Wales, Colony of England

Let me start by establishing what I mean by a colony. A colony is a territory or country run in the interests of another country, and for the benefit of the elite or the population in general of that other country. The colony does not need to be far away, nor do its indigenes need to be of a different pigmentation or religion, what matters is the economic and other relationships between the two countries. By which criteria Wales is most definitely a colony of England.

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Historically, we Welsh had to be conquered and brought under English rule a) because we resisted Anglo-Saxon / Anglo-Norman / English attempts to control the whole island of Britain and b) because we, as the original inhabitants of Britain, served to remind these invaders of our prior claim to their land as well as our own.

For centuries we suffered under a discriminatory legal system then, with the Industrial Revolution, we started to see Wales and the Welsh exploited in a more organised fashion, with the motive this time being profit rather than imperialist aggrandisement. In a modified form this system persists today, and although discrimination may no longer be on the statute book it still exists in myriad subtle forms.

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Something I was reminded of recently with the re-surfacing of a story I’d been vaguely aware of before. A Welsh businessman named Clive Hughes had planned to build two biomass plants employing hundreds of people, one near Kidwelly, the other on Swansea docks, reported in the panel on the right (click to enlarge).Biomass Swansea docks It seems that Mr Hughes had no help in his endeavours from either Mark James Carmarthenshire council or the ‘Welsh’ Government. In fact, he received no reply after writing to First Minister Carwyn Jones.

The reason this story has re-surfaced is because Clive Hughes was understandably peeved to learn that while his projects were either ignored or refused planning permission, civil servants and councils are now falling over themselves to help Chinese investors build two biomass plants, one on Ynys Môn, the other in Port Talbot, just a few miles from his planned Swansea docks site.

Something Clive Hughes was quoted as saying hints at where I’m going with this example. He said, “I have been fortunate to have enjoyed successful multi-million-pound businesses all over the world – however, I have never been treated so badly as in my home county”.

How do we explain this curious tale of Welsh agencies refusing to support indigenous enterprise while generously supporting foreign investment  – to do exactly the same thing! In a word, colonialism. (Yes, I know the report mentions nimbyism and “opposition from residents”, but believe me, it goes way beyond that.)

Clive Hughes was wasting his time appealing to Carwyn Jones, who is just a figurehead for a form of sham devolution. Wales – as I have said time and time gain – is run by civil servants, invariably masquerading as ‘advisors’ to Carwyn and his gang of deadbeats, and these civil servants take their orders from London. The wisdom for some years in London has been that it is a good thing to ‘open up’ the UK to foreign investment, particularly from China. Once you know that, then it’s easy to understand why no Welsh businessman will be allowed to queer the pitch for Chinese and other foreign investors.

A further example of the colonial economy at work is often articulated as the question, ‘Isn’t it strange how Welsh people (insert here, Terry Matthews, Chris Evans et al, or Clive Hughes) have to leave Wales to be successful?’ Er, no, there’s nothing strange about it, for two very good reasons. First, too many successful Welsh businesspeople might give us natives silly ideas about our ability to do things for ourselves. Second, any successful Welsh business is almost bound to come into competition with English companies. Both are undesirable in a colonial set up.

Of course after making his money in Canada Matthews returned to Wales and built the very successful Celtic Manor resort outside Newport. But the Celtic Manor poses no threat to the colonial arrangement. To begin with, it does not really compete with English rivals in the way that a company chasing consumers in a competitive market would. In addition, with its NATO conferences and Ryder Cup golf tournaments, the Celtic Manor helps integrate Wales with England.

Note that in the piece I’ve linked to about Matthews, Michael Moritz is described as “the richest person in Wales”, which is stretching it a bit. He was certainly born in Cardiff, but left for the USA in his early twenties, made his fortune in Silicon Valley, and never returned. He still lives in San Francisco with his family. Perhaps the most successful business based in Wales, and the only one quoted in the FTSE 100, is Admiral Insurance, started up and still owned by Henry Engelhardt . . . from Chicago. Which is fine, because it confirms that the Welsh must have outsiders to provide them with work.

Let’s end with another feature of the colonial economy, and again, something that draws bewildered comment from people who refuse to see the system controlling the economic life of Wales. I’m referring now to the phenomenon of successful Welsh companies being taken over by larger companies before they can grow too big, with this often resulting in redundancies or even closure of the now subsidiary Welsh operation. If you don’t understand why this happens then you haven’t been paying attention.

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The Roman system of coloniae settled army veterans and their families in conquered territories and border regions, and was employed for two main reasons. First, to keep an eye on the natives and, if necessary, confront any insurgency until the army arrived. Second, coloniae spread the use of the Latin language and Roman ways of doing things.

This example of settling people from, or loyal to, the ruling country in recently conquered territories and colonies is one that has been imitated globally down to the present day. The British have done it across the world, even to Christian European populations. There was the Irish Plantation, the ‘repopulating’ of eastern Canada after the expulsion of the Acadians (Cajuns), and the flooding of the independent republic of Transvaal with British settlers once it was realised that the land beneath the Boers’ feet contained gold and diamonds.

In more recent times, France sees a steady exodus of loyal French people to Tahiti, New Caledonia, Guadeloupe, Martinique and other specks in the ocean in the hope that these emigres will help the natives see the benefit of maintaining ties with France. While on a bigger scale, and in a much more brutal fashion, China has created all sorts of incentives for Han Chinese to settle in, with the intention of dominating, Tibet and Xinjiang.

So why be surprised that Wales has been undergoing a process of colonisation since the 1960s? A process that has taken many forms, some so bleeding obvious you wonder how they got away with it.

Take the Development Board for Rural Wales, an agency set up – so we were told – to stem the depopulation of the five central counties of Montgomeryshire, Cardiganshire, Merionethshire, Breconshire and Radnorshire. It operated by paying English companies to relocate to central Wales, with their workforces (all paid for), while spending many more millions building thousands of new houses for this influx. And while all this cash was being showered on English companies local firms could not apply for a penny of DBRW funding. As blatant a colonisation strategy as Mother England has ever deployed. But Welsh politicians, media, and others still applauded every relocation as ‘New jobs coming to —————‘.

Many countries pay companies to set up in areas needing employment, but I have never come across another case like the DBRW, where a state paid firms to transfer lock stock and barrel, plus workers, to another area. It makes no sense, until you see it for what it was – plain, unvarnished colonisation.

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The colony of Wales also serves as a receptacle for those who are not making a contribution to the common weal in England. Those in this category range from geriatrics to young criminals and drug addicts. To the point where in some areas of Wales – such as where I live – two-thirds of the over 65s were born in England. But, hey! looking after old people is a ‘growth industry’.

Gwynedd SW Wards merged
CLICK TO ENLARGE

If it’s not wrinklies then it’s a feckless white underclass. Some towns have been almost destroyed by this phenomenon, and none have come closer to implosion than Rhyl. This link reports a story of a woman living in Rhyl sent down after police found a dead body and a stash of heroin in her flat. An everyday story of Rhyl folk.

When it’s not drug addicts then it’s paedophiles. So many such deviants from over the border are now turning up in Wales that it just has to be organised, perhaps by the Probation Service. I have written about this problem before, one of the most notorious recent cases was a whole gang of paedophiles relocated from London to Kidwelly. Read about it and other cases. Within the past few days I have learnt of two more paedophiles who, by some unspecified route, arrived in Wales. This one in Ciliau Aeron and this one in Llanbadarn Fawr.

In the great colonialist scheme of things it really doesn’t matter whether those coming into Wales are sweet old dears straight out of an Ealing comedy or dangerous perverts, they all make their contribution to skewing Welsh statistics in a way that is unflattering to us, put a strain on an already overburdened health service, and of course, make their contribution to anglicising Wales. ‘Poor Wales’, ‘Ageing Wales’, ‘Wales’ Drugs Problem’ writes Phil Space, and intones Jamie Owen, but no one has the balls to really investigate these issues and give us the truth.

But then, in a colony, the last thing you can expect is an honest media.

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I can’t be absolutely certain when I first realised the media lies (maybe it was when I was first lied about), but the reporting of the Balkan wars in the 1990s was something of a watershed because that coverage was not simply a lie here and there, or some vague and ill-defined bias, it was an unwavering adherence to a propaganda line originating in the Pentagon.

Done in pursuit of a strategic objective dictating that Jugoslavia should be dismembered and Russia’s Serb allies at the core of that State be internationally isolated. To achieve this objective the fascist Croats of the Ustaše, and the gangster Albanians in the Kosovo Liberation Army, were depicted as knights in shining armour, while a blind eye was turned to foreign jihadists killing Serbs in Bosnia, leaving us to focus solely on the beastly Serbs, the only ones guilty of any atrocities.

Obviously, when dealing with ‘internal’ matters the UK media is different, but even here, the bias has long been unmistakable, and especially in television. Just about everyone has noticed the recent plethora of programmes with titles beginning ‘Great British’, in fact, it’s become so obvious that it’s something of a joke. A regular orgy of cringe-worthy ‘patriotism’, on sets bedecked with union flags, and all done in the hope of persuading Scots and other disaffected minorities that it don’t get no better than singing the worst national anthem on earth.

While on another level we see some elements of the BBC – Newsnight comes to mind – becoming almost schizophrenic in their desire to maintain their Left-liberal bias while simultaneously following the BritNat line in the hope of pandering to those in the Tory party who wish to dismantle the Beeb. Though in its coverage of the Scottish independence referendum last year all pretence at impartiality went out the window for the BBC in general, and Newsnight in particular.

Here in Wales, with its recent acquisition of the Evening Post, we have Trinity Mirror taking a stranglehold on the ‘Welsh’ print media. We can now look forward to Swansea’s daily paper, the largest selling Welsh daily, being written in Cardiff. And why not? With the political and economic life of the country being centralised on the capital like some tin-pot dictatorship it makes perfect sense.

Our self-styled ‘National Newspaper of Wales’ is now little more than a desperate amalgam of showbiz news, columnists nobody reads, sport, and a daily promotion of all things Cardiff. To the extent that a new restaurant opening, or a celebrity being spotted in the city, somehow becomes a news item that Llais Y Sais deludes itself will be of interest to people in other parts of Wales. No wonder so few people outside of the Cardiff area buy the bloody thing.

Perhaps the best way to explain how this Cardiff-obsessive system operates is by introducing that famous bullshit duet the Barry Brothers. Mark Barry runs M&G Barry Consulting and gets paid to promote the Metro system and other projects designed to further enrich Cardiff at the expense of the rest of Wales, while brother Siôn is the Business Editor for Media Wales, which of course covers the Wasting Mule. So Mark Barry’s clients tell him what they want promoted, he passes ready-made promos on to brother Siôn, who ensures that they appear in Llais y Sais as ‘news’! This is how low ‘journalism’ in Wales has sunk.

In the panel below (click to enlarge) you’ll see a piece by Siôn Barry that appeared in the Western Mail on Monday (23.11.2015). I’m using it because it brings together a couple of the points I’m making in this post. First, we have another successful Welsh company being taken over. This company is based in Swansea, but it’s left to a spokesperson for the company to tell us that.

Sion Barry Francis Estate Agents

Because the purpose of this business news report is to give a plug to “Cardiff-based business advisory firm Greenaway Scott”. Something Siôn Barry does quite regularly. Here in May 2013, March 2015, May 2015, and there may be other write-ups by Barry that I’ve missed. Puffs for this company have certainly appeared on Media Wales attributed to others. Would a law firm in any other part of Wales get so much free publicity? So how do we explain it – is Greenaway Scott a client of M&G Barry Consulting? And if so, why is Trinity Mirror allowing the Wasting Mule to be used in this way? Whatever the answer, this is not journalism.

On the television front, S4C looks to be on its last legs as the Tories consider that if its funding is withdrawn no one will complain other than those with a vested interest in so doing. There certainly won’t be any protests of the kind that brought the channel into existence.

ITV Wales continues to plod along, a curate’s egg of a channel ranging from the engaging Adrian Masters to reporters and newsreaders who look and sound as if they’d have trouble locating Aberystwyth if they were dropped on top of Constitution Hill.

While over at the Talfan Davies patrimony things get weirder and weirder. The Monday following the Paris outrages Wales Today carried a piece about Islamophobia! Over a hundred people were dead in Paris, killed by Muslim extremists, yet for BBC Wales the real horror was that some Welsh person might say something nasty to a Muslim! Rarely in a human lifetime does one encounter such a corrupted sense of values, such an absence of proportion. The interviewee, living in mortal fear of being shouted at, claimed to have previously been subjected to abuse, but this must of course have happened before the Paris massacres. She was shrouded from head to foot with just a slit for her eyes, so I suppose she could have been an actress. I began to wonder if this interview had been in the can for a while, just waiting for the next killing spree.

Something becoming more regularly noticeable on BBC Wales is the adherence to the Question Time dictum – ‘When in Wales, listen only to English opinions’. Because even when reporting on news items from the Swansea Valley and similar places with very few English residents BBC Wales will find those English residents, and interview them, ignoring locals. There is an echo here of the British media’s attitude when working abroad – find someone to interview who speaks English, even if that person knows sod all about the issue being covered.

Jason Mohammad

In other areas BBC Wales follows the ‘Great British’ line, and few do it more loyally than Jason Mohammad. His recent interview with Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood is a gem of its kind. But then, his ‘ethnic’ background, the fact that he speaks Welsh (but is a devoted Brit), makes ‘Jase’ an absolute treasure who will do anything for the cause. Hang on, it wasn’t him in the niqab, was it?

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Though if you seek an area, an industry, an activity, call it what you will, that ticks all the colonialist boxes, then look no further than tourism. Read Tourism: Creating a ‘Wales’ Without the Welsh.

It is beneficial to the UK economy because – seeing as Wales is tied to England – most of the money spent by tourists in Wales will find its way to England in the form of taxes, payments to suppliers, etc.

‘Welsh’ tourism provides thousands of business opportunities for English people thanks to their greater purchasing power coupled with the unwillingness of some Welsh to engage in the prostitution of their homeland.

Tourism attracts a few million English tourists to Wales every year, many of whom decide to settle here. And even if they don’t immediately settle, then they might buy a little place to use as a holiday home.

Nothing is anglicising Wales faster and more comprehensively than tourism and the colonisation that is its inevitable corollary and consequence. This explains why tourism is being forced on us as ‘the economic salvation of rural Wales’.

Yet we Welsh are expected to accept all this in return for a few thousand low paid, seasonal jobs, and a pat on the head accompanied by, ‘You Welsh should be so grateful that all these English people come here’.

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Wales in 2015 is a land being ripped apart, with a national identity under the kind of pressure it is unlikely to survive.

Our former mining valleys are now among the poorest and most wretched areas of Europe. But, due to the low property prices – among the lowest in the UK – we can predict that the Valleys will see more bail hostels and properties housing persons and groups that English communities are glad to see the back of. And the ‘Welsh’ Government – plus local politicians – will welcome this, because appearances are everything, and anything looks better than derelict houses and a rapidly declining population.

Our rural and coastal areas have been condemned to serve as recreation and retirement areas for our neighbours because, ‘There’s nothing else around here, is there?’. No of course there isn’t, not after decades of allowing the rural economy to decline, and doing nothing to bring in decent employment, for local people.

And while the Welsh population is engineered into decline, in both rural and urban areas, a new, replacement population is encouraged to move in, not least through building new homes that Welsh people either cannot afford or else will not be allocated. ‘Oh look! the population of Wales is rising – things must be good there’.

And while this social engineering goes on older forms of exploitation persist. English cities steal our water resources, but it’s justifiable we are told because these cities built the dams. Mmm, try going to Iran and claiming the oil because the original infrastructure was built by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

Wales is a colony of England, and we Welsh are still bottom of the pile. The only Welsh who make it – outside certain spheres such as sport and entertainment – are those who submit, or those who collaborate with the colonialist system.

You reading this can either accept this system, or you can fight it; but let no one – certainly not the professional liars in politics and the media – pretend that our relationship with England is anything other than colonial, and designed to eventually destroy Welsh identity.

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Cardigan Castle, Equinox, Gareth Wardell, Terry Matthews

CARDIGAN CASTLE

Not a lot to report from the Gang of Five and I probably won’t do another post until I get something important to report. But if I am silent then you mustn’t think I’m ignoring Timms and the gels; no, siree, it’s because I’ve decided to approach the problem from a different angle.

Though one thing that does merit mention, something now obvious beyond any doubt, is the disturbing fact that those who have been sacked, forced out, or ‘encouraged to leave’, such as Director Cris Tomos, Eduction Officer Rhian Medi, and others, are all local and Welsh. Those taken on in this period, from Facilities Officer Sue Lewis to the caretaker and the gardener, are all English. The pattern in the employment policy of the Castle is now unmistakable – Welsh out, English in.

Of all the things going wrong at Castell Aberteifi this might be the ugliest and most reprehensible. And yet, local politicians will stay schtum, and the only criticism we’re likely to hear will be levelled against anyone complaining against this discrimination, as the Cambrian News cranks up the ‘outrage’ to direct its venom at the ‘racists’ asking for Welsh people to be treated fairly.

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EQUINOX

On a lighter note, while visiting the website of Equinox, the Castle’s PR outfit, I was surprised to see a photo containing David Phillips, the man overthrown last year from his position of leader of Swansea council. The Equinox picture is of one of the company’s clients, the Swansea Bay City region project, though it’s at least a year old (see below), as Phillips was also given the heave-ho from the board of the city region outfit. (He’s the one in the centre, under the England flag.)

Equinox Phillips

Predictably, the board has among its members the leaders of the four local authorities involved, but strangely, in the case of Carmarthenshire, and only Carmarthenshire, we find a second representative. And who might that be? Meryl Gravell of course. Can anyone offer a suggestion as to why Carmarthenshire, but not Swansea (with its greater population) or any of the other councils, should have two representatives?

Ere his downfall I regularly chronicled Phillips’ deeds and utterances on this blog (just use the Search box atop the sidebar); indeed, I even gave him a nickname. In fact, I’m almost missing him, for he provided the citizenry of Swansea with hours of harmless fun. Such as going out in public, in daylight, in a red duffle coat? I repeat, a red duffle coat. Not even the Celtic scarf could save him from the fashion police.

In the duffle coat picture I’ve linked to, and on the extreme right, we can see acolyte and protégé Councillor John Charles Bayliss, one of the students Labour had to recruit to compensate for the party’s failure to find local candidates who could write their own name without biting off the tip of their tongue. After a few years of being a professional councillor Bayliss has at last found gainful employment, as an ‘account executive’ with PR outfit the Remarkable Group.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to councillors earning an honest crust away from the council chamber. Indeed, it can be viewed as a good thing, otherwise we’d be lumbered with councils made up of the retired, the unemployable and the permanently sick (as has often been the case with Labour groups). No, the problem arises over the kind of work they do, and whether they might have been employed in the hope they can swing decisions to the advantage of their employers’ clients.

Not that I am for one minute suggesting that this is why the Remarkable Group recruited Councillor Bayliss – heaven forfend! – but I cannot help noticing that among his new employer’s clients we find many companies raking in the loot from wind farms, solar complexes and other activities that usually face local opposition and often struggle to gain planning consent. And as it says on John Boy’s Linkedin profile, his employer provides, “communications support for clients across England and Wales navigating the complex planning application process”.

Bayliss Remarkable

Which is a load of old bollocks. Because the big companies that are Remarkable’s clients employ lawyers and planning experts who understand planning law better than most councillors; what they’re really looking for is an extra advantage from having ‘someone on the inside’. So, without downplaying his undoubted abilities, I think it’s reasonable to assume that John Charles Bayliss would never have landed the job with the Remarkable Group had he not been a member of the party controlling Swansea council. Moving on, but not far, in any sense . . .

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GARETH LODWIG WARDELL

To save you scratching your head, or Googling, he was the Labour MP for the Swansea constituency of Gower from 1982 until 1997.

Wardell is the son of legendary Gwendraeth barber Jack Wardell, but he himself resisted the temptation to offer customers ‘Something for the weekend’ and took himself off to the London School of Economics before getting a gullible electorate to vote for him. Curiously, I could only find four photographs of Wardell online, and all are marked ‘Copyright Victor Patterson’, a Belfast photographer! So that’s why you’re not getting a mugshot. (Though you’re not missing much!) In fact, there’s little information of any kind about Wardell on the internet, unless you’re prepared to dig. Which I enjoy!

So what is he doing nowadays? Well, here’s an example. Swansea council’s planning committee recently considered an application for 14,970 solar panels in the Cockett Valley. The application had been made in the name of Renewable Developments (Wales) Ltd, run by one Huw Davies, a former fixer for the late Bryn Llewellyn, of Abergelli Farm, Felindre, on the outskirts of Swansea, who was a self-made multi-millionaire in haulage and small coal mines.

(Having mentioned Abergelli Farm, it’s probably worth adding that Davies is planning a 299Mw gas-fired power station there that will – it’s argued – complement the Swansea tidal lagoon. This is being promoted by Abergelli Power, which seems to be acting in concert with Millbrook Power, which is in turn a subsidiary of Watt Power Ltd of Edinburgh.)

As you might expect, the local residents objected to the solar scam scheme, partly because the Cockett Valley is a ‘green wedge’ in an increasingly built up area. Their councillor, Ann Cook, who sat on the planning committee, conscientiously represented the wishes of her constituents by objecting to the planning application. In fact, at the July 14th planning committee meeting most Labour councillors on the planning committee voted against the application.

But by the time the planning application was reconsidered on August 11th the situation had changed dramatically. The Labour councillors trooped into the meeting holding each other’s hands and all bar one voted for the solar rip-off, while Ann Cook, the local councillor, was allowed / instructed to feign sickness rather than turn up and risk losing her (and Labour’s) seat by voting in favour of something her ward was vehemently against.

At this second meeting applicant Huw Davies was allowed to address the committee. Sitting alongside him, glaring at the assembled councillors, was Gareth Wardell, even though he had no obvious connection with the application. He certainly doesn’t seem to be on the company’s books.

I’ve already mentioned the lack of photographs of Wardell, and then there’s his Wikipedia entry, which is skeletal. Though a little digging did put flesh on the bones. For example, I found this on a Bloomberg page, which lists Wardell as “Energy Advisor – Planning” to an outfit called the Camborne Energy Group Ltd. When I checked Camborne Energy on Company Check I was confronted with about a dozen companies of that name, at the same Cardiff address, and all marked “dissolved”. Though there is a company in Bridgend called Camborne Energy Investments (10) Ltd, described as “active”, but does no trading! Who starts up so many companies, to do nothing? And why?

Another company with which Wardell is, or was, linked is 3C Energy. Now this may or may not be an Irish company, it certainly had an address in Dublin. The panel below (click to enlarge) is taken from a cached version of the site because all links to 3C websites are broken. Note again, Wardell’s usefulness is made clear – his ability to get planning permission.

Wardell Advisor

As with Camborne Energy Investments Ltd, we find multiple identities for 3C Energy. The only one of which that appears to be trading, 3C Renewable Energy Investments Ltd, is based in Cardiff and has a net worth of £-86,195. At 11 Oaklands Road, Bridgend, the same address as one of the Camborne companies, we find 3C Energy Developments (1) Ltd. And you will not be surprised to learn that we find the same man mentioned as director of both, Jonathan David Townend. But since June 26th, we also find Wardell as a director. The companies Townend has been involved with deserve a post on their own, but who is he?

I have argued for many years that the ‘Welsh’ Labour Party is corrupt to its core. It’s members as venal and selfish as those of any party the bruvvers and sissters condemn. What you have just read is, perhaps, another example of that venality.

Without wishing to unduly excite his lawyers it’s pretty clear that Gareth Wardell advertises himself as a kind of gun for hire. A man who, for a price, will use his influence within the Labour Party to get planning permission for the rogues inhabiting the renewables sector, parasites feeding off the public purse who, in truth, have no more concern for the environment than I have for the well-being of the Labour Party.

What Wardell does may be legal, then again it may not. Perhaps it depends where the line is drawn between lobbying and exerting undue pressure in order to influence planning and other decisions for the material gain of those exerting the pressure. Where Wardell appears to be clever is in having few if any direct involvements with the projects for which he’s lobbying. Take the Cockett Valley solar farm, he seems to have no official or registered connection with the applicant, so why was he ‘phoning and in other ways applying pressure on Labour councillors, especially the ward councillor?

Wardell’s influence can obviously swing things in Swansea, but how far does that influence reach? Can he affect decisions made by the Notional Assembly and the ‘Welsh’ Government? Whatever the answers, this little tale, this potted biography, is an indictment of the planning system, the political system, and the ‘Welsh’ Labour Party.

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TERRY MATTHEWS

When the unlamented David Phillips was overthrown in Swansea he also lost his role as chairman of the Swansea Bay City Region consortium, though at the time he seemed to think he could carry on with the city region role. Others clearly had different ideas. He was replaced by Sir Terry Matthews, usually described as ‘Wales’ richest man’ or ‘Wales’ most successful entrepreneur’. (‘Entrepreneur’, a word for which there is no Welsh equivalent, by the way.)

I’ve never been too sure who exactly appointed Matthews, was it the members of the consortium, or the ‘Welsh’ Government? Recent statements by Matthews only add to my confusion.

Speaking last week at a question and answer session held at Trinity St. David University’s Carmarthen campus Matthews declared that he is “in favour of Carmarthenshire branding itself as region of Cardiff to boost the area’s economy”! Carmarthenshire, remember, is to the west of Swansea, and at the nearest point is over 50 miles from Cardiff, the county council is a member of the Swansea Bay city region, yet Matthews is telling Carmarthenshire to link itself with Cardiff! Then, when asked by a student how Carmarthenshire could compete with big cities, Matthews’ response was “You can cheat”!

Terry Matthews

And Matthews has form when it comes to advising people to lie, and be “shifty”. Around the same time he told business leaders in Gwent to tell people they’re based in Cardiff. Here’s a response to that suggestion in the form of a letter published in the South Wales Guardian.

Matthews is supposed to be heading the Swansea Bay City Region project, yet seems more concerned with promoting Cardiff, which makes me even more suspicious of his appointment. For I have regularly argued that the Swansea Bay City Region was added as an afterthought in order to disguise the fact that the Cardiff City region was all that really mattered to the ‘Welsh’ Government. Which makes me suspect that it was the ‘Welsh’ Government that appointed Matthews, perhaps to ensure that the Swansea Bay City Region isn’t too successful, and doesn’t interfere with Cardiff’s ambitions. Certainly, that’s the only interpretation to draw from the man’s bizarre statements.

But, for a minute, let’s listen to Matthews, let’s take his advice ad absurdum. If what he advises for Carmarthenshire, Swansea and the Valleys is credible, then why doesn’t he suggest that Cardiff brand itself as part of Bristol, after all, Bristol is a much more attractive and famous city? Why stop there – why shouldn’t every city from Plymouth to Inverness pretend to be part of London? ‘But wait!’ I hear you cry, Cardiff’s on the up, getting a lot of positive publicity from major sporting events being held in the city, such as the 2017 Champions League final.

OK . . . let’s consider that for a minute. It is generally agreed that the greatest final of all time was in 1960, when the great Real Madrid team of Puskas, di Stefano, Ghento and the rest beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7 – 3 before 127,621 fans. That game was played at Hampden Park, Glasgow. How much did Glasgow really benefit from that in hard, economic terms? The same could be asked of more recent venues, cities such as Athens (1983), Seville (1986), Istanbul (2005), Lisbon (2014). Like Glasgow, all great cities, but I think someone’s over-egging it to suggest that a few hours of television exposure will have investors rushing, and ‘swarms’ of people wanting to settle in any city hosting a major sporting event.

Matthews gravell

Though if there is some truth in this, then Swansea is obviously getting more regular and wholly positive global exposure from the Swans playing in the Premier League. All Swans’ games are televised around the world, with massive audiences when they play one of the ‘big’ clubs. And what’s more, the name ‘Swansea’ is inescapable, it’s visible from the score to the players’ shirts. By comparison, when people view the 2017 Champions League final they’ll only be interested in the two teams, not that it’s taking place in Cardiff.

Clearly, a lot of nonsense is spouted by the Cardiff propaganda machine (otherwise known as the ‘Welsh media’) which tries to justify the disproportionate investment and expenditure in Cardiff. Yet this, as the letter-writer to the South Wales Guardian pointed out, is the real problem. It is a dangerous and anti-national strategy that risks alienating other parts of the country, and poses the very real danger that large parts, especially in the north, will identify even more strongly with coterminous areas of England.

Devolution should mean nation building, not favouring one city over all other parts of the country. It’s about time those clowns down Cardiff docks, and the civil servants who manipulate them, realised that the strategies pursued since 1999 are dividing not uniting us. (Though from the perspective of the civil servants, answering to London, maybe this is the strategy.) The areas that were poor in 1999 are relatively poorer today, compared with Cardiff, and almost all other parts of Europe.

Wales needs a strategy to bring us together; the south east, the north, the Green Desert, and of course the Swansea Bay area, where those involved in the city region project might start asking themselves whether Terry “region of Cardiff” Matthews is the right man for the job.