CPRW Llandovery Hustings
An eyeopener for some!
The recent hustings in Llandovery attracted a full hall and a high level of public interest, highlighting how crucial the current debates on energy, infrastructure, and rural policy have become. People from all over the area came to listen to the candidates, ask questions, and hear directly how different parties view the issues impacting Mid Wales today.
Throughout the evening, a wide range of topics was discussed: cumulative wind-farm development, transport pressures, peat disturbance, pylons, Green GEN, governance, grid planning, and alternatives such as tidal and hydro. Audience questions were detailed and often challenging, and candidates offered a variety of responses — some very direct, others more cautious.
Several exchanges focused on cumulative impacts: not just individual schemes but the combined effect of multiple developments proposed across rural Wales. Transport impacts were also discussed, including whether there should be compulsory cumulative assessments before projects proceed. Different candidates held varying views, and the audience reacted strongly to some of these responses.
Pylons and the role of Green GEN and Bute Energy generated significant interest. Concerns were raised about behaviour, transparency, and landowner relations, and this section prompted some of the clearest reactions of the night.
Rather than summarising or interpreting the event further, this week’s blog simply encourages you to watch the recording yourself.
The hustings covered a lot of ground, the audience was fully engaged, and the exchanges spoke for themselves. Whatever your perspective on Net Zero developments, it is well worth watching and forming your own view.
Please watch the video and think very carefully about who you consider voting for in the Sennedd elections next May.
For the first time, this hustings gave us (the public) the opportunity to ask a few of the questions that needed to be asked specifically about Net Zero and renewables and I am grateful for it, but because the topics are so complicated, and the impacts are so far-reaching, it was only possible in the time available for us to merely scratch the surface of the mountain of information that needs to be 'out there' and understood before we even think about voting in May.
We will need many more hustings of this type to take place, all across Wales, in order for more people to grasp the enormity of what we are currently being pushed into accepting with Net Zero policy and the renewables 'gold-rush' that it has spawned and if we are to get any way close to understanding what is going on with it all, we will also need people to be doing their own research into precisely why we are being made to 'transition' - exactly what is it meant to be hoping to achieve?
By all means read and carefully digest each party’s manifesto before making that crucial decision in May, but it is probably even more important to remember how our current and previous Senedd members (and the political party they ‘adhere’ to) have behaved whilst they have been in government, because with very few exceptions, they are entirely responsible for having forced us into the situation we find ourselves in now and they have done it all by being economical with the truth (and that's being kind!) and without consulting us properly (if at all).
Most of those politicians have actively encouraged and participated in developing and approving the policies that now have us desperately fighting to protect what’s left of our divided and embittered rural communities, our landscapes, our farming, our heritage, our beleaguered wildlife and ecosystems - and our free speech.
So – if you want more of the same, go ahead and vote those same politicians back in!
It was an informative evening. I would also suggest reading each party's manifesto before making that crucial decision in May. Sometimes the best speaker doesn't have the best background.