Strange election hustings in the Gower constituency last night. We had the Labour candidate, also claiming that she “nearly had to rely on food banks because of cuts”

Thing is, our Tonia, works as a teacher, the departmental head no less, at Ysgol Bryngwyn, Dafen, Llanelli.

Education is devolved, and it’s the Labour Party who would be responsible for not paying enough and force the poor Tonia to access food banks. Of course, being the head of modern languages she was responsible for the twinning of Ysgol Bryngwyn, with Agen, France in 2014. I am told extensive cuisine was consumed by all, with free champagne.

Plump Tonia is also a Welsh Womens Rugby coach and is sponsored by United Colours of Benneton. She was the Labour candidate for Llanelli Rural Council claiming to live in the Penbre/Porth Tywyn ward, and failed to get elected. Although now she claims to be a native and living in Gorseinon.

Why is it that the spoilt elite of Labour champagne socialists keep crying poverty and food banks, when the reality they are living a lifestyle most people in Wales can only envy? Fake claims from these champagne socialists also demeans the people who really do have to rely on charity.

Links..
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/live-updates-swansea-west-gower-13124461

http://niagriffith.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Penny-Tonia-768×1024.jpg
Tonia Antoniazzi (left), Labour Candidate for Gower.
Pictured previously as a council candidate in Carmarthenshire.

I couldn’t agree more with you drsallybaker – you’ve hit the nail on it’s head, and put your finger squarely on the problem. At present it’s a poisoned well. The parliamentary Labour Party is stuffed full of pink Tory leftovers from the Blair/ Brown era, who are so vile, I doubt if they’d even be accepted by the true Tories, who are of the same ilke!

Labour in Cymru is teeming with the same self serving vermin.

Did you see the Corbyn/ May debate in front of an audience. and then being interviewed (if you can call it an interview) with that elitist leaning, up his own arse Paxman. That guy epitomises everything that’s wrong and annoying about the bigoted and snobby Brit media (I also genuinely think he’s gone nuts – the acting role has taken over the actor).

Anyway, what are your views on what you saw? I have a gut feeling that Corbyn is in the ascendancy, and I’m not disappointed. I believe Corbyn is fair, principled and genuine. Life might be easier for us if we had a proper Nationalist party in power here and a Corbyn led Labour party in control in the colonial city. I believe we Nationalists could do something with him. Sinn Féin could in the past, and the SNP probably could now, because he is fair, of that I have no doubt.

If you missed it you can see it all again. Click HERE

Yes. Everyone knew him as Jimmy Wilde. As well as the club, he kept a sort of dosshouse of the type that I doubt would be allowed these much regulated days.

your story there reminds me of a situation about 40 years ago when a mate was living in a council house in Merthyr where the damp was so bad he named it “mushroom villa” and received a bollocking from the council. Nothing seems to change much, except for those on the inside track..

All power to Neil’s elbow for exposing mediocre Housing Association accommodation for sky high rents, but the conditions that Neil has filmed here aren’t half as bad as some of the conditions that I witnessed when I lived around Bangor and Caernarfon until very recently. The Daily Post has run constant exposes of the dreadful state of houses ‘managed’ by CCG, the ‘social landlord’ that took the housing stock over from Gwynedd County Council a few years ago. The people I knew in the worst conditions however were people on low incomes renting from private landlords or indeed people who had managed to buy their own houses previously and were now struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Many of the people that I knew in this category were mental health clients who were legally entitled to social housing – but if those ‘clients’ had dared ever make a complaint against the ‘services’, they would be told in no uncertain terms that there was no way that housing could be found for them. (Mind you, some of those ‘clients’ purposefully did not ask for help with housing because they saw where other people in their position were being housed – please see my comments below for examples of vulnerable people being housed next to violent offenders).
In my own case, when I was doing my PhD and on a very limited income, for a while I rented a house in Cwm-Y-Glo. It had no heating and fungi – quite big fungi as well – found the back corner of one room excellent growing conditions. The back door frame was so dodgy that the door collapsed. The landlord’s solution to this was to nail the door shut. My PhD supervisor pissed himself laughing at the irony of this – because the landlord had gone to the trouble of fitting a fire alarm. But then barricading me in should it go off… Although my supervisor found this entertaining it was at this point that he offered to lend me money for rent in advance to enable me to find somewhere decent to live. He and his wife kept expressing horror at the conditions that I was living in but I was by no means alone. The reason that I was living in such a dump was that on my bursary all I had was a choice of similar such dumps. Things must be even worse now because when I spent Christmas at my former PhD supervisor’s house last year, one of the other guests was a young Romanian student from Bangor University who was living in a tent on Bangor mountain. Students have always traditionally slummed it, but a tent really is pushing the boat out. Bangor University do of course have some very, very nice halls of residence now – but only a minority of students can afford them. Then there’s the university approved accommodation list, with houses that have been passed and registered – at a price of course. Then there’s the hovels where the students who don’t have affluent parents to bail them out live. And now it seems there’s the tents on Bangor mountain for those who can’t afford the hovels. But as my comment further below indicates, I still encountered problems with the private rented sector even when I hit the big time after my PhD and I actually had a salary to live on. This chaos – that exists in rural Wales as well as places like London – is the natural result of successive governments putting absolutely no thought at all into housing policy. And now we’re being asked to blame the baby boomers for the housing crisis – as though they’re selfishly sitting in all the houses refusing to move out.

A typical example of Housing Associations not fulfilling their remit to provide decent affordable housing can be seen in RCT. They prefer to do profitable new-builds down by the M4 rather than further up the valley in the communities that need them. A site became available in the Rhondda, the old Pentre barracks.

It was owned, has traditionally been used for training of reserved forces, and was home to Rhondda Sea Cadets. When the MoD wanted to dispose of the site due to integrating reserves training into regular sites, many ‘old barracks’ throughout the United Kingdom, were sold off. In the deal was ‘preference to housing need’.

The site went to auction and sold to a private buyer with a guide price for £25,000. At the time, Chris Bryant MP (Rhondda Labour) launched a local campaign to have the site donated to the Sea Cadets. A substantial sum was donated to the cadets by the Rhondda Trust.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/historic-pentre-barracks-sold-amid-11912723

The Rhondda Trust was set up during the Burberry Factory closure campaign, a bribe to the community of a few hundred thousand pounds annually. Chris Bryant, who is the main trustee, negotiated it. He knew, in advance, that the Pentre barracks site could not just be ‘donated’ as he got this in a statement from the Under-Secretary of State.

Priority goes to social housing, but no bids were made from the Trivallis (formally RCT Homes).

The Pentre site was sold to a private developer, and now the MoD social clauses have expired, the site is up for sale again, wholly within the private sector. The Sea Cadets gave been evicted. Meanwhile, Trivallis are building posh estates down Llantrisant way, to generate profits from Cardiff overspill, while the families in real need languish on the social housing list in Rhondda, and the kids in Cadets, now evicted, have to use the school playing fields.

That’s why I argue that anyone thinking of a ‘progressive alliance’ that includes Labour must have their head up their arse. The priority in Wales must be to do what the SNP has done in Scotland and destroy Labour. Give Welsh voters the choice between Independence and permanent Tory rule. Labour just muddies the water and maintains the Union, but our masters know that, and that’s why they’ll keep breathing life into the Labour corpse.