This is a theme I’ve dealt with before, the links between corporate funders, politicians, and environmental groups; but this time it comes from a slightly different angle.
Though the message stays the same:
‘Man is destroying the planet, and the only way to save us from the “sixth global mass extinction event” is to end livestock farming and let corporations buy the land for trees, windfarms, and other forms of greenwashing; with the environmentalists who’ve campaigned to bring us to this point given land for ‘rewilding’ and other purposes.’
The losers will of course be 95% of us, certainly in the West. Our energy will be more expensive, as will our food, which will increasingly be made up of factory-produced ‘meat’, and insects. Our movements will be restricted and the private car will be viewed as a selfish and unnecessary luxury from which we must be alienated.
You’ll own nothing, you’ll live in 15-minute neighbourhoods, and you’ll be blissfully unaware of your enslavement (thanks to whatever’s been added to your food).
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QUADRATURE CAPITAL
This story starts with the revelation by Open Democracy (Sept 18) that the Labour party received £4m from Quadrature Capital, a somewhat questionable outfit to be found in that bastion of financial probity, the Cayman Islands. Here’s the company website.
The timing is interesting, because in April 2023 the Quadrature Capital shares held by founding directors, Greg Howard Skinner and Suneil Setiya, were transferred to QC Ventures Ltd. Though it took them almost a year to notify Companies House.
It’s often reasonable in such circumstances to assume the change actually took place at the time of notification, and was ‘backdated’. Which could mean that at the time the donation was made to the Labour party Quadrature Capital was still a UK-registered company.
Which might be significant because Open Democracy tells us . . .
Electoral Commission records suggest Labour received the donation in the one-week window between former prime minister Rishi Sunak announcing the general election and the start of the ‘pre-poll reporting period’ in which all political donations over £11,180 had to be published weekly . . . .
The Cayman Islands is of course a British Overseas Territory, one of many offering ‘financial services’ with no questions asked. In fact, these repositories and conduits for dirty money play a vital role in maintaining the pre-eminence of the City of London.
The excellent video below (1:17:52) explains the situation very well. More especially, how and why this system came about. I urge you to watch it.
As I’ve said, the hedge fund that gave Labour £4,000,000 is Quadrature Capital.
But we’tre going to focus on Quadrature Climate Foundation. A semi-detached company registered with Companies House, that’s also a charity, with its own declared annual income of £130m.
The four directors / trustees are, the parent company Quadrature founders, Suneil Setiya and Greg Skinner; then Neil Paul Cosgrove, with a recent recruit being Jennifer Hooke. (Though Ms Hooke had previously been a director.)
The reason I’m telling you this is because a number of Welsh links have emerged. Far too many in my view.
And even though the story of Labour donations is new, the news of Quadrature splashing the cash to environmental groups was first reported in the Guardian in June last year.
Though what seemed to vex the Grauniad was that . . .
Quadrature Capital has stakes worth more than $170m (£135m) in fossil fuel companies
Which is a fraction of Quadrature’s total assets and a lot less than the millions given to pressure groups so they could subvert democracy by influencing governments’ policies behind the voters’ backs.
This generosity was . . .
. . . worth about £175m in 2021 and 2022. They included £4m to the European Climate Foundation . . . £2.7m to the Carbon Tracker Initiative; and more than £3m to the WWF.
The amount given to the European Climate Foundation has increased considerably, as I’ll explain in a minute. Which is why we’ll soon turn to the ECF.
But before that, and to give you some idea of the links between tax haven money, the Labour party, and envirogrifter pressure groups, here are some tweets from journalist Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) last week.
This refers to Rachel Kyte, Starmer’s climate envoy . . . and also of Quadrature. Here’s Daniel Luhde-Thompson, and here’s who I take to be his wife. She became a director of Friends of the Earth in March.
Though a woman I think is Naomi’s mother, Ursel Luhde, was a FoE director from January 2007 until October 2009. Also a director of Friends of the Earth Charitable Trust in the same period.
I know this is heavy going, so here’s some light relief . . . another journalist, Robert Peston (@Peston), put out this post on X after learning that Quadrature claimed to be paying Corporation Tax!
All in all, there’s something not right about Quadrature.
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EUROPEAN CLIMATE FOUNDATION (ECF)
Let’s start with the website of this outfit that by my calculations has had $46,127,158 from Quadrature Climate Foundation. Here’s a link to the ‘active grants’ page on the website. And here’s a link to its most recent annual report.
At the top of the ECF website homepage you read pious drivel that includes . . .
Our vision is a greener, more peaceful and democratic Europe made possible by climate action.
This seems to suggest that democracy and peace depend on Europe following the green path. And, by implication, if we deviate from that path of self-righteousness then we imperil democracy and risk war.
But that’s absolute bollocks. Net zero means more people being colder, more people being hungrier, more people being miserable, because they can no longer afford the essentials and the harmless luxuries their parents took for granted.
For the first time in generations living standards in the West are declining. This has nothing to do with a ‘climate crisis’, and everything to do with measures being pursued in response to this mirage, that in reality serve another purpose.
When we consider conflict, then man is no different to other animals. He is less likely to be aggressive when he’s content, when life is good. But net zero means shortages; and competition for scarce resources or produce always leads to conflict.
Well-fed lions loll about in the shade. Hungry lions look for something to kill.
Lower down the ECF homepage we find another gem. Click on ‘read more’ under ‘2023 annual report’, and you’ll see . . .
2023 not only tested our resilience but also underscored the critical importance of our mission, amid heightened political polarisation, a worrying resurgence of populism, and profound geopolitical upheaval.
“A worrying resurgence of populism“. Well it don’t worry this ol’ boy none.
To the ECF ‘populism’ means the long overdue awakening we see across Europe, wrongly limited by a dishonest media to ‘far right’ protests against immigration.
But the planet-savers know ‘populism’ also means people asking why net zero means the de-industrialisation of the West, making life more difficult, and more expensive.
Put it all together and the ECF is the authentic voice of the Globalist-Woke-Green-Left. Dangerously unhinged oligarchs and corporate leaders demanding censorship, and encouraging ‘women with penises’ to push the climate scam on the days when they and the comrades are not demanding open borders and supporting Muslim terrorists.
Yup, the full package (and that is not a reference to ‘transgender women’).
One of the groups funded by the ECF is the Green Finance Institute Ltd. (Formerly Green Finance Initiative Ltd.) Where the CEO is Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, who is of course Welsh, and you’ll be reading more about her in the next section.
The Green Finance Institute has also donated to Labour.
What I found interesting about Dr Thomas is that her background is in banking, not matters environmental. Dare I suggest that she may be less concerned with saving us from our selfish selves than with using the climate scam to make mountains of moolah for those with whom she normally mixes?
(Slaps self on wrist for ungenerous thought!)
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GREEN FINANCE INSTITUTE & THE WELSH CONNECTIONS
What more can I tell you about Rhian-Mari Thomas, of the Green Finance Institute?
Well, for a start, she’s been accepted at Davos. And she’s a trustee at the World Wildlife Fund.
And this intriguing article from my favourite fish-wrap seems to confirm the suspicions I just aired about who Rhian-Mari represents. Unless of course her friends are offering to save the planet out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.
The chief executive of the Green Finance Institute (GFI) . . . had grown increasingly concerned about Labour’s £28bn green investment pledge.
The party should not have even considered using that much taxpayer cash, Thomas argued. Instead, it should engage with private investors who were already keen to pour money into big green projects.
The Green Finance Institute has received $3,830,267 from Quadrature Climate Foundation. I can’t find if it’s also been funded by the European Climate Foundation.
Ms Thomas is also an advisor to Aviva, which greenwashes investors’ money through wildlife trusts and other shrieker collectives. Seeing as I regularly mention wildlife trusts on this blog I found this interesting.
Another link between ‘ethical'(!) investments and wildlife trusts is Greenpeace veteran, Jocelyn Joseph Talbot Garman, of Bristol, executive director at the ECF. For since January ‘Joss’ has been a trustee of that old favourite, Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.
UPDATE: Through his paternal grandmother Jocelyn belongs to the Dorset branch of the Anglo-Norman (long resident in Ireland) Talbot de Malahide family. His father, David Edmund Talbot Garman, moved to Radnorshire around 1972, and was for many years vice-chair of Radnorshire Wildlife Trust.
A name we encountered earlier was that of Daniel Luhde-Thomson, who’s said to have given Labour £500,000 this year. The woman I believe to be his wife, Naomi Luhde-Thomson, was appointed early in 2022 to the Eryri National Park Authority by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.
Another name we ran into was that of Neil Paul Cosgrove. One of the four trustees of the Quadrature Climate Foundation. I did a search, and what I turned up was rather odd, and I’m not sure what to make of it. But it’s yet another Welsh connection with offshore entities.
My search took me to the North Data site, which I find useful as it suggests various links and connections. This is what I found.
The links to the left we know about, they’re Quadrature, but what of the others?
Greendoor Investments Ltd is based in Bermuda. And it links with Beaubridge Energist LLP, which uses an address in Hampshire but is registered with Companies House as an overseas company (OC371398). Chaffer, Rigby and Clevely are among the partners in this LLP, as is Cosgrove himself.
But it doesn’t end there. For there are other companies under the ‘Energist’ flag. One being, Energist (Holdings) Ltd, using a Swansea address. Where we find Beaubridge Energist LLP shown as the majority shareholder.
Listed among other Beaubridge companies on the Companies House website we find Beaubridge Swansea LLP. Though it’s difficult to see why it carries that name. For this is a company using the same Hampshire address and is also registered with Companies House as an overseas company (OC432171).
There are two other companies at the Swansea address. Neogen Plasma Ltd, in the business of “manufacture of medical and dental instruments and supplies“. This is owned by Belmont Investments Ltd, and Belmont is owned by Energist Holdings Ltd.
I’m concerned that companies in my home town, involved in ostensibly harmless activities, have links with offshore companies pumping money into the Labour party, while also looking for greenwashing opportunities, and funding envirogrifters to buy up Welsh land.
◊
CONCLUSION
Another clue to the big picture comes from a Wales Environment Link (WEL) document, ‘Pathways to 2030: 10 key areas for investment in nature’s recovery across Wales’. (WEL is based in the Tramshed, you’ll be surprised to learn!)
On the first page (para 5), we read:
A recent study for the Green Finance Institute estimated that there is a gap of between £5 billion and £7 billion between the resources currently dedicated to nature recovery actions in Wales and those needed to meet priority outcomes for nature.
Here we have Rhian-Mari Thomas’s Green Finance Institute arguing that we need £5bn to £7bn to save Wales from becoming a desert.
But the ‘Welsh Government’ can’t spare that kind of money. So where might it come from? Rhian-Mari has already told us, in her reported conversation with Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Thomas argued . . . engage with private investors who were already keen to pour money into big green projects
I’m sure she’s given the same message to the ‘Welsh Government’.
Because there’s a lot of money in offshore tax havens. Not always dirty money from drugs and other criminal activities, but still, money that cannot be honestly accounted for. How best to use it?
One answer is cashing in on environmental hysteria. Because by their very nature, envirogrifters are ideal for those seeking to, er, ‘relocate’ money currently sunning itself in tax havens. Unscrupulous people who will egg on the planet savers to make ever more apocalyptic claims.
Because it’s in the interests of both corporate investors and envirogrifters. The greater the hysteria, and the more readily the politicians fall for it, then the larger the sums of money it’ll be argued are needed to put things right. Money that governments either don’t have or can’t spare.
So let me finish by suggesting that . . .
Nobody should be allowed to accept funding that originates offshore, even if it’s been ‘filtered’ through organisations like the Quadrature Climate Foundation, the European Climate Foundation, and the Green Finance Institute.
Tax haven money is too often dirty money. That’s why it’s in a tax haven. And why it’s always looking for opportunities to be laundered.
♦ end ♦
© Royston Jones 2024
A Celtic Myth 7-10-24
Our village Craigcefnparc, near Clydach Swansea Valley, was born out of coal mining about 200 years ago. We had several coal mines, our largest was Clydach Merthyr (known as Nixons). Mining ceased here about 65 years ago and our miners transferred to the Brynlliw Pit near Gorseinon and that closed about forty years ago. Mining is now a distant memory but its ghosts live on in our Welsh culture here. Our miners used to receive 8 tonnes a year of concessionary coal for domestic use, that’s also long finished. About that time, forty years ago, there were demands for a village gas supply – the nearest connection was at Clydach just a couple of miles away. Representatives of the Gas Supplier came to a public meeting in the Village Hall (which incidentally was paid for by the Miners’ Welfare Hall Funds). They explained they would take Gas anywhere as long as the demand was there, and the community paid for its costly installation household by household. The cost was too high then, so we still have no gas.
This history reminds me of a new example with our national UK electric grid. Our politicians are glibly talking of two systems of a new supply of electric. Those are from floating offshore wind turbines in the Celtic Sea and solar power via a sea bed connection from Morocco. So I’ve been checking in an old school atlas. The Celtic Sea is located between Pembrokeshire; Cornwall ; South West Ireland and North West France, with the deep St George’s Channel between it and us, of distance on average of about 120 miles of under sea cables and then an extra 100 miles from its landfall points to a high population of consumer demand.
The Moroccan solar panels would involve an international sea bed cable system of about 1,400 miles to its UK landfall. Our politicians in the Wales Government and Starmer’s Miliband are serious about this, despite costs of the cabling and costly offshore floating giant wind turbines and risks of storms and terrorist acts of cutting the cables. It all reminds me of those Gas supply Engineers of forty years ago, who said they would take supply anywhere as long as the demand was there, and the community paid for it household by household. Incidentally, our Irish friends call the Celtic Sea the ‘Sea of Myths’ inhabited by the fairy folk of the sea called the ‘Merrows’.
I. Richard, Craigcefnparc, Swansea,
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Mr. Ioan Richard, 23 Mountain Rd., Craigcefnparc, Swansea SA65RH.
aptrefor@yahoo.co.uk 7-10-24 see map below :-
https://apis.mail.yahoo.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-cuEwd0a-altAfq_QYoc5k8HHQ5DGIEIkj9srYm8JkvMX472e0UkC4yJCqzmFCvihOhlIgOsK-VEEKqVdp3kLGg/messages/@.id==AGE1NZx-KIY9ZwPNAwFIIN3mxoA/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appid=YMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=2
CELTIC SEA – shaded area.
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Clean up our rivers, then save the world
We’re still indirectly using coal power
From Ioan ap Trefor in Swansea
This POST of Jac’s has been on his BLOG for a while so COMMENTS have slow down so I thought I’d post this below as I know not all of Jac’s readers reader the Western Wail or the Evening Ghost :-
My letter today Saturday 5-10-24 on Western Mail and South Wales Echo.
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We’re still indirectly using coal power
THERE is a free website that shows the up-to-date electrical UK power mix used in the recent past and updated every 15 minutes. Click onto Gridwatch UK to follow our power use and its source mix.
A simple understanding of units of power is needed and the easiest is the old fashioned example, where a single-bar electric fire needs one kilowatt or 1kW for any one instant.
If left on for a whole year it becomes 1kW x 365 days x 24 hours or 8,760 kW hrs this can be written as 8.76 MWhrs as a thousand kilowatts equals one megawatt.
Our UK grid operates between 25,000 MW and 65,000 MW on “instants” depending on the time of day, fluctuating with commercial and industrial demand and domestic use and the season of the year and hour of day. Generally it is between about 30,000 MW and 45,000 MW but it can spiral to maximum 65,000 MW quite quickly on demand circumstances.
It constantly changes and its sources fluctuate. Nuclear power is kept stable at about 13,000 MW, whereas gas and wind constantly vie for top place as the wind is so vastly erratic and unreliable that they need each other. A large number of other sources contribute in small but important ways such as solar; tidal; biomass and hydro, and even international exchange links to and fro with our neighbouring European countries (France, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Belgium) via seabed cables to a total significant capacity of nearly 7,000MW. There is even serious talk of a seabed connector for solar from Morocco. Also we are beginning to see whole fields being used up for giant lithium LiFe storage batteries near solar and erratic wind power sources linked by new pylon lines to meet urban demand.
At the time of writing we just shut down our very last reliable coalfired power station at Ratcliffe-onSoar in Nottinghamshire (capacity 2,000 MW). It is set for immediate demolition, although it has been an essential gap filler right up to this summer when the other sources failed to cope. What is not said, and hidden, is that our international connections all contain a mix of coal-generated power and our neighbours still burn a lot of coal.
Check the Gridwatch statistics for our neighbours, as listed above. So despite the “greeny glee” at seeing off our steelworks blast furnaces and our last coal power station to create a “carbon zero Britain” (forgetting the essential gas power emissions) we will still have coal power in our grid from Europe. To top that, most of our mass of imports of things like white goods and cars come from industrial giants in Asia that rely mostly on coal power. So we in the UK are all complicit in burning huge masses of coal in Asia.
Forget the fantasy of powering the country, and its vehicle fleet, with hydrogen. It takes more gas energy to source, store and transport hydrogen than it provides when converted into useful energy, so using anything but vast new renewable sources, true green hydrogen, will require burning more fossil fuels like gas unless we cover our whole nation with erratic, parttime wind turbines. Let’s hope that the new Great British Energy gets a true realistic grip on our energy economy.
********************************************* .end of published letter.
Whilst at it – THINK ABOUT THIS BELOW :-
£21,700,000,000 of our tax to be spent on the new Miliband Mania project:-
Carbon Capture – News Today
News on BBC UK today Friday 4-10-24 Quote below from BBC headline article :-
There is a lot of rousing rhetoric today about carbon capture, following the government’s pledge of £21.7bn of public funds over the next 25 years to help kick-start the industry in the UK.
Around 45 commercial carbon capture and storage facilities are in operation worldwide, together capturing more than 50 million tonnes of CO2 each year, according to the International Energy Agency. That may sound a lot – but global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry currently sit at more than 35 billion tonnes per year.So carbon capture currently makes very little difference to global CO2 emissions.
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Comment below on Carbon Capture – from Ioan Richard 01792 843861 Swansea.
Carbon capture sounds a good idea in principle, putting it down disused empty oil wells. Better than their original mad suggestion of pumping it down into our old coal mines until it was realised nearly all UK old coal mines are full of putrid water in fractured geology, and mass Carbon Dioxide gas escapes would be an obvious outcome. Then there is the magnitude. Just think of the Blast Furnaces that recently shut – they could produce 75,000 tonnes of iron for steel every week and their chemical ‘reduction’ equation using coke (carbon) and iron ore (iron oxide) released 43,000 tonnes of red hot loose carbon dioxide gas every week at Port Talbot into the atmosphere i.e. 2,236,000 tonnes per annum of loose red hot carbon dioxide gas – or two and a quarter million tonnes per annum. If those furnaces had stayed open that would be a lot of capture and long distance transport or pipeline continuously to distant old oil wells. Anyway they are going to spend £21,700,000,000 of our tax on this mammoth trial target. In announcing this, it is a blatant admission that we will continue to use Carbon Chemicals and Carbon Fuels and Carbon generated Power (by gas?) long past their stated deadline of carbon zero targets. Anyway I am not opposing this idea because I know nothing of the capture / storage methods and I know nothing of the stability of the geology of the strata of the old oil wells – are they safe from earthquakes and terrorism attack in war time hostilities forever as they must last sealed to eternity? Yes – lasted safe to eternity! Will China,India and USA follow our lead in this? Look at the glum faces of those in the photo for this Press Release yesterday. Do they look convincing? Anyway I pay little tax on my meagre pension and at the age of 80 yrs I will not be here in 25 yrs but my grandchildren will be middle aged then. I am not opposing this – all I say is – everyone should ask detailed questions, including lazy journalists who just regurgitate press releases from politicians – before these politicians destroy our economy with any Miliband inspired ideas.
https://apis.mail.yahoo.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-cuEwd0a-altAfq_QYoc5k8HHQ5DGIEIkj9srYm8JkvMX472e0UkC4yJCqzmFCvihOhlIgOsK-VEEKqVdp3kLGg/messages/@.id==AOAB6JwPCYrTZwEEvAHoSJFVwu0/content/parts/@.id==2/thumbnail?appid=YMailNorrin&downloadWhenThumbnailFails=true&pid=2
Photo sourced from BC News site 4-10-24. Both “Dim and Glum” – but “Dim” wearing a nice suit and posh spectacles!
**************************************************************** end.
Another thought provoking and insightful, well written article Jac.
Thank you very much, Lisa.
After reading this blog post and then seeing this article https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/north-wales-hospitality-group-wants-three-more-hotels-as-part-of-expansion-push/ar-BB1pIeq2?ocid=BingNewsVerp ir reminded me of how more people are getting grants for there own benefit, on companies house I think they are everbright hotel / lodge. apparently all the directors “work” at all the hotels!
All the directors seem to be Chinese but UK citizens. There are linked companies. But of course it’s possible to make someone a director without their knowledge. I’m not sure they’ve had grants. They all look like bank loans.
The one said to be in control is Lei Ma. He has a number of companies to his name.
A common thread I’ve noticed about the cast of characters in this entry is the eminently twattish and pretentious names they all seem to go by. All mouthfuls and hyphens. It can’t be a coincidence surely? Parents quite obviously up their own arses, and such traits pass down by both nature and nurture.
It’s almost like some new elite forming. In the past it might have been through noble birth, strength of arms, wealth, but today it’s a perception of moral superiority.
The only things missing from the dystopia you describe in the first paragraph is Soylent Green, or a Matrix to keep us all compliant. Wonder if they’d resort to these measures if they had the technology/could get away with it.
Would you eat ‘meat’ from a factory owned by Bill Gates?
It would be the first ever meat, to have been meted out. 🙂
Everything you all say is true, but may I comment that with the latest sleeze re the Labour Govt was it was to be expected. Starmers father owned the factory he made tools in etc etc…a fake persona to appeal to the core labour voters. At least with the Tories what you saw is what you get…not making excuses. This has always existed through the centuries of politics. The question that is not being asked is why were these clothes donated and the money and what were they BUYING. The thing with green energy is the fact that the National Grid is not fit for purpose. Octopus energy has said that as you cant link all these turbines or solar farms up to the grid because the infrastructure isnt there…but a lot of ppl just dont know this because we live in a want it all and must have it now society so we are also complicit in allowing these guys to get away with it. Starmer did say pre election campaign that the N grid wasnt fit for purpose but someone shut him up quick and Milliband has taken over the rant…
Alongside Rachel Reeves’ manipulation of UK spending and tax revenue figures this widespread green scamming must rank now as one of the biggest redistributive campaigns in modern history. Unlike their socialist predecessors this Labour regime inherits the role of 14 years of Tory programmes aimed at safeguarding and enhancing the wealth of the the relatively few that inhabit various elite cliques in financial institutions, global corporates and governments. The old socialist mandate of improving the lot of joe and jane public, or SIon and Sioned, to us Cymry, has been well and truly trashed. Looks like the GE 2024 did nothing to slow our trip down the road to serfdom. Maybe things will only get better when a few thousand politicians and enviroshysters are found hanging from ( recyclable) ropes off the lampposts along the major motorways.
There are comrades in a state of shock at the levels of duplicity and corruption already seen from this Labour government. Even journalists and commentators who would normally give Labour an easy ride are very critical. And there are rumours it could get worse.
It’s definitely going to get worse, even worser !!!! because the top team have signed up to someone else’s agenda and fully embraced it. So the relatively few at the top of the pyramid will prosper and the rest of us will, in the fullness of time, be bloody lucky to get jobs building new pyramids !
This is the uniparty system. Different labels, same product. The only ones challenging it are the ‘populists’, and Donald Trump. This explains the way they’re treated by the media.
Democracy is when the Left wins, and is a good thing. Populism is when the Right wins, and is a bad thing. Voters need to understand their responsibilities towards the project.
A good account here of Austria’s election results and the sheer incomprehension of the chattering classes:
https://www.aol.co.uk/news/austria-offers-warning-glimpse-death-150212265.html
Under the old two-party system found in most Western countries, comprised of centre-left and centre-right, the Globalists only needed to target a few dozen people in the top levels of those parties to control a country. Smooch them at Davos and send them home converted to the New World Order. Then, anything that threatens the uniparty arrangement must be vilified and discredited.
But this system is breaking down as people realise it is a uniparty system, and it has no answers to the problems facing the country. In fact, when it comes to net zero, the economy, law and order, and mass immigration, the uniparty is usually the author – or at least the local agent – of these disasters. And of course the rejection of state media and the traditional outlets makes it more difficult to defend the uniparty system. Which explains the attacks on Elon Musk.
I know I get criticised for still using terms like ‘left and right’, and the criticism is valid, but I use it because the Globalists have definitely been using the left to push their agenda. Certainly at street level. And the people see it, which is why we had the watershed of 2016 with Brexit and Trump.
And in the article you linked to, the writer says, ‘The Austrian Left, like its counterpart in Germany, is increasingly becoming the party of the wealthy, while the Right is absorbing the working-class vote. In the long run, this will spell the end of the Social Democratic movement in the German speaking parts of Europe, because you cannot be a working-class party in name and a woke-class party in your programme forever.’
It’s not just in Austria and Germany, this is the problem for the left across the West. And it explains the rise of ‘populism’. Though Wales is slow to catch on.
No matter what political colour people are we believe that this is the most pathetic start of any new government in my 78 years.
In fact I just cannot believe that what they are doing, perhaps they should go into therapy?
But things should improve in Wales because we don’t have any Conservative MPs (sic)!!!
There are some among us who will accept anything so long as they can claim their, ‘Tory-free Wales’.
Look on the bright side it could be a step towards a Unionist free Wales. Then we need an obsessives free Wales, an ishoo free Wales, and on and on and on. Last man standing ?
I see no point in celebrating a ‘Tory-free Wales’ when we’re lumbered with Labour and Plaid Cymru.
“Obsessive -free” and “ishoo free” should cater for most of those 2 parties.There may be a small number of tidy left overs who could feature in the cleaner, better Cymru but I’m unable to muster any nominations right now. Most of them seemed to have an effective life of about 2 days before decaying into the green slime.
In some ways Corruption Bay is reminiscent of that great movie The Stepford Wives. People go there full of ideas of doing their own thing and get re-programmed, or sucked into the system.
The reprogramming gets done by introducing the boys and girls to vices in which they already engage, or in the few lily white cases they get presented with “new experiences” that make them complicit. Kiddie porn, kiddie fiddling, chixwivdix, girls,boys, easy money etc etc all part of the work culture.
I assume, or at least hope that’s a sliding scale of vices you enumerate there – might have got the point across better if you’d started with easy money and ended with kiddie fiddling!
How about, Gwlad in a position to snatch all the small ‘c’ votes, because that is the party’s raison d’etre isn’t it, to be a home for the conservative minded who are open to the question of the Union.
It’d be very interesting to see an old-school left wing party emerge from the mire too, binning wokeism and being strictly about the good things the Left has brought us throughout history like worker’s rights and facilities for the common good. A party like that with enough momentum would do a number on Labour/Plaid.
You’re correct about Gwlad (though I no longer play an active role), and what you suggest on the left is happening on the continent. The problem in the UK might be that that non-mainstream pitch has been queered by Galloway and others. In Wales, it’s difficult to see anything remotely resembling a non-woke, anti-net zero socialism emerging. Where would it come from?
It is widely known in Europe that one of the primary reasons for Brexit was that the rich were frightened by new EU laws which would effectively destroy the secrecy of UK tax havens.
So their client media spewed out childlike nonsense about bendy cucumbers and blue passports etc. And the guillible electorate believed it.
So you’ve basically screwed your own economy to preserve the fortunes of the rich.
Nothing wrong with bendy cucumbers having blue passports!
I don’t dispute what you say about the motives of some, but they were not my motives for voting to leave the EU, as I made clear at the time. And the motives for clamping down on tax havens may have had a lot to do with the ambitions of Paris and Frankfurt than with cleaning up the world of international finance. But Brexit is over and what I’m discussing here is happening now.
And it would be happening even without Brexit, because plenty of corporations registered in the UK and EU are in the same racket. Even so, I take your point.
UK and EU are art of the same web of deceit and fraud. Making an honest buck from adding real value to a product or service does not sit well with these bureaucrats who inhabit the corridors of London or Brussels. All these dubious funds and pyramids of investors are more about “adding value” by financial engineering, a nice term for fiddling the books. The old acid test for making money was whether the cash flow was robust over a period of time. These modern wide boys don’t allow enough years to be compared back to back because they keep shuffling stuff around. The reasons are obvious to anyone who’s not prepared to swallow any old crap. .
Thinking about the piece I put out today, and it’s a picture I’ve encountered before, money is passed around through various charities, foundations, etc., to influence media and politicians, but achieve nothing for the rest of us. The only jobs created are for those on the bandwagon. What’s being promoted actually makes life worse for Dai Public!
This reply came as an e-mail. Hope I’ve copied ir right. Jac
I wish to make some observations on this matter but there are some items, that I’d not be able to include on the blog.
Greenwashing (And woke) seems to be the new way of virtue seeking and anyone, who questions the green agenda, is portrayed as a heretic. Just as there were many church and chapel goers, who did it all for show (As there are now but in smaller numbers), so the same applies with the green lobby.
In many cases, I feel that Tony Hancock summed them up in Wild Man of the Woods, particularly the line about being near the shops. People will buy into it and wear the badge, provided it doesn’t inconvenience them and cramp their style (Vanity being the world’s most popular hobby, manifesting itself in many ways).
It has to be accepted that it we wreck the world and consume all the natural resources, we have a problem. It would seem that at least a quarter of all the people, who have ever lived, are alive now. That would suggest a great strain on resources but I don’t know whether it approaches breaking point. Perhaps, if we were immortal, some may feel that what they do now, would impact on them in a couple of hundred years. I say perhaps, given the short term view, which many seem to hold, even within the context of a lifetime.
Net zero appears to be net hypocrisy. How can we claim to be net zero, when we buy in much of our manufactured goods from China, where there is no concern for the environment? It’s rather like the exhaust of an electric car; out of sight, out of mind. It is all a case of big business and sell sell sell. Most things are made with mass production in mind, not maintenance and repair. Cars, of which I have some knowledge, have certainly become consumable and the electric car simply refines that concept, by linking car life to battery life (In a recent case, a Hyundai, which had cost around £31000 new and was about a year old, suffered suspected battery damage and a new one would cost £34000). I know some people in the used car trade, who say that it will disappear and cars will end up like white goods.
The Association of British Drivers have produced the attached, which shows that overall, an electric vehicle has a worse environmental impact than an equivalent petrol or diesel vehicle. That may simply be to compare bad with worse. I have a small collection of historic vehicles (Some of it inherited and to an extent, I am just a custodian for my lifetime) and whilst I do relatively few miles, what passes as the runabout (Other than my bicycle) is a 1971 Morris Minor Traveller (Of which I am now the longest keeper). The late Charles Ware produced a book, over forty years ago, extolling the virtues of running a simple car, which being simple (And in the case of the Minor, durable), was easier to keep going long term. Of course, he was running a business, catering for Morris Minors but almost by accident. It would appear that to create a Minor produced four tons of carbon emission per car, whilst today, in Cowley, to create a petrol or diesel Mini, creates ten tons of carbon per car (Parts having been shipped in from far further afield and increased mechanisation consumes more power). On that basis, my Morris Minor, spreading that four tons over more than fifty years, has done rather better than one of Elon Musk’s Teslas. The gearbox, in my car, came from a Ford Sierra (Of which fewer than 200 now survive), the 5 speed conversion being popular in many BMC/BL cars, such as MG Midgets, Minors, A30/35, even MGA, T Type Midgets & Z Type Magnettes (The MGB was available with overdrive and this became standard equipment). As such there are more Sierra gearboxes out there than cars. There never were enough Minors made for everyone to have one but it demonstrates that a key element, in sustainability, is simplicity. The original Land Rover was another good example, with over 70% of production still being in existence. I don’t think that will be said of today’s models, from Land Rover/Range Rover, in 75 years from now.
Here’s the other attachment.
The odd thing is that whilst we are told we must drive electric cars (Presumably the electricity grows on trees), we are not encouraged to live near where we work and air travel is never mentioned as a source of pollution. A physicist I know calculated the carbon footprint of a trip to Germany, by air, with one by boat and train. 1km, by air, equaled the entire trip by train and boat. Naturally Mr & Mrs Average expect to fly to Spain at least once a year, so our politician cherry pick what to target, in order not to lose votes. You have to wonder what enticements are offered, for them to promote electric vehicles? Perhaps some are “On loan” to certain politicians (I recall your comments on the Kinnocks and windfarms and still await a reply, concerning the carbon footprint of making a turbine and it’s total anticipated output). As I have previously remarked, when money and/or politics conflicts with fact, money and/or politics prevails.
Even the bicycle is not so “Green” as it once was and could still be and I make my living in the bike trade, so I have knowledge of that too. Bikes are much more consumable than they were and vanity plays a big part in the cycling scene of today. Gone are the days when someone would get a new frame (Or good used one) and keep it for decades (Periodically re enameled), changing the running gear as required.
A good read.
Point of information: it used to be named the Association of British Drivers before becoming the Alliance of British Drivers (now) when it merged with Peter Roberts’ Drivers’ Alliance after he set up the largest ever response petition (still) on the then Downing Street (now Westminster) Petition website against the proposed introduction of road user charging pay-per-mile motoring in 2007, IIRC.
A petition that might coincidentally rise from the dead this Hallowe’en after the 30th October Budget.