Shorts 16.03.12

1/   Congratulations to Leanne Wood on being elected Plaid Cymru's new leader. Though it's difficult for me to work up any enthusiasm because I view Plaid Cymru as a spent force, no matter who's in charge.

      On the plus side, she seems genuinely in favour of independence; but the downside is that she's a real socialist, unlike the drawing room / debating society kind of 'socialists' Plaid has known up until now. Equally worryingly, she seems to be a radical green at a time when common sense is gaining the upper hand.

     The acid test will come in her attitude to the Plantation, and curbing the exploitation of our country and its resources. Also, whether the outgoing rural, culturalist wing of the party let her get on with the job.

2/  Gwynedd's council housing was taken over a couple of years ago by Cartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd (CCG). Yesterday's Daily Post reported that, due to complaints from tenants, CCG is terminating its refurbishment contract with the Apollo Group of Essex.

     The real question must be not whether Apollo was up to the job but why a company from south-east England ever got the work of refurbishing properties in north-west Wales. There's always been something not right about CCG, with its English-bought vehicles sporting GB plates.

3/  This week's edition of the Jewish Chronicle reported that "the Welsh government has pledged more than £320,000 to boost Holocaust education in the country's schools".

     Of course the Holocaust should be taught in schools, it's part of European and world history, but does it need funding additional to the rest of the history curriculum? And do sixth-formers really need to be taken to Auschwitz "to learn about and understand what happened during the Holocaust"? How is it possible to imagine the horrors that took place there in a visit made by teenagers who will almost certainly be treating the trip as a holiday?

     In the Middle East conflict I support Israel, but I'm savvy enough to know that Israel relies heavily on the guilt and sympathy generated by the Holocaust for its support. Therefore, mightn't specific funding for teaching about the Holocaust be interpreted as supporting Israel? And this in an Assembly where most Members probably support the Palestinians! 

        

4/  Edwina Hart AM, our Minister for Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science admits she hasn't got the branding of Wales right. Quite right, Redwina; image is so important.

5/   My petition on social housing has died a death. You may recall that I petitioned the Assembly for a five-year residency period before anyone qualified for social housing in Wales. Well, a couple of days ago I received an e-mailed letter telling me that my petition has now, finally, been rejected.
    The reasons? Introducing such legislation would restrict the cross-border flow of people. Obviously nothing must interfere with the Plantation.

6/  You may recall an earlier post in which I dealt with the fact that in Wales, alone among the countries of the UK, no permission is needed to convert a residential property to a house of multiple occupation with up to 7 tenants. So yesterday I sent Huw Lewis an e-mail asking for an explanation of this anomaly. My full name and address was appended to the e-mail.
     In response I received a reply from Christopher Binding, Huw Lewis's office manager, saying: "As you may be aware there is a protocol amongst AMs and MPs that they only deal with cases on behalf of their own constituents. In Mr. Lewis’s case, people who live in Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney". He then referred me to a list of AMs - as if I don't know my AM! before referring me to another e-mail address if I'm contacting Huw Lewis in his ministerial capacity.
     What a precious little sod! The content of my e-mail made it absolutely clear that I was contacting Huw Lewis about a matter covered by his portfolio, so why couldn't Bondage have just forwarded it?

An Offer Not To Be Refused

FROM A RUSSIAN BUSINESSMAN TO CARWYN JONES . . .

Dear Comrade Jones,

We hearing your country so poor rats collecting food for you. (Old Russian saying.) This good. Not good for you people of course, but good for plan I have. My cousin Oleg say because you waste money you given before, some fool in Brussels give you more money! (This some racket!) Oleg say lots of money coming your way soon, so here my plan.

I want set up network of refuges and hostels in Wales for Russian ex-criminals. I know what you say - 'We got no Russian ex-criminals in Wales'. But that beauty of plan - I set up network and Russian baddies appear like flies round a corpse! Like it say in that American movie about cricket, 'build it and they will come'.

I hear about political correctness commisars, so you want gay Russian criminals, black Russian criminals, green Russian criminals, I find them. Disabled? No problem, I get Mad Yuri and boys to work on some people, then they be very disabled. Lesbians? My sister Svetlana into that sort of thing. Good plan, no?

My accountant, Boris, he genius with figures. So good he now help prison camp commandant with accounts. He say we need 57 million euros to start and then 17 million a year after. (Money be paid to Cayman Islands account.) Of course, we do own accounting and auditing, save everybody work. Also, insult in Russia if strangers come check figures. Mad Yuri and boys very sensitive about Russian traditions.

From enquiries Oleg make it seem your city Swansea be great place to have headquarters; he hear it very much like St. Petersburg. Not so cold in winter maybe, but colder in summer . . . what country you got there? Anyway, we hear YMCA building come vacant soon. Mr Malik leaving. YMCA on street with lots nightclubs. Mad Yuri and boys like nightclubs. Smash up then take over. 

So there we are. European funding create lots jobs doing something Wales crying out for, as you say. (See, I learn your Welsh ways. Soon I be wearing kilt like you.) We fit into your third sector like Mad Yuri's fingers into his brass knuckles. 

Everybody here get very excited now about come Wales. Let us know when Swansea YMCA come free. If no hear in six weeks Mad Yuri come collect invitation personally. Get bread and salt ready.

                          

                                                                                                    Dos vedanya, Tovarisch,

                                                                                                                       Vladimir

The Streets Of Swansea 2

After watching the second programme in the series, Swansea: Living on the Streets, last night, I have some more observations. But before making these, I want to address some sanctimonious Brit Left 'anti-racist' comments made on the earlier post.

What I'm attacking here (and in many other blogs) is the waste of public funding in Wales; the way that money always seems to be available for non-Welsh issues; and the fact that by throwing money at a problem - as in the case of turning Swansea into the homelessness capital of Wales - you only make that problem worse. I am attacking the third sector and those politicians who support it. There was nothing racist in my attacks on AWEMA and there is nothing racist here. 'Racism' seems to be the last resort of anti-Welsh Unionists who've got no argument.

In the earlier post I neglected to mention some other organisations active in Swansea. Prominent among them is Caer Las; an organisation I have previously posted about due to its activities in Llanelli. Also worth mentioning is the Wallich Foundation, very active in homelessness projects around Swansea Bay. Add these to Shelter Cymru, The Cyrenians, the many housing associations and other groups dealt with in my previous post, and you have what can only be described as a homelessness industry in Swansea. All reliant on government funding and public and private donations, which are drying up in these straitened economic times; so this series is - with the connivance of the BBC - nothing but an appeal by the Swansea homelessness industry for continued or increased funding.

Having mentioned Caer Las, this links with another recent post on the mystery of why Wales is the only country of the UK without legislation on Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMO). With the result that in Wales it is possible to convert a residential dwelling into a multi-occupancy building (with up to 7 tenants) without needing planning permission and with no requirement to inform neighbours. Swansea - surprise! surprise! - has one of the highest incidences of HMOs in the UK. The more you learn about how Wales is misgovered the more you can make sense of things that you might otherwise pay no attention to. The Welsh Government refuses to implement HMO legislation because it would impede the colonisation work of the homelessness industry, private landlords, social housing agencies, universities and others.

Moving on, a criticism levelled against my previous post was that I was a bit harsh in my descriptions of some of the homeless. So consider this. Those being paraded before the cameras are the best of the bunch, the ones designed to elicit our sympathy. We aren't being shown the aggressive beggars, the drunks and junkies sprawled out in public places, the used needles, the urine and the excrement, etc., etc. The BBC is not screening footage of gangs of drunken, screaming dossers wandering the city's streets. No, it's all very, very selective, because it's all about securing funding.

Swansea has a homeless industry providing many hundreds of jobs; the 'raw materials' of this industry are down-and-outs. It follows that - as in any industry - there must be a regular supply of raw materials. To guarantee the continuing success of this industry Swansea must attract people with no connection with the city, or Wales, simply to keep the industry going. There can be no doubt that the industry has been successful. One of those interviewed in last night's programme was a Mancunian who had travelled to Swansea from Bristol. This man - who, rather worryingly, described himself as "feral" - stated that he had "heard good things about Swansea" and this explained his coming. What he probably heard was that Swansea is a soft touch. 

The fact that Swansea is Wales' homelessness capital is due solely to the money and resources being thrown at the 'problem'. It follows that if you throw more money at the problem it will grow, by attracting yet more dossers to the city. Then the self-serving people who run some of these organisations, and pay themselves such generous salaries (and pension packages), will use the growing problem to argue for yet more funding. 

     When are politicians and others going to wise up to the reality that many of these third sector ventures are nothing more than black holes for public funding? You will only reduce the problem of 'homelessness' in Swansea by cutting the funding and making the city less attractive to dossers.

It may not be AWEMA, but homelessness is another form of deception, and it saddens me that it's happening in my home town. But this problem, this waste of money, is not confined to Swansea. Across Wales money is being poured into third sector ventures providing no benefits whatever to Welsh people. Why are we wasting this money? Why does Wales have no HMO legislation? Why is it often easier for a Londoner to secure social housing in Wales than a Welsh person?

The Streets of Swansea

Last Monday I watched a programme on BBC 1, Swansea: Living On The Streets, about homelessness in the ugly lovely town. When I realised it was the first of a series I assumed the subsequent programmes would focus on other Welsh cities and towns, but the whole series is devoted to Swansea. I couldn't understand why . . . until a few days later when I saw an item on the BBC website about homelessness in Wales.

According to the latest statistics Swansea has more people homeless than Cardiff with 2,945 against Cardiff's 2,020. Or, in percentage terms, 1.27% against 0.59% of the population seeking help. Which is both disturbing and odd. Because in second place, with a figure of 1.25%, is Neath Port Talbot; while in third place, with 0.83%, is Carmarthenshire. It's reasonable to assume that the Carmarthenshire figure is heavily influenced by Llanelli, so we are really looking at the Swansea conurbation. But why should homelessness be a bigger problem here than anywhere else in Wales? (The full table is on the right, click to enlarge.)

The figures were supplied by the local authorities, so part of the answer must lie in how different councils assess homelessness. There is no other way to explain Flintshire having a figure of 0.07% and Swansea 1.27%. But I don't think that's the full answer.

Watching the programme last Monday I was struck by the fact that few, perhaps none, of those telling their stories were actually from Swansea. There were men from other parts of Wales, an Englishman, an Irishwoman and some Romanians. So why are they all in Swansea? If they're looking for work, then surely Cardiff is the place to be? There must be something other than the sea air attracting them to Swansea and its satellite towns. There is, for I believe these homeless are just pawns in a bigger game.

Shelter Cymru, the homelessness charity, and one of the giants of the third sector, is based in Swansea. (Its president-for-life, John Puzey, was also on television last week, calling for more affordable housing.) Also very active in the Swansea area is Cyrenians Cymru, who help 'rough sleepers' (I don't sleep too well sometimes - does that make me a rough sleeper?). There are other charities like the Salvation Army and various Christian bodies also active in the area, providing help for down-and-outs.

Then add the fact that Swansea is also home to major players in the social / 'affordable' housing sector, some of which I have dealt with in the past, such as The Coastal Housing Group, which seems to be both a social housing provider and and a property developer; plus the Gwalia group, which housed the gang of English paedophiles jailed last year. All of which I suggest makes the Swansea conurbation something of a magnet for dossers and those looking for somewhere to live at someone else's expense.

This also reminds us how fragile is the economy of our second city. We already know that Swansea is over-dependent on public sector jobs, from local government to the DVLA, but there seems to be a blind spot about the third sector, which is also over-represented in the city. The third sector is composed of the kind of organisations I've mentioned in the two preceding paragraphs, reliant for their survival on grants and donations. As might be expected in the current economic climate, both sources of income are declining, made clear in the most recent set of accounts available on the Shelter Cymru website. But these are for 2009 / 2010, so we can assume that the position is even more desperate today. Which probably explains what's happening in Swansea, and at BBC Wales.

With their income streams drying up those in the homelessness and affordable housing business need to stress the problem in order to keep the lolly rolling in . . . and of course to secure the funding needed for hundreds if not thousands of publicly-funded jobs in Swansea. How to do it? Thinks . . . get the Beeb onside then wheel on the dossers . . . let them tell their harrowing tales of self-destruction . . . capture them crying . . . see them sleeping under cardboard - hey presto! more funding is guaranteed. Both for homelessness directly and also the 'affordable homes' built by outfits like Coastal Housing and Gwalia which also feed off the 'homelessness problem', using it to justify more funding to house more problem tenants.

Here's my take on this. Human nature being what it is, the third sector contains some unscrupulous people wishing to exaggerate the scale of homelessness in Swansea (and Wales, generally) in order to, a) guarantee their own positions and salaries and, b) make political points about 'wicked, uncaring capitalism'. Before anyone accuses me of right wing bias, just remember this: most of the third sector in Wales - outfits like AWEMA - must justify their existence and their funding by identifying and stressing a 'problem'. The bigger that 'problem' can be made to appear then the more funding can be claimed. This is an incontrovertible fact.

The problem of homelessness in Wales will only become worse if more funding is allocated to solving it. This is because the more support and funding provided the more an area, like Swansea, becomes a magnet for dossers, junkies, alkies, misfits and criminals. The bottom line is that - due to the Englandandwales framework in which our third sector operates - the better funded our third sector then the bigger the problems will become. Politicians should start waking up to this reality.

 

Diamond Jubilee: A Welsh Reality

Two weeks ago our edition of the Cambrian News ran a 'news item' (I use the term very loosely) in which the proprietor of a local caff - and luminary of the Tywyn and District Chamber of Tourism and Commerce - bemoaned the fact that the town's primary school, Ysgol Penybryn, had no plans to celebrate Bet Windsor's Diamond Jubilee.

This week the refrain was taken up in a reader's letter. (Right; click to enlarge.) It would, fulminated the writer, be "a disgrace should the local primary school not mark such an historical occasion, when it will be celebrated all over the UK and abroad".

The Tywyn and District Chamber of Tourism and Commerce has a history of expressing 'certain' attitudes. It often seems more concerned with politics than with doing its avowed job. One example I recently highlighted was the outburst over Cyngor Gwynedd wasting millions of taxpayers' money by erecting half a dozen bilingual signs in the hope of saving people from injury.

As I explained in that post, coastal south Meirionnydd has an embittered minority that has never accepted Cyngor Gwynedd because it's too big for them and their kind - Businessmen-Freemasons standing for election as 'Independents' - to control, and this dislike has turned into a pathological loathing since the council fell to Plaid Cymru. These malcontents will resort to anything - however absurd - to undermine the council and / or attack Plaid Cymru. Which explains the current 'Gawd bless yer, Mum' nonsense. But this time I suggest they've gone too far.

Picking on elected councillors is one thing, they after all are politicians and it goes with the job. But this latest politically-motivated attack is levelled against conscientious and hard-working teachers, who do a difficult job, not helped by the constant stream of riff-raff moving into the area. Yet these teachers, in the eyes of the royalists, seem to be viewed as treacherous Welsh republicans.

The letter-writer concludes by saying: "My family and I will once again organise a street party in honour of the Jubilee for ourselves and neighbours just as we did for the the royal wedding last April." Which is fine by me: she and her kind are free to organise such parties, so why not be satisfied with that - why force these celebrations on others? Why use small children to score cheap political points? And why attack damn good teachers who cannot defend themselves?

Look forward in the coming months to more of the same: If-you-don't-celebrate-the-Jubilee-you're-a-Welsh-bastard-who-burns-holiday-homes-and-supports-the-IRA-and-Al-Qaeda-and-calls-the-Falklands-the-Malvinas.

Actually, I'm none of those things. I just don't have much time for royalty, and even less time for royalism and royalists. But I won't force my views on them, so why do they think it's OK to force their views on me and others?