This is a theme I’ve dealt with before, the links between corporate funders, politicians, and environmental groups; but this time it comes from a slightly different angle.
Though the message stays the same:
‘Man is destroying the planet, and the only way to save us from the “sixth global mass extinction event” is to end livestock farming and let corporations buy the land for trees, windfarms, and other forms of greenwashing; with the environmentalists who’ve campaigned to bring us to this point given land for ‘rewilding’ and other purposes.’
The losers will of course be 95% of us, certainly in the West. Our energy will be more expensive, as will our food, which will increasingly be made up of factory-produced ‘meat’, and insects. Our movements will be restricted and the private car will be viewed as a selfish and unnecessary luxury from which we must be alienated.
You’ll own nothing, you’ll live in 15-minute neighbourhoods, and you’ll be blissfully unaware of your enslavement (thanks to whatever’s been added to your food).
It’s often reasonable in such circumstances to assume the change actually took place at the time of notification, and was ‘backdated’. Which could mean that at the time the donation was made to the Labour party Quadrature Capital was still a UK-registered company.
Which might be significant because Open Democracy tells us . . .
Electoral Commission records suggest Labour received the donation in the one-week window between former prime minister Rishi Sunak announcing the general election and the start of the ‘pre-poll reporting period’ in which all political donations over £11,180 had to be published weekly . . . .
The Cayman Islands is of course a British Overseas Territory, one of many offering ‘financial services’ with no questions asked. In fact, these repositories and conduits for dirty money play a vital role in maintaining the pre-eminence of the City of London.
The excellent video below (1:17:52) explains the situation very well. More especially, how and why this system came about. I urge you to watch it.
As I’ve said, the hedge fund that gave Labour £4,000,000 is Quadrature Capital.
Though what seemed to vex the Grauniad was that . . .
Quadrature Capital has stakes worth more than $170m (£135m) in fossil fuel companies
Which is a fraction of Quadrature’s total assets and a lot less than the millions given to pressure groups so they could subvert democracy by influencing governments’ policies behind the voters’ backs.
This generosity was . . .
. . . worth about £175m in 2021 and 2022. They included £4m to the European Climate Foundation . . . £2.7m to the Carbon Tracker Initiative; and more than £3m to the WWF.
The amount given to the European Climate Foundation has increased considerably, as I’ll explain in a minute. Which is why we’ll soon turn to the ECF.
But before that, and to give you some idea of the links between tax haven money, the Labour party, and envirogrifter pressure groups, here are some tweets from journalist Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) last week.
Though a woman I think is Naomi’s mother, Ursel Luhde, was a FoE director from January 2007 until October 2009. Also a director of Friends of the Earth Charitable Trust in the same period.
I know this is heavy going, so here’s some light relief . . . another journalist, Robert Peston (@Peston), put out this post on X after learning that Quadrature claimed to be paying Corporation Tax!
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All in all, there’s something not right about Quadrature.
At the top of the ECF website homepage you read pious drivel that includes . . .
Our vision is a greener, more peaceful and democratic Europe made possible by climate action.
This seems to suggest that democracy and peace depend on Europe following the green path. And, by implication, if we deviate from that path of self-righteousness then we imperil democracy and risk war.
But that’s absolute bollocks. Net zero means more people being colder, more people being hungrier, more people being miserable, because they can no longer afford the essentials and the harmless luxuries their parents took for granted.
For the first time in generations living standards in the West are declining. This has nothing to do with a ‘climate crisis’, and everything to do with measures being pursued in response to this mirage, that in reality serve another purpose.
When we consider conflict, then man is no different to other animals. He is less likely to be aggressive when he’s content, when life is good. But net zero means shortages; and competition for scarce resources or produce always leads to conflict.
Well-fed lions loll about in the shade. Hungry lions look for something to kill.
Lower down the ECF homepage we find another gem. Click on ‘read more’ under ‘2023 annual report’, and you’ll see . . .
2023 not only tested our resilience but also underscored the critical importance of our mission, amid heightened political polarisation, a worrying resurgence of populism, and profound geopolitical upheaval.
“A worrying resurgence of populism“. Well it don’t worry this ol’ boy none.
To the ECF ‘populism’ means the long overdue awakening we see across Europe, wrongly limited by a dishonest media to ‘far right’ protests against immigration.
But the planet-savers know ‘populism’ also means people asking why net zero means the de-industrialisation of the West, making life more difficult, and more expensive.
Put it all together and the ECF is the authentic voice of the Globalist-Woke-Green-Left. Dangerously unhinged oligarchs and corporate leaders demanding censorship, and encouraging ‘women with penises’ to push the climate scam on the days when they and the comrades are not demanding open borders and supporting Muslim terrorists.
Yup, the full package (and that is not a reference to ‘transgender women’).
One of the groups funded by the ECF is the Green Finance Institute Ltd. (Formerly Green Finance Initiative Ltd.) Where the CEO is Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, who is of course Welsh, and you’ll be reading more about her in the next section.
What I found interesting about Dr Thomas is that her background is in banking, not matters environmental. Dare I suggest that she may be less concerned with saving us from our selfish selves than with using the climate scam to make mountains of moolah for those with whom she normally mixes?
(Slaps self on wrist for ungenerous thought!)
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GREEN FINANCE INSTITUTE & THE WELSH CONNECTIONS
What more can I tell you about Rhian-Mari Thomas, of the Green Finance Institute?
And this intriguing article from my favourite fish-wrap seems to confirm the suspicions I just aired about who Rhian-Mari represents. Unless of course her friends are offering to save the planet out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.
The chief executive of the Green Finance Institute (GFI) . . . had grown increasingly concerned about Labour’s £28bn green investment pledge.
The party should not have even considered using that much taxpayer cash, Thomas argued. Instead, it should engage with private investors who were already keen to pour money into big green projects.
The Green Finance Institute has received $3,830,267 from Quadrature Climate Foundation. I can’t find if it’s also been funded by the European Climate Foundation.
Ms Thomas is also an advisor to Aviva, which greenwashes investors’ money through wildlife trusts and other shrieker collectives. Seeing as I regularly mention wildlife trusts on this blog I found this interesting.
UPDATE: Through his paternal grandmother Jocelyn belongs to the Dorset branch of the Anglo-Norman (long resident in Ireland) Talbot de Malahide family. His father, David Edmund Talbot Garman, moved to Radnorshire around 1972, and was for many years vice-chair of Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.
A name we encountered earlier was that of Daniel Luhde-Thomson, who’s said to have given Labour £500,000 this year. The woman I believe to be his wife, Naomi Luhde-Thomson, was appointed early in 2022 to the Eryri National Park Authority by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.
Another name we ran into was that of Neil Paul Cosgrove. One of the four trustees of the Quadrature Climate Foundation. I did a search, and what I turned up was rather odd, and I’m not sure what to make of it. But it’s yet another Welsh connection with offshore entities.
My search took me to the North Data site, which I find useful as it suggests various links and connections. This is what I found.
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The links to the left we know about, they’re Quadrature, but what of the others?
Greendoor Investments Ltd is based in Bermuda. And it links with Beaubridge Energist LLP, which uses an address in Hampshire but is registered with Companies House as an overseas company (OC371398). Chaffer, Rigby and Clevely are among the partners in this LLP, as is Cosgrove himself.
Listed among other Beaubridge companies on the Companies House website we find Beaubridge Swansea LLP. Though it’s difficult to see why it carries that name. For this is a company using the same Hampshire address and is also registered with Companies House as an overseas company (OC432171).
I’m concerned that companies in my home town, involved in ostensibly harmless activities, have links with offshore companies pumping money into the Labour party, while also looking for greenwashing opportunities, and funding envirogrifters to buy up Welsh land.
A recent study for the Green Finance Institute estimated that there is a gap of between £5 billion and £7 billion between the resources currently dedicated to nature recovery actions in Wales and those needed to meet priority outcomes for nature.
Here we have Rhian-Mari Thomas’s Green Finance Institute arguing that we need £5bn to £7bn to save Wales from becoming a desert.
But the ‘Welsh Government’ can’t spare that kind of money. So where might it come from? Rhian-Mari has already told us, in her reported conversation with Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Thomas argued . . . engage with private investors who were already keen to pour money into big green projects
I’m sure she’s given the same message to the ‘Welsh Government’.
Because there’s a lot of money in offshore tax havens. Not always dirty money from drugs and other criminal activities, but still, money that cannot be honestly accounted for. How best to use it?
One answer is cashing in on environmental hysteria. Because by their very nature, envirogrifters are ideal for those seeking to, er, ‘relocate’ money currently sunning itself in tax havens. Unscrupulous people who will egg on the planet savers to make ever more apocalyptic claims.
Because it’s in the interests of both corporate investors and envirogrifters. The greater the hysteria, and the more readily the politicians fall for it, then the larger the sums of money it’ll be argued are needed to put things right. Money that governments either don’t have or can’t spare.
So let me finish by suggesting that . . .
Nobody should be allowed to accept funding that originates offshore, even if it’s been ‘filtered’ through organisations like the Quadrature Climate Foundation, the European Climate Foundation, and the Green Finance Institute.
Tax haven money is too often dirty money. That’s why it’s in a tax haven. And why it’s always looking for opportunities to be laundered.
This wasn’t planned, but it’s too big and complicated for a tweet, and so I’m putting it out as a quickie. As the title suggests, it concerns Coleg Soros in Talgarth, otherwise known as Black Mountains College.
For those new to this blog, or regulars with short memories, I have written a few times about Coleg Soros, so just type the name in the search box to the right. This piece from June 2019 will explain why I’ve renamed Black Mountains College after that evil old bastard (scroll down).
But there was a third company I’d somehow overlooked. In my defence I’ll say that this other company wasn’t launched until just before Christmas 2022. It’s Black Mountains College Operations Ltd. Scroll down on the overview page and you’ll see that it’s devoted to education.
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It began life with a single £1 share held by director Ben Rawlence, who’s been involved with Coleg Soros from the off. But then things moved on apace.
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INTEREST FROM AFAR
In June 2023 there was a share issue with a total value of £4,480,000. A couple of weeks later, William John Lana became a director. In November 2023 the company produced a breakdown of shareholders. Here it is.
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Like me when I first saw it, you’re wondering about Rewilding Wealth Ltd. So here’s what I found. It’s registered with Companies House as an Overseas Entity. Located in that bastion of probity and openness, the British Virgin Islands.
But using a Hong Kong correspondence address.
When we seek the beneficial owner(s) we see named, Andrew James Kadoorie McAulay, of Hong Kong, and the Bermuda Trust Company Ltd based, as you’d expect, on the sun-drenched isles of the same name.
Trying to make sense of it I wondered who McAulay is. What I found interesting is the Kadoorie element of his name. Because the Kadoories were a family of Jewish merchants in Baghdad who moved to China. And became very, very rich.
For so long as RWL holds any shares in issue from time to time, it shall be entitled to nominate, appoint and maintain in office one person as a director of the company and to remove (or remove and replace) such director from time to time.
So what do we know about William John Lana? Well, let’s start with his Linkedin page, which mentions a number of companies he’s involved with. Partly confirmed by this Companies House entry.
But no mention of the one run by him and his wife, Greenfibres Ltd. It’s one of those companies that charges Guardian readers over the odds for linen and suchlike so they can sleep easy at night knowing they’re superior to the common herd destroying the planet.
I think the key here is Rewilding Wealth Ltd. For while there is a Caribbean connection, I believe the majority holding lies in Hong Kong, with Andrew James Kadoorie McAulay.
As I’ve told you, his mother is a member of the ultra-wealthy Kadoorie clan, and his father, Ronald James McAulay, is a Scottish-Hong Kong billionaire, now in his late 80s.
Apart from McAulay Jnr being chairman of Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, it’s difficult to know how he whiles away the hours, or how he makes his contribution to the family pile.
Hong Kong was handed over to the People’s Republic of China at midnight on July 1, 1997, and Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden was quick off the mark. For Wikipedia tells us, ‘Conservation work has been extended to Mainland China since 1998’.
‘Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!’ Click to open enlarged in separate tab
In fact, digging around, it became clear that McAulay works quite happily with communist China. It looks as if he and his family are ‘flexible’ in dealing with the comrades, and have been for some time.
Clearly, someone has plans that involve Wales, but will probably have little or no Welsh input. (Rather like Coleg Soros itself.) Other than the necessary permissions to go ahead. But why is whoever’s behind it all using a small education establishment in Powys?
Because a good source told me Howe’s another of the many Labour insiders on the payroll of Scottish company Bute Energy, which wants to cover our beautiful country in wind turbines and pylons.
And let’s not forget that in the extract I used from the Articles of Association of Black Mountains College Operations, and the reference to appointing a director, Howe might also fit the bill if the clause extends to the controlling company.
But if she is the designated RWL director, then who is Lana representing?
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WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
Rewilding Wealth Ltd may do what it says on the tin, by which I mean it seeks investors for rewilding projects. And as the Guardian told us a few years back, there’s serious money to be made.
In which case, Coleg Soros will serve as the entry point, perhaps facilitator, for foreign investors buying up Welsh farmland. Something the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ fully supports, and which might explain Sophie Howe’s involvement.
Another possibility, is that Kadoorie-McAulay is fronting for the Chinese Communist Party, and they want their slice of the Welsh renewables cake. For in its blind acceptance of the Globalists’ climate scam the ‘Welsh Government’ has laid our country wide open to exploiters from around the world.
Neither corporate rewilders nor Chinese Communist party should be acceptable to any Welsh man or Welsh woman who cares about this little country of ours. It’s all we’ve got.
Something else that is unacceptable is the way Labour insiders benefit from cwtshing up to those exploiting Wales. Selling political influence for personal gain is exactly what Labour politicians accuse their Conservative counterparts of doing.
Deluding yourselves that taking the money is justified because you’re saving the planet is rank hypocrisy. Which is of course Labour’s stock-in-trade.
I hadn’t planned on writing this, but you know how it is, you learn of 300 ‘refugees’ coming to a place where you’ve sunk a few pints, and then you discover a previously unknown publishing empire in the same town . . . well, it becomes difficult to turn down the opportunity.
Maybe I should explain that ‘Sosban’ is the nickname for Llanelli, after the local anthem, Sosban Fach, which was always sung at Stradey Park, the old home of Llanelli RFC, and after which the Stradey Park Hotel is named. This being the destination for those 300 ‘refugees’.
Stradey Park Hotel. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
And yes, I was there at Stradey Park on the great day in 1972 when the Scarlets beat the All Blacks 9 – 3. A few of us travelled down from Harlech, stayed at the Ivy Bush in Carmarthen. I got utterly rat-arsed that night.
Happy days!
I suppose I should conclude this intro by explaining that the indigenes of ‘Sosban’, with their unique accent, are called ‘Turks’. I have no idea why. Does anybody know?
The assumption that some of these ‘refugees’ will be Turks or Turkish Kurds explains the title of this little offering. Clever, innit?
Then, yesterday, came the report below in Llais y Sais, by Branwen Jones, telling that a ‘network’ had been set up to help the “asylum seekers“. Before even reading the piece I knew what it was about – Leftists exploiting illegal immigrants to attack the working class and decent, concerned locals.
Which is how it works nowadays.
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Since the Left gave up on the working class, and aligned itself with many of the biggest corporations and some of the richest men on the planet, the formerly downtrodden victims of capitalism have become ‘racists’, ‘transphobes’, ‘Islamophobes’, etc.
Not that the working class has changed. It’s just that the Left and its brainwashed followers now march to the sound of the Globalists’ drum. They don’t understand where they’re marching to, but then, the modern Left is about theatrics not socialist theory.
As the reports make clear, locals were understandably concerned by these reports of 300 or more unvetted migrants being brought into their community, and so a public meeting was held on Sunday night at the Selwyn Samuel Centre. The biggest public meeting seen in Llanelli for some years.
The BBC was invited to attend, but did not show. If anybody from the Beeb had turned up they would have heard ex-cop Steve Williams lay into the council for not informing local people about the plan, let alone consulting them. (Genuine Turk accent.)
Tonight people of Llanelli held a meeting regarding @StradyHotel & being used to house illegal migrants. Steve Williams ex police officer told the politicians exactly what he thought of them for hiding this from the people for 4 weeks@DaveAtherton20@Sargon_of_Akkad@StanVoWalespic.twitter.com/xhGt2QLCRY
A name you’ll see mentioned in the piece about the ‘network’ is Steve Kelshaw. Local Leftist who’s been involved with refugees in the past. (I omit the quotes because the Syrians Kelshaw was working with may have been genuine refugees.)
After reading the piece in yesterday’s ‘paper I went online to see what else I could turn up. And blow me! there was an online version of the same piece, but from last Saturday, and with a different headline; this one saying, “community unites to support asylum seekers“.
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Which as we know is absolute bollocks!
For as you’ve read, the “local community” turned up in their hundreds, at the Selwyn Samuel Centre, to show how pissed off they are with the whole farrago.
But the online version was written before the public meeting. And obviously, after that meeting, there was no hope of sustaining the claim made in the original headline. So “community” had to become “network“.
The Cambrian News report is basically the one followed by the others. Except that the CN piece quoted a council spokesperson saying:
“The proposal and engagement by Clearsprings (the Home Office private housing provider) has been disappointing, giving the council no confidence that they understand the local or national context they intend to work within”.
The other reports neglected to mention the role of controversial Clearsprings.
Local journalist Robert Lloyd tells us the BBC was invited to the public meeting but did not turn up. Lloyd seems to work as an In Your Area stringer for Retch, which owns Llais y Sais and its online version, WalesOnline.
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But why has he got it in for the BBC?
Because Tuesday’s Wales at Six opened with, “Some local people are protesting . . . “. Then it covered the cancelled wedding . . . . But later, it reported, ” . . . on Sunday around 400 people attended a public meeting . . . “.
But that was 6:30pm on the 30th. Lloyd’s tweet is timed at 7:10am that day. Had earlier BBC versions not mentioned the public meeting?
Anyway, let’s not get bogged down in what may be personal. We can reasonably assume that Branwen Jones of Llais y Sais got her version of the story from stringer Robert Lloyd. But if so, why didn’t she mention the public meeting?
All very confusing. But then I got to wondering who else might have been pushing the story with their own interpretation.
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THE SOSBANWIDE WEB
My search of the interweb was now taking me up some blind alleys, but then I found another report from May 26, and from the Llanelli Standard.
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It’s basically a shorter version of the other ‘support network’ reports.
I must confess, I’d never heard of the Llanelli Standard. Perhaps most people west of the Llwchwr have never heard of it either. But the website says: “The Llanelli Standard is the new newspaper for Llanelli, by people from Llanelli and based in Llanelli. The Llanelli Standard is managed by Red Brand Media”.
So, it’s obviously, er, Llanelli.
But it does seem to have crossed that mighty torrent to launch the Swansea Standard. I just hope that it’s “a newspaper for Swansea, by people from Swansea and based in Swansea”.
The ‘About’ page of the Llanelli Standard is good for a few laughs. Not least this claim, for I would suggest otherwise.
The West Wales Chronicle and the Llanelli Standard are both politically neutral
And as evidence I would present the headline we read earlier suggesting that the community around the Stradey Park Hotel was preparing a carpet of fragrant blooms to welcome the Sons of the Prophet who will surely appear.
Unless of course they’re representatives of Albanian drugs gangs, or others of an entrepreneurial bent.
The ‘About’ page also says, “The Llanelli Standard is published by Red Brand Media and owned by CETMA”. So who are they?
From the website we learn that Cetma is funded by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, linked bodies, and the Lottery, which works closely with the ‘Welsh Government’.
There’s Keith Elwyn Evans-Hurley, who in other entries prefixes his name with ‘Lord’. There’s David Jonathan Williams. And then there’s 83-year-old Eunydd Ashley Brynmor Thomas.
Interesting character, our Eunydd.
He was the Labour councillor for Llwynhendy on Carmarthenshire county council. But, in 2004, he took advantage of a scheme by the Notional Assembly for Wales to retire, and trousered a golden handshake of at least £16,000.
People are reluctant to vote for the undead, even in Llwynhendy.
Fellow candidate Meilyr Bowen Hughes, of Plaid Cymru, said: “It’s a loophole that should have plugged by the Welsh Assembly Government.” He added he was “very unhappy” with explanations given to him why that had not happened.
That’s enough distractions. What I’ve tried to do with these detours is open a few eyes as to how a story makes it into the national news.
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THE BIT AT THE END
Given that the council knew of the plan for three to four weeks before it eventually broke it’s reasonable to assume that the council was the source of the story.
There is massive public outrage over the plan, and over the council hiding it from the public for so long. But this element of the story is either being ignored, or massaged to push the line taken by Llais y Sais and others – the burghers of Llanelli offering up their wives and daughters to comfort the eagerly-awaited ‘asylum seekers’.
Yesterday’s piece in Llais y Sais focused entirely on the Leftist support network with no mention of the public meeting. This is not balanced journalism.
Clearly, the media emphasis has shifted from protest to ‘support network’, with some wanting us to believe there are no protestors. Or that the few there are can be dismissed with the usual slanders.
Which would be bullshit. But they may be getting away with it! And that should make you wonder how much of what you are told in the ‘Welsh’ media is bullshit.
Because everything put out by the media in Wales must meet certain criteria. And so to help you – well, you know me! – here they are. But remember! they’ll be inferred or alluded to, rather than stated outright:
Reporting must adhere to the Unionist line. Supporting devolution is allowed but nothing going any further.
The Woke-Left diktats must be obeyed. Men can have babies; ‘refugees’ are all genuine, and must be welcomed; White people are usually racist.
The biggest threat to humankind is the ‘climate catastrophe’.
Basically, the Globalist agenda. Understand that and you’ll make far more sense of the bilge coming out of Cardiff every day.
And I’ll leave you with something else to think about. As our local press declines it is being increasingly replaced by political activists funded directly or, more usually, indirectly, by the ‘Welsh Government’ in ‘community journalism’.
But all done in the interests of “maintaining a healthy local democracy“.
Just over two years ago I published Do you know where your child is tonight? In which I explained how children are being taken into care, often in Cardiff, then moved by private companies to Swansea and other areas where property is cheaper.
This was being done with the consent or even the connivance of Labour-controlled Cardiff council and implemented by – and to the financial benefit of – persons who often enjoyed Labour Party connections.
It was even alleged that children were being taken into care unnecessarily. Often from single mothers, and others it was felt would be ignored if they complained to anyone.
At the other end of this trafficking we saw homes opening in Swansea about which Swansea council knew nothing. This inevitably meant that these establishments were often not monitored and the children in them vulnerable to many dangers.
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As the article in WalesOnline (from which the above image is taken) put it: ‘Swansea currently has 13 homes registered with Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW), with at least four more due to open in the next year. Only one of them is a Swansea Council-registered home.’
But of course, Swansea council is also controlled by Labour.
On March 31 last year O’Donnell and Drane bade farewell to both companies. They no doubt made a handsome profit from selling out to Orbis Education and Care Ltd.
Which means that many children’s homes in southern Wales are now run by – private equity funds. A curse on anyone who dares think that making money may henceforth be the priority!
Another report from last week telling us Swansea council is buying property for children’s homes, also says: ‘ . . . some independent children’s care providers were . . . withdrawing offers to place Welsh children because the Welsh Government wanted profit to be removed from the sector.’
Will owners of children’s homes in Wales, like Orbis Equity LLP, sell up . . . or will they bring in children from England, where the profit motive is still allowed?
If it’s the latter, what will be the status of English-owned children’s homes in Wales housing children from England? Who will register, inspect, and regulate them?
The Likely Lads. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
If the profit motive is to be removed from children’s homes then the beneficiaries could well be Labour’s cronies in the third sector.
O’Donnell and Drane being aware in advance of the intention to remove the profit motive might explain them selling Priority Childcare. But they saw a fresh opening in supplying staff, which explains why, a short time before selling out, they set up Allcare and Education Recruitment Ltd (Inc. 12 February, 2020), and Allcare and Education Recruiters Ltd (9 September, 2020).
For their first year the companies had just one director, Marc David Elsey of Trelewis, then O’Donnell and Drane showed up. Was there a reason the two did not wish to be associated with the old company and the new companies simultaneously?
Could it be because these new companies recruit staff for . . . the old company? Come to that, have they really severed all links with Priority Childcare Ltd? We know they’re no longer directors, but do they still hold shares?
Then, for some reason, the dynamic duo has a third recruitment company, Ace Recruiters Ltd, formed in September 2020. Which means that during the first year of Covid-19 lockdown, O’Donnell and Drane set up three new recruitment companies.
Cooperating with Allcare we find Noble Training Solutions. Despite the rather impressive website this company is a one-man band with, according to the accounts filed for y/e 30.04.2021, no employees.
I suspect that the sole director given for Noble Training Solutions, ‘Mr Gareth John Noble’, is in fact Dr Gareth Noble of Swansea University, though a resident of Cardiff, and a specialist in autism.
I do hope the day job doesn’t interfere too much with his money-making side-line.
A question for the local authorities of south Wales: You are taking children from their parents (often single mothers), and regularly placing them in homes some distance away – do you know who ultimately owns and runs those homes? Do you care?
∼
What you are about to read is from the perspective of an ex-Swansea council employee who was offered 17K in return for her silence about the unethical practices of Swansea council and South Wales Police.
So take it away, Dr Gail John . . .
I was a primary teacher/special educational needs (SEN) teacher who worked for Swansea local authority for twenty years from 1994-2014. I am a fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health, a tutor of postgraduate university students at Goldsmiths London, an academic and is a member of the Bar Human Rights Committee. I stood as one of six Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) candidates in last year’s elections as the only trauma informed candidate and attained a respectable 13K votes (attaining this without any leaflets).
My extensive advocacy work since 2012 helping and supporting vulnerable children and families right across the South Wales region opened my eyes wide to the large-scale corruption, financial abuse and exploitation that exists within Welsh public services, which some might reference as ‘legal human trafficking’.
At the beginning at this month, March 2022, I was contacted by a distraught mother who told me of her horrific experience of how Swansea council tried to coerce her into signing a Section 47 and it is thought that this was to have her son wrongfully removed into care. This happened directly after her son disclosed child sexual abuse within a Swansea primary school.
I was absolutely appalled that the practise of ‘legal human trafficking’ is still ongoing in Swansea, that I immediately made attempts to safeguard this lady from the unethical practises of the Labour council.
Just like many others right across the region, I reference Alexis Jay (2022) and her findings regarding the failure to follow child protection procedures in the Labour run council.
I have also personally experienced the Labour council trying to financially profit through a thwarted attempt to unethically ‘legally traffick’ my own daughter into care after I exposed fraud and child abuse at the school where I was working as a Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCo) at the time.
I have evidence of Swansea councillors abusing their powers of trust when children themselves asked for financial help to pay for GCSEs. One child who contacted Councillor Jennifer Raynor in 2015, ended up becoming a target and potential victim of Swansea council’s financial exploitation as directly after Jennifer Raynor stated that the council wouldn’t waste public money on SEN children who were ‘bound to fail’ (breaching her ethical code of public office, Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010), this child became the subject of a child protection investigation where it emerged that there was no evidence to justify Swansea council’s decision to initiate this.
Furthermore, I had been working hard with this fourteen-year-old child to prepare her for her Sociology GCSE which the family paid over £200 for the exam at a private exam centre (I taught the child for free). This child had one exam on the Friday and the second exam on the Monday. However, after successfully sitting the exam on the Friday, the letter from Swansea social services arrived in the family home and the child never sat the second exam on the Monday. This fourteen-year-old child attained a B grade in the first exam and was on target for a high grade until Swansea council saw this child through the lens of making themselves a quick £32000 (equivalent rate 2022).
Many people across the Swansea region know that instead of following correct child protection procedures when allegations of child abuse are brought before Swansea council, the council and South Wales Police prefer making up lies, and believe they are above the law.
After receiving the information from the Swansea mother who was yet another victim of the unethical practices of Swansea council, I detailed some of the problems I have encountered in the city, with the education authority, the wider council, the police, and the local health board. This ranged from denial to intimidation to a laughable attempt to buy my silence!
Jac adds . . .
What Dr John has to say is set out in the form of a letter addressed to Councillor Robert Smith, cabinet member for Education Improvement, Learning & Skills at Swansea Council. I have withheld a number of names.
This being Swansea, and as we’re dealing with the Labour Party, I was not in the least surprised to read in Smiffy’s Register of Interests:
Son in receipt of grant from the Thomas and Elizabeth Williams Trust administered by the Council for postgraduate study (awarded 06.11.19)
Wife employed as exam invigilator occasionally in Swansea schools, on a casual basis
The Labour family that troughs together, stays together.
Now read Dr John’s letter to Councillor Smith.
♦
Dear Mr Robert Smith, Education Councillor for Swansea,
Thank you for taking the time to talk briefly on the phone last night.
I understand that (a Swansea parent) has presented very alarming evidence, concerning bullying and systematic abuse after she disclosed the child sexual abuse of her son at a Swansea primary school. After making this disclosure, this mother was further bullied by social services (and police) who tried to trick her into signing a Section 47 to remove her son into care and implied that she was mentally ill.
I can verify that this lady is not an isolated case but it seems that bullying and scapegoating is a common practice in Swansea when it comes to covering up child abuse, medical negligence, fraud, miscarriages of justice or educational incompetence in Swansea (see Serious Child Practice Review Report submission and multiple evidence below).
The information in this email is presented in four parts:
National research evidence driven from England due to the high social poverty statistics in Swansea.
The reasons why I help so many people in Swansea and beyond South Wales. Evidence to back up and support (a Swansea parent). Personal experiences that are almost identical to this lady.
Helping others caught as victims of abuse and victims of educational failure in Swansea, including Serious Concise Child Practice Reviews where a child died due to medical negligence in Swansea.
Trauma Informed solutions to try to bring investment to reverse the pain and poverty from the abusive practice.
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1/ National research evidence driven from England due to the high social poverty statistics in Swansea.
You will see all the social poverty statistics about Swansea in this thesis.
To briefly summarise, I focused on educational failure and this is what I found out –
Participant 6 – was targeted/terrified by Swansea social services and police after her mother raised child abuse concerns concerning both an educational professional and a church member.
Participant 7 – was raped in foster care aged 9. This was covered up by Swansea education and social services. Instead of being safeguarded, the victim was victim-blamed and received psychiatric diagnosis of ADHD (against CSA specialist advice as her symptoms were because of the abuse she suffered) and drugged with Ritalin.
Participant 8 – sexually assaulted in school, school did not follow child protection policy, got child to shake hands with her abuser.
Participant 9 – was raped, no safeguarding procedures followed, instead he was sectioned aged nineteen and diagnosed with schizophrenia put on multiple drugs. Financially exploited and abused under social services care.
Participant 10 – talked about being attacked in her dormitory in a Swansea university, South Wales Police lied to her to cover it up and make her drop the case. The victim was made to drop out of university while the perpetrator was protected.
Participant 11 – sexually abused at school and home, ended up sexually exploited aged 14 by gangs and prostituted out to men three times her age when she was living under Swansea children’s services. When she brought gang rape allegations to South Wales Police, they laughed at her and one officer ‘tried it on with her’. Instead of following safeguarding procedures, she was given psychiatric diagnosis of ADHD and given strong drugs. Her child was removed from her with her own child abuse used as evidence against her.
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2/ The reasons why I help so many people in Swansea and beyond South Wales. Evidence to back up and support (redacted name to protect identity). Personal experiences that are almost identical to this lady.
My background
I worked as a primary teacher for nearly twenty years employed by Swansea council from 1994-2013/2014. During this time, I worked extremely hard, obtained promotions in the three schools I taught at, contributed to four successful inspections, along with working exceptionally hard to self-fund my multiple postgraduate qualifications to improve outcomes for all my students. My postgraduate qualifications included a Doctorate in Education (2012-2019), Master’s Degree in Education (1994-1998), British Dyslexia QTS qualified teacher status and postgraduate certificate in Special Learning Difficulties or Dyslexia (SpLD) (1996-1997), Graduate Diploma in Special educational Needs (GradDipSEN) – Qualified Special Education Needs Coordinator (SENCO) status (2009-2011), Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) (2014).
In October 2012, my outstanding educational results for all children (especially the SEN children under my care and leadership) especially the SEN children in Pontybrenin (a Gorseinon school) were recognised by the University of Sheffield who nominated me to speak at largest teacher conference in the UK and I was invited to be a speaker at this conference (January 2013).
I worked at Pontybrenin Primary from October 2000 and was promoted to SENCO at Pontybrenin Primary by (a former head teacher) and started this position in January 2009. Education councillor Will Evans was a governor at the school during this time period. (Jac: Labour councillor Evans is a former senior police officer.)
Acting headteacher Matthew O’Brien joined the school January 2009, the same time I started this position of SENCO, and he informed everyone that the SEN children had failed under the provision of SENCO A. B. Next, Matthew O’Brien informed everyone that the school needed to be put into Special Measures in order to access a substantial amount of government money which was to be spent on the SEN children.
Strangely enough, after being informed that the SEN children and provision had failed under A. B. (January 2009), A B was given a glowing reference and received a promotion to deputy headteacher at Tre-Uchaf (Easter 2009) and was made an ESTYN inspector. (A. B. is now also running her own therapy outfit in Llandeilo.)
In March 2009, it also emerged that a staff member was summoned to attend court and admitted three counts of fraud which took place years before in 2007 over a long time-period. She had not disclosed her crime to headteacher at the time of her crime, Alison Jenkins. Alison Jenkins was bullied out of her job and left December 2008, after being targeted (like some of the other staff, myself included) with malicious anonymous letters.
The barrage of malicious anonymous letters were written about staff members including myself from the end of July 2008-December 2008 and suddenly stopped after the Headteacher Alison Jenkins handed in her resignation. Alison Jenkins was an excellent headteacher and a lady with integrity who safeguarded children and staff first.
According to governor, M. C., one of the last malicious letters that went to the police from office staff, B. J., attacked and denigrating my character for receiving a promotion in the school under Alison Jenkins and also viciously attacking Alison Jenkins for demoting (perpetrator of fraud) for having a poor attendance. Just two months after the last of these nasty letters stopped, (perpetrator’s) fraud came into the public domain where she admitted three counts of fraud (March 2009). Alison Jenkins who had left the school at this point, knew nothing about the crime until she saw it/read it on the news.
Acting headteacher Matthew O’Brien (January 2009-April 2009) did not follow correct safeguarding regulations in reporting (perpetrator) to the GTCW, instead she was given a glowing reference and so obtained another teaching job. During a similar time-frame, malicious letters also emerged in ex-Pontybrenin headteacher David Greenaway’s church where it emerged that similar scapegoating practices of covering over abuse where pastor protected an adult male sexual predator who sent explicit pictures of himself to a vulnerable young person.
Instead of the pastor reporting this crime to the police, he hid it and gave this perpetrator a glowing reference, sent him to Bible College, and then gave him a job back in his church.
Pastor Michael Williams of Elim City Church, Swansea, enjoying a buffet with Liberty Church / Bible College safeguarding officer Hugh Griffiths who did not follow child protection procedures regarding Charmain Speirs. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
As SENCO at Pontybrenin school, I can verify that none of the Special Measures’ additional money was ever spent on the Special Educational Needs children. I also examined the SEN results which were deemed as failing under A. B. and used as a reason to put the school into special measures to acquire money for the SEN children. However, there was no failure and the money was never spent on the SEN children. It was all a farce, and fraudulent activity.
Instead of the SEN children having the money spent on them, under Phil Williams, the school had major construction work, walls and partitions and outdoor provisions. When I met Alison Jenkins, neither of us could understand where all the money had come from and how the school all of a sudden had gone from a school struggling to a school that had money to lavish on new carpets, desks, etc. However, when money is obtained for SEN children under the guise of special measures and not spent on SEN children – this amounts to FRAUD.
Moreover, when Phil Williams was asked awkward questions about where the money had come from to pay for the building work, new desks, etc – he began to display bullying types of behaviour especially to SEN children and those asking these questions. In May 2012 he came into my class to observe one of my lessons on a Monday (it emerged he had deliberately hit a SEN child over the head with a book on the previous Friday). Phil Williams stated it was an unsatisfactory lesson and his reason was because I had used peer tutoring. However, peer tutoring was a teaching and learning strategy recommended by the Welsh Government. The University of Sheffield submitted my excellent results from this time period in 2012, where I was asked to speak at an educational conference about the power of peer tutoring (January 2013),
At this time, at least three female staff members were forced to go to their unions about the bullying behaviour of Phil Williams.
In March 2013, as SENCO of Pontybrenin Primary School, I raised serious concerns about the abusive behaviour of headteacher Phil Williams towards the SEN children to Swansea Local Authority head of inclusion Robin Brown / Lesley Evans and the Education Minister Leighton Andrews, who resigned a few months later.
In March/April 2013, Phil Williams was put in charge of his own child abuse investigation about himself in his own organisation backed by safeguarding officer Paul Henwood and chair of governors Jeffrey Lewis. This was against all child protection laws.
In September/October 2013 – six months after I raised the concerns – Pontybrenin school and Swansea council abused their positions of trust and to cover up child abuse. They used unethical Swansea social services (E.R.) and police friend of Phil Williams – Jonathan Bainbridge – to abuse their positions of trust to try to bully me into silence. The police abused their positions to intimidate my friend Charmain Speirs (who was murdered just 18 months later) and made fun of her SEN (family member name redacted to protect identity) who the police described as a child with demons (evidenced by Jonathan Bainbridge’s document).
Inept social worker E.R. accidentally left a nasty anonymous malicious letter and police friend of the headteacher, Jonathan Bainbridge’s police document which contained 8 out of 10 breaches of police professional standards. Headteacher Phil Williams had given his police friend Jonathan Bainbridge’s wife Lisa Bainbridge a job in Pontybrenin school with no interview or qualifications.
I asked my very well qualified colleagues (social workers / police) at the University of Sheffield who told me that these professionals had broken the law. Therefore, I removed consent and disengaged from Swansea inept professionals in order to safeguard my family from the abuse which is rife in Swansea council.
April 1st 2014 – I resigned from my teaching position as I could not work for a council that allows abuse towards (SEN) children.
April 2nd 2014 – I was offered £17,000 by Pontybrenin School / Swansea council to keep my mouth shut but I would have had to sign a gagging order which I did not do. I did not receive their silencing money.
Click to enlarge in separate tab
June 2014 – Head of Inclusion Robin Brown makes threats to me – he told me to destroy all my evidence of Swansea’s abuse or he would report me to GTCW. I spoke to GTCW and found out Robin Brown was just trying to bully me as I was told I had not done anything wrong. Instead I found out that I could report Phil Williams and multiple professionals for their part in abusive practice towards SEN children. GTCW did nothing about any of the unethical abusive practice. They chose to ignore the abuse towards the SEN children, and the only thing they did was publish the fact that Swansea teacher Ellen Lloyd’s fraud in 2007 came to their knowledge 7 years later and was not even reported accurately.
In 2016, I was requested to go to police professional standards after ESTYN reported TWO MALE Police for unethical practices towards Charmain Speirs who was murdered in bizarre circumstances just 18 months after police abused their positions of trust in going to her house under false pretences as part of their retaliation towards me. The police did not follow procedures, the IPCC upheld the complaint while South Wales police scapegoated TWO FEMALE police officers who had never even been part of the complaint in the first place.
In 2018, Leighton Andrews (Education Minister in 2013) apologised after I contacted him to offer him support when he was being bullied after Carl Sargeant committed suicide. He apologised that proper child protection procedures were not followed in 2013 and stated that lessons had been learned. However, this is just a phrase that is used as a sticking plaster and the truth is that NO LESSONS HAVE BEEN LEARNED.
ABUSE TOWARDS CHILDREN IS STILL BEING COVERED UP IN SWANSEA.
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3/ Helping others caught as victims of abuse and victims of educational failure in Swansea, including Serious Concise Child Practice Reviews where I have included a report where a child died as a result of medical negligence in Swansea.
I’ve been involved in helping multiple people who have been targeted and abused throughout the city. I was requested to appear as an expert witness in court by a judge and have helped lots of people acquire qualifications after they were failed at school, including tutoring master degree students. I conducted an in-depth doctoral research study (2012-2019) about Adverse Childhood Experiences in Swansea and found that systematic abuse is a common occurrence. Alexis Jay Report February 2022 found similar findings.
Last year I was involved in two Serious Concise Child Practice Reviews where two children died because of professional negligence. One report is attached (link above). I helped the man in the report (he’s given consent for you to see the report) move into a house after his daughter had died and he was bullied by social services and police. He was deliberately made homeless by social services. This was after his daughter had died due to medical negligence. The bullying towards him was relentless.
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4/ Trauma Informed solutions to try to bring investment to reverse the pain and poverty from the abusive practice
Just recently I had a meeting with head of housing Steve Porter, 2/2/22, where I have acquired PDNES who are linked to multi-million pound investors willing to bring investment and regeneration to Swansea. PDNES are an award winning trauma informed supportive housing organisation who specialise in CSA, trauma and recovery using a person-centred approach. There is nothing like this in Wales. Steve Porter recognised that Swansea like other councils in Wales have a need and asked PDNES to write out their model in order to write letters of intent and demand to give to PDNES so they could give these to the investors in order to bring regeneration to Swansea to reverse poverty statistics. We are still waiting.
Unfortunately, it appears that Swansea Council is still denying that they have a problem.
However, in recent weeks. journalists from ITV (Dean), Sky News (Owen) and the BBC (Gavin) have made contact through Adele Rose-Morgan who sits on many of your boards along with Jason Lovell Plaid Cymru wanting to meet Adam Price of Plaid Cymru; and Wayne Erasmus, of Gwlad, wanting to investigate the revelations about the scandal of the abuse towards SEN families in Swansea ABMU/Swansea Bay and the Child Sexual Abuse IICSA (2022) report.
I hope with the elections coming up, it will motivate the council to see the need to start properly protecting children and young people in Swansea.
I am trying my best to bring solutions to Swansea through bringing high quality trauma informed supportive housing provision to our city linked to award-winning Gary Crooks and Nevres Kemal (social worker and Baby P whistle-blower) who Steve Porter head of housing had the privilege of meeting with me last month. The consequences of failed provision and underperformance under Will Evans, Rob Stewart and others’ leadership in Swansea council has resulted in high social poverty, homelessness, etc and this is not a good investment of tax payers’ money!
Unfortunately, Swansea council appear to be ignoring the problem and continuing to turn a blind eye to all the published research and their own statistics. However, turning a blind eye is not effective child protection. This is incompetence. Those who can do, do; those who can’t do their jobs bully others to cover-up for their own incompetence.
I will be keeping a close eye on safeguarding (name redacted to protect identity), as I know that previous systematic abuse, bullying and retaliation from Swansea council has brought much anxiety to this lady. Bullying towards SEN children and women by men and women in professional positions of power in Swansea council IS ABUSE and should be challenged. There needs to be accountability because NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW. OUR SOCIAL POVERTY STATISTICS ARE CRYING OUT FOR JUSTICE!
(Please read: HUMAN RIGHTS IN PUBLIC OFFICE RESPONSIBILITIES).
I look forward to your swift response.
Kindest regards Dr Gail John
♦
JAC’S EPILOGUE
Childcare in Wales is degenerating from a bit of a mess into a national scandal. Children are being taken into care at almost double the rate for England.
The stark figures. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
The reasons for this are complex, but most can be traced back to the problem of one political party exercising too much control, for too long. Not just in the political sphere, but also in the fields of health and education.
That, coupled with no effective political opposition, and no media worthy of the name.
Though one fascinating feature, cropping up again and again, is the linkage between the Labour Party and evangelical churches. (Perhaps we might add the police.) Even the husband of Charmain Speirs, who died in strange circumstances in Kenya (and who Dr John met when Speirs spent time in Swansea), is ‘a pastor with the Global Light Revival Ministries’.
Another example of what I’m talking about would be the Jonathan Norbury case. Norbury, a teacher at Pontarddulais School, seems to have escaped jail by persuading jurors that the schoolgirls he was having sex with were over 16.
I mention Norbury because in addition to being a teacher he was a deacon, and a ‘youth pastor’, at an evangelical church. (No, I am not making this up.)
Then there’s Robin Brown, Head of Inclusion at Swansea council, who Dr John mentioned in her letter. I’m told he belongs to the Lifepoint Church.
It is suggested that the link between the Swansea Labour Party and these Evangelical churches may be provided by Freemasonry.
In my introduction I suggested that if the ‘Welsh Government’ intends removing the profit motive from child care then the beneficiaries could be third sector groups. I suppose we shouldn’t rule out certain favoured churches.
However our tribunes may try to explain it, the fact is that Wales has a shameful record for taking children into care. ‘Shameful’, because in many cases it’s being done for the wrong reasons. And in other cases, for no reason at all.
This BBC report from last June tells us that the percentage of children being taken into care has almost doubled in less than twenty years. But only in Wales. Which is why it cannot be divorced from devolution.
‘Wales now has the highest proportion of children in the UK being cared for by the state, prompting one expert to raise concerns.
There are 7,170 (latest: 7,265) children being looked after away from home in Wales – which is 1.14% of children. The current UK average is 0.72% of children.’
As I say, something is very wrong here, and the problem is getting worse.
Given the cross-border operations of the third sector, housing associations, and others there must be the possibility that the figures for Wales are skewed by children being brought in from England.
If so, then this must stop.
Though if that is not the answer then we need to explain the glaring differences in the percentages for children taken into care in Wales and those taken into care in the other administrations of these islands.
We also need to analyse the differences within Wales. By and large these differences are between urban areas, which generally have higher percentages, and rural areas, with lower percentages. In other words, areas controlled by the Labour Party and areas run by other political parties, or coalitions, or ‘Independents’.
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Though the tragic tale reported (above) in last Wednesday’s Daily Post might suggest that the system isn’t too good in rural areas either, and that children who perhaps should be in care are being ignored.
Whatever the fuller picture, the situation in Wales has worsened under devolution and 23 years of Labour Party domination. Which means that either children are being taken into care unnecessarily, or else Wales has become materially poorer under devolution and one result is more children being taken into care.
Neither possibility reflects well on the Labour Party / ‘Welsh Government’.
To be placed in homes that are badly regulated, often not known to the local authority where they are located, and owned by City of London investors.
Forget the propaganda and the gestures from Corruption Bay about saving the planet, welcoming refugees, etc., etc, what you’ve read here is the reality of modern Wales for too many of our people.
As an example of gesture politics, we have a Children’s Commissioner who seems more concerned with obeying the quasi-Marxist demands of Black Lives Matter than with looking after our kids.
Priorities, eh!
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Wales needs the kind of fundamental change that is impossible while the dead hand of the Labour Party allows its vampiric cronies to prey on us.
At the very least, we are entitled to a statement from the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ giving us their explanation for why an ever-increasing number of Welsh children are being taken into care.
I’m returning to a subject I’ve tackled before because there have been developments. But before the update we’ll do a quick recap.
Bute Energy Ltd, operating through a host of other new companies, hopes to build some 20 wind farms (at the last count) across Wales. Bute Energy is based in London. (With an Edinburgh pied-à-terre.)
This company is owned by Windward Enterprises Ltd, which was formed 31.05.2018. With Windward Enterprises owned by Windward Global Ltd, which was given life in May 2017 under a different name and perhaps for a different purpose.
Windward Global is controlled by Oliver James Millican who, when accompanied by Stuart Allan George and Lawson Douglas Steele, are the only directors found for most, if not all, the yearlings in the Bute stable.
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The reason for the Bute boys choosing Wales is partly that England is reluctant to take onshore wind turbines, and partly that the soi-disant ‘Welsh Government’ has worked itself into a frenzy of planet-saving self-righteousness. To the point where it cannot be long before sackcloth and ashes become de rigeur among the worshippers of Deryn.
Which some of you might view as noble and altruistic.
Having alluded to a multiplicity of companies involved in the Bute wind farm offensive I’d better give you a link to the updated list of those entities.
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DEVELOPMENTS
The working assumption was that a new company called Bute, presumably representing City investors, had come to an arrangement with the ‘Welsh Government’.
The deal being the one I just outlined: that in return for keeping Drakeford and his gang in Greta’s good books, and for taking on a few Labour lags, Bute would be allowed to build wind farms just about anywhere they wanted – planning permission guaranteed from Lesley Griffiths MS (and Gary).
Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) with Plaid Cymru MS Elin Jones. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
I recently learnt of a couple of new stars in the Bute constellation.
The other new arrival is Grayling Capital Investments Ltd. This is also controlled by Grayling Capital Holdings Ltd and then, by extension, Windward Global Ltd.
Other news from last week was that Windward Cambria Ltd, formed 08.10.2021, had changed its name to Bute Energy Development Holdings Ltd. This company is controlled by Windward Enterprises Ltd. Which is in turn – and again! – owned by Windward Global Ltd.
Bute Energy owns Bute Energy (Cambria) Ltd, the first link in the chain of ownership for the 20 wind farms on the list I linked to earlier. (Here it is again.) Which means that all the Bute wind farms in Wales are covered by the loan to Bute Energy.
The locations of the Bute Energy wind farms. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
As for the loan to Bute Energy Development Holdings Ltd, seeing as it’s a relatively new company – just over 4 months old – I’m sure we’ll learn more in the near future.
The name that came with the loans is, ‘CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd’.
I’d like to tell you that this is a new Welsh financial institution created with the backing of a pro-business administration in Corruption Bay.
I’d like to, but I don’t do fairy tales.
Explaining who we’re dealing with here is quite complicated, so please bear with me. The company number given on the debenture documents is 13816597, and this is indeed the number for CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd.
Set up as recently as 23 December last year this company, with an address in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, is owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd, which shares the Rotherham address, and was formed on the same day.
Fancy that!
It’s reasonable to assume that ‘Dragon’ is a reference to Wales, and the 20 wind farms Bute has planned for our country.
There are a number of other CI IV companies registered with Companies House. None of which go back further than March, 2020. Many link with Scottish projects, and use as their address, 115 George Street, Edinburgh.
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Some of you may remember George Street from earlier postings. It’s the New Town office of the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre (ESPC), used by Millican and his mates.
So who or what is ‘CI IV’? The answer is that it stands for Copenhagen Investments 4. The answer was found through this Linkedin page.
It’s an investment fund and part of the Copenhagen Infrastructure Service Co. Here’s the link to the website for Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. This outfit will invest your money in wind energy and similar projects.
As we read under the ‘News’ tab, ‘CIP is the world’s largest dedicated fund manager within greenfield renewable energy investments’.
Here’s the page for CI IV. The map obviously hasn’t caught up with latest developments in Wales. Which may be understandable, given that Companies House wasn’t notified of the deals until last Thursday. (Though I’m sure negotiations between Bute and CIP had been going on for some time.)
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A search for ‘Bute’ on the CIP website turned up nothing, but I did find another reference to Wales. For this page tells us, ‘Copenhagen Infrastructure 1 has invested GBP ~155m of equity for a 49% stake in Falck Renewables S.p.A.’s (Falck) operational onshore wind portfolio in Scotland and Wales.’
This buy-in was financed by PensionDanmark. Which means that a wind farm in Ceredigion is now jointly owned by a Danish pension fund and an Italian company.
With all involved expecting to make a pile of money. Well, everybody except the locals; who’ll end up with crumbs, from their own table.
And perhaps flooding.
The only question remaining, for me is this: Was Bute Energy acting all along as a stalking-horse for others, or did Bute get its foot in the door and then look around for the investment needed to realise its ambitions?
Did the ‘Welsh Government’ care either way?
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UPDATE: I found this from December ’21. Lee Waters MS, Deputy Minister for Climate Change, worries about German pension funds profiting from offshore wind farms. Waters’ gang in Corruption Bay has no control over offshore wind farms.
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Is he also concerned about onshore wind farms – for which his ‘Welsh Government’ will have to give planning permission – benefitting Danish pension funds?
One to watch?
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THOUGHTS
When the ‘Welsh Government’ decided that our homeland was to become an al fresco power station those mighty intellects were confronted with three options as to how they might go about achieving that objective.
They could have . . .
Invested in Welsh companies to build the turbines, and other Welsh companies to generate electricity. Thereby creating thousands of jobs and enriching the country.
Followed their socialist instincts and had our wind farms run by a body owning them for the nation; or else local groups could have owned individual wind farms. (As appears to be happening in Scotland.)
Acted like a pimp and invited violators and exploiters to do what they wished with Mam Cymru.
As we know, to our cost, the ‘Welsh Government’ chose the third of those options. All the while trying to justify the betrayal by whimpering about a ‘climate emergency’.
Which goes some way to explaining why these latest developments involve companies and investment fund managers from Denmark, a country not much bigger than Wales, and with none of our natural resources.
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I have no doubt that Denmark is one of the countries the ‘progressive’ consensus in Corruption Bay looks up to, and wants Wales to copy. A kind-of socialist country with a high standard of living, first-class infrastructure, and health and social services that most countries can only dream of.
But how do the denizens of the Bay think these goodies are paid for? Do they believe that Denmark gets a block grant every year, perhaps from Berlin, or maybe Brussels?
The truth is that the Danes have their little piece of heaven thanks to a healthy economy of their own. Due to the likes of the Maersk Group (value, 2018: $28.1bn), the Carlsberg Group ($19.3bn), and Danske Bank (£16.6bn, 5m+ retail customers).
Apropos this article, another reason the luvvies of the Bay look towards Denmark is because the Danes are soooo committed to renewable energy.
Let’s compare the Danish approach to renewables with that of our esteemed tribunes.
The Danes design turbines, and build them at home and abroad. Either way, the money ends up back in the land of the Little Mermaid. Big in this field is Vestas Wind Systems (value, 2018: $17.9bn). And as we’ve seen in this article, there are also the Danish investment funds.
So, one way or another, Denmark gets 100% of the economic benefit from wind turbines erected in and off Denmark, and a healthy slice of the moolah for turbines erected elsewhere. Especially in ‘welcoming’ countries like Wales.
Wales sees only ‘community funds’. The modern equivalent of beads and blankets.
This kind of relationship used to be called colonialism. The sort of thing socialists and ‘progressives’ railed against. Presumably, the ‘Welsh Government’ now believes that such exploitation is OK if it can be greenwashed.
However we look at, ‘renewable energy’ has been one of the biggest rip-offs in Welsh history. Anyone who thinks this exploitation is acceptable because we’re ‘saving the planet’ is either a fool or a liar.
Bute Energy, in various manifestations, with addresses in London and Edinburgh has, for a minimal outlay, landed itself at least 20 wind farms in Wales that it can now exploit with foreign investment, or sell off entirely for a vast profit.
Wales will see none of that money, no jobs, and no other benefits . . . unless of course you’re well connected with the ‘Welsh’ Labour Party.
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AND FINALLY . . .
I don’t for one second blame Danish companies for making money; for providing jobs and creating wealth for Denmark and the Danish people. Nor do I attach any blame to Danish politicians for encouraging this entrepreneurialism.
That is what they are supposed to do.
The blame for the growing inequalities between two small European countries, and the growing exploitation of one by the other, rests entirely on the shoulders of those posturing clowns in Cardiff.
They who have failed us, the Welsh people, time after time.
Let’s emulate Denmark by all means. And Ireland, which wants to erect – in Wales, of course! – the UK’s tallest wind turbines.
But let’s remember there can be no substantive improvement until we sever the English connection. Another slavering simian we need to get off our back is a socialism that prioritises gestures and identity politics over the material well-being of our people.
I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY SOON AFTER THIS YEAR’S SENEDD ELECTIONS. POSTINGS WILL NOW BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.
This latest post is in part an update of, and in part a sequel to, last week’s post.
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INTRODUCTION
In that previous piece I explained the infiltration of Yes Cymru by left wingers who are more likely to be promoting their own agendas than serving Welsh interests.
I also tried to explain the linkage between the doctrinaire ‘hard’ left and the ‘fluffier’ wokies, especially those who believe transsexuals are a persecuted minority in Wales that must not just be protected, but promoted and grown.
Following that piece I suffered considerable online abuse, people saying they wanted to attack me, even kill me. Moi! loveable old Jac!
This is the kind of thing I’m talking about.
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Aled Gwyn Williams, poisonous little troll of Maesteg, was no doubt angry that my blog piece had been taken up by Llais y Sais, where Martin Shipton gave him a few mentions.
This was perhaps payback for Shipton being attacked last year by the usual suspects for daring to wonder why BLM protests were allowed during Covid lockdown.
For this he was removed from a judging panel by the touchy-feely, state-funded, left liberals of Literature Wales, an organisation where ‘diversity’ now takes precedence over good writing.
Shipton was quoted in a Nation.Cymru article saying, “Many of the tweets questioned my right to express an opinion, called into question my credentials as a journalist and attacked me on the basis of my age.”
Tell me about it!
But it was all rather naïve of Shippo. For as we learnt from the USA and elsewhere, marches, riots, arson, looting, even murder and mayhem, were perfectly acceptable during lockdown – as long as it was BLM or Antifa doing it.
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Further news came in after last week’s post was published, some of which I added as an update, and so you may have missed it. Also, information to which I’ve been directed in recent days.
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HARD LEFT INFILTRATES, PROMISES SOCIALIST UTOPIA OF . . . GULAGS
As a late addition to last week’s post I mentioned that Yes Cymru had taken on a Campaigns Officer. Her name is Harriet Protheroe-Soltani (formerly Protheroe-Davis), originally of Merthyr.
What’s important about her is that she comes from Momentum, or Welsh Labour Grassroots, as it tends be more popularly known in Wales. By either name this is the hard left group that gathered around Jeremy Corbyn capturing and, for a while, controlling the Labour Party.
Since Corbyn’s fall parasitic Momentum has sought new hosts.
When standing for the Momentum NCG last year this is what she had to say to the Momentum membership in her election pitch:
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The penultimate sentence is chilling. It suggests that those who are democratically elected to the Senedd by the Welsh people will be dictated to by left wingers like her.
Another hard left woman who has adopted the cause of Welsh independence is infamous anti-Semite Kerry-Anne Mendoza, editor-in-chief of far left media site The Canary. I think she has ‘bought a place’ near Abergavenny.
I don’t accept that these women really care about Wales, or about us. I say that because the left is inherently unpatriotic. To them, patriotism is either passé or downright evil.
One of Aled Gwyn Williams’ playmates’ recently used the term ‘flagshaggers’ to describe Welsh patriots. (He’s the one in the centre of the picture below.)
Not long before, in a truly bizarre tweet – even by their standards – he challenged ‘flagshaggers’ to a cage fight! Everybody had a good laugh.
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The hard left supports Welsh independence for its own reasons. Reasons that would be of no benefit to the Welsh people. For example, the left would do nothing to combat the ethnic cleansing taking place in our rural areas as they believe in open borders and free movement of people.
Consequently, the independent Wales they promise would be an absolute nightmare. As we were reminded by the comedian in the centre of the picture above . . . who fantasises about gulags!
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And he is not joking! That’s how unhinged the hard left / wokies have become.
These are the people taking over and reshaping the movement for independence, and it makes sense.
For reading Momentum literature certain things become obvious. Regular references to the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights tell that this issue is being used by Momentum to cause disruption in ‘target groups’.
It worked its magic on the Labour Party and now we see the hard left using its useful idiots the wokies to cause disruption with transphobia allegations in Wales. Especially within Plaid Cymru and the independence movement.
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THE HARD LEFT UNDERMINING THE NATION
When it’s not talk of gulags and cage fights with ‘flagshaggers’, or dictating policy to the ‘Welsh Government’, then leftists engage in other attacks on the nation.
Here are two examples from last week.
To believe the first, the movement for Welsh independence owes virtually nothing to white, heterosexual Welsh people!
“Bigots and fascists” is code for, ‘anyone who refuses to accept the hard left / wokie message’. That is, most of us.
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According to Welsh Communalists of the World Yes Cymru was “only possible” due to the LGBTQ community and the Kurds. Now, I have supported the Kurds ever since I became aware of their plight – and this was long before the clowns I’m writing about were born – but to give the Kurdish diaspora in Wales such influence would probably embarrass the Kurds themselves.
Yet – and this is surely the clincher! – what Welsh Communalists of the World says is “a scientific fact”. So there!
Who are these idiots?
A brief background may be needed for you to understand the second example.
This has excited the representatives of the ‘visitor economy’ (love that term!) who claim the tourists won’t like it. Citing the fact that no one visits Mont Blanc or Benidorm.
It’s this suggestion from Cllr Roberts that encouraged the Twitter contribution you see below from @henpbapur.
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It’s difficult to know where to start with this, but let’s try some facts. Colonel Sir George Everest was born into a family of butchers turned lawyers from London. They’d made enough money to buy a sizeable estate near Crughywel.
There is some dispute as to where George Everest was born, in 1790, but he was certainly baptised in London and educated in England before joining the East India Company as a cadet and sailing for India in 1806. He died at his London home in 1866 and is buried in London.
His connection with Wales, therefore, is tenuous in the extreme. He may never have set foot here! For all sorts of reasons, to call him a Welshman is absurd.
But none of this matters to those, infected with transient lunacies, who want to paint us Welsh as colonialist oppressors. Though even if Everest was Welsh, would that make us all guilty?
Following World War Two the Allies decided that guilt for the Holocaust and other crimes would be borne by those who were guilty – not by the whole German nation. That was the correct thing to do then, and now.
But under the influence of Black Lives Matter, and its mantra that all white people must carry the guilt for slavery and colonialism some young person in Wales uses George Everest to pin the guilt of colonialism on the whole Welsh nation in 2021!
And by so doing, she lines up with some Cheshire Set shite in Abbasock who thinks using the name Yr Wyddfa is racist!
Whose side is she on?
She doubled down on her silliness with the tweet you see below.
No, I’ll tell you what’s ‘toxic’ and ‘shallow’ – blaming people for things they had no hand in, and arguing for collective guilt. Because that’s how dictators and genocidalists ‘justify’ their crimes.
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THE HARD LEFT, YES CYMRU, AND THE COALITION
One of the many curiosities of the Welsh political scene nowadays is a group calling itself Labour for an Independent Wales. As you can see if you click on the link, the homepage of the group’s website proclaims ‘Socialism through independence’, leaving us in no doubt of its priority.
(Mercifully, there’s no mention of gulags. Or of challenging ‘flagshaggers’ to a scrap.)
On the executive committee of @LabforIndyWales we find Martyn Shrewsbury, snake oil salesman of Swansea and former luminary of the Liberal Democrats. Shrewsbury has appeared on this blog more than once. (Just put his name in the search box atop the sidebar.)
The rest seem to be the usual mix of dinner party socialists, those still fighting Brexit, and yet more opportunists dreaming of exploiting an independent Wales.
The leader and spokesperson for this merry band is Ben Gwalchmai, who is the fourth of Labour’s four candidates on the Mid and West Wales list for Thursday’s election. Which means he’s got as much chance of being elected as I have.
I mention Comrade Gwalchmai because, idly searching the web the other night, I came across a podcast in which he appears, alongside Harriet Protheroe-Soltani of all people. She of Yes Cymru and Momentum.
If nothing else, it tells us that they know each other. Which is no great surprise.
But the reason I mention it is because I’m told Gwalchmai has been having discreet talks with the leadership of Yes Cymru. The organisation that so recently attracted Protheroe-Soltani. This might be significant.
Because despite Yes Cymru’s claims to not be aligned with any political party, it became obvious soon after YC’s launch that it was an extension of Plaid Cymru. While the claim to being ideology-free has been destroyed by Yes Cymru’s surrender to the far left and the left’s wokie dupes.
Then, other sources tell me that the details of the post-election coalition between Labour and Plaid Cymru have already been settled. Plaid Cymru is being coy about it so as not to alienate its supporters.
I’ll remind them: A vote for Plaid Cymru is a vote for Labour.
It would make perfect sense for potential partners in any coalition to have made the initial contact through proxies. Or should we view it as Yes Cymru acting as matchmaker?
One thing is absolutely certain. The hard left has extended its influence in Wales without ever putting its agenda to the electorate. It has achieved this influence through the time-honoured methods of entryism and operating through surrogates.
The little chart I’ve drawn up explains how I see the flow of left wing influence. You’ll note that while Labour is obviously targeted, the ultimate targets are Yes Cymru and Plaid Cymru. In fact, Plaid Cymru might be seen as the end of the line.
Making the party of Saunders Lewis and Gwynfor Evans the Labour Party by another name.
The trickle down effect.
Undod is a far left group containing a number of extremists and oddballs, some of whom crop up in the company of Aled Gwyn Williams. With its emphasis on class war it’s about as relevant to the 21st century as whalebone corsets.
“One of the reasons we decided to call ourselves Undod was as a permanent reminder that the working class have more in common with one another than they do with the political and business elites in this country.”
As I said earlier, the left is always unpatriotic, and Undod is no exception. It seeks to divide the Welsh nation on class lines while forging alliances with the toiling masses elsewhere. It’s almost nostalgia socialism; the sort of thing that can only appeal to the truly embittered or the too-young-to-know-better.
Plaid Ifanc, the youth wing of Plaid Cymru, is another far left organisation, with its number one objective being to make Wales independent . . . and then join the EU! Being generous, I’ll suggest its members are too young to remember the 2016 referendum in which Wales voted to leave the EU.
There is no mention on the Plaid Ifanc website of the citizens of an independent socialist Wales having a referendum to decide whether they want to join the EU.
There are other groups and social media accounts that I could have mentioned but these would be more peripheral.
Though one deserving a mention, which seems to be another front for Momentum, is Acorn. Formed in 2014, it describes itself as “a mass membership organisation and network of low-income people organising for a fairer deal for our communities”.
Deliciously vague . . . but who could criticise!
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LOOKING AHEAD
There will be a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition after Thursday’s elections, but the real victor will be the hard left, which has infiltrated both parties, and will, as Harriet Protheroe-Soltani warned, “set the narrative” for the ‘Welsh Government’. It could be argued that this infiltration made the coalition almost inevitable.
Can merger be far behind?
From then on it will be virtue signalling on steroids!
The planet will be saved by banning private transport while also getting rid of farmers and their farting livestock; the world’s refugees will be encouraged to come to Wales; police will be defunded and their bicycles emblazoned with ‘ACAB’; England’s homeless will be housed; gender dysphoria counselling will be available to foetuses; the stocks will be brought back for flagshaggers; the currently under-funded third sector will enjoy a golden age of largesse; anyone asking, ‘But what about the economy?’ will be re-educated . . . and Wales will sink into (even greater) poverty and utter chaos.
I can only hope that a few years of the lunatics running the asylum leads to our people coming to their senses, and from then on voting for parties with no hidden agendas, and only Wales’ best interests at heart.
I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY SOON AFTER THIS YEAR’S SENEDD ELECTIONS. POSTINGS WILL NOW BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.
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The title is of course taken from Tony Blair’s famous speech of May 2001. It seems apposite because this offering is also about the UK Labour Party (Welsh branch) and education.
On the same day, Llais y Sais ran a full-page piece (below) by Jane Hutt MS, speaking on behalf of the ‘Welsh Government’, setting out her gang’s plan for an “anti-racist Wales”. (It too is available in pdf format.)
It’s clearly orchestrated. And it needs to be answered because this campaign is misinterpreting statistics, telling outright lies, and marginalising the history of the people to whom this country belongs.
To the surprise of absolutely no one Prof Williams discovered that the current education system could have been designed by the Ku Klux Klan. Her working group made 51 recommendations – all of which have been accepted by the ‘Welsh Government’. Which has also shelled out £500,000 to help implement those recommendations. (With more to follow, I’m sure.)
I can’t tell you much about Professor Williams. She’s probably a Labour Party loyalist, and that explains how she got the gig. That’s how things work in Wales.
Though I’m not clear about her field of expertise and her titles seem to be honorary. Certainly, that’s what’s suggested by this piece on the Bangor University website. (Available here in pdf format.) She’s an honorary professor at Bangor and an honorary fellow at Glyndŵr and South Wales.
In the Bangor University article I’ve linked to Williams says: “We have a rich history in Wales, built on difference and diversity”. Er, no.
For the greater part of our history we have been one people, speaking one language, divided only by geography and dialect. This is what held us together, this is what gave us our sense of ourselves as a people during centuries of conquest and subjugation.
As late as the 19th century that unity was reinforced by the Industrial Revolution and our adherence to the nonconformist denominations. Making me wonder how much Prof Williams really knows about Wales.
The ‘diversity’ to which she refers is very recent. And while its proselytisers preach unity, in practice they label and divide.
While Welsh children are to be taught BAME history the ‘Welsh Government’ has decided they will not be taught their own history, or the history of their country unless this is done through the prism of a ‘diversity’ that is absent from the history of Wales until comparatively recent times.
Something very strange is happening. The desire to tell the story of ‘colonialism, discrimination and exploitation’ is being used to ignore or marginalise the history of an indigenous population with first-hand knowledge of colonialism, discrimination and exploitation.
And this has all been prompted by the death of a man last year in a US city most of you can’t even remember the name of.
Another untruth in the BBC article can be found with, “In 2019, 12% of all pupils aged five and over came from minority ethnic backgrounds . . . according to Pupil Level Annual School Census data.”
We are encouraged to interpret that as meaning 12% of pupils in Welsh schools come from non-white backgrounds. But the source used, StatsWales, makes it clear that’s not the case. What it tells us is that 12% did not identify as ‘White British’.
This 12% is made up of Irish children, Italian children, and Polish children, maybe even white Welsh kids who didn’t want to identify as British.
But if we are to have an à la carte education system then I suggest our pedagogues get their answers ready for when Mrs McGillicuddy rocks up demanding to know why Seamus and Siobhan are not being taught the history of Gaelic Ireland.
Polish history is very interesting as well. And what about the Risorgimento!
It may sound like a good idea, but once history is tailored to group or individual backgrounds then it can become as irrelevant to others as one’s family history.
That’s why sensible countries take the ‘broad sweep’ approach to the history of their country and then fit that national past into the wider, global picture.
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Now a quick shufty at the petition.
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A hybrid beast, this. It is addressed to the Welsh Parliament, yet it keeps referring to the UK and Britain.
To take the petition wording at face value it seems to be asking that Welsh children be taught about the experiences of immigrant groups in England. But why?
It also wants our children to learn that Wales, “benefited from colonialism and slavery for centuries”. Did we really! These ‘benefits’ must have passed my family by.
But what is Black and POC history? Is it the history of African people(s)? The spread of Islam? Moghul India? Asia? China? Pre-Columbian America? With nothing to connect these disparate stories other than their contacts with Europeans, at what point will BAME history degenerate into, ‘White bastards . . . ‘.
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Finally, let’s look at the Llais y Sais article. There are so many distortions that it’s difficult to know where to start.
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The article is written by Jane Hutt of Surbiton, who spent much of her childhood in colonial Africa. Her career in Wales began in the third sector, which helped her become a Labour councillor. She was then an unsuccessful Westminster candidate before securing the consolation prize of a seat in the new Welsh Assembly in 1999.
So, yet another Labour politician who’s never done a real job.
In the second paragraph Hutt says, “. . . our partners have shared more shocking stories of racism and hate crime endured in Wales”. Who might these ‘partners’ be, I wonder?
I would hazard a guess that these are Labour’s cronies in the third sector and elsewhere. People and groups reliant on public funding that can be best secured by exaggerating a problem and / or telling the ‘Welsh Government’ what it wants to hear.
What’s in it for the Labour Party? Well, the sub-text has always been – from the days of Naz Malik and his Swansea Bay Race Equality Council – ‘Welsh nationalism is by definition racist’. (Remember Naz?)
In discussing the impact of Covid, Hutt suggests that people from ethnic minority backgrounds have suffered worse than white people. This is more bollocks. The critical factor has been deprivation. The kind of deprivation experienced in the post-industrial communities that the ‘Welsh’ Labour Government has condemned to managed decline. Communities where the population is almost exclusively white, and Welsh.
Towards the end Hutt writes: “We want to make sure that Wales becomes not just non-racist, but anti-racist, by the year 2030”.
‘Non-racist’ means the absence of racism. To go further is to pander to extremists who argue that all white people carry the guilt for slavery and imperialist exploitation. A sentiment we saw articulated in the petition.
We are now in the territory of Critical Race Theory, reporting neighbours for watching Gone With The Wind, and shopping Nain for her Robertson’s golliwog badge. Maybe even self-flagellation.
Wales does not want to go there. Labour should not be taking us towards this fresh kind of intolerance.
And yet Hutt’s overlong homily is not without its unintended humour.
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The idea of Travellers complaining about ‘racism and hate crime’ is laughable. What they’re far more likely to be moaning about is being collared for their criminal behaviour. (Here’s a very recent example.)
‘Colourism’ may be a term many of you are unfamiliar with, but it’s rife in India, where it seems people of darker skin tone tend to be looked down on. All tied up with history, caste, religion, etc. It also seems to operate in the USA. Where, again, it is something found within communities, in this case, African-Americans.
Either way, ‘colourism’ or ‘shadism’ is a complex subject internal to certain countries and groups. It should never be a concern of the ‘Welsh Government’.
Hutt concludes with, “We must stand proud with open hearts and minds, and take positive action to banish racism, discrimination and inequality from Wales”. All very noble, and guaranteed a round of applause at the next Labour Party bunfight.
But this commitment to combating discrimination and inequality would carry more weight if, instead of playing to certain galleries, Labour politicians took action to stop Welsh people being ethnically cleansed from their own communities.
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BAME education is so typically ‘Welsh’ Labour – about Wales, but not the Welsh. Twenty-two years of devolution has been all about gestures and virtue signalling for external audiences and tiny groups of activists.
While the essential Welshness of Wales, that sense of identity that brought devolution into being, has been undermined and the threats against it ignored.
Twenty-two years of anti-Welsh devolution.
This is why the Labour Party is opposed to both Welsh language education and the teaching of Welsh history in our schools. They fear it might make our young people more patriotic, and therefore, less likely to vote Labour.
Which is why, the more I think about BAME education, the more I suspect Labour may not have thought this through.
As I’ve just said, Labour does not want to enthuse Welsh children with a sense of patriotism, or worse, grievance. Nor does it wish to encourage anti-British or anti-English sentiment.
But if history is to be taught from a BAME and leftist perspective then how are children to be told about the slave trade, the Amritsar Massacre, An Gorta Mór, the Bengal famine, the coup against Mosaddeq, and so many other episodes of Britain’s past without encouraging a “Bastards!” reaction?
What you’ve read here is my interpretation of the Labour Party pandering to yet another vocal and unrepresentative minority. And while we should all strive to marginalise racism – for it will never be entirely eradicated – I believe that what is being suggested risks damaging the Welsh education system and doing more harm than good for communal relations.
I say that because I can think of few things more insulting than middle class left liberals designing a curriculum that tells kids relying on food banks in post-industrial shitholes that they should feel guilty for being the beneficiaries of slavery and ‘white privilege’.
It really is time to get rid off these dangerous and insulting clowns in the Labour Party, and the same goes for any other leftist party that might keep Labour in power.
PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR
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This a complicated story, so I advise you to pay attention. I’ve written about Dawnus and Hydro Industries a few times in recent years, but now I want to go back, ten years and more, to the start of this story. I shall use information from a number of sources, primarily Rebecca Television, the greatly missed Cneifiwr blog, and another well-informed source.
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DESIRABLE PROPERTY
We’ll begin in March 2006 when it became clear that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was winding down its Llangennech site in Llanelli and the prospect was causing some consternation in the locality.
The local Labour MP was Nia Griffith, and of course there was a Labour government in Westminster at the time. Griffith asked a question about Llangennech in the House of Commons. For the government, Don Touhig, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Veterans) Ministry of Defence, confirmed that the Llangennech site would close by mid-2008.
Soon after the closure, early in 2009, the ‘Independent’-Labour-run Carmarthenshire County Council purchased the site and immediately sold it on to a commercial entity. Which raised a number of questions, aired in this report from May of that year.
First, why couldn’t this commercial entity, R & A Properties, have bought the site from the MoD? Second, why wasn’t R & A Properties registered with Companies House? Third, who was behind R & A Properties?
The answer to the first question will be given later.
Question 3 was answered very quickly when we were told that one of those behind the scheme was David Francis Pickering, former captain of the national rugby team and then chairman of the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU). Working with his “lifelong friend” Robert Nigel Lovering.
So we have The Labour Party in control in Westminster, Cardiff Bay, the Shire Hall (coalition), and a staunch Labour supporter gets handed the deal of his life with the old MoD site in Llangennech. Such serendipity!
But back to the questions.
The second question was answered by David Pickering when he said, “I know some people will find it strange that R & A is not a limited company but we’ve been advised to do it this way by our professional advisers.” So they paid someone to ‘advise’ them to enter into a multi-million pound deal using a non-existent company! Advice like that might explain Pickering’s business record, which we’ll look at in a minute.
Though in fairness, there does seem to have been a company, or rather, a Limited Liability Partnership, called R&A Properties, for it’s mentioned in the accounts of Hydro Industries Ltd for y/e 31/03/2016. (More on Hydro Industries anon.)
I’m at a loss to explain the reference to DFP Properties Ltd, a company whose records show it has never done any business whatsoever. Click to enlarge
The problem here is that R&A Properties LLP does not exist, or it has certainly never been registered with Companies House. So from what parallel dimension did this creature slip through the Llangennech portal to help Hydro Industries?
A company called R & A Properties Cardiff Limited was eventually Incorporated 5 March 2019, with Pickering, Lovering, and Wayne Preece (of Hydro Industries) as directors. Why it took so long to legitimise R & A is a mystery that might be answered later in this posting. Though why ‘Cardiff’ should be in the name, seeing as the correspondence address given for the company is the Stradey Business Park in Llangennech, remains a mystery.
The deal in 2009 was justified because Pickering and his mates had a ‘blue chip’ company lined up to provide dozens or hundreds of top-notch jobs. The number given seemed to depend on who you spoke to and which way the wind was blowing.
Later in 2009 we learnt that Thales UK, part of the French defence giant, would be adapting the Bronco All Terrain Tracked Carrier built by a Singapore company and re-branding them ‘Warthogs’ for deployment with the British Army in Afghanistan.
As you’ve read, the 37-acre site was bought from the MoD by Carmarthenshire County Council and soon sold to the mysterious R & A Properties LLP.
The Land Registry turns up nothing for Stradey Business Park or Stradey Park Business Centre. You have to use the LR map, which produces two separate titles. The first, CYM462190, for ‘Land on the north side of Mwrwg Road, Llangennech’. The second, CYM458189, ‘Land on the south side of Mwrwg Road, Llangennech’.
There is a third title, mentioned on both of these documents, it’s CYM444641, but it seems to be unavailable at the Land Registry website.
Consulting Google Maps tells us that Heol Mwrwg bisects the site. Or check it out on the image below.
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What we learn from these documents is that Robert Nigel Lovering owns both titles . . . or rather, they were bought with loans from Lloyds Bank Plc and The Secretary of State for Defence, with Carmarthenshire County Council chipping in later.
Moving on . . . early in 2009 the MoD sold the Llangennech site to Mark James, aka Carmarthenshire County Council, and he quickly sold it on to his mates, Dai Pickering and Robert Lovering.
And that answers the first question we left hanging earlier – why couldn’t R & A Properties have bought the site directly from the MoD? Answer: R & A couldn’t buy directly from the MoD because Lovering was getting a loan from the MoD to make the purchase. So it had to go through Carmarthenshire County Council.
For a very similar reason, the loan from the council in December 2012, was made not for the purchase of the site but to improve it.
You’ll have noticed that only Lovering’s name appears on the title documents. So why is that?
One answer might be Pickering’s financial status. For according to Paddy French at Rebecca Television Pickering had outstanding debts, both against companies he was involved with and also against him personally.
We read of one such debt: “In July 2009 Lloyds TSB obtained judgment against him for an unpaid bill of £10,232. The bank has taken him to court – and secured the debt against his Cardiff home.”
Rebecca Television estimates HMRC lost around £4 million in unpaid National Insurance, VAT and other taxes from the collapse of assorted Pickering companies.
Cneifiwr used the Rebecca Television article in an interesting update, Warthogs and a man with a van, in April 2014. It’s worth a read.
If we look at the companies David Pickering has been involved with, most are dissolved. The only ones still standing fall into three categories: 1/ Companies he left, 2/ Companies associated with the WRU, 3/ Companies Pickering has joined or formed in recent years. We’ll look at this final category in a minute.
It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that Pickering is a failed businessman whose public profile and many contacts can still get his size 12s under boardroom tables.
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COOL, CLEAR WATER
One hypothesis to explain this remarkable deal in Llangennech must be . . .
The MoD had agreed the Warthog deal with Thales in 2008, but was reluctant to invite Thales to do the work at Llangennech themselves because politicians and media might view that as too close a relationship between the British Ministry of Defence and what was after all a French company.
With the added advantage of Llangennech being well off the beaten track for the London redtops.
So I make no apologies for again using this scene from the Godfather, in which Willie Cicci gives evidence to a Congressional hearing. For just like the Corleone family the MoD needed ‘buffers’ between them and Thales.
It’s difficult to explain the convoluted sale in any other way.
One of the companies with which Batty was involved – one of the few still afloat – is the Langland Bay Golf Club Ltd. One of Swansea’s better golf clubs in an up-market suburb. In fact, this part of the city figures more than once in this narrative.
For not only does Lovering live in Langland Bay, but Preece is also a resident. And among the previous directors of the Langland Bay Golf Club I see Huw Wyn Price. Price and his wife were the founding directors of Lancehawk Ltd in 1986. Lovering joined on 1 July 1999 and seems to have taken over, to the extent that he is now the only director.
I assume the company is doing well because I see 12 satisfied charges over the years, some with lenders I’ve never heard of. The accounts, unaudited and abridged, show Total Net Assets of £872,709.
‘Lancehawk’ has a certain martial ring to it. And so I wouldn’t be surprised if it has done work for the Ministry of Defence. The address given for Lancehawk used to be Lovering’s Langland Bay home, but now it’s relocated to – where else? – the Stradey Business Park.
Maybe someone else thought Lancehawk sounded a bit too ‘Up yours!’ which might explain the company trading as the rather blander European Telecom Solutions (ETS).
Though the ETS website doesn’t seem to be maintained very well. For example, the latest ‘News’ is for September 2018. Has nothing happened in the last year and a half? Why is there no mention of Covid-19 such as I find on every other website I visit these days? Don’t tell me ETS is another ‘buffer’!
Another Lovering company to add to the line-up is R & A Secure Services Ltd, formed 6 September 2012. That ‘R & A’ again. But it can’t be the ethereal company we seek because Lovering is the sole director. Its correspondence address was in central Swansea, but last September it moved. You have one guess!
Click to enlarge
Preece, as I’ve said, seems to have been involved in no company before 2011, with the exception of the rather odd Brightley, but then in 2012 and 2013 Preece joined a number of companies under the ‘Hydro’ banner, all based on the Stradey Business Park. In chronological order they were:
Hydro Industries Marine Ltd Formed 29 November 2012 with Preece, Lovering and Philip Graeme Morgan as directors. The company seemed to do nothing and was dissolved via compulsory strike-off 14 July 2014.
Hydro Industries Ltd Formed 2 September 2010 by Janine Morgan, who I assume is the wife of Philip Morgan, who joined her 1 April 2011. Next came Christopher Lewis 27 June 2011, and then Pickering, Preece and Lovering 2 January 2013. More recently we have seen a number of luminaries climb aboard. One of those new arrivals is Robert Brooks, who I’m told lives or lived just around the headland from Langland Bay in Caswell Bay. The Morgans left 6 August 2014.
Hydro Strata Ltd (formerly Hydro Mining Ltd). Formed 11 March 2013 with Preece and Morgan as directors. Never more than a dormant company and it was dissolved via voluntary strike-off 25 April 2017.
Hydro Utilities Ltd Formed 4 April 2013 with Morgan and Preece as directors. Morgan left 5 August 2014 and the company drifted towards voluntary strike-off 25 April 2017.
Hydro Environmental Systems Ltd Wayne Preece was in on the ground floor with Morgan 3 May 2013. Morgan left 5 August 2014 and Pickering joined 19 June 2019. Accounts and confirmation statement are overdue.
Hydro Marine & Salvage Ltd Preece and Morgan were there at the kick-off 7 October 2013 but Morgan left 5 August 2014. Dissolved by voluntary strike-off 25 April 2017.
Hydro Oil & Gas Ltd Preece and Morgan from the start 7 October 2013, Morgan left 5 August 2014 and Preece called it a day with voluntary strike-off 25 April 2017.
What I find strange here is that the late Philip Morgan (he died suddenly in the early part of 2018) was an expert in his field, academically recognised. Morgan’s departure from the Hydro companies in August 2014 can be explained by him setting up KP2M Ltd in April 2014, which trades as Power & Water from its Llansamlet base.
Yet what knowledge of water did Preece bring to the party, with his background in Sony televisions and Thales?
And yet despite Preece’s apparent lack of knowledge of H2O Hydro Industries thrives. For as we read recently, the company has been awarded two lucrative contracts in the Middle East. One is in Saudi Arabia, and then there’s a £150m gig in Egypt.
Things are certainly looking up at Hydro Industries. Just compare the balance sheets below, covering a 4-year period. What you see represents quite a turnaround in just a few years. Did they find a Fairy Godmother?
Click to enlarge
For remember, this impressive improvement preceded the Middle East contracts!
Here, in pdf format is the latest distribution of shares, dated 2 September 2019. Note that although Robert Lovering ceased to be a director 1 July 2019 he retains his share holding.
Let’s now go back to the time before Preece joined Morgan at the Hydro companies.
◊
THALES COME, THALES GO
After losing his managerial job with Sony in Bridgend – the plant finally closed in early March 2006 – Preece found himself doing fixed-term contracts for Thales UK. This gave him a foot in the door.
And tells me that by late 2008 Preece knew about the deal Thales had struck with the MoD to convert the 100+ Singapore-built Broncos into Warthogs. He now used whatever influence he had to get Thales to bring the work to Wales.
But he needed help.
If they didn’t already know each other then this is when the troika formed. Preece had the contacts with Thales (possibly also the MoD); I believe Lovering certainly had the MoD contacts (which is why the site was ‘sold’ to him); and then there was Dai Pickering, with his Labour Party contacts, and his rugby anecdotes guaranteeing him the best biscuits in Mark James’ private suite.
This explains why, in defence of the deal, the council said the sale had been agreed with persons “known to some officers”. For Mark James, then the county CEO, is a big rugby fan, and has used council money and sweetheart deals to benefit the local Scarlets.
And the generosity was reciprocated. For as Cneifiwr reports: “Shortly after the council approved the purchase and simultaneous resale of the site in February 2009, the chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council accepted an invitation from David Pickering to a rugby international.”
The Ministry of Defence was quite happy to sell the Llangennech site to the county council on the understanding that the council immediately sold it on to Preece, Lovering and Pickering. This may be the reason that the partnership back in 2009 had to be kept under wraps.
Despite all the hype, the brass bands and the kids waving flags to welcome Thales, the French outfit didn’t stay very long. So, why did Thales pull out? Well, here’s what I’ve been told . . .
Thales signed the lease agreement with Lovering, or Lovering and Pickering, or all three, before the site had actually been bought. Which of course made the agreement invalid. Possibly illegal.
This cock-up was perhaps attributable to the fact that the agreement had not been concluded by Thales’ Properties Department, as would have been normal, but by another arm under some Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) measure.
Image from Google Maps taken in August 2011, with time running out. Click to enlarge
In an attempt to cover up le désastre I’m told that the final page of the lease agreement, with signatures and dates, ‘went missing’. When it ‘reappeared’ the time lords had worked their magic – for now it showed that the site had been purchased before the lease agreement was concluded between the mysterious R & A Properties and Thales.
Phew!
But this was only a short-term measure. Once Thales held one of its regular checks on lease agreements, which would examine all documentation, the feline would be free of the encumbering sack.
And so Thales pulled out and took the work elsewhere. Search for ‘Llangennech’ or ‘Llanelli’ on the Thales website and nothing comes up. It’s as if this chapter never happened.
Which was a great pity. For while it lasted Thales provided good jobs and the workforce repaid the company by making big profits on each vehicle. A million pounds per vehicle has been quoted to me.
But Thales upped sticks and took the work away to less favourable locations, with inferior facilities, and more expensive premises. A ‘lean-to’ in Glasgow that could barely accommodate the vehicles was mentioned, as was a much more expensive venue in Sussex that lacked a decent crane.
So everyone lost out . . . except perhaps those who had screwed up.
Because I am convinced that the British government stepped in when it became obvious that Dawnus was on the ropes and going down for the count.
I say that because a) Dawnus was operating in Sierra Leone and other ‘sensitive’ areas of West Africa where China is extending its influence; b) because expensive plant and machinery was shipped out to West Africa – out of reach of liquidators and creditors – before the collapse; c) because administrators reports have been delayed for another year; and d) because the two phoenix that rose from the Dawnus flames, DIG International Group Ltd and DIG Civil Engineering Ltd, moved in March from the old Dawnus depot in Clydach to . . . go on, have a guess!
In addition to the main depot and yard at the old Players Tinplate works site in Clydach, Dawnus also had a presence in the Ashmount Business Park in Llansamlet. Very close to where Hydro Industries began life in 2010 as Watertec Solutions Ltd. And where today we find Power & Water.
Are these coincidences?
Click to enlarge
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I just know enough about how the world works to know that the UK government, or the MoD, or certain other agencies, don’t open offices abroad and put up a brass plate reading ‘Spies ‘R’ Us’. It’s done subtly, often using phoney companies as fronts.
Or recruiting genuine companies already operating in an area of interest. There might be an approach along the lines of, ‘As you’re out there, old boy, we were wondering . . . ‘. Nothing 007 about it, just keep your eyes and ears open and we’ll have the occasional chat.
Or it might just be supporting British companies in Africa and elsewhere in order to counter the influence of rivals. Today, in Africa, that means China.
This table was produced by McKinsey & Company for a June 2017 report. Chinese investment, and influence, has increased since then, both in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Click to enlarge
Those who’ve seen the wonderful film, Our Man in Havana, will recall that Alec Guinness’s character, James Wormold, is a vacuum cleaner retailer recruited by MI6. It may have been a piss-take by writer Graham Greene, but he knew what he was writing about, he’d been recruited by MI6 himself. And posted to – of all places! – Sierra Leone.
The different trajectories of the Dawnus group and Hydro Industries, and the Thales debacle, all link through a number of factors.
First, we have various arms of the UK government treating Wales as a colony, and interfering in our political and economic life. Then there’s the lack of openness and accountability at local government level. The ‘pliability’ of those elected to Corruption Bay. The cupidity of certain BritNat businessmen. And finally, good old-fashioned Labour Party cronyism.
And I haven’t even mentioned the drones, but that can wait.
Do you still want to know what’s wrong with Wales?
♦ end ♦
P.S. The British military has always directed operations at Llangennech and that is still the case. Which is why I should have mentioned Rick Libbey, a 30-year-service man who is Chief Operating Officer for Hydro Industries.
It’s pretty clear who really calls the shots at Hydro.
PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR
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In recent years I’ve written a few articles – too many to list here – about the unrelenting assault on Welsh farming and rural life. A campaign that sees Welsh politicians used as puppets by senior civil servants serving interests other than those of Wales and Welsh people.
This post is in the form of an update.
◊
THE GATHERING STORM
Arraigned against our farmers are politicians in London of assorted political hues, left-‘Green’ politicians in Corruption Bay, civil servants linking Westminster and Whitehall with Cardiff docks, and land-grabbing ‘environmentalists’ who tend to be either strident memsahibs or darlings of the Guardianistas.
Now on the one hand, we all want cleaner water. But it looks as if Ms Griffiths and her friends have been over-zealous in their attempts to give us crystal clear rills, rivers we can cross by walking on the backs of spawning salmon, and lakes home to old slappers catching the swords that are regularly chucked in.
But on the other hand, we don’t want to drive farmers out of business using sly and underhand methods. Well, I don’t, but there are some who do, and Ms Griffiths is an ally of theirs, possibly no more than a tool.
In both statements you will see reference to Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ). This term is used to describe areas, “that contain surface water or groundwater that is susceptible to nitrate pollution from agricultural activities”.
The percentage of Welsh land designated NVZ currently stands at 2.4% (750 farm holdings) and there was an understanding that the percentage would increase – Natural Resources Wales recommended 8% – but Ms Griffiths has proposed that the whole country becomes a NVZ. (So you’ll understand the response of the farming unions.)
A NVZ consultation process launched by the ‘Welsh Government’ 29 September 2016 ended 23 December 2016, with the findings being published just over two years ago. You can read the ‘summary of response’ here.
A flick through those responses makes it clear that farmers’ bodies were outnumbered by angling clubs and environment groups, a number of them Englandandwales bodies. (I’m thinking here of the National Trust, the RSPB, Marine Conservation Society and the Angling Trust.) And the way the responses came in suggest that members and supporters were whipped into line.
Click to enlarge
One question considered the effects of an All-Wales NVZ on the Welsh language. There was a majority view that enforcing an All-Wales regime would be damaging to the Welsh language because the (often unnecessary) expense involved could prove too much for the smaller family farm. But in the very last paragraph we read:
“One respondent who agreed with the question thought language should not be a fundamentally important factor in any new regulations. However, it was essential that a Welsh identity was maintained through clean waters and a beautiful countryside.”
So there you have it. Remove Welsh-speaking farming families and Welsh identity will be perpetuated by the water nymphs and sword-catching slappers to which I heretofore alluded.
But I repeat, I want to see clean rivers and lakes; it’s just that I believe this can – and must – be achieved without waging war on the farming community. Which is what it seems motivates Ms Griffiths and her pals, using the findings of a consultation process skewed by those with many years experience in such dark arts.
This proposal to extend NVZ must not be looked at in isolation, for it is part of a wider strategy to ‘discourage’ traditional farming and open up the Welsh countryside to new ideas . . . and a new population.
Which means that pleasing a few thousand hippies and eco-fanatics was seen to be more important than providing an economy, a health service, an education system an infrastructure, and all the other things needed by three million people.
And remember! in 2009 Wales was managed by a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition.
‘One Wales: One Planet’ led, in October 2012, to the ‘Welsh Government’s Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6, which allowed One Planet Developments. A measure intended to attract hippies into Wales and allow them to build what they like, wherever they choose; with local planning authorities forced to give them planning permission, often retrospectively.
Wales is the only country in the world to have enacted this hippies’ charter.
Next, in December 2013, we saw Alun Davies, then Minister for Natural Resources and Food (therefore Ms Griffiths’ predecessor) transfer 15% of EU Common Agricultural Policy funding from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2. In practice, this saw £286m taken from farmers and allocated to rural development projects.
No prizes for guessing what ‘rural development projects’ means, and who benefits.
Fifteen per cent was the maximum permitted by the EU and the ‘Welsh Government’ showed its attitude to farmers by going for broke.
Then we had the Well-being of Future Generation Act (Wales) Act 2015 promising sunshine, lollipops and roses . . . and cushy jobs for Labour Party cronies. Such as the first Future Generations Commissioner herself. Sophie Howe is the daughter of a former Cardiff Labour councillor, and previously worked for Alun Michael, erstwhile Labour MP and now South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner.
No other country entertains anything like this bullshit.
More recently we have seen the arrival of the memsahibs and the Monbiots demanding huge swathes of our homeland in which they can play silly buggers. I’ve dealt with this in The Welsh Clearances of 16 October 2018 and a number of times since. Just type ‘rewilding’ or ‘Summit to Sea’ in the search box on top of the sidebar to find these further contributions.
And to cap it all, we have recently seen outbursts from ‘trendy metropolitan eco-zealots’ and swivel-eyed advisers to Boris Johnson promoting the same idiocies.
◊
ÉMINENCE GRISE
There is is no question that influencers have been working on the ‘Welsh Government’ for a decade or more, and they have tended to be men with little understanding of or sympathy for farming, and very often a poorly concealed hostility towards Welsh farmers.
We should not be surprised therefore that through the malign influence of this cabal Welsh farming has been weakened by one cut after another, to the advantage of the hippies, the memsahibs and the Monbiots.
They always encourage legislation against farmers, nothing is ever done for farmers.
Most of those I’m referring to have been mentioned in previous blog posts, but now I want to focus on one who has been rather overlooked, Gary Haggarty. No, this is not Gary Haggarty, the UVF killer and supergrass, but Gary Haggarty, former Rural Director for the ‘Welsh Government’.
‘Shared vision, united approach and consistent messaging are crucial to success’. Did you ever hear such vapid sound bites! Click to enlarge
But more importantly, Haggarty is the partner of Lesley Griffiths, the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs in the ‘Welsh Government’. Their affair was kept secret for quite some time but has been widely known about for at least a year.
Haggarty has form, for he is said to be the genius behind the decision to take money off farmers with the 2013 ‘Pillars’ decision.
Responsibility for replacing of the Tir Mynydd scheme with the unpopular Glastir arrangement is also laid at his door. Glastir tends to regard traditional Welsh farming as just another rural activity, little different to organic hobby farming. Which of course fits perfectly with the overall strategy.
When Brexit came along Haggarty saw another weapon he could use and he rolled it out with the September 2018 consultation document, ‘Brexit and our land: Securing the future of Welsh farming’. The second element in that title is quite insulting considering what we know about Haggarty’s attitude to farming and farmers.
The ‘Welsh Government’s response to the results of the consultation process is contained in this document.
A further publication in July 2019 was ‘Sustainable Farming and our Land’, which was described by its ‘author’, Lesley Griffiths, as ‘revised proposals’ following the responses received to the ‘Brexit and our land’ consultation, also ‘authored’ by Griffiths.
Or were they, because of course the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs was in a relationship with a man on a mission to bring Welsh farmers to heel? And so I have no doubt that he wrote most of what appeared in these publications. And she was happy to let him do it.
Which means that a man with not a single democratic vote to his name is dictating policy to the wretched and useless ‘Welsh Government’. And Gary Haggarty is not the only one.
So much for devolution!
This relationship was known about in Cardiff Bay for a long time, but Haggarty was only reassigned when it became public knowledge. Yet the relationship was improper whether it was public knowledge or not. They should have been separated, professionally, as soon as the affair became known about.
◊
BEST OF FRIENDS
As I say, the relationship between Griffiths and Haggarty is now out in the open, as shown by the image below, taken in a Dublin bar on 8 February, the day of the Ireland v Wales rugby international.
On the left we see the happy couple, and on the right, Elin Jones, the Plaid Cymru AM for Ceredigion and Llywydd (Speaker) in the Senedd. And is that Llais y Sais columnist Carolyn Hitt behind Jones? If so, what’s a nice girl like her doing there?
Gary entertaining the ladies with his Stan Laurel face. Click to enlarge
You could say that seeing Labour and Plaid Cymru politicians sharing a convivial jar in a Temple Bar pub shows how civilised Welsh politics is. Not really.
Could you imagine Elin Jones sharing a Guinness with Andrew R T Davies, or his successor, Paul Davies? Or enjoying a snifter and a risqué joke with Mostyn? (Neil Hamilton, to you.)
And if Neil McEvoy had walked through the door Elin Jones would have screamed, switched off his microphone, summoned the gardaí and demanded that they drag him off to Kilmainham to be summarily executed.
Let Uncle Jac interpret that photograph for you. What it says is this: In next year’s Assembly elections Labour will fall well short of a majority of seats, consequently its only hope of staying in power lies in a coalition with Plaid Cymru. Therefore a vote for Plaid Cymru in 2021 will be a vote for Labour.
So don’t be fooled by the playful sparring you’ll see in the election campaign. It’s only done to fool mug punters. Don’t you be one of them!
Something else that strikes me is that Elin Jones, from a farming background, has no problem socialising with people inflicting so much pain on Welsh farming. A testimony to the amnesiac qualities of the Cardiff Bay air.
There was a piece of good news for our farmers last week. And unwelcome news for those wanting to displace them. For that’s where we’re at: two sides, one still in possession of its ancestral land, and the other prepared to use all manner of tactics to take possession.
This is semi-naked colonialism, with native ‘friendlies’ who have jumped into bed with the enemy justifying their treachery by pretending it’s done for the greater good of saving the planet.
The news I’m referring to is that academics conclude that planting trees everywhere, which is what many of the would-be ethnic cleansers advocate, would do more harm than good for the environment.
“The report comes from the Natural Capital Committee (NCC), which says planting trees into peat bogs would prove a serious mistake.”
But don’t worry, for those pulling Lesley Griffith’s strings will still want wind turbines plonked on peat, to cause flooding and other problems – and it will all be done in order to save the planet!
Left to these people, Welsh identity itself will be destroyed . . . to save the planet. Gesture politics all the way.
Devolution does not work for us Welsh. Devolution benefits a colonial management class that just rubber-stamps decisions made by strangers acting against the Welsh national interest. We must move on to independence and reclaim our country from both our external enemies and their internal allies.
♦ end ♦
UPDATE 16.04.2020: Conservative MPs from Wales have written to Lesley Griffiths condemning her treatment of Welsh farmers over NVZ. (Did they also send Gary a copy?) Will Plaid Cymru also defend our farmers, or will they side with their Labour friends? (Available here in pdf.)
PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR
♦
I was already late with the weekly offering, and getting bogged down with what I was working on – but then Plaid Cymru came to my rescue!
So here’s a little something to keep you going while I do a bit more digging into the labyrinthine workings of Wales & West Housing.
◊
PLAID CYMRU, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING
I rose late yesterday, and after firing up the trusty old desktop I found a Twitter DM from a regular source telling of a new recruit to Plaid Cymru. Not only that, but the source also provided a tweet from Ms Leanne Wood.
Click to enlarge
I’m sure that not all new members get such a welcome from the former leader of the party . . . though then again, how many recruits is Plaid pulling in these days?
Anyway, accompanying the pic of Leanne Wood and Sonia Klein was another image, this one from the Ilford Recorder of August last year. It told us that Ms Klein was hoping to become the Labour Party candidate for Ilford South. Here’s a link to the article.
Though I found the photograph the Recorder used a little disconcerting. Here we have a family group, wholesome and clean-shaven, all dressed in light clothing with the sun shining down on them. It reminded me of an image from one of those leaflets I politely decline when they’re proffered by earnest young missionaries.
Click to enlarge
And now, it appears, the Kleins have moved from one cult to another. Or am I being cynical? Moi!
Anyway, I thought this information merited a wider audience and so I put out a tweet. I was then contacted by Brychan Davies, a regular contributor to my blog, with further information on Sonia Klein.
◊
THE WOMAN FROM GOD KNOWS WHERE (APOLOGIES TO FLORENCE WILSON)
A later issue of the Ilford Recorder, from September last year, tells us that Sonia Klein, “Grew up in Ilford South and also ran a business in the area. Lives in Wales.”
Brychan also found her Linkedin profile which tells that Sonia Klein has spent some time in the USA, where she got involved with the Democratic Party (natch). This source also suggests she’s a strategic advisor for CMS Global, but with no link provided, and a number of companies sharing that name, it’s difficult to know what this means.
With a complete absence of links on her Linkedin profile it’s impossible to verify the connections claimed. And though a link is provided for CMS Global on her Facebook page . . . it goes nowhere.
I’m not for one minute suggesting that Ms Klein should not be believed, but perhaps she sometimes gets confused.
Click to enlarge
For example, you’ll recall that we read in the Ilford Recorder that Sonia Klein grew up in Ilford South, yet I remember as if it was yesterday reading in Left Foot Forward (of February 2013) that she claimed to have been, “Born in Tower Hamlets and raised in Newham”.
No doubt, if she ever runs for office in Swansea she’ll claim to have been “born in the cowin’ Hafod, like”.
Going back to the Facebook page for a moment, we read that Sonia Klein works at Welsh Rowing. But doing what, exactly?
Just beneath that entry we learn that Sonia Klein worked at Swansea University’s ill-starred School of Management. If that rings the old ding-dongs then it’s because the School of Management has attracted a great deal of publicity in recent years. Just think of sackings at the University, Mark James’ Wellness Village in a Llanelli swamp, strange deals with Gulf states, and Plod getting involved.
If you’re having trouble remembering the case, just read this.
So I can well understand why the Swansea University School of Management gig does not appear on Sonia Klein’s Linkedin profile. But the link cannot be denied.
For I turned up this Labour CND conference document from 2018 which describes Sonia Klein as you see below. It tells us she was advising the School of Management at the very time the plans were being hatched that ended a number of careers. Fancy that!
“Sonia Klein has been chosen by Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) as the new candidate for its left slate in the elections for additional members of Labour’s National Constitutional Committee (NCC), the party’s senior disciplinary body.
Ms Klein, who was initially proposed by Labour CND, is a Labour member in the Welsh constituency of Gower.”
Perhaps she was in the Mayor’s Parlour on the same trip she made to fight racism in Pembrokeshire, as reported here in Socialist Worker.
Click to enlarge
This is one of the reasons I detest socialism and socialists. To begin with, and despite that photograph being taken in Wales, I would be surprised if there are more than two or three Welsh people in that whole group.
What we see there is a crew of blinkered ideologues, obsessed with an ‘ishoo’ they have brought with them from England, and insulting us by insinuating that this problem is widespread in Wales. And in Pembrokeshire of all places!
Bastards! Any self-respecting country would direct them to the border.
Yet it would appear that these are the kind of people that Plaid Cymru’s new recruit feels comfortable with. Which makes perfect sense.
For Plaid Cymru has abandoned Wales and Welsh issues to latch on to idiocies hatched in the alternative universe of US campuses and brought into Wales by the kind of clowns we see in that picture from Haverfordwest.
◊
THINKS . . .
Now if I was a member of Plaid Cymru (and I was once!) I’d be asking a few questions:
Who or what is CMS Global?
When did Sonia Klein resign from the Labour Party?
Why did Sonia Klein resign from the Labour Party?
What advice did she give to Marc Clement and Swansea University’s School of Management?
Has Sonia Klein been interviewed by the police in connection with the ongoing investigations relating to the School of Management and associated parties?
Is she advising Mark James?
Does Sonia Klein live in Wales?
Why has she joined Plaid Cymru?
I know Plaid Cymru has a thing for ‘strong women’ (and is very elastic in its application of the term ‘women’) but I can’t help thinking that a mistake has been made here.
Perhaps both sides should reconsider.
But then again, Plaid Cymru has recruited a woman who just a few months ago was fighting to become a Labour Party parliamentary candidate and, what’s more, she was an advisor to Marc Clement at Swansea University’s School of Management.
PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR
♦
FASCISTS TO THE RIGHT, RACISTS TO THE LEFT RIGHT (ALSO)
For various reasons I wasn’t at the Merthyr march and rally last Saturday, organised by YesCymru and All Under One Banner Cymru (but I was there in spirit). To compensate, I’ve had feedback from many quarters. This feedback even includes a copy of the special edition of The National produced for Merthyr.
As someone reminded us on Twitter, this one-off issue was a collaboration between that Scottish newspaper and Plaid Cymru, which explains the Plaid membership application form that came with each copy.
Though, given that the rally was in Merthyr, and Plaid is supposedly trying shake the image of being a party primarily for Welsh speakers, I was surprised to see the Welsh version of ‘Come and join us!’ at the top of the form larger and more prominent than the English version.
Click to enlarge. (It should go without saying that my cheque is in the post!)
The National also contained a series of articles by Plaid Cymru luminaries, and a rather strange contribution from Yasmin Begum, who was unknown to me, and who seemed to fear that the movement for independence might be a front for the Ku Klux Klan, with the Merthyr rally perhaps organised by the Dowlais branch of the Broederbond.
A strange, hysterical little piece, that also managed to be insulting. Particularly, “Wales has an uncomfortable relationship with colonialism and the slave trade which is yet to be fully explored and unpacked”. Wales was England’s first fucking colony and has been exploited ever since, but this woman wants to load onto us the crimes of the British Empire so we’ll feel guilty and be more receptive to her fatuous and self-serving drivel.
As I say, I had no idea who Yasmin Begum was . . . and then I checked her Twitter account, and was not surprised to learn that she is obsessed with thoughts of race. It seems that she thinks about nothing else. (Unless it’s ‘non-binary’ sexual identification.)
Entirely predictable then that she considers AUOB Cymru to be dangerously white and almost certainly infiltrated by fascists.
Click to enlarge
Though I was glad to see her retweet the news that Paddington Bear is a liberal. I was beginning to have my doubts about that furry little bastard, what with him being foreign and all.
Click to enlarge
Going back to the title of this section, I suppose all fascists are racists, but are all racists fascists? Discuss. (Because these things really concern me.)
◊
PRO EU BUT ANTI EUROPEAN
Click to enlarge
Something else I noticed about the rally – and this can be applied to the wider independence movement and Plaid Cymru – was the obsession with staying in the EU and thwarting the dastardly plans of Boris Johnson. (Or, if you prefer, Dominic Cummings.)
I wasn’t the only one, a friend who was in Merthyr reminded me of the attacks on Brexit-supporting Plaid Cymru stalwart Emrys Roberts, and sent me a copy of his letter published in Llais y Sais, responding to Wales for Europe. Which, predictably, is just the Welsh branch of People’s Vote.
Despite being pro EU the left is generally anti European, and too many on the left are anti Western. They want to do away with the capitalist system and replace it with societies in which nobody works but we’re all supported by taxing those who are no longer making any money because there’s no economy. It’s clever stuff. Too clever for me.
Though in fairness, such a system might have its plus points. It should help the environment because nobody’ll be making anything – except ‘artisans’ using hand tools – and only the most important comrades will be allowed to travel. Rewilding will occur naturally as veganism is enforced and livestock farmers are summarily executed. Their animals will then be released into ‘the wild’, which will further reduce the stock of humanity; for those of us that don’t succumb to malnutrition will be trampled by roaming herds of feral cattle.
This liberal elite and its foot-soldiers – the far left, the woke and the reverse-racists – is critical or dismissive of European civilisation. It seeks to undermine the social and economic frameworks of Europe; it has always sided with the enemies of the West, from communism to ISIS; it believes in open borders; and of course it rejects Christianity, which has done more than anything to shape Europe and the West.
Whereas I, on the other hand, admire European civilisation and values, on both sides of the North Atlantic, and from Argentina to Australia. I’m proud of the Europe peoples and their achievements. And like Burke, I understand the compact between generations past, present and future.
Which might explain why I am opposed to the European Union. But I will always be European.
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CHAOS
The Merthyr rally took place to the backdrop of a prorogued parliament and a minority government hanging on for dear life. On the other side we are presented with an unseemly coalition rejoicing in two victories: the first, over a no-deal Brexit; the second, from denying Boris Johnson the chance to call a general election before Hallowe’en.
Alternatively – and this is how I see it – those who never accepted the 2016 referendum result are now close to stopping Brexit altogether; while denying us the opportunity of giving our opinion on the matter in a general election they fear they’ll lose.
(Though of course the Scottish National Party will win a handsome majority, and push on for independence, but Scotland is now a different country.)
Make no mistake, what we are seeing in Westminster is a victory for Remainers. Over the past three years they have done everything they could to undo the 2016 result. They may have achieved it now partly thanks to the clumsy chutzpah of Boris Johnson, and partly due to Jeremy Corbyn being forced into a position he would never have adopted had he been free to make his own choice.
Somehow, a liberal elite and its supporters has managed to unite the white working class with Old Etonians, with many in the areas that voted for Brexit prepared to support an English nationalist party led by Nigel Farage in the upcoming general election. And that also applies to Wales. This is a remarkable achievement.
Words would be superfluous, just click to enlarge if you want a better look at these buffoons.
And it explains the reluctance in parts of the Labour Party and sections of the trade union movement to have a general election, for union bosses are far more attuned to the mood of the lower orders in Sunderland, Stoke-on-Trent and Swansea than the denizens of Islington (or Cardiff Bay) will ever be.
Which leaves Labour’s electoral support reduced to a rump white working class, middle class liberals, supplemented by migrants and minorities. Not enough to win an election, certainly not with Corbyn in charge and Labour in Scotland all but a memory.
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DANGER AND OPPORTUNITY
For it can’t be stressed enough that the 2016 vote was decided in the ‘Rust Belt’ areas of southern Wales and northern and central England, and settled largely with the votes of poorer white people. Many of whom saw the referendum as a chance to express their anger towards an arrogant elite, based largely in London, that they believed cared nothing for them and their communities.
I’m repeating this because there are many out there who gave little thought to the European Union or European unity before the 2016 referendum. Since losing that referendum they have managed to turn a bureaucratic construct they never fully understood, and rarely thought about, into the most precious thing in their world.
The far left in Wales has adopted the EU enthusiastically since the referendum because it gives the comrades the chance to portray the opposition as ‘far right’, or even ‘fascist’, and the left is never happier than when confronting the forces of darkness.
And if real fascists are a bit thin on the ground (which of course they are) then anyone they disagree with can be envisioned in jackboots. Plaid Ifanc, Undod, certain elements of YesCymru, Yasmin Begum and other individuals (so many of them members of my fan club) bear this out . . . with mind-numbingly monotonous regularity. There are no half measures with these absolutists – contradict them or highlight their idiocies and you’re a fascist.
That would be bad enough, but mainstream politicians have caught the same virus and now demand that we remain in the EU . . . irrespective of what poor and stupid people think.
Though the SNP is playing a canny game of stirring things up in Westminster while at the same time preparing Scots for a second independence referendum – ‘Will ye no look at that shambles doon in London, Wullie!’ (Did you see how I slipped into the vernacular there?)
Click to enlarge
Plaid Cymru on the other hand has thrown itself single-mindedly into ensuring that Wales remains in the EU and the UK and, eventually, Englandandwales. And there will be a price to pay in the shorter term. For at the imminent general election, that will be dominated by Brexit, the Remain vote in Wales will go to Labour and the Lib Dems, while Plaid will lose Brexit-voting nationalists.
And for what?
The new independence movement is making the same mistake, and by so doing threatens the movement’s cohesion and potency. All because liberals and leftists believe the EU is ‘progressive’, and must therefore be defended.
The UK is falling apart, and civil unrest – if not worse – is on the horizon. We should be preparing to guide Wales towards the safety of independence. But instead, Labour and Plaid Cymru have rushed headlong into an English civil war, aligning themselves with external enemies and Seoinín, from which Wales can only emerge seriously harmed. If we emerge at all.
Premised on the belief that those with whom they have allied themselves give a fuck about Wales. They don’t, and they’ll betray us at the first ‘difficult choice’.
It could all have been so different. We could have exploited this chaos, this English culture war, to Wales’ advantage. But that was impossible when we have politicians and activists who burden the national cause with their pet obsessions and vanity excursions, piling on new and ever more absurd distractions to compete with the old and discredited abstractions.
There is no hope for Wales until we can build up a strong enough body of people determined to focus only on Wales, and to demand what is best for our people and our communities. Wales has no future if it’s left to dilettantes and local allies of the metropolitan elite preciously fighting someone else’s battles.
I happen to believe that decent homes and jobs for our people in a prosperous and independent Wales is more important than obsessing over the EU, or gender, or gender reassignment, or race, or sexual orientation, or . . .
There must be a seat for everybody on the Independence Express; but no group must be so noisy and demanding of attention that they drive other passengers off at the next stop, or bring the train to a halt.
PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR
The clue to my motivation lies in my use of the word ‘Wexit’, for I believed then, and I believe even more strongly today, that Brexit, especially a disastrous and damaging Brexit, can lead to Welsh independence. And Welsh independence is my priority; more important by far than membership of the EU.
In addition to voting for Brexit I confirmed my trip to Tartarus by supporting Trump, and more recently, by voting for the Brexit Party in the recent EU elections. Then there’s my backing for Neil McEvoy, and the regular criticism of Plaid Cymru.
Oh, yes, and of course I attack the Labour Party on a regular, almost daily, basis.
So, all in all, I suppose I’ve made a few enemies.
My rap sheet is enough to reduce certain people to bouts of carpet-chewing rage. These, it should be said, tend to be Plaid Cymru members and supporters; more especially what some call the ‘Leannistas’, the woke left, currently nursing their wounds after so many recent defeats and now lashing out blindly at people like me.
Which is ironic in a way, for I am only following Lenin’s dictum, “The worse, the better”. By which he meant that the population at large will be more receptive to revolutionary change when the system they’re familiar with starts disintegrating.
It may be cruel, it may be cynical, but old Vlad was spot on. For the Bolsheviks would never have come to power if Russia had stayed out of World War One and the Czar had introduced adequate reforms.
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BY THE LEFT
There are no half measures with these people who attack me.
If you don’t support Extinction Rebellion bringing cities to a standstill then you’re a climate change denier. Vote for Brexit and you’re a fascist/racist/white supremacist. Refuse to accept that ‘chicks with dicks’ are 100% women and you’re a transphobe. The list of crimes people like me can commit – without even knowing it! – is endless. And these ‘crimes’ increase by the month.
Though many of my critics are happy to engage in rational debate, and there’s even banter. But then there’s the darker side, those who just want to screech at me.
Here’s a recent example from Twitter of what I’m talking about.
Click to enlarge
I don’t know who Aled Gwyn Williams is (is he the one in the cap?), and I’ve no idea what motivated him to put such ugly slanders on social media for my grandchildren to be teased about.
I shall deal with the first paragraph in a minute.
As for the second paragraph, I am none of the things he lists. Though perhaps he’s trying to say the same thing with “fascist”, “racist”, and “authoritarian & white-supremacist”. (I can almost hear the spluttering as he repeats himself.)
As for being “homophobic”, well, just ask my gay friends.
The final smear is that I am a “defender of violence against women”, but I have no idea what the hell he’s trying to say. Does he think I stand outside windows listening to domestic arguments and shouting, “Go on, pal, punch her!”
Displayed here we see the absolute self-belief of the true fanatic (political or religious); convinced that he/she is right and anyone he/she disagrees with is not only wrong, but evil.
Which makes them no different to those they claim to oppose. For the right, we’re told, is intolerant, that it ‘others’ people, who can then be vilified and humiliated. Precisely what Aled Gwyn Williams tried to do to me in that tweet.
Support for the old axiom that says there’s no real difference between the extremes of left and right. They operate in almost exactly the same way.
But yes, I did vote for Brexit; and yes, I did support Trump; and yes, I did vote for the Brexit Party in last month’s EU elections; and yes, I certainly want Boris Johnson to become prime minister: and yes, I did help form Ein Gwlad – because I want Welsh independence!
An increasing number of people across the political spectrum now agree that Brexit delivered by Boris Johnson with his head up Trump’s arse will threaten the Union.
The exclusive English nationalism preached by Boris Johnson makes many more Scots, Irish, and Welsh question the English connection.
This is a good thing. As this Irish tweet I picked up over the weekend understands. (Though I’m not sure about Wales as a fifth province!)
Click to enlarge
When Johnson is announced as new Tory Party leader and prime minister tomorrow he will face a choice. Either to soldier on with a rebellious minority in his party capable of derailing his plans, or to call a general election in the hope of removing his critics and increasing his majority.
Despite the obvious discord in the Labour Party there’s no guarantee that Johnson could increase his majority, that’s because any election will be fought on the issue of Brexit, which will see certain parties standing aside to give a single anti-Brexit candidate a clear run at the Tory opponent.
His best option then might be an electoral pact with the Brexit Party. The Tories could concentrate on the suburbs and the shires, while Farage’s crew could focus on those ‘left behind’ areas that voted for Brexit in 2016.
Such a pact will confirm the split in the Conservative Party.
For as I’ve said somewhere before, in recent decades ‘Europe’ has been to the Tories what Irish Home Rule was to the 19th century Liberal Party. The Liberals split in 1886 with the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party eventually merging with the Conservative and Unionist Party.
A victory for the pact would give Boris Johnson – and his thirsty deputy, Nigel Farage – the majority needed to turn the UK into an offshore tax haven where everybody whistles The Dam Busters tune before settling down to yet another meal of chlorinated chicken.
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A LITTLE BIRD
While it’s difficult to understand the unprovoked attack from Aled Gwyn Williams, he is not alone. Not so long ago a very similar assault was mounted by someone called Huw Marshall who, again, is a complete stranger to me.
Ifan Morgan Jones also came out swinging with a ludicrous charge of Antisemitism over something I’d written that included George Soros. But in my piece I never mentioned that Soros was Jewish. To which I might add that, as a good conservative, I support the state of Israel because it’s an ally of the West.
But why would complete strangers want to attack me, and do so by telling lies? I mean, if you don’t like me, or you don’t agree with me, then don’t read this blog, don’t follow me on Twitter, etc. Am I that influential?
Which makes me wonder whether we are really dealing with a few individuals who’ve taken an intense dislike to me/my views or if there’s more to it.
Let’s think about it for a minute. I criticise Plaid Cymru. I helped form Ein Gwlad. I continually attack the Labour Party. I am an outspoken supporter Neil McEvoy. I regularly refer to Cardiff Bay as ‘Corruption Bay’ (or “a cess-pit”). For years I have exposed the corruption, cronyism and waste of public funding in the third sector . . .
Thinks . . . who might share my interest in those things, but from a perspective opposite to mine, and might be able to influence, directly or indirectly, people who don’t know me?
One obvious suspect is Deryn Consulting, the lobbying firm that acts as a link between Labour, Plaid Cymru, the third sector, and others that together make our country a corrupt and impoverished laughing-stock and a magnet for crooks and chancers.
At this point I should add that I’ve also attacked Deryn more than once.
To understand how Deryn operates – they are lobbyists and ‘influencers’ after all – just think of Welsh public life focused on Cardiff Bay as a web, with Deryn as a fat, hairy-legged spider at the centre.
Click to enlarge
Deryn was instrumental in the sacking of Carl Sargeant and must bear considerable responsibility for his suicide. Deryn also co-ordinates the unremitting campaign against Neil McEvoy.
If you doubt how influential Deryn is in Welsh political life then read this piece by the lawyer representing the Sargeant family at the resumed inquest the week before last into Carl Sargeant’s death. There are passages there that almost jump off the screen.
Particularly the section below.
Extract from Dr Neil Hudgell’s account of the Sargeant inquest. Some might argue that Deryn set itself up as accuser, judge and jury. Click to enlarge.
Why would Carwyn Jones make TWO phone calls to Deryn almost immediately after hearing of Carl Sargeant’s death? Was it, ‘Oh, dear, ladies . . . tell me what to do now.’
Maybe I should explain that the Cathy Owens mentioned by Dr Hudgell is the leading director of Deryn, while the other woman also figured in Guido Fawkes’ coverage of December 2018, where we read: “Jo Kiernan: Deryn employee and named at last week’s Inquest as co-ordinating a bullying campaign against Sargeant when she worked as Carwyn Jones’ chief SpAd.”
I’m not saying that Aled Gwyn Williams, Huw Marshall, Ifan Morgan Jones, and the rest of my critics are taking orders from the nest (or maybe it’s the bunker nowadays) but they seem to share the Deryn mindset that will not tolerate critics or divergent views.
And never forget that Deryn is a creation of devolution, prospering thanks to weak and malleable politicians in a devolved system still controlled from London. Deryn would not survive independence.
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‘HIS NAME IS ROYSTON JONES AND HE’S NOT ON OUR SIDE’
Is what Aled Gwyn Williams wrote in the first paragraph of his tweet.
His tweet is addressed to “Welsh Self-determinationists”, which I assume to mean those who want Wales to be independent. But I have been a nationalist all my life, check with anyone who’s been around since the 1960s.
It follows, then, that when he says I’m not on ‘their’ side, he must mean some grouping other than those wanting independence. As Williams is a hard-line socialist he can only be alluding to the comrades.
I am a lifelong opponent of socialism.
So my real ‘crime’, in Williams’ eyes, is being hostile to socialism.
Williams seems to be active in YesCymru and supports All Under One Banner Cymru. Two groups some fear have become too close to Plaid Cymru.
The small increase in membership in the wake of Adam ‘Soundbite’ Price’s victory may already have been offset by resignations over the party’s treatment of Neil McEvoy, which will of course only strengthen the influence of the ‘Leannistas’.
I’m not the only one who sees this drift to the left. Here’s a tweet put out a week or so ago by writer Siôn Jobbins, asking if he’ll be welcome at Plaid’s Summer School, seeing as he’s not a socialist.
Click to enlarge
Though it could be that not all the leftists trying to capitalise on the increase in support for independence belong to Plaid Cymru, there may be even more exotic elements trying to muscle in.
Below we see a picture from a recent AUOB Cymru tweet showing some kind of street furniture or utility box in Cardiff presenting an interesting display. In the centre we see nationalist hero, John Jenkins, leader of Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru, who was sent down for 10 years in 1970 for his role in a 1960s bombing campaign.
John, now 85, has lived in Wrecsam for many years.
We also see a couple of YesCymru stickers, a football fans for independence sticker and Wrexham fans against the Sun (newspaper). But it’s the other three that intrigue me.
Click to enlarge
On the top left we see the Starry Plough of the Irish Citizen Army, led by James Connolly in the Easter Rising of 1916. This was a socialist organisation that fought alongside the larger, and nationalist, Irish Volunteers led by Padraig Pearse.
The one at the bottom right carries letters printed backwards to look Russian, a communist red star, and the slogan ‘Free Wales’.
Finally, the black one on the left reads ‘Wxm (Wrexham) Antifa No Pasaran!’ Antifa are left wing thugs who first took to the streets of the USA following Donald Trump’s victory, ostensibly ‘fighting fascism and racism’.
Now they resort to bombing and attacking anyone who doesn’t agree with them. A recent victim was journalist Andy Ngo, who wrote: “Antifa operates by a very broad definition of ‘fascists.’ By antifa’s telling, fascists include mainstream conservatives and even centrist journalists who dare criticize them.”
I know exactly how he feels.
You have to wonder what’s going on when the self-appointed promoters of inclusivity beat up the gay son of Vietnamese boat people. I hope to God we don’t have any nutters in Wales preparing to emulate Antifa.
And I’m disappointed to see AUOB Cymru apparently endorse Antifa.
So on a Cardiff street we see a collection of stickers linking independence with socialism, with some pretty hairy and intolerant expressions of socialism at that.
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THE CRUCIAL EIGHTEEN MONTHS
Partly due to events beyond our control Wales will soon be closer to independence than at any time in the past five hundred years. But the mood is also being influenced by what is happening here in Wales.
Our homeland is deprived and exploited because devolution has been a miserable failure. For what has devolution given us – Deryn! This realisation has resulted in the Labour Party losing credibility by the day; but I fear Plaid Cymru will be reluctant to take advantage of the opportunity presented by Johnson in No 10 and Drakeford in the Bay.
Instead, Plaid Cymru will chase rainbows and form Englandandwales anti-Tory or anti-Brexit alliances. This loss of focus is due to the party’s leftward drift coupled with the ephemeral appeal of being ‘taken seriously’ by appearing on TV with Caroline Lucas.
And when Johnson makes his move, Plaid Cymru will rush to support the Labour Party in defending ‘the devolution settlement’.
I say, fuck the devolution settlement. It wasn’t worth having in 1999 and it’s been seriously devalued over the past two decades. All our efforts now must concentrate on independence. And to achieve that goal we must reach out to as many as possible of our people.
This cannot be done by demanding a socialist feminist republic (as was heard at AUOB’s first rally on May 11). And if balaclava’d Antifa thugs start beating up people they disagree with, then any hope of independence will be lost. Wales may have a radical past but most of us today are socially conservative.
It should go without saying, therefore, that Wales needs a broad-based movement for independence that must either be ideology-free or else it must accept all ideological standpoints.
And so I’m asking All Under One Banner Cymru if there’ll be a welcome in Caernarfon on Saturday for people who don’t support Plaid Cymru, and people who are not socialist; for those who would have fought alongside Pearse rather than Connolly, who don’t obsess over a second referendum and who regard Antifa thugs no differently to the thugs who follow Tommy Robinson.
I ask because there are clearly some who feel that the drive for independence should be controlled by the left; and maybe they’ll only accept independence on their terms. Either way, it’s insulting and offensive to those holding different views who have worked for independence for over 50 years.
This is a theme I’ve dealt with before, the links between corporate funders, politicians, and environmental groups; but this time it comes from a slightly different angle.
