Climate Cult Killing The Welsh Family Farm

On 04/03/202405/03/2024 By JacIn Brexit, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption Bay, Environmentalism, EU Funding, Farming, Globalism, Hippies, Public Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Labour, World Economic Forum37 Comments

In this piece I’ll explain that the ‘Welsh Government”s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) is just the latest in a long series of attacks on the Welsh family farm, and all that that means.

The SFS demands that 10% of every farm be given over to trees, with a further 10% to ‘habitat’. Many farms will become unprofitable. Which is the whole point of the SFS – to release more land for other uses.

Today’s piece is bigger than others I’ve put out recently, some 3,400 words; but it’s broken up into sections, so take it a chunk at a time.

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2008: ONE WALES: ONE PLANET

I’ve chosen to start in May 2008 with the publication One Wales: One Planet. Sub-titled, ‘The Sustainable Development Scheme of the Welsh Assembly Government’. You’ll find a revealing extract below.

Let’s look at the first bullet point. Who decides Wales’s “environmental limits“? Who calculates our “fair share of the Earth’s resources“? Who measures our “ecological footprint“? (I’m a size 9.) And how can anyone work out, “the global average availability of resources“.

This is the kind of gobbledegook you can only get away with when you live a very sheltered life, mixing only with others in your bubble.

The final paragraph (below, my emphasis) leaves us in no doubt that everything that’s done in Wales from now on will be predicated on the belief that human beings are killing the planet.

To achieve this, sustainable development (the process that leads to Wales becoming a sustainable nation) will be the central organising principle of the Welsh Assembly Government, and we will encourage and enable others to embrace sustainable development as their central organising principle.

But as I’ve explained, there’s something more sinister behind it all. Which is not to say that those pushing the nonsense don’t believe it, I’m sure many of them do. But there are also many who go along with it because it’s become the accepted wisdom of the circles in which they mix.

Before I forget, chapter 8 is headed: ‘The Wellbeing of Wales’. (Now there’s a clue!)

The administration at the time was a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition, and to jog your memory, here’s a cabinet group photo. The minister for environment and sustainability was Jane Davidson.

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2010: TECHNICAL ADVICE NOTE 6, ONE PLANET DEVELOPMENTS

July of 2010 brought joy unbounded with the announcement that hippy encampments, thrown up illegally (but with a nod and a wink from Corruption Bay), were now to be legitimised

Making TAN 6 little more than a general amnesty, or granting retrospective planning approval.

Dressed up as ‘sustainable living’, ‘self-sufficiency’, and God knows what else, they were in reality just a way around planning regulations for hippies and others to build ugly shacks in open country.

There were conditions attached, of course, not least, being able to prove that these impositions were to some degree self-sufficient . . . but nobody ever checks.

Interestingly, OPDs came to the notice of the World Economic Forum, which exposed the fundamental contradiction by urging people to move to Wales.

For OPDs were justified by arguing they’d reduce Wales’ carbon footprint. But this could only happen if local people moved out of traditional dwellings into OPD shacks. That never happened.

Instead, people moved from England to previously unused land . . . where they kept farting animals, burned wood, and drove old diesel vehicles; so that by these and other means increased Wales’ carbon footprint.

In a recent publication I noticed that DEI had been added to the chicken entrails in the voodoo stew. This news came from Sophie Howe herself, just before she stepped down as Future Generations Commission in 2022:

I am pleased to see the emphasis given to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, a key component of sustainability . . .

But despite the posturing, OPDs remain exclusively English, White, middle class.

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2011 OCTOBER: ALUN DAVIES AND ORGANIC ARABLE FARMING

Then there was the plan to help farmers go organic.

Alun Davies, deputy minister of agriculture, announced that priority would be given to arable farmers, and those converting to arable farming . . . in a country where climate and topography dictate that livestock farming will dominate.

But let’s not be picky, for I’m sure this news was welcomed in the pomegranate groves of Pembrokeshire and the broccoli orchards enhancing the Vale of Clwyd, but it offered sod all to most Welsh farmers.

This initiative might reveal the growing vegan influence. For these had been brought in from the fringes to serve the Globalists’ plan to eliminate livestock farming and take control of the land and the food supply.

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2013 DECEMBER: ALUN DAVIES AND HIS TWO-PILLAR TRICK

The above date was when Alun Davies, now farm minister, announced that funding from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Pillar 1 (direct payment to farmers) would be moved to Pillar 2 (‘other rural activities’).

Davies could have transferred anything up to 15%. Almost inevitably, he opted for the full whack. Defending the decision by saying Pillar 1 should not be seen as a “never-ending subsidy“.

To understand Alun Davies, and the socialist attitude to farming, here’s an outburst from him in October 2014.

The former minister in the Labour ‘Welsh Assembly Government’ (for he was sacked in July 2014) rails against ‘subsidies’; yet his administration had built up a vast third sector of cronies – all living off public funding!

And things have got worse, for now the ‘Welsh Government’ throws millions of pounds at Sustrans, Stonewall, wildlife trusts, and other pressure groups.

Clearly, in the eyes of Labour politicians there’s nothing wrong with subsidies per se, it all depends who’s getting them.

UPDATE 05.03.2024: But has Alun Davies recanted?

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2015: WELL-BEING OF FUTURE GENERATIONS (WALES) ACT

This legislation was a long time in the planning, but we know who wrote it.

For this article from Sustainable Brands (scroll down) tells us it was Jane Davidson, who we met earlier as the minister for environment and sustainability in the 2007 – 2011 Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition.

The article also says Davidson, ” . . . had her damascene moment at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992“. But I don’t buy that.

For at the time she was a researcher for Labour MP for Cardiff West, Rhodri Morgan, who of course went on to become first minister of the Assembly. So was she representing him, or the Labour party, at Rio?

I think she’d already had her ‘damascene moment’, and she was there as one of the converted.

When she became Assembly Member for Pontypridd in 1999 Ponty was her ticket to more power and influence to push the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) narrative.

Which she did relentlessly and effectively.

And even though she stepped down as an AM in 2011 she never really left. For she was always in the shadows, nudging, hectoring, demanding. Now she chairs the ‘Welsh Government’s Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group.

The significance of the Well-being Act is that, as was hinted in One Wales: One Planet in 2008, all other considerations must be subordinated to fighting the so-called ‘climate crisis’.

And this being the socialist hell that is Wales, the Act introduced yet more pointless bureaucracy and more opportunities for virtue signalling, with Public Services Boards for each of our 22 local authorities. (Yes, that’s right, 22 local authorities for a country of 3.2 million people.)

Perhaps the real lesson Wales could teach the world is how to bring a country to its knees. For this is the Globalist plan for the West.

The politicians and their pet parasites who achieved this resent giving money to farmers and others, who actually work, and produce necessities.

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2016 SEPTEMBER: START OF NVZ ‘CONSULTATION’

A Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) is, according to the ‘Welsh Government’, “an area of land draining into ground or surface waters that are currently high in nitrate, or may become so if appropriate actions are not taken“.

It had always been accepted there was a problem, but it had also been understood that the problem was very localised, and seemed to be associated with dairy cattle.

Ostensibly to get a better understanding of the situation, the ‘Welsh Government’ launched a consultation process in September 2016.

The map above, produced by Natural Resources Wales (NRW), shows that Water Framework Directive (WFD) catchment areas covering some 90% of the country reported 0 – 4 incidents in the period 01.01.2010 to 01.01.2016.

The problem was clearly very localised.

Which is why NRW suggested increasing the area covered by NVZ legislation from 2.4% (750 farm holdings) to 8%. But, and here I quote from:

The (now) Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths, responded to the consultation replies a year later, in December 2017. She said she was “minded to introduce a whole Wales approach”.

Truth is, that had been the plan all along.

As an example of politicians going out of their way to make life more difficult for farmers – because of course there would be more expense and increased form-filling – the handling of NVZ legislation would be difficult to surpass.

This is how NFU Cymru described it:

As things stand, the ‘Welsh Government’ has been forced to be marginally less vindictive. With slightly less punitive measures being introduced in stages, the next due in August.

NVZ was part of a wider campaign to blame farmers for all pollution. To the extent of bribing river groups and other ‘environmentalists’. Done to protect the bigger culprit, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water.

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2018 JULY: ‘BREXIT AND OUR LAND’

Wales voted to leave the European Union 23 June 2016.

That is, the people voted to leave. The political class was outraged at the stupidity of the hoi polloi. The media agreed. While the ever-multiplying legions of third sector parasites were aghast at the thought of losing such a lucrative funding stream.

In response the ‘Welsh Government’ produced ‘Brexit and our Land‘. Wherein we read (page 3) what was to replace the CAP.

But how can it talk of “food production” when we know Labour’s attitude towards farmers? While the reference to timber did not mean developing a genuine timber industry, it referred to what I’m now going to highlight.

Idly flicking through the annual accounts of Stoke engineering firm Goodwin Plc the other night I found this, on page 17.

The site of this enviro-colonialism is north west of Llanwrtyd. But it’s happening all over Wales.

This is how it works: Land is bought and trees are planted by investors like Goodwin, who will own the land, the trees, and the carbon they capture. This carbon can not be included in Wales’ carbon inventory.

Which means that outside investors could buy up 50% of Welsh land, make billions from carbon capture, none of which would contribute to Wales’ national figure (or economy) – and the ‘Welsh Government’ would pay them to do it!

The rest of rural Wales, and the post-industrial areas, will be surrendered to foreign-owned wind farms whose owners will dole out beads and blankets to the desperate inhabitants of doomed communities.

And it’s all built on a scam, for carbon is no threat to the environment.

As for “Public Goods“, this is a phrase picked up from the bad company Welsh politicians keep. It can mean whatever the person using it wants it to mean.

Just think of it as bollocks; usually delivered in Estuary English.

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2018 AUGUST: SUMMIT TO SEA

This project links with Brexit, and the publication you read about in the previous section. It’s ‘environmentalists’ seeking to capitalise on the new reality to grab a huge swathe of Welsh land.

The project began before the date I’ve just given, but I used that date because it’s the first time I mentioned the project on this blog. Click here and scroll down to the section ‘Re-wilding’.

In essence, a number of individuals and organisations came together and hatched a plan to requisition 10,000 hectares, from Pumlumon up to the Dyfi estuary, and out to sea for a few miles.

Below you’ll see two maps. The one on the left was produced by those behind the project; the one on the right tells us who’s really behind it. But I’m not sure who produced the second.

Admittedly, this was not a ‘Welsh Government’ policy . . . but I believe those involved had discussions with politicians and civil servants, and had been assured that Brexit could be the excuse used to withhold or ‘redirect’ farm subsidies.

Those involved were so confident of success, so arrogant, that they saw no need to engage with those whose land they wanted to appropriate. For it was a done deal.

Among the partners with Rewilding Britain was the Woodland Trust (WT). Here is Natalie Buttriss of the WT being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today in October 2018. And she plays the admonishing memsahib for all she’s worth.

Summit to Sea met its Waterloo at a public meeting in Talybont, north of Aberystwyth on 31 July 2019, when locals made their feelings unmistakably clear to even the thick-skinned individuals involved.

Partners such as Ecodyfi and Rewilding Britain soon withdrew, and the project was then taken over by the RSPB. The organisation that cares so much for birds, but has no issue with bird-killing wind turbines. (I wonder how much that silence costs.)

The Woodland Trust is still taking over Welsh land to plant trees and profit from the carbon capture scam you read about earlier. But all done of course to save the planet.

Summit to Sea was an attempt by ‘environmentalists’ and ‘conservationists’ to grab Welsh farmland using the threat of subsidy withdrawal. So it’s no surprise to learn that many see the Sustainable Farming Scheme as Summit to Sea repackaged.

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LATE 2018: TIT-BITS

In September, Lesley Griffiths, Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs, was in Frisco, at a UN bunfight giving business leaders a chance to impress politicians from the sub-national level.

What could possibly go wrong?

Griffiths came back, her rechargeable batteries humming, and a week or so after her return delivered this speech.

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A month later the Daily Post produced this article in which farmers accused wildlife groups of lying about bio-diversity loss in order to grab farm funding. I include it because it introduces an important new tactic into the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.

Hoping to hide the source of the attacks the Corruption Bay establishment was now funding wildlife trusts and other groups to do the dirty work. I wrote about this just last month, in Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas.

Quoted in the DP article was Katie-Jo Luxton of the RSPB:

Writing in today’s Daily Post, RSPB Cymru director Katie-jo Luxton said it was in farming’s interest to work with wildlife groups – and take what’s being offered.

Only by doing this can the industry justify its receipt of taxpayers’ money, she said. Otherwise the industry risks losing out in the post-Brexit scramble for public funding.

That sounds like dialogue from a very bad Mob movie! “Dis is da best deal ya gonna get, Louie, take it – if ya knows what’s good for ya!”

Also note, another reference to “taxpayers’ money“, and “the post-Brexit scramble for public funding“. They’re all reading from the same script.

Having pissed off many, many people, Luxton left the RSPB towards the end of 2021 and joined BirdLife International.

In four years between 2018 and 2022 BirdLife’s income shot up from £22 million to over £40 million. Another indicator of how governments and corporations are using wildlife groups and conservationists to undermine agriculture globally.

Wildlife trusts here saw their income more than double between 2019 and 2022. But income from ‘Welsh Government’ grants and contracts rocketed from £769,310 to £6,821,800 in the same period.

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2019 APRIL: ‘WELSH GOVERNMENT’ DECLARES CLIMSATE EMERGENCY

April 2019 was tough in Wales. I recall people running into the streets screaming, “Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) have declared a climate emergency!”

Well, maybe I exaggerate a wee bit. For truth is, nobody really paid any attention to this pronunciamento.

Nevertheless, it was followed, in June, with a ‘10-point Plan To Fund Wales’ Climate Emergency‘ from the Future Generations Commissioner.

As might be expected, planting trees and making life even more difficult for farmers figured big in this mercifully short document.

The reality is that despite all the grandstanding, no other country on this doomed planet has allowed OPDs, created the useless post of Future Generations Commission, or declared a climate emergency.

There’s a message there.

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2019 OCTOBER: ‘WALES MAY BE A SMALL NATION . . . ‘

In full: “Wales may be a small nation, but we have a big ambition“. The words spoken by Lesley Griffiths, at a Climate Change conference in Cardiff City Hall.

Among the world-renowned climate experts attending was “ITV weather presenter Ruth Wignall“. Further down we read:

For every attendee at the conference a tree will also be planted in Mbale, Eastern Uganda, as part of the Welsh Government’s Wales for Africa programme.

Farmer Nimrod Wambette, from Mbale, will speak at the conference about how his home region is already feeling the impacts of climate change.

After enjoying an expenses-paid trip to Cardiff and a bit of pocket money Nimrod could be guaranteed to stick to the script.

It’s just more of the same, a rather sad and desperate combination of hyperbole and hysteria for which, in kinder and saner times, people would have received treatment. But what really caught my eye was this sentence:

Representatives from Extinction Rebellion will be attending to share some of their ideas about how we should be responding to the climate emergency

When you read that you know the nutters have really taken over the asylum.

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2023 NOVEMBER: AGRICULTURE (WALES) ACT 2023

This new legislation is designed to increase the influence of ‘environmentalists’ and ‘conservationists’ over Welsh farming. How do I know? Because the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) takes credit for influencing it.

It’s there, on page 4 of the WWF Annual Report.

We launched and led a successful campaign to help put the climate and nature emergencies at the core of the new Agriculture (Wales) Bill. Through a survey of rural Wales, an open letter signed by more than 50 organisations, a petition and more, WWF Cymru’s Land of Our Future/Gwlad Ein Dyfodol campaign advocated for agroecology to be central to the bill

Those experts on Welsh farming, the British Mountaineering Council, signed the WWF petition . . . but our farming unions did not.

The same WWF that’s in partnership / funded by Tesco which, like other supermarket chains, is screwing our farmers.

Makes you think, eh!

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CONCLUSION

And so we come to the Sustainable Farming Scheme, for which ‘consultations’ end on Thursday. Though I suspect that, as with NVZ and other proposals, it’s a done deal.

For Labour’s attitude towards farmers is clear. In recent months we’ve heard Joyce Watson, Mike Hedges, and first minister Drakeford himself express contempt.

To leave us in no doubt about Labour’s hatred for farmers Anna McMorrin, (former?) partner of Alun Davies, called hard-working Welsh farmers extremists, climate deniers, and conspiracy theorists in the House of Commons last week.

I could have introduced other examples of the ‘Welsh Government’s contempt, such as the refusal to do anything about bTB . . . other than to order the killing of cattle.

But I’ve given enough clues for you to guess how I see the big picture.

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Wildlife and environmental groups, and more recently the ‘Welsh Government’, tell us that 80/90% of Wales’s land is taken up by farming. There’s a reason for that.

By ‘farming’ they mean livestock farming. But it’s not really about farming, it’s about the land used by farming. The talk of farting cows, dirty rivers, biodiversity loss, etc, are the excuses used to destroy farming and to facilitate a land grab.

Land that’s wanted for carbon capture trees and rewilding. Which go together. Can’t have beavers without trees. And almost all the critters planned to be re-introduced are forest dwellers.

UPDATE 05.03.2024: I’ve been sent a pro forma letter that English ‘environmental’ groups have asked members and supporters to submit to the SFS consultation.

In the first line of the second paragraph: ” . . . upwards of 84% of land in Wales managed for farming”. It really chokes them, all this land – and they want it!

This also explains the involvement of vegans, and the backing for organic arable farming. Meat will be an imported luxury item that most of us will be unable to afford. (We’ll be offered insects, and factory-made ‘meat’.)

The countryside of the future will belong to an elite that will justify its advantages, and the restrictions placed on the rest of us, car-less in our 15-minute, constantly-surveiled cities, as being necessary to save the planet.

Having submitted to this cult-agenda, Labour politicians will destroy Welsh farming as we know it. And with it, a culture, a language, and a way of life.

♦ end ♦

The State Of Wales

On 02/05/202303/05/2023 By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Devolution, Far Left, Globalism, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, World Economic Forum, Yes Cymru37 Comments

I’m sorry I haven’t put out anything for a few weeks, but there’s just been too much to write about, and my lack of self-discipline has resulted in me being too easily distracted, too often.

So here goes, again. With a story that in my opinion is not being properly interpreted. What you’re about to read is my explanation for the adoption of the name Bannau Brycheiniog by the national park formerly known as the Brecon Beacons.

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BANNAU BRYCHEINIOG

Unless you’ve been trapped underground, cast away on a desert island, or living in Treherbert, you’ll know that the Brecon Beacons National Park recently dropped the English version of its name to be known exclusively as Bannau Brycheiniog.

And the rebranding produced an outpouring of balderdash such as this old blogger has rarely seen.

Though few reached the depth of silliness plumbed by the Park’s chief executive, Catherine Mealing-Jones. The traditional flaming brazier logo had been discarded because it didn’t fit with these times of global warming, she wailed, as she zipped up her Eskimo Nell™ anorak to avoid the icy April blasts.

Here’s the headline from The Times.

But the ‘climate crisis’ is a global fear campaign engendered by those, in the UN and the World Economic Forum, wishing to control your behaviour.

They’ve influenced governments around the world to brainwash millions of kids. That we then have so many worried or even unhinged youngsters is used as proof of the ‘climate crisis’, when in reality it’s proof of brainwashing.

In the Bannau debate the climate hysteria angle was bad enough, but certain sections of the English media seemed to view the changes as Woke. Here’s the headline from the Telegraph.

Now you know me, nobody’s more alert to the lunacies of Wokeness than old Jac, but I didn’t quite see it that way. Worse, for some English writers, Wokeness seemed to be code for anti-Englishness.

The Daily Mail viewed with horror the prospect of Swansea ‘becoming’ Abertawe, and Aberdovey changing to the unrecognisable Aberdyfi.

Yet the name change, the rebranding, and the bollocks about climate change, was all a distraction from the real story. So pay attention!

Let’s begin by saying that in my view there’s nothing wrong with the name change. ‘Beacons’ may have been a misnomer anyway. Were there ever warning beacons lit there? If so, who were they warning? And who were they warning against?

Look out! A charabanc from Dowlais is heading up the A470!

And as a regular contact pointed out, few people will use the new name anyway. Partly because, unlike the recent name change of ‘Snowdonia’ to ‘Eryri’, it’s too long, and fewer people speak Welsh in Bannau Brycheiniog than in Eryri.

Though to end this section on a lighter note, our ‘Welsh’ TV newsreaders should provide hours of mirth with their mangled pronunciations of Bannau Brycheiniog.

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THE TAKEOVER

For a few years I’ve been writing about the ‘interesting’ people turning up in south Powys, an area almost co-terminus with Bannau Brycheiniog.

There’s a temptation to just dismiss them as good-lifers, but I believe there’s more to it than that. Some are on a mission.

That latter interpretation certainly applies to those involved at Black Mountains College (BMC). An institution founded by people who had previously worked for George Soros, a man viewed by some as a philanthropist, and by others – including me – as someone on a mission to undermine Western society.

Black Mountains College is a member of Soros’s Open Society University Network.

The video below, produced by BMC, makes it clear that the college seeks to enrol those who have already been frightened witless over climate change. Attracting scared kids to Coleg Soros with the promise that they can, “re-engineer the future”.

The video also tells us: “our current predicament is man-made”. And indeed it is.

I believe that Black Mountains College now acts as a ‘hub’ or information exchange for climate alarmists, and this role is encouraged – and funded – by Corruption Bay. Which uses the same illusory threat as justification for imposing 20mph speed limits, waging war on farmers, and generally making us poorer, and our lives more miserable.

The hub may be needed because there’s quite a lot happening in the area.

For a start, let’s remember that Gilestone farm is just a few miles from Coleg Soros. Whatever was planned for Gilestone before the fan was overwhelmed with excrement, I guarantee it would have been justified on ‘environmental’ grounds.

Then, earlier this year, the ‘Welsh Government’ made a number of appointments to the (then) Brecon Beacons National Park Authority. This was done in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘access’, for it seems Persons of Colour and homosexuals had previously been barred from entering our national parks.

Who knew?

Nonsense of course. It was done to give the ‘Welsh Government’ greater control over the policies and direction of the national park.

The last Conservative member of the park authority, Iain McIntosh, has now resigned. Which leaves a national park authority, with control over planning and other matters, and in a constituency represented in London by a Tory MP, and in Cardiff by a Tory MS, controlled by the Labour party.

But this is how Labour has always operated in Wales. And we see it again with yet another new body ‘tacking climate change’.

The latest is the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. Below is a panel from the ‘About’ tab. It’s funny. I mean, just look at who’s involved.

Topping the bill is former Labour Assembly Member and Minister for Saving Welsh Polar Bears Jane Davidson. She it was who gave Wales One Planet Developments. Hoping to realise her vision of the Welsh countryside repopulated with frightfully nice English smallholders and OPD dwellers.

Little room for the Welsh in that vision. And there’s little Welsh presence in the group headed by La Davidson.

What we do see is the Green Heath Robinsons at the Centre for Alternative Technology, who’ve received tens of millions of public funding. Our non-Welsh universities are of course represented. As is Coleg Soros, in the form of Art Garfunkel lookalike Ben Rawlence.

Returning to the bigger picture, we can’t ignore Y Bannau, the management plan for the national park. (Full version here.)

(How many such bodies and publications does one small country need!)

It’s a strange document. A mixture of platitudes, anguished concerns for the future, and the kind of ‘Welshness’ John Ford gave us with his adaptation of How Green Was My Valley.

For example, there are regular appearances by an imaginary family named Brychan. They also have impeccably Welsh forenames – Ioan, Mair, Dafydd – in an area becoming less and less Welsh through the activities of the kind of people you’re reading about.

There’s even a Brychan family tree (page 127)! It’s truly weird. Almost unsettling.

Take the ‘Letter from Sian (sic) Brychan to her daughter Megan’, February 20th 2042 (page 75). I suppose some reading this will be reassured to think that we’ll still be writing letters in 2042. Or at least the Brychans will.

In fact, they’re writing to each other all the bloody time. Don’t they talk?

By a painful irony the Brychans are described as, “seventh generation farmers here in the Bannau Brycheiniog” . . . which makes them the very people Green zealots want to remove from the area.

Aside from the Brychans a number of old favourites appear in Y Bannau. Coleg Soros, again; the greenwashers at Stump up for Trees; the secretive Beacons Water Group; and many more favourites that have appeared on this blog.

Perhaps all you really need to know about this management plan is that the foreword comes from Julie James, Minister for Climate Change, and the document first saw the light of day in Corruption Bay, not Brecon.

This is the ‘Welsh Government’s plan for Y Bannau. And if they and their cronies can get away with it, they’ll try it on elsewhere.

There must now be hundreds of Labour-connected enviro-shysters whizzing around Wales – in cars we pay for – attending meetings where they earnestly discuss how to cut emissions and save the planet.

A planet in no danger whatsoever.

UPDATE 03.05.2023: It should go without saying that the new Future Generations Commissioner was at the launch of Y Bannau.

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WHO’S A LUCKY BOY, THEN!

The most recent development in the Beacons / Bannau saga came last Friday with a fascinating article in the MailOnline.

Which tells that the genius behind the re-branding was one Jordan Thorne, who is 34 and has a company called Creo, described by the Mail as “a Cardiff-based marketing agency which has in recent years won a series of lucrative public sector contracts”.

Including of course the Beacons to Bannau gig.

So, what can we learn about Thorne and Creo?

Starting with Creo, there seem to be three companies of that name. They are: Creo Digital Ltd; Creo Interactive Ltd; and Creo Group Holdings Ltd. Here’s the Creo website.

Where we can read Jordan Thorne telling us how he sees himself.

I get a wee bit queasy when I hear anyone say they’re ‘trapped’ in the wrong body because it puts me in mind of weirdos and perverts who pretend they can’t tell men from women.

But back to more wholesome thoughts.

Creo was acquired, in a management buy-out, just over a year ago, when Thorne and a couple of others bought out founder Richard Ward. Though Ward retains a 25% share.

As you’ve just read, the buy-out was funded by the Development Bank of Wales (DBW). Which is owned by the ‘Welsh Government’. Here’s a link to more details of that act of generosity. Just click on ‘View PDF’ for the details.

But it wasn’t the first time DBW has looked kindly on Creo, for there was an earlier example in December 2018. (Ditto.)

Let’s just flick through the accounts for the Creo companies, see if anything catches Jac’s jaundiced eye. (Though, actually, they’re skeletal ‘unaudited financial statements’.)

Creo Digital shows total assets of £300,172 but has a net deficit of -£55,253.

Creo Interactive Ltd reveals total assets of £522,250 (previous year £365,043); reducing to net assets of £466,437.

Creo Group Holdings Ltd shows total assets of £375,100, made up of fixed assets of £375,000. Taking out liabilities leaves a net figure of -£4,529.

Control over Creo Interactive is exercised by Creo Digital; and Creo Digital is, predictably, controlled by the holding company. Where the 100 shares are split equally between Ward, Coakley, Thorne and Shaw.

Maybe the fixed asset is the Creo premises in the old St Cadoc’s church at 76 Wells Street, Cardiff. Naturally, I wondered who owned it, so I shuffled over to the Land Registry website.

The freehold title document shows four owners. Two are Ward and Coakley, from the image above. A third is Personal Pension Trustees Ltd. The fourth is Andrew Paul Ashton, who was formerly a director of Creo Interactive Ltd.

Turning to the leasehold document we see the two leaseholders named as “David McLeod Lea and others” and Creo Interactive Ltd.

Lea’s another ‘creative’, who shared the old church premises for a while. He was involved with company Still Works Ltd that went bust a few years back owing Development Bank of Wales money.

I’m a ‘creative’, do you think I could get a DBW loan?

On a more serious note, seeing as it’s wholly owned by the ‘Welsh Government’, is there genuine scrutiny or oversight of the DBW? And while I’m not suggesting that Labour supporters are favoured by the DBW with its loans policy, I can understand why some might think that.

∼

The MailOnline went big on Thorne’s politics, without properly understanding them. Though the boy has said some nasty things. As the headline put it:

Corbyn-loving Twitter troll and Welsh separatist whose vile posts tell Margaret Thatcher to ‘burn in hell’ and call Conservative ministers ‘Tory scum’

Why are modern Leftists so thoroughly unpleasant? So vindictive? So personal? The kindest thing one can say is that it’s infantile. For let’s remember that Thorne is too young to even remember Margaret Thatcher.

Clearly, he’s far left, and was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Then, like a number of other Corbynistas, he turned to Yes Cymru. Though not because he cares about Wales but because he sees Welsh independence as a vehicle for his socialism.

Jordan Thorne wants a Welsh socialist republic. Just like the other Corbyn entryists who nearly wrecked Yes Cymru a couple of years back. (I wrote about it extensively.)

I must admit that I’d never heard of Jordan Thorne. Yet it seems Yes Cymru values him highly enough to have put out a tweet in his defence on Saturday.

I believe that leaping to his defence can be put down to Thorne being a socialist, and the attack coming from a ‘Tory’ source.

Yes Cymru then tried to reassure us that it is neither left nor right, with this tweet yesterday morning. But just a few hours before, had put out the tweet below.

What the hell has Welsh independence got to do with illegal immigrants crossing from France to England? The answer should be – Nothing.

But what the tweet above reveals is that whoever wrote it wants an independent Wales with open borders. A socialist Wales. A Wales following the Globalist agenda.

The stances taken by the loudest elements in Yes Cymru; on immigration, gender ID, climate hysteria, ‘White supremacy’, and all the other Woke nonsense only serves to alienate many in a socially conservative country, making independence less likely.

◊

CONCLUSION

Jordan Thorne and Creo got the rebranding contract due to Labour party connections. Thorne joining Yes Cymru may be part of Labour’s infiltration of that organisation.

For there have been other attempts, such as the absurd ‘Labour for an Independent Wales‘ (linked with, ‘DUP for a 32-County Republic’). Plus individual Corbynistas and Momentum members have been identified on this blog and elsewhere.

And let’s not forget that Labour is a control-freak party that wants to run just about every organisation in the country. Labour will often use the Welsh language to placate the easily duped, and to disguise its true intentions.

The name change was the dead cat thrown on the table to distract the media and those who rely on the media to do their thinking for them. It’s really about the takeover of Bannau Brycheiniog by a political party with no democratic mandate.

Done so that it can implement the Globalists’ Net Zero lunacies, and in so doing, ‘re-model’ the landscape, the economy, even the demographics of the area.

Having succeeded in south Powys Labour can now impose its will – and its supporters – on other areas that do not vote Labour. It must be done this way because . . .

Despite its dominant role Labour is a minority party. Winning the votes of less than 20% of the electorate in 2021. This is another reason why the party must rely on corruption and cronyism to exert control. With many of the cronies imported.

In practical terms this insidious spread of Labour influence, this crony shadow state, means that even if Labour was to lose the next Senedd elections in 2026 (unlikely given the rigged ‘party list’ system it wants to introduce) it could carry on running Wales – for it would take years to dismantle the system Labour had created.

Clearly, Wales is not a democracy. Wales is run as a one-party state. Shame on Plaid Cymru for lending this corrupt system a veneer of credibility with its support.

I for one would shed no tears if Westminster chose to restore some semblance of democracy to Wales.

♦ end ♦

Money Does Grow On Trees!

On 10/01/202212/01/2022 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Environmentalism, Greens, Hippies, Plaid Cymru, Planning35 Comments

Yes, don’t worry, I am winding down, and eventually retiring, but I’m bringing out this ‘special’ for two reasons.

First, because the picture it paints of Carmarthenshire County Council – and, to a lesser degree, Dyfed Powys Police – is rather worrying. I feel this merits a wider audience so as to serve as a warning to us all.

Second, we are dealing with trees, and unscrupulous companies and individuals that trade in woodland. In 2022 we shall be hearing a lot more about trees, and also about unscrupulous companies and individuals.

This is another ‘biggie’, 3000+ words; but broken down into easily-digestible and nourishing chunks. Yes, nourishing. Enjoy!

♦

‘WOODLANDS FOR SALE’

We’ve all seen them, in both Welsh and English, the roadside signs reading, ‘Coedwig ar Werth’, ‘Woodland for Sale’. Most belong to Woodland Investment Management Ltd (WIM), trading as woodlands.co.uk.

If this sounds familiar, then it’s because I’ve mentioned these people before in, for example, One Planet Developments, getting devious, in July 2020. Now more information has come my way, which prompts this article.

Specifically mentioned in the earlier articles was Allt y Gelli, between Llangynog and Llanybri. There, WIM carved up the old woodland into saleable parcels and flogged them off with names like Coed Aberoedd, Allt y Castell, Coed Gwas y Neidr, and Coed Tâf.

These ranged in size and price from £19,000 for 2.5 acres to £55,000 for just under 8 acres. And the process continues.

In the panel below you see, left to right: an OS map of the area twixt Llangynog and Llanybri, with the area I’ll discuss in a minute circled in red. The woodland is Allt y Gelli.

The central image highlights the parcel of 8.25 acres labelled Coed Ffordd Pererin, which recently sold for £65,000.

While the image on the right shows an adjacent plot outlined in blue for which a man from Guildford, in the county of Surrey, was hoping to get planning permission.

I assume he wishes to be a lumberjack. For last year he intimated to Carmarthenshire County Council his desire to build a ‘shed’, some 8.5 metres long, 2.9 metres to the eaves, and 4.8 metres to the ridge.

A substantial structure for the ‘Storage of forestry extraction equipment / Tractor shed & maintenance bay for aforementioned equipment’. Who could refuse such a request – for he might have already bought his check shirts!

To their credit, the council responded to this enquiry by informing him that a full planning application would be required. To wit: ‘Its (the proposed building’s) use for the storage and maintenance of forestry extraction equipment isn’t reasonably necessary for the purposes of managing the woodland based upon the small scale tree felling and timber extraction proposed.’

As far as I can see, no planning application resulted. Why ever not?

Maybe he realised he’d been rumbled; as this letter of objection suggests.

Let’s be quite blunt here. Woodland Investment Management Ltd is an unscrupulous operator. It buys woodlands, asks for planning permission for roads, ostensibly for forestry work, yet in reality the roads are needed to make the property more accessible and saleable in smaller plots.

Alternatively, WIM just sells off unimproved woodland knowing the new owner will carve it up and flog it off in smaller chunks.

First the timber is harvested and then the parcels sold as off-grid retreats or holiday homes. Not the glorified allotments described on the WIM website. Think how difficult it would be looking after an allotment 300 miles away!

This is what the same company has done with other woodland in this locality, I’m referring now to Plas Estate Woodlands. (The ‘Plas’ referred to is Coomb Mansion, once used as a Cheshire Home.)

The title document tells us that Woodland Investment Management paid £385,000 for this land in 2006, which this report from last April suggests is now in three parts, Allt y Hendre, Allt y Coomb and Allt Tre-hyrn. These lie to the east of Allt y Gelli, and can be seen in the image on the left in the panel above.

On page 3, the title document helpfully lists the owners of plots already sold off.

While Carmarthenshire County Council is to be commended for rejecting the enquiry about a palatial tractor shed, the question remains – what will the council do if this person – and others – just go ahead and build without planning consent?

Moving back to Llangynog, locals are also concerned about land that is or was owned by Mark Oriel, who appeared on this blog in June 2020, in One Planet Developments. Oriel got a mention back then because he’d applied for retrospective planning permission for an OPD at Pentowyn farm, just across the estuary from Laugharne.

Shamelessly lifted from an earlier piece this shows the rough triangle formed by the A40, the Tywi, and the Tâf. The woodland highlighted is Allt y Gelli. Click to open enlarged in separate tab.

As far as I can see this Pentowyn application – No: W/40691 – has stalled, for nothing has been added to the documents available on the council’s website since revised drawings appeared on April 30, 2021.

Which might explain Oriel turning his attention to land he owns / owned at Llangynog. Land he certainly bought for £25,000 in 2007 from – who else! – Woodland Investment Management Ltd.

Many trees have been cleared and one suggestion made is that a woman from Lampeter plans to grow vegetables on the site. Whether she has bought it from Oriel is unclear. The Land Registry says he is still the owner.

OK, my red outline is a bit wobbly, but it’s been a hard Christmas and New Year. What with the Jack Daniel’s and the mince pies, the Malbec and the Christmas pudding. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

No doubt this woman will claim sound ecological credentials for her activities, with her vegetables fed only the finest yak manure (flown in daily from Mongolia) . . . yet to make way for this horticultural extravaganza many of the mature trees you see in the image above have been felled.

But wait! Isn’t the ‘Welsh Government’ paying for trees to be planted? Well, yes indeedy . . . but only if they’re planted by global corporations and hedge funds as carbon capture scams that allow them to carry merrily on, emitting . . . carbon.

And of course the Labour Party and its little Plaid Cymru helpers don’t mind at all if this ‘Look-at-virtuous-little-Wales!’ posturing removes farmers from the land and destroys Welsh communities.

And let’s not forget the wind turbines. Natural Resources Wales has admitted to felling some two million trees to make way for the concrete and hardcore these useless monstrosities need. How many more trees have been felled by private forestry owners?

But on the plus side, covering Welsh hills with concrete to increase the run-off of rain is of great benefit to the parched valleys and dry river beds below. The former Pontypridd desert is blooming again!

This policy of ‘plant-a-tree-chop-down-a-tree might make sense to somebody. But it strikes me as confused and inherently contradictory virtue signalling.

Alternatively: Purest bullshit.

Locals fear that Mark Oriel’s land is destined to become a collection of shit-in-the-stream dwellings. Though nothing resembling a planning application, or even a pre-application enquiry, has found its way to County Hall.

Yet these recent images show a site being cleared of trees, and roadways being laid. I’m told these roadways go off on ‘spurs’ that just come to a dead end. Which makes perfect sense if each spur will lead to a chalet or a mobile home.

The evidence suggests that Mark Oriel, or perhaps the person to whom he’s sold the land, is sub-dividing it with a view to selling it off in plots.

Maybe Mark Oriel will contact me (as he’s done before) with answers to these questions:

1/ Do you still own this land?

2/ If so, what are your plans for it?

3/ If you’ve sold it, who did you sell it to?

Questions worth asking because clearing woodland, laying trackways, then selling off plots to those wanting to live on those plots in chalets, sheds, tepees, and trailer homes, is happening all over the ‘triangle’. And has been for some time.

In one notorious case, near to the settlement of Llangynog, there was an example that at one time had as many as twenty structures on it used either as permanent or seasonal dwellings.

(And when I say ‘seasonal dwellings’, I am not referring to clans of hunter gatherers. These were holiday homes.)

UPDATE: Feedback suggests that Mark Oriel has indeed sold the land. It is rumoured that the lady originally interested has ‘passed it on to friends’. Which makes things very opaque. And worrying.

◊

‘WHAT’S MINE IS MINE . . . AND WHAT’S YOURS IS ALSO MINE’

This chapter begins with another purchase from Woodland Investment Management.

But it went much further. The purchaser was not satisfied with what he’d bought in 2007 and soon took over land belonging to a woman who had recently been widowed. When she complained she was threatened with physical violence.

The poor woman went to Dyfed Powys Police who decided they could do nothing because, I’m told, they chose to view it as a civil case of Adverse Possession rather than the criminal offence of Aggravated Possession.

After repeated threats against her the widow became too afraid to take civil action.

Bizarrely, she was also threatened by the council, perhaps because they believed she was responsible for the chalets and other unauthorised dwellings on the land that had been stolen from her!

Some of the chalets and other structures in Coedfryn woods, none of which have planning permission and all of which have had enforcement notices served. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The villain responsible appears not to have registered his ownership with the Land Registry, or else had someone else pose as the owner. (Something we’ve seen at Bryn Llys and elsewhere.)

This wasn’t the first time he’d taken over someone else’s land. A source tells he’d also been, ‘Active in the Mumbles area. I spoke to a farmer who told me —– had taken over some of his farmland claiming adverse possession. The farmer got him off eventually, but described —– as a vicious bully who would use intimidation and the threat of force (guns mentioned) should anyone cross him.’

This man we’re discussing hailed from Pontarddulais. He died in 2019.

I’ve chosen not to name him partly because he is recently deceased and therefore unable to answer for himself. Also, because with a common Welsh name it’s difficult to track him down. A problem compounded by the fact that he was a man who seemed to have disliked paperwork and official records. His dealings were often cash in hand and word of mouth.

But the physical and anecdotal evidence is there in abundance. As you can see in the previous image, and the one below.

The narrow strip of woodland in the centre of the image on the left is shown again in an aerial image on the right. At one time there were 20 dwellings there. All unauthorised. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

From 2007 until April 2021 Carmarthenshire County Council (CCC) received many, many complaints, from individuals, the community council, and county councillors, about Coedfryn wood, but did nothing.

Well, to be fair, enforcement notices were issued . . . but, er, never enforced.

Hopes were raised in April 2021 when the community was informed by CCC that money had been set aside and enforcement would be implemented. So the people of Llangynog waited, and waited . . . and waited.

Again, nothing happened.

Then, in September, in a complete about turn, the council decided to effectively write off outstanding enforcement orders. Read the relevant document.

Having failed to discharge its responsibilities to the law-abiding, council tax-paying citizens of Llangynog and other communities Carmarthenshire County Council was now trying to absolve its guilt by wiping the slate clean and handing victory to thieves, thugs, squatters, drug dealers and God knows who else.

What a testament to local government in Wales!

When the people of Llangynog were eventually informed of this decision they were told it was ‘not in the public interest’ to pursue these historic enforcement notices. How is the ‘public interest’ being served by this decision? Who are ‘the public’?

Here is the community council’s response to the chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council last week. It’s worth reading because it lists the various problems in the area, all of which are attributable to the failings of the council.

There now seem to be new owners. One chancer swaggering about trying (and failing) to impress people is Steve Ryan of Weston-Super-Mare. He’s another who seems to own nothing in his own name.

Though there is certainly land there owned by a resident of Weston-Super-Mare, but she’s named Cecilia Polisario O’Callaghan. In fact, she appears to own the trackway running to the settlement of chalets and other constructions. Here’s the title document.

But if Ryan owns this land why isn’t it in his name? Come to that, why doesn’t his name appear on any other documents? Because he claims to own everything. Does he need to hide his assets?

Though as I say, he seems to be telling the truth about living in Weston-Super-Mare, apparently with a woman who also has an Hispanic-sounding name.

What I find intriguing though is that Ryan claims to have interests in Mumbles.

Another proprietor at Coedfryn woods is Ivan Wallace of Swansea. He owns land alongside the trackway. But again, there’s a wee mystery.

The address given to the Land Registry when the land was bought or transferred to him in 2010 was c/o a council-owned property in Loughor. For the past 7 or 8 years he’s lived in the city centre, alone, in a house owned by a woman who appears to be a social worker or a carer of some kind.

When we turn to Coedfryn Wood itself it’s almost impossible to know who owns what. At least, with Woodland Investment Management – as we saw at Plas Estate Woodlands – we can see the buyers of the individual plots, and get the Land Registry title numbers.

But when WIM sells to unscrupulous individuals, who have an aversion to official records, who then sell or lease individual plots, for cash, it becomes very difficult to establish ownership.

The appalling lack of professionalism in the county’s planning department was eventually observed by others.

And following Audit Wales’ damning review of the council’s planning services last year there was a big shake-up of the planning department. (This might explain the decision to wipe the slate clean.)

From the Summary of the Audit Wales report into CCC’s planning dept. It mentions ‘enforcement’. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Though the problem with wiping the slate clean is that of course the problems remain unsolved. So I’ll address Carmarthenshire County Council’s planning department directly.

You and / or your predecessors have made the department a laughing-stock. The unscrupulous know they can do anything anywhere, and, then, if you are stirred into action, your enforcement notices can be ignored because you won’t follow them up.

All the while communities like Llangynog are betrayed. Their people robbed and threatened while you hide in County Hall.

Here’s my suggestion.

You have the information you need from the community council and your own records. So work it out with the police and one fine day descend on the Llangynog area and make it clear to all malefactors that unauthorised work is to cease, with chalets and other structures without planning permission to be removed. Then remedial work is to be undertaken.

Fail to do this and you’ll end up in the same mess as your predecessors. Do it and not only will you be serving those who pay your salaries, but you will send out a message that will save the council a lot of work in future, and the county’s communities a lot of misery.

◊

WALTER MITTY GETS IN ON THE RENEWABLES SCAM

As we’ve seen, the drive to be environmentally friendly, encouraging people to live a simpler life, and in other ways save the planet, obviously attracts crooks and con men because there’s easy money to be made.

We’re moving a little further east now, but staying in the county of Carmarthenshire, to not far from the great metropolis of Llanelli.

Those of you familiar with the A484 as it runs north from Pembrey to Kidwelly will know that it crosses low-lying, marshy terrain. Part of it known as Kidwelly Flats.

So you might be surprised to learn that someone wants build a solar farm there. Opposite Pembrey International Airport.

That someone is Arthur Edwyn Turner-Thomas. For that’s the name given on the title document for ‘The Pen, Pembrey’. Though on this Companies House entry for Richard Thomas and Co (Hydro) Ltd he is elevated to Sir Arthur Edwyn Turner VC.

It should go without saying that he is neither a knight nor has been awarded the Victoria Cross. He is, as the title to this section suggests, a fantasist.

But not to be entirely dismissed, because he’s also a practising con man.

Artists who appeared at his Tenby Folk Festival in August 2008 – headlined by Cerys Matthews – are still wondering what happened to the £30,000 collected by Arthur Turner-Thomas – cos they never saw a penny of it!

The report I’ve linked to tells that the festival was organised through the Field Admiral’s company Wicked Wang Promotions Ltd. That company must have folded, but a new company with the same name was launched in January 2017. With ‘Edwin’ serving as secretary and ‘Edwyn’ as director.

The thing about this company is that the latest available accounts claim it has assets of £137,526. Yet in October 2020 Sir Arthur Edwyn Turner VC applied to strike the company off. Had creditors caught up with him?

In December 2020 there was certainly an objection to the striking off, and the company is now in a state of limbo, with accounts a year overdue. I wonder where the money is?

Anyway, moving on . . . Arthur applied to build a small solar farm on the marshland he owns. The community council objected, a plan so absurd that Carmarthenshire County Council turned it down!

But the Field Admiral is still making money from the site because I’m told the ‘Welsh Government’ has given him a grant to look after some trees. Which, to judge by the pictures I’ve been sent, he is not doing very well.

And whaddya know – a shipping container has appeared, just as in Llangynog. I wonder what that will be used for?

It should go without saying that Field Admiral of the RAF Lord Sir Arthur Edwyn Turner-Thomas VC, Croix de Guerre, Congressional Medal of Honour, Iron Cross (First Class), Woodcraft Badge, was once a Plaid Cymru candidate. And is probably still a member.

But who’s going to notice one more nutter among the Bangor ‘No Debating!’ Society, the Splott Terfhunters Alliance (pile-on training every Tues & Fri), and the Knit Your Own Antifa Balaclava Collective?

UPDATE 12.01.2022: I’ve received more photographs. I’m still intrigued by that storage container. The trees are obviously thriving under the Grand Vizier’s stewardship. I’m assured that that is an eco-friendly tyre dump. And look at the little rocking-horse. Ahh!

◊

CONCLUSION

Politicians in Wales, especially on the left, have been suckered by those who’ve hijacked an environmental crusade for personal gain. Which is why we have rural slums springing up everywhere, burning wood, polluting watercourses, and paying nothing towards the services they have no intention of abandoning.

And it can only get worse.

For the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ wants to throw money at global corporations and hedge funds, to encourage them to buy up Welsh land, to destroy rural communities, in order to claim that they are offsetting their carbon emissions.

Add this to the problems of holiday homes, Airbnb, etc . . .

As with wind turbines, there will be no jobs, no investment in Wales, just more ‘climate colonialism’. Though Wales can not really be classed among the ‘developing countries’. No, under authoritarian crony socialism we’re going backwards.

Though we’d win an Olympic gold if the IOC introduced Gesture Politics as an event.

It’s only a matter of time before some lying bastard turns up in Corruption Bay with a bag of magic beans. He’ll claim they grow into trees with wind turbines instead of branches; and instead of leaves, the branches will sprout little solar panels. Ahhh!

I hope I’m not giving you ideas, Sir Arthur!

♦ end ♦

Black Mountains College

On 27/08/202031/08/2020 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Wales80 Comments

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR

♦

Black Mountains College got a mention in the previous post, since when the Annual Review and Financial Statement has become available on the Companies House website. This new document throws up a number of matters worthy of comment. There are also other issues that need an airing.

◊

IN THE BEGINNING

There are two companies using the Black Mountains College name.

The first, Black Mountains College Ltd, was Incorporated 3 October, 2017, and I suspect it was something of a false start. I say that because it was set up as a private limited company, and it’s now dormant.

Perhaps realising their mistake, the BMC crew soon set up the Black Mountains College Project (without ‘Limited’) as a company limited by guarantee, and a charity of the same name, 7 February, 2018.

The difference being that with the first company the directors would have been fully liable had it gone belly-up, but with the second incarnation the directors can only be made to cough up a maximum of £10 each.

The directors of Black Mountains College Ltd are Dr William Newton-Smith and Ben Rawlence. Newton-Smith is also a director and trustee of the second company, while Rawlence is now CEO.

Potted biographies for the directors/trustees of the Black Mountains College Project can be found on the BMC website. I’ll provide further information as this article develops.

◊

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

You can get quite a lot of information from the BMC website. More can be found in this piece by Rawlence from the autumn/winter 2018 issue of The Welsh Agenda, published by the Institute of Welsh Affairs. (The images suggest someone was a little heavy-handed with the Photoshop controls.)

The BMC offers a degree course with a partner university that I can’t find named on the site, but which might be Trinity St David’s of ‘Dr’ Jane Davidson. An institution that has been moving steadily east from Lampeter and Carmarthen so much in recent years that it’s only a matter of time before it crosses the border.

But whichever university it is, it’s not named among ‘Our Partners’.

The BMC also offers, “further education vocational training in future skills. We aim to get you ready for a high-tech, low carbon future with skills such as seasonal catering, organic horticulture, coppicing, coding and regenerative farming.”

‘Seasonal catering’ can only mean tourism. God help us!

Let’s turn now to the Rawlence article. Here’s the link again.

In a highlighted block we read: “Powys is facing a ‘catastrophic’ risk of a
collapse in its working age population. The rural economy is facing several
existential threats”.

And yet, Ben Rawlence is right, though I suspect he doesn’t know the reasons.

Powys has been neglected for the whole period of devolution because the Labour Party hates rural areas – where it has little support – and encourages attacks on agriculture, the mainstay of the rural economy, from the eco-warriors and rewilders now rallying to the BMC standard. To complete the picture Powys – like other rural areas of Wales – is filling up with retirees.

Result: A collapse in the working age population of Powys . . . but it doesn’t really matter because there are few jobs! That’s the ‘Welsh Government’s strategy for rural areas – neglect the needs of the indigenous Welsh to facilitate managed economic decline which will be disguised by the indigenes being replaced by a largely non-working population.

The way to improve the situation is to build up an economy creating jobs for local people. This will not be achieved by attracting basket-weavers and organic radish growers who will never be more than self-employed.

◊

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

As I mentioned at the top, what prompts this piece is the availability of the latest Annual Review and Financial Statement. Here’s the link again, to help you follow where I’m going. Maybe keep it open in another window.

Let’s start on page 3, under ‘Financial Review’. You’ll read mention of funding from the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority. This came from the Authority’s Sustainability Fund and totalled £82,500. This was matched with a further £45,000 from the Ashley Family Foundation.

You’ll also see mention of “The Arwain (Leader) grant”. This is ‘Welsh Government’ funding via Powys County Council.

At the very bottom of the page you’ll read of a “large private donation” of £103,000. Perhaps you’ll agree with me that that seems a rather odd amount. Is it a more rounded figure in some other currency, and if so, which currency might that be?

Scrolling down . . .

Top of page 4 tells of £97,000 over two years from the National Lottery Community Fund, People and Places. Plus “several private donations of 5k”. I shall return to this in a moment.

Page 11 reminds us that last year Black Mountains College received a £45,000 grant from the Community Foundation in Wales. This is a funder I’m unfamiliar with, and even after visiting the website I’m still not clear where its money comes from, or how it operates. All I can tell you is that it’s another Englandandwales outfit. (Scotland and Northern Ireland are not covered.)

There’s obviously money coming in, but I was still surprised to see £122,415 spent on “Legal & professional fees”, compared to just £6,040 the previous year. Though I’m sure very little of this would have gone on legal fees.

Part of this sum (plus match funding) went to employ a Communications Director three days a week. Which means that the greater part went on professional fees.

Under ‘Expenditure’ on page 4 we see the likely beneficiary in The Philanthropy Company. Certainly, Black Mountains College gets a mention as a client of the fund-raising Philanthropy Company.

Though for a fledgling organisation with not a lot of cash that is a big outlay. Some might say extravagant.

On the plus side, staff costs soared from £23,890 in 2019 to £105,979 in 2020.

Images: Black Mountains College. Click to enlarge

Which is what it’s all about, bringing jobs to Powys . . . but not for locals.

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LIFE’S A LOTTERY . . . OR MAYBE NOT!

If you’ve been paying attention then you’ll remember that I told you about £97,000 promised by the National Lottery Community Fund, People and Places.

The reason I’m returning to this is that the Black Mountains College is unusually well connected when it comes to the National Lottery. In fact, of the seven directors/trustees two have Lottery connections – and I don’t mean selling tickets in a corner shop!

David Isaac, partner at solicitors Pinsent Masons, was a director of the Big Lottery Fund from 2014 to 2018.

Currently serving as a member of the Community Fund board is Elizabeth Passey.

What I find odd about Ms Passey is that nowhere in connection with the Lottery, either in the site I linked to in the previous paragraph, nor in this announcement from the UK Government of her reappointment, is there any mention of her link with the Black Mountains College. Nor, come to that, is there a mention of BMC in this bio from The Entrepreneurs Network.

Which I find odd, considering that she was there at the start of BMC, on September 7, 2018. As was David Isaac.

In fact, seeing as David Isaac served on the Lottery from 2014 to 2018, and Elizabeth Passey was reappointed for a second term in 2018, they would have served together.

Equally puzzling is that Ms Passey’s BMC bio (scroll down to ‘Trustees’) does not mention her Lottery role.

Almost as if we’re not allowed to see Lottery and BMC together.

I won’t say too much as I’m already knee-deep in solicitors’ letters, but two out of seven directors/trustees having top jobs with the Lottery, and the Lottery then shelling out £97,000 for BMC, with possibly more to come, is food for thought.

Certainly got me thinking.

UPDATE 30.08.2020: A number of comments have drawn our attention to the fact that David Isaac has done very well for himself, very well indeed. Whereas some are homeless, most of us satisfied with one home, the greedy wanting two, but Dai has got three, maybe more. ‘Champagne socialist’, the Daily Mail called him.

The more we learn about Black Mountains College the more obvious it becomes that they’re a bunch of ‘We know best’ poseurs, charlatans and interlopers.

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CONCLUSION

From my executive swivel chair the Black Mountains College looks like a milking machine. A few people, sensing the zeitgeist, have seen a chance to both enhance their reputations in certain circles while also pulling down a bit of moolah.

I certainly don’t believe it started as described by Emma, when, “On a wintry night in 2016, with wind rattling the windows, Ben and his neighbour Owen talked about the frightening future that their young daughters would inherit.”

Makes it sound like they were waiting for Heathcliff and Cathy!

On nights such as that I find the best thing to do is to relax with a glass or twa while listening to Hank Williams singing some particularly soulful numbers, then putting on a good pair of woolly socks and going to bed.

However it started, the Black Mountains College had to be in Wales. After TAN 6 and One Planet Developments, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and the ‘Welsh Government’ declaring war on farmers, just about every eco-shyster on planet Earth was Googling ‘Wales’.

Go to 7:10 in this video to hear some arrogant interloper named Chris Vernon opine: “There is no reason why Wales couldn’t support several tens of thousands of smallholdings in the open countryside”.

How many, exactly, Chris, 30,000, 50,000? Whose country are we talking about, Chris?

And how many Welsh farming families will have to lose their land to accommodate these tens of thousands of smallholdings? Or, if the smallholdings would be on land that is currently unused, how the hell would that be helping the environment?

UPDATE: The saintly Dr Chris Vernon works for the Met Office in Bristol. His wife, Dr Erica Thompson, is a Fellow of the London School of Economics. I doubt that they live full-time on their OPD.

What’s more, with them both pulling down good salaries they certainly don’t need the income from their OPD. Which makes them, at best, hobby farmers; at worst, eco-charlatans.

Despite lauding the self-sufficient, off-grid lifestyle they don’t actually live it.

If Black Mountains College takes off then Chris Vernon and his ilk will have their mother church. Somewhere ‘safe’ for their kids to be educated. And BMC will attract more Chris Vernons to Wales.

In another contribution Ben Rawlence urges us to ‘decolonise’ this, that and t’other. But it never occurs to the Ben Rawlences of this world that they can be as guilty of colonialist behaviour, especially in Wales, as those on the political right they are so ready to condemn as “threats to the liberal order”.

(Trans: The Orwellian-sounding “threats to the liberal order” means those who won’t submit to the left liberal climate alarmist agenda. Or those who can think for themselves and won’t be dictated to.)

Let’s finish with another rhetorical flourish from Rawlence’s piece in the IWA publication. A paragraph towards the end begins with, “The college of the future cannot be a college on the hill, an ivory tower divorced from its environment.”

Yet that’s exactly what the cult-like Black Mountains College wants to be. And that’s why it must not be funded from the public purse.

♦ end ♦

Wales and envirocolonialism

On 24/08/202029/08/2020 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Environmentalism, Wales, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Wind Turbines31 Comments

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Envirocolonialism may not be a term you’re familiar with, but I’ve coined it to describe two separate but linked phenomena.

The first of which is companies from outside of Wales building wind farms, wave power installations, and other facilities, that provide few if any jobs for Welsh people and contribute little or nothing to the Welsh economy.

The second is eco-warriors of various hues, including ‘rewilders’, also from outside of Wales, demanding land and funding to put into practice what are often insane schemes working against the interests of Welsh people and their communities. Or simply milking the funding system.

Yet both these forms of envirocolonialism are encouraged by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, which dresses up this exploitation as an economic strategy by which Wales will become prosperous while also saving the planet.

This lie, and the ugly colonialism it disguises, must be exposed and rejected.

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‘BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND’

Last week the Guardian told us that the Crown Estate had given permission to a subsidiary of the French oil giant Total for floating wind turbines off the north coast. The English Crown giving a French company the go-ahead in Welsh waters.

(In Scotland – thanks to the SNP – the Crown Estate is devolved.)

But we were asked to believe there was Welsh involvement thanks to a Pembroke Dock-based company, Blue Gem Wind Ltd.

Don’t get too excited, for Blue Gem Wind is simply a marriage of convenience between Total and Simply Blue Energy. Blue Gem changed its registered office address from Kernow to Pembrokeshire last June, probably in anticipation of this project.

Both directors of Simply Blue Energy Wind Ltd are citizens and residents of Ireland, but the company has an address in Cornwall. There’s also Simply Blue Energy (Wave Hub) Ltd, with the same County Cork-based directors and the same Cornwall address.

One of the Irishmen is also found at Simply Blue Energy (Scotland) Ltd, but the other director is Scottish, with an Edinburgh address. The secretary, though, lives in County Louth, some distance from both The Rebel County and Auld Reekie.

This announcement was soon followed by news of what I take to be a separate development of some 100 turbines. The beneficiary here is RWE Renewables, the German conglomerate. With the the usual flotilla of small companies from over the border following in the giant’s wake.

‘Renewable energy targets’ that bear no resemblance to Wales’ needs. Just a fig leaf to disguise exploitation. Click to enlarge

There will soon be wind turbines off the coast from the border to the Menai Strait. And the benefits for Wales will be counted in a few dozen jobs. Though from what I hear, those already doing the jobs seem to have arrived from a few hundred miles east of Mostyn docks.

But never mind! There may be no Welsh companies involved, and no Welsh jobs, but we can still get a warm glow from sitting in our deck chairs, looking out to sea at hundreds of wind turbines making Wales’ contribution to saving the planet.

A contribution so insignificant that it can be wiped out by just one more coal-fired power station in China or a day’s logging in Amazonia.

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RIDING THE WAVE . . . BUT NOT IF YOU’RE WELSH

With wind power being unreliable, the short life span of the turbines, the landscape damage, the killing of birds and bats, and now the increased risks of flooding, public opinion is turning against onshore wind power.

This goes some way to explaining the increase in offshore wind power, such as we looked at in the previous section, and also wave-generated energy.

Which is the cue to introduce another company, one that hasn’t gone through the charade of taking out a Pembrokeshire address.

In fact, it would be odd if Wave Hub had moved to Wales . . . seeing as it’s 100% owned by Cornwall County Council. And before the council took control in November 2017 Wave Hub had been owned by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

While Wave Hub is obviously not a Welsh company it nevertheless has enough of a ‘presence’ in Pembrokeshire to guarantee it £60 million from various funding sources. Including the Swansea Bay City Deal and the ‘Welsh Government’.

Did you know we had an ‘Internet Coast’? Click to enlarge

According to the linked article, the City Deal will provide £28 million with this “expected to help leverage a further £32 million of public and private funding”. No doubt a sizeable chunk of the remaining £32 million will come from the Welsh public purse.

And what will we get in return?

Research and development will almost certainly be conducted outside of Wales, and we can guarantee that Wales will not see the profits. Which leaves jobs. How many will there be and who’ll be monitoring the situation to ensure that locals get them? Answers: very few; nobody.

So let’s stop deluding ourselves and recognise a rip-off when it’s staring us in the face and twisting our gonads.

Here’s my interpretation of Wave Hub’s move to Wales.

Once it became clear there were to be City deals for Swansea and Cardiff clever minds in London sat down and thought, “OK, so we’re giving the Taffs this money . . . now how do we get back as much of it as possible?”

The Swansea Bay City Deal was signed off in March 2017 by Prime Minister Theresa May. The gestation period would have been at least a year. So let’s see how that fits with the Wave Hub timeline.

Chubby Cheeks looking miserable – tea but no biccies? Click to enlarge

Despite having been in existence since December 2011 the accounts for y/e 31 March 2016 show net assets of just £3,638. A company just ticking over, maybe waiting for a project.
March 2017, Swansea Bay City Deal signed off.
November 27, 2017, Cornwall County Council takes control of Wave Hub Ltd. Is this to make it more acceptable to the Welsh public?
July 1, 2019, Wave Hub appoints Piers Basil Guy as director. He will know ‘Welsh Government’ and Natural Resources Wales from being a director of: Llanerfyl Access Road Consortium Ltd; Parc Cynog Wind Farm; Pen y Cymoedd Wind Farm Ltd; Nant y Moch Wind Farm Ltd; Pendine Wind Farm Ltd; Nant Bach Wind Farm Ltd. What an inspired appointment!
September 18, 2019, Piers Basil Guy sets up Guy Energy Ltd. Hoping to make a bit for himself on the side?
June 11, 2020, announcement of £60 million funding for Wave Hub at its ‘Welsh’ operations.
June 11, 2020, elsewhere we read, with no mention of Pembrokeshire: “The South West Floating Offshore Wind Accelerator is being led by Wave Hub in collaboration with the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), University of Plymouth, University of Exeter, the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, A&P Group, Cornwall Council and Plymouth City Council.

Why the hell are WE, through the Swansea Bay City Deal and the ‘Welsh Government’, funding a project with no Welsh presence beyond a shed in Pembrokeshire? Where are the benefits for Wales?

All the companies listed for Piers Basil Guy are owned by Vattenfall, the Swedish company that has so much influence with the ‘Welsh Government’. A number of the wind farms listed were built on land managed by Natural Resources Wales, an agency of the ‘Welsh Government’. This includes of course the massive Pen y Cymoedd.

In addition, Basil George Guy has worked directly for a number of Vattenfall companies, sometimes through what I think is its Dutch arm, Nuon.

In this BBC article from October 2011 Guy is described as, “Nuon Renewables head of development”; while this wind energy site says in November 2012 that he’s, “Vattenfall’s head of Onshore Wind Development in the UK”.

Money is being showered on a company that might, or might not, be owned by Cornwall County Council. Either way, it has but the lightest of footprints in Wales and shouldn’t be given a penny until we are assured of tangible benefits.

Finally, is there a connection between Simply Blue (Wave Hub) Ltd and Wave Hub Ltd?

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Up at the other end of the country from Pembrokeshire a genuinely Welsh outfit, Menter Môn, also has plans for wave energy, but it is being thwarted by a cat’s paw acting for Natural Resources Wales and the ‘Welsh Government’.

The ‘cat’s paw’ is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), another English organisation believing that Wales is too nice to be left to the Welsh. A view shared of course by the board of Natural Resources Wales, with which the RSPB has far too close a relationship.

The RSPB has recently come out in opposition to Menter Môn’s Morlais tidal energy plan. The project itself is explained here.

Though the RSPB has no issue with wind turbines killing birds!

Perhaps what the RSPB and NRW found offensive was, “Morlais is a Menter Môn project which aims to benefit local communities . . .”. That’s not how envirocolonialism works.

Though there has been opposition from other quarters, mainly the Trearddur Bay Sailing Club and the owners of ‘seasonal properties’ at Rhoscolyn. This explains the intervention of the constituency’s Conservative candidate a few weeks before last December’s general election.

The person being interviewed is Tom Roberts, presumably a local, and therefore unrepresentative of the opposition to the Morlais scheme. Here he is looking suitably impressed with Virginia Crosbie doing a memsahib – ‘Speak up man; speak, damn you!

She gets out of him what he has perhaps been primed to say – the Morlais project could be bad for tourism. Mmm. Is that a negative any more?

Virginia Crosbie, friend, possibly tenant, of Jake Berry, the Tory MP for Rossendale and Darwen in east Lancashire. How many properties does Berry now own on Ynys Môn?

Joking aside, let me spell this out quite clearly, for the avoidance of any doubt.

The RSPB would not have objected to this scheme if it had come from a developer viewed more favourably by Natural Resources Wales and the ‘Welsh Government’, neither of which wants to encourage genuinely Welsh initiatives.

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TALES OF THE RIVERBANK

For a couple of years now a few people have been urging me to take a peek at the The Wye and Usk Foundation. At first sight, there seems to be nothing to worry about, the Foundation is a body trying to improve rivers and riparian environments. It of course works closely with Natural Resources Wales.

Admittedly, it’s a cross-border organisation, with most of the territory it covers being in Wales but, as is usually the case, with a majority of its trustees from outside.

But then, the more you look at the Wye and Usk Foundation the more the doubts creep in. It can be a little thing, such as this sentence found under ‘Climate Change’, on page 5 of the latest Trustees’ report.

“The summer drought also led to an increase in fodder crops being grown in the Welsh uplands which pose a serious risk to our rivers this winter.”

This is an organisation based in Wales, so why not just say, “uplands”? Using the term “Welsh uplands” makes it sound like an alien, and hostile, area. Something that could have been written by a 12th century Norman chronicler.

And of course, there’s the inference that Welsh farmers harm rivers. Which could have been written by that scourge of Welsh hill farmers, George Monbiot.

Talk of the devil! – less than a fortnight ago the man himself was writing in the Guardian about these very rivers, the Wye and the Usk, saying:

“In the west of Britain, the main issue is livestock farming. As dairy and poultry units have consolidated, the manure they produce is greater than the land’s capacity to absorb it. As an agricultural contractor explained to the Welsh government, some farmers are deliberately spreading muck before high rainfall, so that it washes off their fields and into the rivers. A farm adviser told the same inquiry that only 1% of farm slurry stores in Wales meet the regulations.”

Follow the link and you’ll see that the person who made that allegation about farmers deliberately spreading muck before rain was allowed to remain anonymous. (If he or she ever existed.)

Typical Grauniad, picture of a Welsh river but headline refers to UK government. Click to enlarge

In the same article Monbiot also wrote: “The Wye itself is dying at astonishing, heartbreaking speed.” Yet the The Wye Usk Foundation is far more upbeat. But then, Monbiot is a polemicist and a scaremonger, with a strategy to follow.

Basically, Monbiot’s message is: ‘Welsh farmers are bastards, get them off the land and then turn the land over to people like me’.

So, does George Monbiot have links to The Wye and Usk Foundation?

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TALGARTH, SEAT OF LEARNING

The Wye and Usk Foundation is based in Talgarth, and among the trustees we find Elizabeth Passey, formerly of US investment bank Morgan Stanley, and now the Big Lottery Fund. Ms Passey is also a trustee of the Black Mountains College Project in Talgarth. Though for some reason Ms Passey’s role with the Big Lottery is not mentioned in her BMC bio, below.

On the BMC website Passey is said to hail “from a corn merchant family on the Welsh borders.” But from Talgarth it’s the English borders. It’s only the ‘Welsh borders’ for people who see Wales through English eyes, or from an anglocentric perspective . . . such as those involved in the Black Mountains College Project.

I have written about the Black Mountains College . . . or at least, the plan to set up such an institution, and to link it with a similar school in the USA funded by George Soros.

The Black Mountains College plans to offer “planet-centric education”. As we have come to expect with such ventures, there is little Welsh involvement.

Just last month, ‘Dr’ Jane Davidson, midwife to One Planet Developments, inspiration for the Future Generations legislation, doyenne of all things envirocolonial, appeared on the putative college’s website.

I assure you there is more crap on this website than Monbiot ever saw in the Wye. And the same could be said for Davidson’s book.

UPDATE 25.08.2020: The accounts for y/e 28.02.2020 are now available.

We see the £75,000 grant last year from the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority. A fresh grant of £49,036 from Arwain (money taken from farmers in the transfer from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2 made by Alun Davies in 2013). Also, £16,750 from the National Lottery Community Fund. For which BMC can no doubt thank Ms Passey.

There are now three full-time employees; and while no one earns more than £60,000 we can be sure that with staff costs of £105,979 there are three people each earning a good screw.

Though I’d love to know why ‘Legal and professional fees’ jumped from £6,040 in 2019 to £122,415 in 2020.

Perhaps sitting next to Passey in the BMC boardroom yurt is Chris Blake, for he is also a trustee. You may remember that Chris had a walk-on role in last week’s offering, about beavers. That was due to him being a Natural Resources Wales board member.

When he’s not fulfilling the world vision of George Soros, or helping NRW screw us, Blake works with The Green Valleys (Wales) Community Interest Company. As far as I can see there is no other company with that name, so why does it need ‘(Wales)’?

That nagging doubt returns about people being in Wales but still looking at the country through the eyes of an outsider, or else selling it to outsiders.

Also on the Green Valleys board we find Grenville Ham, formerly of the Green Party of Englandandwales and now Plaid Cymru.

Now we move south west, to the Rhondda, accompanied by Messrs Blake and Ham.

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HONEST RIP-OFF OR PATERNALISM?

As any self-respecting crow will tell you, the distance between the hill station of Talgarth and the native settlement of Treherbert is just over 20 miles. Though they can appear to be much further apart.

Last week we learnt from the BBC:

“A former mining village has been awarded nearly £250,000 to develop Wales’ first community ownership project.

The Skyline project wants to take charge of about 1.5 sq miles (4 sq km) of forestry around Treherbert, Rhondda Cynon Taff.

It wants to create jobs in forestry and provide timber for affordable homes.

It also hopes to open up space to grow vegetables and encourage use of the woods for education and leisure.

The money will be used to develop the ideas with the hope of getting up to £2.5m from the National Lottery climate action fund to put their plans into action.”

There is clearly local enthusiasm, but who’s running the show, and what are their ultimate intentions?

We see mention of the Skyline project. I visited the Skyline website, where I found this video of an event held in Cardiff on May 1, 2019.

We hear Chris Blake, because Skyline is run by his Green Valleys company from Talgarth.

We also hear from Ian Thomas who, despite the name, does not sound as if he’s from round by ‘ere. He represents the ‘social enterprise’ Welcome to our Woods. In big type the home page of the Welcome to our Woods website tells us: “We are a community partnership in the Upper Rhondda Fawr, South Wales Valleys UK.”

‘South Wales Valleys UK’! Yet again, that ‘outsider’ phrasing.

WTOW Ltd is a company that has been going since 7 November 2014. Ceri Nicholas, a local who features prominently in the video below, was in at the start, but ceased to be a director in March this year. Why leave when things are about to take off?

Apart from Ian Thomas the directors are Simone Jayne Devinett of the Rhondda Housing Association; and Phillip John Vickery, who used to work for Pembrokeshire Association of Voluntary Services and uses a Haverfordwest address.

Further confusion is caused by the WTOW website still showing Ceri Nicholas as a director, and also a Karen Davies of Purple Shoots, who is not listed as a director with Companies House.

Sort yourselves out!

In the video, locals are given bit parts, but at 2:04 we meet Sonya Bedford, introduced as ‘Head of Energy Stephen Scown Solicitors’. The name is in fact Stephens Scown, and it’s based in Devon. What the hell is she doing there?

The trip to Scotland is revealing, if only for the kind of people they met up there.

All the talk of growing vegetables, and living in cheap, timber housing suggests One Planet Developments. Which only adds to the feeling that this Rhondda project might simply be using locals to further the ends of a select group of outsiders.

People who are largely unemployable in the real world, whose companies are unviable, but who survive through political patronage, public funding, and of course Lottery funding. Which is where Elizabeth Passey of the National Lottery will come in handy.

To complete the picture of a scam being run by outsiders, for outsiders, the BBC was kind enough to tell us that the project manager is Melanie Newton.

If that name rings a bell it’s because Melanie was, until very recently, CEO of Summit to Sea, with which George Monbiot and others were deeply involved. This was an attempt to take over a vast area inland and north of Aberystwyth, evict the farmers, plant millions of trees, and introduce all sorts of exotic animals.

I’ve written about Summit to Sea a number of times, starting with The Welsh Clearances. There was also an excellent guest post by Jon Coles of the Pembrokeshire Herald.

Those involved in this population replacement scheme were encouraged by the ‘Welsh Government’s threat to use Brexit as a weapon against farmers. Explicit in Brexit and our land. In fact, the ‘rewilders’ probably influenced the writing of the document.

One obvious channel of influence would have been ‘Game Show Gary’ Haggaty, advisor to and lover of Lesley Griffiths, the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs. Gary hates farmers. So do too many of the civil servants advising that shower in Corruption Bay.

So maybe the people of the Rhondda should worry that the real plan may be to get rid of them, forest the valley floor, and bring in lynx, beaver, and God knows what else. Because Melanie has form, and so do some of the others involved.

It has been suggested to me that this project in the Rhondda is part of a wider scheme, the brainchild of Alun Davies, Labour MS for Blaenau Gwent.

The Valleys Regional Park seems to be one of the Labour Party’s periodic attempts to convince Valleys’ voters that they aren’t being taken for granted. The document is page after page of what Monbiot imagined he saw in the Wye, though not without black humour.

Extolling the natural beauty of the Valleys, on page 14 we see:

Those “magical moorlands” of Mawr have been desecrated by the Mynydd y Gwair wind farm of the Duke of Beaufort.

Fitting, because Davies’ partner is Anna McMorrin. She has been mentioned a few times on this blog, lobbying for London investors wanting to despoil Powys with wind turbines. She’s been the Labour MP for Cardiff North since the June 2017 general election.

And talking of the Labour Party, Melanie Newton is a staunch supporter, if not a card-carrying member.

Connections. Connections. Connections.

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TOMORROW BELONGS TO THEM?

What I’ve described here is not sincere people saving the environment of Wales for the Welsh but a network of ruthless grant-grabbers and would-be colonists trying to take it from us. Which means that at every opportunity Welsh people, and especially farmers – because they hold so much land – must be demonised.

This explains the borderline racism about ‘upland Welsh’ from the Wye and Usk Foundation, and the anonymous ‘sources’ quoted by George Monbiot.

The environment of Wales is being saved by and for more enlightened and superior people. Reminiscent of the Nazi’s idea for removing lesser races from conquered territories in the east and reintroducing (even back breeding) lost species such as the Auroch.

“Lutz began calling for the transformation of newly conquered lands in the east in order to recreate the primordial forest described in the epic Germanic poem Nibelungenlied. Lutz and Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and president of the Reichstag, became friends and went hunting in traditional dress and armed with spears to try and recreate the heroism of ancient German mythology.”

I’m not suggesting that the rewilders plan ‘Beowulf weekends’, where blond and hearty computer programmers from Solihull roam newly-forested hills dressed as Anglo-Saxon warriors before retiring to the Hall for a saga, a skinfull of ale, and a bit of wenching.

But who knows?

This colonialist approach to rewilding goes hand in hand with Wales making such a disproportionate contribution to ‘saving the planet’ that Lesley Griffiths adopts the persona of a madam greeting punters: “Ev’nin’, ducky, which bit of Wales would you like to have your way with?”

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Of course we must protect the Welsh environment, and sensibly increase the use of renewable and clean energies. But this must be done in the interests of Wales; not by using climate change to cloak exploitation, or to promote a form of conservation that is paternalistic colonialism flirting with ethnic cleansing.

♦ end ♦

Tourism in Wales: problems, thoughts, suggestions

On 04/08/202029/08/2020 By JacIn Colonialism, Tourism, Wales112 Comments

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I’m taking a break from the con men, fraudsters and assorted crooks who figure regularly here. But I’m not moving far, because this week I’m focusing on tourism operators, politicians and others who themselves have but a nodding acquaintance with the truth.

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THE STORM BREAKS

One of the benefits of coronavirus and lockdown was the absence of tourists, and the joyous consequences of that absence. Such as much less traffic on our rural roads, fewer call-outs for our emergency services, and in all manner of ways making rural and coastal areas of Wales more pleasant for those who live there all year round.

Making recent months seem even more of a lost golden age has been the irruption of noisy, stupid and irresponsible tourists since lockdown was eased by our self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, bowing to pressure from the Conservative and Unionist Party and tourism operators.

There has inevitably been a reaction from local people to the return of the tourists in what have been, literally, overwhelming numbers. What you see below was the scene two weeks ago near Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon).

Much of the anger this has generated is directed at motorists, with many photos in print and online of inconsiderately parked cars. Which allowed some to argue that all would be well if we had bigger car parks to accommodate all the vehicles. Or even park and ride schemes.

Both of which ignore the real problem – many areas get more cars than the local road system can handle, and more people than the environment can cope with. I shall return to the environmental angle later.

Let’s also remember that the problems caused by tourism go way beyond traffic issues.

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RESPONSES

Here’s a two-page spread from last Wednesday’s Llais y Sais, in which we read Councillor Gareth Thomas, Cyngor Gwynedd’s Head of Economical Development, opine that, despite the recent problems, tourism, “provides high quality jobs for local people as well as supporting the county’s environment, language, culture and destinations”.

“Destinations”?

I don’t know Gareth Thomas, he might be a great bloke, but anyone saying that tourism provides high quality jobs, and that it also supports the area’s environment, language and culture is talking absolute nonsense.

Yesterday’s Daily Post carried what might have been an attempt to retrieve the situation. (With first minister Drakeford not ruling out a tourism tax . . . sort of.) But did council leader Dyfrig Siencyn really say, as he is quoted: ” . . . our rural economy is totally dependent on the tourism industry”?

A fuller version of this article may have appeared in Llais y Sais, Read it here.

Perhaps hoping to establish its own credentials vis-à-vis tourism opposition group Llais Gwynedd also weighed in. For those unfamiliar with Llais Gwynedd (which has 6 councillors), it sees itself as perhaps more radical than Plaid Cymru, more rooted in the local communities of Gwynedd.

Its spokesman, Glyn Daniels, wants to charge hikers on Yr Wyddfa £1 per head. I don’t know Glyn Daniels either, but he’s also talking rubbish. At £1 per head the money raised wouldn’t be enough to cover the costs of collecting and processing it.

What’s more, it would not serve as a deterrent. And we need some kind of deterrent to reduce the numbers coming to areas like our national parks and other ‘honey pots’. To cover the costs mentioned, and put a decent amount into the communities affected, the charge would need to be a minimum of £10 a head.

In a Daily Post poll, more than 70% of respondents agreed there should be a charge.

Opposing Councillor Daniels’ suggestion to charge hikers was Brân Devey, of Ramblers Cymru, with a remark I found rather puzzling: “Local people will not go up Snowdon really in the summer, it is too busy”.

Is he saying we shouldn’t charge the people overcrowding Yr Wyddfa in summer because they’re not locals?

‘Ramblers Cymru’ is worth a little detour.

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‘RAMBLERS CYMRU’?

You will remember that ‘Dr’ Jane Davidson, Minister for Hippies in the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition 2007 – 2011, and midwife of One Planet Developments, was also Welsh vice-president of The Ramblers before stepping down in 2007, and then, as grough tells us, she rejoined as president when she departed Corruption Bay in 2011.

But of course she shunned The Ramblers, and the ramblers, while she was a minister.

For some reason this second stint with The Ramblers is not mentioned in Davidson’s Wikipedia entry. (By the time you read it the page might have been re-written, again.)

Though it’s difficult to make out if there really is a group called Ramblers Cymru or, as the grough article I just linked to puts it, Davidson became “president of the Ramblers in Wales”.

The website, https://www.ramblers.org.uk/wales, suggests another Englandandwales organisation, for when you click ‘Home’ on the Wales page you go back to the UK site.

Which is appropriate, for most of those working for Ramblers Cymru have moved here to do jobs that are clearly beyond the abilities of Welsh people. Mainly women of the type who have flooded into Wales since devolution to run the hundreds of third sector bodies that the ‘progressive’ parties feel we can’t do without.

One, Maria Hamlett, says: “My background includes working in numerous third sector organisations in key governance roles”. While Amanda Hill has: “15 years experience working for Worcestershire County Council”. Rebecca Brough: “I have a background in policy influencing work in the governmental, charity and statutory sectors”.

Important points there. For the staff at Ramblers Cymru don’t restrict themselves to scolding a wicked farmer for leaving Berwyn the bull on the footpath, they also seek to influence policy-makers. Just as Jane Davidson did, before, during, and after her stint as a minister.

The people I’m describing do not represent – nor do they seek to represent – our interests. If Welsh interests are served then it’s entirely accidental or tangential. ‘Ramblers Cymru’ and similar organisations seek to curate (love that word!) our homeland for the benefit of others like themselves.

We have far too many colonialist organisations like ‘Ramblers Cymru’.

Because it is what it is no one should be surprised to learn that – just like ‘rewilders’ – The Ramblers demand that the ‘Welsh Government’ forces farmers to do their bidding or have their funding withheld.

Dontcha just love the term, ‘our land’. Another example of, ‘What’s yours is ours’.

The Ramblers merit this digression because they see Wales as an area for recreation. For them Wales is not a different country; where people witness their language and identity, the country itself, being destroyed by saturation tourism.

What should also make you angry is that these memsahibs, based on Cathedral Road (ideal for rambling), and others just like them, have more influence in Corruption Bay than we poor natives will ever have.

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WHAT THE POLITICIANS SAY

That ‘our’ politicians go along with ‘Playground Wales’ is easily explained.

The Labour Party, which has managed Wales since 1999, is an urban party with little concern for rural areas. Labour has no coherent economic plan for the countryside so pretending there is a ‘strategy for tourism’ is a useful way of disguising this inadequacy.

The truth is that tourism is unregulated; it just ‘happens’, and things would carry on in much the same way if the ‘Welsh Government’ fell into a wormhole and reappeared in some distant galaxy. (Stop dreaming!) Making bodies like Visit Wales little more than bystanders, pretending they do something more than organise beanos where they hand out awards and grants.

One of the few things to be said in its favour is that tourism reveals the inconsistency, if not the hypocrisy, of the Labour Party.

Wales must be covered in wind turbines to save the planet, says Labour. For the same reason, OPDs must be allowed to impose their carbon footprint on previously unused land. Yet when our environment is trashed by tourist hordes on a regular basis Labour politicians are blind to the environmental damage!

Another example of Labour’s hypocrisy might be promoting renewable energy, saving the planet, and worrying about the underprivileged . . . while giving millions of pounds to Aston Martin to build £200,000 cars doing 12 miles to the gallon.

The ‘Welsh Government’s declaration of a climate emergency is just bullshit to explain away Wales being lumbered with the wind turbines English communities refuse to accept, and having to accommodate Jane Davidson’s friends.

The Conservative and Unionist Party (plus the fringe BritNats) will support tourism because they will never object to anything that both anglicises Wales and keeps money flowing back to England from staycations in Wales.

Blind, unthinking loyalty to tourism probably explains the comment, quoted in the North Wales Pioneer, from Darren Millar, the MS for Clwyd West, addressing Glyn Daniels’ pound a head suggestion. In Millar’s view, “This is a bad idea. Every pound charged will be a pound less for people to spend in the local economy”.

If Darren Millar had thought before speaking he’d have realised that every pound charged would be guaranteed to stay in the locality, unlike money taken in other ways.

What’s more, those who drive to Yr Wyddfa – to park here, there and everywhere – are often day-trippers, from Greater Manchester, Merseyside and towns nearby. Some will arrive having filled the fuel tank before leaving England, bring a packed lunch, and go home without spending a penny!

For the environmental damage alone, these buggers should be charged £20 a head.

While Plaid Cymru . . . well, what can I say? Plaid Cymru nowadays doesn’t give much thought to Wales. They’re too busy facing up to the fascist hordes they see advancing, outing terfs on social media, and planning more dirty tricks against Neil McEvoy.

Though maybe it’s best they stay schtum, because when they do address the subject – as we’ve seen with Gareth Thomas – they only confirm that they’ve lost the plot.

Whenever a political party, or a politician, says, ‘Wales needs tourism’ they are either lying or exposing their ignorance. The truth is only arrived at by reversing the phrase to read, ‘Tourism needs Wales’.

To conclude this section on a more optimistic note, Wales has two new political parties – Gwlad and the WNP – who I’m sure will take a more analytical, and patriotic, approach to tourism.

I expect both to demand a form of tourism that works for Wales, and the Welsh. Rather than what we suffer at present – an alien enterprise with Welsh people nothing but helpless bystanders as their country is trashed.

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MAKING TOURISM WORK FOR US

Let me set out my stall . . .

I want to see an industry offering visitors from all over the world quality tourism.
An industry that provides business opportunities and well-paid, permanent jobs for Welsh people.
An industry that benefits Wales and her people without the cultural, social and environmental damage currently being inflicted by tourism.

Here are just a few suggestions for achieving these objectives:

1/ Tourism tax: A minimum charge of £2 per head per overnight stay, including those in self-catering accommodation. This to be collected by the owner of the property or site and paid to the local authority.

This money will used in the areas from which it is collected or on capital projects of more widespread benefit. Why not consult local people on how they’d like to see it spent?

Tourism tax is raised everywhere and it benefits local communities. I recall Silvio Berlusconi having to pay a local tourism tax in Sardinia when he docked his luxury yacht, the Bunga Bunga.

2/ Caravan sites: These is no place for these blots on the landscape in a country promoting quality tourism in a respected environment. They offer holidays on the cheap and the money they put into the local economy is overstated. Very few jobs are created and the major beneficiary is the site owner, often a foreign company.

Caravan sites should be phased out over a period of ten years with no replacement ‘vans, cabins or lodges permitted. Thousands of acres could be returned to agriculture or Nature by getting rid of them.

Farmers and others should be allowed small sites of perhaps no more than 50 units.

To maximise tourism income, business opportunities and jobs we should strive to have as many people as possible staying in serviced accommodation.

3/ Raising standards: In New Zealand – a country with which we often like to compare Wales – they have a School of Tourism, operating on eight campuses throughout the country, internationally respected and offering a wide range of courses.

In Wales, all we do is teach Siôn and Sioned elementary catering skills at the local sixth form college so they can work for Kevin from Stockport who owns the local hotel . . . since he bought it off Keith and Sharon from Coventry. Kevin, of course, will have had no training.

Or it might be Paul and Rowena Williams at Plas Glynllifon and Seiont Manor. Or their business partner, Myles Cunliffe. (‘Weep for Wales’ passim.) Or perhaps Siôn and Sioned can get a job at one of the hotels owned by Gavin Lee Woodhouse.

Or perhaps not, seeing as all the businesses owned by these crooks are closed and/or in the hands of receivers.

Which is why other countries insist on a proven level of proficiency, and background checks, before anyone is allowed to run a hotel. But here, money is all that matters. As long as you’ve got the dosh you can buy a five star hotel, and run it badly, thereby damaging the reputation of the locality, and Wales.

You can even buy a zoo without knowing anything about the care of animals!

4/ Permits: New Zealand provides another example worth following. (And NZ isn’t alone in this.) I’m referring now to limiting numbers visiting environmentally sensitive areas and issuing those visiting with permits.

If you live outside Wales and you want to go hiking in one of our national parks then you should pay £20 a year. For the three national parks you pay £50 a year. If the National Trust can charge us to visit sites in our own country, why can’t we do something similar and use the money for our benefit?

Again, the money raised would be used within the local area.

5/ Airports: You don’t need to go as far as New Zealand to realise the value of a good airport. Scotland is a much nearer example. Overseas tourists, high-spending overseas tourists, fly directly to Glasgow and Edinburgh. They do so all year round.

All we have is Cardiff airport, kept afloat by public money and still losing out to Bristol. We obviously need a new, more accessible airport in the south. We also need one in the north. Why not revamp Llanbedr airfield? It would be better to have overseas tourists flying in than to have the place used – as at present – for testing inaccurate drones that will wipe out wedding parties in Afghanistan.

Well-heeled foreign tourists flying in also offer opportunities for taxi and car hire firms.

6/ Public Transport: Overseas and other tourists not wanting to drive will need public transport. An integrated public transport system is therefore essential. This would have to include a north-south rail link.

The ‘Welsh Government’ has prevaricated for years over re-opening the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth line. That’s because doing so would offer no obvious benefits to Cardiff or to England.

Yet you’d think that an administration dedicated to saving the planet would prioritise public transport. But no, and this lack of commitment to public transport – apart from the Cardiff Metro (to benefit the Cardiff economy not the environment) – is yet another example of Labour’s hypocrisy.

7/ Funding: A major obstacle to Welsh people getting involved in tourism – other than as cooks and cleaners – is a lack of finance.

The ‘Welsh Government’ could divert a portion of the funding it squanders on third sector memsahibs into a pot accessible to young Welsh people who’ve been through school, got a few years practical experience under their belts, and now need funding to branch out on their own.

I appreciate that this is not how tourism is supposed to operate in a colonial context, but what the hell – let’s give it a try!

8/ Touring caravans and Camper-vans: I’m throwing this one in more as a traffic safety measure and a means of lowering blood pressure, but it’s definitely related to tourism.

No towed caravans or camper-vans should be allowed on any public highway between the hours of 6am and 10pm.

◊

CONCLUSION

Tourism in Wales can be summed up as hundreds of thousands of people driving east to west along overcrowded roads, congregating in unsustainable numbers at certain points, staying in the cheapest possible accommodation (if they stay at all), and spending as little money as possible before driving home. Each wave succeeded by the next, and each wave contributing to erosion.

So, what do you think – should we continue to accept ‘Tourism at any cost’?

I say no. I say we reject the idea that Wales exists to provide cheap holidays for our neighbours. Wales should not provide anything to anyone on the cheap.

But the political will must be there to make the necessary changes.

If the political will is absent then we as a nation have every right to defend ourselves from this exploitation of our homeland, this assault on our very identity.

♦ end ♦

Miscellany 28.07.2020: One Planet Developments, Gower Caravans, Holyhead flats, Ffordd Penrhyn

On 28/07/202029/08/2020 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Wales75 Comments

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As promised, here’s another bumper issue, four pieces from hither and yon; so even the most discerning of readers should find something to entertain or inform. If you’re lucky, you’ll be entertained and informed!

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ONE PLANET DEVELOPMENTS

As I suggested in the previous post, information is coming in about OPDs from many different places, so maybe a bullet point update is the best way to go about it.

For those new to the subject, OPDs were introduced by the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition management team (2007-2011) as a gesture to show that Wales was playing its part in the fight against global warming.

The truth was that the nonsense was engineered by Minister for Hippies, Jane Davidson, whose friends didn’t want to pay market prices for smallholdings. This explains the ‘Welsh Government’ bringing out Technical Advice Note 6, which made it clear to planners that any dreadlocked planet-saver who showed up on their patch should be allowed to build whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted.

Jane Davidson is an odd old trout. I’m not sure if she has any genuine academic qualifications, but she likes to call herself ‘Doctor’ on the strength of an honorary doctorate from Ponty Poly. Confusion is also caused by her relationship with Harvard University, in the USA, to which she once made a flying visit. Last week her Wikipedia entry was claiming that she was a faculty member, until someone queried it, after which it was changed to, “In 2017, Jane was guest faculty in the Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership programme at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.” Which explains everything . . . I suppose.
For those still unsure about exactly what One Planet Developments are, here’s some ‘Lessons in Best Practice’ from the experts at the Lammas eco-village.
“But how do they support themselves?”, you ask. For a start, they grow their own broccoli, which can be eaten for any meal. And they bring in the readies by conning the gullible to join them in an orgy of shamanic drumming. Who can say no at £250 a pop?
Click to enlarge
Another way money is being made – and we’ll see a lot more of this in the future – is selling off OPDs. A one-bedroom ‘Hobbit House’ is currently on the market with an asking price of £475,000. Though this WalesOnline article stresses that there are still questions as to whether the property has valid planning permission.
Here’s Tess Delaney’s take on it in the Pembrokeshire Herald. Tess herself lives on a OPD.
The pre-application request for advice regarding the OPD at Ilston, on Gower, is no longer available on the Swansea council website, as the applicants have been told to go away and do their homework again. To get the story, go to this post and scroll down to the section ‘Brighton Greens discover Gower’.
A source tells me that the Ecological Land Co-operative of Brighton already has a presence in Wales, at Llangolman in Pembrokeshire. Living apparently in a log cabin brought in from Bristol. Cabin in situ after ripping up ancient hedges. Nice access road, though, which must have cost a bomb.
Another OPD settlement I’ve written about recently is the one at Llyn Adain Gwydd, near to Llangarthginning farm at Meidrim. Though this is a bit complicated. On the one hand, Neil Moyse, once of Lammas, seems to be going through the planning system with his application W/39846. But there are things happening that deserve a separate mention.
In ‘One Planet Developments, getting devious‘, I mentioned the behaviour of woodlands.co.uk, which gets planning permission for ‘access roads’ for timber-related purposes that open up woodlands for leisure and other use. A source says of such a road at Meidrim: “This track now has small bays . . . each with names that are being sold off for holiday motor homes to park up in. We have notified the council who gave notice for the vehicles to be removed. As yet not all have gone. The owners attend now and then . . . “

One Planet Developments were a pointless bit of virtue signalling to begin with. But whatever one thinks of them there is no question that they were intended for families or small groups to live a self-sufficient, off-grid life.

Before OPDs the only way to get planning permission for a new dwelling in open country was to claim that it was for a forestry or agricultural worker. This system was widely abused. One route was ‘retirement bungalows’ . . . to which farmers never retired.

With planners clamping down on the ‘rural employment’ route OPDs are now just about the only way of getting planning permission for a new dwelling outside of settlement boundaries. Consequently, the OPD option was bound to attract the unscrupulous.

Labour and its partner Plaid Cymru will do nothing to curb either the spread of OPDs or the abuse of the system. Partly because OPDs are their ‘baby’, and partly because highlighting the abuse would only draw attention to an absurd piece of legislation.

Conversely, any other political party promising to clamp down on OPDs, and the underhand tactics OPDs encourage, would pick up a few votes in next year’s elections.

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MORE CARAVANS FOR GOWER!

I’ve written quite a bit about Gower recently, and it’s made me nostalgic for school holidays spent in Port Eynon, and teenage years angling, everywhere from Mumbles islands right around the coast to Blue Pool and Broughton.

Happy days!

We return to Port Eynon because someone wants Gower to host another caravan site . . . yet another caravan site. For that’s what is mooted in a pre-application enquiry to Swansea council. You can read about it here.

Here’s a direct link to the enquiry, but if it doesn’t work, then you’ll need reference number 2019/2541/PRE for the search box.

You’ll see that the council’s initial response, delivered earlier this month, was negative; but there’s a good chance that the project will return, in some ‘repackaged’ form, so let’s try to see who and what are behind it.

Let’s start by locating the project, which the pre-application enquiry tells us is ‘Land lying south of Highwinds, Port Eynon’. And there’s a plan, showing a succession of fields to the east of the A4118 running down to the village.

Image: Google Earth. The planned caravan site – coloured a tasteful shade of pink – is, at 8.4 Ha, almost as big as the village. You can also see that Port Eynon and neighbouring Horton already have more than enough caravan pitches. Click to enlarge

These fields are owned by a local family named Jones. (No relation.)

I’ve described the project as a caravan park, but that doesn’t do it justice, for the council website tells us that what’s planned is “a holiday park consisting of holiday lodges, static caravans, touring pitches and tent pitches with ancillary facilities blocks. Along with this the proposal includes an events field and car park”.

If this is approved, then the road into Port Eynon will start to look like the descent into Hell that is the A486 as it drops down into New Quay.

OK, so the Jones family owns the land, but are they behind the planning application, or is it someone else, perhaps someone willing to buy the land if planning permission can be obtained?

Because while I’ve argued in favour of farmers being allowed to supplement their incomes with small caravan sites, this goes way beyond what I could support.

Perhaps the potential purchaser is the applicant, Sutton Hospitality Consultants of Boldon, Tyne and Wear. The website looks quite professional, and the company boasts an impressive-looking team of 16.

Yet, strangely, the Sutton Linkedin page says it has ‘1 – 10 employees’.

Another curiosity is that the company number given on the website, 11250475, turns up Hospitality Consultants Global Ltd. A company that was only launched in March 2018 – as Ephihany (sic) Hotels Ltd!

The only director until 20 February, 2020 was Andy Sutton, but then he was joined by the gloriously monikered Paul John Hotson Brinton Thatcher. (I kid you not!) Thatcher has a string of companies to his name, but Sutton’s background is less clear.

There is another company we need to look at, Sutton Hospitality Park Management Ltd. There have been some strange happenings there. The company was launched as recently as 12 November, 2019, with Sutton as the only director. He was joined 20 February by Thatcher . . . who resigned the same day.

Yet the registered office moved from Sunderland to West Sussex 17 December, 2019, which suggests that Thatcher was involved before his day as director. The fact that the registered address is still in West Sussex would argue that Thatcher is now in charge.

As we’ve seen, Thatcher has a string of companies, but what is Sutton’s history?

Well, let’s start with four rather iffy-looking companies. In the order they were Incorporated.

First, Passion Safe and Secure Ltd. Incorporated 25 February 2010, compulsorily struck off 8 March, 2016. This company has one of the most bizarre series of entries I’ve ever seen on the Companies House website.

For not filing a confirmation statement saying the company is still in existence Companies House will automatically strike off, but objections are accepted. And this is what happened no less than six times with Passion Safe and Secure.

Companies House filing history for Passion Safe and Secure Ltd. Click to enlarge

In fairness Sutton resigned 21 May, 2012, but his mate, Michael Downey, kept objecting to the company being struck off even though it was filing nothing and – ostensibly – not trading. Why would someone want to keep a company like that alive?

Seeing as he left that sinking ship early we’ll excuse Sutton. But it’s a similar story with the Beehive Bakery Ltd. Started 30 November 2010, Sutton joined 7 February, 2011 and left 1 May, 2012. Then it’s a struggle with Companies House to keep alive a company that in 6 years of existence filed no accounts and, again, did not trade. Apparently.

The only director after 1 May, 2012 was Stacey Tanya Stewart, who became a director the same day as Sutton.

Moving on . . .

The next company we’ll look at is The Salon (Northeast) Ltd. Incorporated 21 March 2014, dissolved by compulsory strike-off 10 May, 2016. Sutton was the only director and, again, nothing filed, but one objection to strike-off was made to keep alive yet another company apparently doing nothing.

Finally, there’s Spoilt Rotten Hairdressing Ltd 10 July, 2017 – 11 December, 2018. Sutton the sole director and a straightforward strike-off with no objections.

There may be other companies with which Sutton has been linked, but he often calls himself ‘Andy’ Sutton, and that’s more difficult to follow due in part to a retired ice hockey player of the same name.

And then, all of a sudden, Andy Sutton is in the leisure and holiday parks business with the launch in March 2018 of Hospitality Consultants Global Ltd.

Yet according to this piece from The World of Park and Leisure Homes Show (which Sutton probably wrote and paid for), “Andy Sutton, founder of Sutton Hospitality Consultants lives and breathes hospitality and leisure – it has been his passion for 25 years.” But the article is vague, and gives no examples of this claimed experience.

Given the team he has at his disposal, the link with big shot Thatcher, and a London office, I was surprised to see Sutton use an agent from a little town in south west Wales – Gerald Blain Associates Ltd of Whitland.

Perhaps you remember this outfit from a recent post on this blog? Because Gerald Blain Associates also submitted the pre-application enquiry for the ‘eco-village’ at Dunvant. Remember? If not, read about it here, scroll down to the section ‘Farmlets’.

Here’s the plan.

What a coincidence!

I described Gerald Blain Associates then as a “shoestring outfit”, which was fair enough seeing as its net worth is said to be £49.

So many companies with sod all money working on big contracts. What’s going on – have we entered a parallel dimension of cashless business?

I say there’s more to this than meets the eye. If it is the Jones family’s project, how did they find the same agent as the one being used by the luxury OPD estate at Dunvant? And how did they find Sutton, with his chequered business record and little apparent experience in this field?

One thing I’m pretty sure of, Sutton is a front man. Who for? Well, a stab in the dark might get a scream out of Paul John Hotson Brinton Thatcher.

Something I’m absolutely sure of is that Port Eynon does not need any more bloody caravans, or ‘lodges’. The same applies to the rest of Gower, and the whole of Wales.

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HOLYHEAD FLATS

Holyhead is a town that doesn’t get a good press. Although it’s a busy ferry port that doesn’t seem to benefit the town. It just means people driving through to get the boat, and others getting off the boat and driving straight out of town.

This results in a declining community with a very run-down look and dilapidated buildings. But this decline attracts those who pretend they’re some kind of social workers when in reality all they want is to buy a cheap property, pack in as many problem cases as possible, and then charge as much as possible for housing them.

Thus completing the cycle of decline.

This is how it began in Rhyl, when ‘bucket and spade’ holidays ceased and the men who wore knotted handkerchiefs on their heads died off. Small hotels and B & Bs came available cheap, attracting unscrupulous bastards who saw an opening to make serious money. Which gives us the Rhyl we see today.

A new planning application for a building in the centre of Holyhead reminds us of this phenomenon. It’s for the old main post office on Boston Street. Which, as you can see in the capture from Google, is quite a substantial building. The Newry Nursery mentioned as objecting is right next door.

Also mentioned, as being the applicant, is Benjamin Popat, so who’s he? Let’s take a look at the planning application, see what we can learn. Here’s a direct link, but if it doesn’t work then it’s number FPL/2020/39 on the Ynys Môn planning portal.

However you got there, you’ll see that the applicant’s name is confirmed as Benjamin Popat, and the agent is a John Wyer. If you click on the application number in the ‘Documents’ row you’ll access the other documents submitted in support of the application.

The plans were drawn up by John Wyer of T.Sgwar, who was also agent for a very similar project to what is now planned for Holyhead, this one on the Maesgeirchen estate in Bangor. There he was agent for Bangor firm Shilling & Shoker Enterprises. Ltd, now dormant, which might have been set up specifically for the Maesgeirchen job.

Though who Shilling was, I have no idea. The two directors were Mangal Singh Shoker and Michael Williams. Who are also the directors of Shilling and Shoker Enterprises 11 Ltd, where Shoker is now known as ‘Manny’!

Shoker also has a few other companies.

But what of the applicant, Benjamin Popat? I found a Linkedin page for a Ben Popat, who drives for Arvonia Coaches of Caernarfon. I assume this is him; right name, right area. But it’s quite a departure for someone who takes Cofi oldies on coach trips to be planning a major building conversion in Holyhead.

Let’s come at this from another angle by seeing who owns the building.

The Land Registry tells us that 13A Boston Street, Holyhead, was bought for £70,000 in September last year by Village Views Ltd of Sittingbourne in Kent. Quite a way from Holyhead, in more ways than just miles.

So now you need to know about Village Views Ltd.

To start with, this company was only set up 7 February, 2019. And the sole director is Sunil Popat. But it’s been busy, already having taken out a loan, with CPF Two Ltd, which itself set up as recently as 30 August, 2018.

This loan to Village Views was to buy land and buildings in Sittingbourne.

Lender CPF Two Ltd has also taken out loans for itself. One with Yes Growth Ltd, which is in the business of short-term, unsecured loans; the directors are British, Italian and South African. CPF Two’s other loan came from ‘specialist lenders’ OneSavings Bank Ltd, which is owned by Kent Reliance, which is in turn owned by . . .

At the risk of confusing you further . . . CPF Two, which lent the money to Sunil Popat’s Village Views to buy the land and property in Sittingbourne, has now been taken over by We Are Catalyst Ltd, which was set up ages ago, as far back as August 2017 in fact.

The only director of We Are Catalyst is Christopher Gareth Fairfax . . . who is also the only director of CPF One Ltd, which should not be confused with CPF Two, which lent money to Village Views. And the only director of CPF Two is – go on, have a guess!

Which means that CPF Two Ltd has been taken over by We Are Catalyst Ltd, which is owned by CPF One – with the same, single director running all three!

So many lenders, and all household names, shuffling money around, perhaps hoping nobody can follow the trail. This is the underbelly of the ‘financial sector’ that makes the UK so attractive to those with a ‘buccaneering’ approach to business.

I am not for one minute suggesting that any of those mentioned in this article are involved in money laundering. This illustration is used for, well . . . illustrative purposes. Click to enlarge

Back to Holyhead.

If planning permission is granted then the old post office will not be tenanted by clean-limbed local lads leaving Mam and Dad for the first time to enjoy the freedom of a bachelor existence.

No, the old post office will become a bail hostel or similar establishment catering for those with ‘issues’. Few if any of those living there will be local to Caergybi or even to Ynys Môn. Holyhead has been chosen because the town is run-down and property is cheap. This hostel will then feed into the spiral of decline I explained earlier.

This is why the council must refuse this planning application. It would be better for the council itself to buy the old post office and rent it out cheaply to a local group.

But if Cyngor Sir Ynys Môn does consider allowing the application then the first step should be to establish who’s behind it. Is the ‘Benjamin Popat’, named on the planning application as the applicant, the same person as the ‘Sunil Popat’ of Village Views Ltd? If so, why two different names? If they’re different people, then what’s the connection?

Though my advice to the council would be to reject the application without any further ado because you know what the old post office will be used for. Your responsibility is to the town of Holyhead, not to some property speculator in Kent.

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FFORDD PENRHYN

There was a bizarre debate last week when Stand up to Racism Cardiff and the Vale (a front for the Socialist Workers and Rapists Party), speaking for Black Lives Matter, opposed a road in Barry being named Ffordd Penrhyn because its spokesperson believed it celebrates Baron Penrhyn, who had estates in the West Indies worked by slaves of mainly African descent.

This woman, a lawyer named Hilary Brown, was wrong, of course, and it was pointed out to her that Penrhyn is Welsh for promontory or headland, and referred to Barry ‘Island’. Despite realising she’d landed herself in a hole Brown kept digging and responded with, “That’s unacceptable and I want it changed”.

So ancient Welsh (and Cornish) place names are unacceptable to Hilary Brown.

An absurd position, though as the Penrhyn family name was Pennant does Brown also want us to scour the map looking for cottages, farms, hamlets, etc bearing that hateful name – and then change them all to something more acceptable to her?

This insulting nonsense is little different to English colonists and holiday home owners changing the name of their property from Welsh to English.

I suppose the problem for Hilary Brown, Stand up to Racism, the Socialist Workers and Rapists Party, and Black Lives Matter, is that they desperately want to exploit George Floyd’s death but in Wales the opportunities are limited by the absence of the prime commodity – racism. So they end up looking rather silly glaring at a piece of metal.

Thankfully, Hilary Brown is just a rabble-rouser without a rabble.

But she is an enthusiastic digger, as was proven when she threw up a few more spadefuls with, “Wales’ shameful legacy in slavery”.

WTF! National guilt! The only names I’ve heard mentioned are Penrhyn and Thomas Picton. (And I guarantee that Brown and her allies hadn’t heard of either man until a few months ago.) And because of Penrhyn and Picton all Welsh people somehow had a hand in slavery.

Do you accept that?

Though it soon becomes clear that BLM is only interested in white on black slavery committed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries in the Americas, more especially, the USA.

The fact that during the same period Barbary corsairs were carrying out slave raids on the coasts of Europe, and the Turkish empire enslaved Slavs and Central Europeans, doesn’t count. Black Africans being sold today in the slave markets of Libya is ignored. The fact that slavery has been practised throughout history is irrelevant.

And don’t mention Leicester!

So it’s not really about slavery at all. It’s about hostile feelings towards white people.

And slavery and racism are certainly unimportant for those cheering on Black Lives Matter. Not the infantile exhibitionists of Antifa but those who sense an opportunity to re-shape Western society; an ambition they believe can be be served by encouraging riots and looting in 2020 and blaming it on the Confederacy, or Columbus, or some poor bugger left a few shares in a sugar plantation by an uncle he never met.

Writing about retrospective accusations makes me think of the treatment meted out to Oliver Cromwell in 1661, after the Restoration of Charles II. His rotting corpse was disinterred and left hanging for three days before being beheaded. The head was then placed on a spike above Westminster Hall.

Though, in fairness, no one was unreasonable enough to suggest that Cromwell’s guilt should be passed down to his great-great-great-great-grandchildren.

What’s more, not even the most ardent royalist has tried to topple regicide Cromwell’s statue outside the House of Commons.

Which means I suppose that Cromwell’s ‘trial’ and subsequent treatment by his political opponents is not really a valid analogy for what we witness today, so let me introduce a more recent example.

I believe the death of George Floyd is being used by liberals, leftists and their foot-soldiers in a very similar way to the Nazis’ exploitation of the Reichstag fire in 1933, with police officer Derek Chauvin reprising the role of Marinus van der Lubbe.

Van der Lubbe was a Dutch Communist, acting alone, but it served the Nazis’ agenda to present him as the instrument of a vast Communist-Zionist conspiracy bent on enslaving the German race, and then use that ludicrous fabrication to take control of the media, suspend democracy and, ultimately, carry out the Holocaust.

Similarly, for those we’re discussing, Derek Chauvin can’t be viewed as an individual who did something wrong; he must be portrayed as the embodiment of a racist system built on the suffering of African-Americans.

Today’s enemies of democracy wear trainers not jackboots, but they’re using the same tactic of misrepresenting the action of an individual to blackmail or frighten us all into surrendering our freedoms.

Objecting to being vilified and intimidated, speaking up when your national identity is trivialised and dismissed, does not make anyone a ‘racist’. Hilary Brown and her allies should learn that the respect they demand of others, they must also give. They have harmed their cause with their arrogance and their intransigence.

∼

FOOTNOTE

A central and worrying feature of this débâcle is the refusal of Brown and her supporters to accept the truth. Here are a couple of comments posted on Sunday to the Bro Radio website in response to a local Plaid Cymru councillor coming to Brown’s rescue.

Neither Jemima Williams nor Elizabeth Millman seem able to accept that the naming of the road has nothing to do with any Baron Penrhyn or slavery. Millman even expects the council to apologise! For what?

If they still believe that the Vale of Glamorgan Council deliberately named a road after a slave-owner then it’s impossible to hold a rational debate with people like this.

Scroll down in the comments and you’ll come to Trevor Macey telling us that street names shouldn’t be in Welsh. I avoid using the term ‘gammon’ but it could have been coined for Trevor Macey.

He’s drawn to this debate because it provides him an opportunity to join in what he clearly sees as an attack on the Welsh language. Predictably, Trevor Macey doesn’t support BLM either.

Whoever allowed his comment obviously hadn’t dipped into Trevor Macey’s Facebook page, where they would have found an image of George Floyd. Make sure you click on this.

If nothing else, this Ffordd Penrhyn episode reminds us that the enemies of Wales come in all shapes and sizes, all creeds and colours, and from all points on the political spectrum. The same applies to those who want the best for Wales.

Some among us need to remove their blinkers in order to tell the difference.

♦ end ♦

Miscellany 15.07.2020

On 15/07/202024/08/2020 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Tourism64 Comments

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Seeing as I spoilt you with two issues last week this week’s post is later than usual. It takes the form of a couple of ‘starters’, a very substantial main course, followed by coffee, and then there’s a liqueur to round things off which some of you may find a little bitter.

But it’s another feast, so take your time!

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RHOSCOLYN LTD

In the recent series I did on Jake Berry – the Conservative MP for Rossendale and Darwen in east Lancashire, but who owns an ever-increasing number of properties on Ynys Môn – we found an old company of his named Rhoscolyn Ltd. This outfit bit the dust in 2010, but the name has been resurrected.

The new Rhoscolyn Ltd belongs to Michael William Kenyon, and it’s also in the business of buying, selling and letting Welsh property. Kenyon also comes from over the border, from Cheshire. As I’ve remarked before, the property market in the north seems to be controlled now from Manchester and Cheshire. With the Cheshire Set entrenched from Abba Sock to Ross Niger and Ross Colin.

Kenyon is involved in a number of companies. An interesting one being a Lloyds-linked LLP which was, apparently, started in 2008 by Kenyon’s then 88-year-old father. Or at least, in the old man’s name. Nomina No 457 LLP has no less than 44 outstanding charges, many of which link to the USA, some to a bank in Louisville, Kentucky. And when you click on the ‘People’ tab you bring up other LLPs and more Kenyons.

The world of high finance, eh! What chance do locals on Ynys Môn, or indeed the council, have against people like Jake Berry with his Westminster connections, and Maxwell with his City links?

But the question is, are the two companies named Rhoscolyn Ltd linked? Do Berry and Kenyon know each other?

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MY COMPANY!

You will recall that a company being run by crooks I’ve written about many times, started life in January 2019 as Glynllifon Mansion Ltd, then in December became Waterford Interiors Ltd, before undergoing yet another change of name in June when it became Royston Jones LL36 9YF Ltd.

This was reported to North Wales Police on the grounds of a) harassment [as it followed hand-delivered threatening letters] and b) the possibility that this company bearing my name might be used for unlawful purposes.

I also made my feelings known to Companies House, but there was nothing they could do. You can give a company any name you like, it seems. Though I’m sure you wouldn’t be able to register a company using the name of a royal, or a leading politician, or lots of other people.

Anyway, NWP phoned Myles Cunliffe, who had been a director until November, after that he ran the company through his boy Thomas Jacob Hindle. Cunliffe professed his innocence, as did Hindle when the police spoke with him. So it seems the name changed all by itself! Whatever next?

Myles Cunliffe may be back where he started in the shadowy world of unregulated car leasing and credit brokering. Someone sent this link to explain what he’s up to.

♦

AFAN VALLEY ADVENTURE RESORT

TO RECAP . . .

Among the crooks who’ve crossed the border recently we find Gavin Lee Woodhouse, of Northern Powerhouse Developments. Gavin’s business model was to buy a run-down hotel, inflate its value, and then sell off the rooms individually as ‘investments’.

Many of the buyers had overseas addresses. Whether they knew they’d bought a room from Woodhouse is a good question. Whether some of them even existed may be an even better question.

His other line was selling rooms in care homes . . . care homes that never got built.

Gavin Woodhouse owned hotels from Llandudno to Tenby, and then he got really ambitious with his Afan Valley Adventure Resort (AVAR), up behind Port Talbot.

The jackpot for Woodhouse would be selling the 600 lodges for £200,000 or more, plus the 100 hotel rooms. To get punters queuing, and to promote the ‘adventure’ angle, Woodhouse recruited maggot-muncher and self-publicist extraordinaire, Bore Grylls.

But the black clouds were gathering for Afan Valley Ltd.

Let it be universally understood that I am not for one minute suggesting that Grylls was sharp enough to have sussed that Woodhouse was a con man. Nice image of the West Glamorgan Alps. Click to enlarge

And once the storm broke Grylls doused himself with hogwash, put on his camouflage pants – the ones with the Kalashnikov sewn into the hem – and disappeared . . . to emerge a short time later from a rhododendron bush on Llŷn and convince a group of photocopier salesmen from Reading that once they’d got their boots muddy and handed over £2,000 a head they would be official, part-time, honorary members of the SAS. (And for another grand he could get them in the Foreign Legion as well!)

Before long most people realised Woodhouse was a crook . . . except, it seemed, those closest to him. Such as Peter Moore, the CEO and alleged brains of the outfit, who still thought Woodhouse was kosher!

As did the ‘Welsh Government’ whose duty it was – or should have been – to have made enquiries. Young Kenny Skates, famed for his dazzling gnashers and his Flint Ring, rushed to enjoy a photo op with Woodhouse and Moore on a high and windy hill above the Afan Valley. (Councillor Jones looks less impressed.)

One of my favourites, this. It hangs in my hall alongside the photo of great-aunt Fastidia competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, shooting something, or somebody. (Did she give a Nazi salute? Of course she did . . . she gave everyone a Nazi salute.)

I started asking questions about Woodhouse in April 2017, and eventually the mainstream media got involved in the middle of 2019. (Though this was almost certainly at the pleading of cheated investors.) This report from ITV of June last year has a video explaining how Woodlouse operates. ITV News co-operated on this inquiry with the Guardian, which provides another account.

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UPDATE

Understandably, this house of cards soon collapsed, but I’ve tried to keep up with events. In March I received an e-mail from Companies House telling me a progress report had been received from the administrators, but when I checked, it had been so poorly scanned it was unreadable. After three e-mails asking for a better copy, one finally appeared last week. Here is that report.

Those of you thinking this project is dead should think again. Neath Port Talbot council extended the deadline to establish the project’s credibility until 31 March, (but obviously this was overtaken by the Coronavirus pandemic). So I guess from NPT’s point of view the project is still ‘live’.

You’ll also note that despite Gavin Woodhouse being exposed and his companies in receivership, CEO Peter Moore is still at his desk. Any comparison with a Japanese soldier still fighting on in the jungle in the 196os would be erroneous. Moore knows the score – so who’s he working for?

Let’s refer again to the administrator’s report. Where, at 3.2.1, paragraph 6, we read:

Click to enlarge

It’s reasonable to assume that this neighbouring landowner is also paying Moore’s salary. Helpfully, he’s named in this Business Live report from September last as Clive Mishon.

And when we look at the Afan Valley entry on the Companies House website we see two charges. One held by Mishon himself, the other by his company 360Mi, which seems to have been set up in September 2017 specifically to deliver the loan in December.

Both loans mention title numbers WA519567 and CYM471819. There are also a couple of other titles worth looking at.

WA519567:

Scroll down to page 8 and you’ll read what I’ve captured for you in the box below. (Caerau Park Ltd was the name used by Afan Valley Ltd from its Incorporation 14 April 2016 until the name change of 23 February 2017.)

As already stated, this ‘Land at Caerau Park Wood’ was bought in March 2017 for £889,000 by Afan Valley Ltd from Ontaris Resources Inc and Foreman Properties Ltd. The top of page 6 tells us this was done with the loan taken out with Clive Mishon.

Ontaris Resources is registered in the British Virgin Islands, one of many dirty money havens protected by the UK government. In the Offshore Leaks Database you’ll find Ontaris linked with Andrew Patrick Foreman. Click on Foreman’s name and you bring up a registered address of Tickton Hall, Tickton, Beverley, near Hull.

This is where we find Afan Solar Ltd. Mishon and Foreman both served as directors, with Mishon the original majority shareholder. The company was struck off in September 2015 without ever filing accounts.

We now know that Woodhouse bought the land from Mishon and his mates – with money they loaned him!

P.S. Tickton Hall seems to be an agreeable county house hotel north of Hull. It is owned by Andrew Patrick Foreman.

CYM471819

This is mentioned in 15 of the panel above, where we are told that Mishon’s intervention in July 2019 also covered CYM471819. This title refers to a sliver of land alongside the A4107 (Brytwn Road), heading east out of Cymmer, which has the appearance of a ransom strip. Possibly a future entrance.

CYM60212

More ‘Land at Caerau Park Wood, Caerau, Maesteg’, bought by Clive Mishon in May 2014 for £180,000. The title document tells us of “a contract for sale dated 1 August 2016 made between (1) Clive Mishon and (2) Caerau Parc Limited.”

It appears the sale did not go through.

CYM655077

You’ll notice that the previous title document mentions a lease of ‘Land lying to the west of Pen y Bryn’. This made little sense for a while until I grasped that Pen y Bryn was the name for a stretch of the A4063 in Croeserw.

The land is leased for 20 years from 1 January 2015 by Arqiva Ltd, a company in the business of telephone masts.

Explained in the images I’ve put together below. The one on the left is from the Caves of South Wales site (you must know it!), and the one on the right from the Land Registry. Which is helpful seeing as the LR does not offer maps with CYM60212 or with WA519567.

Note ‘Pen y Bryn’, the highway coloured red. Click to enlarge

On page four (3) of this title document you can read “(22.07.2015) Option to purchase in favour of Afan Energy Limited contained in an Option Agreement dated 17 April 2014 made between (1) Clive Mishon and (2) Afan Energy Limited upon the terms therein mentioned.”

Yes, in addition to Afan Solar there is also Afan Energy Ltd, and at the same East Yorkshire address where we also found BVI-registered Ontaris. Or rather, there was an Afan Energy, because it was voluntarily written off in September 2017 with liabilities of £596,391. Mishon was the sole director at the death. Which means that the Agreement of 2014 was between him and his company.

◊

WHAT NEXT?

It would appear that the whole area set aside for the Afan Valley Adventure Resort is now owned by Clive Mishon (and perhaps others), who reinforced his claim just days ahead of the administrators.

Obviously Mishon thinks it’s worth proceeding with the Afan Valley Adventure Resort; and why not, there’s a great deal of money to be made if it can be pulled off.

And Google Maps certainly thinks it will – it’s even renamed a road in anticipation!

The AVAR site is bounded for the most part by the A4107, the A4063 and, to the south, the NPT boundary. The whole site owned by Clive Mishon (and perhaps his partners). Click to enlarge

Though a big question for me remains: ‘Seeing as Woodlouse bought the land off people who loaned him the money for the purchase, did he ever really own it?’

Or was he just fronting for Mishon (and his mates) all along? I ask because as I’ve been writing this a picture has been forming in my head.

We’ve met companies called Afan Energy and Afan Solar, which suggest that Mishon and friends originally intended to reap the subsidy bonanza with solar arrays and wind turbines. This fell through, perhaps trumped by the massive Pen y Cymoedd wind farm nearby. So thoughts turned to other uses for the land.

As this was an attractive wooded area, already used by mountain bikers and others, to come up with the idea of an adventure resort didn’t need any great leap of imagination.

For Mishon and his mates the problem might have been the way some of their companies were structured . . . and then there were the offshore links. This might have been off-putting for the ‘Welsh Government’, certainly it could have been used by their opponents. The media (what’s left of it) might also have asked questions.

Gavin Woodhouse, with his hotels scattered about Wales, and being favoured by the ‘Welsh Government’ with a grant of £500,000 for his Caer Rhun hotel in the Conwy valley, might have seemed the perfect front man.

If I’m right, that really is funny.

◊

CONCLUSION

I could certainly understand both the ‘Welsh Government’ and Neath Port Talbot Borough Council being reluctant to deal with people using Limited Liability Partnerships and other opaque financial vehicles. Then there are the tax haven companies.

Would our tribunes ever know who they were really dealing with, and where the money came from? But then, maybe they now think they’re dealing with Peter Moore.

That said, the Afan Valley, and the Valleys in general, need jobs.

We are faced with this dilemma because leftists, like Labour and Plaid Cymru, have no idea how to build an economy and create jobs; which leaves Wales prey to shysters like Woodlouse and businessmen like Clive Mishon and his associates, with their tax haven companies.

Native socialist incompetence and alien exploitation in the symbiotic relationship that is destroying Wales.

Wales deserves better. But it can only come from those determined to make Wales more prosperous, rather than those who prefer to whine about deprivation, and exploit it for political gain.

The first step out of the mess Wales is in is to support political parties seeking to build a genuinely Welsh economy and serve the Welsh national interest. With the foundation laid we can then push for independence.

♦

ONE PLANET DEVELOPMENTS

INTRODUCTION

The truth was that the scam was engineered by Minister for Hippies, Jane Davidson, whose friends didn’t want to pay market prices for smallholdings. So, the ‘Welsh Government’ brought out Technical Advice Note 6, which made it clear to planners that any dreadlocked planet-saver who showed up on their patch should be allowed to build whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted.

That was because this person, his ‘lady’, their offspring, their dogs, cats, goats, chickens, sheep, and other livestock, their candles and incense burners, their wood-burning stove, plus their diesel-powered 4 x 4 and generator, were reducing Wales’ carbon footprint.

Anyone who couldn’t see that had to be a climate change denier.

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GOWER

In recent posts I’ve discussed cases suggesting the OPD system is being abused even more than legislators had intended. Catch up by reading: One Planet Developments (29.06.2020) and One Planet Developments, getting devious (09.07.2020).

News reaches me from Gower suggesting that whatever is planned for the Parkmill woodland may not be a OPD commune. I’m glad to hear that, and I hope it’s true, but I shall keep my powder dry.

Staying on Gower, I also reported that the Ecological Land Co-operative (ELC) of Brighton had applied for a two-dwelling OPD at Furzehill, Ilston – that it planned to rent or sub-let! Letters of support have come in . . . from all over England. But a recent letter from Reading might put the absurd project in jeopardy.

It comes from Ieuan Williams BSc., MA., FBIAC, PIEMA of Reading Agricultural Consultants. What gives the letter its weight is that Williams was ” . . . a member of the team that wrote the Welsh Government’s TAN 6 Practice Guidance, relating to rural enterprise dwellings.”

Here are a few extracts: “ELC appears not to understand OPD policy and its requirements . . . It may even be that the tenants have not read and understood the OPD Guidance . . . The tenants’ approach to the development appears to be as a rural enterprise rather than an OPD . . . It is of considerable concern that the prospective tenants seem to think that travel around the country, throughout the UK and abroad on holidays would be acceptable for residents of an OPD . . . With regards to water use on the site, contrary to the ELC assertion in its Planning Statement, use of a mains water supply is not acceptable for the site occupants.”

Another very good objection came from Christine Lloyd of Parkmill who made a very interesting, but rather worrying, point, when she writes: “Most of the letters of support are from outside the area but they seem to be given additional status by being added to the Document page on the planning portal. Most of the objections are from locals and are on the Comments tab.”

Why would that be? Are certain employees of Swansea council exhibiting bias in favour of these schemes?

What the Ecological Land Co-operative of Brighton wants is to throw up cheap dwellings on the edge of town, pretend they’re OPDs, charge rent, and then swan about the world to attend self-congratulatory bun fights.

◊

LLANSTEFFAN

Moving west, we also looked at an application for a OPD at Pentowyn Farm, Llansteffan.

To get the bigger picture I’m told we need to introduce Gwilym Griffith Morris, originally from the upper reaches of Cwmtawe or even the Brecon area. Morris is something of a wheeler-dealer in the world of agricultural land and buildings.

Around 30 years ago, he bought Mwche farm, adjoining Pentowyn. Then Pentowyn itself. He sold off the farm buildings to a woman in Swansea, and the land to other buyers. The marshes he sold to the National Trust and is believed to rent them back.

A recent claim to fame was his planning application for a wind turbine at Mwche, which lies across the Tâf estuary from Dylan Thomas’s boathouse. As is the way with things in Carmarthenshire, local councillors nodded it though without even a site visit.

The international outcry was such that even county CEO Mark James had to back down. And it cost the council over twenty grand.

Here’s the planning application. There was of course a firm from England behind the wind turbine. It would appear that the ‘local benefits’ of renewable energy – rather like caravan sites – are restricted to landowners.

Here’s the inimitable and sadly missed Cneifiwr’s slant on the matter with The Dylan Thomas Memorial Wind Turbine. Be sure to follow the links he provides.

A source has pointed me towards an interesting planning application that might explain the application for an OPD. A few years ago, Griff or Gruff Morris applied for a ‘farm dwelling’ at Pentowyn . . . having sold off the farmhouse soon after buying the farm.

He had been successful with a similar application at Mwche farm. But the Pentowyn application was rejected in May 2018. Check it out here.

As I say, Griff/Gruff Morris is a wheeler-dealer always looking to turn a penny. It is suspected locally that this OPD application is simply the ‘farm dwelling’ in different wellies.

Mwche farm, or parts of it, were sold a few years back, to this man.

Griff or Gruff Morris is now rumoured to be back in the Brecon area.

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‘FAUXDEGLA’

For those who don’t know the area, Llandegla-yn-Iâl is a village in Denbighshire on the moors to which it gives its name. I often take that route to Wrecsam.

Pursuing a certain line of inquiry recently I came across a business named Fauxdegla Shooting Ground. The name is contrived out of, obviously, Llandegla, and the name of the couple that runs this business, Michael and Deborah Faux.

Michael Ronald Faux of Warrington has a glittering business career, with five other companies listed by Companies House – all of them dissolved. Some without ever filing accounts, and mucho dinero owed to creditors by at least one of them.

Fauxdegla Shooting Ground Limited isn’t in the best of financial health itself either. The most recent accounts show tangible assets of just £60,954, and net assets of £1,099. With Barclays Bank holding a charge over everything.

This lack of (obvious) liquidity might explain the appearance of the caravans a few weeks ago. The word on the street is that they’re connected with the Fauxs. Before writing this I sent Fauxdegla an e-mail asking if the caravans were theirs, but I’ve had no reply.

Irrespective of the caravans, what right does anyone have to come into our country and change an ancient name inspired by a saint? What sort of people are we to put up with this colonialist arrogance?

Oh, silly me; I’m forgetting – it’s tourism!

♦ end ♦

One Planet Developments, getting devious

On 09/07/202010/07/2020 By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Hippies, Planning76 Comments

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Regular readers will know that I’ve got into the habit of putting up one post a week, usually on a Monday morning; but information has come to light on One Planet Developments that I think merits a second post this week. I want to get it out while it’s fresh in my mind. (Cos it’s a bit complicated.)

♦

HOW IT STARTED

Someone in Swansea alerted me to a planning application on Gower that asks for a, ‘New entrance track and turning bay’ at Coed Onnen, Parkmill. Read it for yourself. (If the link doesn’t work type 2020/1104/PNA here.)

The applicant is woodlands.co.uk, responsible for all the ‘Woodland For Sale’ signs you see as you drive about, and the agent is a Chris Colley of Bangor Teifi, between Llandysul and Castell Newydd Emlyn.

So what do we know about them?

The full name of the company is Woodland Investment Management Ltd, and it’s run by Angus Thomas Hanton. Hanton has a number of companies to his name and he is co-founder of the Intergenerational Foundation, a Labour-supporting think-tank that uses the phrase ‘future generations’ a lot.

There’s not so much information available about the agent. Though his Linkedin profile tells us that in addition to being the regional manager for Hanton’s company he has one of his own called Teifi Management Ltd.

Despite the name, and despite Colley living in the Teifi valley, the address for the company is in Bristol.

Though it gets a little confusing here because, even though Colley’s Linkedin page describes him as the Regional Manager, the woodlands.co.uk website gives Tamsin and Matt Brown as the managers for ‘West and South Wales and Herefordshire’.

You’ll see that Tamsin and Matt ‘run a smallholding in ‘West Wales’. Who’d have thought it!

I got to wondering what planning applications other than the one in Parkmill woodlands.co.uk and/or Chris Colley had been involved with. So I started looking.

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COUNTRY ROADS

My search started in Pembrokeshire.

This proved difficult because the Pembrokeshire planning applications doesn’t allow you to search by agent name or applicant name. So I just stuck ‘woodland’ in the Proposal Description box to see what came up. Nothing for Chris Colley or woodlands.co.uk.

Ceredigion was no better. On to Carmarthenshire.

Searching for ‘Woodland Investment Management’ turned up three planning applications. One, W/32406, through agent Chris Colley, was for the ‘Creation of a forestry road, and upgrade of existing forestry road, to facilitate the management of the wood’ at Llangarthginning farm, Meidrim.

More specifically, at Llyn Adain Gwydd, owned by woodlands.co.uk. For which planning permission was granted in July 2016.

I mentioned Llyn Adain Gwydd as an update to a post last December, Miscellany 09.12.2019. Scroll down to the section ‘One Planet Developments’ and you’ll find it tacked on at the bottom.

I know that it was for an OPD, because Neil Moyse, who lives, or lived, at Tir y Gafel aka Lammas, in Pembrokeshire, last November put in a planning application. (If it doesn’t open type W/39846 here.)

I gave further information on Neil Moyse in Miscellany 27.04.2020, scroll down to the section ‘One Planet Developments revisited, again’.

While Moyse may be going through the planning system, my local source tells me that others have rocked up at Llangarthginning and just made themselves at home. Possible thanks to Chris Colley’s access road.

Moving on . . .

The other planning applications in Carmarthenshire are both near Llansteffan, close to where the Tâf joins the Tywi. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote about an application for a OPD at Llansteffan very recently. At Pentowyn farm, to be exact.

You’ll find it in the piece One Planet Developments from the end of last month.

Planning applications W/32381, from July 2015 and W/40731, from June 2020, are both for Coed Allt y Gelli, in Llangynog parish, and Llansteffan ward.

Allt y Gelli does not appear on the woodlands.co.uk website. That’s because it’s broken up into smaller plots with their individual names. Such as Coed Cogan, 7.5 acres, which was very recently sold.

In case it disappears from the website I’ve saved the full sales pitch for you. Where we read:

Access to the woodland is excellent. The newly upgraded stone track leads directly off the main road through the larger woodland to the hardstanding area created at the entrance to Coed Cogan, ensuring all year round access for 2 or 4 wheel drive vehicles.’

I suspect that other lots carved out of Allt y Gelli have also been sold under various names, with the new road used as a selling point. I’m thinking of Coed Aberoedd, 4.75 acres, and Allt y Castell, 2.5 acres.

Other parcels of Allt y Gelli that are still for sale may be Coed Gwas y Neidr, 8 acres, and Coed Tâf, 6.5 acres.

It could be that with the OPD application at Llansteffan, and Woodland Investment Management Ltd selling off OPD-size plots with new access roads, the triangle bounded by the Tywi, the Tâf and the A40 is the new promised land for enviro-colonists.

But it doesn’t end there, so let’s go back to the land of my fathers at Meidrim.

There we find that woodlands.co.uk recently sold 4.75 acres at Llangarthginning under the Tyle Tegeirian label. One lot still for sale is Coed Gafr, 6.75 acres.

These properties at Llangarthginning are accessible thanks to Carmarthenshire planners giving permission in 2016 for a ‘forestry road’, to ‘facilitate management of the wood’.

It’s clear that Woodland Investment Management and/or Christopher Colley get planning permission for ‘forestry access’ roadways that facilitate One Planet Developments.

Why has no one noticed? It’s not as if Colley is shy about it. Earlier I showed you an extract from his Linkedin profile, and though he provides little information about himself he thought it worth putting up a picture of Jane Davidson, the architect of One Planet Developments.

It’s obvious that Colley is a believer, and he’s probably well in with the OPD crowd. The image comes from the announcement that Jane Davidson had become a non-executive director of the One Planet Centre. This is run by David Thorpe, who also spouts bullshit at the utterly discredited UWTSD.

I suppose there’s something fitting about OPD applications becoming dishonest because the woman who introduced them is herself prone to misrepresentation. Such as calling herself ‘Dr’ on the strength of an honorary doctorate from Ponty Polytechnic.

And as if that wasn’t enough she’s also claimed to be a member of the faculty at Harvard University because of a speech she gave at a very expensive US conference for which the Welsh taxpayer picked up the bill!

Jane Davidson’s deceptions are being unravelled as I write. Watch out, Mrs Mitty!

◊

BACK TO GOWER

Given what we’d learnt of woodlands.co.uk and Chris Colley’s modus operandi it was worth going back to the planning application in Parkmill. Especially after I’d seen the map supplied with the application.

Let me try to explain.

The land for which the access road has been applied is edged in red. I have circled, in blue, the Gower Heritage Centre; and in green, the old Mount Pisgah Chapel.

Why have I done this?

Last week I published ‘One Planet Developments’, and if you scroll down to the section ‘Brighton comes to Gower’ you’ll meet Anthony ‘Ant’ Flanagan of Cae Tân (and many other companies), who invited the Ecological Land Co-operative of Brighton to move onto land owned by Cae Tân at Ilston.

UPDATE 10.07.2020: A contribution from Ieuan Williams, who helped write the TAN 6 document authorising OPDs, provides damning criticism of the slipshod way the ECL has gone about applying for its little place in the West. It will be virtually impossible for Swansea council (or anyone else) to give planning permission after reading his letter.

Move to the next section ‘Farmlets’, and you’ll see Flanagan as a director of Gower Regeneration Ltd; another director is Roy Kenneth Church of the Gower Heritage Centre in Parkmill. Church’s Tourism Swansea Bay Ltd is based at the Barham Centre aka Mount Pisgah Chapel. Which explains why they’re both circled on the plan.

The only other director of Tourism Swansea Bay is Stephen William Crocker. Crocker is the ‘Captain Croaker’ named as the ‘applicant’ for the 12 ‘farmlets’ at Dunvant. That land is owned by Dunvant SBG Ltd, and Roy Kenneth Church is the only director.

The Dunvant ‘farmlets’. Click to enlarge

Crocker also lives in Parkmill or, to be exact, Lunnon, within shouting distance.

So many connections.

Of course, it could be pure coincidence that a fan of Jane Davidson who lays access roads for OPDs should turn up in Parkmill to do the same thing close to men who so recently tried to get planning permission for an OPD settlement.

But being the cynical old bastard I am, my reading is that this is the opening gambit in a One Planet Development.

A suspicion reinforced by the planning application reading in full: ‘New entrance track and turning bay (application for Prior Approval of Forestry Development)’. So there’s definitely more to come.

◊

SUMMARY

Legislating for One Planet Developments was part of a raft of measures presented to a gullible world as Wales’ contribution to combating climate change. In reality, the purpose was to anglicise our rural areas.

This element of the strategy was complemented by undermining the farming sector and telling us that the economic future of the Welsh countryside lies in tourism, care homes, and building houses fewer and fewer of us can afford.

It was understandable that the ‘urban’ Labour Party should embrace this social engineering, but Plaid Cymru supporting it was almost unbelievable. But then, if virtue signalling is your thing, then Plaid Cymru is the party for you.

Though it should have been obvious even to Labour’s Little Helpers that if OPD legislation provides a loophole allowing homes to be built in open country then it was only a matter of time before the Gaia worshippers were joined by others of a more commercial bent.

And that is what we see happening with woodlands.co.uk and its ‘forestry access roads’ to sylvan smallholdings, the Dunvant ‘farmlets’, and this planning application in Parkmill.

Carmarthenshire and other authorities need to be on their guard for further planning applications from Chris Colley and Woodland Investment Management Ltd for ‘forestry access roads’.

It should go without saying that Swansea council needs to say a very firm ‘Sod off!’ to this Parkmill application.

And London’s management team in Corruption Bay should review OPD and other legislation it enacted at the behest of strident and acquisitive groups working against the interests of the Welsh nation.

♦ end ♦

P.S. seeing as I’ve put up two posts this week, don’t expect another on Monday.

One Planet Developments

On 29/06/202004/01/2022 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Demographics, Welsh Government125 Comments

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This is a subject I’ve tackled before; I’m returning to it because the problem seems to be spreading, yea! even unto the city of my dreams.

This is another ‘biggie’ but, as usual, broken down into easily-digestible chunks. Enjoy!

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INTRODUCTION

For those new to the subject, One Planet Developments were introduced and encouraged by the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition management team (2007 – 2011), at the instigation of – among others – Jane Davidson, who served in that team as the Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing.

The issue being addressed was, we were told, how Wales could play its part in saving the planet. Yet this excuse was – as we political commentators are wont to put it – bollocks. The lie is exposed by the claim that OPDs will reduce Wales’ carbon footprint – by attracting more people into the country.

For Wales is the only country on Earth to allow OPDs. No one else has been so stupid.

The true motivation was that Davidson’s ‘alternative’ friends wanted smallholdings in Wales but didn’t want to pay commercial property prices. Enacting legislation –TAN 6 strengthened with the Well-being of Future Generations Act – allowed hippies to settle just about anywhere by claiming OPD status, then demanding – and getting! – planning permission for structures that no one else would be allowed to build.

This meant they could set up a smallholding on a shoestring.

Her work done in Corruption Bay, Davidson moved on after the 2011 election to take advantage of the group-think she had helped engender. A post was created for her at UWTSD Lampeter with the Institute of Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Effectiveness (INSPIRE), a department that began life with her arrival in January 2012.

Perhaps in the hope of disguising the relationship between the Labour Party and higher education, and to give her some academic credibility, Davidson is billed as ‘Dr Jane Davidson’, but her doctorate is purely honorary, and from another Labour-linked institution in Pontypridd.

Predictably, ‘Dr’ Davidson lives on a smallholding of her own.

◊

MOVING EAST

The majority of OPDs are to be found in Pembrokeshire and west Carmarthenshire, but as I’ve suggested, they’re creeping east.

Earlier this month a planning application was submitted to Carmarthenshire County Council for a OPD at Llansteffan. To be exact, in ‘Pentowyn farm yard’. Here’s the full planning application.

Pentowyn farm is located across the Tâf estuary from Dylan Thomas’s boathouse at Laugharne. Nice.

Note that the work on this OPD started on 1 May last year, so it’s taken over a year for what is now the retrospective planning application to be submitted. Which is how OPDs operate, knowing that no matter what the local planning authority might say, the ‘Welsh Government’ or the Planning Inspectorate will always grant planning consent.

To help you follow the tale, here’s the plan submitted with the planning application. It shows a long, thin section of land to the east and north east of the farm buildings, with a more compact area to the south and south west, on the other side of the road. The planned buildings are located on this second area.

A number of things struck me about this application. First, the agent is Tao Wimbush; and if that name rings a bell, then it’s because he is a hetman in the Lammas commune not far away, up towards Crymych.

I’d always assumed that these enviro-colons were vegans, or at least, vegetarians – so why is there a ‘butchers unit’ and a ‘mobile refrigeration unit’ at this OPD? But then, Wimbush is only the agent, the adviser.

The applicants are Mark and Ann Oriel, and even though their company name as given on the planning application is ‘Lammas Earth Centre’, and their address that for the Lammas commune, I suspect the Oriels live in Bancyfelin, and Mark runs a slap, rub and squeeze outlet in nearby Sanclêr. (No, not that kind of establishment.)

Which might suggest he too lacks the necessary background in the butchering of livestock and the preparing of meat for sale. So why the ‘butchers unit’? (I wish to God people would use apostrophes.)

Certainly, the Oriels own the land to the east of the farmhouse, the land edged in red on the Land Registry title document plan (scroll down). But the land to the south of the farmhouse, where the shack and the butcher’s building will be located, is not on that title document. So who owns that land?

When I tried to get the document from the Land Registry I drew a blank. The land is either not registered or not yet re-registered.

Copyright Ordnance Survey. Click to enlarge

If you go back to the planning application (20) you’ll read, ‘A butchers unit for processing meat grown on the farm’. I’m not sure that the Oriels have enough land to graze many animals so this must refer to other land.

When asked if neighbours or the local community have been consulted about the proposed development (23) the applicant answers, ‘I have discussed the proposal with my direct neighbours’. So who are the ‘direct neighbours’?

The farm buildings and the land down as far as the road are owned by a woman living in Sketty, Swansea. Shown here edged in red on the Land Registry title plan. I suspect they (or some of them) have been converted into holiday cottages.

The land across the road to the south east, adjoining the land for which planning permission is sought, is owned a local farming family. Are they the ‘direct neighbours’?

The more I think about this, the weirder it seems. We have a hippy asking for planning permission for a sports therapist to have a OPD complete with what reads like a mini abattoir. And we don’t know who owns the land on which the new buildings are to go.

Is someone using the near-certainly of planning permission being granted for an OPD to get consent for something that might otherwise be difficult to get past the planners and other authorities?

If so, then this is a dangerous development, and might signal that OPDs are now being used in a way that I’m sure was not intended by the buffoons who agreed to this idiocy back in the days of the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition.

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ANOTHER STRANGE ONE

Someone has also directed me to a property being advertised by Rees Richards, a long-established firm of estate agents in Swansea and the surrounding area. The company was advertising a property with ‘Potential for ‘One Planet’ development (subject to planning)’.

As we know, planning is never a problem for OPDs, so we can take that for granted.

Of course, if someone wanted to repair and renovate the old house then they wouldn’t need planning permission for an OPD. But that house needs a lot of work, and it would cost a lot of money.

So I assume that the house and the outbuildings are not the big selling point.

Certainly, Cwm-Garenig is a bit off the beaten track, and there’s no mains electricity, so that might attract potential OPD dwellers. But it’s still only 19 acres, and the area round about has been mined for centuries.

I’d hate to switch on the Evening News to hear that, ‘Police and rescue teams are still searching for survivors after a yurt-full of tofu tasters disappeared today down the old Number 9 shaft . . . ‘.

Wouldn’t that just be too, too awful!

It seems to me that Rees Richards is selling 19 acres of land, some of it possibly unstable. Not only that, but we have a Swansea-based estate agency cottoning on to the possibility of bumping up the price of low value land by adding the magic letters ‘OPD’.

Clearly, this is no longer a rural thing, as you’ll learn from reading on.

If estate agents and others have latched on to the fact that OPDs are a sure-fire way of getting planning permission for dwellings in open country (and maybe not just open country), then who knows where it might lead?

It certainly leads us to Swansea.

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BRIGHTON COMES TO GOWER

I introduced this ~~scam~~ scheme to you in Miscellany 06.06.2020, just scroll down to the section ‘Brighton Greens discover Gower’. It’s called the Furzehill Project. Here’s the link to the article from which the image below is taken.

The Brighton gang goes by the name of the Ecological Land Cooperative (ELC) and want two smallholdings on an 18 acre site it bought in December 2017. These smallholdings will be of 5.5 acres each because the rest of the land is already being used by the ELC’s local partner, Cae Tân CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

Though there are very few locals involved with Cae Tân and so it’s questionable how well it’s supported by the wider community.

The leading light in Cae Tân would appear to be Anthony ‘Ant’ Flanagan, who has set up a string of companies, none of which seem able to survive without public largesse, and at least one of which has entered into a disastrous partnership.

It may be worth listing these companies, seeing where their money comes from, and checking on their fates. (CIC means Community Interest Company.)

CORDELIA COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed 15 June 2015; 5 loans taken out 2017, three with Finance Wales, all still outstanding; 4 new directors appointed February 2017; either merges with or is taken over September 2017 by YnNi Teg Cyf.
KILLAN SOLAR CIC. Formed June 2015; 3 loans taken out 2016/17 all with Finance Wales, still outstanding; April 2017, registers with FCA as Community Benefit Society Gower Regeneration Ltd.
WOLFIE COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015; Dissolved December 2017.
HERMIA COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015, but Flanagan joined by others and address moved from Gower to London; in the red.
MARBLE COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015; Flanagan sole director; Dissolved December 2017.
MARIANA COMMUNITY ENERGY COMPANY. Formed June 2015; Flanagan sole director; Dissolved December 2017.
SHUFFLES COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015; Dissolved December 2016; Flanagan’s co-director was John Christopher Whiten.
BABS COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015; directors Flanagan and Whiten; Dissolved January 2018.
CLEOPATRA COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015; directors Flanagan and Whiten; Dissolved December 2016.
PEASBLOSSOM COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015; directors Flanagan and Whiten; Dissolved December 2016.
HERMIONE COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015; directors Flanagan and Whiten; Dissolved December 2016.
MIRANDA COMMUNITY ENERGY CIC. Formed June 2015; Flanagan sole director; Dissolved January 2018.
CAE TÂN COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE LTD. Formed April 2015; 8 directors (one or two may even be Welsh); latest accounts show Total Net Assets of £5,918.
GOWER POWER CO-OP CIC. Formed June 2013; 5 directors including Flanagan and Whiten; net assets £21,956.
COIGACH COMMUNITY CIC (originally Willowcroft W. Community Energy CIC). Formed June 2015; address moved from Parkmill to Manchester July 2016, when Flanagan ceased to be a director; net assets £10. (‘Coigach’ is a Scottish Gaelic name.)

I suspect that the inspiration for all these start-ups in June 2015 were the municipal energy companies in England, such as Bristol Energy. But Bristol Energy is docked in Shit Creek. The council is hoping to find a buyer.

Others are Robin Hood Energy in – where else? – Nottingham, which lost £23m last year; and Victory Energy in Portsmouth, which in May had its licence revoked by Ofgen.

So why did Gower Power enter into a deal with Bristol Energy in January?

These council-owned energy companies end up costing council taxpayers a hell of a lot of money. We know that Swansea council has been very generous to Ant Flanagan, so how indebted are my fellow-Jacks as a result of this generosity?

Ant Flanagan and his playmates are responsible for the arrival in Wales of the Ecological Land Cooperative of Brighton, who want the smallholdings at Ilston.

A point I made about the planning application in the earlier piece was that letters of support for Furzehill were coming in from all over England but there were few letters from locals. Well that’s changed. And the locals haven’t held back in their criticisms.

If we click on the ‘Comments’ tab, then from local residents we read:

‘This is nothing more than a vanity project from a group of opportunists who are hell bent on claiming community grant subsidies and then feeding that funding through its various other side projects . . . ‘.

Another writes:

‘ . . . In the meantime small farmers trying to scratch a living from the earth are being displaced by larger cooperatives, being unable to compete with grant led, subsidised or community funded groups.’

A third says, referring to OPD legislation:

‘The Ecological Land Coop, an organisation based in South England, would not be likely to be investing money in land in Wales if this planning law applied equally to England.’

This writer continues:

‘As a former organic market gardener, serving people in and around Swansea by growing and selling through a veg box scheme between 1994 and 2018, I no longer even try to compete with these market rigging opportunists.’

While a another objector has this to say:

‘I object about this proposal on two grounds
That this a means of laundering and misappropriating WG and any LA grant funds, rather than a being of benefit for local produce growers/vendors, many of which are being put out of business because of the practices unscrupulous organisation.

There were other objections along similar lines. Arguing that these people are exploiting OPD legislation, they’re only here because of easy access to public funding, which then helps them under-cut genuinely local growers and companies. Some objectors make specific claims of dishonesty.

How the hell did we get to a situation where we are funding interlopers to put local people out of business?

Because . . .

Wales is a land of make-believe, especially when socialists are in charge, and image is more important than reality. Being seen to do the right thing has become more important than actually doing the right thing . . . and far, far easier.

Which is how we end up with One Planet Developments, and the mantra that Wales can show everyone how to save the planet. Idiocies that are welcomed in the Guardian, cheered by superannuated hippies in California, and will have Eco-capitalists from Sweden to Australia rubbing their hands with glee as they think about how many bird-slicing, flood-causing wind turbines they can erect on our hills . . .

The kind of headline the ‘Welsh Government’ loves to see. But does it provide any benefits for us Welsh? Not in this life! Click to enlarge

There are no material benefits for us Welsh from OPDs, and wind turbines, and saving the planet, yet we are lectured that it’s done for some greater good, and for generations to come. Intangible and unquantifiable benefits that may never materialise. But then, virtue signalling is so much easier than coming up with a serious economic strategy for Wales that might create business opportunities, careers and jobs.

When you think about it, the message being put out today by the ‘progressive’ parties in the Senedd is not a lot different to that preached in earlier times by clerics in the pay of landowners and industrialists. It runs, ‘There’s nothing for you in this life, but if you’re virtuous and obedient then your reward is in heaven’.

Those clergymen were serving someone else’s interests, not the interests of those to whom they preached. And it’s the same with the ‘Welsh Government’ today.

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‘FARMLETS’

In the companies listed for ‘Ant’ Flanagan you may have noticed Killan Solar CIC, which converted in 2017 into Community Benefit Society Gower Regeneration Ltd.

Anthony Flanagan appears to be still in charge, but with other directors on board, prominent among them, Roy Kenneth Church. The Church family has for many years run the Gower Heritage Centre at Parkmill, which seems to be the base for most of the Flanagan Companies.

Roy Kenneth Church is also a director of Swansea Bay Community Energy Ltd, which has now been deregistered and for which documents are no longer available on the FCA website. Yet another ‘Energy’ company, and given the name, this one suggests ambition on the scale of the municipal failures we looked at earlier.

Though on the FCA document Church is also listed as a director of Swansea Bay Community Energy Two Ltd, for which I can find nothing. Did a ‘phoenix’ company rise from the ashes of Swansea Bay Community Energy Ltd?

Church is also one of the two directors of Tourism Swansea Bay Ltd which, despite the grand title, is a shoestring outfit based, again, in Parkmill. But at a different address to the Gower Heritage Centre.

Then there’s Gower Power Solar Ltd, where we find Church, Flanagan and John Christopher Whiten. The only documents filed, in October 2017, tell of a dormant company. Possibly linked with Gower Power Co-op CIC, where we find Flanagan and Whiten among the directors.

But back to Killan Solar CIC which metamorphosed into Gower Regeneration Ltd.

The name ‘Killan’ refers to a couple of farms which give their name to a road in Dunvant, on the western outskirts of Swansea. We need to focus on the land to the right of the land outlined in red on this plan of Killan-fach farm, Land Registry title number WA289902.

The land we’re looking at is covered by title number WA289901.

There we find a solar complex owned by Gower Regeneration Ltd, with Roy Kenneth Church and Ant Flanagan as directors. The money to build the complex came in the form of three loans from Finance Wales Investments. All three loans remain outstanding.

So, in a sense, you and I own those solar panels because like most things we look at in this piece – they were paid for with public money that has yet to be repaid.

A request for pre-planning application guidance has been made to Swansea council for this land. Land that seems to be owned by Dunvant SBG Ltd. The only director of which is Roy Kenneth Church.

Dunvant SBG was formed in 2001 and the five outstanding charges go back almost as far. Roy Kenneth Church was a director from 24 December 2001 until 1 October 2009, and then rejoined in September 2019, probably following the death of his father.

Covered by Land Registry title number WA289901. Click to enlarge

The plan being hatched, it seems, is to build an ‘Eco village’ of 12 ‘farmlets’. Yes, ‘farmlets’. What a twee word, I wonder what idiot thought that up? I ask because even though the land seems to be owned by Roy Kenneth Church the pre-application submission came from Gerald Blain associates of Whitland.

‘Farmlets’ of 2 acres or less. Not much bigger than decent-sized allotments. What the hell is going on? (Here’s a link to the council website.)

Equally perplexing is why Church couldn’t find an architect in Swansea, which might have spared him a trip to Whitland. But wait! Whitland . . . now who do we know in that area? Why, Tao Wimbush’s postal address is Whitland. And having a background in architecture himself I’m sure he knows Gerald Blain and his mate Mark Sanders.

Gerald Blain Associates seems to be another shoestring outfit. The latest accounts at Companies House show total assets of £49. Confirmed by Company Check. Why would Church rush down west to hire this lot?

I say Church, but the applicant for these ‘farmlets’ is named as a Captain Steve Croaker. But I cannot find a Captain Steve Croaker. Who is he? Does he even exist?

UPDATE 01.07.2020: ‘Captain Croaker’ has been identified. He is Steven William Crocker of Cefn Gwlad Solutions Ltd, though I’m assured he has other strings to his bow. A Swansea man with strong links to Roy Kenneth Church and Parkmill.

What we have is an area on the edge of Swansea where development is not permitted because it would result in Dunvant, a part of the city, merging with the village of Three Crosses, viewed as Gower. But OPD promises a way around this problem.

Because anyone who could get planning permission for substantial properties sitting in an acre or more of land, with Gower on the doorstep, could rake it in.

Gerald Blain mentions OPD more than once in his submission. He makes a big play on how difficult it is for young people to get into farming. Which may be true, but this is not farming. You won’t see any of the old Gower families on these ‘farmlets’.

For they are intended for the friends of Tao Wimbush, and the land-grabbers from Brighton. Using OPD almost as blackmail – “If you don’t give us planning permission we’ll scream ‘OPD’ and our friends in Corruption Bay will give us what we want”.

The council clearly sees what’s behind this plan – expensive dwellings in the green belt with planning permission obtained by subterfuge. This extract from the council’s response to Gerald Blain makes that clear.

It seems very unlikely that the council will look favourably on this project when it’s discussed at 2pm today (Monday). It may be possible to follow proceedings by installing this Microsoft app.

But what happens if the mysterious Cap’n Croaker appeals to the so-called ‘Welsh Government’? Will those clowns allow it?

◊

CONCLUSION

The problems with OPD go beyond what I’ve listed here.

For example, a lady in Powys writes to me regularly with tales of a family that thinks OPD status gives them carte blanche to erect other buildings, to dump vehicles, etc. The parents and adult children who live on this OPD cause havoc on a narrow access track.

It seems they’re now looking for someone to sell what little they produce in the way of vegetables because they’re too busy themselves at the jobs that take them away every day from the ‘OPD’!

One Planet Developments should be self-sufficient agricultural smallholdings, not a little place in the country from which you commute to your job.

The supine behaviour of Powys County Council towards this OPD encourages others to behave in a similar fashion.

Taking the lead from OPDs in Powys. Ain’t it cute? Click to enlarge

As might be expected, Powys County Council’s refusal to act, and local AS’s and MP’s unwillingness to get involved, not only encourages mess like you see in the picture, it drives out decent residents and it deters investors.

I shall return to problems in Powys in more detail at a later date.

Information comes in from various sources about OPD problems in other areas.

For example, a reliable source who has provided information before writes:

‘What I can tell you briefly is that the most, if not all, of the plots at Tir y Gafel are no longer Lammas as such but are freehold properties that can be brought and sold without restrictions.

This is a game changer.’

This source also advises that the hub, central to the Lammas community, and built with funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change in London, has been abandoned because it is structurally unsound.

Furthermore, it is now surrounded by freeholders unwilling to take responsibility for what was intended to be a shared, community building. Presumably it will now be allowed to fall down.

Another source directed to me to certain Facebook postings. Here’s one from David Thorpe of Cynefin Community Land Trust.

What’s being promoted here is a new village, a new English village in Wales. And note how this new village will be tagged onto ‘an existing settlement’, just like the ‘farmlets’ in Dunvant. OPDs were not supposed to be new suburbs.

Thorpe is a patron of the One Planet Council . . . along with Jane Davidson.

Here’s another contribution from Thorpe.

Andrew Slade? Does that name ring a bell? It should. Slade is one of the English civil servants who run the ‘Welsh Government’. He it was who took EU money off our farmers (Pillar 1) and transferred it to ‘Rural Development Projects’ (Pillar 2).

He’s worked with ‘Game Show Gary’ Haggaty, who’s rogering Lesley Griffiths, the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs.

Together they’re all working to get Welsh farming families off their land – so they can be replaced by OPDs, and ‘rewilders’, and Mongolian yak herders . . . any bugger will do, just as long as they’re not Welsh.

This is naked racism. This is ethnic cleansing. Yet this is what One Planet Developments have become.

♦ end ♦

Jake Berry MP, Part 4

On 29/05/202012/06/2020 By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour104 Comments

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR

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Here we are again! For more news has come in about Jake Berry, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen who is also a property owner on Ynys Môn.

Though there have been moves behind the scenes to stop the word getting out. Facebook refuses to carry any mention of Jake Berry, or even a link to the blog when that link makes no mention of him! Now I can no longer access my Facebook page.

Telling me that this platform for despots, pornographers and election fiddlers may be closer to the Conservative and Unionist Party than I’d suspected. Thankfully I only ever used Facebook for carrying links to this blog.

Click to enlarge

So let’s hope President Trump carries through his threat to rein in these social media platforms.

Even if you’re new to the saga you will have guessed that with this being part 4 there have been three previous instalments. If you haven’t read them then you might want to catch up. They were Jake Berry MP: ‘They seek him here, they seek him there’; Followed by Jake Berry MP, Part 2 and Jake Berry MP, Part 3.

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AN INTRODUCTORY DIGRESSION

In order to explain what’s new I need to tell you about legislation introduced by those wonderful and talented people down Corruption Bay who go by the name of the ‘Welsh Government’.

I’m referring to the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. Like so much ‘Welsh’ legislation this was, essentially, updating earlier legislation with the addition of a few expensive and virtue signalling tweaks for the benefit of sectors in Wales close to the Labour Party.

The perks included increased influence for housing associations, which saw their Englandandwales role enhanced, allowing them to import more tenants from over the border.

The influence of housing associations also became clear with The Regulation of Private Rented Housing (Designation of Licensing Authority) (Wales) Order 2015.

This gave us Rent Smart Wales (RSW), a registration body for private landlords which began operating in November 2016. Responsibility for running RSW was given to Cardiff City Council. (Yet another example of Welsh jobs being unnecessarily concentrated in Cardiff.)

On the one hand, who could argue with asking private landlords to register and meet certain standards?

Yet those of a less trusting bent saw Rent Smart Wales as the ‘Welsh Government’ being pressed by housing associations into making life difficult for their biggest rivals. If it benefited tenants, then fine, but that wasn’t really important.

Housing in Wales is a contentious issue, perhaps more so than elsewhere, and this is only partly due to the proliferation of holiday homes and the extension of English commuter belts along the A55 and the M4.

To compound their errors the ‘progressive’ parties then voted to abolish Right to Buy. For being socialists they’re opposed to lesser mortals enjoying the benefits of private property; they want control over the people, they want a population beholden to the state. To them.

Labour and Plaid Cymru justified abolishing Right to Buy by arguing there was a shortfall in social housing. Yet strict local allocations would have dealt with any shortfall without having to deny many Welsh people their only chance of ever owning a home.

The three candidates in Plaid Cymru’s 2018 leadership contest owned, between them (with spouses/partners) nine or ten houses. It may be more by now.

But however we got here, we now have Rent Smart Wales.

But when attempts were made to introduce similar legislation in England in 2016, Jake Berry, the Conservative MP for Rossendale and Darwen voted against. As did every other landlord Conservative MP.

◊

Jake Berry’s position was perhaps understandable given that he owned rented property in Liverpool. You can see that in the Register of Members’ Interests declaration from October 2016 that he also declared a house and a share of a house in Rhoscolyn ‘North Wales’.

Jake Berry’s House of Commons Declaration October 2016. Click to enlarge

By the time of the most recent declaration, earlier this month, the Liverpool properties had disappeared and more properties had appeared on Ynys Môn.

The house with associated farmland is Rhyd-y-Bont, bought late last year for £780,000.

One of the rental properties is Plas Coch, which seems to have been owned by the Berry family for some time. Last week I had a message from the former tenant of Plas Goch. He gave me his phone number and I rang him earlier this week.

He told me he had been the tenant of Plas Coch since 2012 but then, last summer, Jake Berry and his father turned up and gave him two weeks notice to get out. (I’m told Jake never came alone.)

When the tenant asked if the landlord or the property was registered with Rent Smart Wales Jake backed off and graciously allowed him a little longer before he had to sling his hook.

Clearly Jake Berry knew about Rent Smart Wales, and equally clearly, he wasn’t registered. To clarify the position I visited the RSW website. Searching for ‘Jake Berry’ turned up nothing. So I looked for and found an entry for Plas Coch. Which told me that our boy was calling himself ‘James Berry’.

What seems to have happened is that after being challenged by the then tenant of Plas Coch Jake Berry went to the Rent Smart Wales website and made some kind of initial registration, but this was not followed through, indicated by ‘Licence Not Yet Submitted’.

There are a number of benefits for a landlord not registering with Rent Smart Wales. As a landlord who contacted me explained:

“I find that people who ‘accidentally’ don’t register usually haven’t bothered with gas safety certification, deposit protection etc. Which begs the question, did your contact have his deposit protected? Was it returned? If he googles ‘is my deposit protected’ he can find out. He can claim back up to three times the deposit he paid if it wasn’t.

Rent Smart keep telling me they are actively issuing fines for those who don’t comply as we’re coming up to the fifth year of this being in place.

There’s something going on up in Anglesey, when I look on Zoopla at properties to rent there’s hardly any with Energy Performance Certificates which is another legal requirement.

If you want me to look into anything, I can do my best.”

Naturally, I took him up on his offer. For the idea that something odd is happening on the island raises all sorts of intriguing possibilities. Is Rent Smart Wales up to the job? Is a blind eye being turned on Ynys Môn to these irregularities?

The contact mentioned Energy Performance Certificates (EPC), and these can be found by following a link on the RSW website for each property. The EPC is very important because, from April this year, it has been illegal to “create new tenancies in England and Wales without an EPC rating of E or above“.

The EPC for Plas Goch, according to the certificate issued 21 March 2013, was 50, putting it in the E (39 – 54) band. But that was 2013, God knows what the rating is now. The fact that no test has been done for 7 years might suggest that Jake Berry is not confident of passing.

As we’ve seen, the declaration in the Register of Members’ Interests lists a number of properties, but the problem lies in the wording: ‘Land and property portfolio: (i) value over £100,000 and/or (ii) giving rental income of over £10,000 a year’, which makes it difficult to know if what is being declared is ownership or rental income.

CORRECTION: It has been drawn to my attention that more careful reading of Berry’s Commons declaration tells us that (i) and (ii) can be differentiated. Which means that the final part, which must refer to Rhyd-y-Bont, says that the house (i) was bought at the end of September and the land (ii) rented out from December.

Enquiries are further hindered by two of the properties being shared, which opens the possibility of them being registered under another’s name. So I checked the RSW records again, where all properties under each specific post code are listed, for Cerrig and Mountain View. The former was listed but unregistered, while the latter wasn’t even listed. Is it known by another name?

So I tried looking under Jake’s Berry’s father, David, and I found an entry that fits the bill. A David Berry successfully registered with Rent Smart Wales last July, the same month ‘James’ Berry made contact. David Berry operates through agents Peter Large and Company Ltd on the north coast.

But irrespective of these considerations we can be sure that Jake Berry MP was illegally letting Plas Coch from 23 November, 2016, when the Rent Smart Wales legislation came into effect, until the middle of last year. And he knew it.

What action does Rent Smart Wales, or indeed the ‘Welsh Government’, plan on taking?

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WALES, THE RENTIER PARADISE

The former tenant of Plas Coch also told me that from conversations with a neighbour familiar with the Berry family’s holdings that the clan may have as many as 16 properties on Ynys Môn.

In addition to the ones we know, a few more possibles have been identified by various sources, including one where the local MP, Virginia Crosbie, is said to stay during her visits to the constituency. It’s difficult to check because the Land Registry documents show this property as still belonging to a man who died over three years ago.

But death didn’t stop him putting in a planning application last year. Praise the Lord!

As a result of the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers, its environmental virtue signalling that benefits none but malodorous dropouts on their OPD communes and eco-shysters covering our hills with flood-causing and bird-killing wind turbines, coupled with its refusal to build a rural economy beyond tourism and granny dumping, the greater part of our country is now given over to interlopers cleansing northern villages of their indigenous inhabitants so that the Cheshire Set can demand £3,000,000 for properties in ‘Abbasock’.

Is this the Wales you want; where your children or grandchildren have to leave because there are no homes and jobs for them, or else remain as a members of a helot population subservient to a new master race?

In more than twenty years the ‘progressive’ parties in Corruption Bay have done nothing for the Welsh people. In fact they have consistently legislated against the Welsh national interest.

The Berry family and the other rentier networks are the result of ‘progressive’ party policies being enacted in Corruption Bay. Socialist policies that have achieved the same result we would have seen if Unionist-conservative parties had been running things since 1999 – the steady but relentless anglicisation of Wales.

Ideological considerations are largely irrelevant in a colonial context because it’s the colony against its masters. Those within the colony who promote their own interests by trying to disguise or ameliorate colonial rule are little different and certainly no better than those whose interests they serve.

The only way to put an end to this cycle of decline is to abandon the self-serving middle men and women to vote for one of the new parties that puts Welsh interests first, above the deceits and delusions of ideology.

So join Gwlad or the Welsh National Party, and get active ahead of next year’s Welsh Parliament elections. Because we can’t afford to keep voting for the same old liars.

♦ end ♦

‘This land is (y)our land’?

On 12/04/202016/04/2020 By JacIn Environmentalism, Hippies, Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government39 Comments

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In recent years I’ve written a few articles – too many to list here – about the unrelenting assault on Welsh farming and rural life. A campaign that sees Welsh politicians used as puppets by senior civil servants serving interests other than those of Wales and Welsh people.

This post is in the form of an update.

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THE GATHERING STORM

Arraigned against our farmers are politicians in London of assorted political hues, left-‘Green’ politicians in Corruption Bay, civil servants linking Westminster and Whitehall with Cardiff docks, and land-grabbing ‘environmentalists’ who tend to be either strident memsahibs or darlings of the Guardianistas.

Last week, during a Skype-enabled session of the Senedd, Lesley Griffiths AM, the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – working on the principle that a pandemic is a good time to slip out bad news – announced the release of Draft Water Resources (Control of Agricultural Pollution) (Wales) Regulations 2020.

The timing certainly surprised and angered our farming unions. National Farmers Union Cymru was ‘astonished’, while the Farmers Union of Wales agreed that the proposals are ‘draconian’.

Now on the one hand, we all want cleaner water. But it looks as if Ms Griffiths and her friends have been over-zealous in their attempts to give us crystal clear rills, rivers we can cross by walking on the backs of spawning salmon, and lakes home to old slappers catching the swords that are regularly chucked in.

But on the other hand, we don’t want to drive farmers out of business using sly and underhand methods. Well, I don’t, but there are some who do, and Ms Griffiths is an ally of theirs, possibly no more than a tool.

In both statements you will see reference to Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ). This term is used to describe areas, “that contain surface water or groundwater that is susceptible to nitrate pollution from agricultural activities”.

The percentage of Welsh land designated NVZ currently stands at 2.4% (750 farm holdings) and there was an understanding that the percentage would increase – Natural Resources Wales recommended 8% – but Ms Griffiths has proposed that the whole country becomes a NVZ. (So you’ll understand the response of the farming unions.)

A NVZ consultation process launched by the ‘Welsh Government’ 29 September 2016 ended 23 December 2016, with the findings being published just over two years ago. You can read the ‘summary of response’ here.

A flick through those responses makes it clear that farmers’ bodies were outnumbered by angling clubs and environment groups, a number of them Englandandwales bodies. (I’m thinking here of the National Trust, the RSPB, Marine Conservation Society and the Angling Trust.) And the way the responses came in suggest that members and supporters were whipped into line.

One question considered the effects of an All-Wales NVZ on the Welsh language. There was a majority view that enforcing an All-Wales regime would be damaging to the Welsh language because the (often unnecessary) expense involved could prove too much for the smaller family farm. But in the very last paragraph we read:

“One respondent who agreed with the question thought language should not be a fundamentally important factor in any new regulations. However, it was essential that a Welsh identity was maintained through clean waters and a beautiful countryside.”

So there you have it. Remove Welsh-speaking farming families and Welsh identity will be perpetuated by the water nymphs and sword-catching slappers to which I heretofore alluded.

But I repeat, I want to see clean rivers and lakes; it’s just that I believe this can – and must – be achieved without waging war on the farming community. Which is what it seems motivates Ms Griffiths and her pals, using the findings of a consultation process skewed by those with many years experience in such dark arts.

This proposal to extend NVZ must not be looked at in isolation, for it is part of a wider strategy to ‘discourage’ traditional farming and open up the Welsh countryside to new ideas . . . and a new population.

The assault began in May 2009 with the publication of ‘One Wales: One Planet’. This is what the UN had to say about it:

Which means that pleasing a few thousand hippies and eco-fanatics was seen to be more important than providing an economy, a health service, an education system an infrastructure, and all the other things needed by three million people.

And remember! in 2009 Wales was managed by a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition.

‘One Wales: One Planet’ led, in October 2012, to the ‘Welsh Government’s Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6, which allowed One Planet Developments. A measure intended to attract hippies into Wales and allow them to build what they like, wherever they choose; with local planning authorities forced to give them planning permission, often retrospectively.

Wales is the only country in the world to have enacted this hippies’ charter.

Next, in December 2013, we saw Alun Davies, then Minister for Natural Resources and Food (therefore Ms Griffiths’ predecessor) transfer 15% of EU Common Agricultural Policy funding from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2. In practice, this saw £286m taken from farmers and allocated to rural development projects.

No prizes for guessing what ‘rural development projects’ means, and who benefits.

Fifteen per cent was the maximum permitted by the EU and the ‘Welsh Government’ showed its attitude to farmers by going for broke.

Then we had the Well-being of Future Generation Act (Wales) Act 2015 promising sunshine, lollipops and roses . . . and cushy jobs for Labour Party cronies. Such as the first Future Generations Commissioner herself. Sophie Howe is the daughter of a former Cardiff Labour councillor, and previously worked for Alun Michael, erstwhile Labour MP and now South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner.

No other country entertains anything like this bullshit.

More recently we have seen the arrival of the memsahibs and the Monbiots demanding huge swathes of our homeland in which they can play silly buggers. I’ve dealt with this in The Welsh Clearances of 16 October 2018 and a number of times since. Just type ‘rewilding’ or ‘Summit to Sea’ in the search box on top of the sidebar to find these further contributions.

And to cap it all, we have recently seen outbursts from ‘trendy metropolitan eco-zealots’ and swivel-eyed advisers to Boris Johnson promoting the same idiocies.

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ÉMINENCE GRISE

There is is no question that influencers have been working on the ‘Welsh Government’ for a decade or more, and they have tended to be men with little understanding of or sympathy for farming, and very often a poorly concealed hostility towards Welsh farmers.

We should not be surprised therefore that through the malign influence of this cabal Welsh farming has been weakened by one cut after another, to the advantage of the hippies, the memsahibs and the Monbiots.

They always encourage legislation against farmers, nothing is ever done for farmers.

Most of those I’m referring to have been mentioned in previous blog posts, but now I want to focus on one who has been rather overlooked, Gary Haggarty. No, this is not Gary Haggarty, the UVF killer and supergrass, but Gary Haggarty, former Rural Director for the ‘Welsh Government’.

‘Shared vision, united approach and consistent messaging are crucial to success’. Did you ever hear such vapid sound bites! Click to enlarge

But more importantly, Haggarty is the partner of Lesley Griffiths, the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs in the ‘Welsh Government’. Their affair was kept secret for quite some time but has been widely known about for at least a year.

Haggarty has form, for he is said to be the genius behind the decision to take money off farmers with the 2013 ‘Pillars’ decision.

Responsibility for replacing of the Tir Mynydd scheme with the unpopular Glastir arrangement is also laid at his door. Glastir tends to regard traditional Welsh farming as just another rural activity, little different to organic hobby farming. Which of course fits perfectly with the overall strategy.

When Brexit came along Haggarty saw another weapon he could use and he rolled it out with the September 2018 consultation document, ‘Brexit and our land: Securing the future of Welsh farming’. The second element in that title is quite insulting considering what we know about Haggarty’s attitude to farming and farmers.

The ‘Welsh Government’s response to the results of the consultation process is contained in this document.

A further publication in July 2019 was ‘Sustainable Farming and our Land’, which was described by its ‘author’, Lesley Griffiths, as ‘revised proposals’ following the responses received to the ‘Brexit and our land’ consultation, also ‘authored’ by Griffiths.

Or were they, because of course the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs was in a relationship with a man on a mission to bring Welsh farmers to heel? And so I have no doubt that he wrote most of what appeared in these publications. And she was happy to let him do it.

Which means that a man with not a single democratic vote to his name is dictating policy to the wretched and useless ‘Welsh Government’. And Gary Haggarty is not the only one.

So much for devolution!

This relationship was known about in Cardiff Bay for a long time, but Haggarty was only reassigned when it became public knowledge. Yet the relationship was improper whether it was public knowledge or not. They should have been separated, professionally, as soon as the affair became known about.

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BEST OF FRIENDS

As I say, the relationship between Griffiths and Haggarty is now out in the open, as shown by the image below, taken in a Dublin bar on 8 February, the day of the Ireland v Wales rugby international.

On the left we see the happy couple, and on the right, Elin Jones, the Plaid Cymru AM for Ceredigion and Llywydd (Speaker) in the Senedd. And is that Llais y Sais columnist Carolyn Hitt behind Jones? If so, what’s a nice girl like her doing there?

Gary entertaining the ladies with his Stan Laurel face. Click to enlarge

You could say that seeing Labour and Plaid Cymru politicians sharing a convivial jar in a Temple Bar pub shows how civilised Welsh politics is. Not really.

Could you imagine Elin Jones sharing a Guinness with Andrew R T Davies, or his successor, Paul Davies? Or enjoying a snifter and a risqué joke with Mostyn? (Neil Hamilton, to you.)

And if Neil McEvoy had walked through the door Elin Jones would have screamed, switched off his microphone, summoned the gardaí and demanded that they drag him off to Kilmainham to be summarily executed.

Let Uncle Jac interpret that photograph for you. What it says is this: In next year’s Assembly elections Labour will fall well short of a majority of seats, consequently its only hope of staying in power lies in a coalition with Plaid Cymru. Therefore a vote for Plaid Cymru in 2021 will be a vote for Labour.

So don’t be fooled by the playful sparring you’ll see in the election campaign. It’s only done to fool mug punters. Don’t you be one of them!

Something else that strikes me is that Elin Jones, from a farming background, has no problem socialising with people inflicting so much pain on Welsh farming. A testimony to the amnesiac qualities of the Cardiff Bay air.

Or possibly Deryn Consulting.

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AND, FINALLY . . .

There was a piece of good news for our farmers last week. And unwelcome news for those wanting to displace them. For that’s where we’re at: two sides, one still in possession of its ancestral land, and the other prepared to use all manner of tactics to take possession.

This is semi-naked colonialism, with native ‘friendlies’ who have jumped into bed with the enemy justifying their treachery by pretending it’s done for the greater good of saving the planet.

The news I’m referring to is that academics conclude that planting trees everywhere, which is what many of the would-be ethnic cleansers advocate, would do more harm than good for the environment.

“The report comes from the Natural Capital Committee (NCC), which says planting trees into peat bogs would prove a serious mistake.”

But don’t worry, for those pulling Lesley Griffith’s strings will still want wind turbines plonked on peat, to cause flooding and other problems – and it will all be done in order to save the planet!

Left to these people, Welsh identity itself will be destroyed . . . to save the planet. Gesture politics all the way.

Devolution does not work for us Welsh. Devolution benefits a colonial management class that just rubber-stamps decisions made by strangers acting against the Welsh national interest. We must move on to independence and reclaim our country from both our external enemies and their internal allies.

♦ end ♦

UPDATE 16.04.2020: Conservative MPs from Wales have written to Lesley Griffiths condemning her treatment of Welsh farmers over NVZ. (Did they also send Gary a copy?) Will Plaid Cymru also defend our farmers, or will they side with their Labour friends? (Available here in pdf.)

Jac o' the North

Tag: One Planet Developments

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Jake Berry MP, Part 4

‘This land is (y)our land’?