This week’s piece about wildlife trusts and environmental groups complements what I put out last week about the assorted river charities.
For both seem to be funded to shield Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) and others from criticism by blaming livestock farmers for all river pollution. Also, to pursue the so-called ‘Welsh Government’s Net Zero lunacy and, in so doing, serve the globalist agenda.
With a few twists.
Wildlife and environmental groups tend to contain more ‘zealots’, which results in hysteria, and a readiness to tell lies. Which in this context is often accompanied by a thinly-disguised contempt for Wales and Welsh identity.
One example might be the charity Wildlife Trusts Wales (WTW) choosing to dissolve itself, while the local trusts for which it served as the umbrella organisation joined England’s Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. You’ll learn more about this as you read on.
As I say, there will be similarities with last week’s piece, but also differences. And I promise a bit more in the way of polemic. Ol’ Jac gonna let rip!
It’s fairly big, so go make a mug of something before settling down to enjoy it.
♦
WHO’S WHO IN THE FLEECE JACKETS
Let’s start by looking at the organisational setup.
As I said in the intro, Wildlife Trusts Wales recently put itself out of business so that the five regional trusts – North, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, South and West, Gwent – could become full members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT).
Explained at the foot of page 1 in the 2021 WTW accounts.
The clip below from the Charity Commission entry tells us that the RSWT now views Wales and England as a single unit, whereas Scotland and Northern Ireland are treated separately. Even the Isle of Man gets more respect than us.
But then, when you surrender your separate identity this is what you can expect.
And yet, the pretence of an independent existence is maintained by a Wildlife Trusts Wales website. Where WTW describes itself as: ‘one of five Wildlife Trusts in Wales’ which, again, makes no sense. Yes, there are five, I just listed them, and they’re all area specific, so where and how does WTW fit in?
It’s all very confusing. Perhaps deliberately so.
At the foot of the WTW website home page we are given Companies House and Charity Commission numbers. The latter draws a blank because the charity was closed March 31, 2021. While the Companies House entry tells us that the company voluntarily dissolved earlier this year.
So why hasn’t the information on the website been updated? If it’s claimed WTW still exists, then what form does that existence take?
And what happened to the money?
Well, the final accounts for the WTW (y/e 31.03.2021) seem to show, at the foot of page 19, that the cash left when the company folded was divvied up among four of the five trusts I mentioned earlier.
Brecknock received nowt because it had not long before merged with the South and West Wales Wildlife Trust, which for some reason was itself left out. (Why didn’t ‘Brecknock’ make the obvious merger, with Radnorshire? Or why not a Powys trust?)
You’ll see that £234,320 went to the ‘All Wales Conservation Strategy’. Does anyone know what that is? I’ve tried Googling but nothing comes up. Do the funders know where their money’s going?
The more I thought about this wildlife trusts reconfiguration the stranger it appeared. I mean, just think about it.
Before devolution we had local wildlife trusts with Wildlife Trusts Wales serving as the umbrella body. Yet now, when wildlife trusts deal with Y Senedd, when there’s separate Welsh funding, different legislation, they do away with their national body in order to, effectively, become English wildlife trusts.
This move makes no sense on any rational or practical level. How then can it be explained? I really would like to know.
Whatever ethereal form Wildlife Trusts Wales now takes the wraith clearly retains the strength to use a Twitter account. Here’s a gem put out on Monday.
To describe Wales as ‘one of the most nature depleted countries in the world’ is hysterical nonsense and an insult to us as a nation.
While suggesting that farming is to blame rather gives the game away.
The image used in the tweet comes from this source, linked with Denmark farm, near Lampeter, where we find another gang of alien envirogrifters. A farming source tells me the allegation made in the image may be libellous.
The Denmark Farm Conservation Centre has gone the way of so many outfits that appear on this blog – it was Dissolved earlier this year. With two outstanding charges.
◊
FILTHY LUCRE
We saw in last week’s piece that river charities saw a remarkable increase in official funding at the very time Minister for Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths (and Gary) was formulating her draconian and ‘unworkable’ NVZ legislation.
Such propinquity!
Well, no. It’s explained by the fact that Lesley (and Gary) wanted a stream of pollution stories in order to justify that NVZ legislation.
Stories that were also music to the ears of Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water) bosses, because it deflected attention from the water company’s pollution.
We see something very similar in wildlife trusts.
Let’s start with the North Wales Wildlife Trust. Where total income more than doubled between 2017 and 2021. The largest element of that increase is (in various forms) government funding, up from £180,440 in 2017 to £1,970,000 in 2021.
Plus assets of around £3m.
A ten-fold increase in government funding will support a few beavers.
The picture at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust shows a more modest but still healthy increase in funding. To which we must also add assets pushing £3m.
Moving south we come to the intriguing anomaly of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust. Intriguing for in the old 13-county arrangement you will recall that Radnorshire was quite small in size and had the lowest population of all our counties.
But the local wildlife trust paints a different picture. Total income doubled between 2017 and 2021 and there are assets of over £2m. There were no assets in 2019.
The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales has seen income increase by 50% in the period we’re looking at, but government grants increased from £21,300 in 2017 to £748,050 in 2021. Then throw in assets of some £5m.
Finally, to Gwent. Where income has increased at a more modest rate apart from a huge blip in 2018 accounted for by Heritage Lottery funding for a project on the Gwent Levels. But with assets around the three million pound mark.
So everything looks just tickety-boo on the financial front for our English-registered wildlife trusts.
◊
BARE-FACED LIES
I am indebted to one of the few honest journalists left in Wales for drawing my attention to a disgraceful incident last November, at a hearing of the Senedd’s Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee.
Rachel Sharp of the zombie-like Wildlife Trusts Wales and Wales Environmental Link (WEL) alleged that along with all the other evils livestock farmers are responsible for they also use growth hormones, which eventually end up in our streams and rivers.
The transcript is here (123) and the video here.
The truth is that growth hormones have been banned in the UK since 1981. Welsh livestock farmers do not use growth hormones.
After protests from farming unions and Tory MS Sam Kurtz apologies were issued. But as we’ve come to expect from these envirofanatics it’s never an honest ‘I was wrong’. It’s always qualified, position shifting, hoping the original lie lingers.
But this time they’d gone too far, and it wasn’t just Rachel Sharp telling porkies. Also there representing Wales Environmental Link was Creighton Harvey, also a trustee of Afonydd Cymru Cyf.
Here’s how the Pembrokeshire Herald reported it.
‘The evidence of Ms Sharp’s fellow representative from Wales Environment Link was also riddled with errors.
Creighton Harvey told the Committee that agriculture was the largest polluter of Wales’s watercourses.
The largest polluters are water companies, industrial users, and domestic users’.
So who is Rachel Sharp?
Well, as we know, she’s a trustee of Wales Environmental Link. But this profile from the ‘Welsh Government’ website tells us a bit more. And it’s fascinating.
To begin with, it keeps up the pretence of the defunct Wildlife Trusts of Wales. But concludes by informing us that Rachel Sharp is also ‘a group member of the Welsh Water Independent Environment Advisory Panel’.
So what’s that? Here’s a clue from the Dŵr Cymru website.
We’re told, ‘The Chair is Mari Arthur, Director of Cynal (sic) Cymru’. But Mari Arthur left Cynnal Cymru in July 2018, after just 4 months. Is this another site in need of updating?
Mari Arthur now runs Mari Arthur Marketing, but hasn’t yet registered it as a company. Among her clients we find Cynnal Cymru. Also, joined-at-the-hip ‘Welsh Government’ and Cardiff University.
Her other companies include Afallen LLP and Tetrimteas Cyf.
If the name Mari Arthur rings a bell it’s because she so badly damaged Plaid Cymru in Llanelli, a seat the party had been nurturing since the days of the great Carwyn James.
She was forced on the constituency party by her friends in both Plaid Cymru and Labour. For in the Corruption Bay circles in which Mari Arthur moves party labels mean little as long as you’re ‘on the right side of history’.
The Independent Environmental Advisory Panel is clearly a group that allows Dŵr Cymru and envirozealots to agree their narratives in the war on livestock farmers and draw attention away from Dŵr Cymru itself, the biggest culprit.
There should be no place in Welsh public life for Rachel Sharp of the mythical Wales Wildlife Trusts, the all too corporeal Wales Environmental Link, and the Dŵr Cymru claque in the laughably named Independent Environmental Advisory Panel.
I suspect Rachel Sharp’s mask slipped last November when she forgot where she was; because when she and others of her ilk usually talk with politicians and civil servants – and of course, Dŵr Cymru – they tend to reinforce each other’s self-serving prejudices about livestock farmers.
But she’ll survive. For she has powerful friends, among those who’ve been elected, and those we’ve never heard of.
∼
Another name that caught my eye among the Wales Environmental Link luminaries was Natalie Buttriss, whose Linkedin profile (here in pdf) tells us she’s ‘Director of Wales The Woodland Trust’. This outfit previously used the name Coed Cadw for its Welsh operations, but this pandering to the indigenes seems to have been dropped.
Native of Bristol Buttriss was in at the start of the Summit to Sea land grab. For which she appeared on this blog four years ago in The Welsh Clearances. Her contempt for farmers was made obvious in this radio interview with the BBC’s Farming Today.
I have always believed that Buttriss was so arrogant, so dismissive of the interests of livestock farmers, because she believed she had the full support of the ‘Welsh Government’.
For in that interview she suggests that subsidies would be withheld or cut to make farmers fall into line. She wouldn’t have said that unless certain Bay politicians had promised to play the heavies.
The ‘Welsh Government’s hand was not revealed because the opposition to Summit to Sea made backers like Rewilding Britain pull out and the whole thing seemed to fall apart.
Or maybe it’s still out there, lurking in the undergrowth, waiting to re-emerge.
As we know, climate alarmists have too much influence with the media, partly through having brainwashed two generations of schoolchildren and college students, and partly through funding – ever wondered why Bill Gates gives money to the BBC?
Or perhaps, more pertinently, why the BBC is allowed to accept his funding?
But the propagandising is not confined to the BBC.
∼
Last Friday ITV’s Wales at Six ran a piece about cooperation between the Rhug Estate and the Welsh Dee Trust. A relatively harmless little filler.
But the newsreader, Andrea Byrne, dropped into the report: “Rivers like the Wye and the Usk are virtually dead and no longer able to support an abundance of fish like trout and salmon and other wildlife“.
Bizarre, and completely untrue. But from where did ITV Wales get that lie?
Because if it’s true then somebody should tell Harry Legge-Bourke of the Glanusk estate; for he advertises, ‘fantastic fishing on 5 miles of double bank fishing on the River Usk offering day tickets for Trout and Salmon rods’.
No one disputes that these rivers could be healthier, but they’re far from ‘virtually dead’, as ITV Wales would have us believe.
And if these rivers are in decline, then whose fault is that? Because if the finger of guilt is being pointed in the wrong direction to protect the guilty party then things are unlikely to improve.
There is constant financial backing and other support for those who tell lies about livestock farmers from those who benefit from and capitalise on those lies.
I’m often inclined to believe in coincidences. But not this time. What I’m describing is too widespread, across too many sectors.
If it quacks like a duck, and it waddles like a duck . . .
◊
CONCLUSION
The environmental / wildlife / Nature bodies in Wales are like exotic organisms in a Petri dish. Forever growing, dividing, re-forming, changing appearance and colour, and multiplying through the introduction of fresh viruses.
There are many reasons why there should be no further public funding for these groups. You’ve read some of those reasons here. But Sebastian and Claudia needn’t go without because there are plenty of funding streams they could tap into.
For example, and seeing as they’re promoting the agendas of the UN and WEF, one possibility must be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Another option would be George Soros. Contact details can be had from Coleg Soros in Talgarth, where environmental and wildlife groups already have many contacts.
Bottom line, and last word . . .
It’s obscene that a country – especially our country – gives tens of millions of pounds every year for truth-averse zealots to enjoy sinecures fretting over toads and butterflies while our people die because ambulances don’t turn up.
♦ end ♦
Has Wales really been under socialism for a century? For most of those years Westminster wasn’t run by left-wing governments. We’ve had a puppet parliament running some affairs here since ’99, but with nowhere near the remit to be able to seize the means of production and have everything run by the ‘people’ (AKA an at-present non-existent state). Whatever Carwyn, Drakey et al are, they’re not exactly at the helm of the USSR are they?
At ground level it’s been Labour all the way, and for most of the time more socialist than the crew in the Bay have ever been.
Confusion here between “socialism” and “Cronyism”. The latter is not necessarily restricted to socialists or pseudo socialists but here in Wales it became far more prevalent within those of an interventionist busybody inclination. Seldom effective at anything other than filling wallets of the minority who managed to climb on board the wagon. Since 1999 we have seen the development of a far more sinister form of interventionist mindset more concerned with how we think, our preferences and attitudes. Those who deem themselves arbiters of good taste in such matters have tended to regard themselves as socialists but really their behaviours clearly indicate that they are selfish creepy bastards – dictatorial fascists – whose sole aim is to constrain the freedoms of choice enjoyed by others in the name of some “greater good”. A Pseudo socialism that continues to evolve largely unchecked here in Wales. With more funds it would get even more extravagant and remote from reality.
Couple of Jac’s tweets caught my eye.
– Michelle Mone can keep her seat in the Lords for all I care. However she ought to be made to repay the amount of money she obtained for delivering non conforming PPE and any other supplies over a timescale equal to the timescale of the performance of the supply contract. i.e if her contract lasted 12 months then she should repay in 12 monthly instalments. Greedy bitch, and blaming management or staff is no defence.
– Plaid Cymru has a real problem with perverts “feasting” on other members of staff. So far only Rhys Ap Owen has been named as the subject of an investigation and he may prove innocent. However given the volume of noise over the other undisclosed victims and alleged perps it seems that Plaid has dug itself into a hole by spending far too much time on niche issues like gender flexing, shirt lifting, and who knows may have already branched out into a more “relaxed” view on kiddie fiddling. Maybe the startchy old fuckers who used to run Plaid were more in touch with the priorities of us plebs out in the electorate.
Most of the public I meet are more concerned about ensuring a few square meals a week, controlling the usage of energy and controlling other costs and would dearly love politicians who are actively doing something rather than standing on their soapboxes squealing virtuous claptrap while undermining what’s left of our way of life.
The latest case in Plaid involves a high-ranking official.
Give us a scoop Jac. Time one or more of the bastards was in the stocks
Plaid gropersThis went out on Twitter about a month ago. Hastily taken down, but damage done.
Oh dear me. It looks like those who chose “gay” as a career enhancing option are now finding the world a tough old place. It seems that ageing senior members of said party feel that it’s open season when it comes to playing with junior members’ bits. Compliance with senior members’ more deviant wishes may be a career enhancing move. Sounds more like the sort of party that Jeremy Thorpe would have enjoyed.
Don’t forget Rhys ab Owen MS, he’s old-fashioned enough to have been groping women! And these were real, biological women – without penises! That boy is doomed, and serves him right.
Rhys is finished unless he changes his ways. Engaging in such old hat pastimes as chasing real women is symptomatic of serious irredeemable deviance. No doubt he’ll get shipped off to one of Adam’s reorientation gulags to learn the merits of bearded men in frocks, retrain in shirtlifting techniques and be able to recite the umpteen merits of gender flex hanky panky.
In fairness Jac, Ellan Vannin is much closer to being a sovereign state than we are. Probably akin to the old Irish Free State in terms of autonomy.
Partly because it’s suited certain business interests to maintain the independence of IoM and CI as conduits for money best not associated with London and the City.
Schrodinger’s dependencies. They’re at once autonomous territories outside of parliamentary control and so it’s up to them how they set tax rates and regulate business, and also under the ‘Crown’ so can be made to dance to the tune required.
“Reported” on Nation Cymru – New research will examine the impact of livestock farming on rivers in Wales as part of a major UK-wide study.
“Feshwater ecosystems are facing multiple pressures from a cocktail of pollutants, including chemicals, microplastics, pharmaceuticals, invasive species and land management practices. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) says that as a result, the majority of UK rivers fail to have good ecological status.Only 14% of waterways in England, 46% in Wales, 50% in Scotland and 31% in Northern Ireland reach the threshold.Poor water quality can result in loss of life in the rivers, threaten the structure and stability of the food chain, be dangerous for bathing and lead to enhanced drinking water treatment needs and costs.”
Not one word about the large scale corporate ( Dwr Cymru et al) dumping of human effluent in our water courses and coasts. Biased against agriculture yet governments still consent the increasing industrialisation of the industry.
For info. Copy below of my letter today to WG.
Customer Contact Centre
Welsh Government
Cathays Park
Cardiff
CF10 3NQ
My Ref: NCC/WJ/27
Your Ref:
Date: 28 November 2022
cc:
Dear Customer Contact Team
Subject: Water Quality Failures in Wales
I refer to the above subject and attach copy of consultation document No.55678090 downloaded from Welsh Government website.
The consultation relates to “Water Resources [Control of Agricultural Pollution] [Wales] Regulations 2021” available at the link below.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/wsi/2021/77/contents/made
To enable me to respond to the consultation before the closing date 17 February 2023, I would be grateful if you could arrange to provide me with a copy of the Regulatory Impact Assessment [R I A] undertaken by Welsh Government in support of the Regulations. Thank you.
Yours sincerely
I noticed your tweet dimissing “The English” as wokey crap. Have to admit I’m only 3 episodes in and I’ve quite enjoyed the fact that all the actors look rough as fuck, more like what people probably looked like way back in the 1890’s great Plains. . Except, of course, the lovely Emily Blunt who has to work really hard to look rough! Even the Indian is only part civilized although he speaks well. As for the tale well most Westerns are yarns that stretch way beyond normal credulity. As yet I haven’t come across any gut wrenching examples of diversity, inclusion and equality among the rounds of garroting by wire, back shooting, good archery and shit hot rifle fire.
Not a patch on Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, Lonesome Dove and Josey Wales but, so far, streets ahead of most of the crap churned out by our limpwristed TV media
Speaking of ‘The English’, while there are undoubtedly a great many from up East who’ve moved here and contribute to our society and embrace their adopted home, we can do with a lot less of the likes of this prat:
https://twitter.com/amberweb
The business referenced is very suspect as it has only a token web presence. Either a complete fabrication, or the guy is basically a failure.
Away from the hostility towards farmers and rural communities in general our freak show down in the Bay bubble continues to astonish. This little “gem” turned up on Twitter – “Today, we remember the trans individuals who have lived, loved, fought and fallen.We remember their spirit and their message that everyone deserves the right to be exactly who they are. #TransDayOfRemembrance ”
Given the date chosen for this most forgettable event I suspect they may be referring to people killed in battle during WW1,WW2, and subsequent conflicts like Korea, the NI troubles, Malvinas, Iraq, Afghanistan. Among the fallen in those conflicts there may have been a few who chose to dress up in frocks in their leisure time. Some may have worn bloomers under their service kit when going into conflict. Whatever, the reason we remember them is because they lost their lives fighting for causes deemed to be just by the regimes of the time. Some of those more recent conflicts have been very dubious causes especially those with Bliar’s fingerprints on them but I seriously doubt whether any of those who gave their lives had trans rights uppermost in their minds as they set off on those final missions. I appreciate that the militants promoting trans rights may wish to make a noise but seeing our Senedd engaging in yet another round of virtue signaling is sick.
Good points, Huw, and the mention of bloomers took me back to my childhood. Family gatherings – usually funerals – attended by distant aunts wearing bloomers underneath and dead foxes around their necks.
Though I’m fairly sure that trans activists and their supporters are not thinking of transsexuals who died in combat. This is a variation on the theme of persecution. We are expected to accept that there is a campaign of persecuti0n against trans people. There isn’t of course, but if that nonsense is to be promoted then there must be victims of the persecution. And so we have the Trans Day of Remembrance.
They get away with it because so many public bodies have been bullied or blackmailed into accepting this bollocks. It’s so sad when lies prevail.
By the way I was in Cardiff on Saturday having been persuaded by brother in law to watch Wales vs Georgia. What a debacle. Something seriously amiss in the entire WRU from overpaid execs to limpwristed disinterested players. Anyway I strolled through the city en route to the stadium but never saw any “trans militants” prancing about. There were plenty of dodgy types around mostly sporting fat bellies in red rugby shirts! Designed to make the nation look shabby. Now 55 years since our old mate from Silian got onto the roof of Howells ( or it might have been David Morgan’s) on St Mary Street and liberated their Union Jack. No one noticed until our boy torched the fuckin’ thing!
I get about more than a fair bit; I’ve travelled all over these islands and had a decent crack at Western and Central Europe. Off the top of my head, I’ve met two transsexuals, and maybe three ‘non-binaries’. Not to draw any sort of comparison on any basis other than that of scarcity of type of individual, I’m sorry to say I’ve met more paedophiles. This is very much a fringe issue, for some reason enormously magnified in its reach.
I was about to say that despite the history paedos have managed to keep a low profile until some of them get caught. However I detect a bit of a drift among social justice types towards recognition of rights of adults who have “an affection for minors”!
Seeing this affection in terms of mental illness might be a sensible move, but I suspect that this kind of recognition will be out to legitimise paedo behaviours which will lead to an inevitable backlash. Given the kind of governments we have been blessed with over recent years the backlash will most likely be criminalised while the paedos will be a protected group! More madness about to be unleashed?
It’s just one of those causes that the left latches onto to tell us how cruel and uncaring Western society really is. While the rest of the world gets a free ride.
We encounter this tactic in so many variants. Take ‘multiculturalism’. It’s such a desirable objective that . . . it must only be demanded in Western – White-majority – countries. Same with ‘Saving the planet’; the biggest polluters are ignored to berate countries making a genuine effort.
After a while it becomes clear that these are just tools in the left’s anti-Western toolbox.
To return to the trans issue; that there are so few genuine trans people explains the rise of Mermaids and other dangerous nutters who believe that every 10-year-old boy who ever picked up one of his sister’s dolls, and every girl of that age who showed an interest in guns, is in the wrong body.
Thankfully, I believe the tide is turning, and sanity – along with an acceptance of biological immutabilities – is returning.
Such organisations already have come into existence. I’d advise against Googling NAMBLA and the Paedophile Information Exchange on pain of your activities online drawing the attention of those keeping an eye!
They’ve always been there, the difference now is that the libertarian left promotes paedophilia as just another minority sexual identification.
I’m sure I read somewhere that fringe elements in the Libertarian Party in the States make the case that child pornography should be legalised because there’s a market for it, or something like that. So it’s not only the libertarian left with a monopoly on this twisted acceptance.
They’re too thick to realise children have a propensity to mimic and play-act. Gormless cunts.
Given that these are hard times I was hoping that Chancellor KHunt would have reduced or eliminated the gross habit of handing out large dollops of public funds to any old organisation that purports to have anything to do with things like on shore wind energy, displacement of agriculture as a key component of food production (meat, veg, fruit etc – you know, stuff ordinary people still consume and enjoy), and minorities who have “needs” and ishoos. Corporates still do well despite the much publicised windfall tax. There are so many holes in that net that I seriously doubt whether a fraction of the claimed amounts will be collected. Same goes for tax dodging by the uber-wealthy.
The tired old Barnett formula will give Drakeford more loot to piss away on pet projects. I wrote recently to David Davies about waste and his reply focussed on the scrutinising role of the Welsh Conservatives at Y Senedd ! I was reminded of old sayings involving chocolate teapots and one legged men in arse kicking competitions.
My understanding is that the “All Wales Conservation Strategy” was led by NAAONB (The National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty).
National here apparently applies to England, Wales and NI. It seems to be based in Shrewsbury.
The money may have been ringfenced to be spent on Welsh projects ?
If anybody was going to find it . . . Diolch, Ian. It’ll probably be impossible, but I’ll try to track down the source(s) of that funding.
You ask where the £234,320 went to that is listed as the “All Wales Conservation Strategy”.
Wildlife Trusts are constituted as a three tier system of body corporate. Local, regional (to them Wales is considered a region) and national (they see this as the United Kingdom). Upon wind up of the Wales entity, some cash went down to the local groups, which means the remainder must have been sent to the higher tier. To the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts.
There is an entry in the accounts of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, page 45, in the same year of £200k income under the tag of “Strategy Reset” listed next to the line of Wildlife Trusts Wales, £7k income, £7k expenditure, which is the administrative costs of the arrangement. In the sources and application statement this £200k just “appears” without any related income or expenditure, other than the administrative chargeback listed separately.
It was sent to England.
Bloody hell! That merits an update.
I found it, on page 52. But that page refers to money out from RSWT. The column is headed ‘People’s Postcode Lottery’. It shows on page 18 of the Wales Wildlife Trust accounts as money in from ‘People Postcode Lottery’.
So ‘All Wales Conservation Strategy’ remains a mystery.
You’re looking at the wrong year, up to Mar2020.
It’s listed in the following year, up to Mar2021. Page 45 when viewing online, page 43 as printed out due to cover page and page intentionally left blank. The page is titled “Item 21-Designated funds.”
You may, however inadvertently, have stumbled upon the reasoning for its treatment. A prior year grant from UK Postcode lottery distributed downward in 2020 the £200k being the share for Wales. Then no means of donating to local trusts in line with expressed intent of the lottery grant, so then paid back up to RSWT in 2021 when Wales finally wound up. Listed as Wales Strategy in Wales then as Strategy Reset in the books of RSWT in 2021.
If this cash “left the structure” it would appear as expenditure.
Thanks for clearing that up, Brychan. Though it’s still a confused picture. Maybe it’s not accidental.
Annwyl Jac
Two comments. I have referred to this previously. It is totally inappropriate for a minister to have a relationship with a civil servant in, or near, her department. Whilst clearly not illegal, it is against established protocol and more importantly, the “line” between elected officials and paid officers.
Before I became a councillor in the far off seventies, I was made aware of the need to keep this “line” between me as an elected member, and paid officers. In all contact I insisted on formality, Mr Ball and Mr/Mrs whoever.
It says something about government (lack of) discipline and indeed process that this continues.
Mari Arthur. There’s a name from the past. Foisted on Llanelli by the then leadership of Plaid Cymru, the lovely Leeanne, a winnable seat has been lost, perhaps forever.
Leeanne managed to do more damage to the prospects of Plaid Cymru than Ieuan Wyn Jones, and that’s an achievement matched only by the hapless Adam Price.
My understanding is that even when the relationship became know within ‘Welsh government’ nothing was done. It was only when it became more widely known about that WG acted and Lover Boy was moved.
Over the years, you and I have known many good people in Llanelli. Spent many happy hours there. And no matter what we both now think of Plaid Cymru it’s sad when I reflect on what happened. And it was all so unnecessary. But it exposes a big problem within Plaid Cymru, and the detached-from-reality Bay.
Cash for trees. Whilst you are correct that the winding up of Denmark Farm Conservation Centre left an outstanding charge upon the freehold of the farm, the benefactor of this was the Shared Earth Trust (charity 1183155), who now lists it as their asset. SET is a strange beast, a consolidation from a charity of the same name, so adds in the farm.
https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/5128832/
The trustees are Dr Glenn Edward Strachan of South Bank University in London, Linda Anne Bradshaw-Wood of Keep Wales Tidy, Rhian Corcoran who is the Environmental Manager at Hywel Dda University Health Board, Aline Denton who an ‘author’ and writes books from her “Grooms Cottage’ near Llanrhystud, Maria Wilding of Cylch Meithrin Felinfach, Guy Hopwood of the Energy Saving Trust who’s into wind turbines, and Neil Edward Howard who works as a civil servant for the Welsh Government and lists himself on the Denmark Farm website as a “grant funder”.
Besides inheriting the farm, SET has just landed a grant of £32k in the form of a “Woodland Investment Grant” from the Welsh Government as part of their ‘National Forest Project”.
Incestuous, and hinting at a conflict of interests, if not worse. You have aroused my interest.
So the logic of this polemic is that when I have to swim in the shit brown slurried sea I should blame the wild life trusts or have I missed the point?
The point is that you don’t believe the propaganda that says it’s always and only livestock farmers responsible.
If you swim in a shit infested sea there is a greater probability that the shit is a direct result of dear old Dwr Cymru not doing its job properly. I live on a stretch of the South Wales coast with very little evidence of, or scope for, pollution deriving directly from farms but there’s bloody tons of it deriving from Dwr Cymru’s inability to deliver its mandate in anything other than perfect conditions. Cow pats and other farm liquids have an odour totally different to the mainly human waste that “pops up” on our shoreline with increasing frequency. Shame on any so called defenders of wildlife for deflecting so maliciously. Are they just thick, or do they have an agenda?
It’s an agenda. It may be their agenda, but they get well paid for sticking to it.