I betook myself to Aberystwyth yesterday, accompannied by the wife and a couple of grandchildren (in case the old car needed a push). ‘Callous bastard’, I hear you cry . . . so, anyway, I went for a coffee before wandering about the old town, seeing what had changed since my last visit.

Quite a bit, as it happened. Inhabitants of Aber’, or regular visitors, will know that the council has been working around the front of the railway station for twelve years or more (well, it seems that long), laying out bus bays and new pavements. Walking from the Mill Street car park (soon to be lost under Marks & Spencers and Tesco), I turned the corner by the station to be greeted by a veritable minefield of drunk traps. Just look! the picture (click to enlarge) shows a short stretch of pavement with at least a dozen obstacles over which, or even into which, an unwary imbiber might fall. All this in a university town!

I tell you, if I was an ambulance-chasing lawyer or some other variety of shyster I would be hanging about this area of a Friday or Saturday night just waiting for the inevitable tumble, followed by the yell of shock and then the drawn-out moan of agony, whereupon I would leap from the shadows and present my card, for there’s a fortune to be made here! And with an ‘assistant’, giving gentle ‘nudges’ . . .

On a lighter note, but staying with the topic of the immoderate consumption of alcohol, I am delighted to report that the shelter on the promenade, so badly damaged in the January storms, has been restored. Over the years, this noble and welcoming structure has provided a roof under which many a weary bon viveur has rested his head for the night, me included.

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Last year I wrote a post called Neighbours From Hell, which was well received and is still getting lots of visits. (You’ll see it featured in the sidebar.) One of those I wrote about was Leanne Meredith, and her collection of aggressive dogs. So aggressive that a one-tonne bull these dogs attacked had to be put down. The latest news is that Ms Meredith, originally of Wimbledon, has done a runner, yet, since the attack, one of her dogs, an American bulldog, has been kept in “official kennels” – where the little darling has run up a bill of £24,000, which we shall pay! (Click on cutting to enlarge.)

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Straying not far from the subject of English undesirables in Wales I am indebted to the ever-reliable BD for this tale of windfarm bribery and the privatised probation service.

As you may be aware, Pen y Cymoedd is the massive windfarm on the western side of the Heads of the Valleys. (Click on image to enlarge.) This grant-guzzling monstrosity and eyesore is being built by Swedish company Vattenfall which, as is the way in such ventures, is bribing the local communities with their own money. Among those applying for a slice of this faux largesse is the Wales Community Rehabilitation Company Ltd. As BD says, when he first saw the name he assumed it was a group to help seriously deprived communities in the area blighted by these monsters, villages such as Glyncorrwg and Blaenllechau; but no, it has little to do with such communities, and perhaps not a lot to do with Wales.

The one-page website tells us that the Wales Community Rehabilitation Company is a successor to the Wales Probation Trust and is a privatised Third Sector subsidiary of the Englandandwales Ministry of Justice. It is a private limited company, Incorporated on December 4, 2013 (Company Number: 08802571), and it clearly hopes to be funded by generosity from sources such as Vattenfall plus, we can be sure, the ‘Welsh’ Government. Welcome to the privatised probation service.

BD tells me that the directors are David Rees Evans, a retired banker, living in Colwyn Bay, who is on the North Wales Probation Circuit; retired group captain Neil Trevor Bale, who owns Cyfie Farm guesthouse on Efyrnwy, and is chairman of the Tourism Partnership of Mid Wales; Clare Elizabeth Roach, previously the HR manager at the Royal Voluntary Service, after a stint in HR with South Wales Police; Bernadette Elizabeth Ann Rijnenberg, who was also director of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Support Services Limited; and Andrew James Skene Emmett, who resigned from the The Humberside, Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire Community Rehabilitation Company Limited, because ‘he moved to London’.

So we appear to have yet another ‘Welsh’ organisation that is mainly English in its composition. Given its business, and the colonial relationship between Wales and England, I believe we can confidently predict that many of its clients will have no previous connection with Wales. In which case, and yet again, ‘Welsh’ money, or money promised to ‘Welsh’ causes, will be used in the service of England.

But isn’t it a strange name for a service looking after ex-cons and offenders? You can understand why BD initially thought it was in the business of reinvigorating run-down communities. One to watch, I think.

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Finally, how could I do an update post without a mention of ‘Bishop’ Nathan Lee Gill MEP!

It seems that I misunderstood the info I received about Gill’s Humvee with the big screen in the back. (Misunderstandings are almost inevitable when trying to communicate by text messages.) I assumed it was a big television screen inside the vehicle when, in reality, it was a 6ft x 5ft LCD advertising screen affixed to the rear. As shown in the picture (click to enlarge). This link will take you to some other pictures, including some of the man himself. You’ll also see that Humview Ltd, Gill’s short-lived company, seems to have been based in Pensans, Kernow. Which is very interesting, for it might answer a question that’s been puzzling me about Gill’s brother-in-law, Brian Lynn Quilter of Lledr House, Dolwyddelan.

The thing is, I have this e-mail (click to enlarge), sent from lledrhouse@aol.com, which can only be from Quilter. It seems to have been sent to either the London Gazette (which announces company liquidations) or the Official Receiver, possibly both. Quilter is American, married to Gill’s part-time cop sister. My guess is that he came over some twelve years ago. But the point is that, being married into Gill’s family, he would of course know Anglesey, possibly other parts of the north, and obviously the old Gill stamping ground of Hull and the adjacent area of Yorkshire. But Plymouth is quite a way from both, so how did Quilter get himself into business down there? (The business being the migrant housing racket.)

Well, given that we know now Gill was operating in Cornwall, then Plymouth’s not far away, just over the Tamar; and in many ways the ‘capital’ of Cornwall in much the same way that Liverpool is / was ‘the capital of north Wales’. Which then raises the obvious question, why was Gill himself in Cornwall? Was he running migrant housing scams down there, in Cornwall and south west England, as he was in Hull?

Returning to the e-mail, it’s dated March 15, 2010, so in its chronological sequence it comes just before the second (and final) Notification of Strike-off Action against Quilter Properties Ltd appeared in the London Gazette on April 23, 2010. So it could be part of a tidying-up exercise, even a confession – for Quilter is almost certainly talking in the e-mail of undeclared, (cash-in-hand) income – but it also raises one final question.

Given what we know about how HMRC has operated in recent years, and also given that HMRC was interested in Gill and his business associates, was a deal struck, in which Gill and Quilter paid off a nominal amount in order to get HMRC off their backs?