To Be A Farmer’s Boy

On 05/09/202405/09/2024 By JacIn Climate, Colonialism, Environmentalism, Globalism, Greens32 Comments

This week’s offering is about organisations that are often little more than a name. Yet despite their lack of corporeal substance these outfits enjoy considerable support from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’.

Which is bad enough, but Wales has far too many of these organisations, and their numbers seem to be increasing monthly.

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The title of this piece is taken from an old English song about a lad whose father dies leaving him, his mother, and five siblings, to fend for themselves. The lad goes to a farm seeking work. The farmer’s wife and daughter take pity on him, and he’s hired. He marries the daughter, and when her parents die, he becomes the farmer.

Here’s a good pub version from West Yorkshire.

And here’s an interesting version by Shropshire singer Fred Jordan. The old rhotic accent of the central border coming through well.

God! I spoil you.

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SONS (AND DAUGHTERS) OF THE SOIL

This first section is about a shindig planned for November called the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference, at the University of Wales Trinity St David in Lampeter.

Where else? For this venerable institution is to where Jane Davidson, authoress of the Future Generations legislation, retreated after leaving Corruption Bay.

I particularly love their use of the term, ‘Real farming’. Does it suggest those involved enjoy a monopoly in knowledge of the subject? Inferring that those beyond this coterie are wholly ignorant of farming?

So who are these enlightened ones?

The website is a minimalist creation, perhaps explained by the fact that this group comes alive only for the annual knees-up. Like some sort of Earth-botherers Brigadoon.

Here’s the line-up (from the match programme, 6d from the boys at the turnstiles):

Hazel Thomas, who might actually know something about food. But after that promising introduction it’s downhill all the way.

Laura-Cait Driscoll, University of Wales Trinity St David Lampeter. Whose life is a mystery ere she rocked up in Lambed in 2016 to work at Shapla Tandoori.

Catherine Hughes. Is it a local Plaid Cymru councillor? Or this Catherine Hughes? If it’s the second, then she works with the ‘Welsh Government’.

Alicia Miller, Sustainable Food Trust. An international organisation, reflected in its directors. Monmouthshire council among the donors tells you who’s moving to rural north Gwent, have taken over the local Labour party and, through it, the council.

A farming source tells me Patrick Holden, founder of SFT, is a good egg, but my source fears his organisation is going the way of others, like the Soil Association, in being taken over by anti-farmer activists. Or worse.

Dr Jane Ricketts Hein, Cynidr Consulting. Is there such a company, or is it a one-woman band? The name crops up in relation to this 2017 conference, and then, nothing. Though Dr Hein seems to be connected with Bangor university.

To confuse matters(?), there was a company called Cynder Consulting.

Lowri Hedd Vaughan, GwyrddNi, which is a climate action group . . . at a conference on food and farming?

Ieuan Davies, Natural Resources Wales. ‘Welsh Government’ representative.

I said it was downhill after the full-back, and now it starts to get slightly ridiculous.

Jackie Pearce-Dickens, Whole Health Agriculture; from Oxfordshire, which wants us to consume less meat and fewer dairy products. A perfect fit for a food and farming conference in a dairy farming area of a livestock-raising country.

Lisa Mundle, Landworkers’ Alliance Cymru. An organisation of middle-class fantasists who want to be seen as peasants, such as might be found in Asia or Latin American. Sad, really.

The group belongs to La Via Campesina. So Viva La Revolucion!

Delyth Phillips (actually, Phillipps), of Wildlife Trusts Wales. An organisation that haunts me, because – and as I’ve reported more than once – it doesn’t exist.

Wildlife Trusts Wales dissolved as a charity in 2021, and as a company a year later. Thereby surrendering Wales’ distinct identity in that sphere. But reflecting the English takeover of the ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ rackets in Wales.

Despite lacking any legal structure Wildlife Trusts Wales carries on as if nothing happened. Led by dissembling Rachel Sharp. Ably assisted by Tim Birch, the Extinction Rebellion nut-job who was run out of the Peak District. And now, we have Delyth Phillipps.

How many more are there in this wraith-like organisation?

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But do you know what’s missing from that line-up? That’s right – a farmer!

And that’s because we’ve reached the stage in Wales where conferences can be organised to discuss food production, land use, the rural environment . . . yet genuine, traditional, Welsh, farmers, are excluded.

I’ll explain this in the Conclusion.

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TIR NATUR

This is a gang I’ve mentioned a few times before. And that’s despite them climbing aboard the environmental bandwagon only very recently. Here’s their website.

I think the first time Tir Natur appeared here was in July 2022, in a Miscellany post, scroll down to the section headed with the name.

But I think they’re worth another look. So let’s turn to the website, where we see Tir Natur’s vision laid out:

A Wales where beavers return to build their dams . . . where cranes dance in the setting sun and golden eagles soar above Eryri once more.

Poetic, like, innit?

But seriously, what soul-dead ghoul among you could not be moved by the uplifting images of foxtrotting cranes and soaring eagles?

And there’s more.

A Wales where large grazing animals roam freely in natural herds . . .

Note that Tir Natur is not referring here to cattle. If previous TN output is anything to go by, then this is a reference to European bison. In fact, an image of said beasts appears on the TN website.

Picture it! It’s 2035, and herds of bison roam from Crickhowell to Caeathro and from Crymych to Caerwys, pausing to rub themselves against the wind turbines, many of which have now toppled. Useless, unrecyclable, their owners untraceable.

The bison often wander into towns and villages, trampling people, wrecking cars, buildings, and gardens, but nothing can be done – because they’re protected. And that’s because, unlike cow farts, bison farts do no harm to the planet!

This is re-wilding. And it’s what Tir Natur is all about. So let’s get to the nub of it.

Tir Natur is a rewilding charity, set up to address the nature & climate crises in Wales. The state of nature in Wales is truly devastating . . .

Globally, 1,000,000 species are at risk of extinction, and Wales is one of the worst culprits in the world for loss of nature. We are ranked 224th out of 240 countries for biodiversity intactness . . . but rewilding offers hope

What you’ve read there is how modern environmentalism operates. Imagine or exaggerate a problem – then come up with the solution. A ‘solution’ that will greatly benefit those who identified the problem in the first place!

Such an elegant and circular solution to the woes of the world.

If you think I’m wrong, then tell me who decided that, ‘The state of nature in Wales is truly devastating‘, and that Wales is, ‘ranked 224th out of 240 countries for biodiversity intactness‘.

Was it some respected and impartial authority, or was it off-the-wall activists such as we find at Tir Natur? Come to that, who accepts these ‘findings’? The truth is that it doesn’t matter what you and I think; what matters is getting politicians and funders to pretend they believe this garbage.

But look around the world, for God’s sake, where forests bigger than Wales are being cleared, where species are hunted to extinction, at countries with no environmental controls whatsoever – yet we are expected to believe that little Wales, where hardly anything has changed, where regulations get tighter by the year, is ranked in the top 10% of countries suffering biodiversity loss.

Insulting bullshit. Insulting to all Welsh people, but especially to farmers, for they are the real target of these lies.

From the Tir Natur website. ‘This little piggy . . . ‘ can grow to 150kg or more, with tusks capable of ripping a human to shreds. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I was directed back to Tir Natur a couple of weeks ago because of two new arrivals.

First was Sally Weale, zoologist and maker of documentaries. She had previously been a director of The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

Weale greeted her appointment with, and very predictably:

With the loss of so much of Wales’ once abundant wildlife, I’m excited by the scale and ambition of Tir Natur’s vision

I don’t know what species have been lost in my lifetime, but I suspect it’s very few, if any. Which leads me to believe that when Sally Weale and others talk of ‘loss’ they’re thinking in a much longer timescale.

Which then allows them to include beaver, lynx, wolf, and other animals as having been ‘lost’. If I’m right, then how far back do we go? To bears? Pterodactyl?

But while using the longer timescale they still want to pretend that we, living today, are responsible. Or, at a stretch, it starts with the Industrial Revolution.

This is a deliberate and dishonest conflation designed to deceive us, and benefit them.

The other recent recruit was none other than Tim Birch, still looking over his shoulder for mutton-chopped Derbyshire gamekeepers.

I conclude this section with another extract from the TN website. Go to the ‘About Rewilding’ tab, then click ‘What is Rewilding?’ Where you’ll be regaled with:

Here in Wales, where ecosystems are more depleted and 88% of land is managed in some way for agriculture, rewilding is about restoring the complex and dynamic mosaic of habitat that once was.

The link is now clearly made between ecological degradation, species loss, and farming. An environmental tragedy created by farming that can only be remedied by taking land away from farmers and giving it back to nature.

Well no, not really. The land must be given to organisations like Tir Natur. Who will introduce all manner of strange critters, some of which were never known in Wales. Such as the Konik horse. For as all Wales knows, from Gower to the Carneddau, we have no wild equines of our own.

And that, my friends, is ‘rewilding’. It’s a colonialist land grab by shysters who know nothing of our country, or us. But then, we Welsh don’t figure in the future they want.

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CONCLUSION

Readers may have noticed that the methodology employed by the environmental and land grab scammers is remarkably similar to that used by climate alarmists. That’s because they’re directed by the same source.

I refer now to the UN, WEF, EU, assorted supranational bodies; the mega corporations like BlackRock and Vanguard; and unhinged multi-billionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates, who think their wealth is a mandate to dictate our lives.

They too operate by dreaming up a crisis, then, like magicians producing rabbits from top hats, they come up with the ‘solution’. This pattern is now established.

The ‘climate crisis’ demands we rely on heavily subsided – and therefore expensive for consumers – ‘green’ energy, reject the internal combustion engine, have fewer children, and radically modify our diets.

A number of ostensibly unconnected agencies and movements have been recruited by the Globalists to promote the ‘destabilisation leads to control’ agenda.

These include Cultural Marxists pushing BLM, ‘trans rights’, open borders, and the idea that all white people are guilty of slavery, etc. Done to encourage division and violence that will be used to justify increasing censorship and authoritarianism.

Also, environmentalists, vegans and others, who’ve been platformed in recent decades because they too serve the Globalist agenda.

Simple, really. Control the food supply, control the people.

Which is why the Globalists encourage and fund environmentalists to demand an end to farming. While simultaneously pushing the idea of eating bugs, and ‘meat’ made in laboratories.

From the Guardian, July 17. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But the Globalists may not want the land from which farmers have been evicted for themselves. Other than perhaps what they can use for carbon offsets and other scams.

The priority is to ensure that that land no longer produces food.

Now I don’t know about you, but if, after all we know about Bill Gates’ involvement with Covid and the vaccines, you’re still happy to eat ‘meat’ from his factories, then the best of luck to you.

(You’ll find his ‘meat’ factory next to his mosquito breeding sheds.)

Call me old fashioned, but I’d prefer to stick with the Welsh countryside as it is, dotted with Welsh family farms producing good, wholesome, and natural food.

And helping maintain Welsh identity.

♦ end ♦

The Climate Crisis And The Noble Lie

On 08/07/202408/07/2024 By JacIn Climate, Globalism, Greens, Higher Education46 Comments

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

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MIND-BENDING BOLLOCKS, CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLIES, MORE BOLLOCKS

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

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

The article begins:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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CENTRE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is disgusting hypocrisy. Even for a Labour politician.

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THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

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

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

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

Cherry and Whitmarsh were both there at that time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growth hormones have been illegal in the UK since 1981.

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

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

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

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

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CONCLUSION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lies that are anything but noble.

♦ end ♦

The Tramshed, The Loans, The Leases, The Lord

On 27/05/202430/05/2024 By JacIn Corruption26 Comments

This piece is about corruption and mutual back-scratching in and around the Labour party. ‘So what’s new?’, you ask. Well, this piece introduces some new faces, and connections that may surprise you.

And with an election on July 4, I will take any and every opportunity to put the boot into Labour and its fellow-travellers.

My original intention was to write about the eco-shriekers at Wales Environmental Link (WEL). In particular, Natalie Buttriss, formerly of the attempted land grab Summit to Sea; and Rachel Sharp who, in November 2021, lied to Senedd Members about Welsh farmers using growth hormones.

Sharp’s been joined at the (officially non-existent) Wildlife Trusts Wales by Extinction Rebellion’s Tim Birch, a real extremist who was chased out of Derbyshire.

Then I saw that WEL is now based at ‘Tramsheds Tech Ltd, Unit D, Tramshed, Pendyris Street, Cardiff CF11 6BH’. So I made a quick delve (as you do) and decided there was a bigger and fresher story at the Tramsheds.

Fresher, because I haven’t written about it before.

And that explains what you’re about to read.

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THE TRAMSHED

I’d seen the name a few times, but it meant little to me. As far as I could tell it was one of those outfits that rents out office space by the day or the week. Here’s a link to the Tramshed website, which might help.

Vaughan Gething launched his leadership campaign from Tramsheds’ Newport base. And why not? For as the Pembrokeshire Herald reminded us, it had received ‘Welsh Government’ funding through the Soft Landing programme. And then returned the favour with a £3,000 non-cash donation to Gething’s campaign.

Here’s the Companies House entry, and at the time of writing compulsory strike-off action was in progress because the accounts were almost two months overdue.

One of the two charges against Tramsheds Tech is a loan from Finance Wales Investments (since re-named the Development Bank of Wales) in July 2017.

The Tramsheds Tech directors are Louise Margaret Harris, CEO and co-founder, Labour peer Lord Evan Mervyn Davies aka Lord Abersoch, Simon John Dixon, and Thomas Gwyn Davies (who I take to be Abersoch’s son).

Staying with the People tab, we see that control over Tramsheds is exercised by Tramsheds Holdings Ltd.

Here’s the Companies House entry for Tramsheds (Holdings) Ltd. You’ll see the same directors as for Tramsheds Tech.

Harris is also a director of a company based at Tramsheds, Partneriaid Oleia Cyf, along with media types Huw Eurig Davies and Kevin Tame. Until January this year, control of the company was exercised by Tramsheds Tech, before passing to Davies and Tame.

Let’s go back to Tramsheds (Holdings) Ltd, the parent company of Tramsheds Tech.

When it began life, in March 2021, all 300 shares were held by Lord Davies. The situation as reported March 27 was what you see below. Though Huw Eurig Davies ceased being a director 28 February, and Mark Prosser John was never a director.

To save you reaching for the abacus . . . the other four combined hold one share more than the noble lord.

I can’t tell you a lot about Mark John, but he was a director at Tramsheds Tech Ltd until 29 November 2023. In fact, he was the co-founder with Louise Margaret Harris.

John appears to be another media type.

The only company he’s involved with now is BLC (Wales) Ltd, based at Tramsheds Tech, where the other director (and secretary) is Louise Margaret Harris; accounts are overdue with Companies House, and the most recently filed accounts do not paint a rosy picture.

So, we have directors of what appear to be linked companies, all based in and connected with the old Tramshed on Pendyris Street.

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‘THE SCOURGE OF LEASEHOLD’ (AS LABOUR REGULARLY SAYS)

Inevitably (cos I’m a nosy bugger), I got to wondering who owns the Tramsheds building. And so I popped over to the Land Registry website for the title document and plan for the site. You’ll see that it’s owned by Cardiff council.

Or to be absolutely clear, Cardiff council owns the freehold, but an agreement was entered into, in December 2014, to lease the building to DS Properties (Pontypridd) Ltd for 999 years.

But after the appointment of an Administrator in February 2018, this company was finally dissolved in June last year. At the end, ownership lay with DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd. So that’s our next stop.

DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd is owned by Simon Malcolm Baston, the sole director. He has a number of companies that specialise in renovating and converting old buildings, most of which have been taken over by the local council, which is always Labour controlled.

An example would be the old Albert Hall cinema in Swansea. (I remember the uniformed doorman!) Baston got the money for that project from The Welsh Ministers. And Baston’s no stranger to Swansea. He’s been getting contracts in my home town for at least 20 years.

And just up town, Tramshed Tech is involved in the renovation of the Palace Theatre. Though I suggest that the picture below is misleading.

Click to open enlarged with separate tab

Gwenno Jones donned a hi viz jacket and a hard hat for a photo op, otherwise she’s togged up for a night out.

Tramshed Tech will be running the revamped Palace when it’s completed by Simon Baston and DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd, or whoever’s actually doing the work.

There may even be local firms getting a look in!

To recap: the Tramshed building is owned by Cardiff council. It was leased late in 2014 / early 2015 to DS Properties (Pontypridd) Ltd, which was owned by another Simon Baston company DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd.

Baston duly renovated the Tramshed, and converted much of the building into flats. These flats – 31 by my count – were then sold on 250-year leases in 2016.

Though the music venue at the Tramsheds was leased for just 15 years to Alchemy Tramshed Ltd, which used a Cardiff address. This company was taken over in November and December 2019 by Australian company TEG Venues UK Ltd.

The Tramshed Café and the Dance Studio were also leased for 15 years.

Then, in May 2021, the site, or part of it, seems to have been sub-leased for £2,850,000, to Tramsheds Cardiff Ltd. Scroll down on the title doc for the title numbers of the individual leases. And, at the bottom, the plan of the site.

Here’s the other title involved in the same deal. For a very narrow strip of land, probably a pathway.

Tramsheds Cardiff Ltd is another company of Labour peer, Lord Davies. and owned by Tramsheds (Holdings) Ltd, which we looked at earlier. The purchase of the Tramshed leases was financed with a loan from the Principality Building Society.

We seem to have come full circle. But what have we learnt? Let’s go through it.

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FOLLOW THE MONEY

Wherever we look in this story, which takes us across south Wales, we find ourselves dealing with former commercial or industrial properties owned by Labour-run councils.

I’ve focused on the assorted ‘DS’ entities and linked outfits, but there may be other companies in the same business, with other buildings. But I just don’t have the time or the resources to check.

What I also found to be interesting was that the outstanding loans against DS Holdings (Penarth) Ltd are with: Swansea council (Labour), Cardiff council (Labour), Welsh Ministers, Principality Building Society, and the ‘Welsh Government’-controlled Development Bank of Wales.

Another lender was the Julian Hodge Bank in Cardiff. For younger readers . . .

Hodge was a big man in Cardiff, very pally with Jim Callaghan Labour MP, and PM, and George Thomas, another of the City’s Labour MPs, who went on to become Lord Tonypandy. They had hopes of Hodge’s Commercial Bank of Wales becoming a recognised bank like Lloyds or Barclays, but the regulators knocked it back.

L to R: Julian Hodge with Jim Callaghan; The Rhuddlan penny, that was used as the bank’s logo; George Thomas with Julian Hodge. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

The whole episode is explained in this February 2016 issue of Rebecca, that reprints an article from the spring of 1977.

Even so, The Hodge Bank still operates, and remains very close to the Labour party.

Some of the other DS companies, ones I haven’t mentioned, such as DS Properties (Goods Shed) Ltd, have enjoyed loans from the Monmouthshire Building Society.

Now I’m not saying that this building society is tied to the Labour party. But I will point out that when the ‘Welsh Government’ was toying with the idea of Banc Cambria, it was the Monmouthshire Building Society involved.

What’s beyond doubt is that behind all the DS companies is Simon Baston, and so it’s reasonable to assume that – like Vaughan Gething’s benefactor, David Neal – Baston looks favourably upon and is in turn favoured by Labour.

And as I said earlier, on January 16 Gething launched his leadership campaign in Tramshed Tech’s Newport operation. I quote the South Wales Argus: ‘He kicked off his speech by thanking Tramshed Tech for hosting him in “this fantastic space they’ve created in the heart of Newport“.

And to complete the image of comradely solidarity, the Count of Abbasock has returned to the land of his fathers. After apparently turning his back on Wales at an early age, for none of his other companies has any connection with his homeland.

So why has the Tramshed drawn him back? And will his reawakened interest end with the Tramshed, or will it expand?

We’ve seen the charges against Tramshed Tech but I’m certain there’s other money coming in that might not even be shown in the accounts. (When they’re filed.) For example, I unearthed this article on UKTN about money coming from the British Business Bank.

I also found the section below in this Cardiff council document. Another £250,000.

How many more hand-outs have there been from local authorities, the ‘Welsh Government’ and other sources that we don’t know about?

To help you take it all in here’s a small table of the main events in a timeline.

UPDATE: How did I miss this! I am indebted to Born Guessing @drakefraud for this reminder from WalesOnline that Lord Davies’s wife dropped £21,600 into Vaughan Gething’s campaign war chest.

What an odd amount. What currency was the donation made in, euros, dollars, or even roubles? Do the rules say owt about donations from beyond this Scepter’d Isle?

◊

FINAL THOUGHTS

As I’ve suggested, The Tramshed gets a lot of positive coverage in our uncritical media; bright young things being innovative and ground-breaking, etc., etc.

And yet, maybe that’s just froth, for the real business and the real money may be in the leases for the 31 flats, and the café, and of course the 1,ooo capacity music venue.

Welcome to socialist Wales 2024. The circular economy, benefitting those lucky enough to be in the ‘circle’. Where there’s no private investment, and everything is state funded, but only those close to the ruling party can benefit. So that Tramsheds can play ‘diversity’ games, and provide a base for outfits like Wales Environmental Link, favoured by the regime because it works to destroy Welsh farming.

And as we’ve seen in this Tramshed saga, Labour, the party that has promised so often to do away with leasehold, will actually encourage and extend the use of leasehold – when Labour insiders benefit.

Devolution has been a disaster. And it couldn’t be much better under a different party. To stamp your little feet and yell that Wales should be a full-blown Marxist state suggests to the adults in the room that it might be past your bed-time.

And yet, in the election on July 4, Labour will win more Welsh seats than any other party. A painful reminder that I belong to a nation with too many fuckwits.

♦ end ♦

Wildlife Trusts – Not To Be Trusted

On 09/04/202416/04/2024 By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Globalism46 Comments

In a sense, this is a follow-up to a piece I put out in February called ‘Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas‘. Perhaps a variation on a theme.

Though this is not quite the piece I originally promised. Perhaps I’ll return to the sweat lodges and other joys in the ‘Bhutan of Wales’ (“ample parking space“) at some later date.

◊

ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN NEWTS

What you have to understand about modern environmentalism, certainly in Wales, is that it’s no longer fleece-jacketed innocents protecting red squirrels or tagging birds. It is now intensely political. And financially lucrative.

Lucrative, as long as it promotes a certain interpretation of the world.

Which means, in practice, that environmentalists work for BlackRock and other Globalist corporations; Bill ‘jabs and bugs’ Gates, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.

And even if environmentalists don’t realise it, if they’re just useful idiots, then that don’t matter none – what matters is that they do what they do.

And as I suggested, they’re getting paid handsomely for it. Here’s one example.

Total income for the North Wales Wildlife Trust went up from £1.83m in 2019 to £6.17 in 2023, a rise of 237%. But in the same period, funding from the ‘Welsh Government’ rose from £309,480 to £3,760,000, an increase of 1,115%.

Similar increases in the funding awarded to the other wildlife trusts, river groups, etc, correlates with the ramping up of the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.

Which meant blaming just about anybody other than Dŵr Cymru for river pollution.

But environmentalists weren’t confining themselves to persecuting cows, and matters scatological; for they were also pushing the anti-car agenda.

◊

THE WAR ON CARS I

An example of this would be defeating plans to upgrade the M4 around Newport. Here’s Friends of the Earth reminding us of its role in that campaign.

Which is fine with me because that’s the raison d’être of environmental groups. But if opposing M4 improvements was ‘Welsh Government’ policy, and if ‘WG’ funded various groups to support that policy, then that puts a different complexion on things.

As FoE stated, one of the major reasons for rejecting improvements to the M4 was to protect the Gwent Levels. Which was also the reasoning given by the first minister.

Mark Drakeford said he would not have gone ahead even if it was affordable because of the impact on the Gwent Levels.

But the environmentalists’ war on roads didn’t end with saving the Gwent Levels. (Though not from solar farms.)

I’ve written a number of times about the ‘Welsh Government’s decision to abandon all new road schemes. Let’s begin in June 2021, with the announcement of a ‘freeze’ on new road building.

Then, in September 2021, came news of a panel . . .

. . . of climate change and transport specialists . . . led by Dr Lynn Sloman MBE, a transport consultant based in Wales

Despite what the ‘Welsh Government’ wanted us to believe, Dr Lynn Sloman is not ‘based in Wales’; she actually lives in London, where she sits on the Transport for London board, headed by mayor Sadiq Ulez Khan.

Dr Lynn Sloman is, predictably, an anti-car fanatic. And her connection to Wales is a holiday home in Cwm Einion, near Machynlleth. To which she presumably drives.

Dr Sloman’s panel delivered the result required in February 2023 – no new roads!

This impacted on just about every part of the country, and deprived communities of long-awaited and much-needed, improvements. It meant no third crossing of the Menai, no by-pass for Llanbedr, no by-pass for Llandeilo.

This was of course welcomed by both Rachel Sharp, CEO of the officially defunct Wildlife Trusts Wales; and her trusty henchman, Tim Birch, of Extinction Rebellion.

But there is one issue on which environmentalists could and should be more vocal.

We’ll ignore the energy consumed in manufacturing wind turbines, then the damage inflicted on the environment from shipping them to Wales; widening roads, felling trees, ripping out hedgerows to get them to where they’re being erected.

Instead’ let’s just focus on the damage they cause in situ.

Wind turbines destroy peat deposits. They scar hillsides with access roads and cable trenches. Hundreds of pylons are needed to carry whatever’s generated in Wales to England. The turbine blades kill birds, bats, and all manner of insects.

There are also threats to human health from infrasound, flicker, and worrying over your home losing value due to its proximity to wind turbines.

Yet environmentalists have little to say against wind turbines. That’s because their ‘outrage’ can be switched off and on, as required, by their paymasters.

◊

THE ‘FOXES’ OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

We often hear: “Farming occupies around 90% of ‘our’ land“, as if it’s something undesirable. It’s very revealing, because those who say it seem genuinely horrified that so much of Wales belongs to hairy-arsed peasants.

A recent example of the ‘90%’ fixation came in an article in ‘Welsh Government’ mouthpiece Nation.Cymru by Dr Malcolm Smith. He was ostensibly writing about the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).

Smith wants us to believe that carbon emissions increase global temperatures when there is no link whatsoever, and then rather gives away his own position on SFS with:

Trees, it seems, aren’t welcomed by most farmers.

This obsession with the amount of land held by farmers seems most prevalent among politicians and middle class enviro-grifters who want Welsh farmers off the land they and their corporate patrons covet.

I say that because no one has ever come up to me in a pub, a supermarket, or any other setting, grabbed me by the lapels and shouted – ‘Isn’t it bloody awful that farmers have so much land?‘

Nobody. Honestly!

Which makes the support these spivs get from Welsh socialists difficult to fathom. And the support from those socialists who claim they want independence inexplicable.

Maybe this subservience can be explained by something I read last week. Someone was trying to explain why Sinn Féin has fallen for the Globalist-Woke-Left agenda.

It is a lingering symptom of what Ruairi Ó Bradaigh once described as the intellectual inferiority complex of men who were absurdly impressed by . . . bourgeois lefties and liberals

I think that explains a lot of what we see in Wales. Particularly the insecure among us, who can’t resist a bit of flannel delivered in a ‘posh’ accent.

What Ruairi Ó Bradaigh called “the intellectual inferiority complex” always lurks in the Welsh psyche. And it seems to afflict socialists far more than it affects those of us on the political right.

Welsh leftists like to see themselves as ‘progressive’, which then leaves them wide open to the blandishments of the ‘foxes’ Malcom X refers to here.

◊

ANOTHER WARNING FROM IRELAND

For some time now I’ve been paying closer than usual attention to what’s happening in Ireland, where the uniparty establishment has enthusiastically signed up to the Globalist agenda. It’s been open borders, war on farmers, and recently, referendums that hoped to re-define ‘woman’ and ‘family’.

Both referendums were heavily defeated, and the preening, obnoxious, Varadkar soon resigned in the hope of salvaging his political reputation. Because he fears there’s worse to come as the people wake up and fight back. (Something the Irish have a history of doing.)

And the Irish people are waking up. And demanding a return to sanity. Especially when they look around and see who’s been allowed into their country.

For example, one result of open borders is that Ireland is now home to the Nigerian Black Axe gang, which deals in romance fraud and other online scams . . . with a little murder, drugs, and extortion thrown in.

Just think about that. A Nigerian criminal network is actually based in Ireland. How the hell was that allowed to happen!

Well, as I just mentioned, because the Irish establishment obeys the Globalist agenda; and no-questions-asked immigration is an integral part of that agenda, designed to destabilise western societies.

Then, last week I was directed to news about moves to punish people who want to live in the countryside. (Unless, presumably, they’re Nigerian gangsters.)

You can read the whole publication if you like. But the opening paragraph tells you exactly where it’s going. And how it’s justified.

Moving Together . . . a commitment in the Climate Action Plan 2023 . . . to alleviate the impacts of car-dependency

Someone wants the Irish countryside emptied, and populations concentrated in urban areas. Now why should that be?

Wales may be heading in the same direction.

◊

THE WAR ON CARS II

I say Wales may be headed in the same direction because the ‘pieces’ are already there, we just need to put them together to see the bigger picture.

Earlier, we looked at environmentalists, funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ or Globalist corporations and multi-billionaires, campaigning against road improvements. In league with former Sustrans rep in Wales, and until so very recently, chauffeur-driven deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters.

Waters welcomed the halt on new road projects with:

As the review points out the by-pass that was demanded to relieve congestion often ends up leading to extra traffic, which in time brings further demands for extra lanes, wider junctions and more roads

I suggest Waters and his allies stand for half an hour one summer day outside the ‘Vic’ in Llanbedr, or The Castle in Llandeilo; and ponder that the shit forming a skin on their iced tea, the shit they’re also inhaling, comes from cars and trucks in low gear inching their way through a traffic bottleneck.

And it could all be avoided with a by-pass!

Consider this, gentle reader: the man who can ignore the effects of low-gear emissions on human health – because it serves an element of the agenda – can also impose 20mph speed limits, guaranteed to increase harmful emissions – and justify doing so on health and safety grounds!

But when it can be used to serve another element of the agenda, air quality becomes a consideration. For Nicola Lund recently reminded us in ‘Message to Wales – On Yer Bike (Part 2)‘ that the Welsh Government’ is also promising air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’.

So where might that lead, if we put it all together?

Let’s look at Llanbedr, which sits on the A496 running up the coast from Barmouth. A busy road, and especially so in summer.

With a combination of no by-pass, air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’ in place, many people will give Llanbedr a miss. Some will avoid that road altogether.

The map above shows that travellers between north and south will still have the A470, so the effects would be very localised, but highly damaging.

There’s one more consideration I want to throw into the mix.

I have consistently supported plans to raise council tax on holiday homes and restrict numbers of holiday lets*. And I will continue to back measures that might return domestic properties to local use. But . . .

Tourism means cars, camper vans, etc. So are the measures against the worst excesses of tourism doing the right thing for the wrong reason? By which I mean, are they just part of the bigger plan to restrict car journeys in Wales?

Putting it all together – and irrespective of the stated justifications – what we’ve just looked at will result in a seriously damaged rural economy, and could lead to the kind of rural clearances being talked about in Ireland and elsewhere.

Yet it all fits perfectly with the Globalist-environmentalist agenda.

*I received a communication on this very matter yesterday!

◊

CONCLUSION

Where the Globalists have been clever is in funding or promoting ideas, organisations and lobbies that push their agenda.

This includes, cyclists, vegans, renewable energy enthusiasts, advocates of CBDC, and of course, environmentalists.

We’re at a stage now where an environmental lobby is waging war on our farmers while also working with the ‘Welsh Government’ to make us view cars as something evil, to be done away with.

But what’s being targeted is not really farmers and motorists, but land and freedoms. Which is the essence of the Globalists’ power grab – promote fear and confusion in order to seize assets, restrict freedoms, and exert control.

As I said earlier, ‘environmentalists’ are no longer fleece-jacketed innocents. So see them for what they really are. Who they work for. And treat them accordingly.

♦ end ♦

Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas

On 19/02/202420/02/2024 By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Environmentalism, Farming, Globalism, Welsh Government46 Comments

This is a follow-up to last week’s piece on the enviro-shysters blaming farmers for everything wrong with our rivers, and those behind them hoping to get their corporate claws into farmland.

◊

MERGERS

First, let’s make sure you know where our five wildlife trusts are located. On the image below you can also see the difference in the sizes of the areas they cover.

Given the other mergers that have taken place over the years it might be worth asking why Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire didn’t join with Breconshire to form a Powys trust? For until 2018 there was a Brecknockshire Wildlife Trust, but then it merged with the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

The Wildlife Trusts Wales Ltd, the umbrella body, dissolved itself 22 March 2022 and the individual trusts joined the English Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. (Trading name: ‘The Wildlife Trusts’.)

The WTW charity de-registered.

What had been the Welsh umbrella outfit may even have joined the English body as a separate and individual trust. Certainly, that’s what the website seems to tell us.

When the end came for WTW, the funds were distributed to the five trusts, which makes sense. But I was surprised to see an inrush of grants in the final year.

Why was that, and why couldn’t the money have been given directly to the individual trusts? Finally, what the hell is a ‘Strategic Allocation Grant’?

Anyway, that’s how we got to where we are now, Wales has five wildlife trusts. Also, Wildlife Trusts Wales, existing is some kind of limbo.

◊

WILD THINGS

Let’s stick with finances, which suggest to me that wildlife trusts have recently been ‘repurposed’. Let me try to explain . . .

There seem to be three main sources of income for wildlife trusts: One is donations or legacies, and a bequest of £1,000,000 in 2003 must have helped keep Brecknock afloat for a while.

The others sources are, either the Lottery (which is little more than disguised UK government funding), and grants and contracts from our ‘Welsh Government’. The table below might help.

Amazing figures. While total income for the five trusts increased by 133% between 2019 and 2023, for the same period ‘Welsh Government’ funding went up by 760%.

In fact it was more. I didn’t include Radnorshire because I wasn’t sure how to express that increase as a percentage. Should it be 579,620%?

Below I use Charity Commission graphs that I find very helpful. (Here in pdf format.) You can see them individually by clicking on these links: North, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, Gwent, South and West.

The other tabs bring up further information.

For the South and West there’s been little discernible increase. There’s been no startling increase for Montgomeryshire or Gwent either.

Though Montgomeryshire has been getting money for old rope through the Wild Skills Wild Spaces project, worth £700,000 and which, from what I can see, does little more than show people how to go for a walk.

The big jumps in funding are clearly in Radnorshire and the north. In percentage terms Radnorshire really stands out. But why?

One reason may be that the local trust now has a farm, Pentwyn, which is planned to become ‘Wilder Pentwyn‘. The Trust is well-favoured in Corruption Bay, and gets visits from Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary?), helping her promote the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).

The SFS demands that all Welsh farms give over 10% of their land for trees, and a further 10% for ‘wildlife habitat’. Farmers are, understandably, resisting. And things may be coming to the boil.

But it could get worse, for in its latest annual report the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust (RWT) demands that by 2030: ” . . . 30% of land and water in Radnorshire is managed in a way that creates extensive natural habitats for a wide variety of species”.

How will RWT achieve that target in just six years, considering it owns only one farm?

And how much input did RWT have to the Sustainable Farming Scheme?

Here’s an interesting group photograph. Unfortunately, I don’t have a date, but it can’t be that old. We’ll work left to right:

Far left is Martin Wilkie, another environmentalist who’s come to tell us how to look after the country we’ve been looking after for over 2,000 years. Wilkie was with the RWT but has now branched out on his own with Wild Borders Ecology.

Next to him of course is Lesley Griffiths.

In the centre is James Hitchcock, RWT CEO.

To his right is Jenny Chryss, an investigative journalist. I’m told she broke with RWT when the Trust became, as my source put it, “corporate shills“. Chryss now fights Bute’s wind farm plans.

Far right is Rachel Sharp, CEO of Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW). No friend of farmers, that one.

And talking of WTW, let’s not forget Tim Birch. A few years back he was virtually run out of Derbyshire for his extreme views . . . so he came to Wales, where he was welcomed with open arms by the ‘Welsh Government’.

For as I pointed out not so long ago, the ‘Welsh Government’ has regular chats with Extinction Rebellion.

Birch did somersaults when Lee Waters announced the end to road-building in Wales. This legislation was the brainchild of Dr Lynn Sloman, author of ‘Car Sick‘ . . . who lives in London but drives to her holiday home near Machynlleth.

These are the people deciding the future of rural Wales.

They don’t give a toss about us. For them our country is just one big experiment to see how many of their lunacies our idiot politicians will implement.

What we’ll see with Radnorshire Wildlife Trust at Pentwyn (and with others elsewhere), is that nature reserves will have a few sheep, a couple of cows, a rescued donkey for kiddies to pet – and they’ll be hailed as “the future of farming in Wales“.

In fact, that’s exactly what it says on the website: “A new model farm for the future“.

I believe Radnorshire has been chosen by the ‘Welsh Government’ for a number of ‘initiatives’, and it’s been thrown open to all-comers.

For example, a source drew my attention to Protect Earth, a charity that’s applied for a grant to plant 14,000 trees at Goytre wood, near Knighton. No matter how it’s dressed up, this is just another carbon sequestration scam – and we’ll pay for it!

Protect Earth seems to have other projects in Wales.

Staying in Radnorshire, another new venture is Wilba Conservation Ltd, formed in April 2022, and also into ‘silviculture’. So more carbon sequestration scams.

Wilba is owned by Marches Business Group Ventures Ltd, which itself was formed just a month earlier.

When Wilba need a professional ecologist they turn to Martin Wilkie of Wild Borders Ecology. Ain’t it cosy?

‘Environmentalism’ has become a racket.

∼

As I explained, Wildlife Trusts Wales Ltd was dissolved as a company 22 March 2022, and is no longer registered with the Charity Commission. Yet the website is still active and quotes the defunct registration numbers.

Rachel Sharp’s LinkedIn page confirms she’s still with WTW, and we know Tim Birch works with her. How many more work for this non-existent outfit?

Seeing as Sharp and Birch serve as the ‘Welsh Government’s attack dogs I’m beginning to wonder if WTW is now ‘in-house’, funded by Lesley Griffiths and her gang.

Here are three questions for The Wildlife Trusts Wales:

What is the legal status of Wildlife Trusts Wales?
Where does the money to run it come from?
Where can I examine the accounts?

◊

WHAT BORDER?

A few years back I was surprised to learn that the Shropshire Hills AONB might be extended into Wales. Here’s one reference from 2019. The article also suggests that the current AONB might be elevated to National Park status.

But if it were to cross the border, where would it go?

To help answer that question I’ve been busy on Photoshop. And when you fit the pieces together it makes a lot of sense, it even ties in with what I described earlier.

On the right in the diptych below we see a tourist map of Shropshire with the AONB shaded in darker green, in the south west. While on the left, I have fitted that map into the wildlife trusts map I used earlier.

Any extension into Wales would affect both Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire, but more so the latter.

Which I’m sure would make Trust CEO James Hitchcock ecstatic. For he is on record as saying: “We’re in the Welsh Marches. The Marches is a mindset and a cultural identity. Nature does not heed boundaries.”

And let’s remember that before crossing the border Hitchcock was CEO of Herefordshire WT. Which presents a puzzle.

When Hitchcock left Herefordshire that trust was pulling down an average of £1.6m a year. By comparison, Radnorshire wasn’t scraping together a third of that. So it could be argued that Hitchcock took a step down when he started his new job 1 February 2021.

Two months after Hitchcock laid out his pens on the CEO’s desk Wildlife Trusts Wales decided to dissolve itself, with the individual trusts joining the English body. Is that just a coincidence?

No.

I believe Hitchcock was recruited to promote the ‘Welsh Government’s agenda. (Maybe a bigger agenda.) And this explains why he and the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust are feted by Lesley Griffiths and other denizens of the Bay.

Yes, I’m flying a kite by theorising on why Hitchcock came to Wales, but extending the Shropshire Hills AONB into Wales came from somewhere else. And it all ties in perfectly with the ‘Wilder Marches’ project.

But plans for new National Parks and AONBs do not end with a cross-border extension of the Shropshire Hills.

You must be aware of the decision to make the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB into Wales’s fourth National Park. Here are some details from Natural Resources Wales.

An argument I’ve heard used to justify the new NP is that the south east has one with Bannau Brycheiniog; the south west has the Pembrokeshire Coast; the north west, Eryri; so it’s only fair that the north east should also have a National Park.

But if the ‘geographical fairness’ argument has been accepted, then there’ll be just one area without a National Park – central Wales. And why not make it a cross-border National Park?

Co-operation, innit? ‘Hands across the Dyke’ an’ all that.

UPDATE: A comment to this blog reminds us that the area covered by the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust and it’s Montgomeryshire neighbour is almost the same as the area of Severn Trent Water.

Given that environmental groups and river ‘saviours’ in other parts of Wales have been used (and funded) to blame farmers, in order to cover up for Dŵr Cymru’s spillages and other misdemeanours, might that also be happening in Powys?

◊

CONCLUSION

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with National Parks, AONBs, wildlife trusts and nature reserves. But they’re no longer just about protecting landscapes, nurturing flora and fauna. They have been politicised, and funded, to serve other agendas.

And the attacks against farming keep coming. Saturday saw the contribution below from Jenny Rathbone MS. And if you want a full tote bag of Green-left hysteria then here it is. And here’s the link to the article she quotes.

She brings Brexit into a truly weird conspiracy theory. Most absurdly she seems to believe that putting our farmers out of business somehow guarantees food security. What do these people have between their ears?

And what “nature catastrophe“? Things have never been better. Hasn’t she heard that ospreys are nesting on the farm her government bought for £4.25m?

Though we won’t know if they’re coming back, or not, until Vaughan Gething is safely installed as the new Labour leader. Phew!

But they were definitely there last year, oh yes . . . even though nobody saw them. And no photos or videos have emerged.

By “food security” what Rathbone means is an endless supply of free range radishes from the OPD that daddy bought for Guy and Clarissa.

Rathbone herself is sprung of a wealthy Liverpool family and does well from her cut of the various trusts and other bodies bearing the Rathbone name.

She sits on the Senedd’s Climate Change Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. Her partner, John Uden, was given a no-show job by Bute Energy, the Scottish company wanting to throw up a few dozen wind farms in Wales.

How the other half lives, eh!

I was directed to another Saturday posting on X, this one from Jeremy Clarkson.

Other people have the same problem, Jeremy. And the explanation is that the ‘Welsh Government’ tells porkies.

Lesley Griffiths, Julie James, Jenny Rathbone et al say they’re saving the planet, fighting a “climate catastrophe“, but in reality they’re forcing farmers out of business so that big corporations can buy the land, and make yet more money, from carbon sequestration, wind farms, and other scams.

With ‘environmentalists’ disguising this land grab and hoping to be rewarded with vast acreages for rewilding and other anti-human activities.

And that’s why only 3% of farmers trust the ‘Welsh Government’. (Though I’m surprised it’s that high.) It also explains why the protests have started.

This dishonest behaviour is not confined to agriculture,

Last year the ‘Welsh Government’ introduced it’s 20mph legislation. The justification was road safety. But Lee Waters and the rest also want to sneak in legislation on noise, and emissions; to make ‘idling’ an offence, introduce road charging.

‘Safety’ was just the pretty wrapping – it is ultimately about taking away our cars, and keeping us penned in 15-minute ghettos.

Environmentalism and restoring biodiversity are also pretty wrapping for something more sinister. And it’s not just farmers under attack.

The ‘Welsh Government’ is implementing the Globalists’ de-growth agenda. And among other targets this agenda wants to destroy traditional farming and food production because if they can control the food supply, then the Globalists will control the world.

Don’t let it happen. The farmers’ fight is your fight. Stand with the farmers!

♦ end ♦

20mph, A Disaster Unfolds

On 16/09/202318/09/2023 By JacIn Corruption, Corruption Bay, Environmentalism, Far Left, Welsh Government, World Economic Forum69 Comments

Well, here we are, on the eve of a great experiment. Are you excited about 20mph speed limits? Enthused? Or do you just roll your eyes skyward in the way that typifies modern Wales?

I suppose I could have gone about this post differently, by looking at the costs, and examining the various claims more closely, but I leave that to others, confident that I’ll return to this subject once the excrement starts moving upward.

And so what I’ll do in this post is expose the propaganda campaign (that we’re paying for); then give the local history of this 20mph madness; before explaining where I believe it’s taking us.

◊

LABOUR’S VERY OWN PROPAGANDA BUREAU

Early last month I published It’s Getting Sinister, in which I drew attention to a relatively new PR/’nudge’ outfit called Lynn Global. The following week I brought out Lynn Global Pushes Globalist Agenda.

What we learnt was that Lynn was being paid to push the ‘Welsh Government’s 20mph restrictions for Welsh roads. And it paid well. For Tory leader Andrew R T Davies was told that Lynn had received £738,593 from ‘Welsh Government’ since 2021.

The figure for ‘2023-24 (to present)’ is £185,164. But is that figure for the calendar year or the financial year? I suspect it’s the financial year, beginning April 6, and I say that because Lynn received almost half a million pounds last year, and with the 20mph roll-out taking place this year, I think it’s reasonable to assume that 2023’s figure will be close to, or in excess of, last year’s figure.

Bumping up the costs will be Lynn’s ‘Misinformation Fact Sheet‘ for the ‘Welsh Government’. This attempts to anticipate and refute the objections raised to 20mph speed limits.

It was produced by Lynn’s very own Misinformation Cell, headed by Stefan Rollnick.

This is odd. When I wrote this on Thursday the online Linkedin page was available, but on Friday it seems to have disappeared. Fortunately I saved a pdf version last month.

So if you’re plagued by fake news, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, flatulence or scurvy, then Steff is the boy to contact. For having worked for Labour in London and Cardiff he knows all there is to know about bullshit.

In fact, Rollnick tells us he was . . .

Assisting the Office of the First Minister with its preparedness for misinformation outbreaks and developing a broad, proactive strategy for bolstering the spread of good information, with a specific focus on tackling anti-vax misinformation.

Ah! “good information“. Isn’t that what we’re all looking for?

The terminology used by these people is superficially reassuring, but anyone who’s studied history, particularly totalitarianism, knows exactly what’s being said. And it’s sinister.

‘We have a monopoly on the truth. Accept what we say, or suffer’.

Then, having dutifully carried out the orders of ‘Dr’ Bill Gates, in September 2021 Rollnick transferred his devious talents to Lynn . . . but still working for Drakeford’s clown troupe.

But enough background on a propagandist masquerading as a purveyor of truth, let’s get back to the origins of 20mph.

For Lynn was recruited to push the 20mph nonsense, but the story doesn’t begin there. So where do we need to go to find its origin?

◊

THE LONG MARCH

One culprit might appear to be the pressure group, 20’s Plenty for Us; which has quite a presence in Wales, and may even have sent ‘missionaries’. Such as Fiona Andrews, who moved with her partner Piers Graham Partridge to Llandudoch from Bristol in 2018.

She got a mention in the piece I did back in June, Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups. And here she is in a BBC report from July 2021 lauding 20mph restrictions, that had already been introduced in two Welsh communities.

One being Llandudoch, to which Andrews had so recently moved!

The other, was St Brides Major, in the Vale of Glamorgan. This video, released last Thursday by the ‘Welsh Government’, features a few brainwashed kids and a couple of other well-rehearsed locals.

If you’re convinced by that then contact me about some beans.

The BBC item about Fiona Andrews provided a link to a report that told us the Senedd had initially backed 20mph limits in July 2020. This followed a report from a group set up by the Senedd Member for Llanelli (who prefers to spend his time in Penarth).

The Wales 20mph Task Force Group was formed on the direction of Lee Waters, the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, in May 2019.

We aren’t told the individuals who sat on this panel, just the organisations they represented. (Appendix A, page 36.) Among them I noticed Sustrans, of which Lee Waters used to be boss-man for Wales.

The whole tone of the procedure and the report screams ‘Done deal!‘.

But can we go back any further in tracing the genesis of the 20mph restrictions?

Something I dug up (or I may have been directed to) is a report from August 2018 by Dr Adrian L Davis of Bristol. What I found significant about this was that the report was immediately promoted by . . . the ‘Welsh Government’.

In fact, it was available on the ‘Welsh Government’ website on the first day of August, so it must have been available as soon as it was officially released. Perhaps before?

In Appendix A, which lists papers quoted by Davis, we see a reference to, ‘Twenty miles per hour speed limits: a sustainable solution to public health problems in Wales‘. Authored by Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt.

This US site gives a brief synopsis, which saved me having to splash out £38 to buy it.

Though I was amazed by the claim that imposing 20mph limits will aid the fight against obesity. Surely driving slower gives fat people more time to get out of the way?

But if driving slower makes us slimmer, then what about hair loss? And flatulence?

20mph is beginning to sound like snake oil.

The main conclusion arrived at in 2016, that bringing the speed limit down to 20mph would save 6 – 10 lives per year, and 1200 – 2000 casualties, is now being repeated verbatim by the ‘Welsh Government’.

So who are the authors of that 2016 report, Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt?

Well, I found them both on the Hinkley Point C stakeholder reference group. In some interesting company.

Chairing the group is former Labour Assembly Member, mastermind of the Future Generations legislation, and mother of the OPD, Jane Davidson. Who does more work for the party and the ‘Welsh Government’ now than when she sat in Corruption Bay.

Cardiff University, that partner with ‘Welsh Government’ in so many quixotic ventures, has two representatives. Possibly a third with Sarah J Jones.

There is another ‘Welsh Government’ spokesperson in Rachel Sharp, CEO Wildlife Trusts Wales, who appeared on this blog in The Alliance Against Livestock Farming.

She has worked assiduously for ‘Welsh Government’ and Dŵr Cymru in blaming farmers for everything in our rivers that shouldn’t be in our rivers. No surprise then to learn that she also sits on Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel.

Which seems to be another secret society; for when I asked Dŵr Cymru for the names of panel members I was refused and, as with The Wales 20mph Task Force Group, told to scroll down the page to the logos of the organisations represented.

Though we are told that the panel is chaired by “Mari Arthur, director of Cynal Cymru”. But she was secretary of Cynal, not director . . . and she left in July 2018.

It looks a bit of a shambles.

Here’s how I see it. The anti-car, restrict human movement element of the Globalist agenda, takes root in the Bay. ‘Welsh Government’ insiders Sarah J Jones and Huw Brunt are told to knock out something in support of introducing 20mph speed limits.

In the hope of disguising its origins, Adrian Davis of Bristol is roped in, and ‘Welsh Government’ quotes him rather than Jones and Brunt directly. As we saw in a response to a Freedom of Information request earlier this week.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Davis supports 20’s Plenty, Just Stop Oil, and the UN’s climate liars at the IPCC. Not only that, he also dreams of re-joining the EU, and he’s 100% opposed to fossil fuels.

What we have with Adrian Davis is an archetypal member of Globalists’ Woke-Green-Left. Yet in the FoI response just mentioned he is the sole authority quoted by the ‘Welsh Government’ in support of imposing 20mph restrictions.

In whose universe is Davis an impartial and unbiased scientific authority?

How do his conclusions square with those of the Alliance of British Drivers?

But this kind of ‘Tell us what we want to hear‘ behaviour is all too familiar, as I’ve tried to explain on this blog over and over. Let’s just close this section, and jog your memories, with one recent example.

Back in March, in Nicola Sturgeon: Her Fall In Context, I considered the malign influence of pressure groups.

A few weeks before that article appeared the ‘Welsh Government’ announced that all new road projects were ‘paused’. This report from Llais y Sais told us the decision had been made by the Welsh Roads Review Panel headed by Dr Lynn Sloman.

I made enquiries about Dr Sloman and this is what I wrote at the time.

Well, she lives in London, where she’s a board member of Transport for London. The bio I’ve linked to tells us she has a holiday home near Machynlleth. (To be exact, in Cwm Einion aka ‘Artists Valley’.)

So a cycling zealot who lives in London, and hates cars – but has a holiday home in Wales, to which she presumably drives – is allowed to dictate ‘Welsh Government’ policy.

This is how the ‘Welsh Government’ operates. It recruits people it calls ‘independent’ to undertake studies guaranteed to come to the desired conclusion. Then it employs propagandists like Lynn Global, or uses the tame media, to push that message.

There is never an independent voice, nor genuine public consultation.

◊

WHERE IT ENDS

Before I start, let me make it clear that I’m sure there are people who genuinely believe 20mph restrictions will get mamgu on her bike, zooming ’round the neighbourhood frightening animals and knocking kids over.

Just as there are people who believe the planet is doomed unless we get rid of human beings. Or that men can have babies, and women have todgers. That White people are evil. And that every criminal who lands in Europe in a small boat must be looked after cos he is a ‘refugee’.

Such people are fools. But more dangerous by far are those who know these things to be lies, but promote them for other reasons. Which brings us to the Great Manipulators.

For perhaps more than any other administration and political establishment of which I know, Corruption Bay has surrendered itself to the Globalist agenda. And by so doing it is prepared to sacrifice us, the Welsh people.

This sacrifice means imposing restrictions in the name of public health, or saving the planet, or to promote inclusivity / diversity, and generally protect us from ourselves. For we are both stupid and evil.

Wales is now being subjected to the most odious form of paternalism. Odious, as it claims to be done for our benefit, but it’s not.

Because if you understand what I’ve been saying then you’ll realise that making us drive at 20mph has absolutely nothing to do with road safety, or air quality.

This legislation is part of a wider strategy against the private motor car. Or rather, it’s to deny private transport to poorer people. For Net Zero is a war against the poorest in society waged by the middle class on behalf of an elite seeking global domination.

Further proof comes in a ‘Welsh Government’ document updated just last month, where you’ll read it spelled out, on page 45 . . .

Just think how insane that is. They want to take away your car, on environmental and health grounds, but there’s no public transport, so you’re effectively stuck at home.

So wise up,

20mph legislation is part of the same package as ditched road-building projects, 15-minute neighbourhoods, compulsory injections with untested vaccines, the assault on livestock farming, and CBDC to keep check on every penny you spend.

If Wales had more devolution, giving Labour and Plaid Cymru the power (God forbid!), they’d introduce legislation such as we see proposed in Ireland, where there’s a Bill to impose a ‘Hate Speech Act’ . . . that fails to even define hate!

It’s censorship pretending to be something virtuous.

Should that law be introduced then a grifter from a protected group will just need to say they feel offended (or that great favourite, ‘unsafe’), and the Guards will be kicking somebody’s door down in no time.

They will even be encouraged to feel offended, and have explained to them the most lucrative ways to be ‘offended’, and ‘unsafe’, by the shysters in NGOs and pressure groups currently wreaking such damage on Ireland.

Wales would also see legislation against ‘misinformation’ and its even more evil twin ‘disinformation’. Which in practice could mean the ‘Welsh Government’ employing Lynn to police us all.

Even me!

Not a welcome prospect for those of us who believe in freedom of movement, and freedom of expression. But somehow, ‘progressives’, acting as shouty foot-soldiers for Globalist totalitarianism have convinced themselves they’re engaged in a noble struggle against fascism!

At some point in the near future historians and political commentators will marvel that, having alienated the working class, the left then shot itself in the other foot by attacking the poorest and most vulnerable in society on the orders of the world’s biggest corporations and richest individuals.

An encapsulating irony with which to end might be that those who now fight to protect animals we breed to eat, especially perhaps battery hens, have sided with those wanting humans to live in a very similar fashion.

The ‘Welsh Government’s 20mph legislation is a step in that direction. Only a fool would see it for anything else.

♦ end ♦

The Alliance Against Livestock Farming

On 16/11/202205/12/2022 By JacIn Corruption, Englandandwales, Greens, Public Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Government, Welsh Media43 Comments

This week’s piece about wildlife trusts and environmental groups complements what I put out last week about the assorted river charities.

For both seem to be funded to shield Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) and others from criticism by blaming livestock farmers for all river pollution. Also, to pursue the so-called ‘Welsh Government’s Net Zero lunacy and, in so doing, serve the globalist agenda.

With a few twists.

Wildlife and environmental groups tend to contain more ‘zealots’, which results in hysteria, and a readiness to tell lies. Which in this context is often accompanied by a thinly-disguised contempt for Wales and Welsh identity.

One example might be the charity Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW) choosing to dissolve itself, while the local trusts for which it served as the umbrella organisation joined England’s Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. You’ll learn more about this as you read on.

As I say, there will be similarities with last week’s piece, but also differences. And I promise a bit more in the way of polemic. Ol’ Jac gonna let rip!

It’s fairly big, so go make a mug of something before settling down to enjoy it.

♦

WHO’S WHO IN THE FLEECE JACKETS

Let’s start by looking at the organisational setup.

As I said in the intro, Wildlife Trusts Wales recently put itself out of business so that the five regional trusts – North, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, South and West, Gwent – could become full members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT).

Explained at the foot of page 1 in the 2021 WTW accounts.

The clip below from the Charity Commission entry tells us that the RSWT now views Wales and England as a single unit, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland are treated separately. Even the Isle of Man gets more respect than us.

But then, when you surrender your separate identity this is what you can expect.

And yet, the pretence of an independent existence is maintained by a Wildlife Trusts Wales website. Where WTW describes itself as: ‘one of five Wildlife Trusts in Wales’ which, again, makes no sense. Yes, there are five, I just listed them, and they’re all area specific, so where and how does WTW fit in?

It’s all very confusing. Perhaps deliberately so.

At the foot of the WTW website home page we are given Companies House and Charity Commission numbers. The latter draws a blank because the charity was closed March 31, 2021. While the Companies House entry tells us that the company voluntarily dissolved earlier this year.

So why hasn’t the information on the website been updated? If it’s claimed WTW still exists, then what form does that existence take?

And what happened to the money?

Well, the final accounts for the WTW (y/e 31.03.2021) seem to show, at the foot of page 19, that the cash left when the company folded was divvied up among four of the five trusts I mentioned earlier.

Brecknock received nowt because it had not long before merged with the South and West Wales Wildlife Trust, which for some reason was itself left out. (Why didn’t ‘Brecknock’ make the obvious merger, with Radnorshire? Or why not a Powys trust?)

You’ll see that £234,320 went to the ‘All Wales Conservation Strategy’. Does anyone know what that is? I’ve tried Googling but nothing comes up. Do the funders know where their money’s going?

The more I thought about this wildlife trusts reconfiguration the stranger it appeared. I mean, just think about it.

Before devolution we had local wildlife trusts with Wildlife Trusts Wales serving as the umbrella body. Yet now, when wildlife trusts deal with Y Senedd, when there’s separate Welsh funding, different legislation, they do away with their national body in order to, effectively, become English wildlife trusts.

This move makes no sense on any rational or practical level. How then can it be explained? I really would like to know.

Whatever ethereal form Wildlife Trusts Wales now takes the wraith clearly retains the strength to use a Twitter account. Here’s a gem put out on Monday.

To describe Wales as ‘one of the most nature depleted countries in the world’ is hysterical nonsense and an insult to us as a nation.

While suggesting that farming is to blame rather gives the game away.

The image used in the tweet comes from this source, linked with Denmark farm, near Lampeter, where we find another gang of alien envirogrifters. A farming source tells me the allegation made in the image may be libellous.

The Denmark Farm Conservation Centre has gone the way of so many outfits that appear on this blog – it was Dissolved earlier this year. With two outstanding charges.

◊

FILTHY LUCRE

We saw in last week’s piece that river charities saw a remarkable increase in official funding at the very time Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) was formulating her draconian and ‘unworkable’ NVZ legislation.

Such propinquity!

Well, no. It’s explained by the fact that Lesley (and Gary) wanted a stream of pollution stories in order to justify that NVZ legislation.

Stories that were also music to the ears of Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) bosses, because it deflected attention from the water company’s pollution.

We see something very similar in wildlife trusts.

Let’s start with the North Wales Wildlife Trust. Where total income more than doubled between 2017 and 2021. The largest element of that increase is (in various forms) government funding, up from £180,440 in 2017 to £1,970,000 in 2021.

Plus assets of around £3m.

A ten-fold increase in government funding will support a few beavers.

The picture at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust shows a more modest but still healthy increase in funding. To which we must also add assets pushing £3m.

Moving south we come to the intriguing anomaly of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust. Intriguing for in the old 13-county arrangement you will recall that Radnorshire was quite small in size and had the lowest population of all our counties.

But the local wildlife trust paints a different picture. Total income doubled between 2017 and 2021 and there are assets of over £2m. There were no assets in 2019.

The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales has seen income increase by 50% in the period we’re looking at, but government grants increased from £21,300 in 2017 to £748,050 in 2021. Then throw in assets of some £5m.

Finally, to Gwent. Where income has increased at a more modest rate apart from a huge blip in 2018 accounted for by Heritage Lottery funding for a project on the Gwent Levels. But with assets around the three million pound mark.

So everything looks just tickety-boo on the financial front for our English-registered wildlife trusts.

◊

BARE-FACED LIES

I am indebted to one of the few honest journalists left in Wales for drawing my attention to a disgraceful incident last November, at a hearing of the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee.

Rachel Sharp of the zombie-like Wildlife Trusts Wales and Wales Environmental Link (WEL) alleged that along with all the other evils livestock farmers are responsible for they also use growth hormones, which eventually end up in our streams and rivers.

The transcript is here (123) and the video here.

The truth is that growth hormones have been banned in the UK since 1981. Welsh livestock farmers do not use growth hormones.

After protests from farming unions and Tory MS Sam Kurtz apologies were issued. But as we’ve come to expect from these envirofanatics it’s never an honest ‘I was wrong’. It’s always qualified, position shifting, hoping the original lie lingers.

But this time they’d gone too far, and it wasn’t just Rachel Sharp telling porkies. Also there representing Wales Environmental Link was Creighton Harvey, also a trustee of Afonydd Cymru Cyf.

Here’s how the Pembrokeshire Herald reported it.

‘The evidence of Ms Sharp’s fellow representative from Wales Environment Link was also riddled with errors.

Creighton Harvey told the Committee that agriculture was the largest polluter of Wales’s watercourses.

The largest polluters are water companies, industrial users, and domestic users’.

So who is Rachel Sharp?

Well, as we know, she’s a trustee of Wales Environmental Link. But this profile from the ‘Welsh Government’ website tells us a bit more. And it’s fascinating.

To begin with, it keeps up the pretence of the defunct Wildlife Trusts of Wales. But concludes by informing us that Rachel Sharp is also ‘a group member of the Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel’.

So what’s that? Here’s a clue from the Dŵr Cymru website.

We’re told, ‘The Chair is Mari Arthur, Director of Cynal (sic) Cymru’. But Mari Arthur left Cynnal Cymru in July 2018, after just 4 months. Is this another site in need of updating?

Mari Arthur now runs Mari Arthur Marketing, but hasn’t yet registered it as a company. Among her clients we find Cynnal Cymru. Also, joined-at-the-hip ‘Welsh Government’ and Cardiff University.

Her other companies include Afallen LLP and Tetrimteas Cyf.

If the name Mari Arthur rings a bell it’s because she so badly damaged Plaid Cymru in Llanelli, a seat the party had been nurturing since the days of the great Carwyn James.

She was forced on the constituency party by her friends in both Plaid Cymru and Labour. For in the Corruption Bay circles in which Mari Arthur moves party labels mean little as long as you’re ‘on the right side of history’.

The Independent Environmental Advisory Panel is clearly a group that allows Dŵr Cymru and envirozealots to agree their narratives in the war on livestock farmers and draw attention away from Dŵr Cymru itself, the biggest culprit.

There should be no place in Welsh public life for Rachel Sharp of the mythical Wales Wildlife Trusts, the all too corporeal Wales Environmental Link, and the Dŵr Cymru claque in the laughably named Independent Environmental Advisory Panel.

I suspect Rachel Sharp’s mask slipped last November when she forgot where she was; because when she and others of her ilk usually talk with politicians and civil servants – and of course, Dŵr Cymru – they tend to reinforce each other’s self-serving prejudices about livestock farmers.

But she’ll survive. For she has powerful friends, among those who’ve been elected, and those we’ve never heard of.

∼

Another name that caught my eye among the Wales Environmental Link luminaries was Natalie Buttriss, whose Linkedin profile (here in pdf) tells us she’s ‘Director of Wales The Woodland Trust’. This outfit previously used the name Coed Cadw for its Welsh operations, but this pandering to the indigenes seems to have been dropped.

Native of Bristol Buttriss was in at the start of the Summit to Sea land grab. For which she appeared on this blog four years ago in The Welsh Clearances. Her contempt for farmers was made obvious in this radio interview with the BBC’s Farming Today.

I have always believed that Buttriss was so arrogant, so dismissive of the interests of livestock farmers, because she believed she had the full support of the ‘Welsh Government’.

For in that interview she suggests that subsidies would be withheld or cut to make farmers fall into line. She wouldn’t have said that unless certain Bay politicians had promised to play the heavies.

The ‘Welsh Government’s hand was not revealed because the opposition to Summit to Sea made backers like Rewilding Britain pull out and the whole thing seemed to fall apart.

Or maybe it’s still out there, lurking in the undergrowth, waiting to re-emerge.

As we know, climate alarmists have too much influence with the media, partly through having brainwashed two generations of schoolchildren and college students, and partly through funding – ever wondered why Bill Gates gives money to the BBC?

Or perhaps, more pertinently, why the BBC is allowed to accept his funding?

But the propagandising is not confined to the BBC.

∼

Last Friday ITV’s Wales at Six ran a piece about cooperation between the Rhug Estate and the Welsh Dee Trust. A relatively harmless little filler.

But the newsreader, Andrea Byrne, dropped into the report: “Rivers like the Wye and the Usk are virtually dead and no longer able to support an abundance of fish like trout and salmon and other wildlife“.

Bizarre, and completely untrue. But from where did ITV Wales get that lie?

Because if it’s true then somebody should tell Harry Legge-Bourke of the Glanusk estate; for he advertises, ‘fantastic fishing on 5 miles of double bank fishing on the River Usk offering day tickets for Trout and Salmon rods’.

No one disputes that these rivers could be healthier, but they’re far from ‘virtually dead’, as ITV Wales would have us believe.

And if these rivers are in decline, then whose fault is that? Because if the finger of guilt is being pointed in the wrong direction to protect the guilty party then things are unlikely to improve.

There is constant financial backing and other support for those who tell lies about livestock farmers from those who benefit from and capitalise on those lies.

I’m often inclined to believe in coincidences. But not this time. What I’m describing is too widespread, across too many sectors.

If it quacks like a duck, and it waddles like a duck . . .

◊

CONCLUSION

The environmental / wildlife / Nature bodies in Wales are like exotic organisms in a Petri dish. Forever growing, dividing, re-forming, changing appearance and colour, and multiplying through the introduction of fresh viruses.

There are many reasons why there should be no further public funding for these groups. You’ve read some of those reasons here. But Sebastian and Claudia needn’t go without because there are plenty of funding streams they could tap into.

For example, and seeing as they’re promoting the agendas of the UN and WEF, one possibility must be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Another option would be George Soros. Contact details can be had from Coleg Soros in Talgarth, where environmental and wildlife groups already have many contacts.

Bottom line, and last word . . .

It’s obscene that a country – especially our country – gives tens of millions of pounds every year for truth-averse zealots to enjoy sinecures fretting over toads and butterflies while our people die because ambulances don’t turn up.

♦ end ♦

Jac o' the North

Tag: Rachel Sharp

To Be A Farmer’s Boy

The Tramshed, The Loans, The Leases, The Lord

Wildlife Trusts – Not To Be Trusted

Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas

20mph, A Disaster Unfolds

The Alliance Against Livestock Farming