Tag: Oliver James Millican

Bute Energy, Connections & Partners

On By JacIn Bute Energy, Climate, Colonialism, Ireland, Renewables, Wind Turbines59 Comments

This piece is in two parts. The first takes us to Ireland, the second . . . well, I’m not quite sure, maybe into a war zone.

For anyone new to the blog, or this topic, Bute Energy is a Scottish company with a Cardiff address planning a dozen or more windfarms in Wales, plus the pylon runs needed to connect them with the main grid. Also solar arrays and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS).

The head man is Oliver James Millican who, along with the other Bute principals, Stuart Allan George and Lawson Douglas Steele, left Millican’s father’s Parabola property company towards the end of 2017. They may still be working for Parabola.

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‘IF YOU EVER GO ACROSS THE SEA TO IRELAND, THEN MAYBE . . . ‘

To begin with, I recently learnt that Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), Bute’s main funder up to this point, is now operating in Ireland. Taking advantage of Ireland’s Strategic Investment Fund.

The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) has committed €200m to specialist greenfield renewable energy infrastructure investor, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (“CIP”) latest flagship strategy, Copenhagen Infrastructure V (the “CI V”)

When I saw ‘CI V’ it rang a bell, because this is (or was?) the CIP fund behind Bute Energy. Mentioned more than once on this blog. Specifically, CI V Dragon Lender Ltd (launched 23.12.2021). Other companies with the CI V Dragon name are; CI V Dragon Topco Ltd (16.03.2023), and CI C Dragon Holdco 2 Ltd (07.12.2023).

All three are still in business, with directors I believe to be working for CIP.

There was a fourth company, CI V Dragon Holdco Ltd, formed 23.12.2021, with CIP directors. Two of whom left in November 2023, but two hung on until June 2025, when they were replaced by Oliver Millican. A liquidator was appointed in January this year. This outfit was clearly replaced by Holdco 2.

A lot of money went into the now-departed company, over £60,000,000. Which seems to have been used in payouts to Bute directors. This has been widely covered in the media; including Nation.Cymru. There are suggestions of, dare I say it – can I even spell it! – jiggery-pokery.

Here’s what Google AI says. Nation.Cymru is quoted, but the info came from this site.

Though a reporter for a London newspaper, who’s been in contact recently over Bute’s activities, tells me his ‘paper’s bean counters are not convinced Bute’s done anything illegal. Devious, maybe, but not, strictly speaking, illegal.

Whatever the answer, it seems that the money was doled out thus: Millican £47.56m, with George and Steele each getting £4.64m, and a few million going to minor players, one said to be Millican’s brother-in-law.

Much of Millican’s money was used to buy real estate in Scotland, often warehouses, and dealt with in this blog in March. Here’s a quote I used then from a Bute insider:

The real estate arm of the Windward portfolio . . . is working with multiple overseas businesses and at least one national government to house interests and commodity items relating to renewables infrastructure. There are warehouses in Wales and Scotland filled to the rafters with BESS and pylon materials – rented and landed for resale exclusively to the UK market to artificially appear to restrict overseas procurement and brand it as available when supply chains pinch in the late 2027 to early 2029 drive.

Windward is another name used by Bute companies, Windward Enterprises Ltd being the ultimate holding company for the Bute empire. Sole director and shareholder Oliver Millican.

A new director of Windward Enterprises, since June 1, is given as ‘Thomas Anthony Watson’. (Companies House was notified June 25.) A name common enough to be ignored. He is in fact, Labour peer, Baron Watson of Wyre Forest.

Last month Windward Enterprises took out a loan with private bank Brown Shipley & Co Ltd, ultimately owned by the Al Thani family, which owns and runs Qatar. This family also owns some £40bn of real estate in London, including Selfridges, Harrods, The Savoy, Claridge’s, Heathrow Airport . . .

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BUT WHY THE INTEREST IN IRELAND?

With Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners investing in ‘renewables’ in Ireland I naturally got to wondering if Bute Energy is similarly involved.

In an idle moment I typed ‘Bute Energy Ireland’ into Google, and it suggested a “corporate address” down by Anna Liffey. Here to be exact: 2nd Floor, Riverview House, 21-23 City Quay, Dublin, D02 AY91.

Which turns out to be the Dublin address of SYSTRA Ireland, part of a big French company, with projects around the world.

Next, I searched for ‘Bute Energy Systra’, and turned this up:

Bute Energy is a Welsh developer spearheading over £3 billion of onshore wind projects. They collaborate with global infrastructure and consulting firm SYSTRA. SYSTRA provides lifecycle services, electrical grid/infrastructure planning, and engineering for Bute’s energy parks to speed up the transition to a low-carbon grid.

“Welsh developer“! So there is a link. But why had I never heard of SYSTRA before? Next, my trembling digits tapped in ‘Welsh Government Systra’, and this came up:

SYSTRA is a prominent transport and engineering consultancy that frequently partners with the Welsh Government and Transport for Wales (TfW) to modernize public transport, boost regional connectivity, and achieve net-zero climate targets.

Then I found this on the SYSTRA website. Nice to see another Welsh company getting contracts from the transition to the wonderful Green economy.

On the Systra website I also unearthed these specific projects. A franchised bus service for Wales and an energy from waste facility on Deeside. Are there others?

Despite these contracts in Wales SYSTRA doesn’t even bother with the Bute ploy of having an office here. It seems Wales is handled from Bristol or Birmingham. Though there is of course an office in Edinburgh, which will be handy for the Bute boys. (In fact, SYSTRA’s Edinburgh address looks somehow familiar.)

AI coming up with SYSTRA’s Dublin address for Bute Energy is no real surprise. It’s pretty obvious this French company has its feet under the table with the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

So, Bute is already linked with SYSTRA and CIP, both are now operating in Ireland, with Systra also well in with the ‘Welsh Government’. It’s therefore reasonable to assume that Bute may also be active in Ireland.

Which brings me to another reason for looking at Irish connections. I’m referring to the pylon runs from windfarms planned in central Wales (many by Bute) to Llandyfaelog, south of Carmarthen, where they connect with the main grid running from RWE’s Pembroke power station to England.

This has been covered extensively, both my blog and on the CPRW website.

While England was always the presumed destination for the electricity generated, it could just as easily go west to Ireland, thanks to the new Greenlink Interconnector at Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire.

This short (2:12 mins) news clip from RTÉ explains it.

The demand for electricity in Ireland is soaring, with some 80 AI data centers already, and more in the pipeline. Understandably, the state electricity board, EirGrid, is getting nervous.

No surprise then, that in addition to the connection from Pembrokeshire there’s another from Bodelwyddan to somewhere near Dublin, with MaresConnect. This is owned jointly by Etchea Energy, with offices in London and Dublin, and our old friends in the Foresight Group.

UPDATE: Bodelwyddan is mentioned in this announcement of an offshore development “entirely in Welsh waters“, between BP and Japanese company Jera, with a “proposed connection to the Bodelwyddan National Grid substation“.

As for Foresight, you may remember this lot attracting bad publicity in recent years for buying up Welsh farms on which to make money from planting trees to offset ’emissions’, or some such corporate bollocks.

And then there are the governmental contacts. Here’s a joint statement issued a year ago after first minister Eluned Morgan visited Dublin to meet Tánaiste Simon Harris.

Forums have enabled us to hear directly from Irish companies including ESB, Simply Blue and DP Energy, who are investing in energy projects in Wales. During the 2023 forum, ministers also visited the Morlais tidal stream energy project on Anglesey in North Wales

Last month, the new Plaid first minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth, was in Dublin.

And the links don’t end with politicos doing photo-ops. Here’s one between French giant EDF and Irish state-owned ESB. This offshore wind project’s called Gwynt Glas. The only thing Welsh about it is the name. (But that’ll be enough to please some.)

So Irish companies, with others from Scotland, England, and further afield, invest in renewable energy projects in Wales. A country that already produces more electricity than it could consume if we all drove electric Humvees and left our lights on 24/7.

But it doesn’t end there, because there’s also electricity being shipped down from Scotland. This was supposed to be taken by a lengthy pylon run from Pentir near Bangor to Swansea North, on the line from Pembroke to England.

Then again, it might not run down to Swansea at all; perhaps it – or some of it – could be sent to Ireland via the Bodelwyddan link. However you look at it, Wales is being covered in windfarms and other installations we don’t need, and criss-crossed with transmission routes going elsewhere.

Something noted by CPRW, which last month put out a press release warning that ‘Wales Must Not Become England’s Energy Corridor‘. Agreed. But I repeat, the way things are shaping up Wales is just as likely to become an energy corridor serving Ireland as well.

All the while those treacherous clowns in Corruption Bay mince around looking smug, and preparing their spare rooms for ‘refugees’ (or maybe not) – cos we is saving the planet, innit.

And anybody who objects is a climate-denying fascist. Well, I guess that’s me.

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JUDGED BY THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

Another development concerning Bute worth reporting is the funding from Dutch outfit Rabobank. Here’s the Rabobank website.

There are maybe two points to make about Rabobank. First, it’s big in agriculture and food . . . and buying farmland. Second, it has a rather worrying record.

When it comes to buying farms and land Rabobank operates through the subsidiary Rabo Farm and local intermediaries. These are often corrupt local officials. Worth asking if these officials were always corrupt, or was it the prospect of Rabobank money that corrupted them?

Come to that, how did Rabobank make contact with local officials in remote parts of Poland and Roumania? Did they have intermediaries with good contacts? I mention that Latin outpost because of a scandal just over a decade ago that saw local farmers learning they no longer owned their land. Read about it by clicking on the image below.

Rabobank has strong links with top-tier Globalists the Rothschilds. Maybe the latter rely on Rabobank’s expertise in food supply and pricing to help them towards the Globalists’ wet-dream goal of controlling the food supply. And with it, us.

Rabobank is also believed to be active in that most corrupt of eastern European countries, Ukraine. But the law there states that only Ukrainian citizens and entities can own land. Up to 10,000 hectares.

What this means in practice is that those close to the Cokehead Clown of Kiev often act as intermediaries for foreign investors. This goes some way to explaining the Bugattis, Lamborghinis and Bentleys with Ukrainian plates in Monte Carlo.

Rather cruelly they’re known as the “Monaco Battalion“. Which must be a great consolation to Ukrainians dying at the front to defend their corruption.

But then, dying on the front line nowadays is reserved for little people.

But the question is, why is Bute Energy involved with Rabobank at all? The new funder may now be branching out into ‘renewables’, but the primary interest remains land, farming, and foodstuffs. Are the two connected?

By which I mean, is Rabobank’s link-up with Bute connected to Bute owning ‘Welsh’ Labour, also now buying influence in Plaid Cymru; and Rabobank realising that both these parties want to end livestock farming. Which will bring many farms onto the market.

A Powys farmer confided recently, regarding Rabobank:

From my perspective, the concern is that this extremely powerful financial institution with deep expertise in agricultural land are now also financing infrastructure that competes for that land.

Whatever the answer, Bute Energy linking up with a company with Rabobank’s record should set alarm bells ringing.

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CONCLUSION

As I’ve said a few times in recent posts on the subject, I (and others) may have focused too much on Bute’s activities in Wales at the expense of the bigger picture. Which now seems to be emerging.

A picture that, first, confirms the electricity generated in Wales is for consumption somewhere else. I’d assumed that ‘somewhere else’ to be England. But that’s only part of the picture.

Electricity generated in Wales, and off our coasts, is also likely to be going to Ireland. This accounts for the interconnectors from Bodelwyddan and Freshwater West, and it might also explain the Irish companies investing here.

Will electricity generated by Irish companies in Wales be reserved for Irish consumers? I ask because while I appreciate there are interconnectors everywhere, and electricity can flow both ways, consumption in Ireland seems to be outpacing generating capacity.

Then there’s the power coming down from Scotland. It’s not for Welsh consumption. So why can’t it go directly to England and / or Ireland?

Do you remember Alexander Cordell’s book, Rape of the Fair Country, about the 19th century exploitation of Wales by Victorian industrialists? What we see today is the Globalist-Green rape of Wales . . . but without the jobs or any other tangible benefits.

It’s clear beyond doubt that Mam Cymru is being used, and abused. How much longer do we just stand by and let it happen?

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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The Windward-Bute Empire, Fresh Insights

On By JacIn Bute Energy, Corruption Bay, Renewables, Welsh Labour90 Comments

I had something else planned to go out on Monday, but I’ve held it back in light of fresh information I’ve received about the activities of Bute Energy. Information that raises wider considerations.

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INTRODUCTION

Let me start with an apology. I’ve been writing about Bute’s activities in Wales for seven or eight years. This meant ignoring projects elsewhere, and overlooking Bute and Windward companies that had no obvious Welsh connection.

That may have been a mistake. And in view of recent events suggesting dubious links with China, no longer tenable. Dealt with on this blog.

Apology made, one company I have mentioned, one I could never make sense of, was Storagefolk Ltd. Presumably involved in . . . warehousing?

Launched 23.09.2017 Storagefolk appears to be the oldest surviving Windward-Bute company apart from Windward Enterprises Ltd (until very recently Windward Global), the ultimate holding company, where Oliver James Millican, capo di tutti capi in the W-B world, is in sole charge.

But what’s its purpose, and how does it fit into the wider empire? Information received offers some answers. And opens up a new line of inquiry.

As you can see from the Companies House entry for Storagefolk the address is in Mayfair, that upmarket district of London. The sole director is Millican. But he gives his address as Hodge House in Cardiff, where we find virtually all the companies relevant to Wales. Or at least, those we know about.

Listed as ‘person with significant control‘ (PSC) is Windward Global Ltd.

Though if we go through the main CH listing for Millican’s companies we see Storagefolk using the Hodge House address. (More Millican companies are listed here, here, here, and here.)

At the address in Curzon Street, hosting Storagefolk, we find Turcan Connell Company Secretaries Ltd. Scottish legal eagles with their HQ in Edinburgh. A company regularly used by Millican and his mates.

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MY! WHAT A BIG WAREHOUSE YOU’VE GOT. AND SO MANY OF THEM!

Of the companies registered at that address, we’re interested in the ones shown in the panel below. Particularly those to which I’ve been directed. (Storagefolk appears on the previous page.)

Beginning with Windward Eurocentral MD Ltd. Sole director Oliver Millican. PSC is Windward RE Holdco Ltd (more on this company later). PSC for Windward RE Holdco Ltd is Windward Enterprises Ltd, the ultimate holding company mentioned earlier.

Turn to the charges and you’ll see one taken out in July 2023 and satisfied in April 2025. The lender was private bank Brown Shipley & Co Ltd. Brown Shipley is owned by Quintet Private Bank (Europe) SA of Luxembourg, which is in turn owned by Precision Capital:

Precision Capital is a Luxembourg-based holding company that represents the private interests of members of the Al-Thani family of Qatar.

The charge was against a building just to the east of Glasgow, close to the M8 that runs to Edinburgh. A property offering 127,000 square foot of space.

The next company is Windward Badentoy Ltd. Directors are Millican and TC Directors Ltd with an Edinburgh address. ‘TC’ of course is Turcan Connell again. The PSC is Windward RE Holdco 2 Ltd.

The charges, again with Brown Shipley, refer to industrial storage units such as this one, all near Aberdeen. Plus a floating charge.

The third is Windward RE Project Co 1 Ltd. Here are the players. It’s the Mayfair address with PSC again being Windward RE Holdco 2 Ltd. There are/were two outstanding charges with Brown Shipley. One a fixed and floating charge, the other refers to three properties in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.

Another company worth looking at is Windward Z3B Ltd, with the same pattern. Funding from Brown Shipley for two more storage facilities on industrial or technology parks around Aberdeen.

And there was another company, one that I wrote about in August 2024. And other warehouse not far from the M8.

It was reported on October 2, 2018 that the Titan warehouse had been bought for £6.5M by Grayling Capital. This is Grayling Capital LLP, formed just over a year earlier.

David Taylor, one of those recently questioned by police in relation to China ‘spying’, was made a partner in Grayling Capital LLP in September 2019.

I could go on, but you should get the picture. Companies in the W-B empire have, for perhaps a decade, been buying up big warehouses, often borrowing from a ’boutique’ bank owned by an oil-rich family in Qatar.

A name mentioned in connection with W-B’s activity in the Aberdeen area is IKM. Said to be a tenant of properties owned by Windward-Bute. Here’s a piece from December last year and the Aberdeen Press & Journal.

In another major milestone, IKM Testing UK today opens its third facility as it pushes ahead with plans to expand into international markets, the renewables sector and increase its UK decommissioning work.

But IKM only accounts for some of W-B’s real estate, so the question remains: Why does it need all this storage space?

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PLANNING AHEAD?

First, let me clear up the purpose of Storagefolk before telling you how Windward-Bute buying up vast areas of storage space was explained to me:

(Storagefolk) is purely a negotiating shell for projects in Scotland and NE England; it is used in proposals to financiers, a distinct legal entity is then formed post-investment decision to ring fence properties and interests – and distance from the risk of course.

As for the warehouses, it seems that W-B has been importing parts and components for turbines, solar installations, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) for quite a few years.

This stockpiling is in anticipation of a crackdown on imported parts for ‘renewable’ energy projects. This seems plausible as the opposition mounts to increasing energy prices resulting from ‘Mad’ Ed Miliband’s Net Zero death-wish.

The real estate arm of the Windward portfolio . . . is working with multiple overseas businesses and at least one national government to house interests and commodity items relating to renewables infrastructure. There are warehouses in Wales and Scotland filled to the rafters with BESS and pylon materials – rented and landed for resale exclusively to the UK market to artificially appear to restrict overseas procurement and brand it as available when supply chains pinch in the late 2027 to early 2029 drive.

Is it just forward planning, or is there more to it?

As an example of ‘more to it’, can we assume these imports come from China? I’d put a few quid on it. And if I’ve picked the right nag, then this explains a few other things.

For as we’ve recently learnt, it’s impossible to escape the China connection when dealing with Windward-Bute. So I was not surprised to be told that two of the Big Three (Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George, and Lawson Douglas Steel) have even stated they’d sell to “interested parties from China at the right price“.

But none of these machinations would be possible without political influence, and that influence is not confined to Labour in Wales.

Let’s remember that Tom Watson, former deputy leader of the UK Labour party, now Baron Watson of Wyre Forest, is a non-executive director of Windward Energy Ltd, where he’s listed as plain old Thomas Anthony Watson.

It’s suggested this provides a good connection through Great British Energy to ‘Mad’ Ed Miliband himself, the apostle of Net Zero, de-industrialisation, and electricity consumer impoverishment.

To sum up: there is a concerted effort not only to increase expenditure and reliance on ‘renewables’, but also to remove cheaper and more reliable alternatives. This explains why the UK is closing down North Sea oil and gas . . . only to buy from Norway, which extracts from the same North Sea source.

Proving it has sod all to do with saving the planet.

This is the ugly world inhabited by Windward-Bute. It’s not limited to wind turbines despoiling landscapes, it’s about using political influence to remove competition providing more reliable and cheaper alternatives.

In Wales, this has resulted in the infiltration of the Labour party to the point where it’s hopelessly compromised. Election posters for May’s Senedd elections should read: ‘Vote for Dai Jones – your Bute Welsh Labour candidate‘.

We know W-B is also making inroads into Plaid Cymru. The Greens were always on side. But does it end there?

Maybe not.

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TITBITS, THOUGHTS

In this section I’ll look at a few other items that have come my way and how they perhaps fit with what we already knew.

First, I’m told that Nigel Farage had a closed-door meeting in January with Windward Energy Ltd Chairman Steve Scrimshaw. So let’s have a statement from Reform on where it stands on ‘renewable energy’ and rising electricity prices.

More closed door negotiations preceded the decision by the Wales Pension Partnership to invest £68m (for starters?) in Windward-Bute. A source says that very influential in the ultimate decision was Cardiff Lib Dem councillor Rhys Taylor.

Taylor of course sits on the council’s Pensions Committee, but I bet you can’t guess where his day job is. Let me help . . .

So we see that Windward-Bute also has its claws into the Lib Dems.

Leaving Gwlad the only honest party left.

I’m told the investigations into Taylor and Aplin might result in a number of Senedd Members, MSPs and MPs being invited to ‘help police with their inquiries’.

Understandably, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), the main funders for W-B’s renewable energy projects, is said to be pissed off by the recent news and allegations of spying for China.

Which provides yet another link to ‘Welsh’ Labour. Through Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Danish PM, her directorship of Vestas since 2019, and that company’s 25% stake in CIP.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt is the wife of Stephen Kinnock, MP for Aberavon Maesteg. He is of course the son of former Labour party leader now Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty in the County of Gwent, and the late Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, long-time Member of the European Parliament.

Her seat on the Brussels gravy-train was taken by Derek Vaughan who, following Brexit, was given a non-job by Windward-Bute on its Welsh Advisory Board.

Kinnock the Younger’s constituency is home to Port Talbot steelworks, so recently and shamelessly allowed to die. Welcomed in certain circles because it reduces Wales’ output of some evil dreamed up by Greenhairs.

∼

I’m going to throw out an idea that might sound outrageous, yet it’s plausible. Just think about it.

Millican, Steele and George all worked for real estate outfit Parabola, where Millican’s father Peter is head man. They all left Parabola towards the end of 2017. (Or that’s what we’re encouraged to believe.)

They had no experience in ‘renewables’; and to my knowledge they’ve still not erected a single turbine. Certainly not in Wales. But is this missing the point?

They now have sites designated, landowners signed up, planning applications submitted, politicians and others bought, financial backing for the projects arranged, and warehouses stacked to the gunwales with the wherewithal to complete the projects.

So if Windward-Bute only gets half or less of the planning consents applied for – even no planning approval at all – they could still sell up and make a massive profit. Especially if the anticipated crackdown on (recently) imported parts comes into play and the components they bought years ago rocket in price.

Maybe that was always the business model. Not actually building anything.

If nothing else, it’ll be a very lucrative fall-back position.

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CONCLUSION

Windward-Bute has corrupted Welsh political and public life. And it was so predictable.

With a form of devolved government designed to fail. And with ‘progressive’ politicians too stupid and gullible to have made even a good model work.

Made worse by those same politicians seriously believing Wales alone could save a planet being destroyed by humans – and their farting cows!

Politicians believing that lobbyists and pressure groups should determine policies, and that they should be able to do so free from regulation or restraint.

Resulting in overlapping and incestuous circles in one relatively small city, circles of perhaps no more than two or three thousand people in total, damaging the lives of over three million people.

This shit-show was bound to attract the kinds of ‘developers’ we’ve seen over the past 27 years. With Windward-Bute perhaps the worst, the most pernicious example.

Windward-Bute already has the shadow of ‘China spying’ hanging over it, and the stain of buying political influence, but it doesn’t end there.

The West’s lemming-like rush over the cliff of ‘renewables’ isn’t just good news for China, on which we depend for everything from rare earth minerals to completed solar panels; it’s also welcomed in the oil-rich Gulf states because ‘renewables’ are also unreliables, and need back-up.

Some might think that a UK-based company or individuals enriching themselves from helping de-industrialise and impoverish the West is tantamount to treason.

And I would agree. For ‘renewables’ are a response to nothing but avarice.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2026

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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.

◊

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.

◊

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.

◊

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

Buy Me A Coffee

Bute Energy And Others, A Round-up

On By JacIn Climate, Environmentalism, Globalism, Wind Turbines82 Comments

I haven’t devoted a full piece to Bute Energy and the rest since August last year. Which is somewhat remiss, seeing as the plans are ongoing and causing great concern to communities across the land.

That said, maybe this offering is directed more at the general reader than those who follow Bute’s activities closely, or are involved with a particular campaign group, of which there are perhaps too many. (More on this later.)

Though I’ve had a gutsful of Bute and the other eco-scammers who’ve taken up more space on this blog than the diamond geezers and career criminals.

Yet they’re lauded in the media, have politicians in their back pocket, and the red carpet is rolled out for these exploitative interlopers.

◊

INTRO, RECAP

After a visit to the cellar, dusting off a few files, I think I’ve found my first reference to Bute. It was back in November 2018. In the piece, Corruption in the wind?

Though Bute first appeared via a connection with someone I’d already written about.

This pathfinder was Steven Radford. He was fronting for a major player named U + I in three wind farm projects: Bryn Blaen, near Llangurig; Rhoscrowther, down on the Haven; and Hendy, a few miles from Llandrindod.

U + I was soon taken over by Landsec; big shareholders in Landsec are BlackRock, Vanguard, Legal & General, Jupiter Asset Management.

In that November 2018 piece I wrote:

In September Radford branched out again with Bute Energy Ltd . . . in the electricity business, the production, transmission, distribution and trade of electricity to be exact.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the boys of Bute had all come from property company Parabola. And that the lead director of Bute, Oliver James Millican, is the son of Parabola boss, Peter John Millican.

The other Bute principals we’ve come to know are: Lawson Douglas Steele and Stuart Allan George. Barry Woods was a fourth departure from Parabola in November 2017. But Woods parted company with the others in September 2019.

Another name that crops up is John Reilly. Like those just named (apart from Millican) he has a company named ‘Windward’ followed by his initials. I can’t be sure if Reilly worked for Parabola, but he is now Project Manager for Bute. Like the others, he lives in Scotland.

These ‘personal’ companies all saw a massive boost in their values recently.

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These figures might be accounted for by a payout from Grayling Capital LLP, which dissolved around that time. For Millican, Steele and George were Designated Members, and Reilly a Member. Another Member had been SuperSpAd and ‘Welsh’ Labour insider David James Taylor. (Mentioned a few times on this site.)

UPDATE: More plausibly, the windfall is explained here.

But that only throws up another question – where did the money come from that went into Grayling Capital?

Whatever the answer, that’s a lot of money for a group that has yet to put up a single turbine. Ask yourself, how does that ten grand for your village hall from a developer’s ‘community fund’ compare to sums like these?

Taylor also did well for himself. The clip below is from the accounts of Taylor’s company Moblake Ltd. A liquidator was appointed in April 2022 and Taylor rode off into the sunset with the 600k in his saddlebags.

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The ultimate holding company for all the Bute entities is Windward Global Ltd. The sole director is Millican Jnr. The company was formed in May 2017 as DMWSL 864 Ltd and changed its name six months later, at the exact same time we are expected to believe the boss’s son and his mates turned their backs on Parabola.

Somehow, the Parabola-Bute crew made contact with Radford. Who joined Bute Energy Ltd in September 2018, less than a week after Oliver Millican. (The company changed its name to RSCO 3750 Ltd and folded in September 2023.)

How was this contact made? Why did Parabola turn its attention to wind turbines? And to Wales?

◊

PARABOLA-BUTE DISCOVERS WALES

But how did they ‘discover’ Wales? Were there introductions? To answer these questions I’ll begin with something substantive before flying a kite.

In the first piece, of November 2018, you’d have read a section – ‘Mystery Woman’ – in which I identified Anna McMorrin as a lobbyist for Hendy wind farm. She was then a Labour insider shacked up with a minister in the ‘Welsh Government’, and she went on to become the MP for Cardiff North in the June 2017 general election.

Seventeen months after McMorrin’s performance before Powys councillors, Steven Radford of Hendy wind farm teamed up with Parabola-Bute.

This pattern of Labour party involvement (ahem!) has been repeated in subsequent years. Most recently with Sophie Howe, former Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, who became a director of the new Bute Energy Ltd last month. (It switched names with RSCO 3750 Ltd.)

Labour party troughing is covered in many other posts on this site.

So we have the Labour party helping windfarm developers, but that doesn’t establish a connection for Radford with Millican and his pals. Yet people I’ve spoken with recently are convinced the key lies with Radford and Hendy Wind Farm Ltd.

And what a story of political corruption that was; done to help a project meet an OFGEN funding deadline, with one hurriedly erected turbine – that has never turned!

But even if Hendy is the key, that still doesn’t explain how Radford and the Bute gang met each other.

Here’s one possibility . . .

McMorrin was working for a company, Invicta Public Affairs, with branches in Glasgow and London, but its registered office is on the Gallowgate, not far from St James’ Park in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Parabola, despite having offices in Edinburgh and London, began life in Newcastle and still maintains a presence in a building it redeveloped near the Central Station.

I admit the Geordie connection is tenuous; yet while the Labour party link to both Radford and Bute is established, there is still no evidence it was the comrades who brought them together.

Though the Labour party is now so enmeshed with Parabola-Bute it might soon be difficult to disentangle them. What with individual party members involved and then the council pension fund investment. (Controlled by BlackRock.)

Plaid Cymru is also getting in on the climate scam. Sorry! that should read: saving the planet for future generations. In the form of an obscure Plaid loyalist from Ynys Môn named Carmen Smith.

After dabbling in student politics, working for politicos and leftist groups, Smith was given a made-up job with Bute in October 2023 – Advisor on Youth Governance! Her employer is named as Windward Global, the ultimate holding company for the Bute empire.

Next, she made it to the House of Lords when Plaid needed to replace retiring Lord Wigley. The election process was rigged in order to ignore members’ choice of former MP Elfyn Llwyd.

These shenanigans now give Bute a presence in the House of Lords.

◊

KLINGON AND A POSSIBLE RESTORATION TRAGEDY

As is often the case with planning permission – and perhaps especially in Wales – what is originally given consent is often very different to what is eventually built. ‘Changes’ and ‘modifications’ are made, which may or may not go through the planning process.

In the case of Bute Energy these now include, “bigger blades, higher substations, to cracking on before approval of any restoration plans. The local authorities, who told PEDW they have no resources to oversee any planning conditions, appear to be rubber stamping things“.

Never was rubber stamping more obvious than with this amendment submitted by Bute to Caerphilly council regarding Twyn Hywel wind farm. Fortunately, the council accepts correspondence in English, Welsh, and Klingon.

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For it was indeed accepted.

In the quote I used just now you’ll have seen a reference to “restoration plans“. So let me explain what this is about.

After certain opencast mines came to the end of their working lives in southern Wales it was expected that the companies involved would – as promised – restore the sites to something close to their original state.

But, alas, when the time came for the restoration to begin – the companies involved had relocated to offshore tax havens.

In 2010, a company called Celtic Energy sold its opencast coalmines – with its restoration liabilities – for £1 apiece to a series of shell companies it had set up in the British Virgin Islands. Then the senior executives walked away with millions.

To avoid something similar happening with windfarms a number of people have submitted FoI requests to the ‘Welsh Government’ about site restoration, but I’ve yet to see a response that satisfies anyone.

UPDATE 02.10.2025: Here’s an example that I’ve just received from a reader. Natural Resources Wales says they can’t tell how much they demand for wind farm site restoration, because “this information is commercially sensitive“.

It’s now being suggested that wind turbines in Wales have an operational lifespan of 50 years. Below is a clip from Google AI, and here’s a link to a piece in Solar Power Portal which says, “Manmoel Wind will have an operational life span of 50 years“.

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Obviously, no turbine lasts 50 years. A turbine is lucky to make 20, or 25. So people who’ve seen that 50 year figure assume the turbines will be replaced at some stage.

Yet the extended lifespan claim appears again in this response from Bute to a question from a concerned local resident:

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Quite frankly, I believe that ten years from now few new (or replacement) turbines will be going up. People are no longer listening to the Swedish doom goblin and her Globalist masters. Reality is kicking in.

So the question remains: with the bubble soon to burst, why are turbines going up today, or tomorrow, being given operational lifespans of 40 or 50 years?

Could it be because developers have an arrangement with politicians and planners that restoration of a site begins when the agreed operational lifespan is up? Even if the turbines had long ago stopped working. Or had even been removed?

My belief is that restoration costs should be paid up front, before a single turbine is erected, and the money ring-fenced so politicians can’t get their grubby paws on it. Furthermore, the restoration costs must not be limited to the visual. There must be enough money deposited to pay for the removal and disposal of the vast concrete bases in which every turbine stands.

Questions need to be asked about this extended operational lifespan. And whether it will be linked with site restoration.

UPDATE 12.10.2025: I should add that being ‘imaginative’ with a project’s lifespan might encourage hesitant investors. And it will be used by politicians spouting ‘future generations’ bollocks to grant planning permission.

◊

THE PYLON RUNS

Clearly, the hundreds of wind turbines planned for remote upland areas of Wales are a long way from the eventual consumers in England. For that’s where it’s going. (Ignore bullshit like, “powering seven million Welsh homes“.)

Below you’ll see two maps that I hope will help explain the position.

On the left is a map produced by the ‘Welsh Government’ in its Future Wales The National Plan 2040 (update), showing the designated areas for wind power. On the right, a map produced by CPRW (here), adding areas for solar power and associated infrastructure including pylon routes.

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Because, clearly, there will be a need for pylons and overhead power lines to run from the windfarms to where they can connect with the grid. Though in environmentally sensitive (or politically favoured) sections the cabling might be underground.

In the southern half of the country this means a run from around Aberedw, east of Llandrindod, down to Builth, and then down Dyffryn Tywi to Llandyfaelog, south of Carmarthen. The other southern line runs from the wild country east of Lampeter – projects I covered in this piece – following the Teifi before branching off south from somewhere near Llandysul.

In the northern section, the run starts near Llangurig, then runs north before turning north east to its destination at Lower Frankton in Shropshire. Though for some reason we were originally told it ended in ‘Chirk’.

Perhaps we were supposed to think it would supply Wrecsam and Deeside.

This simple map of the grid in Wales will also help as it shows most of the turbines planned are going up in areas a long way from that grid.

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Most electricity in Wales is generated by Pembroke power station in the far south west. The line then runs east, supplying much of the urban south, before taking power over the border.

The loop in the north is, I suspect, accounted for by the decommissioned nuclear power stations at Wylfa and Trawsfynydd.

Let’s conclude this section by focusing on an area just mentioned, Twm Siôn Cati country. There’s a very active group opposing the three projects we’ve heard about (there may be more to come), and there was a public meeting last month.

Here’s a report from the Western Mail. Here in pdf format.

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The meeting was held in Pumsaint because, as I explained in the piece I linked to earlier, the blades and turbines will need to be transported from Pumsaint up country, and over the 2,500 acres of the National Trust’s Dolaucothi estate.

For some reason the NT is coy about giving out information about its involvement with wind farm developers.

To add to the air of mystery, I’m informed that prior to the Pumsaint meeting local Plaid worthies met with Bute representatives at the Falcondale Hotel, just a mile or so north east of Lampeter. Is this true?

If so, what did they discuss? More peerages?

◊

ODDS AND ENDS

I’ve been writing about wind farms for so long, and more keep appearing, that I was almost on the point of giving up. But like I say, as truth dawns, and the costs mount, the bubble will eventually burst.

So I’ll stick with it, and give a few random thoughts. First, something that’s been a stone in my shoe for a while. Maybe someone out there can help.

It’s a company called Storagefolk Ltd. The sole director is Oliver Millican, and ownership traces back to super holding company Windward Global, where all the shares are owned by Millican.

Now, this company was formed September 2017; it seems to do nothing, yet it’s kept alive, so I must assume there’s a reason for its existence. But what?

Answers on a postcard . . .

Returning to electricity transmission . . . in a belated attempt to salvage its reputation the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ set up Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru. Which, to date, has achieved virtually nothing beyond virtue signalling.

And of course, costing us money.

Those clowns in Corruption Bay had over two decades to ensure that, if we had no alternative but to participate, that at least Wales benefitted from this climate scam. But they did nothing beyond pimping Wales out to any green con artists who slunk into view.

Bute has also set up a distribution company, Green Gen Cymru (GGC). Which is planning the pylon runs we looked at earlier. Though this is a joint venture with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, a major funder for Bute.

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The GCC chairman is Bleddyn Phillips, former chairman of London Welsh Rugby Club, who worked in Russia when his wife, Dame Anne Pringle, was ambassador.

For many year Phillips was Global Head of Oil and Gas for multinational lawyers Clifford Chance LLP. These are not the kind of lawyers you go to if Plod arrests you for hurty words on X. We are talking big, big money here. Billions.

Consequently, Phillips must know many wealthy investors in the energy field from his globetrotting days. I wonder if any of them are interested in Green Gen Cymru?

◊

CONCLUSION

I don’t wish to name groups or individuals, but I believe the fight against these various – but linked – plans is too fragmented. A certain level of unity is needed. Or at the very least, co-operation.

Yet it must also be kept local.

By which I mean, involve local people, farmers and others with a stake in the country. At all costs avoid creating the impression that the only people opposing wind turbines and pylons are well-heeled nimbys who’ve moved into the area.

Selfish buggers who are now, “denying locals thousands of well-paid jobs“.

Because that’s the kind of lie those opposing you – politicians and ‘developers’ – will use to divide and discredit you.

And finally, don’t trust political parties that support Net Zero, wind farms and all the rest. Politicians with constituencies or council areas threatened by the projects of Bute and others are in trouble, and they know it.

So they’re trying to ride two horses. But only succeeding in coming across as more two-faced than usual. It is not a pretty sight.

Say, “Thank you very much for your kind offer of advice and assistance” – then help them through the door. Whether you open the door is entirely up to you.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2025

Foundation Scam Supporting A Tower Of Bullshit

On By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Corruption, Corruption Bay, Development Bank of Wales, Environmentalism, European Union, Farming, Football, Globalism, Media, Sport123 Comments

There’s been a two-week gap since my previous opus, A Case Study In ‘Rewilding’; so here’s a pre-Christmas treat for you to get your teeth into before those Brussel sprouts. Yum! yum!

◊

THE FOUNDATION SCAM

Here, I am of course referring to the ‘climate crisis’. It’s foundational because if you buy into this, or even if you just silently accept it, then you help erect the ‘Tower of Bullshit’ that’s built upon it.

In this ‘tower’ you’ll find net zero, behavioural control, loss of personal freedoms, open borders, wealth transfer, anti-white racism, personal carbon allowances, and a host of other evils that George Orwell might have warned us about if he’d lived long enough to write a sequel to 1984.

The evils we see around us, the ways in which everything becomes more expensive, and our lives more miserable, can only be imposed if enough of us accept we need to make sacrifices to combat (they love that word!) their ‘climate crisis’.

Because if we buy into the climate scam then we’ll dutifully vote for uniparty politicians and parties controlled by those who dreamed up and now profit from the scam.

◊

STORM DARRAGH BLOWS AWAY THE COBWEBS (TOGETHER WITH THE SOLAR PANELS UNDER WHICH THE SPIDERS WERE HIDING)

Among the most obvious measures being promoted to fight the ‘climate crisis’ is renewable energy. This usually means wind turbines and solar panels.

A truly disastrous combo.

On the plus side, Wales sees a lot of wind. What we don’t get a lot of is sunshine. Which is why solar panels are an insult to our collective intelligence.

To begin with, solar ‘arrays’ take up a hell of a lot of space, often good agricultural land. Which then gets poisoned. Even the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ admitted as much in this report from March 2023.

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The problems mentioned occur if the panels stay in place, but as we saw with Storm Darragh the other week, they don’t always stay in place. For the winds caused chaos at Porth Wen, near Cemaes, in the northern part of Ynys Môn.

It was soon reported in the Daily Mail, and the New Civil Engineer. But it was a full six days before the ‘National Newspaper of Wales’ got around to mentioning it.

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The problem is of course that Ynys Môn sees a lot of wind. That wind often comes straight off the Atlantic. To make matters worse, the island is relatively flat, with no sheltering hills.

So you might think it’s a good place for wind turbines. Well, no.

For as the New Civil Engineer also reported, just nearby, at Llanbadrig, a wind turbine had its blades ripped off.

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And yet, despite the obvious problems, there are plans for even bigger solar installations on Ynys Môn.

I heard of other incidents where solar installations broke up, and panel parts took wing. One incident involved Aberystwyth University’s £2.9m solar farm at Penglais.

An investment that’s inspired . . .

Four new degrees . . . International Relations and Climate Change, Biology and Climate Change, Business and Climate Change and English and Climate Change.

“English and Climate Change” must have a module, ‘Selling this crap to the plebs’.

For those unfamiliar with the area . . . Penglais is a hill above the town, perfect for catching the wind coming off Cardigan Bay. Though not so good for ground-mounted solar panels, which positively invite levitation.

Penglais solar farm circled. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Even if they reach the grand old age of 20, wind turbines and solar panels will never ‘repay’ the environmental damage they caused in being created and installed.

In addition, massive subsidies are demanded. And when there isn’t enough of our money on offer, developers go off in a huff. As was the case recently in Denmark.

Governments are then advised to come up with “healthier pricing” . . . by the wind industry. If it was up to me, I’d tell them to . . .

The Danish Government must now quickly . . . adapt their auction design to market realities. The industry needs healthier pricing and fairer risk allocation

Once installed, turbines and panels offer unreliable, intermittent supply – that has to be backed up by something more reliable; usually nuclear, or fossil fuels.

And as we’ve seen with Storm Darragh – which was nothing out of the ordinary – ‘renewables’ can’t cope with serious wind.

In fact, turbines have to be switched off in anything other than a strong breeze. And of course they produce nothing in windless conditions. Solar panels obviously generate nothing at night, or when there’s no sun, or if they’re covered in snow.

Which means that on those cold, overcast, windless winter days we experience so often, ‘renewables’ contribute bugger all to the grid.

So the idea that a country can rely 100% on ‘renewables’ is utterly insane. Yet this is what ‘Mad Monk’ Miliband is demanding. Though he’s being paid handsomely to push this bullshit by those who’ll benefit.

◊

BOLLOCKS IN THE WIND

If we’re talking of wind turbines, then we can’t ignore Bute Energy; maybe the biggest player in Wales, with many wind farms planned, plus solar installations, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), even its own power lines.

And of course, Bute is well connected with Labour in Wales, having created sinecures for party insiders. Then there’s the Danish connection, with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. Which matches funders with Bute projects.

A 25% stake in CIP is held by another Danish outfit, Vestas, and on the Vestas board is former Danish PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Alternatively known as Mrs Kinnock, for she’s the wife of Stephen Kinnock, MP for Aberavon, son of former Labour leader Neil, and the late Glenys, for many years a MEP.

(Talking of Vestas, here’s a very recent mishap with a new Vestas wind turbine in Scotland. And there have been others.)

Mrs Kinnock has her own company, Thorningschmidt Global Ltd, and she also sits on the board of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

The address given for her company is Acre House, 11/15 William Road, London NW1 3ER. Other companies at that address appeared in the Paradise Papers. This is the UK end of Rontec Group (Jersey) Ltd, the empire of Sir Gerald Ronson OBE. For those old enough to remember, Ronson was one of ‘The Guinness Four’.

Mrs Kinnock’s also worked with the World Health Organisation and the Trilateral Commission.

Does the backdrop remind you of anything? Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I’ve made the point before that the principals involved in Bute came from property company Parabola. The holding company for the Bute empire is Windward Global Ltd. This is controlled by Oliver James Millican, son of Peter John Millican, chair of Parabola.

Is Bute just a front for Parabola? I ask, because one might need to be very generous to believe that four young executives, including the boss’s son, cut their ties with Parabola at the same time to take a leap into the unknown.

I just wrote “four young executives“, which may confuse some of you familiar with the principal players. For in addition to Millican Jr the other ex Parabola people prominent with Bute are usually Lawson Steele and Stuart George.

But there was a fourth departure from Parabola, Barry Woods. If you look at the list of related companies, you’ll see that Steele, George and Woods each had a ‘Windward’ company formed for them 31.05.2018.

Woods’ company was dissolved in September 2019 when, I assume, he broke with Bute.

If you go down that list you’ll see Windward JR Ltd. Those initials stand for John Reilly. He’s the Project Manager for Bute Energy, and a bit of a joker. For here he is quoted by NorthWalesLive in May 2023.

John Reilly, project manage . . . said: “As a nation we’re in a Climate Emergency, and a cost-of-living crisis.

The cost-of-living crisis is partly caused by Net Zero, forced on us to fight a non-existent ‘Climate Emergency’, yet Reilly tries to turn facts on their head. It’s too late for this bullshit, pal. Too many people now see through it.

The latest accounts for Windward JR, which became available to view earlier this month, show a remarkable upturn in fortunes.

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A company that never had more than a few hundred quid in the kitty now has over a million. With the filed accounts offering no explanation for this windfall. So where might it have come from?

Answers on the usual postcard.

UPDATE 22.12.2024: The accounts for Windward LS have become available on the Companies House website. They show the arrival of roughly £5 million. We can expect a similar amount to appear in Windward SG Ltd. And probably a larger sum in some other company for Oliver James Millican.

UPDATE 23.12.2024: The accounts for Windward SG Ltd (to 31.03.2024) are also now available. They show an unexplained increase in Assets from the previous year’s £87,950 to £4,722,225.

◊

A WOMAN OF SOME IMPORTANCE

In June ’23 I put out Taking Control, Of Everything, where I tried to explain how, through funding, appointments, and other means, the ‘Welsh Government’ seems to take over bodies that should be non-political.

In particular, I drew attention to recent changes at the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) and the Football Association of Wales (FAW).

I mentioned Dr Carol Bell who, according to this bio from Chapter Zero (one of her many directorships), leads (the FAW’s) sustainability strategy“. Which, given how ‘sustainability’ operates in the wider world, will probably bankrupt Welsh soccer.

Since I wrote last year Dr Bell has taken up a number of new appointments.

In January she started Aileni Ltd, with crachach luminary Geraint Talfan Davies, and Geoffrey Hunt of Arup. In March, she became Treasurer of Glamorgan County Cricket Club. Then she got involved in three archaeological bodies. And on April 23 Dr Bell joined Bute’s Windward Energy Ltd.

She is a non-executive director of Norwegian Bonheur ASA. A non-executive director of Cyprus-based  platinum and chrome mining company Tharisa. Dr Bell’s Market Screener bio mentions Hafren Scientific Ltd, another mining and drilling company, which for some reason isn’t mentioned in her Linkedin profile. Strange, seeing as she’s the chair.

Hafren Scientific has three outstanding loans with the Development Bank of Wales (DBW), of which Dr Bell was a director until a year ago.

The first DBW loan was made in December 2014. And in that very same month Dr Bell joined both Hafren Scientific and BlackRock Energy and Resources Income Trust Plc. (Though it appears she left BlackRock in March.)

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I used to think that Dr Bell and others worked for the ‘Welsh Government’, pushing the Globalist agenda. Now I wonder if she works for a higher authority to ensure Welsh politicos follow orders.

And as we’ve seen, earlier this year, and within weeks of leaving(?) BlackRock, Dr Bell joined Anglo-Scottish investment company Bute Energy. Intriguing.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

John Reilly’s “Climate Emergency“, was concocted by very rich individuals and corporate entities wanting to exercise political and social control through uniparty political systems in Europe and North America.

Their strategy is to destabilise and weaken the West from within, thereby making the Globalist takeover easier. Using tactics like DEI, ESG, CRT, Net Zero, open borders, and a comprehensive rejection of Western traditions and values.

To promote this strategy Globalists have recruited environmentalists, Islamists, vegans, sexual deviants, and of course, the Quisling Left. For all the measures designed to weaken Western societies are promoted as ‘progressive’, with critics dismissed as ‘far right’, etc., etc.

Of course, politicians come and go, whereas other institutions and structures are more enduring, even self-perpetuating. Higher education and the civil service might come into this category.

Academe is obviously in the service of the Globalist agenda, and it’s long been rumoured that senior levels of the UK civil service have been ‘captured’. More than that, it’s said they – not the politicians – now make (or convey) major policies.

It can be seen in Wales. I’ve chronicled the assault on Welsh farming for a decade or more, and it’s usually led by civil servants sent down from London by Defra. Which is believed to have devised (or conveyed) the Starmer regime’s inheritance tax.

◊

CONCLUSION

Matters are coming to a head. The lunacies that have prevailed for too long are in retreat. We shall see major change in 2025. And it may not be bloodless.

The German government has effectively fallen, there will be elections in February. Already moves are afoot to stop the ‘populist’ AfD from winning. In France, De Gaulle’s Fifth Republic totters from one crisis to another, the country run by pygmies not fit to utter the great man’s name.

Across the West, Globalism and Cultural Marxism (Wokeism) are in retreat, and people realise the threat posed by Islam. Change is coming.

Here in the UK there’s talk of cancelling some of next year’s local council elections in England due to ‘reorganisation’. The truth is, Reform must be stopped.

As I write this, it’s rumoured Canadian PM Justin Trudeau will resign. Whether he does, or whether he clings on until next year’s elections, he’s finished.

Down in Argentina, President Milei has taken a chainsaw to bureaucracy and socialist corruption – and the country is thriving.

And finally, it’s just a month until Donald J Trump becomes the 47th president of the United States of America. And then things are really going to change.

I’m looking forward to 2025 so very, very much.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

    Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

Parabola Bute Energy, Scottish Echoes

On By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Wind Turbines38 Comments

This piece has been prompted by information received from Scotland, which may clear up a lingering mystery, while also telling us more about the operations of those involved with Parabola Bute Energy.

I use that name because I’m convinced that Bute Energy, which wants to build some 20 wind farms in Wales, plus other installations, also mile after mile of pylons, is little more than a venture into the renewables sector by property group Parabola.

I say that because the ultimate holding company for all Bute companies is Windward Global Ltd. This company is controlled by Oliver James Millican. He is the son of Peter John Millican, who runs Parabola.

The son worked for the father at Parabola, as did the other Bute principals (though some have since left Bute). They all ‘departed’ Parabola late in 2017 or early in 2018.

But to avoid confusion, I’ll stick to the name you’ve become familiar with.

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NEWS FROM THE NORTH

I’ve written a lot about ‘Bute Energy’, in its various incarnations, but always from a Welsh perspective. And despite consistently identifying it as a Scottish company, I’ve never really looked into what Bute’s owners might have got up to in Scotland.

So let’s put that right. Starting with a warehouse, a very big warehouse, over 122,000 sq ft; it’s to the east of Glasgow, not far off the M8, which runs to Edinburgh.

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It was reported on October 2, 2018 that the Titan warehouse had been bought for £6.5M by Grayling Capital. This is Grayling Capital LLP, formed just over a year earlier.

If we turn to the Members of this LLP, we see the names of Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George, and Lawson Douglas Steele. These are the names we’ve become familiar with as they keep turning up as directors of the Bute companies in Wales.

At the bottom of the list we see David James Taylor, a Labour insider in Wales whose name has cropped up a few times in the Bute saga.

The warehouse had been used by Lidl, but the company decided to move out to a purpose-built warehouse of their own. So Grayling looked around for a buyer. They didn’t find one, but the Covid pandemic did provide a tenant, in the form of the Scottish government. Or rather, the Scottish NHS.

The lease runs to 31 January 2031, at £766,094 per annum. Which was a good bit of business for Grayling, but it got better. For in March 2021 the warehouse was sold for £14.326m to the Lothian Pension Fund. Ultimately owned by the City of Edinburgh Council.

Though I ask myself, why did Lothian Pension Fund pay £14.3m for a property it must have known sold for half that price just over two years earlier? Did the Auditor General get involved?

Grayling Capital LLP is now liquidated.

In the report I just linked to you’ll see the sale worded thus:

The Lothian Pension Fund has acquired a prime logistics warehouse at Eurocentral in North Lanarkshire from Windward Titan.

Windward Titan was a vehicle set up specifically for the warehouse deal in Scotland, and that explains why it hasn’t been mentioned on this blog. Though ‘Windward’ should certainly be familiar to regular readers. It crops up with a number of other companies.

Windward Titan is now dissolved.

The directors were of course Millican, Steele, and George. Control was exercised by Windward Enterprises Ltd, which is now – since St David’s Day this year – known as Windward Energy Ltd. Which is in turn owned by the company mentioned above as the ultimate holding company, Windward Global Ltd.

Here’s the warehouse disappearing from the Windward Titan balance sheet.

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You’ll see that the warehouse was valued at just over £7 million. It sold for £14.3 million. And on top of that there’s the income of £766,000 a year from the Scottish NHS until 2031. Did that lease transfer to the new owner?

What’s more, a Scottish source tells me that the value of the warehouse was increased because as part of the lease the Scottish government agreed to undertake improvements costing £2.75m.

Bizarrely, this work meant that the warehouse could not be used at the height of the pandemic – which was the reason for taking out the lease in the first place!

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One reason I find this story from Scotland so interesting is that it seems to presage what we’ve seen in Wales. More on this later.

Another reason is that those involved in the warehouse deal are now in Wales posing as planet savers, but they are first and foremost property speculators.

Never, ever, forget that.

◊

WHO FILLED THEIR BOOTS, AND HOW?

Windward Titan was started with a single £1 share and there was never any money in the kitty, just the value of the warehouse. The only cash money appeared at the end, from the parent company, to settle up with the liquidators.

So to follow the money we need to turn to Grayling Capital LLP.

A LLP is a Limited Liability Partnership, popular with solicitors, accountants, and other professionals working as a partnership. When used in a more commercial context it can disguise ‘opaque’ dealings.

What you see below is from the final page of Windward Titan’s financial statement for year ending 31.03.2020.

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It tells that the Titan warehouse was bought by Windward Titan with a loan from parent company Windward Enterprises Ltd. And it also confirms that everything is ultimately owned by Windward Global Ltd and Oliver James Millican.

To return to Labour insider David James Taylor. Who’d been Spad to Peter Hain MP and Welsh first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones. More specifically, to the money given to his company Moblake Ltd (originally Moblake Wind Ventures Ltd).

From Moblake Ltd financial statement for y/e 31.03.2021. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

There were two possible sources for the ‘interest free loan’ of £605,872 Taylor made to himself. Both linked to Bute.

One was his shares in Windward Energy Ltd (formerly Windward Enterprises Ltd), but he held these shares until July 22, 2022. Whereas the mysterious £600,000+ had been and gone from Moblake at least a year earlier.

The answer would seem to be Taylor being a Member of Grayling Capital LLP. He ceased being a Member September 13, 2021, which ties in with the sale of the Titan warehouse in March of that year to the Lothian Pension Fund.

The question then becomes . . . why was Taylor, living either in Wales or London, involved with a Scottish company doing business in Scotland?

I think the answer may lie in the timing. Taylor joined Grayling Capital in September 2019, a year after the Bute boys seem to have found their way to Wales. They hired him to open doors in Corruption Bay and elsewhere.

So let’s look at what happened. And how I think it was done.

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BUTE COMES TO WALES

Now we’re going to look at how a clearly Scottish company manoeuvred itself into such a dominant position in Wales. But it could only have been done with the help of the Labour party.

On this blog, I first mentioned Bute Energy in November 2018, in Corruption in the wind?. But only tangentially. For I was really writing about a guy named Radford, who wanted to build three wind farms; two in Powys, the other in Pembrokeshire.

One of his projects, Hendy, near Llandrindod, was turned down by a planning inspector, but that decision was surprisingly overturned by Lesley Griffiths, who was at the time Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary in Corruption Bay.

To do that was strange enough. But it stank even more when it became clear that Griffiths did it just in time for the developer to erect a single turbine (never connected to the grid), in order to meet the Ofgem payment deadline on January 31, 2019.

Those involved even seemed to know about Griffiths’ decision in advance, to the extent of jumping the gun.

Here’s a recent update on Hendy from the CPRW.

Why did Lesley Griffiths give permission for a wind farm that was never going to be built? The answer is a 10-letter word beginning with ‘c’.

As I say, the guy involved was Steven John Radford, of Hendy Wind Farm Ltd. But he was only fronting for a big company called U+I.

The reason Bute got a mention was, and here I quote from that November 2018 piece:

In September Radford branched out again with Bute Energy Ltd, joining six days after its two founding directors.

Those two directors were Millican and Steele, who we’ve already met. Radford may have been their introduction to Wales. (Bute Energy Ltd was re-named RSCO 3750 Ltd in March 2020.)

Or maybe the key lies with whoever introduced them to each other. So let’s fit a few things into that time-frame.

Radford was already planning wind farms, and lobbying for him was Invicta Public Affairs of Newcastle. Invicta’s representative in Wales since October 2016 had been Labour Spad Anna McMorrin, now MP for Cardiff North.

The Bute Boys linked up with Radford, and Taylor might have taken over McMorrin’s role providing a link between developers and Labour party. A different Scottish source told me last year that Taylor has now been replaced by Sophie Howe, the former Future Generations Commissioner.

Here’s a table I drew up of some essential facts, with links. You might find it useful.

Among those who get a mention in the table are the four below. Vaughan is a former Labour MEP, and Uden is the husband of Labour MS Jenny Rathbone. For some reason you won’t find the panel below on the Bute website any longer.

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And even though McMorrin never seemed to work for Bute before becoming an MP in June 2017, she nevertheless declared £3,000 received from Bute earlier this year.

Throughout this story I’ve been struck by how often Newcastle crops up. It’s the city where Parabola began life. ‘Bute’ companies have used Newcastle addresses. And Invicta, the lobbyist we encountered with Anna McMorrin, is also based there.

And there are a number of Parabola outfits using a Newcastle address.

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But Invicta also has an office in Edinburgh, the city where we usually find Millican Jr, Steele, and George.

Something else worth remembering is that Lesley Griffiths and David Taylor know each other. They’re from the same area, here’s a photo of Taylor canvassing for Griffiths. Both had been involved in the Carl Sargeant tragedy.

What we looked at earlier in Scotland seems to be repeated to some degree with what we’ve seen in Wales.

On the one hand, we saw Millican and his mates do a lucrative deal with the Scottish Government. Here, Bute Energy has been adopted by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

In Scotland, a local government pension fund stepped in to buy Titan Warehouse for perhaps double what it was worth. Here there’s been a big investment from the Wales Pension Partnership. With some councils unhappy with the decision.

Is this all coincidence?

◊

WHAT NEXT?

Something worth remembering about Bute is that for all the companies, and all the wind farm projects, Bute has never erected a single bloody turbine. Perhaps because those involved are property speculators.

Which is why some people – and I’ve been one of them – think that Bute is not here to actually build wind farms. Maybe they’re just here to get exclusivity agreements with landowners and planning permissions.

Then sell up, making massive profits, without having done much other than smooch Labour politicians and sponsor Cwmscwt Annual Ferret Show.

But because there are now so many wind farm projects planned in Wales it can only be a matter of time before we see developers fighting turf wars. Maybe it’s started.

Take the case of Foel Fach and Orddu, just north of Bala.

Foel Fach Wind Farm Ltd, the company, was set up May 31, 2022. Head honcho is David Charles Murray. Orddu is a Bute project, the company formed a year later.

Murray got a mention on this blog back in October 2020 in, ‘Poor Wales: magnet for property spivs, fraudsters, and enviroshysters‘. I mentioned him due to his connection with the project between Port Talbot and Maesteg known as Y Bryn.

But Murray has been involved with many wind farm projects, and his main vehicle seems to be Coriolis Energy Ltd. It has a very basic website, and here’s the Companies House filing. Coriolis Energy is owned by Coriolis Energy Developments LLP. But again, that’s David Charles Murray.

Y Bryn Wind Farm Ltd shares a Berkshire address with Coriolis.

When we look at who’s behind Foel Fach, we see again Coriolis Energy Developments LLP and David Charles Murray.

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The map on the left shows the relative positions of the Foel Fach and Orddu summits. The map on the right gives the outline of the Foel Fach wind farm.

But this is where it gets a bit messy.

For a start, I can’t find a map for Orddu, so where will it end and Foel Fach begin? Are they contiguous? Do they overlap? Or are they two names for what will be one big site?

We’ve always been told there must be a ‘buffer zone’ between wind farms and National Parks. But Foel Fach runs right up to the Eryri boundary on the B4501. Who allowed this?

Incidentally, the ‘lake’ to the left on that map is the Tryweryn reservoir covering Capel Celyn. And Foel Fach wind farm will also overlook Frongoch, where Irish prisoners were interned after 1916.

And finally . . . I believe David Charles Murray of Coriolis is Scottish. Many of his other projects have been in Scotland. So are he and the Bute boys acquainted?

Wind farm developments in Wales are out of control, it’s a free-for-all. Planning permission guaranteed; no matter how ugly, inappropriate, or damaging the project. Wales already has too many wind farms (and too many pylons), we don’t need any more.

And because it appears we’re in this mess due to questionable links between wind farm developers and the Labour party, a thorough and impartial examination of such links is surely the best way to proceed.

Being the transparent and co-operative organisation it is, and with nothing to hide, I’m sure the Labour party will agree.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Bute Energy And Friends: Corrupting Wales

On By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Environmentalism, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour61 Comments

For a second week running, I’m focusing on Bute Energy. This time, looking at its links with the Labour party, and how, through that and by other means, Bute encourages corruption and spreads discord.

This will also serve to bring those who haven’t been following the Bute saga up to date.

◊

THE FLOODGATES OPEN!

I first became aware of Bute’s links to Labour when I was told that someone was visiting people close to a planned wind farm. This was (the now abandoned) Moelfre site inland of Colwyn Bay, a real outlier from Bute’s other projects.

This Bute representative was David James Taylor, Labour insider who’d been Spad to a number of high-profile figures; UK government minister Peter Hain and Wales first ministers Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones.

In 2016 Taylor stood to become the North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner. After losing maybe he considered his career options. Or perhaps he was approached, for Labour was already helping wind farm developers.

We saw this when Anna McMorrin lobbied Powys councillors on behalf of Hendy wind farm in April 2017, just a month before she was elected Labour MP for Cardiff North.

Taylor formed three companies in October 2018: Moblake Wind Ventures Ltd (which became Moblake Ltd 11.11.2020); Moblake Energy Trading Ltd (folded 2020); and Moblake Associates Ltd (now being struck-off).

The timing is intriguing, because Taylor’s companies were formed a week before his friend and colleague, Lesley Griffiths, set the precedent of over-ruling a planning inspector to give Hendy windfarm planning consent. She did so using the relatively new Developments of National Significance (DNS) legislation.

DNS made it clear that Wales was free range for wind turbines; free of interference from locals, their council representatives, or even planning inspectors.

Taylor was rewarded by Bute with shares in Windward Enterprises Ltd (now Windward Energy Ltd), both in his own name and that of Moblake Associates Ltd. He was also a (non-designated) member of Grayling Capital LLP.

Money magically appeared in Moblake Ltd, which Taylor then paid to himself in ‘loans’ totalling over £600,000 that did not need to be repaid.

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There was an attempt to liquidate this company a couple of years ago, but the liquidator was removed last August. Since when there’s been no further news.

Taylor was useful to Bute because of his closeness to Lesley Griffiths, and his insider knowledge of the Labour party machine.

Which is why it’s suggested that Taylor’s personal payment came in shares and other ways; and that most if not all of the £600,000+ was really a donation from Bute to the Labour party.

◊

‘YOU SAY VISTRA, AND I SAY, ER . . . VISTRA‘?

Someone has contacted me arguing there are two companies called Vistra, and in last week’s post I conflated them. One is a big Texas energy company, the other is a provider of secretarial services.

To explain . . .

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) is funding Bute through CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd, owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd. All holdco shares owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure V SCSp, which has its address at 16 Rue Eugene Ruppert, L2453, Luxembourg. At the same address is ‘Vistra’.

Now I took this to mean the Texas energy firm, but my contact insists it’s the other one. He’s probably right. But in my defence:

Vistra Company Secretaries Ltd of Bristol (which you’ll read about in a minute) was, until April 2019, Jordan Company Secretaries Ltd. The Vistra name was adopted because it was taken over and joined many companies under the Vistra banner.

Vistra is now owned by Sweden’s EQT, an equity outfit big in green energy.

So there are two Vistra companies. But with both involved in ‘renewable energy’ projects, often the same projects, confusion was almost inevitable.

Especially when we see BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard behind both.

◊

THE GANG OF FOUR

Soon after landing in Wales, and perhaps in an attempt to establish Welsh credentials, Bute set up a Welsh Advisory Board. You can see the members in the image below.

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Left to right: Derek Vaughan, redundant MEP; Dr Debra Williams, businesswoman and academic; John ‘Cwmbetws’ Davies, man of many hats and big shot in the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society; John Uden, partner of Jenny Rathbone MS.

◊

THE NEATH PORT TALBOT-BRUSSELS-COPENHAGEN CONNECTION

Derek Vaughan was leader of Neath Port Talbot (NPT) council and would certainly know Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, the Port Talbot seat.

Vaughan was an MEP from 2009 to 2019, preceded by the late Glenys Kinnock. The wife of former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and mother to Stephen.

Stephen Kinnock MP is married to Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Danish PM. She serves as a director of Danish wind turbine producer, Vestas, reputed to be the biggest in the world.

From Windpower Monthly of March 2024. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

In 2020 Vestas took a 25% stake in Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. As you’ve just read, CIP is the conduit for funding the Bute projects.

Derek Vaughan’s political background and contacts explain him being chosen as the chairman of Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board. He was a ‘good fit’.

◊

THE ACADEMIC BUSINESSWOMAN

I can’t tell you much about Dr Debra Williams other than the fact that she was managing director of Confused.com. Now she’s taken a gig at Lampeter, which some might view as a step backwards.

I suppose ‘Top things to do in Lampeter’ is part of the Creative Writing course. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

That said, since Jane Davidson landed there after ‘leaving’ Corruption Bay, Lampeter has tried to re-invent itself as a centre for alternative living. And why not, there are enough ‘alternatives’ in the shacks, tepees, and OPDs thereabouts.

Even so, I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing about Dr Williams, unless she was viewed by Bute as their entry to what passes for the Welsh business community.

◊

GALILEO AND THE FAVOURED SON

A number of sources have told me that Bute has assiduously courted the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society (RWAS). Which makes sense, for the RWAS gives access to many of the landowners on whose property Bute would like to erect turbines and pylons.

And this explains Bute’s recruitment of John Davies, who from 2012 was RWAS chairman. As I read through his other appointments I recalled Harri Webb’s reference to, “the public men on the boards and panels“.

Put it all together and it made him very attractive to Bute.

I have been told that John Davies was instrumental in seeing Aled Rhys Jones appointed CEO of the RWAS. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with a man of John Davies’s standing promoting a protégé. But there may be more to it.

As you might have read in the link, Aled comes from, “the family’s hill farm near Cwrt-y-Cadno in North Carmarthenshire“. To be exact, Tyllwyd, which I’m told the family still owns, but rents out.

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The thing about this area is that it’s being targeted by other wind farm companies in addition to Bute. As I wrote last November, in ‘A Change Of Tack?‘

One of those companies is Galileo Green Energy UK, eyeing a site at Bryn Cadwgan. With another Welsh site planned for Mynydd Ty-talwyn.

The parent company, Galileo Green Energy, is headquartered in Zurich.

Curiously, when based in Bristol – at the Vistra address – Galileo was known as GGE Machynlleth Ltd. Now it’s using a Cardiff office and the name has changed to Galileo Empower Wales Ltd.

From what is now Galileo Empower Wales Ltd documents filed with Companies House when it was knowns as GCE Machynlleth Ltd.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

A quick shufty at the directors will tell you how Welsh it really is.

Anyway, I hear that Aled Rhys Jones, CEO of the RWAS, stands to gain financially from the Bryn Cadwgan wind farm. A map I’ve been sent shows the outline of the wind farm in red, with the Tyllwyd land edged in green.

You’ll see four turbines planned on Tyllwyd land. With access to the others perhaps over Tyllwyd land. All perfectly legal, but it don’t look good.

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The forested land is owned by Natural Resources Wales, which will mean mature trees felled to accommodate wind turbines, access roads, cable trenches, etc.

That’s protecting the environment, that is.

Correction: Just received some clarification: ‘I am informed: There are two machines on Tilhill managed land, but nearly all the others are on ——— — ——– (Ilchester Estate) plantation, with a few on Tyllwyd and other individual land owners.’

◊

THE MAN FROM GOD KNOWS WHERE

The fourth member of the quartet is John Uden, whose only qualification is being the partner of Senedd Member, Jenny Rathbone, who sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee.

And so to understand why Bute recruited Uden we need to focus on Rathbone.

Rathbone was born in Liverpool and is a member of the Rathbone dynasty, once very influential in that city. The influence continues through Rathbones Wealth & Investment Management.

Jenny Rathbone and other family members are looked after from the investments made. This presumably accounts for the shares in her Register of interest.

An earlier declaration of Rathbone’s says that Uden was getting payment from Bute, but that’s absent from the latest Register. So is he working for free, or is payment being made in some other way?

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Interestingly, he set up John Uden Consulting Ltd in March 2020. A company that (apparently) has never turned a penny. Was he planning to go down the same route as Taylor, but backed off after I first mentioned Taylor and Moblake (August 2020) in Corruption in the wind 2, Labour snouts in the trough?

I shall conclude this section by dazzling you with yet another example of propinquity.

A fascinating connection revealed itself shortly after I put out the previous piece. Copenhagen Offshore Partners A/S has an office at 10 George Street, Edinburgh. In the same building we find Rathbone Investment Management (£60bn assets).

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It’s probably just another of the coincidences that plague the Bute saga.

◊

SLICING THE PENSION POT TURKEY

As an example of how Wales is ripped off by the pushers and pimps of the ‘renewable energy’ industry, the Wales Pension Partnership investment takes some beating.

The Welsh local government pension pot (WPP) is investing at least £68m in Bute Energy. Reading the article on the WPP website you might think this money is going directly from the pension fund to Bute. For no intermediaries are mentioned.

Yet the WPP was ‘advised’ by law firm Burges Salmon of Bristol. Then this article in renews.biz gives more names: ‘WPP has been advised by independent clean energy asset manager Capital Dynamics and by the law firms TLT and Burges Salmon’.

That is, Capital Dynamics of London, Birmingham and various cities around the world. Top man is Thomas Kubr, who can be found at the Zug office, south of Zurich.

The registration with Companies House tells that Capital Dynamics has 49 outstanding charges, and is heavily indebted to if not controlled by State Street.

TLT is another Bristol law firm. (It’s s shame we don’t have lawyers in Wales.)

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QUI BONO?

After all is said and done, do we really know who owns the wind farms in Wales? For as I suggested in last week’s piece, Bute Energy, run by Oliver James Millican, is an offshoot of the property and investment company Parabola, run by his father, Peter John Millican.

Also, in last week’s piece (and elsewhere in recent years) I mentioned Njord Energy Ltd and Steven John Radford, the man behind Hendy wind farm, where we earlier met lobbyist – now Labour MP – Anna McMorrin.

Another of Radford’s projects, not far away, was Bryn Blaen. The ownership history is instructive. It starts with Radford leaving Bryn Blaen Wind Farm Ltd in February 2020.

Bryn Blaen is now said to be owned by Elm Wind Holdings Ltd. Which leads back to Elm Trading Ltd, where the latest accounts say:

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But does this apparently leaderless outfit have any connection with a foreign entity of the same name registered on the Isle of Man?

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Or is this just another coincidence?

If so, then maybe we should focus on the labyrinth of companies linked with Elm Trading at the London address. Companies like Time Nominees Ltd, which holds all the Elm Trading shares and is controlled by Alpha Real Property Investment Advisers LLP. Which is owned by Philip Sidney Gower of Guernsey.

Who’s Gower? Well, he’s described here as a ‘serial entrepreneur’.

The point I’m making is that when it comes time to dismantle, recycle, or bury, the clapped-out wind turbines on Bryn Siencyn, and restore the site to its earlier condition, the ‘Welsh Government’, the local council, and Natural Resources Wales, will be met with, ‘Nothing to do with us, squire, we sold it to a company on an island somewhere‘.

And we’ll have to pay for dozens of Bryn Siencyns.

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CONCLUSION

But the immediate danger remains the corruption engendered by wind farm ‘developers’.

Through the influence they wield inside ‘Welsh’ Labour, where corruption is endemic. As we’ve been so recently reminded by the new first minister. Now the poison has spread to Plaid Cymru, exposed to the world when Carmen Smith, Bute lobbyist, was made a peer.

Beyond politics these ‘developers’ cause resentment within the farming industry by making some farmers offers they can’t refuse – a position into which many have been manoeuvred by the ‘Welsh Government’s war on livestock farming.

And finally, there’s worry and division inflicted upon communities across Wales.

∼

It really pisses me off to see the country I love reduced to third world level; where a few chiefs can be bribed so the rest of us can be exploited, our country wrecked.

We’re in this mess because leftists believe they’re fighting the evils of capitalism by buying into the climate scam dreamed up to further the ambitions of the wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations on Earth.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Bute Energy: Who’s Really Behind It?

On By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Environmentalism, Planning Inspectorate, Wind Turbines60 Comments

I’m returning to the ‘Bute’ stable of companies, a subject I’ve ignored for a while. More especially, some aspects of Bute’s operations that may have been overlooked.

1/ How did investment company and property developers the Parabola group, from which Bute emerged, learn about the opportunities offered by wind turbines in Wales?

2/ We’ve been told the funding for Bute’s projects will come from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and the Wales Pension Partnership. But is that true?

I’m starting with some background, which I think sets the scene. So please indulge me there before we move on later to the ‘meat’ of the piece.

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THE TRAILBLAZER GETTING A LITTLE HELP FROM THE COMRADES

Before the boys from Parabola ever heard of Nant Mithil, Waun Hesgog, or Blaencothi, other nobly-intentioned businessmen, alarmed by the impending climate crisis, were trying their damnedest to cover central Wales in wind turbines.

I’m going to focus on one of those wind farms; Hendy, to the east of Llandrindod.

Planning permission was refused by Powys County Council in April 2017, and that decision was upheld by a planning inspector a year later. But then, Lesley Griffiths, Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ intervened, to ignore the inspector’s decision and give Hendy the green light.

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Prior to this, an inspector’s decision was almost the final word. But now it was being over-ridden using the legislation that gave us Developments of National Significance.

From now on ‘Welsh Ministers’ had authority to rule on electricity generation projects with an installed capacity of 10MW to 50MW. Below that, responsibility lies with local authorities; and above, it’s the UK government.

Which means that developers pitch their projects in the 10 – 50MW ‘sweet spot’.

The main director of Hendy Wind Farm Ltd was Stephen John Radford. He had other wind companies including, in Wales, Rhoscrowther Wind Farm Ltd, on the Haven, and Bryn Blaen Wind Farm Ltd, near Llangurig.

Radford was very close to, if not fronting for, the U+I group. Though it seemed he also had his own piggy-bank in Njord Energy Ltd.

Lobbying Powys councillors on behalf of the Hendy wind farm was Anna McMorrin. She was seen at a meeting on 27 April 2017, desperately trying to hand a note to councillors considering the project.

She was working for Invicta Public Affairs, which has its headquarters in Newcastle, but also a presence in Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

She had been working as a Spad in Corruption Bay, for which she was rewarded by being selected as the Labour candidate for Cardiff North. In June 2017 she became the MP.

Maybe this is the first instance of someone working simultaneously for the Labour party and wind energy developers. There have been many more since Anna McMorrin.

Once they got to know each other, I’m sure Radford made the boys from Parabola understand that to get anything done in Wales you must have people working for you inside the Labour party.

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THEY MEET, AND THE BOYS FROM PARABOLA BECOME BUTE

In September 2018 Windward Generation Ltd was launched; the name changed to Bute Energy the following month, and finally became RSCO 3750 Ltd in March 2020.

The founding directors were Oliver James Millican and Lawson Douglas Steele, who were joined a week later by Radford. The man from Hendy left in December 2019 and was replaced by Stuart Allan George, who’d left Parabola with Millican and Steele.

But I want to go back a little further, and consider the ‘Windward’ name.

Just before Christmas 2014 Windward Enterprises Ltd was launched. This company’s stated business was ‘Financial management’. The sole director was Oliver James Millican, using secretarial services in Edinburgh, but a Newcastle office address for himself. (Newcastle being where Parabola started out.)

This was a long time before any interest was expressed in wind turbines.

In November 2016 the address switched to Broadgate Tower in London, where we now find Parabola; and the company name changed in August 2018 to WELN1 Ltd.

We encounter the ‘Windward’ name a number of times early on in this saga, but what if it has nothing to do with wind power, and instead refers to the Windward Islands in the Caribbean?

I’m thinking now of tax havens. Just a thought.

If you study the timeline of company formations, you’ll see that the first ‘Bute’ company, Windward Global Ltd, wasn’t formed until May 2017. This is now the holding company for the Bute empire, controlled by Oliver James Millican.

Millican’s father, Peter John Millican, runs the Parabola property empire, with more companies under the umbrella than I was able to count. As we’ve seen, son Oliver ceased being a director at Parabola late in 2017.

Steele was employed as Investment Director at Parabola. He left in October 2017.

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Stuart George was also a Parabola employee.

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And there seems to have been a fourth departure. For on 31 May 2018, in addition to Windward LS Ltd (Lawson Steele), and Windward SG Ltd (Stuart George), a company called Windward BW Ltd was launched.

The ‘BW’ is Barry Woods. I can’t tell you much about him, except that he’s Irish, and he’d also worked for Parabola. In fact, he was a designated partner, along with Parabola Real Estate Investment Management LLP, in Parabola Partners LLP.

Just like Millican, Steele and George, Woods quit Parabola in November 2017.

He then seems to have parted company with the other three on 24 September 2019. The last trace of Woods sees him running Woods Investment Management Ltd in Edinburgh, which folded after a couple of years, in March 2021.

So we have four men, all in their thirties, and all working for a major property and investment group (one of them the boss’s son); but late in 2017 they apparently hear the planet calling, sever their ties with Parabola, and go off to erect wind turbines in Wales.

Do you buy that?

Something else that gives off a bit of a whiff is that if the four of them had started up on their own, I would have expected to see them as partners. But Millican Junior in control suggests a continuing link with his father’s business empire.

Using the Parabola address at the Broadgate Tower, 20 Primrose Street, London EC2A 2EW is also a bit iffy.

It’s far more likely that, in 2017, the four turbineers started setting up companies in Wales, ultimately owned and controlled by Parabola, to capitalise on the ‘How many turbines would you like, duckie?’ DNS system.

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MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

Funding is a vital consideration because more than 20 wind farms, an unknown number of solar arrays, at least 6 Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), and mile after mile of pylons, requiring connectors and other whatsits, do not come cheap.

Admittedly, nothing has yet been built, but even so, Bute employs dozens of people, rents or leases office space, and promotes itself relentlessly by sponsoring everything from the Ystradgynlais Wet T-shirt Olympics to the Llanfair Caereinion Refuge for Distressed Ferrets.

So where’s the money coming from to fund this unrivalled extravaganza of bird dicing?

We can (perhaps surprisingly) rule out the Development Bank of Wales, a soft touch that throws moolah at magic bean salesmen and landfill-owning friends of politicians.

Instead, our attention must turn to the two stated funding sources: Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), and the local councils’ Wales Pension Partnership (WPP).

The WPP involvement is a bit of nonsense that it’s hoped will give the impression Wales is benefitting from wind power. Though on a more practical and political level I suppose it gives Bute even more leverage in Corruption Bay.

I’m going to focus on Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and see where that takes us.

Now the first thing to make clear is that CIP is not a bank, it does not provide funding. The clue appears to be in ‘Partners’, for it seems investors looking for green projects go to CIP, which then finds them the right fit.

Or it could be t’other way around. Either way, we can be sure CIP takes its cut.

The funding from CIP for Bute is channelled through CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd. This is owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd. Both companies are based in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

The latest accounts for CI IV Dragon Holdco (y/e 31.12.2022) give a list of ‘Subsidiary undertakings’ (page 20) in which the company holds a ‘golden share’. These are Bute companies, including Green Generation Energy Networks Cymru Ltd, which wants to build a network of pylons.

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And as you can see below, since October last year all 79,000,000 shares in the holding company are in the possession of Copenhagen Infrastructure V SCSp.

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Which can be found at 16 Rue Eugene Ruppert, L2453, Luxembourg, the EU’s internal tax haven.

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And at that address we find an outfit called Vistra. So who are they? It turns out they’re a Fortune 500 company from the Lone Star State. Well, Ye haw!

Vistra is big itself in electricity production and supply, but it also ‘partners with suppliers’, which would presumably include Bute.

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But why is Bute dealing with Copenhagen Investment Partners which is dealing with a US company working out of an office in Luxembourg? Especially when Vistra has offices in the UK.

Among them, a very familiar address in Edinburgh. In fact, if you close in on this Google maps capture you’ll see the Vistra plate, top right.

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The name Vistra was vaguely familiar, but not in connection with Bute. It was linked more with the Bristol address you see above, and Galileo, which wants a wind farm at Bryn Cadwgan, to the east of Lampeter.

All explained in this piece from last November, A Change Of Tack?

Galileo is based in Zurich, Switzerland. It began life locally at Vistra’s Bristol office before moving to Edinburgh. But there’s also Galileo Empower Wales Ltd which has a presence on Cathedral Road in Cardiff.

Its directors are Italian, German, Scottish and Irish. A typical ‘Welsh’ company.

The Bute companies are fronting for Vistra of Texas through Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The ‘golden share’ in so many Bute companies means that those projects are effectively owned by Vistra.

With an obvious connection via Oliver Millican to his father’s Parabola group. Which we must assume is also getting a cut.

The sequence would appear to be: Parabola spawns Bute, Bute goes to CIP, CIP finds Vistra, and Vistra either puts in its own money, or it finds funding from . . .

UPDATE 30.04.2024: A reliable source draws my attention to another link between Copenhagen and Vistra. There are many more.

UPDATE 2: 30.04.2024: Another source reminded me there are many Njord companies. Often linked to CIP. A little digging brought up yet another, and an intriguing connection.

Copenhagen Offshore Partners A/S has an office at 10 George Street, Edinburgh. At the same address we find Rathbone Investment Management (£60bn assets). A member of the Rathbone family is Jenny Rathbone MS, who sits on the Climate Change Committee.

Her Partner, John Uden, was recruited (for no obvious reason) to sit on Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board.

I think we’re at the stage now where so many Labour people (some I’ve never mentioned) are benefitting financially from Bute / CIP  that an independent inquiry is needed.

◊

CONCLUSION

The situation is that through Developments of National Significance, and now the Infrastructure Bill, Wales is being desecrated and exploited by foreign corporations.

The ferrets of Llanfair Caereinion notwithstanding, there are no real benefits for us; nothing in terms of jobs, or anything else.

The real beneficiary is England, where communities can and do object to wind farms. Which is why, as reliable sources of electricity generation are phased out on the orders of Globalist ‘environmentalists’, electricity generated in Wales must go to England, and this explains the need for so many pylons.

The wind farms, solar arrays and pylons in Wales (and Scotland), are also needed to help the UK / England meet its Net Zero commitments. Which I suppose raises the possibility of political pressure being applied from London.

What’s happening is so obvious that I even find myself in agreement with the leftist(s) who wrote, ‘Neoliberalism Has Quietly Flourished Under Welsh Labour – It’s Time To Break The Silence‘. (The comrades love slick and catchy titles!)

Joking aside, and looming over all other considerations, my biggest worry is that even though we can now identify Bute, and Parabola, and CIP, and Vistra, we still can’t be sure where the money for these projects begins its journey.

Which provides two major headaches.

If the Bute funding needs to be ‘filtered’ so many times (with everybody taking a slice) then it raises suspicions that the original funder may not be entirely acceptable.

And if we don’t know who ultimately owns the installations, then how do we get these sites restored when they come to the end of their working lives?

Instead of being suckered by those fronting these projects those pretending to run this country need to establish who is ultimately funding each and every project operating in Wales or proposed for Wales.

We also need to look into the relationship between Bute Energy / Parabola / CIP / Vistra and the ‘Welsh Government’. In particular, how it’s grown to the point where Bute has a position close to being a state-sponsored monopoly.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Bute Energy, Update, 30.06.2023

On By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Welsh Government, World Economic Forum38 Comments

This piece has been off / on for a while, due to other matters cropping up to grab my attention. But in the end, it worked out, because new information is emerging all the time.

To avoid going over too much old ground I shall devote most of this piece to what’s new. Those wanting more information on what’s gone before can type ‘Bute Energy’ in the search box atop the sidebar.

The whole article, including quoted passages, is roughly 3,000 words, so rather than gulp it down in one you can take it a piece at a time. You know it makes sense!

♦

BUTE ENERGY, A SHORT RÉSUMÉ

In recent years I’ve written a lot about Bute Energy and the various companies under that umbrella. This ever-expanding empire began life in London, at 20 Primrose Street, otherwise known as the Broadgate Tower in the City.

Then it used an address in Edinburgh’s New Town (above Gant), probably because the principals, Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George and Lawson Douglas Steele, seem to be Scottish, or resident in Scotland.

But over the past year we’ve seen use made of an address at Hodge House in Cardiff. This being a desperate but unconvincing attempt to suggest that Bute is a Welsh company.

“Pass the bara brith, Blodwen, indeed to goodness, look you!”

This change of address simply means that the invitations to meet ‘Russian brides’, the 50p off! at Tesco vouchers, and the Vote for Dai Scroggins election leaflets get delivered to Sir Julian’s old gaff.

And let’s not forget the overseas investment, for Bute is in partnership with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The name says ‘Copenhagen’, but the money could be coming from anywhere.

Bute Energy, through a host of companies, many carrying the name of a specific project – such as Bryn Glas Energy Park Ltd – wants to build ‘Energy Parks’ the length of Wales; twenty-three at the latest count. These locations may also include solar arrays, and even hydrogen whatsits.

The map below is my best guess of where these wind farms are. I may have mis-located one or two.

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Opposition has been mounting for some time to Bute’s grand designs, but resistance has tended to be localised, confined to areas immediately affected by one of the few projects for which Bute has revealed its plans.

But most of the sites remain little more than Companies House entries offering the bare minimum of information.

Resistance increased a while ago when news broke that Bute wanted to bring power from its ‘Nant Mithil’ (Radnor Forest) site along 60 miles of pylons to link up with the grid running east from Pembroke power station.

If we accept the route map produced by Bute, then the connection with the grid is to be made somewhere south of Carmarthen town.

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Though when asked exactly where the connection is to be made, at a ‘Have Your Say’ meeting in the RWS showground, Llanelwedd, Bute head honcho, Millican, was unable to answer.

So let’s see if I can fill in any gaps.

What follows will be in some kind of chronological order; which means I’ve tried to present the fresh evidence in the order it became known to me.

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LAND USE CONSULTANTS AND OTHERS

This first item takes us back a couple of years, but it seems to have been overlooked. It cropped up in this tweet from April 2021. (The link is broken.)

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Land Use Consultants was formed by Edward Max Nicholson in 1966. Five years earlier, with Sir Peter Scott and others, he set up the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). I guess LUC has been recruited in another attempt to burnish Bute’s environmental credentials.

Bute and LUC were together at the ‘inception meeting’ last December with ‘Welsh Government’s Planning & Environmental Decisions outfit to discuss the ‘Nant Mithil Grid Connection Project‘ (page 6).

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Intriguingly, LUC has been involved with the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ since at least 2010. As shown by this report, Research: Planning Implications of Renewable and Low Carbon Energy.

Though for other projects Bute seems to employ different planning consultants. For the Nant Mithil site itself it’s David Bell Planning, of Edinburgh; for Llyn Lort it seems to be Carney Sweeney, of Birmingham; and for Rhiwlas it’s RSK, of Cheshire.

LUC also seems to be picking up other work in Wales. I know it’s working with Natural Resources Wales on the Dark Skies project.

Which makes perfect sense. Because with the Corruption Bay Clown Show determined to switch to Unreliables it won’t be long before we shan’t need to travel to darkest Powys to escape ‘light pollution’.

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TWO NEW ‘ENERGY PARKS’

Orddu is one of the new sites. As you can see on the map above, the nearest town is Bala. To be more precise, Orddu is north east of Bala and sits above the smallholding of Cwm-cywen in Cwm Main, where my father-in-law was born and raised.

A company has been formed with the usual three directors. Here’s the Companies House entry.

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The other new energy park, Moel Chwa, is across the A5 and just to the east of another Bute site at Mwdwl-eithin. At the time of writing there is no company bearing the Moel Chwa name, but there is a website mention.

Moel Chwa seems to be very close to an earlier project by Clean Earth Energy Ltd called Nant Bach. Are they related?

The Companies House entry for Nant Bach Turbine Ltd suggests Clean Earth erected just a single turbine. Which the filed accounts value at £2,273,106, giving some idea of the kind of money we’re talking about.

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GRIDS & NETWORKS

As I mentioned, opposition to Bute’s ambitions got a boost with news of the plan for 60 miles of pylons from Nant Mithill (Radnor Forest) to the west-east grid connection near Carmarthen.

This has been linked with Bute’s Green Generation Energy Networks Cymru Ltd.

It’s also being suggested that, in a belated attempt to make up for the past two decades in which they encouraged foreign companies – many government owned – to exploit Wales with no local returns, ‘Welsh’ Labour is now pretending it can create something like a Welsh national grid.

The announcement I just linked to came a few days after the Commons’ Welsh Affairs Committee produced ‘Grid capacity in Wales’.

And while neither document mentioned Bute Energy, many observers believe that Bute Energy is heavily involved. Some believe Bute will build Julie James’ ‘Welsh grid’.

For naked corruption would be the only other interpretation for the very close, and financially lucrative, links between Bute and a number of ‘Welsh’ Labour insiders.

From the Green Gen Cymru Network video. “Endless potential” is quite chilling. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But then, confusion abounds on the subject of networks, with Julie James, Minister for Climate Change, as confused as anyone, according to a knowledgeable contact. For this source suggests she doesn’t understand there are two different types of grid.

My source explains the difference here.

We know that Bute wants new pylons from the Radnor Forest to somewhere in the vicinity of Carmarthen, and to then take that power to Usk and over the border. This it calls “Phase 1“.

It’s suggested Phase 2 (and another line of pylons?) will start somewhere near Eisteddfa Gurig, close to the A44, inland of Aberystwyth, and run to (and here I quote my source) “Chirk Grid Supply Point’ (as yet unbuilt)“.

Although Phase 2 is still a bit hazy, there would appear to be confirmation out there. According to the documents reproduced below, Bute projects in west central and northern Wales will run to the as yet unbuilt Chirk GSP.

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References to ‘Chirk’ obviously cause confusion because Chirk GSP doesn’t exist. But what does exist is not far away at Lower Frankton. The problem here being that Lower Frankton is in Shropshire.

On this OS map the border is in purple, it shows Chirk as just about the nearest point, in Wales, to Lower Frankton. So is Lower Frankton being called Chirk to pretend it’s in Wales, and therefore boost Wales’ Net Zero credentials?

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Further evidence of grid ambitions came a few weeks back with the Infrastructure (Wales) Bill. You’ll see it talks of making it easier for the James Gang to give consent for “overhead electric lines”.

There are also links with Ireland. One comes up near Bodelwyddan, inland of Abergele. Then there’s the Greenlink Interconnector, ensuring that “Excess power can be shared between Ireland and the UK”.

Finally, let’s look at a link from Scotland. Nation.Cymru reported this last November, and parroted the National Grid’s press handout about it being to “upgrade Wales’ electricity network and take advantage of offshore power“.

In fact, and to get technical, I hear work has started on the Bangor (Pentir) to Swansea (North) 400kv double-circuit pylon line.

Let Uncle Jac explain this one . . .

England needs more electricity . . . but not the turbines and the pylons. So the turbines are in Scotland, the cables carrying the electricity run under the Irish Sea, come ashore near Bangor, go overland to Swansea, where they join the west-east line from Pembroke, and then on to England.

As my well-informed source put it, “The two grid connections out of south Wales into England currently have no constraints so it appears as if Wales is being used as a ‘transmission corridor’ from Scotland to England”.

◊

NEWS FROM SCOTLAND

A couple of weeks ago I had an e-mail from Glasgow. As you know, I get lots of e-mails, but this is worth mentioning because it suggests that this source is keeping an eye on Bute’s operations in Scotland.

Before I tell you what it says, I’d better identify some of those mentioned.

Erik Bonino was an oil executive who joined Bute in July 2020 but left early this year due to alleged naughtiness by Bute in Senghenydd. Or that’s how I heard it.

The story made it into Llais y Sais, where Shippo covered it.

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David James Taylor was spad to Rhodri Morgan, Peter Hain and Carwyn Jones. He has profited greatly from being Bute’s entry to ‘Welsh Government’.

You’ll see that the source suggests Taylor has been replaced by the fragrant Sophie Howe, the former Future Generations Commissioner. This would fit well with her new job with Lynn. (Until May last year, ‘Lynn PR Ltd’.)

Sophie Howe has landed on her feet, again, due to her manifest and dazzling talents. Her raking it in, again, is completely unconnected with knowing everybody worth knowing in ‘Welsh Government’, ‘Welsh’ Labour, and civil service.

Happy to clear that up.

By “Reece Emmett” I think my source means Reece Emmitt. (Here in pdf format.) Though I can’t see any obvious connection with the Labour party. But after 5 years in Cardiff University that can be almost guaranteed.

There have been big divisions in Bute management. Chairman Erik Bonino lost a power struggle with Oliver Millican, the majority shareholder, now Bonino and his allies have been cleared out.

Team Millican: Stuart George, Lawson Steele, Gareth Williams.

Team Bonino: Mark Vyvyan Robinson, Gemma Hamilton, David Taylor.

Bonino was known to be nervous and raised concerns about unethical practices regarding securing land and some of the heavy legal agreements and gagging orders Bute were trying to impose on landowners and residents. He was concerned only about his own image and reputation though not about the welfare of the landowners and communities. He was also nervous about all the bad publicity Bute were getting generally and how it was impacting on him.

Bonino recruited Mark Vyvyan Robinson from EDF (where he had been for 20 years) as CEO but he left shortly after a few months. Gemma Hamilton (development director) David Taylor (comms director) were both in same camp and left soon after along with Bonino. and some junior staff.

Millican made himself chairman and installed his sidekick Stuart George as Managing Director. Both are woefully inexperienced and the whole operation is now considered a joke in the industry.

They brought in Derek Hastings from SSE to replace Gemma Hamilton. They basically are paying people 3x what they get elsewhere which is how they recruit people.

They are throwing money around and recently brought in two people to replace DT: Sophie Howe as an “adviser” to help with Welsh govt / Labour link. And Aled Rowlands a former aide to Nick Bourne to try and sort the Tories. Obviously that is failing badly cos the Welsh Tories hate Bourne.

Also Reece Emmett ex Welsh Labour apparatchik is in the comms team.

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ANTZ CYMRU

I suppose we’d better start this section with the ANTZ Cymru website’s announcement of the link-up with Bute Energy. Which prompts a few comments.

First, there is no entity called ANTZ Cymru, it’s a flag of convenience for ANTZ UK Ltd of Manchester. Realising there’s money to be made in Wales ANTZ is another company that has adopted a faux Welsh identity.

A good source in Powys, sees parallels between ANTZ and something called the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT). Which says of itself, “We are the original Nudge Unit”. BIT is an international outfit with its UK office in Manchester.

Here’s a BIT website page to which I was directed called ‘How to build a Net Zero society’. I was also nudged (geddit!) in the direction of, ‘A Manifesto for Applying Behavioral (sic) Science’.

And then, from 2010, we have ‘Mindspace‘, focusing on “influencing behaviour“.

This all begins to sound like getting people to think the way you want them to think. To accept that black is white. Dare we say – brainwashing?

Will we see people stumbling out of village halls repeating, “Wind turbines are nice . . . I love pylons . . . Mark Drakeford is the most gifted and accomplished politician of his era”.

An exaggeration, I confess, but we are talking of mind games here. Getting people to think a certain way, and then there’s the careful use of language. Here’s a couple of gems from the page announcing the partnership.

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We read: “ANTZ Cymru is developing a bespoke person-centred, Social Value monitoring system on behalf of Bute Energy that tracks the individual.”

Tracks the individual! What the hell does that mean?

Then there’s this, “The renewable energy team at Bute Energy is planning to deliver a family of wind and solar farms across Wales”. A family!

“Oh look, children – there’s Daddy wind turbine, and there’s Mammy wind turbine, and all the little – 820ft! – baby wind turbines”.

Did you ever read such bollocks?

How much is Bute paying ANTZ? To judge by what my Scottish contact told us, it’s probably well over the odds.

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CPRW COMPLAINT

As I’ve explained, Bute goes to great lengths in attempts to prove it’s a Welsh company serving Wales. As I hope I’ve made clear, what Bute and others are actually doing is exploiting the complicity of the Corruption Bay buffoons to turn Wales into a vast open-air power station for England.

If the wind farms planned and mooted ever get built, then Wales, apart from national parks and built-up areas, will be covered in turbines and pylons. All happening in a country that already produces more electricity than she needs!

I was encouraged therefore to read that the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW) has reported Bute to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making misleading claims.

Point 1 of the complaint (below) sums it up. Electricity produced in Wales goes into the UK national grid and thence to wherever it’s needed. Bute therefore cannot promise to supply Welsh homes with green energy.

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Well done, Ross Evans and CPRW. And the very best of luck.

◊

CONCLUSION: THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER

What you’ve read might make you despair, but that’s because you’ve been reading about Wales. Elsewhere, things seem to be looking up.

But perhaps not in Germany. Or not yet.

Though Siemens has taken a hit recently due to component problems in Siemens Gamesa wind turbines. But many believe the problems are more widespread. Not least because the components used by Gamesa are used by other manufacturers.

More on Siemens, linking with Bute Energy. And on ‘Creaky Wind Turbines’.

In fact, the German economy is in trouble. Over-reliance on Russian gas – which NATO sabotaged – closing its last three nuclear power plants, and going hell-for-leather on ‘Renewables’ hasn’t helped.

But the Germans aren’t stupid. They’ll soon realise their mistake.

Which is what appears to have happened in Sweden, where the news is much more encouraging. The government there has turned its back on the unattainable goal of 100% renewable energy. What will Greta say!

While next door, in Norway, we read . . .

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The fact is that Western governments, under pressure from the public and the dictates of common sense, are starting to reject the Globalists’ degrowth agenda and their stooges’ insistence on Net Zero.

Yet as some countries wake up to the cost of Net Zero others continue to sleepwalk towards disaster. Unfortunately, we live in one. And it has consequences.

Just before last Christmas Tata put out a press release saying it would ‘pause’ operations at its Port Talbot steel plant, the largest in Europe, and its tinplate operation at Trostre, in Llanelli, “to reduce strain on grid”.

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As we are forced to depend more and more on Unreliables the electricity supply will become more erratic; and that means jobs paying good wages, like the thousands at Margam and Trostre, will be lost.

An absurd price to pay for the unattainable goal of 100% of electricity from ‘renewables’ – in order to fight a ‘climate crisis’ that’s not happening! The only beneficiaries are the governments, corporations, and investors owning the wind turbines on our soil.

And so every wind farm and pylon run should be treated as another Tryweryn. For they mean Cymru being exploited to satisfy the greed of strangers. And to keep the lights on in England.

♦ end ♦

Bute Energy Selling Wales For Danegeld?

On By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Environmentalism, Greens, Labour Party, Welsh Government, Wind Turbines69 Comments

Yeah, yeah, retirement. If only!

♦

THE STORY SO FAR . . .

I’m returning to a subject I’ve tackled before because there have been developments. But before the update we’ll do a quick recap.

Bute Energy Ltd, operating through a host of other new companies, hopes to build some 20 wind farms (at the last count) across Wales. Bute Energy is based in London. (With an Edinburgh pied-à-terre.)

This company is owned by Windward Enterprises Ltd, which was formed 31.05.2018. With Windward Enterprises owned by Windward Global Ltd, which was given life in May 2017 under a different name and perhaps for a different purpose.

Windward Global is controlled by Oliver James Millican who, when accompanied by Stuart Allan George and Lawson Douglas Steele, are the only directors found for most, if not all, the yearlings in the Bute stable.

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The reason for the Bute boys choosing Wales is partly that England is reluctant to take onshore wind turbines, and partly that the soi-disant ‘Welsh Government’ has worked itself into a frenzy of planet-saving self-righteousness. To the point where it cannot be long before sackcloth and ashes become de rigeur among the worshippers of Deryn.

Which some of you might view as noble and altruistic.

Less commendable – but truer to type – is Labour Party insiders being given sinecures. Explained here in Corruption Is Such An Ugly Word . . . But I Can’t Think Of Anything Else To Call It!

Don’t that title just trip off the tongue!

Having alluded to a multiplicity of companies involved in the Bute wind farm offensive I’d better give you a link to the updated list of those entities.

◊

DEVELOPMENTS

The working assumption was that a new company called Bute, presumably representing City investors, had come to an arrangement with the ‘Welsh Government’.

The deal being the one I just outlined: that in return for keeping Drakeford and his gang in Greta’s good books, and for taking on a few Labour lags, Bute would be allowed to build wind farms just about anywhere they wanted – planning permission guaranteed from Lesley Griffiths MS (and Gary).

Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) with Plaid Cymru MS Elin Jones. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I recently learnt of a couple of new stars in the Bute constellation.

The first is Grayling Capital Operations Ltd, formed 02.11.2021. This is controlled by Grayling Capital Holdings Ltd. Which is in turn owned by Windward Global Ltd, which we looked at just now.

The other new arrival is Grayling Capital Investments Ltd. This is also controlled by Grayling Capital Holdings Ltd and then, by extension, Windward Global Ltd.

Other news from last week was that Windward Cambria Ltd, formed 08.10.2021, had changed its name to Bute Energy Development Holdings Ltd. This company is controlled by Windward Enterprises Ltd. Which is in turn – and again! – owned by Windward Global Ltd.

Complicated, innit?

Then, in updates received from Companies House last week, I learnt that Bute Energy Ltd and Bute Energy Development Holdings Ltd had taken out loans, or found investors.

Bute Energy owns Bute Energy (Cambria) Ltd, the first link in the chain of ownership for the 20 wind farms on the list I linked to earlier. (Here it is again.) Which means that all the Bute wind farms in Wales are covered by the loan to Bute Energy.

The locations of the Bute Energy wind farms. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

As for the loan to Bute Energy Development Holdings Ltd, seeing as it’s a relatively new company – just over 4 months old – I’m sure we’ll learn more in the near future.

The name that came with the loans is, ‘CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd’.

I’d like to tell you that this is a new Welsh financial institution created with the backing of a pro-business administration in Corruption Bay.

I’d like to, but I don’t do fairy tales.

Explaining who we’re dealing with here is quite complicated, so please bear with me. The company number given on the debenture documents is 13816597, and this is indeed the number for CI IV Dragon Lender Ltd.

Set up as recently as 23 December last year this company, with an address in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, is owned by CI IV Dragon Holdco Ltd, which shares the Rotherham address, and was formed on the same day.

Fancy that!

It’s reasonable to assume that ‘Dragon’ is a reference to Wales, and the 20 wind farms Bute has planned for our country.

The single share issued by Dragon Holdco is held by CI IV Transfer Coöperateif  UA, of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

There are a number of other CI IV companies registered with Companies House. None of which go back further than March, 2020. Many link with Scottish projects, and use as their address, 115 George Street, Edinburgh.

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Some of you may remember George Street from earlier postings. It’s the New Town office of the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre (ESPC), used by Millican and his mates.

So who or what is ‘CI IV’? The answer is that it stands for Copenhagen Investments 4. The answer was found through this Linkedin page.

It’s an investment fund and part of the Copenhagen Infrastructure Service Co. Here’s the link to the website for Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. This outfit will invest your money in wind energy and similar projects.

As we read under the ‘News’ tab, ‘CIP is the world’s largest dedicated fund manager within greenfield renewable energy investments’.

Here’s the page for CI IV. The map obviously hasn’t caught up with latest developments in Wales. Which may be understandable, given that Companies House wasn’t notified of the deals until last Thursday. (Though I’m sure negotiations between Bute and CIP had been going on for some time.)

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A search for ‘Bute’ on the CIP website turned up nothing, but I did find another reference to Wales. For this page tells us, ‘Copenhagen Infrastructure 1 has invested GBP ~155m of equity for a 49% stake in Falck Renewables S.p.A.’s (Falck) operational onshore wind portfolio in Scotland and Wales.’

In this portfolio we find Cefn Croes wind farm in Ceredigion.

This buy-in was financed by PensionDanmark. Which means that a wind farm in Ceredigion is now jointly owned by a Danish pension fund and an Italian company.

With all involved expecting to make a pile of money. Well, everybody except the locals; who’ll end up with crumbs, from their own table.

And perhaps flooding.

The only question remaining, for me is this: Was Bute Energy acting all along as a stalking-horse for others, or did Bute get its foot in the door and then look around for the investment needed to realise its ambitions?

Did the ‘Welsh Government’ care either way?

∼

UPDATE: I found this from December ’21. Lee Waters MS, Deputy Minister for Climate Change, worries about German pension funds profiting from offshore wind farms. Waters’ gang in Corruption Bay has no control over offshore wind farms.

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Is he also concerned about onshore wind farms – for which his ‘Welsh Government’ will have to give planning permission – benefitting Danish pension funds?

One to watch?

◊

THOUGHTS

When the ‘Welsh Government’ decided that our homeland was to become an al fresco power station those mighty intellects were confronted with three options as to how they might go about achieving that objective.

They could have . . .

  • Invested in Welsh companies to build the turbines, and other Welsh companies to generate electricity. Thereby creating thousands of jobs and enriching the country.
  • Followed their socialist instincts and had our wind farms run by a body owning them for the nation; or else local groups could have owned individual wind farms. (As appears to be happening in Scotland.)
  • Acted like a pimp and invited violators and exploiters to do what they wished with Mam Cymru.

As we know, to our cost, the ‘Welsh Government’ chose the third of those options. All the while trying to justify the betrayal by whimpering about a ‘climate emergency’.

Which goes some way to explaining why these latest developments involve companies and investment fund managers from Denmark, a country not much bigger than Wales, and with none of our natural resources.

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I have no doubt that Denmark is one of the countries the ‘progressive’ consensus in Corruption Bay looks up to, and wants Wales to copy. A kind-of socialist country with a high standard of living, first-class infrastructure, and health and social services that most countries can only dream of.

But how do the denizens of the Bay think these goodies are paid for? Do they believe that Denmark gets a block grant every year, perhaps from Berlin, or maybe Brussels?

The truth is that the Danes have their little piece of heaven thanks to a healthy economy of their own. Due to the likes of the Maersk Group (value, 2018: $28.1bn), the Carlsberg Group ($19.3bn), and Danske Bank (£16.6bn, 5m+ retail customers).

Apropos this article, another reason the luvvies of the Bay look towards Denmark is because the Danes are soooo committed to renewable energy.

Let’s compare the Danish approach to renewables with that of our esteemed tribunes.

The Danes design turbines, and build them at home and abroad. Either way, the money ends up back in the land of the Little Mermaid. Big in this field is Vestas Wind Systems (value, 2018: $17.9bn). And as we’ve seen in this article, there are also the Danish investment funds.

So, one way or another, Denmark gets 100% of the economic benefit from wind turbines erected in and off Denmark, and a healthy slice of the moolah for turbines erected elsewhere. Especially in ‘welcoming’ countries like Wales.

Wales sees only ‘community funds’. The modern equivalent of beads and blankets.

This kind of relationship used to be called colonialism. The sort of thing socialists and ‘progressives’ railed against. Presumably, the ‘Welsh Government’ now believes that such exploitation is OK if it can be greenwashed.

However we look at, ‘renewable energy’ has been one of the biggest rip-offs in Welsh history. Anyone who thinks this exploitation is acceptable because we’re ‘saving the planet’ is either a fool or a liar.

Bute Energy, in various manifestations, with addresses in London and Edinburgh has, for a minimal outlay, landed itself at least 20 wind farms in Wales that it can now exploit with foreign investment, or sell off entirely for a vast profit.

Wales will see none of that money, no jobs, and no other benefits . . . unless of course you’re well connected with the ‘Welsh’ Labour Party.

◊

AND FINALLY . . .

I don’t for one second blame Danish companies for making money; for providing jobs and creating wealth for Denmark and the Danish people. Nor do I attach any blame to Danish politicians for encouraging this entrepreneurialism.

That is what they are supposed to do.

The blame for the growing inequalities between two small European countries, and the growing exploitation of one by the other, rests entirely on the shoulders of those posturing clowns in Cardiff.

They who have failed us, the Welsh people, time after time.

Let’s emulate Denmark by all means. And Ireland, which wants to erect – in Wales, of course! – the UK’s tallest wind turbines.

But let’s remember there can be no substantive improvement until we sever the English connection. Another slavering simian we need to get off our back is a socialism that prioritises gestures and identity politics over the material well-being of our people.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2022


Corruption Is Such An Ugly Word . . . But I Can’t Think Of Anything Else To Call It!

On By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Wind Turbines41 Comments

My intention was to start winding down this blog, spend more time with my wife, grand-children, books, Malbec . . . but things keep cropping up. That said, it’s very unlikely I shall undertake major new investigations. Diolch yn fawr.

♦

In recent months I have written about wind farms threatening the Welsh countryside. In particular, the 16 ‘energy parks’ planned by Bute Energy and its subsidiaries. You can get the details from reading the following piece from October, England’s wind turbines – in Wales!

I’m returning to the subject now because the links between Bute Energy and the local branch of the UK Labour Party have become so close as to warrant calls for resignation and investigation.

The general locations of the 20 ‘energy parks’ planned by Bute Energy. Click to open image enlarged in separate tab

We shall look at four individuals. Two of them Labour insiders. One the partner of a Labour MS. The fourth, the MS herself.

UPDATE 07.12.2021: There have been yet more companies formed under the Bute umbrella. (It’s getting difficult to keep up!) They are:

Windward Cambria Ltd. Bryn Glas Energy Park Ltd. Maesnant Energy Park Ltd. Bryngwyn Energy Park Ltd, Blaencothi Energy Park Ltd. Grayling Capital Investments Ltd. Grayling Capital Operations Ltd.

Telling us there are four more wind farms planned. Bryngwyn has yet to be located. Blaencothi is east of Lampeter. Maesnant is close to Nant y Moch reservoir, inland of Aberystwyth. Then there’s Bryn Glas – do these buggers really intend to desecrate the site of Glyndŵr’s victory over Mortimer in 1402?

♦

DAVID JAMES TAYLOR has served as spad to a number of high-profile Welsh Labour politicians. He was also the unsuccessful Labour Police and Crime Commissioner candidate for North Wales in 2016.

Taylor now does the groundwork in Wales for Bute Energy Ltd. For example, getting people who’ll be affected by Bute’s developments to sign agreements to the benefit of Bute Energy.

David Taylor out canvassing in 2016 for his friend Lesley Griffiths, the MS for Wrexham, who has done so much to smooth the path for wind farms. Click to open image enlarged in separate tab

For his efforts he’s been made a Member of Grayling Capital LLP, along with Oliver James Millican, Stuart Allan George, and Lawson Douglas Steele, the troika running Bute Energy.

He has also been given shares in Windward Enterprises Ltd, another Millican, George, Steele production.

And in a further show of gratitude the Bute boys shovel money into David Taylor’s Moblake Ltd; from whence he has ‘loaned’ himself £605,872 over the past three years.

For the accounts tell us this is an ‘interest free loan and does not have a set repayment date’. Well of course not – he’d just be repaying himself!

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David James Taylor, with no knowledge of renewables, wind power, or the generation of electricity, has been hired by Bute Energy for his contacts within the so-called ‘Welsh Government’.

◊

DEREK VAUGHAN CBE was a Labour MEP who of course became redundant in 2019 – and available for hire. His encyclopaedic knowledge of the renewables industry has secured for him the post of chairman of Bute Energy’s Welsh Advisory Board.

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As with Taylor, there could be some other reason for him being given this sinecure. A reason not unrelated to his familiarity with the levers of power in the Labour Party, and his connections within the ‘Welsh Government’.

But what kind of cynical bastard would entertain such a thought?

Er, me.

◊

JOHN UDEN is the partner of Jenny Rathbone MS.

Let’s start with Nant yr Odyn Ltd, formed in October 2009 and dissolved in May 2011. (The significance of May 2011 will soon become clear.) The company name refers to the stream that meets the Alwen at Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr.

Alongside the stream we find the property known as Maes yr Odyn. Both Rathbone and Uden were on the Electoral Register there in 2002. Which makes sense because that was the year Rathbone lost her seat on Islington council.

The Jenny Rathbone entries on 192.com, suggesting that she and Uden were living at Maes yr Odyn in 2002. (Though why is she later described as a ‘director’?) Click to open image enlarged in separate tab

Though the Senedd website tells us, ‘From 2002 to 2007, Jenny was programme manager of an award-winning Sure Start programme in north London’.

So the property in Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr was presumably being used as a holiday home, or a weekend retreat?

There are two titles at the Land Registry relating to Maes yr Odyn. One for the property itself, where Jenny Rathbone is joint owner with Andrew Lyle Rathbone; the other for ‘land and outbuildings’, where she is the sole owner. The address Rathbone gives on the second of those title documents is ‘Hen Maes yr Odyn’. The house next door.

It looks as if the dwelling Maes yr Odyn has been in the ownership of the Rathbone family for some time. The title document suggests the property was bought in 1962 by Elizabeth Eleanor Rathbone, then gifted to the current owners in 1992.

Then, and perhaps to ‘re-unite’ the property, the outbuildings and land were bought by Jenny Rathbone in July 2008 for £120,000.

Incidentally, Maes yr Odyn seems to be a mile or two from Mwdwl Eithin, one of Bute Energy’s planned wind farms. Here’s the company that’s been set up.

Image: Ordnance Survey. Click to open image enlarged in separate tab

In May, 2011 Rathbone was elected to the National Assembly for Wales as Labour AM for Cardiff Central. A city and a constituency of which she knew nothing.

Her career has not been without its ups and downs. Playing the environmentalist got her sacked from Carwyn Jones’ cabinet over the M4 ‘improvements’. Then, a couple of years back, there were allegations of anti-Semitism. More recently, she urged us to ‘get real’ because poor people don’t go to rugby matches, football matches, or the cinema.

But we’re neglecting her partner!

John Uden got his position on Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board due to Rathbone’s influence. And, possibly, the proximity of Maes yr Odyn to the planned Mwdwl Eithin ‘energy park’.

Bute Energy, John Uden, and Jenny Rathbone’s own shares, could all benefit from decisions taken and recommendations made by the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee on which she sits.

Jenny Rathbone’s Register of Interests (Category 8, ‘Land and property’) lists ’Barn used as community centre and two acres of land, Llanfihangel GM, Conwy’ . . . but makes no mention of her shared ownership of the house itself, Maes yr Odyn, which must be worth considerably more. (Here in pdf format.)

Maes yr Odyn. Click to open image enlarged in separate tab

As stated, the co-owner of the house is Andrew Lyle Rathbone, who we can assume is related. For both sit as Trustees on the Miss E F Rathbone Charitable Trust. Along with a couple of other Rathbones.

The Rathbones are a very wealthy family. With a number of companies and trusts bearing the name, such as Rathbone Investment Management Ltd (total assets £3.1bn), based at the Port of Liverpool Building. Though that company is in turn owned by Rathbones Group Plc.

I suppose many or most of the shares we see on Jenny Rathbone’s Register of Interests are her allocation of investments made by the various entities handling the Rathbone family fortune.

In which case, is there income / dividends from those shares?

Among the shares held by Jenny Rathbone are those in AstraZeneca Plc, which makes the Covid-19 vaccine – what foresight!

Returning to ‘renewables’, Rathbone Investment Management has gone gung-ho for wind turbines. As we see from the cover of the Summer 2021 issue of Rathbones Review.

I wonder if Rathbones are investing in wind farms in Wales?

◊

CONCLUSION

This squalid relationship between Bute Energy and leading figures within or close to the Labour Party in Wales is corruption.

Businessmen have recruited people to ease their projects through the political system and the planning process. To pretend there’s any other explanation for Bute Energy recruiting Taylor, Vaughan, and Uden, would be to insult our intelligence.

Just ask yourself – Why did Bute Energy feel the need to create a ‘Welsh Advisory Board’? To provide a fig leaf, in the form of ‘jobs’ for Vaughan and Uden.

Taylor, Vaughan and Uden must sever their connections with Bute Energy Ltd and its associated companies. Failure to do so by any one of them must invalidate any planning application received from Bute Energy or its associated companies.

This may already have gone too far, I would therefore suggest that any planning application received from a Bute company should be reviewed by a body independent of both the ‘Welsh Government’ and its in-house Planning Inspectorate.

Jenny Rathbone MS. Click to open image enlarged in separate tab

In the case of Jennifer Ann Rathbone MS; for failing to register ownership of Maes yr Odyn, for the fear that she might bring political influence to bear on behalf of her partner and a company with many projects planned in Wales, I feel that her fitness to serve as a Senedd Member is severely compromised.

Her position is almost untenable. She should consider resigning.

Finally, I also feel that the Welsh public is entitled to a statement from Y Prif Weinidog. With assurances that the guilty parties will not prosper, and that there will be no repeat of this squalid affair.

A register of lobbyists might help in this respect.

Looking at the bigger picture, I fear we are at a dangerous juncture in Welsh political development. There seems to be a growing belief that it’s acceptable to do the wrong things for the ‘right’ reasons.

This outlook is no longer confined to the far left, it has spread to the mainstream, to the virtuouser-than-thou ‘progressives’. If you persuade yourself that those who oppose you are fascists, or transphobes, or climate deniers – then anything goes!

Perhaps to the point where, ‘Yeah, I may be lining my own pockets, but I’m also saving the planet – so that makes it OK’.

♦ end  ♦

 




England’s wind turbines – in Wales!

On By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Planning, Welsh Government, Wind Turbines35 Comments

My intention was to start winding down this blog, spend more time with my wife, grand-children, books, Malbec . . . but things keep cropping up. That said, it’s very unlikely I shall undertake major new investigations. Diolch yn fawr.

♦

Last week, I introduced you to the Bute empire, based in Edinburgh and London, which, under a variety of company names, is planning many new wind farms in Wales.

This week’s piece is partly a recap, partly putting a new slant on things, and partly some fresh thoughts on the unequal relationship between Wales and England.

♦

MAPPING IT OUT

Here are the location-specific Bute Energy companies, sixteen in all, each with a link to the relevant Companies House entry. Is there a project near you?

Twyn Hywel Energy Park Ltd / Rhiwlas Energy Park Ltd / Banc Du Energy Park Ltd / Aberedw Energy Park Ltd / Moelfre Energy Park Ltd / Mwdwl Eithin Energy Park Ltd / Garreg Fawr Energy Park Ltd / Bryn Gilwern Energy Park Ltd / Nant Mithil Energy Park Ltd / Lan Fawr Energy Park Ltd / Waun Hesgog Energy Park Ltd / Esgair Galed Energy Park Ltd / Llyn Lort Energy Park Ltd / Nant Ceiment Energy Park Ltd / Nant Aman Energy Park Ltd / Tarenni Energy Park Ltd

The full list of recent company formations, and other background information, can be found here.

I’ve now drawn up a map showing what I hope is the correct location of each of Bute’s planned wind farms. I can’t be absolutely sure because in most cases all we have is a company name, and that name could fit a number of locations.

The names Rhiwlas and Moelfre, for example, can be found in many locations.

But by ruling out urban areas, National Parks, etc., etc . . .

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To help them build these wind farms, Bute’s head honcho, Oliver James Millican, and his constantly growing band expect help from both Labour Party insider David James Taylor and Lesley Griffiths MS, the Minister for Rural Affairs in the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’.

I’m not exactly sure what’s expected from Taylor, but he’s been made a Member of Grayling Capital LLP, and he’s also been given shares in Windward Enterprises Ltd, both in his own name and that of his company Moblake Associates Ltd.

Taylor seems to be paying himself some £200,000 a year from Moblake Ltd but the skeletal accounts give no indication of where the money originates. Though, strictly speaking, and quoting the ‘accounts’, the money is, ‘an interest free loan and does not have a repayment date’.

But seeing as Taylor is the sole Moblake director, and holds the only share, for him to ‘repay’ Moblake would just be transferring money from one pocket to another.

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From Ms Griffiths Millican and whoever he might be working with obviously expect planning permissions. I’m not for one minute suggesting favouritism, let alone inducements. It’s simply that, as we saw when she overruled the Planning Inspector’s decision on Hendy Wind Farm, she has the final say.

Griffiths and Taylor are well known to each other. It would be unusual if they weren’t, seeing as they belong to the same political party and are both from the north east. Here’s Taylor out canvassing for Lesley Griffiths in the 2016 Welsh Assembly elections.

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A WEE DIGRESSION, BUT INTERESTING

Something I didn’t explore in the previous post was the fact that Taylor, Griffiths, Sophie Howe (Commissioner for Greenwash), and others, were on the same side before and after the Carl Sargeant suicide in November 2017.

This picture below, from 2014/15, shows, left to right, Carl Sargeant, Sophie Howe, a former Spad to Sargeant (though when the photo was taken she was deputy to former MP Alun Michael, the South Wales PCC), Lesley Griffiths, and Leighton Andrews AM for Rhondda, who lost his seat in 2016 to Leannein Wood.

David Taylor worked as a Spad or trouser presser for Andrews, and his loyalty to the party was rewarded when, in 2016, he was the Labour candidate for the North Wales PCC post. He lost out to Arfon Jones, the Plaid Cymru candidate.

L to R: Carl Sargeant, Sophie Howe, Lesley Griffiths, Leighton Andrews. Click to open in separate tab

The thing about this picture is, it’s not a ‘work’ photo, they’re out together relaxing. They know each other, they obviously enjoy each other’s company.

After Sargeant’s suicide they all rallied to his defence, or at least, they didn’t do any favours to then First Minister Carwyn Jones, lobbyists Deryn, and others coming under fire. Lesley Griffiths is quoted more than once in this report.

In this piece, we read that Sophie Howe: ‘ . . . told Coroner John Gittins: “I find that incredible that he (Sargeant) can be sacked without being told what the allegations were.”’

While Leighton Andrews has plenty to say on his blog.

In this November 2018 report from the Wrexham Leader we are told that, ‘The inquest also heard a statement from David Taylor, a friend of Mr Sargeant who was previously employed by the Labour Party.’

It’s all coincidence, no doubt, but from this small group around Carl Sargeant we have three – Howe, Griffiths, Taylor – currently contributing to Wales being ripped off by every shyster who can spin a line about saving the planet.

◊

‘JUST A FEW QUESTIONS, SIR’ (Oh, the times I’ve heard that!)

I wrote to Bute Energy last Tuesday morning, ahead of office hours, giving them the chance to clarify a few points for this follow-up.

My questions were:

  1. When and where did you first meet David James Taylor?
  2. Were you introduced to Taylor? If so, by whom?
  3. What is your relationship with Taylor’s Moblake companies?
  4. Why did you make Taylor a Member of Grayling Capital LLP?
  5. Why did you give Taylor (and Moblake) shares in Windward Enterprises
  6. Have you met Lesley Griffiths, Welsh Government Minister for Rural Affairs? If so, where and when?
  7. Did you have advance warning of Ms Griffiths’ overturning a Planning Inspector’s decision on Hendy Wind Farm in October 2018?
  8. Why did you recruit former Labour MEP Derek Vaughan to chair your Welsh Advisory Board?
  9. Why does your Welsh Advisory also have as a member John Uden, a former London police officer now specialising in property security, who, apparently, has no Welsh connections?
  10. Why do you have so many wind farms planned for Wales?
  11. You don’t know Wales, so how did you find these sites? Did someone recommend them?
  12. Do the principals in Bute and the other companies have any experience in engineering, construction, renewables, or related fields?
  13. Do you really intend building wind farms or will you simply obtain planning permission and then sell the sites?
  14. Talking of the sites, have you been promised that, if necessary, powers of compulsory purchase will be exercised on your behalf?
  15. Do you have contact details for David James Taylor?
  16. Do you have anything you’d like to say?

I’m still waiting for answers.

Having mentioned the ‘skeletal accounts’ of David Taylor’s Moblake Ltd I naturally got to wondering about the accountant.

At the start, Moblake’s registered address was in the West End of London, at 109 Gloucester Place. It’s the tidy-looking gaff with the blue door. Though the company registered at that address, Adams Mitchell Ltd, was only formed in August 2019.

In fairness, it looks as though David Taylor was simply using Gloucester Place as an accommodation address. The ‘accounts’ submitted were all his own work.

Though the most recent accounts are a tale of West End to East End. For Moblake’s latest accounts were signed off by Naail & Co Ltd, a husband and wife outfit on Lambeth Walk in property leased with money borrowed from banks.

But the accounts remain unaudited. The accountant just signed off what Taylor put in front of him.

Accountant’s contribution to the latest Moblake Ltd accounts (y/e 30.04.2021). Click to open in separate tab.

Couldn’t David Taylor have found a nice, respectable accountant in Wales who would have presented fully audited and verified accounts?

Makes you wonder.

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‘HERE YOU ARE, TAFF – DON’T SAY WE DON’T GIVE YOU NOTHING’

Maybe I’d better explain what I mean by the heading to this article about England’s wind turbines in Wales. Now pay attention, because this is a bit complicated, and prefaced with, ‘As I understand it . . . ‘.

In 2015 legislation was passed, covering England and Wales, that gave local planning authorities – i.e. councils – powers to decide on wind farms of 10MW and above. (They already had the power over smaller installations.)

This had been mooted for some years and finally came into effect, on June 18, 2015. With political spin about upholding election promises by letting ‘local people have the final say on wind farm applications’.

Hinting that this was a decision dictated by electoral considerations. For wind farms are erected in rural areas, and the rural areas of England are overwhelmingly Conservative in their political sentiments.

The Conservative and Unionist Party would lose MPs and councils if a Tory government in London over-ruled local councils to impose wind farms on areas where locals didn’t want them.

The map below might help illustrate my point.

You can do your own by going to this site, and by playing with the various layers on the interactive map you can end up with whatever your heart desires.

Image: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy / Barbour ABI. Click to open in separate tab

To reproduce my map, from the menu on the left: In ‘Energy Type’, keep Wind Onshore. In ‘Energy Capacity’, 10MW and Above. In ‘Status’, Application Submitted, Awaiting Construction, Operational, and Under Construction.

If we could add a layer giving political features it would show that Tory-voting England is almost entirely free of wind farms.

Below you’ll see an extract from a relevant UK government publication. This makes it clear that the 2015 legislation covered England and Wales.

Click to open in separate tab

Obviously, this legislation means there will be hardly any wind farms in England. And that will result in the UK struggling to meet its climate change obligations. It will also be bad news for the Tories’ business friends who milk the subsidies paid for renewable energy.

Which is why I am convinced pressure was applied from London on the ‘Welsh Government’ for Wales to accept more and more wind farms.

This explains why the legislation was reversed in Wales to make wind farms of 10MW Developments of National Significance, meaning local authorities must either grant planning permission or expect to be over-ruled if they refuse planning permission. For the ultimate power rests with Welsh ministers. (Here’s the link.)

Click to open in separate tab

This explains how, in 2018, Lesley Griffiths was able to over-rule both Powys County Council and the Planning Inspector on Hendy wind farm.

Ordinarily, Wales and England moving in separate directions would be something I’d applaud, but not this time.

Perhaps someone in the ‘Welsh Government’ can explain why 10MW wind farms are Developments of National Significance in Wales, but not in England. 

Especially as we share the same National Grid and the electricity generated by ‘Welsh’ wind farms will most likely go to England.

As I’ve said, I’m convinced pressure was applied from London, perhaps via the civil servants operating in Wales who answer to London. The ‘Welsh Government’ couldn’t admit that, so it was glossed over with the Well-being of Future Generations Act, which came into force in April 2016.

Followed by pious declarations to make Wales ‘carbon neutral’ and then, like a maiden aunt having an attack of the vapours, declaring a ‘Climate Emergency‘.

As if anybody outside of Corruption Bay gives a toss!

These bouts of orchestrated hysteria turned planting wind farms all over Wales into an environmental crusade. The panel below, from this ‘Welsh Government’ site, explains why someone thinks we needed this legislation.

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Note that climate change, over which Wales can have no effect, is more important for the ‘Welsh Government’ than spheres where it could make a difference.

Priorities, eh!

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CONCLUSION

Despite the apparent divergence of approach over Developments of National Significance in 2015/16 we are, effectively, still in the Englandandwales model.

Making wind farms another example of devolution being used to serve England’s interests rather than ours. Consider this . . .

Just imagine if a Tory government in Westminster had said, ‘We don’t want wind farms in England – so we’re going to dump them all in Wales’. There would have been a national outcry.

Yet that is what has happened!

It’s the old story of Wales being exploited for the benefit of England. And just as with our water, we are not compensated for what we export.

Wanting Wales to be ‘carbon neutral’ and declaring a ‘Climate Emergency!’ is just vain posturing to disguise Wales’ subordinate status. Play-acting that won’t improve the lives of Welsh people, or make any difference to climate change.

And things might be about to get a whole lot worse.

For the number of wind farm applications is accelerating. Not only do we have Bute Energy’s 16 projects, there’s also the monster turbines planned for Y Bryn, between Port Talbot and Maesteg; while more recently I’ve learnt of a plan for turbines above coal tips at Ynyshir in the Rhondda Fach.

Yes, honestly, above coal tips.

How many more are planned that we haven’t yet heard about?

There is nothing to be said in favour of wind turbines. In their brief and intermittent lives they do not repay the environment for the damage caused in making, transporting, and erecting them. They are all built and owned by foreign companies. They provide no jobs. They despoil our landscapes. They kill birds. They cause flooding.

But never mind, we’re serving England’s interests. Again.

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