When performing doesn't mean acting up

It's said that turkeys don't vote for Christmas, but Swansea's councillors seem a lot less adroit in avoiding axe-sharpening situations. The word among the workers at Calamity Hall is that the head of the Assembly’s intervention panel sent the Swansea Council’s chief executive a note last Friday morning. The contents aren’t known but the speculation is that it makes pointed reference to an acrimonious council meeting held the previous week in which too many politicians confused the need for performance with the act of making one.

As reported by a poor soul from the Beans on Toast, who had to sit through four and a half hours of interminable squabbling, it appears that most of the combatants didn’t seem to actually care that their self-indulgent spouting & posturing was witnessed by the people who have yet to decide if Children’s Services are safe in the local authority’s hands. We also understand that an ineffectual performance by Wendy Fitzgerald in the chair ensured that proceedings were conducted with the dignified gravitas of a late-night Wind Street brawl – in which she supplied a good deal of the screaming herself.

Sources tell us that there was also a brief moment of comic relief when the council leader had a Jacko-type moment as he seemed to be claiming a recent education department accolade as his own achievement – hoping no doubt that everyone had forgotten how he had opted to go on a day-trip to Brussels rather than meet an Assembly minister to discuss failing standards in social services. A suggestion by observers is that his usual blustering performance was made even more pronounced by the brief appearance of a ghost in the public gallery.

For many, the conduct of the meeting has marked another low point for a local authority already locked in a steady descent. Sadly for the council, for the city they represent and for the staff who rely of their leadership, their brand of play-ground politics has not impressed the intervention panel any more than it is likely to influence voters who are still hearing about the shambles nearly a fortnight after the event.

More criticism came on this morning's local Sunday phone-in show which heard the presenter question the actual value - compared to the daunting cost - of keeping 72 councillors in office. The show also featured calls and poems from listeners in favour of a Doncaster-type elected mayor who has plans to cull public spending in his city. Of course, these calls came from people who don’t know what else is going on in Doncaster but others might feel that there is not too much of a difference in the long run.