Plan to build luxury lodges in campsite in the foothills of Snowdon

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/plan-build-luxury-lodges-campsite-12495112

The scheme would include a mixture of lodges from one bedroom cabins to four beds homes for large family groups and ‘treehouse’ style lodges.

After reading Brychan’s report on the kind of investment going into Holland this little snippet just reinforces the feeling that we are being dumped on from a great height.

The thread from the original posting is one of governance and the generation and allocation of resources, the initial concern was the processes involved with the Third Sector. The emotional feel to it all is this real sense of grievance and injustice. Also a real sense of lack of transparency.

Even if Wales gained full independence, a circumstance that does not seem very likely at the moment, there would still be the issue of how resources would be generated and allocated efficiently and effectively. Which brings us back to the real divisions in Wales.

Since devolution, governance has been undertaken by the Labour Party in conjunction with Plaid and the Liberal Democrats, along with a dependency on the UK taxpayer ( individual and business ) especially the English taxpayer. The regular assertion being the lack of an equitable allocation from Westminster and now an anxiety that the allocation after BREXIT will also be inequitable. For me a further strong theme is the migration of Welsh residents to the rest of the UK or globally to earn a living and a more amenable way of living, a significant number were born in Wales and many speak Welsh. Some return but many stay away forever.

Which brings me back to the common ground of those that choose to live in Wales finding away to run the country and allocate resources that heals some of the divisions. I feel strongly that we are all learners in this process. However, I do think that unless information about the explicit detail of what is happening now is more readily available in all formats it is doubtful we will find the means to achieve more acceptable and consensual ends. I feel very uneasy about the level of angst so many of my fellow citizens feel. Sadly the political and professional leadership in Wales do not appear to fully grasp the scale of the issues to be resolved. I am constantly encouraging people to get involved but sadly I strongly suspect in most areas of Wales there will be very few people standing for the local elections particularly younger people. We will only have a vibrant and dynamic society when we can encourage more people to become involved. This social media platform is a small but significant part of the process. I for one want to find solutions for the issues of living in Wales and ongoing discourse in all its forms is required.

So I’ll take liberty and ask another – why can’t Welsh and London governments not apply similar logic to their relationship with business ?

On numerous occasions I have commented that our business community – corporates and entrepreneurial – rely heavily on all sorts of grants to stimulate any interest, yet those investments of public moneys seldom, if ever, produce an outcome like that produced in Holland. It is therefore evident that either the Dutch government, or businesses like Tata ( and Philips at Eindhoven), or both parties, show immense initiative and imagination when confronting the challenges of economic and social progress.

You ask – How do the Dutch get Tata to give up some of their technology gains (profits/surplus) for social investment?

Simples. Tata cannot make their technological advances in India as the infrastructure (includes a healthy, well nourished and educated workforce as well as reliable electricity supply, shipping and rail connections) is excellent in the Netherlands. It’s what they need to make profits in Europe. A symbiotic relationship exists. Also, the vast amounts of water required in steel making does not rely on the monsoon in Europe. Tata find that having their most advanced steel making facilities inside the EU allows them to access social as well as physical infrastructure. This begs the question, why keep the ‘disposable additional capacity’ plant in Port Talbot open after Brexit?

Just came across this. As I was saying.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2017/jan/22/the-new-robot-revolution-will-take-the-bosss-job-not-the-gardeners

If you’re a nationalist then it’s Hobson’s Choice sadly. The other alternative is to not vote for anyone, until a proper nationalist party is formed (that’s where I’m camped at present), a party that drops this ‘right’ or ‘left’ crap. Attracts people of all political persuasions – as long as they are proper nationalists and ‘healthy’. With a back bone, teeth and proper principles.

sadly, what you say is consistent with much of the earlier criticism on this blog. However we won’t get much joy out of asking the Cons, LibDems or UKIP to stick up for Wales, so it’s back to Plaid, or some other form of response.

(Oh – and watch them all blame Brexit when people kick-off about it. Even though 5 banks for example started the process 2 years ago)

Nobody listens to Plaid anymore – not even it’s own membership. For example, they currently are promoting a petition about Wales remaining in the Single Market. Despite repeated mass mail shots to it’s members and constantly pushing it on social media, it has amassed less than 2000 signatures.

Nobody gives a toss about what they say about anything really because in the main it’s garbage, excrutiatingly condescending, mixed-message and contradictory. And I’m a member.

The issue for the next 10 years is that all the major corporations have already started what will be a massive relocation of white collar professional jobs – Corporate Legal, HR, Compliance, remote IT support, Databasing, Accounts, etc etc. Initially (it’s already starting) these are filtered out to Spain etc, with the final destination of China, Thailand and the Philipines.

Underpinning this is that major companies (and I know this for a fact from my union activities) are now recruiting engineering graduates, on-site IT, on-site HR junior management etc from the Baltic states (in Lithuania for example all university education is done in English – ergo their graduates are fluent English speakers), and taking them on 3 year contracts for less than 20K then binning them at the end of the 3 years.

One major hospital in Wales now recruits nurses from the Philipines because nurses from elsewhere in the EU cost to much and have too high expectations.

The next big victims of globalisation wont be shelf stackers in Tescos, security guards or lowly clerks – it will be our young who went to university to get skills that very soon will no longer need to be located in the west or can be bought-in from cheaper countries where the people with the skills have lower expectations.

In the stagnant economies of the west the only way corporate profit levels can be maintained is by reducing wage costs at all levels.