The Left: Lost, Found, Re-purposed, Finished

On By JacIn Climate, Environmentalism, Far Left, Globalism, Middle East, Ukraine, World Economic Forum42 Comments

Let me start by explaining that the title does not refer to the sad buggers in forgotten communities who vote Labour out of force of habit, nor the careerists they vote for.

I’m dealing with those who bring city streets to a standstill waving terrorist flags and shouting anti-Semitic slogans. Antifa, BLM, and all the other representatives of grievance politics.

And the Quixotic beings forever battling ‘fascists’ and ‘transphobes’, ‘climate deniers’ and ‘Islamophobes’. Those who think the white man is genetically evil.

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IN THE BEGINNING

I’d considered writing something along these lines for a while, but the trigger for what you’re about to read was something that happened a week ago.

I put out a post on X that linked to Google maps to show the heat island around the Senedd, with nary a blade of grass to be seen near the building whose denizens want to plant trees everywhere . . . preferably on what today are working farms. It struck me as mildly hypocritical.

Among the responses was one from someone called Ben Wildsmith.

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He seemed to suggest that vegetation does not grow near the sea. Making the marram grass of my childhood summers in Port Eynon a false memory. The palms lining tropical beaches, and trees running down to more northern shorelines, must be equally imaginary.

So I got to wondering about Ben Wildsmith.

Let’s give some background for what’s coming. At the Trump assassination attempt one man died after shielding his wife and daughter from the shooter, His name was Corey Comperatore, aged 50, and he was a firefighter.

In one of those theatrical gestures that Americans seem to like, Donald Trump, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, kissed the fire helmet of the dead man.

Which prompted Ben Wildsmith to put out this post on X. The message reads: ‘Yer Da kisses dead men’s helmets’.

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‘Yer Da’ is Scouse for ‘your father’, and the rest is a crude reference to a human penis. However you think about it, it’s distasteful. I mean, is it addressed to Trump’s children? Or is it something really, really clever that’ll be understood by leftist necrophiliacs?

That helmet belonged to a man who put his life on the line in the job he did, and then gave that life to save his wife and daughter. Doesn’t he deserve better?

Well, no – because he was a Trump supporter. That means he can be ‘othered’, and vilified. Because that’s how too many in the modern left think. Including the brainwashed young man who tried to kill Trump. And this nutter.

Reminding us that those who urge ‘tolerance’ are often the most dangerously intolerant.

They suffer a kind of tunnel vision; which is never a good thing, unless perhaps you’re in a tunnel. But as long as sufferers stick together, they see no problem.

Take the July 4 general election. There were people in Wales celebrating a Tory-free Wales as if that was going to make everything better. Of course it won’t; but these people are so fixated on the Conservatives being the source of all evil that they’re incapable of seeing the truth.

Wales has had 25 years of socialist rule from Corruption Bay and it’s been disastrous. But everything’s gonna be fine now – because we’ve got no Tory MPs!

‘Cleansing rain’! Wow! Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Ben Wildsmith was one of those rejoicing, in his Nation.Cymru column. Yes, Ben writes for that site funded by the ‘Welsh Government’. Ben also likes to think of himself as a poet and a musician.

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LOST

I believe the left in the Anglosphere started losing its way in the late 1970s. The answer to human misery was certainly losing ground in the UK then (partly due to over-reach), and this culminated in the Winter of Discontent.

Which helped Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives get elected in May 1979. Her position was then strengthened by an unlikely combination of an Argentine military junta invading some islands nobody’d heard of, and the antics of the extreme left.

In the USA, Democrat Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, but was not re-elected due to his administrations’s perceived weakness over the US hostages taken in Tehran. Republican Ronald Regan won the presidency in 1980, and was re-elected in 1984.

To cap it all, after years of obvious decline, but also thanks to a collapsing economy, and a costly and unpopular military intervention in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union started falling apart in 1988/89.

This was crucial, so it’s worth considering how the end of Soviet Communism affected politics in the West. Or certainly, this is how I see it.

On the one hand, the US military-industrial complex had grown rich and powerful by holding up the Soviet bloc as an existential threat.

But in his farewell address in January 1961, less than three years before his successor, John F Kennedy, was assassinated, outgoing president Dwight D Eisenhower, warned:

. . . guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex

With the Soviet empire gone, those Ike warned against were left almost without a raison d’etre.

But with China not yet powerful enough to be a credible replacement there was little alternative but to stick with Russia. The regime had changed, but post-Communist Russia still had all those nuclear warheads. And a space programme.

Which posed a problem for the left, because since 1917 many socialists in the West had looked to Russia for inspiration, even orders.

Remarkably, the left, traditionally critical of US foreign policy in Latin America, Vietnam and elsewhere, eventually fell in with military-industrial complex thinking.

This was achieved because many leftists began to regard the new Russia under Yeltsin, and then Putin, as a betrayal. And when Putin came all out for nation, church, family, tradition, the left turned on him.

When he banned gay marriage the comrades became apoplectic.

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Putin’s position on these matters also made him a target for the Globalists, who ridicule religion (but only Christianity), and seek to undermine the family unit, erase national differences, and destroy Western traditions.

This led to a fear among both Globalists and the military-industrial complex that the new Russia might serve as a dangerous example to the West. This became another reason to treat Russia as the enemy, and to villainise Putin.

And so it was full speed ahead to NATO encirclement of Russia, EU enlargement, the 2014 Kiev coup, provoke war in Ukraine and . . . I wonder what comes next?

Something else that must be understood about the collapse of the Soviet Union is that it killed off any lingering belief in the Communist economic model. It just didn’t work. Few saw that more clearly than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The lesson for ‘our’ socialists was that their war against the corrupt and evil West would need to take a different form. Which meant cultural Marxism; initially the relatively benign ‘political correctness’, with this softening-up process leading to the mind-numbing idiocies of Wokeism that followed.

Yet Russia in the early 1990s, with its vodka-loving president, and gangsters fighting over state assets, was a bit of a shambles. In the public mind it was not perceived as the same threat as its superpower predecessor.

Other ‘threats’ were needed as a supporting cast.

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FOUND

In the UK, the initial cleansing under leader Neil Kinnock wasn’t enough to win Labour the general elections of 1987 and 1992. A complete re-brand was needed, and it came with Tony Blair and New Labour which, after victory in 1997, stayed in power until 2010.

New Labour was a kind of Margaret Thatcher tribute band.

In the USA, the left seemed to be largely incorporated into the Democratic Party, and to some extent de-fanged.

The collapse and disintegration of the Soviet empire, and with it the removal of a unifying focus for Western concerns, was also a problem for supranational bodies that like to influence public perceptions and political decisions.

The answer they came up with was ‘global warming’, or ‘climate change’. This racket fulfils an almost identical role to the Cold War; because as well as focusing minds and frightening people, it’s used to dictate human behaviour, curb individual freedoms, and satisfy corporate greed.

And when it came to more immediate military ‘threats’, well there was a theatre company of sociopaths out there with dodgy moustaches . . . and oil. To raise the curtain, and stress the importance of oil, Saddam Hussein conveniently invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And as we soon learned from US and UK spokesmen, Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). People who knew that to be a lie were helped to commit ‘suicide’.

Perhaps Saddam felt encouraged to invade after the US had funded and armed his bloody war with Iran from 1980 to 1988. Done, not because the Americans had any liking for him, but because the Ayatollahs had deposed their Shah in 1979. And of course, as payback for the hostage crisis that so embarrassed the USA and brought down the peanut farmer from Georgia.

(Though rumours persist that certain US agencies dragged their feet over the hostages in order to make Carter look bad, and help former CIA boss George H W Bush get elected. What a thought!)

These forays into the lands of oil initially wrong-footed the left. Normally, the comrades would oppose Western powers invading countries over natural resources. But Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti was a difficult bloke to defend.

So by 2010 the left is onside with the thinking of the military-industrial complex agenda, has bought into the Globalists’ climate scam, and is open to adopting any lunacy that can be deployed to challenge Western values and institutions.

With a Conservative government returned in 2010 the left felt it was time to flex its muscles again.

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RE-PURPOSED

In the USA, blue collar workers and southern whites had been switching to the Republicans for some time. And this continued under Obama.

While in the UK, many lower-paid workers had lost their fear of voting Tory with Margaret Thatcher, some moving to even more ‘exotic’ destinations on the right.

Which meant that Labour and Democrats needed to replace these lost voters. In the USA there was a push to register more voters from minority groups. But that took a dangerous turn when the left started arguing that to ask voters for ID was ‘racist’.

Now, in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, we’ve seen Democrats demand that undocumented, illegal migrants be allowed to vote.

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The thinking behind this is pretty obvious.

The military-industrial complex may have taken shape to further US imperial ambitions and enrich US corporations, but it soon spread its influence to UK politics, and NATO.

For as Tom Paxton put it in Daily News:

Ban the bombers are afraid of a fightPeace hurts business and that ain’t right

At its simplest . . . corporate America gains from making the weapons for the military. The quicker the products are used, and replaced, then the bigger the profits.

But the military-industrial complex also profits from ‘rebuilding’ the countries wrecked by the weapons it’s produced.

This report from 2005 explains how Halliburton did it in Iraq. And with the fighting still taking its bloody toll along the Dnieper BlackRock and JPMorgan have been quick off the mark to set up a Ukraine Reconstruction Bank.

Globalist corporations profiting from a war the USA engineered in order to support the most corrupt regime in Europe. What’s more, Ukraine’s been corrupt for a long time.

As I’ve reported before, the head of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, wants “governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations” to have the power of compulsory purchase over farms and other private property.

Should that happen, then WWW, or Radnorshire Wildlife Trust, or even Bute Energy, could throw you off your land, or out of your home – to save the planet.

When they’re not supporting the US military-industrial complex and the most corrupt country in Europe, the comrades are promoting the Globalist land grab agenda of Jamie Dimon and his buddies.

As I’ve said before, 2016 saw the process ratcheted up because, through Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, the lower orders had proven themselves to be both stupid and racist. The gloves were off.

Which is why we are where we are. And seeing the West so weak, socialists may think their time has finally come. But I believe their time has come, and gone.

The entitled, attention-seeking clowns, with their half-baked ideas, have become an embarrassment. Certainly Ed Miliband thinks so. The days of performance socialism may be coming to an end. People have had enough.

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FINISHED

Miliband is close to those hoping to benefit from net zero, carbon capture, and all the other elements of the climate scam. So he may not just be speaking for himself.

But anyway, it’s not just Miliband, there are other signs that something is changing. Just look around. Can’t you smell it!

There are governments in Europe hanging on for dear life, dreading the next election. The UK has a government with no real mandate. France seems to be falling apart. The West is being flooded with ‘refugees’ who are nothing of the sort. Following an assassination attempt on the man likely to be the next US president, there was a palace coup to remove the incumbent!

All because people are waking up to the truths. They know they’ve been lied to in so many ways, and for too long. Those who’ve lied to us are getting worried.

Change is inevitable. Possibly major change.

Finally following Ike’s advice and reining in the military-industrial complex, curbing the power of the Globalists, and dealing with the clowns who serve their agendas without realising it, is the best hope for a just, peaceful, and prosperous world.

But if it’s too late and the worst happens; then when you see that mushroom cloud, you can at least console yourself by knowing there are no Tory MPs in Wales.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Miscellany 18.07.2024

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Welsh Government, Wind Turbines38 Comments

I suppose I could have done a piece on Vaughan Gething’s belated resignation; but I’ve said almost all I want to say on that nice Mr Musk’s platform. He’s moving to Texas, you know. (Musk, not Gething.)

I will just add that Gething’s resignation speech was a classic of ‘Welsh’ Labour. He took no responsibility whatsoever for his fate; the mistakes, the errors of judgement, the lies, being an arrogant prick, no – it was all somebody else’s fault!

And of course, he was the victim of racism. Ideas of victimhood, and exploiting it, are now so embedded in the Labour party in Wales that they direct policy and legislation. As you’ll read in the third section of this offering.

Which is a Miscellany! A section on Woodknowledge Wales, yet another gang of enviro-shysters. Part three is on yet more tinkering by the ‘Welsh Government’ with the democratic process. And finally, some thoughts on wind turbines, and pylons.

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WOOD YOU BELIEVE IT!

An outfit that’s been in the news lately is Woodknowledge Wales (WKW). It encourages greater use of wood. I quote: “We champion the development of wood-based industries for increased prosperity and well-being in Wales“.

‘Well-being‘! That meaningless term used to justify anything and everything.

I have no issue with timber-framed buildings, or even buildings made entirely of wood. The issue is the politics, the funding, the peripheral messages and hidden agendas that always attach to outfits like WKW.

So who runs this show, and where might we find them?

Looking through the early directors of what was originally the Welsh Timber Forum I saw a few names I recognised, in fact, people I know personally. But there seems to have been a kind of takeover in 2016.

Of the six directors at the start of 2017, two have since left. The four remaining directors – of what converted to a Community Benefit Society (CBS) on St Patrick’s Day 2022 – all joined in 2016.

The two departures may even have been connected with the change to a CBS. Strangely, perhaps, of the 36 directors who’ve come and gone since 2001 those two were the only ones to describe themselves on the Companies House listings as ‘Welsh’.

Below you see the current WKW directors from the latest accounts (to 31.03.2023) filed with the Financial Conduct Authority. Also the companies they run or, in the case of Rachel Moxie, the day job. This filing still uses the address of one of the departed.

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Though I’m unclear on the status of Gary Newman. He was a director when WKW was a company, yet he’s signed the most recent accounts from the FCA as secretary.

But if Newman is now WKW secretary, rather than a director, this would explain why he isn’t listed as being a director of The Foundational Economy Alliance Wales Ltd.

This lot moved in November 2022 from the United Welsh housing association offices in Caerffili to an address in Porthaethwy (Menai Bridge), which is quite a move.

However, the new address for WKW, the one given on the website, is 22 Cathedral Road in Cardiff. (Possibly out back.) Also known as Pentan House, for at this address we also find, Pentan, Rant Media, Moxie People, LRM Planning, The Green Business Centre, and who knows who else?

With Woodknowledge Wales we have another outfit serving the ‘Welsh Government’s self-destructive obeisance to the Net Zero cult. With councils and housing associations made to use more wood in their new builds.

Much of which will be from timber grown by foreign corporations on what used to be Welsh family farms. Or wood from monoculture plantations poisoning land and water.

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The role I suggest for WKW would explain the presence on The Board of Shayne Hembrow of Corruption Bay’s favourite housing association.

Deputy Chief Executive / Commercial Director of Wales and West Housing Association . . .  In addition Shayne is chair of Shelter Cymru and Chair of Woodknowledge Wales.

Hembrow is yet another third sector grifter who came to Wales to help third-rate politicians wreck our country. But I can’t see him listed on the W&W website. Has he gone undercover?

In the FCA filings we see only Hughes, Meade and Moxey named as directors. So does this mean that Godefroy, Healy and Hembrow joined more recently? And why is Godefroy described in her bio as a “trustee“, for WKW isn’t a registered charity?

Finally, and in what seems to be a recurring theme, we have with Woodknowledge Wales a group close to if not controlled by Corruption Bay . . . with one of those involved getting loans from the Development Bank of Wales.

In the case of director Jasper Meade, in January 2020, he landed two loans from DBW Investments (14). One specific to a factory in Buttington, near Welshpool; the other, a more general charge over a number of his companies.

As I say, a recurring theme. Which is why I suggest the Development Bank of Wales needs to be investigated, and then taken away from the control of politicians.

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All that said, I could still support this push to use more wood if I thought it would result in a forestry industry employing thousands of people in rural areas, sustaining Welsh communities, complementing farming rather than being used to destroy it.

But that won’t happen. It’ll be like renewable energy, environmentalism, 20mph, and all the other results of politicians buying into the climate cult and the control agenda.

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BYE-BYE, PORT TALBOT

Let’s stick with Woodknowledge Wales (WKW) for just a minute. They’ve been pushing a report, ‘Serious About Green?—Building a Welsh wood economy through co-ordination‘.

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This makes it clear – as I suggested earlier – that WKW is not simply concerned with us using more wood in buildings. The agenda is much bigger.

And while the report itself seems to be the work of WISERD, the quote below is from Woodknowledge Wales, and can be found here.

Wales is a sheep, beef and dairy nation and Wales is a steel nation. These activities are deeply ingrained in our cultural identity.  They may have been rational activities for the past century but are not well-aligned to the low carbon needs of 21st Century Welsh society.

We must give up good-pay steel jobs and the Welsh family farm. And we must do so because a bunch of zealots have decided that we who belong here, working in our own country, in spheres they disapprove of, must lose everything.

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UNIVERSAL FRANCHISE . . . AND THEN SOME!

Now we’re going to consider the Elections and Elected Bodies (Wales) Bill. Here’s a shorter summary. And this is how WalesOnline reported it last week.

You’ll see that everyone is to be put on the electoral register whether they want to be on it or not. Speaking for the Electoral Reform Society, chief executive Darren Hughes had this to say:

Automatic voter registration is a win-win for voters as it takes one more thing off their to-do list while also . . . helping to enfranchise the hundreds of thousands of missing voters in Wales.

Which is, as we psephologists are wont to say, and at the risk of sounding technical, utter bollocks.

“Takes one more thing off their to-do list“, says Kiwi Darren. But what if it was never on their to-do list? There are thousands of people in Wales who have chosen not to be on the electoral register.

Consequently, to put them on the register, without their permission, will be an infringement of their privacy and an assault on their freedoms.

As well as bulking up the electoral rolls the Bill also references candidates, and inevitably, we find ‘diversity’ mentioned. Here’s what the summary says on page 5.

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“Specific characteristics” is code for trans, as the ‘Welsh Government’ now shies away from using the legally incorrect and deliberately misleading ‘protected’. But it also introduces a new term with “socio-economic circumstances“? Does that mean preference will be given to poor people?

It’s worth asking, because the summary then takes a rather curious twist when it talks of “financial assistance“.

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(Is Section 29 written correctly, or should it read, ‘specified characteristics’?)

For me, the mention of disability is a distraction, for most beneficiaries of this largesse will in fact come from other groups.

I expect race and a certain religion to figure, but there may be another clue here.

Welsh Ministers may provide financial assistance schemes to help candidates in Welsh elections that have specific characteristics or specified circumstances overcome barriers to participation.

I went to the full version of the Bill in the hope of finding “specified circumstances” explained. But there was nothing. Leaving me to think the Labour party will sponsor candidates from certain categories on whose loyalty it can count.

Putting everyone on the electoral register only makes sense if we have compulsory voting. But we don’t, and I’m not aware of any plans to introduce it. So why put everyone on the electoral register?

Here’s another concern. This legislation might be in place for the 2026 Senedd elections, which means it will complement the Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidates Lists) Bill. Yes, that’s the one giving us huge constituencies and closed lists.

In the WalesOnline article you’ll see mentioned Mick Antoniw, the Counsel General. Now I have concerns about this man’s role in elections.

Counsel General, Mick Antoniw. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Mainly because of his involvement in pushing through the closed lists system. I dealt with it in my piece Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill. There I explained that Antoniw was even trying to get away with not naming candidates!

The electoral systems of Wales and the UK are screwed up enough without making things worse.

Consider, Labour has just won a landslide victory in the July 4 general election. But it was only a landslide in terms of seats, and entirely due to the peculiarities of the FPTP system. The turnout was well down on recent elections.

The problem – in addition to the Gething factor and the failure of devolution – is that too many people don’t feel engaged by politics, or feel that politicians don’t speak for them.

The priority should therefore be engaging with those who are already on the electoral registers but don’t vote. Because it makes no sense to register people who have no intention of voting.

One change we’ve already seen was the requirement on July 4 for those wanting to vote to produce photographic ID. Now as we know, from the USA and elsewhere, such a rule is racist, and so would never have been introduced by Labour.

For Labour is far more ‘flexible’ when it comes to rules relating to voting.

Which is why I predict that, in addition to putting everybody’s name on the electoral register, we shall also see moves to make postal and proxy voting easier.

In the 2026 Senedd elections we could see un-named Labour candidates, with “specified characteristics” and “specified circumstances“, benefit from “financial assistance” . . . and be elected in turnouts of 127%.

Try to argue then that democracy’s in trouble!

The truth is that once again we see Labour introducing dangerous divisions and dubious methods to serve its own narrow political interests.

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LINKS TO THE OLD NORTH

Many of you must be aware of Bute Energy’s plans for a pylon run some 60 miles long from that company’s wind farms in Powys south through the Tywi valley to Llandyfaelog, south of Carmarthen.

There the line from Powys will connect with the line from Pembroke to England. For of course virtually all the power generated in Wales goes to England. (Thankfully, we get the thousands of excellent jobs provided by ‘renewables’.)

The project is being handled by Bute’s Green Gen Cymru. And it’s explained, sort of, here, and if you scroll down there’s even an interactive map.

As might be expected, there is considerable opposition along the route.

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And the plan is severely testing the loyalties of some politicians. (Also, their mental dexterity.) For example, Ann Davies, the new Plaid Cymru MP for Caerfyrddin, has said she opposes the pylons . . . but not the wind turbines.

I don’t want to spend too much time on the Tywi valley project because it’s really just the intro to the other elements of this section.

As I say, roughly half of the electricity generated in Wales goes to England, and the amount will increase if all the planned wind farms get built. The situation is similar in Scotland, with electricity generated there having even further to travel to consumers in central and southern England. (With power being lost in transmission.)

And although it’s been reported once or twice, I’m not sure how many people are aware of the planned new Scottish connection. In a nutshell, it’s proposed that electricity generated off south west Scotland will be taken by undersea cable to Pentir, near Bangor, and then overland to Swansea North substation.

I’d like to be able to show you a map of the route, but there isn’t one, all I’ve seen is a vague line from Bangor to Swansea . . . through Eryri. Which obviously isn’t going to happen.

In this CPRW article Dr Jonathan Dean has this to say.

The route of this line is not yet known, despite me asking them numerous times.  As they will not get consent for pylons in Eryri national park they basically have two options:
  • along the north coast to Conwy, up the Conwy valley, past Bala then down to the Tywi valley to Swansea
  • across the top of Pen Llŷn to Porthmadog, subsea to near Aberystwyth then cross country to Swansea

Which could mean the pylons coming down the Teifi valley, where there is already a campaign fighting Bute pylons. This Bute line will carry electricity from Lan Fawr, east of Llanddewi Brefi. I assume it will also serve Blaencothi and Nant Ceiment.

Bute Energy projects in Wales. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Then the pylons will also run down to Llandyfaelog. But will they share the line coming from Powys, or will there be two pylon runs past Llandeilo? And will they interfere with the route of the planned bypass?

However you look at it, lovely Ystrad Tywi is in for a forest of steel pylons marching for mile after mile over hill and dale. Each one sunk in hundreds of tons of concrete. And all done to save the environment, innit?

∼

The reason that Scotland and Wales have despoiled landscapes in order to generate electricity for England, is partly due to their politicians buying into the climate scam, and partly due to the difficulty of building onshore wind farms in England.

The latter due to different laws that allowed communities affected by such projects to object and, effectively, block them. But the law is changing.

Clearly, if onshore windfarms can in future be built in England, where the power is needed, there’ll be less need to erect windfarms in Wales. In fact, the need might be removed entirely.

It seems obvious to me that many of the mooted projects won’t now be needed. And that might include the pylon runs in the Teifi and Tywi valleys, even the big one from Bangor to Swansea.

And seeing as Bute Energy has yet to erect a single turbine, I think the ‘Welsh Government’ should call a halt to onshore wind projects in order to assess how the new legislation in England might impact on Wales.

We don’t want the ‘Welsh Government’ (via NRW) felling tens of thousands of trees, allowing hundreds of 800ft wind turbines, and hundreds of miles of pylons, if nobody wants to buy the electricity they erratically produce.

We’ll just have to live without the thousands of £70,000 pa jobs they’d have created.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Climate Crisis And The Noble Lie

On By JacIn Climate, Globalism, Greens, Higher Education46 Comments

I decided to put this out soon after making up my mind not to bother with an analysis of the general election result. Only in a FPTP system could a party get a massive majority from a reduced share of the vote. A system designed for Whigs and Tories to fight over rotten boroughs is obviously broken.

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MIND-BENDING BOLLOCKS, CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES, MORE BOLLOCKS

This piece took life with an article in Nation.Cymru last Thursday entitled, ‘Climate inaction undermines public support for lifestyle changes‘. A strange title, but when you think about it, it’s revealing.

The suggestion is that because the decision-makers are not doing enough to tackle the ‘climate crisis’ we, the public, are failing to support the lifestyle changes deemed necessary to combat said ‘climate crisis’.

The article begins:

New research into the public perception of climate change initiatives finds that whilst there is strong support for low-carbon lifestyles inaction is limiting public beliefs that a low-carbon future is possible.

Which is absolute bollocks. Outside of OPD circles there’s no ‘strong support for low carbon lifestyles’.

Or rather, support may exist, but only in the abstract. For in the real world, eating, heating, travelling, at reasonable cost, win out every time over the draconian and expensive measures proposed to achieve net zero.

The N.C article quotes Dr Catherine Cherry, of Cardiff University’s School of Psychology and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST).

Though I’m not sure if Dr Cherry’s really in Cardiff, and if she is, then I’m fairly sure she’s not teaching. Her Linkedin page locates her in Liverpool, but says she’s with CAST at Cardiff University. How does that work?

Call me an old cynic, but here’s how I read it. We, mere hoi polloi, need to be ‘persuaded’ that climate change is happening in order to accept the expensive, behaviour-changing, and freedom-limiting measures demanded of us by the Globalists.

But how is the voice of Dai Public to be heard? The N.C article recommends that old favourite – Citizens’ Assemblies.

We suggest involving the public in co-creating positive and fair visions of a sustainable future through deliberative processes like Citizens’ Assemblies. This could help build a public mandate for climate policies and foster a sense of climate citizenship, weakening the discourse of delay.

Anyone who’s been paying attention will know that Citizens’ Assemblies are as representative of genuine public opinion as a Question Time audience. In practice, citizens’ assemblies are stuffed with activists who tell other activists and politicians what they want to hear.

What those involved might perceive as a virtuous circle; others as an echo chamber.

As Dr Cherry is involved with the CAST, that’s where we head next.

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CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS

There’s something very 1984-ish about ‘social transformations’, don’t you think? Rather like ‘nudge unit’ Lynn Global and their ‘Behavioural Sciences’ (BS) work for the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

CAST looks like another gang of Greta-worshippers agonising over the rest of us. We inconsiderate bastards driving cars, having kids, eating meat . . . basically, just breathing.

Also at CAST we find Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE. Linkedin tells us she was also at Cardiff University, until July 2020. And she seems to have been a lecturer.

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And although she’s left Wales for Bath University, Whitmarsh was last year recruited by the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. Below is her entry on the WNZ2035 website.

I wonder if her ‘studies of meat consumption’ concluded we should eat more?

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Professor Whitmarsh’s CV might appear to be that of an academic, and nothing more, but I suggest caution because, in addition to her links with the highly suspect IPCC, this BBC article from March 2019 tells us:

A new £5m research centre led by Cardiff University’s psychology department, which will explore new ways to tackle climate change, has also been announced.

Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh, who will head up the unit, said it would “address the fundamental question of how we can live differently and better, in ways that meet the need for these systemic, deep and rapid emission reductions”.

Again, note that it’s the psychology department exploring “new ways to tackle climate change“. What can psychology do even if there is a climate crisis?

It’s explained in the following paragraph. And I think we know what is meant by, “live differently and better“. This is another reference to the ‘social transformations’ we read about earlier.

In reality, we are expected to live differently, but it won’t be better. Not for us.

This new department at Cardiff University seems to be a collaboration with CAST, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which is part of UK Research and Innovation.

So we have a department at Cardiff University, where psychologists are funded by the UK government to, among other things, advise the ‘Welsh Government’ on how to make us behave differently in response to a claimed ‘climate crisis’.

Here’s a final contribution from CAST, which is one of those bodies pushing the idiocy that the countryside is racist, and introduces race into the climate debate with:

People of colour in the UK are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts.

It’s nonsense, obviously. Yet another attempt by leftist academics to introduce race into just about every discussion. (A guaranteed route to funding.)

Before leaving that 2019 BBC article I must comment on the contribution from former first minister, Mark Drakeford:

First Minister Mark Drakeford said the younger generation recognised a failure to act “could have catastrophic consequences for their futures”.

We are talking now of brainwashed young people. Here’s how it works.

Six-year-olds, after being traumatised by drag queens flaunting their junk and telling them they’re in the wrong bodies, are further terrified by hearing the world will end in the very near future – and it’s all the fault of their wicked parents and grandparents!

Politicians then claim to be surprised and horrified by levels of ‘climate anxiety’ among young people. As if the inevitable consequence of brainwashing can be divorced from the brainwashing itself.

This is disgusting hypocrisy. Even for a Labour politician.

◊

THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

If that establishment’s name rings a bell it’s because about 15 years ago someone released a stash of e-mails suggesting that people involved with the Climate Research Unit there had been ‘imaginative’ with their findings.

Inevitably, those with a vested interest in promoting the climate scam – and of course their media – circled the wagons and dismissed the claims as smears made by ‘climate deniers’. (Who denies climate?)

The BBC even made a drama out of it – 14 years later!

Cherry and Whitmarsh were both there at that time.

Cherry was doing a MSc in Climate Change, after which she worked for a few months for the Norwich Green Party. While Whitmarsh was a senior research assistant at the University of East Anglia from April 2005 until March 2009.

I’m not suggesting that either was involved in fiddling the figures, or indeed that fiddling took place; but there is a cloud hanging over the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia from that period.

I mention this because Cherry and Whitmarsh later came to Wales, to Corruption Bay’s favourite university. Also because what happened in Norwich makes us consider what is often referred to as Plato’s ‘Noble Lie’.

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Which is saying things you know to be untrue for (what you perceive to be) the right reasons, or a beneficial outcome. In Plato’s case it seems to have been reminding different classes of their roles in a divinely-ordered system, thereby ensuring the social cohesion of the polis.

Social cohesion and a sense of belonging are entirely desirable, but today, in the age of Globalism, and its use of Wokery, there is nothing noble about the lies we are fed.

We are told that white people are uniquely evil. We are told that men can have babies. In fact, we are told all sorts of lies in order to cause confusion, destabilisation and the very opposite of social cohesion.

In Wales, farmers are blamed for every pollution incident. Blamed by those who covet the farmers’ land. In many cases, those making the claims are lying.

One example came from Rachel Sharp of the (officially defunct) Wildlife Trusts Wales. In November 2021 she told the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee that Welsh rivers and streams were awash with growth hormones used by Welsh farmers. Here’s a link to the video.

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Growth hormones have been illegal in the UK since 1981.

This blatant lie did nothing to damage Sharp’s reputation. For she sits on the ‘Welsh Government’s Hinkley Point C Reference Group. And it should go without saying that she was also recruited to that discredited-in-advance-of-their-‘findings’ gang, the WNZ2035 Challenge Group.

Both of which are chaired by the Green Goddess, and author of the Future Generations legislation, Jane Davidson.

If you really believe that farting cows are destroying the planet, or if you’re a zealous vegan, then you’ll have no qualms about lying when it comes to farmers. Especially when politicians are eagerly waiting to accept and act on your lies.

And of course, fund your purchase of vacated farms and abandoned farmland.

◊

CONCLUSION

If there really was a climate crisis, then the evidence would be enough to make us change our wicked ways. Psychology would not be needed. But there is no real evidence. As ever, in the absence of evidence, we are subjected to ‘imaginative messaging’.

Which relies on ‘corrected’ records, contemporary temperatures recorded in ‘heat islands’, computer modelling, and influencing organisations such as the Met Office and the BBC into describing sunny days of 20º Celsius as heatwaves. Phew!

Sometimes the deception is so obvious it’s laughable. We had a fine example back in 2022 with Matthew Horwood selling his photos of a tidal creek in Pembrokeshire to media outlets as evidence of a dried up river – due to climate change!

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Read it here by scrolling down to the section ‘Someone’s Telling Porkies’.

What I found instructive about this episode was that even after they’d been told the truth, the media made no corrections to their reports. They allowed the lie to stand, because they wanted to promote the lie.

But then, I suppose they have to lie because the headline-grabbing predictions made by Al Gore and other charlatans have all failed to materialise.

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Snow still caps Kilimanjaro. The Great Barrier Reef is in rude health. Polar bear populations are thriving. People still take holidays on the Seychelles and other islands we were told would disappear under rising sea levels. Deaths from extreme weather events have plummeted.

All of which explains why people aren’t buying into the ‘climate crisis’ – because it’s just not happening. So those who want us to believe in climate change, in order to control us and our behaviour, must resort to voodoo psychology.

If that fails, then perhaps it’ll be hypnotism next. I can see it now – The Great Gateso, black top hat and cloak, leggy assistant, inviting volunteers from the audience to be mesmerised into eating his lab-made ‘meat’.

This is of course encouraging. It tells us the Globalists are losing. But we must remain vigilant against their emissaries in politics, academia, the media, pressure groups and elsewhere trying to make us accept the lies.

Lies that are anything but noble.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

High Stakes General Election 2024

On By JacIn Globalism47 Comments

There’s no avoiding it, and I won’t bother trying. So here’s my quick preview of the general election, and my reason for voting for Reform. Not because I support Reform but because I reject the rest.

Don’t worry, I still want independence, but the immediate priority is confronting Globalism. Because an ‘independent’ Wales run from the shadows, a virtue-signalling basket-case begging to join the EU, isn’t worth having.

◊

THE TITANIC DECKCHAIRS ANALOGY, AGAIN

In this election I see the political parties as passengers on the Titanic. With the doomed ship heading towards the iceberg they squabble over the arrangement of the deckchairs.

Yet when you listen to the ‘deckchair’ parties arguing you realise that, from the wider perspective, it will make hardly any difference which of them wins. Because they all ignore what’s really important – the looming ‘iceberg’.

Thankfully, there may be one party that realises where the focus should lie, and that party is Reform. Which is why I shall be voting for Reform on July 4.

I know nothing of my local candidate, I don’t need to. It doesn’t matter to me if he / she has horns, chronic flatulence, and supports Cardiff City.

That’s because party politics is dead. It is now the Globalists, their media, and their uniparty, versus the rest of us – Them against us, the people.

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. . . BUT FEW NOTED ITS PASSING

You can see that politics is dead when the uniparty stresses minor differences that are barely perceptible; exploiting understandings and interpretations that no longer apply.

Done to hide the fact that both major parties have signed up to The Agenda. Labour because it’s swallowed the nonsense about a ‘climate crisis’, transgenderism, and believes the New World Order offers something better for humanity; the Tories because they’ve always been relaxed about corporate greed.

You must reject this deception that relies on long gone ideological differences.

The struggle now is for the Western way of life, national sovereignty, the family, individual freedom, traditional values, biology, and simple common sense.

Confronting us we have political placemen, a bought media, a corrupted education system, assorted activists, all working to weaken the West so that a select group of wealthy, powerful, and increasingly desperate people can take control.

They’re getting desperate because they can no longer hide. Too many people know about them. Which means more people wanting to thwart their plans.

For as the recent elections in the EU told us, the ‘iceberg’ is increasingly visible to ordinary people in many countries. This explains traditional parties suffering electoral defeats, and the ‘far-right’ doing so well.

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For while the Globalists have effectively merged ‘mainstream’ parties, giving them supporters on what are still perceived as left and right, real opposition can only come from where we have always found those who believe in the values I earlier listed.

Which explains why we’re vilified by the Globalist media and other shills as ‘far-right’, or whatever.

◊

TO FOCUS ON WALES

This election could not have come at a worse time for Labour and Plaid Cymru. Let me explain why.

Since the advent of devolution in 1999, which put the party in control, Labour has taken credit for anything that went right (very little), while blaming ‘London’ / Tories for everything that went wrong (a lot). But you can only get away with this, even in Wales, for so long.

Now, after 25 years of devolution, perhaps even the stupidest among us realise that the NHS is devolved, so is education. Similarly with the cancellation of desperately-needed infrastructure projects, including improvements to the M4.

With no hope of the kakistocracy pinning the 20mph disaster on anybody else.

While in the pipeline is road charging, emission charges, an intensification of the war on farmers, and even more draconian measures serving net zero.

These are all Globalist policies being pushed harder in Wales because with no successes to claim in areas that matter, the ‘Welsh Government’ thinks that leading the world in ‘saving’ a planet in no danger is the only way they’re going to get a pat on the head from anybody.

In fact, we’re entering a phase of blatant deception where we’re told to forget crass and selfish material considerations like food on the table, clothes for the kids, and dignity for your elderly parents; we should focus instead on the joys derived from greater diversity, increased toad populations, and just being nice.

This is what ‘Well-being‘ is really about. Making you accept declining standards across the board in favour of airy-fairy concepts that mean fuck all. And you’re being preached at by people who will go without nothing.

In the reality from which those clowns have long drifted it means Wales going down the tubes faster than anywhere else.

As if 25 years of failure wasn’t enough to damage their chances, Labour in Wales also has to worry about Vaughan Gething, their new leader. To begin with, he’s embroiled in a donations scandal; then two of his Senedd Members stayed away and caused him to lose a vote of no confidence, yet he refuses to stand down.

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I think that on July 4 Labour in Wales will be judged on their record in Wales to a greater extent than at any election in the past. This can not be good for them.

When we turn to Plaid Cymru, Labour’s erstwhile partners in Corruption Bay, we see another party for whom the timing of this general election has not been kind.

Plaid recently disengaged itself from Labour with the 2026 Senedd elections in mind. Done to give them enough time to go in for some gentle sparring that might persuade mug punters they are now in opposition.

Then came the announcement of the general election.

Which means that in most people’s minds Plaid is still Labour’s little helper, and only slightly less culpable for the horrors of recent years.

Looking at the bigger picture, it’s difficult to see Plaid now as anything more than a ship that long ago slipped its moorings; since when it’s been drifting aimlessly, at the mercy of wind and tide.

Plaid Cymru no longer believes in Wales and what makes Wales Welsh. It has swapped it all for an artisanal tote bag stuffed with green-woke-left lunacies. And people can see it.

In my area, UK elections saw farmers’ fields filled with Plaid Cymru placards. But not this time round. But never mind, Wil is being replaced with Sarah and others of her ilk who see Plaid as an acceptable left wing party.

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Looking at LSR in that picture it’s as if Leanne Wood never went away. Then again, maybe performative ‘socialism’ appeals to you; but it’s always left me cold.

There was a time when the media used to gleefully report ‘extremists’ in Plaid Cymru, I knew some of them. (I was one of them!) Their ‘crime’ was being over-zealous in their patriotism. Plaid now attracts real extremists who don’t give a toss about Wales.

◊

WHY WE MUST STAND UP NOW

So, yes, I suppose me voting Reform could be seen as a protest vote, but it goes way beyond a traditional protest vote. Because the West is at a crossroads, and we know where we’re heading unless we change course – because they’ve told us!

Into a cold, dark future, with few jobs; our movements restricted and our behaviour and speech monitored. It’s already out there with hate speech laws. And with the EU implementing online censorship.

Let me explain how ‘hate speech’ works. It begins with politicians allowing themselves to be led by groups pushing idiocies like women having penises and men being able to give birth.

Everybody knows these suggestions are biological nonsense. But the left promotes them because it’s a way of kicking back at ‘bourgeois values’, ‘the patriarchy’, even (somehow!) ‘white supremacy’.

Liberals go along with it wanting to be ‘progressive’.

And so laws are passed stating biological absurdities. These laws, of themselves, could be dismissed as a bit of harmless fun. But it never ends there. For this legislation empowers freaks, perverts, sexual predators . . . and of course, political activists.

And gives governments the power to silence any criticism.

Which was always the intention.

Your little daughter comes home traumatised because some bloke flashed his penis at her in the swimming pool changing room. You go to the police, complain – and are told, ‘But that’s a female penis, and you’re under arrest for hate speech.’

We have now arrived at a point where stating the truth has become a crime. This is the totalitarians’ nirvana. The shades of Hitler and Stalin are comparing erections!

And censorship doesn’t come alone. It is accompanied by wrecking economies in pursuit of net zero. Arguing that white people are evil, and making them pay for it. And of course, the illegal immigration of unvetted, mainly young males who have no intention of working or integrating.

For to achieve the objective of destabilising the West the Globalists have recruited environmentalists, Islamists, sexual deviants and God knows what else. And of course, the quisling left, seeking to succeed from within where the Soviet Union failed from without.

Nor must we forget Rupert and Clarissa of the dilettante left; who’ll throw paint, stop traffic, and topple statues to prove how frightfully poor and oppressed they are. Yah.

Goes down well with other spoilt brats at Glasto.

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Either we troop silently into this dystopian future, or we say no. And at the moment the best way to say no is to vote for political parties the Globalists do not control. Parties like Marine le Pen’s RN (didn’t they do well!), Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the AfD in Germany, and others across Europe.

For that’s one thing I’ve noticed in recent years – a growing appreciation of what it means to be European by people who increasingly reject the EU. There’s a powerful message there if you think about it.

Finally, let’s not forget Donald Trump. When he’s elected US President in November he must not make the mistake he made first time round by taking into his camp too many who were not really on his side.

He must be ruthless from Day One in rooting out the enemies of the USA and the West. A great start would be keeping his promise to release all the JFK assassination files. As a first step in undoing the power of the deep state that has caused so much misery in the USA and around the world.

For one of the Globalists’ greatest successes has been to manoeuvre leftists and liberals, who so revered JFK, onto the same side as those who killed him.

◊

A MESSAGE TO LABOUR VOTERS

I’m going to end with a message addressed to Labour voters in Blaengwynfi and Bonymaen, the people from whom I am sprung, and with whom I identify.

The Labour party has always taken your vote for granted, knowing you’d chop your arm off rather than vote Conservative. But times have changed; there’s no difference between them any more. They march to the same drum.

Labour and Conservatives will make you and your communities poorer, both will close Port Talbot steelworks, and both will implement the half-arsed ideas of those attending the Hay Festival rather than listen to the needs of working class people.

Are you going to carry on being the mug who votes Labour?

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Coleg Soros And Associates Part 2

On By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Globalism, Higher Education, Russia, World Economic Forum39 Comments

I had considered doing this piece as an update to the one I put out on Tuesday, but there’s too much I want to say, so it has to be done as a second posting. And that wasn’t the only problem.

For I’d also intended including a reminder about the generosity to Coleg Soros that I reported on in ‘Green Man, Red Herring‘, in May 2022.

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THE BENEFITRIX

I’m referring now to Troed-yr-Harn, the farm that was bought for Coleg Soros back in January 2021. I couldn’t identify the buyer beyond her name, ‘Jenny Mathilde Daneels Watt’, and so I signed off with a request for information.

Here’s a link to the Land Registry title document (no plan, unfortunately), and here’s the link to the title document for a smaller purchase on the same site (with plan).

I’d assumed that Daneels was a Dutch name, and because Watt is usually Scottish, that she’d married a Scotsman.

The Daneels name is in fact, Flemish, so I wasn’t far off. Though she is a French citizen with an English mother. (Here’s what Linkedin tells us.) While her Scottish husband’s name is David Crichton-Watt.

I now have more information on them and it’s fascinating. It takes us out East again to Hong Kong, then Kuala Lumpur, and various other locations.

◊

HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES

But let’s start in Herefordshire, with this article from Country Life. It tells us:

David, a successful hedge-fund manager based in Kuala Lumpur, his wife, Jenny . . . were living at the time in Malaysia and looking to buy a house in England.

Which they did, and they seemed so happy at Newport House. Their fourth daughter was born there.

Yet in 2018 David and Jenny Crichton-Watt moved to Switzerland and put the property on the market for £10m.

Image, Knight Frank. Newport House. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The money from selling Newport House could have covered the £1m splashed out on Troed-yr-Harn. But I suspect that’s a drop in the ocean to a family like Crichton-Watt.

The main vehicle for Crichton-Watt’s business activities might be Asian Investment Management Services (AIMS) which he set up in 1982. But he seems to have fingers in a number of pies.

Among them, Steppe Cement Ltd of Kazakhstan. This piece from the Financial Times in October 2022 tells us that the family had just increased its holding in the company.

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You’ve probably seen their trucks delivering to builders in your area. Or maybe not.

And as I say, Crichton-Watt has been involved in Hong Kong and China for a long time. Which is where we find Andrew James Kadoorie McAulay of Rewilding Wealth Ltd and who, as we read in the piece earlier this week, is also investing in Coleg Soros.

Another pie in which Crichton-Watt has a finger in is Phoenix Gold Fund Ltd.

David Crichton-Watt is a busy man, on the global stage, and yet . . . I couldn’t find a photo of him. Even this piece (scroll down) has pictures of most investors interviewed, but not him.

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MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

In the previous piece, when I looked at Kadoorie-McAulay and his company, Rewilding Wealth Ltd, I wrote.

Like me when I first saw it, you’re wondering about Rewilding Wealth Ltd. So here’s what I found. It’s registered with Companies House as an Overseas Entity. Located in that bastion of probity and openness, the British Virgin Islands.

I re-visit this because BVI probably could be termed a ‘bastion of probity and openness’ when compared to Kazakhstan.

For while Kazakhstan is, theoretically, independent of Russia, links are strong, not least because Kazakh President Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, is kept in power by Putin.

On top of which, 15% of the population is ethnic Russian, and concentrated in the north, close to the Russian border. If he so wished, I’m sure Vlad could engineer a Sudetenland situation.

Kazakhstan acts as a Russian gateway and conduit to the rest of the world, and is something close to being a Russian satellite.

◊

ALL PART OF A BIGGER PICTURE

The so-called ‘Welsh Government’ has sold us and our country down the river to the Globalist climate scammers, and those who’ve been encouraged to use the scam to enrich themselves.

Part of the acceptance, a show of commitment by politicians and others, sees Wales playing a disproportionate role in the farce. In practice, it means waging war on motorists, farmers, and just about anybody else the fanatics claim is part of the threat.

Blind acceptance that results in Welsh politicians pimping Wales out to renewable energy companies. And obeying the diktats of the green-haired and the swivel-eyed in various pressure groups.

As if that wasn’t bad enough . . . I’m told there are 873 environmental gangs operating in Wales, and there’ll be more by the time you read this. All demanding public funding . . . and privately-owned land.

Also corporations, hedge funds, and other investors seeking to buy farms in order to plant trees and make huge profits from ‘carbon sequestration’. A scam within a scam. Or even, as now seems to be the case with Coleg Soros, for rewilding.

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JUDGED BY THE COMPANY WE KEEP

Let me make it clear that just because someone does business in exotic locales, where the application of rules may be ‘lax’, does not imply wrongdoing.

That said, I did turn up something that might cause concern, when I ran across this document, from which I’ve extracted the entry below. It links David Crichton-Watt, or his Asian Investment Management Services Ltd, with Lutea Trustees.

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The document is produced by:

‘The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is a private American corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization that regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets‘, based in Washington, DC.

Naturally, I got to wondering about Lutea. So I did another search. And turned up this document from the Jersey Financial Services Commission from 2022.

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This is quite serious. ‘ML’ is money laundering, and ‘TF’ is terrorist financing.

The finger is firmly pointed at Andrew Mark Hicks. Who the Jersey Financial Services Commission has now barred from working in finance.

For at the end of the day, and as the Lutea website reminds us – ‘It’s all about trust‘.

I’m not for one minute suggesting that David Crichton-Watt and his wife are involved in money laundering or terrorist financing, but a connection with an outfit like Lutea doesn’t help anybody’s reputation.

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QUESTIONS

So, does Coleg Soros, or ‘Welsh Government’, Powys county council, or any other bugger, care where the money arriving in Talgarth originates? Or how it’s made?

If not, then it’s up to the rest of us, who do care, to keep asking questions.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Coleg Soros And Associates

On By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Environmentalism, Globalism, Labour Party, Welsh Government, Wind Turbines, World Economic Forum19 Comments

This wasn’t planned, but it’s too big and complicated for a tweet, and so I’m putting it out as a quickie. As the title suggests, it concerns Coleg Soros in Talgarth, otherwise known as Black Mountains College.

For those new to this blog, or regulars with short memories, I have written a few times about Coleg Soros, so just type the name in the search box to the right. This piece from June 2019 will explain why I’ve renamed Black Mountains College after that evil old bastard (scroll down).

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COLEG SOROS GROWS!

Over the years I’ve become aware of two Coleg Soros entities: the now dissolved Black Mountains College Ltd, and Black Mountains College Project Ltd.

But there was a third company I’d somehow overlooked. In my defence I’ll say that this other company wasn’t launched until just before Christmas 2022. It’s Black Mountains College Operations Ltd. Scroll down on the overview page and you’ll see that it’s devoted to education.

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It began life with a single £1 share held by director Ben Rawlence, who’s been involved with Coleg Soros from the off. But then things moved on apace.

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INTEREST FROM AFAR

In June 2023 there was a share issue with a total value of £4,480,000. A couple of weeks later, William John Lana became a director. In November 2023 the company produced a breakdown of shareholders. Here it is.

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Like me when I first saw it, you’re wondering about Rewilding Wealth Ltd. So here’s what I found. It’s registered with Companies House as an Overseas Entity. Located in that bastion of probity and openness, the British Virgin Islands.

But using a Hong Kong correspondence address.

When we seek the beneficial owner(s) we see named, Andrew James Kadoorie McAulay, of Hong Kong, and the Bermuda Trust Company Ltd based, as you’d expect, on the sun-drenched isles of the same name.

Trying to make sense of it I wondered who McAulay is. What I found interesting is the Kadoorie element of his name. Because the Kadoories were a family of Jewish merchants in Baghdad who moved to China. And became very, very rich.

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AND CLOSER TO HOME

William John Lana, who we met earlier, may be the UK representative of Rewilding Wealth Ltd (RWL). I’m guessing that because in the Articles of Association for Black Mountains College Operations Ltd (page 12), it says:

For so long as RWL holds any shares in issue from time to time, it shall be entitled to nominate, appoint and maintain in office one person as a director of the company and to remove (or remove and replace) such director from time to time.

So what do we know about William John Lana? Well, let’s start with his Linkedin page, which mentions a number of companies he’s involved with. Partly confirmed by this Companies House entry.

But no mention of the one run by him and his wife, Greenfibres Ltd. It’s one of those companies that charges Guardian readers over the odds for linen and suchlike so they can sleep easy at night knowing they’re superior to the common herd destroying the planet.

Though I did find Greenfibres listed separately.

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MAKING SENSE OF IT

I think the key here is Rewilding Wealth Ltd. For while there is a Caribbean connection, I believe the majority holding lies in Hong Kong, with Andrew James Kadoorie McAulay.

As I’ve told you, his mother is a member of the ultra-wealthy Kadoorie clan, and his father, Ronald James McAulay, is a Scottish-Hong Kong billionaire, now in his late 80s.

Apart from McAulay Jnr being chairman of Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, it’s difficult to know how he whiles away the hours, or how he makes his contribution to the family pile.

Hong Kong was handed over to the People’s Republic of China at midnight on July 1, 1997, and Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden was quick off the mark. For Wikipedia tells us, ‘Conservation work has been extended to Mainland China since 1998’.

‘Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!’ Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In fact, digging around, it became clear that McAulay works quite happily with communist China. It looks as if he and his family are ‘flexible’ in dealing with the comrades, and have been for some time.

An example might be him sitting on the board of the China Light and Power Company (CLP) from 1997 to 2000. Which coincides with his time as a director of UK-based Solar Century Holdings Ltd, now owned by Norwegian state-owned Statkraft.

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SOPHIE GETS IN ON THE ACT

Clearly, someone has plans that involve Wales, but will probably have little or no Welsh input. (Rather like Coleg Soros itself.) Other than the necessary permissions to go ahead. But why is whoever’s behind it all using a small education establishment in Powys?

To make sense of it, let me first make clear that Black Mountains College Operations Ltd is controlled by Black Mountains College Project Ltd.

Within days of William Lana becoming a director of the new creation, Sophie Joyce Howe joined the board of the parent company.

She is of course the former Future Generations Commissioner. Her Linkedin profile claims she’s now a ‘freelance’. Which may be true, but she’s not averse to picking up a few well-paid gigs on the side.

Because a good source told me Howe’s another of the many Labour insiders on the payroll of Scottish company Bute Energy, which wants to cover our beautiful country in wind turbines and pylons.

And then, when I checked the Charity Commission entry for Black Mountains College Project I could see that Sophie Howe is also a trustee of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. She joined in July 2023.

And let’s not forget that in the extract I used from the Articles of Association of Black Mountains College Operations, and the reference to appointing a director, Howe might also fit the bill if the clause extends to the controlling company.

But if she is the designated RWL director, then who is Lana representing?

◊

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Rewilding Wealth Ltd may do what it says on the tin, by which I mean it seeks investors for rewilding projects. And as the Guardian told us a few years back, there’s serious money to be made.

In which case, Coleg Soros will serve as the entry point, perhaps facilitator, for foreign investors buying up Welsh farmland. Something the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ fully supports, and which might explain Sophie Howe’s involvement.

Another possibility, is that Kadoorie-McAulay is fronting for the Chinese Communist Party, and they want their slice of the Welsh renewables cake. For in its blind acceptance of the Globalists’ climate scam the ‘Welsh Government’ has laid our country wide open to exploiters from around the world.

Neither corporate rewilders nor Chinese Communist party should be acceptable to any Welsh man or Welsh woman who cares about this little country of ours. It’s all we’ve got.

Something else that is unacceptable is the way Labour insiders benefit from cwtshing up to those exploiting Wales. Selling political influence for personal gain is exactly what Labour politicians accuse their Conservative counterparts of doing.

Deluding yourselves that taking the money is justified because you’re saving the planet is rank hypocrisy. Which is of course Labour’s stock-in-trade.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

A Personal Take On The Euro Elections 2024

On By JacIn Europe, European Union, Globalism, Russia, Wales, World Economic Forum27 Comments

It might seem odd for me to be writing about elections to the EU parliament 8 years after Wales voted to leave the EU, but I’m doing so because these results are important, and will have repercussions for us.

◊

THE BIG PICTURE

There was a swing to the right across the continent, but of course the media found it almost impossible to engage in honest reporting. There were crude references to the 1930s, or even suggestions that the swing was largely due to a low turnout.

Watching the exit polls and the early declarations on Sunday night, on the BBC, CNN, and Euronews, I was struck by the way commentators used terms like ‘centre’, ‘centre left’, ‘socialists’, even ‘green-left’, but never ‘far left’.

While on the other side there’s rarely a ‘right of centre’; that side of the spectrum begins with ‘right wing’ or ‘far right’, even ‘hard right’. (Yeah, well hard!)

There’s also the ‘populist right’, whatever that means. (Answers on a post card.)

I got the impression that some of those misinforming me would have liked to slip into Antifa black bloc and yell, ‘Nazi!’, ‘fascist!‘, and ‘transphobe!’ Displaying commendable restraint the Beeb limited itself to images like this, linking Austria with Germany (Anschluss), and showing raised arms. (Nudge, nudge.)

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When it came to Gorgeous Geert Wilders, there was an early attempt (Netherlands voted on Thursday) to suggest that his Party for Freedom PVV had somehow tanked, even though projections had it increasing its representation in Brussels from 0 to 7 MEPs. (As it turned out, the PVV won 6 seats.)

Done by making the rather silly comparison with the national election last November, which the PVV won.

The talking heads were almost united in bemoaning the swing to the right, but chose to focus on the personalities, or the possible line-up in the EU parliament, rather than address the reasons for the upheaval they were witnessing.

Those reasons being unsustainable levels of immigration and the hardships being imposed by the completely unnecessary drive to net zero.

◊

THE VIEW FROM THE EAST

The picture across the continent is too big and complicated for me to look at every country. What’s more, the picture in the east, from Finland to Romania, is coloured to a greater or lesser degree by the war in Ukraine, and attitudes towards Russia.

For Finland was ruled by Russia until 1917, then Stalin invaded in 1940. Anti-Russian sentiment is widespread in the Baltic States. Poland borders Ukraine. Hungary tries to play the honest broker. Many Romanians fear Russia will push west, towards and beyond Odessa, to link with Transdnistria, where there is already a Russian military presence.

So I’m going to focus on Central and Western Europe. Where results are marginally easier to read, and then, due to the size and influence of some of the countries involved, the consequences will be felt beyond those countries’ borders.

I should also point out that in a number of countries the EU elections were held on the same day as local or national elections. Which can confuse the picture, and also influence the result of the EU poll.

I’m going to focus on France, but I’ll also zip around a few other countries; including of course, Germany. Once the economic and industrial powerhouse of the continent . . . but then came net zero.

◊

LA BELLE FRANCE

As I’ve suggested by focusing on France, the big story of the elections was that Macron got his ass kicked by Marine Le Pen’s protégé, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella.

Marine Le Pen fought hard for National Rally (NR) to shake off the worst of her father’s legacy, but no matter what did she was stuck with the name. Bardella, of mainly Italian background, but also having an Algerian great-grandfather, has no such problem.

I know what you’re wondering, and you should be ashamed of yourselves! Ach y fi! Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Also in the mix, almost unnoticed, was the Reconquête! party. It linked with a few others to fight under the La France fière banner, got 5.47% and 5 seats. Founded as recently as 2021 by Éric Zemmour, the son of Arabic-speaking Berber Jews from Algeria.

I mention this because Zemmour is usually said to be further to the right, and more hostile to Islam, than NR.

The map below shows that NR came top of the poll in every départment other than Paris. A reminder of a problem found across the West – the disproportionate influence of a metropolitan elite.

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By which I mean, politicians, the media, self-styled ‘progressives’, academics, countless thousands in NGOs and similar gangs living off the public purse.

In response to his drubbing Macron has gone for broke and called a parliamentary election. His job won’t be up for grabs, but he’ll be there to undermine his party, and the liberal left more generally, by reminding French voters he’s now a lame duck president.

An example of a weak man acting tough. And it invariably ends in disaster.

Something that cost Macron and his party votes was his call for what sounded very much like war with Russia. This Spectator article from March 10 suggests Macron made his remarks about intervention in Ukraine to combat NR’s 10% lead in opinion polls ahead of the EU elections.

This cunning plan was so successful that the eventual gap was 16.2%, with NR getting 31.4%, to Macron’s Renaissance getting just 15.2%.

The plan to give Putin what for was not well received by his neighbours and allies. (‘”Follow me!“, he cried, sabre held aloft . . . then looked back and saw he was alone.’)

Incidentally, the French Communist party got just 2.36%. Now if that don’t warm the cockles of your crypto fascist heart, missus, then I don’t know what will.

Back in the days of Gladio there was a real worry, in London and Washington, that France (and Italy) might actually elect a communist government. How times change!

Macron is now urging the French to ‘say no to extremes’ in the elections at the end of the month. Rejecting his brand of banality, mediocrity, and incompetence, does not make people extremists.

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Wise up, mon ami – your bateau has sailed.

◊

A ROUNDUP

Next door to France, in Belgium, there were also national and regional elections. With a turnout of 87.42% for the federal election. The big winners in the regional elections for Flanders were Eurosceptic Flemish nationalist parties, though Vlaams Belang – the ‘separatist’ party – did not perform as well as expected.

On the national stage, the same two parties topped the poll. Other, mainly francophone parties, trotted in behind them.

As in France, the big loser was the party running the national government, but unlike France, there was also a national election, which the ruling coalition lost. This resulted in prime minister Alexander De Croo handing in his notice to the king. But he’ll hang on until a new coalition is formed.

Belgian politics is ‘messy’. A small country divided by language and regional rivalries, with its capital, Brussels, also serving as the EU capital.

In Italy, there was no big surprise. Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, heading the national government coalition, came top. And although the usual suspects call her the ‘heiress to Mussolini’ and a neo-fascist, I fear she may be little more than a political chancer with a real talent for self-promotion.

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An example would be her visit to Albania just before the EU elections, to inspect the centres where would-be migrants will be held while Italy vets their claims. This Rwanda-style deal seems to be pissing off many of the comrades, so it has that in its favour.

And those whose applications fail will presumably be recruited by Albanian gangs and end up over here tending cannabis factories. Everyone’s a winner!

We can’t ignore Germany, the largest member of the bloc in terms of population and just about everything else. As in other countries we’ve looked at, the results were a disaster for the party or parties running the national government.

Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, who head up the ruling coalition, came a poor third with just 13.9%. The big winners were the Christian Democrats (with their Bavarian ally) on 30%, and to the right of them, the AfD on 15.9%. The Greens came fourth with 11.9%.

Catching up on reports as I wrote this I came across something that indicates how the political focus has shifted to the right.

Associated Press is one of the most reliably Globalist mouthpieces. A joke as a news organisation, it can be relied on to spout the Davos-UN line on climate, ‘refugees’, etc.

Normally, AP would be horrified by advances for conservatives, but here it seems to be taking consolation from the success of the German Christian Democrats.

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Scholz says he won’t be calling an election, but the decision may be out of his hands.

The BBC found similar comfort in a ‘resurgent’ centre-left in France. Mmm. I’m sure there was a Straw Clutchers party standing somewhere.

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Next door to Germany, in Austria, it was a similar story. A big surge in support for one of those parties that puts leftists into Wolfie Smith mode.

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We’ve looked at France, Germany and Italy, so the other large country in the west is Spain. There, it was a familiar tale, though with a strange twist.

I quote from the Reuters article I just linked to: ‘Alvise Perez, a far-right social media influencer running against what he describes as universal corruption, managed to obtain three seats with a campaign mostly conducted through the messaging app Telegram.’

Here’s a link that might tell you more about Señor Perez, who dedicated his victory to an 81-year-old man who’d been sent to prison for shooting a burglar.

I’d hoped to bring results from Ireland, where there were also local elections. But counting has been slow, and when I was finishing off this article yesterday evening the results for the Euro elections had still not been finalised.

I would also have liked to tell you about the local elections, but that would have meant a lot of digging. The insurgent parties and individuals I’ve mentioned here in recent times are probably included among Independents and Others in the box below

It’s worth noting that Sinn Féin was topping every poll until it became clear that it supports open borders, which hurts its working class base more than other groups.

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But I can tell you that John Moran is the new mayor of Limerick.

◊

YOUNG EUROPE

In order to explain a few more things about Poland, France, the wider picture, and the standard of BBC journalism, I’m using the two clips below.

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Polish premier Tusk is a Globalist and Permanent War party puppet, and therefore a favourite with the BBC.

But Auntie disapproves of his rival, the Law and Justice party, so it has to be labelled ‘right wing’. But when there’s another party, even more likely to bring on an attack of the vapours, such as the Confederation party, it must be branded ‘far-right’.

But note, the panel also reveals that this party from beyond the Pale is the most popular among 18-29- year-olds. While the other panel tells us that in France 18-24-year-olds have swung behind Le Pen’s RN.

Across Europe young people are rejecting the parties of the centre, and the greens, to move left and right, with the right gaining far more than the left.

This swing to the right among the young is significant. For we’re not dealing with the ‘gammons’ so beloved of leftists and their media, those sad caricatures nostalgic for a time when white families appeared in TV adverts.

This support from young people is rooted in events of the here and the now. And that’s why I find it so encouraging.

◊

FINAL THOUGHTS

I see these European elections as a blow for the Globalists. They also see it, and they’ve been quick to respond. The head of the UN’s refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, ‘criticised the politicisation of migration in European elections‘.

Listen, pal, you and your Globalist mates, the politicians you’ve won over, the European Commission, the media you control . . . you all politicised the issue long ago, by doing away with border controls, and by demonising those who oppose your plans.

You are in no position therefore to criticise decent people who’ve had enough of your behaviour. The fightback is underway, both in Europe and the USA.

For the day after he took office, your puppet Biden opened the southern border. Now that his handlers finally realise how unpopular a decision that has proven to be, and with a presidential election looming, they’re back-pedalling like crazy.

Let’s also remember the damage being inflicted by the climate scam. It’s destroying the Welsh countryside, making everything more expensive, while personal freedom suffers from the restrictions it demands.

Which is why, on July 4, I expect a rag-bag of candidates, some of them off the wall, one or two sought by various constabularies; with a back-of-a-fag-packet ‘manifesto’, and a leader used by leftist yobs for target practice, to do rather well.

Because that’s where we are. Think well on’t.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Tramshed, The Loans, The Leases, The Lord 2

On By JacIn Corruption, Corruption Bay, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour63 Comments

This began as an update to the piece I put out a few days ago. But it grew too big. So I had to admit that the only way to do it properly was as a follow-up, a second part. Which explains what you’re about to read.

◊

LEO FROM THE OLD SCHOOL

A source, someone who’s given me some good stuff in the past, tells me a name to watch for in relation to the Tramshed and other matters is Leonora ‘Leo’ Thomson. She already plays a big role, and may have an even bigger role in future.

Leonora Thomson was educated at Oakham School, and then Leeds University, where she did philosophy. Yet another product of a public school helping to fill the thinning ranks of Labour in Wales.

One day I might put aside some time and see just how many of them there are. For now, I’ll just remind you of two.

There’s Senedd Member Jenny Rathbone of the uber wealthy Rathbone dynasty, who goes big on the environment, and whose partner, John Uden, was given a sinecure by Bute Energy, which wants to cover Wales in wind turbines and pylons.

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And of course, there’s the Green Goddess herself, Jane Davidson, who wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that dictates so many of the restrictions on our personal freedoms, and also the damage being done to our economy.

What was once the party of the Welsh working class has to keep applying an increasingly unconvincing Welsh veneer as it falls further under the control of pressure groups, fanatics, sexual deviants, and career politicians.

Among them we find the privately-educated, conflicted between guilt at their privileged upbringing and the old impulse to shout at the natives.

◊

WHAT LEO DID NEXT

To help you start, here’s Leo’s Linkedin profile. It’s all media, arts, PR. Also a brief stint with the Metropolitan Police, plus 8 years as a Labour councillor in Ealing. All in London until she arrived in Cardiff, December 2015, to become managing director of the Welsh National Opera Company (WNO).

If you go to the About panel on Linkedin, and click on ‘see more’, you bring up what you see below. I’ve highlighted parts that I’ll be referring to as you read on.

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There’s nothing listed after she ended her stint with the WNO in August 2019. What followed is partly explained in the image above, with the rest filled in as we go along. But now, let’s turn to another line of enquiry.

Here’s the relevant page from Companies House. There are some interesting entries there. Let’s go through them.

The oldest active directorship is with English Touring Opera Ltd. She joined 7 June, 2021. Less than two years after leaving the WNO.

On 18 November, 2021 Leo became a director of the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales Ltd. Well, when I read that you could have knocked me down with an illegally-released-into-the-wild beaver!

Yet nothing I see in her background suggests an interest in flora and fauna. Truth is, this was a political appointment to an organisation the ‘Welsh Government’ wishes to use in its war on livestock farming.

In November 2021, with another woman, Thomson set up Studland Hill Ltd. This is a property management company in West Ealing, London. The other director gives as her address a house being renovated according to this Google map for January 2021.

On 23 March 2023 Thomson and three others set up Omidaze Productions Ltd in Penarth. Here’s the glossy website.

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Once you read, “fairer and more equal society” you know it’s about leftist propaganda rather than theatre. More ‘Waiting for Gramsci’ than anything Beckett wrote.

Can’t help wondering where the money comes from, cos I’m damn sure Omidaze don’t pay for itself.

Monk Racing Ltd is an odd one. Formed in 2000 it’s always filed as dormant. The key to Thomson’s involvement is probably Anthony Kenneth Lewis, who was a founding director, and is the joint owner with her of a house on the Taff Embankment.

Lewis resigned from Monk Racing 9 April, 2023. Thomson joined 27 June, 2023.

There have been two stints where Leo served as a Labour councillor. The first you’ve already read about, from 1998 to 2006 in the London Borough of Ealing; and now, from May 2022 for the Riverside ward in Cardiff.

Given the Philistines in Labour’s ranks, both on Cardiff council and in the Senedd, I’m sure the comrades have deferred more than once to Thomson’s knowledge of the finer things in life.

‘How do ew spell opera, love?’

Though I’m beginning to wonder if Leonora Thomson is bad luck. Let me explain.

◊

HARD TIMES, FOR SOME

Towards the end of September last year, it was announced that the ‘Welsh Government’-controlled Arts Council was pulling the plug on the National Theatre of Wales (NTW).

In March we learnt that Thomson was joining as interim CEO. Having already served as Interim Joint Chief Executive from October 2019 to June 2021. And now NTW has moved to the Tramshed, a nest of Labour cronies and insiders.

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Another body to lose funding recently was the WNO. Where Thomson was managing director for almost 4 years until August 2019. (Though I believe she returned in some kind of temporary capacity.)

Which means the WNO lost funding after Leonora Thomson had been involved, and while she was Chair at English Touring Opera. Seeing as the WNO performs at English venues some might see the WNO and the English company as competitors.

Though it’s difficult to explain these cuts to two such important cultural bodies as the WNO and NTW when one of their main funders, the Arts Council of Wales, saw its income increase by more than 50% in just 4 years.

Where did the extra money go? Surely it didn’t all go to Theatr Clwyd?

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A third organisation to lose funding following an association with Leo Thomson is the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Creative Lives (RWCMD). She was working there in some unspecified ‘freelance’ role.

One organisation linked to Leonora Thomson suffering a funding cut, I could dismiss; two, I might, just, accept as coincidence; but three, and in such a short space of time? Do me a favour!

◊

UNDERMINE, TAKE CONTROL

What we’ve just looked at is a phenomenon I’ve seen regularly in recent years. I wrote about it a year ago in Taking Control, Of Everything. I focused then on the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) and the Football Association of Wales (FAW).

It’s the ‘Welsh Government’s method for taking control of an organisation.

The first stage is to discredit and undermine the target organisation, maybe also those running it. (Sometimes with inside help.) Stage Two is the reduction or withdrawal of funding. Stage Three, the takeover; done through a combination of restored / increased funding and the appointment of politically loyal or malleable individuals to the organisation.

A bit like the CIA handbook for regime change.

What we’ve seen done to the WNO, NTW and RWCMD could only have been achieved with the assistance of the Arts Council of Wales; which had already undergone the same treatment.

I wrote about it back to August 2021.

First in Corruption Bay and a tale of Cymrophobia (23.08.2021). In which I reported that the Arts Council and the National Museum commissioned three reports in June 2020 to look into ‘widening engagement’.

To make sense of it, remember that George Floyd died the previous month and there was fierce competition as people fought to honour his memory capitalise on his death.

The three groups commissioned were:

An unregistered entity run by Labour insiders Lu Thomas and Jon Luxton.

Richie Turner Associates. Here’s the image then being used on his Linkedin page.

To give a reminder of the period. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

(Though the company of that name wasn’t formed until February 1, 2022.)

The third outfit commissioned was The Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union (WAARU). Which had no presence anywhere – yet its anonymously submitted report was accepted!

And remember! 31 other applicants were rejected in favour of these three.

The piece in which you’ll find these joys unalloyed was followed with Arts Council of Wales and Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, an update (31.08.2021).

And then (06.09.2021) Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union unmasked, in which I identified those behind WAARU. The usual mix of chip-on-shoulder race grifters and middle class leftists trying to live out their slogans.

Woke employees of Welsh national institutions collaborating with their Woke allies outside to discredit and undermine the organisations they worked for.

◊

FINALE: FITTING LEO INTO THE BIGGER PICTURE

The evidence might suggest that Leonora Hope Thomson has been employed by the ‘Welsh Government’ as some kind of hatchet woman; sent in to various bodies and asked to recommend ‘economies’ and ‘restructuring’.

Part of a pattern that sees ‘Welsh Government’ /  ‘Welsh’ Labour, take control of our public, artistic, and sporting life. Done at the behest of the shrieky and the unhinged to promote the Woke agenda.

Which explains how we see Leo, and National Theatre Wales, of which she’s interim CEO, joining the migration to the Tramshed. Which is of course good news for the owner, Cardiff council (Labour); and the lessee, the Count of Abbasock (also Labour).

And it contributes to the circular economy of which I wrote in the previous piece.

Welcome to socialist Wales 2024. The circular economy, benefitting those lucky enough to be in the ‘circle’. Where there’s no private investment, and everything is state funded, but only those close to the ruling party can benefit.

And having mentioned Cardiff council, it’s worth adding that even though she was only elected in May 2022, Thomson, who hardly knows Cardiff, is now Chair of the council’s Labour group.

I wonder who decided to give her such rapid promotion?

I suggest we watch Leonora Hope Thomson, and the Tramshed with which she’s now linked. Both might have roles in the political and public life of Wales.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Leo’s name isn’t already pencilled in on one of the closed lists for the 2026 Senedd elections.

Finally, what I found perhaps most disturbing when writing this was that I had difficulty telling the Labour party and the ‘Welsh Government’ apart. They should be two clearly separate entities.

That they’ve effectively merged is, for me, confirmation that Wales is a one-party state.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Tramshed, The Loans, The Leases, The Lord

On By JacIn Corruption26 Comments

This piece is about corruption and mutual back-scratching in and around the Labour party. ‘So what’s new?’, you ask. Well, this piece introduces some new faces, and connections that may surprise you.

And with an election on July 4, I will take any and every opportunity to put the boot into Labour and its fellow-travellers.

My original intention was to write about the eco-shriekers at Wales Environmental Link (WEL). In particular, Natalie Buttriss, formerly of the attempted land grab Summit to Sea; and Rachel Sharp who, in November 2021, lied to Senedd Members about Welsh farmers using growth hormones.

Sharp’s been joined at the (officially non-existent) Wildlife Trusts Wales by Extinction Rebellion’s Tim Birch, a real extremist who was chased out of Derbyshire.

Then I saw that WEL is now based at ‘Tramsheds Tech Ltd, Unit D, Tramshed, Pendyris Street, Cardiff CF11 6BH’. So I made a quick delve (as you do) and decided there was a bigger and fresher story at the Tramsheds.

Fresher, because I haven’t written about it before.

And that explains what you’re about to read.

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THE TRAMSHED

I’d seen the name a few times, but it meant little to me. As far as I could tell it was one of those outfits that rents out office space by the day or the week. Here’s a link to the Tramshed website, which might help.

Vaughan Gething launched his leadership campaign from Tramsheds’ Newport base. And why not? For as the Pembrokeshire Herald reminded us, it had received ‘Welsh Government’ funding through the Soft Landing programme. And then returned the favour with a £3,000 non-cash donation to Gething’s campaign.

Here’s the Companies House entry, and at the time of writing compulsory strike-off action was in progress because the accounts were almost two months overdue.

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One of the two charges against Tramsheds Tech is a loan from Finance Wales Investments (since re-named the Development Bank of Wales) in July 2017.

The Tramsheds Tech directors are Louise Margaret Harris, CEO and co-founder, Labour peer Lord Evan Mervyn Davies aka Lord Abersoch, Simon John Dixon, and Thomas Gwyn Davies (who I take to be Abersoch’s son).

Staying with the People tab, we see that control over Tramsheds is exercised by Tramsheds Holdings Ltd.

Here’s the Companies House entry for Tramsheds (Holdings) Ltd. You’ll see the same directors as for Tramsheds Tech.

Harris is also a director of a company based at Tramsheds, Partneriaid Oleia Cyf, along with media types Huw Eurig Davies and Kevin Tame. Until January this year, control of the company was exercised by Tramsheds Tech, before passing to Davies and Tame.

Let’s go back to Tramsheds (Holdings) Ltd, the parent company of Tramsheds Tech.

When it began life, in March 2021, all 300 shares were held by Lord Davies. The situation as reported March 27 was what you see below. Though Huw Eurig Davies ceased being a director 28 February, and Mark Prosser John was never a director.

To save you reaching for the abacus . . . the other four combined hold one share more than the noble lord.

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I can’t tell you a lot about Mark John, but he was a director at Tramsheds Tech Ltd until 29 November 2023. In fact, he was the co-founder with Louise Margaret Harris.

John appears to be another media type.

The only company he’s involved with now is BLC (Wales) Ltd, based at Tramsheds Tech, where the other director (and secretary) is Louise Margaret Harris; accounts are overdue with Companies House, and the most recently filed accounts do not paint a rosy picture.

So, we have directors of what appear to be linked companies, all based in and connected with the old Tramshed on Pendyris Street.

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‘THE SCOURGE OF LEASEHOLD’ (AS LABOUR REGULARLY SAYS)

Inevitably (cos I’m a nosy bugger), I got to wondering who owns the Tramsheds building. And so I popped over to the Land Registry website for the title document and plan for the site. You’ll see that it’s owned by Cardiff council.

Or to be absolutely clear, Cardiff council owns the freehold, but an agreement was entered into, in December 2014, to lease the building to DS Properties (Pontypridd) Ltd for 999 years.

But after the appointment of an Administrator in February 2018, this company was finally dissolved in June last year. At the end, ownership lay with DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd. So that’s our next stop.

DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd is owned by Simon Malcolm Baston, the sole director. He has a number of companies that specialise in renovating and converting old buildings, most of which have been taken over by the local council, which is always Labour controlled.

An example would be the old Albert Hall cinema in Swansea. (I remember the uniformed doorman!) Baston got the money for that project from The Welsh Ministers. And Baston’s no stranger to Swansea. He’s been getting contracts in my home town for at least 20 years.

And just up town, Tramshed Tech is involved in the renovation of the Palace Theatre. Though I suggest that the picture below is misleading.

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Gwenno Jones donned a hi viz jacket and a hard hat for a photo op, otherwise she’s togged up for a night out.

Tramshed Tech will be running the revamped Palace when it’s completed by Simon Baston and DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd, or whoever’s actually doing the work.

There may even be local firms getting a look in!

To recap: the Tramshed building is owned by Cardiff council. It was leased late in 2014 / early 2015 to DS Properties (Pontypridd) Ltd, which was owned by another Simon Baston company DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd.

Baston duly renovated the Tramshed, and converted much of the building into flats. These flats – 31 by my count – were then sold on 250-year leases in 2016.

Though the music venue at the Tramsheds was leased for just 15 years to Alchemy Tramshed Ltd, which used a Cardiff address. This company was taken over in November and December 2019 by Australian company TEG Venues UK Ltd.

The Tramshed Café and the Dance Studio were also leased for 15 years.

Then, in May 2021, the site, or part of it, seems to have been sub-leased for £2,850,000, to Tramsheds Cardiff Ltd. Scroll down on the title doc for the title numbers of the individual leases. And, at the bottom, the plan of the site.

Here’s the other title involved in the same deal. For a very narrow strip of land, probably a pathway.

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Tramsheds Cardiff Ltd is another company of Labour peer, Lord Davies. and owned by Tramsheds (Holdings) Ltd, which we looked at earlier. The purchase of the Tramshed leases was financed with a loan from the Principality Building Society.

We seem to have come full circle. But what have we learnt? Let’s go through it.

◊

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Wherever we look in this story, which takes us across south Wales, we find ourselves dealing with former commercial or industrial properties owned by Labour-run councils.

I’ve focused on the assorted ‘DS’ entities and linked outfits, but there may be other companies in the same business, with other buildings. But I just don’t have the time or the resources to check.

What I also found to be interesting was that the outstanding loans against DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd are with: Swansea council (Labour), Cardiff council (Labour), Welsh Ministers, Principality Building Society, and the ‘Welsh Government’-controlled Development Bank of Wales.

Another lender was the Julian Hodge Bank in Cardiff. For younger readers . . .

Hodge was a big man in Cardiff, very pally with Jim Callaghan Labour MP, and PM, and George Thomas, another of the City’s Labour MPs, who went on to become Lord Tonypandy. They had hopes of Hodge’s Commercial Bank of Wales becoming a recognised bank like Lloyds or Barclays, but the regulators knocked it back.

L to R: Julian Hodge with Jim Callaghan; The Rhuddlan penny, that was used as the bank’s logo; George Thomas with Julian Hodge. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The whole episode is explained in this February 2016 issue of Rebecca, that reprints an article from the spring of 1977.

Even so, The Hodge Bank still operates, and remains very close to the Labour party.

Some of the other DS companies, ones I haven’t mentioned, such as DS Properties (Goods Shed) Ltd, have enjoyed loans from the Monmouthshire Building Society.

Now I’m not saying that this building society is tied to the Labour party. But I will point out that when the ‘Welsh Government’ was toying with the idea of Banc Cambria, it was the Monmouthshire Building Society involved.

What’s beyond doubt is that behind all the DS companies is Simon Baston, and so it’s reasonable to assume that – like Vaughan Gething’s benefactor, David Neal – Baston looks favourably upon and is in turn favoured by Labour.

And as I said earlier, on January 16 Gething launched his leadership campaign in Tramshed Tech’s Newport operation. I quote the South Wales Argus: ‘He kicked off his speech by thanking Tramshed Tech for hosting him in “this fantastic space they’ve created in the heart of Newport“.

And to complete the image of comradely solidarity, the Count of Abbasock has returned to the land of his fathers. After apparently turning his back on Wales at an early age, for none of his other companies has any connection with his homeland.

So why has the Tramshed drawn him back? And will his reawakened interest end with the Tramshed, or will it expand?

We’ve seen the charges against Tramshed Tech but I’m certain there’s other money coming in that might not even be shown in the accounts. (When they’re filed.) For example, I unearthed this article on UKTN about money coming from the British Business Bank.

I also found the section below in this Cardiff council document. Another £250,000.

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How many more hand-outs have there been from local authorities, the ‘Welsh Government’ and other sources that we don’t know about?

To help you take it all in here’s a small table of the main events in a timeline.

UPDATE: How did I miss this! I am indebted to Born Guessing @drakefraud for this reminder from WalesOnline that Lord Davies’s wife dropped £21,600 into Vaughan Gething’s campaign war chest.

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What an odd amount. What currency was the donation made in, euros, dollars, or even roubles? Do the rules say owt about donations from beyond this Scepter’d Isle?

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FINAL THOUGHTS

As I’ve suggested, The Tramshed gets a lot of positive coverage in our uncritical media; bright young things being innovative and ground-breaking, etc., etc.

And yet, maybe that’s just froth, for the real business and the real money may be in the leases for the 31 flats, and the café, and of course the 1,ooo capacity music venue.

Welcome to socialist Wales 2024. The circular economy, benefitting those lucky enough to be in the ‘circle’. Where there’s no private investment, and everything is state funded, but only those close to the ruling party can benefit. So that Tramsheds can play ‘diversity’ games, and provide a base for outfits like Wales Environmental Link, favoured by the regime because it works to destroy Welsh farming.

And as we’ve seen in this Tramshed saga, Labour, the party that has promised so often to do away with leasehold, will actually encourage and extend the use of leasehold – when Labour insiders benefit.

Devolution has been a disaster. And it couldn’t be much better under a different party. To stamp your little feet and yell that Wales should be a full-blown Marxist state suggests to the adults in the room that it might be past your bed-time.

And yet, in the election on July 4, Labour will win more Welsh seats than any other party. A painful reminder that I belong to a nation with too many fuckwits.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Segregation Makes A Comeback

On By JacIn Corruption, Corruption Bay, Globalism, Public Funding, Racism, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour39 Comments

As I’ve said before, 2016 was a watershed year in Western politics. Brexit coupled with Donald Trump’s victory told leftists they’d lost large sections of the (white) working class.

This resulted in a desperate search for a replacement ‘proletariat’. Groups and issues that had been around for a while were cleaned up, eagerly adopted, and zealously promoted. Which explains many things.

Among them, the rise of climate hysteria, a career criminal named George Floyd achieving something close to sainthood, and otherwise intelligent people pretending to believe that men can have babies.

It also explains why Wales is rapidly falling apart, as the intellectually debauched denizens of Corruption Bay turn their backs on the real world, preferring to serve the Globalist’s Woke-Green-Left agenda.

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CITY OF MY DREAMS GIVING ME NIGHTMARES

There’s an outfit in Swansea called BAME Mental Health Support (BMHS). For those unfamiliar with the term, BAME stands for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic. (Here’s the Companies House entry.)

A clumsy term applied to all who aren’t white. Pretending that every non-Caucasian shares similar problems in mental health or anything else is absurd. The UK government agrees, having dropped the term a couple of years back.

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This crew in Swansea could, more honestly, call themselves the Nigerian Mental Health Support CIC, for all involved hail from that West African country.

They’re based on the High Street, sharing with the trade union Unite and Swansea council’s Housing Options, next door to Not Only Sofas Clearance Outlet.

So who’s who at BMHS?

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ALFRED THE GREAT

The driving force is Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya. His wife Nancy Buka is the secretary. I’m told she has a hairdressing establishment nearby, specialising in beads, braids, and extensions.

The couple achieved fame, of a sort, when they met Simon Cowell and David Walliams. Though the remark about, “doctors spreading conspiracy theories“, has not aged well. (Unless you swing it 180 degrees, perhaps.)

Oyekoya was awarded an MBE in this year’s New Year’s Honours List.

His Linkedin page tells us he got a Master’s in Accounting and Finance from Swansea University. He’s also worked for the ‘Welsh Government’ and a WG-funded outfit called Inspire Training.

Now he’s treasurer for the Books Council of Wales.

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All of which suggests that Alfred Oyekoya is well thought of in Corruption Bay.

And when he finds time he also works for the MoD in Bristol. Which either means a long commute from his Swansea home, or else he works from home.

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THE REST OF THE GANG

As I’ve said, Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya is an accountant. We find two other bean-counters among the directors; Adewale Dare and Monday Noutouglo. Dare lives in Nigeria, Noutouglo lives in Canada.

Why does a mental health outfit in Swansea have an accountant in Canada, and another in Nigeria? Or, to rephrase it, what possible use can they be to people suffering mental health issues in Wales?

What also struck me was that these two joined BMHS on the same day, 12.01.2023.

Fortunately, there are doctors on board.

Though Dr Adesola Samson Ademiloye is a lecturer. With a company registered to him that links back, by a tortuous route, to this private equity firm.

Then this suggests he’s a civil engineer. While this page from the Swansea University website mentions ‘biomedical engineering’.

Is any of this relevant to mental health?

While Dr Oluyinka Emmanuel Olutunde might be a medical doctor, and allowed to practise in the UK. But if this is him, then he’s certainly not registered as a GP.

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To confuse matters further, I found a Linkedin profile for an Oluyinka Olutunde, a paediatrician, who seems never to have worked outside Africa. But then, I also found this. Is it the same picture?

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THERE’S MONEY IN BOOKS

‘New Audiences‘ is a funding scheme launched a couple years ago by the Books Council of Wales.

Below you see how the grant to BMHS was listed in the projects for 2022/23. Together with a couple of grants from 2023/24 to give you a flavour of how the scheme is going.

Does being in a room with a lesbian make someone ‘lesbian-adjacent’?

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Which means that Alfred Oyekoya joined the Books Council in October 2021. Less than a year later we find his own brainchild BMHS trousering a £39,000 grant.

Do you find that mildly troubling?

Another BMHS funding source I found was foodbanks in Swansea.

But I can’t see what books or food have to do with BAME mental health; though no doubt a good book and a full belly help people feel better.

But you could make a case for sex, alcohol and a nice holiday. So if I’m feeling a bit down can I apply for a week in Tenby with a bodice-bursting slapper and a crate of Malbec?

What passes for the BMHS accounts (‘unaudited statutory accounts’) gives a turnover of £183,000 for y/e 31.03.2023, but ‘turnover’ refers to un-itemised grants and donations. ‘Administrative expenses’ totalled £164,000.

And while there was just one employee the previous year, this had risen to four in the latest accounts. What do these ’employees’ do?

BAME Mental Health Support is a misnomer in every sense. All involved are Nigerian. And it might have little to do with mental health.

◊

WARPED PRIORITIES

But this happens when the Woke lead the none-too-bright.

We’ve reached a stage where two Haitians in Tonypandy could launch The Haitian Anti-defamation League, demand ‘Welsh Government’ funding, and then get rat-arsed every night in The Gartered Gombeen, before rounding the evening off with sweet and sour bat (with fried rice) from the Star of Wuhan.

To ask them to account for how they spent the grant money would amount to racism. And you will be reported to – The Haitian Anti-defamation League.

Getting serious again (unless of course there are two Haitians in Tonypandy thinking along those lines) . . .

What we see at the Books Council of Wales is an organisation having to spend a bigger portion of reduced funding on Woke twaddle, of interest only to narcissist ‘artists’ and a few equally unhinged admirers.

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And everywhere we look in Wales we see the same thing: services being cut, and what is specific to Wales and its people treated with less respect than is given to assorted grifters, especially those shrieking about climate, race, or gender.

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GRIFTING AT THE GRAND

What I’m writing about is an imagined victimhood that can be a nice little earner for those who’ve figured out how to manipulate politicos and others into funding them.

An example might be British Virgin Islander Nkechi Allen Dawson, director / trustee of the African Community Centre (ACC), at the Grand Theatre’s Multicultural Hub.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Nkechi Allen Dawson works for Coleg Gwent, as a Diversity, Inclusion and Well-being manager.

How did we manage before such jobs were invented?

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ACC’s 2023 ‘accounts’ show £258,665 in readies, and 7 employees (3 in 2022), but no indication of where the money came from. And the website is no help – it’s ‘being updated’.

Fortunately, we can turn to the Charity Commission, which tells us that in the past two years ACC received £263,560 in ‘government grants’. That information should be available in the ‘accounts’, and on the website.

Incidentally, the African Community Centre has 7 directors / trustees. We’ve met the two from the BVI, then there’s a Kenyan, but the other four are Nigerian.

Also appointed a director of the ACC on the same day as Nkechi Allen Dawson was another woman from tax haven BVI (Pop: 31,000), Charlotte Ajomale Evans,

◊

BLACK SWIMMING

Charlotte Ajomale Evans’ Linkedin profile tells us she works full-time for the Black Swimming Association (BSA).

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Yeah, that’s the way to ‘break down barriers’ – segregated swimming. Didn’t Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and a host of others fight against that sort of thing?

But then, everywhere you look in the world of DEI you encounter self-serving hypocrisy and doublespeak.

Here’s where BSA’s funding came from in year ending 31.08.2022.  (RNLI = Royal National Lifeboat Institution. LMCT = London Marathon Charitable Trust.)

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RNLI, eh? Do drowning black people have to be rescued differently to drowning white people?

Here’s the explanatory note for the RNLI in the BSA accounts, page 23:

Funds received for consultancy services, including research and
development, and community engagement.

No surprise there, because so many of the Wokie scam outfits I’ve looked at over the years have minted it from ‘consultancy’ fees.

Just think of Stonewall, which virtually blackmailed public bodies into paying to be lectured (and misinformed) in order to be a ‘Diversity Champion’.

We’ve largely freed ourselves from that particular nightmare, but there are plenty more lurking out there.

◊

“GROWING CONCERNS” AND “UNCONSCIOUS BIAS”

And now a report from Arise News, a Nigerian site I’ve never quoted before, and probably never will again. I do so this time because it’s about Alfred Oyekoya. It begins:

Amidst growing concerns surrounding fair treatment for ethnic minorities in the Welsh workforce, Alfred Oyekoya MBE . . . has advocated for the implementation of labour laws to tackle discrimination and unconscious bias faced by Nigerians and other ethnic minorities in Wales.

That opening paragraph gives the clear impression that racism or discrimination against “ethnic minorities” is rampant in Wales.

Or, rather, that’s the impression given to Arise News by a man who studied at a Welsh university, who’s worked for the ‘Welsh Government’, who’s treasurer of the Books Council of Wales, whose company has received tens of thousands of pounds in public funding and, on a recommendation from within Wales, got an MBE!

A man who’s been treated better since he arrived in Wales than most Welsh people ever will be – repays us with accusations of racism.

Let’s look at another worrying element of the paragraph I quoted – “unconscious bias“. It’s mentioned twice.

Legislation can tackle overt discrimination, the kind of thing perhaps exemplified with the old lodging-house sign. We’ve had such laws for 50 or 60 years.

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But Oyekoya’s “unconscious bias” takes us beyond overt discrimination. I think it even takes us beyond ‘thought crimes’, to somewhere rather scary.

For I think we’ve arrived in a place where you can be accused of prejudices you weren’t aware of, and of which you are innocent – because someone claims to know you better than you know yourself!

If “unconscious bias” can only be observed or detected by others then this will encourage false testimony from those with an axe to grind, and those who can benefit from such accusations.

And of course, an accused person will have no way to prove their innocence. If that’s not Kafkaesque, then I don’t know what is.

Just think of The Trial, which begins: “Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.”

◊

FINAL THOUGHTS

Alfred Oluwafemi Oyekoya MBE needs to explain the interview he gave to (or the piece he submitted to) Arise News. From what I can see, Nigerians in Wales are doing very well. As are members of the BVI diaspora.

And I’d like to hear his explanation for, “Labour laws to tackle discrimination and unconscious bias faced by Nigerians and other ethnic minorities in Wales“.

Is Alfred Oyekoya dreaming of what we see in the States, where white people are barred from applying for certain federal government and other jobs, some colleges, and preferential treatment is given to minority groups?

So don’t be surprised if certain lobbies and individuals start demanding ‘affirmative action’ legislation to combat a problem that doesn’t exist. Legislation that they will help write, and from which they will benefit.

Let us be vigilant against any movement in that direction. And let us also ensure that the Corruption Bay Clown Show isn’t persuaded to add “unconscious bias” to the list of Wokie ‘crimes’ in another desperate attempt to appear ‘progressive’.

We don’t want some poor bugger dragged off by the Unconscious Bias Squad.

It could be me!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Bute Energy And Friends: Corrupting Wales

On By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Environmentalism, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour61 Comments

For a second week running, I’m focusing on Bute Energy. This time, looking at its links with the Labour party, and how, through that and by other means, Bute encourages corruption and spreads discord.

This will also serve to bring those who haven’t been following the Bute saga up to date.

◊

THE FLOODGATES OPEN!

I first became aware of Bute’s links to Labour when I was told that someone was visiting people close to a planned wind farm. This was (the now abandoned) Moelfre site inland of Colwyn Bay, a real outlier from Bute’s other projects.

This Bute representative was David James Taylor, Labour insider who’d been Spad to a number of high-profile figures; UK government minister Peter Hain and Wales first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones.

In 2016 Taylor stood to become the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner. After losing maybe he considered his career options. Or perhaps he was approached, for Labour was already helping wind farm developers.

We saw this when Anna McMorrin lobbied Powys councillors on behalf of Hendy wind farm in April 2017, just a month before she was elected Labour MP for Cardiff North.

Taylor formed three companies in October 2018: Moblake Wind Ventures Ltd (which became Moblake Ltd 11.11.2020); Moblake Energy Trading Ltd (folded 2020); and Moblake Associates Ltd (now being struck-off).

The timing is intriguing, because Taylor’s companies were formed a week before his friend and colleague, Lesley Griffiths, set the precedent of over-ruling a planning inspector to give Hendy windfarm planning consent. She did so using the relatively new Developments of National Significance (DNS) legislation.

DNS made it clear that Wales was free range for wind turbines; free of interference from locals, their council representatives, or even planning inspectors.

Taylor was rewarded by Bute with shares in Windward Enterprises Ltd (now Windward Energy Ltd), both in his own name and that of Moblake Associates Ltd. He was also a (non-designated) member of Grayling Capital LLP.

Money magically appeared in Moblake Ltd, which Taylor then paid to himself in ‘loans’ totalling over £600,000 that did not need to be repaid.

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There was an attempt to liquidate this company a couple of years ago, but the liquidator was removed last August. Since when there’s been no further news.

Taylor was useful to Bute because of his closeness to Lesley Griffiths, and his insider knowledge of the Labour party machine.

Which is why it’s suggested that Taylor’s personal payment came in shares and other ways; and that most if not all of the £600,000+ was really a donation from Bute to the Labour party.

◊

‘YOU SAY VISTRA, AND I SAY, ER . . . VISTRA‘?

Someone has contacted me arguing there are two companies called Vistra, and in last week’s post I conflated them. One is a big Texas energy company, the other is a provider of secretarial services.

To explain . . .

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) is funding Bute through CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd, owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd. All holdco shares owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure V SCSp, which has its address at 16 Rue Eugene Ruppert, L2453, Luxembourg. At the same address is ‘Vistra’.

Now I took this to mean the Texas energy firm, but my contact insists it’s the other one. He’s probably right. But in my defence:

Vistra Company Secretaries Ltd of Bristol (which you’ll read about in a minute) was, until April 2019, Jordan Company Secretaries Ltd. The Vistra name was adopted because it was taken over and joined many companies under the Vistra banner.

Vistra is now owned by Sweden’s EQT, an equity outfit big in green energy.

So there are two Vistra companies. But with both involved in ‘renewable energy’ projects, often the same projects, confusion was almost inevitable.

Especially when we see BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard behind both.

◊

THE GANG OF FOUR

Soon after landing in Wales, and perhaps in an attempt to establish Welsh credentials, Bute set up a Welsh Advisory Board. You can see the members in the image below.

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Left to right: Derek Vaughan, redundant MEP; Dr Debra Williams, businesswoman and academic; John ‘Cwmbetws’ Davies, man of many hats and big shot in the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society; John Uden, partner of Jenny Rathbone MS.

◊

THE NEATH PORT TALBOT-BRUSSELS-COPENHAGEN CONNECTION

Derek Vaughan was leader of Neath Port Talbot (NPT) council and would certainly know Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, the Port Talbot seat.

Vaughan was an MEP from 2009 to 2019, preceded by the late Glenys Kinnock. The wife of former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and mother to Stephen.

Stephen Kinnock MP is married to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Danish PM. She serves as a director of Danish wind turbine producer, Vestas, reputed to be the biggest in the world.

From Windpower Monthly of March 2024. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In 2020 Vestas took a 25% stake in Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. As you’ve just read, CIP is the conduit for funding the Bute projects.

Derek Vaughan’s political background and contacts explain him being chosen as the chairman of Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board. He was a ‘good fit’.

◊

THE ACADEMIC BUSINESSWOMAN

I can’t tell you much about Dr Debra Williams other than the fact that she was managing director of Confused.com. Now she’s taken a gig at Lampeter, which some might view as a step backwards.

I suppose ‘Top things to do in Lampeter’ is part of the Creative Writing course. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

That said, since Jane Davidson landed there after ‘leaving’ Corruption Bay, Lampeter has tried to re-invent itself as a centre for alternative living. And why not, there are enough ‘alternatives’ in the shacks, tepees, and OPDs thereabouts.

Even so, I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing about Dr Williams, unless she was viewed by Bute as their entry to what passes for the Welsh business community.

◊

GALILEO AND THE FAVOURED SON

A number of sources have told me that Bute has assiduously courted the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society (RWAS). Which makes sense, for the RWAS gives access to many of the landowners on whose property Bute would like to erect turbines and pylons.

And this explains Bute’s recruitment of John Davies, who from 2012 was RWAS chairman. As I read through his other appointments I recalled Harri Webb’s reference to, “the public men on the boards and panels“.

Put it all together and it made him very attractive to Bute.

I have been told that John Davies was instrumental in seeing Aled Rhys Jones appointed CEO of the RWAS. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with a man of John Davies’s standing promoting a protégé. But there may be more to it.

As you might have read in the link, Aled comes from, “the family’s hill farm near Cwrt-y-Cadno in North Carmarthenshire“. To be exact, Tyllwyd, which I’m told the family still owns, but rents out.

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The thing about this area is that it’s being targeted by other wind farm companies in addition to Bute. As I wrote last November, in ‘A Change Of Tack?‘

One of those companies is Galileo Green Energy UK, eyeing a site at Bryn Cadwgan. With another Welsh site planned for Mynydd Ty-talwyn.

The parent company, Galileo Green Energy, is headquartered in Zurich.

Curiously, when based in Bristol – at the Vistra address – Galileo was known as GGE Machynlleth Ltd. Now it’s using a Cardiff office and the name has changed to Galileo Empower Wales Ltd.

From what is now Galileo Empower Wales Ltd documents filed with Companies House when it was knowns as GCE Machynlleth Ltd.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

A quick shufty at the directors will tell you how Welsh it really is.

Anyway, I hear that Aled Rhys Jones, CEO of the RWAS, stands to gain financially from the Bryn Cadwgan wind farm. A map I’ve been sent shows the outline of the wind farm in red, with the Tyllwyd land edged in green.

You’ll see four turbines planned on Tyllwyd land. With access to the others perhaps over Tyllwyd land. All perfectly legal, but it don’t look good.

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The forested land is owned by Natural Resources Wales, which will mean mature trees felled to accommodate wind turbines, access roads, cable trenches, etc.

That’s protecting the environment, that is.

Correction: Just received some clarification: ‘I am informed: There are two machines on Tilhill managed land, but nearly all the others are on ——— — ——– (Ilchester Estate) plantation, with a few on Tyllwyd and other individual land owners.’

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THE MAN FROM GOD KNOWS WHERE

The fourth member of the quartet is John Uden, whose only qualification is being the partner of Senedd Member, Jenny Rathbone, who sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.

And so to understand why Bute recruited Uden we need to focus on Rathbone.

Rathbone was born in Liverpool and is a member of the Rathbone dynasty, once very influential in that city. The influence continues through Rathbones Wealth & Investment Management.

Jenny Rathbone and other family members are looked after from the investments made. This presumably accounts for the shares in her Register of interest.

An earlier declaration of Rathbone’s says that Uden was getting payment from Bute, but that’s absent from the latest Register. So is he working for free, or is payment being made in some other way?

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Interestingly, he set up John Uden Consulting Ltd in March 2020. A company that (apparently) has never turned a penny. Was he planning to go down the same route as Taylor, but backed off after I first mentioned Taylor and Moblake (August 2020) in Corruption in the wind 2, Labour snouts in the trough?

I shall conclude this section by dazzling you with yet another example of propinquity.

A fascinating connection revealed itself shortly after I put out the previous piece. Copenhagen Offshore Partners A/S has an office at 10 George Street, Edinburgh. In the same building we find Rathbone Investment Management (£60bn assets).

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It’s probably just another of the coincidences that plague the Bute saga.

◊

SLICING THE PENSION POT TURKEY

As an example of how Wales is ripped off by the pushers and pimps of the ‘renewable energy’ industry, the Wales Pension Partnership investment takes some beating.

The Welsh local government pension pot (WPP) is investing at least £68m in Bute Energy. Reading the article on the WPP website you might think this money is going directly from the pension fund to Bute. For no intermediaries are mentioned.

Yet the WPP was ‘advised’ by law firm Burges Salmon of Bristol. Then this article in renews.biz gives more names: ‘WPP has been advised by independent clean energy asset manager Capital Dynamics and by the law firms TLT and Burges Salmon’.

That is, Capital Dynamics of London, Birmingham and various cities around the world. Top man is Thomas Kubr, who can be found at the Zug office, south of Zurich.

The registration with Companies House tells that Capital Dynamics has 49 outstanding charges, and is heavily indebted to if not controlled by State Street.

TLT is another Bristol law firm. (It’s s shame we don’t have lawyers in Wales.)

◊

QUI BONO?

After all is said and done, do we really know who owns the wind farms in Wales? For as I suggested in last week’s piece, Bute Energy, run by Oliver James Millican, is an offshoot of the property and investment company Parabola, run by his father, Peter John Millican.

Also, in last week’s piece (and elsewhere in recent years) I mentioned Njord Energy Ltd and Steven John Radford, the man behind Hendy wind farm, where we earlier met lobbyist – now Labour MP – Anna McMorrin.

Another of Radford’s projects, not far away, was Bryn Blaen. The ownership history is instructive. It starts with Radford leaving Bryn Blaen Wind Farm Ltd in February 2020.

Bryn Blaen is now said to be owned by Elm Wind Holdings Ltd. Which leads back to Elm Trading Ltd, where the latest accounts say:

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But does this apparently leaderless outfit have any connection with a foreign entity of the same name registered on the Isle of Man?

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Or is this just another coincidence?

If so, then maybe we should focus on the labyrinth of companies linked with Elm Trading at the London address. Companies like Time Nominees Ltd, which holds all the Elm Trading shares and is controlled by Alpha Real Property Investment Advisers LLP. Which is owned by Philip Sidney Gower of Guernsey.

Who’s Gower? Well, he’s described here as a ‘serial entrepreneur’.

The point I’m making is that when it comes time to dismantle, recycle, or bury, the clapped-out wind turbines on Bryn Siencyn, and restore the site to its earlier condition, the ‘Welsh Government’, the local council, and Natural Resources Wales, will be met with, ‘Nothing to do with us, squire, we sold it to a company on an island somewhere‘.

And we’ll have to pay for dozens of Bryn Siencyns.

◊

CONCLUSION

But the immediate danger remains the corruption engendered by wind farm ‘developers’.

Through the influence they wield inside ‘Welsh’ Labour, where corruption is endemic. As we’ve been so recently reminded by the new first minister. Now the poison has spread to Plaid Cymru, exposed to the world when Carmen Smith, Bute lobbyist, was made a peer.

Beyond politics these ‘developers’ cause resentment within the farming industry by making some farmers offers they can’t refuse – a position into which many have been manoeuvred by the ‘Welsh Government’s war on livestock farming.

And finally, there’s worry and division inflicted upon communities across Wales.

∼

It really pisses me off to see the country I love reduced to third world level; where a few chiefs can be bribed so the rest of us can be exploited, our country wrecked.

We’re in this mess because leftists believe they’re fighting the evils of capitalism by buying into the climate scam dreamed up to further the ambitions of the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations on Earth.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Bute Energy: Who’s Really Behind It?

On By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Environmentalism, Planning Inspectorate, Wind Turbines56 Comments

I’m returning to the ‘Bute’ stable of companies, a subject I’ve ignored for a while. More especially, some aspects of Bute’s operations that may have been overlooked.

1/ How did investment company and property developers the Parabola group, from which Bute emerged, learn about the opportunities offered by wind turbines in Wales?

2/ We’ve been told the funding for Bute’s projects will come from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and the Wales Pension Partnership. But is that true?

I’m starting with some background, which I think sets the scene. So please indulge me there before we move on later to the ‘meat’ of the piece.

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THE TRAILBLAZER GETTING A LITTLE HELP FROM THE COMRADES

Before the boys from Parabola ever heard of Nant Mithil, Waun Hesgog, or Blaencothi, other nobly-intentioned businessmen, alarmed by the impending climate crisis, were trying their damnedest to cover central Wales in wind turbines.

I’m going to focus on one of those wind farms; Hendy, to the east of Llandrindod.

Planning permission was refused by Powys County Council in April 2017, and that decision was upheld by a planning inspector a year later. But then, Lesley Griffiths, Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ intervened, to ignore the inspector’s decision and give Hendy the green light.

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Prior to this, an inspector’s decision was almost the final word. But now it was being over-ridden using the legislation that gave us Developments of National Significance.

From now on ‘Welsh Ministers’ had authority to rule on electricity generation projects with a maximum installed capacity of 10MW to 50MW. Below that, responsibility lies with local authorities; and above, it’s the UK government.

Which means that developers pitch their projects in the 10 – 50MW ‘sweet spot’.

The main director of Hendy Wind Farm Ltd was Stephen John Radford. He had other wind companies including, in Wales, Rhoscrowther Wind Farm Ltd, on the Haven, and Bryn Blaen Wind Farm Ltd, near Llangurig.

Radford was very close to, if not fronting for, the U+I group. Though it seemed he also had his own piggy-bank in Njord Energy Ltd.

Lobbying Powys councillors on behalf of the Hendy wind farm was Anna McMorrin. She was seen at a meeting on 27 April 2017, desperately trying to hand a note to councillors considering the project.

She was working for Invicta Public Affairs, which has its headquarters in Newcastle, but also a presence in Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

She had been working as a Spad in Corruption Bay, for which she was rewarded by being selected as the Labour candidate for Cardiff North. In June 2017 she became the MP.

Maybe this is the first instance of someone working simultaneously for the Labour party and wind energy developers. There have been many more since Anna McMorrin.

Once they got to know each other, I’m sure Radford made the boys from Parabola understand that to get anything done in Wales you must have people working for you inside the Labour party.

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THEY MEET, AND THE BOYS FROM PARABOLA BECOME BUTE

In September 2018 Windward Generation Ltd was launched; the name changed to Bute Energy the following month, and finally became RSCO 3750 Ltd in March 2020.

The founding directors were Oliver James Millican and Lawson Douglas Steele, who were joined a week later by Radford. The man from Hendy left in December 2019 and was replaced by Stuart Allan George, who’d left Parabola with Millican and Steele.

But I want to go back a little further, and consider the ‘Windward’ name.

Just before Christmas 2014 Windward Enterprises Ltd was launched. This company’s stated business was ‘Financial management’. The sole director was Oliver James Millican, using secretarial services in Edinburgh, but a Newcastle office address for himself. (Newcastle being where Parabola started out.)

This was a long time before any interest was expressed in wind turbines.

In November 2016 the address switched to Broadgate Tower in London, where we now find Parabola; and the company name changed in August 2018 to WELN1 Ltd.

We encounter the ‘Windward’ name a number of times early on in this saga, but what if it has nothing to do with wind power, and instead refers to the Windward Islands in the Caribbean?

I’m thinking now of tax havens. Just a thought.

If you study the timeline of company formations, you’ll see that the first ‘Bute’ company, Windward Global Ltd, wasn’t formed until May 2017. This is now the holding company for the Bute empire, controlled by Oliver James Millican.

Millican’s father, Peter John Millican, runs the Parabola property empire, with more companies under the umbrella than I was able to count. As we’ve seen, son Oliver ceased being a director at Parabola late in 2017.

Steele was employed as Investment Director at Parabola. He left in October 2017.

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Stuart George was also a Parabola employee.

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And there seems to have been a fourth departure. For on 31 May 2018, in addition to Windward LS Ltd (Lawson Steele), and Windward SG Ltd (Stuart George), a company called Windward BW Ltd was launched.

The ‘BW’ is Barry Woods. I can’t tell you much about him, except that he’s Irish, and he’d also worked for Parabola. In fact, he was a designated partner, along with Parabola Real Estate Investment Management LLP, in Parabola Partners LLP.

Just like Millican, Steele and George, Woods quit Parabola in November 2017.

He then seems to have parted company with the other three on 24 September 2019. The last trace of Woods sees him running Woods Investment Management Ltd in Edinburgh, which folded after a couple of years, in March 2021.

So we have four men, all in their thirties, and all working for a major property and investment group (one of them the boss’s son); but late in 2017 they apparently hear the planet calling, sever their ties with Parabola, and go off to erect wind turbines in Wales.

Do you buy that?

Something else that gives off a bit of a whiff is that if the four of them had started up on their own, I would have expected to see them as partners. But Millican Junior in control suggests a continuing link with his father’s business empire.

Using the Parabola address at the Broadgate Tower, 20 Primrose Street, London EC2A 2EW is also a bit iffy.

It’s far more likely that, in 2017, the four turbineers started setting up companies in Wales, ultimately owned and controlled by Parabola, to capitalise on the ‘How many turbines would you like, duckie?’ DNS system.

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MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

Funding is a vital consideration because more than 20 wind farms, an unknown number of solar arrays, at least 6 Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), and mile after mile of pylons, requiring connectors and other whatsits, do not come cheap.

Admittedly, nothing has yet been built, but even so, Bute employs dozens of people, rents or leases office space, and promotes itself relentlessly by sponsoring everything from the Ystradgynlais Wet T-shirt Olympics to the Llanfair Caereinion Refuge for Distressed Ferrets.

So where’s the money coming from to fund this unrivalled extravaganza of bird dicing?

We can (perhaps surprisingly) rule out the Development Bank of Wales, a soft touch that throws moolah at magic bean salesmen and landfill-owning friends of politicians.

Instead, our attention must turn to the two stated funding sources: Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), and the local councils’ Wales Pension Partnership (WPP).

The WPP involvement is a bit of nonsense that it’s hoped will give the impression Wales is benefitting from wind power. Though on a more practical and political level I suppose it gives Bute even more leverage in Corruption Bay.

I’m going to focus on Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and see where that takes us.

Now the first thing to make clear is that CIP is not a bank, it does not provide funding. The clue appears to be in ‘Partners’, for it seems investors looking for green projects go to CIP, which then finds them the right fit.

Or it could be t’other way around. Either way, we can be sure CIP takes its cut.

The funding from CIP for Bute is channelled through CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd. This is owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd. Both companies are based in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

The latest accounts for CI IV Dragon Holdco (y/e 31.12.2022) give a list of ‘Subsidiary undertakings’ (page 20) in which the company holds a ‘golden share’. These are Bute companies, including Green Generation Energy Networks Cymru Ltd, which wants to build a network of pylons.

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And as you can see below, since October last year all 79,000,000 shares in the holding company are in the possession of Copenhagen Infrastructure V SCSp.

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Which can be found at 16 Rue Eugene Ruppert, L2453, Luxembourg, the EU’s internal tax haven.

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And at that address we find an outfit called Vistra. So who are they? It turns out they’re a Fortune 500 company from the Lone Star State. Well, Ye haw!

Vistra is big itself in electricity production and supply, but it also ‘partners with suppliers’, which would presumably include Bute.

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But why is Bute dealing with Copenhagen Investment Partners which is dealing with a US company working out of an office in Luxembourg? Especially when Vistra has offices in the UK.

Among them, a very familiar address in Edinburgh. In fact, if you close in on this Google maps capture you’ll see the Vistra plate, top right.

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The name Vistra was vaguely familiar, but not in connection with Bute. It was linked more with the Bristol address you see above, and Galileo, which wants a wind farm at Bryn Cadwgan, to the east of Lampeter.

All explained in this piece from last November, A Change Of Tack?

Galileo is based in Zurich, Switzerland. It began life locally at Vistra’s Bristol office before moving to Edinburgh. But there’s also Galileo Empower Wales Ltd which has a presence on Cathedral Road in Cardiff.

Its directors are Italian, German, Scottish and Irish. A typical ‘Welsh’ company.

The Bute companies are fronting for Vistra of Texas through Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The ‘golden share’ in so many Bute companies means that those projects are effectively owned by Vistra.

With an obvious connection via Oliver Millican to his father’s Parabola group. Which we must assume is also getting a cut.

The sequence would appear to be: Parabola spawns Bute, Bute goes to CIP, CIP finds Vistra, and Vistra either puts in its own money, or it finds funding from . . .

UPDATE 30.04.2024: A reliable source draws my attention to another link between Copenhagen and Vistra. There are many more.

UPDATE 2: 30.04.2024: Another source reminded me there are many Njord companies. Often linked to CIP. A little digging brought up yet another, and an intriguing connection.

Copenhagen Offshore Partners A/S has an office at 10 George Street, Edinburgh. At the same address we find Rathbone Investment Management (£60bn assets). A member of the Rathbone family is Jenny Rathbone MS, who sits on the Climate Change Committee.

Her Partner, John Uden, was recruited (for no obvious reason) to sit on Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board.

I think we’re at the stage now where so many Labour people (some I’ve never mentioned) are benefitting financially from Bute / CIP  that an independent inquiry is needed.

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CONCLUSION

The situation is that through Developments of National Significance, and now the Infrastructure Bill, Wales is being desecrated and exploited by foreign corporations.

The ferrets of Llanfair Caereinion notwithstanding, there are no real benefits for us; nothing in terms of jobs, or anything else.

The real beneficiary is England, where communities can and do object to wind farms. Which is why, as reliable sources of electricity generation are phased out on the orders of Globalist ‘environmentalists’, electricity generated in Wales must go to England, and this explains the need for so many pylons.

The wind farms, solar arrays and pylons in Wales (and Scotland), are also needed to help the UK / England meet its Net Zero commitments. Which I suppose raises the possibility of political pressure being applied from London.

What’s happening is so obvious that I even find myself in agreement with the leftist(s) who wrote, ‘Neoliberalism Has Quietly Flourished Under Welsh Labour – It’s Time To Break The Silence‘. (The comrades love slick and catchy titles!)

Joking aside, and looming over all other considerations, my biggest worry is that even though we can now identify Bute, and Parabola, and CIP, and Vistra, we still can’t be sure where the money for these projects begins its journey.

Which provides two major headaches.

If the Bute funding needs to be ‘filtered’ so many times (with everybody taking a slice) then it raises suspicions that the original funder may not be entirely acceptable.

And if we don’t know who ultimately owns the installations, then how do we get these sites restored when they come to the end of their working lives?

Instead of being suckered by those fronting these projects those pretending to run this country need to establish who is ultimately funding each and every project operating in Wales or proposed for Wales.

We also need to look into the relationship between Bute Energy / Parabola / CIP / Vistra and the ‘Welsh Government’. In particular, how it’s grown to the point where Bute has a position close to being a state-sponsored monopoly.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024