take these actions, alongside the right training, advice and support for farmers to embrace them with confidence
You know me, I got to wondering about Alex and Sam Kenyon.
I quickly found the website for Glanllyn farm. On it, Sam Kenyon describes herself as a “goat servant“. I don’t know any genuine Welsh farmer that would use a phrase like that. Come to that, I don’t think I know any genuine Welsh farmers that keep goats.
After starting the business in 2016, she built the farm up from scratch on land that her husband, Alex, inherited from his family
I don’t wish to be too critical, for I see the name Hanmer in Alex’s bloodline. But the fact remains, the Tyrell-Kenyons are not representative of Welsh farmers.
Perhaps a generous interpretation might be the one I allude to in the section heading. That of Marie-Antoinette playing a shepherdess at her ‘cottage’ in the grounds of Versailles.
Whether Sam Kenyon knew she was being used to push a policy deeply unpopular with real farmers, I just don’t know. But we’ll leave it there.
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‘PSST, WANNA HEAR SOME MISINFORMATION?’
Not a lot of people know this, but the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ uses a private company as a propaganda unit, to push its message and slander its opponents. And of course, this is done with your money.
The company I’m referring to is Lynn. It seems to have begun with Lynn Group Ltd. Though another company formed more recently is Lynn Global Ltd. The deadline for submitting the first accounts for Lynn Global is March 20.
The sole director of both companies is Shayoni Sarkar Lynn.
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‘BS’ in the make-believe world of ‘nudge’ units stands for ‘behavioural science’. And that, in practice, means getting people to accept what their better judgement tells them is the other kind of BS.
In other words, and as George Orwell put it in 1984:
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command
Which means that Lynn Global serves as the ‘Welsh Government’s Ministry of Truth. But instead of a questioning Winston Smith we find an enthusiastic Stefan Rollnick.
Though since he starred on this blog, Stefan’s presence on Linkedin has disappeared. Fortunately, I saved it ere it drifted off into the ether, for both posterity and your delectation. Here it is.
The briefest perusal of Rollnick’s background makes it clear that he’s Labour through and through. Which makes his job of defending the shower in Corruption Bay and slagging off their opponents almost instinctive.
What’s striking is that the term “far-right” is used a dozen times in this relatively short article. “Conspiracy” is there six times. But nowhere do we see ‘far-left’. What does this tell us . . . apart from the fact that it’s a bit of a leftist rant?
Well, on one level, we have a website funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ putting out BS from another outfit funded by Drakeford and his crew. (Will you miss him?) So no surprises there.
But as I suggest, there is a dangerously ideological – and therefore divisive – edge to everything put out by the ‘Welsh Government’, or by Lynn, BBC and other mouthpieces.
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CONCLUSION
The message we are being force-fed is that the ‘goodies’ of the Globalist-Green-Left are trying to save the planet, but are being opposed by the wicked ‘far-right’, and these villains are now manipulating farmers protests.
Come on, this is pure pantomime.
Why would I, a creature of the rational and reasoning right, a man who has loved nature all his life; who has children, grandchildren (and soon, great-grandchildren), want to destroy nature and the planet on which we all live?
It makes no sense.
What does make sense is a man who’s been around a bit, studied human nature, known quite a few con men (friends, some of them), many liars, a few sociopaths, understands how politics and control operate, and recognises a dirty campaign when he sees it.
And so I’ve put out this unplanned and rather hasty post to warn people that there are dangerous and unscrupulous actors pushing the ‘Welsh Government’s message.
They are prepared to lie, to vilify decent people, and to do just about anything to promote their agenda. So be warned!
And remember! Behavioural science and bullshit have the same initials, and they amount to the same thing.
And that’s where you’ll find the true ‘hidden agendas’.
In this piece I’ll explain that the ‘Welsh Government”s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) is just the latest in a long series of attacks on the Welsh family farm, and all that that means.
The SFS demands that 10% of every farm be given over to trees, with a further 10% to ‘habitat’. Many farms will become unprofitable. Which is the whole point of the SFS – to release more land for other uses.
Today’s piece is bigger than others I’ve put out recently, some 3,400 words; but it’s broken up into sections, so take it a chunk at a time.
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2008: ONE WALES: ONE PLANET
I’ve chosen to start in May 2008 with the publication One Wales: One Planet. Sub-titled, ‘The Sustainable Development Scheme of the Welsh Assembly Government’. You’ll find a revealing extract below.
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Let’s look at the first bullet point. Who decides Wales’s “environmental limits“? Who calculates our “fair share of the Earth’s resources“? Who measures our “ecological footprint“? (I’m a size 9.) And how can anyone work out, “the global average availability of resources“.
This is the kind of gobbledegook you can only get away with when you live a very sheltered life, mixing only with others in your bubble.
The final paragraph (below, my emphasis) leaves us in no doubt that everything that’s done in Wales from now on will be predicated on the belief that human beings are killing the planet.
To achieve this, sustainable development (the process that leads to Wales becoming a sustainable nation) will be the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government, and we will encourage and enable others to embrace sustainable development as their central organising principle.
But as I’ve explained, there’s something more sinister behind it all. Which is not to say that those pushing the nonsense don’t believe it, I’m sure many of them do. But there are also many who go along with it because it’s become the accepted wisdom of the circles in which they mix.
Before I forget, chapter 8 is headed: ‘The Wellbeing of Wales’. (Now there’s a clue!)
The administration at the time was a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition, and to jog your memory, here’s a cabinet group photo. The minister for environment and sustainability was Jane Davidson.
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2010: TECHNICAL ADVICE NOTE 6, ONE PLANET DEVELOPMENTS
July of 2010 brought joy unbounded with the announcement that hippy encampments, thrown up illegally (but with a nod and a wink from Corruption Bay), were now to be legitimised
Making TAN 6 little more than a general amnesty, or granting retrospective planning approval.
Dressed up as ‘sustainable living’, ‘self-sufficiency’, and God knows what else, they were in reality just a way around planning regulations for hippies and others to build ugly shacks in open country.
There were conditions attached, of course, not least, being able to prove that these impositions were to some degree self-sufficient . . . but nobody ever checks.
Interestingly, OPDs came to the notice of the World Economic Forum, which exposed the fundamental contradiction by urging people to move to Wales.
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For OPDs were justified by arguing they’d reduce Wales’ carbon footprint. But this could only happen if local people moved out of traditional dwellings into OPD shacks. That never happened.
Instead, people moved from England to previously unused land . . . where they kept farting animals, burned wood, and drove old diesel vehicles; so that by these and other means increased Wales’ carbon footprint.
In a recent publication I noticed that DEI had been added to the chicken entrails in the voodoo stew. This news came from Sophie Howe herself, just before she stepped down as Future Generations Commission in 2022:
I am pleased to see the emphasis given to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, a key component of sustainability . . .
But despite the posturing, OPDs remain exclusively English, White, middle class.
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2011 OCTOBER: ALUN DAVIES AND ORGANIC ARABLE FARMING
Then there was the plan to help farmers go organic.
Alun Davies, deputy minister of agriculture, announced that priority would be given to arable farmers, and those converting to arable farming . . . in a country where climate and topography dictate that livestock farming will dominate.
But let’s not be picky, for I’m sure this news was welcomed in the pomegranate groves of Pembrokeshire and the broccoli orchards enhancing the Vale of Clwyd, but it offered sod all to most Welsh farmers.
This initiative might reveal the growing vegan influence. For these had been brought in from the fringes to serve the Globalists’ plan to eliminate livestock farming and take control of the land and the food supply.
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2013 DECEMBER: ALUN DAVIES AND HIS TWO-PILLAR TRICK
The above date was when Alun Davies, now farm minister, announced that funding from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Pillar 1 (direct payment to farmers) would be moved to Pillar 2 (‘other rural activities’).
Davies could have transferred anything up to 15%. Almost inevitably, he opted for the full whack. Defending the decision by saying Pillar 1 should not be seen as a “never-ending subsidy“.
To understand Alun Davies, and the socialist attitude to farming, here’s an outburst from him in October 2014.
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The former minister in the Labour ‘Welsh Assembly Government’ (for he was sacked in July 2014) rails against ‘subsidies’; yet his administration had built up a vast third sector of cronies – all living off public funding!
And things have got worse, for now the ‘Welsh Government’ throws millions of pounds at Sustrans, Stonewall, wildlife trusts, and other pressure groups.
Clearly, in the eyes of Labour politicians there’s nothing wrong with subsidies per se, it all depends who’s getting them.
2015: WELL-BEING OF FUTURE GENERATIONS (WALES) ACT
This legislation was a long time in the planning, but we know who wrote it.
For this article from Sustainable Brands (scroll down) tells us it was Jane Davidson, who we met earlier as the minister for environment and sustainability in the 2007 – 2011 Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition.
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The article also says Davidson, ” . . . had her damascene moment at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992“. But I don’t buy that.
For at the time she was a researcher for Labour MP for Cardiff West, Rhodri Morgan, who of course went on to become first minister of the Assembly. So was she representing him, or the Labour party, at Rio?
I think she’d already had her ‘damascene moment’, and she was there as one of the converted.
When she became Assembly Member for Pontypridd in 1999 Ponty was her ticket to more power and influence to push the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative.
The significance of the Well-being Act is that, as was hinted in One Wales: One Planet in 2008, all other considerations must be subordinated to fighting the so-called ‘climate crisis’.
And this being the socialist hell that is Wales, the Act introduced yet more pointless bureaucracy and more opportunities for virtue signalling, with Public Services Boards for each of our 22 local authorities. (Yes, that’s right, 22 local authorities for a country of 3.2 million people.)
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Perhaps the real lesson Wales could teach the world is how to bring a country to its knees. For this is the Globalist plan for the West.
The politicians and their pet parasites who achieved this resent giving money to farmers and others, who actually work, and produce necessities.
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2016 SEPTEMBER: START OF NVZ ‘CONSULTATION’
A Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) is, according to the ‘Welsh Government’, “an area of land draining into ground or surface waters that are currently high in nitrate, or may become so if appropriate actions are not taken“.
It had always been accepted there was a problem, but it had also been understood that the problem was very localised, and seemed to be associated with dairy cattle.
The map above, produced by Natural Resources Wales (NRW), shows that Water Framework Directive (WFD) catchment areas covering some 90% of the country reported 0 – 4 incidents in the period 01.01.2010 to 01.01.2016.
The problem was clearly very localised.
Which is why NRW suggested increasing the area covered by NVZ legislation from 2.4% (750 farm holdings) to 8%. But, and here I quote from:
The (now) Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths, responded to the consultation replies a year later, in December 2017. She said she was “minded to introduce a whole Wales approach”.
Truth is, that had been the plan all along.
As an example of politicians going out of their way to make life more difficult for farmers – because of course there would be more expense and increased form-filling – the handling of NVZ legislation would be difficult to surpass.
This is how NFU Cymru described it:
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As things stand, the ‘Welsh Government’ has been forced to be marginally less vindictive. With slightly less punitive measures being introduced in stages, the next due in August.
Wales voted to leave the European Union 23 June 2016.
That is, the people voted to leave. The political class was outraged at the stupidity of the hoi polloi. The media agreed. While the ever-multiplying legions of third sector parasites were aghast at the thought of losing such a lucrative funding stream.
In response the ‘Welsh Government’ produced ‘Brexit and our Land‘. Wherein we read (page 3) what was to replace the CAP.
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But how can it talk of “food production” when we know Labour’s attitude towards farmers? While the reference to timber did not mean developing a genuine timber industry, it referred to what I’m now going to highlight.
Idly flicking through the annual accounts of Stoke engineering firm Goodwin Plc the other night I found this, on page 17.
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The site of this enviro-colonialism is north west of Llanwrtyd. But it’s happening all over Wales.
This is how it works: Land is bought and trees are planted by investors like Goodwin, who will own the land, the trees, and the carbon they capture. This carbon can not be included in Wales’ carbon inventory.
Which means that outside investors could buy up 50% of Welsh land, make billions from carbon capture, none of which would contribute to Wales’ national figure (or economy) – and the ‘Welsh Government’ would pay them to do it!
The rest of rural Wales, and the post-industrial areas, will be surrendered to foreign-owned wind farms whose owners will dole out beads and blankets to the desperate inhabitants of doomed communities.
And it’s all built on a scam, for carbon is no threat to the environment.
As for “Public Goods“, this is a phrase picked up from the bad company Welsh politicians keep. It can mean whatever the person using it wants it to mean.
Just think of it as bollocks; usually delivered in Estuary English.
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2018 AUGUST: SUMMIT TO SEA
This project links with Brexit, and the publication you read about in the previous section. It’s ‘environmentalists’ seeking to capitalise on the new reality to grab a huge swathe of Welsh land.
The project began before the date I’ve just given, but I used that date because it’s the first time I mentioned the project on this blog. Click here and scroll down to the section ‘Re-wilding’.
In essence, a number of individuals and organisations came together and hatched a plan to requisition 10,000 hectares, from Pumlumon up to the Dyfi estuary, and out to sea for a few miles.
Below you’ll see two maps. The one on the left was produced by those behind the project; the one on the right tells us who’s really behind it. But I’m not sure who produced the second.
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Admittedly, this was not a ‘Welsh Government’ policy . . . but I believe those involved had discussions with politicians and civil servants, and had been assured that Brexit could be the excuse used to withhold or ‘redirect’ farm subsidies.
Those involved were so confident of success, so arrogant, that they saw no need to engage with those whose land they wanted to appropriate. For it was a done deal.
Among the partners with Rewilding Britain was the Woodland Trust (WT). Here is Natalie Buttriss of the WT being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today in October 2018. And she plays the admonishing memsahib for all she’s worth.
Summit to Sea met its Waterloo at a public meeting in Talybont, north of Aberystwyth on 31 July 2019, when locals made their feelings unmistakably clear to even the thick-skinned individuals involved.
Partners such as Ecodyfi and Rewilding Britain soon withdrew, and the project was then taken over by the RSPB. The organisation that cares so much for birds, but has no issue with bird-killing wind turbines. (I wonder how much that silence costs.)
The Woodland Trust is still taking over Welsh land to plant trees and profit from the carbon capture scam you read about earlier. But all done of course to save the planet.
Summit to Sea was an attempt by ‘environmentalists’ and ‘conservationists’ to grab Welsh farmland using the threat of subsidy withdrawal. So it’s no surprise to learn that many see the Sustainable Farming Scheme as Summit to Sea repackaged.
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LATE 2018: TIT-BITS
In September, Lesley Griffiths, Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs, was in Frisco, at a UN bunfight giving business leaders a chance to impress politicians from the sub-national level.
A month later the Daily Post produced this article in which farmers accused wildlife groups of lying about bio-diversity loss in order to grab farm funding. I include it because it introduces an important new tactic into the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.
Hoping to hide the source of the attacks the Corruption Bay establishment was now funding wildlife trusts and other groups to do the dirty work. I wrote about this just last month, in Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas.
Quoted in the DP article was Katie-Jo Luxton of the RSPB:
Writing in today’s Daily Post, RSPB Cymru director Katie-jo Luxton said it was in farming’s interest to work with wildlife groups – and take what’s being offered.
Only by doing this can the industry justify its receipt of taxpayers’ money, she said. Otherwise the industry risks losing out in the post-Brexit scramble for public funding.
That sounds like dialogue from a very bad Mob movie! “Dis is da best deal ya gonna get, Louie, take it – if ya knows what’s good for ya!”
Also note, another reference to “taxpayers’ money“, and “the post-Brexit scramble for public funding“. They’re all reading from the same script.
Having pissed off many, many people, Luxton left the RSPB towards the end of 2021 and joined BirdLife International.
In four years between 2018 and 2022 BirdLife’s income shot up from £22 million to over £40 million. Another indicator of how governments and corporations are using wildlife groups and conservationists to undermine agriculture globally.
Wildlife trusts here saw their income more than double between 2019 and 2022. But income from ‘Welsh Government’ grants and contracts rocketed from £769,310 to £6,821,800 in the same period.
As might be expected, planting trees and making life even more difficult for farmers figured big in this mercifully short document.
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The reality is that despite all the grandstanding, no other country on this doomed planet has allowed OPDs, created the useless post of Future Generations Commission, or declared a climate emergency.
There’s a message there.
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2019 OCTOBER: ‘WALES MAY BE A SMALL NATION . . . ‘
Among the world-renowned climate experts attending was “ITV weather presenter Ruth Wignall“. Further down we read:
For every attendee at the conference a tree will also be planted in Mbale, Eastern Uganda, as part of the Welsh Government’s Wales for Africa programme.
Farmer Nimrod Wambette, from Mbale, will speak at the conference about how his home region is already feeling the impacts of climate change.
After enjoying an expenses-paid trip to Cardiff and a bit of pocket money Nimrod could be guaranteed to stick to the script.
It’s just more of the same, a rather sad and desperate combination of hyperbole and hysteria for which, in kinder and saner times, people would have received treatment. But what really caught my eye was this sentence:
Representatives from Extinction Rebellion will be attending to share some of their ideas about how we should be responding to the climate emergency
This new legislation is designed to increase the influence of ‘environmentalists’ and ‘conservationists’ over Welsh farming. How do I know? Because the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) takes credit for influencing it.
We launched and led a successful campaign to help put the climate and nature emergencies at the core of the new Agriculture (Wales) Bill. Through a survey of rural Wales, an open letter signed by more than 50 organisations, a petition and more, WWF Cymru’s Land of Our Future/Gwlad Ein Dyfodol campaign advocated for agroecology to be central to the bill
Those experts on Welsh farming, the British Mountaineering Council, signed the WWF petition . . . but our farming unions did not.
And so we come to the Sustainable Farming Scheme, for which ‘consultations’ end on Thursday. Though I suspect that, as with NVZ and other proposals, it’s a done deal.
To leave us in no doubt about Labour’s hatred for farmers Anna McMorrin, (former?) partner of Alun Davies, called hard-working Welsh farmers extremists, climate deniers, and conspiracy theorists in the House of Commons last week.
I could have introduced other examples of the ‘Welsh Government’s contempt, such as the refusal to do anything about bTB . . . other than to order the killing of cattle.
But I’ve given enough clues for you to guess how I see the big picture.
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Wildlife and environmental groups, and more recently the ‘Welsh Government’, tell us that 80/90% of Wales’s land is taken up by farming. There’s a reason for that.
By ‘farming’ they mean livestock farming. But it’s not really about farming, it’s about the land used by farming. The talk of farting cows, dirty rivers, biodiversity loss, etc, are the excuses used to destroy farming and to facilitate a land grab.
Land that’s wanted for carbon capture trees and rewilding. Which go together. Can’t have beavers without trees. And almost all the critters planned to be re-introduced are forest dwellers.
UPDATE 05.03.2024: I’ve been sent a pro forma letter that English ‘environmental’ groups have asked members and supporters to submit to the SFS consultation.
In the first line of the second paragraph: ” . . . upwards of 84% of land in Wales managed for farming”. It really chokes them, all this land – and they want it!
This also explains the involvement of vegans, and the backing for organic arable farming. Meat will be an imported luxury item that most of us will be unable to afford. (We’ll be offered insects, and factory-made ‘meat’.)
The countryside of the future will belong to an elite that will justify its advantages, and the restrictions placed on the rest of us, car-less in our 15-minute, constantly-surveiled cities, as being necessary to save the planet.
Having submitted to this cult-agenda, Labour politicians will destroy Welsh farming as we know it. And with it, a culture, a language, and a way of life.
This is a follow-up to last week’s piece on the enviro-shysters blaming farmers for everything wrong with our rivers, and those behind them hoping to get their corporate claws into farmland.
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MERGERS
First, let’s make sure you know where our five wildlife trusts are located. On the image below you can also see the difference in the sizes of the areas they cover.
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Given the other mergers that have taken place over the years it might be worth asking why Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire didn’t join with Breconshire to form a Powys trust? For until 2018 there was a Brecknockshire Wildlife Trust, but then it merged with the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.
What had been the Welsh umbrella outfit may even have joined the English body as a separate and individual trust. Certainly, that’s what the website seems to tell us.
When the end came for WTW, the funds were distributed to the five trusts, which makes sense. But I was surprised to see an inrush of grants in the final year.
Why was that, and why couldn’t the money have been given directly to the individual trusts? Finally, what the hell is a ‘Strategic Allocation Grant’?
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Anyway, that’s how we got to where we are now, Wales has five wildlife trusts. Also, Wildlife Trusts Wales, existing is some kind of limbo.
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WILD THINGS
Let’s stick with finances, which suggest to me that wildlife trusts have recently been ‘repurposed’. Let me try to explain . . .
There seem to be three main sources of income for wildlife trusts: One is donations or legacies, and a bequest of £1,000,000 in 2003 must have helped keep Brecknock afloat for a while.
The others sources are, either the Lottery (which is little more than disguised UK government funding), and grants and contracts from our ‘Welsh Government’. The table below might help.
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Amazing figures. While total income for the five trusts increased by 133% between 2019 and 2023, for the same period ‘Welsh Government’ funding went up by 760%.
In fact it was more. I didn’t include Radnorshire because I wasn’t sure how to express that increase as a percentage. Should it be 579,620%?
The big jumps in funding are clearly in Radnorshire and the north. In percentage terms Radnorshire really stands out. But why?
One reason may be that the local trust now has a farm, Pentwyn, which is planned to become ‘Wilder Pentwyn‘. The Trust is well-favoured in Corruption Bay, and gets visits from Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary?), helping her promote the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).
The SFS demands that all Welsh farms give over 10% of their land for trees, and a further 10% for ‘wildlife habitat’. Farmers are, understandably, resisting. And things may be coming to the boil.
But it could get worse, for in its latest annual report the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (RWT) demands that by 2030: ” . . . 30% of land and water in Radnorshire is managed in a way that creates extensive natural habitats for a wide variety of species”.
How will RWT achieve that target in just six years, considering it owns only one farm?
And how much input did RWT have to the Sustainable Farming Scheme?
Here’s an interesting group photograph. Unfortunately, I don’t have a date, but it can’t be that old. We’ll work left to right:
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Far left is Martin Wilkie, another environmentalist who’s come to tell us how to look after the country we’ve been looking after for over 2,000 years. Wilkie was with the RWT but has now branched out on his own with Wild Borders Ecology.
Next to him of course is Lesley Griffiths.
In the centre is James Hitchcock, RWT CEO.
To his right is Jenny Chryss, an investigative journalist. I’m told she broke with RWT when the Trust became, as my source put it, “corporate shills“. Chryss now fights Bute’s wind farm plans.
Far right is Rachel Sharp, CEO of Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW). No friend of farmers, that one.
And talking of WTW, let’s not forget Tim Birch. A few years back he was virtually run out of Derbyshire for his extreme views . . . so he came to Wales, where he was welcomed with open arms by the ‘Welsh Government’.
These are the people deciding the future of rural Wales.
They don’t give a toss about us. For them our country is just one big experiment to see how many of their lunacies our idiot politicians will implement.
What we’ll see with Radnorshire Wildlife Trust at Pentwyn (and with others elsewhere), is that nature reserves will have a few sheep, a couple of cows, a rescued donkey for kiddies to pet – and they’ll be hailed as “the future of farming in Wales“.
In fact, that’s exactly what it says on the website: “A new model farm for the future“.
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I believe Radnorshire has been chosen by the ‘Welsh Government’ for a number of ‘initiatives’, and it’s been thrown open to all-comers.
For example, a source drew my attention to Protect Earth, a charity that’s applied for a grant to plant 14,000 trees at Goytre wood, near Knighton. No matter how it’s dressed up, this is just another carbon sequestration scam – and we’ll pay for it!
Rachel Sharp’s LinkedIn page confirms she’s still with WTW, and we know Tim Birch works with her. How many more work for this non-existent outfit?
Seeing as Sharp and Birch serve as the ‘Welsh Government’s attack dogs I’m beginning to wonder if WTW is now ‘in-house’, funded by Lesley Griffiths and her gang.
Here are three questions for The Wildlife Trusts Wales:
What is the legal status of Wildlife Trusts Wales?
Where does the money to run it come from?
Where can I examine the accounts?
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WHAT BORDER?
A few years back I was surprised to learn that the Shropshire Hills AONB might be extended into Wales. Here’s one reference from 2019. The article also suggests that the current AONB might be elevated to National Park status.
But if it were to cross the border, where would it go?
To help answer that question I’ve been busy on Photoshop. And when you fit the pieces together it makes a lot of sense, it even ties in with what I described earlier.
On the right in the diptych below we see a tourist map of Shropshire with the AONB shaded in darker green, in the south west. While on the left, I have fitted that map into the wildlife trusts map I used earlier.
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Any extension into Wales would affect both Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, but more so the latter.
Which I’m sure would make Trust CEO James Hitchcock ecstatic. For he is on record as saying: “We’re in the Welsh Marches. The Marches is a mindset and a cultural identity. Nature does not heed boundaries.”
And let’s remember that before crossing the border Hitchcock was CEO of Herefordshire WT. Which presents a puzzle.
When Hitchcock left Herefordshire that trust was pulling down an average of £1.6m a year. By comparison, Radnorshire wasn’t scraping together a third of that. So it could be argued that Hitchcock took a step down when he started his new job 1 February 2021.
Two months after Hitchcock laid out his pens on the CEO’s desk Wildlife Trusts Wales decided to dissolve itself, with the individual trusts joining the English body. Is that just a coincidence?
No.
I believe Hitchcock was recruited to promote the ‘Welsh Government’s agenda. (Maybe a bigger agenda.) And this explains why he and the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust are feted by Lesley Griffiths and other denizens of the Bay.
Yes, I’m flying a kite by theorising on why Hitchcock came to Wales, but extending the Shropshire Hills AONB into Wales came from somewhere else. And it all ties in perfectly with the ‘Wilder Marches’ project.
But plans for new National Parks and AONBs do not end with a cross-border extension of the Shropshire Hills.
You must be aware of the decision to make the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB into Wales’s fourth National Park. Here are some details from Natural Resources Wales.
An argument I’ve heard used to justify the new NP is that the south east has one with Bannau Brycheiniog; the south west has the Pembrokeshire Coast; the north west, Eryri; so it’s only fair that the north east should also have a National Park.
But if the ‘geographical fairness’ argument has been accepted, then there’ll be just one area without a National Park – central Wales. And why not make it a cross-border National Park?
Co-operation, innit? ‘Hands across the Dyke’ an’ all that.
UPDATE: A comment to this blog reminds us that the area covered by the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust and it’s Montgomeryshire neighbour is almost the same as the area of Severn Trent Water.
Given that environmental groups and river ‘saviours’ in other parts of Wales have been used (and funded) to blame farmers, in order to cover up for Dŵr Cymru’s spillages and other misdemeanours, might that also be happening in Powys?
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CONCLUSION
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with National Parks, AONBs, wildlife trusts and nature reserves. But they’re no longer just about protecting landscapes, nurturing flora and fauna. They have been politicised, and funded, to serve other agendas.
She brings Brexit into a truly weird conspiracy theory. Most absurdly she seems to believe that putting our farmers out of business somehow guarantees food security. What do these people have between their ears?
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And what “nature catastrophe“? Things have never been better. Hasn’t she heard that ospreys are nesting on the farm her government bought for £4.25m?
Though we won’t know if they’re coming back, or not, until Vaughan Gething is safely installed as the new Labour leader. Phew!
But they were definitely there last year, oh yes . . . even though nobody saw them. And no photos or videos have emerged.
By “food security” what Rathbone means is an endless supply of free range radishes from the OPD that daddy bought for Guy and Clarissa.
She sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. Her partner, John Uden, was given a no-show job by Bute Energy, the Scottish company wanting to throw up a few dozen wind farms in Wales.
How the other half lives, eh!
I was directed to another Saturday posting on X, this one from Jeremy Clarkson.
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Other people have the same problem, Jeremy. And the explanation is that the ‘Welsh Government’ tells porkies.
Lesley Griffiths, Julie James, Jenny Rathbone et al say they’re saving the planet, fighting a “climate catastrophe“, but in reality they’re forcing farmers out of business so that big corporations can buy the land, and make yet more money, from carbon sequestration, wind farms, and other scams.
With ‘environmentalists’ disguising this land grab and hoping to be rewarded with vast acreages for rewilding and other anti-human activities.
‘Safety’ was just the pretty wrapping – it is ultimately about taking away our cars, and keeping us penned in 15-minute ghettos.
Environmentalism and restoring biodiversity are also pretty wrapping for something more sinister. And it’s not just farmers under attack.
The ‘Welsh Government’ is implementing the Globalists’ de-growth agenda. And among other targets this agenda wants to destroy traditional farming and food production because if they can control the food supply, then the Globalists will control the world.
Don’t let it happen. The farmers’ fight is your fight. Stand with the farmers!
This week’s tale comes from Powys. It’s an old story with a modern twist. Local farmers and others up against those with more money and political clout, with the twist being the environmental angle.
