Category: Globalism

Don’t Panic, But Stay Alert

On By JacIn European Union, Globalism, World Economic Forum20 Comments

Countries around the world are telling their citizens to stock up with water, food, cash, wind-up radios, batteries, torches and other items. Suggesting we will need these some time soon.

This advice comes with talk of cyber attacks and hybrid warfare. Some even mention outright hostilities. The UK has raised to 65 the age at which reservists can be called up. Other countries are bringing in similar measures.

As an alternative explanation to full-scale war, some say there’s very bad weather coming, maybe due to El Niño, the polar vortex, or perhaps even a pole shift.

Either way, it seems we’re being prepared for something. Here are my thoughts. But this is no more than speculation.

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NUCLEAR WAR

Let’s start with a dire and catastrophic possibility.

Are we being readied for nuclear war? If it’s all-out nuclear war with Russia or China then stocking up on a few days supply of mulligatawny and Brecon Carreg isn’t going to be a great help. Unless of course you’ve got your own bunker, like Ned Flanders.

No matter what our ‘leaders’ say, I don’t believe Russia has any intentions of a first-strike using nuclear weapons against the West. If the threat is nuclear then it’s more likely to be a rogue state or terrorists involved.

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PANDEMIC / BIOLOGICAL WARFARE

Having had their rehearsal in 2020 with so-called ‘Covid’, the elites might think they’ll get it right next time. So I’m not ruling out Bill Gates et al releasing something truly nasty, then persuading the idiots among us to to take injections prepared by Gates’ mates in Big Pharma.

The best option here is to regard Jeffrey Epstein’s big buddy Gates as dangerously unhinged, a man who should be behind bars. But never listened to.

Worse, would be the possibility that some nutters had got their hands on the kinds of pathogens or other nasties being cooked up in laboratories around the world, often by Western governments and/or Big Pharma.

Protecting these labs is one of the reasons Ukraine must fight on.

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WEATHER

Yes, I suppose an extreme weather event is possible. But if so, why not warn us better by being specific? Are those behind these warnings afraid of starting a panic? Perhaps fearing that if people are told the northern hemisphere is threatened, there’ll be an exodus – certainly of the rich – to southern climes.

Argentina would suit me just dandy. (So chip in on the Buy me a Coffee app!)

I’m inclined to disregard the extreme weather possibility, but without dismissing it entirely. My thinking leads me in other directions.

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THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN EUROPE

As it stands, the next month or so could be the best window for the supranational elites to act. Because things could soon start turning against them.

Let’s start in Spain, where there are national elections on November 29th; and PM Pedro Sanchez is going to be kicked out. After allowing the invasion of Ceuta, and naturalising around a million illegal immigrants, his time is up.

Conservatives will win; perhaps one big question is how many votes the ‘far-right’ Vox party gets.

In France, Marine le Pen is set to win the presidency in April. Though the Enemies of the West are still looking for a way to ban her or her party. Ideally, they’d like to ban her at such a time that her Rassemblement national would have no time to run a replacement candidate.

In Germany, the ratings for Chancellor Merz are at an all-time-low, as Germany continues to deindustrialise while accelerating the country’s impoverishment by keeping the borders open and giving generous benefits to those who shouldn’t be in Europe.

And to cap it all, the patriot party AfD, enemy of the EU, is way ahead in the polls. And will pull even further ahead following the recent riots.

German schoolchildren complaining about the lack of trigonometry textbooks

In Italy, prime minister Meloni is still trying to be all things to all men, but if she appreciates which way the wind is blowing she’ll have to respond and get tougher with the left and their migrant criminal allies.

Here in the UK, the replacement puppet PM, Burnham, is a joke. Every time he opens his mouth his backroom staff switch to damage limitation mode and issue statements beginning, ‘What he really meant to say was . . .’.

Few will accept another puppet parachuted into No 10 to replace Burnham. And so, following a weak but inoffensive budget, and with Reform apparently faltering, now might be a good time to call a general election.

Moving east, to Poland, prime minister Donald Tusk just tried to seize control of the country’s Constitutional Tribunal. He did it while the nationalist president was in a plane en route to Africa. This was a EU-inspired coup ahead of elections that must be held before November 2027. Elections the Globalist Tusk is predicted to lose.

In Romania, the EU has imprisoned the man who keeps winning elections. And just a week ago, in Serbia, the ‘students’ won against Vučić, who rejects the idea that Putin is the devil incarnate.

Put it all together and there is now a political ‘window’ for the Globalists that will very soon close.

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Let’s just tag on a quick shufty at economics, where the situation is dire. For there are countries in Europe that are approaching collapse. Things can’t improve until Globalism is defeated. And continuing decline makes people seek out the real reasons for it.

And then, just last week, Christine Lagarde head of the European Central Bank (ECB) announced she was stepping down ahead of her planned retirement.

But why? Is she ill? Perhaps not, for this article from CNN quotes her saying:

 . . . the decision to leave early was driven by a wish to engage on issues outside the ECB’s mandate.

What the hell does that mean? C’mon, Chris, you can tell me, love.

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CIVIL UNREST IF NOT WORSE

Are we heading towards civil war, or at least major social unrest? Now what troubles me here is that it’s difficult to predict such events unless one is planning them.

For if you’re not planning riots, with all that attends them, then to predict them you must know who is planning them. And if the authorities know, then they should arrest the ringleaders before the trouble starts.

That said, serious civil unrest would almost certainly be the result of a breakdown in the authority or control of the state. So it’s still Shit Creek.

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WAR WITH  RUSSIA

I’ve already dismissed a nuclear attack by Russia. Land invasion from that quarter is out of the question.

And yet, this is exactly what governments across Europe have for months, if not years, been trying to persuade us will happen. With the scaremongering intensifying in recent months. Who can forget Jacob Rees-Mogg’s fireside chat exhorting us to do and die. He even demands a stiff upper lip.

This alarmism was not well received. Most of us laughed; many responded with remarks that I would never dream of repeating on this blog for all the family.

The point being that our ‘leaders’ very quickly realised hardly anyone was falling for their bullshit. And talk of fighting the Ivans soon died down.

Which may have ruled out that option. Unless . . . (See below.)

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CYBER ATTACKS & AI

Here I must confess to my woeful ignorance of the internet thingy and associated matters. But I keep up with the news well enough to realise the danger of both cyber attacks and Artificial Intelligence.

Just last week we learnt that some rascals had made off with a lot of swag in ‘digital assets’. This was attributed to North Korea, which definitely qualifies as a rogue state, despite attempts in some quarters to rehabilitate Fat Boy. Or soften that country’s image by promoting his daughter as the likely successor.

One problem with cyber attacks is that it’s often difficult to trace and attribute blame for one that does great damage, such as bringing down the electricity grid, or attacking banks. And they seem to happen with increasing frequency.

Which means it would easy to blame a cyber attack on an innocent party. Especially with the mainstream media amplifying the official narrative.

When it comes to AI, I know it means Artificial Intelligence. Someone once tried to explain to me the Singularity, but my eyes glazed over, and they gave up.

The technological singularity is a theoretical scenario where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, culminating in profound and unpredictable changes to human civilization.

AI might be an improvement, because after writing this blog for 15 years I know only too well that human intelligence is a rare commodity in Welsh politics. But there are still big, big downsides to a world run by algorithms.

Which brings me to a troubling possibility that can never be overlooked.

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FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS

A false flag operation is when a government, or an agency of a government, does something, commits an act of sabotage perhaps, which is then blamed on another government or organisation, to justify ‘retaliating’ against those wrongly accused.

For example, in 1939, German soldiers in Polish uniforms attacked Gleiwitz radio station in Silesia, on the border between the two countries. Hitler used this and other examples of ‘Polish aggression’ to justify invading.

In the modern age, false flag operations can of course be cyber attacks.

So I’m not ruling out an event that will be presented as a hostile act, allegedly committed by perhaps Russia, or Iran, and used to justify a response. But bear in mind that the response to a major cyber attack, or any other threat, be it genuine or false flag, need not be directed externally.

For it would give the authorities the excuse to impose a state of emergency. In the UK there’s the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. Here are the powers it confers.

Imagine the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ having the powers to confiscate and destroy property, and restrict movement and travel. Leanne Wood and her allies would brainstorm themselves into a right old tizzy thinking of draconian measures for FM Rhun ap Iorwerth to implement to deal with the ‘far-right’.

(In that scenario I don’t give much for my chances!)

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CONCLUSION

I’m ruling out a direct military attack by a foreign power, though a false flag operation is always possible. Also ruling out a weather event. I’m dismissing a biological attack, through not ruling out entirely another orchestrated ‘pandemic’. While spontaneous (or organised) civil unrest is never out of the question.

That’s because I think the reasoning behind all the warnings we’ve received is to create an atmosphere in which, for example, lockdowns or other disruptions to normal life, could be justified.

Maybe also crack down on social media (especially X), and impose other curbs on free speech – to fight ‘misinformation’. Or grabbing your ‘lazy’ savings, an idea von der Leyen has already floated. Possibly even arresting dissidents and opponents.

Which means we’re back to politics now. And the worsening situation in Europe.

Governments are under increasing pressure as rioting spreads and economies tank; and it’s also problematic for their masters as more people wake up to the damage done by the Globalist policies of de-growth, fiat currencies, and mass immigration.

A staged or planned event could therefore provide the excuse to impose restrictions and suspend elections. Elections Globalist puppets are likely to lose.

Also, from their perspective, President Trump distracted by a hostile Congress following the midterm elections would be an ideal time to close down Europe and implement the grand plan.

It may even have been what they were waiting for.

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My advice? Stock up, because it’s sensible at any time; and especially now it seems likely something’s planned. But whatever happens, don’t accept as gospel the official version. Do your own research – and think for yourself.

Oh yeah, and keep one eye on what’s unfolding in Poland.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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The Slide Into Authoritarianism ‘To Defend Democracy’

On By JacIn Brexit, Europe, European Union, Globalism, Housing, Housing Associations, Plaid Cymru, Racism, Russia, Senedd, Ukraine, USA, World Economic Forum22 Comments

There’s a saying wrongly attributed to an old Chinese sage that runs, ‘May you live in interesting times’. Well, we do; and just as phoney as the provenance of that maxim are the statements we’re fed daily by our politicians and their media.

Much of what follows may be updates of what’s gone before; but I increasingly suspect the Western world is approaching a dénouement. That scene at the end of a murder mystery, when everyone is gathered in the drawing room, and all is revealed.

To start, I shall concentrate on our new prime minister, Andy Burnham, whose mounting problems make me think he might soon be gone like his predecessor . . . what was his name?

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THE APPOINTED ONE

Andy Burnham, ‘King of the North’, formerly mayor of Manchester.

As we all know, Burnham was not elected by the people, he was voted into No 10 by the Labour party. Not that the party’s MPs had much say in it, much less party members. Burnham’s coronation was arranged by the Fabian Society, acting for the Globalist network of which the Fabians are a part.

Burnham is already running into trouble. Let’s look at reasons for his difficulties.

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First, he inherited the plan to bring back blasphemy laws – abolished in 2008 – but only for Islam. There had been pressure for some years to introduce anti-blasphemy laws to counter ‘Islamophobia’, but Conservative governments had rightly been cautious.

The election of Labour with a huge majority in July 2024 gave the campaign renewed impetus. In November 2024 Labour MP Tahir Ali set the process moving again. With someone cleverly wording his proposal to call for:

 . . . measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?

The ‘Abrahamic religions’ are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The ‘People of The Book’. But nobody was fooled.

Suspicions justified by the Labour government formally adopting an official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ in March. Which soon ran into criticism.

The government’s own counter-terror advisor, Jonathan Hall, has said that the proposed definition could ‘inhibit’ criticisms of Islam. ‘How far are people going to be allowed to push definition effectively in their own political interests?’, he asked. There is no doubt that this is precisely what activists will do. They will try to use this definition to restrict what can be said about Islam.

Inevitably, critics started asking how the government had arrived at the definition. Who advised the politicians? Who supplied evidence? And now it started getting murky.

Initially, the government said it had destroyed all the relevant documents. This would have been illegal. But when pressure was maintained, a civil servant answering to Angela Rayner, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, admitted the documentation did exist – but nobody was allowed to see it!

It’s safe to assume that laws against ‘Islamophobia’ were demanded and framed by Islamists.

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Second, and just last month, Burnham himself announced to the United Nations:

a new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states such as Russia . . . saying the government had a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests.

Note that Russia is singled out. With no other country mentioned. Maybe setting the stage for his next delivery of performance politics.

By the way, ‘misinformation’ is anyone challenging the Globalist narrative. Whether it’s the climate crisis, Covid, DEI, open borders, CRT, gender woo-woo, etc. And it includes the alleged danger posed to us all by Russia.

Next, after his UN gig, and after regularly trailing the idea of closer co-operation with the EU, Burnham announced that it was “Russian interference” wot gave us Brexit . . . but then he started back-tracking.

If Russia did not influence the result of the Brexit referendum, then why resurrect complete bullshit dismissed years ago by the intelligence services? And why kick off this series of performances at the UN? And why single out Russia?

Then, last week, the head of MI5 seemed to slap Burnham down.

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And how can we overlook Burnham’s relationship with the owners of Manchester City? Even though Man of the People Burnham is an Everton supporter he has strong links with Citeh’s Abu Dhabi owners from his time as mayor of Manchester.

For those who’ve been living under a stone . . . it’s alleged the club’s owners funded Man City’s recent success illegally, often through massive sponsorship deals where the bulk of the funding came not from the stated sponsors but from other entities controlled by the owners.

But it didn’t end with football. Because it’s further alleged that in his role as mayor Burnham gave the oil-rich Arabs sweetheart property deals. With complaints over many years by other developers saying they’d been excluded from the tender process.

Here again, Burnham is struggling with the truth, and backtracking. With the suggestion that he might now be using his power as PM to cover up what he might have done when mayor, and to protect the Man City owners.

Even changing official records.

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As if to prove how gaffe prone he is, just a few days ago Burnham had to correct remarks made in the House of Commons in which he referred to the man accused of Ann Widdecombe’s murder as “the man responsible for the murder“. Thereby undermining the accused’s presumption of innocence, and possibly prejudicing the upcoming trial.

Could it have been deliberate?

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But all is not lost – for democracy will be saved by abolishing the need for voters to show photo ID. Straight out of the US Democrats’ playbook – allow illegal and undocumented immigrants to vote.

It looks as if the Globalists should have done a little more research before putting their latest puppet into No 10. He’s turning out to be a disaster for them.

But to cheer you up, the word in the corridors of power is that if Burnham is dumped – he’ll be replaced by Ed Miliband!

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WHY RUSSIA?

These silly allegations against Russia remind me of what the USA went through in 2016, within days of Trump winning the presidential elections.

A campaign led by the defeated candidate Hillary Clinton and former president Barack Obama, and involving the agency behind the JFK assassination, tried to salvage something from that defeat. Tying up the Trump administration for years defending itself against allegations with no substance.

Not even those making the allegations believed them. But that wasn’t the point.

Make the allegations, and with media support guaranteed, just keep repeating the lies and the media will do the same. But it got worse.

To ensure Trump wasn’t re-elected in 2020 the Democrats mounted ludicrous prosecutions, even attempting impeachment. They also rigged the 2020 elections in key states and Democrat-run cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Phoenix and Atlanta.

As Josef Stalin is reported to have said in 1922:

It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.

And so the 2020 elections gave us Joe Biden. A man so obviously unfit for the role that it became painful to watch. Yet the media went along with the official line that despite his gaffes, his incoherent mumbling, his wandering off stages, his falling over, he was still “sharp as a tack“.

‘SHARP AS A TACK’

Even after the disastrous presidential debate in 2024, when Biden lost himself entirely and his wavering voice just trailed off – the media still called it a draw!

So who was really running the USA, and leading the free world between 2020 and 2024? Clue: that period is often referred to as Barack Obama’s third term. And in the past week Obama’s been over here meeting Burnham and others. What can it mean?

Is he planning some kind of government in exile? If so, maybe Obama should watch his step. A former president having talks with foreign governments without the permission of the current resident of the White House could be flirting with treason.

But ain’t Western democracy wonderful? Puppets like Burnham up front, ruthless political operators like Obama controlling them, and then, running the whole shebang from the shadows . . .

But why do the puppets, their handlers, and the media all paint Russia as the bad guy? The easiest way to answer that is to ask why the same people also hate Donald Trump. Because it’s the same answer to both questions.

Neither Putin nor Trump will submit to the Globalists. Understand that and so much else becomes clearer.

Trump is restoring US sovereignty by rejecting supranational organisations like the UN, WHO and, most recently, the ICC. He’s rebuilding the USA as a self-sufficient country that makes things, where money has real-world value.

In Russia, Putin dealt with the oligarchs who were ripping off the country’s wealth with the help of the international financial elites. Russia’s wealth is now Russia’s. And of course, Russia has unexploited natural resources that dwarf those of other countries.

Trump and Putin have become the twin bogeymen for the Globalists, their puppet politicians, the media they control, and their useful idiots of the Woke left.

It’s worth dallying with the media for a second. I often refer to the Uniparty, where squabbling is encouraged to give the proles the impression of choice and the promise of change. But in reality it’s just politicians pushing the same message in different ways. It’s all theatre.

Meanwhile, the proof of Globalist control of UK newspapers – from the Guardian to the Daily Mail – is in their reporting of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. They speak as one, hostile to both, revealing who controls them.

Telling us that Russia is not the enemy of the West. Nor is the USA. They are its defenders. As Marcio Rubio reminded us in his speech in Athens.

The enemies of the West are those they’ve been for centuries. Rootless anti-human capital, socialism, and Islam.

But they never before combined. Though it’s unlikely the leftists and the Muslims appreciate who’s using them. Each probably believes they’ll come out on top after they’ve collapsed the West.

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HOW THE WEST IS THREATENED

The West is to be collapsed by a combination of strategies.

First, there’s managed decline through net zero and deindustrialisation. Similar attacks are being mounted against farming and food self-sufficiency. We see it all around us and across Europe.

Second, open borders. Encourage the migration of individuals and groups that it’s known in advance will be no asset to the country and are unlikely to integrate. These will help push up crime and promote social dislocation as well as increasing the welfare budget – until everything collapses.

I’m not making this up. It’s a variation on a theme laid out back in 1966 by a couple of leftist US academics. It even bears their name: The Cloward-Piven Strategy.

It may have been written for the USA in the turbulent 1960s, and envisioned using the black population, but the strategy is applicable elsewhere: Overload a system until it implodes.

In the modified version there’s an element of – and here I’ll use a term I’ve tried to avoid – ‘population replacement’. Which links with something I can’t help returning to – the watershed year of 2016. Brexit in the UK and Trump elected in the USA.

The shock the establishment experienced, and the realisation that the white working class was being ‘lost’, meant that a new voter base was needed. Which then explains the 2018 UN Global Compact on Refugees.

Today we see that Compact in operation – but not in the USA since Trump took over from whoever was working Biden.

But if you bring in millions of people then you must promise them – in addition to benefits – somewhere to live. And now it gets perhaps a little darker. As we saw in a recent exchange in the Senedd.

When Reform suggested locals should have priority when it came to social housing Kiera Marshall of Plaid Cymru giggled her way through a response.

We heard a Plaid Cymru SM argue that Welsh people should be discriminated against in their own country. You can dress it up in ‘progressive’ word salads, but that’s what it amounts to. So who is Kiera Marshall, SM for Caerdydd Penarth?

She says she’s from Townhill, but she’s not really from The Hill. For both parents, of the social worker/’progressive’ type, had moved to Swansea. And Kiera herself, went to the London School of Economics (LSE), founded of course by the Fabian Society.

Lot of kids from The Hill go to the LSE.

Note that she doesn’t claim to have experienced inequality, just observed it; maybe like some 19th century anthropologist studying a tribe of interesting primitives. For Kiera is just another middle class girlie telling us what to think, and how to behave.

Why is Kiera Marshall in Plaid Cymru? What sort of party has Plaid Cymru become to have one of its politicians advocating discrimination against working class Welsh people? Maybe the clue lies in the term ‘working class’.

But why do I even mention Kiera Marshall?

Some forty years ago, during the Meibion Glyndŵr arson campaign against holiday homes, I argued that depriving young local people of somewhere to live, somewhere to raise a family, was a form of birth control.

A similar case could be made today if non-native groups are given priority for housing over local people in their own communities. But as I say, I’m reluctant to get into talk of ‘population replacement’.

But it’s increasingly difficult to dismiss.

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CONCLUSION

We’re at a stage where the enemies of the West know they’re lying, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying, but they don’t seem to care. Which could be interpreted as a sign of confidence . . . or desperation.

I believe it’s the latter. There are so many little clues. One was footballers over the weekend being made to ‘take the knee’ again. Has there been a big surge in racism? Then there’s Obama’s visit.

And of course, there’s been constant talk of war with Russia; because those I’m writing about know their time is running out, and thought war could save them and their project. This is why I say they’re ‘anti-human’.

Over in the USA, they’ll have the mid-term elections next month. Normally, the party of the president loses ground in the mid-terms, sometimes badly. But this time, as the realisation grows that the Democrats have been infiltrated – if not taken over – by Marxists and Islamists, the Republicans might do better than expected.

But of course opinion polls, and MSM pundits, are predicting a hammering for Trump and his party. Funny that, innit? Though almost predictable.

The images of the French riots won’t help the Democrats.

If anybody thinks those riots, the arson and looting, are about schoolkids not having enough textbooks, then you need to slap yourself. Hard.

Having their plan of war with Russia rejected by the people of Europe, knowing the US Cavalry won’t come riding over the hill, and seeing the EU rejected by the rise of the national sovereignty right, the Globalists might conclude that destroying Europe from within is the only option left in the time still available to them.

Which again, I find encouraging. Reinforcing my belief that the crunch is coming; everybody’s gathering in the drawing room, paying attention, and the enemies of the West will soon be exposed.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Plaid Cymru And ‘Independence’

On By JacIn Europe, European Union, Globalism, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Nationalism115 Comments

A few days after Plaid Cymru’s conference in Llandudno seems a good time to examine where the party stands on independence. And related issues.

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INTRODUCTION

As most of you know, I have always wanted independence for Wales. Partly because I felt Wales was constantly short-changed and could do better with independence; and partly because I saw my people as a European nation and I wanted us to take what I viewed as our rightful place among the nations of Europe.

Unlike many of my contemporaries I did not identify with anti-colonial struggles in the third world. My focus tended to be on Scotland, Brittany, Ireland, Québec and the Basque Country, rather than with peoples I’d never heard of and with whom I found it hard to identify.

I felt this was entirely natural. And I still do. Most of the human race feels, acts, and reacts in the same way.

We identify first with ‘our own’, our immediate family, and then those closest to us. After that, it’s the ripples a stone makes when it’s thrown into a pond. This doesn’t rule out the Good Samaritan, but nor does it encourage ignoring our own in favour of the stranger.

And so I joined Plaid Cymru around 1965 because it was a Welsh-focused party wanting independence. I stood as a candidate a few times and did my fair share of door-knocking, and tramping wet Swansea streets with bundles of leaflets.

I left Plaid Cymru many years ago, and since then we’ve drifted further apart.

So let’s consider what Plaid Cymru offers in its vision for independence.

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EUROPEAN UNION

Starting with the European Union. Which is rather complicated for me because a long time ago I supported a united Europe. That was when I saw such a creation as a force for good in the world, and a mediator between the USA and the USSR.

In recent decades I have swung 180 degrees. To the point where I voted for Brexit in 2016. For even when I believed in European unity, I never wanted the authoritarian, regulation-ridden monster we see today.

My vision was Gaullist: a culturally unified Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals” that included post-Communist Russia. Where political legitimacy resides exclusively in the sovereign nation-state – not supranational institutions where power is exercised by shadowy cabals through unelected bureaucrats.

I wanted Wales to be one of those sovereign nation-states.

Did you ever see a shiftier-looking git in your life?

The EU today is a Globalist capture and an enemy of the West. Run like the old Soviet Union, with real power in the hands of the unelected Politburo-Commission, ruled since 2019 by Ursula von der Leyen. (Whose husband did so well out of Covid vaccines.)

I recall Plaid promoting the EU, or the Common Market as it still was at the time, with ‘Europe of the Regions’. There was a parade in Machynlleth in 1988, on Glyndŵr’s Day, led by the party leader at the time, the late Dafydd Elis Thomas.

The message being pushed with Europe of the Regions was that the nation-state was outdated, and would soon wither away; replaced by historic regions and submerged nationalities under a loose, pan-European superstructure.

What happened to that idea, I wonder? For as I’ve outlined, the EU has become ever-more centralised and undemocratic. Though the war on the nation-state continues.

On a purely practical and contemporary level, the economies of the EU are tanking, thanks to the deindustrialisation imposed by net zero; and especially in Germany, the largest EU economy and main funder for the whole farrago.

In May 2027, Marine le Pen will be elected President of France. And despite the Breton origin of her name I doubt if she’ll welcome supplicants from Wales looking for hand-outs. For that’s what it’s about for many in Plaid Cymru.

Funding that was squandered when the UK was still in the EU and Wales was run by another socialist party.

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NATO

Some years back I checked the linkage between NATO’s eastward creep and EU membership. The message was clear: ‘Join NATO and you’ll be allowed into the EU. Then, because you’re poor, we’ll give you lots and lots of money’.

NATO is a military alliance. An attack on one is an attack on all. Which was fine, when the threat was the Soviet Union and the combined forces of the Warsaw Pact. (And it’s why NATO should have been scrapped in 1991.)

That NATO continued, and expanded towards Russia, made it clear the Globalists had turned an erstwhile political and military threat into a target for conquest and exploitation. The Russians certainly saw it.

And are alliances that desirable anyway? Remember how the First World War started. A Serb nationalist killed an Austrian Archduke in disputed territory after the Archduke’s chauffeur took a wrong turn. It should have been left to the Serbs and the Austrians to sort it out; with other countries either holding their coats or trying to separate them.

Instead, millions of men died because other, bigger countries were tied to alliances that swung into action because of that lucky shot in Sarajevo.

Who benefited from that war? Best not to go there.

Plaid Cymru’s position on the EU might lack clarity, but its position on NATO is even more cloudy and confused. Let’s just remember what party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth has said in recent months.

Towards the end of June, with Plaid in control of the Senedd, he was interviewed by Ciaran Jenkins of Channel 4, a very left wing outlet. Here’s the relevant section.

Ciaran Jenkins: We live in pretty uncertain times. Do you think an independent Wales should not be a part of Nato?

Rhun ap Iorwerth: I think an independent Wales would want to have a very close relationship with Nato that is an associate membership people have. Ireland, for example, with Nato. That would be a decision for an independent Wales.

First off, there is no such thing as “associate membership” with NATO. In 2024 Ireland joined the Individually Tailored Partnership Programme. Though after seeing Georgia, Bosnia, Moldova and Kazakhstan listed, I conclude it’s designed to annoy Russia without poking the bear too hard by granting full membership.

Though you have to wonder why Japan, South Korea and Colombia should be included in any NATO line-up. Along with other bizarre choices.

Anyway, more recently, this report from Sky News has Rhun ap Iorwerth saying “Wales would join a ‘NATO-type’ organisation“. He stumbles through the interview but suggests there’s some alternative out there to NATO.

What was he thinking? NATO Lite?

The only thing that comes to my mind is the idea that’s been floating around for many, many years of a European Army, which seems to go back to 1952 and the European Defence Community. There have been a few false starts but I can see why the idea might be re-surfacing.

Donald Trump is pissed off with Europe and most of its leaders, he’s not going to war with Russia over Ukraine, and things will stay the same if – as seems likely – he is succeeded as president by J D Vance (possibly Marco Rubio) in 2028.

And so a European military, under the command of the EU (and Ursula von der Leyen), with a more aggressive approach towards Russia, would replace or ‘complement’ NATO. But Russia isn’t threatening Western Europe. The threats are internal, as I’ll explain in a moment.

Let Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth come clean about exactly what he’s trying to say with relation to NATO. Perhaps someone could help him.

◊

UNITED NATIONS

It has long been Plaid Cymru’s policy to join the United Nations.

The Charter was signed in June 1945, and the UN came into existence in October, designed to maintain international peace and stability.

But it has now degenerated into a vehicle for third world despots and kleptocracies to dictate to the more advanced countries and demand that the latter keep paying for whatever past crimes can be dreamed up.

Recently, in Gaza, we’re seen UN representatives on the ground being Hamas terrorists under a different badge. And when UN spokespersons on human rights, women’s rights, and other issues, come from countries where such rights don’t exist, then the UN stands exposed for the money-laundering farce it’s become.

And let’s remember that it was the United Nations that gave us, in December 2018, the Global Compact on Refugees. Operated through the UNCHR. This is now used by Globalist European ‘leaders’ to justify open borders.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency works to ensure that everybody has the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge, having fled violence, persecution or war at home.

In reality, those arriving illegally in dinghies, or being secretly flown in, haven’t ‘fled’ anything. They’re here to get whatever they can take and get away with.

They’re not Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany; nor can they be compared to Basque kids taken into Welsh homes during the Spanish Civil War. Or even the East African Asians expelled from Uganda by the Muslim dictator Idi Amin in the early 1970s.

As you might guess, I have no time for the United Nations. My views on the UN are not a million miles from those of President Trump. It’s a Globalist body pushing a distinctly anti-West agenda.

The world might be a better place without the United Nations.

∼

The EU, NATO and UN have been drinking for too long from the same poisoned well. Which is why an independent Wales should avoid all three organisations.

◊

SO WHAT IS MODERN PLAID CYMRU?

In a nutshell, nothing more than an agglomeration of grievance-pedlars, with the same undergraduate obsessions we hear everywhere – climate, gender, race, etc – with the only obstacle to heaven on earth being the ‘far-right’.

Plaid wants a socialist Welsh republic. And looking at the party’s Senedd Members, all I see is a marginally more mature and better dressed Welsh Underground Network.

I’m not being flippant here. The policies, attitudes, and ambitions of the party governing Wales and a far-left fringe group are almost identical. But the Welsh Underground Network is just more honest about theirs.

Plaid is also hypocritical. On the one hand, it still defends the Welsh language and the wider identity – yet rejects ‘whiteness’ and the European civilisational norms to which they belong.

In an attempt to square this circle Plaid (and others) pretend Wales has always been multi-racial. This leads to Black History Month, which uses public funds to support race grifters and indoctrinate schoolchildren into accepting mass migration.

But thank God for the decolonised Welsh cake!

Truth is, the malaise is everywhere. Labour controlled by the Fabians has turned on the working class. The Conservatives are no longer conservative. The Greens have ditched the environment for anti-Semitism. Though the Lib Dems are the same odious and buyable little crew they always were – should we be thankful for that?

While Plaid Cymru has lost interest in the real Wales, and the best interests of Welsh people. And it can’t be hidden when Plaid is . . .

  • More energised about the lack of gender mutilation services than it ever was about the closure of Port Talbot steelworks.
  • Cosying up to foreign ‘renewables’ companies that enrich themselves from desecrating our homeland.
  • Siding with ‘environmentalists’ and rewilders from God knows where to destroy Welsh farming.

I could go on, but it’s so depressing. I’ll try to introduce a lighter way of looking at it.

When it comes to having an independent Wales run by Plaid Cymru – or the Welsh political establishment in general – I’m reminded of that wonderful character from Blackadder, Mr Hardwood. When it’s suggested that his daughter should marry the Prince Regent he responds thus:

I’d no more place her in the hands of an unworthy man than I’d place my John Thomas in the hands of a lunatic with a pair of scissors.

That sums up my feelings about Plaid Cymru and the ‘independence’ it’s offering.

Because there’s no point in leaving the UK only to surrender control to agencies less interested in Wales than any in London. Of course it’s argued that it’ll be different because “Wales will have its own voice” in these chambers. So what?

In Globalist organisations – like the EU, NATO, UN – small countries will be ignored or punished if they don’t toe the line.

Which means that to be heard, and favoured, an ‘independent’ Wales would have to follow the agenda: increasing censorship and surveillance, aided by a controlled media; net zero resulting in job losses and higher energy bills; unlimited immigration leading to rising crime and social dislocation.

All of which are damaging. With the real worry that the dire consequences listed are in fact the desired outcomes.

An independent Wales couldn’t isolate itself from the wider world. And I would never argue for isolation. But independence must mean real independence or it’s just a sham. And not worth having.

◊

FINAL WORD

Before you think all is lost, and reach for the whisky and the revolver, let me tell you there’s a sensible party that still cares about Wales and the Welsh people. A party that wants the best for Wales without joining organisations that don’t give a damn about us.

It just so happens that Gwlad is holding its AGM this coming Saturday in Llandrindod, starting at 10am (’til 4pm) in the golf club. You’re welcome to attend even if you’re not a member. So come along, meet people, hear what they have to say.

You’ll find decent people talking common sense. It’ll be so refreshing.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Power To The People! (Our People, Of Course)

On By JacIn Corruption Bay, Devolution, Globalism, Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour71 Comments

In my previous post I wrote: “. . . one thing Labour was good at over 27 years of devolution was cronyism. That is, using public money to create pointless jobs for party loyalists, and to fund their organisations. To the point where there are now hundreds of these organisations and thousands of jobs“.

Done to extend Labour influence or control into almost every corner of Welsh life.

But not in my wildest, Malbec-fuelled dreams, did I think Labour would prove me right so quickly. (I need a drink!)

◊

DEVOLVING POWER TO KEEP POWER

Yet over the weekend, at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, we heard calls from the party in Wales and Scotland to devolve power to local authorities and communities. Now, if I wanted to be generous, I could say that this chimes with what we’ve heard from the unelected Globalist puppet in No 10.

But I don’t feel like being generous. And neither will you after reading this.

Going back to the 1990s, one of the great selling points of devolution – certainly for sceptics within Labour – was that Scotland and Wales would always vote Labour, and so devolved parliaments in Edinburgh and Cardiff could be useful for making life difficult for Conservative governments in Westminster.

And of course, they’d stymie the SNP and Plaid Cymru. (Though the latter was not thought to be a real threat.) Older readers may even remember George Robertson.

In 1995 George Robertson – then the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland – argued that the creation of a Scottish Parliament would quench the Scottish thirst for the decentralisation of power. Devolution, according to Robertson, would kill the idea of an independent Scotland “stone dead”

The SNP may be less popular following the Sturgeon (and hubby) years, but it’s hardly stane deid, eh, George.

We must also remember that the Tories were in power from 1979 until 1997, which encouraged the thinking I just outlined. And so devolution became Labour policy before Blair was installed as PM in 1997.

Even so, there were those who went along reluctantly with this constitutional change, maybe even Blair himself. And many within Labour – certainly in Wales – who were vehemently opposed.

Perhaps what these diehards realised, or what Labour strategists failed to factor into their calculations, was that many who voted Labour in Scotland and Wales did so in the hope of avoiding a Conservative government in London, rather than from any great love for Labour.

And while devolution offered a kind of ‘filter’ to direct London rule it also meant no threat of Tory administrations in Edinburgh or Cardiff, which allowed voters to relax, even ‘shop around’.

Here we are in the autumn of 2026: Labour hasn’t been in power at Holyrood since 2007, and has just lost control of the Senedd. To compound Labour’s problems, we have an unpopular Labour government in London, polling consistently under 30%, led by a phoney whose gloss is wearing off fast.

You can therefore understand why Labour now wants to devolve power away from Edinburgh and Cardiff. But to where? And to whom?

◊

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The situations of Scotland and Wales are different, but as this blog is about Wales we’ll consider who power might be devolved to here.

The obvious place to start is the level of government below the Senedd, which is our local authorities. All twenty-two of them, and all 1,234 councillors – in a country of just over three million people!

Maybe it’s also worth mentioning the 730 community and town councils, which are served by over 8,000 community and town councillors.

The three major cities, Cardiff (pop 382,000), Swansea (249,000) and Newport (169,000), all have Labour-majority councils. The third largest local authority, by population, is Rhondda Cynon Taf (241,000), which is also run by Labour.

Four other councils in the south are Labour controlled; with a combined population of 485,000. Adding them together gives us some 50% of the country’s population.

In Monmouthshire, Labour’s the largest party, but with no overall control. There are Labour minority administrations in Flintshire and the Vale of Glamorgan. In Merthyr, Labour and Independents are tied. No overall control in Neath Port Talbot, Conwy, Denbighshire. With Plaid running things in Gwynedd, Ceredigion, Ynys Môn, and Carmarthenshire.

Elsewhere, Pembrokeshire is fought over by competing gangs of Independents. The Lib Dems are the largest party in Powys. While in Wrexham it’s a coalition between Independents and Conservatives.

It’s easy to see how devolving power away from Corruption Bay to local authorities could benefit Labour. For with Plaid Cymru ruling it’ll be they who’ll get blamed by sub-Senedd level Labour for everything that’s wrong in Wales.

But it doesn’t begin, and certainly doesn’t end, with local authorities.

◊

CRONYISM RULES!

Now I’ll turn to the cronyism referred to at the start. This is power and influence that’s less obvious than local authorities because there are no elections, and party labels are not obvious.

As I said, Labour spent 27 years of devolution building networks that would support the party. Or else corrupting organisations, often through funding, and bending them to do Labour’s bidding. For example, if you want to understand the chaos at the Welsh Rugby Union, it can be traced back to the WRU saying that biological males would not be allowed to play against women.

That outraged certain Labour Senedd Members, and so the wheels were set in motion.

Let’s also remember the housing associations, many of which are controlled by Labour loyalists. One example would be Wales & West, our biggest provider of social housing.

But it’s no longer just housing associations, and social housing, for many of them now have subsidiaries, which seem to focus on building open-market private housing. Even leasehold properties. Wales & West has Cambria Maintenance Services Limited, Enfys Developments Limited, and Enfys Homes Limited.

Google AI says of the last named:

Enfys Homes Limited: Focuses on mixed-tenure developments to deliver extra affordable housing without requiring grant subsidies.

The bit about grant subsidies may be right. But funding goes to the parent body from the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ and is then diverted to the subsidiary.

There are thirty housing associations registered with Community Housing Cymru. Most, if not all, have subsidiaries. And those subsidiaries, which we hear less about, rely on funding from their parent body. Something we are never told.

As we see with the latest accounts for Enfys Developments Limited.

What a strange set-up this is. I’m waiting for the response to a FoI request I submitted, and I might do a piece on these providers of social housing.

Next, we must consider our health boards. Labour spent many years emplacing trusted people. Whether these were capable of running a health board may never have entered the comrades’ collective thinking.

Then there are the countless third sector outfits and charities. And the duplication involved. Which means funding dozens of organisations to do basically the same job.

One example is homelessness. In a reply to a FoI request I was told that Wales had 48 organisations ‘tackling homelessness’ – in a country of just over three million people and less than 200 miles from one corner to the opposite corner.

In addition to the homelessness racket there’s the race racket, which is catching up fast in these days of enforced diversity. Though you have to wonder if there might not be a symbiotic relationship between the two.

One established outfit in the race racket is BAWSO. Here’s how it bills itself:

Bawso provides practical and emotional prevention, protection and support services to Black Minority Ethnic (BME) and migrant victims of Domestic Abuse, Sexual Violence, Female Genital Mutilation, Forced Marriage, Honour Based Violence, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.

BAWSO gets over £3.5m a year from the ‘WG’ alone in grants and contracts. For many, many years it was the fiefdom of Mutale Rose Merrill. Under her leadership BAWSO built up quite a property portfolio. (It’s alleged her personal portfolio is also quite impressive.)

Even hubby got in on the third sector racket. For Labour put Travers Merrill in charge of the doomed Rhondda Life. But why worry – it’s only public money!

The thing to remember about third sector bodies, charities, and others in the various rackets is that they must never solve the problem they were set up to tackle. Because to do that would mean an end to funding and the loss of many cushy jobs.

So it serves their purpose to invent or exaggerate problems. ‘Homelessness is rising’, or ‘racism is rampant and increasing’, means more funding and more jobs. Almost an economy in itself. And all funded from the public purse.

I swear to God someone could launch a third sector body that claimed to offer counselling to the non-binary yak herders of Ceredigion – and there’d be funding available with few questions asked! (For let’s not forget the gender racket.)

And then of course we have the Future Generations legislation. For all the bodies we’ve looked at must dutifully obey the commandments inscribed into the tablets received from the Future Generations Commissioner.

The first to fill that post was Labour stalwart Sophie Howe, daughter of a Cardiff councillor. She has since moved on to launch her own business, and she’s also joined a host of ishoo-mongers including Coleg Soros.

She was replaced by another Labour apparatchik in Derek Walker. Who’d led another What-the-fuck-is-that-about group in Cwmpas. Which seems to be people with no experience in business giving advice to businesses.

But when you look at who they ‘help’, these are not genuine businesses as you or I might understand that term. In the main, they’re just more third sector gangs.

Though in recent years it’s ceased to be exclusively Labour. Here’s an image from the Our Services section of the Cwmpas website.

I know what you’re thinking – who da honky? You don’t recognise him! It’s one of our new Plaid Cymru Senedd Members, Mark Hooper. The Deputy Minister for Transport who believes in “actively discouraging car use“.

And if you think that’s worrying, Hooper’s boss, Dr Dafydd Trystan Davies, promised to ditch his car when he was elected. If he’s just dumped it somewhere then I expect to see him arrested and charged with being a sanctimonious and insufferable little git.

Yes, indeed, as George Carlin so memorably put it: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it” – unless you belong to a Globalist-left party.

◊

CONCLUSION

As I just suggested, on most issues you can’t get a fag paper between Labour and Plaid Cymru. Whether it’s climate, open borders, re-joining the EU, DEI, ‘trans rights’, or any of the other issues designed to weaken the West and increase the power and wealth of supranational elites.

But voters realising there’s little difference between the two is no good for either party, so minor differences must be exaggerated and new ones invented. And there are of course areas – like independence – where Labour and Plaid do disagree.

So devolving power out of Cardiff might just be something dreamed up to remind punters that Labour in Wales is different to Plaid – and here’s a policy to prove it.

But if Ken Skates, Kinnock, Burnham and others, are serious about devolving power within Wales then a good place to start would be moving the Senedd out of Cardiff. For all devolution has really achieved is allowing Cardiff to enjoy some of the capital benefits London has always enjoyed.

Moving the Senedd could be funded by cutting the number of local authorities from twenty-two to the eight we knew in the days of two-tier local government.

More money could be found by reducing the number of housing associations. Having thirty, plus subsidiaries, is insane. Or why not do away with them altogether and hand the responsibility for social housing back to eight local authorities?

Finally, there’s the morass of the third sector. Hundreds of publicly-funded bodies, most doing work of no discernible public benefit, with dozens of almost indistinguishable gangs fighting turf wars in each and every sector.

But for Labour to agree to anything I’ve suggested would mean weakening the party’s crony network. And that would defeat the object of calling for ‘greater devolution’.

There’s a big test here for Plaid Cymru. They could devolve out of Cardiff, and fund it as I’ve outlined. But if Plaid was to suggest that then Labour would oppose it.

Reminding us yet again that Labour will always act in its own selfish interests.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Net Zero Creating Jobs In ‘Farming’

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Farming, Globalism, Greens, Net Zero43 Comments

Bit of a departure, this one. Or maybe not. It’s more ‘planet saving’ bullshit; with one example dressed up as feeding the masses, the other somehow helping a housing association.

◊

BACKGROUND

In twenty-seven years of mismanaging Wales Labour had a twin-track approach to agriculture. On the one hand, real farming was attacked and undermined; while anything that could be presented as an alternative, an improvement, was promoted.

This was justified as ‘saving the planet’, either by mitigating the damage done to the environment by traditional Welsh livestock farming (farting cows and all that), or else by bringing new life to rural areas. Often combined.

Pure, naked Globalism. For the elites that control our politicians want the land for themselves, and they also want to control what we eat. Not so long ago we were being told to eat insects. What happened to that campaign? Short answer, it was bollocks; nutritionally and in other ways, and the truth caught up with it.

But let’s not forget that control of the food supply is part of the ultimate power grab.

To sell this power grab to slimeball politicians always looking to appear virtuous the Globalists dreamed up anthropogenic climate change, net zero, and the UN’s Agenda 2030. For everything is predicated on, and flows from, climate change.

More importantly, what we are being forced to do to combat this wholly contrived threat.

The driving force in Wales was someone who’s appeared here regularly, Jane Davidson. She attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. But why was she there?

A privately-educated woman who’d drifted to Wales and was so well-in with the Labour establishment that after serving on Cardiff city council for a while she was gifted the safe Labour seat of Pontypridd in the first Welsh Assembly elections of 1999.

In the Labour-Plaid coalition of 2007-2011 Davidson was Minister for the Environment and Sustainability.

She is the self-confessed author of the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015. This is no exercise in wishful thinking; for it influences almost every aspect of Welsh life. Everything must conform to its dictates.

Which brings me to the first recognisable example of what we’ll be looking at in a minute. And it pre-dates the Future Generations legislation. This was One Planet Developments (OPD). Covered under Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6. Which encouraged individuals, families, small groups, to buy or acquire a small plot of land, live off-grid, and be self-sufficient.

Often retrospectively legitimising existing rural slums.

Like so many of the previous ‘Welsh Government’s worst ideas this one originated with, or was helped along by, outfits based in Bristol.

Land Use Consultants is still in business and doing quite well. In fact, the most recent accounts report a turnover of more than £24 million with some £12.7 million spent on 324 employees.

But the Positive Development Trust CIC is long gone. It was launched September 23, 2011 and Dissolved on Christmas Eve 2013. Almost as if it came into existence solely to promote OPD in Wales. Does anyone recognise a name among the directors?

One Planet Developments may have been pushed (insincerely) as some alternative kind of farming, but in reality it attracted superannuated hippies, good-lifers, and others with barely a clue about rural living.

There are still some new OPDs cropping up, but the idea never really took off. Though it might have morphed . . .

◊

FEEDING THE BRUMMIE MASSES

Now we’re heading to Wern farm, near Sarn, which is east of Newtown, Powys. In fact, very close to the border. Which is convenient for all involved. Here’s a recent report from the Lanyard-wearers Bugle.

This land is owned by Powys county council, currently led by Lib Dem Jake Berriman, mentioned in the article just linked to. Berriman may not long have been in Wales, for someone of the same name was CEO at Shropshire Housing Group.

Though the project was opposed by Kerry, the community council involved. Which just last year held a packed public meeting . . .

 . . . in response to growing concerns about Powys County Council selling off parts of its tenanted farm estate.

Selling or renting them to well-funded pressure groups, hippies, and good-lifers.

Wern launched as the ‘Welsh Government’s Future Farms Pilot, which was . . .

 . . . established to test a practical and scalable model for enabling new entrant horticultural businesses to access land, secure affordable on-site homes and supply local markets in Powys and wider Wales.

So where in Wales is Birmingham?

Also mentioned in the Guardian article is Our Food Trust, a new one on me. So who are they? Here’s their website, where they tell us they’re:

Building 100 affordable farms growing food agroecologically for local and regional markets.

Advocating that Welsh Government addresses the food security threat decisively, through the new Food Strategy currently being developed.

It’s found in Crickhowell, Abergavennyshire, and is a registered charity. The first trustee named is George James Stewart Wallis. He can also be found as a trustee of the London-based Wellbeing Economy Alliance.

But who’s that there with him? Why! it’s Sophie Howe, former Future Generations Commissar for Wales. As for the other trustees, your guess is as good as mine. But I don’t think they’re from round by ‘ere.

Going back to Our Food Trust, the second trustee named is Holly Tomlinson. Next is 94-year-old James Steuart Skinner. (Any relation to James Scott Skinner?) Finally, there’s Christopher Albrecht Bielenberg; born in 1942 to an anti-Nazi German father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He seems to have dabbled offshore, because he gets a mention in Offshore Leaks.

But running the show, as joint-CEOs, are Duncan Fisher and Sue Holbrook. Both have generously moved to Wales so that we might benefit from their wisdom.

Also giving support is another gang of grifters at Cynnal Cymru. Funded of course by the ‘Welsh Government’.

But let’s not overlook support from the Landworkers’ Alliance. I’ve never been able to take this lot seriously. Middle-class English envirogrifters – playing at being peasants!

I read some of their output a few years back and I couldn’t help laughing. It conjured up images of moustachioed hombres wielding machetes, marching off to have it out with the local representative of United Fruit. Laughable.

I don’t want to spend any more time on this nonsense, because that’s what it is. It’s being funded and justified as a move towards making Wales more self-sufficient in food – but most of it gets shipped to Birmingham.

In fact, Lydia Dibben, one of the ‘farmers’, is quoted in the article saying:

Because of the cost of living crisis, there’s a limited amount of people who can afford to buy the veg we produce, and we are growing a hell of lot more than we can sell locally.

Locals can’t afford the organic produce of Wern farm – so it’s shipped off to Brum where it’s bought – with public money – by the council, for local schools, etc.

Finally, a big attraction of these allotments is that each can have its own accommodation. These count as temporary rural dwellings, and are allowed under Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6, of October 2012.

This, you might recall, was what legitimised One Planet Developments. Which is why I suggested earlier that the faltering OPD idea might have morphed.

Late News: The ‘Welsh Government’ wants more Wern farms according to this put out last week. Mentioned is Ystadau Cymru (Wales’ Estates), another outfit I’d never heard of. Here it is, talking about ‘Community Asset Transfer’.

In practice, this will mean transferring an asset away from the local community to an organisation or individuals favoured by the Corruption Bay in-crowd.

Note the info came just five days after the Guardian piece. Pure coincidence!

◊

DOWN TO ZERO

Let’s start this section with an article from Nation.Cymru before delving into the truth about this lot. It’s another about growing food, and distributing it to the needy. And it’s received funding as part of a £4.8m package from the ‘Welsh Government’.

There may also be funding from the National Lottery.

So who or what is Down to Zero? Let’s start with the website. You’ll see it’s linked with Cynon Taf Community Housing Group. Based in Abercynon and serving mainly the central valleys.

The founding members were Labour councillor Barry Stephens and John Beresford Chown of leftist think tank the Bevan Foundation.

The image above shows baskets of locally-grown food of the type presumably being delivered. A kind of socialist Deliveroo. (And seeing SM Sioned Williams there means every delivery will come with a lecture on ‘trans rights’.) For those of you wondering about the bananas, they’re a staple crop on the slopes of the Cynon valley.

On the website, we’re met with:

More carbon dioxide (CO2) is now being released than the earth’s land-based plant life and oceans can naturally reabsorb. The excess carbon dioxide has formed a blanket in our atmosphere – trapping the sun’s heat and changing our climate . . .

Truth is, without carbon dioxide all life on Earth would die. More of it means deserts greening and plants growing faster. But this ‘carbon capture’ nonsense is part of the bigger climate scam.

“Trapping the sun’s heat“? Is CO2 being blamed for the ‘heatwaves’ this summer?

Down to Zero is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as a Community Benefit Society. Registered in August 2022. So let’s check the latest accounts, up to March 31, 2025.

One of the first things to catch my eye was (page 4): “The deficit for the year increased from £16,976 in 2024 to £46,924 in 2025“. Mmm. Looks like the new funding is badly needed.

Despite the increasing deficit, administrative costs jumped – nay, leapt! – from £148,835 in 2024 to £246,167 in 2025. The rest of the financial picture is an equally dismal read.

For example, the amount owed to creditors almost doubled in the same period, from £161,638 to £321,897.

Maybe it’s accounted for by this, also from the Down to Zero accounts (page 6, 7B2):

This year, we were pleased to complete on the purchase of 27 acres of wetland and broadleaf native woodlands in Aberdare, known locally as Cwmbach Wetlands. This is an area of significant carbon stores, biodiversity and natural beauty which is loved by the community. Our work in this area is a leading example of asset-based community development and we are committed to working with Cwmbach Community Wetlands Ltd

Google AI gives more details (below). What a wonderful arrangement, it could be described as circular scammery. Pen y Cymoedd windfarm community fund donated £40,000. So those raking it from wind turbines dish out a little dosh to others lower down the food chain, justified – cos they is all saving the planet!

And one way or another – you are paying for it all!

Purchased in July 2024 for £80,000 by Cynon Taf Community Housing Group via its subsidiary Down to Zero, with a £40,000 contribution from the Pen y Cymoedd windfarm community fund.

This land is now leased to Cwmbach Community Wetlands

Something that causes me to wonder is that Cwmbach Community Wetlands began life before Down to Zero. The former 15.12.2021, the latter 22.08.2022.

Presumably the newt botherers were already active at the site. So why would a housing association, through a subsidiary supposedly supplying food to the widows and orphans of the parish, buy and then lease, 27 acres of wetland?

Shouldn’t a housing association focus on, well, I don’t know . . . housing?

◊

CONCLUSION

You’ll note that in the above discussions about food there was no mention of meat. There’s a reason for that.

To pursue and promote their agenda of destabilising, dividing, and impoverishing the West the twin-strategy of net zero and open borders guarantees the support of leftists, ‘environmentalists’, religio-imperialists, and others.

Globalists have also recruited an eclectic band of camp followers and useful idiots.

Ranging from assorted sexual perverts and deviants, to anti-car cycling fanatics, and of course – vegans. Vegans were once harmless eccentrics who didn’t bother anyone. Nowadays they’re encouraged to be more assertive, to the point where eating meat is damned as a sign of toxic masculinity! (Eating meat in a caff with veggies nearby probably qualifies as a microaggression.)

Something else that’s changed is that veganism and vegetarianism used to be about the animals. Now we’re told we should give up meat to save the planet. Another example of Globalism recruiting, and ‘re-focusing’, groups and causes to serve the agenda.

AFTERTHOUGHT 23.09.2026: Vegetarianism and veganism had to be ‘re-focused’ because if it was about the animals then they’d have to oppose halal slaughter. But defending and promoting Islam is a vital element of the Globalist agenda. So the cruelty involved in halal gets a free pass.

On a more venal level, and as I mentioned earlier, livestock farming holds vast acreages of land – that Globalists could own, and profit from. Pretending that ‘farming’ can be shrunk to allotments, and we can survive on their produce will, it’s hoped, serve that agenda.

The other factor to consider, certainly with the second example, is that one thing Labour was good at over 27 years of devolution was cronyism. That is, using public money to create pointless jobs for party loyalists, and to fund their organisations. To the point where there are now hundreds of these organisations and thousands of jobs – and we wouldn’t miss them if they all disappeared tomorrow.

Let’s be honest. These allotment-‘farms’ are a virtue-signalling joke. But the ‘Welsh Government’ wants more of them. So they’ll buy land, or councils will use the farms they own – that should be the first rung on the ladder for young, Welsh, farmers.

As we already see at Bremenda Isaf, in Plaid Cymru-run Carmarthenshire. A 100-acre, council-owned farm. Said to be next-door to the local Plaid MP, Ann Davies. Fancy!

It makes no sense. Until you realise it’s all being done to serve a darker agenda.

An agenda that’s becoming clearer by the day.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

Buy Me A Coffee

An Open Letter To President Donald J Trump

On By JacIn Globalism, Russia, Ukraine73 Comments

Mr President,

As you are aware, there’s a lot of sabre-rattling in Europe at the moment. Certain countries, having encouraged Ukraine to wage war on Russian civilians in the Donbass and elsewhere following the 2014 coup – and provoking the desired response – are now determined to draw Russia into a wider conflict.

I’m referring to countries whose politicians are, in the main, stooges of a transnational elite bent on controlling every aspect of our lives; using allies and useful idiots motivated either by religion or ideology. In fact, the very evils that you and your administration are combatting on your own soil.

Countries whose social security expenditure rockets while their economies collapse, whose borders are open to extremists and criminals from around the world, whose militaries have been run down for decades, are now trying to provoke the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal into a continent-wide, or even global, conflict.

With politicians in one particular country, one in terminal decline, and farthest down the dark road to a full surveillance society, openly demanding we go to war on behalf of the most corrupt country in Europe – to defend democracy!

This hypocrisy on steroids exposes the puppets’ realisation the tide is turning. As people wake up to the catastrophic effects of net zero deindustrialisation and open borders; and opinion polls tell them France and Germany might soon elect leaders and governments that will act in the interests of the French and German nations.

Which will be the end of their European Union pet project.

They must therefore have a distraction, an excuse to impose (even greater) censorship, cancel elections, and maybe take unfettered control. Unable to arrange an asteroid strike, and hesitant to release a plague, war is their only option.

And so they’re stepping up the supply of drones and other military hardware to Ukraine designed to strike deep into Russian territory, at civilian targets. Secure in their recklessness because they believe that if or when Russia responds, the USA will ride to their rescue, as before.

It is this belief, and this belief alone, that encourages their insane behaviour.

And so I appeal to you to pull these lunatics back from the brink. For all our sakes.

Either withdraw the USA from NATO (if only temporarily), or else make it clear to all that the USA will not be drawn into another European conflict. Nor will the USA aid either side with financial support and/or materiel.

As for me, I’m just an awkward old Welshman who doesn’t want his teenage grandsons dragged off to fight for those offering us the victory prize of “benign containment” . . . while they plunder Russia’s resources.

 

Respectfully yours

Royston Jones

 

© Royston Jones 2026

‘Environmentalism’ In Wales, A New Colonialism

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Globalism, Renewables, World Economic Forum, WWF37 Comments

This starts with a very local story that’s been bubbling away for some time. But sometimes a local story can serve to illustrate a much wider issue. And that, I believe, is the case here.

◊

BACKGROUND

In essence, a local family wants a hydroelectric scheme on their land. The plan submitted to Eryri planners July 17, 2024, and approved (with conditions) July 15, 2026.

Warning: there may have been some modifications since the original plan shown here

It’s fairly close to the B4391. The road that runs off the (Bala – Trawsfynydd) A4212 to Llan Ffestiniog. The OS map below will give a better idea of the area, and shows clearly ‘Rhaeadr y Cwm’, where Afon Cynfal runs down the gorge.

The picture below, from Google Maps – but 8 years old, I’m afraid – shows the gorge and the waterfall from the B4391.

The reason I’m writing about it now is because it’s still in the news, and protesters are still protesting. As I was reminded by an article in last week’s issue of the Cambrian News. Reproduced for you below.

The article reports that those who’ve been given planning permission are three brothers from a local farming family: Dafydd Elis, Elis Dafydd and Moi Dafydd. With roots in the area. The objectors? Well . . .

The first objector mentioned is ‘Pat Thynne’, who I assume is Patricia Thynne. And I’m guessing she hasn’t lived long at Cwm farm, which was on the market 13 years ago for £650,000.

I believe that until about 10 years ago she was living in Cumbria, in a property sold for £475,000. As might be expected, Ms Thynne is involved with Cymdeithas Eryri (the Snowdonia Society); a well intentioned outfit that unfortunately attracts too many who’ve moved to the area and want to dictate to those who’ve always lived there.

I’ll return to Cymdeithas Eryri later.

Another protester mentioned is “Joe Hope, farmer and ecologist from Machynlleth“. Which means that Joe is certainly not local. And when I think, ‘Welsh farmers’, I’m more likely to think of the three brothers than I am to think of Joe Hope.

But Joe’s objection takes it all to a new level, invoking the Mabinogion, no less.

I came to understand how it was part of a mythic landscape; the Cynfal and Llyn Morwynion are settings for the Mabinogion, where magical hero Llew Llaw Gyffes is married to and betrayed by Blodeuwedd, a bride conjured up from flowers.

Go for it, Joe!

Truth is, most objections were from outside the area through an e-action webpage set up by the Snowdonia Society, Save Our Rivers, the North Wales Wildlife Trust and Buglife.

Ffestiniog Town Council also objected – after previously supporting the project. The council chair is Rory Francis who, until March this year, was Director of Cymdeithas Eryri. It’s all here on his Linkedin profile.

Curiously, perhaps, on a council that should have 16 members, there are 7 vacancies.

What locals everywhere do object to is 800ft-tall wind turbines, and mile after mile of big, ugly pylons. And yet, this is where so many ‘environmentalists’ seem to fall silent. Or are openly supportive.

◊

GLOBALISM AND ‘ENVIRONMENTALISM’

We’ve been living with the climate scam for a long time now. It’s used to influence our behaviour; to deindustrialise the West through net zero, carbon capture and other nonsense; increase our bills; and make lots of money for big corporations.

Those driving this agenda need plausible allies, people and organisations that might get away with pretending they have altruistic motives. And this is where ‘environmentalists’ enter the picture.

Calls to make sacrifices to ‘save the planet’ will be more persuasive when they come from a sincere but brainwashed youngster like the Swedish doom goblin than if they came direct from Larry Fink of BlackRock and the World Economic Forum.

Though I’m not sure how many are still listening to Greta Thunberg since she finally went off the rails. Here’s a recent photo taken, it’s claimed, at a performance by rappers Kneecap in West Belfast. There she is with balaclava and keffiyeh.

She’s beginning to look as unwell as many have always thought she was. But not so long ago she was addressing the United Nations, and dictating to heads of state. Everybody wanted to be photographed with her.

Now she’s  a raging anti-Semite, supporting a corrupted form of Irish Republicanism that still wants the Brits out – but the rest of the world allowed in.

A carnival of grotesques. Just look at those eyes!

I don’t want you to think I’m picking on Greta, but no one better exemplifies the deception I’m describing. Converted or compromised politicians can pretend they’ve been moved by a sweet little Swedish girl rather than admit to having been browbeaten by the aforementioned Mr Fink and his cadre.

Here in Wales, ‘environmental concerns’ too often work against the interests of the native Welsh. For example, to listen to many environmentalists, all the pollution in our waterways is the fault of farmers, and cow farts will be the end of us all.

These lies of course tie in with the Globalists’ war on farming. Not because they want to improve our diet, or have better water quality, but because they want to control the food supply, and through that, control us.

◊

LOCAL PARTNERSHIPS AND INITIATIVES

Having realised that Welsh people aren’t happy with wind farms and solar arrays proliferating, and knowing where the profits go, the Welsh political class is finally talking about ‘local benefits’.

In October 2023 the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ launched Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru (Green Electricity Wales).

Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru’s remit from Welsh Government, is to develop and deliver renewable energy projects, starting on the Welsh public estate, with the best possible long-term economic and social benefits for the people of Wales.

In addition, we have Ynni Cymunedol Cymru (Community Energy Wales), where we find that doyenne of all things loony and left, former leader of Plaid Cymru Leanne Wood, acting as secretary. Possibly commissar.

Wolfie Smith would be so proud –“Power to the people!”

There seem to be plenty of similarly-minded individuals among the directors, but I’m not sure what they actually do. I think they just offer advice. (There’s a lot of that goes on in Wales.)

But the real benefit from employing this lot is their political influence in Corruption Bay. Which in turn means funding . . . for the favoured ones. And all too often these seem to be new to Wales. When we turn to ‘local partnerships’, and ‘community involvement’ we find them.

Imagine calling a badly-publicised public meeting, at an awkward time for most people, but making sure your people are there and dominate the meeting. Then you go away and pretend that your people represent the views and wishes of the whole community.

(Just like Communist Party takeovers of union branches I recall from my youth.)

Or maybe you don’t even bother with the charade of a meeting. Groups just emerge.

An example might be Awel Aman Tawe. Which was quick off the mark in 2000, just a year after the first sitting of our then Assembly. Started by people with tenuous links to the valleys north and west of Swansea, but who’d seen an opening.

After 26 years is Awel Aman Tawe commercially viable? Perhaps not. The company has seven outstanding charges shown on its Companies House entry, going back to 2006.

These loans, etc came from: Neath Port Talbot council (3). The Wales Council for Voluntary Action, a conduit for ‘Welsh Government’ funding (2). The National Lottery, which only seems to fund projects approved of by the lanyard-wearing classes (1). With one from the Co-operative Bank.

But Awel Aman Tawe certainly has political connections.

For example, a Member of the linked Awel Coop is Jenny Rathbone, Labour MS for Cardiff Central until May. But more importantly, she sat on the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.

And I shouldn’t have to remind you that her husband John Uden sits on Bute Energy’s Welsh Advisory Board.

Most ‘community projects’ rely on public funding. Justified by high energy costs. The consequence of the climate scam demanding highly subsidised but unreliable ‘renewables’. Supported by the politicians doling out the public funding.

What a system! With an obvious solution.

◊

WATER

Earlier I promised a return to the Snowdonia Society, and here it is.

Last week I was sent a curious document – an invitation, I suppose – to an event planned for Cardiff in October: ‘How Designated Landscapes Can Help Solve the Water Crisis’. Here it is.

There are a few things I’m struggling to make sense of.

First, the invite was sent out by Graeme Cotterill, Vice Chair, Alliance for Welsh Designated Landscapes. (Heard of it?) Second, it was relayed by the Snowdonia Society. Third, it specifically mentions the “Cambrian Mountains“, or Yr Elenydd.

I can answer the first two questions by telling you Cotterill’s day job is Director of the Snowdonia Society – he took over from Rory Francis! Before that, for over 13 years, he was at North Wales Wildlife Trust – which also objected to the hydro project!

Such coincidences!

As for why Yr Elenydd got a mention, that remains a mystery. For Designated Landscapes are National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. As you can see from the map below, Yr Elenydd, marked with a cross, is neither.

But as I’ve explained many times, this beautiful wilderness is now under attack; coveted by wind farm bandits and ‘environmentalists’ of the rewilder genus.

But how do we explain the alleged “water crisis” which seems to be the justification for this gathering? Certainly, Yr Elenydd is the source of the Teifi, which runs to the sea at Cardigan. And the Tywi, which meets the sea south of Carmarthen. Also, Llyn Brianne reservoir supplying Swansea; and the Elan reservoirs serving Birmingham.

But why would these interest the Alliance for Welsh Designated Landscapes and the Snowdonia Society? Maybe looking at the speakers might give a clue.

Gail Davies-Walsh is described by the ‘Welsh Government’ as “a transformative leader in Welsh environmental protection“. She’s CEO of Afonydd Cymru (Wales’ Rivers).

She worked for some years for Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Some believe that since leaving DCWW her role has been to deflect criticism from its woeful performance and pollution record.

Next up is Tom Johnstone founder of We Are Nature Based CIC. I’d never heard of this lot. But then, it’s almost impossible to keep up with ‘environmental’ groups. How many are there?

This outfit was formed just over two years ago and is based in Rhos-on-Sea. Which is a long way from Yr Elenydd, and from the Wye, which is mentioned on the website, and even in the accounts.

Another director of We Are Nature Based is Thomas Rickard, who lives in Devon. The third director is Bethany Ward. A director of Drosi Bikes CIC of Llangollen.

The third billed speaker is Adam Taylor. “Protected Areas Committee chair, Flood Risk Management Committee member, NRW / board member, Bannau Brycheiniog National Park Authority.” A busy boy!

He began his career with the Essex Wildlife Trust. Then it was the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. Before crossing the border in November 2019 to become CEO of the Gwent Wildlife Trust. All listed here.

None of them know anything about Yr Elenydd.

But they belong to an ever-expanding network of overlapping and interlinked ‘environmental’ groups. There might soon be 500 of these groups – but perhaps no more than 200 people actually involved.

But with more influence over the political system and economic priorities of Wales than its three million people. Democracy, innit!

◊

HERE’S HOW IT OPERATES

Here I’ll address the ‘circular’ relationship the ‘environmental’ lobby has with the ‘Welsh Government and various bodies. A lobby publicly funded to find that Wales is “nature depleted“, etc, which then allows Corruption Bay to claim it has been “advised“, or “after consultations“, to double down on the anti-farming and other agendas.

From the WWF website

Commissioning reports was an essential part of how Labour ran Wales for 27 years. But it was never confined to the environment, or to farming. And it caused chaos.

A report into a fire service found “toxic masculinity“, “misogyny“, “racism“, even “banter” – to the horror of the pearl-clutchers who made the finding. This was used to impose a diversity agenda.

The South Wales Fire and Rescue Service was even condemned for not taking the knee for George Floyd! The clip below is in the report produced by Judge Fenella Morris.

The current shambles at the Welsh Rugby Union can be traced back to the WRU deciding that ‘trans women’ (i.e. biological males) should not play in women’s rugby. This outraged certain Labour politicians.

And so, in January 2023, the ‘Welsh Government’ announced that Sport Wales – which it sponsors and funds – had stepped in to “advise” the WRU. Then political appointees – who know little about Wales or rugby – were put in charge of the WRU to push a ‘diversity’ agenda.

And that’s why Welsh rugby is going down the tubes. With Jiffy calling on them all to go. He’s not the only one.

◊

AND FINALLY

In Wales, there’s a colonialist aspect to renewables and ‘saving the planet’. Foreign investors and corporations own all the projects. Most of the activists, lobbyists, and spokespersons in the supporting ‘environmental’ movement come from outside of Wales. Some don’t even live in Wales.

They all want to dictate to us. Ride roughshod over us. And exploit our homeland.

And some of the attitudes are quite horrifying. After ‘moving to the country’ Tarquin and Helena are appalled that some hairy-arsed hill farmer, who might struggle with the English language – owns hundreds of acres!

Land that they could be ‘saving’. (With someone else’s money, of course.) Land that’ll give them a platform from which to gesture away to their heart’s content.

The hydro scheme we began with should be supported. And while we obviously don’t have the hydro resources of Norway or Switzerland, even Scotland, there’s nowhere in Wales that’s far from a fast-flowing stream. And we get the rain to keep them flowing.

As for the October event in Cardiff, I’m still not sure what it’s about. But given who’s involved, I predict with certainty that something is being hatched that will see our country exploited for the benefit and profit of others.

Because the bottom line is that ‘environmentalism’ is just a smaller scam serving the bigger climate scam. ‘Environmentalism’ exists to advance the interests of banks, asset managers, and corporations.

Which is why we find ‘environmentalists’ opposing a genuinely local renewable energy project like Nant Cynfal. That this initiative comes from farmers sitting on land that could be making money for somebody else is perhaps another factor.

‘Environmentalists’ are hypocrites. Damaging Wales and Welsh interests to serve some spiv on Wall Street, others in the City of London, or shy buggers hiding behind addresses on distant, sun-blest isles.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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A Property Empire II

On By JacIn Colonialism, Globalism, Housing, Housing Associations17 Comments

The title is explained by the fact that in December 2022 I put out a piece titled A Property Empire. (I bet you’d guessed that!) Which makes this is, unashamedly, a follow-up.

◊

BACKGROUND

That first piece was about a Rhyl property developer named Christopher Paul Walsh, and his company Walsh Investment Properties Ltd. I only took an interest after reading that someone had bought the hamlet of Aberllefenni, just up Afon Dulas from Corris Isaf.

When I first wrote about the company, it had taken out some 30 loans with various lenders, few of which you’d recognise. That figure is now up to a hundred. But there are other Walsh companies, and we’re starting with one of them.

It’s EMW Developments Ltd, and a project in Gronant, Flintshire, east of Prestatyn. To be specific, the Institute building and land in front of it, donated many years ago by Liverpool shipowner and local boy made good, Richard Hughes.

This report from February 2024 says the site is to be converted into “apartments and townhouses“, though it doesn’t make clear whether this involves using, or perhaps demolishing, the Institute itself.

The land in front of the building had been used by locals for parking. As shown in this Google Earth shot from April 2025. It may originally have been a bowling green.

Here’s the plan I found on the Flintshire planning website. You’ll see that the Institute building (green) is to be apartments, with much of the locals’ car park turned into town houses and parking spaces.

Before getting deeper into the Walsh saga, I’d like to tarry awhile in Gronant because, not far away, is another derelict building, the old youth club, on Pentre Lane. Which was also sold recently.

The article I’ve linked to can’t tell us the buyers, so I consulted the Land Registry. Where I learnt that it’s now owned by Golden Acre Developments Ltd, of Leeds. A company formed just a year ago, probably to buy Gronant Youth Club.

So let’s see who’s involved.

One is a Latvian living in Cambuslang, Glasgow, named Arturs Aleksejevs; the other a UK citizen named Robert(s) Opincans, who seems to have been educated in the UK, but whose surname is Latvian.

Last October Opincans started a company called Opincans Retrofit Ltd, using as its address the same Leeds flat as Golden Acre Developments. Opincans Linkedin file suggests he knows something about buildings and building work, but it’s not clear what Aleksejevs brings to the table.

For example, his Linkedin profile (probably lapsed) says he’s managing director at a company called Capsule Systems Ltd – but this outfit was put out of its misery in January 2022. And yet, despite never showing any money passing through the books this company still issued over 1.7 million shares.

How do we explain this? Misplaced optimism might be a generous interpretation. Anyway, I did a quick check on the listed shareholders.

The only Vitalii Druzhinin I found outside the Baltic states lives in New Zealand. Though I did find a few Russians with that surname mentioned on the Offshore Leaks Database. Also, an Alexander Druzhinin with a London address.

Vjaceslavs Knazevs might be in the no-questions-asked mortgage business.

Kevin Parker is too common a name to trace.

And with Vitalijs Kuznerovs I drew a blank.

Now back to Gronant Institute.

◊

WHO’S PUTTING UP THE MOOLAH?

Turning first to the Land Registry title document. Where we see that the owner of Gronant Institute is Walsh Investment Properties Ltd, with EMW Developments Ltd probably doing the work.

Scrolling to the bottom tells us the money to buy the Institute was put up by Livestock (UK) Ltd in December 2022. Companies House says the accounts for this outfit are long overdue, and there’s an active proposal to strike off this company. A fate it’s escaped a few times in recent years.

Yet the most recent (unaudited) accounts filed by Livestock (UK) Ltd report assets of over nine million pounds . . . but this is wiped out by (unnamed) creditors owed slightly more.

Livestock (UK) Ltd is run by the Duffell family of Cheshire. Walsh has been dealing with this family for a number of years.

We can safely assume that Livestock (UK) Ltd put up the money to buy the Stiwt. And the amount loaned was £1.2m over 24 months at the rate of 14% per annum. I know that from this document filed with Companies House.

Further loans have been taken out for the project – now named Richard Hughes Close – by Walsh Investment Properties Ltd. (Scroll down.) These loans are for the individual plots. And they’re all Buy-to-Let mortgages, from Quantum Mortgages Ltd.

So, as things stand . . . Walsh owes £2.4m, plus interest, to Livestock (UK) Ltd, and a few million more to Quantum Mortgages. He will then, presumably, own the rental properties at Richard Hughes Close.

◊

THE QUANTUM CONNECTION

As you might have guessed, I looked into Quantum Mortgages, tracing back the ownership to source. Quantum itself was founded as recently as September 2021 by Jason Christopher Neale.

AI tells us Quantum manages funds from AB CarVal, “an established global alternative investment manager and part of AllianceBernstein’s Private Alternatives business“.

“AllianceBernstein is primarily owned by Equitable Holdings, which holds a majority ownership stake of roughly 68% in the firm“.

Equitable Holdings entered a merger earlier this year with Corebridge Financial, with Corebridge holding 51%. The major shareholders in Corebridge are given as Nippon Life Insurance Company, Blackstone (Argon Holdco LLC), and American International Group (AIG). Other big shareholders are Vanguard and BlackRock.

(Worth remembering that BlackRock split from Blackstone in 1994 under the leadership of a man with his own key to No 10 – Larry Fink!)

So we’re dealing with foreign investment houses and asset managers funding Welsh developers with Buy-to-Let mortgages.

The first I can find was in November 2020, when Walsh took out a loan with Cynwyd Enterprises Ltd, another Duffell company, to buy the Grosvenor Social Club in Shotton. (£300,000 over 24 months.)

It was demolished for housing. Reported here in August 2022. The Cynwyd loan was cleared in December 2023, then Walsh took out a series of Buy-to-Let loans with Quantum for the individual properties.

The Shotton project circled

Cynwyd Enterprises is another company with substantial assets . . . outweighed by unidentified ‘creditors’.

Another early involvement was for Bron Gwalia 7 Mountain Road, Conwy. This Google Maps capture from October 2022 suggests a substantial property containing individual flats. And EMW clearly at work.

The money to buy the building, late in 2021, came from one of the Duffells. With a loan of £205,000 over 24 months. Next, in February 2023, a Buy-to-Let mortgage was taken out with Quantum. Then, the loan was repaid in November 2024. Finally, the flats were, presumably, rented.

Just before the Gronant loans Quantum made over a dozen loans for Aberllefenni.

So we have three instances where the initial funding, to buy the property, came from the Duffell family – Shotton, Conwy, and Gronant – with Christopher Walsh then taking out Buy-to-Let mortgages with Quantum. And plenty of other recent loans from Quantum, such as the dozen or more at Aberllefenni.

But let’s focus on Gronant again, for things have taken a disturbing turn.

◊

LATEST NEWS

Latest news is that a deal has been done for the Gronant properties with Clearsprings, which provides accommodation for migrants; often unvetted, illegal migrants.

The Clearsprings Ready Homes website tells us:

As a provider of accommodation services to the Home Office since 2000, our contracts cover London, the South of England and Wales.

But housing ‘migrants’ is not devolved, so does Clearsprings have an  arrangement, or an understanding, with the so-called ‘Welsh Government’?

And where does Flintshire County Council fit into the picture? For this press release(?) mentions February 2024, the month the Council approved planning permission for Gronant Institute.

This information was released that month, or very soon after, according to Wayback. Does it suggest the Council has known about the plan to house ‘refugees’ at the Institute for over two years?

Whatever the answer, this is a depressing story on a number of levels.

First, it reminds us the housing market is screwed. Young people, who should be setting up home and starting families, find it difficult to buy a place of their own. And renting becomes more difficult as leftist politicians legislate private landlords out of the equation, with social housing providers giving priority to just about everyone ahead of locals.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, asset managers like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street are moving into the UK private housing market. Here’s a company called Apollo Global Management. Who do you think is a major investor in Apollo? Go on, have a guess . . . Clue – it rhymes with CockSock!)

One reason for US investors switching their attention to the UK is President Trump’s desire to stop them buying up single-family homes in the USA. (But of course leftists suffering from TDS will fight this.) We need this legislation in the UK.

And it’s no better in the ‘social housing’ sector. Yes, housing associations have stocks of rented accommodation – virtually all of it inherited from local authorities. But they’re not building many for rent anymore.

Instead they’re concentrating on ‘affordable’ housing for sale, or leasing to people who’d prefer to buy. But it’s sadly beyond the vocabulary of anyone working for a housing association, or indeed a civil servant or politician, to explain what ‘affordable’ means.

And who’s funding housing associations now? (Apart from the ‘Welsh Government’.)

Flicking through the documentation on the FCA website one name that turns up regularly linked to Welsh housing associations is M&G Investments. Here are the major shareholders:

Daiichi is of course Japanese. Kingdom Holding is owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. And there again we see BlackRock and Vanguard. (Don’t be fooled by the Union flag alongside BlackRock.)

UPDATE 12.08.2026: It seems the ‘migrants’ have arrived!

◊

CONCLUSION

Remember the days when an established family firm built houses in your area, and you went along to the building society where you’d been saving, to discuss a mortgage to buy one of those houses?

Now you don’t have a clue who you’re dealing with. And you’re not supposed to ask.

Because it’s not about you. It’s not about providing decent homes for people like you. The housing market in the modern era is all about profits for big corporations you’ve never heard of. With their enablers also getting their cut.

That’s what’s happening in Gronant. And everywhere else.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Net Zero, Pressure Groups, DEI, Cultural Marxism

On By JacIn Climate, DEI, Environmentalism, Far Left, Globalism, Greens, Public Funding, Renewables, Rugby, Sport, Wind Turbines21 Comments

I’m thinking of taking a summer break, but whether I do or not, I want to put this out; based on things I’ve understood for a while, but prompted by cases that have come to light over the past week.

◊

FUTURE GENERATIONS COMMISSIONER

This job was created by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. All Welsh legislation now must adhere to the guidelines laid down by this Act. I covered it recently in the second part of Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse.

A wee digression to explain how we got here.

The driving force behind Well-being, and the woman who claims to have authored its bible, is former Labour Assembly Member (for Pontypridd) Jane Davidson. Before taking up the post she’d created for herself, in 2007, Davidson had already damaged Welsh education with climate scam brainwashing and other nonsense.

Davidson was at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, organised by the UN, where the guidelines for ‘sustainable development’ were laid down. They placed the blame for “Climate Change, Desertification and Biodiversity Loss” at the door of Western nations.

This global crisis had to be tackled. When it was pointed out that developing nations were increasingly contributing to the problem it was argued that they must be allowed to catch up. As Google AI puts it:

. . . climate frameworks, like the UN Paris Agreement, operate on the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. This acknowledges that wealthier nations historically produced the majority of greenhouse gases and must take the lead in cutting them, while giving developing economies more time and leeway to transition out of poverty.

Developed nations paying for this ‘differentiation’ exposes that ‘saving the planet’ is just another form of occidentophobia, or “anti-Western sentiment, prejudice, or hostility toward Western culture, values, and institutions“.

But I’ve never understood why Davidson was in Rio. The Times Higher Education supplement says: “She entered politics in 1994 as a researcher for Labour MP Rhodri Morgan, later the assembly’s second secretary.”

She’s described that Rio trip as her Road to Damascus moment, when she was converted to the Green gospel, thereupon becoming an apostle. But if she was not already a convert in 1992, and not involved in politics, why was she in Rio at all?

Was she on holiday, and just popped in out of curiosity?

I believe Davidson was already involved in the climate scam; and came back from Rio with the blueprint for turning Wales into the wind turbine, solar panel, anti-farming, DEI, brainwashing kids, 20mph hell it’s become.

The first Future Generations Commissioner (FGC) was Labour insider, and at the time, deputy PCC for South Wales, Sophie Howe. Before that she’d been a Cardiff councillor and a special advisor to cabinets led by Labour first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones.

She was succeeded in 2023 by Derek Walker, another Labour insider. He had a background in the TUC, trans lobbyists Stonewall, and in the 12 years before becoming FGC he’d been CEO of Cwmpas (formerly Wales Co-operative Development & Training Centre Limited), a “development agency for social enterprises and co-operatives”.

Latest accounts show income of almost £7 million, almost all of which came from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, and most of which went on salaries. Basically, another publicly-funded job creation scheme for Labour insiders and keffiyeh wearers.

Most people will never have heard of Cwmpas. Or the many similar outfits.

The reason I mention FGC Derek Walker is due to a report in BusinessNewsWales last week that began: “The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Derek Walker, is announcing a review into energy policy and decision-making in Wales.”

I read it, and a few questions came into my head. Let me list them.

“Project Ynni is a new initiative“. OK. And how many other ‘initiatives’ are out there? How many ‘initiatives’ have come and gone? How much public money have they swallowed? What have they achieved?

Where does this man’s legitimacy come from? Who voted for him?

What business qualifications does he have, or what expertise in energy or climate studies?

We all know the answers. He’s a Labour time-server, given a job created solely to promote climate hysteria and control our behaviour.

◊

THE EVILS OF PRIVATE TRANSPORT (OTHER THAN BIKES)

Another piece that caught my eye last week was a report about increased parking charges in Cardiff, a move that many believe will damage the city’s economy.

Quoted in the piece was Ruth Billingham of Living Streets, an anti-car pressure group that has a pass to all departments in Corruption Bay. I remembered Living Streets from its role in the imposition of 20mph speed limits.

Here she is again, in November 2024, with other pressure groups telling the ‘Welsh Government’ to push “active travel“. But the more people are forced to cycle, or walk, the fewer people there’ll be travelling anywhere.

Is there a lobby group for a nation-wide, cheap and reliable, public transport system?

Doing a little digging soon found that Ruth Billingham had for seven years, until May this year, been involved with Cynnal Cymru-Sustain Wales, which describes itself as “the leading sustainability charity for Wales“.

In reality, it’s just one of hundreds. And all costing us money.

Until March, Cynnal Cymru had been part of the group structure of Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA), though its status now is unclear. The WCVA is a body used by the ‘Welsh Government’ to disburse public funding.

Cynnal Cymru is based at Sbarc/Spark, part of a big Cardiff University complex on Maindy Road. Where we also find Cwmpas, which we just looked at, formerly headed by Derek Walker, now Future Generations Commissioner.

Sbarc claims to be . . .

Bringing academics and entrepreneurs together in a spirit of innovation, enterprise, and collaboration

We can see that it’s home to publicly-funded organisations, so I wonder how many genuine entrepreneurs can be found there?

I’ve always said that Cardiff University is almost an extension of the ‘Welsh Government’ and the Bay establishment; so we shouldn’t be surprised to see it provide a home to lobbyists and leftist groups reliant on the the public purse.

◊

‘I JUST HEARD SOME BANTER – PASS THE SMELLING SALTS!’

Here’s how DEI is often implemented in Wales. The ‘Welsh Government’ will claim to have received reports or complaints about a certain organisation that warrant investigation. The ‘investigation’ will always conclude that changes are needed that can only be achieved by imposing a far-left Woke agenda.

One example would the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service (SWFRS). A ‘Culture Review’ was held into the Service, headed by “human rights” lawyer Fenella Morris KC.

The Report unearthed countless horrifying examples of cannibalism, human sacrifice, and officers wearing odd socks. I jest, of course. What was found was racism, misogyny, and “banter“. Yes, honestly, banter.

The pearl clutching continued by condemning legitimate opinions on immigration. Even “inappropriate behaviour outside of work”! But who gets to decide what’s legitimate and what’s inappropriate?

The report also criticised the Service for not ‘taking the knee’ for George Floyd. When I first saw that on social media I thought it was the kind of ‘misinformation’ against which I am ever alert.

So I found and downloaded the report, and there it is, on pages 121 and 122.

Think about that for a minute. Firemen in Merthyr Tudful were expected to take time off their duties to kneel for a career criminal who’d died from the drugs in his system, while being lawfully arrested, five thousand miles away.

Also, to show support for the fraud associated with Black Lives Matter (even in the UK!), sympathise with calls to Defund the Police (with whom the SWFRS work on a daily basis), and turn a blind eye to the murder, arson, and looting – always looting – that followed Floyd’s death.

Following publication of the Report Chief Fire Officer Huw Jakeway resigned and ‘Commissioners’ were installed by the ‘Welsh Government’. These included Kirsty Williams former Liberal Democrat Assembly Member for Brecon and Radnorshire.

Here’s Williams demanding “anti-racism” in schools. (She was Minister for Education 2016 – 2021.) It’s less than two minutes long. Go on, have a chortle! (But don’t let Fenella Morris catch you!)

It’s a word salad of highfalutin bollocks designed to undermine the self-worth of Welsh kids by making them feel guilty about evils dreamed up by their enemies.

◊

WELSH RUGBY UNION

Another example of ‘Welsh Government’ enforcing the Woke agenda is the Welsh Rugby Union. Most people realise the WRU is now a shambles, but few understand how it came about.

Let me see if I can explain it with a timeline.

October 2021: In a BBC report from April 2025 it’s stated that:

In October 2021, a BBC investigation found that the Welsh government had adopted Stonewall’s interpretation of equality law in some of its policies, offering protections not provided for in law.

Hardly surprising seeing as the ‘Welsh Government’ was a major Stonewall funder.

“Early 2022”: Labour MP, and former Wales women’s rugby international, Tonia Antoniazzi, raised concerns with Dawn Bowden, ‘Welsh Government’ Deputy Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, about misogyny and sexism within the WRU.

September 7, 2022: It’s reported the WRU bans biological men from playing rugby against women and girls. For obvious reasons of safety and “in line with World Rugby guidance“.

September 23, 2022: The Sun reports Tonia Antoniazzi criticising the Scottish Rugby Union for allowing biological men to play against women and girls.

October 2022: Dawn Bowden, and Hannah Blythyn, Deputy Minister for Social Partnership (what that?), wrote to the WRU expressing “concern” about its ban on transgender women competing in female-only games. (Reported here March 2023.)

January 23, 2023: BBC Wales Investigates put out a 30-minute programme supporting allegations of “sexism, bullying and sexual harassment at the Welsh Rugby Union“.

January 28, 2023: It’s announced that Sport Wales – sponsored and largely funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ – has stepped in to “advise” the WRU.

January 29, 2023: Steve Phillips resigns as WRU chief executive.

February 2023: The WRU – under new management – set up a panel, chaired by Dame Anne Rafferty, to look into the allegations. This panel’s report is dated November 13, 2023.

Before the report is delivered the ‘Welsh Government’ takes advantage of the chaos it has created to appoint a new chair and CEO to the WRU. Around the same time ‘Welsh Government’ appointees also took over the Football Association of Wales (FAW). Both cases covered in this blog post.

January 3, 2024: It’s reported that Bowden has been ‘liking’ posts on X hostile to Antoniazzi.

April 16, 2025: UK Supreme Court rules that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex.

April 24, 2025: Back to the report I touched on earlier when, in the House of Commons, “Tonia Antoniazzi claimed that the Welsh government and some other institutions had previously been “captured” by LGBT charities promoting the idea that sex can be changed.” (Still held prisoner, Tonia.)

September 12, 2025: Sport Wales signs up to the Brighton plus Helsinki Declaration, which we’re told “supports the development of more fair and equal systems of sport and physical activity for women and girls“.

In Principle 1 of the Declaration we read a reference to “sexual orientation or identity“. Orientation I take to mean heterosexual or homosexual, but identity is almost certainly a reference to self-identification and trans ‘women’.

July 20, 2026: Nation.Cymru runs a piece headed ‘WRU signs international declaration on gender equality in sport‘. The piece quotes the Brighton plus Helsinki Declaration.

So what really happened?

My interpretation is that Tonia Antoniazzi and others raised legitimate concerns with the ‘Welsh Government’ about sexism, homophobia, and misogyny in Welsh rugby.

The Wokists in the Corruption Bay bubble seized on the opportunity to extend these complaints about the treatment of women to include trans ‘women’. Because, as we all know – “Trans women are women!“.

Sport Wales, the WRU, and perhaps other sporting bodies signing up to the Brighton plus Helsinki Declaration is an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court decision of April last year.

All done in the name of promoting women’s sport. It’ll only take one woman to be injured by a 19-stone psycho calling himself Daisy to put women’s sport back decades.

The new Plaid Cymru administration needs to get a handle on this. Pronto!

◊

CONCLUSION

What we’ve looked at here; net zero, the power of shadowy pressure groups, and the imposition of the Woke agenda, are part and parcel of something bigger designed to weaken and undermine the West.

We could add open borders, calls to empty the prisons, and other lunacies. Not because Marxists care about immigrants and criminals but because they appreciate the potential of such groups to damage societies, countries, and Western civilisation.

And we must confront the reality that those promoting Cultural Marxism have reached positions of power in countless organisations. With anyone trying to curb the spread of this poison paying the price.

And yet, it’s almost funny. Here’s an exchange in a House Oversight subcommittee hearing this week, in which Republican Congressman Brandon Gill of Texas questions the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History director Anthea Hartig.

He asks why her organisation lists politeness as a “defining characteristic of white supremacy culture“. The question is almost absurd. But nowhere nearly as absurd as promoting the idea that politeness is a form of racism – to be condemned.

You can see where this leads. If people stop being polite to each other, then arguments result, leading to conflict and violence, fractured societies. Which obviously serves the bigger agenda.

Treat yourself to another chortle with the marks by which ye shall know the beast that is white culture: the nuclear family, objectivity, planning ahead, etc. Basically, everything that has progressed humanity to where it is today.

It doesn’t matter whether you trace it back to the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the Cultural Marxism threatening us believes that to bring down the evil capitalist West it must go for the foundations. To attack the beliefs, structures and realities that underpin the West.

These might be Christianity, the nuclear family, patriotism, freedom of speech, rejection of state over-reach, or believing that only women can have babies.

But what’s really funny is that those promoting Wokeness, those who indoctrinate our kids in school and university, may be stupid enough to genuinely believe they’re creating a better world in which they’ll have some leadership role.

When in reality they’ve become someone else’s useful idiots. For Cultural Marxism has for some time been funded and manipulated by individuals and corporate interests that want to own everything and control everybody.

If the Globalists succeed then those you’ve read about here might be dealt with in the same way Hitler dealt with the Brownshirts when they’d served their purpose.

Now that’ll definitely be worth a chortle or two!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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The Destruction Of The Elenydd

On By JacIn Bute Energy, Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Globalism71 Comments

I suppose I’d better begin by explaining where we are when I talk of ‘the Elenydd’. It’s the wild, and largely unpopulated uplands shown on this Google Earth capture.

The last true wilderness in Wales. Now it’s being industrialised and destroyed by the ‘renewables’ industry, all foreign-owned companies.

With other parcels of land being bought by ‘environmental’ groups and other sheep in wolf’s clothing. (That is not an allusion to the Fabian Society.) One of these groups gives the appearance of being Welsh, the others are the usual suspects; National Trust (NT), Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) . . .

Here’s how Google AI describes the Elenydd:

The least populated and wildest area in southern Britain . . .

The largest continuous tract of blanket mire in the Welsh uplands, designated as a Special Area of Conservation supporting rare birds like red kites, merlins, and diverse upland flora.

Clearly, we are dealing with a very special area – one that should be left to those who have cared for it for generations. But that would mean farmers and others, now viewed as the enemy by those who have elected themselves our saviours from evils as diverse as the climate crisis and the threat from the far-right.

For the two are invariably linked. Those dictating how we behave, even what we eat, in response to the ‘climate crisis’, are often the same people telling us what’s acceptable thinking in the political sphere.

Because it’s all about control. Controlling us.

◊

FURTHER BACKGROUND

I’m going to start with a document produced by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ back in 2019, called Future Wales The National Plan 2040. There, in amongst this melange of hopes, dreams, incoherent ramblings and utter bullshit, on page 94, we find a map showing the areas set aside for wind farms.

They’re numbered and bounded in black. Roughly speaking, the Elenydd is north east of the area 8 panhandle and east of area 6.

Whatever the original purpose of this map showing ‘pre-assessed’ areas, it soon proved worthless and misleading.

A fact illustrated by the map below, produced by Caru Teifi, a group protesting against the pylon runs needed to take the electricity intermittently generated by wind farms to the grid connection point south of Carmarthen.

In the south it appears that most of the turbines built (light blue), and planned (dark blue) are outside the ‘pre-assessed’ areas.

And as you’ll see in a minute. it’s the same – or worse – in the area we’re looking at.

So what was the point of the ‘pre-assessed’ areas in the 2019 National Plan if the ‘Welsh Government was simply going to allow a “near enough” approach that borders on a free-for-all?

Time now to look at the wind turbine projects on the Elenydd. The known knowns, the known unknowns, the unknown unknowns, and the unknown knowns.

◊

WHAT’S PLANNED

We can safely identify four projects. Three we’ve known about for a few years, with another announced this year.

The first involves Scottish company Bute Energy Ltd. Their project is Lan Fawr. There was another project nearby labelled Bryn Brawd, but it seems they’ve merged. Now it’s one sooper-dooper project with 55 turbines up to 800ft in height. Labelled 1 in the image below, and in two parts.

Next is Belltown Power’s Waun Maenllwyd project. Just 4 to 6 turbines. Labelled 2 in the map above. It’s suggested the Belltown project might be taken over by Bute. Alternatively – and I find this interesting – that the Foresight Group, which is behind Belltown, might take over Bute!

Number 3 is Galileo Empower UK’s Bryn Cadwgan project. Galileo has it’s UK office in Edinburgh (and an outpost in Cardiff), but is owned by investors and pension funds from just about everywhere, as far away as New Zealand.

Lastly, we take a brief look at the newest of them, EDF’s Nant y Maen. This straddles the Tregaron to Abergwesyn road. It’s definitely in the pipeline; confirmed by this ‘WG’ document. EDF is wholly owned the French Government.

Local sources insist there are other projects yet to be unveiled. Two, it’s believed.

Access to these projects is planned from the A482 at Pumsaint. Something I covered in The Road To Hell back in November 2023. Then it’s over the old Dolaucothi Estate, now owned, like far too much of Wales, by the National Trust.

After Pumsaint, it’s anyone’s guess, but I guarantee it will involve new roads, hundreds or thousands of trees felled, and massive disruption to the environment over an extended period of time.

But before reaching Pumsaint the turbine columns and blades will be transported on huge diesel smoke-belching trucks along country roads from Swansea docks.

Disruption and destruction all the way so that foreign investors can make money.

Unless, of course, you’re stupid enough to believe that this is all being done to save the planet, and Wales will somehow benefit. Are you that stupid?

◊

‘WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE NEWTS!’

In the intro I referred to a couple of recent purchases in the Elenydd by rewilders and others. So let’s look at them.

First, is one I covered in Land Of Our Fathers, But Not Our Children, in February. This concerned the purchase of 1195 acres by an outfit called Tir Natur.

The area bought is shown in this map by Caru Cymru I linked to earlier. It’s the dull green area below EDF’s Nant y Maen project. (I urge you to consult the Caru Teifi website maps and use the layers available to see what’s what in the area.)

Quite a purchase, and achieved with, according to Farmers Weekly and other sources, a “philanthropic bridging loan“. Wasn’t that nice!

Earlier this month, we learnt that the RSPB had bought 96 hectares at ‘Galltybere’ or ‘Gallt-y-Bere’, which is shown on OS maps (see above) as Craig Alltyberau. This adjoins the planned Galileo Empower Bryn Cadwgan wind farm.

And whaddya know – this purchase also received a “philanthropic loan“.

I wonder where these ‘loans’ come from? Can I have one?

Now for a detour, but not really a digression. We’re going to Scotland, sticking with the RSPB – and there’s more magic money!

Down the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh, not far from North Berwick, rising from the North Sea is the volcanic plug of Bass Rock. A home to many birds, and the largest colony of Northern Gannets.

These are magnificent birds, with a wingspan of six feet or more. While searching for prey they soar or glide until folding back their wings to dive into the sea.

Not far away is the Isle of May. This is home to 50,000 puffins, plus guillemots, razorbills, and other birds.

Hanging over this avian idyll is the threat of 307 wind turbines, in a project approved last year. As might be expected, RSPB Scotland objected. Stating:

Berwick Bank is a gigantic windfarm. To put it in perspective, it would take up an area four times the size of Edinburgh with more than 300 turbines – each the height of six Scott Monuments. 

But then something strange happened. Operating through the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the UK government made a grant of £586,000 to RSPB Scotland – to buy Bass Rock!

I can’t help thinking that what was really being bought was the RSPB’s silence.

◊

CONCLUSION

You don’t need to be cynical to believe that when there’s billions of pounds, dollars, euros or whatever in profits to be made, certain measures will be taken to guarantee those profits. Among those ‘measures’ will be neutralising the opposition.

Unless they’re powerful and well organised, local groups can be largely disregarded, developers can even play one off against another. The same principle applies to landowners and farmers. But when it comes to groups that are well-established, with a national or even international structure, and have the ear of politicians, then a different approach is needed.

And this might explain the magic money that appears regularly in the accounts of wildlife and environmental groups. Sometimes it’s out in the open.

Aviva, the institutional investor owned by Vanguard and others, has given just shy of £40m to the Wildlife Trusts to restore Celtic Rainforests along the western edge of Britain. Much of this money will be coming to Wales. Some already has, and it’s gone to the Elenydd.

I dealt with this February, in The Latest Enviro-scam – ‘Celtic Rainforests’.

In fact, it seems most 0f Wales is a rainforest. Who knew?

Though the Elenydd seems to be in the ‘Oceanic Climate’ zone rather than that described as ‘Hyper Oceanic Climate’.

At the risk of coming across as a cynical old bastard I’ll spell out what I think might be happening in the Elenydd. Shyster ‘developers’ want to destroy an almost pristine wilderness for profit, and have, by one route or another, given money to environmental groups to buy adjoining land.

The developers will then argue that wind turbines, and the work associated with them, pose no threat to wildlife or the environment. If they did – then surely their neighbours like Tir Natur and RSPB would be complaining. “Stands to reason, squire“.

For their part, the recipients of this largesse will tell themselves that sacrifices must be made for the greater good and the bigger picture.

For you must remember that those I’m describing have bought into the climate scam, making their position ambivalent. And rarely have I seen it more evident than in the RSPB Scotland statement I linked earlier.

We can unlock a future where Scotland’s already struggling seabirds are helped to recover, while producing the renewable energy needed to help fight climate change.  

So, for the greater good, sacrifices must be made. But that’s OK, as long as it’s the dicky birds making the sacrifice.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Gilestone And Other Developments

On By JacIn Abergavennyshire, Civil Service, Colonisation of Wales, Farming, Globalism, Greens, Welsh Government26 Comments

For those who don’t know the story, or have chosen to forget, Gilestone farm, near Talybont-on-Usk, was bought in 2022 by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ for £4.25m.

The excuse given was that Gilestone was to be a new home for the Green Man Festival, which holds its knees-ups not far away on the Glanusk Estate. They got away with it for a while, but the story was never really convincing.

Then ospreys appeared at Gilestone – the first sighting of these birds in southern Wales for over 200 years! Some said they’d been attracted there to cover the collapsed Green Man deal and justify ‘Welsh Government’ imposing access restrictions.

◊

GILESTONE, WATER, FARMING

As you might have guessed from previous postings on this blog, I soon stopped believing that Gilestone had been bought for the Green Man Festival. Especially after talking to a previous owner who claimed her family had been forced out of Gilestone by the (then) Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, using a solicitor in Swansea who soon after became a Labour Assembly Member.

Another factor for rejecting the Green Man explanation was learning that a new group called the Beacons Water Group (BWG) had been formed (May 2020), and among the directors were the owner of Gilestone, and his neighbour across the River Usk. And that this group had travelled to Upstate New York to study how the Watershed Agricultural Council manages the water supply to the the Big Apple.

Given the regular talk of moving water from Wales to southern England, and the fact that both the River Usk and the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal flow across Gilestone land, I concluded that the answer to why the farm was purchased lay in water supply.

A suspicion firmed up by learning of another group formed by Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water (DCWW) following the US trip (and a reciprocal visit). This was the Bannau Brycheiniog Mega Catchment group, copying what was found in the USA.

Matters covered in these posts: ‘Green Man, Red Herring?‘; ‘Gilestone Revisited‘; and ‘Gilestone: Thinking Outside The Box‘;

And there was definitely a political dimension to it all.

I say that due to the involvement of ‘Welsh Government’ civil servant David Ashford. He’d been working on “sustainable land management policies to replace the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Wales“, was then seconded to Dŵr Cymru just after the US visits (in the same month the BWG was formed), before returning to WG to work on the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).

Why would a senior civil servant dealing with farming spend two years “Developing new partnerships to improve water quality and a range of other benefits across water catchments within the Brecon Beacons” . . . unless farming was involved?

And of course it was. Those who formed the Beacons Water Group were all farmers. Water quality figures prominently in the SFS (and other) legislation.

The US example contains powers of compulsory purchase (‘Eminent domain’ in the USA) to guarantee water quality. Compulsory purchase is not mentioned in the Welsh SFS legislation but it is covered in the UK government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Part 5), which became law in December last year. The Sustainable Farming Scheme in Wales launched the following month.

And let’s remember that the prominent Globalist, and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon was, in April 2023, openly calling for compulsory purchase “for wind and solar builds“.

So while the visit from the Watershed Agricultural Council in March 2018, and the visit to the Catskills in June 2019, followed by the formation of the Beacons Water Group CIC and the Bannau Brycheiniog Mega Catchment group, were ostensibly about water quality, farming was inextricably involved.

◊

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS, ABERGAVENNYSHIRE LINKAGES

A very recent development was the launch last month of Beacons Rural Energy Ltd (BRE). Three of the current seven directors of the Beacons Water Group are found among the nine directors of the new company.

But what’s the purpose of Beacons Rural Energy Ltd? Here’s what the Certificate of Incorporation filed with Companies House tells us:

So it’s “smart renewable energy projects“. But how will they produce, transmit, distribute and trade electricity? Being in a national park rules out large wind turbines and fields filled with solar panels. So what’s left?

Well, “Hydro” is mentioned. Which takes us back to water. And of course, DCWW.

Clearly, there’s a connection between Beacons Water Group and Beacons Rural Energy, and I believe it extends beyond the principals involved in both; Richard James Roderick (of the farm next-door to Gilestone), Keri Howell Davies, and David Stephen Thomas. Other links would be the Brecknockshire Agricultural Society, the National Farmers Union (NFU), and Farming Connect.

In February 2022 the NFU stated it would “do its best” to meet the 2030 net zero target. John Davies, outgoing NFU Cymru president, reminded us, “we were the first farming organisation to set the goal of net zero by 2040“.

The clip below is from the current NFU website. Rowing back a bit?

Our position remains that journeying towards net zero must not compromise food production, farm profitability, or export emissions overseas by replacing British food with imported food produced to lower standards of environmental protection.

As for Farming Connect, this is run by the ‘Welsh Government’ as a kind of club for farmers who go along with Corruption Bay diktats. Either from Ministers, or from civil servants, like David Ashford, answering to their bosses in London.

Maybe some of the ‘good’ farmers from Farming Connect and Beacons Water Group will be helped make some money through renewable energy projects.

But will these projects be economically viable? And will public funding be involved?

One name among the directors of Beacons Rural Energy, Andrew Geoffrey Matthews, was new to me. But I think I found him in this document of the Aberhonddu Lodge of Freemasons. It may be ten years old, but it’s still informative.

In addition to Worshipful Master Bro Andrew G Matthews you’ll see that I’ve also highlighted Steward Richard J Roderick. There may be others involved with the Lodge, it’s not easy to tell with so many common Welsh surnames.

Think about it, here we are in 2026, after 27 years of ‘progressive’ administrations in Wales; and a bunch of men who like to dress up and spout nonsense in a men-only group still have influence with politicians and civil servants.

Then again, in Globalist-left Wales, men in funny outfits spouting bollocks are almost the norm. Certainly accepted. And influential.

Back to the bigger picture.

Abergavennyshire has proved very attractive to left-liberal do-gooders with ideas on how to save the planet – usually with our money. And how to make better human beings of us all – but only if we listen to them.

They’ve been colonising the area for a few decades. Which would be bad enough in itself, but they also have political clout. The results are everywhere. So are the linkages.

A director of BWG is Anthony Hugh Martineau, who has, or had, connections with Coleg Soros in Talgarth. The current chair of the trustees there is Chris Blake. Here’s his Linkedin bio.

One of his current ventures is The Green Valleys (Wales). Below is a clip from the most recent accounts filed with Companies House, for year ending 31.10.2024.

I’m not sure what happened, but it don’t look good. Turnover and profits slumped, and it all seemed to go tits up. Then, the other directors left last month. Among them Grenville Ham, former capo in the Greens, who switched to Plaid Cymru when the Greens refused to set up a Welsh party.

Green Valleys would appear to have folded. Is the recently-launched Beacons Rural Energy some kind of replacement?

◊

CONCLUSION

One of the attractions of the Abergavennyshire and Bannau area is of course its scenic beauty, helped by the absence of wind turbines and vast acreages of solar panels. But this is problematic for the ‘Welsh Government’, which wants every area of Wales to be seen to be saving the planet.

The maps below might help. On the left is the official map showing areas “pre-assessed” for industrial scale wind turbines in southern Wales. On the right, a map produced by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW), showing existing or planned windfarms. (In the case of the latter category, those that are known about.)

The red lines on the CPRW map are pylon runs.

Outside and to the east of area 6 there are a number of projects planned. These are in the wild, unspoilt Elenydd. Reminding us that the “pre-assessed” areas are just a rough guideline, but national parks are still off-limits . . . for the time being.

Which must also vex the fanatics who want Wales to have more ‘renewables’. Clearly, something else, a different approach, is needed. Which is where the various outfits mentioned above may give a clue.

Because I still believe water is the key to understanding the developments we’ve seen over the past eight years or so, and that includes buying Gilestone. So with wind turbines and the rest ruled out, are the Bannau to become a hot-spot for hydro schemes?

Another hoped-for advantage of focusing on doing good things with water resources might have been generating good publicity for Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Unpopular with the public at large but long defended by the ‘Welsh Government’, Natural Resources Wales, and environmental groups.

Who, for differing reasons, blamed farmers for every discharge or spillage.

If so, then it failed. Because too many recent cases have made everyone aware of what many of us always knew. Here’s a recent case that resulted in a £45m fine.

But then, what’s one more lie added to all the rest? As George Carlin used to say in explaining how shadowy forces control things: “It’s a big club – and you ain’t in it“. (This short video is worth a watch.)

Difficult to believe that was recorded over 20 years ago. He was right then. And it’s a hell of lot worse now. R.I.P. George Carlin.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Plaid Cymru Turns Against The Dragon

On By JacIn Far Left, Globalism, Plaid Cymru41 Comments

I wish I didn’t have to write this, but it needed to be written. Not least because it highlights how Globalism, through the capture of leftists and their organisations, like Plaid Cymru, promotes its agenda.

◊

GLOBALISM, SUMMARY

Globalism is very wealthy families and individuals, supranational bodies and major corporations hoping to benefit from an undemocratic form of world government that imposes censorship and other controls on the population at large.

They target the West because, for obvious reasons, China, Russia, India and other big players are beyond their control. Though China is perhaps the inspiration. In that it’s the perfect combination of a one-party political system and almost unfettered capitalism.

To help enforce its agenda, by weakening the West economically, Globalism has for decades used an invented climate crisis demanding net zero and other costly sacrifices. Also, and certainly since 2016 – Brexit and Trump’s election – open borders.

Immigration is needed partly to replace the working class support lost by leftist parties. And also to justify censorship and creeping authoritarianism through a two-tier policing and justice system deemed essential to combat “racism” and the “far-right“.

To help them achieve The New World Order Globalists recruited Marxism and Islam. These have been co-opted because they share a desire to destroy the West. Which then explains the alliance between them we see today.

The obstacles to the Globalists’ ambitions are freedom of speech, family, private property, people’s pride in national identity, cultural homogeneity, social cohesion, Christianity, and any other focus of loyalty or affection.

These must all be vilified.

Globalism is further facilitated by ‘the long march through the institutions’ (© ‘Red’ Rudi Dutschke) defended and protected by Globalist control of the ‘legacy’ media.

Globalism often employs bribery or kompromat. More likely to be the latter with many politicians, certainly the current UK prime minister.

Though the tactic of capture is not without humour. Perhaps the funniest example is The Green Party, which used to be about saving the whale; now it’s open borders, trans rights, and the crusade against Islamophobia.

Watching these clowns is now more entertaining than anything put out as ‘comedy’ by the BBC.

◊

THE MIND READERS OF WRECSAM

My attention was drawn to this issue by a piece in the Western Mail on Monday. I don’t think I was aware of the matter before this; but after reading the article I naturally got curious.

It seems to link – or certainly that’s the allegation made – with a planned hostel for ‘refugees’ or illegal migrants in Rhosllanerchrugog, famous for its male voice choir, and memorably described by Harri Webb when the Cross Foxes ran dry.

The council objected, and the plan was dropped. This was all back in January. It’s claimed this episode led to Welsh flags being put up around the city. Certainly, that’s what’s alleged in a petition launched May 18. Here it is: Remove illegally placed banners from lampposts in Wrexham.

The wording of the petition is fascinating, and worrying. Let’s begin with the opening paragraph.

Recently, our beloved community in Wrexham has been under siege by a wave of illegally placed banners and flags that have appeared on lampposts and other public fixtures. These banners, adorned with national symbols, have been commandeered by right-wing agitators and racists, turning what should be a representation of pride and unity into tools of fear and intimidation.

Wrecsam “Under siege“! Banners “Adorned with national symbols“. No, it’s our national flag. And it’s a dragon. But then comes the assumption that these flags have been “commandeered by right-wing agitators and racists“.

But if they were “commandeered“, then who put them up in the first place?

And if a flag is “a representation of . . . unity“, then surely it doesn’t matter who put them up. Rally ’round the flag, boys!

The clear message here is that the Welsh national flag – our flag – is only acceptable when it’s flown by people approved of by whoever worded the petition. That is, leftists.

The second paragraph reads:

The situation is particularly distressing for our vulnerable immigrant communities, who feel targeted and alienated by these divisive displays. The right of every citizen to feel safe and welcome in their own neighbourhood is fundamental, yet this basic right is being undermined by a few with harmful agendas.

Why are the immigrant communities “vulnerable“? Are they under attack from the same marauding horde that’s put the whole city “under siege“? After diligently searching, but failing to find le mot juste, I’ll dismiss this claim as hyperbolic bullshit. Where’s my violin?

Though I agree that every citizen should feel safe in their own neighbourhood. But if the allegations made are true, and the flags link with the property in Rhos, then doesn’t the indigenous population also have a right to feel safe?

Or are natives of Wrecsam concerned about such hostels, and the threats they pose, automatically “right-wing agitators and racists“?

Why shouldn’t they be concerned? For as we know, there’s far more likelihood of a local being attacked by an immigrant than there is of a migrant being beheaded by Tyrone from Caia Park.

The change.org website gives the “petition starter” as ‘Lower the Flags Wrexham’.  But who’s behind it?

Someone named in the article I linked to at the top, and a number of other reports, is Iolanda Banu Viegas. Originally from Mozambique, and a Portuguese citizen. I suspect she’s involved.

Iolanda was a Plaid Cymru candidate in 2017, and again in 2022. She’s also the Regional Coordinator and TSPC representative for North Wales / Community Support Officer for North & East Wales in Race Council Cymru. A body that relies heavily on ‘Welsh Government’ funding.

She was also involved with Black History Wales. That rather desperate exercise that tried to make us believe a few black individuals scattered here and there, over centuries, amounted to a distinct historical narrative.

Inevitably, perhaps, she was involved with BLM, mourning and celebrating the drug overdosed career criminal George Floyd.

Clearly, Ms Viegas has something of an obsession with race. And it seems she rarely misses a chance to tell us Welsh what racists we are.

But at the end of the day, what is a flag? First and foremost, it’s a form of identification. It says: ‘This is who I am, this is where I belong, this is my country’. Whereas raising a flag, or removing one, is symbolic of resistance, change, even conquest.

I know that. And so do those wanting to take down my flag.

I can’t help but compare this flags farrago to a certain demographic objecting to people having dogs.

◊

THE LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS

I mentioned this in the first part, and now I’m going to explore it a wee bit more. Perhaps I first became aware of it back in 2021, with the capture of the independence movement YesCymru by people wanting to subvert that group into a bullhorn for the Woke agenda. (Covered extensively on this blog.)

By ‘Woke agenda’ I mean the climate scam, trans rights, DEI, CRT, and all the rest mentioned earlier. And there’s always something new, a new minority, a fresh evil to be combatted. These are ever changing in order to confuse.

The takeover of YesCymru was noticeable because of the speed and the manner of it. But it had already happened to Plaid Cymru. And to Welsh language bodies from nursery group Mudiad Meithrin to the Urdd and the National Eisteddfod.

When I looked into it I was even given names of individuals whose poison-spreading paths could be traced from one group to another. With the message backed up by the threat of ‘Welsh Government’ funding being withheld from any body not falling into line.

Another example of Plaid Cymru and Labour working hand in glove.

For many of the intellectual lightweights pushing the Woke mind virus it’s a case of seeing how much they can get away with before the adults in the room tell them enough is enough.

Just look at the class clown smirk on the face of new Plaid Senedd Member Sarah Rees. Read the article. Sarah Rees was of course involved in the YesCymru fiasco.

Meanwhile, up in the House of Commons, Plaid’s four MPs voted to oppose single-sex spaces for women. Cos it would be transphobic.

Despite all the pre-election promises about the economy, education, the NHS, infrastructure, etc, Plaid’s priority seems to be figuring out a way to ignore the Supreme Court’s decision that sex is biological.

And why did South Wales Police put out an instruction to its officers that they should record non-crime “instances of anti-Muslim hostility“?

After a letter from the Shadow Minister for Equalities Claire Coutinho SWP has agreed to withdraw this ‘guidance’. But why issue it in the first place? The answer is that senior ranks of the police service – and the Police College – have been captured.

◊

CONCLUSION

The broad church Plaid Cymru was when I joined in the 1960s is long dead. The drift to the left began in the 1980s under the leadership of Dafydd Elis Thomas then, under Antifa-supporting Leanne Wood, we saw a moderate, almost reasonable kind of socialism, degenerate into the name-calling and label-attaching silliness of Wokery.

But it mustn’t be dismissed lightly because the fuss over flags in Wrecsam is simply a bigger production scaled down for a local stage. We’ve seen Antifa and other fanatics burn flags in the USA; or it’s councils in England tearing down Union flags or St George crosses because the permanently offended claim to feel ‘unsafe’ or ‘threatened’.

Now it’s come to Wales.

Remember that the council rejected the plan for the Rhos hostel in January, and the plan was dropped. That should have been the end of it. But in mid-May a petition was launched claiming the Welsh flags flying in Wrecsam were linked with the hostel, they were intimidating minorities, and they should be removed.

Does that make sense?

No, but it fits into the bigger picture of the ideological capture of Plaid Cymru. Plaid now promotes the idea that only people on the left care about Wales. Or, perhaps more worryingly, that only leftists are allowed to care about Wales.

Plaid has set itself up as the arbiter of who can, and who can’t, fly our national flag.

Thus delegitimising the views of anyone to the right of centre. Even someone like myself; who’s always defended Wales, Welsh identity, and always wanted independence.

This can only be explained by realising that Plaid Cymru is a hollowed-out sham. It claims to want ‘independence’ – in order to give it away by rejoining the European Union, submitting to the United Nations . . . and the Globalist agenda.

That agenda includes the ending of borders and the erasure of national identities.

Submit to this insanity in Wrecsam and those behind it will be emboldened. They’ll be able to claim that any Welsh flag, anywhere in the country, is the work of racists and the far-right, offensive to somebody or other, and demand it be taken down.

Because that is the bigger agenda to which Plaid Cymru has submitted. Oblivious to the irony, the contradiction, in preaching that Wales is open to all – but only certain people are allowed to fly the flag.

How long now before Owain Glyndŵr is ‘re-evaluated’? For a start, he was far too white. Those who followed him were not diverse. Then there was the fighting, clearly a case of toxic masculinity. And he was obviously straight – all those kids!

◊

FINAL WORD

It’s been strange writing this because when I joined Plaid Cymru we were struggling to get Y Ddraig Goch flown on public buildings and elsewhere. Now that same party is campaigning to have our national flag removed.

Let me say to anyone who’s arrived in Wales, from Mozambique or Manchester . . . If you find my flag objectionable, or if you feel “targeted and alienated” by it, you really should ask yourself whether Wales is the place for you.

But any attempt to tell me I can’t fly MY flag in MY country because my wider political stance doesn’t align with that of Woke activists will get a crisp, two-word response.

And the second word will be “off!“.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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