I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. POSTINGS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.
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Since posting Enviroshysters flock to Wales for easy money last week a source has been in touch with news of more shady dealing down among the organic radishes.
But first, an update.
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BLAENEINION
I have now spoken with Sharon Girardi of Blaeneinion. And while I’m sort of persuaded that she is not the owner of the property, I’m still no nearer knowing who really owns it.
According to Ms Girardi, ownership is somehow tied up with a family trust. One of the family being an old friend of hers who allows her to live at Blaeneinion. Which seems plausible. Though newspaper reports continue to name her as the owner.
What puzzles me is why a family trust would go to such lengths to hide the ownership of 75 acres of not very good land.
For the Land Registry tells us that Blaeneinion’s owner is Gibraltar company Endeavour Ltd. From Companies House in Gibraltar we learn that the shares are all owned by Gibraltar International Trust Corporation Ltd (GITCO). The ‘directors’ being Trilex Ltd, also of Gibraltar.
Just like GITCO Trilex appears in the Paradise Papers and has many interesting connections.
What’s clear is that someone has gone to considerable lengths to hide the identity or identities of whoever owns Blaeneinion.
Another mystery is that the Gibraltar International Trust Corporation Ltd is a director of a company formed earlier this year in Worcestershire. This being the only mention of GITCO I can find on the Companies House website. How is this explained?
On the one hand I’d like to believe that Sharon Girardi is living a Blanche Dubois existence in the hills, but on the other hand, the known facts cause me concern.
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Before we push on, let me warn you, this three-reel production has a cast of thousands, sweeping vistas, farce and tragedy, ‘Welsh Government’ funding, Arts Council of Wales funding, home schooling, land grabbing, elephants . . . and all made possible because the Woke-Left-Green shysters involved are favoured by politicos and their dosh-dishers in Corruption Bay. Which encourages more of the buggers to move here.
(OK, I lie about the elephants.)
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THE GREEN, GREEN GRASS OF (SOMEBODY ELSE’S) HOME
Knowing of my interest in all things Green, a regular correspondent directed me to The Green Gathering, to be held next year in Chepstow. Which is convenient for the anti-everything head-bangers of Bristol, while also ensuring ‘Welsh Government’ support.
The event is organised by a charity of the same name. Which is also a company.
From the documents filed with the Charity Commission we learn that The Green Gathering has a ‘trading subsidiary’ / ‘production company’ by the name of Optimistic Trout Productions CIC. (It’s amazing what quirky names appear when, after another hard day herding rabbits, one relaxes with a mug of sun-dried amanita muscaria.)
All shares in Optimistic Trout Productions (OTP) are held by The Green Gathering Ltd.
Optimistic Trout Productions, of Pengraig, Felindre, Llandysul, was Incorporated December 2010. (Until May 2020 the company’s address was in Frome, Somerset.) The Green Gathering, of Shrewsbury, first saw the light of day in July 2011, in Maidstone, Kent. In August 2013 it moved to Four Roads, Kidwelly. Then on to Shrewsbury in August 2019, moving to another address in the town in October 2020.
The move from Kidwelly to Shrewsbury ties in with Susan Ellis Alexander Pickles of Four Roads ceasing to be secretary and director of The Green Gathering in August 2019.
I suspect The Green Gathering replaced Big Green Gathering Company Ltd, of York, which faltered in 2010 / 2011 and was compulsorily struck-off in July 2012. (Among former directors we find an old friend in the form of Graham ‘Brig’ Oubridge, who has now returned to the land of his naissance.)
I suggest that succession because Stephen Fraser Muggeridge is a director of both companies and also of the Optimistic Trout. He lives in Maidstone, and stood for the county council in May this year. For the Green Party, of course.
Muggeridge failed to be elected but one of the gang who is a councillor, is Shane Collins, who sits on Mendip District Council representing the Frome Keyford ward. This of course explains Optimistic Trout Productions being based in Frome.
When he’s not fighting the Green cause on Mendip District Council Collins is a spokesperson for Insulate Britain. You know, the Provisional wing of Extinction Rebellion that believes they have a right to interfere with everybody else’s lives.
As I say, Muggeridge and Collins are both directors of Optimistic Trout Productions. These are the other directors.
You’ll note that two of them, Muggeridge and Emma Louise Fordham use Llandysul as their correspondence address, but we know Muggeridge lives in Maidstone and Fordham gives ‘Country of Residence’ as England.
So all the directors of a company registered in Llandysul live in England! What’s going on? Perhaps the answer can be found at Pengraig itself.
According to the Land Registry, the property is owned by Amanda Beatrice Murdoch. It was bought in October 2004 for £355,000 without need of a mortgage. We have not encountered this woman before, she has certainly not been involved with the companies mentioned.
I’m guessing that Optimistic Trout Productions is using Pengraig as an accommodation address with an eye to Welsh public funding. It’s difficult to think of any another reason seeing as the directors live in various locations in England and the company holding all the shares is also based over the border.
Because we must remember that everything is now working towards August 2022 and the Green Gathering in Chepstow. I predict with certainty there will be applications for Welsh public funding. The applications may already have been made.
Next, we’ll look at people who are definitely receiving funding, both from the ‘Welsh Government’ and our friends at the Arts Council of Wales.
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‘WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL TODAY?’ (OH! I FORGOT – YOU DON’T GO.)
We move a little further west now, to ‘Fountain Hill’ at Glogue, in north Pembrokeshire, where we find Majical Youth, also in the festivals entertainment business. Scroll down on the home page and you’ll see the backers.
There are obvious connections with Pengraig, Llandysul.
One I found intriguing was that (Rev?) Helen Mary Caroline Reynolds, who bought ‘Fountain Hill’ in December 2015 for £245,000 without need of a mortgage, was previously a director of Pengraig Property Investors Ltd.
Pengraig Property Investors was formed in April 2014. Fountain Hill was bought in December 2015. The company was dissolved at the end of May 2016. Was the company set up for no other reason than to buy ‘Fountain Hill?
I ask because there are tax benefits in buying a property through a limited company. Which is what appears to have happened at ‘Fountain Hill’. It can later be transferred to an individual.
Another link between Pengraig and ‘Fountain Hill’ would be the company Plant Natur. For the two directors are Amanda Murdoch, proprietrix of Pengraig, and her opposite number at ‘Fountain Hill’, Helen Reynolds.
Reynolds signed off the Majical Youth CIC accounts. Though the most recent available accounts only take us up to May 2019. With the next accounts due at the end of next month.
Even so, things were looking pretty rosy, with £81,500 cash in hand and total assets of £169,6580. But these ‘unaudited statutory accounts’ make no mention of succour from the ‘Welsh Government’ or the Arts Council.
Though as the logos for both appear on the website we have to assume that funding has been received, probably after May 2019. Because using the logo is a condition of funding.
Does Plant Natur or Majical Youth connect with the Fountain Hill Home Education Group? Which provides: ‘Wednesday home education social days days for children who do not attend school’.
The issue of home schooling is a problem. A growing problem due to the influx into our rural areas of the kind of people I’m writing about.
And one that is embarrassing politicians since the death 10 years ago of Dylan Seabridge. Eight-year-old Dylan died of scurvy. He lived in Pembrokeshire but his parents had moved from Stoke-on-Trent.
Yes, scurvy!
Dylan was schooled at home. Maybe it would be more accurate to say he just never went to school. He had never seen a doctor or a dentist. And yet, his parents escaped prosecution. They were let off to avoid opening a can of worms and embarrassing the local council and other bodies.
Even so, the ‘Welsh Government’ had to pretend to be doing something. Resisting calls for a register and regular checks on home educated children, the Corruption Bay cronyocracy instead produced a few wishy-washy booklets, such as this, aimed at parents and carers.
The message being, ‘Er, just carry on doing what you’re doing’.
There are obvious reasons for the ‘Welsh Government’ not wanting to take action over home schooling. For a start, too many of those not sending their kids to the local school are in networks loyal to the Green Queen, ‘Dr’ Jane Davidson.
But I think we all need to be concerned if the ‘Welsh Government’ is funding people who, wearing different hats, are involved in and encouraging home schooling.
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LAND GRABS
Not a lot of people know this, but Majical Youth of ‘Fountain Hill’ is part-owner of a wood-fired pizza trailer. Ownership seems to be shared with Incredible Edible Carmarthenshire, a group that’s been in existence for five or six years but finally launched last December as Incredible Edible Carmarthenshire CIC.
The reason it went legit is because those involved are hoping to grab some land near Llanelli railway station. And of course the grants to ‘improve’ the land.
And what an interesting bunch they are. Read about them here. I was particularly struck by this potted bio.
‘Finally, Heike Griffiths, the group’s Chair and Equal Opportunities Champion, is a lecturer who teaches inclusion and social justice at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, as well as being involved in . . . Extinction Rebellion.’
As we know, Lampeter means ‘Dr’ Jane Davidson. Another director is Montserrat Ribas-Gomis, a Spanish scientist head-hunted by Natural Resources Wales from . . . Bristol.
The land in question adjoins Llanelli railway station. It’s the green strip shown in the image below from Google Earth.
The station itself is, predictably, owned by Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd but was leased in October 2018 to KeolisAmey Operations Ltd soon after the partnership had been handed the Wales and Borders rail network.
I am assured that this land is in the stewardship of the Heart of Wales Line Development Company Ltd. The line itself runs from Swansea to Shrewsbury. Though unlike, say, Llandrindod, Llanelli’s main traffic is from the south coast mainline.
So the presence of the HoWLDC might seem a little odd. But it’s worth remembering that there is usually land available close to railway stations. Land that can be acquired for ‘community purposes’, and for which grants will be available.
A director of the Heart of Wales Line Development Company is Gillian Wright, and she first appeared on this this blog in September 2014 in Ancestral Turf. Scroll down and you’ll find her in a video.
Via the HoWLDC Wright was also involved with the Llandeilo Food Hub. This was based in an old railway wagon near the station, and had hopes to be a commercial venture selling locally-grown organic produce. Though now it may be operating as a food bank.
Possibly it’s both. Either way, if the venture has moved to the centre of Llandeilo, then I wonder what’s happened to the £30,000 wagon we see below, refurbished with ‘Welsh Government’ funding?
Another of Wright’s ventures, this one funded by Carmarthenshire County Council, was The Level Crossing Community Interest Company, which went belly-up in 2016 after a few years of struggling, and failing, to break even.
So, if my source is correct (and I’m sure he is), then the would-be organic growers of Incredible Edible Carmarthenshire will be trying to do something that has already been tried, and failed.
And they will no doubt be getting public funding for it.
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CONCLUSION
We have a problem in Wales because, in its desperation to be seen to be Green, in its embarrassing attempts to convince a completely uninterested world that we are saving the planet, whassisname and his gang squander millions of pounds every year on enviroshysters, memsahibs and dreamers.
These invariably dress up their scams or their idiocies as ‘community ventures’ . . . of which the local community is almost always ignorant. It’s usually just outsiders talking to themselves.
But these outsiders are well connected – to Welsh public funding. Which shows how far the Labour ‘Welsh Government’ has drifted from the people it claims to represent.
Selling organically-grown vegetables might be a commercial proposition in the Cotswolds, or Islington – but in the poorest part of a poor Welsh town! An area blighted by the low-lifes shipped in by Labour’s third sector cronies.
News of the ‘Welsh Government’s gullibility has spread far and wide, and that’s why we are experiencing the invasion of the enviroshysters. It’s time to call a halt.
If people want to improve their land by planting trees then they should be allowed to do so without let or hindrance. Those wanting to organise festivals must be free to do so. And the best of luck to anyone wanting to grow and sell organic vegetables.
But these must be done on a commercial basis. None of them merit public funding because there is no public benefit.
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