Tag: Newport

Power To The People! (Our People, Of Course)

On By JacIn Corruption Bay, Devolution, Globalism, Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, Senedd, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour71 Comments

In my previous post I wrote: “. . . one thing Labour was good at over 27 years of devolution was cronyism. That is, using public money to create pointless jobs for party loyalists, and to fund their organisations. To the point where there are now hundreds of these organisations and thousands of jobs“.

Done to extend Labour influence or control into almost every corner of Welsh life.

But not in my wildest, Malbec-fuelled dreams, did I think Labour would prove me right so quickly. (I need a drink!)

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DEVOLVING POWER TO KEEP POWER

Yet over the weekend, at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, we heard calls from the party in Wales and Scotland to devolve power to local authorities and communities. Now, if I wanted to be generous, I could say that this chimes with what we’ve heard from the unelected Globalist puppet in No 10.

But I don’t feel like being generous. And neither will you after reading this.

Going back to the 1990s, one of the great selling points of devolution – certainly for sceptics within Labour – was that Scotland and Wales would always vote Labour, and so devolved parliaments in Edinburgh and Cardiff could be useful for making life difficult for Conservative governments in Westminster.

And of course, they’d stymie the SNP and Plaid Cymru. (Though the latter was not thought to be a real threat.) Older readers may even remember George Robertson.

In 1995 George Robertson – then the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland – argued that the creation of a Scottish Parliament would quench the Scottish thirst for the decentralisation of power. Devolution, according to Robertson, would kill the idea of an independent Scotland “stone dead”

The SNP may be less popular following the Sturgeon (and hubby) years, but it’s hardly stane deid, eh, George.

We must also remember that the Tories were in power from 1979 until 1997, which encouraged the thinking I just outlined. And so devolution became Labour policy before Blair was installed as PM in 1997.

Even so, there were those who went along reluctantly with this constitutional change, maybe even Blair himself. And many within Labour – certainly in Wales – who were vehemently opposed.

Perhaps what these diehards realised, or what Labour strategists failed to factor into their calculations, was that many who voted Labour in Scotland and Wales did so in the hope of avoiding a Conservative government in London, rather than from any great love for Labour.

And while devolution offered a kind of ‘filter’ to direct London rule it also meant no threat of Tory administrations in Edinburgh or Cardiff, which allowed voters to relax, even ‘shop around’.

Here we are in the autumn of 2026: Labour hasn’t been in power at Holyrood since 2007, and has just lost control of the Senedd. To compound Labour’s problems, we have an unpopular Labour government in London, polling consistently under 30%, led by a phoney whose gloss is wearing off fast.

You can therefore understand why Labour now wants to devolve power away from Edinburgh and Cardiff. But to where? And to whom?

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LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The situations of Scotland and Wales are different, but as this blog is about Wales we’ll consider who power might be devolved to here.

The obvious place to start is the level of government below the Senedd, which is our local authorities. All twenty-two of them, and all 1,234 councillors – in a country of just over three million people!

Maybe it’s also worth mentioning the 730 community and town councils, which are served by over 8,000 community and town councillors.

The three major cities, Cardiff (pop 382,000), Swansea (249,000) and Newport (169,000), all have Labour-majority councils. The third largest local authority, by population, is Rhondda Cynon Taf (241,000), which is also run by Labour.

Four other councils in the south are Labour controlled; with a combined population of 485,000. Adding them together gives us some 50% of the country’s population.

In Monmouthshire, Labour’s the largest party, but with no overall control. There are Labour minority administrations in Flintshire and the Vale of Glamorgan. In Merthyr, Labour and Independents are tied. No overall control in Neath Port Talbot, Conwy, Denbighshire. With Plaid running things in Gwynedd, Ceredigion, Ynys Môn, and Carmarthenshire.

Elsewhere, Pembrokeshire is fought over by competing gangs of Independents. The Lib Dems are the largest party in Powys. While in Wrexham it’s a coalition between Independents and Conservatives.

It’s easy to see how devolving power away from Corruption Bay to local authorities could benefit Labour. For with Plaid Cymru ruling it’ll be they who’ll get blamed by sub-Senedd level Labour for everything that’s wrong in Wales.

But it doesn’t begin, and certainly doesn’t end, with local authorities.

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CRONYISM RULES!

Now I’ll turn to the cronyism referred to at the start. This is power and influence that’s less obvious than local authorities because there are no elections, and party labels are not obvious.

As I said, Labour spent 27 years of devolution building networks that would support the party. Or else corrupting organisations, often through funding, and bending them to do Labour’s bidding. For example, if you want to understand the chaos at the Welsh Rugby Union, it can be traced back to the WRU saying that biological males would not be allowed to play against women.

That outraged certain Labour Senedd Members, and so the wheels were set in motion.

Let’s also remember the housing associations, many of which are controlled by Labour loyalists. One example would be Wales & West, our biggest provider of social housing.

But it’s no longer just housing associations, and social housing, for many of them now have subsidiaries, which seem to focus on building open-market private housing. Even leasehold properties. Wales & West has Cambria Maintenance Services Limited, Enfys Developments Limited, and Enfys Homes Limited.

Google AI says of the last named:

Enfys Homes Limited: Focuses on mixed-tenure developments to deliver extra affordable housing without requiring grant subsidies.

The bit about grant subsidies may be right. But funding goes to the parent body from the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ and is then diverted to the subsidiary.

There are thirty housing associations registered with Community Housing Cymru. Most, if not all, have subsidiaries. And those subsidiaries, which we hear less about, rely on funding from their parent body. Something we are never told.

As we see with the latest accounts for Enfys Developments Limited.

What a strange set-up this is. I’m waiting for the response to a FoI request I submitted, and I might do a piece on these providers of social housing.

Next, we must consider our health boards. Labour spent many years emplacing trusted people. Whether these were capable of running a health board may never have entered the comrades’ collective thinking.

Then there are the countless third sector outfits and charities. And the duplication involved. Which means funding dozens of organisations to do basically the same job.

One example is homelessness. In a reply to a FoI request I was told that Wales had 48 organisations ‘tackling homelessness’ – in a country of just over three million people and less than 200 miles from one corner to the opposite corner.

In addition to the homelessness racket there’s the race racket, which is catching up fast in these days of enforced diversity. Though you have to wonder if there might not be a symbiotic relationship between the two.

One established outfit in the race racket is BAWSO. Here’s how it bills itself:

Bawso provides practical and emotional prevention, protection and support services to Black Minority Ethnic (BME) and migrant victims of Domestic Abuse, Sexual Violence, Female Genital Mutilation, Forced Marriage, Honour Based Violence, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.

BAWSO gets over £3.5m a year from the ‘WG’ alone in grants and contracts. For many, many years it was the fiefdom of Mutale Rose Merrill. Under her leadership BAWSO built up quite a property portfolio. (It’s alleged her personal portfolio is also quite impressive.)

Even hubby got in on the third sector racket. For Labour put Travers Merrill in charge of the doomed Rhondda Life. But why worry – it’s only public money!

The thing to remember about third sector bodies, charities, and others in the various rackets is that they must never solve the problem they were set up to tackle. Because to do that would mean an end to funding and the loss of many cushy jobs.

So it serves their purpose to invent or exaggerate problems. ‘Homelessness is rising’, or ‘racism is rampant and increasing’, means more funding and more jobs. Almost an economy in itself. And all funded from the public purse.

I swear to God someone could launch a third sector body that claimed to offer counselling to the non-binary yak herders of Ceredigion – and there’d be funding available with few questions asked! (For let’s not forget the gender racket.)

And then of course we have the Future Generations legislation. For all the bodies we’ve looked at must dutifully obey the commandments inscribed into the tablets received from the Future Generations Commissioner.

The first to fill that post was Labour stalwart Sophie Howe, daughter of a Cardiff councillor. She has since moved on to launch her own business, and she’s also joined a host of ishoo-mongers including Coleg Soros.

She was replaced by another Labour apparatchik in Derek Walker. Who’d led another What-the-fuck-is-that-about group in Cwmpas. Which seems to be people with no experience in business giving advice to businesses.

But when you look at who they ‘help’, these are not genuine businesses as you or I might understand that term. In the main, they’re just more third sector gangs.

Though in recent years it’s ceased to be exclusively Labour. Here’s an image from the Our Services section of the Cwmpas website.

I know what you’re thinking – who da honky? You don’t recognise him! It’s one of our new Plaid Cymru Senedd Members, Mark Hooper. The Deputy Minister for Transport who believes in “actively discouraging car use“.

And if you think that’s worrying, Hooper’s boss, Dr Dafydd Trystan Davies, promised to ditch his car when he was elected. If he’s just dumped it somewhere then I expect to see him arrested and charged with being a sanctimonious and insufferable little git.

Yes, indeed, as George Carlin so memorably put it: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it” – unless you belong to a Globalist-left party.

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CONCLUSION

As I just suggested, on most issues you can’t get a fag paper between Labour and Plaid Cymru. Whether it’s climate, open borders, re-joining the EU, DEI, ‘trans rights’, or any of the other issues designed to weaken the West and increase the power and wealth of supranational elites.

But voters realising there’s little difference between the two is no good for either party, so minor differences must be exaggerated and new ones invented. And there are of course areas – like independence – where Labour and Plaid do disagree.

So devolving power out of Cardiff might just be something dreamed up to remind punters that Labour in Wales is different to Plaid – and here’s a policy to prove it.

But if Ken Skates, Kinnock, Burnham and others, are serious about devolving power within Wales then a good place to start would be moving the Senedd out of Cardiff. For all devolution has really achieved is allowing Cardiff to enjoy some of the capital benefits London has always enjoyed.

Moving the Senedd could be funded by cutting the number of local authorities from twenty-two to the eight we knew in the days of two-tier local government.

More money could be found by reducing the number of housing associations. Having thirty, plus subsidiaries, is insane. Or why not do away with them altogether and hand the responsibility for social housing back to eight local authorities?

Finally, there’s the morass of the third sector. Hundreds of publicly-funded bodies, most doing work of no discernible public benefit, with dozens of almost indistinguishable gangs fighting turf wars in each and every sector.

But for Labour to agree to anything I’ve suggested would mean weakening the party’s crony network. And that would defeat the object of calling for ‘greater devolution’.

There’s a big test here for Plaid Cymru. They could devolve out of Cardiff, and fund it as I’ve outlined. But if Plaid was to suggest that then Labour would oppose it.

Reminding us yet again that Labour will always act in its own selfish interests.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

Buy Me A Coffee

‘For Wales, See Will Hayward’

On By JacIn Corruption Bay, Welsh Media44 Comments

Let me begin by saying that I have nothing personal against Will Hayward, never met the boy. But I can’t help wondering why this graduate of Cardiff University – where else? – is accepted as an expert on a country he ‘knows’ only from brief forays out of Cardiff.

And of course he writes for the Guardian. A bit like someone from Turkmenistan who never leaves London or the circles of the metropolitan elite being accepted as an expert on England. In Turkmenistan.

But the spur for this piece is something Will put out on Sunday. In it he claimed the real immigration problem for Wales is not arrivals from overseas, but retirees from England. Though he’s keen to say:

Before we go any further we need to be very clear, this is not about blaming older people or in any way suggesting that people in other parts of the UK don’t have every right to retire wherever they like.

In a sense, he’s right, but the article falls short of giving the full picture. Partly due to ignoring certain factors operating in Wales, and also the knock-on effects in Wales of changes happening outside.

Will Hayward’s article was about people moving into Wales, and falling birthrates, so I’ll take the opportunity to fill out the picture.

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IMMIGRATION TO WALES

For the purposes of this piece I’ll break immigration down into a few categories.

RETIREES: Will is right in saying that Wales attracts retirees from England, with some areas getting more than others. Not for nothing was the north coast long ago dubbed the Costa Geriatrica.

But even in Conwy, the worst-affected area, only 15.8% of those moving in are retirees. (In Cardiff it’s just 2.8%.) Clearly there are other factors at play. So let’s look at them.

GOOD-LIFERS: Here I’m referring to those who’ve “moved to the country“, from English towns and cities, for a better quality of life or some such. Whether true or not, that’s often the reason given.

BUSINESS BUYERS: This category covers those who’ve bought existing businesses or moved here with capital to start their own. This trend has increased exponentially with the advent of the internet and businesses being sold online.

STUDENTS: This could be students who remain in Wales after graduating. Like Will. Or those who stay in the area around the institutions from which they did not graduate. For want of a better term, the drop-outs.

JOB TAKERS: What it says on the tin. And with the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ insisting that 20% of its future recruits must come from minorities – with Wales’s BAME percentage at just 5 or 6% – there’ll be thousands more in future.

This anti-white discrimination has been engineered by pressure groups that profess to believe the countryside is racist, dogs should be banned, and the Welsh cake needs to be decolonised. (I’ve been thrown out of a number of caffs for demanding decolonised Welsh cakes.)

SOCIAL HOUSING TRANSFERS: Social housing providers must give priority to certain categories of applicants. This results in people with no connection to any part of Wales being allocated social housing ahead of locals.

‘WHITE FLIGHT’: Those who’ve moved from England’s increasingly ‘diverse’ and unsafe towns and cities to live in safer areas. Will and his friends might call such people racists. But they’re not. I know many of them, almost all are decent people who wanted something better for themselves and their families.

But if that rationale of racism is accepted, then it must apply to those who form their own enclaves in England’s towns and cities, to live amongst people like themselves. And in some cases create no-go areas for those outside the group.

The point to be made here is that immigration to England – legal and illegal – has a knock-on effect in Wales. To link retirees with ‘asylum seekers’ and use that to argue the latter category has no effect on Wales is wrong.

But seeing as we’re talking about people moving from England . . .

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FALLING BIRTHRATES AND THE HOUSING ISSUE

A linked thread in Will Hayward’s piece about retirees was the ageing population and the falling birthrate. Valid points. But again, taking them in isolation, and linking the latter with the former to the exclusion of other factors, is simplistic.

Predictably, an ageing population and a falling birthrate is used to justify overseas immigration! Now where have we heard that before?

Unless people in Wales start procreating a lot quicker, we are going to need those overseas immigrants, especially given the difficulties we currently have in attracting people to the social care profession.

A major issue, for decades, has been the inability of many local people in rural areas, young Welsh people, to buy a home in their communities. And this phenomenon is influenced by all the factors I mentioned in the previous section.

Despite this, the easy target is holiday homes. Fair enough. But if holiday homes is not the sole cause of the problem then penalising them cannot solve the problem.

In fact, focusing solely on holiday homes has more than a whiff of ‘tax the rich’ to it.

Hayward’s article spotlighted the 65+ age group. These are his ‘retirees’. But people can retire as young as 50 nowadays, certainly 55. And these are not going to move into The Fading Memories Retirement Home. They’re going to buy a place of their own.

But they’re unlikely to have children helping keep the village school open. And well-heeled early retirees are also unlikely to be looking for jobs in the “social care profession“.

With all the various pressures on local housing stocks, private and social, many young people find it difficult if not impossible to find somewhere to live. So they move out of the area. Maybe out of Wales altogether.

This is one explanation for the falling birthrate. And another reason for the lack of recruits for the “social care profession”

Even those who stay, and marry, might not have children if they have to live with parents. Those who do marry, buy a house, and even with husband and wife working in order to pay the mortgage, are less likely to have children.

The housing problems in rural Wales, as they affect young locals, could be viewed as a form of birth control. If not in intent, then certainly in effect. This obviously helps explain the falling birthrate. And closing village schools.

Which means it’s wrong to pile in on retirees in the 65+ age bracket. Poor dabs!

But these facts throw up a solution that Will Haywood and his mates will reject. Ironically, it’s one where Will’s friends line up with Reform and others.

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THE FAILURE OF DEVOLUTION

If Wales is to solve the problems of too many elderly retirees and a falling birthrate, then we must accept that these are parts of a multi-faceted problem affecting, but not confined to, rural Wales.

With the losers every time being the indigenous Welsh. Which then suggests we need to consider differentiating between those posing the threat, and its victims, in order to protect and promote the interests of the latter.

Which can only mean some form of preferential treatment for locals.

But those on the Unionist right will object, saying that we’re all citizens of the UK and must be treated equally.

While Will and his confreres will be uncomfortable with the idea because the bigger agenda to which they’ve aligned frowns on nations and national identity, certainly for white people. They call it ‘ethno nationalism’.

They can call it what they like. I’m Welsh, this is my country, and that’s the way it is.

For those with whom Will associates, ‘Wales’ is just a platform from which to lecture us, and an administrative unit within which they can give free rein to their pet lunacies. Like decolonised Welsh cakes.

But nationhood? Go wash your mouth out with WEF-approved carbolic!

Getting back to falling birthrates and young people leaving means we can’t ignore economic factors. Because away from the rural areas we see falling birthrates in the Valleys and Swansea Bay, where there’s little retirement from England influencing the picture. (Apart perhaps from Gower.)

The only areas with more births than deaths are Cardiff and Newport. But these are growing cities, with healthy economies, reasonable wages, affordable housing, and few retirees moving in. Though migrants from outside of Europe will also contribute to their birthrates.

We must also factor in jobs being concentrated on the south east coast, which draws in young people from other areas of the country. This of course links with the problems discussed earlier, and exposes a major failing of devolution.

The picture below provides an insight into the workings of both devolution and Corruption Bay. (Will Hayward is on the far side in the dark blue shirt.)

It was taken at a soiree organised by PR/lobbying firm Cadno. Which acts as a link between clients wanting to do business in Wales and politicians and decision-makers who can help their dreams come true.

Made easier by the fact that ‘banana republic’ Wales has no register of lobbyists.

As George Carlin used to say: “It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it“.

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CONCLUSION

Will Hayward may be a man born out of his time. I say that because I think Will should have been an old-style correspondent, sending amusing skits from far-flung corners of the empire back to London publications.

You think I’m being unfair? Just read this, from December 2024, when Will bravely ventured into the uncharted wastes of the Llynfi Valley. (Maesteg, to be exact.)

Here’s his profile of the local matrons:

They pounced with questions from all sides. “Where you from?”, “Who’s your mam?”, “Do you have a girlfriend?” Google, Facebook and Apple have nothing on the old women of the Llynfi valley for data harvesting.

“Who’s your mam?” FFS! (I was surprised not to read, ‘look you, indeed to goodness’.)

Rarely, in the history of journalism, has a single paragraph hosted such an epic tussle between cliche and stereotype.

Will Hayward moves in a certain ‘progressive’ milieu; he picks up tittle-tattle, or he’s fed information, which he then knocks into articles. He’s essentially a propagandist for the Corruption Bay establishment.

Which helps explain why people wonder whether he supports Labour or Plaid Cymru. The fact that so many have difficulty figuring that out reminds us the Uniparty is real, and all that matters is pushing the agenda.

This Uniparty is a political class in hock to pressure groups, many of which are extreme, and some of which are insane. Which means that this political class has for 27 years of devolution been steadily distancing itself from 95% of the Welsh population.

When he isn’t writing favourably about his friends Will Hayward’s attacking those on the other side.

The other string to his bow is reassuring the metropolitan elite, via the Guardian, that the political class in Wales is on-side. (That’s when he’s not wandering off into the bush.)

Maybe socialising with people I find repulsive gets Will Hayward ‘insights’. But he knows nothing about the real Wales.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

Buy Me A Coffee

Gilestone: It’s All About Water

On By JacIn Colonialism, Englandandwales47 Comments

Over three years ago, with ‘Gilestone: Thinking Outside The Box‘, I suggested that the ‘Welsh Government’s controversial £4.25m purchase of Gilestone farm is about the transfer of water.

Much of what follows may look, superficially, like a rehash of that earlier piece; if so, it’s because that’s unavoidable in bringing the story up to date.

But there is more evidence. Which convinces me I was right.

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THE BACKGROUND

We’ll start by looking at what I think are the major milestones in this saga, in the order they happened.

1/ The Thomas family, who owned Gilestone pre-2010, had problems with the (then) Brecon Beacons National Park. They felt hounded. It cost them a lot of money to fight officialdom, and resulted in them selling up in October 2010.

(A curious feature of the business was that the solicitor acting for the Park was a Julie James. Who, in May 2011, became the Labour Assembly Member for Swansea West.)

2/ Next, seemingly out of the blue, a buyer in the form of Charles Weston turned up. He bought Gilestone for £900,000 through his company Sharpness and Severn Transport Ltd, re-named CWW Farming Ltd in November 2019. (Though the title document I’ve linked to does not cover all the Gilestone land.)

(Sharpness, Bristol, Newport, and Cardiff, are the major ports on the upper Severn estuary.)

3/ In March 2018 Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water (DCWW) organised a trip to Wales for representatives of the Watershed Agricultural Council based in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. This is the body responsible for keeping the Big Apple’s water supply up to standard. This visit was reciprocated in October 2019, when a party from the Beacons visited the Catskills.

(Which meant DCWW was studying a model under which a rural catchment area supplied water to a metropolis some 100 miles away.)

4/ This link resulted in DCWW setting up the Brecon Beacons Mega Catchment (BBMC). Though apart from the change of name to Bannau Brycheiniog I can’t see much recent activity on the website. There’s been nothing on the Facebook page since July 2022 and the Twitter/X account has been closed.

Next, in May 2020, the Beacons Water Group CIC (BWG) was launched.

The Beacons Water Group was established under Welsh Water’s Bannau Brycheiniog Mega Catchment initiative (BBMC), our landscape-scale approach to safeguarding our drinking water sources now and for the future.

Among the founders we find Weston of Gilestone and his next-door neighbour across the River Usk. (Weston left BWG in October 2022.)

BWG definitely enjoys political support. As does DCWW, which seems to get a free pass from the ‘Welsh Government’ and ‘environmental’ groups when it comes to river pollution, with farmers copping all the blame. One director, Hugh Martineau, was an ‘advisor’ with Coleg Soros in Talgarth.

5/ In March 2022 the ‘Welsh Government’ bought Gilestone farm for £4.25m. The reason given was to allow the Green Man Festival to expand from its Glanusk Estate site.

OK, that’s enough background. Let’s try to put meat on the bones and get up to date with other developments and findings.

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FILLING IT OUT, RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

What I suggested back in October 2022 was that the key to understanding the purchase of Gilestone might lie in the proximity of, on the one side, the River Usk, and the other side, The Monmouthshire and Breconshire canal.

Even so, this in itself tells you little. For it to make sense we need to link this abundance of H2O in Wales to southern England running dry of the stuff.

And let’s remember that, in addition to the river and the canal, Gilestone is just a couple of kilometres from Llangorse Lake to the north east and the same distance from Talybont reservoir to the south west.

The reservoir already connects with the Usk very near to Gilestone. It would be relatively simple to connect the lake.

I explain this because taking water from Wales has long been a favoured option to meet the increasing shortages in southern England. Boris Johnson talked about it in 2011. Johnson’s name was invoked in August 2022 in renewed calls for a national water grid.

As Nation.Cymru put it, quoting the Daily Mail:

Senior Conservatives are floating the idea of a ‘Great Boris Canal’ named after the outgoing Prime Minister to transfer water from the north of Wales to the south of England.

Though this plan has water from Llyn Efyrnwy diverted into the river and then into the Severn just over the border. As this Guardian article from March 2023 explains.

The “Cotswold canals” mentioned must be the Thames and Severn Canal, currently being restored.

Alternatively, the water will be piped straight into the Severn. Then it will be abstracted lower down, either at Deerhurst, north east of Cheltenham, or near to Sharpness.

Which serves to remind us that Charles Weston bought Gilestone farm in the name of Sharpness and Severn Transport Ltd, based in Sharpness docks. Where the Gloucester and Sharpness canal begins, connecting with the Thames and Severn canal in Gloucester.

It seems like every which way we turn in the Gilestone saga we hit water.

Taking us further and further away from farming and music festivals.

While the plan to transfer water from Wales to southern England has been mooted for decades, one reason for increased urgency in recent years is the planned growth in the numbers of AI data centres.

But it’s not just London and the south of England affected, there are other areas that will need much more water. Such as Cambridge, where there are (somewhat vague) plans for a ‘Forest City‘ of one million people.

One of those behind the plan, while admitting that water from Wales is a serious option, fears we Welsh are a bit touchy about the subject. Us!

Maybe that’s why the talk is of using rivers and canals. Perhaps some people think we’ll be too stupid to notice.

Having mentioned AI data centres, it’s worth remembering we have them in Wales, too. Especially around Newport and Cardiff. With more planned. Let’s get back to Gilestone.

We’ve seen that the River Usk and the Monmouthshire and Breconshire canal flow over or close by the property. Both waterways then run in a southeasterly direction towards Newport and the Bristol Channel.

My original thinking was that water could be transferred in either direction, whichever best suited the purpose of the exercise at any given time. But the canal only runs to Cwmbran, and is now effectively banned from taking water from the river.

As this piece from the Brecon & Radnor Express last month explains:

Earlier this year, Natural Resources Wales imposed new restrictions on the canal’s long-standing abstraction licence from the River Usk. It means that during periods of low water, the canal is no longer permitted to draw water from the river – a supply it has relied on for more than a century.

This has affected those who rely on the canal for their livelihoods, largely in the tourism businesses. Which seems to have resulted in intervention by the ‘Welsh Government’ with what looks like compensation.

With £5m announced in July. And what appears to be further funding announced earlier this month.

It seems clear that the flow of water in the Usk is a priority, and must be safeguarded.

◊

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Earlier I said that Charles Weston of Sharpness & Severn Transport had turned up at Gilestone out of blue. Perhaps I made him sound like a wraith appearing from nowhere. Which would be misleading.

Because before buying Gilestone Weston had, in 2004, bought 182 acres at Tan-y-fedw, south of Sennybridge. This sits on Afon Crai, which runs into the reservoir a few kilometres south.

And as AI Overview says of the reservoir: ” . . . much of its water is diverted to the Swansea Valley, while the remainder flows down to meet the Usk”.

Four years later he bought 76 acres at Allt-fechan, a couple of kilometres north west of Brecon. This holding stands on Ysgir Fechan, which runs into Afon Ysgir, which runs a few more kilometres into . . . the Usk.

Having received its orders from London the ‘Welsh Government’ plays its loyal part in this scheme. We see politicos, DCWW, and Natural Resources Wales, all working towards the objective . . . without being able to say what they’re really up to.

With the ‘environmental’ lobby chipping in. Remember Gail Davies-Walsh, former employee of DCWW, now of front organisation Afonydd Cymru, which shields the water company from criticism by blaming farmers for all river pollution?

Re-acquaint yourself with Gail by scrolling down in this piece from three years ago. Read her contribution to this article from March this year.

In the very same building in Talgarth where Afonydd Cymru is based we find the cross-border Wye and Usk Foundation, with its staff of 34 and its considerable income. Roughly half the grant money comes from that generous old soul, “Other“.

Ah! sweet Talgarth. Home of that noted and venerable seat of learning – Coleg Soros.

∼

Finally . . . We know there’s a plan to take water from Llyn Efyrnwy, into the Severn, and then, via pipe and canal, to the Thames. I believe there’s a wider plan that includes the Usk, Wye, and other sources. And this may be where Gilestone fits.

It would be relatively simple to connect Usk and Wye to the plan shown above. It would then be a multi-source option less likely to draw attention and criticism. For as Severn Trent is keen to stress (my emphasis):

This will be using water that is currently taken from Vyrnwy and occasionally redistributed elsewhere.  No additional water will be taken from Wales.

This, “some from here, some from there” approach, with no valleys drowned, will avoid another Tryweryn.

And seeing as Usk and Wye are within Dŵr Cymru’s territory, it explains the Catskills connection, Mega Catchment and Beacons Water Group. Why else would DCWW study how a hilly rural area supplies water to a metropolis 100 miles away?

Another factor worth considering is flooding. The existing wind farms on hills above the Severn and its tributaries cause greater run-off of rainwater, increasing the risk of flooding. With more windfarms planned, this risk will only increase.

So taking water from the Severn could also serve a flood prevention purpose. Though this is unlikely to be admitted, and never linked to wind turbines.

The wider plan I’m suggesting would also explain the quasi-sacred status given to the Wye by writers like George Monbiot, and bodies such as the Wye & Usk Foundation and Afonydd Cymru. For no other river in Wales gets this attention.

Whatever the details, it’s clear that Wales is to supply water to southern England. Much of it from resources in Wales owned by Severn Trent of Coventry.

But Wales won’t get paid a penny.

Ain’t devolution wonderful!

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Local Government Reorganisation, Again!

On By JacIn Local Government, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour59 Comments

INTRODUCTION

I’m old enough to remember the term ‘Wales and Monmouthshire’ being used, which gave us the thirteen old counties, and then there were the four county boroughs (Swansea, Cardiff, Newport and Merthyr).

This system was swept away by the Local Government Act 1972 which in 1974 gave us a two-tier system of local government, made up of eight counties, thirty-seven districts, and, if I counted them all, 43,736 councillors. It was probably the most absurd system of local government ever devised by man.

Mrs Jones would go her district council office with a query or a complaint only to be told that the issue vexing her was a matter for the county council. (And vice versa.) To further confuse us I seem to recall that responsibilities were often shared or split. Didn’t district councils collect the rubbish but counties dispose of it?

The obvious thing to have done, of course, would have been to do away with the districts leaving us with eight good-sized unitary authorities. But no, this is Wales, and other factors influenced decisions. Such as lowering the minimum population level to 60,000 so that Merthyr could be one of the new unitary authorities.

Quite obviously, twenty-two local authorities – and Powys having more councillors than New York City – is no real improvement on the two-tier system in a country of just over three million people.

The two local government reorganisations introduced in 1974 and 1996 were the work of the UK government and the Boundary Commission with considerable input from political parties and others. But now the power lies with the ‘Welsh’ Government.

For this is the age of devolution; Wales is a land of milk and honey, where lambs frolic under the planet-saving wind turbines (watered daily by the local hippies). Freed from the tyranny of labour by the introduction of AI we fly from Cardiff airport to our villas in the sun – even those from the north can reach Cardiff International in two or three hours on the new motorways and train lines that traverse the land. Students from Vladivostok and Valparaiso fight to get into the Assembly in order to see and hear for themselves our leaders, men and women globally renowned for their wisdom and their probity. Poverty is forever banished, everyone has a nice home and a new electric car or three . . . and I really must lay off the Malbec.

Back to reality. For a few years now the ‘Welsh’ Labour Government down in Corruption Bay, that monument to the late Nicholas Edwards, has toyed with the idea of yet another round of local government reorganisation. The subject seems to surface from time to time, often when Labour needs a distraction, or wants to be seen as ‘visionary’.

Earlier this month the ‘Welsh’ Government’s Local Government Secretary Alun Davies resurrected the suggestion to trim down our twenty-two local authorities to just ten with the publication of a Green Paper. So let’s examine the proposal in a little more detail.

click to enlarge

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NORTH, MID AND WEST

In the previous, two-tier system, the north had two counties, Clwyd in the east and Gwynedd in the west. In the map above you’ll see three counties mooted for any future reorganisation. But why?

I suggest that the answer lies with the Labour Party itself. Lump together Flintshire and Wrexham and you create a council that might just have a Labour majority, or certainly a council that could be run by Labour in coalition with Plaid Cymru and/or assorted Independents. (There being no less than three different Independent groups on Flintshire council!)

But add Denbighshire to the mix, where Labour currently has 13 (out of 47) councillors, and a resurrected Clwyd would be much less likely to be a Labour fiefdom. Which makes the union of Flintshire and Wrexham far more acceptable to the bruvvers.

This would leave the combined Denbighshire and Conwy with the burden of almost the whole of the north coast and its problems, ranging from the importation of criminals and assorted deadbeats into Rhyl and other towns to the granny trafficking that gives this littoral its nickname of the Costa Geriatrica.

Gwynedd and Ynys Môn is a natural unit in every way and of little interest to the Labour Party. Though in the former Gwynedd these two were joined with Conwy.

Moving south, to other areas where Labour has little chance of success (and consequently little interest), we see that the ‘Welsh’ Government has no wish to change the status quo or the status quo ante, with Powys left untouched and Dyfed reborn.

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THE STEAMY SOUTH

Now we move into the south, where Labour most definitely does have an interest in the new boundaries.

First, Swansea Bay, where my understanding is that Swansea and Neath Port Talbot councils have already agreed in principle to merge, thereby formalising what is happening on the ground, with Amazon’s ‘Swansea’ distribution depot and Swansea University’s new Bay Campus both in Neath Port Talbot.

Aerial photo (courtesy of Swansea University) from 2013 showing the old, Mumbles Road, campus, top star; and the yet to be built Bay Campus, lower star. Also shown: River Neath, M4, Port Talbot to the left, Swansea to the right. Click to enlarge.

Next, it’s suggested that Bridgend links up with Rhondda Cynon Taf and Merthyr. Which makes a certain sense in that they are three staunchly Labour areas covering the central valleys and approximate to the old Mid Glamorgan. Things get more complicated, and contentious, as we move east.

Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan comprised the county of South Glamorgan under the two-tier system, and it’s proposed to bring this back. This respect for history must be the reason for the proposal, and not the fact that the Vale is (with the help of an Independent) a Tory-run authority, with Labour holding just 14 of the 47 council seats.

Merged with more populous, and Labour voting, Cardiff, the proposed new authority would almost certainly have a Labour majority.

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GWENT

Moving yet further east, things get really, really complicated.

Under the two-tier system Gwent was one of the eight counties, now it’s proposed to link Newport with Caerphilly, while Monmouthshire merges with Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent. The first we can almost overlook, seeing as it brings together two Labour areas, but the second is gerrymandering on a scale that old-style Ulster Unionists would applaud.

Monmouthshire council today is Conservative run, with the party holding 25 of the council’s 43 seats. At Westminster level Monmouthshire is represented by David Davies MP, and at Welsh Assembly level the AM is fellow-Tory Nick Ramsay.

Next door we find one of the poorest areas in Europe, an area that the twenty-first century – maybe also the twentieth – seems to have passed by. Blaenau Gwent should be held up as an example to the rest of the world of how not to handle the decline of traditional industries.

For whereas in well-run countries the post-industrial era means metal-bashing and extractive industries being replaced by clean, new industries, in Blaenau Gwent it just means neglect and decline. But, God bless ’em, for after a brief flirtation with the People’s Voice, Blaenau Gwent is back to blaming the Tories for its deprivation.

Perhaps I’m wrong, so let’s hear Alun Davies – the AM for Blaenau Gwent – argue that this proposed merger of Monmouthshire with Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent is not a kick in the plums for Dai Davies, nor an act of socialist vindictiveness against wealthier neighbours.

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CONCLUSION

Within days of Alun Davies bringing out his Green Paper it came under attack from a very predictable quarter – the Welsh Local Government Association.

Despite all the flim-flam from the WLGA about ‘services’, and the ‘public interest’, and worries about ‘who’s gonna feed the gondolas?’, the real objections to local government reform from this Labour-controlled group are pretty selfish, and no different to the objections to earlier council reorganisations.

If you’re a council leader who’s schemed and back-stabbed his/her way to the top then you won’t take kindly to a plan to dismember your little empire or have it taken over by someone else’s empire. (The big fish in little pools syndrome.) Something similar goes for ambitious younger councillors with dreams of making it to the top.

And even if you have no ambitions beyond turning up now and again, snoozing on the comfy benches in the centrally-heated chamber, and picking up your allowance, you will still be alarmed because mergers must mean fewer councillors.

Which leaves Wales in a dangerous place.

For just about everyone accepts that we need fewer councils. But if the debate is restricted to the ‘Welsh’ Government on the one hand and the Labour-led WLGA representing the councils on the other then party unity will be the priority rather than the public or national interest.

This would be a disaster.

The ‘Welsh’ Government must be firm and force through reorganisation, and it must also fund reorganisation. The money needed to implement the changes will soon be recouped from the savings made in having many fewer councils.

And rather than go for crudely political and frankly illogical mergers why not just revert to the eight counties we knew up until 1996 and with which many of us are still familiar?

To avoid local government reorganisation becoming an internal Labour Party matter I encourage those reading this to make your opinions known; with letters to your local ‘paper, to your AM, your MP, and also make your local councillors realise that you want fewer councils and councillors even it means them losing out.

♦ end ♦