Wales, Wales!

First Minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford                                                                   Source: Guido Fawkes, order_order.com

Nation Cymru reports:  "The Welsh Government is setting itself on a potential collision course with the UK Government after deciding to allow people to self-identify their gender when standing as candidates for the Senedd - much to the chagrin of Wales-Women’s Rights Network

Little surprise there  given this earlier report from order-order.com: 

"The Welsh government is paying out £9 million in taxpayer cash annually for woke jobs. The Taxpayers’ Alliance have uncovered data revealing that in 2022, a total of 138 posts in the Welsh Government featured words ranging from “diversity” and “inclusion” to “climate“, “wellbeing“, and “race“. A whopping 25 staff are employed in roles mentioning “equality“. The total cost of these, including salary and pension contributions, was £8,879,479."

Meanwhile, in NHS Wales, the health minister has warned that there may be fewer hospital beds in Wales, after asking health boards to make a further £64m in savings.

The Welsh Government has an action plan to make Wales  'A Nation of Sanctuary for asylum seekers and refugees' in which it has a 'vision' for Wales to become "the world’s first ‘Nation of Sanctuary’, celebrating Welsh hospitality and our history of migration and safety. " 

No matter what the cost in a cash-strapped Welsh economy it appears! 

Another government minister said that vulnerable people will "inevitably" feel the impact of spending cuts as she prepared to announce how the Welsh government will fill a black hole in its budget.

Nation Cymru also reports that the Welsh government is working on a plan to introduce a Bill "to make our parliament more representative of the people it serves", which includes provisions to introduce candidate quotas for people seeking election to the Senedd: “Our proposed model for quotas is designed to maximise the chances of achieving a Senedd comprised of at least 50% women."

With plans to increase the number of Senedd Members from 60 to 96, and change the electoral system to one that is "wholly proportional" no doubt the Diversity, Inclusivity and Equality (DIE) campaigners will will be keen to ensure that the real needs of the people of Wales do not come before the wishes of the Welsh DIEhards. First they need to know what a woman is.

Postscript [12.11.2023]

Fresh challenge for Welsh Government’s gender-balanced Senedd plan - Martin Shipton writes in Nation Cymru: "The introduction of a Bill to the Scottish Parliament that will end the rights of transgender women to identify as female when applying for public appointments should prompt the Welsh Government to ditch a similar plan relating to membership of the Senedd, according to a campaign group."

A First Minister's strange little world

First Minister Mark Drakeford with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in Barry, in 2019
Source: Mail Online

Described in the Mail Online as someone who promised to follow 'radical socialist traditions' upon his election, First Minister Mark Drakeford backed Jeremy Corbyn's bid for Labour leadership in 2015. 

More recently Mr Drakeford has been bragging in the Senedd about his industrial relations record of bringing people together compared with the 'entirely absent' UK Government who, he claimed:

 "abandoned their responsibilities and mean that thousands of people are unable to travel due to the dereliction of duty, which is so apparent in their approach to industrial relations. 

"It is a remarkable triple whammy, isn't to have brought the railways to a standstill, to have brought the airports to a standstill, and, finally after about eight weeks, I think, to have woken up to the fact that the 5p that was taken off the price of petrol hadn't been passed on to people in that part of the transport sector as well. It is a remarkable record of failure, and I'm afraid it's people, not just in Wales but across the United Kingdom who are paying the cost of that failure today. "

Despite his claims to have superior skills over UK Government ministers, actually "fewer than 10% of normal rail services were running" in Wales with most of the country having no services at all.

Road traffic is often at a standstill at the M4's gateway to Wales yet the First Minister used his devolved powers to veto the M4 relief road, thus retaining a permanent bottleneck to provide a better environment for wildlife than for the long suffering people who live alongside congested areas of the M4 and are subjected to increased levels of pollution in the atmosphere.

Drakeford's suggested alternative was that people should be encouraged to travel by rail but at the first whiff of heavy traffic as a result of major events in Cardiff, people are urged not to use the railways. 

Train operators asks people not to use its services as fears grew of travel chaos for the recent Tom Jones and Stereophonics stadium shows in Cardiff.

Before the Ed Sheeran show on Friday, May 27, there were 13 miles of queues on the M4 westbound, from the Prince of Wales Bridge to the Brynglas Tunnels in Newport. WalesOnline summed up the situation thus: "Fifteen mile jams, seven-hour trips and massive queues for trains: What people remember most about Ed Sheeran's visit to Cardiff."

When the First Minister was challenged on his decision to scrap plans in 2019 for a new stretch of motorway around Newport, he dismissed claims the road would have helped cut congestion using the bizarre reason that "Even if a decision had been made to go ahead with an M4 relief road, it would have made absolutely no difference at all over the last weekend, because it would, even from today, be another five years before such a road could be opened".

M4 chaos prompts Cardiff event questions. Motorway tailbacks, parking pandemonium and railway station queues. It took one family three hours to get across the Severn Bridge. By the time they got to the out-of-city parking, the shuttle buses had stopped running. They were left about £350 out of pocket.

The First Minister's excuse sounds like a recipe for doing nothing, much like the fate of social care which so desperately needs fixing.

According to the Nuffield Trust, Health and social care account for almost half of the devolved government’s budget but record-breaking NHS waiting lists and the deteriorating performance of the ambulance service and A&E departments are the consequence of a "broken" health service in Wales.

"Vulnerable and elderly patients medically fit to be discharged remain in hospital for longer than necessary because social care support is scarce." 

Another example of Mr Drakeford's weird way of thinking? The problem has not been tackled in the past and it would take too long to resolve so continue to ignore it. 

It may make sense to the First Minister in his strange little world but not to those on NHS waiting lists or in need of social care.  

Latest figures show that there are over 700,000 people across Wales waiting to start NHS treatment. The numbers waiting longer than 36 weeks reached the highest on record - at just over a quarter of a million (258,189) while social care is underfunded and carers undervalued.

'Abandoned responsibilities' or 'radical socialist traditions' First Minister?

Brainwashed

"No more lies and fairy tales."

Answering a question at the Senedd about the inclusion of trans athletes in sport, the First Minister, Mark Drakeford, acknowledged it was an "argument that divides people" but confirmed that he believes "transgender women are women" after being pushed to define what a woman is during a session at the Senedd.

Mr Drakeford said: "My starting point is the same as Penny Mordaunt’s – the UK minister responsible at the time – who said that the UK Government’s starting point was that transgender women are women. That’s my starting point in this debate...I do not understand the point that the member makes that you can be too inclusive. To me, inclusivity is absolutely what we should be aiming for here.

He is wrong. Inclusivity has become a nightmare, forcing people to accept what logic dictates is absurd. It is imposed in the workplace and in schools with individuals demanding the use of preferred pronouns. Everyone is being caught up in a charade that attracts accusations of homophobia if there is any hint of dissent as J K Rowling discovered for tweeting that 'transgender women cannot change their biological sex'.  

A man may go through various procedures to make him appear to be a woman but male cannot be changed to female or vice versa. 

Some poor souls embark on irreversible procedures which they later very much regret. The above video was posted in support of a Twitter thread by @TullipR which reads: "I want to tell everyone what they took from us, what irreversible really means, and what that reality looks like for us. No one told me any of what I’m going to tell you now." The description is heart-rending as is the video.

All the more disturbing, then, to read that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health  has lowered its recommended minimum age for starting gender transition treatment, including sex hormones to 14 with some surgeries done at age 15 or 17.

According to a trans activist woman who detransitioned in 2018 many people who have gender reassignment regret the decision and want to return to their original sex. Charlie Evans says that hundreds of people who want to return to their original gender have contacted her since she announced her de-transition and stopped taking her hormone therapy. 

She said, "The number of young people seeking gender transition is at the highest it has ever been, but little is reported about how many of them regret the decision later, finding they are unhappy with their new gender."

Others counter that it was the best thing they ever did. One trans woman speaking on the BBC's Prejudice and Pride programme claimed just that, largely it appeared because she was able to buy and wear a pair of women's suede boots which she had coveted for years, a relatively harmless desire compared with the trauma of a penectomy. 

She had been married and had a family before transitioning but the happiness felt by her and those like her is no excuse for expecting the rest of us to accept self identification theories made fashionable in gender studies .

But where is the leadership?

We should be able to expect more from our political leaders than a nod to what is trendy in defiance of the facts.

NHS miscarriage statistics illustrates the absurdity of pandering to the few. In this example 'Women' was changed to 'people' because "the word woman in the eyes of the NHS is a word which dare not speak its name all because they are afraid of upsetting a tiny minority in the intolerant trans activist cult."

We should expect more not only from our political leaders but our religious leaders, trendy bishops who preach inclusivity and diversity contrary to biblical teaching. 

As one commentator put it, bishops these days are more likely to be informed by the Guardian than by the Bible.

Postscript [18.06.2022]

From The Telegraph (£): "We are sacrificing our children on the altar of a brutal, far-Left ideology. The medical profession is crumbling in response to radical transgender activists" - JORDAN PETERSON

Video reading here: