Miscellany 21.09.2020

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR

Here’s the round-up that’s been postponed for the past few weeks. It covers quite a bit of ground and a variety of subjects.

CHOO-CHOO TRAINS

SNOWDON MOUNTAIN RAILWAY

I wrote about the Snowdon Mountain Railway (SMR) a while back. Over three years ago, in fact, with ‘Respecting Snowdon’. Even though I say so myself, it’s a good read.

(And by the way, did you know that Snowdon is the highest mountain in Belgium and Wales?)

Tourists swarming over a national icon having been brought up by the Snowdon Mountain Railway. Click to enlarge

Among the many interesting facts I unearthed was that the company, Snowdon Mountain Railway Ltd (formed 1894), files accounts for a dormant company.

At the very end of the latest Report & Accounts we read that “The company (Snowdon Mountain Railway Ltd) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Heritage Great Britain PLC.”

Heritage Great Britain PLC we are told, in its latest Annual Report, “is the holding company for Heritage Attractions Ltd and Heritage Brand Ventures Ltd”.

Click to enlarge

Here’s the Companies House link to Heritage Attractions Ltd, and here’s the link to Heritage Brand Ventures Ltd.

At the very end of the latest Heritage Great Britain Annual Report & Accounts we read that everything is owned by a Jersey company:

Click to enlarge

So the Snowdon Mountain Railway Ltd is owned by Heritage Great Britain PLC which in turn is owned by Cherberry Ltd of Jersey.

And as I found out when writing the earlier piece, Cherberry Ltd of Jersey is in turn owned by Dukla Ltd of Gibraltar, set up August 2015. And Dukla is probably owned by a company based in an even more sun-blest location.

So it’s Snowdonia to Liverpool, Liverpool to Jersey, Jersey to Gibraltar, Gibraltar to God knows where.

Which means that the patriotically named Heritage Great Britain PLC is ultimately owned by an entity based offshore. But why would a company running tourist attractions need such a twisted web of ownership?

It might have something to do with the Jersey connection, and former undertaker Kevin Leech, and perhaps his links to North Korea. For it’s generally believed that the ‘colourful’ Leech owns the companies we’ve read about here.

His interests are now looked after by his son, Allan James Stuart Leech, who sits as a director on the boards of these companies.

The reason I’m returning to the Snowdon Mountain Railway is because of its new hybrid locos, built by Clayton Equipment of Staffordshire. Word has it that these new locos are not performing as hoped.

Image: Clayton Equipment. Click to enlarge

As you can read in this piece from the Rail Technology Magazine website, “SMR plan to operate at Llanberis entirely on battery power, operate the generator charging on the uphill journey, turn off the generator on the downhill journey and use the regenerative braking to recharge the battery packs”.

The problem I’m hearing about seems to be two-fold. First, the batteries don’t charge as the loco descends, with the brakes on; and second, the brakes themselves don’t work too well as brakes. And with each battery weighing ten tonne, this is a serious matter.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions these problems have been hidden, but they won’t go away. And with the SMR planning a full switch to electric and hybrid technology they need to be fixed, pronto.

Due to this problematic investment in hybrid locos, and the loss of income from Covid-19, there must be a possibility that the Snowdon Mountain Railway will soon be seeking financial support from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’.

The ‘Welsh Government’ should not give a penny to a company that is ultimately owned by persons or companies based in tax havens.

BALA LAKE RAILWAY

One toy train that is definitely seeking ‘Welsh Government’ money is the Bala Lake Railway.

Google entry. “Alice the little Welsh engine”! How patronisingly twee. Click to enlarge

The BLR line currently runs from Llanuwchllyn up the eastern – Llangower – side of Llyn Tegid to Pen-y-Bont station, near to where Afon Dyfyrdwy (Dee) leaves on its journey to the border and the sea.

Though there’s nothing really new about this plan, it goes back to the 1980s. Here’s a report from 2014.

Last Friday we learnt that the Bala Lake Railway is asking the ‘Welsh Government’ for £2.5m to extend the line to a new station in the town of Bala. And the ‘Welsh Government’ seems keen on giving the money. (Kenny – ‘Flint Ring’ – Skates is already brushing his teeth for the photo op as you read this.)

One of the things that struck me on the Charity Commission website entry was that the contact address for the Bala Lake Railway Trust is in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.

Then, in a couple of places, I read, as the aim: “To advance enjoyment, education and learning and to promote regional public benefit through the restoration, maintenance and exhibition by operation steam locomotives, rolling stock and other railway artefacts directly associated with the slate industry of north Wales and in particular those regions of Dinorwic and Penrhyn.”

But the Bala Lake Railway runs along a stretch of the old line from Barmouth to Ruabon. It has no connection with the slate industry, and certainly not with Dinorwic or Penrhyn. (Did I say ‘Penrhyn’! That BLM woman will be after me!)

Click to enlarge

So who runs this show . . . from Shepton Mallet? The six trustees are: Squadron Leader Toby Kenneth Watkins, Steve Valentine, Julian Peter Charles Birley, Roger Hine, Christina Lillian Kennedy, Steve Davies.

Toby Watkins and Julian Birley B.E.M. are also with The Locomotive Conservation and Learning Trust. And while Watkins is obviously a retired RAF officer, Birley is a property investor and buy-to-rent landlord, who has recently moved to Llanuwchllyn. His only current company seems to be Property Land Ltd.

Christina Lillian Kennedy accounts for the Shepton Mallet address. She has been involved in countless trusts and the like. While also running a few consultancies.

Roger Hine is another who has graciously come to live among us. Though back in July 2011 he threw a strop when Dŵr Cymru fixed the local water system during school holidays, which meant his toy trains needed to run on diesel for a couple of hours.

Hine was quoted: “I didn’t expect to be cut off in peak season. My next door neighbour runs a guest house and said it was typical in Wales because they are not tourism-orientated.” Useless bloody Welsh! Thank God the English come here to run the tourism industry for us. Did I just say, ‘for us’!

Steve Valentine “owns and runs an award-winning confectionery company in Bala which is also the town’s largest single employer”. This is presumably Gwynedd Confectioners, though the company registered with Companies House is Sweet Valentine Limited, with a Porthmadog address.

I would have expected to see ‘trading as’ somewhere in the Sweet Valentine documents filed with Companies House, but I couldn’t find anything.

Which leaves only ‘Steve’ Davies. When he’s not chuff-chuffing on the banks of Llyn Tegid Davies busies himself with The Friends of Sierra Leone National Railway Museum, The Duke of Lancaster’s Lancashire Regiment Museum, and chairing The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust.

Stephen Davies is from Lancashire, lives in North Yorkshire, and is another ex-military man. Here’s a bit of a bio. And wouldn’t ya know – he too has a consultancy.

Two military officers, someone awarded the British Empire Medal, and the rest suggest a very English establishment outfit. The only thing the Bala Lake Railway seems to want from us is our country and our money.

The question is, boys and girls: Should £2.5m of Welsh public money be used to fund a hobby train, one encouraging the ‘Playground Wales’ tourism that is turning us into strangers in our own country, or should those involved be told to steam off into the sunset?

Answers on the usual post card, please. (And if you’ve run out just send me a message on a post card and I’ll send you some more.)

BEDDGELERT

Another of the ‘Great Little Trains of Wales’ is the Welsh Highland Railway, which runs the 25 miles from Caernarfon to Porthmadog via Beddgelert. At ‘Port’ it links with the Ffestiniog Railway that goes on to Blaenau Ffestiniog.

These lines are for tourists, few locals can afford to use them. I say that because it costs £80 for two to make the 15-mile trip from Caernarfon to Beddgelert in a ‘seating bay’, which I assume to be two, facing bench seats.

Click to enlarge

Which reminded me of something written by Julian Birley B.E.M. on the BLR Trust website; talking of narrow gauge railways, he said: “Largely based in rural regions, these railways are becoming a lifeline for people in areas of high unemployment and in need of regeneration.”

How true is that?

But I digress.

The reason I’m introducing the Welsh Highland Railway is because one of its directors is David Edward Firth, who happens to live in Beddgelert, so I’m sure he uses the train regularly . . . without having to pay.

Another company of which Firth is a director is Glaslyn Leisure Ltd. I’m sure the name won’t mean anything to you and I only came across it in a story about five holiday homes being sold in Beddgelert. Being sold together as an ‘investment’.

They seem to be in a cul-de-sac off the main A498.

Image: Google. Coed Gelert, Beddgelert. Click to enlarge

I suppose £1.2m for five holiday homes in a place like Beddgelert is about right, but when I checked the company accounts an anomaly was revealed. For according to the accounts, or rather, the unaudited financial statement, the company’s tangible assets / net book value amount to only £275,524.

Almost a million pounds less than is being asked for the Beddgelert properties. How is this explained? In two words – debts and depreciation.

The creditors are almost certainly the four directors of Glaslyn Leisure and the debt is presumably what it cost them to buy the land and build the six properties.

Perhaps the real anomaly is depreciation. For in the real world, and especially with holiday homes in Wales, values increase every year; but in declarations to Companies House owners are allowed to apply depreciation of 2% a year on freehold property and 20% on fixtures and fittings.

Which means, over a period of time, property that is increasing in value can, on paper, be made to lose value. Clever, no?

To help me make sense of things I drew a table. Starting in 2010 we see that the fixed assets / book value stood at £526,612 which, a decade ago, with property markets still suffering from the financial crisis of 2008, might have represented some two thirds of what the properties would have fetched if they’d been sold.

Click to enlarge

The big drop in 2018 is accounted for by the sale to David Firth and his wife of Plas Tegfryn. Which means that, as individuals, they bought the house off the company of which they were directors.

How was that calculated?

This sale – the ‘disposal’ mentioned in the financial statement – also explains the reduction in the amount owed to creditors from £519,280 in 2017 to £266,433 in 2018.

I was able to get details of Plas Tegfryn from the Land Registry, but the properties for sale – Sygun, Aran, Y Garn, Hebog, Craig-y-Llan – seem not be registered by name or number. (I got the names from AirBnB.)

Or, rather, on the Companies House website I was able to bring up an individual property, but what’s available for download is the title document for the land on which Coed Gelert was built. You’ll note that when the land was bought David Firth was living on an estate called Oberon Wood. I kid you not – Oberon Wood!

Click to enlarge

And of course we aren’t told how much these properties have earned in the two decades since they were built. So it could be £1.2m clear profit from the sale. Perhaps more. And it will all go to England.

I’ve included this story because it tells us so much about what’s wrong with Wales.

On the one hand we have narrow gauge railways, run by strangers, for the enjoyment of strangers; with hardly any local involvement, but always looking for Welsh public funding by suggesting they provide some public service!

And then we have the kind of tourism-linked property speculation we see in Beddgelert. But not limited to this or any other area.

For as a correspondent from Llandysul wrote a few days ago: “Stories from all directions about ‘selling a shithole house in England and buying three here. One to live in and two to rent out’. I think we’ve had it now.”

This is a decent, caring Welsh person resigned to the death of his nation.

JAKE BERRY

Talking of property speculation reminds me of Jake Berry, the Conservative and Unionist MP for Rossendale and Darwen in east Lancashire. Berry owns an unknown number of properties on Ynys Môn.

He’s been honoured with coverage on this blog in Jake Berry MP: ‘They seek him here, they seek him there . . . ‘. Jake Berry MP, part 2, Jake Berry MP, part 3, and Jake Berry MP, part 4. As if that wasn’t enough, there were subsequent mentions in Miscellany 06.06.2020, Miscellany 15.07.2020, and Wales and envirocolonialism.

One of those properties is Rhyd-y-Bont, at Rhoscolyn, an area of the island being rapidly cleansed of the Welsh and other undesirables. Berry, or his wife, Alice Molly Radclyffe Berry, bought it last year for £780,000.

Jake Berry MP. Click to enlarge

The name of this rural retreat translated into English takes us to Ford Bridge Farm Ltd, a company formed in May, that uses the address of an accountant in Bacup, in Berry’s constituency. The directors are Berry and his wife, with said accountant, Paul Fitton, serving as secretary.

There have been some developments worth reporting. I just hope I can explain them.

On the Companies House website, at the top of an entry, all company names are given in upper case, so I was amazed to see, Ford Bridge, FARM LTD. Also, this curiosity has a date of birth! Though December 1983 is also when Jake Berry’s wife was born.

Had she changed her name?

At the second attempt I found another entry for Ford Bridge Farm Limited, with Palatine Hill Limited listed as an appointment. This is in addition to the original entry given above.

Clicking on Palatine Hill tells us that the listed officers are Duckworth Estate Company Limited and Ford Bridge Farm Limited. With Duckworth Estate owned, it would appear, by Palatine Hill Ltd.

Palatine Hill could be a ‘Russian doll’ arrangement for Jake and his missus’ property dealings, set up to deter enquiries – cos there’s some nosy buggers out there! I suppose the next step would be offshore, but that might look bad, even for a Tory MP.

I suggest that because checking the ‘Filing history’ I saw this entry for 31 July, 2020 “Withdrawal of the directors’ residential address register information from the public register”. And if you want a ‘company snapshot’ then you’ll need to cough up £15.

As you all know, the Palatine Hill was one of the seven hills of Ancient Rome. It’s where the toffs were said to live. Which is entirely fitting for upwardly mobile Jake and Alice Berry.

But under no circumstances should it be confused with the Capitoline Hill or any of the other five. And it’s nowhere near Blueberry Hill, of which the late Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino so often sang.

See, you don’t just get informed on this blog, you get bloody well educated as well.

Tidy, mun!

ONE PLANET DEVELOPMENTS

Towards the end of August I wrote Black Mountains College, in which we looked at this project in Talgarth, Powys that seeks to become a kind of university for eco-warriors.

One of the sidetracks down which comments took us led to the OPD settlement at Rhiw Las, near Whitland in Carmarthenshire. I’d been keeping an eye on this through regular updates from Companies House on Rhiw Las Ltd, a company formed in September 2013.

But of course, filings to Companies House can’t always tell us what’s happening on the ground. And that’s why I’m indebted to those who commented to the blog or contacted me in other ways.

The 21.5 acre Rhiw Las site is made up of four couples living on separate OPDs, each of roughly 5 acres. Planning permission was granted by the Planning Inspectorate in June 2016 after being rejected by Carmarthenshire planning committee.

The stated thinking behind OPDs is to encourage people to live self-sufficient, off-grid lifestyles, in order to reduce Wales’ carbon footprint. The fact that all those choosing to live on OPDs have moved to Wales, thereby increasing Wales’ carbon footprint, is an inconvenient truth and therefore ignored.

As it is set out in the ‘Welsh Government’s Technical Advice Note 6 the strategy is about “delivering sustainable rural communities”. And what a welcome innovation this will be, for in the 10,000 years since the retreat of the ice Wales has never known sustainable rural communities.

Soon after releasing into the wild the piece about Black Mountains College news started arriving about the denizens of Rhiw Las. One couple in particular may have been telling porkies about where they live, and what they do.

I’m referring now to Chris Vernon and Erica Thompson. That’s Dr Chris Vernon, who works for the Met Office in Bristol; and Dr Erica Thompson, a Fellow of the London School of Economics.

Colonialist charlatans with young. Click to enlarge

When she’s not teaching in London, or attending conferences, or at her holiday home OPD, Erica Thompson is chairwoman of the One Planet Council. Which means that she knows the buzz-words, she has the connections, and the buttons she needs to push are invitingly illuminated.

OPDs can look commendable, deserving of support, until you learn more and appreciate the bullshit involved.

Great dollops of which can be found in the Management Plan for Rhiw Las, that accompanied the planning application. It makes a big thing of the availability of wild food. But if you’re going to use wild food to strengthen your case then you might as well say there’ll be lots of air to breathe, and birds singing, and flies flying . . .

One Planet Developments are supposed to be about people doing things for themselves, not relying entirely on Mother Nature . . . plus of course, the Met Office and the LSE.

Click to enlarge

Then there’s Wycliffe Tippins, another resident of Rhiw Las. It seems Wycliffe lives or works in Gloucestershire. As a comment to the Black Mountains College post told us, “Wycliffe is a computer games developer. Another useful addition to the rural skillset at Rhiw Las !”

What’s more, not so long ago, Wycliffe was advertising for unpaid help to look after his OPD while he was designing computer games in England.

Note that Wales is “over here”. Click to enlarge

And before he was even using the static caravan on his visits to Wales, and before Rhiw Las was given planning permission, Wycliffe was demanding a strong Well-being of Future Generations Bill! Which would of course be of benefit to him and his friends.

Which meant he was trying to influence Welsh legislation when he wasn’t even pretending to be living here! Arrogant colonialist fucker!

Another member of the Rhiw Las gang who may be working full-time in England is Dr Paul Jennings. But what I found really interesting about him came from this interview with Lowimpact.org in April.

Contrary to what I’m sure most of us believed, according to Paul Jennings, ‘The (OPD) policy is intended to strengthen local, rural economies in Wales – it’s not about self-sufficiency.’ Though in other areas he agrees with us.

Click to enlarge

Though I’d love to know how the dissembling incompetents in Corruption Bay think inviting into Wales small groups of arrogant colonialist fuckers© standing aloof from the indigenous population strengthens local rural economies. I really would like that to be explained.

Over at Lammas we find Cassandra Lishman, the ‘Woman of the Willows’. Are she and her husband living a self-sufficient, off-grid lifestyle? Almost certainly not, for as the article tells us, hubby “Nigel has a ‘conventional’ job as a care support worker.”

To which he drives every day.

“Cassie is at pains to stress that living at Lammas – reliant upon sun, water and wind for power, and running smallholdings in tune with nature – does not preclude having a ‘normal’ life”.

All they really want is a cheap place in the countryside. And it has to be the Welsh countryside because no other country on Earth has been so stupid as to submit to these people by introducing the OPD system.

Once they’ve got their little bit of heaven, built for a few thousand pounds, it can be sold for a premium price as a dwelling in open country.

It so happens – Cassandra Lishman is selling her place!

Clearly, the OPD system is being abused on a massive scale. And yet the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ refuses to intervene, leaving local planning authorities helpless. And so the envirocolonists keep coming, in an ever-increasing tide.

Here’s what one local source told me:

“As far as I can tell there in no policing by Pembs CC and given the fear of litigation that Carm CC  suffered at the hands OPD lawyers they are reluctant/can’t afford to enforce any of the planning restrictions imposed originally

I foresee many of the properties sold as general housing with a very large garden and a lifestyle

Sure as hell nobody local will be buying these properties as it will be cash buyers only, I somehow doubt that they are mortgageable

Lammas is a shambles and beyond any controls it seems. The latest episode is —– laying down on the track to stop a farmer hedge cutting because he can’t get his hay equipment to fields further up the hill

There are more appearing in the valley and it is divisive. A farmer is buying blocks of land just to prevent more arrivals as he is already surrounded.

They are not going away so sooner or later most will be sold on the open market.

I don’t see the an end to it.

Wealthy incomers, from SE England and Bristol queuing up to buy a toy farm in countryside, working from home and not having the skills abide to OPD planning conditions. What then?

The farms are being fragmented and they will never be able to be reinstated as a viable family farm of the type that has built the indigenous community”.

I know it’s easy to laugh at these people and their pretensions, but they are ambitious, greedy, well connected, and dangerous. Never forget that the clowns in Corruption Bay have already bent over backwards to do their bidding.

The ambition I’m referring to stretches way beyond the few settlements we see today, mainly in the south west. According to Paul/Tau Wimbush, a Lammas guru, Wales could easily accommodate another 115,000 eco-holdings. That’s 414,000 people – all them land-grabbing charlatans, with few living the life they’ll claim to be living.

Paul/Tao Wimbush’ vision for Wales. Click to enlarge

Chris Vernon agrees that there should be many more faux OPDs. Go to 7:10 in this video to hear him say: “There is no reason why Wales couldn’t support several tens of thousands of smallholdings in the open countryside”.

GLYNLLIFON LTD

Glynllifon is a name you’ll be familiar with, but this section has nothing to do with Plas Glynllifon, the old mansion south of Caernarfon that has attracted so many crooks over recent years.

No, this Glynllifon is on Ynys Môn, near Marianglas, with Benllech to the south and Moelfre to the north. Though just like its mainland namesake it also attracts crooks!

As I was informed in a couple of anonymous e-mails earlier this month telling me that certain ‘businessmen’ had a project at Traeth Bychan, Marianglas, and that a company called Glynllifon Ltd was involved.

This company was formed 10 June last year, with Neil Moir as sole director. (The name is sometimes spelt ‘Muir’.) The company soon took out two loans with Goldcrest Finance Ltd to buy the Glynllifon hotel. Goldcrest Finance is yet another “specialist lender based in central Manchester”. How many of them are there?

Glynllifon Ltd uses an accommodation address in London, 160 City Road EC1V 2NX.

Here’s the Land Registry title document. I suggest you keep it open in another window. Because before moving on to the latest developments I’d like to concentrate on the title document for a bit.

Glynllifon Hotel, Marianglas. Click to enlarge

Going back to 1999 (page 2) it would appear that the Glynllifon Hotel passed from people named Beardsley to a Lesley Karen Boshell. Yet on page 3 we find that, “A Deed dated 17 September 2015 made between (1) Thelma Eileen Beardsley and (2) Ocean and Country Developments Limited contains restrictive covenants.”

Turning to Ocean & Country Developments Ltd we find Ronald Kenneth Boshell of Cheshire as a director. It’s reasonable to assume that he is related to Lesley Karen Boshell.

Ocean & Country Developments is heavily in debt and the debt may be explained by an outstanding charge held by ‘The Santhouse Pensioneer Trustee Company Limited Marc Howard and Avis Howard’ against . . . the Glynllifon Hotel. Marc Howard is the other director, with Boshell, of Ocean & Country Developments.

The Boshells were obviously living on Ynys Mon in January 2005 because this report from the Daily Post tells us that one of the Boshell children was hit by a car on the way to school.

The report also told us that, “Mr Boshell and wife Leslie (sic) said they closed the hotel last year because the road was so dangerous”. The hotel was called the Beauchelles Hotel (geddit?), though closing due to traffic is unlikely.

UPDATE 22.09.2020: My suspicion has been confirmed – the Beauchelles Hotel was Glynllifon. Sources say it went downhill, almost as if it was designed to fail.

One source sent me a photo of Ronnie Boshell, now domiciled in Spain.

Click to enlarge

In that report from the Daily Post you will have seen the name of local ‘spokesman’ Barrie Durkin. He became a councillor and in 2013 he was complaining about the derelict buildings in Benllech:

“Cllr Durkin said: ‘For years now Benllech and its surrounding areas has seen a number of its prominent hotels and properties purchased by property developers just to be closed down with no work done. (My emphasis.)

‘They have been left dangerously, inadequately secured and are blots on the beautiful landscapes.”

He drew attention to Y Gorlan, on Benllech promenade, which has already been set on fire, has been left open to the elements and has become a magnet for unsuspecting children to get injured or killed.

Some of the eyesores also include the Bay Court Hotel, the Bryntyrion (sic) Hotel and the Beauchelles Hotel, which Cllr Durkin says are letting the village down.'”

It could be that companies were being set up, and property bought, to launder money. Such things happen.

The image below, from Google, was captured in July 2016. It would appear to show some plan to develop the Glynllifon site as apartments and holiday cottages, perhaps by Ocean & Country Developments Ltd.

Click to enlarge

The Boshells, or Beauchelles, appear to have moved back to north west England.

The empty and semi-derelict Glynllifon Hotel has now been bought by Glynllifon Ltd and Neil Moir. So who exactly is he?

In a word, another crook.

THE winner of top TV quiz Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is set to lose his fortune – because he is a crook.

Millions saw 51-year-old Neil Muir land a £64,000 prize this week. But under the programme’s rules he is BANNED from entering.

Muir has convictions for theft, deception and forgery. And Rule 6 says: “You must… have no criminal convictions (subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974).” London TV company Celador launched an investigation yesterday.

Although his roots seem to be in north west England Moir is, I believe, living on Ynys Môn. In Bodorgan, on the opposite side of the island to Marianglas.

He seems to have a number of companies registered at his home address. It’s worth flicking through them. One of the companies – the Anglo Chinese Property Corporation Ltd – also has loans with Goldcrest and owns property in Wrecsam.

In August 2015 the Financial Conduct Authority refused Moir permission to engage in credit broking. (Though you have to admire his chutzpah!)

In recent days the Glynllifon Hotel has been in the news because the planned development – if it’s not another money laundering operation! – plans to open under the ‘Traeth Bychan Heights’ label. This has upset many locals angry at so many traditional names being lost.

Though when the story was reported by the Daily Post someone supported the change. “Can’t live in the past”, the comment said. It came from ‘Shakinshane’ . . . otherwise known as Shane Baker, of the Duggan family Bryn Llys gang.

(Bryn Llys has been renamed ‘Snowdon Summit View’.)

Click to enlarge

Now what interest would Shane Baker have in the Marianglas / Benllech area? Silly me! – it’s where the police found his boss John Joseph Duggan hiding out. Though given what we now know about the area I can’t help wondering who owned the property in which Duggan was hiding.

Somebody must know.

To complete the picture my source tells me that Neil Moir has a partner. And that partner is Rhys Williams.

I’m sure I’ll return to this story in future posts. If anyone has more information, then get in touch.

Toy trains, ‘investment’ holiday homes, Tory MPs’ property empires, envirocolonists and outright crooks are just the same monster glimpsed in different lights. All elements of a colonial system that no longer simply exploits but also destroys.

Either we start taking back control, from those you’ve read about, and from those who refuse to take action against them, or it will be victory for Shane Baker and those who agree that doing away with everything that makes us Welsh is progress.

♦ end ♦




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LESLEY BOSHELL

Fuk you, you know nothing about our lives

Dyn Gwyrdd

Off topic but a little sweet gem of Dennis Skinner ripping into despicable Neil Kinnock here:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guPsvUlMHEE
Now you’ve had a smile, please get back to Jac’s message and support what Jac says.
I hope he’s not ill. I hope it’s just a computer bug that the wizard Big Gee can fix.

Keith Parry.

Happened to put a pro independence post on a narrow gauge railways site by mistake, always had a long interest in such things.. But got a number of replies, along the lines “Lived here for five years’ Yes Wales should be an independent country. Perhaps some people come here to escape England and pro a FREE WALES!

Dafis

Mildly encouraging. Damn sight better than Smiler Skates having a justified dig at UK government one minute for underinvestment on our rail services and infrastructure only to revert to good old Unionist mode within nanoseconds.

Brychan

Since the line closures of the 1960s, which we now know to be a big mistake, there are some stretches of line of standard gauge which have been maintained or bought back into use as novelty tourism attractions.

The Gwili steam railway near Carmarthen which occupies a stretch of the now closed Carmarthen to Aberystwyth line is an example. The bridges, track bed and embankments have been maintained as a result and the enterprise is a locally owned community company. I suspect they would be delighted to hand over their asset to reopen the Traws Cambria link as a public railway, in free exchange for another site like the old line from Cydweli to Pontyberem. I would fully support this.

There are however, foreign owned lines that operate for purpose of economic extraction and are fakes, constructed for novelty. The one up Yr Wyddfa and the monstrosity at Bala where parts of a closed standard gauge trackbed has been abused with a toy that provides no benefit to Wales are just two examples.

They should be evicted.

I would also like to see the Ffestiniog railway come under a public operators license scheme. Their public obligation to provide access and pricing the same as the valley lines in the south. Services for transport of kids to school, commuter pricing from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog. If they fail to do this, the operators license removed..

Such a proposal will distinguish between the genuine rail enthusiast who should be welcomed into the restoration of Welsh railway heritage and help the reestablishment of a public network from the parasitic scum who just run toy trains for foreign profit.

YBarddCwsc

How do you get to be in charge off Natural Resources Wales?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54248807

Nothing in Sir David Henshaw’s cv suggests that he has any interest in Wales or expertise in climate change or environmental sciences or agriculture or economics.

He has absolutely no relevant qualifications or expertise.

Still, we read that Lesley Griffiths has asked Sir David “to lead a coalition of experts to develop ideas that link climate action with job creation, inclusive and fair economic growth, and other development priorities.”

Perhaps that is why he has come with the brilliant idea of “A taskforce…. [to look] at whether projects such as tree planting could offer work and training opportunities.”

It clearly needs “a coalition of experts” to come up with an idea of that calibre and profundity. One of the “experts” is — inevitably enough — Sophie Howe, who has not yet managed to state a single idea of any originality or depth in her tenure as Future Generations Commissioner.

On Linkedin, we see Sir David is another of those top people with multiple jobs — in Cardiff, Liverpool and the Wirral.

He is chairing strategy for National Museums Liverpool, he is chairing the Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Trust, as well as directing matters at Natural Resources Wales in Cardiff.

Presumably this involves travelling between all these places in his car. So, he is yet another person whose private lifestyle seems to bear little relation to his public advocacy.

As it happens, I am all for planting trees — but I expect there are very limited opportunities for many long-term high quality jobs & economic growth in planting trees.

You don’t need “a coalition of experts” to see this.

David Smith

ShakyShane (a reference to his grasp on the written word) still has the same (bad) grammar habits I see. Why do we put up with such human detritus in our midst?

David Smith

I’ve a radical thought – how about some fucking pres for some *actual* railway infrastructure to go some way to repairing the rickety, insulting and extractive patchwork of a system our overlords, in their infinite benevolence, left us with?

YBarddCwsc

Another gem from Cassie’s blog !

“We decided to move to West Wales. It’s a lot like Connecticut, where I grew up.”

Connecticut is one the very richest of all the US states. The state’s Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metro area holds the largest concentration of millionaires in the U.S. The median Connecticut household income is $ 76,000 == £ 60,000.

And this stupid woman actually thinks it is just like …. errr …. just like West Wales.

She must have willow sap for brains.

Apart from the fact that both Connecticut and West Wales have been colonised by white settlers like Cassie, I can’t actually think of anything in common.

Sion Blewyn Coch

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court…………pity there are no surviving dragons to eat her and her ilk. She’d probably make it a willow basket anyway.

Brychan

There’s an Extinction Rebellion activist now collecting clothes and bedding in Cydweli to make up welcome packs for the ‘asylum seekers’ due to arrive in Penally, South Pembrokeshire.

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Haverfordwest.

She says locals support the plans that the opposition are from racists and fascists from elsewhere. Strange really as Heike Regina Schaub tells us on her Linkedin profile that she went to high school in St Louis, Missouri and then on to Wolfhagen, Germany.

She now works for University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

Dafis

All fits in with the “dump” narrative. First they encourage their ageing population to pop across the border cos it’s cheaper see ( free meds and all that). Then they go on to dump their own dysfunctional units, families and individuals, as the process of gentrification slowly purges the English metropolitan areas to make way for a new wave of yuppies ( or whatever those cnuts are called these days). Recently we’ve seen the cranking up of the penal colony functions with jails that don’t fit what Wales needs but good for soaking up all the crims from England. And this, the newest episode, is camps for “runaway foreigners” who have to be detained by the Brit authorities because they don’t fit some template to justify allowing them to integrate into society. Solution ? ship them off to sunny west Wales to a camp. Just another page on turning Wales into a dump for people not wanted in England.

Someone in Whitehall must have read a book and saw that New South Wales was used as a penal colony and thought “oh, fuck it, that’s too far away and they are all a bit stroppy in Oz, we’ll send them to south Wales instead”

YBarddCwsc

I have argued with my English friends about “dumping”.

Without exception, they just do not get it. They simply don’t see there is anything wrong with it.

Almost all English people think that if the cost of housing & the cost of living is cheaper in Wales, then it is perfectly fine for e.g., English councils to “relocate” homeless peopler or vulnerable people to Wales. Or the probation service to put violent English ex-criminals in Welsh towns.

In fact, it is worse. They think it shows that the English institutions are being well run & well administered. They regard this state of affairs as natural and “just common sense”. This is true whether my friends are politically on the right or on the left.

Unproductive people are being housed more cheaply in Wales than in the South East of England. To them, it is just good management of resources.

You could call it “English privilege”.

There will be no end to “dumping” short of independence.

Brychan

I noticed a huge difference between the BBC coverage compared to that done by ITV Wales and C4. ITV and C4 actually did some interviews of people demonstrating at the barrack gates. These were people with that distinctive south Pembrokeshire accent. Of course some EDL loons with rush in over the border, but to say that this was the nature of opposition is just incorrect, the BBC no longer has ‘reporters’. The BBC are just woke twitter browsers sat in London or Manchester. There was a counter demo down of South Beach in Tenby of some students who drove from a campus in Swansea with some placards. Neither are representative of the local community.

Rhosddu

Here’s the proof that the BBC, Drakeford, and Extinction Rebellion are, er, ‘misinformed’ about locals extending a warm welcome to the illegal migrants, and the busloads of ‘fascists and racists’ brought in as the only voices of protest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S50LIk2cHJQ

It’s an overlong video, but you won’t hear a single English voice among the protesters.

YBarddCwsc

Cassie Lishman’s blog is interesting & reveals her to be the casual, bawling hypocrite we have come to expect:

“In fact, due to the fact that my husband and I both have jobs, and I am often a taxi for the teenagers, we have not one, but two cars! I can’t believe it myself, sometimes. We still do less than the average journeys per household in the UK, even though we have 2 vehicles.
My job uses willow from my land to teach people basketry & sculpture, so it is totally land based. But I still use a car to get to my jobs. Hard to take 50kg of willow on a train!
On the plus side – we are always mindful of doing as much as we can without excessive car use. But the cars still are an intrinsic part of our lifestyle. After all, we live in a rural area. It’s hard to get around without one. Isn’t it?”

https://cassandralishman.net/2019/01/23/self-sufficiency-at-the-lammas-ecovillage-actually-we-can-all-do-more/

What fraction of Welsh households actually have 2 cars? I could not find the figures for Dyfed, but for the City & County of Swansea it is 4.1 per cent.

https://tinyurl.com/y48fumxp

Maybe it is a bit more in Dyfed, but I am sure it is not more than 10per cent. As a car is one of the single most polluting things in a household, the Lishman household is surely in the top 10 per cent of polluting households in Wales.

And she is not alone.

In Cassie’s own words on her blog describing Lammas, “And cars? There are lots of cars here.”

So, there we have it. The OP Developments are chock-full of car. The cars are of course needed to carry the residents to their jobs in London & elsewhere. And to enable Trish to trundle around Dyfed with her tonnage of willow.

It is just a pretence that they are working off the land and sitting down to their nourishing bowls of nettles, cleavers and chickweed.

Brychan

She says..

“So what are we doing right? Renewable energy – tick. We are really good at that! A hydro turbine shared by all, and individual small scale solar provide all our needs.”

And then

“Downside – gas. We all use gas for cooking. It’s really hard to try to live an off grid yet mainstream life, and cook on a wood fired stove. Really, really hard. You need so much wood, and so much time. So I think without exception we all use gas.”

The only renewable energy is the light bulbs, 3w with the new LED types. Just a sham. These households have a bigger carbon footprint that the Welsh average. Where do I order these bottles of renewable propane which are bought to site on those magic solar hoverboards?

Dafis

It’s all quite funny in an absurd way that these utterances are taken seriously by people who are tasked with taking governance decisions. Sane people who live normal day to day lives are ignored, even scorned for making logical quantified points. Yet these fantasists who fabricate on the hoof, pluck figures randomly to support ideas that are evidently unsound, are welcomed by those in power or in that close circle that advises and influences those in power. Is this madness ? or are we witnessing a deliberate destruction of a nation with the culprits operating openly in the guise of progress ?.

Brychan

Lammas uses bottles of propane (C3H8) because butane (C4H10) becomes non-volatile at lower temperatures and the gas bottles are stored externally to the dwelling. Propane has a boiling temperature of -42°C, whilst butane has a much higher boiling point at -2°C. If the gas cylinder is kept outside the dwelling, they need to use propane for it to flow in winter. The energy liberated, however, is lower 2570btu for propane and 3260btu for butane. This compares with mains gas at 1075btu, CH4, methane.

https://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/weight-to-volume
How much gas they have.

As we know the specific weight 47kg bottle contains 33kg of propane of these cylinders. It’s possible to calculate the energy liberated in joules or calorific value and convert this to the flow over time, giving us a measure in Kwh. 0.51kg per litre liberated at standard atmousphere.

https://www.flogas.co.uk/frequently-asked-questions/gas-conversions
1kg of propane = 14kwh or 47300 btu/h.

Also, vented appliances, like a heater or cooking stove combusts to 65% efficiency at maximum. So you’d have to half this to around 7.5kwh of heat energy per kg of propane delivered to site. In perspective, 12 of their orange bottles equals a tonne anthracite coal burnt on open hearth.

Using the OPD assumptions this would mean, as there are 7 plots at Lammas, assuming 14 people, and as Cassandra tells us “The average person in Wales uses around 2.9 planets worth of resources. So that means we would need 2.9 planets if everyone consumed as much as the average person in Wales. Sustainable? No.” The orange 47Kg propane bottles can be seen on some of the drone footage, and assuming a round number of 10 bottles per year then

they use 8 planets just for cooking.

David Robins

“What fraction of Welsh households actually have 2 cars? I could not find the figures for Dyfed, but for the City & County of Swansea it is 4.1 per cent.”

This figure relates to one-person households only, which is why it’s so small. Classic car collectors? People repairing old bangers? The question relates to ‘availability’, so if your neighbour gives you a lift whenever yours is off the road that might also count.

The 2011 Census figures for all households show as follows (2 or more cars/vans per household):

Swansea – 30.8% of households
Carmarthenshire – 37.8%
Ceredigion – 38.5%
Pembrokeshire – 38.1%

The Welsh average is 34.1%. Only 3 areas have a figure above 40% (Flintshire, Monmouthshire and Powys) and only 3 areas have a figure below 30% (Blaenau Gwent, Cardiff and Merthyr).

YBarddCwsc

Can you provide a link ? I’d like to look at the data on multiple car ownership.

I am astonished the percentage is so large, but then I am a hermit.

You are right that the Swansea figure taht I quoted refers to single households only. I read it too quickly.

Still, the essential point is that to reduce your carbon footprint, the two simplest steps to take are (i) reduce your dependence on cars and (ii) reduce your dependence on gas heating/cooking.

Neither of which is happening at the OPDs.

A self-sufficient lifestyle by making willow baskets & sculpture counts for nothing if you are running two guzzling cars and are hooked up to the gas supply.

David Robins

It’s from ONS.

Google ‘car ownership wales 2011 census’.

The link is one of the top ones returned and opens as an .xls spreadsheet.

Local Source

I think that I recall that in the original planning application for the Lammas community it was stated that the community would have one car and the community would share that car

Mel Morgan

Thanks for that tip about Belgium. Did you know that Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in England and France ?

Sion Blewyn Coch

I’m confused….thought it was Scarfell Pike. Must be missing something, hilarious.

Mel Morgan

And the Dead Sea is the deepest depression in England and the Middle East.

Mel Morgan

Correction: for ‘the Dead Sea,’ read ‘Reading’.

Brychan

Off-Topic Covid Update.

Local Authority schools provide their pupils with face masks for any pupils who can’t afford them, the bill paid by the Welsh Government, however, this grant does not stretch to a private schools like the one in Cardiff called Kings Monkton.

https://www.kingsmonkton.org.uk/

The school charges parents a fee of £13,500 per year per pupil, this doesn’t include lunch or after school facilities which are charged separately £6.40 an hour and a penalty charge of £15 if the pupil is not picked up and removed by 6.00pm. There’s also a charge of £395 per term for mini bus transport to the school so pupils don’t have to mix with the riff raff.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54194100

The husband and wife owners of the school, Paul and Karen Norton who are principal and vice principal respectively are claiming that it a breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for the Welsh Government not to pay for face masks for their pupils.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11676081

Paul and Karen also have a company, set up in 2018, which deals with extra-curricular activity at the school which their last account statement recorded a balance of £520,868 cash.

https://thekiran.org.uk/Our-Team.html

Paul Norton has some extra-curricular activity himself, being a trustee of KIRAN, which stands for Knowledge-based Intercommunity Relationship and Awareness Network. They got a grant from the National Lottery Community Fund and runs events they say to “bring communities together with a special emphasis on the people from merginalised (sic) backgrounds”.

The launch of KIRAN was hosted by Mark Esherwood MS (Conservative) and sponsored by Cardiff Film Club.

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Here’s a photo from the Cardiff Film Club at their annual fundraising fest. Isn’t the lady on the left one of Wales’ leading champagne socialists?

Dafis

Don’t know about “champagne socialist” but was at one time an ace champagne guzzler !

Wynne

With regard to your section on OPD’s and the comment you received from a local source, “As far as I can tell there is no policing by Pembs CC”. From my experience there is no planning enforcement on conventional building sites let alone OPD’s. Planning enforcement is a discretionary power not a statutory duty. No local authority can be forced to take enforcement action. The easiest and cheapest option, under current planning law, is for local planning authorities to turn a blind eye. I normally receive a response along the following lines.

“Thank you for drawing the alleged breach of planning control to our attention. Having investigated the matter thoroughly we have concluded that it is not expedient and in the wider public interest to take enforcement action. Our file has therefore been closed”

What a system !

Jac o' the North (@JacotheNorth)

Planners, supposedly working for the local community, have surrendered.

Jonathan Dean

I understand Beauchelles closed the day after it featured in a tv doc as the worse hotel ever!