BBC get it wrong on local issues - and so do Lib Dems

Mooching around the BBC election website, we find that the big thing in the Swansea West constituency is a new urban village for the city’s semi-derelict upper High Street which is described as part of the “Liberal Democrat-run council vision” for the area – is it bollocks!

Clearly BBC Wales’s Tom Singleton should have read the article written by his on-line colleagues just a few days earlier which explains that the scheme is actually the brainchild of Coastal Housing – a voracious outfit that is fast reaching Tesco-like dominance of the local housing association world. The only role of Swansea’s town planners and ruling politicians, who are far too busy disappearing up their own strategies to come up with anything remotely deliverable, was to delay the project for about five years at the pre-application stage. As a matter of fact, the upper High Street area is described in the city centre master plan fantasy as “peripheral” – so much for Lib Dem vision.

Of course, none of this stops the four main candidates from saying that it is a jolly good idea, just what the city needs and yada-yada-yada without stopping to ponder the 'benefits' of yet another affordable housing project in a commercial area that gobbles up public sector resources and will probably sterilise the area for further business investment.. Perhaps a journalist with some ability might actually question Lib Dem Peter May on how he thinks the scheme will produce the extra private sector jobs he says the city needs.

But let’s face it. Whoever wins will simply pack their bags for Westminster, kicking off the Jackland dust as they board the train, safe in the knowledge that they will never have to give a shit again about the city centre – unless it is to blame the council for something. Come to think of it, the same probably goes for the losers too.