To Westminster It Appears Wales Is Only Good For Prisons

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

New prisons are being opened and built in Wales. The first question is why Wales is being targeted in this way? Is it that the Ministry of Justice (who has control of the justice system in Wales) feels that if a prison is in Wales it's a case of out of sight out of mind?

For this post I'm going to concentrate on one. The proposed building of a category C prison on disused land on Baglan in Port Talbot that will house 1,600 prisoners (let's face it though that is likely to increase because of overcrowding).

Local residents oppose it and yet the Ministry of Justice in Westminster, who have full control over the justice system in Wales (unlike Scotland) want to push it through thus changing the character of the area in an instant.

Now Baglan is near the M4 which would probably partly explain the choice. Of course being near to the motorway would make it easier to drop convicted felons at the prison. Conversely if a prisoner is able to arrange an escape then it'll help him get out too. Many towns are relatively close by as well as the cities of Cardiff and Swansea so it'll be easy to hide out for a while.

The proposed prison will be near a bird sanctuary,industrial estates, residential areas, houses and most disturbingly of all schools and a care home. and whatever some glossed up management type will go on television and try to reassure he/she will never be able to guarantee that a jail, even a new one, will be escape proof. Consequently local residents will be living in fear, and it is no exaggeration to say that it is fear, because their neighbours will be criminals.

What I'm going to say next I was told on Twitter, so it comes with the health warning that I've not checked on this, but it was said that some of these prisoners could come as far afield as Birmingham. My first reaction to that was what? If it is correct that English convicts (as opposed to English people living in Wales who are convicted) are being dumped to Wales what greater show there can be of the contempt Westminster shows for the land and people left of the Severn Bridge. There are many areas in England that this prison could have been built on, driving along the M4 I've noticed that Bath to Swindon seems relatively empty to me for example. But no. Jettison people far away from their locality to Baglan and who cares what people there think.

There appears to be a split within the Labour party on this issue. Whilst not opposing the principle of a prison being built in the area the local Assembly Member is against the particular sight chosen for the reasons I gave above as is the local MP. Yet astonishingly the Labour run Welsh government is apparently minded to sell land selected for the prison. According to the BBC website a Welsh government  official said that a new prison would bring "economic benefits to the area".  Really? Apart from taxi firms and cafes what businesses will continually thrive because of the presence of the prison? In fact the area will decline because people will avoid the prison if they can, property prices will fall,householders and local businesses will seek to move away, no new investment will want to move in and so a downward spiral for the area will begin.....because no one wants to have criminals living nearby.

And you know what? On a small scale the consequences of such a rash and ill thought judgement by people motivated by ideology, greed or just stupidity will be exactly what hard Brexit will cause Britain in the future. Perhaps Baglen is a shape of Britain to come. For Brexit read Baexit as Baglen radically moves away from what it once was and changes for the worse.

Also remember that both the Welsh Labour government and the slimeball Conservative secretary Alun Cairns sights "economic benefits" for Wales in supporting the new jail. Ironically the site chosen was near a closed down factory. The Welsh economy should be fuelled by the production of assets not the keeping of criminals . This is quite seriously pathetic from those in positions of power.

The people of the area need politicos who actually care about their interests not just in a bogus economic argument that seems to me to have ignored the bigger overall damage. It seems that the only consistent support they have had is from Plaid Cymru. Local people in Baglen appear to have been trampled on thus far. That is just an injustice.

Perhaps in the case of Baglen that for Westminster since they can't use New South Wales to house criminals Old South Wales will do instead

Until the next time.