Turks To Sosban?

On 31/05/202331/05/2023 By JacIn Far Left, Globalism, Labour Party, Local Government, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media, World Economic Forum43 Comments

I hadn’t planned on writing this, but you know how it is, you learn of 300 ‘refugees’ coming to a place where you’ve sunk a few pints, and then you discover a previously unknown publishing empire in the same town . . . well, it becomes difficult to turn down the opportunity.

Maybe I should explain that ‘Sosban’ is the nickname for Llanelli, after the local anthem, Sosban Fach, which was always sung at Stradey Park, the old home of Llanelli RFC, and after which the Stradey Park Hotel is named. This being the destination for those 300 ‘refugees’.

Stradey Park Hotel. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

And yes, I was there at Stradey Park on the great day in 1972 when the Scarlets beat the All Blacks 9 – 3. A few of us travelled down from Harlech, stayed at the Ivy Bush in Carmarthen. I got utterly rat-arsed that night.

Happy days!

I suppose I should conclude this intro by explaining that the indigenes of ‘Sosban’, with their unique accent, are called ‘Turks’. I have no idea why. Does anybody know?

The assumption that some of these ‘refugees’ will be Turks or Turkish Kurds explains the title of this little offering. Clever, innit?

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BREAKING THE NEWS . . . OR PART OF IT

Here’s a BBC account from May 25. Yesterday, the BBC also ran the story of the couple who’d planned to marry at the venue. Can’t find anything on the ITV website.

Then, yesterday, came the report below in Llais y Sais, by Branwen Jones, telling that a ‘network’ had been set up to help the “asylum seekers“. Before even reading the piece I knew what it was about – Leftists exploiting illegal immigrants to attack the working class and decent, concerned locals.

Which is how it works nowadays.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Since the Left gave up on the working class, and aligned itself with many of the biggest corporations and some of the richest men on the planet, the formerly downtrodden victims of capitalism have become ‘racists’, ‘transphobes’, ‘Islamophobes’, etc.

Not that the working class has changed. It’s just that the Left and its brainwashed followers now march to the sound of the Globalists’ drum. They don’t understand where they’re marching to, but then, the modern Left is about theatrics not socialist theory.

As the reports make clear, locals were understandably concerned by these reports of 300 or more unvetted migrants being brought into their community, and so a public meeting was held on Sunday night at the Selwyn Samuel Centre. The biggest public meeting seen in Llanelli for some years.

This report comes from In Your Area.

The BBC was invited to attend, but did not show. If anybody from the Beeb had turned up they would have heard ex-cop Steve Williams lay into the council for not informing local people about the plan, let alone consulting them. (Genuine Turk accent.)

Tonight people of Llanelli held a meeting regarding @StradyHotel & being used to house illegal migrants.
Steve Williams ex police officer told the politicians exactly what he thought of them for hiding this from the people for 4 weeks@DaveAtherton20 @Sargon_of_Akkad @StanVoWales pic.twitter.com/xhGt2QLCRY

— Voice Of Wales (@VoWalesOfficial) May 28, 2023

A name you’ll see mentioned in the piece about the ‘network’ is Steve Kelshaw. Local Leftist who’s been involved with refugees in the past. (I omit the quotes because the Syrians Kelshaw was working with may have been genuine refugees.)

After reading the piece in yesterday’s ‘paper I went online to see what else I could turn up. And blow me! there was an online version of the same piece, but from last Saturday, and with a different headline; this one saying, “community unites to support asylum seekers“.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Which as we know is absolute bollocks!

For as you’ve read, the “local community” turned up in their hundreds, at the Selwyn Samuel Centre, to show how pissed off they are with the whole farrago.

But the online version was written before the public meeting. And obviously, after that meeting, there was no hope of sustaining the claim made in the original headline. So “community” had to become “network“.

Working back, the earliest report I can find is by Dylan Davies in the Cambrian News, last Wednesday, and timed at 2:50pm. Closely followed by Lucy John at WalesOnline at 18:28 of the same day. (Updated on Friday.)

The Cambrian News report is basically the one followed by the others. Except that the CN piece quoted a council spokesperson saying:

“The proposal and engagement by Clearsprings (the Home Office private housing provider) has been disappointing, giving the council no confidence that they understand the local or national context they intend to work within”.

The other reports neglected to mention the role of controversial Clearsprings.

Local journalist Robert Lloyd tells us the BBC was invited to the public meeting but did not turn up. Lloyd seems to work as an In Your Area stringer for Retch, which owns Llais y Sais and its online version, WalesOnline.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But why has he got it in for the BBC?

Because Tuesday’s Wales at Six opened with, “Some local people are protesting . . . “. Then it covered the cancelled wedding . . . . But later, it reported, ” . . . on Sunday around 400 people attended a public meeting . . . “.

But that was 6:30pm on the 30th. Lloyd’s tweet is timed at 7:10am that day. Had earlier BBC versions not mentioned the public meeting?

Anyway, let’s not get bogged down in what may be personal. We can reasonably assume that Branwen Jones of Llais y Sais got her version of the story from stringer Robert Lloyd. But if so, why didn’t she mention the public meeting?

All very confusing. But then I got to wondering who else might have been pushing the story with their own interpretation.

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THE SOSBANWIDE WEB

My search of the interweb was now taking me up some blind alleys, but then I found another report from May 26, and from the Llanelli Standard.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

It’s basically a shorter version of the other ‘support network’ reports.

I must confess, I’d never heard of the Llanelli Standard. Perhaps most people west of the Llwchwr have never heard of it either. But the website says: “The Llanelli Standard is the new newspaper for Llanelli, by people from Llanelli and based in Llanelli. The Llanelli Standard is managed by Red Brand Media”.

So, it’s obviously, er, Llanelli.

But it does seem to have crossed that mighty torrent to launch the Swansea Standard. I just hope that it’s “a newspaper for Swansea, by people from Swansea and based in Swansea”.

Last thing we want is Turks writing Jack news!

The empire is completed with the Carmarthenshire Standard and the West Wales Chronicle. It was in the Chronicle that we read of Steve Kelshaw’s work with Syrian refugees.

The ‘About’ page of the Llanelli Standard is good for a few laughs. Not least this claim, for I would suggest otherwise.

The West Wales Chronicle and the Llanelli Standard are both politically neutral

And as evidence I would present the headline we read earlier suggesting that the community around the Stradey Park Hotel was preparing a carpet of fragrant blooms to welcome the Sons of the Prophet who will surely appear.

Unless of course they’re representatives of Albanian drugs gangs, or others of an entrepreneurial bent.

The ‘About’ page also says, “The Llanelli Standard is published by Red Brand Media and owned by CETMA”. So who are they?

Let’s start here, with the website for Red Brand Media. Is there a clue to political leaning in the name? And here’s the Companies House entry. Where we learn that the controlling interest is Cetma Ltd.

From the website we learn that Cetma is funded by the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’, linked bodies, and the Lottery, which works closely with the ‘Welsh Government’.

Turning to the Companies House entry, the ‘accounts’ (actually, unaudited financial statement) tell us very little. Though I was intrigued by the three directors.

There’s Keith Elwyn Evans-Hurley, who in other entries prefixes his name with ‘Lord’. There’s David Jonathan Williams. And then there’s 83-year-old Eunydd Ashley Brynmor Thomas.

Interesting character, our Eunydd.

He was the Labour councillor for Llwynhendy on Carmarthenshire county council. But, in 2004, he took advantage of a scheme by the Notional Assembly for Wales to retire, and trousered a golden handshake of at least £16,000.

Everybody waved him good-bye and off he rode into a golden sunset. But bugger me! if he wasn’t back in 2008 standing as an Independent. He came bottom of the poll.

People are reluctant to vote for the undead, even in Llwynhendy.

Fellow candidate Meilyr Bowen Hughes, of Plaid Cymru, said: “It’s a loophole that should have plugged by the Welsh Assembly Government.” He added he was “very unhappy” with explanations given to him why that had not happened.

That’s enough distractions. What I’ve tried to do with these detours is open a few eyes as to how a story makes it into the national news.

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THE BIT AT THE END

Given that the council knew of the plan for three to four weeks before it eventually broke it’s reasonable to assume that the council was the source of the story.

There is massive public outrage over the plan, and over the council hiding it from the public for so long. But this element of the story is either being ignored, or massaged to push the line taken by Llais y Sais and others – the burghers of Llanelli offering up their wives and daughters to comfort the eagerly-awaited ‘asylum seekers’.

Yesterday’s piece in Llais y Sais focused entirely on the Leftist support network with no mention of the public meeting. This is not balanced journalism.

Clearly, the media emphasis has shifted from protest to ‘support network’, with some wanting us to believe there are no protestors. Or that the few there are can be dismissed with the usual slanders.

Which would be bullshit. But they may be getting away with it! And that should make you wonder how much of what you are told in the ‘Welsh’ media is bullshit.

Because everything put out by the media in Wales must meet certain criteria. And so to help you – well, you know me! – here they are. But remember! they’ll be inferred or alluded to, rather than stated outright:

Reporting must adhere to the Unionist line. Supporting devolution is allowed but nothing going any further.
The Woke-Left diktats must be obeyed. Men can have babies; ‘refugees’ are all genuine, and must be welcomed; White people are usually racist.
The biggest threat to humankind is the ‘climate catastrophe’.

Basically, the Globalist agenda. Understand that and you’ll make far more sense of the bilge coming out of Cardiff every day.

And I’ll leave you with something else to think about. As our local press declines it is being increasingly replaced by political activists funded directly or, more usually, indirectly, by the ‘Welsh Government’ in ‘community journalism’.

But all done in the interests of “maintaining a healthy local democracy“.

More bullshit.

♦ end ♦

Baghdad to Pendine?

On 07/09/202026/01/2021 By JacIn Colonialism, Corruption, Planning, Swansea, Wales, Welsh Government24 Comments

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

♦

This week’s posting began life as a round-up of four separate stories, but one of them grew and grew until it pushed the others out of the nest.

But don’t distress yourselves, for I shall pick them up and breathe life back into them for the next posting.

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RUBBISH, RUBBISH

This piece began when I read something interesting on WalesOnline – and it’s not often I get to write that!

The story was about rubbish dumped behind the Lidl Supermarket in Pontardawe in November 2018. Rubbish that had come from a building in central Swansea.

The guilty party was Gower Way Limited. Given the name I assumed it was local to Swansea; but no, for Gower Way Limited has its registered address in London.

Where it was Incorporated in July 2015, and there’s been no change of name. Suggesting the company was set up in London with the intention of operating in Swansea. Though, curiously, the address transferred from Swansea to London in September 2018 – without any record of it ever transferring to Swansea.

The only director and sole shareholder is Nasser Saleh Alanizy.

The confirmation statement is currently overdue with Companies House. In fact, the company was struck off late last year and restored just before Christmas. Though the contact name given on the restoration document is not Nasser Alanizy but Baber Wassim.

Whoever this is, he’s never been a director of Gower Way. Though if it’s this Baber Wassim, then he has a string of dissolved companies to his name.

The unaudited, micro-entity ‘accounts’ suggest capital and reserves of £874,900 in 2019, down from £1,820,720 the previous year. Made up entirely of fixed assets, possibly buildings.

That’s what’s suggested when we click on the Gower Way ‘Charges’ tab. For the charges refer to a retail unit at 62 Kingsway, and ‘The Box’, in Welcome Lane. Both in Swansea.

I must confess that for a minute this old Jack couldn’t place Welcome Lane and so I had to resort to Google. It’s a short street running down from Castle Street to the Strand. But there’s nothing there apart from an old public lavatory. Is that ‘The Box’?

Indeed it is. As the title document and plan prove. In two instalments totalling £114,210.70 Swansea council seems to have paid Gower Way Ltd to take this old public loo off their hands on a 125-year lease commencing 14 December 2015. Though the charges are dated 31 March 2017.

Over on the Kingsway we find a similar story. Two charges totalling £174,521.97 against No 62. According to the title document the lease only cost Gower Way £80,500 plus VAT, so why did the council cough up £174,521.97?

Was it payment for disposing of the rubbish?

That gives us a total of £288,732.67. So I’m not clear as to where Gower Way’s assets of £879,000 shown in the accounts come from. There must be assets in addition to the buildings in Swansea. Presumably.

To recap; Gower Way Ltd was Incorporated 9 July 2015. The lease for 62 Kingsway was signed 10 September, 2015, and the lease for ‘The Box’ on 14 December, 2015. The four loans from the Council are dated 31 March, 2017.

Does this mean that the Council signed lease agreements with a company that over a year later needed money from the Council to honour those lease agreements?

UPDATE: It now appears that a Middle Eastern restaurant opened in April 2017 at 62 The Kingsway. This probably explains the council loans in March 2017. A Twitter account was started, but never tweeted; and a Facebook page was also opened, and abandoned.

There was even a short-lived company called Feasting House Swansea Limited. Incorporated March 2017, application to strike-off made 18 January 2018. There may have been a restaurant on the premises for a short while but I doubt if that was the primary purpose to which the building was put.

And what were the loans for the public lavatories in Welcome Lane used for?

Swansea council was taken for a ride.

UPDATE 08.09.2020: A source tells me that the loans were linked with Property Enhancement Development Fund (PEDF) and Homes Above Shops (HAS). This Google link suggest that funding was announced for Swansea in June 2014. Gower Way Ltd was formed a year later, almost certainly to take advantage of the funding.

Click to enlarge

Unfortunately the link only opens The Wave (radio station) home page.

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HOW THEY ARE RELATED

Nasser Alanizy’s Linkedin entry says that he has also been a director of ‘Old House CMC’ since September 2009. I have no idea what CMC stands for, but a Nasser Alanizy is a director of Old House Group Ltd, a company launched as recently as February last year.

Though his day job would appear to be with the Focus Building Group. Or it was until a couple of years ago. But the Focus Building Group doesn’t appear at all on Alanizy’s Linkedin profile.

A bit confusing. And now it gets more confusing.

For another of Alanizy’s companies is Canons Lodge Ltd. The accounts are overdue with Companies House but the latest available accounts, up to 31 July 2018, show ‘Capital and reserves’ of minus £237,000.

And yet, if we compare the accounts for 2017 and 2018, specifically the extracts below, we see that what was £630,000 in 2017 has reduced in the 2018 accounts to £63,000. Is this a typo, the sort of thing that happens with unaudited, ‘do-it-yourself’ submissions, or is it something more?

But perhaps what’s even stranger is that with Canons Lodge we encounter the same four charges with the City and County of Swansea. The total amount – £288,732.67 – is exactly the same as that listed against the two properties in Swansea for Gower Way Ltd.

So Swansea council is shelling out for a building in London!

Canons Lodge Ltd began life with a London address, Then on 24 March, 2017, it transferred its registered address to 62 The Kingsway. The moolah from the council was delivered the following month.

Then, just like Gower Way Ltd, in September 2018 the address was changed to a London address. Both companies eventually settling at 23 Crawford Street, London W1H 1BY.

So what or where is Canons Lodge?

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CANONS PARK

It turns out that Canons Park is a municipal park in the borough of Harrow in north west London, with an Underground station of the same name. The Lodge used to serve as the park-keeper’s residence and it seems that Nasser Alanizy has recently bought the place.

I got this information from Friends of Canons Park, who told me “Mr Alanizy is the resident of the Lodge in Canons Park. He is a property developer and is trying to adapt the Lodge to create an arts centre and meeting rooms, which the Friends are happy to support as they will directly benefit the park.”

The Land Registry title document for the Lodge tells us, page 3 C5: “(09.04.2014) A Transfer of the land in this title dated 19 March 2014 made between (1) The Mayor And Burgesses Of the London Borough Of Harrow and (2) Intercontinental Developments Limited contains restrictive covenants.”

So who are the previous owners, Intercontinental Developments Ltd? To begin with, it is registered with Companies House. The only current director is Surmid El Akabi. A previous director – from February 2005 until March 2019 – was Karim El Akabi.

Surmid El Akabi’s Linkedin profile tells us that he is CEO of the FIAFI Group, an Iraqi company, that gets a mention in the Panama Papers. (Click on a node to open links.) There we see Karim El Akabi, and also Namir El Akabi.

It’s reasonable to assume that the three El Akabis are related.

Digression alert!

I came across this reference from 2013 to Namir El Akabi buying the Paragon Hotel in Birmingham. BirminghamLive said: “According to sources, Iraqi owners the El-Akabi family are preparing to invest in a multi-million pound overhaul of the hotel which will see it restored to its former glory”.

The Paragon Hotel was soon being used to house more than 230 young male asylum seekers, placed there by G4S. The owners promised to clean up their act and refurbish the hotel.

The re-named building seems to have operated as part hostel for asylum seekers and part commercial hotel. Last month, the citizens of Brum learnt that it was still housing asylum seekers . . . but without the knowledge of the city council.

Surrendering to the curiosity that would surely have killed me by now if I’d been born with a taste for mice I wondered who owns the Paragon/Rowton Hotel.

The answer is Paragon Investment Estate Ltd, Incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Presumably a front for the El Akabis because the most recent sale recorded with the Land Registry was the one reported in 2013.

The BVI is also home to Namir El-Akabi’s Almco group of companies. (Again, click on the nodes to open further links.) The man himself is described in this piece from the New York Times of May 2011 as one of ‘The Hot-Money Cowboys of Baghdad’.

Namir El Akabi was one of the wealthy exiles who helped bring down Saddam Hussein . . . and he expected his cut of post-Saddam Iraq. His reach, under Western patronage, also extended to Afghanistan, as this 2019 piece from the Bureau of Investigative Journalists explains.

Namir El Akabi has contacts in the UK government. And so it’s no surprise to find him in 2013 buying a hotel in Birmingham to house refugees, many from his own country. Perhaps he had better contacts than Birmingham City Council.

Recap: This digression came about because the Al Akabis previously owned Canons Lodge which is now owned by Nasser Alanizy who leases the buildings in Swansea with loans from the Council.

Moving on . . .

I can’t help wondering if the modestly-named Intergalactic Developments had plans for Canons Park Lodge that the council made clear would not be allowed. Thwarted, the boys from Baghdad found (perhaps already knew) Alanizy.

There was a bogus ‘sale’, and the council being aware of this subterfuge explains why the Friends of Canons Park tell me, “all his (Alanizy’s) applications to Harrow Council have been turned down”.’

Extract from the Land Registry title document for the Lodge, Canons Park. Click to enlarge

You will recall that one of Alanizy’s companies was the Old House Group Ltd at the popular accommodation address, 23 Crawford Street, London W1H 1BY. The only other director was Mazin Daood.

We find Daood and Alanizy together again at Bombay Development Ltd, which takes its name from property owned in Bombay Street, London SE16. Another director is Ednor Mata of Focus Developments. The shares are divided 400,000 to Focus Developments Solutions Ltd, 700,000 to SSL Investment Ltd, and 300,000 to Mazmo Partners Ltd.

Alanizy is a director of Focus Development Solutions along with Ednor Mata and Gentian Mata. Each holding 100 of the 300 shares. Only formed in June 2018 the first accounts were due 12 March. Companies House is still waiting.

SSL Investment Ltd belongs to a Jordanian family living in the United Arab Emirates.

Mazmo Partners Ltd has Mazin Daood as sole director. But with another person who may be his father also involved.

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PENDINE IS VERY POPULAR AT THIS TIME OF THE YEAR

But I have little interest in what’s going on in Baghdad, Birmingham, Abu Dhabi or London. Wales is my concern, and those we’re discussing may now have business interests west of the old home town.

Among the companies using the Crawford Street address we find another with Mazin Daood as director, formed as recently as April this year, Pendine Sands Ltd. The Nature of business SIC tells us: “Support activities for animal production (other than farm animal boarding and care) not elsewhere classified”.

Which I thought was a bit odd, why the sudden interest in animals? Are they hoping to profit from the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers?

Whatever the answer, we have an interlocking set of property investors with Middle East connections, one of whom has turned his attention to Pendine Sands, which was famous for land speed record attempts in the first half of the 20th century. You’ll recall that J G Parry-Thomas was killed there in 1927 trying to beat his own world land speed record.

Image: Kevin Trahar. Pendine beach. Click to enlarge

As if that wasn’t enough, there is an Irish company called Pendine Sands 4894 Limited (known as Olympus Leasing 4162 Limited until September 2015). Through a number of intermediaries it is ultimately owned by Goshawk Aviation Funding Ltd, which I assume links with this aircraft leasing company.

There are two other ‘Pendine Sands’ companies at the same Dublin 2 address, Pendine Sands 4832 Limited and Pendine Sands 39621 Limited.

So many companies using the Pendine name could be pure coincidence. Then again, maybe not.

Finally, let’s remember that the UK Ministry of Defence owns over 20 square kilometres at Pendine, which it leases out to QinetiC. We’ve come across QinetiC before. Involved with wayward drones at MoD Aberporth, and through links with Snowdonia Aerospace LLP at Llanbedr.

QinetiC has strong connections with the UK Government’s allies and business associates in the Middle East.

UPDATE 20.09.2020: Well, well, well! RAF lands huge transport plane on Cefn Sidan beach, just a few miles from Pendine.

UPDATE 21.12.2020: This report from todays Western Mail tells us that Carmarthenshire County Council is looking for a private operator to run its £7.6m ‘Pendine Attractor Project’ at Pendine.

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CONCLUSION AND QUESTIONS

As you must know, there’s a lot of money sloshing about the Middle East just looking for a home. Or perhaps a raison d’être.

The City of London and its far-flung empire of tax havens attract this money because no questions are asked.

But I have some questions:

When and how did Nasser Alanizy make contact with the Council of the City and County of Swansea?
Why were the ‘The Box’ and 62 Kingsway leased rather than sold outright?
Why did the Council need to fund the deals for these two properties?
Has any work been done on either of these properties?
Why would Canons Lodge Ltd – buying a property in London – need to temporarily move its address to Swansea?
Were the changes of address connected with the loans, and therefore a deliberate attempt to deceive someone into believing these were Swansea-based companies?
If so, was anyone at Swansea Council complicit in this?
Now that Swansea Council is aware of the facts, what is it going to do?
Is the ‘Welsh Government’ aware of any plans for Pendine relating to the MoD property?
Is the ‘Welsh Government’ aware of any Middle Eastern involvement or investment at Pendine?
Can the ‘Welsh Government’ be bothered to make enquiries of its masters in London?

What do you make of it, boys and girls? Answers on the dog-eared postcard I’m sure you’ll find at the back of a drawer.

♦ end ♦

Justice for Jenny Lee Clarke

On 01/08/201802/08/2018 By JacIn Corruption, Labour Party, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media75 Comments

I am grateful for the co-operation of Ms Clarke in the writing of this article

A long and completely unnecessary ordeal came to an end yesterday at Cardiff Crown Court for Jenny Lee Clarke, who had been accused of theft by Swansea East Labour MP Carolyn Harris. I have reported on this case more than once over recent years, but for latecomers to the story, here’s the background.

Before the 2015 UK general election both Carolyn Harris and Jenny Lee Clarke worked for the Swansea East Labour MP Siân James. Some time in November 2014 Harris humiliated Ms Clarke over her “dyke boots” before attacking her and pulling out clumps of hair. This being just another – if perhaps the worst – in a series of incidents of Harris seeking to insult and humiliate Clarke over her sexuality.

We have evidence for this behaviour in the fact that Siân James MP spoke to Harris, warning her about making homophobic remarks.

Witnesses to the attack included Labour councillor Paulette Smith (Clydach), who gave evidence at the trial.

Harris asked Clarke to forgive her and perhaps in the hope of confirming her remorse made Clarke her office manager after she became the new MP for Swansea East in May 2015. The rapprochement didn’t last long. Following a grievance raised on January 15 and ignored, and then eight hours spent giving a statement to the police on January 27, Clarke was sacked on January 28.

Her replacement is alleged to have found evidence that Ms Clarke had given herself an unauthorised pay rise and also shortened her working week by forging Carolyn Harris’ signature on a form to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA). This was the charge against Jenny Lee Clarke.

Left, Carolyn Harris MP Lab Swansea East, Jenny Lee Clarke Courtesy of WalesOnline, click to enlarge. (That is definitely NOT Carolyn Harris’ comforting hand you see on Jenny Lee Clarke’s shoulder.)

Clarke insisted this had been done on the instructions of the new MP, arguing that “She (Harris) never liked paperwork. She left me to do everything.” As for the form ‘discovered’ by the new office manager, Clarke is adamant, “I didn’t sign it – I just wrote her name. Many letters and other forms have my writing on them – I have never attempted to write her signature, not at all.”

Interesting in this context is a document Jenny Lee Clarke compiled from her diary and from where we learn that as early as 2013 Carolyn Harris seems to have bullied her way into control of Siân James’ office, and by April 2014 we can see that Ms Clarke was not happy with being told by Harris to deal with IPSA.

12.04.12 – C.H demanding I do IPSA……..the rates were paid £1693. L.B £862.50. Reconciled Barclay Card

May 2012 – completing database of IPSA claims

06.01.14 – Was going to speak to C.H regarding I.P.S.A I wasn’t comfortable!

(The ‘L.B.’ referred to is Lawrence Bailey, former Swansea mayor and porn addict, PR advisor to Carolyn Harris , and of course columnist for the pro-Labour – to the point of being swivel eyed – Evening Post.)

Ms Clarke informs me she will be contacting IPSA asking that body to re-open its investigation into certain cash withdrawals made by Harris.

Understandably angry with the way she had been treated over many years, culminating now in her dismissal, Jenny Lee Clarke went to the media with the story of the assault she had suffered in November 2014. Most ‘papers went with it. Here are reports from the Telegraph, Daily Mail, Sun, and Pink News.

The story was also covered in Wales, but with an interesting twist. A day later than the London ‘papers WalesOnline ran the story, but now the emphasis had shifted – it was no longer a homophobic attack but a case of fraud. With Carolyn Harris (or the public purse) now the victim.

Which is when it gets a bit curious, and rather disturbing. Martin Shipton told us that police are ‘probing’ the office manager Jenny Lee Clarke, but where did he get that information, and should he have used it in such a blatant attempt to save face for Carolyn Harris, and the Labour Party?

Whatever the source of Shipton’s information, his report was the first Ms Clarke knew of any investigation. Is that any way to find out that the police might soon be knocking on your door? Four months eventually passed before Ms Clarke was arrested on 24 July. Charges were not laid until October.

Yet Gypsy Rose Shipton knows all!

Then followed a series of delays as the case was put off time after time until it eventually came to trial in July 2018. Should it ever have taken so long? Was there interference from the South Wales Police PCC, the former Labour MP, Alun Michael, in this very political prosecution?

Come to that, did Michael have a hand in deciding that Clarke’s complaint of January 2016 was classed as common assault, and therefore – due to the fact that the complaint was made more than six months after the alleged offence of November 2014 – could not be proceeded with? A different offence, with a longer expiry period, could have resulted in Harris being prosecuted.

Though given that the offence being complained of was a homophobic assault, and therefore clearly a hate crime, why didn’t South Wales Police arrest and charge Carolyn Harris?

While Jenny Lee Clarke was sinking into depression, not knowing whether she might end up in prison for a crime she hadn’t committed, the MP for Swansea East was busy preparing for the trial by ingratiating herself with the Gay community.

Click to enlarge (Carolyn Harris is in the centre)

Now the obvious question is – how many such events did Carolyn Harris attend before she was outed as a homophobe in the London newspapers? Ms Clarke tells me that she cannot recall Harris taking anything other than a hostile interest in Gay matters before the prospect of a trial loomed.

I suppose we could give her the benefit of the doubt and believe that Harris’s persistent and very public homophobic rants were some kind of defence mechanism, her desperately holding the closet doors shut. With the mauling she received at the hands of the London prints triggering the burst of emotional energy that allowed her to emerge.

An alternative, and less charitable view, might be that she’s another scheming politician who went through the motions of befriending gays and others because she thought it would come in useful when she had her moment in the witness box. ‘Homophobic! Moi?’

I understand Jenny Lee Clarke is considering suing Carolyn Harris for unfair dismissal, sexual discrimination and a few other relevant charges. I wonder if Mrs Harris’s new Gay friends will rally to her defence?

If I was Ms Clarke I would also lay a complaint against the police for not properly categorising the offence so clearly described to them in eight hours of questioning at Swansea Central police station on January 27, 2016.

There are just so many questions needing answers. Here are just a few:

Where, how and with whom did the decision to accuse Jenny Lee Clarke begin? (And I mean accuse, not prosecute.)
Will there now be an investigation into whether Carolyn Harris or anyone else knowingly made false accusations?
Should IPSA – and perhaps the police – investigate how Carolyn Harris organises her office and her staff, to establish if she delegates work in ways that make her staff – on her instructions – break the law, or House of Commons rules?
After her complaint made on January 27, 2016, why did South Wales Police not pursue what was clearly a hate crime?
Will Jenny Lee Clarke receive an apology from South Wales Police for putting her through the wringer for over two years for what was clearly an accusation motivated by the desire for revenge?
Will Jenny Lee Clarke receive an apology from the Labour Party?
Did the trade union Unite properly advise Ms Clarke during the period of her dismissal? What Ms Clarke described to me as “shit representation”. Might Unite have been more concerned with protecting the reputation of a Labour MP and the wider party?
Will anyone compensate Jenny Lee Clarke for what she’s endured?
Will Martin Shipton of Labour-supporting Reach (formerly Trinity Mirror) tell us how he learnt that Jenny Lee Clarke was being investigated before she herself knew?
Jenny Lee Clarke lives in the Gower constituency. Will her MP Tonia Antoniazzi stand up for her constituent and condemn the disgraceful treatment Ms Clarke has received over the past two years?
Is Carolyn Harris’ position as Corbyn’s spokesperson for women and equalities any longer tenable?
Is Carolyn Harris’ position as deputy leader of the Labour Party in Wales any longer tenable?
Can Carolyn Harris remain MP for Swansea East?

STOP PRESS! I hear that back in the city of my dreams the book is open on Carolyn Harris’s successor. Front runners are:

Nicola Louise Edwards, 31, who failed to get elected for the Gowerton ward last year but is said to be fiercely ambitious. Being the grand-daughter of the formidable Lillian Hopkins, and daughter of current councillor Dai Hopkins (Townhill), she is not without influence in the now smoke-free rooms.

Also mentioned is council leader Rob Stewart. As it was put to me, “He’s got no job, lives on his own, so why not”. Call me picky, but I might demand better qualifications from my tribune. But then, this is Labour, and this is Swansea East . . . currently represented by Carolyn Harris. What more need I say?

The rank outsider is former Llansamlet ward councillor, former Sunderland North MP, Hero of the Revolution, Bob Clay. During his brief sojourn in Swansea he drew up plans to remove Harris but now faces expulsion himself. Given his vieux compagnon closeness to Corbyn he might yet gallop over the Briton Ferry Bridge at the head of his Trotskyite legion to scatter the hated Harrisites. (Unless the bridge is closed to traffic, as is so often the case.)

Then again, there are widespread fears that Carolyn Harris will take some shifting. Which I can well believe.

◊

The real issue here, as with so many of the other problems in Wales today, is the Labour Party. The old, decrepit and corrupt Labour Party.

Reminiscent of some mangy old predator that can still stand upright and make a bit of noise but is no longer able to fend for itself, surviving only due to the weakness of rivals and their inhibiting memories of the fearsome beast it once was.

But now, as the end approaches, the truth can no longer be hidden. Labour is finished.

This episode is just another footnote to the volume that lists corruption financial and moral, careerism, cronyism, refusal to serve the Welsh national interest, turning Wales into the pauper of Europe, willing participation in the Britification agenda, mismanagement of public funds including the inability to recognise a shyster when he approaches with a flashing neon sign on his head saying – ‘SHYSTER!’

It’s time to put the old beast out of its misery; and with it the fleas, parasites and bloodsuckers that compound and exacerbate its decline and our misery. For it no longer has the power nor the will to serve Wales. We’d be better off without it. As in the wild, he will soon be replaced and forgotten.

P.S. At the time of publication the only article on the WalesOnline website – and in the Western Mail – is the same PA report by Rod Minchin that appeared on the BBC Wales website and elsewhere. No doubt something more forensic and informative by Gypsy Rose Shipton will eventually appear.

♦ end ♦

UPDATE 02.08.2018: There has been no official response from the Labour Party in Wales, there’s certainly nothing on the party’s woefully neglected and rarely updated website. All I’ve been able to find was in a piece in today’s Llais y Sais by Martin Shipton after he’d asked for a comment. It reads:

“We were told (by ‘Welsh’ Labour) there had already been a full and thorough investigation into the allegations against Mrs Harris, that the jury’s verdict was not a verdict or a comment on the veracity of the allegations made during the course of the case, and that Mr (Carwyn) Jones has full confidence in Mrs Harris as his deputy leader”.

What the hell does that mean? They still believe that Carolyn Harris didn’t mount a homophobic attack on Jenny Lee Clarke? And that’s it? A woman has been acquitted by a jury – in just 90 minutes! – of very serious charges made against her by a senior Labour politician. Suggesting that that politician was lying and trying secure the conviction of an innocent woman.

But instead of dealing with the trial and its implications, ‘Welsh’ Labour prefers to focus on an incident that may or may not have happened but is materially unconnected with the trial and the accusations made against Jenny Lee Clarke.

‘Bad news – what bad news?’

Devolution as Prozac

On 29/06/201729/06/2017 By JacIn Cardiff, Colonialism, Conservative and Unionist Party, Devolution, Englandandwales, Media, Plaid Cymru, Planning Inspectorate, Public Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Assembly, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media74 Comments

But first . . .

A LESSON FROM HISTORY

Following victories over the Persians at Salamis (480 BC) and Plataea (479 BC), and with mainland Greece liberated, the Spartans withdrew from their leadership of the wartime alliance. Athens seized the opportunity and in 478 BC created the Delian League.

Athenian greed and heavy-handedness soon made the other city-states realise that what they’d thought was an alliance of equals was nothing of the kind. Everything now flowed to Athens and the other city-states were little more than colonies. The League’s treasury was used to enhance and glorify Athens, funding prestige projects such as the Parthenon.

Courtesy of Ancient History Encyclopedia

Eventually, the other city-states could take no more and rebelled. They appealed to Sparta for help and so began the Peloponnesian War, which ran, in three phases, from 431 BC to 404 BC. At the end of the war Athens was defeated and ruined, Thebes and Corinth even wanted to destroy the city and enslave its citizens, but Sparta said no.

The Peloponnesian War was bloody and destructive. Due to Athenian selfishness the other Greek states were even prepared to seek Persian help in bringing her down and ending the golden age of Greece.

Two news items this week have reminded me of Athens and the Delian League.

♦

BACK TO THE 1960s

The first was that the ‘Welsh’ Government will not back the Circuit of Wales in Ebbw Vale. This is something most of us knew weeks ago, it’s why announcing the decision was postponed until after the general election.

But don’t worry! Economy and Infrastructure Secretary, Ken Skates, softened the blow with: “The Welsh Government is therefore today committing to building a new automotive technology business park in Ebbw Vale, with funding of £100million over 10 years, with the potential to support 1,500 new FTE jobs. We will begin this work with the delivery of 40,000 sq ft of manufacturing space on land currently in public ownership.”

So the ‘Welsh’ Government kills off the Circuit of Wales yet still plans to build an ‘automotive technology park’ in Ebbw Vale. Apart from Ferrari’s Cafe what links does Ebbw Vale now have with the automotive industry? Or to put it another way, after 18 years of devolution and ‘Welsh’ Labour rule we’ve gone back to the 1960s with depressed areas offered nothing better than industrial parks. God Almighty!

But this saga may not be finished, for what if the scheme’s backers are able to find full private funding for the venture, will the ‘Welsh’ Government then support the Circuit of Wales or continue to be obstructive? I know where my money would go.

Let’s be absolutely clear: The Circuit of Wales was not supported by the ‘Welsh’ Government because Ebbw Vale is too far from Cardiff and the project didn’t offer enough benefits to Cardiff.

♦

MAJOR TRAUMA

The nearest major trauma centres to Wales are in Liverpool, Stoke, Birmingham and Bristol. Some time ago the decision was taken that south Wales should have its own trauma centre. The two candidate sites were Morriston Hospital in Swansea and the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

On Wednesday we learnt that some anonymous panel had recommended that the MTC should be located in Cardiff . . . despite Cardiff being so near to the existing centre in Bristol.

The centres in England are located where they are for the very good reason that patients suffering serious injury or sudden and serious debilitation benefit greatly from being treated within the first hour; in fact, it’s a matter of life or death. This period is referred to as the ‘golden hour’.

The maps (kindly supplied by BBC Wales) below show the ‘golden hour’ distances from those Major Trauma Centres closest to Wales together with the predicted ‘golden hour’ ranges for MTCs located in Cardiff and Swansea.

The first map, for existing MTCs, tells us that Cardiff and Newport are already within the ‘golden hour’ for the Bristol MTC, while anywhere west of Bridgend is not covered.

Turning to the second map, the Cardiff option, we see a slight improvement, in that Swansea Bay is now covered by the ‘golden hour’, but not western Gower, nor, I suspect, Llanelli. What’s more, rather than complementing the Bristol MTC to form a network of coverage – as we see in England – a Cardiff MTC would almost be in competition with Bristol. The overlap is huge.

The Swansea option, however, provides a real improvement, with the ‘golden hour’ now extending deep into Pembrokeshire and reaching the Cardigan Bay coastline. The ranges of the Swansea and Bristol MTCs overlap around Cardiff and Newport, but they don’t duplicate each other to anything like the same extent as the Cardiff option. Swansea and Bristol would complement each other perfectly.

Of course it’s being argued that, ‘Cardiff has this, and Cardiff has that’, to justify a MTC, but anything can be built or transferred. What cannot be changed is geography, and the critical and determining criterion for locating the Major Trauma Centre should be saving lives in the ‘golden hour’. You cannot emphasise the golden hour all the way through the process and then ignore it in order to locate the MTC in Cardiff.

To put a large area of the south west outside the ‘golden hour’ through handing Cardiff yet another prestige project – for that’s how it’s viewed in Cardiff – will be a difficult decision for politicians to defend.

♦

The role of the ‘Welsh’ media in this debate has been somewhat bizarre, though predictable. On Wednesday WalesOnline ran this story. Putting the case for Swansea was Rob Stewart, leader of Swansea council. (Though the story was quickly updated and for some reason Stewart was replaced with Clive Lloyd, his deputy!)

Putting the case for Cardiff – which is what I assume he was doing – was a ‘speed flyer’ named Niall McCann. (Though by the time the story appeared this morning in Llais y Sais McCann’s contribution had disappeared.)

McCann had shattered his spine speed flying off Pen y Fan and it had been put together by the University Hospital of Wales. McCann opined, “I’m 100% on board with anything that will improve the NHS services on offer. We are a capital city and we should be leading the way in Wales.”

So in the expert opinion of Niall McCann of Cardiff the new MTC should be in Cardiff, ‘Cos Cardiff’s the capital, innit?’ For reasons best known to itself WalesOnline even included in the article a video of McCann speed flying to remind us of the unnecessary risks he takes.

Perhaps the message we were expected to glean from this article was that having injured himself on the Beacons McCann would have been dead or crippled ere the donkey carrying him could have reached an MTC based at Morriston Hospital. If not, then I have no idea what purpose Trinity Mirror thought it was serving by including McCann’s cameo.

Then on Thursday, the BBC rubbed it in with a story headlined “Swansea ’10 to 15 years behind Cardiff’, think tank says”. Obviously unsuited to have a Major Trauma Centre.

♦

TIME TO RETRACE OUR STEPS

But the problems of Wales today go beyond putting all the nation’s eggs in the Cardiff basket, they reach into every corner of our national life. Just look around you and ask what 18 years of devolution have achieved. Go on, and be honest!

Wales is poorer relative to other parts of the state, and other parts of Europe, than she was before we voted for devolution. Outside of Cardiff our urban and post-industrial areas are suffering managed decline, while our rural and coastal areas serve as recreation and retirement areas for England, with the Welsh population, and their identity, marginalised in both situations.

We have a self-styled Labour ‘Government’ in Cardiff docks that refuses to use even the limited powers it has for fear of upsetting anyone in London – including its own MPs and peers! Competing with Labour we have a Conservative Party currently in league with the Orange Order and the UDA, and a ‘national party’ that is, as Martin Shipton described it this morning, “a pressure group”. (And it’s not often I agree with Shippo!) Though it’s questionable whether Plaid Cymru really is challenging Labour.

‘Ah, but we’ve got devolution now, it’s something to build on’, I hear, from those who are in reality satisfied with this simulacrum of self-government, where free suppositories or some such nonsense qualify as radical initiatives. So who’s going to do the ‘building’? We know it won’t be Labour. It will never be the Conservative and Unionist Party. And there’s not a hope in hell of it being the pressure group.

Devolution has delivered a comfortable and undemanding level for ambitious councillors. To serve these politicians we now have a burgeoning and expensive bureaucracy. Because the party in control is Labour devolution has resulted in a vast and corrupt Third Sector sucking up billions of pounds to keep otherwise unemployable Labour supporters in jobs.

Yet we have no media to hold this juggernaut to account. (Though it’s debatable which is worse – the absence of a Welsh media or the constant bigotry exposed in the English media.) There is no real oversight or control of expenditure, and no justice for anyone wronged by this system. Yet if you investigate ‘devolution’ in any depth you soon realise what a sham it is.

For example, the ‘Welsh’ Government pretends it has its own Planning Inspectorate. The truth is that the Planning Inspectorate for Englandandwales answers to the Department for Communities and Local Government in London, it merely has a branch office in Cardiff. Which means that the Local Development Plans for Welsh local authorities are determined in London . . . and the ‘Welsh’ Government goes along with the charade!

P.S. Soon after publishing this post my attention was drawn to a perfect example of the ‘Welsh’ Government’s relationship with the Planning Inspectorate. This development at Llay is part of a wider strategy to turn our north east into commuter territory for north west England. And Carwyn Jones knows it.

The ‘Welsh’ Government and the whole apparatus of devolution soaks up money that could be better spent in Wales, and might be better spent if the useless edifice was swept away. Which is why I plan to start a petition to the UK Parliament asking for a referendum to be held to determine whether we should keep the Welsh Assembly and all that goes with it. (This will be done once a new Petitions Committee is formed.)

Yes, I know such a petition will attract Kippers and other BritNats, but I don’t care, there are bigger issues at stake. On almost every issue that matters we are still ruled from London anyway – so what do we stand to lose? Devolution is used to hide this fact, and to make us believe that we control our own affairs. It acts like some national dose of Prozac.

When you’ve taken a wrong turning you have two choices: either plod on until you fall off a cliff or sink in a bog, or else admit you made a mistake, retrace your steps, and next time make sure you know where you want to go.

Devolution was a wrong turning.

♦ end ♦

Lying for the Union

On 25/05/201726/05/2017 By JacIn Cymrophobia, English Nationalism, Local Government, Media, Plaid Cymru, Police, Public Funding, Swansea, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media24 Comments

TURF WARS

When the SNP began rising to prominence in Scottish politics a very strange thing happened – Labour and Tories realised they quite liked each other really, to the extent of forming coalition administrations on some local authorities just to keep the SNP (majority party) out of power. It’s still happening.

Following the council elections earlier this month Labour in Scotland got itself into a bit of a tizzy due to its councillors in Aberdeen agreeing to go into coalition with the Tories . . . and then being suspended by the party. Because it doesn’t look good for Labour to be slagging off Mrs May and her gang on one level while jumping into bed with them in Scotland’s third city.

It reminds us that the ‘fight’ between Conservatives and Labour is often a very contrived affair, especially when constitutional issues are introduced. Tories and Labour stood shoulder to shoulder in the 2014 independence referendum and told the same lies. Labour paid the price for that in Scotland with certain sections of the electorate deserting the party, and Labour is now losing support from a different element which realises that if they wish to maintain the Union then they should put aside all other differences to back the Conservative and Unionist Party.

I’ve headed this section ‘Turf Wars’ because in some respects Labour and Tories can be viewed as two gangs fighting over a turf (Britain) in order to protect their rackets: riding the gravy train, promoting and aggrandising themselves and their friends, and of course reaping the rewards in peerages and consultancies/directorships on leaving office, if not before. The introduction of the threat from a third party, especially one offering radical change, makes them realise that they have more in common than they had previously wanted to admit.

On a practical level, it results in people belonging to either of these parties happier to see the other party win than have the outsider, the threat, succeed. Which gives us the reason for Labour’s current tribulations in Aberdeen. And many in Labour are quite open about preferring to see the Tories win, as this snippet from Labour Uncut reminds us.

But how far might this cynical co-operation between Labour and the Tories go? Could it happen in Wales?

Going back to the recent council elections, there might have been some jiggery-pokery in Neath Port Talbot. The Labour Party there was going through a difficult time, with many de-selections resulting in former Labour councillors standing as Independents, and to add to Labour’s woes there was a stronger than usual threat from Plaid Cymru.

All of which might explain the arrival of the cavalry in the form of unknown Conservative candidates, who seemed to do little or no canvassing, and most of whom didn’t bother to turn up at the count. What they did achieve in a number of wards was to split the anti-Labour vote and ensure a Labour victory. Some tell me there were paper candidates like these in other areas.

Then there was the Llangennech school dispute where people close to the Labour Party were more than happy to link up with UKIP in order to attack the Welsh language – ‘education’ and ‘choice’ being mere fig leaves. You might argue this was not strictly political, but Labour used the dispute, now being supported by UKIP, to attack Plaid Cymru. So we see a similar pattern at work.

Anti Welsh language campaigners outside Llangennech school with UKIP AM Neil Hamilton

And going back to my previous post, the people behind that obnoxious leaflet had a clear objective, which was to cause maximum damage to Plaid Cymru and hopefully loosen Plaid’s control on Gwynedd council. I mentioned that the leaflets had been seen in Blaenau Ffestiniog (in the Co-op store, to be exact), perhaps I should also have told you that in the Diffwys and Maenofferen ward of the town the Plaid Cymru candidate lost by just 3 votes.

With a margin that small it’s reasonable to assume that the leaflet was decisive.

♦

MEDIA

One reason that Tories and Labour are allowed to get away with such practices is of course because, by and large, the UK media is on the same wavelength, even otherwise liberal outlets tend to line up with them when ‘ugly nationalism’ is introduced to the mix.

A case in point would be the BBC, which still wields incredible influence due to so many people relying on it for their news. People trust the BBC, but that trust is often abused. Because I am in no doubt that the BBC has done a deal with the Conservative Party to follow the required line on most issues in return for keeping the licence fee that guarantees its survival. Though on Scottish independence, for example, the Beeb might not need to be leaned on.

One recent example of the Corporation’s Unionist credentials was the televised Scottish party leaders debate on Sunday when, to believe most of the media, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was floored by a nurse who claimed she had to use food banks. Here’s a more balanced view of that new low which exposed the BBC for the state propaganda agency it is, and always has been.

The Scottish nurse, Claire Austin, who attacked Nicola Sturgeon during a live TV debate, claiming that because of low pay she had to use food banks, photographed earlier this year dining at the Plaza Hotel in New York. She lives in a nice part of Edinburgh, dines at the best restaurants, her daughter attends a fee-paying school and has a horse. Oh, yes, and nurses in Scotland get paid more than their counterparts in Wales. Did the BBC put her up to it? (Picture courtesy of the Scottish Sun.)

And the BBC also proves what I said earlier about liberal outlets. For within the Corporation certain programmes – often with small, left of centre audiences – are allowed to stray from the official line in the hope of maintaining the image of impartiality. Newsnight, for example, supported Remain, Clinton, anybody but Le Pen, etc, yet when it comes to discussing the SNP or Scotland Newsnight could have Nigel Farage as its producer.

Here in Wales, supplementing the BBC’s output we have Trinity Mirror which, in addition to publishing the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror (and the Daily Record in Scotland) also owns in Wales: Western Mail, Daily Post, Wales on Sunday, the Evening Post, the Echo, Llanelli Star, Caernarfon Herald, Neath Guardian, Flintshire Chronicle, Cynon Valley Leader, Glamorgan Gazette, Gwent Gazette, Merthyr Express, Pontypridd and Llantrisant Observer, Rhondda Leader and the Rhymney Valley Express.

With all the previously separate websites now merged into WalesOnline, and controlled from Cardiff.

Trinity Mirror supports the Labour party. And with the BBC supporting any party that can maintain the Union the combination of Trinity Mirror and the BBC goes quite some way to explaining why a party as utterly useless as ‘Welsh’ Labour can hang on to power.

But Trinity Mirror’s loyalty to the Labour Party can take many forms, much of it distasteful. Further details on one such case were brought to my attention just a few days ago.

♦

JENNY LEE CLARKE

You will recall the case of the Swansea East Labour MP Carolyn Harris’s attack on a co-worker in the constituency office of Harris’s predecessor Siân James. It made the London dailies. No charges resulted only because the complaint was made beyond the six-month limit for charges of common assault.

As might be expected, when Harris became MP for Swansea East in May 2015 things got very difficult for the woman she had assaulted, Jenny Lee Clarke, who was still working in the constituency office. It was no surprise when Harris – once ‘cleared’ – took her revenge by accusing Clarke of theft. Equally unsurprising was the fact that WalesOnline gleefully reported the baseless accusation.

Ms Clarke lost her job and was put through the mill. Here’s her timetable of events:

15.01.16 – Raised a grievance

27.01.16 – 8 hours giving a statement about the verbal, emotional and physical abuse

28.01.16 – Sacked

26.04.16 – Discovered from broadsheets I was being investigated

24.06.16 – Arrested – bail

19.09.16 – Re-bailed

07.11.16 – Re-bailed

17.02.17 – Still on bail whilst case went to CPS for a charging decision

17.05.17 – No action taken and released with no bail conditions because process had not been adhered too

When Ms Clarke attended Swansea Central police station on May 17th she was told that she was being released with no charge . . . but was also told, “You may in future be asked to attend voluntarily to be re-interviewed”. Though an apology was made “for the length of time this has taken”.

It has been suggested to me that this nightmare only ended when it did because of the ‘no extension of bail without fresh evidence’ provision in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, brought in due to the constant re-bailing in the Cliff Richard fiasco.

As we’ve seen, the Labour-supporting Trinity Mirror Group was quick to exonerate the Labour MP and equally quick to put the boot into her victim. Though, fair play, Richard Youle, senior news reporter for the Evening Post did promise to report the outcome of the investigation, as the e-mail reproduced below tells us.

The problem is that despite being told of the outcome, and reminded of his promise, Mr Youle and Trinity Mirror seem to have lost interest in the case. I wonder why?

Labour supporters reading this – and I do get them! – will be shouting, ‘Trinity Mirror’s reluctance to report the Jenny Lee Clarke case has got nothing to do with saving Labour embarrassment, Jac, cos Carolyn Harris is safe in Swansea East’. And indeed she is, bless her . . . but the Post covers the Bay and Carmarthenshire, so what about another Swansea seat, Gower, where Labour is hoping to overcome Byron Davies’s majority of just 27? And then there’s Llanelli, where you wouldn’t bet your house on Nia Griffith being returned.

This is a case that again exposes the links between the Labour Party and Trinity Mirror, and how they are prepared to combine in destroying anyone who threatens them. For Jenny Lee Clarke is now heavily in debt, she has lost her car, her telephone has been disconnected, and – unlike the stooge-nurse in Edinburgh – Jenny really is using food banks.

And what of South Wales Police? Their role in this does their reputation no favours. I hope there’s no connection between their treatment of an innocent woman and the fact that the PCC for South Wales Police is the odious Alun Michael, former Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth who, once elected, stuffed his office with Labour apparatchiks in the time-honoured way.

Having said that the Evening Post and WalesOnline couldn’t find space to tell us that Jenny Lee Clarke was not going to be prosecuted, Trinity Mirror still found space to insult our intelligence with a truly ludicrous story about how Harris had been affected by the Manchester bombing.

Of course, she was nowhere near Manchester on Monday night, but she had been in Westminster for that attack in March – but she was never in any danger there either. While we expect politicians to exploit tragedies for their own advantage this is still one of the more contrived and disgusting examples I’ve come across.

But it’s what happens when you have a country where the dominant political party enjoys an unhealthy relationship with the company controlling most of the indigenous print media.

Anyone considering a ‘progressive alliance’ with these bastards needs a good talking to, with the kind of implement we shall encounter in the next section.

There is nothing ‘progressive’about the Labour Party.

♦

STOP PRESS!

I am informed by the legendary Ian Bone, founder of Class War, that on Sunday July 16th there is to be a ‘Dress Like Leon Atkin Day’ in Swansea. The message went on, “There will be a perambulation from Jimmy Wilde’s to St Paul’s Crypt followed by speechifying and singing”. For those now staring at the screen in bewilderment, let me explain.

Leon Atkin was a man of the cloth who used to give shelter to vagrants in the crypt of his church (now a curry house), which stood on the junction of St Helen’s Road and St Helen’s Avenue, opposite the legendary Joe’s ice cream parlour. The Jimmy Wilde referred to was not that Jimmy Wilde, but the old heavyweight boxer, who’d briefly been Welsh champion until losing his title to Tommy Farr. And he had even known the immortal Marciano who, as everyone knows, started his fight career in Swansea.

By the time I knew Jimmy he looked what he was, a beaten-up old heavyweight straight out of central casting, but you knew not to mess with him. He ran a drinking club not far from High Street Station. To describe Jimmy’s place as ‘rough’ would be an understatement on a par with saying Leo Messi’s a pretty good footballer.

You must remember that back then the pubs closed in the afternoon so, unless you knew a friendly landlord – or landlady! – if you wanted a drink you had to go to a club. Don’t get me wrong, there were some very tidy clubs, but these tended to be more discriminating than Jimmy about who they served. They expected you to be able to stand upright without swaying, or it would be some other irritating qualification.

Even so, you couldn’t always walk straight into Jimmy’s, there was often a certain film noir element to gaining admittance. For example, you’d knock on the door and a voice from within would ask, ‘Are you a member?’ You’d answer ‘No’, and the voice would come back, ‘Oh, never mind’, and the door would open. It was a strange ritual that served no real purpose.

The link between Jimmy Wilde’s and St Paul’s was of course that many of Jimmy’s customers made a regular perambulation to the Crypt. It might be worth adding that Leon Atkin was a drinker himself, in fact, he’d sunk a few pints with Dylan.

Back in the ’70s Ian and his crew did fantastic work with their underground magazine Alarm, exposing the corruption on Swansea council. Labour Council leader Gerald Murphy eventually got sent down, and then his Ratepayer successor Sid Jenkins got done for accepting ‘favours’. As we used to say – ‘Swansea’s got the best councillors money can buy’.

I recall one night in 1980 drinking with Phil Henry in the Queens on Oxford Street (run then by the Necrews family). Ian Bone was there selling ‘Paul Ringer is Innocent’ badges. The story as I remember it was . . . he’d pissed off some local heavies who’d bent an iron bar over his head, so with the compensation money he bought himself a badge-making machine!

Happy days with unbelievable characters. When did people become so boring?

♦ end ♦

‘Welsh’ Labour In All Its Ugliness

On 08/04/201714/04/2017 By JacIn British Nationalism, Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Cymrophobia, Englandandwales, English Nationalism, Local Government, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Language, Welsh Media75 Comments

A few days ago I got an anonymous message telling me about someone, or a group, seeking to raise money to ‘Save English Language Education in Wales’. Here’s the link to the relevant CrowdJustice site. I doubt if those behind this are susceptible to embarrassment, but just in case, and it’s been taken down, here’s what it said (click to enlarge):

There are so many misleading statements and downright lies in that ‘appeal’ that it’s difficult to know where to start. The opening sentence sets the tone with the ludicrous claim that what’s happening in Llangennech is the prelude to removing English medium schools “across Wales”.

At first reading, the fourth paragraph seems to elaborate on the first, but with the qualification of “potentially”, which serves to undermine it altogether. Potentially means ‘possibly’, or ‘maybe’, or ‘who the fuck knows’. For example, potentially I’m the lost heir of the Hapsburgs. The Monster Raving Loony Party is potentially the next government of the UK. Elvis Presley is potentially alive and running a nice little B&B in Penmaenmawr.

Paragraph five: where’s the evidence that, “The majority from within Llangennech village wish to keep their Dual Stream system school, offering both Welsh and English streams . . .” Has there been a vote on it?

Paragraph six: there are a number of English medium schools within reasonable travelling distance. As for the alleged ‘move to England’ remark, it might have been said, by an individual, but this issue is about a decision taken by Carmarthenshire County Council, what individuals have said, on either side, is of less relevance.

Summary: What “apparent flaws, breaches”? And, again, where is the evidence for “overwhelming opposition”?

“Learning through the Medium of Welsh must be through choice and encouragement not by compulsion.” At last! I’ve found something I agree with, so why not remind those Labour-controlled local authorities that do their damnedest to avoid meeting the demand for Welsh language education?

The people behind this campaign claim to be defenders of democracy; yet they are opposing a decision taken by the democratic representatives of the county and they have no grounds whatever for arguing that they represent the will of the majority in Llangennech . . . apart from a biased on-line poll that attracted most of its support from outside the area.

♦

There is a sick yet dangerous mind behind this fund-raising escapade that is premised on a palpable lie, namely, that there is a plan to “eradicate all English Medium schools”. Whoever is saying this is lying, and they know they’re lying. Consequently, this is a case of money being raised under false pretences. Which is of course a criminal offence.

Inevitably, this campaign is being promoted on social media, particularly the Families website, of which I was blissfully ignorant before this cropped up. From what I can make out this is an open website, with local pages, where people post news about their area, or ‘Ah!’ photos of their kids. Riveting stuff.

Save English Medium Education in Wales is being pushed on various local pages, both in Wales and England. Here’s the Carmarthenshire page. As you work down, you’ll read “Watkins and Gunn partner Michael Imperato”. Watkins and Gunn are the solicitors handling this fund-raiser.

It appears that Watkins and Gunn’s headquarters are in Pontypool with branches in Newport and Cardiff. Although Imperato is described as a partner he is not listed as a director on the Companies House website entry for Watkins and Gunn. The company specialises in personal injury and medical negligence; in other words – they’re ambulance chasers.

Though we do find John Michael Imperato listed as a director of the Bevan Foundation, the Labour ‘think tank’. Imperato has also stood as a Labour candidate; in the Llanishen ward of Cardiff in 2008, the Pentwyn ward in 2012, and more recently, he considered going for the Aberavon Westminster nomination, but was talked out of it, allowing Stephen Kinnock to sneak home.

In fact, the word I’m getting from the now smoke-free rooms is that Imperato was ‘persuaded’ not to throw his hat into the ring by a trade union that may have had ‘dirt’ on him. This same trade union is also said to be ill-disposed towards Lee Waters, Imperato’s mate and AM for Llanelli.

Now, I don’t want anyone to think I’m taking a cheap shot here because of his Italian name, but there is something to be said for comparing ‘Welsh’ Labour to the Mafia. Both have contempt for ‘outsiders’, backstabbing is the norm, both are in business for themselves and their members, with the Mob having its rackets and ‘Welsh’ Labour its Third Sector.

You may recall that in News Round-up 24.03.2017 I wrote of a Labour councillor in Plaid Cymru-controlled Gwynedd, Siôn Wyn Jones, and reported that a project of his had been favoured by the local funding agency, Mantell Gwynedd, which is – in the words of my informant – a “Labour closed shop”. I was told the same applies to the Citizens Advice Bureau in Bangor. So it’s no surprise to see that Imperato was once a director of the – now defunct – Cardiff Citizens Advice Bureau.

Which makes me wonder what chance I – someone who has over the years been mildly critical of the Labour Party – would have of getting fair treatment from what appears to be an offshoot of the Labour Party?

UPDATE 10:10pm: Since finishing this piece I have learnt that Mr Imperato has represented parents on the ‘other side’ of the language debate. Ceredigion in 2004, and Newport in 2014. I am happy to put the record straight.

Though in both those cases he was on firmer legal ground, which meant that he, or whoever instructed him, didn’t need to resort to hyperbole, exaggeration and downright lies, as in the Llangennech case.

♦

The Llangennech dispute has inevitably attracted the bigots and oddballs, and they don’t come more bigoted or oddbally than Jacques Protic, a man who blames the Welsh language for his beer going flat. To judge by this Twitter reply he might even have been in the area recently. This obsessive’s blog is one sad but revealing anti-Welsh tirade after another. It paints the picture of a troubled soul.

Inevitably, Protic supports the Save English Medium Education in Wales fund-raiser, here’s a tweet (below) from a few days ago that suggests what’s happening in Llangennech is the fault of the ‘Welsh’ Government and is but a staging-post on the road to a “Welsh Speaking Republic”.

Protic has elsewhere claimed to be a Labour Party member, but believes that both Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones are ‘closet nationalists’, for no better reason than both speak Welsh! As I say, this man is troubled.

Support of a slightly more credible nature came from the Trinity Mirror Group’s Welsh mouthpiece WalesOnline, where someone called Christie Bannon gave an uncritical plug to the flagging campaign and even provided a link to the CrowdJustice page. Though somebody slipped up by using the photo of the bigots lined up with Neil – “do the honourable thing” – Hamilton and his wife-minder.

those with strong stomachs may click to enlarge

Why do ugly people always manage to find each other? Is there magnetism at work?

P.S. The WalesOnline story has finally been updated, at four minutes past three on April 11th. Instead of wondering who pulled the plug on this exercise in misrepresentation, or why, the reporter, Christie Bannon, does no more than say that it’s been taken down before repeating almost verbatim what it said and what is now no longer available on the CrowdJustice website.

The bias we’ve seen in Trinity Mirror’s coverage of the Llangennech dispute has been blatant from the start. Why anyone still buys this company’s Welsh rags is a mystery. Maybe we should be thankful that sales are falling, though I’m a little sad to see the Evening Post – not so long ago the largest circulation Welsh daily – heading for the knackers’ yard as people in the Swansea area realise that ‘their’ ‘paper is now written in Cardiff.

♦

Anyone who’s been following this story will know that there are disturbing connections between the anti-Welsh campaigners and the extreme right, the BritNats so intolerant of all other identities. To these people we Welsh, and our language, are ‘alien’, even in Wales, and must be stamped out. Everything must be English.

This attitude is not restricted to the Welsh language, it extends to anything that differentiates Wales from England, other than sporting events and other trivia. It’s what I’ve referred to more than once as ‘the package’. Those who are hostile to the Welsh language will usually be opposed to devolution and so on. Essentially, these people are English nationalists. Of course it’s dressed up as Britishness and, amusingly, opposition to ‘narrow nationalism’. But ‘British’ means little today, and once Scotland is independent and Ireland reunited it will mean nothing but Englandandwales.

Few have stirred more assiduously than Gary Robert Jones, who tweets as @poumista, a name taken from POUM, a Trotskyite party during the Spanish Civil War period. Jones is a community councillor and hopes for promotion to county hall next month, for he seeks election in the Llangennech ward.

An odd fish, Jones; sometimes he seems to be one of the more rational inmates of the asylum and then he puts out a tweet like this (below). Gifted to the world on the day – March 18 – when Wales played France at rugby in Paris. He appears to be wearing a poilu helmet from WWII, and the caption would suggest he’s supporting France!

Get your head around that. Here’s a Labour candidate in a Llanelli ward, two months away from an election, who appears to be supporting Wales’ opponents in a rugby international! In the Llanelli I know, that’s a lynching offence. But then, as I keep saying, we are dealing here with very strange people.

Moving up a level we come to the local Assembly Member, Lee Waters. Although Waters is the AM for Llanelli he and his family live 55 miles away on Barry Island. Yet for last year”s Assembly elections he gave a Llanelli address – possibly his mother’s – on his nomination paper and sneaked in by less than 400 votes. Would he have been elected if the Turks had known he didn’t live among them? I doubt it.

And now we have John Michael Imperato, failed Labour candidate; Jacques Protic, who dismisses Welsh as a “tribal language”; and a cast of similar individuals who have serious problems with the truth. In a word: they’re unable to recognise it or produce it.

Finally, with the campaign looking unlikely to meet its fund-raising target the Labour-supporting Trinity Mirror Group, using its Welsh titles and WalesOnline gives a priceless plug and a link to the site for potential donors. Curiously, although the piece asks for comments, it’s not publishing any. I know because I submitted a comment yesterday, and I can’t believe that no one has commented.

This affair has ‘Welsh’ Labour running through it like ‘Pwllheli’ through a stick of rock. The party locally has been behind the anti-Welsh campaign in Llangennech from the outset, conveniently forgetting that the county council was run by a Labour-Independent coalition when the decision on Llangennech school was taken in 2015.

No matter what pious statements Carwyn Jones or Alun Davies might make about wanting to help the Welsh language, lower down the food chain unscrupulous individuals see political capital – against Plaid Cymru – in being hysterically anti-Welsh.

And as these people make up the bulk of ‘Welsh’ Labour we can now label the party anti-Welsh. So stop-pussy-footing around with these bastards, dreaming of coalitions and talking of a ‘progressive consensus’, and fight them with their own weapons. They may be cunning and devious, but they ain’t too smart. They must be destroyed as the SNP has destroyed their corrupt, lying cousins.

I suspect this case will rumble on, so I may return to it at some point. For the full background of the squalid Llangennech saga, and its dramatis personae, I can recommend no better source than the excellent Cneifiwr.

As I finish this post I note that the CrowdJustice site has raised £1,400 of the £7,500 target with 26 days to go. Though what this deception has to do with justice I do not know.

♦

UPDATE, 8pm: The link to the CrowdJustice site Save English Language Medium Education in Wales now comes up with this (below). Which is odd, seeing as the appeal had already been launched and was collecting money. It looks as if it has either been withdrawn by those behind it or else taken down by CrowdJustice. Or have they raised all the £6,000+ they needed this afternoon? If so, then it didn’t come in £10 and £20 donations.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I did write to CrowdJustice, using tradition Latin legal terms like ‘bollocks’ and ‘lying bastards’. But surely it was nothing to do with me!

♦

UPDATE, Midnight: I have now been directed to a very strange tale on the Families website. In case this also disappears, I have saved it for you (below, click to enlarge). Quite what all this means I’m not yet sure, so I’m open to suggestions from my erudite readers.

Oh, yes, now I come to think of it, I may have written to Families as well.

♦

UPDATE 10.04.2017: The CrowdJustice page now reads as shown (click to enlarge). It would appear that the appeal was closed down yesterday. But by whom?

♦

UPDATE 2:45pm 10.04.2017: The CrowdJustice page now reads ‘Page not found’.

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♦ end ♦

Circuit of Wales Revisited

On 14/11/201624/11/2016 By JacIn Corruption, EU Funding, Local Government, Public Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media40 Comments

When I first heard of the Circuit of Wales project back in the early part of 2013 I was somewhat sceptical of its chances of success, and the reasons for my scepticism were set out in Vroom, Vroom – The Next Gravy Train?

Despite being doubtful that the project would ever materialise I was (in the even-handed manner for which I am rightly acclaimed) also critical of some of those raising objections to the CoW, not least the environmentalists who seem to oppose anything that might benefit those who live permanently in Wales.

For various reasons that I don’t have the space to analyse here, the project has ‘drifted’ somewhat since my original post, and in recent weeks we have witnessed attacks on the Heads of the Valleys Development Company (HOTVDC) and its Circuit of Wales from what might, at first sight, appear to be unconnected sources. So let’s look at these attacks and see if we can make sense of them.

♦

A long-time critic of what could be the economic salvation of the region is Conservative MP David Davies, who represents the neighbouring constituency (to Ebbw Vale) of Monmouthshire, perhaps the most affluent area in the country. It’s reasonable to assume that those who vote for Davies don’t want anything noisy on their doorstep, attracting people who will drive through their area to get to the circuit. So while not wishing to be unfair – for there may indeed be more to it – I suspect that nimbyism with a dash of snobbery lies behind the attacks from that direction.

But as I say, Davies, chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee at Westminster, has been a consistent critic, and no doubt he’d argue that he’s just doing his job. And his job has been made easier for him by some strange spending of the millions already invested by the ‘Welsh’ Government.

But the criticism of this project comes from beyond leafy Monmouthshire and its well-heeled inhabitants, from those who cannot be dismissed as nimbys or snobs.

On November 1, after regular sniping from its news broadcasts, BBC Wales made a frontal assault using its Week In Week Out series with A Safe Bet? (Video available here for a while.) There was little pretence at impartiality. Anyone watching this programme with no knowledge of Wales, and how it works, would have concluded that the Circuit of Wales is a complete waste of money and should be ditched immediately.

I admit that Michael Carrick, the man behind HOTVDC, doesn’t always instill confidence, and he has certainly made mistakes. Even so, it appears to me that critics have too often been playing the man rather than the ball. By which I mean, the project needs to be considered on its merits; after all, Einstein being a philanderer didn’t undermine his Theory of Relativity.

♦

The attacks have continued, culminating today in a front page lead continued on page 2 plus an editorial in the Wasting Mule. All written by my old mucker, Martin Shipton.

The justification for today’s attack seems to be that the HOTVDC used the Silverstone circuit in England in 2015 and 2016 to host MotoGP races that it had contracted to host at the Circuit of Wales, and had lost money. Now with the best will in the world, I detect an element of having your cake and eating it in this criticism.

Because those attacking the HOTVDC for making a loss at Silverstone – due to the Circuit of Wales not being completed – are the very same people who have been doing their very best to derail the CoW project altogether!

circuit-of-wales-wm-editorial — click to enlarge

As for losing money by going to Silverstone, even before reading the response from the HOTVDC I knew the answer. The owners of the Silverstone circuit creamed off the profits, from the hot dog stands to the champagne hospitality suites and from the Ducati baseball caps to the sales of £300 leather biker boots.

A child could work that out, and a younger sibling could add that those profits would have accrued to Ebbw Vale if the Circuit of Wales had been operational, as would other benefits to the area from those visiting for a few days.

God Almighty! Break somebody’s leg and then criticise him for limping.

♦

So how do we account for this recent onslaught from BBC Wales and the Wasting Mule? I suspect there are two, linked, answers.

First, just last month, it became clear that the project had a good chance of proceeding without needing to be underwritten by the ‘Welsh’ Government. Even so, this report from WalesOnline still manages to put a negative spin on the news with, “However, without approval on underwriting from the Welsh Government, the project will effectively be dead as there is little private sector appetite to take a 100% risk exposure position.”

Though I’m a little nonplussed by the phrase “approval on underwriting”. If the writer means underwriting, why not just say that rather than employ such a convoluted phrase? Though with heavyweight backing from Aviva and Kleinwort Benson underwriting from the ‘Welsh’ Government may no longer be needed . . . and it may be this realisation that has triggered the recent attacks.

The article in question was written by Siôn Barry, of whom I shall have more to say in a moment.

Second, if the Circuit of Wales goes ahead then it will challenge the thinking behind the Cardiff Capital Region project. Which, in its simplest terms, is as follows: As many jobs as the Region’s architects can get away with are to be concentrated in Cardiff, as are the Region’s sporting, recreational, cultural and other facilities. So that people from the Valleys will come into Cardiff to earn their crust, and they will come back into Cardiff to be regularly relieved of a great part of that crust.

Which makes it anathema to those behind the City Region that places like Ebbw Vale should be allowed anything as grand as a race circuit, ‘Bloody hell, people will go there spending their money rather than going into Cardiff. Where will it end? They’ll all want something!’

Now the Wasting Mule, despite its hyperbolic claim to be ‘The National Newspaper of Wales’, is, as we all know, a Cardiff newspaper, and the mouthpiece of those seeking to enrich the city at the expense of the rest of Wales. This explains today’s editorial.

The Wasting Mule does not want the Circuit of Wales to progress even if it has 100% private funding, for fear it might limit Cardiff’s ability to enjoy the full benefits of the City Region scam.

Consequently, the final paragraph of Shippo’s editorial is a direct appeal to his friends in the ‘Welsh’ Labour Government to put obstacles in the way of HOTVDC, perhaps to use environmental or other planning ruses. We can be sure that representations are also being made through more ‘private’ channels.

♦

Fundamental to the Cardiff Capital Region project is the Metro system – for how else are people from Merthyr, Ebbw Vale, Maesteg and other outposts of the empire to reach the City of Milk and Honey? Since 2010 the job of promoting the Metro has fallen to a Mark Barry, some might go so far as to say that the Metro is his idea.

After working for the Welsh Development Agency (2002 – 2003) he has maintained good connections with the ‘Welsh’ Government. Though some might suggest a conflict of interests in the following roles:

Owner of M&G Barry Consulting (Sept 2009 – Present) His Linkedin profile tells us that M&G Barry Consulting was set up to promote the Metro project.
Board Advisor for Transport and the Economy for the Cardiff Business Partnership (Oct 2010 – Oct 2013)
Founder of the private sector Metro Consortium (Aug 2011 – Nov 2013)
Metro Development Director and Advisor to the ‘Welsh’ Government (Nov 2013 – Jan 2016).

(Though seeing as M&G Barry has been going since September 2009 I would have expected the website to be up and running by now. But then, I suppose it’s not looking for business, it’s a one-trick pony.)

I’m telling you this because of course Mark Dafydd Barry is the brother of Siôn Barry, Business Editor of Media Wales, and this explains Siôn Barry’s regular plugging of his brother’s Cardiff Metro scheme, and of course his hostility to the Circuit of Wales.

Yet another example of the incestuous relationship between politics, business, media and academe in Cardiff is provided by the fact that since April this year Mark Barry has been Professor of Practice in Connectivity at Cardiff University, “Exploring the wider economic and regional benefits of the South Wales Metro”.

Though some might think that’s an odd post – created specially? – for a man who did his degree at Manchester in Physics and The Analysis of Science & Technology and who, for many years after leaving university, worked in software design. In fact, Barry seems to have neither qualifications nor experience in the fields of transport and communications before he was granted his vision of the Cardiff Metro . . . and sold it to his former employers at the ‘Welsh’ Government.

This defence of Cardiff’s interests tells us why the Wasting Mule is hostile to the Circuit of Wales, while BBC Wales’ attitude can be explained by the fact that it has as much claim to being our national broadcaster as the Mule has to being our national newspaper.

♦

The Circuit of Wales is a real test for the ‘Welsh’ Government, in a number of ways.

First, and most obviously, it is a massive project, promising thousands of jobs, in an area that badly needs those jobs and the economic boost they’ll bring to the wider economy.

Second, it is becoming clear that for those who believe Cardiff must be the hub for all investment in the south east the Circuit of Wales poses a challenge, partly of itself, and partly because it might encourage other distant towns to question their allotted status of dormitory settlements.

The issue can’t be funding alone. Certainly not for the ‘Welsh’ Government which, it is rumoured, will give more than £100m so that near-bankrupt Aston Martin can relocate in the Vale of Glamorgan, very near to Cardiff. And then there are the hundreds of millions of pounds squandered on the Third Sector for what often seems to be no other reason than providing jobs for Labour cronies and hangers-on. Communities First, which has spent over £300m would be a good example.

Then there are the hundreds, maybe thousands, of smaller projects that have cumulatively swallowed up more money over the years than Aston Martin, Communities First and all the others we know of. Read this puff from 2013, and then read this from just a few days ago. This project was a non-starter, doomed from the outset – but what the hell, it’s only public money!

What’s worse, is that one of the women involved in this doomed venture, Gill Wright, featured in Ancestral Turf, a post I wrote in September 2014. She belongs to a network of people in the Tywi valley – all of whom seem to be English – who appear to be in competition to dream up ever more ludicrous ‘schemes’ for milking the Welsh public purse. And it works – for they get grant after grant that benefits no one but themselves!

The other woman involved with setting up the Level Crossing Bunkhouse in Llandovery, Jane Ryall, is a ‘social enterprise advisor’. So not only do our funding bodies attract all manner of grant-grabbers to take advantage of the easy money, they also pull in those who are now living off those who are living off the Welsh public purse. And it’s all dressed up as economic activity. What a system!

And how can we forget the land deals that were so beneficial to Sir Gilbert Stanley ‘Stan the Pies’ Thomas yet so damaging to the public purse? For those who need to be reminded, read my posts Pies, Planes & Property Development and the sequel – with the same stars! – Pies, Planes & Property Development 2.

So any reticence on the part of the ‘Welsh’ Government to supporting the Circuit of Wales can’t be due to a fear of wasting public money, or a worry that some malcontents might suggest a lack of financial rectitude. For ‘Welsh’ Labour is inured to such criticism.

The Circuit of Wales offers tangible benefits for thousands of our people and a whole region of our country. Which is why the ‘Welsh’ Government needs to put aside its Cardiff bias, ignore the fact that there may be few sinecures in it for Labour Party cronies, and for once – just once – suppress its suspicion of business and entrepreneurship.

Help it happen!

~ ~ ~ ♦ end ♦ ~ ~ ~

UPDATE 17.11.2016: Would you Adam and Eve it! Shippo has returned to the attack on the Circuit of Wales, and what’s more, now he seems to be having a go at my old mate Neil! Bloody hell! where will this end? (Though I note there was no mention of the Brothers Barry.)

I can’t provide a link because the article doesn’t appear to have been uploaded yet to WalesOnline’s appalling and almost unnavigable website.

UPDATE 24.11.2016: Shippo mounts another attack, this time using a spokesman for the Silverstone circuit.

circuit-of-wales-wm-nov-24 — click to enlarge

♦

Playground Wales

On 27/10/201631/10/2016 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Devolution, Tourism, Welsh Government39 Comments

Oh, the joy! the euphoria! Didn’t you feel the surge of national pride, the collective Cymric breast heaving, positively heaving, at the joyous news? – Lonely Planet declares ‘North’ Wales to be the bestest al fresco fun fair around.

Well, obviously, it didn’t use those words (© Jac o’ the North), but that’s what it amounted to. Though the front page of Wednesday’s Wasting Mule seemed a little confused as to where exactly it was talking about (nothing new), believing that the award had gone to the whole country. Thankfully, page three made it clear that ‘North’ Wales was the recipient.

~~~~~~~~~~ ♦ ~~~~~~~~~~

So what exactly has ‘North’ Wales won? Well, it seems that northern Wales came fourth in the Top Regions category of the best destinations to visit in 2017. (The other categories being countries and cities.)

Northern Wales came fourth in the section subtitled “offbeat destinations demanding our attention”. Mmm, anyone who’s visited Betws y Coed or Caernarfon, Llangollen or Beddgelert, will find the use of that word ‘offbeat’ rather bizarre (and I haven’t mentioned the coastal resorts!). But, anyway, read the Lonely Planet piece for yourself.

So what are the other “offbeat destinations” with which north Wales was competing? In first place came Chocquequirao, “hidden across the deep Apurimac Valley . . . the last Inca refuge from the conquistadors”. Which makes this Andean location sound fascinating, and a worthy winner.

Second was Taranaki in New Zealand, which is certainly off the beaten track, confirmed with Lonely Planet‘s description it being a “remote location”. I shall return to the matter of tourism in New Zealand in a minute.

Then, one place ahead of ‘North’ Wales, we find the Azores. Described by Lonely Planet as the “next Iceland” and as a result we are warned, ” . . . the secret won’t last: the Azores have seen a 31% increase in tourism over the last 12 months, so visit in the 2017 sweet spot before things really take off.”

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Now I don’t know much about the Lonely Planet publication other than that it gets a lot of publicity – certainly here in Wales, for every time we get a mention it seems to merit a big news splash – but who pays it any real attention? Maybe its target audience, which I’d guess is the English middle class and its gap year offspring. (I belong to neither category.)

And that’s because, I suspect, Lonely Planet sees its role in identifying ‘offbeat destinations’ before – as seems to be the fear with the Azores – these idyllic locales are discovered by hoi polloi demanding ‘El fish and chips, Pedro – and pronto!’. Without, I hope, sounding snobbish, this is perfectly understandable.

tourism-stats — Courtesy of Visit Britain

In September, Mrs J and I took one of our regular trips to Scotland, and no matter where we went, from the Robert Burns Museum to Sweetheart Abbey to Threave (origin, tref) Castle, we met tourists from all over the world, but nowhere we went was overwhelmed in the way that parts of Wales so often are.

Of course Edinburgh can feel a bit ‘crowded’, but it’s bustling and cosmopolitan, it’s energising . . . and a hell of an improvement on being surrounded by miserable Brummies on a wet Sunday in Barmouth. These people milling around Princes Street and the Royal Mile are also spending lots of money (helped by the fact they’re not slumming it in ‘a caravan down the beach’), and when they go home they’ll tell their friends how wonderful Scotland is.

Scotland gets a better class of tourist, and certainly more overseas tourists. These even spend more per head (heid?) than overseas tourists to Wales. The figures for 2015 bear this out, for we see that while Scotland saw 2.6 million visits from overseas Wales welcomed just 970,000. In Scotland, the average spend per head was £651, compared with £422 in Wales. Giving a total overseas spend in Scotland of £1,695m against our £410m, less than a quarter of Scotland’s income.

There is of course a historic explanation for this. When railways became capable of transporting large numbers of working class people in relative comfort, and for prices they could afford, this advance placed Wales, unlike Scotland, within reach of many of England’s cities and industrial regions. Though that does not explain why we should still be providing holidays on the cheap, going for quantity rather than quality, 150 years later.

There are other, perhaps equally prosaic, explanations for Scotland attracting more overseas tourists and fewer English day-trippers than Wales. Distance being a pretty obvious one. Also, Scotland is much larger than Wales, with a greater variety of scenery. Scotland has airports with regular long haul flights to destinations around the world. Finally, Scotland has a beautiful and historic capital city.

But none of these explain the lack of ambition in the ‘Welsh’ tourism industry. Nor should they be accepted as excuses.

~~~~~~~~~~ ♦ ~~~~~~~~~~

After my Caledonian digression let me return to what I hinted at earlier when mentioning Taranaki, second among the ‘Top Regions’. A friend of mine has visited New Zealand a few times; it’s not cheap, but then, he’s a wealthy bachelor. I remember him telling me about one particular trip to the Southern Alps. He had to book in advance, prove he was healthy and insured, and as they liked the cut of his jib he was taken on a trek through the mountains lasting a few days.

The Southern Alps are protected by various National Parks and other forms of legislation to the point where the chances of a coachload of drunks turning up and making nuisances of themselves is close to zero . . . unlike on Snowdon, for example.

Returning to the Lonely Planet review of ‘North’ Wales we see that what got us noticed was zip wires, wave machines and subterranean trampolines. It seems logical to conclude that if we have more of these, and maybe a water chute running from the top of Cader Idris down to Dolgellau, or Talyllyn, we might achieve the coveted third place next year. Dare we dream of second place!

Grouped with the last refuge of the Incas, the as yet unspoilt Azores, and the majesty of the Southern Alps, a few big boys’ toys scattered about the north seem laughably incongruous, and unworthy. Especially when you read under the ‘Responsible Travel’ heading, “At Lonely Planet sustainable and responsible have always been parts of our vocabulary.” ‘Sustainable’ and ‘responsible’ are words that have never tarnished the lexicon of ‘Welsh’ tourism.

Which I suppose exposes the central contradiction of tourism – ‘Come see this awe-inspiring place . . . and by so doing, help despoil it’. Which explains why I admire the New Zealand approach that realises beautiful and irreplaceable environments and landscapes such as we find in the Southern Alps need to be protected from tourism.

If the Southern Alps had been in Wales they would by now have been extensively and thoroughly ‘developed’, suffering regular visits by twat-like politicos spouting bollocks so vacuous and inane as to make Vacuity and Inanity rise up in indignation. But on the bright side, there would be local employment – collecting garbage.

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When you look around Wales at the ugliness tourism has inflicted, the anglicisation it has brought, the environmental degradation, the social disruption, you have to ask what sort of people are we to have allowed this.

The answer is that we remain what we’ve been for maybe 800 years – a people with no real control over our country. Tourism is a perfect example, not only does it serve England’s interests, but ‘Welsh’ tourism is largely run by, and therefore profits, English people. Why should they give a toss about wrecking our homeland?

What’s best for England will always prevail over the best interests of us Welsh, and devolution has entrenched this system of exploitation even more firmly. I recently coined a term for this phenomenon, devocolonialism. In a future post I shall expand on what I put out recently in a tweet.

I feel this needs to be done because anyone believing that devolution has achieved anything positive for Wales needs a cold shower of facts.

~~~~~~~~~~ ♦ END ♦ ~~~~~~~~~~

Where Is Franz Kafka When You Need Him?

On 01/03/201502/03/2015 By JacIn Welsh Labour, Welsh Media13 Comments

As regular readers will know, I have been having problems from the Wales Eye blog and the Western Mail / Wales Online, they’ve been misrepresenting what they find in my blog and, when that isn’t enough, they’ve just told blatant lies. The story of my relationship with Wales Eye unfolds, chronologically, in the following posts: Cymrophobia and the Many Identities of Jacques Protic (14.08.2013); Wales Eye & Jacques Protic – a Marriage Made in Hell (11.09.2014); Wales Eye, Jacques Protic and North Wales Police (21.10.2014); Seeking a Latter-day Waldorf T. Flywheel (19.01.2015); I Must Be Doing Something Right! (28.01.2015); Now I KNOW I’m Doing Something Right! (03.02.2015); Helping A Man In A Hole (05.02.2015).

Things came to a head recently with Plaid Glyndŵr’s petition on social housing, for which I provide a link in my sidebar. The assault started with a strange tweet from Martin Shipton, chief reporter at Llais y Sais, on the afternoon of January 26th, asking for my phone number in order to discuss “your housing petition”. When I received the Shipton tweet I was unaware of the Wales Eye piece, because of course it hadn’t yet appeared, so I innocently and helpfully tweeted Shipton back, explaining my relationship with the petition.

Overnight the Wales Eye article by Phil Parry was published saying, “A website which urges a policy of Welsh homes only for Welsh people has been reported to the police for inciting racial hatred, Wales Eye can reveal”. Martin Shipton said the same thing in the Western Mail / WalesOnline, and despite what I’d told him, he began his piece with, “The Wales Eye news website discloses that the Jac O’the North blog has been reported to South Wales Police after launching a petition” Significantly, perhaps, the WalesOnline article soon became (and remains) unavailable.

In the hope of getting redress I contacted the legal department of Trinity Mirror, the company that owns Llais y Sais, on Februay 2nd. On the 25th I received an e-mail from a Paul Mottram, which said:

“I refer to your complaint dated 2nd February and apologise for the late reply.

The Western Mail has obtained a statement from the police saying the following: ‘South Wales Police was contacted by a member of the public who was concerned at the language used in a blog posted under the name of ‘jacothenorth’.

The content of the blog was scrutinised and no offence was committed.

The reporting person has been spoken to and given assurances that no criminality has taken place’.

Media Wales would be happy to publish the fact that no offence was committed on the walesonline website to resolve this issue.

If that is satisfactory, I will arrange for it to be published.”

Eventually Mottram and I agreed on the wording that appeared on the WalesOnline website on Friday the 27th of February and on page 2 of the following day’s edition of the Wasting Mule. You can read both on the left (click to enlarge).

You may find the synchronicity in this episode noteworthy, for the Wales Eye piece by Parry was posted on Tuesday, January 27, and the WalesOnline version was timed at 06:30 on the same day. I should imagine that the Wales Eye piece appeared in the early hours, otherwise Shipton would have been quoting from a blog post that hadn’t yet appeared! There was obviously collusion, the proof being the tweet from Shipton asking about the petition. In fact, Shipton is almost acting as Parry’s researcher!

Yet the two accounts differ significantly in their conclusions. The Wales Eye piece, after relating – yet again! – the horrors endured by ultra bigot Jacques Protic, and how he was failed by GogPlod, ends thus:

“Now, it appears, the target of the Jac O’ the North website is incomers (presumably a reference to the Plaid Glyndŵr petition) and this has led to another police inquiry.

Perhaps this one will be the last.”

Whereas the WalesOnline article by Tub O’Lard ends like this:

“It is understood that South Wales Police will not forward the complaint about Mr Jones to the Crown Prosecution Service.”

So Shipton already knew that the police were not taking the complaint seriously when he wrote his piece, and seeing as he and Parry were collaborating so closely, Parry must also have known, but he chose not to say because to have done so would have undermined his attack on me. Worse, he pretends to believe that the complaint will lead to action resulting in the closing down of my blog, and yet . . .

Parry gives the game away that he knows the police have thrown out the complaint with the caption he attaches to the petition link he lifted from my blog. (My intellectual property.) For in it he says: “Petition calling for social housing for Welsh people which was investigated by the police”. Not is being investigated by the police but ‘was’. Clearly Parry knew when he wrote his nonsense that the police had thrown out the complaint. But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe all that mattered was that a complaint had been made, which allowed Parry and Llais y Sais to write their libellous bollocks.

The lies written by Parry and Shipton referred specifically to the Plaid Glyndŵr petition, but if you look at the reply I got from Trinity Mirror, it reads: “The content of the blog was scrutinised (by police) and no offence was committed”. So if this really does mean the blog, rather than the petition, are we now talking of two complaints, or more than two? Worth asking because Parry also got his knickers in a twist over the old FWA photographs on my blog, with Shipton again acting as his ‘researcher’.

Yet despite him knowing, and finally admitting, that the police were not taking the original complaint against me seriously, Parry can’t resist upping the ante in his February 4th posting, Arms Race, with:

“An earlier probe by a Police Constable and Inspector of South Wales Police into alleged racism on the blog was aborted for lack of evidence.

But now the police have received more information after several complaints about inflammatory comments and decided to take action.

A complainant was contacted by a senior officer who said several similar protests were made to the police following the revelations about the petition and a decision has been reached to pursue the inquiry.”

What ‘racism’? Does he mean the petition? But the only group mentioned in the petition are the Welsh! ‘Inflammatory comments’. Does he really mean comments, things said by visitors to my blog? What possible ‘revelations’ could there be about a simple, self-explanatory, 21-word petition in plain English?

So if Phil Parry is to be believed (yes, I know), people are queuing up to report me to Plod! Rubbish of course, but still, we must consider the various possibilities here, which appear to be: 1/ South Wales Police misled Trinity Mirror, which means that the clarification published on Friday is unreliable. 2/ Phil Parry is privy to everything the police are doing and is therefore the only one who really knows what’s going on. 3/ Phil Parry is an obsessive fantasist who’s taken an intense dislike to me. 4/ Somebody is pulling Parry (and possibly Shipton’s) strings, and perhaps protecting Trinity Mirror’s interests by getting Parry to write the bilge leaving Llais y Sais able to argue that it’s merely relaying what someone else has written. Make up your own minds. If it helps, no police officer, from any force, has ever been in contact with me.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I submitted a Freedom of Information request to South Wales Police; it can be found here, together with the first page of the reply. Which says, in essence, ‘We can’t give you the informtion you request because that would breach your data protection rights’! There were a few other pages and a form for me to officially ask if they hold any information on me. But what’s the point, I’ve been through this rigmarole before with North Wales Police over the Protic allegations.

Looking at the four options I’ve posited above, I choose number four, because I can’t believe that Parry and Shipton believe what they’re writing. No rational and balanced individual could possibly think that a petition asking for social housing to be allocated (but not exclusively) to Welsh people ‘incites racial hatred’. And do they really believe that the authorities would be interested in photographs taken almost half a century ago of men who are now almost all dead! Or that those same authorities care that I knew these men? Or to put it another way, when it comes to my support for the FWA, or my respect for John Jenkins, do Parry and Shipton seriously believe that they’re telling the police, MI5, or anyone else, anything they haven’t known for decades? So why bother?

This is not journalists breaking stories, this is history lessons spiced up with lies, hyperbole and silly, time-wasting complaints to the police for a contemporary purpose. Another example of the desperation on display is Parry quoting my playful references to alcohol having been consumed in some of the scenes depicted in those 1960s photographs, as if this somehow damns me! Effectively saying, ‘Oh my God! look at this – a group of young men in the late ’60s, and they used to drink!’ What it really shows is that Phil Parry will use anything, however innocent or banal, in his pathetic and increasingly desperate attempts to blacken my name.

Consequently, the only conclusions I can draw are that either Parry and Shipton have lost all sense of proportion and the instinct for what makes a good story (in which case they shouldn’t be allowed near a keyboard), or that this is some kind of a silly game, in which they are no more than pawns.

Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon 2: Sharks Circling?

On 25/02/201527/02/2015 By JacIn Planning, Planning Inspectorate, Swansea46 Comments

After my previous post, Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon, I have been giving more thought to the subject, and doing a little digging; which has led to a disturbing possibility presenting itself. By which I mean that someone, perhaps even someone local to Swansea Bay, is trying to sabotage this project for their own selfish reasons.

Treading carefully, I have decided to present this post as a combination of incontestable facts, presented as FACT: and limited to the paragraph in bold type following, interspersed with paragraphs containing deductions, assumptions or informed guesswork, before concluding with a reasonable hypothesis extrapolated from what has gone before.

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FACT: The past week or so has seen a number of stories in the media unfavourable to the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project. The first appeared in The Telegraph on February 15th, written by Energy Editor, Emily Gosden, and repeated in the Western Mail and WalesOnline on February 17th, about Cornish villagers up in arms over plans to quarry granite for shipping to Swansea Bay. Ms Gosden was at it again on February 21st, attacking on another front with this report arguing that the electricity generated by the tidal lagoon would be hideously expensive. This piece used as its source a submission produced by Citizens Advice.

So we see negative attention suddenly being paid to the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon. The really damaging attack of course came from Citizens Advice.

FACT: Those familiar with recent goings-on in Wales will recall that there was a plan to throw a massive barrage across the Severn Sea from Penarth to Weston-super-Mare. The company behind this project is, or was (it may be in liquidation), Hafren Power. A number of its leading figures left, the former chief executive to form Severn Tidal Energy.

FACT: The leading political backer of the Severn Barrage project was, and remains, Peter Hain, Labour MP for Neath. In fact, Hain resigned from the shadow cabinet in May 2012 to concentrate on promoting the project. In June 2013 the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee killed off the barrage proposal with a very critical report. Mr Hain attributed the rejection of his project to the influence of Bristol Port, one of whose owners, David Ord, was a substantial donor to the Conservative Party.

The Spanglefish website devoted to Peter Hain (from which the panel above is extracted) suggests that Hain hopes to resurrect the barrage project when there is a Labour government in Westminster. There is of course a general election in May. The website also suggests that ‘Welsh’ Labour is backing the barrage project.

FACT: In a WalesOnline article from September 2013, linked to above, and again here, “Mr Hain said that while he was convinced the project has no future at present, he hoped it could be resurrected under a future Labour Government.” While this article, from just last month, reported, “He (Hain) remains hopeful that the stalled Severn Barrage project, potentially creating tens of thousands of jobs, could be resurrected”.

Haywod Linkedin — LINKEDIN PROFILE (Click to enlarge)

FACT: The CEO of Citizens Advice is Gillian Guy, who is also chair of the Audit Committee of the National Audit Office.

FACT: Dr Elizabeth Haywood, aka Mrs Peter Hain, and another backer of the barrage project, was on the Remuneration Committee of the Wales Audit Office from July 2011 to March 2014. Since January of this year she has had a personal interest in electricity matters by becoming a non-executive director of Scottish Power Energy Networks Holdings Ltd.

Given that the Wales Audit Office is probably no more independent of the National Audit Office in London than the ‘Welsh’ Government is of Westminster it is entirely reasonable to assume that Dr Haywood of Hafren Power and Gillian Guy of Citizens Advice are known to each other. And would be known to each other even if I’m being unduly cynical about the relationship between the two bodies. (For cynicism is not in my nature!)

FACT: Peter Hain and Elizabeth Haywood are both committed to the Severn barrage project. Additionally, Peter Hain has publicly voiced his opposition to the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon.

If the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon goes ahead, and is successful, others will be built. This will almost certainly be the final nail in the coffin of any Severn barrage, or any other major tidal barrage anywhere under the jurisdiction of the Westminster government. It seems to be a case of either / or but not both.

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The Severn Barrage project never went away, it has been lying dormant (much like the company behind it, Hafren Power). A cynic – something I’ve already made clear (if only parenthetically), I am not – might interpret the above information thus:

There are two very good reasons for supporters of the Severn Barrage to attack the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project at this time. First, they are hoping for a Labour victory on May 7th, so in anticipation of that, now is a good time to ‘resurrect’ their project, as has always been the intention. Further, the rival tidal lagoon project is currently at the critical stage of waiting for the Planning Inspectorate to recommend acceptance or refusal to the UK government, after which there is a further three-month period during which the UK government must say yea or nay. So why not kill two birds with one stone by trying to influence the decisions of the Planning Inspectorate and the outgoing UK government, while also reminding a Labour government-in-waiting of the economic bounty that could be lavished by a Severn barrage? And doesn’t it tie in well with all the recent talk of a Cardiff – Bristol city region (with poor old Newport as the spread in the sandwich).

Hain barrage — HAIN QUOTED IN ARTICLE (BY MARTIN SHIPTON) IN WALESONLINE JANUARY 21, 2015

The barrage is said to have, or possibly had, powerful supporters, among them, Tony Blair, Rhodri Morgan and the Notional Assembly. And of course, the Western Mail / WalesOnline, which will support anything that has Labour backing. Making this the ideal time for ‘Welsh’ Labour to clear up the confusion over whether a motion supporting the barrage was passed in the 2014 conference, as is suggested by the Peter Hain tweet below from March 29, 2014. (For some reason I’m blocked from Hain’s Twitter account!) The current briefing against the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon also provides ‘Welsh’ Labour with an opportunity to make clear its position on the project. The same opportunity naturally extends to the Labour MPs and AMs around Swansea Bay . . . though of course we already know where Peter Hain stands.

Hain Labour tweet — PETER HAIN TWEET FROM MARCH 29, 2014. (SUPPLIED BY ‘STAN’)

FACT: Peter Hain and Elizabeth Haywood obviously have considerable experience and contacts in business and politics; in addition, they have a company, Haywood Hain LLP, that specialises in ‘Media and Political Communications’.

I fear there may be more to the recent attacks on the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project than concern for the tranquility of a Cornish village, or a commendable regard for electricity consumers being ripped off. Big money is at stake, and – speaking for our hypothetical cynic – it could be that certain persons of influence are trying to kill off a very worthwhile and beneficial project for the Swansea Bay region.

Any further information to admin@jacothenorth.net

UPDATE 26.02.2015: As predicted above, Peter Hain has used the report produced by his wife’s former colleague to rubbish the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon and promote the ~~Lazarus~~ Severn barrage in this piece. I know none of us think much of Llais y Sais, but does it have to be so predictably obsequious and revolting!

Now I KNOW I’m Doing Something Right!

On 03/02/201504/02/2015 By JacIn History, Welsh Media, Welsh Nationalism24 Comments

As you might guess, this (originally short) post is a follow-up to my previous one, I Must Be Doing Something Right. It seems that Phil Parry at Wales Eye and Martin Shipton at Llais y Sais just won’t let go . . . though their persistence is not to be compared to slavering pit bulls, more like drowning men clutching at straws.

Yesterday afternoon I received a tweet from Fat Boy, you can see it for yourself on the right, together with my response. (Click to enlarge.) Yes, I was flippant, partly because I have difficulty taking the man seriously and also because I’d caught some bug that had me in bed by seven o’clock. I should have guessed that this was the prelude to another attack on me but, as I’ve said, I was feeling rough and on my way to bed.

Refreshed by fifteen hours of sleep I powered up my computer this morning to learn that after I’d gone to bed Shipton had tweeted again, this time about paramilitary activity and John Jenkins. His tweet and my response can be found on the left. (Click to enlarge.) What was it all about? I soon found out thanks to an e-mail from a supporter directing me to a tweet from Phil Parry at Wales Eye. (Below.) Again, I replied, and again, the response was somewhat flippant because, quite frankly, and with the best will in the world, I regard the man as an arsehole.

Anyway, it seems I am a “controversial commentator” (thank God for that!) and I support a paramilitary organisation. Which organisation would that be? I certainly support the various Kurdish militias fighting their people’s many enemies, but somehow I don’t think Parry is thinking of the Kurds. Given Lard Boy’s tweets yesterday we can safely assume that tomorrow, Wales Eye will run a World Exclusive! that I, Jac o’ the North, Swansea Jack, Royston Jones, supported the Free Wales Army . . . an organisation that ceased to exist around 1970.

This Earth-shattering news will be taken up by media outlets around the globe, Muscovites will stop complete strangers in a Red Square blizzard to ask, ‘Have you heard about that bastard Royston Jones supporting the Free Wales Army?’ And the response will be, ‘That’s nothing, I’ve heard he used to go drinking with that Cayo Evans in Lampeter’. Before they both shuffle off safe in the knowledge that President Putin would know how to deal with the likes of me. Then again, the coverage might be limited to Fat Boy at the Western Mail. In fact, I’m prepared to bet that the uptake will be limited to Llais y Sais.

So what’s going on here? It started off with Wales Eye, from out of a clear blue sky, attacking me in this concoction on September 2nd. A week or so later Wales Eye ran another piece about the persecution fantasies of Jacques Protic due (allegedly) to something I’d written about him, and this resulted in a North Wales Police enquiry. Then Wales Eye told us that I had been reported to South Wales Police for launching a ‘racial hatred’ petition . . . a petition that I did not launch. (But, understandably, Wales Eye neglected to tell us exactly who reported me.) This lie was then repeated almost verbatim by Martin Shipton in the Western Mail, and in WalesOnline, even though I’d put him straight. (See below.) Now it seems I am to be ‘outed’ as a supporter of paramilitary activity, a member of the Free Wales Army, and an admirer of John Jenkins. (Thank God they don’t know about that statue in Aber’!)

What sort of an arrangement is this that sees one of Wales’ most respected journalists (though not respected by me, obviously) acting as researcher for a vindictive blogger? Does Trinity Mirror plc pay Shipton’s salary for him to behave in this demeaning manner? But then, Shipton and Parry are both Labour, and Trinity Mirror has a record of supporting the Labour Party in Wales; who can forget the short-lived Welsh Mirror that crept from under a stone in the wake of Labour’s failure to gain a majority in the first Assembly elections of 1999? This rag was nothing but a platform for Paul Starling to spew his hatred for all things Welsh, dressed up of course as ‘combatting the evils of nationalism’.

With an election approaching, is Trinity Mirror doing ‘Welsh’ Labour another favour by targetting me? For those tempted to answer with, ‘You’re not important enough, Jac’, I would answer that I’m obviously important enough for the chief reporter of Llais y Sais to sift through my blog postings, check my photographs, and to monitor my tweets, looking for anything that could be presented as remotely incriminating. It’s clearly a concerted attempt to discredit me and, by extension, what I write. So why is it happening?

Anyway, the whole point of writing this was to prepare my easily shocked readers for the news that tomorrow, on the Wales Eye blog, ace investigator and top notch political analyst, Phil Parry will break the news that I supported direct action. This will then be relayed by his fat friend over at Llais y Sais. And that, my friends, just about sums up the dire state of what today passes for ‘the Welsh media’. Stop Press: Here’s Parry’s World Exclusive!, in pdf format (saving you having to pay to read it). Oh, yes, make sure you’re not eating anything, otherwise you might choke laughing.

P.S. To save certain ‘journalists’ unnecessary delving into my past I shall set the record straight on a few things.

I did not sink the Titanic, honest!
I may have met Gavrilo Princip at a social event.
I was not responsible for the Wall Street Crash.
I played no part in the invasion of Abbysinia.
I never served in the SS . . . well, not before 1944, anyway.
I was never a hippy in the 1960s (though I did wear flares).
I did not kill JFK, it was the New Orleans Mob (I was with the Chicago Outfit).
I had no hand in the break-up of the Beatles.
I was nowhere near Watergate.
I have no idea where Jimmy Hoffa is buried (God bless him).
I did not invade ~~Las Malvinas~~ The Falklands.
I had no involvement in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I am not related to Slobodan Milosovic (try Protic on that one).
I was never formally introduced to Saddam Hussein.
I did not vote Yes in last September’s Scottish independence referendum.
I have recommended you both for the very highest awards your profession can bestow.

I Must Be Doing Something Right!

On 28/01/201511/02/2015 By JacIn Colonisation of Wales, Third Sector, Welsh Media28 Comments

I had hoped to have a few days off after posting my previous piece but would you believe it – Wales Eye is having a pop at me again, this time helped by the Wasting Mule. It began – though I had no way of knowing it at the time – with a Twitter message from Martin Shipton on Monday about the link at the top of my sidebar, to which I replied. See the exchange for yourself below.

I thought no more of it until yesterday morning when I was alerted to the fact that there was a piece about me on the WalesOnline website, though the article was soon ‘pulled’. Fortunately it’s available here in pdf format. Despite what I’d told Fat Boy, he begins his piece thus: “The Wales Eye news website discloses that the Jac O’the North (sic) blog has been reported to South Wales Police after launching a petition”. Why write that when he knew I had not launched any petition? A few tweets were exchanged yesterday, you can see them on the left where they appear in chronological order. (Click to enlarge.) A revealing phrase, “predominant language”.

Anyway, the origin of this ‘story’ was obviously Phil Parry over at Wales Eye. Regular readers will know that I’ve had a run-in with Wales Eye over infamous bigot Jacques Protic and him (allegedly) reporting me to North Wales Police. All the relevant information and links are available in my recent post Seeking a Latter-day Waldorf T. Flywheel. I assume Parry has been kicking cats and plotting his revenge since that piece appeared on January 19th. So what exactly was Parry saying? Seeing as the Wales Eye blog hides behind a pay wall, and to save you wasting your money, the article is available here in pdf format.

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The opening paragraph, which contains the essence of the ‘story’, says: “A website which urges a policy of Welsh homes only for Welsh people has been reported to the police for inciting racial hatred, Wales Eye can reveal”. It goes on to say that “an investigation was undertaken by a police constable and inspector” of South Wales Police. The rest of the piece is rehashed nonsense about Protic and old comments taken out of context. Let us focus on this first paragraph.

Obviously, seeing as it’s not my petition, my website is not “urging” anything, I merely offer visitors to my blog the chance to sign a petition I support, and which I have signed. The petition does not argue for “Welsh homes only for Welsh people”, it merely says that Welsh people should have social housing that has been paid for with Welsh public funding . . . is there an objection to that? Now, moving on to “racial hatred”. The only nation mentioned in the petition is the Welsh, so whoever is making this mischief is reading something into the petition that isn’t there.

Elsewhere in the Wales Eye piece there is a graphic of some houses in Kidwelly explained by, “In another post, endorsed by the blog with a re-tweet, families from London who took houses from a Welsh housing association were called ‘perverts'”. WalesOnline says it this way: “In another Twitter posting, re-tweeted by the blog, families from London who took houses from a Welsh housing association were called “perverts”. An aerial picture singles out a number of homes and the tweet says: “Just in one small Welsh town all these houses were allocated to perverts from London by a Welsh housing association.”

Note that this, like the petition, is something else that did not originate with me. Parry is getting pretty desperate now, so here’s the truth. The case referred to is one of a paedophile gang living Dennis' Kidwelly tweet in Kidwelly that was imprisoned in 2011. Here’s a report on the case from the Daily Mail. Here’s a blog post I wrote around the same time. At the risk of frightening Parry and Shipton with facts, here they are: These people had moved – or been moved – from London; they were housed in Kidwelly by a Welsh housing association (Grwp Gwalia); they were all found guilty of paedophilia and other sexual perversions in a court of law. So what is the issue here? The caption to the picture in the tweet is 100% correct. Parry seems to take offence because the tweet calls them “perverts” – so what would he call them, the perfect neighbours? Or maybe he doesn’t like the fact that it was re-tweeted 21 times.

The reason Parry uses this case – which he obviously hasn’t researched – is because it concerns Welsh social housing being given to English people who are labelled “perverts”; which he hopes to use as an example of ‘racial hatred’ in order to confer something resembling credibility on his hysterical reaction to a perfectly reasonable petition. Trouble is, for Parry, that these people weren’t called “perverts” because they were English, they were called “perverts” because they were . . . you paying attention, Parry! Shipton! – PERVERTS.

Here’s an update on the case from last September. Note the English flag outside Colin Bately’s house – for he was a patriot! Complete with two rottweilers. Just think, Welsh housing associations are taking in people like this, knowing what they’re like, because this gang had Phil Parry convictions before they moved to Wales.

Anyway, I don’t fancy wasting much more time on Parry and Shipton, I’ll just conclude with the final lines from Shipton’s contribution to this joint-venture into fantasy. He says: ‘”Mr Jones said: “Not my petition. I’m just promoting it for Plaid Glyndwr.” It is understood that South Wales Police will not forward the complaint about Mr Jones to the Crown Prosecution Service.’ This was obviously added after the piece had been written, otherwise he wouldn’t have started by saying I’d “launched” the petition. But it also raises other questions.

For example, seeing as Parry and his fat friend were in cahoots over this attemped smear, and the pretext was the ‘racist’ petition, why was I / my blog reported to the police when they both knew it was not my petition? Because even before my tweet to Fatso on Monday the most cursory check would have shown who actually launched the petition. Are these people really journalists!

“South Wales Police will not forward the complaint about Mr Jones to the Crown Prosecution Service” – well, I am relieved; I feared I was bound for the Colonies! But will the police charge whoever made the complaint against me with wasting police time? Come to that, who did report me, for Wales Eye neglects to tell us. Now, I wonder . . .

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The truth is – as any perceptive reader will have guessed – these attacks on me have nothing to do with Protic or petitions, it’s an exercise in black propaganda, or to put it an another way, mud slinging. Done so that anyone Googling ‘Royston Jones’ or ‘Jac o’ the North’ in future will turn up crap like this by Parry and Tub O’Lard. And see that I have been reported to the police. Done to discredit me and, by extension, anything I write. So who’s behind it?

Well, my guess is that it can explained by what I write about. My usual targets are the Labour Party and the Third Sector, which is simply an extension of the Labour Party. It may be no coincidence that this latest attack from Wales Eye comes just days after the latest – possibly final – edition of Cambria magazine became available, which contains my article on housing associations, in which I ask why we have so many of them, and why these quasi-private companies receive so much public funding, and why so much of the money they’re given ends up over the border.

Another subject I’ve touched on recently is Canoe Wales and the National White Water Centre on Afon Tryweryn. Today I received the response from Sport Wales to an FoI I’d submitted about funding to Canoe Wales. Read it here. In a poor country where so much needs to be done, how can anyone justify wasting almost two million pounds in just five years on canoeing, an activity that has little or no Welsh involvement? (And there’s almost certainly public funding from other sources.) That’s how Wales is run today, but you aren’t supposed to know. Ask yourself, are you going to get the truth from the BBC, or ITV, or the Western Mail?

I know how corrupt this country is, and I’m beginning to understand just how much money is squandered year after year on a system of sham devolution designed to encourage colonisation and managed decline rather than make Wales a better country for those who belong here. That’s why I have enemies. Enemies so desperate to discredit me they’ll even use clowns like Parry and Shipton. What will they try next?

P.S. Don’t forget to sign the petition!

UPDATE: In the personal attack on me in his latest post Phil Parry refers back to the Jacques Protic case. I have covered most of the angles in this recent post. Parry seems to think he’s on a winner with this, and keeps bringing it up, almost showing off. What I’m saying can perhaps be explained by this extract.

Wales Eye NWP docs

The “inquiry” referred to is a North Wales Police investigation into me or my blog for nasty things it’s claimed I said about Jacques Protic. Reading the extract in the panel, a number of questions arise.

By what route did Phil Parry obtain internal police documents; did they come directly from the police, did they come from Protic, or from some third party?

As the officers involved in the “inquiry” were first named on Wales Eye on September 10th last, and North Wales Police was made aware of this in my letter received (and acknowledged) on September 17th, we must assume that NWP has no objection to the contents of confidential police documents being aired on a blog.

That being so, what is the relationship between Parry and the North Wales Police? Is he working for them, or are the police merely a conduit for some other agency?

Even if Parry has no relationship with North Wales Police, then we still need to know why NWP has allowed confidential documents, naming and embarrassing its officers, to be in the public domain for over four months.

I wonder what the police response would have been I’d got hold of internal police documents and splashed them on my blog?

I believe it’s time for a little honesty from those involved in this ongoing smear campaign against me.

Jac o' the North

Tag: WalesOnline

Turks To Sosban?

Baghdad to Pendine?

Justice for Jenny Lee Clarke

Devolution as Prozac

Lying for the Union

‘Welsh’ Labour In All Its Ugliness

Circuit of Wales Revisited

Playground Wales

Where Is Franz Kafka When You Need Him?

Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon 2: Sharks Circling?

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Now I KNOW I’m Doing Something Right!

I Must Be Doing Something Right!

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