In a sense, this is a follow-up to a piece I put out in February called ‘Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas‘. Perhaps a variation on a theme.
Though this is not quite the piece I originally promised. Perhaps I’ll return to the sweat lodges and other joys in the ‘Bhutan of Wales’ (“ample parking space“) at some later date.
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ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN NEWTS
What you have to understand about modern environmentalism, certainly in Wales, is that it’s no longer fleece-jacketed innocents protecting red squirrels or tagging birds. It is now intensely political. And financially lucrative.
Lucrative, as long as it promotes a certain interpretation of the world.
Which means, in practice, that environmentalists work for BlackRock and other Globalist corporations; Bill ‘jabs and bugs’ Gates, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
And even if environmentalists don’t realise it, if they’re just useful idiots, then that don’t matter none – what matters is that they do what they do.
And as I suggested, they’re getting paid handsomely for it. Here’s one example.
Total income for the North Wales Wildlife Trust went up from £1.83m in 2019 to £6.17 in 2023, a rise of 237%. But in the same period, funding from the ‘Welsh Government’ rose from £309,480 to £3,760,000, an increase of 1,115%.
Similar increases in the funding awarded to the other wildlife trusts, river groups, etc, correlates with the ramping up of the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.
Which meant blaming just about anybody other than Dŵr Cymru for river pollution.
But environmentalists weren’t confining themselves to persecuting cows, and matters scatological; for they were also pushing the anti-car agenda.
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THE WAR ON CARS I
An example of this would be defeating plans to upgrade the M4 around Newport. Here’s Friends of the Earth reminding us of its role in that campaign.
Which is fine with me because that’s the raison d’être of environmental groups. But if opposing M4 improvements was ‘Welsh Government’ policy, and if ‘WG’ funded various groups to support that policy, then that puts a different complexion on things.
As FoE stated, one of the major reasons for rejecting improvements to the M4 was to protect the Gwent Levels. Which was also the reasoning given by the first minister.
Mark Drakeford said he would not have gone ahead even if it was affordable because of the impact on the Gwent Levels.
But the environmentalists’ war on roads didn’t end with saving the Gwent Levels. (Though not from solar farms.)
I’ve written a number of times about the ‘Welsh Government’s decision to abandon all new road schemes. Let’s begin in June 2021, with the announcement of a ‘freeze’ on new road building.
Then, in September 2021, came news of a panel . . .
. . . of climate change and transport specialists . . . led by Dr Lynn Sloman MBE, a transport consultant based in Wales
Despite what the ‘Welsh Government’ wanted us to believe, Dr Lynn Sloman is not ‘based in Wales’; she actually lives in London, where she sits on the Transport for London board, headed by mayor Sadiq Ulez Khan.
Dr Lynn Sloman is, predictably, an anti-car fanatic. And her connection to Wales is a holiday home in Cwm Einion, near Machynlleth. To which she presumably drives.
Dr Sloman’s panel delivered the result required in February 2023 – no new roads!
This impacted on just about every part of the country, and deprived communities of long-awaited and much-needed, improvements. It meant no third crossing of the Menai, no by-pass for Llanbedr, no by-pass for Llandeilo.
This was of course welcomed by both Rachel Sharp, CEO of the officially defunct Wildlife Trusts Wales; and her trusty henchman, Tim Birch, of Extinction Rebellion.
But there is one issue on which environmentalists could and should be more vocal.
We’ll ignore the energy consumed in manufacturing wind turbines, then the damage inflicted on the environment from shipping them to Wales; widening roads, felling trees, ripping out hedgerows to get them to where they’re being erected.
Instead’ let’s just focus on the damage they cause in situ.
Wind turbines destroy peat deposits. They scar hillsides with access roads and cable trenches. Hundreds of pylons are needed to carry whatever’s generated in Wales to England. The turbine blades kill birds, bats, and all manner of insects.
There are also threats to human health from infrasound, flicker, and worrying over your home losing value due to its proximity to wind turbines.
Yet environmentalists have little to say against wind turbines. That’s because their ‘outrage’ can be switched off and on, as required, by their paymasters.
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THE ‘FOXES’ OF ENVIRONMENTALISM
We often hear: “Farming occupies around 90% of ‘our’ land“, as if it’s something undesirable. It’s very revealing, because those who say it seem genuinely horrified that so much of Wales belongs to hairy-arsed peasants.
A recent example of the ‘90%’ fixation came in an article in ‘Welsh Government’ mouthpiece Nation.Cymru by Dr Malcolm Smith. He was ostensibly writing about the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS).
Smith wants us to believe that carbon emissions increase global temperatures when there is no link whatsoever, and then rather gives away his own position on SFS with:
Trees, it seems, aren’t welcomed by most farmers.
This obsession with the amount of land held by farmers seems most prevalent among politicians and middle class enviro-grifters who want Welsh farmers off the land they and their corporate patrons covet.
I say that because no one has ever come up to me in a pub, a supermarket, or any other setting, grabbed me by the lapels and shouted – ‘Isn’t it bloody awful that farmers have so much land?‘
Nobody. Honestly!
Which makes the support these spivs get from Welsh socialists difficult to fathom. And the support from those socialists who claim they want independence inexplicable.
Maybe this subservience can be explained by something I read last week. Someone was trying to explain why Sinn Féin has fallen for the Globalist-Woke-Left agenda.
It is a lingering symptom of what Ruairi Ó Bradaigh once described as the intellectual inferiority complex of men who were absurdly impressed by . . . bourgeois lefties and liberals
I think that explains a lot of what we see in Wales. Particularly the insecure among us, who can’t resist a bit of flannel delivered in a ‘posh’ accent.
What Ruairi Ó Bradaigh called “the intellectual inferiority complex” always lurks in the Welsh psyche. And it seems to afflict socialists far more than it affects those of us on the political right.
Welsh leftists like to see themselves as ‘progressive’, which then leaves them wide open to the blandishments of the ‘foxes’ Malcom X refers to here.
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ANOTHER WARNING FROM IRELAND
For some time now I’ve been paying closer than usual attention to what’s happening in Ireland, where the uniparty establishment has enthusiastically signed up to the Globalist agenda. It’s been open borders, war on farmers, and recently, referendums that hoped to re-define ‘woman’ and ‘family’.
Both referendums were heavily defeated, and the preening, obnoxious, Varadkar soon resigned in the hope of salvaging his political reputation. Because he fears there’s worse to come as the people wake up and fight back. (Something the Irish have a history of doing.)
And the Irish people are waking up. And demanding a return to sanity. Especially when they look around and see who’s been allowed into their country.
For example, one result of open borders is that Ireland is now home to the Nigerian Black Axe gang, which deals in romance fraud and other online scams . . . with a little murder, drugs, and extortion thrown in.
Just think about that. A Nigerian criminal network is actually based in Ireland. How the hell was that allowed to happen!
Well, as I just mentioned, because the Irish establishment obeys the Globalist agenda; and no-questions-asked immigration is an integral part of that agenda, designed to destabilise western societies.
Then, last week I was directed to news about moves to punish people who want to live in the countryside. (Unless, presumably, they’re Nigerian gangsters.)
You can read the whole publication if you like. But the opening paragraph tells you exactly where it’s going. And how it’s justified.
Moving Together . . . a commitment in the Climate Action Plan 2023 . . . to alleviate the impacts of car-dependency
Someone wants the Irish countryside emptied, and populations concentrated in urban areas. Now why should that be?
Wales may be heading in the same direction.
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THE WAR ON CARS II
I say Wales may be headed in the same direction because the ‘pieces’ are already there, we just need to put them together to see the bigger picture.
Earlier, we looked at environmentalists, funded by the ‘Welsh Government’ or Globalist corporations and multi-billionaires, campaigning against road improvements. In league with former Sustrans rep in Wales, and until so very recently, chauffeur-driven deputy minister for climate change, Lee Waters.
Waters welcomed the halt on new road projects with:
As the review points out the by-pass that was demanded to relieve congestion often ends up leading to extra traffic, which in time brings further demands for extra lanes, wider junctions and more roads
I suggest Waters and his allies stand for half an hour one summer day outside the ‘Vic’ in Llanbedr, or The Castle in Llandeilo; and ponder that the shit forming a skin on their iced tea, the shit they’re also inhaling, comes from cars and trucks in low gear inching their way through a traffic bottleneck.
And it could all be avoided with a by-pass!
Consider this, gentle reader: the man who can ignore the effects of low-gear emissions on human health – because it serves an element of the agenda – can also impose 20mph speed limits, guaranteed to increase harmful emissions – and justify doing so on health and safety grounds!
But when it can be used to serve another element of the agenda, air quality becomes a consideration. For Nicola Lund recently reminded us in ‘Message to Wales – On Yer Bike (Part 2)‘ that the Welsh Government’ is also promising air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’.
So where might that lead, if we put it all together?
Let’s look at Llanbedr, which sits on the A496 running up the coast from Barmouth. A busy road, and especially so in summer.
With a combination of no by-pass, air quality legislation, and a ‘national road user charging framework’ in place, many people will give Llanbedr a miss. Some will avoid that road altogether.
The map above shows that travellers between north and south will still have the A470, so the effects would be very localised, but highly damaging.
There’s one more consideration I want to throw into the mix.
I have consistently supported plans to raise council tax on holiday homes and restrict numbers of holiday lets*. And I will continue to back measures that might return domestic properties to local use. But . . .
Tourism means cars, camper vans, etc. So are the measures against the worst excesses of tourism doing the right thing for the wrong reason? By which I mean, are they just part of the bigger plan to restrict car journeys in Wales?
Putting it all together – and irrespective of the stated justifications – what we’ve just looked at will result in a seriously damaged rural economy, and could lead to the kind of rural clearances being talked about in Ireland and elsewhere.
Yet it all fits perfectly with the Globalist-environmentalist agenda.
*I received a communication on this very matter yesterday!
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CONCLUSION
Where the Globalists have been clever is in funding or promoting ideas, organisations and lobbies that push their agenda.
This includes, cyclists, vegans, renewable energy enthusiasts, advocates of CBDC, and of course, environmentalists.
We’re at a stage now where an environmental lobby is waging war on our farmers while also working with the ‘Welsh Government’ to make us view cars as something evil, to be done away with.
But what’s being targeted is not really farmers and motorists, but land and freedoms. Which is the essence of the Globalists’ power grab – promote fear and confusion in order to seize assets, restrict freedoms, and exert control.
As I said earlier, ‘environmentalists’ are no longer fleece-jacketed innocents. So see them for what they really are. Who they work for. And treat them accordingly.
♦ end ♦
© Royston Jones 2024
I am going to have to disagree with you regarding holiday lets/homes. It is not being bought in for the reasons stated. If is was solely about getting properties back to local use, then the Welsh government is getting private citizens to do what they (the government) should be doing.
What the attacks on holiday lets are about is scapegoating, control and money. Any licensing scheme will probably involve costs. Can we be certain that any revenue raised will go towards domestic housing needs? In regards to control, if there was such a problem surrounding holiday homes, why then is Plaid Cymru proposing a locally and publicly (the state/party) owned alterative to Airbnb? Force private operators out, replace them with ‘public’ operators who then reap the benefits.
Lastly it is strange how in their attacks on holiday homes, the Welsh government and their allies never seem to mention the National Trust. The Trust operators many homes throughout Wales.
Got a link for, ‘Plaid Cymru proposing a locally and publicly (the state/party) owned alterative to Airbnb’?
Google Plaid Cymru tourism and it is the top result.
Good observation about “licensing schemes”. About 10 years ago our esteemed government in the Bay created RentSmart and levied an array of fees, training costs and licences on landlords and agents. Must have generated a few million which just flowed into some black hole. All we got was a load of old “tenants always good, landlords always bad” bollox from a crew of faceless bureaucrats in Cardiff. No doubt the same could be replicated with holiday lets.
Another possible route is to follow the “herding” approach where holidays will be taken on large sites or communities set aside exclusively for leisure purposes. Labour will be bussed in daily, or if there is no bus service they’ll have to make their own way in !
Your X text today refers to some tourism/leisure related nonsense being promoted near Merthyr and a commenter asks about the Afan Valley Holiday Camp venture. What is the matter with the clowns in the Bay regime ? Why do they so studiously avoid any contact with real manufacturing industry, you know the stuff that adds real value and generates regular wages and salaries for employees enabling them to have a half tidy chance at living some sort of normal lives ? Do they hate the people of Wales so badly that they just enjoy consigning them to a life on the margins fed a diet of seasonal jobs on rock bottom wages with no horizon beyond today’s hours earned ? Or are they just plain fuckin’ stupid ? Perhaps one or more of the Bay morons would like to come on here one time and explain themselves, or are they too busy fixing up shady deals for their mates, totting up perks and backhanders, or lining up the next cushy number after leaving their current sinecure ?
Haven’t you heard – Wales is saving the planet, can’t have real jobs. I give Port Talbot 5 years, 7 tops.
We are all expected to cycle to work in the artisanal muffin bakery.
The same could be asked about the council on Anglesey who gave the green light to Land & Lakes at Penrhos all those years ago. The holiday camp/leisure park angle is an area that has been missing from the tourism debate. There appears to be a government plan to increase the use of these parks at the expense or to replace holiday homes. Why else would a Gwynedd council sign appear to be advertising a local leisure park?
You mention shady deals, it would not be surprising if in the future we find out that the holiday/leisure parks had been lobbying the government behind the scenes.
Sustrans are imbeciles shooting themselves in the foot as regards their stated and semi-epoymous aim of sustainable transportation, with their wanting to convert any railway trackbed going into some poxy pushbike path that will get not one single fucking soul to abandon the car for his commute.
I wonder whether the reason why socialists are so much more prone to an intellectual inferiority complex is because by their nature they’re in thrall to Those Who Know Better. At the extreme end with your Maoists and the like, these would be authoritarian governments, with the more common or garden sorts doffing their caps to those who would regulate and tax commerce to death.
Lower gear driving not only produces pollutants in the form of the exhaust fumes. Think about what is being spat out by the resultant riding of the clutch, and almost constant braking.
I don’t think I’d mind so much if cyclists actually used them. I can think immediately of three locally, one of which was laid on an old railway track bed, where cyclists insist on using the old road and not the cycle track or specifically widened pavement running parallel to it. It’s an especial farce on the newly widened pavement/narrowed road between Gorseinon and Penllergaer. The cyclists still crawl uphill on the road which has now been made so narrow that it is impossible to overtake leaving Drakeford’s 20mph an impossible dream.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Railbanking scheme in the States, whereby permanent ways of dismantled railways are ‘banked’ for potential future reinstatement should circumstances change, by protection from development. I read once that one of the most effective ways of protecting old railway corridors in this manner is to build cycle paths along them. In this regard, it makes good sense, as well as seeing that historic tunnels, bridges, embankments, etc are at least getting some sort of use.
The real crime of British 20th century railway transport policy was the sale of such land for development. Perhaps in rural areas it could have been sold with compulsory buyback and agricultural use restriction clauses in place? Similarly, any agreed ‘rail trails’ built under these provisions could surely be implemented with an unequivocal ‘off you shall fuck horsey and pushbike sorts’ clause, should reinstatement of the railway be agreed to be viable one day.
There are idiots on Anglesey (good-lifer blow-ins to a man, I’d wager), looking to foist another one of these on us in place of reopening a mothballed line. Who on earth is going to make the 17 mile commute by bike in the pissing rain, leaving the car at home, apart from masochists and the otherwise deranged?
Another consequence of Beeching. I remember a friend telling me of a housing development on a closed line where the builder had cheekily called the estate “the Beechings”. Of course HS2 wouldn’t have been needed if the Great Central Railway which was closed in the 1960s hadn’t been built upon and was available to be reconstructed. Even if it then only took freight traffic, the release of capacity on the existing main line would mean that HS2 wasn’t required.
Beeching and Marples can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned. You get idiot apologists for that folly, but I think the best exemplar of how startlingly awful a course of action it was can be seen by the fact the direct link between Oxford and Cambridge was ripped up. Two of the top fucking universities in the world, disconnected from each other without having to change in London, that itself involving a 15 minute tube ride from Paddington to Kings Cross-St Pancras. I wonder whether barring dictatorships, does the UK have the worst and longest list of cunts making and enacting public policy in the recent history of civilisation?
The GCR was actually built to Continental loading gauge with a view towards connection with a potential future Channel Tunnel. And 60 or so years into its existence, these short-sighted pricks largely ripped it up. One of two (that I can recall) direct links between Leicester and Rugby, no longer in existence, those two being the piddly little hamlets they are!
“Which meant blaming just about anybody other than Dŵr Cymru for river pollution.”
Perhaps this is a good time to provide a link to Top of the Poops.
https://top-of-the-poops.org/waterway/dwr-cymru-welsh-water/river-teifi
“But what’s being targeted is not really farmers and motorists, but land and freedoms. Which is the essence of the Globalists’ power grab – promote fear and confusion in order to seize assets, restrict freedoms, and exert control.”
Totally agree.
Great post Jac, as always.
That was a well-organised and well-funded campaign to take the heat off DC.
Many of these Trusts are CICs…and some have now got on the band wagon and registered as Charities. Community Investment Companies, sorry for the abreviation. Try having a look at Pembrokeshire!! esp the North from lets say Newgale to Newport via St Davids and Fishguard and Goodwick. In Rural Wales there is only Farming,Local Govt and Police and the NHS on its knees as employers and…Tourism!!…without tourism the economy would die and I do get the second home issue but they do, if let, bring people into the area as there is no other accommodation available. You can go back to Anglesey in the 50s and the rise of Plaid Cymru which was born out of the depravation after the change in society and jobs, closure of Slate Mines etc etc…and this is when the local authority built the council house estates and people left their damp cottages only then to be bought up by the incoming holiday home owners who did them up…because the considered opinion was that the locals didnt want them…which they didnt…they were cold and damp and a source of ill health…but!!!….and here we are. Your article is excellent but its only, as you know part of a much bigger picture and the clean energy program is a band wagon everyone is currently getting on…MONEY. Clean energy is something that going to be very difficult to produce in order to meet the demands of todays modern society. 25 years ago many ppl didnt have internet, mobile phones and Netflix had not yet started. We rented our VHS and DVDs and here we are now…and you have to take all this into consideration that the demand for streamable services and mobile data is so great that its beginning to overload the system…hence 3g is going to make room!!..and most ppl today just dont think about this, its a normal part of their lives and they expect access. So…just a quick rant…If you restrict tourism and restrict second home ownership, where are the tourists going to stay? So you will have the “missing” genertion return to Wales? to live and work…in what? there will be no industry. Recently Staycations or whatever they are called are on the decline this year UK wide as ppl return to Spain and semi guaranteed heat and weather and also where tourists are catered for…we dont cater very well within our hospitality industry in the UK and Wales is the worst for providing customer service…it needs a much bigger picture solution…like our NHS…quick fixes wont work and long term planning is something that no one wants to do…
You have a lot to say, and obviously I don’t agree with all of it. But I will make a quick contribution.
If the issue is a lack of housing for locals, then a bigger problem than holiday homes is people moving in permanently. Often retirees and early retirees. But how big is the demand from locals?
What I’m driving at is that the bigger problem in rural Wales – which you suggested – is that apart from agriculture, essential services, and service industries like care home workers, small retail outlets, hairdressers, tradesman, etc, there is no economy as such. No major employers. Which means that hammering second home owners might make socialists feel good, but if there’s no local demand for those properties – what then?
What rural Wales needs is year-round employment providing decent wages, that keep young people in the area, and enable them to buy homes. But socialists are never going to deliver a healthy economy. So something else is needed.
How long a rant do you want lol. But yes I totally agree with you too. 22 years ago I was a community councillor in N Pembs my ward including two other small villages about 600 people. Certainly in my village we all knew eachother..no escape lol..There were 4 holiday homes in the village, one was a second home to a local. Now there are only maybe 10 families locals who remain. Why? their children have left as there was no work and they sold their houses as holiday homes. Most of these houses are then rented out in the summer as tourist residences. The major employers in the Fishguard, St Davids areas have closed and re located to the EU. so thousands of jobs have gone, the closure of the MOD Airbase also.Haverfordwest is in a terrible state as a result of bad planning and scam developments that never happened. Same with the Marina issues in both Milford Haven and Fishguard which was always a scam… So its a chicken and egg situation and no point in blaming the EU. There was an article in the Telegraph or something years ago about the missing generation in Pembrokeshire, yes, they have left as did ppl in N Wales. Either work in dreadful conditions for dreadful management long hours and bad wages or get an education and get out and you cant blame them for that. The farming community scratches a living as it can. Long hours 7 days a week. You now have Milford Haven Port as the Energy port, maybe that will happen but I have my own personal suspicions it wont We had tidal energy programs with millions spent on them with the one from Ramsey Sound rusting away on Milford Docs…Wales is in a dreaful mess. But its politics as all the politicians want is to stay in power and there is no joined up or forward planning.
The key to reviving rural Wales is building up a local economy. A start could be made by the education system losing the obsession with academic achievement and focusing more on vocational training.
Pushing kids in rural areas towards university is basically saying goodbye. Yet I have seen dozens of people move into my area with skills that are not being taught locally and do well. And employers can do more. For example, The Welsh Ambulance Service prefers to recruit trained staff in England rather than train locals to do the job. This failing can be found in many spheres.
More vocational training, and employers being made to train locals rather than recruit from outside, could do a hell of a lot for rural employment.
What about the true, irreversible prospect if this whole business continues unabated: Wales becoming completely anglicised to the point it ceases to exist as a distinct entity. That is not written from a place of bigotry, as I’d raise the same concerns if England was in danger of becoming the 51st state, for instance.
I know what you mean. But what pisses me off is those who bang on about ‘cheque-book colonialism’, which is an acceptance of economic realities, and then believe that Wales can be saved by punitive, socialistic legislation. Having accepted economic realities they should then have the sense to understand that Wales’s best hope lies in a healthy rural economy from which locals benefit.
I’ve long found it a paradox in a way, in that the orthodoxy says in order to allow wealth creation, the government should get out of the way of business and laissez-faire.
But where is the wealth concentrated on this island? All around the seats of ‘national’ and devolved governments, with it broadly decreasing the further away from them you get. In a perverse sort of way, you’d think us here in the North, shunned from the embrace of both Westminster and the Bay, we’d be streets ahead as some sort of libertarian, free market boomtown!
Since big business, especially the seriously big transnational variety, started cosying up to governments (or was it the other way round ?) the whole concept of wealth creation has become modified and ultimately corrupted. Maybe it was Ike’s notion of a military-industrial complex that started it all but it has really gathered momentum over the last 50 years. Here in Europe all sorts of dodgy behaviours have gone on between the Eurocrats and big business, all done in the name of the “greater good” claimed to benefit us as consumers when in reality it was just a big scam to shut out small fry businesses from markets the big boys decided they wanted to dominate and keep prices higher than necessary. Sure, it has created wealth…. for the relatively few, mostly done by taking it from ordinary folk andthe public purse and stashing it in the coffers of various elites. And the theft goes on.
Jac, I thought I knew what ‘cheque-book colonialism’ referred to, but could you confirm? I take it to mean basically, money thrown at a problem, managed decline, welfare subvention from the ruling authority, in contrast to the fostering or encouragement of indigenous enterprise and growth?
Dafis, as I understand it you have basically described the Horseshoe theory. Don’t get me wrong, the logical endpoint of “If government would just get out of the way!…” sort of thinking ultimately is, what? Post-Gaddaffi Libya? A drugs cartel? Government is needed to set the rules and maintain the grounds on which the games of commerce, industry and markets take place.
As regards the big players’ dominance, you’re forgetting things like barriers to entry into a market; for instance, none of us would be able to set up our own high-speed broadband network to compete with BT or Virgin would we? And while big biz undoubtedly can do a lot of harm, there is the benefit of economies of scale to the consumer.
‘Cheque-book colonialism’, as that term is used by language activists, means locals being priced out of the housing market by wealthier outsiders.
Whatever the virtues of big business may be there is no doubt that the escalation in the collaborations between big multinationals and their host governments often works to the disadvantage of citizens as consumers and as participants in any kind of democratic process. Protectionism is the end product by creating all sorts of barriers to entry even from within the host market. That is a key feature of the EU but don’t count on the UK to adopt a less cosy stance towards big multinationals ( TATA ?) and the Bay Bubble is totally besotted with the big beasts.
Fair point, but without protectionism UK workers would be catastrophically undercut by dumping of products from places like China.
This is not all about local “working” people in rural areas – local people retire too and need to downsize, there is a demand, and that’s what they used to do… hand over the farm or other business to family, move into a cottage in the village, remain part of their own local community, keep their (needed, maybe not immediately, but later) support network close, look after grandchildren, be cared for freely by family (not paid strangers) when needed, and often all without any need for car. As part of the community the local clubs and other organisations also provided mutual support. These local pensioners could and did use and support small village shops 52 weeks a year. The Investment home owners have seen an end to all that.
I think you’re mixing up internet bandwidth with energy consumption. Obviously any like-for-like semiconductor circuit with more transistors in it will consume more energy, but the amount of power it takes to produce each bit of information today is infinitesimally smaller than in years gone by.
Also, if you compare the energy consumed in a couple driving to Blockbuster, picking out a VHS tape to rent, playing it in a bulky monstrosity with magnetic heads, viewing it on a hot cathode ray box, and driving back to drop the tape off the next day, with streaming something on an app on a modern LCD panel, there’s no comparison.
Makes for depressing reading. All these parasites arriving at regular intervals to have a good old suck at the tit, snout into trough, feast at the table of Labour in Wales, call it what you will. This is waste on a shocking scale. I would accept indeed encourage a few points of independent scientific research and advice but this multiplicity of agencies, trusts and other fund sucking bodies all driven by assorted ideology, personal preferences and dodgy financial motives is so evidently wrong yet the Bay regime just carries on forging more and more links with such entities. Labour is rotten to the core. Sadly I don’t think any of the alternatives are all that cleaner either. Plaid is shot, Tories are mostly bent and totally obsessed with obeying orders from London, and LibDems are … LibDems ! In a country where people care, movements like Gwlad and Propel would be surging forward but there is so much indifference and subservience out there that the next Senedd will look much like this one full of dead heads and wankers. Grim and grey, the vision of the future as I see it.
I didn’t mention Sustrans in this piece but someone has just directed me to that shower’s annual reports. This is the crew that Lee Waters worked for. You’ll see from this link that funding from government sources – the grey line – soared from £460.61 in 2019 to £92,960,000 in 2023.
That is of course the UK figure, and for some reason, the majority of that funding comes from Scotland.
Though in the annual report Sustrans takes credit for the work it does in Wales.
£93 Million FFS !! in a country where Education from 2-18 is on its knees, where NHS is listing badly and slowly sinking, but above all the lack of stable long term and assertive thinking to restore some kind of working economy and infrastructure based on real trade, not the endless daisy chain of fake service and social enterprise bullshit.
When governments pump money into groups like Sustrans at levels like that there must come a point when we should start regarding those groups as government departments.
They should never become de facto government dept’s even in your imagination. See them for what they are – subversives being welcomed on board by a crew of feeble depraved politicians who just crave an easy life. We are subverted by a whole array of groups that peddle exaggerated threats, myths and downright lies. They may be part funded by some dark forces like WEF but here in Wales they are doing a grand job of local funding by sucking out the funds from the local pool aided by willing accomplices !
That would be sound but maybe this arm’s-lengthing is for a reason. Exemption from Freedom of Information requests comes to mind. Also questions to ministers about whatever they get up to can be deflected with ‘not our operational responsibility’.
I can see the advantages of the FoI loophole, but there might still be a way of getting the info from an FoI to WG. But it would need to be carefully worded. They’ll take any chance you give them to wriggle out of answering.
Info. on FOI requests to arm’s length bodies available at ICO link below.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi/what-is-the-foi-act-and-are-we-covered/
Looks like the Sustrans revenue and expenditure in Scotland is an anomoly. It relates to different land ownership law, and different planning law in Scotland. We see this with the UK government levelling up grants for specific cycle paths. In Carmarthenshire the council pockets the grant and commissions Sustrans as one of many sub contractors. In Perthshire, it’s Sustrans who pockets the grant and commissions the local authority and others as sub-contractors. In Scotland the whole ‘for purpose’ sum goes through the charities books, whereas projects in England and specifically in Wales it’s a rather shady operation and involves a shuffle between the Welsh Government, local authorities and the charity. Difficult to see the full picture. Perhaps a bit of top slicing and book dicing going on. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s for some insider salary for a favoured administrator in the mix, which would explain why HM Treasury has by-passed the Welsh Government and made a direct award to Cyngor Sir Gar to get something physical actually built.
I guessed it had to be something specific to Scotland, something to do with Scots Law. I might have guessed you’d come up with the answer!
Excellent investigation as always. Thank you for the mention! Frustrating that the majority in Wales are so reluctant to see what’s inevitably coming down the line. Been wondering about tourism, since Llwybr Newydd states that the Welsh Dictatorship want a 45% reduction in ‘total journeys’. Presumably this means total journeys of all kinds.
I think it has to include tourism.
At some times of the year tourism accounts for most of the traffic in my area. Especially on specific times, such as Friday afternoon and evening, when people are coming from the Midlands to their caravans on the coast. And Sunday, when they go home. It’s the same in other areas, and on other roads; the A40 and the M4 heading for the south west, and the A55 in the north.
To exclude tourist traffic would make a mockery of the whole exercise, and also guarantee widespread criticism. And if we’re talking of people coming down on a Friday to their self-catering caravans, with what they’ll need for the weekend in the car with them, and then driving back on Sunday, we are not discussing a great contribution to the local economy.
Which takes us on to consider the vast coastal caravan sites. I’m sure the environmentalists have views on these. And on this subject we might even agree!
And thank you for you kind words.
The welsh govt is off its trolley!! as they say lol…how do they expect ppl to be able to stay and make a living out of the tourist industry if there is none…so they will have to do what my family and friends did years ago leave….and I have friends with Kids in the 20s and they have left Wales as there is no work except rubish hours with low pay in Hospitality or care…
Yep…so how are ppl going to make a living in the support industry for tourism…well, friends I know will not being going to Wales on holiday..20mph was the first nail in the coffin…but the transport system is on its knees too…back in the day my parents had to leave N Wales to work elsewhere as there was only the tourist industry, farming, Police and Local govt and NHS..the A55 dualling changed some of that as it put England in reach to commute daily to work…but many left. Back in the 60s onwards you couldnt get anywhere to live in the summer months in Colwyn Bay, Llandudno Rhyl etc as it was all holiday lets and so its not really changed and the Mid Wales seaside towns have always had this problem. Its becomming more noticeable in S West Wales where 25 years ago most villages were populated by locals who owned their own houses….but dont forget too…that the councils allowed council houses to be sold to non locals as the covenants could be bought out…so that was also another nail in the coffin of local affordability. When I lived in a village in N Pembs 22 years ago, there were NO holiday homes now its all holiday property apart from a few which I could name…
Strange we see the Welsh Government cry ‘lack of funding’ for the NHS while at the same time dishing out millions to Wildlife Trusts so their mates who own urban townhouses in England can play Bear Grylls at weekends.
The increase in funding for wildlife trusts and river groups in the past five years has been phenomenal. And it’s been done for a purpose. As I say, it coincides with the stepping up of the war on livestock farming, which had to include water pollution, which in turn had to mean directing environmentalists away from Dŵr Cymru.
We currently have 5 wildlife trusts. Two big ones, South and West Wales, and North Wales; and three smaller ones, Gwent, Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire. Or at least, smaller in area, but not in funding. There are plans for these border trusts. Already, Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire are linked with Shropshire and Herefordshire in the ‘Wilder Marches’ project. Expect more such ‘co-operation’.
Problem is we need food!!…if you cut livestock production how are ppl going to eat…as a farmer…I have never considered my livestock to be a pollutant…but there are other issues like wet pastures, death of the dung beetles due to antibiotics etc and on it goes…its not just a quick fix but a look at the future and future plans…something that is not being put into place atm.
Yes, because its corruption and friends of friends…as it always has been thats whats wrong…bailing their mates out of their failed enterprises via the Welsh Development Bank or Bank ofWales whatever…they own it…and 20mph…