I know, I know . . . I said last week’s post would be the last before Christmas, but those devious buggers in Corruption Bay sneaked out a couple of things that can’t go without comment.
Well, from what I can see, Social Value is on a par with fairy dust, the Emperor’s New Clothes, and the whole Wokie belief system; in that it relies on people denying their better judgement to go along with what they know is unadulterated bollocks.
A kind of snake oil for the senses peddled by earnest, often intense, people who really should be receiving treatment. Alternatively, it’s done by charlatans.
It strikes me as a flagrant attempt to inflate the value of something, perhaps a contract awarded; or even a way of salvaging something from a failure. Putting a gloss on something. Dare I say, turd polishing?
Taken ad absurdum you could say, “Well, yes, Hitler may have been a genocidal maniac – but he liked dogs.”
The outfit pushing this with Bute Energy is ANTZ. I assume this is its Companies House registration. Another company using the ANTZ label at the same Manchester address is ANTZ Junction, in the business of social work.
There’s also ANTZ Network Ltd of Ormskirk, a management consultancy. And until 30 March 2021 there was also an ANTZ Group Ltd of Bolton. There are many other companies using the ANTZ name but I know these four are related through the shared directors.
As I say, one is dissolved, and the other three are all in the red according to the accounts filed with Companies House.
But there’s also a charity by the name of ANTZ Junction. I know it’s linked because the entry on the Charity Commission website gives the company number for ANTZ Junction.
But now it gets odd. For the Charity is doing very well financially.
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In my experience, when an entity is both a company, registered with Companies House, and a charity, registered with the Charity Commission, then the directors of the company are always the trustees of the charity. Also, the accounts filed with Companies House and the Charity Commission will be the same.
That is not the case with ANTZ Junction, and I’d like to know why.
In fact, the only director I can find serving as a trustee is (I assume) Nicola Joanne Geddes, who appears among the trustees as ‘Jo Geddes Hold’. I even found a Linkedin profile for a Joanne Geddes-Hold, but with no mention of ANTZ.
So who are the other trustees?
And why is money going into the charity but not showing in the company accounts?
ANTZ’s man on the ground, so to speak, is Kerdiff boy Paul Shackson, who has a PR company called Camarilla. And good for him, I say, because Cardiff is desperately short of PR outfits . . . and lobbyists, and nudgers, and shysters of all kinds.
She was rescued by senior civil servant Gian Marco Currado; but the best he could offer was . . . “Social Credit”. Which will mean absolutely nothing for farmers.
This takes us neatly into part two of this offering where we look at the wider threat to Welsh farming.
The Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) being ‘Welsh Government’ policy, read about it here. Yes, it’s the one about planting trees everywhere.
The document that came out a few days ago, as the title suggests, calculates the effects of the SFS. You can either go through all the tables, or you can skip to the last page, where you’ll find the Summary.
And you’ll see some worrying figures. Not least, a decline of 11% in “on-farm labour”, which means thousands of jobs lost.
It’s no secret that the ‘Welsh Government’ wants to do away with farming as much as it can. There are a number of reasons for this. Among them, the old socialist hostility towards ‘kulak’ landowners.
I suspect most are using a contemporary fad to serve the pre-existing bias. But that does not exclude the possibility that some of them are stupid enough to really believe in the Armageddon potential of cow farts.
What struck me about the new report was who the ‘Welsh Government’ had chosen to do it. The report tells us, “This work has been undertaken in accordance with the quality management system of RSK ADAS Ltd“.
One of the authors of the report, Dr Liz Lewis-Reddy, works for RSK ADAS.
So what am I driving at?
OK, let’s start with the company, RSK ADAS Ltd. Or rather, ADAS, which is an agricultural advisory service that was acquired by RSK, resulting in the new company, formed some seven years ago.
Tracing the ownership of RSK ADAS eventually gets us to Los Angeles and “global alternative investment manager” the Ares Management Corporation. You may not be surprised to learn that among the largest of Ares’ shareholders we find both BlackRock and Vanguard.
Let’s go back to Liz Lewis-Reddy, the RSK ADAS representative and leading member of the trio that produced the recent report. What’s her background? Well, to begin with, she’s Canadian.
Before joining RSK ADAS Dr Lewis-Reddy worked for the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust. At first sight I thought that was a rather startling career change, from bucolic bliss to the cut-throat world of alternative investment.
But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
We are told she: “Maintained the Trust portfolio of Rural Development Plan funding streams and oversaw the management of over 1000acres of Nature Reserve”.
That 1000+ acres was once agricultural land. Bought with funding from the ‘Welsh Government’. The reference to “funding streams” tells us Lewis-Reddy knows how to get money from politicians to buy farmland.
Remembering Ares, and reminding ourselves that carbon offsetting is now one of the most popular alternative investments, RSK ADAS recruiting Dr Liz Lewis-Reddy makes perfect sense.
And just as with the politicians, she can kid herself she’s saving the planet by getting farmers off the land . . . so it can be bought by her employer’s clients.
And it could get even worse. Because the ‘Welsh Government’ and Plaid Cymru have both bought into the climate crisis scam, and the next stage will be governments forcibly confiscating farmland and other private property.
But of course it’s got nothing to do with saving the planet. It’s about concentrating wealth and assets in the hands of those who want to own and rule the world.
Welsh farmers need to realise that you can’t negotiate with brainwashed thickos who believe farm animals are killing the planet. And the same applies to those pretending to believe it in order to grab farmland for ‘alternative investment’.
And when you see the two coming up the road, arm in arm, singing the same tune, then the only option is to dig in and fight.
This post, the last before Christmas, deals with a ‘consultation process’ that could result in changes being implemented that will prove very damaging to Welsh communities.
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PANELS, REPORTS, RECOMMENDATIONS
You may remember that some six years ago I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the ‘Welsh Government’ asking how many homelessness organisations there were in Wales. The answer I got was 48.
It may be more by now. It will certainly be more in the future if the desired changes are made to the legislation relating to homelessness.
Let’s begin in June 2019 with the ‘Welsh Government’ setting up a Homelessness Action Group “to recommend the steps needed to end homelessness in Wales“.
Let’s return to the Homelessness Action Group. Its report is heavy on recommendations but nowhere could I find the names of those who sit on the group. Nor was it signed off by the chair or secretary.
I eventually found the names of the group members on the website of an organisation called Crisis, the driving force behind the whole exercise. An English outfit that’s done what so many do by renting a cupboard in Cardiff and pretending to be Welsh.
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When I saw the name Jon Sparkes my soul soared, for I hoped it might be a misspelling, and a reference to that great observer of Welsh life who gave us Hugh Pugh, Shadwell, Old Mr Fffffet al; but no, for it was definitely Jon, not John.
Jon Sparkes OBE has moved on from Crisis to become CEO of UNICEF UK.
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Before considering the outcomes of these deliberations and their possible consequences, I want to mention a third assemblage of the wise and the caring. This is the Expert Review Panel, or Legal Reform Panel, announced by Julie James 30 March 2022.
The Expert Review Panel reported to James, Minister for Climate Change, in October. Here’s the report. It was delivered to Chez James because she was the Minister for Housing and Local Government who set up the original Homelessness Action Group back in 2019.
Apart from three local authority representatives I don’t see much Welsh representation. It’s the usual melange of third sector chisellers and memsahibs living high on the hog of public funding. (Though don’t get me wrong! – I’m sure they’re all vegans.)
Cardiff University and the Labour party (virtually one and the same nowadays) are also in the mix.
And again, Crisis seems to be playing the leading role in this farce.
CHC is controlled by the ‘Welsh Government’. Which means that someone who moved from Bristol last year, a woman who knows sod all about Wales, has landed a cushy, well-paid (and almost certainly unnecessary) job, in Corruption Bay.
That’s modern Wales in a nutshell.
On page 88 of the report we read that some on the panel – you can guess who! – wanted to create a new post of Housing / Homelessness Regulator.
I often lie awake at night wondering how we manage without a Housing / Homelessness Regulator, on £100,000 a year. Of course we’d need a Deputy Regulator. And perhaps an Assistant Regulator.
With a staff of 50 . . . until the new department finds its feet and expands.
As you flick through it you’ll see that it’s laid out in chapters, each one concluding with ‘Consultation questions’.
A number of highlighted ‘proposal’ sections are designed to catch the eye. Here’s a selection, together with my comments:
The first will put you in the mood for the unhinged ramblings that follow. And it would be impossible to surpass this example of what German academics call Bollockssprecht.
“ . . . the local housing authority should be obliged to ask an applicant from the Gypsy, Roma and Travelling Community whether or not they are culturally averse to bricks and mortar“.
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If they are not “culturally averse“, and they take a Welsh home, does that mean they no longer qualify as members of the, “Gypsy, Roma and Travelling Community” – and can they expect to be evicted?
Come to that, why would anyone from those communities be applying for a home of the hated “bricks and mortar” variety in the first place?
Who could write that bollocks and keep a straight face? But if it was written with a straight face then the poor soul who wrote it needs help.
I’m getting a headache just thinking about it, so let’s move on.
Next up, ‘Intentionality’. A clumsy-looking word that refers to persons making themselves deliberately homeless.
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In practice, changes here could result in someone giving up a secure tenancy in Yorkshire – thereby making themselves intentionally homeless – and then being able to demand housing in Pembrokeshire.
It is a very, very bad idea.
One of the current safeguards against abuse of the system is the ‘local connection’ rule, which says you must have lived in an area for at least six months to qualify for social housing. The qualification period is far too short, but it’s something.
Yet some regard it as asking too much.
This passage from the consultation document exposes the split between third sector chisellers and local authorities. The second paragraph makes clear that the push to drop the local connection rule entirely came from the English cupboard-dwellers in Crisis.
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An existing way of getting around the local qualification rule has been to claim a family connection with the area. I’ve seen this operate.
Someone with no local connection gets housed after claiming some exceptional status, and before you know it, the extended family has moved to the area through being able to claim a ‘familial connection’.
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This proposal seems to suggest keeping the already inadequate ‘familial ties’ rule, but watering it down to where it would be meaningless.
The paragraphs above suggest removing the local connection rule altogether; but something else I’ve lifted, and you can see below, suggests achieving the same objective by a series of changes rather than in one fell swoop.
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I would guess that the reference to “Prison leavers” refers to the massive new prison in Wrecsam, HMP Berwyn, where most of the prisoners are from England. Think how that might work out.
There are clearly three main ‘targets’ where change is sought by the chisellers heretofore mentioned.
Local connection and intentionality we’ve looked at, which leaves access to public funds. The situation at present is that persons subject to immigration control cannot claim public funds unless an exception applies.
A footnote to page 93 reads: “The Welsh Government have (sic) recently launched a supplementary Migrant Victim of Abuse Support Fund, which will be piloted for a year by BAWSO. We intend to use the learning from this pilot, together with the evaluation of the Home Office’s Support for Migrant Victims Scheme to shape the design of longer-term support to meet the needs of migrant victims in Wales.”
BAWSO is an organisation catering for women of colour. It has received vast amounts of funding over the years – over £3m in ‘Welsh Government’ grants and contracts in the twelve months ending 31.03.2022 – and is now a major property owner. Its founder, Mutale Merrill, also has a nice property portfolio of her own.
Though the original, Homelessness Action Group, set up in 2019, in its report recommended, in the section headed ‘Ending Migrant Homelessness’ (page 26), “Providing guidance to local authorities, clearly setting out the duties owed to migrant households with no recourse to public funds.”
I suspect that the ‘Welsh Government’ and its third sector cronies are trying to circumvent as much as they can the UK immigration control legislation.
Let’s be clear: Any attempts to weaken or remove the existing requirements can only mean that the intention is to commandeer Welsh housing for people with no connection to Wales. This can only be done at the expense of Welsh people hoping for a home in their own country.
What we see here is a struggle between three different interests.
First, we have NGO shysters with no commitment to Wales or the Welsh people, concerned only with groups they’ve decided are ‘marginalised’, assorted ishoos, and themselves. These charlatans would flood Wales with ‘homeless’ and others from God knows where in order to increase their funding and their political clout.
Next, we have Welsh local authorities who are in the front line and can see the dangers from further relaxing regulations that are already too lax.
Finally, we have the ‘Welsh Government’, which invariably succumbs to Left-Woke pressure, but doesn’t want to risk alienating local councils too much, virtually all of which are run by Labour or its partner Plaid Cymru.
Though another factor in play with the ‘Welsh Government’ is virtue signalling on the world stage. For Corruption Bay loves to crow about measures it hopes might win plaudits from elsewhere.
We’ve already seen it with One Planet Developments, which has even been noticed by the World Economic Forum.
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Then there was the Well-being of Future Generation Act, and the boast that, “The Act is unique to Wales attracting interest from countries across the world“.
But no other country has copied Wales’ lead. Revealing, that!
This is no way to run a country; standing on a stage, ignoring your own people to shout over their heads in the hope of attracting the attention of others who really don’t give a fuck what you get up to.
There’s something sad about it. Like a neglected or insecure child desperately seeking the attention and the approval of the adults in the room.
To satisfy these pathetic ambitions the ‘Welsh Government’ might implement the dangerous suggestions of organisations flooding into Wales because they view our country as more ‘receptive’ to their ideas, more ‘manageable’ than England.
I believe a majority of the Welsh public has run out of patience with the virtue-signalling clowns in Corruption Bay.
And increasingly, the politicians there realise it. This explains Drakeford’s departure. Either he realised his time was up, or his colleagues knew he had to go for them to have any chance of saving themselves.
Let’s keep up the pressure.
Make them realise we’ve had enough of grifters living off the Welsh public purse. Enough of perverts being allowed into schools. Enough of the ‘Saving the planet’ bullshit that encourages the exploitation of Wales. Enough of pandering to imaginary or contrived ‘minorities’. Enough of the war on farmers. Enough of the subservience to the Globalists’ anti-human agenda.
They can make a start by rejecting any and all suggestions to weaken the already inadequate rules on who qualifies for housing and other assistance in Wales.
Do that by telling Crisis where they can stick their agenda. And instead, remember our people, who are not “culturally averse to bricks and mortar“.
For those of you wondering where Llanbedr is, it’s a village in Eryri, just to the south of Harlech. There is a small airfield between the village and the coast.
Llanbedr has made the news in recent years due to it being cursed by a 17th century bridge carrying the A496 road through the heart of the village. The so-called ‘Welsh Government’ promised the area a bypass, but reneged in November 2021.
Then, in April this year, the Transport Minister, Lee Waters, told locals the ‘Welsh Government’ would now support “sustainable transport measures“. Which seems to have been the 20mph restrictions introduced across Wales a couple of months ago.
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As I went through the previous offerings on Llanbedr I realised what a complicated story it is. So rather than deal with peripheral characters, like the alleged money-launderer of Venezuela and Miami, and various dead-ends, I shall instead focus on the main players, ownership and leasing arrangements, and recent developments.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, I shall proffer a possible explanation for what is reported to be happening at Llanbedr airfield now. And if I’m anywhere near right, then this poses questions for officialdom, especially our ‘Welsh Government’.
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AIRFIELD PURCHASE AND THE FIRST LEASE
The story so far . . .
The airfield was originally a military site, but bought for £700,000 in March 2006 by the Welsh Development Agency, and then passed to the Welsh Assembly. (Here’s the freehold title document.)
The site was leased for 125 years in July 2012 to Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP (since renamed Snowdonia Aerospace LLP) with the lessee getting loans from the Secretary of State for Defence and the Welsh Assembly Government. (The leasehold title document.)
The first named director of Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP / Snowdonia Aerospace LLP, in July 2008, was Putney Investments Ltd, registered on the Isle of Man in 1991, and also giving a desirable Gold Coast property as an address.
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A few days later Putney Investments was joined at Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP by others, including Lee John Paul. But for some reason there’s a four-month gap between the company being launched and the first directors being appointed. Very odd.
Paul had been involved with another Welsh airfield in Pembrokeshire. He joined Brawdy Business Park Ltd in September 2003 and it went belly-up in April 2013, but the writing must have been on the wall before the collapse
Brawdy Business Park collapsed with a number of outstanding debts, one with the Welsh Development Agency. Yet the last accounts filed with Companies House suggest almost four hundred thousand pounds in the kitty, so where did that go?
At the end, all the Brawdy shares (see here) were owned by Solutions For Storage Ltd (since renamed Ocean Park Investments Ltd), and this company is ultimately owned by another Lee John Paul company, Inspired By Ltd.
From a filing made with Companies House just last month we know that seventy of the Inspired By shares are owned by the Paul family, with the remaining 30 with a family called Lane, who I suppose could be related.
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As I’ve said, Putney Investments was registered in the Isle of Man. The early directors of the company seem to have been a mixture of local agents and businessmen favouring arrangements even more opaque than what Companies House offers.
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PUTNEY INVESTMENTS AND GUNMEN IN SIBERIA
Among these ‘businessmen’ is Philip Mark Croshaw, who gets a big mention on the Offshore Leaks website. Another is Simon Peter Elmont, who also favours jurisdictions with relaxed attitudes to regulation. Such as Cyprus. He too gets mentioned by Offshore Leaks.
Below you’ll see Croshaw and Elmont linked in the November 1997 IoM Annual Return for Putney Investments Ltd. The third name is Gillian Norah Caine. We’ll see her name again in a minute.
The directors listed for Putney Investments in the Annual Return of November 20, 1997. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
On this same Annual Return (full document available here), the two shares are split between Aston Corporate Trustees Ltd and Susan Christine Cubbon, both giving the same IoM address.
We shall also see Ms Cubbon’s name again in a minute. In fact, we’ll see Croshaw, Elmont, Caine and Cubbon named in US court documents.
Another company where Croshaw and Elmont would have been found together was International Securities Investments Ltd. They joined and left on the same dates. That said, they’re not Siamese twins; for both men have been separately involved with many hundreds of companies. Croshaw more than Elmont.
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Though there seems to have been a break around 1998/9. Did it have anything to do with a Siberian oilfield and Kalashnikov-wielding thugs working for a couple of oligarchs?
Or could it be Croshaw being disqualified. This certainly explains why Croshaw ceased being a director of Putney on 26 January 1999. (Though not why Elmont should also resign on that day.) Ms Cubbon was left holding the fort.
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Did Croshaw give up the excitement of wheeler-dealing in exotic locales to devote himself to good works? I think not. I believe he carried on, perhaps operating in the IoM through proxies and fronts.
Philip Mark Croshaw is clearly a bit of a lad, and all will be revealed in a tick . . . Of course, this does not reflect well on those with whom he associates. And certainly not on Putney Investments Ltd.
What I was referring to by introducing Kalashnikovs and US courts is a case brought by Canadian oil company Norex against, primarily, two Russian oligarchs named ‘Len’ Blavatnik and Victor Vekselberg. Here’s how CBC reported it in July 2001.
I introduce this fascinating episode because of the IoM reference. And although the court papers (page 2) do not mention Putney Investments, we know that those named were all involved with Putney. And one of them, Philip Croshaw, had by then been barred from holding directorships on the Isle of Man.
Under the names Croshaw, Elmont, Caine and Cubbon we read what each is accused of or is said to know. Scroll down and you’ll see that a few of the other defendants gave addresses on the tiny island of Sark. What does it mean?
Croshaw, and probably Elmont, sign up as directors of companies in order to hide the true identities of those involved. It’s reasonable to assume this is what they did with Putney Investments, so who is really behind Putney at Llanbedr?
And what happened to Putney after Croshaw and Elmont left in 1999? Well, in January 2002, the shares passed from Ms Cubbon and Aston Corporate Trustees Ltd to Garwood Ltd and Tanwood Ltd. Though Ms Cubbon was still involved, signing for Premier Secretaries Ltd. Gillian Norah Caine works or worked for the same company.
In the Annual Return of November 2008 we see that the Putney shares passed in April of that year to Michael Cole and Christine Cole, resident in Spain. But the Annual Return for 2012 tells us that the Coles are now living on Queensland’s Gold Coast, at the bonzer little property shown in the previous section.
The Coles remained the shareholders of the IoM Putney Investments until April this year, and then, after a brief interval, Putney passed to the Kean brothers at Eximia. A company set up 2 February 2021.
I believe the Coles were also involved in the ‘Sark Lark’. Fronting for others and getting paid handsomely for it.
Anyway, I’m all Manxed out. I’m going to leave it here . . .
Putney Investments on the Isle of Man was a vehicle for Philip Mark Croshaw and Simon Peter Elmont to represent others who wished to remain anonymous.
But what did those wishing to remain anonymous have to hide?
The IoM company and the ‘other’ Putney Investments, linked to Michael Cole, were the same scam registered in different jurisdictions, which is why Cole and his wife became directors of the IoM Putney.
And this indirectly connects Croshaw and Elmont (and God knows who else) with Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP / Snowdonia Aerospace Ltd.
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PUTNEY INVESTMENTS, THE SECOND LEASE, ENDGAME?
So let me don my Columbo disguise and try to sum it all up.
Putney Investments was formed on the Isle of Man in 1991. We know that two very colourful characters, Philip Mark Croshaw and Simon Peter Elmont, of the ‘Sark Lark’, were involved, and implicated in a strange affair in the howling wastes of Siberia.
Then, Putney Investments appears, using an Antipodean address, as the first director of Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP (later Snowdonia Aerospace LLP), a company that leases Llanbedr airfield from the ‘Welsh Government’. We know it’s the same company as the IoM manifestation because it uses the same IoM registration number, 54168C.
Since 1 October 2020 control over the new outfit has been exercised jointly by Putney Investment (sic) Ltd and Lee John Paul.
As we just read, the funding for the second lease came from Compass Point Estates LLP. But the ultimate owner, and therefore the lender, is Inspired By Ltd, which we also met earlier. A company in which the Paul family holds a majority of the shares.
Which means that by a convoluted mechanism Lee John Paul is lending himself money, pretending that the loan comes from an unrelated source. Now why would he do that?
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The loans made to the original company, Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP / Snowdonia Aerospace LLP have been paid off, but that company still holds the lease on the airfield until 2137.
But now there’s a sub-lease, for 30 years, to Snowdonia Aerospace Estates LLP.
Yet it’s the same people – Lee John Paul and Putney Investments Ltd – holding both leases, and controlling both companies. So what’s the point of this arrangement?
I suggest that the second lease, the sub-lease, gives Putney and Paul far more freedom to do as they wish at Llanbedr. Even to the extent of stripping the place bare and flogging off the assets. Which is what I’m told is happening.
And indeed, this paragraph in the ‘Details of Charge’ from Companies House would seem to support that theory. Putney and Paul, as lenders, could get heavy with their borrower selves – and clear the site of ‘chattels’.
It may already be happening, for I’m assured that the bowsers (fuel tanks) from Llanbedr are now at Shoreham (Brighton). The cabling for the runway lights and other facilities has been dug up and is ready for sale. With the trenches they came from now filled.
It seems Llanbedr airfield is being stripped of its transportable and saleable assets.
Which should make us ponder the legality of the sub-lease. Something I was reminded of when I saw the paragraph below in the title document.
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Which serves to remind us that the airfield is still owned by the ‘Welsh Government’ – and that’s us. So do the terms of the first lease between ‘Welsh Government’ and Llanbedr Airfield Estates LLP / Snowdonia Aerospace LLP allow for sub-leasing?
And if it’s not allowed, then what will those clever people in Cardiff do about it?
But if Corruption Bay did give permission, then why didn’t they realise that it was the same people who already leased Llanbedr airfield taking out that second lease while pretending to be somebody else?
Is anybody going to ask the awkward questions? Or are they afraid of the answers?
Yes, I know . . . I said I wasn’t putting anything out this week, but the work doesn’t start until tomorrow, and something I put out earlier on Twitter / X has grown too big to continue with on that platform.
But don’t worry, this is still a quickie.
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JANE DAVIDSON
For those new to the dystopian world of Welsh politics, Jane Davidson is a privately-educated memsahib who turned up in Wales some years ago and quickly grasped that the Labour Party is the key to pushing your agenda.
So she joined, became a Cardiff councillor then, with devolution, was handed the safe Labour seat of Pontypridd, An area she hardly knew.
Her rise was immediate. First serving as Minister for Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills. Then, from 2007 until 2011, she was Minister for Sustainability and Rural Affairs.
Davidson left the Assembly in 2011 to take up a non-job at Lampeter university wailing about the ‘climate crisis’. Again, paid for from the Welsh public purse.
In January this year Jane Davidson was appointed to lead the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. What’s that? you ask. Well, stripped of the bullshit, it’s yet another group of carefully-selected individuals who will tell the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ exactly what it wants to hear.
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This ‘advice’ will then be branded ‘impartial’, having come from ‘independent experts’, and used to justify Drakeford and his brainwashed clowns intensifying their offensive against farmers, motorists, and all others deemed – in Davos – to be obstacles to the Globalists achieving their objectives.
The group contains a number of the usual suspects, all of whom have fallen for the Club of Rome’s climate scam, and most, like Davidson, believe that we indigenes must be told what to think, and who to believe.
Invariably, them.
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‘OH, WHAT A TANGLED WEB . . . ‘
In September, someone in regular contact with me, having read that Julie James, Minister for the Environment, was to receive quarterly briefings from the Group, submitted a Freedom of Information request to the ‘Welsh Government’ asking for a copy of the briefings.
Within hours, my contact had a reply from the ‘Welsh Government’. I’m not saying that this unprecedented example of bureaucratic celerity was due to the attention my tweet was getting, but the timing is a wee bit suspicious.
The response confirmed that no record is kept of the briefings, but that there are “records of the meetings in the form of minutes“.
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The confusion is not helped by the Group’s Terms of Reference mentioning briefing the Minister for Climate Change, Julie James. (The ‘Designated Member’ is Plaid Cymru’s Siân Gwenllian.)
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Because in the minutes for the meetings of April, July, Octoberwe clearly see that the attendees are those mentioned in the Terms of Reference relating to briefings.
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What’s more, if we look at the original response from October 13 we see two dates mentioned for the verbal and unrecorded briefings, 24 April and 5 July.
Which are the same dates as the meetings – for which we have minutes!
Are there minuted meetings and unrecorded briefings held on the same day? That’s what’s being suggested with, “As was stated in past Welsh Government responses there are no written record of these briefings, however, there are records of the meetings in the form of minutes“.
Or is someone getting confused? I think I am.
Another question might be, why aren’t these minutes available on the website of the Wales Net Zer0 2035 Challenge Group? It has its own ‘Secretariat’. What does Stan Townsend do other than scoff Hobnobs with Jane Davidson and Julie James?
UPDATE 14.11.2024: Here’s a bit more info on young Stan. It seems he may be new to Wales! (I bet you’re surprised.) Here’s his Linkedin bio and here’s his blog. I’m sure that like Stan you too have wondered, ‘What is the role of a cyclist in addressing climate change?’ It certainly keeps me awake at night. Or is that heartburn?
Though I also noticed what you see below in the Terms of Reference. So maybe Jane Davidson didn’t want these minutes made public.
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And if so, then I can understand why. For they aren’t exactly evidence of much activity, other than Davidson meeting with a woman she already knew and would probably have met with anyway.
And then, the other strange thing is that the metadata for the pdf documents sent today, the minutes of the three meetings, are all dated today. If the minutes are genuinely contemporaneous with the meetings, then I would expect to see them carry the same dates as the meetings, or a date shortly afterwards.
Then again, maybe it was a copy and paste job, which I suppose would explain the metadata dates. Though if that’s the case, then why couldn’t the original minutes have been sent?
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IN CONCLUSION
There is no sensible or logical reason for the ‘Welsh Government’ to have ever set up the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group, though it gives Jane Davidson something to add to her strangely uninformative Linkedin bio.
It’s just another group of hangers-on and like-minded individuals who’ll tell Julie James exactly what she wants to hear. It’s window-dressing.
It makes me laugh how people like me are accused of being conspiracy theorists, reinforcing our paranoia by only interacted with others like us. And yet this is exactly what the ‘Welsh Government’ does, and what the groups it sets up do.
What I mean is, will Jane Davidson and her Group consult a ‘climate sceptic’? Or someone who isn’t a vegan?
But the real worry in this episode is that whatever Davidson’s gang come up with will be used by Corruption Bay to enact legislation that will make the things we need more expensive, and make our lives more difficult.
That being so, everything must be above board. There must be total transparency. No secret briefings.
Let’s start with the ‘Welsh Government’ bringing clarity to the confusion it has created through talking about both minuted meetings and unrecorded verbal briefings.
And if there have been unrecorded verbal briefings, then let’s have assurances that there will be no more of them.
The previous post got considerable attention and it also unlocked fascinating new information. And that explains this follow-up. Which I hope will result in further revelations.
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WHERE ARE WE?
In the previous post I dealt with the Bryn Cadwgan wind farm planned by Galileo Green Energy. This is a Swiss company that set up a UK operation a few years ago to cash in on the Welsh wind turbine rip-off.
Different rules in England mean that complaints from local communities must be listened to which, in practical terms, means that no onshore wind farms get built. This sees Wales and Scotland increasingly used to supply electricity to England from a source the English don’t want.
Even to the extent of electricity from wind farms off Scotland’s west coast coming by undersea cable to Bangor, then down to Swansea, where it can connect with the main transmission lines from Pembroke power station to England.
Here in Wales, every project of 10MW or above is classed as a Development of National Significance (DNS), which means locals, and their elected representatives on local councils, will always be over-ruled by politicians in Corruption Bay who’ve declared war on a people they regard as racist, climate-denying, car-driving, transphobes.
It’s succinctly explained here. The chronology is intriguing.
In addition to the Galileo proposal I also knew that Bute Energy, a Scottish firm that rents a cupboard in Cardiff to fool us into thinking it’s Welsh, had a plan for an installation they were calling Blaencothi. Though details were scarce.
But true to form, Bute has again recruited a local to proselytise on its behalf. This one is Cilycwm community councillor Jamie Pickup. We can no doubt expect Pickup to be speaking up for all three projects.
But the third project, Waun Maenllwyd Wind Hub, being pushed by Belltown Power of Bristol, was a bit of a surprise. Possibly because it had previously been known as ‘Bryn Brawd’, and I’d perhaps assumed it had fallen though because I’d heard no more of it by that name.
Anyway . . . since putting out last week’s piece I have been told that the companies behind these three projects are combining to share a route to the plateau that forms the southern end of the Cambrian Mountains of central Wales.
The proposed access route to the site for abnormal indivisible loads (such as blades, hub, nacelle and tower sections) will be from the port of origin (which is likely to be Swansea) via the M4, A48 and A40. Loads would turn off the public highway at Pumsaint and travel north for approximately 14km on a combination of existing commercial forestry tracks and new tracks to reach the wind farm location. No significant traffic flows will be associated with the operational phase of the site.
Who could argue with that? A motorway and nice wide trunk roads all the way. Problem is, the route as given is sort of incomplete. Let me explain.
As written, deliveries will turn off the A40 at Pumsaint . . . but the A40 goes nowhere near Pumsaint. Which makes what Belltown says misleading, if not dishonest. And if they could get this so wrong, what else might they have got wrong?
The truth is that after leaving Llandeilo the huge low loaders will turn onto the B4302 and head for Talyllychau (Talley). Then on to Crugybar and the Bridgend Inn (where I sank a few pints in the good old days), where they’ll join the A482 to reach Pumsaint.
Using my bestest crayons I’ve conjured up this map that might explain it better.
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For those of you unfamiliar with this road, take my word for it, it will struggle to accommodate massive low loaders carrying huge turbine blades and tower sections.
Below is a capture from Google Maps showing the B4302 just after leaving Talyllychau on its way to Crugybar. Those hedgerows will have to go. And so will many other trees and hedgerows on the 13 miles from the A40 to Pumsaint.
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Now we’re going to move on to Stage 2 of the environmental vandalism associated with these projects. The section that involves the National Trust (NT) and the ‘Welsh Government’.
With the Foresight reputation damaged locally Belltown may be fronting for Foresight. Questions need to be asked. And answers demanded.
UPDATE 10.11.2023: It was learnt last night that Belltown will be taking the A482 from Llanwrda to Pumsaint. Galileo will take the Talyllychau route suggested above. No information yet on the Bute route, but it doesn’t really matter. Because there will now be two roads suffering expensive damage.
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DON’T TRUST THE NATIONAL TRUST
Once the huge low loaders reach Pumsaint, or just outside the village, they’ll take a right turn onto National Trust property.
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This is the Dolaucothi estate, home to the famous ‘Roman’ gold mines, once owned by the Johnes family, who also owned the Hafod estate, to the north. Hafod fell into the clutches of the National Trust last year. With a 99-year lease and £700,000 gift from the ‘Welsh Government’.
In other words, the ‘Welsh Government’ paid an organisation worth billions £700,000 to take over a prime Welsh estate.
Despite the excuse given by Corruption Bay for this generosity it might have been due to the involvement of Dawn Bowden MS. As Deputy Minister for Arts and Sport the Hafod deal should have had nothing to do with her. But Tourism’ has since been added to her portfolio. Fancy that!
Response from ‘Welsh Government’ to FoI request. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
I wrote about it in this post, scroll to the section ‘Bristol Fashion’. And then in this post, in the section, ‘”Welsh Government” funds National Trust’.
It’s instructive to consider the organisation of the National Trust in Wales, and what happened at Hafod. Not least because it might provide clues as to why the NT would be a willing party to this planned environmental disaster.
It was early June last year when we learnt that the Trust was taking over the Hafod estate. Which seems to be owned by the ‘Welsh Government’ through Natural Resources Wales, and had until then been run by the Hafod Trust.
Just three months earlier, in March, Lhosa Daly of Bristol, had taken on the role of NT’s Acting Director for Wales, and was appointed to the post officially in September. I mention Bristol because that’s where she lives.
If we look at her career background we see that in the past seven or eight years Daly’s been chair of the Bristol branch of the Institute of directors, vice chair of the Bristol Law Centre, and she is still a business ambassador for the Western Gateway.
These positions would have brought her into contact with the glitterati of Bristol’s business community. Including, perhaps, the directors of Belltown Power, the company planning to desecrate our country with Waun Maenllwyd Wind Hub.
With Belltown, Bute and Galileo hoping to reach the site by traversing land owned or managed by Lhosa Daly’s National Trust and the ‘Welsh Government’.
The mystery of Dawn Bowden representing the ‘Welsh Government’ last year, despite it being beyond her responsibilities, could be accounted for by her also being from Bristol. She and Daly might have already known each other.
And if that’s too fanciful an explanation for you, then try this: Bowden should have known Lhosa Daly through her being Deputy Minister for Arts since May 2021 and Daly being an advisor to the Arts Council of Wales since April 2019.
Come to that, how did Bristol-based Daly get that gig with the Arts Council of Wales?
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FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m told deals have been done with farmers and other landowners along the route between Llandeilo and Pumsaint to cut corners, destroy hedges, and in places widen the B4302, and even perhaps the A482.
This will cost a considerable amount of money. So who’ll pay for it? Will it be the ‘developers’? The county council? The so-called ‘Welsh Government’? Or will there be a whip-round in the Dolaucothi Arms?
And then there’s the question of how the National Trust squares being a conservation body with the damage it’s helping inflict on the Welsh landscape by these wind farms. What would NT members say, if they knew?
Not just in the road ‘improvements’ I’ve just described, but also on the 14km journey to the sites after the low loaders turn off the A482. And then the on-site destruction.
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There’ll be the vast concrete bases to support these huge turbines, the access roads, the deep trenches for the cables. How many trees will be felled? How much peat bog damaged? And let’s not forget the pylons.
I ask about the trees because I’m told new populations of red squirrels and pine martens are establishing themselves. Will they adapt to climbing pylons and turbines?
I suggest that even if they stick around they’ll be so traumatised by what’s being done to their habitat they might stop breeding.
As if that wasn’t enough, someone then tells me . . .
We also have two breeding maternity colonies of soprano pipistrelle bats on my land, they will love the sonic signature of wind turbines of course.
Don’t worry – once the poor little buggers are disorientated enough the blades will finish them off pretty quickly. (If they’re turning!)
Them and the kites, and other birds. And insects by the million.
Nothing here really surprises me, because I’ve always regarded the National Trust as a very commercial organisation and, in Wales, rather colonialist. Lhosa Daly playing the memsahib is entirely in keeping.
Not only that, but there’s something of the vulture about the NT in Wales, picking up land and estates as old Welsh families die out. Or more recently, acquiring property from the ‘Welsh Government’ or Natural Resources Wales.
Porthdinllaen once belonged to the Jones-Parry (Madryn) family. Sir Love Jones-Parry MP, was very supportive of the Patagonia settlement. Which explains why a town over there is called Puerto Madryn; and is twinned with Nefyn, I believe.
Another example of this sad phenomenon is located not far from me, a place I love to visit. I’m directing you now to Llynnoedd Cregennan.
Llynnoedd Cregennan. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
Major C L Wynne-Jones lost both his sons in WWII, so in 1959 he handed over this 285-hectare estate to the National Trust.
As I hope I’ve made clear, I’m not surprised by the National Trust’s behaviour with these wind farms, and the damage they’ll cause . . . what really pisses me off is that the National Trust is still operating in Wales.
Devolution should have brought Wales a new organisation to replace the colonialist parasite that is the National Trust. We should by now have a Welsh body conserving our heritage and our history, safeguarding our landscapes.
But to set up such a body would have required political leaders with vision and courage, rather than the grubby, ishoo-of-the-month puppets Wales is cursed with.
The title is a nautical reference to wind, and a change of direction, which I’m entitled to use cos I was in the Sea Scouts. Right! And what I’m alluding to will, I hope, become clear before the end.
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TWM SIÔN CATI
We start in the wild and beautiful uplands between Lampeter and Llanwrtyd, once home to Thomas Jones, known to us all as Twm Siôn Cati, or Twm Shôn Catti.
In the centre of the map I have pinpointed Bryn Cadwgan; Twm’s cave is to the west, and to the south east we see Ystradffin, where Twm took a fancy to the widowed heiress, Joan, and eventually married her.
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Last year I wrote about a plan for wind turbines at nearby Bryn Brawd, which you can see to the north west of the pin. It was in this post, just scroll down to the section ‘Local benefits (well, local to somewhere)’.
A company mentioned in that piece, Awel Newydd Cyf, recently issued 43,659,462 shares. Which suggests there may be something in the wind. (Geddit?)
But I wouldn’t get carried away by the company’s Welsh name, for it’s ultimately owned by Elm Trading Ltd, which has being issuing shares like they’re going out of fashion.
We’re switching our attention to Bryn Cadwgan because another wind farm is planned there, and it should go without saying that the plan comes from yet another gang of foreign investors.
So who is it this time?
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GALILEO GREEN ENERGY
This company launched in early 2020, and is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. Set up with . . .
Galileo Green Energy Wales was set up in April 2021, and was originally known as GGE Machynlleth Ltd (until 4 June 2021). Why ‘Machynlleth’ should appear in the name is a mystery, seeing as the original address was in Bristol, and the first directors lived in Italy (2), France, and Ireland.
Was the original plan to bless the Dyfi valley with yet another wind farm?
All 10,000 shares for Galileo Green Energy Wales are held by GGE Nordics Ltd, who can now be found at the North St. David Street address. But until January this year was up on the fourth floor of 115 George Street in Edinburgh.
The majority shareholder in GGE Nordics is Empower Renewables Ltd, also of 7 – 9 North St. David Street. When we look at Empower’s UK registration we see that apart from a Dane (who lives in Killarney) all the directors are Irish, with control exercised by Diarmuid Anthony Twomey of Castleknock, Dublin.
I bet like me you’re excited by all the Welsh involvement in these projects!
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MYNYDD TY-TALWYN ENERGY PARK
“So where are we now?“, you’re wondering. Well, Mynydd Ty-talwyn, or Mynydd Ty Talwyn, is just to the north west of Bridgend. Outlined in red on the map.
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Other than Bryn Cadwgan it’s the only Welsh site I’m aware of. Though the website tells us (scroll down to the ‘About Galileo’ section): ”
Mynydd Ty-talwyn Energy Park is one of a pipeline of our new renewable energy projects in development across Wales.
So where are the others?
Never mind that for now, because I want to concentrate on a worrying claim and a serious untruth, on the Mynydd Ty-talwyn website; and I also want to highlight a major drawback with Bryn Cadwgan.
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Under ‘Specifications’ ‘Wind’ we read,
Approximately 64,643 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions saved per annum.
We don’t normally see this calculation given, so why do we see it here? One possibility must be that the calculation has been made for the purposes of carbon offsetting.
Just as medieval evil-doers would pay the Church to be forgiven their sins, and carry on sinning, carbon offsetting is a twenty-first century version of the scam.
Immediately below we read, “Up to 50-year lifetime“. If that’s the projected lifespan of the Mynydd Ty-talwyn Energy Park then Galileo must plan to replace the turbines at least once. For few turbines last 20 years.
On the other hand, if Galileo is saying that the turbines they hope to erect at Mynydd Ty-talwyn will last 50 years, then that statement is an outright lie.
Another issue is that Mynydd Ty-talwyn is home to a . . .
Cluster of nationally important medieval house platforms and settlement remains.
And they’re shown clearly on the OS map for the area. Though just one is shown on the map supplied by Galileo (above) there are at least three around Mynydd Ty-talwyn.
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We saw Irish control of Empower Renewables Ltd up at North St. David Street, Edinburgh, and Coriolis Energy, the company behind Y Bryn, is also Irish. The other company involved at Y Bryn is ESB UK, the UK face of a further Irish company.
Mynydd Ty-talwyn is not far off the beaten track, but even so, there will be environmental damage caused hauling huge turbine blades and towers to a relatively unspoilt area.
And let’s not forget the vast concrete bases for each turbine, and the access roads gouged out of the earth, the trenches for cables . . . and then there’ll be the pylons . . .
We can take it for granted that the blades and towers will not be manufactured locally, which will probably see them shipped into Swansea docks and then taken along the M4, before the final four or five miles of their journey to the site.
But the problems that’ll be encountered there are nothing compared to what will need to be overcome at Bryn Cadwgan. From Swansea docks the loads can take the M4 west, and then perhaps the A483 up past Llandovery, but then what?
Once you leave the A483 and head for Rhandirmwyn, and the closer you get to Bryn Cadwgan, the more you’ll realise that you’re really out in the sticks.
How many wind turbines can you get in the back of a farm pickup truck? Click to open enlarged in separate tab
To reach the site itself, new roads will have to be laid. The environmental damage caused will be immeasurable . . . unless of course those clever people at Galileo can get their calculators out again.
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WHO’S WHO AT GALILEO
Let’s start by going back to the main Galileo website. In particular, to the ‘Our People‘ section where, yet again, we see a complete absence of Welsh involvement. Whereas in Scotland, those involved all seem to be Scottish.
Let’s look first at Rob Paul and Joe Winton, both described as ‘Development Manager’. These two are also directors and shareholders of One Wind Renewables Ltd of Truro, a dormant company.
We find these two, along with Simon Edward Coles, at a number of renewables companies. They’ve been knocking around the sector since they were callow youths, and both seem to have started out with Ecotricity.
Next we turn to Leslie Walker, Senior Project Manager. Very interesting, Ms Walker. Here’s her Linkedin page to give you a clue as to where we’re going. (Scroll down to her ‘Interests’.)
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On that Linkedin page you’ll see that she works for Dutch company Arcadis Consulting. And has done for over 30 years.
I’d never heard of Arcadis, maybe I should have, because it gets a lot of work in Wales. Much of it from the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.
I’m not for one minute suggesting that Leslie Walker is not good at what she does, but if I was in the position of Galileo, hoping to get approval for major contracts in Wales, I’d be looking for somebody who knew their way around the Bay.
And recruiting Walker might be less controversial than taking on Matt Enoch who, after 13 years as Project Manager and then Project Director with the ‘Welsh Government’, joined Arcadis in October 2019 as Project Director.
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I could go higher up the food chain to people like Ingmar Wilhelm, CEO at Galileo Green Energy, but it wouldn’t tell us much more than we already know. We’re dealing with foreign individuals, foreign companies, foreign money.
Our contribution is our country – and most of us don’t even know we’re making it.
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FINAL THOUGHTS
Earlier I mentioned that GGE Nordics Ltd, which owns Galileo Green Energy Wales, had been based at 115 George Street, in Edinburgh’s New Town. When I wrote it, I thought to myself, “Jones, that address rings a bell“.
115 George Street, Edinburgh. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
Bute is a Scottish company that’s appeared on this blog many times. It has insane plans to turn our country into a vast open-air electricity generator for England. And like Galileo, Bute employs people familiar with the denizens of the Swamp.
The connection between Bute and Galileo seems to be by association, via CIP. Then again, the link could be Vistra, with companies using it as their address. Which might explain the original Bristol address for Galileo Green Energy Wales.
Food for thought.
We may have missed the public meetings for Mynydd Ty-talwyn, but those for Bryn Cadwgan are being held next week; Llanddewi Brefi on Wednesday, and Pumsaint on Thursday.
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I suggest that people turn up to these meetings and demand answers to all sorts of questions. Here’s what I might ask . . .
How much environmental damage will be done transporting the turbines to and and erecting them at Bryn Cadwgan?
Where are Galileo’s other Welsh projects?
How many local jobs will be provided at Bryn Cadwgan?
Is Galileo claiming that wind turbines last for 50 years?
How much of Galileo’s business model is carbon offset ‘greenwashing’?
Is there any connection between Galileo Green Energy and Bute Energy?
And finally, always remember! wind turbines are not built to save the planet. They’re built to make a few people a lot of money, and to make our lives more difficult through an increasingly expensive and unreliable electricity supply.
In this piece I shall look at what might be a renewed attempt to promote OPDs, or perhaps it’s just another bit of ‘affordable housing’ flim-flam. Maybe a bit of both.
For newcomers . . . the OPD system is unique to Wales; it allows people to build a dwelling in open country as long as they promise to worship the sun, name their sprogs Earthworm and Beelzebub, and grow a couple of carrots to prove they’re ‘farmers’.
I’ve written about OPDs many times. Just type ‘OPD’ in the search bar.
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GARRISON OPD
Three years ago I introduced Garrison Farm CIC, you’ll find it in this post, scroll down to the relevant section. The two principals were Ross Edwards and Chris Carree. Carree left the company in June 2021 but Edwards is still there.
I assume Garrison Farm is still a going concern because three new directors have joined since Carree left. Let’s look at them in the order they joined.
Finally, we have Michael Paul Smith, 05.08.2023, who is Senior Facilities and Project Officer for Swansea council, and has worked for the council for over 20 years. Swansea council contributing?
The plan is to set up – possibly in Swansea, or maybe Carmarthenshire – a kind of OPD community for former military personnel. That’s the impression I get in this video from February last year. (Watch from 38:00.)
Thorpe was clearly recovering from a stroke, which he attributed to ‘climate anxiety’.
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Thorpe has crossed my path a few times over the years as I’ve researched OPDs. And the idea of a community of OPDs is not new. As this tweet of Thorpe’s from January 2018 makes clear.
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Though I don’t know what project was being discussed, or even if there was a specific project mooted. So much OPD discussion is little more than pipedreams.
But to return to Swansea, where there was certainly a project launched that could plausibly be called a community. This was Killan-Fach Eco-farm on the Gower side of the city. (Marginally more attractive than the Port Talbot side.)
I wrote about it in June 2020 in One Planet Developments, just scroll down to the section ‘Farmlets’.
The council knocked it back for a number of reasons. One being that . . .
There is also no evidence of how the development would meet local affordable housing needs
Which tells me that ‘affordable housing’ was one of the angles used in the hope of getting planning consent for an OPD project. This is interesting, because you’ll be reading more about affordable housing, and ‘co-operative social housing’, in a minute.
But before that it might be worth focusing on Ross Edwards a little.
From his Linkedin profile we learn that since January this year he’s been Business Development Manager for Rouute. Here’s the website. It describes its product as a, “road-based energy harvesting system“.
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If I understand it . . . pads or sensors are placed on the road surface and vehicles driving over them generate electricity. Even if it works, we’re unlikely to see this technology in Wales because we’re heading towards a vehicle-free future.
There’s another military connection here at Rouute. For CEO is Antony Edmondson-Bennett, a former army officer who, according to his now disappeared Linkedin bio, is trained in ‘close protection’. (It was there last week when I was researching this.)
The Rouute website announces a link-up with a firm called Carma. Here’s a very short video starring the founder of Carma, Jim Holland.
I found the Carma website easily enough, but there is no company of that name registered with Companies House. It was only by scrolling down to the small print at the bottom that I found, “Carma is a trading name of Rewards.Earth LTD 13315107“.
So let’s see what else we can learn.
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‘I THINK THAT I SHALL NEVER SEE . . . ‘.
The arrangement between the two, as spoken by Jim Holland of Carma, is that . . .
Rouute Technologies Ltd will be planting trees for every single unit they sell in the UK or abroad.
On the ‘Meet the Team‘ page of the website we see: “Our target is to plant tens of millions of trees in the next five years“. That is some ambition!
Rooting around for more information I naturally looked up Holland’s Linkedin page, where we see that he was in the Royal Navy for 13 years. So another military connection.
In this rooting around ‘South Wales’ appeared more than once.
This March, ten members of the Tillo team will be making their way to South Wales for a day of tree planting in partnership with Carma.
Despite the nonsense about saving the planet, what we’re looking at here is greenwash; and it must be bracketed with outfits like Stump Up For Trees, and investment vehicles like Foresight, buying up Welsh farms.
Too much of Wales is being lost in this way. We don’t need any more of it.
Drakeford was responding to a completely unrehearsed and piercing question from Huw Irranca-Davies MS. Here’s the transcript.
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Seeing ‘Mike Hedges’ and ‘fascinating’ in the same sentence is quite hilarious.
But here’s where I want to focus, on this section referencing “co-operative social housing managed and owned by the people who live in them“:
And the good news is, Llywydd, that we have a new wave of initiatives being led in different parts of Wales: the Solva community land trust, the Gower community land trust, the Taf Fechan Housing Co-operative in Merthyr—all of them initiatives designed to develop housing that will be run and managed by the people who live in them.
In his ‘question’ Irranca-Davies makes reference to “international youth leaders” in attendance, though God knows why anyone would travel to listen to those clowns. Let alone travel any distance.
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THE EXAMPLES DRAKEFORD QUOTED
Drakeford mentioned three examples of co-operative social housing. These were, to quote him verbatim: “the Solva community land trust, the Gower community land trust, the Taf Fechan Housing Co-operative in Merthyr”.
Let’s look at them, working backwards.
Taf Fechan looks like an offshoot of housing association Merthyr Valley Homes. I guess it takes over or runs MVH properties. If so, then it’s not a group of locals coming together afresh to build and manage their own community.
Now let’s turn to Solfa.
The Solva Community Land Trust was launched under the direction of, or with the help of, Planed in September 2019. “Planed delivers sustainable outcomes for communities by a collaborative, people-led approach“.
But I’m not sure what if anything’s happened since.
An internet search turned up this from March this year, which suggests the properties are still not built.
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The third project mentioned by Drakeford was in Gower. And I assume he was referring to Gŵyr Community Land Trust. Here’s the website.
Though it’s registered with Companies House as Gower Land Trust CIC, launched May 2021. And with just a few hundred in the piggy-bank it’s also difficult to see where this is going without a major injection of funding.
But it seems to have a rival in the Gwyr Community Land Trust Ltd, launched August 2023. This is a one-man band run by a local, Roger Brace.
I mention that Roger Brace is local because, looking at those involved in Gŵyr Community Land Trust, I see that a number of them are newcomers to Wales.
Director Adam Jefferson Land was not long ago pushing a similar venture over in Devon. (Fellow-director Niaomh Convery came to Swansea with him.) Another of the three directors, Emily Robertson, came to Wales a few years ago after working for Solace Women’s Aid in London.
Going by the bios and other evidence, this crew is sure to appeal to ‘progressive’ politicians. An impression strengthened by the image used in this WalesOnline report in November 2021.
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THE BIT AT THE END WHERE I PULL IT ALL TOGETHER
OPDs, as originally conceived, never really took off. While throwing up a shack in the countryside might appeal to many, needing to prove that you were living a largely self-sufficient lifestyle seems to have put many off the idea.
To make things worse, the idea was highjacked by unscrupulous, often unsavoury individuals and groups, buying land, often tracts of forestry, then selling or renting plots for people to put up cabins or bring in mobile homes.
The examples below are from Llangynog, Carmarthenshire, and they were sent to me a couple of years back. They’re not OPDs, and they don’t have planning permission.
But those who live in them will employ the OPD defence against council planners.
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I’m not suggesting that Wade William Heames is either unscrupulous or unsavoury, but his Edible Forest projects have come in for a lot of criticism. Much of it from people who’d been tempted to buy in, or even had bought in.
Which brings me back to Ross Edwards and Garrison Farm. I might accept this project if it was home to Welsh ex-service personnel. But if it’s nothing more than a smokescreen for greenwashing, then I would object.
The video you saw earlier, starring Ross Edwards and David Thorpe was produced by Cwmpas. (Formerly, Wales Co-operative Development & Training Centre Ltd.)
Income of £6.5m from “‘Welsh Government’, European funding, other grants and sources of income“. With two-thirds of that income going on the 100 staff.
And I bet you’d never heard of Cwmpas until you read this. How many more such beasties are out there, lurking in the shadows, devouring unwary maidens and feasting on public funds?
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You’ll see that the Cwmpas accounts were signed off by the then secretary, D Walker. Now Derek Walker – for it is he! – is the Future Generations Commissioner. Does he plan to breathe new life into OPDs in his new role?
Whatever Walker may have planned, Drakeford was talking about more conventional housing. But to understand why we are where we are, you need some background information.
It was always my belief that the left wing administration in Corruption Bay wanted rented housing to be the sole preserve of housing associations . . . with these in turn funded and controlled from the Bay.
But the close relationship that developed led the ONS to decide that Welsh housing associations were, effectively, public bodies. This resulted in them being privatised. Explained here from a ‘Welsh Government’ perspective.
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Welsh housing associations are now building many fewer homes for rent. Some are building none at all. They, and their subsidiaries, are focused almost exclusively on private, open market housing.
This helps explain why some councils are trying to make up the shortfall.
Finally, and especially in rural areas, we have the issue of holiday homes, also retirees and others buying property and moving in permanently.
So . . . fewer housing association properties for rent; private landlords quitting the business; councils spending money they may not have trying to fill the gap; politicians tickling rather than tackling the rural housing crisis; to a backdrop of recession, a ‘de-growth’ agenda, and increasing economic hardship enforced by following the lunacies of Net Zero.
There could be a perfect storm approaching . . . and this storm will have bugger all to do with any imaginary ‘climate crisis’.
Which is why I would hope to see official support for local people getting together to help themselves. But the examples quoted by Drakeford do not inspire confidence.
One thing for sure – a government making major expenditure cuts, and councils that are also feeling the pinch, should not be funding good-lifers hoping to settle in scenically attractive areas with which they have only the most tenuous connection.
The only real solution is a comprehensive and national housing strategy. But it would need joined-up thinking and hard work – from a ‘Welsh Government’ that prefers soundbites and virtue signalling!
Now that we’ve had three weeks of living with the 20mph speed restrictions I think it’s time to put this measure into its wider context, make a few connections, and introduce some new faces.
I apologise for this piece being a bit long, but it’s still less than 2,800 words. And worth sticking with.
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THE BIGGER PICTURE
Much of the background to this new legislation was covered a few weeks back in ‘20mph, A Disaster Unfolds’.
What’s absolutely clear now is that 20mph did not suddenly appear, it’s been hatching for a while. To explain what I mean, here’s a table I’ve drawn up, though I’m sure it’s incomplete, so if you can add to it . . . .
And it’s failed her on almost every count. But then, grand gestures done for dramatic effect rather than to deliver lasting benefits will invariably fail.
Next, we look at the Wales Act 2017. There, in Section 26, we see that power to vary or regulate speed limits is now conferred on the ‘Welsh Ministers’.
Consideration should be given to lowering speed limits in a CAZ from 30mph to 20mph, which some research suggests would deliver overall benefits27. Safety benefits from reduced road speed can also encourage modal shift from private cars.
Perhaps, state-owned, chauffeur-driven cars are OK?
The call was taken up by Sustrans who, in a publication dated 1 January 2019, called for 20mph speed limits across the UK, quoting Public Health Wales. Does this also show Wales being used as a testing ground?
Another example of pearl-clutching theatricality was Wales declaring a climate emergency. This happened in April 2019, just before Environment Minister Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) met with Scottish and UK counterparts.
Here’s the plan for funding the responses deemed necessary to combat this ’emergency’, produced by Future Generations Commissioner and Labour party insider, Sophie Howe. From which I’ve extracted the graphic for ‘Transport’ below.
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Those who compiled that table obviously view increased car ownership as something deplorable, which must be reversed. Yet for me, and I suspect for most people, those figures represent progress and increased prosperity.
Finally, we see 20mph again in Labour’s 2021 manifesto ahead of the Senedd elections. The original manifesto seems to have disappeared, so I can only link to the update put out following the agreement with Plaid Cymru.
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It’s a pity the original’s disappeared because I’m told it proposed risk-based approaches to assessing trunk road speeds. Basically, ‘Welsh Government’, or an individual minister, wanted lower speed limits on A and B roads.
Perhaps Plaid Cymru, a party of rural areas with sparse traffic on open roads, realised this would not go down well in Trawsfynydd or Nant y Caws.
So we see that the call for 20mph, and associated demands, goes back at least 5 years, and probably further. We’ll briefly consider associated issues before turning to an unattainable fantasy.
One of the associated matters is 15- 0r 20-minute cities / neighbourhoods. Which can be viewed in two ways.
The optimist might say: ‘Wow! everything I need will be within easy travelling distance; Waitrose, Pilates, accountant, Skivvyhire, Green Party constituency office, ballet class, tattooist, florist, saddler, doctor, dentist, plastic surgeon . . . .’
(Dentist? In Wales!)
The cynic might ask: ‘Yes, but is that 20 minutes there, or 20 minutes there and back? And what if I want to travel for longer than 20 minutes . . . and just keep going, into the wide blue yonder?’
Make no mistake, Sustrans is an anti-car organisation. And Waters himself is said to be a cycling and walking “fanatic“. Which is fine with me. Veganism is fine with me. It’s when zealots and fringe outfits are allowed or encouraged to push their beliefs onto the rest of us that I object.
Labour-controlled Cardiff council was also on board with the “20-minute neighbourhood or 15-minute city“, as this motion from March 2021 puts it. Even crediting Sustrans.
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Erm, let’s think about that for a minute. A city is made up of neighbourhoods. So obviously a city is bigger than a neighbourhood. That being so, how can a city be traversed, and its services accessed, quicker than those of a neighbourhood?
I’ll touch briefly on three more elements of the grand design.
First Minister Drakeford has described ULEZ charges as the “last resort“. But he hasn’t ruled them out. Labour’s experience in London, with people fighting back, might explain his hesitancy.
We will develop a framework for fair and equitable road-user charging in Wales and explore other disincentives to car use, taking into account equality issues including the needs of people in rural areas, people who share protected characteristics and people on low incomes
“ . . . and explore other disincentives to car use“.
Something I found odd about this was that it said, “in Wales“. But this was produced by the ‘Welsh Government’, so which other country would it refer to? Or was it written by someone else, perhaps not based in Wales?
The reference to “protected characteristics” I assume means that women with penises won’t have to pay. (Where’s my wig?)
To achieve this result the Welsh Roads Review Panel was created with orders to deliver the desired ‘findings’. And to guarantee that outcome the group was chaired by Dr Lynn Sloman. Who wrote ‘Car Sick‘, which rather gives away her position.
‘Vision Zero’ seems to have appeared in September 2012. In the ‘Welsh Government’s Road Safety Delivery Plan. Explained here in a written statement from the late Carl Sargeant, then Minister for Local Government and Communities.
But then, just a year or so later, on page 24 of the Manifesto for the 2019 UK general election, we read that Vision Zero has become a plan to eliminate road deaths and injuries entirely!
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Let’s give a little more thought to this idea of Vision Zero.
It should be obvious that Vision Zero can only be achieved by banning all vehicles, whether powered by the internal combustion engine, battery, or hydrogen.
But with more bicycles and pedestrians on the roads – as is hoped – there will still be fatalities and injuries. Either cyclists crashing or cyclists colliding with pedestrians. It happens now. With more cyclists, and with cyclists having freedom of the highways, some will be even more reckless and inconsiderate than they are now.
With vehicular transport banned – and that must also mean public transport – then people will spend far more time at home.
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But most accidents happen in the home, so spending more time at home will result in more accidents. Don’t take my word for it, read what RoSPA says on the subject. So how is transferring death and injury from the highway to the home an improvement?
It’s not an improvement at all. It only makes sense if the real goal is to ban cars.
More people spending more time at home will create other problems. I can predict with certainty there’ll be more cases of domestic violence, and murder. There will be more children physically and sexually abused. Even more cruelty towards domestic pets.
Also, more suicides, due to the stress of being cooped up at home. It will be a kind of lockdown. And it will be done despite us knowing the social and psychological damage inflicted by Covid lockdown.
But then, it may be dressed up as climate lockdown. And if so, then we must accept that chasing each other round the house with meat cleavers is an acceptable price to pay for saving the planet.
Think about what you’ve just read. Put it all together and tell me it’s not a war on cars, on private transport, and the freedom the car gives us.
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RULE FROM THE SHADOWS
I’m returning to the idea of Wales being used as a testing ground. With most people unaware of it, and the lack of awareness even extending to the ‘Welsh Government’.
But testing ground status is easy to achieve when our politicians are controlled by pressure groups. These often directed and / or funded by individuals and organisations making up the Globalist network.
The bigger picture only makes sense when you remember how it started.
With the end of Communism a new threat was needed. And so in 1991 the Club of Rome adopted ‘global warming’. Explained in this video (less than 5 minutes long).
Klaus Schwab, founder and chairperson of the World Economic Forum (WEF), makes an appearance. Schwab is also a member of the Club of Rome.
This programme of control was easy to sell to third-rate leftist politicians in Wales because socialism is fundamentally anti-human; viewing us as classes or identities, even “protected characteristics“, rather than gloriously varied individuals.
And of course, socialists love imposing “Can’t do that!” restrictions.
Now for the new faces I promised.
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NORTH STAR TRANSITION
This company was formed just over three years ago by Jyotir Banerjee. The website is full of silly phrases interspersed with impenetrable jargon: “multi-capital metrics” . . . “radical reframing and holistic transformation” . . .
It’s not often one encounters so much bullshit on a single website. Thankfully.
The clue to North Star’s real purpose comes in a piece written a few weeks ago by Banerjee himself. We are told that “biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change” can all be remedied – by “large-scale investment funding“.
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Now you know me, when a chancer crosses my path I like to know more about him or her. Did I really say, “chancer“? (Inner voice: “Yes you did, Jac.”)
First stop was Companies House, to see what our boy has been up to over the years. There are a number of companies to his name, which are either dissolved, dormant or, if still trading, then none too buoyant, to judge by the accounts submitted.
The address currently used for Banerjee’s empire is 1 Pembroke Villas, The Green, Richmond. And a very nice gaff it looks too. But according to the Land Registry this property is leased to a firm of accountants.
Since October 2020, a group of 35 thought leaders across Wales have listened to each other and imagined a country that future generations could thrive in.
“Listened to each other“! I see a gang of interlopers discussing the future of our homeland without consulting us. This is often called colonialism.
Topham continues . . .
Why Wales? With a population of 3m people, Wales is the right size for such a living laboratory.
Now she’s gone full-on memsahib. For her and her ‘thought leaders’ our Wales is just a testing ground. With us indigenes as guinea-pigs? Or are we to be removed?
Despite this clique being anonymous one name found on the North Star website is, inevitably, Jane Davidson, who seems to serve as a kind of chatelaine to that demi-monde where enviroshysters have the ear of politicians and civil servants.
After claiming to have initially been reluctant to get involved Banerjee eventually joined Davidson’s Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. (How many different target years do these people use?)
In his homage to La Davidson Banerjee writes: “Olivier Boutellis and I set up North Star Transition to tackle the climate emergency . . . “.
My cue to introduce Olivier Boutellis and explain what I think is really happening.
Despite what Banerjee says, Boutellis was not there at the start (unless he was keeping his head down). For North Star Transition was launched 10 June 2020 and the company Olivier Boutellis-Taft SPRL climbed aboard 3 February 2021.
The capture below from the European Parliament tells us he’s a lawyer and an economist. And this tells us he’s been a magistrate and a lecturer. Also, CEO of Accountancy Europe.
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But it’s his Linkedin profile that I found fascinating. The screen capture below will explain why.
It tells us Olivier Boutellis-Taft joined the Club of Rome EU Chapter at exactly the same time he got involved with Jyotir Banerjee and North Star Transition.
There is also a Linkedin page of the most elementary kind. But it claims the Club of Rome EU Chapter has 11 employees and that its focus is on “sustainability” and “environmental services“.
But understandable doubts to one side, let’s accept Banerjee and Boutellis-Taft at face value. I believe they’re promising to find ‘investors’ looking to buy Welsh farmland for carbon offsetting, or in other ways take land out of agricultural production.
Which fits perfectly with the Globalist agenda to destroy small- to medium-sized farms so that corporations can take control of the food supply. Because if you control the food supply then you control the people.
This Globalist agenda is welcomed by the environmental pressure groups because it destroys farming, especially livestock farming, and most of these activists seem to be vegans.
They also anticipate getting some of the grabbed land for their rewilding fantasies.
Because of course there’ll be fewer people living in the countryside. Take out the main industry and the decline begins. Impose travel restrictions, run down public transport and impose other obstacles and rural living becomes even less attractive.
At the top and the bottom both Globalists and environmental activists know what they want, and are guaranteed to benefit. It’s those in the middle of the scam who, along with the people, will lose out.
Because politicians don’t seem to realise that in the New World Order they are surplus to requirements. As Klaus Schwab explains in this very short video – in the future we won’t need elections.
“Can you imagine such a world?“, he asks. Yes, I can; and while losing politicians has its attractions . . .
Without elections we won’t need politicians, except to serve as ‘managers’ for their Globalist masters. Which is not a lot different to what they’re doing now.
Our politicians have been fooled into thinking they’re saving the planet when what they’re really doing is sacrificing Wales and other countries to the psychotic ambitions of the Globalists.
And this explains dreamers, chancers, shysters and con men flocking to Wales.
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CONCLUSION
As I hope I’ve explained, 20mph speed restrictions should not be viewed in isolation. They are part of something much, much bigger.
You’re free to dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist. It’s a free world. For now. But before you go . . .
Justify Vision Zero transferring deaths and injuries from highway to home without admitting it’s a plan to do away with cars. Do you think Jyotir Banerjee’s “large-scale investment funding” is designed to save the Welsh family farm? And why does Klaus Schwab talk about abolishing elections?
It all started when it was brought to my attention that properties in Swansea used by housing associations were leased or rented from Link. After a bit of digging I was satisfied that, in various forms and under different names, Link had been operating in and around Swansea, and across the south, for decades.
But, as I say, due to the various entities being offshore, and information hard to come by, there was a limit to how far I could go. In the end I just had to leave it and move on.
Even so, to help you understand better what you’re going to read, and for me to avoid repeating myself too much, I suggest you read the piece from 2016.
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THE LEASEHOLD SAGA
We are going to deal with an issue that’s been rumbling on for a long, long time; with politicians of all stripes promising to tackle it. For those unclear what I’m talking about, the leasehold system is explained here.
Which would of course save the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ from having to do anything. Though it might have some powers now.
I say that because the ‘Welsh Government’ has given thought to leasehold. Here’s a July 2019 report, Residential Leasehold Reform, from a task and finish group.
With the quote below from page 29, made in March 2018 by the Minister for Housing and Regeneration, Rebecca Evans.
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But this report from March 2021, despite containing ‘next steps’ in the title, suggests that ‘Welsh Government’ is just kicking the can down the road.
In fairness, and as I’ve suggested, leasehold reform might be an Englandandwales matter; but if so, it hasn’t stopped Corruption Bay from creating the post of Head of Leasehold Reform. Does that job title suggest he has staff!
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You won’t be surprised to learn that this job went to an insider. His name is Timothy Mann, formerly with the Labour party’s favourite housing association, Wales & West.
But FFS! If ‘Welsh Government has the power to act on leasehold, then why doesn’t it? But if it doesn’t have the power to act then why waste time and money faffing about with task and finish bullshit and sinecures for cronies?
It would appear that Labour in Wales has rowed back from outright opposition to leasehold to merely being against the sale of leases on new-build properties.
One reason might be Registered Social Landlords (housing associations), which are funded by the ‘Welsh Government’. For since their privatisation in 2018 many, perhaps most, have set up subsidiaries, which now build private housing for the open market . . . often leasehold, or ‘shared ownership’.
Also, and as I reported in the 2016 piece, housing associations are quite happy to lease property from Link Holdings (Gibraltar) Ltd, and perhaps other companies. With the ‘Welsh Government’ fully aware of this.
To make sense of it, understand that housing associations, especially in the urban south, are extensions of the Labour party. So if housing associations are doing lots of business with leasehold firms, or selling leaseholds themselves, then this might explain why ‘Welsh Government’ is reluctant to implement leasehold reform.
But if intervention comes from the next Labour government in London then the bruvvers down here can hold their hands up and say, “Nothing to do with us“.
OK, that’s a more general picture on leasehold, time now to turn to the latest news about Link Holdings (Gibraltar) Ltd, and what I’ve unearthed.
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WHY I’M REVISITING THE SUBJECT
This return to Link Holdings (Gibraltar) Ltd was prompted by an e-mail I received last week. Let the senders explain with this extract from that e-mail.
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You must admit, it’s a worrying tale. If the couple that wrote to me hadn’t opened the innocuous-looking letter from Companies House they might have lost their home.
You’ll see Castlebeg mentioned, that we encountered earlier in the Davies-Edwards House of Commons exchange. This was another horse out of the Link stable, based in Jersey. I use the past tense because the company’s dissolved.
Also based in Jersey were Cymru Management Ltd and Cymru Investments Ltd, both of which were connected with Link Holdings. The former has filed nothing since January 2021, and the latter was dissolved in September of that year.
Was this in anticipation of the new legislation you’ll soon be reading about?
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And yet . . . another document I unearthed, for a UK-registered company owned by the family I believe is behind Link Holdings, suggests there is still a company using the ‘Gwalia’ name. This document is dated 24 January 2023.
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The Cymru Investments Ltd just mentioned was once known as Gwalia Investments Ltd, but the name changed many years ago. The date of the filing above suggests an active company. But in which jurisdiction?
Let’s return to the reason for this update.
Here’s the title document sent by my source (already highlighted.) I’ve made redactions for obvious reasons but you can see that in January, this property, for which both leasehold and freehold had been purchased by my contacts, was still, according to the Land Registry, owned by Link Holdings (Gibraltar) Ltd.
There are other title numbers mentioned on the document I’ve just linked to, and these refer to a property on Neath Road in Plasmarl. The freehold is held of course by Link, but the leasehold by Caredig Housing Association. Again, we see a connection between Link and a housing association.
Anyway, after reading and digesting the information I’d been sent, it was time to make fresh enquiries into Link, maybe pick up where I’d left off in 2016.
This registration with Companies House ties in with the Register of Overseas Entities legislation that came into force 1 August 2022, demanding that . . .
Overseas entities who want to buy, sell or transfer property or land in the UK, must register with Companies House and tell us who their registrable beneficial owners or managing officers are.
There’s nothing really to see on the Companies House entry apart from the Registration document itself (OE01). Though it is quite revealing. For if you scroll down to ‘Part 13 Disposal of land’, you’ll hit a few pages of Land Registry title numbers.
Forty-nine titles in all. From my quick dip I’m guessing that most if not all of them are ‘multiples’, covering a number of properties, with a total running into the hundreds.
It would have been too much work, and too expensive, to check them all; so with each page containing 8 titles I settled for one from each page.
Despite being chosen at random, all were in the Swansea area, the furthest out being Ammanford. The others in Penclawdd, Sketty, Waunarlwydd, and Dunvant.
Sketty is 16 properties on an older development. There seem to be 8 properties in the Waunarlwydd development. Finally, at Dunvant, we find (by my figuring) the title covering 35 separate properties. I won’t link to the title document because lessees are named. These properties are scattered about on Hendrefoilan Road, Derlwyn, Gwelfor, and a few other nooks and crannies.
All the Killay / Dunvant properties would seem to be covered by this map.
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That’s a total of 90 properties on five randomly chosen Link Holdings titles.
And remember, these are just the titles disposed of between 28 February 2022 and the dates of the application, the latest of which was 7 November 2022. There will be many, many more titles held by Link.
For example, the Hirwaun title that started the ball rolling again is not listed.
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To give some understanding of how much property Link owns go to Private Eye‘s Tax Haven map. Or try the Excel database (the link for this is just above the map). Admittedly, these only go up to 2014, but they’re revealing; and this research helped bring about the law to register overseas entities owning UK property.
Open the Excel file and, even though there are many Link properties before, and after, if you start at 73397 (left-hand column) you’ll hit a long sequence of Link properties due to the ‘WA’ Land Registry prefix.
Most seem to be in the Swansea area, but they’re spread across the south (with the exception of Blaenau Gwent), though perhaps no further west than Llanelli.
If you’re smart enough with Excel then you can probably extract all the Link properties from the document. (In fact, I’d appreciate it if someone could do that.)
The area we’re looking at next is north east Swansea, either side of the M4. The properties in orange in the Private Eye map on the left are relatively new and all Link Holdings leaseholds.
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Funny, isn’t it? ‘Welsh Government’ says it’s opposed to new builds being leasehold, but this seems to be exactly what Link’s been doing for decades.
If you look at the Land Registry title documents I’ve used in this article you’ll see addresses given on the first page, against ‘Registered owners’. Link Holdings is obviously listed but beneath the company name the contact details given are:
Sovereign Fiduciary Services Ltd, Po Box No 564,
Sovereign Place, 117 Main Street, Gibraltar, GX11 1AA
107 Charterhouse Street, London EC1M 6HW
3rd Floor, 11-12 Wind Street, Swansea SA1 1DP
The Gibraltar address is obviously Link’s representative on The Rock, but the other two are solicitors. One is Sayers Butterworth LLP in London, the other Smith Llewelyn in Swansea.
I saw no point in contacting Sovereign Fiduciary Services at its plush downtown offices. But I thought it might be worth approaching the solicitors, to see if they had anything to say about their client.
I sent each solicitor an e-mail, on Wednesday last week. But I’ve received no reply. I think they’re waiting to see what I write before contacting me.
I’m 90% sure I know who’s behind Link Holdings. It’s an established business family in Swansea. The name suggests their ancestors might have been part of the Cornish migration of the 18th and 19th centuries, following the tin and the copper to Swansea.
Though they seem to have deserted the City of My Dreams for Hampshire, Fulham, and God knows what other hell-holes!
My many admirers on the left might describe those behind Link as, “bloodsucking capitalists!“, or some other carefully-honed and rationally presented response such as we hear from the comrades nowadays.
But me, well, I see it differently. A moral and regulated capitalist system is the only way to create wealth and employment. With the prosperous and egalitarian democracy that results the surest guarantee against the extremes of left and right.
There’s more I could say about the leasehold model; for this throwback to feudalism should have been abolished a long time ago along with droit du seigneur.
Such as people contacting me who thought they’d bought their new house outright, only to discover the hard (and expensive) way that what they’d actually bought was a lease. Leasehold is a system that invites deception and corruption. It should be abolished.
But instead of signing off with a rant I’ve decided to wind up this wee opus with some harmless musing.
How many others have found themselves in the position of my Hirwaun contacts, with Link Holdings claiming to own their home?
How many others are in that situation without knowing it because they haven’t checked what’s filed with the Land Registry?
Given that in recent decades Link has concentrated on new build properties, what is the company’s relationship with the builders involved? Is Link buying ‘off plan’? Or is Link commissioning the building of these developments in order to sell the leaseholds and retain the freeholds?
What is Link’s relationship with Swansea council, which cannot be unaware of the company’s activities? What would the council say to those who’ve been denied the opportunity to buy a home outright by Link hoovering up the freeholds and only offering leasehold agreements?
Labour has argued against the leasehold system for at least 60 years, yet in 24 years of devolution has done nothing. Is this another example of Labour making promises out of power and failing to deliver when it has power?
Is the ‘Welsh Government’ comfortable with certain Welsh housing associations renting / leasing property from a company of unknown ownership hiding away in a tax haven?
Here’s another ‘off the cuff’ kind of post; but what I’m going to write about illustrates a growing problem. Growing due to the increasing unpopularity of the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.
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WELSH MEDIA: FASCISTS AND FOREIGNERS OPPOSE 20MPH
The big issue this week has been the introduction of the 20mph speed limit across the country. I wrote about it in last weekend’s posting, ’20mph, A Disaster Unfolds’.
But perhaps the legislation has been overshadowed by ‘that’ petition, which at the time of writing is heading towards 400,000 signatures. Though the so-called ‘Welsh’ media has tried hard to discredit it and those who’ve signed it.
Here’s an example from yesterday’s Western Mail. Despite 95% of the signatures coming from within Wales, Llais y Sais wants us to know that people in 51 countries have signed.
There’s even an insert headed: ‘Where the global opposition has come from’. Seven from Germany, one from Hungary . . .
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But what that rag is attacking is in fact perfectly reasonable. Welsh people living abroad, and English people in the Marches and elsewhere who regularly drive in Wales, are perfectly entitled to voice their opposition.
Then, at the bottom of the page, there’s a carefully worded piece inviting us to think that opponents of the 20mph restrictions are violent individuals. Probably ‘far right’.
This is not journalism; this is naked propaganda.
But then, when, like the Western Mail, you depend for financial survival on public notices and advertisements paid for by the ‘Welsh Government’, What ya gonna do?
But it was ever thus. It’s just a bit more obvious now. And it’s moving up a notch.
Which is the cue for me to tackle the meat of this issue.
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NUDGE, NUDGE – WHO’S THERE?
For this week also saw the release of a bizarre poll showing that more people support the 20mph restrictions than oppose them. And it was odd for a number of reasons.
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First, there’s the ‘slanted’ question, worded to achieve a desired outcome. Hoping “Where cars mix with pedestrians and cyclists” will conjure up images of boy racers screeching through pedestrianised areas, knocking over old ladies and kiddies on bikes.
This is called ‘nudging’. But even this doesn’t fully account for the ‘findings’.
By way of comparison, here’s a survey from WalesOnline. It certainly overstates the strength of opposition, but it’s closer to the truth than the survey we just looked at.
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Then there’s this YouGov poll, which still shows an almost two to one majority against.
No survey I have seen, and no other form of evidence, suggests anything other than a big majority against widespread 20mph speed limits.
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The other thing I found strange was that the survey doesn’t tell us who commissioned it, which is normal practice. So who produced that slanted survey?
The answer would appear to be Redfield & Wilton Strategies. So what can we learn about them? Well, not a lot. Individuals named Redfield and Wilton may not exist.
Which takes us on to the next section of this post. Follow me . . .
So why is the company called Redfield & Wilton? Is it to make it sound more English? Whatever the answer, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that it’s an attempt to deceive. Which is not good for an organisation trading on credibility.
Even so, it’s reasonable to assume that Rodrigues has background in polling and market research? Well, er . . . no.
For Rodrigues is a solicitor. Here’s his entry from the Solicitors Register.
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Cassadys, mentioned above is a debt-ridden company that’s escaped compulsory strike-off for late returns more than once. The company is named after its founder, an Indian named Kaizad Cassad.
Around the same time, on 1 January 2020, Rodrigues took over BR Services Europe Ltd from Pakistani Umar Aqueel. A ‘Management Consultancy’ company, that was just bumping along financially.
The other entity mentioned in the Solicitors Register is the Brooke Consultancy LLP. Which seems to be a genuine sort of legal partnership, and it provides a useful profile of Bruno Rodrigues.
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That profile tells us he specialises in immigration law, and he’s also into, “the niche area of fashion law“. What the hell’s that? Does it mean I could get arrested for wearing the wrong socks?
But, strangely, no mention of his new venture of opinion polls. Come to that, here’s his Linkedin profile (here in pdf format), and there’s no mention of Redfield & Wilton here either.
I find that very, very strange. If ‘niche’ interests can be mentioned, why not a new company being regularly quoted in the media, and apparently being used by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic?
One more company needs to be mentioned. This is Alghanim Capital Ltd. Rodrigues was a director along with Kuwaitis Abdulwahab Alghanem and Fahad Alghanim who, despite the slightly different spellings, I take to be related.
Abdulwahab is described on the Companies House entry as a ‘civil servant’ in Kuwait, while Fahad is said to be a student in the USA.
Their line of business was: ‘Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet’. Mmm.
Alghanim Capital was formed in October 2018, and folded without seemingly doing anything. So why was it formed at all? This is the sort of company behaviour that gets my whiskers twitching.
But even if it was all innocent, how did Rodrigues meet the Kuwaitis?
Well, I assume that’s where it comes from, but my quick search didn’t find it. Though I’m sure it’s genuine, because the font and the colouring match, and the rascal who used it seemed to think he was putting me down, or weakening my case.
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“Self-commissioned“? Does that mean that Bruno Rodrigues and his little team decide amongst themselves what surveys to do, and then publish them? Or maybe get some media outlet to pay for their whimsical and random findings?
I don’t buy that. I certainly don’t think it accounts for all of their output.
The more I’ve thought about Redfield & Wilton the stronger the possibility has become in my mind that this outfit may not do any research or polling. It simply acts as a channel for what others want to promote.
Let’s say you want to push the message that more people in Wales support 20mph restrictions than oppose them, then you engage Redfield & Wilton in order to make the message look more credible than if it had come from a source that is obviously biased.
Though the R&W record is not impressive. Because for an organisation dealing in statistics, Bruno and his pals are not very good at figuring. They often seem to get things horribly wrong.
Which, when coupled with their pro-Labour bias (pro-Democrat in US polls), makes them look rather stupid. Here’s a recent example.
Bookies, as we know, like to have facts and reliable figures because there’s always money riding on them. So I was amused to read this piece in PoliticalBetting.com expose how horrendously wrong Redfield & Wilton got a recent Scottish poll.
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So who in Wales might have been desperate enough to ask R&W to put out this phoney 20mph survey?
Obviously, there’s the ‘Welsh Government’. But would they run the risk?
A more likely possibility must be the company that Drakeford and his clowns have employed to promote the 20mph restrictions. I’m referring now to Lynn Global. For this is their line of work.
Lynn would regard what I’m suggesting as ‘countering misinformation’ and therefore perfectly legitimate. Even desirable. To most people it would be lying to get your own way.
If I’m right, then we are on a dangerous path. Let me explain why.
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CONCLUSION
It’s common knowledge that in recent years opinion polls, especially on politics, have been used to influence public opinion rather than to gauge it and report it.
This explains why so many polls have been spectacularly wrong; on Brexit, on Trump’s victory in 2016, on the size of the Conservative majority in 2019. All because too many pollsters allowed their left-liberal or woke prejudices to intrude.
Returning to the Redfield & Wilton survey, as I see it, there are two alternatives: either the poll result is distorted with bias, or else it’s completely and deliberately fabricated. Neither option should be acceptable in an open and democratic society.
Good governments can stand on their records, on what they’ve delivered for their people. Only liars, incompetents and aspiring totalitarians need a bought media, ‘behavioural sciences’, and phoney surveys.
Well, here we are, on the eve of a great experiment. Are you excited about 20mph speed limits? Enthused? Or do you just roll your eyes skyward in the way that typifies modern Wales?
I suppose I could have gone about this post differently, by looking at the costs, and examining the various claims more closely, but I leave that to others, confident that I’ll return to this subject once the excrement starts moving upward.
And so what I’ll do in this post is expose the propaganda campaign (that we’re paying for); then give the local history of this 20mph madness; before explaining where I believe it’s taking us.
What we learnt was that Lynn was being paid to push the ‘Welsh Government’s 20mph restrictions for Welsh roads. And it paid well. For Tory leader Andrew R T Davies was told that Lynn had received £738,593 from ‘Welsh Government’ since 2021.
The figure for ‘2023-24 (to present)’ is £185,164. But is that figure for the calendar year or the financial year? I suspect it’s the financial year, beginning April 6, and I say that because Lynn received almost half a million pounds last year, and with the 20mph roll-out taking place this year, I think it’s reasonable to assume that 2023’s figure will be close to, or in excess of, last year’s figure.
Bumping up the costs will be Lynn’s ‘Misinformation Fact Sheet‘ for the ‘Welsh Government’. This attempts to anticipate and refute the objections raised to 20mph speed limits.
This is odd. When I wrote this on Thursday the online Linkedin page was available, but on Friday it seems to have disappeared. Fortunately I saved a pdf version last month.
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So if you’re plagued by fake news, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, flatulence or scurvy, then Steff is the boy to contact. For having worked for Labour in London and Cardiff he knows all there is to know about bullshit.
In fact, Rollnick tells us he was . . .
Assisting the Office of the First Minister with its preparedness for misinformation outbreaks and developing a broad, proactive strategy for bolstering the spread of good information, with a specific focus on tackling anti-vax misinformation.
Ah! “good information“. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for?
The terminology used by these people is superficially reassuring, but anyone who’s studied history, particularly totalitarianism, knows exactly what’s being said. And it’s sinister.
‘We have a monopoly on the truth. Accept what we say, or suffer’.
Then, having dutifully carried out the orders of ‘Dr’ Bill Gates, in September 2021 Rollnick transferred his devious talents to Lynn . . . but still working for Drakeford’s clown troupe.
But enough background on a propagandist masquerading as a purveyor of truth, let’s get back to the origins of 20mph.
For Lynn was recruited to push the 20mph nonsense, but the story doesn’t begin there. So where do we need to go to find its origin?
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THE LONG MARCH
One culprit might appear to be the pressure group, 20’s Plenty for Us; which has quite a presence in Wales, and may even have sent ‘missionaries’. Such as Fiona Andrews, who moved with her partner Piers Graham Partridge to Llandudoch from Bristol in 2018.
One being Llandudoch, to which Andrews had so recently moved!
The other, was St Brides Major, in the Vale of Glamorgan. This video, released last Thursday by the ‘Welsh Government’, features a few brainwashed kids and a couple of other well-rehearsed locals.
If you’re convinced by that then contact me about some beans.
The Wales 20mph Task Force Group was formed on the direction of Lee Waters, the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, in May 2019.
We aren’t told the individuals who sat on this panel, just the organisations they represented. (Appendix A, page 36.) Among them I noticed Sustrans, of which Lee Waters used to be boss-man for Wales.
The whole tone of the procedure and the report screams ‘Done deal!‘.
But can we go back any further in tracing the genesis of the 20mph restrictions?
In fact, it was available on the ‘Welsh Government’ website on the first day of August, so it must have been available as soon as it was officially released. Perhaps before?
In Appendix A, which lists papers quoted by Davis, we see a reference to, ‘Twenty miles per hour speed limits: a sustainable solution to public health problems in Wales‘. Authored by Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt.
Though I was amazed by the claim that imposing 20mph limits will aid the fight against obesity. Surely driving slower gives fat people more time to get out of the way?
But if driving slower makes us slimmer, then what about hair loss? And flatulence?
20mph is beginning to sound like snake oil.
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The main conclusion arrived at in 2016, that bringing the speed limit down to 20mph would save 6 – 10 lives per year, and 1200 – 2000 casualties, is now being repeated verbatim by the ‘Welsh Government’.
So who are the authors of that 2016 report, Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt?
Chairing the group is former Labour Assembly Member, mastermind of the Future Generations legislation, and mother of the OPD, Jane Davidson. Who does more work for the party and the ‘Welsh Government’ now than when she sat in Corruption Bay.
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Cardiff University, that partner with ‘Welsh Government’ in so many quixotic ventures, has two representatives. Possibly a third with Sarah J Jones.
She has worked assiduously for ‘Welsh Government’ and Dŵr Cymru in blaming farmers for everything in our rivers that shouldn’t be in our rivers. No surprise then to learn that she also sits on Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel.
Which seems to be another secret society; for when I asked Dŵr Cymru for the names of panel members I was refused and, as with The Wales 20mph Task Force Group, told to scroll down the page to the logos of the organisations represented.
Though we are told that the panel is chaired by “Mari Arthur, director of Cynal Cymru”. But she was secretary of Cynal, not director . . . and she left in July 2018.
It looks a bit of a shambles.
Here’s how I see it. The anti-car, restrict human movement element of the Globalist agenda, takes root in the Bay. ‘Welsh Government’ insiders Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt are told to knock out something in support of introducing 20mph speed limits.
You won’t be surprised to learn that Davis supports 20’s Plenty, Just Stop Oil, and the UN’s climate liars at the IPCC. Not only that, he also dreams of re-joining the EU, and he’s 100% opposed to fossil fuels.
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What we have with Adrian Davis is an archetypal member of Globalists’ Woke-Green-Left. Yet in the FoI response just mentioned he is the sole authority quoted by the ‘Welsh Government’ in support of imposing 20mph restrictions.
In whose universe is Davis an impartial and unbiased scientific authority?
But this kind of ‘Tell us what we want to hear‘ behaviour is all too familiar, as I’ve tried to explain on this blog over and over. Let’s just close this section, and jog your memories, with one recent example.
A few weeks before that article appeared the ‘Welsh Government’ announced that all new road projects were ‘paused’. This report from Llais y Sais told us the decision had been made by the Welsh Roads Review Panel headed by Dr Lynn Sloman.
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I made enquiries about Dr Sloman and this is what I wrote at the time.
Well, she lives in London, where she’s a board member of Transport for London. The bio I’ve linked to tells us she has a holiday home near Machynlleth. (To be exact, in Cwm Einion aka ‘Artists Valley’.)
So a cycling zealot who lives in London, and hates cars – but has a holiday home in Wales, to which she presumably drives – is allowed to dictate ‘Welsh Government’ policy.
This is how the ‘Welsh Government’ operates. It recruits people it calls ‘independent’ to undertake studies guaranteed to come to the desired conclusion. Then it employs propagandists like Lynn Global, or uses the tame media, to push that message.
There is never an independent voice, nor genuine public consultation.
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WHERE IT ENDS
Before I start, let me make it clear that I’m sure there are people who genuinely believe 20mph restrictions will get mamgu on her bike, zooming ’round the neighbourhood frightening animals and knocking kids over.
Just as there are people who believe the planet is doomed unless we get rid of human beings. Or that men can have babies, and women have todgers. That White people are evil. And that every criminal who lands in Europe in a small boat must be looked after cos he is a ‘refugee’.
Such people are fools. But more dangerous by far are those who know these things to be lies, but promote them for other reasons. Which brings us to the Great Manipulators.
For perhaps more than any other administration and political establishment of which I know, Corruption Bay has surrendered itself to the Globalist agenda. And by so doing it is prepared to sacrifice us, the Welsh people.
This sacrifice means imposing restrictions in the name of public health, or saving the planet, or to promote inclusivity / diversity, and generally protect us from ourselves. For we are both stupid and evil.
Wales is now being subjected to the most odious form of paternalism. Odious, as it claims to be done for our benefit, but it’s not.
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Because if you understand what I’ve been saying then you’ll realise that making us drive at 20mph has absolutely nothing to do with road safety, or air quality.
This legislation is part of a wider strategy against the private motor car. Or rather, it’s to deny private transport to poorer people. For Net Zero is a war against the poorest in society waged by the middle class on behalf of an elite seeking global domination.
Just think how insane that is. They want to take away your car, on environmental and health grounds, but there’s no public transport, so you’re effectively stuck at home.
So wise up,
20mph legislation is part of the same package as ditched road-building projects, 15-minute neighbourhoods, compulsory injections with untested vaccines, the assault on livestock farming, and CBDC to keep check on every penny you spend.
If Wales had more devolution, giving Labour and Plaid Cymru the power (God forbid!), they’d introduce legislation such as we see proposed in Ireland, where there’s a Bill to impose a ‘Hate Speech Act’ . . . that fails to even define hate!
It’s censorship pretending to be something virtuous.
Should that law be introduced then a grifter from a protected group will just need to say they feel offended (or that great favourite, ‘unsafe’), and the Guards will be kicking somebody’s door down in no time.
They will even be encouraged to feel offended, and have explained to them the most lucrative ways to be ‘offended’, and ‘unsafe’, by the shysters in NGOs and pressure groups currently wreaking such damage on Ireland.
Wales would also see legislation against ‘misinformation’ and its even more evil twin ‘disinformation’. Which in practice could mean the ‘Welsh Government’ employing Lynn to police us all.
Even me!
Not a welcome prospect for those of us who believe in freedom of movement, and freedom of expression. But somehow, ‘progressives’, acting as shouty foot-soldiers for Globalist totalitarianism have convinced themselves they’re engaged in a noble struggle against fascism!
At some point in the near future historians and political commentators will marvel that, having alienated the working class, the left then shot itself in the other foot by attacking the poorest and most vulnerable in society on the orders of the world’s biggest corporations and richest individuals.
An encapsulating irony with which to end might be that those who now fight to protect animals we breed to eat, especially perhaps battery hens, have sided with those wanting humans to live in a very similar fashion.
The ‘Welsh Government’s 20mph legislation is a step in that direction. Only a fool would see it for anything else.
This is a piece that I’d planned to get out earlier in the week, but things cropped up. For example, I had to make a trip to Swansea. So for that and other reasons it got delayed.
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DRAMA QUEEN PERFORMS
This piece took inspiration from a report in Saturday’s Llais y Sais, but it links with other things I’ve written in recent years. Let’s start with the article.
It’s about Jessica Dunrod. Who a few days before had resigned as Amgueddfa Cymru’s “project manager of decolonising collections“.
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The first point I want to make is that if you employ someone to ‘decolonise’ your collections then that’s an admission your collection needs decolonising. But who decides in the first place that a collection needs decolonising? And what criteria do they apply?
What exactly is a colonised collection? Is it a collection that has been taken over and is now being brutally exploited by another collection?
I suspect not.
In her resignation letter Dunrod accused our National Museum of high crimes and misdemeanours including a “toxic working environment“, being a den of “unresolved racism and bullying“, before sparing none with, “institutional racism across Wales in general“.
That final attack might appear to be an accusation of collective or national guilt. If so, then it’s a slander against us all. Which is why I’m going on the offensive, and not just against Jessica Dunrod.
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I wrote about our national museum a couple of years back, when it came under attack from certain quarters.
My coverage began with Corruption Bay and a Tale of Cymrophobia (23.08.2021), in which I related that surveys commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru concluded both bodies were racist!
Yeah, ‘surveys’.
My attention was soon drawn to the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union (WAARU).
In a nutshell, what I found was a bunch of far left shit-stirrers moaning about racism, with WAARU (in its ‘report’) even accusing the Arts Council and the Museum of “upholding white supremacist ideology“.
Wow! there’s an ideology!
But as with all the other allegations, and the cases of ‘discrimination’, there was nothing specific, nothing tangible. Just wild accusations that make the report a work of fiction more worthy of funding than anything else produced by these mediocrities.
But while the race grifters were getting the publicity, plus the jobs, grants and other goodies, they were in some ways just a distraction. For there were other beneficiaries.
Allegations of ‘racism’, campaigns to bestow ‘inclusivity’ and other joys, or funding and appointments, are all used to increase ‘Welsh Government’ influence over certain bodies, even to the point of total control.
Though the use of one tactic does not preclude the use of others. And once you appreciate what’s happening then a number of things become clear. For example, the contrived furore over rappers being banned from the National Eisteddfod was clearly a warning shot about the Eisteddfod’s all-Welsh rule.
With the Eisteddfod so dependent on ‘Welsh Government’ funding, and Vaughan Gething being Drakeford’s heir-apparent, things look bleak for the Gorsedd.
Jessica Dunrod’s sinecure at Amgueddfa Cymru as project manager of decolonising collections was perhaps a result of similar manoeuvring.
Yes, it actually says: “The Black Lives Matter movement has fast-tracked conversations about the stories that our collections and displays present, calling for us to confront history and challenge present-day injustices.”
By 6 December 2021 we see Amgueddfa Cymru advertising the vacancy that was filled by Jessica Dunrod.
The wording says: “We are recruiting for a Project Manager, Decolonising Collections. The closing date is 13 December – apply now to be part of the de-colonization of the national collections.”
Which I find revealing.
Because so much of what passes for debate on the subject of race and racism is simply slogans imported, without adaptation, from the USA, often unfit for purpose in Europe; and especially in Wales, which had neither an empire nor slavery, and is itself a victim of colonialism.
This wholesale importation of Americanisms extends to the spelling “de-colonization” in the job advert.
One final word on Jessica Dunrod, who sees racism everywhere, to the point of absurdity.
You’ll recall the case of nurse Lucy Letby, who was recently convicted for the deaths of a number of babies in Chester. As far as I’m aware, all the babies were White, a number of them born to Welsh parents.
Well, someone tweeting as ‘Dr Ruby’, somehow linked these killings to the bizarre case of a woman kicking a big horse, and believes that the tragedy of the murdered babies and the horse incident can be attributed to “white supremacist structures“.
And Jessica Dunrod agrees, for she retweeted it.
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How unhinged, how obsessed with ‘racism’, do you have to be to see white supremacist structures (whatever they might be) in the Lucy Letby case?
Or to put it another way, how far down the woke rabbit-hole do otherwise sane people have to fall to not call this out for what it is?
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SELECTIVE ATTITUDES TO SLAVERY
Slavery is all the rage nowadays.
Well, obviously not the real thing, or certainly not in Western countries, but talk of it often dominates certain political discussions. Based on the absurd premise that slavery was only and ever practised by White people against Black Africans.
And for this, we White folks must be forever repentant. All of us.
I do not believe in collective guilt, even less in inherited guilt. We don’t blame all Germans for WWII, or all Americans for the unspeakable horror that is basketball. And if my great-great-great-great-grandfather killed somebody then that was something he did and for which he alone was and remains responsible.
Similarly with slavery. Though others choose to see it differently.
One of those being Malik Al Nasir, described in the article below as “a poet and an author”, also a PhD history student at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He has focused on former MP and Assembly Member Antoinette Sandbach.
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It seems that she had a slave-owning ancestor named Samuel Sandbach and Al Nasir wanted everyone to know. This resulted in death threats for Sandbach.
The article doesn’t tell us when Samuel Sandbach flourished, but seeing as Britain outlawed slavery in 1833/34, it had to be over 200 years ago.
Come to that, how many Black Africans were enslaved by Muslims over the centuries? Why is it, as this article suggests, “a taboo subject“?
Well, we know why, don’t we? (And if you don’t know, then keep reading.)
After all is said and done, Al Nasir is free to condemn the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but he should be honest enough to accept that slavery was universal.
And by the same token, I am free to condemn the countries of the Sahel, and Turkey, for their part in enslaving millions of White, Christian Europeans in the same time frame as the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The more I think about the left’s attitude to slavery the more I see the response from the same quarter to ’emissions’ and fossil fuels. China can open a coal-fired power station every other day, the same with India and other countries . . . but climate change is still the fault of Western countries currently impoverishing their populations with degrowth strategies in pursuit of Net Zero.
Which should tell you that it’s not really about slavery, or emissions. These are just elements of the Globalist agenda being implemented to undermine the West.
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WHITE BUGGERS ON BIKES
We turn now to someone who’s appeared on this blog before, it’s Gareth James, who runs Irie’s Rum Bar and Reggae Lounge in Aberystwyth. He appeared in Welsh Independence And The Left, back in January.
He got a mention because Aberystwyth seemed to be home to a number of those I wrote about, with Gareth James himself, in his piece in the Cambrian News, arguing that Dyfed Powys Police should be more Woke!
(Most people would settle for them being awake.)
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His most recent offering was in last week’s Cambrian News. It’s a truly strange, and worrying article, but it’s very clear that Gareth James has issues with middle-aged White men riding motorbikes.
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I won’t dissect it too much, but a few questions must be asked.
If the problem is the noise he claims they make, does it really matter that these bikers Gareth James complains about are White? To put it another way, would the noise be acceptable if these, “elderly dickheads on ear-splitting motorbikes” were Black?
But then, he seems to think that if they were Black they wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Aberystwyth. Thanks to un-Woke local Plod.
I know Aberystwyth prom, and I’ve seen the bikers parked near the Prom Diner many a time. Yes, there are a few preening wankers among them, but by and large they’re just ordinary blokes who like motorbikes, and like getting together to talk about motorbikes.
Some are middle class, but most are not. Many come up from the south. Let me make it absolutely clear that I’m thinking now of southern Wales, not Dixie.
I make that clear because the piece gave us another jarring Americanism with Gareth’s reference to Harley Davidsons. Jarring because I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on Aber’ prom.
But Gareth’s rant is obviously informed by American movies, and the perception that all-White motorcycle gangs are inherently racist.
Slow down, Gareth; it’s Aberystwyth promenade, not Sturgis, SD.
That sad piece says more about Gareth James than it says about the problems caused by a few middle-aged bikers in Aberystwyth.
Its confessional nature was disappointing because even though rum and reggae are not my thing I was still warming to Gareth James. Possibly because I’ve spent many happy hours – days, even! – in establishments of public resort wherein alcohol may be obtained.
To the extent that I believe there’s a special place in Heaven reserved for bar-keepers. And if I’m right, then, when my time comes, you’ll find me there on a bar stool.
But I’d rather spend eternity being served by a bosomy slapper (Black or White) who enjoys a risqué joke than being lectured on the evils of Whiteness by Gareth James.
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CONCLUSION
If Jessica Dunrod was the best of those that applied for the post of decolonization (sic) officer at Amgueddfa Cymru then it don’t bear thinking about the unsuccessful candidates.
Malik Al Nasir is a wannabe academic riding a wave. Promoting himself by putting an innocent woman in danger was unforgiveable.
Gareth James really does need to take a long, hard look at the town and the country he lives in. It’s nowhere near as bad as he seems to think.
Combatting ‘racism’ has become a way for some to expose their own frailties by using the most absurd pretexts to attack White people. Thankfully, an increasing number of people, White and Black, see it for what it is. Which is why Dunrod, Al Nasir, James, and others, need to remember the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
Otherwise people will ignore them when the fascists really do appear.
For I see it now . . . hundreds of the noisy buggers, astride Harley Davidsons, demanding the immediate implementation of “white supremacist structures” as they ride up and down Aberystwyth prom seeking Gareth James.
I know, I know . . . I said last week’s post would be the last before Christmas, but those devious buggers in Corruption Bay sneaked out a couple of things that can’t go without comment.
