Alyn and Deeside by-election

On 02/02/201808/02/2018 By JacIn Cardiff, Cardiff Bay, Corruption, Third Sector, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour80 Comments

On Tuesday, February 6th, there will be a by-election in the Alyn and Deeside constituency following the death of sitting Assembly Member Carl Sargeant of the Labour Party.

The facts in the public domain are that on November 7th last year Sargeant took his own life four days after being forced to step down from his post of Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children. This was linked with allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct.

The death and the circumstances surrounding it have been covered extensively, but with the ‘Welsh’ media being its usual cowardly self when honest reporting carries any risk of annoying the Labour Party. Fortunately, there are other sources who can not be intimidated by the bruvvers.

Guido Fawkes reported that Sargeant was being ‘bullied’ back in 2014 by someone in Carwyn Jones’ office, almost certainly Jo Kiernan or others working with/for her. Jo Kiernan left her post after the May 2016 Assembly elections.

Then, news of Sargeant’s sacking was leaked to a number of quarters in the media and elsewhere before he himself had met with Carwyn Jones. Again, the finger points to the First Minister’s staff.

Due to the circumstances of his death Sargeant post mortem has been turned into something of a saint, and a victim. So it may be time to put the record straight.

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THERE’S BULLIES AND THERE’S BULLIES

First, let’s look at the allegations of ‘bullying’.

I find it difficult to believe that Kiernan or anyone else on Carwyn Jones’s staff could physically bully a burly individual like Carl Sargeant, so what we are talking about here is almost certainly something different. I suggest that it was psychological pressure or mind games, with which an unsophisticated man like Sargeant was ill-equipped to deal.

From what I know of him he was very much Old Labour, of the Labour Club rather than the bistro, mushy peas rather than guacamole. Which makes it no surprise to learn that his home town of Connah’s Quay has a fine example of such an establishment.

Connah’s Quay Labour Club (click to enlarge)

The sort of place where the ‘made men’ of the local Labour Party hang out, to be approached by supplicants seeking advice, or a favour (or maybe asking to have somebody whacked). Where for every ideologically committed party member you will find three or four who are in the locally dominant party in order to boost their standing in the community, while bringing in a little extra money.

Ah! those Labour clubs of yore – where are they now? Gone, most of them, thank God. Which makes Connah’s Quay something of a throwback, a curiosity. And this I think accounts for Carl Sargeant’s problems with Carwyn Jones’ back-room staff who, if not New Labour, were certainly less antediluvian than the denizens of Connah’s Quay Labour Club with whom Sargeant was familiar.

No doubt what these sophisticates did qualifies as ‘bullying’ (what doesn’t nowadays?) but it might have been no more than a few clever and devious people being nasty to a man they viewed as a dinosaur. They may even have seen it as a game.

Unless of course they choose to employ the Nuremberg Defence by arguing that they were only obeying orders.

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THE MAN HIMSELF

From the information I’ve received I’m prepared now to say that despite what many want us to believe, Carl Sargeant was no saint.

One incident of bullying that’s been reported has Sargeant’s hand on an intern’s throat with the intern pinned to a wall and Sargeant screaming at him. The crime? – getting Sargeant’s lunch order wrong.

He is said to have been in a relationship with a woman running a very prominent women’s organisation; an organisation that received a grant not unadjacent to £400,000. When she ended the relationship Sargeant made life difficult for her.

There were other relationships, a number with civil servants, who left their jobs at some cost to the public purse.

One source told me of great mirth among Flintshire councillors when Sargeant’s wife found out about his swordsmanship and to pacify her he had to shell out on a cruise.

A youthful Carl Sargeant in 2002 with local Labour capo and long-time friend, Bernie Attridge (click to enlarge)

Less funny are persistent rumours of dodgy procurement deals that are said to have somehow benefited Sargeant’s extended family and friends. It’s even rumoured that BBC Wales was investigating these allegations until the Labour Party took out an injunction.

Most civil servants are mystified by Sargeant’s beatification, for his department had the highest absence and sickness rates, with two senior civil servants taking early retirement, again, at some cost to the public purse.

It’s even been suggested that Sargeant was stitched up because Carwyn Jones wished to clear a path for his anointed successor, Vaughan – ‘I’m black, I am’ – Gething. Though it now looks as if the timing of his own departure may no longer be in the First Minister’s hands.

And yet, despite his many failings, I am assured that the final allegations made against Carl Sargeant, those that got him sacked, and perhaps led to his suicide, were fabricated.

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THOSE IN THE SHADOWS

Given that Jo Kiernan was long gone from Carwyn Jones’ office when Sargeant was dismissed she was unlikely to have leaked the news . . . but may still have been involved.

For after leaving the employ of our Beloved Leader she betook herself unto Deryn Consulting, where she must have felt right at home among schemers and plotters just like herself, almost all of them with political experience and therefore a great interest in events in the Bay.

The word in the corridors and conference rooms is that the whispering campaign against Sargeant continued when Kiernan teamed up with Deryn (which might suggest that her antipathy was personal as well as – or rather than – political). He reciprocated by refusing to employ Deryn.

But Deryn wields (or used to wield) considerable political clout, and perhaps Sargeant underestimated his adversary, for few now doubt that Deryn was instrumental in his downfall, with some singling Cathy Owens out for special mention.

Guido Fawkes tells us, “Cathy Owens, head of Deryn and herself a former special adviser who was embroiled in an earlier bullying scandal, took to the BBC in the days before Carl’s death to allege sexual harassment from an unnamed politician. She pointedly did not rule out Sargeant from her unsupported allegations as part of a concerted campaign to try and humiliate and discredit him.”

If the name Deryn rings a bell it’s because it’s the same company that has been involved in trying to destroy both the reputation and the political career of Assembly Member Neil McEvoy. I wrote about it just over a week ago in Plaid Cymru and the defenestration of Neil McEvoy.

I regard Deryn as a very dangerous organisation: A danger to democracy, and a threat to people’s faith in politics. That Deryn is so influential is indicative of how in less than twenty years devolution has been corrupted.

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THE SON ALSO RISES

And now we face a by-election on Tuesday to elect another Assembly Member for Alyn and Deeside.

As the name suggests, the constituency straddles Afon Dyfrdwy and runs east to the border and Chester, while also running south to Llay, Gwersyllt and Coedpoeth on the outskirts of Wrecsam.

I’ve always thought of the northern section as a rather bleak and characterless area, unattractive industrial towns and dormitory communities, the western edge of the Cheshire Plain, somewhere to pass through on the way to somewhere else.

But there you go, that’s just the opinion of someone lucky enough to have been born and raised in a city of hills and beaches.

Alyn and Deeside constituency (click to enlarge)

Given the short time frame between the death and the by-election, further shortened by the Christmas and New Year holiday, plus the circumstances occasioning the by-election, Labour may have had little alternative but to choose Carl Sargeant’s son, Jack.

And it might have seemed like a wise choice.

For young Jack offers everything: ‘You want to vote Labour – vote for young Jack Sargeant’. ‘You want to give Labour a gentle kicking for the way they treated poor old Carl – vote for his son, Jack’. This is bloody clever, worthy of Baldrick. Let’s hope it gangs agley like the schemes of Blackadder’s dogsbody.

My advice to the voters of Alyn and Deeside is this. If you want to show your anger at the unnecessary death of Carl Sargeant then don’t vote for the party instrumental in his death. Don’t vote Labour.

Of course, you may believe what young Jack says about going down to Cardiff Bay and getting the truth about what happened to his father. If so, just think about that for a minute. If they were too much for Carl Sargeant then they’ll eat the boy alive. So again, Don’t vote Labour.

Think of young Jack and put his welfare first – Don’t vote Labour.

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THE LESSONS

I’ve mentioned Deryn and the treatment meted out to both Carl Sargeant and Neil McEvoy, so I hope you’re getting the message. Cardiff Bay – and here I include politicians, advisers, lobbyists, third sector parasites – is now a national disgrace, an embarrassment to us all.

Not only is it corrupt to its stinking core but it has cost us billions of pounds as money has been diverted to unworthy causes because those getting the money are well connected, or because they’re shagging so-and-so. Yes, there is to be an investigation into how the case was handled by Carwyn Jones, but I’m not holding my breath because ‘investigations’ down there reveal nothing.

Wales is now the poorest country in Europe, and the most corrupt. And it can all be traced back to the Labour Party and Cardiff Bay. Is there something in the air? Because even before we had devolution Cardiff Bay gave us the biggest case of corruption in Welsh history. I wrote about it here in Corruption Bay.

There have always been sound economic and other arguments for moving the Assembly out of Cardiff, preferably to somewhere more central like Aberystwyth or Llandrindod. If we did that then investment and jobs would be far more likely to be spread fairly around the country.

Not only that, but if we moved the Assembly then other investment would surely follow, such as road and rail communications. Allowing our Assembly Members to jump on a train and be home in a couple of hours.

For Cardiff Bay is detached from the city and even more isolated from the country it claims to serve. It has become a world unto itself, with its own mores, its own distorted standards, all of which are damaging Wales.

Had he not been exposed to the temptations of Sodom-in-the-Bay poor Carl Sargeant would be downing a pint this weekend in Connah’s Quay Labour Club, and the voters of Alyn and Deeside wouldn’t be voting on Tuesday.

Cardiff Bay killed Carl Sargeant.

♦ end ♦

UPDATE 08.02.2018: In one of the most bizarre election results in recent Welsh history Jack Sargeant was elected as the new Assembly Member for Alyn and Deeside. Thanks to the untimely death of his father he was able to increase Labour’s majority over that gained by his father in 2016.

We now wait to see whether he falls into line as a loyal AM to leader Carwyn Jones, or whether he keeps to his promise to get at the truth about his father’s suspension. If it’s the latter then the Labour Party in Wales, and certain semi-detached ‘helpers’ it has used, such as lobbyists and third sector bodies, could be in for a rocky spell.

We can but hope.

Sheroes, Herstory and LeadHerShip*: The Weird World of Helen Mary Jones

On 28/01/201828/01/2018 By JacIn Corruption, Devolution, Higher Education, Plaid Cymru, Public Funding, Third Sector94 Comments

Jac’s Introduction:

In the previous post I wrote that there are women in Plaid Cymru, and Cardiff Bay, playing gender politics, by which I meant they use their gender, ‘discrimination’ and all manner of evils, to promote themselves.

This is about one of them, Helen Mary Jones, former AM for Llanelli, and one of the party’s leading lights. I now hand you over to our guest writer, who wishes to remain anonymous.

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*LeadHerShip is the name of a competition currently being run by Chwarae Teg, one of the women’s groups we are about to encounter.

Plaid Cymru has always prided itself on being a party of the grass roots, the ordinary rank and file members who dig into their pockets to keep the show afloat, turn up to meetings, deliver leaflets and knock on doors. They are overwhelmingly a decent bunch who care deeply about their communities and are often surprisingly well informed about events and issues further afield.

The fallout from the Neil McEvoy affair has left them feeling a mixture of bewilderment and anger. One prominent supporter was recently moved to write on social media, “Whoever is bullying and whoever the ‘angels’ are…I could not think of a worse place to work than in the Cardiff Bay political bubble. Disappointment. Yuck.”

The party’s rank and file are not the narrow-minded, bigoted, anti-Sais hambons that Labour and the Brit media like to portray, but the Plaid heartlands are a world away from the swish restaurants and watering holes of Cardiff Bay, and the Neil McEvoy affair has exposed the chasm which exists between ordinary members and some of the party’s elite who roar around in shiny Jaguars and Range Rovers and hobnob with Labour insiders, third sector fat cats and arrogant lobbyists.

One of the many threads in the McEvoy affair was a reminder that Deryn, the consultancy firm which is now home to so many Labour and Plaid “strong women”, lobbied for a firm that pulled in £113 million in government money.

Y Cynulliad was not supposed to be like this, but we are waking up to the realisation that Cardiff Bay has happily adopted many of the worst characteristics of Westminster: the limitless greed, cronyism, secrecy, backbiting and revolving doors between the world of lobbyists, third sector bosses, politicians and their army of SpAds and spin merchants.

Helen Mary Jones may no longer be an AM, but she remains an active and major player in Plaid, as the McEvoy affair reminds us, and in many ways she epitomises the gulf which exists between the grass roots and some of the party’s big beasts.

Weighing into the McEvoy row again a couple of days ago, she tweeted that this was all about “men objecting to women gaining power and influence and coming together to change things for vulnerable women like victims of abuse. Some men don’t like that. I wonder why?”

When it was pointed out to her that her powerful and influential friends at Deryn had screwed £113 million out of the public purse at a time when many charities helping the most vulnerable are facing cuts, Helen Mary fell uncharacteristically silent.

The former AM for Llanelli is certainly a prolific tweeter, and her Twitter feed gives a good insight into how she sees the world, as she tweets and retweets an avalanche of messages to her followers every day.

An analysis of her huge output over a few days shows that gender politics dominate. Roughly five times as many of her tweets fall into this category as official Plaid announcements and publicity, which come in a very distant second. Issues relating to children and young people trail in third place, with everything else that is happening in Wales and the rest of the world making up the residue. Catalonia and the Kurds merit several mentions, but you will find nothing about independence closer to home.

She is clearly keen on history, but only it seems if it’s women’s history. No doubt she would argue that this is adressing the balance after milennia of male oppression, but the result is a view of the past which is just as absurd and skewed as the idea that only men shaped the world around us.

On average, Helen Mary tweets about one “shero” from the past every day. Here’s one of them:

This is a world where women are either “strong women” or victims, and all men are actual or potential rapists and abusers. But there is hope, as ‘Goody Veneer’, one of Helen Mary’s favourite Twitterati tells us:

Anyone foolish enough to express even a hint of dissent will be dismissed as an “angry man” or misogynist, as only a man would disagree with Helen Mary and her friends, although quite what most of Plaid’s female grass roots supporters not following her on Twitter would make of these wilder shores of gender politics is another matter.

Perhaps they will be joining Helen Mary and other strong women in Bristol for this forthcoming event. Or perhaps not.

Closer to home, Helen Mary has released a torrent of tweets to celebrate the 40th anniversary shindig of Welsh Women’s Aid, one of the plethora of women’s groups she supports. A handful of them are listed in the tweet above, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, and as Helen Mary tells us on her Twitter feed, new women’s groups and charities are springing up all the time.

As if we did not have enough of them already, some newly established women’s charities in England are also planning to set up shop here to meet what would seem to be inexhaustible demand. Not that the “Welsh” ones, such as Chwarae Teg, Welsh Women’s Aid or WEN Wales bother with the Welsh language, despite receiving hefty dollops of Welsh government dosh, so setting up shop for bodies such as Women’s Place UK should be easy enough.

The need for so many different groups and charities echoes the politics of The Life of Brian, where minute doctrinal differences and squabbles gave rise to the Judean People’s Liberation Front, the People’s Liberation Front of Judea and numerous other splinter groups.

The key difference, of course, is that the Roman Empire was not funding all of those liberation groups, but the minutiae of competing gender political dogmas help to justify all those generously remunerated chief executive and managerial posts. After all, since losing Llanelli, this is where Helen Mary has re-built her post Assembly career, first, allegedly after a brief spell claiming job seekers’ allowance, with a job as chief executive of Youth Cymru, and currently as deputy director of the Morgan Academy at Swansea University.

For those readers unfamiliar with the work of the academy, this is what it says on the tin. Warning – may contain nuts:

The Morgan Academy, named after the late Rhodri Morgan, former First Minister of Wales and Swansea University Chancellor, is a research-based think tank created to deal with the pressing ‘wicked issues’ of public policy in Wales and the wider World. Based in Swansea University, it will work across subject disciplines. As well as promoting critical thinking, it will work collaboratively to promote innovative evidence-based policy.

It is from this academic perch, with its breath-taking views of the sea, that Helen Mary now spends a lot of her time, much of it apparently on Twitter.

In addition to the recent Welsh Women’s Aid gala, Helen Mary has also been preoccupied by the sordid President’s Club Dinner in London, an event which yields more Jones tweets and retweets than you can shake a stick at. On the other hand she is completely silent on the recent spate of abandoned rape prosecutions and the CPS’s decision to conduct a major review of disclosure procedures because, presumably, the idea that women are not always victims is not in tune with the narrative.

But we have only skimmed the surface of the world according to Helen Mary. Let’s take a deep breath and take a closer look at some of the gender controversies which she is so keen to share with the world, beginning with a rare tweet written by our shero in Welsh. Well, sort of:

To save anyone from reaching for Google Translate, it translates (literally) as, “Juice am this woman. I am woman here. We. Them. Us.”

You would expect nothing less from a leading figure in academe, where in the constant swirl of competing identities it is easy to confuse “ni” (us) and “nhw” (them).

And language is important. You don’t need to be an angry heterosexual man to fall foul of some of Helen Mary’s “strong women”.

Pink News, which describes itself as “the world’s most read LGBT digital media publisher”, gets a bashing for referring to a same sex couple when any fool could see from the picture that they were lesbians. In the eyes of some of Helen Mary’s friends, this betrays a sinister male agenda.

Another Helen Mary favourite, Ruth Serwotka (“Labour Left. SocialistFeminist.network”), spells it out even more clearly:

Serwotka touches here (no smut intended) on a current major preoccupation of Helen Mary’s strong women because the Labour Party is apparently planning to add “certified” transgender women (a.k.a. non-natal women) to its all-women shortlists, some of whom may be in possession of a penis.

As another stalwart of Helen Mary’s Twitter feed puts it succinctly:

Let Bea Campbell, another leading light, explain:

Anyone suggesting that this sounds like a witch hunt risks being stoned to death.

But let’s stay with Bea for a moment, as she explains what this is all about:

Note Bea’s pioneering deconstruction of the testosterone fuelled rules of punctuation.

But this is serious stuff. It seems that a mob of transgender activists recently shouted down and heckled, abused even, some women at one of those countless conferences and workshops which are such a feature of these groups, forcing those strong women to meet in secret to discuss whatever it was they were going to discuss.

This outrage may explain some of these other Helen Mary retweets:

No, I don’t understand either. A beefy Scottish kilt-wearing werewolf, perhaps?

Perhaps Young Crone can shed some light on matters… :

Now that we have cleared that up, let’s hear from another Helen Mary regular called Michael Conroy, who probably has a penis:

If two legs were bad and four legs good on Orwell’s Animal Farm, penises are definitely not required any more in this neck of the Twitter woods:

Fortunately, as another of Helen Mary’s Twitter friends reminds us, women do not have penises:

But as Helen Mary reminded us a couple of days ago, vaginas are what we need to talk about:

But that’s enough genitalia for one day. Let’s turn to knitting instead where Helen Mary is following the Great Pussy Hat Controversy. Pussy hats, for all those living in ignorance in the backwoods of Ceredigion, are pink woolly hats which make the wearer look a little bit like a cat (albeit a skinned cat).

The hats are a symbol of the women’s movement to some, while to others they are the work of the He-devil himself:

But there we must leave the world of Helen Mary Jones.

She is now taking bookings for talks at Merched y Wawr and Cymdeithas y Chwiorydd. Or possibly not.

♦ end ♦

Jac says . . .

Where to start? I don’t want to say too much otherwise I’ll be accused again of being ‘anti women’.

I am a product of the binary, patriarchal tyranny we must all now rise up against. But what do you expect, for as an impressionable child I attended my local flea-pit and imagined that the men and boys around me all wanted to be Burt Lancaster or Robert Mitchum, with the females all wanting to be swept off their feet by these and other trench-coated screen idols.

As I grew older I learnt that some women prefer women and some men prefer men, and I was always easy with that, but Helen Mary Jones and her friends open up whole new dimensions.

For now it seems there are countless sexual or gender identities and self-identifications. Many of HMJ’s Twitter contacts seem to believe that penises and vaginas – and their removal – should be available on demand; on the NHS, I suppose – but why stop at one? Why not two or three for everybody, applied like tattoos?

If nothing else it would open up a whole new world of personal insults.

Joking aside, Helen Mary Jones is regrettably not alone in Plaid Cymru, there are others with her genital and gender fixations. Then there are those who obsess on other issues. Wales hardly enters their thinking.

While agreeing that some men would be happier as women, and some women happier as men, I also believe that anyone this obsessed with what she and others have between their legs may need help. The threat of this woman again becoming a politician, elected by people unaware of her obsessions, must be ended.

The third sector has mushroomed in Wales since devolution, with all manner of oddballs and shysters given easy access to our public money. We don’t want to add to this carnival of grotesques by Helen Mary Jones encouraging her Twitter acquaintances to Wales.

Plaid Cymru and the defenestration of Neil McEvoy

On 24/01/201826/01/2018 By JacIn Common Purpose, Corruption, Greens, Hippies, Plaid Cymru, Public Funding, Social Housing, Third Sector, Welsh Assembly, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media92 Comments

Most of you will be aware that after a protracted and amateurish ‘process’ Plaid Cymru has now expelled Neil McEvoy from its Assembly group. This will have surprised absolutely no one. But what is it all about, what’s the real story?

From speaking with Neil McEvoy and others, and from my own research, this is my interpretation of an affair that reflects badly on devolution, also on Plaid Cymru, the Labour Party, and the third sector, while telling us much about the anti-democratic manoeuvrings and poisonous environment of Cardiff Bay.

The biggest problem I found in researching this piece – something I’ve been doing, off and on, for months – was not the scarcity of evidence but the overwhelming amount of it. Which meant that I had to stick to the straight and narrow without being detoured by personal animosities and other distractions.

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IN THE BEGINNING

I don’t think we need to go back any further than November 2011 to find the time when Neil McEvoy made himself a host of powerful enemies, people who have pursued him ever since, and would now appear to have him down . . . though I wouldn’t bet on it.

What he did with a Facebook post and tweet about men being denied access to their children, and his criticism of Welsh Women’s Aid – run then by Labour’s Paula Hardy and today still packed with party members including the former MP for Swansea East, Siân James – was to threaten a system that relied on unquestioning acceptance of certain dicta, in this case – ‘All men are bastards, and all women are victims’.

This particular dictum wrings an unquestioning acceptance out of politicians and others which is then used to cultivate an ever-growing number of third sector bodies – as new ‘niches’ are found to exploit – with hundreds of crony jobs and all paid for from the public purse. And who would dare argue – for aren’t they ‘helping vulnerable women’.

Though it’s worth remembering that McEvoy was not without support from the very same quarter where most wanted him lynched, as this piece reminds us. It’s about Erin Pizzey, who had founded the UK’s first women’s refuge in London, in 1971.

This woman has been a doyenne of the women’s rights movement since the term ‘battered wives’ was coined and has expressed strong views on the narrow interpretation that only women can be victims of domestic violence. She has also been very critical of what she terms ‘aggressive feminism’.

Predictably, this has made Pizzey unpopular with those who use their gender as a weapon in securing personal advancement, often in the absence of ability or qualifications. And especially with those who view someone else’s domestic abuse as a good career move for them.

Following the self-interested attacks from various third sector bodies back in 2011 the Labour Party predictably came down on a Plaid Cymru politician. But it didn’t end there, because McEvoy was suspended by his own party.

Here we see the first inkling of something beneath the surface suggesting that the political differences we are asked to believe in, the Punch and Judy shows of electioneering and political debate, may be just a sham.

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THE POLITICS OF IT 1

Neil McEvoy was first elected as a Labour councillor for the Riverside ward on Cardiff city council in 1999, becoming vice-chair of the Labour group. In 2003 he left to join Plaid Cymru and lost his seat in the 2004 elections.

In 2008 he was back on the council, representing the Fairwater ward. With Plaid now running the council in coalition with the Lib Dems he served as deputy council leader from 2008 – 2012. Although Labour returned to power in 2012 McEvoy retained his Fairwater seat, coming top out of 13 candidates with 16% of the total vote.

Neil McEvoy entered the Assembly in 2016 by the regional route, becoming an AM for South Wales Central. Although the regional vote is difficult to interpret, few doubt that Plaid’s good showing was due to McEvoy being on the regional list.

(In the first round of voting for the South Wales Central list he actually beat party leader Leanne Wood.)

At the same election he also stood for the Cardiff West constituency, where he increased the Plaid vote by 11.9% and slashed the Labour majority.

Roll on to 2017 and in defending his Fairwater seat Neil McEvoy took Plaid Cymru to previously unscaled heights and a humiliating defeat for Labour. He upped his percentage of the vote to 20%, with the leading Labour candidate trailing way behind on 9%.

What makes this result so impressive is that just before the council elections – in March, in fact – a Cardiff Council (i.e. Labour) tribunal found that a throwaway remark McEvoy had made to a council official amounted to ‘bullying’.

Plaid Cymru joined in by suspending him from the Plaid Cymru Assembly group. Plaid chairman Alun Ffred Jones, thought that the ludicrous charge was “serious because it involves bullying”. (Alun Ffred is one of those men so devoid of animation that watching him I think back to the old Soviet Union and the undead politburo members atop Lenin’s tomb. A fur hat and a few snowflakes would complete that rather unsettling image.)

The timing and co-ordination of these attacks was of course coincidental.

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THE POLITICS OF IT 2

Were he or she reading this then I’m sure that the foreign correspondent of Maritza Plovdiv would be thinking (in Bulgarian) ‘Wow! at last Plaid Cymru has a politician who can stick it to the Labour Party, take them on and beat them on their own turf. Let the good times roll!’

In truth, since Neil McEvoy arrived in the Assembly, Plaid Cymru’s faint-hearts have behaved as if they’d been handed a bomb. For a number of reasons.

To begin with, I don’t think they understand McEvoy. For while Plaid may have many members in Cardiff nowadays, and there may be a thriving Welsh language scene in the city, this is largely due to the population movement that has enfeebled our rural areas.

But Neil McEvoy didn’t move down from Pwllheli or up from Crymych, he’s Kerdiff through and through, with his Irish/Yemeni/English/Welsh background. And this is his strength, for he appeals to Cardiff voters who might not engage with Carys or Rhodri.

Nor did he come to Plaid by any of the usual routes. By which I mean, he certainly hasn’t come from the language movement, he isn’t an environmentalist or a hard leftie infiltrator, nor is he a professional politician who started out as a party worker or spad, and he certainly didn’t emerge from the third sector.

So in many ways, Neil McEvoy is a one-off, an enigma; and for all their talk of ‘the people’, when presented with a genuine man of the people Plaid Cymru’s upper echelons are horrified.

That’s because Neil McEvoy – like most of us reading this – realises that the real enemy in Wales is the Labour Party, not the Conservatives. And so he attacks the Labour Party and its corrupt system again and again. This is why Plaid Cymru is on the verge of expelling him from the party.

It is no exaggeration to make a comparison with the palace coup against Dafydd Wigley in 2000, for once again Plaid Cymru is thinking of getting rid of its most popular politician and its greatest electoral asset.

And once again, the move may be prompted by influences external to the party.

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ALL PROGRESSIVES TOGETHER

In the collective mindset of the Plaid Cymru leadership and hierarchy being ‘progressive’ – and/or being viewed by others as ‘progressive’ – is more important than doing what’s best for Wales. Posturing.

Giving the finger to the US president, saving the planet, arguing that only fascists and racists want us to leave the EU, supporting every -ism that rolls off the left-liberal production line, and getting good coverage in the Guardian, are much more important than serving Wales.

Despite professing love for, and faith in, ‘the people’, progressives don’t really trust hoi polloi to do what’s best (especially since Brexit, Trump, and a host of other recent disappointments). Far better that a progressive elite should run things in the best interests of the untutored mob.

This has given Wales the kind of paternalistic statism we have always known from Labour, with Plaid Cymru latching on to Labour’s coat-tails in recent decades. Industry and commerce are inimical to this model because companies and even individual entrepreneurs cannot be easily controlled, and so both Labour and Plaid Cymru – despite regular protestations to the contrary – are anti-business.

There was a time when Labour could exercise this control through the workforces of major industries and trade unions, but with the passing of the traditional working class it has tried to maintain its hold by breaking society down into ethnic, sexual and other ‘deprived’ or ‘oppressed’ groups – all of which must be defended!

This helps explain the rise of the third sector which, especially in Wales, now fills the role vacated by the trade unions as Labour support troops. Plaid Cymru dutifully goes along with this . . . on condition that enough of its people get a slice of the third sector pie.

It’s no surprise then that one of the complainants against Neil McEvoy is Frances Beecher of homelessness company Llamau (of which I have writ many times). Her complaints are laughable, and tell us how contrived this witch-hunt is, and who’s behind it.

FRANCES BEECHER, Courtesy of WalesOnline, click to enlarge

For example, “he was ‘bullish, difficult and aggressive’ at the charity’s public election hustings in May 20”, we are told. Er, so a politician spoke up at a public meeting! God Almighty – let’s get the bastard!

This ‘social worker politics’ ensures that Wales remains poor, for which Labour and Plaid Cymru blame the Tories (even when they aren’t in power), and the poverty allows the Tories to point to Wales and use it as a warning of what happens if you vote Labour.

So everybody wins – except Wales.

Let’s also remember that relying on more money from the UK government proves that Plaid Cymru doesn’t want independence. Dependent devolution with few responsibilities and plenty of perks is far more amenable.

◊

‘STRONG WOMEN’

Of all the -isms Plaid Cymru has adopted over recent decades none is currently more pernicious and self-harming than the aggressive and intolerant form of feminism now stalking Cardiff Bay.

It manifests itself in a number of ways, and it transcends party boundaries to the advantage of Labour.

In November 2015 I wrote this mixed-bag post, and you should scroll down to the section ‘Sophie Howe, more Labour cronyism’. Howe, a Labour time-server, had been deputy PCC for South Wales to Alun Michael, the former Labour MP, then a new post was created for her, that of Future Generations Commissioner.

This new post linked with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, legislation tied in with the OnePlanet nonsense that opened rural Wales up to hippy lebensraum. Because it involved hippies, and offered no benefits whatsoever to Welsh people, it was supported enthusiastically by Plaid Cymru.

Neil McEvoy (who I referred to in the piece as “a rising star within Plaid Cymru”), criticised the appointment for what it was – Labour cronyism. Others in Plaid Cymru saw it differently, like then AM Jocelyn Davies.

click to enlarge

It was the Jocelyn Davies view that prevailed in Plaid Cymru and provided me with an insight into certain attitudes that allowed gender and perceptions of solidarity to over-ride the political differences most of us imagined existed. The political differences we were asked to vote for at election times.

With the death of Carl Sargeant and other recent developments we now know that things are even worse than justifying political cronyism for no better reason than that the appointee is “a strong woman”.

The agenda takes many forms. For example, there is currently a petition calling for Neil McEvoy not to be reinstated to the Plaid Cymru Assembly group. It is addressed to party leader Leanne Wood, but is it her decision alone?

Even though it claims to be the work of ‘Concerned Welsh Women’ it’s pulling in signatures from around the world, so obviously the petition has been widely publicised in feminist circles and the Labour Party.

The word on the street is that this petition was started by another ‘strong woman’, in the form of Helen Mary Jones, sometime AM for Llanelli. She of course denies it. Though I find it interesting how many times her rebuttal reduces the whole business to a men versus women issue.

At one point she refers to Neil McEvoy as “Neil McAvoy”. Being unable to even get his name right might suggest he’s almost incidental to something bigger.

Whether Helen Mary Jones did start the petition or not she told a friend of mine once, “I have more friends in the Labour Party than in Plaid Cymru”. Make of that what you will.

Helen Mary Jones was AM for Llanelli. The seat where the great rugby coach Carwyn James once stood, and where Plaid Cymru had one of its strongest branches . . . until the general election of 2017, when the candidate selected by the local party was turfed out to make way for a woman candidate imposed by Cardiff HQ.

The imposed candidate lost, the local branch imploded, and Plaid Cymru is withering away in Llanelli.

UPDATE 25.01.2018: It seems that the petition has been taken down.

◊

LOBBYISTS

The late Carl Sargeant complained about being bullied from within the office of Labour leader and First Minister Carwyn Jones in 2014. The finger points at former television journalist Jo Kiernan, who left at the end of 2015. This report of her departure makes it clear she was loathed by many people even in her own party.

When she left the office of the First Minister Jo Kiernan went to lobbying firm Deryn, from where the bullying and undermining of Carl Sargeant continued. The ‘Welsh’ media is reluctant to say this, so let us be thankful for Guido Fawkes. Jo Kiernan also served as a consultant to Llamau.

Though whether the continued bullying came from Kiernan alone will perhaps be established in coming months. It may be significant that Jo Kiernan’s Twitter account went silent around the time of Carl Sargeant’s death, but the tweets preserved suggest she too is ‘a strong woman’.

If we look to the six leading players at Deryn we see four with Labour backgrounds, Cathy Owens, Huw Roberts, Jo Kiernan and Vicki Evans, and two from Plaid Cymru, Nerys Evans and Elin Llŷr.

Courtesy of WalesOnline, click to enlarge

In July 2016 Neil McEvoy drew attention to what he, and many others, considered to be a conflict of interest involving Nerys Evans. He also called for a register of lobbyists. Which would have seen his card marked, yet again.

Early in 2017 Neil McEvoy further endeared himself to Deryn by revealing that Ofcom’s Welsh operation had awarded a contract to Deryn without any tendering process, and this looked bad seeing as two Deryn directors – Nerys Evans and Huw Roberts – sat on the Ofcom Wales board.

The Ofcom contract with Deryn was terminated in August.

These third world shenanigans feed into the continuum, Labour/Plaid Cymru-lobbyists-third sector. With people, overwhelmingly women, floating between the different parts as if they were one. Though of course the continuum is restricted to Labour and Plaid Cymru personnel.

Which inevitably results in political differences blurring, or disappearing altogether. The priorities are influencing political decisions (often for personal gain) and milking the public purse. And God help anybody, like Neil McEvoy, who becomes aware of this corruption and starts blowing the whistle.

This explains why Plaid Cymru is so anaemic, so reluctant to confront Labour. It could even be that through channels like Deryn Labour is to some extent controlling Plaid Cymru. Certainly Nerys Evans is a very close friend of Leanne Wood.

One thing’s for sure, when it comes to election times, and we are asked to choose between Labour and Plaid Cymru, there is no choice, they’re one and the same; combining to keep Wales poor so they get votes by blaming the Tories while their friends in the third sector feather their nests from exploiting our deprivation. (And, where necessary, importing more!)

Neil McEvoy knows this. Neil McEvoy wants to expose this. And it’s the reason Neil McEvoy is now being targeted: Discredit the messenger and hope that the message dies with his political career. But it won’t work. Too many people are waking up to the incestuous relationships and the wider corruption down Cardiff Bay.

Neil McEvoy will emerge from this stronger and more popular, but the careers of many of his detractors will suffer, and I’ll enjoy writing about it. Because you’ve brought it on yourselves!

♦ end ♦

Plaid Cymru and the Imaginary Consensus

On 07/03/201708/03/2017 By JacIn Corruption, Local Government, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Language, Welsh Nationalism135 Comments

Neil McEvoy

There’s no question that Neil McEvoy divides opinion, both within his own party, Plaid Cymru, and also within the wider community. The one place where opinion seems to be united is in the Labour Party, where people universally hate him. In many ways he is the enfant terrible of Welsh politics, a role that has gone unfilled for far too long.

Now you know me, in my book, being hated by ‘Welsh’ Labour is no bad thing, and can very often be a mark of distinction given the odious bastards we find in that corrupt and self-serving gang of liars, crooks, bigots, careerists and BritLanders. (‘BritLanders’ are sad cases who delude themselves that Britain or the UK is something other than England by another name.)

Neil McEvoy’s latest mention in the headlines is due to an appearance last week before something called the Adjudication Panel for Wales over an allegation of bullying. Now as kangaroo courts go, this one could make it from Cardiff to Bangor in a single hop, because the whole process was a stitch-up from start to finish. The charge hinges on an uncontested remark, the issue being to whom it was directed.

Leaving Cardiff Civil Justice Centre with a constituent in July 2015 after an unsuccessful appeal against eviction for non-payment of rent McEvoy said, “I can’t wait until May 2017 when the restructure of the council happens”. He maintains that he was talking to his constituent, the council official thought it was directed at her, and that it could be construed as a threat to her job if and when Plaid Cymru was running the council. (Which in July 2015 seemed a very unlikely prospect.)

Those of us of a certain age, who have enjoyed the company of ‘colourful’ characters, and frequented the kinds of “low dives” our mothers always told us to avoid, may think that as threats go – and even if it was directed at the council official – this was mild to the point of being innocuous. There was no weapon involved, not a hand was laid, there wasn’t even a swear word employed! And it would appear that the official took the same view . . . but then the Labour Party got to hear of it.

Although unwilling to press charges, the official, under pressure now from her ‘Welsh’ Labour Party employers, changed her mind. Maybe it was spelled out to her that if she didn’t co-operate then she could lose her job a lot sooner than May 2017, and it wouldn’t be Plaid Cymru handing her her P45.

For we are dealing here with the Labour Party in Cardiff, where the bullying of women is rampant, perhaps even party policy. For as Neil McEvoy said in the article I’ve linked to –

Seven female councillors have resigned from Labour in Cardiff. Seven!

♦

So Why Was Neil McEvoy Stitched Up?

This section begins in the same vein as the first; Neil McEvoy was stitched up because he’s made a lot of enemies, a hell of a lot of enemies. It’s no exaggeration to say that in the past few years he might have pissed off more people than me! And while Neil McEvoy and I might not agree on much, I suspect that when it comes to pointing the finger at those Wales would be better without, then we’d be pointing in the same directions many a time. Where to start?

As I’ve already said, and as should be obvious, he is detested by the Labour Party with a particular vehemence for two main reasons: first, until 2003 he was a member of that party, and second, since then he has been an opponent who’s landed many damaging blows. Being elected to Cardiff city council and the Notional Assembly are just the more obvious of those blows.

Recently Neil McEvoy has served on the Public Accounts Committee, which has been looking into the workings of our housing associations, and he’s been asking awkward questions, and in other ways annoying people. For as I’ve explained, housing associations, especially the favoured and rapidly expanding Wales and West Housing, are just the Labour Party by another name.

Over the years he’s asked many more awkward questions of the Third Sector in general. Which means there are thousands of people in Wales living high on the hog of public funding who’d like to see the back of Neil McEvoy. (Preferably with a knife between his shoulder blades.)

Then there’s Deryn. You haven’t heard of Deryn? Well, it’s a kind of lobbying or PR company, made up of insiders that is so good that it wins contracts without even having to tender for them! Neil McEvoy has been asking why Ofcom Wales awarded a contract to Deryn and whether this was connected to the fact that two of Deryn’s senior people sit on the Ofcom advisory board for Wales.

But you mustn’t think he’s picking on Deryn alone, for last year he asked the ‘Welsh’ Government to copy Westminster and Holyrood by introducing legislation to regulate lobbyists. But when we have firms like Deryn, stuffed with politicians, former politicians, spads and other insiders, we can’t realistically expect the ‘Welsh’ Government to do anything.

I could go on, but take my word for it, Neil McEvoy has pissed off a lot of people who are taking the public and/or the public purse for a ride. These people are ‘insiders’, by which I mean, they belong to the Cardiff or Bay ‘bubble’. That self-contained world where people tell themselves that everything across Wales is hunky-dory because they are doing well.

A bubble wherein we find lazy incompetents promising not to attack each other for being lazy and incompetent, then dressing this up as some laudable ‘consensus’. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s third-raters deluding themselves they’re achieving something and it’s a cruel deception practised on the Welsh people.

Neil McEvoy exposes this ‘consensus’ for what it is, and threatens to shake this cosy world apart. Do you still want to know why he was stitched up?

♦

Why Neil McEvoy Embarrasses Plaid Cymru’s Leadership

To understand just how cosy this ‘consensus’ really is, just take a look at the leading lights in Deryn. You’ll find representatives of ‘Welsh’ Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives. (It’s only a matter of time before Ukip’s Neil Hamilton gets the call. Christine will be delighted!)

In talking of ‘consensus’, it is the relationship between Labour and Plaid Cymru that goes a long way to explaining the Plaid leadership’s reaction to recent events. Because Plaid’s leadership dreams wet dreams of a coalition with Labour and so reality – in the form of Neil McEvoy – must not be allowed to intrude. Without a formal coalition then Plaid likes to kid itself that more can be achieved by co-operation than by confrontation – with ‘Welsh’ Labour!

All of which results in Plaid Cymru being reluctant to attack Labour. Labour knows this, and laughs at Plaid’s naivete. And this, boys and girls, is the truth about the ‘consensus’. Neil McEvoy understands this better than most.

Beyond the one-sided or imagined cosy relationship another explanation for the party leadership’s attitude to Neil McEvoy can be explained by the special interest groups that make up Plaid Cymru. I’m now referring to those who join Plaid for no other reason than to promote socialism, environmental issues, LGBT politics, the Welsh language, feminism, etc. On the McEvoy issue it is clearly the feminists driving the agenda – those same Plaid Cymru ‘feminists’ who were silent as the Cardiff Labour Party behaved like a gang of latter-day Bluebeards.

To explain what I mean about special interest groups, and in particular, feminism, let me remind you of something I covered back in November 2015, in a compendium post, scroll down to the section ‘Sophie Howe, More Labour Cronyism’.

The eponymous Sophie Howe is a lifelong Labour Party member, the daughter of a one-time councillor in Cardiff, who worked as South Wales Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner, her boss being former Labour MP Alun Michael. When she couldn’t land herself a safe seat a totally new post, Future Generations Commissioner, was created for her.

This news was greeted by Jocelyn Davies, then a Plaid Cymru Assembly Member, with the tweet below. For a feminist like Davies, this squalid example of Labour cronyism could be excused – because Sophie Howe is a “strong woman”. God Almighty!

This blind spot that so many Plaid leaders have for Labour – and, more generally, those on the left – manifests itself in many ways. One example I ran across a few days ago was on the blog of Mabon ap Gwynfor, Plaid candidate for Clwyd South in 2016.

In his latest post Mabon deals with Welsh language education in Dyffryn Ceiriog, and asks in the title ‘Was Llangennech a stand alone issue? No. Here’s why . . . ‘ He tells of a local bigot opposing Welsh medium education, but he doesn’t lay into him because this bugger is “solidly left of centre”, a trade unionist and, presumably, a member of the Labour Party.

Yet the article makes a direct comparison with Llangennech, and if there’s one lesson to come out of Llangennech it is that the Labour Party, and socialists like Gary ‘Poumista’ Jones, have schemed and connived, been guilty of lies and intimidation, all to thwart kids getting a Welsh education. Some of them linked up openly with Ukip, and less openly with even uglier elements further to the BritNat right.

Listen, Mabon; the real message from Llangennech is that anti-Welsh bigotry comes from across the political spectrum, it is not an ideological issue. Because if we follow your logic, then I, being on the political right, am less acceptable to you than this bigot on the left. Know your friends. More importantly, know your enemies.

I didn’t enjoy writing that because Mabon is a good boy. But some things have to be said.

♦

Let me finish by saying that I don’t really know Neil McEvoy; for all I know he could be an utter cad, or perhaps someone who bites the heads off fluffy lickle bunny wunnies.

But I do know why he was stitched up. And I know who stitched him up. And I’ve explained why many in Plaid Cymru are uncomfortable with him – it’s because he threatens their ludicrous ‘consensus’ that is nothing more than an excuse for inertia and betrayal.

Some people, myself included, regard him as a breath of fresh air, others clearly view him as something more destructive, perhaps a whirlwind. Either way, I sense that he is forcing Plaid Cymru to confront its relationship with ‘Welsh’ Labour in a way that no one has done for some time.

Which is good, for I believe that Plaid Cymru either needs a revolution from within to re-focus the party, or else it needs to be killed off and replaced by a new party that will better serve the Welsh national interest.

Wales is the poorest country in Europe, due to Labour’s corruption and incompetence, aided and abetted by Plaid Cymru’s insane belief in ‘consensus’. Anything will be an improvement on this.

♦ end ♦

Jac o' the North

Tag: Deryn Consulting

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Plaid Cymru and the Imaginary Consensus