The next post will appear early in 2021. I shall sneak it up on you while you’re still suffering with your festive hangovers!
It will be a piece in which I look forward to the Senedd elections in May; but I attempt to link them with the housing and colonisation crisis in our countryside, a problem that increasingly affects our more attractive post-industrial areas.
Because I don’t see much point in independence for a Wales from which the native population has, effectively, been ethnically cleansed, while the more strident elements of this independence movement – alert to injustice everywhere! – remains silent.
♦ end ♦
LibDems Diversity Officer needs to acquaint herself/itself/himself with the concept of analogy. Hypersensitivity over use of words like “abuse” is typical of wokey twat type stance rather than any deep appreciation of reality. Middle class, pseudo socialist, posturing liberal just about sums it up. Grow up and get a life. If this is the class of candidate that LibDems are mustering then other parties won’t be overly troubled. Should be a real hoot in some constituencies where all parties will turn out a nap hand of like minded muppets.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55478415 gives a brief report on Michael Sheen’s decision to surrender his OBE a few years ago.
Very commendable I say. However it acquires the bad taste of virtue signalling by sharing his decision with Owen Jones of all people. The classic example of AngloBrit, Londoncentric, supremacist, colonialist, pseudo socialist twat. I could go on and call him other things but you would most likely choose not to print them. Michael should look more closely with whom he chooses to share his thoughts as the other party can diminish their value.
“Talent removes itslef as I did because of a lack of opportunity,” Iesu, that is painful to read. Tragic.
Just noticed your tweet querying S Brooks’ use of the term Welsh Citizen re Ms Crumbly the Sir Fon M.P. That he chose to do that is rather surprising given his long developed awareness of the damage done by rabid Unionists/Anglo supremacists being parachuted into Wales in attempts to further their political careers. Shades of doing tours of duty in the colonies before being rewarded with something better back in the mother country. Trouble is, due to proximity, these fuckers won’t want to go “home” they just want to shift the border westwards to the Cardigan Bay. Word of advice to S Brooks – dal dy dir ! gwell byth, Adfer y wlad.
Welsh people can’t be ”ethnically cleansed” because they are not an ethnic group, we are a mixture of British/Irish/European the same as most other British people
This is why Plaid Cymru rightly became civic nationalist, all people who live in Wales can rightly call themselves ”Welsh” and should be welcomed.
Aled, I will not overly quarrel with that, but try telling that to the English about who they are today.
I think they know Saxon influence is more cultural than genetic, either way Wales is still a melting pot
Squabbling about whether the Welsh can be “ethnically cleansed” misses the point by a wide margin. Assimilation is a massive threat and manifests itself in a variety of ways. Swamping the language in its native strongholds is but one prong in the attack. There is economic subjugation where talent is removed from its roots to become absorbed elsewhere – not unique to Wales but a serious factor in the decay and decline of identity. Add to that a government that prefers to support “inward investment” and crackpot changes of use to the rural landscape and it all adds to a mass of negative factors.
Talent removes itslef as I did because of a lack of opportunity, Welsh nationalism has to own part of the blame because its stiffles investment for fear of incommers and harm to the Welsh language.
Scotland doesn’t have this problem and they seem to have got a lot further down the road.
Please re articulate that first paragraph as it makes no sense at all in its present form. About all I get from it so far is that you consider yourself talented, and I am not likely to wish to debate that with you, but the next 3 lines need clarification.
With such eloquent prose like that, your talent bleeds through these pixels like greasy sweat through the pores of a fat man. You’ve been stiffled too long, friend!
Well that bit aoiut nationalism is utter nonsense stopping stifling immigration, consider west of swansea, full of English incomers
Viewing Wales as a ‘melting pot’ – implying it to be mere ‘terra nullius’, with no core indigenous ethnic identity worth respecting – goes beyond acceptance of others. It’s a symptom of self-loathing, a desire to disappear, to drown, usually the result of shame and guilt brought on by being taught anyone’s history but one’s own. Welsh politics needs to purge itself of this US-style cringing before quack academia. I’m not going to be told my existence doesn’t meet the chattering classes’ current criteria for what is or isn’t legitimate. I suggest the Welsh are indeed an ethnic group, shown by the facts that: (a) they’re recognised as different by the neighbours (hence their name); (b) they’ve often been persecuted or discriminated against, in their own country, for expressing difference, or simply for being what they are; and (c) the difference has been transmitted through numerous generations. All ethnic groups though have fuzzy edges. The issue concerns the terms on which the edge is crossed. I fully accept that ethnic origin isn’t everything: Evanses and Joneses aplenty have been taught to hate Cymraeg and nothing will change their minds.
Plaid’s civic nationalism is as irrelevant as Plaid itself because it demands greater attention to making incomers feel welcome than to the future of the dwindling Welsh majority. Incomers who commit themselves to the cause have no right to be made welcome: their welcome is earned. Those indifferent to Welshness should be asked why they came: not all answers are acceptable. There need be no welcome at all for settlers hostile to the Welshness they perceive as surrounding them in Wales, it being not quite what they expect to find. If they change the names of homes and farms and despise their neighbours for not having ticked off every item on some Islingtonian reading list then they’re in the wrong country. Wales owes colonists nothing.
The Welsh community includes everyone resident in Wales only in a legal sense – the sense of who’s on the electoral register for example – and that’s useless as a political argument because it means having to accommodate, most generously, those who only came to Wales to dominate and exploit. (Or, since the Welsh allegedly are incapable of arranging their own economic destiny, to ‘invest’.) Plaid has no future because nothing appeals to it less than rediscovering what the priorities of a nationalist party are. It can do nothing for Wales if it will do nothing for the consciously, actively Welsh. Without them, it’s simply a West England regionalist party.
Nicely put David, I like it for the clarity and objectivity. You say : “All ethnic groups though have fuzzy edges.” and that is where we find the positive changes bought by immigrants who have sought to become “part of us” rather than impose their culture on us, like much of the modern Anglo migrants. We are evolving while having a capacity for distinct identity which modifies itself gently with the passing of time. The present challenge is to withstand and repel the corrosive assimilation and that’s the likely outcome if so many persist with their neglect and indifference.
Plenty to equate with 1930’s Germany in that rant, we Welsh people are not an ethnic group that is just a silly thing to say given the low population before the industrial revolution and the overseas immigration in the 20th century which is welcome.
As for Plaid being ”irrelevant” we’ll see in May when they go up against far right Gwlad.
Now then, ‘Aled’ / ‘Dave’, I’ve been unusually indulgent of your silliness. First, you take out a Gmail address to impersonate somebody else but you can’t carry it off because fundamentally you’re just anti-Welsh, but pretending to be a Plaid Cymru supporter.
So, take yourself away before I expose you, because I really do know where you live.
Send him a set of “knacker crackers” and he can self administer. I’m sure he’ll be ever so gentle with himself !
I would have to challenge Aled in his assertion that ethnically the Welsh are ethnically British/Irish/European. There’s a Welshman I know who sits in the Senedd had has some Arabian heritage who I do not consider to be a more or less of a Welshman than I, who has some Jewish heritage. This is a problem of the claimed ‘civic’ definitions that have been adopted by Plaid Cymru, as they make the false assumption that anyone who doesn’t buy into a civic stratification is a nasty blood and soil type. Ethnic cleansing can be social, cultural and religious as well as genetic. Civic nationalism can just as easily descend to those depths as blood and soil concepts. My nationalism is based on liberty, equality and freedom, from a colonial power. It is not based on genetics. It’s on how the Welsh nation is governed, and that, by definition, for Wales, involves independence.
Some things just don’t change. Howls of delight cos Boris got “a deal”, even Farage was quietly supportive. Lots of thumbs up in Wales yet there’s next to nothing been agreed that will ensure that Wales will prosper or even compete in a fair trading climate. City of London and some favoured parts of England should do alright, possibly Cardiff as the western edge of the Bristol “boom zone” but the rest of us could go to hell in a hand basket. So to all of you don’t please don’t come on here saying how good this is. Other than that Happy New Year in a few days time. The prosperity bit is now more in the lap of the gods than ever.
The howls of delight are currently echoing through the counties of the north of Ireland as the Irish Republic has made this statement on the Erasmus scheme.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ireland-fund-erasmus-northern-irish-students/
There’s a cross community unprecedented demand for republic passports in Belfast as unification beckons. What’s Boris going to do? Shoot the children?
Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda lewyrchus.
However I suspect though that 2021 will be business as usual in so many ways with the usual blend of incompetent politicians and devious opportunists pulling their strokes with alarming regularity. Unless there is a national awakening it will be the same few voices in the wilderness questioning motives and behaviours, while those who claim to be our representatives carry on with their daily diet of virtue signalling and posturing.
Dyna y Gymru a Fydd.
All the best Jac, look forward to seeing your next posting, you really are wasted, you should have been an investigative journalist. Nadolig Llawen
Nadolig Llawen.
May I take this opportunity to make my last comment of the year on your blog.
Hope you don’t mind. See, there’s a smallholding next to the river, Gwendraeth Fawr, upstream from Cydweli. It’s on a floodplain, always has always been prone to flooding. In fact it floods every year.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/flood-wales-animal-sanctuary-kidwelly-17004141
2019.
The smallholding was renamed ‘Lizzies Barn Scanctuary’, land sold from Morfa Bach Farm (there’s a clue in that name). Proprietor moved in from Staffordshire, England, to set up a dog sanctuary. The property was cheap, for a reason.
Now we watch this.
https://www.facebook.com/HelenMaryJonesPlaid/videos/2851185735157979/
2020.
The proprietors name is Fiona Ashman-Halpin. This flooding is not caused by the railway line, the track bed has been there for over a century. Neither is it the fault of the council, Dŵr Cymru or Natural Resources Wales.
When you buy a farm in Wales, it’s your responsibility to check the nature of the holding being purchased. If any taxpayers cash is to be spent alleviating flooding, it should be spent on Welsh communities, not on propping up the misguided escapades of goodlifers migrating to cheap farms in the Welsh countryside.
Bloody typical of the Welsh Assembly, throwing away money like that. Surely they should do their homework before trying to call a site meeting ?
The homework.
In the proposal to re-open the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth railway line, one requirement is the displacement of the Gwili Heritage Railway on this section near Carmarthen. A logical new site for this, as reinstatement, is the now abandoned Cydweli to Pontyberem line, which would also revitalise the Gwendraeth Fawr.
Whether or not this should include new culverts along a section which runs parallel to Capel Teilo Road and Morfa Bach Farm is another matter. The reason why the track bed is on an embankment on this section is because it was specified under the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway Act of 1864. It’s known pre-existing flooding. The railway preconditions are included in the title covenants over the land and includes ‘dispensable’ in the archaic sense, which kicks in upon line closure.
Flood risk areas are clearly defined on the NRW portal. It would probably have been wise for Fiona Ashman-Halpin to have done a site survey herself prior to purchasing the barn, some 20yrs ago, or paid for a better conveyance solicitor familiar with the local area, rather than annually bombarding the council and other agencies with demands.
I notice the farmers, nearby at Pinged, at their own expense, have dug out the culverts along a similar road, as needed according to the title. It helps with quick drainage after a flooding event, but it should be noted that a farmer has a tractor to so this periodic task as a responsible land holder, where dog sanctuaries do not.
That line will never reopen it suffered heavy losses when car usage was low and freight and post alll went by rail, there’s little traffic along the corridor anyway.
Nobody knows how to back a lost cause like Welsh nationalism.
All rail lines in Wales make heavy losses. The route where the loss is smallest per passenger is between Swansea and Newport, the GWML. However, it’s fortune is dependent on the valley lines as feeders of footfall. The same applies elsewhere. It’s not about railway lines, but about networks.
Example1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Railway_Corridor
Opening up the link between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth pays by reducing the losses on the existing lines, significantly on the existing line west of Swansea and also marginally on the lines to the east. It’s a bit like blaming the carburettor in your car for consuming petrol, all the components work to effect an outcome, the greatest of which in this case would be economic prosperity in the West.
Example2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borders_Railway
Pumping millions into new platforms in Cardiff just displaces existing footfall on the bus that currently runs on the road that runs parallel to the railway line in the Bae. It’s like subsidising a bus up the Rhondda rather than buying a longer train carriage.
Closing the current loss making branchlines and ploughing £millions into reopening long closed lines that can never break even are two very different things, its certainly something a cash strapped independent Wales could never do.
Its a non starter – nice dream but never going to happen.
Then you misunderstand the economics of rail networks. The highest capital investment to rail infrastructure in the world, is London. The benefit is they reduce the margin of losses by footfalling a central zone, even though as a total sum it’s the largest loss maker in Europe. The finance mechanism of such infrastructure is two fold, firstly by using the nation state, the whole of the UK, as an underwriting guarantor for cost over-runs, but also the core capital by infrastructure bond as interest rates are effectively negative. A true measure would be pounds aquisition per capita. Compared to London, almost all closed rail lines on the GB landmass is a goer. This was the Scottish calculation on the borders investment. Also, as a state infrastructure item, there’s the cost of not doing something. A bus route looses all its value when the journey terminates. A rail network lasts hundreds of years, of residual intrinsic value.
An interesting take, but you could have just as easily have shut this moron down by pointing out that the police, judiciary, armed forces, the roads, schools, the NHS, bin rounds etc etc all make a ‘loss’ according to his simple criteria. But lo! They’re apparently part of this revolutionary idea called ‘Public Services’! One question though: what do you mean by that bit about footfalling a central zone?
Footfalling a central zone is a place to extract cash for provision of low or no apparent practical need.
Such zones appear at the end of supermarket isles where punters think they happen upon a bargain but in reality it’s dead stock you’d otherwise throw out, or a central place in a department store which you stuff with frippery of highest gross margin. In transportation it’s where the revenue per mile is actually the highest, like inside the circle line of the London underground. When you design a retail network the concept is to get them there either by temptation or by creating avoidance barriers.
Of course, you can adapt the concept to deal with overcrowding to distribute the node elsewhere, along a strip, by means of state intervention, a form or regeneration. It’s not a new concept. Here an original example from Germany, which is older than you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TqqdOcX4dc{removetoplay}
In terms of profitability only the running cost is paid for by patrons, the burden of capital cost is municipal or the state. The benefits are off-track. You can also build in satellite nodes, to footfall. Fill a dead zone in a supermarket, or in the case of a transportation network regenerate former industrial areas. DLR in London is a classic example as is Lille Europe for longer distance.
In other words, “If you build it, they will come!”.
Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda Jac.
Hope you have a good Christmas, Jac. Try and salvage what you can from the mess, and try and re-charge your batteries for the year ahead, which will, no doubt, bring more of the same shit for our poor, benighted country.
It is interesting to note, as we go into the New Year which is election year to the Senedd / Wales Assembly, that the full Inspector’s Report is still on line that recommended Approval for the Mynydd y Gwair Wind Turbines – yes that collection of Wind Turbines that on average only produce just 8 MW for an average Grid consumption of 40,000 MW. This was approved by Wales Government Labour Minister Lesley Griffiths despite a mass of OBJECTIONS and two previous Inquiries refusing it. Of further interest is that the support for this obviously came from the Developer and the Duke of Beaufort’s family Somerset Trust who own the land. Curiously there were only two individuals who supported this scheme who sent in a letter each with just the term “support” with no details facts or figures. These two individuals were (1) the late Labour County Councillor for Swansea’s Castle Ward and (2) the Liberal Democrat William Powell then Regional Assembly Member for Mid and West Wales in Brecon who is now the Liberal Democrat Candidate to try to succeed Kirsty Williams for Brecon and Radnor’s Senedd seat. Let’s hope the electorate of Brecon and Radnor remember this, at the Polling Booths in May 2021, that he William Powell their Liberal Democrat candidate helped trash a beautiful landscape in north Swansea. Here is the proof from the Inspector’s Approval Report :-
INQ21 Letter of support for scheme from William Powell AM for Mid and West Wales, submitted by Applicant.
Can we trust Liberal Democrat for Brecon and Radnor William Powell not to prop up a Labour Senedd as Kirsty Williams did, or will he become a lackey for an English feudal; Duke as he was with regard to Mynydd y Gwair?
The latest Govt figures are as follows:
Population of Wales: 3,118,700.
Born in Wales: 2,165,200 (69.4%). Fall from 72.6% in 2011.
Born outside Wales: 953,500 (30.6%), overwhelmingly from England.
Those claiming a Welsh identity of any sort: 62.8%. Fall from 66% in 2011.
Nadolig Llawen, Jac a diolch yn fawr.