More of the same, plus inflation

The few people who tuned in with little enthusiasm to a deadly dull radio phone-in show this morning will have heard the expected disclaimers from Swansea’s Lib Dems that the council tax increase up for approval this week is “lower than wot Labour used to do”. This of course is hardly any sort of endorsement when you consider that it is seven years since today’s entrenched opposition delivered a budget in the city.

Yet the former Masters of the Universe will have taken some cryptic comfort from a tacit on-air admission by Chris Holley that he too would have allowed a leisure facility to fall into disrepair in order to maintain schools. This cringing statement came as a blurted interjection after the Bladder-in-Chief had been repeatedly upstaged by his finance cabinet member Stuart Rice – an earnest sort of chap who many regard as a long-overdue replacement for the hapless council leader. This perception however needs to be put in context since Holley was similarly shown up by an elderly caller who tied him up in knots by some pointed questioning as to why his administration had allowed respite care in the city to become virtually non-existent. (Guess what? It’s someone else’s fault).

But Rice was himself patently unable to satisfy a phone-in regular who wanted an explanation for what lay behind further ‘special payments’ to e-government contractors listed in budget papers. The amount of techno-waffle he produced indicated that there was no actual rationale on offer for sinking yet more cash into a cripplingly expensive project which, five years on, is still failing to deliver the promised level of day-to-day cost savings.

We’re tempted to suggest that the pair should try to be a bit more prepared before the budget meeting, but why should they bother? Past experience tells us that they could deliver their proposals in silent mime and the usual outcome will happen, i.e. opposition groups will nullify each other’s alternatives as their respective leaders try to prove how stunningly clever they are and the administration’s donkeys will just follow the carrot. We also predict that whatever is actually said, the local paper’s political reporter will regurgitate a cut-and-paste version as dictated by the council’s spin-machine.