Just so you know a lot of children’s care homes are not actually run by local authorities or local government but limited companies which local authorities pay very high amounts to, way in excess of what it would cost under the public sector to care for each child.

Low property prices and wages in Wales combined with excessive public sector spending means the car sector is a lucrative business opportunity.

Don’t be surprised to find English orphans being put in privately funded carehomes in Wales.

How can you expect the BBC to know anything about bridges when the organisation is full of Oxbridge PPE & Classics grads, supported by media studies output of places like our own TrinitySaintMedwynLadyJane ! The only Bwidge they know anything about is the odd game of cards.

Interesting to read earlier that Guto Bebb won’t stand again for Tories at Aberconwy ( or anywhere else ). Is he too far gone into the Brit spectrum to contemplate a return to a more patriotic posture, not the genderconfused Plaid, but the more focussed Ein Gwlad perhaps ?

Engineering.
Lift a full shopping bag at arms length and feel the pivot load. Put another full shopping bag on the other arm and lift both. It’s much easier, even though the load is double. Your shoulder blades act as a the truss. The Swansea genius is to dislocate the armpit towards the pivot load temporarily shifting the forces, as if between the upper and lower trunk of the arm as a ‘rocking mechanism’. This is achived on the Morfa bridge as it’s a box lattice structure and clad in displaceable sheaths.

Name of design.
A more accurate description is the “Scherzer” the design name eventually being patented, after refinement, by the Matthiessen & Hegeler Zinc Company for Fort Wayne & Chicago Railway, but don’t tell the BBC. It was in an era when both Swansea and American metal companies were making huge leaps in technology.

Inferior.
There is an older bridge in London called ‘Tower Bridge”. This is more accurately described as a “Bascule”. That particular bridge had a critical design fault. The pivot forces are transmitted up the towers and counter-balanced by the top truss. It requires two towers and two spans, lower and upper to transmit load. Stoopid as the yanks would say. Twp as they say in Swansea.

Don’t tell the BBC.

This is my part of town, my heritage. I have put out a tweet.

There’s a bridge in Swansea that was built 100 years ago. It spanned the Tawe linking the Hafod-Morfa copper quarter with Landore railway sidings. It was commissioned by the copper works (Vivian & Sons) themselves. It was named the Morfa Bridge. It was always been known locally as the Morfa Bridge, for generations, even today.

https://www.coflein.gov.uk/en/site/34830/images/
The structure.

Much of the Hafod-Morfa copperworks is gone, the western bank being occupied by the Liberty stadium. The thing about this bridge is that it lifted up as a single span to allow ships to pass using a counter weight, the same mechanism as similar bridges of this era, in Portland, Origon, and one in New York. The single span lift means only one alignment is needed for rails. In France the lifting mechanism was also used on the canals of Normandy, depicted in classic paintings so the design type became known as a Bascule (lifting) Bridge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48949587
The restoration.

Strange then, that the BBC and the Welsh Government is now calling it the “Bascule Bridge of Swansea”, as if the proper name and it’s historical heritage with the Morfa copper works never existed. The BBC has, again, introduced the phrase ‘ALSO KNOWN AS” to describe a piece of our heritage subjugating the indigenous name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2UX7_kpNHg{removetoplay}
Mary Hopkin.

It should also be noted that many of this type of “Bascule” bridge across the waterways in northern France were actually built by engineers, specifically recruited from Swansea during WW1. It allowed the laying of temporary narrow gauge railways over their canals to supply the western front, while also allowing the waterways to remain navigable. The span is box girder lattice and the deck is timbers originally clad in copper plate preventing corrosion but also light enough for single span lifting.

The BBC, also known as the Eradicate Welsh Heritage Corporation.

“Next to nobody in Brussels has any clue what the European Union truly stands for — beyond a flag and an anthem — and more crucially, where it is heading. And that includes the EU leaders and senior officials soullessly waddling through the corridors of power. When I arrived in the EU capital, I expected to find it brimming with activity and potential answers to these questions. Instead, I felt duped: Making a tangible impact on constituents’ lives is apparently not what being an MEP is all about.”

“In Brussels, the go-to answer to a failed system is superficial; try a fresh coat of paint on crumbling walls. We have to be ready to burn down the house if necessary, to rebuild it in such a way that every citizen from Mansfield to Milan truly feels part of and represented by the EU.”


Now that’s some “endorsement” of that regime that Remainers regard with such affection. Person of colour treated like some 3rd world cleaner got lost in the big building !. One small example of that Brussels shit fest – Plaid & others still love it, and I wonder whether that’s more to do with the smell of a good salary, benefits, expenses and undemanding idler lifestyle. Good on you Magid, at least that’s one Green politician showing a capacity for shedding light into dark corners.

There is nothing in the Plaid failure to put a candidate forward in B&R other than betrayal, cowardice, and contempt for the voters. An attempt at cynical manipulation. All so crachach dilettantes can waft themselves around posh metropolitan dinner parties as virtuous. Skinny lattés for Leanne and Llinos.

“reciprocating” doesn’t appear to have entered anyone’s tiny minds. LibDems are having a laff and Plaid will have nothing to show for it. And if thinking strategically had anything to do with it ( which I doubt ) then a strategy for dumping Drakeford out of a job would have made the reinstatement of McEvoy a matter of plain sense.

Read elsewhere that Dewi Evans is planning to bid for Alun Ffred’s job as Chair ( who plays Table is anyone’s guess ! ). Reputed to be a bit of a tenacious bloke who won’t be content to keep McEvoy out in the cold. I don’t know how he plans to do it but he has recognised that the current dystopian scenario driven by a grossly unbalanced agenda is rapidly turning Plaid into a sad sock puppet more concerned with “feelings” and “needs” of other Unionist parties. Good luck to him.

Also worth a read are Dic’s earlier articles on Radio Cymru and on First Minister’s Question Time.

As for Brecon, I would accepted Plaid’s decision if the Lib Dem’s had reciprocated by agreeing to stay out of Dwyfor Meirionydd in 2021.

I recommend it as essential reading especially for those of you in any kind of leadership role within Plaid. It will be uncomfortable and you may still be tempted to retreat into the mutually congratulatory echo chamber that you inhabit habitually. But if you seek some kind of redemption, a quick route to self correction old Dic has given you a head’s start in his most recent article.