Category: Plaid Cymru

Who Ya Gonna Vote For?

On By JacIn Conservative and Unionist Party, Corruption Bay, Devolution, Elections, Globalism, Greens, Gwlad, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Reform, Scotland, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour26 Comments

Well, we’re almost there. Thank God! Because this has been the most uninspiring and negative election in the history of devolution.

Never have so many deadbeats, activists posing as ‘journalists’, party hacks, and nut-jobs, wasted their time trying to rouse a people who’ve just lost interest.

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RUNNERS AND RIDERS IN HEAVY GOING

This election was doomed to be uninspiring and confusing once Labour rigged the voting system. (Almost certainly with the connivance of Plaid Cymru.) It’s a party list system that no one understands, contested in 16 vast and insane constituencies.

An affront to democracy.

I detailed the various stages of the process just over two years ago in Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill, explaining how better and fairer voting systems were rejected in order to arrive at today’s abomination.

For one thing, it’s designed to make life as difficult as possible for smaller parties and independent candidates. Jac Larner of Cardiff University calculates the system imposes a threshold of 14% before a party can hope to win a seat.

Given the quality of the debate, and the paucity of credible candidates, the election has been uninspiring. But this is to be expected. If a Senedd of just 60 Members attracts only people who’d struggle to run a stall at a village fete, what hope is there of improving the quality when the numbers are increased by over 50%?

And this couples with the negativity I also referred to in the intro. The Globalist Uniparty, the self-styled ‘progressives’, Labour, Plaid Cymru, Greens, Lib Dems, have had little to say beyond – Stop Reform!

There has been nothing positive on offer. Certainly no inspiring vision for the future. But this is only to be expected. Because with the exception of the Greens these are the parties that have failed Wales for 27 years of devolution.

Adding the Greens to the mix – and a potential coalition with Plaid – only offers something worse. While the other components of the Uniparty promise more of the same, the Greens want to double down on the mistakes of the past 27 years, and force on us new ones.

It’s also been a very ‘British’ campaign in that Welsh issues have been crowded out. For the London media has tended to lump the Senedd elections in with the Scottish Parliament and English local authority elections.

Their focus has been London-centric in debating whether Starmer will survive bad results “across the UK“. Treating May 7 almost as a general election, or a vote of confidence in the Labour party in Westminster.

And yet, this neglect of Welsh issues serves the interests of some parties. Plaid Cymru, for example, can blame Labour for the mess Wales is in, while claiming a vote for them is also a vote against the most unpopular PM ever.

Ironically, this is Labour’s old election tactic of urging punters to, “Send a message to London“. Which is what many will be doing, but now it’s working against Labour.

Reform can neglect Wales to focus on the issues that figure with the mainstream media and social media; small boat migrants, net zero, anti-Semitism, high taxes, benefit payments, knife crime, etc. Giving out mixed messages about their attitude towards devolution doesn’t do them any harm either.

The Greens have the advantage of being an unknown quantity, something different. But the Greens are universally and correctly described as ‘the Watermelon Party’. Green on the outside, red on the inside. And now attracting Islamist support.

Plaid Cymru has also been dipping its toe in that toxic oasis pool for some years. Though I’m not sure Mrs Evans in Pencader will take kindly to being told she has to wear a hijab to Capel Sion or else be branded Islamophobic.

As for the Lib Dems, does anybody know what they offer? In Wales it’s that strange Jane Dodds, with the party led at UK level by Ed Davey, who backed the Post Office in persecuting postmasters when UK Postal Affairs Minister from 2010 to 2012.

In short, and Reform excepted, various forms of that curious beast, 21st century Western left-liberalism divorced from any concerns for the once-idolised working class.

Offering socialism that can only run an economy for as long as other people’s money lasts or – as we’re now learning from Minnesota and elsewhere in the USA – if it can tap in to official funding which taxpayers thought was being properly used.

Few issues lay bare the deceit and duplicity more clearly than race. Here are a couple more things I picked up over the past week on X.

On the left we have Plaid Cymru dreaming of a multicultural Wales in which it seems white people are a minority. On the right, someone claiming that “Cymru belongs to us, not Reform“.

Now I don’t know Siân Parry, so I can’t say for sure that she’s a Plaid supporter, but she’s certainly on the political left. But what is she trying to say? Come to that, what is Plaid Cymru trying to say? Let’s attempt a synthesis.

An illegal immigrant can be Welsh; but someone who is Welsh to their core, speaks the language fluently, ceases to be Welsh – if they support Reform?

How insane, and offensive, that is. And all in the service of some transitory Woke nonsense. But too many put socialist dogma and childish obsessions above the interests of Wales.

To continue down this path Plaid risks becoming a full-blown anti-Welsh party.

For that’s the course it seems to have charted, with a Gwynedd councillor suspended for not appreciating that the false god of inclusivity is more important than the Welsh language and the community he was elected to represent.

So sod the Uniparty. And with Reform increasingly looking like controlled opposition, I’d avoid them too.

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STUDENT POLITICS AND DYING BIRDS

Twenty-seven years of virtue-signalling, ineptitude, and failure have taken their inevitable toll.

It’s an uphill task for those who’ve run devolution for 27 years to persuade people to forget about bills and hospital appointments, and instead take pride in Wales being the first country to declare a climate emergency, the first to have a Future Generations Commissioner, and to remember that Wales is working to be Anti-racist by 2030.

It’s student politics. And it’s explained very well by a young man named Owain Williams, whose one-minute video I stumbled upon last week.

When I saw “Confederacy” my heart soared!

Now student politics is all very well in its place, but the real world is not that place.

Digression alert!

There’s a little quote from Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man that was popular with the left in my younger days. Paine was responding to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which Burke floridly defended the Ancien Régime. (But still a great read!)

Paine condemned Burke for being more concerned with the pomp of Versailles than with the wretchedness of most French people. It was a radical responding to a conservative, telling him to ignore the ephemeral and focus on the realities.

Paine wrote: “We pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird“.

We can turn this on its head in 21st century Wales; for here it’s the radicals, the progressives, who obsess over the plumage, the ephemeral. But who ignore the dying bird, Wales.

And things won’t get better if we let Plaid Cymru take over. For Plaid, either alone or in alliance with their new wobble-headed pals in the Greens, will only push us harder and faster down Disaster Road.

But on the plus side . . . breast enlargement will be available on the NHS from fully-trained tit whisperers, all accredited by the Zack Polanski School of Woo-Woo.

Let’s be honest, devolution has been a disaster for Wales, and so replacing one bunch of bullshitters with another won’t make a bit of difference. And people know it. This piece from last week’s Western Mail says it all.

“A majority of voters in Wales are either indifferent to devolution or opposed to it . . . only 27 per cent of those asked said they supported devolution“. A majority of those polled couldn’t name the first minister.

But what do you expect after 27 years of failure that has alienated people from the whole idea of devolution, and they see no hope of improvement?

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IS DEVOLUTION EVEN DEMOCRATIC?

A fundamental problem of devolution, and the main reason for being subjected to policies for which there is little public support is the hangers-on, the influencers, the pressure groups, the lobbyists, that attach themselves to the politicians, to by-pass and subvert the democratic process.

You vote for a party that promised this that and t’other but you end up suffering legislation that was never in the manifesto and on which you were never consulted.

That’s because most of the Uniparty members in the Senedd went into politics to promote their pet ishoos rather than represent the constituency for which they were elected. Many came from charities, pressure groups, and lobbying organisations.

The aptly-named ‘Swamp’.

Take Lee Waters. Ostensibly the Labour Senedd Member for Llanelli (though he actually lives in Penarth). Waters had worked for cycling charity Sustrans (renamed Walk Wheel Cycle Trust), and was instrumental in bringing in the 20mph legislation.

There was a petition opposing 20mph that raised almost 470,000 signatures – but the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ ignored it.

While other petitions, with little support, result in legislation – because the issue promoted lines up with the Uniparty agenda. You even get your photo took with some gurning politico in a presentation ceremony!

On the left in the image below is Mike Hedges, Labour SM for Swansea East; on the right, Natalie Buttriss, who’s represented a number of bodies trying to grab Welsh land under various ‘save the planet’/’biodiversity’ guises.

Red carpet treatment – and a chance to meet Mike Hedges! – for just 2,385 signatures!

That’s democracy, folks; the Voice of the People . . . being ignored.

Saying loud and clear that devolution is a sham. But we’re expected to believe it’s going to get better because – just like socialism – it hasn’t been properly tried yet.

Worse, there are those believing Wales could survive as an independent country with the same calibre of politicians pursuing the same policies.

This goes beyond the definition of insanity attributed to Einstein.

At present, all the lunacies we endure from Corruption Bay are funded by the block grant from Westminster. Take that away with independence, and give full powers to politicians who understand nothing about economics, but who will be determined to pursue the same Globalist-Woke agenda, and Wales will go broke within 5 years.

Then it’s into the clutches of the EU and the World Bank; allowing land and other assets to be bought up by BlackRock and the like to give the impression of economic activity, or inward investment.

Socialism has never worked as an economic model. Which explains why the only ones pushing it are either still wet behind the ears or have jobs for life on the public payroll.

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CONCLUSION

Plaid Cymru believes that a few years of the party running the Senedd will win people over to the idea of independence. Thinking of Scotland. They’re wrong.

After the SNP took control in 2008 (as a minority government) it increased its popularity under the leadership of Alex Salmond. To the point where it almost won the 2014 referendum on independence.

But Salmond, in addition to being a very astute politician and a great debater, was an economist. You know, the real world economy. He persuaded many Scots, and many economists, that Scotland could be better off as an independent country.

And it almost worked. I was in Scotland for the referendum, and I know that the polls just before the vote were showing a majority for Yes. The London parties panicked and came out with ‘The Vow’, promising Scotland just about everything short of independence.

That swung it and the vote was 55 – 45 against independence.

Worth noting that the Labour leader at the time was Ed Miliband. Who – like Cameron and Clegg – understood that a great part of the appeal of independence was the promise of oil and gas revenues staying in Scotland. So maybe him closing down North Sea oil and gas fields isn’t just about saving the planet.

Whatever, and to get back to Wales, Plaid Cymru knows nothing about economics; I think the last genuine economist in their ranks was Dr Phil Williams, a good old stick despite everything, but he died in 2003.

Wales has no oil and gas fields to speak of. And there’s been no attempt to develop an indigenous economy over the 27 years of devolution. Funding cronies and charities to run make-believe ‘businesses’, and allowing carpetbagger companies to exploit Wales, is a third world economy.

All Plaid Cymru offers is more of the same, with a different spin. Because while Rhun ap Iorwerth may come across as an affable sort of guy, behind the scenes, still running the show, are dark forces from Plaid’s recent past.

And if Plaid gets power, especially in a link-up of some description with the Greens, then even nastier specimens will start popping up.

Wales needs radical change, in the form of a return to the eternal verities and facing up to economic realities. The Uniparty will never be allowed to provide this. Reform gives no thought to Wales beyond getting votes to pursue a different agenda.

Here’s Owain Williams again. I don’t know his politics, but I suspect they’re not a million miles from my own.

UPDATE 04.05.2026: Well, bless me! Young Owain is the son of Rhodri ‘Billions’ Williams, former boss of S4C and various other bodies. Owain is, or was, a Labour stalwart. The doubt might be justified by the party excluding him from being selected.

The only sensible option is a party that puts Wales first and foremost. One that prioritises the economy we all need. That understands Wales needs real jobs not more gesture politics. That teaches our children to think for themselves rather than brainwashing them. That won’t wage war on the family farm. Or the family unit.

The only party that fits the bill is Gwlad. Of course, Gwlad can’t win this time round, they don’t have the strength yet. But they’ll grow and, with fair media coverage, be back stronger next time. In the meantime, I’m sure Gwlad will be fighting for Wales in council elections and other ways.

The only Welsh party willing to address people’s real world concerns is Gwlad.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

Buy Me A Coffee

Looking Ahead To Senedd Elections

On By JacIn Conservative and Unionist Party, Corruption Bay, Devolution, Elections, Far Left, Greens, Gwlad, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Reform, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour73 Comments

In this piece I shall look towards the May 7 Senedd elections. Rather than delve into party manifestos, or expose the peccadillos of individual candidates, I’m adopting a broad brush approach.

Impressions and perhaps even informed generalisations. Digressions guaranteed, but not without a touch of whimsy and a few doses of ironic humour.

This offering is a bit longer than normal, but as it’s broken up into sections, one for each party, you can nibble a bit at a time. Like your Easter eggs!

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‘WELSH’ LABOUR

I’m starting with Labour, if only because this party has been running the show since devolution began in 1999. The name’s partly in quotes because there’s no such thing as a separate Labour party in Wales, it’s just a branch of the Islington-controlled gang we’ve know since Blair, Brown, Mandelson and a few others sat down to create New Labour.

This was the plan to broaden the party’s appeal beyond the traditional working class support. A strategy that ultimately led to the alienation of much of the working class. Labour in Wales managed to maintain the pretence longer than most party branches, but has now been found out.

But Labour, run by the Fabian Society, never really cared much for the working class, they were simply the means to power. The post-industrial age, Brexit and other factors, has seen Labour turn on the indigenous lower orders with a vengeance. Even to the extent of offering euthanasia.

For culling the poor, the sick, the disabled, the hopeless, was always Fabian Society policy. Find half an hour to watch this video.

LABOUR’S FIRST MINISTERS 1999 – 2026

One of the saddest features of this deception was seeing traditional, even generational Labour voters, in some of the most deprived communities in Wales, taken for granted by a party that had abandoned them and their communities.

A case of: Vote Labour – and we’ll keep kicking you in the nuts!

But chickens come home to roost.

And that’s why Labour finds itself facing humiliation thanks to an electoral system it conjured up believing this system would guarantee a permanent Labour-Plaid love-in, with the comrades always on top.

It says a lot for Labour’s foresight, and arrogance, that they couldn’t factor into their calculations the possibility of defeat. I described the system, and how it came about over two years ago, in Labour And Plaid Cymru Plot To Destroy Welsh Democracy.

But here we are, with Labour at 11% or 12% in the polls and fighting with the even more unhinged Greens for third place behind Plaid Cymru and Reform.

Because the problem for Labour is that having abandoned the working class it now relies for much of its support on racial and religious minorities (of which Wales has few), brainwashed students and ex-students, middle class liberals (another small group in Wales), third sector and other chisellers who’ve done well from Labour cronyism and patronage (a sizeable group regrettably), and the far left.

But many even in those groups are deserting Labour for Plaid Cymru and the Greens.

NOW LISTEN, STARMER, HERE ARE YOUR ORDERS

And if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s Starmer and his clueless, lying crew of Globalist puppets. Who’ve betrayed those who voted for them, and torn up their own manifesto, in order to serve those who came over to give them their orders soon after the 2024 election. (See above.)

A meeting of minds. For Gates’ plan to reduce the human population is pure Fabianism. And Starmer, like all previous Labour PMs, is a staunch Fabian.

Problems compounded in Wales by the growing perception that Labour has been bought by Bute Energy and other foreign companies (perhaps even the Chinese Communist party) wanting to exploit Wales in the name of ‘saving’ a planet in no real danger.

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PLAID CYMRU

This party will obviously be the main beneficiary from the collapse of the Labour vote.

And so Plaid is now doing what it always does when an election approaches – pretending there’s a gulf between them and Labour. But Plaid and Labour have been in bed too often and for too long for that deception to work.

Plaid Cymru might benefit from voters wanting to rebuke Labour without changing the general direction of devolved politics. Making Plaid the soft option for mildly disgruntled Labour supporters.

But they should be careful what they wish for. Especially those unhappy over Labour’s obsession with Net Zero, DEI, gender politics, Gaza, Trump, and all the other ishoos that often alienate left-leaning but socially conservative voters.

I say that because Plaid Cymru seems to have gone further down the fact-free rabbit-hole of Wokery than Labour. On a host of issues. And there’s no longer any attempt to hide it.

Here’s Plaid’s leader in the House of Commons (and my MP), Liz Saville Roberts, in London on March 28. At a march that brought together the far left, Islamists, environmentalists, and others.

Of course it was billed as a march against hate. The problem most people had in accepting that claim was the marchers chanting about killing Jews, threatening opponents of the murderous theocracy in Iran, condemning anyone who thinks men can’t have babies, and dancing dementedly in attempts to fight the climate crisis.

In fact, so much hate was generated by this gathering that a big profit was waiting for anyone who could have bottled it and sold it to a third world dictator.

Which perhaps brings us to Plaid’s real problem – a form of schizophrenia.

We have a party in recent times appealing to the radical left, while trying to hang on to its traditional, more socially conservative rural core vote. This is a difficult balancing act. But then, Labour got away with a similar deception after abandoning its traditional working class voters, so maybe Plaid will be lucky.

Because it takes a while for many voters to catch up with the new reality and ditch old habits. At least, that’s what Plaid Cymru is hoping.

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REFORM

Reform UK is next because in all recent polls it comes in second behind Plaid Cymru. Which seems to surprise many people, who want to believe this strand of politics is new to Wales, even an unwanted import.

The truth is that Farage’s earlier creations – UKIP, Brexit party – have been around for a few decades, and have performed well in Welsh elections, particularly the last two elections to the EU parliament. Here’s a table I drew up a few years back for a piece on the blog that should prove my point.

You’ll see that in 2014, with the Brexit referendum two years in the future, UKIP came a very close second to Labour. And in 2019 the Brexit party, combined with UKIP hold-outs, won comfortably with almost 36% of the vote.

This final EU election, after the 2016 referendum, might be seen as a victory lap for the Brexit party, yet the fact remains they won it very comfortably. But then, Wales voted Leave. Though parties on the left want to ignore this, talking of “alignment“, even re-joining. With no mention of consulting the people, let alone a referendum.

As I hinted earlier, the problem for leftist parties is that most people in Wales, as elsewhere, are socially conservative. They want policies the left is either unable or unwilling to deliver. But which Reform promises.

This goes some way to explaining why a ramshackle and often incoherent group like Reform is riding high in the polls. Topping polls in England, second in Wales.

There are identifiable groups from where Reform can expect support. First, former Labour voters awake now to the nature of modern Labour. Then, disaffected Tories, wondering what happened to their party. And the sizeable percentage of the population pissed off with establishment politicians prepared to give Reform a go. Finally, those who reject all manifestations of Welshness, from devolution to bilingual road signs.

But I see two clouds on the horizon for Reform. Perhaps only one of which will damage the party in May’s elections.

I’m referring to the reported parachuting in to Welsh seats of ex-Tories and others from outside the constituency in which they’re standing, even from outside of Wales. As this newspaper report from earlier this week illustrates.

Other fractures also seem to be appearing.

And yet, the factors just mentioned are less likely to count thanks to the absurd voting system; which means candidates 4, 5 and 6 on the party list could drop out with no effect on the outcome. And because it’s a party list system many voters won’t even know who the candidates are anyway! (Explained below.)

Perhaps a bigger threat, in the longer term, and on the UK level, is Rupert Lowe and his fledgling party Restore Britain, only launched in February. This very recent poll puts a party most people have never heard of on 8%. And I think I know why.

Farage is smooth, glib, a bit of a lad with the pint and the ciggie, and yet . . . I’ve never been able to shake the impression of the spiv. I keep waiting for him to roll up his sleeve to show us all the watches he’s flogging.

Whereas Lowe comes across as ‘serious’; what’s more, it’s that “Don’t fuck with me” kind of seriousness. Which many people respect. And I don’t see an armful of watches.

In the short term, and the context of the Senedd, I suppose we must accept the polls and prepare for Reform to come second.

Meaning four years of pantomime, with leftist luvvies clutching their pearls as they theatrically exit the chamber singing Kumbaya if a Reform MS questions net zero, or wants to end the £3,000,000 a year funding for the Dowlais branch of Hezbollah.

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GREENS

There was a time when the Greens were regarded as harmless eccentrics. Perhaps another incarnation of the brown bread and sandals wing of the Liberal party from the 1960s. (For younger readers . . . Look it up yourselves, you lazy little sods!).

But how they’ve changed!

From what I can see the modern Greens have little interest in the environment; now they seem to have positioned themselves somewhere to the left of Pol Pot. (Though I’m sure PP was a better dancer than ‘Zack Polanski’.)

Everything about the Greens in 2026 is false and/or dangerous.

Starting with party leader, ‘Zack Polanski‘, whose real name is David Paulden. Not so long ago he was a hypnotist, claiming he could enlarge women’s breasts. Did women pay him for this?

Some may think I’m being unfair, pointing out that he’s the UK leader, and we have our own leader in Wales, in Anthony Slaughter. Which is nonsense, because we don’t have a Welsh Green party.

When Green party members in Wales had the chance to form a separate Welsh party in 2018, they chose to stay as the Green Party of Englandandwales. Because most Green Party members in Wales are not Welsh. They tend to be good-lifers and others for whom Wales is nothing more than a nice place to live.

Recently the Greens have been pandering to Muslims, just like other parties of the left. To the extent that Polanski’s deputy is Mothin Ali, who recently attended a rally supporting the murderous theocracy in Iran – with critics labelled “Islamophobic“.

But try to make sense of it. Polanski is Jewish, and gay. Has he ever sat down with Ali to discuss his deputy’s religion and its attitude to both Jews and homosexuals? And does Ali have any interest in environmental matters?

It’s insane; Polanski’s relatives have said they’d leave the UK if he became PM.

The real worry should be the Islamic block vote transferring to the Greens because Labour is finished, if only in the short term. If so, then this is worrying; because on both the Welsh level, after May 7, and the UK level after the next general election, the Greens could be power-brokers.

So who in their right minds will vote in the Senedd elections for a party led by a former hypnotitist and his Islamist sidekick?

Just imagine if the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senedd, and the word comes down from Green Party HQ – “Tell Gareth Wyn Jones them sheepdogs gotta go“.

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CONSERVATIVE

What to say? Conservative politicians at every level have kept such low profiles in recent years they’ve become almost invisible. To the point where some might wonder if the party is still in existence.

In Wales, those who haven’t been kicked out of the party seem to have joined Reform. But nobody’s really noticed!

I mean, can you name the Tory leader in the Senedd? (It’s Darren Millar.)

And yet, despite the party’s near-invisibility the Conservative vote seems to be holding up. Certainly better in percentage terms than the Labour vote. Though I suppose it could be argued that Labour had more votes to lose.

Another way of looking at it might be to say that the Tories should have benefitted more from the collapse in the Labour vote. But it hasn’t. Possibly because so few people know what the Tories stand for nowadays. What is the message?

At this point – seeing as I have so little to say about the Tories! – it might be worth entertaining you with an opinion poll published in Nation.Cymru on April 1.

The accompanying article was written by Martin Shipton, who so recently had a wake-up call when an “eight-strong team from the counter-terrorism division of the Metropolitan Police“ kicked his front door down at 6am.

The survey sample was so small that I’m not sure it can be trusted; but seeing as it was commissioned by N.C, funded with ‘Welsh Government’ (i.e. our) money, I shall pick through the bones.

We see that the Tory vote is around 9/10%, which is not bad for a party that’s almost invisible. While some of the other ‘findings’ defy belief.

Though not the finding that among younger voters Plaid is very popular, and the Greens lead in the under 12 age bracket.

Though one of the more intriguing figures was this:

For people aged 35 to 54, Reform leads with 35%, ahead of Plaid Cymru on 21%, Labour on 16%, Greens 13%, the Conservatives and Lib Dems both on 6%, and others on 2%.

This is where we find those who are working, struggling to pay mortgages or rent, wondering if they can afford to light and heat their homes, bringing up children. Reminding us of what I’ve argued elsewhere – those living in the real world want real world solutions to real world problems.

Though I’m sure Martin ‘China’ Shipton and his ilk would dismiss this 35% as racists, climate deniers, etc., etc.

But this section was supposed to be about the Conservative and Unionist party, and I’m ignoring them. Yes.

I may have had a sneaking regard for their economic and social policies at one time. But that was forfeited when Boris Johnson flew to Kiev in April 2022, to ensure the little clown didn’t sign a peace deal that would have jeopardised their Globalist masters’ money-laundering operation.

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LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

If I had little to say about the Conservatives I have even less to say for the Liberal Democrats. They’re almost an irrelevance. A poll in this week’s Cambrian News suggests they won’t win a single seat on May 7.

Though I have to say that’s a strange poll, also predicting the Tories will win just one seat. I’m sure it’s wrong. Certainly at variance with the poll I quoted in the previous section.

The fact is that the Liberal party started going downhill after Lloyd George, in the 1920s, which of course coincided with the rise of the Labour party. Though my paternal grandparents were still voting Liberal into the 1950s, because they saw it as the party of the chapel, the ‘Welsh’ party.

The party we know today came about following a merger in 1988 between the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party, formed by four who’d split from Labour a few years earlier. “The Gang of Four“; David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers, were among the smuggest buggers you could ever wish to meet.

NICE TIE, WOY

I was once thrown out of a meeting addressed by ‘Woy’ in the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea, when he was still in Labour. Back in the late ’60s. The great man was on stage telling us that he too was Welsh; so a young Jac, in a flush of patriotic fervour (possibly influenced by beer), jumped up shouting “You’re no Welshman“.

I was then assailed by an old crow sitting behind me, who laid into me with her umbrella. A signal for the heavies to move in: “We knows ew, ew’re a trouble-maker, ew are“. And so young Jac, scarred for life by a gamp bought at Swansea market, was forcibly ejected.

Happy days!

What do the Lib Dems stand for nowadays? Your guess is as good as mine. But they’re ‘progressive’; so If Plaid needs an ally for its popular front against the far-right, Trump, climate deniers, Putin, transphobes, and other demons torturing the Globalist-Woke-left imagination, the Lib Dems will be only too glad to help.

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GWLAD

I’ve saved the best ’til last. As you probably know, I had a hand in launching this party, and I’m very proud of that. But why?

Basically because I’m a Welshman, and I’ve always wanted the best for my people, and for me that meant independence. It still does. Yet I’d hoped devolution would at least improve things. But it’s been a total failure. And it’s easy to see why. In fact, I’ve explained why in my assessments of the other parties.

Every successful country needs a functioning, indigenous economy that encourages and rewards hard work, innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit. And thereby creates well-paid jobs. But for 27 years devolution has been ruined by politicians and their hangers-on who did little but make gestures and squander money in slavishly serving agendas that divide us and make us poorer.

By comparison, those running Gwlad include people who’ve started their own companies, given people jobs, and hope, and have worked all over the world. I can’t stress this enough – they come from the real world.

By which I mean they are not professional politicians.

Not like those who did politics in uni, went to work in PR, for a pressure group, or for a politician; then got elected to the Senedd thinking that running a country is nothing more than mixing with others from the same background, having debates informed by ignorance, and choosing to die on hills far away that should have no resonance in Wales.

This political clique, this Corruption Bay bubble, regards the rest of us with contempt. The ‘progressive’ parties want us to believe that about Reform. But they’re no different, not even Plaid Cymru!

Question open borders, or challenge discrimination against the indigenous Welsh, and this makes Wales “the racist capital of the UK“, says a Plaid Cymru candidate.

To believe Elin Hywel we Welsh are an evil people that needs re-educating.

But we’re not. We’re good people ruled by clowns who’ve lied to us and lied about us for too long. So on May 7 vote for candidates who don’t belong to this isolated and self-elevated political class that looks down on the rest of us.

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CONCLUSION

The system being used in this election is complicated and corrupt, unlikely to be used again in any country wanting to be considered a democracy.

To start with, ‘we’ shall be electing 96 Senedd Members instead of 60 previously; in 16 huge constituencies, lumping together areas with nothing in common. For example, Swansea docks is in the same constituency as Llandrindod Wells.

Each elector will have one vote. Which means you’ll be expected to blindly vote for a party, while leaving the selection of candidates, and the order in which they’re ranked, to the party machines.

A system designed to benefit Labour and Plaid Cymru, also intended to make it very difficult for small parties and independent candidates to get elected. An affront to democracy.

And it could have been worse, for Labour was hoping to get away with not even naming candidates!

So as you walk to the polling station on May 7 remember 27 years of devolution under Labour, aided by Plaid Cymru or Lib Dems.

Remember net zero (15-minute cities and 20mph): running the NHS into the ground (while ‘decolonising’ midwifery); Covid (Drakeford believing it all and getting drunk on the power it gave him); covering the land with foreign-built wind turbines (also foreign owned and involving massive political corruption); waging war on farmers (to save the planet); welcoming the closure of Port Talbot steelworks (carbon, innit); promoting transgenderism (with the ‘Welsh Government’ being Stonewall’s biggest funder); using a film of 12-year-old girls to welcome migrants; brainwashing kids from shit-hole estates and abandoned post-industrial communities about their white privilege; and a host of other insulting imbecilities, from wanting Welsh schoolgirls to wear hijabs, to ‘decolonising’ the evil Welsh cake.

It would be masochistic to vote for Labour, Plaid Cymru, or Greens. You know what kind of dangerous nonsense bordering on evil you’ll get from them. Tories and Lib Dems are an irrelevance. And don’t vote Reform unless you’re so desperate to avoid the known failures that you’re ready to take a leap in the dark. (Or buy a knocked-off watch.)

When you reach the polling station, say to yourself, “Enough! Wales needs a fresh start, a new direction“. Then take the pencil in your hand and put a cross next to the Gwlad candidate’s name.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Devolution Is Cardiff Council On Stilts

On By JacIn Cardiff, Cardiff Bay, Corruption Bay, Devolution, Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour23 Comments

To explain the title . . . Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was any talk of a Welsh Parliament, Home Rule, or devolution, one of the arguments used against the idea was that such a creation would just be “Glamorgan County Council on stilts“.

The implication being that other parts of Wales would be ignored. That investment, jobs and other goodies resulting from self-government would be concentrated in that area.

In this piece I’ll try to persuade you that what we’ve seen since 1999 is even worse.

◊

FIRST SECRETARY, FIRST MINISTER

I’m going to begin by looking at the first secretaries and first ministers we’ve had since the beginning of the devolution experiment.

The first, said to be Tony Blair’s choice, even “Blair’s poodle“, was Alun Michael. He was never very popular, either within the Labour party or the country at large, and was first secretary for just nine months, until May 2000.

A former Cardiff City councillor, he later served as Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth. Then Regional Assembly Member for Mid & West Wales. And PCC for South Wales.

Michael was replaced by the much more popular Rhodri Morgan. Who stayed in the first minister role until December 2009.

Cardiff-born Morgan was MP (until 2001 GE) and AM for Cardiff West from 1999.

Next came Carwyn Jones. Despite being born in Swansea, and practising law there for a number of years, he represented the Bridgend constituency. His Cardiff connection was established by being a tutor for a few years at Cardiff University.

I’ve said it many times on this blog, and I’ll say it again, Cardiff University is joined at the hip to the local Labour establishment. The School of Journalism should be renamed the School of Globalist-Left Propaganda.

Jones stood down as leader in December 2018. He now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Jones of Penybont.

He was succeeded by Mark Drakeford, a former South Glamorgan County councillor who became the Assembly Member for Cardiff West in the May 2011 elections.

Drakeford was born and raised in Carmarthenshire, but moved to Cardiff over 40 years ago. And was a lecturer at Cardiff University.

From 1985 to 1993, Drakeford represented the Pontcanna ward on South Glamorgan County Council, with fellow future Welsh Assembly members Jane Hutt and Jane Davidson as his ward colleagues.

(Jane Davidson was at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Labour AM for Pontypridd (1999 – 2011), and wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that enforces ESG and DEI in every aspect of Welsh life.)

Drakeford stood down as first minister in March 2024. He will not stand again in May.

Then came the brief tenure of his successor Vaughan Gething. After serving as councillor for the Butetown ward on Cardiff City Council he became the Senedd Member for Cardiff South & Penarth in 2011.

Gething is also standing down.

Gething was succeeded in August 2024 by the current incumbent, and former MEP, Eluned Morgan, the Regional Member for Mid & West Wales.

Born and raised in Cardiff she sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Morgan of Ely.

So we see a Cardiff connection with all first secretaries or first ministers Wales has known in 27 years of devolution. And with five out of the six a strong connection.

Given that Cardiff makes up some twelve per cent of Wales’ population, this statistic is truly remarkable. And should be concerning.

◊

SOME INTERESTING SENEDD MEMBERS

Beginning with Bridgend, where we find Sarah Murphy. Who was born and raised in Pontypridd then, after Reading University, worked in Seoul and London. She came back to Cardiff; held posts with the Labour party, and the University. More exactly, the School of Journalism.

Next, Cardiff Central. The patch of uber wealthy Jenny Rathbone since 2011. She’s a member of the Rathbone dynasty of Liverpool, where she was born. Her knowledge of Wales is on a par with that of a stay-at-home Eskimo. Limited to Cardiff and the area around her holiday home up in Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr.

Hubby, John Uden, who knows as much about wind power as the heretofore mentioned Innuit knows of Wales, somehow managed to get on the ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ of Bute Energy. Which was handy, seeing as Mrs Uden sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.

She’s standing down in May. Her vacuous wittering will not be missed.

Cardiff North is where we find Julie Morgan, widow of Rhodri. Cardiff born and bred, she is a former South Glamorgan and Cardiff City councillor, and was elected to the Senedd in 2011 after losing the Westminster seat of Cardiff North in 2010.

She is also standing down.

Cardiff South & Penarth is held by former first minister, Vaughan Gething. (See above.)

Cardiff West is held by former first minister Mark Drakeford (See above.)

Cynon Valley brings up Vikki Howells, who was born and raised in the constituency, and attended Cardiff University.

The SM for Llanelli Lee Waters is definitely a member of the Corruption Bay in crowd. A former ITV Wales journalist, director of think tank IWA, then director-lobbyist for bike charity Sustrans, he’s the man responsible for the 20mph restrictions.

Despite being SM for a seat west of Swansea, he lives just outside Cardiff.

He’s standing down in May.

Now we head up to Merthyr where the local representative is Bristol City fan Dawn Bowden. Another Bay insider who worked her way up through union ranks but who knows as much about the Heads of the Valleys as the denizen of the frozen north I mentioned earlier.

But that doesn’t matter – she was promised a safe seat.

Which she’ll thankfully vacate in May.

Another carpet-bagger can be found in Pontypridd in the form of Mick Antoniw. He came to Wales to study at Cardiff University, and stayed. One of those who drove through the absurd and corrupt voting system we’ll be using in May.

Of Ukrainian descent, he’s made a number of very public trips there to deliver ‘aid’. If Wales was independent he’d want us to declare war on Russia.

Another one standing down.

A odd one now, in Julie James, SM for Swansea West. Odd, because even though she was born in Swansea, travelled around a lot in her early life, she was involved in the Gilestone farm saga before being elected to the Assembly in 2011. As a solicitor working against the then owners, which paved the way for the land to be bought by someone’s chosen buyer.

Also standing down.

Moving east to Torfaen, ‘though born in Merthyr, Lynn Neagle is definitely part of the Bay Bubble. Wife of former Labour AM Huw Lewis.

Neagle has worked for, “Shelter Cymru, Mind and the CAB. She was Carers Development Officer with Voluntary Action Cardiff and also worked as a researcher for Glenys Kinnock MEP“.

And, finally . . . Jane Hutt, who sits for the Vale of Glamorgan, is another who moved to Wales to involve herself in charities and third sector bodies: National Co-ordinator of Welsh Women’s Aid, South Glamorgan Women’s Workshop, Tenant Participation Advisory Service and Chwarae Teg (Fair Play) . . .

Thankfully, she’s also standing down.

◊

REGIONAL SENEDD MEMBERS

Due to winning so many seats in the south and the north east Labour has just three Regional SMs. One in the North. Here are the two from the Mid & West.

One of course, is Eluned Morgan, the current first minister. (See above.)

The other is Joyce Watson. And she may be unique among Labour SMs because her official bio says: “Joyce has run several small businesses – public houses, restaurants and retail outlets – in Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.”

But did she own them?

But even that ray of hope is dimmed by the usual charity/third sector involvement: “Joyce managed the Wales Women’s National Coalition . . . senior member of the Wales Gender Budget Group . . . NHS Equality Reference Group”.

Watson is another jumping the sinking ship of devolved politics in May.

◊

WHAT IT MEANS

Let’s start with a statistic. The population of Wales grew between the census years of 2001 and 2021 by 6.8%. In the same period Cardiff saw growth of 18.7%. According to some, Cardiff is now the fastest-growing city in the UK.

Most areas of Wales saw negligible growth, with some even recording a fall. Ceredigion, Blaenau Gwent and Gwynedd have declining, and ageing, populations; while Merthyr and a few other areas struggle to maintain their numbers.

Newport’s population increases steadily since charges on the Severn Bridge were abolished, which allowed buyers from England to access the cheaper housing in south east Wales and commute daily to Bristol, or even further. While in many rural areas population increase is due to retirees and good-lifers moving in.

But turning Newport into a Bristol suburb and rural areas into al fresco retirement homes is neither desirable nor sustainable.

Welsh life is increasingly focused in Cardiff, for the benefit of Cardiff. This can be explained by a number of factors. The first, quite obviously, is political power. Then there’s the third sector, charities, pressure groups, which both feed off and feed into the political system.

A political machine serviced by regiments of spads, assistants and researchers, whose loyalty can be guaranteed by the carrot of a council seat, or, for the very lucky – a seat in the Senedd.

But let’s not overlook other beneficiaries, such as those to be found among the movers and shakers of the local business community.

An example would be the Thomas brothers, of the pie and pasty dynasty. It’s universally accepted that the ‘Welsh Government’ paid way over the odds to buy Cardiff airport. But who was the vendor?

And who bought that criminally undervalued land on the outskirts of Cardiff?

In both cases the lucky boy was Stan Thomas. Hot pies all round!

If you want a fuller picture, read a couple of pieces I put out ten years ago. Pies, Planes & Property Development, and Pies, Planes & Property Development 2.

But it’s not just the Thomas brothers. There are others.

Then there’s sport. Through funding, the ‘Welsh Government’ effectively took control of the Football Association of Wales and the Welsh Rugby Union.

Which explains why, when Cardiff Rugby went bust the WRU stepped in to buy it. And why the most successful region, the Ospreys, based in Swansea, is threatened with extinction.

The last-but-one owner of Cardiff Rugby was the late Peter Thomas, Stan’s brother.

The clowns currently wrecking Welsh rugby are political appointees, and they’ve been told to prioritise the interests of Cardiff. To the detriment of Welsh rugby as a whole.

Finally, there’s the media. Based in Cardiff and little more than a mouthpiece for those I’ve described above.

And all the while, our economy and our essential services decline and decay.

◊

WHAT MIGHT THE FUTURE HOLD?

If polls are to be believed then Plaid Cymru will emerge in May with most SMs, but not a majority. This will mean Plaid going into coalition, or having an ‘agreement’, or an ‘understanding’, most likely with Labour, possibly with the Greens.

We might even see a ‘progressive’ alliance of all the Globalist-Woke parties. It really won’t make much difference. (But what a nightmare that could be!)

Now some might think that with so much of its support being in the west and the north Plaid Cymru will adopt a different approach. And there might be a few moves away from the obsessive focus on Cardiff, but Plaid would be no real improvement.

Because Plaid wants to take Wales further than Labour on ‘ishoos’ such as Net Zero, trans ‘rights’, DEI, Gaza, ‘Islamophobia’, and decolonising Welsh cakes. And faster down the road of economic implosion and civilisational decline.

Party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth may be the Senedd Member for Ynys Môn, the seat furthest from the Bay, but he’s a former BBC journalist. He was educated at Cardiff University and he’s lived in Cardiff.

And ap Iorwerth may be a figurehead; for many believe the party is still controlled by the acolytes of a previous leader, the PoundShop Pasionaria of Penygraig.

Whatever the outcome in May in party terms, it won’t make much difference. Plaid, Greens, Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, they’re all just differently-badged elements of the Globalist Uniparty. That’s why they repeatedly tell us the upcoming election is solely about defeating Reform.

Is it?

Then again, Labour might welcome a ‘break’. Shun any co-operation, then come back untainted and refreshed in 2031. Hoping electors will have forgotten their record in the Senedd.

And who might lead the Labour comeback? If I was a betting man I’d put a few quid on Huw Thomas. If you’ve never heard of him, let me introduce him.

Huw Thomas, courtesy of Getty Images

He’s 41 years old and from Aberystwyth, he’s bilingual, and he’s been leader of Cardiff Council for nearly 10 years. In May, he’s top of the Labour list for the Caerdydd Penarth constituency.

He’s guaranteed to be elected because Cardiff is an area where Labour will do well.

UPDATE: Soon after posting this article at 9am I went to Tywyn, picked up a Western Mail, read it while having my first coffee of the day. In this article Huw Thomas gets a mighty plug.

If it comes to pass as I predict, and Labour gets back into power in 2031, under his leadership, then everything will revert to the status quo ante Plaid, with Cardiff grabbing the lion’s share of investment and jobs.

Which, to respectfully amend Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, will mean a return to: Government of Wales, by Cardiff, for Cardiff.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Plaid Cymru – Party Of Nowhere

On By JacIn Plaid Cymru, Welsh Nationalism26 Comments

I’ve been meaning to write this, or something like it, for some time. So, with the Senedd elections roughly three months away, now seems as good a time as any.

In some ways I suppose this is an update to a piece I put out in February 2019, back when I was young, handsome, and gay: ‘Wales: nationalism ethnic and civic‘.

◊

THE PLAID CYMRU THAT ONCE I KNEW

The party I joined in the mid-Sixties was unambiguous in its call for independence. This was based on the belief in a distinct Welsh identity, coupled with the perception that Wales didn’t get a fair deal from the UK government in London.

We believed that independence was the only way to respect and protect Welsh identity while also improving the economic and other conditions of our people.

But I also flirted with ‘fringe’ groups. Though back in the heady days of the 1960s it was possible to see Plaid Cymru as the political wing of  a wider movement that included ‘militant’ groups like Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru and the Free Wales Army.

Maybe that’s stretching it a bit, but there was certainly ‘rubbing along’, maybe an acceptance that we were all on the same side, wanting the same thing. Here’s an image that might be seen to capture this acceptance, from Cilmeri in 1982, the 700th anniversary of the killing of Llywelyn II.

On the left of course, is Gwynfor Evans, then leader of Plaid Cymru, and former MP for Carmarthenshire. With two good mates of mine. In the centre, Peter ‘Gun’ Williams, and on the right, Gareth ap Siôn.

I often wonder what was going through Gwynfor’s mind when he found himself in such company. That bemused look is intriguing.

Happy days!

Plaid luminaries are rarely seen at such events now. Maybe like those they align with they view Llywelyn as a ‘medieval war-lord’, an ‘oppressor of the people’.

For history can cause Plaid Cymru bouts of confusion and convenient amnesia, with this applying to even modern history. As I was reminded in 2015 at the 50th anniversary of the drowning of Capel Celyn.

Plaid MPs and others were there reminding us how awful it had been: “Liverpool Corporation . . . Welsh-speaking village . . . injustice . . . something should have been done . . . blah . . . blah“.

But no mention of those, risking life and liberty, who actually tried to do something.

A TASTER FOR THE SECTION THAT FOLLOWS

I’ve taken this trip down Memory Lane as the first step in explaining how Plaid Cymru has gone from being a nationalist party with policies to improve Wales to the benefit of the Welsh into just another bunch of Globalist-Woke-left sloganistas.

◊

EPIPHANY, AND THE NEW BELIEF SYSTEM

The year 2021 was a watershed for me, and for many, many others. To begin with, there was Covid, and the vaccines. Once the lies involved in that whole episode became clearer, I saw many things in a new light.

(And now we learn that Bill Gates, global emissary for Big Pharma [in which he’d judiciously invested], caught the pox from Russian whores he met through Jeffrey Epstein. What a role model!)

Around the same time, in Wales, my eyes were opened to another threat. I’m referring to the takeover of ‘independence movement’ YesCymru by some of the weirdest and most unhinged people I’d ever encountered. (And believe me, I’d known a few!)

I knew such creatures were ‘out there’, but until they were all gathered together in the spotlight I hadn’t appreciated how fucked up they really were.

For until then I held the views from my formative years; which meant that I still believed ‘the opposition’ was fairly rational, and though wrong, still wanted the best for Wales.

I suppose I was still thinking of the socialists I’d grown up with, even within my own family. Decent people who’d read their Marx and Lenin, with deeply held views they could rationally (if unconvincingly) defend.

But the events of 2021 made it clear there were new kids on the block. Unread, incapable of rational debate, who could only deal in insults, defamation, and even death threats. (This episode was covered extensively on this blog.)

They wanted Communism . . . to give them freedom to do whatever they wanted!

It’s difficult to explain to anyone unfamiliar with those events how ugly some of these interlopers into adult debate really are. But here’s an attempt. This stuff’s water off a duck’s back to me, but like rabid animals they could turn on anyone.

Even a youngster who’d had the temerity to like a tweet of mine!

A key to understanding – or appreciating – this change between what I’d been familiar with and the new Woke left is the differing attitudes towards the working class.

Old-style socialists eulogised the working class. The Revolution would be achieved by them, and it would be for them. To the Wokies, and certainly after Brexit, the working class was the enemy, for the proletariat is socially conservative and rejects neo or cultural Marxism.

In simple terms: level-headed people in the real world want sod all to do with Wokism.

I’ve dealt here with YesCymru because it’s Plaid Cymru in a different wig. It was almost as if Plaid Cymru was using YesCymru, and other groups, to float some of the crazier ideas they weren’t quite ready to put in their election manifestos.

Just to familiarise us with them.

Admittedly, there was a guy up on the north coast claiming to represent ‘Labour for Independence’, though I suspect Bob Lloyd (bless him!) was founder and sole member.

What considers itself today to be the ‘broader independence movement’, includes not only Plaid Cymru, and YesCymru, but also fruitcake gangs like Melin Drafod, the Welsh Underground Network (should an ‘underground’ group have a social media presence?), and then there was mercifully short-lived Undod.

Did I say ‘broader‘! (Slaps wrist.) For these people independence is only worth having if it delivers a Marxist shit-hole implementing the Globalist-Woke agenda

And the same applies to Plaid Cymru.

The lone voice of sanity is Gwlad.

◊

A CLOSER LOOK AT PLAID CYMRU TODAY

The party that is Plaid Cymru today may be at its highest point in the polls, and predicted to win May’s Senedd elections, but I believe it’s also at a crossroads, perhaps a high-water mark it will never achieve again.

Such a bold declaration obviously requires an explanation. Let’s start with a few facts that I challenge anyone to dispute.

First, Plaid is riding high in the polls because enough voters belatedly realise that the Labour party in Wales (and beyond) is a bunch of lying, posturing, hypocritical incompetents. Many see Plaid as an acceptable alternative.

Second, there is a drive among the ‘progressive’ parties and the Globalist-run media to ‘Stop Reform!‘. As if we’re in some existential struggle with the forces of darkness. Plaid Cymru, seen as the best chance in Wales, will benefit hugely from tactical voting.

Neither of these can be considered positively voting for Plaid Cymru.

But switching from Labour to Plaid Cymru is pointless anyway. For closer inspection reveals that Plaid is very little different. On all the policies that have made Labour unpopular Plaid Cymru is in agreement, or would go further.

Let’s start with Net Zero. Plaid Cymru wants more investment in ‘renewables’ such as wind turbines. When confronted with local hostility to the exploitation of Wales and the blighting of our landscapes by foreign companies Plaid retreats to a position that argues against pylons – but still in favour of wind farms!

The only way to square this circle is to bury all the cables so we don’t have pylons. Which will incur further costs that will inevitably be passed on to commercial and domestic consumers. Result: Higher bills and even more job losses. Misery all round.

If you haven’t seen it yet, watch Plaid Cymru SM for Mid and West Wales, Cefin Campbell, and lead candidate for Carmarthenshire in the upcoming elections, get savaged at a recent public meeting organised by the CPRW. It’s painful.

On the issue of open borders and excessive immigration, party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, has said that Wales – or maybe parts of Wales – must have more immigrants.

The justification for this position seems to be “depopulation“, and the effect this has on schools and services. But what about jobs for the parents of the kids he wants to fill rural schools?

Depopulation, in almost any area, at any time, is invariably an economic issue. Which can only be remedied in one way.

And that is to build a rural economy to retain and draw back the indigenes.

Or else disguise the problem by bringing in a new population that will not seek work, in order to massage the population figures. This has been widely practiced in rural areas for some decades.

But ap Iorwerth wasn’t thinking about the retirees and good-lifers we’ve known. He was thinking of a new population from places more exotic than Edgbaston and Esher.

So there’ll be no economic strategy for the rural areas of Wales.

Then there’s the debilitating anti-white racism, and Islamophilia.

Listen to former Plaid Senedd Member Bethan Sayed complain about too many white people on Welsh language television channel S4C. I would guess that 98% of Welsh speakers are white. But who cares about silly facts?

More recently, she’s suggested that Welsh schoolgirls should wear hijabs.

The sensible approach would be to remind new arrivals and those from other backgrounds that the obligation is on them to adapt to the country they live in, rather than to take girls from the host community back to the 7th century and a foreign culture.

Any attempt by new arrivals to impose their ways, their values, on a host community, is a form of colonialism. I would expect Plaid Cymru, of all parties, to realise that.

The modern left’s flirtation with Islam reminds me of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. But this time the scorpion will get to the other side before stinging the frog.

(Fittingly, this story may have originated in medieval Persia as the scorpion and the turtle. Fitting, because in 1979 middle class leftists cheered the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran . . . then they were dealt with.)

With gender, it should go without saying that Plaid is right there, on message. Here’s another Senedd Member, Sioned Williams, imploring us to remember “transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.”

How many are there? And how do the numbers stack up to all the school shootings and other killings carried out in the USA by unhinged individuals claiming to be trans?

The fundamental problem is that Plaid Cymru has lost the common touch, and with it its sense of what people in the real world want. It’s no longer a case of, ‘What does Wales need?‘ Now it’s, ‘What have we been persuaded to believe Wales needs?‘.

Because what’s important for Plaid is meeting with the approval of those whose opinions they care about – the campaigners, the pressure groups, the minority interests. For Plaid’s politicians, staff, activists, move in closed circles, echo chambers where their own prejudices are confirmed and their errors reinforced.

Go back and watch Cefin Campbell floundering when confronted by real people voicing genuine concerns about something that really impacts on their lives.

◊

CONUNDRUM

Plaid Cymru has swallowed the Woke agenda, accepted the Globalist narrative, and is ready to play its part in implementing the New World Order. This means a world without borders, and of course, without nations.

The Globalist agenda to de-industrialise, destabilise, limit individual freedoms, control the food supply. Then take over completely.

Which is why the Globalists work with those who share that agenda, Neo/cultural Marxists and Islamists. Who also want to bring down the West.

Yet to its traditional supporters, Plaid Cymru pretends it still believes in Welsh identity and nationhood. While assuring its new members and activists that it wants open borders, Welsh schoolgirls in hijabs, and replacing St David’s Day with a day of mourning for ‘trans victims’.

Unless you’re a Cossack, riding two horses rarely ends well.

And the economy? Our essential services? Not important when there are gestures to be made, lobbies to be pandered to, and dangerous minorities to prioritise over your own people.

◊

CONCLUSION

The point I hoped to make earlier about Plaid Cymru is that the party I knew was more easy-going, more welcoming. It was a broad church rooted in the real Wales.

Despite my ‘colourful’ associations in the 1960s, and a conviction in 1968 for trying to decapitate a statue, I was still accepted as a candidate more than once for local elections in the early 1970s.

But since then, and certainly in the past decade, Plaid Cymru has become a hard left party. One in which no deviation from the Globalist-Woke agenda is tolerated.

This combination of Stalinist mindset and extreme Wokism will be the hallmarks of a Plaid Cymru government in the Senedd. Which is why anybody thinking of voting for the party in May, as an improvement on Labour, and better than the other options, would be making a huge mistake.

Think again!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Nadolig 2025

On By JacIn Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Labour53 Comments

Happy Christmas to all those who’ve supported this blog through another year. And may next year be good for you. I suspect 2026 could be a big year, both in Wales and the world. So buckle up!

My priority for 2026 is to persuade those who are clearly deserting Labour that Plaid Cymru is the wrong option. To make people understand that if Labour is the frying pan, then Plaid Cymru is the fire.

Plaid is now so off the wall with its Wokeism that it makes the most indoctrinated student sound rational; while its anti-white racism outdoes BLM, and its anti-Western rhetoric would gain approval from the maddest of mad mullahs.

While the party’s attacks on ‘ethno-nationalism’ undermine its raison d’être.

Plaid is at the point where, compared to the lunacies uttered by Liz Saville-Roberts, Sioned Williams and others, the old-fashioned Marxist wittering we get from Leanne Wood sounds almost coherent.

The message: Anyone who thinks Plaid Cymru would be an improvement on Labour in any way needs to be introduced to reality. Starting January 2nd.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Caerffili By-election: Random Thoughts

On By JacIn Elections, English Nationalism, European Union, Far Left, Globalism, Gwlad, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Government, World Economic Forum101 Comments

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.

◊

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.

◊

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“.

◊

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.

Apologies to George Orwell, Animal Farm.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Plaid Cymru Abandons Welsh Farmers

On By JacIn Climate, Farming, Globalism, Plaid Cymru20 Comments

Last Saturday I put out a post on X drawing attention to something that had been said at the Plaid Cymru conference in Swansea. This piece follows on from that.

◊

‘IT’S THEM FARMERS WOT DONE IT!’

Speaking from the main stage Alex Phillips of the WWF wanted the audience to believe that when it comes to polluting our rivers, then, “it’s beyond reasonable doubt” that it’s the fault of farmers. And only farmers.

But he’s wrong. And he knows he’s wrong. Where to start?

First, the biggest polluter of our watercourses is, in its various operations, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Which leads a charmed life due its ‘closeness’ to Natural Resources Wales, an agency of the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’.

This ‘closeness’ guarantees Dŵr Cymru an easy ride from the planet savers.

Second, ‘agriculture’, is a rather vague, all-encompassing, term. Possibly misleading.

Maybe he’s referring to the chicken farmers of Herefordshire, or arable farmers using chicken manure fertiliser, both polluting the Wye before it runs back into Wales.

But he can’t be referring to Welsh livestock farmers, certainly not those of the uplands.

And I’m damn sure his sweeping statement didn’t include the hippies and good lifers growing non-binary carrots on Powys county council land, often at the expense of Welsh families.

So what exactly was he talking about?

Some background might help. Alex was a ‘Special Advisor’ in the Assembly for 3 years from October 2011. After that, he was in PR for another 3 years. Then he joined the WWF in July 2017.

Here’s Alex, just a few months ago, celebrating legislation he helped push through.

To understand a bit more about the WWF, and its essentially anti-humanity agenda, go to this piece I put out last November and scroll down the section, ‘Darker Past’. Where you’ll read:

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

Here’s a recent example from the Congo basin of how the WWF operates. Making clear that it prioritises ‘Nature’ over people. Indigenous populations seem to be inconvenient, if not expendable.

Maybe we Welsh fall into that category.

The WWF was launched in 1961 by a body few have heard of, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Which modestly says of itself:

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

I don’t think you’re supposed to know about the IUCN; it keeps a low profile, but it’s very influential.

The IUCN European Regional Office plays a key role in addressing these challenges by shaping EU policies, promoting effective regulation, and supporting conservation efforts at both national and regional levels.

The WWF was founded by Nazis, who believed in eugenics, and drastically reducing the global population by removing the “useless eaters“. A term adopted by the WEF. Whose founder, Klaus Schwab, is the son of an enthusiastic member of the Herrenvolk.

The WWF today serves a new elite; and pushes an apocalyptic message (scapegoats provided), in order to get politicians to enact legislation, and provide funding, to serve the ambitions of their Globalist masters.

◊

‘HE’S RIGHT‘, SAYS PLAID CANDIDATE NERYS EVANS

The sentiments of the short speech I’ve linked to above were echoed by Nerys Evans, Plaid Cymru’s No 2 candidate for Sir Gaerfyrddin / Carmarthenshire.

Nerys has an interesting past. One that sums up devolutionary Wales perfectly. A denizen of Corruption Bay, its outliers and appurtenances; one of the in-crowd.

Let’s take a look at Nerys Evans’ Linkedin page.

Her career begins with a few years as ‘Political Officer’ (which means what, exactly?) at the Notional Assembly; then four years as an Assembly Member; followed by a job with a charity, and ‘Welsh Government’ appointments; next was Ofcom, overlapping with ACT and Portal Training (both publicly funded); then seven and a half years as non-executive director with the Farmers Union of Wales (FUW); with a job for going on 14 years with lobbyists Deryn Consulting, now Cavendish Cymru.

Every job there is either the result of political influence, or it’s one seeking to exert political influence. Either way, it makes a mockery of you going to put your cross on a bit of paper every so often.

While at Ofcom and Deryn simultaneously, there was some, er, embarrassment, when it became known that Evans, and another Deryn director advising Ofcom, Huw Roberts (Labour), had steered contracts the way of Deryn.

For this and other reasons the reputation of Labour-Plaid joint venture Deryn took a bit of a knock, and it was taken over earlier this year. But those running Deryn were kept on because their political and other contacts in Corruption Bay and beyond were priceless to the new owners.

Given the association with FUW her contribution to the WWF propaganda show was something to behold. According to Nerys Evans, ninety per cent of the pollution in our rivers is the fault of them wicked farmers.

Later, she tried to go back on what she’d said by protesting she’d meant 90% of pollution on the Wye. Which is also untrue.

But remember, this is a Plaid Cymru Senedd candidate, hoping to represent a constituency next May with many farmers; and this nonsense was spouted, not at a fringe meeting, but on the main stage at the Plaid Cymru conference.

Why did the WWF get such favoured treatment from Plaid Cymru?

Perhaps because Gareth Clubb is CEO of WWF Cymru, and he used to be CEO of Plaid Cymru. Now he also runs Community Energy Cymru (backed of course by the ‘Welsh Government’).

His Linkedin profile tells you everything.

The secretary of Community Energy Cymru is someone named Leanne Wood.

Another example of Labour-Plaid collaboration. Perhaps confirmed by this gem I found in the Articles of Association. But what the hell does it mean?

Another who was on the same stage in Swansea was Shea Buckland-Jones. From a very similar background to the others we’ve looked at. His Linkedin profile spells it out.

Have you noticed it yet? – every one of them has a background in PR and politics, charities and pressure groups.

Another issue here is that Cavendish-Deryn has the WWF as a client. This is kept secret because Wales – unlike England, Scotland, and just about everywhere else – has no register of lobbyists.

So Nerys Evans, Plaid Cymru candidate, director of Cavendish, was on stage at the Plaid Cymru conference with one of her company’s clients putting the boot into the farmers she so recently claimed to represent.

And all the while pretending she was only concerned with water quality.

◊

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Farmers are under pressure as perhaps never before, and it can all be traced back to acceptance by politicians and others of the ‘climate crisis’ scam, and measures such as Net Zero and carbon capture that we’re told are needed to combat this contrived threat.

With more of the same in the pipeline.

But it’s not just farmers suffering. We are all paying for this insanity; through higher electricity bills, brainwashing us into changing our diets, even telling us how we’re allowed to heat our homes.

Which is why the farmers’ fight is your fight.

And many farmers feel increasingly isolated. Some have lost faith in their unions, the National Farmers Union and the Farmers Union of Wales.

They also feel abandoned by political parties, which is understandable. For as we’ve seen, there’s no real difference between Plaid Cymru and Labour. On anything.

Those who control the Uniparty know Labour is dead in the water and something else is needed to challenge Reform. In Wales, that ‘something’ is Plaid Cymru. Talk of independence would frighten off many voters, so Plaid’s leaders were told to drop it.

Another feature that needs highlighting is the funding of the charities and pressure groups that leftist politicians use to justify the legislation they implement. A system we now see being exposed in the USA.

Over here, for example, funding from the National Lottery, especially the Heritage Lottery Fund, is openly political. But the same can be said for major private funders.

One of which would be the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. Which has clearly been captured. Just look at some the recipients here of big sums. Check out all the grants.

‘FFCC’ is the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. One of a regiment of such bodies, and very influential in Wales. Regularly quoted by the FFCC is Derek Walker, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. Just check his CV.

Also mentioned on the FFCC website is Hywel Morgan, who appears regularly on the ‘Welsh Government’ website Farming Connect.

Another faux ‘farmers’ organisation, with too much influence on the ‘Welsh Government’, and of course funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, is the Nature Friendly Farming Network.

If you think of Welsh farming as a sinking ship (as some wish), then there are voices in the murk calling out: “You can swim to the lifeboat“. Farming Connect is such a ‘lifeboat’, and some, like Hywel Morgan, have clambered aboard.

Because it’s not outright confrontation, there’s also stick and carrot. Which is an attempt to set farmers against each other.

◊

ALL IS NOT LOST

It’s easy to get downhearted when you look at the forces ranged against us.

At the top we have the UN, with its Agenda 2030, supported by other supranational bodies like the WEF, EU (Commission); together, these fund and / or influence a host of international charities and pressure groups that then convey the instructions to governments at national and sub-national level.

And because they’re charities, and ‘cuddly’ groups like WWF, it makes the message more acceptable, and disguises its origin.

It’s all top down, without a democratic mandate. Because no electorate was ever consulted about Net Zero except in the vaguest and most misleading terms: ‘You don’t want to destroy the planet, do you?

And it’s the same with open borders: ‘Will you allow thousands of women and children to be butchered in ———, or should we welcome refugees?’

In both cases, utterly dishonest. Because the results people have to live with bear no relation to the deceits that sought popular support.

And profiting behind the scenes are the Globalist corporations such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and oligarchs like increasingly megalomaniac Bill Gates.

You know how powerful and influential these men are when you recall that a year ago, Gates and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink were over giving Starmer his orders.

Larry Fink even sat in on a cabinet meeting!

The Uniparties the Globalists control in various countries perform like a chorus, and when anyone sings a different tune they’re vilified by the mainstream media.

Here in Wales, the Uniparty is made up of Labour, Plaid Cymru, Conservatives (until they fall apart), Greens and Lib Dems. It doesn’t matter which of these parties you vote for, you’ll be voting for the Globalist agenda.

But thankfully, there is an alternative. Councillor Gwyn Wigley Evans, party leader, has this to say: “Gwlad understands the need for farmers to produce food and keep the countryside a safe and thriving community, join us“.

I can extend that invitation to anyone fed up with lies from Uniparty politicians and insults from Globalist shills. You deserve better.

So check out the new Gwlad manifesto today. We don’t promise you the Earth because it’s not ours to give, or to take. But we do promise to fight for the earth and the soil that belongs to you, and to nobody else.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Bute Energy And Friends: Corrupting Wales

On By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Environmentalism, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour61 Comments

For a second week running, I’m focusing on Bute Energy. This time, looking at its links with the Labour party, and how, through that and by other means, Bute encourages corruption and spreads discord.

This will also serve to bring those who haven’t been following the Bute saga up to date.

◊

THE FLOODGATES OPEN!

I first became aware of Bute’s links to Labour when I was told that someone was visiting people close to a planned wind farm. This was (the now abandoned) Moelfre site inland of Colwyn Bay, a real outlier from Bute’s other projects.

This Bute representative was David James Taylor, Labour insider who’d been Spad to a number of high-profile figures; UK government minister Peter Hain and Wales first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones.

In 2016 Taylor stood to become the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner. After losing maybe he considered his career options. Or perhaps he was approached, for Labour was already helping wind farm developers.

We saw this when Anna McMorrin lobbied Powys councillors on behalf of Hendy wind farm in April 2017, just a month before she was elected Labour MP for Cardiff North.

Taylor formed three companies in October 2018: Moblake Wind Ventures Ltd (which became Moblake Ltd 11.11.2020); Moblake Energy Trading Ltd (folded 2020); and Moblake Associates Ltd (now being struck-off).

The timing is intriguing, because Taylor’s companies were formed a week before his friend and colleague, Lesley Griffiths, set the precedent of over-ruling a planning inspector to give Hendy windfarm planning consent. She did so using the relatively new Developments of National Significance (DNS) legislation.

DNS made it clear that Wales was free range for wind turbines; free of interference from locals, their council representatives, or even planning inspectors.

Taylor was rewarded by Bute with shares in Windward Enterprises Ltd (now Windward Energy Ltd), both in his own name and that of Moblake Associates Ltd. He was also a (non-designated) member of Grayling Capital LLP.

Money magically appeared in Moblake Ltd, which Taylor then paid to himself in ‘loans’ totalling over £600,000 that did not need to be repaid.

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There was an attempt to liquidate this company a couple of years ago, but the liquidator was removed last August. Since when there’s been no further news.

Taylor was useful to Bute because of his closeness to Lesley Griffiths, and his insider knowledge of the Labour party machine.

Which is why it’s suggested that Taylor’s personal payment came in shares and other ways; and that most if not all of the £600,000+ was really a donation from Bute to the Labour party.

◊

‘YOU SAY VISTRA, AND I SAY, ER . . . VISTRA‘?

Someone has contacted me arguing there are two companies called Vistra, and in last week’s post I conflated them. One is a big Texas energy company, the other is a provider of secretarial services.

To explain . . .

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) is funding Bute through CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd, owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd. All holdco shares owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure V SCSp, which has its address at 16 Rue Eugene Ruppert, L2453, Luxembourg. At the same address is ‘Vistra’.

Now I took this to mean the Texas energy firm, but my contact insists it’s the other one. He’s probably right. But in my defence:

Vistra Company Secretaries Ltd of Bristol (which you’ll read about in a minute) was, until April 2019, Jordan Company Secretaries Ltd. The Vistra name was adopted because it was taken over and joined many companies under the Vistra banner.

Vistra is now owned by Sweden’s EQT, an equity outfit big in green energy.

So there are two Vistra companies. But with both involved in ‘renewable energy’ projects, often the same projects, confusion was almost inevitable.

Especially when we see BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard behind both.

◊

THE GANG OF FOUR

Soon after landing in Wales, and perhaps in an attempt to establish Welsh credentials, Bute set up a Welsh Advisory Board. You can see the members in the image below.

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Left to right: Derek Vaughan, redundant MEP; Dr Debra Williams, businesswoman and academic; John ‘Cwmbetws’ Davies, man of many hats and big shot in the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society; John Uden, partner of Jenny Rathbone MS.

◊

THE NEATH PORT TALBOT-BRUSSELS-COPENHAGEN CONNECTION

Derek Vaughan was leader of Neath Port Talbot (NPT) council and would certainly know Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, the Port Talbot seat.

Vaughan was an MEP from 2009 to 2019, preceded by the late Glenys Kinnock. The wife of former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and mother to Stephen.

Stephen Kinnock MP is married to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Danish PM. She serves as a director of Danish wind turbine producer, Vestas, reputed to be the biggest in the world.

From Windpower Monthly of March 2024. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In 2020 Vestas took a 25% stake in Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. As you’ve just read, CIP is the conduit for funding the Bute projects.

Derek Vaughan’s political background and contacts explain him being chosen as the chairman of Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board. He was a ‘good fit’.

◊

THE ACADEMIC BUSINESSWOMAN

I can’t tell you much about Dr Debra Williams other than the fact that she was managing director of Confused.com. Now she’s taken a gig at Lampeter, which some might view as a step backwards.

I suppose ‘Top things to do in Lampeter’ is part of the Creative Writing course. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

That said, since Jane Davidson landed there after ‘leaving’ Corruption Bay, Lampeter has tried to re-invent itself as a centre for alternative living. And why not, there are enough ‘alternatives’ in the shacks, tepees, and OPDs thereabouts.

Even so, I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing about Dr Williams, unless she was viewed by Bute as their entry to what passes for the Welsh business community.

◊

GALILEO AND THE FAVOURED SON

A number of sources have told me that Bute has assiduously courted the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society (RWAS). Which makes sense, for the RWAS gives access to many of the landowners on whose property Bute would like to erect turbines and pylons.

And this explains Bute’s recruitment of John Davies, who from 2012 was RWAS chairman. As I read through his other appointments I recalled Harri Webb’s reference to, “the public men on the boards and panels“.

Put it all together and it made him very attractive to Bute.

I have been told that John Davies was instrumental in seeing Aled Rhys Jones appointed CEO of the RWAS. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with a man of John Davies’s standing promoting a protégé. But there may be more to it.

As you might have read in the link, Aled comes from, “the family’s hill farm near Cwrt-y-Cadno in North Carmarthenshire“. To be exact, Tyllwyd, which I’m told the family still owns, but rents out.

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The thing about this area is that it’s being targeted by other wind farm companies in addition to Bute. As I wrote last November, in ‘A Change Of Tack?‘

One of those companies is Galileo Green Energy UK, eyeing a site at Bryn Cadwgan. With another Welsh site planned for Mynydd Ty-talwyn.

The parent company, Galileo Green Energy, is headquartered in Zurich.

Curiously, when based in Bristol – at the Vistra address – Galileo was known as GGE Machynlleth Ltd. Now it’s using a Cardiff office and the name has changed to Galileo Empower Wales Ltd.

From what is now Galileo Empower Wales Ltd documents filed with Companies House when it was knowns as GCE Machynlleth Ltd.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

A quick shufty at the directors will tell you how Welsh it really is.

Anyway, I hear that Aled Rhys Jones, CEO of the RWAS, stands to gain financially from the Bryn Cadwgan wind farm. A map I’ve been sent shows the outline of the wind farm in red, with the Tyllwyd land edged in green.

You’ll see four turbines planned on Tyllwyd land. With access to the others perhaps over Tyllwyd land. All perfectly legal, but it don’t look good.

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The forested land is owned by Natural Resources Wales, which will mean mature trees felled to accommodate wind turbines, access roads, cable trenches, etc.

That’s protecting the environment, that is.

Correction: Just received some clarification: ‘I am informed: There are two machines on Tilhill managed land, but nearly all the others are on ——— — ——– (Ilchester Estate) plantation, with a few on Tyllwyd and other individual land owners.’

◊

THE MAN FROM GOD KNOWS WHERE

The fourth member of the quartet is John Uden, whose only qualification is being the partner of Senedd Member, Jenny Rathbone, who sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.

And so to understand why Bute recruited Uden we need to focus on Rathbone.

Rathbone was born in Liverpool and is a member of the Rathbone dynasty, once very influential in that city. The influence continues through Rathbones Wealth & Investment Management.

Jenny Rathbone and other family members are looked after from the investments made. This presumably accounts for the shares in her Register of interest.

An earlier declaration of Rathbone’s says that Uden was getting payment from Bute, but that’s absent from the latest Register. So is he working for free, or is payment being made in some other way?

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Interestingly, he set up John Uden Consulting Ltd in March 2020. A company that (apparently) has never turned a penny. Was he planning to go down the same route as Taylor, but backed off after I first mentioned Taylor and Moblake (August 2020) in Corruption in the wind 2, Labour snouts in the trough?

I shall conclude this section by dazzling you with yet another example of propinquity.

A fascinating connection revealed itself shortly after I put out the previous piece. Copenhagen Offshore Partners A/S has an office at 10 George Street, Edinburgh. In the same building we find Rathbone Investment Management (£60bn assets).

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It’s probably just another of the coincidences that plague the Bute saga.

◊

SLICING THE PENSION POT TURKEY

As an example of how Wales is ripped off by the pushers and pimps of the ‘renewable energy’ industry, the Wales Pension Partnership investment takes some beating.

The Welsh local government pension pot (WPP) is investing at least £68m in Bute Energy. Reading the article on the WPP website you might think this money is going directly from the pension fund to Bute. For no intermediaries are mentioned.

Yet the WPP was ‘advised’ by law firm Burges Salmon of Bristol. Then this article in renews.biz gives more names: ‘WPP has been advised by independent clean energy asset manager Capital Dynamics and by the law firms TLT and Burges Salmon’.

That is, Capital Dynamics of London, Birmingham and various cities around the world. Top man is Thomas Kubr, who can be found at the Zug office, south of Zurich.

The registration with Companies House tells that Capital Dynamics has 49 outstanding charges, and is heavily indebted to if not controlled by State Street.

TLT is another Bristol law firm. (It’s s shame we don’t have lawyers in Wales.)

◊

QUI BONO?

After all is said and done, do we really know who owns the wind farms in Wales? For as I suggested in last week’s piece, Bute Energy, run by Oliver James Millican, is an offshoot of the property and investment company Parabola, run by his father, Peter John Millican.

Also, in last week’s piece (and elsewhere in recent years) I mentioned Njord Energy Ltd and Steven John Radford, the man behind Hendy wind farm, where we earlier met lobbyist – now Labour MP – Anna McMorrin.

Another of Radford’s projects, not far away, was Bryn Blaen. The ownership history is instructive. It starts with Radford leaving Bryn Blaen Wind Farm Ltd in February 2020.

Bryn Blaen is now said to be owned by Elm Wind Holdings Ltd. Which leads back to Elm Trading Ltd, where the latest accounts say:

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But does this apparently leaderless outfit have any connection with a foreign entity of the same name registered on the Isle of Man?

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Or is this just another coincidence?

If so, then maybe we should focus on the labyrinth of companies linked with Elm Trading at the London address. Companies like Time Nominees Ltd, which holds all the Elm Trading shares and is controlled by Alpha Real Property Investment Advisers LLP. Which is owned by Philip Sidney Gower of Guernsey.

Who’s Gower? Well, he’s described here as a ‘serial entrepreneur’.

The point I’m making is that when it comes time to dismantle, recycle, or bury, the clapped-out wind turbines on Bryn Siencyn, and restore the site to its earlier condition, the ‘Welsh Government’, the local council, and Natural Resources Wales, will be met with, ‘Nothing to do with us, squire, we sold it to a company on an island somewhere‘.

And we’ll have to pay for dozens of Bryn Siencyns.

◊

CONCLUSION

But the immediate danger remains the corruption engendered by wind farm ‘developers’.

Through the influence they wield inside ‘Welsh’ Labour, where corruption is endemic. As we’ve been so recently reminded by the new first minister. Now the poison has spread to Plaid Cymru, exposed to the world when Carmen Smith, Bute lobbyist, was made a peer.

Beyond politics these ‘developers’ cause resentment within the farming industry by making some farmers offers they can’t refuse – a position into which many have been manoeuvred by the ‘Welsh Government’s war on livestock farming.

And finally, there’s worry and division inflicted upon communities across Wales.

∼

It really pisses me off to see the country I love reduced to third world level; where a few chiefs can be bribed so the rest of us can be exploited, our country wrecked.

We’re in this mess because leftists believe they’re fighting the evils of capitalism by buying into the climate scam dreamed up to further the ambitions of the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations on Earth.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill

On By JacIn Corruption, Corruption Bay, Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour39 Comments

This is my submission to the Reform Bill Committee regarding Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill. The attempt to hijack ‘Senedd reform’ with a closed list system that even hopes to keep candidates’ names from us.

Stripped of the self-serving bullshit it’s a crude attempt by the Labour party to guarantee itself permanent rule. With full support from Plaid Cymru.

I urge everyone to make a submission to SeneddReform@senedd.wales.

◊

EXPERT PANEL

I shall start with the appointment of the Expert Panel in February 2017. Set up to look into reforming and enlarging the (then) Assembly.

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The group reported in November 2017. Here is a link to their report. On page 29, the report recommended three electoral systems. The favoured one being the Single Transferable Vote.

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On page 128 of the report we read the ‘closed list proportional representation’ system was rejected. It’s ‘weakness’ spelled out as, “No choice for voters between individual candidates. No accountability for individual Members directly to voters.”

Yet this is the system now being proposed.

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COMMITTEE ON SENEDD ELECTORAL REFORM

This group was set up in January 2020, and comprised Huw Irranca-Davies MS, Dawn Bowden MS, and Dai Lloyd MS. The first two representing the Labour party, the third Plaid Cymru.

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Here’s the Committee’s Report from September 2020, and here’s a summary of its recommendations. Note that it agrees with the Expert Panel in recommending the Single Transferable Vote.

Though it also makes a reference to “diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”, without making it clear what these ‘characteristics’ might be.

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SPECIAL PURPOSE COMMITTEE ON SENEDD REFORM

Now we move on to October 2021 and a new group, with Huw Irranca-Davies MS providing continuity.

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Their report, ‘Reforming our Senedd: A stronger voice for the people of Wales’ was published on 30 May 2022. Here’s a link to that report.

The Expert Panel’s favoured system of the Single Transferable Vote, endorsed by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, was rejected by this latest group because it:

. . . was an unfamiliar system in Wales and that the method of translating votes into seats would be seen as complex and difficult to explain.

Which means that electorates around the world manage to cope with STV, but it seems Welsh voters are uniquely stupid!

The reasoning is so absurd, and insulting, that it suggests something else was going on beneath the surface. With hindsight, we know this to be true.

After considering the three options of the Open List, the Flexible List, and the Closed List, the Special Purpose Committee recommended the least representational of the three.

And when comparing the respective merits of the d’Hondt and Sainte-Laguë divisor systems the committee opted for d’Hondt, which is, again, the less representational.

Now we come to the most remarkable and worrying thing I encountered in all 92 pages. Scroll to page 38, and there you’ll see . . .

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“We would anticipate . . . some of the names . . . of candidates will appear . . . “.

There was clearly an attempt from somewhere, by someone, to promote the idea of giving only the party name, and not naming the candidates!

Which means that from the Single Transferable Vote system recommended by the Expert Panel what is now being offered is 16 huge and impersonal constituencies*, and a closed list system using the less representational d’Hondt system. Even an attempt to have anonymised lists.

*The Boundary Commission has recommended that Wales in future has 32, not the current 40, seats for Westminster elections. The proposals being discussed ‘pair’ these 32 constituencies to give us 16 ‘super’ constituencies, each electing 6 Members by the closed list system.

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REFORM BILL COMMITTEE

This group was established in July 2023. Its role was to go through the Bill that resulted from the report of The Special Purpose Committee on Electoral Reform. Making recommendations where it felt the need.

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The Reform Bill Committee’s report was published in January, and debated in the Senedd 30 January (No 8).

In his Introduction, the chair, Labour’s David Rees MS, makes clear that he is unhappy with the proposed closed list system.

“We have not reached consensus on all matters . . . But, we are unanimous in our concerns about the proposed closed list electoral system . . . We believe the link between voters and the Members who represent them is paramount.

We therefore urge all political parties in the Senedd to work together to ensure the electoral system in the Bill provides greater voter choice and improved accountability for future Members to their electorates.”

The closed list system was by now drawing fire from many quarters, and from outside of Wales. One notable contribution was from former Labour Home Secretary Lord David Blunkett, in a letter to the Western Mail.

I naturally wondered what the report had to say about ballot papers.

On page 105 the ‘Member in charge’, Mick Antoniw MS, defends the recommendations of the Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform.

When asked by David Rees (page 111) why the Bill being presented to the Senedd does not state categorically that candidates’ names will appear on the ballot paper, Antoniw responds that it is being dealt with in “secondary legislation”.

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On page 129 David Rees MS makes it clear that he believes candidates’ names on ballot papers should be stipulated in the Bill itself, not left to secondary legislation.

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A search of the published Bill for ‘ballot paper’ will draw a blank.

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CONCLUSION

What may have started out as a genuine attempt to ‘improve democracy’, and by doing that make Wales a better place to live and work, has been subverted by the Labour party, willingly assisted by Plaid Cymru.

To hide the true nature and purpose of the exercise it must be dressed up in self-serving distractions such as ‘gender equality’, but with 26 out of 60 AMs being women we almost have gender equality now, without any special legislation.

Let me explain what I believe is behind this emphasis on ‘women’. For on the Senedd website, under ‘Information about the Bill’, we read: “Require all candidates on a party’s list to state either whether they are, or are not, a woman”.

I think we’re now in the realm of self-identification, and are no longer talking about biological women. I suggest this because the Welsh Government is the largest single funder to the trans activist group, Stonewall, and Labour and Plaid Senedd Members have made their positions quite clear.

Last year Dawn Bowden MS and colleagues insisted we allow biological males to play rugby with and against women and girls – if they identify as women.

You’ll recall that she sat on the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform which talked of “diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”.

And this goes some way to explaining the attempt to keep candidates’ names off the ballot paper. Because men pretending to be women will not be elected. Unless they can stand anonymously.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab (And try not to laugh!)

I suspect that another reason for trying to keep candidates’ names off the ballot paper is to facilitate the election of lobbyists, and members of the pressure groups that now seem to direct both Labour and Plaid Cymru.

Again, these would be unlikely to get elected if voters saw their names on the ballot paper and could check on their backgrounds and associations.

Seeing as so many of these ‘campaigners’ are alien to and ignorant of our country, if elected they would simply push their agendas. No matter how damaging those were to the interests of Wales.

We already see it, with Stonewall, but also with 20mph, with the constant attacks on our farmers, and in a host of other ways; serving narrow agendas, but not Wales.

◊

RECOMMENDATION

As it stands, I consider the Bill to be the most dangerous and damaging piece of legislation in 25 years of devolution. A naked power grab.

For in addition to the issues already dealt with, the Bill also makes it more difficult for smaller parties and independent candidates to be elected. This is no accident.

It would have been bad enough if we’d arrived at this point through a mistake, or even incompetence, but I believe we are where we are because this was always the destination.

The Expert Panel was pure window-dressing. It’s hoped we’ll believe that what’s now being offered is merely a ‘tweaking’ of the Panel’s recommendations.

This deception has presented us with a Bill that has nothing to recommend it, and there is nothing of it worth salvaging. It is a step backwards; an affront to common sense, and a threat to democracy.

It must be scrapped.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Labour And Plaid Cymru Plot To Destroy Welsh Democracy

On By JacIn Corruption, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour59 Comments

In this post we’ll look at the proposed Senedd ‘reforms’, focusing on the closed list system, the method of counting the votes, the design of the ballot paper, and then I’ll try to explain it all.

There have been calls for many years for a bigger Senedd so that it can give better ‘scrutiny’. That may have been the original intention, but I believe other considerations came into play. And these account for the deviations from the original proposals made by the Expert Panel in 2017.

At present, we have 60 Senedd Members. One from each of our 40 Westminster constituencies, elected by first past the post; the other 20 from 5 regions, each returning four Members, these elected by the less than perfect d’Hondt system. Explained here by Labour MS Mike Hedges.

Wales’s representation at Westminster is being reduced to 32 MPs. Those controlling Senedd reform have decided to ‘pair’ these seats to give 16 huge and unwieldy constituencies each of which will elect 6 Members by the d’Hondt method.

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1/ THE EXPERT PANEL

The process that brought us to this point seems to have begun with the appointment in February 2017 of an Expert Panel (EP) to look into expanding the (then) Assembly.

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This group reported in November 2017. And among other things, suggested three possible electoral systems (p 129). These were:

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The system favoured by the Panel was the Single Transferable Vote.

You’ll perhaps note, by it’s absence, any mention of the closed list system that has been decided upon, and is now being widely criticised.

Or rather, the closed list was mentioned, and rejected (p 128).

This EP report was studied by our esteemed tribunes, its recommendations initially accepted, before being cast aside. Not because it wasn’t a fine piece of academic work, but because, as time went on, it could not deliver changed priorities.

Making the whole EP exercise a waste of time. Unless the hope was that the public would think what politicians subsequently came up with had the imprimatur of those experts.

◊

2/ COMMITTEE ON SENEDD ELECTORAL REFORM

The next step was the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, which first met in January 2020. The Committee was dissolved following a debate on its report on Wednesday 7 October 2020.

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Here’s the Committee’s Report from September 2020, and here’s a summary of its recommendations. Note that it agrees with the Expert Panel in recommending the Single Transferable Vote.

Though it also makes a reference to “diversity quotas for protected characteristics other than gender”. I think we can guess where that’s heading.

◊

3/ SPECIAL PURPOSE COMMITTEE ON SENEDD REFORM

Now we move on to October 2021, when a fresh Committee was established to take things forward, with Huw Irranca-Davies providing continuity.

Here are all the members. From what I can see, the only Conservative, Darren Millar, soon distanced himself. I guess he could see the direction of travel.

The remit and the committee. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform published its report ‘Reforming our Senedd: A stronger voice for the people of Wales’ on 30 May 2022. Here’s a link to that report. Let’s pick out a few choice bits.

In the ‘Recommendation’ (pages 9-12) two that caught my eye were . . .

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In 14 we read that all political parties are to be ‘encouraged’ to publish “a diversity and inclusion strategy”. More ‘diversity’!

I found 17 remarkable in that it says those framing these proposals fear being referred to the Supreme Court. Suggesting that what they’re proposing may be unlawful.

Moving on to ‘Electoral System’, on page 26, where we read, solemnly inscribed: “Electoral systems are one of the fundamental building blocks of democracy”.

Too bloody right, Comrade! Let’s all remember that.

The Expert Panel’s favoured system of the Single Transferable Vote, endorsed by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform, was rejected by Huw Irranca-Davies and his new playmates because it, ” . . . was an unfamiliar system in Wales and that the method of translating votes into seats would be seen as complex and difficult to explain”.

In other words, electorates around the world may have got used to STV, but Welsh voters are uniquely stupid.

So why not elect three Members from each of the 32 new constituencies in the same way we elect councillors? It’s a system we twp Taffs are familiar with.

Jane Dodds (Liberal Democrat) favoured STV, so did Siân Gwenllian (Plaid Cymru), but, “in the spirit of achieving the supermajority required to deliver Senedd reform” Siân Gwenllian fell into line.

Not a whimper of dissent was heard from Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru).

So the Committee rejected the Single Transferable Vote, also the other two options  recommended by the Expert Panel. Instead, and for no obvious reason, went for what it calls, “the closed proportional list” system.

Certainly, the current method for electing our regional list MSs is a closed list, but does any country elect all its politicians by the closed list system?

When it comes to working out who gets to go to Corruption Bay the EP looked at two methods. The d’Hondt and Saint-Lagué divisor systems. The latter gives a more proportional outcome, and also gives more of a chance to smaller parties and independents.

Irranca-Davies and his friends of course plumped for the d’Hondt method.

Now we come to the most remarkable and worrying thing I encountered in all 92 pages. Scroll to page 38, and there you’ll see under ‘Ballot Papers’ . . .

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“We would anticipate . . . some of the names . . . of candidates will appear . . . “.

ALL candidates’ names on the ballot paper should be a ‘given’. That it’s even being discussed strengthens my suspicions of the true motives behind this exercise.

So, let’s recap . . .

This Committee not only rejected the voting system recommended by the Expert Panel and accepted by the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform in favour of the closed list, it also opted for the less proportional system for allocating seats, and finally, it even suggested not naming candidates.

How the hell does this improve democracy in Wales?

Moving on . . .

◊

4/ REFORM BILL COMMITTEE

A Reform Bill Committee was established 12 July 2023. In the panel below you can see the Committee’s remit and its members.

The role of this group was to go through the Bill that resulted from the report of The Special Purpose Committee on Electoral Reform. Making Recommendations where it felt the need.

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The Reform Bill Committee’s report was published last month, and debated in the Senedd 30 January (No 8).

The motion: ‘To propose that Senedd Cymru in accordance with Standing Order 26.11: Agrees to the general principles of the Senedd Cymru (Members and Elections) Bill.’ was passed by 39 votes to 14. All Conservatives voted against.

It’s a weighty tome, 224 pages, and you can read it if you’re so minded. But I’ll focus on the issues I’ve already discussed, and see what, if anything, has changed.

In his Introduction, the chair, Labour’s David Rees MS, has this to say:

We have not reached consensus on all matters . . . But, we are unanimous in our concerns about the proposed closed list electoral system . . . We believe the link between voters and the Members who represent them is paramount.

We therefore urge all political parties in the Senedd to work together to ensure the electoral system in the Bill provides greater voter choice and improved accountability for future Members to their electorates.

He’s clearly not happy with the closed list. Neither is former Labour minister Lord David Blunkett. But as things stand, we’re stuck with it.

Next, I went to check on the design of the ballot paper, which Huw Irranca-Davies’s Committee had suggested need not carry the names of the candidates.

On page 105 I found what you see below. The ‘Member in charge’ is Mick Antoniw MS, Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution, who defends the recommendations of Huw Irranca-Davies’s group.

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If the closed list is used in 2026 then it’s unlikely it will ever be changed, because those who’ve benefitted from it, and then control the Senedd, will not vote to change it.

On page 111 Antoniw is pressed as to why the Bill being presented to the Senedd does not state categorically that candidates’ names will appear on the ballot paper. He gives the mealy-mouthed reply that it didn’t need to be set out in the Bill, but the matter will be addressed in “secondary legislation“.

On page 129 David Rees makes it clear that he believes candidates’ names on ballot papers should be stipulated in the Bill itself, not left to secondary legislation . . . which may never happen:

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In fact, a search of the published Bill for ‘ballot paper’ draws a blank.

I cannot believe that we have got this far in the passage of a ‘reform’ Bill that won’t promise candidates’ names on ballot papers.

But then, Antoniw is Zelensky’s man in Corruption Bay. And Zelensky’s not a big fan of democracy; he’s banned opposition parties and closed churches. But we’re still expected to believe that he’s fighting the Ivans in defence of democracy.

◊

MAKING SENSE OF IT

When this process started, back in early 2017, with the appointment of the Expert Panel, there may have been a genuine intention to ‘improve democracy in Wales’.

Somewhere along the way the focus changed, it became more politicised, more partisan, and less democratic. I believe we can pinpoint when this happened. And also explain it.

It happened some time between the Committee on Senedd Electoral Reform reporting in September 2020 and the Special Purpose Committee on Senedd Reform publishing its report 30 May 2022. A year and a half in the time of Covid.

And here’s why it happened . . .

There’s a phenomenon I’ve reported on more than once and why, last June, I published, Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups.

Pressure groups and organisations, some global, others organised on a UK-wide basis with a Welsh branch, but all pushing the Globalist holy trinity designed to destabilise and weaken the West:

  1. A climate-nature ‘crisis’ that demands a ruinous drive to net zero
  2. Constantly reminding White people how evil and privileged we are
  3. 101 genders that means men can have babies by ‘chicks with dicks’

This also explains calls to constantly lower the voting age. For children who’ve come through a school system influenced by Stonewall and other groups may be unable to read and write but they’re more likely to be suckered by a charlatan pushing the Globalist agenda.

The so-called ‘Welsh Government’ is now controlled by Agenda-loyal pressure groups. Having just mentioned Stonewall, you can see from this table that the ‘Welsh Government’, whether directly or through bodies it controls, is now that group’s largest single UK funder.

Another worrying feature that I’ve observed recently is the ‘Welsh Government’ taking over various organisations that should be independent. This is invariably achieved through funding, in the form of loans or grants, which is then used to justify ‘appointees’.

We’ve seen it across the board, from the Welsh Rugby Union and the Football Association of Wales to Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. I wrote about this dangerous trend, also last June, in ‘Taking Control, Of Everything‘.

What we see happening with the subverting of the Senedd reform process is a synthesis between the growing power of pressure groups and the increasing control freakery of a Labour party wholly committed to the Globalist agenda.

It will give Labour bosses control over the electoral system, and Senedd seats for pressure group parasitoids. Making the Senedd less representative because it will have more Members for whom the interests of Wales will be largely irrelevant.

It will also give the Senedd a near-permanent left / far left majority.

The only way to achieve a Senedd that works solely in the the interests of Labour and its rural variant (Plaid Cymru) is through a closed and anonymised list system.

Such a system also makes Plaid Cymru more of a hostage than a partner.

◊

CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATION

Until I started flicking through the various reports and other documentation I hadn’t fully appreciated how corrupted and dangerous the ‘reform’ plan had become.

Ask yourself – would anyone believe that in a European democracy in 2024 politicians could seriously propose closed list elections that are also anonymised?

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Why recruit an Expert Panel and then reject all three of its proposals for organising elections? And then, after comparing the d’Hondt and Saint-Lagué divisor systems, why choose the one that’s less proportional?

The answer is obvious, and so I repeat – these ‘reforms’ are not to make Wales more democratic, or provide ‘greater scrutiny’. They’re intended to give the leftist political class total control through an electoral system that can almost ignore the wishes of the people.

It’s a very obvious power grab. 

Power to serve The Agenda, that will demand the end of farming; 10mph (or no traffic at all to allow for daily Pride parades); 15-minute ghettoes; butchering confused 12-year-olds on the NHS; re-writing history; more foreign-owned wind farms; ‘inclusivity’ that will exclude most Welsh people, etc., etc.

While away from the noise of articulated idiocies and the din of clashing egos, out ‘there’, in the real Wales, people die in ambulances outside hospitals, and kids go hungry.

What has been stitched up by Labour and Plaid Cymru is so obviously anti-democratic, bordering on the dangerous, that it must be fought all the way.

To the Supreme Court, if necessary.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The State Of Wales

On By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Devolution, Far Left, Globalism, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, World Economic Forum, Yes Cymru37 Comments

I’m sorry I haven’t put out anything for a few weeks, but there’s just been too much to write about, and my lack of self-discipline has resulted in me being too easily distracted, too often.

So here goes, again. With a story that in my opinion is not being properly interpreted. What you’re about to read is my explanation for the adoption of the name Bannau Brycheiniog by the national park formerly known as the Brecon Beacons.

♦

BANNAU BRYCHEINIOG

Unless you’ve been trapped underground, cast away on a desert island, or living in Treherbert, you’ll know that the Brecon Beacons National Park recently dropped the English version of its name to be known exclusively as Bannau Brycheiniog.

And the rebranding produced an outpouring of balderdash such as this old blogger has rarely seen.

Though few reached the depth of silliness plumbed by the Park’s chief executive, Catherine Mealing-Jones. The traditional flaming brazier logo had been discarded because it didn’t fit with these times of global warming, she wailed, as she zipped up her Eskimo Nell™ anorak to avoid the icy April blasts.

Here’s the headline from The Times.

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But the ‘climate crisis’ is a global fear campaign engendered by those, in the UN and the World Economic Forum, wishing to control your behaviour.

They’ve influenced governments around the world to brainwash millions of kids. That we then have so many worried or even unhinged youngsters is used as proof of the ‘climate crisis’, when in reality it’s proof of brainwashing.

In the Bannau debate the climate hysteria angle was bad enough, but certain sections of the English media seemed to view the changes as Woke. Here’s the headline from the Telegraph.

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Now you know me, nobody’s more alert to the lunacies of Wokeness than old Jac, but I didn’t quite see it that way. Worse, for some English writers, Wokeness seemed to be code for anti-Englishness.

The Daily Mail viewed with horror the prospect of Swansea ‘becoming’ Abertawe, and Aberdovey changing to the unrecognisable Aberdyfi.

Yet the name change, the rebranding, and the bollocks about climate change, was all a distraction from the real story. So pay attention!

Let’s begin by saying that in my view there’s nothing wrong with the name change. ‘Beacons’ may have been a misnomer anyway. Were there ever warning beacons lit there? If so, who were they warning? And who were they warning against?

Look out! A charabanc from Dowlais is heading up the A470!

And as a regular contact pointed out, few people will use the new name anyway. Partly because, unlike the recent name change of ‘Snowdonia’ to ‘Eryri’, it’s too long, and fewer people speak Welsh in Bannau Brycheiniog than in Eryri.

Though to end this section on a lighter note, our ‘Welsh’ TV newsreaders should provide hours of mirth with their mangled pronunciations of Bannau Brycheiniog.

◊

THE TAKEOVER

For a few years I’ve been writing about the ‘interesting’ people turning up in south Powys, an area almost co-terminus with Bannau Brycheiniog.

There’s a temptation to just dismiss them as good-lifers, but I believe there’s more to it than that. Some are on a mission.

That latter interpretation certainly applies to those involved at Black Mountains College (BMC). An institution founded by people who had previously worked for George Soros, a man viewed by some as a philanthropist, and by others – including me – as someone on a mission to undermine Western society.

Black Mountains College is a member of Soros’s Open Society University Network.

The video below, produced by BMC, makes it clear that the college seeks to enrol those who have already been frightened witless over climate change. Attracting scared kids to Coleg Soros with the promise that they can, “re-engineer the future”.

The video also tells us: “our current predicament is man-made”. And indeed it is.

 

I believe that Black Mountains College now acts as a ‘hub’ or information exchange for climate alarmists, and this role is encouraged – and funded – by Corruption Bay. Which uses the same illusory threat as justification for imposing 20mph speed limits, waging war on farmers, and generally making us poorer, and our lives more miserable.

The hub may be needed because there’s quite a lot happening in the area.

For a start, let’s remember that Gilestone farm is just a few miles from Coleg Soros. Whatever was planned for Gilestone before the fan was overwhelmed with excrement, I guarantee it would have been justified on ‘environmental’ grounds.

Then, earlier this year, the ‘Welsh Government’ made a number of appointments to the (then) Brecon Beacons National Park Authority. This was done in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘access’, for it seems Persons of Colour and homosexuals had previously been barred from entering our national parks.

Who knew?

Nonsense of course. It was done to give the ‘Welsh Government’ greater control over the policies and direction of the national park.

The last Conservative member of the park authority, Iain McIntosh, has now resigned. Which leaves a national park authority, with control over planning and other matters, and in a constituency represented in London by a Tory MP, and in Cardiff by a Tory MS, controlled by the Labour party.

But this is how Labour has always operated in Wales. And we see it again with yet another new body ‘tacking climate change’.

The latest is the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. Below is a panel from the ‘About’ tab. It’s funny. I mean, just look at who’s involved.

Topping the bill is former Labour Assembly Member and Minister for Saving Welsh Polar Bears Jane Davidson. She it was who gave Wales One Planet Developments. Hoping to realise her vision of the Welsh countryside repopulated with frightfully nice English smallholders and OPD dwellers.

Little room for the Welsh in that vision. And there’s little Welsh presence in the group headed by La Davidson.

What we do see is the Green Heath Robinsons at the Centre for Alternative Technology, who’ve received tens of millions of public funding. Our non-Welsh universities are of course represented. As is Coleg Soros, in the form of Art Garfunkel lookalike Ben Rawlence.

Returning to the bigger picture, we can’t ignore Y Bannau, the management plan for the national park. (Full version here.)

(How many such bodies and publications does one small country need!)

It’s a strange document. A mixture of platitudes, anguished concerns for the future, and the kind of ‘Welshness’ John Ford gave us with his adaptation of How Green Was My Valley.

For example, there are regular appearances by an imaginary family named Brychan. They also have impeccably Welsh forenames – Ioan, Mair, Dafydd – in an area becoming less and less Welsh through the activities of the kind of people you’re reading about.

There’s even a Brychan family tree (page 127)! It’s truly weird. Almost unsettling.

Take the ‘Letter from Sian (sic) Brychan to her daughter Megan’, February 20th 2042 (page 75). I suppose some reading this will be reassured to think that we’ll still be writing letters in 2042. Or at least the Brychans will.

In fact, they’re writing to each other all the bloody time. Don’t they talk?

By a painful irony the Brychans are described as, “seventh generation farmers here in the Bannau Brycheiniog” . . . which makes them the very people Green zealots want to remove from the area.

Aside from the Brychans a number of old favourites appear in Y Bannau. Coleg Soros, again; the greenwashers at Stump up for Trees; the secretive Beacons Water Group; and many more favourites that have appeared on this blog.

Perhaps all you really need to know about this management plan is that the foreword comes from Julie James, Minister for Climate Change, and the document first saw the light of day in Corruption Bay, not Brecon.

This is the ‘Welsh Government’s plan for Y Bannau. And if they and their cronies can get away with it, they’ll try it on elsewhere.

There must now be hundreds of Labour-connected enviro-shysters whizzing around Wales – in cars we pay for – attending meetings where they earnestly discuss how to cut emissions and save the planet.

A planet in no danger whatsoever.

UPDATE 03.05.2023: It should go without saying that the new Future Generations Commissioner was at the launch of Y Bannau.

◊

WHO’S A LUCKY BOY, THEN!

The most recent development in the Beacons / Bannau saga came last Friday with a fascinating article in the MailOnline.

Which tells that the genius behind the re-branding was one Jordan Thorne, who is 34 and has a company called Creo, described by the Mail as “a Cardiff-based marketing agency which has in recent years won a series of lucrative public sector contracts”. 

Including of course the Beacons to Bannau gig.

So, what can we learn about Thorne and Creo?

Starting with Creo, there seem to be three companies of that name. They are: Creo Digital Ltd; Creo Interactive Ltd; and Creo Group Holdings Ltd. Here’s the Creo website.

Where we can read Jordan Thorne telling us how he sees himself.

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I get a wee bit queasy when I hear anyone say they’re ‘trapped’ in the wrong body because it puts me in mind of weirdos and perverts who pretend they can’t tell men from women.

But back to more wholesome thoughts.

Creo was acquired, in a management buy-out, just over a year ago, when Thorne and a couple of others bought out founder Richard Ward. Though Ward retains a 25% share.

As you’ve just read, the buy-out was funded by the Development Bank of Wales (DBW). Which is owned by the ‘Welsh Government’. Here’s a link to more details of that act of generosity. Just click on ‘View PDF’ for the details.

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But it wasn’t the first time DBW has looked kindly on Creo, for there was an earlier example in December 2018. (Ditto.)

Let’s just flick through the accounts for the Creo companies, see if anything catches Jac’s jaundiced eye. (Though, actually, they’re skeletal ‘unaudited financial statements’.)

Creo Digital shows total assets of £300,172 but has a net deficit of -£55,253.

Creo Interactive Ltd reveals total assets of £522,250 (previous year £365,043); reducing to net assets of £466,437.

Creo Group Holdings Ltd shows total assets of £375,100, made up of fixed assets of £375,000. Taking out liabilities leaves a net figure of -£4,529.

Control over Creo Interactive is exercised by Creo Digital; and Creo Digital is, predictably, controlled by the holding company. Where the 100 shares are split equally between Ward, Coakley, Thorne and Shaw.

Maybe the fixed asset is the Creo premises in the old St Cadoc’s church at 76 Wells Street, Cardiff. Naturally, I wondered who owned it, so I shuffled over to the Land Registry website.

The freehold title document shows four owners. Two are Ward and Coakley, from the image above. A third is Personal Pension Trustees Ltd. The fourth is Andrew Paul Ashton, who was formerly a director of Creo Interactive Ltd.

Turning to the leasehold document we see the two leaseholders named as “David McLeod Lea and others” and Creo Interactive Ltd.

Lea’s another ‘creative’, who shared the old church premises for a while. He was involved with company Still Works Ltd that went bust a few years back owing Development Bank of Wales money.

I’m a ‘creative’, do you think I could get a DBW loan?

On a more serious note, seeing as it’s wholly owned by the ‘Welsh Government’, is there genuine scrutiny or oversight of the DBW? And while I’m not suggesting that Labour supporters are favoured by the DBW with its loans policy, I can understand why some might think that.

∼

The MailOnline went big on Thorne’s politics, without properly understanding them. Though the boy has said some nasty things. As the headline put it:

Corbyn-loving Twitter troll and Welsh separatist whose vile posts tell Margaret Thatcher to ‘burn in hell’ and call Conservative ministers ‘Tory scum’

Why are modern Leftists so thoroughly unpleasant? So vindictive? So personal? The kindest thing one can say is that it’s infantile. For let’s remember that Thorne is too young to even remember Margaret Thatcher.

Clearly, he’s far left, and was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Then, like a number of other Corbynistas, he turned to Yes Cymru. Though not because he cares about Wales but because he sees Welsh independence as a vehicle for his socialism.

Jordan Thorne wants a Welsh socialist republic. Just like the other Corbyn entryists who nearly wrecked Yes Cymru a couple of years back. (I wrote about it extensively.)

I must admit that I’d never heard of Jordan Thorne. Yet it seems Yes Cymru values him highly enough to have put out a tweet in his defence on Saturday.

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I believe that leaping to his defence can be put down to Thorne being a socialist, and the attack coming from a ‘Tory’ source.

Yes Cymru then tried to reassure us that it is neither left nor right, with this tweet yesterday morning. But just a few hours before, had put out the tweet below.

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What the hell has Welsh independence got to do with illegal immigrants crossing from France to England? The answer should be – Nothing.

But what the tweet above reveals is that whoever wrote it wants an independent Wales with open borders. A socialist Wales. A Wales following the Globalist agenda.

The stances taken by the loudest elements in Yes Cymru; on immigration, gender ID, climate hysteria, ‘White supremacy’, and all the other Woke nonsense only serves to alienate many in a socially conservative country, making independence less likely.

◊

CONCLUSION

Jordan Thorne and Creo got the rebranding contract due to Labour party connections. Thorne joining Yes Cymru may be part of Labour’s infiltration of that organisation.

For there have been other attempts, such as the absurd ‘Labour for an Independent Wales‘ (linked with, ‘DUP for a 32-County Republic’). Plus individual Corbynistas and Momentum members have been identified on this blog and elsewhere.

And let’s not forget that Labour is a control-freak party that wants to run just about every organisation in the country. Labour will often use the Welsh language to placate the easily duped, and to disguise its true intentions.

The name change was the dead cat thrown on the table to distract the media and those who rely on the media to do their thinking for them. It’s really about the takeover of Bannau Brycheiniog by a political party with no democratic mandate.

Done so that it can implement the Globalists’ Net Zero lunacies, and in so doing, ‘re-model’ the landscape, the economy, even the demographics of the area.

Having succeeded in south Powys Labour can now impose its will – and its supporters – on other areas that do not vote Labour. It must be done this way because . . .

Despite its dominant role Labour is a minority party. Winning the votes of less than 20% of the electorate in 2021. This is another reason why the party must rely on corruption and cronyism to exert control. With many of the cronies imported.

In practical terms this insidious spread of Labour influence, this crony shadow state, means that even if Labour was to lose the next Senedd elections in 2026 (unlikely given the rigged ‘party list’ system it wants to introduce) it could carry on running Wales – for it would take years to dismantle the system Labour had created.

Clearly, Wales is not a democracy. Wales is run as a one-party state. Shame on Plaid Cymru for lending this corrupt system a veneer of credibility with its support.

I for one would shed no tears if Westminster chose to restore some semblance of democracy to Wales.

♦ end ♦

 

Cydweli: Where’s The Money Gone?

On By JacIn Cardiff Bay, Corruption, EU Funding, Hippies, Plaid Cymru, Public Funding, Third Sector, Tourism, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media43 Comments

The so-called ‘Welsh Government’s irresponsibility with money is legendary. They speak of  little else in the bazaars of Samarkand, while the elders of Amazonian villages tut tut at the very mention.

In addition, hundreds of millions of pounds are showered every year on magic bean salesmen (and saleswomen), many of whom are from outside of Wales but can sniff easy money.

♦

BLACK CAT COUNTRY

That heading’s a reference to Cydweli (Kidwelly). It’s explained here . . . sort of. Though I loved the reference to the “zealous Welsh” attacking the Norman castle and the town full of alien settlers.

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If the town was destroyed and the inhabitants killed then describing our ancestors as ‘zealous’ seems a little inadequate. Even trivialising. Though I’m not criticising our forbears, for all nations have the right to respond to invasion and the threat of becoming strangers in their own country.

Some of you will remember that I’ve written about Cydweli before, a little town west of Llanelli, just up the road from Porth Tywyn, where I’ve often sojourned.

In fact, this piece is a follow-up to something I wrote back in January last year. Here’s a link to that earlier post, ‘Tourism or Survival: Wales Must Choose‘, scroll down to the section, ‘Tourism Making Life Difficult for Locals’.

Last year I looked at attempts to re-vitalise the local economy through tourism, which of course brought the threat of the usual problems – holiday homes, few worthwhile jobs, the area attracting retirees and good-lifers, etc.

That attempt was called the Black Cat Tourism Strategy, and in the summer of 2021 we learnt that it had secured £270,000, “to implement a two-year strategy aimed at growing the visitor economy in Kidwelly and Mynydd-y-garreg” (a village to the north east of the town).

The money came from the Coastal Communities Fund, a UK project linked to the Crown Estate; administered in Wales by the ‘Welsh Government’ through the Big Lottery Fund.

And things seemed to begin quite promisingly.

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The grant was awarded to a partnership of the town council and the ‘Hub’, run by Kidwelly Community Hub CIC. (A Community Interest Company.)

To judge by its Facebook page, the Hub has come to the end of the line. Confirmed, it would seem, by this notice from the town council.

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Though I was amused by the fact that most of the comments to the Hub’s valedictory FB post last October were of the, “When can I have my – – – – back?” type, rather than, “We’ll miss you”.

If you scroll down a wee bit further, you’ll come to the FB post you see below. And this is our destination – The Gwên Gwen Festival 2022. (‘Gwen’s smile’?)

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My information is that the bulk of the grant money spend in 2022 went on the Gwên Gwen festival, and it’ll be the same again this year. Most locals believe this is not money well spent. Few turned up last year, and this year’s event doesn’t promise to pull in the punters either.

The Black Cat Tourism Strategy has its own Facebook page, but this seems to offer little beyond Gwên Gwen.

◊

WHERE’S THE MONEY GONE?

One person who recently contacted me was relaying the concerns of others about what the £270,000 allocated to The Black Cat Tourism Strategy had actually been spent on.

My source wrote, referring to last year’s Gwên Gwen bash:

“Tried getting answers as to where the cash has gone. A massive spend of funds where no one turned up apart from organisers families and a bunch of local hippies. Labour councillor involved and now director of CIC company for same festival this year. Council would not give me figures for cash lost.”

I tried to dig the figures out for myself. There seemed to be three obvious places to look: the town council records, the Hub accounts, and the company I assumed would have been set up to manage the Black Cat Tourism initiative.

Working backwards, the Gwên Community and Regeneration CIC wasn’t set up until February this year. (The grant, remember, was allocated in June 2021.) Thus far, the only document filed with Companies House is the Certificate of Incorporation.

Towards the end of that document we read this minor masterpiece in grant-grab waffle. It really is a gem. I speak as someone who’s read many over the years, and penned a few myself.

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Moving on, what can we learn from the Hub accounts? Well, to begin with, the ‘front page’ on the Companies House entry for the Hub tells us that the last accounts filed were for year ending 31 March 2021. That is, before the grant was awarded.

Which left the town council as the last hope. The minutes tell us little, and the archived accounts seem to be intermittent, with no audited accounts after 2017.

So where is the £270,ooo accounted for? It seems unlikely the Hub will produce any further accounts, and the new company will not be required to produce accounts for the period before it was set up.

Which leads me to suggest that the onus for accounting for the £270,000, in full, must now lie firmly with Kidwelly Town Council, the surviving partner.

Another reason for me saying that is because the council has been paying Gwên Gwen invoices. That’s certainly what the Finance Committee minutes for January tell us.

◊

WHO WAS WHO?

If we go back to the clip above from the town council minutes of October 2021, we see four names listed in connection with the Black Cat Tourism Strategy. These are: Christine Lamble-Davies, Michelle Collins, Suki Baynton, Aled Westlake.

I believe they’re in this video from March 2022, asking for suggestions. Which could be seen as being open to ideas . . . or possibly not having a clue themselves what to do.

So, in no particular order, here are brief bios . . .

Michelle Collins’ Linkedin profile (here in pdf format) suggests an aspiring artist forced to work for Caws Teifi. When she’s not studying!

But apart from that early mention, I’m not sure what role, if any, Collins played thereafter. There’s certainly no mention of Black Cat on her Linkedin. But she does get a mention here, on the Saatchi Art website.

Aled Guto Westlake, is another artistic type, who lived in Llansamlet, on the east side of Swansea, but seems to have moved to Mynyddygarreg.

His Linkedin profile suggests that he still sees himself as being part of the Black Cat set-up. This, plus his side-line in photography, would appear to be his employment.

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Incidentally, there’s a Councillor Jonathan Westlake representing Mynyddygarreg ward on the town council. I’m told he’s Aled’s dad.

From the same ward we have the mayor, Councillor Carl Peters-Bond; and another Mynyddygarreg councillor in Christopher Peters-Bond.

What a cosy place Mynyddygarreg must be! Dare I suggest, incestuous?

Suki Baynton I mentioned in the earlier piece, so I might as well lift something from that to give her bio.

The Black Cat project lead is Suki Baynton, who recently arrived from the Cynon Valley, where I’m told she was Contaminated Land Officer for Rhondda Cynon Taf council. She was certainly Property Manager for Ashfield Solutions for a while.

We see Suki in the above picture, on the right, in the red coat. (See image below.)

Suki has also launched her own company, Room Publishing Ltd. The website tells me it’s a load of New Age bollocks; but then, I’m a cynical old bastard who grew up in the real world.

The company, Room Publishing Ltd, was Dissolved about a year after I wrote that earlier piece, without filing anything.

Suki Baynton is on the right, in the red coat. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Which leaves Christine Lamble-Davies, the former Mz Christine Bethan Davies. Who is quite a busy girl. I’ve found a number of companies with which she’s been associated.

Though the only one where she’s still a director appears to be Malihera Ltd. But this ship has obviously been abandoned, with filings for Companies House overdue.

◊

WHO’S WHO NOW?

The directors of the new company, Gwên Community and Regeneration CIC, are: Carmarthenshire Labour councillor Crisial ‘Crish’ Davies, Plaid Cymru’s June James, and June James’ husband, Richard.

These three are also the only remaining directors of the Hub. Davies has been a director since June 2016, Richard James since September 2022, and his wife June became a director in January this year.

From January 11 these three exercise control over whatever remains of the Hub.

Clearly, Labour councillor ‘Crish’ Davies is the continuity factor. The one who’s been there throughout.

This new company could be seen as the Hub reborn. Though why did it take so long, because the Hub didn’t expire unexpectedly?

While these three directors are presumably entrusted with salvaging something from the disaster, and seeing out Gwên Gwen 2, are any of the four we read about earlier, and saw in the video, still involved?

If not, why?

I don’t like banging on about money, but seeing it wasted annoys me. Especially when Cydweli needs money spent on infrastructure repairs and other things.

But certainly not a hippy gathering that was a disaster last year, and with not a hope in hell that this year’s Gwên Gwen will be any more successful.

Here are some photos I was sent of the town. They show, clockwise: the old town hall, falling down and resulting in detours; the town square; the field opposite the Co-op, home to the Gwên Gwen festival; and the building that was used by the Hub.

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But back to this year’s Gwên Gwen festival.

Topping the bill is the Gentleman’s Dub Club, of Bristol. (I’ve got all their 78s!) Though I doubt there’s a big audience for Dub music in east Carmarthenshire. There certainly wasn’t last year when the same band played.

A few pints of Felinfoel might help. Perhaps many pints of Felinfoel.

P.S. Last year’s headline act, Kosheen, also come from Bristol.

◊

ENOUGH ALREADY!

I don’t want anyone to think I’m picking on Cydweli. I’m just using it as an example for something that’s happening all over Wales.

My introduction gave a litany of some big scandals that got reported, but it’s also the few hundred grand here, a million or so there, that escape wider attention. Call it political patronage, call it rewarding grass-roots activism, call it anything you damn well like, but by and large it achieves next to nothing.

This system of dishing out grants to anyone with connections, or who can put together the kind of tosh we read earlier, is damaging Wales. It’s a major reason three dollops of European structural funding achieved nothing.

This was unique. All other countries and regions of Europe that received this funding used it wisely. None remained poor enough to qualify for a third hand-out.

But Labour Party stooges like the WCVA will pretend this wasted money achieved something. That’s how the system works: Labour gives money to its cronies who then produce reports telling us what good use was made of the funding.

But then, if I give my grandchildren money will they admit they wasted it?

The biggest beneficiary of EU funding was the third sector. Now that EU funding has ended – but to ensure these shysters continue living high on the hog – other budgets must be raided. (“Your promised by-pass! What by-pass?”)

Unfortunately, it’s no longer just local groups; for under devolution Wales has seen a tidal wave of gobshites preaching climate disaster, poisoned rivers and habitat loss; berating us for our racism and our transphobia – and demanding that we pay them well for their insulting rants.

But enough of those colonialist parasites, let’s finish in that nice little town where an underage Jac used to drink when him and his mates would get the train down from Swansea to go camping. Happy days!

For even if there was incompetence or worse involved, the Black Cat was probably doomed the minute the local MS, Lee Waters, stroked the poor moggie. For this is the politician who famously said of his own administration, “We don’t know what we’re doing on the economy“.

We believe you, Lee. In fact, that may be the only thing you’ve ever said that we do believe.

♦ end ♦