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£400!!!!!!!!!!
So how can this be? Didn't the city council promise that there would be no extra cost to Liverpool's council tax payers when it first drew up the bid for Culture?
Well, yes, it did. But things have changed now apparently. Through a spectacular mixture of sheer incompetence, obscene profligacy and rank arrogance the city council has contrived to find itself £29million short of balancing its books.
The lion's share of this - £22million - is for Culture, which is currently spending money on 'who knows what' like it is going out of fashion. The city council needs another £7million just to maintain the existing level of poor quality council services. Total = £29million.
The solution offered by the smiling assassin Hasitall (Phil Halsall, £169,000 a year Executive Director for Finance for those who don't know, ed) whose stewardship of the council's finances is may conceivably be to blame, is to beg, steal or borrow the necessary spondulicks from elsewhere. Any suggestion that, as the responsible officer, he had been criminally irresponsible with the city's finances would be criminally irresponsible, of course.
The council can either beg the Government for more dosh (and get lost, ed), it can steal the money from council taxpayers (already done that several times, ed) or it can borrow.
So it will do a combination of Options 2 and 3, while Warren 'I'm just a fireman' Bradley indulges in the distraction of the usual Lib Dem knockabout stuff aimed at the Government.
Meanwhile the city council will re-mortgage buildings like Millennium House (used to be known as Jase's Fun Palace, ed) and take out some more mind-boggling loans.
Either way, the result will be very clear.
Capital of Culture will leave a post-2008 legacy for the people of Liverpool of a huge new £29million debt. That works out at £400 for every home and business in the city. So we will all be in hock.
And all the time, the consultants and the highly paid Executives will have been happily lining their own pockets, thank you very much. And producing nothing very impressive for 2008 in return.
All of which puts McElhinney's Liverpool Direct scandal, Henshaw's bumper pension pay-off, the jobs for the boys, the £3million Summer Pops fiasco, the astronomical salaries, the foreign trips, the criminal pay-offs, the consultants fees, the freeloading, the waste and the neglect all in a bit more perspective doesnt it?
8 comments:
so very true Tone
Any idea how much per household is going into CMP's pockets and how much per household The Smiler and Rottweiler are trousering?
that's disgraceful. What they should have done from the first was to give Capital of Culture to the city's existing arts organisations, who are perfectly capable of delivering a first class international event. Everything that is any good which is planned now is being provided by them anyway. The Culture company should be scrapped and the money saved ploughed back into those arts organisations. it's still not too late.
there are many good arts groups run in nearly every community centre in the city, right across the city even the outskirts even though the culture company have not yet recognised this and lots of local talent we should be tapping into this. The people of this city won the bid we should all be fighting to take part in it but sadly we are all very sceptical HOW SAD
Get out in May and Vote the Fireman and his corrupt administration out of office, it is the only way to stop the people of Liverpool from being ripped off by the Liberal Democrats!
They are worse than Henshaw!
Blackhole of Capculture latest - I see the council are begging the taxpayer for a further £2m to cover their long running Hall Lane by-pass fiasco (ready for 2008? Yeah right).
This was delayed because Parker and Henshaw were trying to brow-beat the Royal Hospital into accepting a smaller site - surely they should be the ones to pay up?
http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/tm_headline=road-row-delays-to-cost-an-extra-%2D2m%26method=full%26objectid=18888755%26siteid=50061-name_page.html
Despite being named capital of culture it appears that its not only Liverpool, but in fact every major city, who at some point spends ridiculous amounts of money on rejuvanation. it's an unwritten rule of councils. By the way, if anyone's interested you can find the latest news for Liverpool here Thanks for reading!
~If cap of culture or coc for short, was meant to provide much needed regeneration, then it has done just that, take a look at the cranes on the skyline !
So why bother pumping more money into coc?
~Its done its job now, let it prove it self or wither on the vine, and if it does screw up, its their own fault for not getting the sponsorship money in.
let them rot thats what i say.
Why should the people of liverpool pay for something that is no benefit to them? Why pay for a load of art performance stuff that nobody wants to see?
We are already in a bad way without this added expense.
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