St Athan
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St Athan (Welsh: Sain Tathan) is a village in the Vale of Glamorgan in south east Wales. The English name is a corruption of the Welsh female saint Tathan, described by Iolo Morgannwg as the daughter of the King of Gwent. The village church is dedicated to St Tathan. There are two pubs in the village the King's Cup and the Four Bells.
A large RAF base RAF St Athan is located in the village.
[edit] St Athan Defence Training Academy
In January 2007, it was announced that the site would be the home of a new centralised training facility for the UK armed forces, and the site would be built and partailly run by Metrix UK, a private consortium including QinetiQ and Raytheon.
This project will involve the investment of up to £14 billion in the site, and will cover the cost of constructing the new, privately-operated training centre for the entire British armed forces. The St Athan Defence Academy, if final contracts are all signed as expected, will open fully in 2013 as a mega-training centre or “university” for all three services of the British armed forces. It will be a private facility operated by the Metrix Consortium, which is a joint venture company of Land Securities Trillium and QinetiQ, in partnership with other sub-contracting companies: AgustaWestland, City & Guilds, Currie & Brown, Dalkia, EDS, Laing O'Rourke, Nord Anglia, Raytheon, Serco, Sodexho and the Open University. The Academy represents a major step in New Labour’s effort to “modernise” defence training in the UK, through promoting closer integration between the Army, Navy and Air Force, seeking high technology solutions to military problems, and outsourcing to the private sector. In the future, all British military recruits will come to St Athan to complete Phases Two and Three of their training, taking specialist courses in subjects such as engineering, information systems, communications, logistics, administration, policing, security, languages, intelligence and photography.
Far from being a peripheral or inconsequential development, the St Athan Academy promises to play a pivotal role in defining the future identity and direction of the new and devolved Wales. It represents one of the largest, if not the largest, government investments in Welsh history. It is also anticipated by Welsh developers and politicians to have major impacts on the entire regional infrastructure (education, transportation, housing, health) and economy (from aerospace to tourism).
[edit] Criticism of the plans
Critics point out the St Athan Academy deal was pushed through with virtually no public discussion and debate. St Athan boosters focused almost exclusively on the economic benefits that the military academy promises to bring to Wales, particularly in terms of new jobs for local people. There are real questions as to how many new jobs – and how many high quality new jobs – St Athan will create for locals. But even before we get to these questions, there is the core matter, which has yet to be addressed publicly in Wales, of what St Athan/Metrix actually represents in the world at large.
