20mph, A Disaster Unfolds

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

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

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

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

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LABOUR’S VERY OWN PROPAGANDA BUREAU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact, Rollnick tells us he was . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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THE LONG MARCH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20mph is beginning to sound like snake oil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It looks a bit of a shambles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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WHERE IT ENDS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So wise up,

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

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

It’s censorship pretending to be something virtuous.

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

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

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

Even me!

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

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

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

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

♦ end ♦

Wales: Ruled By Pressure Groups

On 12/06/202319/06/2023 By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Environmentalism, Globalism, Planning, Public Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Government40 Comments

Some of you may find what follows, especially the Conclusion, troubling. But I had to write it because the level of lobbying, coupled with contempt for our people, is now at unacceptable levels.

And while I still see the third sector as a gravy train for otherwise unemployable Labourites, and remain convinced that senior civil servants are Westminster’s fifth column, the role of environmental pressure groups has become impossible to ignore.

Or maybe I should have said, what started out as environmental groups, or are regarded as environmental groups. For they have moved beyond environmentalism.

Hopefully, my use of italics gives a clue as to what you’re about to read.

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THE MORE THINGS FALL APART THE MORE DESPERATE THEY BECOME

Those I’m discussing, have, in my lifetime, moved beyond individual species, like the whale or the panda, and identifiable environments like the Amazon rainforest, to go global. Not only that, but they now argue that to save the planet many things become necessary, most importantly, controlling human behaviour.

Even human movement. The focus is now on us humans. For we are the problem. All of us, collectively, simply by existing.

To deal with ‘the people problem’, the caring souls I’m writing about have agreed to serve as foot-soldiers for an elite that sees itself as an unelected world government.

Climate hysteria bullshit. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But I sense the campaign by the former panda cuddlers on behalf of the would-be totalitarians is not going well. Maybe I should clarify that by saying things are faltering on the global level but still progressing rather well in Wales.

Globally, those things they’ve demanded we believe in look less and less credible. This results in people questioning the propaganda, and wondering what lies behind it.

After 50 years of preaching climate disaster, rising sea levels, polar ice loss, and polar bear extinction, you can’t be surprised that the public gets a wee bit sceptical when things stay the same . . . except that the Great Barrier Reef has never been healthier, the ice sheets are expanding in both Arctic and Antarctic, and there are now more polar bears than ever.

When the facts so obviously contradict the propaganda the propagandists are in trouble.

And so I think this exposing of the lies explains what I see as a certain change of tack from the environmental lobby, coupled with an increasing desperation on the part of those pulling their strings.

By a change of tack, I mean that the emphasis has shifted from the global Armageddon believed in only by the brainwashed, to more nuanced and local issues under headings like, “biodiversity“, “habitat loss” and “environmental degradation“.

Because in addition to there being no climate catastrophe most people have trouble thinking in global terms. But persuade them things are bad on their patch, and then say, “It’s the same all over “, and you might still fool them.

An accepted environmental tactic known as ‘Think globally, act locally’.

In practice, it means we’re told there are fewer wild flowers than our parents knew. Or that land can be ‘improved’ if handed over to such-and-such a group. Or that our rivers are being destroyed. In fact, to believe George Monbiot, the Wye is now just an open sewer.

I’ve dealt with these issues recently in Clear Water, Poisoned Debate (08.11.2022) and The Alliance Against Livestock Farming (16.11.2022).

But just as with the death cult predictions the remedy is the same – radical changes in human behaviour that require restrictions on movement and other freedoms we and our ancestors have taken for granted.

As I just suggested with one of those links, an obvious connection between puppets and puppet-masters is them putting a disproportionate amount of the blame for the world’s ills on farmers. Especially livestock farmers.

More climate hysteria bullshit. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Not that that makes any sense in the real world. But taking control of the world’s farming is a central ambition of the Globalist agenda. And it’s already happening.

In the Netherlands, the government plans to implement orders from the World Economic Forum, channelled through the European Union, to forcibly buy 3,000 farms (the most efficient farms in the world), and EU legislation will prohibit the displaced Dutch families from farming anywhere else in the EU!

And now, in Ireland, the government recently announced that the country ‘needs’ to cull some 200,000 cows to meet its Net Zero targets.

All because someone decided it would be a good idea to pretend that methane is at dangerous levels, and that CO2 is a threat to the planet.

The truth is that cows belching and farting make little or no difference to methane levels, while life on Earth would be impossible without CO2, which has been at much higher levels many times in the past.

This ’emissions’ nonsense is about control of energy and the food supply. Control these – as the Globalists want – and you control the people.

These attacks on farmers originate with those who operate behind the scenes; but they get bodies like the EU, national governments, and sub-national administrations to implement their instructions.

With ‘environmental’ organisations doing the close up and dirty work.

Wow! We’re in a warm period.. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

With more and more people becoming aware of the WEF, and how it operates through local political establishments, there is something of a panic in Davos to promote The Agenda before too many politicians get elected on anti-WEF platforms.

Which also explains why the growing rejection of the Globalist agenda is described in the mainstream media – now funded and controlled by major WEF backers – as “right wing“.

For those of us who oppose climate hysteria, the butchering of confused teenagers, open borders, and the other elements of The Agenda must be described this way to smear us and deter others from listening.

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HOW DOES THIS SYSTEM OPERATE IN WALES?

Let’s kick off with a subject causing a great deal of debate, and anger, across Wales right now – 20mph speed limits.

It was obvious all the way through that this measure was being pushed onto our self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ by agencies originally external to Wales. Principally, an outfit called 20’s Plenty for Us.

A good source drew my attention to this report on the BBC Wales News website. Where we can read:

Fiona Andrews, member of the “20’s Plenty” campaign group, told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast the speed limit was “more human, friendlier” and better for the environment.

Ms Andrews, who lives in St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire, which has been trialling the speed limit for two years, said it had made a big difference.

It should go without saying that Fiona Andrews is not native to Llandudoch. My source suggests that she and her partner, Piers Graham Partridge, moved from Bristol in 2018.

Andrews also appears in this report from July 2021. The image of Andrews used is even credited to her partner. So she’s not new to the game of influencing politicians to push the Globalist agenda. Or, it would seem, to using the media.

In addition to being a photographer, Partridge is a businessman, with an old family firm called Cardigan Mercantile Company Ltd.

And when he’s not photographing his wife, or running his business, it seems he likes to hang out with thigh-slapping, latte-sipping, Anglo-Saxon volk; and someone wrapped in a gaudy flag. (Partridge is in the blue shirt.)

They also dance. Calling themselves the Traditional Turf Dancers of Santa Dogmales. Is this their idea of Welsh culture? Or are they just taking the piss?

North Pembrokeshire and south Ceredigion must be delighted with this cultural enrichment. Not to mention, being told what they’ve been doing wrong all these centuries.

But Llandudoch is doubly blessed. Not only to have Andrews and Partridge come to enlighten them but, as I mentioned in Clear Water, Poisoned Debate, Jessica McQuade is another recent arrival.

Her Linkedin page (pdf version) reveals that her career path has been: ‘Welsh Government’, WCVA, WWF Cymru, WWF UK (even though she’s based in Wales).

Since January this year, McQuade has been WWF UK’s Wholescape Programme Manager, with a focus on food. (And we are not talking here of bamboo shoots for pandas.)

She also busies herself with the Save the Teifi campaign. Any problems with the Teifi will be mainly blamed on farmers.

I say that because when I researched last November’s pieces the suspicion grew that an understanding had been reached between the ‘Welsh Government’, Dŵr Cymru / Welsh Water, and the environmental / water groups that resulted in public money passing to the savers of the planet in return for them giving the water company an easy ride and concentrating their attacks on livestock farmers.

An arrangement that served a number of agendas.

Which might explain how, in defiance of common sense, English water companies seemed to be in the news almost every day for polluting rivers and seas while our own water company was, apparently, above reproach.

Recently I’ve learnt of other organisations operating behind the scenes. So hold your nose and we’ll dive a little deeper into the swamp that is government and public life in Wales.

And we’re going to focus on another group making the headlines at the moment, Extinction Rebellion (XR). I introduce this lot because another source found info telling us that the ‘Welsh Government’ has been in cahoots with XR, since at least May 2019. As this FoI response makes clear.

The May 2019 notation refers to:

Correspondence between the Minister for Rural Affairs,
North Wales & Trefnydd (MinRANWT) and Extinction Rebellion.

At that time, the minister was Lesley Griffiths, but I doubt if many of you reading this had even heard of Extinction Rebellion four years ago. I certainly hadn’t.

Griffiths is a long-standing enemy of farmers. So was it XR that advised her (and Gary) to introduce the insane and punitive all-Wales NVZ legislation designed to put farmers out of business?

It might get a bit messy now, because I was sent a load of stuff in the form of (often incomplete and undated) screenshots. Even so, what I have is fascinating, and damning.

For not only does it tell us that the ‘Welsh Government’ is sitting down for tea and Hobnobs with extremist groups to discuss how Wales should be run, those groups are even dictating to the ‘Welsh Government’ what its priorities should be.

The first complete minutes I have are for a meeting in January 2021. (Available here in pdf format.)

These minutes pose many questions. Not least, why was a representative of the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) at a meeting discussing internal Welsh matters?

What next – will the Orange Order be invited?

The ‘JO’ referred to is almost certainly James Owen, the former ‘Welsh Government’ Deputy Director, Land Management

While ‘SL’ is, I suspect, Sue Lewis, of Wrecsam. When she’s not laying down the law to the ‘Welsh Government’, she’s telling local authorities what to do.

From that report it’s clear that Extinction Rebellion and Friends of the Earth are working together, but how close are they?

Anyway, I now want to focus on Extinction Rebellion’s Political Engagement Team. The purpose of this little gang is quite simple – to get politicians and governments to do its bidding.

Here’s an example.

And in Wales, that’s easy.

Now, unfortunately, I don’t have a date for the XR correspondence below, but the ‘FM’ referred to is not another gang of environmental shriekers but our very own First Minister, Mark Drakeford, of high renown.

The highlighting is mine.

In addition to what I’ve highlighted, I’m intrigued by the final paragraph. Would there be some way other than legislation for, “mandating fossil fuel divestment from public sector investments“.

This, remember, is our money, much of it paid in council tax; but Extinction Rebellion wants to dictate how that money is invested. Are we ever consulted?

The issue crops up again in this screenshot involving Llyr Gruffydd, Plaid Cymru regional member for north Wales, and interim leader.

I could go on, but I’ll just introduce one more ‘campaigner’ who has come to live among us. This is Paula Renzel, who describes herself as “German-French” but now resides in Llanberis in Eryri.

Paula has quite an interesting background. Here’s her Linkedin page. (Here in pdf.)

She arrived in Cardiff in April 2018 to work for The Ramblers. Interestingly, someone who has always been involved with The Ramblers is former minister, Jane Davidson, mother of the OPD, and driving force behind the Future Generations legislation.

Then, in October 2020, Paula Renzel joined Sustrans. Another pressure group with a ministerial connection. This one still in government. I’m talking now of Lee Waters, who represents Llanelli (from his home in Penarth) and is Deputy Minister for Climate Change. As his official bio tells us:

He previously ran the sustainable transport charity Sustrans Cymru where he led the campaign for the Active Travel Act

So many connections!

Since February 2022 Paula Renzel has worked for the Transport Action Network. She is almost certainly the “new Welsh worker” mentioned in the May 2022 clip (above) from XR’s Political Engagement Team.

Below is her entry on the TAN website. You’ll see that among her battle honours she lists closing Cardiff’s Castle Street to private vehicles.

In fact Sustrans gets involved in all sorts of things. This publication from the ‘Welsh Government almost a year ago is titled: ‘Evolving approach to gender budgeting in Wales‘.

Not only does the WEF get a mention, but also Sustrans.

Active travel is a key part of the Welsh Government’s vision for the Welsh transport network. A gender budgeting pilot is specifically focused on the Wales E-Move programme, which operates low-cost community-based e-bike hire and loan schemes in five areas in Wales – most with high levels of deprivation. The Welsh Government is working alongside Sustrans Cymru, who are delivering the scheme, to better understand how a gender budgeting approach could add value and inform future delivery.

So the ‘Welsh Government’ is working with Sustrans to provide electric bikes, for women living in deprived areas, and this somehow links with ‘gender budgeting’? Is that what this convoluted bullshit is trying to say?

Who writes this stuff?

And will these bikes have crossbars?

I ask because ‘Welsh Government’ takes orders on matters sexual from Stonewall. Which means that if you want a good, long laugh, just ask a Welsh Labour politician to give you a definition of a woman.

As I said earlier, I could go on, but it gets depressing after a while. So I’ll just skip to my concluding thoughts.

◊

CONCLUSION

After reading what I’ve written here it should be obvious to anyone where the idea for 20mph speed limits now being imposed on Welsh communities originated.

We can also see who was behind Lee Waters’ announcement in February that there would be no new roads in Wales.

In fact, they boast about these ‘victories’ . . . over us.

But that’s the norm in Corruption Bay. If Stonewall can dictate Welsh education policy why be surprised that followers of the global death cult are allowed to decide on 20mph speed limits, and no bypass for Llanbedr?

No doubt those I’ve written about argue they’re saving a planet facing an existential crisis. Which is absolute nonsense because there is no looming climate disaster. What they’re really doing is forcing on Wales the Globalists’ de-growth, anti-people, restrict and control agenda.

But what does it say about Welsh democracy? We elect politicians to serve the best interests of our communities and our country, but then they are taken over by pressure groups and told to implement the agendas of those groups.

To all intents and purposes the ‘Welsh Government’ is serving Extinction Rebellion, Sustrans, Greenpeace, 20’s Plenty for us and the other pressure groups. But not us.

What’s worse, the word is obviously out that Wales is the place to come to get your agenda implemented. Just look at the activists who’ve moved here in recent years.

Are they here on secondment? Have their moving costs been paid?

Whatever the answer, we have people who know bugger all about Wales framing legislation for Wales. But Wales doesn’t matter to them. Our country is just an easy place for them to implement their agendas. Thanks to ‘our’ politicians.

And because the pressure groups are now in control, things can only get worse.

Whatever you want to call this system, it’s not democracy.

And it’s not a form of devolution worth keeping.

♦ end ♦

Tourism or Survival; Wales Must Choose

On 25/11/202110/04/2023 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Tourism14 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.

♦

I had planned a Miscellany this week, but then realised that all but one of the items was on tourism. So I dropped that one item – about a bunch of good-lifers pretending to be local and demanding funding so they can live on Gower – and I’ve gone for a selection of pieces on tourism.

♦

FERODO / ‘AWEL Y FENAI’

It seems like a different world when a small town like Caernarfon could have a factory employing over 1,000 people, but it wasn’t so long ago. And there were other employers in our smaller towns.

In the south west there were big creameries making use of the locally-produced milk. These creameries closed and nowadays that milk is shipped over the border, providing thousands of jobs in England.

As an example of colonialist exploitation it’s on a par with Cuban tobacco leaf being shipped ‘home’ to Spain to be made into ‘Cuban’ cigars.

But I digress.

After a change of ownership and name, labour disputes, and other problems, the old Ferodo factory eventually closed for good some twenty years ago.

The Ferodo plant in its hey-day. Click to open in separate tab.

New plans for the site were announced just over 2 years ago, and you can catch up with my article here (scroll down) before pushing on to get up to speed with the latest news.

A number of sources have kept me updated, so let’s see what they have to report.

And where better to begin than by looking at the planning application, which is for:

'Development of a holiday and leisure park to include 173 holiday lodges; 51 new-build holiday apartments; change of use of building to 4 holiday apartments; a leisure hub building; re-configuration and renovation of industrial units; provision of a private water treatment plant; and, associated car parking, landscaping, access and internal access roads.'

We can also see that the plan covers not only the old Ferodo site but also Plas Brereton. And if that sounds familiar, then it’s probably because Paul and Rowena Williams of Plas Glynllifon fame were talking of buying the place.

Go on, you know you want to – take a trip down Memory Lane.

Just over a week ago the developer, Mr Peter Brendan Gerrard O’Dowd, was promising untold benefits to the area from his Gwel y Fenai project. But planners seemed unconvinced, on a number of issues, including the impact on the Welsh language.

Speaking for Mr O’Dowd, agent Rhys Davies, of Cadnant Planning, promised the site would have bilingual signage. Wow!

Though, in fairness, planners had many more reservations about this project than just language impact. Which explains why it was rejected by councillors on Monday.

Though you’ll see from the report that a number of councillors spoke up in support of the project, or else urged planners to continue discussions with Mr O’Dowd. I fear that some councillors in Gwynedd have reached a point where they genuinely believe that low pay, low skill, tourism jobs are the best our people can – or should – aspire to.

I hope I’m wrong.

Another source, who worked at Ferodo, reminds me that one reason the site has lain empty for so long is the asbestos. Either still in situ, or else in the sealed tip on site. Though this source sees no real problem with building on adequately sealed asbestos tips:

'With a cover of several feet depth of inert material and soil, mobile homes or lodges could safely stand on top of the tip as no noxious gases would be generated by the buried material.'

This source’s concerns focus on where the money for the investment is coming from. So let’s give this some thought.

O’Dowd is a property speculator. If we look at his Maybrook company we see assets of over £11m pounds. Which looks fine. But most of the £11m is accounted for by property he’s bought with loans. The rest could be explained by overvaluing that property.

The 11 loans taken out before December 2017 have all been repaid. Most of these loans were with banks you and I would recognise. Since then, there have been 7 further loans, but none after October 2018. And these loans are with less recognisable institutions.

The two most recent loans were taken out with Together Commercial Finance of Manchester, who got in so deep and lost so much with Paul and Rowena Williams. You may remember that Together also funded the purchase of Llangefni Shire Hall.

In fact, Together has appeared on this blog a number of times, invariably associated with rather iffy companies and individuals. It’s a lender of last resort, where you go when banks turn you down.

In fact, Together may be worthy of investigation itself.

The suggestion is that Mr O’Dowd is over-reaching himself with this £70m+ project, because it’s impossible to see where the money will come from.

To progress this project, Bryn Coch Ltd was formed. As far as I can see, all the shares are owned by O’Dowd’s other company, Maybrook Investments Ltd. Bryn Coch’s only asset appears to be the Ferodo site, for which it paid 195,000 + VAT.

(But not all the site is owned by Bryn Coch Ltd. Go to the plan on the title document I’ve just linked to and you’ll see that part of the site is covered by title number WA965076. Here is the relevant title document.)

Yet in the latest accounts, Mr O’Dowd values that land at £5.4m. And it might be worth that, with planning permission. But it doesn’t have planning permission, and without it that land is worth no more than the £195,000 + VAT that was paid for it.

Maybe less.

I suspect Mr O’Dowd may not be alone in this venture. There may be associates yet to be identified. Until we know the full story, planning permission should be rejected. And even if the project does become more transparent, the planners’ objections remain valid.

And those objections will not be overcome by the magnanimous gesture of bilingual signs in a town where 85% of the population speaks Welsh.

∼

Before moving on, I just want to touch on Mr O’Dowd’s new companies, and his other holdings in Gwynedd.

Maybrook Investments Ltd has two holdings on Penamser Road in Porthmadog. (The Pwllheli road.) Title numbers CYM135945, CYM255694. One is the old Gelert outdoor clothing unit, the other, nearby land.

Then, through new company, Lendline (NW) Ltd, Peter O’Dowd owns Parciau Farm – or part of it – which lies just across the A487 from the old Ferodo site. Lendline is owned by Maybrook Investments.

Finally, moving to Bangor, we find that another new company, Maybrook Investments (Parc Menai) Ltd, owns land either side of Penrhos Road, close by the A487, and not far from the A55 Expressway.

Land in two parcels: one to the south west of Graig House, Capel y Graig, title number WA533768; and the other to the west of Nant y Mount, Vaynol Park, title number CYM71442.

I can’t help wondering what has attracted Peter O’Dowd to Gwynedd. And why he’s bought the land he’s bought. Does he know something we don’t?

Or someone?

♦

CARRY ON GLAMPING

There was a Twitter dispute last week with the owners of a new glamping venture near Pwllheli. I got roped in and found myself blocked by the proprietors of Brook Cottage Shepherd Huts.

As you might have guessed, the spat was over that toe-curlingly twee English name.

Also, that the venture got a £50,000 loan from the Development Bank of Wales. I mean, Wales doesn’t already have enough glamping sites? Those involved couldn’t have raised the money they needed from Barclays or some other bank?

The two behind this exciting venture are Jonathan Gooders and Mark Barrow, who were previously in the fine arts business according to this piece from NorthWalesLive. Their ignorance of Wales would seem to be exposed by their belief that Welsh shepherds lived in glamping sheds.

The company involved in this exciting venture at Y Ffor is Brook Cottage Holidays Ltd, formed just over a year ago. The two directors and shareholders are, as we would expect, Gooders and Barrow. On the Certificate of Incorporation both describe themselves defiantly as ‘English’.

I mention this because most people use ‘British’. I would obviously describe myself as ‘Welsh’, but it’s often the Ukip types who go with ‘English’.

But this is not their first company.

Let’s go back to what I wrote earlier, and the quote in NorthWalesLive, that said:

'Jonathan Gooders and Mark Barrow both have a background in fine art and wanted to put this and a passion for nature into redeveloping land near their new home at Y Ffor, near Pwllheli.'

But that’s not the full story. There are other recent companies that have nothing to do with ‘fine art’.

Certainly, Gooders and Barrow ran a company called Framers (London) Ltd, and Barrow may even have had a small gallery. Though Mark Barrow Fine Art (formerly Modern British Artists) seems to have folded. Certainly, the Twitter account hasn’t been used for a few years.

What really interests me is that Jonathan Gooders has been involved in a number of companies that have nothing to do with fine art, and all of which were dissolved around the time they moved to Wales. Three on the same day!

Barrow was also involved in at least one. Here they are:

Property Investor Toolkit LLP, Dissolved August 27, 2019.
Intuitive Software Solutions Ltd. Dissolved September 22, 2020.
MBA Enterprise Investments Ltd. Dissolved September 22, 2020.
Mark Barrow Associates Ltd. Dissolved September 22, 2020.
Framers (London) Ltd. Dissolved April 27, 2021.

Doesn’t inspire confidence does it?

This glittering business record might explain why Jonathan Gooders and Mark Barrow couldn’t get a loan from a ‘High Street’ bank. (Remember them?) It should also have been the reason why the Development Bank of Wales turned them down.

So I just hope that the £50,000 of our money is safe. But even if it is, don’t expect it to create any jobs.

But rest easy – for they have a wealth of experience in tourism and glamping.

♦

TOURISM MAKING LIFE DIFFICULT FOR LOCALS

Now it’s time to move south, to Carmarthenshire, land of my great-grandfathers. And to be precise, to Cydweli (Kidwelly), which lies between the county’s two metropolises of Carmarthen and Llanelli.

An interesting town in many ways. Let me explain.

Something I’ve noticed over the past 50 years or so is that in rural areas the Labour Party is now almost entirely dependent for members and active supporters on people who’ve moved in. Invariably from England.

An example would be the we-know-best harridans trying to take over Knighton in Powys and dictate to everyone else.

Which might make Cydweli the most westerly community in Wales where the Labour Party is still native-run, just. But even here, in recent years the thinning ranks have been swelled by an influx of Guardian-reading know-alls who feel Cydweli can’t manage without their input.

Back to the narrative.

Earlier, when discussing plans for the old Ferodo site in Caernarfon, I suggested that some councillors may have given up on their communities seeing any jobs better than those provided by tourism. And that’s what might have happened in Cydweli.

For the Labour gang controlling Kidwelly Community Hub CIC has been handed £270,000 by the ‘Welsh Government’ for the ‘Black Cat Tourism Strategy’.

This seeks to ‘grow the visitor economy’ – at any price.

The no-expense-spared launch of Kidwelly’s Black Cat tourism strategy. Click to open in separate tab

The Black Cat project lead is Suki Baynton, who recently arrived from the Cynon Valley, where I’m told she was Contaminated Land Officer for Rhondda Cynon Taf council. She was certainly Property Manager for Ashfield Solutions for a while.

We see Suki in the above picture, on the right, in the red coat.

Suki has also launched her own company, Room Publishing Ltd. The website tells me it’s a load of New Age bollocks; but then, I’m a cynical old bastard who grew up in the real world.

Back to Cydweli, and the growing problems being experienced by locals as the county council and others seek to ‘grow the visitor economy’. (Why not just be honest and say, ‘We want lots more tourists’?)

For, clearly, tourists visiting the holiday homes and the Airbnb rents in this rather cramped old town are going to cause parking and other problems. Sure enough, this is what’s happening, and it’s pissing off the locals.

As my source puts it – ‘This is what happens when a Plaid Cymru council (Carmarthenshire) prioritises tourism and starts closing Welsh medium schools in surrounding villages.’

To help you make sense of what else he has to say I suggest you open this Google map of the town. Now read on . . .

'THE CASTLE AREA

There’s a cluster of holiday rentals inside the town walls of Bailey Street and Castle Street and Cadw have installed a barrier stopping parking to the little car park next to the castle.
This has resulted in lots of tourist parking on New Street, the main through road. Residents, when they arrive home from work, are finding the free parking outside their homes occupied by visitors (sometimes with trailers of kayaks and jet-skis). So residents have been parking of the pavements and double yellows causing obstruction or getting parking tickets.

GLANYRAFON

There is a free car park at Glanyrafon (the overflow) which has been used by residents for many years. Now there is a plan to build a new grant funded museum next to it, on the nature reserve. This is the ‘History Shed’ relocated from Laugharne, a kind of WW2 Spitfires and gas masks hobby attraction.
The adjacent car park, which has been free to residents, will now be paid parking, reserved for visitors. Residents of Bridge Street and New Street will lose their free parking.

PARC PENDRE

Carmarthenshire Country Council intends to close two schools. Ysgol Gymraeg Gwenllian in Station Road within the town and also Ysgol Gymraeg Mynyddygarreg in the nearby village (where children from Trimsaran also attend). It is to be replaced by a new consolidated school at Parc Pendre within the town behind the Coop.
It’s anticipated there will be parking chaos due to the school run. Parents dropping off the kids to attend school arriving by car from further up the Gwendraeth valleys. This was anticipated in the plans and is to be mitigated with ‘enhanced parking controls.’
This involves new double yellows in Parc Pendre and a residential parking scheme in surrounding streets. Residents will be charged £30pa for a permit.'

Without recourse to a crystal ball, tea leaves, or seaweed (great-aunt Fastidia’s favourite), I can confidently predict Cydweli’s future . . . properties will be bought up by ‘investors’, coming from that enchanted land, ‘Away’, at prices few locals can afford.

This will result in the town losing its Welsh identity, the age profile will change for the worse, the rugby club will close, one or two pubs, and, as I can testify from my area, there’ll be no need for the new school – because there’ll be so few kids living locally.

And all this will have been achieved by ‘growing the visitor economy’!

Jobs! Did I mention jobs? No, because there won’t be any, this is ‘Welsh’ tourism.

UPDATE 26.11.2021: My source has now heard from Carmarthenshire County Council Highways Officer that –

All permanent residents in Cydweli will be charged £30 per household for a parking permit. All properties will be eligible to apply for a permit to park, even those with existing off-street parking and all properties run as holiday homes, self-catering lets, AirB&B will all be able to apply for a business permit for their guests. HMRC documents such as a tax code in England will be acceptable documentation for a permit.

♦

BEWARE OF SMOKESCREENS AND VIRTUE SIGNALLING

Not long ago, in a wonderful example of those who are unaffected by the decisions they take affecting the lives of Welsh people, the ‘progressive’ consensus in Corruption Bay – i.e. Labour and Plaid Cymru – abolished Right to Buy.

In the village where I live most of the council houses had been bought by their Welsh tenants. Without the option of RtB most of them had little hope of buying a property in their own community. And it’s the same in other villages in the area. With Aberdyfi being the stand-out example.

The reason for that is outsiders snapping up properties; some for holiday homes, others because people want to move here permanently. With many more of the latter than the former.

Yet a bunch of virtue signallers see nothing wrong in depriving Welsh working class people of their only hope of owning a property in their home community. Perhaps they believe the lower orders must be cared for, and dictated to, as if they were children, by those who have sipped at the fount of socialist knowledge.

There were so many other options the leftists could have adopted that would not have disadvantaged our people, but they weren’t prepared to consider them.

And now those ‘progressives’ are in some kind of informal coalition down in the swamp. Which is more nonsense; for despite periodic bouts of foot-stamping from Plaid Cymru they’ve always been in alliance. Nobody was ever fooled.

One of the problems this repulsive mob of mediocrities pledges to confront is that of Welsh people being forced out of their communities by rising house prices. Now I’m a firm believer that to confront and deal with any issue one must first understand it.

Unfortunately, there are those among us, supported by influences external to Wales, who wish to misinterpret the crisis in our rural and coastal areas.

Canary is a left wing English publication, fighting what can no longer be called class war because the working class has been alienated by the modern left’s obsessions with gender, race and climate.

It’s no longer even ideological. It’s a kind of cult-like belief in certain absurdities, as we saw when Undod (mentioned in the panel above) and its allies sought to take over Yes Cymru earlier this year.

The left wants to view the crisis in rural and coastal Wales as some fault of the capitalist system; as part of a bigger, UK-wide, ‘housing crisis’. Without ever addressing the influx of good-lifers, retirees and the rest.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Jennie Bibbings works for Shelter Cymru. This is one of the forty-odd ‘homelessness’ outfits funded with our money by the so-called ‘Welsh Government’. Done for no better reason than to employ otherwise unemployable Labour-supporting graduates and drop-outs from our oversized universities.

If Jennie Bibbings genuinely believes that our rural and coastal areas would still have a housing problem without ‘2nd homers/saes’, then she’s a fool. But she doesn’t believe that. She’s merely spouting the leftist line.

Which believes that only nationalists care about the destruction of Welsh communities. And because ‘All nationalism is evil’ the only acceptable response is to either ignore such concerns entirely or else subsume them into something bigger that can more comfortably be supported.

So I urge you to be on your guard for attempts to cloud the issue and misrepresent the crisis facing us. These attempts will come from the socialist consensus in Corruption Bay and its ideological soul-mates elsewhere in Wales, and outside of Wales.

♦

‘TOURISM, TOURISM, WHAT BULLSHIT IS SPOUTED IN THY NAME’

Some forty years ago, not long after the start of the Meibion Glyndŵr campaign, I was watching a television programme in which the late Prys Edwards, then head of the Wales Tourist Board, was being interviewed and the subject of holiday homes came up.

Edwards seemed almost offended and asked, ‘You surely aren’t suggesting that holiday homes have anything to do with tourism?’ The interviewer let him get away with it and the discussion moved on.

Prys Edwards. Click to open in separate tab

I use that example because it’s symptomatic of attitudes in Wales, the dissociative thinking that results in us being unable to honestly identify the problems facing us, and, as a result, solving them.

Despite what Prys Edwards wanted us to believe, holiday homes are an inevitable consequence of tourism. The clue is in the name.

I have yet to meet anyone who has bought a holiday home in an area with which they did not already have some familiarity from having taken holidays there. Have you?

And yet, as I’ve already said, I suspect that holiday homes will be used as a distraction from the bigger problem to which I have alluded. Which would be a terrible mistake, and a betrayal of our people.

For the problem of locals being priced out of the communities in which they were born and raised, and the anglicising of those communities, can not be resolved until we accept that permanent in-migration is a bigger factor than holiday homes.

This article in the Guardian last week, focusing on Llandudoch, was headlined, ‘Cultural genocide by bank transfer’. The words were those of veteran language campaigner Ffred Ffrancis.

Who also said, ‘ . . . the problem was being turbo-charged by the “flight” from cities caused by Covid’. A reference to people buying properties in Wales in order to work from ‘home’.

And he’s right. But the problem won’t go away with Covid-19.

We, as a nation, and more especially, Welsh speaking communities, are facing an existential threat to our existence. And it all stems from tourism.

Whether it’s the mass tourism that destroyed the Welshness of Abergele and Borth, or the more up-market tourism that is making us strangers from Rhossilli to Rhosneigr.

We are past the stage where consultations and working groups serve any useful purpose – these are just delaying tactics employed by a Vichy administration under orders from its masters in London. We need action. And we know what that action must be.

The ‘Welsh Government’ must introduce legislation that limits who can buy domestic property in Wales.

There can be no more words. No more dithering. No more obfuscation. No more passing the buck. Either the ‘Welsh Government’ acts, and acts quickly, or there’s a growing risk that others will.

Faced with cultural genocide, many will argue that any action will be justified.

♦ END ♦

Jac o' the North

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