I’m returning to a couple of devious characters involved in running retirement and care homes in Wales. Both appeared in the previous ‘Miscellany‘ posting; in the section, ‘The Old Folks At Home’.
Reminding us that the care home sector is a bit of a mess, and will inevitably attract grifters like Mohanananthan Kuhananthan and Raqia Bibi.
And I warn you now, it’s worse than I originally thought. Then again, it’s a modus operandi we’ve encountered in the recent past with another crook.
So stay tuned!
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Since that post appeared on September 28 there have been developments. A piece appeared in WalesOnline last Friday telling of more problems in homes run by Bibi and Kuhananthan.
Followed by the article below in last Saturday’s Western Mail.
Two care homes were mentioned that I hadn’t found in my research for the earlier piece: Manor Park Care Centre, in Wrecsam, run by Manor Park Residential Home Ltd; and Plas-y-Bryn, near Cross Hands, run by Comfort Care Homes (Plas y Bryn) Ltd.
Though Manor Park is owned by Manor Park Property Company Ltd. Here’s the title document. The only director is Mohanananthan Kuhananthan. But the accounts – for a dormant company – show assets of only £100. So where’s the property being hidden?
I had considered making up a table of the companies with which the Gruesome Twosome are or have been involved, but there are just too many. Another problem is that they’ve also been involved in companies where they were not shown as directors on the Companies House website.
UPDATE 14.07.2022: What the hell! I trawled the Companies House website and found 57 companies one or both of them has been involved with. Here’s the list, most recent at the top, each name is a hyperlink that will take you to the relevant CH entry.
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To explain what I mean by that suggestion of the ‘hidden hand’, let’s look at a care home in Newport, which got a mention in the earlier post and then an update.
I’m referring to the Danygraig Nursing Home on Quantock Drive, run by Comfort Care Homes (Danygraig) Ltd. This company received loans in June from the Development Bank of Wales.
It seems the first thing done with this new money was to pay off an earlier loan from posh banker Coutts & Co.
As I made clear in the update, Bibi has never been a director of this company, and Kuhananthan left in January 2020. However . . .
When we click on the ‘Persons with significant control’ tab we bring up Dreams Care Homes (RB) Ltd, launched December 3, 2021. And notified to Companies House as taking control of Danygraig on 24 August, 2022.
Not long after the DBW loans were secured.
The two registered directors of Dreams Care Homes are Bishwa Tara Ghimire and Basanta Nepal. Both were aboard 3 December, 2021 when the company was launched.
Nepal joined the Danygraig Company 17 May, 2022, and Ghimire followed on June 6, the very day of the DBW loans. Nepal is said to control the company. The DBW loan relates to this company also.
Even though there’s no mention of Raqia Bibi and Mohanananthan Kuhananthan I suggest that the ‘(RB)’ in Dreams Care Homes (RB) Ltd is a bit of a giveaway.
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So where might Kuhananthan have gone after ostensibly severing ties with the Newport home? Well, I was as surprised as you’re going be, to learn that in June 24, 2021, the imaginative Mr Kuhananthan launched MK Global Movie Production Ltd.
Like most of his companies, this venture is already heading for the rocks. And yet, what I found fascinating was that there was an initial issue of 1000 x £1,000 shares. Which works out at exactly £1,000,000!
I’m not for one minute suggesting it’s the same money, but just weeks after the Development Bank of Wales slipped the readies to the care home in Newport – where he’d been a director – our boy set up a new company with capital of one million pounds.
A company that I guarantee is planned to fold as soon as is decently possible. Which will effectively write off £1,000,000.
And look at the address for this imaginative departure from granny farming – ‘RB Management Consultancy, 1 Bromley Lane, Chislehurst Business Centre, Chislehurst, England, BR7 6LH’.
Again, I suggest we can all guess what the ‘RB’ stands for.
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The company providing that accommodation address is otherwise known as RBMC Global Ltd, set up by Raqia Bibi in February 2017. She was joined by Kuhananthan in April 2021. Though you have to wonder why he bothered, seeing as RBMC Global files as a dormant company.
Which means that Kuhananthan joined a dormant company just two months before he decided to become a movie mogul. (Was he inspired by The Producers?)
On the very same day as RMBC Global was launched, another Bibi-Kuhananthan epic was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. This being RB Care Homes Ltd. Which is also filing as dormant.
Contradicting its prone position I found a glossy sales brochure for RB Care Homes Ltd, which seems to trade as Luxury Property Global. Or should that read traded, for the website is defunct.
Whatever the answer, that brochure alone must have cost a few bob to knock up and to print. All 18 pages of it.
Getting the picture now? If not . . .
Bibi and Kuhananthan seem to be acquiring care homes and then leasing or selling the rooms in those homes. Described in the brochure as ‘Buy to let’.
They could be running any number of homes in Wales on this model, in many or most cases working through proxies and using companies unknown to local authorities, Care Inspectorate Wales, and others.
UPDATE: When I published what you see above, earlier today, I was unsure if Kuhananthan and Bibi had actually sold or leased any rooms. A bit more digging has turned up the evidence.
The Administrator’s report for Nant-y-Gaer Ltd, dated 30 June, 2022, from which the panel below is extracted, makes it clear that 26 rooms were leased, for 250 years, at the Wrexham Care Centre.
Those who bought the leases have formed a group, The RB Action Group(?), claiming £2,074,984.
If it was done at one care home, then it’s reasonable to assume that Kuhananthan and Bibi were pulling the same stunt at their other homes. In fact, the report I’ve linked to talks of ‘associated companies’.
Questions need be asked as to how ‘Welsh Government, Care Inspectorate Wales, and local authorities, allowed these shysters to operate for so long.
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Which fits with the curious arrangements I mentioned in the previous post, in which the company supposedly owning a business or property is, effectively, dormant, while an unknown entity actually owns the building and runs the business.
In the recent case in Pontypridd, the company mentioned as running things is RB Care Homes Ltd, which produced the brochure yet, as you’ve just read, files as a dormant company, and has nothing in the way of assets other than £1,000 in the bank.
The Land Registry title document tells us the property is actually owned by Pontypridd Care Home Ltd.
Both companies run by Raqia Bibi and Mohanananthan Kuhananthan.
It was a very similar picture in Wrecsam over 3 years ago. The report I’ve just linked to mentions ‘Wrexham Care Centre’. There was certainly a company of that name, but it also filed as a dormant company, with no assets beyond another £1,000 in the bank. It was Dissolved 24 May, 2022. Bibi was a director, but not Kuhananthan.
The property was in fact owned by Nant-y-Gaer Ltd (the former name of the home). Bibi was a director there at the death, but Kuhananthan had departed in October 2015.
Finally, there was also Nant-y-Gaer Hall Ltd, wound-up in March 2020, Bibi ceased to be a director 15 July, 2019, Kuhananthan 21 April 2017.
Yet the June 2019 report in the Leader says the home was run by Raqia Bibi and Mohanananthan Kuhananthan. But in June 2019 Kuhananthan was not a director of any of the three connected companies.
His involvement was limited to Nant-y-Gaer Hall Ltd where, after ceasing to be a director in April 2017, he remained in control until the bad publicity of June 2019 may have forced him out 18 July, 2019.
Nant-y-Gaer Hall Ltd is still in existence, with two outstanding loans, but has been without a single director since Raqia Bibi resigned in July 2019, also following the unfavourable publicity.
Were the council and Care Inspectorate Wales even aware of Nant-y-Gaer Hall Ltd?
Which, by a roundabout route, brings us back to RBMC Global and RB Care Homes, and the same questions – if both have been filing as dormant, who’s running the show, and what happened to the money attracted by that ‘imaginative’ sales brochure?
Bibi and Kuhananthan dabbling in the lease / buy-a-room business was not of itself illegal, but it offers great scope for criminality, including money laundering.
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I referred earlier to this being an MO we had encountered before, and indeed we have. Just think back to Gavin Lee Woodhouse, of Northern Powerhouse Developments, the self-styled ‘Wolf of Wharf Street’.
Grand lad, our Gavin . . . apart from being a lyin’, thievin’ little bastard.
Despite it all, not so long ago representatives of the ‘Welsh Government’ were fighting to shake Gavin’s hand. I treasure the image below. But what happened to little Kenny Skates? Did he disappear one moonlit night while dancing in the Flint Ring?
I do so miss him!
Gavin took a great liking to Wales, buying up hotels from Llandudno to Tenby. Then leasing the rooms individually, a kind of timeshare arrangement. You lease a room from Gavin, then you get paid when someone stays in it.
‘Lubbly jubbly!’ Order your Ferrari now!
One of the properties Woodhouse bought was the Fishguard Bay Hotel. It was run by (and perhaps renamed) Wyncliffe House Hotel Ltd. Here’s the relevant Land Registry title document. Scroll down to see the 125-year leases of individual rooms.
At the time I was writing about Woodhouse I also bought a few of the lease documents from the Land Registry, and my suspicions were raised.
It seemed to me that not all the stated lessees were kosher. There were exotic addresses given that would have been difficult if not impossible for HMRC or anyone else to trace.
Then I remembered that the timeshare business, which is very similar to what we’re discussing here provided golden opportunities for money laundering.
You buy a run-down hotel or apartment block in some Mediterranean locale. Next, you form a timeshare company. Then, you tart up the building, get some glossy brochures printed. Finally, you start selling leases to genuine buyers. But you can also sell the same leases to entirely fictitious buyers and take in money you can’t otherwise account for.
Bingo! Money laundered.
And there are other ways of taking people’s money with timeshare. Some of those involved in such scams have appeared on this blog, mentioned in a long-running saga.
Buy a few hotels and you can defraud any number of people, and launder a hell of a lot of money. The same applies to care homes.
I’m not sure if Gavin Woodhouse went in for retirement homes in Wales, but as the video above makes clear, that was certainly his planned route to riches over the border. But he wasn’t interested in buying existing care homes like Bibi and Kuhananthan – Gavin was going to build new.
Well, no, he wasn’t. He had no intention of actually building the care homes, just in taking the money from investors he’d suckered.
Described by a high court judge as ‘thoroughly dishonest’. No shit, Sherlock!
The Wolf of Wharf Street had other plans to bring joy and prosperity to Wales, as we see in the image above of Woodhouse with Labour luminaries.
For he is said to have come up with the idea for the Afan Valley Adventure Resort. He even roped in no less a personality than Bore Grylls. (Who is probably in Ukraine right now stealthily and mercilessly dispatching Russian generals.)
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All joking aside, there are so many questions.
How many homes are Raqia Bibi and Mohanananthan Kuhananthan still involved with in Wales, directly or indirectly? How many of them are run on the ‘invest-in-a-room’ model?
Does anyone know? Is anyone asking?
What’s the legal situation if some old dear gets raped, robbed, or dies in an accident in a room where responsibility might be difficult to establish because ownership rests with a shady company in the British Virgin Islands?
Finally, let me suggest that it would be a good idea for ‘Welsh Government’, Care Inspectorate Wales, our councils, to establish exactly who ultimately owns each and every care home, if only to ensure they’re not dealing with shell companies.
As they have been too often in the very recent past.
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Hello , did you receive my email
I really need your opinions please 🙏🏽
i look forward to hear from you
Sorry not to have responded earlier. I have to be honest and fair, I am reluctant to give financial or legal advice.
Hello, I was trying to share documents with you but I can’t find the way ?
E-mail to editor@jacothenorth.net
Hello, my name is Tewabech (Michał Piasecki wife ) from Poland few months ago my friend Asia was chatting with you and you respond I appreciate that but now I decided to contact you because I’m really confused , I really need your help? Are you advice for me to accept the offer from the Rhys assistance ?
thank you
i look forward to hearing from you
I’ll help if I can. What do you want to know?
Hello, I found this article because my friend asked me for help. She is the wife of the late Michał Piasecki, one of the buyers into the Fishguard Bay Hotel timeshare rooms. He passed away in 2022 and left her with this obviously bad and mysterious investment that she had no information about beyond the fact that he paid 50k pounds, planned tp rent rooms out to UK students, and worked out the deal with some guys in Dubai (he worked as an architect in Dubai.) And apparently lost the money. She found another investment of his in a property in Brazil. We haven’t dug deep enough to find any connections, but I’m wondering if Brazil has popped up on your radar at all while investigating these hote/timeshare schemes. She’s trying to find out what her husband was wrapped up in before his untimely death. apparently, he kept a LOT of information to himself.
Greetings,
Asha in Poland
I’m surprised to hear that Michał Piasecki planned to rent rooms to “UK students”. There is no college or university anywhere near Fishguard. And I’m fairly sure that renting out to students would have contravened the conditions of any lease.
As for Brazil, it’s way outside my remit. I focus on Wales.
that’s exactly what I was thinking when I checked the property location and didn’t find any evidence of demand for dormitories. By the way that was the only comment he made in passing about this investment before his death, but the whole thing is beyond sketchy indeed. My friend has been receiving emails from solicitors meant for her husband offering to sell the “property in disrepair” (for significantly less than the 50k pounds he originally paid obviously), but the legalities are all so confusing. If there is anyone else in the same situation please contact me to compare notes.
As you probably know, the man behind the project, Gavin Lee Woodhouse, is a crook. I believe legal proceedings are ongoing.
The solicitors offering to buy the flat your friend inherited are either working for Woodhouse, trying get money together to offer to his creditors in the hope of reducing the inevitable jail sentences; or, more likely, they’re working for the liquidators, trying to recoup something for those same creditors. Though in such cases, first claim on any money recouped is usually with banks, tax authorities, and other ‘secured’ creditors. Woodhouse’s victims would almost certainly be considered ‘unsecured’.
Your friend’s late husband made a bad investment. An offer to buy the lease of a room, in a building in a distressed state, may be the best she’s going to get. Because the hotel has been empty for quite a few years, it had a fire, and of course it’s deteriorating. Unless a buyer steps in pretty quickly it will be declared unsafe and demolished.
Thank you for that info, I will definitely be diving deeper into this story and this information is very helpful for her to plan her next moves. I sincerely hope justice will be served to all criminals involved.
I stumbled upon your investigative journalistic piece whilst searching the background of a property that has come in the market for sale— Butterhill carehome in in ST189BU , owned/managed by the same duo. It caught my attention when there was a unit 1 of the same care home appeared in the right move sold price for £70000 while the property is currently being advertised by Harris Lamb estate agents as a freehold sale. Looks like the ponzi operators have the same MO here as well. I am on the verge of making an unconditional offer for the property as I live locally and now I am in utter confusion!! I don’t know what I wood be getting into!! Any thoughts on this property? You have done an absolutely amazing piece of research on these fraudsters!!
It’s a common practice – buy a hotel, care home or whatever at a knockdown price, then sell or lease individual rooms with promises of big returns. This business model is popular with a lot of dishonest operators. One crook I dealt with was selling rooms in care homes he hadn’t even built. His name is Gavin Lee Woodhouse. Check him out.
If the two I wrote about are involved in this project, then my advice would be to give them a wide berth.
It’s not only wales either I worked at a home in Wallasey which she took over to help “
Turn it around “she gave each resident a food budget of two pound a day . Changed the entire food menu around it and made us give soup and sandwiches every afternoon . There was no funding for activities bailiffs turned up for her in the middle of the day .appointment a manager with no managing experience after forcing the old one to quit who ran the home perfectly . She basically ran the home into the ground and now it’s shut down . She seems to have them all close down after taking over and goes onto the next . Surely she should be noticed by cqc by now
I have worked in a home which was meant to be her home I worked there 19yrs I have never known a place to have zero funding of her residence had bare minimum of food through covid she got around 750″000 with let me tell those robbing bastards didn’t put a penny into the home they wanted the old manager to receive charity food ppe an anything she could get her hands on obviously for free b4 the place closed we got promised all different types of money of the trainer was most probably got told to promise us all kinds i hope that woman gets what comes to her she’s a absolute joke I bet she’s not getting drove around anymore 😡😡
Drakeford may have been deflecting but Right Twat Davies has little room to talk with the shitshow his owners oversee in Westminster…
Crikey, that was an outburst from Drakeford this afternoon, even Andrew Marr played it on his prime time political show on LBC – anyone would think Labour was responsible for the NHS in Wales …
Drakeford has been running the health service in Wales for 20 years and tries to blame the Tories in England for the appalling state of the devolved health service in Wales. His only answer appears to be to throw a tantrum rather than respond to a valid question.
That outburst was funny and serious in equal parts. It’s serious in that Drakeford’s default line is now built entirely on “those wicked Tories” in London. The recent decision to make A&E waiting areas more comfortable was a signal that his regime have given up on any intention to get a grip and sort it. The entire supply chain available to the public is clogged up at several choke points right from G.P clinics through to discharge from hospital after operations or remedial treatments. As for the funny bit, well Drakeford’s shake was startling. I thought that my TV reception was going funny but no it was for real. Also a couple of those Labour dames parked around him were shaken rigid,not by ARTD’s question but by their leader’s tantrum. And Elin exercising “authority” makes the point that this gathering, this assembly of lightweights brings nothing but shame on us as a nation. No doubt piss takers like Guido will make hay on this episode obviously omitting that ARTD is just as much part of this freak show as any of the other goons in attendance yesterday.
Now feeling a bit starved of excitement. I honestly thought that we would have had a further instalment of unrestrained emotion from Mr Angry at the Bay Bubble by now. His alter ego, a mild dopey man called Drakeford, might pause and consider that there may be better ways to deploy his resources given that ARTD’s party are likely to continue being mean to him and his regime. Try dumping some of that green crap as so much of it is pure gesture politics of dubious integrity as far as its “greenness” goes. Or call Health and Care green and it might suddenly acquire a new priority and vigour. Take some of the admin and bullshit functions out of NHS and give back control to qualified medical people with a lean team of admin types on much lower salaries just to do as they are fuckin’ told. Do the same with Education and Business support. And make sure that Barreness Morgan and Vague Gething don’t get anywhere near the levers of power and interfere with decision making on any kind of funding.
Wales: Who do we think we are, with Huw was on tonight, an interesting watch it was too. It’ll no doubt be on catchup.
Off topic but hopefully of interest to Jac and others.
I notice how the left are overjoyed at the demise of the Conservative government and its right wing economic policies, but it’s not the Labour opposition who brought this about it was the markets – the same free markets that can halt socialist left wing economic policies.
The markets now govern the country which makes party politics more meaningless than ever, another question is who controls the markets?
If western countries can no longer shrink the state and implement economic policies through the ballot box then those countries cease to be democracies and risk falling into long term economic decline.
It’s been going on for a good while, this clandestine move by big business and financial institutions and I’m talking about the really big ones and a host of smaller ones that are so desperate to be in on the action that they will collaborate on any old scam going. The New World Order ( or whatever you might want to call such a bunch of cvnts) is still a work in progress, laughably because the biggest cvnts of them all can’t agree on who gets to call the shots, determine who sits at the top table etc etc. These corporations are now gross, bigger than city states or similar concept from centuries ago. Also they are not physically located or bound to any one place. They can shift their assets around, put the squeeze on less compliant state governments and generally shaft any politician who might have an ounce of integrity left in him/her. They don’t like mavericks so you can expect a few more proxy wars like Ukraine, sub Saharan Sahel, and Iraq/Syria where the whole of that crescent from Turkey to the Indian Ocean will get carved up, once again, for the “greater good”.
Anyway a war is so good for trade. Just look out for Hunt’s new budget where he’ll hack the nuts off most departments but will keep Defence going nicely just in case some bastard who’s bought some junk from UK decides to come back looking for trouble. And places like Ukraine are good for testing some of our finest gear before we flog some more to a Saudi, Nigerian or Pakistani warmonger.
People shrugged when Eisenhower spoke of the military industrial complex. I doubt if he ever imagined how big it might become 60-70 years later.
Re: The Chiselers. Kahanthanan owns hotels (Portland Hotel, Portland), bars (The Trevor Arms, Wrecsam) all sorts. He is one of the vilest men to walk the earth. One of his counterparts from Comfort Care, a guy named Ash Bansok was done for modern day slavery across three of the homes that Kahanthanan was Director for. It is an ongoing case. Kahanthanan also pulled money from homes and put it into fictitious property companies. He lives in a rented house in Kent rented because it allows him to leave the country for months on end when it gets a little too hot for him. He hasnt paid staff pension or HMRC for a long time. Most of the homes are listed properties but he wouldnt pay for repairs. Residents stayed in poor and cold rooms. Water running along corridors from rain. He emptied the accounts of Ridgeway Nursing Home one year to pay for his families Christmas break to Iceland. He did lots of work with the Saudis until he stopped sending them their money – they pulled the plug then on his buy to let rooms, thats when the trouble started and his finances started dwindling.
That is fascinating. Can I contact you directly for more information?
You can
I am also fascinated can you share more info with me too please 🙂
Away from the chiselers for a moment, I noticed that Aber Uni is celebrating 150 years since its founding by a host of well meaning people who convinced lots of our forefathers to cough up a few quid to fund the institution. While it has done well to preserve Welsh as an academic subject and a medium for teaching other subjects, it has also quite perversely been an agent of Anglicisation and assimilation with Aber and its hinterland full of relocated Sais who have no intention of heading back east of the Clawdd. BBC as usual gave the lead sentence of their coverage to the 6 week stay of a minor European royal back in 1969. Loyalist at every opportunity.
I remember it well. I paid a visit one Saturday night. Stayed longer than anticipated – because we got caught.
Happy days!
The University of Wales is, possibly, the only national university on the planet that is detrimental to the identity of the people is was created to serve.
The breaking up of the “old” Univ of Wales was of itself an unecessary act driven by the vanity of individual university chiefs – Chancellors, Vice Chancellors and whatever other grand titles these usually pompous cvnts adopt. Sometime later the Univ of Wales turned up as an adjunct to the utterly grandiose TrinitySaintDavid etc etc amalgamations when post 1992 formations started to gasp for air (or needed a cash injection sharpish)and that’s where it remains today. Most universities are now discredited having engaged in the sordid growth in useless qualifications aimed at giving a piece of paper to people who would otherwise underachieve. These places still have a job to do to enable students to grow a capacity to tackle the diverse problems – technical, social/political, legal & administrative-that confront modern society but that will be done badly if they continue to be guided by lowest common denominators.
Walk around Bangor and listen out for a Welsh accent. The University has a lot to answer for.
What a mouthful of a name! But in seriousness, it can only be an advantage for one seeking to obfuscate, as it’s crying out for typos and mistranscription.
He encourages it. Look at the name as it appeared in their sales brochure.
There’s always the get-out if challenged over these ‘variations’ that the name in its original script of Hindi or Urdu or whatever can legitimately be transliterated different ways, cf. Mohammed/Muhammad, Koran/Quran.
This useless government of Wales at Cardiff Bay is just implementing the UK Tory government’s policy of extending privatisation. Granny and Granpa farming is a growth sector unless they contrive yet another variant of Covid to wipe out a big chunk of the demographic. Despite many operators whining that “there ain’t enough money in it” there is a steady stream of people setting up operations.
To be fair (that’s me every time!) there are large groups and small scale operators who deliver services of high quality in both residential and nursing segments. However that not thanks to government despite the multitude of rules and regulations promulgated by them over the years which they fail abysmally to enforce. The main delivery and payment model now is finance via a base payment(if entitled) from local authority with the client or his/her family topping it up or paying for the whole deal if assets are over a certain threshold. Care via home visits comes with a lower nominal cost but this model is being undermined by carers having to travel between calls and eating into what should have been quality time for their clients. Carers at the sharp end recognise this but their employers are pressurised by budget constraints from the sponsoring local authority, the same local authorities who have no qualms about splashing cash when some fashionable issue comes around like this month’s Black Lives month circus. FFS Black lives ! There are plenty of black lives out in our communities who are suffering deprivation of service alongside their neighbours because of such woolly thinking. Funded by our hard pressed Bay regime who find it easier to piss about with gestures rather than tackle real problems.
I better sign off as I’m getting into a nasty mood once again.
Dafis & John, At the risk of tipping you over the edge . . .
When I put out that article this morning I still wasn’t sure that rooms had been leased or sold. I now have the evidence. Check the Update.
No one within the Bay regime or its servants will have the competence to smell this kind of rat. Financial engineering and multi level trading creates no added value and is most commonly used to distort a picture when misrepresentation is useful to the party engaged in such activity. Our comments on here will be dismissed by the denizens of the Bay cliquester club scene as lacking in the sophistication required to inhabit their modern world. But I still prefer my side of the Looking Glass.
Jac. The usual comment….I never cease to be amazed at the goings on and ask yet again….where is the due diligence from the Banc of Wales and what the hell is the opposition in the Senedd doing? We don’t expect anything sensible from the mumbling fat farmer but the “Party of Wales” ? Er sorry, silly me, too busy being Drakeford’s liile helpers.