Just in response to Brychan and Macsen, we do have some good home grown projects in the form of the Mumbles Oyster restoration. A project funded at a mere fraction of the IBERS investment at the top of this article and will hopefully lead to a sustainable fishery in Swansea.

While we’re on the subject of ABP, just a bit further along from the birthplace of Jac on the end of Mumbles Pier, the old Queens Dock is home to the recently established largest rope mussel fishery in Wales.

Brychan – want yachts made in Wales? Dim probs:

http://swallowboats.com

Beautiful sailing boats made in Gwbert. Just made an investment to expand the business and product range, employing a number of local skilled people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-26519173

My point? – there is ambition and imagination amongst people in this country, but we need damn sight more of it to drag ourselves out of the GDP doldrums!!!

45 years ago, 1969-70, when Carlo was young! and Emyr Llew , Dafydd Iwan , Caio, Coslett, Glyn Rowlands, you, et al were full of fight, I honestly thought we could go independent and creat a viable trading nation that would pay its own way. Since then we’ve gone backwards so far that now our main Party spends most of its time carping about “fair shares” from the London slops bucket and seldom looks at how we might stand on our own 2 feet again. It hurts.

On an equally depressing note the Treasury civil servants who played a big part in smearing and discrediting YES Scotland economic message were rewarded this week for their efforts by the Cabinet Office, it makes me want to vomit http://www.newsnetscotland.scot/index.php/scottish-politics/9875-treasury-officials-praised-for-no-campaign-work

Bychan – If two students in Wales had created a successful networking site and sold it for a large sum of money to a multi-national, the money would more than likely have gone to a new offshore account – Zilch benefit to us.

Yes. They were start ups in a new country founded following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Any proposal to do in Wales what the Latvians did would probably be met with laughter in Westminster thereby ensuring no funding.
Your suggestion about oyster farms is interesting. http://www.southwales-eveningpost.co.uk/fishy-set-return-bay/story-23483361-detail/story.html and the proposed Tidal Lagoon off the eastside Swansea coast includes shellfish cultivation. Note how ABP (it used to be Associated British Ports a privatised company created by Thatcher but now a private consortium based in Guernsey) has refused to allow footpath access for tourists if the project goes ahead.

. . . and ambition.

don’t start on that !! what a bloody farce – it appears that no one was/is controlling the contract, all parties shuffling along dragging their asses and playing some kind of “low volume” blame game, or “not my fault guv” game. The client/customer is awash with blokes wielding bits of paper, as is the main contractor, yet no one seems to have grasped that the thing was sliding into arrears. These jokers are all well paid yet unable to perform. Any one been sacked ? not likely

The point is that when these industries were established as start ups in Latvia, they didn’t previously exist. If a company was built up from nothing in Penygoes or Tywyn and sold to the Russians for a billion euro, that would count as a major success in my book. Other enterprises which currently don’t exist in Wales may be the future. Why don’t we farm Oysters in the Mawddach? Why don’t we ban tourist divers from Dorothea quarry and farm algae for cosmetics instead? Why don’t we BUILD yachts instead of importing them to the shores of Llyn Tegid? All such enterprises would attract a punt from multinationals if primed with EU structural finds and a smattering of university boffins. Our real enemies are among us, born without imagination.