Woke renaming of the Brecon Beacons masterminded by Twitter troll
REVEALED: Woke renaming of the Brecon Beacons that has infuriated millions was masterminded by a Corbyn-loving Twitter troll and Welsh separatist whose vile posts tell Margaret Thatcher to ‘burn in hell’ and call Conservative ministers ‘Tory scum’
- Jordan Thorne, 34, is the co-owner of Creo, which renamed Welsh landmark
- Read more: Rishi Sunak refuses to use Brecon Beacons’ Welsh name
Like many an internet troll, Jordan Thorne is nothing if not grimly predictable.
The 34-year-old keyboard warrior from Cardiff primarily uses Twitter to pass comment on two topics: football (he supports Liverpool) and politics.
The latter subject sees him at his most hostile.
On a regular basis, Thorne mounts aggressive and at times obscene attacks on politicians and commentators who have the temerity to express views at odds with his own. ‘I f*****g loathe the Tories,’ reads one typical tweet; ‘F*** the Tories’ reads another.
Earlier this month, Thorne decided to mark the anniversary of Lady Thatcher’s death by sharing images bearing the slogan ‘burn in hell’, ‘rot in hell’ and ‘Rejoice, Thatcher is dead’.
Jordan Thorne (centre), 34, from Cardiff, primarily uses Twitter to pass comment on two topics: football (he supports Liverpool) and politics
Elsewhere, he’s launched vile attacks on a virtual Who’s Who of Conservatives, including Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Alun Cairns
A caption to a photo of a popping champagne cork, read: ‘Happy Thatcher’s dead day to all who celebrate.’
Elsewhere, he’s launched vile attacks on a virtual Who’s Who of Conservatives, including David Cameron (‘Tory scum’); Boris Johnson (‘top t***’ and ‘absolute knob’); Environment Secretary Therese Coffey (‘she’s up there with the worst of the bunch. The absolute state of her’); writer Toby Young (‘Tory nonce’); and one of his local MPs, Alun Cairns (‘I absolutely detest Cairns… Welsh and Tory. Makes you sick’).
Thorne is also a fully paid-up supporter of Welsh independence. Having abandoned Labour following the demise of disgraced former leader Jeremy Corbyn (‘Jeremy Corbyn has stolen my heart. An utter legend of a human being’) he recently decided to join Yes Cymru, a combative Left-wing separatist group.
Announcing that he’d become a member, Thorne told followers: ‘This country is in the gutter. Vote Independence.’
Jordan Thorne is, in other words, both an internet bully of the sort that thrives in the Wild West of social media and a hardcore Welsh nationalist.
He detests the roughly one in three citizens of his country who choose to vote Conservative, and loves to say so.
All of which brings us to his day job. For when he’s not deluging politicians with abuse, or campaigning for Wales to leave the UK, this foul-mouthed troll spends many of his days working for the Welsh taxpayer.
Thorne is the co-owner and creative director of Creo, a Cardiff-based marketing agency which has in recent years won a series of lucrative public sector contracts.
It has carried out crucial marketing and PR campaigns for several vast, taxpayer-funded organisations, from the Welsh government to the Welsh NHS.
And last week, thanks to its latest high-profile project, the firm made global headlines.
Read more: The end of Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and Wrexham?: English place names could be BANNED in Wales as language extremist bids to stop cities being called by ‘culturally oppressive’ names
Creo was the agency responsible for a highly controversial rebrand of the Brecon Beacons National Park.
Thorne led a team which had been hired by the tourist destination’s governing authority to create a new ‘identity’ for the globally renowned park.
His proposal, unveiled last Monday, was to scrap its widely recognised English name and replace it with an ‘eco-friendly’ Welsh alternative: Bannau Brycheiniog.
In a lengthy article detailing the name change, the BBC called Thorne ‘the man behind’ the project.
His political affiliations were kept secret. Links to Welsh nationalism were also glossed over by senior staff at the authority, who gave a series of interviews seeking to claim that the move was motivated not by a hatred of the English, but instead by fashionable environmentalism.
The chief executive, Catherine Mealing-Jones, told reporters that the park’s historic name was associated with global warming. Apparently, celebrating beacons — the wood-burning, carbon-emitting braziers that were historically lit on hilltops to warn of a pending invasion — was ‘not a good look’ in these eco-conscious times.
Meanwhile, a woke PR video, made by Creo and narrated by the actor and Left-wing Welsh nationalist actor Michael Sheen, described the mountainous area as being ‘hooked’ on diesel, petrol and oil and claimed the new name would drag it into a brave new eco-friendly era.
Perhaps understandably, there followed a political row. Culture warriors accused the authorities of seeking to ‘cancel’ a historic name on spurious grounds. Locals, who are largely English-speaking (and therefore felt alienated), said they were not properly consulted.
There was also anger from businesses, 200 of which have the words ‘Beacons’ in their name.
Conservatives accused the park of politically-correct posturing. David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, described the move as ‘bonkers’. Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, said the new name would ‘undermine’ public awareness of the park and be costly for employers. Even Downing Street got in on the act, with a spokesman pointing out that actions ‘rather than nomenclature’ were important in combating climate change.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would continue to call them the Beacons.
And here’s where things get interesting. For watching it unfold from his ringside seat was branding expert Jordan Thorne. And he found the whole thing hilarious.
Just how hilarious, can be discerned from the tweets he chose to post on the day his rebrand was announced. Tweets that offer a deeply concerning — and utterly unprofessional — insight into the factors behind the decision to rename the Brecon Beacons.
The best thing about the publicly funded project, he declared, was that it had upset the roughly one in three Welsh people who vote Conservative. This, apparently, is something to celebrate.
‘I am absolutely getting drunk on Tory tears today. I love my job!’ read one of the messages. ‘I am ticking off Tories and the Right hourly. We must have done something great,’ read another. In a third tweet, he chose to launch an ad hominem attack on Andrew RT Davies, saying: ‘Passionate. Dedicated. Positive. Progressive. Lovely. Caring. All words that I’d use to describe the incredible team we’ve been fortunate to work with over at [the Brecon Beacons National Park]. Words however that can never be used to describe this man.’
So, the architect of the Brecon Beacons rebrand — a change that raises delicate debates about heritage, identity, language and nationality, and affects thousands of residents of a Tory-voting region of Wales –— turns out to be a hard-Left Welsh nationalist and cyber-bully, motivated largely by a desire to annoy his political opponents.
If you think this sounds scandalous, you’re not alone.
After the Mail passed copies of Thorne’s tweets to former victims of his online tirades, several voiced disbelief that a Yes Cymru supporter with his track record had been given any public contract whatsoever, let alone one as sensitive as the rebranding of the Brecon Beacons.
Indeed, as we shall see, our discovery of Thorne’s disgraceful tweets even prompted one member of the park’s board to resign.
‘Many people will be horrified that an individual in a high- profile position like Mr Thorne — whose business received funding from the Labour-run Welsh Government and continues to work extensively with those ministers on identity, the Welsh language and other important projects — holds vitriolic views about those who hold a different view to his own,’ was how Welsh Secretary David TC Davies put it.
‘Mr Thorne’s expressed views are reprehensible. As a matter of urgency, I sincerely hope the Labour-run Welsh Government will distance itself from this sort of attitude.’
Alun Cairns MP said the messages prove that the entire rebranding of the Brecon Beacons was politically motivated. ‘This man’s association with the nationalist and separatist movement is worrying. No public body should use designers associated with such political organisations. The Brecon Beacons belong to everyone and need to be inclusive.’
A stream in the newly named Bannau Brycheiniog National Park
The Brecon Beacons National Park is changing its name as a direct response to the climate and ecological crisis, the park’s chief executive has said. Its most recent official map is pictured
The summit of Cribyn mountain as seen from Pen y Fan in the national park
Toby Young remarked: ‘It’s disappointing that this potty-mouthed, sophomoric activist was put in charge of renaming the Brecon Beacons by the park’s custodians. It’s not clear why he was considered a suitable person for the job. Perhaps the woke members of the board were impressed by his anti-Conservative activism, such as calling me a ‘Tory nonce’.’
Meanwhile, James Evans, a Conservative member of the Senedd [Welsh Parliament] for much of the Beacons, said that Thorne’s messages suggest the park authority ‘is more concerned with pushing a Left-wing, anti-English message rather than looking after its people, their livelihoods and its landscape.
‘The decision to team up with a radical Welsh nationalist — who has on Twitter branded Conservative MPs ‘scum’ and celebrated the death of a former prime minister — to undertake this piece of work sadly comes as no surprise.
‘We see this sort of thing across Wales, where public bodies have a history of employing inappropriate people without doing due diligence, who then use their position to promote nationalism and Left-wing causes.’
As Evans suggests, Thorne’s social media posts speak volumes about the culture of Welsh politics, where 25 years of virtually uninterrupted Labour rule has turned the country into a sort of one-party state, with its public institutions, such as the Brecon Beacons, run almost entirely by Left-wing quangocrats.
The National Park authority is a case in point. Its governing board consists of 18 people, of whom 12 are local councillors. Four represent the Labour Party, four are independents, two are Lib Dems and one is Plaid Cymru.
Despite the fact that a third of voters in Wales vote Tory, and although much of the park sits in one of the party’s constituencies, just one of the 12 members is a Conservative.
A rum bunch the others are, too. One of the 12, an independent Powys councillor called Edwin Roderick, was suspended for four months in 2019 for slapping a female colleague on the bottom.
Another, Lib Dem William Powell, was given a formal written warning by his party in 2014 after a 21-year-old activist alleged that he’d plied her with absinthe, touched her leg and put his hands around her waist at a party function.
A third, Labour’s Scott Emanuel, recently tweeted that Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith was ‘scum’.
Then there are the six other members of the board, who are directly appointed by the Welsh government. One, its chairman Canon Aled Edwards, is a vicar and Yes Cymru activist.
The other five consist of one council planner, two academics (one of them a Labour activist), a prominent gay rights campaigner, and Dr Yvonne Howard-Bunt, an expert in ‘inclusion, conflict resolution, arts and nature’.
Brecon Beacons: A history going back to the Middle Stone Age
The Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales was established in 1957, under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949.
The park has two purposes under law – those being to conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the park; and to promote opportunities for the enjoyment and understanding of its special qualities.
Summit of Pen y Fan mountain as seen from Corn Du at Brecon Beacons National Park
Going back to 5500BC in Middle Stone Age times, hunter-gatherers cut down scrub and burned the aftermath to create small grassland areas so animals could graze and be hunted.
By the New Stone Age there was farming and the end of the Bronze Age there had been big forest clearances.
In the Iron Age, Celtic peoples arrived and brought much better farming processes including hill forts. The Romans and Normans later conquered the area – with the latter’s manorial system being consolidated in the Middle Ages.
From the end of the 15th century industries such as ironmaking and charcoal burning began to emerge – while more recent decades have seen urban expansion, road construction, and reservoir building.
The national park area now covers 520 square miles, which much of this being upland and two-thirds of the area comprised of old red sandstone rocks.
The board is, in other words, political by design, dominated by Left-wing quangocrats who boast little to no experience of the private sector.
Precious few members are equipped to represent the farming and business communities who rely on the park for their livelihood.
Unsurprisingly, given the board’s make-up, there are significant questions about the manner in which it signed off the decision to change the name of the park to Bannau Brycheiniog.
Iain McIntosh, the lone Tory member, says that while the board voted to approve the name change, he’d been under the impression that the proposal wouldn’t take effect until extensive consultation with local people and businesses had taken place.
That would in turn allow potential problems with the plan to be
addressed. For example, he says: ‘There are more than 200 business and organisations with ‘Beacons’ in their name and links to the area.
They will all have woken up on Monday last week to find the area’s name has been changed, without consultation, whether they like it or not. To me, that is unacceptable.’
McIntosh said members were also kept in the dark about Thorne and Creo’s links to Welsh nationalism, not to mention his unpleasant tweets, which raise serious questions about the integrity of the project.
On Thursday night, after the Mail passed him copies of Thorne’s various social media posts, he wrote to the park’s chief executive, Catherine Mealing-Jones, tendering his resignation.
‘How on earth was this person and his company chosen and deemed as being suitable to carry out this work?’ read McIntosh’s resignation letter.
‘What due diligence was carried out to check the background of this person?
‘Surely, you must have been aware that he would have been subjected to public scrutiny on the revelation that he carried out the work you had planned and that his publicly visible commentary would have been there to see, by all and sundry?
‘If no due diligence was carried out to investigate those responsible for carrying out work of this nature, then that would be even more alarming.’
That may not be the only hostile missive landing on the desk of Mealing-Jones in the coming days, either.
I can reveal that a group of local businessmen affected by the change are next week holding an emergency meeting in Brecon to explore ways to stop it. ‘This is a stupid move that will cost us money and make the park less popular,’ says one.
‘We’ve no dispute with adding a Welsh name, but if they’d bothered to consult people we’d have told them that it makes sense to do that but also retain the English one.
‘Instead, they’ve rammed this down our throats. We actually think it’s illegal under the 1993 Welsh Language Act, which stipulates that all place names must be both English and Welsh, so are exploring a legal challenge.’
Thorne, who acquired Creo via a loan from the Welsh Development Bank, did not comment.
Hours after the Mail contacted his firm and the park about his vile and offensive Twitter posts, he decided to make his account private.
M ealing-Jones did not comment on McIntosh’s resignation. However, she condemned Thorne’s deeply unprofessional remarks.
‘The work carried out on our rebrand was undertaken by Creo with professionalism and political neutrality.
‘Bannau Brycheiniog National Park does not condone the views expressed in Jordan Thorne’s personal tweets.
‘Bannau Brycheiniog National Park is an inclusive organisation which has nature and community at its heart.’
Only in Labour-led Wales could we be asked to believe a project was carried out with ‘political neutrality’ when its leader spent launch day gloating about ‘getting drunk on Tory tears’.
Only there could taxpayers be asked to fund the work of a Left-wing internet troll.
However Mealing-Jones tries to spin things, there is, as the old saying goes, trouble in them there hills.
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