Jac o' the North
Tag: Housing (Wales) Act 2014
Devolution has made Wales poorer
On 18/12/2017 22/12/2017 By JacIn Cardiff, Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Conservative and Unionist Party, Corruption, Demographics, Public Funding, Social Housing, Third Sector, Welsh Government, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media60 Comments
Before you start, let me warn you that this is quite a long piece, it's long because it deals with the fundamental problems of devolution, and explains why devolution has resulted in Wales becoming poorer.
Though you can console yourselves with the knowledge that unless some bastards really annoy me between now and Hogmanay this will be my last posting of 2017.
Here's how devolution makes Wales poorer, with a few of the consequences:
Fundamentally, devolution makes Wales poorer due to the way devolution is funded
A problem exacerbated by separate legislation and funding allowing England to impose burdens on Wales that would be impossible without devolution
That said, Wales being poor suits the interests of the Labour Party, which blames others for the state of Wales while exploiting the poverty for electoral gain and to build a crony empire
As there is no party or alliance of parties capable of breaking Labour's stranglehold Wales is condemned to ever-worsening poverty
With devolution being so disastrous for Wales we are left with only two realistic alternatives: independence or being treated more fairly as part of England
I shall deal with all of the above points but not necessarily separately (or even in that order) because of linkages that I hope become clear.
SHORT-CHANGED
There is no question that Wales is worse off today than when we had the first elections to the Welsh Assembly in May 1999. The evidence is everywhere, and not only is the Wales of 2017 poorer than the Wales of 1999, we are also poorer relative to other parts of the UK than we were in 1999, and falling further behind every year.
It doesn't really matter which index you use – GVA, GDP, wages, child poverty – the picture painted is the same. (While our GVA may have grown faster than the other countries of the UK in recent years that growth seems to be restricted to Cardiff.)
One of the major reasons for Wales' relative poverty is the funding arrangement known as the Barnett Formula. This article on the BBC Northern Ireland website explains it in simple terms.
Note that it admits, "The figures vary slightly every year, but in 2012-2013 Northern Ireland got the most – £10,876 per head. Scotland got £10,152 per head and Wales, despite being much poorer, got £9,709." (My underline.)
So we see that, to begin with, Wales is disadvantaged in the allocation of funding, but it gets worse. For in the article we also read, "Some argue a needs-based system – which would take into account factors such as the age of the population and levels of poverty – would be a fairer formula."
The importance of the reference to "the age of the population" will be explained in a minute.
Now in any normal country this deteriorating situation might have resulted in a change of government, if not social upheaval, but this is Wales and such things never happen, partly because there's a scapegoat. For since 2010 there's been a Conservative government in London, and so for 'Welsh' Labour and its little helper it's all the fault of them wicked Tories.
But Wales had been in decline since the beginning of the devolution era, and from 1999 until 2010 there was a Labour government in London, first led by Tony Blair and then by Gordon Brown. So did Labour and Plaid Cymru blame 'London' then? Well, obviously, Labour didn't, and Plaid's criticism was usually muted, certainly after the palace coup that removed leader Dafydd Wigley in 2000 (after he'd led his party to its greatest electoral success), and also during the Labour-Plaid coalition of 2007 – 2011.
To reverse this decline would require radical change, but 'Welsh' Labour is as afraid of radical change as the stone throwers of Saudi Arabia; for Labour in Wales is a very conservative party. It wants things to stay the same because the status quo serves its interests, with no change countenanced unless it can benefit the party.
' . . . and it'all the fault of them wicked Tories up in Lundun'. Bollocks! Try looking closer to home, Leanne.
The other consideration is that change of a radical nature, i.e. Wales doing things for itself, to benefit itself, might unleash demons that could inflame a hitherto resigned populace with ideas of Welsh competence. Clearly, a dangerous road to take for a party that, when it comes to the relationship with England, may be viewed as the DUP without the bowlers and the sashes.
To understand Plaid Cymru you need to know that Plaid today is a bound-for-oblivion alliance of a socially conservative rural grass-roots with a leadership stratum made up of 'progressives' fighting UK-wide or even global battles against the forces of darkness.
While Trump is president, Brexit looms, the globe warms, the right marches in Freedonia, and Wales lacks transgender toilets in every coffee shop, Wales is too small and too poor to interest such 'progressives'.
TAKING ADVANTAGE
I've said that Wales will never prosper under devolution, but in the heading to this article I suggest that devolution by its very nature is partly responsible for our decline. So let me explain.
Fundamentally, devolution has made it easier for England to impose financial and other burdens on us that would have been almost impossible prior to 1999. This has inevitably contributed to our decline.
In that article from the BBC Northern Ireland website that I used you read, regarding the Barnett Formula, the suggestion that, "a needs-based system – which would take into account factors such as the age of the population and levels of poverty – would be a fairer formula."
This would definitely help us in Wales because our population is older than those in the other administrations, and ageing faster. The percentage of our population in the 65+ bracket in 2008 was 21.4%, while in Northern Ireland it was 16.7%, England 19.1%, and Scotland 19.7%.
A major reason for the high proportion of elderly people in the Welsh population is the large numbers of English people retiring to Wales. And this influx inevitably increases the burden on our NHS and other services.
In some areas a majority of the over 65s was born in England. Here's a table I compiled a while back using figures gleaned from the 2011 census. In 2011 only 68.8% of the 65+ age group in Wales was actually born here.
In Conwy only 37.1% of the over 65s were born in Wales. That's a staggering statistic.
This should be a cause for concern, because every western country worries about the 'ticking timebomb' of an ageing population, but don't worry, because in Wales a rapidly ageing population is seen as a positive.
A letter I received from the Office of the First Minister assured me, "There are almost 800,000 people aged 60 and over in Wales, over a quarter of the population, and, in the next twenty years, this is expected to exceed one million people. The fact that Wales is a nation of older people should be seen as something positive".
So there you have it, here in Wales we've found the right wire to snip in order to de-activate the demographic time-bomb. So why aren't economists, health professionals and others flocking here from around the world to learn from us? Because it's all bullshit, that's why.
And there's another reason for lying, because to prop up the NHS and related services education and all sorts of other budgets have to be raided. One organisation suffering badly is Natural Resources Wales, which looks after our forests, rivers and other assets.
From £139m in 2013/2014 the 'Welsh' Government grant to NRW will fall to £65m in 2019/20. Falling by more than half in six years, in a country supposedly dedicated to protecting the natural environment (if only to attract tourists).
Of course people were retiring to Wales long before we had devolution, but if health services were not devolved then we would almost certainly have seen an increase in funding, but with devolution and the block grant the attitude is, 'You've had your money, it's up to you how you allocate it'.
This is just one of the ways in which devolution allows England to dump on Wales, but there are many others, which I shall deal with soon.
THE POLITICAL CLASS
As we've seen, Labour blames the Conservative government in London for all our ills, and conveniently ignores the fact that it was in power in the UK until 2010 and could have reformed the Barnett Formula. But Labour prefers to exploit Welsh poverty by blaming the Tories for causing it in order to maintain Labour's hold on Wales.
Plaid Cymru's position is marginally less discreditable, but in attacking them wicked Tories up in London too many in Plaid tend to forget who runs the administration nearer home. For them, perceptions of ideological solidarity with Labour blur the reality.
Giving us two parties for which what's best for Wales will always take second place to (for Labour) hanging onto power, and (for Plaid) being a peripheral part of some UK leftist-'progressive' front.
On the other side, the Tories turn up to slag off the left and carry tales to their bosses in London for them to use in order to warn English voters of the perils of voting Labour. Former prime minister David Cameron even described the Wales-England border as the "line between life and death" due to the state of the NHS in Wales.
But Cameron was right, the Welsh NHS is crumbling, and it's partly due to the influx of elderly English, most of them Tory voters, but he's not going to admit that, is he?
So we see that the Tories also exploit Wales' poverty for electoral gain. Great system, eh! – 'Let's keep Wales poor so both the main English parties can use it to their advantage'.
We've seen that Labour's response to Wales' plight is not to reform the Barnett Formula, not to fight the invasion of the blue rinses, not to stand up for Wales in any way. So how does Labour respond?
Well, in addition to blaming everything on them wicked Tories, Labour sets up one organisation after another to 'combat poverty', or 'deprivation', or 'discrimination', or homelessness, or whatever else third sector shysters can persuade civil servants and politicians needs to be combated.
For Labour, the advantage is that those who make up the third sector tend to be on the luvvie left, which makes them natural Labour sympathisers; while the bloated third sector these parasites create also provides opportunities for 'Welsh' Labour to practice the patronage and cronyism for which it is rightly famed. Which gives Wales a third sector providing sinecures for both those who could smell the money from afar and failed local politicians and loyal hangers-on.
Labour also responds with gimmicks, especially gimmicks designed to gain favourable reporting in the friendly English media. One that made big news was of course free prescriptions back in 2007. Scotland and Northern Ireland followed suit . . . but not England, where the charge is now £8.60 per item.
Inevitably, this has resulted in a movement of people from England to Wales to take advantage of our generosity, people with long-term medical conditions, which further increase the burden on our NHS. Something that, again, would have been impossible without devolution.
But to talk of such things would make us 'uncaring', or 'selfish', heinous crimes in a country as rich as Wales.
THE POVERTY SECTOR
I've written many times about Registered Social Landlords, more usually known as housing associations, and so I don't propose to go into any great depth here, suffice it to say that we have a system of social housing so mismanaged and damaging to Welsh interests that it could only have been developed with objectives other than providing good rented accommodation for Welsh people.
For a start, our social housing is – despite 'devolution' – part of an Englandandwales system that, through the Housing (Wales) Act 2014, awards priority status to English criminals, drug addicts, problems families and others. To the extent that social housing, especially in some rural towns, is now often referred to as 'anti-social housing' due to the problems it imports.
To make matters worse, there is now an 'arms race' under way as it becomes obvious that we have too many social housing providers and the number must be reduced. So all manner of ill-considered and irresponsible 'agreements' are being entered into with probation companies and other English or cross-border agencies.
Also, in this era of 'consolidation', we see Labour blatantly backing housing associations controlled by its supporters – RSLs such as Wales & West, Pobl Group – to expand and take over housing bodies concerned with providing a decent service rather than with spreading 'Welsh' Labour influence.
Closely linked with social housing is the 'homelessness' racket, that ships in homeless people from England and elsewhere in order to increase the problem of 'Welsh' homelessness and guarantee funding increases for third sector bodies, due to another 'arms race' under way here.
A letter I recently received from the 'Welsh' Government told me there are 48 homelessness agencies operating in Wales and being funded by the WG (though the figure given for the amount of funding involved was wildly – and I hope not deliberately – misleading). This is obviously a ludicrous and unsustainable number and so I can guarantee a cull.
To give specific examples we'll go to the website of the Wallich, one of the big boys in the homelessness industry with an income for year ended 31 March 2017 of almost £13m, £7.8m of which went on salaries, but still left £2.8m for investments, £938,478 of it in 'overseas equities'. (Read the accounts for yourselves.)
Here are some Wallich case studies: First, Anthony, who (we are asked to believe) got on the wrong train in Devon and arrived in Cardiff. Then there's Peter, who (of his own volition, honest) moved from Birmingham to Swansea. Finally, there's Kerry, a victim of domestic violence with a drink problem herself who made the move from Northern Ireland to Wales, presumably because there were no nearer refuges.
'Support that Helps' to provide lots of cushy jobs, overseas investments, and of course, funding to look after many of England's homeless.
Another major player in the homelessness business is Llamau which is currently reminding us that if you want to stay afloat in a cut-throat market then you've got to be innovative, find yourself a niche, get celebs on board. Which is what they believe they've done by focusing on homelessness among young people. (Apparently the other 47 homelessness outfits are turning youngsters away!)
And of course, you've also got to use the media, something the third sector is very good at, with newspaper articles and a television series. Until quite recently the chair of the Llamau board was Angela Gascoigne, who represents the trans-Severn future planned for our south east.
She has strong links with housing and ex-offender bodies in England, she's also on the board of the Wales Probation Trust (part of an Englandandwales set-up), and here we find her with Llamau, a body that has suddenly discovered there's money to be made from housing homeless youngsters.
I assure you, Gasgoigne's CV dovetailing so perfectly with Llamau's latest scam scheme is not accidental, for Gascoigne's English connections provide many of Llamau's clients.
Another lesson from Llamau is that if you want to rip off the Welsh public purse, but throw the locals off the scent, choose a Welsh name you can't properly pronounce while stuffing the board and senior management with your English friends.
There are just too many other examples of how Wales is put upon, how our funding is stolen, for me to deal with them all, but here's one final example that would be impossible to inflict on Wales without devolution.
I've told you that the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 guarantees homeless people and others with no Welsh connections priority treatment, and this explains both the funding wasted by housing associations and the plethora of homelessness organisations currently plaguing Wales. If they don't ship them in themselves then both encourage homeless people and others to turn up in Wales and demand to be housed.
But in some areas the legislation is so specific that it's quite striking. For example, if we go to 70 (1) (i) we read that Wales must also give priority to homeless ex-service personnel, but why doesn't the comparable English legislation make the same demands of English social housing providers? Don't you find that odd?
One doesn't need to be 'uncaring', or even 'callous', to realise that homeless ex-service personnel in England are now being directed to Wales. And that 70 (1) (i) was a deliberate insertion into what is supposed to be Welsh legislation . . . which means it couldn't have been done without devolution.
And it will of course cost the Welsh public purse a great deal of money. So how the hell did this little sub-clause appear in 'Welsh' legislation?
I hope I've lived up to the promise I made in the Introduction and explained why devolution has been disastrous for Wales, and why things can only get worse.
Only a liar or a fool will argue that devolution delivers for Wales and that we should stick with it, 'make it work'. It is designed not to work . . . not for Wales, anyway. It's clear that 'Welsh' devolution works better for England than it does for Wales. Labour and its third sector guarantee that.
Which is why I say in the Introduction that if we want to avoid Wales becoming a third world country for our people then we have only two alternatives: either we choose to officially and constitutionally become a part of England, or we push for independence.
If you agree with me that independence is the only acceptable route for anyone who truly cares about Wales, anyone with an ounce of patriotism, then you must also accept that no political party we have today is capable of delivering independence. It's questionable if any of the parties we know today even wants independence.
Fortunately a new party was recently formed that will argue for Welsh interests to be given priority, for Welsh needs to be met, for Wales to aspire to prosperity and independence rather than virtue signalling poverty.
This new party is Wales' only hope; perhaps our last hope. The choice is yours, but I urge you to get involved and play your part. Start now by clicking here to register your interest.
Unless of course you're content with Wales remaining Labour's poverty-stricken fiefdom and England's dumped-on colony, where the only growth industry is the third sector, which maintains Labour's control and facilitates England's exploitation.
Personally, I think our people deserve better. And I know we can do better – if we give ourselves the chance.
Independence!
♦ end ♦
Bits & Pieces: North Wales Housing, Trivallis, Castle Bingo, Cadw, Homeless Squaddies
On 30/09/2017 19/04/2018 By JacIn Civil Service, Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Demographics, Devolution, Englandandwales, Public Funding, Social Housing, Third Sector, Welsh Assembly, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Language, Welsh Media44 Comments
This is a bumper issue to keep you going as the nights draw in and I get on with a couple of jobs that must be done ere winter tightens its icy grip. The post consists of a number of items enabling you to take it in in easy, bite-sized chunks. ('Bite-sized chunks'!)
NORTH WALES HOUSING LTD
News reaches me of another housing association heading for the rocks, this time it's North Wales Housing Ltd. A body all too representative of 'Welsh' housing associations, especially with the retirement properties built by its wholly owned "commercial subsidiary" Domus Cambria. (Though it's nice to see a bit of Latin being used.)
Looked at more critically, Domus Cambria helps explain what's wrong with housing in Wales. The Welsh NHS is stretched to breaking point by the demands made on it by, among others, English retirees, yet in Conwy, where almost two-thirds of the pensioners were born in England (2011 census), the council is still giving planning permission for retirement flats that are marketed over the border!
Domus Cambria recently sold the last of its leasehold flats on Llandudno's West Shore . . . after years of trying. Which explains why it is finally showing a slight profit, though as with Mill Bay Homes in Pembrokeshire, this ray of financial sunshine may be due to cash transferred from the parent body rather than any business acumen attaching to those running the subsidiary.
The 'Welsh' Government's Regulatory Opinion and Financial Viability Judgement for 2015 on North Wales Housing was none too encouraging, and explains what a drag Domus Cambria has been for a small RSL with just over 2,000 rental properties.
"Selling homes has proved challenging, but has been managed within the Group's existing financial resources. Originally, homes were planned to be sold by May 2012. To date, 10 are provisionally under offer but remain unsold. The response from the Group to address the slow sales has drifted along with no real impetus. The mitigations put in place were reasonable but demonstrate the difficulties of the Board deciding to press ahead with this product in highly challenging market conditions.
Despite Domus Cambria's difficulties, the leadership and some elements of the Board continue to press to undertake more business of this nature – even though phase 1 has fallen short of expectations." (Something of an understatement considering sales were 5 years behind schedule.)
The Regulatory Opinion for 2016 is marginally better, but the beguiling song of the Shit Creek sirens can still be heard.
Given the problems with Domus Cambria it's difficult to understand why North Wales Housing has taken on another sideline in Rakes and Ladders an "in house grounds maintenance team". Especially as the name is hardly original, for I found another Rakes and Ladders in Bridgend, one in Gloucestershire, yet another in Vancouver, and I'm sure there must be more. Confusion guaranteed.
North Wales Housing has also been trustee since 2007 for The Olinda Trust, a registered charity, which ran the Plas Parciau home for dementia sufferers in Old Colwyn. The accounts up to 31 August 2016 paint a bleak picture, showing a deficit of £264,568, which explains the charity ceasing to trade in October 2016.
North Wales Housing Ltd is, like almost all housing associations, an Industrial and Provident Society (IPS) registered with the Financial Conduct Authority. The FCA website suggests that since 16 September 2016 NWH has also been in the consumer credit business.
This would have been around the time that The Olinda Trust succumbed to the sirens' call.
I get the impression of a bunch of incompetents running a housing association too small to survive diversifying desperately in the hope that anyone witnessing this activity will be fooled into thinking those behind it know what they're doing. They don't.
Even though North Wales Housing is an IPS, force of habit took me to the Companies House website where, sure enough, I found an entry for 'North Wales Housing Association Ltd'.
Linked with it is Erw Villas Management Company Ltd, the kind of organisation we encountered when we looked into the Cardiff Bay property dealings of Mark Vincent James, chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council. An organisation that allows tenants a say in the running of the block of flats in which they live . . . unless of course Mark Vincent James and his associates get involved.
Erw Villas Management Company Ltd was originally registered to an address in Catford, East London. It was struck off in May 2008 but restored 31 January 2011. On 2 February 2011 the address was changed to that of North Wales Housing in Llandudno Junction. On the same day all the old directors resigned and North Wales Housing was named as secretary and director.
Though in the Annual Return of 12 August 2015, and even though Paul William Diggory, the North Wales Housing CEO at the time, is named as director, the two original directors – Raymond Marquis and Jonathan Colin – are still the only shareholders.
Diggory was succeeded as director by Owen Ingram, who has in turn been replaced by Helena Kirk, the current CEO of North Wales Housing.
No Annual Return for 2016 is available with Companies House, so I assume it has not been submitted.
So what is the connection between North Wales Housing, Raymond Marquis and Jonathan Colin, and Erw Villas on Conway Old Road in Penmaenmawr? Answers on a postcard, please. (And make sure there's a stamp on it this time! cos I'm not bloody paying again.)
The more I looked into North Wales Housing the more clear it became how thoroughly English it is. Take a look at the Board; start with the chair, Tom Murtha, who retired in 2012 from Midland Heart and now seems to have a number of part-time jobs, including NWH. There may be two or three Welsh people on the Board of 12.
Or how about the management team, headed by Helena Kirk, who arrived in Wales last October?
Even the job of designing the website was given to a company in England, Hallnet Ltd of Warrington, Cheshire. Is there no company in Wales that could have designed a website? Is this the Mersey Dee Alliance in practice, or is it just taking the piss?
Because it always makes me smile when I hear someone respond to complaints about Welsh organisations stuffed with English staff with, 'Ah, yes, but you've got to get the best people for the job – no matter where they come from'.
North Wales Housing is on the brink of oblivion, brought there by bad management, so to suggest that the current shower, and its predecessors, are and were the best for the job is an insult to the Welsh nation. And that's without considering the longer term consequences.
Domus Cambria sought, selfishly and irresponsibly, to increase the burden on local services by attracting to the Costa Geriatrica yet more elderly people – and all because the parent body was struggling financially!
'Ah, but that don't affect us down by 'ere, look'. Yes it does, you thick-as-shit Labour-voting cretin! To prop up a failing NHS and social services burdened by the activities of Domus Cambria and others your Labour government down Cardiff docks will rob money from other budgets, and that affects us all, in every part of the country.
There is no reason to keep North Wales Housing afloat any longer, so let it be taken over by another RSL, one that is larger, more efficient, more responsible, and more Welsh.
TRIVALLIS
'Not more f###ing Latin!' you scream. Well, yes, and from that hotbed of classical learning, Rhondda Cynon Taf. (Three valleys, geddit?)
Trivallis is another Registered Social Landlord aka housing association that I'm told is in trouble. Hardly surprising when we read in the 'Welsh' Government's Regulatory Judgement of June 2017, "The Group has a number of unregistered subsidiary companies – Trivallis Ltd, Meadow Prospect, GrEW, Homeforce, Porthcwlis, Porthcwlis Homes and Bellerophon Project 1 LLP."
In my experience, whenever a third sector body / housing association creates a 'trading arm' or a 'subsidiary' things go wrong, as we've just seen with North Wales Housing. That's because these are set up by people who are used to being bailed out by the public purse and have little or no understanding of the realities of business.
Too often they are disasters waiting to happen.
The subsidiaries I've just just listed – some of which are dormant, having never got off the ground – are all being brought in-house, obviously heeding the recent recommendation of the Assembly's Public Accounts Committee on "diversification". (Though I was unable to find anything at all for GrEW.)
In case you haven't noticed, go to the Trivallis website again and look in the top right corner, where you'd expect to find the 'Cymraeg' option, or the flag. It's not there, is it? The website is entirely in English, and that's because of the strong 'Welsh' Labour influence at Trivallis.
Scroll down to the bottom of the home page and you'll read 'Powered by VerseOne Technologies Ltd'. Click on the link and you'll see that the Trivallis website was designed by a Manchester company, with an office in Edinburgh.
Such commitment to Wales! But so typical of 'Welsh' Labour, and too many of its housing associations.
'HOUSE!' (but nothing to do with housing)
Back in July Llais y Sais ran a story on bookies' fixed odds betting terminals. In it, Carolyn Harris is horrified to learn that £8m a year is lost on FOBTs in the Swansea Bay region. And so she should be, for Carolyn Harris chairs the Fixed Odds Betting Terminals All Party Parliamentary Group.
Fast forward to last week and the same local media treated us to news that the cavernous Castle Bingo club in Morriston has been refurbished. And there to re-open it was – Carolyn Harris. 'But bingo's diff'rent, innit, not like them cowin' FOBTs'.
I hope those aren't "dyke shoes"!
Maybe not, except that it's not all 'legs eleven' and 'two fat ladies' in Morriston, for the club provides its customers with other ways to lose their money enjoy themselves on what look suspiciously like FOBTs, or approximations thereof.
So why was Carolyn Harris there, officially re-launching Morriston's answer to Las Vegas? The justification seems to have been that Castle Bingo was giving Harris a cheque for GambleAware.
As I wrote this I got to wondering about Castle Bingo, and so I checked on the Companies House website. The company was Incorporated in December 1995. You'll see that there were two directors; Mrs Diane Elizabeth Stockford of Pontprennau, Cardiff and Mr Jeffrey Charles Harris of Sketty, Swansea.
Harris was also a director of Crown Buckley Ltd, the Brains subsidiary; Cadwalader (Ice Cream) Ltd, which went into administration in October 2015; and Cadwalader (Criccieth) Ltd. Harris is also a director of Meeron Ltd., another company in the gambling business.
Stockford became Brierley, and moved to Rudry, while Harris moved to St Nicholas. Brierley resigned as director in September 2012 and was replaced by Lisa Mary Morgan as both secretary and director. All the while Castle Bingo was providing accounts as a dormant company, explained by the fact that both Stockford and Harris were also directors of Castle Leisure Ltd.
Parent company Castle Leisure Ltd began life in 1911 as The Central Cinema, Cardiff, Ltd. Somewhere along the way, and certainly before May 1988, the company became known as Castle Leisure Ltd.
Here's the latest list of shareholders for the 235,533 shares. In the year ended 25 December 2016 Castle Leisure Ltd had an operating profit of £4,164,319 on a turnover of £30,591,231. The company has 661 employees at its 8 clubs in Wales and 3 in England.
Of course it would be easy to be snobbish, or judgemental, but after all is said and done, this is an established Welsh company, one that has branched out into England and provides hundreds of jobs giving a lot of people what they want.
That said, there are obvious benefits for all concerned: Castle Bingo operates in Carolyn Harris' constituency; Castle Bingo gives Harris publicity and a little cheque in the hope that she steers MPs away from their business model; a mutually beneficial association which Labour-backing Trinity Mirror is happy to report having for years enjoyed 'promotions' and 'partnerships' with Castle Bingo.
Finally: A disturbing report reaches me of unseemly, drunken cavorting at the Labour Party conference in Brighton this week involving – it is alleged – Carolyn Harris and rugby-playing Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour MP for neighbouring Gower.
I don't want to believe this scurrilous allegation so I would welcome any further information. Especially photographic evidence proving that such an incident did not take place.
It's not often that I get the chance to talk of good news and Cadw in the same report, so I'm going to make the most of this.
A good source informs me of a victory won by the natives of Cydweli, who can now enter their local castle for free. Of course they have to provide proof that they are local, and then sing the first three verses of God Save the Queen. (Joke . . . possibly.)
Castell Cydweli
I'm told that the people of Caerffili enjoy the same concession, while in Conwy it's just a 20% discount on the entrance fee. But why isn't there a national scheme to allow all Welsh people into all Cadw premises for free? For God's sake, it's not as if Cadw built them, or owns them!
And how difficult would such a scheme be to administer? I mean, everybody nowadays has a passport, a driving licence, a bus pass or something that identifies them. Even if it's only discharge papers from the Sea Scouts (which I still cherish).
The vast majority of those who visit Cadw sites are tourists, with more money than our people, so let them subsidise our visits. To do so would achieve the impossible – make tourism benefit Welsh people.
A national scheme such as I'm proposing could also introduce more of our people to their country's history, but of course we'd need someone other than Cadw to interpret that history.
'SPECIAL TRAIN FOR ATKINS'*
There are many people in Wales who take great pride in devolution, and especially in the thought of Welsh laws being made to serve Wales and her people. Obviously, I'm not one of these because without independence or at the very least a Welsh legal system there can be no Welsh laws.
Without independence or a separate jurisdiction what we are served up too often is simply English legislation with '(Wales)' added to the name. We are given the chimera of legislative power but the real purpose is to keep us in line with England.
Where a genuine 'Welsh' initiative is allowed, it's either an expensive gesture such as free prescriptions, or else it's the 'Welsh Government' succumbing to English pressure groups. The perfect example of the latter would be the proposal to open Wales up to canoeists, ramblers and the rest, dressed up as 'Sustainable Management'.
But I want to focus on the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. I have written about it before and pointed out that it gives homeless people priority for housing, and who would argue with that? Well, I would, because we are locked into an Englandandwales system that means a family of scruffs making themselves homeless anywhere in England qualify for accommodation in Wales ahead of locals.
Another curiosity of this legislation is that homeless ex-service personnel are also mentioned in the Act as being priority cases. Curious because homeless ex-service personnel do not qualify as priority cases in the equivalent English legislation. The reference can be found at 70 (1) (i).
So why are men and women who have served the English Crown, and suffered for it, not given priority treatment in England? And isn't it all too predictable that England's homeless, disabled ex-service personnel, and those suffering from PTSD, those with drug and alcohol problems, will be 'directed' to Wales?
Though perhaps the real question is, who inserted this sentence into the Bill? Was it the 'Welsh' Government, once again playing gesture politics? Or was it slipped in by a civil servant based in Wales but obeying his or her masters in London?
I've got no problem with looking after some poor sod who's lost both his legs on a foreign adventure about which we were lied to from start to finish, but the way it's being done looks suspiciously like Wales being dumped on, again.
I've taken the heading for this section from Kipling's Tommy. It seemed somehow appropriate.
Regional Parties for the National Good
On 17/08/2015 18/08/2015 By JacIn Assembly, Devolution, Plaid Cymru, Ukip, Welsh Labour43 Comments
This post re-visits a subject I dealt with in September 2012. (Unfortunately, the original comments and other features were lost when Google pulled the plug on my ear
lier blog in December 2012. See sidebar) The reason I am returning to the subject is that, on the one hand, there has been no change for the better, yet on the other hand, there has been a change for the worse. Put it together and it gives a stronger case in 2015 for regional parties than when I originally mooted the idea almost three years ago.
There are a number of reasons for promoting the case for regional parties standing in the 'Welsh' Assembly elections of 2016. I try to deal with them in the various sections below. The map on the right will help you understand the boundaries, click on it to enlarge it.
1. SHAM DEVOLUTION
The first of those reasons is one that I dealt with back in 2012, namely that devolution is a sham. Wales is more firmly under England's control than ever, but now it's done through civil servants taking orders from London yet doubling as 'advisors' to the self-deluding 'ministers' of the 'Welsh' Government. In reality, of course, these civil servants / advisors are relaying orders. It is a charade of the kind we would have found in the old East Germany, or any country run by a regime reliant on US support.
Among the many agencies of this sham devolution I have dealt with, one that has received more attention than most, is the Planning Inspectorate. (To find the many articles I have written on the subject type 'Planning Inspectorate' in the Search box at the top of the sidebar.) It is this agency that facilitates the colonisation of Wales with its bullying of our local councillors (or working with alien and eager senior officers), justifying building new homes we don't need with ludicrously inflated population 'projections', or reduced household (size) estimates.
To keep up the pretence of 'devolution' the Planning Inspectorate maintains an office in Cardiff, it even has a few Welsh planning inspectors, but this is all window-dressing. As we saw with the review of the Local Development Plan for Denbighshire. Two inspectors were involved in assessing the protests of the local council, which argued that the 2011 census showed the county did not need the number of new homes the Planning Inspectorate had demanded. Read about it here.
The two inspectors involved in the 'assessment' of March 2014 were Anthony Thickett (see panel) and Gwynedd Thomas. Within a few months Thickett was appointed chief inspector for the Wales region of the Planning Inspectorate. Poor old Gwynedd Thomas was there just to add a little local colour, in the hope of disguising that this was part of the colonisation process, and all determined in London.
It doesn't matter how we look at, What we have in Wales is a system designed to frustrate Welsh ambitions rather than satisfy them. It is a system of devolution for the benefit of England. And this explains why the 'Welsh' Government can do nothing to serve Welsh interests if that might work against English interests, yet agencies like the Planning Inspectorate are daily working in England's interests against Wales.
The 'Welsh' Government is, like poor Gwynedd Thomas, nothing more than a fig leaf for this colonialist reality; it's only real power lies in being able to distribute funding handed down to it. Yet far too much of this money currently goes to Cardiff or to Labour's cronies and hangers-on in our irredeemably corrupt Third Sector.
2. THE 'WELSH' LABOUR PARTY
Sham devolution of course needs willing participants in the country being flim-flammed, and this is where the 'Welsh' Labour Party comes into the picture. Over many, many years I have made my feelings known on this, the most corrupt political party in the Western world, but if anyone is still in any doubt as to the nature of the beast, then let them read Why I Detest the 'Welsh' Labour Party, The 'Welsh' Labour Party and its Evil Empire, Merthyr: All Aboard the 'Welsh' Labour Gravy Train, or more recently, 'Welsh' Labour and Social Enterprises – All Fall Down!.
It is the 'Welsh' Labour Party that, for sixteen years, has fronted the colonialist system of sham devolution I just mentioned. This explains why the only time we see the self-styled First Minister on UK-wide television is when he's proving how loyal we Welsh are despite devolution (which for some reason, still worries many English!). Such as welcoming Bet Windsor to Wales, or spouting BritNat bollocks during last year's Scottish independence referendum campaign. The man is an embarrassment to all right-thinking Welsh.
One feature of this sham devolution is the growth of Cardiff, due to it serving as the 'capital', and because so much of the colonial bureaucracy is centred there. Though this can have a damaging effect on other areas.
I travel around Wales much more than most people, and one thing that strikes me whether I'm in Llandudno, Newtown or Haverfordwest is that on any contract connected with or funded by an agency based in Cardiff, the hoardings tell me that the estate agent dealing with the sale or, in the case of a new project, the company that drew up the plans and others, will also be found in Cardiff. Suggesting to me that companies based in Cardiff have an unfair advantage when it comes to these civil servants drawing up lists of 'approved' estate agents, contractors, architects, and others, or else we dealing with a form of favouritism that comes close to corruption. But this Cardiff bias can take other forms.
I am indebted to a correspondent in regular contact with the aforementioned civil servants for a recent example of the way Cardiff is favoured above other areas. Regular readers of this blog will be aware of the Housing (Wales) Act 2014. Among the provisions of the Act is a new register of private landlords. This work – and the jobs it will generate – has been allocated to Cardiff City Council, without any tendering process. Why should the richest area of Wales be gifted yet more jobs when this work could have been done by any local authority? And who made the decision?
Though an irony in this situation is that even the Conservative and Unionist Party, the party of the City and big business, has finally conceded that England has an economic imbalance, with too much of the country's wealth and power accumulated in London and the south east. Hence the talk of investing hundreds of billions of pounds in HS2 and Northern 'Powerhouses'. Yet here in Wales, we are replicating the system England is now seeking to remedy!
3. PLAID CYMRU
My feelings on Plaid are equally well documented. I suppose Plaid Cymru: Ninety Wasted Years, from October last year, sums it up as well as anything I've written, but use the Search box atop the sidebar to find other posts. Nothing has improved since I wrote that piece. In this year's General Election Plaid Cymru again performed miserably, dealt with in Election 2015: Plaid Cymru Fails, Again.
And from all quarters comes news that that Plaid Cymru continues to be the most impotent 'national' party in Europe, afraid of upsetting anyone. Here's one recent example that says it pretty well.
Followers of Welsh public life will be aware of a growing problem in local government that sees senior officers take over the running of certain councils. Nowhere has this trend been more apparent than in Carmarthenshire, where the council has for some years been run by the chief executive, Mark James, with the approval of the leaders of the parties in coalition there, Labour and 'Independents'. But recently, after a change of leadership in the local Labour Party, there was a falling-out between the former love-birds and Independent leader Meryl Gravel began smooching Plaid Cymru, which resulted in a new coalition between the two.
With Plaid Cymru the larger of the parties, and Plaid's Emlyn Dole named council leader in May, most people expected things to change in Carmarthenshire but that, alas, has not happened. It appears to be business as before, as this little cameo, received from a reliable source, illustrates.
The trade union Unison, " . . . had to wait 2 months to get a meeting with Dole. There were a number of items on the agenda (employment issues and the council's plans for publicly owned assets such as Parc Howard in Llanelli). To Unison's surprise, waiting to greet them in Dole's office was Mark James, although the union had asked for a private meeting with the leader. The meeting did not go well."
Emlyn Dole's submission to The Ultimate Authority may be connected with his little 'difficulty', for Plaid's leader in the seat where Gwynfor Evans won that famous 1966 victory has been caught flouting planning regulations. But never mind, for Plaid Cymru has not forgotten its primary role – sticking up for Labour. As I reminded people in my June 28th post Vote Plaid Cymru – Get Labour', and as Plaid itself continues to remind us.
Just last Saturday, at the commemoration of the 1911 Llanelli Riots, local Labour MP Nia Griffith was getting a bit of stick from some in the crowd for making a big noise about the Tories' austerity measures but neglecting to inform her listeners that she had abstained when presented with the chance to show her 'opposition' in the House of Commons vote a few weeks ago. Who rode to her rescue? Helen Mary Jones, the Plaid candidate for Llanelli in next year's Assembly election, and Vaughan Williams, who failed so miserably to win the seat in May this year.
Plaid Cymru is now more of an asset to England than to Wales. From England's perspective Plaid Cymru is the perfect 'in-our-pocket' regional party. That's because it can still attract the votes of many who want independence / greater devolution, or who care about Welsh cultural identity, but for all sorts of reasons Plaid Cymru will never get more than 25% of the vote, even in the most favourable circumstances, yet – in the absence of an alternative – it can still be presented as 'the Welsh nationalist party'.
If there was any danger of Plaid Cymru collapsing, perhaps due to the emergence of that alternative national party, then it would be in our masters' interests to keep Plaid Cymru alive. It may already be happening.
4. UKIP
Finally we come to perhaps the major difference today from the situation prevailing when I wrote the earlier piece on regional parties back in December 2012. Then there was a perception that Ukip, being primarily an anti-EU party, would do well in European elections, but only European elections.
The General Election earlier this year taught us the fallacy of that belief as we saw the Ukip vote in Wales reach 13.6%, and in so doing exceed the Plaid Cymru share of the vote. But this increase in Ukip vote has been aided by the collapse of the Liberal Democrats and a weakening of the Labour Party, which was of course almost wiped out in Scotland. To help you understand how things have changed I've compiled a table showing the vote shares for the major parties in Wales over the five most recent elections. (The two figures shown for 2011 represent the constituency vote and the regional vote.)
The Labour Party is in turmoil and, as I write this, looking likely to elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader; the Lib Dems are unlikely to recover any time soon, if ever; and Plaid Cymru seems doomed to a slow, lingering death. Few of those turning away from Labour and Lib Dems find Plaid Cymru attractive (hardly surprising seeing as long-time Plaid Cymru voters are deserting the party), and while some of those abandoning Labour, Lib Dems and Plaid will simply not vote, many will turn to the Tories or Ukip.
One thing's for sure, Labour will definitely not have a majority after next year's election, and may have difficulty forming a coalition with Plaid Cymru and / or Liberal Democrats. Taking us into uncharted territory, but also presenting great opportunities.
REGIONAL PARTIES
Regional parties contesting regional list seats are the only possible way to address the various problems listed above, the only way to ensure a more equitable Wales in which Labour is not completely dominant, with the added advantage of checking the advance of Ukip.
We can be sure that Ukip will view the list for the north as one its best hopes of winning Assembly seats, especially with the party's local hetman, Nathan Gill MEP, being domiciled on Ynys Môn. So the first regional party I want to propose is for the north. Yes, I can already hear people asking, 'What does Arfon have in common with Deeside?' Short answer would be that across the north you will hear, 'Everything is down south'. This will be Ukip's message next year to northern voters. It can also be
the message of an alliance made up of people with roots in northern Wales, committed to serving the area, and hopefully objecting to the A55 corridor becoming a planned commuter belt. Because we can be sure Ukip won't object! Neither will the other parties. (Click on image to enlarge.)
Another area where Ukip did well in 2014 and again this year is the Valleys. While the elected leaders in the region seem happy to surrender to Cardiff's city state ambitions I'm sure there are many others in the Valleys who believe their towns and villages deserve better than a future as dormitory communities. This could be one message for a Valleys grouping. Another message for Labour could be, 'Instead of using EU and other funding to help your cronies capitalise on our deprivation, use it to help us and our communities – the reason the EU gave it to us'.
The third region is obviously the Swansea Bay conurbation.
What I am suggesting is not formal political parties in the accepted sense. I am arguing for ad hoc regional groups with no ambitions beyond using their voice to demand fair shares for all, something that could perhaps be monitored by publishing regular figures for public spending and jobs created in each region. Because as I say, the only real power in this system of sham devolution is the power to divvy up the hand-outs. Which means that going down to Cardiff docks to play politics, to pretend that it's a real parliament, is a waste of time. Focus on the money.
The suggestion of regional parties has both greater urgency and greater potential now than when I first mooted the subject because of the decline of three parties and the unattractiveness of those likely to gain from that decline. (And here I include the Greens.) I further predict that regional parties would get support from some of those who would not otherwise vote next year. And there's guaranteed publicity in the interest that can be predicted from the local media.
To gather enough like-minded individuals in order to compile a raft of regional list candidates should be relatively easy, there's no great expense involved, and for just nine months of work the rewards could be great. And with Welsh politics in a state of flux not seen in living memory, who knows where it might lead? And if that doesn't persuade you, then do you really want to vote for any of the failed parties, or the unattractive alternatives I've dealt with here?
Let's Be Honest About Housing Associations
On 07/01/2015 17/11/2015 By JacIn Local Government, Public Funding, Social Housing, Welsh Government41 Comments
This post is a revised version of an article that recently appeared in Cambria magazine
When I was growing up in Swansea in the 1950s most of the people I knew lived in terraced houses owned by people we didn't know. For our house, the rent was collected by a chain-smoking bottle blonde from Mumbles who would enter the payment in her rent book with the kind of yellow fingers that persuaded me to become the only 10-year-old in the area who smoked his Woodbine from the other end of a cigarette holder. (Well, I was too young to give up smoking.) Despite our rent-collector's aesthetic shortcomings, her ca
lling was considered a steady job, and quite respectable. There were a lot of them about. Another I recall was a man with a bicycle that had a small motor affixed to the back wheel, which I found fascinating. I can see him now, tackling hills with the tails of his long, drab mac flapping behind him.
Some of these rented properties would then be sub-let, or lodgers would be taken in to help pay for a 'telly', or a week in Tenby. One such sub-lettee was 'Old Sam', who lived in someone's front room across the road from us. Sam had piles of pennies (he had piles of just about everything, come to that!) and I'd be sent across the road when the gas meter was running low. Then, some tme in 1958, my father decided to join the property-owning classes. This rise in the status of the Joneses was not without disruption; for example, our new home needed a bit of work, things like a kitchen and an indoor lavatory.
So while the builders were in I was farmed out to my maternal grandmother over on Pentregethin Road. And it was from there, walking through a building site to Penlan School one bitterly cold February morning, that I overheard a trio ahead of me talking; "'Ave ew yerd, mush – Buddy Holly been killed". There'd been a light snowfall and the wind had blown the snow against the piles of builders' sand. It was so cold that the snow didn't melt, yet the fall had been so light that I could almost make out the individual flakes. That's how I heard of the death of my idol, though the rest of that day is lost.
Those of our acquaintance that didn't live in privately rented properties tended to live on council estates, such as Penlan, through which I had walked that dreary February morning. Penlan belonged to a new generation of post-war council estates, supplementing those Swansea had constructed in the inter-war period – Lloyd George's 'Homes fit for Heroes' – most noticeably the massive Townhill-Mayhill estate, collectively and colloquially referred to as, 'The 'Ill'. As in, 'Whe' by do ew live, luv?' 'Up on the cowinʽ 'Ill!'. (I'm making myself quite homesick here.)
Despite the allocation system for council tenancies being, theoretically at least, needs based, it was a decided advantage if one was a Labour Party member, trade union official, or friend / relative of a local councillor. Of course, as a young lad the complexities of this allocation system were beyond my ken, though it must be said that many of my elders were also confused. Especially those who thought they had enough points to put them near the top of the waiting list, only to find that they had been queue-jumped by a woman no better than she ought to be whose only 'points' seemed to be . . . no, let's not go there, or I shall be accused of picking on the Labour Party again.
Yet it's worth remembering that prior to World War One there had been very little housing built by local authorities; in fact, I'm not sure there was any council housing built in Wales. Before the Great War housing had either been built by the big companies and mine owners or quarry owners for their workers, or else the need for rented property was met by speculative developers. (In the village where I now live most of the properties over 30 years old were built by the owners of the local quarry in the 19th century to be rented to their workers.) But the fact was that just about everybody had a home, even if it was a little room like Sam's, piled high with pennies, newspapers and God knows what else in a permanent fog of stale urine. Well into the 1950s unmarried adults (and many young married couples) lived with their parents, the elderly invariably lived with their adult children, while single men and young women who left home to work 'took lodgings' or found a 'bedsit'.
So we can safely say that council or social housing, despite our familiarity with it today, has been a feature of Welsh life for less than a century. With its hey-day probably already in the past, for today most Welsh local authorities have lost their housing stock to housing associations. Another big difference between 1915 and 2015 is of course that most people today are home owners, and many more aspire to be, which is another need being met by housing associations with 'shared ownership' schemes and other imaginative arrangements. All of which makes housing associations worthy of closer inspection.
Despite self-applied labels such as 'social enterprises' and 'not-for-profit organisations' most housing associations are registered as Industrial and Provident Societies; registered with, but not regulated by, the Financial Services Authority. And unlike companies limited by guarantee they have share capital. Then, and despite wanting us to believe they are public bodies, housing associations are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act 2000. (Your local council is of course covered by the Act.) All that being so, and it suggesting they are not public bodies, why have housing associations in Wales received billions of pounds in public funding since the arrival of devolution in 1999? And why is so much of this Welsh public funding seeping over the border in the form of maintenance contracts and sub-contracts for English companies?
If you think I'm exaggerating, just remember that thirty years ago the housing departments of our councils provided many tens of thousands of jobs, making this sector one of the biggest employers, especially in our rural areas. There were those employed in building and maintaining the hundreds of thousands of council properties, and there were also jobs in administration, allocating properties, collecting rents and dealing with all manner of queries. Thirty years ago local authorities were big players in the economic life of the country. 'But surely', you ask, 'the council staff simply transferred to the new owner of the properties?' Well, usually . . . some . . . and to begin with . . .
To explain what's happening now I shall use an example I have studied on my own door-step – literally from my own door-step! In 2010 Gwynedd council's housing stock was transferred to Cartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd (Gwynedd Community Housing), and to begin with, things seemed to carry on much as before. More recently, worrying changes have been apparent. The contract for maintaining the properties was awarded to Lovell, a major English company which has its 'local' branch office in Cheshire. Lovell in turn sub-contracted to smaller companies over the border. Let me explain how this works in practice.
In 2013 Lovell's sub-contractors were working in the Tywyn area and my next-door neighbour waited months for his bathroom and kitchen to be re-tiled. The tilers travelled every day – when they bothered to turn up – from Wigan. Their day worked out at roughly four hours of travelling and five hours of work! And this lunacy, remember, is being perpetrated with Welsh public funding and at the expense of Welsh sub contractors!
More recently we have seen the controversy over CCG's attempts to bring in English managers. Defended and disguised with arguments such as 'unable to find suitable Welsh-speaking applicants' and 'seeking the best for the job', when the truth is that it's a move to better 'integrate' CCG with the Englandandwales social housing setup. Those it is hoped to recruit will have contacts in England that will ensure Cartrefi Cymunedol Gwynedd secures more tenants from the lucrative – but damaging to the host community – 'vulnerable' sector. The real question is, where did this diktat originate? Because CCG's chief executive, Ffrancon Williams, seems to be just a mouthpiece in this, and the acquiescing Board member nothing but a smokescreen. The decision was certainly taken elsewhere.
The table below (click to enlarge) shows the amounts of funding given to Welsh housing associations in just one six-year period and from just one funding stream, the Social Housing Grant. Couldn't that seven hundred million pounds – and all the rest! – have been better used?
There are just so many problems attaching to the current arrangements for social housing. The one I have just dealt with in Gwynedd is replicated across Wales, resulting in thousands of jobs being lost and billions of pounds of Welsh money flowing over the border – Welsh public money that is supposed to be used to boost the Welsh economy! In addition, Wales is locked into an Englandandwales system that means a large family of English social misfits (or worse) can qualify for social housing in Wales ahead of locals; as can criminals, drug addicts, paedophiles and other who qualify as 'vulnerable', and therefore generate more income for whoever houses them. With such rich pickings on offer no one should be surprised to learn that many housing associations are building properties in numbers that cannot be justified by local demand – especially in some rural towns – and are only being built at all to meet the lucrative demand from England. As an example of what I'm talking about let's remember the paedophile gang housed by Gwalia in Cydweli, which generated a lot more income than if those properties had been used to house law-abiding locals.
STOP PRESS: Just before posting I learnt that police in Haverfordwest are warning interested parties (schools, etc.,) that convicted sex offenders are now being housed in the centre of the town.
I don't wish to paint an overly depressing picture (recalling 'The Day the Music Died' has already had me reaching for the Kleenex!), but social housing in Wales is an indefensible system. To conclude this section, and expose the lunacy from another angle, consider this. Apart from hundreds of councillors worried about losing their allowances just about everyone else in Wales believes we need many fewer local authorities. That being so, why does our 'Welsh' Government encourage the proliferation of housing associations – actually funding them to compete with each other? Or to put it another way: why should an area deemed too small to have its own local authority have half a dozen or more housing associations on its patch fighting like ferrets in a sack over the social housing racket?
The day of council-owned social housing is clearly coming to an end, dealt its death-blow by Margaret Thatcher's Housing Act of 1980 and its 'Right-to-Buy' provisions. I would like to believe that we are approaching the end of social housing altogether and heading towards a system in which all rented accommodation will be provided by private sector. Housing associations are obviously a half-way house towards such a system, and were probably designed to be just that. What I would like to see in the next few years is their full privatisation. The writing may be on the wall, and it's in David Cameron's own hand.
In January 2012 the UK Prime Minister announced new legislation (due in 2015) for the governing of co-operatives (including Industrial Provident Societies), and he said, "We know that breaking monopolies, encouraging choice, opening up new forms of enterprise is not just right for business but the best way of improving public services too". What I've underlined is a strange term to use in relation to what purports to be nothing more than legislation to consolidate earlier Bills and iron out anomalies. 'New forms of enterprise' in the same sentence as 'public services' should also have raised a few eyebrows.
Then we have the Housing (Wales) Act of 2014. On the one hand this seeks to further integrate Wales with England but it also has a lot to say about the 'Regulation of Private Rented Housing', with little of it aimed at your average 'Buy-to-Let' investor. My reading of Part One of the Act (by far the largest of the nine Parts) is that it sets the ground rules for a major shift in the provision of social or rented housing. And why not?
Housing associations already borrow money from banks and other institutions, so why shouldn't they be allowed to look for commercial investors and shareholders? They would have little trouble in attracting them given that they have solid assets in the form of their housing stock. Housing associations would be ideal investment vehicles for pension funds, and socially acceptable for the more 'ethical' investor. Fully privatised social housing, with the right legislation in place to guarantee secure tenancies, prioritising locals, fair rents, etc., would not only provide investment opportunities but such an arrangement would also relieve a great burden on the public purse.
And there is of course another great advantage to handing the provision of rented housing over to the private sector. There is unquestionably a housing shortage, not in Wales, but in England. Despite the platitudes and promises, there is no intention of ever meeting the needs of all those wanting to own their own home, because to do so would reduce the value of millions of other homes people have invested in. So the demand remains. So why not meet it by letting the private sector build decent homes for rent, dwellings with – as on the Continent – more cachet than social housing and its connotations of problem families, pit bulls and sink estates? Give people a decent home, solve the housing crisis, and create jobs in the process, something that could be done without causing revolution in the suburbs.
Those buffoons down Cardiff docks who persist in masquerading as the 'Welsh' Government need to decide whether they want to start living up to their billing, or whether they continue allowing Wales to be run by English civil servants taking orders from London and doing little more than feeding the parasites of the Third Sector. If they choose the former, then one of the most convincing ways of showing their newly-grown gonads would be to devise Welsh laws for Welsh needs, rather than being bullied into accepting English laws with '(Wales)' inserted into the name. Social housing might be a good place to start.
The table below shows that the fastest growing hoising sector in Wales is the private rented sector. Much of this is accounted for by 'Buy-to-let' mortgages but, increasingly, major companies and corporations are moving into the sector. Again, why not? As I've said, the demand for home ownership will never be met because to do so would lead to a collapse in property values; so why not allow private and commercial landlords to provide more salubrious accommodation than is currently provided by housing associations?
As I hope to have persuaded you, the current, Twilight Zone model of publicly-funded quasi-private companies is an unsustainable nonsense resulting from Margaret Thatcher's 'Right-to-Buy' legislation. The irony being that it is currently sustained by 'Welsh' Labour and it's right-on cronies in the Third Sector. This situation leaves us with two options. The first would see a new model of publicly-owned social housing, serving Welsh needs, employing Welsh people, and giving contracts to Welsh companies. The second option is to cut housing associations adrift (from public funding) and say, 'Right you're on your own now, behave like private companies, find shareholders and raise your own funding using your massive assets as collateral'.
The first option takes us back to that system we were once comfortable with (and so proud of); whereas the second option takes us back to private landlords (but without the bottle blondes with nicotine-stained fingers). Either option will be an improvement on the absurd system we know today; which sees far too many housing associations in Wales, and too many of them wanting to employ English staff, give contracts to English companies, and take in English tenants – and do it all using Welsh public funding!
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