Don’t panic, this isn’t about US politics. Following information received it’s an update to something I wrote back in 2020.
As you will understand, I’m sure, what I’d promised for Monday, ‘Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse’, will now be delayed. (And anyway, I’d forgotten that Monday is a Bank Holiday.)
◊
RECAP
In December 2020 I put out Lucky Gwynedd – More ‘Investors’! Scroll down to ‘The Phoenix Hotel, Abersoch’ and you’ll get the background to what you’re going to read.
In a nutshell, chancers from N W England had bought the old White Hall Hotel in Abersoch and had big plans, expensive plans. I wrote in that earlier piece:
This establishment closed in 2004 or 2005, inevitably fell into disrepair, and was eventually demolished in the early part of 2016. In the report I’ve linked to we read, “A 40-bedroom hotel and spa will now be built in its place and is set to open in 2018”.
Well, 2018 came and went. It’s now 2026, and it’s still not finished.
Two of the principals behind the project were: Charles Marshall Openshaw and Anthony John Hayton. Each had a string of failed companies to their name. I mentioned one of Openshaw’s companies, Rooftop Solutions Ltd, going bust in 2012 and owing almost half a million quid.
And yet, it seemed that Messrs Openshaw and Hayton were welcomed by Cyngor Gwynedd and certain agencies in Corruption Bay as bona fide investors with a string of glittering successes to their names.
Let’s start the update proper with a piece that appeared last July in Boutique Hotelier. The property is now known as Tŷ Gwyn. The article mentions a series of delays, and suggests that the original plan may have been to lease or sell the individual rooms.
This of course is a model we’ve encountered before, perhaps most notably with con man Gavin Lee Woodhouse, from Yorkshire. He bought run-down hotels from Llandudno to Tenby, and was the inspiration behind the Afan Valley Adventure Resort which now employs thousands. Or maybe not.
To jog your memories, here’s something I put out around the time I was writing about Woodhouse.
Labour got hammered earlier this month in the Senedd elections, but you’ll be delighted to hear that Skates and Irranca-Davies were both re-elected. No doubt Plaid’s new team will be seeking advice from these financial whizz-kids.
In the Boutique Hotelier article, you’ll see that the sooper-dooper new “hotel and apartment complex” at Abersoch will be run by Bespoke Hotels of Warrington.
The first two loans came from an outfit in Preston called E3C Solutions Ltd, 14.07.2022. Since renamed Quarry Rock Solutions Ltd. Another two from Gemini Finance Ltd, 23.08.2022, another back-street lender, this time in Liverpool.
All four loans, against the White House Hotel in Abersoch, were settled 05.04.2023. Then four more loans were taken out. Let’s look at the new loans.
The first, 14.03.2023 – three weeks before the first four loans were paid off – was with Crossbaron Ltd of Bolton. A company owned by – Anil Pitalia! Always nice when you can lend yourself money. Was this used to pay off the earlier loans?
I can only assume the FoI request went to the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ rather than to the DBW. In which case, the response is, strictly speaking, true, even though the DBW is controlled by the ‘Welsh Government’.
Was it a bit naughty not referring the inquirer to the DBW? Anyway . . .
Anil Pitalia has also branched out into charity work. Which always warms the cockles of my cynical old heart. His particular charity is The Pitalia Charitable Trust – previously The Visionary Charitable Trust – bringing succour to those in distress in the mythic Englandandwales . . . also India.
At the risk of sounding unkind, the objectives look a bit, well, pro forma; like they were downloaded from the internet. Or found in a solicitor’s drawer.
Turning to the finances, for the period ended 05.10.2022 we see a huge leap in the charity’s income.
This is accounted for in the accounts filed with the Charity Commission as you see below. Wasn’t that nice of him! Though I suppose it might be reasonable to ask, why so much in one dollop? Why so little before or since?
And perhaps, where did it come from?
So, I got to wondering what might explain this outpouring of charitable zeal. And the timeframe is interesting: Pitalia paid over four million pounds into his charity around the time he paid off loans and took on new ones.
He was a busy boy in 2022/23.
Whatever, and moving on . . . I couldn’t find a website for this charity, but the accounts filed with the Charity Commission for the years following the arrival of that huge sum tell us this:
Little seems to be going out to worthy causes; the charity could even be mistaken for an investment vehicle. But if so, then what might it be investing in?
◊
THE DEVELOPMENT BANK OF WALES
However we got here, the fact is that Anil Pitalia, through his company Abersoch Development Ltd, has obtained loans from the Development Bank of Wales, a body owned by the ‘Welsh Government’.
Over the years, I’ve been critical of the DBW, and ‘Welsh Government’ funding in general. Getting good publicity often seems to be more important than acting wisely; or of doing background checks on the companies and individuals seeking funding.
This approach has led to so many mistakes over the years. Earlier I mentioned Gavin Lee Woodhouse, con man and instigator of the Afan Valley Adventure Resort. One of the properties he bought was Caer Rhun.
And the ‘Welsh Government’ agreed a tourism grant of £500,000. That’s a grant, not a loan. Nothing to be repaid. (Though it was later insisted that no money was ever handed over.)
I’m convinced that the word is out among a certain class of ‘investor’ that Wales is a soft touch for getting your hands on public money. All you have to do is buy some old pile, send a press release to the media, promise investment/jobs/visitors, have your photo taken with a politician or two, and wait for the money to roll in.
Such people will inevitably be attracted when they hear of organisations desperate to get money out the door as proof they’re doing their job, coupled with an almost total absence of serious checks.
With the result that Welsh public funding that could have been better used will be wasted.
As for the Development Bank of Wales itself, I went to the accounts, to see what I could turn up. Not easy because what’s filed with Companies House (or certainly what appears on the CH website) is a sometimes messy photocopy.
But if I’m reading it right, then profit for the last financial year was half of the previous year. (Full accounts available here in pdf format.)
I believe the Development Bank of Wales is a dysfunctional body. I also believe that description extends to the grant-awarding system throughout the administration.
◊
CONCLUSION
My belief is that a competent and legitimate businessman or businesswoman coming to Wales with a viable project should be able to find funding from the usual commercial sources.
Too many of those who’ve been awarded loans or grants, or been given publicly-owned land, and other forms of help over the years, have been out-and-out crooks.
But even when the recipients of funding are genuine, there’s always the danger that money given to be spent on a project in Wales will be lost through some intra-group dealing and end up somewhere else.
The ‘Welsh Government’ and the Development Bank of Wales should therefore focus on funding identifiably Welsh businesses and Welsh entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs, operating solely within Wales.
Because building up an indigenous Welsh economy must be a priority. Also, building on what we already have, such as agriculture. Will the new Plaid Cymru administration do better than its Labour predecessor in this regard? Not a hope.
Because Plaid’s SMs know little and care even less about business. And anyway, when you’re saving a planet, while simultaneously fighting fascism and defending women with penises from genocide, you don’t want distractions like the economy, and jobs.
Where to start? A truly momentous result. But will it make much difference? Join me as I ramble through the results.
◊
THE VOTING SYSTEM
Let’s start with the widespread and growing feeling that the party list system, in 16 vast constituencies, was a mistake, and one that must not be repeated. But how did we end up with this monstrosity?
It started well enough, in February 2017, when the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ appointed an ‘expert panel’ of academics to look into various electoral systems and come up with recommendations. Which the panel did. But Labour (possibly also Plaid Cymru) didn’t like those recommendations.
The panel favoured the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. And it specifically rejected the system used last Thursday. In this piece I put out a couple of years ago, I wrote:
On page 128 of the report we read the ‘closed list proportional representation’ system was rejected. It’s ‘weakness’ spelled out as, “No choice for voters between individual candidates. No accountability for individual Members directly to voters.”
Through a series of further – more political – groups, we arrived at the abomination forced on us last week. Based on the understanding that Labour would be the biggest party, with less than 40% of the vote in a low turnout, propped up by Plaid Cymru.
To put that into context: In 2016 Labour won 30 out of the 60 seats with 34.7% of the vote. Plaid Cymru came third with 11 seats and 20.5%. The turnout was 45.3%.
Never was it imagined that Labour would finish many lengths behind in third.
But it’s happened; and now Plaid Cymru needs to promise something better before the elections of 2031. With Wales now having 32 Westminster constituencies one obvious option is to elect three Members from each.
A simple system that would mean:
1/ Parties putting up three candidates in each constituency. Giving each party a total of 96, the same as we had on May 7.
2/ This system would be far more representative in that it would allow voters to pick and choose from candidates. Even vote for three different parties 1, 2, 3.
3/ It would be fairer for smaller parties and independent candidates.
But will Plaid Cymru want to change the system that gave them victory, at last?
◊
PLAID CYMRU, REFORM, ALSO-RANS
Not for nothing do people say of me: “That bloke’s no curmudgeon“, and now I’m going to prove it . . . without getting carried away, you understand.
The victory last Thursday eclipsed everything Plaid Cymru has achieved in its century-long existence. Without wishing to sound ungracious, I believe Plaid did so well, in part, from negative voting. Because much of the Plaid vote was against other parties.
There’s an irony here. In campaigning ahead of the election Labour and the rest of the ‘progressive’ parties urged us to vote against Reform; but Labour didn’t appreciate just how many people also wanted to vote against them.
Now if people decide to vote against Reform and Labour – where they gonna go?
This can be seen in my home city. Swansea has been a wasteland for Plaid for decades; no councillors, hardly any presence whatsoever. Yet in the Gŵyr Abertawe constituency, corresponding roughly with the old seats of Swansea West and Gower, Plaid Cymru won 3 of the 6 seats, but with just 31.9% of the vote.
Another factor in the Swansea results was the feeling that the city has been short-changed by Cardiff-obsessed Labour governments in Corruption Bay. I’ll return to this aspect of the picture later, when I address what Plaid should do to live up to the hopes of those who voted for the party.
Especially those who voted Plaid for the first time. Hoping for real change.
It might be worth mentioning that of the Plaid intake 27 are women and just 16 are men. Plaid has been pushing ‘equality’ for a long time, but it appears they might have gone too far.
For as George Orwell warned us in 1984:
It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.
Substitute Globalist-Woke agenda for Party.
Reform UK could have done better. Had they remembered this was an election in Wales, to the Senedd. Not a lot to ask, you might think. But it seems to have been too much for Reform. And many of their candidates.
What Reform offered was the usual England/UK spiel with a few unconvincing tweaks, offered by candidates many of whom seemed unsure where they were.
And yet, Reform got a good vote with 29.3%, and 34 of their candidates elected. With a better campaign Reform might have come out on top. If nothing else, the vote for Reform reminds us that we’re in uncharted territory.
And nothing shows this change more than the collapse of Labour’s vote. But this was long overdue. For too long Labour relied on the ‘hereditary’ vote in post-industrial and urban areas. Appeals to remember Nye Bevan and other emotive distractions from the embarrassing reality of modern Wales.
Throw in ‘Two-tier Keir’, and 27 years of failure from the Bay, and maybe Labour should be thankful they got 11.1% of the vote and 9 seats.
The Conservatives were almost squeezed out of the debate, and this wasn’t helped by the party’s woeful recent performance in Westminster. That said, 10.7% and 7 seats is not to be sniffed at. Just 0.4% behind Labour.
Reminding us that the Tory vote may be low, but it’s always there. Had things worked out differently they could have come third and been the junior partner in a coalition. That may be stretching it a bit, but an arrangement of some sort might have been agreed with Reform.
A month ago the Greens looked set for 7 or 8 seats, but recent revelations about the leader and some of his cronies put paid to those hopes. It’s all very well being weird, but when you’re weird and dangerous, then people will turn away.
The Lib Dems got their one seat with Jane Dodds in that ‘camel’ of a constituency, Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd. Nationally, they managed 4.5% of the vote.
I won’t dwell on the minor parties and independent candidates except to show you this from the Welsh Communist Party statement. It was put out after the election. I show it because it tells us what’s wrong with Wales. (I didn’t know we had a Welsh Communist Party!)
“Fair, green and socialist Wales“. . . “progressive coalition between Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour” . . . “extra-parliamentary pressure“.
In other words, more of the same. Too many thinking that way explains why Wales is in the mess she’s in.
◊
OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW?
Plaid Cymru has a golden opportunity – and a popular mandate – to put right the mistakes of the past 27 years.
For the first time Plaid can genuinely claim to be ‘The Party of Wales’, for it now has a better geographical spread in its support than Labour ever enjoyed, having been confined to the south (east of Llanelli) and the north east.
As I mentioned earlier, many in the Swansea area voted Plaid because they feel the city has been neglected by Labour administrations in Cardiff. This feeling is not confined to the city of my dreams.
Because administrations in the Bay have behaved as if they were an extension of Cardiff council. I pointed out a few months ago that five (of six) first ministers had served on the city council. (Carwyn Jones is the only exception.)
The leader of Cardiff’s Labour-controlled council, Huw Thomas, was elected last Thursday, the party’s only successful candidate in Caerdydd Penarth. No doubt he’s being lined up for bigger things. Or he was.
Remembering that they sit in Senedd Cymru not Senedd Caerdydd will be a big test for Plaid Cymru. But it’s essential.
On one of the post-election programmes former Plaid leader Dafydd Wigley was asked what the party should focus on in power. His answer was short and simple: “Economy, economy, economy“.
‘Joshua Miles, Head of Wales at the Federation of Small Businesses calls on the new Welsh Government to provide “a clear economic strategy, with achievable targets and genuine accountability”.’
‘Russell Greenslade, Director, CBI Wales, also called on the new government to focus on partnership working, including with business.’
If Plaid Cymru is to honestly focus on building up the Welsh economy then they’d have the support of other parties. Certainly Reform. Or would they reject that to stay on the same path of failure with their soul-mates in Labour and Greens?
In her powerful farewell speech outgoing first minister Eluned Morgan faced her Ceausescu moment by arguing that Labour needs to re-connect with the working class. This is the working class that relies mainly on jobs provided by the business sector.
We need to go back to being the party of the working-class. We need the Labour Government nationally to change course. We need the wealth of this nation to be more equally distributed away from the South East.
Though working with business would be unpalatable to many in ‘progressive’ parties who have neither experience nor knowledge of real world economics. Worse, many believe job provision should be the preserve of the state, local councils, third sector, and nationalised industries.
With workers ‘represented’ by trade unions answerable to the state.
But the real obstacle to fulfilling Eluned Morgan’s vision is that the Labour party, like socialist parties elsewhere in the West, lost a large component of working class support through net zero costing jobs and raising bills; then further alienated the toiling masses with open borders, CRT, self-ID, and all the other ishoos from the Student Activist Toolkit™.
Fundamentally, Plaid needs to distance itself from all the things Labour did wrong.
One worth mentioning is the obsession with Wales saving the planet single-handed which, in practice, meant allowing windfarms and solar complexes, BESSs and pylons just about everywhere, all to benefit foreign companies providing no jobs.
Plaid talks the talk on community ownership of renewable energy projects. Give it a go; but to walk the walk community projects must be more than vehicles for activists to push their political hang-ups and soapboxes for enviro-nut good lifers.
Oh yeah, and make sure there’s a reliable backup supply.
◊
DR DAF GETS ON HIS BIKE
So will Plaid Cymru be an improvement?
Worth asking because Plaid may be more Woke than Labour; and even more in hock to the pressure groups, the lobbyists, and the single-issue fanatics.
Too many of Plaid’s intake view business – and the jobs it provides – as the capitalist enemy. Of the 43 Plaid SMs I doubt if more than a handful have experience of the real world economy.
Telling me that Plaid will follow the same disastrous path as Labour, forcing on us unpopular policies dictated by pressure groups. One such policy will be the war on private transport and the undesirable freedom it gives individuals.
As I pointed out in my previous piece Who Ya Gonna Vote For? Labour SM Lee Waters had worked for cycle group Sustrans (now Walk Wheel Cycle Trust), and he was the driving force behind 20mph speed limits, even on rural A roads.
Waters stood down last week, but he has a successor in newly-elected Plaid SM for Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf, Dr Dafydd Trystan Davies. And it didn’t happen yesterday.
And what a performance Dr Daf put on in his acceptance speech! He talked of the climate emergency, and he promised to go everywhere by bike, train, bus, or else he’d walk. But if it was pouring down and the bus didn’t turn up then he might resort to a car – but he’d record it so everybody would know what a good boy he is.
I’m sure most of the 151,198 registered voters in his constituency wanted to hear something better, hope for the future; but all they got was this sanctimonious little bugger telling them nothing is going to change.
And let’s remember that much of Plaid’s support is still in rural areas. Where there are few trains, sparse bus services, and ageing populations; so how will “on yer bike” be received?
CONCLUSION: PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE
Devolution has failed Wales because for 27 years Labour, either alone or in alliance with Plaid or Lib Dems, has ignored the economy, the NHS, and the real needs of the people. Choosing instead to play student politics; making gestures and taking ‘positions’.
Jo Stevens MP for Cardiff East and Labour’s Secretary of State for Wales, agrees. She also agrees with me that, “Plaid’s victory in this Senedd election was not a reflection of nationalist fervour or a genuine enthusiasm for independence. It was a rebuke of our own performance and a vote to stop Reform in Wales.”
IMAGE: @20NPHartleyHare
Those responsible for Labour being ‘distracted’, and the only ones to benefit from it, have been gangs of swivel-eyed activists. The “extra-parliamentary pressure” demanded by the Welsh Communist Party.
In the process, this failure created, and is now perpetuated by, a new political class that Djilas would have recognised. Members of this class were brainwashed in school and university. They then got jobs as spads and advisors to politicians. Or they joined lobbying outfits and pressure groups. Maybe they worked in the third sector and for other bodies reliant on the public purse. Some became ‘journalists’.
This political caste, this New Class, is increasingly distanced from the people, and is now entrenched. It’s become generational. It’s self-perpetuating. And it’s concentrated on the left. A very real threat to representative democracy.
Plaid Cymru won because people want change. But if Trystan Davies is any guide they’ll be disappointed, as Plaid will make the same mistakes Labour made.
Well, we’re almost there. Thank God! Because this has been the most uninspiring and negative election in the history of devolution.
Never have so many deadbeats, activists posing as ‘journalists’, party hacks, and nut-jobs, wasted their time trying to rouse a people who’ve just lost interest.
◊
RUNNERS AND RIDERS IN HEAVY GOING
This election was doomed to be uninspiring and confusing once Labour rigged the voting system. (Almost certainly with the connivance of Plaid Cymru.) It’s a party list system that no one understands, contested in 16 vast and insane constituencies.
An affront to democracy.
I detailed the various stages of the process just over two years ago in Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill, explaining how better and fairer voting systems were rejected in order to arrive at today’s abomination.
Given the quality of the debate, and the paucity of credible candidates, the election has been uninspiring. But this is to be expected. If a Senedd of just 60 Members attracts only people who’d struggle to run a stall at a village fete, what hope is there of improving the quality when the numbers are increased by over 50%?
And this couples with the negativity I also referred to in the intro. The Globalist Uniparty, the self-styled ‘progressives’, Labour, Plaid Cymru, Greens, Lib Dems, have had little to say beyond – Stop Reform!
There has been nothing positive on offer. Certainly no inspiring vision for the future. But this is only to be expected. Because with the exception of the Greens these are the parties that have failed Wales for 27 years of devolution.
Adding the Greens to the mix – and a potential coalition with Plaid – only offers something worse. While the other components of the Uniparty promise more of the same, the Greens want to double down on the mistakes of the past 27 years, and force on us new ones.
It’s also been a very ‘British’ campaign in that Welsh issues have been crowded out. For the London media has tended to lump the Senedd elections in with the Scottish Parliament and English local authority elections.
Their focus has been London-centric in debating whether Starmer will survive bad results “across the UK“. Treating May 7 almost as a general election, or a vote of confidence in the Labour party in Westminster.
And yet, this neglect of Welsh issues serves the interests of some parties. Plaid Cymru, for example, can blame Labour for the mess Wales is in, while claiming a vote for them is also a vote against the most unpopular PM ever.
Ironically, this is Labour’s old election tactic of urging punters to, “Send a message to London“. Which is what many will be doing, but now it’s working against Labour.
Reform can neglect Wales to focus on the issues that figure with the mainstream media and social media; small boat migrants, net zero, anti-Semitism, high taxes, benefit payments, knife crime, etc. Giving out mixed messages about their attitude towards devolution doesn’t do them any harm either.
The Greens have the advantage of being an unknown quantity, something different. But the Greens are universally and correctly described as ‘the Watermelon Party’. Green on the outside, red on the inside. And now attracting Islamist support.
Plaid Cymru has also been dipping its toe in that toxic oasis pool for some years. Though I’m not sure Mrs Evans in Pencader will take kindly to being told she has to wear a hijab to Capel Sion or else be branded Islamophobic.
As for the Lib Dems, does anybody know what they offer? In Wales it’s that strange Jane Dodds, with the party led at UK level by Ed Davey, who backed the Post Office in persecuting postmasters when UK Postal Affairs Minister from 2010 to 2012.
In short, and Reform excepted, various forms of that curious beast, 21st century Western left-liberalism divorced from any concerns for the once-idolised working class.
Offering socialism that can only run an economy for as long as other people’s money lasts or – as we’re now learning from Minnesota and elsewhere in the USA – if it can tap in to official funding which taxpayers thought was being properly used.
Few issues lay bare the deceit and duplicity more clearly than race. Here are a couple more things I picked up over the past week on X.
On the left we have Plaid Cymru dreaming of a multicultural Wales in which it seems white people are a minority. On the right, someone claiming that “Cymru belongs to us, not Reform“.
Now I don’t know Siân Parry, so I can’t say for sure that she’s a Plaid supporter, but she’s certainly on the political left. But what is she trying to say? Come to that, what is Plaid Cymru trying to say? Let’s attempt a synthesis.
An illegal immigrant can be Welsh; but someone who is Welsh to their core, speaks the language fluently, ceases to be Welsh – if they support Reform?
How insane, and offensive, that is. And all in the service of some transitory Woke nonsense. But too many put socialist dogma and childish obsessions above the interests of Wales.
To continue down this path Plaid risks becoming a full-blown anti-Welsh party.
For that’s the course it seems to have charted, with a Gwynedd councillor suspended for not appreciating that the false god of inclusivity is more important than the Welsh language and the community he was elected to represent.
So sod the Uniparty. And with Reform increasingly looking like controlled opposition, I’d avoid them too.
◊
STUDENT POLITICS AND DYING BIRDS
Twenty-seven years of virtue-signalling, ineptitude, and failure have taken their inevitable toll.
It’s an uphill task for those who’ve run devolution for 27 years to persuade people to forget about bills and hospital appointments, and instead take pride in Wales being the first country to declare a climate emergency, the first to have a Future Generations Commissioner, and to remember that Wales is working to be Anti-racist by 2030.
Now student politics is all very well in its place, but the real world is not that place.
Digression alert!
There’s a little quote from Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man that was popular with the left in my younger days. Paine was responding to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which Burke floridly defended the Ancien Régime. (But still a great read!)
Paine condemned Burke for being more concerned with the pomp of Versailles than with the wretchedness of most French people. It was a radical responding to a conservative, telling him to ignore the ephemeral and focus on the realities.
Paine wrote: “We pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird“.
We can turn this on its head in 21st century Wales; for here it’s the radicals, the progressives, who obsess over the plumage, the ephemeral. But who ignore the dying bird, Wales.
And things won’t get better if we let Plaid Cymru take over. For Plaid, either alone or in alliance with their new wobble-headed pals in the Greens, will only push us harder and faster down Disaster Road.
But on the plus side . . . breast enlargement will be available on the NHS from fully-trained tit whisperers, all accredited by the Zack Polanski School of Woo-Woo.
Let’s be honest, devolution has been a disaster for Wales, and so replacing one bunch of bullshitters with another won’t make a bit of difference. And people know it. This piece from last week’s Western Mail says it all.
“A majority of voters in Wales are either indifferent to devolution or opposed to it . . . only 27 per cent of those asked said they supported devolution“. A majority of those polled couldn’t name the first minister.
But what do you expect after 27 years of failure that has alienated people from the whole idea of devolution, and they see no hope of improvement?
◊
IS DEVOLUTION EVEN DEMOCRATIC?
A fundamental problem of devolution, and the main reason for being subjected to policies for which there is little public support is the hangers-on, the influencers, the pressure groups, the lobbyists, that attach themselves to the politicians, to by-pass and subvert the democratic process.
You vote for a party that promised this that and t’other but you end up suffering legislation that was never in the manifesto and on which you were never consulted.
That’s because most of the Uniparty members in the Senedd went into politics to promote their pet ishoos rather than represent the constituency for which they were elected. Many came from charities, pressure groups, and lobbying organisations.
The aptly-named ‘Swamp’.
Take Lee Waters. Ostensibly the Labour Senedd Member for Llanelli (though he actually lives in Penarth). Waters had worked for cycling charity Sustrans (renamed Walk Wheel Cycle Trust), and was instrumental in bringing in the 20mph legislation.
While other petitions, with little support, result in legislation – because the issue promoted lines up with the Uniparty agenda. You even get your photo took with some gurning politico in a presentation ceremony!
On the left in the image below is Mike Hedges, Labour SM for Swansea East; on the right, Natalie Buttriss, who’s represented a number of bodies trying to grab Welsh land under various ‘save the planet’/’biodiversity’ guises.
Red carpet treatment – and a chance to meet Mike Hedges! – for just 2,385 signatures!
That’s democracy, folks; the Voice of the People . . . being ignored.
Saying loud and clear that devolution is a sham. But we’re expected to believe it’s going to get better because – just like socialism – it hasn’t been properly tried yet.
Worse, there are those believing Wales could survive as an independent country with the same calibre of politicians pursuing the same policies.
At present, all the lunacies we endure from Corruption Bay are funded by the block grant from Westminster. Take that away with independence, and give full powers to politicians who understand nothing about economics, but who will be determined to pursue the same Globalist-Woke agenda, and Wales will go broke within 5 years.
Then it’s into the clutches of the EU and the World Bank; allowing land and other assets to be bought up by BlackRock and the like to give the impression of economic activity, or inward investment.
Socialism has never worked as an economic model. Which explains why the only ones pushing it are either still wet behind the ears or have jobs for life on the public payroll.
◊
CONCLUSION
Plaid Cymru believes that a few years of the party running the Senedd will win people over to the idea of independence. Thinking of Scotland. They’re wrong.
After the SNP took control in 2008 (as a minority government) it increased its popularity under the leadership of Alex Salmond. To the point where it almost won the 2014 referendum on independence.
But Salmond, in addition to being a very astute politician and a great debater, was an economist. You know, the real world economy. He persuaded many Scots, and many economists, that Scotland could be better off as an independent country.
And it almost worked. I was in Scotland for the referendum, and I know that the polls just before the vote were showing a majority for Yes. The London parties panicked and came out with ‘The Vow’, promising Scotland just about everything short of independence.
That swung it and the vote was 55 – 45 against independence.
Worth noting that the Labour leader at the time was Ed Miliband. Who – like Cameron and Clegg – understood that a great part of the appeal of independence was the promise of oil and gas revenues staying in Scotland. So maybe him closing down North Sea oil and gas fields isn’t just about saving the planet.
Whatever, and to get back to Wales, Plaid Cymru knows nothing about economics; I think the last genuine economist in their ranks was Dr Phil Williams, a good old stick despite everything, but he died in 2003.
Wales has no oil and gas fields to speak of. And there’s been no attempt to develop an indigenous economy over the 27 years of devolution. Funding cronies and charities to run make-believe ‘businesses’, and allowing carpetbagger companies to exploit Wales, is a third world economy.
All Plaid Cymru offers is more of the same, with a different spin. Because while Rhun ap Iorwerth may come across as an affable sort of guy, behind the scenes, still running the show, are dark forces from Plaid’s recent past.
And if Plaid gets power, especially in a link-up of some description with the Greens, then even nastier specimens will start popping up.
Wales needs radical change, in the form of a return to the eternal verities and facing up to economic realities. The Uniparty will never be allowed to provide this. Reform gives no thought to Wales beyond getting votes to pursue a different agenda.
Here’s Owain Williams again. I don’t know his politics, but I suspect they’re not a million miles from my own.
The only sensible option is a party that puts Wales first and foremost. One that prioritises the economy we all need. That understands Wales needs real jobs not more gesture politics. That teaches our children to think for themselves rather than brainwashing them. That won’t wage war on the family farm. Or the family unit.
The only party that fits the bill is Gwlad. Of course, Gwlad can’t win this time round, they don’t have the strength yet. But they’ll grow and, with fair media coverage, be back stronger next time. In the meantime, I’m sure Gwlad will be fighting for Wales in council elections and other ways.
The only Welsh party willing to address people’s real world concerns is Gwlad.
In this piece I shall look towards the May 7 Senedd elections. Rather than delve into party manifestos, or expose the peccadillos of individual candidates, I’m adopting a broad brush approach.
Impressions and perhaps even informed generalisations. Digressions guaranteed, but not without a touch of whimsy and a few doses of ironic humour.
This offering is a bit longer than normal, but as it’s broken up into sections, one for each party, you can nibble a bit at a time. Like your Easter eggs!
◊
‘WELSH’ LABOUR
I’m starting with Labour, if only because this party has been running the show since devolution began in 1999. The name’s partly in quotes because there’s no such thing as a separate Labour party in Wales, it’s just a branch of the Islington-controlled gang we’ve know since Blair, Brown, Mandelson and a few others sat down to create New Labour.
This was the plan to broaden the party’s appeal beyond the traditional working class support. A strategy that ultimately led to the alienation of much of the working class. Labour in Wales managed to maintain the pretence longer than most party branches, but has now been found out.
But Labour, run by the Fabian Society, never really cared much for the working class, they were simply the means to power. The post-industrial age, Brexit and other factors, has seen Labour turn on the indigenous lower orders with a vengeance. Even to the extent of offering euthanasia.
For culling the poor, the sick, the disabled, the hopeless, was always Fabian Society policy. Find half an hour to watch this video.
LABOUR’S FIRST MINISTERS 1999 – 2026
One of the saddest features of this deception was seeing traditional, even generational Labour voters, in some of the most deprived communities in Wales, taken for granted by a party that had abandoned them and their communities.
A case of: Vote Labour – and we’ll keep kicking you in the nuts!
But chickens come home to roost.
And that’s why Labour finds itself facing humiliation thanks to an electoral system it conjured up believing this system would guarantee a permanent Labour-Plaid love-in, with the comrades always on top.
It says a lot for Labour’s foresight, and arrogance, that they couldn’t factor into their calculations the possibility of defeat. I described the system, and how it came about over two years ago, in Labour And Plaid Cymru Plot To Destroy Welsh Democracy.
But here we are, with Labour at 11% or 12% in the polls and fighting with the even more unhinged Greens for third place behind Plaid Cymru and Reform.
Because the problem for Labour is that having abandoned the working class it now relies for much of its support on racial and religious minorities (of which Wales has few), brainwashed students and ex-students, middle class liberals (another small group in Wales), third sector and other chisellers who’ve done well from Labour cronyism and patronage (a sizeable group regrettably), and the far left.
But many even in those groups are deserting Labour for Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
NOW LISTEN, STARMER, HERE ARE YOUR ORDERS
And if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s Starmer and his clueless, lying crew of Globalist puppets. Who’ve betrayed those who voted for them, and torn up their own manifesto, in order to serve those who came over to give them their orders soon after the 2024 election. (See above.)
A meeting of minds. For Gates’ plan to reduce the human population is pure Fabianism. And Starmer, like all previous Labour PMs, is a staunch Fabian.
Problems compounded in Wales by the growing perception that Labour has been bought by Bute Energy and other foreign companies (perhaps even the Chinese Communist party) wanting to exploit Wales in the name of ‘saving’ a planet in no real danger.
◊
PLAID CYMRU
This party will obviously be the main beneficiary from the collapse of the Labour vote.
And so Plaid is now doing what it always does when an election approaches – pretending there’s a gulf between them and Labour. But Plaid and Labour have been in bed too often and for too long for that deception to work.
Plaid Cymru might benefit from voters wanting to rebuke Labour without changing the general direction of devolved politics. Making Plaid the soft option for mildly disgruntled Labour supporters.
But they should be careful what they wish for. Especially those unhappy over Labour’s obsession with Net Zero, DEI, gender politics, Gaza, Trump, and all the other ishoos that often alienate left-leaning but socially conservative voters.
I say that because Plaid Cymru seems to have gone further down the fact-free rabbit-hole of Wokery than Labour. On a host of issues. And there’s no longer any attempt to hide it.
Here’s Plaid’s leader in the House of Commons (and my MP), Liz Saville Roberts, in London on March 28. At a march that brought together the far left, Islamists, environmentalists, and others.
Of course it was billed as a march against hate. The problem most people had in accepting that claim was the marchers chanting about killing Jews, threatening opponents of the murderous theocracy in Iran, condemning anyone who thinks men can’t have babies, and dancing dementedly in attempts to fight the climate crisis.
In fact, so much hate was generated by this gathering that a big profit was waiting for anyone who could have bottled it and sold it to a third world dictator.
Which perhaps brings us to Plaid’s real problem – a form of schizophrenia.
We have a party in recent times appealing to the radical left, while trying to hang on to its traditional, more socially conservative rural core vote. This is a difficult balancing act. But then, Labour got away with a similar deception after abandoning its traditional working class voters, so maybe Plaid will be lucky.
Because it takes a while for many voters to catch up with the new reality and ditch old habits. At least, that’s what Plaid Cymru is hoping.
◊
REFORM
Reform UK is next because in all recent polls it comes in second behind Plaid Cymru. Which seems to surprise many people, who want to believe this strand of politics is new to Wales, even an unwanted import.
The truth is that Farage’s earlier creations – UKIP, Brexit party – have been around for a few decades, and have performed well in Welsh elections, particularly the last two elections to the EU parliament. Here’s a table I drew up a few years back for a piece on the blog that should prove my point.
You’ll see that in 2014, with the Brexit referendum two years in the future, UKIP came a very close second to Labour. And in 2019 the Brexit party, combined with UKIP hold-outs, won comfortably with almost 36% of the vote.
This final EU election, after the 2016 referendum, might be seen as a victory lap for the Brexit party, yet the fact remains they won it very comfortably. But then, Wales voted Leave. Though parties on the left want to ignore this, talking of “alignment“, even re-joining. With no mention of consulting the people, let alone a referendum.
As I hinted earlier, the problem for leftist parties is that most people in Wales, as elsewhere, are socially conservative. They want policies the left is either unable or unwilling to deliver. But which Reform promises.
This goes some way to explaining why a ramshackle and often incoherent group like Reform is riding high in the polls. Topping polls in England, second in Wales.
There are identifiable groups from where Reform can expect support. First, former Labour voters awake now to the nature of modern Labour. Then, disaffected Tories, wondering what happened to their party. And the sizeable percentage of the population pissed off with establishment politicians prepared to give Reform a go. Finally, those who reject all manifestations of Welshness, from devolution to bilingual road signs.
But I see two clouds on the horizon for Reform. Perhaps only one of which will damage the party in May’s elections.
I’m referring to the reported parachuting in to Welsh seats of ex-Tories and others from outside the constituency in which they’re standing, even from outside of Wales. As this newspaper report from earlier this week illustrates.
And yet, the factors just mentioned are less likely to count thanks to the absurd voting system; which means candidates 4, 5 and 6 on the party list could drop out with no effect on the outcome. And because it’s a party list system many voters won’t even know who the candidates are anyway! (Explained below.)
Perhaps a bigger threat, in the longer term, and on the UK level, is Rupert Lowe and his fledgling party Restore Britain, only launched in February. This very recent poll puts a party most people have never heard of on 8%. And I think I know why.
Farage is smooth, glib, a bit of a lad with the pint and the ciggie, and yet . . . I’ve never been able to shake the impression of the spiv. I keep waiting for him to roll up his sleeve to show us all the watches he’s flogging.
Whereas Lowe comes across as ‘serious’; what’s more, it’s that “Don’t fuck with me” kind of seriousness. Which many people respect. And I don’t see an armful of watches.
In the short term, and the context of the Senedd, I suppose we must accept the polls and prepare for Reform to come second.
Meaning four years of pantomime, with leftist luvvies clutching their pearls as they theatrically exit the chamber singing Kumbaya if a Reform MS questions net zero, or wants to end the £3,000,000 a year funding for the Dowlais branch of Hezbollah.
◊
GREENS
There was a time when the Greens were regarded as harmless eccentrics. Perhaps another incarnation of the brown bread and sandals wing of the Liberal party from the 1960s. (For younger readers . . . Look it up yourselves, you lazy little sods!).
But how they’ve changed!
From what I can see the modern Greens have little interest in the environment; now they seem to have positioned themselves somewhere to the left of Pol Pot. (Though I’m sure PP was a better dancer than ‘Zack Polanski’.)
Everything about the Greens in 2026 is false and/or dangerous.
Starting with party leader, ‘Zack Polanski‘, whose real name is David Paulden. Not so long ago he was a hypnotist, claiming he could enlarge women’s breasts. Did women pay him for this?
Some may think I’m being unfair, pointing out that he’s the UK leader, and we have our own leader in Wales, in Anthony Slaughter. Which is nonsense, because we don’t have a Welsh Green party.
When Green party members in Wales had the chance to form a separate Welsh party in 2018, they chose to stay as the Green Party of Englandandwales. Because most Green Party members in Wales are not Welsh. They tend to be good-lifers and others for whom Wales is nothing more than a nice place to live.
Recently the Greens have been pandering to Muslims, just like other parties of the left. To the extent that Polanski’s deputy is Mothin Ali, who recently attended a rally supporting the murderous theocracy in Iran – with critics labelled “Islamophobic“.
But try to make sense of it. Polanski is Jewish, and gay. Has he ever sat down with Ali to discuss his deputy’s religion and its attitude to both Jews and homosexuals? And does Ali have any interest in environmental matters?
The real worry should be the Islamic block vote transferring to the Greens because Labour is finished, if only in the short term. If so, then this is worrying; because on both the Welsh level, after May 7, and the UK level after the next general election, the Greens could be power-brokers.
So who in their right minds will vote in the Senedd elections for a party led by a former hypnotitist and his Islamist sidekick?
Just imagine if the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senedd, and the word comes down from Green Party HQ – “Tell Gareth Wyn Jones them sheepdogs gotta go“.
◊
CONSERVATIVE
What to say? Conservative politicians at every level have kept such low profiles in recent years they’ve become almost invisible. To the point where some might wonder if the party is still in existence.
In Wales, those who haven’t been kicked out of the party seem to have joined Reform. But nobody’s really noticed!
I mean, can you name the Tory leader in the Senedd? (It’s Darren Millar.)
And yet, despite the party’s near-invisibility the Conservative vote seems to be holding up. Certainly better in percentage terms than the Labour vote. Though I suppose it could be argued that Labour had more votes to lose.
Another way of looking at it might be to say that the Tories should have benefitted more from the collapse in the Labour vote. But it hasn’t. Possibly because so few people know what the Tories stand for nowadays. What is the message?
At this point – seeing as I have so little to say about the Tories! – it might be worth entertaining you with an opinion poll published in Nation.Cymru on April 1.
The accompanying article was written by Martin Shipton, who so recently had a wake-up call when an “eight-strong team from the counter-terrorism division of the Metropolitan Police“ kicked his front door down at 6am.
The survey sample was so small that I’m not sure it can be trusted; but seeing as it was commissioned by N.C, funded with ‘Welsh Government’ (i.e. our) money, I shall pick through the bones.
We see that the Tory vote is around 9/10%, which is not bad for a party that’s almost invisible. While some of the other ‘findings’ defy belief.
Though not the finding that among younger voters Plaid is very popular, and the Greens lead in the under 12 age bracket.
Though one of the more intriguing figures was this:
For people aged 35 to 54, Reform leads with 35%, ahead of Plaid Cymru on 21%, Labour on 16%, Greens 13%, the Conservatives and Lib Dems both on 6%, and others on 2%.
This is where we find those who are working, struggling to pay mortgages or rent, wondering if they can afford to light and heat their homes, bringing up children. Reminding us of what I’ve argued elsewhere – those living in the real world want real world solutions to real world problems.
Though I’m sure Martin ‘China’ Shipton and his ilk would dismiss this 35% as racists, climate deniers, etc., etc.
But this section was supposed to be about the Conservative and Unionist party, and I’m ignoring them. Yes.
I may have had a sneaking regard for their economic and social policies at one time. But that was forfeited when Boris Johnson flew to Kiev in April 2022, to ensure the little clown didn’t sign a peace deal that would have jeopardised their Globalist masters’ money-laundering operation.
◊
LIBERAL DEMOCRATS
If I had little to say about the Conservatives I have even less to say for the Liberal Democrats. They’re almost an irrelevance. A poll in this week’s Cambrian News suggests they won’t win a single seat on May 7.
Though I have to say that’s a strange poll, also predicting the Tories will win just one seat. I’m sure it’s wrong. Certainly at variance with the poll I quoted in the previous section.
The fact is that the Liberal party started going downhill after Lloyd George, in the 1920s, which of course coincided with the rise of the Labour party. Though my paternal grandparents were still voting Liberal into the 1950s, because they saw it as the party of the chapel, the ‘Welsh’ party.
The party we know today came about following a merger in 1988 between the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party, formed by four who’d split from Labour a few years earlier. “The Gang of Four“; David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers, were among the smuggest buggers you could ever wish to meet.
NICE TIE, WOY
I was once thrown out of a meeting addressed by ‘Woy’ in the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea, when he was still in Labour. Back in the late ’60s. The great man was on stage telling us that he too was Welsh; so a young Jac, in a flush of patriotic fervour (possibly influenced by beer), jumped up shouting “You’re no Welshman“.
I was then assailed by an old crow sitting behind me, who laid into me with her umbrella. A signal for the heavies to move in: “We knows ew, ew’re a trouble-maker, ew are“. And so young Jac, scarred for life by a gamp bought at Swansea market, was forcibly ejected.
Happy days!
What do the Lib Dems stand for nowadays? Your guess is as good as mine. But they’re ‘progressive’; so If Plaid needs an ally for its popular front against the far-right, Trump, climate deniers, Putin, transphobes, and other demons torturing the Globalist-Woke-left imagination, the Lib Dems will be only too glad to help.
◊
GWLAD
I’ve saved the best ’til last. As you probably know, I had a hand in launching this party, and I’m very proud of that. But why?
Basically because I’m a Welshman, and I’ve always wanted the best for my people, and for me that meant independence. It still does. Yet I’d hoped devolution would at least improve things. But it’s been a total failure. And it’s easy to see why. In fact, I’ve explained why in my assessments of the other parties.
Every successful country needs a functioning, indigenous economy that encourages and rewards hard work, innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit. And thereby creates well-paid jobs. But for 27 years devolution has been ruined by politicians and their hangers-on who did little but make gestures and squander money in slavishly serving agendas that divide us and make us poorer.
By comparison, those running Gwlad include people who’ve started their own companies, given people jobs, and hope, and have worked all over the world. I can’t stress this enough – they come from the real world.
By which I mean they are not professional politicians.
Not like those who did politics in uni, went to work in PR, for a pressure group, or for a politician; then got elected to the Senedd thinking that running a country is nothing more than mixing with others from the same background, having debates informed by ignorance, and choosing to die on hills far away that should have no resonance in Wales.
This political clique, this Corruption Bay bubble, regards the rest of us with contempt. The ‘progressive’ parties want us to believe that about Reform. But they’re no different, not even Plaid Cymru!
Question open borders, or challenge discrimination against the indigenous Welsh, and this makes Wales “the racist capital of the UK“, says a Plaid Cymru candidate.
To believe Elin Hywel we Welsh are an evil people that needs re-educating.
But we’re not. We’re good people ruled by clowns who’ve lied to us and lied about us for too long. So on May 7 vote for candidates who don’t belong to this isolated and self-elevated political class that looks down on the rest of us.
◊
CONCLUSION
The system being used in this election is complicated and corrupt, unlikely to be used again in any country wanting to be considered a democracy.
Each elector will have one vote. Which means you’ll be expected to blindly vote for a party, while leaving the selection of candidates, and the order in which they’re ranked, to the party machines.
A system designed to benefit Labour and Plaid Cymru, also intended to make it very difficult for small parties and independent candidates to get elected. An affront to democracy.
And it could have been worse, for Labour was hoping to get away with not even naming candidates!
So as you walk to the polling station on May 7 remember 27 years of devolution under Labour, aided by Plaid Cymru or Lib Dems.
Remember net zero (15-minute cities and 20mph): running the NHS into the ground (while ‘decolonising’ midwifery); Covid (Drakeford believing it all and getting drunk on the power it gave him); covering the land with foreign-built wind turbines (also foreign owned and involving massive political corruption); waging war on farmers (to save the planet); welcoming the closure of Port Talbot steelworks (carbon, innit); promoting transgenderism (with the ‘Welsh Government’ being Stonewall’s biggest funder); using a film of 12-year-old girls to welcome migrants; brainwashing kids from shit-hole estates and abandoned post-industrial communities about their white privilege; and a host of other insulting imbecilities, from wanting Welsh schoolgirls to wear hijabs, to ‘decolonising’ the evil Welsh cake.
It would be masochistic to vote for Labour, Plaid Cymru, or Greens. You know what kind of dangerous nonsense bordering on evil you’ll get from them. Tories and Lib Dems are an irrelevance. And don’t vote Reform unless you’re so desperate to avoid the known failures that you’re ready to take a leap in the dark. (Or buy a knocked-off watch.)
When you reach the polling station, say to yourself, “Enough! Wales needs a fresh start, a new direction“. Then take the pencil in your hand and put a cross next to the Gwlad candidate’s name.
Over the past year I’ve written a few times about companies in Wales profiting from the UK government’s ECO4 scheme, through cavity wall insulation, solar panels, heat pumps, etc.
Most recently, I’ve had to write about one of these companies going belly-up leaving dissatisfied customers; either suffering from poor workmanship that needed remedial work, or else jobs left unfinished.
Consumer Energy Solutions was part of a group of Welsh companies ultimately owned by Cairngorm Capital of Edinburgh through Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd. (Or, more likely, someone else owned them but operated through Cairngorm.)
But now there’s a new kid on the block in the form of New Dragon Holdco Ltd. The three directors of this new company, formed January 22, can be seen below. They all work for Oaktree Capital Management.
I used to see photos like those hanging up in cinema foyers when I was a kid, there from the days of silent movies. Where’s Rudolph Valentino?
Oaktree’s based in Luxembourg for its European operations, but can be ultimately traced to an address in Los Angeles. Though registered in the state of Delaware, which serves as a kind of internal tax haven in the USA. But it’s not straightforward, as the group accounts filed with Companies House for Oaktree Capital UK Ltd make clear.
Oaktree is another of those companies that makes nothing, grows nothing, and performs no service for the benefit of mankind. Just another gang of sharp-suited spivs shuffling around other people’s money to make themselves rich.
The parasite capitalism that bedevils and seeks to control the modern world.
◊
FURTHER UPDATE
In those earlier posts, another company that came into the frame was Quidos. Or rather, a number of companies operating under that name. Quidos seemed to provide training and accreditation for the ECO4 ‘retrofit’ companies listed in the panel above.
That name is Philip John Stanley. So what can I tell you about Mr Stanley? Let’s start with his Linkedin page. (Not sure about that waistcoat.)
To begin with, and to judge by the addresses of his previous companies, he lives in Liverpool. In fact, I compiled a list of companies with which he’s been involved. Here it is in pdf format.
The companies he’s formed since 2013 have a number of things in common. Most noticeably, that none of them ever turns a profit. They either fold without filing accounts or they return losses. How does the poor man survive?
And then there’s the strange matter of two companies with the same name, Love to Feel. Now I’m fairly sure that’s not allowed by Companies House. But Stanley got around it by naming one Love to Feel Ltd and the other Love to Feel Limited.
But why would anyone do that? It’s guaranteed to cause confusion.
The ‘Ltd’ company is based in Liverpool, and files as dormant. The ‘Limited’ company – Dissolved in May 2024 – gave its address as Bryn Derwen, Parc Menai, Bangor.
But the reason Philip John Stanley is appearing here is because of what seems to be a real departure for him, both in the line of business, and in locations.
◊
CONSUMER RIGHTS
If you go to the table I linked to above, you’ll see two Community Interest Companies (CIC). Now a CIC is not supposed to make a profit and, as the name suggests, it should serve the public interest.
One advantage of a CIC is that it’s easier to set one up with Companies House than it is to register a charity with the Charity Commission. Fewer questions are asked.
Consumer Rights Ltd was launched in November 2021, in Liverpool. It converted to a CIC January 12 2023, and the following day moved to Bryn Derwen, Parc Menai, Bangor.
Might this confuse people, like the two Love to Feel companies?
Less than a week after Consumer Rights CIC moved to Bangor Stanley launched Consumer Rights (Scotland) CIC. Giving an address in Leith, Edinburgh.
Does it link with Consumer Energy Solutions and the other companies in the group being – for public consumption – owned by Cairngorm Capital of Edinburgh?
A director in both Consumer Rights companies was James Joseph Rimmer. Here’s his Linkedin page. He spent over 17 years with Experian, one of the ‘big three’ credit bureaux. Major stakeholders in Experian are BlackRock and Vanguard.
Clearly, Rimmer would know how to use databases.
And Quidos Pure moved its address last month from Bath to Bodlondeb, Conwy, the old council offices now leased by Pritchard.
◊
REMEMBER NEV?
Another name we encountered in the table of Stanley companies I linked to, was Neville Wilshire. Which may sound familiar; if so, it’s because he was the star of the television series The Call Centre. He died in December 2021.
Which might answer the question: What’s the relationship between Consumer Rights CIC and the companies shown in the panel at the top? Including Consumer Energy Solutions, with its dissatisfied customers and unpaid former employees?
There clearly is a connection, for Stanley is a person with significant control of Quidos Pure Ltd. Majority control of Quidos Pure rests with Quidos Holdings Ltd, controlled by Pritchard. And Pritchard links with the other companies.
Also worth remembering that CES was based in Swansea. Like Nev’s call centre.
The company that links Neville Wilshire with Philip John Stanley is EAGA Card Ltd. It was originally based at these salubrious offices in downtown Chepstow, with accountants Macario Lewin. Which also has a presence in Swansea.
After moving its address to Llanelli EAGA Card Ltd was Dissolved in December 2022, after Neville Wilshire’s death. So I got to wondering about the EAGA or Eaga name.
There was a company of that name in Newcastle “supplying energy efficiency products“, bought up in 2011 by Carillion, and the name then disappeared, according to Wikipedia. There was also an EAGA Charitable Trust, which ceased in 2020/21.
But it seems the name was revived by someone in the same line of business as the Geordie original. And by January 2021 people were being cold called.
That may have been Neville Wilshire’s company. Or perhaps it was Philip John Stanley. For by then Stanley could have learnt how to use databases from Rimmer, and call centre know-how from Wilshire.
◊
THOUGHTS
Consumer Energy Solutions Ltd (CES) has departed this mortal coil, and last month the Administrator issued a Statement of Affairs. Assets available for “preferential creditors” amounted to £307,915. Yet the claims from employees alone amounted to £586,185.
Certainly, there are some creditors that’ll hardly notice the loss, such as American Express, owed £689,536. Or HMRC, owed £1,188,925. But many creditors are small local suppliers.
The total deficit was £112,671,723. With almost all that owed to ‘Alter Domus Trustees (UK) Ltd (Oak Tree)’. Presumably referring to Oaktree Capital Management, mentioned above.
This, I believe, is a debt spread across the group. Where the picture is no rosier. For all the shares in CES are held by Diversity Network Holdings Ltd, of Cardiff Business Park, Llanishen, where a Receiver was appointed February 11.
As you can see, the trading name appears to be Heatforce, or Heatforce (Wales) Ltd, which is still in business. Certainly, that’s how it appears. But the most recent accounts, up to year ending January 31, 2025 (showing a loss), acknowledged “difficulties“, restructuring, and the involvement of Oaktree.
But of course, these accounts were filed with Companies House before Consumer Energy Solutions went bust.
Of the other companies in the group panel at the top, accounts are now overdue with Companies House for those that haven’t officially gone into liquidation or receivership.
As you’ve read, Cairngorm Capital of Edinburgh is central to the collapse of CES and other companies in the group.
I earlier made a reference to “parasite capitalism” to describe Cairngorm, but maybe a better description would be ‘slash and burn’.
We invest in profitable companies that have the potential for transformative growth.
That’s Cairngorm’s business model; and yes, bankruptcy is certainly “transformative“.
In January I put out, ‘Cairngorm Capital – The Kiss of Death‘. In that piece I looked at other companies, outside of Wales, that got involved with Cairngorm. And found a very similar story with them.
One was Sentry Doors, near Doncaster. And I recently received a message from a former Sentry Doors employee. You can read it here.
That is a very unhappy ex-worker.
And yet it gives a personal insight into the Cairngorm business model we’ve seen in Wales – take over, put in (or buy) accomplices, treat the workers (and customers) like shit, run the company into the ground, grab what you can, do a runner.
The directors there work for Cairngorm, and this company is covered by the same charge with Oaktree Bank PLC as covers Sentry Doors.
◊
CONCLUSION
A big part of the problem is that when governments have shovel-loads of cash to throw away on schemes like ECO4, with poor regulation and oversight (if any at all), then such schemes will draw people who, to put it kindly, will be less than honest.
And this will involve both local companies and foreign investors. With the former being used by the latter to grab the loot.
Here’s perhaps a personal example of what I’m talking about. Just last week the leaflet below came through my letter-box.
I phoned the number given, on Sunday, and again yesterday. Both times I got an American voice telling me the number was disconnected. What’s the point of distributing a leaflet with a non-working number?
The QR code links to the website. Which suggests a company called ‘FTCH Wales’. Using the same, unobtainable phone number. The Companies House registration gives the address of a Colwyn Bay solicitor.
(As for the ‘accreditations’ on the bottom – ignore them. Yer pays yer money and yer gets yer little badge, no questions asked. Or you just copy and paste.)
Googling the phone number brought up a link to FTCH Group, in Liverpool, possibly above an Italian eatery. (FTCH stands for First Time Central Heating.) The website provides the following message:
Yeah, I know the feeling.
In view of what happened to Consumer Energy Solutions (Reminder), and given the web of linked companies, some collapsed, the shady foreign investors, the missing money, the cold calling, there should be an official investigation.
But there won’t be.
Because the ‘Welsh Government’ is utterly useless. When it comes to money, business, or running an economy, those virtue-signalling clowns in Corruption Bay have been out of their depth since devolution started on May 6 1999.
They were always easy prey for sharks and shysters. But let’s look ahead.
After the Senedd elections on May 7 Labour will be out of power. Plaid Cymru looks likely to emerge with most seats, but not enough for a majority, so that’ll mean a coalition or some kind of agreement.
I had something else planned to go out on Monday, but I’ve held it back in light of fresh information I’ve received about the activities of Bute Energy. Information that raises wider considerations.
◊
INTRODUCTION
Let me start with an apology. I’ve been writing about Bute’s activities in Wales for seven or eight years. This meant ignoring projects elsewhere, and overlooking Bute and Windward companies that had no obvious Welsh connection.
That may have been a mistake. And in view of recent events suggesting dubious links with China, no longer tenable. Dealt with on this blog.
Apology made, one company I have mentioned, one I could never make sense of, was Storagefolk Ltd. Presumably involved in . . . warehousing?
Launched 23.09.2017 Storagefolk appears to be the oldest surviving Windward-Bute company apart from Windward Enterprises Ltd (until very recently Windward Global), the ultimate holding company, where Oliver James Millican, capo di tutti capi in the W-B world, is in sole charge.
But what’s its purpose, and how does it fit into the wider empire? Information received offers some answers. And opens up a new line of inquiry.
As you can see from the Companies House entry for Storagefolk the address is in Mayfair, that upmarket district of London. The sole director is Millican. But he gives his address as Hodge House in Cardiff, where we find virtually all the companies relevant to Wales. Or at least, those we know about.
At the address in Curzon Street, hosting Storagefolk, we find Turcan Connell Company Secretaries Ltd. Scottish legal eagles with their HQ in Edinburgh. A company regularly used by Millican and his mates.
◊
MY! WHAT A BIG WAREHOUSE YOU’VE GOT. AND SO MANY OF THEM!
Of the companies registered at that address, we’re interested in the ones shown in the panel below. Particularly those to which I’ve been directed. (Storagefolk appears on the previous page.)
Precision Capital is a Luxembourg-based holding company that represents the private interests of members of the Al-Thani family of Qatar.
The charge was against a building just to the east of Glasgow, close to the M8 that runs to Edinburgh. A property offering 127,000 square foot of space.
Another company worth looking at is Windward Z3B Ltd, with the same pattern. Funding from Brown Shipley for two more storage facilities on industrial or technology parks around Aberdeen.
I could go on, but you should get the picture. Companies in the W-B empire have, for perhaps a decade, been buying up big warehouses, often borrowing from a ’boutique’ bank owned by an oil-rich family in Qatar.
In another major milestone, IKM Testing UK today opens its third facility as it pushes ahead with plans to expand into international markets, the renewables sector and increase its UK decommissioning work.
But IKM only accounts for some of W-B’s real estate, so the question remains: Why does it need all this storage space?
◊
PLANNING AHEAD?
First, let me clear up the purpose of Storagefolk before telling you how Windward-Bute buying up vast areas of storage space was explained to me:
(Storagefolk) is purely a negotiating shell for projects in Scotland and NE England; it is used in proposals to financiers, a distinct legal entity is then formed post-investment decision to ring fence properties and interests – and distance from the risk of course.
As for the warehouses, it seems that W-B has been importing parts and components for turbines, solar installations, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) for quite a few years.
This stockpiling is in anticipation of a crackdown on imported parts for ‘renewable’ energy projects. This seems plausible as the opposition mounts to increasing energy prices resulting from ‘Mad’ Ed Miliband’s Net Zero death-wish.
The real estate arm of the Windward portfolio . . . is working with multiple overseas businesses and at least one national government to house interests and commodity items relating to renewables infrastructure. There are warehouses in Wales and Scotland filled to the rafters with BESS and pylon materials – rented and landed for resale exclusively to the UK market to artificially appear to restrict overseas procurement and brand it as available when supply chains pinch in the late 2027 to early 2029 drive.
Is it just forward planning, or is there more to it?
As an example of ‘more to it’, can we assume these imports come from China? I’d put a few quid on it. And if I’ve picked the right nag, then this explains a few other things.
For as we’ve recently learnt, it’s impossible to escape the China connection when dealing with Windward-Bute. So I was not surprised to be told that two of the Big Three (Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George, and Lawson Douglas Steel) have even stated they’d sell to “interested parties from China at the right price“.
But none of these machinations would be possible without political influence, and that influence is not confined to Labour in Wales.
Let’s remember that Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the UK Labour party, now Baron Watson of Wyre Forest, is a non-executive director of Windward Energy Ltd, where he’s listed as plain old Thomas Anthony Watson.
It’s suggested this provides a good connection through Great British Energy to ‘Mad’ Ed Miliband himself, the apostle of Net Zero, de-industrialisation, and electricity consumer impoverishment.
To sum up: there is a concerted effort not only to increase expenditure and reliance on ‘renewables’, but also to remove cheaper and more reliable alternatives. This explains why the UK is closing down North Sea oil and gas . . . only to buy from Norway, which extracts from the same North Sea source.
Proving it has sod all to do with saving the planet.
This is the ugly world inhabited by Windward-Bute. It’s not limited to wind turbines despoiling landscapes, it’s about using political influence to remove competition providing more reliable and cheaper alternatives.
In Wales, this has resulted in the infiltration of the Labour party to the point where it’s hopelessly compromised. Election posters for May’s Senedd elections should read: ‘Vote for Dai Jones – your Bute Welsh Labour candidate‘.
We know W-B is also making inroads into Plaid Cymru. The Greens were always on side. But does it end there?
Maybe not.
◊
TITBITS, THOUGHTS
In this section I’ll look at a few other items that have come my way and how they perhaps fit with what we already knew.
First, I’m told that Nigel Farage had a closed-door meeting in January with Windward Energy Ltd Chairman Steve Scrimshaw. So let’s have a statement from Reform on where it stands on ‘renewable energy’ and rising electricity prices.
More closed door negotiations preceded the decision by the Wales Pension Partnership to invest £68m (for starters?) in Windward-Bute. A source says that very influential in the ultimate decision was Cardiff Lib Dem councillor Rhys Taylor.
Taylor of course sits on the council’s Pensions Committee, but I bet you can’t guess where his day job is. Let me help . . .
So we see that Windward-Bute also has its claws into the Lib Dems.
I’m told the investigations into Taylor and Aplin might result in a number of Senedd Members, MSPs and MPs being invited to ‘help police with their inquiries’.
Understandably, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), the main funders for W-B’s renewable energy projects, is said to be pissed off by the recent news and allegations of spying for China.
Which provides yet another link to ‘Welsh’ Labour. Through Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Danish PM, her directorship of Vestas since 2019, and that company’s 25% stake in CIP.
Her seat on the Brussels gravy-train was taken by Derek Vaughan who, following Brexit, was given a non-job by Windward-Bute on its Welsh Advisory Board.
Kinnock the Younger’s constituency is home to Port Talbot steelworks, so recently and shamelessly allowed to die. Welcomed in certain circles because it reduces Wales’ output of some evil dreamed up by Greenhairs.
∼
I’m going to throw out an idea that might sound outrageous, yet it’s plausible. Just think about it.
They had no experience in ‘renewables’; and to my knowledge they’ve still not erected a single turbine. Certainly not in Wales. But is this missing the point?
They now have sites designated, landowners signed up, planning applications submitted, politicians and others bought, financial backing for the projects arranged, and warehouses stacked to the gunwales with the wherewithal to complete the projects.
So if Windward-Bute only gets half or less of the planning consents applied for – even no planning approval at all – they could still sell up and make a massive profit. Especially if the anticipated crackdown on (recently) imported parts comes into play and the components they bought years ago rocket in price.
Maybe that was always the business model. Not actually building anything.
If nothing else, it’ll be a very lucrative fall-back position.
◊
CONCLUSION
Windward-Bute has corrupted Welsh political and public life. And it was so predictable.
With a form of devolved government designed to fail. And with ‘progressive’ politicians too stupid and gullible to have made even a good model work.
Made worse by those same politicians seriously believing Wales alone could save a planet being destroyed by humans – and their farting cows!
Politicians believing that lobbyists and pressure groups should determine policies, and that they should be able to do so free from regulation or restraint.
Resulting in overlapping and incestuous circles in one relatively small city, circles of perhaps no more than two or three thousand people in total, damaging the lives of over three million people.
This shit-show was bound to attract the kinds of ‘developers’ we’ve seen over the past 27 years. With Windward-Bute perhaps the worst, the most pernicious example.
Windward-Bute already has the shadow of ‘China spying’ hanging over it, and the stain of buying political influence, but it doesn’t end there.
The West’s lemming-like rush over the cliff of ‘renewables’ isn’t just good news for China, on which we depend for everything from rare earth minerals to completed solar panels; it’s also welcomed in the oil-rich Gulf states because ‘renewables’ are also unreliables, and need back-up.
Some might think that a UK-based company or individuals enriching themselves from helping de-industrialise and impoverish the West is tantamount to treason.
And I would agree. For ‘renewables’ are a response to nothing but avarice.
You must know what this is about. But in case you’ve been sleeping for a week . . . three men, with close ties to the ‘Welsh’ Labour party, were arrested last Wednesday “on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service“. They were released on bail the following day.
◊
WHO’S INVOLVED?
The first, is David James Taylor. Originally of Ruthin, now perhaps London. But he spent most of the intervening years working as a special advisor (spad) to a number of prominent Labour politicians.
These were Rhodri Morgan, first secretary of Wales between 2000 and 2009. Peter Hain, one-time anti-Apartheid campaigner, MP for Neath, who held a few posts in the UK government, and now sits in the House of Lords. I seem to think Taylor might also have done a stint with Morgan’s successor, Carwyn Jones.
Around a decade ago Taylor got himself involved in wind energy. More on this later.
Next up is Steven Jones. He has already been removed from the website of the lobbying group Camlas Cymru, for which he works in Cardiff. He definitely worked for Carwyn Jones. As this report makes clear.
Also non-personed by Camlas is the third man arrested last Wednesday, Matthew Aplin.
‘Camlas’, I suggest, might be translated into English as canal or channel.
Camlas was founded, as Positif Politics Ltd, in January 2006 by Daran Hill and his wife. But Hill was sent down in July 2023 for sharing images of child abuse.
Hill links with Taylor through a company called (after a couple of name changes) Leckwith Ltd. This was started by Taylor in November 2011 and taken over by Hill on New Year’s Day 2018. Leckwith was Dissolved just over a year after the exchange.
Was Hill killing off a possible competitor? If so, how much did he pay Taylor?
Whatever, Taylor then became a client of Hill. As I found out in a DM exchange back in August 2020. (Full version here.)
They might have met when Reid was a councillor in Islington from 2014 to 2022.
Reid claimed no knowledge of her husband’s business activities. But why would she link the arrest to his business dealings? He was arrested on suspicion of spying.
Following Taylor’s arrest, Reid said in a statement that she is “not part of” her husband’s business activities.
So what have we got? A young MP, only elected in 2024, on the right of the Labour party, and certainly not privy to state secrets.
Of the three men, none is a nuclear scientist, or a high-ranking military officer, so I think we can rule out slipping the Chinese Communist Party important information.
Which leaves me to conclude that what they’re suspected of is commercial in nature. Unless of course, the CCP is planning to take over the ‘Welsh’ Labour party. But if the comrades in Beijing rummage in the drawers, and check down the backs of the sofas, they might find a receipt for that shower.
Whatever they paid – they wuz robbed!
Let’s proceed on the assumption that any offence committed is of a commercial or financial nature.
UPDATE: 01.04.2026: This incredible story just took another crazy turn with the suggestion that Joani Reid had ‘relationships’ with two captains of nuclear submarines. Read it for yourself.
◊
MORE ON DAVID JAMES TAYLOR, INTRODUCING BUTE ENERGY
For perhaps ten years David James Taylor has been involved with renewable energy. More specifically wind power. His involvement is due to developers realising how useful he is through his contacts in the Labour party that’s run the Welsh parliament for 27 years, either alone or with a junior partner in the Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru.
All this is covered in the many, many pieces I’ve put out on Bute Energy.
A good place to start might be Hendy Wind Farm, not far from Llandrindod. Where nary a turbine has turned. The eponymous company was launched in May 2011 by Matthew Simon Weiner, Graham Prothero, Michael Henry Marx, and Charles Julian Barwick.
There were linked projects at Bryn Blaen, near Llangurig, and Rhoscrowther on Milford Haven waterway.
Behind it was an outfit called U+I, taken over late in 2021 by Landsec.
The original directors were joined in August by Steven John Radford who, in May 2011, had launched Njord Energy Ltd. This company is in the process of being wound up. A new Radford company launched last year is Njord Wind.
Planning permission for Hendy was refused by the local council in April 2017, and this decision was upheld by an inspector in May 2018. At the council meeting a lobbyist tried to hand a note to the councillors and she had to be ushered away.
The woman was Anna McMorrin, working for Invicta Public Affairs of Newcastle. A Labour stalwart, she became MP for Cardiff North in the general election of June 2017.
As I say, permission for this windfarm was refused; but then came a strange incident that defied – and still defies – explanation. In October 2018, Lesley Griffiths, the Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ said she would ignore the planning inspector’s decision and allow Hendy Wind Farm to go ahead.
By this time David JamesTaylor had developed an interest in wind turbines (which may link with his failure to be elected North Wales PCC in May 2016). Taylor’s an ally and friend of Griffiths. Here he is campaigning for her.
A month before Griffiths’ bizarre decision a company was launched called Windward Generation Ltd. Later re-named Bute Energy Ltd, then RSCO 3750 Ltd, and Dissolved in September 2023.
The original directors, from Scotland, were Oliver James Millican and Lawson Douglas Steele. They were joined six days later by Radford.
Bute Energy has since spawned many companies planning windfarms, solar arrays, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), and pylon runs from central Wales; one to just south of Carmarthen where it’ll meet the main grid from Pembroke running through the south and on to England, the other running north east and over the border near Oswestry.
The ultimate holding company for them all is Windward Global Ltd, formed 16 May 2017. The only shareholder is Oliver James Millican. He’s the son of Peter Millican of real estate company Parabola. Millican, Steele, and the other member of the Bute troika, Stuart Allan George, had all worked for Parabola, and all ‘left’ at the same time.
Taylor was soon involved. Becoming a partner in Grayling Capital LLP. And holding shares in Windward Energy Ltd, both in his own name and that of his company Moblake Associates Ltd. These shares seem to have been sold in July 2022.
But why was Taylor given these shares in the first place? Why was he a partner in the LLP? What was he doing for Bute?
I’ll conclude this section on Taylor by saying that in the Moblake Ltd accounts for year ending 30 April 2021 we find this entry.
There’s no explanation of where the money came from that he gave himself as a ‘loan’. Even though it’s before the sale of the Windward Energy shares I still assumed this money came from Bute, for services rendered.
Moblake soon went into liquidation.
◊
POSITIF, CAMLAS, BUTE
In the first section I mentioned David Taylor’s link to child pornography fan Daran Hill, and Hill’s company Positif. Since renamed Camlas. And we saw that the other two men arrested with Taylor are Camlas employees.
Camlas is owned by Rhodri ab Owen. Rhodri’s brother is Senedd Member Rhys ab Owen, who sits as an Independent following a minor lapse that saw the pearl-clutchers of Plaid Cymru distance themselves.
These brothers are the sons of lifelong Plaid activist and Assembly Member the late Owen John Thomas, with whom I had a few jars back in The Good Old Days when the party prioritised Wales and Welsh interests before going far left then Woke.
Camlas seems to be another Plaid-Labour hybrid. (Like Deryn.) For as we’ve seen, and despite Plaid ownership, there’s plenty of Labour involvement. Another from that quarter worth mentioning is Naomi Williams, the partner of Labour SM Jack Sargeant, who did 14 years with Positif-Camlas and ended up as Managing Partner.
Another Camlas-Labour connection is provided by Matthew Hexter. He worked for Camlas for over three years, as a Senior Political Consultant, before becoming a Special Adviser at the Wales Office.
Bute Energy is a client of Camlas. And as I’ve established above, Taylor has a lengthy association with Bute. But Taylor’s now moved on, and since September last year he’s been Head of Programmes for Asia House in London.
I don’t know much about Asia House, but it has many contacts in China. That’s almost inevitable, with China being the largest Asian country. And there needn’t be anything suspicious about it. Except that China is a country controlled by a Communist regime with its hand in everything.
Taylor’s most recent company is Earthcott Ltd. Launched 1 September 2021. The latest accounts, to year ending 30 September 2024, show a big increase in assets and cash. And, as we saw earlier with Moblake, there’s no explanation for where it comes from.
Is this to be paid to himself as a loan that doesn’t need to be repaid?
Idly flicking through the Asia House accounts filed with Companies House, I soon came upon the capture you see below, which rang a bell. But why?
Rathbones is a major investment company, with its roots in Liverpool. Like most asset and investment companies nowadays it’s keen to make money from ‘renewable’ energy. But let me explain why I found Rathbone’s involvement interesting.
The Rathbone family still benefits handsomely from such investments. One member of the family sits in the Senedd, Jenny Rathbone, SM for Cardiff Central since 2011. As Wikipedia tells us:
Her husband, or partner, John Uden, who knows bugger all about wind energy, had a sinecure created for him by Bute Energy on its ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ a few years back. Another member recruited was redundant Labour MEP Derek Vaughan.
In fact, Bute has been hoovering up people with influence in the Labour party for some years. A recent addition is Sophie Howe, former Future Generations Commissioner, who’s now a director of Bute Energy Ltd.
And it seems to have started with David James Taylor, because the boys from Edinburgh didn’t know anybody here until they recruited him.
But now, with the wind in their sails, Plaid Cymru seem to be the target. One notable recruit being 29-year-old Baroness Carmen Smith. She was selected for the Lords by the party hierarchy over the members’ choice of former MP Elfyn Llwyd.
Martin ‘Shippo’ Shipton, of ‘Welsh Government’-funded Nation.Cymru, had his door kicked in just after 6am last Wednesday by an “eight-strong team from the counter-terrorism division of the Metropolitan Police“. As he reports here.
To believe him this was all a misunderstanding due to a completely innocent visit he made to Hong Kong, with David James Taylor, to meet representatives of the Chinese Communist Party.
Fair enough, squire . . . except that Shippo has made his admiration for Communist China clear on a few occasions.
He sounds like a visitor to Stalin’s Russia in awe of the grain harvest.
And on Friday the Western Mail gave him a big spread. Though I was initially confused by the reference to “top Welsh journalist“.
Shipton is a biased lefty propagandist subsidised with our money. If it was up to me I’d have him ‘cuffed, dragged off to some quiet place, where he’d be encouraged to respond to the gentle persuasion of a rubber hose.
But, then, I’m a far-right bastard . . . who respects democracy, who wants to defend freedom of speech, who rejects censorship and Digital ID, who realises that Net Zero is a Globalist scam, who knows that Covid was engineered by some truly evil bastards.
Just another nobody who loves his country, and realises who its real enemies are.
Another property has been searched. So who is it? Well, he’s a former aide to Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the Labour party, who now sits in the House of Lords.
I could go about Labour party connections with Bute. For example, funding is said to be coming from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, where we find a former Danish PM, who happens to be the wife of Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon.
Welsh politics is corrupt. It’s a cess-pit. There could be no other way after a century of Labour party dominance and the cronyism and nepotism that goes with it.
With devolution third-rate politicos have been bossed around by spads and advisers, civil servants answering to bosses in London, and bullied by lobbysists and others. All of whom have more influence in Corruption Bay than we, the people they were elected to represent.
Which explains so much. Such as why Wales is the only country in the Western world without a register of lobbyists. Because the lobbyists didn’t want it!
In recent years, new players have added to that corruption.
Among these new players, Bute Energy is prominent. It wants to plaster rural Wales in 250-metre-tall wind turbines, cover good land with solar panels, and destroy what remains with pylons.
And Bute’s done this through buying political influence. The boys from Auld Reekie know how the game is played. And it was so easy when you’re dealing with thick-as-shit politicians, with no business sense – but stupid and gullible enough to believe that human beings are destroying the planet!
And for what? Unreliable and expensive ‘renewable’ energy. While China builds one coal-fired power station after another. While supplying us with components for wind turbines and complete solar panels.
It would relatively easy for China to begin a takeover of the UK energy market in Wales. There’d be little or no oversight from incompetent politicians who’d dress it all up as ‘diversity’ or ‘foreign investment’, or some such nonsense.
With the mainstream media, aided by the likes of Martin ‘China’ Shipton and Wee Willy Hayward, denouncing critics as racists and Sinophobes.
I don’t want it to look like I’m picking on Bute Energy, but it’s certainly a link between those who were pulled in. Bute, and of course the ‘Welsh’ Labour party that Bute’s so successfully infiltrated.
On top of which, people are telling me that Bute, perhaps due to mounting local opposition to its plans, is looking to sell up.
I’ll say no more. Form your own conclusions from the evidence I’ve presented.
To explain the title . . . Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was any talk of a Welsh Parliament, Home Rule, or devolution, one of the arguments used against the idea was that such a creation would just be “Glamorgan County Council on stilts“.
The implication being that other parts of Wales would be ignored. That investment, jobs and other goodies resulting from self-government would be concentrated in that area.
In this piece I’ll try to persuade you that what we’ve seen since 1999 is even worse.
◊
FIRST SECRETARY, FIRST MINISTER
I’m going to begin by looking at the first secretaries and first ministers we’ve had since the beginning of the devolution experiment.
The first, said to be Tony Blair’s choice, even “Blair’s poodle“, was Alun Michael. He was never very popular, either within the Labour party or the country at large, and was first secretary for just nine months, until May 2000.
A former Cardiff City councillor, he later served as Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth. Then Regional Assembly Member for Mid & West Wales. And PCC for South Wales.
Michael was replaced by the much more popular Rhodri Morgan. Who stayed in the first minister role until December 2009.
Cardiff-born Morgan was MP (until 2001 GE) and AM for Cardiff West from 1999.
Next came Carwyn Jones. Despite being born in Swansea, and practising law there for a number of years, he represented the Bridgend constituency. His Cardiff connection was established by being a tutor for a few years at Cardiff University.
I’ve said it many times on this blog, and I’ll say it again, Cardiff University is joined at the hip to the local Labour establishment. The School of Journalism should be renamed the School of Globalist-Left Propaganda.
Jones stood down as leader in December 2018. He now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Jones of Penybont.
He was succeeded by Mark Drakeford, a former South Glamorgan County councillor who became the Assembly Member for Cardiff West in the May 2011 elections.
Drakeford was born and raised in Carmarthenshire, but moved to Cardiff over 40 years ago. And was a lecturer at Cardiff University.
From 1985 to 1993, Drakeford represented the Pontcanna ward on South Glamorgan County Council, with fellow future Welsh Assembly members Jane Hutt and Jane Davidson as his ward colleagues.
(Jane Davidson was at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Labour AM for Pontypridd (1999 – 2011), and wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that enforces ESG and DEI in every aspect of Welsh life.)
Drakeford stood down as first minister in March 2024. He will not stand again in May.
Then came the brief tenure of his successor Vaughan Gething. After serving as councillor for the Butetown ward on Cardiff City Council he became the Senedd Member for Cardiff South & Penarth in 2011.
Gething is also standing down.
Gething was succeeded in August 2024 by the current incumbent, and former MEP, Eluned Morgan, the Regional Member for Mid & West Wales.
Born and raised in Cardiff she sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Morgan of Ely.
So we see a Cardiff connection with all first secretaries or first ministers Wales has known in 27 years of devolution. And with five out of the six a strong connection.
Given that Cardiff makes up some twelve per cent of Wales’ population, this statistic is truly remarkable. And should be concerning.
◊
SOME INTERESTING SENEDD MEMBERS
Beginning with Bridgend, where we find Sarah Murphy. Who was born and raised in Pontypridd then, after Reading University, worked in Seoul and London. She came back to Cardiff; held posts with the Labour party, and the University. More exactly, the School of Journalism.
Next, Cardiff Central. The patch of uber wealthy Jenny Rathbone since 2011. She’s a member of the Rathbone dynasty of Liverpool, where she was born. Her knowledge of Wales is on a par with that of a stay-at-home Eskimo. Limited to Cardiff and the area around her holiday home up in Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr.
Hubby, John Uden, who knows as much about wind power as the heretofore mentioned Innuit knows of Wales, somehow managed to get on the ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ of Bute Energy. Which was handy, seeing as Mrs Uden sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.
She’s standing down in May. Her vacuous wittering will not be missed.
Cardiff North is where we find Julie Morgan, widow of Rhodri. Cardiff born and bred, she is a former South Glamorgan and Cardiff City councillor, and was elected to the Senedd in 2011 after losing the Westminster seat of Cardiff North in 2010.
She is also standing down.
Cardiff South & Penarth is held by former first minister, Vaughan Gething. (See above.)
Cardiff West is held by former first minister Mark Drakeford (See above.)
Cynon Valley brings up Vikki Howells, who was born and raised in the constituency, and attended Cardiff University.
The SM for LlanelliLee Waters is definitely a member of the Corruption Bay in crowd. A former ITV Wales journalist, director of think tank IWA, then director-lobbyist for bike charity Sustrans, he’s the man responsible for the 20mph restrictions.
Despite being SM for a seat west of Swansea, he lives just outside Cardiff.
He’s standing down in May.
Now we head up to Merthyr where the local representative is Bristol City fan Dawn Bowden. Another Bay insider who worked her way up through union ranks but who knows as much about the Heads of the Valleys as the denizen of the frozen north I mentioned earlier.
But that doesn’t matter – she was promised a safe seat.
Which she’ll thankfully vacate in May.
Another carpet-bagger can be found in Pontypridd in the form of Mick Antoniw. He came to Wales to study at Cardiff University, and stayed. One of those who drove through the absurd and corrupt voting system we’ll be using in May.
Of Ukrainian descent, he’s made a number of very public trips there to deliver ‘aid’. If Wales was independent he’d want us to declare war on Russia.
Another one standing down.
A odd one now, in Julie James, SM for Swansea West. Odd, because even though she was born in Swansea, travelled around a lot in her early life, she was involved in the Gilestone farm saga before being elected to the Assembly in 2011. As a solicitor working against the then owners, which paved the way for the land to be bought by someone’s chosen buyer.
Also standing down.
Moving east to Torfaen, ‘though born in Merthyr, Lynn Neagle is definitely part of the Bay Bubble. Wife of former Labour AM Huw Lewis.
Neagle has worked for, “Shelter Cymru, Mind and the CAB. She was Carers Development Officer with Voluntary Action Cardiff and also worked as a researcher for Glenys Kinnock MEP“.
And, finally . . . Jane Hutt, who sits for the Vale of Glamorgan, is another who moved to Wales to involve herself in charities and third sector bodies: National Co-ordinator of Welsh Women’s Aid, South Glamorgan Women’s Workshop, Tenant Participation Advisory Service and Chwarae Teg (Fair Play) . . .
Thankfully, she’s also standing down.
◊
REGIONAL SENEDD MEMBERS
Due to winning so many seats in the south and the north east Labour has just three Regional SMs. One in the North. Here are the two from the Mid & West.
One of course, is Eluned Morgan, the current first minister. (See above.)
The other is Joyce Watson. And she may be unique among Labour SMs because her official bio says: “Joyce has run several small businesses – public houses, restaurants and retail outlets – in Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.”
But did she own them?
But even that ray of hope is dimmed by the usual charity/third sector involvement: “Joyce managed the Wales Women’s National Coalition . . . senior member of the Wales Gender Budget Group . . . NHS Equality Reference Group”.
Watson is another jumping the sinking ship of devolved politics in May.
◊
WHAT IT MEANS
Let’s start with a statistic. The population of Wales grew between the census years of 2001 and 2021 by 6.8%. In the same period Cardiff saw growth of 18.7%. According to some, Cardiff is now the fastest-growing city in the UK.
Most areas of Wales saw negligible growth, with some even recording a fall. Ceredigion, Blaenau Gwent and Gwynedd have declining, and ageing, populations; while Merthyr and a few other areas struggle to maintain their numbers.
Newport’s population increases steadily since charges on the Severn Bridge were abolished, which allowed buyers from England to access the cheaper housing in south east Wales and commute daily to Bristol, or even further. While in many rural areas population increase is due to retirees and good-lifers moving in.
But turning Newport into a Bristol suburb and rural areas into al fresco retirement homes is neither desirable nor sustainable.
Welsh life is increasingly focused in Cardiff, for the benefit of Cardiff. This can be explained by a number of factors. The first, quite obviously, is political power. Then there’s the third sector, charities, pressure groups, which both feed off and feed into the political system.
A political machine serviced by regiments of spads, assistants and researchers, whose loyalty can be guaranteed by the carrot of a council seat, or, for the very lucky – a seat in the Senedd.
But let’s not overlook other beneficiaries, such as those to be found among the movers and shakers of the local business community.
An example would be the Thomas brothers, of the pie and pasty dynasty. It’s universally accepted that the ‘Welsh Government’ paid way over the odds to buy Cardiff airport. But who was the vendor?
But it’s not just the Thomas brothers. There are others.
Then there’s sport. Through funding, the ‘Welsh Government’ effectively took control of the Football Association of Wales and the Welsh Rugby Union.
Which explains why, when Cardiff Rugby went bust the WRU stepped in to buy it. And why the most successful region, the Ospreys, based in Swansea, is threatened with extinction.
The last-but-one owner of Cardiff Rugby was the late Peter Thomas, Stan’s brother.
The clowns currently wrecking Welsh rugby are political appointees, and they’ve been told to prioritise the interests of Cardiff. To the detriment of Welsh rugby as a whole.
Finally, there’s the media. Based in Cardiff and little more than a mouthpiece for those I’ve described above.
And all the while, our economy and our essential services decline and decay.
◊
WHAT MIGHT THE FUTURE HOLD?
If polls are to be believed then Plaid Cymru will emerge in May with most SMs, but not a majority. This will mean Plaid going into coalition, or having an ‘agreement’, or an ‘understanding’, most likely with Labour, possibly with the Greens.
We might even see a ‘progressive’ alliance of all the Globalist-Woke parties. It really won’t make much difference. (But what a nightmare that could be!)
Now some might think that with so much of its support being in the west and the north Plaid Cymru will adopt a different approach. And there might be a few moves away from the obsessive focus on Cardiff, but Plaid would be no real improvement.
Because Plaid wants to take Wales further than Labour on ‘ishoos’ such as Net Zero, trans ‘rights’, DEI, Gaza, ‘Islamophobia’, and decolonising Welsh cakes. And faster down the road of economic implosion and civilisational decline.
Party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth may be the Senedd Member for Ynys Môn, the seat furthest from the Bay, but he’s a former BBC journalist. He was educated at Cardiff University and he’s lived in Cardiff.
And ap Iorwerth may be a figurehead; for many believe the party is still controlled by the acolytes of a previous leader, the PoundShop Pasionaria of Penygraig.
Whatever the outcome in May in party terms, it won’t make much difference. Plaid, Greens, Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, they’re all just differently-badged elements of the Globalist Uniparty. That’s why they repeatedly tell us the upcoming election is solely about defeating Reform.
Is it?
Then again, Labour might welcome a ‘break’. Shun any co-operation, then come back untainted and refreshed in 2031. Hoping electors will have forgotten their record in the Senedd.
And who might lead the Labour comeback? If I was a betting man I’d put a few quid on Huw Thomas. If you’ve never heard of him, let me introduce him.
Huw Thomas, courtesy of Getty Images
He’s 41 years old and from Aberystwyth, he’s bilingual, and he’s been leader of Cardiff Council for nearly 10 years. In May, he’s top of the Labour list for the Caerdydd Penarth constituency.
He’s guaranteed to be elected because Cardiff is an area where Labour will do well.
UPDATE: Soon after posting this article at 9am I went to Tywyn, picked up a Western Mail, read it while having my first coffee of the day. In this article Huw Thomas gets a mighty plug.
If it comes to pass as I predict, and Labour gets back into power in 2031, under his leadership, then everything will revert to the status quo ante Plaid, with Cardiff grabbing the lion’s share of investment and jobs.
Which, to respectfully amend Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, will mean a return to: Government of Wales, by Cardiff, for Cardiff.
Happy Christmas to all those who’ve supported this blog through another year. And may next year be good for you. I suspect 2026 could be a big year, both in Wales and the world. So buckle up!
My priority for 2026 is to persuade those who are clearly deserting Labour that Plaid Cymru is the wrong option. To make people understand that if Labour is the frying pan, then Plaid Cymru is the fire.
Plaid is now so off the wall with its Wokeism that it makes the most indoctrinated student sound rational; while its anti-white racism outdoes BLM, and its anti-Western rhetoric would gain approval from the maddest of mad mullahs.
While the party’s attacks on ‘ethno-nationalism’ undermine its raison d’être.
Plaid is at the point where, compared to the lunacies uttered by Liz Saville-Roberts, Sioned Williams and others, the old-fashioned Marxist wittering we get from Leanne Wood sounds almost coherent.
The message: Anyone who thinks Plaid Cymru would be an improvement on Labour in any way needs to be introduced to reality. Starting January 2nd.
This is something I considered putting out on X; in fact I did, briefly. But more digging made me realise it was so illustrative of the state of Wales it merited a piece on the briefly revived blog.
◊
HOW IT BEGAN
It all started when I noticed a couple of unfamiliar vans in our street. I didn’t recognise the livery, they carried 03333 phone numbers. One had been registered in Bath, the other in Nottingham.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
Curiosity aroused, I thought I’d check out the website given on the vans. But when I tried to reach www.advanceenergy.co.uk I hit the brick wall you see below. Nothing’s been posted on the Facebook page since January 2024.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab.
Now I was really curious.
Next stop, the Companies House website. And from here, a picture started to emerge.
Advance Energy Services Ltd began life in October 2016 as Bright Plumbing and Heating Ltd of Pontypridd. It failed to take off, and in January 2019, with compulsory strike-off just averted, two new directors came aboard: one being Michael Ian Wayman.
I mention Wayman because while he was a director at Advance Energy Services he and another man started a company called Advance Energy (UK) Ltd. Formed in October 2019 it gave up the ghost in July 2021 without ever filing accounts.
At the same time, another Wayman family company, Smart Energy Homes Ltd, saw an upsurge in fortunes. Though the sketchy accounts offer no explanation.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
Meanwhile, directors came and went at Advance Energy Services, and the company address changed a few times.
But something might then have gone awry. I say that because I turned up this notification on the Financial Conduct Authority website dated February 2023. Wayman and his associate are named.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
From this point on I shall avoid naming Welsh or Wales-based individuals unless I feel it’s necessary. It may be possible to find the names on official documents by following the links. That’s unavoidable.
Just over a year on from the FCA mention, in May 2024, Robert Benjamin Nathaniel Brodie became a director. In fact, he joined a host of companies giving addresses mainly in south east Wales. Here’s his Linkedin profile.
He was joined in March this year, at a number of the companies, by Christopher McLain. McLain seems to have had no directorships before then. Here’s his Linkedin profile.
This company uses an address where we’ll find a few other companies in the table below: Unit 10, Lambourne Crescent, Cardiff Business Park, Llanishen, Cardiff CF14 5GP.
◊
THE WEB
I think the best way to join up the dots is to look at the companies where Robert Benjamin Nathaniel Brodie recently became a director. For he seems to be the key, the link to the ultimate owner.
It might look complex, but believe me, everything leads back to Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd and, ultimately, Cairngorm Capital.
There are six names that crop up more than once in the companies found in the table, prior to the takeover by Brodie and McLean. I shall refer to these as The Six.
We find them in Mudrock Investments Ltd. Launched in August 2020, a year or two before they started paving the way (apparently) for Cairngorm Capital.
Mudrock’s into real estate. I know that, partly because Companies House tells us, but also because Mudrock last year applied to Swansea council for a change of use.
The first (skeletal) accounts filed (as at 29.08.2021) showed fixed assets of £390,000. In the most recent (equally skeletal) accounts (to 31.12.2023), Mudrock’s fixed assets had rocketed to £3,142,088.
The address given for Mudrock on the Certificate of Incorporation is Coptic House 4-5 Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff. Though the address used now is a nice little gaff out in Cyncoed.
But it doesn’t end there.
Another strange entity associated with some of those named above was WYRL Ltd, giving an address on Langdon Road, which runs alongside the old Prince of Wales Dock in Swansea. (Where a boy I knew a long time ago used to go fishing.)
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
The 120 WYRL shares were distributed between Diversity Network Holdings (80) and one of The Six (40). WYRL was launched 10 March 2023 and folded 20 August 2024 without filing accounts.
Diversity Network Holdings leads back to Cairngorm Capital. (See table above.)
Just before the end, control passed to View Investments Ltd, where we find two of The Six as directors and shareholders. This company has just avoided strike-off.
There are other companies linked to this lot, but life is short. All I will say is that over the years I’ve reported on many companies that start up and then fold without apparently doing anything, without filing accounts.
This often denotes shady dealings, even criminality. I’m not saying that any referred to here are involved in such activities, but it never looks good.
Since the arrival of Cairngorm Capital, financial support for most of the companies named here and listed in the table has come from Alter Domus.
One thing is clear from looking into these companies, and those involved: A lot of money became available around the time Cairngorm Capital showed up.
Though I suspect most of these companies, having served their purpose, will now be dissolved. But perhaps not Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd. Not yet, anyway.
For last November there was a share issue amounting to some £100,000,000. Here’s how those shares were divvied up.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
As you can see, The Six came out of it very well.
◊
SURELY NOT!
Something struck me while writing about Cairngorm Capital, operating through companies using ‘Dragon’ in the name.
Because it reminded me of the funding for Parabola Bute Energy and its 666 wind farms (none yet built), which have been getting their funding from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners through companies using ‘Dragon’ in their names.
One is CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd. Another is CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd. (Though both have recently changed to CI V.) I suppose using the term is a way of showing these companies operate in Wales.
Something else that struck me was that both Parabola Bute and Cairngorm Capital are based in Edinburgh. Now I appreciate that the Scottish capital is a sizeable city, and a major financial centre, so maybe it could all be dismissed as a coincidence.
Edinburgh. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
But Bute and Cairngorm are both in the electricity business; at different ends, admittedly, but they could complement each other.
Parabola Bute’s wind farms could generate the electricity, be stored in their Battery Energy Storage Systems, distributed by GreenGenCymru, with Cairngorm companies installing the unnecessary but expensive equipment to maximise the profits.
Just a thought.
◊
THERE’S MORE . . .
While I was writing this I received information about something similar happening in the same part of the country and similar kinds of businesses. The name given to me was the Cardo Group.
Naturally, I looked into it. Typing ‘Cardo’ into the Companies House website brings up many options, but here’s the one we’re interested in.
A company Incorporated February 2015 as LCB Construction Holdings Ltd changed its name to LCB Group Holdings Ltd in October 2022, before finally bursting forth as Cardo Group Ltd in May 2023.
LCB was started by a local businessman who is now CEO of Cardo. The website tells us that Cardo provides: ‘A total solution for maintaining and retrofitting homes’.
One cause for concern might be the list of Cardo directors. I suspect that of the 8, our local businessman and a long-time associate may be the only ones living in Wales.
That Buckthorn board is truly impressive. Two Conservative peers and two chaps called Jonty. Break out the Pimms!
But why did it buy out the operation in Cardiff?
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
The answer is that LCB gave Buckthorn entry to the Welsh social housing sector, for heat pumps and all the other bollocks. (But mighty lucrative bollocks.)
Then, because the ‘Welsh Government’ has bought into the climate scam, and it funds housing associations, they must fall into line. Social housing tenants have no choice.
‘Hello, Mrs Evans . . . just to let you know there’ll be a team coming round tomorrow to put a carbon capture plant in your back garden, right love’.
Knowing how close housing associations are to the ‘Welsh Government’, and the Labour party, there is no way that Corruption Bay would have been unaware of Buckthorn’s arrival.
One rabbit hole I sniffed without venturing too far in was Glas Trust Corporation Limited, a funder associated with Cardo, BP INV Bidco, and possibly others since the Buckthorn takeover. (I initially thought it might be Welsh!)
UPDATE 04.08.2025: Since writing this piece there’s been a lot of activity with BP INV6 Bidco Ltd. Many ‘replacement filings’ and ‘clarifications’ related to the allotment of shares, suggesting some confusion.
Let me explain how the Globalist climate scam operates:
1/ Globalist corporations, private equity funds, etc, often working through pressure groups, ‘persuade’ governments to provide funding for green energy projects. In other words, anything that can be sold as saving the planet.
2/ Governments find the funding, even if it means taking money from schools, pensioners, the NHS, neglecting infrastructure, or even raising taxes.
3/ Those who started the process now take over the companies that will be doing the work and serving as conduits for the loot. Or even create new ones.
4/ Globalist corporations, equity funds and the rest then trouser the money they themselves persuaded governments to shell out in the first place.
They might keep the names of local companies, or give new companies Welsh-sounding names, to create the impression that it’s all owned by tidy boys from roun’ by ‘ere.
∼
Let me pause here and make something clear. I believe in independence and the capitalist economic model. I want to see Welsh entrepreneurs and Welsh companies employing Welsh people and building a strong Welsh economy.
But what we’ve looked at here, what we see with the ‘Welsh economy’ in general, is window-dressing. The control always lies elsewhere, and that’s where the profits go.
Because the socialists wrecking Wales prefer silly gestures to building an economy. Apparently believing we Welsh must be protected from the corrupting influence of prosperity.
◊
FINAL THOUGHTS
What you’ve read here is so typical of Wales after 26 years of devolution and Welsh politicians being suckered into obeying the Globalist agenda.
Yet stupid enough to believe they’re doing the right thing!
I keep referring to the ‘climate scam’, because that’s what it is. Dreamt up by a corrupt and decadent elite that bribes, blackmails, or brainwashes politicians and others.
Here we see that class in pursuit of greater wealth and total control.
The wealth comes by many routes, not just the Net Zero lie I’ve just described.
Authoritarianism creeps up through censorship we’re told is vital to protect us from ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’, the ‘far right’, ‘climate deniers’, ‘transphobes’, Nigel Farage, ‘Islamophobes’, Donald Trump, and Uncle Tom Cobleigh an’ all.
Authoritarianism to shout down the truth about the ‘climate crisis’; to defend rape gangs and open borders; to spread anti-white racism, gender nonsense, and to wage war on farming . . . all of which is designed to result in societal breakdown.
At which point the global elite will step from the shadows and offer to put everything right through total censorship, property seizures, digital ID, climate lockdowns, bans on private transport, and other means.
We shall then have reached the Nirvana promised by the WEF, where we own nothing, are surveilled 24/7 – and yet we’ll be happy!
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
The only light relief – or is it gallows humour? – to be found as darkness encroaches is the sight of po-faced socialists believing they’re engaged in a noble, existential struggle to save humanity from itself, when in reality they’re enriching the biggest corporations and the wealthiest individuals on the planet.
Those parasites running the most profitable scam ever devised.
This piece has been prompted by information received from Scotland, which may clear up a lingering mystery, while also telling us more about the operations of those involved with Parabola Bute Energy.
I use that name because I’m convinced that Bute Energy, which wants to build some 20 wind farms in Wales, plus other installations, also mile after mile of pylons, is little more than a venture into the renewables sector by property group Parabola.
The son worked for the father at Parabola, as did the other Bute principals (though some have since left Bute). They all ‘departed’ Parabola late in 2017 or early in 2018.
But to avoid confusion, I’ll stick to the name you’ve become familiar with.
◊
NEWS FROM THE NORTH
I’ve written a lot about ‘Bute Energy’, in its various incarnations, but always from a Welsh perspective. And despite consistently identifying it as a Scottish company, I’ve never really looked into what Bute’s owners might have got up to in Scotland.
So let’s put that right. Starting with a warehouse, a very big warehouse, over 122,000 sq ft; it’s to the east of Glasgow, not far off the M8, which runs to Edinburgh.
If we turn to the Members of this LLP, we see the names of Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George, and Lawson Douglas Steele. These are the names we’ve become familiar with as they keep turning up as directors of the Bute companies in Wales.
At the bottom of the list we see David James Taylor, a Labour insider in Wales whose name has cropped up a few times in the Bute saga.
The warehouse had been used by Lidl, but the company decided to move out to a purpose-built warehouse of their own. So Grayling looked around for a buyer. They didn’t find one, but the Covid pandemic did provide a tenant, in the form of the Scottish government. Or rather, the Scottish NHS.
The lease runs to 31 January 2031, at £766,094 per annum. Which was a good bit of business for Grayling, but it got better. For in March 2021 the warehouse was sold for £14.326m to the Lothian Pension Fund. Ultimately owned by the City of Edinburgh Council.
Though I ask myself, why did Lothian Pension Fund pay £14.3m for a property it must have known sold for half that price just over two years earlier? Did the Auditor General get involved?
Grayling Capital LLP is now liquidated.
In the report I just linked to you’ll see the sale worded thus:
The Lothian Pension Fund has acquired a prime logistics warehouse at Eurocentral in North Lanarkshire from Windward Titan.
Windward Titan was a vehicle set up specifically for the warehouse deal in Scotland, and that explains why it hasn’t been mentioned on this blog. Though ‘Windward’ should certainly be familiar to regular readers. It crops up with a number of other companies.
Windward Titan is now dissolved.
The directors were of course Millican, Steele, and George. Control was exercised by Windward Enterprises Ltd, which is now – since St David’s Day this year – known as Windward Energy Ltd. Which is in turn owned by the company mentioned above as the ultimate holding company, Windward Global Ltd.
Here’s the warehouse disappearing from the Windward Titan balance sheet.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
You’ll see that the warehouse was valued at just over £7 million. It sold for £14.3 million. And on top of that there’s the income of £766,000 a year from the Scottish NHS until 2031. Did that lease transfer to the new owner?
What’s more, a Scottish source tells me that the value of the warehouse was increased because as part of the lease the Scottish government agreed to undertake improvements costing £2.75m.
Bizarrely, this work meant that the warehouse could not be used at the height of the pandemic – which was the reason for taking out the lease in the first place!
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
One reason I find this story from Scotland so interesting is that it seems to presage what we’ve seen in Wales. More on this later.
Another reason is that those involved in the warehouse deal are now in Wales posing as planet savers, but they are first and foremost property speculators.
Never, ever, forget that.
◊
WHO FILLED THEIR BOOTS, AND HOW?
Windward Titan was started with a single £1 share and there was never any money in the kitty, just the value of the warehouse. The only cash money appeared at the end, from the parent company, to settle up with the liquidators.
So to follow the money we need to turn to Grayling Capital LLP.
A LLP is a Limited Liability Partnership, popular with solicitors, accountants, and other professionals working as a partnership. When used in a more commercial context it can disguise ‘opaque’ dealings.
What you see below is from the final page of Windward Titan’s financial statement for year ending 31.03.2020.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
It tells that the Titan warehouse was bought by Windward Titan with a loan from parent company Windward Enterprises Ltd. And it also confirms that everything is ultimately owned by Windward Global Ltd and Oliver James Millican.
To return to Labour insider David James Taylor. Who’d been Spad to Peter Hain MP and Welsh first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones. More specifically, to the money given to his company Moblake Ltd (originally Moblake Wind Ventures Ltd).
From Moblake Ltd financial statement for y/e 31.03.2021. Click to open enlarged in separate tab
There were two possible sources for the ‘interest free loan’ of £605,872 Taylor made to himself. Both linked to Bute.
One was his shares in Windward Energy Ltd (formerly Windward Enterprises Ltd), but he held these shares until July 22, 2022. Whereas the mysterious £600,000+ had been and gone from Moblake at least a year earlier.
The answer would seem to be Taylor being a Member of Grayling Capital LLP. He ceased being a Member September 13, 2021, which ties in with the sale of the Titan warehouse in March of that year to the Lothian Pension Fund.
The question then becomes . . . why was Taylor, living either in Wales or London, involved with a Scottish company doing business in Scotland?
I think the answer may lie in the timing. Taylor joined Grayling Capital in September 2019, a year after the Bute boys seem to have found their way to Wales. They hired him to open doors in Corruption Bay and elsewhere.
So let’s look at what happened. And how I think it was done.
◊
BUTE COMES TO WALES
Now we’re going to look at how a clearly Scottish company manoeuvred itself into such a dominant position in Wales. But it could only have been done with the help of the Labour party.
On this blog, I first mentioned Bute Energy in November 2018, in Corruption in the wind?. But only tangentially. For I was really writing about a guy named Radford, who wanted to build three wind farms; two in Powys, the other in Pembrokeshire.
One of his projects, Hendy, near Llandrindod, was turned down by a planning inspector, but that decision was surprisingly overturned by Lesley Griffiths, who was at the time Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary in Corruption Bay.
To do that was strange enough. But it stank even more when it became clear that Griffiths did it just in time for the developer to erect a single turbine (never connected to the grid), in order to meet the Ofgem payment deadline on January 31, 2019.
Why did Lesley Griffiths give permission for a wind farm that was never going to be built? The answer is a 10-letter word beginning with ‘c’.
As I say, the guy involved was Steven John Radford, of Hendy Wind Farm Ltd. But he was only fronting for a big company called U+I.
The reason Bute got a mention was, and here I quote from that November 2018 piece:
In September Radford branched out again with Bute Energy Ltd, joining six days after its two founding directors.
Those two directors were Millican and Steele, who we’ve already met. Radford may have been their introduction to Wales. (Bute Energy Ltd was re-named RSCO 3750 Ltd in March 2020.)
Or maybe the key lies with whoever introduced them to each other. So let’s fit a few things into that time-frame.
The Bute Boys linked up with Radford, and Taylor might have taken over McMorrin’s role providing a link between developers and Labour party. A different Scottish source told me last year that Taylor has now been replaced by Sophie Howe, the former Future Generations Commissioner.
Among those who get a mention in the table are the four below. Vaughan is a former Labour MEP, and Uden is the husband of Labour MS Jenny Rathbone. For some reason you won’t find the panel below on the Bute website any longer.
Throughout this story I’ve been struck by how often Newcastle crops up. It’s the city where Parabola began life. ‘Bute’ companies have used Newcastle addresses. And Invicta, the lobbyist we encountered with Anna McMorrin, is also based there.
What we looked at earlier in Scotland seems to be repeated to some degree with what we’ve seen in Wales.
On the one hand, we saw Millican and his mates do a lucrative deal with the Scottish Government. Here, Bute Energy has been adopted by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.
Something worth remembering about Bute is that for all the companies, and all the wind farm projects, Bute has never erected a single bloody turbine. Perhaps because those involved are property speculators.
Which is why some people – and I’ve been one of them – think that Bute is not here to actually build wind farms. Maybe they’re just here to get exclusivity agreements with landowners and planning permissions.
Then sell up, making massive profits, without having done much other than smooch Labour politicians and sponsor Cwmscwt Annual Ferret Show.
But because there are now so many wind farm projects planned in Wales it can only be a matter of time before we see developers fighting turf wars. Maybe it’s started.
Take the case of Foel Fach and Orddu, just north of Bala.
When we look at who’s behind Foel Fach, we see again Coriolis Energy Developments LLP and David Charles Murray.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
The map on the left shows the relative positions of the Foel Fach and Orddu summits. The map on the right gives the outline of the Foel Fach wind farm.
But this is where it gets a bit messy.
For a start, I can’t find a map for Orddu, so where will it end and Foel Fach begin? Are they contiguous? Do they overlap? Or are they two names for what will be one big site?
We’ve always been told there must be a ‘buffer zone’ between wind farms and National Parks. But Foel Fach runs right up to the Eryri boundary on the B4501. Who allowed this?
And finally . . . I believe David Charles Murray of Coriolis is Scottish. Many of his other projects have been in Scotland. So are he and the Bute boys acquainted?
Wind farm developments in Wales are out of control, it’s a free-for-all. Planning permission guaranteed; no matter how ugly, inappropriate, or damaging the project. Wales already has too many wind farms (and too many pylons), we don’t need any more.
And because it appears we’re in this mess due to questionable links between wind farm developers and the Labour party, a thorough and impartial examination of such links is surely the best way to proceed.
Being the transparent and co-operative organisation it is, and with nothing to hide, I’m sure the Labour party will agree.
This began as an update to the piece I put out a few days ago. But it grew too big. So I had to admit that the only way to do it properly was as a follow-up, a second part. Which explains what you’re about to read.
◊
LEO FROM THE OLD SCHOOL
A source, someone who’s given me some good stuff in the past, tells me a name to watch for in relation to the Tramshed and other matters is Leonora ‘Leo’ Thomson. She already plays a big role, and may have an even bigger role in future.
Leonora Thomson was educated at Oakham School, and then Leeds University, where she did philosophy. Yet another product of a public school helping to fill the thinning ranks of Labour in Wales.
One day I might put aside some time and see just how many of them there are. For now, I’ll just remind you of two.
There’s Senedd Member Jenny Rathbone of the uber wealthy Rathbone dynasty, who goes big on the environment, and whose partner, John Uden, was given a sinecure by Bute Energy, which wants to cover Wales in wind turbines and pylons.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
And of course, there’s the Green Goddess herself, Jane Davidson, who wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that dictates so many of the restrictions on our personal freedoms, and also the damage being done to our economy.
What was once the party of the Welsh working class has to keep applying an increasingly unconvincing Welsh veneer as it falls further under the control of pressure groups, fanatics, sexual deviants, and career politicians.
Among them we find the privately-educated, conflicted between guilt at their privileged upbringing and the old impulse to shout at the natives.
◊
WHAT LEO DID NEXT
To help you start, here’s Leo’s Linkedin profile. It’s all media, arts, PR. Also a brief stint with the Metropolitan Police, plus 8 years as a Labour councillor in Ealing. All in London until she arrived in Cardiff, December 2015, to become managing director of the Welsh National Opera Company (WNO).
If you go to the About panel on Linkedin, and click on ‘see more’, you bring up what you see below. I’ve highlighted parts that I’ll be referring to as you read on.
Click to open enlarged in separte tab
There’s nothing listed after she ended her stint with the WNO in August 2019. What followed is partly explained in the image above, with the rest filled in as we go along. But now, let’s turn to another line of enquiry.
The oldest active directorship is with English Touring Opera Ltd. She joined 7 June, 2021. Less than two years after leaving the WNO.
On 18 November, 2021 Leo became a director of the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales Ltd. Well, when I read that you could have knocked me down with an illegally-released-into-the-wild beaver!
Yet nothing I see in her background suggests an interest in flora and fauna. Truth is, this was a political appointment to an organisation the ‘Welsh Government’ wishes to use in its war on livestock farming.
Once you read, “fairer and more equal society” you know it’s about leftist propaganda rather than theatre. More ‘Waiting for Gramsci’ than anything Beckett wrote.
Can’t help wondering where the money comes from, cos I’m damn sure Omidaze don’t pay for itself.
Monk Racing Ltd is an odd one. Formed in 2000 it’s always filed as dormant. The key to Thomson’s involvement is probably Anthony Kenneth Lewis, who was a founding director, and is the joint owner with her of a house on the Taff Embankment.
Lewis resigned from Monk Racing 9 April, 2023. Thomson joined 27 June, 2023.
There have been two stints where Leo served as a Labour councillor. The first you’ve already read about, from 1998 to 2006 in the London Borough of Ealing; and now, from May 2022 for the Riverside ward in Cardiff.
Given the Philistines in Labour’s ranks, both on Cardiff council and in the Senedd, I’m sure the comrades have deferred more than once to Thomson’s knowledge of the finer things in life.
‘How do ew spell opera, love?’
Though I’m beginning to wonder if Leonora Thomson is bad luck. Let me explain.
In March we learnt that Thomson was joining as interim CEO. Having already served as Interim Joint Chief Executive from October 2019 to June 2021. And now NTW has moved to the Tramshed, a nest of Labour cronies and insiders.
Click to open enlarged in separate tab
Another body to lose funding recently was the WNO. Where Thomson was managing director for almost 4 years until August 2019. (Though I believe she returned in some kind of temporary capacity.)
Which means the WNO lost funding after Leonora Thomson had been involved, and while she was Chair at English Touring Opera. Seeing as the WNO performs at English venues some might see the WNO and the English company as competitors.
Though it’s difficult to explain these cuts to two such important cultural bodies as the WNO and NTW when one of their main funders, the Arts Council of Wales, saw its income increase by more than 50% in just 4 years.
One organisation linked to Leonora Thomson suffering a funding cut, I could dismiss; two, I might, just, accept as coincidence; but three, and in such a short space of time? Do me a favour!
◊
UNDERMINE, TAKE CONTROL
What we’ve just looked at is a phenomenon I’ve seen regularly in recent years. I wrote about it a year ago in Taking Control, Of Everything. I focused then on the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) and the Football Association of Wales (FAW).
It’s the ‘Welsh Government’s method for taking control of an organisation.
The first stage is to discredit and undermine the target organisation, maybe also those running it. (Sometimes with inside help.) Stage Two is the reduction or withdrawal of funding. Stage Three, the takeover; done through a combination of restored / increased funding and the appointment of politically loyal or malleable individuals to the organisation.
A bit like the CIA handbook for regime change.
What we’ve seen done to the WNO, NTW and RWCMD could only have been achieved with the assistance of the Arts Council of Wales; which had already undergone the same treatment.
I wrote about it back to August 2021.
First in Corruption Bay and a tale of Cymrophobia (23.08.2021). In which I reported that the Arts Council and the National Museum commissioned three reports in June 2020 to look into ‘widening engagement’.
To make sense of it, remember that George Floyd died the previous month and there was fierce competition as people fought to honour his memory capitalise on his death.
The three groups commissioned were:
An unregistered entity run by Labour insiders Lu Thomas and Jon Luxton.
The third outfit commissioned was The Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union (WAARU). Which had no presence anywhere – yet its anonymously submitted report was accepted!
And remember! 31 other applicants were rejected in favour of these three.
And then (06.09.2021) Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union unmasked, in which I identified those behind WAARU. The usual mix of chip-on-shoulder race grifters and middle class leftists trying to live out their slogans.
Woke employees of Welsh national institutions collaborating with their Woke allies outside to discredit and undermine the organisations they worked for.
◊
FINALE: FITTING LEO INTO THE BIGGER PICTURE
The evidence might suggest that Leonora Hope Thomson has been employed by the ‘Welsh Government’ as some kind of hatchet woman; sent in to various bodies and asked to recommend ‘economies’ and ‘restructuring’.
Part of a pattern that sees ‘Welsh Government’ / ‘Welsh’ Labour, take control of our public, artistic, and sporting life. Done at the behest of the shrieky and the unhinged to promote the Woke agenda.
Which explains how we see Leo, and National Theatre Wales, of which she’s interim CEO, joining the migration to the Tramshed. Which is of course good news for the owner, Cardiff council (Labour); and the lessee, the Count of Abbasock (also Labour).
And it contributes to the circular economy of which I wrote in the previous piece.
Welcome to socialist Wales 2024. The circular economy, benefitting those lucky enough to be in the ‘circle’. Where there’s no private investment, and everything is state funded, but only those close to the ruling party can benefit.
And having mentioned Cardiff council, it’s worth adding that even though she was only elected in May 2022, Thomson, who hardly knows Cardiff, is now Chair of the council’s Labour group.
I wonder who decided to give her such rapid promotion?
I suggest we watch Leonora Hope Thomson, and the Tramshed with which she’s now linked. Both might have roles in the political and public life of Wales.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Leo’s name isn’t already pencilled in on one of the closed lists for the 2026 Senedd elections.
Finally, what I found perhaps most disturbing when writing this was that I had difficulty telling the Labour party and the ‘Welsh Government’ apart. They should be two clearly separate entities.
That they’ve effectively merged is, for me, confirmation that Wales is a one-party state.
Don’t panic, this isn’t about US politics. Following information received it’s an update to something I wrote back in 2020.
