Monday 2 June 2014

Jac and Gill

Update 3 June

It seems that further and very serious allegations about our new Ukip MEP have reached Jac. Watch this space.

Updated update

Barely had the ink dried on that before Jac posted some startling new claims involving a mysterious fire at a church, running a hostel for Polish migrant workers packed in like sardines and interesting financial dealings. If there are any readers in Hull who remember any of this, there are at least two Welsh bloggers who would like to hear from you.

As it happens, Gaerwen (near Llangefni) and Newcastle Emlyn have the unusual distinction of being far-flung Mormon outposts in Wales.

Cue X Files theme music.
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If you have not seen it, take a look at Jac o' the North's latest piece about Nathan Gill, the newly elected Ukip MEP for Wales and, in the eyes of those who voted Ukip on 22 May, the antidote to all those lying professional politicians on the make.

If the information which Jac has turned up is true, Nathan Gill has some serious questions to answer and some at least of the 202,000 people who voted for him may want their votes back.

A couple of weeks before the election Cneifiwr did a little googling to try to find out more about the Ukip candidate, and within a couple of minutes it became evident that his business history deserved a closer look. The problem with that, as Jac points out, is that digging deeper means that as a hard-up blogger you will have to fork out to buy reports from Companies House.

The reason for saying this is not sour grapes at Jac's scoop, but to show how easy it is to do a little background checking on someone in the public eye. So why did none of our mainstream media organisations bother?

The local press lacks the resources, and the Western Mail and Daily Post are focused on their respective regions rather than on Wales as a whole. The London press is just not interested, and so that leaves the BBC, which when it comes to elections is the default for anybody remotely interested in finding out about the issues, the parties and the candidates.

The BBC has received a torrent of complaints from the public about its coverage of the European elections - a record for any election, it seems. 1,190 people felt that the BBC had been biased towards Ukip, 149 felt it had been biased against Ukip, and 73 thought it had been biased against Labour (a party which produced two election broadcasts that did not mention Europe once).

As usual the BBC has rejected the criticism, trotting out the old argument that if you are being criticised by all sides, you have probably got the balance about right.

Let's hope the Corporation is not let off the hook so easily. Nigel Farage received blanket coverage and clocked up far more appearances on programmes such as Question Time than any other party leader. Other Ukip candidates got barely a look-in, probably to the intense relief of Ukip itself, and Nathan Gill got just a few, deeply unimpressive minutes of air time on BBC Wales.

The BBC has the resources, and could have done its homework on Nathan Gill before the campaign started as part of its obligations to inform and educate as well as entertain.

It is not just Nathan Gill who has questions to answer.


9 comments:

Jac o' the North, said...

Kind words, Cneifiwr, for which I thank you.

And you're right about BBC Wales. If we look at the Euro elections, most of the candidates were no-hopers, so it boiled down to those likely to be elected. Three of those - Lab, PC, Con - were being re-elected, which left just one unknown quantity - Nathan Gill.

He should therefore have been been the focus of enquiry, but no; either due to laziness or BBC policy to give Ukip an easy ride and maximunm exposure, no one asked - 'Who is this guy, what do we know about him?'

Anonymous said...

Is there noone who will save Wales but Jac?

Anonymous said...

I gather Rhun ap Iorwerth is Welsh speaking Chapel. Dangerous stuff, very anti LGBT. Worse, he doesn't tell the truth. On the hustings he sided against Wylfa B. Shortly thereafter he turned into a pro Wylfa man. Duplicitous in the extreme.

I wish Jac had written about this fellow too. Or does nobody care what happens in Anglesey?

Cneifiwr said...

Anon@23.16 - the fact that someone speaks Welsh doesn't make them a bigot. Neither does going to chapel.

And Rhun did not hide anything in order to get himself elected.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like extremely sour grapes to me.

We have to get our heads around the fact that UKIP are in the ascendancy and Plaid are on their way down.

Its probably only temporary but that's democracy.

Anonymous said...

Ah ha, good to see you springing to the defence of a Welsh speaker. As for his duplicitous nature, I would redirect you to the Syniadau blog site. There you can read many articles about this 'lying professional politician on the make'.

Interesting that you chose not to mention matters LGBT. And even more interesting that you seem to think Nathan Gill is worthy of scrutiny but not a high profile Plaid Cymru member.

Perhaps you too have issues.

Cneifiwr said...

Anon@10.02 - I think you are desperately trying to spread muck when there is none.

Your comments are those of a typical troll, and the only reason I have published them is because they discredit you and the cause you stand for.

Now crawl back under your stone.

Bill Chapman said...

It really is time that Nathan Gill resigned. How much longer can he limp on?

Anonymous said...

Nathan Gill certainly can't take up his seat while the more serious allegations that Jac made are subject to appraisal.