Tag: John C Bayliss

Odds And Sods (Nothing Personal) 18.06.2013

On By JacIn Cardiff3 Comments

Here’s a merry and eclectic miscellany of tit-bits and tales that have caught my attention over the past week or so. Or at least, it’s those I deemed worthy of comment.

NOT CRICKET, SURELY? (THOUGH PERHAPS STILL VERY ENGLISH)

A strange story from the Nicholas Insurance Pembrokeshire Cricket League (Division Six), not a source of news I’ve used before, nor one I ever thought I would use, but there you are. It seems that in a game last Saturday Crymych Seconds were batting against Lamphey Seconds when the Crymych batsmen walked off complaining they’d been abused by Lamphey players for speaking Welsh. An official complaint has been made to the League by the Crymych club.

Now obviously, Crymych is in north, or ‘Welsh’, Pembrokeshire, and Lamphey is south of the ‘Landsker’ (near Pembroke town); but even so, in this day and age who objects to people speaking Welsh to each other? And what would have happened if Lamphey had been playing a touring side from, say, Pakistan? Would they have subjected the Pakistani batsmen to the same treatment? If they had, I guarantee that it would have made more ripples than this story, now being quickly and quietly brushed under the carpet.

IEUAN WYN JONES STANDS DOWN . . .

. . . about twenty years too late. All Plaid Cymru needs now is a leader . . . and policies . . . and politicians someone other than a political anorak might recognise . . . and a sense of purpose . . . and a commitment to the Welsh people (rather than to ‘Wales’) . . . and a clear-out of the dead-wood . . . and an acceptance that Wales cannot save the planet by being covered in wind turbines . . . and an abandonment of (lower) sixth form socialism by joining the real world . . .

SWANSEA, MY SWANSEA

Clay OuterThe Llansamlet by-election campaign is up and running. Hitting the straps early is Robert – ‘call me “Bob”‘ – Clay, public school educated Trotskyite, former MP, political adventurer, friend of George ‘Indefatigability’ Galloway and now refugee. I was sent a copy of what I assume will be his main election leaflet, which I am pleased to share with you here. (Click to enlarge.) There are a number of observations worth making.

1/ Despite it being a large, and very wordy, example of its kind, Comrade Bob could find no room for a single word of Welsh other than the ‘Llafur’ in the party logo.

Clay Inside2/ He admits that he and his Austrian wife – elected to the council last year – are political migrants, having come to Wales after hearing Rhodri Morgan talk of “clear red water”. So there you are, if anyone was still in doubt, you now know who to blame for carpetbaggers, Third Sector grant-grabbers and other undesirables coming over the border.

3/ He identifies a number of specific problems within the ward that he will tackle: listed as Rhyd-y-Felin, Lon Enfys, Trewen Road, Parc yr Helig . . . none of which he knows, nor can pronounce, for he only moved to Llansamlet last August. Though one issue he does not mention is the one he’s built his local reputation on – the fight against another Traveller site in Llansamlet. Why is he so reticent?

Staying in Swansea, but moving on to other carpetbagger Labour councillors who’ve been in Swansea no longer than the Clays, no one seems to know whether Pearleen Sangha is still in California. Her Twitter account @PearleenSangha has fallen silent, no tweet since June 13. Has she been ordered by the party to stay schtum, in the same way her equally embarrassing colleague, John Boy Bayliss, @JohnCBayliss, was ordered by the party to close his Twitter account? The third member of the student-councillor trio has also been making a fool of himself, again.Theaker 1

Gin drinker Mitchell Theaker, @mitchelltheaker, got in the habit of signing off council cabinet e-mails as ‘Mitchy’. (Yes, he’s in the cabinet, representing children and young people. I suspect he identifies better with the former.) Anyway, the suspicion is that the party took a dim view of this lack of protocol, coming Theaker 2on top of other little, um, annoyances. Does “signing off” mean he doesn’t write them? What exactly does he do for his £36,000 a year?

And come to think of it, ‘Mitchy’ has also gone very quiet on Twitter. Nothing since this gem last Saturday. (Left.) Maybe he hasn’t sobered up yet! Or perhaps some avuncular figure among the bruvvers has taken young Theaker Theakeraside and, in an arm-around- the-shoulder sort of way, whispered to him, Shut up! you embarrassing little sod!

UPDATE JULY 1, 2013: It appears that young ‘Mitchy’ is unable or unwilling to take advice. His latest indiscretion seems to have been tweeting nonsense while supposedly attending a cabinet meeting. (Right. Click to enlarge.)

STARSTRUCK LABOUR

The Welsh Labour Government is splashing out £50m to “attract world class scientists and their teams to Wales“. The first of these ‘stars’ has now pitched up at Cardiff University; he is Prof. Yves Barde, from Switzerland. Now you know me, I have the utmost faith in the judgement of our Welsh Government, but I can’t help wondering . . .

1/ How many jobs for Welsh people will this massive expenditure create?

2/ Haven’t we been down the road of publicity-grabbing, ‘prestige projects’ before, and don’t they invariably fail?

3/ Isn’t this scheme just disguised extra funding for Cardiff university? For how many of these academic ‘stars’ will other universities see?

4/ No disrespect to the Prof, but the high point of his career seems to have been in 1989, “with the discovery of a gene which creates a protein – brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) – which is involved in number of brain processes including memory”. Mightn’t he, and others who’ll follow, be rather like southern hemisphere rugby players, coming here towards the end of their careers to boost their retirement pots?

LABOUR SEEING THE LIGHT, AT LAST?

I was struck by something said by Edwina Hart (and it’s not often I can say that!). Watch the BBC clip I’ve linked to and see if you get the same impression – that Labour now admits pouring money into the Third Sector was a waste of EU funding. She rejects in future having “hundreds and hundreds of partners” with “pet projects”, she tallks of more involvement from the private sector, and gives other signals that a corner may have been turned.

I’d like to think I’ve helped in my small way to bring about this change of direction. What I’m certain of is that the EU funders have made it crystal clear to Edwina Hart and others in Cardiff that they’ve screwed up twice, and they’d better get it right with the third and final dollop of Structural Funds.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall when Edwina and the rest have to explain to their grant-grabbing hangers-on that the days of wine and roses are over, forever. That the EU funding will in future be used for alleviating Welsh poverty, not for subsidising the unemployable of the loony left to capitalise on that poverty.

Swansea Labour Party 6: Incest And Sybaritism

On By JacIn Labour Party20 Comments

Peraleen Sangha TwitterMore news from the soap opera that is Swansea Labour Party. You will recall that in earlier episodes we met those bright young things Pearleen Sangha (@PearleenSangha), “Big fan of Ray-Ban eyewear”; Mitchell Theaker (@mitchelltheaker), “Labourite and gin lover”; and John Bayliss (@JohnCBayliss), “LGBT campaigner”; all students at Swansea University when they were elected to the council last May. (Click to enlarge images.) These three are devoted to, in order of precedence: 1/ preening and promoting themselves, 2/ helping the good times roll, 3/ student politics, 4/ the internal bitching of the Labour Party (at a ‘national’ level), 5/ assorted rightMitchell Theaker Twitter-on causes, 6/ enriching the shysters of the wind con racket.

Although, nominally, Swansea councillors, these three don’t give a lot of thought to the city and its people. Swansea council merely gives them a platform from which to giggle and gossip with slightly more credibility about what really interests them . . . be that gin, Gay ‘rights’, bars and restaurants, the next yoof commissar of the Labour Party, feminism, name-dropping, recipies, etc., etc. That’s the thing you notice when you look over their tweets, there are virtually no references to the city they’re supposed to be serving, unless it can be used to promote one of their pJohn Bayliss Twitteret causes. Other than that, it’s all about enjoying themselves, but only with ‘their people’, as I’ll explain. Something else I should have mentioned is that they have opinions, on everything. They know nothing, but give out their views on everything. Take Pearleen Sangha, an American, living in Wales, but she has taken sides in the Scottish independence debate. No prizes for guessing . . .

They even use a cash-strapped city’s money to promote those ’causes’, and possibly to promote their friends. For it is rumoured that the soon to be announced GLBT Officer for the city will be a ‘friend’ of John Bayliss. Now of course, our three – and, it must be said, there are others – will argue that this new post is ‘serving Swansea’ . . . leaving us to wonder how the city could possibly have managed in the past without such an appoinSangha caketee.

And they do get about! ThiSangha Scots year alone, Pearleen Sangha has been home to California for a wedSangha weddingding, and was also in Leicester for the conference of Labour Yoof. A busy girl, Pearleen. Too busy to be a councillor on Saturdays, as one of her constituents found out recently – “Do you know what day it is?” the impudent constituent was told. I mean, bothering your globe-trotting councillor as she prepares for dinner with friends! Mitchell Theaker has been to India for a few weeks, empathising and meeting “bigwigs”. While John Bayliss has been home in Sussex for a while helping Labour candidates in the elections there next month. Of course it can be argued that while Bayliss is away the Uplands ward is in the delicate and fragrant hands of comrade Pearleen . . . unless of course anybody wants help on a Saturday. (The large photo of Councillor Bayliss below is taken from his blog. Quite franBayliss Eatbournekly, it’s toe-curlingly embarrassing. He looks like ‘the podgy one’ from a boy band, feigning modesty as Bayliss Ricardohe’s hailed by the total membership of his fan club.)

More thoughtful – cynical? (do I attract cynics?) – readers may at this point be asking themselves, ‘California, Leicester, India, Sussex . . . what the fuck has this got to do with running Swansea?’ A question more and more people are asking, even within the Labour Party.

Another thing you’ll notice by going through their tweets is that the Labour Party isn’t just the political party they belong to, it’s eBayliss Uplandsverything they are. They live on Planet Labour. One tweeter from the Labour Yoof shindig claimed that one third of all the people he knew were at the conference! That’s sad, and worrying. For here we have an organisation that has virtually cut itself off from the rest of society and whose members only mix with ‘their own’. This is New Labour’s gift to us all – a class of professional politicians for whom the talents of being glib and photogenic, being astute at networking and ruthless in back-stabbing, count for more than unBayliss Argentinaderstanding life outside the bubble. As it must, for they know nothing of life outside the bubble. It’s odious; almLuke Youngost incestuous.

Yet these middle-class kids are helping run Swansea. They puff and posture as the defenders of the downtrodden, people they would never mix with socially, but to whom they must pander because that’s where their votes come from. And it’s all feigned, all hypocrisy. All done to justify their hedonistic, gossipy lifestyles which, let me remind you, are being paid for by the citizens of Swansea.

GethingBefore we can achieve indepenTheaker Indiadence from England we must gain independence from a Labour Party that becomes less and less Welsh every year. As the Party fills up with careerists and chancers from outside Wales, and the disconnect between the party apparatus and its captive vote increases year on year, there is no longer any reason for Welsh people to vote Labour. If only we could offer them a viable alternative!

 

UPDATE 24.04.13: Someone phoned me to ask, ‘Why are they allowed to get away with it?’, meaning why aren’t the lotus eaters being reined in. The leader of the Labour group on Swansea council, and the council itself, is a scouser named David Phillips. I’m using a photo here that I’ve run across more than once. It shows him, steely-eyed, looking into the distance for foes to crush and challenges to overcome. Mussolini liked to be photographed in a similar pose. (I wonder how Phillips would look in a helmet?)David Phillips

You will remember that I wrote about him a while ago, when it was realised he wasn’t allowed to use the letters after his name that he’d been using to impress people since washing up in Swansea. Around the same time I heard that he’d turned up for the funeral of a former Labour councillor in a long, flapping, white trench coat, looking like an extra from a film noir. (Everyone else was in black.) And it should go without saying that his wife, Sybil Crouch, is also on the council, and a cabinet member.

So it would be pointless hoping for intervention from that quarter. Phillips is just another poseur. Swansea Labour Party is full of them now, all trying desperately to impress each other. They can’t pronounce Cwmrhydyceirw or Waunarlwydd, they know nothing of the history of Swansea, they don’t understand its people, but none of that matters. All that matters is that Labour now controls Swansea again. My city reduced to a ‘scalp’.This is ‘Welsh’ Labour 2013.