There are two things which are apparent from this slightly desperate letter from council leader Chris Holley. The first, based on previous evidence of his penmanship skills, is that it was written by someone else. The second is that things must be pretty bad if Swansea’s Lib Dems are assuming the old default position of dissing the city’s pre-2004 Labour administration.
Holley has been very effective in keeping a politically disparate bunch of deadbeats together by pandering to their self-interests. But this ‘success’ has patently been at the expense of the city’s progress. The result of assigning sinecures to cronies in order to keep things sweet is that the quality of political direction given to senior council management is at best mediocre. In some cases it has been an absolute disaster, e.g. social services.
When former cabinet member Wendy Fitzgerald claimed to have been kept in the dark over day-to-day departmental issues, few realised that she was actually telling the truth and that the person that Holley put into the role of running the council’s second largest department, within days of being first elected to public office, could not even read a budget statement.
The consequence of this asinine approach is that the city is verging on the brink of near-terminal decline in its services and has just as poor a record in delivering key investment projects. The Vetch field lays derelict five years after the Swans moved out. The only discernible political policy from a leadership that is clearly out of its depth is to sell off ‘costly’ services such as the Tennis Centre, the Dylan Thomas Centre and even adult social services.
As much as the Lib Dem leader is keen to downplay the legacy he received on taking office, he was able to preside over the opening of Liberty Stadium and the National Waterfront museum because the ground work had been done by his predecessors. By comparison, his own strategies for the city centre have yet to get off the drawing board. It is hardly an accolade for some someone who christened Swansea “the city artists’ of impressions” when he was opposition leader.
3 Comments:
"Holley has been very effective in keeping a politically disparate bunch of deadbeats together by pandering to their self-interests. But this ‘success’ has patently been at the expense of the city’s progress. The result of assigning sinecures to cronies in order to keep things sweet is that the quality of political direction given to senior council management is at best mediocre. In some cases it has been an absolute disaster, e.g. social services."
The sad thing is that all this applies equally to the previous Labour administration (except that they were probably even more arrogant and complacent)
Its a shame that is Swansea it seems to be a straight choice between the two, we definately need a more credible alternative!
"Its a shame that is Swansea it seems to be a straight choice between the two, we definately need a more credible alternative!"
Sounds to me like a choice between Mediocre A and Mediocre B. Sounds like you need to get rid of the "party machine" that produces this type of mediocracy. Meritocracy over Mediocracy.
"Holley has been very effective in keeping a politically disparate bunch of deadbeats together by pandering to their self-interests...."
I rather think that is a reflection of how dead the deadbeats really are, rather than Holley's Machiavellian brilliance.
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