Swansea Council leader Chris Holley is on very thin ice over his criticism of governors at closure-threatened Daniel James School. The hapless Lib Dem leader told a cabinet meeting that he had asked the director of education Richard Parry to sack the governing body eighteen months ago, having concluded that the school “wasn't improving”.
Leaving aside the patent crap about his ability to make any kind of cogent assessment, his claim raises the question as to why he was not similarly adroit in spotting how social services was going to shit on Wendy Fitzgerald’s watch or why Mary Jones remained in her cabinet post despite a wasteful e-governing project that is even now still failing to deliver promised level of savings.
When Holley and his sidekicks attained office, they proclaimed that Swansea had stood still for decades and described themselves as the people to shift things into gear. After six years at the helm, it is now very clear that they were talking about reverse gear.
Swansea is a city in visible decline. Christmas shoppers are going elsewhere thanks to endless congestion and a lack of meaningful retail investment. Yet we have a man at the top who moans how Swansea is no longer hope to compete with Cardiff as if the situation is nothing to do with him or his abysmal record. Isn’t he the individual notionally responsible for regenerating the city centre? Or is that more bullshit?
Perhaps the most telling point is the one he makes about how he can “remember a time when Swansea could hold its own or outdo Cardiff for amenities, but no more". Presumably he was talking about the period before he and the other incompetents took charge and when leadership actually meant putting the city first - not seeking underhand political advantages from government ministers.
Such an admission of ineffectiveness anywhere else in the UK from someone who is supposed to be running a local authority would merit front page headlines along with a demand for an immediate resignation. But not in Swansea, it seems.
2 Comments:
Ahhhh! The Holley magic touch continues unabated.
Things are so bad, I understand, that his cronies of the LibDem persuasion have been fighting (tooth&nail) to get on the magic list for the assembly election in the mistaken belief that it would be a lifeboat out of the titanic/cabinet.
I mean? How desperate is that?
If that's true then they are only copying the actions of an ex-Labour leader who has also got himself a candidacy.
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