Plaid Cymru Abandons Welsh Farmers

Last Saturday I put out a post on X drawing attention to something that had been said at the Plaid Cymru conference in Swansea. This piece follows on from that.

‘IT’S THEM FARMERS WOT DONE IT!’

Speaking from the main stage Alex Phillips of the WWF wanted the audience to believe that when it comes to polluting our rivers, then, “it’s beyond reasonable doubt” that it’s the fault of farmers. And only farmers.

But he’s wrong. And he knows he’s wrong. Where to start?

First, the biggest polluter of our watercourses is, in its various operations, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Which leads a charmed life due its ‘closeness’ to Natural Resources Wales, an agency of the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’.

This ‘closeness’ guarantees Dŵr Cymru an easy ride from the planet savers.

Second, ‘agriculture’, is a rather vague, all-encompassing, term. Possibly misleading.

Maybe he’s referring to the chicken farmers of Herefordshire, or arable farmers using chicken manure fertiliser, both polluting the Wye before it runs back into Wales.

But he can’t be referring to Welsh livestock farmers, certainly not those of the uplands.

And I’m damn sure his sweeping statement didn’t include the hippies and good lifers growing non-binary carrots on Powys county council land, often at the expense of Welsh families.

So what exactly was he talking about?

Some background might help. Alex was a ‘Special Advisor’ in the Assembly for 3 years from October 2011. After that, he was in PR for another 3 years. Then he joined the WWF in July 2017.

Here’s Alex, just a few months ago, celebrating legislation he helped push through.

To understand a bit more about the WWF, and its essentially anti-humanity agenda, go to this piece I put out last November and scroll down the section, ‘Darker Past’. Where you’ll read:

The founder and first president of the WWF was Prince Bernhardt, consort to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Though he himself was German and had, like many other princelings, joined the Nazi Party in 1933.

Here’s a recent example from the Congo basin of how the WWF operates. Making clear that it prioritises ‘Nature’ over people. Indigenous populations seem to be inconvenient, if not expendable.

Maybe we Welsh fall into that category.

The WWF was launched in 1961 by a body few have heard of, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Which modestly says of itself:

Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

I don’t think you’re supposed to know about the IUCN; it keeps a low profile, but it’s very influential.

The IUCN European Regional Office plays a key role in addressing these challenges by shaping EU policies, promoting effective regulation, and supporting conservation efforts at both national and regional levels.

The WWF was founded by Nazis, who believed in eugenics, and drastically reducing the global population by removing the “useless eaters“. A term adopted by the WEF. Whose founder, Klaus Schwab, is the son of an enthusiastic member of the Herrenvolk.

The WWF today serves a new elite; and pushes an apocalyptic message (scapegoats provided), in order to get politicians to enact legislation, and provide funding, to serve the ambitions of their Globalist masters.

HE’S RIGHT‘, SAYS PLAID CANDIDATE NERYS EVANS

The sentiments of the short speech I’ve linked to above were echoed by Nerys Evans, Plaid Cymru’s No 2 candidate for Sir Gaerfyrddin / Carmarthenshire.

Nerys has an interesting past. One that sums up devolutionary Wales perfectly. A denizen of Corruption Bay, its outliers and appurtenances; one of the in-crowd.

Let’s take a look at Nerys Evans’ Linkedin page.

Her career begins with a few years as ‘Political Officer’ (which means what, exactly?) at the Notional Assembly; then four years as an Assembly Member; followed by a job with a charity, and ‘Welsh Government’ appointments; next was Ofcom, overlapping with ACT and Portal Training (both publicly funded); then seven and a half years as non-executive director with the Farmers Union of Wales (FUW); with a job for going on 14 years with lobbyists Deryn Consulting, now Cavendish Cymru.

Every job there is either the result of political influence, or it’s one seeking to exert political influence. Either way, it makes a mockery of you going to put your cross on a bit of paper every so often.

While at Ofcom and Deryn simultaneously, there was some, er, embarrassment, when it became known that Evans, and another Deryn director advising Ofcom, Huw Roberts (Labour), had steered contracts the way of Deryn.

For this and other reasons the reputation of Labour-Plaid joint venture Deryn took a bit of a knock, and it was taken over earlier this year. But those running Deryn were kept on because their political and other contacts in Corruption Bay and beyond were priceless to the new owners.

Given the association with FUW her contribution to the WWF propaganda show was something to behold. According to Nerys Evans, ninety per cent of the pollution in our rivers is the fault of them wicked farmers.

Later, she tried to go back on what she’d said by protesting she’d meant 90% of pollution on the Wye. Which is also untrue.

But remember, this is a Plaid Cymru Senedd candidate, hoping to represent a constituency next May with many farmers; and this nonsense was spouted, not at a fringe meeting, but on the main stage at the Plaid Cymru conference.

Why did the WWF get such favoured treatment from Plaid Cymru?

Perhaps because Gareth Clubb is CEO of WWF Cymru, and he used to be CEO of Plaid Cymru. Now he also runs Community Energy Cymru (backed of course by the ‘Welsh Government’).

His Linkedin profile tells you everything.

The secretary of Community Energy Cymru is someone named Leanne Wood.

Another example of Labour-Plaid collaboration. Perhaps confirmed by this gem I found in the Articles of Association. But what the hell does it mean?

Another who was on the same stage in Swansea was Shea Buckland-Jones. From a very similar background to the others we’ve looked at. His Linkedin profile spells it out.

Have you noticed it yet? – every one of them has a background in PR and politics, charities and pressure groups.

Another issue here is that Cavendish-Deryn has the WWF as a client. This is kept secret because Wales – unlike England, Scotland, and just about everywhere else – has no register of lobbyists.

So Nerys Evans, Plaid Cymru candidate, director of Cavendish, was on stage at the Plaid Cymru conference with one of her company’s clients putting the boot into the farmers she so recently claimed to represent.

And all the while pretending she was only concerned with water quality.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Farmers are under pressure as perhaps never before, and it can all be traced back to acceptance by politicians and others of the ‘climate crisis’ scam, and measures such as Net Zero and carbon capture that we’re told are needed to combat this contrived threat.

With more of the same in the pipeline.

But it’s not just farmers suffering. We are all paying for this insanity; through higher electricity bills, brainwashing us into changing our diets, even telling us how we’re allowed to heat our homes.

Which is why the farmers’ fight is your fight.

And many farmers feel increasingly isolated. Some have lost faith in their unions, the National Farmers Union and the Farmers Union of Wales.

They also feel abandoned by political parties, which is understandable. For as we’ve seen, there’s no real difference between Plaid Cymru and Labour. On anything.

Those who control the Uniparty know Labour is dead in the water and something else is needed to challenge Reform. In Wales, that ‘something’ is Plaid Cymru. Talk of independence would frighten off many voters, so Plaid’s leaders were told to drop it.

Another feature that needs highlighting is the funding of the charities and pressure groups that leftist politicians use to justify the legislation they implement. A system we now see being exposed in the USA.

Over here, for example, funding from the National Lottery, especially the Heritage Lottery Fund, is openly political. But the same can be said for major private funders.

One of which would be the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. Which has clearly been captured. Just look at some the recipients here of big sums. Check out all the grants.

‘FFCC’ is the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. One of a regiment of such bodies, and very influential in Wales. Regularly quoted by the FFCC is Derek Walker, Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. Just check his CV.

Also mentioned on the FFCC website is Hywel Morgan, who appears regularly on the ‘Welsh Government’ website Farming Connect.

Another faux ‘farmers’ organisation, with too much influence on the ‘Welsh Government’, and of course funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, is the Nature Friendly Farming Network.

If you think of Welsh farming as a sinking ship (as some wish), then there are voices in the murk calling out: “You can swim to the lifeboat“. Farming Connect is such a ‘lifeboat’, and some, like Hywel Morgan, have clambered aboard.

Because it’s not outright confrontation, there’s also stick and carrot. Which is an attempt to set farmers against each other.

ALL IS NOT LOST

It’s easy to get downhearted when you look at the forces ranged against us.

At the top we have the UN, with its Agenda 2030, supported by other supranational bodies like the WEF, EU (Commission); together, these fund and / or influence a host of international charities and pressure groups that then convey the instructions to governments at national and sub-national level.

And because they’re charities, and ‘cuddly’ groups like WWF, it makes the message more acceptable, and disguises its origin.

It’s all top down, without a democratic mandate. Because no electorate was ever consulted about Net Zero except in the vaguest and most misleading terms: ‘You don’t want to destroy the planet, do you?

And it’s the same with open borders: ‘Will you allow thousands of women and children to be butchered in ———, or should we welcome refugees?’

In both cases, utterly dishonest. Because the results people have to live with bear no relation to the deceits that sought popular support.

And profiting behind the scenes are the Globalist corporations such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and oligarchs like increasingly megalomaniac Bill Gates.

You know how powerful and influential these men are when you recall that a year ago, Gates and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink were over giving Starmer his orders.

Larry Fink even sat in on a cabinet meeting!

The Uniparties the Globalists control in various countries perform like a chorus, and when anyone sings a different tune they’re vilified by the mainstream media.

Here in Wales, the Uniparty is made up of Labour, Plaid Cymru, Conservatives (until they fall apart), Greens and Lib Dems. It doesn’t matter which of these parties you vote for, you’ll be voting for the Globalist agenda.

But thankfully, there is an alternative. Councillor Gwyn Wigley Evans, party leader, has this to say: “Gwlad understands the need for farmers to produce food and keep the countryside a safe and thriving community, join us“.

I can extend that invitation to anyone fed up with lies from Uniparty politicians and insults from Globalist shills. You deserve better.

So check out the new Gwlad manifesto today. We don’t promise you the Earth because it’s not ours to give, or to take. But we do promise to fight for the earth and the soil that belongs to you, and to nobody else.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Back to the Land!

After taking August off (and enjoying the break) I’m back to report on an event planned for later this month.

In fact, I enjoyed the break so much, and found writing this such hard going, that it might be a while before the next piece appears.

HOW IT BEGAN

A couple of weeks ago someone sent me news of a gathering to be held in the Community Centre, Knighton, on September 17, when many of us will be nursing hangovers from celebrating Glyndŵr’s Day.

Knighton Community Centre has been mentioned on this blog before, after falling into the clutches of white settler Labour activists; who now wage war on local farmers, welcome refugees to an area where they themselves are not universally welcome, and generally play latter-day left liberal colonialists.

For no longer is it Bible and bullets, now it’s saving us through a combination of uplifting sermons from the Rev Monbiot and those organic thingeys they eat at Felicity’s aerobic knife-throwing class.

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But I digress.

To expose the dishonesty behind this event I shall go through those named as being involved before concluding with . . . well, my conclusions. What else?

CAMPAIGN FOR THE PROTECTION OF RURAL WALES (CPRW)

Let’s start with some background. The CPRW has been pootling along for almost a century as a charity, but now things are changing. Most significantly, with the formation of a company in late May this year.

Though I’m assured there’s no significance to this other than the trustees ensuring they are not personally bankrupted by legal action against the CPRW.

Which also means that, at the moment, the CPRW has two charities with the same name registered with the Charity Commission. One will soon be closed.

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Previous CPRW presidents have included politician Megan Lloyd George and BBC broadcaster Wynford Vaughan Thomas. Clough Williams Ellis, of Portmeirion fame, was also deeply involved for many years as both chairman and president.

The current president of the CPRW is TV celeb Jules Hudson, who is believed to live in Herefordshire. Possibly Hertfordshire. But definitely not Wales. He’s famous for programmes like Escape to the Country and Countryfile.

In his favour, he has a Labrador called Iolo.

The chair of the Brecon & Radnor branch is Jonathan Halsey Luke Colchester, who has recently moved to Clyro. From where he runs his company, Courtenay Advisers Ltd.

I am informed by a very reliable source that the Brecon & Radnor branch of the CPRW is particularly hostile towards farmers.

That being so, why is the local CPRW branch organising a bash with the title ‘Welsh Food & Farming’? The answer to that question will become clear as you read on.

There are farmers, and there are farmers.

THE FERTILE CRESCENT

One of the CPRW’s recent recruits is associated with another new outfit, Friends of the Upper Wye (FUW), registered with the Charity Commission in March this year. (Though I’m assured she’s an admirable and well-intentioned lady.)

This will no doubt complement the Wye & Usk Foundation (WUF) which is about a lot more than just angling. The WUF is based in Talgarth, close to Coleg Soros.

Over the years the WUF has received millions in funding from or via the ‘Welsh Government’, much of it handed over by an official whose attitude to money might have been compared by my dear mamgu to that of an inebriated seafarer.

An amazing episode, with apparently no oversight whatsoever. It is even suggested that some favoured bodies didn’t even need to make an application – it was a case of, “Would you like some more money?”

OK, so it’s not exactly a crescent, but did I ever claim to be an artist? Click to open enlarged in separate tab

For the Fertile Crescent formed by the Usk and the Wye is something of a magnet for those seeking to save us benighted natives from ourselves. And for others with even less noble intent.

There’s yet another organisation, formed last year, in the Welsh Rivers Union (WRU), based on the Usk at Llanvihangel Gobion. This claims to be a collective of ‘citizen-funded’ community groups defending our rivers.

If it gets airborne it will be made up of the usual ‘community groups’ composed of people who were living somewhere else not so long ago.

Though as yet, it’s not registered as either a company or a charity. It may be just a website, and a Twitter account.

Oh, I almost forgot Afonydd Cymru Cyf, also based in Talgarth. Where income from government grants leapt like a returning salmon from £10,000 in 2018 to £894,704 in 2020.

Afonydd Cymru’s chair is Viscount Christopher Mills, of Kensington, who served as regional director of the Environment Agency in Wales (before the creation of Natural Resources Wales). Among the trustees is Joe Pimblett, CEO of the Severn Rivers Trust, based in Worcestershire.

When it comes to the Fertile Crescent even the Blesséd Monbiot has made a film, Rivercide (what a wit!), in which one of the supporting cast was Lesley Griffiths (sans Gary), and she reminded us that no matter what the facts may say, it’s always farmers wot we must blame.

St George thought the culprits were chickens, which appear at number 2, after humans, in his forthcoming opus, ‘Species To Be Exterminated If We Are To Save The Planet’. (Chickens have apparently deposed sheep in Monbiot’s demonography.)

Why this obsession with the Usk and the Wye? Is it because they’re close to Bristol? Or is their cross-border nature, demanding ‘co-operation’, the attraction?

Of course, there are rivers within Wales in far worse condition than the Wye and the Usk, so why are these ignored? Three reasons, perhaps.

First, these other rivers run through more populated areas with few stretches of open country attractive to those in search of a rural idyll, or intent on ‘habitat restoration’ (aka ‘rewilding’).

Second, while there may be areas meeting the criteria further west, there the Welsh language would be a consideration. And after the resistance to Summit to Sea the land-grabbers are wary of getting another bloody nose.

Third, they are entirely within Wales.

Never lose sight of the fact that for many, water quality is a stalking-horse, used against farmers so as to free up their land for other purposes. And the ‘Welsh Government’ wholeheartedly supports this agenda.

UPDATE: Here’s a recent example of pollution on the Wye that clearly has nothing to do with farmers.

LOCAL GROWERS AND FARMERS

A source informs me that the ‘local grower’ is the bloke from the organic food shop in Knighton, where you buy the knobbly carrots and the misshapen parsnips. Ach y fi!

(Though there may be others attending, more deserving of the billing.)

As for the ‘local farmers’, it seems these will both come from Herefordshire, which may be fairly local to Knighton (/Tref y Clawdd) but are not, unless we want to be irredentist about this, Welsh.

More pragmatically, whether we view Herefordshire as the ‘lost lands’ or not, the area will not be affected by any legislation or initiatives emanating from Corruption Bay.

Even so, to help give a fuller flavour of the event, I’ll tell you who they are.

One is ‘RegenBen’, of Townsend Farm, near Ross-on-Wye. Which, as the name suggests, is on the River Wye. Ben is a director of the Oxford Farming Conference, an organisation I’m told represents big landowners, yeoman farmers and the like.

(I was also told that a famous Welsh farmer went there to speak a few years ago, and has never felt more out of place.)

The makeup of the Oxford Farming Conference probably explains why a rival was set up in 2010 called the Oxford Real Farming Conference.

From what I can see the older body caters for those with inherited land while the upstart is more attractive for Greens looking to get their hands on someone else’s land. I wouldn’t be comfortable with either.

The other ‘local farmer’ is from ‘Wild by Nature’, of Lower House farm, just over the border from Llanthoney, close to Llanveynoe. (These corrupted spellings!)

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Looking at a map I see that both of them are close to the border, but neither is particularly ‘local’ to Knighton. The first is roughly 45 miles away, the second almost 50.

I suspect that both have been invited because they are well-connected, and have diversified into ‘artisanal’ food produce and other activities.

The Rhug Estate model, if you like.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve stopped many times at the Rhug restaurant and shop, and like some urchin from a Dickens novel gazed at goodies I can’t afford.

Rhug Estate shop. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Though ‘farm shop’ really is a misnomer. It suggests Mrs Evans in a shed at the bottom of the farm drive selling goods cheaper by cutting out the middle man. In reality it’s a place where the price of everything is marked up.

Few locals can afford to shop there. That’s why the Rhug ‘farm shop’ is on the A5.

Even so, I’m sure a farm shop can be a nice little earner, and so I wasn’t surprised to learn that ‘Wild by Nature’ already has one. While RegenBen’s website tells us: ‘Our plans are to share the fruits of our labour by opening a farm shop’.

There are of course some excellent farm shops in Wales. One is Bargoed Farm / The Moody Cow, near Aberaeron, run by the former owners of Gilestone Farm, and visited very recently by Conservative Senedd leader Andrew R T Davies MS.

But how many farm shops can Wales support?

SOIL ASSOCIATION

The Soil Association, headquartered in Bristol, is another of those English organisations that recognises the existence of Scotland, but not Wales. We, presumably, are part of England.

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The Soil Association is registered as both a company and a charity. And with an annual income of over £23m it is no shoestring outfit. Of course the Scottish Soil Association is registered separately in Scotland.

In addition, there is The Soil Association Land Trust ‘established to acquire and maintain farmland sustainably’. Which might be worth bearing in mind, and could explain The Soil Association’s interest in Wales, a country I’m sure it will quickly recognise if the ‘Welsh Government’ offers to buy it a farm.

NATURE FRIENDLY FARMING NETWORK

The company of that name was launched in July 2018. Though there has been quite a turnover of directors in the four years since then. Of the eight original directors, five have left, including two who were obviously Welsh.

NFFN has an impressive website, telling us of a Welsh Steering Group, with two group members serving as directors.

Here’s a page giving some responses from the Welsh Steering Group to the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme that emerged in July.

Hilary Kehoe, the Chair, mentions the ‘changing climate’. Rhys Evans thinks the ‘devil will be in the detail’. But Hywel Morgan was ecstatic. I was not surprised to learn that Hywel is involved with the ‘Welsh Government’s Farming Connect scheme.

The Nature Friendly Farming Network is looking to hire a £29,000 a year Communications Officer. Having recently recruited a Farmer Engagement Officer on the same salary. But who’s funding these posts?

For the financial situation is not impressive. I appreciate that it’s a company limited by guarantee, but even so, I would have expected to see more than £69 in the kitty. Which is what the latest accounts (to y/e 30.06.2021) show.

Yes, NFFN has assets of £199,317, but this sum is exceeded by money owed to creditors.

On the ‘Nature Means Business‘ page we read: ‘Right now, farm businesses are facing a multitude of challenges: climate change, unpredictable weather patterns, changes to future farm payment schemes and adjusting to new consumer demands’.

To prioritise ‘climate change’ (when it’s becoming clear that climate change has been – at the very least – exaggerated), and then virtually repeat it with ‘unpredictable weather patterns’, before mentioning farm payments, is revealing.

With no mention at all of the threat from mandatory afforestation, farms being bought for greenwashing, and restrictions applied by politicians and administrations that are blatantly anti-farming.

These priorities are evident throughout the website. The image below is from the Fund Us page. And again it’s ‘climate in crisis’, ‘wildlife declining’, ‘habitats being lost’.

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The Nature Friendly Farming Network seems to be an environmental organisation that recruits farmers. There’s nothing wrong with that, farmers care deeply about the environment that provides livelihoods for them and their families.

But it’s a question of priorities. The first of which has to be supporting farmers – who will then look after the environment

STUMP UP FOR TREES

This organisation has appeared on this blog a number of times, so I won’t dwell on it again.

Based in Abergavenny Stump up for Trees is a greenwash outfit. It’s registered as a charity, and one of the three trustees is Richard James Roderick, who farms next to Gilestone.

By ‘greenwashing’ I mean that SUFT ‘saves the planet’ by planting trees in order for companies to offset their perceived ‘carbon footprint’, which allows them to go on putting out carbon. Its major partner seems to be Utility Warehouse.

Nonsense predicated on there being a ‘climate emergency’ (there isn’t); carbon being damaging to the environment (it’s not); and replacing agricultural land with sterile, monoculture pine forests making sense (it doesn’t).

Even so, Stump up for Trees seems to be well-regarded in Corruption Bay among the connoisseurs, practitioners and dispensers of flim-flam, bullshit, propaganda and other means of deceiving poor old Dai Public.

ABATTOIR SECTOR GROUP

This is yet another organisation based in Bristol and set up as recently as 2020. Though it’s not registered as either a company or a charity because it’s an offshoot of the Sustainable Food Trust.

The ABS is dedicated to keeping smaller, rural abattoirs open, and what carnivore (bares fangs!) could argue with that?

Parent body, the Sustainable Food Trust, is an international organisation with a wider remit to support ‘sustainable farming’. By which I assume that it seeks to avoid the wrath of the swivel-eyed with a modified kind of farming that’s less damaging to Mother Earth.

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It is, as I say, based in Bristol, and I see no mention of Wales on the website. The only Welsh connection I can find is founder Patrick Holden, an organic dairy farmer from the Lampeter area.

Holder is a founder of Sustainable Food Trust and current CEO. He was a former director of the Soil Association.

OUR FOOD

You may need to pay attention with this one. For just as with the previous section we have an organisation operating under a different label. There’s even a third label.

Let’s start with the Our Food website. Scroll down and you’ll read: A project of the Conservation Farming Trust Company Number 10823532′. Which the Companies House website confirms as the number for Conservation Farming Trust.

On the Our Food website we also read: ‘This website was built with support from Monmouthshire County Council, the Brecon Beacons National Park, and the Welsh Government. It is part of a process to build a new campaign in the region to secure 1200 acres for regenerative horticulture for local markets.’

The Our Food 1200 website confirms that the figure refers to the acreage the new organisation hopes to be given. At the time of writing 24 acres had been donated. Though, in fairness, Our Food 1200 was only launched in January. It’s registered as a Community Benefit Company.

Let’s go back to the parent organisation, Conservation Farming Trust. The registered office address is in London, and the three directors live in Ireland (1) and England (2). So no Welsh connections there.

And yet, it seems the only funding Our Food gets is from Welsh sources.

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This funding is presumably justified because Our Food 1200 is looking for Welsh land to be donated. This looks very much like One Planet Developments rebranded. (I’m sure I read a reference to ‘OPD’ on the website.)

As with OPDs, those we’ll find on these over-sized allotments are unlikely to be local. So why are we funding it?

And is it a safe bet? I ask because a driving force behind it all seems to be Duncan Mark Fisher, who serves as both secretary and a member of Our Food 1200. Companies House suggests Fisher’s business record is ‘patchy’, to say the least.

The Conservation Farming Trust may have no connection with Wales, but Our Land, and certainly Our Land 1200, are trying to put down roots. Maybe they’re hoping someone will buy them a farm!

More planet-savers promoting climate hysteria, with the ‘Welsh Government’ and others happy to go along with this exploitative, colonialist nonsense.

LANDWORKERS’ ALLIANCE

What you’ve read thus far has been unadulterated, unsubstantiated and unconvincing bullshit (however sincere some of those promoting it), but this final section outdoes it all. For we are now with the horny-handed sons of toil, straight out of The Grapes of Wrath.

Or those who would imagine themselves so to be.

For I now direct your attention to the Landworkers’ Alliance. Scroll down and you’ll see that this crew aligns itself with the International Peasants Movement. (I’m afraid I let my membership lapse.)

When you join you get given a pitchfork and the addresses of local landlords. (Bastards!)

When Dominic and Eugenie re-imagine themselves as peasants you know you’ve gone so far down the rabbit-hole that you run the risk of being shot by an Australian farmer.

And doesn’t it count as cultural appropriation?

The Landworkers’ Alliance was formed in 2015, and has its registered address in Dorset. Here’s the Companies House entry.

The ‘accounts’ – as with all the outfits I’ve dealt with here – are vague, being little more than unaudited statements. Though I can tell you that the latest such statement (y/e 30.09.2020) gives assets at £151,507 (previous year £66,523). But with no indication of where the money came from.

It would also appear to be a Woke organisation. For which we should be thankful, because trans peasants are never far from my thoughts. (I hope it’s the same for you!)

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The directors are resident in England and Scotland with the exceptions of Katharine Anne McEvoy and Gerald Davies Miles, both residents of Pembrokeshire. The former seems to live in Newport, with the latter to be found at Caerhys Organic Community Agriculture (COCA), near St David’s.

I feel a tear well in old Jac’s eye, for we may finally have found a genuine Welsh farmer! Though whether he’ll be in Knighton is another matter.

Looking briefly at the ‘accounts’ for COCA, or rather, the ‘statement of financial position’, we see a paltry £3,154 for y/e 31.03.2022.

I suspect that COCA is a virtue-signalling side-line, with Caerhys farm itself run as a commercial – if organic – agricultural business, including bed & breakfast.

But the irony.

We have sought for centuries to escape being peasants, in our own country; now we face an invasion of land-hungry Green-Left-Woke carrot-growing poseurs wanting to play at being peasants . . . in our country.

CONCLUSION

The sad truth is that farmers have been badly treated under devolution. And it’s happened in identifiable stages.

It began in 1999 with Labour taking control of the new Assembly. A Labour Party in which too many saw farmers as landowners, and therefore capitalists. Though anyone who can lump together a struggling Welsh hill farmer and the Duke of Westminster really does have a problem.

This encouraged others to join in. I’m thinking now of the environmentalists, the planet savers. Though all too often it was their own interests, and the interests of their cronies, that were being served, not those of the planet.

Chief among them was Jane Davidson, Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing from 2007 to 2011. When her Labour Party was in coalition with Plaid Cymru.

Davidson, a wealthy and privately-educated Englishwoman, was determined to impose her will on us, for the benefit of others like her, no matter what the cost. To us.

Thanks to Davidson we saw TAN 6 in July 2010, the ‘Hippies’ Charter’, which allows English drop-outs to build what they like, where they like.

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In January 2014, Alun Davies, the Minister for Natural Resources and Food, announced that 15% of CAP funding would in future be transferred from Pillar One (i.e. farmers) to Pillar 2 (rural development projects).

‘Rural Development Projects’ means those self-serving ‘community’ schemes dreamed up by Jane Davidson’s friends that benefit no one else.

Wales was further blessed, just a year later, with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Here you see the Act’s objectives, with my comments.

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This legislation is another example of the Left window dressing a looted store (after inciting the looters with talk of ‘victimhood’ and ensuring the police didn’t get involved.)

Bullshit dreamed up to please enviroshysters and pressure groups. Which has achieved nothing for us Welsh. But it allows the ‘Welsh Government’ to say: ‘We were the first government in the world . . . ‘.

And that, for our politicians, is all that really matters.

More recently, we saw Lesley Griffiths (and Gary), introduce legislation to curb pollution of Welsh waterways. This problem is localised, and there are many culprits, including water companies.

But Lesley (and Gary) pretended to believe that the problem is national, and that farmers are solely to blame.

If you believe that traditional farming methods contribute to anthropogenic global warming, then the sensible approach would have been to sit down with farmers and work out a better way forward.

Instead, and from the outset, Labour politicians chose vilification, lies, confrontation, punishment.

An approach that becomes inconsistent, even sinister, when we think again about Knighton on the 17th. Where ‘Welsh Government’ representatives will be rubbing shoulders with lots of . . . well, farmers.

Clearly, the ‘Welsh Government’ has no problem with farmers as such, so perhaps the problem is only with Welsh farmers.

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2022