When the Welsh Secretary Simon Hart makes all these decisions affecting Wales, whose interest do you think he considers?
His constituents? The people of Wales?
Or the Ukranian Oil and Gas man who has given him more than £40k in recent years?
Maybe the London based American hedge fund manager who donated £25k?
Or the London property developer who donated £7k?
Maybe it's the "Landsker Business Club" who gave £23k but who don't seem to have any online presence except in Simon's financial declarations?
Could it be the Countryside Alliance who have paid him around £130k as a "high net worth consultant"?
Whilst on the topic of the Countryside Alliance, their one time deputy Chief Executive chipped in another £4,500 donation.
Or is he thinking of the alleged anti-Muslim Suffolk businessman who donated £15k?
Perhaps it's the London/Aberdeen PR company that gave £6k?
I really hope he's not thinking of the partner in a private mercenary company who gave £5k!
Could it be the tobacco company who donated £1,400 worth of entertainment, 3 months after Simon voted against anti-smoking legislation?
How anyone can think Simon has Wales' interest at heart, I don't know.
(For comparison, none of the Plaid MPs had any such private donations to declare, except for @LSRPlaid going on a work trip to Brussels and Jonathan Edwards (Plaid at the time) borrowing a mini bus as an office for 6 months!)
A few tech notes on the Boris WhatsApp story (TLDR It's VERY hard to get the messages without the pin)
There's a lot of jokes around "my teenager/corner shop could do it in 10mins", but it's not true. Here's why 🧵
Both Android and iPhones are very hard, near impossible, to get into. Boris had an iPhone, so let's focus on those.
You CAN unlock an iPhone by connecting it to your own iTunes account on a computer, but that wipes the phone. We need the messages off this phone.
But the police can easily do it right? Nope. CSI Miami or Line of Duty may do it all the time, but getting into a locked phone is not something police can do in reality (they can prosecute you under anti-terror laws for not sharing your pin, but it's rare) mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/m…
The property, 9 Gwel y Wylfa, was built not by Anglesey Homes but by Snowdonia View Management Ltd. But don't worry, SVM Ltd share accountants with Anglesey Homes and lists Emma Scott as a Director, the same person in who is the sole director of Anglesey Homes...
In fact, until 2022, long after 9 Gwel y Wylfa had been sold, Emma was also the sole director of SMV Ltd, so the statement was wrong to say Anglesey Homes built the house, but to be fair Emma likely forgot it was her other company, she has a few...
Whilst it's usually best to ignore the abolish lot, since Welsh twitter will be all over their latest mess ups today, I thought I'd share what it's like to look inside their private Facebook group. So here's the Top 6 things Abolish supporters hate, from 6 to 1...
6. Muslims.
Any mention of @Plaid_Cymru 's Sahar Al-Faifi is met with comments about her Niqab. Whilst Al-Faifi has been criticised elsewhere for comments on Semitism, that's never brought up in the ATWA group, just being a Muslim is enough for them to hate
5. Living in Wales
I'm sure ATWA leaders would tell you they love Wales and want the best of it. Seems their supporters wished they lived anywhere but. Why do they want to leave? Wait for point 1 and 2 on the list!
Thread: This fuss with the two Neils (Hamilton and McEvoy) has gotten me all confused this weekend as it just made no sense. So, with @neiljmcevoy helpfully releasing a few emails tonight, lets see what we can work out by looking at what's in them and in the public record.
It started with this tweet from @NeilUKIP on Friday night. Even without context, clearly an attempt to stir things up between McEvoy and Plaid by flat out stating that Plaid decided to support him instead of McEvoy.
McEvoy (I'm going by surnames here, two Neil's confusing!) then pitched in by calling out @RhunapIorwerth as the one who didn't back him. McEvoy later explained he named Rhun as it's the Business Committee who decides, and Rhun is Plaid's rep on BC