Dewi Sant and the Burry Port Soviet (Updated)

It only seems like yesterday (June 2016 to be precise) that Nia Griffith belatedly joined other plotters in yet another attempt to oust Jeremy Corbyn. The coup failed, Nia rejoined the shadow cabinet, but Labour's civil war rumbled on, and the party seemed destined to go down in flames when Theresa May called her snap general election.

Since the election all has been sweetness and light in the UK Labour Party, at least in public, but someone seems to have forgotten to tell Labour in Llanelli that purging the party of capitalist lackeys and traitors has been put on hold, and the comrades are still busy getting on with the real business of stabbing each other.

Rent-a-mob

Just over a week ago Alan Evans' hyperlocal LlanelliOnline published one of those very strange pieces it specialises in, this time purporting to report on a dust-up at Burry Port Town Council where, it was alleged, Labour had brought in a rent-a-mob to disrupt proceedings, with some of its members and supporters going on to issue "false and misleading" statements to the press.

To put the icing on the cake, the piece attracted the attention of Michaela Beddows, notorious for her role in the Llangennech saga, and she left a series of rants in the comments section

A journalist from the Carmarthen Journal was invited down to cover the next meeting to ensure that a more impartial and accurate account of proceedings was published.

This invitation clearly upset LlanelliOnline which responded by launching an attack on the integrity of the Journal's representative and rubbishing the idea that a rent-a-mob had been organised.

It has been claimed that the rent-a-mob was led by Llanelli Labour's bovver boys in CUSC (the "Carmarthenshire Unified Sports Committee"), who just happen to be bosom buddies with Alan Evans, although as readers will see in the comments section below, one half of the CUSC "committee", denies being present.

Walkies!

We didn't have to wait long before CUSC made another appearance on LlanelliOnline, this time rallying in support of the dog walkers campaigning to keep what they see as the "brainwashed plebs" and" jumped up Welsh tossers" of Ysgol Dewi Sant away from Llanerch Fields.

What triggered the latest outbursts was the appearance on Llanerch Fields of a couple of men carrying out permeability tests on the soil. Luckily a passing dog walker was on hand to photograph this outrage on a green space where we are told you can hardly move for picnickers, kiddies, kite flyers, sporty types, blackberry pickers, boy scouts and troupes of Morris Men (but definitely no doggers).

Walkies with the labs

The unlikely alliance between the revolutionary vanguard of CUSC and the snooty dog walkers who front the group campaigning against Ysgol Dewi Sant has, readers will not be surprised to hear, an interesting political subtext.

Mrs Heather Peters, who chairs the campaign group, is a big fan of Labour's Neath carpetbagger, Cllr Rob James, or "Our Rob", as she calls him. And writing on the campaign group's Facebook page, a CUSC operative recently called for Rob James to take over the Labour group in Carmarthenshire.

Holding Back the Plebs Years

Now they are taking matters a stage further, with LlanelliOnline quoting an unnamed CUSC spokesperson (that would be "Red Mick" Barrett, the Simply Red tribute act, Ed.) as follows:

We are meeting with Cllr James and Cllr Najmi next week to discuss this. Kev and I are meeting with Rob and Shahana next week to discuss this and the resignation of Jeff Edmunds.

The CUSC have passed information onto Jeff Edmunds and it hasn’t been acted on.

We fought to rid Llanelli of Plaid Cymru so that Labour can fight these issues. Jeff Edmunds has done nothing. Unpaid volunteers are doing all the fighting, we need a voice.

Expect not so much a stab in the back, but a full frontal assault on the lugubrious Labour leader. Poor old Jeff.

Jac Codi Baw

Meanwhile Lee Waters AM is rumoured to have put even greater distance between himself and his constituents by moving from Barry to Newport. Not to be out-manoeuvred by the left-wing of his party, Lee took to social media last night to accuse Plaid Cymru of sending in its JCBs to dig up a green space, with Simon Thomas AM reminding him that the business case for building the school on Llanerch Fields had been approved, subject to planning and a consultation, by his own Labour government.

Update 21 October

Lee Waters contacted Y Cneifiwr on Twitter last night to say that rumours he had moved to Newport were untrue before going on to accuse this blog of making up the rumours.


When asked, he initially failed to confirm that he was still living in Barry, before eventually announcing that he would be moving to Llanelli in two weeks from now.

Waters is by no means the only AM not to live in his constituency, but what marks him out as different is the lengths he has gone to in the past to give the impression that he lives in Llanelli, including this sentence taken from his blog:

Like countless families across the Llanelli constituency my wife and I struggle with juggling the needs of our children and the pressures of work. 

It has taken more than two years for Lee Waters to answer this simple question, and he has been asked multiple times, not just by this blog. In fact, his strange reluctance to be open about where he lives has even become something of a joke in Cardiff Bay, with nicknames including "the Member for the Vale of Glamorgan" and "Barry Lee Waters" gaining currency.

That's two years of unwanted attention he could have spared himself, not to mention the damage it has done his reputation by needlessly making himself look shifty and evasive over what is a truly trivial matter.

_________________  

With Halloween just around the corner, is Rob James about to reveal himself as Van Helsing and drive a stake through the heart of the living dead Labour leader?

Watch this space.