| Hiya, my name is Dai Richards and
on Thursday the 5th of May 2022 I'm standing in the election to
become a councillor in the Glynneath Town Council and also in
the Neath-Port Talbot County Borough Council.
You might be asking yourself why am I now seeing footage from
the battle of El Alamein, which was fought in Egypt during World War II.
My dad, Dai Richards Senior, fought
in this battle, he was part of 5051 mobile squadron attached to
the Black Watch, the 51st Highland Division, at the time, he was
only 20 years old, we can only guess what is going through his
mind as he went into battle, they were terrible times, and
thankfully my Dad came through WWII and 18 years later, I was
born.
This video is being released on the 25th April 2022 which is
the 100th anniversary of the birth of my Dad.
He was born here
in the centre of Neath, in number 18 Zoar Row, Neath and in 1916 his parents John &
Mary Richards were married in the chapel we see here.
Zoar Row
was between where I'm standing now and the chapel itself.
My
grandparents and my dad, were nice people, there were gentle and
caring but at the age of 20 my dad found himself, with a gun in
hand attempting to kill other people because the opinions of
their leaders differed to those of his leaders.
This is
WAR. WAR between human beings is not nice and people can
lose their life.
Throughout his life my dad worked hard and he cared for his
fellow worker, he was a Trade Union representative and when he
retired he became a Labour Party member and was elected a member
of the Neath Town Council.
He died in 1991, suddenly of a heart attack, I never had the
chance to say goodbye, and I never said thank you for bringing
me into the world and doing what he thought was best for
me.
****
But what of LIFE, If you are watching this video then you are
alive and you have a LIFE.
exceprt from MOL
Each of us only have one life and to most us that life is
precious. As a rule its also precious to those people around us
we call family, especially our parents. Put only yourself into
the centre of this circle and lets call it the 'circle of care'.
Who cares about you. Ask yourself the question who cares about
me and lets assign a level to that care and place it outside
your circle ?
parents & partners - the most
grandparents - less
friends and extended family, work colleagues
Others you come into contact with such as educators,
theologians, government officials, service personnel etc.
At the far end of the scale we have people who we've never
met in far off remote places. In the throes of the daily life,
they are not thinking about you because they have their own
circles of care, they've never heard of you so they do not care
about you. Your life means nothing to them, and their life means
nothing to you.
Let's look at a life of a human in general. There are 3
constants in eveyone's life that we can all relate to.
1 you are born
2 you will be alive
3 you will die
When you are dead, the people who are alive will
remember you and will sometimes mark that remembrance with a
monument such as this.
I'm at Baglan Church and this is the grave of Geoffrey Dale
Morgan who died age 13 Geoff as I knew him was a childhood
friend and at one time we were best mates, we were inseparable
and then we didn't fall out, we just drifted apart, I think the
distance between our homes was such that we had to make a big
effort to visit each other and in the days before every house
had a phone, if the other wasn't in then it was a long trek
home. This was in the days before mobile phones which make
communication easy.
One day Geoff was found hanging from a tree, one we used to
swing on, I think that's where I first met him, in the woods, on
a swing. I think Geoff committed suicide. Geoff was in my
circles of care and I come back from time to time to visit him.
Geoff has those three constants in life:
Geoff was born
Geoff was alive
Geoff is dead
We can never bring back Geoff but what we can learn from his
life that if the adults around him paid more attention to his
circumstances and environment then Geoff would probably still be
here with us today. Which brings me to the reason why I am
involved with politics. Its a long sometimes confusing story but
it began with...........
In 2016 I wrote a book about the origin of rugby union and
found that the origins of the sport had been misrepresented, how
a group of old Rugby School pupils used methods of deception and
the manipulation of words to present an impossible action as
possible. That is William Webb Ellis broke a rule and invented a
game when all Webb Ellis did was broke a rule of an existing
game that remained the same game. Quite simply Webb Ellis was
playing Rugby Football before he broke the rule and Rugby
Football after it.
I am intrigued by sport and have spent my whole life either
playing it, teaching it, studying the history and buying and
selling sporting memorabila. In fact I've made a living out of
it and as part of my investigation into the origins of sport I
wanted to learn more about child's play.
I joined a children's charity to learn more and was sent on a
Welsh Government funded course run by Swansea City Council. My
wife Hayley joined me as a volunteer in the charity and that's
where my career in politics begins. The long and the short of it
is that we were both traumatised by the course content, we have
4 children between us and what we saw on the course that they
wanted us to allow children to do was nothing short of child
abuse. We were shown videos of children chasing each other with
burning objects and fighting over who would use a sledge hammer
was seen as normal behaviour. The course tutor showed a video in
which she acted in a sexually inappropriate manner towards a
child. Initially we thought it was a wind up or a video on what
not to allow children to do, but unfortunately that wasn't the
case. This was the reality of Welsh Government play education. I
refused to complete the course and undertook further
investigation into the topic and found that the Welsh Government
play policies were based on a blatant scientific
misrepresentation. Together with my cousin, Neilson I submitted
a paper to the Welsh Government for discussion by the CYPE
committee whose role is to look at such things. We received a
reply from the committee and after research into their
discussion on the paper found that the correct protocol had been
bypassed. I was in the course of beginning the complaints
process and had organised a Welsh Government petition to look
into play legislation when two things happened at around the
same time, this was March 2020.
1 - COVID19 became widespread
2 - A planning notice appeared in my
garden.
I live next to the Heol y Glyn landfill site.
What we are seeing with the life threatening play and the
planning department support of unscrupulous developers is system
purpose corruption. Its a system that is specifically built to
remove the level of care that should be afforded to each and
every one of us who live in wales. Those of us who find
themselves in a position whereby the circumstances and/or
environment dictate that we are in life threatening danger are
forced to endure the possibilities that we may die
from.
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