Yes, I know . . . I said I wasn’t putting anything out this week, but the work doesn’t start until tomorrow, and something I put out earlier on Twitter / X has grown too big to continue with on that platform.

But don’t worry, this is still a quickie.

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JANE DAVIDSON

For those new to the dystopian world of Welsh politics, Jane Davidson is a privately-educated memsahib who turned up in Wales some years ago and quickly grasped that the Labour Party is the key to pushing your agenda.

So she joined, became a Cardiff councillor then, with devolution, was handed the safe Labour seat of Pontypridd, An area she hardly knew.

Her rise was immediate. First serving as Minister for Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills. Then, from 2007 until 2011, she was Minister for Sustainability and Rural Affairs.

Davidson left the Assembly in 2011 to take up a non-job at Lampeter university wailing about the ‘climate crisis’. Again, paid for from the Welsh public purse.

In January this year Jane Davidson was appointed to lead the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. What’s that? you ask. Well, stripped of the bullshit, it’s yet another group of carefully-selected individuals who will tell the so-called ‘Welsh Government’ exactly what it wants to hear.

This ‘advice’ will then be branded ‘impartial’, having come from ‘independent experts’, and used to justify Drakeford and his brainwashed clowns intensifying their offensive against farmers, motorists, and all others deemed – in Davos – to be obstacles to the Globalists achieving their objectives.

The group contains a number of the usual suspects, all of whom have fallen for the Club of Rome’s climate scam, and most, like Davidson, believe that we indigenes must be told what to think, and who to believe.

Invariably, them.

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‘OH, WHAT A TANGLED WEB . . . ‘

In September, someone in regular contact with me, having read that Julie James, Minister for the Environment, was to receive quarterly briefings from the Group, submitted a Freedom of Information request to the ‘Welsh Government’ asking for a copy of the briefings.

Here are the Terms of Reference to which he refers.

He received a reply on October 13, which told him that these briefings were verbal, and that there was no record.

Not satisfied with this, he immediately wrote back asking for the protocol that allows for unrecorded briefings.

Having received no reply, he wrote again, today.

At this point, I was made aware of the problem and I put out this tweet.

Within hours, my contact had a reply from the ‘Welsh Government’. I’m not saying that this unprecedented example of bureaucratic celerity was due to the attention my tweet was getting, but the timing is a wee bit suspicious.

The response confirmed that no record is kept of the briefings, but that there are “records of the meetings in the form of minutes“.

The confusion is not helped by the Group’s Terms of Reference mentioning briefing the Minister for Climate Change, Julie James. (The ‘Designated Member’ is Plaid Cymru’s Siân Gwenllian.)

Because in the minutes for the meetings of April, July, October we clearly see that the attendees are those mentioned in the Terms of Reference relating to briefings.

What’s more, if we look at the original response from October 13 we see two dates mentioned for the verbal and unrecorded briefings, 24 April and 5 July.

Which are the same dates as the meetings – for which we have minutes!

Are there minuted meetings and unrecorded briefings held on the same day? That’s what’s being suggested with, “As was stated in past Welsh Government responses there are no written record of these briefings, however, there are records of the meetings in the form of minutes“.

Or is someone getting confused? I think I am.

Another question might be, why aren’t these minutes available on the website of the Wales Net Zer0 2035 Challenge Group? It has its own ‘Secretariat’. What does Stan Townsend do other than scoff Hobnobs with Jane Davidson and Julie James?

UPDATE 14.11.2024: Here’s a bit more info on young Stan. It seems he may be new to Wales! (I bet you’re surprised.) Here’s his Linkedin bio and here’s his blog. I’m sure that like Stan you too have wondered, ‘What is the role of a cyclist in addressing climate change?’ It certainly keeps me awake at night. Or is that heartburn?

Though I also noticed what you see below in the Terms of Reference. So maybe Jane Davidson didn’t want these minutes made public.

And if so, then I can understand why. For they aren’t exactly evidence of much activity, other than Davidson meeting with a woman she already knew and would probably have met with anyway.

And then, the other strange thing is that the metadata for the pdf documents sent today, the minutes of the three meetings, are all dated today. If the minutes are genuinely contemporaneous with the meetings, then I would expect to see them carry the same dates as the meetings, or a date shortly afterwards.

Then again, maybe it was a copy and paste job, which I suppose would explain the metadata dates. Though if that’s the case, then why couldn’t the original minutes have been sent?

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IN CONCLUSION

There is no sensible or logical reason for the ‘Welsh Government’ to have ever set up the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group, though it gives Jane Davidson something to add to her strangely uninformative Linkedin bio.

It’s just another group of hangers-on and like-minded individuals who’ll tell Julie James exactly what she wants to hear. It’s window-dressing.

It makes me laugh how people like me are accused of being conspiracy theorists, reinforcing our paranoia by only interacted with others like us. And yet this is exactly what the ‘Welsh Government’ does, and what the groups it sets up do.

What I mean is, will Jane Davidson and her Group consult a ‘climate sceptic’? Or someone who isn’t a vegan?

But the real worry in this episode is that whatever Davidson’s gang come up with will be used by Corruption Bay to enact legislation that will make the things we need more expensive, and make our lives more difficult.

That being so, everything must be above board. There must be total transparency. No secret briefings.

Let’s start with the ‘Welsh Government’ bringing clarity to the confusion it has created through talking about both minuted meetings and unrecorded verbal briefings.

And if there have been unrecorded verbal briefings, then let’s have assurances that there will be no more of them.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023