News that plans for the Murder Academy at St Athan are in serious jeopardy will lift the hearts of Welsh patriots. The Sunday Times reports that the whole project is threatened as the contractor Metrix, which is lead by the ‘defence group’ Qinetiq, is struggling to get the £1.3 billion from the banks needed to keep the project afloat.

A New Liebour pipe dream built on lies and half-truths.

Those of us who have been following developments over the last couple of years with mounting disgust will hope that this signals the beginning of the end for this ill-conceived and sinister knavery, largely peddled by Labour Vale of Glamorgan MP John Smith. Smith, a faceless New Liebour fellow traveller, will be defending a slim majority of just 1808 at the next general election, has high hopes that the project might just save his skin. It was Smith, you will remember, who once gushed about Barry experiencing a 21^st century Welsh rerun of the Californian Gold Rush, with 5,000 new jobs, and a spanking new ‘centre of excellence’ infrastructure bringing as yet undreamed of benefits to the whole of South Wales. It is turning out to be just another New Liebour pipe dream built on lies and half-truths. And thank goodness it is.

Anyone with any sense knows that any ‘Defence Training Academy’ worth its salt would need a huge influx of highly qualified specialist personnel into the area, and that means around 4,500 of the new jobs. Such an invasion would bring with it all the unsavoury curses of a large-scale military presence with vastly increased traffic and construction, not forgetting the inevitable increase in violence and drunken behaviour and resulting local resentment. Any jobs left over for locals would be those of the order of cleaners, security personnel, ancillary labour, cooks and bottle-washers.

We’ve seen it all before. Remember the sweeteners to attract valuable inward investment by the old WDA? Remember the jobs-for-the-boys of the 1980s and 90s, the reneged deals, the red faces, the desolate, unoccupied state-of-the-art ‘facilities’?

Another idiotic splurge of public money

A recent idiotic splurge of public money, incidentally, was right there at St Athan with the much vaunted “Project Red Dragon” – an aeronautical ‘super hangar’ maintenance centre. Back in 2003, this promised us the creation of, 3,300 jobs and a lot more besides because the new facility was to open its doors to commercial aviation concerns. Ribbons were cut, red carpets laid, champagne sprayed, and First Minister Rhodri Morgan promised the inevitable ‘bright new future’ from the regulation bright new ‘centre of excellence’. Within a year the project was on the rocks with a loss of 550 already existing jobs – the result of sensible rationalisation and a more realistic bid by the RAF.

You’d have thought we’d have seen this one coming then? No, Liebour just can’t help it.

The Sunday Times article continues: “Ministers have insisted that the troubled programme to centralise the military’s specialised engineering and technical training at St Athan in South Wales is back on track and would be signed before MPs’ summer recess.”

“But officials revealed that the deal would not now be signed off before the recess, with the possibility that contractor Metrix, led by defence group Qinetiq, “could walk away”. The memo admits that the “currently planned programme will be hard to achieve” and the implementation team is “conducting fall-back planning”.

“The state has provided another £44m to keep the project going, a sum recently confirmed in a parliamentary minute. The government came under fire this year when it emerged that it had already provided “contingent liability” funding of about £50m.”

‘Fall-back planning’? Sound idea – as long as all the bills, the sweeteners, the perks and the pensions are settled first of course – all from a total that’s not far off £100 million of public money.

Afghan adventure costs Wales £127,000,000 a year

In the light of the current financial crisis, a government defence spending review is now looking seriously at Britain’s Trident programme – the true cost of which, including the purchase of new missiles, the replacement of existing nuclear submarines and the overall costs of maintaining the entire system for 30 years was, in 2006, estimated at £76 billion. It is significantly greater today.

The government is also re-examining the construction of two vast 65,000 ton super aircraft carriers, the original budget for which has risen by a quarter to £5 billion (from an original £3.9 billion). In view of the obvious and urgent need to cut public expenditure, why on earth is Britain still trying to punch so far above its weight when it patently can’t afford it? Why is Britain still sending a foreign aid package of £825 million to India, a nuclear power with its own space research programme and one of the fastest-growing economies of the world? Why is Britain pursuing a winless war in Afghanistan with troops issued with inferior equipment which is patently not fit for purpose, at an annual cost to the British taxpayer of more than £2.5 billion – that’s a cost, incidentally, to Welsh taxpayers of a staggering £127,000,000 a year. Think also of the terrible, criminal loss of life Liebour’s ill-conceived adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought about, and there’s no sign of the latter ending any time soon.

No! to saving John Smith’s parliamentary career

Commenting on the latest developments Mark Pritchard, Conservative MP for The Wrekin in Shropshire, a fierce opponent of the scheme, whose own constituency has a location and facilities which provide a far more feasible and cost-effective option said: “With further delays and escalating costs, no more public money should be allocated to the programme until its viability has been fully considered.” You’ve said it!

Angharad Mair asked recently “Is this the kind of development we really need or want here in Wales?” adding that the St Athan military academy would “be the military centre for the whole of the UK, and that could bring dire consequences to Wales, as well as turning a beautiful and peaceful part of our country into what would have to be a security-obsessed nightmare. In Wales we have a long and proud tradition of peace and pacifism, and that should be enough reason to condemn this horrific development.”

Indeed, the building of Murder Academies in Wales has an ignominious history. In September 1936 a ’Bombing School’ set up to train RAF pilots in the arts of aerial bombardment was burnt down by a group of Welsh patriots, Saunders Lewis, D.J. Williams and Lewis Valentine, outraged at the desecration of one of the most beautiful parts of Gwynedd. As with St Athan, there were perfectly good alternative sites in England, one in Dorset and the other in Northumberland. Both had been rejected after protests by local historians and naturalists. Wales, then as now, was singled out for the privilege.

The answer to the Murder Academy must be NO on every count:

NO to saving John Smith’s lacklustre parliamentary career, NO to disrupting and overwhelming the communities of South Wales and the outstandingly beautiful Vale of Glamorgan, NO to squandering further taxpayers’ money, NO to swelling the coffers of unscrupulous and sinister ‘defence’ consortia – and most important of all, NO to creating a monstrous colonial leviathan which will serve to bind a steadily devolving Wales to a rapidly failing England with titanic bands of armoured steel.

Sources:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/public_sector/article6638748.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/sep/21/military.armstrade