Tag: Nation.Cymru

Labour Apparatchiks Associated With Bute Energy Arrested In China Spy Probe

On By JacIn Bute Energy, China, Corruption Bay, Welsh Labour, Wind Turbines66 Comments

You must know what this is about. But in case you’ve been sleeping for a week . . . three men, with close ties to the ‘Welsh’ Labour party, were arrested last Wednesday “on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service“. They were released on bail the following day.

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WHO’S INVOLVED?

The first, is David James Taylor. Originally of Ruthin, now perhaps London. But he spent most of the intervening years working as a special advisor (spad) to a number of prominent Labour politicians.

These were Rhodri Morgan, first secretary of Wales between 2000 and 2009. Peter Hain, one-time anti-Apartheid campaigner, MP for Neath, who held a few posts in the UK government, and now sits in the House of Lords. I seem to think Taylor might also have done a stint with Morgan’s successor, Carwyn Jones.

Around a decade ago Taylor got himself involved in wind energy. More on this later.

Last year he started working for Asia House. (It’s been taken down from the website.)

Next up is Steven Jones. He has already been removed from the website of the lobbying group Camlas Cymru, for which he works in Cardiff. He definitely worked for Carwyn Jones. As this report makes clear.

Also non-personed by Camlas is the third man arrested last Wednesday, Matthew Aplin.

‘Camlas’, I suggest, might be translated into English as canal or channel.

Camlas was founded, as Positif Politics Ltd, in January 2006 by Daran Hill and his wife. But Hill was sent down in July 2023 for sharing images of child abuse.

Hill links with Taylor through a company called (after a couple of name changes) Leckwith Ltd. This was started by Taylor in November 2011 and taken over by Hill on New Year’s Day 2018. Leckwith was Dissolved just over a year after the exchange.

Was Hill killing off a possible competitor? If so, how much did he pay Taylor?

Whatever, Taylor then became a client of Hill. As I found out in a DM exchange back in August 2020. (Full version here.)

The other individual named in media reports, but not arrested, was Taylor’s wife Joani Reid, Labour MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven. The grand-daughter of Jimmy Reid. (Despite his politics, I always had time for him.)

They might have met when Reid was a councillor in Islington from 2014 to 2022.

Reid claimed no knowledge of her husband’s business activities. But why would she link the arrest to his business dealings? He was arrested on suspicion of spying.

Following Taylor’s arrest, Reid said in a statement that she is “not part of” her husband’s business activities.

So what have we got? A young MP, only elected in 2024, on the right of the Labour party, and certainly not privy to state secrets.

Of the three men, none is a nuclear scientist, or a high-ranking military officer, so I think we can rule out slipping the Chinese Communist Party important information.

Which leaves me to conclude that what they’re suspected of is commercial in nature. Unless of course, the CCP is planning to take over the ‘Welsh’ Labour party. But if the comrades in Beijing rummage in the drawers, and check down the backs of the sofas, they might find a receipt for that shower.

Whatever they paid – they wuz robbed!

Let’s proceed on the assumption that any offence committed is of a commercial or financial nature.

UPDATE: 01.04.2026: This incredible story just took another crazy turn with the suggestion that Joani Reid had ‘relationships’ with two captains of nuclear submarines. Read it for yourself.

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MORE ON DAVID JAMES TAYLOR, INTRODUCING BUTE ENERGY

For perhaps ten years David James Taylor has been involved with renewable energy. More specifically wind power. His involvement is due to developers realising how useful he is through his contacts in the Labour party that’s run the Welsh parliament for 27 years, either alone or with a junior partner in the Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru.

All this is covered in the many, many pieces I’ve put out on Bute Energy.

A good place to start might be Hendy Wind Farm, not far from Llandrindod. Where nary a turbine has turned. The eponymous company was launched in May 2011 by Matthew Simon Weiner, Graham Prothero, Michael Henry Marx, and Charles Julian Barwick.

There were linked projects at Bryn Blaen, near Llangurig, and Rhoscrowther on Milford Haven waterway.

Behind it was an outfit called U+I, taken over late in 2021 by Landsec.

The original directors were joined in August by Steven John Radford who, in May 2011, had launched Njord Energy Ltd. This company is in the process of being wound up. A new Radford company launched last year is Njord Wind.

Planning permission for Hendy was refused by the local council in April 2017, and this decision was upheld by an inspector in May 2018. At the council meeting a lobbyist tried to hand a note to the councillors and she had to be ushered away.

The woman was Anna McMorrin, working for Invicta Public Affairs of Newcastle. A Labour stalwart, she became MP for Cardiff North in the general election of June 2017.

As I say, permission for this windfarm was refused; but then came a strange incident that defied – and still defies – explanation. In October 2018, Lesley Griffiths, the Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ said she would ignore the planning inspector’s decision and allow Hendy Wind Farm to go ahead.

By this time David JamesTaylor had developed an interest in wind turbines (which may link with his failure to be elected North Wales PCC in May 2016). Taylor’s an ally and friend of Griffiths. Here he is campaigning for her.

A month before Griffiths’ bizarre decision a company was launched called Windward Generation Ltd. Later re-named Bute Energy Ltd, then RSCO 3750 Ltd, and Dissolved in September 2023.

The original directors, from Scotland, were Oliver James Millican and Lawson Douglas Steele. They were joined six days later by Radford.

Bute Energy has since spawned many companies planning windfarms, solar arrays, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), and pylon runs from central Wales; one to just south of Carmarthen where it’ll meet the main grid from Pembroke running through the south and on to England, the other running north east and over the border near Oswestry.

The ultimate holding company for them all is Windward Global Ltd, formed 16 May 2017. The only shareholder is Oliver James Millican. He’s the son of Peter Millican of real estate company Parabola. Millican, Steele, and the other member of the Bute troika, Stuart Allan George, had all worked for Parabola, and all ‘left’ at the same time.

Taylor was soon involved. Becoming a partner in Grayling Capital LLP. And holding shares in Windward Energy Ltd, both in his own name and that of his company Moblake Associates Ltd. These shares seem to have been sold in July 2022.

But why was Taylor given these shares in the first place? Why was he a partner in the LLP? What was he doing for Bute?

I’ll conclude this section on Taylor by saying that in the Moblake Ltd accounts for year ending 30 April 2021 we find this entry.

There’s no explanation of where the money came from that he gave himself as a ‘loan’. Even though it’s before the sale of the Windward Energy shares I still assumed this money came from Bute, for services rendered.

Moblake soon went into liquidation.

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POSITIF, CAMLAS, BUTE

In the first section I mentioned David Taylor’s link to child pornography fan Daran Hill, and Hill’s company Positif. Since renamed Camlas. And we saw that the other two men arrested with Taylor are Camlas employees.

Camlas is owned by Rhodri ab Owen. Rhodri’s brother is Senedd Member Rhys ab Owen, who sits as an Independent following a minor lapse that saw the pearl-clutchers of Plaid Cymru distance themselves.

These brothers are the sons of lifelong Plaid activist and Assembly Member the late Owen John Thomas, with whom I had a few jars back in The Good Old Days when the party prioritised Wales and Welsh interests before going far left then Woke.

Camlas seems to be another Plaid-Labour hybrid. (Like Deryn.) For as we’ve seen, and despite Plaid ownership, there’s plenty of Labour involvement. Another from that quarter worth mentioning is Naomi Williams, the partner of Labour SM Jack Sargeant, who did 14 years with Positif-Camlas and ended up as Managing Partner.

Another Camlas-Labour connection is provided by Matthew Hexter. He worked for Camlas for over three years, as a Senior Political Consultant, before becoming a Special Adviser at the Wales Office.

Bute Energy is a client of Camlas. And as I’ve established above, Taylor has a lengthy association with Bute. But Taylor’s now moved on, and since September last year he’s been Head of Programmes for Asia House in London.

I don’t know much about Asia House, but it has many contacts in China. That’s almost inevitable, with China being the largest Asian country. And there needn’t be anything suspicious about it. Except that China is a country controlled by a Communist regime with its hand in everything.

Taylor’s most recent company is Earthcott Ltd. Launched 1 September 2021. The latest accounts, to year ending 30 September 2024, show a big increase in assets and cash. And, as we saw earlier with Moblake, there’s no explanation for where it comes from.

Is this to be paid to himself as a loan that doesn’t need to be repaid?

Idly flicking through the Asia House accounts filed with Companies House, I soon came upon the capture you see below, which rang a bell. But why?

Rathbones is a major investment company, with its roots in Liverpool. Like most asset and investment companies nowadays it’s keen to make money from ‘renewable’ energy. But let me explain why I found Rathbone’s involvement interesting.

The Rathbone family still benefits handsomely from such investments. One member of the family sits in the Senedd, Jenny Rathbone, SM for Cardiff Central since 2011. As Wikipedia tells us:

Rathbone descended from the Rathbone family, with many members being notable merchants and politicians. Rathbone’s great aunt is Eleanor Rathbone, one of the first women elected as a Member of Parliament.[16][17][18] Her great grandfather was William Rathbone V, who was Lord Mayor of Liverpool.[19]

Jenny Rathbone is a big supporter of ‘Renewables’. And “sits on the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee“. But it don’t end there.

Her husband, or partner, John Uden, who knows bugger all about wind energy, had a sinecure created for him by Bute Energy on its ‘Welsh Advisory Board’ a few years back. Another member recruited was redundant Labour MEP Derek Vaughan.

In fact, Bute has been hoovering up people with influence in the Labour party for some years. A recent addition is Sophie Howe, former Future Generations Commissioner, who’s now a director of Bute Energy Ltd.

And it seems to have started with David James Taylor, because the boys from Edinburgh didn’t know anybody here until they recruited him.

But now, with the wind in their sails, Plaid Cymru seem to be the target. One notable recruit being 29-year-old Baroness Carmen Smith. She was selected for the Lords by the party hierarchy over the members’ choice of former MP Elfyn Llwyd.

Did Bute have a hand in that? Because Smith works for Bute.

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UPDATES

Martin ‘Shippo’ Shipton, of ‘Welsh Government’-funded Nation.Cymru, had his door kicked in just after 6am last Wednesday by an “eight-strong team from the counter-terrorism division of the Metropolitan Police“. As he reports here.

To believe him this was all a misunderstanding due to a completely innocent visit he made to Hong Kong, with David James Taylor, to meet representatives of the Chinese Communist Party.

Fair enough, squire . . . except that Shippo has made his admiration for Communist China clear on a few occasions.

He sounds like a visitor to Stalin’s Russia in awe of the grain harvest.

And on Friday the Western Mail gave him a big spread. Though I was initially confused by the reference to “top Welsh journalist“.

Shipton is a biased lefty propagandist subsidised with our money. If it was up to me I’d have him ‘cuffed, dragged off to some quiet place, where he’d be encouraged to respond to the gentle persuasion of a rubber hose.

But, then, I’m a far-right bastard . . . who respects democracy, who wants to defend freedom of speech, who rejects censorship and Digital ID, who realises that Net Zero is a Globalist scam, who knows that Covid was engineered by some truly evil bastards.

Just another nobody who loves his country, and realises who its real enemies are.

And I’ve got a sense of humour!

In other news, Taylor’s wife, Joani Reid, has resigned the Labour whip.

Another property has been searched. So who is it? Well, he’s a former aide to Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the Labour party, who now sits in the House of Lords.

Watson became a director of Bute company Windward Energy Ltd in September 2024.

I could go about Labour party connections with Bute. For example, funding is said to be coming from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, where we find a former Danish PM, who happens to be the wife of Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon.

With more investment coming from the Welsh local government pension pot.

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CONCLUSION

Welsh politics is corrupt. It’s a cess-pit. There could be no other way after a century of Labour party dominance and the cronyism and nepotism that goes with it.

With devolution third-rate politicos have been bossed around by spads and advisers, civil servants answering to bosses in London, and bullied by lobbysists and others. All of whom have more influence in Corruption Bay than we, the people they were elected to represent.

Which explains so much. Such as why Wales is the only country in the Western world without a register of lobbyists. Because the lobbyists didn’t want it!

In recent years, new players have added to that corruption.

Among these new players, Bute Energy is prominent. It wants to plaster rural Wales in 250-metre-tall wind turbines, cover good land with solar panels, and destroy what remains with pylons.

And Bute’s done this through buying political influence. The boys from Auld Reekie know how the game is played. And it was so easy when you’re dealing with thick-as-shit politicians, with no business sense – but stupid and gullible enough to believe that human beings are destroying the planet!

And for what? Unreliable and expensive ‘renewable’ energy. While China builds one coal-fired power station after another. While supplying us with components for wind turbines and complete solar panels.

And there is already Chinese interest in ‘renewables’ in Wales. Brenig wind farm, in the Clocaenog forest, is owned by the China General Nuclear Power Corporation of Guandong Province.

Wales & West Utilities is Chinese owned. After trawling through a labyrinth of ownership you eventually come to West Gas Networks Ltd. Check out the shareholders. Tracing back to Li Ka-shing.

It would relatively easy for China to begin a takeover of the UK energy market in Wales. There’d be little or no oversight from incompetent politicians who’d dress it all up as ‘diversity’ or ‘foreign investment’, or some such nonsense.

With the mainstream media, aided by the likes of Martin ‘China’ Shipton and Wee Willy Hayward, denouncing critics as racists and Sinophobes.

I don’t want it to look like I’m picking on Bute Energy, but it’s certainly a link between those who were pulled in. Bute, and of course the ‘Welsh’ Labour party that Bute’s so successfully infiltrated.

On top of which, people are telling me that Bute, perhaps due to mounting local opposition to its plans, is looking to sell up.

I’ll say no more. Form your own conclusions from the evidence I’ve presented.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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The Latest Enviro-scam – ‘Celtic Rainforests’

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Farming, Public Funding30 Comments

I ended last week’s piece on the purchase by Tir Natur of land in the Elenydd, the beautiful ‘wilderness’ between Lampeter and Llanwrtyd, by saying that I was waiting for further information on what was planned to have been the second part of that offering.

Well, I’ve since had a response from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, but it’s not entirely satisfactory. More on that in part two. But first . . .

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TIR NATUR AND ‘CELTIC RAINFORESTS’

I pointed out last week that the land bought by Tir Natur, is in the Cwm Doethïe-Mynydd Mallaen Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Which means it is already protected, and in the care of Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

That being so, why does it need ‘rewilding’? Well, I have since learnt that this SSSI is one of four sites in Wales already appearing on the Celtic Rainforests (Wales) website. (Maybe someone should tell them that ‘Snowdonia’ is now Eryri.)

So why isn’t the rainforest aspect mentioned on the Tir Natur website?

Of the others, Eryri is of course a National Park; Elan Valley is owned or managed by Dŵr Cymru; and Cwm Einion (aka ‘Artists Valley’) is another SSSI that runs up behind Ffwrnais in north Ceredigion.

Which means that all four sites so far chosen for restoration to their imagined pristine state of ‘Celtic Rainforest’ are under some form of public agency control. So why can’t the bodies involved do the work themselves?

Perhaps I’ve given the game away in the title to this week’s piece. The Celtic Rainforest baloney is just another way for ‘environmentalists’ to grab land, and for big business to make money.

Checking the background of Celtic Rainforests I ran across this advertisement put up by Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW). This is the name of a body that abolished itself on 31 March 2021. So it has no official registered or regulated standing

Before that date the individual Welsh Trusts had been represented by WTW in dealings with the Englandandwales Wildlife Trusts (WT). Now they belong directly to WT, just like English county Trusts.

Attributable to the almost complete absence of Welsh involvement in ‘Welsh’ wildlife trusts.

Getting back to the Celtic Rainforests, The manager vacancy was filled by Gethin Davies, who also works for Parc Eryri. Which, if nothing else, explains why the project is based at the Park’s HQ in Penrhyndeudraeth.

Anyway, seeing as this land bought by Tir Natur is already a SSSI, and is to be planted with native trees, how much rewilding will actually happen? Or does planting trees count as rewilding?

To finish this section let me introduce one of Celtic Rainforests volunteers, who believes, ” . . . systemic racism is built into the way we view and use land; how it’s parcelled up and managed.”

For someone I can confidently locate on the political left she’s strangely blind to the class dimension to land ownership. Instead, she prefers a more simplistic, black and white interpretation. Literally! White people bad, everybody else good.

This Rainforests volunteer condemns colonialism but seems blind to a ruling group’s middle class, aligned with corporate capital and serving Globalist aims, working against an indigenous ethno-cultural minority.

Are there any depths of idiocy this anti-white bullshit can’t plumb? Perhaps not; for to believe a US academic this week, drinking cows milk makes you a Nazi.

Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at NYU, criticized The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on January 14. In a blog post, Caplan claimed that whole milk has been used as a symbol by white supremacists.

As you can guess, I’ve had a gutsful of this nonsense. Despite being difficult to take it seriously at times it’s still racism. It must be called out and defeated.

But of course, in this context, it’s another weapon in the anti-farming arsenal.

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RHOS-FARCH, PENNAL

If the name sounds familiar it’s because I wrote about this farm in July last year, in the piece, ‘Farming’ – The Globalist Way!’. So this is by way of an update.

Last July I told you it was suspected that Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust had bought Rhos-farch, a farm of 625 acres overlooking the historic village of Pennal. Here’s how Savills describes the holding.

And here’s a map to help you further. Rhos-farch is coloured in pink.

I can now confirm that Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust (MWT) received £3,000,000 to buy Rhos-farch. Certainly, that’s what’s suggested in the accounts. The clip below says the money came from Aviva via the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.

Note “restore it to Celtic Rainforest“. This is the reason for the funding.

But that clip above also says that Rhos-farch will be “open to visitors as a MWT nature reserve“. We can almost guarantee that some visitors will get lost, or think the nature reserve extends over neighbouring farms.

Seeing as Savills had priced the property at £3,500,000 I wondered if MWT had received money from anywhere else. So I wrote to the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, asking if any money had come from that quarter.

The answer was no. But I was sent copies of email correspondence, from last summer, between interested parties. Despite redactions we can assume the ‘Welsh Government’ was a participant, if only because it was holding the copies.

Other participants that can be clearly identified from the emails are Wildlife Trusts Wales (conduit for the Aviva money), and the Celtic Rainforest Creation Manager (Wales). Confirming that even though Rhos-farch is not mentioned on the Rainforests website it is obviously lined up.

The wildlife trust’s purchase is not welcomed by locals. Certainly not by local farmers.

One reason for that is the farms in the area, including Rhos-farch, benefit from a local shoot, a useful addition to their income. Of course, Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust will not allow shooting, and this will impact negatively on other farms.

The issue even got an airing in Nation.Cymru last year, which reported retirees and good-lifers trying to impose their views on locals. The giveaway was the paragraph beginning, “I was upset when moving here that there seemed to be an us and them atmosphere in the village.”

(Of course it never occurs to these buggers to ask how this division arose.)

Thankfully, the answer came later in the piece:

I and all my family are Pennal born and bred, and it winds me up terribly that incomers want to change our way of life and also tell us what we can and can’t do. If all the anti shooting brigades in the village don’t like what we do in the countryside, maybe they should move back to where they came from.

I find it interesting that Nation.Cymru should run this article around the same time as the emails I’ve mentioned were being exchanged. And perhaps as the Rhos-farch sale was being finalised. But N.C is extremely well connected in Corruption Bay.

Though seeing as Rhos-farch is not mentioned on the Celtic Rainforests website, how many other farms, other sites, are being lined up?

One final thought. Rhos-farch was never in Montgomeryshire, or Powys. It was in the old county of Merioneth, now in Gwynedd. So why was it bought by the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust?

Is it because the vendors, one of them a senior ‘Welsh Government’ civil servant, live in the old county of Montgomeryshire?

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CONCLUSION

If it was simply about preserving and perhaps enhancing rainforests, then I’d be fine with that. We could ban felling, clear the rhododendrons and other invasive species, plant more trees – and then leave it to Nature.

Given that the rainforests I know locally are typically dark, dank places, steep slopes and narrow valleys, no good land would be lost and no one would be inconvenienced.

And the website agrees with me.

You are never far from the sound of cascading water, and with the huge boulders and ravines galore, these forests are an ideal place for adventures.

“Adventures“?

That description also tells us these sites are unsuitable for the grazing that is constantly advocated! Though bear in mind that what these areas might have known in the past was not the right kind of grazing.

For that’s how it works when ‘environmental’ arguments are used against Welsh farming. It starts with dreaming up ways to make money, grab land – and then comes the excuse.

Step 1: Think of imaginative ways to achieve the objective.

Step 2: Dream up a ‘problem’ to justify what you’ve decided on.

Deception is the essence of the ‘climate crisis’; responsible for Net Zero impoverishing the West through ruinous electricity bills that drive industry away and make life more difficult for ordinary people.

Feeding off this prime lunacy are associated disorders such as the ‘threat’ from CO2! All too predictably, this is one of the justifications used for the Celtic Rainforests scheme.

It should go without saying that the World Economic Forum (WEF) is to the fore in connecting trees with corporate money-making.

Pushing the same message on the UK level is the Climate Change Committee. Here’s an extract from a CCC report on Wales published less than a year ago.

“Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere“! Life on Earth depends on carbon dioxide. Remove it, and everything – including we humans – dies.

Seeing as we’re talking of rainforests it’s worth remembering that this all started decades ago, in attempts to save the Amazon rainforest, and the rainforests of south east Asia. But more recently, someone realised it could be brought nearer home and used in the Globalist-environmentalist war on farming.

And remember! “Just 4.3% of the entire rainforest landscape is ancient woodland“, says the State of Wales Rainforest Report (page 8). So plenty of room to expand. Plenty more farms to buy.

And who’ll decide what must be ‘restored’? A fair question – because most of Wales qualifies as “Rainforest Zone”.

The map comes from an article in Nation.Cymru in October 2022. It seems to be attributed to Guy Shrubsole, whose name crops up a lot in such discussions. The article even names the Elenydd.

Shrubsole is said to have founded Right to Roam, a gang of self-entitled narcissists who feel they have the right to traipse wherever they damn well please. Among their number we find the ‘racist countryside’ woman we encountered earlier.

In conclusion . . . I often watch Neil Oliver’s monologues on YouTube. Neil’s persona non grata with the Beeb for challenging Covid, climate change, and all the other lies. He rambles a bit, and he’s not always right, but he’s a sincere guy.

Anyway, and as Neil Oliver always says: “It’s never about what they say it’s about“.

How true that is. Bear it in mind.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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‘Corruption Bay’ Living Up To Its Name?

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Development Bank of Wales, Labour Party36 Comments

This is a big post, in two ways. First, because there’s a lot of money involved. And second, because an incredible claim I stumbled upon throws up a very disturbing possibility.

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HITTING THE BIG TIME (REVISITED)

In July I wrote about companies in south east Wales being bought out and having lots of money pumped into them. You’ll find it here; ‘Saving The Planet – The Globalist Way!’.

These companies are involved in, “energy efficiency“; which means ‘retrofitting’ homes with solar panels, cavity wall insulation, heat pumps, loft insulation, that kind of thing.

They’re all linked under the holding company Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd. From the most recent accounts submitted to Companies House here’s a list of the companies owned.

And here’s my table of the interlinked companies and individuals involved, in pdf format with working links. (And helpful notes!)

The majority shareholding in Dragon 2023 Topco lies with Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP of Edinburgh. Part of the Cairngorm group of companies. Dragon 2023 Topco’s directors are: Robert Brodie; Chris McLain; Andrew Steel, managing partner of Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP; and Jonathan Neale.

Steel is also named as the controlling interest.

Another key player is, or was, Matt Anstead, managing director of Cairngorm Capital Partners LLP. Below is a clip from Anstead’s Linkedin page.

You’ll see Anstead joined Cairngorm around the time they took over the Welsh companies. Was he brought in for that job? And was the takeover funded with three loans in 2024 from Metro Bank?

Funding to the companies themselves comes from Alter Domus, a company registered in Luxembourg, that seeks ‘alternative investments’, and was recently taken over itself by another private equity firm Cinven.

What’s really behind it is, as ever, money. Local companies expand thanks to the UK government ECO4 scheme, making them attractive to bigger fish; while also offering opportunities for others to profit from investing in these companies and then claiming to be saving the planet in some way.

There are obviously pay-offs for those who’ve been previously involved in the companies, and of course jobs are created; but as ever – this being socialist Wales – the real money leaves the country.

I make that point because, as you should know by now, I support the capitalist model, and I have no objections to profits being made. But as a Welshman, and a nationalist, it pisses me off to see the profits leave Wales.

Wasn’t devolution supposed to improve things?

Before pushing on maybe I should remind you that July’s post was in two parts. One dealt with the companies taken over by Cairngorm Capital; the other with companies in the same area, and the same line of business, that were taken over by Buckthorn Partners LLP of Jersey.

Maybe I’ll return to this second lot another day.

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NICK PRITCHARD

Now we’re going to look at another man with a role in (he certainly benefitted from) the takeovers we just looked at. Though it’s not always easy to figure it out.

If the name rings a bell, it might be because Pritchard appeared in a Nation.Cymru article a few weeks back written by Martin ‘Shippo’ Shipton. It recounted Pritchard’s conviction in 2010 for growing cannabis, or providing premises where it might be grown.

So why bring it up now? Because Pritchard is associated with Reform UK, and may wish to stand for the UK parliament. This interest in his past is another sign of the desperate establishment that recently sent down Nathan Gill for something he said in 2018, and is now hunting for people Nigel Farage might have thrown milk over in kindergarten.

All done because the Globalist elite, and the political and media establishments they control, are getting worried by the rise of the ‘far right’ across the Western world. And so, as a mouthpiece for the Corruption Bay Uniparty, Nation.Cymru must get stuck in . . . or risk losing its ‘Welsh Government’ funding.

That said, Nick Pritchard is an interesting character; he seems to be a bit of a Jack the Lad, always looking for ways to make money. Nothing wrong with that as long as you stay on the sunny side.

But things never seem to be simple with Pritchard. Take this piece from Ideas Fest promoting his appearance at some event next year (my highlighting):

In 2013, Nick founded City Energy Network, an innovative energy efficiency consultancy based in Cardiff. The company specialises in the full retrofit journey from initial consultation to the implementation of the renewable measures recommended, his group of companies plan, and installs energy efficiency and low carbon measures for both homes and businesses and also specialises in Local Authority large scale projects.

But it makes no sense.

For a start, City Energy Network Ltd (CEN) was formed in 2011, but Pritchard’s name never appeared as a director or a shareholder. Perhaps because, Pritchard, sent down in 2010 for three-and-a-half years, would have been in prison when CEN was formed.

And what’s included in “the group of companies“?

Seeing as 2013 is mentioned by Ideas Fest, Pritchard may have been represented by one or both of Nicola Vaughan and Michelle Roberts, who became CEN directors 31.01.2014.

But even after he was released from prison I’m fairly sure Pritchard would have been disqualified from acting as a director for a few years. If he was operating through Roberts and / or Vaughan at CEN then “proxy management” is a criminal offence.

Coinciding with the arrival of Roberts and Vaughan all 100 CEN shares were transferred to Diversity Network Holdings Ltd (DNH), which Roberts and Vaughan had joined 28.01.2014. Pritchard didn’t become a director until April 2020.

A declaration dated 28.01.2015 shows the 100 DNH shares now distributed thus:

Though Pritchard did join Diversity Network Ltd 14.05.2012, which might have been not long after he was out of prison. And surely disqualified? Also directors were Michelle Roberts and Shelley Roberts.

There are other anomalies I could point out. Check names, DoB, dates.

When he was sent to prison Pritchard was reported to be in the “lettings business” in Bangor and other parts of north west Wales. He’s from Bangor, passionate about the local football club, he serves on the city council, so how and why did he get involved with companies in a totally different line of business at the opposite end of the country?

Hoping to make sense of it on a wet night with no football on the telly, I compiled a list of the companies Pritchard’s been involved with. Here it is, with the company name serving as a hyperlink.

You’ll see three company names in yellow blocks. These are also found in the previous table I linked to, showing the companies taken over by Cairngorm Capital. His past involvement with these companies perhaps accounts for Pritchard’s sizeable share allocation in holding company Dragon 2023 Topco Ltd.

You’ll see other individuals there with sizeable shareholdings. All have been involved with the companies we’re looking at. And Ahmud Saleem Eamon Furreed is a Labour party donor. (There may be other donors.)

Obviously, companies doing the kind of work we’re looking at need a stamp of approval, some accreditation. From a company like Quidos of Bath. And as you can see if you scroll down on that link, you have to pay for it.

But Pritchard now seems to own Quidos through year-old Quidos Holdings Ltd!

It could make life easier when you’ve got big stakes in companies ‘retrofitting’ and you also own a company that’ll give them a certificate to put up on the office wall saying they know what they’re doing.

Though many would disagree. Such as those involved with this website. Or those who gave these reviews to a company that’s among the clutch bought up by Cairngorm.

And we’ve all heard tales of cavity wall insulation resulting in damp and other horrors. I could tell you my own story.

You might have noticed that in some of his most recent business ventures Pritchard has been joined by celeb economist Dylan Jones-Evans.

What the hell is that about?

◊

WHERE IT GETS WEIRD

While researching this article I stumbled upon a remarkable letter addressed to Paul Davies AS/SM, in his capacity as chair of the Senedd Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee.

It gets included in this piece because I’m convinced there’s a connection to what you’ve just read. Anyway, here’s the (redacted) letter. I urge you to read it carefully and consider what it alleges.

After reading it I last Monday I e-mailed Paul Davies asking what had happened to the complaint. Here’s his response. (The links don’t work as there’s an issue with linking to pdf docs created from e-mails.)

So here’s the link to the report on the DBW he references (Section 9).

I asked if I could use his response and he agreed.

I would have tried to contact the complainant, but one problem was that I believe he’s moved from his original address. The other reason will be given later.

What the letter alleges is that the complainant (hereinafter referred to as ‘A’) came up with a good idea, and was doing quite well . . .

The company grew quickly and gained significant market traction with companies such as Sainsburys Supermarkets and BT Openreach.

But presumably needing to expand, ‘A’ in 2017 applied to Finance Wales (now Development Bank of Wales) for a loan. That’s when things started going wrong.

Not only does ‘A’ claim he had to take on “a bank-appointed expert”, and pay that ‘expert’ £150,000 pa, but . . .

Less than 1 year later, I was accused of taking “unauthorised funds” from the company’s bank account and sacked.

This happened to be just 1 month after my refusal to sell the business to BT Group.

I lost my job, my shares (approx £3.8m at that time), my patent (£13m-£17m valuation) and was forced to go bankrupt in September 2018.

Is the complainant suggesting a link between him refusing to sell up to the BT Group and the criminal charges that soon followed?

Things got even worse. ‘A’ was arrested, tried at Swansea Crown Court – but was acquitted by the jury. (Which might explain why the Labour government in Westminster wants trials without juries.)

To add insult to injury . . .

To note, after my dismissal the business was moved from Lampeter . . . where we employed up to 17 local people to Cardiff. Where they employed only 3.

After the business moved to Cardiff, both [name redacted] and [name redacted] set up new battery storage business, using my invention, and even got further funding from DBoW for these copy cat companies.

That is one hell of a story. And yet, if you think about it, the danger of such an outcome is always there. Just imagine . . .

Dai Schmuck out in the sticks comes up with a good idea, but he needs money to expand. So he goes to the Development Bank of Wales. They appoint ‘advisors’, who may move in the same circles as the bank officials who give them the gig.

The DBW admits to appointing the same favourites as ‘advisors’ again and again.

In a follow up letter to the Committee’s session with the Bank, the Chief Executive noted that it did re-appoint the same people
multiple times if it thought that person was a good match and had capacity.

Though an unscrupulous ‘advisor’ might say to himself: “Hang on, this bloke’s got a good idea – let’s nick it and make a fortune“. It’s a sweet system, but only if you’re well connected in Corruption Bay.

I could tell you more, but I’d be sticking my scrawny neck out. What I will say is that as I know the name of the company ‘A’ is referring to I can probably identify those he claims ripped him off.

From what I can see, ‘A’s allegations seem to have been kicked into the long grass. Maybe nobody in Corruption Bay wants to know the truth. Or perhaps they don’t want us to know the truth.

But the real twist is that ‘A’ is now teamed up with Nick Pritchard. And this happened soon after he started making waves with his letter to Andrew Davies.

What the hell is that about?

◊

CONCLUSION

We need an independent investigation into the Development Bank of Wales.

In particular, we need to know how it chooses ‘advisors’ for small companies needing help. We also need to know the conditions imposed on those companies. And the behaviour expected of the ‘advisors’.

But then, it’s unlikely anyone will get straight answers. Because Wales is corrupt.

All devolution has done is give Labour more chances to be corrupt, more money to squander, while also providing more opportunities for cronyism. Third sector outfits, pressure groups (closed to non-socialists), are funded to fight problems that don’t exist.

Sinecures and non-jobs for insiders proliferate.

In recent decades Labour’s joined forces with Plaid Cymru. Together, they’ve built a fortress they see as a bastion from where they combat racists, homophobes, climate deniers, Islamophobes, a white supremacist countryside, misinformation, and colonialist Welsh cakes!

In truth, it’s ‘Corruption Bay’, and its enemies are honesty and openness.

Because what they get up to must be kept secret. This explains why Corruption Bay is unique in the Western world in refusing to have a register of lobbyists. “Why do you need to know?”

But I’m forgetting Cairngorm Capital, Nick Pritchard and the rest . . . here we have a man with a ‘colourful’ past, dubious associates, now teamed up with Professor Dylan Jones-Evans, who’s often critical of the DBW. Pritchard also teamed up with ‘A’ soon after ‘A’s complaint against DBW was heard.

What the hell is that about?

Answers on a postcard please. (I will not accept diagrams or flowcharts.)

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Caerffili By-election: Random Thoughts

On By JacIn Elections, English Nationalism, European Union, Far Left, Globalism, Gwlad, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Government, World Economic Forum101 Comments

This piece is totally unplanned; but I want to get it out because I see so many misinterpreting the result and failing – or refusing to understand – what lies behind it.

◊

PLAID CYMRU AND LABOUR, LABOUR AND PLAID CYMRU

Let me begin by congratulating Plaid Cymru on a great victory. As I’ve mentioned more than once, I was a member of the party for many years and, back in the 1970s, a candidate for both Swansea council and the old West Glamorgan county council.

But it was a different party back then. Though the victor in Caerffili, Lindsay Whittle, seems in some ways closer to the party I belonged to than the modern party. We shall see.

The Plaid campaign was strange in that it seemed to be more about stopping Reform than offering any policies of its own. And so it was reduced to a two-horse race; portraying Reform as the agents of Putin, Trump, and English nationalism (get your head around that!), with Plaid as the standard bearer for Wales, decency, and ‘progress’.

Which was bollocks. The election was really about voters’ rejection of Labour. Everything else flowed from that.

The people of Caerffili were justifiably pissed off with Labour for two reasons.

First, 26 years of abject failure by the Labour party managing Wales from Corruption Bay. From which Plaid and Reform profited.

But let’s remember that Plaid was in coalition with Labour between 2007 and 2011, and the two are currently in some ill-defined ‘agreement’. Furthermore, and just like Labour, Plaid supports the Globalist-Woke agenda on climate, gender, race, etc., and would go further.

Second, there was Keir Starmer factor: cancelling winter fuel allowance, rocketing electricity bills thanks to ‘clean green energy’, rising taxes, rent boys, immigration, Chinese Communist Party influence, rape gangs, Digital ID. A tower of betrayals and lies that will soon topple and destroy Starmer.

So Plaid profited because they were seen by many as being a change from Labour. An improvement. And marginally preferable to Reform. With a strong local candidate, in Lindsay Whittle.

But in addition to the shared outlook I just listed, and since Plaid abandoned independence the difference between Labour and the Party of Wales is, well . . . anybody got a fag paper? Don’t bother – there’d be nowhere to fit it.

Here’s what they both really want: More political power for the Senedd and more funding from London; then they can make California Democrats look like Confederate flag-waving rednecks buck dancing by their likker stills.

And as someone has pointed out to me, the constituency itself needs to be understood.

His take is that the northern part of the constituency probably went to Reform.

But the southern part, which touches Cardiff’s northern suburbs, is home to many ‘progressives’ who realised Labour is cooked and switched to Plaid.

◊

ATTITUDES, REACTIONS, RESPONSES

One of the more puzzling outlooks came from those claiming to want independence but attacking Reform, and using choice language, for being “English nationalists“. Which exposed, yet again, that the modern nationalist movement is home to some very strange, and stupid, people.

I love to see the England flag. I want the English people to reclaim England. I want three independent countries on this island respectful of each other. The threat is not England or the English, the threat is a form of Unionism that has little respect for us and is subservient to supranational bodies and the Globalist agenda.

Yet most of those who attack Reform as English nationalists want independence in order to rejoin a bankrupt and increasingly authoritarian EU pushing for war with Russia to distract from its internal collapse. This is insane.

Reform may be Unionist – but looking at the bigger threat, to which independence under those now promoting it would sacrifice us – Reform appears to want the same things I want.

There was a post-election piece by Martin Shipton in Nation.Cymru today. Here’s one of the comments. Who’d have thought the president of Russia could be worked into a small comment on a Welsh by-election.

Though I’m at a loss as to why proximity to Cardiff should matter. Unless it links with my earlier reference to the nature of the Caerffili constituency, and the dread thought of hairy-arsed ‘flag-shaggers’ encroaching on those leafy northern suburbs.

Knowing the political sentiments of some of those commenting to this piece (even the writer), I was struck by how easy it’s been for them – and others I’ve read today – to switch from Labour to Plaid.

For them, it’s clearly the agenda that matters, not which party pushes it.

Yet we might still see Labour go for broke, and try to out-Woke Plaid before next May’s Senedd elections. That’s what Paul Embery might have suggested today in this tweet.

Did a Labour Senedd member really say that on the Home Service?

If so, how will Labour go about it? Just imagine . . . “We have set up a taskforce, with a budget of £20m, to tackle the problem of transphobia in Llanfair Caereinion“.

◊

LOSERS, WINNERS, CONCLUSION

The party I support, Gwlad made little impression; hardly surprising if you lack rich backers and the media ignores you.

But then, I remember it took Plaid Cymru 40 years before Gwynfor Evans won the Carmarthen by-election in 1966. So maybe it’s time to put Plaid’s victory in perspective.

First, Caerffili was a by-election; strange things can happen at by-elections. I recall the Orpington by-election of 1962. But it didn’t lead to a Liberal revival.

And Plaid has been here before, winning seats in the Valleys. In the first Assembly elections (of 1999) Plaid took Islwyn, and Rhondda, also Llanelli. Plus of course the usual seats further west and north.

More recently, Leanne Wood won, then lost, Rhondda.

I can even remember Plaid briefly taking control of Merthyr council.

So Plaid winning a seat in this area is not unprecedented, but they tend to be flashes in the pan. Will Caerffili prove to be any different?

The big difference now of course is that Labour is in real trouble. Is it terminal? Is Labour’s century of dominance in Wales over, just as the 1920s marked the end of Liberal hegemony?

It’s too early to say, because as I said earlier, Labour paid the price in Caerffili for both its own record in Wales, and the unpopularity of a Labour administration in London. A change of government in London would almost certainly help Labour here, but only so much.

Because I think Labour in Wales was on the skids before Starmer got elected. In the Senedd elections of 2021 Labour got 46% of the vote in Caerphilly. In last year’s UK general election, it was down to 38%.

And we may never see a majority Labour government in London again. Many younger voters, and middle class voters, will desert to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

And where are the Conservatives? Remember them!

Looking ahead to the Senedd elections next May, and unless something dramatic happens between now and then, we’ll see Reform with most seats, but Wales run by a Plaid-Labour coalition.

Which means that the big winner last night in Caerffili was, and the big winner next May will be, the Globalist agenda.

∼

The punters looked from Labour to Plaid, and from Plaid to Labour, and from Labour to Plaid again; but it was already impossible to say which was which.

Apologies to George Orwell, Animal Farm.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Wales Being Bought Up Acre By Acre

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Farming, Globalism, Greens, Wind Turbines71 Comments

This piece was prompted by someone asking me if I’d read an article recently published on the Nation.Cymru website. I smiled to myself, and responded in the negative.

But I went to the site anyway, and read ‘140 hectares of Welsh land purchased to restore woodland and nature habitat‘. Then one thing led to another, and here we are with yet another ‘quickie’.

Which means I must apologise again for the delay in the promised piece on the Rhug Estate. I have started, and it’s in the pipeline.

◊

CONNECTIONS

You may recall that earlier this month I wrote about 200m tall wind turbines being threatened for a hill to the east of Neath, in the Afan valley. That opus was called, Do They Know Where The Money’s Coming From? Do They Care?

(The answer to both questions is almost certainly No.)

The area under threat is Mynydd Fforch-dwm. The piece in Nation.Cymru a few days back concerned Brynau (pinned) and Cefn Morfudd. Fforch-dwm is to the east.

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Back to the article, which was unattributed, suggesting it was a press release, and that N.T, funded by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’, has truly joined the Welsh media.

The article told us that Coed Cadw, the Welsh branch of the Woodland Trust, had “secured” 140 hectares at Cefn Morfudd to add to the 95 hectares previously acquired at Brynau farm.

Let’s look into it a little more. And as ever, the real question is, where’s the money coming from?

The purchase . . . supported by grants from Lloyds Bank and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, funding from People’s Postcode Lottery . . . donations . . . Moondance Foundation and the Banister Charitable Trust . . . grant from The Woodland Investment Grant (TWIG) scheme, a partnership between The National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Welsh Government

Most look to be straightforward grants, but two piqued my interest.

The Moondance Foundation, is the charitable arm of the Admiral Insurance group. The company formed by American Henry Engelhardt, and Wales’ only FTSE 100 company.

But who now owns the group? Wikipedia says:

Admiral Group plc is owned by . . . shareholders, including the Moondance Foundation, Rothschild & Co, Fidelity Management & Research, and FIL Investment Advisors

Wikipedia also tells us:

In April 2021, Admiral finalised the sale of interests, that included its Cardiff-based price comparison firm Confused.com, to RVU for proceeds of £508m.

This is a reference to RVU, which in recent years seems to have bought up a number of well-known insurance companies. The RVU website gives us the timeline, and we see Confused.com under 2021.

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The first entry mentions Silver Lake as a ‘US equity firm’. Silver Lake (Offshore) AIV GP V Ltd is the ultimate owner of RVU, and it’s registered in the Cayman Islands.

How often do we end up in the Caymans – or other sun-blest locales – when looking into planet savers?

The money for Coed Cadw at Bryn Morfudd may be coming from the Moondance Foundation, or the Moondance Foundation might simply be acting as a conduit. For having just mentioned so many hard-nosed investors, and tax haven companies, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we were looking at another bit of greenwashing.

The other name that caught my attention was the Banister Charitable Trust. But I couldn’t find a website, only references like this. It’s based in Bristol, the source of so much ‘green-ism’.

There is of course an entry on the Charity Commission website, which set me off down a few more rabbit-holes. Especially when I checked out the trustees.

Where we see two surnamed Banister, but above them, Ludlow Trust Company, which seems to manage other trusts. So what is the Ludlow Trust?

Let’s start with the website. Where we read:

Established in 2020 to acquire and manage the UK trust business of Coutts and the NatWest Group . . .

In 2024, Ludlow Trust also acquired the UK trust business of C. Hoare & Co.

So it’s a very recent creation, and it would appear to be in the business of saving people money, by way of avoiding taxes wherever possible, or investing in those areas offering reductions in tax, and other benefits.

The Companies House entry is also interesting. Looking through the recent grants I found a number of recipients based in Wales. (I include the Woodland Trust because there’s unlikely to be a separate payment to Coed Cadw.)

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Tracking the ultimate ownership and control of the Banister Charitable Trust led me to Luxembourg, the EU’s internal tax haven. To be exact, 2 Rue des Gaulois and the Charter Trust Group.

It then comes back to London, and there’s an Isle of Man connection. But the point, I think, with both Moondance and Banister, is that the money offered may be rather more than no-strings-attached grants.

◊

THE BIT IN THE MIDDLE

To recap: In a recent post we looked at the 200m turbines planned for Mynydd Fforch-dwm, and now we’ve looked at Woodland Trust expanding its little empire at Brynau and Cefn Morfudd.

But if we look again at the map, we see there’s a bit in between, Mynydd Blaenafon, so who owns this?

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To find out I obviously went to the Land Registry website. Here’s the title document I downloaded. You’ll see the land was bought in September 2020, for £525,000, by Peter Jeffrey Solly, of Exeter in Devon, who has a chequered record.

Solly’s also in the business of saving the planet . . . or of making money from pretending to do so. For the ‘Natural capital’ he mentions is the scam of scams. Described by the European Investment Bank thus:

Natural capital is the value of everything that comes from nature — soil, air, water and all living creatures

This is the Greensters dream – get politicians to introduce subsidies, grants and tax breaks for just about anything. Buy a field and claim it’s capturing carbon, breeding worms, or providing a habitat for moles – then wait for the lucre to roll in.

And when things start growing in your field . . . well, you’ll be able to order your private jet to get to the January knees-ups in Davos.

And you can even demand payment for the air above your field.

This explains why assorted corporations, asset managers, hedge funds, tax avoidance specialists, investors, etc., are buying up just about every parcel of land they can.

Though in the case of Solly his ambitions tread an already well-worn path. Because if we look more closely at the title document we see, at the very end:

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He has a lease agreement with a company called Mynydd Fforch Dwm Wind Energy 2021 Ltd. This is a front for Naturalis, which we read about in the earlier piece. So I won’t go over the links again.

What I find intriguing though is the timing. Solly bought the land at Mynydd Blaenafon in September 2020. The Naturalis website for Mynydd Fforch Dwm Wind Farm is also dated 2020.

Is Solly working with, or for, the company behind the plan for Mynydd Fforch-dwm? Was he tipped off? Then again, is Mynydd Fforch-dwm a red herring, and are the turbines really planned for Mynydd Blaenafon?

Or are turbines planned on both mountains? God knows there are enough in the area already. Maybe somebody’s hoping a couple of dozen more won’t be noticed.

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I’m not sure what exactly’s happening, but it begins to look a little complicated, maybe even devious. So here’s a thought . . .

According to the Land Registry, Mynydd Fforch-dwm is still in Welsh ownership. The owner has entered into an agreement with Mynydd Fforch Dwm Wind Energy 2021 Ltd.

While next door, the land at Mynydd Blaenafon was sold outright to Peter Jeffrey Solly. So was the previous owner, the Welsh owner, unaware of the turbine plans?

Worth asking, because everywhere we look in modern Wales we see Welsh people losing out, being displaced. We own less of Wales now than at any time in our history. Certainly less than we did before devolution.

That’s what 26 years of socialist rule under Labour and Plaid Cymru has achieved.

◊

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In our former mining valleys today it seems as if all land outside towns and villages is to be given over to wind farms. All of them foreign owned, with vast profits flooding out of Wales every day.

But why be surprised – this is Globalism. The land is bought up, cleared, exploited, and people are confined to 15-minute settlements, with travelling discouraged.

Superficially, and from a Welsh perspective, it may look bleak. But with President Trump declaring the ‘climate emergency’ to be a scam, and J D Vance humiliating the Globalist puppets running Europe, our enemy’s agenda is under real threat.

Starmer has a massive majority in MPs, but little popular support (less credibility). The EU is tottering. Germany goes to the polls on the 23rd. The war in Ukraine will soon end, and there’ll be huge revelations that not even the BBC will be able to ignore.

Thinking more locally – Labour will lose the 2026 Senedd elections. And many or most of the council by-elections between now and then.

So hang on in there. Better times are a-coming!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

A Case Study In ‘Rewilding’

On By JacIn Abergavennyshire, Climate, Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Farming, Globalism, Greens49 Comments

In a sense, this is a follow-up to last week’s offering, Budget Boost For Rewilders And Globalists. This week, I’m looking at an example of ‘rewilding’ which, on closer inspection, turns out to be a tourism business – receiving funding for posing as a rewilding project.

I’ll fit this into a more general evaluation of ‘rewilding’, and what it really means.

Incidentally, last week’s piece about Tir Natur’s project got a response from ‘Welsh Government’-funded Nation.Cymru and Stephen Price, its Senior Reporter.

Price has a background “working in the third and charity sectors“, and a “voluntary role as a Keep Wales Tidy Litter Champion“. Which gives us another link between that charity and Tir Natur.

◊

SETTING THE SCENE

This week, we’re mid-way between Abergavenny and Monmouth, the region I’ve dubbed ‘Abergavennyshire’ due to an influx of ‘progressives’ from the hell-holes of ‘Metro-Land’ and elsewhere.

(It should go without saying that Stephen Price lives in Abergavennyshire.)

Despite its distance from Corruption Bay, our politicians care more for these recent arrivals than for Welsh people. Certainly, that’s my conclusion when I consider the funding and other patronage bestowed on Abergavennyshire.

Perhaps a reward for this ingress strengthening Labour’s position as the largest party on Monmouthshire county council.

It’s here we find the Abergavenny Food Festival, Coleg Soros, Brecon Jazz Festival, Hay Festival, the many bodies arguing farmers are killing the Wye and the Usk. And of course – Gilestone farm, and the Green Man Festival. Etc., etc.

Map of Abergavennyshire. You’ll see it’s a cross-border unit because many of the new arrivals feel unsafe with thoughts of borders and nations.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Our destination today is not easy to reach. There’s no A road in the vicinity. Instead, it’s the B4233, then a track off that road, and after you’ve gone up a-ways, it’s another track to the destination.

This off-road excursion brings us to the The Grange Project. Run by Tom Constable and his wife Chloe, who bought the farm in April last year for £1.875m, without need of a loan or a mortgage.

But as the entry on Rewilding Britain tells us, there’s a lot more going on:

The vision for the site includes developing new nature-based tourism, including log cabins, alongside education and wellbeing programmes hosted in a beautiful converted barn on site. Chloe intends to use her background in clinical psychology to run courses focusing on the systemic resilience required to address the climate and biodiversity crises, while Tom will use his background in business to support ecopreneurs as they set-up and thrive on site.

Those who’ve been brainwashed, worked into a frenzy over a non-existent ‘climate crisis’, will be able to come to The Grange for treatment. At a cost, of course.

The Grange Project also does podcasts – in fact, Tom Constable is a professional – and here we find another link with last week’s piece.

You may remember Dan Ward, one of those involved with Tir Natur, was also working with North Star Transition. North Star was created by Jyoti Banerjee, who starred on the Grange podcast last week.

Small world, innit!

◊

A CLOSER LOOK

Those who’ve given themselves nightmares from reading too much Monbiot won’t be the only visitors, for The Grange also offers corporate away days. Where the IT department of Global Gizmos Inc can come gaze at trees and stuff.

Better still . . . for the trifling sum of £10,000 you can enjoy “two bespoke corporate away days“. Read more in the Corporate Partnership Proposal.

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I tell you what . . . for half that (in ready cash) you can have two corporate away days in my back garden, There’s flower beds, and a tree, and, er, grass, and if it’s wildlife you’re after then I’ll get our cat to put in an appearance.

If it’s raining you can sit in the conservatory. The missus will lay on a cuppa and biccies. Can’t say fairer than that, squire.

I have no doubt that the companies turning up for these eco-jollies will be claiming tax deductions, which will contribute to the ‘black hole’ in the UK accounts, and be used to justify freezing pensioners this winter.

That’s the ‘circular economy’ you keep hearing about.

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And sure enough, in the Corporate Partnership Proposal we find predictable ‘quotations’.

One from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), that outfit launched by Nazis using environmentalism as the new way to seize power and cull the untermensch.

The other is attributed to ‘Native American Wisdom’. (Are people still falling for that bollocks!) Here’s some wisdom from a source as much Native American as the one quoted: ‘Big Chief Jac-on-Blog say: “Environmentalists speak with forked tongue“‘.

The Grange website also offers, “our own glamping cabins and bespoke bell tents“, and elsewhere, “off grid escapes” in caravan-type structures made by Herefordshire chippie Simon Whitfield.

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Whitfield runs The Tiny Home Company. When I tried to find it on the Companies House website I drew a blank. So I went back to the website and scrolled down the homepage, where, in the smallest font imaginable, was: “The Tiny Home Company is a trading name of WB Capital Ventures Limited“.

But it was only by copying and posting it into Word that I was able to read that. Why so small? Very odd.

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WB Capital Ventures Ltd was formed as recently as July, and I assume ‘WB’ stands for Whitfield Brothers, because the two directors are Simon Peter Whitfield and his older brother(?) John Robert Whitfield.

The twelve shares split 8 – 4 in favour of the older brother. Who maybe put up the cash. He has over a million pounds sitting in the bank account of his other company.

And talking of money . . .

In its short life The Grange Project has already trousered £26,650 from the Coetiroedd Bach scheme. I guarantee there’ll be more grants in future.

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I’ll end this section with a brief look at what’s registered with Companies House. There are two companies.

One’s Wild Grange Farm Ltd, launched as recently as September 5, with the Constables as the only directors and shareholders.

And then there’s the Community Interest Company, formed in August, Wild Grange CIC. Again, Tom and Chloe Constable are the only directors (or members) and shareholders. Which I found odd. Because with a CIC I would expect to see others named, representing the community that will benefit.

This is usually people in the vicinity. So I went to the Companies House website entry for Wild Grange CIC and the Certificate of Incorporation. Most of which is pro forma.

Though towards the end it sets out who might benefit from the CIC:

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Which is fair enough, and what I expected. But what I read earlier in the document has me thinking. I refer to Rewilding Britain, as the ‘asset locked body‘.

A worst case scenario might be . . . the farm title is transferred to the CIC, which liquidates, and Rewilding Britain takes over The Grange.

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In the clip above, the Charity number given is that for Rewilding Britain. Whereas the address is for The Trust Partnership (and associated companies), which I assume drew up the arrangement.

The mystery is company number 08943330. For it refers to Mental Mastery Ltd, of Bournemouth, that dissolved 18 months after being formed, without filing anything.

I’ll assume it’s a typo. But if not . . .

◊

THOUGHTS ON REWILDNG

Let me be clear, there might be a role for small-scale rewilding such as we’re asked to see at The Grange.

Thinking again of my back garden . . . if I let it run wild it would sprout plants, flowers; attract butterflies and other insects, some small mammals, maybe a foraging hedgehog.

But once we talk about pine marten, beaver, wild boar, deer, wild ponies, ancient cattle, then we need more land than even the 1,000 acres Tir Natur is hoping to buy.

Because without large areas for these animals to roam and live naturally, problems such as stress, over-grazing, and in-breeding will occur.

Of course, food can be brought in, and fresh bloodlines can be introduced; but if ‘rewilding’ doesn’t create a self-perpetuating ecosystem, as in nature, then that defeats the whole object of the exercise.

One answer might be linking separated projects with ‘corridors’. I mention this because the idea features regularly in rewilding fantasies. Such as one in Cornwall called Tor to Shore. (Does that ring a bell?)

While Helman Tor sits near the top of the Par River, areas downstream are surrounded by farmland, where the project will partner with local farmers to tackle agricultural pollution and create ‘wildlife corridors’ – areas of habitat that . . . connect with other nature-rich sites, allowing wildlife to thrive beyond the reserve’s boundaries.

Rewilding Britain got its ass kicked for its involvement in a similarly-named colonialist land grab. It may be treading more carefully now, yet it’s deeply involved at The Grange, and seems to have been involved from the outset.

But how well do animals understand ‘corridors’? Not well at all; so that would mean mile after mile of fencing . . . which will inevitably get broken.

Mrs Jones will wake one morning to find aurochs feasting on her prize geraniums. And, then, when she goes out to shoo them away, and one of the buggers tramples her . . .

Or maybe it’ll be the consolation prize of tauros.

Auroch. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I haven’t mentioned predators like wild cat, lynx, and wolf. All of which appear in rewilders’ literature. Yet they have to be present, for without the balance created by their natural predators introduced prey animals will need to be regularly culled.

As deer are culled in the Highlands, due to the absence of wolves. While a shortage of prey animals will see predators going elsewhere to get a meal. (‘Look out, Mrs Jones!‘)

Which means that for a rewilding project to be viable it would need 20,000 or more self-contained acres. There would need to be enough food for a range of herbivores and foragers, whose numbers would be kept in check by predators – as in the wild.

In a small country like Wales we just don’t have that land to spare. Not if we; a) want a farming industry and b) let people access the countryside.

Which brings us to a very fundamental question, one confronting us at Grange Farm: ‘What is the real purpose of rewilding?’ This article (February 2023) asks a very similar question, and gives some disturbing answers.

A bit leftist for my tastes but it still makes good points about farms being lost, and corporate investment through middle men, agents, and front organisations.

Organisations such as Rewilding Britain, involved with three-year-old Nattergal. Below is Nattergal director and CEO Archie Struthers, panellist at Rewilding Britain’s Blue Earth Summit last month.

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Nattergal is owned by Lansdowne Developed Markets Master Fund Limited of the Cayman Islands.

One day Archie’s a ruthless investments guru, next day he’s saving the planet. These things happen. After Christmas I’m joining the Socialist Workers Party. (Yes, really!)

Archie’s a busy man for Nattergal, and the company’s mystery owner. Let’s look at three recent ventures. Starting with High Fen Wildland, where we read:

High Fen will offer wellness, eco-tourism, educational and research opportunities to provide opportunities for people as well as wildlife.

Wildlife comes last. Almost an afterthought.

The other two are Boothby Wildland, where, “Nattergal hopes to generate revenues through the sale of ecosystem services (natural capital)“. And Harold’s Park Wildland, that “will generate income from the sale of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) units and corporate sponsorship, and will support nature based tourism and recreation“.

Archie also has a couple of relatively new companies of his own, registered in Glasgow. Ardmaddy Ventures Ltd, named for his Argyll estate; and Nature Based Investment Solutions Ltd.

Make no mistake, corporate ‘investors’ are circling Welsh family farms like vultures.

There was an example just last week of farmers being ‘cold called’ by a company named Property Vision. Acting on behalf of anonymous ‘investors’.

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Rewilding Britain is involved with three projects in Wales in addition to The Grange; they are:

Cefn Garthenor, in Ceredigion. Gilfach, in Powys. Wilder Pentwyn, also in Powys.

They have three things in common:

1/ They were once homes to Welsh families.

2/ They are no longer working farms producing food.

3/ They have received substantial ‘Welsh Government ‘ funding

Always worth remembering when some clown gets all misty-eyed over ‘rewilding’.

◊

CONCLUSION

On a fundamental level, The Grange Project makes no environmental sense due to the increased traffic emissions as engines struggle with gradients and rough tracks to even reach the place.

More environmental damage than the working farm it replaced. Unless of course you want to be really stupid and introduce the threat posed to us all by farting cows. (Fortunately, ‘Dr’ Bill Gates has a solution.)

The Grange Project is clearly a tourism project and a ‘wellness’ retreat for hysterical Guardian readers raking in extra money by presenting itself as a rewilding project. Like those we looked at earlier linked with Archie Struthers.

I believe genuine rewilding is incompatible with daily visits from the public, especially noisy children, and middle management on a raucous day out. Making it all rather phoney.

Especially if there’s ‘natural capital’ and ‘biodiversity net gain’ involved.

And let’s remember that The Grange is less than 100 acres in total. From what I can see, a few trees have been planted and pigs allowed to muddy up some fields. Is that really ‘rewilding’?

If so, then why aren’t we all offered money to let our gardens run wild? A few thousand of us, in Wales alone, could make a big contribution to the environment and biodiversity.

Because, gentle reader, ‘rewilding’, with the involvement of outfits like BlackRock, is not about saving the planet; it complements legislation and other measures intended to undermine farming, thereby freeing up land for acquisition and investment.

‘Rewilding’ is just the prettied-up face of the Globalist land grab.

Once you understand that – everything else makes sense!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Left: Lost, Found, Re-purposed, Finished

On By JacIn Climate, Environmentalism, Far Left, Globalism, Middle East, Ukraine, World Economic Forum42 Comments

Let me start by explaining that the title does not refer to the sad buggers in forgotten communities who vote Labour out of force of habit, nor the careerists they vote for.

I’m dealing with those who bring city streets to a standstill waving terrorist flags and shouting anti-Semitic slogans. Antifa, BLM, and all the other representatives of grievance politics.

And the Quixotic beings forever battling ‘fascists’ and ‘transphobes’, ‘climate deniers’ and ‘Islamophobes’. Those who think the white man is genetically evil.

◊

IN THE BEGINNING

I’d considered writing something along these lines for a while, but the trigger for what you’re about to read was something that happened a week ago.

I put out a post on X that linked to Google maps to show the heat island around the Senedd, with nary a blade of grass to be seen near the building whose denizens want to plant trees everywhere . . . preferably on what today are working farms. It struck me as mildly hypocritical.

Among the responses was one from someone called Ben Wildsmith.

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He seemed to suggest that vegetation does not grow near the sea. Making the marram grass of my childhood summers in Port Eynon a false memory. The palms lining tropical beaches, and trees running down to more northern shorelines, must be equally imaginary.

So I got to wondering about Ben Wildsmith.

Let’s give some background for what’s coming. At the Trump assassination attempt one man died after shielding his wife and daughter from the shooter, His name was Corey Comperatore, aged 50, and he was a firefighter.

In one of those theatrical gestures that Americans seem to like, Donald Trump, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, kissed the fire helmet of the dead man.

Which prompted Ben Wildsmith to put out this post on X. The message reads: ‘Yer Da kisses dead men’s helmets’.

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‘Yer Da’ is Scouse for ‘your father’, and the rest is a crude reference to a human penis. However you think about it, it’s distasteful. I mean, is it addressed to Trump’s children? Or is it something really, really clever that’ll be understood by leftist necrophiliacs?

That helmet belonged to a man who put his life on the line in the job he did, and then gave that life to save his wife and daughter. Doesn’t he deserve better?

Well, no – because he was a Trump supporter. That means he can be ‘othered’, and vilified. Because that’s how too many in the modern left think. Including the brainwashed young man who tried to kill Trump. And this nutter.

Reminding us that those who urge ‘tolerance’ are often the most dangerously intolerant.

They suffer a kind of tunnel vision; which is never a good thing, unless perhaps you’re in a tunnel. But as long as sufferers stick together, they see no problem.

Take the July 4 general election. There were people in Wales celebrating a Tory-free Wales as if that was going to make everything better. Of course it won’t; but these people are so fixated on the Conservatives being the source of all evil that they’re incapable of seeing the truth.

Wales has had 25 years of socialist rule from Corruption Bay and it’s been disastrous. But everything’s gonna be fine now – because we’ve got no Tory MPs!

‘Cleansing rain’! Wow! Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Ben Wildsmith was one of those rejoicing, in his Nation.Cymru column. Yes, Ben writes for that site funded by the ‘Welsh Government’. Ben also likes to think of himself as a poet and a musician.

◊

LOST

I believe the left in the Anglosphere started losing its way in the late 1970s. The answer to human misery was certainly losing ground in the UK then (partly due to over-reach), and this culminated in the Winter of Discontent.

Which helped Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives get elected in May 1979. Her position was then strengthened by an unlikely combination of an Argentine military junta invading some islands nobody’d heard of, and the antics of the extreme left.

In the USA, Democrat Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, but was not re-elected due to his administrations’s perceived weakness over the US hostages taken in Tehran. Republican Ronald Regan won the presidency in 1980, and was re-elected in 1984.

To cap it all, after years of obvious decline, but also thanks to a collapsing economy, and a costly and unpopular military intervention in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union started falling apart in 1988/89.

This was crucial, so it’s worth considering how the end of Soviet Communism affected politics in the West. Or certainly, this is how I see it.

On the one hand, the US military-industrial complex had grown rich and powerful by holding up the Soviet bloc as an existential threat.

But in his farewell address in January 1961, less than three years before his successor, John F Kennedy, was assassinated, outgoing president Dwight D Eisenhower, warned:

. . . guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex

With the Soviet empire gone, those Ike warned against were left almost without a raison d’etre.

But with China not yet powerful enough to be a credible replacement there was little alternative but to stick with Russia. The regime had changed, but post-Communist Russia still had all those nuclear warheads. And a space programme.

Which posed a problem for the left, because since 1917 many socialists in the West had looked to Russia for inspiration, even orders.

Remarkably, the left, traditionally critical of US foreign policy in Latin America, Vietnam and elsewhere, eventually fell in with military-industrial complex thinking.

This was achieved because many leftists began to regard the new Russia under Yeltsin, and then Putin, as a betrayal. And when Putin came all out for nation, church, family, tradition, the left turned on him.

When he banned gay marriage the comrades became apoplectic.

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Putin’s position on these matters also made him a target for the Globalists, who ridicule religion (but only Christianity), and seek to undermine the family unit, erase national differences, and destroy Western traditions.

This led to a fear among both Globalists and the military-industrial complex that the new Russia might serve as a dangerous example to the West. This became another reason to treat Russia as the enemy, and to villainise Putin.

And so it was full speed ahead to NATO encirclement of Russia, EU enlargement, the 2014 Kiev coup, provoke war in Ukraine and . . . I wonder what comes next?

Something else that must be understood about the collapse of the Soviet Union is that it killed off any lingering belief in the Communist economic model. It just didn’t work. Few saw that more clearly than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The lesson for ‘our’ socialists was that their war against the corrupt and evil West would need to take a different form. Which meant cultural Marxism; initially the relatively benign ‘political correctness’, with this softening-up process leading to the mind-numbing idiocies of Wokeism that followed.

Yet Russia in the early 1990s, with its vodka-loving president, and gangsters fighting over state assets, was a bit of a shambles. In the public mind it was not perceived as the same threat as its superpower predecessor.

Other ‘threats’ were needed as a supporting cast.

◊

FOUND

In the UK, the initial cleansing under leader Neil Kinnock wasn’t enough to win Labour the general elections of 1987 and 1992. A complete re-brand was needed, and it came with Tony Blair and New Labour which, after victory in 1997, stayed in power until 2010.

New Labour was a kind of Margaret Thatcher tribute band.

In the USA, the left seemed to be largely incorporated into the Democratic Party, and to some extent de-fanged.

The collapse and disintegration of the Soviet empire, and with it the removal of a unifying focus for Western concerns, was also a problem for supranational bodies that like to influence public perceptions and political decisions.

The answer they came up with was ‘global warming’, or ‘climate change’. This racket fulfils an almost identical role to the Cold War; because as well as focusing minds and frightening people, it’s used to dictate human behaviour, curb individual freedoms, and satisfy corporate greed.

And when it came to more immediate military ‘threats’, well there was a theatre company of sociopaths out there with dodgy moustaches . . . and oil. To raise the curtain, and stress the importance of oil, Saddam Hussein conveniently invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And as we soon learned from US and UK spokesmen, Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). People who knew that to be a lie were helped to commit ‘suicide’.

Perhaps Saddam felt encouraged to invade after the US had funded and armed his bloody war with Iran from 1980 to 1988. Done, not because the Americans had any liking for him, but because the Ayatollahs had deposed their Shah in 1979. And of course, as payback for the hostage crisis that so embarrassed the USA and brought down the peanut farmer from Georgia.

(Though rumours persist that certain US agencies dragged their feet over the hostages in order to make Carter look bad, and help former CIA boss George H W Bush get elected. What a thought!)

These forays into the lands of oil initially wrong-footed the left. Normally, the comrades would oppose Western powers invading countries over natural resources. But Saddam Hussein Al-Tikriti was a difficult bloke to defend.

So by 2010 the left is onside with the thinking of the military-industrial complex agenda, has bought into the Globalists’ climate scam, and is open to adopting any lunacy that can be deployed to challenge Western values and institutions.

With a Conservative government returned in 2010 the left felt it was time to flex its muscles again.

◊

RE-PURPOSED

In the USA, blue collar workers and southern whites had been switching to the Republicans for some time. And this continued under Obama.

While in the UK, many lower-paid workers had lost their fear of voting Tory with Margaret Thatcher, some moving to even more ‘exotic’ destinations on the right.

Which meant that Labour and Democrats needed to replace these lost voters. In the USA there was a push to register more voters from minority groups. But that took a dangerous turn when the left started arguing that to ask voters for ID was ‘racist’.

Now, in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, we’ve seen Democrats demand that undocumented, illegal migrants be allowed to vote.

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The thinking behind this is pretty obvious.

The military-industrial complex may have taken shape to further US imperial ambitions and enrich US corporations, but it soon spread its influence to UK politics, and NATO.

For as Tom Paxton put it in Daily News:

Ban the bombers are afraid of a fightPeace hurts business and that ain’t right

At its simplest . . . corporate America gains from making the weapons for the military. The quicker the products are used, and replaced, then the bigger the profits.

But the military-industrial complex also profits from ‘rebuilding’ the countries wrecked by the weapons it’s produced.

This report from 2005 explains how Halliburton did it in Iraq. And with the fighting still taking its bloody toll along the Dnieper BlackRock and JPMorgan have been quick off the mark to set up a Ukraine Reconstruction Bank.

Globalist corporations profiting from a war the USA engineered in order to support the most corrupt regime in Europe. What’s more, Ukraine’s been corrupt for a long time.

As I’ve reported before, the head of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, wants “governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations” to have the power of compulsory purchase over farms and other private property.

Should that happen, then WWW, or Radnorshire Wildlife Trust, or even Bute Energy, could throw you off your land, or out of your home – to save the planet.

When they’re not supporting the US military-industrial complex and the most corrupt country in Europe, the comrades are promoting the Globalist land grab agenda of Jamie Dimon and his buddies.

As I’ve said before, 2016 saw the process ratcheted up because, through Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, the lower orders had proven themselves to be both stupid and racist. The gloves were off.

Which is why we are where we are. And seeing the West so weak, socialists may think their time has finally come. But I believe their time has come, and gone.

The entitled, attention-seeking clowns, with their half-baked ideas, have become an embarrassment. Certainly Ed Miliband thinks so. The days of performance socialism may be coming to an end. People have had enough.

◊

FINISHED

Miliband is close to those hoping to benefit from net zero, carbon capture, and all the other elements of the climate scam. So he may not just be speaking for himself.

But anyway, it’s not just Miliband, there are other signs that something is changing. Just look around. Can’t you smell it!

There are governments in Europe hanging on for dear life, dreading the next election. The UK has a government with no real mandate. France seems to be falling apart. The West is being flooded with ‘refugees’ who are nothing of the sort. Following an assassination attempt on the man likely to be the next US president, there was a palace coup to remove the incumbent!

All because people are waking up to the truths. They know they’ve been lied to in so many ways, and for too long. Those who’ve lied to us are getting worried.

Change is inevitable. Possibly major change.

Finally following Ike’s advice and reining in the military-industrial complex, curbing the power of the Globalists, and dealing with the clowns who serve their agendas without realising it, is the best hope for a just, peaceful, and prosperous world.

But if it’s too late and the worst happens; then when you see that mushroom cloud, you can at least console yourself by knowing there are no Tory MPs in Wales.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

The Climate Crisis And The Noble Lie

On By JacIn Climate, Globalism, Greens, Higher Education46 Comments

I decided to put this out soon after making up my mind not to bother with an analysis of the general election result. Only in a FPTP system could a party get a massive majority from a reduced share of the vote. A system designed for Whigs and Tories to fight over rotten boroughs is obviously broken.

◊

MIND-BENDING BOLLOCKS, CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES, MORE BOLLOCKS

This piece took life with an article in Nation.Cymru last Thursday entitled, ‘Climate inaction undermines public support for lifestyle changes‘. A strange title, but when you think about it, it’s revealing.

The suggestion is that because the decision-makers are not doing enough to tackle the ‘climate crisis’ we, the public, are failing to support the lifestyle changes deemed necessary to combat said ‘climate crisis’.

The article begins:

New research into the public perception of climate change initiatives finds that whilst there is strong support for low-carbon lifestyles inaction is limiting public beliefs that a low-carbon future is possible.

Which is absolute bollocks. Outside of OPD circles there’s no ‘strong support for low carbon lifestyles’.

Or rather, support may exist, but only in the abstract. For in the real world, eating, heating, travelling, at reasonable cost, win out every time over the draconian and expensive measures proposed to achieve net zero.

The N.C article quotes Dr Catherine Cherry, of Cardiff University’s School of Psychology and the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST).

Though I’m not sure if Dr Cherry’s really in Cardiff, and if she is, then I’m fairly sure she’s not teaching. Her Linkedin page locates her in Liverpool, but says she’s with CAST at Cardiff University. How does that work?

Call me an old cynic, but here’s how I read it. We, mere hoi polloi, need to be ‘persuaded’ that climate change is happening in order to accept the expensive, behaviour-changing, and freedom-limiting measures demanded of us by the Globalists.

But how is the voice of Dai Public to be heard? The N.C article recommends that old favourite – Citizens’ Assemblies.

We suggest involving the public in co-creating positive and fair visions of a sustainable future through deliberative processes like Citizens’ Assemblies. This could help build a public mandate for climate policies and foster a sense of climate citizenship, weakening the discourse of delay.

Anyone who’s been paying attention will know that Citizens’ Assemblies are as representative of genuine public opinion as a Question Time audience. In practice, citizens’ assemblies are stuffed with activists who tell other activists and politicians what they want to hear.

What those involved might perceive as a virtuous circle; others as an echo chamber.

As Dr Cherry is involved with the CAST, that’s where we head next.

◊

CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS

There’s something very 1984-ish about ‘social transformations’, don’t you think? Rather like ‘nudge unit’ Lynn Global and their ‘Behavioural Sciences’ (BS) work for the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

CAST looks like another gang of Greta-worshippers agonising over the rest of us. We inconsiderate bastards driving cars, having kids, eating meat . . . basically, just breathing.

Also at CAST we find Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE. Linkedin tells us she was also at Cardiff University, until July 2020. And she seems to have been a lecturer.

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And although she’s left Wales for Bath University, Whitmarsh was last year recruited by the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. Below is her entry on the WNZ2035 website.

I wonder if her ‘studies of meat consumption’ concluded we should eat more?

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Professor Whitmarsh’s CV might appear to be that of an academic, and nothing more, but I suggest caution because, in addition to her links with the highly suspect IPCC, this BBC article from March 2019 tells us:

A new £5m research centre led by Cardiff University’s psychology department, which will explore new ways to tackle climate change, has also been announced.

Prof Lorraine Whitmarsh, who will head up the unit, said it would “address the fundamental question of how we can live differently and better, in ways that meet the need for these systemic, deep and rapid emission reductions”.

Again, note that it’s the psychology department exploring “new ways to tackle climate change“. What can psychology do even if there is a climate crisis?

It’s explained in the following paragraph. And I think we know what is meant by, “live differently and better“. This is another reference to the ‘social transformations’ we read about earlier.

In reality, we are expected to live differently, but it won’t be better. Not for us.

This new department at Cardiff University seems to be a collaboration with CAST, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which is part of UK Research and Innovation.

So we have a department at Cardiff University, where psychologists are funded by the UK government to, among other things, advise the ‘Welsh Government’ on how to make us behave differently in response to a claimed ‘climate crisis’.

Here’s a final contribution from CAST, which is one of those bodies pushing the idiocy that the countryside is racist, and introduces race into the climate debate with:

People of colour in the UK are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts.

It’s nonsense, obviously. Yet another attempt by leftist academics to introduce race into just about every discussion. (A guaranteed route to funding.)

Before leaving that 2019 BBC article I must comment on the contribution from former first minister, Mark Drakeford:

First Minister Mark Drakeford said the younger generation recognised a failure to act “could have catastrophic consequences for their futures”.

We are talking now of brainwashed young people. Here’s how it works.

Six-year-olds, after being traumatised by drag queens flaunting their junk and telling them they’re in the wrong bodies, are further terrified by hearing the world will end in the very near future – and it’s all the fault of their wicked parents and grandparents!

Politicians then claim to be surprised and horrified by levels of ‘climate anxiety’ among young people. As if the inevitable consequence of brainwashing can be divorced from the brainwashing itself.

This is disgusting hypocrisy. Even for a Labour politician.

◊

THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

If that establishment’s name rings a bell it’s because about 15 years ago someone released a stash of e-mails suggesting that people involved with the Climate Research Unit there had been ‘imaginative’ with their findings.

Inevitably, those with a vested interest in promoting the climate scam – and of course their media – circled the wagons and dismissed the claims as smears made by ‘climate deniers’. (Who denies climate?)

The BBC even made a drama out of it – 14 years later!

Cherry and Whitmarsh were both there at that time.

Cherry was doing a MSc in Climate Change, after which she worked for a few months for the Norwich Green Party. While Whitmarsh was a senior research assistant at the University of East Anglia from April 2005 until March 2009.

I’m not suggesting that either was involved in fiddling the figures, or indeed that fiddling took place; but there is a cloud hanging over the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia from that period.

I mention this because Cherry and Whitmarsh later came to Wales, to Corruption Bay’s favourite university. Also because what happened in Norwich makes us consider what is often referred to as Plato’s ‘Noble Lie’.

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Which is saying things you know to be untrue for (what you perceive to be) the right reasons, or a beneficial outcome. In Plato’s case it seems to have been reminding different classes of their roles in a divinely-ordered system, thereby ensuring the social cohesion of the polis.

Social cohesion and a sense of belonging are entirely desirable, but today, in the age of Globalism, and its use of Wokery, there is nothing noble about the lies we are fed.

We are told that white people are uniquely evil. We are told that men can have babies. In fact, we are told all sorts of lies in order to cause confusion, destabilisation and the very opposite of social cohesion.

In Wales, farmers are blamed for every pollution incident. Blamed by those who covet the farmers’ land. In many cases, those making the claims are lying.

One example came from Rachel Sharp of the (officially defunct) Wildlife Trusts Wales. In November 2021 she told the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee that Welsh rivers and streams were awash with growth hormones used by Welsh farmers. Here’s a link to the video.

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Growth hormones have been illegal in the UK since 1981.

This blatant lie did nothing to damage Sharp’s reputation. For she sits on the ‘Welsh Government’s Hinkley Point C Reference Group. And it should go without saying that she was also recruited to that discredited-in-advance-of-their-‘findings’ gang, the WNZ2035 Challenge Group.

Both of which are chaired by the Green Goddess, and author of the Future Generations legislation, Jane Davidson.

If you really believe that farting cows are destroying the planet, or if you’re a zealous vegan, then you’ll have no qualms about lying when it comes to farmers. Especially when politicians are eagerly waiting to accept and act on your lies.

And of course, fund your purchase of vacated farms and abandoned farmland.

◊

CONCLUSION

If there really was a climate crisis, then the evidence would be enough to make us change our wicked ways. Psychology would not be needed. But there is no real evidence. As ever, in the absence of evidence, we are subjected to ‘imaginative messaging’.

Which relies on ‘corrected’ records, contemporary temperatures recorded in ‘heat islands’, computer modelling, and influencing organisations such as the Met Office and the BBC into describing sunny days of 20º Celsius as heatwaves. Phew!

Sometimes the deception is so obvious it’s laughable. We had a fine example back in 2022 with Matthew Horwood selling his photos of a tidal creek in Pembrokeshire to media outlets as evidence of a dried up river – due to climate change!

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Read it here by scrolling down to the section ‘Someone’s Telling Porkies’.

What I found instructive about this episode was that even after they’d been told the truth, the media made no corrections to their reports. They allowed the lie to stand, because they wanted to promote the lie.

But then, I suppose they have to lie because the headline-grabbing predictions made by Al Gore and other charlatans have all failed to materialise.

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Snow still caps Kilimanjaro. The Great Barrier Reef is in rude health. Polar bear populations are thriving. People still take holidays on the Seychelles and other islands we were told would disappear under rising sea levels. Deaths from extreme weather events have plummeted.

All of which explains why people aren’t buying into the ‘climate crisis’ – because it’s just not happening. So those who want us to believe in climate change, in order to control us and our behaviour, must resort to voodoo psychology.

If that fails, then perhaps it’ll be hypnotism next. I can see it now – The Great Gateso, black top hat and cloak, leggy assistant, inviting volunteers from the audience to be mesmerised into eating his lab-made ‘meat’.

This is of course encouraging. It tells us the Globalists are losing. But we must remain vigilant against their emissaries in politics, academia, the media, pressure groups and elsewhere trying to make us accept the lies.

Lies that are anything but noble.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

‘Welsh Government’ Wages Propaganda War Against Welsh Farmers

On By JacIn Corruption Bay, Environmentalism, Farming, Globalism41 Comments

This is an unplanned ‘quickie’ that I want to get out while the humour is on me and before I lose the details. It also needs to be said before the ‘Welsh Government’s campaign goes any further.

◊

‘FAR RIGHT’ SUPPORT

I’m going to start by looking at a piece from the BBC Wales website a few days ago. Written by an S4C reporter it worried that the farmers’ campaign against the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) was being exploited by far right elements with hidden agendas.

The article even provided a photograph of the ogress Katie Hopkins. Whatever one may think of her (and I don’t think about her at all) I suggest she’s rather too public to have anything hidden.

But just mentioning her name is guaranteed to get the comrades hyperventilating, and finger-pointing. Though providing a picture as well may have got a few spluttering to a point where their mams would have been seriously concerned.

(Unless of course they were out. Then it might be a three-day wait for an ambulance.)

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As I say, the report was written by a journalist from state-funded S4C. And by pure coincidence, one of the two farmers quoted has a gig with the same broadcaster! The other farmer had a beef with something Price had said about the Welsh language.

The farmer with the S4C job was quoted:

A responsible government will listen. Because no government’s role is to make the life of its citizens more difficult

But this is Wales. The ‘Welsh Government’ only listens to, and is then directed by, pressure groups and other fanatics. If S4C wants to find ‘hidden agendas’ then that’s where it needs to look.

If you want proof just look at who’s on the Active Travel Board, plotting to get private cars off the roads of Wales – three cycling organisations, plus Sustrans!

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Which of those lycra-clad wankers is supposed to speak for me?

I don’t believe that ‘farmers’ fear the wrong kind of support. They’re sensible enough to spot it. What I know a number of them really fear is a black propaganda campaign being mounted against them using ‘far right’ accusations.

And that’s exactly what this story was all about. It was a contrived and distasteful attempt to discredit the farmer’s protests using the most tenuous connection with somebody the left despises.

◊

LE PETIT TRIANON SUR ELWY?

The next report I’m going to use came out last night. Again, on the BBC website, and it actually says ‘climate change’ in the headline. (So there’s no arguing, right!)

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There were two journalists involved. Erin Sharrocks Lister is yet another English journalist taken on by BBC Wales, with Eirian Jones presumably serving as her native guide on this assignment.

(Unnecessary doubling up, and you’re paying for it.)

On a superficial level this story was about a farming family – Alex and Sam Kenyon – that had coped, in a very nature-friendly way, with increased flooding of their land caused by climate change. But so many buttons were being pressed in this story that it soon became a dizzying whirl of digits.

For example, we read:

With advice from Natural Resources Wales and the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), Sam discovered a method to preserve the riverbanks

Can you not see the cavalry coming over the hill and splashing through the flood plain? What a sight it was!

Sam then consulted her notes from Lesley Griffiths, and we read:

Sam said she was very determined to show nature-based solutions were practical and can benefit farmed landscapes and their biodiversity, especially in the face of climate change

As you’ve read, the ‘Welsh Government’s stooge, the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN), was involved here.

And on consulting the instructions he’d received from Lesley (and Gary?), Phil Carson, head of policy at NFFN, said:

We need government schemes that reward farmers to take these actions, alongside the right training, advice and support for farmers to embrace them with confidence

You know me, I got to wondering about Alex and Sam Kenyon.

I quickly found the website for Glanllyn farm. On it, Sam Kenyon describes herself as a “goat servant“. I don’t know any genuine Welsh farmer that would use a phrase like that. Come to that, I don’t think I know any genuine Welsh farmers that keep goats.

Sam is also supportive of the World Wildlife Fund (WFF). (Scroll down and you’ll find her among the Supporters.) There are few organisations doing more to undermine traditional farming today than the WWF.

The next step was Companies House, where I found Glanllyn Farm Produce Ltd. And where the humble ‘Alex’ is elevated to The Hon Alexander Simon Tyrell-Kenyon.

It seems he inherited the farm from an aunt.

After starting the business in 2016, she built the farm up from scratch on land that her husband, Alex, inherited from his family

I don’t wish to be too critical, for I see the name Hanmer in Alex’s bloodline. But the fact remains, the Tyrell-Kenyons are not representative of Welsh farmers.

Perhaps a generous interpretation might be the one I allude to in the section heading. That of Marie-Antoinette playing a shepherdess at her ‘cottage’ in the grounds of Versailles.

Whether Sam Kenyon knew she was being used to push a policy deeply unpopular with real farmers, I just don’t know. But we’ll leave it there.

◊

‘PSST, WANNA HEAR SOME MISINFORMATION?’

Not a lot of people know this, but the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ uses a private company as a propaganda unit, to push its message and slander its opponents. And of course, this is done with your money.

The company I’m referring to is Lynn. It seems to have begun with Lynn Group Ltd. Though another company formed more recently is Lynn Global Ltd. The deadline for submitting the first accounts for Lynn Global is March 20.

The sole director of both companies is Shayoni Sarkar Lynn.

Shayoni Lynn. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I wrote about Lynn last year, in ‘It’s Getting Sinister‘, and then I followed it with ‘Lynn Global Pushes Globalist Agenda‘. Lynn has a BS Unit. (As if the ‘Welsh Government’ doesn’t have enough in-house BS units!)

‘BS’ in the make-believe world of ‘nudge’ units stands for ‘behavioural science’. And that, in practice, means getting people to accept what their better judgement tells them is the other kind of BS.

In other words, and as George Orwell put it in 1984:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command

Which means that Lynn Global serves as the ‘Welsh Government’s Ministry of Truth. But instead of a questioning Winston Smith we find an enthusiastic Stefan Rollnick.

Though since he starred on this blog, Stefan’s presence on Linkedin has disappeared. Fortunately, I saved it ere it drifted off into the ether, for both posterity and your delectation. Here it is.

The briefest perusal of Rollnick’s background makes it clear that he’s Labour through and through. Which makes his job of defending the shower in Corruption Bay and slagging off their opponents almost instinctive.

His output confirms that view. A gem appeared on Nation.Cymru, but I can’t seem to find it now on the site. Fortunately, again, I saved it.

What’s striking is that the term “far-right” is used a dozen times in this relatively short article. “Conspiracy” is there six times. But nowhere do we see ‘far-left’. What does this tell us . . . apart from the fact that it’s a bit of a leftist rant?

Well, on one level, we have a website funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ putting out BS from another outfit funded by Drakeford and his crew. (Will you miss him?) So no surprises there.

But as I suggest, there is a dangerously ideological – and therefore divisive – edge to everything put out by the ‘Welsh Government’, or by Lynn, BBC and other mouthpieces.

◊

CONCLUSION

The message we are being force-fed is that the ‘goodies’ of the Globalist-Green-Left are trying to save the planet, but are being opposed by the wicked ‘far-right’, and these villains are now manipulating farmers protests.

Come on, this is pure pantomime.

Why would I, a creature of the rational and reasoning right, a man who has loved nature all his life; who has children, grandchildren (and soon, great-grandchildren), want to destroy nature and the planet on which we all live?

It makes no sense.

What does make sense is a man who’s been around a bit, studied human nature, known quite a few con men (friends, some of them), many liars, a few sociopaths, understands how politics and control operate, and recognises a dirty campaign when he sees it.

And so I’ve put out this unplanned and rather hasty post to warn people that there are dangerous and unscrupulous actors pushing the ‘Welsh Government’s message.

They are prepared to lie, to vilify decent people, and to do just about anything to promote their agenda. So be warned!

And remember! Behavioural science and bullshit have the same initials, and they amount to the same thing.

And that’s where you’ll find the true ‘hidden agendas’.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Lies, Damned Lies, Opinion Polls

On By JacIn Corruption, Corruption Bay, Globalism, Media, Public Funding, Welsh Government80 Comments

Here’s another ‘off the cuff’ kind of post; but what I’m going to write about illustrates a growing problem. Growing due to the increasing unpopularity of the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

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WELSH MEDIA: FASCISTS AND FOREIGNERS OPPOSE 20MPH

The big issue this week has been the introduction of the 20mph speed limit across the country. I wrote about it in last weekend’s posting, ’20mph, A Disaster Unfolds’.

But perhaps the legislation has been overshadowed by ‘that’ petition, which at the time of writing is heading towards 400,000 signatures. Though the so-called ‘Welsh’ media has tried hard to discredit it and those who’ve signed it.

Here’s an example from yesterday’s Western Mail. Despite 95% of the signatures coming from within Wales, Llais y Sais wants us to know that people in 51 countries have signed.

There’s even an insert headed: ‘Where the global opposition has come from’. Seven from Germany, one from Hungary . . .

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But what that rag is attacking is in fact perfectly reasonable. Welsh people living abroad, and English people in the Marches and elsewhere who regularly drive in Wales, are perfectly entitled to voice their opposition.

Then, at the bottom of the page, there’s a carefully worded piece inviting us to think that opponents of the 20mph restrictions are violent individuals. Probably ‘far right’.

This is not journalism; this is naked propaganda.

But then, when, like the Western Mail, you depend for financial survival on public notices and advertisements paid for by the ‘Welsh Government’, What ya gonna do?

But it was ever thus. It’s just a bit more obvious now. And it’s moving up a notch.

Which is the cue for me to tackle the meat of this issue.

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NUDGE, NUDGE – WHO’S THERE?

For this week also saw the release of a bizarre poll showing that more people support the 20mph restrictions than oppose them. And it was odd for a number of reasons.

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First, there’s the ‘slanted’ question, worded to achieve a desired outcome. Hoping “Where cars mix with pedestrians and cyclists” will conjure up images of boy racers screeching through pedestrianised areas, knocking over old ladies and kiddies on bikes.

This is called ‘nudging’. But even this doesn’t fully account for the ‘findings’.

By way of comparison, here’s a survey from WalesOnline. It certainly overstates the strength of opposition, but it’s closer to the truth than the survey we just looked at.

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Then there’s this YouGov poll, which still shows an almost two to one majority against.

No survey I have seen, and no other form of evidence, suggests anything other than a big majority against widespread 20mph speed limits.

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The other thing I found strange was that the survey doesn’t tell us who commissioned it, which is normal practice. So who produced that slanted survey?

The answer would appear to be Redfield & Wilton Strategies. So what can we learn about them? Well, not a lot. Individuals named Redfield and Wilton may not exist.

Which takes us on to the next section of this post. Follow me . . .

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‘WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE REALLY THINKING’

Companies House tells us that Redfield & Wilton Ltd was formed in January 2020 by Bruno Augusto Kormann Rodrigues. He remains the majority shareholder and the sole director.

So why is the company called Redfield & Wilton? Is it to make it sound more English? Whatever the answer, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that it’s an attempt to deceive. Which is not good for an organisation trading on credibility.

Even so, it’s reasonable to assume that Rodrigues has background in polling and market research? Well, er . . . no.

For Rodrigues is a solicitor. Here’s his entry from the Solicitors Register.

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Cassadys, mentioned above is a debt-ridden company that’s escaped compulsory strike-off for late returns more than once. The company is named after its founder, an Indian named Kaizad Cassad.

Rodrigues left at the end of October 2020. Just before launching Redfield & Wilton.

Around the same time, on 1 January 2020, Rodrigues took over BR Services Europe Ltd from Pakistani Umar Aqueel. A ‘Management Consultancy’ company, that was just bumping along financially.

The other entity mentioned in the Solicitors Register is the Brooke Consultancy LLP. Which seems to be a genuine sort of legal partnership, and it provides a useful profile of Bruno Rodrigues.

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That profile tells us he specialises in immigration law, and he’s also into, “the niche area of fashion law“. What the hell’s that? Does it mean I could get arrested for wearing the wrong socks?

But, strangely, no mention of his new venture of opinion polls. Come to that, here’s his Linkedin profile (here in pdf format), and there’s no mention of Redfield & Wilton here either.

I find that very, very strange. If ‘niche’ interests can be mentioned, why not a new company being regularly quoted in the media, and apparently being used by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic?

One more company needs to be mentioned. This is Alghanim Capital Ltd. Rodrigues was a director along with Kuwaitis Abdulwahab Alghanem and Fahad Alghanim who, despite the slightly different spellings, I take to be related.

Abdulwahab is described on the Companies House entry as a ‘civil servant’ in Kuwait, while Fahad is said to be a student in the USA.

Their line of business was: ‘Retail sale via mail order houses or via Internet’. Mmm.

Alghanim Capital was formed in October 2018, and folded without seemingly doing anything. So why was it formed at all? This is the sort of company behaviour that gets my whiskers twitching.

But even if it was all innocent, how did Rodrigues meet the Kuwaitis?

◊

VOX POPULI, VOX DAI

When I put out a tweet asking why we weren’t told who’d commissioned the Redfield & Wilton survey, I got a response containing an image from the R&W website.

Well, I assume that’s where it comes from, but my quick search didn’t find it. Though I’m sure it’s genuine, because the font and the colouring match, and the rascal who used it seemed to think he was putting me down, or weakening my case.

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“Self-commissioned“? Does that mean that Bruno Rodrigues and his little team decide amongst themselves what surveys to do, and then publish them? Or maybe get some media outlet to pay for their whimsical and random findings?

I don’t buy that. I certainly don’t think it accounts for all of their output.

The more I’ve thought about Redfield & Wilton the stronger the possibility has become in my mind that this outfit may not do any research or polling. It simply acts as a channel for what others want to promote.

Let’s say you want to push the message that more people in Wales support 20mph restrictions than oppose them, then you engage Redfield & Wilton in order to make the message look more credible than if it had come from a source that is obviously biased.

Though the R&W record is not impressive. Because for an organisation dealing in statistics, Bruno and his pals are not very good at figuring. They often seem to get things horribly wrong.

Which, when coupled with their pro-Labour bias (pro-Democrat in US polls), makes them look rather stupid. Here’s a recent example.

Bookies, as we know, like to have facts and reliable figures because there’s always money riding on them. So I was amused to read this piece in PoliticalBetting.com expose how horrendously wrong Redfield & Wilton got a recent Scottish poll.

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So who in Wales might have been desperate enough to ask R&W to put out this phoney 20mph survey?

Obviously, there’s the ‘Welsh Government’. But would they run the risk?

A more likely possibility must be the company that Drakeford and his clowns have employed to promote the 20mph restrictions. I’m referring now to Lynn Global. For this is their line of work.

This brainwashing outfit appeared in last week’s post on the 20mph fiasco, and Lynn also appeared in a couple of posts last month. ‘It’s Getting Sinister‘ and ‘Lynn Global Pushes Globalist Agenda‘.

Lynn would regard what I’m suggesting as ‘countering misinformation’ and therefore perfectly legitimate. Even desirable. To most people it would be lying to get your own way.

If I’m right, then we are on a dangerous path. Let me explain why.

◊

CONCLUSION

It’s common knowledge that in recent years opinion polls, especially on politics, have been used to influence public opinion rather than to gauge it and report it.

This explains why so many polls have been spectacularly wrong; on Brexit, on Trump’s victory in 2016, on the size of the Conservative majority in 2019. All because too many pollsters allowed their left-liberal or woke prejudices to intrude.

Returning to the Redfield & Wilton survey, as I see it, there are two alternatives: either the poll result is distorted with bias, or else it’s completely and deliberately fabricated. Neither option should be acceptable in an open and democratic society.

Good governments can stand on their records, on what they’ve delivered for their people. Only liars, incompetents and aspiring totalitarians need a bought media, ‘behavioural sciences’, and phoney surveys.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

Wales, Idiots And Envirogrifters

On By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Globalism, Greens, Welsh Government41 Comments

Yes, I’ve postponed the piece on the Globalists, again, but it’s a story with no real deadline. Whereas what I’m offering below is a kind of follow-up to a piece I put out in June: Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups. And I want to get it out before this year’s Show in Llanelwedd becomes a distant memory.

This is another biggie, but it’s segmented. So, as Buddy Holly sang, Take Your Time.

♦

EXTINCTION REBELLION, AN UPDATE

In the piece I just linked to I established that the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ (‘WG’) has been meeting with the extremists of Extinction Rebellion since at least May 2019.

I can now confirm that first minister Drakeford himself met with Extinction Rebellion in July 2019. Did he meet them even earlier, because the letter below doesn’t say it was their first meeting?

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I can’t take it back further (unsurprising seeing as XR didn’t launch until October 31, 2018), but I can reinforce the point that XR and WG are close, and establish beyond any doubt that the pressure group is giving orders to our elected representatives.

Exhibit A, M’lud: An e-mail from XR Cymru to Julie James, who’d been re-elected in the May 6 Senedd elections and made Minister for Climate Change. Basically, the message says, ‘You’re not going far enough or fast enough’.

The message ends with a reference to, ” . . . the good relationship with Welsh Government developed in the last few years”. On the right you’ll see Julie James’ response.

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The next communication I have is from XR Cymru Political Circle and it’s to Julie James and Llyr Gruffydd, Plaid Cymru chair of the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee, and it’s dated December 7, 2021.

I should add that the highlighting is not mine. And I was unable to locate the attachment referred to. (Yes, you’re welcome to try.)

Extinction Rebellion, with nary a vote to their name, tell the ‘Welsh Government’: “Of course there are areas where we want to see more action and faster responses“.

I’d tell them to fuck right off . . . but then, that’s me.

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The next billet-doux was sent on July 13, 2022, at 7:26 in the morning! From XR Cymru Political Circle to Julie James, and the subject matter, in upper case, read: “URGENT REQUEST FOR A MEETING”.

This is an interesting (and amusing) communication. For it might suggest that Julie James was not giving XR the personal attention they thought they deserved. In fact, it reads as if she fobbed them off with her deputy Lee Waters, and they weren’t impressed.

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There is the usual ‘Must do better! reprimand, but what I really want to focus on is the reference, in bold type, to “Behaviour Change Strategy“. Also, the introduction of Claire Chappell, who is said to be ” . . . working as quickly as possible with substantial resources . . . “.

So who is Claire Chappell?

Her Linkedin page (here in pdf) describes her as, ‘Head of Brand Performance’ at the ‘Welsh Government’, and she’s been in the job for more than 8 years. But what is the job? And what is ‘brand performance’?

Well, I found this explanation, and if the definition below is to be believed, then Clair Chappell and her employer are dismal failures.

Brand performance marketing, also known as brand purpose marketing, focuses on improving your brand’s reputation and of course, its performance.

Finally, we’ll read this e-mail from December 13, 2022. From XR Cymru Political Circle to Julie James and Lee Waters, cc Mark Drakeford and Llyr Gruffydd.

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Again, that reference to “behaviour change“. How exactly are we supposed to change? And change into what – mugs taking orders from Extinction Rebellion channelled through the ‘Welsh Government’?

Here endeth the chapter on Extinction Rebellion. I’m hoping the ‘Welsh Government’ and Plaid Cymru now remember that we are judged by the company we keep.

Though I suppose that advice could also be given to Extinction Rebellion.

♦

MISCELLANEA

In this chunk of the opus I want to deal with stories that either made it into the news recently, or else came to my attention by some other route. Some of these broke at the Show, others lead on from things that broke at the Show.

That make sense?

∼

RULE OF SIX

I’m referring to the Six Principles, and Extinction Rebellion was also involved in this nonsense from before the May 2021 Senedd elections. It’s in the form of an appeal to politicos to sign up to six principles somebody’s dreamed up at their Pilates class.

Here’s a composite of the appeal, the six principles set out, and a list of the signatories.

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One of the six organisations involved is Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Which I was delighted to see, for we really must stop the annual slaughter of dolphins at Abergele, and scupper the Aberaeron whaling fleet.

Also among the signatory bodies is CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. When did Wales become ‘overseas’? Or why does CAFOD keep cropping up in these envirogrifter pronunciamentos?

∼

THE ENVIROGRIFTERS’ MILITIA

Now we’re expected to fall into line with the National Nature Service, and I bet you didn’t even know we had one. Neither did I.

I just can’t keep up with all these new bodies, overlapping, duplicating each other’s work, the same people popping up wearing different hats, and all in receipt of public funding and / or time that politicians and civil servants should be spending on real problems.

Clearly following the third sector model.

And just like the third sector envirogrifters will identify a ‘problem’, and demand funding to solve said problem; but never actually solve the problem because that would mean the end of the funding. That’s how this scam works.

I described this plan on Twitter as a militia for hobby farmers and hippies, and I see no reason to change that view. With perhaps XR providing the commissars. Just scroll down here and see who’s involved in this latest scam.

Now think about it, here we have an organisation promising to revitalise rural Wales, and yet the two farming unions are not involved, and neither is the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales.

What we see instead, are the usual suspects. Envirogrifters, Swamp dwellers, and ‘Welsh Government’ departments.

Which makes this capture from the militia website dishonest. Unless of course it refers to hippies and hobby farmers. Which I suppose makes a certain sense, given that the ‘Welsh Government wants these to replace traditional Welsh farming.

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The website is very basic and uninformative, giving it a work in progress feel but, unsurprisingly, we read that the previous Future Generations Commissioner had a big hand in its production.

Though the Commissioner is only the Welsh agent for a bit of UK-wide silliness, as we read below. The links will tell you more.

The process is being organised by the Wales Inquiry of the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission, with support from the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner, under the auspices of the Green Recovery Task Group – a cross sector group convened to act quickly and creatively in response to the impacts of the pandemic.

The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales included the proposal to create a national nature service in her Fit for the Future Programme for Government

Envirobollocks piled so high it’s in danger of blocking out the sun . . . Hang on! – is that the cunning plan?

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NFU REJECTS ‘WELSH GOVERNMENT’ TREES PLAN

One of the big stories of the Show was NFU Cymru rejecting ‘Welsh Government’s demand that farmers set aside 10% of their land for tree planting. Hedgerows do not count, but possibly trees in hedgerows do count!

The proposal might work on some farms, but not others. Which is why the ‘Welsh Government’s blanket approach reveals the failing of inflexibility that we see time and time again.

We saw it with the NVZ legislation, brought in to tackle a very localised problem, yet the politicians adopted a sledgehammer and nut approach and made the legislation both national and unreasonably strict. Though the ‘Welsh Government’ has subsequently backed down a couple of times.

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But then, Labour politicians in Wales know little about farming or the countryside. Theirs is a party of cities, post-industrial areas, chip-on-shoulder minorities, and agitators with useless degrees and colourful hair.

To compound the problem Labour politicians are advised by civil servants – like Lesley Griffiths’ former paramour Gary – who’ve been shipped in from England to run down Welsh agriculture.

Further, the draconian NVZ rules were based on the false premise that farmers are solely responsible for poor water quality. Because, for reasons given elsewhere, it suited a number of agendas to give Dŵr Cymru / Welsh Water a free ride.

Among the agendas served was that of environmental / river groups, in receipt of public funds and, in many cases, seeking to appropriate farmland.

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FUTURE GENERATIONS COMMISSIONER LOOKS INTO THE, ER, FUTURE

Now we turn to one of my favourite sites, Nation.Cymru. Though the unkind among you dismiss it as just another ‘Welsh Government’ propaganda outlet.

And after reading ‘We need a new long-term vision for food in Wales‘ I can see why.

This little gem was penned by Derek Walker, the new £95,000 a year Future Generations Commissioner; and just like his predecessor, Sophie Howe, he got the gig not because of any particular talent, but because he’s a trusted Labour insider.

Not only that, but Derek worked for Stonewall. In fact, he helped Stonewall set up in Wales. How much more of an insider can you be?

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So what did Derek have to say?

“High food prices mean one in five people in Wales are hungry, disproportionally affecting more disabled people, Black, Asian and minority ethnic people.”

Mmm. Does that mean Derek thinks it’s OK for able-bodied White people to starve? Is this another example of ‘inclusivity’ that discriminates against the majority?

But let’s give the boy another chance. Carry on, Derek . . .

“Agricultural waste pollutes our rivers” Oh dear, that may be the party line, but I was expecting better. But alright, one more chance.

And the boy comes good with: “Farmers are critical to our nation’s health, rural communities and a thriving Welsh language – they helped maintain the food chain through the pandemic, play a leading role in restoring nature and reducing emissions, and should be a vital part of this long-term food plan.”

But it raises the obvious question – if you think our farmers are so important, Derek, why is your government making life so difficult for them?

Finally, we read:

This autumn, I will publish my priorities for my role for the next seven years, and the long-term questions I’m exploring include – how can we involve communities to shift diets to meet the nature and climate emergencies and create green jobs?

What does “shift diets” mean, Derek? Because I suspect it means away from meat. I suspect that because you link it with “the nature and climate emergencies”, which I further suspect alludes to farting cows.

In a country of livestock farming you want people to stop eating meat?

And as for “green jobs” this often means hobby farmers, OPDs, etc., which don’t create many jobs. Or cheap food. It’s also used to describe greenwashing . . . often on land that was previously productive farmland.

All in all, Derek, your piece shows the confused if not contradictory thinking we’ve come to expect from Corruption Bay. Which resulted in it being cliched and vacuous.

∼

DEVELOPMENTS OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE

I’ve had occasion to commend the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW) recently and I am delighted to do so again. On Monday we saw the release of a map compiled by the CPRW showing Developments of National Significance.

Here’s a link to the press release, and here’s a link to the map. Understandably, the map is big, and detailed; so set aside some time to make sense of it. And remember, these are just the projects where planning applications have been submitted.

There are many more in the pipeline, including quite a few of Bute Energy’s 23 known projects.

This was a useful exercise by the CPRW because the ‘Welsh Government’ seems unable or unwilling to produce such a map. But also because it exposes the hypocrisy of those we are dealing with.

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It’s become obvious in recent years, and perhaps especially in Wales, that as the threat of ‘climate crisis’ loses its power to frighten people the message has linked with ‘biodiversity loss’ or ‘habitat loss’. This coupling is clear in all the documents I’ve linked with and organisations I’ve mentioned.

Taken at face value it says there has been a depletion or degradation of the natural habitat, with a resultant loss of species or of numbers within a species. And yet . . .

Those who now trumpet climate crisis and biodiversity / habitat loss refuse to criticise tens of thousands of acres of pristine upland being ruined by wind farms, or fertile lowland by solar arrays. 

For example, the RSPB refuses to acknowledge the problem despite birds being killed by turbines, especially larger birds, often belonging to rare or endangered species.

And there are wider issues. Such as China’s near-monopoly of the rare earth metals needed to produce turbines and solar panels. Transporting materials and finished products vast distances by ship. Finally, the fact that neither wind turbine blades nor solar panels can be recycled.

How environmentally friendly is all that for intermittent and very expensive power!

It’s clear that for environmentalists biodiversity loss is restricted to farmland. Explained, again, by support and funding they receive in order to follow Labour’s anti-farming agenda and thereby grab farmland for themselves.

An agenda the envirogrifters are increasingly dictating!

♦

CONCLUSION

We are lumbered with a bunch of third-rate politicians elected in the main for no better reason than, “My nanna would turn in her grave if I didn’t vote Labour”. Blind loyalty allowing Labour to win with the support of just 20% of the electorate.

Being third-rate they tend to be impressionable. Not only did they buy in early to the Globalists’ Fear = Control agenda but went for broke by implementing legislation to prove that, “Wales can show the world . . . ” . . . how a country can impoverish itself by adopting a Green policy of degrowth.

In the early days, this idiocy came from within the administration, from people like Jane Davidson, Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing from 2007 – 2011, and now chair of Wales Net Zero 2035.

But as word spread others took notice. By 2018 the principal Globalist organisation, the World Economic Forum, was advising envirogrifters to move to Wales!

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But let’s go back to the trees for a minute. The 10% of farmland for trees demand is a condition of ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme, a replacement for EU funding.

Speaking last year, just ahead of the Llanelwedd Show, Mark Drakeford said that subsidies to Welsh farmers must be justified to Bangladeshi taxi drivers in Cardiff.

To suggest that the views of a small immigrant community are more important than the views of thousands of Welsh farmers looks like another example of ‘inclusivity’ at the expense of the indigenous majority.

Ask yourself – would Drakeford suggest consulting Ceredigion farmers if taxi drivers in Cardiff wanted to increase their charges?

Wales, a country being run into the ground by clowns who prioritise feelings above biological reality, preach economic gibberish, practice discriminatory ‘inclusivity’, and have been suckered by a global power grab calling itself “the climate crisis”.

How much more of this are you going to take? How much more can Wales afford?

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© Royston Jones 2023

Why only 10% of Welsh housing should be on the open market Part 2: Suggested answers to the most common questions and concerns

On By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Housing, Planning, Social Housing, Welsh Government22 Comments

This is a guest post by Gruffydd Meredith. It considers important but overlooked aspects of the housing crisis in Wales.

For while holiday homes get most of the attention the problem of properties being bought for other reasons tends to slip beneath the radar. I’m thinking now of properties bought by those settling permanently in rural and coastal areas.

These will often be retirees (who seem to get younger every year), people making a lifestyle choice, those who’ve bought a local business (most of which are now sold online), and others moving to Wales for a whole range of reasons from white flight to health considerations.

And the effects go beyond housing. All the way from village schools closing to social tensions as newcomers try a little too hard to ‘involve themselves’ in village life, with this being perceived by many locals as ‘taking over’.

Take it away, Gruff . . .

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It was good to see the discussion following an article I wrote which was published on Nation.Cymru on November 20th 2021, titled ‘Why only 10% of Welsh housing should be on the open market’. There were a great deal of important questions and comments made in response.

The basic premise of the article is this; that Wales should follow the example of the island of Guernsey (and many other countries such as Switzerland and New Zealand) and that all Welsh housing should be divided into two basic groups; a 90% group for the local / national priority market for the present and long term resident citizens of Wales, and the remaining 10% group for the open market and for anyone to buy – with local authorities across Wales also deciding annually how much of the 90% local/national priority market would be available for citizens within the local authority and how much would be available to citizens from the rest of Wales. The 90% / 10% ratio would be an approximate figure to aim for and would unlikely be arrived at perfectly all the time of course.

Ultimately we’re relying on those elected to come up with decent policies and laws in this and other areas but I’ll use this opportunity here to try and respond to some of the main comments, questions or concerns made in response to the original article in the hope of adding to a constructive discussion.

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How would you separate the open market housing from the local/national priority housing? How do you decide which property is in which category?

Like in Guernsey, this plan wouldn’t happen overnight. In Guernsey, these two separate priority and open market groups gradually came in after the Second World War with the Housing Control law 1948, when locals were getting pushed out and priced out of the market after the war – it’s taken them many years to gradually develop the two different markets in a rational and reasoned way so that when people buy and sell property in Guernsey they know what sector they are buying or selling in to. And it has naturally developed that open market housing tends to often be more expensive than those on the local priority market. The same could happen in Wales in my view. And if introduced in Wales there will be a transition period to give people plenty of time to know which group they’re buying or selling in to.

The plan obviously wouldn’t be retroactive, wouldn’t affect existing homes or those already living in Wales whomever they are, and would only come in to action at a pre determined point in the future where both home sellers and buyers in the  local/national priority or open market group would know which market they are in or out of. So if a new housing law was passed stipulating the two different markets, both house sellers and house buyers in the future would know what they were doing. If existing home owners never want to sell their home then nothing would change anyhow.

Guernsey. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In terms of how do you determine which home goes in to which category, I’d propose this as a starter:

It should be fairly straightforward to create a housing act that ensures that most new homes (although not all of course – some could also be in the open market sector) being built in Wales fit in to the local/national priority housing group – new homes that would then retain this local and national ownership priority clause in perpetuity should they be sold again the future.

When it comes to existing homes I’d propose that as a guide, like in Guernsey, a large amount (although not all) of the existing homes on the open market, would tend to be the more expensive homes above a certain rateable value – homes that are, say, over £400,000 in value (this is a suggested example – this figure could also be lower of course). Four hundred thousand pounds is also the point where the Welsh Transaction Tax changes from 5% to 7.5% which might make this a potentially useful place to introduce a small increase. So this housing law wouldn’t affect most of these homes above a suggested figure such as £400,000 or their owners if they wanted to sell their home at any point, which they could do on the open market as they wished and exempt from any housing controls.

This would mean that most homes generally below this example value of £400,000 (adjusted depending on inflation etc.) would then stay in the local/national priority group in perpetuity – therefore enabling a great deal more people to buy affordable homes within their own areas. A team of experienced valuers and deliberators including appointed estate agents within each local authority could fairly determine a balanced approach to decide on these two markets and to engage positively and constructively with home owners and buyers  – a team that would also be accountable to the democratically elected local authority.

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What would be my incentive to take part?

Financial incentives could also be offered to the home sellers taking part in the local/national priority scheme. They could be awarded for selling the homes to the priority market at a more affordable price by being guaranteed an upfront set sum from a pot coming from the extra council tax raised on holiday/second homes for example. This way, sellers wouldn’t be out of pocket and their conscience would be clear (if they had one!).

This incentive could also be made even more appealing if sellers in the priority group could also receive some of the Welsh Transaction Tax paid by buyers for homes above £400,000 in the open market group. This tax could perhaps be slightly and reasonably increased – raised from, say, 7.5% to 9% –  generating more funds for this scheme and further compensating house sellers who are within the local/national priority group – this more than making up and perhaps exceeding any difference between an affordable local price and the potential market price. A similar arrangement could also be made when it comes to capital gains tax although that tax is not yet transferred to the Welsh Government. Welsh estate agents could also receive a reasonable percentage from the pot for each house sold (on top of their normal commissions) for making sure that the two different housing markets are properly regulated and administered.

And it might be reasonable that house sellers in the priority group who haven’t found a buyer after a certain time (perhaps after 1 or 2 years as a suggestion) could then sell on the open market.

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How would you decide who is able to live where? What gives you the right to decide? Is this racist/sexist/some other ism or ist?

No, this plan isn’t any of the ists or isms and isn’t anti anyone. Nothing would change for anyone already living in Wales – wherever they are from in the world, whether that be Wales, Poland, Kenya, England or Timbuktu. All people who want to move to Wales after the date of the law being enacted would be treated equally. And whether you consider yourself Welsh, Welsh-British, British, English or any other ethnicity, nationality or identity and already live in Wales, this wouldn’t affect you or your home. The new plan would come in to being at a future date and then gradually develop over time as new homes are built and home sellers and buyers take part if buying or selling.

After that future point in time where the new law will come in, any person not already living in Wales having been offered a full time job in Wales who couldn’t find a house on the open market would also be eligible for a house in the priority market. As would any partner, wife or husband and any children. And as would those giving long term care for a family member or partner in Wales. Self employed people who could demonstrate that their work would benefit and contribute to the Welsh economy specifically could also be eligible.

And, like also happens in Guernsey, anyone could also rent in Wales following the same law as that for house buyers or sellers. And once anyone had rented a place in Wales for ten years they would be considered permanent Welsh resident citizens and therefore eligible to buy on the 90% priority market (unless they’ve already managed to rent or buy a place on the 10% open market).

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Social housing could also follow similar priority/open market lines. There needs to be emergency social housing for those that really need it of course, but exploitation of this system has to be stopped to ensure that it’s only those that genuinely need emergency housing that are given it and that local authorities from outside of Wales also don’t fail in their own responsibilities and unfairly pass on the buck by sending people to live in social housing in Wales simply because it’s a cheaper or nicer place to live.

Land ownership laws should also follow similar lines in my view, as many countries such as New Zealand are now also instigating. The present situation of global corporations and financial investment firms buying up Welsh land on a large scale is nothing but very disturbing modern colonialism and land grabbing by modern day robber barons that needs urgent stopping.

Buyers and renters from outside of Wales could also be able to buy or rent a more relaxed, higher capped percentage of apartments and condos in apartment blocks etc. in the bigger towns and cities of Wales. The Swiss government for example, have decided that non-Swiss citizens can still own up to 50% percent of units in large, newly built apartment buildings, which are treated in a slightly more relaxed way in comparison to residential or family homes – whilst general residential properties belonging to non Swiss citizens, are limited to 20% of the housing stock in any Swiss community. The same could apply in Wales, giving a fair and balanced opportunity for all that want to live here and those that already live here.

The vast majority of countries and states in the world, including the present UK state, have tight control on housing and who can live there or not. Wales is a country in its own right and with its own legislative parliament and government, and is no different to any other country.

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Not sure about a citizen of Wales being someone who had lived here for ten years… What if you were a nurse who didn’t have a Welsh parent but did have a job? Would you be forced to rent for ten years before being allowed to buy a “home for locals”. Seems rather unfair.

As mentioned, if you had a full time job or an offer of one in Wales I believe it would be reasonable that you should be able to buy or rent within both the priority local/national market or open market group regardless of anything else.

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Who counts as a citizen of Wales?

Anyone who lives in Wales can be said to be a de facto citizen of Wales and Welsh law will apply to you whether you’re a person who’s lived in Wales for three months, three years or have always lived here and can trace your heritage to Wales since time immemorial. So when the specific date of this proposed law would come in, whether you’ve already lived in Wales for three months or a hundred years (many congratulations on that if so), whether you are Icelandic, Senegalese, Japanese, Scottish or English, nothing would change and no one would be chasing you out of the country with a broomstick or any other implement.

For the purpose of present or future priority housing eligibility after the official start of the proposed policy, the permanent resident citizens of Wales can be defined as people who were either born in Wales and have at least one parent born in Wales or people who have lived in Wales for a total of at least ten years in any given period/s (or have a full time job here or are long term carers for partners/relatives etc.). Those buying on the open market wouldn’t need any eligibility.

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If you already own your own home in Wales you would keep your existing home and nothing would change. The only thing that would change under this proposal is that your home, if generally under a certain designated value as mentioned, would likely fall within the local/national priority group if you decide to sell in the future, for which you would be compensated to ensure the value would be around the open market price. And, after the law would be enacted, unless otherwise eligible, new people moving to Wales would need to wait ten years for eligibility to buy on the priority market unless they managed to find one on the open market.  If someone had already been living here for 8 years and don’t meet the other eligibility criteria then they would need to wait another two years to become Welsh permanent resident citizens and be able to join the priority market if they want to buy a new place (unless they can find a house on the open market that is).

These points, I’d argue, give a good balance between those who are existing residents and/or have long term connections or family heritage in Wales, and those who have come here more recently and want to make Wales their home – I believe this type of plan would be beneficial to all involved. Stipulating a ten year period or ‘born here with a Welsh born parent’ – similar to the system in Guernsey and Japan as a few examples of many – should stop people exploiting the policy by travelling to Wales to have a child/children here before leaving again knowing that their child would be guaranteed a home in the future. As mentioned, the other 10% of open market housing would stay the same and would have no restrictions whether you are a Welsh permanent resident citizen or not.

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Isn’t this kind of bad idea? Imagine the uproar if the English brought in a rule that 90% of homes are allocated only to English people. I can see the headline… “Welsh man trying to buy a home in London due to moving for work not allowed because he is Welsh.”

No, the principle would be fine and fair enough in England as well in my view, although this proposal suggests that people who work or have a full time offer of work in Wales should be able to buy a house or rent in Wales on the priority market (and can buy or rent on the open market without restrictions as well if they want).

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Housing priority rules such as these are already in place in many parts of England such as the Peak District, the Lake District and the North York Moors, and this type of regulation is seen in most of the world’s countries including the Channel Islands (Jersey also has similar housing rules to Guernsey) and the UK state as a whole of course. This is increasingly becoming a global problem which is being tackled.

Although these proposals aren’t just about England and treat all people wishing to move to Wales equally, these issues are also relevant to England and her citizens. English citizens also have a right to have reasonable policies in place and to not be priced out and driven out of their local areas (including in London). As does Guernsey. As does Wales and any other country. Wales and the Welsh Government should, in my view, support a similar proportionate scheme in England and elsewhere if that is what the people of England or elsewhere want.

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Rights of peoples and nations under international law

A final point about rights of peoples and nations under international treaty.

As mentioned, the vast majority of countries and states in the world, including the present UK state, have tight controls on housing and who can live there. Wales is a country in its own right, with its own legislative parliament and government, and is no different to any other country. Colonialism is also a crime as recognised in international law and as seen in The Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

No government needs to constantly apologise or justify why they work to have the interests of the country and the citizens of that country as its main focus. That is supposedly the whole point of a national government and of democracy in the first place and it doesn’t mean that that country is anti anything or anyone or doesn’t care and won’t reach out to others who are in need. We constantly (and rightly) hear protesting against colonialism and imperialism being used against countries and peoples all across the world, many of these seriously marginalised. Yet, according to some it’s perfectly acceptable for this to happen in Wales and if we try and manage the problem then we are somehow the narrow minded extremists.

I would suggest that it is those who strongly oppose any management of this issue and condone mass colonialism are the ones who are pushing narrow minded and dangerous extremism. We the citizens of Wales, whomever and wherever we are in Wales and whatever our background and origin, also have a right not to be colonised or be displaced from our own communities and land.

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