The old adage says: ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. Referring to family connections, the old school tie, Freemasonry or some other means of getting preferential treatment, especially when it comes to landing a contract, getting a job, or gaining promotion.
It’s just as true today, but the mechanism for preferential treatment has changed. Certainly in Wales. For what’s been added is believing in, or at least going along with, Woke thinking and Globalist dogma.
The sad, twisted mindset that pervades Welsh public life, and would see some people campaigning on behalf of cancer cells if Elon Musk discovered a cure for cancer.
For we are dealing here with zealots. Some of them truly fanatical.
In this piece I’m going to look at a specific funding pot run by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ in order to explain what I mean.
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YNNI CYMRU GRANTS
Ynni Cymru (Welsh Energy) was set up by the previous Labour administration. It gives out grants of up to £999,999 for Smart Local Energy Systems (SLES) through Local Partnerships.
Bureaucracy, eh! Layer upon layer; where would we be without it?
It’s pretty obvious that Ynni Cymru was set up by the Corruption Bay establishment to counter criticism that all the money from ‘renewables’ leaves Wales with no benefits whatsoever for us.
Too little, too late. And anything run by Labour or Plaid Cymru is doomed to fail.
There doesn’t seem to be a website for Ynni Cymru. Which might make it difficult for those out of the loop to know about the money on offer.
Ynni Cymru should not be confused with Ynni Cymunedol Cymru, where former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood is secretary (cos she got lots of pencils).
There’s not a great deal of money involved with Ynni Cymru grants, £8.27m in total for 2026/27. But it’s the recipients I want to look at. Asking who they are, why they got their funding, and wondering whether it was justified.
Here’s a list of the grant recipients (scroll up for 26/27), with the amounts received. Let’s look at some of the big awards.
The first thing to say is that this lot used to be known as Gower Power Energy Co-operative Ltd. One of a nest of companies set up by eco-grifters who’ve settled on the western outskirts of Swansea. Gower Power always filed as dormant.
Obviously, it’s easier to take over an existing entity than to start a new one; but here it might suggest a connection, even a continuation under a different name.
Whatever, the directors of the new or renamed company are Peter Roger Davies, Jane Nerys O’Brien, Felix Merry, Brian Mark, and Ena Lloyd.
Brian Mark “lives off-grid in Llandudoch“, and is involved with Grannell Community Energy Ltd, as is Jane O’Brien. Grannell has a wind turbine near Lampeter.
So who’s running this show? Well, the names given on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) filings are: Neil Statham, Lisa Stead, Tim Ware, and Duncan Burwood.
The only Neil Statham I can find was a director with the Association for Environment Conscious Building in Huddersfield. The year of birth tallies, so I guess it’s him. He might have lived in Wales for a couple of years.
Lisa Stead seems to run a holiday business, and busies herself with the local Scouts.
As for Duncan Burwood; he is Dr Duncan Frederick Strathdee Burwood, who was until earlier this month a director and trustee of Llanidloes Energy Solutions Ltd. Which after 20 years in existence doesn’t seem to have done much. If anything.
I’m not sure I see any genuine locals there, nor do I see much experience in ‘renewables’. Why were they given just shy of a million smackeroos?
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YNNI BRO RHIAN CYFYNGEDIG £881,654
When I saw ‘Rhian’, I guessed we were going to Llanrhian, in north Pembrokeshire, where Meibion Glyndŵr made their debut in December 1979. This is another new company or, to be exact, a Community Benefit Society. With three directors: Huw Morris, Robert Laddle, and Neil Prior.
In the FCA entry we read:
The Society is a community renewable energy company, with aspirations to become a generator of green energy and leading on other renewable energy projects.
Ah! aspirations.
Huw Morris is Welsh, but I don’t think he’s local. I say that because his Linkedin page tells us he was educated at Aberdare Boy’s Grammar School. And I think he lives in Swansea, where he runs his ‘Higher Education Consultancy’.
Robert Laddle has been involved with many other companies, quite a few with Welsh names. (Though I think ‘Penberth’ is in Cornwall.) And I’m certain he lives in England. Maybe he has a holiday home in north Pembs?
Now we come to the star of the Llanrhian show in Neil Prior who, as chair of the community council, and a county councillor to boot, must surely be local. A busy boy, our Neil, and obviously well connected.
Your mush has to fit to be appointed to a health board, while Codi is the biggest housing association in Wales following the merger of Linc Cymru with Pobl. Telling me that Neil Prior is another who’d know his way around the Bay.
Which means that in Ynni Bro Rhian we have another new entity with no track record, just “aspirations” – and £883k to play with!
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RHONDDA CYNON TAF COUNTY BOROUGH COUNCIL £695,888
RCT council is of course controlled by Labour, and these grants were presumably awarded before the May elections, when Labour lost power in the Bay. It seems five projects across RCT and Merthyr received £1.37m.
Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council, Rhondda Cynon Taf – local authority project at Ysgol Nantgwyn supporting education and community energy. £695,588.
Business in Focus Limited, Dowlais – social enterprise supporting local businesses and entrepreneurs. £81,344.
I can’t find details for the first project beyond the vague: “project at Ysgol Nantgwyn supporting education and community energy“.
The last-named is yet another ‘social enterprise’. And looking none too healthy according to the accounts. With the Confirmation Statement overdue with Companies House.
Wales is weighed down with ‘social enterprises’. But social enterprises running on bank loans or public funding, and ‘advising’ other social enterprises and third sector outfits, are no substitute for a real economy; just a system kept afloat by the block grant from Westminster.
Independence with this as the model would reduce us to cannibalism in about five years, maybe less. On the plus side, if it ever came to that, then there are specimens in the Senedd that could feed the average village for a week.
Is the Ynni Cymru grant to Business in Focus really about green energy, and reducing bills, or a disguised hand-out to keep them afloat?
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AFANTI MEDIA LTD £668,558
This is owned by power duo Emyr and Mair Afan Davies, and they have a number of other companies. Here are those listed with Companies House for Emyr. And those for Mair. There is of course a big overlap. And many are no longer with us.
Avanti Media itself, the recipient of the Ynni Cymru funding, shares the other charge with a third company, Avanti Media Group.
The ‘Welsh Government Media Service’ tells us us what the Afanti grant is for:
Afanti Media is set to receive £668,558 to help bring cleaner power centre stage at festivals, cultural events and broadcasts across Wales. The company has already used its battery technology at events including the Eisteddfod yr Urdd, Cân i Gymru and S4C’s Super Rygbi Cymru coverage.
The investment will help expand the use of battery-powered systems at events across Wales, reducing reliance on traditional diesel-powered generators while creating quieter event spaces and reducing emissions.
So it’s to phase out diesel-powered generators. Very worthy, perhaps. But shouldn’t a private company be funding this itself? And where are the community benefits?
When I saw the name ‘Afanti’ I was reminded of Avanti!, the newspaper old Benito edited between 1912 and 1914. Though it was during his socialist period, so I wasn’t a subscriber.
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SMALLER FRY
Just to be fair, and so they wouldn’t feel ignored, I also had a peek at a few of those who got smaller grants. Here’s one that caught my eye.
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G39 £113,400
That’s this lot. As you can see, they only got £113,400, but in these uncertain times, with Russian paratroopers ready to drop on us, blackouts forecast, and climate change about to engulf us, every penny counts.
The money is for solar panels – on a building g39 doesn’t own, and looks somewhat temporary! (Image here.)
So who or what is g39? It’s something to do with the Arts, I think. Here’s how it describes itself. Note the Palestinian flag, and the admission that the bulk of the funding comes from the Arts Council of Wales (ACW). Even though most of those involved have only a tenuous connection to Wales.
To judge by its Strategic Equality Action Plan, and the emphasis on “dismantling systemic inequality“, it’s another far-left gang that believes white people are evil.
The latest accounts (click here) confirm the ACW funding on page 7, and on page 5 you’ll read, in ‘Future plans’: ‘The Communist Party South Wales Archive Project’. Hang on – are we paying for this?
Looking at the Charity Commission entry for g39, and the financial history, we see that income has dropped steadily over the previous three years, and it’s been outstripped by expenditure in the past two years.
Making me wonder if the Ynni Cymru grant for ‘solar panels’ is a ruse to keep g39 afloat, because the figures you’ve just read head in only one direction.
Those involved with g39 can hold any views they like, but no organisation so partisan and exclusive – bordering perhaps on extremist – should receive any form of public funding.
The problem is that those giving the funding belong to the same far-left bubble, divorced from mainstream thinking, as the recipients. And that applies across the board, not just to g39.
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CONCLUSION
There are worthy causes getting grants from Ynni Cymru, but those I’ve highlighted seem questionable, often because I struggle to see the community benefits. And if we’re talking about cheaper energy, then the best way to deliver that is to dump net zero.
But that would mean having to admit the ‘climate crisis’ is one big scam, created to make the rich richer and the rest of us poorer. But too many have been fooled.
And then there’s the issue of the money going to the well connected. No surprise in Wales, for Labour spent a century building the crony state, in which funding, jobs and sinecures, go to those who support or submit to Labour.
Plaid Cymru running the Senedd will be no improvement because in the era of the Globalist Uniparty only those standing outside that system can make a difference.
Ynni Cymru is a just another way of servicing that crony state while indulging in what can only be described as virtue funding: ‘Look at us . . . worthy causes . . . saving the planet . . . blahdeblah’.
In my previous post I wrote: “. . . one thing Labour was good at over 27 years of devolution was cronyism. That is, using public money to create pointless jobs for party loyalists, and to fund their organisations. To the point where there are now hundreds of these organisations and thousands of jobs“.
Done to extend Labour influence or control into almost every corner of Welsh life.
But not in my wildest, Malbec-fuelled dreams, did I think Labour would prove me right so quickly. (I need a drink!)
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DEVOLVING POWER TO KEEP POWER
Yet over the weekend, at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, we heard calls from the party in Wales and Scotland to devolve power to local authorities and communities. Now, if I wanted to be generous, I could say that this chimes with what we’ve heard from the unelected Globalist puppet in No 10.
But I don’t feel like being generous. And neither will you after reading this.
Going back to the 1990s, one of the great selling points of devolution – certainly for sceptics within Labour – was that Scotland and Wales would always vote Labour, and so devolved parliaments in Edinburgh and Cardiff could be useful for making life difficult for Conservative governments in Westminster.
And of course, they’d stymie the SNP and Plaid Cymru. (Though the latter was not thought to be a real threat.) Older readers may even remember George Robertson.
In 1995 George Robertson – then the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland – argued that the creation of a Scottish Parliament would quench the Scottish thirst for the decentralisation of power. Devolution, according to Robertson, would kill the idea of an independent Scotland “stone dead”
The SNP may be less popular following the Sturgeon (and hubby) years, but it’s hardly stane deid, eh, George.
We must also remember that the Tories were in power from 1979 until 1997, which encouraged the thinking I just outlined. And so devolution became Labour policy before Blair was installed as PM in 1997.
Even so, there were those who went along reluctantly with this constitutional change, maybe even Blair himself. And many within Labour – certainly in Wales – who were vehemently opposed.
Perhaps what these diehards realised, or what Labour strategists failed to factor into their calculations, was that many who voted Labour in Scotland and Wales did so in the hope of avoiding a Conservative government in London, rather than from any great love for Labour.
And while devolution offered a kind of ‘filter’ to direct London rule it also meant no threat of Tory administrations in Edinburgh or Cardiff, which allowed voters to relax, even ‘shop around’.
Here we are in the autumn of 2026: Labour hasn’t been in power at Holyrood since 2007, and has just lost control of the Senedd. To compound Labour’s problems, we have an unpopular Labour government in London, polling consistently under 30%, led by a phoney whose gloss is wearing off fast.
You can therefore understand why Labour now wants to devolve power away from Edinburgh and Cardiff. But to where? And to whom?
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT
The situations of Scotland and Wales are different, but as this blog is about Wales we’ll consider who power might be devolved to here.
The obvious place to start is the level of government below the Senedd, which is our local authorities. All twenty-two of them, and all 1,234 councillors – in a country of just over three million people!
Maybe it’s also worth mentioning the 730 community and town councils, which are served by over 8,000 community and town councillors.
The three major cities, Cardiff (pop 382,000), Swansea (249,000) and Newport (169,000), all have Labour-majority councils. The third largest local authority, by population, is Rhondda Cynon Taf (241,000), which is also run by Labour.
Four other councils in the south are Labour controlled; with a combined population of 485,000. Adding them together gives us some 50% of the country’s population.
In Monmouthshire, Labour’s the largest party, but with no overall control. There are Labour minority administrations in Flintshire and the Vale of Glamorgan. In Merthyr, Labour and Independents are tied. No overall control in Neath Port Talbot, Conwy, Denbighshire. With Plaid running things in Gwynedd, Ceredigion, Ynys Môn, and Carmarthenshire.
Elsewhere, Pembrokeshire is fought over by competing gangs of Independents. The Lib Dems are the largest party in Powys. While in Wrexham it’s a coalition between Independents and Conservatives.
It’s easy to see how devolving power away from Corruption Bay to local authorities could benefit Labour. For with Plaid Cymru ruling it’ll be they who’ll get blamed by sub-Senedd level Labour for everything that’s wrong in Wales.
But it doesn’t begin, and certainly doesn’t end, with local authorities.
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CRONYISM RULES!
Now I’ll turn to the cronyism referred to at the start. This is power and influence that’s less obvious than local authorities because there are no elections, and party labels are not obvious.
As I said, Labour spent 27 years of devolution building networks that would support the party. Or else corrupting organisations, often through funding, and bending them to do Labour’s bidding. For example, if you want to understand the chaos at the Welsh Rugby Union, it can be traced back to the WRU saying that biological males would not be allowed to play against women.
Let’s also remember the housing associations, many of which are controlled by Labour loyalists. One example would be Wales & West, our biggest provider of social housing.
But it’s no longer just housing associations, and social housing, for many of them now have subsidiaries, which seem to focus on building open-market private housing. Even leasehold properties. Wales & West has Cambria Maintenance Services Limited, Enfys Developments Limited, and Enfys Homes Limited.
Google AI says of the last named:
Enfys Homes Limited: Focuses on mixed-tenure developments to deliver extra affordable housing without requiring grant subsidies.
The bit about grant subsidies may be right. But funding goes to the parent body from the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ and is then diverted to the subsidiary.
There are thirty housing associations registered with Community Housing Cymru. Most, if not all, have subsidiaries. And those subsidiaries, which we hear less about, rely on funding from their parent body. Something we are never told.
As we see with the latest accounts for Enfys Developments Limited.
What a strange set-up this is. I’m waiting for the response to a FoI request I submitted, and I might do a piece on these providers of social housing.
Next, we must consider our health boards. Labour spent many years emplacing trusted people. Whether these were capable of running a health board may never have entered the comrades’ collective thinking.
Then there are the countless third sector outfits and charities. And the duplication involved. Which means funding dozens of organisations to do basically the same job.
One example is homelessness. In a reply to a FoI request I was told that Wales had 48 organisations ‘tackling homelessness’ – in a country of just over three million people and less than 200 miles from one corner to the opposite corner.
In addition to the homelessness racket there’s the race racket, which is catching up fast in these days of enforced diversity. Though you have to wonder if there might not be a symbiotic relationship between the two.
One established outfit in the race racket is BAWSO. Here’s how it bills itself:
Bawso provides practical and emotional prevention, protection and support services to Black Minority Ethnic (BME) and migrant victims of Domestic Abuse, Sexual Violence, Female Genital Mutilation, Forced Marriage, Honour Based Violence, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.
BAWSO gets over £3.5m a year from the ‘WG’ alone in grants and contracts. For many, many years it was the fiefdom of Mutale Rose Merrill. Under her leadership BAWSO built up quite a property portfolio. (It’s alleged her personal portfolio is also quite impressive.)
Even hubby got in on the third sector racket. For Labour put Travers Merrill in charge of the doomed Rhondda Life. But why worry – it’s only public money!
The thing to remember about third sector bodies, charities, and others in the various rackets is that they must never solve the problem they were set up to tackle. Because to do that would mean an end to funding and the loss of many cushy jobs.
So it serves their purpose to invent or exaggerate problems. ‘Homelessness is rising’, or ‘racism is rampant and increasing’, means more funding and more jobs. Almost an economy in itself. And all funded from the public purse.
I swear to God someone could launch a third sector body that claimed to offer counselling to the non-binary yak herders of Ceredigion – and there’d be funding available with few questions asked! (For let’s not forget the gender racket.)
And then of course we have the Future Generations legislation. For all the bodies we’ve looked at must dutifully obey the commandments inscribed into the tablets received from the Future Generations Commissioner.
The first to fill that post was Labour stalwart Sophie Howe, daughter of a Cardiff councillor. She has since moved on to launch her own business, and she’s also joined a host of ishoo-mongers including Coleg Soros.
She was replaced by another Labour apparatchik in Derek Walker. Who’d led another What-the-fuck-is-that-about group in Cwmpas. Which seems to be people with no experience in business giving advice to businesses.
But when you look at who they ‘help’, these are not genuine businesses as you or I might understand that term. In the main, they’re just more third sector gangs.
Though in recent years it’s ceased to be exclusively Labour. Here’s an image from the Our Services section of the Cwmpas website.
I know what you’re thinking – who da honky? You don’t recognise him! It’s one of our new Plaid Cymru Senedd Members, Mark Hooper. The Deputy Minister for Transport who believes in “actively discouraging car use“.
And if you think that’s worrying, Hooper’s boss, Dr Dafydd Trystan Davies, promised to ditch his car when he was elected. If he’s just dumped it somewhere then I expect to see him arrested and charged with being a sanctimonious and insufferable little git.
Yes, indeed, as George Carlin so memorably put it: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it” – unless you belong to a Globalist-left party.
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CONCLUSION
As I just suggested, on most issues you can’t get a fag paper between Labour and Plaid Cymru. Whether it’s climate, open borders, re-joining the EU, DEI, ‘trans rights’, or any of the other issues designed to weaken the West and increase the power and wealth of supranational elites.
But voters realising there’s little difference between the two is no good for either party, so minor differences must be exaggerated and new ones invented. And there are of course areas – like independence – where Labour and Plaid do disagree.
So devolving power out of Cardiff might just be something dreamed up to remind punters that Labour in Wales is different to Plaid – and here’s a policy to prove it.
But if Ken Skates, Kinnock, Burnham and others, are serious about devolving power within Wales then a good place to start would be moving the Senedd out of Cardiff. For all devolution has really achieved is allowing Cardiff to enjoy some of the capital benefits London has always enjoyed.
More money could be found by reducing the number of housing associations. Having thirty, plus subsidiaries, is insane. Or why not do away with them altogether and hand the responsibility for social housing back to eight local authorities?
Finally, there’s the morass of the third sector. Hundreds of publicly-funded bodies, most doing work of no discernible public benefit, with dozens of almost indistinguishable gangs fighting turf wars in each and every sector.
But for Labour to agree to anything I’ve suggested would mean weakening the party’s crony network. And that would defeat the object of calling for ‘greater devolution’.
There’s a big test here for Plaid Cymru. They could devolve out of Cardiff, and fund it as I’ve outlined. But if Plaid was to suggest that then Labour would oppose it.
Reminding us yet again that Labour will always act in its own selfish interests.
This is a big post, in two ways. First, because there’s a lot of money involved. And second, because an incredible claim I stumbled upon throws up a very disturbing possibility.
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HITTING THE BIG TIME (REVISITED)
In July I wrote about companies in south east Wales being bought out and having lots of money pumped into them. You’ll find it here; ‘Saving The Planet – The Globalist Way!’.
These companies are involved in, “energy efficiency“; which means ‘retrofitting’ homes with solar panels, cavity wall insulation, heat pumps, loft insulation, that kind of thing.
They’re all linked under the holding company Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd. From the most recent accounts submitted to Companies House here’s a list of the companies owned.
Another key player is, or was, Matt Anstead, managing director of Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP. Below is a clip from Anstead’s Linkedin page.
You’ll see Anstead joined Cairngorm around the time they took over the Welsh companies. Was he brought in for that job? And was the takeover funded with three loans in 2024 from Metro Bank?
Funding to the companies themselves comes from Alter Domus, a company registered in Luxembourg, that seeks ‘alternative investments’, and was recently taken over itself by another private equity firm Cinven.
What’s really behind it is, as ever, money. Local companies expand thanks to the UK government ECO4 scheme, making them attractive to bigger fish; while also offering opportunities for others to profit from investing in these companies and then claiming to be saving the planet in some way.
There are obviously pay-offs for those who’ve been previously involved in the companies, and of course jobs are created; but as ever – this being socialist Wales – the real money leaves the country.
I make that point because, as you should know by now, I support the capitalist model, and I have no objections to profits being made. But as a Welshman, and a nationalist, it pisses me off to see the profits leave Wales.
Wasn’t devolution supposed to improve things?
Before pushing on maybe I should remind you that July’s post was in two parts. One dealt with the companies taken over by Cairngorm Capital; the other with companies in the same area, and the same line of business, that were taken over by Buckthorn Partners LLP of Jersey.
Maybe I’ll return to this second lot another day.
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NICK PRITCHARD
Now we’re going to look at another man with a role in (he certainly benefitted from) the takeovers we just looked at. Though it’s not always easy to figure it out.
If the name rings a bell, it might be because Pritchard appeared in a Nation.Cymru article a few weeks back written by Martin ‘Shippo’ Shipton. It recounted Pritchard’s conviction in 2010 for growing cannabis, or providing premises where it might be grown.
So why bring it up now? Because Pritchard is associated with Reform UK, and may wish to stand for the UK parliament. This interest in his past is another sign of the desperate establishment that recently sent down Nathan Gill for something he said in 2018, and is now hunting for people Nigel Farage might have thrown milk over in kindergarten.
All done because the Globalist elite, and the political and media establishments they control, are getting worried by the rise of the ‘far right’ across the Western world. And so, as a mouthpiece for the Corruption Bay Uniparty, Nation.Cymru must get stuck in . . . or risk losing its ‘Welsh Government’ funding.
That said, Nick Pritchard is an interesting character; he seems to be a bit of a Jack the Lad, always looking for ways to make money. Nothing wrong with that as long as you stay on the sunny side.
But things never seem to be simple with Pritchard. Take this piece from Ideas Fest promoting his appearance at some event next year (my highlighting):
In 2013, Nick founded City Energy Network, an innovative energy efficiency consultancy based in Cardiff. The company specialises in the full retrofit journey from initial consultation to the implementation of the renewable measures recommended, his group of companies plan, and installs energy efficiency and low carbon measures for both homes and businesses and also specialises in Local Authority large scale projects.
But it makes no sense.
For a start, City Energy Network Ltd (CEN) was formed in 2011, but Pritchard’s name never appeared as a director or a shareholder. Perhaps because, Pritchard, sent down in 2010 for three-and-a-half years, would have been in prison when CEN was formed.
And what’s included in “the group of companies“?
Seeing as 2013 is mentioned by Ideas Fest, Pritchard may have been represented by one or both of Nicola Vaughan and Michelle Roberts, who became CEN directors 31.01.2014.
But even after he was released from prison I’m fairly sure Pritchard would have been disqualified from acting as a director for a few years. If he was operating through Roberts and / or Vaughan at CEN then “proxy management” is a criminal offence.
A declaration dated 28.01.2015 shows the 100 DNH shares now distributed thus:
Though Pritchard did join Diversity Network Ltd 14.05.2012, which might have been not long after he was out of prison. And surely disqualified? Also directors were Michelle Roberts and Shelley Roberts.
When he was sent to prison Pritchard was reported to be in the “lettings business” in Bangor and other parts of north west Wales. He’s from Bangor, passionate about the local football club, he serves on the city council, so how and why did he get involved with companies in a totally different line of business at the opposite end of the country?
You’ll see other individuals there with sizeable shareholdings. All have been involved with the companies we’re looking at. And Ahmud Saleem Eamon Furreed is a Labour party donor. (There may be other donors.)
Obviously, companies doing the kind of work we’re looking at need a stamp of approval, some accreditation. From a company like Quidos of Bath. And as you can see if you scroll down on that link, you have to pay for it.
It could make life easier when you’ve got big stakes in companies ‘retrofitting’ and you also own a company that’ll give them a certificate to put up on the office wall saying they know what they’re doing.
Though many would disagree. Such as those involved with this website. Or those who gave these reviews to a company that’s among the clutch bought up by Cairngorm.
And we’ve all heard tales of cavity wall insulation resulting in damp and other horrors. I could tell you my own story.
You might have noticed that in some of his most recent business ventures Pritchard has been joined by celeb economist Dylan Jones-Evans.
What the hell is that about?
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WHERE IT GETS WEIRD
While researching this article I stumbled upon a remarkable letter addressed to Paul Davies AS/SM, in his capacity as chair of the Senedd Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee.
It gets included in this piece because I’m convinced there’s a connection to what you’ve just read. Anyway, here’s the (redacted) letter. I urge you to read it carefully and consider what it alleges.
After reading it I last Monday I e-mailed Paul Davies asking what had happened to the complaint. Here’s his response. (The links don’t work as there’s an issue with linking to pdf docs created from e-mails.)
I asked if I could use his response and he agreed.
I would have tried to contact the complainant, but one problem was that I believe he’s moved from his original address. The other reason will be given later.
What the letter alleges is that the complainant (hereinafter referred to as ‘A’) came up with a good idea, and was doing quite well . . .
The company grew quickly and gained significant market traction with companies such as Sainsburys Supermarkets and BT Openreach.
But presumably needing to expand, ‘A’ in 2017 applied to Finance Wales (now Development Bank of Wales) for a loan. That’s when things started going wrong.
Not only does ‘A’ claim he had to take on “a bank-appointed expert”, and pay that ‘expert’ £150,000 pa, but . . .
Less than 1 year later, I was accused of taking “unauthorised funds” from the company’s bank account and sacked.
This happened to be just 1 month after my refusal to sell the business to BT Group.
I lost my job, my shares (approx £3.8m at that time), my patent (£13m-£17m valuation) and was forced to go bankrupt in September 2018.
Is the complainant suggesting a link between him refusing to sell up to the BT Group and the criminal charges that soon followed?
Things got even worse. ‘A’ was arrested, tried at Swansea Crown Court – but was acquitted by the jury. (Which might explain why the Labour government in Westminster wants trials without juries.)
To add insult to injury . . .
To note, after my dismissal the business was moved from Lampeter . . . where we employed up to 17 local people to Cardiff. Where they employed only 3.
After the business moved to Cardiff, both [name redacted] and [name redacted] set up new battery storage business, using my invention, and even got further funding from DBoW for these copy cat companies.
That is one hell of a story. And yet, if you think about it, the danger of such an outcome is always there. Just imagine . . .
Dai Schmuck out in the sticks comes up with a good idea, but he needs money to expand. So he goes to the Development Bank of Wales. They appoint ‘advisors’, who may move in the same circles as the bank officials who give them the gig.
The DBW admits to appointing the same favourites as ‘advisors’ again and again.
In a follow up letter to the Committee’s session with the Bank, the Chief Executive noted that it did re-appoint the same people
multiple times if it thought that person was a good match and had capacity.
Though an unscrupulous ‘advisor’ might say to himself: “Hang on, this bloke’s got a good idea – let’s nick it and make a fortune“. It’s a sweet system, but only if you’re well connected in Corruption Bay.
I could tell you more, but I’d be sticking my scrawny neck out. What I will say is that as I know the name of the company ‘A’ is referring to I can probably identify those he claims ripped him off.
From what I can see, ‘A’s allegations seem to have been kicked into the long grass. Maybe nobody in Corruption Bay wants to know the truth. Or perhaps they don’t want us to know the truth.
But the real twist is that ‘A’ is now teamed up with Nick Pritchard. And this happened soon after he started making waves with his letter to Andrew Davies.
What the hell is that about?
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CONCLUSION
We need an independent investigation into the Development Bank of Wales.
In particular, we need to know how it chooses ‘advisors’ for small companies needing help. We also need to know the conditions imposed on those companies. And the behaviour expected of the ‘advisors’.
But then, it’s unlikely anyone will get straight answers. Because Wales is corrupt.
All devolution has done is give Labour more chances to be corrupt, more money to squander, while also providing more opportunities for cronyism. Third sector outfits, pressure groups (closed to non-socialists), are funded to fight problems that don’t exist.
Sinecures and non-jobs for insiders proliferate.
In recent decades Labour’s joined forces with Plaid Cymru. Together, they’ve built a fortress they see as a bastion from where they combat racists, homophobes, climate deniers, Islamophobes, a white supremacist countryside, misinformation, and colonialist Welsh cakes!
In truth, it’s ‘Corruption Bay’, and its enemies are honesty and openness.
Because what they get up to must be kept secret. This explains why Corruption Bay is unique in the Western world in refusing to have a register of lobbyists. “Why do you need to know?”
But I’m forgetting Cairngorm Capital, Nick Pritchard and the rest . . . here we have a man with a ‘colourful’ past, dubious associates, now teamed up with Professor Dylan Jones-Evans, who’s often critical of the DBW. Pritchard also teamed up with ‘A’ soon after ‘A’s complaint against DBW was heard.
What the hell is that about?
Answers on a postcard please. (I will not accept diagrams or flowcharts.)
This piece is totally unplanned; but I want to get it out because I see so many misinterpreting the result and failing – or refusing to understand – what lies behind it.
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PLAID CYMRU AND LABOUR, LABOUR AND PLAID CYMRU
Let me begin by congratulating Plaid Cymru on a great victory. As I’ve mentioned more than once, I was a member of the party for many years and, back in the 1970s, a candidate for both Swansea council and the old West Glamorgan county council.
But it was a different party back then. Though the victor in Caerffili, Lindsay Whittle, seems in some ways closer to the party I belonged to than the modern party. We shall see.
The Plaid campaign was strange in that it seemed to be more about stopping Reform than offering any policies of its own. And so it was reduced to a two-horse race; portraying Reform as the agents of Putin, Trump, and English nationalism (get your head around that!), with Plaid as the standard bearer for Wales, decency, and ‘progress’.
Which was bollocks. The election was really about voters’ rejection of Labour. Everything else flowed from that.
The people of Caerffili were justifiably pissed off with Labour for two reasons.
First, 26 years of abject failure by the Labour party managing Wales from Corruption Bay. From which Plaid and Reform profited.
But let’s remember that Plaid was in coalition with Labour between 2007 and 2011, and the two are currently in some ill-defined ‘agreement’. Furthermore, and just like Labour, Plaid supports the Globalist-Woke agenda on climate, gender, race, etc., and would go further.
Second, there was Keir Starmer factor: cancelling winter fuel allowance, rocketing electricity bills thanks to ‘clean green energy’, rising taxes, rent boys, immigration, Chinese Communist Party influence, rape gangs, Digital ID. A tower of betrayals and lies that will soon topple and destroy Starmer.
So Plaid profited because they were seen by many as being a change from Labour. An improvement. And marginally preferable to Reform. With a strong local candidate, in Lindsay Whittle.
But in addition to the shared outlook I just listed, and since Plaid abandoned independence the difference between Labour and the Party of Wales is, well . . . anybody got a fag paper? Don’t bother – there’d be nowhere to fit it.
Here’s what they both really want: More political power for the Senedd and more funding from London; then they can make California Democrats look like Confederate flag-waving rednecks buck dancing by their likker stills.
And as someone has pointed out to me, the constituency itself needs to be understood.
His take is that the northern part of the constituency probably went to Reform.
But the southern part, which touches Cardiff’s northern suburbs, is home to many ‘progressives’ who realised Labour is cooked and switched to Plaid.
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ATTITUDES, REACTIONS, RESPONSES
One of the more puzzling outlooks came from those claiming to want independence but attacking Reform, and using choice language, for being “English nationalists“. Which exposed, yet again, that the modern nationalist movement is home to some very strange, and stupid, people.
I love to see the England flag. I want the English people to reclaim England. I want three independent countries on this island respectful of each other. The threat is not England or the English, the threat is a form of Unionism that has little respect for us and is subservient to supranational bodies and the Globalist agenda.
Yet most of those who attack Reform as English nationalists want independence in order to rejoin a bankrupt and increasingly authoritarian EU pushing for war with Russia to distract from its internal collapse. This is insane.
Reform may be Unionist – but looking at the bigger threat, to which independence under those now promoting it would sacrifice us – Reform appears to want the same things I want.
There was a post-election piece by Martin Shipton in Nation.Cymru today. Here’s one of the comments. Who’d have thought the president of Russia could be worked into a small comment on a Welsh by-election.
Though I’m at a loss as to why proximity to Cardiff should matter. Unless it links with my earlier reference to the nature of the Caerffili constituency, and the dread thought of hairy-arsed ‘flag-shaggers’ encroaching on those leafy northern suburbs.
Knowing the political sentiments of some of those commenting to this piece (even the writer), I was struck by how easy it’s been for them – and others I’ve read today – to switch from Labour to Plaid.
For them, it’s clearly the agenda that matters, not which party pushes it.
Yet we might still see Labour go for broke, and try to out-Woke Plaid before next May’s Senedd elections. That’s what Paul Embery might have suggested today in this tweet.
Did a Labour Senedd member really say that on the Home Service?
If so, how will Labour go about it? Just imagine . . . “We have set up a taskforce, with a budget of £20m, to tackle the problem of transphobia in Llanfair Caereinion“.
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LOSERS, WINNERS, CONCLUSION
The party I support, Gwlad made little impression; hardly surprising if you lack rich backers and the media ignores you.
But then, I remember it took Plaid Cymru 40 years before Gwynfor Evans won the Carmarthen by-election in 1966. So maybe it’s time to put Plaid’s victory in perspective.
First, Caerffili was a by-election; strange things can happen at by-elections. I recall the Orpington by-election of 1962. But it didn’t lead to a Liberal revival.
And Plaid has been here before, winning seats in the Valleys. In the first Assembly elections (of 1999) Plaid took Islwyn, and Rhondda, also Llanelli. Plus of course the usual seats further west and north.
More recently, Leanne Wood won, then lost, Rhondda.
I can even remember Plaid briefly taking control of Merthyr council.
So Plaid winning a seat in this area is not unprecedented, but they tend to be flashes in the pan. Will Caerffili prove to be any different?
The big difference now of course is that Labour is in real trouble. Is it terminal? Is Labour’s century of dominance in Wales over, just as the 1920s marked the end of Liberal hegemony?
It’s too early to say, because as I said earlier, Labour paid the price in Caerffili for both its own record in Wales, and the unpopularity of a Labour administration in London. A change of government in London would almost certainly help Labour here, but only so much.
Because I think Labour in Wales was on the skids before Starmer got elected. In the Senedd elections of 2021 Labour got 46% of the vote in Caerphilly. In last year’s UK general election, it was down to 38%.
And we may never see a majority Labour government in London again. Many younger voters, and middle class voters, will desert to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
And where are the Conservatives? Remember them!
Looking ahead to the Senedd elections next May, and unless something dramatic happens between now and then, we’ll see Reform with most seats, but Wales run by a Plaid-Labour coalition.
Which means that the big winner last night in Caerffili was, and the big winner next May will be, the Globalist agenda.
∼
The punters looked from Labour to Plaid, and from Plaid to Labour, and from Labour to Plaid again; but it was already impossible to say which was which.
What a week that was! President Trump’s executive orders exceeded my expectations. Everybody (and perhaps more so those on the left) now realises that what Trump has set in train will not be limited to the USA.
After thoughts on what’s being achieved in the USA I’ll consider how the changes in the USA might impact on Europe.
This is not exactly what I promised earlier on X, but I decided to pull one section. I hope you’ll forgive me and enjoy this truncated version of what I originally planned.
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MR T COMES TO TOWN!
Donald Trump, 47th President of the United States of America, is already implementing his election promises – and sending assorted groups into paroxysms of fury. (And it’s wonderful to watch!)
Though I’m not sure what upsets them more, a politician honouring the promises he made to the electorate or, as a result of doing that, dismantling the Globalist-left-green-woke alliance that’s destroying Western countries.
Maybe I don’t care; perhaps I’m just happy to see these bastards chewing the carpets at Davos, tearing out their green hair, and tearfully hugging the porcupine they were about to ‘re-introduce’ to Pembrokeshire.
But let’s go back a bit. To the last days of Sleepy Joe pretending he was running things. You probably know that son Hunter – who had nothing to do with that laptop! – was given a pardon going back to 2014!
(Though I agree with her on, “Fuck the EU“. Especially The Commission.)
The video below will help you understand Nuland better.
The coup marked the beginning of orchestrated violence against Russians in Ukraine, the emergence of US-controlled biolabs, and the start of the Bidens lining their own pockets from what soon became the most corrupt country in Europe.
Meanwhile, the good news keeps a-coming for Americans!
For President Trump has promised no more wind turbines and solar fields, an end to illegal immigration, a return to fossil fuels, to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, to lower taxation, to reduce utility bills, and so many other changes that ordinary, sensible Americans will welcome.
Measures that are opposed by Globalists, Marxists, ‘environmentalists’, and shrieking Wokies who really need to get their heads fixed.
The “Gulf of America” suggestion didn’t really bother me because it’s a bit of harmless bombast, the kind of thing we expect from him. Though his position towards Canada and Greenland needs to be clarified.
As for the Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine still holds. And if that vital waterway is, as Trump and others allege, effectively controlled by China, with US Navy ships being penalised, then the USA has every right to take back control of the PCZ. And we in Europe should support him.
As I say, Trump is flawed, I accept that. But the good he’s doing now outweighs all his shortcomings. Maybe this ‘warts and all’ appreciation was well explained by Hollywood actor James Woods, almost five years ago.
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Let me conclude this section with some final thoughts on Ukraine.
If Trump stops funding and arming Ukraine, then the war is as good as over. Saving many thousands of European lives.
We might then be able do what we should have done in 1990 – reintegrate Russia into Europe. As was done after WWII with Germany. For Russia has never fought against let alone invaded a Western country.
Of course there’ll be resistance from Poland, the Baltic States, and a few other countries, but the Soviet Union is dead and buried. And if French, Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Czechs and others could get over WWII fairly quickly then the countries of the east will have to get used to living with Russia.
To achieve this ambition we might need to punish those, like Victoria Nuland, who’ve demonised Russia and Russians; for these are the same people who elsewhere have manufactured coup after coup, that have engineered regime changes, and have instigated conflicts around the globe costing millions of lives.
Remember! this is the system President Trump wants to dismantle. Oppose him and you support the Permanent War Party lunatics straight out of Dr Strangelove.
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WHITHER EUROPE?
It appears the USA has been saved, but Europe is still led by compromised weaklings.
By a political elite actively working against the interests of its own people. Especially the working class. That’s because the glorious future envisioned by the Globalists and their green-woke-left foot-soldiers has no place for the white working class.
The New World Order has no need for a vast labour force destroying the planet with their children and their cars. Their farting cows and their racist dogs.
The reference to racist dogs is another reminder of how the lunatics have taken over the asylum. However absurd, the Globalist agenda must be defended and promoted, by the political elite, the Globalist-controlled media, and the agencies that have been captured.
To understand the extent of that ‘capture’ here’s an ongoing story from the USA. One that’s seen little coverage in the media (for reasons that’ll become obvious). I refer now to what happened in the western part of North Carolina after it was hit by Hurricane Helene in late September.
It was even reported that across the devastated region of the south east USA, FEMA was picking and choosing who to help, and it seemed white people, and Trump supporters, were being ignored.
Why did FEMA ignore this area? Well, it’s in the Appalachians; which might mean that big city sophisticates see the people living there as white trash, strumming Dixie on their banjos between gulps of moonshine.
And yet, while US citizens were neglected the Federal authorities found billions of dollars to cater to every need and whim of illegal immigrants.
What we see with FEMA, and even from bodies over here as disparate as the Director of Public Prosecutions and our National Museum, is that the poison of DEI and CRT has corrupted them and turned them against the majority population.
So let me explain DEI. It stands for ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion’. Which in practice means discriminating against ‘over-represented’ groups, and that always means the same thing.
A poison that has spread throughout the body politic and public life of the West.
Clearly, when you overlook the best qualified people, to favour those ticking the right boxes, then standards will fall. Whether it’s a university, a government department, or a police force. And when standards fall, we all suffer, including the groups being favoured. Which exposes what DEI is really about.
For just like Net Zero, uncontrolled immigration, or the attack on free speech, DEI is designed to weaken the West. Another part of the Globalist agenda.
The picture is unmistakably consistent, on both sides of the Atlantic.
We’ve witnessed the Globalist agenda at work, implemented by Cultural Marxists, and their useful idiots – deluded liberals desperate to appear ‘progressive’. Not forgetting of course the permanently offended, who live to invent new isms and phobias.
And the people see it. They see corrupt establishments empowering petty tyrants and commissars to control thinking, and to silence opponents, to dole out public funding, and to favour strangers over them. And they get angry.
Which is why I’m convinced change is coming to Europe. Because as the Trump administration lowers prices by returning to fossil fuels, as it cuts taxes by reducing Federal spending, as it seals its border and deports illegals, as it restores freedom of expression and equal opportunities, there can be no turning back.
So let those responsible for imposing this nightmare accept that it’s over. And do so graciously. A bloody and hopeless rearguard action will serve no one’s interests – except those who have conspired for so long to destroy the West.
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IN THE PIPELINE?
Someone has sent me a dossier on the Rhug Estate. How it’s run. By whom. Plus information on some of the practices and marketing ploys used. The dossier’s contents are intriguing, amusing, and in some parts very concerning.
As I start putting something together I’d welcome information from anybody with experience of the Rhug Estate; as an employee, a supplier, or a customer. Send what you have to editor@jacothenorth.net. (There is no prize.)
Reminding us that ‘environmentalism’ sees new groups spring up almost every day, proliferating like maggots on a corpse. That’s because ‘the environment’ nowadays is a great investment opportunity, just like the ‘climate emergency’. As a result, the toad-savers are now regularly rubbing shoulders with ‘investors’.
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DIFFICULT TO KEEP UP
As I suggest, its Welsh arm is new, and FFCC itself was officially formed in April 2020. Though it certainly existed before that date.
Landsec is, according to Wikipedia, “the largest commercial property development and investment company in the United Kingdom“. Companies House can’t tell us who owns holding company Landsec Securities Group Plc, but the Financial Timesthrows up some familiar names, with two BlackRock companies jointly owning 10%.
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But back to the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission.
The article informs us Davidson was succeeded by another Corruption Bay insider in the form of Chris Nott, senior partner at Capital Law, one of the ‘Welsh Government’s favourite firms.
The sequence seems to be that Jane Davidson became a Fellow of the RSA at the start of 2014. Before the year is out she’s chair of the RSA’s Welsh Advisory Board. In November 2017 the RSA launched the FFCC. Then, Nature Service Wales was set up in the second half of 2023.
Her Linkedin profile also tells us she attended very expensive Atlantic College. Like the daughters of Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon. Whose wife, former Danish PM, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, is coining it from wind turbine going up all over Wales.
Davidson herself was privately educated at Malvern Girls’ College.
It don’t matter from which angle you come at it, you soon realise the proselytisers of the climate scam, and the ‘mass-extinction-around-the-corner’ crew, belong to the middle class going through one of its periodic fits of ‘Isn’t it ghastly!‘
∼
I shall return to the FFCC and the Wales Nature Service at a later date, but for now I’m going to concentrate on the ubiquitous and very influential Jane Davidson.
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JANE DAVIDSON AND FRIENDS
It’s amazing how many entries you can find when searching the internet for ‘Jane Davidson’. An interesting one I turned up is an event she attended last year organised by the School of International Futures (SOIF) which is:
a global non-profit transforming futures for current and next generations
But she wasn’t lonely. For also there was the former Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe; and her successor in that post, another Labour stalwart in the form of Derek Walker.
So we had three Labour insiders on the same jolly.
SOIF is organising another get-together of the hand-wringers this year at Lainston House in Wiltshire. But it don’t come cheap . . .
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I wonder who’ll be there from Wales.
Among the SOIF funders we find the UN, the WHO and – it should go without saying – George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Fitting in a way, seeing as Davidson, Howe, and Walker, are all linked to Coleg Soros in Talgarth.
Where, among the funders, is the A Team Foundation. In its latest accounts this lot explains its donation thus:
Black Mountains college curriculum challenges the basis of our destructive economy.
Yeah, we gotta do away with this “destructive economy” . . . that’s provided us with homes, jobs, cars, cheap energy, regular holidays. Let’s swap it for a future in which the only jobs will be for Davidson, Howe and their friends telling us what we can’t have, and what we can’t do.
And they’ll be funded by those who’ve grown rich from dispossessing 99% of us – but it’ll all be done for our own good!
So look on the bright side . . .
Er, no; there isn’t one.
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WHO IS THE REAL JANE DAVIDSON?
If we refer back to her Linkedin page, we see nothing before 2000. That source begins with her appointment as Minister for Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills, after being elected to the Assembly in May 1999.
Though the important job was Minister of Environment, Sustainability and Housing 2007 – 2011. For the ‘environment’ is her true calling. Maybe her mission.
This BBC profile from September 1999 helps fill in some gaps. So let’s deal with the purely personal first. Not because I enjoy doing it but because Davidson has been so secretive about it. For example, never using her married name. Yet, thanks to the BBC, it’s in the public domain.
And the Beeb tells us she married Guy Roger George Stoate in January 1993. Stoate was a lecturer, and here he is in 2009 protesting at our Notional Assembly – where his wife was the Labour Member for Pontypridd!
I suppose that would be a good reason not to call yourself ‘Mrs Stoate’.
Since they moved west Guy has run a second-hand bookshop in Aberteifi, called Leafed Through. It’s a ‘community’ bookshop. Stoate and his bookshop are regularly in the local rags making donations to other ‘community’ groups.
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(I can’t help thinking the Cambrian News missed a glorious opportunity there. Can’t you see the headline? – ‘Stoate gives monkey to badgers’.)
As luck would have it, Tom Kearney of the Ceredigion Badger Group was also in the Labour party . . . ’til last month, when he resigned over Starmer not being socialist enough. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the Labour party in rural Wales is almost entirely made up of middle class English interferers, more alien than the Tories ever were.
With too many of them running ‘community’ ventures in Welsh communities they know sod all about. Driven by the same belief in their superior organisational abilities that helped build the empire they now repudiate.
But back to Mrs Stoate.
Look again at the BBC profile and let me direct you to the gap from 1996 until the first Assembly elections in May 1999. Was she working her Ponty constituency, even before Labour won the May ’97 general election and confirmed we’d be offered devolution?
If not, then what was she doing? Answers . . . post card . . .
But the bigger question is, when did she become the scheming zealot we see now, involved in everything; the ambassador for Agenda 2030 and the climate scam?
It tells us Jane Davidson bought into the climate scam over three decades ago.
But she had to be in Rio for the ‘conversion’ to happen. So why was she there? Because at the time – according to her BBC profile – she was working as a researcher for the late Rhodri Morgan, then Labour MP for Cardiff West.
Surely Rhodri Morgan didn’t send her? I can’t see that, especially as the House of Commons was sitting from 2 June 1992 to 16 July 1992 inclusive.
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So why was she in Rio? And who paid for the trip? Again, answers . . . post card . . .
She was minister for environment and sustainability in Wales from 2007 to 2011 where she was responsible for the Welsh Government agreeing to make sustainable development its central organising principle
And yet, “sustainable development” has such a positive ring to it. Surely, only a maniac intent on destroying the planet would not want it?
Well, yes; that’s how they want us to see it.
The problems come, first, with the realisation that the ‘danger’ the planet is facing is greatly exaggerated if not entirely imaginary, and the measures demanded to mitigate a manageable or non-existent threat are destroying economies and the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
And for reasons the zealots prefer not to discuss, it’s the West that’s suffering.
The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 was a key starting point for Wales’s efforts to reduce its carbon emissions and transition to a net zero economy
Even though it wasn’t really the “starting point“, this legislation means that everything done in Wales must accord with the diktats of UN Agenda 2030.
Every economy-killing, cost-raising, poverty-increasing lunacy.
I am delighted to report that the party to which I belong is serious about repealing this legislation.
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Davidson’s influence on political decision making didn’t end when she left the Assembly, nor with the passing of the Future Generations legislation. Because she never really left; she’s always there, sitting on this board, chairing that panel.
Giving her more political clout than anybody you’ve ever voted for.
One such position is chair of the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. An unsavoury crew of bought academics, enviroshysters, assorted grifters, and fraudsters who might be banged up if they weren’t selling their duff products on behalf of ‘the planet‘.
The ‘findings’ of this crew will be even more damaging for Wales than what’s gone before. But we can’t afford any more of it.
If the wreckage of the Welsh economy and the collapse of our public services was treated as a crime scene, then Jane Davidson’s fingerprints would be everywhere. Which is why I consider her to be the most dangerous individual in the disaster that devolution has proved to be.
I say that because incompetence and stupidity are one thing (and found everywhere in devolved Wales), but what Davidson and her kind are doing is a deliberate and calculated attempt to de-industrialise and impoverish Wales in order to showcase our self-destruction to the rest of the world.
And so I say, Agenda 2030 and Net Zero must be rejected if our people are to have decent jobs; if they are to live in homes they were able to buy; in a country where public services work; where food is plentiful, cheap, and we aren’t told what we can eat.
This is the Wales we should demand for our children. Not the dystopian vision being offered by ‘environmentalists’, and used to enrich their corporate backers.
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?
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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.
∼
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.
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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
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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.
The old adage says: ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. Referring to family connections, the old school tie, Freemasonry or some other means of getting preferential treatment, especially when it comes to landing a contract, getting a job, or gaining promotion.
