Devolution has made Wales poorer

On 18/12/201722/12/2017 By JacIn Cardiff, Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Conservative and Unionist Party, Corruption, Demographics, Public Funding, Social Housing, Third Sector, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media60 Comments

INTRODUCTION

Before you start, let me warn you that this is quite a long piece, it’s long because it deals with the fundamental problems of devolution, and explains why devolution has resulted in Wales becoming poorer.

Though you can console yourselves with the knowledge that unless some bastards really annoy me between now and Hogmanay this will be my last posting of 2017.

Here’s how devolution makes Wales poorer, with a few of the consequences:

Fundamentally, devolution makes Wales poorer due to the way devolution is funded
A problem exacerbated by separate legislation and funding allowing England to impose burdens on Wales that would be impossible without devolution
That said, Wales being poor suits the interests of the Labour Party, which blames others for the state of Wales while exploiting the poverty for electoral gain and to build a crony empire
As there is no party or alliance of parties capable of breaking Labour’s stranglehold Wales is condemned to ever-worsening poverty
With devolution being so disastrous for Wales we are left with only two realistic alternatives: independence or being treated more fairly as part of England

I shall deal with all of the above points but not necessarily separately (or even in that order) because of linkages that I hope become clear.

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SHORT-CHANGED

There is no question that Wales is worse off today than when we had the first elections to the Welsh Assembly in May 1999. The evidence is everywhere, and not only is the Wales of 2017 poorer than the Wales of 1999, we are also poorer relative to other parts of the UK than we were in 1999, and falling further behind every year.

It doesn’t really matter which index you use – GVA, GDP, wages, child poverty – the picture painted is the same. (While our GVA may have grown faster than the other countries of the UK in recent years that growth seems to be restricted to Cardiff.)

One of the major reasons for Wales’ relative poverty is the funding arrangement known as the Barnett Formula. This article on the BBC Northern Ireland website explains it in simple terms.

Note that it admits, “The figures vary slightly every year, but in 2012-2013 Northern Ireland got the most – £10,876 per head. Scotland got £10,152 per head and Wales, despite being much poorer, got £9,709.” (My underline.)

So we see that, to begin with, Wales is disadvantaged in the allocation of funding, but it gets worse. For in the article we also read, “Some argue a needs-based system – which would take into account factors such as the age of the population and levels of poverty – would be a fairer formula.”

The importance of the reference to “the age of the population” will be explained in a minute.

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SCAPEGOAT

Now in any normal country this deteriorating situation might have resulted in a change of government, if not social upheaval, but this is Wales and such things never happen, partly because there’s a scapegoat. For since 2010 there’s been a Conservative government in London, and so for ‘Welsh’ Labour and its little helper it’s all the fault of them wicked Tories.

But Wales had been in decline since the beginning of the devolution era, and from 1999 until 2010 there was a Labour government in London, first led by Tony Blair and then by Gordon Brown. So did Labour and Plaid Cymru blame ‘London’ then? Well, obviously, Labour didn’t, and Plaid’s criticism was usually muted, certainly after the palace coup that removed leader Dafydd Wigley in 2000 (after he’d led his party to its greatest electoral success), and also during the Labour-Plaid coalition of 2007 – 2011.

To reverse this decline would require radical change, but ‘Welsh’ Labour is as afraid of radical change as the stone throwers of Saudi Arabia; for Labour in Wales is a very conservative party. It wants things to stay the same because the status quo serves its interests, with no change countenanced unless it can benefit the party.

‘ . . . and it’all the fault of them wicked Tories up in Lundun’. Bollocks! Try looking closer to home, Leanne.

The other consideration is that change of a radical nature, i.e. Wales doing things for itself, to benefit itself, might unleash demons that could inflame a hitherto resigned populace with ideas of Welsh competence. Clearly, a dangerous road to take for a party that, when it comes to the relationship with England, may be viewed as the DUP without the bowlers and the sashes.

To understand Plaid Cymru you need to know that Plaid today is a bound-for-oblivion alliance of a socially conservative rural grass-roots with a leadership stratum made up of ‘progressives’ fighting UK-wide or even global battles against the forces of darkness.

While Trump is president, Brexit looms, the globe warms, the right marches in Freedonia, and Wales lacks transgender toilets in every coffee shop, Wales is too small and too poor to interest such ‘progressives’.

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TAKING ADVANTAGE

I’ve said that Wales will never prosper under devolution, but in the heading to this article I suggest that devolution by its very nature is partly responsible for our decline. So let me explain.

Fundamentally, devolution has made it easier for England to impose financial and other burdens on us that would have been almost impossible prior to 1999. This has inevitably contributed to our decline.

In that article from the BBC Northern Ireland website that I used you read, regarding the Barnett Formula, the suggestion that, “a needs-based system – which would take into account factors such as the age of the population and levels of poverty – would be a fairer formula.”

This would definitely help us in Wales because our population is older than those in the other administrations, and ageing faster. The percentage of our population in the 65+ bracket in 2008 was 21.4%, while in Northern Ireland it was 16.7%, England 19.1%, and Scotland 19.7%.

A major reason for the high proportion of elderly people in the Welsh population is the large numbers of English people retiring to Wales. And this influx inevitably increases the burden on our NHS and other services.

In some areas a majority of the over 65s was born in England. Here’s a table I compiled a while back using figures gleaned from the 2011 census. In 2011 only 68.8% of the 65+ age group in Wales was actually born here.

In Conwy only 37.1% of the over 65s were born in Wales. That’s a staggering statistic.

This should be a cause for concern, because every western country worries about the ‘ticking timebomb’ of an ageing population, but don’t worry, because in Wales a rapidly ageing population is seen as a positive.

A letter I received from the Office of the First Minister assured me, “There are almost 800,000 people aged 60 and over in Wales, over a quarter of the population, and, in the next twenty years, this is expected to exceed one million people. The fact that Wales is a nation of older people should be seen as something positive”.

So there you have it, here in Wales we’ve found the right wire to snip in order to de-activate the demographic time-bomb. So why aren’t economists, health professionals and others flocking here from around the world to learn from us? Because it’s all bullshit, that’s why.

And there’s another reason for lying, because to prop up the NHS and related services education and all sorts of other budgets have to be raided. One organisation suffering badly is Natural Resources Wales, which looks after our forests, rivers and other assets.

From £139m in 2013/2014 the ‘Welsh’ Government grant to NRW will fall to £65m in 2019/20. Falling by more than half in six years, in a country supposedly dedicated to protecting the natural environment (if only to attract tourists).

Of course people were retiring to Wales long before we had devolution, but if health services were not devolved then we would almost certainly have seen an increase in funding, but with devolution and the block grant the attitude is, ‘You’ve had your money, it’s up to you how you allocate it’.

This is just one of the ways in which devolution allows England to dump on Wales, but there are many others, which I shall deal with soon.

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THE POLITICAL CLASS

As we’ve seen, Labour blames the Conservative government in London for all our ills, and conveniently ignores the fact that it was in power in the UK until 2010 and could have reformed the Barnett Formula. But Labour prefers to exploit Welsh poverty by blaming the Tories for causing it in order to maintain Labour’s hold on Wales.

Plaid Cymru’s position is marginally less discreditable, but in attacking them wicked Tories up in London too many in Plaid tend to forget who runs the administration nearer home. For them, perceptions of ideological solidarity with Labour blur the reality.

Giving us two parties for which what’s best for Wales will always take second place to (for Labour) hanging onto power, and (for Plaid) being a peripheral part of some UK leftist-‘progressive’ front.

On the other side, the Tories turn up to slag off the left and carry tales to their bosses in London for them to use in order to warn English voters of the perils of voting Labour. Former prime minister David Cameron even described the Wales-England border as the “line between life and death” due to the state of the NHS in Wales.

But Cameron was right, the Welsh NHS is crumbling, and it’s partly due to the influx of elderly English, most of them Tory voters, but he’s not going to admit that, is he?

So we see that the Tories also exploit Wales’ poverty for electoral gain. Great system, eh! – ‘Let’s keep Wales poor so both the main English parties can use it to their advantage’.

We’ve seen that Labour’s response to Wales’ plight is not to reform the Barnett Formula, not to fight the invasion of the blue rinses, not to stand up for Wales in any way. So how does Labour respond?

Well, in addition to blaming everything on them wicked Tories, Labour sets up one organisation after another to ‘combat poverty’, or ‘deprivation’, or ‘discrimination’, or homelessness, or whatever else third sector shysters can persuade civil servants and politicians needs to be combated.

For Labour, the advantage is that those who make up the third sector tend to be on the luvvie left, which makes them natural Labour sympathisers; while the bloated third sector these parasites create also provides opportunities for ‘Welsh’ Labour to practice the patronage and cronyism for which it is rightly famed. Which gives Wales a third sector providing sinecures for both those who could smell the money from afar and failed local politicians and loyal hangers-on.

Labour also responds with gimmicks, especially gimmicks designed to gain favourable reporting in the friendly English media. One that made big news was of course free prescriptions back in 2007. Scotland and Northern Ireland followed suit . . . but not England, where the charge is now £8.60 per item.

Inevitably, this has resulted in a movement of people from England to Wales to take advantage of our generosity, people with long-term medical conditions, which further increase the burden on our NHS. Something that, again, would have been impossible without devolution.

But to talk of such things would make us ‘uncaring’, or ‘selfish’, heinous crimes in a country as rich as Wales.

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THE POVERTY SECTOR

I’ve written many times about Registered Social Landlords, more usually known as housing associations, and so I don’t propose to go into any great depth here, suffice it to say that we have a system of social housing so mismanaged and damaging to Welsh interests that it could only have been developed with objectives other than providing good rented accommodation for Welsh people.

For a start, our social housing is – despite ‘devolution’ – part of an Englandandwales system that, through the Housing (Wales) Act 2014, awards priority status to English criminals, drug addicts, problems families and others. To the extent that social housing, especially in some rural towns, is now often referred to as ‘anti-social housing’ due to the problems it imports.

To make matters worse, there is now an ‘arms race’ under way as it becomes obvious that we have too many social housing providers and the number must be reduced. So all manner of ill-considered and irresponsible ‘agreements’ are being entered into with probation companies and other English or cross-border agencies.

Also, in this era of ‘consolidation’, we see Labour blatantly backing housing associations controlled by its supporters – RSLs such as Wales & West, Pobl Group – to expand and take over housing bodies concerned with providing a decent service rather than with spreading ‘Welsh’ Labour influence.

Closely linked with social housing is the ‘homelessness’ racket, that ships in homeless people from England and elsewhere in order to increase the problem of ‘Welsh’ homelessness and guarantee funding increases for third sector bodies, due to another ‘arms race’ under way here.

A letter I recently received from the ‘Welsh’ Government told me there are 48 homelessness agencies operating in Wales and being funded by the WG (though the figure given for the amount of funding involved was wildly – and I hope not deliberately – misleading). This is obviously a ludicrous and unsustainable number and so I can guarantee a cull.

To give specific examples we’ll go to the website of the Wallich, one of the big boys in the homelessness industry with an income for year ended 31 March 2017 of almost £13m, £7.8m of which went on salaries, but still left £2.8m for investments, £938,478 of it in ‘overseas equities’. (Read the accounts for yourselves.)

Here are some Wallich case studies: First, Anthony, who (we are asked to believe) got on the wrong train in Devon and arrived in Cardiff. Then there’s Peter, who (of his own volition, honest) moved from Birmingham to Swansea. Finally, there’s Kerry, a victim of domestic violence with a drink problem herself who made the move from Northern Ireland to Wales, presumably because there were no nearer refuges.

‘Support that Helps’ to provide lots of cushy jobs, overseas investments, and of course, funding to look after many of England’s homeless.

Another major player in the homelessness business is Llamau which is currently reminding us that if you want to stay afloat in a cut-throat market then you’ve got to be innovative, find yourself a niche, get celebs on board. Which is what they believe they’ve done by focusing on homelessness among young people. (Apparently the other 47 homelessness outfits are turning youngsters away!)

And of course, you’ve also got to use the media, something the third sector is very good at, with newspaper articles and a television series. Until quite recently the chair of the Llamau board was Angela Gascoigne, who represents the trans-Severn future planned for our south east.

She has strong links with housing and ex-offender bodies in England, she’s also on the board of the Wales Probation Trust (part of an Englandandwales set-up), and here we find her with Llamau, a body that has suddenly discovered there’s money to be made from housing homeless youngsters.

I assure you, Gasgoigne’s CV dovetailing so perfectly with Llamau’s latest ~~scam~~ scheme is not accidental, for Gascoigne’s English connections provide many of Llamau’s clients.

Another lesson from Llamau is that if you want to rip off the Welsh public purse, but throw the locals off the scent, choose a Welsh name you can’t properly pronounce while stuffing the board and senior management with your English friends.

There are just too many other examples of how Wales is put upon, how our funding is stolen, for me to deal with them all, but here’s one final example that would be impossible to inflict on Wales without devolution.

I’ve told you that the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 guarantees homeless people and others with no Welsh connections priority treatment, and this explains both the funding wasted by housing associations and the plethora of homelessness organisations currently plaguing Wales. If they don’t ship them in themselves then both encourage homeless people and others to turn up in Wales and demand to be housed.

But in some areas the legislation is so specific that it’s quite striking. For example, if we go to 70 (1) (i) we read that Wales must also give priority to homeless ex-service personnel, but why doesn’t the comparable English legislation make the same demands of English social housing providers? Don’t you find that odd?

One doesn’t need to be ‘uncaring’, or even ‘callous’, to realise that homeless ex-service personnel in England are now being directed to Wales. And that 70 (1) (i) was a deliberate insertion into what is supposed to be Welsh legislation . . . which means it couldn’t have been done without devolution.

And it will of course cost the Welsh public purse a great deal of money. So how the hell did this little sub-clause appear in ‘Welsh’ legislation?

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CONCLUSION

I hope I’ve lived up to the promise I made in the Introduction and explained why devolution has been disastrous for Wales, and why things can only get worse.

Only a liar or a fool will argue that devolution delivers for Wales and that we should stick with it, ‘make it work’. It is designed not to work . . . not for Wales, anyway. It’s clear that ‘Welsh’ devolution works better for England than it does for Wales. Labour and its third sector guarantee that.

Which is why I say in the Introduction that if we want to avoid Wales becoming a third world country for our people then we have only two alternatives: either we choose to officially and constitutionally become a part of England, or we push for independence.

If you agree with me that independence is the only acceptable route for anyone who truly cares about Wales, anyone with an ounce of patriotism, then you must also accept that no political party we have today is capable of delivering independence. It’s questionable if any of the parties we know today even wants independence.

Fortunately a new party was recently formed that will argue for Welsh interests to be given priority, for Welsh needs to be met, for Wales to aspire to prosperity and independence rather than virtue signalling poverty.

This new party is Wales’ only hope; perhaps our last hope. The choice is yours, but I urge you to get involved and play your part. Start now by clicking here to register your interest.

Unless of course you’re content with Wales remaining Labour’s poverty-stricken fiefdom and England’s dumped-on colony, where the only growth industry is the third sector, which maintains Labour’s control and facilitates England’s exploitation.

Personally, I think our people deserve better. And I know we can do better – if we give ourselves the chance.

Independence!

♦ end ♦

Bawso and friends

On 08/12/201708/12/2017 By JacIn Cardiff, Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, EU Funding, Third Sector, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour51 Comments

PROPERTY EMPIRES

In my previous post I wrote about Rose Mutale Nyoni Merrill, queen of the race relations industry in Wales, perhaps undisputed monarch since the downfall of the Malik dynasty.

If you go to that previous post, Wales: Corruption and Poverty, and scroll down to the section ‘Hired Bullies’, you’ll see that I looked at the various roles to which Mutale Merrill has been appointed by the ‘Welsh’ Labour Government, and I explained how she’d used her authority – on more than one occasion – to stifle criticism of her political masters who, in addition to elevating her to these posts, also funded her various companies and charities.

A symmetry with which we are only too familiar in Wales. It’s the form of corruption known as cronyism, or patronage.

The foundation for this woman’s rise to prominence in public life, is an organisation called Bawso, formerly, or originally, Black Association of Women Step Out. Here’s a link to the website, and here’s a link to the Companies House entry. Bawso is also registered with the Charity Commission, number 1084854.

Bawso was founded in January 1996, and although Merrill isn’t listed among the founding members she does appear as the witness to their statements on the Certificate of Incorporation, where she is ‘Rose M. Nyoni’ and described as a ‘project co-ordinator’. So, clearly, she was involved with Bawso from the outset.

Now she appears at the top of the pile on the Companies House page where we are told that she came aboard 27 August 2004 as secretary. As she is also chief executive she would appear to have Bawso in an iron grip.

Though despite Mutale Nyoni being appointed secretary 27 August 2004 she didn’t sign the consent document for that post until 19 May 2005, and it was eventually registered with Companies House 2 June 2005. So was she acting as secretary without official recognition, and then her appointment had to be backdated?

Before quitting this section we’ll just take a quick look at the figures in the latest accounts available, for year ended 31 March 2016.

A figure that struck me as odd was, on page 22, ‘Rental Income’ of £388,803. We find what I assume to be the same figure on page 16, listed there as ‘Income from charitable activities’. That’s a lot of money for rental income, it works out at over thirty thousand pounds a month. Apart from the various grants this is Bawso’s biggest source of income. Where might it come from?

Information on other pages suggests that Bawso has a substantial building – possibly buildings – in the north from which it derives a considerable rental income. Page 28 suggests that Bawso also leases property.

Bawso’s Wrecsam address is 33 Grosvenor Road, a relatively quiet commercial street near the centre of town. At 31 and 31a we encounter another outfit that has appeared on this blog more than once – The Wallich Clifford Foundation.

In fact, the Wallich and Bawso occupy the same building, as the photograph shows. The large building on the left of the picture is split between the Wallich on the left, at 31, with Bawso the right, at 33. (On the right of the picture, at 35, we see the Citizens Advice Bureau.)

Naturally, I downloaded the Land Registry details for both properties. Here are the title details for 31, and here the details for 33. You’ll see that the Wallich property was bought in 2009 for £312,000 with no loan or mortgage involved. Bawso’s property next door was bought around the same time for £457,000, again, with no loan or mortgage involved.

A total of £769,000. Substantial purchases for third sector bodies like the Wallich and Bawso. Did some fairy godmother buy this building for them?

But the Wallich was soon extending its new property to create 31a. Here are the title details with a map dated 1 October 2015 showing the substantial extension to the rear, visible in another screen capture from Google.

The same map shows that number 33, the Bawso property, has also been extended, and this is confirmed by the Google screen capture (2) above.

Which raises a number of questions. Such, as why did the Wallich and Bawso both feel the need to extend their properties so soon after buying them, and who paid for the extensions?

Perhaps more worrying is, why hasn’t Bawso notified the Land Registry of its footprint-doubling extension? Here’s the latest available title plan for number 33. It shows just the original outlines for both the Wallich and the Bawso properties.

I don’t want you to think that I’ve got in for the third sector, but bloody hell! . . . Here we have two outfits dependent on the public purse and yet they can buy a substantial building in the centre of Wrecsam and then spend another dollop on doubling its size! Altogether this must have cost well over a million pounds.

And Wrecsam is just one corner of their national networks.

Oh, and didn’t I mention . . . the Wallich has another building not far away, St John’s House on Chester Road. Though this is owned by the council. So presumably the Wallich rents it, for I can find no leasehold arrangement. Or maybe they get it for free. Who cares? – it’s only public money after all.

5. courtesy of Google, St Johns House, click to enlarge

*Scroll to foot for important update regarding the Bawso property in Wrecsam*

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FOREIGN AID

While researching into Labour Party heavy Mutale Merrill I of course looked into those companies with which she is still involved. These being, Bawso Training and Interpreting Services Ltd and Abesu Ltd. The latter she runs with hubby Travers and step-son Samuel Oliver Crichton.

There’s little to report on either company. Unless they’re fronts for something bigger then they’re just ticking over.

Though one thing I did notice was that on the Certificate of Incorporation for Abesu, in the box marked ‘Previous surname(s)’, is typed Kalimamukwento. So is this her original or maiden name, and Nyoni the name from an earlier marriage?

Of more interest is the Sub Sahara Advisory Panel, a ‘think tank’. It is a registered company, and a charity, number 1159990. Mutale Merrill is chairman.

The accounts for year ending 30 September 2015 were 235 days late in reaching the Charity Commission.

The accounts up to 31 March 2017 are now available. So what do they tell us? Well, before getting to the figures we read on page 14 that “SSAP is currently setting up a young women’s safe space platform in Newport, Bangor and Edinburgh” Edinburgh! With Welsh public money?

The figures tell us that income is rising nicely, though staff costs of £51,488 account for the greater part of the income, and 78% of the £66,162 total SSAP spent. Leaving £36,319 as current assets, i.e. cash at bank and in hand £25,444, plus debtors £10,875.

Though I’m wondering who actually does the work, because page 13 tells us that SSAP “recruited a project officer (part-time) in Wales following interviews of 5 candidates. The person in post has been effective as of 1st of November 2016”.

Seeing as the accounts go up to 31 March 2017 the salary for a part-time project officer would never amount to £51,000 in five months; so who’s running the show, pulling down the big bucks?

I’m also a little concerned by the use of the phrase “in Wales”. Does this suggest that the Sub Sahara Advisory Panel has employees outside Wales?

Anyway, to the funders . . .

Wales for Africa, as it says on the tin, “. . . works with individuals, communities, the third sector and the public sector to build the world we want to live in and the Wales we want to be.”

If you have the time, and the inclination, you might wish to read the Wales for Africa 10 Year Report, 2006 – 2016. It has a foreword by Carwyn Jones who, at the time of writing, was still First Minister. Moving on . . .

Comic Relief we know about, and I’m sure we all have our own thoughts.

The Welsh Centre for International Affairs is a registered charity, number 1156822, and based at the Temple of Peace in Cardiff, which, conveniently, is where Mutale Merrill’s Sub Sahara Advisory Panel is also located. I couldn’t help but notice that funding for the WCIA went up from £335,881 for year ending 31 March 2015 to £988,946 for year ending 31 Match 2016.

The accounts for the Welsh Centre for International Affairs come in a glossy and expensive document in which the actual accounts seem almost incidental, so where does it get its money from?

Well, as we can see, some 87% of the income came from just two sources; Wales for Peace with £243,233 and Hub Cymru Africa with £614,000. Have you ever heard of these? I hadn’t, so I did a little trawling.

Wales for Peace seems to be some kind of subsidiary of the Welsh Centre for International Affairs – but how can a subsidiary be giving money to the parent company! Because according to the figures below Wales for Peace gave the Welsh Centre for International Affairs £243,233 and the WCIA gave back £254,734.

I can see how shuffling money around within an organisation might create employment, and give the impression of industry, but does it really achieve anything else?

And what of Hub Cymru Africa?

Are you getting dizzy from going round in circles? Let’s stop now and retrace our steps before we get completely lost, because we are in a maze, and it has been created to deter investigation.

Also, to disguise the fact that Wales, a country so poor it doesn’t have a pot to piss in, has a foreign aid programme! Think about that – a foreign aid programme!

And all so that a bunch of delusional liberals down in Cardiff can be manipulated by shysters into ‘helping’ the less fortunate in foreign climes, and send delegates to conferences in Paris and God knows where else.

These bastards shouldn’t be given public funding, they should be taken around Wales and shown the realities of life – the food banks, the failing services, the deteriorating infrastructure, the poverty, the vandalism, the drugs, the crime, the sheer fucking hopelessness.

But of course those I’m talking about don’t notice any of that, it doesn’t affect them in their insulated lives; they’re doing just fine, and feeling frightfully good about themselves as well. With the rest of us paying for this illusion.

Bastards!

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MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

Let’s conclude by returning to Wrecsam, a town for which I’ve got a soft spot.

I am absolutely certain that the Wallich and Bawso buying adjoining properties within months of each other was no coincidence. Neither were the extensions. It suggests that they may be collaborating. But on what?

The mission statement for the Wallich can be found in the Objects of the charity, which were revised on October 18, to read:

Whereas Bawso caters to black and ethnic minority women, as it explains on the home page of its website:

“Established in 1995, Bawso is an all Wales, Welsh Government Accredited Support Provider, delivering specialist services to people from Black and Ethnic Minority (BME) backgrounds who are affected by domestic abuse and other forms of abuse, including Female Genital Mutilation, Forced Marriage, Human Trafficking & Prostitution.”

So with one catering exclusively to the homeless and the other to BME women, where’s the overlap, or connection? Homeless BME women, perhaps, but how many would there be in the Wrecsam area?

Maybe the answer lies with human trafficking. Certainly this would explain the Bawso presence in Wrecsam. For if we go to the website and the Diogel Project page, we read, “In 2010 Welsh Government funded the expansion of the project to North Wales in response to increased demand for the service.” (Diogel is Welsh for safe or secure.)

So does this tell us that the property on Grosvenor Road was bought for Bawso by the ‘Welsh’ Government? And presumably the same applies to the Wallich property?

It certainly makes sense, for if we return to the most recent accounts we see, on page 20, that the Home Office gave £373,769 to the Diogel Project and the ‘Welsh’ Government gave another £74,000.

Though if women trafficked from eastern Europe are now being targeted by Bawso then it suggests that the definition of BME has stretched way beyond its original remit. But then, that’s how third sector bodies operate, if there’s an ishoo to be exploited and money to be made . . .

What a mess Wales is in with this self-serving Labour crony-filled third sector, with its property empires and investment portfolios, most of its funding going on salaries, motors and ‘conferences’, and achieving sod all for Wales despite being funded from the Welsh public purse.

It only remains for me to write to the Land Registry informing them that 33 Grosvenor Road in Wrecsam has been doubled in size but it seems the owner has neglected to notify them.

An oversight, I’m sure.

♦ end ♦

UPDATE 08.12.2017: We know that the Land Registry was not informed of the major changes to 33 Grosvenor Road, even though the title plan for 31 was revised towards the end of 2015.

So I got to wondering what changes had been approved by the local planning authority, Wrexham County Borough Council. I checked for both 31, the Wallich property, and for 33, the Bawso property, in the 10 years between 2007 and today.

Here’s what the WCBC website gave me.

There is a full set of planning consents for 31 Grosvenor Road, but nothing for 33. Which suggests that the extension to 33 may have been built without planning permission.

Though of course, if no planning permission was granted then this would explain why Bawso didn’t notify the Land Registry about the extension.

I’m no longer sure whether this is just a planning irregularity or whether a criminal offence has been committed.

To Those That Have Shall Be Given – Housing Benefit!

On 04/05/201506/06/2015 By JacIn Local Government, Social Housing25 Comments

We should all be indebted to the Daily Mirror for the work put in to gather a breakdown of the housing benefit being paid to private landlords by every local authority on this septic isle. The figures are for “last year”, though it’s unclear whether this means the calendar year or the financial year ending on March 31st. Either way, we are only interested in the figures for the Welsh councils, but gluttons for statistics can find the full piece here. The table I have produced below gives the bare bones of this ~~scam~~ essential funding You will see that the bottom line (how nice to use that term literally) gives two totals for two of the columns, this is due to the figures calculated in different ways not agreeing. Any statistician out there is welcome to explain this apparent anomaly.

Let’s start by looking at the national picture I’ve tried to explain in the table. It tells us that, as a general rule, urban authorities pay a lower percentage of their housing benefit to private landlords than more rural authorities, with Torfaen paying just 18.2%. (Though the Vale of Glamorgan, with 49.7% needs some explaining. Unfortunately the VoG council declined to release detailed figures.) The two exceptions to this rule, the two rural authorities paying the lowest percentages, lower than many urban areas, are Monmouthshire (28.6%) and Gwynedd (32.2%). Monmouthshire’s low figure can be accounted for partly by its prosperity, while the figures for both councils are also influenced by a refusal to patronise many of the Labour-allied shysters dealt with below.

The two authorities paying the very highest percentages to private landlords are – and I bet you’d never have guessed! – on the north coast. Conwy pays out 50.8% and Denbighshire 53.2%. (Though not far behind is Ceredigion with 48.2%.) Many unfamiliar with this area will think of these as rural councils but they are overwhelmingly urban, containing Llandudno, Conwy, Prestatyn, Colwyn Bay, and of course – Rhyl! Much of the housing benefit paid here will be going to slum landlords and third sector parasites that have shipped in ‘clients’ from Liverpool and Manchester, then demanded that Wales pays to look after their charges, while also providing said parasites with salaries and pension packages . . . for to demur would be ‘racist’. One such organisation in Conwy, the biggest grossing private landlord, is dealt with below, but Denbighshire came over all coy and named just four out of the top twenty earners on its patch.

For more detailed results, you’ll see that I have screen captured from the Daily Mirror interactive to make the gallery below. (In order to avoid confusion I have kept to the names – some obviously English – used on the DM website, so it starts with ‘Anglesey’.) Keep your cursor off the image and each of our 22 local authorities will appear for 8 seconds. If you want to study the details for any particular council then leave your cursor on the image or its black surround. If you don’t like the gallery then just click on the name of the council in the details section below to bring up the information. (God! I spoil you!)

A number of councils refused to give out information beyond the total amount paid to private landlords, these shy, retiring types are, Anglesey, Ceredigion, Flintshire, Powys, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Vale of Glamorgan and Wrexham. A mixed bag in terms of the rural / urban divide, culture and language, and also political control. Other councils released only partial information, in that they named some of the private landlords trousering the loot, but not all. Though if I was one of the private landlords named I’d want to know why others were granted anonymity. These councils were Denbighshire, Monmouthshire and Torfaen. So that’s ten of Wales’ twenty-two local authorities withholding information. Not a great start.

So let us look a little more closely at the twelve local authorities that made full disclosure, and let’s do it alphabetically.

BLAENAU GWENT: The individuals named mean nothing to me, and this is why I suggest that local knowledge will be needed to identify these people. The same will apply in other areas. The one name I do recognise is Wallich Clifford Ltd, the charity for the ‘homeless’, which received £56,728. Is there that much homelessness in Blaenau Gwent? Not always easy to keep track of Wallich Clifford aka The Wallich and operating under various guises as both a charity and a business. Though top of the list in Blaenau Gwent, by some way, with £263,159, is Ronald Herbert Lawrence. So who is he, one of the Herbert clan?

BRIDGEND: The biggest recipient of housing benefit in Bridgend is . . . well, Bridgend. The council paid itself £685.595, which I don’t quite understand seeing as the council housing stock appears to have been taken over by Valleys to Coast Housing. I suppose it depends when the transfer took place. Someone down that neck of the woods will have the answer. Next in the queue for the ~~easy money~~ vital funding is A1 Lettings of Maesteg, coining no less than £391,410. Wallich Clifford appears again – this time as ‘The Wallich’ – for £139,216.

CAERPHILLY: Again, many of the individuals listed will be known to those familiar with the area. Though the biggest earner by a mile is the Shaw Healthcare Group Ltd of Cardiff which, as the name suggests, specialises in care homes rather than rented accommodation. Shaw scooped £482,792. Second on the list, with a paltry £83,739, is the Care Management Group, an English company with a Welsh branch operation. Are there really that many care homes in Caerphilly? If so, why? And does the absence of The Wallich / Wallich Clifford suggest that there is no homelessness in the borough? Maybe the homeless are all in the care homes!

CARDIFF: The first thing to say about Cardiff is that the amounts paid are surprisingly low given the total figure of over 53 million pounds paid to private landlords, with the top landlord getting just £192,822. So it’s reasonable to assume that there are a great many small- to medium-sized enterprises in the city. Unless I’m missing something? Whatever the answer to that, one of the major earners in Cardiff, with £138,908, is the Reside Housing Association Ltd, a company based in Kingston-upon-Thames. But if there is a local need for the service provided by Reside why doesn’t Cardiff council find a Welsh company to provide that service rather than sending money out of Wales? And despite Cardiff having the largest population of any Welsh council, and despite The Wallich / Wallich Clifford being headquartered in Cardiff, it does not appear on the list of the top private landlords. Why? In fact, the most striking feature of the Cardiff figures is the total absence of the big third sector recipients found elsewhere, found especially in Swansea.

CARMARTHENSHIRE: Always ‘interesting’, Carmarthenshire doesn’t let us down by throwing up a major query. The biggest private landlord, with £455,893, is listed as ‘Social Lettings Agency’, which turns out to be an umbrella for a number of local housing associations, Coastal Group, Gwalia, Cantref and others (though, confusingly, Coastal also appears on its own, lower down the list, with a figure of £62,134). Suggesting that the council ruled over by the litigious and overbearing Mark James regards housing associations as private landlords, which I would argue is correct. Carmarthenshire pays 36.8% of its housing benefit to private landlords, compared to Cardiff’s 35.8%. But why don’t housing associations appear in the Cardiff list, and the lists for most of the other authorities?

CONWY: Touchstones 12 is the biggest recipient of housing benefit here with £167,485, and as already stated it makes its money by bringing into northern Wales alcoholics and drug addicts from north west England. Another big earner is Sanctuary Trust, an English charity also dealing with the homeless, alcoholics and drug addicts. Just read the link I’ve provided and see how grateful these parasites are for ‘Welsh’ Government help. And you wonder why Wales is poor! Again, no housing associations listed.

GWYNEDD: Few surprises here. The main recipient being Agorfa / Cefni Lettings. Though it’s not easy to find information about this outfit, certainly I can’t find the website, only ‘company check’ references and a Facebook page. As far as I’m concerned the jury is still out on Agorfa / Cefni, it receives a lot of money but I’d like to know more about the organisations it deals with. The same applies to number two on the list, GISDA. Things are much clearer with another body, one that received £59,027 last year, though I’m surprised to see Nacro Cymru, the organisation for offenders and ex-cons, so active in largely law-abiding Gwynedd.

MERTHYR TYDFIL: Being the smallest of our local authorities in terms of population, and one of the poorest, there’s not a lot of housing benefit to be distributed in Merthyr. The biggest payout was £43,104 to a ‘Mr Evans’, no forename or even an initial. As for the rest, they’re mainly individuals and a few small companies.

NEATH PORT TALBOT: More individuals interspersed with small companies are to be found in NPT, but with six exceptions who all received over £100,000 last year. These are, Tony John & Co (£498,113); Port Talbot YMCA (£240,398), “No local connection required”; Pennaf Sales and Lettings Ltd (£123,753); Parker Estates of Skewen (£118,263); Mr David Breach (£116,330); and I E S Davies Property Rentals (£103,959), which seems to be based in Ceredigion, though of course we can’t check how much business it does on its home patch because Ceredigion won’t release any detailed figures.

NEWPORT: Top of the pops in our third city is ‘Mrs M Payne’, with £181,558, but a quick check on Google turned up nothing. So who is she? We can only assume that Newport City Council knows, if only to send the cheques to the correct address. Second on the list with £148,051 is Newport Mind. Now we all know that Mind is the charity helping those with mental health problems, but why is it a major recipient of housing benefit in Newport but not in other local authority areas? Third on the list with £135,311 is the Libra Investment Property Group, another of those agencies that acts on behalf of landlords and those who’ve taken advantage of ‘Buy to Let’ mortgages. It has offices in Newport and Wolverhampton.

PEMBROKESHIRE: If Carmarthenshire’s dysfunctional council has provided much entertainment over recent years then the same can also be said of Pembrokeshire with the Bryn Parry-Jones saga. Though it doesn’t end with the great man. A case currently being investigated by a number of agencies is that of grants awarded in Pembroke Dock for renovation work that, it is alleged, was never carried out, or certainly did not cost anything like the amount charged. The developer at the centre of the confusion is one Cathal McCosker, who also trades as E-Lettings of Pembroke Dock. The panel (click to enlarge) shows a review from the Yell E-Lettings page. Anyway, who do you think comes top of the Pembrokeshire list for private landlords in receipt of housing benefit? Yup, leading the pack with £236,834 is Mr Cathal Eamonn McCosker . . . and lower down the list, with a mere £35,248, we find E-Lettings. Compared to McCosker the rest are small fry, though I was taken by the name Graham Perfect.

SWANSEA: Ah! the city of my dreams. At the top of the list, receiving no less than £1,632,262 in 2014 is “Community Lives Consortium” which “provides support for adults with learning disabilities working in partnership with Social Services and Health Agencies” in Swansea and Neath Port Talbot. (Though it seems to receive no housing benefit from NPT!) Now I’m sure this body does good work, but knowing my home town’s reputation for third sector spivery there is bound to be a strong element here of ‘Invent an “ishoo”‘ and then milk the system for all you can get!’.

Second on the list with a whopping £727,426 is Walsingham, yet another outfit providing support for those who cannot look after themselves. Walsingham is an English company, with English partners and suppliers, so this is another dollop of Welsh money leaving the country. Also on the Swansea list we find, inevitably, The Wallich (£588,342) and a host of third sector grant-grabbers such as Cyrenians Cymru (£207,651), Swansea Womens Aid (£190,463), Haven Trust Supporting People Ltd (£135,994), S.Y.S.H.P. (Drws Agored) (£130,161), Cymdeithas Caer Las (£118,801), S.Y.S.H.P. (again!) (£103,525), Black Association of Women Step Out Ltd (BAWSO) (£98,323), Cymdeithas Caer Las (Carmarthen Road Project) (£77,355).

It grieves me to say it, but Swansea is a magnet for third sector shysters. If I’m wrong, then explain to me how other local authorities can manage without all these agencies. If I’m wrong, then explain why organisations such as The Wallich, BAWSO and others, with their headquarters in Cardiff, seem to do all their work in Swansea. Is it – as I have been told, and as the Cardiff figures suggest – that neither Cardiff council nor the ‘Welsh’ Government wants the capital’s streets despoiled with dossers, disabled people and others who might give important visitors the wrong impression? Whatever the answer, it is clear that to justify the grants, the housing benefit and all the other goodies that keep so many in unnecessary jobs the groups operating in Swansea must be importing many of their ‘clients’ because there’s no way Swansea, or the wider conurbation, could provide enough.

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Some of you reading this will dismiss me as a callous, hard-hearted bastard, but I’m not. This article is prompted by the knowledge that the housing benefit system is a racket that attracts the wrong sort of people to rented housing and the third sector. It is a system that is taken advantage of in so many ways, especially in Wales. For example, in dealing with Swansea I mentioned Walsingham, which received from Swansea council last year £727,426. The Walsingham website tells us that this company operates across Englandandwales. Yet according to the Daily Mirror article that supplied the figures, this £727,426 from Swansea was Walsingham’s total income from housing benefit. (Click on panel to enlarge.) So why doesn’t Walsingham receive housing benefit for any of its many operations in England?

I genuinely want to believe that housing benefit is being well spent and that people are being helped without those providing the funding – and this means all of us – being taken advantage of. But this is not the case. We have a corrupted housing benefit system in urgent need of reform. And given the colonial relationship between Wales and England Wales will always lose out.

UPDATE 05.05.2015: I should of course have mentioned this in the main article, but it needs to be said. In the table I’ve used subtract the amount paid to private landlords from the total housing benefit and it gives us a figure of £634m. The bulk of this will be going to housing associations. Add this to the amounts paid in Social Housing Grant – and remembering that housing associations also have yet other funding streams! – and we get an idea of how much money is paid to the third sector, which is then promoted as if it was a real economy. It is not, and never will be. An over-large third sector is a sure indicator of poverty. And because it cannot generate wealth it guarantees that the poverty persists. And when one country is prepared to take in another country’s ‘problems’ then the problem will be exacerbated.

Jac o' the North

Tag: Wallich Clifford

Bawso and friends