INTRODUCTION
The National Renaissance of the 1960s put the wind up our masters for two main reasons.
First came the shock that there were numbers of Welsh people prepared to use violence and civil disobedience to achieve their political aims, with a far greater number supporting them.
Second, came the more worrying realisation that Welsh nationalism, hitherto regarded as a cultural issue confined to rural districts, was spreading into the more populous urban areas and ‘infecting’ people who spoke little or no Welsh. Perhaps there was even a danger of Pura Wallia being employed as Yeats and others had used the West of Ireland, a magical and unsullied ideal to be brought back to the rest of the land.
Something had to be done. The decision taken was to undermine the influential and inspiring Welshness of those western areas, which then ran from the outskirts of Llanelli in the south to the north coast around Abergele, with salients pushing towards the border.
What was envisioned was a form of social engineering, a kind of ‘watering down’ process, that would make life difficult for many Welsh people while simultaneously encouraging into western Wales large numbers of English.
To the point where the remaining Welsh would be outnumbered, anglicised, and this would result in the political threat they posed and the inspiration they provided being removed. Facilitated by legislation and other means; and if these could be sugar-coated, or disguised, then so much the better.
This is a strategy that Martiniquais poet and political activist Aimé Césaire so memorably described as ‘genocide by substitution‘.
Genocide by Substitution is just a more subtle means than outright clearance of killing off a culture and the identifications and loyalties that go with that culture.
◊
THE EARLY YEARS
DEVELOPMENT BOARD FOR RURAL WALES
A good place to start would be the plan in 1965 for a new town of 60,000 or more inhabitants in the Severn valley near the village of Caersws.
Historian Kenneth O. Morgan, in Rebirth of a Nation Wales 1880 – 1980, couldn’t resist linking near-universal local opposition to the plan with Welsh nationalism and racism, “Welsh nationalists and others feared that the population of this new town might be drawn largely from English overspill from the west Midlands . . . that these migrants might be black, brown or yellow in hue”.
Here we have the authentic voice of Old, South Wales, anti-Welsh Labour.
No new town was built, but nearby Newtown was expanded, with a population imported almost exclusively from outside of Wales, and this provided the template for what was now to happen across the region with the creation of the Development Board for Rural Wales.
The strange thing about the DBRW was that its charter stated it could only give financial and other help to incoming employers . . . and their employees. Which meant that small Welsh companies, family firms, could find themselves being put out of business by an English company that had moved into Wales with DBRW support.
‘But surely’, you ask, ‘these companies moving in provided jobs for local people?’ Well no, because under the ‘key worker’ provisions incoming companies were encouraged to bring their entire workforce with them, with relocation costs funded by the DBRW. On top of which the DBRW provided shiny new housing.
The Development Board for Rural Wales was the most blatant colonisation programme Wales had seen since the period following the Edwardian conquest, yet few dared question its operations for fear of being branded ‘racist’ or economically illiterate. For the DBRW was bringing jobs and people to areas suffering depopulation.
It should not surprise anyone to learn that the outflow of Welsh people from the DBRW region did not abate. Giving us a perfect example of Genocide by Substitution.
The Development Board for Rural Wales was merged with the Welsh Development Agency in 1995.
THE A55
Further north than the fiefdom of the DBRW economic and other development was said to be impossible without the A55 becoming a dual carriageway to Holyhead, for it was the ‘Highway of Opportunity’ (© Wyn Roberts) and would bring undreamed of wealth and opportunities.
One of the first consequences of the road’s upgrade was the closure of the Royal Mail’s Bangor sorting office, with work being transferred to Chester. Here we were, coming towards the end of the twentieth century, with devolution just around the corner, and Chester was reasserting its parasitic relationship with northern Wales.
For what the cheer-leaders for the A55 didn’t understand, or weren’t telling us, was that improved communications invariably result in the closure of ‘outposts’, which become redundant or expendable if their areas can now be served from further away.
Unfortunately, there was plenty of European money available for the A55 because it is a trans-national route linking Ireland with the continent. That it also opened up large areas of Wales to commuters and others from over the border was never considered.
And the spending continues. Another £250m will go into a Deeside Corridor which will help facilitate the Mersey Dee Alliance agenda by further integrating north east Wales with north west England.
LOOKING AROUND
Elsewhere in our rural areas, in the 1970s and 1980s, we saw an economy in decline. In the south west, for example, dairies and creameries closed, and milk was shipped off to England to be processed. Politicians were helpless . . . or at least, they did nothing.
And everywhere we were promised that tourism would be the economic salvation of rural Wales.
I’ve written about tourism many times and I hope I’ve made it clear that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with tourism, it can be a useful part of a diversified economy. But the tourism industry that has developed in Wales was developed to serve England, Wales happened to be conveniently near and became ever nearer with the spread of the railways and then the family car.
Even so, until fairly recently Welsh people did benefit. Many locals – my own late mother-in-law included – brought in some extra money by running a B & B. And back then local businesses such as pubs tended to be locally owned. But somewhere along the way the Welsh seem to have been squeezed out.
I remember a couple of years ago my wife and I stayed at a bed & breakfast in Abersoch, that favourite of the Cheshire Set, and the woman running the establishment told us, quite unprompted, that she was one of only two locals still running B&Bs in the village, yet there must be dozens and dozens of B&Bs in Abersoch.
What we have in Wales now, masquerading as ‘the Welsh tourism industry’ is largely owned and run by strangers. The lack of decent jobs provided by tourism, coupled with its power to bring a new population into our rural and coastal areas, makes it another element in the overall strategy of Genocide by Substitution.
We have reached the point where tourists can come to certain parts of Wales, spend a week or ten days there, and not meet a Welsh person. Yet we are expected to be so proud of this ‘Welsh tourism’!
◊
THE DEVOLUTION ERA
Those expecting things to get better under devolution were probably naive, they have certainly been disappointed. It may no longer be the blunt and obvious instruments of the DBRW, the A55 and creamery and other closures that inflicts the damage, now it is the stiletto thrusts of a ‘Welsh’ Government operating against the Welsh national interest.
Did I really say, “a ‘Welsh’ Government operating against the Welsh national interest”? Yes I did, and now I shall give some examples of this behaviour, hopefully in chronological order.
Let’s start with One Wales: One Planet, of May 2009. This publication retrospectively gave approval to a number of illegal settlements and the green light to future sustainable communities. Despite grandiose pronouncements about a “sustainable nation” it was really about encouraging those seeking a certain lifestyle to move to Wales.
This was followed in July 2010 by Technical Advice Note 6 Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities. (A Technical Advice Note “provides detailed planning advice”.)
TAN 6 replaced an earlier document that talked only of “Agriculture and Rural Development” but something had obviously changed, new influences were being brought to bear on the ‘Welsh’ Government that had little concern for traditional agriculture, or Welsh farming.
January 2012 saw former Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing in the ‘Welsh’ Government, Jane Davidson, join the University of Trinity St David’s Institute of Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Effectiveness (INSPIRE). Among its aims is to “contribute to our communities by giving particular regard to issues of sustainable rural communities and the development of south west Wales as a low carbon region“.
Davidson, former Labour MP for Pontypridd is from England, where she was privately educated, she knew nothing of Pontypridd when she arrived and little when she left, but being AM for the town allowed her to use her position in the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition to promote causes dear to the hearts of others like herself.
I’m thinking now of those members of the English middle classes who in times past were given to wearing indecently voluminous khaki shorts and belonged to the Ramblers Association (since re-branded Ramblers). Having been vice-president while a Minister Davidson became President of Ramblers Cymru almost as soon as she left the Assembly in May 2011. She is, predictably, also a Patron of the One Planet Council.
I took a little detour from the One Planet website after seeing the name of another Patron, Paul Taylor, and his connection with the Cwm Harry Land Trust of Newtown, Powys. Another ‘No-Welsh-Need-Apply’ organisation.
The Accounts for the Cwm Harry Land Trust Ltd are overdue at Companies House, but it’s also a charity, No 1100899, though the accounts to the Charity Commission are even further in arrears.
The Accounts for 2015 tell us that the biggest source of income was – surprise! surprise! – the ‘Welsh’ Government, and the biggest outgoing was – never! – salaries. Though another reason for Cwm Harry being in a delicate financial position may be its attempt to buy Moelyci, “a community owned farm in North Wales”, in fact, just outside Tregarth, near Bangor. (Despite being committed to Welsh heritage and culture the Welsh language version of the Moelyci website is, as ever in such cases, “under construction“.)
The falling through of the Cwm Harry deal for Moelyci is explained here. I hope the ‘Welsh’ Government is keeping a close eye on how Cwm Harry spends our money. It should go without saying that no more public funding should be wasted on Cwm Harry or Moelyci.
This digression started when I saw the name Paul Taylor on the One Planet site. Taylor is, or was, also involved with Home Presteigne, which seems to have folded. But he’s still a busy boy, for he tells us that he’s an “Independent Advisor Community Land Advisor (sic) Service Cymru”. So what’s that?
At the Royal Welsh Show in late July 2013, John Griffiths, then Minister for Sport and Culture, launched the Community Land Advisory Service Cymru, part of a wider Englandandwales organisation. The Welsh operation had received a £600,000 grant from the Big Lottery’s Climate Change Programme.
CLAS Cymru is “part of a wider Community Land Advisory Service across the UK, which is managed by the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens“ but its press release suggests a different role in Wales with,“CLAS Cymru helps new communities to navigate through the challenges associated with finding land, negotiating a lease and obtaining planning.”
Back to the main thread.
While many of the influences behind One Wales: One Planet, TAN 6 and all the offshoots may be external to Wales native Welsh politicians have also chipped in, among them Minister for Natural Resources and Food, Alun Davies, who announced in January 2014 that 15% of EU Common Agricultural Policy Funding would in future be diverted from Pillar 1 (farmers) to Pillar 2 (‘rural development projects’).
The next attack on the population indigenous to the Welsh countryside was the ‘Welsh’ Government’s decision to cancel a £360,000 grant to Wales’ Young Farmers Clubs in January 2015.
Before finishing we need to consider the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015. To save you reading through the full document, with its bullshit piled high and overhung with impossible dreams interwoven with outright lies, here’s a quick-read Guide and an illustration from it.
Hooray! Wales is going to save the Planet! Or rather, we are going to use the pretext of environmental concerns to encourage hippies and other shysters to move to Wales and become yet another piece in the jigsaw of Genocide by Substitution.
Finally, I was struck by the local branch of the UK government’s BBC mouthpiece putting out this strange article earlier this week which warned us that “rural west and north Wales are the most vulnerable to economic decline as the UK leaves the European Union”.
The example we need to follow, according to the article, is a ‘network’ currently running on Exmoor. “Helping incomers to integrate is part of the network’s ethos, according to its chairman, sheep and beef farmer David Knight. One of their initiatives is a micro-farming group for new owners of smallholdings . . .“
Despite everything that the UK and ‘Welsh’ governments have done since the 1970s to undermine the indigenous economy of rural Wales, to destroy the region’s social and cultural integrity, are they now hoping to blame its final eclipse on Brexit!
But no! for it is to be reborn, salvation lies in “incomers”, on “smallholdings”; “new communities” “obtaining planning”.
◊
CONCLUSION
I don’t wish to appear overly cynical, but when so much legislation is churned out by the ‘Welsh’ Government that is clearly designed to draw into Wales those seeking a green or eco-friendly lifestyle, then we are entitled to ask why.
Another reason for suspicion is the contradiction inherent in what is being done. For the purpose of the legislation, and the various initiatives is, we are told, to reduce Wales’ carbon footprint, but by attracting into Wales a whole new population that will keep animals, burn timber and in other ways bother the environment we can only increase Wales’ carbon footprint.
Which means that what is being done only makes sense on an Englandandwales level, which in turn means that a ‘Welsh’ Government is now legislating for Englandandwales by agreeing to take in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hippies and others that England wants to offload.
I can see the advantage for England in this arrangement, but where’s the benefit to Wales?
On the plus side, I suppose those living in eco-villages might be an improvement on the white trash being imported by some third sector outfits and certain housing associations, or the hypochondriacs and worse attracted by free prescriptions, and the retirees taking over so many communities. And let’s not forget the white flighters and other flag-fliers.
But none of these groups will create wealth, or generate employment. If anything, they will take the Welsh economy in an opposite direction, making Wales poorer by any criteria you care to employ. While also draining the Welsh public purse.
So the motive for encouraging this multi-faceted influx cannot be economic growth or job creation.
During this same period there has been no legislation, not even a vague promise, to defend our rural areas in a way that will protect their Welsh identity. So what is the point of a ‘Welsh’ Government if it only cares for strangers and works against the interests of its own people?
What we are witnessing in the Welsh countryside, and along our coasts, is a crude attempt to remove a perceived or potential political threat posed by a people and their distinct identity, in the manner described by Aimé Césaire – Genocide by Substitution.
♦ end ♦
The Johnson declaration…..
https://mrorigamidotorg.wordpress.com/author/mrorigami2013/
This is what was done in Ulster / Northern Ireland around 1600. To quell rebellion and to make Ireland easier to rule by the English. During the reign of King James 1 from what I’ve just checked online. Wales has been shafted by the English, true – but historically Ireland have had to take it up every orifice. As the Queen acknowledged in May 2011. Not using quite those words, mind. More’s the pity.
The unified English & Scottish Crowns uder James I created with Scottish Presbyterians. At the same time they had a Catholic country (potential French/Spanish launch pad) less than 30 miles off their flank – the Kingdom of Ulster.
Square peg, square hole – bin the Scots Presbyterians to Ulster on the promise of free land and let them be the buffer zone to move Catholicism (and potential French/Spanish invasion) a bit further away and in their zealotry cement the Crown’s foothold in what was good quality farmland.
It was advantageous for the newly-unified Crown of England & Scotland to create presbyterianism in Scotland and export it’s practitioners to Ulster and for the Crown to push the threat of French/Spanish invasion via the shortest crossing point and the subsequent threat a Catholic Scotland under French/Spanish influence could become. Dirty game is politics – sometimes you have to work with an enemy in order to thwart an even bigger enemy.
Ah but it went on to give the unforgettable howls of “No Popery” from the Reverend Ian Paisley, and rants against Papist Idolatory at any opportunity. The same Paisley who in the winter of his life joined with Martin McG to form a bond that attracted the unflattering label “Chuckle Brothers”. Ulster needed those two joined at the hip far more than it is now willing to acknowledge.
P.S All we can offer is the low quality Punch and Judy affair called Carwyn and Leanne. Really, really sad.
much wailing and gnashing of teeth with more stories being told about “charity workers” paying for sex with natives and being imaginative with funds as a way of helping distressed economies recover from various disasters. Now we know that the UK &international 3rd sector’s cavalier attitude is much more than just Oxfam’s naughty episode in Haiti perhaps the inquisition into 3rd sector behaviour can be extended to look at the shocking waste, duplication and general corruption that is going on in our little country. Or is that a touch too near home for dear old Carwyn, Leanne and all the virtue signalling troop in the Bay bubble ? Not holding my breath on this one.
I thought that given his past role in a major British charity that Brendan Cox might have something to say on the subject. But for once he’s come over all shy!
I have often thought about why there are so few Welsh speakers in Powys even though it is a predominantly rural area. I stayed in Llangamarch over the new year, the hotel owner and all staff working there were clearly not from the local area or even Wales. they invited us to the bar in the evening to ‘meet the locals’. all the accents without exception of the locals were from the south east of England, no Welsh accents and not a word of Welsh being spoken. out for a walk the next day we got speaking to a farmer who you could tell was from the area but the those living the village were not. Before WW2 a great deal of the farmsteads from the high Eppynt land was cleared of the farmsteads to provide a military range because the threat of war was imminent, that range is still there but what that did was push back the boundary of Welsh speaking Wales further into Wales and away from the border. the only Welsh people remaining in this area are the farmers whereas all the villagers have disappeared for some reason and over time to be replaced by hoteliers and shop owners from England. Granted they still provide a service and keep the village alive but it is now a village in Wales with no Welsh people. as an example of this an advert in the local post office was in the window inviting those interested to come to a talk on how the land clearances on the Eppynt was a good thing because of the benefits to the ecology of mosses, lichens and liverworts on the range since sheep grazing finished, so these are the kinds of talks present villagers are attending.
… same sort of people who glibly pronounce that farmers should diversify or redirect their energies if the arse falls out of the lamb/sheep/milk/beef etc markets. Not forgetting the “wisdom” of those who think that farming stinks and the entire countryside should be converted into a big fuckin’ playground for urban twats looking for somewhere to go for a long weekend or short break. Fine for those people with money, local peasants could be on seasonal zero hour contracts and be bloody grateful for such career enhancing opportunities.
….same sort of people who could live in a country for a 100 years and still declare its language and culture to be of no relevance whatsoever. Commonly known in these columns as colonists.
Just heard that Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has made the Canadian anthem gender neutral. I’m surprised Labour aided by Leanne and HMJ et al haven’t made moves to do the same regarding Hen Wlad Fy Rhieni’ or whould that be ‘Hen Wlad fy ngofalwyr’? ”Parents’ aren’t acceptable either by all accounts.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/01/americas/canada-gender-neutral-national-anthem-trnd/index.html
Interesting article and very interesting comments section, however, this does seem to be something of a grumble-fest !
I would ask what the proposed solution (solutions) to the problems of the following in Wales actually are;
Hippy invasion
White flighters
Historic paedophilles
Social-economic integration with England in border areas
Economic decline in the west
Ageing and economically inactive/illiterate population
Even if you were able to convince all the Labour voters in Wales to back independence (which in reality is what is what would be required) what would be required to build a viable state out of the current mess that Wales appears to be in at the moment.
You could start by putting an end to Third-Sector scams and spending the money on creating proper jobs (i.e. not seasonal tourism work) for Welsh people, taking real (as opposed to pretend) ownership of planning laws in order to prevent unwanted house-building for English settlers, introduce a residency qualification before they start visiting the estate agents, and fight tooth and nail against the Mersey-Dee plan and Cairn’s Greater Bristol Project.
While you’re at it, you could introduce the teaching of Welsh history to Welsh schoolchildren and safeguard the budget for increasing the number of Welsh-medium schools.
And deport Bear Grylls.
We’re waiting, Carwyn.
Of course there is much grumbling on here, what the hell do you expect ?. If it wasn’t for the grumbling some of us would be out with firearms and other “tools” sorting out the problem, especially categories 1 to 3 in your list.
Look a bit deeper and much of what you refer to as “grumbling” is exposure of the consequences of the assorted policies of our governments in Cardiff and London. Now there may have been a time when many of us saw these consequences as unintended but given their current prevalence it is now a bit silly or naive to maintain that stance. Given that Jac and others with minimal resources are able to discover all these features and trends one has to conclude that those armed with a far more comprehensive array of reporting and analytical tools must be seeing the same picture and electing to ignore it, or foster it.
Accidental ? No, Coincidental ? No. More like deliberate Conspiracy using a series of long term Policies.
For a start, the very valid concerns of those like Seimon Glyn https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/seimon-glyn-plaid-tired-feeble-2905277 and Big Gee, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/1496411.stm, should have been acknowledged and dealt with back in 2001, it is a disgrace how Plaid treated them. Instead, the threats to the Welsh communities they raised, have of course, grown to crisis levels in the intervening years. The concerns are undeniable and the policies that have been brought in since, only confirm that Labour and Plaid are actively undermining Welsh identity and not promoting it.
Why have Labour and Plaid not acted on these concerns, why have property prices been allowed to escalate to way beyond what local Welsh people can afford and why has there been inadequate investment in the infrastructure in Wales, in education and the jobs market in rural areas? It would be interesting to know who in those parties has a vested interest in the property market and the third sector? For transparency, all politicians should disclose what property they own in Wales, owning multiple properties, which encourages inflated house prices at the expense of their electorate, should not be an option. You don’t have to be Welsh or a Welsh speaker, to understand how destructive it is for any culture, to endure the unrestrained impact of another, historically more aggressive neighbour, which has always controlled the generation of wealth and exploited resources. Labour and Plaid Cymru would readily understand the plight of say, the Tibetan people, or the issue of poverty in African Countries, yet are not dealing with the undeniable problems facing Wales, right under their noses!
Ar y botwm Myfanwy – fel arfer.
On the cards approx 600 new houses going to be built in Burry Port , there are only 3 doctors in the surgery traffic on the road into Llanelli thanks to the ridiculous Stradey developemnt is already grid lock, . What are al these people going to be doing? working? my arse … retiring
Has anybody written to their AM to complain about these OPDs and to present them with the facts uncovered by Jac and various contributors? I’d be very curious to hear the replies they got.
Yesterday, I came across 2 different groups of people who had moved to west Wales in the last few months. Both groups were retirees. Nice properties. Probably way out of the range of most locals. Like somebody said above….I also live on the edge of a town an my street is majority Welsh speaking. But over the years I’m seeing people pass away or go into elderly care. All of the properties are being bought up by the English. Often they don’t stay that long. The winter and autumn is long and dark and wet in west Wales. Very dissimilar to when they came here on holiday. Most of these people are fine and I can get on with most of them. But it’s surely madness to allow so many to move here who change the character of the area and will also add a further burden on social services, the health board etc. This new party I believe will have to argue the case for powers over immigration. What’s happening in England? Is there a civil war going on there with all these migrants turning up?
What’s happening in Wales is managed decline; by which I mean, fewer and fewer worthwhile jobs and business opportunities are available for Welsh people, with the result that the younger and more ambitious among us move away. Cardiff of course is the exception, and is used as a “Wales is booming!” distraction.
This strategy would normally result in obvious signs of decline – empty properties, run-down towns and villages, falling population – but this is avoided in Wales by pulling in a totally new, English population, that will eventually overrun and outnumber the indigenous Welsh.
The beauty of this strategy is that a thousand-year-old ambition can now be achieved with very little expenditure on the part of the UK or the ‘Welsh’ governments. In fact, the less that’s spent on Wales the more likely, and quicker, the takeover is to happen!
but even Cardiff will be overrun by Bristolians etc if or when the metro project gets completed, severn bridge tolls get abolished. The pressure will come Westminster not the Bay.
It makes the property and demographic hinterland available for the economics of Bristol. Wales is being hollowed out under our feet or noses or even in plain view. The economic growth will be in Bristol and surrounds.
The Bay of Plenty will eventually disappear into the gorge of the powerhouse? or just be kept or become a joke for more gimmicky legislation to try out or wimmins empowerment polices in Wales. No-one will give a toss about those things as they will be busy working in Bristol and/or drinking scrumpy.
I’ve seen reference somewhere to the western powerhouse which includes south east wales ie Cardiff.
And London on Avon
https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21695067-south-western-powerhouse-needs-better-government-if-it-prosper-london-upon-avon
Who knows with the pressure on the purse strings Carwyn and co will have to toe the line or already are. It will be too late for a Boston Tea Party or such rebellions. Maybe that’s why NMcevoy is being edged out?
DP – I do accept you points and your fears for Wales, but people in Somerset are having a very similar experience to people in Wales – although of course in Somerset there is not a language under threat. I grew up in Somerset and the place is now full of very wealthy professionals from London or the south east who have purchased splendid properties or pretty little cottages and pushed the prices way beyond the purse of most locals. My best friend from school still lives in a village in the Quantocks near where we both came from – compared to the rest of us her family were wealthy and middle class, but she is considered very down at heel by her neighbours, who include the former wife of a Daily Telegraph journo and Julian Temple the film director. Some years ago Johnny Depp purchased the house across the hill from them but never actually got around to living there. My friend’s son is being treated like crap at the local village school because my friends are not money orientated – that school used to be full of the children of farmers and farm workers, as did both the primary schools that I went to. Not any more. Wealthy people from outside of Somerset have completely taken over and the locals now have to scrape a few pennies together to live in the worst housing in Bridgwater, because they can never afford to live in the villages where they grew up.
It wasn’t all rosy when I was growing up in Somerset – as in north Wales there was a group of people who had far too much influence and power and the kids whose parents could afford to send them to the public schools in Taunton or Bath or Bristol or Wells barely mixed with us. But I fear that things may have actually got even worse for people in Somerset without much money. They have been completely excluded from the countryside – which is turning into a theme park as the farmers gradually give up farming and do something else – and can’t even visit it because the bus service, which was always poor, does not exist anymore.
Bristol offers highly paid jobs to middle class people who live in the houses where I and my school friends used to live. Very few are from Somerset. The jobs for locals are the minimum wage zero hours jobs in places like Bridgwater. Minehead, which is just down the road from Exmoor, is one of the most disadvantaged places in England. Exmoor residents include Boris’s sister Rachel Johnson – she has her second home there. The mad Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones also lived there.
People in Somerset have very similar feelings towards the political class as are expressed on this blog.
I know that there is not a separate language in Somerset to lose, but interestingly enough one of the things that I notice now when I visit is that you never hear a Somerset accent in the villages. Just posh accents. And the attitudes of some of the people who’ve moved into Somerset is every bit as bad as the worst colonisers in Wales. When we were at school pompous petit bourgeois teachers used to enjoy repeating to us ‘Somerset born, Somerset bred, strong in the arm, thick in the head’. So when I first heard ‘Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief’, I realised that I’d been here before. There are now more people with that attitude, not fewer.
Somerset and Wales ought to get together and precipitate a revolution – they’ve certainly both been screwed over in a very similar way. Oh yes, Somerset is full of retirement homes as well, lots of jobs for carers at rock bottom wages. Just like in Jac’s part of Wales.
As for scrumpy, scrumpy was consumed by the vat full when I was young, there was a hand painted sign in most villages inviting you to go in somewhere and buy a big can for a very modest price so you could consume something alcoholic and lethal with twigs and leaves floating around in it. I have not seen such a sign for years, but no doubt there would be a choice of wine bars in Taunton if I really wanted to go into one.
All sadly true. I once stood for Parliament in Somerset as a Wessex Regionalist candidate, because in theory many parts of England are being deprived of what they are, just as Wales is. Mainly by rich Londoners who buy up everything and then tell the locals orff for not talking naice. Bridgwater is like a town under siege from them.
Theory doesn’t translate into practical politics though. The west, like the north, could have followed Scotland and Wales down a devolutionary path but didn’t. Too much deference to be arsed, basically. I too wish that the dragon and the wyvern could make common cause. I fear though that Wales isn’t going to benefit from any general decentralist trend, what’s been called the rising tide that lifts all boats. The English boats are all deep in the mud, by longstanding choice, which means Wales is on its own.
Thanks Jac for an interesting read.
Jac says ‘This strategy would normally result in obvious signs of decline – empty properties, run-down towns and villages, falling population – but this is avoided in Wales by pulling in a totally new, English population, that will eventually overrun and outnumber the indigenous Welsh.’. All true but I think you underestimate one of the biggest drivers of people into Wales – cheap property and land prices and in the background the pattern of ownership of land in England causing land values especially with the possibility of building are sky high.
The other problem I have with the analysis is that those towns which are doing well (eg Llanidloes, Brecon, Aberaeron, Hay, Presteigne) are doing well because of inward investment by the very people who are changing the local culture, whether it is repairing listed buildings, opening small businesses or promoting culture, history and conservation. This is born out by the WAG sponsored review ‘ Dynamic Smaller Towns’.
Less prosperous towns have a lot of social housing and also groups of people stranded after the virtual death of manufacturing in the 1980s and 90s. As you have said the DBRW moved these people to jobs often building houses for them and now they are stuck. Even the ‘doing well’ towns have percentages of the adult population with no formal qualifications nearly as bad as the Valleys and are generally hostile to Welsh identity and language. Some communities are very bifurcated between the educated middle classes and a quiet but resentful working class.
I would see the problems as more to do with neglect by WAG of anywhere apart from its base in South Wales, extremely poor infrastructure, the decline of the education service in many areas and the loss of jobs. The return of small scale manufacturing together with investment in technical education would be a start together with enabling councils to employ more of the old manual workers. Restrictive practices also abound now which discriminate against working class people I saw an advert for a playleader on minimum wage requiring Grades C in English and Maths, the police mainly recruit graduates etc etc. Finally we need to up our spend on education in Wales, the fact we are £800-£1000 per pupil per year less than in England is starting to have a huge impact on our schools.
Here is an explanation given by someone on the same One Planet facebook page, they don’t mention anything about saving the planet, the environment, sustainability, Low impact build or carbon footprints and of course they don’t mention anything about Wales.https://www.facebook.com/groups/oneplanetcouncil/permalink/2035051950065791/
Clare Adamson: ” We decided to go ahead with an OPD because we felt no security and confidence in our society, government to not only look after us but look after countless others. Everywhere you look these days there are vulnerable and marginalised people being left in the gutter, whether it be the elderly or others. The only way to really thrive out there is to be a pawn in a destructive, exploitative system. For us there is a real possibility that OPD can support people to support themselves and each other if we can learn to cooperate and value each other…”
This reads as the great escape from the rat race in England, did those who gave the go ahead for the One Planet OPDs realise that it would encourage an exodus from England, if not, why not? Have they figured out how many people will flee to Wales and how much this will cost the local Council Planning Offices who will have to cope with multiple applications? Is it possible to properly monitor each individual OPD, when they are likely to be swamped and what cost and pressure will this add to local services as numbers rise as OPD dwellers pay minimal council tax and probably no income tax? Those like Tony Wrench and others involved with One Planet, know how the planning office is already overstretched and they assume by putting pressure on the authorities, as they have done in the past, they can try and manipulate the terms and conditions of the OPDs as time goes by. This must not be allowed to happen and as a planning policy it should only be offered to people from local communities until England, also commits to a One Planet OPD TAN6 policy!
And that was written by Shipton…..a Labour supporter.
What was?
The book about George Thomas.
Donkey and Anonymous – the book about George Thomas ‘Political Chameleon’ is a mine of info if you already know who was or may have been involved in the cover-up re the North Wales Child Abuse Scandal and Westminster Paedophile Ring. George Thomas was mates with all of them and they undoubtedly knew that he was molesting children himself. The book was indeed written by Martin Shipton – he was interviewed about it on a Welsh radio show that I listened to and admitted that he hated George Thomas. The book is in no way flattering about Thomas but Shipton could have been far ruder and named more people – I suspect that he didn’t dare because the reality of the George Thomas business was that the whole of the south Wales Labour Party knew about him. Most of them hated him but whatever would have happened if south Wales had turned against the Labour Party? None of them dared shop him. Jim Callaghan hated Thomas but Thomas got on very well with Harold Wilson…
There was another person whom George Thomas got on very well with as well – Thatcher. They were friends across the political divide and her book The Downing Street years waxes lyrical about him – Thatcher of course made much of her Methodist roots and Thomas was a Methodist lay preacher and that’s what Thatcher said impressed her so much about him. I know some Methodists who take a rather dimmer view of Thatcher and Thomas. There were some people in the Methodist Church in north Wales who sadly colluded with the paedophile gang that operated in the region – one member of which was the MP for Chester, Sir Peter Morrison, Thatcher’s friend and PPS…
Everyone active in south Wales Labour politics in the 60s, 70s and 80s knew about George Thomas – the Kinnocks knew, Rhodri Morgan knew, they all bloody knew. They didn’t like him and in the end he was a major embarrassment, but the silly sods had colluded for so long that if they’d had tried to get rid of him they’d have all been brought down.
The other people who knew about George Thomas were the medical services. Thomas couldn’t seem to stop himself molesting boys but lived in terror of being exposed, particularly as some people did go to the police – they were of course silenced. Thomas was reduced to a nervous wreck on a number of occasions and on one occasion was hospitalised because he thought that he had caught an STD and the news would get out. It was never made clear whether Thomas HAD contracted an STD – he might well have, so much was being concealed who would ever have known. Interestingly enough one thing that Thomas used his fame and political connections for was raising money for NHS charities. They have now all changed their names since it has been revealed that Thomas was a molester, but he was at the root of quite a few of them. The Chair of the City of Cardiff Hospice (or called something similar) was and might still be the widow of Prof Kenneth Rawnsley, the man who led the psychiatry service in Wales for years – he was based at Cardiff Medical School, but wielded huge clout across the whole of Wales. He concealed the abuses of patients by the psychiatric services in north Wales – those patients were very often the kids who had been abused in care and who were being diagnosed as psychotic to discredit them when they talked about what had happened to them. Rawnsleys wife, the Chair of the hospice, is a retired child psychiatrist herself…now I wonder what her young patients were telling her…
I will soon be blogging in detail about George Thomas, it’s been on my list for a while but I’ve been snowed under. That man compromised the whole of south Wales – the crooked businessmen in Cardiff, the Councillors, the NHS, the whole lot. They all knew, he used them and they used him. And of course they used his links to Thatcher and dear old Prince Charles.
The Mersey/Dee area is one conurbation, and thus needs good roads.
Bollocks. But even if you were right, it’s still two countries.
Balderdash. In terms of economics, North East Wales is in North West England, I’m afraid!
Consider things; it’s 4 miles from the border near RAF Sealand (Deeside) to Eastham (Merseyside). Since there is a frictionless border, the industrial economies of Deeside and Merseyside/West Cheshire became one and have been so for a hundred years or more. Saltney lies upon the English border and the Airbus factory is often described as being near Chester. It’s five minutes drive from Sandycroft to England, and the site of the old Shotton steel works (now a vast industrial estate) lies upon the border.
Seriously, how much more of a “conurbation” could it be? Let’s not pretend to be blind. And this is a good thing – those in the Deeside/Merseyside conurbation generally earn far higher wages than those in the rest of Wales.
What you’re describing is commonplace across continental Europe and elsewhere. There are cross-border conurbations everywhere, and there’s no problem as long we’re talking about independent countries. The difference with Deeside being that because Wales is not independent we’ve had no control over how it has developed.
The Mersey Dee Alliance is no different, another scheme for the benefit of England. On one level it’s nothing more than a plan to protect property values in Cheshire by pushing commuters further west. This is why we see properties in Wrecsam being advertised as ‘West Cheshire’.
We have avoided being controlled by “third parties” of any nationalist tendency. Others would love to share in our good fortune; we are inclined to keep it all for ourselves.
But that burnishes property values in Wrexham, not Cheshire. And why not – it too has proximity to real industry and does quite well from it (although I prefer Flintshire myself.)
The trouble is that we are talking about different Wales’s. My Wales is an industrial corner that is an indivisible and historic economic component of industrial north west England. It’s just the “way it is” mate.
Nothing ‘historic’ about it, except for those with no understanding of history. Read this.
Where to start with Steve Jones’ nonsense?
As Jac points out, trans-border conurbations are hardly unknown around the world. The key difference is that, in all other instances, both sides have states to defend their interests. We don’t. Indeed, the colonial power scarcely recognises that there’s even a border there, and when they do, it’s only as an administrative convenience, rather like the border between, say, Shropshire and Staffordshire.
This structure means that we have no state to protect us, and – being a construct of colonial policy – the benefit accrues almost solely to the colonial power’s side.
(Any ‘benefits’ to the side of the colony are an unintended happy accident. And I don’t see inflated property prices in Wrexham & Flintshire as being ‘A Good Thing’, because it prices the local people who need somewhere to live out of the market, the property sellers knowing that there will be no shortage of the impressionable on the colonial power’s side of the border to buy them up, their being cheaper than property in the areas they come from).
Two instructive examples:
1) The former Brymbo Steelworks site (a profitable industry asset-stripped and closed down by its English owners). It lay derelict for over a decade before a developer (from England, natch) built a whole load of houses and ‘apartments’ on it…which they then found they couldn’t sell to locals at the sort of prices which would maximise their profits (profits which were, of course, ‘repatriated’ to the developers’ HQ in the English midlands). So they handed a large chunk of them over to letting agencies, housing associations and the like. The proportion of genuinely local people living there is low for these reasons.
2) When I go to the supermarket once a week (a middle-ranking one, not one of the cheapo-cheapo places, but hardly Waitrose either), the predominant accents I hear are not local ones, but English, and these usually coming out of the mouths of people in their 60s and older, who have clearly retired here to avail themselves of the cheaper (from the standpoint of where they came from) property prices and such benefits as free prescriptions. The strain that their presence puts upon already stretched (and badly run) health and social services is obvious.
As we have seen with Skates’ promotion of the Dee-Mersey ‘partnership’, with Drakeford’s enthusiasm for turning our midlands into a happy-hunting ground for Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Telford’s white-flighters and Cairns’ obscene enthusiasm for the Greater Bristol Bollocks, we are seeing our nation dismembered before our eyes.
What the English state couldn’t achieve by invasion, occupation and armed force, what it couldn’t do with discriminatory laws, what it couldn’t do even with the ‘managed decline’ of the last fifty years, it is now seeking to do by driving the productive parts of our society out and replacing it by spongers, criminals and inadequates from England. And none of our existing political class has the gumption or the balls to say, “Enough!”.
As I have said before here (though it may have been in the days when I posted anonymously), we are being Latvianised, with the primary objective being to prevent any possibility of a demand for independence from colonial rule taking root.
We are at the stage where we have either to fight or to die.
With the ultimate irony that all of this is happening under devolution.
Welsh devolution is safe in the hands of Labour, surely that was always the plan. Likewise for Scotland but fortunately there it all went terribly wrong.
No they don’t. Google “Tri-state areas”, and you’ll find that you are talking soft. And the same happens with the Hull/Ottawa conurbation in Canada. It’s commonplace… so read and learn!
You’ve not had the industrial revolution down your end, then? I thought not. Don’t criticise what you can’t understand…
You’re being silly now, son. This the view I remember from my boyhood. We used to play over on the slag heaps (God knows what poisons were in them). We’d build bikes from parts we’d scavenged from the canal or the river, no brakes or saddles or pneumatic tyres but they were tidy bikes. My father, uncles, grandfathers and great-grandfathers worked in the tinplate and other plants you see in the picture.
I think you’ve said all you have to say, you just keep repeating yourself now – ‘Deeside/Flintshire is prosperous because it is economically integrated with Merseyside’. That being so, there’s not much point in you coming back.
To help you understand how arrogant and ignorant you are, here’s an earlier illustration of the Lower Swansea Valley, roughly where the Swans beat Burnley 1 – 0 this afternoon.
Unfortunately, it was usually all built on one thing – copper in the case of Swansea, coal for the valleys. Without a diversified economy, or some larger conurbation with a diversified economy, Swansea was too fragile to last. So it goes. Only those places near a large, diversified, industrial conurbation have done well. You may call that “ignorance” if you wish, but that’s your problem, not mine.
Swansea was the copper capital of the world, but it wasn’t reliant solely on copper. Every metal known to man has been worked in Swansea. There is still a nickel refinery at Clydach (perhaps the only one in the UK). I worked at an aluminium plant and a tinplate plant. My father worked in a titanium plant. Just around the Bay we have the biggest steel works in Europe.
“Swansea was too fragile to last”. Hate to disappoint you, son, but it’s still there and going strong.
“Only those places near a large, diversified, industrial conurbation have done well”. Like Aberdeen? Monaco?
And as for your “large, diversified, industrial conurbation”, by which you mean Merseyside, it’s been doing so well in recent decades that it qualified for EU Objective One funding, just like the Valleys. In fact, I wouldn’t mind betting that Merseyside has had more public money poured into it than the Valleys, or even the whole of south Wales.
Stick to your own area, son, because you know fuck all about mine. And despite your claims to have travelled, you don’t seem to know a lot about how the world operates, how money can be generated, and an economy formed.
Your problem is that you’re obsessed with big is beautiful and the belief that Greater Merseyside is prosperous. If it wasn’t for the funding of recent decades Liverpool would today have more in common with Detroit than any other UK conurbation.
I get disappointed if I don’t get enough angry comments – because that’s how I know I’m right. So you’ve made my day, Jac.
So we’ll just enjoy our “higher than yours” wages, and leave you to stew in your own juice for a long, long time. You richly deserve that.
You should be disappointed then, because I’m not angry.
You’ve said lots of silly things about Merseyside and Swansea and I’ve corrected you, but that’s how I see the role of this blog – education.
“So we’ll just enjoy our “higher than yours” wages, and leave you to stew in your own juice for a long, long time. You richly deserve that.” Makes you sound like a real nasty piece of work.
And as you’ve said all you have to say – and said it ad nauseum – there’s no point in you coming back. (That’s the polite way of saying ‘Fuck off!’)
“Never argue with an idiot Jac, he’ll only drag you down to his level, and beat you with his experience”
Troll time. Where it ain’t you can’t put it (YAWN).
Sounds like more parts of Wales being dependent on parts of England. If you’d travelled to any other real colonies you’d understand this is the norm. The more areas of Wales that cannot exist without England the better as far as our colonial masters see. But at the end of the day you are Welsh and to them you are lesser and your land with eventually be forfeit when your children can no longer afford to call Deeside their home. Good lord a part of Wales is onto a good thing from England – that always fucking lasts doesn’t it. Don’t choke on those extra crumbs.
Its the case now, it was the case before and it will be the case tomorrow.
Sorry to hog this – and with a change of track but something important before I go to slumber:-
I borrowed a book from my local Library last week to confirm suspicions. It was :-
“Political Chameleon” in search of George Thomas
by Martin Shipton pub Welsh Academic Press 2017.
It is a comprehensive biography of the late “Lord Tonypandy George Thomas” and is 282 pages long.
I only wanted to read two chapters :-
“Sexual Predator” p224 – p239 &
“Freemason” p240 – p246 – just twenty two pages in all – did not take long !
to confirm what an utterly revolting disgusting ‘thing’ this was that we called “George Thomas”.
It is sickening how such a ‘thing’ was seen by so many to represent us in Wales (not in my name – or yours I hope) and how ‘it’ was revered by Labour members and indeed the more gullible in public at all levels. I’ve not read the rest which is full of this ‘thing’s’ grovelling life. I am returning the book to the Library now. I recommend you get to read those twenty two pages.
I think everyone in Wales should read pages 224 to 246 to see the truth of this ‘thing’.
All Welsh Labour Party members who idolised this “thing” should be tied to a Chair, with “The Prince of Wails”, and forced to read those pages, to know what a “thing” they idolised, and confess publicly how wrong they were.
Keith Parry you say Neil McEvoy wants to stay in Plaid Cymru. I don’t know the complicated legal issues within Plaid Cymru, but if they expel him, then that’s – it he is out. Of course he can appeal to a court but that costs lots of money. So if he is “out” then he’s out. It all depends now on his back stabbers and the law and Neil’s finances to fight it if it comes. Will Plaid’s red green bubbly set have the “bottle”? If it’s a case of “exit then it means exit” for Neil in Plaid. Then who is going to fight Genocide by substitution in Yemen and Wales?
I don’t think the Saudis are practising Genocide by Substitution in Yemen – it’s just genocide.
You’re correct about the A55 and M4 mean ‘that improved communications invariably result in the closure of ‘outposts’, which become redundant or expendable if their areas can now be served from further away.’. You talk of the creameries. If you go on any day of the week to Crosshands which is basically at the end of the M4, you’ll see articulated milk tankers receiving milk from smaller vehicles which have picked up their produce from dairy farms across the west Wales milk field. Where are they taking the milk? They’re mostly bound for large dairies in England. It’s incredible how Crosshands is expanding so much. Raw milk going eastwards, and finished products the other way. It’s no coincidence that Bibby, Wincanton and NR Evans are all based there. Wincanton even have English rivers written on some of their vehicles to give them a specific name eg Tamar. Haven’t see a Teifi or Tywi yet.
Not far from the above, I’ve seen this ‘housing’ development based in Carmel. I’ve come across another similar Glanaman. I have cause to visit these sites and the residents I’ve come across have not been local. This has to be the ultimate example of ‘privatise profits and socialise losses’. I mean, somebody is making a lot of money encouraging these people to more here during their twilight age. Who will be picking up the tab for their care needs?
https://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/45676502?search_identifier=18ee6f76b314ecb4818397b1d510cd88#AOBuBduMFgTfeuc2.97
“Marlais park is an established estate of retirement homes and occupancy of these homes is restricted to residents who must be retired or semi-retired and having an age of 50 plus years. No children are permitted to live on the estate although domestic pets of dogs and or cats are permitted.”
“We are informed by the Site Owner that the Park Home will be owned and occupied under the provisions of The Mobile Homes Act. The monthly ground rent charge is presently £132.50 and which includes general service charge to cover the cost of the maintenance of the roads, communal lighting, surface water drains and maintenance of the communal grounds and water charge.”
It’s no wonder that most of the places I went to as a youth are now elderly care homes including the Gwernllwyn in Crosshands. Is this another part of the economic plan in store for us? Carers in addition to seasonal tourism work?
“It’s incredible how Crosshands is expanding so much. Raw milk going eastwards, and finished products the other way. It’s no coincidence that Bibby, Wincanton and NR Evans are all based there. Wincanton even have English rivers written on some of their vehicles to give them a specific name eg Tamar. Haven’t see a Teifi or Tywi yet.”
That’s how colonialism operates. The example I love is from Cuba under Spanish rule in the 19th century, when tobacco leaf would be grown on the island and then taken to Spain to be made into cigars – then shipped back. THAT is how a colony is supposed to serve the ‘mother country’. Here we are in 2018, after almost 20 years of devolution, and the same thing is happening in Wales with milk.
That’s why we need a political revolution, and a leader with balls the size of Castros! Why do you think I’ve got a long beard? But it ends there, I no longer have the stamina to do a Castro job, although the balls are still there.
Not all the tobacco and sugar plantation slaves in the Caribbean had black skin..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY4rDnb11bY
A bit of ‘British History’ they don’t tell you about in schools.
I am ashamed to be British because of our history, and embarrassed to be British because of Brexit. Incidentally, by continually referring to the Holocaust, and the two world wars (never the actual cause of them mind, just “we won” – no we didn’t, the Yanks did, and “fighting for our freedom” – er no.. probably if the Prime Minister at the time wasn’t in a manic period of his mental illness we’d never have gone to war anyway) our nation of morons are distracted away from the fact that our nation is the only one to “successfully” complete a genocide – we completely obliterated an entire race – 19th century I think. All this backward harking to “Lest We Forget” sticks in my craw too. Not only have “we” forgotten, we’ve denied, ignored – even failed to learn our own history.
I suggest that WWII was won, and lost, on the Eastern Front. If Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union, or if he’d won, then it’s unlikely that D Day would have happened.
Hmm, well if Germany hadn’t been stripped of so much after WW1, there probably wouldn’t have been the discontent that allowed a maniac like Hitler rise to the top and for things to kick off like they did. Nothing like discontent to allow nutters to take the lead – as very recent history shows. I do believe that civilisation is now in decline. Hopefully gradually, or by disease or meteor or whatever – before some unhinged lunatic presses a button and obliterates the planet. And a good chunk of the universe.
That’s a different thing, but you’re right that the Versailles Treaty gave Hitler a platform.
Jac – Interested that you mentioned Moelyci/Cwm Harry. I know something about the sad implosion of that project, because my PhD supervisor and his wife were two of the founders of Moelyci and they were stuffed over and ousted by incompetent greedy people – as a result the whole thing has imploded.
The two people concerned are John and Della Fazey who were two school teachers who secured jobs at Bangor University in the 1980s. John and Della sent their children to local schools, where Della was a governor. Both their children speak Welsh fluently. John is fluent in Welsh – he learnt it from the members of Bethesda Rugby Club – he was their coach and is often mistaken for someone who grew up in Bethesda so authentic is his accent. Della is a Welsh learner. The Fazeys are well known among the farming community in Gwynedd because they own and run a small hill farm and have many close friends in the Welsh farming community.
John had the idea of setting up Moelyci when the tenant of the neighbouring farm to his – a tenant of the Penrhyn estate – was told to leave the farm when she could no longer afford the rent after the foot and mouth crisis. She had farmed there for all of her life and her father farmed it before her. Her landlord Pennant – I’ve forgotten his first name, but he’s not Edmund, he’s the other one who lives in Cyprus – was kind enough to just give a few months notice in view of her dire straits rather than the year or whatever that is usually required and then she was out of house and home. She moved to a council house in Mynydd Llandegai and took a job as a carer. John and Della were friends with her and were appalled. Pennant announced that he was putting the farm up for sale and discussions began that indicated that Pennant was about to sell it to someone who was going to develop the site with absolutely no benefit to the local community.
John knew about the villagers on the Isle of Eigg who had clubbed together and purchased their island rather than see it sold to an absentee landlord and he came up with a plan to form an IPS – Industrial Provident Society – with a group of people and buy Moelyci and indeed turn it into a community farm. It was not supposed to be the mess that it evolved into – John and Della know how to farm, they know how to garden and they knew how to manage an SSI, because they had been doing that at their place for years. They also knew of local young people who would love to farm and garden but had no money for land – so John thought that perhaps they could have allotments available for local people or let them use the land for grazing sheep etc.
John arranged an IPS whereby people could buy into it for a very modest minimum sum – £25. I bought £100 worth of shares when I was a PhD student myself. The bulk of the money to buy Moelyci farm however came from John and two other investors – John remortgaged his own farm as security. What John and Della didn’t know was that one of the major investors – a grade A shite of doctor from Ysbyty Gwynedd – was only interested in being part of it all because he had a Cunning Plan. He wanted to acquire Moelyci for himself – he owned neighbouring land – at rock bottom price. So he recruited loads of utter dipsticks to buy shares. He then spread vicious rumours which I knew to be untrue around about John and Della. The farmers knew that these were lies but the dipsticks didn’t – they were not very compus mentis people from the hippyish community around Bethesda who did not know the Fazeys. They were also very difficult confrontational people who caused chaos and fought among themselves whilst the whole project went tits up because they voted down every suggestion that the Fazeys made – and the Fazeys were the only ones who knew how to run a farm. The Ysbyty Gwynedd doctor stood by delighted. John nearly lost his farm – at which point the dreadful doctor made his generous offer to buy Moelyci for peanuts. Fortunately John was sharper than the crooked doctor and did manage to save his own farm, although he did lose a great deal of money.
Not many people know about all this because the Fazeys are Methodists and felt that it was unacceptable to openly badmouth the dreadful doctor. I’d have taken a shotgun to him myself, but never mind. However the Fazeys did collect evidence and confronted the dreadful doctor with his defamatory comments – they received a written apology and he resigned from Moelyci.
The problems hadn’t ended. By now the dreadful doctor had been sacked from Ysbyty Gwynedd for seriously neglecting the patients. He then set up a rival business to Moelyci on his own land and replicated most of their ideas in order to poach their customers. Then the vicious lies began again…
By now an awful lot of people – including me – gave up under the weight of the dipsticks, they were just too much to deal with. The Fazeys continued to persevere because they genuinely wanted to give local people without land or money opportunities. They were crapped on repeatedly – after they had been touched for thousands of more pounds to keep Moelyci afloat.
In the end the Fazeys were frozen out by the dipsticks and they finally gave up and left. They asked for their money back – it had been a loan not a gift – and were told to fuck off. Within months Moelyci was in very deep trouble – because the capable people had all been driven out. Then Cwm Harry appeared out of nowhere, offering to buy Moelyci Farm. Cwm Harry described itself as a land trust – but it didn’t have any land, which is why it wanted to buy Moelyci at a knock down price from a bunch of wallies who could not see that they were about to be fleeced.
Cwm Harry installed a manager from outside of the area who unlawfully dismissed the employees of Moelyci from their jobs. These were local people who were not well educated who did not have the stomach for a fight, although Della offered to support them if they wanted to go to employment tribunals. A volunteer with learning disabilities was told not to appear in public when some journos arrived to do a PR piece – the man involved might have had learning disabilities but he knew that he was being treated dreadfully and left. Most other volunteers left as well – except for one vicious bully, who was then given a paid job by Cwm Harry as the volunteer co-ordinator!
Because I left Wales a while ago I have lost touch with the Cwm Harry saga but the last time that I saw the Fazeys they told me that it was very clear that Cwm Harry could’t run the farm and it would have to be sold.
It is all very sad and you are right that much Welsh Govt funding has been wasted. If anyone had listened to the Fazeys instead of swindling them and undermining them, Moelcyi would be a well run farm and a valuable resource for Tregarth. It is instead a scandal ridden embarrassment. The Fazeys have behaved with dignity throughout it all and have never entered into a public slanging match. The only people who know the full story are the Fazey’s children and close friends.
By the way, one of the many allegations – apart from the Fazeys stealing the funds would you believe – was that John and Della were a pair of stuck up Oxford landowning academics born with silver spoons in their mouths.
Here is the truth:
John is a miner’s son from Nottingham. He went to grammar school and became a school teacher – the first person in his family to have a professional rather than a manual job. When he was in his twenties he did a Masters degree and then a PhD at Bangor whilst working as a lecturer. He went to work at Oxford when he was 60 – because he was very very good at what he did.
Della’s dad was a Methodist minister. The family were well educated and cultured but they did not have money – Methodist ministers get a stipend not a salary and the family were very hard up. Della also became a teacher and like John after teaching for a few years got a job at Bangor University when John started work there.
For years they lived in a cottage in Tregarth. When the children were teenagers they had scraped together enough money to buy their farm – they were only able to afford it because the previous owners had been an elderly eccentric couple who had not maintained it and let the place go to rack and ruin.
Neither of them inherited a penny. Many of the people who spread the vicious rumours about them were the rather hopeless hippy children of English middle class families who inherited far more than most people around Bethesda.
The biggest problem was always the dreadful doctor from Ysbyty Gwynedd who wanted Moelyci for himself. He was causing trouble before I really got to know John and Della. But I am aware that one reason why John and Della were targeted later on was because of their support for me. I was being seriously threatened and harassed by the people who facilitated the north Wales paedophile ring – whom I have now exposed on my blog. A lot of people ran away in terror after seeing what was happening to me. The Fazeys didn’t. They made statements to lawyers detailing what they had seen happening to me and wrote to the police as well as to the Chairman of the North West Wales NHS Trust, whose staff were some of the worst offenders. They also let me stay at their place when it was too dangerous for me to be alone at my own house. And they were not afraid to challenge people when they heard lies being told about me. Sadly, it brought them into the firing line.
The two people who were not in the least bit responsible for the Moelyci/Cwm Harry disaster are the people who have been blamed – John and Della.
Re Swansea University and Keith’s comment – I think that Swansea University was very heavily influenced by Rhodri Morgan and his network. Wasn’t his dad an academic there – and his brother Prys definitely was. Many, many people in Rhodri’s circle of colleagues and friends went to Swansea or worked there. There have been serious allegations of nepotism and corruption at Swansea but it might have been after your time Keith. Huw Irranca-Davies ended up bagging a job there when his uncle was I think the Chair of the Governors and once Richard Davies was appointed as VC havoc broke out. Depts were shut down on the grounds that he’d had disagreements with members of staff in them and there were bizarre allegations about dodgy deals in the university with the best man at Davies’s wedding. Things got so bad that the staff tried to have Davies removed – they petitioned the University visitor – which was of course HM the Queen Lilibet! She failed to sort it out…
There is a bomb lurking at Swansea at present in the form of PVC Hilary Lappin-Scott. Hilary was appointed PVC for Research at Bangor a few years ago and in the space of 18 months virtually destroyed the place. She made an alliance with the sociopathic prof of psychology Fergus Lowe and they tried to close down five depts – some of them very highly performing. The VC resigned during the middle of it all and I was told that he did that to stop Hilary and Fergus causing any more havoc – his resignation meant that everything had to be frozen. Then she was sacked by the VC before he actually left Bangor but the gory details never emerged because of a confidentiality clause. On the afternoon on which the VC did the dirty deed an e mail was sent around to all staff stating that Hilary Lappin-Scott had left her role at Bangor and that no more information would be released. Loud cheering could be heard coming from offices and an e mail began circulating headed ‘the witch is dead’. She’s been at Swansea a few years now – depts have been closed, students have protested, staff have resigned…But at least Hilary has won an ‘Inspirational Woman’ award and has been photographed with Princess Anne.
Sally, you are an unbelievable fount of knowledge. What is the current position at Moelyci?
I don’t know the latest news to be honest Jac – John had a stroke last year which left him a bit incapacitated. He has made an excellent recovery but he and Della have had things other than the loonies at Cwm Harry to think about. John suffered more than he should have – he actually had a stroke previously, was taken to Ysbyty Gwynedd and then the GPs in Bethesda, had extensive tests but guess what, no-one diagnosed the stroke, he was told he had a middle ear infection. He had another stroke which did damage…
Nasty stuff Jac, very nasty.
However the minute that Cwm Harry turned up, John and Della did observe that there was no way that they wanted Moelyci for the purposes that they had told everyone.
So what was Cwm Harry’s real purpose in getting involved?
As far as anybody could work out it was to acquire some land at a knock down price, because although Cwm Harry was a land trust it didn’t have any land. Why they didn’t get their arses in gear, do what was necessary and actually buy Moelyci at the bargain price that they negotiated I do not know…
I do indeed fondly remember Phil Henry and Huw Price. My politics were probably formed before I went to Swansea and met my good like minded friends there. Neil has made it clear he wishes to stay in Plaid and bring it to its senses. He seeks sovereignty for local people in their communities and this country. I support him in his campaign.
Sovereignty for this country means what exactly… Independence or Max Devo? Because the latter is a waste of time and resources. Just by asking for more than we want we’ll get that.
Keith Parry, weren’t you Phil Henry’s political apprentice guided by Dr Huw Price? Phil had fire in his belly and sadly died young and Huw had true wisdom. Now Plaid is totally dead in Swansea County. You are a Cardiff City & County Councillor for three simple reasons:- (1) you’ve worked hard at it to persuade a cosmopolitan community to vote for you, and (2) your early politics were formed under Phil Henry’s wing and (3) you’ve been elected partly because of the Neil McEvoy influence in your Ward. Phil and Huw are sadly long gone and Plaid is determined to get rid of Neil. You’ll be alone in the little big city soon, looking over your shoulder for those back stabbers brewing curried oysters with bubbly in the “Bay Bubble island”. Why don’t you and Neil jump ship into the ‘New Party’ to be launched within weeks.
I went to Swansea University as a mature student in 1979. At that time he Politics Department was run by a Professor Greenleaf, an English Tory. Some of the staff still there dated back to an earlier age, before the 1960’s expansion of the universities. From the 1920s to the 1950s the University in Swansea was essentially a Welsh University with Welsh staff and students. In the 1960s a massive expansion started along the UCCA admissions system. Many Welsh students were sent to universities in England and fifty or more percent of students and academic staff in Welsh universities were English.
As with the Treason of the Blue Books, that destroyed Welsh Education in schools from the 1870s Welsh Nationalism, Welsh politics, Welsh Identity, was destroyed in the universities in Wales in the 1960s by the London Government with the horrible Labour Party acying as England’s Henchman.
I am a Plaid Cymru Councillor in Cardiff. Cardiff in many ways is a city like San Francisco, a city of immigrants. No one says a San Franciscian is not Californian or American.
Cardiff has the same climate as San Francisco mild and damp
Plaid Cymru promotes the idea of civic nationalism, if a person is registered to vote they are a Welsh Citizen.Where they come from is of no matter,by registering to vote they have declared themselves to be Welsh.
Knocking on doors in Cardiff for elections, all sorts of people from all round the world answer the door. Tell them we need independence to sort out, our health, education, economic problems many agree. This argument needs to be put to them. Most realise they have come to another country, no one has forced them here, they have good will for Wales. FEED IT!
But Keith, my old mucker, how can you canvass people in Cardiff, arguing that we need independence to sort things out, when your party, Plaid Cymru, doesn’t want independence? Isn’t that dishonest?
Yes, this is exactly what has been happening to Wales, genocide by substitution, over many generations. The fact that this is so obviously built into ‘Welsh’ Government policy, as you clearly describe, makes it so treacherous.
In regard to the ‘One Planet’ OPD policies, it is so clear how little thought and care has been given to the outcome of the planning policy and how this policy can be exploited. Here is an example of how those who have managed to attain an OPD, are not satisfied with that, but want to carry on trying to bend the policy to suit their own, selfish agenda. In this debate, https://www.facebook.com/groups/oneplanetcouncil/permalink/2035051950065791/ someone from as far away as Sweden, has heard about the OPDs in Wales and is interested, but asks a very pertinent question, namely, what happens when you get old, how can you run a smallholding and meet the targets set out by the OPDs? Many of those who join in the debate, including Tony Wrench and those from Rhiw Las, Paul Jennings (who wrote so disgustingly about his Welsh neighbours) and Erica Thompson, who works for ‘One Planet’ and CATS etc http://www.ericathompson.co.uk/ are very vocal about changing OPDs so that they can grow old in comfort on their smallholdings!
Again, these are not poor, working class people from the local community taking up the OPD opportunities, they are often very privileged. Erica Thompson had an architect design her Grand design style Eco house, https://www.mwd.wales/rhiw-las, In the same Facebook discussion, she states “it could mean becoming “the brains of the operation” and using volunteers and visitors to do more of the physical work” So basically behaving like a 19th Century English Landowner, exploiting voluntary/slave labour to maintain their lifestyles, they don’t think about Wales at all. Where are these “volunteers” coming from, are they creating a carbon footprint or is she thinking she can exploit the local community to suit her lifestyle choice? It seems like she has already put these slave labour practices into action, although this lot had to pay to build her house! http://www.heartwoodnaturalbuilding.moonfruit.co.uk/strawbale-course/4593703534
How is this good for the local economy, when this is all about middle class individuals, moving from England, wangling the planning laws, to acquire a cheaper small holding than they would otherwise get for their money, while exploiting free labour. How many of these people will say they will support the Welsh language by sending their children to the local Welsh medium school, but will instead either home school or send them to a private Steiner school? There are far too many loopholes in the TAN 6 policy, which do not support the local communities. The policy should be one that covers the whole of Britain and it should only be given as an option to those who are from the local area. Alternatively, they could have made a restriction on all second homes and local people living in Wales wouldn’t be priced out of a home in their community in the first place!
Copy below of my enquiry to Welsh Government dated 4 February. Awaiting reply.
To: Welsh Government – Customer Help Desk
A series of fires in “eco settlements” in Wales has focused attention on the Building Regulations process and planning policy as set out in TAN 6 “Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities” published July 2010.
To clarify policy and process I would be grateful if you could respond to the following enquiries.
1] If “eco settlements” are granted planning permission on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate is there a requirement for the Local Authority to enter into a planning obligation [S.106 agreement Town & Country Planning Act 1990] with the applicant in accordance with Para. 4.23.1 of TAN 6 which states.” A S.106 agreement should also be used to tie the dwellings to the land which justified the grant of planning consent. Where there is a change of ownership of the One Planet Development or any individual holding within larger schemes, a new management plan should be submitted to the planning authority for approval.”
2] Building Regulations is a devolved function. Under Building Regulations 2010, is there currently a statutory requirement for private Approved Inspectors to provide Local Authorities with any information regarding the inspection process. Are Local Authorities currently required to record any information in a public register.
3] Are “eco settlements” subject to the same criteria as conventional settlements with regard to building regulation compliance, particularly with regard to fire safety and structural integrity of buildings.
I look forward to receiving clarification when you have had an opportunity to liaise with your Planning and Building Regulation departments. Thank you.
Regards
Wynne Jones
That’s excellent Wynne, very well said, clear and succinct!
Myfanwy I have also requested a copy of the S.106 agreement for Lammas site at Glandwr. No reply from Council yet. I suspect there is no agreement in place. Why would the Council enter into a legal agreement after recommending rejection of planning application only to have the decision overturned on appeal to Planning Inspectorate. If a S.106 agreement has not been executed I wonder if there are legal implications with regard to the validity of the planning permission granted.
Just to add, the irony of this comment from the same One Planet facebook debate knows no bounds.
Paul Jennings: “OPDs should clearly be designed for generational succession. OPD is inspired by Permaculture; there can be no Permaculture without communities and communities must, to be stable, be multi-generational. Work to have young people around; work to build villages. There is quite simply no alternative to this in the long run. In healthy human communities old people do not simply soak up care,but play crucial roles. We design for this and live for this or we ensure a future of reliance of an unsustainable “care system” and a state in progressive collapse.”
Erica Thompson: “Yes, exactly.”
What about the “multi generational succession” of Welsh communities, who have in fact, been displaced by the successive migration of people, like your self Paul Jennings, over generations, they didn’t have policies set up by the Welsh Government to stop the rot of their forced migration? His self entitled arrogance and lack of self awareness regarding the Welsh predicament is breath taking, but the clear fault lies with the Labour/ Plaid Government, for not only not actively supporting local communities, but rather encouraging the displacement of Welsh people, with clearly, ill thought out policies.
Myfanwy has this lot sussed alright. The Facebook link provided led me into the Discussion page where I came across the most recent poster, who asked today, “Hello OPDers, we’ve finished our draft management plan and sent it in to Pembrokshire planning dept, as advised. Any idea how long we have to wait before we hear any thing? What have other people experienced. Would love to know. Thanks”. The question was posed by a Lucy Lant. On her Facebook page are some rather interesting photos where she makes her political allegiances quite clear. It’s the Labour Party. Well you didn’t think it would be Plaid, did you? https://www.facebook.com/lucy.lant.5
What you’ve outlined there in a most revealing and clear way, that cannot attract any mitigating arguments, is the DESPERATE need for us to get our skates on to get our New Party rolling – pronto!
I have lived on a dead end road on the rural outskirts of a large Welsh urban area for decades. The newer residents call it a cul-de-sac. It has 34 quite old houses. Unlike many people in Wales today, I know all the residents – some very well – and some only vaguely. I’ve just sat down and listed all the houses. It slightly surprises me, as 16 houses have Welsh speakers, mostly elderly “natives”. Sixteen houses have English only speakers mostly young and mostly newcomers – few exactly from England – mostly coming out from the nearby anglicised urban area, with little interest in the Welsh language or culture. There is also one empty house whose last resident, an elderly Welsh speaker, just passed away and its up for sale. Another house has been empty a long while – it is being renovated – the previous last owner spoke some Welsh. So my road is exactly 50% Welsh speaking now, when I came here many decades ago it was nearly all Welsh speaking. House prices were low then, now they are above average because its a rural area. This 50% is high for the outskirts of a large urban conurbation, but I sadly guess it will be far lower in the next generation. I hope i am wrong when I’ve gone. Another thing, most of the newcomers do not frequent the community’s shop or pub or chapel or community hall, but their kids do go to the local school but not to the quite nearby Ysgol Gymraeg. It is as if there are two communities here.
Sadly, your story is being repeated all along the West Wales coast and beyond. Very soon we’ll have a political voice that will highlight this problem without fear, unlike those cowardly politicians down in the Cardiff Bay bubble.
Indeed. On a wet and windy walk with my hound this morning I ran into a fellow walker. We exchanged pleasantries and in an impeccable West Midlands accent he said to me, I’m off to watch the Swans this afternoon, got to go as I’ve a season ticket. I rarely meet anyone with a South Wales valley accent any more, we’re becoming an endangered species. I’m surprised no-one has set up a charity to make money from, sorry, I meant protect us.
Yet another mild mellow dissertation from Jac’s keyboard. Excellent work. Why is it, I sometimes wonder, that people who are paid ( still) handsome salaries and packages can’t distill this clear diagnosis from a body of information that is, mostly, freely available to us all. Increasingly evident that this “project” is hidden in plain sight, “nothing to worry about ‘ere guv, move along”, with all sorts of manipulative folk and some downright dopey articles combining to shove the project along its path with increasing momentum. Unlike their classic bad guy Adolf, who favoured eugenics and mass murder, this Anglo Brit project will be delivered with minimal overt force and stacks of devious strategies and underhanded policy “initiatives”.
Jac
I am not sure I share all your views on this, but I have always had a massive problem with the way in which successive governments ( both London and Cardiff) have approached the question of developing the Welsh economy.
As the traditional heavy industries closed, so the rush was on to find ready made jobs for those made redundant, the likes of the DBRW and the WDA spent millions trying to entice various companies to move to Wales. Setting aside for a moment how many “new” local jobs for local people this created, what it created was an economy which was heavily dependent on subsidiary companies of large global enterprises with no real link to the local economy.
Let me give you the example of Nippon Electric Glass, in the early 1990’s they were paid a fortune in grants and incentives to set up a manufacturing plant in Cardiff Docks, I can’t recall how much NEG got from the taxpayer but it ran into many millions. Fast forward 10 years to 2005, and because of market changes, NEG closed its Cardiff operation. How was that a good investment?
Look at Ireland, what we need is companies HQ’d in Wales, not yet another factory making widgets on a industrial estate in Bridgend, whose future is decided by a board of directors in Singapore or the US. It’s been while since I have done the research, but I seem to recall that since TBI PLC was sold, there is no not a single FTSE 250 company with its HQ in Wales!!!!!
The challenge for Wales remains creating a “Welsh” economy, where locally based business is encouraged to grow and develop, and where local enterprise is encouraged to flourish, and where the best and the brightest do not decide to leave for greener pastures elsewhere.
What you want can’t happen because in a colonial relationship the the economy of the colony is controlled by and to the advantage of ‘the mother country’. The only way for Wales to prosper is to become independent.
Some parts of Wales already have some prosperity. For north east Wales, proximity to north west England keeps the economy relatively buoyant. In south east Wales, the seat of government brings in some cash (creating a Welsh version of the north/south divide in England!) as does the proximity of other conurbations over the border.
BTW: I think you are over-egging your trope that Wales is a colony, and you are trying to engender anti-English bias where there is no need for any. There are plenty of parts of England that are as “economically challenged” as the rural areas of Wales (visit Rock Ferry). But at least in Wales, houses are cheaper. If you start a battle over language, the English-speaking people in Wales would have to challenge any anti-English bias. Tit-for-tat. The results of that could be counter-productive, since English speakers form the vast majority of the voters now. Best leave sleeping dogs lie.
This ‘poor parts of England’ argument is a red herring. There are poor parts of London but it doesn’t change the fact that too much of the UK’s wealth is concentrated in London.
We even hear it being used now in Wales, there are ‘Poor parts of Cardiff’ we’re told. Upon hearing this, people in the Heads of the Valleys wondering how they’ll put food on the table are heard to say, ‘Oh, well, that’s OK then, I’ll accept my lot’.
If there are poor parts of London or Cardiff then it’s the responsibility of the politicians in those cities to do something about it, to spread the wealth around a bit better, not use it to silence people in more deprived areas, where there are no decent jobs with a mile or two.
There is no reason why jobs would start in any area out of a vacuum. Jobs have to be tempted into an area which has lower costs and better workers. That has happened in (say) Flintshire, where there are too few workers now and Polish have filled the gap.
But you have thrown me a “red herring”. We’re talking about the relative prosperity of (say) Flintshire, which has done well even compared to the fat cats of Cardiff. We have done well due to our participation in the British (one might day “English”) business model of industry. We work, we earn, we learn, and we do well (comparatively) to neighbors to the south and west. But don’t punish us for doing well. Ask others to copy us. They can start by dropping Labour and Plaid.
Don’t make Flintshire out to be Silicon Valley, there is no great spirit of innovation or entrepreneurship behind the area’s high wages. Flintshire’s prosperity today is due to public funding in previous decades, money spent on infrastructure and outright bribes in order to attract employers, many wishing to avoid Merseyside and its socialists.
It was claimed to be spending for Wales but in reality much of it benefited north west England. Seeing as other parts of Wales could have made better use of that funding, could have created more jobs for Welsh people, it makes Deeside/Flintshire a ‘debtor’ region in my book.
And you are certainly a debtor in my book. You consider Deeside to be ‘bleak’ (previous) yet you envy its political and economic success. My advice; learn from Flintshire; I work in an institute that manufactures silicon detectors, which are somewhat more high-tech than the mundane chips they churn out in California! I can only do that due to my proximity to England.
Good for you. But the manufacture of silicone detectors in Wales for use in English industry isn’t contingent on turning North East Wales into settler territory for commuters from Cheshire and Merseyside.
Flintshire and Denbighshire’s industry was obviously linked with that of the urban centres over the border. The North Wales coalfield is an example – it was English businessmen who opened and developed it(plus the odd rich Welshman like the Williams-Wynns). But the Denbighshire coal-mining villages, and the Flintshire lead-mining villages, were Welsh, and partly Welsh-speaking, and didn’t have their demographic make-up restructured by mass immigration from over that border. Which is what is happening now.
The point is that cross-border industrial interdependency has nothing inherently to do with population transfer into Wales. The latter is a political agenda which is the more insidious because it is being done under the seemingly beneficial guise of meeting a (greatly exaggerated) housing need in NE Wales. They’ve done Wrexham, Gresford and Rossett. Now they’re doing Llay.
Judging by the traffic flow on the old Welsh road, to some extent the Wirral side of Merseyside (at least) has become settler territory for commuters into Deeside. That is what happens in a conurbation. We are asking for better roads to link us; that improves economic productivity, making Wales more attractive and bringing better jobs. Nothing stays still for long. I have no problem with English – my mother’s family was from Formby. They moved over to work in Flint (Muspratt’s, later Courtaulds) before the Great War. I don’t notice or care what side of the border is which. It’s largely irrelevant to me.
Then you have nothing of value to contribute to this blog. I thought you’d been asked to stop ‘contributing’.
So by your own admission the prosperous Welsh areas exist due to their close proximity to England. Why do you think Wales is so economically dependent on England? Something other than a colonial relationship? It’s difficult to reconcile the fact that Wales is so dependent on England with the notion that it isn’t a colony, especially with so many English people migrating to Wales. Welsh people within the upper middle classes and upper classes are few and far between and generally in service of the British state or work for private enterprises that aren’t Welsh either. Their service to Wales trickles out far down the pipeline. Any economic prosperity is generated by England, and whatever talent we have either moves away or is subdued by their local socio economic situation. Wales is colonised socially first and economically second, which is why excellent educational opportunities across Wales for Welsh people is so crucial. If the various knowledge classes of Welsh people hadn’t been so devastated then there wouldn’t be such a need to focus on the Welsh themselves. But that is where we find ourselves, without knowledgeable leaders who put Wales first and with universities full of English students.
They do, by and large. It’s not an “admission”; it’s just the way it is.
Because of the Industrial Revolution. Industrialised nations are (by and large) more wealthy than rural places. Much of Wales was never industrialised in the first place, or has been de-industrialised fairly recently. Indeed, Flintshire was practically de-industrialised about 40 years ago. I worked in Cambridge, Munich, Montreal and various other places to escape. But somehow it has bounced back – perhaps due to proximity and communications?
I use the word ‘admission’ because strong evidence for a colonial relationship would be the economic dependence of the colonised country on the other. So I am pointing out that you go along with this even though you think the case for colonialism is overstated. It is an admission of agreement to that point, that is all. I would say also that is how it is but why?
Your reason for economic dependence has different stages – industrialism, deindustrialism, post industrialism. Why though, through these various, long stages of development is Wales not advancing to be able to hold its own? An answer I would suggest is that at all these wealth creating stages there has not been the required reinvestment in education and Welsh infrastructure to create the appropriate knowledge classes that would help Wales thrive. As Jac often states – “managed decline”. I would suggest there has been a colonial relationship with the Welsh people from this lack of strategic and beneficial reinvestment, (3rd sector grants don’t count), that would create our own Welsh business leaders and other kinds of necessary leaders and workforce, whatever the stage of development the economy happens to be at.
There are no ‘poor parts of London’.
A process of social cleansing and remedial action that has taken place. Back in the 80s Brixton was ‘poor’ but after the riots the UK government poured money into it, as opposed to Toxteth in Liverpool where they demolished it. Brixton is now ‘millionaires row’. The ‘poor’ parts of west London has also had massive investment with cross-rail (a UK wide budgeted investment) and in the ‘east end’ not only has ‘canary wharf’ evicted the poor, but also the 2012 Olympics (funded by UK wide budget and a smash and grab raid in Sport Wales) managed to ‘redevelop’ the area into plush apartments. The previous inhabitants who would usually occupy ‘social housing’ have been shipped out and dumped in Southend-On-Sea, Margate, Hastings, Stoke-On-Trent. In London you’re always within an Oyster Card tube or bus ride from well paid work, and if you can’t afford the rent, there’s always the massively subsidised suburban rail links. The result has also been artificially inflated property prices, which means if you have ‘family inheritance’ of a home, you can effectively sell-up and buy half of Padstow/Tenby/Solva/Aberdaron/Dolwyddelan with the proceeds.
It’s a form of imperial social engineering. A consensus between Tories and Labour at Westminster.
Yes, what you describe is the result of the London ‘economic boom’ created by Labour and the Tories, propped up by the bailed out casino banks, that haven’t allowed it to naturally go bust. The only missing part in your description is the role of unrestricted foreign investment, potentially dirty laundered money from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, The US, etc, which keeps asset prices soaring. Most Countries concerned about their native citizens, would not allow the complete sell out of the housing stock and assets that make the cost of living akin to a rat race. Another knock on effect for Wales, other than house price inflation of course, is those that are fleeing this engineered rat race, for Wales.
The gypsy warnings have started early this year. As in, Wales isn’t actually a colony and you Welshies should remember your place. Wouldn’t want anything ‘unfortunate’ to happen to that quaint little language of yours now, would we?
The battle over language has been running since at least 1536 and it wasn’t the Welsh who started it. The correct term is not ‘anti-English bias’; it’s basic self-respect and refusal to be told how to speak by the occupying power.
Steve y Sais makes the common assumption that where a majority don’t speak Welsh then there must be an anti-Welsh-language majority too. Not true. I know more of the national anthem than John Redwood but I couldn’t hold a conversation in yr hen iaith for more than ten seconds. I nevertheless hate the deformation of Wales by the English language as much as anyone, more so than some Welsh-speakers I know.
It was when I realised that those meaningless garglings Cockett and Sketty are actually Uwch-Coed and Is-Coed, separated by Cefn Coed, that I found myself at last in an entirely different country, and in a landscape that actually made sense. Yet Welsh-speakers refer to these places as Y Cocyd and Y Sgeti. No-one corrects them, because the orthodoxy within the language movement is that bad Welsh is better than no Welsh. Or is it the soft tyranny of low expectations, that drives learners away, thinking, well, if the Welsh won’t make any effort, why should I?
It’s deeply unfair to hold Welsh-speakers to a higher linguistic standard than English-speakers but it could be an opportunity rather than a problem. Why does Wales still tolerate so-called bilingual place-names? I don’t mean real bilingual names like Abergwaun / Fishguard or Abertawe / Swansea. I mean the names that entrench a legacy of bad spelling by lazy settlers. No-one now would get away with Carnarvon, Llanelly or Mothvey, so why do Caerphilly, Llandaff and Magor still exist? Welsh is a phonetic language: everyone in Wales should know how to pronounce it even if they don’t speak it. It’s a relatively easy win and it saves money. A decolonised country would have those road signs on the scrap heap on Day One.
A example of the ‘sponger mentality’ of English people settling in Wales as substitution for local investment is the situation at Sandy Cove, Kinmel Bay.
These ‘homes’ were built specifically as cheap holiday homes for people to holiday from North West England. These people then ‘retired’ to their chalets and turned them into permanent residencies. Trouble is, as they were built as sub-standard chalets, the utilities and roads were not up to standard to be ‘adopted’ by the local authority. The settlers are now asking the Welsh taxpayer to spend millions to get the utilities and roads on the estate up to ‘residential’ standard. Besides the £60million spend on a ‘flood prevention scheme’ they are now asking for another £5million to do up the roads so it can be ‘adopted’ by the council.
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/flood-hit-residents-take-action-10143263
Only in Wales.
I understand a similar situation exists on the coast of South Gwynedd. The reason why these ‘homes’ were built on the cheap was because they were built as corrugated sheds for ‘holiday’ occupancy. I wonder if I purchased a ‘beach hut’ one the Sussex coast then could I move in, then get the council to build me a new sea wall, upgrade the access road for free so there are no potholes when I trundle my disability buggy down the lane to pick up my winter fuel allowance and state pension. I think Tory politicians in Sussex would send me packing and told ‘nobody owes you a living’, but in North Wales we get Tory AMs asking the Welsh Government to ‘fund’ these settlements, as they vote Tory.
taffyman2 – Admiral plc is H.Q’d in Cardiff and is in or near FTSE100. Nevertheless your points are valid and it sticks in my gullet that our industries have been wrecked, new industries diverted to cheaper or more fashionable locations by globalists. Their only ambition is to dominate all nation states and make them toe the subservient line where corporate interests come 1st 2nd 3rd and last with crumbs off their tables dished out to essential public services.
This grand plan has been under way since mid 20th century or earlier but it seems to be stepping up in tempo. Hand in hand with all this is the racket at the heart of Jac’s presentation on this silent assassination of our nation. The English are lucky insofar as their language appears to be one of those few chosen by the globalists as a top tier medium along with Chinese, Spanish and out of necessity one of the Indian dialects. However the narrowly defined English culture will get swamped further by the Anglo-American version as the population becomes increasingly mongrelised by global trends. As for the rest of us our languages will be binned in due course, even strong tongues like German, French Italian and Russian ( the fight to keep those in play will be well worth watching ! ).
But all that is a long way off. Our challenge is to protect and nurture what we’ve got and give it scope for restoration to a platform that will allow it to contribute to the community of nations with its own identity.
For all of the above visit Hay on Wye.