There’s no avoiding it, and I won’t bother trying. So here’s my quick preview of the general election, and my reason for voting for Reform. Not because I support Reform but because I reject the rest.
Don’t worry, I still want independence, but the immediate priority is confronting Globalism. Because an ‘independent’ Wales run from the shadows, a virtue-signalling basket-case begging to join the EU, isn’t worth having.
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THE TITANIC DECKCHAIRS ANALOGY, AGAIN
In this election I see the political parties as passengers on the Titanic. With the doomed ship heading towards the iceberg they squabble over the arrangement of the deckchairs.
Yet when you listen to the ‘deckchair’ parties arguing you realise that, from the wider perspective, it will make hardly any difference which of them wins. Because they all ignore what’s really important – the looming ‘iceberg’.
Thankfully, there may be one party that realises where the focus should lie, and that party is Reform. Which is why I shall be voting for Reform on July 4.
I know nothing of my local candidate, I don’t need to. It doesn’t matter to me if he / she has horns, chronic flatulence, and supports Cardiff City.
That’s because party politics is dead. It is now the Globalists, their media, and their uniparty, versus the rest of us – Them against us, the people.
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. . . BUT FEW NOTED ITS PASSING
You can see that politics is dead when the uniparty stresses minor differences that are barely perceptible; exploiting understandings and interpretations that no longer apply.
Done to hide the fact that both major parties have signed up to The Agenda. Labour because it’s swallowed the nonsense about a ‘climate crisis’, transgenderism, and believes the New World Order offers something better for humanity; the Tories because they’ve always been relaxed about corporate greed.
You must reject this deception that relies on long gone ideological differences.
The struggle now is for the Western way of life, national sovereignty, the family, individual freedom, traditional values, biology, and simple common sense.
Confronting us we have political placemen, a bought media, a corrupted education system, assorted activists, all working to weaken the West so that a select group of wealthy, powerful, and increasingly desperate people can take control.
They’re getting desperate because they can no longer hide. Too many people know about them. Which means more people wanting to thwart their plans.
For as the recent elections in the EU told us, the ‘iceberg’ is increasingly visible to ordinary people in many countries. This explains traditional parties suffering electoral defeats, and the ‘far-right’ doing so well.
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For while the Globalists have effectively merged ‘mainstream’ parties, giving them supporters on what are still perceived as left and right, real opposition can only come from where we have always found those who believe in the values I earlier listed.
Which explains why we’re vilified by the Globalist media and other shills as ‘far-right’, or whatever.
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TO FOCUS ON WALES
This election could not have come at a worse time for Labour and Plaid Cymru. Let me explain why.
Since the advent of devolution in 1999, which put the party in control, Labour has taken credit for anything that went right (very little), while blaming ‘London’ / Tories for everything that went wrong (a lot). But you can only get away with this, even in Wales, for so long.
Now, after 25 years of devolution, perhaps even the stupidest among us realise that the NHS is devolved, so is education. Similarly with the cancellation of desperately-needed infrastructure projects, including improvements to the M4.
With no hope of the kakistocracy pinning the 20mph disaster on anybody else.
While in the pipeline is road charging, emission charges, an intensification of the war on farmers, and even more draconian measures serving net zero.
These are all Globalist policies being pushed harder in Wales because with no successes to claim in areas that matter, the ‘Welsh Government’ thinks that leading the world in ‘saving’ a planet in no danger is the only way they’re going to get a pat on the head from anybody.
In fact, we’re entering a phase of blatant deception where we’re told to forget crass and selfish material considerations like food on the table, clothes for the kids, and dignity for your elderly parents; we should focus instead on the joys derived from greater diversity, increased toad populations, and just being nice.
This is what ‘Well-being‘ is really about. Making you accept declining standards across the board in favour of airy-fairy concepts that mean fuck all. And you’re being preached at by people who will go without nothing.
In the reality from which those clowns have long drifted it means Wales going down the tubes faster than anywhere else.
As if 25 years of failure wasn’t enough to damage their chances, Labour in Wales also has to worry about Vaughan Gething, their new leader. To begin with, he’s embroiled in a donations scandal; then two of his Senedd Members stayed away and caused him to lose a vote of no confidence, yet he refuses to stand down.
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I think that on July 4 Labour in Wales will be judged on their record in Wales to a greater extent than at any election in the past. This can not be good for them.
When we turn to Plaid Cymru, Labour’s erstwhile partners in Corruption Bay, we see another party for whom the timing of this general election has not been kind.
Plaid recently disengaged itself from Labour with the 2026 Senedd elections in mind. Done to give them enough time to go in for some gentle sparring that might persuade mug punters they are now in opposition.
Then came the announcement of the general election.
Which means that in most people’s minds Plaid is still Labour’s little helper, and only slightly less culpable for the horrors of recent years.
Looking at the bigger picture, it’s difficult to see Plaid now as anything more than a ship that long ago slipped its moorings; since when it’s been drifting aimlessly, at the mercy of wind and tide.
Plaid Cymru no longer believes in Wales and what makes Wales Welsh. It has swapped it all for an artisanal tote bag stuffed with green-woke-left lunacies. And people can see it.
In my area, UK elections saw farmers’ fields filled with Plaid Cymru placards. But not this time round. But never mind, Wil is being replaced with Sarah and others of her ilk who see Plaid as an acceptable left wing party.
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Looking at LSR in that picture it’s as if Leanne Wood never went away. Then again, maybe performative ‘socialism’ appeals to you; but it’s always left me cold.
There was a time when the media used to gleefully report ‘extremists’ in Plaid Cymru, I knew some of them. (I was one of them!) Their ‘crime’ was being over-zealous in their patriotism. Plaid now attracts real extremists who don’t give a toss about Wales.
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WHY WE MUST STAND UP NOW
So, yes, I suppose me voting Reform could be seen as a protest vote, but it goes way beyond a traditional protest vote. Because the West is at a crossroads, and we know where we’re heading unless we change course – because they’ve told us!
Into a cold, dark future, with few jobs; our movements restricted and our behaviour and speech monitored. It’s already out there with hate speech laws. And with the EU implementing online censorship.
Let me explain how ‘hate speech’ works. It begins with politicians allowing themselves to be led by groups pushing idiocies like women having penises and men being able to give birth.
Everybody knows these suggestions are biological nonsense. But the left promotes them because it’s a way of kicking back at ‘bourgeois values’, ‘the patriarchy’, even (somehow!) ‘white supremacy’.
Liberals go along with it wanting to be ‘progressive’.
And so laws are passed stating biological absurdities. These laws, of themselves, could be dismissed as a bit of harmless fun. But it never ends there. For this legislation empowers freaks, perverts, sexual predators . . . and of course, political activists.
And gives governments the power to silence any criticism.
Which was always the intention.
Your little daughter comes home traumatised because some bloke flashed his penis at her in the swimming pool changing room. You go to the police, complain – and are told, ‘But that’s a female penis, and you’re under arrest for hate speech.’
We have now arrived at a point where stating the truth has become a crime. This is the totalitarians’ nirvana. The shades of Hitler and Stalin are comparing erections!
And censorship doesn’t come alone. It is accompanied by wrecking economies in pursuit of net zero. Arguing that white people are evil, and making them pay for it. And of course, the illegal immigration of unvetted, mainly young males who have no intention of working or integrating.
For to achieve the objective of destabilising the West the Globalists have recruited environmentalists, Islamists, sexual deviants and God knows what else. And of course, the quisling left, seeking to succeed from within where the Soviet Union failed from without.
Nor must we forget Rupert and Clarissa of the dilettante left; who’ll throw paint, stop traffic, and topple statues to prove how frightfully poor and oppressed they are. Yah.
Goes down well with other spoilt brats at Glasto.
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Either we troop silently into this dystopian future, or we say no. And at the moment the best way to say no is to vote for political parties the Globalists do not control. Parties like Marine le Pen’s RN (didn’t they do well!), Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the AfD in Germany, and others across Europe.
For that’s one thing I’ve noticed in recent years – a growing appreciation of what it means to be European by people who increasingly reject the EU. There’s a powerful message there if you think about it.
Finally, let’s not forget Donald Trump. When he’s elected US President in November he must not make the mistake he made first time round by taking into his camp too many who were not really on his side.
He must be ruthless from Day One in rooting out the enemies of the USA and the West. A great start would be keeping his promise to release all the JFK assassination files. As a first step in undoing the power of the deep state that has caused so much misery in the USA and around the world.
For one of the Globalists’ greatest successes has been to manoeuvre leftists and liberals, who so revered JFK, onto the same side as those who killed him.
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A MESSAGE TO LABOUR VOTERS
I’m going to end with a message addressed to Labour voters in Blaengwynfi and Bonymaen, the people from whom I am sprung, and with whom I identify.
The Labour party has always taken your vote for granted, knowing you’d chop your arm off rather than vote Conservative. But times have changed; there’s no difference between them any more. They march to the same drum.
Labour and Conservatives will make you and your communities poorer, both will close Port Talbot steelworks, and both will implement the half-arsed ideas of those attending the Hay Festival rather than listen to the needs of working class people.
Are you going to carry on being the mug who votes Labour?
Though this is not quite the piece I originally promised. Perhaps I’ll return to the sweat lodges and other joys in the ‘Bhutan of Wales’ (“ample parking space“) at some later date.
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ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN NEWTS
What you have to understand about modern environmentalism, certainly in Wales, is that it’s no longer fleece-jacketed innocents protecting red squirrels or tagging birds. It is now intensely political. And financially lucrative.
Lucrative, as long as it promotes a certain interpretation of the world.
Which means, in practice, that environmentalists work for BlackRock and other Globalist corporations; Bill ‘jabs and bugs’ Gates, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
And even if environmentalists don’t realise it, if they’re just useful idiots, then that don’t matter none – what matters is that they do what they do.
And as I suggested, they’re getting paid handsomely for it. Here’s one example.
Total income for the North Wales Wildlife Trust went up from £1.83m in 2019 to £6.17 in 2023, a rise of 237%. But in the same period, funding from the ‘Welsh Government’ rose from £309,480 to £3,760,000, an increase of 1,115%.
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Similar increases in the funding awarded to the other wildlife trusts, river groups, etc, correlates with the ramping up of the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.
Which meant blaming just about anybody other than Dŵr Cymru for river pollution.
But environmentalists weren’t confining themselves to persecuting cows, and matters scatological; for they were also pushing the anti-car agenda.
Which is fine with me because that’s the raison d’être of environmental groups. But if opposing M4 improvements was ‘Welsh Government’ policy, and if ‘WG’ funded various groups to support that policy, then that puts a different complexion on things.
. . . of climate change and transport specialists . . . led by Dr Lynn Sloman MBE, a transport consultant based in Wales
Despite what the ‘Welsh Government’ wanted us to believe, Dr Lynn Sloman is not ‘based in Wales’; she actually lives in London, where she sits on the Transport for London board, headed by mayor Sadiq Ulez Khan.
Dr Lynn Sloman is, predictably, an anti-car fanatic. And her connection to Wales is a holiday home in Cwm Einion, near Machynlleth. To which she presumably drives.
This impacted on just about every part of the country, and deprived communities of long-awaited and much-needed, improvements. It meant no third crossing of the Menai, no by-pass for Llanbedr, no by-pass for Llandeilo.
This was of course welcomed by both Rachel Sharp, CEO of the officially defunct Wildlife Trusts Wales; and her trusty henchman, Tim Birch, of Extinction Rebellion.
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But there is one issue on which environmentalists could and should be more vocal.
We’ll ignore the energy consumed in manufacturing wind turbines, then the damage inflicted on the environment from shipping them to Wales; widening roads, felling trees, ripping out hedgerows to get them to where they’re being erected.
Instead’ let’s just focus on the damage they cause in situ.
Wind turbines destroy peat deposits. They scar hillsides with access roads and cable trenches. Hundreds of pylons are needed to carry whatever’s generated in Wales to England. The turbine blades kill birds, bats, and all manner of insects.
There are also threats to human health from infrasound, flicker, and worrying over your home losing value due to its proximity to wind turbines.
Yet environmentalists have little to say against wind turbines. That’s because their ‘outrage’ can be switched off and on, as required, by their paymasters.
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THE ‘FOXES’ OF ENVIRONMENTALISM
We often hear: “Farming occupies around 90% of ‘our’ land“, as if it’s something undesirable. It’s very revealing, because those who say it seem genuinely horrified that so much of Wales belongs to hairy-arsed peasants.
Smith wants us to believe that carbon emissions increase global temperatures when there is no link whatsoever, and then rather gives away his own position on SFS with:
Trees, it seems, aren’t welcomed by most farmers.
This obsession with the amount of land held by farmers seems most prevalent among politicians and middle class enviro-grifters who want Welsh farmers off the land they and their corporate patrons covet.
I say that because no one has ever come up to me in a pub, a supermarket, or any other setting, grabbed me by the lapels and shouted – ‘Isn’t it bloody awful that farmers have so much land?‘
Nobody. Honestly!
Which makes the support these spivs get from Welsh socialists difficult to fathom. And the support from those socialists who claim they want independence inexplicable.
Maybe this subservience can be explained by something I read last week. Someone was trying to explain why Sinn Féin has fallen for the Globalist-Woke-Left agenda.
It is a lingering symptom of what Ruairi Ó Bradaigh once described as the intellectual inferiority complex of men who were absurdly impressed by . . . bourgeois lefties and liberals
I think that explains a lot of what we see in Wales. Particularly the insecure among us, who can’t resist a bit of flannel delivered in a ‘posh’ accent.
What Ruairi Ó Bradaigh called “the intellectual inferiority complex” always lurks in the Welsh psyche. And it seems to afflict socialists far more than it affects those of us on the political right.
Welsh leftists like to see themselves as ‘progressive’, which then leaves them wide open to the blandishments of the ‘foxes’ Malcom X refers to here.
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ANOTHER WARNING FROM IRELAND
For some time now I’ve been paying closer than usual attention to what’s happening in Ireland, where the uniparty establishment has enthusiastically signed up to the Globalist agenda. It’s been open borders, war on farmers, and recently, referendums that hoped to re-define ‘woman’ and ‘family’.
Both referendums were heavily defeated, and the preening, obnoxious, Varadkar soon resigned in the hope of salvaging his political reputation. Because he fears there’s worse to come as the people wake up and fight back. (Something the Irish have a history of doing.)
And the Irish people are waking up. And demanding a return to sanity. Especially when they look around and see who’s been allowed into their country.
For example, one result of open borders is that Ireland is now home to the Nigerian Black Axe gang, which deals in romance fraud and other online scams . . . with a little murder, drugs, and extortion thrown in.
Just think about that. A Nigerian criminal network is actually based in Ireland. How the hell was that allowed to happen!
Well, as I just mentioned, because the Irish establishment obeys the Globalist agenda; and no-questions-asked immigration is an integral part of that agenda, designed to destabilise western societies.
You can read the whole publication if you like. But the opening paragraph tells you exactly where it’s going. And how it’s justified.
Moving Together . . . a commitment in the Climate Action Plan 2023 . . . to alleviate the impacts of car-dependency
Someone wants the Irish countryside emptied, and populations concentrated in urban areas. Now why should that be?
Wales may be heading in the same direction.
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THE WAR ON CARS II
I say Wales may be headed in the same direction because the ‘pieces’ are already there, we just need to put them together to see the bigger picture.
Earlier, we looked at environmentalists, funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ or Globalist corporations and multi-billionaires, campaigning against road improvements. In league with former Sustrans rep in Wales, and until so very recently, chauffeur-driven deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters.
Waters welcomed the halt on new road projects with:
As the review points out the by-pass that was demanded to relieve congestion often ends up leading to extra traffic, which in time brings further demands for extra lanes, wider junctions and more roads
I suggest Waters and his allies stand for half an hour one summer day outside the ‘Vic’ in Llanbedr, or The Castle in Llandeilo; and ponder that the shit forming a skin on their iced tea, the shit they’re also inhaling, comes from cars and trucks in low gear inching their way through a traffic bottleneck.
And it could all be avoided with a by-pass!
Consider this, gentle reader: the man who can ignore the effects of low-gear emissions on human health – because it serves an element of the agenda – can also impose 20mph speed limits, guaranteed to increase harmful emissions – and justify doing so on health and safety grounds!
But when it can be used to serve another element of the agenda, air quality becomes a consideration. For Nicola Lund recently reminded us in ‘Message to Wales – On Yer Bike (Part 2)‘ that the Welsh Government’ is also promising air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’.
So where might that lead, if we put it all together?
Let’s look at Llanbedr, which sits on the A496 running up the coast from Barmouth. A busy road, and especially so in summer.
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With a combination of no by-pass, air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’ in place, many people will give Llanbedr a miss. Some will avoid that road altogether.
The map above shows that travellers between north and south will still have the A470, so the effects would be very localised, but highly damaging.
There’s one more consideration I want to throw into the mix.
I have consistently supported plans to raise council tax on holiday homes and restrict numbers of holiday lets*. And I will continue to back measures that might return domestic properties to local use. But . . .
Tourism means cars, camper vans, etc. So are the measures against the worst excesses of tourism doing the right thing for the wrong reason? By which I mean, are they just part of the bigger plan to restrict car journeys in Wales?
Putting it all together – and irrespective of the stated justifications – what we’ve just looked at will result in a seriously damaged rural economy, and could lead to the kind of rural clearances being talked about in Ireland and elsewhere.
Yet it all fits perfectly with the Globalist-environmentalist agenda.
Where the Globalists have been clever is in funding or promoting ideas, organisations and lobbies that push their agenda.
This includes, cyclists, vegans, renewable energy enthusiasts, advocates of CBDC, and of course, environmentalists.
We’re at a stage now where an environmental lobby is waging war on our farmers while also working with the ‘Welsh Government’ to make us view cars as something evil, to be done away with.
But what’s being targeted is not really farmers and motorists, but land and freedoms. Which is the essence of the Globalists’ power grab – promote fear and confusion in order to seize assets, restrict freedoms, and exert control.
As I said earlier, ‘environmentalists’ are no longer fleece-jacketed innocents. So see them for what they really are. Who they work for. And treat them accordingly.
This piece is prompted by the ‘Welsh Government’ suggesting it wants to address the issue of lobbying. As the website puts it: “The Standards of Conduct Committee is undertaking an inquiry into lobbying and is keen to establish whether lobbying is a matter of concern to the people of Wales”.
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A disingenuously worded paragraph because the hope is that few people will even know about the exercise, fewer still will respond, and that will allow the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ to claim that lobbying is not “a matter of concern” and everything can just carry on as before.
The truth is that Wales desperately needs reform in this area, and it needs to go well beyond a simple register of lobbyists. I say this because lobbying takes a different form in Wales to most other Western countries.
What I’m going to try here is to give examples of different lobbying sectors (that would probably not regard themselves as lobbyists), while also looking at more obvious examples of lobbying.
I warn you, this is a ‘biggie’, pushing 4,000 words. But broken up into sections so you don’t have to take in the full horror of the situation all at once.
So go make a cuppa.
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THE ENVIRONMENTAL LOBBY
Since before the first elections to the then Assembly for Wales in May 1999, those looking to benefit from devolution were positioning themselves, even relocating.
For example, the RSPB, which had until then been based – very centrally for an essentially rural organisation – in Powys, decided the time had come to move its Wales regional office to Cardiff.
This had nothing to do with bird migrations, or even the rediscovery of the Lesser-spotted Splott Warbler (previously thought extinct).
No, it was all to do with access to the new decision makers.
For the RSPB and the wider environmental lobby, devolution has been like Christmas, with a constant supply of prezzies delivered by yo ho ho-ing politicians.
“At the centre of government decision making” can only mean that the WEL lobbies to influence decisions made by the ‘Welsh Government’.
But do you remember voting for the Wales Environmental Link? Do you remember being offered the chance of voting for the Wales Environmental Link? No, nor me.
As I say, the ‘Save the Planet!’ lobby was out of the blocks early on in the devolution era. Helped to a great extent by ‘insiders’. These came in two forms.
First, civil servants, often from England, always answering to London, and working to a vision of a Welsh countryside without farming.
Second, politicians who, despite what they were elected and paid to concentrate on, always prioritised their real interest of ‘reconfiguring’ – even repopulating – rural Wales.
Inevitably, the two elements worked closely together. Never more so than when Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales* Lesley Griffiths shacked up with her civil servant adviser Gary Haggaty.
But the grande dame of the sector is Jane Davidson. “Minister for Environment and Sustainability from 2007 to 2011 where she was responsible for the Welsh Government agreeing to make sustainable development its central organising principle”, as Wikipedia tells us.
Sustainable development became the “central organising principle” of governing Wales. Let that sink in.
After leaving the Assembly in 2011 Davidson took up a post of Director of the Wales Institute for Sustainability at Trinity St David University, Lampeter.
Davidson was, supposedly, Assembly Member for Pontypridd, but she’d already bought a place down west and was more concerned with pushing through the Hippies’ Charter (One Planet legislation) than with anything happening in Ponty.
From ivory tower to organic cabbage patch Jane Davidson and those she can marshal and organise have wielded an unhealthy influence over successive administrations in Corruption Bay.
The environmental lobby is now one of the most powerful in Wales. It’s why farmers have their backs to the wall, it’s why the M4 was not improved, and why smaller projects, such as the Llanbedr by-pass, have been scrapped.
If this lobby could close Port Talbot steelworks, take away our cars, confiscate all farmland, and turn us into vegans, it would. And the ‘Welsh Government’ would pass the necessary legislation without quibbling.
As gesture politics go, few things are more damaging to the Welsh national interest than deluding yourself that you’re saving the planet while damaging Wales.
*A bizarre title that makes ‘North Wales’ sound like an overseas colony of Corruption Bay.
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THE RACE LOBBY
At it’s crudest this is little more than, ‘You Welsh are racist – give us funding’. I examined this racket not so long ago, when the so-called Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union successfully blackmailed the Wales Arts Council and the National Museum.
In brief, the Arts Council of Wales was pressured into ‘commissioning’ a report from the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. An ad hoc group capitalising on the George Floyd killing by using ‘discrimination’ as the key to future funding.
In the race lobby sector we find another grande dame, in the form of Rose Mutale Nyoni Merrill, who you can read about in the first section of this miscellany from May 2018.
Her empire is founded on Bawso, which has accumulated quite a few properties around Wales over the years. And you’ll be glad to hear that Mrs Merrill has not neglected her own property portfolio.
But that’s how it is in the ‘Welsh’ Labour Party. You work for and promote the party, and preferment and funding will be your reward. Even if it’s public money down the drain.
And the showering of goodies can extend to your loved ones, involved in other fields.
As happened with Travers Merrill, Mutale’s hubby; given the cushy number of chief executive at Rhondda Life, a ‘regeneration’ project in the Rhondda Fach. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything, by the look of it.
It 2012 it was announced that the project was in receivership. And having looked through the documents filed with Companies House I get the impression there was something akin to jiggery-pokery going on in Ferndale.
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For example, in the last accounts filed, for y/e July 31, 2012, the company is said to own freehold property valued at £1.5m. This is presumably the building you see in the image above.
The property eventually realised £295,000. Even allowing for the way liquidators dispose of such properties, that is quite a difference. But the bottom line is that the building was never worth £1.5m.
Over-valuing assets is a tactic used by many who’ve appeared on this blog over the years: money launderers, mortgage fraudsters, and other crooks.
(There is an obvious link in terms of directors between Rhondda Life and Blaenllechau Community Regeneration, which went belly-up around the same time.)
But of course, this being Wales, a ‘Welsh Government’ cock-up leads to a cover-up. It was years before the truth started coming out. Due in no small part to the persistence of Leanne Wood, a politician for whom I have the highest regard.
(Keyboard explodes!)
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THE HOMELESSNESS LOBBY
A few years back I submitted an FoI request asking about organisations in Wales “combatting homelessness”. Specifically, how many were there?
The response told me there were 48! In a country of just over 3 million people. There are probably more by now. “It’s them wicked Tories, innit”.
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But then, when you think about it, when you remember the kind of country Wales is, and the kind of lobbying I’ve described, 48 shouldn’t surprise anyone. The more the merrier. It’s only public money after all.
As with the other sectors, many of the homelessness racketeers have moved to Wales in the era of devolution. Which is bad enough, but to keep the funding flowing these people – just like their counterparts in other sectors – will import a steady stream of ‘clients’ from over the border.
It’s a form of human trafficking.
We see here the fundamental and uncomfortable truth about third sector lobbyists in Wales.
Identify or invent a ‘problem’ in order to get funding. Then, with the help of an ever-compliant media and understanding politicians, the ‘problem’ must persist – to guarantee continued funding!
Let the good times roll!
Many of those now running the dozens of homelessness organisations have worked for the Labour Party or for Plaid Cymru, others will move on to work for these parties.
Or join some other publicly-funded gravy train.
To get a taste of what I’ve written over the years on this subject try, ‘Another “homelessness” outfit!’ (16.04.2020). Or just put ‘homelessness’ into the search box on top of the sidebar to open up a library.
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THE “WOMEN WITH PENISES” LOBBY
A relatively recent arrival on the lobbying scene in Wales is the transsexual lobby. Represented by Stonewall, the former lesbian and gay organisation.
To begin with, and as you’ve probably guessed, Stonewall has its claws into the ‘Welsh Government’ for funding. The panel below shows that in the 18 months up to March 31, 2021, only the UK government gave more money to Stonewall than the boys and girls of Corruption Bay.
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But this being Wales, Stonewall has also been able to influence – if not dictate – legislation. To the extent of the ‘Welsh Government’ agreeing to what Stonewall would like to see in law rather than what the 2010 Equalities Act actually says.
As Irving Berlin put it: There May Be Trouble Ahead.
It appears that the voice of Stonewall in Wales is Lu Thomas. You’ll have noticed her name if you followed the links in the section on the race lobby. She’s a Labour insider with far too much influence in the Bay.
As I suggest, she was deeply involved, with her business partner, Jon Luxton, another Labour insider, in the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union scam.
Her Linkedin profile says she’s managing director of Final Say Wales, which seems to be a rather sad attempt to roll back Brexit. I dug this out, but I couldn’t find much more. My guess would be it’s died a natural death in the face of reality.
The other outfit mentioned on her Linkedin page is Re:cognition. An odd fish, this; not least because there’s a reputable company with a very similar name.
Lu Thomas was previously director of a company known as Cognition Training Ltd, along with Jon Luxton. This went into liquidation in December 2018 owing close on £35,000, most of it to the tax man.
The latest incarnation, Re:cognition Training CIC has only Luxton as a director. So is Lu Thomas an employee?
Whatever the answer, through political connections Re:cognition gets commissions from the ‘Welsh Government’.
For as the latest accounts tell: “We chaired and developed an LGBTQ+ strategy for Welsh Government where we managed the LGBTQ+ stakeholder group, ensuring voices from across wales (sic) was heard.”
But I bet that only certain voices were allowed to be heard.
This probably helped inform the ‘Welsh Government’s current – and possibly unlawful – position on “trans rights”. But then, when it comes to surveys, it all depends who you talk to.
What Lu Thomas and others have learned from many years of working with and influencing politicians is that if you put your mind to it you can find racism, environmental damage, transphobia, etc., etc., just about anywhere.
And then you can capitalise on your ‘find’.
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THE REFRESHINGLY HONEST AND CORRUPT COMMERCIAL LOBBY
Those we’ve looked at so far have been insiders, dealing with civil servants and politicians they know. These activist-lobbyists have, in a number of cases, previously worked for the ‘Welsh Government’, or for individual politicians.
They are invariably associated with not-for-profit organisations. Which means few jobs for anyone not linked to a particular clique of insiders, and little by way of a contribution to the wider economy beyond the increased spending power of clique members.
But we are asked to ignore this and focus instead on the incalculable benefits to society as a whole from ‘doing good’.
Though I fail to understand how a Welsh community is improved by a third sector body or a housing association importing into that community from England ex-cons, petty criminals and drug addicts.
Nor do I pretend to understand the doublespeak that gave us a policy (OPDs) designed, we were told, to reduce Wales’ carbon footprint . . . that invites into Wales people to live on previously unused land; who drive elderly diesel vehicles, keep farting animals, and cannot live without wood-burning stoves.
It’s refreshing then to be able to focus on a lobbying activity motivated by unalloyed greed and promoted through in-yer-face corruption. Though it adheres to the model herein explained in that it is facilitated using Corruption Bay insiders.
I’m referring now to the many, many companies under the Bute Energy umbrella, and their plans for at least 20 new wind farms in Wales. Shown in red print in the map below.
To understand the brazen corruption involved you’ll need a few introductions. Let us look first at Bute Energy’s ‘Welsh Advisory Board’. A totally unnecessary group formed purely to justify paying certain people for their influence with the ‘Welsh Government’.
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On the left, we see Derek Vaughan, former Labour MEP. Not known to have any knowledge of or interest in wind turbines or renewable energy of any kind.
On the right is John Uden, partner of Labour MS, Jenny Rathbone, who sits on the Senedd’s Climate Committee. His knowledge of three-arm bandits is believed to be on a par with Vaughan’s.
The other two may be there to act as a distraction. The jury’s out on them. Though I’m told ‘John Cwmbetws’ already has a bloody big turbine on his land.
Indeed, a beneficiary of the planned Moelfre site is vice-chair of the Board, Harry Fetherstonhaugh.
But of even more interest is David James Taylor, who has served as a spad to former First Ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones, and also former Secretary of State for Wales, Peter Hain. Quite the lad about the corridors of power, our Dai.
Taylor tends to work under the radar and is nowhere mentioned on the Bute website. But he, like Vaughan and Uden, was recruited by Bute Energy for one reason and one reason only – his contacts in the Labour Party.
His lucre from Bute Energy was channelled through Moblake Ltd. This company was wound up in April with sole director Taylor owing the company £605,872 that he’d taken out in interest-free ‘loans’ with no repayment date.
But no mention of where the money came from!
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Taylor has set up a new company, Earthcott Ltd, so maybe Bute’s future payments will be channelled through this new venture. Then again, seeing as we know about it . . .
Yes, folks, Scots, Danes, everyone gets a slice of the action, except the native Welsh. Unless of course you’re well connected down Corruption Bay.
That’s how a corrupt, third world country operates.
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THE PROFESSIONAL LOBBYISTS
In addition to those already looked at, who might be termed ‘amateur lobbyists’, there are also companies that are quite open about what they do. Which is, helping commercial outfits, often from outside of Wales, get what they want from the ‘Welsh Government’.
But they also dabble in politics. And for unregulated bodies they have far too much influence.
Let’s just look at two of them.
Starting with a company that’s appeared on this blog a number of times, Deryn Consulting. Run by former politicians and spads, but keeping up with the Woke agenda by recruiting enviromarxists and promoters of BLM.
The majority of Deryn’s shares are owned by former Labour spad Cathy Owens, with a minority nestling in the neatly-manicured hands of former Plaid Cymru Welsh Assembly Member Nerys Evans.
Over the years Deryn has been involved in a number of unsavoury incidents, I’ll just mention two.
The first was the Ofcom contract, a gem of its kind. This report from October 2017 will give you the story. And the image below of a WalesOnline headline from August 2017 leads on to another element of the Deryn saga.
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You’ll see that Neil McEvoy, was at that time, still a Plaid Cymru AM, but he’d blotted his copybook big time by challenging third sector shenanigans and exposing Deryn.
For party leader at that time was Leanne Wood, a personal friend of those whose lives were being made difficult by Neil McEvoy. He’s told me more than once that he was ordered to lay off Deryn. He didn’t.
He was too honest to stay silent when surrounded by institutionalised corruption, and so he had to go. First from Plaid Cymru, and then from the Senedd.
Around the time of the Ofcom scandal people at Deryn were briefing against Carl Sargeant, Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children in the ‘Welsh Government’.
Those at Deryn employed in this dirty work were colluding with over-wrought but ever-cooperative third sector women. Some of whom had also made unfounded allegations against Neil McEvoy.
What’s worse, there were politicians, supposed allies of Sargeant, also briefing Deryn. The conduit here was Jo Kiernan, former senior spad to First Minister Carwyn Jones.
From Carwyn Jones’ staff Kiernan knew that Carl Sargeant was to be sacked before the poor bugger himself knew, and she was briefing others.
Carl Sargeant was sacked on November 3, 2017 and took his own life four days later.
As I was writing this I got to wondering about the Deryn finances, and so I went to the Companies House website. Where I found the latest accounts. Or rather, the unaudited financial statement up to December 31, 2020.
This skeletal document tells us that Deryn, with 9 employees, has assets of just £63,836.
But where are the real figures? Where’s the rest of the money? Where’s the turnover for the year? Is everything done with brown envelopes?
There’s something squalid and distasteful about Deryn. More worrying is that Owens, Evans and Kiernan seem able to open any door in Corruption Bay.
The bad news is that Deryn isn’t the biggest PR company down the Bay. The big kid on the block now is Camlas, formerly Positif Politics Ltd. The change of name last November is linked to the departure of Positif founder Daran Hill, who ceased to be a director in September. (Though he still seems to hold a majority of the shares.)
I’ve heard rumours, involving the local gendarmerie; but you know me, I try to avoid tittle-tattle in favour of facts and informed speculation.
Back in August 2020, in the early days of investigating Bute Energy and David Taylor, I ran across Hill’s name in connection with a wind farm planning application, so I contacted him. The resultant Twitter exchange can be read below.
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The Bute account at Camlas is currently handled by Matt Hexter.
Did David Taylor direct Bute Energy to his mate Daran Hill, or was it vice versa?
But with Plaid Cymru firmly in control through Managing Partner and Co-Owner Rhodri ab Owen, brother to Plaid Cymru MS Rhys ab Owen; while the other Managing Director and Co-Owner Naomi Williams was a spad to former Plaid AMs Dafydd Elis Thomas and Dai Lloyd.
Plaid Cymru is of course in an alliance with the Labour Party in the Senedd. And even without an alliance, the two parties are never far apart.
Finally, and turning to Companies House, Camlas is another disappointment. All that’s filed is another bare bones ‘financial statement’.
I’m sure these minimalist filings are perfectly legal, but I believe that with companies such as Deryn and Camlas exercising unaccountable influence in Welsh public life we are entitled to know more about them.
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CONCLUSION
In normal countries, with normal economies, lobbying is conducted by business interests and often involves donations to political parties. In other words: lobbying decides which company or corporation gets the contracts.
And while this may be undesirable, it usually delivers jobs and generates wealth. The country benefits, the losers tend to be commercial competitors. Who, had they been successful, would also have created jobs and generated wealth.
The political elite controlling Wales wants a quasi-socialist state in which they exercise power through patronage and hand-outs. The last thing this elite wants is a decent economy and an entrepreneurial class challenging its diktats and exposing its weaknesses.
And this explains why, in Wales, lobbying takes the form of fawning and cajoling by pressure groups that share the political outlook of the elite. These demand legislation beneficial to their cause, also funding and publicly-owned assets.
This must then be disguised with flim-flam like, “public good”, “future generations”, and other specious and unquantifiable ‘benefits’. Which we are told to accept as some kind of substitute for a decent economy and a prosperous country.
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RECOMMENDATIONS
To begin with, we obviously need a definition of lobbying.
I would suggest: Anyone seeking to influence politicians, either directly or indirectly, through civil servants, advisers, or by any other means, in the hope of securing personal or corporate financial gain, or in order to influence legislation.
There should be a register of such persons. And a diary kept of all meetings between lobbyists and politicians, civil servants or advisers; both those meetings that have been held, and those planned for the future. The subject matter of these meetings must also be stated clearly and unambiguously.
Both the register and the diary should be updated daily and made available online.
To monitor lobbying will require a new post, and it will need to be filled by someone untainted by Corruption Bay. For once, I would have no objection to filling an important post in Wales with a complete stranger.
But I remain open to suggestion, so let’s have your comments. The ‘Welsh Government’ is also asking for your views, so don’t forget to write.
They’ll be delighted to hear from you! Or maybe not.
PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR
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We are confronted by a paradox. The stock of housing in Wales is growing, yet less and less of it is accessible to Welsh people.
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INTRODUCTION
What I’m describing is a bizarre housing system that works against the native population while promoting the interests of strangers. A system too complex and too consistent in its outcomes to be attributed to incompetence or happenstance.
Once the bigger problem is deconstructed and its component parts exposed, then remedies present themselves. All that’s needed then is the political will to implement those remedies.
In this article I shall explain a problem and then make one or more suggestions for tackling it. I’m sure many of you reading this will have your own ideas – so let’s hear them.
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PRICES, TOO HIGH AND TOO LOW
When dealing with house prices we find problems at both ends of the scale. On the one hand, houses are being built in many areas that most locals can’t afford – but that’s OK because they’re not intended for us.
Take Newport, Pembrokeshire, a ‘holiday hotspot’. Locals are being squeezed out of the local housing market and this shortfall is then used to justify building new housing . . . that is also beyond the reach of locals!
While at the other end of the scale, in declining seaside resorts and post-industrial areas, property prices are so low that they attract those who buy in bulk and ship in problems.
Which takes us to Llanelli, and the Ty Isha neighbourhood, by the railway station. Third sector bodies, private landlords and others have moved in, bought up terraced houses and flats, and dumped petty criminals and drug addicts from England.
I’m not sure how to read this without more information, but it’s pretty, and some people enjoy this kind of thing. Blame WalesOnline for ‘Tyshia’. Click to enlarge
Those who profit from trading in undesirables – with the full support and financial backing of the ‘Welsh Government’ – were initially attracted to Ty Isha by low house prices, and they have succeeded in driving property values down even more!
Some of those interviewed in the report are now trapped in houses they have lived in all their married lives but can only sell at a price below what a house such as theirs would fetch in a normal neighbourhood.
Yet in a system that prioritised Welsh needs the small terraced houses of Ty Isha would make ideal starter homes for young people.
SUGGESTIONS: In the case of Newport, Pembs and countless other such developments, the answer is that we simply do not allow the building of new properties that locals either do not wish to buy or cannot afford to buy.
I’ll explain later how we could both achieve this and forecast local need.
To argue that allowing such properties takes the pressure of the existing stock, thereby making many such properties available for local buyers, is absolute bollocks. The numbers wanting to relocate to Wales is limitless, and the demand for holiday homes insatiable.
As for Ty Isha, funding should be withdrawn from any third sector body importing problems from outside of Wales to any part of Wales. The same should apply to housing associations.
I shall also offer suggestions for achieving these objectives.
Those whose properties have been devalued, and their lives affected by the riff-raff dumped around them, should be compensated by the ‘Welsh Government’.
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THE NUMBERS GAME
Let’s now focus on the problem of houses being built in numbers greatly in excess of what Wales needs. And, again, at prices most of us can’t afford. This is particularly noticeable in the eastern parts of the country as English commuters look west for cheaper housing and nicer scenery.
Black-spots are along the A55 in the north and the M4 in the south and, since the removal of tolls on the Severn Bridge, increasingly evident in southern Gwent, including the city of Newport. An example would be the 900 dwellings of the ‘urban village’ planned for Mamhilad, north of Pontypool, towards Abergavenny, but close enough to the M4 for Bristol commuters.
Building in Wales to meet a demand from England has also become noticeable around Wrexham in recent years. It begins with the ‘Welsh Government’ producing absurd population projections to justify building an excessive number of new houses.
Then, when the projections are shown to be exaggerated, the Planning Inspectorate insists on sticking with the original number of new houses. This article explains it well.
I looked into this problem back as March 2014 in a piece I wrote about Denbighshire. The council said, “Look, the latest projections suggest a smaller population increase, so we don’t need to build so many new houses”.
The Planning Inspectorate’s response was, “Yes, you’re right about the population projections . . . but we insist on sticking with the original number of new dwellings”.
Planning Inspectorate insisting that discredited population projections still be used to determine housing provision. Click to enlarge
A response like that sort of gives the game away, doesn’t it?
Back in 2011 the ‘Welsh Government’ was insisting that the population of Wrexham would increase by 20% in the near future, then the projected increase reduced to 10%, and the latest calculation is that the borough’s population will actually fall by 1.5% by 2028! Yet the number of houses ‘needed’ must remain the same as when an increase of 20% was forecast.
Major housing developments planned around Wrecsam. None to the south or the west. Quelle surprise! Click to enlarge
As the map above makes clear, the planned developments are all to the north or the east of the town, in other words, convenient for Cheshire. Or rather, convenient for those who aren’t wanted in Cheshire, in order to preserve property values in Wilmslow, Alderley Edge and the other communities of the ‘Golden Triangle’.
Add to all the new housing the proposed road improvements and the fate allotted to Wrecsam becomes clear. The A483 is of course the road to Chester.
What has clearly been happening is that the ‘Welsh Government’ (or others acting in its name) has been producing what it knew to be inflated, contrived, population projections. Done to justify building excessive numbers of new dwellings.
When the population projections were exposed as bogus, and revised downwards, the Planning Inspectorate stuck with the discredited figures in order to push on with building what were now clearly excessive numbers of new houses.
And by so doing the Planning Inspectorate exposed a dishonest system.
SUGGESTIONS: To begin with, calculations to determine how many new homes an area needs must be based on what the people of the area need, not on how many properties developers think they can sell. In fact, I can’t think of any good reason why developers need to be involved in assessing demand.
The Wrecsam area being used to take pressure off Cheshire is part of the wider integration strategy of the Mersey Dee Alliance. A giveaway is estate agents referring to the area as ‘West Cheshire’.
The Planning Inspectorate does not serve Welsh interests, it never has. It must be replaced with a new Welsh body free from political interference and divorced from commercial interests.
Why can’t we have a register of those who think they’ll be looking to buy a new home within an area; something similar to the waiting list for social housing. Once people grasp that contributing to such a database will make it more likely they’ll find the home they need then the more likely they’ll be to participate.
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HOLIDAY HOMES
A perennial issue in Wales and the Covid lockdown has highlighted the problem. First, it was people sneaking to their holiday homes for lockdown rather than staying at their usual residence, while more recently it’s been the increased demand for holiday homes.
The latest figures for Gwynedd suggest that 40% of the properties being sold in the county are now bought for use as holiday homes. Take the towns out of the calculation and it’s reasonable to assume that a majority of the properties in villages and in the countryside are being sold as holiday homes.
Gwynedd council is run by Plaid Cymru but it has only imposed a 50% surcharge on holiday homes. Yet another example of Plaid Cymru wringing its hands, “Oooh, isn’t it awful, something should be done”, yet when a roar of defiance was needed Plaid Cymru could only whimper.
This is Plaid Cymru terrified of being called ‘anti-English’. That mauling Glenys Kinnock handed out to Ieuan Wyn Jones on Question Time in February 2001 has left a deep and painful scar.
Swansea waterfront. Click to enlarge
Compare Gwynedd to Swansea, where the Labour-controlled council has imposed a 100% surcharge, (which also applies to properties left empty for a long period). And in case you think this is only a gesture because the city has few holiday homes, there are many hundreds in the waterfront area, and of course, on Gower.
All the arguments used in defence of holiday homes are self-serving bullshit. “Nobody else wanted the place” . . . “But we put so much money into the local economy!” . . . “An essential part of the tourism industry”, etc, etc.
SUGGESTIONS: One simple change in the law would go a long way to easing the misery of holiday homes.
Legislation stating that only 10% of properties in any electoral ward can be registered as holiday homes, with the figure reducing to 5% in 2030 would have a number of immediate effects.
First, in wards where more than 10% of properties are currently registered as holiday homes such legislation would immediately curtail future demand. Knowledge of the change in 2030 would remove the threat of further properties being bought as holiday homes.
Resulting in more properties, at reduced prices, becoming available for locals.
Severe penalties must be imposed for using a property as a holiday home when it is not registered for that use. And the loophole allowing holiday homes to escape council tax by registering as a business must be closed.
To further reduce the demand for holiday homes and increase their contribution to the local community council tax should be charged at a rate of 200%.
Some may think that a 5% figure is too low, others that it’s unduly generous. My belief is that no area of Wales should suffer more than 5% of its housing stock being used by strangers flaunting their greater wealth.
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RETIRING TO WALES
An often overlooked factor in inflating house prices is retired and elderly people moving to Wales. The negatives increase when we remember that the older a person is the more likely they are to need medical care of some kind. This is a universal truth.
Which means that this influx will obviously impact on our NHS and other services.
In fact, it’s difficult to think of any benefit Wales derives from people in the older age brackets moving in. But that doesn’t stop some from trying.
Some three years ago I wrote to the ‘Welsh Government’ with a few questions on this subject. What I received by way of an answer contained a paragraph that has caused either mirth, or head shaking, whenever people read it. (For the full letter, click here.)
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On a planet where all other countries view an ageing population as a ‘ticking time-bomb’ Wales alone sees the takeover by alien wrinklies as something positive. Or rather, the ‘Welsh Government’ wants us to believe it does.
This is the sort of nonsense that officialdom spouts when it’s cornered. I say that because while the letter I received makes highfalutin’ references to “liberty of movement” the truth is that the ‘Welsh Government’ has enacted legislation that encourages retired and elderly people to move to Wales.
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Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine that Welsh people going into care can hold on to £50,000, I might benefit from such a provision myself one day. But it also encourages into Wales people who have spent their working lives elsewhere. And the cost of looking after these elderly goes into the debit column of our national accounts and is used to prove that Wales is a financial basket-case.
I see a boy at the back with his hand up, “How big is the problem, Sir?”
Here’s a table I compiled using data from the 2011 Census. You’ll see that in some local authority areas only a minority of the population in the 65+ age bracket was born in Wales.
Click to enlarge
With the problem not confined to the north, just look at Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire. There’s a definite correlation between tourism and the numbers of retired and elderly people moving to an area.
Though Flintshire would appear to buck the trend in that it is not a tourism hotspot, but even so, half of the over 65s were born in England. While this can be partly explained by maternity services being located in Chester I can also suggest another explanation.
Let’s say you’re a likely lad living on the Wirral. Aunt Mabel is going to leave you her money, a nice round figure of £100,000. If she goes into a local care home you might only see £23,350, but take her to Mold or Connah’s Quay and you’re guaranteed at least £50,000. More if you can get the local authority to cough up.
And, anyway, is the old girl going to know where she is!
Finally, let’s not forget the political dimension to this phenomenon. It has been proven time after time that the older an English voter is the more likely that person is to be royalist, patriotically British, pro-Brexit, conservative and Conservative.
From a Welsh perspective, encouraging retired and elderly English people into Wales is both an economic and a political disaster. But it benefits England for the same reasons.
SUGGESTIONS: There’s no need to deny Welsh people the £50,000 limit, but insist on 20 years residency in Wales before anyone qualifies.
And let’s stop building retirement bungalows and flats to be advertised over the border. Many of those who move to such properties may be fit and active when they arrive, but Father Time will soon do his work.
Only a country run by idiots drives out its own young people and replaces them with another country’s elderly.
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SOCIAL HOUSING
At one time it was so simple – local authorities built and rented council houses. You put your name down on the list and you waited your turn. Obviously there was favouritism shown in certain allocations, but by and large the system worked to the benefit of Welsh communities.
Then came the housing associations and the transfer of council housing stock.
There’s a general and touching misconception that Registered Social Landlords (RSLs), more commonly known as housing associations, have simply replaced councils, and that social housing is universally available for those who cannot afford to buy a home but would rather not rent from a private landlord.
Er, no.
That was the intention, and that may have been how it started under the new system, but things got much more complicated as years went by. Much more complicated.
There are a number of fundamental problems with the way RSLs now operate.
1/ To begin with, social housing in Wales is locked into an Englandandwales system. This was explained to me in December 2010 in a response I received from Nick Bennett, who was then CEO of Community Housing Cymru, the umbrella organisation for housing associations.
He wrote, “There are over 2 million people on waiting lists for social housing”. This figure cannot be for Wales alone, and yet it was provided by the head of the body supposedly responsible for social housing in Wales. And only in Wales.
Bennett emerged a couple of decades ago from under a lily pad in Cardiff Bay as a fully-formed Spad, before becoming a business partner of Labour’s Alun Davies. He then served as CEO at Community Housing Cymru from 2006 to 2014, and since leaving CHC he has guarded the posterior regions of our politicians and civil servants as the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales.
Corruption Bay in mortal form.
Who gets a vacant house may be decided by a third sector body, in contact with a sister body in England, which has ‘recommended’ Chardonnay and her six semi-feral children; the little darlings having been chased out of their last home by neighbours fed up with the thieving and the vandalism.
They get priority treatment, “Cos they is homeless, innit. Little kiddies, look”.
This rehousing of ‘priority cases’ can have catastrophic consequences. As we learnt when Grwp Gwalia of Swansea housed a network of Satan-worshipping paedophiles from London in Kidwelly.
It was never explained why this was done. And no politicians asked . . . because they didn’t want to know. ‘Priority cases’ are still being dumped in Wales, every day.
2/ A more recent problem with housing associations – and there are dozens of them, competing with each other – is that they are now privatised, but still in receipt of public funding.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, nearly all of them have subsidiaries, or private companies that are not subsidiaries but still members of the group. And then there are the partners.
This diversification has led to the mis-use of public funding, an almost complete lack of monitoring and accountability, and RSL group members building private housing for open market sale. Sold to retirees (officially ‘downsizers’), buy-to-rent landlords (officially ‘investors’), and even as holiday homes. While also selling shares in leasehold properties, with the agreements poorly explained and many duped into thinking they’re buying a freehold property.
This, remember, is the hated leasehold system that the ‘Welsh Government’ elsewhere opposes. Yet it is funding RSLs who then slip money under the table to subsidiaries, or partners, to con people into buying a share in a leasehold property.
Brenig Construction, with Chinese investment, is in partnership with Creating Enterprise, which is a subsidiary of RSL Cartrefi Conwy. Wales and West is Labour’s favourite RSL and the only one that operates all over the country. It has a bad record for housing drug addicts and petty criminals from outside of Wales in towns like Lampeter and Fishguard. Click to enlarge
What a system! What a ‘government’! What a country!
SUGGESTIONS: The bottom line is that what Wales needs is social landlords renting decent housing to Welsh tenants. Nothing more.
We don’t need subsidiaries of RSLs using diverted public funding to build and sell buy-to-rents in Pembrokeshire. Nor do we want convoluted arrangements using Chinese money to build more retirement bungalows and flats on the north coast.
Housing associations are past their sell-by date. A root-and-branch reform of the social housing system is needed. Wales must leave behind the mess created by ‘diversification’ and adopt a system closer to the original council housing model.
One big question will be what happens to the housing stock currently held by RSLs. Seeing as almost all of it was either built by local authorities, or built since stock transfer with money from the ‘Welsh Government’, a strong case could be made to bring it back into public ownership.
This twilight zone of private bodies living off the public purse while also taking out commercial loans with banks and behaving like private developers must end.
In the meantime, to avoid the dumping of undesirables, no one should be allocated a social tenancy by a RSL unless that person has been resident in Wales for at least 10 years.
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CONCLUSION
We have a housing sector in Wales that has for years been steadily divorcing itself from the needs of our people. The situation has worsened under devolution.
There is clearly a strategy to settle in Wales as many people as possible who are loyal to the UK or England, in order to ‘secure’ Wales. We can expect this assault on Welsh identity to intensify with Scotland looking more and more likely to choose independence in the next few years.
There is one final weapon in the armoury that can be employed to stem the tide of colonisation. That is the Land Transaction Tax (LTT). It replaced Stamp Duty and it’s already in operation.
Below is a table I’ve compiled showing the current LTT rates with higher rates I’m suggesting as a way to curb the invasion. ‘Existing main residence’ is self-explanatory. Holiday homes are covered by ‘Existing higher residential’.
My suggestions are at the bottom, in yellow. What I’m proposing is higher rates all round for those not already living in Wales. Exceptions could be made for key workers, investors and others deemed necessary for the national good.
Click to enlarge
I am also suggesting that LTT kicks in lower down the price scale, and there’s a good reason for this. In the Valleys, post-industrial towns, even parts of Swansea, properties sell at prices buyers from prosperous areas of England find irresistible. Many are being bought for the wrong reasons.
Just think back to Ty Isha, Llanelli.
What’s more, most properties bought by retirees will be below the £250,000 threshold, so why should they be free of LTT?
I suppose one response to everything I’ve written will be, “It all depends on the political will”, and clearly that political will is absent. For the following reasons.
Civil servants of the ‘Wales would be better without the Welsh’ mindset ‘advising’ – some shagging! – ‘Welsh Government’ ministers.
A zealously Unionist Labour Party containing too many politicians who can dismiss concern for Welsh identity as ‘ugly and narrow-minded nationalism’. And then of course they have their third sector and housing association cronies to think about.
A Conservative Party (plus a rag-bag of BritNats) who will never object to English people moving to Wales, or the votes they bring. “All British . . . free to move anywhere . . . God Save the Queen.”
A so-called ‘national party’, Plaid Cymru, scared witless of being called anti-English by the anti-Welsh. And anyway, national survival is nowhere near as important as trans rights, BLM, refugees, getting Trump out of the White House . . .
You’ve read that 40% of the properties now sold in Gwynedd are to be used as holiday homes. I’ll bet that another 40% are bought by people moving from England into Gwynedd permanently. And it’s the same in other rural areas.
Thanks to the refusal of successive ‘governments’ in Corruption Bay to build a rural economy, the forced reliance on ‘shit anywhere’ tourism, the neglect of everywhere other than Cardiff . . . Wales, thanks to the ‘progressive’ parties’ refusal to confront the assimilation agenda, is approaching the point of no return.
To refuse to challenge the assimilation agenda is to accept it.
If you scroll down my sidebar you’ll see that, under ‘Jac’s Reads’, one of the blogs I follow is Wales Eye, written by Daran Hill, managing director of Positif, a political lobbying firm in Cardiff docks and an integral part of the self-important but ultimately impotent Cardiff bubble. Don’t think I’m being nasty to Daran Hill, I don’t know the man; to the best of my knowledge our paths have never crossed. But today he posted a piece that made me think, ‘Why doesn’t he get it?’
The information for the piece I’m referring to had probably been fed to him by disgruntled BBC journos. It seems that Edwina Hart, the minister for Economy, Science and Transport does not give live interviews, everything must be pre-recorded. The piece on Wales Eye contained much harrumphing about ‘democracy’ and ‘accountabilty’ but none of those expressing their concerns to Hill understood the real reason for Hart not giving live interviews – the truth is, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And she’s not the only one. Let me explain.
Back in January I posted this, about a statement made by Alun Davies, at the time Minister for Natural Resources and Food, trying to explain why he was taking money from Welsh farmers and transferring it to ‘rural development projects’, i.e. subsidising good-lifers, hippies, Greens and others Wales would be better off without. Here’s a link to the excruciating footage of a squirming, stuttering, Alun Davies telling us why he has decided to do this. (Skip past DET’s intro to 2:03.) The thing to note here is the two civil servants flanking Davies, like prison officers with the defendant in the dock, making sure chummy don’t do nuffin stupid.
After watching Davies’s performance I gave him the benefit of the doubt by thinking that he didn’t believe what he was saying, or that he may not even have understood the full implications of what he was saying, and that he was simply repeating, parrot-fashion, what someone had told him to say. The civil servants were there to make sure he didn’t succumb to a debilitating attack of conscience or patriotism that might have rendered him unuseable.
In short, he was no more than a ventriloquist’s dummy, and the same applies to other ‘ministers’ in the absurdly named ‘Welsh Government’. This is why Edwina Hart doesn’t give live interviews – it’s because she can only repeat what she’s been told to say in a recording that can be re-started when she fluffs her lines. Because, obviously, live interviews run the risk of her being asked questions she cannot answer about policies she had no part in formulating.
The piece in Wales Eye was prompted by Hart’s announcement of the Newport by-pass, welcomed by very few in Wales (none that I can see outside of Cardiff). The clue to Hart’s camera shyness is that chancellor George Osborne has been consistently urging the ‘Welsh Goverment’ to improve the M4: here on November 29, 2011; April 3, 2013; March 19, 2014 (and there have been other occasions). Make no mistake, this was a decision taken in London; but rather than have London fund it, the ‘Welsh Government’ was given new powers to get into debt! Once the details were worked out the scheme was passed on to civil servants in Wales, who then coached Hart in her delivery. Result: Wales will get at least £1bn into debt, other projects around the country will be shelved, and all to facilitate the flow of English goods into Wales. Wasn’t that good of Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne, children?
Because believe me, that’s what will happen. Improved communications mean that ‘peripheral’ areas can be served and supplied from further away. Always. Take the example of the A55 in the north. Great benefits were promised from this ‘Highway of Opportunity’ by Wyn Roberts et al, but one of the first changes to materialise was the Post Office transferring its sorting office from Bangor to Chester. And the PO was not alone. Once the M4 is improved, depots serving the south from Cardiff and Newport will start to be lost because, for example, if south Wales and the west of England can both be supplied from its Avonmouth depot then Tesco won’t keep its depot in Magor open. In a colonial economy such as Wales, where the overwhelming majority of retailers, utilities, major contractors, financial services, etc., etc., are headquartered in England, improved communications always means job losses. So we are paying £1bn for the economic benefit of England! Welcome to devolved government, ‘Welsh solutions for Welsh problems’.
The bigger problem, as I’ve hinted above, is civil servants operating in Wales but taking orders from London. I have dealt with this in countless posts, often when I write about planning and housing. I remind people that, despite a cupboard in Cardiff, the Planning Inspectorate is an executive agency of the Department for Communities and Local Government in London. The ‘Welsh Government’s own StatsWales also answers to the DCLG. The housing directorates that control social housing and other areas are also subject to the DCLG. They have a presence in Wales, and a ‘relationship’ with Welsh ministers, but it’s a ventriloquist and dummy relationship. This is why Carl Sargeant always looks out of his depth when dealing with LDPs, because just like Edwina Hart he has difficulty remembering details about policies and decisions he had no hand in determining.
It also helps explain why the EU funding has been squandered. In the south it has been wasted on professional grant-chasers, invariably English, who, instead of combating poverty and deprivation, have celebrated it, made a political and social cause of it, in order to secure funding and careers for themselves. As for those they are supposed to be helping . . . well, they’re only a bunch of losers anyway! In the west and the north the EU funding has been used to subsidise the same people who will benefit from the announcement made by Alun Davies back in January. That’s because the complete colonisation of rural Wales faces one last obstacle – too much land is still owned by the natives, farmers and the like. So fund the good-lifers and the Greens to buy land for fluffy environmental projects, protect our countryside from nasty over-grazing (i.e. farming), and let’s turn rural and coastal Wales into a land fit for the jodhpured heroes of the English middle class, escaping those frightful, multi-racial cities.
All of which makes devolution the biggest load of old bollocks in Welsh political history. We had less interference from London back in the 1950s before we had a Welsh Office or a Secretary of State than we have today, fifteen years into devolution. Because back then we were considered no threat and so we were just left to get on with things. That all changed in the 1960s, as did London’s attitude towards us. The long term policy decided upon was colonisation leading to assimilation. Devolution is just another stage in that process. We have the delusion of a ‘government’ in Cardiff, but the big decisions are taken in London. All part of the wider strategy for Wales: turn Cardiff into one of the more agreeable English provincial cities; allow the north east to merge into England’s north west; oversee the managed decline of the rest of the south (west and north of Cardiff); use rural and coastal Wales as retirement and recreation areas for England.
And that’s why Edwina Hart doesn’t give live interviews – because she’s just a ventriloquist’s dummy. But maybe no more a dummy than those who think this M4 project is good for Wales. Or those who can’t see what’s being done to this country.
There’s no avoiding it, and I won’t bother trying. So here’s my quick preview of the general election, and my reason for voting for Reform. Not because I support Reform but because I reject the rest.
