An extension at the Aberdare Tesco supermarket has created 40 new jobs for the local community, bringing the total number of people employed at the store to 285.
The Tesco supermarket on Depot Road has had a number of its departments significantly improved. The clothing range, which has baby, children and adult clothing, has been
increased and the area is now much more spacious, making for a much more relaxing shopping experience. The cookshop, homeshop, electrical, healthy and beauty and home
entertainment departments have also had significant improvements made and offer customers a much great choice of products.
In addition, dairy produce, frozen foods, grocery items and the fruit and veg aisles have all got new layouts and great new improved ranges to offer customers. There is also a new meat and fish counter, welcome additions to the store’s existing bakery, deli and hot chicken counter. The store also stocks a variety of fresh, local Welsh ranges,
supporting local suppliers.
Store Manager Ray Russell said: “I am delighted with all my new staff. We have recruited great people and they are a welcome addition to our existing team. We recruited in and around Aberdare and so many of our new members of staff are from the local area.”
Ray continued: “I am really pleased with the new extension and hope that our customers are too. Our new and extended ranges mean that our shoppers now have a much
greater choice and hopefully this will enhance their shopping experience.”
For added convenience, five extra tills have been added in store and the car park has been significantly improved. There is also a cafe, cash machine, recycling facilities
and a petrol station.
Store opening hours are 8am – midnight Monday, 6am – midnight Tuesday to Friday, 6am – 10pm Saturday and 10am – 4pm Sunday.
A Public Meeting will be held in Aberdare on Thursday 9th October 2008, at the Sobells Sports Centre.
At the Meeting Rhondda Cynon Taf Councillors will decide on the new Gloucesters & Ironworks site planning application.
All Welcome.
A Planning Application has been re-submitted to the local Council. The plans are for 130 houses to be built on the Hirwaun Gloucesters and old Ironworks site. This area is much valued and used by the community as an area for recreation and leisure and home to an abundance of wildlife and flora.
Councillors voted to refuse planning permission in July 2008.
Local Council Planning Officers are trying to persuade Councillors to change their minds and approve this application, despite overwhelming objections from residents over the last 3 years.
The people of Hirwaun are not opposed to building new houses.
They are opposed to inappropriate overdevelopment at the expense of the whole community.
Hoo-bloody-rah! for Hirwaun people fighting for their own Community.
Join the demonstration against the proposed military academy in South Wales.
Saturday 26 April, Assemble 1.30 pm, Cathays Park (opp. City Hall & National Museum)
The Military Academy is funded by defence multi-nationals like Raytheon, the manufacturer of cluster-bombs, £14 billion is being spent on this huge complex when we need hospitals & schools.
Needless to say the multinationals will be making a large profit on the scheme. It is also the biggest PFI (Private Finance Initiative) in history, and probably the biggest ever award of taxpayers money to Wales:
Why is there always a blank cheque for war, but no blank cheque for vital public services?
Called by the Stop the St Athan’s Military Academy Campaign and supported by UK Stop the War Coalition, CND Cymru, Cynefinywerin and many other organisations. People will be coming from all over Wales and beyond.
In the brand-satured world we live in, corporations do their utmost to protect their brand name and logo. Shell – the Royal-Dutch Shell Group – are experiencing some difficulties protecting their logo at Trenant, near Hirwaun.
The Shell fuel station closed in January 2006, and the site has remained a rusting industrial eye-sore ever since. Soon after the business closed, they covered their signage and large logo with a white plastic sheeting to hide the ownership of the site.
Eventually this blew away. It was replaced by bright blue plastic material in February 2008. This looked like a cheap blue plastic bag one might use at nearby Rheola Market! This too blew away within a few weeks.
The fuel station is situated at the junction of Trenant and the ever-busy A4059 Aberdare to Hirwaun road. There is a pedestrian crossing within a few feet and this stretch of road has been the scene of many serious accidents over the years, hence the presence of a nearby speed camera.
As one of the UK’s largest corporations, one would expect a more responsible attitude towards the small community that has tolerated the presence of a fuel station since the 1960s.
Contact Details for Shell UK
Telephone Freephone 0800 731 8888
Address : Shell Customer Service Centre, Rowlandsway House, Rowlandsway, Wythenshawe. Manchester M22 5SB
This week George Bush and other Western war-mongers celebrate the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
War is good news for the corporations which the war-mongers represent.
War is profitable and militarism plays a key role in the capitalist system.
Wars are fought for class interests. The Iraq war is no exception.
Writing fifty-two years ago in their book Monopoly Capital, American economists Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy characterize the impact militarism has on society and the function of militarism in capitalist society :
Trinity Mirror – the media Corporation which owns the Cynon Valley Leader – has announced Financial Results for the year ending 30 December 2007 painting a bleak picture for the group’s advertising revenue in 2008. The news portends big changes in the operations of local newspapers such as Cynon Valley Leader, based in Commercial Street, Aberdare.
Chief Executive Sly Bailey was keen to emphasise the progress the group is making in ‘going digital’.
In 2003, when Sly Bailey became Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror, digital revenues represented less than half a per cent of the group’s total revenue. Today, digital revenues account for 3.7 per cent of the group’s total revenues.
Trinity Mirror said in its financial results statement that “going forward, our aim is to increase substantially digital revenues as a proportion of total group revenues”.
Trinity Mirror is one of Britain’s largest publishing groups, owning over 200 regional newspaper titles. In October 2007, Trinity Mirror re-branded their portfolio of business in Wales as Media Wales, which took over from the company name of Western Mail and Echo Ltd.
Media Wales is responsible for 16 print titles in Wales, a portfolio of magazines, and a fast-expanding digital presence. The company also claim to have invested heavily in a new state-of-the-start news facility in Cardiff on the site of the Thompson House building. They have dubbed the project a 24×7 ‘around-the-clock’ news operation.
How will these Changes affect the publication of news in Aberdare ?
Wandering around Abercynon a year ago we were struck by a small post office in Glancynon Terrace. The street scene we stumbled upon seemed like a typical scene from the post-modern South Wales Valleys. The terraced houses knitted together tightly with so very few shops… a newsagents on the corner, a chinese take-away, and – thank the heavens! – a friendly post office.
Now fast forward a year to the news announcing the list of Post Offices that the powers-that-be would like to close in Glamorgan and the Valleys. On that list is poor old Glancynon Post Office, in the village of Abercynon, Rhondda Cynon Taf. It’s almost like putting the heart of the village on Death Row for the Post Office is at the heart of the village.
There are a few weeks of “public consultation” however this is merely a public relations charade. The decision will be bulldozed through come what may by a corporation now being run into the ground according to ‘market imperatives’ (or whatever other jargon they are currently spouting in the name of economic rationalisation).
To their credit, the most vociferous political opposition to the Post Office closures – at least here in the Cynon Valley – has come from certain voices within Plaid Cymru.
Leanne Wood AM writes in her blog recently, thus :
“The Post Office Network Change Programme is the direct result of Labour Government policy in London, and is the latest stage in their rationalisation agenda. The Welsh Government can not intervene. This shows another example of the weakness of the current constitutional settlement. Plaid argues that not Welsh Post Office should close as a result of a Westminster driven policy agenda. 3,500 Post Offices closed under the last Tory Government, and over 4,000 have closed under New Labour.
Labour claim that the closures are needed to create a viable network. Plaid believes that that uninhibited competition in markets is not always the best way of securing the universal service provision of our public services, particularly in isolated and deprived communities.”
The “rationalisation agenda” that Leanne Wood refers to above leads to the centralising and monopolising of services, of power and of control. It is an argument Vandana Shiva discusses in her writings on Monocultures of the Mind.
“The primary threat to nature and people today comes from centralising and monopolising power and control. Not until diversity is made the logic of production will there be a chance for sustainability, justice and peace. Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.” – Vandana Shiva
Come and hear the powerful stories of the Iraqi oil workers and trade unions resisting the military and economic occupation of their homeland . . .
Tuesday 2 October at 7 pm
WALLACE LECTURE THEATRE
Main Building
Cardiff University
Park Place (opp. Student Union Building)
Speakers-
EWA JASIEWICZ
UK rep for the Basra Oil Workers Union & founder member of NAFTANA, an organisation that builds solidarity with Iraqi workers.
+ Speaker from the Stop the War Coalition
About the Ewa Jasiewicz:
In 2004, Ewa Jasiewicz visited Iraq to build links between the anti-war movement and Iraqi trade unions resisting both occupation and the corporate take-over of their counrty. She became the UK rep for the Basra Oil Workers Union, a militant trade union resisting both the sell-off of Iraqi oil to foreign corporations and the armies of occupation and helped organise Iraq’s first anti-privatisation conference.
Ewa has lived in Baghdad and Basra, supporting human rights groups, womens organisations, families, workers, trade unionists and Palestinian refugees.
Her articles have appeared in Red Pepper, Electronic Iraq, Z-Net, Counterpunch, Infoshop, Occupation Watch and The Socialist Review in the US.
This will be an important meeting to join the international campaign against the hydrocarbon law that aims to give control of Iraq’s oil for the next 30 years to foreign multinationals.
About HANDS OFF IRAQI OIL
Hands Off Iraqi Oil is a UK coalition opposing any foreign exploitation of Iraq’s oil reserves that rips off the Iraqi people. Members include Corporate Watch, Iraq Occupation Focus, Jubilee Iraq, Naftana, PLATFORM, Voices UK, and War on Want.
For more info. about this event contact Adam Johannes on 07940108146
The Neath Bookshop in Neath town centre is currently holding a closing down sale.
50% off everything.
Amongst all the usual suspects, there were a couple of Rachel Tresize’s books for sale.
We opted for Cyril Treharne’s ‘Around God’s Acre (in South Western Wales)’ (Llanrwst, Gwasg Carreg Gwalch 2006 – ISBN 1-84527-087-8) : “This book takes us on a journey around some of the most interesting churches and churchyards in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion and Gower.”
Priceless.
Well worth three pounds fifty.
Nowadays the small independent bookseller faces being crushed between the mighty monopolistic supermarkets and their heavy discounting and fending off global giants like Amazon who announced earlier this year that they were investing in large distribution centre near Neath. It’s no surprise to see so many bookshops closing.
Caught in the act of tearing up the Welsh countryside! Here is a photo of National Grid’s gas pipeline near Llanigon, north of Brecon.
The photograph was taken in mid June 2007. It is an ugly site to behold. The gas pipeline is a giant industrial phallus imposed on Wales by planners in London. A few corporations will benefit from this project. It will do little good to resolve the peak oil crisis we face in the next few years.
But do we not accept all the noise and the pollution ? Do we not rejoice at the smell and smoke that remind us of our industrial might ?
Ralph Borsodi’s book This Ugly Civilization (1929) reminds us of how man accepts the ugliness of his own creation :
THIS is an ugly civilization. It is a civilization of noise, smoke, smells, and crowds–of people content to live amidst the throbbing of its machines; the smoke and smells of its factories; the crowds and the discomforts of the cities of which it proudly boasts.
The places in which the people work are noisy. The factories are filled with the recurring, though not the rhythmic, noises of machines and the crash and clatter incidental to their operation. The offices, too, are noisy with the rat-tat-tat of typewriters, the ringing of telephones, the grinding of adding machines. The streets on which the people move about, and around which they work and play, resound with the unending clatter of traffic–the roar of motors, the squeaks of brakes, the shrieks of sirens, and the banging of street cars. And even the homes in which they are supposed to rest are noisy because they are not only packed close together but built tier on tier so that the pianos, phonographs, and radios in them blare incongruously above, below, and on all sides of them.
The people of this factory-dominated civilization accept its noisiness. For noise is the audible evidence of their prowess; the inescapable accompaniment of their civilization’s progress. The greater the noise, the greater the civilization.
A montage of photos taken today in Commercial Street and Canon Street.
It is a depressing vision.
In parts it looks like a wasteland.
These streets are in the choicest retail district of Cynon Valley.
All the shops in the postcard have closed.
How can small shops compete against giant-sized corporations that encircle Aberdare like jungle beasts, pawing away at the easy prey in the centre ?
How long before some megalomaniac supermarket opens a ‘convenience store’ within Aberdare Town itself, to kill off even more of the retail landscape ?
Giant corporations – principally supermarkets – destroy choice and diversity in Aberdare. And in villages across the Valley, they destroy all forms of retail life. It is a ’scorched earth’ policy.
If you can buy a loaf of bread in your own village, you are lucky. Think about it. Many people in Cynon Valley have no local shopping facilities selling good quality nourishing food.
If Aberdare Town is a depressing dump, it is because we have let it become such a thing. By allowing our politicians to mis-represent our interests and gild the pockets of corporate capital, by tolerating the mendacity of the media who fawn at the feet of the rich and powerful, we have chosen to create this wasteland on our own doorstep.
Why is it that Rhondda Cynon Taff Council can spend day after day manicuring the hedgerow and roadsides near Tesco’s controversial Aberdare store… but in the heart of Aberdare, they are unable to organise a lick of paint on one of their own buildings ?
Last year, the flower display in front of Aberdare Library appeared much too late and was as limp as a wet lettuce. For most of the year, the former fountain in front of the Library was a bowl of mud, in total contrast to the special treatment our Council offer corporate clients like Tesco.
Green Street in Aberdare should be the heart of Aberdare : Two majestic chapels, the ancient Church of St John’s on the doorstep, the Con Club across the road, our Town Library nearby. Green Street greets citizens, visitors and shoppers coming to Aberdare. It’s something to be proud of and it should entice people to stay.
A Public Meeting will be held in Aberdare on Thursday 9th October 2008, at the Sobells Sports Centre. 
Join the demonstration against the proposed military academy in South Wales.
In the brand-satured world we live in, corporations do their utmost to protect their brand name and logo. 
This week George Bush and other Western war-mongers celebrate the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Trinity Mirror – the media Corporation which owns the Cynon Valley Leader – has announced Financial Results for the year ending 30 December 2007 painting a bleak picture for the group’s advertising revenue in 2008. The news portends big changes in the operations of local newspapers such as Cynon Valley Leader, based in Commercial Street, Aberdare.
WORLD AGAINST WAR
Come and hear the powerful stories of the Iraqi oil workers and trade unions resisting the military and economic occupation of their homeland . . . 
It has been another lawless weekend in ‘Wild West’ Aberdare Town.
