The Windward-Bute Empire, Fresh Insights

On By JacIn Bute Energy, Corruption Bay, Renewables, Welsh Labour90 Comments

I had something else planned to go out on Monday, but I’ve held it back in light of fresh information I’ve received about the activities of Bute Energy. Information that raises wider considerations.

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INTRODUCTION

Let me start with an apology. I’ve been writing about Bute’s activities in Wales for seven or eight years. This meant ignoring projects elsewhere, and overlooking Bute and Windward companies that had no obvious Welsh connection.

That may have been a mistake. And in view of recent events suggesting dubious links with China, no longer tenable. Dealt with on this blog.

Apology made, one company I have mentioned, one I could never make sense of, was Storagefolk Ltd. Presumably involved in . . . warehousing?

Launched 23.09.2017 Storagefolk appears to be the oldest surviving Windward-Bute company apart from Windward Enterprises Ltd (until very recently Windward Global), the ultimate holding company, where Oliver James Millican, capo di tutti capi in the W-B world, is in sole charge.

But what’s its purpose, and how does it fit into the wider empire? Information received offers some answers. And opens up a new line of inquiry.

As you can see from the Companies House entry for Storagefolk the address is in Mayfair, that upmarket district of London. The sole director is Millican. But he gives his address as Hodge House in Cardiff, where we find virtually all the companies relevant to Wales. Or at least, those we know about.

Listed as ‘person with significant control‘ (PSC) is Windward Global Ltd.

Though if we go through the main CH listing for Millican’s companies we see Storagefolk using the Hodge House address. (More Millican companies are listed here, here, here, and here.)

At the address in Curzon Street, hosting Storagefolk, we find Turcan Connell Company Secretaries Ltd. Scottish legal eagles with their HQ in Edinburgh. A company regularly used by Millican and his mates.

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MY! WHAT A BIG WAREHOUSE YOU’VE GOT. AND SO MANY OF THEM!

Of the companies registered at that address, we’re interested in the ones shown in the panel below. Particularly those to which I’ve been directed. (Storagefolk appears on the previous page.)

Beginning with Windward Eurocentral MD Ltd. Sole director Oliver Millican. PSC is Windward RE Holdco Ltd (more on this company later). PSC for Windward RE Holdco Ltd is Windward Enterprises Ltd, the ultimate holding company mentioned earlier.

Turn to the charges and you’ll see one taken out in July 2023 and satisfied in April 2025. The lender was private bank Brown Shipley & Co Ltd. Brown Shipley is owned by Quintet Private Bank (Europe) SA of Luxembourg, which is in turn owned by Precision Capital:

Precision Capital is a Luxembourg-based holding company that represents the private interests of members of the Al-Thani family of Qatar.

The charge was against a building just to the east of Glasgow, close to the M8 that runs to Edinburgh. A property offering 127,000 square foot of space.

The next company is Windward Badentoy Ltd. Directors are Millican and TC Directors Ltd with an Edinburgh address. ‘TC’ of course is Turcan Connell again. The PSC is Windward RE Holdco 2 Ltd.

The charges, again with Brown Shipley, refer to industrial storage units such as this one, all near Aberdeen. Plus a floating charge.

The third is Windward RE Project Co 1 Ltd. Here are the players. It’s the Mayfair address with PSC again being Windward RE Holdco 2 Ltd. There are/were two outstanding charges with Brown Shipley. One a fixed and floating charge, the other refers to three properties in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Another company worth looking at is Windward Z3B Ltd, with the same pattern. Funding from Brown Shipley for two more storage facilities on industrial or technology parks around Aberdeen.

And there was another company, one that I wrote about in August 2024. And other warehouse not far from the M8.

It was reported on October 2, 2018 that the Titan warehouse had been bought for £6.5M by Grayling Capital. This is Grayling Capital LLP, formed just over a year earlier.

David Taylor, one of those recently questioned by police in relation to China ‘spying’, was made a partner in Grayling Capital LLP in September 2019.

I could go on, but you should get the picture. Companies in the W-B empire have, for perhaps a decade, been buying up big warehouses, often borrowing from a ’boutique’ bank owned by an oil-rich family in Qatar.

A name mentioned in connection with W-B’s activity in the Aberdeen area is IKM. Said to be a tenant of properties owned by Windward-Bute. Here’s a piece from December last year and the Aberdeen Press & Journal.

In another major milestone, IKM Testing UK today opens its third facility as it pushes ahead with plans to expand into international markets, the renewables sector and increase its UK decommissioning work.

But IKM only accounts for some of W-B’s real estate, so the question remains: Why does it need all this storage space?

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PLANNING AHEAD?

First, let me clear up the purpose of Storagefolk before telling you how Windward-Bute buying up vast areas of storage space was explained to me:

(Storagefolk) is purely a negotiating shell for projects in Scotland and NE England; it is used in proposals to financiers, a distinct legal entity is then formed post-investment decision to ring fence properties and interests – and distance from the risk of course.

As for the warehouses, it seems that W-B has been importing parts and components for turbines, solar installations, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) for quite a few years.

This stockpiling is in anticipation of a crackdown on imported parts for ‘renewable’ energy projects. This seems plausible as the opposition mounts to increasing energy prices resulting from ‘Mad’ Ed Miliband’s Net Zero death-wish.

The real estate arm of the Windward portfolio . . . is working with multiple overseas businesses and at least one national government to house interests and commodity items relating to renewables infrastructure. There are warehouses in Wales and Scotland filled to the rafters with BESS and pylon materials – rented and landed for resale exclusively to the UK market to artificially appear to restrict overseas procurement and brand it as available when supply chains pinch in the late 2027 to early 2029 drive.

Is it just forward planning, or is there more to it?

As an example of ‘more to it’, can we assume these imports come from China? I’d put a few quid on it. And if I’ve picked the right nag, then this explains a few other things.

For as we’ve recently learnt, it’s impossible to escape the China connection when dealing with Windward-Bute. So I was not surprised to be told that two of the Big Three (Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George, and Lawson Douglas Steel) have even stated they’d sell to “interested parties from China at the right price“.

But none of these machinations would be possible without political influence, and that influence is not confined to Labour in Wales.

Let’s remember that Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the UK Labour party, now Baron Watson of Wyre Forest, is a non-executive director of Windward Energy Ltd, where he’s listed as plain old Thomas Anthony Watson.

It’s suggested this provides a good connection through Great British Energy to ‘Mad’ Ed Miliband himself, the apostle of Net Zero, de-industrialisation, and electricity consumer impoverishment.

To sum up: there is a concerted effort not only to increase expenditure and reliance on ‘renewables’, but also to remove cheaper and more reliable alternatives. This explains why the UK is closing down North Sea oil and gas . . . only to buy from Norway, which extracts from the same North Sea source.

Proving it has sod all to do with saving the planet.

This is the ugly world inhabited by Windward-Bute. It’s not limited to wind turbines despoiling landscapes, it’s about using political influence to remove competition providing more reliable and cheaper alternatives.

In Wales, this has resulted in the infiltration of the Labour party to the point where it’s hopelessly compromised. Election posters for May’s Senedd elections should read: ‘Vote for Dai Jones – your Bute Welsh Labour candidate‘.

We know W-B is also making inroads into Plaid Cymru. The Greens were always on side. But does it end there?

Maybe not.

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TITBITS, THOUGHTS

In this section I’ll look at a few other items that have come my way and how they perhaps fit with what we already knew.

First, I’m told that Nigel Farage had a closed-door meeting in January with Windward Energy Ltd Chairman Steve Scrimshaw. So let’s have a statement from Reform on where it stands on ‘renewable energy’ and rising electricity prices.

More closed door negotiations preceded the decision by the Wales Pension Partnership to invest £68m (for starters?) in Windward-Bute. A source says that very influential in the ultimate decision was Cardiff Lib Dem councillor Rhys Taylor.

Taylor of course sits on the council’s Pensions Committee, but I bet you can’t guess where his day job is. Let me help . . .

So we see that Windward-Bute also has its claws into the Lib Dems.

Leaving Gwlad the only honest party left.

I’m told the investigations into Taylor and Aplin might result in a number of Senedd Members, MSPs and MPs being invited to ‘help police with their inquiries’.

Understandably, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), the main funders for W-B’s renewable energy projects, is said to be pissed off by the recent news and allegations of spying for China.

Which provides yet another link to ‘Welsh’ Labour. Through Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Danish PM, her directorship of Vestas since 2019, and that company’s 25% stake in CIP.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt is the wife of Stephen Kinnock, MP for Aberavon Maesteg. He is of course the son of former Labour party leader now Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent, and the late Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, long-time Member of the European Parliament.

Her seat on the Brussels gravy-train was taken by Derek Vaughan who, following Brexit, was given a non-job by Windward-Bute on its Welsh Advisory Board.

Kinnock the Younger’s constituency is home to Port Talbot steelworks, so recently and shamelessly allowed to die. Welcomed in certain circles because it reduces Wales’ output of some evil dreamed up by Greenhairs.

∼

I’m going to throw out an idea that might sound outrageous, yet it’s plausible. Just think about it.

Millican, Steele and George all worked for real estate outfit Parabola, where Millican’s father Peter is head man. They all left Parabola towards the end of 2017. (Or that’s what we’re encouraged to believe.)

They had no experience in ‘renewables’; and to my knowledge they’ve still not erected a single turbine. Certainly not in Wales. But is this missing the point?

They now have sites designated, landowners signed up, planning applications submitted, politicians and others bought, financial backing for the projects arranged, and warehouses stacked to the gunwales with the wherewithal to complete the projects.

So if Windward-Bute only gets half or less of the planning consents applied for – even no planning approval at all – they could still sell up and make a massive profit. Especially if the anticipated crackdown on (recently) imported parts comes into play and the components they bought years ago rocket in price.

Maybe that was always the business model. Not actually building anything.

If nothing else, it’ll be a very lucrative fall-back position.

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CONCLUSION

Windward-Bute has corrupted Welsh political and public life. And it was so predictable.

With a form of devolved government designed to fail. And with ‘progressive’ politicians too stupid and gullible to have made even a good model work.

Made worse by those same politicians seriously believing Wales alone could save a planet being destroyed by humans – and their farting cows!

Politicians believing that lobbyists and pressure groups should determine policies, and that they should be able to do so free from regulation or restraint.

Resulting in overlapping and incestuous circles in one relatively small city, circles of perhaps no more than two or three thousand people in total, damaging the lives of over three million people.

This shit-show was bound to attract the kinds of ‘developers’ we’ve seen over the past 27 years. With Windward-Bute perhaps the worst, the most pernicious example.

Windward-Bute already has the shadow of ‘China spying’ hanging over it, and the stain of buying political influence, but it doesn’t end there.

The West’s lemming-like rush over the cliff of ‘renewables’ isn’t just good news for China, on which we depend for everything from rare earth minerals to completed solar panels; it’s also welcomed in the oil-rich Gulf states because ‘renewables’ are also unreliables, and need back-up.

Some might think that a UK-based company or individuals enriching themselves from helping de-industrialise and impoverish the West is tantamount to treason.

And I would agree. For ‘renewables’ are a response to nothing but avarice.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Labour Apparatchiks Associated With Bute Energy Arrested In China Spy Probe

On By JacIn Bute Energy, China, Corruption Bay, Welsh Labour, Wind Turbines66 Comments

You must know what this is about. But in case you’ve been sleeping for a week . . . three men, with close ties to the ‘Welsh’ Labour party, were arrested last Wednesday “on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service“. They were released on bail the following day.

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WHO’S INVOLVED?

The first, is David James Taylor. Originally of Ruthin, now perhaps London. But he spent most of the intervening years working as a special advisor (spad) to a number of prominent Labour politicians.

These were Rhodri Morgan, first secretary of Wales between 2000 and 2009. Peter Hain, one-time anti-Apartheid campaigner, MP for Neath, who held a few posts in the UK government, and now sits in the House of Lords. I seem to think Taylor might also have done a stint with Morgan’s successor, Carwyn Jones.

Around a decade ago Taylor got himself involved in wind energy. More on this later.

Last year he started working for Asia House. (It’s been taken down from the website.)

Next up is Steven Jones. He has already been removed from the website of the lobbying group Camlas Cymru, for which he works in Cardiff. He definitely worked for Carwyn Jones. As this report makes clear.

Also non-personed by Camlas is the third man arrested last Wednesday, Matthew Aplin.

‘Camlas’, I suggest, might be translated into English as canal or channel.

Camlas was founded, as Positif Politics Ltd, in January 2006 by Daran Hill and his wife. But Hill was sent down in July 2023 for sharing images of child abuse.

Hill links with Taylor through a company called (after a couple of name changes) Leckwith Ltd. This was started by Taylor in November 2011 and taken over by Hill on New Year’s Day 2018. Leckwith was Dissolved just over a year after the exchange.

Was Hill killing off a possible competitor? If so, how much did he pay Taylor?

Whatever, Taylor then became a client of Hill. As I found out in a DM exchange back in August 2020. (Full version here.)

The other individual named in media reports, but not arrested, was Taylor’s wife Joani Reid, Labour MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven. The grand-daughter of Jimmy Reid. (Despite his politics, I always had time for him.)

They might have met when Reid was a councillor in Islington from 2014 to 2022.

Reid claimed no knowledge of her husband’s business activities. But why would she link the arrest to his business dealings? He was arrested on suspicion of spying.

Following Taylor’s arrest, Reid said in a statement that she is “not part of” her husband’s business activities.

So what have we got? A young MP, only elected in 2024, on the right of the Labour party, and certainly not privy to state secrets.

Of the three men, none is a nuclear scientist, or a high-ranking military officer, so I think we can rule out slipping the Chinese Communist Party important information.

Which leaves me to conclude that what they’re suspected of is commercial in nature. Unless of course, the CCP is planning to take over the ‘Welsh’ Labour party. But if the comrades in Beijing rummage in the drawers, and check down the backs of the sofas, they might find a receipt for that shower.

Whatever they paid – they wuz robbed!

Let’s proceed on the assumption that any offence committed is of a commercial or financial nature.

UPDATE: 01.04.2026: This incredible story just took another crazy turn with the suggestion that Joani Reid had ‘relationships’ with two captains of nuclear submarines. Read it for yourself.

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MORE ON DAVID JAMES TAYLOR, INTRODUCING BUTE ENERGY

For perhaps ten years David James Taylor has been involved with renewable energy. More specifically wind power. His involvement is due to developers realising how useful he is through his contacts in the Labour party that’s run the Welsh parliament for 27 years, either alone or with a junior partner in the Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru.

All this is covered in the many, many pieces I’ve put out on Bute Energy.

A good place to start might be Hendy Wind Farm, not far from Llandrindod. Where nary a turbine has turned. The eponymous company was launched in May 2011 by Matthew Simon Weiner, Graham Prothero, Michael Henry Marx, and Charles Julian Barwick.

There were linked projects at Bryn Blaen, near Llangurig, and Rhoscrowther on Milford Haven waterway.

Behind it was an outfit called U+I, taken over late in 2021 by Landsec.

The original directors were joined in August by Steven John Radford who, in May 2011, had launched Njord Energy Ltd. This company is in the process of being wound up. A new Radford company launched last year is Njord Wind.

Planning permission for Hendy was refused by the local council in April 2017, and this decision was upheld by an inspector in May 2018. At the council meeting a lobbyist tried to hand a note to the councillors and she had to be ushered away.

The woman was Anna McMorrin, working for Invicta Public Affairs of Newcastle. A Labour stalwart, she became MP for Cardiff North in the general election of June 2017.

As I say, permission for this windfarm was refused; but then came a strange incident that defied – and still defies – explanation. In October 2018, Lesley Griffiths, the Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ said she would ignore the planning inspector’s decision and allow Hendy Wind Farm to go ahead.

By this time David JamesTaylor had developed an interest in wind turbines (which may link with his failure to be elected North Wales PCC in May 2016). Taylor’s an ally and friend of Griffiths. Here he is campaigning for her.

A month before Griffiths’ bizarre decision a company was launched called Windward Generation Ltd. Later re-named Bute Energy Ltd, then RSCO 3750 Ltd, and Dissolved in September 2023.

The original directors, from Scotland, were Oliver James Millican and Lawson Douglas Steele. They were joined six days later by Radford.

Bute Energy has since spawned many companies planning windfarms, solar arrays, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), and pylon runs from central Wales; one to just south of Carmarthen where it’ll meet the main grid from Pembroke running through the south and on to England, the other running north east and over the border near Oswestry.

The ultimate holding company for them all is Windward Global Ltd, formed 16 May 2017. The only shareholder is Oliver James Millican. He’s the son of Peter Millican of real estate company Parabola. Millican, Steele, and the other member of the Bute troika, Stuart Allan George, had all worked for Parabola, and all ‘left’ at the same time.

Taylor was soon involved. Becoming a partner in Grayling Capital LLP. And holding shares in Windward Energy Ltd, both in his own name and that of his company Moblake Associates Ltd. These shares seem to have been sold in July 2022.

But why was Taylor given these shares in the first place? Why was he a partner in the LLP? What was he doing for Bute?

I’ll conclude this section on Taylor by saying that in the Moblake Ltd accounts for year ending 30 April 2021 we find this entry.

There’s no explanation of where the money came from that he gave himself as a ‘loan’. Even though it’s before the sale of the Windward Energy shares I still assumed this money came from Bute, for services rendered.

Moblake soon went into liquidation.

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POSITIF, CAMLAS, BUTE

In the first section I mentioned David Taylor’s link to child pornography fan Daran Hill, and Hill’s company Positif. Since renamed Camlas. And we saw that the other two men arrested with Taylor are Camlas employees.

Camlas is owned by Rhodri ab Owen. Rhodri’s brother is Senedd Member Rhys ab Owen, who sits as an Independent following a minor lapse that saw the pearl-clutchers of Plaid Cymru distance themselves.

These brothers are the sons of lifelong Plaid activist and Assembly Member the late Owen John Thomas, with whom I had a few jars back in The Good Old Days when the party prioritised Wales and Welsh interests before going far left then Woke.

Camlas seems to be another Plaid-Labour hybrid. (Like Deryn.) For as we’ve seen, and despite Plaid ownership, there’s plenty of Labour involvement. Another from that quarter worth mentioning is Naomi Williams, the partner of Labour SM Jack Sargeant, who did 14 years with Positif-Camlas and ended up as Managing Partner.

Another Camlas-Labour connection is provided by Matthew Hexter. He worked for Camlas for over three years, as a Senior Political Consultant, before becoming a Special Adviser at the Wales Office.

Bute Energy is a client of Camlas. And as I’ve established above, Taylor has a lengthy association with Bute. But Taylor’s now moved on, and since September last year he’s been Head of Programmes for Asia House in London.

I don’t know much about Asia House, but it has many contacts in China. That’s almost inevitable, with China being the largest Asian country. And there needn’t be anything suspicious about it. Except that China is a country controlled by a Communist regime with its hand in everything.

Taylor’s most recent company is Earthcott Ltd. Launched 1 September 2021. The latest accounts, to year ending 30 September 2024, show a big increase in assets and cash. And, as we saw earlier with Moblake, there’s no explanation for where it comes from.

Is this to be paid to himself as a loan that doesn’t need to be repaid?

Idly flicking through the Asia House accounts filed with Companies House, I soon came upon the capture you see below, which rang a bell. But why?

Rathbones is a major investment company, with its roots in Liverpool. Like most asset and investment companies nowadays it’s keen to make money from ‘renewable’ energy. But let me explain why I found Rathbone’s involvement interesting.

The Rathbone family still benefits handsomely from such investments. One member of the family sits in the Senedd, Jenny Rathbone, SM for Cardiff Central since 2011. As Wikipedia tells us:

Rathbone descended from the Rathbone family, with many members being notable merchants and politicians. Rathbone’s great aunt is Eleanor Rathbone, one of the first women elected as a Member of Parliament.[16][17][18] Her great grandfather was William Rathbone V, who was Lord Mayor of Liverpool.[19]

Jenny Rathbone is a big supporter of ‘Renewables’. And “sits on the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee“. But it don’t end there.

Her husband, or partner, John Uden, who knows bugger all about wind energy, had a sinecure created for him by Bute Energy on its ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ a few years back. Another member recruited was redundant Labour MEP Derek Vaughan.

In fact, Bute has been hoovering up people with influence in the Labour party for some years. A recent addition is Sophie Howe, former Future Generations Commissioner, who’s now a director of Bute Energy Ltd.

And it seems to have started with David James Taylor, because the boys from Edinburgh didn’t know anybody here until they recruited him.

But now, with the wind in their sails, Plaid Cymru seem to be the target. One notable recruit being 29-year-old Baroness Carmen Smith. She was selected for the Lords by the party hierarchy over the members’ choice of former MP Elfyn Llwyd.

Did Bute have a hand in that? Because Smith works for Bute.

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UPDATES

Martin ‘Shippo’ Shipton, of ‘Welsh Government’-funded Nation.Cymru, had his door kicked in just after 6am last Wednesday by an “eight-strong team from the counter-terrorism division of the Metropolitan Police“. As he reports here.

To believe him this was all a misunderstanding due to a completely innocent visit he made to Hong Kong, with David James Taylor, to meet representatives of the Chinese Communist Party.

Fair enough, squire . . . except that Shippo has made his admiration for Communist China clear on a few occasions.

He sounds like a visitor to Stalin’s Russia in awe of the grain harvest.

And on Friday the Western Mail gave him a big spread. Though I was initially confused by the reference to “top Welsh journalist“.

Shipton is a biased lefty propagandist subsidised with our money. If it was up to me I’d have him ‘cuffed, dragged off to some quiet place, where he’d be encouraged to respond to the gentle persuasion of a rubber hose.

But, then, I’m a far-right bastard . . . who respects democracy, who wants to defend freedom of speech, who rejects censorship and Digital ID, who realises that Net Zero is a Globalist scam, who knows that Covid was engineered by some truly evil bastards.

Just another nobody who loves his country, and realises who its real enemies are.

And I’ve got a sense of humour!

In other news, Taylor’s wife, Joani Reid, has resigned the Labour whip.

Another property has been searched. So who is it? Well, he’s a former aide to Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the Labour party, who now sits in the House of Lords.

Watson became a director of Bute company Windward Energy Ltd in September 2024.

I could go about Labour party connections with Bute. For example, funding is said to be coming from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, where we find a former Danish PM, who happens to be the wife of Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon.

With more investment coming from the Welsh local government pension pot.

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CONCLUSION

Welsh politics is corrupt. It’s a cess-pit. There could be no other way after a century of Labour party dominance and the cronyism and nepotism that goes with it.

With devolution third-rate politicos have been bossed around by spads and advisers, civil servants answering to bosses in London, and bullied by lobbysists and others. All of whom have more influence in Corruption Bay than we, the people they were elected to represent.

Which explains so much. Such as why Wales is the only country in the Western world without a register of lobbyists. Because the lobbyists didn’t want it!

In recent years, new players have added to that corruption.

Among these new players, Bute Energy is prominent. It wants to plaster rural Wales in 250-metre-tall wind turbines, cover good land with solar panels, and destroy what remains with pylons.

And Bute’s done this through buying political influence. The boys from Auld Reekie know how the game is played. And it was so easy when you’re dealing with thick-as-shit politicians, with no business sense – but stupid and gullible enough to believe that human beings are destroying the planet!

And for what? Unreliable and expensive ‘renewable’ energy. While China builds one coal-fired power station after another. While supplying us with components for wind turbines and complete solar panels.

And there is already Chinese interest in ‘renewables’ in Wales. Brenig wind farm, in the Clocaenog forest, is owned by the China General Nuclear Power Corporation of Guandong Province.

Wales & West Utilities is Chinese owned. After trawling through a labyrinth of ownership you eventually come to West Gas Networks Ltd. Check out the shareholders. Tracing back to Li Ka-shing.

It would relatively easy for China to begin a takeover of the UK energy market in Wales. There’d be little or no oversight from incompetent politicians who’d dress it all up as ‘diversity’ or ‘foreign investment’, or some such nonsense.

With the mainstream media, aided by the likes of Martin ‘China’ Shipton and Wee Willy Hayward, denouncing critics as racists and Sinophobes.

I don’t want it to look like I’m picking on Bute Energy, but it’s certainly a link between those who were pulled in. Bute, and of course the ‘Welsh’ Labour party that Bute’s so successfully infiltrated.

On top of which, people are telling me that Bute, perhaps due to mounting local opposition to its plans, is looking to sell up.

I’ll say no more. Form your own conclusions from the evidence I’ve presented.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Devolution Is Cardiff Council On Stilts

On By JacIn Cardiff, Cardiff Bay, Corruption Bay, Devolution, Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour23 Comments

To explain the title . . . Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was any talk of a Welsh Parliament, Home Rule, or devolution, one of the arguments used against the idea was that such a creation would just be “Glamorgan County Council on stilts“.

The implication being that other parts of Wales would be ignored. That investment, jobs and other goodies resulting from self-government would be concentrated in that area.

In this piece I’ll try to persuade you that what we’ve seen since 1999 is even worse.

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FIRST SECRETARY, FIRST MINISTER

I’m going to begin by looking at the first secretaries and first ministers we’ve had since the beginning of the devolution experiment.

The first, said to be Tony Blair’s choice, even “Blair’s poodle“, was Alun Michael. He was never very popular, either within the Labour party or the country at large, and was first secretary for just nine months, until May 2000.

A former Cardiff City councillor, he later served as Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth. Then Regional Assembly Member for Mid & West Wales. And PCC for South Wales.

Michael was replaced by the much more popular Rhodri Morgan. Who stayed in the first minister role until December 2009.

Cardiff-born Morgan was MP (until 2001 GE) and AM for Cardiff West from 1999.

Next came Carwyn Jones. Despite being born in Swansea, and practising law there for a number of years, he represented the Bridgend constituency. His Cardiff connection was established by being a tutor for a few years at Cardiff University.

I’ve said it many times on this blog, and I’ll say it again, Cardiff University is joined at the hip to the local Labour establishment. The School of Journalism should be renamed the School of Globalist-Left Propaganda.

Jones stood down as leader in December 2018. He now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Jones of Penybont.

He was succeeded by Mark Drakeford, a former South Glamorgan County councillor who became the Assembly Member for Cardiff West in the May 2011 elections.

Drakeford was born and raised in Carmarthenshire, but moved to Cardiff over 40 years ago. And was a lecturer at Cardiff University.

From 1985 to 1993, Drakeford represented the Pontcanna ward on South Glamorgan County Council, with fellow future Welsh Assembly members Jane Hutt and Jane Davidson as his ward colleagues.

(Jane Davidson was at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Labour AM for Pontypridd (1999 – 2011), and wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that enforces ESG and DEI in every aspect of Welsh life.)

Drakeford stood down as first minister in March 2024. He will not stand again in May.

Then came the brief tenure of his successor Vaughan Gething. After serving as councillor for the Butetown ward on Cardiff City Council he became the Senedd Member for Cardiff South & Penarth in 2011.

Gething is also standing down.

Gething was succeeded in August 2024 by the current incumbent, and former MEP, Eluned Morgan, the Regional Member for Mid & West Wales.

Born and raised in Cardiff she sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Morgan of Ely.

So we see a Cardiff connection with all first secretaries or first ministers Wales has known in 27 years of devolution. And with five out of the six a strong connection.

Given that Cardiff makes up some twelve per cent of Wales’ population, this statistic is truly remarkable. And should be concerning.

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SOME INTERESTING SENEDD MEMBERS

Beginning with Bridgend, where we find Sarah Murphy. Who was born and raised in Pontypridd then, after Reading University, worked in Seoul and London. She came back to Cardiff; held posts with the Labour party, and the University. More exactly, the School of Journalism.

Next, Cardiff Central. The patch of uber wealthy Jenny Rathbone since 2011. She’s a member of the Rathbone dynasty of Liverpool, where she was born. Her knowledge of Wales is on a par with that of a stay-at-home Eskimo. Limited to Cardiff and the area around her holiday home up in Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr.

Hubby, John Uden, who knows as much about wind power as the heretofore mentioned Innuit knows of Wales, somehow managed to get on the ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ of Bute Energy. Which was handy, seeing as Mrs Uden sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.

She’s standing down in May. Her vacuous wittering will not be missed.

Cardiff North is where we find Julie Morgan, widow of Rhodri. Cardiff born and bred, she is a former South Glamorgan and Cardiff City councillor, and was elected to the Senedd in 2011 after losing the Westminster seat of Cardiff North in 2010.

She is also standing down.

Cardiff South & Penarth is held by former first minister, Vaughan Gething. (See above.)

Cardiff West is held by former first minister Mark Drakeford (See above.)

Cynon Valley brings up Vikki Howells, who was born and raised in the constituency, and attended Cardiff University.

The SM for Llanelli Lee Waters is definitely a member of the Corruption Bay in crowd. A former ITV Wales journalist, director of think tank IWA, then director-lobbyist for bike charity Sustrans, he’s the man responsible for the 20mph restrictions.

Despite being SM for a seat west of Swansea, he lives just outside Cardiff.

He’s standing down in May.

Now we head up to Merthyr where the local representative is Bristol City fan Dawn Bowden. Another Bay insider who worked her way up through union ranks but who knows as much about the Heads of the Valleys as the denizen of the frozen north I mentioned earlier.

But that doesn’t matter – she was promised a safe seat.

Which she’ll thankfully vacate in May.

Another carpet-bagger can be found in Pontypridd in the form of Mick Antoniw. He came to Wales to study at Cardiff University, and stayed. One of those who drove through the absurd and corrupt voting system we’ll be using in May.

Of Ukrainian descent, he’s made a number of very public trips there to deliver ‘aid’. If Wales was independent he’d want us to declare war on Russia.

Another one standing down.

A odd one now, in Julie James, SM for Swansea West. Odd, because even though she was born in Swansea, travelled around a lot in her early life, she was involved in the Gilestone farm saga before being elected to the Assembly in 2011. As a solicitor working against the then owners, which paved the way for the land to be bought by someone’s chosen buyer.

Also standing down.

Moving east to Torfaen, ‘though born in Merthyr, Lynn Neagle is definitely part of the Bay Bubble. Wife of former Labour AM Huw Lewis.

Neagle has worked for, “Shelter Cymru, Mind and the CAB. She was Carers Development Officer with Voluntary Action Cardiff and also worked as a researcher for Glenys Kinnock MEP“.

And, finally . . . Jane Hutt, who sits for the Vale of Glamorgan, is another who moved to Wales to involve herself in charities and third sector bodies: National Co-ordinator of Welsh Women’s Aid, South Glamorgan Women’s Workshop, Tenant Participation Advisory Service and Chwarae Teg (Fair Play) . . .

Thankfully, she’s also standing down.

◊

REGIONAL SENEDD MEMBERS

Due to winning so many seats in the south and the north east Labour has just three Regional SMs. One in the North. Here are the two from the Mid & West.

One of course, is Eluned Morgan, the current first minister. (See above.)

The other is Joyce Watson. And she may be unique among Labour SMs because her official bio says: “Joyce has run several small businesses – public houses, restaurants and retail outlets – in Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.”

But did she own them?

But even that ray of hope is dimmed by the usual charity/third sector involvement: “Joyce managed the Wales Women’s National Coalition . . . senior member of the Wales Gender Budget Group . . . NHS Equality Reference Group”.

Watson is another jumping the sinking ship of devolved politics in May.

◊

WHAT IT MEANS

Let’s start with a statistic. The population of Wales grew between the census years of 2001 and 2021 by 6.8%. In the same period Cardiff saw growth of 18.7%. According to some, Cardiff is now the fastest-growing city in the UK.

Most areas of Wales saw negligible growth, with some even recording a fall. Ceredigion, Blaenau Gwent and Gwynedd have declining, and ageing, populations; while Merthyr and a few other areas struggle to maintain their numbers.

Newport’s population increases steadily since charges on the Severn Bridge were abolished, which allowed buyers from England to access the cheaper housing in south east Wales and commute daily to Bristol, or even further. While in many rural areas population increase is due to retirees and good-lifers moving in.

But turning Newport into a Bristol suburb and rural areas into al fresco retirement homes is neither desirable nor sustainable.

Welsh life is increasingly focused in Cardiff, for the benefit of Cardiff. This can be explained by a number of factors. The first, quite obviously, is political power. Then there’s the third sector, charities, pressure groups, which both feed off and feed into the political system.

A political machine serviced by regiments of spads, assistants and researchers, whose loyalty can be guaranteed by the carrot of a council seat, or, for the very lucky – a seat in the Senedd.

But let’s not overlook other beneficiaries, such as those to be found among the movers and shakers of the local business community.

An example would be the Thomas brothers, of the pie and pasty dynasty. It’s universally accepted that the ‘Welsh Government’ paid way over the odds to buy Cardiff airport. But who was the vendor?

And who bought that criminally undervalued land on the outskirts of Cardiff?

In both cases the lucky boy was Stan Thomas. Hot pies all round!

If you want a fuller picture, read a couple of pieces I put out ten years ago. Pies, Planes & Property Development, and Pies, Planes & Property Development 2.

But it’s not just the Thomas brothers. There are others.

Then there’s sport. Through funding, the ‘Welsh Government’ effectively took control of the Football Association of Wales and the Welsh Rugby Union.

Which explains why, when Cardiff Rugby went bust the WRU stepped in to buy it. And why the most successful region, the Ospreys, based in Swansea, is threatened with extinction.

The last-but-one owner of Cardiff Rugby was the late Peter Thomas, Stan’s brother.

The clowns currently wrecking Welsh rugby are political appointees, and they’ve been told to prioritise the interests of Cardiff. To the detriment of Welsh rugby as a whole.

Finally, there’s the media. Based in Cardiff and little more than a mouthpiece for those I’ve described above.

And all the while, our economy and our essential services decline and decay.

◊

WHAT MIGHT THE FUTURE HOLD?

If polls are to be believed then Plaid Cymru will emerge in May with most SMs, but not a majority. This will mean Plaid going into coalition, or having an ‘agreement’, or an ‘understanding’, most likely with Labour, possibly with the Greens.

We might even see a ‘progressive’ alliance of all the Globalist-Woke parties. It really won’t make much difference. (But what a nightmare that could be!)

Now some might think that with so much of its support being in the west and the north Plaid Cymru will adopt a different approach. And there might be a few moves away from the obsessive focus on Cardiff, but Plaid would be no real improvement.

Because Plaid wants to take Wales further than Labour on ‘ishoos’ such as Net Zero, trans ‘rights’, DEI, Gaza, ‘Islamophobia’, and decolonising Welsh cakes. And faster down the road of economic implosion and civilisational decline.

Party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth may be the Senedd Member for Ynys Môn, the seat furthest from the Bay, but he’s a former BBC journalist. He was educated at Cardiff University and he’s lived in Cardiff.

And ap Iorwerth may be a figurehead; for many believe the party is still controlled by the acolytes of a previous leader, the PoundShop Pasionaria of Penygraig.

Whatever the outcome in May in party terms, it won’t make much difference. Plaid, Greens, Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, they’re all just differently-badged elements of the Globalist Uniparty. That’s why they repeatedly tell us the upcoming election is solely about defeating Reform.

Is it?

Then again, Labour might welcome a ‘break’. Shun any co-operation, then come back untainted and refreshed in 2031. Hoping electors will have forgotten their record in the Senedd.

And who might lead the Labour comeback? If I was a betting man I’d put a few quid on Huw Thomas. If you’ve never heard of him, let me introduce him.

Huw Thomas, courtesy of Getty Images

He’s 41 years old and from Aberystwyth, he’s bilingual, and he’s been leader of Cardiff Council for nearly 10 years. In May, he’s top of the Labour list for the Caerdydd Penarth constituency.

He’s guaranteed to be elected because Cardiff is an area where Labour will do well.

UPDATE: Soon after posting this article at 9am I went to Tywyn, picked up a Western Mail, read it while having my first coffee of the day. In this article Huw Thomas gets a mighty plug.

If it comes to pass as I predict, and Labour gets back into power in 2031, under his leadership, then everything will revert to the status quo ante Plaid, with Cardiff grabbing the lion’s share of investment and jobs.

Which, to respectfully amend Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, will mean a return to: Government of Wales, by Cardiff, for Cardiff.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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The Latest Enviro-scam – ‘Celtic Rainforests’

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Farming, Public Funding30 Comments

I ended last week’s piece on the purchase by Tir Natur of land in the Elenydd, the beautiful ‘wilderness’ between Lampeter and Llanwrtyd, by saying that I was waiting for further information on what was planned to have been the second part of that offering.

Well, I’ve since had a response from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, but it’s not entirely satisfactory. More on that in part two. But first . . .

◊

TIR NATUR AND ‘CELTIC RAINFORESTS’

I pointed out last week that the land bought by Tir Natur, is in the Cwm Doethïe-Mynydd Mallaen Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Which means it is already protected, and in the care of Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

That being so, why does it need ‘rewilding’? Well, I have since learnt that this SSSI is one of four sites in Wales already appearing on the Celtic Rainforests (Wales) website. (Maybe someone should tell them that ‘Snowdonia’ is now Eryri.)

So why isn’t the rainforest aspect mentioned on the Tir Natur website?

Of the others, Eryri is of course a National Park; Elan Valley is owned or managed by Dŵr Cymru; and Cwm Einion (aka ‘Artists Valley’) is another SSSI that runs up behind Ffwrnais in north Ceredigion.

Which means that all four sites so far chosen for restoration to their imagined pristine state of ‘Celtic Rainforest’ are under some form of public agency control. So why can’t the bodies involved do the work themselves?

Perhaps I’ve given the game away in the title to this week’s piece. The Celtic Rainforest baloney is just another way for ‘environmentalists’ to grab land, and for big business to make money.

Checking the background of Celtic Rainforests I ran across this advertisement put up by Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW). This is the name of a body that abolished itself on 31 March 2021. So it has no official registered or regulated standing

Before that date the individual Welsh Trusts had been represented by WTW in dealings with the Englandandwales Wildlife Trusts (WT). Now they belong directly to WT, just like English county Trusts.

Attributable to the almost complete absence of Welsh involvement in ‘Welsh’ wildlife trusts.

Getting back to the Celtic Rainforests, The manager vacancy was filled by Gethin Davies, who also works for Parc Eryri. Which, if nothing else, explains why the project is based at the Park’s HQ in Penrhyndeudraeth.

Anyway, seeing as this land bought by Tir Natur is already a SSSI, and is to be planted with native trees, how much rewilding will actually happen? Or does planting trees count as rewilding?

To finish this section let me introduce one of Celtic Rainforests volunteers, who believes, ” . . . systemic racism is built into the way we view and use land; how it’s parcelled up and managed.”

For someone I can confidently locate on the political left she’s strangely blind to the class dimension to land ownership. Instead, she prefers a more simplistic, black and white interpretation. Literally! White people bad, everybody else good.

This Rainforests volunteer condemns colonialism but seems blind to a ruling group’s middle class, aligned with corporate capital and serving Globalist aims, working against an indigenous ethno-cultural minority.

Are there any depths of idiocy this anti-white bullshit can’t plumb? Perhaps not; for to believe a US academic this week, drinking cows milk makes you a Nazi.

Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at NYU, criticized The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on January 14. In a blog post, Caplan claimed that whole milk has been used as a symbol by white supremacists.

As you can guess, I’ve had a gutsful of this nonsense. Despite being difficult to take it seriously at times it’s still racism. It must be called out and defeated.

But of course, in this context, it’s another weapon in the anti-farming arsenal.

◊

RHOS-FARCH, PENNAL

If the name sounds familiar it’s because I wrote about this farm in July last year, in the piece, ‘Farming’ – The Globalist Way!’. So this is by way of an update.

Last July I told you it was suspected that Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust had bought Rhos-farch, a farm of 625 acres overlooking the historic village of Pennal. Here’s how Savills describes the holding.

And here’s a map to help you further. Rhos-farch is coloured in pink.

I can now confirm that Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust (MWT) received £3,000,000 to buy Rhos-farch. Certainly, that’s what’s suggested in the accounts. The clip below says the money came from Aviva via the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.

Note “restore it to Celtic Rainforest“. This is the reason for the funding.

But that clip above also says that Rhos-farch will be “open to visitors as a MWT nature reserve“. We can almost guarantee that some visitors will get lost, or think the nature reserve extends over neighbouring farms.

Seeing as Savills had priced the property at £3,500,000 I wondered if MWT had received money from anywhere else. So I wrote to the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, asking if any money had come from that quarter.

The answer was no. But I was sent copies of email correspondence, from last summer, between interested parties. Despite redactions we can assume the ‘Welsh Government’ was a participant, if only because it was holding the copies.

Other participants that can be clearly identified from the emails are Wildlife Trusts Wales (conduit for the Aviva money), and the Celtic Rainforest Creation Manager (Wales). Confirming that even though Rhos-farch is not mentioned on the Rainforests website it is obviously lined up.

The wildlife trust’s purchase is not welcomed by locals. Certainly not by local farmers.

One reason for that is the farms in the area, including Rhos-farch, benefit from a local shoot, a useful addition to their income. Of course, Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust will not allow shooting, and this will impact negatively on other farms.

The issue even got an airing in Nation.Cymru last year, which reported retirees and good-lifers trying to impose their views on locals. The giveaway was the paragraph beginning, “I was upset when moving here that there seemed to be an us and them atmosphere in the village.”

(Of course it never occurs to these buggers to ask how this division arose.)

Thankfully, the answer came later in the piece:

I and all my family are Pennal born and bred, and it winds me up terribly that incomers want to change our way of life and also tell us what we can and can’t do. If all the anti shooting brigades in the village don’t like what we do in the countryside, maybe they should move back to where they came from.

I find it interesting that Nation.Cymru should run this article around the same time as the emails I’ve mentioned were being exchanged. And perhaps as the Rhos-farch sale was being finalised. But N.C is extremely well connected in Corruption Bay.

Though seeing as Rhos-farch is not mentioned on the Celtic Rainforests website, how many other farms, other sites, are being lined up?

One final thought. Rhos-farch was never in Montgomeryshire, or Powys. It was in the old county of Merioneth, now in Gwynedd. So why was it bought by the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust?

Is it because the vendors, one of them a senior ‘Welsh Government’ civil servant, live in the old county of Montgomeryshire?

◊

CONCLUSION

If it was simply about preserving and perhaps enhancing rainforests, then I’d be fine with that. We could ban felling, clear the rhododendrons and other invasive species, plant more trees – and then leave it to Nature.

Given that the rainforests I know locally are typically dark, dank places, steep slopes and narrow valleys, no good land would be lost and no one would be inconvenienced.

And the website agrees with me.

You are never far from the sound of cascading water, and with the huge boulders and ravines galore, these forests are an ideal place for adventures.

“Adventures“?

That description also tells us these sites are unsuitable for the grazing that is constantly advocated! Though bear in mind that what these areas might have known in the past was not the right kind of grazing.

For that’s how it works when ‘environmental’ arguments are used against Welsh farming. It starts with dreaming up ways to make money, grab land – and then comes the excuse.

Step 1: Think of imaginative ways to achieve the objective.

Step 2: Dream up a ‘problem’ to justify what you’ve decided on.

Deception is the essence of the ‘climate crisis’; responsible for Net Zero impoverishing the West through ruinous electricity bills that drive industry away and make life more difficult for ordinary people.

Feeding off this prime lunacy are associated disorders such as the ‘threat’ from CO2! All too predictably, this is one of the justifications used for the Celtic Rainforests scheme.

It should go without saying that the World Economic Forum (WEF) is to the fore in connecting trees with corporate money-making.

Pushing the same message on the UK level is the Climate Change Committee. Here’s an extract from a CCC report on Wales published less than a year ago.

“Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere“! Life on Earth depends on carbon dioxide. Remove it, and everything – including we humans – dies.

Seeing as we’re talking of rainforests it’s worth remembering that this all started decades ago, in attempts to save the Amazon rainforest, and the rainforests of south east Asia. But more recently, someone realised it could be brought nearer home and used in the Globalist-environmentalist war on farming.

And remember! “Just 4.3% of the entire rainforest landscape is ancient woodland“, says the State of Wales Rainforest Report (page 8). So plenty of room to expand. Plenty more farms to buy.

And who’ll decide what must be ‘restored’? A fair question – because most of Wales qualifies as “Rainforest Zone”.

The map comes from an article in Nation.Cymru in October 2022. It seems to be attributed to Guy Shrubsole, whose name crops up a lot in such discussions. The article even names the Elenydd.

Shrubsole is said to have founded Right to Roam, a gang of self-entitled narcissists who feel they have the right to traipse wherever they damn well please. Among their number we find the ‘racist countryside’ woman we encountered earlier.

In conclusion . . . I often watch Neil Oliver’s monologues on YouTube. Neil’s persona non grata with the Beeb for challenging Covid, climate change, and all the other lies. He rambles a bit, and he’s not always right, but he’s a sincere guy.

Anyway, and as Neil Oliver always says: “It’s never about what they say it’s about“.

How true that is. Bear it in mind.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Land Of Our Fathers, But Not Our Children

On By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Farming, Wind Turbines46 Comments

This post is about what’s described as “Wales’ largest rewilding site“. I suspect it’s about more than ‘rewilding’. Because there’s usually big money involved with ‘environmental’ schemes nowadays.

◊

TIR NATUR: WHO’S WHO?

I’ve written about this outfit a few times in recent years. But to get you started, here’s the Tir Natur website, and here’s the Charity Commission entry.

When I first encountered Tir Natur it seemed to be a very amateurish outfit, but now it appears more professional. (That’s not always a compliment.) And there also seems to have been an almost complete change of personnel.

The name I recall from the beginning was Stephen Jenkins. And he gets a mention on the website, telling us he’d left:

The capture above confirms that Tir Natur was formed in 2021. But not actually registered with the Charity Commission until June of 2022.

The only founding member still with Tir Natur might be Gwenan Jenkins-Jones. She’s had training in how to spot money laundering. Which might come in useful at a ‘rewilding’ charity.

These changes are also reflected in the address given.

For the address now shown with the Charity Commission is Moat Farm, Trimsaran, to the west of Llanelli. Though the old address, Y Beudy, Lanlwyd, Pennant, Ceredigion SY23 5JH, also appears on the website.

The Pontyberem address is perhaps where we’ll find the chair of the trustees, Tatatia ‘Tash(a)’ Reilly; for one of the farm owners is a Lindsey Reilly.

Tatatia was the director of a company called Dashtan Ltd. In the business of ‘Residents property management’, which was formed and folded in less than a year. A phenomenon which, as you know, always gets my antennae twitching.

Her co-director was Bogdan Edward Staniaszek. The company address was given as this property not far from Swansea city centre.

Did this in any way link with Tir Natur’s activities?

I suspect those living at Moat Farm are relative newcomers to Wales. ‘Nice little place in the country’ and all that. Same applies to a number of other Tir Natur trustees. I see two smallholders among them.

Definitely getting a whiff of good-lifers here. Though these are the ‘farmers’ Tir Cymru claims to be working with. None are real farmers.

Then there’s a couple of eco loonies who also come from outside of Wales. James Hitchcock, formerly of Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust, and now Rewilding Britain. And Tim Birch, still looking over his shoulder for the Derbyshire gamekeepers he smeared, and now involved in just about every enviroscam.

Next, Bronwyn Jamie Bunt-Brown, who may be American. And was living in Surrey when she ran this short-lived company. And there was another company that never filed accounts, or seemed to do anything, before being struck off.

Bronwyn became a trustee 25 March, 2025. Someone who joined on the same day was Pamela Louise Noakes. While Bronwyn seems to have moved to Wales Pamela still lives in London, where she works for M&C Saatchi Group.

This company has worked with Rewilding Britain. Fancy! And is keen to offset its carbon emissions. Noakes’ role is Global Director of Sustainability. Curiously, this day job is not mentioned in her Tir Natur bio. Why would that be, I wonder?

Turning to the ‘Executive Team’, those who run Tir Natur day to day, presents very much the same picture, with the obvious exception of Gwenan Jenkins-Jones. I hope she’s getting well paid, because her mere presence is invaluable to this scam.

To help her provide a Welsh gloss there’s Dr Elen Robert, whose full-time job is as a translator for Natural Resources Wales. Is NRW – that is, us – paying her to do translation work for Tir Natur?

Kilner’s the one on the left, I think

Dan Ward’s day job is with North Star Transition, another interloper organisation.

I could go on, but I’ll just mention David Kilner who, as Development and Programme Lead, might be the top man. Dai is also involved with Climate Cymru, where ‘diversity’ seems to be more important than the climate or the environment.

I say that because you may recall it was the BAME department of Climate Cymru, back in 2024, that called for dogs to be banned from the countryside because they offended a certain group that really should start adapting and integrating.

◊

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY?

With money from somewhere, Tir Nature has bought (or “secured“) 1195 acres of Ceredigion. Here’s a report on the purchase from the County Times.

And here’s a video put out by Tir Natur.

According to an article last week in Nation.Cymru half of the £2.2m has been raised. Farmers Weekly talks of “a philanthropic bridging loan”

The Charity Commission website shows that over £900,000 appeared from somewhere before the end of June last year. But where?

Less than two years ago Tir Natur was skint. Though there is now at least one active Crowdfunder page. And there seems to have been an earlier Crowdfunding attempt that closed about a year ago after raising £60,000.

With a sizeable donation in match funding coming from Aviva which, as we know, works with BlackRock. Here’s more information on the Aviva Communities Fund, which has donated £28,264, that we know of.

One of the reasons I’m focussing on the money is because there are many examples of ‘rewilding’ projects and the like that have gone financially awry, perhaps taken on burdens that became too heavy.

One example of overreach would be Highlands Rewilding, which may be the model being followed by Tir Natur. This outfit struggled to pay off the bank loan.

If it’s not overreach then ‘rewilding’ is often a front for milking government schemes.

An example of this would be another case from the Highlands. With Aberdeen Investments being honest about the motives behind the company’s interest in ‘rewilding’.

The estate was acquired by abrdn three years ago for £7.5m as a way to offset carbon emissions from its property portfolio.

The Highlands now are over-run with investment funds and asset managers looking for ‘environmentalists’ to front for them so they can rake in the money from carbon capture and other wheezes.

And there are plenty willing to play the acceptable public face of corporate greed. New groups sprout quicker and better than any fungi they claim to grow.

Just yesterday a good contact drew my attention to Wild Cymru, which is rewilding 210 acres of Ceredigion, at Cefn Garthenor, near Tregaron. The farm is owned by Neil Alistair Hughes of Savoir Beds.

The Chair of Wild Cymru is Daniel Gruffydd Jenkins-Jones. Might he be related to Gwenan Jenkins-Jones of Tir Natur?

A few days earlier a different source told me about another outfit also operating in Ceredigion. This is Oxygen Conservation, which now owns the 300 acres of Esgair Arth.

The guy who seems to own the company, Roy Barry Bedlow, has a string of similar companies. And it’s all about investment, not the environment.

A number of his companies carry the ‘L C’ handle, which stands for ‘low carbon’. One of those companies is L C Energy, which supplies woodchip. But don’t worry, this isn’t shipped across the Atlantic, it’s all “sustainably sourced within the UK“.

Biomass is a scam within a scam. Get big grants to plant native hardwood trees, instead plant quick-growing foreign species, grab the grants and subsidies, chop ’em down, flog off the wood as ‘renewable energy’, sell the land, move on to the next scam.

It should go without saying that Roy Barry Bedlow is based in Jersey.

Finally, a worrying possibility raised by someone who knows about these things, is that this Tir Natur project might qualify for payments under the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS), which would not have been the case under the old Basic Payments Scheme.

This would be wrong, and can be avoided if the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ insists that food must be produced for any land or landowner to qualify for SFS payouts. Otherwise, it’s not farming, is it?

◊

NEIGHBOURS

Let’s take a closer look at the land in question, and its surroundings. Such as the planned windfarms. Didn’t I mention the windfarms! How remiss of me.

The map shows four planned windfarms and the land Tir Natur is claiming. As you can see, they are very, very close. (I am indebted to the group that provided the map.)

The orange access road running south from Bryn Cadwgan goes over National Trust land to the village of Pumsaint. This is the only viable access for the turbine parts and the vast amounts of concrete needed for each turbine base. I covered this issue in November 2023 in The Road To Hell.

Now you might think that the peace and tranquility promised by an area returned to nature doesn’t sit well with an industrial site next door. With work going on for years.

But it doesn’t end there. Word I’m getting from locals says Bute is scouting more land over towards Teifi pools and Pontrhydfendigaid, north east of Tregaron.

And then there are the three farms in the area reportedly bought by the Foresight Group, which has been been busy in recent years buying Welsh farms and planting trees for investors.

But now it gets rather curious. Because I’m told the farms sold to Foresight had not long before been bought by a stranger to the area who’d made his pile in pet cremations! Yes, honestly.

This man, James Uys, is originally from Stroud in Gloucestershire. He played rugby and cricket for the local teams, and is big in sheepdog sales.

His business was almost certainly Limekiln Pet Crematorium, sold to Pet Cremation Services. Pet Cremation Services Ltd is the trading name for Time Right Ltd.

I don’t know how much Uys got for the pet cremation business, but he seems to have sold it in November 2017. And subsequently sold Limekiln Farm in September 2023 for a stated £3,000,000.

Some locals think Uys is a stalking-horse for Foresight, maybe others. Which would be odd, given what he’s on record as saying.

The value of agricultural land is hitting record highs as rich people seek loopholes to avoid inheritance tax, it is being reported.

Wealthy investors who have discovered the legal technicality are snapping up fields – and as a consequence prices are soaring to around £11,000 an acre, making life difficult for farmers. One newspaper reported on the case of a 50-year-old farmer from Gloucestershire who is in the process of selling his hundred-acre estate so he can buy a larger plot elsewhere. James Uys says he hopes to make £3m from the sale.

Did Uys move west, where land is cheaper, to find that “larger plot“. For in addition to what’s discussed here, I’m also told he’s bought a farm near Rhandirmwyn.

Bizarrely, the most recent report I have of Mr Uys is that he is the new tenant of Penlan Farm, Upper Chapel, near Brecon. There were 22 other candidates, including many young locals.

The farm is owned by the Penllergaer Estates in Swansea. Which has an interest in solar farms, as I reported in November 2021. (Scroll to the section ‘Follow the Money’.)

UPDATE: As this section is headed ‘Neighbours’, here’s two of Tir Natur’s supporters talking about the project. One is Jon Moses of Right to Roam. The other is Alasdair Campbell, Executive Director of Somerset Wildlands.

Campbell talks dismissively of “these guys“, who are of course the local farmers. Believing, it would seem, that people like him should have more say about what happens in Wales than local people.

Two arrogant outsiders. Which about sums up ‘rewilding’ in Wales.

◊

CONCLUSION

Whatever Tir Natur may say, I believe they’re fronting for somebody else. Somebody hoping to make lots of money. I say that for a number of reasons.

First, the land Tir Cymru claims to have acquired is, as the video I linked to tells us, already a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is already protected. For Tir Cymru to want to take it over can only mean they want to make changes.

Perhaps ‘reintroduce’ species like the Eurasian lynx.

‘I’m going to live in Wales’

Second, and in addition to be being an SSSI, the Elenydd is perhaps the last true wilderness in Wales. Consequently, to suggest it needs ‘rewilding’ is absolute bullshit. Like suggesting the Mona Lisa would be improved with a moustache and sunglasses.

Only those with a hidden agenda would insult our intelligence in this way.

But let’s take the claim at face value. If ‘developers’ have their way this ‘rewilded’ area will be surrounded by wind turbines. How will the constant hum and vibration, the flicker, affect wildlife? The lynx and other species will move out.

And the large, slow-moving birds that Tir Natur hopes to attract won’t stand a chance against the blades of the wind turbines.

Going back to the video again, the commentary claims to be “celebrating Welsh history and culture” – while snidely condemning that heritage for the bad farming practices Tir Natur wants to remedy.

Tir Natur promoting themselves as knights in shining green armour coming to save the Welsh environment – from those who have cared for it for over two millennia.

The video talks of bringing in Carneddau ponies. But a contact who knows the farmers that look after these animals says they’ve had no approach from Tir Natur. Which makes me remember a ‘rewilding’ scheme, near Machynlleth, that talked of “reintroducing” Welsh  horses – then they brought in a Polish breed!

Put it all together and you might understand why I’m a wee bit cynical. Why I don’t buy the story that the land Tir Natur has acquired in the Elenydd is just a ‘rewilding’ project, and nothing more.

I believe there’s much more to it.

FOOTNOTE: This week’s piece was to have been in two parts. The second part about a 625 acre farm on the Gwynedd side of Machynlleth bought by Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust with Aviva-Blackrock money. I’m waiting for further information.

But that’s the state of rural Wales today. Those with roots in this land are being elbowed out by recent arrivals and groups serving the Globalists’ anti-human agenda. With many of them funded and supported by the ‘Welsh Government’ to do the elbowing.

It’s a form of Clearance.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Wales Ruled By The Wampis?

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism26 Comments

I am indebted to a good source for introducing me to an outfit I’d never heard of, called Local Partnerships LLP. Here’s the website, and here’s the Companies House entry.

Sticking with the CH filings, we see three names under ‘Officers’. The Designated Members are H M Treasury and the Local Government Association, but the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ is just a ‘Member’.

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INTRODUCING THE WAMPIS

Let’s start with the Local Partnerships website, which tells us . . .

Our purpose is to help public sector organisations face the ever-increasing challenge of meeting rising demands for services, with shrinking budgets.

Last week Local Partnerships brought out their Wales Annual Impact Report 2025. So let’s go through it, see what joys it offers up.

In Chair Keith Fraser’s Foreword, in the very first paragraph, we read a reference to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Insane legislation, the authorship of which is claimed by privately-educated, globe-trotting climate fanatic, former Assembly Member for Pontypridd, and now good-life smallholder, Jane Davidson.

Though I’m persuaded there was much input from others.

This Act now dictates everything done by the ‘Welsh Government’, public bodies, local authorities, and just about everybody else. Forcing Wales to commit economic suicide on the false premiss that we are threatened by an anthropogenic climate crisis.

But now it gets rather strange. For as the Introduction to the Act itself says:

No disrespect to the Wampis . . . but are we seriously expected to run a complex, post-industrial society by following the example of a Stone Age Amazonian tribe?

And if you’re wondering about “the Seventh Generation Principle“, it also comes from Native Americans, this time the Iroquois, whose territory I believe straddled the eastern border between the USA and Canada.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting the strong whiff of bollocks here with all this “indigenous wisdom“. It echoes all the other ‘wisdom’ and advice attributed to sage old Indians . . . that was made up by LSD-dropping hippies in the 1960s.

Despite the patronising ‘noble savage’ trope being widely debunked it inspires and infuses the 2015 Act; and even though it’s hailed as an “example to the world” . . . the Act remains, eleven years on, an example nobody has been daft enough to follow.

Who’s gonna tell the Wampis!

◊

GEMS FROM THE REPORT

As I pointed out earlier, on the surface, Local Partnerships describes itself as a body helping public sector organisations. But I don’t think that’s strictly true. Let’s delve into the Report again.

And let’s go to page 11, where we encounter a rather curious juxtaposition:

Sustainable Farming Scheme business case approved for a national, multi-year programme

new National Park in Wales progressed toward designation.

What public sector bodies or small local projects are being aided here?

The Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) is designed to reduce farming in the name of saving the planet. (On the advice of the Wampis?) And it’s being pushed by the ‘Welsh Government’ in its war against the Welsh family farm.

The truth is that it’s a policy to free up land for investors and the wildlife trusts and other bodies said investors control or influence through funding and other means. But this ambition doesn’t confine itself to land. For those behind it want to put a value on everything, including the air we breathe – and then make us pay for it.

The new national park proposed for the north east, provisionally named Glyndŵr National Park, is rejected by local authorities and most people living in the area.

Proven by the fact that in a survey conducted by Natural Resources Wales (NRW) most of the support for the idea came from outside the area affected, even from outside of Wales. And it still only managed 53% backing.

The groups that want the new park are the usual suspects, like the Open Spaces Society, urging its largely English membership to show their support. But this is supposed to be a decision made within Wales.

Despite local objections, and external interference, it seems to be a done deal.

Whatever happened to ‘local democracy’? Well, that concept is only invoked when it supports a pre-determined outcome. Which, in this case, means it’s disregarded.

The SFS crops up again, on page 23. In fact, it gets the whole page. And it’s mentioned again on page 24.

Is Local Partnerships helping with local projects or dictating ‘Welsh Government’ policy?

On page 17 we find a reference to “Re:fit“. Does this refer to what I think it refers to? I suspect it does because later in that same sentence we see ” . . . fuel poverty and energy efficiency programmes including Warm Homes, NEST and ECO“.

Was Local Partnerships involved in the ECO4 fiasco that led to the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions, which I wrote about last month in, ‘Grab The Money And Run!‘?

Climate bullshit in a domestic setting

Next, a remarkable map of where Local Partnerships operates. Now I’m not very good with figures, but I don’t need to do any counting to see that the bulk of the projects being helped and funded are in Cardiff, or within 15 or 20 miles of Corruption Bay.

So many dots that some have to be located out to sea!

Pembrokeshire has a single project! Conwy two. Gwynedd three. Yet this is how devolution works. This is how devolution was always supposed to work. Cardiff gets the lion’s share of everything.

Preferential treatment that even extends to rugby.

Page 17 mentions the UK government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC). I know it describes itself as an “independent advisor“, but that’s a smokescreen.

Here’s a letter from the CCC, in July last year, to Huw Irranca-Davies SM, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs. It says:

We recommended that the Fourth Carbon Budget should be set to require average annual emissions over the five-year period from 2031 to 2035 to be at least 73% lower than the 1990 baseline, including Wales’ contribution to international aviation and shipping.*

I suppose 73% lower than the 1993 baseline is achievable, if you close the odd steelworks, stop people driving cars, etc. But why do we need to make this reduction?

And what the hell is Wales’ contribution to “international aviation and shipping“? Are they suggesting Powys closes Llanfair Caereinion International Airport?

Later in the letter we read:

Carbon units, also known as international carbon credits, represent a reduction or removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Under the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 (‘the Act’), the Welsh Government has the option to purchase international credits to help meet Wales’ emissions targets.

So not only are we expected to pursue the self-destructive idiocy of Net Zero, and swallow the scientific illiteracy that says CO2 is destroying the planet, but if Wales falls short ‘we’ can buy ‘International carbon credits’ to make up the shortfall.

Where would the ‘Welsh Government’ get these ‘credits’? Has it bought any?

Throughout the Local Partnerships document there’s hardly any reference to jobs, or the economy; just the fabled ‘green economy’, and the equally mythical ‘green jobs’.

Why am I not surprised!

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CONCLUSIONS

It seems to me that the “close cooperation” Local Partnerships claims with the ‘Welsh Government’ means ensuring that Wales follows the Westminster line. It may even mean that Wales is used to test certain ‘initiatives’ before they’re rolled out in England.

So much for devolution, you might say. But again, this was always a purpose for which devolution was intended.

Here’s another thought. One of the two full partners in Local Partnerships LLP is the Local Government Association (LGA) which represents local authorities. Local Partnerships bangs on relentlessly about green energy, and how we must invest in it.

So did the LGA have a role in Welsh local authorities investing £68m of their pension pot in Bute Energy? Will there be further investment?

Finally – and I make no apologies – I’m returning to the Future Generations legislation, and the reference in the Act’s preamble to taking direction from “indigenous wisdom“.

The Act to which all other legislation, initiatives, polices, must submit or conform, and predicated on the claimed ‘wisdom’ of Indian tribes in the Americas.

Or look at it this way . . . What about the genuine wisdom of Welsh farmers, whose families have been on the land for generations? Wisdom that’s more relevant to Wales than that of Wampis and Iroquois.

So why are our farmers ignored, even vilified?

Only a fool, or an enemy of Wales, would ignore our farmers and claim to be guided by those who’ve never heard of Wales. Unfortunately, there are too many fools and enemies dictating what we must do in our country.

Which makes Local Partnerships suspect in my book. So watch out for it in future.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Plaid Cymru – Party Of Nowhere

On By JacIn Plaid Cymru, Welsh Nationalism26 Comments

I’ve been meaning to write this, or something like it, for some time. So, with the Senedd elections roughly three months away, now seems as good a time as any.

In some ways I suppose this is an update to a piece I put out in February 2019, back when I was young, handsome, and gay: ‘Wales: nationalism ethnic and civic‘.

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THE PLAID CYMRU THAT ONCE I KNEW

The party I joined in the mid-Sixties was unambiguous in its call for independence. This was based on the belief in a distinct Welsh identity, coupled with the perception that Wales didn’t get a fair deal from the UK government in London.

We believed that independence was the only way to respect and protect Welsh identity while also improving the economic and other conditions of our people.

But I also flirted with ‘fringe’ groups. Though back in the heady days of the 1960s it was possible to see Plaid Cymru as the political wing of  a wider movement that included ‘militant’ groups like Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru and the Free Wales Army.

Maybe that’s stretching it a bit, but there was certainly ‘rubbing along’, maybe an acceptance that we were all on the same side, wanting the same thing. Here’s an image that might be seen to capture this acceptance, from Cilmeri in 1982, the 700th anniversary of the killing of Llywelyn II.

On the left of course, is Gwynfor Evans, then leader of Plaid Cymru, and former MP for Carmarthenshire. With two good mates of mine. In the centre, Peter ‘Gun’ Williams, and on the right, Gareth ap Siôn.

I often wonder what was going through Gwynfor’s mind when he found himself in such company. That bemused look is intriguing.

Happy days!

Plaid luminaries are rarely seen at such events now. Maybe like those they align with they view Llywelyn as a ‘medieval war-lord’, an ‘oppressor of the people’.

For history can cause Plaid Cymru bouts of confusion and convenient amnesia, with this applying to even modern history. As I was reminded in 2015 at the 50th anniversary of the drowning of Capel Celyn.

Plaid MPs and others were there reminding us how awful it had been: “Liverpool Corporation . . . Welsh-speaking village . . . injustice . . . something should have been done . . . blah . . . blah“.

But no mention of those, risking life and liberty, who actually tried to do something.

A TASTER FOR THE SECTION THAT FOLLOWS

I’ve taken this trip down Memory Lane as the first step in explaining how Plaid Cymru has gone from being a nationalist party with policies to improve Wales to the benefit of the Welsh into just another bunch of Globalist-Woke-left sloganistas.

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EPIPHANY, AND THE NEW BELIEF SYSTEM

The year 2021 was a watershed for me, and for many, many others. To begin with, there was Covid, and the vaccines. Once the lies involved in that whole episode became clearer, I saw many things in a new light.

(And now we learn that Bill Gates, global emissary for Big Pharma [in which he’d judiciously invested], caught the pox from Russian whores he met through Jeffrey Epstein. What a role model!)

Around the same time, in Wales, my eyes were opened to another threat. I’m referring to the takeover of ‘independence movement’ YesCymru by some of the weirdest and most unhinged people I’d ever encountered. (And believe me, I’d known a few!)

I knew such creatures were ‘out there’, but until they were all gathered together in the spotlight I hadn’t appreciated how fucked up they really were.

For until then I held the views from my formative years; which meant that I still believed ‘the opposition’ was fairly rational, and though wrong, still wanted the best for Wales.

I suppose I was still thinking of the socialists I’d grown up with, even within my own family. Decent people who’d read their Marx and Lenin, with deeply held views they could rationally (if unconvincingly) defend.

But the events of 2021 made it clear there were new kids on the block. Unread, incapable of rational debate, who could only deal in insults, defamation, and even death threats. (This episode was covered extensively on this blog.)

They wanted Communism . . . to give them freedom to do whatever they wanted!

It’s difficult to explain to anyone unfamiliar with those events how ugly some of these interlopers into adult debate really are. But here’s an attempt. This stuff’s water off a duck’s back to me, but like rabid animals they could turn on anyone.

Even a youngster who’d had the temerity to like a tweet of mine!

A key to understanding – or appreciating – this change between what I’d been familiar with and the new Woke left is the differing attitudes towards the working class.

Old-style socialists eulogised the working class. The Revolution would be achieved by them, and it would be for them. To the Wokies, and certainly after Brexit, the working class was the enemy, for the proletariat is socially conservative and rejects neo or cultural Marxism.

In simple terms: level-headed people in the real world want sod all to do with Wokism.

I’ve dealt here with YesCymru because it’s Plaid Cymru in a different wig. It was almost as if Plaid Cymru was using YesCymru, and other groups, to float some of the crazier ideas they weren’t quite ready to put in their election manifestos.

Just to familiarise us with them.

Admittedly, there was a guy up on the north coast claiming to represent ‘Labour for Independence’, though I suspect Bob Lloyd (bless him!) was founder and sole member.

What considers itself today to be the ‘broader independence movement’, includes not only Plaid Cymru, and YesCymru, but also fruitcake gangs like Melin Drafod, the Welsh Underground Network (should an ‘underground’ group have a social media presence?), and then there was mercifully short-lived Undod.

Did I say ‘broader‘! (Slaps wrist.) For these people independence is only worth having if it delivers a Marxist shit-hole implementing the Globalist-Woke agenda

And the same applies to Plaid Cymru.

The lone voice of sanity is Gwlad.

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A CLOSER LOOK AT PLAID CYMRU TODAY

The party that is Plaid Cymru today may be at its highest point in the polls, and predicted to win May’s Senedd elections, but I believe it’s also at a crossroads, perhaps a high-water mark it will never achieve again.

Such a bold declaration obviously requires an explanation. Let’s start with a few facts that I challenge anyone to dispute.

First, Plaid is riding high in the polls because enough voters belatedly realise that the Labour party in Wales (and beyond) is a bunch of lying, posturing, hypocritical incompetents. Many see Plaid as an acceptable alternative.

Second, there is a drive among the ‘progressive’ parties and the Globalist-run media to ‘Stop Reform!‘. As if we’re in some existential struggle with the forces of darkness. Plaid Cymru, seen as the best chance in Wales, will benefit hugely from tactical voting.

Neither of these can be considered positively voting for Plaid Cymru.

But switching from Labour to Plaid Cymru is pointless anyway. For closer inspection reveals that Plaid is very little different. On all the policies that have made Labour unpopular Plaid Cymru is in agreement, or would go further.

Let’s start with Net Zero. Plaid Cymru wants more investment in ‘renewables’ such as wind turbines. When confronted with local hostility to the exploitation of Wales and the blighting of our landscapes by foreign companies Plaid retreats to a position that argues against pylons – but still in favour of wind farms!

The only way to square this circle is to bury all the cables so we don’t have pylons. Which will incur further costs that will inevitably be passed on to commercial and domestic consumers. Result: Higher bills and even more job losses. Misery all round.

If you haven’t seen it yet, watch Plaid Cymru SM for Mid and West Wales, Cefin Campbell, and lead candidate for Carmarthenshire in the upcoming elections, get savaged at a recent public meeting organised by the CPRW. It’s painful.

On the issue of open borders and excessive immigration, party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, has said that Wales – or maybe parts of Wales – must have more immigrants.

The justification for this position seems to be “depopulation“, and the effect this has on schools and services. But what about jobs for the parents of the kids he wants to fill rural schools?

Depopulation, in almost any area, at any time, is invariably an economic issue. Which can only be remedied in one way.

And that is to build a rural economy to retain and draw back the indigenes.

Or else disguise the problem by bringing in a new population that will not seek work, in order to massage the population figures. This has been widely practiced in rural areas for some decades.

But ap Iorwerth wasn’t thinking about the retirees and good-lifers we’ve known. He was thinking of a new population from places more exotic than Edgbaston and Esher.

So there’ll be no economic strategy for the rural areas of Wales.

Then there’s the debilitating anti-white racism, and Islamophilia.

Listen to former Plaid Senedd Member Bethan Sayed complain about too many white people on Welsh language television channel S4C. I would guess that 98% of Welsh speakers are white. But who cares about silly facts?

More recently, she’s suggested that Welsh schoolgirls should wear hijabs.

The sensible approach would be to remind new arrivals and those from other backgrounds that the obligation is on them to adapt to the country they live in, rather than to take girls from the host community back to the 7th century and a foreign culture.

Any attempt by new arrivals to impose their ways, their values, on a host community, is a form of colonialism. I would expect Plaid Cymru, of all parties, to realise that.

The modern left’s flirtation with Islam reminds me of the fable of the scorpion and the frog. But this time the scorpion will get to the other side before stinging the frog.

(Fittingly, this story may have originated in medieval Persia as the scorpion and the turtle. Fitting, because in 1979 middle class leftists cheered the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran . . . then they were dealt with.)

With gender, it should go without saying that Plaid is right there, on message. Here’s another Senedd Member, Sioned Williams, imploring us to remember “transgender people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.”

How many are there? And how do the numbers stack up to all the school shootings and other killings carried out in the USA by unhinged individuals claiming to be trans?

The fundamental problem is that Plaid Cymru has lost the common touch, and with it its sense of what people in the real world want. It’s no longer a case of, ‘What does Wales need?‘ Now it’s, ‘What have we been persuaded to believe Wales needs?‘.

Because what’s important for Plaid is meeting with the approval of those whose opinions they care about – the campaigners, the pressure groups, the minority interests. For Plaid’s politicians, staff, activists, move in closed circles, echo chambers where their own prejudices are confirmed and their errors reinforced.

Go back and watch Cefin Campbell floundering when confronted by real people voicing genuine concerns about something that really impacts on their lives.

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CONUNDRUM

Plaid Cymru has swallowed the Woke agenda, accepted the Globalist narrative, and is ready to play its part in implementing the New World Order. This means a world without borders, and of course, without nations.

The Globalist agenda to de-industrialise, destabilise, limit individual freedoms, control the food supply. Then take over completely.

Which is why the Globalists work with those who share that agenda, Neo/cultural Marxists and Islamists. Who also want to bring down the West.

Yet to its traditional supporters, Plaid Cymru pretends it still believes in Welsh identity and nationhood. While assuring its new members and activists that it wants open borders, Welsh schoolgirls in hijabs, and replacing St David’s Day with a day of mourning for ‘trans victims’.

Unless you’re a Cossack, riding two horses rarely ends well.

And the economy? Our essential services? Not important when there are gestures to be made, lobbies to be pandered to, and dangerous minorities to prioritise over your own people.

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CONCLUSION

The point I hoped to make earlier about Plaid Cymru is that the party I knew was more easy-going, more welcoming. It was a broad church rooted in the real Wales.

Despite my ‘colourful’ associations in the 1960s, and a conviction in 1968 for trying to decapitate a statue, I was still accepted as a candidate more than once for local elections in the early 1970s.

But since then, and certainly in the past decade, Plaid Cymru has become a hard left party. One in which no deviation from the Globalist-Woke agenda is tolerated.

This combination of Stalinist mindset and extreme Wokism will be the hallmarks of a Plaid Cymru government in the Senedd. Which is why anybody thinking of voting for the party in May, as an improvement on Labour, and better than the other options, would be making a huge mistake.

Think again!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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Cairngorm Capital – The Kiss Of Death

On By JacIn Corruption, Globalism18 Comments

This is a follow-up to my previous piece on the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions Ltd (CES), owned by Cairngorm Capital. I suspect CES will be followed by linked companies that have also been taking advantage of the UK government’s ECO4 scheme, due to end in March.

Even before the scheme ends MPs are calling for an investigation into the shambles into which it degenerated. Demanding the Serious Fraud Office be involved.

Cairngorm is a private equity firm using leveraged buyouts. In other words, borrowing money to buy companies, loading the debt onto those companies, bumping up their value, then getting out as quickly as possible with as much loot as they can.

A business practice many regard as unethical, even a form of asset stripping.

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QUICK RECAP

Here’s the group of companies we’ve looked at in earlier posts.

Cairngorm’s arrival was soon followed by loans or Security Accession Deeds with Alter Domus Trustees (UK) Ltd. Which is in turn owned by Alter Domus DCM (UK) Ltd.

A Security Accession Deed is a legal document used to add new parties—such as borrowers, guarantors, or lenders—to an existing security trust deed or loan agreement.

Following the ownership trail brings us – according to latest accounts filed with Companies House – to the Eighth Cinven Fund. Cinven is another private equity firm.

This fund raised $14.5bn. Here’s the Cinven website. Most of the money came from pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. For example, $280m from New York State Common Retirement Fund. A further $167m from California State Teachers’ Retirement System.

It all links up when we see that Alter Domus is listed as one of Cinven’s ‘portfolio companies’. Cinven has offices across Europe, but prefers to be based in, and subject to the easy-going regulations of, Luxembourg and Guernsey.

BlackRock may even be involved.

Alter Domus, the leading global provider of tech-enabled fund services for the private equity, real assets and private debt sectors today appointed Mark Wiseman as Chairman. Mr. Wiseman is the former Head of Active Equities and Chairman of BlackRock’s Alternatives Business, as well as President & CEO of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

All that said, the latest accounts filed with Companies House by Alter Domus DCM (UK) Ltd tell us what you see below:

Cortland is based in Chicago. Which might explain Alter Domus US LLC. Also involved, and mentioned in this 2017 article, is Permira Funds. This latter entity is ultimately owned by Permira Holdings Ltd of Guernsey.

That’s enough links!

So . . . these Welsh companies pocket lots of money from the ECO4 scheme, get involved with Cairngorm Capital, and more money is pumped in from God knows where.

Which could mean that the pension fund to which Minnie Schwarz, retired teacher of Indian Falls, New York State, belongs, may have been used to do Mrs Jones’s cavity wall insulation in Llansamlet.

Cos it’s a small world.

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A LITANY OF ENGINEERED FAILURE

The first link in the chain after our local boys is obviously Cairngorm. And given that these Welsh companies are either already up Shit Creek or heading at full-speed in that direction, I decided to look at other companies with which Cairngorm has become involved.

Mindful of what I found on the Cairngorm Linkedin page.

Going through the Cairngorm website I turned up this list. So, naturally, I checked out these companies.

First, Bromborough Paints. And it’s quite an interesting tale.

Let’s start with this report from October 2022, telling us that Bromborough Paints had got involved with Cairngorm in March 2021. Then, after takeover, it rebranded to Paintwell.

And there were loans taken out. With Cairngorm acting as security agent.

Bromborough Paints had been in business for 60 years. The last accounts before the involvement of Cairngorm show a gross profit of £5.9m (Net profit £1.06m) on a turnover of £16.9m. And total equity of £12.4m.

Finally, Paintwell went into administration and was taken over by Brewers Decorator Centres. It’s alleged there is £30m in unsecured creditor claims.

‘Unsecured creditors’ are often redundant employees, local suppliers, the little people, not institutional lenders.

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Next it’s Building Supplies Online Ltd. If it’s this company, then it was dissolved in September 2023. Though this article from June 2025 mentions CMO Group Ltd, also in Plymouth. CMO began life in June 2021 with a share issue of £50,000.

Against CMO there are two outstanding charges with Clydesdale Bank.

Not sure what’s going on here but, rather like some women I’ve known, it don’t look good from any angle.

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Moving on to E-Zec Medical. (CH entry.) Where, by a long and tortuous ownership route (maybe a dozen companies!) we arrive at Emil W. Henry Jr of 717 Fifth Avenue, Suite 12a, New York, New York, United States. He took control in February 2025.

So who is he? Well, I found this:

Mr. Henry is the CEO and Founder of Tiger Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm focused on infrastructure investment opportunities. Prior to founding Tiger Infrastructure Partners, he was Global Head of the Lehman Brothers Private Equity Infrastructure businesses, where he oversaw global infrastructure investments

Here’s the website for Tiger Infrastructure Partners.

Along the way, while chasing the ultimate owner, I noticed loans from Glas Trust. A name that’s cropped up on this blog more than once. Control of Glas Trust probably rests with yet another private equity firm, Levine Leichtman.

The most recently filed accounts for EZEC do not paint a healthy picture.

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No 4 on the list is Grant & Stone Group. Which Cairngorm took over in November 2019. And things looked good, expansion followed.

Grant & Stone is now owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners III LP. I got that from the most recent accounts filed with Companies House, up to 31.12.2023. Companies House is still waiting for the latest accounts.

There are, predictably, two outstanding charges with Alter Domus Trustees (UK) Ltd.

I suspect Grant & Stone is another one about to bite the dust.

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Next up is Independent Builders Merchants Group Ltd. Here’s what Cairngorm has to say. Though it needs updating. Again, two outstanding charges with Alter Domus Trustees (UK) Ltd.

At the time of writing, the accounts are overdue with Companies House.

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Now we move on to MRO+ Solutions Group Ltd. This began life in December 2017 as Cairngorm Acquisitions 5 Bidco Ltd. It’s now owned by two-year-old Zinc Group Topco Ltd. Though ownership ultimately rests with Martin Green.

MRO is now losing money, and there are of course outstanding loans.

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Millbrook Healthcare is the next stop. Bought by Cairngorm in 2019. At the top of the Millbrook ownership pile is Millbrook Healthcare Holdings Ltd, owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP.

To my untrained eye, this is not a company in good financial health.

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Fasten your seatbelts as we look at National Timber Group. This report from just last November might explain where we’re going. However, it seems there was a very recent ‘rescue’ by a Welsh company.

But don’t get carried away, because top of the ownership pile here seems to be National Timber Group Topco Ltd. Owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners II LP. With accounts overdue with Companies House. The most recent accounts filed (y/e 31.12.2023) show turnover dropping and, after returning a small profit in 2022, a whopping loss of £22,738,3045 in 2023!

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On now to Sentry Doors. Sentry Doors Holdings Ltd was Dissolved in July last year. Though other companies in the group, such as Sentry Fire Safety Group Ltd, seem to retain the semblance of life. Though I’m not convinced.

Not clear which is the top company, but I am sure that everything is ultimately owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners II LP.

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The next entry is Verso Wealth Management. Things seem to be chugging along quite nicely. Though I’d watch for the two outstanding charges with Glas Trust.

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The penultimate case study is Whyte Bikes. Here’s the website.

This company was owned by Cairngorm until very recently, then sold to Irish company Causeway Capital. This entry below, listed under ‘Post Balance Sheet Events’ on the most recent accounts suggests the association with Cairngorm was not to Whyte’s advantage.

There are four outstanding charges, two with Cairngorm. So don’t build your hopes up.

∼

Finally, a comment to my blog directed me to this Linkedin post. It’s worth reading. As are some of the comments. Not least because it gives us yet another company with which Cairngorm Capital has been involved. So let’s check it out.

The company is Customade Group Ltd. Dissolved at the end of 2019. I suggest the name to focus on among the directors is Neil Andrew McGill. Here’s his Linkedin page. And here he is getting a special mention from Cairngorm in December 2018.

McGill is now Group CFO at Verso Wealth, which we looked at just now.

Note the four outstanding charges. Two with Cairngorm.

∼

So there you have it. The companies Cairngorm gets involved with are rarely unalloyed successes. In fact, there may not be one success among them.

There’s more chance of finding someone in the WRU hierarchy who understands rugby, and knows something about Wales, than there is of finding a Cairngorm success story.

But then, it all depends how you gauge ‘success’. Somebody, somewhere, is making a packet, but it won’t be the workers at the companies getting shafted by Cairngorm. Nor the small local suppliers left with unpaid bills.

◊

ASSET MANAGEMENT & PRIVATE EQUITY

The financial world in recent decades has seen the rise of those who make nothing, grow nowt, contribute little to the wealth of nations, but become extremely rich, and politically powerful.

I’m referring to asset managers, most of which are US based. The Big Three being BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street. There are many, many others, like Alter Domus and Emil W Henry Jr.

They invest pension funds, personal savings, sovereign wealth funds, and money from other sources, with only one intention – making money. Which may be good news for Minnie Schwarz in Upstate New York, but is often bad news for those at the other end of the chain.

Which always seems to be us.

And while Cairngorm may protest they don’t invest in “distressed companies“, the companies they invest in soon end up in that state.

As for Consumer Energy Solutions, I’m convinced that what happened there couldn’t have been done without the cooperation of some of the directors at CES and the wider group.

So while I support MPs’ call for the Serious Fraud Office to look into the abuse of the ECO4 scheme, I also believe we need our own investigation in Wakes into the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions and the behaviour of the wider group.

Focusing in particular on certain prominent individuals.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

Buy Me A Coffee

Grab The Money And Run!

On By JacIn Corruption Bay, Public Funding, Welsh Business Community33 Comments

In this piece I’m going to look at the collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions (CES) earlier this month, ask what could have gone wrong, and consider what the future might hold.

◊

BACKGROUND

There is a group of companies in south Wales involved in ‘retrofitting’ homes with cavity wall insulation, solar panels, loft insulation, heat pumps, etc., capitalising on the UK government’s ECO4 and related schemes.

They’ve experienced rapid growth in recent years. Most seem to be still in business, but the largest among them, in terms of turnover and profit, is in administration.

These companies are all owned by Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd, which is in turn owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP, part of the Cairngorm Capital group of Edinburgh.

I’ve written about these companies a couple of times. Most recently with, ‘Corruption Bay’ Living Up To Its Name? just last month. I urge you to read it so you understand better the background. Also, the histories of some of the principals involved.

It’s quite fascinating.

◊

CONSUMER ENERGY SOLUTIONS

Something I remarked on last month was the huge increase in turnover and profits being reported by CES in its returns to Companies House. Here’s a clip from the most recent accounts (to 31.01.2024) which will explain what I’m talking about.

By any criteria, in any sphere of business, these figures are remarkable. So where did all the money go? And why is CES in administration?

Go to the accounts and scroll down to Note 25, where you’ll see under ‘Related party transactions’ that £74,326,749 came as revenue from City Energy Network. You’ll also see mention of the companies we’ll be looking at in a minute.

The directors who must claim credit for these profits have all now left the company.

The three I wish to focus on are: Ahmud Saleem Furreed, Lewis Edward John, and Stephen Mark Williams. All joined CES 19.01.2016, when the company was formed. They left either in June or September last year.

What are these talents of the retrofitting business up to now?

Before proceeding, it might be worth throwing out there that Furreed is a Labour party donor. I can’t speak for the political affiliations of the other two.

Here’s the Companies House list of Furreed’s companies. I’ll ignore some of the older ones and start with Assure Connect Ltd, where we find the three I’ve just introduced.

This company was formed in September 2019, has filed no accounts, uses as its address the old Evening Post offices in Swansea, and is presumably facing strike-off.

Next up is Majasala Ltd. And now it gets interesting. Formed in March 2023 this company’s ‘investments’ jumped from zero in year ending 31.03.2024 to £4,443,982 in a year! Furreed is the only director and sole shareholder of this ‘management consultancy’.

Though thanks to ‘creditors’ Majasala returned a deficit of £447,961.

Now we turn to WRYL Ltd, also based in the SA1 Waterfront district. This outfit was born 10.03.2023 and buried unmourned 20.08.2024. During its brief existence Furreed, John and Williams were the directors. It filed no accounts.

But before its demise, WRYL was taken over, in March 2024, by View Investments Ltd. Where we find Nicholas Simon Pritchard! (More on Nick later.) View Investments was formed 19.10.2023, yet in is first accounts, 30.10.2024, Pritchard’s company could declare assets of £5,486,684.

Where could it have come from?

We now turn to Secret Squirrel Property Ltd. What a lovely name! Is it a reference to squirrels hiding their nuts? This company was launched 18.11.2024, so it hasn’t needed to file accounts yet.

But a confirmation statement tells us that each of the following owns 1,000 shares: Majasala Ltd (which we’ve already looked at), LEJ Holdings Ltd, and TWE Partnership Ltd. So let’s see what entertainment they can provide.

LEJ Holdings, launched 9 March 2023 is, as the initials suggest, the company of Lewis Edward John. The most recent accounts paint the following picture.

Total assets of over ten million pounds, all arriving between the end of March 2024 and the end of March 2025, but virtually all wiped out by creditors. With the  accounts saying only, “owed to related parties“.

TWE Partnership Ltd paints a similar picture. Some five million pounds in assets, most of it accounted for by ‘debtors’, with creditors leaving just £217,000 in the piggy-bank.

Back to Furreed, and his most recent venture, Claimwise (UK) Ltd. Launched three days before Christmas just past. Four directors; Furreed, a younger man of the same name, perhaps his son, plus his regular partners, John and Williams.

The younger Furreed has a real estate company, JFurreed Property Network Ltd, formed in August last year. And just before Christmas he started up JFurreed Holdings Ltd.

So . . . after the most recent accounts for Consumer Energy Solutions, and before it was announced that the company had gone belly-up, ∼£25,000,000 appeared in the accounts of companies run by the three individuals who’d been directors of CES, and another company that was transferred to Nick Pritchard.

Companies that had virtually, or even literally, nothing before these windfalls.

You can draw your own conclusions on these rags to riches stories.

UPDATE 03.02.2026, RUMBLING ON:

This article is from today’s Western Mail. It also appeared in the Daily Post.

◊

CAIRNGORM CAPITAL PARTHERS AND THE ‘LAST MAN STANDING’

Earlier I wrote, “These companies are all owned by Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd, which is in turn owned by Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP, part of the Cairngorm Capital group of Edinburgh“.

But as the website tells us:

Cairngorm Capital is a specialist private equity firm providing investment capital, strategic insight and sector-specific expertise to leading UK companies. We invest in private mid-market companies that have the potential for further substantial growth.

Which suggests that Cairngorm can act as a conduit between investors looking for “companies that have the potential for further substantial growth” and companies that fit the bill and need investment.

And that might be the case with Consumer Energy Solutions and the linked companies in the group. But if so, then where might the money be coming from to begin with?

After doing work like this for a few years I’ve noticed that ‘background’ companies will often have a representative serve as a director and/or a senior officer within the company invested in to keep an eye on things.

With the retrofitting group we’re looking at, we saw Cairngorm Capital LLP had its representatives in the forms of Matt Anstead, former managing director, and Andrew Steele, managing partner.

Steele succeeded Anstead on the board of holding company Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd just before Anstead left to join Benoil Services Ltd.

When we look at who’s left in the companies subordinate to the Topco, we see one name, the sole director, and that name is Robert Benjamin Nathaniel Brodie. So it’s worth asking if Brodie might be representing someone else. And if so, then who?

One possibility – and admittedly I’m flying a kite here – is the company he left in March 2024, Ensera UK Bidco Ltd. Which for some reason is not listed in his Linkedin page.

This company is owned by Stark UK Topco (Guernsey) Ltd, owner of Jewson, the builders supplier. Which is where it gets a bit messy. For Google AI tells us:

Stark UK Topco (Guernsey) Ltd is part of the larger Stark Group, a major building materials distributor, and is ultimately owned by CVC Capital Partners Fund VII, a global private equity firm that acquired the STARK Group in 2021. CVC manages investments for various global institutions, including pension plans, meaning it’s owned by many investors worldwide. 

And there seems to be little doubt about it. “Fund VII will have over €16 billion of equity capital available to invest. It is the largest European fundraising on record.”, says Simpson Thacher.

Though there has been the odd hiccup.

We are clearly dealing with major investors. And serious money.

But the point is that Brodie was tied up with this lot, then joined the retrofitting companies we’re looking at. So let’s look at when Brodie joined the companies that were out in the field, as it were, doing the work. Which excludes the ‘Dragon’ companies. (Click on date for details.)

In all these companies he is now the sole director. After leaving Ensera UK Bidco Ltd, ultimately owned by CVC Capital partners Fund VII, on March 22, 2024.

Diversity Network Holdings Ltd 28.05.2024.

Advance Energy Services Ltd 28.05.2024.

City Energy Facilities Management Ltd 28.05.2024.

Simply Electric Metering Ltd 28.05.2024.

City Training Group Ltd 28.05.2024.

Consumer Energy Solutions Ltd 31.05.2024.

City Energy Network Ltd 24.06.2024.

Heatforce (Wales) Ltd 01.07.2024.

Still clutching the string of my ever-so-pretty kite . . . Robert Benjamin Nathaniel Brodie could be representing those behind CVC Capital Partners Fund VII, who’ve been investing in these Welsh companies through Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP.

If I’m wrong, then why did Brodie get involved in the first place, and why is he the last man in the wheelhouse when everybody else has abandoned these sinking ships?

UPDATE 20.01.2026: A fresh comment to my earlier post on these companies suggests that getting involved with Cairngorm often results in going bust. So I checked. And it’s true. Here’s what I put out on X.

◊

WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

Earlier I mentioned Nicholas Pritchard, Bangor City ultra, businessman. To help you appreciate what a busy boy he’s been, I compiled a list of companies he’s been involved with for the piece I put out last month. Here it is.

There have been a few developments.

When writing last month’s piece I was particularly intrigued by Pritchard’s involvement with the company Quidos of Bath which, as you’ll see from the image below, provides both training and accreditation.

Some might think that a company wanting to take advantage of government schemes, and then send out untrained – but ‘accredited’ – operatives to do sub-standard work, would find a company like Quidos attractive.

There is now a long list of Quidos companies, some even giving Welsh addresses. Such as Quidos AI Ltd, Quidos Capital Ltd, Quidos Facilities Ltd, and Quidos Protect Ltd. These new companies or acquisitions were launched, or changed name, less than a year ago.

Control is often exercised through Quidos Holdings, or another Pritchard company giving an Essex address, where Quidos Group Ltd is based. Just look at who’s funding Quidos Group – Pritchard himself and View 2 Investments Ltd.

The latter, a company set up in October 2024, is due to be struck off by Companies House for not filing a confirmation statement.

Think about it . . . View 2 Investments, set up 29.10.2024, is lending money to another Pritchard company, Quidos Group, formed April 2024, and giving a Romford, Essex address, to buy substantial semi-detached properties in Holyhead!

Another Pritchard company giving an Essex address is Hathaway House Holdings Ltd.

In the address given for a number of Pritchard companies you will have seen the name ‘Bodlondeb’ a few times. This is the fine old council building in Conwy, now leased to Quidos Investments Ltd.

I wonder what Pritchard has planned for the old pile?

Enough! I’m going giddy.

◊

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Let’s think again about the 25 million quid we looked at earlier; will Furreed, John, Williams and Pritchard really be keeping it, or is it going somewhere else? Maybe after they’re taken their cut?

And let’s not forget they have shares.

The three CES directors were paying themselves big salaries, and also paying CES money into their private companies. It was probably the same throughout the group. And “close family members” were recruited as “subcontractors“.

But beyond the financial, there are other considerations.

Not least, the customers left in the lurch. With shoddy work that needs fixing, or jobs that have simply been left unfinished. Disgruntled customers even have a website. Here’s how it reported ‘The Collapse of Consumer Energy Solutions‘.

One homeowner with whom we are in contact felt forced to sell their home after the devastating impact of a CES install. Another was moved into a care home pending restoration of their heating. And another family with an ill child claims to have been temporarily rehoused by their local authority

We’ve looked at the possible role of Quidos in training and accrediting those who worked for CES. But what about TrustMark, which seems to be funded and owned by the very companies it should be monitoring?

And local authorities that put companies like CES on their ‘Approved’ list? We know that Ahmud Saleem Furreed is a Labour party donor in the Merthyr Tydfil & Aberdare constituency, are there other political connections?

The reason for the collapse of CES and the other companies is almost certainly the impending end of the ECO4 scheme, scheduled for March 31. With so much public money having been allocated, there should be a forensic investigation of whether the money was well spent.

Seeing as we’ve been looking at Welsh companies that operate across the UK, and have gained a bad reputation, for themselves and for Wales, it should be a matter of concern for our politicians. And our media.

But our politicians are virtue-signalling clowns who spend most of their time trying to outdo each other in Wokery. While our media regurgitates their vapid utterances, trying to make us believe such laughable posturing will do anything to improve the real world we poor mortals inhabit.

There should now be a thorough investigation into what went wrong with CES and associated companies. But it won’t happen. There may be attempts to put right the botched work, the unfinished jobs – which will use up more public money.

But otherwise, there’ll be little more than hand-wringing and platitudes.

That’s due to the fact that too many of those who should have been monitoring the activities of these companies, protecting the public interest, were either negligent, or complicit.

Because that, gentle reader, is the state we’re in.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

Buy Me A Coffee

Here We Go Again!

On By JacIn Globalism26 Comments

For all sorts of bizarre and complicated reasons I thought I’d lost my blog. But after a few frustrating days over New Year I finally managed to salvage it. So here’s bit of a ramble to kick off 2026.

◊

TONY BLAIR, EDUCATOR

Some of you were a bit confused by the clip I used to accompany notice of this piece. I’m referring now to what I put up last Thursday on X. What you see below. Let me explain.

You may remember that about 30 years ago prime minister Tony Blair decided that 50% of young people should have the opportunity of higher education. What a wonderful idea! No, not really. Not when you think about.

To achieve this target A level grades and university entrance standards were lowered. Polytechnics became universities. And with the massive expansion of higher education people were taken on as tutors and lecturers who just weren’t up to the job.

Inevitably, academic standards fell. But that didn’t matter. Because the expansion of higher education was done for reasons that could never be said out loud.

So now half the 18+ population was rounded up and penned in to be ‘informed’, ‘influenced’ or, if we’re to be honest – brainwashed. To be brought around to a certain way of thinking and looking at the world.

That was the main reason for the expansion of higher education. And there’s nothing new in this. As this post on X from a few days ago reminded us.

The alternative was to have them leave school and get a job, where they’d work with people who’d experienced life, and held too many of the ‘wrong’ views. The real world, where they might settle down, have children . . .

But the UK economy can never provide jobs for a 50% graduate population. Maybe somewhere like Singapore can do it, or countries with expanding economies, even Gulf states where menial jobs and manual labour are for fixed-contract foreign workers.

But not the UK.

Which meant that at the end of their three years at university young people emerged having studied Racism and Patriarchy in The Simpsons, or Theoretical and Applied Marxism, expecting £70,000 a year (to start), a nice pad, and an endless round of Glasto and dinner parties with enlightened beings such as themselves.

So when they ended up stacking shelves at Tesco they was mighty pissed off.

Those who did find jobs paying reasonable salaries very often found those jobs with NGOs, ‘charities’, pressure groups, third sector bodies, or in politics. Making nothing, generating no wealth, creating no jobs, and adding nothing to society.

But associating with people sharing and reinforcing their ‘values’. And building bubbles insulated from the common herd and the real world this underclass inhabited.

All paid for with someone else’s money. Usually yours, through government funding. Cos decolonising them hateful Welsh cakes don’t come cheap.

Which resulted in the UK (and other Western countries) having a large segment of the younger population poorly educated, devoid of any practical skills, with nothing to offer an employer – but politically brainwashed.

Young people animated by feelings of moral and intellectual superiority, even narcissism, but feeling cheated and resentful because their talents are not properly rewarded by the world into which they’ve graduated.

For them, the reason for their lack of recognition in a declining economy and an increasingly fractured society had nothing to do with their own limitations – it was all the fault of the evils they’d been taught to watch out for and to combat.

Giving the Globalists and their Marxist allies the foot-soldiers needed to further the economic decline and the social divisions desired in order to bring about the demise of Western civilisation.

◊

MAKING WAVES

Something I put out on X last week got a lot of hits, about 35k at the time of writing, so, after some digging, I’m going to expand on it.

First, let me say I’m indebted to the source that sent me the information that set me to digging. I won’t mention names, but you know who you are, so thank you.

What my source picked up was that a company based in Cornwall had received over £2 million from our wonderful, and self-styled, ‘Welsh Government’. To be exact, two million and one pounds. Here’s the clip I was sent.

You’ll see that the name of the company is Inyanga Marine Energy Group Ltd. Naturally, I went to the Companies House (CH) website and looked into the filings for this outfit. Here’s the entry.

Despite the front page describing the company as ‘Active’, it does in fact file as dormant. Wi’ nowt in t’kitty. Though in fairness, the most recent filing is for 2024. Though it suggests that empty coffers is not a new thing.

Seeing as we’re looking into wave energy it seems appropriate to describe this company as a shell. An empty shell.

Here’s a list of Inyanga shareholders. No mention of ‘WG’, and no names I recognise.

Despite this state of inactivity there is a website. And the company has had coverage in the media. That report I linked to in the Falmouth Packet says:

Inyanga Marine Energy Group, based in Penryn, has tasked Hutchinson Engineering with constructing its HydroWing tidal energy device.

The 20 MW HydroWing tidal energy array will be deployed at Morlais, off Anglesey in Wales

Which directs us to another company, HydroWing Ltd, giving an address in Gaerwen, Ynys Môn. Again, there is no mention of a loan from the ‘Welsh Government’. So was the two million smackeroos a grant?

Anyway, I turned to the CH filings for HydroWing Ltd. And found a further two companies of that name! The three are, in chronological order of formation: HydroWing Ltd (30.03.2017); HydroWing Tidal Projects Ltd (10.10.2022); HydroWing Tidal Projects 2 Ltd (16.04.2024).

All give their correspondence address as ‘M S Parc, Parc Gwyddoniaeth Menai, Gaerwen, Ynys Môn, United Kingdom, LL60 6AG’. Also known as Menai Science Park.

Though HydroWing is not listed as a tenant, or even a ‘virtual tenant’, yet Inyanga is. But why list as a dormant company in Cornwall when there are three HydroWing companies giving Companies House the Gaerwen address?

It gets a little more confusing (sorry!) when we try to track the ownership. The oldest HydroWing company is owned by Inyanga. The middle one by Sangoma Energy Projects Ltd of the same address. The latest by Richard James Parkinson.

Sangoma Energy Projects Ltd was formed as recently as February last year. The two directors, and owners, are Richard James Parkinson and a woman I take to be his wife.

Confused? I am.

Let’s briefly turn to the financial situation of these companies. Inyanga, as we’ve seen, files as dormant and with no cash. Here’s the statement for the oldest HydroWing at 31 January 2024. Rather uninspiring.

Here are the shareholders. Some of the same names we saw with Inyanga, with the Parkinson family well represented. But the largest shareholder, with over 1,600,000 shares, is Inyanga itself, the dormant company we started out with. Owned by Mr and Mrs Parkinson.

Based at, Unit 3 Penstraze Business Centre, Penstraze, Chacewater, Truro. Another ‘virtual office’.

The ‘middle’ HydroWing files as dormant with just £100 in the kitty.

The ‘youngest’ is too new to have filed accounts.

All the companies we’ve looked at are Private Limited Companies (as opposed to Public Limited Companies). Which raises the issue of the accounts available with Companies House being so far behind.

For Public Limited Companies normally have six months to file their accounts after the end of their accounting period. Private Limited Companies (and Limited Liability Partnerships) usually have nine months.

But for some reason the Parkinson companies have twelve months, and seem to take every day of it. Accounts for the three HydroWing companies using the Gaerwen address are due with CH by the end of this month.

But even so, it’s difficult to see any Welsh benefit from this money. We seem to have a family-owned Cornish company that’s realised how much money is available in Wales by pushing the right planet-saving buttons.

For to refer back to the piece in the Falmouth Packet . . .

The foundation frame will be partly constructed at Hutchinson Engineering’s factory in Cheshire, with final construction taking place quayside in Wales.

That’s this company. Owned, via Modernuser Ltd, by Dean Drinkwater. A man mighty ‘close’ to Labour – and a fan of both Starmer and Miliband!

The more I dug into the two million quid gift (from us), and its recipients, the more of a rodenty sort of smell assailed the delicate nostrils of my fine – and oft remarked-upon – Roman nose.

There is summat not right here. Looking forward now to reading the next accounts.

◊

MEANWHILE, ACROSS THE POND

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, or relying on mainstream media for news, you’ll know that over in the USA the arrangement between the Globalists, their Democrat party puppets, and their corrupt immigrant allies, is being blown apart.

News coming out of Minnesota makes it clear that Democrat politicians at the highest levels encouraged Somali fraudsters to steal billions from federal funding with all manner of scams. With much of the money going back to Somalia to fund the Islamist terrorists of Al Shabab, even being flown out of Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in suitcases stuffed with cash!

At the rate of a million dollars a day!

The rest of the loot went on luxury homes, jewellery and Rolls Royces for the fraudsters; with millions more going into the campaigns of the Democrat politicians who’d encouraged and covered up the theft.

With some of the loot I’m sure going to ActBlue, the Democrats machine for funding the ‘spontaneous’ protests we see across the USA.

Minnesota is just the tip of the iceberg. The situation is even worse in California, New York City, Chicago, Michigan, and other places.

Where do the Globalists fit into this picture?

What we see with the widespread abuse of federal funding in the USA, linked with Net Zero deindustrialisation and open borders, is part of the wider agenda to wreck Western economies and societies. To impose decline and encourage despair. To the point of total collapse; when the Globalists will step in to ‘save’ us all with Digital ID, CBDC, censorship, curfews . . .

Fortunately, the Trump administration is taking action.

Of course, the left shouts ‘Racism!‘ and ‘Islamophobia!‘, because whether it’s women with penises or polar bear numbers, the left is averse to facts.

The mainstream media either ignores the story or else targets the messengers, such as twenty-two-year old Nick Shirley.

But this exposure has resonated across America, and is doing the Democrats great harm. Because if you’re a hard-working, tax-paying citizen; black, white or Hispanic, US born or an immigrant through the correct channels, you know you pay too much tax, and when you see that money being ripped off like this, you get angry.

The Democrats were tanking in the polls before these videos went viral, before the evidence emerged, before Minnesota Governor Tim Walz announced he was pulling out of the gubernatorial race; and so only ballot rigging in the states they still control can save the party from complete wipeout in this year’s mid-term elections.

That the Trump administration understands how the Globalists operate was evidenced by a measure introduced recently that’s had little coverage in the Mainstream media. What a surprise!

Family homes for hard-working, tax-paying, US citizens. How it used to be.

Take 15 minutes to hear in the video below what else Trump is doing to loosen the Globalist grip on the USA. For him it’s about sovereignty, freedom from international bodies that restrict nations’ ability to serve their national interests, and their peoples.

Who can disagree?

It’s done through international ‘agreements’, corruption, money-laundering, and support for, and from, some very unpleasant – but useful or compliant – ‘leaders’.

The Globalists want total control and ownership of everything you think you own, or might want to own. Which explains why BlackRock and other ‘asset managers’ are buying up private homes.

And who do you think will be getting those homes? Well, the future is already playing out in the Globalist colony of Ireland.

You remember what the World Economic Forum (WEF) promised us: “You’ll own nothing, and be happy“. Well, it’s a-comin’.

But only if we allow it.

By happy coincidence the head man at the WEF now is Larry Fink, who just happens to be the CEO of BlackRock. (What are the chances of that happening by accident!)

You must remember Larry, he was over in London not long after his creature Starmer was – for reasons that will ever elude me – elected to manage the UK on the Globalists’ behalf. What a welcome he had!

He came just after, or maybe it was just before, ‘Dr’ Bill Gates of Covid vaccine fame.

Having received his orders to run down and destabilise the UK, to remove freedoms, and to favour certain groups, Starmer has spent the last year or so obeying.

He may even subscribe to the Globalist agenda, but just in case . . . they’ve got the goods on him. And it’s much more than three Ukrainian rent boys, duckie.

Fundamental to the Globalist agenda of destabilising and undermining the West is anti-white racism. This will take many forms. A favourite is to demand ‘reparations’ by pretending that only white people ever practised slavery. Or that only white people were ever colonialists. To disprove both I suggest a cursory study of Islam.

But then, the Globalists are in league with Islam. And Marxism.

That insane ideology that has always failed in practice and is now reduced to an intellectual exercise in the avoidance of truth and reality for embittered losers in academia and elsewhere. But whose suicidally empathetic devotees can be relied on to march with placards and slogans (both ready-made) attacking the institutions of Western civilisation.

So thank God for Trump and the USA.

But as I keep telling you, the rolling back of Globalist plans in the USA means that the focus turns to Europe. And that includes Wales. You think I exaggerate? Just look at the muppets in the Senedd, and then image 36 more of them in May! Or look at the quality of our MPs.

Both virtue signalling SMs and posturing MPs are interested in anything but the real world concerns of 90% of Welsh people. Just feigning interest before elections.

◊

CONCLUSION

I’m coming around to the way of thinking that says the system we live under is too corrupt, too far gone, to be reformed. Too many institutions from the monarchy down have been captured.

We need a complete change. We need a revolution. From the bottom up. For the working class is the last redoubt of patriotism and common sense. (Which explains why it’s now reviled by Marxists.)

I’m not suggesting guillotines, firing squads, or violence of any kind. Just turning our backs on the existing system. Refusing to participate in the charade of electoral politics, rejecting corrupted authority, and creating alternative structures and systems.

As might be done by the population of an occupied country in which the elite had thrown in its lot with the occupier.

The alternative is to let Larry Fink and his mates win, and let their ‘progressive’ puppets introduce you to the joys of twenty-first century, hi tech serfdom.

♦ end ♦



© Royston Jones 2026

Nadolig 2025

On By JacIn Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Labour53 Comments

Happy Christmas to all those who’ve supported this blog through another year. And may next year be good for you. I suspect 2026 could be a big year, both in Wales and the world. So buckle up!

My priority for 2026 is to persuade those who are clearly deserting Labour that Plaid Cymru is the wrong option. To make people understand that if Labour is the frying pan, then Plaid Cymru is the fire.

Plaid is now so off the wall with its Wokeism that it makes the most indoctrinated student sound rational; while its anti-white racism outdoes BLM, and its anti-Western rhetoric would gain approval from the maddest of mad mullahs.

While the party’s attacks on ‘ethno-nationalism’ undermine its raison d’être.

Plaid is at the point where, compared to the lunacies uttered by Liz Saville-Roberts, Sioned Williams and others, the old-fashioned Marxist wittering we get from Leanne Wood sounds almost coherent.

The message: Anyone who thinks Plaid Cymru would be an improvement on Labour in any way needs to be introduced to reality. Starting January 2nd.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Tidings Of Unease And Foreboding

On By JacIn Globalism, Russia25 Comments

This is the last posting of 2025. I just wish I could be more optimistic. But the lunatics have taken over the asylum and it looks like they might burn it to the ground.

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WAY BACK WHEN . . .

As he left office in January 1961 outgoing US President Dwight D Eisenhower (R) warned against what he called the “military-industrial complex” (MIC).

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower’s successor was Democrat John Fitzgerald Kennedy. For failing to use US troops for an invasion of Cuba, and for refusing to sanction the war the MIC wanted in Vietnam, JFK was assassinated.

Kennedy said many things. But let’s remember that he wanted to, ” . . . splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds”.

For by the early 1960s the Central Intelligence Agency had become a law unto itself, allied with the MIC; free of political oversight, forming its own foreign policy, and acting independently both at home and overseas.

Perhaps they got a taste for it in 1953, when they helped MI6 overthrow the democratically-elected nationalist prime minister in Persia, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Handing all power to the Western puppet whose excesses led to the 1979 revolution and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Interestingly, that revolution saw socialists and Islamists combine to overthrow the Shah. The comrades were soon gobbled up by the tiger they were riding.

To explain . . . the military-industrial complex is an alliance of US corporations involved in the production of armaments and other military necessities aligned with with gung-ho generals (aka ‘The Pentagon’) and the agency that is supposed to monitor and counter overseas threats to the US homeland.

The collective term often used is the ‘Deep State’.

For these people, and as Tom Paxton sang in Daily News:

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

At its simplest; war is good for corporate business, it wins gongs for generals and admirals, while sociopaths in Langley VA can bring about the next war through false flag operations, propaganda, or whatever. Or they can while away the hours organising regime change hither and yon.

We see them exposed in Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece Dr Strangelove: Brig Gen Jack Ripper, good ole boy Maj ‘King’ Kong (who unforgettably rides the bomb), Col ‘Bat’ Guano, Gen ‘Buck’ Turgidson.

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THE WORLD TURNS UPSIDE DOWN

The military-industrial complex was largely a creature of the political right, as was the CIA. Democrats, and liberals more generally, opposed their machinations.

But as the USA suffered financial crises, moved factories overseas, the once-mighty auto industry struggled against foreign competition, with the advent of computers and the internet, the face of American capitalism changed. And with it, political influence.

We had a new generation of multi-billionnaires, many of whom can fairly be described as geeks, but with the power to influence the thinking of the masses. This was coupled with the rise of hedge funds and asset managers, who made nothing, they just invested other people’s money to enrich themselves and gain immense political power.

Without getting in over my head, or risk being called a conspiracy theorist, the Deep State soon realised the power of the new media and the new money. And began co-operating with both.

But there was a slight problem. The geeks and others tended be more liberal in their outlook than the CEO of arms manufacturer Kill All Commie Bastards Inc. They gravitated towards the Democrats rather than towards the Republicans.

I believe there was an uncomfortable accommodation with the new oligarchy that saw the Deep State become for a period bi-partisan, and now, bizarrely, closer to the Democrats than the Republicans.

In fact, those in Donald Trump’s administration talk openly of dismantling the Deep State, defunding it’s money-laundering NGOs and other agencies, and putting an end to the ‘forever wars’ on which the military-industrial complex thrived for decades.

Perhaps even doing away with ‘The Fed‘. Which was set up by bankers to serve bankers. Now Trump wants the US economy to serve the people by concentrating on the ‘real’ economy.

What a novelty!

Big Money is not happy. That includes the City of London. Explained in this video.

Then again, considering that the Deep State sought to imprison him, perhaps even assassinate him, you can understand why Trump’s not too well disposed towards it.

Because the internet is global, and so is money, the new elite often sees a world without borders. Through this mindset, plus their co-operation with supranational bodies like the UN, WEF, Club of Rome, they attracted the soubriquet ‘Globalists’.

The Deep State can go along with this because while Microsoft or BlackRock want to unite the human race like that old Coke advert, they remain US corporations, extending US influence.

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THE NEW ALLIANCE IN OPERATION

The Deep State-Globalist alliance now extends its malign influence across the Western world; done through converting/subverting elites, funding educational establishments, buying media, and thereby corrupting countries.

When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink visited London last year to give Starmer and his crew their orders he was presented as a successful businessman, and a ‘good guy’; as opposed to Trump and his associates who – thanks to a media largely controlled by Fink and his ilk – are the bad guys, the ‘far right’, even fascist.

For as we are reminded after every Islamist atrocity – by that same media – the biggest terror threat to the West comes from ‘far right extremism’.

The next element to join the Deep State-Globalist march to ultimate power was the left. Feeling low after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and China abandoning the centralised economy model, socialists were at a bit of a loose end.

But the impulse to destroy the capitalist West, demolish churches, and unite the global proletariat remained.

Which chimed perfectly with the Globalist vision of a world controlled by them with no competing loyalties such as family, nation, or religion.

And so the most absurd ideas of the revamped left were encouraged. Women have penises, white people (particularly men) are dangerous, boys are girls and girls are boys, secure elections are racist, while religion is a pernicious evil from which mankind must be freed . . . but Islam’s just fine.

For in its assault on the West the Globalists also needed Islam, but there weren’t enough Muslims here to really pose a threat. So from 2016 or so Europe was told to open its doors to hundreds of thousands of ‘refugees’, people escaping war and persecution. (Wars often started by the Deep State.)

The same thing happened under Biden (or whoever was running the USA).

But the over-arching scam used to weaken and demoralise the West through deindustrialisation, and employed to control human behaviour, while also being used to grab land and other resources, was the ‘Climate Crisis’, and the carefully orchestrated hysteria over carbon levels in the atmosphere.

Both now exposed as utter bullshit.

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HOW THE EU FITS

From a Globalist perspective, the European Union represents the future model they’d like to impose on the world.

To begin with, at national level, voters are offered a ‘choice’ from establishment parties and politicians that answer to the Globalists. Parties and politicians that don’t toe the Globalist line are persecuted.

We saw this with Trump under the Biden administration, we see it Europe with Marine le Pen banned from standing for the French presidency, moves to ban AfD in Germany, the demonisation of Reform and Farage, elections and referendums being re-run from Romania to Ireland until the ‘right’ result is achieved.

Politicians from these Globalist-approved parties are elected to the European Parliament. Where they are ultimately impotent. The President of the EU Parliament since January 2022 is Roberta Metsola. You ever heard of her? Nor me.

That’s because the EU is run like the old Soviet Union. The Parliament is a talking shop. Decisions are made by the politburo, which in the EU is the Commission. Headed by the unelected Ursula von der Leyen. You’ve all heard of her.

Which means that some 450 million people are effectively ruled by one woman that nobody voted for – but she’s a loyal Globalist.

This explains why another Globalist puppet, PM Keir Starmer, who has done so much for Ukraine (especially its young ‘male models’), is taking the UK back into the EU, step by step.

Because those are his orders.

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BUT HOW DOES IT END?

Globalism is cornered, but far from defeated.

Having its grip on the USA loosened by President Trump, and with Latin America turning against them, it was inevitable that the Deep-State-Globalists would focus increasingly on Europe.

But this side of the Atlantic don’t look a whole lot better for them.

Their puppets are reviled, especially those leading the three major European economies. (With Italy less and less willing to obey EU diktats.) ‘Insurgent’ parties head the polls in France, Germany, and the UK. Countries in the east are in open revolt against the EU over immigration and funding for the war in Ukraine.

As the BBC reported it: “Hungary and Slovakia are known to be closer to the Kremlin.” Er, no, closer to sanity would be nearer the mark. But that’s how the media operates: join in the madness or be branded a “puppet of Putin“.

But a cornered animal is dangerous. And desperate.

For while BlackRock and others have major investments in Ukraine, the ultimate target, the whole point of this war, is to weaken and hopefully defeat, Russia. Then to seize as ‘reparations’ the vast resources of that huge country. But it’s not going to happen.

For no matter how much Western aid Ukraine has received, in funding, in armaments, military ‘advisers’, intelligence, it’s losing.

And that’s why we hear silly talk now of Russia threatening the West. To justify all-out war. But there’ll be little support from ordinary people in the West. They’ve been lied to too often; on Covid, Net Zero, DEI, open borders. They live with the results.

So the Globalists are staring at the loss of money and power.

While for Starmer, Merz, Macron, von der Leyen, and the other Globalist puppets, war has become their only hope of survival.

Their economies are collapsing, their peoples are in revolt, so war will allow them to declare martial law, impose complete censorship, cancel elections, bring in Digital ID, restrict movement, impose rationing, and make our lives even more miserable.

And by so doing usher in the age of full and untrammeled Globalist control.

But for the time being, masters and servants are so desperate that they might resort to anything to save their miserable skins. So be on your guard. Make your feelings known to the elite. And don’t believe anything the Globalist media tells you.

Russia has no intention of attacking the West. But she will respond if she’s attacked.

So don’t support a war to save Globalism and its beleaguered elites.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025