Dodgy mega 'school for mercenaries' PFI scheme dumped in Wales!

Dear Julie

Just to draw your attention to this - a rather heavily supported campaign for a military academy (see below) under a dodgy mega PFI scheme. It all seems rather rash for the WAG and politicans locally to give this their blessing and why? Some of the biggest arms companies are involved in this. Many would call this an extremely 'unethical' school for mercenaries? There seems to be very little oppositon locally which is very worrying. How much control/say will local people/ams and local councillors have? Is there in reality a much possilibity of quality jobs for locals. What impact will having all these mostly male mercenaries and soldiers have on the local community? Will they go into Cardiff on their night out to add to the weekend drunken chaos on the streets?

What else will happen here? Traffic is dependant on the following road proposed developments taking place. We don't know how much traffic will be generated or the type or whether weapons systems will be moved around on vechicles. What steps will be taken to manage traffic? WAG is currently upgrading a number of roads in the area and the trunking of the A48 is underway. In addition, WAG intends to carry out improvements to the A4226 to widen two narrow sections in order to provide a good length of quality road access from the M4 to Cardiff airport. A new direct road link from the M4 to Cardiff airport is in WAG's published Trunk Road Forward Programme and consultants will be appointed shortly to take this scheme through the design and statutory process. But what effect will this have on the environment?

Will there also be additional air traffic? Will people be 'rendered' via this site which leads me to ask what monitoring will there be of aircraft, their destination or from whence they came?

The local paper and Ms Hutt AM and Mr Smith MP support the campaign.
Ms Hutt supporting biggest ever PFI military academy to improve electoral chances of her party?
'No hitches' on academy decision Dec 1 2006 Peter Collins, South Wales EchoThere will be no 'last-minute hitches with the Treasury' to delay a decision on where a multi-billion military training academy will be built. Vale of Glamorgan MP John Smith and AM Jane Hutt were assured everything was on schedule at a meeting with the Government minister who will make the final decision.Mr Smith and Ms Hutt met Defence Minister Derek Twigg at the Ministry of Defence, in London, yesterday, in the final push to bring the £14bn academy contract to RAF St Athan. The Metrix consortium's bid to building the academy in South Wales is up against a bid by RAF Cosford, in the West Midlands.

Is this the same deal "Watchdog sniffs around Qinetiq's bid for billion-pound defence deal" 11/12/2006. The National Audit Office (NAO) could expand its investigation into the privatisation of defence contractor Qinetiq in order to examine whether the company's bid for a £10 billion defence private finance initiative contract created a conflict of interest.

Under Qinetiq's plan, training for the armed forces would be transferred from sites in the West Midlands to a new academy in south Wales. But with elections in Wales due next year, critics also argue that Labour will give Qinetiq the contract to protect its constituencies in the region. "There also is some concern that politics will play a role here," said Pritchard. "The Welsh elections and the personal political ambitions of Peter Hain [the secretary of state for Wales and potential deputy prime ministerial candidate] may not be an insignificant factor in the overall decision

At the same time PCS say "With over 20,000 MoD jobs under threat from either job cuts or privatisation, 95% of members voting endorsed a campaign plan which includes the threat of industrial action. The indicative ballot result comes as the MoD seek to axe 14, 000 civilian posts across the country in areas including aviation repair, army repair, defence logistics and the defence supply chain. Massive privatisation of key areas of defence worth billions of pounds is also planned, including defence training and IT."