Welsh not British

Who owns Welsh water?

2012-02-24T09:25:00.006Z

Initially it might sound like a fairly bizarre question. Surely Welsh water belongs to Wales?
And once again the subject is being brought up in the media. Which isn't a surprise considering certain areas of the UK are almost in a continual state of drought. I'll come back to that later.

Let's look back to the 70s first, in particular to the Water Act 1973. This act restructured the water authorities in England and Wales ready for privatisation in the 80s. There is a full list of these here, but as always we only care about the ones that involve Wales. I will add that I will leave out Dee Valley Water and concentrate on the big two. I have also asked both Severn Trent and Dŵr Cymru for a complete list of their reservoirs in Wales to enable a more in depth analysis. Until then let's just focus on what can be found with a quick google.

Severn Trent. This started life as an amalgamation of 20 or so public sector water authorities, one of which was Montgomeryshire. One of the original counties of Wales and now part of Powys. They also own reservoirs in Wales.

If you are a Welsh based customer of Severn Trent I would be wondering why areas in Wales that are unmetered pay more for their water than similar areas in England. Here's the pricing guide for 2011-12 so you can check it yourself.

Clywedog reservoir, near Llandiloes in Powys. Built by damming the Afon Clywedog in 1967 to supply water to Birmingham and the Midlands. It's the tallest concrete dam in the UK with a height of 72m and a water volume of 50,000 mega litres. Let's pause right there, because I'm not sure what a mega litre is. Using this handy conversion tool I can now tell you that 50,000 ML is 50,000,000,000 Litres. So we've looked at one reservoir, built in Wales by England to supply England with Welsh water that is managed by a HQ in England that is capable of storing fifty billion litres of water.

Lake Vyrnwy, Powys. Built by flooding the Welsh village of Llanwddyn to supply Liverpool and Merseyside. It has a volume of 59,666 ML. So that's just under 60 billion litres of our water.

I don't know about you but those numbers make my head hurt. We've only looked at two English owned reservoirs in Wales yet they can provide up to 110 billion litres of water for England. Let's try and put those numbers into some perspective without resorting to Olympic sized clichés.

The BBC's diet and nutrition expert Dr Toni Steer recommends that the average adult needs between 1.5 and 3 litres of water per day.

Now let's assume that Wales' population of 3 million are all adults and all require 3 litres per day. That works out as 9,000,000 litres that Wales needs per day. or 3,285,000,000 litres per year.

Now you divide the 110 billion by our yearly requirement and we have enough to supply Wales for 33 years. Obviously that factors in no loss through evaporation and not washing (I'll cover that later), but it also factors in no more rain. Plus it's only two reservoirs in Wales. 81 more are owned by Dŵr Cymru.

So what about Dŵr Cymru, they are Welsh. Aren't they?

Dŵr Cymru / Welsh Water is owned by Glas Cymru, purchased for £1 back in 2001 after the previous company, Hyder went belly up after a decade of capitalist greed post privitisation left it with £1.85 billion in debts. It's limited to water only business dealings and is designed to be run solely for the benefit of it's customers. Not all of these customers are in Wales. They also supply to customers over the border. That was the short, polite and politically correct answer, there is a longer, more in depth answer in this very good article by Glasiad ap Gruffydd.

I've taken the following from the website of DCWW.

Welsh Water is the regulated company that provides water supply and sewerage services to over three million people living and working in Wales and some adjoining areas of England.

We have 1.2 million household customers and over 110,000 business customers making us the sixth largest of the 23 regulated water companies in England and Wales.

So that's over 3 million people per day. Conveniently that is also the same number as the total population of Wales. This time, all these millions of litres of water they supply every single day does include washing, flushing toilets, washing the car, watering the garden, filling your pond and all those other things we and many across the border who are with Dŵr Cymru use our drinking water to do.

So anything else, such as the 110 billion litres in those two reservoirs in Powys is just a bonus, right? And if we were in a position where we were capable of selling our water then it would make financial sense to boost the potential on our terms. If we wanted to create a new reservoir or expand an existing one it would be our choice.

So we already know we have plenty of water for us that's fairly obvious. And as the following graphic from Defra shows Wales doesn't have any real issue with water stress. Which is just as well for our English neighbours whose continuing fascination with growth in one corner of the UK means that (according to Defra) there is "very little water available" to them.

If you hadn't worked it out by now, that one corner where they focus all the growth is also the driest corner of the UK too. The following graphic depicts average annual rainfall for the UK for the 30 years between 1971-2000.

If you visit this link you can play about with the interactive maps on the Met Office website. Find out how many days of rainfall, average temperature, hours of sunshine etc. They are point to the one corner of England being warmer, drier and sunnier than the rest of the UK.

So we've established that England has destroyed Welsh communities for the sole benefit of supplying Welsh water to England.

We've established that Wales is more than self sufficient in Water and an exporter.

We've established that many people in Wales pay more for our water than the English pay for our water.

And we've also established that England simply could not survive without taking our water.

So why can't we do anything about it? Well the problem we have in Wales is what is known as the funding gap, that is the deficit between what Wales earns and what Wales needs to earn. Otherwise known in some circles of Wales as "we are too poor, too weak and too stupid" and in England it's known as "those Taffies would never survive without our subsidies".

In previous articles we looked at how Labour MPs in Wales betrayed us by voting against devolving our natural resources and we also looked at The Crown Estate holdings in Wales that Plaid Cymru want devolved to Wales. There are those that want Wales to be given the opportunity to be able to develop it's own economy, narrow the funding gap and therefore not be "such a burden" on other parts of the UK. Then there are those whose own interests are in serving the South East of England. Keeping them wealthy and keeping the other areas weak.

Here's the big reveal, water is already devolved to Wales but we are not able to benefit financially from the sale of water to people in Wales, let alone England due not having any tax raising powers. Not that this would matter because of something called...

"The Government of Wales Act 2006".

Nestled in the miscellaneous section of this act is a clause relating to water. It states...

Intervention in case of functions relating to water etc

(1) This section applies where it appears to the Secretary of State that the exercise of a relevant function (or the failure to exercise a relevant function) in any particular case might have a serious adverse impact on—

(a) water resources in England,

(b) water supply in England, or

(c) the quality of water in England.

So we finally have our answer. Providing we let England take as much water as they require, both now and in the future the water is ours. Should we do anything to affect the supply then they retake control via the Secretary of State for Wales.

And there is not a single thing we can do about it unless we can get out of the ridiculous habit of voting for political parties that continue to put the needs of England over our own.

And there we have it, a whole article about the colonial greed of England destroying Welsh communities and plundering Welsh water without a single mention of Tryweryn. D'oh!

If you liked this article then please share it, as always here's a video to make sharing easier.

The Crown Estate

2012-02-13T17:33:00.190Z

In a previous article I briefly mentioned The Crown Estate. Or rather, how MP Jonathon Edwards raised a bill in Parliament to have energy generation (and The Crown Estate) devolved to Wales. 25 of the 26 Labour MPs and 8 out of the 8 Conservative MPs that represent Wales voted no (or stayed in bed, either way they betrayed us all).

Clearly proving that Labour and the Conservatives are against devolution. No matter what their minions in the Assembly say.

A week later Plaid Cymru published it's proposals to the Silk Commission. For those unaware, the Silk Commission is another name for the Commission on Devolution in Wales. Set up to discuss the devolution of fiscal powers to the Welsh Assembly.

Number 6 on Plaids list of proposals is as follows.

The Crown Estates: Given that, in the past, Wales has not fully benefited from its abundant energy resources, ownership of and control over the Crown Estates in Wales should be transferred to the Welsh Government.

To put it bluntly The Crown Estate is a huge property portfolio, amassed over the centuries by the monachs, but these days all profits go directly to HM Treasury. So along with everything else on this list of Plaid Cymru proposals it doesn't currently benefit Wales. Well at least not directly, and even then not by much.

Firstly, for legal reasons I want to stress that I am complying fully with the following from The Crown Estate.

Copyright

Material on this site is protected by copyright. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright owner is The Crown Estate. Material may be downloaded or copied for personal use, provided it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. You may not make alterations or additions to the material on this website or sell it to a third party. Where information is re-published in any format, appropriate acknowledgement of the copyright owner is required.

So all pictures, maps and info, unless otherwise stated have been reproduced from The Crown Estate website, none have been doctored. Other than cropping, I've left the original pictures exactly as they were when I took a screen shot. And I shall not use them to mislead anyone.

I've included a lot of links in this article, tons in fact. That's for my benefit so I know where I found the info and your benefit if you wanted to read up on something.

Here we have a zoomed out shot of Britain taken from the official website of The Crown Estate.

It's a very cluttered map, basically spread out all across Britain, there are anchors and buildings, green stuff, W's and 3's, whatever they are. And that's just the stuff we can see.

Right, now we're getting somewhere. We can see there's a really good spread of dots in all different colours across the four "regions" of the UK. Thankfully The Crown Estate website provides us with a a nice colour coded key, which saves me having to make one. And it also means that when I write about these areas I will enclose them in the appropriate colour. So if you want to skip to something near you, then just look for that colour. It's also worth noting this map isn't very accurate, so some things aren't quite where they should be. But it you visit the page and zoom in you'll see it better.

There's also some important info above the key. Ignore the top as one that's nothing to do with us. The next three should immediately start you asking questions.

The Mines Royal refers to a three hundred year old law that is still in act to this day. To paraphrase the gibberish old law it basically states that if you have a copper, tin, lead or iron mine then go nuts. If it has silver or gold in it then we'll have a bit of that. These days though they'll just sell you an option to look for the precious metals. And if you find them then you could also give them even more money for an extraction license. Just as Gold Mines of Wales are hoping to do up in Eryri.

Now back to the map, again the website was kind enough to highlight Wales for me and also to write it on the map, copyright rules and all that. Remember the map is fully interactive, so if there's an area near you that you want to find out more then use the map. But I'm going to try and break down exactly what's in Wales.

We'll start at Tintern Minerals near the border to the south, Tintern is just north of Chepstow. It's listed as a rural asset and managed by John Pears of Wardell Armstrong LLP, the phone number listed is no longer in use. A quick google leads me to their website. And that's when we start to run out of steam. Historically though Tintern was the site of the first British wireworks, ironically set up in Wales to make England less dependent on foreigners. Maybe they originally wanted to build it in England but Nimbys got in their way?

The company that manages this location specialises in mineral rights, it appears to be quite common to own land but not own the mineral rights to that land, which can make developing that land quite tricky (palms may need greasing). On their website I found this case study that mentions this.

Moving along the Welsh coast now (or should that be UK coast?) we get to Porthcawl. Just off it's coast is the south west marine aggregate zone, otherwise known as a dredging area. It does actually stretch across the Bristol channel but for simplicity they've just shown it here.

Clicking on the anchor symbol reveals a list of contracts and which dredging zones they have been awarded. Only one of these 12 zones has been awarded to a Welsh company. One thing I did find whilst looking at these was a document detailing the strategic importance of the marine aggregate industry to the UK. One little fact I picked up from it is that in 2005 46% of all the gravel and sand sales in Wales came from dredging.

So why then, when dredging is obviously so important to Wales' construction industry are we letting foreign companies extract it, process it and then sell it back to us?

The dredging also has an impact on beach errosion. A lot of people come to this part of the world for the scenery and the beaches, some of them are now more rock than sand. Who wants to sunbathe on a rock?

Next up is Swansea, or more specifically The Morfa Retail Park, located just across the river from The Liberty Stadium that houses both Swansea City and The Ospreys.

"Morfa Shopping Park, Swansea. Purchased for £80 million in 2011. The park comprises 31,600 m² (340,000 ft²) and occupiers include WM Morrison, TK Maxx, New Look, Peacocks, B&Q and DSG Currys Megastore". - The Crown Estate.

Once again, managed by a firm from outside Wales. This time it's Jones, Lang and LaSelle of London

Surely there are firms inside Wales that could manage these assets?

Skokholm Island is up next, as above with the phone number, the link provided doesn't work. But it does take us to a 404 page on the website of The Wildlife Trust Of South and West Wales. On the whole this looks like one of the better assets from a "not ripping us off" point of view but it's an asset nonetheless.

Next up is the Ramsey Sound Project, just off Ramsey Island. An indevelopment tidal power project with a capacity of 1.2MW located at the awesomely named "The Bitches". So 1.2MW doesn't sound huge but it's just a tester. Although it does appear odd that this tester, on The Crown Estates property has been funded by The Welsh Government via the EU.

There's good and bad in the link (TWG) above, if successful, schemes like this rolled out across our 1200 KMs of coastline could provide up to 4 GWs (gigawatts). Now that alone is enough to run three Back to The Future Deloreans or 750,000 homes. Which, according to the Welsh Governments own stats from 2007 would be more than half the homes in Wales. It spoils it though by referring to Wales as a region.

Heading north we have three rural assets in fairly close proximity to each other, and unsurprisingly these are all managed by someone in England. This time it's Knight Frank of Bristol and they manage the sites near Ystradffin, Aberystwyth and Plynlimon.

Again there isn't a lot of info I can find about these although at a guess I would suggest turbines. Maybe some locals might come across this article and add some info below that I can add?

Near to Porthmadog is another Marine area called Llandanwg Dunes. Another broken link doesn't reveal much but a google search takes me to the LPYC. There doesn't appear to be much going on here (I'm happy to be corrected) but what we can see is that there is extensive work needed to protect these areas.

Given that we have previously been told that half of the coast line of the UK is owned by The Crown Estate and not all of it is listed on these maps leads me to the folowing conclusion. It wont all be gravy, if the assets of The Crown Estate that are Welsh are devolved to Wales we will have to pay for their upkeep. I know that sounds obvious but not everything thing will be profitable and some areas will have to be subsidised by the profitable areas.

But then there is the plus to that aswell. We can ensure that any of these jobs are created in Wales for Welsh people. And where possible using materials sourced in Wales by Welsh people. And it should go without saying that these assets wont be managed by companies outside of Wales.

To the north of Ynys Mon we have another tidal development, like the one down by "the bitches" it's run by a company from England. Don't let the "Sea Gen Wales" name fool you. They are based in Bristol. And as we discussed earlier, Bristol is not in Wales. This one generates 10MW (7500 homes). Which must give all the foreign partners of this operation a nice tidy profit and some great PR because let's face it, they are "saving the planet", one piece of colony at a time.

One thing I noticed though, in their credit is that their website was designed by a company in Pontlliw and does have a Cymraeg option. At least that's something.

Over to Colwyn Bay and we have another marine asset, Deganwy marina. It's a 165 berth marina that is managed by someone based in Wales. Save the hallelujahs though as yet again the owners of this company are from Bristol.

On their website they are very forthright that they are owned by The Crown Estate, I wonder if this is to do with appealing to their target demographic. I used their online quote tool to find out how much it would cost to moor my small 6m boat, the "Fictitious". £327 for the month, bargain. Multiply that by the 165 berths and they have a potential monthly income of at least £54,000.

If I wanted to moor my 13.5m vessel, "Fantasyland" for the same period it would cost £737. Obviously this can be a very lucrative business.

In the Bristol Channel is a round 3 wind farm zone. More commonly referred to as the Atlantic Array, 25GW (19 Deloreans or 18 Million homes). Without having a set maritime border it's hard to see what share of this would come to Wales. What is clear though is that anything on the Welsh side of the border would belong to Wales. And we would need to be compensated as a result if we were not able to benefit directly.

In the Irish Sea there are several spots for renewables, the biggest of which lies between Ynys Mon and the Isle of Man. This is operated by Centrica and according to their website the actual location is as follows.

The boundaries of the zone are approximately 15km from Anglesey, 20km from the Isle of Man, and over 40km to the Cumbrian coast.

Once again we'd have to see what falls into Welsh water but the total area will be enough to provide 4GW. That's the same figure as I mentioned earlier if we could harness our entire coast.

There's also another four areas off the coast of Colwyn Bay. Two of these are unquestionably within what would be Welsh waters. The 3rd (named North Hoyle) looks like it would be in our waters too.

All three of these are RWE npower with a capacity of 90MW, 567MW and 60MW (717MW total or 525,000 homes). Incidentally the last one which is closer to England is run by Dong Wind (Ltd). I mention that solely for childish reasons.

To summarise then it's easy to see just why Plaid Cymru politicians have given The Crown Estate so much attention recently. Especially considering that the yes vote for Scottish independence is making such gains in popularity based on the very real fact that it should be Scotland that benefits from the extortionate amount of tax revenue raised by it's oil and not the UK.

In Wales we are always told that we are too weak, too poor and often too stupid to be independent. No one believes we will just click our fingers and be free. It's quite clear there is enormous potential inside the property portfolio of The Crown Estate. As well as all the other points on the Plaid Cymru proposals.

Not only would these little bridges give us our own revenue, but we can make them work in our favour to boost our economy and create jobs for our people. It's all about narrowing the gap between what we earn and what we need to earn. But let's remember the fact that even the UK is operating at a deficit, so by using their own logic they too must be too small, too weak and too stupid.

As always, here's a video to help share this information.

What now for Labour voters?

2012-02-06T19:22:00.000Z

Welsh poltics used to be so simple. The average person in Wales just turned up at their polling station on election day, put a cross in the box next to Labour and went home safe in the knowledge they have played their part in the democratic act of "not letting those bloody Tories in".

Even after devolution and the formation of the Welsh Assembly the only thing that really changed for the average voter in Wales is that they were now able to vote for Labour twice as often.

But over the last year or so a few things have happened that may cause your Welsh Labour voter to want to rethink their vote.

It started in March 2011 when the people of Wales voted to give their assembly more powers. Over 63% agreed with granting further powers. Two months later in May the people of Wales put their crosses next to Labour and Labour were again in control of the assembly, except this time with some extra powers.

Another two months went by and then Carwyn Jones, leader of Welsh Labour and First Minister of Wales told the BBC that he wanted Wales to have even more powers devolved to it. This was backed up in early 2012 by a You-Gov poll commisioned by ITV that showed that more people had a desire either for more powers or full independence than those that wanted less powers or no devolution at all.

Now here's where it gets tricky. On January 31st 2012 Jonathon Edwards MP (Plaid Cymru) raised a bill in the house of commons for energy generation powers to be devolved to the Welsh Government.

The Bill would also mean the people of Wales gaining control over the Crown Estates in Wales.

Full speech here, iPlayer here.

In case you nodded off earlier, this is what Carwyn Jones was banging on about when he said he wanted more powers devolved. And more powers devolved is exactly what the Welsh voters want.

The bill was defeated 239 - 44. 44 isn't a bad showing you might think, Wales has 40 MPs so even if all of them voted yes then that means at least 4 non Welsh MPs voted yes.

And here is the point in the movie when the penny is about to drop and the audience will realise what is going on and that nothing is as straight forward as they thought. This is where your average Welsh voter should begin to doubt whether just turning up and putting a cross next to Welsh Labour or UK Labour is really the best thing to do.

All Welsh MPs didn't vote yes, not all of them bothered to turn up.

In fact here is a list of all the UK MPs that voted yes.

Peter Bottomley Worthing West Con aye
Zac Goldsmith Richmond Park Con aye
Andrew Percy Brigg and Goole Con aye
Henry Smith Crawley Con aye
Nigel Dodds Belfast North DUP aye
William McCrea South Antrim DUP aye
David Simpson Upper Bann DUP aye
Paul Flynn Newport West Lab aye
Jonathan Edwards Carmarthen East and Dinefwr PC aye
Elfyn Llwyd Dwyfor Meirionnydd PC aye
Hywel Williams Arfon PC aye
Mark Durkan Foyle SDLP aye
Angus MacNeil Na h-Eileanan an Iar SNP aye
Angus Robertson Moray SNP aye
Alan Beith Berwick-upon-Tweed LDem aye
Tom Brake Carshalton and Wallington LDem aye
Annette Brooke Mid Dorset and North Poole LDem aye
Malcolm Bruce Gordon LDem aye
Michael Crockart Edinburgh West LDem aye
Tim Farron Westmorland and Lonsdale LDem aye
Don Foster Bath LDem aye
Andrew George St Ives LDem aye
Stephen Gilbert St Austell and Newquay LDem aye
Mike Hancock Portsmouth South LDem aye
John Hemming Birmingham, Yardley LDem aye
Martin Horwood Cheltenham LDem aye
Simon Hughes Bermondsey and Old Southwark LDem aye
Julian Huppert Cambridge LDem aye
John Leech Manchester, Withington LDem aye
Stephen Lloyd Eastbourne LDem aye
Tessa Munt Wells LDem aye
John Pugh Southport LDem aye
Alan Reid Argyll and Bute LDem aye
Dan Rogerson North Cornwall LDem aye
Bob Russell Colchester LDem aye
Adrian Sanders Torbay LDem aye
Robert Smith West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine LDem aye
Ian Swales Redcar LDem aye
John Thurso Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross LDem aye
David Ward Bradford East LDem aye
Mark Williams Ceredigion LDem aye
Roger Williams Brecon and Radnorshire LDem aye
Stephen Williams Bristol West LDem aye
Jennifer Willott Cardiff Central LDem aye

There are 26 Labour MPs that represent Welsh constituencies. Only Paul Flynn MP voted yes, the others either voted no or couldn't be bothered to turn up.

There's a complete list here.

I hope I have shown there is a distinct difference between the policies and attitudes towards Wales from both Welsh Labour and UK Labour MPs that just so happen to represent Welsh constituencies. The people of Wales can no longer blindly put a cross in the box next to Labour no matter which election it is.

If you are not happy with your MP then ask them why they are betraying Wales in this way. These people must realise they are accountable to us. I'll hand you over to Jonathon to finish the article off.

As always, here is a brief video to help share the message.

Wales' representation in the EU.

2012-02-03T11:51:00.000Z

The European Parliament has 754 MEPs. These represent the 27 member states of the EU. Wales is not a member as it is a region of the UK. The UK has 72 MEPs. Of this 72 only 4 represent the 3 million people that live in Wales. That's 0.5% of the total number of EU MEPs.

The minimum number of MEPs that each member state has is 6. Remember Wales is a region so it has as many MEPs as Westminster allows it to have, even then they are still representing interests of the UK first and Wales second.

Malta has 400,000 people and are represented in the EU by 6 MEPs.
Luxembourg has 500,000 people and are represented in the EU by 6 MEPs.
Cyprus has 800,000 people and are represented in the EU by 6 MEPs.
Estonia has 1.3 million people and are represented in the EU by 6 MEPs.
Slovenia has 2 million people and are represented in the EU by 7 MEPs.
Latvia has 2.2 million people and are represented in the EU by 8 MEPs.
Wales has 3 million people and as a region of the UK it has 4 MEPs.
Lithuania has 3.3 million people and are represented in the EU by 12 MEPs

So we have the raw data, how do they look as a graph?

OK so here we have a graph showing the countries (and region) listed above. The graph clearly shows the countries increasing in population.

Now when we take those same countries (and region) and compare the number of MEPs each one has you see one sticks out like a sore thumb.

It's quite clear that an independent Wales would have somewhere between 8 and 12 MEPs. (or 1-1.5% of the total MEPs)

So that's either double or treble what we currently have. And not only would we have far more MEPs fighting our corner in the EU. They would also be representing only Wales and not the interests of the UK.

I've created this basic video to make it easier and quicker to share with the masses.

Facts and figures can be checked here and here.
Thanks to bcnsco for the idea behind this video and article, if only mine was half as funky as his Lord Rockingham / Lego video.

Welsh not British dot com

2012-01-24T12:49:00.000Z

Mission Statement - Datganiad Cenhadaeth

This wont be another "heavy political blog", there are some really good ones out there that I will include links to, and from time to time will share the links via the facebook page and on twitter.

Currently the Welsh nationalist blogs cater to the already converted. The apathetic masses need to be roped in. By using social networking such as facebook, twitter and youtube to easily share small bite sized pieces of information I hope to do that.

These bite size pieces can then be backed up by more in depth articles on this blogger site.

Hopefully once they have discovered an interest in Welsh politics they will become engaged enough to go looking through the other Welsh blogs and start to question why things are the way they are.