This began as an update to the piece I put out a few days ago. But it grew too big. So I had to admit that the only way to do it properly was as a follow-up, a second part. Which explains what you’re about to read.
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LEO FROM THE OLD SCHOOL
A source, someone who’s given me some good stuff in the past, tells me a name to watch for in relation to the Tramshed and other matters is Leonora ‘Leo’ Thomson. She already plays a big role, and may have an even bigger role in future.
Leonora Thomson was educated at Oakham School, and then Leeds University, where she did philosophy. Yet another product of a public school helping to fill the thinning ranks of Labour in Wales.
One day I might put aside some time and see just how many of them there are. For now, I’ll just remind you of two.
There’s Senedd Member Jenny Rathbone of the uber wealthy Rathbone dynasty, who goes big on the environment, and whose partner, John Uden, was given a sinecure by Bute Energy, which wants to cover Wales in wind turbines and pylons.
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And of course, there’s the Green Goddess herself, Jane Davidson, who wrote the Well-being of Future Generations legislation that dictates so many of the restrictions on our personal freedoms, and also the damage being done to our economy.
What was once the party of the Welsh working class has to keep applying an increasingly unconvincing Welsh veneer as it falls further under the control of pressure groups, fanatics, sexual deviants, and career politicians.
Among them we find the privately-educated, conflicted between guilt at their privileged upbringing and the old impulse to shout at the natives.
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WHAT LEO DID NEXT
To help you start, here’s Leo’s Linkedin profile. It’s all media, arts, PR. Also a brief stint with the Metropolitan Police, plus 8 years as a Labour councillor in Ealing. All in London until she arrived in Cardiff, December 2015, to become managing director of the Welsh National Opera Company (WNO).
If you go to the About panel on Linkedin, and click on ‘see more’, you bring up what you see below. I’ve highlighted parts that I’ll be referring to as you read on.
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There’s nothing listed after she ended her stint with the WNO in August 2019. What followed is partly explained in the image above, with the rest filled in as we go along. But now, let’s turn to another line of enquiry.
The oldest active directorship is with English Touring Opera Ltd. She joined 7 June, 2021. Less than two years after leaving the WNO.
On 18 November, 2021 Leo became a director of the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales Ltd. Well, when I read that you could have knocked me down with an illegally-released-into-the-wild beaver!
Yet nothing I see in her background suggests an interest in flora and fauna. Truth is, this was a political appointment to an organisation the ‘Welsh Government’ wishes to use in its war on livestock farming.
Once you read, “fairer and more equal society” you know it’s about leftist propaganda rather than theatre. More ‘Waiting for Gramsci’ than anything Beckett wrote.
Can’t help wondering where the money comes from, cos I’m damn sure Omidaze don’t pay for itself.
Monk Racing Ltd is an odd one. Formed in 2000 it’s always filed as dormant. The key to Thomson’s involvement is probably Anthony Kenneth Lewis, who was a founding director, and is the joint owner with her of a house on the Taff Embankment.
Lewis resigned from Monk Racing 9 April, 2023. Thomson joined 27 June, 2023.
There have been two stints where Leo served as a Labour councillor. The first you’ve already read about, from 1998 to 2006 in the London Borough of Ealing; and now, from May 2022 for the Riverside ward in Cardiff.
Given the Philistines in Labour’s ranks, both on Cardiff council and in the Senedd, I’m sure the comrades have deferred more than once to Thomson’s knowledge of the finer things in life.
‘How do ew spell opera, love?’
Though I’m beginning to wonder if Leonora Thomson is bad luck. Let me explain.
In March we learnt that Thomson was joining as interim CEO. Having already served as Interim Joint Chief Executive from October 2019 to June 2021. And now NTW has moved to the Tramshed, a nest of Labour cronies and insiders.
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Another body to lose funding recently was the WNO. Where Thomson was managing director for almost 4 years until August 2019. (Though I believe she returned in some kind of temporary capacity.)
Which means the WNO lost funding after Leonora Thomson had been involved, and while she was Chair at English Touring Opera. Seeing as the WNO performs at English venues some might see the WNO and the English company as competitors.
Though it’s difficult to explain these cuts to two such important cultural bodies as the WNO and NTW when one of their main funders, the Arts Council of Wales, saw its income increase by more than 50% in just 4 years.
One organisation linked to Leonora Thomson suffering a funding cut, I could dismiss; two, I might, just, accept as coincidence; but three, and in such a short space of time? Do me a favour!
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UNDERMINE, TAKE CONTROL
What we’ve just looked at is a phenomenon I’ve seen regularly in recent years. I wrote about it a year ago in Taking Control, Of Everything. I focused then on the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) and the Football Association of Wales (FAW).
It’s the ‘Welsh Government’s method for taking control of an organisation.
The first stage is to discredit and undermine the target organisation, maybe also those running it. (Sometimes with inside help.) Stage Two is the reduction or withdrawal of funding. Stage Three, the takeover; done through a combination of restored / increased funding and the appointment of politically loyal or malleable individuals to the organisation.
A bit like the CIA handbook for regime change.
What we’ve seen done to the WNO, NTW and RWCMD could only have been achieved with the assistance of the Arts Council of Wales; which had already undergone the same treatment.
I wrote about it back to August 2021.
First in Corruption Bay and a tale of Cymrophobia (23.08.2021). In which I reported that the Arts Council and the National Museum commissioned three reports in June 2020 to look into ‘widening engagement’.
To make sense of it, remember that George Floyd died the previous month and there was fierce competition as people fought to honour his memory capitalise on his death.
The three groups commissioned were:
An unregistered entity run by Labour insiders Lu Thomas and Jon Luxton.
The third outfit commissioned was The Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union (WAARU). Which had no presence anywhere – yet its anonymously submitted report was accepted!
And remember! 31 other applicants were rejected in favour of these three.
And then (06.09.2021) Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union unmasked, in which I identified those behind WAARU. The usual mix of chip-on-shoulder race grifters and middle class leftists trying to live out their slogans.
Woke employees of Welsh national institutions collaborating with their Woke allies outside to discredit and undermine the organisations they worked for.
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FINALE: FITTING LEO INTO THE BIGGER PICTURE
The evidence might suggest that Leonora Hope Thomson has been employed by the ‘Welsh Government’ as some kind of hatchet woman; sent in to various bodies and asked to recommend ‘economies’ and ‘restructuring’.
Part of a pattern that sees ‘Welsh Government’ / ‘Welsh’ Labour, take control of our public, artistic, and sporting life. Done at the behest of the shrieky and the unhinged to promote the Woke agenda.
Which explains how we see Leo, and National Theatre Wales, of which she’s interim CEO, joining the migration to the Tramshed. Which is of course good news for the owner, Cardiff council (Labour); and the lessee, the Count of Abbasock (also Labour).
And it contributes to the circular economy of which I wrote in the previous piece.
Welcome to socialist Wales 2024. The circular economy, benefitting those lucky enough to be in the ‘circle’. Where there’s no private investment, and everything is state funded, but only those close to the ruling party can benefit.
And having mentioned Cardiff council, it’s worth adding that even though she was only elected in May 2022, Thomson, who hardly knows Cardiff, is now Chair of the council’s Labour group.
I wonder who decided to give her such rapid promotion?
I suggest we watch Leonora Hope Thomson, and the Tramshed with which she’s now linked. Both might have roles in the political and public life of Wales.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Leo’s name isn’t already pencilled in on one of the closed lists for the 2026 Senedd elections.
Finally, what I found perhaps most disturbing when writing this was that I had difficulty telling the Labour party and the ‘Welsh Government’ apart. They should be two clearly separate entities.
That they’ve effectively merged is, for me, confirmation that Wales is a one-party state.
I hadn’t planned on writing this, but thinking about what’s happening to our major sporting bodies left me little alternative. It’s dressed up as reorganisation, or combatting sexism, misogyny, and other evils, but I believe these are a smokescreen for the true motivations.
Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the promised piece on Bute Energy. That will still come out early next week.
My first thought – betraying the parochial side to my otherwise angelic nature – was, “I don’t remember any of them playing for the Swans“. I immediately slapped myself on the wrist and went on to read the article.
So who are these Independent Non-executive Directors of the FAW?
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Chair Alys Carlton, on the left in the image above, was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, Edinburgh University (French, Italian), and Nottingham Trent (Law).
She is clearly a ‘Welsh Government’ insider because nobody who wasn’t well-regarded in the Swamp would be ‘Vice Chair of Welsh Government’s Expert Panel on Supporting Entrepreneurial Women’. Nor would they be, ‘First Tier Judge – Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales’.
Before branching out on her own, with Alys Carlton Consulting Ltd, in April 202o, Alys worked for Capital Law, one of the ‘Welsh Government’s favourite law firms, an outfit that sees a great deal of our money.
And I’m sure Capital Law has written to Old Jac after someone went running to them. “Tell him to stop being nasty!”
Next up is Sameer Rahman Syed, centre in the above image. Here’s his Linkedin info. (Here in pdf format.)
This guy would also appear to be well-connected with the movers and shakers in that city some 40-odd miles east of Swansea. I suggest that because he is also a non-executive director of the Millennium Stadium and Glamorgan County Cricket Club. The latter being the reason Wales has no national cricket team.
And after a career in ‘Data’ he too went solo, in April 2021, with Datamonet Ltd. Things seem to be going splendidly, with our boy as CEO and, er, sole employee.
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The third member of this troika is Dr Carol Bell. (No ding-dong jokes!) Though in her case, she was re-‘elected’.
A coalminer’s grand-daughter from Felindre, north Swansea, she made important contacts at Cambridge which may have helped her land a job with Rio Tinto on graduating.
A former investment banker in the energy field, now turned archaeologist, and another Welsh speaker. Here’s her Linkedin page (Here in pdf format.)
Dr Bell is as well connected in Corruption Bay as the other two, and perhaps well beyond the Bay. We see Millennium Stadium in her trophy cabinet too, along with a few intriguing appointments. Such as non-executive director at the Development Bank of Wales.
But what really caught my eye was Dr Bell being a director at BlackRock Commodities Income Investment Trust plc. Blackrock has been mentioned a few times on this blog; for its CEO, Larry Fink, is a leading Globalist, and big buddies with Bill Gates and Claus Schwab.
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WELSH RUGBY UNION
We begin this section with a piece from last Friday’s Llais y Sais. As you can see below, it deals with two appointments to the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU).
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Richard Collier-Keywood is described as the WRU’s “first independent chair“. Which I take to mean that he was not elected by the Union’s member clubs, as has been done in the past.
The piece also tells us that these are “appointments“, but not who made them. Which is odd. And the WRU website makes it clear that Collier-Keywood is to take over from current chair, Ieuan Evans. So can we assume that the appointments have been made by the WRU Board?
Now, we all know who Ieuan Evans is, he’s one of our all-time great players, but most of you will be wondering, “Who the hell is Richard Collier-Keywood, and where by do he come from?”.
I can tell you it’s not from round by ‘ere. Though both sources are keen to tell us that his mother had some connection to Maesteg and he may have enjoyed an ice cream or two in Porthcawl.
I’ll have more for you on Richard Collier-Keywood later.
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Alison Thorne is another interesting appointment. Her Linkedin page will fill in more details. (Here in pdf format.) I draw particular attention to the most recent of her appointments, which you can see below.
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Beyond any question of a doubt we are dealing with another denizen of the Swamp. A charming lady, no doubt, but as great-aunt Fastidia would say, in her characteristically earthy way: “Shit in the same latrine and you’ll share the smell“.
She even works for the ‘Welsh Government’ on public appointments!
And wearing a different hat, she’s the chair of the National Dance Company of Wales. Which – and I kid you not! – seeks “to deliver social change through dance“. Another way of saying, ‘Straight White men need not apply’.
Finally, she is the chair of trustees at housing association Barcud. This is interesting because, in theory, housing associations are now private companies. But a control-freak administration such as we see in Corruption Bay won’t give up control of anything.
A firm grip maintained by social housing bodies either having outstanding loans, or taking out fresh loans, or acquiring land from, the ‘Welsh Government’.
Maybe someone decided that giving Jones the job would have been too obviously political. Though on the plus side, he is Welsh, and knows something about rugby.
Instead, Richard Collier-Keywood was appointed. And it’s an odd appointment. As was suggested to me by someone who was in university with him.
My source told me the WRU’s new chair was a good tennis player in his younger days, with an interest in other racquet sports. But no interest in rugby; and Collier-Keywood never mentioned Wales, despite knowing that my source is 100% Welsh.
Strange that, for a man with a Welsh mam.
Let’s be clear. These are political appointments.
After creating what was reported by a loyal media as “turmoil” in our sporting bodies the ‘Welsh Government’, with the help of certain individuals ‘on the inside’, was able to engineer a situation that saw people parachuted in who are dependent on ‘Welsh Government’ patronage.
In the case of the WRU influence can be exerted because there are two outstanding loans on the Millennium Stadium (October 2020 and March 2022) with “The Welsh Ministers of the Welsh Government“. So it can be claimed that the appointees are simply there to safeguard the public interest.
This is the model alluded to earlier with housing associations. “We lend you money and to safeguard our investment we’ll have a big say in the running of your organisation“. Tony Soprano would immediately understand that model.
But is it ethical to use public assets to exercise political control, and promote a political agenda lacking public support?
It’s less clear how Corruption Bay got its claws into the Welsh FA.
But the important point is that both the Football Association of Wales and The Welsh Rugby Union are very high profile organisations. Many Welsh people can be influenced by them. Controlling them therefore becomes politically desirable.
Not least because either or both might go ‘off-message’. With fans supporting the national football team singing Yma o Hyd some people were getting worried.
Talking of using our sporting associations to influence public opinion, I wonder what Billy Meredith or John Charles would have made of what you see below, from last Saturday’s Pride parade in Cardiff?
Incredible welcome from everyone @PrideCymru march for @FAWales showcasing that football is for everyone!
The tweet was put out by Jason Webber, who is – and you’d never have guessed! – ‘Senior Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Integrity Manager at the Football Association of Wales’. If he’s the senior manager, then there must be lesser mortals doing similar work.
Yeah, that’ll help us qualify for Euros and World Cups.
My worry is that, “Football is for everyone” means that full-grown men pretending to be women will be allowed to play with and against young girls. And of course, they must also be allowed to share facilities.
Because on matters like this the ‘Welsh Government’ takes orders from Stonewall.
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What we see at the WRU and FAW are not isolated examples of political interference. For I’ve detected a growing trend of such ‘appointments’. One I wrote about earlier this year involved the then Brecon Beacons National Park Authority (BBNPA).
These appointments were justified as being done to promote inclusivity and diversity. Woman of colour, disabled man . . .
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We then had a contrived and very public debate over the change of name to Bannau Brycheiniog. Which served to draw attention away from the fact that what had really changed was that Labour had now taken full control of the BBNPA.
So, on one level, these manoeuvrings increase the ‘Welsh Government’s control over public and other bodies. And then, given what I explained in my previous blog piece, it also gives easier access to pressure groups, whose diktats the clown show in the Bay will dress up as its own policies.
But there’s also a third element that becomes obvious the more we look at these appointments.
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THOSE WHO WOULD BE KINGS
The rash of appointments being made in Wales obviously extends the influence of the ‘Welsh Government’, for the Swamp is the immediate and obvious beneficiary; and then there are the pressure groups, but it doesn’t end there.
The appointments are also being made in order to implement ESG. And if those letters mean nothing to you, let me explain that they stand for Environmental and Social Governance.
Who could object to such desirable ambitions? Er, me. The awkward bugger at the back.
Because as with so much else produced by the WEF, you have to poke around behind the words to see what they really mean. Read the panel below, from the WEF website I’ve just linked to, and then I’ll explain it.
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” . . . social justice protests have drawn attention to gaps in diversity, equity, and inclusion; and the impacts of climate change and the importance of environmental sustainability are becoming harder, if not impossible, to ignore.”
“Social justice protests” is a euphemism for the riots that caused death and destruction in so many US cities following the death of George Floyd during a botched police arrest.
And then we get “climate change” and and “environmental sustainability“, straight out of the climate alarmists’ handbook.
Which ties in neatly with Dr Carol Bell of the FAW working for Blackrock.
And it explains Alison Thorne of the WRU delivering “social change through dance“. (Did youse ever in yer natural read such sententious bollocks!)
The terpsichoreans seeking to deliver this social change can be found – in case you’re minded to join! – at Dance House, which is in the Millennium Stadium.
Where else!
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SUMMING UP
The self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ is taking control, through appointees, and by other means, such as funding, of as many organisations as it possibly can.
Which means that a political party gaining roughly one fifth of the available votes will soon exert a stranglehold on Welsh life. With Drakeford and his sorry troupe of inadequates just puppets operated by pressure groups and Globalists lacking any mandate at all.
For betraying Wales in this way the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ will get a pat on the head from Uncle Claus in Davos. And then everybody’s happy – ‘Welsh Government’, pressure groups, and World Economic Forum.
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?
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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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’.
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?
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.
‘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.
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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This post is about the findings from surveys commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru. The project was entitled, ‘Widening Engagement’.
These reports, or certainly one of them, prompted old Shippo at Llais y Sais to give it something close to the, ‘We Are At War With Germany’ treatment. (Available here in pdf format.)
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Front page lead continued on inside page, completed with a full page of grovelling from the white supremacist running-dogs of the patriarchal imperialist-colonialist system.
The story travelled. Not only did the Daily Telegraph pick it up, but also, from that source, Andy Ngo, in Portland, Oregon, scourge of Antifa.
“At the end of June 2020 Arts Council of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales advertised a tender to undertake a series of in-depth research conversations. Our aim was to widen engagement with communities we consistently fail to engage in our work. We received 34 submissions and after a detailed selection process and interviews we decided to appoint three organizations to undertake three very different studies.”
The reports from the three successful tenders have been submitted and are now available online. They are from: Re:cognition, Richie Turner Associates, and the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union.
So let’s look at them in that order.
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RE:COGNITION
The first problem I have with these people is the name. Let me explain.
There is a company Re:Cognition, with qualified medical people involved in specialist mental health services. And an annual turnover in excess of £10m. But this was not the company employed by Arts Council of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru.
For as the report tells us, on the very first page, its authors are Jon Luxton and Lu Thomas, two Labour Party stalwarts from Penarth. (Where Luxton was once mayor.) And wouldn’t you know it – Lu Thomas has appeared on this blog! In ‘Plaid Cymru’s enemy within‘ (scroll down a bit).
Lu Thomas is big in Pride Cymru, and something of a trans fanatic, believing that ‘women with penises’ are being persecuted. Everywhere. By everybody.
Here’s her Linkedin profile. Where you’ll see that she claims to be a director of a company called Cognition.
Image: Mark Lewis. This appeared in a WalesOnline report in July 2018. Click to open in separate tab.
The ‘Cognition’ name was also used by Luxton and Thomas in Cognition Associates. Which produced a website where the latest ‘News’ is from July 2013. Cognition Associates was never registered with Companies House.
And now there’s Re:cognition Wales. Or rather, there’s a website. Note that Thomas and Luxton use a lower case ‘c’, whereas the ‘real’ company spells it ‘Re:Cognition’. But again, this Luxton-Thomas company is not registered with Companies House.
One Lu Thomas company that was registered with Companies House was Pitch Consult Ltd. Incorporated July 15, 2019. Struck off January 5, 2021. No accounts were ever filed.
What I found interesting about Pitch was that the other two directors were Mitchell Theaker and Pearleen Sangha, who you may remember from their appearances on this blog. They were Labour councillors in Swansea; part of the student intake needed to keep up the bruvverly numbers.
Jon Luxton has also been rubbing shoulders with celebrities lately. For listed among the directors in Sound Progression Ltd, along with Luxton, we find Cian Ciaran, of Super Furry Animals, and late of YesCymru. This company was Incorporated June 10, 2019.
Given Luxton’s record its time can not be long.
A glimpse of what Thomas and Luxton do is given in this snippet from the NHS. They work for the Labour Party, in its various forms: ‘Welsh Government’, Cardiff Council, etc.
They also work for bodies reliant on ‘Welsh Government’ funding. Reminiscent of the jobs found for the nephews of made men.
To understand how it operates imagine a phone call from Corruption Bay or City Hall: ‘Oh, hello, Lu, love, how’s it going . . . listen, we want you to do one of your surveys, yeah, here are the findings we want from you’.
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And this is why no ‘survey’ conducted by Thomas and Luxton should be given any credence. They are just Labour Party apparatchiks.
The worry should be that these beneficiaries of Labour cronyism get so much work. Work paid for by the public purse. It’s naked corruption.
But it also explains why they were one of the 3 out of 34 applicants chosen by the Arts Council and the Museum to do the ‘research’.
Page 10 of the Thomas and Luxton report tells us (rather clumsily): ‘To note: only one respondent namechecked the Eisteddfod indicating poor reach into this community of mainly English speakers. this lack of Welsh Language art and culture was also demonstrated in the responses to all other relevant questions.’
I wonder if this ‘finding’ will be used in future by the ‘Welsh Government’ to deny or reduce funding to Welsh language organisations, events, and projects, or in other ways be used to undermine the language?
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The quote above, from page 12 of the report, about sums up what Thomas and Luxton have to say – ‘Do what our friends in the Welsh Government tell you’.
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RICHIE TURNER ASSOCIATES
Whoever these are, they compiled, ‘A research report looking at the reasons why D/deaf, disabled, learning disabled and neurodiverse people do not attend arts events or visit National Museums’ Wales or attend very infrequently’.
While that may have been the ostensible reason for recruiting Richie Turner, his Linkedin profile makes his political leanings very clear. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a colourful Linkedin header.
Or one less relevant to Wales.
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Richie Turner is of course another Corruption Bay insider. His jobs and appointments listed on Linkedin suggest someone with strong Labour Party connections. For no one in Wales without Labour Party connections could dream of a CV like that.
So what does the Richie Turner Associates report have to say? Though before you read it, I should say that Richie Turner Associates is not a company or a partnership, just an ad hoc group of his friends and, well, associates.
Richie lives in Hay-on-Wye, which is handy for the books, and the festival.
Those who helped him compile his report, also live in the south east. In fact they all seem to live in Cardiff and Gwent. One of them, Lyndy Cooke, is a former director of the Hay Festival. Nice.
Though the report tells us (page 4): ‘Our research engaged with people across all regions of Wales.’
Possibly. But how well do Richie Turner and his gang know these far-flung ‘regions’?
It might also be asked how well Turner knows his associates. For the woman named throughout the report as ‘Mary Allen’ is surely Mary Allan.
There’s little to take issue with in the Richie Turner Associates report. It’s just a litany of complaints followed by a few recommendations. And concluding with some comic book-style illustrations!
Flicking through it a few things caught my jaundiced eye.
This, for example (page 27): “Arty farty type messaging on advertising, such as Gothic and trendy typefaces also make it hard to read from a few feet away in a wheelchair”.
Who could argue with that?
Whereas I found this a little confusing (page 30): “Some places like museums are too big, with too many people. I need less people to be able to go”.
We obviously can’t have empty museums. Museums that attract no visitors will be closed.
All in all, this contribution from Richie Turner Associates may be regarded as the bland filling between two very unappetising slices of bread.
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THE WELSH ARTS ANTI-RACIST UNION (WAARU)
It’s difficult to know what to make of this one. For a start – what or who is the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union?
I found a Twitter account. I think we can assume that it was started in the period of hysteria following the killing of George Floyd, some 5,000 miles away.
In fact, the WAARU Twitter account started up a week or so after the Arts Council and Amgueddfa Cymru decided to launch their ‘research conversations’ at the end of June 2020. What an amazing coincidence!
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The first tweet was on July 6, 2020, followed by a flurry of tweets that ended on August 11. There was nothing then until a retweet on Oct 20. A further retweet in November, another in December. Then nothing until April 18 and 19. A final retweet on May 14, attacking Israel, and nothing since.
Why hasn’t the Twitter account rejoiced in WAARU’s participation in this exercise? I find this very odd.
We can reasonably assume that the WAARU leans politically to the left, maybe quite far to the left.
There is no website for the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. Just a Gmail address on the Twitter account. So I wrote on Friday morning. I’m still waiting for a reply.
It suggests that the Welsh language is racist and the Arts Council and Amgueddfa Cymru are both run by white supremacists.
There are ten references in the report to these organisations being ‘white-led’. But in a country that is 95% or more white does the writer expect them to be non-white-led? That would make them grotesquely unrepresentative.
There are also references to Black Lives Matter, reminding us that the report is very much of the post-Floyd era. Summed up perhaps with this paragraph from page 24: ‘One participant asked how Amgueddfa Cymru could see itself as combating poverty, when it’s very purpose involved displaying objects from countries whose wealth had been plundered through colonialism.’
No, that is not its ‘very purpose’. What a stupid and insulting thing to say! If Amgueddfa Cymru has a ‘very purpose’ then it’s to celebrate the history of Wales.
But that is not atypical. For a number of times this report comes across as either ignorant of recent Welsh history, or misinformed, or just mischievous. Here’s another example, from page 18.
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There is no ‘Welsh Census’, it’s organised by the Office for National Statistics in London. Not so long ago you couldn’t even describe yourself as Welsh on the census form. That’s why I was one of those protesting before the 2001 census.
But the writer of the WAARU report presents the census as more evidence of structural racism within Wales!
Having mentioned the writer, I ask again – who is it? Because there is no name mentioned anywhere in the report. It is anonymous. So why was it accepted? Or to go back to the beginning, why was the WAARU commissioned to write a report?
Are we to believe that out of the 31 rejected applicants there wasn’t one better qualified!
On page 36 we read this passage: ‘Marginalised artists and art workers should receive support to learn different languages, in addition to Welsh. This additional support is necessary because Welsh language policies in current applications can exclude Black and non-Black people of colour’.
What ‘different languages’ are needed in Wales?
The writer is clearly ignorant of the fact that many ‘Black and non-Black people of colour’ were brought up speaking Welsh, or else have learnt to speak Welsh.
And while there’s solidarity implied with the term ‘Black and non-Black people of colour’ this solidarity is not consistent. Because the Twitter account suggests that non-Black People of Colour might be little better than Uncle Toms.
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Finally, most reports end with findings and recommendations. The report from the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union ends with ‘Our List of Demands’. It sounds almost threatening. Like a kidnappers’ note.
Whoever wrote this report may have legitimate grievances, but they’ve gone about airing those grievances in entirely the wrong way.
The national institutions of Wales exist to reflect and to serve the culture, history, identity, and people of Wales. The Welsh language is central to Welsh identity, and for many centuries served as the identifier of Welshness.
Maybe the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ can also remember that.
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UPDATE 24.08.2021: Checking the metadata of the three published reports gives Jon Luxton as the author of the Re:cognition report, which is what I would expect. Him or Lu Thomas.
But listed as author for the other two reports are Arts Council of Wales employees.
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There are a number of possible explanations for this. Maybe the original documents were converted from MS Word to PDF format at the Arts Council. If so, why? Those chosen to produce these reports were well paid to do so. Was this work at the Arts council deducted from their fees?
Or is there another explanation?
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CONCLUSION
The first report we looked at was produced by Labour Party insiders who carry out research for their comrades. The ‘findings’ are often used to justify legislation and other measures that the ‘Welsh Government’ has already decided on.
I wonder if the ‘Welsh Government’ would pay me to do a survey into the third sector, or housing associations, or tourism . . . or even the ‘Welsh Government’?
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The second report told us nothing really except that the Arts Council and Amgueddfa Cymru are doing a bad job when it comes to catering for those with disabilities.
Though much of the feedback was about venues, over which the Arts Council may have little or no control. And as for ’empty museums’ . . .
But that will be overlooked because the report gives the ‘Welsh Government’ another stick with which to beat both organisations.
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The third report is just a chip-on-the-shoulder, ‘where’s our grants?’ diatribe. To give it credit for being anything more would be to legitimise the anti-Welsh prejudice running through the report.
Whoever commissioned this report must have known in advance the kind of submission they could expect from the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. Which means that the WAARU was paid to produce exactly that kind of report.
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Let’s remind ourselves who heads the two organisations involved.
Phillip George of the Arts Council was previously,‘ Creative Director of the award-winning production company Green Bay Media which specialised in high-end documentary projects for broadcasters in Wales’.
He left Green Bay on March 31, 2016, when he was appointed to the Arts Council. At that time, Green Bay had 14 outstanding charges (loans, etc) with S4C and Finance Wales.
Phillip George re-joined Green Bay on June 30, 2017, as secretary, though I suppose he could have been acting as a director.
On January 14, 2019, a Declaration of Solvency was made and a liquidator appointed. Green Bay was finally struck off May 19, 2020. With George still listed as secretary.
Were those debts really cleared, or were they written off, or was some other arrangement agreed? And why was Phillip George allowed to re-join Green Bay while serving as Chair of the Arts Council?
I don’t know Phillip George’s politics, but here he is with former Labour MP Kim Howells. Does he share Howells’ attitudes to the Welsh language, devolution / independence?
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Prior to taking up the post Amgueddfa Cymru chief Roger Lewis was CEO at that most BritNat and Unionist of organisations, the Welsh Rugby Union.
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It’s the third report, from the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union that’s getting the media attention, and quite rightly so, so let’s give it a few final thoughts.
Although the report ostensibly deals with the Arts Council and Amgueddfa Cymru, by questioning the role of the Welsh language and perceptions of Welsh identity its impact goes well beyond those two institutions.
Doing it from an ethnic minority perspective is clever, because attacking Welsh identity from a BritNat position invariably generates resistance. It’s much smarter to use the race angle, and maybe get some liberals and socialists onside.
Which makes it difficult to pin down the origin of this survey. Because if someone is trying to introduce Critical Race Theory into Welsh public life, for the disruptive effect it guarantees, then that source could be Marxist left or Unionist right.
Whatever the source, if enough people can be persuaded that defending Welshness is ‘racist’, then this will impact negatively on the growing interest in Welsh independence. The ‘racist’ slander can even be used against those demanding action on holiday homes.
Where does it end?
Maybe campaigning against Tryweryn was ‘racist’. And perhaps it’s ‘racism’ that sustains our national sporting teams. Why not just merge with England and join in singing GSTQ at Wembley and Twickers?
No one should be publicly funded to question a nation’s existence. Both bodies must explain why they chose the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union.
We, who’ve paid for it, are entitled to know who wrote the WAARU report.
Finally, perhaps the real lesson from this fiasco is that Wales must have independence. Not just from England, but also from Cardiff Bay.
This began as an update to the piece I put out a few days ago. But it grew too big. So I had to admit that the only way to do it properly was as a follow-up, a second part. Which explains what you’re about to read.
