Closure

Not gone yet

So the dirty deed is done, and again, evil has triumphed over good, lies over truth, greed over compassion and self interest over the safety and concerns of others.  Nothing really new there, a few people shout the truth but the sheep just bleat and accept their fate because that is their nature. You can no more blame a sheep for being a docile passive creature then you can stop the greed and self interest of the wolves that feed off them and their labours.

In a secret ballot held earlier this month 16 members of the South Wales Fire and Rescue Authority voted to close Blaina Fire Station despite having been presented with overwhelming evidence that Blaina Fire Station actually saved money by preserving lives, that if lost would have cost South Wales millions of pounds.

Now before I continue in more detail, it is important that you who read this final article now, and those who will read it over the coming years understand why it is not just a simple "Announcement of Closure" article but more a pointer to the historic, truthful and chronologically accurate articles beneath it and a damning, permanent reminder to people about the perfidiousness of corrupt politicians, Councillors and the Chief Fire Officer Huw Jakeway and his non fire fighter bean counter deputy, Sally Chapman in particular.

I am not going to link to the relevant articles that will support what I now write, as it is better for those interested in the truth to follow the site through from day one to see the full picture, but you have my guarantee that everything I write is true.  I apologise now for any information that I miss out that you may also find relevant.

From day one of the announcement to close down Blaina Fire Station, some of us realised that this was not an isolated incident but just a small part of a much bigger jigsaw puzzle to close down hundreds of Fire Stations across the UK in preparation for a future sell off to the business associates of our political elite of both the Labour and Conservative Party.

You think these political parties are different (because they must give you the illusion of democracy) but they are not.  The new Labour Party is nothing like the Labour Party created  by its heroic founders and its future direction has nothing to do with the advancement of the working classes but rather the perpetuation of a political "elite" working hand in glove with global big business.

The proof that this sell off is supported by the Labour Party in Wales (who could have stopped the closure of Blaina with a click of their fingers) is the increasing numbers of "Graduates" from the truly evil tool of global big business, Common Purpose and the appointment of Lee Howell as the Welsh Government's Fire and Rescue Adviser.

Both Lee Howell and Huw Jakeway are Common Purpose graduates, as now are hundreds of other people embedded in our infrastructures who believe that they have been "chosen" to "lead beyond their authority".  Political analysts have laid the blame for the destruction of the NHS at the door of Common Purpose, who are preparing to sell it off to their masters business cronies.

So from day one, we really did have a mountain to climb if we were to save Blaina Fire Station.

Being brutally honest, some of us realised that the Fire Cutting Service would make cuts but had hoped that by making them pay in time and effort, that they would bring their axes (which have never seen a real fire) down on some other poor community that did not have the fighting spirit of the Blaina People and so at least the safety of our children and the jobs of our firefighters would be secured.

Ideally an organised campaign in Wales against all the Fire Cuts would have been better but that never happened and so stations mainly fought alone instead of united.

Our Campaign to save our fire station started off well, thanks to Councillor Lisa Winnett (more about later).  A well attended demonstration mainly attended by the concerned mothers of Blaina greeted the Chief Fire Officer Huw Jakeway on his only "public" visit to Blaina and his departure provided a clue to his lack of moral fibre and his willingness to publicly lie when he stated that he would meet the people of Blaina publicly to answer any questions that they might have had.

I must confess, that at that time, he took me in as I could not believe that any true commander of men would wish to endanger the lives of the men he commanded by depleting their numbers, whilst as a father himself he would not wish to endanger the lives of other peoples children.  In my defence, I did not know then that he was in fact a Common Purpose Graduate who are taught to lie and that the end justifies the means.

Our Campaign then really started to move, with thousands of signatures being gathered in a petition to save the station and thousands more people filling in the Fire Service Survey expressing their concerns about the closure and I myself took part in a questions and answers session on the local radio and this site had a readership bigger than some newspapers.  We were looking good.

Again Councillor Lisa Winnett came up trumps, when she presented a superbly well researched document to the members of the Fire Authority that totally demolished their spurious supporting evidence of the fire station closing Fire Service proposal document.

To me and any honest, impartial person it was game set and match.  In fact, evidence showed that Blaina Fire Station actually saved South Wales money every time they saved a life and having saved a few last year had paid for itself years into the future.

This information, along with news and images of some dramatic and life threatening incidents attended by our local heroes where lives were saved, seemed to me to have ensured the survival of Blaina.

But that assumption would only work if we had been dealing with real men.  But like Gwilym Morgan in How Green Was My Valley, we were to discover that, yes we were dealing with men but most certainly not men like us, for they had no honour only greed in their hearts like the pit owners in that novel.

Then at a meeting of the Fire Authority, Huw Jakeway claimed that their vote to accept in principle the recommendations of the Fire Service to close Blaina was a victory, when in fact the truth was, that the Fire Authority had to accept their recommendation in principle but it would be subjected to review by the Scrutiny Committee, who were tasked with ploughing through the reams of evidence from both sides and then making recommendations back to the full Fire Authority.

Then Huw Jakeway revealed the size of his monstrous ego and arrogance when he wrote in one of his weekly columns, that "The role of the scrutiny will not be to change the decision of the Authority".

This statement alone, makes Huw Jakeway's conduct in this affair worthy of investigation.

So then, what was the purpose of the Scrutiny Committee, who having examined ALL the evidence, including the inaccurate information provided by the Fire Service, recommended that Blaina Fire Station remain open as a valuable and cost effective asset to the people of Blaenau Gwent.  Were their findings to be ignored and discarded in such a shabby way?

Now before we move onto the actual and shameful vote by outsiders that endangers the lives of our young, I want to highlight the efforts of our MP for Blaenau Gwent, Nick Smith, who supports keeping Blaina Fire Station open.

Nick Smith is a rare thing in parliament.  An honourable MP with a fine mind and track record who in his influential role with the cross party Public Accounts Committee was partly responsible for saving the United Kingdom millions if not billions of pounds.

So having checked the figures and looked at the statistics, Nick Smith came to the sensible conclusion that Blaina Fire Station was a valuable and reasonably cheap asset to Blaenau Gwent that provided value for money and proceeded to write a series of communications to various key people saying so.

Now then it is at this stage in the game, I believe that we lost our battle to save Blaina Fire Station.

We rested on our laurels and did nothing to keep the issue of the injustice of the proposed closure in the public's eye and by doing so putting Fire Authority members on the spot.

At this point and before the Fire Authority vote, I planned to leaflet the wards of every single Fire Authority member with leaflets and posters calling for their communities support in our struggle and to lobby their Councillors on our behalf.

Despite offering to cover the cost of the printing myself and repeated requests for volunteers to assist me, NOT ONE PERSON stepped up to the plate.  I will not continue with this theme as it is pointless, as some of you honestly think we did enough, whilst I know we could have done so much more.

Now onto that shameful cowardly vote that betrayed the people of Blaenau Gwent, that was held in secret (because apparently one of their members had received a threatening phone call) and consider how the fix had gone in before the vote even took place and highlights just why the areas of these Councillors should have been leafleted prior to this vote.

Incidentally, it is worth noting that this meeting is worthy of further investigation, because according to my information, immediately prior to the vote and most certainly a breach of protocol Sally Chapman strongly hinted that should Blaina Fire Station be closed, then there would be a very good chance of monies being made available to build a brand new fire station in Cardiff.

This was clearly wrong and something Ms Chapman should be disciplined for and cause for another vote to take place, with Councillors from Cardiff being excluded because of a conflict of interests.  After all, Councillors from the valleys whose lives are under threat were excluded from voting because a desire to preserve their lives was seen a conflict of interests.

So they voted.  Completely ignoring the recommendations of the Scrutiny Committee to keep the station open, totally disregarding the findings of one of Wales most respected politicians showing how Blaina Fire Station was real value for money, treating like unwanted litter the superb documents presented by a fellow Councillor and showing the utmost contempt for the people of Blaenau Gwent's safety, they voted away the safety of others they will never meet, for reasons we will never really know and can only guess at.

Now there were other serious anomalies that took place during that fateful meeting and vote and I strongly suspect that we have not heard the last of it.

For instance, the fact that the Fire Authority may not have been made aware of the number of lives actually saved by the fire fighters of Blaina or information relating to changes made to the Fire Authority data system.  Time will tell.

Now on reading the results of this perverse vote, I then considered launching an appeal for funds for a Judicial review to overturn the vote and believe that I have the skills and contacts via a whole host of international networking charity and fund raising sites to raise maybe £50,000 or more, but further investigation leads me to believe we would need four times that amount, and anyone who follows the Judiciary and the recent Judgements regards fighting the Fire Service in the court must reach the conclusion that the judges are as corrupt as their masters and so the money would be wasted.

So what next?


This site is now officially closed or rather shall we say, in a state of suspended animation.