To Be A Farmer’s Boy

This week’s offering is about organisations that are often little more than a name. Yet despite their lack of corporeal substance these outfits enjoy considerable support from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’.

Which is bad enough, but Wales has far too many of these organisations, and their numbers seem to be increasing monthly.

The title of this piece is taken from an old English song about a lad whose father dies leaving him, his mother, and five siblings, to fend for themselves. The lad goes to a farm seeking work. The farmer’s wife and daughter take pity on him, and he’s hired. He marries the daughter, and when her parents die, he becomes the farmer.

Here’s a good pub version from West Yorkshire.

And here’s an interesting version by Shropshire singer Fred Jordan. The old rhotic accent of the central border coming through well.

God! I spoil you.

SONS (AND DAUGHTERS) OF THE SOIL

This first section is about a shindig planned for November called the Wales Real Food and Farming Conference, at the University of Wales Trinity St David in Lampeter.

Where else? For this venerable institution is to where Jane Davidson, authoress of the Future Generations legislation, retreated after leaving Corruption Bay.

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I particularly love their use of the term, ‘Real farming’. Does it suggest those involved enjoy a monopoly in knowledge of the subject? Inferring that those beyond this coterie are wholly ignorant of farming?

So who are these enlightened ones?

The website is a minimalist creation, perhaps explained by the fact that this group comes alive only for the annual knees-up. Like some sort of Earth-botherers Brigadoon.

Here’s the line-up (from the match programme, 6d from the boys at the turnstiles):

Hazel Thomas, who might actually know something about food. But after that promising introduction it’s downhill all the way.

Laura-Cait Driscoll, University of Wales Trinity St David Lampeter. Whose life is a mystery ere she rocked up in Lambed in 2016 to work at Shapla Tandoori.

Catherine Hughes. Is it a local Plaid Cymru councillor? Or this Catherine Hughes? If it’s the second, then she works with the ‘Welsh Government’.

Alicia Miller, Sustainable Food Trust. An international organisation, reflected in its directors. Monmouthshire council among the donors tells you who’s moving to rural north Gwent, have taken over the local Labour party and, through it, the council.

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A farming source tells me Patrick Holden, founder of SFT, is a good egg, but my source fears his organisation is going the way of others, like the Soil Association, in being taken over by anti-farmer activists. Or worse.

Dr Jane Ricketts Hein, Cynidr Consulting. Is there such a company, or is it a one-woman band?  The name crops up in relation to this 2017 conference, and then, nothing. Though Dr Hein seems to be connected with Bangor university.

To confuse matters(?), there was a company called Cynder Consulting.

Lowri Hedd Vaughan, GwyrddNi, which is a climate action group . . . at a conference on food and farming?

Ieuan Davies, Natural Resources Wales. ‘Welsh Government’ representative.

I said it was downhill after the full-back, and now it starts to get slightly ridiculous.

Jackie Pearce-Dickens, Whole Health Agriculture; from Oxfordshire, which wants us to consume less meat and fewer dairy products. A perfect fit for a food and farming conference in a dairy farming area of a livestock-raising country.

Lisa Mundle, Landworkers’ Alliance Cymru. An organisation of middle-class fantasists who want to be seen as peasants, such as might be found in Asia or Latin American. Sad, really.

The group belongs to La Via Campesina. So Viva La Revolucion!

Delyth Phillips (actually, Phillipps), of Wildlife Trusts Wales. An organisation that haunts me, because – and as I’ve reported more than once – it doesn’t exist.

Wildlife Trusts Wales dissolved as a charity in 2021, and as a company a year later. Thereby surrendering Wales’ distinct identity in that sphere. But reflecting the English takeover of the ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ rackets in Wales.

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Despite lacking any legal structure Wildlife Trusts Wales carries on as if nothing happened. Led by dissembling Rachel Sharp. Ably assisted by Tim Birch, the Extinction Rebellion nut-job who was run out of the Peak District. And now, we have Delyth Phillipps.

How many more are there in this wraith-like organisation?

But do you know what’s missing from that line-up? That’s right – a farmer!

And that’s because we’ve reached the stage in Wales where conferences can be organised to discuss food production, land use, the rural environment . . . yet genuine, traditional, Welsh, farmers, are excluded.

I’ll explain this in the Conclusion.

TIR NATUR

This is a gang I’ve mentioned a few times before. And that’s despite them climbing aboard the environmental bandwagon only very recently. Here’s their website.

I think the first time Tir Natur appeared here was in July 2022, in a Miscellany post, scroll down to the section headed with the name.

But I think they’re worth another look. So let’s turn to the website, where we see Tir Natur’s vision laid out:

A Wales where beavers return to build their dams . . .  where cranes dance in the setting sun and golden eagles soar above Eryri once more.

Poetic, like, innit?

But seriously, what soul-dead ghoul among you could not be moved by the uplifting images of foxtrotting cranes and soaring eagles?

And there’s more.

A Wales where large grazing animals roam freely in natural herds . . . 

Note that Tir Natur is not referring here to cattle. If previous TN output is anything to go by, then this is a reference to European bison. In fact, an image of said beasts appears on the TN website.

Picture it! It’s 2035, and herds of bison roam from Crickhowell to Caeathro and from Crymych to Caerwys, pausing to rub themselves against the wind turbines, many of which have now toppled. Useless, unrecyclable, their owners untraceable.

The bison often wander into towns and villages, trampling people, wrecking cars, buildings, and gardens, but nothing can be done – because they’re protected. And that’s because, unlike cow farts, bison farts do no harm to the planet!

This is re-wilding. And it’s what Tir Natur is all about. So let’s get to the nub of it.

Tir Natur is a rewilding charity, set up to address the nature & climate crises in Wales. The state of nature in Wales is truly devastating . . . 

Globally, 1,000,000 species are at risk of extinction, and Wales is one of the worst culprits in the world for loss of nature. We are ranked 224th out of 240 countries for biodiversity intactness . . . but rewilding offers hope

What you’ve read there is how modern environmentalism operates. Imagine or exaggerate a problem – then come up with the solution. A ‘solution’ that will greatly benefit those who identified the problem in the first place!

Such an elegant and circular solution to the woes of the world.

If you think I’m wrong, then tell me who decided that, The state of nature in Wales is truly devastating‘, and that Wales is, ‘ranked 224th out of 240 countries for biodiversity intactness‘.

Was it some respected and impartial authority, or was it off-the-wall activists such as we find at Tir Natur? Come to that, who accepts these ‘findings’? The truth is that it doesn’t matter what you and I think; what matters is getting politicians and funders to pretend they believe this garbage.

But look around the world, for God’s sake, where forests bigger than Wales are being cleared, where species are hunted to extinction, at countries with no environmental controls whatsoever – yet we are expected to believe that little Wales, where hardly anything has changed, where regulations get tighter by the year, is ranked in the top 10% of countries suffering biodiversity loss.

Insulting bullshit. Insulting to all Welsh people, but especially to farmers, for they are the real target of these lies.

From the Tir Natur website. ‘This little piggy . . . ‘ can grow to 150kg or more, with tusks capable of ripping a human to shreds. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

I was directed back to Tir Natur a couple of weeks ago because of two new arrivals.

First was Sally Weale, zoologist and maker of documentaries. She had previously been a director of The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales.

Weale greeted her appointment with, and very predictably:

With the loss of so much of Wales’ once abundant wildlife, I’m excited by the scale and ambition of Tir Natur’s vision

I don’t know what species have been lost in my lifetime, but I suspect it’s very few, if any. Which leads me to believe that when Sally Weale and others talk of ‘loss’ they’re thinking in a much longer timescale.

Which then allows them to include beaver, lynx, wolf, and other animals as having been ‘lost’. If I’m right, then how far back do we go? To bears? Pterodactyl?

But while using the longer timescale they still want to pretend that we, living today, are responsible. Or, at a stretch, it starts with the Industrial Revolution.

This is a deliberate and dishonest conflation designed to deceive us, and benefit them.

The other recent recruit was none other than Tim Birch, still looking over his shoulder for mutton-chopped Derbyshire gamekeepers.

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I conclude this section with another extract from the TN website. Go to the ‘About Rewilding’ tab, then click ‘What is Rewilding?’ Where you’ll be regaled with:

Here in Wales, where ecosystems are more depleted and 88% of land is managed in some way for agriculture, rewilding is about restoring the complex and dynamic mosaic of habitat that once was.

The link is now clearly made between ecological degradation, species loss, and farming. An environmental tragedy created by farming that can only be remedied by taking land away from farmers and giving it back to nature.

Well no, not really. The land must be given to organisations like Tir Natur. Who will introduce all manner of strange critters, some of which were never known in Wales. Such as the Konik horse. For as all Wales knows, from Gower to the Carneddau, we have no wild equines of our own.

And that, my friends, is ‘rewilding’. It’s a colonialist land grab by shysters who know nothing of our country, or us. But then, we Welsh don’t figure in the future they want.

CONCLUSION

Readers may have noticed that the methodology employed by the environmental and land grab scammers is remarkably similar to that used by climate alarmists. That’s because they’re directed by the same source.

I refer now to the UN, WEF, EU, assorted supranational bodies; the mega corporations like BlackRock and Vanguard; and unhinged multi-billionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates, who think their wealth is a mandate to dictate our lives.

They too operate by dreaming up a crisis, then, like magicians producing rabbits from top hats, they come up with the ‘solution’. This pattern is now established.

The ‘climate crisis’ demands we rely on heavily subsided – and therefore expensive for consumers – ‘green’ energy, reject the internal combustion engine, have fewer children, and radically modify our diets.

A number of ostensibly unconnected agencies and movements have been recruited by the Globalists to promote the ‘destabilisation leads to control’ agenda.

These include Cultural Marxists pushing BLM, ‘trans rights’, open borders, and the idea that all white people are guilty of slavery, etc. Done to encourage division and violence that will be used to justify increasing censorship and authoritarianism.

Also, environmentalists, vegans and others, who’ve been platformed in recent decades because they too serve the Globalist agenda.

Simple, really. Control the food supply, control the people.

Which is why the Globalists encourage and fund environmentalists to demand an end to farming. While simultaneously pushing the idea of eating bugs, and ‘meat’ made in laboratories.

From the Guardian, July 17. Click to open enlarged in separate tab

But the Globalists may not want the land from which farmers have been evicted for themselves. Other than perhaps what they can use for carbon offsets and other scams.

The priority is to ensure that that land no longer produces food.

Now I don’t know about you, but if, after all we know about Bill Gates’ involvement with Covid and the vaccines, you’re still happy to eat ‘meat’ from his factories, then the best of luck to you.

(You’ll find his ‘meat’ factory next to his mosquito breeding sheds.)

Call me old fashioned, but I’d prefer to stick with the Welsh countryside as it is, dotted with Welsh family farms producing good, wholesome, and natural food.

And helping maintain Welsh identity.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

Wildlife Trusts – Not To Be Trusted

In a sense, this is a follow-up to a piece I put out in February called ‘Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas‘. Perhaps a variation on a theme.

Though this is not quite the piece I originally promised. Perhaps I’ll return to the sweat lodges and other joys in the ‘Bhutan of Wales’ (“ample parking space“) at some later date.

ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN NEWTS

What you have to understand about modern environmentalism, certainly in Wales, is that it’s no longer fleece-jacketed innocents protecting red squirrels or tagging birds. It is now intensely political. And financially lucrative.

Lucrative, as long as it promotes a certain interpretation of the world.

Which means, in practice, that environmentalists work for BlackRock and other Globalist corporations; Bill ‘jabs and bugs’ Gates, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.

And even if environmentalists don’t realise it, if they’re just useful idiots, then that don’t matter none – what matters is that they do what they do.

And as I suggested, they’re getting paid handsomely for it. Here’s one example.

Total income for the North Wales Wildlife Trust went up from £1.83m in 2019 to £6.17 in 2023, a rise of 237%. But in the same period, funding from the ‘Welsh Government’ rose from £309,480 to £3,760,000, an increase of 1,115%.

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Similar increases in the funding awarded to the other wildlife trusts, river groups, etc, correlates with the ramping up of the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.

Which meant blaming just about anybody other than Dŵr Cymru for river pollution.

But environmentalists weren’t confining themselves to persecuting cows, and matters scatological; for they were also pushing the anti-car agenda.

THE WAR ON CARS I

An example of this would be defeating plans to upgrade the M4 around Newport. Here’s Friends of the Earth reminding us of its role in that campaign.

Which is fine with me because that’s the raison d’être of environmental groups. But if opposing M4 improvements was ‘Welsh Government’ policy, and if ‘WG’ funded various groups to support that policy, then that puts a different complexion on things.

As FoE stated, one of the major reasons for rejecting improvements to the M4 was to protect the Gwent Levels. Which was also the reasoning given by the first minister.

Mark Drakeford said he would not have gone ahead even if it was affordable because of the impact on the Gwent Levels.

But the environmentalists’ war on roads didn’t end with saving the Gwent Levels. (Though not from solar farms.)

I’ve written a number of times about the ‘Welsh Government’s decision to abandon all new road schemes. Let’s begin in June 2021, with the announcement of a ‘freeze’ on new road building.

Then, in September 2021, came news of a panel . . .

. . . of climate change and transport specialists . . . led by Dr Lynn Sloman MBE, a transport consultant based in Wales

Despite what the ‘Welsh Government’ wanted us to believe, Dr Lynn Sloman is not ‘based in Wales’; she actually lives in London, where she sits on the Transport for London board, headed by mayor Sadiq Ulez Khan.

Dr Lynn Sloman is, predictably, an anti-car fanatic. And her connection to Wales is a holiday home in Cwm Einion, near Machynlleth. To which she presumably drives.

Dr Sloman’s panel delivered the result required in February 2023 – no new roads!

This impacted on just about every part of the country, and deprived communities of long-awaited and much-needed, improvements. It meant no third crossing of the Menai, no by-pass for Llanbedr, no by-pass for Llandeilo.

This was of course welcomed by both Rachel Sharp, CEO of  the officially defunct Wildlife Trusts Wales; and her trusty henchman, Tim Birch, of Extinction Rebellion.

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But there is one issue on which environmentalists could and should be more vocal.

We’ll ignore the energy consumed in manufacturing wind turbines, then the damage inflicted on the environment from shipping them to Wales; widening roads, felling trees, ripping out hedgerows to get them to where they’re being erected.

Instead’ let’s just focus on the damage they cause in situ.

Wind turbines destroy peat deposits. They scar hillsides with access roads and cable trenches. Hundreds of pylons are needed to carry whatever’s generated in Wales to England. The turbine blades kill birds, bats, and all manner of insects.

There are also threats to human health from infrasound, flicker, and worrying over your home losing value due to its proximity to wind turbines.

Yet environmentalists have little to say against wind turbines. That’s because their ‘outrage’ can be switched off and on, as required, by their paymasters.

THE ‘FOXES’ OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

We often hear: “Farming occupies around 90% of ‘our’ land“, as if it’s something undesirable. It’s very revealing, because those who say it seem genuinely horrified that so much of Wales belongs to hairy-arsed peasants.

A recent example of the ‘90%’ fixation came in an article in ‘Welsh Government’ mouthpiece Nation.Cymru by Dr Malcolm Smith. He was ostensibly writing about the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).

Smith wants us to believe that carbon emissions increase global temperatures when there is no link whatsoever, and then rather gives away his own position on SFS with:

Trees, it seems, aren’t welcomed by most farmers.

This obsession with the amount of land held by farmers seems most prevalent among politicians and middle class enviro-grifters who want Welsh farmers off the land they and their corporate patrons covet.

I say that because no one has ever come up to me in a pub, a supermarket, or any other setting, grabbed me by the lapels and shouted – ‘Isn’t it bloody awful that farmers have so much land?

Nobody. Honestly!

Which makes the support these spivs get from Welsh socialists difficult to fathom. And the support from those socialists who claim they want independence inexplicable.

Maybe this subservience can be explained by something I read last week. Someone was trying to explain why Sinn Féin has fallen for the Globalist-Woke-Left agenda.

It is a lingering symptom of what Ruairi Ó Bradaigh once described as the intellectual inferiority complex of men who were absurdly impressed by . . . bourgeois lefties and liberals

I think that explains a lot of what we see in Wales. Particularly the insecure among us, who can’t resist a bit of flannel delivered in a ‘posh’ accent.

What Ruairi Ó Bradaigh called “the intellectual inferiority complex” always lurks in the Welsh psyche. And it seems to afflict socialists far more than it affects those of us on the political right.

Welsh leftists like to see themselves as ‘progressive’, which then leaves them wide open to the blandishments of the ‘foxes’ Malcom X refers to here.

ANOTHER WARNING FROM IRELAND

For some time now I’ve been paying closer than usual attention to what’s happening in Ireland, where the uniparty establishment has enthusiastically signed up to the Globalist agenda. It’s been open borders, war on farmers, and recently, referendums that hoped to re-define ‘woman’ and ‘family’.

Both referendums were heavily defeated, and the preening, obnoxious, Varadkar soon resigned in the hope of salvaging his political reputation. Because he fears there’s worse to come as the people wake up and fight back. (Something the Irish have a history of doing.)

And the Irish people are waking up. And demanding a return to sanity. Especially when they look around and see who’s been allowed into their country.

For example, one result of open borders is that Ireland is now home to the Nigerian Black Axe gang, which deals in romance fraud and other online scams . . . with a little murder, drugs, and extortion thrown in.

Just think about that. A Nigerian criminal network is actually based in Ireland. How the hell was that allowed to happen!

Well, as I just mentioned, because the Irish establishment obeys the Globalist agenda; and no-questions-asked immigration is an integral part of that agenda, designed to destabilise western societies.

Then, last week I was directed to news about moves to punish people who want to live in the countryside. (Unless, presumably, they’re Nigerian gangsters.)

You can read the whole publication if you like. But the opening paragraph tells you exactly where it’s going. And how it’s justified.

Moving Together . . . a commitment in the Climate Action Plan 2023 . . . to alleviate the impacts of car-dependency

Someone wants the Irish countryside emptied, and populations concentrated in urban areas. Now why should that be?

Wales may be heading in the same direction.

THE WAR ON CARS II

I say Wales may be headed in the same direction because the ‘pieces’ are already there, we just need to put them together to see the bigger picture.

Earlier, we looked at environmentalists, funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ or Globalist corporations and multi-billionaires, campaigning against road improvements. In league with former Sustrans rep in Wales, and until so very recently, chauffeur-driven deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters.

Waters welcomed the halt on new road projects with:

As the review points out the by-pass that was demanded to relieve congestion often ends up leading to extra traffic, which in time brings further demands for extra lanes, wider junctions and more roads

I suggest Waters and his allies stand for half an hour one summer day outside the ‘Vic’ in Llanbedr, or The Castle in Llandeilo; and ponder that the shit forming a skin on their iced tea, the shit they’re also inhaling, comes from cars and trucks in low gear inching their way through a traffic bottleneck.

And it could all be avoided with a by-pass!

Consider this, gentle reader: the man who can ignore the effects of low-gear emissions on human health – because it serves an element of the agenda – can also impose 20mph speed limits, guaranteed to increase harmful emissions – and justify doing so on health and safety grounds!

But when it can be used to serve another element of the agenda, air quality becomes a consideration. For Nicola Lund recently reminded us in ‘Message to Wales – On Yer Bike (Part 2)‘ that the Welsh Government’ is also promising air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’.

So where might that lead, if we put it all together?

Let’s look at Llanbedr, which sits on the A496 running up the coast from Barmouth. A busy road, and especially so in summer.

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With a combination of no by-pass, air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’ in place, many people will give Llanbedr a miss. Some will avoid that road altogether.

The map above shows that travellers between north and south will still have the A470, so the effects would be very localised, but highly damaging.

There’s one more consideration I want to throw into the mix.

I have consistently supported plans to raise council tax on holiday homes and restrict numbers of holiday lets*. And I will continue to back measures that might return domestic properties to local use. But . . .

Tourism means cars, camper vans, etc. So are the measures against the worst excesses of tourism doing the right thing for the wrong reason? By which I mean, are they just part of the bigger plan to restrict car journeys in Wales?

Putting it all together – and irrespective of the stated justifications – what we’ve just looked at will result in a seriously damaged rural economy, and could lead to the kind of rural clearances being talked about in Ireland and elsewhere.

Yet it all fits perfectly with the Globalist-environmentalist agenda.

*I received a communication on this very matter yesterday!

CONCLUSION

Where the Globalists have been clever is in funding or promoting ideas, organisations and lobbies that push their agenda.

This includes, cyclists, vegans, renewable energy enthusiasts, advocates of CBDC, and of course, environmentalists.

We’re at a stage now where an environmental lobby is waging war on our farmers while also working with the ‘Welsh Government’ to make us view cars as something evil, to be done away with.

But what’s being targeted is not really farmers and motorists, but land and freedoms. Which is the essence of the Globalists’ power grab – promote fear and confusion in order to seize assets, restrict freedoms, and exert control.

As I said earlier, ‘environmentalists’ are no longer fleece-jacketed innocents. So see them for what they really are. Who they work for. And treat them accordingly.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2024

20mph, A Disaster Unfolds

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

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

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

LABOUR’S VERY OWN PROPAGANDA BUREAU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact, Rollnick tells us he was . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE LONG MARCH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

20mph is beginning to sound like snake oil.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It looks a bit of a shambles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHERE IT ENDS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So wise up,

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

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

It’s censorship pretending to be something virtuous.

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

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

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

Even me!

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

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

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

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

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2023

The Alliance Against Livestock Farming

This week’s piece about wildlife trusts and environmental groups complements what I put out last week about the assorted river charities.

For both seem to be funded to shield Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) and others from criticism by blaming livestock farmers for all river pollution. Also, to pursue the so-called ‘Welsh Government’s Net Zero lunacy and, in so doing, serve the globalist agenda.

With a few twists.

Wildlife and environmental groups tend to contain more ‘zealots’, which results in hysteria, and a readiness to tell lies. Which in this context is often accompanied by a thinly-disguised contempt for Wales and Welsh identity.

One example might be the charity Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW) choosing to dissolve itself, while the local trusts for which it served as the umbrella organisation joined England’s Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. You’ll learn more about this as you read on.

As I say, there will be similarities with last week’s piece, but also differences. And I promise a bit more in the way of polemic. Ol’ Jac gonna let rip!

It’s fairly big, so go make a mug of something before settling down to enjoy it.

WHO’S WHO IN THE FLEECE JACKETS

Let’s start by looking at the organisational setup.

As I said in the intro, Wildlife Trusts Wales recently put itself out of business so that the five regional trusts – North, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, South and West, Gwent – could become full members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT).

Explained at the foot of page 1 in the 2021 WTW accounts.

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The clip below from the Charity Commission entry tells us that the RSWT now views Wales and England as a single unit, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland are treated separately. Even the Isle of Man gets more respect than us.

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But then, when you surrender your separate identity this is what you can expect.

And yet, the pretence of an independent existence is maintained by a Wildlife Trusts Wales website. Where WTW describes itself as: ‘one of five Wildlife Trusts in Wales’ which, again, makes no sense. Yes, there are five, I just listed them, and they’re all area specific, so where and how does WTW fit in?

It’s all very confusing. Perhaps deliberately so.

At the foot of the WTW website home page we are given Companies House and Charity Commission numbers. The latter draws a blank because the charity was closed March 31, 2021. While the Companies House entry tells us that the company voluntarily dissolved earlier this year.

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So why hasn’t the information on the website been updated? If it’s claimed WTW still exists, then what form does that existence take?

And what happened to the money?

Well, the final accounts for the WTW (y/e 31.03.2021) seem to show, at the foot of page 19, that the cash left when the company folded was divvied up among four of the five trusts I mentioned earlier.

Brecknock received nowt because it had not long before merged with the South and West Wales Wildlife Trust, which for some reason was itself left out. (Why didn’t ‘Brecknock’ make the obvious merger, with Radnorshire? Or why not a Powys trust?)

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You’ll see that £234,320 went to the ‘All Wales Conservation Strategy’. Does anyone know what that is? I’ve tried Googling but nothing comes up. Do the funders know where their money’s going?

The more I thought about this wildlife trusts reconfiguration the stranger it appeared. I mean, just think about it.

Before devolution we had local wildlife trusts with Wildlife Trusts Wales serving as the umbrella body. Yet now, when wildlife trusts deal with Y Senedd, when there’s separate Welsh funding, different legislation, they do away with their national body in order to, effectively, become English wildlife trusts.

This move makes no sense on any rational or practical level. How then can it be explained? I really would like to know.

Whatever ethereal form Wildlife Trusts Wales now takes the wraith clearly retains the strength to use a Twitter account. Here’s a gem put out on Monday.

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To describe Wales as ‘one of the most nature depleted countries in the world’ is hysterical nonsense and an insult to us as a nation.

While suggesting that farming is to blame rather gives the game away.

The image used in the tweet comes from this source, linked with Denmark farm, near Lampeter, where we find another gang of alien envirogrifters. A farming source tells me the allegation made in the image may be libellous.

The Denmark Farm Conservation Centre has gone the way of so many outfits that appear on this blog – it was Dissolved earlier this year. With two outstanding charges.

FILTHY LUCRE

We saw in last week’s piece that river charities saw a remarkable increase in official funding at the very time Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) was formulating her draconian and ‘unworkable’ NVZ legislation.

Such propinquity!

Well, no. It’s explained by the fact that Lesley (and Gary) wanted a stream of pollution stories in order to justify that NVZ legislation.

Stories that were also music to the ears of Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) bosses, because it deflected attention from the water company’s pollution.

We see something very similar in wildlife trusts.

Let’s start with the North Wales Wildlife Trust. Where total income more than doubled between 2017 and 2021. The largest element of that increase is (in various forms) government funding, up from £180,440 in 2017 to £1,970,000 in 2021.

Plus assets of around £3m.

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A ten-fold increase in government funding will support a few beavers.

The picture at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust shows a more modest but still healthy increase in funding. To which we must also add assets pushing £3m.

Moving south we come to the intriguing anomaly of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust. Intriguing for in the old 13-county arrangement you will recall that Radnorshire was quite small in size and had the lowest population of all our counties.

But the local wildlife trust paints a different picture. Total income doubled between 2017 and 2021 and there are assets of over £2m. There were no assets in 2019.

The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales has seen income increase by 50% in the period we’re looking at, but government grants increased from £21,300 in 2017 to £748,050 in 2021. Then throw in assets of some £5m.

Finally, to Gwent. Where income has increased at a more modest rate apart from a huge blip in 2018 accounted for by Heritage Lottery funding for a project on the Gwent Levels. But with assets around the three million pound mark.

So everything looks just tickety-boo on the financial front for our English-registered wildlife trusts.

BARE-FACED LIES

I am indebted to one of the few honest journalists left in Wales for drawing my attention to a disgraceful incident last November, at a hearing of the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee.

Rachel Sharp of the zombie-like Wildlife Trusts Wales and Wales Environmental Link (WEL) alleged that along with all the other evils livestock farmers are responsible for they also use growth hormones, which eventually end up in our streams and rivers.

The transcript is here (123) and the video here.

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The truth is that growth hormones have been banned in the UK since 1981. Welsh livestock farmers do not use growth hormones.

After protests from farming unions and Tory MS Sam Kurtz apologies were issued. But as we’ve come to expect from these envirofanatics it’s never an honest ‘I was wrong’. It’s always qualified, position shifting, hoping the original lie lingers.

But this time they’d gone too far, and it wasn’t just Rachel Sharp telling porkies. Also there representing Wales Environmental Link was Creighton Harvey, also a trustee of Afonydd Cymru Cyf.

Here’s how the Pembrokeshire Herald reported it.

‘The evidence of Ms Sharp’s fellow representative from Wales Environment Link was also riddled with errors.

Creighton Harvey told the Committee that agriculture was the largest polluter of Wales’s watercourses.

The largest polluters are water companies, industrial users, and domestic users’.

So who is Rachel Sharp?

Well, as we know, she’s a trustee of Wales Environmental Link. But this profile from the ‘Welsh Government’ website tells us a bit more. And it’s fascinating.

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To begin with, it keeps up the pretence of the defunct Wildlife Trusts of Wales. But concludes by informing us that Rachel Sharp is also ‘a group member of the Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel’.

So what’s that? Here’s a clue from the Dŵr Cymru website.

We’re told, ‘The Chair is Mari Arthur, Director of Cynal (sic) Cymru’. But Mari Arthur left Cynnal Cymru in July 2018, after just 4 months. Is this another site in need of updating?

Mari Arthur now runs Mari Arthur Marketing, but hasn’t yet registered it as a company. Among her clients we find Cynnal Cymru. Also, joined-at-the-hip ‘Welsh Government’ and Cardiff University.

Her other companies include Afallen LLP and Tetrimteas Cyf.

If the name Mari Arthur rings a bell it’s because she so badly damaged Plaid Cymru in Llanelli, a seat the party had been nurturing since the days of the great Carwyn James.

She was forced on the constituency party by her friends in both Plaid Cymru and Labour. For in the Corruption Bay circles in which Mari Arthur moves party labels mean little as long as you’re ‘on the right side of history’.

The Independent Environmental Advisory Panel is clearly a group that allows Dŵr Cymru and envirozealots to agree their narratives in the war on livestock farmers and draw attention away from Dŵr Cymru itself, the biggest culprit.

There should be no place in Welsh public life for Rachel Sharp of the mythical Wales Wildlife Trusts, the all too corporeal Wales Environmental Link, and the Dŵr Cymru claque in the laughably named Independent Environmental Advisory Panel.

I suspect Rachel Sharp’s mask slipped last November when she forgot where she was; because when she and others of her ilk usually talk with politicians and civil servants – and of course, Dŵr Cymru – they tend to reinforce each other’s self-serving prejudices about livestock farmers.

But she’ll survive. For she has powerful friends, among those who’ve been elected, and those we’ve never heard of.

Another name that caught my eye among the Wales Environmental Link luminaries was Natalie Buttriss, whose Linkedin profile (here in pdf) tells us she’s ‘Director of Wales The Woodland Trust’. This outfit previously used the name Coed Cadw for its Welsh operations, but this pandering to the indigenes seems to have been dropped.

Native of Bristol Buttriss was in at the start of the Summit to Sea land grab. For which she appeared on this blog four years ago in The Welsh Clearances. Her contempt for farmers was made obvious in this radio interview with the BBC’s Farming Today.

I have always believed that Buttriss was so arrogant, so dismissive of the interests of livestock farmers, because she believed she had the full support of the ‘Welsh Government’.

For in that interview she suggests that subsidies would be withheld or cut to make farmers fall into line. She wouldn’t have said that unless certain Bay politicians had promised to play the heavies.

The ‘Welsh Government’s hand was not revealed because the opposition to Summit to Sea made backers like Rewilding Britain pull out and the whole thing seemed to fall apart.

Or maybe it’s still out there, lurking in the undergrowth, waiting to re-emerge.

As we know, climate alarmists have too much influence with the media, partly through having brainwashed two generations of schoolchildren and college students, and partly through funding – ever wondered why Bill Gates gives money to the BBC?

Or perhaps, more pertinently, why the BBC is allowed to accept his funding?

But the propagandising is not confined to the BBC.

Last Friday ITV’s Wales at Six ran a piece about cooperation between the Rhug Estate and the Welsh Dee Trust. A relatively harmless little filler.

But the newsreader, Andrea Byrne, dropped into the report: “Rivers like the Wye and the Usk are virtually dead and no longer able to support an abundance of fish like trout and salmon and other wildlife“.

Bizarre, and completely untrue. But from where did ITV Wales get that lie?

 

Because if it’s true then somebody should tell Harry Legge-Bourke of the Glanusk estate; for he advertises, ‘fantastic fishing on 5 miles of double bank fishing on the River Usk offering day tickets for Trout and Salmon rods’.

No one disputes that these rivers could be healthier, but they’re far from ‘virtually dead’, as ITV Wales would have us believe.

And if these rivers are in decline, then whose fault is that? Because if the finger of guilt is being pointed in the wrong direction to protect the guilty party then things are unlikely to improve.

There is constant financial backing and other support for those who tell lies about livestock farmers from those who benefit from and capitalise on those lies.

I’m often inclined to believe in coincidences. But not this time. What I’m describing is too widespread, across too many sectors.

If it quacks like a duck, and it waddles like a duck . . . 

CONCLUSION

The environmental / wildlife / Nature bodies in Wales are like exotic organisms in a Petri dish. Forever growing, dividing, re-forming, changing appearance and colour, and multiplying through the introduction of fresh viruses.

There are many reasons why there should be no further public funding for these groups. You’ve read some of those reasons here. But Sebastian and Claudia needn’t go without because there are plenty of funding streams they could tap into.

For example, and seeing as they’re promoting the agendas of the UN and WEF, one possibility must be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Another option would be George Soros. Contact details can be had from Coleg Soros in Talgarth, where environmental and wildlife groups already have many contacts.

Bottom line, and last word . . .

It’s obscene that a country – especially our country – gives tens of millions of pounds every year for truth-averse zealots to enjoy sinecures fretting over toads and butterflies while our people die because ambulances don’t turn up.

♦ end ♦

© Royston Jones 2022


‘Saving Wales From The Welsh’

“LISTEN TO US”

Lurking behind the barns in the Gilestone saga I published last week were environmental / wildlife groups. Now I think they need some sunlight.

What prompted my decision was a tweet I saw just over a week ago. The idea that a wildlife trust should be directing the ‘Welsh Government’s farm funding is bizarre.

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As I asked in a tweet of my own: “Is the ‘Welsh Government now consulting foxes on chicken coop security?”

The wildlife trusts and environmental groups I’ve encountered in Wales tend to be run by zealots believing the Welsh countryside faces few problems that couldn’t be solved by getting rid of livestock farmers.

Predictable when we remember that these groups contain a worryingly high percentage of vegetarians and vegans. And others of a dictatorial bent.

The man who put out the tweet is CEO of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust. Registered as both a company and a charity.

The Trust is doing very well for itself. With net assets of £2,196,206 in 2021, against £1,899,611 the year before. And £288,436 in the bank (£147,097 in 2020).

That was despite writing off a debt of £10,296 owed by Radnorshire Wildlife Services Ltd. (In all my years of blogging I have encountered few successful ‘trading arms’. They must serve some other purpose.)

On page 6 of the 2021 accounts and annual report we see this ambition set out.

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“What do we want?”

“Thirty per cent!”

“When do we want it?”

“No later than 2030!”

It’s worth using the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust as an intro to the bigger picture.

ENGLANDANDWALES

The Radnorshire Wildlife Trust is, as the annual report and accounts tells us, a member of The Wildlife Trusts (TWT). The result of a re-organisation you can read about circled in the panel below.

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Is that progress? Strikes me as a step backwards.

Wildlife Trusts Wales maintains the pretence of independence with a website of its own. (Look top left.) Though the contact address is now in Nottinghamshire.

Then, perhaps to confuse things further, the charity, Wildlife Trusts Wales Ltd, seems to be ploughing on, yet the company dissolved itself in March.

In its latest report and accounts (at the foot of page 1) Wildlife Trusts Wales says, “WTW Council unanimously agreed that Wildlife Trust Wales should dissolve as a separate charity”, so why hasn’t it happened?

Wildlife Trusts Wales has chosen to be the local branch of an English body and hopes we’ll generously view it as having a separate existence. A bit like the Green Party.

OUT OF THE WOODWORK

After casting in the direction of James Hitchcock I hooked a few fish.

One specimen I dragged up from the murky depths was a Dr Paul Tubb. (I was tempted to take it easy on him because he might be related to Ernest of that ilk, who gave Hank Williams one of his best songs.)

It wasn’t long into our exchange, with me being the restrained and muted presence I always am, before Tubb came out with this!

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As I was quick to clarify – ain’t nothing “so-called” about my nationalism.

Another attempt to silence us by playing the ‘ugly nationalism’ card. Opposing the takeover of our country regularly draws this response, but the takeover itself is just fine. Perhaps even a moral crusade.

I introduce that elevating consideration after being confronted by it in a document produced by Woodknowledge Wales. Which is about as Welsh as the East India Company was Indian.

Here’s the document I’m talking about.

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On page 17 you’ll find the section above. Here’s my interpretation of what it says.

  • In addition to taking England’s wind turbines, and providing England’s water, Wales should also become England’s forest.
  • Farming is in the way of “re-forestation”.
  • “Natural colonisation of land” (by flora and fauna) is not a “morally justifiable . . . option for Wales”.  

The claim that there is a moral dimension to this scam is self-deluding bullshit. These are grant-grabbing tree-planters, not theologians or moral philosophers.

But enough of that, for I’ve been neglecting Tubby. He and I exchanged a bit more banter before it died a death.

Then, on the Monday, I received an e-mail from a complete stranger. It contained a link to the tweet you see below.

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The glasnost reference is to a blog produced by the late Dušan ‘Jacques’ Protić, who believed that both Rhodri Morgan and Carwyn Jones were dangerous nationalists . . . because they spoke Welsh! To Protic the Welsh language was the root cause of all Wales’ problems.

Protic was a ranter, and always good for a laugh. I often pictured him, crowned with a battered šajkača, pounding furiously away on his laptop . . . never dreaming he had a fan in Dr Paul Tubb.

Another irritating little git who popped up was a certain Rob Thomas. A twitcher from Cardiff Met. His party piece was referring to me as “anonymous tweeter and conspiracy theorist ‘Jac'”.

It got a bit boring after a while. So did he.

Someone else who joined in was a man with a beard, but no name; he was simply the “Welsh manager” for the Confederation of Forest Industries (UK) Ltd, headquartered in Edinburgh.

And there were others.

In fact, it’s quite amazing – and worrying – how many ‘afforestation’ groups there are out there. And how few of them, if any, are genuinely Welsh.

HOW MANY GROUPS DOES IT TAKE TO PLANT A TREE?

One, very influential outfit, is the Woodland Trust, which seems to be involved in most wood-related scams. An English organisation that followed the time-honoured route of opening a branch within whispering distance of Corruption Bay and giving itself a Welsh name, Coed Cadw.

But it’s simply a flag of convenience, for ‘Coed Cadw’ doesn’t exist for Companies House, or the Charity Commission, or the Financial Conduct Authority.

Another organisation I haven’t yet mentioned, but which has increasing influence over the ‘Welsh Government’, is the World Wildlife Fund. Which has an office and a website but, again, no existence independent of its UK / England HQ.

Then there’s a crew I may have neglected until now, Wales Environment Link (WEL), which sees itself as an umbrella organisation for environmental groups.

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When we look at the trustees we find at the top of the list, Roger Thomas, who is also a trustee at Tir Coed and Coed Cymru Cyf. (Not to be confused with Coed Cadw, the Woodland Trust’s Welsh disguise.)

Thomas is also a director at the Centre for Alternative Technology.

Another trustee is Natalie Roxanne Buttriss. Who deserves special mention.

Back in October 2018 she appeared in The Welsh Clearances. She was then Wales Director of the Woodland Trust, which was a partner with Rewilding Britain in the Summit to Sea project, a very ambitious land grab that was derailed by colonialist arrogance rousing local resistance.

I reproduce a photo from that post. It says so much. It shows Buttriss presenting a petition to Mike Hedges, Labour AM for Swansea East, I don’t know what post he held then. (Don’t care.)

A petition demanding – what else? – more trees! But it only managed to get a miserable 2,385 signatures. Yet it was still accorded an official presentation and media coverage . . . while petitions with many more signatures are effectively binned.

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When the memsahibs shout, the native politics-wallahs come running.

Among the full-time staff at WEN we find Llinos Price, of whom the less said the better. (Put her name into the search box atop the sidebar.) Also, former Labour spad, Liz Smith. Then there’s Rory Francis, who too has worked as a spad, and more recently for Friends of the Earth and Coed Cadw / Woodland Trust.

It really is revolving doors between ‘charities’ and politics, with none of those involved having any experience of business, and a lifetime spent wholly reliant on public funds.

But it’s not just identifiable organisations we should worry about; there are also loners, operating below the radar, who surface for other reasons.

This was the case with Sharon Girardi and her beavers at Blaeneinion. She came to my attention only because her response to Covid made the news. I started digging and then published ‘Enviroshysters flock to Wales for easy money‘.

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Blaeneinion has been owned since 2009 by a company registered in Gibraltar.

How many more Blaeneinions are there?

Let me end this section by reminding you that we are not just talking about land, and trees, for the enviroshysters also want our coastal waters.

According to the Rewilding Britain website back then the Summit to Sea project wanted 10,000 hectares of land and 28,400 hectares of sea.

And as we saw earlier, the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust has a core objective to, “Ensure 30% of the land and 30% of the sea is actively managed for wildlife by 2030”.

Not only are these vegan environmentalists determined to end livestock farming in Wales, they also wish to abolish commercial fishing.

POWYS, THE EPICENTRE

There were until recently 5 wildlife trusts in Wales. The North Wales Wildlife Trust, the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales (WTSWW), and then three in Powys.

We’ve looked at the one for Radnorshire, but there is also the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust, and there was a Brecknock Wildlife Trust until it merged with WTSWW.

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Quite remarkable when you think about it. Powys, with less than 5% of Wales’ population, had 60% of the country’s wildlife trusts. And post merger, still has 50%.

How do we explain this? Being so large, and sparsely-populated, Powys obviously attracts the kind of people we’ve encountered in this article. But there may be other factors at work.

A number of those I encountered in my research still live over the border, often just over the border. Wales obviously attracts them because funding is more readily available here.

James Hitchcock, the CEO of Radnorshire Wildlife Trust, with whose tweet this piece began, was formerly Estates Senior Manager at Herefordshire Wildlife Trusts.

Powys is also within reasonable travelling distance of almost any part of England, which makes it convenient for greenwash ‘investors’.

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There are other organisations helping to turn Harri Webb’s ‘Green Desert’ into a wooded wildlife paradise; among them, Soros College, Talgarth.

I know the boys and girls at Black Mountains College don’t like me harping on about their George Soros connection . . . so I shall keep doing it!

FINAL THOUGHTS

By accepted yardsticks such as health service delivery, education, infrastructure, standard of living, etc., we Welsh are worse off today than we were in 1999.

Unless they can serve as commuter communities for Cardiff and Newport the towns and villages of the Valleys undergo managed decline; Swansea is fed crumbs; the north east is being merged with north west England; the north coast is becoming the A55 commuter belt for Merseyside, Manchester, and Cheshire; our western coastal areas are no-go areas for our people due to property prices; while the rural heartland is bought up by carbon capture scammers and enviroshysters – with the support of the ‘Welsh Government’.

If it’s not the ‘Welsh Government’ buying up land for the claimed climate emergency then it’s Natural Resources Wales (NRW). Among their recent acquisitions is Ty’n y Mynydd on Ynys Môn.

But what can we expect from an organisation that puts out 1960s peace and love bollocks like: ” . . . reflective walk . . . ‘Children of the Revolution’ . . . thanks and love . . . for what we’d done for Wales”.

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What they’d done for Wales!!! They are buying up our country with our money and handing it over to strangers. (And look at the goody bags! We also paid for them.)

Every last one of them should be deported. Along with the others mentioned here. Plus the politicians, the civil servants, the lobbyists, and anyone else linked to the cess-pit that is Corruption Bay.

Let’s have a clean sweep so we can all breathe purer air.

Dominic Driver, who was responsible for that toe-curling tweet, is Head of Land Stewardship at NRW, so he presumably had a hand in the purchase at Ty’n y Mynydd. He taught at Harrow School and lives in the Cotswolds. Neis.

But that’s Wales for you. Or rather, for them.

The writing is on the wall. And the message reads: “R.I.P. Wales, the country that sacrificed itself pandering to strangers ‘saving’ a planet that was never in danger”.

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© Royston Jones 2022


Buy-to-rent beavers, hawking sheikhs and Mrs Hain

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

Yes, I promised there wouldn’t be anything until next Monday, but something came up and I thought, ‘Why not?’ And seeing as I’m spoiling you, next week’s offering might now be later than I’d promised.

You can have too much of a good thing!

ESCAPEES ON THE DYFI

This story starts with a report on the North Wales Live website of beavers in Afon Dyfi. A similar report appeared in the Western Mail yesterday. These beavers shouldn’t be there, of course, but they are, and no one seems to know who put them there!

Which could happen, I suppose. Anyone can walk into a pet shop and buy a mating pair of beavers . . . then mislay them somewhere near Machynlleth. It must happen all the time.

The fact that there are people wanting to release beavers into Welsh rivers is pure coincidence. Equally coincidental is that the Dyfi is targeted by these people.

The unlawful release may have taken place around the time – or even before – an application to release was made by Wildlife Trusts Wales to Natural Resources Wales. More on both these organisations later.

BEAVERS EVERYWHERE!

Another area being targeted by beaver lovers is in Carmarthenshire, where we find the Bevis Trust. The website tells us that the Trust, ” . . . manage wildlife on our 300 acre farm in Carmarthenshire and on other farms in the south west of Wales.”

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Are we dealing here with a Welsh farming family wishing to reintroduce species that have not been found in Wales for centuries?

No prizes for guessing the answer to that question, for we are now in the murky world of ‘rewilding’.

Companies House tells us that the Bevis Trust for Wildlife Management is based at Penllynin Farm, west of Carmarthen. Seemingly run by Dr Nicholas Christopher Fox and the woman I take to be his Swedish wife, Barbro Ingrid Margareta.

Financially, the most recent ‘Micro company’ accounts (y/e 31.12.2018) give fixed assets of £444,733 (the farm?), but a negative figure for ‘total net assets’. This being accounted for by ‘current liabilities’.

I wondered who owns the farm, but when I tried my luck on the Land Registry website I found that Penllynin farm is not registered. Which is odd. Has it recently changed hands, with perhaps new ownership details being processed, or is someone trying to hide something?

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Another outfit at the same address is International Wildlife Consultants (UK) Ltd. The ‘Abridged Balance Sheet’ (y/e 31.12.2019) shows healthy net assets of £8,749,561.

Though there are two charges against the company. One seems to be a bank loan for the purchase of Vowley farm, near Royal Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire. The farm probably contributes most of the £2,320,764 in fixed assets. There is also a newly-minted Vowley Management Company Ltd.

With almost six million pounds of ‘assets’ accounted for by ‘debtors’. Who might they be? On page 7 of the latest accounts we read:

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So – and not for the first time – we are dealing with linked or interlocking companies with money passing between them. Let’s see if we can figure out what’s what.

Wingbeat Ltd has “the same ultimate controlling party”. It never seems to have traded, with the one-time assets made up almost entirely of stocks, and the latest accounts showing a negative value of over one million pounds, accounted for by ‘creditors’. Presumably other Fox companies.

The other company mentioned in the capture above is Mickelbo Ltd, which is rather interesting. Not least because from its Incorporation in December 2003 until February 2007 it was known as International Wildlife Consultants Ltd.

I referred to money passing between the various companies owned by Nicholas and Barbro Fox. Go back to the 2004 accounts for Mickelbo Ltd (then International Wildlife Consultants Ltd) and you’ll read, in the final entry:

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It was the same in the following year’s accounts. Charging their company for use of their land. All perfectly legal.

The change of company name in 2007 is due to the complete change in business, from a wildlife consultancy to a buy-to-rent landlord. This explains 40 outstanding mortgages. A number of these mortgages refer to properties in Carmarthen, Whitland, St Clears.

Most of these mortgages are with Mortgage Express, which has quite a history.

All 100 shares in Mickelbo are owned by International Wildlife Consultants (UK) Ltd. Which is why we can read this in the latest Mickelbo accounts:

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Let’s recap. A couple of strangers decide Wales looks attractive. They start buying up land and property – then they rent it back to us! They have created not a single job. They now want permission to release beavers into Welsh rivers.

Because they’re curious to see what will happen. But unconcerned about the damage these animals might cause, and the livelihoods and leisure activities they could harm.

MONEY ON THE WING

In addition to beavers the Foxes are also interested in hawks. As we see with The Festival of Falconry and The Falconry Heritage Trust. We find other directors at these two charities, with an eclectic collection at the second representing China, Italy, USA, Japan, Netherlands, Belgium and Mongolia. (There is of course no Welsh involvement.)

The Festival of Falconry is filing as a dormant company with debts of £1,587. The Falconry Heritage Trust is in much better financing shape, thanks to . . .

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This grant seems to have been sat on for a decade and explains the bulk of the one and half million pounds currently in the kitty.

The donor, “Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, colloquially known by his initials as MBZ, is the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces”.

His official biography paints him as a liberal; no mention of chopped-up journalists or adulterers being stoned to death. But then, in the Gulf, these considerations are relative.

Compared to Hitler and Stalin Mussolini looked almost cuddly.

Though going through The Falconry Heritage Trust accounts I was surprised to read, “Dr N Fox, a trustee of the charity, is a director and shareholder of International Wildlife Consultants Ltd”.

This was the previous name for Mickelbo, the new company has ‘(UK)’ in the name. Can’t they keep up with their own name changes?

BEAVERS EVERYWHERE!

So, we know there are beavers in the Dyfi, the Foxes want them in Carmarthenshire, while in Llandrindod we find yet another group with beavers straining at the leash. (Or however beavers express their deep yearning for liberty.)

I’m referring now to the Welsh Beaver Project, which is the umbrella organisation for a number of groups. Another umbrella organisation for local groups is Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW).

From WTW we learn there is a single Trust for the whole of the north, another for ‘south and west Wales’, a third for Gwent; but instead of there being one for Powys, ‘Brecknock’, Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire have one each.

Now you might expect an organisation representing Welsh wildlife bodies to be located somewhere rural . . . but you’d be wrong. The registered office for Wildlife Trusts Wales is in Mount Stuart Square, in the black heart of Corruption Bay.

For Wildlife Trusts Wales is as much about lobbying politicians and influencing civil servants as it is about protecting wildlife. And of course, ensuring a steady flow of public moolah to create jobs . . . to employ people to lobby . . .

Just like George Monbiot and his Summit to Sea gang of ‘rewilders’, the WTW sees Brexit as a great opportunity. That’s because the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ will in future control the agricultural purse-strings. (Unless Westminster takes back that power.)

Just like the Monbiot gang the ‘Beavers Everywhere!’ crew believe they can persuade the ‘Welsh Government’ to re-label and divert farm payments to them.

It’s spelled out quite brazenly in the most recent annual report (top of page 2). We read that the ‘Welsh Government’ being in control of farm funding represents, “Significant opportunity to influence future payments”.

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And the enviro-colonists of WTW have every right to be optimistic. For the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs is Lesley Griffiths, who is shacked up with ‘Game Show Gary’ Haggaty. He belongs to a clique of civil servants believing that all farmers – but especially Welsh farmers – are absolute bastards, and should be cleared off the land.

Their land.

‘BEAVERS, WHAT BEAVERS?’

It seems clear that the runaway – swimaway? – beavers on the Dyfi have been there for a few years . . . without anyone doing anything about it. The agency that should have been taking an interest is Natural Resources Wales.

Now you know me, I don’t like twisting the knife, but NRW has not had a good press of late. Most memorably with the timber sales, something that was never properly explained. But that’s Wales – a colony run by a corrupt management team with neither an effective political opposition nor a media to hold it to account.

This scandal resulted in Labour AM Lee Waters claiming the NRW was “out of control”, and for once I agreed with him. Because for once, he was right.

Deposed NRW chair, Diane McCrea, entered the revolving door from which popped her replacement Sir David Henshaw, who was, ” . . . born and bred in Liverpool”, but has “lived in North Wales for a number of years”. So he knows Wales like the back of his hand.

Then there’s CEO Clare Pillman who, in a different role, played her part in inflicting HMP Berwyn on us.

In fact, if you want to see ‘colonialism’ spelled out in thirty-foot-high neon letters you couldn’t do much better than the Board of Natural Resources Wales.

Though while the majority of the members are imports, there is also Geraint Davies described – because he’s the only one – as a “fluent Welsh speaker”. (Being a mere native, Geraint of course comes at the bottom of the list.)

Former chair of Wildlife Trusts Wales, Howard Davies, is also on the Board. Isn’t that cosy for when WTW deals with NRW? Howard is also CEO of the National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

At NAAONB we find office manager Amber Carter. Amber previously worked for Wildlife Trusts Wales and Environment Wales (the forerunner to Natural Resources Wales).

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Did I say cosy? It’s positively incestuous!

Another who caught my eye was Chris Blake, for he is also involved with the Simon and Garfunkel tribute act at the putative Black Mountains College. An institution that provides “planet-centric education”. So there!

I wrote about them here and here. (You will need to scroll down.)

His brief bio on the BMC website tells us that Blake is a director of Green Valleys CIC .

The Green Valleys (Wales) Community Interest Company is based in Crickhowell, which we need to be told is in Wales. The latest accounts show that on a turnover of £208,753 in 2019 it managed a gross profit of £147,119, which is nothing to scoff at.

Unfortunately, administrative expenses took £178,338, and the bottom line, with everything taken into account, was a deficit for the year of £235,023. Bank loans and overdrafts accounting for £120,000 of that.

Making me wonder if any green energy companies make money. Would any of them survive without grants and other hand-outs?

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Another member of the NRW Board worthy of mention is Dr Elizabeth Haywood, aka Mrs Peter Hain. Because for a woman with not a democratically cast vote to her name she plays a worryingly influential role in Welsh political and public life.

“Purely advisory roles, surely, Jac?”

Mmm. But when you consider how lazy and useless the Labour politicos of Corruption Bay are, and the fact that she’s the wife of a party heavyweight who outranks them all, then Haywood’s ‘advice’ will go a long way to determining policy.

Such as her Task and Finish Group into City Regions concluding that the best future for our north east is to be taken over and integrated with the north west of England.

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I could understand ‘advice’ like that coming from the English side of the border – “Let us take over Flintshire, Wrexham and Denbighshire for overspill housing in order to protect property values in Cheshire”, but from the Welsh side it sounds like surrender.

Or, more likely, it’s just stating the English position in a way that’s supposed to make it more palatable. It happens all the time.

As I said at the top of this section, I introduced Natural Resources Wales because it is the agency that should have taken action when it became known that beavers had been illegally released into the Dyfi catchment area.

A couple of days ago I put out a tweet that was answered by NRW and then taken up by @Cynfab3 who seems to know about the Dyfi beavers. The responses from NRW tell me they aren’t interested in taking any action.

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To cover their own negligence NRW even tries to pass the buck to Dyfed Powys Police!

JAC AND THE BEAVERS

So what is the considered opinion of this august blog towards our furry, flapper-tailed friends?

Let me make it quite clear that I have nothing against beavers. They’ve done me no harm. So, in principle, I would have no real objection to them being reintroduced into Welsh rivers.

But that’s not the point is it?

My objection is based on the fact that this scheming – and law-breaking – is being done by alien groups with an unhealthy influence over civil servants and politicians, the latter elected to serve the Welsh interest. And being done against the wishes of those whose opinions should be paramount and decisive – the local, Welsh population.

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Which makes this latest furore contemporary Wales in a nutshell, where everyone’s interests are catered for, except us Welsh. Where you only have to scream “climate change” loudly enough to get what you want.

Resulting in Wales filling up with bullshitters and shysters who spend their time attending conferences, making self-promoting videos, lobbying politicians, milking the public purse – and contributing sod all to the health or wealth of the nation.

Simply creating conditions where you can – quite literally – throw up a shack in open country, just as long as you claim it’s a One Planet Development saving us from global warming. As this recent FoI response makes clear.

Nobody in officialdom cared about this unauthorised OPD, just as nobody cares about the unlawful release of beavers into the Dyfi because the authors are people with names like Guy and Cassandra rather than Gwilym and Cerys.

Am I exaggerating?

As I write, we have tourists dumping rubbish everywhere, blocking roads; Welsh communities are being destroyed by holiday homes and colonisation, yet the ‘Welsh Government’ prefers to sit on its hands, serving the interests of an alien and genocidal tourism industry.

We need a fresh intake of politicians to Corruption Bay prepared to prioritise Welsh interests. Make it happen next year!

STOP PRESS: The latest ‘rewilding’ stunt is the suggestion that golden eagles be ‘reintroduced’ to Eryri. But will they survive saturation tourism, wind turbines and an absence of their natural prey?

Given the mess left by tourists in recent weeks maybe we should be thinking of vultures?

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