The Greenhouse Effect
















2007 marks the 10th anniversary of the narrow "Yes" vote by the Welsh people for the first democratically elected body to represent Wales since the time of Owain Glyndwr.

It's also marks a new year for people in Wales to go to the polls in May and vote on a whole range of issues, ranging from Health to the status of the Welsh language.

A key plank that this election will be fought on is the whole issue of climate change and the developing energy crisis that is forcing governments the world over to re-evaluate their dependence on fossil fuels and look to cleaner, renewable alternatives.

Yet we have a Labour Assembly administration in this country that refuses to discuss the single biggest and most important energy project ever undertaken in Welsh history. The Welsh electorate will be accorded the right to see the trees being cut down by National Grid for it's pipeline project, while the Assembly denies any responsibility for the wood.

Under Section 121 of the Government of Wales Act, the Welsh Assembly has a constitutional obligation to "promote suatainable development in all it does". It's one of only 3 government in the world to have such a requirement built in.

Yet all the way along the route of this pipeline, our National Assembly and it's Members have publicly denied having any responsibility for this project, while privately working to facilitate it. Footpaths have been closed, community-owned woodlands have been chopped down, common land is being compulsory purchased, and a Geopark and UNESCO World Heritage Site sits on the brink of destruction. So much for section 121.

You've gotta ask the question: when the sea level rises and drowns our beaches, where will these guys find the sand to bury their heads?

Time for National Grid to split?

Amazing to think that this camp started with a little black dog called Max! What you're looking at is a public footpath (part of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path) that National Grid rather foolishly forgot to close off. A local landowner regularly walked her dog along the path, and couldn't work out why the contractors hadn't bulldozed through it yet. Residents in the area, inspired by the Trebanos protest camp, took a chance and pitched up.

While Milford Haven hasn't hogged as much of the limelight as it's sisters up the line, it's probably the most strategically significant as it prevents National Grid from connecting the pipeline to the terminals. No connection, no gas. Simple.

GGATCHA!

Construction of the pipeline hit a small hitch last year when excavation uncovered a Bronze Age canoe, widely reported in the media. What the media conveniently omitted was the fact that the pipeline ploughed through an entire Bronze Age village in the process of retrieving this canoe.

Oddly enough, despite the fact that the canoe was discovered in Pembrokeshire, the canoe was donated to the Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust, where it is held in Newport. As it turns out, GGAT is a statutory consultee for Phases 1 and 2 of the pipeline route. Maybe this would explain GGAT's silence over this act of wanton destruction...

Archaeologists are still uncertain as to whether the object is definitely a canoe, or maybe a trough of some kind. Well, if it's a trough, it's not hard to spot the snouts...

Residents of the small town of Amlwch on Anglesey may be gearing up to oppose plans by American energy multinational Canatxx to build an LNG terminal and pipe it undersea to Fleetwood in Lancashire. The company, which plans to store some of this gas in massive salt caverns, has already sparked local opposition in Lancashire. Check it out here:

http://www.thorntonactiongroup.co.uk/

No doubt arguments about this development will polarise into the usual "Jobs versus Environment" where locals in one of the poorest areas of Wales, let alone the United Kingdom, are forced to choose between the few jobs created by these massive developments, at the expense of a clean, safe environment to live in.

But given LNG is a specialist industry relatively new to the UK, how many of those jobs will be filled by local people anyway?

Talbotgate.

There are advantages and disadvantages to running a big pipeline project through a Labour-controlled council area. The advantage is that they'll happily toe the ruling party line, and seeing as this is the pet strategic project of a Labour government in London, aided and abetted by a Labour Assembly in Cardiff, it makes sense to fall into line. A few bungs and local contracts always helps to oil the wheels of co-operation.

However, there are disadvantages, too. The main one being that many Labour councillors are extremely twp.

Step forward Councillor Mike James, the Ward member for Pontardawe and member of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council.

During the recent botched vote to approve blasting with explosives in Trebanos, Councillor James was nowhere to be seen. A new count was held, and the Labour group concocted the perfect opt-out - they passed the buck back to the Department of Trade and Industry in London. They approved the pipeline, after all. Councillor James even proposed the motion.

In the event, the DTI decided to ban the blasting, a vindication of months of local campaigining and detailed research. A new public meeting was held by local group CRAG (Cwmtawe Residents Action Group) to take stock of recent events. Councillor James turned up.

He had many interesting things to say. All of it recorded by an attentive local who had the presence of mind to bring a tape recorder. It's not often you get to savour the words of a Labour Councillor falling on his sword.

In particular, accusing the Head of Planning, Geoff White, and planning officer Nicola Pearce, of "blatantly lying" "incompetence" and "misleading councillors" has to be a first.

But why stop there? He then went on to accuse Head of Legal Services Carole John of having “cocked up wholesale and then trying to cement over it with all sorts of bullshit we were supposed to believe”. Really? Anything else?

Oh yes, and he adds “we have professional paid legal represenatatives and advisors to councillors, to tell them how to proceed and how not to proceed”. “The crux of it is that our officers were lying blatantly about safety features that should have been known about”.

The question has to be asked - are National Grid digging trenches for their pipeline - or mass graves for Labour councillors? With friends like these - does National Grid need enemies?

United we stand, Divided they fall.

3 years ago, a consortium of multinational giants - led by ExxonMobil - lodged an application to build a series of massive LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) terminals at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire.

That was only the beginning, and what nobody told any of us about was the pipeline. Shrouded in secrecy, and then dogged by controversy, the pipeline cuts a scar of devastation across our fair land and constitutes a new phase in what can only be called "Rape of the Fair Country - Mark II".

It may be gas, but what it's fuelling are the flames of Welsh resistance. This blog is a small, personal, humble attempt to diarise and document a revolution in the making. A bit late in the day, perhaps, but then maybe this is just the end of the beginning, and not the beginning of the end. Read on!