MEWN: ANOTHER THIRD SECTOR EMBARRASSMENT FOR ‘WELSH’ LABOUR
Another Swansea-based ethnic minorities charity is being investigated by police. This one is Mewn, the Minority Ethnic Womens Network. Funded mainly by EU money dished out by the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO) this charity is now in liquidation. As it is a charity (No. 1082587) there are a number of documents available on the Charity Commission website. Where we learn, among other things, that the most recent accounts were received on May 6, 95 days late, and that the MEWN secretary is Yvonne Jardine, a Labour councillor in Swansea. UPDATE JUNE 20: Within 24 hours of the original post I learnt that another Labour councillor, Erika Kirchner, resigned as director on May 6. Lucky Erika! Not there when the excrement came into contact with the air-circulatory appliance! Update ends. In fact, there seems to have been a rather curious relationship altogether between the Labour council in Swansea and MEWN.
For example, and I quote now from a document issued by Swansea council: “MEWN have had their Payroll run through the Council for a number of years. The arrangement is that the Council pays their staff through our Payroll system, and MEWN reimburse the Council. Therefore due to MEWN going into administration the Council is now one of the Creditors.” How common is such an arrangement? MEWN is also registered with Companies House, Number 03965481. From a ‘Welsh’ Government letter to AMs we learn that MEWN was gazetted on June 16th, but there is no word on who initiated the liquidation.
One entry in the accounts that caught my eye was the piece about staff costs (panel, click to enlarge). You will see that between 2012 and 2013 staff costs increased from £129,479 to £235,570. I suppose this massive increase in workload is attributable to the Swansea race riots and the subsequent pogroms (which went largely unreported outside the city).
UPDATE JUNE 20: Things are becoming a little clearer, though no clearer on what exactly happened to bring about the downfall of MEWN Swansea. What I’ve now learnt is that until last year there was another outfit, based in Cardiff, called Minority Ethnic Womens Network Cymru (Mewn Cymru) which operated “throughout Wales” . . . as did, according to the Charity Commission, the Swansea-based outfit. Were they in competition?
According to the Companies House website (click on panel to enlarge), the Cardiff crew was dissolved on January 14 this year. But it was in reasonable financial health so I assume that what happened was that someone pointed out that having two organisations with the same name, doing the same work, was a pretty obvious example of the kind of duplication for which the Third Sector is rightly condemned, and so some time last year the two merged. This would account for the increase in staff and associated costs of MEWN Swansea. Update ends.
The fate of MEWN will inevitably bring back memories of AWEMA, another Swansea-based, Labour-linked outfit in the business of milking EU funding promoting ethnic minorities. It may be worth starting the long trawl through what I’ve written on AWEMA from this post of November 2012, which mentions MEWN. I should warn you that these posts come from my old Google blog, and may be incomplete due to Google denying me access to transfer them to my new blog.
I earlier mentioned Councillor Yvonne Jardine, a Labour councillor for Morriston. Councillor Jardine is a BME activist of Afro-Caribbean origin, and yet another Labour councillor with no local roots. I have written many times about Swansea’s non-local Labour Party councillors . . . the Scouse leader (and his wife); the students; the English ex-MP Trotskyite and his Austrian wife; the West Brom fan with responsibility for the Swans’ Liberty Stadium, and many others. (Just type ‘Swansea council’ into Search at the top of the sidebar.) There will come a time in the not-too-distant future, when the veterans of the genuinely local Labour Party, Byron Owen, Robert Francis Davies et al, will have retired and Swansea Labour Party will be just a weird and dangerous collection of drifters, chancers, political opportunists, entryists, kids fresh out of college and single-issue nutters – running a city they know nothing about! My city!
I tell you, boys and girls, the Labour Party in Wales is an empty shell waiting to be cracked. It cannot find local candidates in Swansea and other areas; it relies for votes on folk memory and convincing the stupid that everything wrong with Wales is the fault of the Tories; many of its heartland seats almost went to Ukip in the recent Euro elections . . . all we need to crack the shell is a nationalist party more loyal to Wales than some laughable belief in socialist solidarity . . . or environmental agendas . . . or keeping Wales GM free . . . or sucking up to the metropolitan left-liberal-Green ‘consensus’ . . . In other words, a party nothing like Plaid Cymru.
THE OXBRIDGE CHIMERA
I see that another non-issue has been revived by the ‘Welsh’ media and the ‘Welsh’ Labour Party (in many respects, one and the same). This time it’s the national shame of so few Welsh youngsters going to Oxford and Cambridge. Read all about it here in this load of bollocks on the BBC Wales website telling us that Paul Murphy MP and one-time Secretary of State to Wales was appointed our ‘Oxbridge Ambassador’ by the ‘Welsh’ Government. Did you know Wales has an Oxbridge ambassador? Nor me. Sad, isn’t it; really sad.
What we have here is yet another example of what Labour does so well – telling us that ‘Everything’s better in England’. (Which of course it is, with Labour running Wales.) Designed to make us see everything English as superior . . . thereby making anyone wanting to put distance between Wales and England a complete fool. In order to amplify this blatantly political message the ‘Welsh’ Government is prepared to subsidise a brain drain while ignoring 99% of Welsh youngsters. It reminds me of my schooldays, when the headmasters of certain local schools were in competition to see who could get the most pupils to Oxbridge every year, as if the rest of their charges were unimportant. God knows I’m no socialist, but there was something distasteful about that back in the ’60s, and ‘Welsh’ Labour promoting the same exclusivity today is equally distasteful. Shame on you!
Here’s an alternative strategy. Improve the higher education sector in Wales; start promoting quality rather than quantity. Treat our universities as places to educate the future of the nation rather than businesses, making loot from piling high third-rate English students and flogging degrees in Asia to anyone with the requisite folding.
NATHAN GILL MEP
Unless you’ve been asleep for the past few weeks you will be aware that our new Ukip MEP has been making the news. (Scroll down to recent posts.) This publicity has generated much interest and prompted a few people to start their own enquiries, I’m glad to say.
Among these is someone who was as intrigued as I was by Gill’s company, Burgill Ltd, having a planning application approved by Hull city council on May 6, 2009 when the company’s petition for liquidation was heard on November 26 the previous year, and the liquidation registered by Companies House on February 12. He suspects laws may have been broken if a) Hull city council was not informed that Burgill had been liquidated or b) if someone was still trading with a liquidated company.
Another mystery for which I would appreciate clarification is the fire on November 5, 2001 (also reported in the posts below). The fire – described by my informant as “suspicious” – was at the disused (possibly converted) Plane Street Methodist Church off Anlaby Road in west Hull. The Hull Daily Mail account describes Nathan Gill as having responsibility for the building in his capacity as “general manager of Kingston Care, based in Holderness Road, east Hull”.
There was certainly a company called Kingston Care extant at that time, but based in York, not Hull. It was in the business of providing ‘lodgings’, and seems to have been run, from their home, by a middle-aged couple named Morris with no other business involvement. Which is odd, because people with a bent for business usually have more than one company to their name; some fail, some succeed. Kingston Care had liabilities of £211,938 in September 2001 which had reduced to just £4,981.00 by August 30, 2002. An insurance pay-out, perhaps?
There cannot be two companies with the same name trading at any one time. So Nathan Gill was either working for the middle-aged couple in York, or else Kingston Care was his (or his family’s) company and the Morrises were allowing themselves to be used as a front. What’s the story?
I went to Swansea University College as it was called then – back in the 1950s- I went back in the late 1960’s on the staff- whilst a student there I had a boyfriend in Downing College, Cambridge, went to the May Ball , Bump races etc – none of it was my scene – so glad to come back to Swansea to reality and real people. My daughter went to Swansea and my grandson – my two step children and 2 grandchildren went to Cardiff – the youngest is in her final year doing Journalism- they have all done well, 3 teachers, and 1 dentist – all living and working in Swansea- Wales has an excellent record in its Universities who needs Oxbridge ?
– proud that we have all been educated in Wales
Isn’t th point that the young are free to go where they like but that to actually encourage your best students to leave is another thing?
Do Poland and other nations have Oxbridge Ambassador’s too?
Actually alot of nations send their elites to Oxbridge. Depressingly. I read the other day that Poland’s leaders largely went to Oxbridge and Eton. It has huge ramifications for networking and elitism but it is “normal” and the Oxbridge institutions aren’t particularly English, they’re completely international and multi-national.
Don’t you find it rather ominous that “lots of nations send their elites to Oxbridge”? What does it say about democracy, and countries following their own paths, chosen by electorates made up of those who didn’t go to Oxbridge?
I’m sorry to say that I don’t agree with you on the Oxbridge point. I want to see the best of our local youth go for the “glittering prizes”. The problem is having something to attract them back afterwards and there is very little indeed .As a result we’re losing them after graduation.
It is also an indictment of Labour’s Welsh education policies. You recall the 60’s. I recall the early 70’s. Local schools were proud to send pupils to Oxbridge (no doubt there was too much concentration on it). I think it was distinctly preferable to the present where the current generation have been so hobbled by the relative decline as shown in the results between Wales and the rest of the UK that they’re far less able to compete.
Great piece on Oxbridge. How many other nations on earth are so desperate to export the cream of their crop? It sums up our sycophantic mindset. As for Labour in Swansea this is a national disgrace. They deliberately alienate local people who want to be activists. The people in charge recruit youngsters from Swansea University, who are predominantly English, and fast track them. They have no idea of local needs, desires or ambitions, let alone Swansea’s history and culture. It is all about them being good servants to their London masters. Frightening!
It would be nice to think that one day, the people, even the stupidest Labour voters, will wake to the realities of contemporary Wales. But I think it will take some very loud noises to wake some people up.
Another glorious chapter for the Welsh press and opposition parties as they find out MEWN are being wound up via a Ministerial letter rather than by some actual investigation, a tip off or knowing what the hell is going on in their area, take a bow folks your contributions to welsh democracy are a joke.
As for Labour Minister’s and their supporters it’s going to be harder to much claim AWEMA was one off now and there aren’t more third sector organisations misappropriating funds now that a second third sector business is being investigated by the police while they’ve been in government. Is there any chance this could start waking up the Labour voting sheeple to Labour’s skulduggery before it’s too late for Wales?
And good to know that behind the scenes Nathan Gill’s dodgy dealings and still being looked in to.
If you read the update you’ll see that there was another MEWN in Cardiff. It looks like it merged with the Swansea operation, but I don’t recall anything in the media.
What do you expect in Swansea with a drama queen as leader who gives positions of power to students with ‘dew on their lips and down on their chins-‘ straight out of University and not indigenous to Swansea with no experience in the real world ? Sum total of their contribution is to fly the ‘bacon,lettuce and tomato flag’ over County Hall. I presume we now have to pay fo.r the inadequacies of yet another ethnic minority organisation.
Parachuting in an MP or an AM is bad enough, but he or she just goes off to Westminster or Cardiff docks to represent a constituency. Councillors, on the other hand, are running areas that they must know well to do their job properly, otherwise they cannot do their job and are simply there representing a political party for no better reason than to keep the opposition out of power. Local government should be about more than that.
There are a number of ‘testimonials’ on the MEWN website, from…
Miranda Clark – From Illinois in the United States. She boasts of her work on US Christian Radio, the marketing and events planning at a yacht club. She’s a fundamentalist Christian, and currently vice president of the Element Christian Organization in the United States. She was an intern at MEWN during the huge jump in staff costs you have already identified.
Christine Baum – Now living in London. Executive director of a Brazilian International Literary Festival based in São Paulo. Before washing up on Swansea Bay she was the “Guest Programmer” for the Festival Brazil at the Southbank Centre, London. She was also a director of the Palestine Festival of Literature in Ramallah. Claims to have enjoyed her stint at MEWN.
Sarah Lowe – Currently listed as an employee of the Welsh Government by the FARR Institute who conduct statistical work and data mining relating to health matters. Clients include NHS. Her sideline at MEWN was to teach English.
Angelina Martins and Adelina Vania Daniel – They were part of a Global Xchange project. They boast that they were sent to Mozambique to learn about tacking poverty and applying their new skills to the city of Swansea.
Caroline Demmitt – Now a Camp Counsellor at YMCA of Greater Charlotte, North Carolina, in the United States, after spending only one year at Swansea University, while at the same time as studying at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Ms Demmitt lists her expertise as a Nanny and outgoing education major.
Why do posh White Americans count as a Black Ethnic Minority in Swansea?
In answer to your final question, it might have more to do with sexual orientation than with racial or ethnic origins.