A Case Study In ‘Rewilding’

In a sense, this is a follow-up to last week’s offering, Budget Boost For Rewilders And Globalists. This week, I’m looking at an example of ‘rewilding’ which, on closer inspection, turns out to be a tourism business – receiving funding for posing as a rewilding project.

I’ll fit this into a more general evaluation of ‘rewilding’, and what it really means.

Incidentally, last week’s piece about Tir Natur’s project got a response from ‘Welsh Government’-funded Nation.Cymru and Stephen Price, its Senior Reporter.

Price has a background “working in the third and charity sectors“, and a “voluntary role as a Keep Wales Tidy Litter Champion“. Which gives us another link between that charity and Tir Natur.

SETTING THE SCENE

This week, we’re mid-way between Abergavenny and Monmouth, the region I’ve dubbed ‘Abergavennyshire’ due to an influx of ‘progressives’ from the hell-holes of ‘Metro-Land’ and elsewhere.

(It should go without saying that Stephen Price lives in Abergavennyshire.)

Despite its distance from Corruption Bay, our politicians care more for these recent arrivals than for Welsh people. Certainly, that’s my conclusion when I consider the funding and other patronage bestowed on Abergavennyshire.

Perhaps a reward for this ingress strengthening Labour’s position as the largest party on Monmouthshire county council.

It’s here we find the Abergavenny Food Festival, Coleg Soros, Brecon Jazz Festival, Hay Festival, the many bodies arguing farmers are killing the Wye and the Usk. And of course – Gilestone farm, and the Green Man Festival. Etc., etc.

Map of Abergavennyshire. You’ll see it’s a cross-border unit because many of the new arrivals feel unsafe with thoughts of borders and nations.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Our destination today is not easy to reach. There’s no A road in the vicinity. Instead, it’s the B4233, then a track off that road, and after you’ve gone up a-ways, it’s another track to the destination.

This off-road excursion brings us to the The Grange Project. Run by Tom Constable and his wife Chloe, who bought the farm in April last year for £1.875m, without need of a loan or a mortgage.

But as the entry on Rewilding Britain tells us, there’s a lot more going on:

The vision for the site includes developing new nature-based tourism, including log cabins, alongside education and wellbeing programmes hosted in a beautiful converted barn on site. Chloe intends to use her background in clinical psychology to run courses focusing on the systemic resilience required to address the climate and biodiversity crises, while Tom will use his background in business to support ecopreneurs as they set-up and thrive on site.

Those who’ve been brainwashed, worked into a frenzy over a non-existent ‘climate crisis’, will be able to come to The Grange for treatment. At a cost, of course.

The Grange Project also does podcasts – in fact, Tom Constable is a professional – and here we find another link with last week’s piece.

You may remember Dan Ward, one of those involved with Tir Natur, was also working with North Star Transition. North Star was created by Jyoti Banerjee, who starred on the Grange podcast last week.

Small world, innit!

A CLOSER LOOK

Those who’ve given themselves nightmares from reading too much Monbiot won’t be the only visitors, for The Grange also offers corporate away days. Where the IT department of Global Gizmos Inc can come gaze at trees and stuff.

Better still . . . for the trifling sum of £10,000 you can enjoy “two bespoke corporate away days“. Read more in the Corporate Partnership Proposal.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I tell you what . . . for half that (in ready cash) you can have two corporate away days in my back garden, There’s flower beds, and a tree, and, er, grass, and if it’s wildlife you’re after then I’ll get our cat to put in an appearance.

If it’s raining you can sit in the conservatory. The missus will lay on a cuppa and biccies. Can’t say fairer than that, squire.

I have no doubt that the companies turning up for these eco-jollies will be claiming tax deductions, which will contribute to the ‘black hole’ in the UK accounts, and be used to justify freezing pensioners this winter.

That’s the ‘circular economy’ you keep hearing about.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And sure enough, in the Corporate Partnership Proposal we find predictable ‘quotations’.

One from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), that outfit launched by Nazis using environmentalism as the new way to seize power and cull the untermensch.

The other is attributed to ‘Native American Wisdom’. (Are people still falling for that bollocks!) Here’s some wisdom from a source as much Native American as the one quoted: ‘Big Chief Jac-on-Blog say: “Environmentalists speak with forked tongue“‘.

The Grange website also offers, “our own glamping cabins and bespoke bell tents“, and elsewhere, “off grid escapes” in caravan-type structures made by Herefordshire chippie Simon Whitfield.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Whitfield runs The Tiny Home Company. When I tried to find it on the Companies House website I drew a blank. So I went back to the website and scrolled down the homepage, where, in the smallest font imaginable, was: “The Tiny Home Company is a trading name of WB Capital Ventures Limited“.

But it was only by copying and posting it into Word that I was able to read that. Why so small? Very odd.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

WB Capital Ventures Ltd was formed as recently as July, and I assume ‘WB’ stands for Whitfield Brothers, because the two directors are Simon Peter Whitfield and his older brother(?) John Robert Whitfield.

The twelve shares split 8 – 4 in favour of the older brother. Who maybe put up the cash. He has over a million pounds sitting in the bank account of his other company.

And talking of money . . .

In its short life The Grange Project has already trousered £26,650 from the Coetiroedd Bach scheme. I guarantee there’ll be more grants in future.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I’ll end this section with a brief look at what’s registered with Companies House. There are two companies.

One’s Wild Grange Farm Ltd, launched as recently as September 5, with the Constables as the only directors and shareholders.

And then there’s the Community Interest Company, formed in August, Wild Grange CIC. Again, Tom and Chloe Constable are the only directors (or members) and shareholders. Which I found odd. Because with a CIC I would expect to see others named, representing the community that will benefit.

This is usually people in the vicinity. So I went to the Companies House website entry for Wild Grange CIC and the Certificate of Incorporation. Most of which is pro forma.

Though towards the end it sets out who might benefit from the CIC:

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Which is fair enough, and what I expected. But what I read earlier in the document has me thinking. I refer to Rewilding Britain, as the ‘asset locked body‘.

A worst case scenario might be . . . the farm title is transferred to the CIC, which liquidates, and Rewilding Britain takes over The Grange.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In the clip above, the Charity number given is that for Rewilding Britain. Whereas the address is for The Trust Partnership (and associated companies), which I assume drew up the arrangement.

The mystery is company number 08943330. For it refers to Mental Mastery Ltd, of Bournemouth, that dissolved 18 months after being formed, without filing anything.

I’ll assume it’s a typo. But if not . . .

THOUGHTS ON REWILDNG

Let me be clear, there might be a role for small-scale rewilding such as we’re asked to see at The Grange.

Thinking again of my back garden . . . if I let it run wild it would sprout plants, flowers; attract butterflies and other insects, some small mammals, maybe a foraging hedgehog.

But once we talk about pine marten, beaver, wild boar, deer, wild ponies, ancient cattle, then we need more land than even the 1,000 acres Tir Natur is hoping to buy.

Because without large areas for these animals to roam and live naturally, problems such as stress, over-grazing, and in-breeding will occur.

Of course, food can be brought in, and fresh bloodlines can be introduced; but if ‘rewilding’ doesn’t create a self-perpetuating ecosystem, as in nature, then that defeats the whole object of the exercise.

One answer might be linking separated projects with ‘corridors’. I mention this because the idea features regularly in rewilding fantasies. Such as one in Cornwall called Tor to Shore. (Does that ring a bell?)

While Helman Tor sits near the top of the Par River, areas downstream are surrounded by farmland, where the project will partner with local farmers to tackle agricultural pollution and create ‘wildlife corridors’ – areas of habitat that . . . connect with other nature-rich sites, allowing wildlife to thrive beyond the reserve’s boundaries.

Rewilding Britain got its ass kicked for its involvement in a similarly-named colonialist land grab. It may be treading more carefully now, yet it’s deeply involved at The Grange, and seems to have been involved from the outset.

But how well do animals understand ‘corridors’? Not well at all; so that would mean mile after mile of fencing . . . which will inevitably get broken.

Mrs Jones will wake one morning to find aurochs feasting on her prize geraniums. And, then, when she goes out to shoo them away, and one of the buggers tramples her . . .

Or maybe it’ll be the consolation prize of tauros.

Auroch. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I haven’t mentioned predators like wild cat, lynx, and wolf. All of which appear in rewilders’ literature. Yet they have to be present, for without the balance created by their natural predators introduced prey animals will need to be regularly culled.

As deer are culled in the Highlands, due to the absence of wolves. While a shortage of prey animals will see predators going elsewhere to get a meal. (‘Look out, Mrs Jones!‘)

Which means that for a rewilding project to be viable it would need 20,000 or more self-contained acres. There would need to be enough food for a range of herbivores and foragers, whose numbers would be kept in check by predators – as in the wild.

In a small country like Wales we just don’t have that land to spare. Not if we; a) want a farming industry and b) let people access the countryside.

Which brings us to a very fundamental question, one confronting us at Grange Farm: ‘What is the real purpose of rewilding?’ This article (February 2023) asks a very similar question, and gives some disturbing answers.

A bit leftist for my tastes but it still makes good points about farms being lost, and corporate investment through middle men, agents, and front organisations.

Organisations such as Rewilding Britain, involved with three-year-old Nattergal. Below is Nattergal director and CEO Archie Struthers, panellist at Rewilding Britain’s Blue Earth Summit last month.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Nattergal is owned by Lansdowne Developed Markets Master Fund Limited of the Cayman Islands.

One day Archie’s a ruthless investments guru, next day he’s saving the planet. These things happen. After Christmas I’m joining the Socialist Workers Party. (Yes, really!)

Archie’s a busy man for Nattergal, and the company’s mystery owner. Let’s look at three recent ventures. Starting with High Fen Wildland, where we read:

High Fen will offer wellness, eco-tourism, educational and research opportunities to provide opportunities for people as well as wildlife.

Wildlife comes last. Almost an afterthought.

The other two are Boothby Wildland, where, “Nattergal hopes to generate revenues through the sale of ecosystem services (natural capital)“. And Harold’s Park Wildland, that “will generate income from the sale of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) units and corporate sponsorship, and will support nature based tourism and recreation“.

Archie also has a couple of relatively new companies of his own, registered in Glasgow. Ardmaddy Ventures Ltd, named for his Argyll estate; and Nature Based Investment Solutions Ltd.

Make no mistake, corporate ‘investors’ are circling Welsh family farms like vultures.

There was an example just last week of farmers being ‘cold called’ by a company named Property Vision. Acting on behalf of anonymous ‘investors’.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Rewilding Britain is involved with three projects in Wales in addition to The Grange; they are:

Cefn Garthenor, in Ceredigion. Gilfach, in Powys. Wilder Pentwyn, also in Powys.

They have three things in common:

1/ They were once homes to Welsh families.

2/ They are no longer working farms producing food.

3/ They have received substantial ‘Welsh Government ‘ funding

Always worth remembering when some clown gets all misty-eyed over ‘rewilding’.

CONCLUSION

On a fundamental level, The Grange Project makes no environmental sense due to the increased traffic emissions as engines struggle with gradients and rough tracks to even reach the place.

More environmental damage than the working farm it replaced. Unless of course you want to be really stupid and introduce the threat posed to us all by farting cows. (Fortunately, ‘Dr’ Bill Gates has a solution.)

The Grange Project is clearly a tourism project and a ‘wellness’ retreat for hysterical Guardian readers raking in extra money by presenting itself as a rewilding project. Like those we looked at earlier linked with Archie Struthers.

I believe genuine rewilding is incompatible with daily visits from the public, especially noisy children, and middle management on a raucous day out. Making it all rather phoney.

Especially if there’s ‘natural capital’ and ‘biodiversity net gain’ involved.

And let’s remember that The Grange is less than 100 acres in total. From what I can see, a few trees have been planted and pigs allowed to muddy up some fields. Is that really ‘rewilding’?

If so, then why aren’t we all offered money to let our gardens run wild? A few thousand of us, in Wales alone, could make a big contribution to the environment and biodiversity.

Because, gentle reader, ‘rewilding’, with the involvement of outfits like BlackRock, is not about saving the planet; it complements legislation and other measures intended to undermine farming, thereby freeing up land for acquisition and investment.

‘Rewilding’ is just the prettied-up face of the Globalist land grab.

Once you understand that – everything else makes sense!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Budget Boost For Rewilders And Globalists

This post is about a group I’ve mentioned before, Tir Natur. It’s not a big outfit, it was only launched in 2022. I’m writing about it again because my attention has been drawn to what might be a major development.

Which coincides with the UK government’s decision to make most family farms liable for punitive inheritance taxes. This measure will leave many farming families with little alternative but to sell up.

Which is almost certainly the intention.

For the Treasury only expects to benefit by £520m a year from this legislation. Inconsequential when set against the harm that’ll be caused to the rural economy; and in Wales, the damage inflicted on a culture and a way of life.

THE OPPORTUNITY

Here’s the Tir Natur website piece on the development. It reads:

An opportunity has presented itself to Tir Natur. A significant area of land which has been deemed unsuitable for commercial forestry and the dominance of purple-moor grass and bracken undermine its grazing value.

But is it being grazed now, or not? If it is, then do the graziers agree with that evaluation? I ask because later we’re told: “Overgrazing over the years has restricted natural regeneration and reduced not only the ecological, but agricultural value of the land“.

And yet, things can’t be that bad. For the place seems to be swarming with wildlife; on the ground, in the trees, in the water, and above our heads.

A skylark . . . over our heads . . . whilst a male roe deer, springs up . . . Pine marten are known to be neighbours whilst red squirrel are seen here . . . Otter . . . sandpipers and goosanders. Red Kite and buzzard hunt for . . . small mammals in the thick tussocks . . . osprey patrol the water . . . trout and pike abound.

Despite this picture painted of a Cambrian Eden, a paragraph or two later we’re asked to: “Imagine, then, a new approach. Ancient Welsh cattle and ponies enter the land“.

So there must be good grazing available, just not for sheep and cattle.

It also talks of pigs “disturbing tussocks” . . . presumably the tussocks wherein dwell the small mammals providing prey for kite and buzzard.

The section outlining Tir Natur’s plans concludes with looking forward to: “Ground nesters such as golden plover and curlew make their triumphant return“. How will they cope with the trampling horses and cattle, or the gobble-up-everything porkers?

From the area Tir Natur says it wants to buy. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

What is graphically described is a flourishing ecosystem, so I can’t see how Tir Natur’s vision improves on that. Am I missing something?

Maybe in writing this glorious example of bucolica the writer got carried away and ended up contradicting himself, or herself, or theyself.

And let’s bear in mind that this land could be bought by a commercial entity from outside of Wales. The new owner could then make lots of money from allowing Tir Natur to graze reindeer or anything else they fancy.

NEW ARRIVALS

When I looked at Tir Natur a couple of years back there were four trustees (of the charity), but there have been changes. One of the founders, Stephen Jenkins, is no longer a trustee, but serves as a Development Officer. Here he is with the rest of The Team.

He may be one of only two Welsh people still involved. The other being Gwenan Jenkins-Jones. She is also a trustee at Keep Wales Tidy.

This is a body becoming increasingly political, with a Woke and ‘inclusive’ emphasis. Explained by ‘Welsh Government’ funding trebling from £1.52m in 2019 to £4.71m in 2023.

(It should go without saying that Andrew Stumpf, chair of Keep Wales Tidy, lives in the White Highlands of Abergavennyshire. A sink hole for Welsh public funding)

When we look at the changes in personnel at Tir Natur it tells us by whom and for what purpose Tir Natur has been captured.

First up is David Kilner. Who’s also involved with Climate Cymru. It was this lot’s BAME section that produced the internationally ridiculed recommendation to ban ‘racist’ dogs from the countryside.

Yet another outfit in receipt of Kilner’s wisdom is Natur am Byth. Here’s a piece he penned in April last year for Friends of the Earth.

Clock to open enlarged in separate tab

The other member of The Team is Dan Ward. Who has worked, and may still work, for Natural Resources Wales. But for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on his link to North Star Transition (NST).

To give you a better understanding of where we’re heading, go to this post of mine from a year ago and scroll down to the section ‘North Star Transition’. Below is a clip from the NST website I used back then.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And here’s the full article, written by North Star co-founder Jyotir Banerjee. It begins: “Large-scale investment funding is missing in action when it comes to transforming landscapes.”  (“Missing in action”! Are we at war?)

A more recent article on the NST website, by Jérôme Tagger, warns that:

There is an urgent need for large-scale funding of nature-based solutions across many landscapes if the UK is to achieve net zero, environmental, social and health transformations.

So who’s Jérôme Tagger?

Well, he’s American, based in Brooklyn, New York, and he may still be hiding under his duvet after Donald Trump’s election victory. Here’s his Linkedin profile.

You’ll see that Tagger is CEO of Preventable Surprises, and when skimming through the website my eyes were drawn to “climate finance and behavior“. He’s also co-founder of White Label Impact.

Time to turn to the Tir Natur trustees. And when you see who’s recently joined, you’ll be in no doubt as to what Tir Natur is up to.

In May 2023 Richard Wheat came aboard. He’s an ecological consultant at Middlemarch Environmental Ltd, of Coventry. Companies House tells us the company is controlled by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust.

In June this year, it was Sally Weale, documentary film maker. She was, until March 2022, a director of The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

Next, in July, it was our old friend Tim Birch of Extinction Rebellion. He fled Derbyshire a few years back with a posse of gamekeepers in pursuit. He is now a director of Wildlife Trusts Wales . . . which voted itself out of existence a few years ago to become a county branch of the English parent body.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And, finally, on September 26, it was James Hitchcock. If that name rings a bell, it’s because he’s appeared on this blog a number of times after coming to Wales to be CEO of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.

He quit that job last month, and became Advocacy Coordinator – Wales for Rewilding Britain. Wales, a country he doesn’t even know. But he does know who’s who in Corruption Bay, and that’s what matters.

That’s quite a cast. Why are they all now involved with Tir Natur, a small outfit, with an income that last year doubled to just over twelve grand?

GLOBALIST BONANZA

You might be wondering why this Labour government would want to destroy farming, and why its supporters welcome the move. Let me explain.

Taking the supporters first . . . the Pinkhairs may genuinely believe they’re sticking it to the super-rich (and perhaps even freeing the serfs), because they really are that fucking stupid. Whereas old-style leftists may have a hazy recollection of kulaks being vilified in the smoke-filled rooms of yore.

But above all that, the government in Westminster is a Globalist tool . . . one that was not made by Keir Starmer’s father, but by some very unpleasant people indeed.

These Globalists, who I’ve identified on the blog before, want to take over (among other things) farmland. Firstly, to profit from insane subsidies and payments given to those claiming to be saving the planet. Secondly, to take them nearer their ultimate objective – control of the food supply. And by that means, to control human behaviour.

To help them achieve this they must control what we see, hear, and say. This explains their puppets demanding hate speech legislation, and laws against ‘misinformation’. Also, banging people up for social media posts.

For they must control the narrative. But it’s more difficult for them now because their mainstream media is no longer trusted, and there are channels they do not control.

Another problem they have is that the ‘climate crisis’ isn’t co-operating, and hasn’t been for years. There’s no marked deterioration in the weather, and the net zero lunacy imposed to combat this ‘threat’ is being increasingly resisted.

The fallback position is the ‘nature crisis’, or ‘biodiversity loss’, which asks us to believe that species are disappearing almost daily. And just as with the ‘climate crisis’, it’s all our fault. This looming tragedy can only be averted by us making major sacrifices – which again, will involve assaults on farming.

For to save the dormouse we must stop eating cheese.

Just as the ‘climate crisis’ relied on con men like Al Gore, and voodoo ‘science’, so, when it comes to species depletion, we are expected to heed the sermonising of those who want big dollops of cash to put things right. And of course, they also want land.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The more I’ve learnt and thought about environmentalism the clearer it’s become why top environmentalists found it easy to work with the Globalists – because they’re one and the same.

Let’s start with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Which modestly says of itself:

Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

And I bet you’ve never heard of it! But I’m not sure you’re supposed to.

DARKER PAST

The IUCN was formed in 1948 and took up residence in Gland, Switzerland. Feeling it needed a more public face, in 1961 the IUCN helped launch the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), also headquartered in Gland.

The founder and first president of the WWF was Prince Bernhardt, consort to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Though he himself was German and had, like many other princelings, joined the Nazi Party in 1933.

Prince Bernhardt was also a member the shadowy Club of the Isles, another organisation that helped give birth to the WWF. This group of royals and business tycoons uses environmentalism to protect and promote their post-imperial interests. Especially in Africa.

Involved in both was Philip, consort to the late queen of England. His sisters all married German princes, and three of them became Nazis. In 1948 Elizabeth’s father, George VI, banned Philip’s family from his daughter’s wedding.

Among the activities of the WWF and associated movements that get less publicity than saving pandas is taking over vast areas of Africa for game reserves, and ‘parks’. When the evicted populations protest they are dealt with as trespassers, or even shot as ‘poachers’.

Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO, comes to give Starmer his orders. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

There are incredible allegations made against the WWF and those behind it, but let’s ignore the more outlandish claims – such as ‘anthropological reserves’ in Amazonia – to consider two features that are undeniable.

Firstly, there’s the link with fascism or, more specifically, Nazism. Secondly, there’s the belief the world is overpopulated.

Seeing as we’re 80 years on from WWII, we can perhaps ignore a (direct) Nazi link. But the belief in an overpopulated world is central to the modern Globalist-environmentalist agenda.

It explains so why many refer to that agenda as being “anti-human“. Critics can see it, but may not understand the background that makes their suspicions correct.

Let me end this section by explaining how the agenda is already making us poorer in ways other than immediate costs like higher electricity bills.

Earlier we looked at Keep Wales Tidy. It receives huge amounts of ‘Welsh Government’ funding, not to keep Wales tidy, but to promote the Globalist agenda. And the same applies to countless other ‘charities’, third sector outfits, even pressure groups.

It’s amazing . . . the Welsh NHS is falling apart, kids leave school unable to read and write, but Corruption Bay can always find money for organisations that are actually working against our interests. Even threatening our national identity.

CONCLUSION, AND WARNING

The West is in a dangerous place, with the Globalists controlling politicians and uniparty systems. And this control costs lives, tens of thousands of young lives in the war in eastern Europe, from which BlackRock profits hugely.

Take a few minutes to watch this 3 minute video by Robert F Kennedy Jr.

If the West is in dangerous waters, then Wales is docked up Shit Creek.

Yet I have such a low opinion of Senedd Members that I think they might genuinely believe they’re doing the right thing. They’ve certainly swallowed all the Globalist scams. But it’s not just our clowns.

Not long before they dined with Larry Fink of BlackRock, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were granted an audience with ‘Dr’ Bill Gates, of Covid fame. Look how attentive and respectful they are!

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In Cardiff, London, Brussels and elsewhere politicians are in thrall to Globalism, with the leftist majority in the Senedd pre-disposed to imposing petty regulations and restrictions on personal freedom.

Which makes them putty in the hands of kings, princes and others who are used to exercising power. Those who once marched with the workers now dance for Hapsburgs and Bourbons.

Having mentioned BlackRock a few times, here’s an example of how it operates. Some ten years ago planning permission was granted for a wind farm in Blaenau Gwent. Within months it was snapped up by you know who.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Many suspect the wind farms planned today, by Parabola Bute and others, will go the same way once planning permission is obtained.

That Blaenau Gwent example wasn’t a one-off. The Labour party has been dealing with BlackRock for many years. In 2016 BlackRock took control of the £2.8bn Welsh public pension pot.

That’s how BlackRock and the rest operate. They don’t make or create anything, they just use other people’s money to buy up things, corporations and assets which then give them vast economic strength, and with that strength, political power.

And it’ll be the same with land acquired by Tir Natur, and all the other land from which Welsh farmers will be evicted. If it’s not BlackRock then it’ll be some other Globalist corporation working to exactly the same agenda.

Helped by BlackRock having the WWF in its pocket. It’s the same with all the other organisations, down to your local wildlife trust. Globalists have ‘environmentalists’ doing the dirty work for them, ‘greenwashing’ their activities.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

So don’t be fooled by these machinations pretending to save the planet. It’s the biggest asset grab in history. And as I’ve explained, it has worrying antecedents.

Always remember that behind the cuddly image of environmentalism lurk the shades of those who thought Hitler was the good guy. Which helps explain why Globalism is just another attempt at world domination.

Demanding reduced population levels in order to tackle the ‘climate crisis’ is no more than the ugly eugenics of a century ago made more palatable.

At root, it’s just repackaged Nazism. So wake up and realise it.

♦ end

UPDATE 27.11.2024: Today Nation.Cymru put out a piece in defence of the Tir Natur project, and almost certainly in response to the piece above I’d put out two days earlier. It was written by Stephen Price, N.C’s Senior Reporter.

Price lives in Abergavennyshire, has a background “working in the third and charity sectors“, and a “voluntary role as a Keep Wales Tidy Litter Champion“.

Which says it all.

© Royston Jones 2024

US Elections, Observations And Hopes

This is my personal take on what happened in the USA last week. I’ll give some thought to the curious electoral system. The trajectory I hope to see from now on. And I’ll conclude by briefly considering the effects Trump’s victory might have on the wider world.

THEN AND NOW

I woke around six o’clock last Wednesday morning, though I’m not sure why.

Anyway, I switched on the TV, expecting to see talking heads discussing the turnout in Wisconsin, and whether the result offered a bright new dawn for transgender Latino birthing persons, but I could tell from the faces and demeanour of the respected and impartial presenters that Trump had won.

I was amazed at how quickly the result had become known.

To understand my surprise, we need to go back four years to the events of 2020. When ballots were still arriving days after the polls closed, often in the middle of the night and from out-of-state locations.

Which leads us to the consideration of ID; whether someone turning up at a polling station should establish their identity before being allowed to vote. As we do in Wales.

For reasons I cannot fathom, Democrats are opposed to demanding ID. California even went so far as to make it illegal to ask for ID! Republicans say it should be mandatory.

It’s also being reported that Harris won all the states where voter ID is not required . . . but only those states. Not that I’m suggesting anything, you understand.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But just think what could happen.

An unknown man goes to vote . . . then comes back 5 minutes later, to vote again. The people manning the polling station say, ‘Hang on, you voted 5 minutes ago’. Mystery man responds, ‘No I didn’t – and you can’t prove I did!’.

What went right for Trump this time? Well . . .

There’s no doubt that in 2020 there were ‘irregularities’, and these favoured the Democrats. I say that because they all seemed to happen in Democrat-controlled cities, and swing states. More on this later.

Harris getting over 10 million votes less than Biden won in 2020 takes some explaining. Seeing as there were more voters this time. And especially as this was the election to save civilisation from the Nazi hordes awaiting their cue from Donald J Trump.

And then there were the countless celebrity endorsements for Harris. Did these count for nothing? How could out-of-work coal miners in West Virginia not heed the advice of Leonardo DiCaprio?

Though it’s said Oprah Winfrey was paid £1m or more to have Harris on her show!

Earlier this year, who among you was not moved by Robert de Niro’s performance outside the New York City courthouse where Trump was being tried? The renowned thesp turned up surrounded by more heavies than in any of his movies.

Speaking in NYC De Niro says of Trump, “He doesn’t belong in my city”. Trump was born there. But when Trump deports criminals who sneaked into the USA De Niro and other luvvies will demand they be allowed to stay because they ‘belong’. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And then there was the civil fraud case brought by Soros-funded New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump for over-valuing his assets in order to get a bank loan.

This was a civil action, not a criminal case. For the bank involved, Deutsche Bank, had made no complaint!

This being New York, Trump was of course found guilty. James’s co-conspirator, the goblinesque Judge Arthur Engoron, slapped a fine of $454.2m on Trump. And even wanted him barred from doing business in New York.

But things soon unravelled for James, Engoron, and the Democratic Party.

For in its testimony, Deutsche Bank said, ‘No problemo, everybody exaggerates their wealth, or the value of their assets, to get a loan.

Managing director David Williams said the bankers viewed clients’ reports of their net worth as “subjective or subject to estimates” and took its own view of such financial statements.

This was a squalid business, even for NYC, so blatantly political. And the Appellate Court agreed.

Conclusions:

When it became clear Trump had won those who were supposed to be impartial made no effort to hide their bias. Telling us that any vestige of credibility the legacy media might have had is gone. Forever.

After cheating their way to victory in 2020, partly thanks to the fortuitous and wholly unexpected arrival of Covid, the deep state Democrats were unable to do the same again.

The average American resents being told to make sacrifices by luvvies who use private jets to fly to awards ceremonies where they tell each other how virtuous and superior they are.

Like other people, Americans want a legal system that is above politics and personalities; a system that administers justice blindly. Not a system corrupted by an evil old man.

And most Americans, of all ethnicities, reject ‘women with penises’, pronouns, anti-white racism, and all the other Woke nonsense.

When you consider the media bias, the amount by which the Harris campaign out-spent Trump’s, the celebrity endorsements, Trump being called Hitler, and everything else the president-elect had to put up with, you realise that with a level playing-field the margin of victory would have been huge.

That should be a sobering thought for leftists, liberals, the media, and their Globalist manipulators.

THE LONG SHADOW OF TAMMANY HALL

A message we heard over and over again from the media was that Trump is ‘divisive’. But which politician isn’t? And yet, when we look at the electoral map, we see the real divide in the USA.

At its simplest, it’s between urban and rural.

On the one side, the major cities, with their ghettoes and immigrant communities, their white liberal suburbs. On the other, the rest of the country.

The cities have an enormous effect on how the states vote, in ways that skew results and disenfranchise large areas. The map below shows how the states voted on November 5.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I want to draw your attention to a few examples of what I’ve just described.

Take Illinois, where Harris – with 93.6% of the vote counted by Nov 13 – won with some 54% of the vote. The Chicago metropolitan area deciding how the state voted. Here’s a map of Illinois by county.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This pattern is replicated across the country. Go back to the map of the states and see that Colorado went for Harris thanks to the city of Denver. In Minnesota it was Minneapolis-St Paul. But perhaps the most egregious example is found in Virginia.

In the western counties of the state, as you head up into the Appalachians, Trump polled 80 – 85% of the vote, but it was all decided in the north east, in the suburban overspill of Washington DC. Many of those who voted for Harris here are working for bloated or even unnecessary federal agencies.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And of course, many if not most of those living in this suburban overspill were not born in Virginia. Which means they helped outvote native Virginians.

Something similar obtains on the other side of DC, in Maryland, where suburban sprawl, and the city of Baltimore, helped the Democrats easily outvote the eastern side of that small state.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Collectively, DC and these counties in Virginia and Maryland make up the Washington metropolitan area. A conurbation that has grown apace with the reach of the federal government.

I believe the only exceptions to this winner takes all system are Maine (3 – 1 Harris) and Nebraska (4 – 1 Trump).

So why do the Democrats exercise such a stranglehold on the major cities?

Go back far enough and you come to Tammany Hall, “a blend of charity and patronage”, that delivered the vote for the Democratic Party in New York City.

The Democrats controlled the major cities through appealing to immigrant groups, organised labour, and the increasing black vote coming up from the South. In return for those votes it could arrange jobs, contracts, housing, and other benefits.

The ‘bosses’ could deliver the vote. In Boston, one of the most powerful was John Francis ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, grandfather of president John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

There was, perhaps inevitably, an overlap with organised crime. And when JFK won the 1960 election, with the slimmest-ever majority, the Chicago Outfit felt they’d made a big contribution.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Tammany Hall may be gone, and the power of the Mafia is diminished, but the Democratic Party still controls the cities through that “combination of charity and patronage“. And still delivers the vote.

In addition to the core of each city there are the suburbs to consider. Here we find the business class, the professionals, and many of those running the agencies, funded by DC, the state, or the city, providing the goodies that keep the citizens voting Democrat.

Though it’s questionable if inner-city neighbourhoods see any tangible and lasting benefits from these arrangements.

Welsh readers might see a valid comparison between US inner cities and the Valleys, the latter abandoned and decaying, but still voting Labour. But with the real beneficiaries of this system being the chisellers of Corruption Bay, found in the nicer suburbs of Cardiff, out in the Vale, or even Abergavennyshire.

It’s a stranglehold that’s almost impossible to break. Because without political power the Republicans can’t promise the homes, or the jobs, or any benefits to woo voters. With minorities urged by their leaders to regard the party with suspicion. ‘Leaders’ who are often on the Democratic Party payroll, or otherwise catered for.

Which brings me to my final consideration in the urban-rural split.

Those who live outside of the cities, those areas that voted 70%, 80%, or more, for Donald Trump, especially in the South, the Mid West, and the Northern Plains, will differ in many ways from city-dwellers.

Yes, they’re far more likely to be white, but so are the suburbs, which is why it would be wrong to focus too much on race. The difference is that those out in the sticks are more likely to own their own home, and land; are more likely to be self-employed, and self-sufficient; and will be suspicious of government, especially the federal government.

The hicks are also far more likely to (legally) own guns. But we won’t go there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing against one person one vote. I fully support all US citizens, who can prove their identity, being given a numbered paper ballot on the day of the election, at the polling station, so they can cast their vote(s).

Does anyone object to that? And if so, why?

LOOKING AHEAD

We need here to avoid another over-simplification, that between left and right. Though I know I use these terms myself, so let me explain why, and why they’re misleading.

The struggle today is not really between right and left.

On the one hand we have those who want to tell us what we’re allowed to eat, what we can drive (also how far and at what speed), what we must believe, who our friends are, and who we must hate.

The UN’s 2030 Agenda.

They do it by hypnotising us with engineered crises / threats and while we’re fixated on the swinging pocket-watch they take our money, property, and personal freedoms.

On the other side, are those who see the threat and are prepared to resist it. Mainly, but no longer exclusively, from the political right.

I condemn the left for buying into the Globalist agenda. Most socialists and liberals because they see no further than Wokeism, taking childish enjoyment from ‘bourgeois’ angst; but for the hard-core, Globalism is a replacement Soviet Union in the old ambition to bring down the West.

And while the Globalists may be planning corporate colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, their primary targets are Europe and North America. Which is why Trump’s victory is important to us, because its effects will not be limited to the USA.

The president-elect is known to be sceptical of the EU, wary of NATO, and suspicious of the regime in Ukraine. He’s promised to reject net zero, regarding the ‘climate crisis’ as a ‘threat’ no more real than Russia, both dreamed up to promote the Globalist agenda.

But it takes more than the left to push forward the agenda.

Globalism, the deep state, the military-industrial complex, call it what you will, is supported and defended, its aims advanced, by a professional political class, and a huge bureaucracy, focused on Washington DC.

This vast apparatus is the target for the incoming Trump administration.

The man given the job of bringing down this monster is Elon Musk, who made Twitter / X more efficient, popular, and profitable, after sacking some 90% of the staff.

His deputy is former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who spelt it out only yesterday.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The only ones who’ll object to this cull of the bureaucracy will be those who benefit from it. Those who work in these non-jobs, and those who gain politically or materially from them.

Reducing the federal budget, cutting aid to Ukraine, the UN, and other drains, making the US self-sufficient in energy, will reduce taxes and bring down prices across the board.

It must be done, not just because the American people are hurting, but because the USA may be broke. Forbes didn’t come straight out and say it, but the headline to this piece in May leaves little doubt . . . of the problem, and the cause.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

If you really want to scare yourself, just think: ‘Now, those who are bankrupting the federal government, and by extension, the USA, are controlled by the Globalists. So do the Globalists want to bankrupt the USA?’

Damn right they do. And the same applies to Europe.

The Globalists have created the monsters that can only be pacified with massive and expensive sacrifices designed to bankrupt individuals, nations, continents.

Having engineered the collapse, the Globalists will then step in with their solutions.

It’s how Hitler did it. Send out the Brownshirts to bloody the streets brawling with socialists and communists – then promise to bring law and order back to those same streets. Take power by promising to solve the problem you’ve created.

Welcome to the world of Universal Basic Income (UBI), Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC); which will mean an end to democracy, freedom of speech, and individual economic autonomy.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

You’re now a serf, because you opened the door to authoritarianism promising to solve non-existent problems and fight imaginary enemies.

OVER HERE

What happens in the USA always impacts on the rest of the world because of that country’s economic strength, military power, and cultural influence. Which is why the new administration taking control in January will impact on us all.

If Trump carries out his promises, on dumping net zero, cutting federal waste, increasing production, reducing taxation, dealing with unlawful immigration, he can make the USA more prosperous and more at ease with itself than it’s been since the 1950s.

And no matter how much the politicians and the media lie to you about it, if Trump turns the USA around it’ll be impossible to hide the truth.

People this side of the Atlantic will then ask: ‘Why are we destroying our economy, our country, our children’s futures, by following an anti-human, de-growth agenda, dictated by some of the biggest corporations and richest individuals on Earth?

And the only honest answer will be – ‘Because you’re incredibly fucking stupid!

So stop being stupid, catch up with reality, and look forward to Donald J Trump becoming the 47th President of the United States of America.

I can’t wait!

And don’t forget to support the farmers in their London protest on the 19th. Because the bastards who are coming for the farmers’ land are the same bastards coming for your car and your flight to Majorca. The same bastards who want you to go vegan. The same bastards who think your electricity bill should be at least £1,000 a month – ‘to save the planet, innit‘.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

More From Ireland Moor

The piece I put out on the 10th was quite well received, it certainly encouraged some fresh information. Which tends to put what’s happening on Ireland Moor into a wider context, and factor in fresh considerations.

At 2,600 words this is a wee bit longer than recent offerings, and maybe a bit ‘denser’, but still worth sticking with.

OWNERSHIP

In the previous piece I told of Scottish aristos the Duff Gordons, who inherited the Lewis estate at Harpton Court.

Ireland Moor is an upland grazing area to the east of Builth, around and perhaps above the pin in the map below. Bordered to the north by the A481 and the A44.

Click to open enlarged in separte tab

Let’s start in 1993, when Sir Andrew Cosmo Lewis Duff Gordon (scroll down) sold some land. Here’s a Land Registry document for title no CYM427489. There may be other titles involved. If so, they’ll likely be: WA484809, WA404806, and WA667700.

There were four buyers named in the 1993 transaction. Also, three “beneficial tenants“. More information on these can be found by clicking here.

Now we go to July 2008, and a piece from Country Life informing us regular readers that Ireland Moor was for sale. A Land Registry title document from November of that year for CYM427489 probably tells us who bought the land. (We can now assume the other titles just mentioned are involved.)

Two of the names mentioned in this sale we saw among the 1993 buyers: Edward John Francis Dashwood and Peter John Horsburgh. So in case you didn’t follow the earlier link . . .

Dashwood is descended from Hellfire Club Dashwood, who was a bit of a lad.

Dashwood was a notorious rake and prankster who had once impersonated King Charles XII of Sweden at the Russian court when Charles was Russia’s great enemy. He had also tried to seduce the Russian Tsarina Anne, and he had been banned from the Papal States, all while still in his late teens and early 20s.

On the surface, Horsburgh is a devout environmentalist and trustee of the Wye and Usk Foundation. But he’s also a director of companies under the ETF umbrella, companies that profit hugely from – net zero.

Which makes perfect sense.

Organisations set up to ‘protect’ our rivers – especially in Wales – blame farmers for any and all pollution in those rivers. Environmentalists see farting cows as an obstacle to the target of net zero. Which pressurises politicians to work against livestock farming.

Environmentalism is not really about Greta Thunberg and brainwashed kids throwing paint over old masters. That’s all a distraction. ‘Environmentalism’ is major corporations seeking investments. And near the top of their ‘Dear Santa‘ list is land to be exploited for ‘carbon capture’ greenwashing and ‘natural capital’.

This Land Registry document from June 5, 2009, confirms the November 2008 sale, but without naming the buyers. Though it does tell us the four titles were involved, reveals the sale price of £900,000, gives Ireland Moor Ltd as the owner, with a Jersey company number (103322), and an address in Bristol.

Does this suggest the November 2008 buyers are now the Jersey company?

Possibly, and the third buyer might provide the clue.

CONNECTIONS APPEAR

For this is James Warren Kent, one of the ‘beneficial tenants’ in the 1993 deal. Naturally, I got to wondering who Mr Kent is, and what he gets up to.

I found he’s the sole director of Q Branch Investments Ltd. A company in the business of “letting and operating of own or leased real estate“. Though the company is owned by Benjamin Mark Peter Whitfield. Possibly living in Switzerland.

Looking more closely at Q Branch Investments I saw three outstanding charges.

One of them with the Conon Group, up in Auld Reekie, a city we visit regularly on this blog. I would guess the two directors of this financially healthy undertaking are the elderly parents of Benjamin Whitfield.

The other two charges are held by Roger Charles Adams. And this is where it gets rather interesting. For Adams is a director of RSK Environment Ltd, operating out of an address south of the river in Glasgow. Part of the RSK Group.

A bell rang when I saw ‘RSK’, “a global leader in the delivery of sustainable solutions“.

Let’s go back to this piece I put out a week before Christmas last, and scroll down to the section ‘Globalist Land Grab?’ about the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme. Where you can read:

Tracing the ownership of RSK ADAS eventually gets us to Los Angeles and “global alternative investment manager” the Ares Management Corporation. You may not be surprised to learn that among the largest of Ares’ shareholders we find both BlackRock and Vanguard.

Someone who got a mention was Canadian Dr Liz Lewis-Reddy. She’s worked for RSK for 7 years, and before that spent 11 years at Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust.

Dr Lewis-Reddy was a co-author of the ‘Welsh Government’s Potential economic effects of the Sustainable Farming Scheme.

Her career seems to be another example of getting farmers off the land so that ‘alternative investment’ corporations can make fortunes from saving the planet.

So let’s recap. James Warren Kent, who is or was one of the owners of Ireland Moor, gets loans for his company from Roger Charles Adams, a man who works for a company that does contracts for both the ‘Welsh Government’ and Bute Energy. (Yes, Bute Energy.)

What’s the likelihood of that happening by chance?

But now it gets a little more complicated.

MORE ON OWNERSHIP

I’ve mentioned Ireland Moor Ltd, the company said to own the land in the LR title document of June 5, 2009.

That checks out with the Jersey filings.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Here’s the Jersey Document of Incorporation for Ireland Moor Ltd, May 2009. It mentions two companies holding 45 shares each.

This ‘Persons Holding Shares’ filing for January 1, 2018, informs us that Edward Warren Filmer of Venezuela is now the sole shareholder.

Finally, here’s the winding up document for Ireland Moor Ltd dated February 23, 2018.

(Let me express my gratitude to the person who dug out, paid for, and then forwarded these and other documents to me.)

There was a problem identifying Edward Warren Filmer. But he does exist. Here he is mentioned in his father’s Will as ‘Edward Warren Filmer Cabrera’.

Which suggests his mother is from a Spanish-speaking country and her maiden name was Cabrera. Which ties in with him living in Venezuela.

This Jersey company seems to have been succeeded by Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd, run by the four sons of Sir Andrew Cosmo Lewis Duff Gordon who, you’ll recall, sold the land in 1993. (And died in April 2023.)

It seems the land was sold to the Duff Gordons in December 2015. The relevant LR titles are: WA484809 (no plan available), WA404806 (no plan available), WA667700 (with plan), and CYM427489 (with plan).

Edward Warren Filmer Cabrera remains something of a mystery man. How did he get involved? I couldn’t help notice that he shares a middle name, ‘Warren’, with the guy named in the Ireland Moor purchase in November 2008, James Warren Kent.

Could they be brothers? Cousins?

We must assume that Ireland Moor Ltd of Jersey owned the land of that name because the Duff Gordon boys bought Ireland Moor from that company.

Though I’m convinced things may not be quite as they appear when it comes to Ireland Moor. I say that because there is something on the Companies House filings that’s a real puzzle.

Go to the Land Registry title documents for which I’ve given links, above, and you’ll see a panel similar to the one below. It says the sale was concluded December 15, 2015.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Which tallies with the December 2015 date given on the company’s outstanding debt with Edward Warren Filmer and Ireland Moor Ltd.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Yet if we scroll down that charge document, to page 16, we see the panel below. Which says the titles were transferred to Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd in May 2015!

That’s two months before Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd was formed!

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I’m open to suggestions for this curiosity. But I will not accept ‘time travel’.

Whatever the answer, with Ireland Moor Ltd dissolved, then (on paper at least) the Duff Gordons owe the outstanding debt for the land to Señor Edward Warren Filmer Cabrera of Venezuela.

Whoever he might be.

THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL

The LR documents say the Duff Gordons bought Ireland Moor in December 2015, the purchase part-financed with a loan from Filmer-Ireland Moor Ltd.

This is something I’ve come across before, but usually when assets are moved between partners, or within a group of companies.

The charge dated that same month says:

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Which suggests the Duff Gordons handed over £560,000 as a down payment.

Then they took out two further loans, in December 2016 with Lloyds Bank. Normally when I see this (and almost always when the Development Bank of Wales is involved) the newer loans are used to pay off older debts. But not, it seems, in this case.

The accounts don’t help much. Below I’ve taken the ‘headlines’ from the first accounts filed by Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd.  (Actually, ‘unaudited financial statements’.)

The first ‘accounts’, to July 31, 2016, make sense. ‘Fixed assets’, £1,231,914, is obviously Ireland Moor. ‘Creditors’, at £678,158, is the debt owed to Filmer and Ireland Moor Ltd plus a few odds and ends.

But a year later, and after the loans from Lloyds Bank, the ‘accounts’ show the amount owed to ‘creditors’ down from £678,158 to £191,078.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This could be explained by taking on the new debt and then paying off what was owed to Filmer and Ireland Moor Ltd. But that didn’t happen. For Companies House shows the Filmer-Ireland Moor charge is still ‘outstanding’.

The most recent accounts, to July 31, 2023, are equally confusing. Despite no new charge registered, the amount owed to creditors shot up from £693,676 in 2022 to £1,287,026. Almost the whole increase explained (page 7) as “other creditors“.

With the amount in the kitty going down, down, down every year. To the point where, in the 2023 accounts, Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd is in the red.

And where’s the £600,000 grant from the Powys Moorland Partnership? I can’t see that showing in the accounts.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Seeing as, “This project is funded from the Sustainable Management Scheme under the Welsh Government’s Rural Communities Rural Development Programme”, ‘Welsh Government’ should be insisting on ‘fuller’ accounts.

Is Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd being used for purposes other than the conservation of Ireland Moor?

SEEING AS THIS IS POWYS . . .

. . . you just know wind turbines might be involved. And that means another trip to Edinburgh, where we find those behind Bute Energy. But don’t be fooled by that – for Bute is definitely a Welsh company!

Back in 2018 or 2019 our wonderful ‘Welsh Government’ commissioned Arup’s Bristol office to identify areas that would be suitable for solar and wind energy.

The approach seems to have been, ‘Anywhere outside national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty will be OK’. Which was a disaster, and betrayed Arup’s ignorance of Wales.

For example, Arup declared almost the whole of Ynys Môn to be perfect for wind turbines . . . until the RAF reminded them there are jets, helicopters and other craft taking off and landing every day.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The mess was eventually sorted by RenewableUK, whose suggestion for the area we’re interested in (top right) was used in the final version (bottom right) of ‘Future Wales The National Plan 2040‘.

That said, the ‘Welsh Government’ and corporate investors are very ‘flexible’ when it comes to the selected areas. To put it bluntly, other than NPs and AONBs (and of course, Ynys Môn), you can put up wind and solar farms anywhere.

Which is why, despite Ireland Moor being outside designated area 7, I wouldn’t rule out wind turbines appearing.

Because not far away, on Aberedw Hill (circled on the left), which is also outside the designated area, Bute Energy is planning an ‘energy park’, and has an agreement with landowner Harry Legge-Bourke.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Reminding us that when it comes to ‘renewables’, Wales is open range; so we can definitely add wind turbines to the mix of possibilities for Ireland Moor.

The threats afflicting our countryside are very similar no matter where we look. Though more pronounced near the central border, partly due to the machinations of the wildlife trusts in Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire.

THE PERFECT STORM

Welsh livestock farming, and with it the Welsh family farm, a supporting pillar of Welsh language and culture, is under threat as never before. That threat comes in a number of guises, but all can be traced back to the Globalist ambition to control what we eat and where it comes from.

Additionally, a whole political class has been won over to the lunacy of a ‘climate crisis’, not because it’s true, but because it gives them a ’cause’, and it gives them some kind of moral authority.

A natural-born asshole gets a kick out of bossing people around. But when saving the planet, or fighting racism, is introduced, then a natural-born asshole becomes a morally superior being . . . and a bigger asshole!

Western thought has been corrupted by these caped crusaders, and all done by stealth. We elect politicians on vague, ‘something for everybody’ manifestos . . . and then the pressure groups we did not elect get to work on them.

If it’s not the pressure groups then – and certainly here in Wales – it’s the civil servants ‘advising’ our politicians. Men like Andrew Slade, who’s been a malign influence in Corruption Bay for too long.

It doesn’t matter whether Ireland Moor sees grouse shooting, wind turbines (to supply England), rewilding, greenwashing (or a combination of the four), it’s clear they will all have political backing – because they undermine farming.

And the farmers understand the threats. This is what one wrote to me:

I can’t tell how important that grazing is to hill farmers like us, we can’t afford down country grass keep, it will reduce our flocks down to a fraction, we are running on fumes as it is. And the sheep, they are old bloodlines it’s taken generations to get them hefted and thriving, I despair, and goodness knows what horrors await us in the budget, another local boy hung himself the other day, I fear there is going to be a lot more, and all the old farmers I go and visit are about in tears thinking all they have worked for and sacrificed for will be take from them and their grand-children won’t get the chance to have roots in the area where they belong, I could bloody cry.

What we see on Ireland Moor and elsewhere is plutocrats orchestrating those they fund and control against livestock farming so as to release land for corporate gain.

Their motto is, I’m told: ‘The countryside needs hedge funds not hedges.’

The ‘Welsh Government’ agrees. Politicians who’ve spent 25 years serving agendas that sound noble in the abstract but, in practice – from Port Talbot to the Powys uplands – always work against the interests of local people.

Ireland Moor is modern Wales in microcosm. Among all those you’ve read about, the ones losing out will be the ones born and raised there, who went to school in the area, who graze their animals on the moor.

For me, the lesson from Ireland Moor – and it can be applied across Wales – is this: Socialists in Corruption Bay are driving small farmers off the land so that land can be taken over by foreign corporations, landed families, and enviroshysters.

Reminding us that socialism always was a lie. The betrayal of the urban working class, and now the war on small farmers, exposes that lie to the world.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Commoners, Toffs, Envirogrifters

This week’s tale comes from Powys. It’s an old story with a modern twist. Local farmers and others up against those with more money and political clout, with the twist being the environmental angle.

The Crown Estate is involved, and we also encounter that ultimate expression of the environmental scam – ‘natural capital’, which puts a price tag (in the form of grants and subsidies expected) on every blade of grass.

ON THE BLACK HILL

The area we’re going to focus on is roughly halfway between Builth and the border, an area containing Glascwm Hill (pinned) and the Black Hill. There are quite a few grouse butts in the vicinity.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

For reasons I didn’t query, the area is known as Ireland Moor. This contribution from the Ramblers confirms that and gives a little more information.

We’ll begin with establishing ownership of the land. And we start with a company called Ireland Moor Ltd (IM), registered in Jersey. Below is a clip from the Jersey companies registry.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This company was wound up early in 2018, perhaps because it had been superseded by Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd (IMC), formed in July 2015. For more information, let’s turn to the new company.

The founding director was William Andrew Lewis Duff Gordon, and he was joined on June 6, 2016, by his three brothers. But Tom, the banker, left after just one day. He is with crypto outfit Coinbase.

Let’s turn to the charges for IMC, see who’s owed money.

I assume the first charge is for the purchase of Ireland Moor. The two creditors named are the Jersey-registered Ireland Moor Ltd, and Edward Warren Filmer. But if the land was owned by the Jersey company, does that mean the old company loaned the new company the money to buy the land?

UPDATE 16.10.2024: A comment to the blog tells me Filmer’s full name is Edward Warren Filmer Cabrera, and he’s linked with companies registered in Venezuela.

You’ll see four Land Registry title documents shown there, and here they are, in the order listed: WA484809 (no plan available), WA404806 (no plan available), WA667700 (with plan), and CYM427489 (with plan).

I’ve combined the two plans, but it leaves us with a problem.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

What we know is that the total price said to have been paid for the four titles was £1,160,000. (With £600,000 being mentioned as the buyer’s contribution in the legal charge.) But do these two plans cover the four titles, or are there plans missing?

Seeing as the Jersey registry tells us Ireland Moor Ltd is dissolved, then who now holds the debt against Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd? Has it all passed to the other name on the charge, Edward Warren Filmer?

The only company I can find with which Filmer’s involved is CGM Farming Ltd, formed in March 2015, just a few months before IMC.

Though ‘Farming’ is rather misleading, for this company’s in the business of, “Hunting, trapping and related service activities“. So I got to wondering about the name. Might the ‘GM’ stand for grouse moor(s)? And if so, what could the ‘C’ mean?

The Companies House filings give the address of an accountancy firm in Weybridge, Surry for CGM, but tell us Filmer lives in Wales.

There is another title mentioned on that first charge, under ‘Schedule 1’, page 16. This is against William Andrew Lewis Duff Gordon rather than the company.

Though the dates given in Schedule 1 do not tally with those given elsewhere. In fact, the dates given are before Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd was even formed! Something’s not right here.

It relates to “land lying to the south of Cwmpiben barn“. (Though I think that should read ‘Cwm-piban’.) It’s for a trifling £40,000. Here’s the title document and plan. And here it is pinned on the OS map. Not a million miles from Ireland Moor.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The other outstanding charges against Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd are, first, with Lloyds Bank (December 2016). Another with Lloyds (January 2017), secured against the 7000 acres at Ireland Moor. With a further charge with Lloyds against ‘Gwaithla bungalow’, at Gladestry.

POWYS MOORLAND PARTNERSHIP

The problem relayed to me is that local farmer-graziers fear there are plans afoot that will adversely affect them, and this explains them being kept out of the loop.

Let’s start with the Powys Moorland Partnership (PMP). I was unable to establish when this outfit began life, but it visited Ireland Moor in September 2017. It’s funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ through the Sustainable Management Scheme.

Where we read . . .

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I’m sure you’ve clocked the £600,000. Is this the same sum we saw earlier, and which I assumed was the contribution made by Ireland Moor Environmental Ltd to the £1,160,000 purchase price of the four titles?

If so, then what I didn’t know then of course was the source of that money.

Though there’s also something odd about PMP. On it’s homepage it describes itself as a “3 year collaborative project“, but we know it’s been running for at least seven years. And in that mission statement there is no mention of the farmers who graze the land.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

So who exactly are the partners in this ‘partnership’?

Also note that the capture above, from the Powys Moorland Partnership website, talks of: “. . . nearly 20,000 acres of moorland stretching from the Llanthony Valley in the south of the county to Beguildy common in the north . . . ”

Which is 43 miles by road, and not a lot less for a fit and adventurous crow. What’s more, Llanthony is not in “the south of the county“, it’s in Sir Fynwy (Monmouthshire).

If we’re talking about just 20,000 acres, over that distance, and we know that 7,000 are accounted for on the Black Hill and Glascwm Hill, then the other 13,000 must be scattered about in disparate parcels.

Though something I noticed about Llanthony on the OS map was the proximity of grouse butts. Is that what the Powys Moorland Partnership is all about?

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Maybe the ‘Welsh Government’, through the Sustainable Management Scheme, and more locally, the Powys Moorland Partnership, has accepted, even encouraged, some kind of alliance between local sporting interests and the environmental lobby.

The Crown Estate may also be involved. The map below, by Guy Shrubsole, was available through WalesOnline. It shows considerable Crown Estate holdings in the area.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Quite a concentration in a small area. But it all makes sense.

Because it seems the PMP is little more than a vehicle for the Duff Gordons and their circle. Men like Peter Hood who rents the shooting rights on 5000-acre Beacon Hill from the Crown Estate.

Hood of course is one of those listed in the Powys Moorland Partnership’s ‘Who’s Who’, along with his gamekeeper David Thomas. Also there is Will Duff Gordon.

I believe the owners of the uplands we’ve looked at, including the Crown Estate and the Duff Gordons, have reached an understanding with the environmental lobby. The planet savers will turn a blind eye to the killing of grouse and the critters that prey on them to view the whole shebang through green-tinted glasses.

And of course, seeing as some farms might became unviable without their upland grazing the acquisitive interlopers of the local Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (RWT) look forward to more land becoming available.

The RWT has received £1,161,740 from the ‘Welsh Government’ in grants over the past 4 years. And it rises every year! Corruption Bay has no money for farmers, but plenty for those who put farmers out of business, and the scavengers who benefit.

NATURAL CAPITAL

If we go back to the PMP website, we see a tab ‘Natural Capital’, so click on it. The opening paragraph reads:

The term ‘Natural Capital’ refers to the “stock of renewable and non-renewable natural resources (e.g. plants, animals, air, water, soils, minerals) that combine to yield a flow of benefits to people.” (Source: Natural Capital Protocol (2016).

Note the year, 2016. Which ties in perfectly with this document, prepared for the Fifth Assembly (2016 – 2021). Within it we find a contribution by Nia Seaton, asking. ‘Are we neglecting our natural capital?

I think it’s reasonable to assume the ‘Natural Capital’ bandwagon started rolling in Wales in or before 2015. Those ‘in the know’, those with contacts, would have had advance warning.

The natural capital report we’re looking at was prepared for PMP by environmental economist Phil Cryle, Duncan Royle, and Ian Dickie of Economics for the Environment Consultancy Ltd (eftec).

With the efforts of their labour reviewed by Dr Rob Tinch, also of eftec. Cosy!

Those involved clearly envision money being made available in the years ahead from exploiting ‘natural capital’. Yes, I know they want us to see it as conservation, but that’s no longer the motive.

The motive now is to put a price on, and thereby capitalise on, just about every square foot of heather, every cubic metre of soil. Even the air we breathe! And the payment won’t be a warm glow, it’ll be hard cash.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And I’m serious about the air we breathe. For as you can see, it’s projected to be a nice little earner in the years ahead.

CONCLUSION

Yet again, we see politicians and others in Corruption Bay throwing money at anybody who can work the magic words ‘environment’, or ‘habitat’, or ‘conservation’, into their pitch for funding. Or into any other way of making money.

Which explains tax haven company Ireland Moor Ltd rebranding itself to Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd. For public money going to a Jersey-registered company would not look good.

The relationship between those two companies, and more especially the ownership of the original company, needs to be established. As does the identity and the role of Edward Filmer.

Because I couldn’t help but notice that the other projects funded by the Sustainable Management Scheme have as their ‘lead organisation’ a county council, a national park, a wildlife trust, or a Community Interest Company, but with Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd public funding was given to a private limited company with shares.

And those shares are divvied up within a very wealthy family.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Discussions and planning by the Powys Moorland Partners (aka Ireland Moor Conservation Ltd), and certain other parties, seem to exclude the graziers.

You don’t need a crystal ball to see what’s happening here. And where it’s headed. Grouse shooting can be very profitable. And as we read earlier, the ‘Welsh Government’ is already funding gamekeeper jobs via the PMP.

Finally, let’s not forget natural capital, which can be greatly enhanced by activities such as planting trees. Or, to put it crudely, greenwashing. I’m told Aviva, partner to WWF, has been spoken of favourably, and more than once, by the Duff Gordons.

The graziers are being sold out; they and their sheep are in the way . . . and getting rid of them dovetails perfectly with the ‘Welsh Government’s desire to end livestock farming.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

To Be A Farmer’s Boy

This week’s offering is about organisations that are often little more than a name. Yet despite their lack of corporeal substance these outfits enjoy considerable support from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’.

Which is bad enough, but Wales has far too many of these organisations, and their numbers seem to be increasing monthly.

The title of this piece is taken from an old English song about a lad whose father dies leaving him, his mother, and five siblings, to fend for themselves. The lad goes to a farm seeking work. The farmer’s wife and daughter take pity on him, and he’s hired. He marries the daughter, and when her parents die, he becomes the farmer.

Here’s a good pub version from West Yorkshire.

And here’s an interesting version by Shropshire singer Fred Jordan. The old rhotic accent of the central border coming through well.

God! I spoil you.

SONS (AND DAUGHTERS) OF THE SOIL

This first section is about a shindig planned for November called the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference, at the University of Wales Trinity St David in Lampeter.

Where else? For this venerable institution is to where Jane Davidson, authoress of the Future Generations legislation, retreated after leaving Corruption Bay.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I particularly love their use of the term, ‘Real farming’. Does it suggest those involved enjoy a monopoly in knowledge of the subject? Inferring that those beyond this coterie are wholly ignorant of farming?

So who are these enlightened ones?

The website is a minimalist creation, perhaps explained by the fact that this group comes alive only for the annual knees-up. Like some sort of Earth-botherers Brigadoon.

Here’s the line-up (from the match programme, 6d from the boys at the turnstiles):

Hazel Thomas, who might actually know something about food. But after that promising introduction it’s downhill all the way.

Laura-Cait Driscoll, University of Wales Trinity St David Lampeter. Whose life is a mystery ere she rocked up in Lambed in 2016 to work at Shapla Tandoori.

Catherine Hughes. Is it a local Plaid Cymru councillor? Or this Catherine Hughes? If it’s the second, then she works with the ‘Welsh Government’.

Alicia Miller, Sustainable Food Trust. An international organisation, reflected in its directors. Monmouthshire council among the donors tells you who’s moving to rural north Gwent, have taken over the local Labour party and, through it, the council.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

A farming source tells me Patrick Holden, founder of SFT, is a good egg, but my source fears his organisation is going the way of others, like the Soil Association, in being taken over by anti-farmer activists. Or worse.

Dr Jane Ricketts Hein, Cynidr Consulting. Is there such a company, or is it a one-woman band?  The name crops up in relation to this 2017 conference, and then, nothing. Though Dr Hein seems to be connected with Bangor university.

To confuse matters(?), there was a company called Cynder Consulting.

Lowri Hedd Vaughan, GwyrddNi, which is a climate action group . . . at a conference on food and farming?

Ieuan Davies, Natural Resources Wales. ‘Welsh Government’ representative.

I said it was downhill after the full-back, and now it starts to get slightly ridiculous.

Jackie Pearce-Dickens, Whole Health Agriculture; from Oxfordshire, which wants us to consume less meat and fewer dairy products. A perfect fit for a food and farming conference in a dairy farming area of a livestock-raising country.

Lisa Mundle, Landworkers’ Alliance Cymru. An organisation of middle-class fantasists who want to be seen as peasants, such as might be found in Asia or Latin American. Sad, really.

The group belongs to La Via Campesina. So Viva La Revolucion!

Delyth Phillips (actually, Phillipps), of Wildlife Trusts Wales. An organisation that haunts me, because – and as I’ve reported more than once – it doesn’t exist.

Wildlife Trusts Wales dissolved as a charity in 2021, and as a company a year later. Thereby surrendering Wales’ distinct identity in that sphere. But reflecting the English takeover of the ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ rackets in Wales.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Despite lacking any legal structure Wildlife Trusts Wales carries on as if nothing happened. Led by dissembling Rachel Sharp. Ably assisted by Tim Birch, the Extinction Rebellion nut-job who was run out of the Peak District. And now, we have Delyth Phillipps.

How many more are there in this wraith-like organisation?

But do you know what’s missing from that line-up? That’s right – a farmer!

And that’s because we’ve reached the stage in Wales where conferences can be organised to discuss food production, land use, the rural environment . . . yet genuine, traditional, Welsh, farmers, are excluded.

I’ll explain this in the Conclusion.

TIR NATUR

This is a gang I’ve mentioned a few times before. And that’s despite them climbing aboard the environmental bandwagon only very recently. Here’s their website.

I think the first time Tir Natur appeared here was in July 2022, in a Miscellany post, scroll down to the section headed with the name.

But I think they’re worth another look. So let’s turn to the website, where we see Tir Natur’s vision laid out:

A Wales where beavers return to build their dams . . .  where cranes dance in the setting sun and golden eagles soar above Eryri once more.

Poetic, like, innit?

But seriously, what soul-dead ghoul among you could not be moved by the uplifting images of foxtrotting cranes and soaring eagles?

And there’s more.

A Wales where large grazing animals roam freely in natural herds . . . 

Note that Tir Natur is not referring here to cattle. If previous TN output is anything to go by, then this is a reference to European bison. In fact, an image of said beasts appears on the TN website.

Picture it! It’s 2035, and herds of bison roam from Crickhowell to Caeathro and from Crymych to Caerwys, pausing to rub themselves against the wind turbines, many of which have now toppled. Useless, unrecyclable, their owners untraceable.

The bison often wander into towns and villages, trampling people, wrecking cars, buildings, and gardens, but nothing can be done – because they’re protected. And that’s because, unlike cow farts, bison farts do no harm to the planet!

This is re-wilding. And it’s what Tir Natur is all about. So let’s get to the nub of it.

Tir Natur is a rewilding charity, set up to address the nature & climate crises in Wales. The state of nature in Wales is truly devastating . . . 

Globally, 1,000,000 species are at risk of extinction, and Wales is one of the worst culprits in the world for loss of nature. We are ranked 224th out of 240 countries for biodiversity intactness . . . but rewilding offers hope

What you’ve read there is how modern environmentalism operates. Imagine or exaggerate a problem – then come up with the solution. A ‘solution’ that will greatly benefit those who identified the problem in the first place!

Such an elegant and circular solution to the woes of the world.

If you think I’m wrong, then tell me who decided that, The state of nature in Wales is truly devastating‘, and that Wales is, ‘ranked 224th out of 240 countries for biodiversity intactness‘.

Was it some respected and impartial authority, or was it off-the-wall activists such as we find at Tir Natur? Come to that, who accepts these ‘findings’? The truth is that it doesn’t matter what you and I think; what matters is getting politicians and funders to pretend they believe this garbage.

But look around the world, for God’s sake, where forests bigger than Wales are being cleared, where species are hunted to extinction, at countries with no environmental controls whatsoever – yet we are expected to believe that little Wales, where hardly anything has changed, where regulations get tighter by the year, is ranked in the top 10% of countries suffering biodiversity loss.

Insulting bullshit. Insulting to all Welsh people, but especially to farmers, for they are the real target of these lies.

From the Tir Natur website. ‘This little piggy . . . ‘ can grow to 150kg or more, with tusks capable of ripping a human to shreds. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I was directed back to Tir Natur a couple of weeks ago because of two new arrivals.

First was Sally Weale, zoologist and maker of documentaries. She had previously been a director of The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

Weale greeted her appointment with, and very predictably:

With the loss of so much of Wales’ once abundant wildlife, I’m excited by the scale and ambition of Tir Natur’s vision

I don’t know what species have been lost in my lifetime, but I suspect it’s very few, if any. Which leads me to believe that when Sally Weale and others talk of ‘loss’ they’re thinking in a much longer timescale.

Which then allows them to include beaver, lynx, wolf, and other animals as having been ‘lost’. If I’m right, then how far back do we go? To bears? Pterodactyl?

But while using the longer timescale they still want to pretend that we, living today, are responsible. Or, at a stretch, it starts with the Industrial Revolution.

This is a deliberate and dishonest conflation designed to deceive us, and benefit them.

The other recent recruit was none other than Tim Birch, still looking over his shoulder for mutton-chopped Derbyshire gamekeepers.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I conclude this section with another extract from the TN website. Go to the ‘About Rewilding’ tab, then click ‘What is Rewilding?’ Where you’ll be regaled with:

Here in Wales, where ecosystems are more depleted and 88% of land is managed in some way for agriculture, rewilding is about restoring the complex and dynamic mosaic of habitat that once was.

The link is now clearly made between ecological degradation, species loss, and farming. An environmental tragedy created by farming that can only be remedied by taking land away from farmers and giving it back to nature.

Well no, not really. The land must be given to organisations like Tir Natur. Who will introduce all manner of strange critters, some of which were never known in Wales. Such as the Konik horse. For as all Wales knows, from Gower to the Carneddau, we have no wild equines of our own.

And that, my friends, is ‘rewilding’. It’s a colonialist land grab by shysters who know nothing of our country, or us. But then, we Welsh don’t figure in the future they want.

CONCLUSION

Readers may have noticed that the methodology employed by the environmental and land grab scammers is remarkably similar to that used by climate alarmists. That’s because they’re directed by the same source.

I refer now to the UN, WEF, EU, assorted supranational bodies; the mega corporations like BlackRock and Vanguard; and unhinged multi-billionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates, who think their wealth is a mandate to dictate our lives.

They too operate by dreaming up a crisis, then, like magicians producing rabbits from top hats, they come up with the ‘solution’. This pattern is now established.

The ‘climate crisis’ demands we rely on heavily subsided – and therefore expensive for consumers – ‘green’ energy, reject the internal combustion engine, have fewer children, and radically modify our diets.

A number of ostensibly unconnected agencies and movements have been recruited by the Globalists to promote the ‘destabilisation leads to control’ agenda.

These include Cultural Marxists pushing BLM, ‘trans rights’, open borders, and the idea that all white people are guilty of slavery, etc. Done to encourage division and violence that will be used to justify increasing censorship and authoritarianism.

Also, environmentalists, vegans and others, who’ve been platformed in recent decades because they too serve the Globalist agenda.

Simple, really. Control the food supply, control the people.

Which is why the Globalists encourage and fund environmentalists to demand an end to farming. While simultaneously pushing the idea of eating bugs, and ‘meat’ made in laboratories.

From the Guardian, July 17. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But the Globalists may not want the land from which farmers have been evicted for themselves. Other than perhaps what they can use for carbon offsets and other scams.

The priority is to ensure that that land no longer produces food.

Now I don’t know about you, but if, after all we know about Bill Gates’ involvement with Covid and the vaccines, you’re still happy to eat ‘meat’ from his factories, then the best of luck to you.

(You’ll find his ‘meat’ factory next to his mosquito breeding sheds.)

Call me old fashioned, but I’d prefer to stick with the Welsh countryside as it is, dotted with Welsh family farms producing good, wholesome, and natural food.

And helping maintain Welsh identity.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Climate Crisis And The Noble Lie

I decided to put this out soon after making up my mind not to bother with an analysis of the general election result. Only in a FPTP system could a party get a massive majority from a reduced share of the vote. A system designed for Whigs and Tories to fight over rotten boroughs is obviously broken.

MIND-BENDING BOLLOCKS, CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES, MORE BOLLOCKS

This piece took life with an article in Nation.Cymru last Thursday entitled, ‘Climate inaction undermines public support for lifestyle changes‘. A strange title, but when you think about it, it’s revealing.

The suggestion is that because the decision-makers are not doing enough to tackle the ‘climate crisis’ we, the public, are failing to support the lifestyle changes deemed necessary to combat said ‘climate crisis’.

The article begins:

New research into the public perception of climate change initiatives finds that whilst there is strong support for low-carbon lifestyles inaction is limiting public beliefs that a low-carbon future is possible.

Which is absolute bollocks. Outside of OPD circles there’s no ‘strong support for low carbon lifestyles’.

Or rather, support may exist, but only in the abstract. For in the real world, eating, heating, travelling, at reasonable cost, win out every time over the draconian and expensive measures proposed to achieve net zero.

The N.C article quotes Dr Catherine Cherry, of Cardiff University’s School of Psychology and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST).

Though I’m not sure if Dr Cherry’s really in Cardiff, and if she is, then I’m fairly sure she’s not teaching. Her Linkedin page locates her in Liverpool, but says she’s with CAST at Cardiff University. How does that work?

Call me an old cynic, but here’s how I read it. We, mere hoi polloi, need to be ‘persuaded’ that climate change is happening in order to accept the expensive, behaviour-changing, and freedom-limiting measures demanded of us by the Globalists.

But how is the voice of Dai Public to be heard? The N.C article recommends that old favourite – Citizens’ Assemblies.

We suggest involving the public in co-creating positive and fair visions of a sustainable future through deliberative processes like Citizens’ Assemblies. This could help build a public mandate for climate policies and foster a sense of climate citizenship, weakening the discourse of delay.

Anyone who’s been paying attention will know that Citizens’ Assemblies are as representative of genuine public opinion as a Question Time audience. In practice, citizens’ assemblies are stuffed with activists who tell other activists and politicians what they want to hear.

What those involved might perceive as a virtuous circle; others as an echo chamber.

As Dr Cherry is involved with the CAST, that’s where we head next.

CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS

There’s something very 1984-ish about ‘social transformations’, don’t you think? Rather like ‘nudge unit’ Lynn Global and their ‘Behavioural Sciences’ (BS) work for the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

CAST looks like another gang of Greta-worshippers agonising over the rest of us. We inconsiderate bastards driving cars, having kids, eating meat . . . basically, just breathing.

Also at CAST we find Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE. Linkedin tells us she was also at Cardiff University, until July 2020. And she seems to have been a lecturer.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And although she’s left Wales for Bath University, Whitmarsh was last year recruited by the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. Below is her entry on the WNZ2035 website.

I wonder if her ‘studies of meat consumption’ concluded we should eat more?

Click to open enlarged ion separate tab

Professor Whitmarsh’s CV might appear to be that of an academic, and nothing more, but I suggest caution because, in addition to her links with the highly suspect IPCC, this BBC article from March 2019 tells us:

A new £5m research centre led by Cardiff University’s psychology department, which will explore new ways to tackle climate change, has also been announced.

Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh, who will head up the unit, said it would “address the fundamental question of how we can live differently and better, in ways that meet the need for these systemic, deep and rapid emission reductions”.

Again, note that it’s the psychology department exploring “new ways to tackle climate change“. What can psychology do even if there is a climate crisis?

It’s explained in the following paragraph. And I think we know what is meant by, “live differently and better“. This is another reference to the ‘social transformations’ we read about earlier.

In reality, we are expected to live differently, but it won’t be better. Not for us.

This new department at Cardiff University seems to be a collaboration with CAST, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which is part of UK Research and Innovation.

So we have a department at Cardiff University, where psychologists are funded by the UK government to, among other things, advise the ‘Welsh Government’ on how to make us behave differently in response to a claimed ‘climate crisis’.

Here’s a final contribution from CAST, which is one of those bodies pushing the idiocy that the countryside is racist, and introduces race into the climate debate with:

People of colour in the UK are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts.

It’s nonsense, obviously. Yet another attempt by leftist academics to introduce race into just about every discussion. (A guaranteed route to funding.)

Before leaving that 2019 BBC article I must comment on the contribution from former first minister, Mark Drakeford:

First Minister Mark Drakeford said the younger generation recognised a failure to act “could have catastrophic consequences for their futures”.

We are talking now of brainwashed young people. Here’s how it works.

Six-year-olds, after being traumatised by drag queens flaunting their junk and telling them they’re in the wrong bodies, are further terrified by hearing the world will end in the very near future – and it’s all the fault of their wicked parents and grandparents!

Politicians then claim to be surprised and horrified by levels of ‘climate anxiety’ among young people. As if the inevitable consequence of brainwashing can be divorced from the brainwashing itself.

This is disgusting hypocrisy. Even for a Labour politician.

THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

If that establishment’s name rings a bell it’s because about 15 years ago someone released a stash of e-mails suggesting that people involved with the Climate Research Unit there had been ‘imaginative’ with their findings.

Inevitably, those with a vested interest in promoting the climate scam – and of course their media – circled the wagons and dismissed the claims as smears made by ‘climate deniers’. (Who denies climate?)

The BBC even made a drama out of it – 14 years later!

Cherry and Whitmarsh were both there at that time.

Cherry was doing a MSc in Climate Change, after which she worked for a few months for the Norwich Green Party. While Whitmarsh was a senior research assistant at the University of East Anglia from April 2005 until March 2009.

I’m not suggesting that either was involved in fiddling the figures, or indeed that fiddling took place; but there is a cloud hanging over the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia from that period.

I mention this because Cherry and Whitmarsh later came to Wales, to Corruption Bay’s favourite university. Also because what happened in Norwich makes us consider what is often referred to as Plato’s ‘Noble Lie’.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Which is saying things you know to be untrue for (what you perceive to be) the right reasons, or a beneficial outcome. In Plato’s case it seems to have been reminding different classes of their roles in a divinely-ordered system, thereby ensuring the social cohesion of the polis.

Social cohesion and a sense of belonging are entirely desirable, but today, in the age of Globalism, and its use of Wokery, there is nothing noble about the lies we are fed.

We are told that white people are uniquely evil. We are told that men can have babies. In fact, we are told all sorts of lies in order to cause confusion, destabilisation and the very opposite of social cohesion.

In Wales, farmers are blamed for every pollution incident. Blamed by those who covet the farmers’ land. In many cases, those making the claims are lying.

One example came from Rachel Sharp of the (officially defunct) Wildlife Trusts Wales. In November 2021 she told the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee that Welsh rivers and streams were awash with growth hormones used by Welsh farmers. Here’s a link to the video.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Growth hormones have been illegal in the UK since 1981.

This blatant lie did nothing to damage Sharp’s reputation. For she sits on the ‘Welsh Government’s Hinkley Point C Reference Group. And it should go without saying that she was also recruited to that discredited-in-advance-of-their-‘findings’ gang, the WNZ2035 Challenge Group.

Both of which are chaired by the Green Goddess, and author of the Future Generations legislation, Jane Davidson.

If you really believe that farting cows are destroying the planet, or if you’re a zealous vegan, then you’ll have no qualms about lying when it comes to farmers. Especially when politicians are eagerly waiting to accept and act on your lies.

And of course, fund your purchase of vacated farms and abandoned farmland.

CONCLUSION

If there really was a climate crisis, then the evidence would be enough to make us change our wicked ways. Psychology would not be needed. But there is no real evidence. As ever, in the absence of evidence, we are subjected to ‘imaginative messaging’.

Which relies on ‘corrected’ records, contemporary temperatures recorded in ‘heat islands’, computer modelling, and influencing organisations such as the Met Office and the BBC into describing sunny days of 20º Celsius as heatwaves. Phew!

Sometimes the deception is so obvious it’s laughable. We had a fine example back in 2022 with Matthew Horwood selling his photos of a tidal creek in Pembrokeshire to media outlets as evidence of a dried up river – due to climate change!

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Read it here by scrolling down to the section ‘Someone’s Telling Porkies’.

What I found instructive about this episode was that even after they’d been told the truth, the media made no corrections to their reports. They allowed the lie to stand, because they wanted to promote the lie.

But then, I suppose they have to lie because the headline-grabbing predictions made by Al Gore and other charlatans have all failed to materialise.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Snow still caps Kilimanjaro. The Great Barrier Reef is in rude health. Polar bear populations are thriving. People still take holidays on the Seychelles and other islands we were told would disappear under rising sea levels. Deaths from extreme weather events have plummeted.

All of which explains why people aren’t buying into the ‘climate crisis’ – because it’s just not happening. So those who want us to believe in climate change, in order to control us and our behaviour, must resort to voodoo psychology.

If that fails, then perhaps it’ll be hypnotism next. I can see it now – The Great Gateso, black top hat and cloak, leggy assistant, inviting volunteers from the audience to be mesmerised into eating his lab-made ‘meat’.

This is of course encouraging. It tells us the Globalists are losing. But we must remain vigilant against their emissaries in politics, academia, the media, pressure groups and elsewhere trying to make us accept the lies.

Lies that are anything but noble.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Road To Hell

The previous post got considerable attention and it also unlocked fascinating new information. And that explains this follow-up. Which I hope will result in further revelations.

WHERE ARE WE?

In the previous post I dealt with the Bryn Cadwgan wind farm planned by Galileo Green Energy. This is a Swiss company that set up a UK operation a few years ago to cash in on the Welsh wind turbine rip-off.

Different rules in England mean that complaints from local communities must be listened to which, in practical terms, means that no onshore wind farms get built. This sees Wales and Scotland increasingly used to supply electricity to England from a source the English don’t want.

Even to the extent of electricity from wind farms off Scotland’s west coast coming by undersea cable to Bangor, then down to Swansea, where it can connect with the main transmission lines from Pembroke power station to England.

Here in Wales, every project of 10MW or above is classed as a Development of National Significance (DNS), which means locals, and their elected representatives on local councils, will always be over-ruled by politicians in Corruption Bay who’ve declared war on a people they regard as racist, climate-denying, car-driving, transphobes.

It’s succinctly explained here. The chronology is intriguing.

In addition to the Galileo proposal I also knew that Bute Energy, a Scottish firm that rents a cupboard in Cardiff to fool us into thinking it’s Welsh, had a plan for an installation they were calling Blaencothi. Though details were scarce.

But true to form, Bute has again recruited a local to proselytise on its behalf. This one is Cilycwm community councillor Jamie Pickup. We can no doubt expect Pickup to be speaking up for all three projects.

But the third project, Waun Maenllwyd Wind Hub, being pushed by Belltown Power of Bristol, was a bit of a surprise. Possibly because it had previously been known as ‘Bryn Brawd’, and I’d perhaps assumed it had fallen though because I’d heard no more of it by that name.

Anyway . . . since putting out last week’s piece I have been told that the companies behind these three projects are combining to share a route to the plateau that forms the southern end of the Cambrian Mountains of central Wales.

In fact, the route is described here on the Belltown website (scroll down):

The proposed access route to the site for abnormal indivisible loads (such as blades, hub, nacelle and tower sections) will be from the port of origin (which is likely to be Swansea) via the M4, A48 and A40. Loads would turn off the public highway at Pumsaint and travel north for approximately 14km on a combination of existing commercial forestry tracks and new tracks to reach the wind farm location. No significant traffic flows will be associated with the operational phase of the site.

Who could argue with that? A motorway and nice wide trunk roads all the way. Problem is, the route as given is sort of incomplete. Let me explain.

As written, deliveries will turn off the A40 at Pumsaint . . . but the A40 goes nowhere near Pumsaint. Which makes what Belltown says misleading, if not dishonest. And if they could get this so wrong, what else might they have got wrong?

The truth is that after leaving Llandeilo the huge low loaders will turn onto the B4302 and head for Talyllychau (Talley). Then on to Crugybar and the Bridgend Inn (where I sank a few pints in the good old days), where they’ll join the A482 to reach Pumsaint.

Using my bestest crayons I’ve conjured up this map that might explain it better.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

For those of you unfamiliar with this road, take my word for it, it will struggle to accommodate massive low loaders carrying huge turbine blades and tower sections.

Below is a capture from Google Maps showing the B4302 just after leaving Talyllychau on its way to Crugybar. Those hedgerows will have to go. And so will many other trees and hedgerows on the 13 miles from the A40 to Pumsaint.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Now we’re going to move on to Stage 2 of the environmental vandalism associated with these projects. The section that involves the National Trust (NT) and the ‘Welsh Government’.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that Belltown is closely linked with the Foresight Group. And if that name rings a bell it’s because Foresight has been buying up farms in this area for carbon offsetting.

With the Foresight reputation damaged locally Belltown may be fronting for Foresight. Questions need to be asked. And answers demanded.

UPDATE 10.11.2023: It was learnt last night that Belltown will be taking the A482 from Llanwrda to Pumsaint. Galileo will take the Talyllychau route suggested above. No information yet on the Bute route, but it doesn’t really matter. Because there will now be two roads suffering expensive damage.

DON’T TRUST THE NATIONAL TRUST

Once the huge low loaders reach Pumsaint, or just outside the village, they’ll take a right turn onto National Trust property.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This is the Dolaucothi estate, home to the famous ‘Roman’ gold mines, once owned by the Johnes family, who also owned the Hafod estate, to the north. Hafod fell into the clutches of the National Trust last year. With a 99-year lease and £700,000 gift from the ‘Welsh Government’.

In other words, the ‘Welsh Government’ paid an organisation worth billions £700,000 to take over a prime Welsh estate.

Despite the excuse given by Corruption Bay for this generosity it might have been due to the involvement of Dawn Bowden MS. As Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport the Hafod deal should have had nothing to do with her. But Tourism’ has since been added to her portfolio. Fancy that!

Response from ‘Welsh Government’ to FoI request. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I wrote about it in this post, scroll to the section ‘Bristol Fashion’. And then in this post, in the section, ‘”Welsh Government” funds National Trust’.

It’s instructive to consider the organisation of the National Trust in Wales, and what happened at Hafod. Not least because it might provide clues as to why the NT would be a willing party to this planned environmental disaster.

It was early June last year when we learnt that the Trust was taking over the Hafod estate. Which seems to be owned by the ‘Welsh Government’ through Natural Resources Wales, and had until then been run by the Hafod Trust.

Just three months earlier, in March, Lhosa Daly of Bristol, had taken on the role of NT’s Acting Director for Wales, and was appointed to the post officially in September. I mention Bristol because that’s where she lives.

If we look at her career background we see that in the past seven or eight years Daly’s been chair of the Bristol branch of the Institute of directors, vice chair of the Bristol Law Centre, and she is still a business ambassador for the Western Gateway.

These positions would have brought her into contact with the glitterati of Bristol’s business community. Including, perhaps, the directors of Belltown Power, the company planning to desecrate our country with Waun Maenllwyd Wind Hub.

With Belltown, Bute and Galileo hoping to reach the site by traversing land owned or managed by Lhosa Daly’s National Trust and the ‘Welsh Government’.

The mystery of Dawn Bowden representing the ‘Welsh Government’ last year, despite it being beyond her responsibilities, could be accounted for by her also being from Bristol. She and Daly might have already known each other.

And if that’s too fanciful an explanation for you, then try this: Bowden should have known Lhosa Daly through her being Deputy Minister for Arts since May 2021 and Daly being an advisor to the Arts Council of Wales since April 2019.

Come to that, how did Bristol-based Daly get that gig with the Arts Council of Wales?

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m told deals have been done with farmers and other landowners along the route between Llandeilo and Pumsaint to cut corners, destroy hedges, and in places widen the B4302, and even perhaps the A482.

This will cost a considerable amount of money. So who’ll pay for it? Will it be the ‘developers’? The county council? The so-called ‘Welsh Government’? Or will there be a whip-round in the Dolaucothi Arms?

And then there’s the question of how the National Trust squares being a conservation body with the damage it’s helping inflict on the Welsh landscape by these wind farms. What would NT members say, if they knew?

Not just in the road ‘improvements’ I’ve just described, but also on the 14km journey to the sites after the low loaders turn off the A482. And then the on-site destruction.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

There’ll be the vast concrete bases to support these huge turbines, the access roads, the deep trenches for the cables. How many trees will be felled? How much peat bog damaged? And let’s not forget the pylons.

I ask about the trees because I’m told new populations of red squirrels and pine martens are establishing themselves. Will they adapt to climbing pylons and turbines?

I suggest that even if they stick around they’ll be so traumatised by what’s being done to their habitat they might stop breeding.

As if that wasn’t enough, someone then tells me . . .

We also have two breeding maternity colonies of soprano pipistrelle bats on my land, they will love the sonic signature of wind turbines of course.

Don’t worry – once the poor little buggers are disorientated enough the blades will finish them off pretty quickly. (If they’re turning!)

Them and the kites, and other birds. And insects by the million.

Nothing here really surprises me, because I’ve always regarded the National Trust as a very commercial organisation and, in Wales, rather colonialist. Lhosa Daly playing the memsahib is entirely in keeping.

Not only that, but there’s something of the vulture about the NT in Wales, picking up land and estates as old Welsh families die out. Or more recently, acquiring property from the ‘Welsh Government’ or Natural Resources Wales.

For example, Daly is also a director of a National Trust company called Porthdinlleyn Harbour Company (The). This relates to Porthdinllaen at Morfa Nefyn.

Porthdinllaen once belonged to the Jones-Parry (Madryn) family. Sir Love Jones-Parry MP, was very supportive of the Patagonia settlement. Which explains why a town over there is called Puerto Madryn; and is twinned with Nefyn, I believe.

Another example of this sad phenomenon is located not far from me, a place I love to visit. I’m directing you now to Llynnoedd Cregennan.

Llynnoedd Cregennan. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Major C L Wynne-Jones lost both his sons in WWII, so in 1959 he handed over this 285-hectare estate to the National Trust.

As I hope I’ve made clear, I’m not surprised by the National Trust’s behaviour with these wind farms, and the damage they’ll cause . . . what really pisses me off is that the National Trust is still operating in Wales.

Devolution should have brought Wales a new organisation to replace the colonialist parasite that is the National Trust. We should by now have a Welsh body conserving our heritage and our history, safeguarding our landscapes.

But to set up such a body would have required political leaders with vision and courage, rather than the grubby, ishoo-of-the-month puppets Wales is cursed with.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

A Little Place In The Country

In this piece I shall look at what might be a renewed attempt to promote OPDs, or perhaps it’s just another bit of ‘affordable housing’ flim-flam. Maybe a bit of both.

For newcomers . . . the OPD system is unique to Wales; it allows people to build a dwelling in open country as long as they promise to worship the sun, name their sprogs Earthworm and Beelzebub, and grow a couple of carrots to prove they’re ‘farmers’.

I’ve written about OPDs many times. Just type ‘OPD’ in the search bar.

GARRISON OPD

Three years ago I introduced Garrison Farm CIC, you’ll find it in this post, scroll down to the relevant section. The two principals were Ross Edwards and Chris Carree. Carree left the company in June 2021 but Edwards is still there.

I assume Garrison Farm is still a going concern because three new directors have joined since Carree left. Let’s look at them in the order they joined.

First, 04.10.2021, was Kevin John Foley, who’s worked for Admiral insurance for 20 years. Is his employer chipping in?

Next we have, 30.06.2023, Christopher Mark Kelshaw. Another Army veteran.

Finally, we have Michael Paul Smith, 05.08.2023, who is Senior Facilities and Project Officer for Swansea council, and has worked for the council for over 20 years. Swansea council contributing?

The plan is to set up – possibly in Swansea, or maybe Carmarthenshire – a kind of OPD community for former military personnel. That’s the impression I get in this video from February last year. (Watch from 38:00.)

The webinar is hosted by David Thorpe, founder / director of the One Planet Centre and co-founder / patron of the One Planet Council.

Thorpe was clearly recovering from a stroke, which he attributed to ‘climate anxiety’.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Thorpe has crossed my path a few times over the years as I’ve researched OPDs. And the idea of a community of OPDs is not new. As this tweet of Thorpe’s from January 2018 makes clear.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Though I don’t know what project was being discussed, or even if there was a specific project mooted. So much OPD discussion is little more than pipedreams.

But to return to Swansea, where there was certainly a project launched that could plausibly be called a community. This was Killan-Fach Eco-farm on the Gower side of the city. (Marginally more attractive than the Port Talbot side.)

I wrote about it in June 2020 in One Planet Developments, just scroll down to the section ‘Farmlets’.

The council knocked it back for a number of reasons. One being that . . .

There is also no evidence of how the development would meet local affordable housing needs

Which tells me that ‘affordable housing’ was one of the angles used in the hope of getting planning consent for an OPD project. This is interesting, because you’ll be reading more about affordable housing, and ‘co-operative social housing’, in a minute.

But before that it might be worth focusing on Ross Edwards a little.

From his Linkedin profile we learn that since January this year he’s been Business Development Manager for Rouute. Here’s the website. It describes its product as a, “road-based energy harvesting system“.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

If I understand it . . . pads or sensors are placed on the road surface and vehicles driving over them generate electricity. Even if it works, we’re unlikely to see this technology in Wales because we’re heading towards a vehicle-free future.

There’s another military connection here at Rouute. For CEO is Antony Edmondson-Bennett, a former army officer who, according to his now disappeared Linkedin bio, is trained in ‘close protection’. (It was there last week when I was researching this.)

The Rouute website announces a link-up with a firm called Carma. Here’s a very short video starring the founder of Carma, Jim Holland.

I found the Carma website easily enough, but there is no company of that name registered with Companies House. It was only by scrolling down to the small print at the bottom that I found, “Carma is a trading name of Rewards.Earth LTD 13315107“.

So let’s see what else we can learn.

I THINK THAT I SHALL NEVER SEE . . . ‘.

The arrangement between the two, as spoken by Jim Holland of Carma, is that . . .

Rouute Technologies Ltd will be planting trees for every single unit they sell in the UK or abroad.

While on the Carma website we read of: “UK trees planted by veterans via The Green Task Force“. Here’s the Companies House entry.

On the ‘Meet the Team‘ page of the website we see: “Our target is to plant tens of millions of trees in the next five years“. That is some ambition!

Rooting around for more information I naturally looked up Holland’s Linkedin page, where we see that he was in the Royal Navy for 13 years. So another military connection.

In this rooting around ‘South Wales’ appeared more than once.

One mention involved Paul Webb of Pontypool, who spent 12 years in the Royal Navy. The other mention was about planting trees for Sussex software company Tillo. On that Tillo website we read:

This March, ten members of the Tillo team will be making their way to South Wales for a day of tree planting in partnership with Carma.

Despite the nonsense about saving the planet, what we’re looking at here is greenwash; and it must be bracketed with outfits like Stump Up For Trees, and investment vehicles like Foresight, buying up Welsh farms.

Too much of Wales is being lost in this way. We don’t need any more of it.

DRAKEFORD SPEAKS!

I’ve got a treat for you now – a video clip of our Glorious Leader! It’s from Tuesday last week (Oct 17).

Drakeford was responding to a completely unrehearsed and piercing question from Huw Irranca-Davies MS. Here’s the transcript.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Seeing ‘Mike Hedges’ and ‘fascinating’ in the same sentence is quite hilarious.

But here’s where I want to focus, on this section referencing “co-operative social housing managed and owned by the people who live in them“:

And the good news is, Llywydd, that we have a new wave of initiatives being led in different parts of Wales: the Solva community land trust, the Gower community land trust, the Taf Fechan Housing Co-operative in Merthyr—all of them initiatives designed to develop housing that will be run and managed by the people who live in them.

In his ‘question’ Irranca-Davies makes reference to “international youth leaders” in attendance, though God knows why anyone would travel to listen to those clowns. Let alone travel any distance.

THE EXAMPLES DRAKEFORD QUOTED

Drakeford mentioned three examples of co-operative social housing. These were, to quote him verbatim: “the Solva community land trust, the Gower community land trust, the Taf Fechan Housing Co-operative in Merthyr”.

Let’s look at them, working backwards.

Taf Fechan looks like an offshoot of housing association Merthyr Valley Homes. I guess it takes over or runs MVH properties. If so, then it’s not a group of locals coming together afresh to build and manage their own community.

Now let’s turn to Solfa.

The Solva Community Land Trust was launched under the direction of, or with the help of, Planed in September 2019. “Planed delivers sustainable outcomes for communities by a collaborative, people-led approach“.

But I’m not sure what if anything’s happened since.

There’s this report from the Western Telegraph (19.02.2021) telling us that 18 affordable homes will be built on Solfa football field. But were they built?

Adding to the uncertainty is that nothing’s been posted on the ‘News’ section of the group’s website (scroll down) since January 2021. Nothing added to the SolvaCLT Twitter / X account since January 2022. And the latest accounts filed with the Financial Conduct Authority show just a few quid in the kitty.

An internet search turned up this from March this year, which suggests the properties are still not built.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The third project mentioned by Drakeford was in Gower. And I assume he was referring to Gŵyr Community Land Trust. Here’s the website.

Though it’s registered with Companies House as Gower Land Trust CIC, launched May 2021. And with just a few hundred in the piggy-bank it’s also difficult to see where this is going without a major injection of funding.

But it seems to have a rival in the Gwyr Community Land Trust Ltd, launched August 2023. This is a one-man band run by a local, Roger Brace.

I mention that Roger Brace is local because, looking at those involved in Gŵyr Community Land Trust, I see that a number of them are newcomers to Wales.

Director Adam Jefferson Land was not long ago pushing a similar venture over in Devon. (Fellow-director Niaomh Convery came to Swansea with him.) Another of the three directors, Emily Robertson, came to Wales a few years ago after working for Solace Women’s Aid in London.

Going by the bios and other evidence, this crew is sure to appeal to ‘progressive’ politicians. An impression strengthened by the image used in this WalesOnline report in November 2021.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

THE BIT AT THE END WHERE I PULL IT ALL TOGETHER

OPDs, as originally conceived, never really took off. While throwing up a shack in the countryside might appeal to many, needing to prove that you were living a largely self-sufficient lifestyle seems to have put many off the idea.

To make things worse, the idea was highjacked by unscrupulous, often unsavoury individuals and groups, buying land, often tracts of forestry, then selling or renting plots for people to put up cabins or bring in mobile homes.

The examples below are from Llangynog, Carmarthenshire, and they were sent to me a couple of years back. They’re not OPDs, and they don’t have planning permission.

But those who live in them will employ the OPD defence against council planners.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I’m not suggesting that Wade William Heames is either unscrupulous or unsavoury, but his Edible Forest projects have come in for a lot of criticism. Much of it from people who’d been tempted to buy in, or even had bought in.

Also, from those threatened with being neighbours to one of his projects.

Which brings me back to Ross Edwards and Garrison Farm. I might accept this project if it was home to Welsh ex-service personnel. But if it’s nothing more than a smokescreen for greenwashing, then I would object.

The video you saw earlier, starring Ross Edwards and David Thorpe was produced by Cwmpas. (Formerly, Wales Co-operative Development & Training Centre Ltd.)

Cwmpas is pushing co-operative and community-led housing. Naturally, I went to the Financial Conduct Authority website to get some info on Cwmpas. Here’s the annual return and accounts for year ending 31.03.2022.

Income of £6.5m from “‘Welsh Government’, European funding, other grants and sources of income“. With two-thirds of that income going on the 100 staff.

And I bet you’d never heard of Cwmpas until you read this. How many more such beasties are out there, lurking in the shadows, devouring unwary maidens and feasting on public funds?

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

You’ll see that the Cwmpas accounts were signed off by the then secretary, D Walker. Now Derek Walker – for it is he! – is the Future Generations Commissioner. Does he plan to breathe new life into OPDs in his new role?

Whatever Walker may have planned, Drakeford was talking about more conventional housing. But to understand why we are where we are, you need some background information.

It was always my belief that the left wing administration in Corruption Bay wanted rented housing to be the sole preserve of housing associations . . . with these in turn funded and controlled from the Bay.

But the close relationship that developed led the ONS to decide that Welsh housing associations were, effectively, public bodies. This resulted in them being privatised. Explained here from a ‘Welsh Government’ perspective.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Welsh housing associations are now building many fewer homes for rent. Some are building none at all. They, and their subsidiaries, are focused almost exclusively on private, open market housing.

This helps explain why some councils are trying to make up the shortfall.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Adding to the problem is the ‘Welsh Government’s ongoing campaign against private landlords.

Finally, and especially in rural areas, we have the issue of holiday homes, also retirees and others buying property and moving in permanently.

So . . . fewer housing association properties for rent; private landlords quitting the business; councils spending money they may not have trying to fill the gap; politicians tickling rather than tackling the rural housing crisis; to a backdrop of recession, a ‘de-growth’ agenda, and increasing economic hardship enforced by following the lunacies of Net Zero.

There could be a perfect storm approaching . . . and this storm will have bugger all to do with any imaginary ‘climate crisis’.

Which is why I would hope to see official support for local people getting together to help themselves. But the examples quoted by Drakeford do not inspire confidence.

One thing for sure – a government making major expenditure cuts, and councils that are also feeling the pinch, should not be funding good-lifers hoping to settle in scenically attractive areas with which they have only the most tenuous connection.

The only real solution is a comprehensive and national housing strategy. But it would need joined-up thinking and hard work – from a ‘Welsh Government’ that prefers soundbites and virtue signalling!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

Wales, Idiots And Envirogrifters

Yes, I’ve postponed the piece on the Globalists, again, but it’s a story with no real deadline. Whereas what I’m offering below is a kind of follow-up to a piece I put out in June: Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups. And I want to get it out before this year’s Show in Llanelwedd becomes a distant memory.

This is another biggie, but it’s segmented. So, as Buddy Holly sang, Take Your Time.

EXTINCTION REBELLION, AN UPDATE

In the piece I just linked to I established that the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ (‘WG’) has been meeting with the extremists of Extinction Rebellion since at least May 2019.

I can now confirm that first minister Drakeford himself met with Extinction Rebellion in July 2019. Did he meet them even earlier, because the letter below doesn’t say it was their first meeting?

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I can’t take it back further (unsurprising seeing as XR didn’t launch until October 31, 2018), but I can reinforce the point that XR and WG are close, and establish beyond any doubt that the pressure group is giving orders to our elected representatives.

Exhibit A, M’lud: An e-mail from XR Cymru to Julie James, who’d been re-elected in the May 6 Senedd elections and made Minister for Climate Change. Basically, the message says, ‘You’re not going far enough or fast enough’.

The message ends with a reference to, ” . . . the good relationship with Welsh Government developed in the last few years”. On the right you’ll see Julie James’ response.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The next communication I have is from XR Cymru Political Circle and it’s to Julie James and Llyr Gruffydd, Plaid Cymru chair of the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee, and it’s dated December 7, 2021.

I should add that the highlighting is not mine. And I was unable to locate the attachment referred to. (Yes, you’re welcome to try.)

Extinction Rebellion, with nary a vote to their name, tell the ‘Welsh Government’: “Of course there are areas where we want to see more action and faster responses“.

I’d tell them to fuck right off . . . but then, that’s me.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The next billet-doux was sent on July 13, 2022, at 7:26 in the morning! From XR Cymru Political Circle to Julie James, and the subject matter, in upper case, read: “URGENT REQUEST FOR A MEETING”.

This is an interesting (and amusing) communication. For it might suggest that Julie James was not giving XR the personal attention they thought they deserved. In fact, it reads as if she fobbed them off with her deputy Lee Waters, and they weren’t impressed.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

There is the usual ‘Must do better! reprimand, but what I really want to focus on is the reference, in bold type, to “Behaviour Change Strategy“. Also, the introduction of Claire Chappell, who is said to be ” . . . working as quickly as possible with substantial resources . . . “.

So who is Claire Chappell?

Her Linkedin page (here in pdf) describes her as, ‘Head of Brand Performance’ at the ‘Welsh Government’, and she’s been in the job for more than 8 years. But what is the job? And what is ‘brand performance’?

Well, I found this explanation, and if the definition below is to be believed, then Clair Chappell and her employer are dismal failures.

Brand performance marketing, also known as brand purpose marketing, focuses on improving your brand’s reputation and of course, its performance.

Finally, we’ll read this e-mail from December 13, 2022. From XR Cymru Political Circle to Julie James and Lee Waters, cc Mark Drakeford and Llyr Gruffydd.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Again, that reference to “behaviour change“. How exactly are we supposed to change? And change into what – mugs taking orders from Extinction Rebellion channelled through the ‘Welsh Government’?

Here endeth the chapter on Extinction Rebellion. I’m hoping the ‘Welsh Government’ and Plaid Cymru now remember that we are judged by the company we keep.

Though I suppose that advice could also be given to Extinction Rebellion.

MISCELLANEA

In this chunk of the opus I want to deal with stories that either made it into the news recently, or else came to my attention by some other route. Some of these broke at the Show, others lead on from things that broke at the Show.

That make sense?

RULE OF SIX

I’m referring to the Six Principles, and Extinction Rebellion was also involved in this nonsense from before the May 2021 Senedd elections. It’s in the form of an appeal to politicos to sign up to six principles somebody’s dreamed up at their Pilates class.

Here’s a composite of the appeal, the six principles set out, and a list of the signatories.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

One of the six organisations involved is Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Which I was delighted to see, for we really must stop the annual slaughter of dolphins at Abergele, and scupper the Aberaeron whaling fleet.

Also among the signatory bodies is CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. When did Wales become ‘overseas’? Or why does CAFOD keep cropping up in these envirogrifter pronunciamentos?

THE ENVIROGRIFTERS’ MILITIA

Now we’re expected to fall into line with the National Nature Service, and I bet you didn’t even know we had one. Neither did I.

I just can’t keep up with all these new bodies, overlapping, duplicating each other’s work, the same people popping up wearing different hats, and all in receipt of public funding and / or time that politicians and civil servants should be spending on real problems.

Clearly following the third sector model.

And just like the third sector envirogrifters will identify a ‘problem’, and demand funding to solve said problem; but never actually solve the problem because that would mean the end of the funding. That’s how this scam works.

I described this plan on Twitter as a militia for hobby farmers and hippies, and I see no reason to change that view. With perhaps XR providing the commissars. Just scroll down here and see who’s involved in this latest scam.

Now think about it, here we have an organisation promising to revitalise rural Wales, and yet the two farming unions are not involved, and neither is the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales.

What we see instead, are the usual suspects. Envirogrifters, Swamp dwellers, and ‘Welsh Government’ departments.

Which makes this capture from the militia website dishonest. Unless of course it refers to hippies and hobby farmers. Which I suppose makes a certain sense, given that the ‘Welsh Government wants these to replace traditional Welsh farming.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The website is very basic and uninformative, giving it a work in progress feel but, unsurprisingly, we read that the previous Future Generations Commissioner had a big hand in its production.

Though the Commissioner is only the Welsh agent for a bit of UK-wide silliness, as we read below. The links will tell you more.

The process is being organised by the Wales Inquiry of the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission, with support from the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner, under the auspices of the Green Recovery Task Group – a cross sector group convened to act quickly and creatively in response to the impacts of the pandemic.

The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales included the proposal to create a national nature service in her Fit for the Future Programme for Government

Envirobollocks piled so high it’s in danger of blocking out the sun . . . Hang on! – is that the cunning plan?

NFU REJECTS ‘WELSH GOVERNMENT’ TREES PLAN

One of the big stories of the Show was NFU Cymru rejecting ‘Welsh Government’s demand that farmers set aside 10% of their land for tree planting. Hedgerows do not count, but possibly trees in hedgerows do count!

The proposal might work on some farms, but not others. Which is why the ‘Welsh Government’s blanket approach reveals the failing of inflexibility that we see time and time again.

We saw it with the NVZ legislation, brought in to tackle a very localised problem, yet the politicians adopted a sledgehammer and nut approach and made the legislation both national and unreasonably strict. Though the ‘Welsh Government’ has subsequently backed down a couple of times.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But then, Labour politicians in Wales know little about farming or the countryside. Theirs is a party of cities, post-industrial areas, chip-on-shoulder minorities, and agitators with useless degrees and colourful hair.

To compound the problem Labour politicians are advised by civil servants – like Lesley Griffiths’ former paramour Gary – who’ve been shipped in from England to run down Welsh agriculture.

Further, the draconian NVZ rules were based on the false premise that farmers are solely responsible for poor water quality. Because, for reasons given elsewhere, it suited a number of agendas to give Dŵr Cymru / Welsh Water a free ride.

Among the agendas served was that of environmental / river groups, in receipt of public funds and, in many cases, seeking to appropriate farmland.

FUTURE GENERATIONS COMMISSIONER LOOKS INTO THE, ER, FUTURE

Now we turn to one of my favourite sites, Nation.Cymru. Though the unkind among you dismiss it as just another ‘Welsh Government’ propaganda outlet.

And after reading ‘We need a new long-term vision for food in Wales‘ I can see why.

This little gem was penned by Derek Walker, the new £95,000 a year Future Generations Commissioner; and just like his predecessor, Sophie Howe, he got the gig not because of any particular talent, but because he’s a trusted Labour insider.

Not only that, but Derek worked for Stonewall. In fact, he helped Stonewall set up in Wales. How much more of an insider can you be?

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

So what did Derek have to say?

High food prices mean one in five people in Wales are hungry, disproportionally affecting more disabled people, Black, Asian and minority ethnic people.”

Mmm. Does that mean Derek thinks it’s OK for able-bodied White people to starve? Is this another example of ‘inclusivity’ that discriminates against the majority?

But let’s give the boy another chance. Carry on, Derek . . .

Agricultural waste pollutes our rivers” Oh dear, that may be the party line, but I was expecting better. But alright, one more chance.

And the boy comes good with: “Farmers are critical to our nation’s health, rural communities and a thriving Welsh language – they helped maintain the food chain through the pandemic, play a leading role in restoring nature and reducing emissions, and should be a vital part of this long-term food plan.”

But it raises the obvious question – if you think our farmers are so important, Derek, why is your government making life so difficult for them?

Finally, we read:

This autumn, I will publish my priorities for my role for the next seven years, and the long-term questions I’m exploring include – how can we involve communities to shift diets to meet the nature and climate emergencies and create green jobs?

What does “shift diets” mean, Derek? Because I suspect it means away from meat. I suspect that because you link it with “the nature and climate emergencies”, which I further suspect alludes to farting cows.

In a country of livestock farming you want people to stop eating meat?

And as for “green jobs” this often means hobby farmers, OPDs, etc., which don’t create many jobs. Or cheap food. It’s also used to describe greenwashing . . . often on land that was previously productive farmland.

All in all, Derek, your piece shows the confused if not contradictory thinking we’ve come to expect from Corruption Bay. Which resulted in it being cliched and vacuous.

DEVELOPMENTS OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE

I’ve had occasion to commend the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW) recently and I am delighted to do so again. On Monday we saw the release of a map compiled by the CPRW showing Developments of National Significance.

Here’s a link to the press release, and here’s a link to the map. Understandably, the map is big, and detailed; so set aside some time to make sense of it. And remember, these are just the projects where planning applications have been submitted.

There are many more in the pipeline, including quite a few of Bute Energy’s 23 known projects.

This was a useful exercise by the CPRW because the ‘Welsh Government’ seems unable or unwilling to produce such a map. But also because it exposes the hypocrisy of those we are dealing with.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

It’s become obvious in recent years, and perhaps especially in Wales, that as the threat of ‘climate crisis’ loses its power to frighten people the message has linked with ‘biodiversity loss’ or ‘habitat loss’. This coupling is clear in all the documents I’ve linked with and organisations I’ve mentioned.

Taken at face value it says there has been a depletion or degradation of the natural habitat, with a resultant loss of species or of numbers within a species. And yet . . .

Those who now trumpet climate crisis and biodiversity / habitat loss refuse to criticise tens of thousands of acres of pristine upland being ruined by wind farms, or fertile lowland by solar arrays. 

For example, the RSPB refuses to acknowledge the problem despite birds being killed by turbines, especially larger birds, often belonging to rare or endangered species.

And there are wider issues. Such as China’s near-monopoly of the rare earth metals needed to produce turbines and solar panels. Transporting materials and finished products vast distances by ship. Finally, the fact that neither wind turbine blades nor solar panels can be recycled.

How environmentally friendly is all that for intermittent and very expensive power!

It’s clear that for environmentalists biodiversity loss is restricted to farmland. Explained, again, by support and funding they receive in order to follow Labour’s anti-farming agenda and thereby grab farmland for themselves.

An agenda the envirogrifters are increasingly dictating!

CONCLUSION

We are lumbered with a bunch of third-rate politicians elected in the main for no better reason than, “My nanna would turn in her grave if I didn’t vote Labour”. Blind loyalty allowing Labour to win with the support of just 20% of the electorate.

Being third-rate they tend to be impressionable. Not only did they buy in early to the Globalists’ Fear = Control agenda but went for broke by implementing legislation to prove that, “Wales can show the world . . . ” . . . how a country can impoverish itself by adopting a Green policy of degrowth.

In the early days, this idiocy came from within the administration, from people like Jane Davidson, Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing from 2007 – 2011, and now chair of Wales Net Zero 2035.

But as word spread others took notice. By 2018 the principal Globalist organisation, the World Economic Forum, was advising envirogrifters to move to Wales!

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But let’s go back to the trees for a minute. The 10% of farmland for trees demand is a condition of ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme, a replacement for EU funding.

Speaking last year, just ahead of the Llanelwedd Show, Mark Drakeford said that subsidies to Welsh farmers must be justified to Bangladeshi taxi drivers in Cardiff.

To suggest that the views of a small immigrant community are more important than the views of thousands of Welsh farmers looks like another example of ‘inclusivity’ at the expense of the indigenous majority.

Ask yourself – would Drakeford suggest consulting Ceredigion farmers if taxi drivers in Cardiff wanted to increase their charges?

Wales, a country being run into the ground by clowns who prioritise feelings above biological reality, preach economic gibberish, practice discriminatory ‘inclusivity’, and have been suckered by a global power grab calling itself “the climate crisis”.

How much more of this are you going to take? How much more can Wales afford?

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

Nicola Sturgeon: Her Fall In Context

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

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

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

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

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

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

But how did we get here?

POST-SOVIET MARXISM

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

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

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

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

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

A change of tack was needed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which brings us back to the recent debacle in Scotland.

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

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

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

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

And the politicians in Corruption Bay obey them like zombies.

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

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

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

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

This is what I was directed to on page 45.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

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

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

2016 AND ALL THAT

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

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

Then came the election of Donald Trump in November.

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

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

TWO OTHER DONKEYS OF THE CULTURAL MARXIST APOCALYPSE

THE ENVIRONMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

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

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

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

     RACE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Funny old world, innit!

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

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

THE QUISLING LEFT AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONCLUSIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The future is spelling itself out before our eyes.

To return to where we started . . .

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

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

It’s a hell of a coincidence.

CONCLUSION

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arise ye “useless eaters“!

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2023


Time To Call In The OPD Scam

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

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

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

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

LIVING OFF THE (FAT OF THE) LAND

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

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

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

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

Here’s the sales guff from Savills.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

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

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

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

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

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

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

Such as . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

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

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

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

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

Does the DBW do bridging loans?

CONCLUSION

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

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

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

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

How much time is actually spent tending the organic kumquat?

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

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

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

(Try not to visualise that!)

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

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

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

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023