Please can we have a debate in Wales about ...St Athan mercenary training world

Leanne Woods transcript of her question to Carwyn Jones AM, the Leader of the House, at the Senedd on July 1st.

Leanne Wood: I am sure that you will be aware of reports about documents received from the defence training review executive board,which show that there is a major affordability gap in the proposed St Athan development, that there are 15 significant risks to frontlinetroops from the Metrix proposal, that 72 percent of trainers have said that they do not want to move to south Wales and that the construction industry cannot cope with the project, which coincides with the construction work for the Olympics inLondon. Do you accept that in addition to all of these problems, the credit crunch will make borrowing more expensive, bearing in mind that this is also a PFI project? These are serious concerns which need to be given debating time in the Assembly. I accept that the decision around this development is not an Assembly decision and that it is not a devolved issue, but Members need to be satisfied that if this project falls apart, the Assembly’s budget will not be adversely affected.

Carwyn Jones:With regard to St Athan, it is important that we do not put ourselves in a situation whereby we, effectively, appear not to beable to deliver a project in Wales. We have the construction ability to build this project,and it is important that we make that point. If it is the case that many instructors do not want to come to Wales, that does not work very well in terms of selling Wales. I suspect that as soon as the project is up and running and building work begins and they see the facility being built, many people will want to move to Wales. We do not want to give the impression to the world that there is no point building anything in Wales because no-one wants to come here in any case; there is a great danger there. The commitment to the defence training academy is still extremely strong. The Ministry of Defence reaffirmed its commitment to package 1 on 31 January2008, and it is an important development that will bring many jobs to the Vale of Glamorgan and the wider surrounding area,including the Valleys. The full record of proceedings can be viewed here: http://www.assemblywales.org/bus-home/bus-chamber/bus-chamber-third-assembly-rop.htm?act=dis&id=91292&ds=7/2008#rhif2

pathetic... cap in hand to new labour and government uk - not even a debate. not a mention of the privatisation of the war machine..war profiteers,...mercenary training ... for a small now undisclosed number of jobs ......ethics? principles, policies don't matter.

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Big brother hassles Anti-metrix - St Athan protesters

http://www.cynefinywerin.org.uk/ Anti-Metrix protest march to demonstrate opposition against the St Athan privatised military academy. PCS where there to support the staff whose jobs are threatened and show opposition to the protest - Cynefin y Werin members - CND Cymru and CAAT supporters, Cymdeithas y Cymod and Church, Chapel and other faith representatives. Along with Green Party protestors and speakers Jill Evans Plaid MEP, Davy McAuley of the Raytheon 9 and stop the war.

In an attempt to silence the protesters they were banned from marching through Cardiff city centre as police used the the public order act to suppress opposition and the human right to protest in public. The MOD spend huge sums of money on propaganda and publications especially in the vale of glamorgan and John smith has thousands of pounds to promote the academy and even go in to schools with unbalanced material in favour of the academy. Recently we saw the NUT protest at the MOD & government lies to school children regarding Iraq.

Yesterday - the huge police presence was totally disproportionate and a waste of tax payers money. Police photographers where busy taking pictures and videos - to what purpose - the real criminals and evan murders are the arms dealers Ratheon and serco and the new labour politcans like John smith & rhodri morgan who supported or voted a policy of going to war and this academy to train people to kill.

Yet they want to stop http://www.cynefinywerin.org.uk/ and its suscribing member organisations and supporters like PCS - there defending its members jobs and the public protesting at their expensive failed PFI policy being applied to MILITARY TRAINING.

We don't want a school for mercenaries in Cardiff - we don't need it - we want sustainable jobs to benefit the community not mercenary soldiers to terrorise them and put our young people at risk of rape and worse.

Note this story today Police in court over pictures at arms protest Politics The ...
This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday April 27 2008 on p6 of the ... Arms campaigner Andrew Wood from Oxford claims that his human rights were ...
The power of the police to mount surveillance operations at peaceful protests will be challenged in court this week. In a case seen as opposing Britain's move towards a Big Brother-style society, the High Court will determine if police are legally entitled to take photographs and compile information on protesters even if they do not break the law www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/27/police.humanrights -




More Videos of the protest can be found here
Videos of protest Police crahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ7WfAG0VxU&eurl=http://cardiffpr.wordpress.com/video/ck down hard as St Athan demo finally awakens mass media
OU out of metrix & St Athan military academy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqJcp8fKR0s
No2 privatised military academy at St Athan -anti-metrix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyLaZKD47jU
Jill evans 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkrqpPxG_Bo
Jill Evans 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFm3oTxx8Rk

St Athan protest with Davy McAuley 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqJcp8fKR0s
St Athan protest with Davy McAuley 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXCY4usUAHA

Raytheon & US Military-Industrial Complex takeover St Athan

Global Gridlock: How the US Military-Industrial Complex Seeks to ...By admin Some of the names of the military contractors involved in this project include Boeing; Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard; IBM; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; Raytheon; and Sun Microsystems (Weiner, 2004). As part of this complete coverage ...TruthNews.us - http://www.truthnews.us/

St Athan PFI Decision made in London

Not a single politican from WAG is challenging the UK government ability to have this sort of power over Wales - to make this decision for Wales?

Q. Did the 'Wales Office' not have to approve the St Athan PFI?

Paul Murphy : Written Answers - Wales: Departmental Private Finance Initiative (3 Mar 2008)
The Wales Office has not initiated or approved any private finance initiative projects in the last three years.http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2008-03-03a.190810.h&s=speaker%3A10454#g190810.r0

A. Its not a Welsh PFI. Remember that MC3 package 1 solution was based around Bordon and Cosford and Portsmouth. It was instigated by Mod with Ministerial backing. However the Welsh politicians did help Metrix win the bid by hard lobbying and the WDA provided human resources to METRIX.

MP accuses government of cover up over St Athan

MP accuses government of cover up Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard has accused the government of covering up problems around the proposed Defence Training Acedemy in St Athan, Wales. The Wrekin MP challenged Wales Secretary Paul Murphy in the commons yesterday to give a “100 percent guarantee” that the project was safe. His intervention came after the Ministry of Defence’s decision to strip Metrix, the consortium which won the St Athan contract, of its preferred bidder status for running the second phase of the defence training shake-up....There are clearly infrastructure problems in delivering the remaining defence training package as well as the constant squabbling between the Welsh Assembly, local authorities and the MOD. The full article from the Shropshire Star can be viewed here. 29th Feb 2008