The State Of Wales

I’m sorry I haven’t put out anything for a few weeks, but there’s just been too much to write about, and my lack of self-discipline has resulted in me being too easily distracted, too often.

So here goes, again. With a story that in my opinion is not being properly interpreted. What you’re about to read is my explanation for the adoption of the name Bannau Brycheiniog by the national park formerly known as the Brecon Beacons.

BANNAU BRYCHEINIOG

Unless you’ve been trapped underground, cast away on a desert island, or living in Treherbert, you’ll know that the Brecon Beacons National Park recently dropped the English version of its name to be known exclusively as Bannau Brycheiniog.

And the rebranding produced an outpouring of balderdash such as this old blogger has rarely seen.

Though few reached the depth of silliness plumbed by the Park’s chief executive, Catherine Mealing-Jones. The traditional flaming brazier logo had been discarded because it didn’t fit with these times of global warming, she wailed, as she zipped up her Eskimo Nell™ anorak to avoid the icy April blasts.

Here’s the headline from The Times.

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But the ‘climate crisis’ is a global fear campaign engendered by those, in the UN and the World Economic Forum, wishing to control your behaviour.

They’ve influenced governments around the world to brainwash millions of kids. That we then have so many worried or even unhinged youngsters is used as proof of the ‘climate crisis’, when in reality it’s proof of brainwashing.

In the Bannau debate the climate hysteria angle was bad enough, but certain sections of the English media seemed to view the changes as Woke. Here’s the headline from the Telegraph.

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Now you know me, nobody’s more alert to the lunacies of Wokeness than old Jac, but I didn’t quite see it that way. Worse, for some English writers, Wokeness seemed to be code for anti-Englishness.

The Daily Mail viewed with horror the prospect of Swansea ‘becoming’ Abertawe, and Aberdovey changing to the unrecognisable Aberdyfi.

Yet the name change, the rebranding, and the bollocks about climate change, was all a distraction from the real story. So pay attention!

Let’s begin by saying that in my view there’s nothing wrong with the name change. ‘Beacons’ may have been a misnomer anyway. Were there ever warning beacons lit there? If so, who were they warning? And who were they warning against?

Look out! A charabanc from Dowlais is heading up the A470!

And as a regular contact pointed out, few people will use the new name anyway. Partly because, unlike the recent name change of ‘Snowdonia’ to ‘Eryri’, it’s too long, and fewer people speak Welsh in Bannau Brycheiniog than in Eryri.

Though to end this section on a lighter note, our ‘Welsh’ TV newsreaders should provide hours of mirth with their mangled pronunciations of Bannau Brycheiniog.

THE TAKEOVER

For a few years I’ve been writing about the ‘interesting’ people turning up in south Powys, an area almost co-terminus with Bannau Brycheiniog.

There’s a temptation to just dismiss them as good-lifers, but I believe there’s more to it than that. Some are on a mission.

That latter interpretation certainly applies to those involved at Black Mountains College (BMC). An institution founded by people who had previously worked for George Soros, a man viewed by some as a philanthropist, and by others – including me – as someone on a mission to undermine Western society.

Black Mountains College is a member of Soros’s Open Society University Network.

The video below, produced by BMC, makes it clear that the college seeks to enrol those who have already been frightened witless over climate change. Attracting scared kids to Coleg Soros with the promise that they can, “re-engineer the future”.

The video also tells us: “our current predicament is man-made”. And indeed it is.

 

I believe that Black Mountains College now acts as a ‘hub’ or information exchange for climate alarmists, and this role is encouraged – and funded – by Corruption Bay. Which uses the same illusory threat as justification for imposing 20mph speed limits, waging war on farmers, and generally making us poorer, and our lives more miserable.

The hub may be needed because there’s quite a lot happening in the area.

For a start, let’s remember that Gilestone farm is just a few miles from Coleg Soros. Whatever was planned for Gilestone before the fan was overwhelmed with excrement, I guarantee it would have been justified on ‘environmental’ grounds.

Then, earlier this year, the ‘Welsh Government’ made a number of appointments to the (then) Brecon Beacons National Park Authority. This was done in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘access’, for it seems Persons of Colour and homosexuals had previously been barred from entering our national parks.

Who knew?

Nonsense of course. It was done to give the ‘Welsh Government’ greater control over the policies and direction of the national park.

The last Conservative member of the park authority, Iain McIntosh, has now resigned. Which leaves a national park authority, with control over planning and other matters, and in a constituency represented in London by a Tory MP, and in Cardiff by a Tory MS, controlled by the Labour party.

But this is how Labour has always operated in Wales. And we see it again with yet another new body ‘tacking climate change’.

The latest is the Wales Net Zero 2035 Challenge Group. Below is a panel from the ‘About’ tab. It’s funny. I mean, just look at who’s involved.

Topping the bill is former Labour Assembly Member and Minister for Saving Welsh Polar Bears Jane Davidson. She it was who gave Wales One Planet Developments. Hoping to realise her vision of the Welsh countryside repopulated with frightfully nice English smallholders and OPD dwellers.

Little room for the Welsh in that vision. And there’s little Welsh presence in the group headed by La Davidson.

What we do see is the Green Heath Robinsons at the Centre for Alternative Technology, who’ve received tens of millions of public funding. Our non-Welsh universities are of course represented. As is Coleg Soros, in the form of Art Garfunkel lookalike Ben Rawlence.

Returning to the bigger picture, we can’t ignore Y Bannau, the management plan for the national park. (Full version here.)

(How many such bodies and publications does one small country need!)

It’s a strange document. A mixture of platitudes, anguished concerns for the future, and the kind of ‘Welshness’ John Ford gave us with his adaptation of How Green Was My Valley.

For example, there are regular appearances by an imaginary family named Brychan. They also have impeccably Welsh forenames – Ioan, Mair, Dafydd – in an area becoming less and less Welsh through the activities of the kind of people you’re reading about.

There’s even a Brychan family tree (page 127)! It’s truly weird. Almost unsettling.

Take the ‘Letter from Sian (sic) Brychan to her daughter Megan’, February 20th 2042 (page 75). I suppose some reading this will be reassured to think that we’ll still be writing letters in 2042. Or at least the Brychans will.

In fact, they’re writing to each other all the bloody time. Don’t they talk?

By a painful irony the Brychans are described as, “seventh generation farmers here in the Bannau Brycheiniog” . . . which makes them the very people Green zealots want to remove from the area.

Aside from the Brychans a number of old favourites appear in Y Bannau. Coleg Soros, again; the greenwashers at Stump up for Trees; the secretive Beacons Water Group; and many more favourites that have appeared on this blog.

Perhaps all you really need to know about this management plan is that the foreword comes from Julie James, Minister for Climate Change, and the document first saw the light of day in Corruption Bay, not Brecon.

This is the ‘Welsh Government’s plan for Y Bannau. And if they and their cronies can get away with it, they’ll try it on elsewhere.

There must now be hundreds of Labour-connected enviro-shysters whizzing around Wales – in cars we pay for – attending meetings where they earnestly discuss how to cut emissions and save the planet.

A planet in no danger whatsoever.

UPDATE 03.05.2023: It should go without saying that the new Future Generations Commissioner was at the launch of Y Bannau.

WHO’S A LUCKY BOY, THEN!

The most recent development in the Beacons / Bannau saga came last Friday with a fascinating article in the MailOnline.

Which tells that the genius behind the re-branding was one Jordan Thorne, who is 34 and has a company called Creo, described by the Mail as “a Cardiff-based marketing agency which has in recent years won a series of lucrative public sector contracts”. 

Including of course the Beacons to Bannau gig.

So, what can we learn about Thorne and Creo?

Starting with Creo, there seem to be three companies of that name. They are: Creo Digital Ltd; Creo Interactive Ltd; and Creo Group Holdings Ltd. Here’s the Creo website.

Where we can read Jordan Thorne telling us how he sees himself.

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I get a wee bit queasy when I hear anyone say they’re ‘trapped’ in the wrong body because it puts me in mind of weirdos and perverts who pretend they can’t tell men from women.

But back to more wholesome thoughts.

Creo was acquired, in a management buy-out, just over a year ago, when Thorne and a couple of others bought out founder Richard Ward. Though Ward retains a 25% share.

As you’ve just read, the buy-out was funded by the Development Bank of Wales (DBW). Which is owned by the ‘Welsh Government’. Here’s a link to more details of that act of generosity. Just click on ‘View PDF’ for the details.

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But it wasn’t the first time DBW has looked kindly on Creo, for there was an earlier example in December 2018. (Ditto.)

Let’s just flick through the accounts for the Creo companies, see if anything catches Jac’s jaundiced eye. (Though, actually, they’re skeletal ‘unaudited financial statements’.)

Creo Digital shows total assets of £300,172 but has a net deficit of -£55,253.

Creo Interactive Ltd reveals total assets of £522,250 (previous year £365,043); reducing to net assets of £466,437.

Creo Group Holdings Ltd shows total assets of £375,100, made up of fixed assets of £375,000. Taking out liabilities leaves a net figure of -£4,529.

Control over Creo Interactive is exercised by Creo Digital; and Creo Digital is, predictably, controlled by the holding company. Where the 100 shares are split equally between Ward, Coakley, Thorne and Shaw.

Maybe the fixed asset is the Creo premises in the old St Cadoc’s church at 76 Wells Street, Cardiff. Naturally, I wondered who owned it, so I shuffled over to the Land Registry website.

The freehold title document shows four owners. Two are Ward and Coakley, from the image above. A third is Personal Pension Trustees Ltd. The fourth is Andrew Paul Ashton, who was formerly a director of Creo Interactive Ltd.

Turning to the leasehold document we see the two leaseholders named as “David McLeod Lea and others” and Creo Interactive Ltd.

Lea’s another ‘creative’, who shared the old church premises for a while. He was involved with company Still Works Ltd that went bust a few years back owing Development Bank of Wales money.

I’m a ‘creative’, do you think I could get a DBW loan?

On a more serious note, seeing as it’s wholly owned by the ‘Welsh Government’, is there genuine scrutiny or oversight of the DBW? And while I’m not suggesting that Labour supporters are favoured by the DBW with its loans policy, I can understand why some might think that.

The MailOnline went big on Thorne’s politics, without properly understanding them. Though the boy has said some nasty things. As the headline put it:

Corbyn-loving Twitter troll and Welsh separatist whose vile posts tell Margaret Thatcher to ‘burn in hell’ and call Conservative ministers ‘Tory scum’

Why are modern Leftists so thoroughly unpleasant? So vindictive? So personal? The kindest thing one can say is that it’s infantile. For let’s remember that Thorne is too young to even remember Margaret Thatcher.

Clearly, he’s far left, and was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Then, like a number of other Corbynistas, he turned to Yes Cymru. Though not because he cares about Wales but because he sees Welsh independence as a vehicle for his socialism.

Jordan Thorne wants a Welsh socialist republic. Just like the other Corbyn entryists who nearly wrecked Yes Cymru a couple of years back. (I wrote about it extensively.)

I must admit that I’d never heard of Jordan Thorne. Yet it seems Yes Cymru values him highly enough to have put out a tweet in his defence on Saturday.

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I believe that leaping to his defence can be put down to Thorne being a socialist, and the attack coming from a ‘Tory’ source.

Yes Cymru then tried to reassure us that it is neither left nor right, with this tweet yesterday morning. But just a few hours before, had put out the tweet below.

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What the hell has Welsh independence got to do with illegal immigrants crossing from France to England? The answer should be – Nothing.

But what the tweet above reveals is that whoever wrote it wants an independent Wales with open borders. A socialist Wales. A Wales following the Globalist agenda.

The stances taken by the loudest elements in Yes Cymru; on immigration, gender ID, climate hysteria, ‘White supremacy’, and all the other Woke nonsense only serves to alienate many in a socially conservative country, making independence less likely.

CONCLUSION

Jordan Thorne and Creo got the rebranding contract due to Labour party connections. Thorne joining Yes Cymru may be part of Labour’s infiltration of that organisation.

For there have been other attempts, such as the absurd ‘Labour for an Independent Wales‘ (linked with, ‘DUP for a 32-County Republic’). Plus individual Corbynistas and Momentum members have been identified on this blog and elsewhere.

And let’s not forget that Labour is a control-freak party that wants to run just about every organisation in the country. Labour will often use the Welsh language to placate the easily duped, and to disguise its true intentions.

The name change was the dead cat thrown on the table to distract the media and those who rely on the media to do their thinking for them. It’s really about the takeover of Bannau Brycheiniog by a political party with no democratic mandate.

Done so that it can implement the Globalists’ Net Zero lunacies, and in so doing, ‘re-model’ the landscape, the economy, even the demographics of the area.

Having succeeded in south Powys Labour can now impose its will – and its supporters – on other areas that do not vote Labour. It must be done this way because . . .

Despite its dominant role Labour is a minority party. Winning the votes of less than 20% of the electorate in 2021. This is another reason why the party must rely on corruption and cronyism to exert control. With many of the cronies imported.

In practical terms this insidious spread of Labour influence, this crony shadow state, means that even if Labour was to lose the next Senedd elections in 2026 (unlikely given the rigged ‘party list’ system it wants to introduce) it could carry on running Wales – for it would take years to dismantle the system Labour had created.

Clearly, Wales is not a democracy. Wales is run as a one-party state. Shame on Plaid Cymru for lending this corrupt system a veneer of credibility with its support.

I for one would shed no tears if Westminster chose to restore some semblance of democracy to Wales.

♦ end ♦

 

Nicola Sturgeon: Her Fall In Context

There’s something odd, even tragic, about an intelligent woman destroying her political legacy and damaging the cause she believes in to argue that women have penises and men can give birth.

How can anyone, let alone someone as smart as Nicola Sturgeon, believe such nonsense? The answer is that she might not believe it at all. And I strongly suspect that many of the zealots pushing this lunacy do not believe it either. Few people are that bloody stupid.

But people can be brainwashed into believing that promoting such idiocy is the right thing to do; partly because it’s ‘progressive’, and partly because it pisses off the ‘fascists’.

But what straight man could possibly object – it’s a ‘feminine penis’! Click to open engorged in separate tab

For you must remember that we live in an age when everything is ideological, and agendas are promoted for political gain and / or social change, but definitely not for the public good; which means that whether what is being propounded is true or not is irrelevant.

In the post-truth era the end definitely justifies the means.

But how did we get here?

POST-SOVIET MARXISM

Following World War Two, and the USSR’s leading role in defeating Nazi Germany, Communism enjoyed a surge in popularity in western Europe, particularly in Italy and France. There were worries in Washington that Europe might even go Red without the need for direct Soviet intervention.

That appeal faded as the economy of Europe improved. Communism lost even more of its appeal with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, and its ‘freedom-loving’ credentials took a near-fatal knock in 1968 when Red Army tanks put down the wholly peaceful ‘Prague Spring‘.

By the late 1980s, with the Soviet Union losing a war in Afghanistan, queueing for bread becoming a national pastime, and Russians themselves admitting the game was up, it was clear to most people that Communism was an experiment that had failed. Certainly clear to those of us inhabiting the ‘real’ world. (And that included the babushkas in the bread queues.)

But there remained others who insisted Communism hadn’t been given a proper chance, or hadn’t been implemented correctly. Many of those who argued like this belonged to the middle classes, a disproportionate number of them academics.

Though by the late 1980s even its staunchest adherents knew Communism could never be sold as an economic model, certainly not as a replacement for capitalism – it couldn’t deliver the goods a consumer society demanded.

A change of tack was needed.

But for the diehards the objective remained the same – to undermine, weaken, and then, hopefully, take over the Western, capitalist world. But how was this to be done now that the socialist economic model was proven to be unworkable?

The answer came in the form of ‘Cultural Marxism’, succinctly explained here.

Though according to Wikipedia (and an editor who can’t spell ‘anti-Semitic’): “The term ‘Cultural Marxism’ refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.”

Ah, yes: “Far-right conspiracy theory”. Remember when the Wuhan lab origin of Covid was a Far Right conspiracy theory? Even ‘racist’? And so was the growing evidence that the vaccines did more harm than good.

Though “academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western cultures” is a rather good description of, um, Cultural Marxism. Because anyone choosing to argue that our academic institutions today are bastions of free speech has an impossible job on their hands.

But how was the grand design to be put into practice?

THE ROUTE TO THE SUNLIT UPLANDS, AND THE GUIDES TO GET US THERE

With Marxists being so influential in academe this guaranteed that in Western universities students would be indoctrinated, with the new converts spreading the gospel as they dispersed into the wider world.

For a phenomenon of the past 30 years has been an increasingly bloated higher education sector catering in the main for semi-literate and impressionable natives and rich foreigners, which inevitably couples with falling academic standards.

Little more than a production line churning out the blinkered but earnest young people needed to fill the ranks of pressure groups, third sector bodies, and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

With the result that politics today is little more than politicians implementing the wishes of these groups, usually at the expense of the people who elected them.

Which means that democracy has, effectively, been subverted. Who you or I vote for is largely irrelevant. And it’s not just pressure groups undermining democracy, as I’ll explain later.

Which brings us back to the recent debacle in Scotland.

Nicola Sturgeon, and too many others in the Scottish National Party-Green Party coalition, fell under the influence of Stonewall pushing, among other things, the self-ID agenda that said your gender is whatever you claim it to be at any given time.

What began as an absurd and almost laughable fantasy turned darker when Adam Graham decided during his trial for raping two women that he was now transgender, and as ‘Isla Bryson’ he expected to be sent to a female prison, so he could be among more, vulnerable women

The self-inflicted disaster from which the SNP is now struggling to emerge could only have come about when politicians are beguiled by a pressure group to the point where they lose sight of reality and simply don’t care what the public really thinks.

We also have this problem in Wales, in every sphere of our national life. We suffer pressure groups and campaigners – many from outside the country – pushing agendas that are against the best interests of the Welsh people.

And the politicians in Corruption Bay obey them like zombies.

A few weeks back readers of the Western Mail were treated to the headline you see below. Pay attention to the section I’ve circled. Who is Dr Lynn Sloman?

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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.

Yeah, that’s how I imagined devolution panning out.

More recently, my attention was drawn to a ‘Welsh Government’ document with the snappy title, Wales Innovates: Creating a Stronger, Fairer, Greener Wales. When you see ‘stronger’, ‘fairer’ and ‘greener’ grouped like that you can guarantee that we, the people, are going to be shafted.

This is what I was directed to on page 45.

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Look at that phrase, ‘Mobility as a service’. No. Mobility, and freedom of movement within one’s own country, are fundamental human rights.

I want to be able to jump in my car and drive anywhere I bloody well please. I will not be deprived of this freedom by some swivel-eyed fanatic using the excuse of a ‘climate catastrophe’ that’s just not happening.

Though I’m intrigued by the possibilities opened up by ‘bike-sharing’. Does this mean different people using the same bike at different times, or can I fantasise about some buxom lovely of a playful nature astride my crossbar?

2016 AND ALL THAT

Cultural Marxism has became more shrill and divisive in recent years, and its toxicity has increased. This I believe is due to a number of factors.

In 2016 the Anglosphere suffered two unexpected political jolts. In June of that year the UK voted to leave the European Union (or rather, England and Wales voted to leave; Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted to stay).

Then came the election of Donald Trump in November.

The far left had long been losing faith in the White working class, there was clearly a lack of revolutionary zeal among these dullards who wanted a decent home for their family and a good education for their kids. Brexit and Trump confirmed the comrades’ worst fears.

A counter-offensive was needed. And the weapons needed were already to hand.

TWO OTHER DONKEYS OF THE CULTURAL MARXIST APOCALYPSE

THE ENVIRONMENT

Concerns about global warming or climate change had been gaining traction for a couple of decades, in part due to showmen like Al Gore, who understands climate as well as I understand nuclear fusion.

Who among you could not be convinced by those “boiling oceans“?

But the Far Left wasn’t really interested in saving the planet; the Cultural Marxists simply saw a problem that could be blamed on capitalism, and could be remedied by undermining Western economies.

For it was of course the West that would have to reduce its emissions to defeat those fortune cookie ‘predictions’.

Essentially, a programme of ‘degrowth’. Being discussed here in the What’s Up With That blog quoting Japanese Marxist academic Kohei Saito.

(Not for nothing are Greens called ‘watermelons’ – green on the outside, red on the inside.)

Or to put it another way, the populations of the advanced countries would have to suffer rising fuel bills, food shortages, travel restrictions, 15-minute cities . . . all for the good of the planet.

By comparison, countries in the developing world, China in particular, could build as many coal-fired power stations as they pleased. (Two a week, at the last count.) Further proof that the Left was less interested in saving the planet than with damaging the West.

The truth is that none of the absurd predictions made over the past 50 years has come to pass. The world may be warming, slightly, but it has little to do with us humans, and far more to do with the fact that we are in an inter-glacial warm period.

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Entire nations wiped off the face of the Earth! Wow! How did I miss that?

Though a more generous interpretation that crosses my mind, especially after a glass or twa of Malbec, might be that climate hysteria is a variation on Pascal’s Wager. Or, at least, that’s how it might play out.

The great 17th century French thinker argued that believing in God was the sensible thing to do. Because if there was a God, and you’d lived a good life, then you went to Heaven. If there was no God, then you’d still lived a good life, helping others, etc.

If after all the sacrifices we are being forced to make it becomes clear there is no global warming, then those who promoted climate disaster might argue: “OK, so there’s no global warming – but those sacrifices made you a better person”.

     RACE

Another tool in the Cultural Marxists’ destabilisation armoury is race; more specifically, reminding us of the terrible things the White man has done. For as everyone knows, only Europeans ever conquered other peoples, and slavery was always and only a relationship between White masters and Black slaves.

(Anyone who knows their history and tries to speak the truth is of course a ‘racist’.)

To the point where in the eyes of many, White people can do little right, and Black people can do nothing wrong. As we saw in Minneapolis when career criminal George Floyd died in a botched arrest. And that’s all it was.

But his death led to his immediate martyrdom and resulted in riots applauded by the mainstream media.

Riots that were not simply applauded but deliberately misrepresented, even when the evidence was just over the reporter’s shoulder.

The answer to rioting was obvious – ‘Defund the police!‘.

Because if the police were not there then the riots could proceed uninterrupted, the buildings burn down quicker, and everybody could go home with their looted goods.

Surely any fool could see the advantages? (Well, obviously, not the ‘racists’.)

The USA has arrived at a situation where, one hundred and sixty years after Lincoln freed the slaves (in the Confederate states he didn’t control), and sixty years since the Civil Rights Act, the Far Left is deliberately and irresponsibly reintroducing segregation and racism into the USA.

But it can’t stop over there. For as we’ve seen, ‘racism’ must be used everywhere, and interpolated into everything nowadays, even Covid.

And football. For during the recent Word Cup Finals a Black US academic, writing in the Washington Post (where else?) accused winners Argentina of being too White. Truth is that well under one percent of the Argentine population is Black.

It gets worse – for the countryside is racist! All those jackbooted farmers belting out the Horst Wessel Lied as they round up the sheep! Back in the 1940s the West fought those who sang that song. Now we fund and arm them.

Funny old world, innit!

And if ‘racism’ is to be fully exploited there must be unrestricted immigration to Western countries. Disruptive, unjustified, increasingly unpopular . . . so now these migrants are being called ‘climate refugees‘.

And if you fall for that, then you’ll fall for anything!

THE QUISLING LEFT AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The Cultural Marxism I’ve described has, in recent years, come to be known as ‘Wokeness’, or ‘Wokeism’. Before that, perhaps, ‘political correctness’. There’s no point in looking for differences between them because there are too few.

The others were just Cultural Marxism rebranded, because those pushing it knew that the ‘M’ word was unpopular, far better to hide under other labels. ‘Progressive’ being particularly popular with the Far Left today.

But whatever the tag, it remains a war on the West. And given that non-White majority countries get a free ride, Cultural Marxism / Wokeism can even be seen as racist.

And why not, for the Far Left has always been unpatriotic, so there’s no great leap needed for it to extend its hatred from individual nations and states to a whole racial and cultural identity.

It was noticeable during the Covid pandemic how eagerly the Far Left embraced the restrictions on human freedoms demanded by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) and other bodies.

Which was not surprising, for the comrades have always believed that for society to function efficiently the common herd must be directed and led by morally, intellectually and ideologically superior beings. People like Stalin. Mao. Pol Pot.

With this justified because however it might look, it’s really being done in the interests of the ruled. Little different to a theocracy. And the vision of the World Economic Forum.

I bring in the WEF because this shared belief in rule by, ‘Those Who Know Best’ has brought Cultural Marxists into alliance with mega corporations like Blackrock, Big Pharma, Big Tech, multi-billionaires, and others who want to act as an unelected world government.

Reducing our elected governments to little more than middle-men, or facilitators; implementing orders from above and obeying demands from below.

A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL

The fundamental problem for Cultural Marxists is that, well, they spout bollocks. Whether it’s climate hysteria, anti-White racism, women with penises and, more recently, Covid.

Confronted with these realities Cultural Marxists, unable to defend the positions in which they’ve entrenched themselves, must resort to silencing critics before the truth can emerge. Which is why they openly advocate ‘No debate’.

Hoping to convey the message that the position(s) they have taken up are so incontrovertibly correct that debate is unnecessary.

Anyone suggesting maybe, just maybe, the world is not coming to a fiery end is a ‘climate denier’. Those who argue that cross-dressers are not women are ‘transphobes’. While those who believe that White people are not evil are, of course, ‘racists’.

But the catch-all term Leftists often reach for to slander their opponents when they’re cornered is ‘Far Right’. Which is what London mayor Sadiq Khan did last week to those protesting against 15-minute cites.

This is definitely a fascist sign. Click to open enlarged in separate tab.

These attempts to intimidate and silence opponents with silly labels is further enforced by denying a platform to those with the courage to speak. This of course is ‘cancel culture’.

Silencing critics is greatly aided by WEF control of the mainstream media and most social media. Resulting in newspapers and TV channels presenting only approved narratives, even ignoring some news stories altogether.

Now they want to introduce bans on what they – or their AI algorithms – will decide is ‘hate speech’. In other words: “All voices that challenge us will be silenced”.

It’s worth considering the role of Bill Gates in all this. For in many ways he is the public face of the World Economic Forum.

To begin with, Bill Gates is the second biggest donor to the WHO, and it was pure coincidence that during the Covid pandemic ‘Dr’ Gates was urging people to get vaccinated . . . with products from companies in which he’d heavily invested.

The same WHO that issued global directives during Covid, and now wants to take on itself the power to instruct democratically-elected governments to close their country down. Even the power to enforce global lockdowns.

Gates is also a big donor to media around the world, including the BBC. Now why would he do that? His fellow-‘philanthropist’, George Soros, another Globalist meddler, also gives vast sums to the media.

My understanding of the BBC was that it is funded by the licence fee in order to ensure its impartiality. (Don’t laugh!) So why is the BBC allowed to accept funding from Bill Gates? And who else is funding the BBC?

Bill Gates, friend of the late Jeffrey Epstein. (‘Suicide’, remember? Sad.)

CONCLUSIONS

The West is in a dangerous place. Those we are asked to believe are in control have been reduced to figureheads. Cardboard cut-outs.

As I explained, our elected politicians answer to the Globalists above them, and the Cultural Marxists below. With the latter acting as the ‘feet on the ground’ for the former. Neither source of real power has a democratic mandate.

Which results in the diktats of the unelected being ‘legitimised’ by being fed through national and sub-national governments.

But their agenda is clear: to make our lives more expensive and more miserable; with fewer freedoms, in expression, movement, and so much else.

To get a feel for the promised future read, ‘Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better‘, written in 2016 by Ida Auken, member of the Global Future Council on Cities and Urbanization of the World Economic Forum.

‘No privacy’ will be dressed up as ‘smart’ and ‘convenient’.

And forget the Sunday joint, for vegans are another of the fringe outfits found among the screeching mass of Cultural Marxists. And it’s why livestock farmers are being hounded out of business around the world.

The WEF wants to control the global food supply. Vegans want us to stop eating meat. To achieve this, both will target farmers. (Though the vegans may disguise themselves as environmentalists.)

Intolerant and unreasonable vegans would never have such influence today, with a media free ride, if they weren’t carrying out the WEF agenda.

This also explains why Bill Gates is said to be the largest private owner of farmland in the USA. Not only that, but ‘Farmer’ Gates is also cornering the market in seeds.

The future is spelling itself out before our eyes.

To return to where we started . . .

Were I a cynical bastard I might wonder what really happened in Scotland. For with both Globalists and Cultural Marxists wanting to put an end to nation states why get involved with a party and a government wanting to create a new nation state?

And then I think of what happened in Wales in 2021. When a thriving organisation campaigning for independence, that had quickly gained 18,000 members, was almost destroyed by fanatics – all of a Far Left background – trying to turn YesCymru into TransCymru.

It’s a hell of a coincidence.

CONCLUSION

I believe in the family, the nation, and Western civilisation. Proud to be a husband, father and grandfather; proud to be Welsh; proud of what Europeans, people of the West, have contributed to the world.

The same West that’s being targeted today, and for a number of reasons.

Partly because Russia, China, and other states know how to deal with the kind of disruptive fanatics we’ve dealt with here. So the Cultural Marxists focus on their unfinished business with the capitalist West.

The WEF targets the West because that’s where the power and the money lies. But Klaus Schwab and his gang also understand that the obstacles to their takeover – love of democracy, respect for individual liberty, and a belief in freedom of expression – are more cherished in the West than elsewhere.

Which explains the concerted vilification of White people, and the existential threat.

No matter how it’s disguised, we are facing a global power grab. And for complete power over our lives. So let’s unite, across national boundaries, across continents, to defeat the crazies trying to ‘soften us’ up for the Bond villains.

Arise ye “useless eaters“!

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2023


Welsh Independence And The Left

I’m kicking off 2023 with thoughts on independence; more exactly, the kind of independence being offered by those who’ll be gathering in the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, on the 28th of this month.

Ah! the Brangwyn Hall. I remember being slung out of there many years ago. It was a Labour Party do, with that son of Abersychan, Roy Jenkins, topping the bill. (Ere he and others left to form the SDP.)

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Anyway, Woy had got to the bit in his peroration where he proclaimed to the assembly that he too was Welsh . . . at which point a young Jac jumped up and shouted ‘You’re no Welshman!’ (My outburst may have contained an expletive attributive.)

I was immediately attacked by some old crow sitting behind me, who laid into me with her umbrella! A possible headline from the Evening Post flashed through my mind – ‘Nationalist yob beaten to death by umbrella-wielding Labour granny’.

I was saved from this undignified and premature fate by the ‘stewards’ (i.e. Labour heavies) dragging me off towards the huge front doors. With a few reminders along the way that my contribution was not appreciated. (‘Troublemaker, ew are!’)

Happy days!

‘PROGRESSIVE’ MELIN DRAFOD

In this section I shall refer more than once to the briefly successful far Left takeover of YesCymru in 2020 and 2021.

I wrote about this extensively at the time and so, to catch up with what I wrote, type ‘YesCymru’ in the search box atop the sidebar.

The event later this month in the Brangwyn is organised by think tank Melin Drafod. And you don’t need to think too hard to realise what anyone attending is likely to hear.

All the speakers are on the Left. Or the far Left. Or the Woke Left. Call it what you will.

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But ‘progressive’ is the label behind which they all hide nowadays. Such a nice word, harmless and unthreatening. Who among us could object to ‘progress‘?

Me. Because I recognise rebranded Marxism.

Helping me appreciate that the ‘progress’ demanded by those who’ll gather where a young Jac was assaulted by a Bolshie harridan is worrying.

But let Melin Drafod speak for itself:

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‘Not independence for its own sake’. What is that trying to say – patriotism is not enough? Or is it a veiled threat to scupper any form of independence that doesn’t meet with the approval of the far Left?

There is so much to read into that section.

My views on ‘climate change’ are well known – it’s not happening. The myth is being kept alive by ‘environmentalists’ and others who’ve staked their reputations on it and can’t afford to backtrack, with supranational bodies thinking ‘global warming’ gives them the excuse to control human behaviour worldwide.

And does anyone seriously believe that racism is a ‘scourge’ in modern Wales? Who but the seriously unhinged could insult us by equating Wales in 2023 with Arkansas or the Transvaal a few decades back?

Only perhaps those with a vested interest in using the allegation of ‘racism’ to slander political opponents and to promote their own interests.

The latter might apply to Melin Drafod National Committee member Harriet Protheroe-Soltani, of the Wales Refugee Council. Like all third sector bodies, this one thrives by inventing or exaggerating a problem – and then demanding funding to tackle that problem.

Ms Protheroe-Soltani of Momentum was also employed by YesCymru when it fell briefly under the control of the far Left in 2020 / 2021.

Sam Coates is another member of the National Committee.

His Twitter account tells that he is a socialist first, then a Welshman. Which would appear to bear out that for these ‘progressives’ Wales comes second to their ideological priorities.

Significantly, perhaps, there’s no mention of independence.

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And, again, it’s worth returning to the far Left takeover of YesCymru, for Coates wrote this essay in July 2021, and it’s revealing. (Available here in pdf format.) Not just about Coates but about the others who’ll be at the Brangwyn later this month.

He writes: ‘In 2017, I rocked up to the Hen Coleg yn Aberystwyth on a baking hot day to attend YesCymru’s AGM. It was a friendly room of about 50 people, mostly middle age, and mostly white.’

‘Mostly white’ – in a country that is 95% White! Would Coates and the comrades be happier if YesCymru was a majority non-White organisation, and therefore grotesquely unrepresentative of Wales?

As unrepresentative as those who’ll be at the Brangwyn Hall.

Referring to the rigged YesCymru elections of May 2021 that saw the far Left briefly take control, Coates writes: ‘Hundreds of members attended the online event, and used a voting tool used by many other political organisations to choose members of the new Central Committee’.

It would appear that when he wrote of those ‘hundreds’ voting Coates had forgotten that a few paragraphs earlier he’d talked of YesCymru having 18,000 members. Presenting us with the obvious question: why were just 2-3% of the members able / allowed to vote?

But let’s remember some of the tweets from ‘progressives’ celebrating victory!

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Coates’ whole essay is an apology for an attempted far Left takeover; and it’s riddled with inaccuracies, misrepresentations and outright lies.

The other members of Melin Drafod’s National Committee seem to be Plaid Cymru members, and others who were involved in the near-destruction of YesCymru in 2021. I’m thinking of Llywelyn ap Gwilym, and Siôn Jobbins, Chair of YesCymru who eventually jumped ship.

Then we have Elin Hywel and Colin Nosworthy of Undod, the source of so much of the poison that almost finished off YesCymru.

And of course there are one or two on the National Committee from the Labour Party.

WHO’S COMING TO THE SUMMIT AND WHO’S NOT INVITED?

Let’s start by listing those political parties and organisations that are not invited by Melin Drafod (or whoever) to the portentously dubbed ‘Independence Summit’.

First off, there’s the party to which I belong, Gwlad. Then there’s Propel. There’s also the Sovereign Party / Plaid Sofren. So without going too far, we’ve already found three registered political parties, with councillors, made up of serious and experienced people, with all three parties committed to Welsh independence.

So why didn’t Melin Drafod invite them?

The listed speakers are advertised as follows . . .

‘Anthony Slaughter (Wales Green Party Leader), Adam Price MS (Plaid Cymru Leader), Cllr Rachel Garrick (Welsh Labour for Independence), Sam Coates (Undod), Gwern Evans (YesCymru), Luke Fletcher MS, Mirain Owen (Cymdeithas yr Iaith) and others’.

So let’s begin with Slaughter, and remind everyone that there is no Wales Green Party! There is only the Wales branch of the Green Party of England.

In 2018 Green Party members in Wales had the chance to create a separate Wales Green Party, they voted not to. The main reason for that was that most Green Party members in Wales are English.

Then, last year, the Green Party of England in Wales claimed to be in favour of Welsh independence! Plaid Cymru fell for it and was happy to enter some sort of agreement with them.

No individual, group, or party, sincere about Welsh independence, should even talk to a colonialist outfit that refuses to even recognise the existence of our country.

Plaid Cymru I’ll leave until last.

‘Welsh Labour for Independence’ (WLfI) is another piece of nonsense. Labour is a Unionist party. Any Labour member who wants independence is in the wrong party. Maybe some now realise that.

But is (WLfI) the same as Labour for an Independent Wales (LfIW)? Or, and this is the frightening bit – are there two of them!

During the struggle for YesCymru LfIW was prominent in undermining sensible committee members and replacing them with some real nutters. Working from the shadows was Rob Lloyd of Prestatyn, while out there on the Welshpool barricades was Benji Gwalchmai.

Where are they now? How I miss them!

We already know all we need to know about Sam Coates and Undod.

Luke Fletcher is a Plaid Cymru Senedd Member. With a beard.

YesCymru is represented by Gwern Gwynfil Evans. He was announced as YC’s first-ever full-time CEO in September. The piece I’ve linked to says he has ‘a business background’. Which is true; one of his companies was Dissolved in the very month he was appointed.

Yet he brings another Aberystwyth connection to the party. Which I’ll explore shortly.

Cymdeithas yr Iaith is not worth dwelling on. Hopelessly Woke it overlaps with Undod and other far Left groups like Plaid Cymru’s youth wing, Plaid Ifanc, where pronouns are of paramount importance.

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So, finally, let’s give some thought to Plaid Cymru which, in most people’s eyes, is ‘the nationalist party’, and the leading voice for Welsh independence.

On the one hand, Plaid activists seem to be more at home at Gay Pride parades than at marches for independence; while the party is being eaten away from the inside by a combination of back-stabbing and sexual misbehaviour.

The party tries to keep things under wraps but news of the obsession with other people’s ‘bits’ inevitably reaches the public domain.

MS Rhys ab Owen was suspended a few months ago for unwanted sexual advances to a female. But he was only suspended after the party had sat on the case for some time in the hope the complainant would go away.

Last month, the party’s chief executive, Carl Harris, finally stepped down after it emerged he had made unwanted sexual advances to a young party worker.

When it’s like this at the top of the party – and I mean, the very top – then no one should be surprised that lower down the pecking order we find bizarre behaviour.

The image below (which I pixelated) is of someone who works for a Plaid Cymru MS showing what he proposes to do when he catches whoever is behind an anonymous ‘I know what you did!’ Twitter account accusing him of . . .

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And, yes, that is a crowbar.

No wonder a former Plaid Cymru Police and Crime Commissioner recently called on party leader Adam Price to resign.

Plaid Cymru is a mess, however you look at it, and from top to bottom. To say it’s lost its way would be wrong . . . for that would suggest Plaid’s leadership in recent decades ever knew where it was going.

I think Plaid Cymru is now too far gone for the change of leadership Arfon Jones calls for to make any difference. My view is that Plaid should do the honest thing and merge with Labour.

They deserve each other.

RUM, REGGAE, AND ‘AN UNTAINTED, LEFT-WING, WELSH ALTERNATIVE’

I mentioned earlier that Aberystwyth businessman, Gwern Evans, is CEO of YesCymru. And he’s not the only one speaking at the Brangwyn bash from that lovely town where a dashing young blade spent a weekend in the police cells.

Happy days!

For Melin Drafod Chair, Dr Talat Chaudhri is mayor of the town. Also living in Aber’ is secretary Mererid Boswell, and former chair of YesCymru, Siôn Jobbins.

UPDATE: I am indebted to Jon Coles for telling us that Colin Nosworthy is a press officer for Aberystwyth University.

And there may be others with Aberystwyth connections. Not Sam Coates, obviously; not after his chastening experience of stumbling into a gathering of the Llanbadarn chapter of the Afrikaner Broederbond.

However you cut it, Aber’ will be over-represented at this Swansea gig. And then I came across something last week, which is intriguing, but needs an intro.

There is an intermittent column in the Cambrian News by a Gareth James.

This was the piece drawn to my attention, last November. It contained this line: ‘Like it or not, mid Wales is woke, for mid Wales is about sharing mid Wales with everyone’, plus a few passages that the source interpreted as threats against those who refused to accept Wokeness.

Then, a couple of weeks later, came this extraordinary piece calling for Dyfed Powys Police to be more ‘woke’, following what the writer interpreted as racial profiling that targets his sons. (Here in pdf format.)

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You’ll also see, at the top of the article ‘The View from the Vaults’, these being the Weston Vaults pub in Aberystwyth. Now renamed Irie’s Rum Bar and Reggae Lounge.

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Gareth James, the man in the picture, runs the bar. This piece from the Cambrian News last September makes that clear. What you see above is something of a resurrection, for Irie’s closed in March 2016, apparently for good.

The building that houses the Rum Bar is owned by Cyngor Ceredigion. Do councils normally buy pubs? This other Land Registry title document tells us that a lease was taken out (or taken over) in April 2015 by Irie’s (Aberystwyth) Ltd.

Aberystwyth is a fairly small town, so I’d be surprised if the ‘progressives’ of YesCymru, Melin Drafod, etc, don’t frequent a bar run by a man who wants Plod to be more Woke.

A consideration that brings us to the most recent contribution from Gareth James, that appeared in the Cambrian News last week. (Available here in pdf format.) Also available on Irie’s Blog.

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Another long, rambling piece, but when I read the final paragraph a light went on in my head – a new political party that is ‘an untainted, left-wing, Welsh alternative’.

Is Gareth James trying to tell us something?

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Is this what Talat Chaudhri, Sam Coates and the rest have in mind? Is this what Melin Drafod is hoping comes out of the Brangwyn Hall meeting?

Whether it’s a new party or simply closer co-operation between existing far Left groups, this Independence Summit looks like another attempt by the far Left to take over the independence movement.

If so, then it becomes the duty of those of us with a broader view of Wales to challenge these people. For if it became accepted among the general public that these fanatics are the only ones wanting independence then Wales is finished.

Independence must promise, and deliver, the inclusivity the far Left always demands of others but never practices itself.

CONCLUSION

I have warned many times before, and I make no apologies for doing so again, that what these Green-Woke-Leftists want is independence for a small country whose politicians can then be bullied and blackmailed into implementing their fantasies.

This capture from the website of Labour for an Independent Wales reminds us that, for them, independence is simply the route to socialism.

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It’ll be something like the Wales we know today: a country falling apart at the seams because weak politicians are dominated by lobbyists, pressure groups and third sector organisations. But it’ll be a hell of a lot worse!

There’ll be nothing in it for you and me, Dai. For our people; or for our Wales.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

♦ end ♦

 

© Royston Jones 2023


Miscellany 27.07.2022

This week’s offering kicks off with assorted musings from here and there before returning home to focus on issues that have caught my eye. And if these have a theme then it’s assorted companies and individuals pretending to be what they’re not. In this case, Welsh.

This is another biggie, just over 4,000 words, but you know the spiel – ‘nourishing, easily-digestible chunks, etc., etc‘.

First stop, England, where the Conservatives have committed electoral suicide by getting rid of Boris Johnson and now have to make the choice between Sunak and Truss! Like having to choose which foot to shoot yourself in.

I don’t know the minds of Tory politicians and strategists but I do know that among the working class – male and female – there’s always been a guilty liking for a roguish toff.

And that’s what Johnson is. Nobody ever accused him of having his hand in the till or anything heinous; it was a bit of bullshitting here, a few drinks there, and an over-fondness for the ladies.

Those ‘failings’ might mean some tosser needing to be fanned with a copy of the Guardian in Islington, but they wouldn’t have lost BoJo many votes in Scunthorpe, St Helens, or Sunderland.

“Grand lad is Boris”.

The only ray of sunshine for the Tories comes in the soporific form of Labour leader Keir Starmer.

Now across the Pond, to where Joe Biden – after two injections and two boosters – has caught Covid. Oh dear, what a pity, how sad.

Sleepy Joe is, without a doubt, the worst US president of my lifetime. And I remember Gerald Ford, of whom it was said that chewing gum and tying his shoelaces at the same time was too intellectually demanding.

Though in fairness, Ford could be relied on to do as he was told. Which explains how he got to serve on the Warren Commission looking into the JFK assassination.

Joe Biden clearly has dementia or a similar condition, and looming ever larger over his presidency are the multiple horrors contained in his son Hunter’s laptop.

Many of you will be unaware of this because the left-leaning mainstream media has largely ignored the story. They can’t deny it, because they’ve all read the e-mails and seen the videos. (And laughed along with the rest of us.)

In a nutshell, crack-smoking, sex-addicted Hunter saw himself as an international businessman. Making deals in China, Russia, Ukraine and other places by trading on his father’s name when dad was Obama’s VP.

Joe Biden’s brother James was certainly getting a cut and it looks increasingly likely that Joe himself was also in on it.

The problem is that Hunter just had to keep records. And they were all stored on a laptop he took to be repaired in Wilmington, Delaware, then forgot to collect it, and so the laptop became the property of the repair shop owner.

The only questions now are: 1/ How much longer can Sleepy Joe last? and 2/ What method will his party use to get rid of him?

Finally, in Ukraine, the war grinds on with Russian forces advancing slowly and steadily on all fronts. It seems likely that the whole of the Donbass will soon be in Russian hands, and so will large swathes of territory across the south, perhaps even lovely Odessa.

Basically, those areas where a majority of the population identify as Russian. Areas where the population was treated abominably by Ukrainian forces – often Nazi units – for protesting against the US-engineered Maidan coup of 2014.

This outcome could have been achieved by a plebiscite, but certain interests in the West were determined that corruption-ridden Ukraine, generously supplied with weapons and money – which will never be accounted for – should wage a proxy war.

Jugoslavia all over again; with Russia in the role of ‘baddie’ Serbia, and Ukraine playing the white hat parts of Croatian Ustaše fascists, Bosnian Muslims and their Jihadist allies, and the organ-harvesting, gun-running, drug-smuggling gangsters of the (Albanian) Kosovo Liberation Army

On the plus side . . . it looks like Russia turning off the gas taps has killed Net Zero.

EAT YOUR HEART OUT, ELON MUSK!

An announcement last Thursday from the self-styled ‘Welsh Government’ told of an exciting development hoping to overcome the problem of reliance on China for supplies of rare earth elements for electric car batteries.

Followed by a word-for-word ‘article’ in the Wasting Mule on Friday.

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What most people don’t realise (because the media prefers not to tell us), is that electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels, all need rare earth elements, and we are too reliant for these on China.

Being an expansionist Communist country China is obviously a potential enemy. Then there’s the fact that extracting these metals is dirty and dangerous work, which might be done by members of religious or ethnic minorities undergoing ‘re-education’.

The pieces linked to say the project is being funded by the Ford Low Carbon Vehicle Transformation Fund and uses fewer of the rare earth elements.

Naturally, I got to wondering about the company involved in this exciting venture, named as, ‘Caerphilly-based Deregallera’. And that was the first disappointment, for the company seems to be based near Bradford, in West Yorkshire.

Though in fairness, it was at one time using a Caerphilly address. So let’s put that into its contextual timeline.

Deregallera began life in 2011 in Southampton. Then it was Pontypridd. Then in March 2013 it was down to Cardiff. September 2019 saw a move within Cardiff. In December 2020 it was over to Bristol. Then in April this year it was up to Bingley.

Getting further and further away from the claimed base in Caerffili.

The driving force behind Deregallera is Martin Hugh Boughtwood. His Linkedin profile modestly describes him as a ‘visionary leader’. He has a host of US patents.

So it should go without saying that he’s been involved with a number of companies. Quite a few using the ‘Deregallera’ name. Here they are in a table.

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Among them we see D G Innovate PLC. Which last year was taken over by Path Investments for £32m in a ‘reverse merger transaction’, according to the Annual Report and Financial Statements for Deregallera Ltd (March 2021).

D G Innovate was known by that name between 29.01.2021 and 05.04.2022. Before that it was Deregallera Holdings Ltd (from formation 26.11.2009). And now, since April 5, it’s Deregallera Holdings again!

God, this is confusing! With all the name changes, all the comings and goings of directors, do those involved know which company is which any more?

Talking of directors, D G Innovate PLC seems to have recruited a few this year.

Worth a mention are, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, former governor of Jersey; Dr Patrick Bruce Reith Symonds, formerly of Williams Grand Prix Engineering; and Trevor Gabriel, managing director at Monaco Villas. (Monaco Villas!)

I’m sure they’ll be very happy together in what is obviously another great Welsh venture.

As far as I’m concerned, the jury is out on this one. Those involved have got their hands on money from a fund administered by the ‘Welsh Government’ (which often spells disaster), but how much of that money Wales will see is another matter.

One to watch.

‘WE’RE WELSH, HONEST!’

Another company desperately trying to prove it’s Welsh is our old friend, Bute Energy. Which began life in London, then used an Edinburgh address, but now most Bute companies also use a broom cupboard in Hodge House, Cardiff.

Named of course after Julian Hodge, banker to the Labour Party. Friend and confidante of PM Jim Callaghan and George “Order, Order!” Thomas.

Remember George, Lord Tonypandy? Even by the standards of the ‘Welsh’ Labour Party George Thomas was one of the most odious bastards ever to draw breath.

Not content with a Cardiff address to prove how Welsh it is Bute has recruited Dafydd Williams as a project manager to traverse the land addressing community councils and concerned locals, promising they’ll hardly notice 250 metre tall wind turbines . . . 36 here, another 30 there . . .

Is Dafydd a replacement for David George Taylor? For more on Taylor, and Bute’s Welsh Advisory Board, click here and scroll down to the section ‘Labour Party Freedom of Information Request’.

In search of enlightenment I joined a Zoom meeting of New Radnor community council a few weeks back, where I managed to put some questions to Dafydd Williams, but all I got in return was waffle.

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One Bute site now threatened with 250m (to tip) turbines is Moelfre, inland of Abergele. To put that into perspective, the turbines put up 15 – 20 years ago were rarely more than 100m (often less), the turbines at Pen-y-Cymoedd are 145m.

But locals are fighting back. The image above is taken from a protest leaflet they’ve produced. Read the full leaflet here.

Another area threatened is to the east of Llandrindod. This being Bute’s Nant Mithil site. Here’s the briefing paper produced by Bute.

Bute has set up a company for each of its 20 planned wind farms, or as they now prefer to call them, ‘Energy Parks’. Here’s a map to help you locate them. And here’s more information on the various companies and individuals involved.

The proposal for Nant Mithil is for 36 x 220m (to hub) turbines, with ‘solar energy and battery technology’ not ruled out.

In both the Moelfre protest leaflet and the Bute briefing paper for Nant Mithil you will have seen reference to these being in a ‘Pre-Assessed Area for Wind Energy in Future Wales: The National Plan 2040’. Here’s a link to that document.

On page 94 you’ll find the map you see below. The areas bordered in black have been given over to wind farms. Planning permission is virtually guaranteed. Local resistance will prove futile. (Certainly, that’s the hope in Corruption Bay.)

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Moelfre is in area 1, and Nant Mithil in area 4. Though sources tell me that as much as 75% of Bute’s 200 hectare Nant Mithil site is outside area 4. It’ll be interesting to see how that pans out.

Progress is also being made on other sites. Here’s the Scoping Report for Rhiwlas, near Llangurig. Compiled for Bute Energy by RSK of Bristol.

Other news is that new directors, Forrest, Gruescu and Parkhouse, have joined the gang in certain companies. Aberedw Energy Park Ltd being one. These new boys represent the interests of Bute’s Danish investors.

I covered this development in February, in ‘Bute Energy Selling Wales For Danegeld?’.

Everybody’s ripping off Mam Cymru, thanks to those assholes in Corruption Bay and their obsession with a non-existent ‘Climate Emergency’.

Maybe it’s time the old girl’s sons stirred themselves again, and put a stop to this abuse and exploitation taking place before their eyes.

GILESTONE, REVISITED, AGAIN

To recap: The ‘Welsh Government’ paid £4.25m for Gilestone farm near Talybont-on-Usk which it says will be leased to the Green Man Festival.

I’ll try to avoid some of the rumours I’ve been hearing . . . oh, what the hell!

One has Green Man boss Fiona Stewart telling Minister for Economy  – ‘economy’! – Vaughan Gething that if the ‘Welsh Government’ didn’t buy her a farm she would move the Green Man Festival to England.

Another wanted me to believe that the Green Man will move to Gilestone farm in 2026 because current host, Harry Legge-Bourke of the Glanusk Estate, is getting a divorce. Which seems rather protracted. And why should a divorce make any difference?

Finally, some believe there has long been a relationship between Fiona Stewart and former Gilestone owner, Charles Weston. I had to confirm that this was a business relationship not, er . . . well, you know.

I could find nothing linking them. To help my enquiries I drew up a table of Fiona Stewart’s companies. Which makes strange reading.

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Throughout this saga we’ve been told that the ‘Welsh Government’ has been dealing with the Green Man Festival. Yet the company, Green Man Festival Ltd, formed September 2015, has always filed as a dormant company. The only director, Fiona Stewart.

What’s more, Green Man is controlled by Tree Trunk Ltd. Formed May 2012, this also files as a dormant company. And it’s behind with its filings to Companies House.

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There are two directors. Stewart and Paul Abraham Betesh of Manchester. Betesh has been involved with a number of companies.

The other company using the Green Man label is the Green Man Trust Ltd. You’ll note that it receives funding from the ‘Welsh Government’, the Arts Council of Wales, and Arts Council England.

As well as being a company registered with Companies House it’s also registered with the Charity Commission.

Two of the four directors / trustees are Stewart and long-time business associate, Ian Myers Fielder, with these two exercising control. The other directors / trustees are Natasha Hale, and Joanna Owen, a solicitor working for Commission for Equality and Human Rights in London.

Flicking through the accounts I was struck by some of the other funders, Performing Rights Society Foundation, Ashley Family Foundation, and Cardiff University.

Then, a few days ago, a secretary was appointed, Joana Margarida Martins Rodrigues. Clearly Portuguese, perhaps one of the many Lusitanians to be found in Crughywel.

If we look at the total income for the Green Man Trust we see that it’s risen from £152,643 in year ending 31.12.2020 to £347,417 in y/e 31.12.2021. Which means that the income more than doubled, and is perhaps more than the Trust knows what to do with.

I suggest that because the latest accounts show £266,835 as ‘cash at bank and in hand’.

An interesting contribution to the Gilestone saga came a couple of weeks back from senior civil servant Andrew Slade. To give him his title, Director General, Economy, Skills and Natural Resources.

Here’s the article, in which Slade says that Gilestone may not be a done deal, but also describing the Green Man Festival as the “jewel in Wales’ crown”. A curious remark, and an indicator of Slade’s ignorance of Wales.

Most of those who attend come from England. Many more Welsh people go to the National Eisteddfod, then there’s ‘The Show’ (which was on last week), and even Dolgellau’s Sesiwn Fawr. I wouldn’t expect Slade to know much about the first or the third, but he’s been to Llanelwedd a few times.

It wouldn’t be stretching it to describe the Green Man Festival as an event for the English middle classes, for less than a quarter of the attendees live in Wales.

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I even found a photo of Slade with a bunch of young farmers. (He’s right centre.) Next to him, carefully coiffed, is Gary Haggaty, looking as if he’s about to go on stage to give Mr and Mrs Gripe of Wisbech the chance to win a week for two in sunny Scunthorpe.

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Both Slade and Haggaty have appeared on this blog before. They are civil servants with Defra backgrounds, sent down to keep the natives in check and do whatever damage they could to Welsh farming.

In The Welsh Clearances from October 2018 I used an image from January 2014 of Slade alongside Alun Davies, then Minister for Natural Resources and Food, as Davies announced taking EU funding from farmers and turning it over to ‘Rural Development Projects’. (And we all know what that means!)

Haggaty eventually shacked up with his boss, Lesley Griffiths.

I quote from her official bio: ‘Lesley was appointed Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs on 3 November 2017. On 13 December 2018 Lesley was appointed Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs. On 13 May 2021 Lesley was appointed Minister for Rural Affairs, North Wales and Trefnydd’.

Enough of digression, back to Fiona Stewart and her companies.

The only company I can find that seems to have any serious money is Plantpot Ltd; originally GMF Festival Ltd, before changing into Pot Plant Ltd. This is also controlled by Tree Trunk Ltd.

And let’s remind ourselves that Tree Trunk Ltd is a dormant company behind with its Companies House filings.

At the end of 2020 Plantpot had £1,179,096 ‘cash at bank and in hand’. Up from £656,213 the previous year. Not bad considering the Covid ‘pandemic’. But most of this money is owed to unidentified creditors. Who are they?

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With £169,900 owed to ‘group undertakings’. So does this mean it’s owed to other companies in the Tree Trunk group?

Another concern is that there’s no indication of where the £1m+ in cash came from. What we have instead of audited accounts for Plantpot Ltd is an ‘Unaudited Financial Statement’ made out by Ms Stewart herself.

I’m not suggesting dishonesty, but I am saying there’s a lack of clarity. Which might not matter had the ‘Welsh Government’ not paid £4.25m for Gilestone farm.

Because if the Green Man is the major event it’s said to be, then it must take in millions of pounds, so where is that money accounted for? It certainly doesn’t go through any company using the Green Man name. Is there a company I’ve missed?

If we go back to the table of Fiona Stewart’s companies we see that the newest is Cwningar Ltd, formed in February this year, with its formation almost certainly linked to the purchase of Gilestone farm.

Which is why I suspect that talk of an agreement between the ‘Welsh Government’ and the Green Man Festival is misleading. Fiona Stewart is the Green Man. I believe the farm was bought for Fiona Stewart herself. And for some new venture loosely connected with the Green Man.

I suggest that because Ms Stewart is nothing if not well connected in Cardiff.

This article from May 2017 says, ‘Cardiff University and Green Man will build upon their existing partnership’. Fiona Stewart gushed . . .

“Green Man works with world class talent and Cardiff University is one of the most respected universities on the planet, so it’s definitely top of the bill with me.”

(Pass the sick bag!)

Then think back to the item about the electric car motor, telling us that ‘academics at Cardiff University’ are involved. Dafydd Williams of Bute Energy ‘holds a BSc and MSc from Cardiff University’s School of City and Regional Planning’.

Cardiff University is almost an extension of the ‘Welsh Government’. If you’re well in with Cardiff Uni then doors – and cheque books – open for you in Corruption Bay.

And if, like Fiona Stewart, you’re also connected to Coleg Soros Talgarth, then you can write your own cheque. Which may explain how she acquired Gilestone.

Apart from its location there’s nothing Welsh about the Green Man Festival – just look at the line-up for this year. If Stewart wants to move to England, let her go.

Seeing as the great majority of the visitors come from England moving to that country would be the environmentally sensible thing to do.

Then sell Gilestone and put the money from the sale back into the public purse. Where it belongs. And don’t do the bidding of any other pushy memsahibs.

In conclusion, it’s worth remembering that a great deal of bullshit is talked about the Green Man Festival. Take this June 2019 submission from UK Music to the Senedd’s Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee. (Page 7.)

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Does anyone really think there are 1,500 jobs created on site? If so, there must be almost as many people working at the festival as there are attending!

And no matter what the figure is, those are very, very temporary jobs.

Like I say, bullshit!

CHILD PROTECTION

We live in dangerous times.

Obviously, there’s a war in Ukraine. But then we have supranational organisations like the World Health Organisation and the World Economic Forum trying to impose themselves as some kind of unelected global government.

And recently we’ve had to put up with the swivel-eyed who got really swivelly because of a few fine days – in July! You could sense their disappointment when the bodies weren’t piling up in the streets; their ‘We warned you!’ taunts dying on their lips.

All joking aside, one threat, a very real threat, is shaping up under our noses, with the full support of the ‘Welsh Government’ and the Corruption Bay establishment. Because both have been infiltrated, indoctrinated, or intimidated into supporting Stonewall.

For Stonewall, which started out defending and promoting the interests of gays and lesbians, is now nothing more than a group getting ever more extreme in its promotion of ‘trans rights’ and other issues.

Stonewall is favoured in Corruption Bay, we know that from the amount of funding it’s received from the ‘Welsh Government’.

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Seeing as the Wales Council for Voluntary Action is also funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ the total comes to £241,781. Only UK government departments gave more to Stonewall in the period covered.

Being so favoured Stonewall also has influence in Wales. Influence over legislation. Even to the extent of deliberately misrepresenting existing legislation.

Specifically, the Equality Act 2010. There are 9 protected characteristics under the Act, and this is how the ‘Welsh Government’ interpreted them. They’re correct apart from the one I’ve highlighted.

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What the Act protects is gender reassignment. That is, someone who has undergone surgery. Stonewall would like it to promote ‘chicks with dicks’, and give free rein to male sexual predators pretending to be women.

The ‘Welsh Government’ chose to accept Stonewall’s wishful thinking over the law. And then desperately tried to explain its mistake as being in ‘the spirit of the law’.

The spirit of the law can be elusive, a difficult thing to pin down. But there can be no mistaking the letter of the law. In this case it is quite unambiguous. (Doesn’t the ‘Welsh Government’ have lawyers?)

The ‘Welsh Government’ got it wrong because it listened to Stonewall. That’s because Stonewall has allies in the Bay among Labour insiders.

Which helped Stonewall influence the new curriculum for Welsh schools. But the fightback has started. There will now be a judicial review of the ‘Welsh Government’s proposals.

Here’s a rather long video (almost 2 hours) of a meeting in Bethel, near Caernarfon, where opposition is being organised to the imposition of certain elements of the curriculum.

But it doesn’t end there, for Stonewall also wants to corrupt pre-school children. Those who attend playgroups. Here’s a tweet put out by Stonewall last week.

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When asked to produce the ‘research’ referred to, Stonewall was unable to do so.

Make no mistake, Stonewall wants to push its vile agenda that results in mutilating confused kids into every sphere of our lives, and certain elements on the Left will give all the assistance they can.

Of course, many nursery or pre-school groups in Wales are run by Mudiad Meithrin. Which has, unfortunately, also been infiltrated.

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When I look at the Mudiad Meithrin board of directors I can see a few possible advocates for this dangerous nonsense. One in particular, who was deeply involved in attempts last year to turn YesCymru into TransCymru.

Another, who has recently left the Mudiad Meithrin board, also did great damage to YesCymru before moving on to other things. I’m told he played a big part in turning  Cymdeithas yr Iaith Woke.

Stonewall has walked into a trap of its own making. When you argue there is an ever-expanding universe of genders you will inevitably attract the exhibitionists and the unhinged, and the general public will stop taking you seriously.

Start talking about the sexuality of children and you’ll draw the perverts and the paedophiles. And then the general public will start seeing you as a threat.

An organisation in Stonewall’s position has two options:

    • Paddle back and regain some credibility.
    • Keep paddling furiously for the rapids and prove your critics right.

Stonewall seems to have chosen the second option. Which is bad news for them, but I won’t be shedding any tears.

We must protect our kids from discredited and dangerous beliefs promoted by a few influential individuals who decided those beliefs were ‘progressive’, then bullied others into accepting Stonewall’s lunacies.

It’s time for the ‘Welsh Government’, Mudiad Meithrin, and others, to paddle back, and to root out the influence of Stonewall from all areas of Welsh life.

♦ end ♦

August is normally a slow month for news so, unless the Gorsedd starts an insurrection, the ‘Welsh Government’ announces major investment outside of Cardiff, or Powys is invaded by enviroshysters (damn! too late for that one!), I’ll be back, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, in September.

 

© Royston Jones 2022


Arts Council of Wales and Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, an update

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. POSTINGS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

This is a follow-up to last week’s post, ‘Corruption Bay and a tale of Cymrophobia‘. You’ll remember that we looked at how Labour Party insiders were paid to produce reports that would guide more ‘inclusive’ policy at the commissioning bodies, the Arts Council of Wales and the National Museum.

UPDATE

One of these submissions, from the mysterious Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, painted a picture of Wales as some kind of Hell on Earth where ‘creatives’ of a non-Caucasian pigmentation are brutally discriminated against.

It was reminiscent of the hysteria I’ve been writing about in connection with YesCymru. Where some of those involved in the failed Woke-Left takeover wanted us to believe that ‘women with penises’ are being butchered on Welsh streets by mobs of transphobes.

What I found revealing was that neither those suggesting rampant transphobia or a whites-only arts scene are prepared to debate. Any dialogue must start from a blind acceptance of their ‘facts’.

A few tit-bits have come to light since the previous post went out. For example, someone drew my attention to the metadata naming authors for the three reports.

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The report from Labour insiders Lu Thomas and Jon Luxton named Luxton as the author. But the other two reports listed Arts Council employees as authors. Which might at first sight seem a bit odd, though there could be a simple explanation.

Such as the reports being submitted in MS Word or some other format and the Arts Council converting them to PDF.

If that is not the explanation, then what is?

Despite the ‘authorship’, there is no real issue with the Richie Turner Associates’ report because the contributors are named in the report.

It’s the third report, from the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union, that’s causing concern. Because no individual or contributor is named anywhere.

Anyway, in the hope of helping me make sense of the bigger picture, a few people made suggestions. Pointed me in certain directions. So off I went.

NATURE OF THE BEAST

It’s fair to say that Amgueddfa Cymru was almost a ‘passenger’ in this exercise, so I’m ruling them out to focus on The Arts Council of Wales.

The current Chair is Phil George, who I speculated was a Labour Party supporter. His immediate predecessor in the post, from 2007 – 2016, was David Burton Smith, whose political leanings have never been in doubt.

For Dai Smith – father of unsuccessful challenger to Jeremy Corbyn, Owen Smith – is another creature of the left. One of those historians who, like Neil Kinnock, believes Wales isn’t worthy of study until the Industrial Revolution and the creation of a proletariat.

Smith worked for the BBC in Cardiff, from 1994, as, ‘Head of Broadcast (English Language). He was responsible for commissioning programmes on the arts and in drama and has also presented award-winning documentaries on the people and culture of south Wales’.

Through a socialist prism, of course.

An interesting insight into colonial Wales, this. For while the Labour Party rails against Tory cronyism, Old Boy networks and the rest, the Buttybond practises something very similar in Wales.

And the Tories are more than happy to let them do it. I’ll explain why a bit later.

Phil George has a long history with The National Theatre of Wales (NTW). In fact, he was one of the founding directors on September 9, 2008. He seems to have left NTW in March 2016, around the time he was appointed Chair of the Arts Council.

I’m told the National Theatre of Wales was always well favoured in Cardiff. One source reports: ‘”BBC Wales” used and uses every opportunity to promote this company. Hardly any arts documentaries are done but in its formative years, 2010, it commissioned a 30 minute advertorial dressed up as a documentary on a National Theatre production’.

It was thanks to Phil George and NTW that Abdul Shayek of London got his foot in the Welsh public funding door.  For Shayek’s Linkedin page tells us that from April 2011 until April 2013 he was a Creative Associate with NTW.

Shayek then branched out to form FIO, a BAME theatre group. Though apparently reliant on funding from the Welsh public purse this didn’t stop FIO taking plays to India. And Shayek ‘representing’ FIO at symposia and the like in Sri Lanka and Australia.

Nice work if you can get it! And especially if someone else is paying.

Another source tells me FIO got some £400,000 in funding over 3 or 4 years. (It might have been more.) Which pays for quite a few trips to Oz and old Serendip.

Going back to Shayek’s Linkedin bio we see that he left FIO in August 2020 to join Tara Theatre. No, this has nothing to do with halls and High Kings, it’s yet another ‘ethnically diverse’ theatre group. This time in London.

I’m not sure of the reasons for Shayek’s departure, or where this leaves his creation, FIO. The website suggests it’s still going, and the Charity Commission entry implies he’s still involved.

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Whatever the relationship between Abdul Shayek and FIO he still appears to be involved with the arts scene in Wales. And pissing off quite a few people with his involvement in the Wales Culture and Race Taskforce (WCRT).

Which was set up in June 2020 to, ‘challenge the lack of diversity within the arts in Wales and demand systemic change’.

I’m not sure if this was Abdul Shayek’s brainchild or if he just got involved somehow. Certainly, his creation FIO was holding the money donated to WCRT by other arts groups. Said to be £20,000.

You’ll get a flavour of the dispute from the Critically Speaking blog of Jafar Iqbal. (A supporter of Leyton Orient football club.) In particular, read the lengthy comment from ‘pledging organisations’.

If you want to know more about the role envisaged for the Wales Culture and Race Taskforce then you should read this document prepared for the ‘Welsh Government’.

Strangely, in just 452 words this document manages to use the term ‘white-led’ three times. In the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union ‘report’ we encounter the phrase ‘white-led’ 10 times.

When checking the metadata for the document I’ve just linked to, I found the author named as Letty Clarke. So obviously, I wondered who she might be.

You will not be surprised to learn that Letty is also from England, but since January 2020 she has been Curator of Public Programmes at Artes Mundi Prize Ltd. From the Artes Mundi website we learn:

‘Artes Mundi Prize Ltd is a registered non-profit charity that annually relies on support from individuals, corporations, sponsors, trusts and foundations to fund the costs of all our programmes, alongside our core public revenue from Arts Council of Wales and Cardiff City Council’.

The name may sound like a character from a forgotten novel set in 19th century New England, but Letty is of the here and now. And, unfortunately, the ‘here’ is Wales.

Letty Clarke’s Linkedin profile makes it clear that she supports Black Lives Matter, and her Twitter account provides a few gems.

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As many of you will know, investigations are continuing into the death of Mohamud Mohammed Hassan, who died some hours after leaving police custody. But Letty Clarke, after being in Wales for a short time, has already made her mind up.

For according to her Hassan was a victim of ‘police brutality’ and ‘state violence in Wales’. What the hell does she mean by ‘state violence’? There is no Welsh state!

Let me explain the relationship to you, Letty . . . Your country robs my country and by way of compensation doles out money to those buffoons down Corruption Bay, who in turn distribute far too much of that cash to people like you and your friends.

Which means that, one way and another, most Welsh people get screwed twice over.

Up to now in this painful trawl through the ‘Welsh’ arts scene I don’t think we’ve met anyone who is actually Welsh, apart from a few cocks atop the dung heap.

Let’s see if we have any more luck in the next section.

THE SEARCH CONTINUES FOR THE WELSH ARTS ANTI-RACIST UNION

In December 2019 the Wales Audit Office produced a snappily-entitled report, ‘Well-being of Future Generations Increasing Participation in Areas with Under-developed Reach of the Arts – Arts Council of Wales’. You can read it here.

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The Introduction says: ‘This document has been prepared for the internal use of the Arts Council of Wales’. Reminding us that this is an example of the additional public money wasted since the implementation of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and the creation of the post of Future Generations Commissioner, with of course, a whole new department.

The job of Commissioner was given to Labour time-server Sophie Howe. She had previously worked under Alun Michael, the former Labour MP and now Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales.

Under ‘Contents’ we read: ‘In its efforts to increase participation, inclusion and engagement in areas with under-developed reach of the arts, the Arts Council of Wales (Arts Council) is demonstrating commitment to the sustainable development principle but it recognises the need to further embed the five ways of working.’

Clearly, the Audit Office looked into inclusion in the arts, and made recommendations to the Arts Council. So why, just six months later, did the ACW spaff another £50,000 (minimum) doing what looks like exactly the same thing?

(Note that the Sell2Wales notice I link to is from June 2020. Which is when the Wales Culture and Race Taskforce was set up.)

This duplication produced the three reports dealt with in the previous post, including the submission from the mysterious Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union.

This digression takes us nowhere nearer identifying the person or persons behind the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. In fact, it’s difficult to get any handle on the WAARU.

One mention I did find was on what I assume to be a podcast. It seems to be called Mostyn, or Lumin, the latter described as, ‘an artist-run radio and publisher led by Sadia Pineda Hameed and Beau W Beakhouse’.

If you scroll down to the bios of others involved, you’ll see this for the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. But again, no name.

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I’d like to be able to tell you that Hameed is from Froncysyllte and Beakhouse from Llangyfelach, but alas . . .

Beau tells us: ‘I’m originally from Bournemouth but moved around . . . I come from a nature & craft background . . .  My parents were self-employed gardeners, who then went into woodcraft . . . Eventually, I managed to study English Literature at Cardiff University’.

Hameed: ‘I’m from London. I also came to Cardiff to study English Literature at uni and decided to stay ‒ in part because I didn’t really have the money to pursue the arts back in London, but also because I really liked how open the arts scene in Wales is.’

Yes indeedy; the ‘arts scene’ in Wales is open to just about anybody . . . artistic talent is unnecessary, and knowledge of Wales undesirable.

Here’s an example of Beakhouse’s poetry from 2017.

Don’t give up the day job, Beau. Whatever it is.

That we are no nearer fingering who wrote the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union report is understandable, given its reception. But the Arts Council of Wales must know because the WAARU was paid well to insult us.

Which is why I have submitted a Freedom of Information request to the ACW.

But over and above that, this situation of strangers being paid to insult us could only happen in the peculiar circumstances of devolution, which sees politicians and others who superficially oppose each other agree when it comes to Wales, and the Welsh.

UPDATE: Since publishing this piece I have received feedback, including someone drawing my attention to The Future Generations Report 2020. On page 355 we read what you see in the panel:

I have two points to make.

First, ‘learning Welsh on the job’ sounds like a good idea, until you realise it’s often a ruse to give jobs to people most of whom will do no more than go through the motions of taking a few Welsh lessons.

Mark James, former chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council, would be a great example of this scam in practise.

Second, The Future Generations Commissioner in her 2020 report is quoting Race Alliance Wales (RAW), a body formally launched on December 19, 2019. How the hell did a newly-constituted body become so influential so quickly?

The answer is that those behind RAW are based almost exclusively in Cardiff and well connected in Corruption Bay.

While organisations elsewhere in Wales, established for far longer, representing many more people, but outside the Bay Bubble, are ignored.

This is not healthy; this is not democratic; this should not be the Wales any of us wants to see.

But it’s the Wales we live in.

FURTHER UPDATE: Someone else has been in touch with an intriguing suggestion. Which is, that when an anonymous Twitter account is launched the author is often to be found among the early followers.

In the case of the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union Twitter account the first ten followers can be found here. (Read from the bottom up.) There are quite a few names there that appear in this article.

THE BIT AT THE END WHERE COLOMBO PUFFS ON HIS CIGAR AND . . .

Picking up again on the shared motivations, what I’m hinting at is that these otherwise squabbling interests agree that Wales must be carefully ‘managed’.

Which is why what passes for entertainment on television and elsewhere is banal and superficial. Welsh politics, social issues, and other specifically Welsh matters (when dealt with in English) are often quarantined in programmes broadcast at awkward times . . . which results in hardly anyone watching them.

The same applies more widely, in the fields so copiously manured by the Arts Council. For example, there’s not a hope in Hell of Wales having its own Abbey Theatre.

We are at a stage now where if two plays are in competition for funding, one about Welsh villages being destroyed by excessive tourism, the other about the absence of obstetric facilities for low caste birthing persons in Tamil Nadu, then you can predict with certainty which will enjoy an opening night.

Researching this piece I stumbled on an hour-long lecture by former Arts Council Chair Dai Smith, built around writer Raymond Williams. Smith is speaking at a ‘Cultural Democracy Workshop’ in November 2020.

This was of course delivered at a time when the three reports commissioned by the Arts Council were being prepared. Yes, it was all happening around that time.

Smith makes the point that in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, when Williams was at the height of his intellectual and creative powers, his writing was framed by what he saw as a class struggle. But things have moved on.

(Interestingly, a piece on Williams appeared in UnHerd yesterday.)

Most importantly, the political left in Europe and North America has lost the working class. Which is why Marxism is now promoted through race, environmentalism and gender. And the harder the left pushes these the more it alienates the working class.

No one living just thirty years ago could have envisioned the crazy situation we have reached today. And few political activists of the left under the age of 40 can believe that their ideological predecessors idolised those they regard as stupid, racist, transphobic, climate denying Brexiteers.

The sons and grandsons of Marxist miners are fascist white van men!

A hazy understanding of Marxism re-interpreted by Black Lives Matter almost certainly lies behind the report submitted by the Welsh Arts Anti-Racist Union. It also explains the report’s acceptance by the Arts Council.

But why would the Old Etonians in Westminster and their civil servant alumni of lesser schools want to push such drivel? The answer is that they share with the Woke-Left establishment in Corruption Bay a desired outcome.

This explains the funding and other encouragement for people from around the world to come here, take funding that should go to Welsh arts, and then call us racist.

London likes the ‘The Welsh are racist’ message because it explains why we oppose holiday homes, and resent being colonised. (It’s why the Telegraph used the WAARU report.) Corruption Bay modifies it to read, ‘Nationalism is racist’ because that can slander those suggesting there is a better way for Cymru than devolution’s cronyism and exploitation. 

Together they tell us why the ‘Welsh’ arts scene today is a revolting mess of talentless dreamers and grant-grabbing shysters. Overwhelmingly alien; with some of those involved positively racist in their attitudes towards us.

Modern Wales in microcosm.

♦ end ♦

 




YesCymru: Resignations and more

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. POSTINGS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

Here we are again! But with good news to impart. Though we mustn’t get carried away, for the enemy has retreated into the bush to reflect on his next move. Indeed, I hear that in remote valleys, far, far away, the wily Wokie is regrouping and planning a fresh offensive.

And you thought they couldn’t get any more offensive!

Have I got news for you!

OUT WITH THE OLD

Every man and his dog knows by now that YesCymru’s Central Committee – or what remained of it – resigned last Friday. Here’s the statement they put out. Gettysburg Address, it ain’t, but I’ll take it.

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Despite what this destined-for-the-archives document says, speculation abounds as to what really precipitated the decision at that time.

You may recall that in my previous post I quoted a source who’d told me: “The CC meeting to suspend Ben (Gwalchmai) was supposed to have been last Wednesday (Aug 4), then delayed until Thursday, then delayed to today (Monday), and now tomorrow.”

Could it have been that young Benji’s suspension couldn’t be put off any longer, and then, because suspending him would leave the Central Committee inquorate, they decided to go together? Perhaps holding hands and singing Abide With Me, as they jumped overboard into the icy waters of the North Atlantic?

Gwalchmai certainly had one hell of a Twitter rant on Saturday night. He lashed out in all directions. Members of the middle class seemed to particularly irk him. Whether this was an attempt to burnish his working class credentials or an attack on those he felt had betrayed him was difficult to say.

Possibly a bit of both.

Because in that rant Gwalchmai stated that he had not wanted to resign. Suggesting perhaps that he had been outvoted by the other three. (Bourgeois bastards!)

And he hadn’t calmed down by Monday, to judge by this tweet. Though this time the target was, ‘The Groups’.

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But the groups, and the members they represent, are YesCymru. How could they mount a coup against themselves? What the groups have executed is a counter-coup. They’ve been fighting to reverse a sly takeover by extremists.

Far left extremists who’d ensured that some people – Secretary Iestyn ap Rhobert and Central Committee member Dilys Davies – could not be re-elected at the May 22 AGM. While also guaranteeing that their choices would be sneaked in by keeping the number of members able to vote at the AGM down to a few hundred.

There were also people involved in the coup who were not on the Central Committee. Most notably, perhaps, Rob Lloyd of Labour for an Independent Wales.

But whether they were on the Central Committee or not it was a Woke-Left takeover involving the Leannista wing of Plaid Cymru, Undod, Momentum, and Labour for an Independent Wales. Using ‘trans rights’ as their trojan horse they sought to silence all critics by labelling them ‘TERFs’, ‘transphobes’ and, of course, ‘fascists’.

Explained here, with main players named, in YesCymru: it must be a clean sweep.

YesCymru is now in the hands of an unnamed firm of accountants. Which is no doubt costing more money. Maybe a lot of money. Who knows?

This expensive period of stasis could have been avoided if the Central Committee had agreed to an EGM as soon as possible after the Vote of No Confidence passed by local groups on July 13.

Instead of accepting that VONC, at a meeting arranged by them – a meeting at which they’d allowed the attendance of supportive non-branches (Maesteg, Bynie) – the Central Committee rejected the vote as being “anti-democratic”.

A complete absence of self-awareness is something that has been remarked on many times in this saga when people look at the Central Committee and its chorus.

Or maybe it’s psychological projection; in which someone attributes their own faults or feelings onto others.

OUT IN THE FIELD

The High Command may have fled, jodhpurs flapping, but the indefatigable infantryman and infantrywoman carry on the fight, from north to south.

In Rhuthun yesterday they were out showing their colours. (One of my favourite towns, can’t wait to visit again.)

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While back in the City of my Dreams the local branch of YesCymru met the very day the Central Committee did a lemming and discussed a statement to submit to the Gweithgor (the working group to organise the EGM).

Note, in particular, the reference I’ve highlighted about not pre-judging ‘what an independent Wales should look like’. How encouraging to read that!

For those involved in the Woke-Left coup were so prescriptive in their vision that they’d even worked on the locations and lay-out of the gulags, and stipulated that bread queues would have agreed percentages of trans, non-binary, etc., etc.

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Despite this common sense, one from the ugly lovely town was a member of the takeover gang. This was Rachel Cooze, though her elevation to the Central Committee had little to do with support from her local group.

Cooze’s success was due to her allies within and without the Central Committee. Partly a reward for her enthusiastic involvement in the campaign against Dr Dilys Davies that saw Dr Davies suspended and therefore unable to oppose the elections of Cooze and others like her. A suspension that also helped facilitate the adoption of the Left-Woke motion to set up a Diversity and Inclusivity Sub-committee.

All carefully orchestrated, and beginning with Aled Gwyn Williams’ deliberately provocative visit to Dr Davies’ properties in Ceredigion.

The three who lodged the complaints that got Dr Davies suspended were Cooze, ‘Emrys’ Price-Jones, and Elinor Walters. For a while, Walters even renamed her Twitter account, ‘Dr Dildo Davies’.

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Which Aled Gwyn Williams thought was ‘excellent’. Silly boy!

But Cooze went further, offering discounts on her OnlyFans sex site using Dr Davies’ name. That was a new low even for these people. Perhaps worse, was her co-conspirators defending her.

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Cooze gets a mention in the next section. Though we may soon be hearing of her in another context.

A PHOENIX RISES?

After I’d stopped laughing I got round to properly reading what someone sent me on Sunday evening. After reading it properly I laughed a lot more. Here it is.

Aled Gwyn Williams – for it must be him! – has arranged a meeting on Glyndŵr’s Day at Maesteg RFC to launch Cwm Llynfi for Indy, ‘a group advocating inclusive independence for Wales’ . . . but not if you’re Dilys Davies, or Iestyn ap Rhobert, or Niki Jones, or me, or anybody who won’t accept Marxism and women with penises.

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You’ve read about Rachel Cooze, so who are the other speakers?

Siwan Clark has not long returned from London, where she was a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn. It should go without saying that she is in Momentum.

Welsh independence seems to have become more attractive to the far left since Corbyn’s hammering in the December 2019 general election. Not because the comrades want Welsh independence – or even care about Wales – but because with the Labour Party under Keir Starmer being less welcoming they must find new platforms for their odious message.

Clark brought Momentum methods with her. One of which is the sock puppet Twitter account. She has run quite a few of these recently.

The other name is ‘Charlotte Williams from Hiraeth Films’. This outfit has been working for about seven years on a film about Capel Celyn, the village drowned to make way for the Tryweryn dam; though apart from a few short videos to be found on Twitter and Facebook it’s difficult to know if it really does anything.

But the point is, Charlotte Williams comes from Welshpool, and who else do we know in that area? The photo below will help. It’s taken on the Montgomeryshire Canal in the town.

Kneeling down, swigging from a bottle, is Charlotte Williams and behind her is Katie Bataille, another trans woman, one who never turns down an opportunity for a social media pile-on. But who is that bearded fellow, sitting there so nonchalantly, about to fall backwards into the murky water?

Why! it’s young Ben Gwalchmai!

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And is that a sticking plaster across his knuckles? Has Benji been brawling with the local fascists and transphobes? (Cos I’ve seen them many a time goose-stepping up and down Broad Street.)

Enough levity.

Aled Gwyn Williams has brought together this impressive threesome to launch Cwm Llynfi for Indy. So what is this new venture?

Worth asking because, as I mentioned, Williams represented YesCymru Maesteg in the July 13 meeting at which the vote of no confidence in the CC was passed. (AGW of course supported the Central Committee.)

Though whether YesCymru Maesteg was a legally-constituted group is debatable.

Whether it was or not, this proposed launch of Cwm Llynfi for Indy certainly suggests that Aled has now severed his links with YesCymru. The presence of Cooze, Williams and Clark suggests that they too have burned their bridges.

Worth watching, I suggest. And although I’ll be unable to make it myself on September 16 – unless I go in disguise – I’m sure I’ll get plenty of feedback.

(There’s also a Twitter account.)

UPDATE: An early comment tells us that YesCymru Welshpool has rebranded to Welshpool for Independence. Taken with the plan for Maesteg it looks as if this is the path chosen by the defeated takeover gang. Will there be a national structure?

And do these new groups have access to YesCymru information on members? If so, how does this square with General Data Protection Regulation? And access to YC money?

A source also tells me that Scott Mackay, one of the Woke-Left plotters who failed to be elected to the CC, has left YC Abertawe.

BEYOND THE FRINGE

In many ways the Woke-Left coup was the work of different groups and individuals that could be viewed as concentric rings.

With the Central Committee serving as the inner ring. Aled Gwyn Williams and his social media pile-on gang as the next ring, but in close contact with the inner ring. Then beyond them, an outer ring, where we find those who can be rallied to support the others and attack the fascisti.

In the hazy outer ring we find the fascinating ‘Alan Reilly’. I’ve put his name in quotes because I’m not sure if he’s a real person.

This name first cropped up towards the end of 2018, soon after the formation of Gwlad. With vicious attacks on me, personally. Also attacks on Cayo Evans and the Free Wales Army – ‘What did you bastards ever do for Wales?’ and more in that vein.

It was strange stuff from someone professing to be a sympathetic Irish Republican and, as I say, it was very personal. With an unhealthy obsession with my bodily functions. A fascination recently exhibited by others.

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‘Reilly’ was often in the company of Shane Waters aka Séan Mac Uaitéir and Andrew McDonald aka Andras ap Alun. And despite their claims of support for Wales and Welsh independence, they often slipped up.

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Then ‘Reilly’ went quiet. To reappear very recently, when the pressure on the YesCymru Central Committee reached the crescendo that led to the mass resignation.

This time he was commenting to posts on Nation.Cymru. And I’m ‘Nonce o’ the North’.

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I complained to N.C about the first comment and it was taken down, so ‘Reilly’ wrote the second comment, and then I had to complain about that. It too was taken down. In an e-mail, Mark Mansfield at Nation.Cymru told me: ‘I’ve banned him and his IP address and disabled comments for the article’.

‘Alan Reilly’ is now back on the Nation.Cymru site posting as ‘Alan Reilly 1’. Presumably from a different IP address. Unless Mark Mansfield was lying about blocking him.

But he’s not using ‘Alan Reilly 1’ to attack me. No, instead, the attack last Saturday came from someone signing ‘Rwân’. (The correct spelling is of course ‘rŵan’.) How do I know it was ‘Reilly’? Because of the references to ‘old incontinent boy, sad Sac o’ the North’.

Someone saw it, drew my attention to it and, again, I had to complain to Nation.Cymru before the comment was taken down.

To express his frustration, ‘Reilly’ then turned his attention to my blog, where he posted this comment at twenty minutes to one on Sunday morning. It’s difficult to know where to start.

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He accuses me of hiding behind an alias. Yet he knows my name, everybody does, it’s Royston Jones. As it says in the old Daily Mail report from October 1968. In fact, I was ‘lifted’ by the police more than once. (Lost jobs because of it. Fortunately, I was young, and carefree. And handsome!) I did not make a complaint about Leanne Wood’s ‘arsehole’ remark, that was someone else.

How many remember the old Quarter Sessions? Happy days! Click to open in separate tab

Without thinking too much about ‘Alan Reilly’, there appear to be four possibilities:

1/ He’s a sock puppet of one of the Woke Left fanatics who nearly wrecked YesCymru.

2/ He is what he says he is, an Irish Republican with an interest in Welsh politics.

3/ He’s someone in Wales, possibly even Welsh, hostile to Welsh nationalism. And / or me?

4/ He’s working for some agency hostile to both Irish Republicanism and Welsh nationalism.

I dismiss the first two possibilities because I don’t believe anyone qualifying for those descriptions would be so dismissive of the national movement in Wales.

The third option is plausible because Alan Reilly’ seems to know quite a lot about Wales and the history of the national movement, but is clearly hostile. But if so, why adopt the Irish persona?

Then there’s option 4. Also plausible because ‘Alan Reilly’ first appeared shortly after a new political party was formed, and reappeared when it became clear that the coup to subvert YesCymru was in danger of failing.

I am not suggesting that those behind the coup work for the British state. But the British state would have been delighted to see a growing movement for Welsh independence subverted and side-tracked.

If anyone has any thoughts on ‘Alan Reilly’, then please pass them on.

And by the way, don’t think I’m whining here; I’m an old bastard and this is water off a Jack’s back. Think of it more as a warning.

LOOKING FORWARD

The worst appears to be over, with an EGM in the offing at which all members will be able to vote. YesCymru should in future be more representative of its membership than it has been since May’s rigged AGM.

Whether YesCymru sticks with the old structure of officials and a Central Committee, or whether it becomes more professional, with full-time employees, is something else for the members to decide.

But without I hope sounding vindictive, I would warn YesCymru’s members to be very wary of those who’ve appeared on this blog recently. And think carefully about whether they are made welcome in future.

Because, politics aside, there have been some very weird people involved in recent events. Some of them seriously unhinged. Others, violent. A few, genuinely evil.

Speaking personally, I would not extend a welcome to any of them.

And though he’s a long way from being the worst among them, for God’s sake don’t allow Rantin’, Rovin’ Benji anywhere near the levers of power in YesCymru.

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I’m now hoping to take a break from the Woke-Left interlopers who tried to wreck YesCymru and re-acquaint myself with more likeable people. I’m referring now to the grant grabbers, con men, money launderers, mortgage fraudsters, etc., who’ve starred on this blog for so long.

They must be feeling neglected!

♦ end ♦

 




YesCymru, conspirators flying the coup

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. POSTINGS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

The picture with YesCymru is becoming clearer, which makes those who clouded it ever more desperate. And dishonest.

“Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies.”

Senator Barry Goldwater

I shall offend certain people by quoting this early influence on my political development. But it doesn’t matter how you try to twist it, what Barry Goldwater says there could have been written about recent events in YesCymru.

For when it comes to YesCymru, there may have been those among the takeover gang who sought to do, “what they regard as good”, but there were many driven by political fanaticism, and a few by self-interest.

And now it’s all over. The coup has failed and the plotters are slinking away.

So let’s have an update.

WHO’S LEFT THE BUILDING?

It’s been difficult at times keeping up with events, but here’s how I believe things stand after collating information from a number of sources.

Llywelyn ap Gwilym has been keeping a low profile, making me wonder if he was hoping to hide, Claudius-like, and then emerge after the blood-letting to be acclaimed emperor.

But no, for a number of sources tell me ‘Ein Llyw Nesaf’ has promised to stand down and not seek re-election at the EGM. That said, others warn that he’s a ‘slippery customer’, and needs to be watched.

Then, some time over the weekend before last Tori West bade her farewell. But there was no presentation of a clock followed by a few pints down the Red Lion, where anodyne speeches were delivered about ‘Good old Tori‘, and her responding with, ‘I’ll be back to see you all from time to time‘.

Instead, she suggested that YesCymru should be razed to the ground. Which, if nothing else, calls into question her commitment to Welsh independence.

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One source suggests that West may still consider herself ‘resignation fluid’. After that tweet she should be toast. And burnt toast at that.

I’m told the next to leave, on Monday last week, was Carys Eleri.

She will be best remembered for the video below. Even though it’s more of an exhibition of posterior than a gift to posterity I still see it as somehow fitting.

YesCymru members’ money was given to a company few had heard of. (Hardly surprising seeing as the company is less than a year old.) Then there are questions as to how this company gained the contract. Was there a tendering process? Does the Turk running the company know someone who may have been influential in YC? Is this company still receiving money from YesCymru?

As I say, I see this video as a metaphor – for the unfocused, spendthrift, self-indulgent and ultimately laughable organisation YesCymru became under the clowns now seeking the shadows.

 

On Tuesday last week Elin Hywel did her disappearing act. Like so many – all? – of those involved in the attempted and now defeated coup she is a member of Far Left Undod.

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While some took to the shadows as the pressure mounted, one who tried to put on a show of resistance was Ben Gwalchmai of Labour for an Independent Wales.

But something has clearly happened with Gwalchmai and it might have been linked with complaints to the Central Committee about his online behaviour. One complaint was signed by some 50 people.

A source tells me: “The CC meeting to suspend Ben was supposed to have been last Wednesday, then delayed until Thursday, then delayed to today (Monday), and now tomorrow.” I hear feet being dragged.

Whether the Rasputin of the Severn Valley has been or will be suspended is unknown, but his YC Twitter account was certainly shut down last Wednesday. A couple of days later he used his personal account to put out a rant against the 16 local groups that mustered a vote of no confidence in the Central Committee at the recent sit-down.

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Note that critics are ‘crazies’, and a democratic vote open to all is a ‘coup’.

Though Benji attempted to clarify his remark about ‘violent harasser’ by saying that he was not referring to himself, but to an online critic of the Central Committee, the so-called ‘Cornish Crow’, a Twitter account that was taken down on Sunday night.

But not before encouraging an imitator.

The personal account was putting out YC stuff today. Which might suggest that Benji remains part of the gang, but perhaps semi-detached? ‘We’ll pretend you aren’t with us’ kind of thing.

There could be a good reason for this. As I’ll explain in a mo.

Ben Gwalchmai has a terrible problem with the truth. He should be receiving treatment. Click to open in fresh tab.

Whatever his status vis-à-vis the Central Committee, Gwalchmai is a spent force. Utterly discredited, and perhaps now viewed as a liability even by the remaining CC members. (Which would really be saying something!)

There may also be legal action pending against him.

Ben Gwalchmai’s fundamental problem is that he’s ‘imaginative’. (Yes, that is a euphemism.) Take the recent example below.

Now, to read Benji, one might think that those awful ‘Fash’ had enlisted the help of the Kremlin to mount a full-scale assault against the organisation he and the comrades had so recently snatched from their evil clutches.

The Central Committee had to put out a statement clarifying that it was just a minor, personal matter. And no mention of PayPal.

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Talking of the Central Committee, who is left?

Let’s recap . . . there’s possibly Llywelyn ap Gwilym, no doubt carefully weighing up the best move for Llywelyn ap Gwilym. Then there’s Sarah Rees, the vice-chair, and interim chair since Siôn Jobbins stepped down. And finally, there’s treasurer Gwyn Llewelyn.

And that, without suspended Niki Jones, is that. Apart from the indeterminate status of Ben Gwalchmai, which might even have changed between me writing this on Monday evening and you reading it.

UPDATE: The news has been broken now so I can tell you that Niki Jones resigned from the Central Committee tonight.

Which means that the Central Committee might have less than four members and consequently be inquorate. If so, then the only power it has is to call an EGM pretty damn quick to get a new CC elected.

A last-ditch attempt to remain quorate would explain ap Gwilym hanging on and Gwalchmai being allowed to mooch around. Because without them it’s just Rees and Llewelyn, and definitely inquorate.

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One who seems to have slipped under my radar is Shane Brennan. In an earlier post I pointed out that with Iestyn ap Rhobert not seeking re-election as secretary his rival for the post, Shane Brennan, was a shoo-in.

What I didn’t know was that Brennan had been offered a job with The National and told that if he was taking it then he couldn’t be YesCymru secretary. Though when you think about it, working for Huw Marshall puts you on the same side as the Woke-Left takeover gang anyway.

Here’s Marshall crowing over the Twitter demise of the Cornish Crow. (Though I suspect he’ll be back soon.) Note that I remain a target. God! it brings a tear to the old Jac eye.

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It has been suggested to me that the Cornish Crow’s fate might be attributable to media persons knowing others of that ilk in the employ of Twitter. Who knows?

For obvious reasons, the Central Committee kept quiet about Brennan’s non-arrival. Which means that in addition to possibly being inquorate the CC has also been stumbling along without a secretary since before the May 22 AGM.

YesCymru is an utter shambles!

Another departure was that of Diversity and Inclusivity Officer Jessica Harvey. One of those determined to turn YesCymru into TransCymru. She will not be missed.

The sole remaining employee is Harriet Protheroe-Soltani. Though I don’t recall hearing anything from her or about her for months. Is she still there? If so, what is she doing for £32,000 a year in her part-time job? (For she is also an official of Momentum.)

Putting it all together makes me wonder why the first mate and the purser pretend that the good ship YesCymru is sailing merrily along with a full complement of officers and a not-at-all-mutinous crew.

Sinking Ship GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY

Obviously there’s the matter of remaining quorate, which we’ve just read about. But there are also suggestions that this pretence must be maintained because there are things to hide. And money to be accounted for.

Just one more thing that might need to be cleared up is the Equality and Diversity Sub-committee, which was a motion passed at the May 22 AGM. Were appointments made to this sub-committee? Can a sub-committee exist independently of the committee to which it is subordinate?

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Questions. Questions. So many questions.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Woke-Left coup has failed, partly because those involved were just so bloody incompetent. But if you want specifics . . .

1/ The Far Left entryists believed that by using terms like ‘fascist’ and ‘far right’ for their critics they could swing more moderate socialists behind them. But this didn’t work. In fact, it may have had the opposite effect.

This I find very encouraging. It tells me there are decent people out there, reasonable and fair-minded socialists, prepared to work with others in the cause of Welsh independence.

2/ Once those who’d taken over began to assert themselves, and it became clear that for many outing ‘TERF’s and ‘transphobes’ was more important than working towards independence, they both revealed their true intentions and sealed their own fate.

3/ In some ways, those who joined the Central Committee were the reasonable face of the Woke-Left fringe. Because out there, on the howling peripheries, roam some seriously unhinged nutters! You have met many of them on this blog.

But those on the inside did themselves no favours by their social media interaction with the loonies. Both encouraging them and being encouraged by them.

An example of the behaviour of these loonies cropped up a few days ago. I don’t know this guy, I’ve had no dealings with him, but he is not alone in his experience of the Woke-Left extremists.

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These evil and dangerous bastards mimic their heroes in the anarcho-nihilist cult Antifa: ‘We are absolutely in the right, which means we can do whatever we choose to those who oppose us and those we decide are in the wrong’.

The sort of attitude that leads to Inquisitions, pogroms, persecution, and the public beheading of unbelievers. So far we’ve only reached the de-platforming stage, and social media censoring, but the trajectory is clear.

An illustration of the co-operation between those on the inside and those on the fringes came to light tonight. It’s in a tweet from former Central Committee member Niki Jones, responding to Ben Gwalchmai, who claims never to have made or signed a complaint to YC.

He is of course lying, again, as the complaint from June 4 proves.

But just look at those names! Central Committee members mixed in with the worst of the gang. They’re all there: the mad axeman, ‘Dr Dildo Davies’, that disgusting creature who wrote the obscene tweet to a boy mourning his mother, the mayor of Bangor, and of course, the leader of the pack – Aled Gwyn Williams.

You can see the lines of communication, the links, for organising a pile-on.

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Benji’s fiery pants must be visible from the Long Mynd.

UPDATE 10.08.2021: There was a reaction last night to the publication of the list of complainants against Niki Jones, made when it was realised she would not fall into line with the exclusionary Woke-Left agenda. It came from Benedict Belli, ‘BVB’, @no_pasaran90, one of those complainants.

After a chorus of, ‘Non, Je ne regrette rien’ he goes on to blame “that joke organisation” for a breach of confidentiality. It’s always somebody else’s fault.

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YesCymru, as it is currently constituted, is no longer fit for purpose. There must be root and branch change, in both personnel and organisational structure.

Those involved in the takeover, and their social media foederati, must return from whence they came and never be allowed back into YesCymru.

For with their undoubted talent, their tolerant and inclusive behaviour, I have no doubt that those of whom I have writ could build up Undod into a movement that both captures the souls of our people and, by so doing, strikes terror into the black hearts of our enemies.

Then again, I could just be taking the piss. (Cos I enjoys a good laugh, I do.)

I started with a little something from Barry Goldwater, and I’ll end with some more wisdom from the great man.

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

God bless you, Barry.

♦ end ♦

 




YesCymru: it must be a clean sweep

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. POSTINGS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

Yes, folks, this is another episode in the ongoing tale of YesCymru. Another report of damage inflicted on the independence movement by a gang of Woke-Left extremists, their assorted hangers-on, others too weak to resist, and a few who thought they could ride the wave for personal advancement.

UPDATES

In the previous post in this series, YesCymru, light at the end of the tunnel?, I had to add a few updates, so in case you didn’t catch them, here they are. With one snippet I didn’t use as an update.

Siôn Jobbins, long time Chair of YesCymru – and after a couple of weeks AWOL – finally announced he was stepping down within hours of my previous post going live. I am not claiming cause and effect.

Rachel Cooze, one of the Central Committee members elected at the May 22 AGM, resigned after – among other things – it came to light she had used suspended Central Committee member Dr Dilys Davies’ name to offer discounts on her OnlyFans porn site.

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Would-be journalist, ‘Emrys’ Price-Jones, was suspended following her very silly article in The National. A redacted version of the article is still available.

The article named Dr Davies, even though her appeal against suspension is still to be heard. ‘Emrys’ also clearly identified, but without naming, the Central Committee member elected at the May 22 AGM who has also been suspended.

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I reached out an avuncular and comforting hand, but the offer was politely rejected. (Since deleted?) Though someone in the gang made a suggestion on Twitter that my approach to ‘Emrys’ was creepy, possibly sexually motivated.

Maybe somebody can find the tweet.

Just when you think there’s nothing new to surprise you about these clowns they manage to plumb new depths.

THE PART WHERE JAC EXPLAINS HOW IT ALL FITS TOGETHER

Bottom line: There was a conspiracy to take over YesCymru. It was mounted by people I shall name below. Marxists and others belonging to the Far Left justifying what they did as being in the cause of, “progressive socialism”.

Facilitated to some degree by fools who think Communism is ‘cool’, some too stupid to appreciate the danger, and others who just proved too weak to mount any opposition.

The conspiracy has failed because too many people were involved; some of them none too bright who gave the game away, others so convinced they were on the side of the angels that they bragged about their involvement.

But over and above that, once you put the facts together – it’s just so obvious!

I shall try to lay it out in chronological order without, I hope, repeating myself too much. But if I do, then it’s justified because previously I have dealt with disparate pieces, whereas this is the near-complete jigsaw.

The genesis of YesCymru can be found in earlier posts. But it’s worth mentioning that among the founders we find Dr Dilys Davies, Siôn Jobbins and Iestyn ap Rhobert.

Inevitably, the Far Left infiltrated YesCymru early on, but an attempt at takeover was rebuffed and the plotters – or some of them – went off to found openly Marxist Undod towards the end of 2018. A group promoting ‘socialism through independence’ or ‘socialism and independence’.

Though the Undod website now reads, rather anaemically: ‘We are a democratic, socialist republican movement established to secure independence for Wales’.

About as ‘democratic’ as the long gone and unlamented German Democratic Republic. (East Germany.)

Perhaps as revenge for the rebuff the Far Left remnant within YesCymru tried to ambush Dr Davies in the autumn of 2019. It was very amateurish and she survived.

The defeat of Jeremy Corbyn in the general election later that year resulted in Momentum taking an interest in Welsh independence. One member, Harriet Protheroe-Soltani, is now YesCymru’s Campaigns Officer, while still serving as an officer of the North West and Wales region of Momentum.

Another, who returned to Wales from London following Corbyn’s fall, is Siwan Clark. It’s claimed she has more ‘sock puppet’ Twitter accounts than anyone. I couldn’t possibly comment.

To clear the way for the Far Left to take control at the May 22 AGM certain people needed to be ‘neutralised’.

In the case of Dr Dilys Davies this was achieved by @AledGwynWiliams (Single ‘l’!) travelling to her properties in Ceredigion and engineering a spat that resulted in complaints being made to the Central Committee by ‘Emrys’, @sheikyerbouti_ and Rachel Cooze. Dr Davies was suspended from the Central Committee and unable to participate in the AGM.

All explained here in ‘Hopes of Welsh independence being jeopardised by the hard left’.

But this Ceredigion foray was part of a bigger scheme.

We’ve met a number of manipulators in this series on YesCymru but one, almost overlooked, whose name has cropped up a few times recently, is moustachioed Robert Lloyd of Prestatyn, President of Labour for an Independent Wales.

Lloyd became head honcho of this group in January this year. And sources say that the plotting to take over YesCymru began soon afterwards. Plotting in which Lloyd played a bigger hand than he has previously been given credit for.

And you know me, I’m all for giving credit where credit is due.

What’s crucial for the purposes of this article is Lloyd’s role in the run-up to the May 22 AGM, his part in selecting who served on the Central Committee. And I’m sure it will interest you, as well.

Lloyd recently confessed on Twitter that he had indeed been involved in a group that brought together those of a certain ideological disposition seeking to ensure that the incoming Central Committee was to their liking.

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This ” . . . very loose campaign, but ultimately a successful one” (note the use of ‘campaign’) pulled together serving Central Committee Members, retiring Central Committee members, and candidates seeking election to the Central Committee for the first time.

In the first category we find Llywelyn ap Gwilym, Elin Hywel and Carys Eleri. In the second there’s Mark Hooper. While in the ranks of the hopefuls, bright of eye and bushy of tail, were Ben Gwalchmai and Rachel Cooze.

These Signal app meetings were set up to delete everything after 5 minutes, and so that option proved unsuitable. Future meetings were held on Zoom, and a fresh initiate was Scott Mackay of Swansea. (Endorsed by Aled Gwyn Wiliams.)

It was now that ap Gwilym and Hooper pushed the “Iestyn must go” line and urged everyone to support Shane Brennan for Secretary. This proved unnecessary because Iestyn ap Rhobert withdrew from the race.

But Lloyd fits into none of the three categories – so why was he there? Who was he representing? Obviously, Labour for an Independent Wales, which I have previously described as about as convincing as DUP for a United Ireland.

Lab4Indy overlaps with Momentum and links with Undod. There are fellow-travellers in Plaid Cymru, especially its youth wing, Plaid Ifanc. There has also – believe it or not – been a Far Left takeover of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (the Welsh Language Society).

But YesCymru was the big prize due to its 18,500 members and the ‘reach’ such a figure gave the organisation.

Of course a membership of that size also presented problems for the Marxist plotters. Selecting and screening Woke-Left candidates for the Central Committee in secret meetings was one thing, but an open and fair election at the AGM, with all members voting, could have undone all the plotting.

To guarantee the election of those they’d chosen the Woke-Left ensured that as few members as possible would be able to vote at the May 22 AGM.

The leaders of the takeover plot were Robert Lloyd, Ben Gwalchmai, Mark Hooper, and Llywelyn ap Gwilym. Representing Undod, Labour/Momentum, and the Leannista wing of Plaid Cymru.

Some of the foot-soldiers, hangers-on and social media warriors I’ve already listed, but there were others. A few too many for the plot to succeed.

Many have justified the takeover as ‘protecting YesCymru from ‘fascism”. Just as the Soviets were fighting ‘fascism’ and ‘revisionism’ when they put down the Hungarian Rising of ’56 and the ‘Prague Spring’ in ’68.

Perhaps the biggest worry in that comparison should be that Marxism prefers big units and is invariably hostile to the aspirations of small nations unless pretending to support those aspirations can be used to promote Marxism.

Footnote: Vice-president of @Lab4IndyWales is our old friend Martyn J Shrewsbury. A source points out that both Lloyd and Shrewsbury might have escaped prison terms.

In his case, in 2014, the magistrate was amazed that Lloyd had not been charged with dangerous driving. If he had been, and if he had been found guilty, then he might not have gone to Cardiff University.

Shrewsbury is a convicted fraudster who escaped jail. (Strangely, the link to the court case is broken.) After causing disruption in the Green Party of Englandandwales for a few years he moved to the Labour Party, and of course Momentum. Shrewsbury had quite a reputation for fake social media accounts.

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Read more about Shrewsbury here, in ‘Plaid Cymru’s enemy within‘. In fact, type his name in the sidebar search box because he’s appeared on this blog a few times.

President and Vice-president of Labour for an Independent Wales both dealt with leniently by the authorities with subsequent careers as political wreckers is obviously just a coincidence.

But what are the odds?

UPDATE 30.07.2021: A link to the Shrewsbury conviction has turned up.

THE COUP SUCCEEDS

The high point for the plotters was around mid-day on May 22, just after the AGM, when their supporters were putting out celebratory tweets like these.

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It’s been downhill for them ever since.

For it soon dawned on YesCymru members that the new Central Committee had been elected with the votes of some two per cent of the total membership. (Many members didn’t even know there was an election!) Not even in the socialist Utopias dreamed of by the plotters would such a blatant con have been pulled.

Then it was one revelation after another, indiscretions followed with vile attacks as the plotters and their foot-soldiers were put on the defensive. (Did anyone really believe this woman would be an asset to YesCymru? Or was she brought in to be a wrecker?)

Where were the Minutes? Why couldn’t members see detailed and independently audited accounts?

Regarding the latter, there was a growing suspicion that YesCymru money was being appropriated by Central Committee members, or being diverted to their friends.

A suspicion that began on the day of the AGM. Encouraged by another celebratory tweet; this one from re-elected Central Committee member Tori West.

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Recently, London-based West went on strike. How a Central Committee member withdraws their labour is not clear. But anyway, she’s back.

As I’ve said, the pressure on the Central Committee has been relentless, and it has increased week on week. To the point where the Central Committee was forced to agree to a meeting with the branches, which took place on July 13.

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I’m not sure what purpose the Central Committee thought the meeting would serve. Was it intended to be a show of strength? An attempt at reconciliation?

I can’t answer those questions. What I can tell you is that from the Central Committee’s perspective it was a disaster.

To begin with, and in an obvious attempt to show that there were branches siding with the Central Committee, those attending the meeting were entertained by . . .

Aled Gwyn Wiliams, tormentor of Dr Dilys Davies, and a veritable keyboard samurai. (Though he’s a bit too fond of the saké and often has to do a lot of deleting the morning after.) He was there representing YesCymru Maesteg. Reports says he waffled without contributing anything.

Then there was ‘Kemp’ who set up @YesYBynie because she didn’t want to mix with all those horrid transphobes and fascists in the thriving Llanelli branch of YesCymru. This Bynea ‘branch’ is just her, and therefore should not be regarded as a branch.

Aware of this she put out a sorry tweet a couple of months ago hoping to rope in waifs and strays. I wonder if anybody answered the call?

Someone else who spoke was Central Committee member Ben Gwalchmai – on behalf of the Welshpool branch! This should not have been allowed.

The letter sent to the branches promised that two members of the Central Committee would be in attendance. In fact, they were all there. Well, those who haven’t resigned or been suspended.

Seeing as ‘Emrys’ is suspended, and his deranged deputy at YesCymru LGBTQ+, ‘George Brown’ has presumably been locked in the attic, being fed through a hatch at the bottom of the door, it fell to young Tyler Griffiths to represent this section.

He did not impress. After ranting about a suspended Central Committee member running ‘sock puppet’ Twitter accounts he didn’t really have a lot to say.

Llywelyn ap Gwilym remained largely silent and seemed to wish he were somewhere else. Whilst Elin Hywel did not enhance her reputation with a number of rather silly comments.

The good news from last Tuesday’s meeting is that most genuine branches want an Extraordinary General Meeting and fresh elections to the Central Committee.

AND FINALLY . . .

As was reported on Politics Wales yesterday, there’s a lot of crazy stuff flying around on social media. I can state with confidence that 80 to 90 per cent of it comes from defenders of the takeover. And participants therein.

One of the leaders in the field is Rachel Cooze who put the knife into Dr Davies and anybody else she took a dislike to – including me! First, by telling my Twitter followers that I was a fascist and a transphobe, and suggesting they unfollow me. (Which about 40 or 50 did, but now I have more followers than before her attack!)

Then, she came out with a bizarre – and actionable – claim that former YesCymru Secretary, Iestyn ap Rhobert, had been feeding me confidential information. I can swear on a stack of Bibles that the claim is untrue.

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I assumed that she had dreamt it up, or been fed it by one of her poisonous consœurs. But then, last week, along came @YupCymru. One of the weirdest accounts to appear in this saga.

Mention has been made of ‘sock puppet’ Twitter accounts, which are shell accounts used by people wanting to hide their identity and/or pretend that their position has more support than is truly the case.

But @YupCymru, now closed, was different.

To begin with, it was opened in 2013, before YesCymru was even thought of, and there were only ten or a dozen tweets until very recently. Yet this almost inactive account made the same allegation on April 29 of Iestyn ap Rhobert leaking me information.

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So who was @YupCymru?

It’s a question many are asking because in a brief flurry of activity before closing the account @YupCymru also released confidential YesCymru documents. To wit, the Minutes of the Dr Dilys Davies disciplinary hearing held on May 5.

This hearing was a kangaroo court. The decision to suspend Dr Davies had already been taken by the plotters named earlier. She had to be removed before the AGM because she was a threat to their plans and would certainly have opposed the two motions the plotters had framed.

The Minutes are already in the public domain so I feel able to offer them here.

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It’s a strange business. One minute (no pun intended) @YupCymru was fighting for the takeover gang, attacking Iestyn ap Rhobert and me; and then, by releasing the Minutes, seems to be trying to damage YesCymru.

I suppose any investigation will have to start by asking who had copies of or access to those Minutes.

For this breach of security and confidentiality is a serious business. And it’s not the only example we’ve seen recently of unauthorised or unlawful use of confidential YesCymru information.

Perhaps attributable to the fact that those who mounted the coup, and those who support them, know that their time is running out. Of course, they can’t accept that the fightback is coming from ordinary members who want to welcome everybody to a broad-based movement working for Welsh independence.

No, it has to be a fascist takeover. Because anybody who doesn’t agree with these lunatics is a fascist. That’s one of the big mistakes they’ve made – absurd slanders alienating so many decent people.

But then, when you dream of driving a Red Army tank along the boulevards of Budapest or Prague this intolerance of differing views will often betray you.

It’s alleged that ‘Arson Sam’ is one of Siwan Clark’s many sock puppet accounts. Now putting her Momentum experience to the service of the Far Left in YesCymru. Click to enlarge.

Where now for YesCymru?

It would be absurd to suggest that all those involved in the takeover of YesCymru are working for the British state. Equally absurd would be to think that the British state would ignore a movement with 18,000 members pushing for Welsh independence.

The damage done is so severe that none of those responsible for the coup or supportive of it can be allowed to stay. If they don’t resign they must be removed.

There must then be a fresh start with a more professional structure in place to ensure it can’t happen again. Otherwise YesCymru is as good as finished.

♦ end ♦

 




YesCymru, light at the end of the tunnel?

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. POSTINGS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

At the risk of overworking clichés, YesCymru has become the gift that keeps on giving. In fact, it is developing into a veritable cornucopia of source material.

The reason for this is now obvious. There is a group of people within (and some outside) YesCymru who have persuaded themselves that they can say and do whatever they like with no repercussions.

They have been encouraged in this belief, first, by the ease with which they were allowed to take over YesCymru, and then, by the lack of opposition from politicians and mainstream media to their insane views on society, politics and gender.

IF YOU’RE NEW TO THE SAGA . . .

YesCymru was born on a cold and gray Chicago morn in 2014 out of Welsh support for Scottish independence. The group was officially launched in February 2016, and I gave it my backing in this piece, ‘YESCymru Launch Rally 20.02.2016‘.

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As is the fate of all such groups, the Far Left soon tried to muscle in and subvert a cross-party and non-ideological group.

The initial attempt was thwarted, which resulted in certain individuals leaving and, towards the end of 2018, forming Undod, offering ‘Radical Independence for Wales’. It was soon clear that Undod was a Marxist organisation whose members turned up for any kind of protest.

Inevitably, Undod also attracted – and welcomed – Marxists with no real interest in Wales, let alone independence. For these, Wales was just another stage on which to perform, and independence another ishoo to exploit.

One of these recruits was Siwan Clark. For soon after her hero Jeremy Corbyn lost the December 2019 general election she left London to return to Cardiff. In this tweet, put out 11 days before this year’s AGM, she helpfully explains the genesis of Undod.

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Clark is of course a member of Momentum, the Marxist party within a party that cost Labour so many seats in December 2019. And now Clark has brought her winning formula to Wales!

What could possibly go wrong?

To prepare the way for the takeover completed at the May 22 AGM certain people, resistant to the Marxists and the Wokies, needed to be removed. Among them, Dr Dilys Davies.

Dr Davies had been attacked earlier, in September 2019, for defending Germaine Greer’s views on sex and gender. (Or at least, that was the excuse used.) I dealt with it here in, ‘Misogyny, bullying? Depends who’s doing it‘.

The attack was renewed at Easter-time this year when Aled Gwyn Williams went down to Ceredigion to engineer the excuse for more complaints – from Aled’s cronies – that would be used to get Dr Davies suspended from the Central Committee.

This I dealt with in ‘Hopes of Welsh independence being jeopardised by the hard left’.

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In the tweet above, from around April 23, Siwan Clark helpfully confirms that there was indeed a campaign against Dr Dilys Davies by, “Welsh trans people and their allies”. Code for, ‘Hard Left and their Woke dupes’.

POTS, KETTLES, AND OTHER NEWS

These Woke-Left extremists do not provide much in the way of humour. Understandable, for they count many swivel-eyed fanatics in their ranks.

Which means that what laughs they do provide are entirely unintentional. Here’s a recent example from Twitter. It’s Aled again!

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It’s difficult to think of any group that has posted more ‘mad shit’ on Welsh Twitter in recent years than Aled Gwyn Williams and his gang.

Though as I may have remarked in recent postings, Aled and his fan club are much less active now. They either post innocuous stuff or else their accounts are protected. The suggestion is that they’re using private chat rooms . . . where no doubt the ‘mad shit’ still fills the ether.

But wherever they are, Aled can’t kick the selfies on Twitter: ‘This is me!’, ‘Look at me!’, ‘Look what I’m doing!’.

If anybody loves Aled half as much as Aled loves Aled then Aled is a very lucky boy.

Aled’s mate ‘BVB’ has also forsaken Twitter, having lately realised that it is “vile”. This is priceless.

For when they ruled social media, when they could slag off good people with impunity, Aled and his gang thought Twitter was the best thing since Leanne Wood becoming leader of Plaid Cymru.

But now, as more and more people realise what a pernicious influence this gang has been for too long, it becomes, ‘Oooh, nasty people on Twitter answering back’.

A case of biter bit. And he doesn’t like it. Click to enlarge

Lest we forget, here are two gems put out not so long ago, on Twitter, by ‘BVB’. Did somebody say ‘Mad shit’?

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In other news . . .

A bizarre article appear on The National website last Saturday. I knew it was going to be a treat when I saw that the author was our young friend, ‘Emrys’ Price-Jones, Chair of YesCymru’s LGBTQ+ Committee.

‘Emrys’ has a deputy, even more off the wall than her. I’m referring now to ‘George Brown’. Here are some of their recent tweets, to give you a flavour of this dysfunctional duo.

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I have to be careful how I word what follows because lawyers are involved, and old Jac has had his fill of those buggers. Anyway, here’s the article from The National as it now reads on the site. But that’s not how it originally appeared.

You’ll see that certain comments have been deleted. This is because they addressed parts of the original article that were soon removed by The National. But not before the article, in its original format, had been endorsed and retweeted by YesCymru.

In the section taken down ‘Emrys’ was candid enough to confirm that he was one of the complainants against Dr Davies a few months back. He even spelled out that the whole charade was staged to engineer her suspension, thereby ensuring that Dr Davies could not stand for election to the Central Committee at the May 22 AGM.

The redacted section also libelled, without naming, but clearly identifying, the woman referred to above by ‘George Brown’ in such vile terms.

Make no mistake: this article was a deliberate attempt to prejudice hearings that are yet to take place; hearings involving Dr Dilys Davies and the other woman identified in the article.

Thankfully, apart from a few ‘wonderful article’ comments from a few people, including ‘BVB’, most comments were hostile. Here’s a good example.

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The Central Committee member so grossly abused by ‘George Brown’ in the tweet above complained to Jess Harvey, YesCymru’s Diversity and Inclusivity Officer. The complainant was fobbed off with, “I know George from Plaid Pride. This is very uncharacteristic of them. I’ll have a chat with them!” (Note the pronouns.)

On the contrary, it’s all too characteristic of ‘George Brown’, and Jess Harvey must know it. 

Yet this episode reminds us that Jessica – formerly Matthew – Harvey left Plaid Pride in April. ‘George’ left around the same time. Both seem to have decided that YesCymru offered more scope for their intolerant, cultist approach to trans issues; and gave them more freedom to slag off good people as TERFs, transphobes and fascists.

For while earlier forays had established a bridgehead for the Woke-Left, the war on diversity of opinion intensified once YesCymru had a Diversity Officer.

I’m assured that legal action is actively being pursued against those involved with the writing and publication of that heinous article, and other examples of defamation and intimidation. The police are involved.

I can understand why YesCymru Chair Siôn Jobbins has closed his Twitter account.

UPDATE: Siôn Jobbins resigned around mid-day. Here’s the statement he put out.

UPDATE: I am informed that ‘Emrys’ was suspended late this afternoon. Which I assume prompted this rather plaintive tweet.

UPDATE 12.07.2021: ‘Emrys’ has confirmed that she has been suspended. Does this mean that the lunatic ‘George Brown’ is now acting Chair?

SLAPPERS, MINUTES, MONEY

As if YesCymru doesn’t have enough problems with police and lawyers, more problems are piling up with questions about how YC is organised and regulated. And where the money is going.

On the day of the AGM, London-based Central Committee member Tori West put out this intriguing tweet.

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Suspicions grow that ‘Welsh creatives’ (and indeed, non-Welsh creatives) already had their fingers in the YesCymru pie when that tweet went out.

Such as whoever created this eyebrow-raising, toe-curling, stomach-churning, vomit-inducing little video. If you haven’t yet seen it, I suggest you sit down before watching.

 

We’ll deal with the images in a minute, but let’s focus first on the ‘lyrics’: “England, I know you love me / And I love you too”. What the fuck is that supposed to be saying?

Is anyone claiming the credit!

And why does ‘Wales’ have to be a buxom slapper on a night out down Wind Street?

I know we complain that Wales has been shafted by England for centuries, but did it have to be so graphically illustrated? And seeing as it was, shouldn’t it have come with some kind of warning?

Who the hell commissioned this? Who agreed to pay for it? And who made it?

The answer to the last question I’m told is BAK, a Cardiff company. They look like the kind of ‘creatives’ Tori West may have been thinking of. But there is no company called BAK. We need to look for Capsizing Creative Ltd, formed just last October.

The sole director is Memet Ali Alabora. A Turkish actor and playwright who fled his homeland – with his wife – when it was alleged a play of his had encouraged riots in 2013. He is now a British citizen.

Those involved at BAK are either Turkish or Welsh and, in fairness, Alabora and his wife seem to have taken to Wales, the language, perhaps even the independence cause. But nothing can justify that video. And how many others of that execrable standard has BAK turned out for YesCymru?

I’m even told that the singer is Central Committee member Carys Eleri. Is that true?

Finding out how much that video cost to produce, and how much YesCymru money has found its way to BAK, or anyone else, may not be easy because there are increasing claims that YC’s accounts are either unreliable or unavailable.

Similar claims are made for the Minutes of Central Committee and other meetings.

Another cause for concern might be Ymgyrch Yes Cyf. This being the private company that holds the rights to the YesCymru trademark. Until this year’s AGM the company had four directors. Two resigned because they were no longer officials of YesCymru.

This left just Chair Siôn Jobbins and Treasurer Gwyn Llewelyn. But with Jobbins AWOL this means that the company is in breach of Article 10 of its own Articles of Association, which says there must be 2 directors for a meeting to be quorate.

There are other matters being raised of a similar nature. It looks chaotic.

DENOUEMENT?

The prevailing mood among members has increased the pressure on the Central Committee and that pressure is certainly telling.

A grassroots revolt, with branches demanding face-to-face meetings with the CC, resulted in this e-mail going out yesterday. It’s signed, in the absence of Siôn Jobbins, by his deputy, Sarah Rees.

It confirms that there will be a meeting of the local groups and the Central Committee on Tuesday.

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You’ll note there are certain things that cannot be discussed at the meeting “due to legal reasons”. I bet there are! I just hope that whoever represents the Central Committee doesn’t use that as an excuse to clam up on everything.

And it will be interesting to see who does represent the Central Committee at Tuesday’s meeting.

The victory of the Woke-Left has been short-lived because they were too arrogant and self-obsessed to appreciate that taking over the Central Committee in a rigged AGM would be resented by the great majority of YesCymru members.

Members who want to prioritise independence, and welcome into YesCymru all those who share that view, irrespective of political loyalty and ideological alignment.

For YesCymru to get back on track most of the Central Committee must be removed. The same goes for Diversity and Inclusivity Officer Jessica Harvey, and Campaigns Officer Harriet Protheroe-Soltani (of Momentum).

Unless swift and firm action is taken YesCymru as an organisation could find itself paying – literally! – for the disgusting and criminal behaviour of a few dozen people. That would not be fair on thousands and thousands of decent people.

If YesCymru is to be saved, those wanting to save it must be ruthless. Cut the guilty loose and let them fend for themselves. They’ve already done enough damage.

♦ end ♦



YesCymru: Stalin meets Kafka on a Marx Brothers set

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. POSTINGS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

I had intended putting out Weep for Wales 19, but events in and around YesCymru meant that my attention was drawn there. What’s more, with the YC story developing as I write this it may be more stream of consciousness than you have come to expect from me.

In a nutshell, YesCymru, an organisation formed and dedicated to campaigning for Welsh independence has, over recent years been first, infiltrated, and then taken over, by the Woke-Left obsessed with issues that have little or nothing to do with Welsh independence.

The AGM of May 22, rigged so that as few as possible of YesCymru’s 18,500 members could participate, sealed the takeover. Less than 2% of the members voted for the new Central Committee and two contentious Motions.

The takeover has been accompanied by a campaign of lies, intimidation, and the vilification of anyone standing up to the extremists. Yet those behind this takeover have cleverly turned the facts on their head to present themselves as victims of intimidation, ‘transphobia’, etc., etc.

To prepare you for what follows I would suggest you read these recent postings. ‘Hopes of Welsh independence being jeopardised by the hard left’ (April 27), ‘Senedd elections: Hard left to win by stealth’ (May 4), ‘This is where I came in’ (May 11), ‘YesCymru – under new management?’ (May 18), ‘YesCymru, the beginning of the end?’ (May 25), ‘A guest post on . . . YesCymru!’ (June 21).

IN THE BEGINNING

As you’ll have read in the posts I linked to the extremists now running YesCymru – and their allies outwith that organisation – first came to my attention with the hounding of Dr Dilys Davies. This followed her purchasing the ‘Tryweryn Wall’ on the A487 in July 2019.

The memorial had been subjected to two attacks earlier that year and was in danger of complete collapse. So, you might think that a Welsh patriot buying it for the nation would be welcomed by those claiming to be patriots or nationalists.

Mais, non. For Dr Davies was almost immediately attacked, and for bizarre reasons, most of which seemed to focus on the fact that she had the wherewithal to make the purchase.

It was pure, old-fashioned, socialist envy of the, ‘I hates rich people, I do’ variety. The sort of thing you often get from failures, malcontents, and social misfits.

Some even talked of demolishing the wall. Though now they insist they were only joking. Of course they were. Though it does raise an interesting possibility.

For it has been suggested to me that Dr Davies stepping in to buy the Wall may have thwarted a plan for our heroes to buy it – probably with crowdfunding – thereby guaranteeing their places in the pantheon of Welsh nationalism. When their hopes were dashed they had to ensure that Dr Davies was not deified in their stead.

Whether that theory is plausible or not, it may be worth mentioning that no one was ever charged with causing the damage to the Wall in 2019. Or even accused on Twitter. Which, in the febrile world of Welsh social media, is quite something.

Who could have done it?

TAKEOVER AND AFTERMATH

And so it came t0 pass that at the YesCymru AGM on May 22 the Left-Woke extremists, influenced by Momentum and operating out of Undod, took control of YesCymru.

This was achieved by the old Communist Party ploy of fixing things beforehand and keeping participants down to a manageable number and a favourable disposition.

Undod was formed towards the end of 2018 by leftists who’d previously attempted to take over YesCymru but had been resisted. Its website tells us, “Our members are involved in political campaigning across Wales on a wide range of issues”. Which is fine for an avowedly left wing campaigning group.

But why would the Undodistas want to take over YesCymru and have it do exactly the same thing? The answer, gentle reader, comes down to numbers, and the perceptions of the general public.

Let me explain.

Undod has a few dozen members. At best, a Far Left outfit could hope for a few hundred members. YesCymru has – or had until very recently – 18,500 members.

If Undod protests about US involvement in Laputa they will be dismissed as ‘the usual suspects’. By which will be meant a tiny minority unwilling to come to terms with a liberal democracy and a market economy.

But, if YesCymru demands that the US withdraws its troops from Laputa then the public response might be different. It won’t be, ‘Them lefty nutters!’, it’ll be, ‘Oh, hang on, there’s somebody in YesCymru who works with me – tidy bloke’.

And this is why the Left wanted to take over YesCymru – credibility. And not just with the public, but also with the media, and with politicians.

However . . .

Since the takeover, resistance to it has grown as people who joined YesCymru to work for independence see the organisation’s energies – and money? – dissipated on causes that should have nothing whatsoever to do with YesCymru.

Not least because above and beyond the more general Leftist agenda there are other issues causing concern. First, is the obsession – and that is not too strong a word – with ‘trans rights’. Then there is the growing realisation that some of those involved in the takeover, and their allies, are very unpleasant people.

Very unpleasant indeed. With quite a few of them absolutely unhinged. And those who encourage and exploit them are of course unwilling to rein them in.

One of the new members of the YesCymru Central Committee is Rachel Cooze of Swansea.

Rachel appears on OnlyFans, an online pornography site. Here’s a recent WalesOnline piece that might give you a better idea of what OnlyFans offers.

Some will disapprove of a YesCymru Central Committee member being involved in that kind of thing, others will rush to her defence . . . ‘How is a working-class girl supposed to make money?’ I’m sure there are a million answers, but we don’t have the time . . .

Though the reason Rachel Cooze is coming under pressure now is not – as her defenders pretend – because she is a sex worker, but because she joined in a second attack on Dr Dilys Davies and linked it with her sex work. This second attack was instigated to get Dr Davies removed from the Central Committee ahead of May’s AGM.

To explain. From what I can gather, punters pay money to see Rachel Cooze and others ‘perform’ on OnlyFans. In April she offered a ‘Happy Fuck Off Dilys Day’ discount voucher, the kind of thing you get from your local supermarket.

Well, perhaps not quite.

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The renewed attacks on Dr Davies were set in train by Aled Gwyn Williams of Maesteg, something of a guru to those being discussed here. Over Easter he made a trip to Ceredigion in order to provoke Dr Davies into doing something out of which her suspension from YC’s Central Committee could be contrived.

This trip is covered in ‘Hopes of Welsh independence being jeopardised by the hard left’. With photos!

Here’s another photo; this one shows Aled Gwyn Williams with Rachel Cooze.

The person on the right has had her face pixelated. She doesn’t really look like that. Click to enlarge

Rachel Cooze’s reward for sticking it to Dr Davies may have been membership of the Central Committee, to which she was duly elected at the rigged AGM on May 22.

Rachel Cooze’s position within YesCymru must surely now be untenable, as must the positions of those who drew her into the conspiracy against Dr Davies, and those who persist in supporting her despite the evidence.

Among his other qualities Aled is forthright . . . especially after a few drinkies.

Here’s an example I was sent today that is completely in keeping with our hero’s behaviour: “Looks like Aled has a habit of saying “f**k off” to women on Twitter and deleting tweets. He told C—– H—– to “f**k off” at 12:06 am and by 9 ish this morning the tweet had gone….It was there at 8 ish this morning. By the looks of it he spent some time in a pub yesterday too…”.

Some previous examples of Aled Gwyn Williams’ chivalry. Where are the troubadours when you need one? Click to enlarge

The latest news on Dr Dilys Davies’ suspension is that her appeal was heard on Tuesday and the final decision on whether she’s re-admitted will rest with . . . the Central Committee! The very people who engineered her suspension.

No, I am not making this up!

Iestyn ap Rhobert was a YesCymru founder and served as Secretary until withdrawing just before this year’s AGM.

Iestyn ap Rhobert had a bit more to say about his own position today in this Twitter thread. It’s worth reading.

Motions 1 and 2 to which Iestyn ap Rhobert refers – and which I mentioned earlier – were put before the last AGM:

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Motions ensuring that as many as possible of YesCymru’s decision makers are non-binary, transsexual, and belong to other ‘oppressed’ minorities. In this set-up there is little room for straight White people . . . unless they’re pulling the strings.

When I started writing about the shenanigans in YesCymru, and wondering who Rachel Cooze was, she put out a message to my Twitter followers asking them to unfollow me.

She asked others to put out the same lies, among them Tessa Marshall of Cardiff. I’d never never heard of Marshall before this, and she certainly didn’t know me. But that didn’t stop her going even further than Cooze.

On Wednesday Marshall was back, defending Rachel Cooze. And attacking Dr Dilys Davies, someone else she doesn’t know.

Tess Marshall is still retweeting Stonewall. Reminding us that much of what I’m writing about is a desperate, rear-guard action by those who know they’re on the losing side.

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These people are no different to members of a cult. They are incapable of reasoned argument, so they scream slogans. Their world is black and white, without nuance. Everything is exaggerated: they always feel ‘unsafe’, words are violence, any attempt to engage or debate is ‘harassment’, ‘fascists’ are no longer hiding under the bed – they’re trying to jump in with you like some jackbooted incubi belting out the Horst Wessel Lied.

But then, all manner of strange behaviour is to be found with these people. Some of it truly disturbing, to the point where you wonder how twisted a mind has to be to produce such filth. Take this for example, addressed to a boy of 18 who had recently lost his mother.

This came with illustrations. I’ve spared you those. Click to enlarge

The person who wrote is also 18. It’s a boy wanting to be a girl or a girl wanting to a boy. Either way, the confusion has clearly affected ‘George’, and made him / her both irrational and vicious. Which is something encountered time and again when dealing with Wokies and those obsessed with gender issues.

Despite these obvious and troubling problems, ‘George Brown’ is the vice chair of YesCymru’s LGBT Committee. And was recently defended by Montgomeryshire’s answer to Rasputin, Ben Gwalchmai.

For even though Gwalchmai is a relatively intelligent individual, a member of the Labour Party (and of course, Momentum), he knows that unhinged individuals like ‘George’ have paved his crew’s way to control of YesCymru. And it’s not time to ditch them, yet.

In other news . . . YesCymru Chair, Siôn Jobbins has been missing since Monday. Or at least, his Twitter account was closed on that day.

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So what does the future hold for YesCymru?

THE ROAD AHEAD

Last Saturday there was a meeting of the Central Committee. At the meeting was YesCymru’s Diversity and Inclusivity Officer, Jessica – formerly Matthew – Harvey, who harangued Andrew O’Brien of Port Talbot for daring to suggest that YC should focus on independence.

Didn’t he realise that the streets of Wales ran red with the blood of trans martyrs! Ripped limb from limb by TERF mobs! Where were his priorities?

Soon after, Andrew O’Brien resigned from the Central Committee. Here’s the statement he issued:

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Andrew O’Brien is a decent, level-headed guy from the steel town of Port Talbot. The sort of man that Plaid Cymru has struggled to recruit, but YesCymru was able to attract. But is now alienating.

It is reported that just one member of the Central Committee spoke up in defence of Andrew O’Brien, so this man’s days on the CC may also be numbered.

Which leaves Niki Jones, who is hanging on by her fingertips. Niki could not attend last Saturday’s Politburo lecture. Though I’m sure she can empathise with Andrew O’Brien because she too has been attacked by people inside YesCymru aided by their social media allies. To the point where it is now a matter for the police.

There’s an irony in the fact that the Far Left, using its Woke foot-soldiers, has finally captured YesCymru; yet as they settle in, hoping to take advantage of their success – the whole thing starts falling apart!

We are at the stage now where YesCymru is alienating people so fast, and bringing the idea of independence into such disrepute, that if the Central Committee is not working for the British state then it is certainly doing the work of the British state.

In his statement, Andrew O’Brien asked, “Who is it who is actually guiding the direction that YesCymru is currently taking”.

A good question. Here’s my answer.

Wales may be at a constitutional crossroads, even First Minister Drakeford is dropping hints about an unbalanced Union not working for Wales. Others sense that Wales may be closer to independence now than at any time since Glyndŵr’s day.

Having captured YesCymru the Far Left has a credibility and influence that would never be bestowed by the ballot box. This gives the Marxists a platform from which to not only influence events in the here and now but also, should independence be achieved, the development of the new state.

More credibility and influence than Undod could ever hope for under its own banner.

CONCLUSION

From my observations, from what I’m being told, and from what insiders are now making public, YesCymru has become TransCymru, and should be allowed to drift away to irrelevance.

I believe TransCymru is too far gone to save. Any attempt would be lengthy and acrimonious, would almost certainly involve lawyers (which those holding the YesCymru purse-strings could afford), and attract the attention of Wales’ enemies in London and elsewhere. All of which would damage the independence cause.

A new organisation is needed. One rooted in Wales. An organisation that will speak out on the real world issues that affect our people; and by doing this build up support for independence, through proving commitment to Welsh people and their physical rather than their imaginary communities.

We must start again. And this time – get it right.

♦ end ♦



A guest post on . . . YesCymru!

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY SOON AFTER THIS YEAR’S SENEDD ELECTIONS. POSTINGS WILL NOW BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

This week’s offering is a short guest post on an organisation currently providing a great deal of entertainment and amusement. To which I’ve added a contribution of my own.

You only have to remind yourself of the sort of people now running this three-ring circus to immediately understand why so many people are spellbound.

I am of course referring to YesCymru.

Now read on . . .

With the dust and smoke from YesCymru’s AGM on 22 May still thick on the social media battlefield, we can now look forward to another election to the Politburo. This time it’s for the post of Secretary, and first out of the traps is Scott Mackay from Swansea.

Scott’s brief moment in the sun on Twitter as he announced his decision to stand quickly clouded over as he was reminded of some of his more recent pronouncements:

In other words, those unhappy with the direction the movement has taken are just a bunch of far-right fashies, with their “almost entirely baseless” complaints.

Whatever message Scott chooses for his campaign, it seems pretty clear that he does not see himself as a unifying peacemaker.

It won’t surprise readers to learn that Scott has the enthusiastic support of our old friend Aled Williams (and Teifi by proxy):

With an endorsement from the man who has done more to wreck the independence movement than anyone else alive, Scott should be home and dry.

UPDATE (by Jac): Scott Mackay yesterday issued an apology . . . of sorts.

The last week was not without its lighter moments as whoever is handling the movement’s Twitter account mysteriously announced “What a great idea” in response to a tweet that many members found themselves unable to read.

It turned out that the message called on members to meet up in railway stations to campaign and that it came from Rachel Cooze, one of the recently elected central committee members. La Cooze and YesCymru had momentarily forgotten that, in a demonstration of her commitment to inclusivity, she has blocked a huge swathe of the membership from her Twitter account.

Complaints rolled in from disgruntled punters who had never had any interaction with her, but had been blocked anyway.

The effect that this has on potential new YesCymru members when they discover they have been blocked by a senior representative of the movement is not hard to predict. Whatever Rachel Cooze’s objectives are, maintaining and growing the membership are not on the list.

Perhaps recognising that using a personal Twitter account to transact YesCymru business has its drawbacks, Ben Gwalchmai recently announced he was setting up a second account to deal exclusively with YC matters.

Ben has set his Twitter account to autodelete every 24 hours, but an eagle-eyed passer-by did manage to spot this intriguing message on his personal account (you know, the one that doesn’t deal with YC matters):

“KatieMonVie” is a peripheral member of the group which has risen to prominence within YC, but she won’t be joining YC until it has been purged of all transphobes, TERFs, fashies, etc., etc.

So what had rattled her cage?

After a little prompting, Katie revealed that the dodgy, ableist, transphobic and now homophobic committee member concerned was Niki Jones, and that Niki’s latest crime was to like a tweet from someone wondering why Aled Williams seems to have become the voice of the Indy movement:

Fair enough, “the don” could have used slightly more polished English, and the use of “it” was either a little careless or just a clumsy attempt to use inclusive non-binary pronouns, but a lot of people are asking the same question.

Clearly, Ben made a note of this outrage, and no doubt the matter will be raised when the central committee undergoes compulsory diversity and inclusivity training:

The movement’s new LGBTQ+ three-step process was excitedly announced by Comrade Gwalchmai as an example of his drive for increased “transparency and professionalism” by the movement’s leadership.

Quite how this will make the Politburo more transparent, let alone professional, is not clear, but only cynics would see this new process as a mechanism for weeding out members and committee members who are found guilty of being on La Cooze’s blocked list.

Meanwhile, writing from London where she edits Bricks Magazine, “an independent queer led publication rerouting the intersections between fashion and our precarious social systems”, another member of the central committee, Tori West, has announced that she is going on strike less than a month after being re-elected:

Ymlaen!

— ♦ —

Jac adds . . .

Those being written about here used to depict me as some rare and malevolent presence. A lone voice howling into the void.

In the past few months they’ve been made to realise that not only I am not alone, but that they are far less popular than they once believed. With the result that Twitter accounts have been closed, tweets deleted and, as we saw with Scott Mackay, apologies issued.

These things would never have happened just a few months ago when Aled and Teifi could saunter around Ceredigion cocking their legs against ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’ walls and growling at Dr Dilys Davies.

(But it couldn’t last. She’s back. Come on, where’s she gonna post her selfies?)

Not only is a pillar of their belief system collapsing as Stonewall is dismantled, but in addition they draw the contempt of decent people because so many of them are just very unpleasant. And extreme in their beliefs.

Our guest writer referred to YesCymru Central Committee member Rachel Cooze blocking people on Twitter. Many of these would have committed the crime of following me. For Cooze and some allies went through my Twitter followers requesting they stop following me.

But someone Cooze or one of her allies contacted went even further.

Who the hell is ‘Tess’, linked with #SavetheNorthernMeadows, and why is she saying these lies about me? She doesn’t even know me!

The answer is that she is Tessa Hannah Marshall, of Cardiff, and clearly involved with the Save Cardiff Northern Meadows campaign. Her Linkedin profile tells us that she’s part of the UpRising Leadership organisation, an English third sector body that views Wales as a region of England.

More specifically, Marshall seems to be involved with the Environmental Leadership Programme (ELP). But now it gets a wee bit odd.

The plan to put the new Velindre cancer centre on Cardiff’s Northern Meadows is ‘Welsh Government’ policy. Yet the UpRising / ELP presence in Wales is in partnership with Labour-run Cardiff City Council, and is a ‘delivery partner’ for the Future Generations Commissioner, who is of course Labour time-server, Sophie Howe.

‘Diversity’, ‘inclusion’. Now where have we heard that? Click to enlarge.

Are Cardiff council and the Future Generations Commissioner helping protesters against a ‘Welsh Government’s policy? Or is this some cunning game in which the Labour Party is on both sides, and therefore can’t lose?

Or another example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

Either way, yet more Welsh public funding is wasted on Woke-Left-Green ‘activists’.

It might be significant that Tessa Marshall has written for the Undod blog, because in its short life Undod has become the mother church for leftist extremists in Wales.

No doubt I shall be attacked for ‘harassing’ or ‘doxxing’ Tessa Marshall. Because in the demi-monde of the Woke-Left people can be slandered with impunity; ‘targets’ can be vilified, and in other ways attacked. But defend yourself, or expose what ugly people they are, and the pack will feign outrage before turning on you.

After studying those involved in trying to take over YesCymru, and slander anyone who dares to criticise them, I detect three categories.

First, we have those claiming to be socialists, even communists. Often embittered individuals who maybe can’t understand why their 2:2 in Media Studies didn’t land them that £70k job.

Second, we have the sexuality / gender-obsessed. These can be ‘uncomfortable’ gays and lesbians. They can also be confused young people, and even those who have transitioned.

Third, we have those who pay lip service to the causes espoused by Categories 1 and 2 but also enjoy saying and doing things to outrage people. (As long as Mam and Dad don’t find out!)

Members of Category 1 exploit members of Category 2 who regard members of Category 1 as friends and protectors. Many of both Categories see themselves as involved in some noble crusade. While those in Category 3 are just there for the craic.

If you put them all together you’d be hard-pressed to find many rounded, reasonable, and successful individuals in sound mental health.

And that’s why their hold on the indy movement must be broken.

♦ end ♦



YesCymru, the beginning of the end?

I’M IN SEMI-RETIREMENT AND THIS BLOG IS WINDING DOWN. I INTEND CALLING IT A DAY SOON AFTER THIS YEAR’S SENEDD ELECTIONS. POSTINGS WILL NOW BE LESS FREQUENT AND I WILL NOT UNDERTAKE ANY MAJOR NEW INVESTIGATIONS. DIOLCH YN FAWR.

After recent postings on YesCymru it’s time to analyse what happened at last Saturday’s AGM before considering where it might lead.

DEMOCRACY AND THE LEFT

Let me start by spelling out what happened. And then explain why.

In a nutshell: the left, operating from its bases in Undod and elsewhere, captured YesCymru using its woke ‘guerrillas’ advancing under the smokescreen of ‘diversity’.

Among themselves the leftists justify both the coup and the future direction of travel by claiming that ‘Wales is a socialist country’. A claim supported by pointing to the fact that most of us vote for Labour and Plaid Cymru. Which in turn depends on accepting that a) these parties are indeed socialist and b) all who vote for them are socialists.

Which is just one misconception piled upon another.

While Plaid Cymru could credibly be called a socialist party Labour can be anything you want it to be, certainly the Welsh branch of the party.

As for the voters, most of those who vote Labour in Wales do so out of self-interest, believing Labour will keep taxes low, benefits high, while looking after the NHS. These Labour voters tend to be social conservatives, and most voted for Brexit.

Plaid Cymru is more obviously socialist than Labour, but the distance between the party policy-makers and the party’s voters may be greater than in Labour. People from across the ideological spectrum vote for Plaid Cymru because they want independence, while others – especially in western areas – vote for the party because they see it as the party that best supports the Welsh language.

So, only a minority of those who vote for Labour and Plaid Cymru are socialists. With self-identifying socialists increasingly concentrated in an anti-Brexit, climate conscious, gender-obsessed middle class bubble that every year drifts further away from most Labour and Plaid Cymru voters.

To the point where many on the ‘Welsh’ left now identify better with the English middle class and the metropolitan elite than with working class Welsh people.

It’s important to stress that the Conservative Party does not have this problem. People know exactly what they’re voting for because it does what it says on the tin. (This greatly annoys the left . . . but they still don’t get it!)

The reality of the mismatch was brought home to the comrades in the Plaid Cymru leadership contest of September 2018, when the socialist candidate, and then leader, Leanne Wood, came a poor third in a three-horse race.

That election was open to all members of the party. The left has not made the same mistake again.

In the Plaid Cymru party conference held in Swansea just over a year later only those present in the venue – just over 500 people – were allowed to vote. (And it was ensured that the ‘right’ people were in attendance.)

I covered these shenanigans in ‘Plaid Cymru, where to now?’

Which meant that most party members were effectively disenfranchised even though a postal ballot could easily have been organised, as was done with the leadership contest the previous year.

The scheming involved was so obvious that academic and writer Seimon Brooks was moved to compare the 2019 result with that of the previous year. While Alwyn ap Huw described the machinations as a Stalinist coup.

“2021 Plaid Government”. 🤣 Click to enlarge

These Plaid Cymru votes from 2018 and 2019 explain why YesCymru did not allow a postal ballot for the Central Committee elections and motions submitted to last Saturday’s AGM.

Instead, debate was restricted to 400 or so logged in to the online deliberations. Representing less than 3% of the 18,500 members.

Yes, Alwyn, another Stalinist coup.

Though, as you know, I’m a generous old bugger, so I’ll give YesCymru a chance to explain why it couldn’t organise a postal ballot.

I don’t expect an answer because I already know it – the left cannot afford open and fair elections because it knows it will lose. 

Proving that there is nothing new in all the world. For this is how the old Communist Party used to operate in places I worked over 50 years ago. Call a meeting at short notice, at a time and place awkward for most people but for which your people are ready. At the meeting, control the agenda, decide who can and can’t speak, and then – make sure you count the votes.

What the left did with Plaid Cymru in October 2019 and YesCymru last Saturday is the old Communist Party playbook updated for the 21st century.

BRAVE NEW WORLD

You’ll get a good idea of what sort of people support the takeover from celebratory tweets put out very soon after the AGM. Here are a couple for you to savour.

Click to enlarge

To explain . . .

‘TERF’ means trans-exclusionary radical feminist. A silly and insulting term used to describe any woman who refuses to accept a man with penis and testicles as a woman. In other words, the attitude of most people in the real world.

This is the term that has been constantly used in the recent attacks on Dr Dilys Davies and Plaid Cymru’s Helen Mary Jones.

“Fashy phobes” means fascist transphobes. Because of course, in the black and white world of these fanatics, if you don’t agree with them then you must be a fascist. A transphobe is anyone – usually a man – who agrees with the ‘TERFs’. Roughly 95% of the population.

As of Saturday, who’s running the show?

Three of the four officers are: Siôn Jobbins (Chair); Sarah Rees (Vice-Chair); and Gwyn Llewelyn (Treasurer); all of whom were returned unopposed.

Though Jobbins may not be as secure as being returned unopposed might suggest. Someone sent me this tweet, posted on the very day of the AGM. As you’ll see, @thbuff98 was in an exchange with ‘BVB’, who appears in the panel above.

What does “playing privy” mean?

Jobbins may be too easy-going, and has perhaps not appreciated the approaching danger; so it might be karma if he is the left’s next victim. Though I’m sure he has no connection with the political party Gwlad.

Will this be the excuse used to remove him?

I can’t tell you a lot about Shane Brennan because his election statement to the members has been taken down. Perhaps because he became a shoo-in for Secretary after Iestyn ap Rhobert withdrew.

Though I do know that he first came to Wales to study at Aberystwyth, joined Plaid Cymru around twenty years ago, went home to England to work for a few years, before coming back to Wales to take a job in finance.

He was the Plaid Cymru candidate in the 2011 Assembly elections for the Alyn and Deeside constituency, and supported Leanne Wood for the party leadership.

Now let’s introduce the other members of the Central Committee. I shall do this by providing a link to their election statement supplemented perhaps by a comment.

Most of these statements contain a link to a video by the candidate.

CARYS ELERI (re-elected) Seems to be a performing artist with a YouTube channel.

LLYWELYN AP GWILYM (re-elected) Is the son of Eurfyl ap Gwilym (of Paxman interview fame). I don’t know if he’s in a relationship with Carys Eleri but his Twitter account carries the quote: “A wonderful human”@caryseleri

NIKITA JONES May be one of the more rational among the new intake. Certainly, in her favour is the fact that the wokie jackal pack turned on her just before the AGM. This is often a good sign. Time will tell.

BEN GWALCHMAI Seems to be the head honcho of that bizarre outfit, Labour for an Independent Wales. About as convincing as ‘DUP for a United Ireland’.

As I’ve pointed out before, Labour for an Independent Wales is quite clear about its objective: “Socialism through independence”. Meaning independence is only desirable if it delivers socialism.

Does that mean that if an independent Wales votes to not be socialist Gwalchmai and his mates will campaign for re-joining whatever is left of the UK? Especially if there’s a Labour government in Westminster?

TORI WEST (re-elected) Is another artist. In this ‘get to know . . . ‘ piece from Dazed digital magazine in June 2020 there’s no mention of Wales, let alone Welsh independence. Which is odd, seeing as West was on the YC Central Committee.

(But then, as a number of people have pointed out, independence wasn’t mentioned during Saturday’s AGM either.)

Soon after the AGM West put out this rather worrying tweet.

Spare a thought for “marginalised Welsh creatives”. 😥

I describe it as worrying because a possible motive for takeover I’ve avoided mentioning until now – despite numerous people suggesting it – is YesCymru’s money. The balance sheet given at the AGM showed an annual income of £365,413, expenditure of £156,792; with almost £198,348 in the bank, and stock valued at £23,500.

(As one of those “marginalised Welsh creatives” I shall of course be applying for a grant.)

ANDREW O’BRIEN Comes from Port Talbot, he’s a Swans fan (which is obviously in his favour), and seems to want independence with no distractions. Time will tell.

RACHEL COOZE Perhaps the kindest thing to say about Rachel Cooze is that she comes from Swansea. Other than that, she seems to have ordered every dish on the Woke menu. To the point where she now sees YesCymru as the agency to rid Wales of the fascists, racists, transphobes, etc that are everywhere. Everywhere!

Cooze appeared prominently in an earlier post, ‘Hopes of Welsh independence being jeopardised by the hard left’.

ELIN HYWEL Seems to live a relatively quiet life. She has written for far left Undod (not encouraging) but I can’t tell you much more about her.

UPDATE 27.05.2021: This tweet, and the fact that is was re-tweeted by Mark Hooper, strongly suggests that Elin Hywel also belongs to the woke left.

In addition, YesCymru now has two full-time officials. One, the Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Jessica (formerly Matthew) Harvey, is a transsexual woman. While the other, the Campaigns Officer, is Harriet Protheroe-Soltani, of Momentum.

They complement each other perfectly because the issue nowadays for the far left is ‘transsexual rights’. With the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights being controlled by hard left Momentum.

The AGM also agreed to create an Equality and Diversity Sub-committee.

Why no place for straight white bloggers?

Put it all together and if it doesn’t convince you of the direction YesCymru is headed, then you must be a bit dim or part of the problem.

Click to enlarge

Or maybe this will help. Put out late last night by the ‘Communalism or Barbarism’ Twitter account.

First, it somehow conflates the left’s takeover of YesCymru with the recent Senedd elections, and presents the result in the manner of a Wikipedia entry on a war or a battle.

Some of the ‘combatants’ are unknown to me, and I’m not sure that all those on the side of the left would welcome their inclusion in those ranks.

Like those behind it, it’s puerile, amusing, even superficially clever; but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Though it confirms and celebrates that the left has taken over YesCymru . . . but justifies it by arguing that YC has been saved from fascism!

For as I suggested earlier, when dealing with these extremists you soon learn that everyone who opposes them, and everyone they attack, is a fascist. So that makes it OK.

‘Fascist’ has been devalued to a catch-all term for a political opponent. I’m not sure who benefits from this devaluation, except perhaps, genuine fascists.

Here’s a link to a pdf version of the tweet.

BEGINNING OF THE END?

Regular readers will know that I’m not a big fan of Nation.Cymru, but my attention was drawn to something  published on that site last Saturday, almost certainly to coincide with the YesCymru AGM.

Penned by Ifan Morgan Jones it had the catchy title: The big question YesCymru needs to answer is: ‘What went right in 2020?’ The important section is worth quoting in full:

“I think that changing YesCymru’s central tenet as a neutral movement would be a big mistake, for a few reasons:

Firstly, while I agree that independence for the sake of it would be pointless, no kind of independence is independence for the sake of it. Any kind would transfer more democratic power away from an established political elite at Westminster and into the hands of the people of Wales. There is no independence ‘for the sake of it’ – it’s a massive constitutional upheaval in itself and will radically change how Wales is run. Either that is, in and of itself, a fundamentally good idea or YesCymru should stop campaigning now because nothing beyond that is guaranteed.

Secondly, because nothing beyond independence is guaranteed, no one can honestly promise a single vision of an independent Wales to the people of the nation. The future ideological direction of an independent Wales would be chosen by the people of Wales, at a Senedd election after the referendum, not by any promises made by YesCymru beforehand. As much as I would personally like to see a socialist, progressive independent Wales, that’s dependent not just on independence but the public deciding, in an independent Wales, to throw their weight behind socialist, progressive parties.

Thirdly, there is no guarantee that selling a particular ideological vision to the people of Wales would be in any way effective. While everyone in YesCymru may have an idea of what a post-independence Wales would look like, they’re likely to all have different ones, and backing one of them would alienate others. As Plaid Cymru demonstrated at the recent Senedd election, voters don’t necessarily want a laundry list of specific promises. In fact, the party with the vaguest manifesto of all ended up winning.”

The fraction of YesCymru members that voted at Saturday’s AGM didn’t heed those wise words. Those who now control YesCymru intend promoting a plethora of diversionary concerns, and independence will soon be relegated to just another issue, or dropped altogether.

You’ve already read Tori West suggesting that those in control start divvying up the YesCymru money among their friends. Sorry! “marginalised Welsh creatives”.

Someone else quick off the blocks was ‘Kemp’, of @YesYBynie.

And so it begins . . . Click to enlarge

Can anyone explain what this has to do with the campaign for an independent Wales? And where will the money come from to pay ‘contributors’? (And I bet there’ll be no mention of Abram Wood.)

As I’ve said before, Yes Y Bynie (Bynea) is a one-woman show, set up because she found YesCymru Llanelli to be uncongenial, as it’s membership is made up of level-headed people who want to focus on independence.

But perhaps the most important reason that YesCymru is heading down a blind alley is because of recent developments around protected characteristics and related matters.

To explain (as best I can) . . .

I’m sure you’ve heard of Stonewall. In recent years this LGBTQ+ organisation has built up a great business advising government departments, police forces, universities, private companies, and other bodies on matters sexual and gender related.

But recent developments have exposed Stonewall to be both partisan and dishonest.

The problem is one that Stonewall brought on itself by becoming fixated with trans issues. Sound familiar?

Stonewall’s promotion of ‘trans rights’ resulted in academics being ‘no-platformed’, feminists and others being hounded as ‘TERFs’ and ‘transphobes’, and lies being told about ‘persecution’ suffered by trans people.

It all came crashing down last week with a number of announcements. These included:

Stonewall had been telling lies to Essex University. This resulted in the university being forced into apologising to two academics for them being no-platformed following protests by trans extremists egged on by Stonewall.

As this article from the Spectator put it: “Both professors Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman have views which accord with our current laws on gender identity”. But Stonewall was deliberately misinterpreting the law to serve its trans agenda.

Other organisations severed their links with Stonewall and yesterday the Guardian, in this report, told us that the Equality and Human Rights Commission would no longer be linked to Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme.

You know how far Stonewall has fallen when it tries to get a Black lesbian lawyer sacked.

And so it was no surprise to read that the Stonewall UK media director was standing back due to a ‘tsunami of transphobia’. The truth is of course that he’s leaving because Stonewall has been caught out in lies.

But that can’t be admitted, so it has to be ‘transphobia’. Which, if you think about it, should be a reason for staying, because isn’t ‘transphobia’ what Stonewall is fighting?

It would be reasonable therefore to conclude that Stonewall has capitulated.

At the head of this section, and in the title of this posting, I suggest that YesCymru could be heading for the rocks, and there are two main reasons for me thinking this.

First, following the AGM, YesCymru is firmly under the control of ishoo-mongers, obsessives, and the hard left. These will insist on YC fighting on many different fronts, thereby dissipating its energies and making enemies unnecessarily.

Second, the one issue that unites the dangerous and intolerant fanatics that hounded Helen Mary Jones and Dr Dilys Davies, the jackal pack that piles in on its victims, is ‘trans rights’. That’s because the hard left has weaponised this issue.

With the left having relied on Stonewall for guidance and credibility, and Stonewall now itself discredited, dismissing legitimate critics of certain trans lunacies as TERFs and transphobes will no longer work. The scam is exposed.

Put the two together and we see that the present Central Committee is now on the wrong side of history. But it’s still a tragedy for YesCymru. That said, those at the top had plenty of warnings, and time enough to lance the boil.

Perhaps Ifan Morgan Jones should start working on, ‘The big question YesCymru needs to answer is: “What went wrong in 2021?”‘

♦ end ♦