Leanne Wood, leader of Plaid Cymru, has announced that her party will not go into coalition with the Conservatives after next May’s elections to the Notional Assembly. (Read all about it!) From where I’m sitting, this would appear to condemn Plaid Cymru to either impotence or a pact with Labour. Not an attractive choice, but then, when you play student politics with a nation’s future, and duck the real issues, you deserve no third option. Though the nation of course deserves a lot better than Plaid Cymru.
If my judgement strikes some as a little harsh, then that’s because, as a nationalist, I have little time for Plaid Cymru. But before dismissing my opinion out of hand let us examine the possibilities for next May’s elections. A good way to start is by reminding ourselves of the results from the Assembly election in 2011 and the two polls since then, the Euro elections of May 2014 and the UK general election of May 2015.
In 2011, Labour gained 30 seats, half of the total, and chose not to go into coalition with another party. They’ve never really come unstuck. Plaid Cymru came third, with less than half of Labour’s vote in both constituencies and regions, and well behind the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats averaged over 9% of the total, while Ukip, who contested only the regional lists, gained a paltry 4.6% of the votes cast.
By the European elections of 2014 Ukip had transformed itself into a major force in the politics of Englandandwales (but not Scotland), and was now the second party in Wales, just .6 of a percentage point behind Labour. All the other parties bar the Greens lost ground.
Just seven weeks ago we saw Ukip fall back somewhat, and drop from its second place in 2014 to third, but it still got more votes than Plaid Cymru. In fact, Ukip came second to Labour in a number of Valleys’ seats which, when taken with the increase in the Tory vote, tells us there was a move to the right which, as I suggested in my blog post Election 2015: Plaid Cymru Fails, Again, might have marked the death of the ‘socialist Wales’ myth. From these recent results it’s reasonable to predict that Labour, with just 30 seats in 2011 and its share of the vote dropping since then, will not win 30 seats in 2016.
The major changes since 2011 are, quite obviously, the rise of Ukip, then there’s the increase in the Tory vote, and finally the near-demise of the Liberal Democrats. Next year Ukip could, if the heavenly bodies align aright, win a seat or two; though if that doesn’t pan out, and given that the party might get 15 – 20% of the regional vote, then it could pick up 5 – 8 seats.
Labour has in previous Assembly elections gained less than other parties from the regional lists, just two seats in 2011, because it wins so many constituency seats, so the bigger threat to Labour may come at the constituency level. With Labour losing Gower and the Vale of Clwyd to the Conservatives last month, and the Lib Dems losing Brecon & Radnor to the same opponents, there must be a possibility that these results will be repeated next year. If so, then it would establish the Tories as the second largest party by some margin. This seems predictable because the number of Plaid Cymru AMs is bound to fall, partly because other than Llanelli it’s impossible to see a seat Plaid could gain (though maybe not if Siân Caiach stands again), and Plaid is bound to lose out to Ukip in the regional allocation. Though if the Lib Dems do lose Brecon & Radnor then that makes it more likely they will be compensated with a couple of regional seats.
Looking at the bigger picture it would not be unreasonable to predict the following result for next year’s Assembly elections: Labour 26 seats (-4), Conservative 17 (+3), Ukip 7 (+7), Plaid Cymru 7 (-4), Lib Dems 2 (-2), Greens 1 (+1). Which would mean that to cobble together an administration Labour would need to go into coalition with Plaid Cymru, which is almost certainly what influenced Ms Wood’s rejection of a deal with the Tories. But this is so short-sighted.
Being a native of the Rhondda Ms Wood must know that throughout the Valleys (and indeed the south) there are tens and tens of thousands of people looking for a viable alternative to Labour, that’s why they turned out last month and last year to vote Tory and Ukip in Caerffili, Merthyr, Blaenau Gwent and Islwyn, and in the process pushed Plaid Cymru down to fourth place. So why should anyone who doesn’t want Labour in power vote for the party that will keep Labour in power?
There may be another, even less charitable way of looking at this. Over the years I have consistently argued that the Labour Party relies on deprivation in Wales – and blaming the Tories for that deprivation – to keep people voting Labour. This means that Labour has no incentive to make Wales a wealthier country, and this then explains the obscene amounts of public funding wasted on Labour’s cronies in the Third Sector, so that they can make an industry out of deprivation and present their parasitism as a form of economic activity.
Could it be that Plaid Cymru, most definitely a begging bowl party, has taken this reasoning a step further? Have those at the highest, policy-making levels of the party calculated that if a poor Wales votes Labour, then a poorer Wales might swing towards Plaid Cymru? Don’t dismiss the suggestion out of hand; just ask yourself, what other hope has Plaid Cymru got of ever becoming a successful party? Well, of course, there is one, obvious route; Plaid could be a Welsh party, focusing on Welsh issues, from a Welsh perspective. But that option was rejected in favour of a slow, lingering death – for both nation and party – decades ago.
Last month I loaned Plaid Cymru my vote because I persuaded myself that doing so was a way of giving a proxy vote to the SNP, a party I respect greatly for confronting the Labour monster head-on, and slaying it. Compare that to what we now hear from Plaid Cymru – ‘A vote for us is a vote for Labour’. How do we explain the difference?
I can’t help thinking that one explanation for ruling out any pact with the Tories may be Ms Wood’s desire to play to a foreign gallery. I’m thinking now of those Left-Green ‘progressive elements’ Plaid so assiduously courted a few months ago. If so, then it’s another reminder of how divorced from Wales and Welsh issues Plaid Cymru has become. By comparison, the Scottish National Party does not fashion its policies to appeal to audiences in Islington, or the offices of the Guardian newspaper . . . and certainly not Labour HQ!
But if Plaid Cymru wants to talk about poverty, then okay. Let’s talk about the poverty of ambition in the party that has the nerve to call itself The Party of Wales. While the SNP is leading the Scottish people to independence, Plaid Cymru’s ambition extends no further than begging a few more crumbs from England’s table and propping up Carwyn Jones and his gang of deadbeats. Almost fifty years after Gwynfor Evans won Carmarthen Plaid Cymru’s ambition today extends no further than acting as a crutch for the party of George Thomas and Neil Kinnock in a system of sham devolution. Now that’s poverty! And total failure.
Many people will hate me for saying this, but political parties of the Right are invariably more honest, and therefore more ‘comfortable’, with their supporters than parties of the Left. The reason for this is that they appeal to perfectly natural human sentiments such as patriotism, family, Mom’s apple pie, or even baser impulses such as prejudice and greed. Whereas parties of the Left pretend – even delude themselves – that their voters are motivated solely by the desire for a nicer, fairer world, where the sun shines all day and we’re all nice to each other, when the truth is that those who vote for them are motivated by the same self-interest as the most venal, cigar-smoking capitalist.
Or am I exaggerating? Well, consider this: Throughout history there has been opposition to organised religion, monarchy, the military, landowners, the aristocracy, industrialists, the bourgeoise, etc., not because of any deep moral or philosophical objections but simply because malcontents believed such institutions and groups disadvantaged them. What I suppose could be described as a combination of envy and greed, which some would argue is the true basis of socialism.
Occasionally this resentment flared up in events such as England’s Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 which, despite the best efforts of historians in subsequent centuries to portray it as such, was not a mass movement with a coherent ideology and long term plans for a better society . . . it was simply a spontaneous rising of people motivated by anger and envy. In subsequent centuries, such episodes of unrest played into the hands of radical groups and political parties using these waves of popular discontent for their own ends. France would certainly have seen disturbances towards the end of the eighteenth century, but these would not have amounted to the French Revolution had there not been clever and ruthless men on hand to exploit the public mood and reshape France.
In the following century Russia knew her movements for liberalisation, all of which failed. Some were glorious failures, none more so than that of the young officers who made up the Decembrists. Others were almost farcical. I particularly enjoyed reading many years ago of the Narodniki of the 1860s and ’70s and their ‘Going to the People’, which meant moving to the countryside in order to educate the peasants and help them in their struggles against the kulaks and other oppressors. The conservative peasants were so terrified by these young idealists that they couldn’t hand them in to the tsarist authorities quick enough.
The problem in nineteenth-century Russia and elsewhere was that the radical intellectuals of the aristocracy and the middle-class might eulogise and idealise the peasants and the workers but they had absolutely nothing in common with them, which usually resulted in suspicion and hostility from those they were trying to help. Little changed when Lenin and his gang came to power. There was a massive disconnect between the underdogs and those who saw it as their mission to help make the world a better place, either for, or at least in the name of, said underdogs.
By comparison, those defending privilege and the established order almost always belonged to the class whose interests they defended. More than that, they also appealed to the aspirational, those with a foot or two on the ladder. And never forget that those who defended the status quo also had an audience among the poor, perhaps those of a religious bent, or others who saw the rabble-rousers as harbingers of chaos.
Within my lifetime, in the USA, I can recall the Democrats cobbling together ‘rainbow alliances’ of disparate groups that had nothing in common other than not being Republican, while, on the other hand, the GOP represented an almost homogenous interest of the prosperous, the relatively satisfied, the patriotic, the religious and others who were reasonably happy with America the way it was. Both may have involved a degree of consensus but one didn’t need to be a great psephologist to predict which was the more likely to fall apart.
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This gulf between the underprivileged and those who sought to speak for them has, at its best, been a kind of distant paternalism; at its worst, it has resulted in oppressive systems operated by fanatics in the name of those they very often despised. This has something to do with the fact that radical and anti-establishment parties can never entirely trust their constituencies. External enemies threatening war, or a rise in their living standards, could send the ‘oppressed masses’ flocking to the opposition. By comparison, the Right has always been able to trust its supporters.
Which meant that while the Right represented a coherent ideological continuum, from the richest in the land to the poorest patriot or the widow crossing herself before a picture of the tsar, the self-appointed saviours of the downtrodden always struggled to find common ground with those they spoke for. As the Narodniki and others found this can be very frustrating, to the point where educated and motivated radicals look at those they’re trying to help, and ask, ‘Is it worth it?’ . . . before pulling themselves together and remembering that these drunken, slobbering, superstitious oaves are their hope of power.
This gulf was almost unbridgeable in tsarist Russia, and it’s still there in today’s Western democracies. With a small number of exceptions the modern UK Labour Party is made up of middle-class people and professional politicians, that is, those who studied politics in university then went on to become political assistants – perhaps doubling up as councillors – before making the logical step up to becoming an MP. How do these really feel about beer-swilling, Sun-reading, Reality-TV-obsessed Labour supporters who think Jim Davidson is a great comedian? The truth is that many Labour politicians would sympathise with the Narodniki who came to loathe the peasants who handed them in to the police.
But ‘Ah!’, you say, ‘what about those Old Etonians running the UK government, aren’t they out of touch?’. Out of touch with whom? Certainly not with their friends and relatives in the City, nor with the great English middle class, nor with those lower down the pecking order who feel it’s perfectly natural to be ruled by toffs. Consequently there is no great disconnect between Cameron, Osborne et al and those who support them.
Yet this disconnect on the Left goes a long way to explaining Labour’s fear and loathing for Ukip, and Nigel Farage in particular. The rise of Ukip has exposed another fundamental truth I touched on earlier – many people vote Labour out of pure self-interest, believing that Labour in government will raise wages and benefits, lower taxes and do all manner of things to benefit them. Altruism and a better world have nothing to do with it. As I said in a recent post. ” . . . your average working class, Labour-voting, tabloid-reader is very often a conservative and even a racist. Not a violent, Hitler-worshipping nutter, but a person who undemonstratively shares almost all the prejudices of the far Right. The identikit Ukip voter (as the May Euro-elections showed). We all know them. We work with them, we talk with them down the pub.”
What Labour – and socialists in general – will not admit is that Ukip has out-bogeymanned them. Whereas Labour has traditionally scapegoated capitalism, the banks, international finance, etc., Ukip has come along and said ‘No, no, the real problem, the reason you’re having a hard time, is “Europe” and immigrants’. What makes it worse for Labour is that during the Blair – Brown ( – Mandelson) years Labour got as close to big business and international finance as the Tories, so the traditional bogeymen can no longer be attacked.
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Due to the reckless behaviour of these traditional but now inviolate bogeymen the Western world has just gone through – or may still be experiencing – the worst Recession since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the UK has a national debt of 1.4 trillion pounds, the Chancellor’s autumn statement last week will lead to public service cuts on a ‘colossal scale‘. . . so where are the massive protest marches behind the banners of socialism? One answer lies in the preceding paragraph. In addition to believing in Ukip’s ‘bogeymen’ we alse see an illustration of what I said in my opening paragraph: “parties of the Right pander to perfectly natural human sentiments such as prejudice and greed”, and gain the rewards.
What of Wales? Surely here, in this fastness of fraternity, this citadel of comradeship, this bastion of brotherhood, this . . . (ah, bugger it!). Surely here socialism still courses through the veins of our people, the Internationale still rings out at the end of ballet performances in the local Institute? Well . . . no. The truth is that in the most recent elections in May Ukip, with 27.6% of the vote, came damn close to beating Labour, on 28.1%. But of course Labour isn’t the only socialist party in Wales, we also have Plaid Cymru (15.3%), which is probably more socialist than Labour, and still moving Left. I don’t wish to be too cruel, but from where I’m sitting, becoming more ardently socialist in 2014 is the political equivalent of buying Confederate Bonds in 1865, or seeking a title in 1788 France.
Having turned its back on the Welsh people and given up almost all hope of success Plaid Cymru is now desperately looking for allies among other ‘progressive’ elements’. (Don’t you just love the labels these Lefties attach to themselves!) This of course is in addition to its long-standing policy of not jeopardising any future coaltion by being too hard on Labour. The ones being courted most assiduously, and unwisely, at the moment are the Greens.
This I have dealt with in a number of recent posts, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party of Englandandwales and More on the Green Party of Englandandwales. From reading assorted blogs and other sources I have picked up on references to a proposed eco-socialist alliance which seems to be welcomed by Plaid Cymru luminaries going out of their way to assure English Greens in Wales that Plaid has nothing to do with nationalism (scroll down to comments). Which must raise the question: What is Plaid Cymru for if not for defending and representing Welsh nationhood, this being my understanding of nationalism? I can see why such an anti-colonialist stance might offend those of a colon disposition, but not why Plaid Cymu candidates should have to pander to such susceptibilities.
I have asked it before and I make no apology for asking it again “How can a Welsh political party be in existence for ninety years without realising that its greatest – perhaps its only – selling point is its Welshness? Blame England! – play on Welsh grievances! – stir the passions! – reap the rewards! Better to do that and fail than be a bunch of mealy-mouthed compromisers satisfied with crumbs.”
But, no, Plaid Cymru has refused to be a truly Welsh party for fear of alienating those ‘progressive elements’ with which it is so keen to form alliances. People like Pippa Bartolotti of the Green Party of Englandandwales who regards Welshness as a “regional identity”, she of the checquered past and the recent anti-Nato fiasco in Newport. Or maybe the spotlight will fall on Andy Chyba, who believes the Welsh language is “moribund”. The more one looks at some of these people Plaid Cymru wants to get into bed with the more one can see that they may indeed be progressive in their attitudes to logging in the Amazon and similar issues, but when it comes to Wales and Welshness their attitudes are most definitely nineteenth century and Rule Britannia.
As things stand, Plaid Cymru is of more use to the British system than it is to the Welsh people. All it does is fill the space that should be taken up by a nationalist party. Plaid Cymru mistakes being ignored (due to its impotence) as evidence of its ‘respectability’ (of paramount importance to a certain Welsh mind-set). Plaid Cymru’s taken-for-granted heartlands are being lost due to the colonisation Plaid Cymru is afraid to speak out about; the party has never connected with the anglophone Welsh; yet now it believes it can increase its appeal by linking up with colonialist-minded Greens and other oddballs! This goes beyond wishful thinking, this is self-deluding bollocks.
I hope that Plaid Cymru and its ‘progressive’ allies fail to get a single MP next year and suffer badly in the Assembly elections of 2016 because that’s what they deserve. More importantly, it’s what Wales deserves. Plaid Cymru today is little more than a ‘zombie’ party; not quite dead, but incapable of making any meaningful contribution to the life of Wales. Only when it becomes obvious to everyone that Plaid Cymru is finally dead can Wales start making any real progress.
‘Surely you’re not going to write favourably about Ukip, Jac?’ I hear you plaintively inquire. Well, yes and no. What I’m going to try to say is that if we learn the right lesson from Ukip’s recent success then that lesson can be used for the benefit of Wales. So let’s first remind ourselves of what the party achieved in the May European elections. (Click on table to enlarge.)
The party won 27.6% of the vote, against just 15.3% for Plaid Cymru and only 28.1% for Labour. And for those who used to argue that the Ukip vote came almost entirely from disaffected Tories, the Conservative vote held fairly steady at 17.4%. If you wanted to be even more dismissive, and self-deluding, then you would have written off this success as the kind of protest vote in which people indulge at Euro elections. It was not. It was much, much more. ‘Something’ was happening. It was observable then and it has become unmistakable since May.
So what was the response from the other political parties to the Euro results? Initially, there was a stubborn refusal to accept the changed landscape of Englandandwales politics. (Ukip is irrelevant in Scotland.) Precious, simpering Leftists and liberals held their noses at the very mention of Ukip, as if it were unwholesome and repugnant, while many leading Tories tended to see Ukip members as oiks, the products of minor public schools. But that soon changed.
Because more recently we have seen the defections of a couple of Conservative MPs (with more expected to follow). One of those MPs, Douglas Carswell, has already won for Ukip the Clacton seat he vacated when he resigned from the Tories. While on the same night, at the Heywood & Middleton by-election in Greater Manchester, Labour held on to one of its ‘safe’ seats by getting just 617 votes more than Ukip. Ukip is odds-on favourite to win the Rochester and Strood by-election next month when another Tory defector, Mark Reckless, stands for his former constituency.
Finally, and very reluctantly, the other political parties have been forced to accept that something very worrying is happening, and it’s no flash in the pan. The growing contempt for Westminster and the ‘established’ parties is manifesting itself in increased support for what voters see, and welcome, as an ‘outsider’ party, an untainted, maverick presence that can shake everything up – and articulate their concerns. And there is one issue more than any other on which Ukip has captured the public imagination – immigration.
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As I have made clear more than once on this blog, the biggest threat facing Wales is not fracking, or the lack or primary legislative powers, but the steady and engineered colonisation witnessed by every one of us every single day. It is taboo to raise the subject of English colonisation, and it results in being shouted down as a ‘racist’, or else have it pointed out that there is nothing that can be done about immigration due to EU laws on free movement of labour. Another argument employed is that as citizens of the UK English people are perfectly free to move to Wales.
Ukip’s success, and it’s focus on immigration, has not only legitimised immigration as a subject for debate, but it has even changed the terms of reference. To the extent that even Ed Miliband, the nerdy and disconnected leader of the Labour Party, now agrees that something needs to be done about immigration. This, remember, is the same Labour Party that not so long ago was in favour of unrestricted immigration in order to create a multiracial society. A policy that they believed would lead to better race relations(!) and of course, more votes for Labour.
The Conservative Party has always talked tough on immigration, accused Labour of being ‘soft’, but since regaining power in 2010 has done nothing itself to curb the flow. That’s because today’s Tories are not the patriots one would have found in the Conservative Party in earlier generations; the current crop contains too many of the selfish and short-sighted who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. In the view of such people immigration equals cheap labour, which in turn helps to depress wages more generally. Therefore, no matter what they might say for public consumption, and to hang onto their seats, if immigration is good for them and their friends then they aren’t going to knock themselves out doing anything about it.
This is the split one finds on the Right across the Western world. On the one hand, there are those that oppose unskilled or non-professional immigration. Then there are those that appreciate the economic benefits unskilled migrants can bring to farmers and others, using well-rehearsed arguments such as ‘locals don’t want these jobs’. Finally, there is the extreme Right that opposes virtually all immigration. Most Conservative MPs today belong to the second category but, under the increasing threat from Ukip, are being forced to adopt the rhetoric of the third. To the extent that a government minister this week talked of English communities being “swamped” by immigrants.
So Welsh nationalists should thank Ukip for bringing immigration to the forefront of political debate. What’s more, the debate now is not about legal rights – for ‘Europeans’ have legal rights to be in the UK – but effects on the host community. If ten per cent of the population of Peterborough being immigrants is legitimate cause for concern, then fifty per cent of the population of Powys being English should be cause for immediate action.
The other reason true Welsh nationalists should thank Ukip is for exposing the sheer bloody uselessness of Plaid Cymru. Last May, in the kind of election in which people say, ‘What the hell!’, Ukip was able to get more votes than Plaid Cymru; worse than that, Ukip gained the ‘soft’ Labour, or non-voter, vote in the south that Plaid Clymru claims to have been chasing for half a century. Plaid Cymru can now look forward to coming fourth at the 2016 Assembly elections.
Ukip has opened a door, but Plaid Cymru won’t go through because it’s afraid to point up the hypocrisy in the position of English politicians and media being outraged when a few thousand poor people turn up in a prosperous English town to take the low-paid jobs, yet condemn us as ‘racist’ for drawing attention to wealthy English people buying up our homeland and, in the process, destroying our very identity! No, instead, Plaid Cymru snuggles up to a party the SNP has all but destroyed in Scotland and cobbles together election pacts with the Green Party of Englandandwales and it’s colon representatives here.
With events in Scotland threatening the Westminster consensus on another front there has never been a better time for a radical Welsh party to make a breakthrough. Plaid Cymru is not that party. It never was. It looks jaded, even part of that now-detested Westminster consensus. Maybe that’s the price you pay for being ‘respectable’ and ‘responsible’, being written about favourably in the Guardian and the New Statesman. And Wales pays the price.
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Having got that off my chest, let me end on a lighter note, with something I’ve wanted to say about Ukip for a long time – I find Nigel Farage and his gang incredibly funny. Let me explain.
As a child growing up in the 1950s one sub-species of humanity then to be observed was the somewhat louche individual who favoured cavalry twill trousers and a badge-embazoned blazer, or a sports coat. For neckware there was the choice of regimental / old school tie, cravat or bow tie, and above that a moustache he hoped would help him further promote the image of a man who’d done his bit of derring-do, don’t y’know. The favoured mode of transport was a sports car, in which our specimen would cruise around hoping to pick up ‘crumpet’. Despite his natural habitat being the Home Counties and certain areas of west London, this fascinating creature could even be found in Swansea, often at the more acceptable ‘watering holes’ on Gower or in Mumbles drinking half pints in glasses with dimples and handles. (Never a straight glass!) These they would obtain by marching into a pub demanding to be served with ‘A half of your very best bitter, squire’. (It should be noted that during this period many innocents were elevated to the ranks of the squirarchy without ever understanding how or why.) They seemed a hearty crew exhuding bonhomie and guffawing at lame jokes about ‘shirt-lifters’ and ‘darkies’ while slapping each other vigorously on the back. They were almost a stock character in English films of the period, played by none better than Terry-Thomas. In a yet earlier age many of them might have been remittance men.
Anyway, the point I’m making is that I had assumed this sub-species of homo britannicus (‘Homo’, geddit? nudge, nudge) had been rendered extinct by the decline of the English sports car industry, or Rock ‘n’ Roll, or loss of habitat, but I was wrong – they were just hiding, biding their time, and now they’ve re-emeged from the collective apoplexy of the golf club and the piss-take pageantry of the masonic lodge – as Ukip! This realisation has been quite disconcerting for me, even disorientating, though it brought memories flooding back. I suppose younger readers will suspect that the creatures I’ve described never existed. Believe me, boys and girls, they did – just look at Farage and his chums and you’ll get some idea of what they were like!
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Of course, nothing I’ve written here changes my opinion of Nathan Gill, the Ukip MEP for Wales. (Pick up the story from here.) He is still a lying shite. He and his brothers-in-law – possibly others – are unscrupulous, hypocritical, exploitive bastards prepared to make money out of desperate immigrants from the ‘Europe’ they claim to hate, and then hide away the cash-in-hand income from the tax authorities. When they aren’t exporting dangerous used tyres to West Africa, that is. Don’t y’know.
I betook myself to Aberystwyth yesterday, accompannied by the wife and a couple of grandchildren (in case the old car needed a push). ‘Callous bastard’, I hear you cry . . . so, anyway, I went for a coffee before wandering about the old town, seeing what had changed since my last visit.
Quite a bit, as it happened. Inhabitants of Aber’, or regular visitors, will know that the council has been working around the front of the railway station for twelve years or more (well, it seems that long), laying out bus bays and new pavements. Walking from the Mill Street car park (soon to be lost under Marks & Spencers and Tesco), I turned the corner by the station to be greeted by a veritable minefield of drunk traps. Just look! the picture (click to enlarge) shows a short stretch of pavement with at least a dozen obstacles over which, or even into which, an unwary imbiber might fall. All this in a university town!
I tell you, if I was an ambulance-chasing lawyer or some other variety of shyster I would be hanging about this area of a Friday or Saturday night just waiting for the inevitable tumble, followed by the yell of shock and then the drawn-out moan of agony, whereupon I would leap from the shadows and present my card, for there’s a fortune to be made here! And with an ‘assistant’, giving gentle ‘nudges’ . . .
On a lighter note, but staying with the topic of the immoderate consumption of alcohol, I am delighted to report that the shelter on the promenade, so badly damaged in the January storms, has been restored. Over the years, this noble and welcoming structure has provided a roof under which many a weary bon viveur has rested his head for the night, me included.
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Last year I wrote a post called Neighbours From Hell, which was well received and is still getting lots of visits. (You’ll see it featured in the sidebar.) One of those I wrote about was Leanne Meredith, and her collection of aggressive dogs. So aggressive that a one-tonne bull these dogs attacked had to be put down. The latest news is that Ms Meredith, originally of Wimbledon, has done a runner, yet, since the attack, one of her dogs, an American bulldog, has been kept in “official kennels” – where the little darling has run up a bill of £24,000, which we shall pay! (Click on cutting to enlarge.)
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Straying not far from the subject of English undesirables in Wales I am indebted to the ever-reliable BD for this tale of windfarm bribery and the privatised probation service.
As you may be aware, Pen y Cymoedd is the massive windfarm on the western side of the Heads of the Valleys. (Click on image to enlarge.) This grant-guzzling monstrosity and eyesore is being built by Swedish company Vattenfall which, as is the way in such ventures, is bribing the local communities with their own money. Among those applying for a slice of this faux largesse is the Wales Community Rehabilitation Company Ltd. As BD says, when he first saw the name he assumed it was a group to help seriously deprived communities in the area blighted by these monsters, villages such as Glyncorrwg and Blaenllechau; but no, it has little to do with such communities, and perhaps not a lot to do with Wales.
The one-page website tells us that the Wales Community Rehabilitation Company is a successor to the Wales Probation Trust and is a privatised Third Sector subsidiary of the Englandandwales Ministry of Justice. It is a private limited company, Incorporated on December 4, 2013 (Company Number: 08802571), and it clearly hopes to be funded by generosity from sources such as Vattenfall plus, we can be sure, the ‘Welsh’ Government. Welcome to the privatised probation service.
BD tells me that the directors are David Rees Evans, a retired banker, living in Colwyn Bay, who is on the North Wales Probation Circuit; retired group captain Neil Trevor Bale, who owns Cyfie Farm guesthouse on Efyrnwy, and is chairman of the Tourism Partnership of Mid Wales; Clare Elizabeth Roach, previously the HR manager at the Royal Voluntary Service, after a stint in HR with South Wales Police; Bernadette Elizabeth Ann Rijnenberg, who was also director of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Support Services Limited; and Andrew James Skene Emmett, who resigned from the The Humberside, Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire Community Rehabilitation Company Limited, because ‘he moved to London’.
So we appear to have yet another ‘Welsh’ organisation that is mainly English in its composition. Given its business, and the colonial relationship between Wales and England, I believe we can confidently predict that many of its clients will have no previous connection with Wales. In which case, and yet again, ‘Welsh’ money, or money promised to ‘Welsh’ causes, will be used in the service of England.
But isn’t it a strange name for a service looking after ex-cons and offenders? You can understand why BD initially thought it was in the business of reinvigorating run-down communities. One to watch, I think.
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Finally, how could I do an update post without a mention of ‘Bishop’ Nathan Lee Gill MEP!
It seems that I misunderstood the info I received about Gill’s Humvee with the big screen in the back. (Misunderstandings are almost inevitable when trying to communicate by text messages.) I assumed it was a big television screen inside the vehicle when, in reality, it was a 6ft x 5ft LCD advertising screen affixed to the rear. As shown in the picture (click to enlarge). This link will take you to some other pictures, including some of the man himself. You’ll also see that Humview Ltd, Gill’s short-lived company, seems to have been based in Pensans, Kernow. Which is very interesting, for it might answer a question that’s been puzzling me about Gill’s brother-in-law, Brian Lynn Quilter of Lledr House, Dolwyddelan.
The thing is, I have this e-mail (click to enlarge), sent from lledrhouse@aol.com, which can only be from Quilter. It seems to have been sent to either the London Gazette (which announces company liquidations) or the Official Receiver, possibly both. Quilter is American, married to Gill’s part-time cop sister. My guess is that he came over some twelve years ago. But the point is that, being married into Gill’s family, he would of course know Anglesey, possibly other parts of the north, and obviously the old Gill stamping ground of Hull and the adjacent area of Yorkshire. But Plymouth is quite a way from both, so how did Quilter get himself into business down there? (The business being the migrant housing racket.)
Well, given that we know now Gill was operating in Cornwall, then Plymouth’s not far away, just over the Tamar; and in many ways the ‘capital’ of Cornwall in much the same way that Liverpool is / was ‘the capital of north Wales’. Which then raises the obvious question, why was Gill himself in Cornwall? Was he running migrant housing scams down there, in Cornwall and south west England, as he was in Hull?
Returning to the e-mail, it’s dated March 15, 2010, so in its chronological sequence it comes just before the second (and final) Notification of Strike-off Action against Quilter Properties Ltd appeared in the London Gazette on April 23, 2010. So it could be part of a tidying-up exercise, even a confession – for Quilter is almost certainly talking in the e-mail of undeclared, (cash-in-hand) income – but it also raises one final question.
Given what we know about how HMRC has operated in recent years, and also given that HMRC was interested in Gill and his business associates, was a deal struck, in which Gill and Quilter paid off a nominal amount in order to get HMRC off their backs?
Knowing how many of you are gleefully anticipating the arrest of avidly following the exciting career of our new MEP, Nathan Gill, I thought I’d give you a wee update. For those arriving late to the feast let me explain that Nathan Lee Gill is a ‘businessman’ (of sorts) who was elected to the European Parliament on May 22 to represent Wales and the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip).
Since writing the last of those posts there have been developments and I have received further information, which I shall now share with you.
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I have reported Gill to H. M. Revenue and Customs, in a letter mailed on July 7th. I did this because I sincerely believe that Gill has, over many years, defrauded the tax authorities through operating a number of cash-in-hand enterprises; either alone, or in partnership with others. It could even be that some of the enterprises in which he was engaged were of a nature that made it impossible to declare earnings without admitting to unlawful activities.
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More information has been received from my original informant since I wrote to HMRC. The first talked of Gill buying a new Citröen C5 in 2008, which was paid for with cash. Even then it would have been difficult to get the big Citröen for less than £16,000, even paying in cash. I was also told that Gill’s brother-in-law, Brian Lynn Quilter, had paid “mainly with cash” for a Lotus Elise sports car. Depending on the specification, Quilter’s car could have cost more than Gill’s C5.
My informant also talks of two classic cars used for weddings, and “a shop in the village where he lives doing wedding videos”. Does he mean Llangefni? Can readers up there rack their memories for such an enterprise. A Humvee may have been involved, one with a big TV screen in the back.
The Humvee also clears up one of the (many) mysteries in Gill’s past. In earlier posts I mentioned, among the companies with which Gill has been associated, Humview Ltd, Incorporated on March 16, 2008 and finally struck off on May 30, 2009. During its brief existence it had just three directors: Gill, his wife, Jana, and a Richard Bruce Worsey, who resigned eight days before the end, and may also be a resident of Anglesey. My informant states that the Humvee cost £26,000, but does not say if this was also paid for with readies. But knowing Nathan Gill . . .
My informant also referred back to Guy Fawkes’ Night in 2001 (refresh your memory here). It appears that the church in Hull was a Grade II listed building. Gill applied for planning permission. He was refused. There was a “mysterious fire” which Gill blamed on kids throwing fireworks. (Why am I deafened by alarm bells ringing!)
Finally, we have further evidence of what a believer Gill is in international trade. (Read about the Ghana connection.) For I am told that Gill and Quilter made a number of trips to China, and – wait for it! – were accompanied on these trips by large amounts of folding. Quite what was bought, my informant does not know, not being privy to the details of these oriental excursions; but he is in no doubt that the gruesome twosome were “avoiding duty”. Shome mishtake, shurely!
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Moving on, as they say, I am indebted to another correspondent for informing me that he has reported Nathan Gill to the Electoral Commission, arguing that Gill is in breach of Section 106 of the Representaion of the People Act. Rather than me try to explain what I might not properly understand, I shall quote directly from the correspondence I received, which I assume to be a copy of what was sent to the Electoral Commission.
The point being, of course, that from 2009 until his election on May 22, 2014, Gill was an adviser to his predecessor as Ukip MEP, John Bufton. So he was not, “a real person with a real job”, he was precisely what he denied being – “a career politician”. Nor was he, at the time these leaflets were written and circulated, a “domiciliary and residential care services professional”, for the only income declared to the European Parliament was that which he received as an “MEP’s assistant”.
It will be interesting to see whether the Electoral Commission has the balls to proceed with this complaint.
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Finally, let me extend thanks to a third person for directing me to Gill’s four UK assistants; they are: Major John Atkinson, Andrew Martin Haigh, Scott George Tuppen and Simon Wall.
The Major lives in Swansea and spent 33 years (1967 – 2000) in the Royal Marines, so presumably he worked his way up through the ranks. He stood for Ukip in the 2011 Assembly elections on the South Wales West regional list. He was second (of four) on the Ukip slate which managed 4.3% of the vote, just ahead of Socialist Labour on 3.3% and the BNP on 3.1%. He may have stood in other elections but I can’t be bothered to check.
Andrew Martin Haigh was Ukip candidate for Delyn in the 2010 general election, when he came home in sixth place, behind the BNP. He seems not to have excited Google since that foray into electoral politics. Haigh has this to say on Friends Reunited: “I live in North Wales and run a small mail order business. I am married to clare a marine biologist who works for the government. In my spare time I write and also play Bass in a 60/70’s rock & roll band.” (My toes are curling for him.)
The company is Vitaplankton, for which he has worked since it was Incorporated in March 2013. On DueDil the business is described as ‘Fish Farrming’ and ‘Marine Aguaculture’. I suppose it’s reasonable to assume, given his wife’s job, that she helps out or advises in Haigh’s business; maybe he has access to facilities or equipment at her place of work, or he makes use of data or contacts that she can provide through her work. But would that be allowed? Haigh currently lives in Llanrug, near Caernarfon, but has previously lived in Menai Bridge. Regular readers will know that Menai Bridge was home to Gill’s parents, and also home to the dump of tyres destined for Ghana. Haigh is of course English.
UPDATE July 25: More information has come to light on Haigh. The mail order business referred to may in fact be Vitalox, which sells a twenty-first-century equivalent of snake oil. Haigh imports oxygen (sic) from Canada that, it is claimed, can cure everything from ingrowing toenails to baldness, plus many more serious conditions. (Read the ‘Oxygen & Cancer’ section.) Though if the oxygen fails (as it presumably will), then the Vitalox website recommends prayer, with a Spirituality page; and wouldn’t you know it – Haigh is a Mormon, like Gill and all his family! The website modestly describes Haigh as a “serial entrepreneur” (for which there is no word in Welsh, incidentally), a description I’m sure Nathan Gill has applied to himself.
UPDATE July 30: Thanks to BC I now have more information on Haigh. Such as the fact that he and his wife have a little sideline in Segways. Also, that this staunch Kipper, hostile to the EU and all its works, recently sought to recruit a Lab technician for Vitaplankton, and as the advert makes clear, “The post is funded under the European Fisheries Fund”.
What is it with these Ukip Mormons; are they all hypocrites, charlatans, crooks and con men?
Scott George Tuppen seems to be yet another Kipper with a head for business. From July 11, 2011 to November 7, 2012 he was a director / company secretary of a firm called Cusu Services Ltd which according to DueDil, has a current book value of -£178,468. Though young Tuppen – for he is but 31 – started in business at the age of 15 with Tuppen and Associates Enterprises Ltd, with big sister Angela holding his hand. This venture lasted from July 31, 1998 to June 21, 2000. Tuppen and Associates was based in Brynna, Pontyclun.
Finally, we come to Simon Wall, another Englishman plaguing Anglesey. Reminding us that in many parts of Wales Ukip is little more than an English club, of the kind that might have been found in earlier times in the White Highlands or some Indian hill stations. English people away from home becoming ever more exaggeratedly English and hostile to the natives.
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The net is closing on Gill, and those associated with him. Given his past he was always destined to be yet another embarrassment for the United Kingdom Independence Party. Which will bring nothing but joy to those of us who have come to realise what a deceitful and unprincipled bastard this man is, and yet so representative of Ukip. But before he departs the political stage let him do Wales one service in reminding us why we must be alert to him and his kind, and why we must leave them in no doubt that they are unwelcome in our country.
Our Ukip tribune – for that’s what he is, even though few reading this will have voted for him – has been appointed to the European Parliament’s Development Committee. I am further informed (though I can’t find it myself, ‘Ynyswr’) that he wiill have special responsibility for aid to developing countries. Which is entirely fitting, considering his established concern for the Phillipines, and for employing, and indeed housing, our new friends from eastern Europe. Not only that, but there is also Gill’s links with Africa; to be specific, Ghana.
Information, some received and some unearthed from leads provided, suggest that I may have been rather lenient on Gill over that business of the tyre exports to Ghana, and the harm they might have done. To recap, for those joining the saga . . . when he were nobutalad Nathan Lee Gill, arrived in Anglesey with his Mormon family. On reaching adulthood he returned to Hull where he engaged in lucrative enterprises with his American Mormon brothers-in-law housing migrant workers. Solicitous of his Polish guests’ loneliness, and those cold winds coming off the North Sea, he housed them 8 or 12 to a room. For reasons yet to be satisfactorily established he came back to Anglesey, and from 2009 worked as PA to his Ukip MEP predecessor, John Bufton.
The tyres were found on his parents’ property, Bryn Aethwy, in Menai Bridge, while the property in Llangefni for which the report says a search warrant was issued, was Gill’s own home. The link with Ghana may have been provided by Gill’s fellow-Mormon Dennis Kofi Asumah, a Ghanaian who was living in Anglesey at the time, indeed he was a member of the local Ukip branch. Also involved – according to another informant – was Gill’s brother in law, Brian Lynn Quilter, of Dolwyddelan. (All explained in posts over the past couple of months.)
In my earlier posts I mentioned that worn tyres imported from Europe – and for the purposes of this article, however much it might offend some, the UK is counted as being part of ‘Europe’ – were one of the biggest killers on Ghana’s roads. Now, following the directions of ‘Ynyswr’, I learn that tyres imported from Europe (inc. UK) are also blamed for the increase in dengue fever. As this World Health Organisation report explains. In fact, not only does the trade in used tyres increase the incidence of dengue fever in Ghana and other parts of Africa, it also helps the disease spread to areas previously unaffected, including Europe.
To explain . . . dengue fever is the most virulent mosquito-borne viral disease in the world. Due to increased travel and other factors the incidence of the disease has increased 30-fold in the past 50 years. There are up to 50 million infections a year, with 22,000 deaths, mainly among children. Scrap tyres are ideal mosquito incubators as they absorb heat and trap rainwater, leaf litter and micro-organisms. Of course, mosquitoes don’t limit themselves to dengue fever; so tyre dumps can also increase the risk of encephalitis, malaria, yellow fever, equine encephalitis and St. Louis encephalitis. Spraying tyre dumps with insecticides is environmentally risky and costly. Even if done, it’s almost impossible to reach the heart of the tyre piles where the mosquitoes breed.
There are two reasons why I’m returning to this often overlooked episode in the glittering business career of Nathan Lee Gill MEP. The first is that a number of people – one almost certainly a family member – have, on this blog and elsewhere, tried to interpret the tyres story as a business deal that cut a few corners to avoid the “red tape and government meddling” (i.e. laws) Gill and his kind hate so much. Making him out to be, at worst, a bit of a chancer, or even a Robin Hood figure – for the legislation being disregarded almost certainly came from ‘Europe’. (Boooo!) So, however you look at it, it’s a victimless crime. No, it’s not.
As I’ve explained, many lives would have been put at risk, some perhaps lost, had those tyres reached Ghana. Proving yet again that Nathan Lee Gill is an irresponsible shite who will do just about anything to make money, wilfully blind to the consequences of his actions. He may already have blood on his hands, for how do we know there weren’t previous tyre dumps on Anglesey, that made it to Ghana?
Now, if my informant, ‘Ynyswr’, is correct, Gill has been given some responsibility by the European Parliament for aid to developing countries. You have to ask if this is some kind of joke. Here is a man with a record of dishonesty and hypocrisy, a man prepared to make money out of endangering lives in a third world country, yet now he is given responsibility for representing in developing countries a legislature he detests! One doesn’t need to be a soothsayer to predict that Nathan Lee Gill will take advantage of this opportunity to line his own pockets. Again.
P.S. I forgot to provide this link to Gill’s Declaration of Members’ Financial Interests made to the European Parliament. It seems that this political innocent’s only source of income prior to boarding the gravy train was his salary from the political assistant job. You know, I think our boy’s mind goes all blank when confronted with forms – tax forms and the like – asking him to declare his income. Funny, that!
More information reaches me from the Eastern Front (East Yorkshire, that is).
The mystery concerning the late Michael Ronald Gill’s first stretch in prison, for theft, seems to have been solved. According to my informant . . . while running the Pink Panther care home on Holderness Road in Hull Gill would pocket the pensions of those in his care and cover his tracks with false receipts. This criminality came to light when a patient’s death resulted in a police enquiry that subsequently uncovered the trousering of the old dears’ pension money. I am also informed that the Gills got hammered by the tax authorities when Gill Senior one year submitted the exact same return he had sent in the previous year!
Since I’ve been writing about our new MEP whiners and apologists have come to this and other blogs arguing that the sins of the father are irrelevant in any consideration of the son’s behaviour. Normally I would agree, but not this time. To begin with, Gill senior was the patriarch of a family abiding by the mores of a weird religious sect who would have played a major role in creating the Nathan Lee Gill we know today. Then, when Nathan Gill had grown up, he went into the family business, where I’m sure he learnt a lot more from his father.
A name we encountered in an earlier post was Brian Quilter, a co-director with Nathan Gill in Compactor Ltd (Company Number 06329258, Incorporated. July 31, 2007; Final Dissolution March 15, 2011). This company was engaged in “the manufacture of telegraph and telephone apparatus and equipment”. This was obviously a major departure for grannyfarmer and gangmaster Nathan Gill, so I assumed that whatever expertise in this field the directors possessed came from Compactor managing director, Brian Lynn Quilter. Though I was somewhat puzzled by Gill’s mother also being a director. The explanation, it turns out, is quite simple; Quilter, a US citizen, is the husband of Gill’s sister Melanie, and therefore son-in-law to Elaine Gill.
Compactor Ltd was based in Bridlington, just up the coast from Hull, but the Quilters live in Dolwyddelan, in a massive former YHA building now described as a “budget hostel” (surely not more migrant accommodation!). Bridlington is also where – according to my informant – we find another Gill family venture; this time “a day care home . . . another substantial building with flats on the top floor”.
You will also recall that in an earlier post I quoted my informant saying that Gill, together with “his brothers-in-law” (see update at foot of post) was operating migrant accommodation scams in English cities other than Hull, Portsmouth and Plymouth being mentioned. I think we can assume that Quilter is one of those “brothers-in-law”. A clue comes from Quilter Properties Ltd, registered in Dolwyddelan (Company Number 05324303), and with just two directors – Brian Quilter and Melanie Quilter (nee Gill). The company business is stated as being, “Management of Real Estate on a Fee or Contract Basis” or, as my informant put it to me, “sub-sub-letting”. (Presumably in cash.)
Quilter Properties is an outfit that on the face of it struggled along for a few years before giving up the ghost. The company was Incorporated on January 5, 2005 (less than a year after ‘stack ’em high’ Burgill Ltd came into existence), and finally struck off on April 23, 2010. The table I include (click to enlarge) shows the flatlining figures for Quilter Properties Ltd, which existed for five years and achieved . . . well, nothing. My research can find no business – other than Compactor and Quilter Properties – with which Brian Lynn Quilter was involved. Oh, yes, talking of Melanie Gill Quilter, I understand she is a Special Constable, B Special, or some such.
Which brings us to the great mystery of the extended Gill family’s business dealings. Of the businesses we know, none ever seemed to make money, yet – and as my informant notes – these people live in million pound houses, they drive fancy sports cars and big 4 x 4s. It doesn’t add up, unless:
a) businesses are, for whatever reason, being deliberately run at a loss
b) the tax authorities are being regularly lied to (for which we have some evidence)
c) these companies, Burgill, Quilter Properties and others, are simply fronts behind which dealings are done almost entirely in cash, which, again, my informant suggests is the case
d) the Gills have other, successful ventures – maybe not entirely legal – about which we know nothing.
e) A combination of any of the above
Having mentioned enterprises that might be illegal, you will recall that something else I dealt with in an earlier post was the curious business, in 2011, of the tyre dump at Bryn Aethwy, Menai Bridge. Some 5,000 tyres were found in Menai Bridge (where Gill’s parents live) and a warrant was issued to search a property in Llangefni (where Nathan Gill lives). My informant now suggests that Quilter was also involved. The worn tyres were destined for Ghana, where there is a burgeoning Mormon community. Here’s an endorsement of Gill by Dennis Kofi Asumah, a Ghanaian member of the local Ukip branch on Anglesey. Maybe the three helpers in this photo are also Ghanaian (click to enlarge). Below left is an earlier endorsement from Dennis Kofi Asumah – for the 2011 Welsh Assembly elections – in which he urges support for ‘Bishop’ Nathan Lee Gill on the regional list. Strongly suggesting that Asumah is a Mormon himself. Perhaps Asumah was involved in some way in the Ghanaian tyres deal.
We already know that Nathan Gill is a hypocrite, being a representative of an anti-EU party while personally profiting from the very EU migrants his party condemns, but could it go further? Could Gill also be helping African co-religionists to enter the UK, and if so, what’s his cut (for we know that Bishop Nathan Lee Gill don’t do nuffin for nuffin)? Just ask yourself, why else would there be Ghanaian Mormons on Anglesey? What – or who – drew them there? Whatever the answers, we have established Ghanaian connections for ‘Bishop’ Nathan Gill which help explain the used tyres scam. But when I first read the story I couldn’t understand why there had been no arrests; I mean, it appeared they’d been caught bang to rights. Now I’m wondering if Gill’s sister, Quilter’s wife, being a hobby cop with GogPlod has any bearing.
Here’s a wee pic I found in my digging; it shows Dennis Kofi Asumah with Nigel Farage (click to enlarge). People like Dennis – whose loyalty is primarily to ‘Bishop’ Gill – must nevertheless be useful to Ukip. Though the irony does not escape me of an African, and of course, Americans, challenging the right of Europeans to enter a European country to which they themselves have, by whatever means, gained entry. But, then, this is just more of the hypocrisy and double-standards we now expect from the United Kingdom Independence Party.
Finally, Gill, or his supporters, have now made use of Wikipedia, with this page devoted to their boy. Basically, it admits to what’s now in the public domain – Burgill’s debts, “bunkhouse” accommodation for migrant workers, five years working as a PA for his predecessor as MEP, being a Mormon – but nothing we don’t already know. Yet he, or whoever wrote the entry, still can’t resist more lying; such as claiming that, “After leading the UKIP group for the May 2013 local elections on Anglesey and being re-elected as a councilor . . .”. Very impressive . . . until I remind you that Nathan Gill has never been elected to the local council. What is it with these people, are they incapable of telling the truth! The US spelling of ‘councilor’ suggests this puff may have been written by Gill’s wife, Jana; or even his brother-in-law, Brian Lynn Quilter.
So there you have it, yet more news on Nathan Gill and his family. All fascinating stuff, some of it disturbing, and none of it doing him or his family any favours. This man shouldn’t be allowed to hold any public office. He shouldn’t have been allowed to stand for public office. He should be an embarrassment even to a political party as ‘relaxed’ about its representatives’ moral defects and peccadillos as Ukip. But apparently not. The more I learn of Nathan Lee Gill and his kin, the more I think of a Mormon version of the Sopranos or Corleones – perhaps they’ll hire somebody to whack me!
UPDATE JUNE 30: I can now reveal that the other brother-in-law is Anson Dwayne Bentley, currently of Bridlington, just north of Hull (click on image to enlarge), born April 1965; another US Mormon, this one married to Gill’s sister Jayne. Further information received now gives me a much better understanding of both the nature and scale of the operations in which Nathan Gill and his two brothers-in-law were engaged.
The bunkhouse on Holderness Road in west Hull that Gill has admitted to, housing Poles and others, only accounts for a few dozen migrants; I am now informed there were hundreds of migrants housed, and not just in Hull, but in Plymouth and God knows how many places in between. I have even been given the names of two men – almost certainly Latvians – who acted as rent collectors, S. F. and I. S.
For the scam was all about renting or even buying property, often through shell companies, then letting and sub-letting to exploit migrants who paid in cash, which was never declared as income, thereby cheating H M Revenue & Customs. Let’s say Gill rents a substantial house for £800 per month (in 2005) sub-lets to Quilter and / or Bentley for £2,000 a month, they then pack in 20 migrants paying £50 a week each, which works out at £4,300 per month. Everybody’s happy!
I have been accused of picking on Mormons or their beliefs, but Mormonism may lie at the heart of this conspiracy. I suspect that like many fundamentalist expressions of mainstream religions Mormonism has an ‘us and them’ mentality. In which ‘them’ are unbelievers and even the enemy. Because they are not ‘us’ they are fair game, to be exploited or worse. We see this attitude around the world today, especially in extreme variants of Islam; but Hinduism, Judaism, and even Buddhism are not exempt. Christianity has always had its fair share of extreme and exclusive cults and sects (often founded by charlatans to satisfy deviant sexuality or an overactive libido).
This outlook can then be used to justify not respecting or even openly disobeying governments, for these are the works of wicked Man, and lack the approval of their God. When you reach this stage then you have the religious equivalent of the militia mentality that rejects the US federal government and all its works. (Which might explain why Mormons and other sects seem to favour the same parts of the USA as the anti-Washington militias, and why there is so often an overlap.)
For the purposes of this case, it might also explain why Mormons, especially Mormons from the USA, see nothing wrong in exploiting mainly Catholic migrants and also cheating the UK government of its due. Thought it does throw up another irony. Nathan Gill and his Kipper cronies are forever moaning about the UK taxpayer being ‘ripped off’ by devious and dishonest continentals, but he has no problem with him and his US brothers-in-law doing the same!
SYNOPSIS OF A LOST BOOK OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, RECENTLY DISCOVERED BY WANDERING BEDOUIN IN THE RUINS OF A COPTIC MONASTERY NEAR YSTRADGYNLAIS
FROM CHAPTER 1
And lo, it came to pass, when the daughter of the alderman waxed strong in the land, she who smote Argies and miners, those of a damp disposition and others who followed false prophets, that the patriarch Gill heard a voice in a dream saying, ‘Best go where you’re not known, lad’. Troubled by these words the patriarch asked, ‘But where shall I go, Lord?’ ‘Follow the setting sun into the land wherein dwell the Welshites’, spake the Lord, ‘for they are as thick as that which droppeth from a camel’s bum and will let anyone settle among them, no questions asked’.
So he and his wife (for unlike many of his Mormon creed, he had but one), forsook their dwelling in the city called Hull, in the land of Ing-er-lund, and prepared to journey into the wilderness. They took with them the fruit of their loins, prized among these was young Nathan, of whom we shall learn more anon. Though they gave away not their chattels and materialistic encumbrances, for of these and the shekels the Gillites were uncommon fond.
FROM CHAPTER 2
Arriving in the land of the Welshites they were stunned by both the beauty of the place and the gullibility of the people. Patriarch Gill saw there were many in need of the laying on of hands, so he became an homeopath, dispensing treatment to all who needed it . . . but especially women . . . and even more especially, those women who could be persuaded to disrobe. Yeah, verily, he was an horny old patriarch. Small wonder that he was condemned by the elders of the temple and thrown in a cell by the authorities.
Young Nathan, meanwhile, was growing into a man, of sorts. A faithful attendee at the temple (notwithstanding his father’s little difficulties) while being instructed in letters and figures by local wise men, and women, at the Coleg that is called Menai. But then, as he attained man’s estate, a voice spake unto him, ‘Go to Hull’, it said, ‘return to the land of your fathers and claim your patrimony’.
This perplexed young Nathan, for he knew not the voice. ‘Is that you, Lord?’ ‘Well, sort of . . . think of me as a rival network giving better service for your particular needs’. ‘What are you called?’ ‘I am known by many names, but you can call me the E O’. So Nathan forsook the land of the Welshites and travelled east to seek his fortune.
FROM CHAPTER 3
Upon arriving in Hull he laboured in the family business of offering succour to the halt and the lame, the wizened and the widows, for his parents had taught him there was lucre to be made from providing pallets for the aged. He soon betook himself a wife, and begat children, but this union ended badly, and in recriminations. (At this point the manuscript is damaged, but our experts are working to fill the lacunae.)
Nathan was next mentioned in ancient local texts when an abandoned holy place with which he was connected ‘caught on fire’, on the night that is called Guy Fawkes. ‘It was the act of wicked children’ spake the son of the patriarch, but others were less sure, and some suspicious souls even raised accusing fingers against Nathan himself.
FROM CHAPTER 4
Patriarch Gill, now bethought himself to send his son, and his daughters (for the patriarch had been married ere he knew Nathan’s mother) to a great land across the sea, wherein dwelt many of the Mormonites. There they were married to devout Mormonite spouses. After the wedding, and the celebrations, Nathan, together with his new wife, returned to Hull. His sisters also returned from these arranged marriages with their new husbands.
Soon after their arrival the E O conjured up a vision for Nathan. In this vision Nathan saw many strangers coming to his beloved Ing-er-lund, men of a strange race and a heathen faith (which made it acceptable to enslave them). These people, known as Polandites, could be employed tending to the wizened ones, and even greater wealth could be gained from also providing these Polandites with pallets (nothing too fancy, you understand).
FROM CHAPTER 5
And it came to pass that Nathan created the company known as Burgill. And it prospered. The Polandites tended to the crones and when their labours were over they returned to the straw pallets provided by Burgill. Nathan owned many tents, large and small, in the city of Hull, wherein the Polandites did dwell.
Though this harvesting of the Polandites was not without its problems. For the tax collectors came unto him saying, ‘Oi, we suspect that you are doing all your business in ready shekels, with little being entered on the parchment rolls kept by your scribe’. This vexed Nathan full sore, for he knew it to be true, but consoled himself with the knowledge that the tax collectors could prove nothing.
It was during this time of plenty – for Nathan, not the Polandites – that the E O came to him again, saying, ‘Listen, son, there’s another way you can do yourself a bit of good out of these Polandites’. ‘How so, E O?’ enquired Nathan. After a deep sigh, the E O spelled it out, ‘A lot of people are getting angry about all these Polandites and others coming to Ing-er-lund (blesséd be her name), so pretend to agree with them, tell them you’ll put a stop to it’. Nathan was delighted, ‘That’s brilliant . . . hypocritical, but brilliant’. ‘Of course’, continued the E O, ‘you’ll have to leave that shower you’re with now and join Ukip’.
FROM CHAPTER 6
And it came to pass that Nathan abandoned the sepulchre of the Toryites to become a follower of the prophet Nige. A loud and hearty fellow was Nige, much given to raucous laughter and wine, and very fond of the ladies (not unlike the patriarch Gill in the latter respect). Nathan was smitten with Nige and vowed to follow him all his days (or until one of them got banged up).
‘What is our message, O Nige, for the marketplace and the caravanserai, the highways and the alleyways, the taverns and the temples?’ ‘Simple, son, “Vote for us and we’ll stop the Polandites and all the rest coming over here taking your jobs”’. ‘But I have many Polandites in my service, Nige’. ‘Fear not, Nathan, for if anyone doth uncover thy little secret we can use it to prove thou art not racist, merely in favour of controlled immigration. Though as for the undeclared shekels you’ve trousered, you’re on your own there, my son’.
Whereupon the E O appeared unto Nathan and spake in this wise, ‘I knew you’d like the prophet Nige, think of him as my emissary on earth. And if it all goes pear-shaped for him, you can take over.’
FROM CHAPTER 7
And so it came to pass that after certain problems in his business dealings in the city of Hull Nathan returned, with his new family, to the land of the Welshites. There, he began to preach at the people saying, ‘Vote for me, lest the land of the Welshites become deluged with strangers’. ‘Too right!’ they responded, especially those who had, like Nathan, come from Ing-er-lund!
Nathan proved unelectable among those who knew him on the island where he dwelt, but in a different casting of ballots he gained many votes from those who knew naught of him. For the criers and the tellers of tales in the market place, those on whom the people relied for their news, failed to ask, ‘Who is this Nathan that comes among us asking that we heed him, and follow him?’
Nathan’s prize for victory in this ballot was being allowed to go to an far place that he claimed was the root of all evil – Eu-rope. There he was free to do more serious trousering of shekels, the ones that were called euros. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the Welshites, who cried, ‘If only we’d known then what we know now . .
My previous post on Nathan Gill MEP is the most popular I’ve ever written. It even got taken up by the print media, or rather, it was cursorily written up by the Wasting Mule with that account then repeated by newspapers from the Independent to the Belfast Telegraph plus BBC Wales which, unintentionally no doubt, introduced humour with a quote from Peter Hain accusing Gill of “bare-faced hypocrisy” (when it comes to hypocrisy Mr Hain is a man who knows of what he speaks). Martin Shipton, who wrote the Mule account, focused solely on the contradiction inherent in Gill representing a party that is anti-immigration and anti-EU while employing workers from eastern Europe and the Phillipines. As if that were all there is to it. It’s not, there’s a lot more.
As might be expected, one ‘paper that got involved rather more enthusiastically was the Hull Daily Mail, through its reporter Angus Young. First with this, and then this. The second report is the more interesting for a number of reasons. First, it shows us a younger, fresh-faced Nathan Gill. Also because it tells of his (or someone’s) plans for Plane Street Methodist Church off Anlaby Road in west Hull. A report of the fire suffered by that building on November 5th 2001 can be found to the right (click to enlarge). The report quotes Gill as blaming the fire on kids with fireworks, but my informant describes the fire as being more “suspicious”, and says it followed the refusal of planning permission for the building.
In this report Gill is described as “general manager of Kingston Care, based on Holderness Road, east Hull”. Holderness Road we know well from my previous post; Gill had a number of properties there and it is also the location of a Mormon church, but Kingston Care is a new player in this farce. The only company I can find with such a name is based in York, and is in the business of the “provision of lodgings” (see below left). No member of the Gill family is mentioned among its directors. This company was finally struck off in November 2006. Could there have been two companies, operating at the same time, in the same area, with the same name? Seems unlikely. So was Gill working for Kingston Care?
The newspaper reports thus far have, without actually using the word, described Gill as a gangmaster, a term we more usually associate with those using east European labour in agriculture, or illegal Chinese immigrants for cockle-picking. He housed migrants who either worked in the Gill family business or else were contracted to Hull city council and other bodies. With the latter paying Gill £x to supply labour, and him paying those workers £x minus his cut, on top of which, he was getting paid rent by everyone living in his bunkhouses, almost certainly in cash. This recruitment of foreign labour is defended by Gill on the grounds that he couldn’t get local labour, though comments to the Hull Daily Mail articles question this claim.
My original informant made contact again yesterday, to tell me that Nathan Gill, together with his brothers-in-law, was operating migrant labour accommodation in other cities, Portsmouth and Plymouth were mentioned. The rents were collected, presumably in cash, by a “Polish Lithuanian” who was then – according to my informant – falsely accused of theft when money went ‘missing’ from Burgill Ltd. It is suggested that if this ‘rent-collector’ could be located, and was prepared to talk, then the potential for bean-spilling would be considerable. I was also told of Nathan Gill and his sister(s) being sent to the USA to marry approved Mormon spouses! Which, if true, would presumably mean that the brothers-in-law allegedly involved with Gill as gangmasters would be US citizens? And seeing as they are all Mormons, I have to ask again; was this Gill’s personal scam or a business venture to improve further the already healthy finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? After all, they were exploiting Catholic Poles, little better than heathens in the eyes of Mormons.
This information, if true – and my informant has been very reliable up to now – means that Gill wasn’t just recruiting workers for care homes in Hull due to a shortage of local recruits, but was in the migrant labour business big time, as I say, a gangmaster. In fact, the exploitation of migrant labour, rather than care homes, may have been his – and the family’s – business. In which case the care homes could be viewed as a ‘front’. Enquiries now need to be made in Portsmouth and Plymouth to see if evidence can be found for Gill operating in these cities as he was in Hull.
Finally, just before posting I received another contribution, suggesting that what Gill had told the Wasting Mule, about Burgill Ltd sinking “when the HSBC ended its borrowing facility in the wake of the banking crisis”, may be untrue. My informant suggests that what really happened was that a creditor lost patience and filed for compulsory liquidation. Plausible, for Burgill was always run at a loss. Quite amazing, considering that it had two sizeable income streams: the Gill care home(s), Hull city council and other clients; then the rent from an unknown number of foreign workers. My guess is that Nathan Gill and his associates were making a lot of money from their activities but not all of it – perhaps very little – went through the Burgill accounts. This would explain the “skimming” allegations made by my informant and the suggested interest of the tax authorities. It may be worth going through the Burgill accounts with a fine-tooth comb.
Nathan Gill was employing people for whom he was also landlord. Anyone who crossed him risked losing both job and ‘home’, in a strange land, with whose language and customs they were unfamiliar. An arrangement owing more to the nineteenth century or the third world than twenty-first century England. This would have given him a very powerful hold over these unfortunate people.
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This other informant earlier sent me news of doings on Anglesey, mainly concerning Michael Ronald Gill, Nathan Gill’s father. In 1988 Gill senior was sent down for indecent assault, with other charges of rape and buggery left on file. Gill Senior, after 20 years in the RAF, set himself up as a homeopath, with ‘consulting rooms’ in Llanerchymedd. There he hypnotised women, many of them Mormons, persuading them to take off their clothes, after which he ‘treated’ them. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but these women then paid him for his ‘services’. Anyway, read it for yourself, though I should say that the pages from the Holyhead & Anglesey Mail were sent to me as A3 photocopies, so the quality isn’t perfect, and page 2 is incomplete. But I’m sure you’ll get the gist of it.
All this tells us that Gill pere is, or was, over-sexed, but there are other nuggets in the report that should interest us more. Among these is the news that Michael Ronald Gill was expelled from the Mormons some five years earlier for “preaching false doctrine”, and left the Gaerwen congregation after “certain problems” . . . whatever these might have meant in practice, we have to assume that it did not mean ostracisation, seeing as Mormon women still sought out his homeopathic talents. Elsewhere in the newspaper report, a representative of Bangor Rape Crisis Line is quoted as saying: “In the past he (Gill) has already served 18 months for theft . . . “. So what was that about? Was the crime committed back in Hull, or after the Gills decided to inflict themselves on Wales?
I am grateful to Cneifiwr for drawing my attention to this amazing coincidence. Here we have two Englishmen, with the same surname, of roughly the same age, moving to western Wales and practising very similar scams in order to satisfy their sexual perversions. A truly amazing coincidence. Are they related? (I had picked up on this Carmarthenshire case earlier, and covered it in my Neighbours From Hell post, but failed to remember it when writing about Nathan Gill and his father.)
My overseas contributor also drew my attention to this news item from October 2011. Used tyres were being illegally stored and sorted at an address in Menai Bridge before being exported to Ghana. A search warrant was executed for an address in Llangefni. Now, think hard, who do we know living in Menai Bridge, with a very close family member living in Llangefni? Anyone tempted to dismiss this as yet another example of Jack the Lad behaviour should ponder that imported worn tyres is one of the biggest causes of deaths on Ghana’s roads. This was no victimless crime.
Despite all that, I would not have brought up the now elderly Ronald Gill’s crimes were it not for two things. First, Nathan Gill himself, more than once, entertains us with talk of “the family business”, which means he was a business associate of his ‘homeopath’ father. Second, Ronald Gill became a shareholder in Burgill Ltd.
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From what I know of the Gills, I wouldn’t trust them to run a burger van. They come across as a dishonest, dysfunctional and rather odd crowd. I can’t help thinking that, if they’d been poor, then the social workers would have been in there when the father was sent down in 1988. But despite everything, they managed to put over a mirage of pious, middle class respectablity which we now know was a deceit. But shouldn’t we have known this earlier, before the European elections of May 22nd?
If we refer back to my May 15 post, Wales Euro Elections 2014: Runners & Riders we see 44 candidates representing 11 parties standing for the 4 seats. Most can be dismissed as no-hopers (and that includes the Liberal Democrats), which leaves us with the top candidates of five parties. The No 1 candidates for Labour, Conservative and Plaid Cymru were all seeking re-election, they were known, as were many of the others. The only unknown quantity guaranteed to be elected was Nathan Gill. He should have been the focus of the election coverage – Who is he? What do we know about him? The Welsh media made no such enquiries.
I am convinced that if what we know now had been known to the electorate before the election then Ukip would have got many fewer votes. It might not be stretching things too far to say that the Welsh media, or the lack of one, could be largely responsible for Wales being lumbered with Nathan Gill.
Evidence has come to light suggesting that one of our recently elected tribunes may have been less than honest with us. (Well, with you, actually, because I don’t believe in any of the buggers.) I appreciate that the very thought of an untruthful politician may be a shock to some of the more delicate among you, so I can only suggest you gird up your loins, grit your teeth, and perform any other contortions that might help you endure what follows.
As the title of this post informs you, the politician in question is Nathan Gill, the Ukip candidate elected on May 22 to the European Parliament. Now Mr Gill looks a presentable forty-years-old man; happily married with five beautiful children, a dutiful son and a successful businessman to boot. It can be guaranteed that he gained the votes of many women, especially those of a certain age. That’s the JFK factor, exploited, since Dallas and the arrival of wall-to-wall television and social media, by Clinton, Blair, Obama, Cameron, and many other politicians in the English-speaking world. With the predictable corollary that those who fail the JFK test often suffer politically: Richard Nixon, Michael Howard, Gordon Brown et al. Lies may have forced Nixon from the White House but liars who pass the test are more likely to escape, or at least delay, retribution. This worshiping of the photogenic is yet another example of the superficiality of the Anglo-Saxon world today, the victory of style over substance. But I digress . . .
There are three specific areas in which Mr Gill was less than honest with the electors of Wales. The first two can be dealt with fairly quickly, but the third is a little more involved, so you’ll need to pay attention. It might also help you understand this post if you could refer back to an earlier post, Nathan Gill, Ukip No 1 in Wales; I would suggest keeping that earlier post open in a different window (or browser) so you can refer to it when necessary. (Here’s the link to the Ukip website from which the information came), with the bio panel from the site below.
NATHAN GILL, MORMON
People tell me that on other election literature produced by Ukip there were references to Gill being a ‘Christian’, which is unlikely to alarm anyone, but the Ukip election leaflet delivered to my house went straight in the bin, so I don’t know what it said. This was partly due to my views on English supremacism and partly a reaction to some of the insulting rubbish put out by Ukip in Wales. Whatever the leaflets may have said, none mentioned that Mr Gill is a Mormon. My belief is that few would have refused to vote for a ‘Christian’, but many would have been less ready to vote for someone belonging to one of the more exotic varieties of Christianity such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS).
Click to Enlarge
Seeing as Mr Gill is a Mormon, what is his attitude to gays and same-sex relationships? Come to that, what does he think of the kind of heterosexual relationships enjoyed by that pork swordsman, legendary drinker, and all round sybarite, Nigel Farage? Does he really see his party leader as ‘a bit of a lad’, Everyman re-born for the twenty-first century, or a sinner bound for Hell?
The fact is, we should have been told that Nathan Gill is a Mormon. We were not. The information was deliberately withheld. That was dishonest.
NATHAN GILL, PROFESSIONAL POLITICIAN
Ukip makes great play on the claim that they, unlike the ‘established’ (and discredited) political parties, are not made up of ‘professional politicians’ but of ordinary people who’ve just had enough of the professional political class. There’s no doubt that this plays well with an electorate that now puts politicians on a par with sellers of ‘pre-loved’ automobiles, and vendors of dwellings whose descriptions bear no reality to their true condition.
This situation is alleged to have come about due to young people studying politics, then working as assistants or advisors to politicians, before going on to become tribunes themselves. This process, it is alleged, divorces its practitioners from ‘real life’ and the concerns of ‘real people’, for whom Ukip of course speaks. It’s a message that resonates and, unlike most of Ukip’s messages, this one is based in truth.
In the address I used in the earlier post (right) Mr Gill first says, “From an early age I have been interested in politics . . . “, before telling us that he resigned from the Conservative Party to join Ukip in 2005. But then, confusingly, he proudly and emphatically states, “I am not a career politician”. Which is it? Maybe if we ask what he was doing prior to his election it might help. Ah, yes, he was working as assistant to his predecessor as Ukip MEP, John Bufton. So he’s a professional politician just like those his party vilifies. Another question mark against Nathan Gill’s honesty.
NATHAN GILL, BUSINESSMAN
In the earlier post I mentioned a number of business ventures with which Gill and his family had been, or still are, involved. One was Burgill Ltd, compulsorily wound up in February 2009 with debts of some £116,000. This was involved in the letting of property, Incorporated with Companies House on St. Patrick’s Day 2004. The directors at Incorporation, each having one share, were Nathan Gill and his mother; with Gill’s address given as 51 Park Road, Sproatley, Hull, East Yorkshire, England, and his mother living at a house in Bryan (sic) Aethwy, Menai Bridge, Anglesey, England (sic). The proposed Registered Office was in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, with the Agent in Preston, Lancashire.
I was unable to get much more information on Burgill at the time I wrote the earlier post, and felt disinclined to pay for documents from Companies House. That all changed late on Thursday night when I received a strange comment (since removed) to the post, some of which I can paraphrase here: “Nathan Gill . . . Burgill . . . migrants mainly from Poland . . . housed 46 people in one very large house on Holderness Road, Hull, 6 bunk beds per room . . . a perfect candidate for Ukip?” It would have been easy to dismiss this comment as coming from someone with a grudge against Gill or an anti-Ukip agenda, but when I made further enquiries things began to look less far-fetched.
Below you’ll find a series of documents linked to Burgill Ltd bought from Companies House. In chronological order, they are: 1/ Certificate of Incorporation (17 March, 2004); 2/ Debenture referring to mortgage taken out by Burgill (13 June, 2005); 3/ Annual Return (March 17, 2008) which now has the Registered Office in Llangefni, Nathan Gill living at a different address in the town, and his father having joined as a shareholder (Anglesey has now relocated from England to Gwynedd. Still wrong, but an improvement.); 4/ Details of the winding-up (12 February, 2009); 5/ the Current Appointments Report I downloaded on Friday May 30, which confirms the compulsory liquidation, tells us the accounts are long overdue, and reminds us that Burgill’s business was “Letting of own property”. (If they don’t show, then click here.)
Further enquiries revealed more information on Burgill and Nathan Gill which ties in with the mysterious comment sent to my blog. For example, trawling the internet I came across this piece which locates Burgill Ltd at 778 Holderness Road in Hull. More digging unearthed information about a planning application from Burgill, to Hull city council, for a new detached dwelling close to 709 Holderness Road. Also on Holderness Road, at 443, is a care home which seems to have been Gill’s parents’ business. Incorporated on March 27, 2001 it traded as the Pink Panther Resource Centre until it changed its name in March 2003 to Gill Enterprises Yorkshire Ltd, though now based in Menai Bridge. The attraction of Holderness Road may be explained by the fact that a Mormon church is located on this thoroughfare. No. 778 is almost directly opposite the church, across the dual carriageway of the A165 Holderness Road. (Click to enlarge aerial view below.)
UPDATE JUNE 3: I now learn there was yet another property on Holderness Road, this one No. 711 (also known as ‘Tower Grange’). This is the most likely candidate to be “the very large house on Holderness Road, Hull, 6 bunk beds per room . . . ” mentioned in the comment to the earlier post on Gill. According to my informant this substantial building was sold to another company, by Burgill Ltd, with planning permission for a two-storey extension of nine two-bedroom and five one-bedroom ‘apartments’, which would tie in with this document. Though Gill’s original planning application was for a three-storey extension of eleven two-bedroom ‘apartments’ and five one-bed. (This may also be relevant.) Elsewhere in that city with which we are becoming familiar, you may recall that on the Certificate of Incorporation for Burgill Ltd Gill’s address is given as 51 Park Road, Sproatley (a commuter village to the north east of the city). Well, I’m told that Gill “had four Polish guys living there and he never declared the cash”.
In what they say will be their last communication, my informant also refers to a church – presumably in Hull – owned by Gill for which planning permission was refused . . . with the building subsequently suffering a “mysterious fire”. (Though I make no connection between the two.) After which a compulsory purchase order was issued by Hull city council. I fear that in Nathan Gill we could be dealing with a very naughty boy, a very naughty boy indeed (even by the standards of Ukip), and a man totally unfit to represent Wales in the European Parliament. As ever, I would be grateful for more information.
Mentioning the Mormons again makes me ask out loud a question that keeps nagging at me. In my experience many religious sects have a very unChristian regard for lucre. They seem not to have read about Jesus expelling the money changers from the Temple. So while this post is premissed on the assumption that Nathan Gill was in business for personal profit, what if Burgill Ltd was in reality being run on behalf of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?
Returning to the planning application (details below) for a new detached dwelling close to 709 Holderness Road, this is dated 3 April, 2009, despite the petition to liquidate Burgill being presented and heard at Llangefni county court by district judge Jones-Evans on 26 November, 2008, and the company registered as liquidated by Companies House on 12 February 2009! So how can a company that to all intents and purposes has ceased to exist have a live planning application? I’m open to explanations.
Next stop was the DueDil website, which has yielded much information in the past, and came up with the goods again. The chart below gives a pretty good outline of the rise and fall of Burgill. It starts in March 2005 with the company having assets of some £230,000 – a property, maybe accounting for the mortgage referred to above? – with assets peaking at £405,525 on 30 March, 2006 (was another property bought?). Things changed little until March 2007, after which it was downhill all the way, with no recording of cash after that date. Suggesting (and I stress suggesting) that after March 2007 assets were sold to pay off liabilities, for these always exceeded assets, and the last entries tell us that by March 2008 Burgill Ltd had liabilities of £116,571 and assets of just £504.00.
So what was Burgill’s business? Did it involve, as my informant suggests, Polish migrant workers and bunk beds? That scenario is not so implausible. Due to its location on England’s east coast Hull has always traded with the Baltic and would have been a port of entry for people from that region when Poland and the three Baltic States joined the EU on May 1, 2004. (Remember, Burgill was Incorporated on March 17, 2004.) An enterprising young fellow, with local links, might see money to be made. What we know for certain is that Nathan Gill was involved in the property business in Hull during that period, so if not Polish migrants packed in like sardines, what type of business was he running?
At this point let me briefly mention other information received that refers to “sub-letting”, and the suggestion that what’s on paper may not be a true reflection of Burgill’s financial position, as Nathan Gill is alleged to be a man who likes to deal in cash . . . much of which is said to have gone missing as Burgill dived south . . . which set off alarm bells with the tax authorities. It is also alleged that ‘Bishop’ Gill had another wife, with whom he was involved in an acrimonious custody battle, and that – how can I put this? – imaginative means were employed allowing the cash-rich Mr Gill to claim legal aid. These are all serious allegations, and there may be more ready to surface.
Perhaps we should expect no better, for Ukip is a Ship of Fools, skippered by an arsehole and crewed by chancers and oddballs who regard probity, fidelity, and the better angels of our nature as irritants or obstacles to the satisfying of their baser instincts. They don’t much care about the destination of their craft – they signed on simply to enjoy the cruise and rake in the hated Euros. Far from being a break with a corrupt system Ukip is all the problems of modern politics magnified and made more repugnant. Nathan Gill adds another ingredient to the Ukip mix with his Mormon beliefs. Can we in future expect to see Ukip emulate the Tea Party in the USA by attracting Christian Fundamentalists and Evangelicals?
All this would be bad enough, but for a Welshman there is another consideration. Ukip is, as I mentioned earlier, an English supremacist party; it is the political voice of every social media bigot and internet troll who thinks we Welsh are an inferior people who would be ‘nothing without the English’, and that everything Welsh is, by definition, inferior to what England has to offer. The sort of swivel-eyed nutter, eaten up with hatred – often, it must be admitted, self-hatred – who will not be happy until every last vestige of Welshness is destroyed and Wales fully assimilated into England. It is scum like these that keep the Ship of Fools afloat in Wales.
I shall end this post by calling on Nathan Gill to, finally, be honest. Tell us why you withheld the information about being a Mormon, and how that faith influences your attitudes to contemporary issues. Why did you try to present yourself as a political virgin when you clearly are not? What exactly were (or are) your business interests in Hull with Burgill Ltd, and perhaps other companies; was it the exploitation of migrants from that place you hate so much – ‘Europe’? Finally, Nathan Gill, do you really think it’s wise to go to the European Parliament accompanied by so many skeletons, with others almost certain to emerge?
Trying to bluff it out will only make things worse, Mr Gill; I suggest you reconsider your position as an MEP.
I don’t want anyone to think I’m picking on Ukip, or indeed, Nathan Gill; but as the BBC and other media have been making clear, these European elections are most definitely about Ukip, and as Mr Gill is the lead candidate, and therefore almost certain to be representing us – we Welsh – in the European Parliament, I have every right to know more about the man, and to present my findings – and indeed my impressions – to a wider audience of potential voters. The best place to start is with what Nathan Gill has to say about himself. Here’s a link to what you see in the panel (click to enlarge). And for your further delectation, here’s a link to a piece on Ukip I posted earlier this month.
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The first thing that struck me was that this is very badly written, in so many ways. While criticising syntax may be ‘picky’, criticising bad spelling and ludicrous capitalisations is not. For example (final paragraph) there is no ‘d’ in privilege. In the previous paragraph it should be ‘candidates’. How are we to interpret “our Great Nation” (and to which nation does it refer?). Why does he write “Domiciliary and Home Care for the Elderly” when no capitalisation is required? Amazing, that these people, so intolerant of other languages, are so careless with their own.
Over and above these childish mistakes there are other sections that cause amusement or alarm. Let’s start with the funny – well, sort of – bit at the start of the fifth paragraph, where he says, “I am not a career politician”, which is something Ukip candidates have been playing on in this campaign; in other words, ‘Trust us – we are not part of the corrupt system’. Now I don’t wish to go too far in this observation, but this ‘innocent outsider’ ploy was used by the Nazis: ‘Vote for us – we are not part of the corrupt Weimar system’. Yet he ends the preceding paragraph by saying that the aim is to “raise UKIP’s profile as a professional mainstream party”. If Nathan Gill and Ukip succeed in that ambition he will no longer be able to capitalise on his political virginity. In short, there is a glaring contradiction due to whoever wrote this garbage either forgetting what they’d just written or being unable to grasp that contradiction.
Less amusing is this section, immediately before the bit about professionalising Ukip: “I resigned my membership (of the Tories) and joined UKIP in February of 2005 deciding then and there, that this was a fight worth fighting. I was not being asked to stand in the trenches, or storm the beaches of Normandy for my country. This was to be a long and mainly thankless battle to inform the public, and raise UKIP’s profile . . .”. God Almighty! Stand in the trenches! Storm the beaches! What is it with the English Right that it can think of no other way to serve its country than by donning khaki and killing foreigners? We used to be told that this attitude was confined to the extreme Right, the National Front or the BNP, but Ukip now claims to represent mainstream English opinion. If so, God help us!
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How does Mr Gill earn his crust? Because he makes reference to “the family business” I made some enquiries and turned up a number of companies connected with Nathan Gill, four departed, one still clinging to life. The first of the four was Compactor Ltd of Bridlington, in Gill’s native East Riding of Yorkshire, Company No 06329258. Compactor seems to have lasted from July 2007 until March 11, 2011 and the Second Notification of Strike-Off Action in the London Gazette. Other directors were Mrs Elaine Gill (his mother, presumably) and Mr Brian Lynn Quilter. The company was listed as a manufacturer of telegraph and telephone apparatus and equipment.
Another that fell by the wayside was Humview Ltd, of Church Street, Llangefni, Company No 06166193. The other directors were Ms Jana Lyn Gill (wife?) and Mr Richard Bruce Worsey. Humview was Incorporated on March 16, 2007 and the Second Notification, etc was dated May 30, 2009. The third dead company was Picture Perfect (GB) Ltd, back in Bridlington, Company No 05781088. The only other name mentioned, as Company Secretary was, again, Ms Jana Lyn Gill. Picture Perfect first saw the light of day in April 2006 and breathed its last on November 19, 2010 via the London Gazette, departing this mortal coil with debts of just over £11,000.
Finally, we come to Burgill Ltd, Company Number 05076906, which was in the business of ‘letting of own property’ and ‘renting and operating of housing association real estate’. (Intriguing.) This company was also registered at Church Street, Llangefni, with Nathan Gill and his mother serving as directors, but may have operated in Hull. Alas, early in 2009, the company was forced into compulsory liquidation owing £116,067. On the left you will find a screenshot of Burgill’s life support system just before it was switched off by the Official Receiver in Chester. (Yes, folks, Chester; after a millennium of that city’s parasitism and 15 years of devolution, it seems the Official Receiver for North Wales is still based in Chester.)
So there appears to be just one company with which Ukip’s local hetman is involved that still trades – Gill Enterprises Yorkshire Ltd, Company No 04188257 which, despite the name, has its registered office in Menai Bridge. It was Incorporated on March 27, 2001 and until March 2003 was known as The Pink Panther Resource Centre Ltd. Googling Pink Panther Resource Centre turned up a care home in Hull. Gill Enterprises could be the “family business” referred to in the bio, for his parents were both directors at one time. The only problem being that unless he was an adult student he would have left Coleg Menai around July 1991, ten years before the company was incorporated. Yet there seems to be no contender for the title of “family business” other than this company which currently has just two directors, Nathan Gill and his mother. The business seems to bob along, keeping its head above water, with net worth equalling current liabilities and a few grand in the bank.
All this digging got me wondering about Nathan Gill’s parents, were there other companies that might fit the “family business” label? Well, for a start, and in addition to Compactor and Burgill, Mrs Elaine Gill had also served as a director of Gillshill Ltd, which seems to have enjoyed a lifespan of just two years, from January 1992 until its Final Dissolution on St. David’s Day 1994. The only other director was her husband, Michael Ronald Gill. Though perhaps more interesting from a Welsh perspective is yet another company, Home Comforts (Gwynedd) Ltd, also registered in Menai Bridge, where the other director was again her husband, and she is listed as a ‘care home proprietor’. This company, number 02939007, was registered in August 1994 and dissolved in April 1996.
I don’t profess to know a lot about business and investment, and I can’t afford to pay for the documents that would throw more light on the Gill family’s business ventures (sob!); but it looks a chequered history to me, and I’d certainly like to know more about the disastrous Burgill Ltd. But after all that, I still don’t know what Nathan Gill actually does to support his wife and five children. Perhaps he should have been more specific in his bio rather than making a vague reference to the family business before taking us off to war while painting himself as the political innocent.
UPDATE MAY 29: Since writing this post I have learnt that Gill’s ‘job’ was personal assistant to the Ukip MEP (2009 – 2014), John Bufton. Why so reticent? Perhaps because it would have undermined his claim to not be “a career politician”. At least he’s got a real job now . . . but one he doesn’t want to do!
Additionally, Gill is a Mormon, it seems they have a ‘Meetinghouse’ in Gaerwen, and he may have come to Wales as a ‘missionary’. In my area it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses, a whole congregation, complete with patriarch, decamped from somewhere in northern England. Sometimes this village is under siege as they descend on us mob-handed . . . people diving under tables, turning televisions off, clapping hands over kids’ mouths . . . I know Wales is a third world country but do we really have to suffer white missionaries?
Seeing as Gill belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (to give them their full name, often abbreviated to LDS) what is his attitude to gays and same-sex relationships? Come to that, what does he really think of that pork swordsman extraordinaire, legendary drinker and all round sybarite, his party leader, Nigel Farage? Does he really see him as ‘a bit of a lad’ or a sinner bound for hell?
When you think about it, there’s a few things here we should have been told before the election, but it’s pretty obvious why we weren’t.
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If the Ukip bandwagon isn’t halted soon then, some time after the general election of May 7 next year, the UK could have a Conservative-Ukip coalition government. I say this because many Conservatives are quietly supportive of Ukip, while Tory supporters in the media and elsewhere hope to use Ukip to pull the party to the Right. They believe that encouraging Farage and his cohorts to change the terms of debate on Europe, immigration, and other issues, prepares the ground for a ‘repositioned’ Conservative Party to reap the rewards. Which, again, reminds me of 1930s Germany; and the way in which big business, the army, and other establishment elements thought they could use and control Hitler before disposing of him. It didn’t work then, and England’s own ‘funny little man’ may prove equally difficult to ditch.
Nor should we ignore the fact that Ukip sees itself fighting on two fronts. The first is obviously ‘Europe’ and what it interprets as interference in Britain’s internal affairs, the second is the crusade to keep Britain English. Therefore Welsh identity of any kind, when seen through Ukip rifle sights on this second front, is a threat to the desired social and cultural cohesion. Which is why devolution – despite what Ukip may say publicly – would soon be phased out by a Tory-Ukip coalition government. (With the support of many in the Labour Party.)
For these and so many other reasons we must oppose this irredeemably English party for which Wales and Scotland are merely colourful appendages to be disempowered and eventually integrated. Despite the presence of three gullible Welsh candidates on the Ukip list the one topping that list, the one very likely to be elected, is Englishman Nathan Gil, which is how it must be, seeing as Ukip is appealling primarily to the English living in Wales. If Nathan Gill is elected he will sit in the European Parliament representing English interests . . . but in the name of Wales. This is why the fight against Ukip must not end with this week’s elections.
It may be a strange thing to say, but last night’s English council elections, and the advances made by Ukip, should provide great encouragement for those of us who want the diverging interests and needs of Wales and England put into sharper focus.
Most of Ukip’s votes seem to have come from disillusioned Conservatives, but neither Labour nor Lib Dem voters are immune to Ukip’s appeal. There are a number of reasons for this, not least that those who sit in Westminster have not been so distanced from us, the common herd, for almost two hundred years. Which might be accepted if they were perceived to be honest, competent and capable. They are not. Add to a distant and incompetent government an uninspiring opposition, an economic recession, a growing sense that the English are treated shabbily both at home and abroad, and Ukip was almost guaranteed to succeed. (Nick Griffin and what’s left of the BNP must be ruing the fact that if they could only have shaken off the skinhead-thicko-racist image then much of Ukip’s success could have been theirs. But with one foot in the English gutter and the other in the Third Reich they never had a chance.)
Seeing as these were exclusively English local elections (the only election in Wales being Ynys Môn, returning to the democratic fold) why am I even writing about it? Because . . . Ukip success could be excellent news for those of us who understand that what is promoted as ‘consensus’ invariably results in us Welsh being screwed. I’m also writing this to counter the responses of the Left in Wales, patriotic or otherwise, who detest Ukip so much that they blind themselves to the potential advantages to Wales, and just fall in with the Guardianista Left in throwing up their hands and wailing, ‘Isn’t it just awful!’
So what are these ‘advantages’ I’m talking about? Ukip is an English nationalist party; to pretend it’s anything else is dishonest. As dishonest as the party itself using ‘UK’ in its name. For Ukip’s UK is nothing but Greater England. The party’s attitude to us and the Scots is, ‘We’ll get along just fine as long as you do as we tell you’. Which may not sound too promising for us Welsh, but consider these possibilities.
Ideological politics has been dying a slow death in the UK and Wales for over twenty years. The process began with the deposing of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and was completed with the creation of New Labour a few years later. All parties – Plaid Cymru included – then piled into the centre ground with the result that a ‘consensus’ was arrived at based on the suppression of ideology, the belief that endlessly repackaging money could be the basis of a national economy, and allowing oneself to be carried along by those taking us towards a new world order. Throw an economic recession into the mix and it begins to explain how a party of golf club bigots could become the hottest thing in English politics.
No matter what the major parties may be saying publicly, they know that Ukip’s strength is growing because an increasing number of English voters no longer trust Labour or Conservatives to deliver; first, on ‘Europe’ (i.e. pulling out); and then on ‘immigration’ (i.e. allowing far fewer immigrants). To reassure these people – and more importantly, to regain their votes – both major parties will have to shift their positions on the two issues. But it won’t end there. For being essentially an English nationalist party Ukip also resents the money ‘wasted’, and the concessions made, to Scotland and Wales. It will insist that funding to both countries be cut, perhaps even that devolution be abolished. Or maybe Ukip will demand a parliament for England. For don’t expect subtlety, or carefully-considered policies; expect more of what will appeal to existing and potential Ukip voters.
Which means that what really matters is how this English return to gut-instinct politics will be received in Wales. All parties in the Assembly are agreed that devolution is here to stay. And I believe they mean it. Which could put both Labour and Conservative parties on course for confrontation with their London masters if the latter harden their positions towards Wales in order to fight off the Ukip threat. Perhaps more important than the positions of the political parties is the attitude of the Welsh people; for they are now overwhelmingly supportive of devolution and would strongly resent any ‘English’ interference. Which is not to say that Ukip would not have support in Wales if it tried to force a London government into abolishing the Welsh Assembly. (Let’s remember that one of our four MEPs is from Ukip.) But we know where most of that support would come from; it would expose a divide that many would prefer to keep papered over.
The growing strength of Ukip, and its influence on both Conservatives and Labour, can only be good for our cause. Because it will alienate so many of our people and make them want to erect ‘defences’ against an increasingly selfish and xenophobic England. Leaving our politicians with little alternative but to follow suit (if they wish to persist in their collective delusion of being our ‘leaders’). So ignore the outraged moaners of the Left; England moving to the Right and prioritising her national interests would be wonderful news . . . because it would provoke a sizeable section of our nation into rethinking the relationship with England. So stuff consensus . . . radical change invariably comes from conflict or confrontation. Wales needs radical change. Keep up the good work, Nige!
P.S. Within minutes of this post going out I came across this tweet. Don’t know who he is, I don’t follow him, he doesn’t follow me, and I doubt if he reads my blog. But I think it proves my point.
but then, when you play student politics with a nation’s future, and duck the real issues, you deserve no third option. Though the nation of course deserves a lot better than Plaid Cymru.
e dropping since then, will not win 30 seats in 2016.
lts will be repeated next year. If so, then it would establish the Tories as the second largest party by some margin. This seems predictable because the number of Plaid Cymru AMs is bound to fall, partly because other than Llanelli it’s impossible to see a seat Plaid could gain (though maybe not if Siân Caiach stands again), and Plaid is bound to lose out to Ukip in the regional allocation. Though if the Lib Dems do lose Brecon & Radnor then that makes it more likely they will be compensated with a couple of regional seats.
viable alternative to Labour, that’s why they turned out last month and last year to vote Tory and Ukip in Caerffili, Merthyr, Blaenau Gwent and Islwyn, and in the process pushed Plaid Cymru down to fourth place. So why should anyone who doesn’t want Labour in power vote for the party that will keep Labour in power?
