What a week that was! President Trump’s executive orders exceeded my expectations. Everybody (and perhaps more so those on the left) now realises that what Trump has set in train will not be limited to the USA.
After thoughts on what’s being achieved in the USA I’ll consider how the changes in the USA might impact on Europe.
This is not exactly what I promised earlier on X, but I decided to pull one section. I hope you’ll forgive me and enjoy this truncated version of what I originally planned.
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MR T COMES TO TOWN!
Donald Trump, 47th President of the United States of America, is already implementing his election promises – and sending assorted groups into paroxysms of fury. (And it’s wonderful to watch!)
Though I’m not sure what upsets them more, a politician honouring the promises he made to the electorate or, as a result of doing that, dismantling the Globalist-left-green-woke alliance that’s destroying Western countries.
Maybe I don’t care; perhaps I’m just happy to see these bastards chewing the carpets at Davos, tearing out their green hair, and tearfully hugging the porcupine they were about to ‘re-introduce’ to Pembrokeshire.
But let’s go back a bit. To the last days of Sleepy Joe pretending he was running things. You probably know that son Hunter – who had nothing to do with that laptop! – was given a pardon going back to 2014!
(Though I agree with her on, “Fuck the EU“. Especially The Commission.)
The video below will help you understand Nuland better.
The coup marked the beginning of orchestrated violence against Russians in Ukraine, the emergence of US-controlled biolabs, and the start of the Bidens lining their own pockets from what soon became the most corrupt country in Europe.
Meanwhile, the good news keeps a-coming for Americans!
For President Trump has promised no more wind turbines and solar fields, an end to illegal immigration, a return to fossil fuels, to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, to lower taxation, to reduce utility bills, and so many other changes that ordinary, sensible Americans will welcome.
Measures that are opposed by Globalists, Marxists, ‘environmentalists’, and shrieking Wokies who really need to get their heads fixed.
The “Gulf of America” suggestion didn’t really bother me because it’s a bit of harmless bombast, the kind of thing we expect from him. Though his position towards Canada and Greenland needs to be clarified.
As for the Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine still holds. And if that vital waterway is, as Trump and others allege, effectively controlled by China, with US Navy ships being penalised, then the USA has every right to take back control of the PCZ. And we in Europe should support him.
As I say, Trump is flawed, I accept that. But the good he’s doing now outweighs all his shortcomings. Maybe this ‘warts and all’ appreciation was well explained by Hollywood actor James Woods, almost five years ago.
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Let me conclude this section with some final thoughts on Ukraine.
If Trump stops funding and arming Ukraine, then the war is as good as over. Saving many thousands of European lives.
We might then be able do what we should have done in 1990 – reintegrate Russia into Europe. As was done after WWII with Germany. For Russia has never fought against let alone invaded a Western country.
Of course there’ll be resistance from Poland, the Baltic States, and a few other countries, but the Soviet Union is dead and buried. And if French, Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Czechs and others could get over WWII fairly quickly then the countries of the east will have to get used to living with Russia.
To achieve this ambition we might need to punish those, like Victoria Nuland, who’ve demonised Russia and Russians; for these are the same people who elsewhere have manufactured coup after coup, that have engineered regime changes, and have instigated conflicts around the globe costing millions of lives.
Remember! this is the system President Trump wants to dismantle. Oppose him and you support the Permanent War Party lunatics straight out of Dr Strangelove.
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WHITHER EUROPE?
It appears the USA has been saved, but Europe is still led by compromised weaklings.
By a political elite actively working against the interests of its own people. Especially the working class. That’s because the glorious future envisioned by the Globalists and their green-woke-left foot-soldiers has no place for the white working class.
The New World Order has no need for a vast labour force destroying the planet with their children and their cars. Their farting cows and their racist dogs.
The reference to racist dogs is another reminder of how the lunatics have taken over the asylum. However absurd, the Globalist agenda must be defended and promoted, by the political elite, the Globalist-controlled media, and the agencies that have been captured.
To understand the extent of that ‘capture’ here’s an ongoing story from the USA. One that’s seen little coverage in the media (for reasons that’ll become obvious). I refer now to what happened in the western part of North Carolina after it was hit by Hurricane Helene in late September.
It was even reported that across the devastated region of the south east USA, FEMA was picking and choosing who to help, and it seemed white people, and Trump supporters, were being ignored.
Why did FEMA ignore this area? Well, it’s in the Appalachians; which might mean that big city sophisticates see the people living there as white trash, strumming Dixie on their banjos between gulps of moonshine.
And yet, while US citizens were neglected the Federal authorities found billions of dollars to cater to every need and whim of illegal immigrants.
What we see with FEMA, and even from bodies over here as disparate as the Director of Public Prosecutions and our National Museum, is that the poison of DEI and CRT has corrupted them and turned them against the majority population.
So let me explain DEI. It stands for ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion’. Which in practice means discriminating against ‘over-represented’ groups, and that always means the same thing.
A poison that has spread throughout the body politic and public life of the West.
Clearly, when you overlook the best qualified people, to favour those ticking the right boxes, then standards will fall. Whether it’s a university, a government department, or a police force. And when standards fall, we all suffer, including the groups being favoured. Which exposes what DEI is really about.
For just like Net Zero, uncontrolled immigration, or the attack on free speech, DEI is designed to weaken the West. Another part of the Globalist agenda.
The picture is unmistakably consistent, on both sides of the Atlantic.
We’ve witnessed the Globalist agenda at work, implemented by Cultural Marxists, and their useful idiots – deluded liberals desperate to appear ‘progressive’. Not forgetting of course the permanently offended, who live to invent new isms and phobias.
And the people see it. They see corrupt establishments empowering petty tyrants and commissars to control thinking, and to silence opponents, to dole out public funding, and to favour strangers over them. And they get angry.
Which is why I’m convinced change is coming to Europe. Because as the Trump administration lowers prices by returning to fossil fuels, as it cuts taxes by reducing Federal spending, as it seals its border and deports illegals, as it restores freedom of expression and equal opportunities, there can be no turning back.
So let those responsible for imposing this nightmare accept that it’s over. And do so graciously. A bloody and hopeless rearguard action will serve no one’s interests – except those who have conspired for so long to destroy the West.
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IN THE PIPELINE?
Someone has sent me a dossier on the Rhug Estate. How it’s run. By whom. Plus information on some of the practices and marketing ploys used. The dossier’s contents are intriguing, amusing, and in some parts very concerning.
As I start putting something together I’d welcome information from anybody with experience of the Rhug Estate; as an employee, a supplier, or a customer. Send what you have to editor@jacothenorth.net. (There is no prize.)
The Development Bank of Wales (DBW) has been in the news a lot recently, and it’s usually bad news. About loans for individuals or companies of questionable probity and / or dubious commercial viability.
The case that’s gained most publicity was the £400,000 loan made to the generous, landfill-owning mate of our mercifully short-lived first minister Vaughan Gething.
The (R) you’ll see next to some names will be explained at the end.
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BETWS-Y-COED
I should warn you that what might appear to be a simple tale of the DBW making a loan to some guy opening a hostel in Betws-y-Coed gets rather complicated. But interesting, so it’s worth paying attention.
For those unfamiliar with this large village in the Conwy valley, maybe it’ll help if I tell you the wife and I avoid it between Easter and October. It’s a tourist trap; nice for all that, but best enjoyed when it’s not choked with coachloads of wrinklies from Warrington and Wolverhampton.
The piece you’re about to read took off when a comment to last week’s posting drew my attention to this item in the Daily Post. Intrigued, I naturally got to wondering about the man named, Rowern Wong (R), so I made enquiries.
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It turns out that Mr Wong has a number of property companies, and many associates. Put together it paints an interesting picture. And opens up quite a few possibilities.
Before delving into who’s who and what’s what, I can tell you that whoever now owns Bryn Llewelyn, the change of ownership has not yet been notified to the Land Registry. So there’s little point in me showing you the title document I downloaded.
‘Social justice’! ‘Circular bioeconomy transitions’! Did youse ever read such simpering bollocks! The company is owned by Australian Ross Hampton. The other directors are Aussies, Americans, Japanese, a few Scandinavians, a Brazilian and an Englishman.
Under the ‘About’ tab, we learn . . .
The ISFC is a Company limited by guarantee (not for profit) registered in the United Kingdom. Each member company has the right to nominate one individual to become a Director of the ISFC.
So each director of this cuddly, not-for-profit front is there representing a major corporation looking to plant trees in order to save the planet make lots of easy money out of the ‘carbon is evil’ nonsense.
Before pushing on, let’s recap. This story started with someone opening a hostel for hikers in Betws-y-Coed, and landing a £500,000 DBW grant.
But the parent company, Base Camp Hostels Ltd, links with a big-shot financier in the Channel Islands, and various green scams, quite a few of which seem to be in Wales, including Pant-y-Maen wind farm south west of Denbigh.
I’ll end this section by mentioning two other companies run by Rowern Wong.
The first, Mount Fitzroy Partners Ltd, was launched in October 2016 and dissolved two years later without apparently doing anything.
July 2023 saw the birth of Walbrook Ventures Ltd (originally The Marylebone Trading Co Ltd). Now six weeks late with the first confirmation statement.
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SHARES
On the same day in April Base Camp Hostels moved its address from Wong’s pad to the second floor at 168 Shoreditch High Street an intriguing share distribution was registered with Companies House.
These are divided into Founder shares and Ordinary shares. Wong has 100,000 of the former, Gibbs 75,000.
The Ordinary shares introduce a number of interesting players. I’ll take them in the order they appear on the Companies House document. Leaving aside Wong and Gibbs, the first name we come to is:
You must admit, that is a very eclectic collection of investors in what is after all just a small company running one, possibly two, hostels. And they’re all money men.
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THE MANCHESTER CONNECTION
Let’s move over now to the land of the Mancs, for Mr Wong has been busy there buying up property. Done through his company Kaltain Ventures Ltd. The other director, with an equal number of shares, is Babaola Alabi Omiyale (R).
Omiyale is also a director of Bisley Solar Ltd. I found, by a tortuous route, that this company is owned by Impax Asset Management. Which ‘pioneers’ . . .
. . . investment in the transition to a more sustainable global economy and today is one of the largest investment managers dedicated to this area.
But clearly, Rowern Wong and his mate Omiyale, are into the buy to rent sector. Which would appear to be something of a departure for Omiyale.
Because from his Linkedin entry it seems he’s representing planet-saving Impax at Bisley Solar. Which makes sense. But how do we explain his involvement with Wong in Manchester? Is he freelancing, making some pocket-money?
UPDATE: Interestingly, Omiyale was witness to the signatures on both DBW loans. Isn’t a witness supposed to be impartial, unconnected with either party? Admittedly, Omiyale seems not to be involved in the hostel companies, but he is certainly a business partner of Wong.
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FURTHER QUESTIONS
The Development Bank of Wales loan was delivered January 15, a month after Base Camp Snowdonia Ltd was launched. Which was remarkably quick, especially as Christmas and New Year intervened.
It’s reasonable therefore to assume the DBW was dealing originally with Base Camp Hostels Ltd (launched April 2023), and perhaps advised that English company to set up a Welsh entity to avoid exciting the likes of me.
Though if we look closely at the DBW deal we see that it’s actually two transactions. There’s a mortgage for Bryn Llewelyn, and then . . .
All other freehold and leasehold property now or in the future belonging to the company together with all buildings, trade and other fixtures
July saw the launch of Base Camp Hathersage Ltd. Presumably after buying a property in the village of that name. Was it bought with DBW money? Because no charge is shown against the company.
If that is the case, then not only did DBW give an English company money to buy property in Wales, it might even have funded the purchase of property in England.
Then, and as I mentioned earlier, there’s the fact that although Bryn Llewelyn must have been bought earlier this year, the change of ownership has not yet been registered with the Land Registry.
And until the new title document is available we won’t know a) who actually owns the property, or b) if there’s another charge, for money received from some other source.
We’ve already considered the share issue at the parent company, Base Camp Hostels Ltd, in April. But what brought them all together? What’s the common denominator?
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CONCLUSION
It’s a long time since I’ve written a piece with so many unanswered questions, so many loose ends. But that’s how it’s worked out. Because, I suspect, there may be a lot more going on here than just a hostel in Eryri.
Now it’s time to explain the (R) you’ve seen after a few names. And I’ll do it by showing you Rowern Wong’s Linkedin profile.
For without checking all whose names have cropped up here I was still struck by how many of those mentioned had, like Wong, worked for Rothschild & Co. Of course, it could all be pure coincidence. But maybe not.
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Returning to his Linkedin bio, we see that Wong’s day job seems to be Chief Operating Officer of an outfit called General Projects. I eventually found it on the Companies House website.
A creative-led real estate developer that builds innovative and inspiring buildings wholly designed for the new economy
What’s the “new economy“?
I also found the website. But there’s no mention of Wong. Has he left? Is he now a full-time hostelier? (Is there such a word?) Does he need to update his Linkedin bio?
On the General Projects website, under ‘Purpose’, I found this chilling statement, leaving us in no doubt about the kind of people we’re dealing with:
A commitment to be operationally Net-Zero Carbon across our whole portfolio by 2030 in addition to the supply of energy from 100% renewable sources
Which ties in with something else that struck me, almost a thread running through every involvement and angle I looked into, was corporations seeking profitable investments that could be dressed up as saving the planet.
Is there a link between Rothschild and the planet savers? If so, where might Rowern Wong fit in?
Look at it this way. If you were a company, even an individual, in the greenwashing business, and you were looking for ‘pliable’ politicians who’d already bought into the climate scam and would therefore guarantee you easy money, then Wales would be very attractive.
Maybe Rowern Wong is testing the water with his hostel in Betws-y-Coed; getting to know people in Corruption Bay, seeing how things are done. Just a theory.
But whether I’m right or wrong, given all the money men involved with Base Camp Hostels the Development Bank of Wales should not have dished out £500,000 of our money. Especially if some of it was used to buy a place in the Peak District.
Though it may be significant that the money men appeared after Rowern Wong’s ventures had been primed with DBW money.
That said, the apparent change in control of the parent company, Base Camp Hostels Ltd, may have taken place before the DBW loan.
Does the Development Bank of Wales know who it’s really dealing with?
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UPDATE: As you’ll have read, I was struck by the number of times Rothschild & Co cropped up while researching this piece. And so I’m indebted to a regular reader for drawing my attention to Kerdiff boy Kevin Gardiner. Whose day job is Global Investment Strategist at Rothschild & Co Wealth Management.
Which fits well with those we’ve looked at in this post: asset / wealth investment types looking for a profitable home for their money. And few bets are safer or more profitable today than saving the planet. With few administrations on Earth more completely suckered by the climate scam than the ‘Welsh Government’.
Kevin Gardiner has been an advisor to those clowns, and is now a member of the Cardiff Capital Region’s advisory board. From these and other links we can safely assume that Gardiner is very well connected in Corruption Bay.
The Betws-y-Coed hostel may be a red herring, or a sprat to catch a mackerel. The question now might be: Is Kevin Gardiner of Rothschild & Co Wealth Management using his Corruption Bay connections to introduce his clients to Wales, and the profits they can make?
Here’s a nice group photo from 2014; also in the frame is Lord Davies of Abbasock, owner of The Tramshed. If you’ve got the right connections in Corruption Bay then Wales is your oyster!
As I’ve said before, 2016 was a watershed year in Western politics. Brexit coupled with Donald Trump’s victory told leftists they’d lost large sections of the (white) working class.
This resulted in a desperate search for a replacement ‘proletariat’. Groups and issues that had been around for a while were cleaned up, eagerly adopted, and zealously promoted. Which explains many things.
Among them, the rise of climate hysteria, a career criminal named George Floyd achieving something close to sainthood, and otherwise intelligent people pretending to believe that men can have babies.
It also explains why Wales is rapidly falling apart, as the intellectually debauched denizens of Corruption Bay turn their backs on the real world, preferring to serve the Globalist’s Woke-Green-Left agenda.
A clumsy term applied to all who aren’t white. Pretending that every non-Caucasian shares similar problems in mental health or anything else is absurd. The UK government agrees, having dropped the term a couple of years back.
They’re based on the High Street, sharing with the trade union Unite and Swansea council’s Housing Options, next door to Not Only Sofas Clearance Outlet.
So who’s who at BMHS?
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ALFRED THE GREAT
The driving force is Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya. His wife Nancy Buka is the secretary. I’m told she has a hairdressing establishment nearby, specialising in beads, braids, and extensions.
The couple achieved fame, of a sort, when they met Simon Cowell and David Walliams. Though the remark about, “doctors spreading conspiracy theories“, has not aged well. (Unless you swing it 180 degrees, perhaps.)
His Linkedin page tells us he got a Master’s in Accounting and Finance from Swansea University. He’s also worked for the ‘Welsh Government’ and a WG-funded outfit called Inspire Training.
All of which suggests that Alfred Oyekoya is well thought of in Corruption Bay.
And when he finds time he also works for the MoD in Bristol. Which either means a long commute from his Swansea home, or else he works from home.
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THE REST OF THE GANG
As I’ve said, Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya is an accountant. We find two other bean-counters among the directors; Adewale Dare and Monday Noutouglo. Dare lives in Nigeria, Noutouglo lives in Canada.
Why does a mental health outfit in Swansea have an accountant in Canada, and another in Nigeria? Or, to rephrase it, what possible use can they be to people suffering mental health issues in Wales?
What also struck me was that these two joined BMHS on the same day, 12.01.2023.
While Dr Oluyinka Emmanuel Olutunde might be a medical doctor, and allowed to practise in the UK. But if this is him, then he’s certainly not registered as a GP.
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To confuse matters further, I found a Linkedin profile for an Oluyinka Olutunde, a paediatrician, who seems never to have worked outside Africa. But then, I also found this. Is it the same picture?
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THERE’S MONEY IN BOOKS
‘New Audiences‘ is a funding scheme launched a couple years ago by the Books Council of Wales.
Below you see how the grant to BMHS was listed in the projects for 2022/23. Together with a couple of grants from 2023/24 to give you a flavour of how the scheme is going.
Does being in a room with a lesbian make someone ‘lesbian-adjacent’?
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Which means that Alfred Oyekoya joined the Books Council in October 2021. Less than a year later we find his own brainchild BMHS trousering a £39,000 grant.
But I can’t see what books or food have to do with BAME mental health; though no doubt a good book and a full belly help people feel better.
But you could make a case for sex, alcohol and a nice holiday. So if I’m feeling a bit down can I apply for a week in Tenby with a bodice-bursting slapper and a crate of Malbec?
What passes for the BMHS accounts (‘unaudited statutory accounts’) gives a turnover of £183,000 for y/e 31.03.2023, but ‘turnover’ refers to un-itemised grants and donations. ‘Administrative expenses’ totalled £164,000.
And while there was just one employee the previous year, this had risen to four in the latest accounts. What do these ’employees’ do?
BAME Mental Health Support is a misnomer in every sense. All involved are Nigerian. And it might have little to do with mental health.
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WARPED PRIORITIES
But this happens when the Woke lead the none-too-bright.
We’ve reached a stage where two Haitians in Tonypandy could launch The Haitian Anti-defamation League, demand ‘Welsh Government’ funding, and then get rat-arsed every night in The Gartered Gombeen, before rounding the evening off with sweet and sour bat (with fried rice) from the Star of Wuhan.
To ask them to account for how they spent the grant money would amount to racism. And you will be reported to – The Haitian Anti-defamation League.
Getting serious again (unless of course there are two Haitians in Tonypandy thinking along those lines) . . .
What we see at the Books Council of Wales is an organisation having to spend a bigger portion of reduced funding on Woke twaddle, of interest only to narcissist ‘artists’ and a few equally unhinged admirers.
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And everywhere we look in Wales we see the same thing: services being cut, and what is specific to Wales and its people treated with less respect than is given to assorted grifters, especially those shrieking about climate, race, or gender.
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GRIFTING AT THE GRAND
What I’m writing about is an imagined victimhood that can be a nice little earner for those who’ve figured out how to manipulate politicos and others into funding them.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Nkechi Allen Dawson works for Coleg Gwent, as a Diversity, Inclusion and Well-being manager.
How did we manage before such jobs were invented?
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ACC’s 2023 ‘accounts’ show £258,665 in readies, and 7 employees (3 in 2022), but no indication of where the money came from. And the website is no help – it’s ‘being updated’.
Incidentally, the African Community Centre has 7 directors / trustees. We’ve met the two from the BVI, then there’s a Kenyan, but the other four are Nigerian.
Also appointed a director of the ACC on the same day as Nkechi Allen Dawson was another woman from tax haven BVI (Pop: 31,000), Charlotte Ajomale Evans,
Yeah, that’s the way to ‘break down barriers’ – segregated swimming. Didn’t Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and a host of others fight against that sort of thing?
But then, everywhere you look in the world of DEI you encounter self-serving hypocrisy and doublespeak.
Here’s where BSA’s funding came from in year ending 31.08.2022. (RNLI = Royal National Lifeboat Institution. LMCT = London Marathon Charitable Trust.)
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RNLI, eh? Do drowning black people have to be rescued differently to drowning white people?
Funds received for consultancy services, including research and development, and community engagement.
No surprise there, because so many of the Wokie scam outfits I’ve looked at over the years have minted it from ‘consultancy’ fees.
Just think of Stonewall, which virtually blackmailed public bodies into paying to be lectured (and misinformed) in order to be a ‘Diversity Champion’.
We’ve largely freed ourselves from that particular nightmare, but there are plenty more lurking out there.
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“GROWING CONCERNS” AND “UNCONSCIOUS BIAS”
And now a report from Arise News, a Nigerian site I’ve never quoted before, and probably never will again. I do so this time because it’s about Alfred Oyekoya. It begins:
Amidst growing concerns surrounding fair treatment for ethnic minorities in the Welsh workforce, Alfred Oyekoya MBE . . . has advocated for the implementation of labour laws to tackle discrimination and unconscious bias faced by Nigerians and other ethnic minorities in Wales.
That opening paragraph gives the clear impression that racism or discrimination against “ethnic minorities” is rampant in Wales.
Or, rather, that’s the impression given to Arise News by a man who studied at a Welsh university, who’s worked for the ‘Welsh Government’, who’s treasurer of the Books Council of Wales, whose company has received tens of thousands of pounds in public funding and, on a recommendation from within Wales, got an MBE!
A man who’s been treated better since he arrived in Wales than most Welsh people ever will be – repays us with accusations of racism.
Let’s look at another worrying element of the paragraph I quoted – “unconscious bias“. It’s mentioned twice.
Legislation can tackle overt discrimination, the kind of thing perhaps exemplified with the old lodging-house sign. We’ve had such laws for 50 or 60 years.
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But Oyekoya’s “unconscious bias” takes us beyond overt discrimination. I think it even takes us beyond ‘thought crimes’, to somewhere rather scary.
For I think we’ve arrived in a place where you can be accused of prejudices you weren’t aware of, and of which you are innocent – because someone claims to know you better than you know yourself!
If “unconscious bias” can only be observed or detected by others then this will encourage false testimony from those with an axe to grind, and those who can benefit from such accusations.
And of course, an accused person will have no way to prove their innocence. If that’s not Kafkaesque, then I don’t know what is.
Just think of The Trial, which begins: “Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.”
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FINAL THOUGHTS
Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya MBE needs to explain the interview he gave to (or the piece he submitted to) Arise News. From what I can see, Nigerians in Wales are doing very well. As are members of the BVI diaspora.
And I’d like to hear his explanation for, “Labour laws to tackle discrimination and unconscious bias faced by Nigerians and other ethnic minorities in Wales“.
Is Alfred Oyekoya dreaming of what we see in the States, where white people are barred from applying for certain federal government and other jobs, some colleges, and preferential treatment is given to minority groups?
So don’t be surprised if certain lobbies and individuals start demanding ‘affirmative action’ legislation to combat a problem that doesn’t exist. Legislation that they will help write, and from which they will benefit.
Let us be vigilant against any movement in that direction. And let us also ensure that the Corruption Bay Clown Show isn’t persuaded to add “unconscious bias” to the list of Wokie ‘crimes’ in another desperate attempt to appear ‘progressive’.
We don’t want some poor bugger dragged off by the Unconscious Bias Squad.
No, this is not a homage to the founder of Rock ‘n’ Roll, but I’ve used the title of his timeless classic because it kinda fits. But my use of it is not an endorsement of the original (and thankfully expunged) lyrics.
Truth is, I used the song because Tutti Frutti can of course refer to ice cream. It’s Italian for ‘all fruits’.
To explain . . . About a month or so back someone drew my attention to an article in the Daily Post about an ice cream company on Ynys Môn coming back from the dead.
This report can be read as written, though my source hints there’s more to it than meets the eye. So I delved, and it took me on quite a journey.
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MAYDAY! MAYDAY! RED BOAT SINKING!
The company you’re going to read about is The Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd. Set up 9 December 2012. The two shareholders / directors, Anthony Green and Lynda Green. Presumably husband and wife.
Seeing as it’s always filed as dormant it might be a ‘spoiler’, set up to grab the ‘Red Boat’ name. Which would account for the brackets in the other company’s name.
The Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd (hereinafter referred to as RBICP) was put into administration on January 30. After which things moved very quickly.
And for a small company there are interesting players involved, some as far away as San Francisco; and considerable governmental involvement.
I just hope I can make sense of it all. Anyway, sit back and enjoy!
There was a Maes Hyfryd Cyf, of Mold, formerly known as Cyfrifwyr Hill & Roberts Accountants Ltd (until 31.10.2019). The directors were Hilary Baines, Ffion Eleri Hampson, and Richard Andrew Roberts.
But let’s not overlook HB Accountants, found behind another Mold doorway. This one 8A Chester Street, next-door to and above the constituency office of Bob Roberts MP.
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Heading into the sunset, I also found a Hill & Roberts office in Bala. At 76 High Street, behind the war memorial.
The entities not using ‘Ltd’ or ‘Cyf’, are almost certainly partnerships. Perfectly legal, but confusing when we see the same people pop up in different combinations and under slightly different labels.
But what might cause me some concern would be that the companies registered with Companies House (apart from Hill and Roberts Ltd) seem to be very short-lived, and file hardly anything.
Anyway, let’s zip along the A55 back to Beaumaris.
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REARRANGING THE DECK CHAIRS?
As the article I linked to explains, to get around the financial difficulties afflicting RBICP, a new company was formed in January this year. This was The Artisan Gelato Group Ltd (TAGG). When formed, with a single penny share, the sole director was named as Kelly Donald Pattullo.
TAGG then bought RBICP. To quote the Daily Post article . . .
KBL Advisory approached in January. After discussions it was decided that a pre-pack administration was the best way forward . . . A formal offer was received by (sic) Artisan Gelato Group Ltd.
This was recommended for acceptance by JPS Chartered Surveyors. It was sold to them for £42,000. Employees were transferred over to the new business . . .
So, in February 2024, RBICP went into receivership owing trade creditors money; £213,000 to the ‘Welsh Government’s Development Bank of Wales, and over a hundred thousand to solicitors, administrators, and other professionals.
RBICP’s two outstanding debts with the Development Bank of Wales seem to have transferred to TAGG.
So who is Kelly Donald Pattullo? Well, that’s a good question. And while I may not have the full answer, I can at least give you some more information.
It seems Kelly Frances Donald-Pattullo and Samuel Malcolm Pattullo now own the premises used by Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd at 34 Castle Street in Beaumaris. They bought it at the end of May 2022. The stated price being £525,000.
From the Administrator’s report / proposals for Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
A year later the Pattullos formed 34Castle Ltd, a company involved in the ‘Manufacture of ice cream’. So what’s the relationship between the Pattullos and the Greens?
There has to be one. And it must go back to at least the May 2022 purchase of 34 Castle Street. Almost two years before Kelly Pattullo formed TAGG and took over Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd.
Yet to read the documents filed with Companies House one might think that TAGG came out of the blue.
(Seeing as we’re talking of Italian ice cream, and in case you’re thinking the ‘Pattullo’ name is Italian, it is in fact Scottish. I believe the first element is Pictish, the second Gaelic.)
In the documents filed with Companies House, and specifically the Administrator’s report, we read that Covid is claimed to have played a big part in the RBICP downfall. But the company was already in trouble before the Covid virus was released from a Chinese laboratory.
This is shown in the accounts up to 31 March 2020. These figures cover the summer of 2019 when people were sauntering around Beaumaris enjoying their ice creams.
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The accounts suggest that the little Red Boat was heading up Shit Creek at a rate of knots. Just look under ‘Creditors’ (page 2). That figure, £524,678, has gone up over half a million quid in one year!
And while much of it will be accounted for by the DBW loans most, I suspect, refers to the LDF-White Oak hire purchase loans. For it ties in with the rise in ‘Tangible fixed assets’ (page 6) from £246,829 in 2019 to £648,006 in 2020.
The unaudited financial statement submitted by Cyfrifwyr Hill & Roberts of 8a Chester Street, Mold, does not identify the tangible fixed assets, nor does it tell us on what the borrowed money was spent.
As you’ve read, the Administrator’s report of February 2024 says: ‘In May 2022, the Company sold one of its former business premises to support the cash position.’
This has to refer to 34 Castle Street, sold to the Pattullos for £525,000. This influx of cash should then show in the accounts up to 31 March 2023. But I can’t see it.
Where did it go?
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THE RESCUE SHIPS TAKE ON SURVIVORS!
Once it started pulling away from the doomed craft the good ship Artisan Gelato saw many changes on board in a short space of time.
To begin with, two weeks after launch, Kelly Pattullo was joined at TAGG by Anthony Green, who’d presumably swum from the Red Boat. Then we learnt that Green had taken control of the new company at the start of February.
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But of more interest, maybe, was the piping aboard of Richard Elmitt. (Am I overdoing the nautical references? “Yes, Jac”.)
But of more interest to us is that he joined BIC Innovation Ltd, a management consultancy. This outfit is based in Gaerwen, on Ynys Môn. (Though the Linkedin page says Bridgend.) ‘Significant influence’ is exercised by Huw Geraint Watkins.
The thought of those socialist buffoons in Corruption Bay directing any ‘strategy’ for our SMEs is quite terrifying. Especially as the Industry Wales website doesn’t seem to have been updated for years.
You may recall Nicola Kneale, a director of RBICP from January 2016 to January 2018, when she worked for Denbighshire County Council. This was likely connected with RBICP leasing the Roundhouse on Prestatyn prom from the council.
I’m fairly sure there’s a connection between Local Partnerships, owned by the Treasury, LGA, ‘Welsh Government’; Industry Wales, owned by ‘Welsh Government’; and BIC Innovation on Ynys Môn, where the Treasury is a major shareholder.
On the surface, all would now appear to be hunky-dory. Everything and everyone has been salvaged, spruced up, and the re-named Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd is ready to sail serenely on as The Artisan Gelato Group Ltd.
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CONCLUSION
Fundamentally, I believe we are dealing with a kind of deception; not necessarily illegal, but still naughty.
Clearly, the Greens of Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd and Kelly Pattullo of The Artisan Gelato Group Ltd knew each other from at least May 2022, when she and Samuel Pattullo are said to have bought the ice cream shop at 34 Castle Street, Beaumaris.
Next, I believe it was decided to do away with RBICP. A speedy disposal via a pre-pack administration deal was decided upon, and at the start of 2024 the company was ‘put up for sale’.
Along came TAGG, with sole director Kelly Pattullo, snapping up RBICP for a bargain-basement price of £42,000. Soon after, Anthony Green of RBICP became a director, and now he controls the new company.
But with Tony Green in charge of The Artisan Gelato Group Ltd since 1 February he effectively sold Red Boat (Ice Cream Parlour) Ltd to himself.
That was always the intention. The ‘sale’ was a charade.
Another worry concerns 34 Castle Street. Was it really sold in May 2022, or was it simply a ploy by a company in financial difficulties to remove a valuable asset from the reach of creditors?
Which would make sense if the property wasn’t really sold, but merely transferred under some clever arrangement to disguise ownership. These things are done.
So many questions. If you know any of the answers, stick ’em in a bottle and chuck it in the sea. I’ll get it eventually.
In this piece I’ll explain that the ‘Welsh Government”s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) is just the latest in a long series of attacks on the Welsh family farm, and all that that means.
The SFS demands that 10% of every farm be given over to trees, with a further 10% to ‘habitat’. Many farms will become unprofitable. Which is the whole point of the SFS – to release more land for other uses.
Today’s piece is bigger than others I’ve put out recently, some 3,400 words; but it’s broken up into sections, so take it a chunk at a time.
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2008: ONE WALES: ONE PLANET
I’ve chosen to start in May 2008 with the publication One Wales: One Planet. Sub-titled, ‘The Sustainable Development Scheme of the Welsh Assembly Government’. You’ll find a revealing extract below.
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Let’s look at the first bullet point. Who decides Wales’s “environmental limits“? Who calculates our “fair share of the Earth’s resources“? Who measures our “ecological footprint“? (I’m a size 9.) And how can anyone work out, “the global average availability of resources“.
This is the kind of gobbledegook you can only get away with when you live a very sheltered life, mixing only with others in your bubble.
The final paragraph (below, my emphasis) leaves us in no doubt that everything that’s done in Wales from now on will be predicated on the belief that human beings are killing the planet.
To achieve this, sustainable development (the process that leads to Wales becoming a sustainable nation) will be the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government, and we will encourage and enable others to embrace sustainable development as their central organising principle.
But as I’ve explained, there’s something more sinister behind it all. Which is not to say that those pushing the nonsense don’t believe it, I’m sure many of them do. But there are also many who go along with it because it’s become the accepted wisdom of the circles in which they mix.
Before I forget, chapter 8 is headed: ‘The Wellbeing of Wales’. (Now there’s a clue!)
The administration at the time was a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition, and to jog your memory, here’s a cabinet group photo. The minister for environment and sustainability was Jane Davidson.
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2010: TECHNICAL ADVICE NOTE 6, ONE PLANET DEVELOPMENTS
July of 2010 brought joy unbounded with the announcement that hippy encampments, thrown up illegally (but with a nod and a wink from Corruption Bay), were now to be legitimised
Making TAN 6 little more than a general amnesty, or granting retrospective planning approval.
Dressed up as ‘sustainable living’, ‘self-sufficiency’, and God knows what else, they were in reality just a way around planning regulations for hippies and others to build ugly shacks in open country.
There were conditions attached, of course, not least, being able to prove that these impositions were to some degree self-sufficient . . . but nobody ever checks.
Interestingly, OPDs came to the notice of the World Economic Forum, which exposed the fundamental contradiction by urging people to move to Wales.
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For OPDs were justified by arguing they’d reduce Wales’ carbon footprint. But this could only happen if local people moved out of traditional dwellings into OPD shacks. That never happened.
Instead, people moved from England to previously unused land . . . where they kept farting animals, burned wood, and drove old diesel vehicles; so that by these and other means increased Wales’ carbon footprint.
In a recent publication I noticed that DEI had been added to the chicken entrails in the voodoo stew. This news came from Sophie Howe herself, just before she stepped down as Future Generations Commission in 2022:
I am pleased to see the emphasis given to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, a key component of sustainability . . .
But despite the posturing, OPDs remain exclusively English, White, middle class.
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2011 OCTOBER: ALUN DAVIES AND ORGANIC ARABLE FARMING
Then there was the plan to help farmers go organic.
Alun Davies, deputy minister of agriculture, announced that priority would be given to arable farmers, and those converting to arable farming . . . in a country where climate and topography dictate that livestock farming will dominate.
But let’s not be picky, for I’m sure this news was welcomed in the pomegranate groves of Pembrokeshire and the broccoli orchards enhancing the Vale of Clwyd, but it offered sod all to most Welsh farmers.
This initiative might reveal the growing vegan influence. For these had been brought in from the fringes to serve the Globalists’ plan to eliminate livestock farming and take control of the land and the food supply.
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2013 DECEMBER: ALUN DAVIES AND HIS TWO-PILLAR TRICK
The above date was when Alun Davies, now farm minister, announced that funding from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Pillar 1 (direct payment to farmers) would be moved to Pillar 2 (‘other rural activities’).
Davies could have transferred anything up to 15%. Almost inevitably, he opted for the full whack. Defending the decision by saying Pillar 1 should not be seen as a “never-ending subsidy“.
To understand Alun Davies, and the socialist attitude to farming, here’s an outburst from him in October 2014.
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The former minister in the Labour ‘Welsh Assembly Government’ (for he was sacked in July 2014) rails against ‘subsidies’; yet his administration had built up a vast third sector of cronies – all living off public funding!
And things have got worse, for now the ‘Welsh Government’ throws millions of pounds at Sustrans, Stonewall, wildlife trusts, and other pressure groups.
Clearly, in the eyes of Labour politicians there’s nothing wrong with subsidies per se, it all depends who’s getting them.
2015: WELL-BEING OF FUTURE GENERATIONS (WALES) ACT
This legislation was a long time in the planning, but we know who wrote it.
For this article from Sustainable Brands (scroll down) tells us it was Jane Davidson, who we met earlier as the minister for environment and sustainability in the 2007 – 2011 Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition.
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The article also says Davidson, ” . . . had her damascene moment at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992“. But I don’t buy that.
For at the time she was a researcher for Labour MP for Cardiff West, Rhodri Morgan, who of course went on to become first minister of the Assembly. So was she representing him, or the Labour party, at Rio?
I think she’d already had her ‘damascene moment’, and she was there as one of the converted.
When she became Assembly Member for Pontypridd in 1999 Ponty was her ticket to more power and influence to push the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative.
The significance of the Well-being Act is that, as was hinted in One Wales: One Planet in 2008, all other considerations must be subordinated to fighting the so-called ‘climate crisis’.
And this being the socialist hell that is Wales, the Act introduced yet more pointless bureaucracy and more opportunities for virtue signalling, with Public Services Boards for each of our 22 local authorities. (Yes, that’s right, 22 local authorities for a country of 3.2 million people.)
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Perhaps the real lesson Wales could teach the world is how to bring a country to its knees. For this is the Globalist plan for the West.
The politicians and their pet parasites who achieved this resent giving money to farmers and others, who actually work, and produce necessities.
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2016 SEPTEMBER: START OF NVZ ‘CONSULTATION’
A Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) is, according to the ‘Welsh Government’, “an area of land draining into ground or surface waters that are currently high in nitrate, or may become so if appropriate actions are not taken“.
It had always been accepted there was a problem, but it had also been understood that the problem was very localised, and seemed to be associated with dairy cattle.
The map above, produced by Natural Resources Wales (NRW), shows that Water Framework Directive (WFD) catchment areas covering some 90% of the country reported 0 – 4 incidents in the period 01.01.2010 to 01.01.2016.
The problem was clearly very localised.
Which is why NRW suggested increasing the area covered by NVZ legislation from 2.4% (750 farm holdings) to 8%. But, and here I quote from:
The (now) Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths, responded to the consultation replies a year later, in December 2017. She said she was “minded to introduce a whole Wales approach”.
Truth is, that had been the plan all along.
As an example of politicians going out of their way to make life more difficult for farmers – because of course there would be more expense and increased form-filling – the handling of NVZ legislation would be difficult to surpass.
This is how NFU Cymru described it:
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As things stand, the ‘Welsh Government’ has been forced to be marginally less vindictive. With slightly less punitive measures being introduced in stages, the next due in August.
Wales voted to leave the European Union 23 June 2016.
That is, the people voted to leave. The political class was outraged at the stupidity of the hoi polloi. The media agreed. While the ever-multiplying legions of third sector parasites were aghast at the thought of losing such a lucrative funding stream.
In response the ‘Welsh Government’ produced ‘Brexit and our Land‘. Wherein we read (page 3) what was to replace the CAP.
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But how can it talk of “food production” when we know Labour’s attitude towards farmers? While the reference to timber did not mean developing a genuine timber industry, it referred to what I’m now going to highlight.
Idly flicking through the annual accounts of Stoke engineering firm Goodwin Plc the other night I found this, on page 17.
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The site of this enviro-colonialism is north west of Llanwrtyd. But it’s happening all over Wales.
This is how it works: Land is bought and trees are planted by investors like Goodwin, who will own the land, the trees, and the carbon they capture. This carbon can not be included in Wales’ carbon inventory.
Which means that outside investors could buy up 50% of Welsh land, make billions from carbon capture, none of which would contribute to Wales’ national figure (or economy) – and the ‘Welsh Government’ would pay them to do it!
The rest of rural Wales, and the post-industrial areas, will be surrendered to foreign-owned wind farms whose owners will dole out beads and blankets to the desperate inhabitants of doomed communities.
And it’s all built on a scam, for carbon is no threat to the environment.
As for “Public Goods“, this is a phrase picked up from the bad company Welsh politicians keep. It can mean whatever the person using it wants it to mean.
Just think of it as bollocks; usually delivered in Estuary English.
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2018 AUGUST: SUMMIT TO SEA
This project links with Brexit, and the publication you read about in the previous section. It’s ‘environmentalists’ seeking to capitalise on the new reality to grab a huge swathe of Welsh land.
The project began before the date I’ve just given, but I used that date because it’s the first time I mentioned the project on this blog. Click here and scroll down to the section ‘Re-wilding’.
In essence, a number of individuals and organisations came together and hatched a plan to requisition 10,000 hectares, from Pumlumon up to the Dyfi estuary, and out to sea for a few miles.
Below you’ll see two maps. The one on the left was produced by those behind the project; the one on the right tells us who’s really behind it. But I’m not sure who produced the second.
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Admittedly, this was not a ‘Welsh Government’ policy . . . but I believe those involved had discussions with politicians and civil servants, and had been assured that Brexit could be the excuse used to withhold or ‘redirect’ farm subsidies.
Those involved were so confident of success, so arrogant, that they saw no need to engage with those whose land they wanted to appropriate. For it was a done deal.
Among the partners with Rewilding Britain was the Woodland Trust (WT). Here is Natalie Buttriss of the WT being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today in October 2018. And she plays the admonishing memsahib for all she’s worth.
Summit to Sea met its Waterloo at a public meeting in Talybont, north of Aberystwyth on 31 July 2019, when locals made their feelings unmistakably clear to even the thick-skinned individuals involved.
Partners such as Ecodyfi and Rewilding Britain soon withdrew, and the project was then taken over by the RSPB. The organisation that cares so much for birds, but has no issue with bird-killing wind turbines. (I wonder how much that silence costs.)
The Woodland Trust is still taking over Welsh land to plant trees and profit from the carbon capture scam you read about earlier. But all done of course to save the planet.
Summit to Sea was an attempt by ‘environmentalists’ and ‘conservationists’ to grab Welsh farmland using the threat of subsidy withdrawal. So it’s no surprise to learn that many see the Sustainable Farming Scheme as Summit to Sea repackaged.
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LATE 2018: TIT-BITS
In September, Lesley Griffiths, Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs, was in Frisco, at a UN bunfight giving business leaders a chance to impress politicians from the sub-national level.
A month later the Daily Post produced this article in which farmers accused wildlife groups of lying about bio-diversity loss in order to grab farm funding. I include it because it introduces an important new tactic into the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.
Hoping to hide the source of the attacks the Corruption Bay establishment was now funding wildlife trusts and other groups to do the dirty work. I wrote about this just last month, in Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas.
Quoted in the DP article was Katie-Jo Luxton of the RSPB:
Writing in today’s Daily Post, RSPB Cymru director Katie-jo Luxton said it was in farming’s interest to work with wildlife groups – and take what’s being offered.
Only by doing this can the industry justify its receipt of taxpayers’ money, she said. Otherwise the industry risks losing out in the post-Brexit scramble for public funding.
That sounds like dialogue from a very bad Mob movie! “Dis is da best deal ya gonna get, Louie, take it – if ya knows what’s good for ya!”
Also note, another reference to “taxpayers’ money“, and “the post-Brexit scramble for public funding“. They’re all reading from the same script.
Having pissed off many, many people, Luxton left the RSPB towards the end of 2021 and joined BirdLife International.
In four years between 2018 and 2022 BirdLife’s income shot up from £22 million to over £40 million. Another indicator of how governments and corporations are using wildlife groups and conservationists to undermine agriculture globally.
Wildlife trusts here saw their income more than double between 2019 and 2022. But income from ‘Welsh Government’ grants and contracts rocketed from £769,310 to £6,821,800 in the same period.
As might be expected, planting trees and making life even more difficult for farmers figured big in this mercifully short document.
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The reality is that despite all the grandstanding, no other country on this doomed planet has allowed OPDs, created the useless post of Future Generations Commission, or declared a climate emergency.
There’s a message there.
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2019 OCTOBER: ‘WALES MAY BE A SMALL NATION . . . ‘
Among the world-renowned climate experts attending was “ITV weather presenter Ruth Wignall“. Further down we read:
For every attendee at the conference a tree will also be planted in Mbale, Eastern Uganda, as part of the Welsh Government’s Wales for Africa programme.
Farmer Nimrod Wambette, from Mbale, will speak at the conference about how his home region is already feeling the impacts of climate change.
After enjoying an expenses-paid trip to Cardiff and a bit of pocket money Nimrod could be guaranteed to stick to the script.
It’s just more of the same, a rather sad and desperate combination of hyperbole and hysteria for which, in kinder and saner times, people would have received treatment. But what really caught my eye was this sentence:
Representatives from Extinction Rebellion will be attending to share some of their ideas about how we should be responding to the climate emergency
This new legislation is designed to increase the influence of ‘environmentalists’ and ‘conservationists’ over Welsh farming. How do I know? Because the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) takes credit for influencing it.
We launched and led a successful campaign to help put the climate and nature emergencies at the core of the new Agriculture (Wales) Bill. Through a survey of rural Wales, an open letter signed by more than 50 organisations, a petition and more, WWF Cymru’s Land of Our Future/Gwlad Ein Dyfodol campaign advocated for agroecology to be central to the bill
Those experts on Welsh farming, the British Mountaineering Council, signed the WWF petition . . . but our farming unions did not.
And so we come to the Sustainable Farming Scheme, for which ‘consultations’ end on Thursday. Though I suspect that, as with NVZ and other proposals, it’s a done deal.
To leave us in no doubt about Labour’s hatred for farmers Anna McMorrin, (former?) partner of Alun Davies, called hard-working Welsh farmers extremists, climate deniers, and conspiracy theorists in the House of Commons last week.
I could have introduced other examples of the ‘Welsh Government’s contempt, such as the refusal to do anything about bTB . . . other than to order the killing of cattle.
But I’ve given enough clues for you to guess how I see the big picture.
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Wildlife and environmental groups, and more recently the ‘Welsh Government’, tell us that 80/90% of Wales’s land is taken up by farming. There’s a reason for that.
By ‘farming’ they mean livestock farming. But it’s not really about farming, it’s about the land used by farming. The talk of farting cows, dirty rivers, biodiversity loss, etc, are the excuses used to destroy farming and to facilitate a land grab.
Land that’s wanted for carbon capture trees and rewilding. Which go together. Can’t have beavers without trees. And almost all the critters planned to be re-introduced are forest dwellers.
UPDATE 05.03.2024: I’ve been sent a pro forma letter that English ‘environmental’ groups have asked members and supporters to submit to the SFS consultation.
In the first line of the second paragraph: ” . . . upwards of 84% of land in Wales managed for farming”. It really chokes them, all this land – and they want it!
This also explains the involvement of vegans, and the backing for organic arable farming. Meat will be an imported luxury item that most of us will be unable to afford. (We’ll be offered insects, and factory-made ‘meat’.)
The countryside of the future will belong to an elite that will justify its advantages, and the restrictions placed on the rest of us, car-less in our 15-minute, constantly-surveiled cities, as being necessary to save the planet.
Having submitted to this cult-agenda, Labour politicians will destroy Welsh farming as we know it. And with it, a culture, a language, and a way of life.
The previous post got considerable attention and it also unlocked fascinating new information. And that explains this follow-up. Which I hope will result in further revelations.
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WHERE ARE WE?
In the previous post I dealt with the Bryn Cadwgan wind farm planned by Galileo Green Energy. This is a Swiss company that set up a UK operation a few years ago to cash in on the Welsh wind turbine rip-off.
Different rules in England mean that complaints from local communities must be listened to which, in practical terms, means that no onshore wind farms get built. This sees Wales and Scotland increasingly used to supply electricity to England from a source the English don’t want.
Even to the extent of electricity from wind farms off Scotland’s west coast coming by undersea cable to Bangor, then down to Swansea, where it can connect with the main transmission lines from Pembroke power station to England.
Here in Wales, every project of 10MW or above is classed as a Development of National Significance (DNS), which means locals, and their elected representatives on local councils, will always be over-ruled by politicians in Corruption Bay who’ve declared war on a people they regard as racist, climate-denying, car-driving, transphobes.
It’s succinctly explained here. The chronology is intriguing.
In addition to the Galileo proposal I also knew that Bute Energy, a Scottish firm that rents a cupboard in Cardiff to fool us into thinking it’s Welsh, had a plan for an installation they were calling Blaencothi. Though details were scarce.
But true to form, Bute has again recruited a local to proselytise on its behalf. This one is Cilycwm community councillor Jamie Pickup. We can no doubt expect Pickup to be speaking up for all three projects.
But the third project, Waun Maenllwyd Wind Hub, being pushed by Belltown Power of Bristol, was a bit of a surprise. Possibly because it had previously been known as ‘Bryn Brawd’, and I’d perhaps assumed it had fallen though because I’d heard no more of it by that name.
Anyway . . . since putting out last week’s piece I have been told that the companies behind these three projects are combining to share a route to the plateau that forms the southern end of the Cambrian Mountains of central Wales.
The proposed access route to the site for abnormal indivisible loads (such as blades, hub, nacelle and tower sections) will be from the port of origin (which is likely to be Swansea) via the M4, A48 and A40. Loads would turn off the public highway at Pumsaint and travel north for approximately 14km on a combination of existing commercial forestry tracks and new tracks to reach the wind farm location. No significant traffic flows will be associated with the operational phase of the site.
Who could argue with that? A motorway and nice wide trunk roads all the way. Problem is, the route as given is sort of incomplete. Let me explain.
As written, deliveries will turn off the A40 at Pumsaint . . . but the A40 goes nowhere near Pumsaint. Which makes what Belltown says misleading, if not dishonest. And if they could get this so wrong, what else might they have got wrong?
The truth is that after leaving Llandeilo the huge low loaders will turn onto the B4302 and head for Talyllychau (Talley). Then on to Crugybar and the Bridgend Inn (where I sank a few pints in the good old days), where they’ll join the A482 to reach Pumsaint.
Using my bestest crayons I’ve conjured up this map that might explain it better.
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For those of you unfamiliar with this road, take my word for it, it will struggle to accommodate massive low loaders carrying huge turbine blades and tower sections.
Below is a capture from Google Maps showing the B4302 just after leaving Talyllychau on its way to Crugybar. Those hedgerows will have to go. And so will many other trees and hedgerows on the 13 miles from the A40 to Pumsaint.
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Now we’re going to move on to Stage 2 of the environmental vandalism associated with these projects. The section that involves the National Trust (NT) and the ‘Welsh Government’.
With the Foresight reputation damaged locally Belltown may be fronting for Foresight. Questions need to be asked. And answers demanded.
UPDATE 10.11.2023: It was learnt last night that Belltown will be taking the A482 from Llanwrda to Pumsaint. Galileo will take the Talyllychau route suggested above. No information yet on the Bute route, but it doesn’t really matter. Because there will now be two roads suffering expensive damage.
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DON’T TRUST THE NATIONAL TRUST
Once the huge low loaders reach Pumsaint, or just outside the village, they’ll take a right turn onto National Trust property.
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This is the Dolaucothi estate, home to the famous ‘Roman’ gold mines, once owned by the Johnes family, who also owned the Hafod estate, to the north. Hafod fell into the clutches of the National Trust last year. With a 99-year lease and £700,000 gift from the ‘Welsh Government’.
In other words, the ‘Welsh Government’ paid an organisation worth billions £700,000 to take over a prime Welsh estate.
Despite the excuse given by Corruption Bay for this generosity it might have been due to the involvement of Dawn Bowden MS. As Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport the Hafod deal should have had nothing to do with her. But Tourism’ has since been added to her portfolio. Fancy that!
Response from ‘Welsh Government’ to FoI request. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
I wrote about it in this post, scroll to the section ‘Bristol Fashion’. And then in this post, in the section, ‘”Welsh Government” funds National Trust’.
It’s instructive to consider the organisation of the National Trust in Wales, and what happened at Hafod. Not least because it might provide clues as to why the NT would be a willing party to this planned environmental disaster.
It was early June last year when we learnt that the Trust was taking over the Hafod estate. Which seems to be owned by the ‘Welsh Government’ through Natural Resources Wales, and had until then been run by the Hafod Trust.
Just three months earlier, in March, Lhosa Daly of Bristol, had taken on the role of NT’s Acting Director for Wales, and was appointed to the post officially in September. I mention Bristol because that’s where she lives.
If we look at her career background we see that in the past seven or eight years Daly’s been chair of the Bristol branch of the Institute of directors, vice chair of the Bristol Law Centre, and she is still a business ambassador for the Western Gateway.
These positions would have brought her into contact with the glitterati of Bristol’s business community. Including, perhaps, the directors of Belltown Power, the company planning to desecrate our country with Waun Maenllwyd Wind Hub.
With Belltown, Bute and Galileo hoping to reach the site by traversing land owned or managed by Lhosa Daly’s National Trust and the ‘Welsh Government’.
The mystery of Dawn Bowden representing the ‘Welsh Government’ last year, despite it being beyond her responsibilities, could be accounted for by her also being from Bristol. She and Daly might have already known each other.
And if that’s too fanciful an explanation for you, then try this: Bowden should have known Lhosa Daly through her being Deputy Minister for Arts since May 2021 and Daly being an advisor to the Arts Council of Wales since April 2019.
Come to that, how did Bristol-based Daly get that gig with the Arts Council of Wales?
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FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m told deals have been done with farmers and other landowners along the route between Llandeilo and Pumsaint to cut corners, destroy hedges, and in places widen the B4302, and even perhaps the A482.
This will cost a considerable amount of money. So who’ll pay for it? Will it be the ‘developers’? The county council? The so-called ‘Welsh Government’? Or will there be a whip-round in the Dolaucothi Arms?
And then there’s the question of how the National Trust squares being a conservation body with the damage it’s helping inflict on the Welsh landscape by these wind farms. What would NT members say, if they knew?
Not just in the road ‘improvements’ I’ve just described, but also on the 14km journey to the sites after the low loaders turn off the A482. And then the on-site destruction.
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There’ll be the vast concrete bases to support these huge turbines, the access roads, the deep trenches for the cables. How many trees will be felled? How much peat bog damaged? And let’s not forget the pylons.
I ask about the trees because I’m told new populations of red squirrels and pine martens are establishing themselves. Will they adapt to climbing pylons and turbines?
I suggest that even if they stick around they’ll be so traumatised by what’s being done to their habitat they might stop breeding.
As if that wasn’t enough, someone then tells me . . .
We also have two breeding maternity colonies of soprano pipistrelle bats on my land, they will love the sonic signature of wind turbines of course.
Don’t worry – once the poor little buggers are disorientated enough the blades will finish them off pretty quickly. (If they’re turning!)
Them and the kites, and other birds. And insects by the million.
Nothing here really surprises me, because I’ve always regarded the National Trust as a very commercial organisation and, in Wales, rather colonialist. Lhosa Daly playing the memsahib is entirely in keeping.
Not only that, but there’s something of the vulture about the NT in Wales, picking up land and estates as old Welsh families die out. Or more recently, acquiring property from the ‘Welsh Government’ or Natural Resources Wales.
Porthdinllaen once belonged to the Jones-Parry (Madryn) family. Sir Love Jones-Parry MP, was very supportive of the Patagonia settlement. Which explains why a town over there is called Puerto Madryn; and is twinned with Nefyn, I believe.
Another example of this sad phenomenon is located not far from me, a place I love to visit. I’m directing you now to Llynnoedd Cregennan.
Llynnoedd Cregennan. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
Major C L Wynne-Jones lost both his sons in WWII, so in 1959 he handed over this 285-hectare estate to the National Trust.
As I hope I’ve made clear, I’m not surprised by the National Trust’s behaviour with these wind farms, and the damage they’ll cause . . . what really pisses me off is that the National Trust is still operating in Wales.
Devolution should have brought Wales a new organisation to replace the colonialist parasite that is the National Trust. We should by now have a Welsh body conserving our heritage and our history, safeguarding our landscapes.
But to set up such a body would have required political leaders with vision and courage, rather than the grubby, ishoo-of-the-month puppets Wales is cursed with.
In this piece I shall look at what might be a renewed attempt to promote OPDs, or perhaps it’s just another bit of ‘affordable housing’ flim-flam. Maybe a bit of both.
For newcomers . . . the OPD system is unique to Wales; it allows people to build a dwelling in open country as long as they promise to worship the sun, name their sprogs Earthworm and Beelzebub, and grow a couple of carrots to prove they’re ‘farmers’.
I’ve written about OPDs many times. Just type ‘OPD’ in the search bar.
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GARRISON OPD
Three years ago I introduced Garrison Farm CIC, you’ll find it in this post, scroll down to the relevant section. The two principals were Ross Edwards and Chris Carree. Carree left the company in June 2021 but Edwards is still there.
I assume Garrison Farm is still a going concern because three new directors have joined since Carree left. Let’s look at them in the order they joined.
Finally, we have Michael Paul Smith, 05.08.2023, who is Senior Facilities and Project Officer for Swansea council, and has worked for the council for over 20 years. Swansea council contributing?
The plan is to set up – possibly in Swansea, or maybe Carmarthenshire – a kind of OPD community for former military personnel. That’s the impression I get in this video from February last year. (Watch from 38:00.)
Thorpe was clearly recovering from a stroke, which he attributed to ‘climate anxiety’.
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Thorpe has crossed my path a few times over the years as I’ve researched OPDs. And the idea of a community of OPDs is not new. As this tweet of Thorpe’s from January 2018 makes clear.
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Though I don’t know what project was being discussed, or even if there was a specific project mooted. So much OPD discussion is little more than pipedreams.
But to return to Swansea, where there was certainly a project launched that could plausibly be called a community. This was Killan-Fach Eco-farm on the Gower side of the city. (Marginally more attractive than the Port Talbot side.)
I wrote about it in June 2020 in One Planet Developments, just scroll down to the section ‘Farmlets’.
The council knocked it back for a number of reasons. One being that . . .
There is also no evidence of how the development would meet local affordable housing needs
Which tells me that ‘affordable housing’ was one of the angles used in the hope of getting planning consent for an OPD project. This is interesting, because you’ll be reading more about affordable housing, and ‘co-operative social housing’, in a minute.
But before that it might be worth focusing on Ross Edwards a little.
From his Linkedin profile we learn that since January this year he’s been Business Development Manager for Rouute. Here’s the website. It describes its product as a, “road-based energy harvesting system“.
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If I understand it . . . pads or sensors are placed on the road surface and vehicles driving over them generate electricity. Even if it works, we’re unlikely to see this technology in Wales because we’re heading towards a vehicle-free future.
There’s another military connection here at Rouute. For CEO is Antony Edmondson-Bennett, a former army officer who, according to his now disappeared Linkedin bio, is trained in ‘close protection’. (It was there last week when I was researching this.)
The Rouute website announces a link-up with a firm called Carma. Here’s a very short video starring the founder of Carma, Jim Holland.
I found the Carma website easily enough, but there is no company of that name registered with Companies House. It was only by scrolling down to the small print at the bottom that I found, “Carma is a trading name of Rewards.Earth LTD 13315107“.
So let’s see what else we can learn.
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‘I THINK THAT I SHALL NEVER SEE . . . ‘.
The arrangement between the two, as spoken by Jim Holland of Carma, is that . . .
Rouute Technologies Ltd will be planting trees for every single unit they sell in the UK or abroad.
On the ‘Meet the Team‘ page of the website we see: “Our target is to plant tens of millions of trees in the next five years“. That is some ambition!
Rooting around for more information I naturally looked up Holland’s Linkedin page, where we see that he was in the Royal Navy for 13 years. So another military connection.
In this rooting around ‘South Wales’ appeared more than once.
This March, ten members of the Tillo team will be making their way to South Wales for a day of tree planting in partnership with Carma.
Despite the nonsense about saving the planet, what we’re looking at here is greenwash; and it must be bracketed with outfits like Stump Up For Trees, and investment vehicles like Foresight, buying up Welsh farms.
Too much of Wales is being lost in this way. We don’t need any more of it.
Drakeford was responding to a completely unrehearsed and piercing question from Huw Irranca-Davies MS. Here’s the transcript.
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Seeing ‘Mike Hedges’ and ‘fascinating’ in the same sentence is quite hilarious.
But here’s where I want to focus, on this section referencing “co-operative social housing managed and owned by the people who live in them“:
And the good news is, Llywydd, that we have a new wave of initiatives being led in different parts of Wales: the Solva community land trust, the Gower community land trust, the Taf Fechan Housing Co-operative in Merthyr—all of them initiatives designed to develop housing that will be run and managed by the people who live in them.
In his ‘question’ Irranca-Davies makes reference to “international youth leaders” in attendance, though God knows why anyone would travel to listen to those clowns. Let alone travel any distance.
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THE EXAMPLES DRAKEFORD QUOTED
Drakeford mentioned three examples of co-operative social housing. These were, to quote him verbatim: “the Solva community land trust, the Gower community land trust, the Taf Fechan Housing Co-operative in Merthyr”.
Let’s look at them, working backwards.
Taf Fechan looks like an offshoot of housing association Merthyr Valley Homes. I guess it takes over or runs MVH properties. If so, then it’s not a group of locals coming together afresh to build and manage their own community.
Now let’s turn to Solfa.
The Solva Community Land Trust was launched under the direction of, or with the help of, Planed in September 2019. “Planed delivers sustainable outcomes for communities by a collaborative, people-led approach“.
But I’m not sure what if anything’s happened since.
An internet search turned up this from March this year, which suggests the properties are still not built.
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The third project mentioned by Drakeford was in Gower. And I assume he was referring to Gŵyr Community Land Trust. Here’s the website.
Though it’s registered with Companies House as Gower Land Trust CIC, launched May 2021. And with just a few hundred in the piggy-bank it’s also difficult to see where this is going without a major injection of funding.
But it seems to have a rival in the Gwyr Community Land Trust Ltd, launched August 2023. This is a one-man band run by a local, Roger Brace.
I mention that Roger Brace is local because, looking at those involved in Gŵyr Community Land Trust, I see that a number of them are newcomers to Wales.
Director Adam Jefferson Land was not long ago pushing a similar venture over in Devon. (Fellow-director Niaomh Convery came to Swansea with him.) Another of the three directors, Emily Robertson, came to Wales a few years ago after working for Solace Women’s Aid in London.
Going by the bios and other evidence, this crew is sure to appeal to ‘progressive’ politicians. An impression strengthened by the image used in this WalesOnline report in November 2021.
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THE BIT AT THE END WHERE I PULL IT ALL TOGETHER
OPDs, as originally conceived, never really took off. While throwing up a shack in the countryside might appeal to many, needing to prove that you were living a largely self-sufficient lifestyle seems to have put many off the idea.
To make things worse, the idea was highjacked by unscrupulous, often unsavoury individuals and groups, buying land, often tracts of forestry, then selling or renting plots for people to put up cabins or bring in mobile homes.
The examples below are from Llangynog, Carmarthenshire, and they were sent to me a couple of years back. They’re not OPDs, and they don’t have planning permission.
But those who live in them will employ the OPD defence against council planners.
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I’m not suggesting that Wade William Heames is either unscrupulous or unsavoury, but his Edible Forest projects have come in for a lot of criticism. Much of it from people who’d been tempted to buy in, or even had bought in.
Which brings me back to Ross Edwards and Garrison Farm. I might accept this project if it was home to Welsh ex-service personnel. But if it’s nothing more than a smokescreen for greenwashing, then I would object.
The video you saw earlier, starring Ross Edwards and David Thorpe was produced by Cwmpas. (Formerly, Wales Co-operative Development & Training Centre Ltd.)
Income of £6.5m from “‘Welsh Government’, European funding, other grants and sources of income“. With two-thirds of that income going on the 100 staff.
And I bet you’d never heard of Cwmpas until you read this. How many more such beasties are out there, lurking in the shadows, devouring unwary maidens and feasting on public funds?
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You’ll see that the Cwmpas accounts were signed off by the then secretary, D Walker. Now Derek Walker – for it is he! – is the Future Generations Commissioner. Does he plan to breathe new life into OPDs in his new role?
Whatever Walker may have planned, Drakeford was talking about more conventional housing. But to understand why we are where we are, you need some background information.
It was always my belief that the left wing administration in Corruption Bay wanted rented housing to be the sole preserve of housing associations . . . with these in turn funded and controlled from the Bay.
But the close relationship that developed led the ONS to decide that Welsh housing associations were, effectively, public bodies. This resulted in them being privatised. Explained here from a ‘Welsh Government’ perspective.
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Welsh housing associations are now building many fewer homes for rent. Some are building none at all. They, and their subsidiaries, are focused almost exclusively on private, open market housing.
This helps explain why some councils are trying to make up the shortfall.
Finally, and especially in rural areas, we have the issue of holiday homes, also retirees and others buying property and moving in permanently.
So . . . fewer housing association properties for rent; private landlords quitting the business; councils spending money they may not have trying to fill the gap; politicians tickling rather than tackling the rural housing crisis; to a backdrop of recession, a ‘de-growth’ agenda, and increasing economic hardship enforced by following the lunacies of Net Zero.
There could be a perfect storm approaching . . . and this storm will have bugger all to do with any imaginary ‘climate crisis’.
Which is why I would hope to see official support for local people getting together to help themselves. But the examples quoted by Drakeford do not inspire confidence.
One thing for sure – a government making major expenditure cuts, and councils that are also feeling the pinch, should not be funding good-lifers hoping to settle in scenically attractive areas with which they have only the most tenuous connection.
The only real solution is a comprehensive and national housing strategy. But it would need joined-up thinking and hard work – from a ‘Welsh Government’ that prefers soundbites and virtue signalling!
Here’s another ‘off the cuff’ kind of post; but what I’m going to write about illustrates a growing problem. Growing due to the increasing unpopularity of the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.
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WELSH MEDIA: FASCISTS AND FOREIGNERS OPPOSE 20MPH
The big issue this week has been the introduction of the 20mph speed limit across the country. I wrote about it in last weekend’s posting, ’20mph, A Disaster Unfolds’.
But perhaps the legislation has been overshadowed by ‘that’ petition, which at the time of writing is heading towards 400,000 signatures. Though the so-called ‘Welsh’ media has tried hard to discredit it and those who’ve signed it.
Here’s an example from yesterday’s Western Mail. Despite 95% of the signatures coming from within Wales, Llais y Sais wants us to know that people in 51 countries have signed.
There’s even an insert headed: ‘Where the global opposition has come from’. Seven from Germany, one from Hungary . . .
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But what that rag is attacking is in fact perfectly reasonable. Welsh people living abroad, and English people in the Marches and elsewhere who regularly drive in Wales, are perfectly entitled to voice their opposition.
Then, at the bottom of the page, there’s a carefully worded piece inviting us to think that opponents of the 20mph restrictions are violent individuals. Probably ‘far right’.
This is not journalism; this is naked propaganda.
But then, when, like the Western Mail, you depend for financial survival on public notices and advertisements paid for by the ‘Welsh Government’, What ya gonna do?
But it was ever thus. It’s just a bit more obvious now. And it’s moving up a notch.
Which is the cue for me to tackle the meat of this issue.
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NUDGE, NUDGE – WHO’S THERE?
For this week also saw the release of a bizarre poll showing that more people support the 20mph restrictions than oppose them. And it was odd for a number of reasons.
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First, there’s the ‘slanted’ question, worded to achieve a desired outcome. Hoping “Where cars mix with pedestrians and cyclists” will conjure up images of boy racers screeching through pedestrianised areas, knocking over old ladies and kiddies on bikes.
This is called ‘nudging’. But even this doesn’t fully account for the ‘findings’.
By way of comparison, here’s a survey from WalesOnline. It certainly overstates the strength of opposition, but it’s closer to the truth than the survey we just looked at.
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Then there’s this YouGov poll, which still shows an almost two to one majority against.
No survey I have seen, and no other form of evidence, suggests anything other than a big majority against widespread 20mph speed limits.
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The other thing I found strange was that the survey doesn’t tell us who commissioned it, which is normal practice. So who produced that slanted survey?
The answer would appear to be Redfield & Wilton Strategies. So what can we learn about them? Well, not a lot. Individuals named Redfield and Wilton may not exist.
Which takes us on to the next section of this post. Follow me . . .
So why is the company called Redfield & Wilton? Is it to make it sound more English? Whatever the answer, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that it’s an attempt to deceive. Which is not good for an organisation trading on credibility.
Even so, it’s reasonable to assume that Rodrigues has background in polling and market research? Well, er . . . no.
For Rodrigues is a solicitor. Here’s his entry from the Solicitors Register.
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Cassadys, mentioned above is a debt-ridden company that’s escaped compulsory strike-off for late returns more than once. The company is named after its founder, an Indian named Kaizad Cassad.
Around the same time, on 1 January 2020, Rodrigues took over BR Services Europe Ltd from Pakistani Umar Aqueel. A ‘Management Consultancy’ company, that was just bumping along financially.
The other entity mentioned in the Solicitors Register is the Brooke Consultancy LLP. Which seems to be a genuine sort of legal partnership, and it provides a useful profile of Bruno Rodrigues.
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That profile tells us he specialises in immigration law, and he’s also into, “the niche area of fashion law“. What the hell’s that? Does it mean I could get arrested for wearing the wrong socks?
But, strangely, no mention of his new venture of opinion polls. Come to that, here’s his Linkedin profile (here in pdf format), and there’s no mention of Redfield & Wilton here either.
I find that very, very strange. If ‘niche’ interests can be mentioned, why not a new company being regularly quoted in the media, and apparently being used by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic?
One more company needs to be mentioned. This is Alghanim Capital Ltd. Rodrigues was a director along with Kuwaitis Abdulwahab Alghanem and Fahad Alghanim who, despite the slightly different spellings, I take to be related.
Abdulwahab is described on the Companies House entry as a ‘civil servant’ in Kuwait, while Fahad is said to be a student in the USA.
Their line of business was: ‘Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet’. Mmm.
Alghanim Capital was formed in October 2018, and folded without seemingly doing anything. So why was it formed at all? This is the sort of company behaviour that gets my whiskers twitching.
But even if it was all innocent, how did Rodrigues meet the Kuwaitis?
Well, I assume that’s where it comes from, but my quick search didn’t find it. Though I’m sure it’s genuine, because the font and the colouring match, and the rascal who used it seemed to think he was putting me down, or weakening my case.
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“Self-commissioned“? Does that mean that Bruno Rodrigues and his little team decide amongst themselves what surveys to do, and then publish them? Or maybe get some media outlet to pay for their whimsical and random findings?
I don’t buy that. I certainly don’t think it accounts for all of their output.
The more I’ve thought about Redfield & Wilton the stronger the possibility has become in my mind that this outfit may not do any research or polling. It simply acts as a channel for what others want to promote.
Let’s say you want to push the message that more people in Wales support 20mph restrictions than oppose them, then you engage Redfield & Wilton in order to make the message look more credible than if it had come from a source that is obviously biased.
Though the R&W record is not impressive. Because for an organisation dealing in statistics, Bruno and his pals are not very good at figuring. They often seem to get things horribly wrong.
Which, when coupled with their pro-Labour bias (pro-Democrat in US polls), makes them look rather stupid. Here’s a recent example.
Bookies, as we know, like to have facts and reliable figures because there’s always money riding on them. So I was amused to read this piece in PoliticalBetting.com expose how horrendously wrong Redfield & Wilton got a recent Scottish poll.
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So who in Wales might have been desperate enough to ask R&W to put out this phoney 20mph survey?
Obviously, there’s the ‘Welsh Government’. But would they run the risk?
A more likely possibility must be the company that Drakeford and his clowns have employed to promote the 20mph restrictions. I’m referring now to Lynn Global. For this is their line of work.
Lynn would regard what I’m suggesting as ‘countering misinformation’ and therefore perfectly legitimate. Even desirable. To most people it would be lying to get your own way.
If I’m right, then we are on a dangerous path. Let me explain why.
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CONCLUSION
It’s common knowledge that in recent years opinion polls, especially on politics, have been used to influence public opinion rather than to gauge it and report it.
This explains why so many polls have been spectacularly wrong; on Brexit, on Trump’s victory in 2016, on the size of the Conservative majority in 2019. All because too many pollsters allowed their left-liberal or woke prejudices to intrude.
Returning to the Redfield & Wilton survey, as I see it, there are two alternatives: either the poll result is distorted with bias, or else it’s completely and deliberately fabricated. Neither option should be acceptable in an open and democratic society.
Good governments can stand on their records, on what they’ve delivered for their people. Only liars, incompetents and aspiring totalitarians need a bought media, ‘behavioural sciences’, and phoney surveys.
Some of you may find what follows, especially the Conclusion, troubling. But I had to write it because the level of lobbying, coupled with contempt for our people, is now at unacceptable levels.
And while I still see the third sector as a gravy train for otherwise unemployable Labourites, and remain convinced that senior civil servants are Westminster’s fifth column, the role of environmental pressure groups has become impossible to ignore.
Or maybe I should have said, what started out as environmental groups, or are regarded as environmental groups. For they have moved beyond environmentalism.
Hopefully, my use of italics gives a clue as to what you’re about to read.
♦
THE MORE THINGS FALL APART THE MORE DESPERATE THEY BECOME
Those I’m discussing, have, in my lifetime, moved beyond individual species, like the whale or the panda, and identifiable environments like the Amazon rainforest, to go global. Not only that, but they now argue that to save the planet many things become necessary, most importantly, controlling human behaviour.
Even human movement. The focus is now on us humans. For we are the problem. All of us, collectively, simply by existing.
To deal with ‘the people problem’, the caring souls I’m writing about have agreed to serve as foot-soldiers for an elite that sees itself as an unelected world government.
Climate hysteria bullshit. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
But I sense the campaign by the former panda cuddlers on behalf of the would-be totalitarians is not going well. Maybe I should clarify that by saying things are faltering on the global level but still progressing rather well in Wales.
Globally, those things they’ve demanded we believe in look less and less credible. This results in people questioning the propaganda, and wondering what lies behind it.
After 50 years of preaching climate disaster, rising sea levels, polar ice loss, and polar bear extinction, you can’t be surprised that the public gets a wee bit sceptical when things stay the same . . . except that the Great Barrier Reef has never been healthier, the ice sheets are expanding in both Arctic and Antarctic, and there are now more polar bears than ever.
When the facts so obviously contradict the propaganda the propagandists are in trouble.
And so I think this exposing of the lies explains what I see as a certain change of tack from the environmental lobby, coupled with an increasing desperation on the part of those pulling their strings.
By a change of tack, I mean that the emphasis has shifted from the global Armageddon believed in only by the brainwashed, to more nuanced and local issues under headings like, “biodiversity“, “habitat loss” and “environmental degradation“.
Because in addition to there being no climate catastrophe most people have trouble thinking in global terms. But persuade them things are bad on their patch, and then say, “It’s the same all over “, and you might still fool them.
An accepted environmental tactic known as ‘Think globally, act locally’.
In practice, it means we’re told there are fewer wild flowers than our parents knew. Or that land can be ‘improved’ if handed over to such-and-such a group. Or that our rivers are being destroyed. In fact, to believe George Monbiot, the Wye is now just an open sewer.
But just as with the death cult predictions the remedy is the same – radical changes in human behaviour that require restrictions on movement and other freedoms we and our ancestors have taken for granted.
As I just suggested with one of those links, an obvious connection between puppets and puppet-masters is them putting a disproportionate amount of the blame for the world’s ills on farmers. Especially livestock farmers.
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Not that that makes any sense in the real world. But taking control of the world’s farming is a central ambition of the Globalist agenda. And it’s already happening.
In the Netherlands, the government plans to implement orders from the World Economic Forum, channelled through the European Union, to forcibly buy 3,000 farms (the most efficient farms in the world), and EU legislation will prohibit the displaced Dutch families from farming anywhere else in the EU!
All because someone decided it would be a good idea to pretend that methane is at dangerous levels, and that CO2 is a threat to the planet.
The truth is that cows belching and farting make little or no difference to methane levels, while life on Earth would be impossible without CO2, which has been at much higher levels many times in the past.
This ’emissions’ nonsense is about control of energy and the food supply. Control these – as the Globalists want – and you control the people.
These attacks on farmers originate with those who operate behind the scenes; but they get bodies like the EU, national governments, and sub-national administrations to implement their instructions.
With ‘environmental’ organisations doing the close up and dirty work.
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With more and more people becoming aware of the WEF, and how it operates through local political establishments, there is something of a panic in Davos to promote The Agenda before too many politicians get elected on anti-WEF platforms.
Which also explains why the growing rejection of the Globalist agenda is described in the mainstream media – now funded and controlled by major WEF backers – as “right wing“.
For those of us who oppose climate hysteria, the butchering of confused teenagers, open borders, and the other elements of The Agenda must be described this way to smear us and deter others from listening.
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HOW DOES THIS SYSTEM OPERATE IN WALES?
Let’s kick off with a subject causing a great deal of debate, and anger, across Wales right now – 20mph speed limits.
It was obvious all the way through that this measure was being pushed onto our self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ by agencies originally external to Wales. Principally, an outfit called 20’s Plenty for Us.
Fiona Andrews, member of the “20’s Plenty” campaign group, told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast the speed limit was “more human, friendlier” and better for the environment.
Ms Andrews, who lives in St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire, which has been trialling the speed limit for two years, said it had made a big difference.
It should go without saying that Fiona Andrews is not native to Llandudoch. My source suggests that she and her partner, Piers Graham Partridge, moved from Bristol in 2018.
Andrews also appears in this report from July 2021. The image of Andrews used is even credited to her partner. So she’s not new to the game of influencing politicians to push the Globalist agenda. Or, it would seem, to using the media.
In addition to being a photographer, Partridge is a businessman, with an old family firm called Cardigan Mercantile Company Ltd.
And when he’s not photographing his wife, or running his business, it seems he likes to hang out with thigh-slapping, latte-sipping, Anglo-Saxon volk; and someone wrapped in a gaudy flag. (Partridge is in the blue shirt.)
North Pembrokeshire and south Ceredigion must be delighted with this cultural enrichment. Not to mention, being told what they’ve been doing wrong all these centuries.
But Llandudoch is doubly blessed. Not only to have Andrews and Partridge come to enlighten them but, as I mentioned in Clear Water, Poisoned Debate, Jessica McQuade is another recent arrival.
Her Linkedin page (pdf version) reveals that her career path has been: ‘Welsh Government’, WCVA, WWF Cymru, WWF UK (even though she’s based in Wales).
Since January this year, McQuade has been WWF UK’s Wholescape Programme Manager, with a focus on food. (And we are not talking here of bamboo shoots for pandas.)
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She also busies herself with the Save the Teifi campaign. Any problems with the Teifi will be mainly blamed on farmers.
I say that because when I researched last November’s pieces the suspicion grew that an understanding had been reached between the ‘Welsh Government’, Dŵr Cymru / Welsh Water, and the environmental / water groups that resulted in public money passing to the savers of the planet in return for them giving the water company an easy ride and concentrating their attacks on livestock farmers.
An arrangement that served a number of agendas.
Which might explain how, in defiance of common sense, English water companies seemed to be in the news almost every day for polluting rivers and seas while our own water company was, apparently, above reproach.
Recently I’ve learnt of other organisations operating behind the scenes. So hold your nose and we’ll dive a little deeper into the swamp that is government and public life in Wales.
And we’re going to focus on another group making the headlines at the moment, Extinction Rebellion (XR). I introduce this lot because another source found info telling us that the ‘Welsh Government’ has been in cahoots with XR, since at least May 2019. As this FoI response makes clear.
The May 2019 notation refers to:
Correspondence between the Minister for Rural Affairs,
North Wales & Trefnydd (MinRANWT) and Extinction Rebellion.
At that time, the minister was Lesley Griffiths, but I doubt if many of you reading this had even heard of Extinction Rebellion four years ago. I certainly hadn’t.
Griffiths is a long-standing enemy of farmers. So was it XR that advised her (and Gary) to introduce the insane and punitive all-Wales NVZ legislation designed to put farmers out of business?
It might get a bit messy now, because I was sent a load of stuff in the form of (often incomplete and undated) screenshots. Even so, what I have is fascinating, and damning.
For not only does it tell us that the ‘Welsh Government’ is sitting down for tea and Hobnobs with extremist groups to discuss how Wales should be run, those groups are even dictating to the ‘Welsh Government’ what its priorities should be.
These minutes pose many questions. Not least, why was a representative of the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) at a meeting discussing internal Welsh matters?
What next – will the Orange Order be invited?
The ‘JO’ referred to is almost certainly James Owen, the former ‘Welsh Government’ Deputy Director, Land Management
While ‘SL’ is, I suspect, Sue Lewis, of Wrecsam. When she’s not laying down the law to the ‘Welsh Government’, she’s telling local authorities what to do.
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From that report it’s clear that Extinction Rebellion and Friends of the Earth are working together, but how close are they?
Anyway, I now want to focus on Extinction Rebellion’s Political Engagement Team. The purpose of this little gang is quite simple – to get politicians and governments to do its bidding.
Here’s an example.
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And in Wales, that’s easy.
Now, unfortunately, I don’t have a date for the XR correspondence below, but the ‘FM’ referred to is not another gang of environmental shriekers but our very own First Minister, Mark Drakeford, of high renown.
The highlighting is mine.
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In addition to what I’ve highlighted, I’m intrigued by the final paragraph. Would there be some way other than legislation for, “mandating fossil fuel divestment from public sector investments“.
This, remember, is our money, much of it paid in council tax; but Extinction Rebellion wants to dictate how that money is invested. Are we ever consulted?
The issue crops up again in this screenshot involving Llyr Gruffydd, Plaid Cymru regional member for north Wales, and interim leader.
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I could go on, but I’ll just introduce one more ‘campaigner’ who has come to live among us. This is Paula Renzel, who describes herself as “German-French” but now resides in Llanberis in Eryri.
She arrived in Cardiff in April 2018 to work for The Ramblers. Interestingly, someone who has always been involved with The Ramblers is former minister, Jane Davidson, mother of the OPD, and driving force behind the Future Generations legislation.
Then, in October 2020, Paula Renzel joined Sustrans. Another pressure group with a ministerial connection. This one still in government. I’m talking now of Lee Waters, who represents Llanelli (from his home in Penarth) and is Deputy Minister for Climate Change. As his official bio tells us:
He previously ran the sustainable transport charity Sustrans Cymru where he led the campaign for the Active Travel Act
So many connections!
Since February 2022 Paula Renzel has worked for the Transport Action Network. She is almost certainly the “new Welsh worker” mentioned in the May 2022 clip (above) from XR’s Political Engagement Team.
Below is her entry on the TAN website. You’ll see that among her battle honours she lists closing Cardiff’s Castle Street to private vehicles.
Not only does the WEF get a mention, but also Sustrans.
Active travel is a key part of the Welsh Government’s vision for the Welsh transport network. A gender budgeting pilot is specifically focused on the Wales E-Move programme, which operates low-cost community-based e-bike hire and loan schemes in five areas in Wales – most with high levels of deprivation. The Welsh Government is working alongside Sustrans Cymru, who are delivering the scheme, to better understand how a gender budgeting approach could add value and inform future delivery.
So the ‘Welsh Government’ is working with Sustrans to provide electric bikes, for women living in deprived areas, and this somehow links with ‘gender budgeting’? Is that what this convoluted bullshit is trying to say?
Who writes this stuff?
And will these bikes have crossbars?
I ask because ‘Welsh Government’ takes orders on matters sexual from Stonewall. Which means that if you want a good, long laugh, just ask a Welsh Labour politician to give you a definition of a woman.
As I said earlier, I could go on, but it gets depressing after a while. So I’ll just skip to my concluding thoughts.
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CONCLUSION
After reading what I’ve written here it should be obvious to anyone where the idea for 20mph speed limits now being imposed on Welsh communities originated.
In fact, they boast about these ‘victories’ . . . over us.
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But that’s the norm in Corruption Bay. If Stonewall can dictate Welsh education policy why be surprised that followers of the global death cult are allowed to decide on 20mph speed limits, and no bypass for Llanbedr?
No doubt those I’ve written about argue they’re saving a planet facing an existential crisis. Which is absolute nonsense because there is no looming climate disaster. What they’re really doing is forcing on Wales the Globalists’ de-growth, anti-people, restrict and control agenda.
But what does it say about Welsh democracy? We elect politicians to serve the best interests of our communities and our country, but then they are taken over by pressure groups and told to implement the agendas of those groups.
To all intents and purposes the ‘Welsh Government’ is serving Extinction Rebellion, Sustrans, Greenpeace, 20’s Plenty for us and the other pressure groups. But not us.
What’s worse, the word is obviously out that Wales is the place to come to get your agenda implemented. Just look at the activists who’ve moved here in recent years.
Are they here on secondment? Have their moving costs been paid?
Whatever the answer, we have people who know bugger all about Wales framing legislation for Wales. But Wales doesn’t matter to them. Our country is just an easy place for them to implement their agendas. Thanks to ‘our’ politicians.
And because the pressure groups are now in control, things can only get worse.
Whatever you want to call this system, it’s not democracy.
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.
One-hundred-and-fifty million pounds (£150m) returned to London (presumably because we have all we need)
A failing airport bought for about ten times what it was worth.
A farm bought for £4.25m (a purchase no one can explain).
Those running the most dysfunctional health board on God’s Earth are searching down the backs of sofas for £122m that’s unaccounted for.
Etc., etc., etc.
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).
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.
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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 . . .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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 both seem to be funded to shield Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) and others from criticism by blaming livestock farmers for all river pollution. Also, to pursue the so-called ‘Welsh Government’s Net Zero lunacy and, in so doing, serve the globalist agenda.
With a few twists.
Wildlife and environmental groups tend to contain more ‘zealots’, which results in hysteria, and a readiness to tell lies. Which in this context is often accompanied by a thinly-disguised contempt for Wales and Welsh identity.
One example might be the charity Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW) choosing to dissolve itself, while the local trusts for which it served as the umbrella organisation joined England’s Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. You’ll learn more about this as you read on.
As I say, there will be similarities with last week’s piece, but also differences. And I promise a bit more in the way of polemic. Ol’ Jac gonna let rip!
It’s fairly big, so go make a mug of something before settling down to enjoy it.
♦
WHO’S WHO IN THE FLEECE JACKETS
Let’s start by looking at the organisational setup.
The clip below from the Charity Commission entry tells us that the RSWT now views Wales and England as a single unit, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland are treated separately. Even the Isle of Man gets more respect than us.
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But then, when you surrender your separate identity this is what you can expect.
And yet, the pretence of an independent existence is maintained by a Wildlife Trusts Wales website. Where WTW describes itself as: ‘one of five Wildlife Trusts in Wales’ which, again, makes no sense. Yes, there are five, I just listed them, and they’re all area specific, so where and how does WTW fit in?
It’s all very confusing. Perhaps deliberately so.
At the foot of the WTW website home page we are given Companies House and Charity Commission numbers. The latter draws a blank because the charity was closed March 31, 2021. While the Companies House entry tells us that the company voluntarily dissolved earlier this year.
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So why hasn’t the information on the website been updated? If it’s claimed WTW still exists, then what form does that existence take?
And what happened to the money?
Well, the final accounts for the WTW (y/e 31.03.2021) seem to show, at the foot of page 19, that the cash left when the company folded was divvied up among four of the five trusts I mentioned earlier.
Brecknock received nowt because it had not long before merged with the South and West Wales Wildlife Trust, which for some reason was itself left out. (Why didn’t ‘Brecknock’ make the obvious merger, with Radnorshire? Or why not a Powys trust?)
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You’ll see that £234,320 went to the ‘All Wales Conservation Strategy’. Does anyone know what that is? I’ve tried Googling but nothing comes up. Do the funders know where their money’s going?
The more I thought about this wildlife trusts reconfiguration the stranger it appeared. I mean, just think about it.
Before devolution we had local wildlife trusts with Wildlife Trusts Wales serving as the umbrella body. Yet now, when wildlife trusts deal with Y Senedd, when there’s separate Welsh funding, different legislation, they do away with their national body in order to, effectively, become English wildlife trusts.
This move makes no sense on any rational or practical level. How then can it be explained? I really would like to know.
Whatever ethereal form Wildlife Trusts Wales now takes the wraith clearly retains the strength to use a Twitter account. Here’s a gem put out on Monday.
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To describe Wales as ‘one of the most nature depleted countries in the world’ is hysterical nonsense and an insult to us as a nation.
While suggesting that farming is to blame rather gives the game away.
The image used in the tweet comes from this source, linked with Denmark farm, near Lampeter, where we find another gang of alien envirogrifters. A farming source tells me the allegation made in the image may be libellous.
We saw in last week’s piece that river charities saw a remarkable increase in official funding at the very time Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) was formulating her draconian and ‘unworkable’ NVZ legislation.
Such propinquity!
Well, no. It’s explained by the fact that Lesley (and Gary) wanted a stream of pollution stories in order to justify that NVZ legislation.
Stories that were also music to the ears of Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) bosses, because it deflected attention from the water company’s pollution.
We see something very similar in wildlife trusts.
Let’s start with the North Wales Wildlife Trust. Where total income more than doubled between 2017 and 2021. The largest element of that increase is (in various forms) government funding, up from £180,440 in 2017 to £1,970,000 in 2021.
Moving south we come to the intriguing anomaly of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust. Intriguing for in the old 13-county arrangement you will recall that Radnorshire was quite small in size and had the lowest population of all our counties.
But the local wildlife trust paints a different picture. Total income doubled between 2017 and 2021 and there are assets of over £2m. There were no assets in 2019.
The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales has seen income increase by 50% in the period we’re looking at, but government grants increased from £21,300 in 2017 to £748,050 in 2021. Then throw in assets of some £5m.
So everything looks just tickety-boo on the financial front for our English-registered wildlife trusts.
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BARE-FACED LIES
I am indebted to one of the few honest journalists left in Wales for drawing my attention to a disgraceful incident last November, at a hearing of the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee.
Rachel Sharp of the zombie-like Wildlife Trusts Wales and Wales Environmental Link (WEL) alleged that along with all the other evils livestock farmers are responsible for they also use growth hormones, which eventually end up in our streams and rivers.
The truth is that growth hormones have been banned in the UK since 1981. Welsh livestock farmers do not use growth hormones.
After protests from farming unions and Tory MS Sam Kurtz apologies were issued. But as we’ve come to expect from these envirofanatics it’s never an honest ‘I was wrong’. It’s always qualified, position shifting, hoping the original lie lingers.
But this time they’d gone too far, and it wasn’t just Rachel Sharp telling porkies. Also there representing Wales Environmental Link was Creighton Harvey, also a trustee of Afonydd Cymru Cyf.
Here’s how the Pembrokeshire Herald reported it.
‘The evidence of Ms Sharp’s fellow representative from Wales Environment Link was also riddled with errors.
Creighton Harvey told the Committee that agriculture was the largest polluter of Wales’s watercourses.
The largest polluters are water companies, industrial users, and domestic users’.
So who is Rachel Sharp?
Well, as we know, she’s a trustee of Wales Environmental Link. But this profile from the ‘Welsh Government’ website tells us a bit more. And it’s fascinating.
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To begin with, it keeps up the pretence of the defunct Wildlife Trusts of Wales. But concludes by informing us that Rachel Sharp is also ‘a group member of the Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel’.
We’re told, ‘The Chair is Mari Arthur, Director of Cynal (sic) Cymru’. But Mari Arthur left Cynnal Cymru in July 2018, after just 4 months. Is this another site in need of updating?
Mari Arthur now runs Mari Arthur Marketing, but hasn’t yet registered it as a company. Among her clients we find Cynnal Cymru. Also, joined-at-the-hip ‘Welsh Government’ and Cardiff University.
If the name Mari Arthur rings a bell it’s because she so badly damaged Plaid Cymru in Llanelli, a seat the party had been nurturing since the days of the great Carwyn James.
She was forced on the constituency party by her friends in both Plaid Cymru and Labour. For in the Corruption Bay circles in which Mari Arthur moves party labels mean little as long as you’re ‘on the right side of history’.
The Independent Environmental Advisory Panel is clearly a group that allows Dŵr Cymru and envirozealots to agree their narratives in the war on livestock farmers and draw attention away from Dŵr Cymru itself, the biggest culprit.
There should be no place in Welsh public life for Rachel Sharp of the mythical Wales Wildlife Trusts, the all too corporeal Wales Environmental Link, and the Dŵr Cymru claque in the laughably named Independent Environmental Advisory Panel.
I suspect Rachel Sharp’s mask slipped last November when she forgot where she was; because when she and others of her ilk usually talk with politicians and civil servants – and of course, Dŵr Cymru – they tend to reinforce each other’s self-serving prejudices about livestock farmers.
But she’ll survive. For she has powerful friends, among those who’ve been elected, and those we’ve never heard of.
∼
Another name that caught my eye among the Wales Environmental Link luminaries was Natalie Buttriss, whose Linkedin profile (here in pdf) tells us she’s ‘Director of Wales The Woodland Trust’. This outfit previously used the name Coed Cadw for its Welsh operations, but this pandering to the indigenes seems to have been dropped.
Native of Bristol Buttriss was in at the start of the Summit to Sea land grab. For which she appeared on this blog four years ago in The Welsh Clearances. Her contempt for farmers was made obvious in this radio interview with the BBC’s Farming Today.
I have always believed that Buttriss was so arrogant, so dismissive of the interests of livestock farmers, because she believed she had the full support of the ‘Welsh Government’.
For in that interview she suggests that subsidies would be withheld or cut to make farmers fall into line. She wouldn’t have said that unless certain Bay politicians had promised to play the heavies.
The ‘Welsh Government’s hand was not revealed because the opposition to Summit to Sea made backers like Rewilding Britain pull out and the whole thing seemed to fall apart.
Or maybe it’s still out there, lurking in the undergrowth, waiting to re-emerge.
As we know, climate alarmists have too much influence with the media, partly through having brainwashed two generations of schoolchildren and college students, and partly through funding – ever wondered why Bill Gates gives money to the BBC?
Or perhaps, more pertinently, why the BBC is allowed to accept his funding?
But the propagandising is not confined to the BBC.
∼
Last Friday ITV’s Wales at Six ran a piece about cooperation between the Rhug Estate and the Welsh Dee Trust. A relatively harmless little filler.
But the newsreader, Andrea Byrne, dropped into the report: “Rivers like the Wye and the Usk are virtually dead and no longer able to support an abundance of fish like trout and salmon and other wildlife“.
Bizarre, and completely untrue. But from where did ITV Wales get that lie?
Because if it’s true then somebody should tell Harry Legge-Bourke of the Glanusk estate; for he advertises, ‘fantastic fishing on 5 miles of double bank fishing on the River Usk offering day tickets for Trout and Salmon rods’.
No one disputes that these rivers could be healthier, but they’re far from ‘virtually dead’, as ITV Wales would have us believe.
And if these rivers are in decline, then whose fault is that? Because if the finger of guilt is being pointed in the wrong direction to protect the guilty party then things are unlikely to improve.
There is constant financial backing and other support for those who tell lies about livestock farmers from those who benefit from and capitalise on those lies.
I’m often inclined to believe in coincidences. But not this time. What I’m describing is too widespread, across too many sectors.
If it quacks like a duck, and it waddles like a duck . . .
◊
CONCLUSION
The environmental / wildlife / Nature bodies in Wales are like exotic organisms in a Petri dish. Forever growing, dividing, re-forming, changing appearance and colour, and multiplying through the introduction of fresh viruses.
There are many reasons why there should be no further public funding for these groups. You’ve read some of those reasons here. But Sebastian and Claudia needn’t go without because there are plenty of funding streams they could tap into.
For example, and seeing as they’re promoting the agendas of the UN and WEF, one possibility must be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Another option would be George Soros. Contact details can be had from Coleg Soros in Talgarth, where environmental and wildlife groups already have many contacts.
Bottom line, and last word . . .
It’s obscene that a country – especially our country – gives tens of millions of pounds every year for truth-averse zealots to enjoy sinecures fretting over toads and butterflies while our people die because ambulances don’t turn up.
As evidence trickles out about the purchase – by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’, for £4.25m – of Gilestone farm, the picture just seems to get murkier.
That’s because every new revelation, or attempted explanation, raises more questions. Though one thing becoming clear is that in this area of southern Powys and rural Gwent, there is a network of well-connected individuals profiting from political patronage, and the public purse.
♦
CONNECTIONS
It was difficult deciding which thread to start with. The one I’ve chosen may seem innocuous enough, but stick with it because it does lead somewhere, and connections will reveal themselves.
To explain. The World Economic Forum, using the pretext of a ‘climate catastrophe’ that isn’t happening, seeks to impose an unelected global government made up of political leaders, major corporations like Vanguard and Blackrock, and multi-billionaires such as Gates, Soros, Zuckerberg and others.
One of the ploys being used to exert control over us is the claim that there is too much carbon about. We are expected to believe that an element essential to life on this planet is in fact killing us! So the world needs to ‘decarbonise’.
The document to which I’ve linked invites responses. And here’s a further link, this time to the summary of those responses.
Being badly advertised outside of environmental circles the responses predictably suggested fewer cars, more wind turbines, and increased brainwashing of children. (Scroll down to page 84 for the organisations that responded.)
You’ll see that the report on the responses was compiled by Miller Research (UK) Ltd. Here’s the company website, and if you scroll down you’ll see that the main office is in Abergavenny, fast becoming the enviroshyster epicentre of our Wye-Usk Fertile Crescent.
On the Companies House entry for Miller we see that the sole director of the company is the eponymous Nicholas FitzHardinge Miller. The unaudited financial statement (y/e 31.07.2021) would suggest that the company is doing fairly well, with 12 employees and retained earnings of £473,108.
While the website makes it obvious where the money comes from. For in addition to the ‘Welsh Government’ Miller does work for other bodies I guarantee you’re familiar with.
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There are no entities there that I’d regard as genuine commercial clients. They seem to be the kind of lucrative gigs you’d get if you were well-connected down in Corruption Bay. Or to the Labour Party.
While there’s a company Twitter account Miller also has his own account where, a few months back, he recommended a book approved by the otherworldly fanatics of Extinction Rebellion.
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‘Degrowth’ is code for turning the clock back on human progress. Especially in the West, or perhaps only in the West. And not for everybody.
An administration in thrall to the World Economic Forum employed a company owned by an individual who supports Extinction Rebellion. The outcome of the ‘consultation’ on decarbonisation was beyond predictable. It was pre-determined.
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GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD
Another company Miller has been associated with is Blurrt Ltd. Which is, alas, no longer with us, having gone the way of so many of the companies that appear on this blog.
As a Victorian headstone might have put it, ‘Received into the bosom of the Great . . . ‘ er, well, Receiver.
But Blurrt is a story worth telling. Here’s the link to the Companies House entry that will help you follow the tale.
Formed in June 2012, by Jason Robert Smith, Blurrt’s product, ‘allows users to listen, analyse, showcase and engage with social audiences in real time’, which television companies thought might be useful.
And yet, confusingly, in his Twitter bio, Nick Miller, of ‘Monmouthshire, UK’, describes himself as, ‘Founder at Blurrt’.
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It’s confusing because according to the documents filed with Companies House Smith alone formed the company and wasn’t joined by Miller and Andrew Paul Cargill until October of 2012. (Cargill left on February 12, 2014.)
Is Miller saying he was involved before becoming a director and a shareholder? But if so, then what form might that involvement have taken? And would it allow him to claim that he was the ‘founder’?
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The day Cargill left, two new directors joined. These were Lloyd Gooding (son of Alf Gooding), and would-be media tycoon Huw Marshall. Marshall was representing S4C, for the following month we read, S4C takes stake in Blurrt.
By an amazing coincidence, Marshall gets a mention in the latest issue of Private Eye.
The involvement of S4C links with investment made in Blurrt Ltd. Though around the same time the company was also seeking other funding and seems to have raised £504,135 from 182 investors.
In a return made to Companies House June 26, 2014 we see that the largest shareholder was Nicholas FitzHardinge Miller, with 360 in his own name and a further 240 in the name of Miller Research.
Marshall was replaced as S4C’s representative on July 6, 2015 by Phillip Gwynne Evans, who lasted until December 21, 2018.
The investment did not work out. We know that because this report of Westminster’s Welsh Affairs Committee, from July 2019, says that: ‘S4C has confirmed to the Committee that its investments in Blurrt have since been written down to zero.’
Is that saying the debt from 2014 was written off? Presumably because there was no hope of it being recovered. And yet . . .
Founder Jason Robert Smith ceased being a director in October 2017. Which left Lloyd Gooding and Nicholas FitzHardinge Miller minding the shop.
I have difficulty understanding these further loans. Partly because S4C may have had to write off the 2014 loan, and partly because by 2017, when the two loans were made, the good ship Blurrt was securely moored up Shit Creek.
The accounts for year ending December 31, 2017 show debts of £467,329. While some of this may be attributed to the two loans, the debt for the previous year was a worrying £118,085.
This looks like a gambler on a losing streak throwing good money after bad. But let’s remember who the ‘gamblers’ were, and whose money they were squandering!
The last Blurrt accounts filed were for year ending December 31, 2018. And they are not a pretty sight. It might help if you visualise the bracketed figures in red.
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It’s difficult to comprehend why so much money was pumped into a lost cause. Was it to help out certain well-connected persons?
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BABYLON-ON-USK
There are a couple of other companies with which Nick Miller is associated that are worthy of mention as they help fill out the picture.
The piece told us that the new venture at Gilestone – whatever it is – will support farmers and young people. Did we ever doubt it! But will it be intersectional and carbon-neutral, that’s what we all want to know.
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In all seriousness, I get the impression that the Gilestone / Green Man story is changing from week to week. And not one version I’ve heard is plausible. Perhaps the truth can’t be told because it’s too embarrassing for certain politicians.
No wonder the ‘Welsh Government’ is now refusing to answer Freedom of Information requests about this shambles.
Nicholas FitzHardinge Miller and Sarah Dickins are of course denizens of the Fertile Crescent, where a certain milieu is especially favoured by Corruption Bay.
In addition, I bet Sarah Dickins has connections all over the place that could be of use to a company ready to . . . oh, I don’t know, maybe help various bodies go through sham consultations in order to arrive at pre-determined conclusions.
Another company registered at Pen-y-Wyrlod is Blue Egg Productions Ltd. As Sarah Dickins holds the shares this may be the vehicle through which her BBC salary is paid.
An outfit looked on with great favour down the Bay.
I can’t help wondering if telling us trees are edible might be advice, preparing us for the dark times after the WEF has put farmers out of business and we are being forced to eat insects and ‘meat’ produced by Bill Gates.
Earlier we saw Sarah Dickins’ partner Nick Miller recommend Jason Hickel’s book Less is More. Sarah is also a Hickel fan. Here she is retweeting him misrepresenting this year’s monsoon in Pakistan as evidence of global climate catastrophe.
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Note the political bias and dishonesty that underpins the Green movement. To believe those carefully selected maps China, which opens a new coal-fired power station almost every day, is one of the good guys, a victim of the evil White man.
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PULLING SOME THREADS TOGETHER
I’ve elsewhere referred to southern Powys and rural Gwent as ‘Cotswolds-on-the-cheap’, which on reflection is unfair, because it’s scenically and in other ways more attractive than the Cotswolds.
But property is certainly cheaper, and this draws people to the area. Which helps expand the network, that will in turn support the UN’s Agenda 2030 and the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.
Which leads to the belief – shared by the ‘Welsh Government’ – that these objectives are so existentially important they must be achieved at any cost. Which in turn explains the war on traditional Welsh farming; covering our hills with unreliable, bird-slicing wind turbines; and making the rest of us poorer, colder, and hungrier.
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For of course it’s we who will sacrifice for these agendas, not those who promote them.
Being fundamentally Green Left the network is obviously short on political allies in a region which, at Westminster and Senedd levels, votes Conservative.
At Powys County Council level there are 9 Labour members, all from Brecon town and the top end of the Swansea Valley, otherwise it’s mainly Lib Dem and Tory, with what appear to be three unaligned groups, and three Plaid Cymru members.
Which is why, when viewed from a Labour Party perspective, funding and generally supporting its few but high-profile supporters is seen as a good investment – it gives Labour influence in an area where it has very little electoral support.
The purchase of Gilestone farm is part and parcel of the culture of cronyism and corruption that has developed under devolution, that sees the ‘Welsh Government’ and its agencies favouring organisations and individuals with a preferred ‘outlook’.
But this funding and favouritism is not like me slipping my grandson a tenner; for what Labour is doing impacts adversely on others. It involves public money. In some cases it will have national implications.
That’s because Labour’s system of cronyism and patronage works both ways. For example a few zealots in the system explains the ‘Welsh Government’ becoming a major funder for trans extremist group Stonewall, and how that group was able to influence policy decisions in Corruption Bay.
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QUESTIONS
I’m going to finish with a few questions addressed to no one in particular down in Corruption Bay. Cynics might suggest I’m simply howling into the void. Again.
That void where there should be a system of accountability.
Was the contract to produce findings of the consultation exercise on ‘Achieving our low carbon pathway to 2030’ put out to tender?
If so, how was this done?
How many responses were there?
If there was no tendering process, why not?
Given Nicholas FitzHardinge Miller’s clear and zealous belief in anthropogenic climate change, was Miller Research Ltd the right choice for this work?
Or does that bias explain why Miller Research Ltd was chosen?
The same questions on tendering and bias attach to the other contracts this company has secured with the ‘Welsh Government’ and other Welsh public bodies and institutions.
Why did S4C and Finance Wales Investments make further loans to Blurrt Ltd in 2017 when that company was clearly in financial difficulties and after S4C had seemingly written off a previous loan made in 2014?
Seeing as Blurrt Ltd was Dissolved in July 2021 are we to assume that these two loans from 2017 have also been written off?
Whether they’ve been written off or not, what amounts are involved?
If they have not been written off, then what steps are being taken to secure their repayment?
Will Miller Research Ltd be tasked with evaluating whether the purchase of Gilestone farm was public money well spent . . . and recommend that more farms be bought?
As I say, these questions are rhetorical. For the ‘Welsh Government’ is now refusing to answer FoI requests on a range of embarrassing issues, using all sorts of unconvincing reasons.
What a week that was! President Trump’s executive orders exceeded my expectations. Everybody (and perhaps more so those on the left) now realises that what Trump has set in train will not be limited to the USA.
