Tag: Planning INspectorate

The Trouble With Devolution . . .

On By JacIn Conservatives, Devolution6 Comments

A story in the Daily Telegraph has been getting attention on Twitter and elsewhere. It appears that the Treasury in London is considering giving power over stamp duty (on property purchase) to the ‘Welsh’ Government. (Though if I’ve read the article correctly, it seems that others in the Treasury are arguing against the move!) The (pro-transfer) Treasury would appear to be considering implementing a change proposed by the Silk Commission, set up to look into the devolution settlement and recommend changes it feels might be necessary or welcome.

There would be nothing surprising in the Treasury handing over such power, for it has long been suspected that the Conservative Party would be happy to transfer to Wales authority over the raising of existing taxes. Which if you think about, makes perfect sense. If we raise £100m then this same sum will be deducted from the block grant . . . with the expense of raising and administering the tax transferred to Wales. So we’ll end up out of pockTelegraph clip 2et.

Irrespective of whether there is discord at the Treasury among the unnamed, one name we do encounter in the Telegraph article is that of David Jones, Secretary of State for Wales. Doing what Tory Secretaries of State have ever done – put England’s interests first. For while he may urge caution because of the consequences ” . . . . for the whole of the UK . . . ” this – as he well knows – is disingenuous. The legislation will have no effect on Scotland, so he is thinking solely of England. More importantly, those Conservative voters with second homes in Wales.

Just remind yourself that this post of Secretary of State for Wales exists, so we have always been told, to defend Welsh interests. Increasing stamp duty on second homes would result in more properties coming within the financial reach of local buyers, so shouldn’t David Jones be supporting such a measure? Yes, but only if you fall for the old deception that a Secretary of State for Wales is ‘the voice of Wales in the Cabinet’. In reality, he, and every other Secretary of State, Conservative and Labour, has been the voice of the Cabinet in Wales. Little more than a governor-general with instructions to keep the natives in check.

Telegrap clipElsewhere in the article we were treated to another quote, this time from “a Tory source” which first reminded us that England and Wales (or Englandandwales), ” . . . in many respects form a single economic region”. Yes, we’re aware of the problem. Before going off the rails a bit with, “The border areas are highly populated . . . “. What! Travelling north from Chepstow the border is sparsely populated until one reaches Wrecsam. Which suggests that this ‘Tory source’ is probably from the north or the north east . . . perhaps David Jones again, this time incognito.

One thing I find really sad about this little tale is that the Conservative Party within Wales has made great strides to detoxify itself, to become more Welsh, and then along comes Dai Jones talking like a Tory politician of the 1980s. Such progress has been made in Wales that the party has managed to make itself unattractive to Beata ‘Britannia’ Brookes and Rod Richards, both offloaded onto Ukip. David Melding often sounds a better Welshman than many in Plaid Cymru. Then comes the reality check in the form of David Jones.David-Jones-MP-007

Though in fairness, things would be little different if the Labour Party was in power in London. For this episode only exposes, yet again, the fundamental problem with devolution. England agrees we can have devolution just as long as it doesn’t disadvantage England. Which is almost impossible. If Wales was to act in her own best interests – as does every other country – then we would be charging a fair rate for water and other exports. Were we growing a healthy economy then Welsh companies could only expand at the expense of English rivals currently taking advantage of the lack of indigenous competition.

In a nutshell . . . The problem with devolution is that the ‘Welsh’ Government only has power to decide spending priorities of the block grant given by London. Due to the prevailing socialist ethos, this results in much of this money being squandered in order that our politicians can claim the moral high ground. Though this is defended as making Wales a fairer and “more equal” country. Which I suppose has some truth, for we’re all becoming poorer.

Compounded by the fact that we have a Labour Party in control of Wales that sees a virtue in poverty! We are said to enjoy the only administration in Europe that has a Minister for Tackling Poverty. But making a virtue, or a political weapon, out of poverty is so entrenched in Labour thinking that we also have to suffer a Third Sector that exists to glorify and capitalise on poverty, and of course, by so doing provide a few thousand jobs for Labour cronies! As if that wasn’t bad enough, many in ‘Welsh’ Labour seem fearful of making Wales successful lest this excites nationalist passions!

Further exacerbated by the problem that too many policy decisions attributed to the ‘Welsh’ Government are in fact made by civil servants and ‘advisors’ of whom we know next to nothing, beyond the fact that few of them are Welsh, and many of them answer directly to London. The Planning Inspectorate, the Housing Directorate (social housing), the Wales Rural Observatory, are just a few of the bodies involved.

While on the other hand, London will never grant powers that could improve the economic standing of Wales because to do so would, in too many instances, result in England or English consumers of Welsh resources being disadvantaged, or else – as stamp duty explicitly shows – work against the interests of English people taking advantage of Wales’ relative poverty and colonial status in relation to England.

Put it all together and it exposes devolution as a chimera; a worthless sop to Welsh sentiment designed to fail on almost every practical level. Which is what we have seen since the Welsh Assembly came into being. By almost every important criterion Wales is poorer today than she was in 1999, not just in absolute terms but relative to England, Scotland, and almost every other part of Europe.

Consequently, the current model of devolution is indefensible. To persist with it can only be viewed as a collective delusion, or the worst form of national masochism.

Neighbours From Hell

On By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Labour Party, Planning42 Comments

The first responsibility of any government is the protection of its people, from threats internal and external. Yet with its ‘no border’ policy not only is the ‘Welsh’ Government putting at risk the survival of Welsh identity, it also risks the lives of individuals, too many of whom have died at the hands of criminals who would not have been allowed entry to any country with a government mindful of its primary responsibility.

doguedebordeauxZygosSo in this post I shall deal with some of the more notorious cases from recent years. Or rather, just those I happen to have noticed, or were brought to my attention. Had any of these individuals you’ll read about below sought entry to Canada or Australia they would have been laughed at, and then turned back to England.

First, and before getting down to the gruesome and the repulsive, let’s look at some less serious cases, some almost humorous. Such as the woman in this story, who is obviously some kind of nutter drawn to large and aggressive dogs that she clearly cannot control. Which explains why, for a while, she wrought havoc in the corner of Ynys Môn where she lived. In addition to the two American bulldogs mentioned in the link, she also kept a Dogue de Bordeaux aka Bordeaux Mastiff or French Mastiff. (Shown left.) All nice cuddly poochie-woochies.

UPDATE 06.05.2015: The woman at the centre of this story may have had good reason to be in Wales, and in need of ferocious dogs. For as this report tells us she was a central character in a particularly brutal murder.

UPDATE 29.09.2015: She has now been jailed for 21 months.

Staying with animals, here’s the case of a couple who moved from the south east of England to a former pub in Gilfach Goch, where they kept animals in appalling conditions. When asked why they kept so many animals, suffering because they were obviously incapable of looking after them, the husband simply replied, “Why not?”.

Or how about Reginald Gill, who claimed he could cure women of cancer by groping them. Then there was Heather Stokes, who shouted “Welsh bastards” at a group of workmen who had the temerity to slow her regal progress. More recently we have had a case of four hippy women living near Tregaron charged with preventing the lawful and decent burial of a man who had been dead for four and a half years in order to keep claiming his disability allowance and pension credits. One of the accused is the deceased’s wife! We can safely assume that the late – though regrettably unburied – Geoffrey StuBatley Residencerdey, was a lot lighter than the 880 pound teenager who was moved from Kent to Aberdare. It took thirty people to get her from her social housing property into the ambulance when she needed to visit her local hospital. Now we must move on to the more serious cases.

One I dealt with a couple of years ago was that of Colin Batley, paedophile and English patriot. His sexual tastes were known before he came to Wales, they may have been the reason he and his gang left London, but Grwp Gwalia Cyf of Swansea was quite happy to house these creatures and to inflict them on Kidwelly. Despite being warned of his behaviour in 2002 Carmarthenshire social services did nothing. Here are some more peripatetic pervs, this time from Wolverhampton. A father and son act, Barry Ford and Craig McKellar, jailed at Mold Crown court last December for a total of 28 years. Here’s another, named Brian Sturley from London; this bastard was molesting kids in Swansea.

SeabridgesA really weird, and disturbing case, is that of a couple living in Ceredigion. Glynn and Julie Seabridge (left) are charged with neglecting their eight-year-old son so badly that he died of scurvy. Who, in Western Europe, dies of scurvy in the twenty-first century! (Update January 29, 2015.) What no one is saying is that these two are not Cardis at all. If Seabridgemy information is correct, they almost certainly moved from Stoke-on-Trent (see right, click to enlarge). And if other reports reaching me are correct, then the Potteries seems to be the source of an increasing number of our problems. Note the walking sticks in the photo. It’s amazing how many of these bastards turn up for court appearances sporting walking sticks or crutches. Are judges or juries fooled by this? Now we must move up a level, for regretably we also have to suffer an influx of murderers.

George Johnson (below left) was jailed in Wolverhampton in 1986 after killing someone in their own home for just £3. Some time after being released he moved to Rhyl (where else?) and there –George Johnson high on drugs in 2011 – he killed an eighty-nine-year-old woman for £25. Another avoidable tragedy was the rape and murder of sixty-seven-year-old Irene Lawless in Llanllwni, Carmarthenshire in 2011 by Darren Jackson of Kent..

More recently Wales received unwanted global publicity over the murder of little April Jones of Machynlleth. The media tended to overlook the fact that Mark Bridger was born in Surrey, the son of a London cop, and moved to Wales after getting into trouble over possession of a firearm, theft, and obtaining property by deception. It seems he was packed off to Wales, where no one knew him, to ‘make a fresh start’. I’ve known a few like him – camouflage clothing, they usually carry a knife, and tell stories of having served in the SAS or the Foreign Legion. Bullshitting weirdoes no country should ever allow in. But it seems most towns and villages in rural Wales nowadays have their resident nutter in combat trousers.

Finally, in recent days we’ve been reading about the tragedy of three generations of the same family killed by Carl Mills, an alcoholic psycopath from Manchester who decided to give himself a change of scenery in Cwmbran. Perhaps another ‘fresh start’. Read the reports. Did no one realise the danger these people were in from this unhinged, alcoholic degenerate? Take a look at him – he could have stepped straight out of Deliverance! (‘Is that Central Casting? – send me a weird, inbred-looking hillbilly type’.) Or am I being my usual intolerant, judgemental and Carl Millsreactionary self? Well, if any smug leftie out there is nodding in agreement, he or she might care to remind themselves that before this bastard killed three generations, including his own daughter, he even threatened to dig up the child’s stillborn twin. This is one sick fucker!

What have all the misfits, paedophiles and murderers involved in these recent cases got in common? Answer: none of them had any good reason for being in Wales. Many were brought here or encouraged to move here by social housing providers, unscrupulous private landlords or other ‘agencies’. Or simply because Wales is a soft touch. For these people making a fresh start does not mean reforming, it does not mean changing their ways, it simply means the luxury of being able to carry on with the same behaviour in communities where they aren’t known. Which is bad enough, but why are there agencies in Wales helping them?

We must have more control over who comes to Wales because it has now become, quite literally, a matter of life or death. People are being killed, children are being raped, communities are being disrupted and made to live in fear, because the ‘Welsh’ Government is failing in its primary responsibility to the Welsh people.

The first scumbag, Frederick Lawlor, is both a murderer and a paedophile. After killing his partner in Rochdale, and burying her body in the cellar of the house they shared, he moved to Abergele, where he used a 13-year-old-girl for sex with dozens of men. It’s unclear if he came to Wales of his own volition, but the anonymity provided by the north coast’s ‘fluid’ population is a big attraction for individuals like Lawlor and the agencies looking to relocate (i.e. dump) dangerous individuals.

Among those convicted for abusing the girl was Freemason Raymond Ketland, who claimed to have been asked, by a fellow Mason in the group already abusing the girl, “do you want to have a bit of fun?” Ketland is yet another who’d recently moved to the north coast, but he hadn’t been relocated by any agency, for Ketland was a former Birmingham detective. Ketland takes us into the murky and constantly overlapping worlds of Freemasonry and the police, dealt with extensively by Paddy French at Rebecca.

Moving down to Ceredigion, we find David Thomas Clapton. In order to get near children Clapton set up a charity, Harvest Trust, and arranged holidays for English kids in the Welsh countryside. To show his love for children, Clapton also became a foster parent, accepted as such by Cyngor Ceredigion. One worry here is that in just a few years Harvest Trust received hundreds of thousands of pounds in grants and donations. From where? The Cambrian News article I link with is wrong when it says that Harvest Trust sent no accounts to the Charity Commission  after 2009, here’s a link to the 2011 accounts.

Finally (until the next update) we shall look at the case of Gavin Benit who, as the prosecution lawyer said at his trial, “likes to have sex with under-age girls”. This little ‘weakness’ first attracted the attention of the police while Benit was living in his native Oldham. Although his offences against a 13-year-old girl took place there, by the time he came to trial in Manchester, in September 2008, Benit had moved to Colwyn Bay. He was sentenced to four years in prison. This month he was sentGavin Benitenced at Caernarfon Crown Court to 10 years for raping a 15-year-old girl in Colwyn Bay. Or as BBC Wales says: “The rape took place at a Colwyn Bay hotel where he was placed in a flat”. “Placed in a flat” by whom? My guess is the Probation Service (for Englandandwales). I further speculate that the Probation Service moved him to Bae Colwyn some time between his arrest and sentencing in 2008.

At least the BBC had the balls to say that Benit had been “placed” in Colwyn Bay, but other elements of the ‘Welsh’ media either infer that the guilty are Welsh, or state it outright! Take the Daily Post, which said that Benit is “from Rhyl”, and also mentioned the Colwyn Bay connection. Yet while the Daily Post also mentioned Benit’s previous conviction it refused to say that this was in Manchester, and that Benit was then living in Oldham. Worse, is this coverage from Trinity Mirror’s WalesOnline which, in reporting the 2006 convictions of four others involved in the Lawlor case, begins thus, “Four more Welsh monsters are facing jail . . . “. Looking at the names of the four men convicted, one, from Wrecsam, is clearly Welsh . . . but the other three, from Prestatyn, Colwyn Bay and Rhyl? WalesOnline has no way of knowing their nationality, so why call them Welsh?

Scumbag ExpressEven though it was established in court that Lawlor, Benit, et al are English the ‘Welsh’ media are not allowed to report that fact because in colonial Wales the description ‘English’ can only be used in positive contexts. The only exception, or ‘safety-valve’, is the sporting arena or some other triviality. Among the other directives for our colonial media is putting the best possible gloss on the English connection. This of course is difficult in a third world country unless we natives are blamed for all that’s wrong and our masters given credit for the little that is good. The dumping of English criminals in Wales shows how this works in practice. 1/ Ignore the issue. 2/ When cases come to court report on them but never mention the English origins of the convicted, and certainly not the routes by which they arrived in Wales. 3/ If you really want to go for broke, then – and with no evidence beyond addresses – describe the convicted perverts as Welsh – better yet, “Welsh monsters”.

The Housing (Wales) Bill I have dealt with in my most recent posts will, if implemented, make the existing situation even worse. For it forces Welsh housing associations into accepting any murderous, child molesting scumbag from across the border. (Though many of them need no persuasion.) The problems the north coast has experienced up to now will be nothing compared to what the Bill promises. It will be time to rename the Costa Geriatrica the Costa del Pervert.

UPDATE 25.01.14:

The case of London gangster Joland Giwa turning up in Newport seems to have surprised a lot of people, including local MPs and others. It’s as if they were unaware that hundreds, possibly thousands, of murderers, paedophiles, ex-cons, substance abusers, etc., arJoland Giwae either being encouraged to move to Wales or being given no choice in the matter and dumped here. Here are a few other cases I’ve noted since I wrote the original post. (Though before moving on, let me make it clear that, unlike others dealt with in this post, I am not aware that Mr Giwa has committed any offences in Wales.)

UPDATE 19.06.2015: Joland Giwa has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for robbing a Newport bookmaker’s office. Despite it all, I feel a certain sympathy for the boy (unlike the others dealt with here), I don’t think he ever had a chance to make more of his life. We are no nearer knowing who decided to move him to Wales.

Taking A Break

On By JacIn Colonisation of Wales26 Comments

In recent months I have given much thought to my lifestyle. I’m spending far too much time at my computer, writing my blog and other things; reading, watching television, or just filling my head with information I’d be none the poorer for not knowing. Then there’s Twitter, Facebook, texts, e-mails. And so often I’m not even sure who I’m dealing with . . . I suspect many are socialists, or oafs in baseball caps. Even socialist oafs in baseball caps! People I wouldn’t bother with in the real world. It has become clear to me that this technology, promised to be the great servant of mankind, can, if we allow it, become our master, exerting an unhealthy influence over our lives.

Another issue encouraging my return to the real world is the new wave of US entrepreneurs and capitalists behind this revolution. They may look and sound like unworldly geeks, but when it comes to business, with their monopolistic ambitions and their tax-dodging, they are more ruthless than Ford, Rockefeller and J P Morgan ever were. Do I really want to use anything over which these amoral weirdoes have control? Do I want to use software or social networking that is all the while gathering information about me? Do I want to download a harmless ‘update’, only to find that I have, totally unwillingly and without warning, also installed a toolbar, a search engine, anti-virus software, tracking cookies and God knows what else? No, I do not.

Don’t run away with the idea that I am Thoreaurejecting new technology entirely and going live in a cave, but I will in future be drastically reducing the time I spend on my computer. My Twitter account will be closed soon, and so will my Facebook page (which I never could see the value of). As for my blog, I shall keep it open but resort to it less. Maybe a weekly or bi-weekly post, supplemented by ‘specials’ if I think I have something worth saying. For while I believe some of my postings have had an effect, particularly those dealing with the Third Sector and other obvious forms of mismanagement or corruption, at the end of the day, blogging could be viewed as a cheap form of vanity publishing.

‘Why now?’ you might ask. Well, there comes a point when you realise you’re repeating yourself. Largely because the stupidly of politicians, and the perfidy of those who manipulate them, is unchanging. As is the gullibility of  too many Welsh voters. Only the characters and the circumstances change. One Third Sector scandal is much like another. And when a blogger finds himself referring back to his own earlier posts then he should realise that he’s said it all before. Such is the situation with me.

In addition, my mother has just died, a milestone in any man’s life. So now seems the right time to make my return to the real world. Before finishing, I’d like to thank you all for reading my blog, both at its original home with Google Blogger, and more recently here, courtesy of Gwilym ab Ioan of S C Cambria. Thank you also for your support and comments over the years. What follows may be my last post for a while, in it I try to give my honest assessment of the situation in Wales today, and how we got here.

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IN THE BEGINNING

When I joined the nationalist movement in the mid-ʼ60s I joined something vibrant and exciting, there was a ‘We’re not taking this shit any more!’ attitude, and a belief that change would be brought about by pressure from below, by activists like us. And for a while we had the system worried. But by 1975, the high-water mark had been reached, and Welsh nationalism was in retreat. For by now the British Establishment understood what it was dealing with. It knew how far Welsh nationalism was prepared to go, what barriers it wouldn’t cross; it had worked out who could be bought, or intimidated; and it understood that by guiding a nationalist movement without mass support into politics that that movement was never going to threaten the status quo.

And so it proved. After Plaid Cymru won Carmarthen in 1966, Meirionnydd and Caernarfon in 1974, after seventeen years of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, after the Free Wales Army (FWA), Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru (MAC) and countless other manifestations of Welsh nationalism, on St. David’s Day 1979 just 20.26% of us voted for a Welsh Assembly. That the devolution referendum of 1997 was won was due to Margaret Thatcher and eighteen years of Conservative rule. It had nothing to do with Plaid Cymru. Even then, many Labour voters argued that we didn’t need devolution – Labour was back in power! (A good example of the mentality of the ‘Donkey Labour’ voter; rejecting devolution because it’s only needed when the Tories are in power but unable to work out that the Tories will never give Wales devolution!)

DOWNHILL

By the early 1970s the English Establishment had worked out the following facts. Plaid Cymru was essentially a linguistic and cultural movement which, once the initial excitement had worn off, would have little appeal to the anglophone majority. Many of the language activists were simply after their own niche in the English system, some proving themselves to be ruthlessly ambitious. While the most sincere and selfless element of Welsh nationalism, those who resorted to direct action, were not prepared to take a human life. Just to be sure, the English Establishment put it place a colonisation strategy to encourage English settlers into Wales, using agencies as diverse as higher education and tourism, plus quangos such as the Development Board for Rural Wales.

It was downhill from there. Apart from the Meibion Glyndŵr campaign and groups such as the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement, Cofiwn, Cyfamodwyr, Wales was quiescent. Plaid Cymru went through various colour changes – red, green, pink – and Cymdeithas yr Iaith’s best days were behind it, its victories nearly all won in the first twenty years of its existence. Whatever came to us now would be gifted by our masters without them having to worry about pressure from below. Even the Meibion Glyndŵr campaign, which had widespread popular support, did nothing to remove the problem of holiday homes.

TODAY

Which brings me to a consideration of Wales today. Plaid Cymru can be discounted entirely. Exposed and discredited. Infiltrated and manipulated. A former leader openly talking about joining the Labour Party. More concerned with socialism and environmentalism than with nationalism. Its ambition limited to being junior partner in a Labour-led coalition. Quite happy to see the Welsh countryside covered with wind turbines and populated with English settlers. Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, or the wider language-cultural movement, stands exposed as a bunch of weak-kneed charlatans. Deluding themselves that another school in Cardiff is fair exchange for the loss of Ceredigion. Smug and complacent on the moral high ground, as the enemy takes over the land below. Direct action? There is none.

Ah! but we’ve got devolution, you reply. No. What we have is a system in which a bunch of second-rate politicians faff about in a leaky building down Cardiff docks while real power is increasingly exerted by English civil servants and organisations of which most of us have never heard – Planning Inspectorate, Housing Directorate, Wales Rural Observatory, countless Third Sector shyster-wagons, etc. – for which we never voted. So don’t kid yourself that this system fronted by Carwyn and his gang is devolved and democratic government, or that it’s doing anything for us. It is nothing but English colonialism with its repulsive features partly disguised with a Welsh veil.

TOMORROW?

The biggest issue facing the Welsh nation is its very survival. Partly due to ‘Wales’ becoming divorced from ‘the Welsh’. Allowing politicians and academics, journalists and others, to crow about something being ‘wonderful for Wales’ when it offers Welsh people nothing, or is even detrimental to their interests. Tourism, for example. To the point where people can even bang on about Wales being ‘a rainbow nation’, with we Welsh nothing more than another exotic component. Hand in hand with this divorce goes the trivialisation of Welsh identity, and a careful promotion of what are considered to be acceptable expressions of Welshness. So that some tart on a reality TV show would be an acceptable face of ‘Welshness’, but a dignified patriot rejecting an ‘honour’ from the English Queen would be a narrow bigot, an extremist.

EuphemismThese Orwellian interpretations dominate Welsh life. Exemplified by the approach to colonisation. Wales today has ‘incomers’ or ‘in-migrants’, and ‘people from other parts of Britain’, or even ‘from over the border’. These can be ‘retirees’, or people ‘looking for a better quality of life’ (even ‘good-lifers’ is acceptable). They can even be, in the memorable phrase of Wyn Roberts, “this beneficent influx”. You can use any bloody euphemism you choose, but they must never be called ‘English’. To do so would be ‘racist’. Exposing a pathetic self-censorship, perhaps even self-intimidation. This is the level of debate we have sunk to in Wales; one corrupted by political correctness and poisoned by a variant of socialism that would be ridiculed and rejected from Bilbao to Barcelona to Belfast.

From now on the only issue must be the fight against colonisation and the threat it poses to the survival of Welsh nationhood. Everything else is secondary or irrelevant. Whether it’s ‘saving the planet’ (as if Wales could make any bloody difference!) or the chimera of extra power for those clowns I mentioned earlier in the leaky building. Because no matter how many lies are told, how imaginative the euphemisms employed, or how many distractions promoted, WE know the truth: England is carrying out a colonisation programme in Wales that is excluding and marginalising the Welsh (apart from those needed to disguise the process) with the intention of destroying Welsh national identity. Fight this evil wherever you find it. It is the biggest threat the Welsh nation has ever faced.

WALES v ENGLAND: The Distraction and the Real Contest

On By JacIn Sport4 Comments

As the media reminds us unremittingly, there is a rugby game in Cardiff on Saturday between Wales and England. Though, if one wanted to be cynical – and I often do! – then, seeing as ‘our’ team is the creation of the Welsh Rugby Union, it could be argued that what we shall actually see is a team representing England and another team representing a corrupted interpretation of Welsh identity.

Why am I picking on the Welsh Rugby Union? Well, basically because the WRU has always been a bastion of the forelock-tugging element in Welsh life, those for whom pride in Wales and Welshness are permissable up to the point where it’s acknowledged that Welshness is a subordinate identity to what they might describe as Britishness but is, in reality, Englishness. They are what the Irish might call ‘shoneens’.

This attitude was exhibited at the very formation of the Welsh Rugby Union when, instead of adopting a Welsh emblem, the founders went for a central European badge with a motto in German that represents the heir to the English throne. The WRU has continued in this obsequious vein for well over a century. Most recently with its introduction of the Prince William Cup, competed for between Wales and South Africa! (Most of whose players over the years have been republican Afrikaners, or Boers.)

But let’s focus on Saturday’s game. England are going for the Grand Slam after beating Ireland, Scotland, France and Italy. Having lost only to Ireland, Wales can deny England this prize, and also win the Championship themselves, if they beat England by seven points. So why am I not transported to paroxysms of frenzied patriotism, ignoring all else? Because that’s what they want. Rugby in Wales is bread and circuses twenty-first century style: Permissible patriotism and sanctioned Sais-bashing (up to a point).

‘Patriotism’ and national sentiment turned off and on like a tap. While the tap is running, and just like in the ancient festivals of misrule, we Welsh are allowed to get above ourselves, say and do things that would normally be frowned upon. But once the tap is turned off, it’s back to normal; to the normal condition of our country. For ask yourself, if we stuff the English by thirty points will it make Wales less poor? When the cloud of euphoria has evaporated will we find that England is no longer exploiting our water and other resources, not covering our country in wind turbines, has stopped dumping her undesirables on us?

Wales doesn’t need 80-minute ‘patriots’; Wales needs commitment for 365 days a year. Even so, enjoy the game, but remember, even a Welsh victory will be nothing more than a harmless and enjoyable distraction from, rather than the answer to, Wales’ problems. They’ll still be there when you sober up.

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A few hours berallyfore the game, at mid-day, I hope to be at a rally outside the Senedd. A number of groups have combined to organise a protest against the Local Development Plans being forced on our local authorities by the English Planning Inspectorate acting in the name of the Welsh Government. In fact, no less than 320,000 new homes.

There is no indigenous demand for this number. Most, especially in rural areas, will be unaffordable to all but a few Welsh people. In fact, all rural areas of Wales already have an oversupply of housing, both private and social, so why are we being told to build more? The answer is inescapable – to accommodate yet more English colonists.

This is why organisations including Cambria Band, Cyngor Pobl Gogledd Cymru, Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, Cymuned, Plaid Cymru and the Welsh National Rights Movement will be represented at the rally. They will be calling for a new approach to planning in Wales, based on what we need. Radical, I suppose, but only in a colonialist context such as we find in Wales.

So if you’re in Cardiff on Saturday, rather than getting tanked up on Brains and faux patriotism, why not come down the Bay to experience the real thing? Among people who’ll still be patriots next week. Learn about what really matters in this country; the things that will be important long after most people have forgotten what happened at the Millennium Stadium.

LDPs – Yet Another Flaw?

On By JacIn PlanningLeave a comment

A lot has been written in recent years (some of it by me!) about the flawed reasoning used to justify the Local Development Plans forced on our local authorities by the English Planning Inspectorate; this body allowed to act in the name of the Welsh Government and aided by non-Welsh senior officers in our de-democratised councils.

One regular complaint is that previous, undesirable, levels of English immigration are used to justify more of the same. Or that there has been too much input allowed from those with a vested interest in building more new houses. But whatever the exact complaint, it has tended to centre on interpretation, or presentation, rather than on the raw data used. But there may be problems here as well.

Unable to yet make the emotional break with the City of my Dreams, this afternoon I looked through the ward profiles data used to inform Swansea’s LDP. And I found something that brought back memories . . . memories strong enough to make me realise that someone had dropped a rather large testis.

Those of you older than some of the councillors I have been dealing with lately, and who were – also unlike them – living in Wales at the time, will remember that the 2001 census neglected to provide a Welsh tick box. This led to a campaign, organised by the Independent Wales Party, and supported by many others, to boycott the census. The centrepiece of the protest was a ‘coffin’ that travelled the length of Wales collecting census forms that people had refused to complete. After arriving in Cardiff Bay the coffin containing the forms went missing. (And I honestly don’t know where it went.) As I travelled with the coffin for most of the route I can testify to the anger we encountered.

So I was surprised to read in the ward profiles figures given for “People identifying themselves as Welsh” – with the source for this information being the 2001 census! Which, as you can imagine, gave rather odd ‘statistics’. According to Swansea council, using Office of National Statistics data, in 2001 just 15.29% of Swansea’s population identified as Welsh. The 2011 census, which did allow people to describe themselves as Welsh, found that 70.4% chose one or other form of Welshness. Surely someone at the council should have realised that the 2001 figure is rubbish. So why use it without a health warning?

In fairness, the council does admit, “The Profiles (published in July 2012) are a snapshot based on currently available information. They are published in draft form only, as they will need to be updated when the 2011 Census findings are published and as further information becomes publicly available”. Fair enough, but the 2011 census figures have now been out for a few months, so why haven’t these ward profiles been updated? And wasn’t the Swansea LDP based on these wrong figures?

Which brings me to my real worry. If I can find such obviously incorrect ‘data’ from just a quick glance, how many of the other ‘facts’ used to justify LDPs across Wales can be trusted? Is there any independent assessment or evaluation? What about those LDPs, such as Denbighshire’s, planning thousands of new houses not needed by the local population, were they also compiled on faulty data? Did someone look at the 2001 census and say, ‘Only 12% here are Welsh. Let’s build – everywhere!’