Miscellany 22.08.2019

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

‘COME AND JOIN US, COME AND JOIN US . . . ‘

A rather strange story surfaced recently suggesting that Helen Mary Jones, who replaced Simon Thomas as Plaid Cymru regional Assembly Member for Mid and West Wales last August – after Thomas was convicted of possessing child pornography – may not have been a paid-up party member when the spotlight picked her out.

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The suggestion was made in the satirical magazine Lol, which appears for every National Eisteddfod.

Plaid Cymru’s response was, “Helen was and is a member”. Which is no doubt true, but it avoids answering the question of whether she was a member when she was called up to replace convicted paedophile Simon Thomas.

(If a regional seat becomes vacant during an Assembly term, then the person who was next on the list at the time of the previous election is offered the seat first.)

There was certainly a delay in Helen Mary Jones accepting the job, which she put down to a reluctance to leave her post as deputy director at the (Rhodri) Morgan Academy at Swansea University. (A ‘chair’ in the Welsh national game of musical chairs that involves politics, the third sector and academia.)

This was always a lame excuse, and while lapsed membership seems incredible, Jones did admit that it happened.

Though as you can read for yourself, she attributed the membership lapse to moving house, with this resulting in standing orders with her bank being cancelled. But why would moving house affect standing orders?

No, it looks very much as if Helen Mary Jones let her membership lapse and the delay in her taking up the AM role was due to Plaid Cymru covering up this fact. Which then poses the question: If Helen Mary Jones had let her membership lapse was it because she’d lost faith in Plaid Cymru, had there been a bust-up, or was she thinking of joining the Labour Party?

Anyway, the story gets even curiouser because I am informed that the next candidate on the regional list, Vicky Moller, had also neglected to renew her membership.

Had Jones and Moller both let their membership lapse, and therefore been ineligible to replace Simon Thomas, the fourth name on Plaid’s 2016 slate for Mid and West Wales was Freddie Greaves, scarcely a household name in his own household.

Which makes me wonder what the hell is going on in Plaid Cymru. A party that can’t even hang on to its candidates would appear to be in serious trouble.

ON YER BIKE! . . . OR WHATEVER IT IS

A Pembrokeshire source tells me that the county’s roads will soon see three-wheeled taxi-style vehicles. If I’m vague on the exact terminology it’s because Pembrokeshire County Council seems a little unclear as to what it’s dealing with.

Let’s go back to 2005 when the council authorised the use of an “electric motor assisted pedal Rickshaw” for the Tenby area, the relevant document is image 1 below. And it must be referring to something like what we see in image 2.

But now, the Licensing Officer argues that any three-wheel motor vehicle meets the criteria set out in 2005. Alert readers will have noticed that somewhere along the way the pedals have been lost.

Which opens the door to a Tuk Tuk, shown in image 3; or even a three-wheel motor cycle with a massive engine such as we see in image 4.

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You know me, I’m always reluctant to criticise officialdom, but I suggest that in this instance, what was approved in 2005, was clearly a pedal cycle-type vehicle with a supplementary electric engine; not a Tuk Tuk, nor a Harley Davidson on three wheels.

Over to you, Licensing Committee. Be guided by the fact that while they may both be Italian, and begin with the letter F, a Fiat is not a Ferrari. And when it comes to three-wheel vehicles the disparity can be even greater.

STOP PRESS: I hear that there may be a re-think going on down Tenby way.

SAINT SULIEN’S CHURCH, SILIAN

Nationalists of a certain vintage will be familiar with this church, just outside Lampeter. For in its graveyard is buried Julian Cayo-Evans of the Free Wales Army.

I was told that the church is up for sale, so I thought I’d better check with the family before putting anything up on this blog. I did, and it’s true.

Commandant Julian Cayo-Evans. Click to enlarge

It seems that the church was jerry-built just over a hundred years ago and is now beyond repair. So the Church in Wales is selling.

There was a hope of turning St Sulien’s into a community centre, but I hear that plan has fallen through due to the dilapidated state of the building and a lack of interest locally.

Obviously, the church itself is of neither architectural merit nor interest to us, but the graveyard should be significant to all who seek Welsh independence. I would therefore urge that a watching brief be kept to ensure that the churchyard remains accessible to those visiting graves.

I give this warning because I know another church that was sold off by the Church in Wales, along with its graveyard, not far from where I’m sitting now. The new owner (the place is a holiday home) makes it difficult for people to visit graves on ‘his’ property.

GAVIN LEE WOODHOUSE, THE EMPIRE COLLAPSES

It’s not in my nature to gloat, but the dramatic downfall of property tycoon and hotelier Gavin Lee Woodhouse has provided a lot of material for journalists, lawyers, receivers and of course – bloggers. Well, me, anyway.

To jog your memory, Woodhouse is the brains behind the Afan Valley Adventure Resort. But he also owns or owned many hotels and other businesses, both in Wales and England.

My most recent offering on the subject was Gavin Lee Woodhouse, the picture darkens, which went up on Bastille Day.

Since when I’ve received more information about Woodhouse, much of it directing me to snippets about hotels of his being put into receivership. Such as this report, about Caer Rhun in the Conwy Valley and the Fourcroft in Tenby.

Though some who’ve got in touch say I’ve overlooked other characters in this saga. Two in particular.

Despite financial and other backing from the ‘Welsh Government’ Gavin Woodhouse still went under! Click to enlarge.

Let’s start with Robin Scott Forster. One contact would have it that, Forster was, ” . . . his business partner that was with him every step of the way and actually gave him the in, into North Wales”. (Or as I might have phrased it, ‘the in into the inns in North Wales’.)

It may be significant that many of the companies Forster was involved with carry the MBI name. Closer inspection shows that Woodhouse and Forster have operated in tandem for a number of these companies, such as MBI Ferndale Ltd and MBI Tingley Mills Ltd. Or else they joined/left on the same day, as happened with MBI Social Care Smithy Bridge Ltd and MBI Hotel Management Ltd.

All of which suggests two men working together. Yet Forster seems to have avoided involvement in Woodhouse’s hotels in Wales, for many of these were solo efforts by Woodhouse.

If Forster belongs to the past then the new boy on the block would appear to be Iain Andrew Shelton. Who has joined many of the Woodhouse companies. Here’s a link to all Shelton’s companies.

It tells us that on 9 July he joined various companies including Caer Rhun Hall Hotel Ltd, Fourcroft Hotel (Tenby) Ltd and Queens Hotel (Llandudno) Ltd.

Next, on 15 July, it was Caer Rhun Hotel Management Ltd, Queens Hotel (Llandudno) Management Ltd, Llansantffraed Court Hotel Ltd, Fishguard Bay Hotel Ltd and assorted other Woodhouse companies.

Finally, on 1 August, Shelton even became a director of three companies bearing the ‘Woodhouse Family’ element in their names.

It seems clear that Shelton got involved when the shit was already heading towards the fan. Now why would he do that? Seeing as he’s from the same area as Woodhouse is he helping out a friend?

I feel sure I’ll be returning to the Woodhouse empire in a little while. For even though the one-time leading man may no longer be treading the boards the play continues.

Anyone with information on Forster or Shelton is welcome to contact me.

LEANNE WOOD, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

The deposed leader of Plaid Cymru worries that Stop and Search is racist. Why, she wonders, will more young black males be searched “than wealthy, middle class regular cocaine users”.

Shall we tell her, boys and girls? It’s cos Stop and Search is about knives not drugs!!

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Though maybe she has a point, so let’s broaden the demographic to include elderly white women . . . visiting Inuit . . . Peruvian trade delegations . . . rabbis (Orthodox and Reform) . . . or Salvation Army people – for everyone knows that uniforms mean weapons. Come to that, and to prove their impartiality, why don’t the police search themselves?

Better still, why not have the police searched by young black males?

Or how about this – if there can be a citizen’s arrest, why not a citizen’s search? Now that would be fun!

Bottom line: Starting from a different political direction to Leanne Wood, I also wish things were otherwise. But facts is facts.

Santes Leanne has also called on us to support US leftist thugs Antifa who, apparently, need our solidarity “now more than ever”. Not because of anything planned by the “far-right”, as she alleges, but because the US government is considering declaring Antifa a domestic terrorist organisation.

Here we see another example of any moderate voice opposing the far left automatically becoming ‘far right’ or ‘fascist’.

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More worrying is that Leanne Wood’s supporters within Plaid Cymru would like to bring Antifa to Wales. The signs are there for all to see, but too many people in Plaid Cymru feign blindness.

In an earlier post I drew attention to a Welsh Antifa sticker in Cardiff, around the same time I picked up on a Plaid Ifanc tweet about Antifa. And someone from Undod was wandering around the Caernarfon rally on July 27 with Antifa stickers, affixing them to the backs of those she decided were ‘fascists’.

(Plaid Ifanc is the party’s youth wing, and Undod is a group refusing to accept independence unless they can organise the purges and decide who gets the one-way ticket to the gulags.)

The image below shows, working clockwise from the top left: the ‘Wxm’ (Wrexham) Antifa sticker in Cardiff – with the dragon facing the wrong way!; the disrespectful use of our patron saint on the Cachupostio FB page; the Antifa stickers girl behind the Undod banner at Caernarfon; the Plaid Ifanc Antifa tweet . . .

While, finally, at bottom left (appropriately), we find the inspiration for it all – Antifa stormtroopers in the USA ready to sally forth and beat the living shit out of anybody who disagrees with their mantra of love, peace and inclusivity.

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I know who the Antifa sticker girl in Caernarfon is and I know her affiliations. Those behind the infantile Facebook page are to be found in Cwmtawe and Neath. One of them, a chubby youth, made the headlines a while back when he became the youngest town councillor in Wales. Despite being members of Plaid Cymru their loyalty is to Leanne Wood not the party.

Following Wood’s humiliation in last year’s leadership contest, rather than accept that they represent a minority view within Plaid Cymru (and are rejected by the population at large), these Leannistas carry on as if they are the voice of the people with a monopoly on the truth. If you can convince yourself of that, then it stands to reason that anyone who questions you must be a fascist.

They claim to be part of the independence movement, but they’ve jumped on this bandwagon for the same reason they were drawn to Plaid Cymru when Leanne Wood was leader – because it offers a platform for them to promote their extreme brand of socialism with its divisive add-ons, all of which should be extraneous to a campaign for Welsh independence.

If Antifa is declared a domestic terrorist organisation in the USA, then these juveniles, and their older mentors, could prove to be a great embarrassment to Plaid Cymru.

This wouldn’t bother me in the least, Plaid would deserve all it got due to being so weak; but the independence movement is too important to be damaged by the stunts of puerile extremists.

As I write this news comes in of another Leanne Wood ‘special’ on Twitter following Donald Trump’s suggestion that many Jews have divided loyalties.

The ‘divided loyalty’ allegation is regularly made by all sorts of people, and is almost inevitable given that many US Jews have dual nationality. But what Trump actually said was that Jews who vote Democrat are disloyal to the USA, and are also disloyal to Israel.

It’s a way of saying that true Americans vote Republican. Whether you like it or not, that’s US politics. The Democrats in the USA, like the Labour Party here, get most of the immigrant and minorities vote.

For the record: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is Jewish. Kushner is a senior adviser at the White House. Trump himself has always been a strong supporter of Israel.

But let’s return to Leanne Wood.

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She’s obviously wrong to call the President “anti-Semitic”, and I’m not sure that what she’s attacking is “Orwellian doublespeak”, or “gaslighting”.

Though she’s entirely predictable in seeking to defend the Labour Party.

‘WELSH’ LABOUR’S WAR ON FARMING

Throughout the twenty years of devolution the ‘Welsh’ Labour Government in Cardiff Bay has, time after time, proved its hostility to Welsh farming and to Welsh farmers.

With measures such as the One Wales: One Planet initiative of 2009, designed to attract a new population into rural Wales. Reinforced in 2013 with the decision to take 15% of Wales’ EU’s Common Agricultural Policy payments away from farmers and transfer it to ‘rural development projects’. In other words, the kind of scams dreamed up by the new population taking over our countryside.

More recently we have seen attempts by George Monbiot and others to take over vast areas of Wales and justify the land grab by arguing that Welsh farmers are damaging the environment, whereas they, with their tree-planting, and their ‘re-wilding’, will give succour to Mother Earth.

In the small print it becomes obvious that Welsh farmers will have to like it or lump it. In fact, it’s been spelled out by a couple of those involved in the purest meme sahib manner.

Listen to Natalie Buttriss, the Director of Wales for the Woodland Trust, a partner in the Summit to Sea rewilding project, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Farming Today’ programme last October. (N.B. ‘of Wales’, not, for Wales.)

And if you need further convincing of the kind of people we’re dealing with, their attitudes and their motivations, then watch this video of Rebecca Wrigley of Rewilding Britain talk about the Summit to Sea project.

Inevitably, the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ has gone along with this Clearance programme, partly because, bizarrely, too many socialists in Wales identify with middle class English people rather than with hard-working Welsh farmers.

This colonised mindset is regrettably not confined to the Labour Party. You only have to press the magic ‘Environment!’ button for some in Plaid Cymru to view our farmers as fascists in wellies – Summon Antifa!

The latest Labour Party assault on Welsh farmers comes in the form of new legislation regarding the use of fertilisers, effective from 1 January 2020. The report below is from the Tivy-Side Advertiser and the image of dead fish clearly feeds into the ‘farming destroys the environment’ narrative.

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Clearly, no one wants to see dead fish, but what the ‘Welsh Government’ is proposing goes way beyond measures needed to avoid spillages. It could be interpreted as part of a wider strategy. Or even a pincer movement.

For on the one hand the ‘Welsh Government’ is promising to reduce funding for farmers, but with this new legislation it makes farming more expensive. This will result in farmers being forced out of business.

Which in turn frees up more Welsh land for recreation and rewilding; taking us ever closer to the ultimate objective of ‘Playground Wales’. England’s playground, of course; with us Welsh marginalised, if not removed entirely.

♦ end ♦

 

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Ellie Wales

With regards to the church at Silian a friend tells me that the church has been given a £10k feasibility grant. she didn’t know it was for sale although living within a stones throw of the building. It doesn’t take £10k to decide whether to sell or not, so what’s going on?

Dafis

Got drawn into that Tweet column earlier. Somehow found Mabon’s response to some fuckin’ absurd bullshit from Peta about milk. Mabon is smart, talks far more sense than many of Plaid’s leadership team and seems willing to smack ishoo driven “activists” in the eye. Just the man to put Lord DLT out of a job and in due course reshape Plaid’s orientation away from Islington back to Blaenau Ffestiniog or Penuwch, or somewhere like that ( plenty of them).

While roaming on the twitter sphere found a sickening amount of Plaid endorsement of today’s Pride shuffle through Cardiff. Now I’ve taken a long time to overcome my dislike of these antics but having got used to males and females who love members of their own gender we now have the gush of “love” for those whose gender is not defined and enjoy sex with anything that moves. Let them get on with it quietly in their own private space and no offence taken, but to shove it in our faces, making just about everybody who feels a bit queer a cause celebre is taking the piss.

Shifting it into one of the major political issues of the day shows how warped our politicians have become. Our First Minister would do well to get his brain into gear to address the several factors driving the serious crisis confronting our country, and Plaid’s leader should stop telling us how gay he is and get on with sharpening up the Opposition performance or he too will be ripe for replacement either by another Plaid person or by the leader of another party.

Brychan

Fire.

The soil of the tropical rain forest is very low in nutrients. Alluvial sand. Natural fires are part of the renewal cycle, and some tropical tree species can only propagate from the ashes and are dependent on fire and ash to germinate. To establish they need the removal of canopy. This is a natural process as topical rain forests are the most active environment for thunderstorms, and the native population has been using slash and burn methods of creating clearings for thousands of years.

Soya.

This is a legume bean plant and is planted on a huge scale destroying the natural regeneration cycle of the tropical rain forest. Like all legumes, it is a ‘nitrate’ sequester on poor soils. This is damaging. It is a favoured bean consumed by the affluent vegan, in the form of beans and tofu. It is also processed to produce soya milk for those adverse to cows milk. Vegans damage the tropical rain forest, as this bean cannot be grown in our native temperate climate.

Cattle.

It’s uneconomic to browse cattle directly on land cleared of tropical rain forest due to the poor soil, although cattle is often used to browse the stubble left over from a soya harvest. Most cattle farming in Brazil is feedlot husbandry and they are fed molasses and soya bulk. Foot and Mouth disease is endemic so up until 2018 there was a trade embargo imposed by the EU on beef imports from Brazil. Only ‘canned and cooked’ beef from Brazil was allowed, the amounts miniscule. This needs to continue after Brexit. Wales is self sufficient in good wholesome nutritious beef.

English vegans who arrive in Wales.

Please stop abusing are National Health Service with requests for intravenous supplements of vitamin B12 and supplements of calcium, iron and zinc, or going to the GP feeling ‘weak’. These minerals and vitamins can be found by eating our ample supply of organic meat and drinking our quality milk. It is not true that such a balanced diet can be obtained from plant based substitutes as these are mainly broken down in your lower intestine. The best absorption of these vitamins and minerals is in the marinade of your upper intestine. It’s also why meat is tastier tender.

Mabon – At last there’s a Plaid Cymru candidate that I can support.

Brychan

The current media fest on the Amazon fires has been prompted by inaccurate press releases by Amazon Environmental Research Institute (Ipam). This is a third sector organisation, staffed and set up by a campaigner from the United States. It is part funded by the TetraPak organisation the firm that package Soya products in non-recyclable cartons. This is the same outfit behind the ‘Summit To Sea’ project in Wales.

It’s useful that forest wild fires make good video, but the claim that “more than 75,000 forest fires were recorded in Brazil in the first eight months of the year – the highest number since 2013. That compares with 40,000 in the same period in 2018” is misleading.
comment image

The reality is that there has been an upward trend, but this is mainly due to Soya farmers deliberately starting fires.

A more accurate assessment is that the previous peak year was 2016 where over 70,000 forest fires were recorded. Also, an analysis of NASA satellite data last week indicated that the total fire activity in 2019 across the Amazon, not just Brazil, is close to the average when compared with a longer 15 year period.

TetraPak are a global polluter in non-recyclable packaging and seek to highjack third sector environment groups it sees as a threat to their activity. They want global dominance of packaging for UHT milk in Europe and Soya products from South America. Their support of the ‘environment’ is based on damage limitation in public perception of their products, and greenwash.

Brychan

On the subject of Leanne Woods’ comments on stop-and-search, I was recently present at a railway station where a police operation to counter county-lines drug trafficking was taking place. A knive-arch metal detector (like at airports) was used and a drugs sniffer dog (called Miskin) from Gwent was employed. I can confirm that a disproportionate number of black people were searched compared to the population average. The stop-and-searches were prompted by frantic tail wagging.

Is she saying that Miskin is racist?

The real problem is that there are sections of our community involved in and being used by criminal gangs. This needs to be addressed. This is not the fault of the police in tackling this crime. I can also confirm I knew a lady, mamma Sterlini, (aged 97), who did go down Judges hall in Pandy on a bingo night armed with a knife in her handbag. This was many years ago. This, however, was due to the tombola machine jamming. Rhondda women are not, and never have been, routinely armed with blades, and it is grossly irresponsible to encourage, or mitigate women who do so. The buttons to press on the mobile phone is 999 in the type of emergency she refers to.

Perhaps she should spend more time with the community that elected her she is paid to represent rather than the trendy wine-bars of the Bae or workshops for the okay-ya. Ishoo innit.

Derrick Towlson

Ref. the Gavin Lee Woodhouse story. It seem Iain Shelton works for Assured Hotels and has been appointed by Duff & Phelps as interim manager for Lakeside Manor and a couple of other hotels.

Philip

Shelton works for Landricks, a firm of accountants and he has been appointed by the administrator to look after the day to day affairs of the various businesses. To the best of my knowledge he has no connection with Woodhouse.

.

No direct connection at all with Woodhouse, Simply part of assured hotels and just happens to be in the same area. Hotels are working and reporting directly to assured and are accessing all staff and roles making redundancies if necessary.

Philip

I think he is known by his middle name, Andrew.
He had a meeting a few weeks ago at the Fishguard Bay before moving onto the Fourcroft, so certainly taking a hands on role.

Glenn

Farmers have brought this on themselves.
There is a massive problem with slurry pollution of the Tywi, Taf, Teifi and some other rivers stemming from the huge dairy farms that now exist so supermarkets can sell milk cheaper than they sell some bottled water.
These ‘farms’ produce vast amounts of slurry that is disposed of by spreading over adjoining fields, when it rains much of this slurry ends up in the watercourse.

There are guidelines about the disposal of slurry such as not spreading when rain is imminent, not spreading on frozen ground etc. which have been completely ignored in the past hence the reason for tougher legislation. Drive up the A40 during pouring rain and you will see the muck spreaders out all the way up the valley.

Also this is should not only be about fish and the environment, much of Swansea’s drinking water is extracted from the Tywi at Nantgaredig.

https://www.itv.com/walesprogrammes/wales-this-week/wales-this-week-ruined-river?fbclid=IwAR0ecqaKorEZ0cpP4gFMYpBtOoWVDCoxca7_AKR14XffsIKamFj4KafGLMc

Dafis

Farmer-bashing won’t help either. The root cause is the large scale corporate domination of food collection, processing and distribution right through to retailing. Government policy at EU and UK levels, replicated in Cardiff cos they know no better and can’t be bothered to learn anything new, has condoned this drift to large scale “industrial” agriculture.
You pile large numbers of cows together, work them intensively for the good old economies of scale and apart from milk and meat on the hoof you get shit – fuckin’ loads of it ! Quelle surprise, hywir bach it’s not that difficult to figure out.
Now I don’t accept for a minute that shit needs to flow uncontrolled into water courses but why on earth haven’t the clever guys who allowed this market configuration to develop not addressed a structured approach to “recycling” bovine shit. It took humanity long enough to figure out ways to deal with human shit but having got some sort of template ( which is now also under pressure in some cities) why not commercialise bovine effluent – a raw material for fertiliser ? , or are we going to stand around trading bullshit for ever cos it’s the easy option ?

Peter

And – if you tell the EA (Environment Agency) about a pollution incident you will probably find them – slow to react [a day or two later when the pollution has moved downstream], reluctant to prosecute and downgrading the incident so it does not look so bad.

Wynne

Yes, I agree Peter. The Environment Agency remains in place in England but has been replaced in Wales by “Natural Resources Wales” where three organisations were merged [Environment Agency Wales + Forestry Commission + CCW]. I expect they will again be separated at the next reorganisation. They have certainly been heavily criticised recently, so I doubt they will survive in their current form long term.

Brychan

Glenn – Obviously, we need to move away from volume dairy to feed the creameries of England. Better quality organic regimes are exempt from these regulations and the shit goes directly from cow to field, and the silage cycle much reduced. This should be our direction of travel.

There is a MYTH going around the enviro-ignorant that farmers are not allowed to muck spread when it’s raining. Under the ‘panic’ measures introduced in 2017/18 there in a ban on spreading in the rain only if the pasture is frozen or already water logged. Proximity rules to water courses have always applied.

This ‘knee jerk’ measure introduced by Griffiths has resulted in a fall in general water quality since their introduction. The self-regulation that operated previously allowed farmers to better manage their land. The regulations were introduced by civil servants in Cardiff and based them on the Defra guidelines drawn up by civil servants in England, who in turn, used data on saturation and run-off on studies in Staffordshire. They get 9in of rain pa, win the Welsh zones there is up to 4ft of rain pa, with river systems to match. A more appropriate regime to copy operates in Ireland. They share our weather, and river patterns. Not England.

In terms of public policy, in matters of metrology and land management of Wales, all civil servants should be instructed to ignore Defra and look to the Irish for best practice. NRW should not pay the Brits for weather predictions, and NRW should re-direct their gaze as well as their graze. Our weather does not blow in from England. They should be getting data from Ireland, where our weather does blow from. That should be the basis of flexible open and closed seasons, distributing to short term rain forecasts, and adding this to flow modelling of the rivers and water courses.

A new regime, almost impossible to adhere to, is about to be imposed. This not only makes the situation even less manageable, but also removes windows from the calendar which could be better, and further concentrates muck spreading to times that are less than ideal. Thus resulting in further concentrating peak nutrient into non-ideal windows.

The object of regulation is to allow farmers to keep the nutrient on their pasture (this is what they want), and not have it leached into water-courses. It’s accelerated bacteria action in the leach that de-oxygenates the streams and rivers. This is a function of flow volume, applied concentration, and run-off as a function of time.

I also suggest that the Welsh experiments at Gelli Aur (machinery water extraction of slurry prior to spreading) be implemented in Wales, with capital schemes available for this investment in Welsh farming, rather than moving this financial support away from farms to the enviro-ignorant, which, unlike Ireland, makes the situation worse.

Why does Plaid Cymru rural policy look more like the Green Party of Sussex rather than the policies operated in the island of Ireland? Even the DUP in the northern counties support the all-Ireland approach. This is where our rainfall, rivers, farming footprint and landscape is mirrored. If only the salmon of the Shannon was as prolific as the Teifi and Tywi.

Brychan

Can we add Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion to these counties for slurry policy?
https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/slurry-spreading-season-commence-soon/
It makes more sense.

ffranc_sais

One can be anti-Semitic and pro-Israel (though admittedly the combination is usually the other way round). Let us just say that it suits Trump not to condemn outright groups in the USA which discriminate against minorities, including Jews.

Jonathan Edwards

Honestly ffranc_sais you might get your facts right. Trump has repeatedly condemned. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pd62nU4CWE
But then I’m posting from N.Carolina and have actually followed US politics.
More widely, Jac is quite right to correct Leanne Wood about Antifa. Supposedly left-wing thuggery is tacitly approved of and defended by the left in the US which now means the Democrats influenced by the anti-semitic “Squad: AOC +3”. Warming LW, remember that when going from US to UK, a lot is lost in translation. Do get back to real Wales, LW.

Brychan

I became aware of a significant pollution incident from a farm on the upper reaches of the Twyi recently. It’s within an existing NVZ. It involved leakage from a slurry lagoon. I used google maps to locate the polluted stream, and the satellite view to locate the slurry lagoon. I then googled the farm in question and found it was for sale, the business operating from there in liquidation, and also the property was still for sale by estate agents. I understand the legal process is still live.

As I was in the area, I went to the farm and observed the absence of livestock (assume sold) and the pastures un-grazed. I also noticed the access point to the yard where the lagoon was located only had van tyres in the mud (presumably the NRW inspectors) not no imprint of tractor tyres, evident that the contents of the lagoon not being sprayed upon the pastures during the ‘allowed window’. I assume that a full lagoon had not been emptied, monitored or maintained during the property conveyance. Rainwater had overtopped the contents. This being the chronology of the pollution incident.

The titleholder (in liquidation) is not in a position to ensure the lagoon is correctly dealt with although as title holder still legally responsible. Any the new owner, prior to completion, even if willing, cannot take remedial action on assets not yet owned to prevent or mitigate any leakage. This is the cause.

I am familiar with industrial storage of ‘dangerous chemicals’ and there is provision for compulsory insurance to comply with environmental legislation so even if the business folds, the warehouse is handled correctly. Agents, or the environment agency (NRW), or the chief fire officer, are able to use enforcement/insurance funds to do so. It’s a preventative arrangement.

This does not appear to apply to farms, only to digester installations. I suggest that the Welsh Government can easily solve this ‘conveyance gap’ issue by extending existing legislation, but as we know NRW often acts as a ‘prosecute first’ rather than a ‘preventative’ agency. Perhaps a farmer, with greater expertise than I, can confirm my observation. Extending NVZ to all of Wales does not tackle the issue, just puts burden on farmers, in the calendar, and in places where it’s not necessary. It also fails to prevent existing incidents within NVZs.

Even more of a problem when the land is sold separately from the residential property, as the new owner of a holiday home is unlikely to know what to do with a slurry lagoon in the yard. Is there an AM who can raise this issue, as the minister is asleep at the wheel?

Dafis

There is ample evidence that this Minister has no wheels as she is frequently seen dragging her arse on everything that comes her way. That’s how senior civil servants with twisted agendas can manouver any old nonsense past her.

Wynne

I hope to wake up the minister Brychan with my request for a copy of the R I A.

Brychan

Good luck with that. I understand Afonydd Cymru took Griffiths to Europe over her failings. The Welsh government are also trying to keep those findings secret, too.

Tom Smith

Iain Shelton is a respected hotelier, chances are its something to do with Assured Hotels who have been appointed to run the hotels by the administrators and Iain has worked with them in the past

Tom Smith

Are we still expecting another weep for wales Jac?

Wynne

Interesting post again Jac. Copy below of my request to WG for information. Sent today. Will update you on the response in due course. I can not see how these regulations can be introduced without undertaking an impact assessment.

To: Welsh Government – Minister for Environment Energy and Rural Affairs – Lesley Griffiths A M

I refer to the above subject and would be grateful if your officials could arrange to provide me with a copy of the “Regulatory Impact Assessment” [R I A] undertaken by Welsh Government to justify the introduction of new pollution control regulations in Wales affecting the farming industry. The new regulations take effect from 1 January 2020. I look forward to receiving a copy of the document from your officials at their earliest convenience. Thank you.

Regards