Chartist Kingdom
Notes from the Silurian Republic
Tuesday 23 July 2024
Sacred Groves of Siluria
Monday 20 May 2024
Nidum: The Last Silurian Frontier?
When the Romans invaded Britannia in AD43 they swept across the south-east of the island in the space of four years, conquering tribe after tribe. Until that is they got to the Severn Estuary and met the Silures, who were to prove a major headache for the Rome for the next 30 years. Initially led by the famous British leader Caratacus, his subsequent capture did nothing to deter them, and they continued to wage war against Rome for another quarter of a century.
Our primary source for the Silures is the Roman historian and politician Tacitus, who tells us that the Silures waged guerrilla warfare against the Roman legionary forces, causing one Governor of Britain to have a complete mental breakdown and pop his clogs before subsequently chewing their way through another three Governors, only to be "subjugated" in AD75 by Sextus Julius Frontinus, except...
Friday 22 May 2020
From Wuhan to Wallia: Why We Need a Land Army for Wales.
Born from the plight of illegally traded animals in the "Wet Markets" of Wuhan, Covid-19 has unleashed catastrophic economic and social consequences on the rest of the world. But from panic-buying in supermarkets to the prospect of summer food shortages as farmers and growers struggle to deal with the loss of a seasonal workforce on lock-down abroad, there's one thing that ties all these disparate elements together: food.
Saturday 15 June 2019
The Mount Estate: Sitting on a Gas Goldmine
Having moved to Sir Benfro from Swansea I already knew about the Mount Estate as it seems to have a poor rap in the County, as indeed some parts of Swansea do or anywhere else for that matter. A BBC documentary a few years back highlighted the high unemployment and social issues on the estate, which is mainly council stock, and in typical sycophantic fashion, couldn't resist squeezing in a plug about "Will and Kate's" Royal Wedding just to show how enthusiastic her Maj's poor but loyal Subjects are for their feudal overlords. But I wonder how many residents on the Mount could really give two hoots about the Royals who might as well live on another planet.
In any case I knew about the Mount for different reasons, as a few years prior to that documentary I was involved in protests to do with the LNG plants in Milford Haven, protests in which the Mount had a curious role.
Now of course ten years down the line South Hook and Dragon LNG are thoroughly embedded in the community and a big part of their PR drive is "getting down with the yoof"; a recent press release highlights the support South Hook have given to a youth club on the Mount. Great kudos for South Hook you might think, but peanuts given that the Mount, in point of fact, is sitting on a taxable goldmine worth millions of pounds per annum, not just to Pembs, but Wales as a whole.
Many of the kids attending the club will be too young to remember that relations between the community - in the form of the Mount Community Association - and the titans of LNG were not always so peachy. While the Terminal operators have gone to great lengths to ingratiate themselves with the local community, the Terminals were simply the most obvious part of an even bigger project designed to plug the UK's growing energy gap. The other key part - the giant pipeline - is buried a metre underground and runs for a length of 316 km to it's final destination in Gloucestershire.
But 13 years ago, residents in the Mount woke up to find that National Grid - who were responsible for the pipeline - had ploughed a swathe of destruction through a section of woodland managed by the community. I can still quite clearly recall speaking to one of the Association members on the phone - considering the reported outrage he was curiously reluctant to talk and it soon became clear why - the Association had been made to sign a gagging clause, in exchange for "compensation" for all the trouble. Having silenced protesters and dissenters through bribery and bully-boy tactics all along the pipeline route National Grid got their pipe in and within a few years it was all forgotten about.
But here's why it's worth refreshing our memories.
Having squished all dissent, the Terminals came into operation in 2009. And then a curious thing happened. The next year the Tories got back into power (Labour were the architects of the LNG project), and having done so promptly abolished Import VAT on gas imports in their emergency budget of June 22nd, 2010. This change included Import VAT on Liquefied Natural Gas.
Now, LNG hasn't lived up to the hype or hysteria and in fact the Terminals have been significantly under-utilised since they came into operation, but it's still worth doing the math. The UK government in fact very helpfully compiles statistics on gas imports for each individual LNG Terminal in the UK, including South Hook and Dragon. These stats allow us to calculate the amount of revenue that has been lost. So for example in 2017, South Hook imported 52,808 Gigawatt Hours worth of gas which was then pumped into the UK's national gas transmission system. The UK now has a free-market in gas, and the value of gas on the wholesale market is calculated on a kind of virtual gas trading exchange known as the "National Balancing Point" . Not surprisingly, demand is higher in the winter which is the point at which LNG tankers roving the high seas alter course and head for the UK to cut a tidy profit.
So based on the average price of gas on the UK wholesale market in 2017, around £160 million of lost taxable revenue docked at Milford Haven and bypassed a council estate with around 70% unemployment, on it's way to the big centres of demand in the rest of the UK. For 2018, that figure increases to around £200 million. Currently, the Terminals are significantly under-utilised as the UK makes up a lot of it's shortfall in gas from Norway (UK North Sea reserves peaked and have been declining since 2001), but Norwegian gas production is projected to decline shortly which means that LNG will become a bigger part of the equation as the years go by. The South Hook and Dragon LNG terminals have a minimum 25 year lifespan and have the capacity to meet up to 30% of UK gas demand. So the figures laid out above are only going one way: up.
To those of us concerned with the economics of Welsh Independence, these figures matter. Consider for example that the entire deficit for the Hywel Dda Health Trust, which covers the whole of west Wales, is £69 million, a figure which could effectively be wiped out, with quite a bit of spare change. Hywel Dda of course proposes to downgrade Withybush Hospital's A&E department, and many people in Pembrokeshire justifiably ask why their A&E is being downgraded when they have heavy industries with all the attendant safety risks. Heavy industries that include LNG. If Pembrokeshire shoulders the risks, it should also be able to reap the rewards. Rewards it could capture - as part of an Independent Wales.
Pembrokeshire is a proud and independent county, but sitting on the western extremity of Britain, many residents justifiably feel marginalised both by Cardiff and London. I would argue that they are only marginalised because they vote for Unionist Parties and a corrupt Westminster establishment and it's little doggie in Cardiff. Take them out of the equation and those LNG tankers show us what Pembrokeshire really is; Wales' gateway to the rest of the world. A world that we are perfectly capable of taking our place in.
The figures are there, and the choice is ours. Let's take it.
Sunday 24 July 2016
Air Passenger Duty: Wales grounded by Westminster as Scotland and Northern Ireland take off
There's nothing more useful than a major international controversy as an opportunity to bury a whole host of smaller domestic problems. So while Britain was busy voting to make itself "Great again", George Osborne, now former Chancellor of the Exchequer, quietly caved into English aviation interests and reneged on a commitment to devolve control over Air Passenger Duty (APD) to Wales.
On the face of it, APD is such an obscure little tax that readers might be inclined to wonder what the fuss is all about. But the interesting and revealing thing about APD is not so much the support it engenders in Wales (an online poll for the Western Mail showed 78% in favour) but the reaction it has generated on the other side of Offa's Dyke.
So, for the uninitiated (author included!), what is Air Passenger Duty? It's broadly defined as "an excise duty which is charged on the carriage of passengers flying from a UK or Isle of Man airport on an aircraft that has an authorised take-off weight of more than ten tonnes or more than twenty seats for passengers". To get a sense of the wider importance of APD as a tax it's worth quoting the UK Treasury itself;
"Air Passenger Duty is primarily a revenue raising duty which makes an important
contribution to the public finances, while also giving rise to secondary environmental
benefits"
UK Treasury, 2011
Ironically, APD was put on the political agenda in Wales by the very same Tories that have just put the kibosh on it. In 2011, the Silk Commission - set up by then Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan - recommended devolving control over APD to the Welsh Government, It should be noted at this point that both Scotland and Northern Ireland both already have control over this tax.
The Silk Commission took their data from the Civil Aviation Authority, who estimated that APD raised just over £7.5million in Wales in 2011. This figure might sound like a drop in the ocean in the context of identifiable public spending of £30 billion in Wales in 2010-11 but it's not quite that simple. So read on!
Needless to say, having let this particular taxation genie out of the bottle, it rapidly proceeded to magic up a considerable amount of support across the political landscape in Wales. Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies stated it was "perverse" not to devolve control over APD to Cardiff, while Comrade Carwyn agreed that it was "completely unacceptable" for Scotland and not Wales to get powers over the tax. Plaid, of course, want rather more than just control over APD.
Outside of the Cardiff Bay bubble, support has also steadily grown across the aviation industry in Wales. Not surprisingly, Wales' only major airport is a firm supporter of devolving APD. But a spirited online campaign also finds focus with websites such as APD4Wales calling for the "punitive tax" to be scrapped.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Bristol Channel an equally spirited campaign has sprung up in defence of the status quo. Needless to say, this campaign has won a temporary victory, at least. At the forefront of this campaign is Bristol Airport. But in making the economic case for the status quo, Bristol Airport has also helpfully outlined the economic benefits for Wales too. The airport's Chief Executive has been quoted in the press as stating that devolution of APD to Cardiff could cost the south-west economy 1500 jobs and £843 million. in GVA (Gross Value Added) over the next decade. This puts our previously-cited £7.5 million figure in a rather different light...
Perceptive readers will note that Labour, the governing power in Wales, have largely been left of the hook so far in this piece. In the run-up to the Budget, Welsh Finance Minister Jane Hutt blasted the Chancellor's "unacceptable procrastination" and went on to say that;
“It would pave the way to improved international air links with the rest of the world, which would bring economic benefits not just to Wales but also businesses and citizens in the South
West of England, helping to stimulate business and trade"
This very magnanimous sentiment didn't cut any mustard with her Labour colleagues on the other side of the Channel, however. Bristolian Labour MP Karin Smyth congratulated the Tory Government's decision as "very welcome news for the South-west economy". Which just goes to show what a mendacious game the Labour Party is content to play with Wales, it's traditional playground.
Which all goes to show what a raw deal we have in the so-called "United Kingdom". We are the only constituent part of the UK not to have control over this small tax. The economic benefits to Wales are clear, and in ignoring Welsh interests, it should be clear that Westminster is holding the Welsh economy back. We're better off out of the Union altogether. But in making the case for being out of it, it's worth articulating a basic point of principle; as APD4Wales put it;
"A tax on flying from Wales should not be set by an English government"
To be continued....
Tuesday 12 May 2015
You Get What You Ask For
The penny dropped for me when I was coming home one day and, cutting through the Council estate, I spotted a series of Tory placards in someone's garden. Taken aback, gawping, and bogged down temporarily with the perennial Welsh question "Who are you?", I almost crashed the car. The realization soon dawned on me that the house belonged to the former Chair of the local Workingmen's Club, the Brighton Road.
Over the next few weeks as the election campaign proceeded apace, a few more Tory placards sprang up around "North Gower". But they weren't just springing up in fields or on well-to-do housing estates, they were popping up on terraces, and in former mining villages. It occurred to me that something was up, and I suggested to my partner that Labour could lose the Gower seat. She didn't buy it. I went a little further. Labour have held Gower since 1906. If they lost a seat like this, they would be in trouble nationally. If Labour lost Gower, we'd have another Tory government. Which as it happens is exactly what we've got.
And there's nothing magical, mystical or mysterious about how we got here either.
You see, in Gower, the Tories got on in the back of a working class protest vote from the northern part of the constituency, where Labour have traditionally drawn their vote. Underneath the lazy rhetoric of the "Tory tide" surging across Wales is a complex mosaic of local stories. Labour have sat on this area for year after year after year while funding has been pumped into Swansea city centre on grandiose vanity projects. Ironically, in a climate of "Tory" cuts, local patience with Labour has run out. Why vote for Labour when they only offer more of the same thing?
This city-centre/periphery conflict was made all the worse by the disastrous decision to centrally impose a female candidate on the constituency, drawn from an all-woman short list. Parachuted in from the Hafod in Swansea (so we're told, although she didn't have a Hafod accent), the reaction of the local Party organisation was predictable. A large chunk of the local Labour Party effectively boycotted the election campaign.
Many on the Left of politics in Wales are deeply uncomfortable with the idea that people from communities that were hammered by the Tories in the 1980s could bring themselves to vote for "The Nasty Party". There is even a school of opinion in Left-leaning Nationalist circles that the Tory vote in Wales is made up largely of English incomers, as though migrants from over the border are some kind of "Fifth-column" for the Tory invader. Toryism in Wales, you see, is not an indigenous phenomenon. There may well be an element of truth to this perception, but it's not the whole truth.
For many in Wales, there's a kind of visceral reaction to the Tory Party that paradoxically leads them to defend, or at least refrain from attacking, a Party that has shifted so far towards the pro-business agenda of the Tories that it's almost indistinguishable from them now anyway - Labour. A madman runs towards you wielding a bloody great axe. It's a Tory, Run away! The chips are down and you suddenly feel the twist of the knife in your back. That's the modern Labour Party, who will then tell you it's for your own good, and if the Tory had done it, it could have been a whole lot worse...
And for that precise reason it shouldn't be hard to see why Labour and the working class are no longer synonymous in Wales, and why many people have given up on even the pretense of voting for Labour. For people who have been hammered by a recession Labour dragged us into, the Tory message of economic competence, whether you believe it or not, has some resonance. Those placards are a big "fuck you" to a Party that bombed the hell out of Iraq, fucked up the economy and embraced Neoliberalism even while arrogantly assuming our continued tribal loyalty.
Plaid Cymru, meanwhile, actually did alright in Gower. It upped it's vote despite running the local campaign on a shoe-string. Yet I have colleagues in Plaid who tell me they'd rather see Plaid lose it's deposit than let Tories get in. The rationale is that Labour voters will never forgive Plaid for splitting the vote and letting in the evil Tory bogeyman to steal our first-born children. What they neglect to understand is that many of these Labour voters have given up on Labour - and switched to the Tories anyway.
And there is the simple reality. Many Welsh people vote Tory. It would seem that the Welsh are more promiscuous than ever, and not only have they abandoned the Chapel in droves, they are even happily indulging in a little sado-masochism in the privacy of the polling booth a la UKIP. But there is a line it seems and that's where you aren't likely to see many defiant placards broadcasting a newly found conviction to the wider community. A source of some frustration to pollsters and Party activists, but also of hope for the future.
For UKIP, while articulating the very real economic and social concerns of ordinary people, demarcates the furthest reaches of Wales' flirtation with the Right. Beyond that point is the terra incognita of Welsh Independence. A prospect we're not quite ready for yet, but the only real alternative in a country that faces the prospect of being dragged out of Europe by Isolationist England.
In Scotland, the Scottish National Party have articulated a clear and well-worked out vision of what an Independent Scotland would look like. In Wales, Independence is, er,...a long-term aim. A collection of policies is no substitute for a coherent vision of a future society. The SNP have grasped the thistle and realised that only Independence will give Scotland all the tools to do the job.
Yet who is really articulating the arguments for Welsh Independence?
Until they are made, you can expect the Tories and UKIP in Wales to continue filling the void left by Parties - Labour and Plaid included - that are not offering a compelling vision of the future. A vision strong and coherent enough to motivate people into taking that leap of faith into a future of unquantifiable but tantalising possibilities. A future that only we in Wales can make. Regardless of where we originally came from...
Saturday 4 October 2014
Power to the People?
Say no more...