US Elections, Observations And Hopes

This is my personal take on what happened in the USA last week. I’ll give some thought to the curious electoral system. The trajectory I hope to see from now on. And I’ll conclude by briefly considering the effects Trump’s victory might have on the wider world.

THEN AND NOW

I woke around six o’clock last Wednesday morning, though I’m not sure why.

Anyway, I switched on the TV, expecting to see talking heads discussing the turnout in Wisconsin, and whether the result offered a bright new dawn for transgender Latino birthing persons, but I could tell from the faces and demeanour of the respected and impartial presenters that Trump had won.

I was amazed at how quickly the result had become known.

To understand my surprise, we need to go back four years to the events of 2020. When ballots were still arriving days after the polls closed, often in the middle of the night and from out-of-state locations.

Which leads us to the consideration of ID; whether someone turning up at a polling station should establish their identity before being allowed to vote. As we do in Wales.

For reasons I cannot fathom, Democrats are opposed to demanding ID. California even went so far as to make it illegal to ask for ID! Republicans say it should be mandatory.

It’s also being reported that Harris won all the states where voter ID is not required . . . but only those states. Not that I’m suggesting anything, you understand.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But just think what could happen.

An unknown man goes to vote . . . then comes back 5 minutes later, to vote again. The people manning the polling station say, ‘Hang on, you voted 5 minutes ago’. Mystery man responds, ‘No I didn’t – and you can’t prove I did!’.

What went right for Trump this time? Well . . .

There’s no doubt that in 2020 there were ‘irregularities’, and these favoured the Democrats. I say that because they all seemed to happen in Democrat-controlled cities, and swing states. More on this later.

Harris getting over 10 million votes less than Biden won in 2020 takes some explaining. Seeing as there were more voters this time. And especially as this was the election to save civilisation from the Nazi hordes awaiting their cue from Donald J Trump.

And then there were the countless celebrity endorsements for Harris. Did these count for nothing? How could out-of-work coal miners in West Virginia not heed the advice of Leonardo DiCaprio?

Though it’s said Oprah Winfrey was paid £1m or more to have Harris on her show!

Earlier this year, who among you was not moved by Robert de Niro’s performance outside the New York City courthouse where Trump was being tried? The renowned thesp turned up surrounded by more heavies than in any of his movies.

Speaking in NYC De Niro says of Trump, “He doesn’t belong in my city”. Trump was born there. But when Trump deports criminals who sneaked into the USA De Niro and other luvvies will demand they be allowed to stay because they ‘belong’. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And then there was the civil fraud case brought by Soros-funded New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump for over-valuing his assets in order to get a bank loan.

This was a civil action, not a criminal case. For the bank involved, Deutsche Bank, had made no complaint!

This being New York, Trump was of course found guilty. James’s co-conspirator, the goblinesque Judge Arthur Engoron, slapped a fine of $454.2m on Trump. And even wanted him barred from doing business in New York.

But things soon unravelled for James, Engoron, and the Democratic Party.

For in its testimony, Deutsche Bank said, ‘No problemo, everybody exaggerates their wealth, or the value of their assets, to get a loan.

Managing director David Williams said the bankers viewed clients’ reports of their net worth as “subjective or subject to estimates” and took its own view of such financial statements.

This was a squalid business, even for NYC, so blatantly political. And the Appellate Court agreed.

Conclusions:

When it became clear Trump had won those who were supposed to be impartial made no effort to hide their bias. Telling us that any vestige of credibility the legacy media might have had is gone. Forever.

After cheating their way to victory in 2020, partly thanks to the fortuitous and wholly unexpected arrival of Covid, the deep state Democrats were unable to do the same again.

The average American resents being told to make sacrifices by luvvies who use private jets to fly to awards ceremonies where they tell each other how virtuous and superior they are.

Like other people, Americans want a legal system that is above politics and personalities; a system that administers justice blindly. Not a system corrupted by an evil old man.

And most Americans, of all ethnicities, reject ‘women with penises’, pronouns, anti-white racism, and all the other Woke nonsense.

When you consider the media bias, the amount by which the Harris campaign out-spent Trump’s, the celebrity endorsements, Trump being called Hitler, and everything else the president-elect had to put up with, you realise that with a level playing-field the margin of victory would have been huge.

That should be a sobering thought for leftists, liberals, the media, and their Globalist manipulators.

THE LONG SHADOW OF TAMMANY HALL

A message we heard over and over again from the media was that Trump is ‘divisive’. But which politician isn’t? And yet, when we look at the electoral map, we see the real divide in the USA.

At its simplest, it’s between urban and rural.

On the one side, the major cities, with their ghettoes and immigrant communities, their white liberal suburbs. On the other, the rest of the country.

The cities have an enormous effect on how the states vote, in ways that skew results and disenfranchise large areas. The map below shows how the states voted on November 5.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I want to draw your attention to a few examples of what I’ve just described.

Take Illinois, where Harris – with 93.6% of the vote counted by Nov 13 – won with some 54% of the vote. The Chicago metropolitan area deciding how the state voted. Here’s a map of Illinois by county.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This pattern is replicated across the country. Go back to the map of the states and see that Colorado went for Harris thanks to the city of Denver. In Minnesota it was Minneapolis-St Paul. But perhaps the most egregious example is found in Virginia.

In the western counties of the state, as you head up into the Appalachians, Trump polled 80 – 85% of the vote, but it was all decided in the north east, in the suburban overspill of Washington DC. Many of those who voted for Harris here are working for bloated or even unnecessary federal agencies.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And of course, many if not most of those living in this suburban overspill were not born in Virginia. Which means they helped outvote native Virginians.

Something similar obtains on the other side of DC, in Maryland, where suburban sprawl, and the city of Baltimore, helped the Democrats easily outvote the eastern side of that small state.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Collectively, DC and these counties in Virginia and Maryland make up the Washington metropolitan area. A conurbation that has grown apace with the reach of the federal government.

I believe the only exceptions to this winner takes all system are Maine (3 – 1 Harris) and Nebraska (4 – 1 Trump).

So why do the Democrats exercise such a stranglehold on the major cities?

Go back far enough and you come to Tammany Hall, “a blend of charity and patronage”, that delivered the vote for the Democratic Party in New York City.

The Democrats controlled the major cities through appealing to immigrant groups, organised labour, and the increasing black vote coming up from the South. In return for those votes it could arrange jobs, contracts, housing, and other benefits.

The ‘bosses’ could deliver the vote. In Boston, one of the most powerful was John Francis ‘Honey Fitz’ Fitzgerald, grandfather of president John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

There was, perhaps inevitably, an overlap with organised crime. And when JFK won the 1960 election, with the slimmest-ever majority, the Chicago Outfit felt they’d made a big contribution.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Tammany Hall may be gone, and the power of the Mafia is diminished, but the Democratic Party still controls the cities through that “combination of charity and patronage“. And still delivers the vote.

In addition to the core of each city there are the suburbs to consider. Here we find the business class, the professionals, and many of those running the agencies, funded by DC, the state, or the city, providing the goodies that keep the citizens voting Democrat.

Though it’s questionable if inner-city neighbourhoods see any tangible and lasting benefits from these arrangements.

Welsh readers might see a valid comparison between US inner cities and the Valleys, the latter abandoned and decaying, but still voting Labour. But with the real beneficiaries of this system being the chisellers of Corruption Bay, found in the nicer suburbs of Cardiff, out in the Vale, or even Abergavennyshire.

It’s a stranglehold that’s almost impossible to break. Because without political power the Republicans can’t promise the homes, or the jobs, or any benefits to woo voters. With minorities urged by their leaders to regard the party with suspicion. ‘Leaders’ who are often on the Democratic Party payroll, or otherwise catered for.

Which brings me to my final consideration in the urban-rural split.

Those who live outside of the cities, those areas that voted 70%, 80%, or more, for Donald Trump, especially in the South, the Mid West, and the Northern Plains, will differ in many ways from city-dwellers.

Yes, they’re far more likely to be white, but so are the suburbs, which is why it would be wrong to focus too much on race. The difference is that those out in the sticks are more likely to own their own home, and land; are more likely to be self-employed, and self-sufficient; and will be suspicious of government, especially the federal government.

The hicks are also far more likely to (legally) own guns. But we won’t go there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing against one person one vote. I fully support all US citizens, who can prove their identity, being given a numbered paper ballot on the day of the election, at the polling station, so they can cast their vote(s).

Does anyone object to that? And if so, why?

LOOKING AHEAD

We need here to avoid another over-simplification, that between left and right. Though I know I use these terms myself, so let me explain why, and why they’re misleading.

The struggle today is not really between right and left.

On the one hand we have those who want to tell us what we’re allowed to eat, what we can drive (also how far and at what speed), what we must believe, who our friends are, and who we must hate.

The UN’s 2030 Agenda.

They do it by hypnotising us with engineered crises / threats and while we’re fixated on the swinging pocket-watch they take our money, property, and personal freedoms.

On the other side, are those who see the threat and are prepared to resist it. Mainly, but no longer exclusively, from the political right.

I condemn the left for buying into the Globalist agenda. Most socialists and liberals because they see no further than Wokeism, taking childish enjoyment from ‘bourgeois’ angst; but for the hard-core, Globalism is a replacement Soviet Union in the old ambition to bring down the West.

And while the Globalists may be planning corporate colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, their primary targets are Europe and North America. Which is why Trump’s victory is important to us, because its effects will not be limited to the USA.

The president-elect is known to be sceptical of the EU, wary of NATO, and suspicious of the regime in Ukraine. He’s promised to reject net zero, regarding the ‘climate crisis’ as a ‘threat’ no more real than Russia, both dreamed up to promote the Globalist agenda.

But it takes more than the left to push forward the agenda.

Globalism, the deep state, the military-industrial complex, call it what you will, is supported and defended, its aims advanced, by a professional political class, and a huge bureaucracy, focused on Washington DC.

This vast apparatus is the target for the incoming Trump administration.

The man given the job of bringing down this monster is Elon Musk, who made Twitter / X more efficient, popular, and profitable, after sacking some 90% of the staff.

His deputy is former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who spelt it out only yesterday.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The only ones who’ll object to this cull of the bureaucracy will be those who benefit from it. Those who work in these non-jobs, and those who gain politically or materially from them.

Reducing the federal budget, cutting aid to Ukraine, the UN, and other drains, making the US self-sufficient in energy, will reduce taxes and bring down prices across the board.

It must be done, not just because the American people are hurting, but because the USA may be broke. Forbes didn’t come straight out and say it, but the headline to this piece in May leaves little doubt . . . of the problem, and the cause.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

If you really want to scare yourself, just think: ‘Now, those who are bankrupting the federal government, and by extension, the USA, are controlled by the Globalists. So do the Globalists want to bankrupt the USA?’

Damn right they do. And the same applies to Europe.

The Globalists have created the monsters that can only be pacified with massive and expensive sacrifices designed to bankrupt individuals, nations, continents.

Having engineered the collapse, the Globalists will then step in with their solutions.

It’s how Hitler did it. Send out the Brownshirts to bloody the streets brawling with socialists and communists – then promise to bring law and order back to those same streets. Take power by promising to solve the problem you’ve created.

Welcome to the world of Universal Basic Income (UBI), Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC); which will mean an end to democracy, freedom of speech, and individual economic autonomy.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

You’re now a serf, because you opened the door to authoritarianism promising to solve non-existent problems and fight imaginary enemies.

OVER HERE

What happens in the USA always impacts on the rest of the world because of that country’s economic strength, military power, and cultural influence. Which is why the new administration taking control in January will impact on us all.

If Trump carries out his promises, on dumping net zero, cutting federal waste, increasing production, reducing taxation, dealing with unlawful immigration, he can make the USA more prosperous and more at ease with itself than it’s been since the 1950s.

And no matter how much the politicians and the media lie to you about it, if Trump turns the USA around it’ll be impossible to hide the truth.

People this side of the Atlantic will then ask: ‘Why are we destroying our economy, our country, our children’s futures, by following an anti-human, de-growth agenda, dictated by some of the biggest corporations and richest individuals on Earth?

And the only honest answer will be – ‘Because you’re incredibly fucking stupid!

So stop being stupid, catch up with reality, and look forward to Donald J Trump becoming the 47th President of the United States of America.

I can’t wait!

And don’t forget to support the farmers in their London protest on the 19th. Because the bastards who are coming for the farmers’ land are the same bastards coming for your car and your flight to Majorca. The same bastards who want you to go vegan. The same bastards who think your electricity bill should be at least £1,000 a month – ‘to save the planet, innit‘.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Gilestone Revisited

I took a week off last week. It was too hot for blogging. For which we must all blame anthropogenic global warming. Then again, it might just have been normal summer weather.

It certainly was when the rain arrived. So different to when I was a boy . . .

Back then, summer started in mid-March, many over the age of 50 were dead from heatstroke and malaria by the time we celebrated the Feast of Saint Blodwen of Cwmrhydyceirw. And we played cricket ‘frae morning sun till dine’.

Happy days!

BACKGROUND

To get the background for this story – fast developing into a saga – you’d better read Green Man, Red Herring? (20.05.2022) about the purchase, by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, for £4.25m, of Gilestone farm, just outside Talybont-on-Usk.

According to the aforementioned ‘Welsh Government’, the farm was bought in order to be leased to the Green Man festival. Yet the Green Man submitted no business plan, and says it has no intention of leaving its current venue at the Glanusk estate, a few miles down the road.

For these and other reasons I suggested the Green Man angle was perhaps a distraction. I’ll go further now and suggest that Gilestone itself might not be the thread to follow if we want to know what’s really going on.

There seem to be two possible ways of explaining it. Both start from the same point.

WATERSHED AGRICULTURAL COUNCIL

And that point is the visit to Wales in March 2018 by a delegation from the Watershed Agricultural Council (WAC), based in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. This trip was organised and hosted by Dŵr Cymru / Welsh Water.

It was arranged to coincide with the Watersource 18 Conference.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This northern reach of the Appalachian mountain chain supplies New York City with its drinking water, and of course NYC wishes to ensure a supply of good drinking water.

As the video below explains, legislation introduced in 1990 meant that water for NYC would need to be more rigorously treated, but one option was prohibitively expensive, even for the Big Apple.

The need to find a cheaper alternative to the $5 – 7bn outlay on a new filtration plant led to the link-up between NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Catskill farmers, foresters and others.

https://vimeo.com/148721900

Following that visit to Wales in March 2018 for the Watersource conference the next contact was in June 2019, when a party representing Dŵr Cymru visited the Catskills.

There was another US visit later that year. This time a Dŵr Cymru representative and some Beacons farmers went over. Among those who made this trip were Richard Roderick, who farms across the Usk from Gilestone, and Keri Davies of Crai.

Representing Dŵr Cymru was Nigel Elgar, the project manager for DC’s Brecon Beacons Mega Catchment scheme. So here’s another video!

(How many more transatlantic trips would there have been without Covid?)

In December 2019 Roderick and Davies were together again as guests at a meeting of Natural Resources Wales Land Management Forum Agri-Pollution Sub Group.

This was around the time Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) started blaming farmers for every bit of crud in every waterway in Wales.

An anti-farmer campaign that resulted in the notorious ‘NVZ’ legislation.

The next step was the formation, in May 2020, of the Beacons Water Group CIC (BWG). Roderick and Davies were among the six directors, as was Charles Weston, who owned Gilestone. But at the formation of BWG – some two years before Gilestone was sold to the ‘Welsh Government’ – Weston gave a Crai address.

Had he already vacated Gilestone? Had it already been bought?

A fourth Founding Father was Anthony Hugh Martineau. He farms land at Llangorse lake owned by the Raikes family of Treberfydd House.

Martineau is also an ‘advisor’ in sustainable agriculture at Black Mountains College in Talgarth. Which is interesting because back in New York State there’s Bard College, another George Soros-backed institution.

And Bard College seems to work with the Watershed Agricultural Council.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Perhaps to complete the circle, Dŵr Cymru is chummy with Soros College, Talgarth. Our water supplier is sponsoring an Ecological Futures Camp in August.

So if you want to learn how to catch and skin an illegally released beaver, and then turn the pelt into a nice pair of slippers for Auntie Ceinwen, get your name down now!

Oh, I can’t wait!

‘WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE . . . ‘

So, as I suggested in a tweet last week, the events around the Gilestone purchase could be all about Dŵr Cymru getting together with farmers to ensure a constant supply of good drinking water.

But if we were simply talking about clean drinking water, then I might not be writing this. For who could argue against?

There has to be more to it.

Let’s think back to the video we looked at earlier. The one in which we were told that the Watershed Agricultural Council came into being as a result of new and more stringent regulations regarding water quality.

That’s true, though things got off to a rocky start. There was clearly local opposition to what them folks from the big city wanted to do.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Though relations between NYC authorities and Catskill farmers seem to have improved, perhaps because (penultimate paragraph): “Farmers have been given 100% funding from WAC for infrastructure to improve water quality. WAC is trusted intermediary and all work is locally led, science based and voluntary with no regulations.”

By comparison, I get the impression that the ‘Welsh Government’ and Natural Resources Wales hope to use new regulations to bankrupt farmers and free up land.

Though I’m writing about the USA I still don’t understand why Dŵr Cymru needed to go there to learn about clean drinking water. They could have gone anywhere in Europe without the cost and environmental damage of transatlantic flights.

Some might conclude – as I have done – that certain agencies in Wales were attracted to New York City’s watershed model for reasons other than just clean water.

Either way, I’d like to know how or through whom Dŵr Cymru first made contact with those US organisations.

Whatever the answer, it would not justify spaffing £4.25m of public money.

SO WHAT ELSE COULD IT BE?

The Watershed Agricultural Council website has a page on Conservation Easements. A term and a concept with which I was unfamiliar. I found it fascinating.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

This is how Wikipedia describes these arrangements.

‘In the United States, a conservation easement (also called conservation covenantconservation restriction or conservation servitude) is a power invested in a qualified private land conservation organization (often called a “land trust“) or government (municipal, county, state or federal) to constrain, as to a specified land area, the exercise of rights otherwise held by a landowner so as to achieve certain conservation purposes.’

The Environment Act 2021 that comes into effect in England on September 30 allows for Conservation Covenants. Read about it here. Note the references to “carbon offsetting” and “carbon insetting”.

I’m not aware of similar Welsh legislation, but the ‘Welsh Government’ usually follows London’s lead. Often with ‘variations to accommodate local circumstances’.

Let’s go back to the Watersource 18 conference in March 2018. Also attending were New York City Department of Environment’s Water Supply Bureau and, giving the keynote speech, the Catskill Watershed Corporation (CWC).

These bodies remind us that Conservation Easements / Covenants are not the only way for land to be used or acquired for ensuring water quality and other purposes.

The website for the Catskills Watershed Corporation tells us:

‘The CWC was officially born January 17, 1997 with the signing of the landmark New York City Watershed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between City, State, Federal and environmental entities and Watershed municipalities. The MOA and associated Filtration Avoidance Determination (FAD), allowed the City to avoid building an expensive facility to filter its Catskill-Delaware Water Supply as long as it proved it could keep this surface supply clean through land acquisition, regulations and city-funded, locally-administered environmental protection programs.’

“Land acquisition . . . environmental protection programs”.

Then, this NYC Department of Environmental Protection document says something very similar (paragraph 5):

‘In the late 1990s, DEP began a Land Acquisition Program to protect water quality in its reservoirs by preserving key parcels of land in the watershed. Since then, DEP has acquired more than 100,000 acres of land in the Catskills, including many tracts that were historically used for agriculture or rented by neighboring farmers.’

“Land Acquisition Program . . . tracts that were historically used for agriculture”.

I guess whether Conservation Easements / Covenants benefit farmers depends on who’s wielding the power.

Statements made and attitudes displayed in recent years by representatives of the ‘Welsh Government’ towards the farming community and the countryside in general make me pessimistic.

BEACONS WATER GROUP

I’m intrigued by the rather mysterious Beacons Water Group CIC. One thing I find odd is that – even allowing for Covid – a Community Interest Company has gained no new members in over two years of its existence.

Is it a closed shop?

Come to that, which ‘community’ does it represent? And in which way? When I checked the BWG entry on the Companies House website, and in particular the Certificate of Incorporation, there, under ‘Objects’, I found what you see below.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

It struck me as being rather vague. With no mention of water despite ‘Water’ appearing in the company name. And why ‘visitors’ (before ‘residents’) – is it a tourism group?

There are six directors of the Beacons Water Group.

Two were taken on a trip to the USA by Dŵr Cymru, and ‘debriefed’ on their return by Natural Resources Wales. A third had his farm bought by the ‘Welsh Government’ for a grossly inflated price. A fourth farms land owned by a local squire and is connected to a Soros-backed institution.

The other two directors I haven’t really checked on yet.

It stinks! (And I’m not talking agricultural pollution of watercourses!)

CONCLUSION

We have been lied to about the purchase of Gilestone farm. Especially the reason given for buying it. The Green Man festival is peripheral to these machinations, if it’s involved at all.

Gilestone being bought for an insane amount of money cannot be divorced from the owner, Charles Weston, belonging to the in-crowd Beacons Water Group.

Is Gilestone the first of many purchases of farms close to a watercourse? Though how many farms in Wales are not close to a watercourse!

There may be partnership in the USA between farmers and officialdom but that won’t happen in Wales, where too many civil servants and politicians regard George Monbiot as the ultimate authority on Welsh farming.

What you’ve read here is about water only in so far as water quality might in future be used to appropriate farmland. This explains the attraction of the Catskills model to certain agencies in Wales.

As I’ve suggested, it was no coincidence that the absurd ‘NVZ’ legislation, pretending a highly localised issue is a nationwide crisis, was dreamed up at the very time others were to-ing and fro-ing across the Atlantic.

Because the NVZ regulations are also about land, rather than water.

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2022


President Donald J Trump, a statement

It’s no secret that I supported the election of Donald J Trump in 2016.

That was for a number of reasons; not least because I identified with the people who supported Trump, the forgotten Americans; and because the thought of Hillary Clinton in the White House, spewing forth her well-practised brand of venomous liberal hypocrisy, filled me with revulsion.

Even so, I was never blind to Trump’s failings. For not even his most fawning acolyte would describe him as an intellectual, or a man of great moral integrity. But I put these reservations aside in the interests of the greater good, which for me meant reversing the trends of recent decades that are nothing but – to adapt Clausewitz – communism by other means, in their attempts to undermine the very fabric of the West.

Click to enlarge

Even in 2016 I wished that the candidate to have emerged from the Republican hustings and primaries had been a more worthy and inspiring beneficiary of the zeitgeist, and less liable to hinder the West’s return to sanity. But we were delivered Trump, and I accepted it, kept my mouth shut. Since then, on the many occasions when I’ve thought he was wrong, I still stayed silent.

This silence has become increasingly difficult to maintain for a number of reasons. One being that in the age of the internet and social media a blowhard and a buffoon has fewer places to hide. Especially when he chooses to issue pronunciamentos via Twitter.

I would never have believed that a tweet could convey such bombast, such sheer fucking stupidity, with such frightening clarity.

You have to remind yourself that this is not some acne-plagued youth who’s a bit pissed off about something – This is the president of the USA!’

Now things have come to a head.

Trump’s decision to give the green light to an Islamist dictatorship to attack the West’s most reliable ally in the Middle East crosses a line. I can no longer bite my tongue. God knows the Kurds have suffered long enough at the hands of their many enemies, and they have been betrayed by the West more than once. By France and Britain after the Great War and more recently by one or more of Trump’s predecessors.

Click to enlarge

And now by Donald J Trump 45th president of the United States of America himself.

What Trump fails to understand is that the influence of the USA and the West is not solely reliant on economic power and military might, there must also be a moral dimension. It means doing the right thing, and standing by your friends and allies is doing the right thing.

Even when a people or a country are not necessarily our friends we should still not be blind to their plight. Trade deals with China should never mean ignoring the ethnocide being practised against Tibetans and Uighurs. And in seeking arms sales to and oil exports from Gulf states we must not ignore humanitarian considerations within those states and the wider region.

But if US foreign policy remains determined by Wall Street and whether dictators and mass murderers are our bastards then we are in trouble.

The final straw for me came when Trump defended his decision to throw the Kurds to the Turkish wolves by arguing that the Kurds weren’t on the beaches of Normandy in June 1944! It was then that I decided I can no longer stay silent.

Click to enlarge

Only a complete idiot could have made such a remark. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll rebuke the Kurds for not riding to Custer’s rescue at the Little Big Horn.

The Kurds are not simply fighting for themselves, they are defending Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, plus of course the Yazidi population that ISIS tried to destroy by butchery and enslavement. Which brings us to the ISIS fighters that the Kurds defeated and now hold, with their families, in a number of camps.

Turkey’s attitude to ISIS has always been ambivalent. Many thousands of foreign fighters from Europe and elsewhere were allowed to cross Turkey unhindered to join ISIS. If Turkey’s invasion proves responsible for bringing ISIS back to life then that really would be some legacy for Donald J Trump.

Trump is now an embarrassment for the USA and the West, and it’s time we were rid of him. But it must not be done by impeachment, which would be a victory for the wrong side. Trump must be removed, or his power curtailed, by his own side in order to salvage something from his disastrous presidency.

I still stand with those who elected Trump in 2016, the forgotten Americans. I am still committed to the struggle against the enemies of the West, both internal and external. And I look forward to more success in the future, but that success can now only be realised without Donald J Trump.

♦ end ♦

 

Wilmslow-sur-Mer

INTRODUCTION

I remember, back in the 1960s, when I was a wild young thing, visiting Owain Williams (of Tryweryn fame) on his farm, Gwynus, and then heading down for a drink at the local hostelry, the Plas Pistyll Hotel. I remember it well because ‘G–‘ and I picked up a couple of girls from Birmingham and took them up the mountain to enjoy the view. (Who says we don’t welcome tourists?)

Ah! happy days.

Plas Pistyll, click to enlarge

The old pile, with its uninterrupted views of the sea, fell on hard times and was eventually abandoned to the elements. But even if it was no longer viable as a hotel, the location alone dictated that somebody would some day come along with a plan for the site.

And so it was. . . .

THE PLANNING APPLICATIONS

Let me start by explaining that I have drawn together all the planning references I can find relating to both Plas Pistyll and neighbouring Pistyll farm and caravan site, I’ve done this because as early as 2008 they had become one and the same project.

Here’s the link to the pdf version. Click on the planning reference number in the left-hand column to be taken to the Gwynedd planning site.

Below you’ll see a montage created for Natural Retreats by the Ark Company Landscape Architects of Middlesex, and although things have moved on the image gives the layout of the site.

click to enlarge

The obvious place to start is with the three earliest applications, which tell us that both the farm and the Plas are owned by Sustainable Leisure, a company I couldn’t find on the Companies House website.

Even so, I know that the properties were owned by a Bill Gleave of Greater Manchester. I know because by August 2009 he had hit the rocks owing local businesses money. You’ll note that in the Daily Post report I’ve just linked to the Pistyll site is called ‘Nature’s Point’ (A name I’m sure I recall from the Mabinogion.)

This catastrophe was confirmed when the Bolton News reported that Gleave company BGH had gone tits up, with Sustainable Leisure following.

It all went quiet for almost three years until, in August 2011, there was an application from new player Natural Retreats to demolish Plas Pistyll and replace it with 20 self-catering holiday units. These to be complemented with “16 self catering holiday units in lieu of the existing static caravan site” at the farm.

Plas Pistyll had been bought in April 2010 for £85,000 by Natural Land 3 Ltd, though a loan was taken out towards the end of 2014 with HSBC. (There will be more on the array of linked companies later.)

To begin with, I had the same problem with Natural Retreats as I had with Sustainable Leisure – I couldn’t find it on the Companies House website. But I found a Natural Retreats website and eventually unearthed Natural Retreats UK Ltd, which changed its name to The UK Great Travel Company Ltd on 25 October 2017.

Permission was given in August 2012 to demolish Plas Pistyll with the condition that the same individual or family could not live in the new holiday units for more than three months in a year. Natural Retreats appealed against this decision and the appeal was allowed permitting unrestricted holiday use for the whole site.

I understand that the last time the planning committee met was to discuss C11/0661/43/LL, thereafter everything was delegated to planning officers. Some very important decisions were made that many feel should have been referred back to the committee, not least the decision to allow unrestricted holiday use.

click to enlarge

Having got the big prize Natural Retreats – usually operating now as Natural Land & Sea – chipped away over the next few years at more of the planning conditions imposed by Gwynedd’s planning committee, to the point where few remained.

For Gwynedd’s planning department seemed to bend over backwards to oblige: “. . . deletion of Conditions 8, 9, 10 (Code for Sustainable Homes) . . . vary the materials proposed for the external wall of the units on the farm site . . . Discharge conditions 20 (slate), 22 (stone) and 24 (external finishes) . . .  Discharge condition 2 (agree stone) on planning permission . . . “

Instead of stone and slate cottages in keeping with vernacular styles (including Pistyll farm), using local materials and labour, what are being thrown up now on the Plas Pistyll site are prefabricated units brought in from God knows where – Estonia being one suggestion – with no local benefits whatsoever.

And again, predictably, searching the Companies House website turned up nothing for Natural Land & Sea. Either there is no such company, or it’s registered outside the UK, or it’s the trading name of another entity (in which case we should know the name of that entity). But Cyngor Gwynedd and its planners don’t seem to know or care who they’re dealing with.

It should be standard practice for any elected or public body dealing with a commercial entity to insist on that entity identifying itself with a Companies House, Charity Commission, FSA, etc number or some other form of identification, or else explain why it cannot meet this requirement.

Relevant digression: I’ve been helping a neighbour who’s lived in the village all his life renew his blue parking badge, but he still had to provide his birth certificate and other proof of identity. If he’d rocked up claiming to represent Intergalactic Con Men Inc, and wanting to build 5,000 holiday apartments in tower blocks around Llyn Tegid I suppose Cyngor Gwynedd would have rolled out the red carpet, like they’ve done for Paul Williams, Natural Retreats, and God knows how many others.

I’ve told you that Natural Retreats UK Ltd renamed itself The UK Great Travel Company Ltd on 25 October 2017. On that very same day a company was born named NRML Technology Ltd. The sole director was soon joined by another gentleman from Bobby Lee’s home state of Virginia and in June the company name was changed to Natural Retreats UK Ltd.

Why would Natural Retreats UK Ltd be resurrected under American ownership? We shall consider this in just a minute.

THE APPLICANT

Before that, let’s take a closer look at who’s behind this disaster at Pistyll, on the very site where a young Jac downed pints and chatted up young ladies. (Though I use the most generous application of that epithet.) As we’ve seen, there can easily be confusion about the name of the company involved. Hardly surprising when you read on.

For at the same address in Wilmslow, in Cheshire’s Golden Triangle, where footballers, soap stars and successful criminals from Manchester and Merseyside choose to live, we also find: NR Partners No. 2 Limited Partnership (Natural Retreats Limited Partnership until 20 June), NR Investors LPNatural Retreats Pension LLP, Project Natural Retreats Ltd, Natural Assets Investments Ltd, Natural Land 1 LLP, Natural Land 3 Ltd, Natural Land 3 Management Ltd, NL 3 Cottages Management Ltd,

That’s not all. There are yet other companies at the same address that do not carry the ‘Natural’ tag but are run by the same people. These are: Dol Park Ltd (Dissolved 31.07.2018), JOG 3 LLP, JOG Highlands LLP, John o’ Groats Highlands Ltd, K2 Equity Partners LLP, Mini Gems Ltd (Dissolved 31.07.2018), N A Lews Castle Ltd (Formerly Snowdonia Land Ltd, ), North York Moors Ltd, Pentire Fistral Beach Ltd (Dissolved 31.07.2018), Worldwide Private Residences LP.

There may be other companies for all I know but the people involved with almost all of those I’ve listed are: Matt Spence, Anthony Wild and Ewan Kearney.

click to enlarge

The founder and driving force is Matt Spence, who was born on a Yorkshire sheep farm where – he tells us – it was a struggle to survive, so he and his brothers looked for alternative ways to make money. Spence hit on the idea of high quality accommodation in national parks and other areas of great natural beauty.

A noble ambition that he’s partly met in finding the right locations. But in reality Spence’s business is raising money in the form of investments – the minimum seems to have been £50,000 to join NR Investors LP (check out the document for 16.01.2008) – and whether all the money raised goes on lodges and chalets is a moot point, for he and his associates have their fingers in so many pies.

But whatever the company or partnership the bottom line remains making as much money as possible. And this often seems to mean cutting corners, for I’ve heard from a number of quarters that the ‘Natural’ empire is not always a good neighbour, or employer. Here are reports from the Cairngorms, and Yorkshire.

There are even suggestions that the empire may not be in the best of financial health. But with so many interlinked commercial and financial entities constantly changing addresses and names it’s not easy for anyone to keep track.

I earlier alluded to an intervention from the Commonwealth of Virginia, so maybe it’s time to expand on what I’m sure you found to be a tantalising reference.

Spence is something of an evangelist and so we should not be surprised to learn that he spread the ‘Natural’ gospel to the USA, where they have a hell of a lot more open spaces than us. This bore fruit in Natural Retreats USA. And yet . . .

Those who have raised Natural Retreats UK Ltd from the dead appear to have no connection with Natural Retreats USA. And yet, under its original name of NRML Technology Ltd the company was formed by a Christopher Holden who gave his correspondence address as, ‘Natural Retreats, 675 Peter Jefferson Parkway, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, 22911’.

Holden works with venture capitalists and investors, Court Square Ventures of Charlottesville, which has no obvious connection with Natural Retreats USA, it’s certainly not listed among CSV’s clients. He was later joined as a director by Douglas Burns. On the CSV website Holden is described as a ‘General Partner’, whereas Burns is ‘Principal & CFO’.

click to enlarge

Unless they plucked the Natural Retreats UK Ltd name out of thin air, and found Manchester by sticking a pin in a map, there has to be a connection between Court Square Ventures and Matt Spence and his associates.

But it still doesn’t make sense.

Because if we read the CSV website, and the biographies of the partners, then we see that their backgrounds are in media, technology, communications and the like – not a sasquatch-terrorised log cabin to be seen!

And yet, Court Square Ventures is an investment company, so it’s reasonable to suggest that the boys from Charlottesville come bearing greenbacks, which inclines me towards three options:

  1. They have come to get a slice of the action, at Pistyll and elsewhere, perhaps by investing in one or more of Spence’s many financial vehicles.
  2. They have come to help Spence out of a financial hole.
  3. They have come to take over.

And if you think about, it could be a bit of all three; or maybe options 1 and 2 culminating in option 3.

In the hope of clarifying the situation I e-mailed Natural Retreats USA on Friday with, “There are companies of the same name operating in the UK, in Wales, Scotland and England. I see that Christopher Holden is a director of Natural Retreats UK Ltd. What exactly is the connection or relationship between the US and UK companies?”

The reply said, “Thank you for your inquiry into Natural Retreats. I would be happy to offer some more information as to how the different companies are related. You may also view our website for further clarification: https://www.naturalretreats.com/about

Natural Retreats was originally founded in the UK by Matthew Spence, and started with a few luxury lodges in the Yorkshire Dales. Over time, Natural Retreats grew to include destinations in the Eastern and Western United States as well. At this time, the US and UK now operate separately; they only share the name of Natural Retreats. The US main office is located in Charlottesville, VA and the Western Support Office is located in Park City, UT. 

If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out. Thank you, again, for your inquiry; we hope you will stay with us at one of our luxury retreats in the near future!”

To which I responded with, “I am grateful for your speedy response.
 
As I mentioned in my original query, I was a little confused seeing Christopher Holden of Charlottesville, Virginia listed as a director of Natural Retreats UK Ltd (Co No 11031026). A company formed in October 2017.
 
This would appear to be a UK presence for the US operation, or is there some other interpretation?”

At this point the line went dead!

So we are no nearer to knowing why venture capitalists from Virginia with no obvious expertise in tourism have set up in Manchester using a company name previously used by those building at Plas Pistyll. But it’s surely no coincidence that Rural Retreats USA’s eastern office is in Charlottesville. Which throws up other questions.

I’ll ask again, does Cyngor Gwynedd and its planners really know who they’re dealing with? Not just because of the find-me-if-you-can company names but also because Spence specialises in getting others to invest in his plans, and even though I’m sure he scrupulously screens each and every investor, the fact remains that the money to develop Plas Pistyll could be coming from anywhere.

Court Square Ventures is another company that invests money for third parties.

And does Cyngor Gwynedd know that Project Natural Retreats Ltd owns Tŷ Mawr at Abergeirw, and not just the house, but also land around it. These title references apply: WA634099, WA894641, WA930505. One to watch I would suggest!

TIME TO DEFEND OURSELVES

The properties at Pistyll are now being advertised on Rightmove and other sites. So let’s consider what we’re dealing with, and its implications.

click to enlarge

For a start, I note that these properties are being sold leasehold. Yet England’s management team down in Cardiff docks – those clowns that hope to be mistaken for a ‘Welsh Government’ – has turned against leasehold, except, apparently, when it’s used by RSLs or, more secretively, by unregistered private subsidiaries of publicly-funded RSLs. And of course by the likes of the ‘Natural’ empire.

Then again, just imagine Matt Spence and his gang turning up and saying, ‘Oi, Taff, we want to build a new holiday village overlooking the sea. We ain’t gonna use local materials, suppliers or labour. Then we are gonna give it some idiotic English name and there’s fuck all you can do about it’.

There would have been an outcry, even Plaid Cymru might have been roused to mumble something.

But that is exactly what has been achieved incrementally!

This development at Pistyll is only a few miles from Plas Glynllifon where dwells our old friend Paul Williams of Weep for Wales fame. Yet Plas Pistyll and Plas Glynllifon represent for the ‘Welsh’ Government ‘high end’ tourism, which must be unquestioningly encouraged.

For it is all set out in TAN 13: Tourism (1997) . . . which observant readers will have noted was two years before the Assembly first sat. That’s really thinking ahead!

Yet from what I can see, ‘high end’ tourism only attracts the smarter shysters and the outright crooks. Though if we are to attract high end tourism then what is being done to phase out the barrel-scraping tourism represented by mile after mile of ugly coastal caravan parks that can only deter the high rollers?

Nothing.

Because we are expected to believe that in a tiny country like Wales we can have all kinds of tourism and unlimited numbers of tourists without causing catastrophic cultural and environmental damage.

This is because it’s what England wants, due to the fact that a) money spent in Wales will make its way back to England, and b) tourism and the population influx it encourages makes Wales less of a ‘worry’.

As for the aforementioned clowns down Geiger Bay, well they’ll always do what London tells them, and some of them are even stupid enough to believe that a healthy economy can be based on tourism. Not forgetting that many in the Labour Party would be happy to see the death of Welsh identity.

‘As long as we got a rugby team, innit!’

♦ end ♦

 

Plaid Cymru and Escapist Politics

THE UNTUTORED MOB

I’ve never met Ifan Morgan Jones but he do seem a tidy boy, what with his blog, and his books, and now he’s branched out with Nation.Cymru.

I withheld judgement on this new venture because with so many different contributors it was difficult to get a handle on where it stood on things close to my heart, such as the Swans, or the price of laverbread. Another issue was that my comments – or certainly those submitted as Jac o’ the North – disappeared into the ether. I accepted the explanation that this was due to some glitch rather than to censorship . . . but even so, a suspicious old bastard like me will still mutter to himself when in his cups.

Over time I have attuned myself better to the eclectic nature of Nation.Cymru accepting that I won’t agree with everything I read there; an example being the recent article defending Cyngor Gwynedd’s surrender to the Planning Inspectorate. But then, Nation.Cymru is there to give a platform to divergent views and it balanced Dyfrig Jones’ lamentable piece with this counter-argument by Huw Williams.

As I say, I was already warming to Nation.Cymru and then I read Why the Welsh national movement needs Brexit voters by the man himself, Ifan Morgan Jones. Quite simply, this is one of the best political analyses I have read for a long, long time. And nothing sums up what’s wrong with the ‘national movement’, and Plaid Cymru in particular, better than this sentence.

click to enlarge

But recent experiences of mine suggest that the problems with ‘the national movement’ may go beyond a disconnect between it and the greater part of the Welsh nation. For I see a split within the movement itself.

Or maybe those I’m going to deal with now are examples of what Ifan meant when he wrote, “Ironically, the people who currently make up the Welsh national movement are also the group that’s probably one of the least likely to vote for Welsh independence.” He continued . . .

click to enlarge

I suppose it could be extrapolated that the middle class national movement, with so many of its members dependent directly or indirectly on the UK state, has a vested interest in not engaging with the untutored mob to create an effective national movement. Self-interest with a dash of snobbery.

Though I first suspected this back in the 1960s. Those I associated with most closely wanted independence and nothing less; independence for the good of Wales and all her people. Yet I soon grasped that there were others hanging around, some egging us on, and using the unrest to press for personal advancement.

The ‘language movement’ seemed to contain more than its fair share of those whose antipathy to England and all her works could be vanished away by a cushy number at the BBC or a quango. Little different to socialists accepting peerages and arguing that henceforth they would be working against the system from within. Right on, comrade!

Yes, I’ve known a lot of hypocrites in my time. All prepared to do their bit for Wales . . . as long they didn’t lose out. And yet the ultimate test of an individual’s principles is that he or she is prepared to suffer for them, otherwise they’re just vacuous dinner party spoutings.

As a student of history, one thing I’ve learnt is that it is invariably the case that empires are brought down, governments are overthrown, and new countries brought into existence by those who have little or nothing to lose, not by those who’d like to tinker with a system to their own advantage.

DON’T WELSH LIVES MATTER?

Every so often I have a little run-in on Twitter or some other medium with those of a younger generation and a more leftward political orientation. It amuses me until my opponents become irrational – to the point where I can visualise the spittle on the keyboard or phone – and then I just block them.

This week I’ve enjoyed a couple of exchanges that I think are worth sharing with you. On the one hand, they’re illuminating of themselves, but equally, I believe they link with what Ifan Morgan Jones wrote.

First, let me introduce @PollyLizManning. I’m not entirely sure how our little contretemps started, I think she joined an exchange I was having with someone else. Anyway, it centred on my use of the term ‘wimmin’, which I’d been told was a feminist word used to avoid the ‘men’ element in women.

But that’s not really important, what might interest you is how she framed her response to me after I’d said that I reject political correctness. Here it is.

“White bloke”! Yes, OK, I’m white, I confess; but I blame my parents, and their parents, and their parents’ parents . . . Joking aside, what possible relevance is the colour of my skin? Is she so involved with the politics of race that she subscribes to the view that all white people are racists?

Or is she trying to sound black, maybe identify with black people in the patronising way the Left always has done? Well, maybe she is, because this is the tweet proudly pinned to the top of her Twitter timeline.

“Croeso i Refugees” the placard reads. But Wales has no power to admit refugees or refuse admittance. And as for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ poster she’s holding, I can only assume that this is protesting about all the black folks being shot down by redneck sheriffs in Powys.

What I’m asking is – what the hell has this got to do with Wales? And the reason I’m asking is because Polly Liz Manning is the Women’s Officer for Plaid Ifanc. This is the future of Plaid Cymru.

On the face of it, standing up to racism would be commendable . . . if this was Mississippi in the 1960s. But when you package it up with other issues, such as immigration and Donald Trump, and then argue that anyone who isn’t in favour of unrestricted immigration or impeaching Trump must be a racist, you are no different to the fascists in using the combination of corrupted arguments and vilification.

Below you’ll see a photograph from the ITV website of the march that Polly Liz Manning attended. I think it makes my point. (I think we can see Ms Manning behind the police officer.)

Though if racism is such a concern why don’t Polly and her comrades confront white flight into Wales? The answer to that is simple: to deal with white flight would mean discussing English colonisation, which is a taboo subject because to discuss it will a) alienate Plaid’s English allies in the fight against ‘international fascism’ and b) bring down the wrath of the English redtops.

Far safer to ignore Wales and ‘fight’ faraway issues.

Another with whom I exchanged words was @Wales4Europe. I don’t know who this is, but whoever it is he or she is another fighting against Brexit, supposedly on behalf of Wales.

I’d seen a tweet somewhere quoting Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, so I re-tweeted it and encouraged the curious response below. Which raises quite a few questions.

For a start, what was the thinking behind giving my name? Was it an attempt to expose me? Was the writer trying to intimidate me – ‘We know who you are, pal’? Or was it just showing off? Whatever the answer, my name is no secret, so nothing was achieved except making the writer look a little weird.

As for Voice of Europe, I’ve no idea who or what this is. As I say in my reply, I was showing support for Viktor Orbán. What is a national leader supposed to do but protect his or her people? Though of course I wouldn’t expect that to be understood by Leftist members of the ‘national movement’.

I found the reference to the Arrow Cross, a fascist organisation of the 1930s and ’40s, intriguing. For remembering the Arrow Cross but ignoring the Muslim invasions and occupations that colour Hungarian attitudes to Islam is another example of the Alt-Left’s selective interpretations of history to serve its own political agenda.

And it goes without saying that the heroic national uprising against the Soviet Union in 1956 will never be mentioned by Welsh Leftists, too many of whom still have a lingering affection for the old USSR.

Onwards and upwards.

“FAR RIGHT” IN BARCELONA

Leanne Wood, leader of Plaid Cymru, made a monumentally stupid and insensitive remark following the recent atrocities in Catalunya committed by Muslim extremists. I’m sure most of you are aware of it, but in case anyone missed it, here it is.

What I think she was trying to say was, ‘These people are no different to the extreme Right you saw last week in Charlottesville’. Certainly her defenders argued that her use of the term “far right” made sense because both are violent and intolerant of the views and beliefs of others. Which may be fair enough . . . up to a point.

That point is passed when you realise that she’s likening law-abiding political opponents to terrorists. And by suggesting that the evil people in the world all belong to the far right she lines herself and her comrades up on the side of the angels (not that such enlightened and progressive beings subscribe to primitive superstitions).

I say that because fundamental to interpreting her remark would be an understanding of who exactly Leanne Wood regards as “far right”. I suspect that for many who share her views anyone to the right of the Liberal Democrats is flirting with fascism. This is certainly close to what we’ve heard from within the party when working with the Tories has been suggested.

Though to fully understand why Leanne Wood made that stupid remark you have to put yourself in her position.

She leads a party going nowhere, a party that has gone backwards since it deposed Dafydd Wigley. Her own position as leader is under threat from more Wales-focused elements within the party, which means that she needs to rally the Left around her to stay at the helm.

But it goes beyond Plaid Cymru, because for a socialist and an ‘internationalist’ like Leanne Wood things have not gone well lately. First there was Brexit, and then came Trump, followed by the return of Theresa May. Bitter blows for the Left, represented in Wales by the likes of Polly Liz Manning, WalesForEurope, and of course Leanne Wood herself.

The lesson most observers drew from Brexit and the election of Donald Trump was that a majority of voters on both sides of the Atlantic reject the views held by Leanne Wood and her cohorts. But they can’t accept that.

click to enlarge

Seeking to rationalise or explain away these defeats has led many to persuade themselves that Brexit and Trump were victories for racists and fascists. That’s why Charlottesville was such a godsend, and played for all it was worth by the Alt-Left and its media allies – ‘We told you so! Look! there they are on the streets, carrying guns – Trump supporters.’

Which elevated a couple of hundred saddoes into the manifestation corporeal of tens of millions of Trump supporters. Which made the ‘horror and revulsion’ that filled our television screens complete theatre.

If we add the political escapism above to Ifan Morgan Jones’ ‘national movement’ then what we have is a socialist party that just happens to be located in Wales, but with little or no interest in improving the lives of the vast majority of Welsh people. Which of course disqualifies it from being a national movement.

More damningly, it confirms that these people do not aspire to be a national movement.

If those in Plaid Cymru who care about Wales more than Wood, Manning and the rest, have any sense they’ll get rid of their leader and try putting their party on a different course in order to appeal to more of our people. Personally, I’m past caring, as I believe Plaid Cymru is now beyond saving.

♦ end ♦