Nicola Sturgeon: Her Fall In Context

On 07/03/202307/03/2023 By JacIn Environmentalism, Greens, Scotland, World Economic Forum, Yes Cymru60 Comments

There’s something odd, even tragic, about an intelligent woman destroying her political legacy and damaging the cause she believes in to argue that women have penises and men can give birth.

How can anyone, let alone someone as smart as Nicola Sturgeon, believe such nonsense? The answer is that she might not believe it at all. And I strongly suspect that many of the zealots pushing this lunacy do not believe it either. Few people are that bloody stupid.

But people can be brainwashed into believing that promoting such idiocy is the right thing to do; partly because it’s ‘progressive’, and partly because it pisses off the ‘fascists’.

But what straight man could possibly object – it’s a ‘feminine penis’! Click to open engorged in separate tab

For you must remember that we live in an age when everything is ideological, and agendas are promoted for political gain and / or social change, but definitely not for the public good; which means that whether what is being propounded is true or not is irrelevant.

In the post-truth era the end definitely justifies the means.

But how did we get here?

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POST-SOVIET MARXISM

Following World War Two, and the USSR’s leading role in defeating Nazi Germany, Communism enjoyed a surge in popularity in western Europe, particularly in Italy and France. There were worries in Washington that Europe might even go Red without the need for direct Soviet intervention.

That appeal faded as the economy of Europe improved. Communism lost even more of its appeal with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and its ‘freedom-loving’ credentials took a near-fatal knock in 1968 when Red Army tanks put down the wholly peaceful ‘Prague Spring‘.

By the late 1980s, with the Soviet Union losing a war in Afghanistan, queueing for bread becoming a national pastime, and Russians themselves admitting the game was up, it was clear to most people that Communism was an experiment that had failed. Certainly clear to those of us inhabiting the ‘real’ world. (And that included the babushkas in the bread queues.)

But there remained others who insisted Communism hadn’t been given a proper chance, or hadn’t been implemented correctly. Many of those who argued like this belonged to the middle classes, a disproportionate number of them academics.

Though by the late 1980s even its staunchest adherents knew Communism could never be sold as an economic model, certainly not as a replacement for capitalism – it couldn’t deliver the goods a consumer society demanded.

A change of tack was needed.

But for the diehards the objective remained the same – to undermine, weaken, and then, hopefully, take over the Western, capitalist world. But how was this to be done now that the socialist economic model was proven to be unworkable?

The answer came in the form of ‘Cultural Marxism’, succinctly explained here.

Though according to Wikipedia (and an editor who can’t spell ‘anti-Semitic’): “The term ‘Cultural Marxism’ refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.”

Ah, yes: “Far-right conspiracy theory”. Remember when the Wuhan lab origin of Covid was a Far Right conspiracy theory? Even ‘racist’? And so was the growing evidence that the vaccines did more harm than good.

Though “academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western cultures” is a rather good description of, um, Cultural Marxism. Because anyone choosing to argue that our academic institutions today are bastions of free speech has an impossible job on their hands.

But how was the grand design to be put into practice?

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THE ROUTE TO THE SUNLIT UPLANDS, AND THE GUIDES TO GET US THERE

With Marxists being so influential in academe this guaranteed that in Western universities students would be indoctrinated, with the new converts spreading the gospel as they dispersed into the wider world.

For a phenomenon of the past 30 years has been an increasingly bloated higher education sector catering in the main for semi-literate and impressionable natives and rich foreigners, which inevitably couples with falling academic standards.

Little more than a production line churning out the blinkered but earnest young people needed to fill the ranks of pressure groups, third sector bodies, and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

With the result that politics today is little more than politicians implementing the wishes of these groups, usually at the expense of the people who elected them.

Which means that democracy has, effectively, been subverted. Who you or I vote for is largely irrelevant. And it’s not just pressure groups undermining democracy, as I’ll explain later.

Which brings us back to the recent debacle in Scotland.

Nicola Sturgeon, and too many others in the Scottish National Party-Green Party coalition, fell under the influence of Stonewall pushing, among other things, the self-ID agenda that said your gender is whatever you claim it to be at any given time.

What began as an absurd and almost laughable fantasy turned darker when Adam Graham decided during his trial for raping two women that he was now transgender, and as ‘Isla Bryson’ he expected to be sent to a female prison, so he could be among more, vulnerable women

The self-inflicted disaster from which the SNP is now struggling to emerge could only have come about when politicians are beguiled by a pressure group to the point where they lose sight of reality and simply don’t care what the public really thinks.

∼

We also have this problem in Wales, in every sphere of our national life. We suffer pressure groups and campaigners – many from outside the country – pushing agendas that are against the best interests of the Welsh people.

And the politicians in Corruption Bay obey them like zombies.

A few weeks back readers of the Western Mail were treated to the headline you see below. Pay attention to the section I’ve circled. Who is Dr Lynn Sloman?

Well, she lives in London, where she’s a board member of Transport for London. The bio I’ve linked to tells us she has a holiday home near Machynlleth. (To be exact, in Cwm Einion aka ‘Artists Valley’.)

So a cycling zealot who lives in London, and hates cars – but has a holiday home in Wales, to which she presumably drives – is allowed to dictate ‘Welsh Government’ policy.

Yeah, that’s how I imagined devolution panning out.

More recently, my attention was drawn to a ‘Welsh Government’ document with the snappy title, Wales Innovates: Creating a Stronger, Fairer, Greener Wales. When you see ‘stronger’, ‘fairer’ and ‘greener’ grouped like that you can guarantee that we, the people, are going to be shafted.

This is what I was directed to on page 45.

Look at that phrase, ‘Mobility as a service’. No. Mobility, and freedom of movement within one’s own country, are fundamental human rights.

I want to be able to jump in my car and drive anywhere I bloody well please. I will not be deprived of this freedom by some swivel-eyed fanatic using the excuse of a ‘climate catastrophe’ that’s just not happening.

Though I’m intrigued by the possibilities opened up by ‘bike-sharing’. Does this mean different people using the same bike at different times, or can I fantasise about some buxom lovely of a playful nature astride my crossbar?

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2016 AND ALL THAT

Cultural Marxism has became more shrill and divisive in recent years, and its toxicity has increased. This I believe is due to a number of factors.

In 2016 the Anglosphere suffered two unexpected political jolts. In June of that year the UK voted to leave the European Union (or rather, England and Wales voted to leave; Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted to stay).

Then came the election of Donald Trump in November.

The far left had long been losing faith in the White working class, there was clearly a lack of revolutionary zeal among these dullards who wanted a decent home for their family and a good education for their kids. Brexit and Trump confirmed the comrades’ worst fears.

A counter-offensive was needed. And the weapons needed were already to hand.

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TWO OTHER DONKEYS OF THE CULTURAL MARXIST APOCALYPSE

THE ENVIRONMENT

Concerns about global warming or climate change had been gaining traction for a couple of decades, in part due to showmen like Al Gore, who understands climate as well as I understand nuclear fusion.

Who among you could not be convinced by those “boiling oceans“?

But the Far Left wasn’t really interested in saving the planet; the Cultural Marxists simply saw a problem that could be blamed on capitalism, and could be remedied by undermining Western economies.

For it was of course the West that would have to reduce its emissions to defeat those fortune cookie ‘predictions’.

Essentially, a programme of ‘degrowth’. Being discussed here in the What’s Up With That blog quoting Japanese Marxist academic Kohei Saito.

(Not for nothing are Greens called ‘watermelons’ – green on the outside, red on the inside.)

Or to put it another way, the populations of the advanced countries would have to suffer rising fuel bills, food shortages, travel restrictions, 15-minute cities . . . all for the good of the planet.

By comparison, countries in the developing world, China in particular, could build as many coal-fired power stations as they pleased. (Two a week, at the last count.) Further proof that the Left was less interested in saving the planet than with damaging the West.

The truth is that none of the absurd predictions made over the past 50 years has come to pass. The world may be warming, slightly, but it has little to do with us humans, and far more to do with the fact that we are in an inter-glacial warm period.

Entire nations wiped off the face of the Earth! Wow! How did I miss that?

Though a more generous interpretation that crosses my mind, especially after a glass or twa of Malbec, might be that climate hysteria is a variation on Pascal’s Wager. Or, at least, that’s how it might play out.

The great 17th century French thinker argued that believing in God was the sensible thing to do. Because if there was a God, and you’d lived a good life, then you went to Heaven. If there was no God, then you’d still lived a good life, helping others, etc.

If after all the sacrifices we are being forced to make it becomes clear there is no global warming, then those who promoted climate disaster might argue: “OK, so there’s no global warming – but those sacrifices made you a better person”.

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RACE

Another tool in the Cultural Marxists’ destabilisation armoury is race; more specifically, reminding us of the terrible things the White man has done. For as everyone knows, only Europeans ever conquered other peoples, and slavery was always and only a relationship between White masters and Black slaves.

(Anyone who knows their history and tries to speak the truth is of course a ‘racist’.)

To the point where in the eyes of many, White people can do little right, and Black people can do nothing wrong. As we saw in Minneapolis when career criminal George Floyd died in a botched arrest. And that’s all it was.

But his death led to his immediate martyrdom and resulted in riots applauded by the mainstream media.

Riots that were not simply applauded but deliberately misrepresented, even when the evidence was just over the reporter’s shoulder.

"This mostly a protest. It is not, generally speaking, unruly.

But fires have been started."

MSNBC reporter says protests in Minneapolis are not "generally speaking, unruly" as buildings burn in the background. pic.twitter.com/IzzEmKgxhM

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 29, 2020

The answer to rioting was obvious – ‘Defund the police!‘.

Because if the police were not there then the riots could proceed uninterrupted, the buildings burn down quicker, and everybody could go home with their looted goods.

Surely any fool could see the advantages? (Well, obviously, not the ‘racists’.)

The USA has arrived at a situation where, one hundred and sixty years after Lincoln freed the slaves (in the Confederate states he didn’t control), and sixty years since the Civil Rights Act, the Far Left is deliberately and irresponsibly reintroducing segregation and racism into the USA.

But it can’t stop over there. For as we’ve seen, ‘racism’ must be used everywhere, and interpolated into everything nowadays, even Covid.

And football. For during the recent Word Cup Finals a Black US academic, writing in the Washington Post (where else?) accused winners Argentina of being too White. Truth is that well under one percent of the Argentine population is Black.

It gets worse – for the countryside is racist! All those jackbooted farmers belting out the Horst Wessel Lied as they round up the sheep! Back in the 1940s the West fought those who sang that song. Now we fund and arm them.

Funny old world, innit!

And if ‘racism’ is to be fully exploited there must be unrestricted immigration to Western countries. Disruptive, unjustified, increasingly unpopular . . . so now these migrants are being called ‘climate refugees‘.

And if you fall for that, then you’ll fall for anything!

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THE QUISLING LEFT AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The Cultural Marxism I’ve described has, in recent years, come to be known as ‘Wokeness’, or ‘Wokeism’. Before that, perhaps, ‘political correctness’. There’s no point in looking for differences between them because there are too few.

The others were just Cultural Marxism rebranded, because those pushing it knew that the ‘M’ word was unpopular, far better to hide under other labels. ‘Progressive’ being particularly popular with the Far Left today.

But whatever the tag, it remains a war on the West. And given that non-White majority countries get a free ride, Cultural Marxism / Wokeism can even be seen as racist.

And why not, for the Far Left has always been unpatriotic, so there’s no great leap needed for it to extend its hatred from individual nations and states to a whole racial and cultural identity.

It was noticeable during the Covid pandemic how eagerly the Far Left embraced the restrictions on human freedoms demanded by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) and other bodies.

Which was not surprising, for the comrades have always believed that for society to function efficiently the common herd must be directed and led by morally, intellectually and ideologically superior beings. People like Stalin. Mao. Pol Pot.

With this justified because however it might look, it’s really being done in the interests of the ruled. Little different to a theocracy. And the vision of the World Economic Forum.

I bring in the WEF because this shared belief in rule by, ‘Those Who Know Best’ has brought Cultural Marxists into alliance with mega corporations like Blackrock, Big Pharma, Big Tech, multi-billionaires, and others who want to act as an unelected world government.

Reducing our elected governments to little more than middle-men, or facilitators; implementing orders from above and obeying demands from below.

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A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL

The fundamental problem for Cultural Marxists is that, well, they spout bollocks. Whether it’s climate hysteria, anti-White racism, women with penises and, more recently, Covid.

Confronted with these realities Cultural Marxists, unable to defend the positions in which they’ve entrenched themselves, must resort to silencing critics before the truth can emerge. Which is why they openly advocate ‘No debate’.

Hoping to convey the message that the position(s) they have taken up are so incontrovertibly correct that debate is unnecessary.

Anyone suggesting maybe, just maybe, the world is not coming to a fiery end is a ‘climate denier’. Those who argue that cross-dressers are not women are ‘transphobes’. While those who believe that White people are not evil are, of course, ‘racists’.

But the catch-all term Leftists often reach for to slander their opponents when they’re cornered is ‘Far Right’. Which is what London mayor Sadiq Khan did last week to those protesting against 15-minute cites.

This is definitely a fascist sign. Click to open enlarged in separate tab.

These attempts to intimidate and silence opponents with silly labels is further enforced by denying a platform to those with the courage to speak. This of course is ‘cancel culture’.

Silencing critics is greatly aided by WEF control of the mainstream media and most social media. Resulting in newspapers and TV channels presenting only approved narratives, even ignoring some news stories altogether.

Now they want to introduce bans on what they – or their AI algorithms – will decide is ‘hate speech’. In other words: “All voices that challenge us will be silenced”.

It’s worth considering the role of Bill Gates in all this. For in many ways he is the public face of the World Economic Forum.

To begin with, Bill Gates is the second biggest donor to the WHO, and it was pure coincidence that during the Covid pandemic ‘Dr’ Gates was urging people to get vaccinated . . . with products from companies in which he’d heavily invested.

The same WHO that issued global directives during Covid, and now wants to take on itself the power to instruct democratically-elected governments to close their country down. Even the power to enforce global lockdowns.

Gates is also a big donor to media around the world, including the BBC. Now why would he do that? His fellow-‘philanthropist’, George Soros, another Globalist meddler, also gives vast sums to the media.

My understanding of the BBC was that it is funded by the licence fee in order to ensure its impartiality. (Don’t laugh!) So why is the BBC allowed to accept funding from Bill Gates? And who else is funding the BBC?

Bill Gates, friend of the late Jeffrey Epstein. (‘Suicide’, remember? Sad.)

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CONCLUSIONS

The West is in a dangerous place. Those we are asked to believe are in control have been reduced to figureheads. Cardboard cut-outs.

As I explained, our elected politicians answer to the Globalists above them, and the Cultural Marxists below. With the latter acting as the ‘feet on the ground’ for the former. Neither source of real power has a democratic mandate.

Which results in the diktats of the unelected being ‘legitimised’ by being fed through national and sub-national governments.

But their agenda is clear: to make our lives more expensive and more miserable; with fewer freedoms, in expression, movement, and so much else.

To get a feel for the promised future read, ‘Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better‘, written in 2016 by Ida Auken, member of the Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization of the World Economic Forum.

‘No privacy’ will be dressed up as ‘smart’ and ‘convenient’.

And forget the Sunday joint, for vegans are another of the fringe outfits found among the screeching mass of Cultural Marxists. And it’s why livestock farmers are being hounded out of business around the world.

The WEF wants to control the global food supply. Vegans want us to stop eating meat. To achieve this, both will target farmers. (Though the vegans may disguise themselves as environmentalists.)

Intolerant and unreasonable vegans would never have such influence today, with a media free ride, if they weren’t carrying out the WEF agenda.

This also explains why Bill Gates is said to be the largest private owner of farmland in the USA. Not only that, but ‘Farmer’ Gates is also cornering the market in seeds.

The future is spelling itself out before our eyes.

To return to where we started . . .

Were I a cynical bastard I might wonder what really happened in Scotland. For with both Globalists and Cultural Marxists wanting to put an end to nation states why get involved with a party and a government wanting to create a new nation state?

And then I think of what happened in Wales in 2021. When a thriving organisation campaigning for independence, that had quickly gained 18,000 members, was almost destroyed by fanatics – all of a Far Left background – trying to turn YesCymru into TransCymru.

It’s a hell of a coincidence.

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CONCLUSION

I believe in the family, the nation, and Western civilisation. Proud to be a husband, father and grandfather; proud to be Welsh; proud of what Europeans, people of the West, have contributed to the world.

The same West that’s being targeted today, and for a number of reasons.

Partly because Russia, China, and other states know how to deal with the kind of disruptive fanatics we’ve dealt with here. So the Cultural Marxists focus on their unfinished business with the capitalist West.

The WEF targets the West because that’s where the power and the money lies. But Klaus Schwab and his gang also understand that the obstacles to their takeover – love of democracy, respect for individual liberty, and a belief in freedom of expression – are more cherished in the West than elsewhere.

Which explains the concerted vilification of White people, and the existential threat.

No matter how it’s disguised, we are facing a global power grab. And for complete power over our lives. So let’s unite, across national boundaries, across continents, to defeat the crazies trying to ‘soften us’ up for the Bond villains.

Arise ye “useless eaters“!

♦ end ♦

The Alliance Against Livestock Farming

On 16/11/202205/12/2022 By JacIn Corruption, Englandandwales, Greens, Public Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Government, Welsh Media43 Comments

This week’s piece about wildlife trusts and environmental groups complements what I put out last week about the assorted river charities.

For both seem to be funded to shield Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) and others from criticism by blaming livestock farmers for all river pollution. Also, to pursue the so-called ‘Welsh Government’s Net Zero lunacy and, in so doing, serve the globalist agenda.

With a few twists.

Wildlife and environmental groups tend to contain more ‘zealots’, which results in hysteria, and a readiness to tell lies. Which in this context is often accompanied by a thinly-disguised contempt for Wales and Welsh identity.

One example might be the charity Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW) choosing to dissolve itself, while the local trusts for which it served as the umbrella organisation joined England’s Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. You’ll learn more about this as you read on.

As I say, there will be similarities with last week’s piece, but also differences. And I promise a bit more in the way of polemic. Ol’ Jac gonna let rip!

It’s fairly big, so go make a mug of something before settling down to enjoy it.

♦

WHO’S WHO IN THE FLEECE JACKETS

Let’s start by looking at the organisational setup.

As I said in the intro, Wildlife Trusts Wales recently put itself out of business so that the five regional trusts – North, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, South and West, Gwent – could become full members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT).

Explained at the foot of page 1 in the 2021 WTW accounts.

The clip below from the Charity Commission entry tells us that the RSWT now views Wales and England as a single unit, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland are treated separately. Even the Isle of Man gets more respect than us.

But then, when you surrender your separate identity this is what you can expect.

And yet, the pretence of an independent existence is maintained by a Wildlife Trusts Wales website. Where WTW describes itself as: ‘one of five Wildlife Trusts in Wales’ which, again, makes no sense. Yes, there are five, I just listed them, and they’re all area specific, so where and how does WTW fit in?

It’s all very confusing. Perhaps deliberately so.

At the foot of the WTW website home page we are given Companies House and Charity Commission numbers. The latter draws a blank because the charity was closed March 31, 2021. While the Companies House entry tells us that the company voluntarily dissolved earlier this year.

So why hasn’t the information on the website been updated? If it’s claimed WTW still exists, then what form does that existence take?

And what happened to the money?

Well, the final accounts for the WTW (y/e 31.03.2021) seem to show, at the foot of page 19, that the cash left when the company folded was divvied up among four of the five trusts I mentioned earlier.

Brecknock received nowt because it had not long before merged with the South and West Wales Wildlife Trust, which for some reason was itself left out. (Why didn’t ‘Brecknock’ make the obvious merger, with Radnorshire? Or why not a Powys trust?)

You’ll see that £234,320 went to the ‘All Wales Conservation Strategy’. Does anyone know what that is? I’ve tried Googling but nothing comes up. Do the funders know where their money’s going?

The more I thought about this wildlife trusts reconfiguration the stranger it appeared. I mean, just think about it.

Before devolution we had local wildlife trusts with Wildlife Trusts Wales serving as the umbrella body. Yet now, when wildlife trusts deal with Y Senedd, when there’s separate Welsh funding, different legislation, they do away with their national body in order to, effectively, become English wildlife trusts.

This move makes no sense on any rational or practical level. How then can it be explained? I really would like to know.

Whatever ethereal form Wildlife Trusts Wales now takes the wraith clearly retains the strength to use a Twitter account. Here’s a gem put out on Monday.

To describe Wales as ‘one of the most nature depleted countries in the world’ is hysterical nonsense and an insult to us as a nation.

While suggesting that farming is to blame rather gives the game away.

The image used in the tweet comes from this source, linked with Denmark farm, near Lampeter, where we find another gang of alien envirogrifters. A farming source tells me the allegation made in the image may be libellous.

The Denmark Farm Conservation Centre has gone the way of so many outfits that appear on this blog – it was Dissolved earlier this year. With two outstanding charges.

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FILTHY LUCRE

We saw in last week’s piece that river charities saw a remarkable increase in official funding at the very time Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) was formulating her draconian and ‘unworkable’ NVZ legislation.

Such propinquity!

Well, no. It’s explained by the fact that Lesley (and Gary) wanted a stream of pollution stories in order to justify that NVZ legislation.

Stories that were also music to the ears of Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) bosses, because it deflected attention from the water company’s pollution.

We see something very similar in wildlife trusts.

Let’s start with the North Wales Wildlife Trust. Where total income more than doubled between 2017 and 2021. The largest element of that increase is (in various forms) government funding, up from £180,440 in 2017 to £1,970,000 in 2021.

Plus assets of around £3m.

A ten-fold increase in government funding will support a few beavers.

The picture at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust shows a more modest but still healthy increase in funding. To which we must also add assets pushing £3m.

Moving south we come to the intriguing anomaly of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust. Intriguing for in the old 13-county arrangement you will recall that Radnorshire was quite small in size and had the lowest population of all our counties.

But the local wildlife trust paints a different picture. Total income doubled between 2017 and 2021 and there are assets of over £2m. There were no assets in 2019.

The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales has seen income increase by 50% in the period we’re looking at, but government grants increased from £21,300 in 2017 to £748,050 in 2021. Then throw in assets of some £5m.

Finally, to Gwent. Where income has increased at a more modest rate apart from a huge blip in 2018 accounted for by Heritage Lottery funding for a project on the Gwent Levels. But with assets around the three million pound mark.

So everything looks just tickety-boo on the financial front for our English-registered wildlife trusts.

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BARE-FACED LIES

I am indebted to one of the few honest journalists left in Wales for drawing my attention to a disgraceful incident last November, at a hearing of the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee.

Rachel Sharp of the zombie-like Wildlife Trusts Wales and Wales Environmental Link (WEL) alleged that along with all the other evils livestock farmers are responsible for they also use growth hormones, which eventually end up in our streams and rivers.

The transcript is here (123) and the video here.

The truth is that growth hormones have been banned in the UK since 1981. Welsh livestock farmers do not use growth hormones.

After protests from farming unions and Tory MS Sam Kurtz apologies were issued. But as we’ve come to expect from these envirofanatics it’s never an honest ‘I was wrong’. It’s always qualified, position shifting, hoping the original lie lingers.

But this time they’d gone too far, and it wasn’t just Rachel Sharp telling porkies. Also there representing Wales Environmental Link was Creighton Harvey, also a trustee of Afonydd Cymru Cyf.

Here’s how the Pembrokeshire Herald reported it.

‘The evidence of Ms Sharp’s fellow representative from Wales Environment Link was also riddled with errors.

Creighton Harvey told the Committee that agriculture was the largest polluter of Wales’s watercourses.

The largest polluters are water companies, industrial users, and domestic users’.

So who is Rachel Sharp?

Well, as we know, she’s a trustee of Wales Environmental Link. But this profile from the ‘Welsh Government’ website tells us a bit more. And it’s fascinating.

To begin with, it keeps up the pretence of the defunct Wildlife Trusts of Wales. But concludes by informing us that Rachel Sharp is also ‘a group member of the Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel’.

So what’s that? Here’s a clue from the Dŵr Cymru website.

We’re told, ‘The Chair is Mari Arthur, Director of Cynal (sic) Cymru’. But Mari Arthur left Cynnal Cymru in July 2018, after just 4 months. Is this another site in need of updating?

Mari Arthur now runs Mari Arthur Marketing, but hasn’t yet registered it as a company. Among her clients we find Cynnal Cymru. Also, joined-at-the-hip ‘Welsh Government’ and Cardiff University.

Her other companies include Afallen LLP and Tetrimteas Cyf.

If the name Mari Arthur rings a bell it’s because she so badly damaged Plaid Cymru in Llanelli, a seat the party had been nurturing since the days of the great Carwyn James.

She was forced on the constituency party by her friends in both Plaid Cymru and Labour. For in the Corruption Bay circles in which Mari Arthur moves party labels mean little as long as you’re ‘on the right side of history’.

The Independent Environmental Advisory Panel is clearly a group that allows Dŵr Cymru and envirozealots to agree their narratives in the war on livestock farmers and draw attention away from Dŵr Cymru itself, the biggest culprit.

There should be no place in Welsh public life for Rachel Sharp of the mythical Wales Wildlife Trusts, the all too corporeal Wales Environmental Link, and the Dŵr Cymru claque in the laughably named Independent Environmental Advisory Panel.

I suspect Rachel Sharp’s mask slipped last November when she forgot where she was; because when she and others of her ilk usually talk with politicians and civil servants – and of course, Dŵr Cymru – they tend to reinforce each other’s self-serving prejudices about livestock farmers.

But she’ll survive. For she has powerful friends, among those who’ve been elected, and those we’ve never heard of.

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Another name that caught my eye among the Wales Environmental Link luminaries was Natalie Buttriss, whose Linkedin profile (here in pdf) tells us she’s ‘Director of Wales The Woodland Trust’. This outfit previously used the name Coed Cadw for its Welsh operations, but this pandering to the indigenes seems to have been dropped.

Native of Bristol Buttriss was in at the start of the Summit to Sea land grab. For which she appeared on this blog four years ago in The Welsh Clearances. Her contempt for farmers was made obvious in this radio interview with the BBC’s Farming Today.

I have always believed that Buttriss was so arrogant, so dismissive of the interests of livestock farmers, because she believed she had the full support of the ‘Welsh Government’.

For in that interview she suggests that subsidies would be withheld or cut to make farmers fall into line. She wouldn’t have said that unless certain Bay politicians had promised to play the heavies.

The ‘Welsh Government’s hand was not revealed because the opposition to Summit to Sea made backers like Rewilding Britain pull out and the whole thing seemed to fall apart.

Or maybe it’s still out there, lurking in the undergrowth, waiting to re-emerge.

As we know, climate alarmists have too much influence with the media, partly through having brainwashed two generations of schoolchildren and college students, and partly through funding – ever wondered why Bill Gates gives money to the BBC?

Or perhaps, more pertinently, why the BBC is allowed to accept his funding?

But the propagandising is not confined to the BBC.

∼

Last Friday ITV’s Wales at Six ran a piece about cooperation between the Rhug Estate and the Welsh Dee Trust. A relatively harmless little filler.

But the newsreader, Andrea Byrne, dropped into the report: “Rivers like the Wye and the Usk are virtually dead and no longer able to support an abundance of fish like trout and salmon and other wildlife“.

Bizarre, and completely untrue. But from where did ITV Wales get that lie?

Because if it’s true then somebody should tell Harry Legge-Bourke of the Glanusk estate; for he advertises, ‘fantastic fishing on 5 miles of double bank fishing on the River Usk offering day tickets for Trout and Salmon rods’.

No one disputes that these rivers could be healthier, but they’re far from ‘virtually dead’, as ITV Wales would have us believe.

And if these rivers are in decline, then whose fault is that? Because if the finger of guilt is being pointed in the wrong direction to protect the guilty party then things are unlikely to improve.

There is constant financial backing and other support for those who tell lies about livestock farmers from those who benefit from and capitalise on those lies.

I’m often inclined to believe in coincidences. But not this time. What I’m describing is too widespread, across too many sectors.

If it quacks like a duck, and it waddles like a duck . . .

◊

CONCLUSION

The environmental / wildlife / Nature bodies in Wales are like exotic organisms in a Petri dish. Forever growing, dividing, re-forming, changing appearance and colour, and multiplying through the introduction of fresh viruses.

There are many reasons why there should be no further public funding for these groups. You’ve read some of those reasons here. But Sebastian and Claudia needn’t go without because there are plenty of funding streams they could tap into.

For example, and seeing as they’re promoting the agendas of the UN and WEF, one possibility must be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Another option would be George Soros. Contact details can be had from Coleg Soros in Talgarth, where environmental and wildlife groups already have many contacts.

Bottom line, and last word . . .

It’s obscene that a country – especially our country – gives tens of millions of pounds every year for truth-averse zealots to enjoy sinecures fretting over toads and butterflies while our people die because ambulances don’t turn up.

♦ end ♦

Climate Change – That Old Time Religion!

On 19/07/202220/07/2022 By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Ukraine, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Language, Welsh Media, Wind Turbines57 Comments

As you may have guessed, I am somewhat sceptical of the claims made by those who insist we’re heading for a climate catastrophe . . . unless of course we do as they tell us.

♦

THE ADVANTAGE OF HINDSIGHT

I’m an old bugger and I’ve been hearing horror stories about climate change all my life. The narratives have varied but the intention was always the same.

For example, back in the 1970s, following a dip in the temperature, there was a fear that aerosols were blocking out sunlight and this was pushing us towards a new Ice Age.

Ain’t seen no polar bears yet in Aberdyfi.

But the 1970s also gave us our last genuine heatwave; for in 1976 we saw 15 consecutive days when the temperature was 32°C or higher.

Attention then seemed to switch to global warming, but with this prospect still bringing colder weather for north west Europe. For it was believed that global warming would detach huge sheets of ice from the Greenland shelf; these would float southwards and redirect the Gulf Stream.

Even today, some are still prophesying disaster from that direction.

Next, it was the huge and growing hole in the ozone layer that spelt death for us all. I suppose it fixed itself. Here’s what the BBC, a leading purveyor of climate hysteria, has to say.

And who remembers acid rain, that would strip trees of their leaves and their bark, and reduce humans to skeletons if we stepped outside? Nobody mentions it any more, so I guess it went away.

‘Give us your serious face, Sue, there’s a love’. From the BBC Wales website, Saturday afternoon. The only thing missing is the body count. This is play-acting. Click to open enlarged in separate tab.

To give some perspective, here’s a link to some of the ludicrous predictions of climate catastrophe we’ve been served up over the past 50 years or so. Some you’ll remember, some you won’t. Anyone under the age of 40 should read it and then they might understand why older people are rather more sceptical.

◊

THE NEW RELIGION

As a student of history brought up in a moderately religious family it’s fascinating to see a combination of a (would-be) global elite, scientists, politicians and political activists, set up what is in effect their own ‘church’.

Those listed could be compared to a College of Cardinals, bishops, priests, and lay brethren. So it’s worth remembering that . . .

The medieval Church frightened our forefathers with the prospect of eternal damnation, while the new orthodoxy offers lurid prophesies of global disaster; the striking similarity due to the same desired outcome – to exert control over people by frightening them with the prospect of a terrible but unverifiable fate if they don’t obey.

If we accept that analogy, then we are in some kind of time-warp where blind obedience is demanded, and no questions are tolerated. Rejecting the prevailing orthodoxy makes one a heretic.

An old one from ‘Viz’. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I say that because anyone questioning the ‘science’ today is treated as a heretic would have been in the time of the Inquisition. With today’s heretics, like their predecessors, usually knowing more about the ‘science’ than their persecutors and the whipped-up mob demanding its entertainment.

Thankfully, there’s a ‘Reformation’ in the offing. It will inevitably lead to a ‘Counter-Reformation’; which will – through an excess of zealotry coupled with a paucity of supporting evidence – succeed only in further discrediting what had previously been so widely accepted.

◊

CONTROL THE MESSAGE

The current spell of warm weather being exaggerated by the Met Office and the media into a threat to the human race will be of short duration compared to 1976.

Even so, with an agenda to serve, a few days of warmer than average weather must be pumped up into a life-threatening event. Though, as I read in a tweet a few days ago . . .

Makes you think, doesn’t it!

People having to choose between heating their homes and eating this coming winter will be due to environmental zealots forcing on us measures to combat a non-existent climate emergency. As a result, winter deaths will be ignored; or if they are noted they will be attributed to ‘extreme weather’, which will of course be linked to the climate emergency.

Another parallel we can draw between today’s environmental establishment and earlier belief systems is their need to control what people see, read, and hear.

In the twenty-first century that means the media. And there is no doubt that the new religion has control over the greater part of what is referred to as the ‘mainstream’ or ‘legacy’ media.

That means radio, television, newspapers and magazines.

Which is why, in spite of censorship, and algorithms, ‘fact-checking’ and Big Tech rooting out ‘disinformation’ (i.e. ‘heretical’ thoughts), we should still be grateful for the internet. Fulfilling as it does the role of a latter-day printing press.

This control over the established media is both global – though especially pernicious in the Anglophone world – and local.

Wales is not immune to attempts to promote the globalists’ Word at all costs. Even when it means misrepresentation and outright lies.

◊

SOMEONE’S TELLING PORKIES

Monday last week saw the ‘Welsh media’ mount what was clearly a concerted effort to frighten us with images of a dried-up river in Pembrokeshire. All due, it was inferred, to global warming.

But things were not as they seemed. Here are the images.

Now, at first sight, and to those who might not know the area, those images of dried and cracked mud would suggest a river drying up. But as I say, things are not as they seem.

For the Carew River – that’s Carew Castle in the images – is nothing more than a tidal creek. It flows into the Cleddau and on past Milford Haven to the sea.

Not only that, but there’s a dam, which holds back water to create a mill pond. Although no longer operational, the mill has been restored. And it’s the only tidal mill in Wales.

Which means that the expanse of mud shown in the images is indicative of nothing more than the extent of the mill pond when the tide is in, or when the dam is operating.

This clip from an Ordnance Survey map might explain it better.

And if you click here you’ll go to a site that tells you more about the mill. Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see a nice picture of all that ugly mud covered over. In fact, I’m told the mill pond is normally full.

People, myself included, pointed out on Twitter and elsewhere that the images used by the BBC and WalesOnline were misleading. And so, by Wednesday, the caption had changed to say that the image showed the Carew River at ‘low tide’.

Fair enough. But if that’s the Carew at low tide, what’s the message?

The photographer, Matthew Horwood, had clearly gone up in his balloon for the image used by the Telegraph on Wednesday. But at least, in this image the dam is clearly visible.

Yet the caption still claims that the image shows ‘low water levels’. Which is wrong. The level of water in the Carew is quite normal – just look beyond the dam.

(The misleading picture of Afon Caeriw was still being used yesterday afternoon. Though, perhaps significantly, Horwood’s name does not appear, just Getty Images.)

Matthew Horwood was a busy boy last week.

For he was at it again on Saturday. This time, with photographs of Llwyn-on reservoir, near Merthyr Tudful. Though the person who sent me the link remarked that the grass we see might suggest the ground has been exposed for some time.

Someone else noticed that the photographs used on Saturday seemed very similar to photographs used in this report from 2020.

What’s more, photographs of Llwyn-on showing other droughts that were not claimed to be heralding Doomsday can be found on the Coflein site.

The truth is that it’s an old reservoir, with outdated infrastructure; and I suspect it now operates at well below its original capacity. Hence the ‘droughts’.

UPDATE 20.07.2022: Someone sent me this photograph of the Carew mill pond taken today. All I can say is, they must have had a hell of downpour in Pembrokeshire last night!

◊

CALLING MATTHEW HORWOOD

As for the photographer, Matthew Horwood, I reached out to him on Twitter last week, but there was no response. I’ll try again.

Matthew Horwood, your photographs, used by various media outlets last week, were misleading. So here are my questions:

Did you submit those photographs yourself as evidence of ‘global warming’?
Were they requested from you by the media outlets that used them?
Were you unaware that the River Carew is tidal and that Llwyn-on reservoir is regularly at that level?
Do you now intend asking the media outlets involved to clarify what the images actually show?
How close are you to the so-called ‘Welsh Government’?

The final question is due to Horwood’s Linkedin profile. To see Drakeford and his favourite university ‘liked’ suggests Horwood may be a member of the Bay in-crowd.

What’s abundantly clear is that certain interests saw in the recent spell of pleasantly warm and dry weather the opportunity to ratchet up the climate hysteria.

Matthew Horwood and his photographs are an element of that offensive, as is Sue Charles, the weathergirl, looking as if she’s about to burst into tears.

◊

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Not only are we being lied to, but the media is now increasingly self-censoring, which means that the general public is uninformed on world events.

Take Sri Lanka. The violent overthrow of the government was almost impossible to ignore, but it was certainly misreported.

Yes, the economy tanked; yes, the people were hungry. But it came about because the political elite in Sri Lanka followed the dictates of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and made its farmers go organic.

Nearer to home, the government of the Netherlands also wants farmers to use less fertiliser, which the government knows will put many farmers out of business, and so the government has offered to buy their farms.

Dutch farmers have refused to accept these directives and have been protesting for weeks. They have been joined by farmers in Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain.

The latest news is that Dutch farmers are refusing to sell their produce to supermarkets.

Even the Irish Greens are pushing the same ‘Let’s get the farmers!’ line.

But nothing is being reported by the BBC or the rest of the mainstream media. Because the WEF doesn’t want it reported.

About the only mainstream TV coverage I see is from Sky News in Australia!

The agenda of the globalists, and by that term I mean, the United Nations (IPCC), the World Health Organisation (which wants to override national governments in order to impose lockdowns and other measures), and of course, the World Economic Forum, can be summed up as follows.

A global government. (For which of course there will be no elections.)
In the meantime, national governments should be in the hands of oleaginous creatures who’ve been groomed by the globalists. (Trudeau in Canada and Rutte in the Netherlands are two examples.)
Eventually, there will be an end to the nation state. (And, by extension, nations. Especially majority white nations.)
An end to farming. (To be justified by claiming that farming causes great environmental damage.)
To speed up the end of farming governments, corporations, and individuals, will be encouraged to buy farmland. (Already happening in Wales, elsewhere, and of course, Bill Gates is now the largest private owner of farmland in the USA.)
The land released by the end of farming will in many cases be used for ‘habitat restoration’. (That is, rewilding, done by organisations and individuals that are close to the globalist cabal.)
Without farming we shall eat insects, and food produced in laboratories. (By happy coincidence Bill Gates, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and others have been pushing this for a few years.)
There will be a cashless society. Everyone will use online banking and every transaction will be recorded. (After all, only criminals use cash!)
To increase personal security and reduce crime and terrorism everyone will have a biometric passport or ID. (Maybe a chip implanted, like your dog! Does he complain?)
We shall be regularly injected with whatever our globalist masters say is good for us. (Especially those who reject the yummy artificial food.)
We must all drive electric vehicles. (Can’t afford one? Don’t worry, walking is good exercise.)
There really are too many of us in the world, so we must reduce numbers. (This is where the game is often given away, with the focus on countries where the birth-rate is below replacement level.)

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture. Thankfully, the agenda is coming off the rails because it’s been pushed a little too crudely, and events beyond the globalists’ control could now deal it a death-blow.

Even before the unrest across Europe Justin Trudeau in Canada made a revealing move when he froze the bank accounts of the truckers protesting against the Canadian government’s over-reaction to Covid.

But fundamental to the agenda is the myth of a planet in danger, for this is the justification for everything else. The planet must be saved by giving up fossil fuels, fertilisers, private transport, real meat, and a host of other things that underpin an advanced society.

Those over-arching priorities coupled with individual mistakes and events beyond our control explain why we are where we are.

Remember . . .

We’re up Shit Creek now partly because we believed Angela Merkel when she downplayed how much the world relies on Russia for gas and raw materials. Partly because ‘renewables’ are expensive and unreliable nonsense. And partly because the globalists will now make us pay for them engineering a war with Russia.

◊

MEANWHILE, IN WALES . . .

The ‘Welsh Government’ surrendered to the globalists without firing a shot in defence of Wales.

Worse, the collaborationist clowns in Corruption Bay see themselves as trailblazers in implementing the globalists’ agenda. Forever claiming to be the ‘first government in the world’ to introduce this, or that.

‘This’ and ‘that’ invariably translate into expensive gestures, and pandering to alien lobbies, neither of which deliver anything tangible or of material benefit for the Welsh people.

And of course, destroying the agricultural sector. For as a regular contributor to the Welsh debate, an academic from Bristol, put it recently . . .

But now this enthusiasm is taking a more sinister and authoritarian turn.

Last Wednesday, from this tweet, I learned that a motion had been tabled in the Senedd by Jane Dodds, the Liberal Democrat MS for Brecon & Radnor. It was supported by the ‘Welsh Government’ and its little helpers in Plaid Cymru.

Here’s a contribution to the debate from Carolyn Thomas, the Labour Regional MS for North Wales. (Look at those eyes!)

I’ve highlighted a few sections and I’ll explain why.

This woman has obviously bought into laboratory ‘food’. Then, high priest of the planet savers, and regular Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, gets a mention or two.

Handing back “vast swathes of our land to nature” means nothing of the sort. To begin with, Carolyn Thomas is talking about the Welsh family farm. And the land will be handed over to people like George Monbiot and his cronies, who thankfully failed in one colonialist land grab with Summit to Sea.

“Harnessed by the state” and “kept out of private hands” means nothing more or less than the ‘Welsh Government’ taking over Welsh family farms. Collectivisation that we’ve seen in Communist states.

“A basic income and state-owned green jobs to today’s farmers” means that having bought their farms, perhaps compulsorily, the ‘Welsh Government’ will now employ former farmers on the land they once owned.

If the jobs are state-owned, then those doing the jobs will also be state-owned. We could be going beyond nationalisation here to a form of serfdom.

Ukrainian peasants search for food in the famine that followed Stalin’s collectivisation. Communist politicians taking control of agriculture always results in famine. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I’d like to dismiss Carolyn Thomas as just another unbalanced Green activist. Or someone who’s been overdoing it on the ganja.

But she’s a politician, a Member of ‘our’ Senedd, belonging to the ruling party. And because no one felt the need to apologise for her attack on the ‘kulaks’ I conclude that her contribution is ‘Welsh Government’ policy.

So let’s remind ourselves that under Labour . . .

Child poverty has increased in all 22 local authority areas; hospital waiting lists lengthen year on year; people are eyeing up which furniture they can sacrifice to keep warm this coming winter; but a bunch of deluded fanatics in Corruption Bay wants to turn Wales into a Communist hell-hole using as their justification a climate catastrophe that’s not going to happen.

This is the kind of moral corruption and intellectual vacuity that led to the medieval Church losing its authority. It grew distanced and divorced from the concerns of the people it claimed to serve.

We are at that point now. We may even have passed it.

The globalists’ dream of being leaders in a new world order, with them knowing where each and every one of us is at all times, what we’ve eaten that day, and what we’ve recently bought, is dead.

Killed by a combination of arrogance, economic realities, and Vladimir Putin.

There’ll be very few politicians pushing Net Zero in January, and I guarantee that for future WEF knees-ups the message for Klaus Schwab will be (adapting Bismarck’s Canossa allusion), “Nach Davos gehen wir nicht, Klaus”.

It would therefore be tragic if those assholes down Corruption Bay ignored the changing realities and tried to implement Carolyn Thomas’s nightmare.

♦ end ♦

London Lying

On 04/04/201804/04/2018 By JacIn British Nationalism, Media, Scotland37 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being lied to. Obviously, when it’s your children, or grandchildren, you often suppress a smile before putting them straight. But when it’s a corporate body as powerful and influential as the British Broadcasting Corporation, then it’s an entirely different matter.

For this is a source of information beamed into just about every home on this island and still trusted by most people.

That trust is misplaced, for the BBC is now the state broadcaster, the voice of the London government and, more insidiously, the voice of Britain and a stultifying Britishness. This latter role results in the BBC misinforming people in Scotland and Wales about their homelands, and it also results in people around the world being given a deliberately distorted view of events in these countries.

Propaganda is one thing, every country and all governments put out propaganda to a greater or lesser degree, but what makes the BBC different is that we are paying for it. From April 1st the cost of a colour television licence fee is £150.50.

So we are paying to be lied to!

It was this realisation, and the thought of some campaign against the propaganda machine that prompted the tweet you see above. This tweet encouraged the guest post you’re now going to read.

♦

A GUEST POST BY BRYCHAN DAVIES

Jac suggests on his twitter feed a campaign of non-payment of the television licence fee in light of the now clear editorial bias of the BBC in favour of the union, regularly demonstrated in the coverage of Scottish affairs.

I have therefore taken time to look at how the television licence fee is spent, what happens in Wales, and what happens in the rest of Europe.

A two frame spreadsheet is attached.

In the first frame I have divided the total BBC revenue for the television licence according to population of the countries within the union. The cost of the TV licence is the same in all countries. I have then extracted from this the services provided specifically to Wales, like the two ‘regional’ radio stations, the spend on S4C and then a population proportion for English language television broadcasts, online content, and administration, where Wales is treated as a ‘region’.

In the second frame I have listed the television licence fee payable in other countries in Europe, including countries where the licence fee has been recently abolished.

◊

WALES

You will notice that income from TV licences issued in Wales is £180m per year while spending on all services the BBC provide to Wales is £240m per year. Some would argue that this is a subsidy of £60m per year. Those who are hostile to the Welsh language would argue that this is S4C (£76m per year) but for this to be true, all Welsh speakers have four eyes and are able to consume both English and Welsh content simultaneously. Previously only £70m of S4C revenues was not funded by the BBC and directly funded from direct taxation via the Whitehall department of Media and Sport, prior to that all of S4C was funded by DCMS.

click to enlarge (but it only makes JM look bigger!)

The issue with ‘state financed’ content is that if it costs £10m to make a content series this does not change, whether 3m people consume it or 55m people consume it. Only commercially financed content has a ‘break-even’ point in terms of viewers.

◊

DEVOLUTION

Plaid Cymru argue that ‘broadcasting should be devolved’. If this happened and the full array of BBC content currently available in Wales was to be maintained, the licence fee in Wales would need to increase from £147pa to £200pa or the shortfall financed through the block grant.

◊

INDEPENDENCE

The reality is that the BBC is a unionist institution and while the population are fed a steady stream of ‘Eastenders bake a cake on Countryfile while Dancing in Coronation Street’, content which could alternatively be provided by commercial broadcasting on Sky, ITV, C4, C5, and others. What comes with the BBC, it’s USP, is a ‘unionist’ news service and content which in the last few years are broadcast as ‘Great British Bake-Offs’, an obsession with World War One documentaries and empire nostalgia dressed up as ‘lifestyle’ and ‘heritage’.

◊

CONCLUSION

A true Welsh nationalist would have to ague for the abolition of the television licence fee, and that any BBC content imported and consumed from England be on the basis of commercial subscription, as applies in the Irish Republic. This would also mean that Wales only content would either be financed by…

commercial activity only

One of the effects of making BBC imports a subscription pack is that more people consume content on other commercially available transmissions. This would result in a massive increase in the value of commercial sales advertising on Welsh channels.

from a much lower Wales only licence fee

To fund the £76m for a Welsh language channel, a Wales News channel in the English language at £20m with entertainment content purchased globally, the 18m of Radio Cymru and the £20m for Radio Wales giving a £100pa Welsh licence fee.

direct government grant for this from general taxation of £134m

Radio Wales can be based in the existing facility in Swansea, Radio Cymru can be based in the existing facility in Bangor and the English language TV channel can be housed in the new S4C facility in Carmarthen giving greater capacity utilisation. The most difficult issue in any of these options is having to demolish that new building currently squatting outside Cardiff Central railway station, where a bus/tram interchange should be or selling it off to fund transition costs.

♦ end ♦

Jac adds . . .

Since the poisonings of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4th the BBC has slavishly toed the official line that it was Putin what done it. The nerve agent involved was quickly identified and attributed to Putin’s henchmen. Following the attack the USA and other countries fell into line and expelled Russian diplomats. It unfolded so neatly that it looked almost choreographed.

The BBC is still telling us that, “The British government says a military-grade Novichok nerve agent of a type developed by Russia was used in the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia”. So who in the British Government has the expertise to identify nerve agents – David Davis, Boris Johnson, Gavin Williamson?

In matters like this the experts are to be found at Porton Down, the UK’s centre for chemical and biological warfare. On April 3rd Porton Down’s chief executive, Gary Aitkenhead, told us they could not prove that the agent used to poison the Skripals had come from Russia. (Given that Aitkenhead is Scottish maybe it’s only a matter of time before the Daily Mail attacks him for being a ‘Sturgeon stooge’.)

This announcement clearly undermined the UK government’s case against Russia. Which is almost certainly why the BBC’s main Six O’Clock News programme on April 3rd ignored it entirely, and led with the important story of a 96-year-old man going into hospital for a hip operation.

Folks, we have a serious problem on our hands. We are paying to be lied to. Either they stop lying or we must stop paying.

Jerusalem Unsundered

On 03/04/201704/04/2017 By JacIn Colonialism, Devolution, Englandandwales, History, Welsh Assembly, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour56 Comments

NATIONS

‘The nations and regions of the UK’ is a term used by the BBC and other organisations and it fascinates me for a number of reasons. Primarily I suppose because I can readily identify the former but I’m confused when I read about the latter, especially in a political context. Do you know where these mysterious ‘regions’ are? Let’s start with the relatively easy job of identifying the nations.

There are four nations in these islands. Apart from us Welsh there are the Scots and the English with the three of us making up Britain; and then there are the Irish, with the greater part of Ireland being independent. Northern Ireland is a part of the UK, but as the Troubles made clear, there are two communities there; one that shares its cultural background with the citizens of the Republic of Ireland, and can be called Irish, with the other identifying with Britain, or more particularly Scotland, and insisting it is British.

Which is confusing, because there is no British nation. There is certainly a British state, but that’s a constitutional arrangement. To confuse matters further ‘British’ is a term that was used for centuries by English writers to describe us Welsh and our language, in recognition of the fact that we were the original inhabitants of this island, before the post-Roman Germanic and Irish settlements. (Though this connection is less likely to be made nowadays, for the same English nationalist reasons that ‘Iron Age Britain’ has replaced ‘Celtic Britain’.) So are these people in the northern part of Ireland who claim to British some lost Welsh tribe?

Despite this division into two mutually hostile camps it serves British interests to regard Northern Ireland as one of the nations, on a par with Wales, England and Scotland. Is it not, it is simply a devolved administration, and at some point in the near future it will re-unite with the rest of the island.

I think that settles – for the time being, at least – the nations element of this little piece. Let’s move on.

♦

REGIONS

It seems obvious that if we are looking for the BBC’s regions, then we’ll have to look for them in England. But these regions are arbitrary geographical units, most of which seem to be named after compass points, I see nothing closer to a nation, a geographical area of England where people say – preferably in a distinctive accent – ‘This is my region, I am a native of ————-‘.

At this point you might be tempted to put down your porcelain cup of Darjeeling and wonder aloud, ‘What the fuck is he is on about, why is he writing about the regions of England?’ but please bear with me, for I shall now explain how I believe this is relevant to Wales.

Last Wednesday saw a ‘taskforce’ meet in Cardiff, a gathering of great Labour minds hoping to give the impression that their party has a cunning plan for a new constitutional arrangement post-Brexit.

In attendance were our own Carwyn Jones, former PM Gordon Brown, leader of ‘Scottish’ Labour Kezia Dugdale, ex-deputy PM John Prescott, some bloke named Jon Trickett (described as a strategist’), and among the spear carriers were Christina Rees MP and Nick Forbes, leader of Newcastle council. While in the chorus we find the Labour candidate for Mayor of Greater Manchester, his counterpart for the Liverpool City Region, etc.

Clearly, ‘handing more powers down’ is an attempt to cut off the SNP at the pass, by giving Scotland more powers so that people there will say, ‘See you, Jimmy, we dinnae need independence the noo’. (I bet you read that and thought, ‘Bloody hell! Some Scotsman has taken over Jac’s blog’.)

And in the hope of disguising that this is all about preventing Scottish independence Labour must come up with what looks like a more general plan for all “the nations and regions that make up the UK”.

Which is a bit tricky when we can’t locate these regions, which brings us back to the original problem.

♦

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

Clearly, England does not have established and distinct regions like France, let alone Germany, where many of today’s länder were independent states well into the nineteenth century. It was a similar situation in Italy, though few today mourn the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

By comparison, England was unified by the middle of the tenth century, with London the capital and major city. When William of Normandy invaded in 1066 he only needed to win one battle, kill Harold, and march on London to be ruler of all England. I can think of no other European country of the time that would have fallen so completely, so quickly.

Consequently, what passes for regions in England today are nothing more than broadcasters’ shorthand – the West Country, East Anglia, etc. And yet, there was a time, a brief window, when England was organised into separate kingdoms, or at least, those parts of England that weren’t still under Welsh control.

It was known as the Heptarchy, or Seven Kingdoms, and those of you of a Time Team disposition will go all a-quiver at the mention of the term. It was that period from (roughly) the early seventh century to the early tenth century, and is illustrated in the map. The western areas, coloured in darker green, were the areas still ruled by our ancestors.

That was then, and since then the problem of delineating England’s regions has taxed many great minds, but there was always resistance to formal regions on the grounds that there was something foreign about them, foreign and divisive. Perhaps because her imperial history had taught England how to exploit divisions. So if – God forbid! – some foreign Johnny ever invaded let him find himself faced with a united country. (Though as we’ve learnt, that was England’s weakness in 1066.)

And this resistance to regions persists, so you’d think Labour would have known better after the abject failure of the party’s Regional Assemblies (Preparation) Act 2003. (What do you mean, you ‘don’t remember it’!) This was intended to pave the way, through referendums, for assemblies in northern England. Just one referendum was held, in the north east, in 2004; but the Geordies, Mackems, Smoggies and the rest rejected the offer by 78% to 22%. The whole project was then abandoned.

As I mentioned, one of those attending the taskforce meeting was former deputy prime minister John Prescott, and the northern assemblies project was his brainchild. So this is either a case of some people never learn, or, a good idea is worth persisting with. Take your pick.

♦

WHY IT WILL NEVER WORK

The idea of regions and regional governments is unattractive to most English people; they will probably have an affection for their town or city, the wider locality, maybe their county, but after that it’s England, or Britain. A region is an odd and unnecessary layer to insert.

And yet, if English politicians, and their Unionist allies in Scotland and Wales are to save Britain then they must pretend to believe in devolution, or even federalism, but the problem remains England, it’s just too big. Federalism works in the USA or Germany because no matter how big and rich California and Bavaria might they’re still out-gunned by the rest.

BBC Regions, used by many politicians as a template

So the only way to sell federalism to Scotland is to suggest breaking England up into regions . . . that the English don’t want. But even if you could get enough English to buy into regions that would still leave the problem of London, infinitely richer than any of the other ‘regions’, and it would almost certainly be the seat of the federal government.

And look at the North West region. Liverpool, Manchester and wealthy Cheshire in the south, and in the north . . . lakes and holiday homes? Come to think of it – where’s Cornwall? Will our Cornish cousins accept being subsumed into a South West region run from Bristol?

The Scots would be foolish to listen to Labour’s overtures, or any promise of more devolution. Ask yourself what would happen in the unlikely event of the Scottish Parliament accepting federalism but the English refusing to accept regions – will the UK government force regions on the English? No.

The second reason for rejecting Labour’s proposals is that we’ve been here before, very recently, in fact, just before the independence referendum in September 2014. Remember ‘The Vow’? In the closing stages of the referendum campaign Cameron, Miliband and Clegg, the leaders of the three main Unionist parties ganged together to promise Scotland something within a whisker of independence. This promise may have guaranteed the No vote, and it was then reneged on.

Thirdly, this taskforce is drawn from the Labour Party, which is unlikely to be in any position to offer anybody anything until around 2025. And just look at who’s in the taskforce; Brown, Prescott, Jones, Dugdale – would you trust any of that lot?

I have faith in the SNP. They know that England and England’s Unionist allies in Scotland are not to be trusted. It must be independence; no more crumbs, no more half measures, no more lies.

It would be nice to report that Wales is on the same path. But she’s not. I fear we’re headed in the opposite direction.

end

Brexit, Wexit: Things Can Only Get Better!

On 27/06/201604/11/2017 By JacIn British Nationalism, Cardiff, English Nationalism, European Union, Ukip, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Language, Welsh Media, Welsh Nationalism106 Comments

THE REFERENDUM RESULT

In my previous post I set out my reasons for voting to leave the European Union. I didn’t think I’d be on the winning side, but there you are.

On Thursday night I’d planned to watch the results programme for a bit and then head to bed around midnight. My expectations of defeat seemed to have been met with the announcement of a substantial rise in the value of the pound and bookies telling us that one of the horses in this race was en route to the knackers yard. It wasn’t long before Nigel Farage conceded defeat.

But then a different mood began to take hold as news filtered through that pollsters, bookies and other self-appointed interpreters of the public mood might have got it wrong. For it seemed that up in north east England, in Newcastle, and Sunderland, the unwashed were in revolt. Then the results started to arrive.

Newcastle, where the Remain campaign had expected a substantial majority, was 50 / 50. (Were they blaming the EU for the Toon getting relegated?) Then came Sunderland, where Leave achieved 61.3%. (But the Black Cats escaped relegation!) Some pundit reminded us that Sunderland has a big Nissan car plant, located there to access the European market, so why were people voting Leave. Cue for much tut-tutting and superior mutterings about voters being ‘uninformed’ (i.e. stupid). It wasn’t long before Nigel Farage ‘unconceded’, and had a celebratory pint.

As more results became known a picture emerged suggesting that results could be predicted with near-certainty by checking an area’s indicators of wealth – poor areas were voting to Leave, rich areas voting to Remain. There were of course exceptions, such as Liverpool (58.2% Remain), a result some attributed to the pro-Leave Sun newspaper being boycotted in that city. This may have played a part, but let’s not overlook the fact that Liverpool has received billions in EU funding, perhaps more than the Valleys. What’s more, in Liverpool people can see what the funding has been spent on, and by and large they approve.

Perhaps the divide in England was summed up with this article in the Guardian by John Harris headed, ‘If you’ve got money, you vote in . . . if you haven’t got money, you vote out’. The picture in Wales was almost identical; and yet, just a few short months ago Plaid Cymru was hoping for a substantial Remain majority to contrast Wales with England. (Making me wonder yet again what ‘Wales’ this lot claims to be the party of.)

During the night itself, the voice that stood out for me was that of John Mann, the MP for Bassetlaw in north Nottinghamshire (to the east of Sheffield). Mann made it clear that the referendum had been largely won for Leave by Labour voters in the ‘forgotten’ post-industrial regions of England (and Wales) of which the metropolitan elite knows little and cares less.

A few others also saw the true picture, but these were a minority. I found this article from the Guardian by Mike Carter compelling, it details a meandering walk from Liverpool to London.

The picture in Scotland was the one we’d expected. Even so, it was strange to hear English Remain supporters blame the SNP for not getting enough of its support out, which – it was argued – might have swung the whole UK result. The claim seemed to be that because everyone knew which way Scotland would vote, many Scots Remain supporters stayed at home. In Glasgow, the largest authority, the turnout was just 56.2% (66.6% Remain), whereas in the September 2014 independence referendum the turnout was 75% (53.5% Yes).

In the North of Ireland the picture was rather more difficult to interpret because the two Unionist parties followed different courses. The Democratic Unionist Party (the party of the late Rev Dr Ian Paisley) urged its supporters to vote Leave, while the Official Unionist Party favoured Remain. Both Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party wanted to Remain. And of course, hovering over any political debate in that part of the world is the wider consideration of relations with Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

The result for the whole of the Six Counties was 55.8% Remain, telling us that many Unionists voted with nationalists and Republicans to stay in the EU. Though it’s unlikely that many of them would allow their referendum vote to be seen as support for a re-unified Ireland, which seems to be how Sinn Féin is choosing to interpret the result. Yet almost everyone views the return of a visible, patrolled border with the Republic as a dangerously retrograde step.

REACTIONS AND FALL-OUT

The chaos that has ensued is being attributed to a number of factors, with ‘uncharted waters’ being among the favoured analogies, and not just with those of a nautical bent. Of course it’s true; no one has ever been in this situation before so no one is quite sure what happens next. Certainly our politicians seem to be lost.

Though it’s significant that those who led the Brexit campaign – Farage excepted – seem to be backtracking. Strange behaviour for victors. They remind me of a gang of young tearaways who went to start a fire in their school but didn’t mean to burn the whole place down.

We can now divide the Brexiters into two camps (as indeed they split themselves during the referendum campaign). First, we have those who want to disengage from the EU but regard ‘losing’ Scotland and Ireland as too high a price to pay, hence the backtracking. These can be regarded as BritNats. While on the other hand we have those who want to go the whole hog and have an England independent of the EU, independent of Scotland and Wales, independent of just about everybody and everything. We could be unkind, but let’s call these the EngNats. They include the twat in this article who believes that Catholic Croatia is not part of Europe.

But what really struck me about the reporting of the referendum and its result was the uncomprehending anger of London commentators, luvvies and others who know less about the lives of people in Sunderland and Swansea than I do about yak herders on the Eurasian steppe. ‘How could they be so stupid?’ was their cry.

The BBC – wedded to the US-NATO-EU line I wrote of in my previous post – didn’t actually call those who voted Leave ‘stupid racist bastards’ . . . it was marginally more nuanced. Perfectly illustrated with the picture below for an article on the BBC website.

Some of course did not hold back. Among the more offensive Remainers I encountered was a John Niven; apparently he’s a Scottish writer now living in some Buckinghamshire slum. I can’t say I’ve read anything he’s written, and I certainly haven’t troubled Amazon since reading this asshole’s tweets.

The message from infuriated Remainers was consistently offensive, insulting and intimidating. This is the liberal elite at its worst – still feeling superior but angry and confused because its collective will has been thwarted by the untermensch. Summed up rather well by his article by Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator, The howl against democracy.

The ironies and paradoxes abound. Here we have a group that has for months demonised and belittled others as bigots, yet if poor whites qualified as a minority then the commentariat would be equally guilty of bigotry!

When the BBC wasn’t telling us that ~~thick bastards~~ non-graduates voted for Brexit, it was consulting opinion among groups thoroughly representative of the population. One such group was those attending the Glastonbury Festival, an event covered to an excessive degree by the Beeb. Unsurprisingly, the sons and daughters of the Corporation’s bigwigs and their friends were simply ‘devastated’ at the referendum result.

Just put yourself in the position of a single mother on hearing those views, perhaps a young woman bringing up two or three kids on a sink estate or a flat above a moneylender on a decaying High Street in a forgotten town. Will they make her regret voting Leave? No, but I’ll tell you what it will do, it’ll make her feel angry, hearing people who have so much, and can look forward to so much more, condemning her for her desperation.

Yet another example of hypocrisy. For while the liberal elite and the Leftists accuse those who voted Brexit of causing divisions it is they, who largely control the media, with their patronising bullshit about stupid poor people racists, that risks turning social divisions into yawning chasms.

Another popular theme was that of the young being deprived of their futures by selfish old gits. The Wasting Mule got in on the act with this piece from its Saturday edition. Dan Baker is nineteen years of age and studying in Paris. He believes that we who voted Leave have “succumbed to ignorance”. But then, Dan is 19, and knows everything.

So there you are – you’re stupid and racist for voting Leave, while the ‘more mature’ among us are thoroughly bloody selfish for not dying off pronto, as we would if we really cared about Dan and other deprived youths.

As in England, the insults were flying here too. One my attention was drawn to was a comment from an Englishman making a living out of covering Wales with wind turbines. (This link to his LinkedIn profile no longer works as the page has been removed. Possibly connected with Smith being reported to South Wales Police for a Hate crime.) Not only does he think the country that gives him a living is a pimple on the buttock of his homeland but he also re-tweeted another insult about us deserving a Darwin Award, given for stupidity by the kind of smart-arses who are now lashing out in all directions.

UPDATE 29.06.2016: Around 6pm on the 28th this appeared on Smith’s Twitter account.

I’ll conclude this section with another piece that appeared in the Mule, this one by regular columnist Carolyn Hitt. Now in the past I might have been a little unkind to Carolyn Hitt, lumping her with Jason ‘Jase’ Mohammad and the other bollocks-spouting muppets in our very own Cardiff bubble.

Carolyn Hitt wanted to tell us that she grew up in the Rhondda, an area that attracted migrants from all over, and that the referendum result had “shaken to the core” her “sense of self as a Welsh person”. Serious stuff. But then she goes and blows it all by arguing that in voting to leave the European Union “the majority of Welsh voters threw in their lot ideologically with Middle England”.

‘Middle England’, be buggered! Middle England voted to Remain. The kindest thing I can suggest is that Ms Hitt had not checked the map, or the results, before rushing into print.

THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES

Since the referendum result became known the UK has been in a state of political chaos. the only politician who seems to know what she’s about and what she wants is Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon.

Prime Minister Cameron stood down soon after the result was known and now there’ll be an election to choose his successor as Tory leader. As the new leader will lack a mandate he or she will almost certainly call a general election. The original hope seems to have been that this could be done at a leisurely pace without interfering too much with everyone’s summer holidays, but pressure from the EU seems to have speeded up the process and the new leader is expected to be in place by September 2nd. Boris Johnson is the front-runner, with Theresa May as the ‘Block Boris’ candidate.

We’ve always known that the Conservative Party in Westminster is split on Europe, but what this referendum exposed is how detached from its traditional support the irredeemably metropolitan Labour Party has now become. Made obvious by the fact that those areas that voted most heavily to Leave are areas where Labour has dominated for decades.

Now the prospect of a general election before the year’s out has concentrated Labour MPs’ minds and they have turned on their hapless leader Jeremy Corbyn who, they believe, could never win an election . . . which would of course result in many Labour careerists losing their seats. The problem is that while Corbyn may lack support among MPs he has the backing of party activists, many of whom are Leftist agitators and activists who took over the Labour Party around a year ago to elect him leader.

So we have the Labour Party itself split between members and representatives, with a third element being the Labour voters who chose to leave the EU last Thursday against the advice of the party. These disillusioned voters have no truck with the comrades and little faith in the MPs. Consequently, the Labour Party is in one hell of a mess – and I haven’t even mentioned Scotland, where the Labour Party, for so long dominant, is almost dead and buried.

The picture is different in London, where the vote to stay in the EU was 59.9%. This can be explained by greater wealth, the presence of the liberal elite / Leftist types who now control the Labour Party, plus of course large numbers of immigrants. London may have provided good news for the pro-EU campaigners but it also tells us how divided England has become.

Here in Wales, Cardiff, which has long sought mini London status, grabbing all the goodies for itself, achieved that ambition last Thursday when 60% of its voters chose to Remain against a national figure of just 47.5%. Two capitals unrepresentative of the countries that support them.

The vote in Wales so outraged the youth of Cardiff that ~~many thousands~~ a few dozen were persuaded to take part in a ludicrous march on the Notional Assembly, among their demands were a second referendum (and a third if that was lost), tattoos on the NHS, and votes for foetuses (possibly eggs). Though I didn’t spot Dan Baker among them. Perhaps the poor boy is in his Paris garret drowning his sense of betrayal with glass after glass of pastis.

It only remains to discuss Plaid Cymru. When the full horror of the defeat dawned on the party leadership the immediate response from leader Leanne Wood was to propose a Labour-Plaid coalition. A response typical of those for whom Plaid Cymru is an alternative socialist party rather than a nationalist party. This suggestion was quickly dropped as opposition from within the party mounted.

Though on the weekend immediately following the referendum, when we might have expected the Plaid Cymru leadership to be monitoring and debating a constantly changing situation and planning ahead, Leanne Wood and Jill Evans MEP, were attending a two-day feminist event in Cardiff, and there were other Plaid wimmin there as well.

The latest news seems to be that Plaid is belatedly trying to emulate the Scottish National Party, but it may be too late. I say that because the SNP has for years been appealing directly to the Scottish people, in direct competition with the Labour Party, to the point where it was eventually able to supplant Labour; whereas Plaid Cymru has farted about with Greens, ‘feminists’, and other cross-border ‘progressives’, only focusing on Labour and Wales when forced to do so at election times, and then, almost apologetically.

LOOKING AHEAD

There will be no clean break with the European Union, things will get very messy from now on, and for the obvious reasons. There may be no break at all.

Just about every pillar of the UK establishment supported the Remain campaign, and they won’t give up without a fight. (A fight most of us will not even realise is happening.) So we can expect increasing calls for a second referendum, perhaps after the general election. (It will be interesting to see what is in the manifestos.) And already we are being reminded that the referendum result is not binding, it was a ‘consultative’ exercise. With most MPs in favour of EU membership that opens up another route for the Remainers.

Even so, there will still be dangerous divisions and tensions between London and the rest of England, tensions that have been obvious for some time, prompting initiatives such as HS2 and talk of a ‘Northern Powerhouse‘, which as we know plans to absorb and assimilate northern Wales. Initiatives that might benefit Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds – all of which voted Remain (though only just in the case of Newcastle and Leeds) – but will do little for Hull, Plymouth, Carlisle, Peterborough, Barnsley, Isle of Wight, Stoke, Dagenham, Wolverhampton, Doncaster, Dartford, Blackpool and countless other smaller cities and towns that voted decisively Leave.

I have already dealt with the divide between England and Scotland. While UKIP and other EngNats might be resigned – even glad – to see Scotland go the BritNats will do all in their power to hang on to the country. So expect to hear promises of a ‘federal structure’ for Britain, which might – as with devolution – see Wales offered the same as Scotland to avoid showing fear of the SNP.

It seems that politics in Englandandwales – as in the USA and continental Europe – is moving to the Right. For few of those who voted Remain did so for the noble and altruistic reasons the metropolitan elite and the commentariat ascribe to themselves – most voted to stay in the EU out of perceived self-interest. City traders in their Cotswold retreats who voted Remain and former steel workers in Ebbw Vale who voted Leave were driven by a very similar impulse.

The next general election could be a choice between the English Centre Right and the English Extreme Right, BritNats and EngNats. Scotland will of course be insulated by the SNP and slowly extricating herself from this threatening mess (perhaps helped by the EU). Wales’ defence however will be limited to a rump Labour Party made up of careerists and mediocrities, a temporarily resurgent Hard Left, and Plaid Cymru. Which is really no defence at all.

So I say, yes, by all means capitalise on the current chaos, but what Wales really needs is a national movement promoting independence for the right reasons, rather than some ad hoc alliance formed in reaction to Brexit that will fall apart once the threat passes. A national movement unconcerned with the views of metropolitan ‘progressives’ and concentrating solely on defending and promoting Welsh interests.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ END ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The British Propaganda Corporation

On 25/09/201406/10/2014 By JacIn British Nationalism, Labour Party, Scotland47 Comments

In times of national crisis, when Britain is under threat or involved in overseas conflict, the BBC gives unquestioning support to the official government line. To all intents and purposes the BBC becomes the mouthpiece of the government, an agent of propaganda. This is understandable, it may even be acceptable, though what is less easy to understand is why a referendum on Scottish independence should have been treated like a war, or why Alex Salmond was put on a par with General Galtieri or Saddam Hussein.

And even when the referendum had been ‘won’ the BBC couldn’t drop its prejudice. On the day following the referendum gangs of Loyalists roamed the streets of Glasgow, attacking peaceful Yes supporters and burning Scottish flags. Many of these thugs – some giving Nazi salutes – had come over from the Six Counties, others had come up from England. Yet the BBC reported it as two groups – one pro independence the other pro Union – both intent on violence. If they’d believed they could have got away with it I’m sure the BBC would have portrayed the pro-independence students and families as the aggressors. It was left to the Herald to give the truth, even identifying a Rangers supporters group involved in organising the violence and encapsulating what really happened in George Square and nearby streets with the memorable phrase, “The heart of Glasgow had gone from Woodstock to Belfast in the space of just one day”.

Of course no one at the BBC would admit to it, nor would anyone in the Conservative Party, or at The Times, or in the Tesco boardroom, or on the trading floor at Deutsche Bank, but those thugs that terrorised central Glasgow last Friday night – violent and malodorous though they might be – are allies, for they’re all found in the great Unionist spectrum. This explains why the BBC and the rest of the London media deliberately misreported those events in Glasgow.

*

If the Scottish referendum presented a very real threat to ~~England’s prestige~~ this wonderful United Kingdom, then it follows that potential or lower level threats must also be dealt with, using the same agencies, primarily the BBC. Yesterday the BBC produced the results of a poll that purported to show that only 3% of people in Wales favoured independence. A quite remarkable finding when compared with other recent polls.

Polls this year by ITV Wales put support for independence at 14% in May and 17% in September. Another poll in September, this one by Face for Business, suggested that support for independence was as high as 29%. Now it would be easy to dismiss this last poll as being wrong . . . though few did, for it seems to have been ignored by the media. I was tempted to dismiss it myself, until I looked into it a little more and found that it provided a breakdown by age group, so I made a comparison with what has been produced for the Scottish referendum by Lord Ashcroft Polls, and the concurrence is quite striking.

The little table I drew up unsurprisingly shows that there is more support for independence in the younger age groups, while it falls off dramatically in both countries after the age of 55. Though the fall is greater for some reason in Scotland, where among the 65+ support for independence is 46% of the highest independence supporting age group, while in Wales it’s 51%. This is strange, even more so when we consider that so many English people retire to Wales. (In the area where I live they make up two-thirds of the 65+ age group.) And even if the FfB poll is all to hell, I still don’t fully understand why support for independence in Scotland declines so dramatically in the 65+ bracket.

Whatever the answers, we have to remember that opinion polls are not simply produced to tell us what people are thinking, many are designed to influence how people think, and this explains the BBC poll. Also, to provide ammunition for the defenders of the UK State who, in Wales, love to trot out the lie that, ‘only between five and ten per cent want independence’. (Hang on, is this why the Face for Business poll was totally ignored?) The only way to establish how many people in Wales want independence is to ask them the same question that was asked in Scotland last Thursday (with Wales substituted for Scotland) – ‘Should Wales be an independent country?’ That’s it, one simple question. Anything else, involving multiple choice or ‘answer-guided’ questions, is unacceptable and designed to confuse and mislead.

Among those making political capital out of the BBC’s propaganda poll was Councillor Pearleen Sangha of Swansea (well sort of, as I’ll explain). She re-tweeted @PearleenSangha enthusiastically that within a margin of error there could be nobody in Wales who wants independence. Even making allowances for the fact that Ms Sangha doesn’t know Wales, not even she believes that. But it’s not about what people really believe, is it, we’re talking propaganda here. Councillor Sangha is a staunch defender of the Union, and was up in Scotland for a few weeks campaigning for a No vote. Though seeing as she’s from the USA I can’t help wondering if she’s a UK citizen, and if not, should she have involved herself in a constitutional issue like this. Although nominally a Swansea councillor Sangha is now working for the Labour Party in Cardiff, so her Uplands constituents see very little of her these days. Though perhaps they don’t notice, for even when she was in Swansea she was strictly a Monday to Friday and 9 to 5 councillor. That’s when she was there, because she also likes to take lengthy trips home to California, and being a true party girl, she never misses a Labour conference or knees-up.

UPDATE 27.09.14: I’m told the Evening Post ran a story today (can’t find it on the website) in which it queried Councillor Sangha’s status. She claims to have resigned as a councillor in July and informed the party leadership, which was then (the recently departed) David Phillips. Yet no one else seems to know about this, certainly no by-election has been called. But despite what she told the Evening Post, on her Twitter account Cllr Sangha is still describing herself as a Labour councillor for Uplands! (Click to enlarge.) Lending weight to the suspicion that she is still, officially, a councillor – even though, due to her long absence and appalling attendance, record she shouldn’t be – is the fact that her council e-mail address is still receiving mail. In addition, she is still listed on the council’s website as a councillor. So what’s the story here?

28:09:14: A story on the Evening Post website today tells us that “Uplands councillor Pearleen Sangha steps down from her post”. She is quoted as saying “It is with regret that I have formally tendered my resignation as a Swansea councillor”. Which I take to mean that she’s resigning now, following the recent attention. Though she claims she decided “some time ago” to resign, perhaps at “the end of July”, when she says she informed the “leadership” of her intentions. (‘Leadership’ suggests more than one person, so who exactly did she tell?) She also wants us to know that she has not received her councillor allowance since then – good for her! Though the problem is that she went AWOL long before July, so it looks as if she was getting paid her councillor allowance while she was no longer in Swansea, no longer attending council and committee meetings, no longer serving her constituents. It has been obvious for a year or so that Pearleen Sangha was not doing her job as a Swansea councillor, but the local Labour Party allowed this situation to persist, and for her to collect her councillor allowance – simply because she is working full-time for the party, in Cardiff. What a squalid arrangement! What contempt it shows for the city of Swansea and its people. Yet another example of the Labour Party putting its interests first.

*

Robert Burns wrote a damning indictment of those who sold out his country’s independence in Parcel of Rogues; perhaps it should be updated, or maybe someone should give us a new song for the twenty-first century.

Any new ‘Parcel of Rogues’ would have to mention the British Propaganda Corporation, and the London newspapers . . . you know, those ‘journalists’ who’ve been tapping phones, and bribing bent London coppers, like the ones involved in the murder of Daniel Morgan. And we mustn’t forget the noble and upstanding politicians, most of whom seem to be fiddling their expenses. Sticking with politicians, let’s remember ALL the parties opposed to Scottish independence – Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Ukip, BNP, National Front, Britain First, and a host of even smaller, loonier parties; plus of course the Unionists and Loyalists across the water. Finally, there was Carwyn ‘the veto’ Jones. Then there’s the supermarkets, the supermarkets that rip off Welsh farmers. And how could we forget the banks, for all of them were opposed to Scottish independence because they feared being properly regulated, as they are just about everywhere outside of the UK and the USA. Have you noticed that the bankers who end up in court are not the ones who nearly wrecked the Western economy but ‘rogue traders’, in other words, those who lose the banks’ money! Then there’s the oil industry, ‘Scottish oil running out’ they screamed . . . then four days after the referendum we learn that they got it wrong. But of course, this was unknown before referendum day! These are just some of the turds to be found floating in the cess-pit of modern Britain, the most corrupt and unequal society in Europe.

If the people of Scotland had known the truth, if they could have relied on an impartial and unbiased media, then Scotland would today be on its way to independence. That’s why Britain’s elite so desperately needed its propaganda machine and its foot-soldiers. But it was so blatant, so clumsily done and so easily exposed, that the backlash has started, and Scotland will be independent within ten years. The changes Britain will see in the coming decade will not end with Scotland. Fasten your seatbelts!

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Euro Elections: Picking Through The Bones

On 27/05/201427/05/2014 By JacIn English Nationalism, European32 Comments

Now that the dust has settled let’s see who’s still standing, who counts as walking wounded, and who might be deserving of a coup de grâce. Below you’ll find a table I’ve compiled giving a breakdown of the results. (Click to enlarge.) For comparison, the 2009 results can be found lower down. (Again, click to enlarge.) Further statistics and tables for 2014 can be found at the Pembrokeshire County Council website or at Welsh not British, where young Mr Evans has produced yet more easy-to-read graphics. (Though I got confused!)

Recent posts may also be of interest. First, my Wales Euro Election 2014: Runners and Riders and then my brief, pre-election biography of Nathan Gill, Ukip No 1 in Wales. Finally, bear in mind that the results were declared by local authority not by Westminster or Assembly constituencies. So while Anglesey council is the same as the constituency, this is rarely the case elsewhere, with some authorities containing more than one constituency and some constituencies straddling local government boundaries.

First, let’s get some of the minor parties out of the way. I cannot understand why NO2EU, Socialist Labour and the Socialist Party of Great Britain bothered standing. These three hard Left parties got a total of just 1.2% of the vote. I suppose it’s a platform, and a way of advertising themselves, but beyond that . . .

Moving over to the other extreme of the political spectrum we find the British National Party and its former members in Britain First. Their combined total was 1.9%. A great disappointment for the BNP, which got 5.4% of the vote at the previous Euro elections. I shall return anon to the BNP.

The performance of the Greens was patchy, ranging from 2.3% in Blaenau Gwent to 8.0% in Ceredigion. Nationally the party got 4.5% which was down on the 5.6% of five years ago. With all the environmentalist brainwashing going on in our schools I would have expected the Green vote to be rising. Then again, maybe many Greens ‘lent’ their vote to Plaid Cymru this time round to save Plaid’s skin. (Something else I shall return to.)

*

One of the shocks of this election was of course the near-annihilation of the Liberal Democrats. Now you know my views on the Lib Dems, but I’m not a man to gloat, so (putting aside the party hat and champagne bottle) I will stick with the facts. Nationally, the Lib Dem vote dropped from 10.7% in 2009 to 3.9% last Thursday. The candles in the gloom were where you’d expect to find them: 12.9% in Powys and 11.4% in Ceredigion. But even these were poor figures considering that we are dealing here with areas containing (or until recently containing) Liberal Democrat AMs and MPs.

Elsewhere, the picture is one of unrelieved bleakness: votes of less than 3% in Anglesey, Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire, Gwynedd, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire, Rhondda Cynon Taff and Torfaen. The centre ground is obviously overcrowded, and being in coalition with the Tories has its price. This result is part of a decline also found outside Wales, and when we add in the findings of opinion polls, it could be that the Liberal Democrats are coming to the end of the line as a serious political party.

*

Given the result achieved by Ukip, and the added factor this time round of having been in government at Westminster for four years, the Conservatives will be quite satisfied – if not relieved – to have hung on to 17.4% of the vote, down from 21.2% in 2009. The Tories’ lowest vote was 6.2% in Blaenau Gwent, and they got votes below 10% in three other Valleys authorities; with the highest vote, unsurprisingly, being 33.2% in Monmouthshire. This year’s vote was just two percentage points down from 2004.

As for Labour, 28.1% looks excellent when compared with 20.3% in 2009. But 2009 was an election influenced by Gordon Brown being PM and leading an unpopular government heading for defeat in the general election of 2010. To put Labour’s result last Thursday into a longer term perspective, their 28.1% takes them closer to the 32.5% they achieved in 2004. Labour’s lowest vote was 10.3% in Ceredigion and the highest 46.5% in Blaenau Gwent. Which leaves us with just Ukip and Plaid Cymru to consider. Plaid first.

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Plaid scraped home to retain its MEP by just a few thousand votes and a share of 15.3%, compared with 18.5% in 2009 and 17.4% in 2004. The percentage share varied wildly, from 43.5% in Gwynedd to 6.3% in Monmouthshire. Only four local authorities (out of 22) gave Plaid a percentage share above 20%. I have made my views on Plaid Cymru / The Party of Wales known in many previous posts: they are a party that reached a ‘plateau’ of support under Dafydd Wigley from which they have been falling back steadily since he was deposed. And if, as we were being told prior to the voting, many Greens, Liberal Democrats and other ‘progressive elements’ were voting Plaid in order to stop Ukip getting a second seat, then the result is even worse.

Plaid’s support was concentrated along the west side of the country, as it has been throughout the party’s history, and even though 118,479 people in the south decided to stick two fingers up to the three main UK parties they chose to do it by voting Ukip rather than Plaid Cymru. Think about that – tens of thousands of working class Welsh people in the Valleys chose ex-public school ‘Frenchy’ Farage and his golf club bigots in preference to Plaid Cymru. Plaid Cymru has completely failed to break through in Denis Balsom’s ‘Welsh Wales’, among those who described themselves as ‘Welsh Only’ in the 2011 census; this failure, coupled with its heartland being colonised (without any protest from Plaid!) guarantees the eventual – and hopefully speedy – demise of this faux national party.

Yet there are those thankful for a ‘nationalist’ party as incompetent and unthreatening as Plaid Cymru. Given the fact that Plaid losing its MEP might have set in train events resulting in consequences unpalatable to such people, I can’t help wondering if, somewhere along the road to Abergwaun, Wales didn’t experience another deus ex machina moment to compare with what happened in Carmarthen back in September 1997.

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Now we come to the undoubted stars of the show, even if they didn’t quite manage to top the bill: Ladies and gentlemen – the United Kingdom Independence Party! Let me concede that this was a spectacular result for Ukip, so let’s consider where it might lead. But before that, let’s set the context by saying that Ukip’s share of the vote has risen from 10.5% in 2004 to 12.8% in 2009 to 27.6% in 2014. By any standards, quite spectacular; though it’s not immediately obvious where the votes came from.

By which I mean, between 2009 and 2014 the Ukip vote increased by 114,398, and in percentage share terms from 12.8 to 27.6. In other words, it more than doubled. Yet the Labour vote also increased from 138,852 to 206,332, or 20.3% to 28.1%. So little if any of Ukip’s vote came from Labour. We can also safely assume that few would make the switch from Plaid Cymru to Ukip. Which leaves the Tories, Liberal Democrats and the British National Party. Yet the Tory vote was down by less than 20,000 on 2009, so we must assume that many who had previously used the Lib Dems as their protest vote switched to Ukip this time. (While others went to Labour.) Another source of votes was obviously the BNP; something admitted by leader Nick Griffin, who says his lost supporters will be back when they realise Ukip can’t deliver on immigration. (And the BNP can!) Finally, while Ukip may have picked up the votes of the disenchanted and the gullible in the Valleys; in Powys, the north, and rural areas, we can safely say that Ukip had far more appeal to English residents than to Welsh.

If those are the sources of Ukip’s votes then these, I believe, are the factors that helped Ukip achieve its success. First, the desire among a large section of the electorate to use elections that don’t really matter to put the boot into established politics, and lazy and corrupt establishment politicians – so they voted for ‘Farage the outsider’. Second, genuine, but non-racist, concerns about immigration and how it affects the social life or character of communities. Third, a protest against something very few of them really understand called ‘Europe’ and its increasing control over their lives. Fourth, Lib Dem voters deserting to what they perceive to be another ‘protest’ party. Fifth, Ukip still has novelty value and has been promoted by large sections of the media, including the BBC, which made Farage almost a permanent member of the Question Time panel and other programmes. Which raises an intriguing question . . .

Many can see that the BBC has in the past few years has taken on the role of State broadcaster. Whether this was as a result of a decision taken within the BBC, or a role taken on at the behest of others, need not bother us here. This change has manifested itself in the plethora of programmes now prefixed by ‘Great British’ and the clear bias in reporting the Scottish referendum debate. So the question has to be, why is the BBC giving a free ride to this threat to the established order, portraying Farage as a good egg who enjoys a pint and a ciggie? I’m open to suggestions, but my belief is that we are witnessing here the ‘elastic theory’ in practice; by which I mean, Ukip is being used to legitimise certain issues that were previously taboo, or the preserve of extremists, and therby move political debate to the Right. From the confusion created by this shift will soon emerge – to steal Ukip’s clothes – a ‘repositioned’ Conservative Party. There may even be a place for the unquestionably popular Nigel Farage in the New Conservative Party. Either way, it will mean the end of Ukip as a major political force. Though of course, there were those who thought they could do something similar with Hitler in 1930s Germany.

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Looking ahead, I see that Mr Gill, our new Ukip MEP, is quoted as saying, “the Valleys are ours for the taking”, meaning that he expects to win Westminster and Assembly seats in this region. I have no way of knowing from which of his orifices these words emanated, but Mr Gill is an Englishman, living on Anglesey, who knows as much about the Valleys as I do about the Hindu Kush. Which is why I never talk of that region. Ergo he talks bollocks. For he knows as well as I do – or should – that Ukip is a protest vote for elections that people don’t take seriously. Which explains why the party has not a single MP, MSP or AM. Ukip has as much chance of winning Merthyr or Blaenau Gwent next year, or in 2016, as I have of winning the Kentucky Derby. And yet . . .

The threat of Ukip having some success in England at next year’s general election, and perhaps holding the balance of power, remains. (I have heard electoral pacts with the Conservatives mooted.) So put yourself in the position of someone in Scotland who has not yet decided how to vote in the independence referendum. Maybe you’re having a pint in an East End bar, or relaxing at home in Inverurie, when who pops up on the television but Nigel Farage. He says that you Scottish chaps (and he’ll use the word ‘chaps’) should be very grateful to be ruled by chaps like him; so you should forget all this independence nonsense because you’re ‘too wee and too poor’ (said in an appalling Scottish accent, an attempt at humour). Then he signs off with ‘Toodle-pip’. Do you think this intervention, and the possibility of a Tory-Ukip coalition after May 2015, might influence Scottish voters?

We all know the answer, yet some Ukip people are urging Farage to get involved in the Scottish referendum debate, to put Alex Salmond in his place. (Telling us that Nathan Gill isn’t the only Ukipper struggling with political and other realities.) Which takes me back to the BBC. Why is the Great British Broadcasting Corporation giving an armchir ride to the man who could ‘lose’ Scotland? For no matter what some in Ukip may think I must believe that wiser counsels will tell Farage to stay out of the Scottish independence debate because, being so quintissentially English in a rather annoying way, he can only harm the Unionist cause. But will he listen? We shall see. Whatever the future holds the way Farage and Ukip have been handled thus far by both the political establishment and the mainstream media is perplexing. I can only assume that there is a longer game being played.

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In conclusion, let me just say a few things that might, hopefully, summarise what I feel about Ukip and the wider Welsh political scene. First, we should thank Ukip for exposing that the ‘socialist roots’ of the Valleys are, for many Valleys’ residents, as shallow as their own leader. When working class and unemployed Welsh people in some of the most deprived parts of Europe can vote for a party whose social policies come close to advocating sterilisation of the poor, then we know that the old certainties are gone, and it’s all up for grabs.

A Welsh academic, writing on Daily Wales, suggested that Ukip, by demanding that immigrants become fluent in English, had somehow released a genie that allowed language activists to demand that people moving into the Welsh-speaking areas of the west should learn Welsh. My comments can be found on the article. But he’s half right. The real lesson though is that by detoxifying the subject of immigration Ukip should have made it easier for us to discuss English immigration into Wales. Far greater in scale and effect than anything England is experiencing.

Finally, given the slow death of Plaid Cymru and other changes taking place in Welsh politics, I feel that the time is now right for nationalists to at least discuss setting aside their differences and uniting behind agreed Regional List candidates for the 2016 elections to the Notional Assembly. The advantages could be many. The elections would provide a platform to promote a more focused message than our people have heard for decades. It would also give the opportunity to challenge Ukip in the only route by which they can hope to achieve Assembly Members. And for Plaidistas reading this, it might provide the kick up the arse most of you know your party needs.

Jac o' the North

Tag: BBC

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