Yes, I’m still retiring, and writing this piece has reminded me why.
I could have written a piece like this at any time in recent years. I would only have needed to change the names of those ripping us off and the racket used for doing it.
The constant would have been the incompetence and gullibility of the so-called ‘Welsh Government’, and the contempt in which politicians hold the electorate.
Now, how do I get out?
♦
Thi
s week’s piece was inspired by a tweet put out last Thursday by Lee Waters, the MS for Llanelli and Deputy Minister for Climate Change. (Which means he comes under Julie James.)
This is the man who admitted that he and his ‘Welsh Government’ ‘don’t know what we’re doing’ when it comes to the economy.
Who said there are no honest politicians?
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MORE TREES
In the tweet I refer to we see Lee Waters getting his boots muddy for a photo op with some tree-planters. And they reciprocated with a tweet of their own. So, who are we dealing with here?
The PATT Foundation is based in Hull, and the website might suggest it’s in the business of making people feel guilty about the ‘climate crisis’ and screwing money out of them.
To understand what I’m suggesting go to the ‘shop’ page where you can sign up for ‘a hole in the ground’ for £2 a month. Or, a family of two adults and two children could offset their carbon footprint with a donation of £500. (Ten trees.)
Bargain of the month – a Covid face mask for £12. Or a steal at £36 for 3.
The PATT head honcho is Andrew Graeme Steel. Who has a couple of other companies, Precision Farming Ltd and Steeldom Properties Ltd, neither of which is setting the world on fire. (Not that he’d want to, of course!)
Steel was in on the ground floor when the PATT company was formed in November 2005. He was then living in Bangkok. He may have owned other property in Thailand.
I should add that the PATT Foundation is both a company and a charity. Though according to the information at the Charity Commission it does not operate in Wales.
Fancy that!
In addition to Steel, the other directors of the Patt Foundation are John Nicholas Kennedy of Cyprus, Christopher Mark Ruddy of Somerset, and Valerie Josephine Seekings of Malawi. No obvious Welsh connections there.
The PATT Foundation’s latest accounts (actually, an unaudited financial statement) show net assets of £18,718 after a bank loan of £50,000 was taken out.
The tweet from Waters also mentioned @GreenTaskForce1. Green Task Force Ltd, set up in October 2019, is another company run by Steel. Also, since last March – when Sentient Retreats Ltd changed its name, for the third time – we have Green Task Force (Cymru) Ltd. With Steel again holding most of the shares.
Which makes the local offshoot older than the parent company!
On the Companies House website this ‘Welsh’ branch still uses as its SIC: 52219 – Other service activities incidental to land transportation, not elsewhere classified’. This was presumably the SIC for the company’s original incarnation as Eco Drivers Ltd (06.09.2011 – 16.07.2019).
The only Green Task Force director other than Steel is Paul Gibbs Sykes, also of Somerset.
Although the company was only formed in October 2019 the website claims it’s already planted 3,000,000 trees! At that rate we’ll reach global net zero around 5pm on September 28, 2027.
And we Welsh will be living in tree houses! (Those that haven’t become holiday homes.)
The unaudited financial statement for Green Task Force also shows a loan of £50,000, which may be the same loan we found mentioned in the accounts of the parent company The PATT Foundation.
Question. Steel is ‘Dr’ for the Charity Commission, but not for any of his companies. Why might that be?
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THE MISSING YEARS OF PAUL GIBBS SYKES
At first glance I assumed that Paul Gibbs Sykes of Green Task Force was recently arrived in the world of business, with four companies since January 2021. But then I tried a different angle and found an older company, from a time when Sykes seems to have been living in the Gwendraeth. I’m referring to PMJC Ltd.
This company lasted a very short time before dissolving. It never turned over much money. Or at least, the single and very brief balance sheet received by Companies House in August 2009 doesn’t reveal anything noteworthy.
And yet, what strikes me as odd, is that this one-man-band issued 1,000 shares.
You’ll see that Sykes describes himself as a HGV driver, which is in keeping with the haulage theme we encountered earlier.
But then it got a bit strange. Trying a different route I unearthed a further 20 companies that Sykes had been involved with over a decade ago. You’ll see that the most recent on the list is PMJC Ltd, which we’ve just looked at, which was dissolved in November 2010.
Note that a number of the companies have Cpi in the name, and they may trace back to a company in the US state of Wisconsin. Here are details for Cpi Worldwide Ltd.
You’ll also note that no accounts were ever filed for Cpi Worldwide Ltd. And Sykes never stayed long at any of the companies.
There may be a simple explanation for these walk-on roles. If so, I’d like to hear it.
Then there seems to be a gap of ten years between PMJC Ltd folding in 2010 and Sykes resurfacing with the new companies in 2021. Where was he in that period? Anyway, let’s look at his new companies.
Green Task Force and Green Task Force (Cymru) we already know about, so let’s focus on the other two companies that were formed last year.
The first was Sykes Consulting Ltd, which uses an accommodation address in Covent Garden, London. The SIC is, ‘49410 – Freight transport by road’. This one-man-band has issued a single share.
The other company was Lamb Sykes Consulting Ltd, where his partner is Simon Lamb. (With two women I assume to be their wives also holding shares.) This company’s SIC is ‘63120 – Web portals, 73110 – Advertising agencies’.
Which is a hell of a departure from HGVs and road haulage.
Now let’s turn to Green Task Force (Cymru) Ltd.
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GREEN TASK FORCE (CYMRU) LTD
Andrew Graeme Steel has been with this company, through its various name changes, since it was Incorporated in September 2011. In the latest unaudited financial statement we once again encounter the £50,000 bank loan. But no mention anywhere of which bank loaned the money.
On April 1 last year Steel was joined by Paul Sykes Gibbs, who you’ve just read about, and Thomas James Gent, who also has an interesting business background.
Going chronologically, the earliest company I can find for Thomas Gent is Cass Scaffolding Ltd, which began life in September 2008. But soon ran into trouble, going into administration in March 2011 before being dissolved in December 2012.
But then it was resurrected by order of the court in October 2014. Presumably at the request of unpaid creditors. As things stand, Cass Scaffolding remains an active company with Companies House waiting for accounts, confirmation statement, and annual return.
The statement of administrator’s proposals dated May 2011 puts the total amount for unsecured creditors at close to £1.4m. With the largest of them being HMRC.
Next up is Cass Supplies Ltd, launched in April 2010. This company is also in the scaffolding business and seems to be doing reasonably well. The Development Bank of Wales seems to think so because it made a couple of loans in June and September 2020.
Now it’s back into the red with Cass Hire and Sales Ltd, launched in January 2011. A liquidator was appointed in September 2014, with estimated debts of £703,003.
The company lingered for quite a while before being finally dissolved in November 2020. With unsecured creditors – owed £532,111.82 – eventually being paid at the rate of 1.98 pence in the pound.
Moving on . . .
September 2011 saw the Incorporation of TJG Enterprises Ltd. Something of a departure for Thomas Gent, this, because it takes us into the realm of real estate.
In August and September 2020 there were yet more loans from the Development Bank of Wales. Which I find odd. My understanding is that the DBW makes loans to job-creating investors, not to help individuals build up their property portfolios.
Finally, we arrive at the imaginately named Envisage Envelope Solutions Ltd. Formerly, and more blandly known as, P & S Projects Ltd. This company gives its address as Gent’s property in Barry, but the former address was in Llansamlet. For reasons that will soon become clear.
P & S was launched in August 2020 by Scott Ashley Mason, then 23 years old. He is the ‘S’ in the original name. His father, Paul Edward Mason, is the ‘P’. The son seems to live in Wales while the father lives in Scotland.
The company’s original address was on the Enterprise Park in Llansamlet. Where we might also have found three other do-nothing companies registered by Paul Mason.
In one of which, Specialised Access Scaffolding Ltd, we would have found Gent as secretary.
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SUMMARY
The question running through my mind as I was writing this was, ‘How did these three come together in Green Task Force (Cymru ) Ltd? With Sykes and Gent joining on the same day.
- Former resident of Thailand, now living in Hull, Dr(?) Andrew Graeme Steel.
- HGV driver Paul Gibbs Sykes, formerly of Llanelli, now Bristol.
- Scaffolding contractor, Thomas James Gent, from the Cardiff area.
What links this unlikely threesome? And when did they become so concerned for the future of the planet? Or is there some other reason they’re now involved in the tree-planting racket crusade?
One possible link must be Stuart Victor Chapman, who served for many years as the PATT Foundation secretary. He obviously knows Steel, and as he lives in Chepstow he’s not far from Sykes and Gent.
Another company that links Chapman and Steel is Eco-Odyssey-4Life Ltd, which had a brief existence from St David’s Day 2011 until October 9, 2012. Yet there was a share issue of 21,000 £1 shares, of which Bangkok resident Steel held 10,000.
The other shareholders all lived in the Hull area and Chapman served as secretary.
In addition to links with Steel Chapman has served as a director or secretary in a number of companies that would have brought him into contact with the Corruption Bay in-crowd.
Particularly Hafod Resources Ltd, and Children in Wales / Plant yng Nghymru, both chock-a-block with do-gooders and other burdens on society and / or the public purse.
But then . . . if Chapman was the introduction to what passes for the local movers and shakers, why does Steel need the truck driver and the scaffolder?
Questions. Questions.
Maybe Lee Waters has the answer. Perhaps he can remember who persuaded him to trek up to Cwmbran last week, shake a few hands, feign interest, and have his photo took.
◊
CONCLUSION
We have reached something of a crossroads in the climate debate.
Partly because the case presented by alarmists is becoming steadily less convincing, while ‘socialists’ in pursuit of carbon neutral objectives are increasingly embarrassed about punishing the most vulnerable in society.
What’s being exposed is an agenda promoted by political dilettantes like Mrs Boris Johnson and her chums and adopted by dupes influenced by overwrought schoolgirls.
An agenda that increasingly gives Russia control of Europe’s energy supply.
More locally, because the English don’t want wind farms despoiling their country, yet the City of London must make money, the ‘Welsh Government’ has welcomed any and all impositions and woven them into a deluded narrative of Wales playing an exaggerated role in saving the planet.
With the added advantage that an administration with no economic strategy of its own can dress up this exploitation as its innovative ‘Green economy’ . . . an ‘economy’ which, er, involves no Welsh companies and creates no Welsh jobs.
We may be at the stage now where investors are desperate to make a killing before the renewables / net zero house of cards starts collapsing.
Which might explain the ‘Welsh Government’ feverishly paying hedge funds and other investors to buy up Welsh farms to plant trees. Behaviour that has – predictably – resulted in Wales becoming a magnet for envirospivs.
The tweet on the left below, from last Friday, talks of two farms near Llanwrtyd. The one on the right, from Saturday, tells a very similar story. It’s a national problem encouraged by the ‘Welsh Government’ and its Plaid Cymru allies.
One of the farms near Llanwrtyd, Lofftwen, is now Lofftwen Forest Farm LLP. Run by a man who, ‘ . . . never intended to get into farming‘. But he had money looking for an investment.
And when he wanted more money – the ‘Welsh Government’ chipped in. (See panel below.)
Despite what Lee Waters said in a recent radio interview about planting operations all needing Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA), the truth is that they’re just nodded through. Check out this list supplied by Natural Resources Wales (scroll down).
Lee Waters was right to say that EIAs are required, but none are refused and few checks are undertaken.
And it’s into this demi monde of sylvan scammery that we need to fit Messrs Steel, Gibbs and Gent. They’re planting trees and the ‘Welsh Government’ will pay them handsomely for doing so.
Interestingly, the image below from a Green Task Force tweet (no ‘Cymru’) suggests co-operation with Octopus Energy. Is this company using Green Task Force to offset its carbon output, in Wales, and is the ‘Welsh Government’ subsidising this nonsense?
I suggest that photo of Lee Waters on a windswept hillside makes a perfect partner for the image of Ken Skates shaking hands with notorious con man Gavin Lee Woodhouse.
If you recall, the ‘Welsh Government’ was about to hand over large areas of land and substantial sums of money to a crook. But others – myself included – said, ‘Hang on, something’s not right about this bloke.’ Eventually, even the Guardian saw through him. (But not the ‘Welsh’ media.)
We were right. And the ‘Welsh Government’ was wrong. Again.
Here’s my offer to the so-called ‘Welsh Government’. After you’ve decided to give someone money, let me do a quick check, and for every wrong ‘un I find you pay me just one per cent of what I’ll save the public purse.
Because, obviously, no one down the Bay is currently doing any checks.
For as Lee Waters himself so memorably said – when it comes to the economy, you really don’t know what you’re doing!
♦ end ♦
Off topic – Looks like our friends over at Plaid Towers are having a bad day. Enjoying their new life as Labour’s little helpers in Wales they suddenly find that the Starmerite wing of the Party ( the bit that sets the rules for the UK Unionist scene) is about to set up some sort of collaboration with Lib Dems. Their aim is to roll into battle at the next GE with the aim of crushing the Tories and…. all those other irritating bastards like SNP, the emerging “far right” parties… and would you believe it, poor old Plaid ! Plaid may have thought that they would be much favoured due to their cosy relationship with Drakeford’s regime but true to form Big Labour’s view is that it’s a marriage of convenience and can be cast aside when ever it is useful to do so.
Now the SNP will probably roll with the punches especially as they have weeded out the Labour cancer north of the border. Their hangups are likely to be about Alex’s Alba who will be in the mood for a bit of bruising if they decide to go for Westminster seats. Our Plaid will be a lot more anxious as they place a lot of value on those seats and indeed their reps there are of a higher calibre than most of the muppets they send down the Bay who have done themselves no favours at all by embracing all kinds of wokey claptrap ishoos and ignoring the real issues, or taking real issues and giving them an unecessary wokish slant. They are about to find out that the era of kinder gentler politics never got off the ground and that the Unionist parties in general are all nasty bits of work, not just the Tories.
Just seen your tweet about the re emergence of loony fantasist extremists. I told everybody via this site months ago that these people had not gone away. Now seeding their own fringe group to hover on edge of an ultimately within YC, which will no doubt attract pockets of useless dysfunctionals especially among those who feel the need to keep up with latest nonsense politics. Manipulators in Whitehall and the Bay must be wetting themselves having a good giggle while likes of Adam will be too scared to tell them to bugger off.
Just seen your tweet referring to the Tory M.P having a whinge about the A483 improvement between Pant and Llanymynech. He certainly looks like the standard issue off the shelf smug prick favoured by the party faithful. However on this occasion he may just be right. That road needed improving, the Sais bit is committed and all it needs is the Bay to fill in the other bit.
Of course Waters has said no more roads as though we’re all going to hover from A to B. Rail may reconnect some bits of Wales eventually, but don’t hold your breath. EV’s will still need roads although if each village has more than 2 or 3 of them there’ll be massive power outages especially as wind turbines only work under 25-30% of the time ! There a huge gap in realistic appreciation of what goes on in this world of ours and much of the lunatic dysfunction ailment has decided to settle itself in the Bay and its subordinate services.
Think I’ll go live in Russia !
For all this talk of cutting back on roads and saving the planet the ‘Welsh Government’ still refuses to back the re-opening of the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth railway line. So where’s the money saved going?
Handouts to those green entrepreneurs who are milking the wind turbine scam for all its worth. And now the call “Timber” has gone out across the City of London those carpetbaggers will be teeming in to pick off the meat on the Bay budget right down to the bone. Bastards all of them.
On UK TV this week there was discussion between two so called learned Panellists over the state of the NHS. The Lefty Panellist said the problems were due to eleven years of Tory Government and not just Covid that has worsened it. The Tory rebuffed that saying “If that’s the case, why is the NHS in Wales in a worse state than in England and Wales has a Labour Government”. The Lefty rebuffed that saying “I don’t know enough about Wales to respond to that”. I took that as an implication from the Lefty (a Labourite) to mean we in British Labour are not interested in Wales. What do you think of that? Maybe we should say that even Labour in Wales is not interested in Wales, they are only interested in cronyism with their little buddies Plaid Cymru who are only obsessed with sharing power here to promote “faddish ishoos”!
I’ll bet you a fiver that the £50k loans are COVID bounce backs.
Hadn’t considered that possibility. Will do some checking.
This is what it actually says on the document submitted to Companies House. If it is a loan, then why is he so confident of being able to repay it in such a short time? WG funding coming his way?
Just seemed to fit. Right amount and payback has kicked in. Third sector business planning Jac – live off the loan while you wait for Waters to write the cheque to save the world with a bit of crowd funding contingency thrown in. One to two years is a short timeframe though.
Here we go again, a catalogue of sheer laziness, utter lack of awareness, and dark collaboration and connivance. All these characteristics turn up within the Bay regime, sometimes all in the same person ! Add to them the “twpdra”, the juvenile naivety and blind adherence to the green gospel found by the truck load within Plaid; the greed, deviant urge to be making money by any means within Welsh Tories and it all generates a hefty sum of negative factors militating against Cymru ever having a chance of beating this plague.
2 brief quotes taken from the report above illustrate my points :
…….. “because the English don’t want wind farms despoiling their country, yet the City of London must make money, the ‘Welsh Government’ has welcomed any and all impositions and woven them into a deluded narrative of Wales playing an exaggerated role in saving the planet.”
and,
…….” One of the farms near Llanwrtyd, Lofftwen, is now Lofftwen Forest Farm LLP. Run by a man who, ‘ . . . never intended to get into farming‘. But he had money looking for an investment…..And when he wanted more money – the ‘Welsh Government’ chipped in. ”
This Bay regime is trying its best to waste money at a rate that will compare with the Boris/Rishi regime. While the London boys have their fist on most of the loot available I think Drakeford and his lackeys are punting for the £million per head prize. They may call themselves socialists but all they are doing is ladling loot out of the public purse into the coffers of corporate spivs and their advisers. Rampant bandit capitalism in action.
Someone sent me a DM yesterday that said: ‘Lee Waters met a group of Carmarthenshire farmers a couple of months back. They were very worried about the tree planting scheme, but talking to Waters was like “talking to a Brillo pad”, one of them said.’ That may be unfair on Brillo pads but I know what that farmer meant.
Waters comes across as a bit of an automaton. He’s been given a script and he just repeats it, without really understanding what he’s saying. He could never survive searching questions on this tree-planting bollocks, so he’s lucky that he gets a free ride from both the Senedd and the so-called media.
Part of the same phenomenon that encourages external, multi national venture capitalists to develop industrial wind sites of 250 metre high turbines within 700 metres of homes across Wales via the designated ‘pre-assessed’ areas enshrined in Future Wales Plan 2040 amidst a global pandemic (diverging from the predecessor NDF) – with no evidence of assessment other than desk top (avoiding Eryri & Bryniau Clwyd in our case); no real consultation with those most affected and by passing local democracy with one individual subsequently determining whether adverse impacts are ‘acceptable’ or not. Hitting targets but missing the point. Scarring landscapes and communities, with energy and money flowing from Wales. Sounds familiar? I was pleased to see that Adam Price supported the Cwrt y Cadno campaign by visiting them, we trust that he will accept our invitation to meet with us in Conwy….
Price knows that Cwrt y Cadno is within striking distance of his home patch and him failing to show up could lead to retribution at the polling station or even worse. Mind you it is high time that someone got a bloody nose for fostering all this quackery and foisting it on the nation
As Dafis suggests, Cwrt-y-Cadno is too close to home for Price to ignore. Don’t build up your hopes, Non.
Well put Non. Wales certainly does not get much support these days from Plaid Cymru in issues such as this. They are fully in support of the destruction of our countryside and its hill farms and consequently the language of our hill farmers. Gwynfor Evans and Saunders Lewis, and those previous proud patriotic leaders, must all be wriggling in their graves. Even the living like Dafydd Wigley must be squirming but are totally silent.
Non, you mentioned – “designated ‘pre-assessed’ areas enshrined in Future Wales Plan 2040” let me remind you, and readers of this Blog, that the origin of this was a document called “TAN8” which had no ‘assessment’, it was just areas that appeared blank on a road atlas. The WAG, as it was then, finally admitted that. One problem we have had since the Welsh Language Act is that all campaigners for the Welsh Language got into the resulting good jobs they deserved, in culture and the media, and have mellowed into middle age and will not rock the boat in the face of the tsunami of destruction by the rewilding of central Wales where the language is now facing its biggest threat ever from the people running Brighton Council who now control the mind set of Welsh Politics and Policy. The One Planet Brigades are already in the vineyard enjoying the good life. Many more will join them. Is it too late? Let’s see if the forthcoming imminent Welsh County Council elections can get rid of the Time Servers here with their Brighton Council mentality!
A couple of weeks ago you were ….”pleased to see that Adam Price supported the Cwrt y Cadno campaign by visiting them, we trust that he will accept our invitation to meet with us in Conwy….
Well our prospective candidate for Chair of Politburo has legged it to Ukraine to show some solidarity or something else along those lines. I think you should drop him a line reminding him that you too would like a spot of that solidarity as you confront the forces of globalist kleptocracy. Of course the Russians may take a shine to him and keep him for a few weeks to inspect their institutions that specialise in dealing with people who stick their noses where they are not wanted. So it may be a while before he responds.
Seen this?
Jac Interesting note from Mason. Looks like the good people bothered by the proposed wind farm and the destruction of habitat are going to be waiting a long time before Adam and his entourage see fit to pay a visit. The guy is so hooked on gesture politics. He could have just issued a statement of solidarity from his front room and it would have the same impact on those seeking an excuse to engage in a war on that Eastern Ukrainian front. These people, on both sides, have some nasty characteristics and carry grudges dating from a 100 or so years ago. Some of them may share an ethnicity but the local tribalism is still very evident. And Putin sitting on top of it all just pulling strings is taking the piss but knows that if it comes to a battle he can pinch a bit of frontier further west than what he’s got now. “Right or wrong” won’t even come into the debate.
A great opportunity was squandered with the end of the USSR to build bridges, try to bring Russia back into the European fold. For a while it looked as if it might happen, but perhaps Russia served some purpose by being the ‘enemy’.
But Putin has a point about NATO. It was created to counter a threat – the Warsaw Pact – that ceased to exist over thirty years ago, so why is it expanding eastwards? Why should Russia accept US weapons in Ukraine when we all remember how the US responded to Soviet missiles in Cuba?
And then there’s Poland. In all the news coverage I have yet to see Poland mentioned. A country that borders Russia (Kaliningrad), Ukraine and Belarus, and a member of NATO. If Poland gets involved in any Russian attack on Ukraine then NATO members – including UK – will have to pile in.
There has been an interesting bit of tree planting going on in a bog in Murky Waters’ constituency back yard at Pembrey Llanelli. It seems to involve a former Plaid Cymru candidate who is Britain’s only current utterly disgraceful bogus claimant to a Victoria Cross. Can someone tell us whether the Bog Bogus got any of our Public Money via the Senedd off Murky’s mates. The trees are withering due to lack of attention. It makes me whither to think of the lack of scrutiny of the way the Senedd dishes out our money, my cash, to line the pockets of all sorts of odd people and their odder bizarre schemes.