‘Welsh Government’ Declares War On Freedoms, Motorists, Farmers

On 10/10/202311/10/2023 By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, European Union, Globalism, Welsh Government26 Comments

Now that we’ve had three weeks of living with the 20mph speed restrictions I think it’s time to put this measure into its wider context, make a few connections, and introduce some new faces.

I apologise for this piece being a bit long, but it’s still less than 2,800 words. And worth sticking with.

◊

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Much of the background to this new legislation was covered a few weeks back in ‘20mph, A Disaster Unfolds’.

What’s absolutely clear now is that 20mph did not suddenly appear, it’s been hatching for a while. To explain what I mean, here’s a table I’ve drawn up, though I’m sure it’s incomplete, so if you can add to it . . . .

And here it is in pdf format with working links.

I believe it starts with the Well-being of Future Generation Act 2015. This cartoon video imagines ‘Megan’, growing up under the umbrella of the Act’s protective legislation. Which promises:

And it’s failed her on almost every count. But then, grand gestures done for dramatic effect rather than to deliver lasting benefits will invariably fail.

Next, we look at the Wales Act 2017. There, in Section 26, we see that power to vary or regulate speed limits is now conferred on the ‘Welsh Ministers’.

Which makes sense if, as some suggest, Wales is being used as a testing ground for the wackier planet-saving ideas.

Now we move on to an undated publication by Public Health Wales recommending 20mph on our roads. I assume this is by Huw Brunt and Sarah Jones of Public Health Wales. It mentions the new powers to lower speed limits.

Then there’s the Clean Air Zone Framework for Wales (April 2018) where, on page 20, we read:

Consideration should be given to lowering speed limits in a CAZ from 30mph to 20mph, which some research suggests would deliver overall benefits27. Safety benefits from reduced road speed can also encourage modal shift from private cars.

Perhaps, state-owned, chauffeur-driven cars are OK?

The call was taken up by Sustrans who, in a publication dated 1 January 2019, called for 20mph speed limits across the UK, quoting Public Health Wales. Does this also show Wales being used as a testing ground?

Another example of pearl-clutching theatricality was Wales declaring a climate emergency. This happened in April 2019, just before Environment Minister Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) met with Scottish and UK counterparts.

Here’s the plan for funding the responses deemed necessary to combat this ’emergency’, produced by Future Generations Commissioner and Labour party insider, Sophie Howe. From which I’ve extracted the graphic for ‘Transport’ below.

Those who compiled that table obviously view increased car ownership as something deplorable, which must be reversed. Yet for me, and I suspect for most people, those figures represent progress and increased prosperity.

Finally, we see 20mph again in Labour’s 2021 manifesto ahead of the Senedd elections. The original manifesto seems to have disappeared, so I can only link to the update put out following the agreement with Plaid Cymru.

It’s a pity the original’s disappeared because I’m told it proposed risk-based approaches to assessing trunk road speeds. Basically, ‘Welsh Government’, or an individual minister, wanted lower speed limits on A and B roads.

Perhaps Plaid Cymru, a party of rural areas with sparse traffic on open roads, realised this would not go down well in Trawsfynydd or Nant y Caws.

So we see that the call for 20mph, and associated demands, goes back at least 5 years, and probably further. We’ll briefly consider associated issues before turning to an unattainable fantasy.

One of the associated matters is 15- 0r 20-minute cities / neighbourhoods. Which can be viewed in two ways.

The optimist might say: ‘Wow! everything I need will be within easy travelling distance; Waitrose, Pilates, accountant, Skivvyhire, Green Party constituency office, ballet class, tattooist, florist, saddler, doctor, dentist, plastic surgeon . . . .’

(Dentist? In Wales!)

The cynic might ask: ‘Yes, but is that 20 minutes there, or 20 minutes there and back? And what if I want to travel for longer than 20 minutes . . . and just keep going, into the wide blue yonder?’

Sustrans was promoting the idea in November 2019, just ahead of December’s UK general election. The local chief of Sustrans for over six years (2007 – 2013) was Lee Waters, now Deputy Minister for Climate Change.

Make no mistake, Sustrans is an anti-car organisation. And Waters himself is said to be a cycling and walking “fanatic“. Which is fine with me. Veganism is fine with me. It’s when zealots and fringe outfits are allowed or encouraged to push their beliefs onto the rest of us that I object.

The Future Generations Commissioner was backing 20-minute neighbourhoods by September 2020. To show loyal, Plaid Cymru chimed in in April 2021.

Labour-controlled Cardiff council was also on board with the “20-minute neighbourhood or 15-minute city“, as this motion from March 2021 puts it. Even crediting Sustrans.

Erm, let’s think about that for a minute. A city is made up of neighbourhoods. So obviously a city is bigger than a neighbourhood. That being so, how can a city be traversed, and its services accessed, quicker than those of a neighbourhood?

I’ll touch briefly on three more elements of the grand design.

First Minister Drakeford has described ULEZ charges as the “last resort“. But he hasn’t ruled them out. Labour’s experience in London, with people fighting back, might explain his hesitancy.

Then there’s road charging, mentioned on page 21 of Llwybr Newydd The Wales Transport Strategy 2021. Where it’s spelled out quite unambiguously:

We will develop a framework for fair and equitable road-user charging in Wales and explore other disincentives to car use, taking into account equality issues including the needs of people in rural areas, people who share protected characteristics and people on low incomes

“ . . . and explore other disincentives to car use“.

Something I found odd about this was that it said, “in Wales“. But this was produced by the ‘Welsh Government’, so which other country would it refer to? Or was it written by someone else, perhaps not based in Wales?

The reference to “protected characteristics” I assume means that women with penises won’t have to pay. (Where’s my wig?)

Finally, let us never forget that it was Lee Waters who announced earlier this year that all new road-building projects were cancelled.

To achieve this result the Welsh Roads Review Panel was created with orders to deliver the desired ‘findings’. And to guarantee that outcome the group was chaired by Dr Lynn Sloman. Who wrote ‘Car Sick‘, which rather gives away her position.

I wrote about this episode in March, scroll down to the relevant section.

◊

THE WORLD OF MAKE-BELIEVE

‘Vision Zero’ seems to have appeared in September 2012. In the ‘Welsh Government’s Road Safety Delivery Plan. Explained here in a written statement from the late Carl Sargeant, then Minister for Local Government and Communities.

Here’s how Road Safety GB reported it.

Vision Zero was a vague promise to reduce road accidents. It was re-affirmed in this ‘Welsh Government’ publication from May 2018 (pp 6, 13).

But then, just a year or so later, on page 24 of the Manifesto for the 2019 UK general election, we read that Vision Zero has become a plan to eliminate road deaths and injuries entirely!

Let’s give a little more thought to this idea of Vision Zero.

It should be obvious that Vision Zero can only be achieved by banning all vehicles, whether powered by the internal combustion engine, battery, or hydrogen.

But with more bicycles and pedestrians on the roads – as is hoped – there will still be fatalities and injuries. Either cyclists crashing or cyclists colliding with pedestrians. It happens now. With more cyclists, and with cyclists having freedom of the highways, some will be even more reckless and inconsiderate than they are now.

With vehicular transport banned – and that must also mean public transport – then people will spend far more time at home.

But most accidents happen in the home, so spending more time at home will result in more accidents. Don’t take my word for it, read what RoSPA says on the subject. So how is transferring death and injury from the highway to the home an improvement?

It’s not an improvement at all. It only makes sense if the real goal is to ban cars.

More people spending more time at home will create other problems. I can predict with certainty there’ll be more cases of domestic violence, and murder. There will be more children physically and sexually abused. Even more cruelty towards domestic pets.

Also, more suicides, due to the stress of being cooped up at home. It will be a kind of lockdown. And it will be done despite us knowing the social and psychological damage inflicted by Covid lockdown.

But then, it may be dressed up as climate lockdown. And if so, then we must accept that chasing each other round the house with meat cleavers is an acceptable price to pay for saving the planet.

Think about what you’ve just read. Put it all together and tell me it’s not a war on cars, on private transport, and the freedom the car gives us.

◊

RULE FROM THE SHADOWS

I’m returning to the idea of Wales being used as a testing ground. With most people unaware of it, and the lack of awareness even extending to the ‘Welsh Government’.

But testing ground status is easy to achieve when our politicians are controlled by pressure groups. These often directed and / or funded by individuals and organisations making up the Globalist network.

I’ve written about this phenomenon a number of times recently. In Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups. And Who The Hell Are These People!. The ‘Welsh Government’ even pays through the nose for this Globalist influence, as I explained in Lynn Global Pushes Globalist Agenda.

The bigger picture only makes sense when you remember how it started.

With the end of Communism a new threat was needed. And so in 1991 the Club of Rome adopted ‘global warming’. Explained in this video (less than 5 minutes long).

Klaus Schwab, founder and chairperson of the World Economic Forum (WEF), makes an appearance. Schwab is also a member of the Club of Rome.

This programme of control was easy to sell to third-rate leftist politicians in Wales because socialism is fundamentally anti-human; viewing us as classes or identities, even “protected characteristics“, rather than gloriously varied individuals.

And of course, socialists love imposing “Can’t do that!” restrictions.

Now for the new faces I promised.

◊

NORTH STAR TRANSITION

This company was formed just over three years ago by Jyotir Banerjee. The website is full of silly phrases interspersed with impenetrable jargon: “multi-capital metrics” . . . “radical reframing and holistic transformation” . . .

It’s not often one encounters so much bullshit on a single website. Thankfully.

The clue to North Star’s real purpose comes in a piece written a few weeks ago by Banerjee himself. We are told that “biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change” can all be remedied – by “large-scale investment funding“.

Now you know me, when a chancer crosses my path I like to know more about him or her. Did I really say, “chancer“? (Inner voice: “Yes you did, Jac.”)

First stop was Companies House, to see what our boy has been up to over the years. There are a number of companies to his name, which are either dissolved, dormant or, if still trading, then none too buoyant, to judge by the accounts submitted.

The address currently used for Banerjee’s empire is 1 Pembroke Villas, The Green, Richmond. And a very nice gaff it looks too. But according to the Land Registry this property is leased to a firm of accountants.

The reason I’m writing about Banerjee is his Wales Transition Lab.

But what is Wales to be ‘transitioned’ into? And by whom? And for whose benefit?

This piece from the North Star website by Victoria Topham of Buckinghamshire informs us that:

Since October 2020, a group of 35 thought leaders across Wales have listened to each other and imagined a country that future generations could thrive in.

“Listened to each other“! I see a gang of interlopers discussing the future of our homeland without consulting us. This is often called colonialism.

Topham continues . . .

Why Wales? With a population of 3m people, Wales is the right size for such a living laboratory.

Now she’s gone full-on memsahib. For her and her ‘thought leaders’ our Wales is just a testing ground. With us indigenes as guinea-pigs? Or are we to be removed?

Despite this clique being anonymous one name found on the North Star website is, inevitably, Jane Davidson, who seems to serve as a kind of chatelaine to that demi-monde where enviroshysters have the ear of politicians and civil servants.

After claiming to have initially been reluctant to get involved Banerjee eventually joined Davidson’s Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. (How many different target years do these people use?)

In his homage to La Davidson Banerjee writes: “Olivier Boutellis and I set up North Star Transition to tackle the climate emergency . . . “.

My cue to introduce Olivier Boutellis and explain what I think is really happening.

Despite what Banerjee says, Boutellis was not there at the start (unless he was keeping his head down). For North Star Transition was launched 10 June 2020 and the company Olivier Boutellis-Taft SPRL climbed aboard 3 February 2021.

This company was registered in Belgium 04 October 2011.

So who is Olivier Boutellis, or Boutellis-Taft?

The capture below from the European Parliament tells us he’s a lawyer and an economist. And this tells us he’s been a magistrate and a lecturer. Also, CEO of Accountancy Europe.

But it’s his Linkedin profile that I found fascinating. The screen capture below will explain why.

It tells us Olivier Boutellis-Taft joined the Club of Rome EU Chapter at exactly the same time he got involved with Jyotir Banerjee and North Star Transition.

But there’s something not right. The website looks abandoned, and the Twitter account hasn’t been used since September 2020.

There is also a Linkedin page of the most elementary kind. But it claims the Club of Rome EU Chapter has 11 employees and that its focus is on “sustainability” and “environmental services“.

But understandable doubts to one side, let’s accept Banerjee and Boutellis-Taft at face value. I believe they’re promising to find ‘investors’ looking to buy Welsh farmland for carbon offsetting, or in other ways take land out of agricultural production.

Which fits perfectly with the Globalist agenda to destroy small- to medium-sized farms so that corporations can take control of the food supply. Because if you control the food supply then you control the people.

The opening part of this 2-minute video explains it succinctly.

∼

This Globalist agenda is welcomed by the environmental pressure groups because it destroys farming, especially livestock farming, and most of these activists seem to be vegans.

They also anticipate getting some of the grabbed land for their rewilding fantasies.

Because of course there’ll be fewer people living in the countryside. Take out the main industry and the decline begins. Impose travel restrictions, run down public transport and impose other obstacles and rural living becomes even less attractive.

At the top and the bottom both Globalists and environmental activists know what they want, and are guaranteed to benefit. It’s those in the middle of the scam who, along with the people, will lose out.

Because politicians don’t seem to realise that in the New World Order they are surplus to requirements. As Klaus Schwab explains in this very short video – in the future we won’t need elections.

“Can you imagine such a world?“, he asks. Yes, I can; and while losing politicians has its attractions . . .

Without elections we won’t need politicians, except to serve as ‘managers’ for their Globalist masters. Which is not a lot different to what they’re doing now.

Our politicians have been fooled into thinking they’re saving the planet when what they’re really doing is sacrificing Wales and other countries to the psychotic ambitions of the Globalists.

And this explains dreamers, chancers, shysters and con men flocking to Wales.

◊

CONCLUSION

As I hope I’ve explained, 20mph speed restrictions should not be viewed in isolation. They are part of something much, much bigger.

You’re free to dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist. It’s a free world. For now. But before you go . . .

Justify Vision Zero transferring deaths and injuries from highway to home without admitting it’s a plan to do away with cars. Do you think Jyotir Banerjee’s “large-scale investment funding” is designed to save the Welsh family farm? And why does Klaus Schwab talk about abolishing elections?

♦ end ♦

It’s Getting Sinister

On 09/08/202310/08/2023 By JacIn Corruption, Environmentalism, Globalism, Welsh Government39 Comments

This quickie begins with the response to a Freedom of Information request. It concerns ‘Welsh Government’ dealings with an outfit called Lynn, which former Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe, joined in May as a ‘Global Strategic Partner’.

‘Global Strategic Partner’! Has she ever lived outside of Cardiff?

The sole director and shareholder of Lynn Group Ltd and Lynn Global Ltd – the latter formed just a month after Howe joined – remains Shayoni Sarkar Lynn. She studied at Cardiff University (where else?) and is married to a Welshman.

So let’s turn to the FoI mentioned at the top, and the reason I’m writing this piece.

◊

TOO MUCH TO HANDLE

This FoI request, dated 27 July, simply asked for . . .

a copy of all correspondence, digital or otherwise, both internal and external (including time sent) that reasonably relate to Welsh Government’s use of communications consultancy Lynn to promote the 20 MPH zone law, from 1 July 2022 to date.

It seems straightforward enough, and surely a request easy enough to satisfy, covering just a year, and a single topic.

But the response, as you can read below, makes clear that there was a lot of traffic between Lynn and the ‘Welsh Government’ in that period. For a quick shufty turned up over 2,000 documents!

The FoI. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Of course, the accounts for the period covered in the FoI have not yet been filed with Companies House. But the accounts for the previous year, ending 31 March, 2022 are available. And they make for interesting reading.

The number of employees went up from 5 the previous year to 12 in y/e 31 March, 2022, and money in the bank went up from £199,227 to £1,650,756. I’ll repeat that for the hard of reading. Cash in hand, for a small company, went up by £1.45m in a single year.

Yes, creditors account for £1,172,195, but most of that figure is covered by ‘accruals and deferred income’. This probably means income from the previous year, but it’s not money owed to anybody.

And remember, that previous year, ending 31 March, 2021, was the first year in business for the Lynn Group (originally Lynn PR). Which tells us that Shayoni Sarkar Lynn hit the ground running. Dare we assume the work was already promised and all she had to do was set up the company?

How much did Lynn earn in year ending 31.03.2023, the period largely covered by the FoI request, and how much of it came from ‘WelshGovernment’?

Did Lynn have any other clients, or was it just the ‘Welsh Government’? The Spartan website certainly mentions no clients. There are a few campaigns listed, but no claim that Lynn was involved in them.

Come to that, what exactly does Lynn do? What does it offer clients? Here’s Shayoni Lynn to tell us.

Well, whaddya know, it’s “behavioural science“. Which is getting people to believe in things they wouldn’t readily believe in. A kind of brainwashing. Or coercion.

The kind of thing politicians do when trying to push unpopular policies, like, er . . . oh I don’t know, maybe 20mph zones. Which is of course what the FoI request was about.

And she makes no secret of her admiration for the MS for Llanelli (resident in Penarth). Though given the money that association has brought her I can understand why she’s delighted to support Lee Waters and 20mph.

But we are still no nearer to understanding exactly what she did for that money.

The Twitter / X account I grabbed the above image from contains a number of gems that leave us in no doubt as to how Shayoni Lynn operates. It’s the “Scare them shitless” UN-WEF strategy used to get people to believe in the ‘climate crisis’.

Lynn describes it as, “impactful fear appeals“. Yeah, like I said – “Scare ’em shitless“.

From what I can see, the wonderful and universally respected ‘Welsh Government’ is paying this woman – and others – to frighten us into accepting their Globalist agenda.

Is this a proper use of public funding? And how much are we talking about?

◊

SOPHIE HOWE

Now we have to consider where and how Sophie Howe fits into the picture.

After leaving her sinecure as the Future Generations Commissioner in February Sophie Howe was soon putting herself about.

She started her own company, Sophie Howe Associates Ltd . . . with her as the only associate. In June she became a trustee of Coleg Soros. And a Scottish source tells me she’s also got a seat aboard the Bute Energy gravy train.

And of course she joined Lynn. But why?

It couldn’t be because Shayoni Lynn needed influence in Corruption Bay, for she was already living high on the hog of Welsh public funding. There had to be another reason.

Being an aficionado of Mafia movies I know there’s often a scene when the local kingpin insists on a job for a relative. Just think of The Godfather, when young Vito Corleone loses his job in the grocery store to Don Fanucci’s nephew.

Don Fanucci. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Alternatively, the Mob moves somebody into a business they’ve invested in in order to protect that investment.

Which is it with Lynn and Sophie Howe?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not for one minute doubting Sophie Howe’s talents; but let’s be honest, we’re dealing here with ‘Welsh’ Labour, and as political parties go, this lot comes bloody close to being a criminal enterprise.

(Though mentioning ‘enterprise’ in their company might get you whacked!)

◊

CONCLUSION

I’ve written a lot about those clowns down in Corruption Bay, and the system of third sector spongers, funded pressure groups, and assorted cronies, that serves as an echo chamber protecting them from the reality of an increasingly restless population.

But with Shayoni Sarkar Lynn we have entered new and dangerous territory. For we are being manipulated and frightened into accepting policy decisions over which we were never consulted and with which the majority of us do not agree.

This is a form of totalitarianism. And yet we are paying for it!

And it comes with a failing NHS; with our poorest kids going without meals this summer; with a community in Llanelli on edge as it waits for ‘refugees’ every man and his dog knows are not refugees; as rural Wales is turned into an open-air power station with turbines and pylons – to supply England; and as the no roads, ‘degrowth’ agenda demanded by demented Globalists is imposed.

I therefore call on opposition politicians to demand that this Freedom of Information request be answered properly. Because we are entitled to know how much public money has been paid to Shayoni Lynn and her Lynn Group Ltd to lie to us, and to frighten us.

Because if opposition politicians don’t oppose, and the will of the people can be ignored by a cult-like minority that’s persuaded itself we, the common herd, are stupid and bigoted (and they have), then democracy is as good as dead.

UPDATE: A good source directs me to this Sell2Wales entry (22/12/2021) seeking tenders for: “NPS Media Buying, Integrated Marketing Campaigns and Public Relations Services Framework”. Of 16 applications 12 were accepted.

The 12 were approached for what was now the, “20 mph National Campaign” (17/08/2022), only 5 tendered, and if we click on the tab ‘Full Notice Text’ we see Lynn PR was successful. For some reason, ‘Estimated Total Value’ is left blank.

My source points out: a) Lynn was competing with more experienced and better resourced competitors; b) tenders are not accepted from companies with less than 3 years experience, which should have ruled Lynn PR out.

That Lynn PR got the 20mph contract suggests that someone in Corruption Bay smiled on Shayoni Lynn. That Sophie Howe, the ultimate Labour insider, has joined Lynn, would seem to confirms this suspicion.

But that still leaves the mystery of the work Lynn PR was doing that paid so well before being awarded the 20mph contract.

♦

I promised a piece on Bute Energy, its links with the ‘Welsh Government’, and a few associated snippets, but it’ll have to wait until next week.

♦ end ♦

Bute Energy, Update, 30.06.2023

On 30/06/202319/07/2023 By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Welsh Government, World Economic Forum38 Comments

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

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

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

♦

BUTE ENERGY, A SHORT RÉSUMÉ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

◊

LAND USE CONSULTANTS AND OTHERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

◊

TWO NEW ‘ENERGY PARKS’

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

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

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

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

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

◊

GRIDS & NETWORKS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My source explains the difference here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let Uncle Jac explain this one . . .

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

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

◊

NEWS FROM SCOTLAND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy to clear that up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

◊

ANTZ CYMRU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tracks the individual! What the hell does that mean?

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

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

Did you ever read such bollocks?

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

◊

CPRW COMPLAINT

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

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

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

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

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

◊

CONCLUSION: THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER

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

But perhaps not in Germany. Or not yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

♦ end ♦

England’s wind turbines – in Wales!

On 11/10/202113/04/2023 By JacIn Colonialism, Environmentalism, Planning, Welsh Government, Wind Turbines33 Comments

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

♦

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

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

♦

MAPPING IT OUT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

◊

A WEE DIGRESSION, BUT INTERESTING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While Leighton Andrews has plenty to say on his blog.

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

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

◊

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

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

My questions were:

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

I’m still waiting for answers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Makes you wonder.

◊

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

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

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

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

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

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

The map below might help illustrate my point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps someone in the ‘Welsh Government’ can explain why 10MW wind farms are Developments of National Significance in Wales, but not in England.

Especially as we share the same National Grid and the electricity generated by ‘Welsh’ wind farms will most likely go to England.

As I’ve said, I’m convinced pressure was applied from London, perhaps via the civil servants operating in Wales who answer to London. The ‘Welsh Government’ couldn’t admit that, so it was glossed over with the Well-being of Future Generations Act, which came into force in April 2016.

Followed by pious declarations to make Wales ‘carbon neutral’ and then, like a maiden aunt having an attack of the vapours, declaring a ‘Climate Emergency‘.

As if anybody outside of Corruption Bay gives a toss!

These bouts of orchestrated hysteria turned planting wind farms all over Wales into an environmental crusade. The panel below, from this ‘Welsh Government’ site, explains why someone thinks we needed this legislation.

Note that climate change, over which Wales can have no effect, is more important for the ‘Welsh Government’ than spheres where it could make a difference.

Priorities, eh!

◊

CONCLUSION

Despite the apparent divergence of approach over Developments of National Significance in 2015/16 we are, effectively, still in the Englandandwales model.

Making wind farms another example of devolution being used to serve England’s interests rather than ours. Consider this . . .

Just imagine if a Tory government in Westminster had said, ‘We don’t want wind farms in England – so we’re going to dump them all in Wales’. There would have been a national outcry.

Yet that is what has happened!

It’s the old story of Wales being exploited for the benefit of England. And just as with our water, we are not compensated for what we export.

Wanting Wales to be ‘carbon neutral’ and declaring a ‘Climate Emergency!’ is just vain posturing to disguise Wales’ subordinate status. Play-acting that won’t improve the lives of Welsh people, or make any difference to climate change.

And things might be about to get a whole lot worse.

For the number of wind farm applications is accelerating. Not only do we have Bute Energy’s 16 projects, there’s also the monster turbines planned for Y Bryn, between Port Talbot and Maesteg; while more recently I’ve learnt of a plan for turbines above coal tips at Ynyshir in the Rhondda Fach.

Yes, honestly, above coal tips.

How many more are planned that we haven’t yet heard about?

There is nothing to be said in favour of wind turbines. In their brief and intermittent lives they do not repay the environment for the damage caused in making, transporting, and erecting them. They are all built and owned by foreign companies. They provide no jobs. They despoil our landscapes. They kill birds. They cause flooding.

But never mind, we’re serving England’s interests. Again.

♦ end ♦

Arts Council of Wales and Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, an update

On 31/08/202105/09/2021 By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Cymrophobia, Public Funding, Third Sector, Wales, Welsh Government32 Comments

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. POSTINGS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

♦

This is a follow-up to last week’s post, ‘Corruption Bay and a tale of Cymrophobia‘. You’ll remember that we looked at how Labour Party insiders were paid to produce reports that would guide more ‘inclusive’ policy at the commissioning bodies, the Arts Council of Wales and the National Museum.

♦

UPDATE

One of these submissions, from the mysterious Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, painted a picture of Wales as some kind of Hell on Earth where ‘creatives’ of a non-Caucasian pigmentation are brutally discriminated against.

It was reminiscent of the hysteria I’ve been writing about in connection with YesCymru. Where some of those involved in the failed Woke-Left takeover wanted us to believe that ‘women with penises’ are being butchered on Welsh streets by mobs of transphobes.

What I found revealing was that neither those suggesting rampant transphobia or a whites-only arts scene are prepared to debate. Any dialogue must start from a blind acceptance of their ‘facts’.

A few tit-bits have come to light since the previous post went out. For example, someone drew my attention to the metadata naming authors for the three reports.

The report from Labour insiders Lu Thomas and Jon Luxton named Luxton as the author. But the other two reports listed Arts Council employees as authors. Which might at first sight seem a bit odd, though there could be a simple explanation.

Such as the reports being submitted in MS Word or some other format and the Arts Council converting them to PDF.

If that is not the explanation, then what is?

Despite the ‘authorship’, there is no real issue with the Richie Turner Associates’ report because the contributors are named in the report.

It’s the third report, from the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, that’s causing concern. Because no individual or contributor is named anywhere.

Anyway, in the hope of helping me make sense of the bigger picture, a few people made suggestions. Pointed me in certain directions. So off I went.

◊

NATURE OF THE BEAST

It’s fair to say that Amgueddfa Cymru was almost a ‘passenger’ in this exercise, so I’m ruling them out to focus on The Arts Council of Wales.

The current Chair is Phil George, who I speculated was a Labour Party supporter. His immediate predecessor in the post, from 2007 – 2016, was David Burton Smith, whose political leanings have never been in doubt.

For Dai Smith – father of unsuccessful challenger to Jeremy Corbyn, Owen Smith – is another creature of the left. One of those historians who, like Neil Kinnock, believes Wales isn’t worthy of study until the Industrial Revolution and the creation of a proletariat.

Smith worked for the BBC in Cardiff, from 1994, as, ‘Head of Broadcast (English Language). He was responsible for commissioning programmes on the arts and in drama and has also presented award-winning documentaries on the people and culture of south Wales’.

Through a socialist prism, of course.

An interesting insight into colonial Wales, this. For while the Labour Party rails against Tory cronyism, Old Boy networks and the rest, the Buttybond practises something very similar in Wales.

And the Tories are more than happy to let them do it. I’ll explain why a bit later.

Phil George has a long history with The National Theatre of Wales (NTW). In fact, he was one of the founding directors on September 9, 2008. He seems to have left NTW in March 2016, around the time he was appointed Chair of the Arts Council.

I’m told the National Theatre of Wales was always well favoured in Cardiff. One source reports: ‘”BBC Wales” used and uses every opportunity to promote this company. Hardly any arts documentaries are done but in its formative years, 2010, it commissioned a 30 minute advertorial dressed up as a documentary on a National Theatre production’.

It was thanks to Phil George and NTW that Abdul Shayek of London got his foot in the Welsh public funding door. For Shayek’s Linkedin page tells us that from April 2011 until April 2013 he was a Creative Associate with NTW.

Shayek then branched out to form FIO, a BAME theatre group. Though apparently reliant on funding from the Welsh public purse this didn’t stop FIO taking plays to India. And Shayek ‘representing’ FIO at symposia and the like in Sri Lanka and Australia.

Nice work if you can get it! And especially if someone else is paying.

Another source tells me FIO got some £400,000 in funding over 3 or 4 three years. (It might have been more.) Which pays for quite a few trips to Oz and old Serendip.

Going back to Shayek’s Linkedin bio we see that he left FIO in August 2020 to join Tara Theatre. No, this has nothing to do with halls and High Kings, it’s yet another ‘ethnically diverse’ theatre group. This time in London.

I’m not sure of the reasons for Shayek’s departure, or where this leaves his creation, FIO. The website suggests it’s still going, and the Charity Commission entry implies he’s still involved.

Whatever the relationship between Abdul Shayek and FIO he still appears to be involved with the arts scene in Wales. And pissing off quite a few people with his involvement in the Wales Culture and Race Taskforce (WCRT).

Which was set up in June 2020 to, ‘challenge the lack of diversity within the arts in Wales and demand systemic change’.

I’m not sure if this was Abdul Shayek’s brainchild or if he just got involved somehow. Certainly, his creation FIO was holding the money donated to WCRT by other arts groups. Said to be £20,000.

You’ll get a flavour of the dispute from the Critically Speaking blog of Jafar Iqbal. (A supporter of Leyton Orient football club.) In particular, read the lengthy comment from ‘pledging organisations’.

If you want to know more about the role envisaged for the Wales Culture and Race Taskforce then you should read this document prepared for the ‘Welsh Government’.

Strangely, in just 452 words this document manages to use the term ‘white-led’ three times. In the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union ‘report’ we encounter the phrase ‘white-led’ 10 times.

When checking the metadata for the document I’ve just linked to, I found the author named as Letty Clarke. So obviously, I wondered who she might be.

You will not be surprised to learn that Letty is also from England, but since January 2020 she has been Curator of Public Programmes at Artes Mundi Prize Ltd. From the Artes Mundi website we learn:

‘Artes Mundi Prize Ltd is a registered non-profit charity that annually relies on support from individuals, corporations, sponsors, trusts and foundations to fund the costs of all our programmes, alongside our core public revenue from Arts Council of Wales and Cardiff City Council’.

The name may sound like a character from a forgotten novel set in 19th century New England, but Letty is of the here and now. And, unfortunately, the ‘here’ is Wales.

Letty Clarke’s Linkedin profile makes it clear that she supports Black Lives Matter, and her Twitter account provides a few gems.

As many of you will know, investigations are continuing into the death of Mohamud Mohammed Hassan, who died some hours after leaving police custody. But Letty Clarke, after being in Wales for a short time, has already made her mind up.

For according to her Hassan was a victim of ‘police brutality’ and ‘state violence in Wales’. What the hell does she mean by ‘state violence’? There is no Welsh state!

Let me explain the relationship to you, Letty . . . Your country robs my country and by way of compensation doles out money to those buffoons down Corruption Bay, who in turn distribute far too much of that cash to people like you and your friends.

Which means that, one way and another, most Welsh people get screwed twice over.

Up to now in this painful trawl through the ‘Welsh’ arts scene I don’t think we’ve met anyone who is actually Welsh, apart from a few cocks atop the dung heap.

Let’s see if we have any more luck in the next section.

◊

THE SEARCH CONTINUES FOR THE WELSH ARTS ANTI-RACIST UNION

In December 2019 the Wales Audit Office produced a snappily-entitled report, ‘Well-being of Future Generations Increasing Participation in Areas with Under-developed Reach of the Arts – Arts Council of Wales’. You can read it here.

The Introduction says: ‘This document has been prepared for the internal use of the Arts Council of Wales’. Reminding us that this is an example of the additional public money wasted since the implementation of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and the creation of the post of Future Generations Commissioner, with of course, a whole new department.

The job of Commissioner was given to Labour time-server Sophie Howe. She had previously worked under Alun Michael, the former Labour MP and now Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales.

Under ‘Contents’ we read: ‘In its efforts to increase participation, inclusion and engagement in areas with under-developed reach of the arts, the Arts Council of Wales (Arts Council) is demonstrating commitment to the sustainable development principle but it recognises the need to further embed the five ways of working.’

Clearly, the Audit Office looked into inclusion in the arts, and made recommendations to the Arts Council. So why, just six months later, did the ACW spaff another £50,000 (minimum) doing what looks like exactly the same thing?

(Note that the Sell2Wales notice I link to is from June 2020. Which is when the Wales Culture and Race Taskforce was set up.)

This duplication produced the three reports dealt with in the previous post, including the submission from the mysterious Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union.

This digression takes us nowhere nearer identifying the person or persons behind the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. In fact, it’s difficult to get any handle on the WAARU.

One mention I did find was on what I assume to be a podcast. It seems to be called Mostyn, or Lumin, the latter described as, ‘an artist-run radio and publisher led by Sadia Pineda Hameed and Beau W Beakhouse’.

If you scroll down to the bios of others involved, you’ll see this for the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. But again, no name.

I’d like to be able to tell you that Hameed is from Froncysyllte and Beakhouse from Llangyfelach, but alas . . .

Beau tells us: ‘I’m originally from Bournemouth but moved around . . . I come from a nature & craft background . . . My parents were self-employed gardeners, who then went into woodcraft . . . Eventually, I managed to study English Literature at Cardiff University’.

Hameed: ‘I’m from London. I also came to Cardiff to study English Literature at uni and decided to stay ‒ in part because I didn’t really have the money to pursue the arts back in London, but also because I really liked how open the arts scene in Wales is.’

Yes indeedy; the ‘arts scene’ in Wales is open to just about anybody . . . artistic talent is unnecessary, and knowledge of Wales undesirable.

Here’s an example of Beakhouse’s poetry from 2017.

Don’t give up the day job, Beau. Whatever it is.

That we are no nearer fingering who wrote the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union report is understandable, given its reception. But the Arts Council of Wales must know because the WAARU was paid well to insult us.

Which is why I have submitted a Freedom of Information request to the ACW.

But over and above that, this situation of strangers being paid to insult us could only happen in the peculiar circumstances of devolution, which sees politicians and others who superficially oppose each other agree when it comes to Wales, and the Welsh.

∼

UPDATE: Since publishing this piece I have received feedback, including someone drawing my attention to The Future Generations Report 2020. On page 355 we read what you see in the panel:

I have two points to make.

First, ‘learning Welsh on the job’ sounds like a good idea, until you realise it’s often a ruse to give jobs to people most of whom will do no more than go through the motions of taking a few Welsh lessons.

Mark James, former chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council, would be a great example of this scam in practise.

Second, The Future Generations Commissioner in her 2020 report is quoting Race Alliance Wales (RAW), a body formally launched on December 19, 2019. How the hell did a newly-constituted body become so influential so quickly?

The answer is that those behind RAW are based almost exclusively in Cardiff and well connected in Corruption Bay.

While organisations elsewhere in Wales, established for far longer, representing many more people, but outside the Bay Bubble, are ignored.

This is not healthy; this is not democratic; this should not be the Wales any of us wants to see.

But it’s the Wales we live in.

∼

FURTHER UPDATE: Someone else has been in touch with an intriguing suggestion. Which is, that when an anonymous Twitter account is launched the author is often to be found among the early followers.

In the case of the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union Twitter account the first ten followers can be found here. (Read from the bottom up.) There are quite a few names there that appear in this article.

◊

THE BIT AT THE END WHERE COLOMBO PUFFS ON HIS CIGAR AND . . .

Picking up again on the shared motivations, what I’m hinting at is that these otherwise squabbling interests agree that Wales must be carefully ‘managed’.

Which is why what passes for entertainment on television and elsewhere is banal and superficial. Welsh politics, social issues, and other specifically Welsh matters (when dealt with in English) are often quarantined in programmes broadcast at awkward times . . . which results in hardly anyone watching them.

The same applies more widely, in the fields so copiously manured by the Arts Council. For example, there’s not a hope in Hell of Wales having its own Abbey Theatre.

We are at a stage now where if two plays are in competition for funding, one about Welsh villages being destroyed by excessive tourism, the other about the absence of obstetric facilities for low caste birthing persons in Tamil Nadu, then you can predict with certainty which will enjoy an opening night.

Researching this piece I stumbled on an hour-long lecture by former Arts Council Chair Dai Smith, built around writer Raymond Williams. Smith is speaking at a ‘Cultural Democracy Workshop’ in November 2020.

This was of course delivered at a time when the three reports commissioned by the Arts Council were being prepared. Yes, it was all happening around that time.

Smith makes the point that in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, when Williams was at the height of his intellectual and creative powers, his writing was framed by what he saw as a class struggle. But things have moved on.

(Interestingly, a piece on Williams appeared in UnHerd yesterday.)

Most importantly, the political left in Europe and North America has lost the working class. Which is why Marxism is now promoted through race, environmentalism and gender. And the harder the left pushes these the more it alienates the working class.

No one living just thirty years ago could have envisioned the crazy situation we have reached today. And few political activists of the left under the age of 40 can believe that their ideological predecessors idolised those they regard as stupid, racist, transphobic, climate denying Brexiteers.

The sons and grandsons of Marxist miners are fascist white van men!

A hazy understanding of Marxism re-interpreted by Black Lives Matter almost certainly lies behind the report submitted by the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. It also explains the report’s acceptance by the Arts Council.

But why would the Old Etonians in Westminster and their civil servant alumni of lesser schools want to push such drivel? The answer is that they share with the Woke-Left establishment in Corruption Bay a desired outcome.

This explains the funding and other encouragement for people from around the world to come here, take funding that should go to Welsh arts, and then call us racist.

London likes the ‘The Welsh are racist’ message because it explains why we oppose holiday homes, and resent being colonised. (It’s why the Telegraph used the WAARU report.) Corruption Bay modifies it to read, ‘Nationalism is racist’ because that can slander those suggesting there is a better way for Cymru than devolution’s cronyism and exploitation.

Together they tell us why the ‘Welsh’ arts scene today is a revolting mess of talentless dreamers and grant-grabbing shysters. Overwhelmingly alien; with some of those involved positively racist in their attitudes towards us.

Modern Wales in microcosm.

♦ end ♦

A guest post on . . . YesCymru!

On 21/06/202121/06/2021 By JacIn Yes Cymru37 Comments

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY SOON AFTER THIS YEAR’S SENEDD ELECTIONS. POSTINGS WILL NOW BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

♦

This week’s offering is a short guest post on an organisation currently providing a great deal of entertainment and amusement. To which I’ve added a contribution of my own.

You only have to remind yourself of the sort of people now running this three-ring circus to immediately understand why so many people are spellbound.

I am of course referring to YesCymru.

Now read on . . .

♦

With the dust and smoke from YesCymru’s AGM on 22 May still thick on the social media battlefield, we can now look forward to another election to the Politburo. This time it’s for the post of Secretary, and first out of the traps is Scott Mackay from Swansea.

Scott’s brief moment in the sun on Twitter as he announced his decision to stand quickly clouded over as he was reminded of some of his more recent pronouncements:

In other words, those unhappy with the direction the movement has taken are just a bunch of far-right fashies, with their “almost entirely baseless” complaints.

Whatever message Scott chooses for his campaign, it seems pretty clear that he does not see himself as a unifying peacemaker.

It won’t surprise readers to learn that Scott has the enthusiastic support of our old friend Aled Williams (and Teifi by proxy):

With an endorsement from the man who has done more to wreck the independence movement than anyone else alive, Scott should be home and dry.

∼

UPDATE (by Jac): Scott Mackay yesterday issued an apology . . . of sorts.

∼

The last week was not without its lighter moments as whoever is handling the movement’s Twitter account mysteriously announced “What a great idea” in response to a tweet that many members found themselves unable to read.

It turned out that the message called on members to meet up in railway stations to campaign and that it came from Rachel Cooze, one of the recently elected central committee members. La Cooze and YesCymru had momentarily forgotten that, in a demonstration of her commitment to inclusivity, she has blocked a huge swathe of the membership from her Twitter account.

Complaints rolled in from disgruntled punters who had never had any interaction with her, but had been blocked anyway.

The effect that this has on potential new YesCymru members when they discover they have been blocked by a senior representative of the movement is not hard to predict. Whatever Rachel Cooze’s objectives are, maintaining and growing the membership are not on the list.

Perhaps recognising that using a personal Twitter account to transact YesCymru business has its drawbacks, Ben Gwalchmai recently announced he was setting up a second account to deal exclusively with YC matters.

Ben has set his Twitter account to autodelete every 24 hours, but an eagle-eyed passer-by did manage to spot this intriguing message on his personal account (you know, the one that doesn’t deal with YC matters):

“KatieMonVie” is a peripheral member of the group which has risen to prominence within YC, but she won’t be joining YC until it has been purged of all transphobes, TERFs, fashies, etc., etc.

So what had rattled her cage?

After a little prompting, Katie revealed that the dodgy, ableist, transphobic and now homophobic committee member concerned was Niki Jones, and that Niki’s latest crime was to like a tweet from someone wondering why Aled Williams seems to have become the voice of the Indy movement:

Fair enough, “the don” could have used slightly more polished English, and the use of “it” was either a little careless or just a clumsy attempt to use inclusive non-binary pronouns, but a lot of people are asking the same question.

Clearly, Ben made a note of this outrage, and no doubt the matter will be raised when the central committee undergoes compulsory diversity and inclusivity training:

The movement’s new LGBTQ+ three-step process was excitedly announced by Comrade Gwalchmai as an example of his drive for increased “transparency and professionalism” by the movement’s leadership.

Quite how this will make the Politburo more transparent, let alone professional, is not clear, but only cynics would see this new process as a mechanism for weeding out members and committee members who are found guilty of being on La Cooze’s blocked list.

Meanwhile, writing from London where she edits Bricks Magazine, “an independent queer led publication rerouting the intersections between fashion and our precarious social systems”, another member of the central committee, Tori West, has announced that she is going on strike less than a month after being re-elected:

Ymlaen!

— ♦ —

Jac adds . . .

Those being written about here used to depict me as some rare and malevolent presence. A lone voice howling into the void.

In the past few months they’ve been made to realise that not only I am not alone, but that they are far less popular than they once believed. With the result that Twitter accounts have been closed, tweets deleted and, as we saw with Scott Mackay, apologies issued.

These things would never have happened just a few months ago when Aled and Teifi could saunter around Ceredigion cocking their legs against ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’ walls and growling at Dr Dilys Davies.

(But it couldn’t last. She’s back. Come on, where’s she gonna post her selfies?)

Not only is a pillar of their belief system collapsing as Stonewall is dismantled, but in addition they draw the contempt of decent people because so many of them are just very unpleasant. And extreme in their beliefs.

Our guest writer referred to YesCymru Central Committee member Rachel Cooze blocking people on Twitter. Many of these would have committed the crime of following me. For Cooze and some allies went through my Twitter followers requesting they stop following me.

But someone Cooze or one of her allies contacted went even further.

Who the hell is ‘Tess’, linked with #SavetheNorthernMeadows, and why is she saying these lies about me? She doesn’t even know me!

The answer is that she is Tessa Hannah Marshall, of Cardiff, and clearly involved with the Save Cardiff Northern Meadows campaign. Her Linkedin profile tells us that she’s part of the UpRising Leadership organisation, an English third sector body that views Wales as a region of England.

More specifically, Marshall seems to be involved with the Environmental Leadership Programme (ELP). But now it gets a wee bit odd.

The plan to put the new Velindre cancer centre on Cardiff’s Northern Meadows is ‘Welsh Government’ policy. Yet the UpRising / ELP presence in Wales is in partnership with Labour-run Cardiff City Council, and is a ‘delivery partner’ for the Future Generations Commissioner, who is of course Labour time-server, Sophie Howe.

‘Diversity’, ‘inclusion’. Now where have we heard that? Click to enlarge.

Are Cardiff council and the Future Generations Commissioner helping protesters against a ‘Welsh Government’s policy? Or is this some cunning game in which the Labour Party is on both sides, and therefore can’t lose?

Or another example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

Either way, yet more Welsh public funding is wasted on Woke-Left-Green ‘activists’.

It might be significant that Tessa Marshall has written for the Undod blog, because in its short life Undod has become the mother church for leftist extremists in Wales.

No doubt I shall be attacked for ‘harassing’ or ‘doxxing’ Tessa Marshall. Because in the demi-monde of the Woke-Left people can be slandered with impunity; ‘targets’ can be vilified, and in other ways attacked. But defend yourself, or expose what ugly people they are, and the pack will feign outrage before turning on you.

◊

After studying those involved in trying to take over YesCymru, and slander anyone who dares to criticise them, I detect three categories.

First, we have those claiming to be socialists, even communists. Often embittered individuals who maybe can’t understand why their 2:2 in Media Studies didn’t land them that £70k job.

Second, we have the sexuality / gender-obsessed. These can be ‘uncomfortable’ gays and lesbians. They can also be confused young people, and even those who have transitioned.

Third, we have those who pay lip service to the causes espoused by Categories 1 and 2 but also enjoy saying and doing things to outrage people. (As long as Mam and Dad don’t find out!)

Members of Category 1 exploit members of Category 2 who regard members of Category 1 as friends and protectors. Many of both Categories see themselves as involved in some noble crusade. While those in Category 3 are just there for the craic.

If you put them all together you’d be hard-pressed to find many rounded, reasonable, and successful individuals in sound mental health.

And that’s why their hold on the indy movement must be broken.

Why I would vote to abolish the Senedd

On 04/02/202105/02/2021 By JacIn Devolution, Wales, Welsh Independence59 Comments

♦

For this, another of my infrequent, pre-retirement postings, I’ll explain why I would vote to abolish the Senedd in a referendum offering the straight choice of to keep or to abolish.

◊

BACKGROUND

In a recent post, ‘Welsh independence: Why? for whom?’, I explained why, when a teenager, I became convinced that independence was the only answer for Wales. I wrote:

I wanted independence to improve the lives of the people I cared about: my family, my neighbours, my community, and my nation. I wanted independence to protect my country from neglect or exploitation, and to defend what made us Welsh.

Devolution is obviously not independence but still, judged against those criteria devolution has been an abysmal failure. For the only beneficiaries have been cliques, claques, and the assorted parasites of a vast and burdensome stratum smothering the nation.

◊

LET ME GIVE SOME EXAMPLES

While the greater part of Wales, and the nation, has seen no benefits, this constitutional tinkering must have brought some benefits, to someone, somewhere, otherwise it would be universally damned and consequently unsustainable.

So let’s try and identify some beneficiaries. I’ll use examples of us losing out and others benefitting at our expense. (You’ll soon get the hang of it.)

∼

THIRD SECTOR

The ‘stratum’ I referred to earlier is the third sector. Bigger than ever in Wales, and bigger in Wales than in any other country.

Wales is a rich country made poor by English rule, and the Labour Party has capitalised on our deprivation both for electoral gain – by blaming ‘London’ / Tories – and also by using that deprivation to create a whole new ‘poverty sector’ for its cronies.

Wales is now smothering under the weight of duplicating and competing third sector gangs, most of which seem to be staffed by strident memsahibs from over the border. Cohort after cohort of Common Purpose’ finest, goose-stepping from conference to workshop to those regular meetings in which they dictate policy and funding priorities to politicians.

This third sector is fundamentally and irredeemably parasitical. Preying on Wales’ deprivation in order to suck money from the public purse. A vast network of self-polishing turds who would not be missed if they ceased doing tomorrow whatever they claim to be doing today.

Both Labour and the third sector exploit and capitalise on Wales’ poverty and deprivation. If the money wasted on the third sector was spent in combatting that poverty and deprivation then Wales would be a much better place.

∼

ENVIROSHYSTERS

Perhaps to make us feel guilty for wanting decent jobs, decent homes, an acceptable road and rail system, etc., our gaze is directed away from such crass materialism to the altruistic, the selfless, in the form of saving the planet.

This crusade – for it is nothing less! – is done without providing jobs or any other material benefits to us Welsh. This national insult takes many forms.

Here’s a recent re-working of the theme.

Is this supposed to be a consolation prize for the Circuit of Wales? Or for more false hopes raised over the TVR car plant? (Which is not coming, by the way.)

Blaenau Gwent is the poorest part of the country. What it needs is decent jobs, housing, NHS dentists, etc., not bullshit publicity stunts from Corruption Bay.

We are told that “50 residents will be selected to create the first Climate Assembly in Wales”. I hope Gwent Police have the riot gear ready for the trouble that will surely erupt in Ebbw Vale and Tredegar as people fight over those 50 places.

Here’s the latest in the ‘Save the planet’ offensive: “I think if political parties are not putting addressing the climate and nature emergencies right at the top of their manifesto agenda then they will be letting down both the current and future generations in Wales,” says Sophie Howe, Labour apparatchik being paid £100,000 a year in a non-job created specially for her.

The message from our leaders is: ‘Wales may be the poorest country in Europe and getting poorer, but fuck that, cos we – on £100,000 a year – are saving the planet’.

I want to see a healthier nation living in a greener land making its contribution to a cleaner planet. But Wales has more immediate priorities. And it’s positively insulting for overpaid Labour Party nobodies to lecture those worrying about feeding their kids and paying their rent.

♦

UPDATE: As if on cue, Nation.Cymru published a piece by Neil Anderson, ‘How can we make the land of our fathers the land of our futures?’ In it we read: “Incoming farmers are likely to be more adventurous and innovative . . . “.

Yet more arrogant – almost racist – envirocolonialism. It seems Kiwi Anderson has been won over to Welsh independence. A reminder that the reason Greens and others are jumping on the indy bandwagon is because they want our land.

∼

GRANNY FARMERS

Wales has the oldest population in Europe and it’s getting older. An unwanted accolade achieved by a number of factors combining. The lack of a decent economy being one. The other is the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ going out of its way to attract elderly people to Wales.

This is done because, due to the lack of a balanced economy in rural areas and the regular exodus of young people that results, population levels need to be maintained; for nothing says ‘area going to hell’ more clearly than a falling population. How better to maintain population levels than by attracting retirees? (Actually, I can think of many better alternatives, but bear with me.)

No only does the ‘Welsh Government’ see no problem with our ageing population, it even tries to present it as something to be celebrated, as I discovered a few years ago in a reply to a Freedom of Information request.

An influx encouraged by the ‘Welsh Government’ legislating so that people entering care homes can keep £50,000 before they start paying for their care. The figure for England is £22,500.

Yet the ‘Welsh Government’ would like to go further, doing away with care home charges altogether by introducing a tax so that we actually pay for wealthy English biddies who’ve been dumped in Welsh care homes by relatives safeguarding their inheritances.

How difficult would it be to introduce a rule insisting that a person must have lived in Wales for 20 years prior to entering a care home before they can benefit from the £50,000 allowance?

Do that and Welsh people won’t lose out and we curb the plague of granny dumping.

∼

HOLIDAY HOMES

I recall, back in the 1980s, during the Meibion Glyndŵr campaign, politicians getting up on their hind legs to proclaim that they would not be influenced by ‘terrorists’. God! they sounded so brave and principled. It brought a tear to my eye.

Thirty years on from the end of that campaign, and after 22 years of devolution, nothing has been done beyond the ‘Welsh Government’ allowing councils to impose a 100% surcharge on holiday home council tax. But it has refused to close the loophole that sees holiday homes classed as businesses to escape council tax entirely.

Oh, I almost forgot, there is also a tiny and insignificant increase in Land Transaction Tax of one per cent per valuation band, introduced 22 December. Which is no deterrent at all to those who can buy a second, third, or fourth home.

In fact, the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ refuses to do anything that might save Welsh communities and allow Welsh people to buy a home in areas cursed with tourism. When pressed on the matter just yesterday by the impressive Delyth Jewell the woeful Julie James could only respond with a promise to . . . kick the issue into the long grass.

From BBC Wales’ ‘Senedd Live’ 03.02.2021 (Alun Jones). Click to enlarge

With the holiday homes problem at crisis levels due to Coronavirus, with Welsh communities being destroyed before our eyes, the fact that those useless bastards down Corruption Bay refuse to act should tell you all you need to know about devolution.

∼

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES

In the past few days we’ve seen the outcry as the ‘Welsh Government’ decided it couldn’t fund the National Library of Wales.

Wales has a ‘government’ that can find money for every lunatic outfit under the sun but cannot find money for the memory of the nation!

Eventually, those clowns did find something down the back of the settee but only after an online petition and a public outcry.

But you have to wonder who made the initial decision not to fund.

∼

THE WAR ON FARMERS

Part of the problem lies in the fact that devolution is controlled by civil servants who may be based in Wales but take their orders from London. Civil servants such as Gary Haggaty, beau to Lesley Griffiths, the Labour MS for Wrecsam, and Minister for the Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs.

L to R: Gary Haggaty, civil servant; Lesley Griffiths MS, Labour, Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs; Caroline Hitt, writer for the ‘Western Mail’; Elin Jones MS, Plaid Cymru, Senedd Llywydd (Speaker). The cosiness of Corruption Bay made corporeal in a Dublin bar. Click to enlarge

Last week, Gary and Lesley – despite promising to consult with farmers before doing anything – introduced legislation to deal with the localised problem of spillage (NVZ) into watercourses. Instead of tackling the guilty parties the lovebirds have imposed financial burdens on all farmers to ensure that they cannot in future do what they weren’t doing anyway.

I quote, again from yesterday’s ‘Senedd Live’:

“Plaid Cymru’s Llyr Gruffydd says the minister is on the record as saying that these Nitrate Vulnerable Zone regulations would not be introduced while the pandemic was in existence – no less than ten times.”

It was eleven times, and here’s the video evidence.

And many of these spillages have nothing to do with farmers. I am reliably informed that the testing done by Natural Resources Wales (yes, them!) cannot differentiate between farm slurry and raw sewerage from other sources.

And let’s remember that the biggest spillage ever occurred last year when a train transporting oil from Milford Haven derailed near Llanelli. No doubt, in a few years time, when people start forgetting about it, it will be blamed on farmers and used to introduce legislation even more burdensome.

This is just the latest assault in a war on Welsh farmers by the ‘Welsh Government’. Done because ‘Welsh’ Labour hates farmers, and also because there are others queuing up to take over Welsh land. Friends of Jane Davidson, ‘rewilders’, Tory MPs.

Significantly, in England, the NVZ legislation targets problem areas and culprits rather than penalising all farmers.

So, we see that under devolution Welsh farming is another area of our national life being targeted and damaged. And it could not have happened without devolution. Because if London had singled out Welsh farmers for such treatment there would have been rioting, and possibly worse.

∼

I could give plenty more examples where devolution has failed us. Here are just a few snapshots:

There’s colonisation, resulting in the Welsh element in the population decreasing year on year. As a prominent citizen of a border town told me a few weeks back: “Some of the attitudes retired people come here have towards the locals are shocking, their sense of superiority is unbelievable.”
Then there’s a crass and exploitative form of tourism that is destroying Welsh communities, especially Welsh-speaking communities.
No other country on Earth has allowed One Planet Developments. Yet here in Wales hippies and enviroshysters are encouraged to take over land, flout planning and other regulations, bring up children in unsanitary and dangerous conditions, and then this colonisation is justified as part of OUR contribution to saving the planet.
Under devolution we have seen Cardiff grow and prosper, largely at the expense of the rest of Wales.
Wales produces twice as much electricity as we need and the rest goes to England free of charge, the same applies to our water resources, stolen by Severn Trent.
The ‘Welsh Government’ pays some of our brightest young people to go to English universities and then makes no attempt to bring them home after graduation. While filling our universities with mediocrities from over the border who stay on to fill third sector and public sector jobs.
Publicly-funded housing associations build ‘affordable’ homes that most locals can’t afford while neglecting the social rented sector for which there’s a local demand.
Let’s not forget the shysters – so many of whom have appeared on this blog – who get showered with funding after turning up with their ‘exciting’, ‘job-creating’ projects meticulously outlined on the back of a fag packet.
Then there’s the cess-pit that is Cardiff Bay, where those we elect to represent us rub shoulders daily with unregistered lobbyists and others trying to influence them – and almost always against the best interests of the nation.

∼

FINALLY, A VERY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EXAMPLE

This pretence of devolved power is a very thin veil behind which England’s interests are served. A great example was supplied to me last week by someone involved in matters technological which went a bit over my head, but I’m sure you’ll get the gist of it.

This source wrote:

” . . . dotCYM had no hope when Plaid Cymru was useless, Labour and the civil servants were working against it, and then Nominet came in with their money and used it to destroy them. The money from .cymru and .wales domains are now going to Oxford instead of Wales.”

The source continued:

“The Welsh government is clever in creating schemes to develop Welsh language technology and software. They come out with a new scheme with millions to develop Welsh software but there’s a maximum of about 30k per project, which isn’t enough to get anywhere or develop anything of use. Also, the money they give for research into Welsh language technology comes with the proviso that the research is then open sourced. What happens then is that large companies from outside Wales can take it, add it to their software as token Welsh support that doesn’t work well, and then sell it back to the Welsh”.

My source then explained to me what’s happening in New Zealand, where those working on a similar project for the Maori language successfully fought against their work becoming open source. The Maoris defended their stance thus:

“By simply open sourcing our data and knowledge, we further allow ourselves to be colonised digitally in the modern world.”

◊

THE TRUTH DAWNS

More and more people grasp that devolution is an unworkable nonsense, even if they don’t understand why. This explains the growing polarisation between those wanting to do away with the Senedd and those wanting independence.

When all devolution’s defenders can muster is, ‘But it’s recognition’, or ‘free bus passes’, then you know that even they have given up.

Successive ‘Welsh’ Assembly Governments and ‘Welsh Governments’ have not only failed to remedy the problems inherited in 1999 they have introduced new measures to work against the national interest.

This is not what I voted for in the September 1997 referendum. It’s no exaggeration to say that what we’ve experienced over the past 22 years is a form of anti-Welsh devolution.

Consequently, in a referendum offering the simple choice between keeping the Senedd or abolishing it I would vote to abolish, because abolition would be the best option for the greatest number of Welsh people.

But I still want independence.

♦ end ♦

‘This land is (y)our land’?

On 12/04/202016/04/2020 By JacIn Environmentalism, Hippies, Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government39 Comments

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

♦

In recent years I’ve written a few articles – too many to list here – about the unrelenting assault on Welsh farming and rural life. A campaign that sees Welsh politicians used as puppets by senior civil servants serving interests other than those of Wales and Welsh people.

This post is in the form of an update.

◊

THE GATHERING STORM

Arraigned against our farmers are politicians in London of assorted political hues, left-‘Green’ politicians in Corruption Bay, civil servants linking Westminster and Whitehall with Cardiff docks, and land-grabbing ‘environmentalists’ who tend to be either strident memsahibs or darlings of the Guardianistas.

Last week, during a Skype-enabled session of the Senedd, Lesley Griffiths AM, the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – working on the principle that a pandemic is a good time to slip out bad news – announced the release of Draft Water Resources (Control of Agricultural Pollution) (Wales) Regulations 2020.

The timing certainly surprised and angered our farming unions. National Farmers Union Cymru was ‘astonished’, while the Farmers Union of Wales agreed that the proposals are ‘draconian’.

Now on the one hand, we all want cleaner water. But it looks as if Ms Griffiths and her friends have been over-zealous in their attempts to give us crystal clear rills, rivers we can cross by walking on the backs of spawning salmon, and lakes home to old slappers catching the swords that are regularly chucked in.

But on the other hand, we don’t want to drive farmers out of business using sly and underhand methods. Well, I don’t, but there are some who do, and Ms Griffiths is an ally of theirs, possibly no more than a tool.

In both statements you will see reference to Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ). This term is used to describe areas, “that contain surface water or groundwater that is susceptible to nitrate pollution from agricultural activities”.

The percentage of Welsh land designated NVZ currently stands at 2.4% (750 farm holdings) and there was an understanding that the percentage would increase – Natural Resources Wales recommended 8% – but Ms Griffiths has proposed that the whole country becomes a NVZ. (So you’ll understand the response of the farming unions.)

A NVZ consultation process launched by the ‘Welsh Government’ 29 September 2016 ended 23 December 2016, with the findings being published just over two years ago. You can read the ‘summary of response’ here.

A flick through those responses makes it clear that farmers’ bodies were outnumbered by angling clubs and environment groups, a number of them Englandandwales bodies. (I’m thinking here of the National Trust, the RSPB, Marine Conservation Society and the Angling Trust.) And the way the responses came in suggest that members and supporters were whipped into line.

One question considered the effects of an All-Wales NVZ on the Welsh language. There was a majority view that enforcing an All-Wales regime would be damaging to the Welsh language because the (often unnecessary) expense involved could prove too much for the smaller family farm. But in the very last paragraph we read:

“One respondent who agreed with the question thought language should not be a fundamentally important factor in any new regulations. However, it was essential that a Welsh identity was maintained through clean waters and a beautiful countryside.”

So there you have it. Remove Welsh-speaking farming families and Welsh identity will be perpetuated by the water nymphs and sword-catching slappers to which I heretofore alluded.

But I repeat, I want to see clean rivers and lakes; it’s just that I believe this can – and must – be achieved without waging war on the farming community. Which is what it seems motivates Ms Griffiths and her pals, using the findings of a consultation process skewed by those with many years experience in such dark arts.

This proposal to extend NVZ must not be looked at in isolation, for it is part of a wider strategy to ‘discourage’ traditional farming and open up the Welsh countryside to new ideas . . . and a new population.

The assault began in May 2009 with the publication of ‘One Wales: One Planet’. This is what the UN had to say about it:

Which means that pleasing a few thousand hippies and eco-fanatics was seen to be more important than providing an economy, a health service, an education system an infrastructure, and all the other things needed by three million people.

And remember! in 2009 Wales was managed by a Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition.

‘One Wales: One Planet’ led, in October 2012, to the ‘Welsh Government’s Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6, which allowed One Planet Developments. A measure intended to attract hippies into Wales and allow them to build what they like, wherever they choose; with local planning authorities forced to give them planning permission, often retrospectively.

Wales is the only country in the world to have enacted this hippies’ charter.

Next, in December 2013, we saw Alun Davies, then Minister for Natural Resources and Food (therefore Ms Griffiths’ predecessor) transfer 15% of EU Common Agricultural Policy funding from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2. In practice, this saw £286m taken from farmers and allocated to rural development projects.

No prizes for guessing what ‘rural development projects’ means, and who benefits.

Fifteen per cent was the maximum permitted by the EU and the ‘Welsh Government’ showed its attitude to farmers by going for broke.

Then we had the Well-being of Future Generation Act (Wales) Act 2015 promising sunshine, lollipops and roses . . . and cushy jobs for Labour Party cronies. Such as the first Future Generations Commissioner herself. Sophie Howe is the daughter of a former Cardiff Labour councillor, and previously worked for Alun Michael, erstwhile Labour MP and now South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner.

No other country entertains anything like this bullshit.

More recently we have seen the arrival of the memsahibs and the Monbiots demanding huge swathes of our homeland in which they can play silly buggers. I’ve dealt with this in The Welsh Clearances of 16 October 2018 and a number of times since. Just type ‘rewilding’ or ‘Summit to Sea’ in the search box on top of the sidebar to find these further contributions.

And to cap it all, we have recently seen outbursts from ‘trendy metropolitan eco-zealots’ and swivel-eyed advisers to Boris Johnson promoting the same idiocies.

◊

ÉMINENCE GRISE

There is is no question that influencers have been working on the ‘Welsh Government’ for a decade or more, and they have tended to be men with little understanding of or sympathy for farming, and very often a poorly concealed hostility towards Welsh farmers.

We should not be surprised therefore that through the malign influence of this cabal Welsh farming has been weakened by one cut after another, to the advantage of the hippies, the memsahibs and the Monbiots.

They always encourage legislation against farmers, nothing is ever done for farmers.

Most of those I’m referring to have been mentioned in previous blog posts, but now I want to focus on one who has been rather overlooked, Gary Haggarty. No, this is not Gary Haggarty, the UVF killer and supergrass, but Gary Haggarty, former Rural Director for the ‘Welsh Government’.

‘Shared vision, united approach and consistent messaging are crucial to success’. Did you ever hear such vapid sound bites! Click to enlarge

But more importantly, Haggarty is the partner of Lesley Griffiths, the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs in the ‘Welsh Government’. Their affair was kept secret for quite some time but has been widely known about for at least a year.

Haggarty has form, for he is said to be the genius behind the decision to take money off farmers with the 2013 ‘Pillars’ decision.

Responsibility for replacing of the Tir Mynydd scheme with the unpopular Glastir arrangement is also laid at his door. Glastir tends to regard traditional Welsh farming as just another rural activity, little different to organic hobby farming. Which of course fits perfectly with the overall strategy.

When Brexit came along Haggarty saw another weapon he could use and he rolled it out with the September 2018 consultation document, ‘Brexit and our land: Securing the future of Welsh farming’. The second element in that title is quite insulting considering what we know about Haggarty’s attitude to farming and farmers.

The ‘Welsh Government’s response to the results of the consultation process is contained in this document.

A further publication in July 2019 was ‘Sustainable Farming and our Land’, which was described by its ‘author’, Lesley Griffiths, as ‘revised proposals’ following the responses received to the ‘Brexit and our land’ consultation, also ‘authored’ by Griffiths.

Or were they, because of course the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs was in a relationship with a man on a mission to bring Welsh farmers to heel? And so I have no doubt that he wrote most of what appeared in these publications. And she was happy to let him do it.

Which means that a man with not a single democratic vote to his name is dictating policy to the wretched and useless ‘Welsh Government’. And Gary Haggarty is not the only one.

So much for devolution!

This relationship was known about in Cardiff Bay for a long time, but Haggarty was only reassigned when it became public knowledge. Yet the relationship was improper whether it was public knowledge or not. They should have been separated, professionally, as soon as the affair became known about.

◊

BEST OF FRIENDS

As I say, the relationship between Griffiths and Haggarty is now out in the open, as shown by the image below, taken in a Dublin bar on 8 February, the day of the Ireland v Wales rugby international.

On the left we see the happy couple, and on the right, Elin Jones, the Plaid Cymru AM for Ceredigion and Llywydd (Speaker) in the Senedd. And is that Llais y Sais columnist Carolyn Hitt behind Jones? If so, what’s a nice girl like her doing there?

Gary entertaining the ladies with his Stan Laurel face. Click to enlarge

You could say that seeing Labour and Plaid Cymru politicians sharing a convivial jar in a Temple Bar pub shows how civilised Welsh politics is. Not really.

Could you imagine Elin Jones sharing a Guinness with Andrew R T Davies, or his successor, Paul Davies? Or enjoying a snifter and a risqué joke with Mostyn? (Neil Hamilton, to you.)

And if Neil McEvoy had walked through the door Elin Jones would have screamed, switched off his microphone, summoned the gardaí and demanded that they drag him off to Kilmainham to be summarily executed.

Let Uncle Jac interpret that photograph for you. What it says is this: In next year’s Assembly elections Labour will fall well short of a majority of seats, consequently its only hope of staying in power lies in a coalition with Plaid Cymru. Therefore a vote for Plaid Cymru in 2021 will be a vote for Labour.

So don’t be fooled by the playful sparring you’ll see in the election campaign. It’s only done to fool mug punters. Don’t you be one of them!

Something else that strikes me is that Elin Jones, from a farming background, has no problem socialising with people inflicting so much pain on Welsh farming. A testimony to the amnesiac qualities of the Cardiff Bay air.

Or possibly Deryn Consulting.

◊

AND, FINALLY . . .

There was a piece of good news for our farmers last week. And unwelcome news for those wanting to displace them. For that’s where we’re at: two sides, one still in possession of its ancestral land, and the other prepared to use all manner of tactics to take possession.

This is semi-naked colonialism, with native ‘friendlies’ who have jumped into bed with the enemy justifying their treachery by pretending it’s done for the greater good of saving the planet.

The news I’m referring to is that academics conclude that planting trees everywhere, which is what many of the would-be ethnic cleansers advocate, would do more harm than good for the environment.

“The report comes from the Natural Capital Committee (NCC), which says planting trees into peat bogs would prove a serious mistake.”

But don’t worry, for those pulling Lesley Griffith’s strings will still want wind turbines plonked on peat, to cause flooding and other problems – and it will all be done in order to save the planet!

Left to these people, Welsh identity itself will be destroyed . . . to save the planet. Gesture politics all the way.

Devolution does not work for us Welsh. Devolution benefits a colonial management class that just rubber-stamps decisions made by strangers acting against the Welsh national interest. We must move on to independence and reclaim our country from both our external enemies and their internal allies.

♦ end ♦

UPDATE 16.04.2020: Conservative MPs from Wales have written to Lesley Griffiths condemning her treatment of Welsh farmers over NVZ. (Did they also send Gary a copy?) Will Plaid Cymru also defend our farmers, or will they side with their Labour friends? (Available here in pdf.)

Bits & Pieces 25.06.2019

On 25/06/201929/06/2019 By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Englandandwales, Environmentalism, Greens, Plaid Cymru, Welsh Government22 Comments

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

♦

INFAMY! INFAMY! (AGAIN)

My previous post, on One Planet Developments and Black Mountains College, suffered an extraordinary attack from Ifan Morgan Jones in a piece entitled ‘No, George Soros isn’t secretly controlling Wales’.

The title gives a strong hint of the tenor and quality of IMJ’s piece, which was both antagonistic (towards me) and riven with non-sequiturs. Make up your own minds as to whether he simply got his facts wrong or deliberately misrepresented what I had written.

Let’s start with the title of his piece. What I actually wrote was: “I’m not saying that George Soros controls Wales, but having read what Soros has to say on climate change – and it really is an obsession with him! – he could have dictated everything the ‘Welsh Government’ has put out in recent years.”

By which I meant that the ‘Welsh Government’s output on saving the planet is attuned with the way Soros uses the threat of climate change to enforce the political and other changes he desires. Somehow, from that, Ifan Morgan Jones chose to believe that I think George Soros is running Wales. The generous interpretation would be that he simply missed the ‘not’.

He continued: “Jac o’ the North’s evidence for this ultimately amounts to the fact that some people now working in Wales used to work for projects to which George Soros had given money, and that institutions set up in Wales have ties to institutions to which George Soros has given money.”

In fact, the two people I named, who are behind Black Mountains College, worked directly for George Soros.

One, William Newton Smith was, “For 20 years head of George Soros’s higher education programme”. He was the founding executive chairman of Soros’s controversial Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.

The other, Ben Rawlence, worked for George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and also Human Rights Watch, a body funded by Soros. Despite being Project Lead of a new higher education college Rawlence appears to have no experience of higher education other than having been a student himself.

As this document makes clear, Black Mountains College “would be part of a global liberal arts network mentored by Bard College, NY, USA.” Bard College is a small, off-Broadway kind of institution kept afloat with Soros money.

And of course the ‘network’ referred to is the other institutions around the globe that Soros funds and through which he exerts his political influence. Many of them set up for him by William Newton Smith.

Even the name of the proposed Powys college resonates in the USA, for there was a short-lived Black Mountain College there, and Bard College is often viewed as its successor. Maybe Soros’s minions scoured the globe for another Black Mountain location.

If further proof were needed of how the policies of the ‘Welsh Government’ chime with the Gospel according to St George, we read in the document I linked to a few paragraphs ago, “It would be a college set up with the Well-being of future generations at its heart”.

The capitalised ‘w’ in mid-sentence tells me that it is a reference to the ‘Welsh Government’s Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

If established, Black Mountains College would produce climate change zealots dictating the political agenda in Wales, curtailing our liberties and making an already poor country poorer for no measurable reduction to global warming. This being the virtue signalling for which Wales is famous, and why it’s so attractive to those seeking to use Wales for their own ends.

There is no doubt in my mind that George Soros is the guiding influence behind Black Mountains College.

The final point I wish to address is Ifan Morgan Jones accusing me of being anti-Semitic. He tries to be clever by saying, “Jac himself strenuously denies any accusation of anti-semitism (sic) in his post. He himself never mentions Soros’ Jewishness”.

Consider: Ifan Morgan Jones introduces the issue of George Soros being Jewish, but only in order to suggest that I – who never mentioned it – am anti-Semitic!

I’ve been losing interest in Nation.Cymru for some time. It obviously serves a certain agenda, appealing to an in-crowd. ‘In’ with their own little cliques and echo chambers, but usually out of step with the great majority of our people.

♦

THE MULE KICKS OUT

My piece on Black Mountains College was published last Monday. Ifan Morgan Jones’s attack came out on Tuesday, and then, on Saturday, in the Western Mail‘s ‘Weekend’ supplement (and TV guide) there was a double-page spread extolling the vision of those involved. (Available here in pdf format.)

Well, I’m sure that was the intention, but it was compromised by the statements made by the principals, and of course, the omissions. Let me explain.

To begin with, the article says that Rawlence and Sheers’ ” . . . thinking has has been shaped by the ground-breaking Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act”. The same connection I made in my article.

Later, Rawlence is quoted: “It (BMC) . . . can attract others . . . who want to come and work here”.

Which supports something else I said – “the Black Mountains College will be in Wales, but not of Wales”. For this is not a college as you and I would understand it; BMC will cater for the kind of people who want to drop out on One Planet settlements.

Despite the highfalutin plans, the whole BMC thing still seems rather half-baked. And perhaps amateurishly managed. For the idea is three years old and yet there seems to be no tangible progress to report.

This despite Sheers and Rawlence receiving £82,500 from the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority for a feasibility study in January 2018. Surely that study has been completed, so where is it?

The preferred location for BMC is the old Talgarth mental hospital, which the article told us is privately owned. Again, they’ve known that for three years, so have any moves been made to acquire the building?

I worry, given the involvement of Labour Party heavyweights like Future Generations Commissioner Sophie Howe, and Jane Davidson, former Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, that the Black Mountains gang are expecting public funding.

I just hope that the redundancies announced at University of Wales Trinity Saint David are in no way connected with Black Mountains College. With UWTSD providing accreditation is BMC also lined up to join the UWTSD group, maybe as a replacement for Lampeter?

Other oddities in the WM report (attributed to Jenny White but almost certainly written by Rawlence and/or Sheers) was the absence of any mention of William Newton-Smith, so trusted by George Soros, who we read about in the first section.

He, you might recall from last week’s piece, is the sole director of Black Mountains College Ltd; also one of the six directors of Black Mountains College Project, and a trustee of the Black Mountains College charity, No 1180681.

But no signs yet of Uncle George’s money. Maybe he’s hoping some mug will cough up so he won’t need to put hands in his very deep pockets. That ‘mug’ might be us, the Welsh public.

Whatever, we’re entitled to know how Black Mountains College is to be funded. Because I honestly don’t think it’s going to be done through JustGiving.

That the ‘National Newspaper of Wales’ should give them a two-page spread so soon after I asked a few questions, and that Ifan Morgan Jones was even quicker off the mark, tells me that Sheers and Rawlence (who remind me of a Simon and Garfunkel tribute act) must be well connected.

And if that’s the case, then we should be on our guard.

Stop Press: the accounts for Black Mountains College Ltd became available on Monday – a dormant company with a single £1 share. Can’t see that building a new college.

♦

A NICE LITTLE BURNER?

Plaid Cymru’s support for One Planet Developments and related bullshit is not limited to the abstract or the ideological, for some Plaidistas are coining it from the hippy influx.

One whose name keeps cropping up is Vicky Moller of Pembrokeshire. Not only has she built up a nice little portfolio of smallholdings, but she was also a driving force behind OPD legislation. Almost inevitably, she has supported a number of OPD planning applications, including Beeview farm on the slopes of Mynydd Carningli.

And it seems to be generational, for her children are also capitalising on the invasion. Here is the Management Plan for Beeview Farm, where we encounter, on page 73, “energy consultant Jamie Ashe”. By page 79 he has become “reed bed designer Jamie Ashe”. (Is this promotion?)

Beeview farm. Anyone who says this is an improvement to the Welsh landscape is talking out of their fat, green arse. Anyone who accepts such bullshit should not hold public office. Click to enlarge.

Jamie Ashe is a son of Vicky Moller. Another son, Robin Donnelly, flogs wood-burning stoves.

Now I have never understood why the planet savers think burning wood is acceptable. Maybe it’s because wood is ‘natural’? But so is coal. Even lignite is natural. And yet, those who have been encouraged to move here to reduce Wales’ carbon footprint (work that out!) obviously see nothing wrong in filling the air with wood smoke.

I have driven the A487 past Corris on a windless winter evening and marvelled at the pall of smoke overhanging the valley thanks to the Centre for Alternative Technology cult’s acolytes. Who, with their wood-burning stoves, candles, joss sticks and joints make an Orthodox cathedral at Easter look smoke-free.

Twelve have walked on the Moon, but there have been dozens of OPDs allowed. So this arrogant twat criticises Wales for not allowing enough OPDs, but his own country, England, escapes criticism for allowing none. Click to enlarge.

With at least one of her offspring benefiting from Beeview ‘farm’ Vicky Moller was herself an enthusiastic backer of this OPD that breached the border defences of a National Park. The first, but certainly not the last.

Moller is a Plaid Cymru Assembly candidate, yet many locals have difficulty understanding what kind of Wales she wants to live in. And their confusion isn’t limited to OPDs.

Pembrokeshire county council wants to close village schools, especially in the Welsh-speaking north of the county. Yet Vicky Moller helped found, and is a big supporter of, Nant y Cwm Steiner school, attended by many of her ‘alternative’ friends’ children. While others prefer home schooling.

But then, since the advent of devolution, the tide has been running against the indigenous Welsh and in favour of those Vicky Moller supports. And others taking over our country.

Things could be about to get even worse.

Because last week, Sophie Howe, the Future Generations Commissioner, called for more climate change funding. Much of her pitch I found uncontentious – more spending on public transport, energy-efficient homes, renewable energy, but then came the sting in the tail . . .

Yet more money will be taken from Welsh farmers and given to English hippies by the ‘Welsh Government’. Click to enlarge

With that kind of money available in the future, what we’ve seen up until now could be viewed as a scouting party for the main force. Things could be about to get a whole lot worse.

♦

MEAN STREETS AND ETHICAL ANGORA

No one can have failed to notice a big story from last week when a Greenpeace protester was bundled out of a private function by Tory MP, Mark Field. It went viral because it was caught on camera, like everything these days.

It’s been covered by countless media outlets so I’m not going over it again; no, what I want to focus on is protester Janet Barker, “from Builth Wells, Powys . . . who works in environmental education and homelessness prevention, and runs a small holding (sic) and ethical angora business”.

(I was relieved to read that, cos there’s a lot of unethical Angora about. Bastards!)

Another report I dug out told us that her partner is an author. It didn’t take long for them to be identified and located on social media. They live near Llyn Brianne . . . ‘off-grid’, of course.

Peter Barker has written a book entitled System Error. When I first read the blurb and saw that the central character is called Imogen Thomas I began to worry that it might be set in Wales. I worried because the author is from Dorset and his partner from Wigan.

My fears were realised, for Imogen – who is, you’ll be surprised to learn, also a Greenpeace activist – stalks the mean streets of Llandrindod Wells. Here’s a section I lifted from what the author has made available.

This is most definitely Station Crescent not the Nevsky Prospekt, but it has a certain . . . well, a certain . . . oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? It’ll come to me.

As far as I can make out this earthly paradise for ethical rabbits is not a One Planet Development, which serves to remind us that the problem is not limited to OPD.

And yet, I don’t wish to be too harsh (you know me), I’m sure they’re both sincere people. But there’s no way they’re making a living out of a few acres and rabbit fur. (Nor Peter Barker’s riveting prose.) Like virtually all those who come here they either have their own money, or they have family money to fall back on, or else they rely on grants, state benefits and other hand-outs.

Which makes a nonsense of whole premiss that families, with children, can live this way. And you have to worry about the children.

It can’t be done. So why is the ‘Welsh Government’ encouraging this fantasy? And if it’s such a great idea – and it’s obvious that many English people want to try this lifestyle – why aren’t OPD and other initiatives being introduced in England?

Because, yet again, we are being taken for mugs, and Wales exploited.

♦

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT . . . OR MAYBE NOT

A news report that caught my jaundiced eye a while back was this story about children’s homes springing up in Swansea. The article itself explained the problem:

“Relatively cheap property prices in the county are attracting private providers to places like Swansea, a group of councillors was told.

Swansea currently has 13 homes registered with Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW), with at least four more due to open in the next year. Only one of them is a Swansea Council-registered home.”

The article also made it clear that the problem extends to Neath Port Talbot. So it’s a Swansea Bay problem due to companies from outside of Wales taking advantage of cheaper property here to bring in someone else’s problems.

I don’t want to sound heartless, because these kids have problems, and they need help – but they should not be our responsibility.

And they cost us money. Just read what the police had to contribute to the report.

“In March, South Wales Police chief superintendent Martin Jones said his officers were dealing with missing children and taking care of young people in crisis at weekends due to the increase in children’s residential homes in Swansea and Neath Port Talbot.

He said: ‘In these homes there are about 110 children and they’re being brought in from outside Swansea and Neath Port Talbot, that’s putting massive strain on police resources and on social services, and other resources in health.'”

So why is Care Inspectorate Wales licensing these homes?

I suppose because this is how Englandandwales must operate. The Valleys and Swansea Bay – accounting for some half the population of Wales – is becoming increasingly attractive to those who run ‘homes’ and the like.

Reproduced courtesy of WalesOnline. Click to enlarge.

The problem of Swansea’s unneeded children’s homes probably links with another problem I highlighted a few months ago in this post. (Scroll down to ‘Welsh Not 2019’.)

This story made news as a Welsh language issue, with staff speaking Welsh at a care home in Ystradgynlais said to be upsetting residents. No one thought to ask why residents at a home in a largely Welsh-speaking community were unfamiliar with the Welsh language.

And of course this system of social dumping goes a long way to explaining why Wales has such a bloated third sector. (And an overstretched NHS.)

Then, earlier this month, we heard of a case in the Rhondda that followed the same pattern – an English company planning to house highly disruptive youngsters in a Welsh community. The company in question being Rise Care Ltd of Bristol, and so new is this company that no accounts have yet been filed with Companies House.

The reaction was so hostile – problems with similar establishments in Tonyrefail and Ebbw Vale were cited – that even local MP Chris Bryant (Labour) and local AM Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru) were forced to object. (Clearly there were votes to be lost.)

I have a suggestion for Bryant and Wood. Ask Care Inspectorate Wales why it registers such establishments, for unproven companies, in areas where there is no local need? Get to the root of the problem rather than engaging in very public displays of knee-jerk nimbyism to hang on to your seats.

And maybe your party leaders down in Corruption Bay will begin to appreciate that we have a serious, national problem of social dumping on our hands.

♦

Wales is a corrupt country being exploited to benefit anybody and everybody – at our expense. It’s our country yet we are marginalised and exploited.

We need to be more assertive. And it really doesn’t matter how we go about it. Any nation being exploited and invaded has the right to defend itself.

♦ end ♦

One Planet, Future Generations & George Soros

On 17/06/201924/06/2019 By JacIn Brexit, Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Englandandwales, Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, EU Funding, European Union, Higher Education, Planning, Public Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Government88 Comments

♦

I‘ve written about One Planet developments before, but to refresh your memories, and help newcomers, here’s a brief outline.

One Planet seems to be a generic term for a loose global network of people who believe in living a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle, both as individuals and communities. And who can argue with that?

The wider and diffuse One Planet movement may be global but Wales is the only country that has implemented OP legislation.

This came about because certain people realised that devolution coupled with malleable politicos offered a golden opportunity for them to live the lifestyle they wanted, wherever they liked, with no restraints. And even to have it funded.

It also opened the door to those who wished to cover Wales in wind turbines. Those grotesque machines that inflict more environmental damage in their production, transportation and erection than is ever recouped during their short and intermittent working lives.

Although the One Wales: One Planet document of May 2009 was signed by then first minister Rhodri Morgan the main driving force within the cabinet would appear to have been Jane Davidson, Minister for the Environment, Sustainability and Housing.

Another influence would have been Plaid Cymru, which from 2007 until 2011 was the junior partner in a coalition with Labour. For Plaid had been cosying up to multifarious Greens for a couple of decades, some of them pathologically anti-Welsh. But what the hell! if there’s virtue to be signalled then Plaid’s your party.

The One Planet legislation was supplemented with Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6 and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

You can catch up with some of my earlier writing on this subject in: Fleece Jacket Fascists (01.08.2013); Plaid Cymru and the Green Party of Englandandwales (10.11.2014); Tryweryn, Happy Donkey Hill, Good-lifers (20.10.2015); The Green Smokescreen (05.09.2016); Hippies and associated problems (09.01.2018); The Green Menace (28.08.2018); The Welsh Clearances (16.10.2018).

♦

SO WHAT’S NEW?

The purpose of this posting is to bring you up to date, with examples of how the legislation mentioned in the previous section is damaging Wales. Also, how our local authorities and planning bodies are impotent in the face of land grabs because the aggressors have the full support of the ‘Welsh Government’, DEFRA, and the Planning Inspectorate.

And then, we come face to face with George Soros in the form of the Black Mountains College.

◊

MAENCLOCHOG

This example from north Pembrokeshire reminds us of how little support these eco-shysters receive from the indigenous communities. In Maenclochog, local councillor Huw George has even called for a moratorium on One Planet developments because, he argues, the system is being abused.

Councillor George has seen five OPD applications in his ward.

Image courtesy of BBC Wales, click to enlarge

And of course he’s right when he argues that the system is being abused. Everyone who looks at how One Planet operates can see that the legislation is too lax. Another – and predictable – problem is that One Planet and associated legislation is of no benefit whatsoever to Welsh people. But it was never intended to be!

Think about that for a minute: a ‘Welsh Government’ passes legislation that it knows in advance will be of no benefit to Welsh people.

Making what is dressed up as saving the planet just another form of colonialism. Encouraged by an administration that may celebrate Welshness on an official and superficial level while simultaneously allowing or encouraging the destruction of the communities where that identity still thrives naturally.

◊

PARC TEIFI

Not far from Maenclochog, just over the county boundary in Ceredigion, we looked a few weeks ago at Parc Teifi. (Scroll down a bit when the link opens.) There the ‘Welsh Government’ ‘sold’ five acres on the outskirts of Cardigan town to Mr Alpay Torgut (late of Islington) and his friends for just £1.

The indefatigable Wynne Jones tried to find out a little more about this remarkable deal. For example, was a business plan submitted; and how is such generosity – with Welsh public assets – justified. But after a deluge of flim-flam the shutters came down. As they always do.

Described as some kind of agricultural storage unit at Parc Teifi I guarantee there will eventually be a retrospective planning application for a One Planet dwelling. Click to enlarge

Anyone who takes an interest in the workings of the ‘Welsh Government’, and asks questions soon runs into a fog of obfuscation, which is usually the prelude to contact being ended completely. That’s because the ‘Welsh Government’ breaks its own rules, which then means that projects cannot be scrutinised or monitored.

Another feature is that many of those migrating to our rural areas to save the planet don’t want their children going to Welsh schools, or they think they can educate them better at home. This results in many kids just slipping off the radar, often with tragic consequences, as in the case of Dylan Seabridge.

I’m not suggesting that this boy’s parents, originally from Stoke on Trent, were involved in the One Planet scam; they just represent another type ‘escaping’ to our rural areas.

◊

BEEVIEW FARM

Another recent arrival worthy of a write-up is Matthew Watkinson, who lives with his wife Charis and their two children at Beeview farm, near Newport, Pembrokeshire.

They live in what can only be termed a rural slum, and claim to make a living on a couple of acres from selling eggs. If children were living in conditions like that in a town then the NSPCC and social services might be alerted. But this is One Planet living.

A parallel universe, where for planning permission, fire safety regulations, child welfare, etc., all the norms and laws of society that you and I must obey are suspended.

Beeview farm. Image by Rob Melen. (Alright, Rob?) Click to enlarge.

Like most of his kind, Watkinson pissed off the locals, and responded to their objections with this diatribe that gets very personal. But it’s par for the course; facile and self-serving arguments sustained with a combination of invective and moral superiority driven home by a sense of entitlement – ‘You Welsh peasants have no right to be critical of us superior beings’.

Beeview farm appears on the list of approved projects* as Golwg y Gwenyn and is described as a ‘Prospective OPD application’, but then we are also told that it’s ‘the first OPD to be granted full planning permission within a Welsh National Park’. I suspect we reconcile these statements by understanding that the structure for which planning permission was granted in July 2016 has yet to be built.

Apart from him being an arrogant twat, another reason locals did not grasp Matthew Watkinson to their bosom was because his OPD is on the slopes of Mynydd Carningli, a very special area with Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age structures, including the famous hillfort.

Quite rightly, no development is allowed on Mynydd Carningli and locals felt that Watkinson was using OPD to circumvent planning rules in a very delicate area. And he’s got away with it, further endearing himself and the One Planet system to the locals of the Newport area.

UPDATE: This article and video went up on the BBC website very soon after this post was published.

* You may have noticed an intriguing caveat to the list of One Planet Developments: ‘This is not a full list – some OPDs prefer not to make themselves public, and there may be more that are not known to us’. Where might one obtain a full list?

◊

‘I’M A GYPSY, HONEST, GUV’

Now we turn to an example of One Planet and Future Generation guidelines popping up in an unlikely situation. Here’s a case from Garnant, near Ammanford. On one level it’s another chancer who’s moved into Wales and is now trying to con the system, but on another level it’s almost funny.

As we read in the report from the South Wales Guardian Henry Rogers and his family moved to semi-rural Bryncethin Road just outside Garnant in 2012. And he has now been given planning permission for a caravan and other amenities alongside the house in which he says his wife lives alone.

For Rogers claims to be separated from his wife, and because he is a gypsy, he now demands his own encampment where he can fiddle his evenings away accompanied by wood crackling on an open fire. Local objectors are unimpressed, saying he is neither a gypsy nor has he separated from his wife.

When councillors on the planning committee asked for proof of Rogers’ gypsy status planning officer John Thomas ‘ . . . said a 15-page statement justifying the applicant’s lineage and background had been submitted, and that Gypsy-traveller sites were lacking in the Garnant area’.

What! How many gypsy sites does a small place like Garnant need?

Councillors were denied a view of the statement and Thomas had to admit that it contained no hard evidence of Rogers’ claimed ancestry, but the planning officer covered his arse with, ‘ . . . . (Thomas) had consulted housing department colleagues, who “verified that it’s common practice to accept justification statements”’.

So all you need do is concoct a ‘statement’ and planning permission is yours!

If you turn to the planning officer’s report you’ll read what appears in the panel below.

Well-being of Future Generation (Wales) Act 2015 used to justify a gypsy site in Carmarthenshire. Click to enlarge

I have just one question: How does an Englishman claiming to be a ‘gypsy’ and having a caravan site in open country “improve the economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales”?

As on the slopes of Mynydd Carningli, Maenclochog, and countless other locations, we see locals united in opposition. Which tells me that the bad feeling created by One Planet developments is damaging rather than improving ‘the social, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales’. While the economic contribution is negligible if not negative.

◊

THE GEORGE SOROS BLACK MOUNTAINS COLLEGE

For the concluding section of this offering we head for the Black Mountains – inspiration for Raymond Williams’ Border Country – where big things are in the offing in the form of a new seat of learning – The Black Mountains College (BMC).

I must confess that until a few days ago I knew nothing of this ~~highly suspect venture~~ exciting project. And when you see who’s involved you’ll wonder why it’s not headlines every day of the week. Let’s start at the beginning.

Here’s the website for the Black Mountains College. There is a charity, the Black Mountains College Project, No 1180681; and two companies, Black Mountains College Ltd (Incorporated 03.10.2017), and Black Mountains College Project (Inc. 07.02.2018).

From the Charity Commission entry. Click to enlarge

From the website we learn that the Project Lead is author Ben Rawlence, who has worked for George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and also Human Rights Watch, a body that has seen much Soros funding.

Though I find it odd that Rawlence has no background in education. So you have to wonder what he contributes to the scheme, and why he’s Project Lead. Unless the answer lies in his links with Soros?

Programme Manager is Libby Pearson, who has connections with, among others, Swansea University and the ‘Welsh Government’.

The sole director of Black Mountains College Ltd and one of six directors of Black Mountains College Project is Dr William Herbert Newton-Smith, a Canadian philosopher of science and co-proprietor (with his wife) of Welsh Lavender Ltd of Builth.

As for the charity, we of course find Newton-Smith listed as a trustee, along with the other directors of Black Mountains College Project: David Isaac, Elizabeth Passey, Owen Sheers, Chris Blake and Emily Durrant. Short biographies can be found here, where we learn that Newton-Smith was, ‘for 20 years head of George Soros’s higher education programme’.

In fact, Newton-Smith was the founding executive chairman of Soros’s controversial Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, used to influence and control human behaviour by inculcating the globalist agenda.

Newton-Smith has launched a number of other ‘universities’ and institutions for Soros, here he is at the University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan . . . and now he’s involved in starting the Black Mountains College.

I don’t subscribe to all of the views on Soros we hear from the US right but I do worry that he may genuinely believe that it’s in the best interests of humanity to do away with borders, languages, religions and nationalities in order to create a homogeneous, anglophone, and ‘manageable’ global population, done by frightening us with global warming and other threats.

This is why I oppose Soros, and it’s also why I’m worried at the involvement of two of his former employees in this new education venture. Because the Black Mountains College will be in Wales, but not of Wales. Made clear in the clip below from the BMC website.

Talgarth may be the ‘gateway to Mid-Wales’ . . . but only if you’ve travelled up the M4 from southern England and the major airports. Click to enlarge.

Another clue is the complete absence of the Welsh language from the BMC website.

Something else that worries me is that the Black Mountains College wants to engage in teacher training and issue Post Graduate Certificates in Education (PGCE) in order to percolate its message through the Welsh education system.

An object made easier by having on the BMC’s Advisory Council both Jane Davidson, former Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing, who since 2011 has flitted around academe and elsewhere reciting her mantras; and Sophie Howe, the Future Generations Commissioner.

Most of those involved with the Black Mountains College are strangers to our country but they know that if you want the sun to shine on your project, with regular life-giving showers of funding, then it helps to have Labour heavyweights on board.

Finally, let’s look at this from an educational angle. Higher education in Wales is in trouble (some might say crisis), with a number of institutions having apparently over-reached themselves. Only last Friday, Jane Davidson, in her role as Pro Vice-Chancellor for External Engagement and Sustainability, announced redundancies at UWTSD.

This is the same Jane Davidson who is now helping launch Black Mountains College, which will almost certainly ask for large amounts of public funding, and may ultimately be controlled by George Soros.

What the hell is going on?

UPDATE: Ben Rawlence has responded, on Twitter, by accusing me of anti-Semitism.

◊

MAKING CONNECTIONS

There is a strategy in place for our rural areas that seeks to undermine traditional farming and replace our farmers with those you’ve read about here. Implemented by a ‘Welsh Government’ influenced by those who’ll be the beneficiaries of the strategy.

The ‘Welsh Government’ is now using Brexit to justify further cutting financial support to farmers, but as we’ve seen, the policy of undermining traditional agriculture has been in place for over a decade. (Though if Brexit is an issue then those liars in Corruption Bay could if they wished maintain funding at EU levels – as the Scottish Government will.)

The next assault will come from the ‘findings’ of the Brexit and our land consultation. A good source tells me that the consultation is a sham as the decision has already been made to proceed with the ‘public goods’ system on which the outgoing Rural Development Programme 2014 – 2020, Sustainable Management Schemes Collaborative Projects scheme was based.

No, the truth is that Welsh farmers are being discriminated against, and rural Welsh life threatened; a form of discrimination against an indigenous population that can only be viewed as colonialism bordering on apartheid.

William Newton-Smith delivering his speech at the Soros-funded University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan. Click to enlarge.

And now we know that George Soros is somewhere in the mix. I’m not saying that George Soros controls Wales, but having read what Soros has to say on climate change – and it really is an obsession with him! – he could have dictated everything the ‘Welsh Government’ has put out in recent years.

In William Newton-Smith and Ben Rawlence we have Soros’s emissaries in Wales, operating through the Black Mountains College. So should the ‘Welsh Government’ be giving funding, approval, accreditation or any other support to those representing a man who likes to run small countries by remote control?

The Soros connection is established beyond any doubt with this document in which the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority recommends grant funding. We read, “BMC would be part of a global liberal arts network mentored by Bard College, NY, USA”. Bard College is funded by George Soros. The ‘network’ referred to is the institutions around the world Soros controls through his vast wealth.

Bard College is funded by George Soros and the ‘network’ is the other institutions he funds and controls. Click to enlarge

The document also tells us that BMC’s accreditation will come from the University of Wales Trinity St David, which explains the presence of Jane Davidson.

But should Sophie Howe, Jane Davidson or any other public figures be involved in this venture that could, if it follows the pattern we’ve seen elsewhere, be subversive of democracy?

Or does the ‘Welsh Government’ already know that Black Mountains College is a George Soros project and is willingly co-operating?

If so, then how much influence does George Soros have in Wales?

UPDATE: There was a Black Mountain College in North Carolina between 1933 and 1957, renowned as a ‘liberal’ and ‘experimental’ establishment. Bard College, which will ‘mentor’ our Black Mountains College, is often seen as the successor institution.

So did Soros’s minions scour the world looking for another Black Mountain before settling on ours?

♦ end ♦

Pot Pourri 12.12.2018

On 12/12/201814/12/2018 By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Englandandwales, EU Funding, Greens, Public Funding, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Wind Turbines24 Comments

As you can see, this is another big one. But it’s made up of five separate reports: Hendy wind farm, recent events in Swansea and Llanelli which may – or may not – be linked, the Bodnant Welsh Food Centre, the redevelopment of the Tower opencast site, and finally, the leadership election in a non-existent political party.

So you can either make yourself a panad, settle down and go through the lot in one go. Alternatively, you can take them one at a time. The choice is yours.

Unless something big crops up this might be my last posting until 2019. If that’s how it turns out, then . . .

◊

HENDY WIND FARM: WHO GAVE THE WORD? WHEN? WHY?

A few weeks ago, in Corruption in the Wind, I looked at three wind farms: Bryn Blaen, near Llangurig; Rhoscrowther, near Milford Haven; and Hendy, near Crossgates. All being promoted by the same property company.

Hendy wind farm merits another visit.

You’ll recall that Hendy was refused planning permission by Powys County Council and this decision was upheld by a planning inspector in May this year. But then, in late October, Lesley Griffiths, Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs Secretary for the management team in Cardiff docks, said that she would over-rule the planning inspector’s decision and allow Hendy to proceed.

The landscape to be desecrated by Hendy wind farm, click to enlarge

In the earlier piece I argued that what triggered the change of heart over Hendy was the High Court decision in September to finally put a stop to the Rhoscrowther project on the Milford Haven Waterway.

Prior to that High Court decision the developers had Bryn Blaen in the bag, were hopeful of getting Rhoscrowther, and were probably resigned to writing off Hendy, taking the view that two out of three ain’t that bad. But once Rhoscrowther was lost they were down to one out of three – they had to have Hendy.

Here’s the sequence of events leading to where we are at present.

11.05.2018 Planning Inspector upholds Powys County Council decision to refuse planning permission for Hendy wind farm.
12.09.2018 High Court refuses leave to appeal on Rhoscrowther wind farm.
02.10.2018 Natural Resources Wales writes to Rhys Rigby of the Planning Inspectorate regarding appeal, “which was received on 19th September 2018.”
09.10.2018 Developer begins ‘pre-construction’ work at Hendy site. See Construction Environmental Management Plan (App to discharge cond. 21)
25.10.2018 Lesley Griffiths gives approval in letter to developer’s agents. (Though in that letter it was amusing to read, under ‘Timings & Plans’, “The development shall begin not later than five years from the date of this decision”.)

The Construction Environmental Management Plan we encountered in the bullet points above should have been produced before work started, but in the case of Hendy it’s dated November 19, six weeks after on-site work started.

The more I think about it, the more I believe there’s only one way to explain the panicky happenings at Hendy.

The decision to allow the Hendy wind farm was taken in London after approaches by the developers following the Rhoscrowther decision. (For despite the Planning Inspectorate having a desk in Cardiff it answers to the Department for Communities and Local Government in London.)

A political decision taken in London was passed to the Planning Inspectorate and only belatedly relayed to Lesley Griffiths when someone remembered about devolution. (Further proof that what masquerades as the ‘Welsh Government’ is just London’s management team in Wales.)

Worth mentioning may be that the landowner at Hendy is Sir Robert John Green-Price 5th Bt. It’s reasonable to assume that Sandhurst-educated Sir Robert has influential friends. It’s equally reasonable to assume that the developers, Marcus Owen Shepherd, Matthew Simon Weiner and Richard Upton, also ‘know people’.

Last week the developers were pile-driving at the source of the Edw, a Special Area of Conservation. All being done in the name of ‘conservation’ and ‘the environment’. The Edw runs south to join the Wye at Aberedw.

Pile-driving in an SAC at the source of the Edw, click to enlarge

Where, last Sunday, a day after the Cilmeri commemoration, people remembered a hero who may have been betrayed. How fitting that they should gather at Aberedw, by a river being polluted by modern invaders assisted by today’s traitors.

◊

TIDAL LAGOON PUTTING WIND UP WIND FARMERS?

One of the more interesting schemes promoted in Wales in recent years was the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon. It eventually failed because the UK government refused to support it.

Yet it had a great deal of backing from people who pointed out that the electricity generated by the Swansea lagoon, a relatively small prototype, was bound to be expensive, but the possibilities of tidal power are immense and larger lagoons would be cheaper all round. For one thing tides, unlike wind, are entirely predictable and therefore reliable.

Not far away from the proposed tidal lagoon we saw one of the more extravagant schemes mooted in recent years in the £225m Wellness Village in Llanelli’s Delta swamp, being promoted chiefly by Carmarthenshire chief executive Mark James and Swansea academic Marc Clement, the latter a Turk by birth.

This project was to be part-funded from the £1.3bn Swansea Bay city deal.

Clement and a few other senior academics in Swansea, including the vice-chancellor, were recently suspended and it was generally agreed that this was somehow connected with the Wellness Village, certainly Clement was connected. Though no Llanelli connection could be established for vice-chancellor Richard B Davies or the other two, unnamed, persons who were suspended.

It was no surprise then that following the Swansea suspensions the Wellness Village seemed to get poorly. Within a very short time the infection spread and now a review has been ordered of the whole city region deal.

But why should the London government suddenly be so concerned about doings in south west Wales?

I’ve been giving this matter some thought, and here’s what I think.

Just a few miles from Swansea Bay lies Mynydd y Gwair, on the northern outskirts of the city. This was an area of wild and unspoilt upland . . . until fat grants were introduced for wind turbines.

Then the owner of Mynydd y Gwair, the Beaufort Estate (Prop. Duke of Beaufort), decided it could make millions by covering this beautiful area with ugly, useless, bird-killing wind turbines. This is the same Beaufort Estate that ten years ago charged the city council £280,000 to put a footbridge over the Tawe near the Liberty Stadium.

Beaufort and his ilk are descended from medieval robber barons, and they still know how to extract money from the rest of us.

It’s the same across this island. In Scotland the descendants of the Parcel of Rogues and assorted foreign landowners are minting it with wind turbines; while in England it’s a similar story, with former PM David Cameron’s father-in-law among those raking it in.

And linked with them are the property men and experts who will do all the dirty work, and reap their own rewards, those we see behind the Hendy wind farm.

And so there must be a possibility that the UK government is ‘reviewing’ the Swansea Bay city deal because Swansea council is threatening to resurrect the tidal lagoon, for that might be disastrous for the wind farmers who are so close to the Tory party, and in many instances, fund it.

‘But, Jac, what about the suspensions at Swansea University and the Wellness Village?’

The Wellness Village was up Shit Creek anyway, no private money was going to appear. It has simply been written off early before any more public money is wasted. As for the suspensions, the Wellness Village might have been a useful distraction.

Put the Wellness Village to one side and remember that the university is also heavily involved with Tidal Lagoon Mk II. It was the university that commissioned the recent report – on behalf of the Swansea Bay City Region – into reviving the barrage project.

Then look at the plan. Swansea University’s new Bay Campus is at the eastern landfall of the proposed lagoon. Students would have fought to get into a university with its own private beach which also overlooked a ground-breaking tidal lagoon offering many recreational facilities.

But as I say, a revived Swansea tidal lagoon might be bad news for those behind Hendy wind farm, and for Lord Beaufort, also for the repackaged Parcel of Rogues, and of course for Sam Cam’s daddy.

We may need to look no further to explain the UK government’s decision to ‘review’ the Swansea Bay city deal.

◊

BODNANT WELSH FOOD CENTRE

Another recent business failure was the collapse of the Bodnant Welsh Food Centre in Dyffryn Conwy. Though it now looks as though it has been saved by local teacake tycoon Richard Reynolds (who I’m sure is no relation to Rikki Reynolds of Weep for Wales notoriety).

In all the excitement too many have neglected to ask the basic questions about Bodnant, such as: Who’s calling the shots? Why was a grant of £6.5m made? Should that money have been allocated? Was the money used well? Why did Bodnant Food Centre collapse? What happens now?

The first thing to explain – and this is fundamental to understanding the bigger picture – is that the Bodnant Welsh Food Centre, opened in 2012 by Charles Windsor, is part of the Bodnant Estate, run by The Hon Michael Duncan McLaren QC, educated at Eton and Cambridge.

Michael McLaren’s father was the third Baron Aberconway, but this son has not succeeded to the title because he’s trumped by an older half-brother, Henry Charles McLaren, from his father’s first marriage (though there may be a dispute over entitlement).

You won’t find Bodnant Welsh Food Centre on the Companies House website because it trades as Furnace Farm Ltd, and this company was Incorporated with Companies House 20 October 2005. Furnace Farm is where we find the venture that received the £6.5m grant, but this is little more than a fancy shop selling overpriced food.

For as a source put it to me: “Dry home cured bacon for sale at £23/kg, yet both butchers at Llanrwst, some four miles away, were selling at £7.55/kg! Both butchers from known local sources!!”

Maybe at this point I should explain that despite not having succeeded to the title, Michael McLaren owns the whole shooting match, for in this document (page 5), the financial statement for year ending 31.01.2013, we read, “The company (Furnace Farm Ltd) entered into transactions with the Bodnant Estate which is owned by The Hon Michael McLaren”.

In addition to the Bodnant Estate and the Welsh Food Centre we have of course the well-known Bodnant Garden, owned by the National Trust but run by Michael McLaren as if he owns it. Then there’s Bodnant Garden Nursery Ltd, a private company with directors Michael McLaren, his wife Caroline, his mother, Lady Aberconwy, and Brian Eric Alcock.

The McLarens have three children: Angus John Melville, Iona Ann Mariel and Hamish Charles Duncan. Nice to see our Welsh aristocracy keeping with those names that resonate through our history.

Alcock’s background is in furniture, in north west England, with a previous directorship in Malbry Furniture (Sales) Ltd (wound up in May 1992), then Burford House Furniture Ltd (dissolved in August 2013).

So how did Alcock, with his IKEA-rivalling career in furniture, get involved with Michael McLaren in Bodnant Garden Nursery Ltd?

The other company in the family group is Bodnant Joinery Ltd, directors Michael and Caroline McLaren.

Giving us a number of interlinked enterprises on the Bodnant Estate, and all of them controlled by The Hon Michael McLaren QC. Invariably, with such an arrangement, there will be trading and lending between the different entities.

For example, that document I linked to earlier tells us that by January 2013 Furnace Farm Ltd owed Michael McLaren £4,969,122. By 31.01.2014 it’s up to £5,997,109. On 31.01.2015 it’s down a little to £5,862,901. A year later there is no specific mention of McLaren but the amount owed to all creditors has increased from £6,804,203 in 2015 to £7,921,963. By 2017 the figure is up to £8,981,591.

In that final financial statement we are also told that Furnace Farm Ltd lost before tax £1,497,444, up from £1,088,324 the previous year.

Just as well the company had a grant of £6.5m.

The problem with assessing how the grant was spent is that Furnace Farm Ltd is much more than just The Welsh Food Centre. For it also includes accommodation, at the farmhouse. In fact, the Estate offers plenty of accommodation.

And let’s not forget the National Beekeeping Centre of Wales.

To complicate the picture further, when I went to the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO) website I could find nothing for either Furnace Farm Ltd or Bodnant Welsh Food Centre.

So eventually I telephoned WEFO, and I was surprised to learn that the name of the project was in fact the Centre of Excellence for Welsh Food, a name I have not seen used.(But I am only too familiar with this practice for making it difficult to make enquiries.) Here are the details.

So the question becomes – on what was the £6,444,107 spent? And after going back to WEFO I was told that, “Furnace Farm Ltd received funding of £237,032 from the Processing and Marketing Grant scheme . . . enabled the company to erect a new bespoke building complex . . . “.

So that’s £6,681,139, and counting?

The document I’ve linked to reads: “Centre of Excellence for Welsh Food The adaptation of abandoned farm buildings for economic use . . . 5 minutes from the A55 . . . private investor is providing 50% of the costs . . . project aims to create a retail outlet for local products, catering facilities for innovation with local food and a culinary school.”

Bodnant Welsh Food Centre, image courtesy of Business Leader, click to enlarge

The mention of “abandoned farm buildings” being adapted “for economic use” may refer to the farmhouse I mentioned earlier, now being used as a holiday let, rather than having anything to do with food excellence.

The latest update tells us that the new owner of the food centre, who plans to re-open on February 1st, and is said to be leasing the buildings from the McLarens, told the Daily Post: “It (Bodnant Welsh Food Centre) has been poorly run and we want to bring it back to what it was . . . with genuine authentic local produce in the shop . . . We can’t get away with charging a premium for something you can pick up in the supermarket.”

How very true. But then, if civil servants and/or politicians want to give someone millions of pounds to spend on property he already owns, then whether a retail outlet succeeds or not may be of little consequence in the bigger scheme of things.

The big question for me is: Why did anyone think it was a good use of EU funding to give millions of pounds to a wealthy aristocrat to open a London-prices shop in the Conwy Valley, especially as such funding was not supposed to be given for retail purposes?

And what guarantees do we have that such ‘misjudgements’ will never occur again?

◊

THE LEFT BETRAYS WALES, AGAIN

This is another little tale that gets rather complicated, so let me set the scene with some background information. (Sorry, no music.)

You’ll recall that in December 1994, under threat of closure, Tower Colliery at Hirwaun was bought out by its miners under the leadership of Tyrone O’Sullivan. This made them mine-owners but paradoxically they also became deities in the socialist pantheon.

Tower Colliery was worked until it became uneconomic and closed in January 2008. What is less well known is that following the closure there was a period of opencast mining in the area.

This explains the formation of Tower Newco Ltd which soon changed its name to Tower Regeneration Ltd, a company dedicated to, “Open cast coal working” and “Development of building projects”. The second of those presumably following the ensuing clean-up operations.

Opencast mining began in May 2012, and if it hasn’t already ended, it is scheduled to end this month.

At its birth, Tower Newco Ltd had a single director named on the Certificate of Incorporation, a Kevin Dougan, of Durham. He was soon joined by others including O’Sullivan and also by Ian Anthony Charles Parkin, another businessman from north east England.

If we turn to the Tower Regeneration website, and scroll down to the bottom we find a link to a company called Hargreaves. It’s no surprise to learn that Hargreaves Services plc is also based in Durham, and among its directors we find Kevin James Stewart Dougan.

Almost immediately it was set up Tower Regeneration Ltd took out a loan with Forward Sound Ltd, of Durham, a company that had been set up less than a year before Tower Regeneration. In fact, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that Forward Sound was set up specifically to capitalise on the Tower opencast project.

Why the strong Durham connection? Well, on a practical level it was a coal-mining area, but on the emotional plane Durham to the bruvvers means the annual Miners’ Gala; it conjures up images of comradely solidarity, fluttering banners and fiery speeches.

On 1 December 2017 the ubiquitous Dougan ceased to be a director at Hargreaves Services, Tower Regeneration, and Forward Sound, but rejoined Tower Regeneration the very next day . . . though Companies House wasn’t notified until 27 April this year!

So from the outset, the Tower opencast and regeneration project has been funded and controlled by English interests. And now they’re lining up to get their hands on the money available for ‘restoration’ work. And we are talking many millions of pounds here.

And as might be expected, the English Labour Party in Wales is eager to play its allotted role in short-changing Wales, again.

It seems that the prettying up is to be done by The Land Restoration Trust, which is both a charity (No 1138337) and a company, though for some reason, on its website it’s called The Land Trust. Its headquarters are in Warrington and it specialises in “open space for community benefit”, much of that open space seems to be reclaimed industrial land, especially in former coalfields.

The Land Restoration Trust was set up by the Coalfields and Joint Ventures Division of the now defunct English Partnerships, “the national regeneration agency for England”, which was succeeded in December 2008 by the Homes and Communities Agency, since re-named Homes England.

Clearly the Land Restoration Trust is an England-only body. Though the website has pages for Scotland and Wales both read: “We currently do not manage any sites in (Scotland/Wales) although we are working hard to do so. If you would like discuss any potential opportunities please contact our Business Development team.”

Despite having no sites in Wales Alison Whitehead, described as ‘Development Manager’, enjoys visiting sites in Wales! But then, Alison, as her Linkedin profile tells us, was ‘Development Manager for North of England and North Wales’.

On 31 January 2018 a reception was held for the ‘Land Trust’ at the Senedd. It was hosted by Vikki Howells the Labour AM for Cynon Valley. Here’s the report from the Land Restoration Trust website.

And below you’ll see what Howells put out on Facebook the following day. Note that she mentions “ownership and management options”. In fact, it had already been decided behind the scenes, and years ago, making the Senedd reception no more than a PR exercise.

Vikki Howells is involved for no better reason than she’s the local AM, having been elected in 2016 because she was the donkey with the red rosette. Does she really understand what’s gone on at Tower and who owns what?

Though if Ms Howells was so keen to inform the Cynon Valley public then she should have explained why her administration has abrogated its responsibilities and rolled back devolution. And also explained why the profits from developing this local site will be leaving Wales.

The Tower opencast operation didn’t last for much more than six years, it employed few, and when repayment of loans, leasing and hiring are taken into account, it wasn’t that profitable, certainly not for Tower. The big beneficiary appears to have been Hargreaves Surface Mining Ltd, renamed Hargreaves Land Ltd in June 2018.

(It should go without saying that Kevin James Stewart Dougan ceased to be a director of Hargreaves Land on 1 December 2017. What is the significance of that date?)

Hargreaves Surface Mining was set up in October 2011, just before opencast mining began at Tower. The timing is no coincidence. Hargreaves Surface Mining Ltd joined a host of new companies that had been created in north east England to make big bucks out of a mining operation in Wales.

An operation that put little money into the local economy but enriched strangers. It also served the purpose of being the necessary precursor to the second stage of the project that will inherit a large tract of land together with millions of pounds to landscape and redevelop it.

Who knows what will be done on the old Tower opencast site. Housing? A leisure resort such as we see not far away in the Afan Valley? One thing I predict with certainty – as with the opencast site, the profits will leave Wales.

Vikki Howells seems to envision the development at Tower linking with the Rhondda Tunnel . . . owned by Highways England!

Or maybe it’ll be more wind turbines, for while they generate little or no electricity they certainly produce massive incomes for those who operate them, and the landowners involved.

It’s difficult to believe that all this is happening after twenty years of devolution. But as I’ve argued many times, devolution is a sham, a façade; and behind that façade Wales is being ripped off and inexorably assimilated into England.

This assimilation along with the exploitation we see at Hendy and Mynydd y Gwair, Bodnant and Tower, is being facilitated by socialists, and the Labour Party, doing what they always do – selling Wales down the river.

◊

GREEN PARTY OF ENGLANDANDWALES

Earlier this year members of the self-styled ‘Wales Green Party’ voted against becoming a Wales Green Party, choosing to remain part of the Green Party of Englandandwales and calling themselves The Green Party in Wales. Whereupon the party ‘leader’ defected to Plaid Cymru.

The confusion that resulted may be reflected in the fact that the party website seems to have been abandoned, with nothing posted since 10 July.

Yet despite all the recent tribulations this Green Party of England in Wales is currently holding a leadership election. Yes, that’s a leadership contest to a non-existent party! Among those standing is Anthony Slaughter.

So who is he? Well, it should go without saying that he’s not Welsh. He lives in Penarth and seems to have a high regard for himself, adopting that tone of moral and intellectual superiority that so endears the Greens to me.

And he spreads his talents wide, for when he’s not saving the planet he’s up in London demanding something called A People’s Vote, supporting the Stansted 15, and arguing for 20 mph speed limits. Sainthood can’t be far away.

But being a Green he’s probably a practising pagan. (Or am I thinking, vegan?)

Obviously there’s no such thing as the Wales Green Party, but then, there’s no such thing as the Welsh Labour Party either, it’s just a label, there’s nothing registered with the Electoral Commission.

So maybe the Greens take their lead from the Labour Party, because they often seem close, almost as if the Greens are the idealistic younger relative indulged by the more staid Labour Party.

And the closeness isn’t confined to the Greens, it seems to extend to the environmentalist movement as a whole, maybe it’s something to do with the self-absorbed regarding themselves as ‘progressive’

This perhaps explains why public money was recently spent on foot massage by the Future Generations Commissioner, that very close friend of the late Carl Sargeant.

But it’s not just Labour that likes to cwtch up to those who think that the examples of Hendy and Mynydd y Gwair should be replicated on every pristine landscape in Wales. Who believe that carving up the countryside to lay thousands of tons of concrete is good environmental practice.

I mentioned that Slaughter, the would-be leader of the non-existent party, lives in Penarth. Where I’m told certain Plaidistas – the names Clubb and Wilton were mentioned – have been keen to do electoral deals with these Wales-rejecting colonialists.

But then, nothing surprises me any more, whether it’s the Greens, Plaid Cymru, or the Labour Party. They all pursue their own agendas, driven by narrow ideology and trapped within dogmas, rather than pragmatically promoting what’s best for the Welsh people.

That’s why they’ve failed us, and that’s why time is running out for all of them.

♦ end ♦

The Green Menace

On 28/08/201829/08/2018 By JacIn Colonisation, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Cymrophobia, Demographics, Devolution, Englandandwales, Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, EU Funding, Greens, Hippies, Plaid Cymru, Planning, Third Sector, Tourism, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour45 Comments

I have written a number of times about One Planet Developments in Wales, and of those taking advantage of this idiocy . . . and of us. (OPD itself will be explained in a mo.)

It would be easy to apply the generic term ‘hippies’ to those I’m going to write about, but this doesn’t convey the full picture, because those we’re dealing with are not all laid-back types, with no interest in material possessions.

No, those I’m going to write about are most definitely interested in owning things, especially that for which we humans have fought and killed each other for millennia – land.

Warning: This is a lengthy read (3200+ words) so make yourself a cuppa or pour yourself a glass and settle down to enjoy it.

◊

ONE PLANET DEVELOPMENTS EXPLAINED

As far as I can make out OPD was announced to an unsuspecting nation in May 2009, with the document One Wales: One Planet. This document gave retrospective planning permission to a number of illegal settlements and dwellings. The use of that cardinal number was fitting seeing as Wales was then managed on behalf of London by the One Wales coalition between Labour and Plaid Cymru.

I have grabbed the illustration below from said document and added names.

‘One Wales: One Planet’ was supplemented in July 2010 with ‘Technical Advice Note (TAN) 6 Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities’. This contains gems such as, “Many economic activities can be sustainably located on farms”. Er, yes, it’s called farming, it’s been going on for thousands of years.

TAN 6 gives the impression that despite it being about the countryside it was written by people who know nothing about real farming. The sentence I’ve quoted suggests that whoever wrote it believes that sheep farmers do nothing but farm sheep, filling their many periods of inactivity by perhaps flying off to the Dalmatian Coast.

Which in a sense makes sense. Because although OPD, TAN 6 and lots of other guff is ostensibly about the rural areas of Wales, it’s not about the Wales we’ve grown up in, it’s about a Welsh countryside of the future, socially engineered to be inhabited by different people. And in some parts, uninhabited.

The agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru in 2007 is set out in the ‘One Wales‘ document, subtitled, ‘A progressive agenda for the government of Wales’. Section 8 (page 30) deals with ‘A Sustainable Environment’ and begins, “Climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity”.

Which suggests that for whoever wrote that, war, poverty, starvation, displacement, oppression, exploitation and all the other very real tragedies facing the human race in 2007 were nothing when compared to what might affect us at some time in the future. Making it pretty clear about the interests and motives of the author.

Whoever penned that is eager to employ a hypothetical future catastrophe in order to advance a narrow and self-serving viewpoint that will work to the advantage of those with whom he or she identifies. In other words, bouncing the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition into giving special treatment to those claiming to be saving the planet by moving to Wales.

Further on in Section 8 we read, “We will establish a Climate Change Commission for Wales, which will be chaired by the Minister for Sustainability and Rural Development.” So who was that?

◊

THE DOYENNE

In the picture above you will see, seated on the left, Jane Davidson, she was the Minister for Sustainability and Rural Development in the 2007 – 2011 coalition government.

Though information on the Climate Change Commission for Wales is sparse. It seems to have been set up in 2007 yet for some reason its first annual report didn’t appear until January 2012. Typing the name into the search box of the ‘Welsh’ Government’s website brings up very little, certainly no later annual report.

But who is Jane Davidson?

Given that she cares so frightfully for rural Wales it should go without saying that she is English and middle class, born in Birmingham and educated at what was then Malvern Girls’ College but appears to have since merged with St James’s School to give us Malvern St James Girls’ School.

What else do we know about Jane Davidson?

After Birmingham University she came to Aberystwyth, perhaps to do some post-graduate qualification, but she certainly taught for a few years (1981 – 1984), became development officer for the Youth Hostels Association (1984 – 1987), and by 1987 was a Cardiff councillor, and known as ‘Lady Jane’.

Her political career really took off when she became a researcher for Rhodri Morgan, the MP for Cardiff West in 1991. For some reason she didn’t stand in the council elections of 1995 and ceased to be Rhodri Morgan’s researcher in 1995/6. Giving us a lacuna between 1995/6 and 1999 when she was elected to the new Welsh Assembly, so if anyone can fill it I’d be most grateful.

(For many of those I write about gaps in the CV are often explained by being banged up, but in the case of Jane Davidson I’m sure she was doing something worthy like smuggling prayer wheels made from recycled wood into Tibet.)

“She lives on a smallholding in West Wales”. Living the dream, girl, living the dream.

As I’ve said, she was elected to the Assembly in May 1999 after being foisted on the bruvvers of Pontypridd and the constituency responded by unenthusiastically electing her with a majority of just 1,575 votes. She was soon made deputy speaker by the unloved and soon departed first minister Alun Michael, a man she is said to have known rather well.

Michael, the ultimate Labour Party operator, is now South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner.

On taking up her post in 2007 she resigned as Welsh vice-president of the Ramblers Association, but became president immediately on leaving office in 2011. We are expected to believe that she had no contact whatsoever with the Ramblers between 2007 and 2011 despite helping push through the Wales Coastal Path, which has caused such disruption, misery and expense for so many Welsh farmers and landowners.

But then, these – like the electors of Ponty – were never people Lady Jane cared about.

Predictably, Ms Davidson also became a patron of the One Planet Council.

For her day job Davidson took up a post at the University of Wales Trinity St David Lampeter in January 2012, where she is now Pro Vice-Chancellor for External Engagement and Sustainability.

According to her Wikipedia entry, which I assume Jane Davidson edited, we read, ” . . . she was responsible for the Welsh Government agreeing to make sustainable development its central organising principle“.

There were no more pressing matters to deal with? Or had devolution now been subverted to a single issue – saving the planet? And were we supposed to believe that a tiny country like Wales could make a difference? This suggests to me that it was the obsessive Davidson who also wrote, in the ‘One Wales’ document, that “Climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity”.

Does this myopia explain Wales being the poorest country in Europe? Did Jane Davidson and a few other English environmentalists con our gullible and deferential politicos into opening Wales up for them and their friends to act out their crackpot ideas?

The answer would appear to be yes, for it doesn’t end with OPD and Jane Davidson, perhaps because the English Labour Party in Wales has never been short of gullible and deferential clowns.

Following on from OPD and TAN 6 we saw, in January 2014, Alun Davies, Minister for Natural Resources and Food, announce that 15% of EU Common Agricultural Policy funding was to be transferred from Pillar 1 (farmers) to Pillar 2 (‘rural development projects’).

Another body feeding ‘advice’ to the ‘Welsh’ Government was the Wales Rural Observatory at Aberystwyth University. Made up of academics who knew nothing about Wales until they moved here they were highly qualified to offer such advice. The WRO went out of business 31 March 2014. (I do hope it was something I wrote.)

Independently, we saw a number of organisations like the Agroecology Land Trust spring up, which has blessed us with Red Pig Farm.

click to enlarge

Then, in 2015, we were presented with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and a Future Generations Commissioner in the form of Labour stalwart Sophie Howe, who had been Alun Michael’s deputy at the PCC office.

Apart from providing yet more jobs for Labour cronies the Future Generations department seeks to brainwash Welsh schoolchildren into accepting that developments like Lammas, complete with its pagan temple, represent the future Wales they should support and aspire to.

We have now reached the point where the One Planet insanity is being lauded outside Wales and promoted as “a ground-breaking Welsh government scheme under which people get to circumvent tight planning rules so long as they build an eco-home in the countryside and go back to working the land on which it sits”.

You can see that the headline reads – ‘Want to save the planet? Move to Wales’. Which exposes the absurdity of the whole idea, because if Wales was populated entirely with hippy ‘farmers’ they’d merely have transferred their footprint from somewhere else, and collectively they wouldn’t cancel out the effect on the environment of a single coal-fired power station in China.

But never mind the facts, for Lady Jane and her friends such publicity must represent victory.

Everything Jane Davidson has done in the field of environmentalism has been done to promote the interests of others like her, those who see Wales as a country of great potential, for them . . . and at our expense. For I cannot think of a single policy or initiative that she and her kind have been involved with that set out to improve the lives of Welsh people.

The footprint these people are really trying to reduce is our footprint, our footprint in our country.

◊

POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS

Some of you may be asking why the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru are so supportive of this nonsense.

You have to remember that the Labour Party has little support in rural areas and so inflicting self-idealising ‘peasant farmers’ on areas that don’t vote Labour may be seen as a form of revenge. Certainly Labour has nothing to lose electorally. And then there’s the good publicity gained outside Wales from those who don’t know the truth.

And as the bruvvers have all read their socialist theories and studied the Russian Revolution maybe they view Welsh farmers as kulaks who must be destroyed in order for the peasants – in the form of eco-settlers – to take over. (And those of us of a certain age remember how successful Soviet agriculture was in putting food on Russian tables!)

But why would Plaid Cymru work against the interests and wishes of their core voters in Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire? The answer seems to be that Plaid Cymru politicians have either been blackmailed with charges of ‘racism’ or else they’ve fallen for the Green invaders’ self-serving bullshit, and this pre-dates One Planet and One Wales.

Cynog Dafis, the former MP for Ceredigion from 1992 until 2000 and AM for the Mid and West Wales regional seat from 1999 until 2003, was an early supporter of the eco-influx, in fact, he stood for Westminster in 1992 as a Plaid-Green candidate.

Others have been involved with that spiritual home of eco-living the Centre for Alternative Technology in Corris. Among them my Lord Elis Thomas, who was a trustee or some such, as was Ellen ap Gwynn, currently Plaid leader in Ceredigion.

CAT has been in Corris for over 25 years and has drawn a few hundred hippies into the area. To the extent that on still autumn evenings there’s more incense and smoke (from wood-burning stoves and spliffs) hanging over Corris than you’ll find in an Orthodox cathedral at Easter.

Much of what I’ve written thus far might be gleaned from previous scribblings; what I’ve tried to do here is give the timetable for a whole strategy that has resulted in the ‘Welcome’ sign being put up to encourage many odd and not a few undesirable persons into our rural areas.

A strategy that increases Wales’s carbon footprint and therefore exposes that in reality it’s simply a type of colonisation. Supposedly more acceptable because it’s done in the cause of saving the planet.

And you mustn’t think that the problem is confined to the west, for since making contacts in Powys over the Paul and Rowena Williams case I learn of a OPD project at Twiscob Top, near Presteigne involving Paul and Kate Hooper, who had previously tried to inflict themselves on Carmarthenshire, insisting that they be allowed a dwelling near their charcoal business.

Powys planners seem reluctant to do their job partly because the Hoopers are using OPD and partly because of the expense involved in standing up to these bullies and their ‘Welsh’ Government backers. Which probably explains why they think they’ve won.

Now it’s time to move on to a related subject that shares many of the attitudes we’ve already encountered: the sense of entitlement, the belief that Wales would be better without the Welsh.

◊

RE-WILDING

I’ve mentioned Corris and the Centre for Alternative Technology but the charlatans of environmentalism are not confined to this small area off the A487. They seem to have spread like a plague over the Dyfi valley area. In no small part due to the influence of notorious enviro-propagandist George Monbiot, who lived in the area for a while.

Monbiot’s pet hate is sheep. Those evil, woolly bastards wandering the hills planning human downfall. This article last year in the Grauniad tells us that while cruelty and lack of calories are the ostensible reasons for defending ourselves from the threat, the true motives become clear when we read: ” they (sheep) occupy around 4m hectares of the uplands”. And we are not talking Swansea Uplands here.

But the sheep-free uplands would not be left for Mother Nature to reclaim over time, oh no, they would need to be managed . . . by people . . . well, by people very much like Monbiot, and others we’ve encountered. In other words, we are talking now of engineered re-wilding.

One shadowy re-wilding project about which I and others are having difficulty getting information is ‘Summit to Shore’, covering 10,000 hectares and 20 sq km of sea from “the Pumlumon uplands down to Cantref (sic) Gwaelod”.

Heavily involved, maybe managing the show, is the laughably dysfunctional (or seriously corrupt) Natural Resources Wales where, among other board members, we find Dr Elizabeth Haywood, whose mini bio didn’t allow space to inform us that she is the wife of Peter Hain.

NRW’s master of ceremonies in Summit to Shore is Andy Middleton, “social entrepreneur . . . environmental innovator” and someone who – it is alleged – believes murderers and rapists should be forgiven for acting out crimes motivated by subconscious thoughts.

But the driving force will be Rewilding Britain, an organisation with which George Monbiot is linked, and some of the funding will come from hedge fund managers Artemis. There are other organisations involved – all based outside Wales or else Welsh-based white flight outfits – but no farming unions and no body representing commercial fishermen. In other words – no locals.

What better illustration could there be of the way the Labour Party operates through nepotism and corruption, facilitating the colonialist agenda and treating us Welsh with contempt? Though in fairness, it could be said that Labour has done its bit for re-wilding by reintroducing a species we thought we’d lost – the quango.

The re-wilding may have already started for in the area we’re dealing with Cambrian Wildwood has brought in some alien Konik horses to its land at Bwlch Carog, near Machynlleth. This report from BBC Wales tells us that, “The horses, from a herd in Kent, are descendants of the now extinct European horse, the Tarpan”.

These Konik horses are certainly from Kent, but the donkeys giving rides at Aberdyfi may have a stronger claim to be descended from the Tarpan. Though you have to ask why anyone supposedly concerned with authenticity and restoring land to a previous condition would import a Polish breed – via Holland and England – when we have horses of our own from Gower to the Carneddau.

Is this yet another example of environmentalists’ antipathy to all things Welsh – except our land?

Oh, yes, you’ll never guess who I found when I looked at the ‘Who we are’ page on the Cambrian Wildwood website – there, smiling back at me were George Monbiot and Lady Jane Davidson!

One thing I’ve learnt about environmentalists and re-wilders is that they have trouble with the truth; it’s not just equines, it’s also felines, specifically lynx.

A statement was recently put out by the Lynx Trust UK saying that it had obtained permission from all relevant landowners to release lynx into the Kielder Forest area of north east England. This was a lie, and was quickly countered by the National Sheep Association.

Something I noticed on the Lynx Trust UK website was, “We will work closely with local communities, stakeholders and the general public”, which I’ve read over and over on re-wilding and environmentalist websites, but it’s a lie. The Green invaders prefer to operate secretively through bodies like Natural Resources Wales, get the backing of individuals like Jane Davidson, and then present their plan as a fait accompli to local people and their elected representatives.

We are dealing here with an insidious form of takeover. No longer are greens and environmentalists looking for abandoned smallholdings, they now want to take over large swathes of our country. In this they are helped by the ‘Welsh’ Government and those the Labour Party has placed in strategic bodies to do its bidding.

Yet if those clowns down Cardiff docks were serious about protecting our environment and reducing Wales’s carbon footprint then it could be done quite easily by reducing tourist numbers, especially to seasonally swamped western areas. Further benefits could be obtained by re-instating a west coast railway and feeder lines to reduce road traffic.

But it’s never been about the environment. The English Labour Party in Wales has allowed itself to be hoodwinked by a bunch of well-heeled shysters and obsessives who want control of those parts of Wales that have rejected Labour, and Labour is quite happy to oblige.

◊

THE GREEN PARTY

You may have noticed that I’ve written this without once mentioning the Green Party of England in Wales. What’s that, you thought there was a Wales Green Party? No, no, they voted on it a few weeks back and Green Party members in Wales voted by a substantial majority to remain part of the Green Party of England, rather than become a separate party, as is the case in Scotland.

That tells you a lot about Greens and environmentalists, off-grid dwellers, planet savers and re-wilders, and it betrays their thoroughly colonialist attitude towards us and our country.

Pure, unadulterated colonialism. Encouraged by leftist political parties.

♦ end ♦

P.S. Maybe I should have been more specific with Lady Jane’s role at Lampeter.

She is, in full, ‘Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for External Stakeholder Development and Engagement and Director of INSPIRE at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David’. (Try saying that after three bottles of Malbec!) INSPIRE is the Institute of Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Effectiveness.

Also at INSPIRE we find Andy Middleton of Natural Resources Wales. And Peter Davies, who “was previously Wales’ Commissioner for Sustainable Futures and provided advice to the Welsh Government”. Not forgetting Anna Jones, who “is currently involved with the voluntary rollout of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act”.

Isn’t it all so cosy, everybody knowing everybody else, and almost everything traceable back to the ‘Welsh’ Government. Or is the word I’m looking for ‘incestuous’?

Jac o' the North

Tag: Sophie Howe

‘Welsh Government’ Declares War On Freedoms, Motorists, Farmers

It’s Getting Sinister

Bute Energy, Update, 30.06.2023

England’s wind turbines – in Wales!

Arts Council of Wales and Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, an update

A guest post on . . . YesCymru!

Why I would vote to abolish the Senedd

‘This land is (y)our land’?

Bits & Pieces 25.06.2019

One Planet, Future Generations & George Soros

Pot Pourri 12.12.2018

The Green Menace