The exploitation of children

Labour seem to believe that their continuing campaign to halt the Council's plan to move the West Cross children's home to Blaenymaes will damage the administration. However, as with all obsessions they cannot see the damage it is doing to them.

They are already in trouble for Blaenymaes for slagging the area off, now they are embroiled in a saga of misrepresentation as they try to drive home their imagined advantage. Their problems however are many.

In the first place anybody with their ear to the ground knows that this issue is not about the children or their home at all. All of this fuss is an attempt to sink the new Welsh School in West Cross by forcing the Council to leave the children's home in situ. Essentially, Labour are exploiting children for their own political ends. Perhaps the Children's Commissioner should investigate that. No doubt the Welsh Language lobby have already taken note.

Secondly, Labour know full well that the children themselves have been consulted because they were told in Council by the cabinet member. The outcome of that consultation was favourable to the move. The Children's Commissioner also knows this because the Council have told him at least twice. In fact we understand that what is in his letter bears no resemblance to what is reported in the Evening Post.

Somebody is misleading people and it is not the Administration. As with all of Labour's little storms in a teacup nothing is as it seems and it is the brothers and sisters who are in the frame.

Broad Banned

The saga of Laptop Lawrence has taken a new twist today with a front page headline grabber. The temporary sigh of relief experienced in August has been replaced with the old adage of "I have been advised to make no comment".

The touchiness shown when he appeared to threaten the Deputy Leader with his lawyer in the council chamber when discussing the Leisure Centre redevelopment has to be put on the back burner.

We hope that the inside outers will now consider a BAIWATCH in their spin off site in the same spirit of the other watches there.

This latest twist has hardly assisted the smooth running of the Llansamlet Labour Party selection procedure for 2008. We understand that this has been 'put on hold' until something or another is cleared up.

Meanwhile temperatures are rising in County Hall because curiously all Councillors have had to hand in their laptops to be locked down. In no way are we suggesting that this has got anything to do with todays developments but when you hear thing like "Why should 71 of us suffer because of one", it does indeed make the mind boggle.

John Miles is rumoured to be furious as 5 years worth of research into his family tree has been lost because his hard drive was wiped clean in the lock down. But you can't please everyone in this life can you?

Premature Exploitation

Labour obviously have the bit between their teeth over this story about the Pool Sanctuary however, they would do well to remember one thing before they try to exploit it.

If it had not been for their failure to maintain the Leisure Centre when they ran the Council that caused it to close and if it had not been for their undue haste to rescue themselves from electoral disaster by signing the lease on the Pool Sanctuary without carrying out all the necessary checks for obvious issues such as disabled access , then the Council would not be in this mess.

The cost of Labour's incompetence continues to mount up.

Another smoking gun for Labour

We are indebted to the Evening Post for underlining the real story behind the audit report into the Liberty Stadium:

Thousands of pounds was spent bringing in the experts who told leaders in the former Labour-run administration that catering firms should pay for the fit-out and that undersoil heating was not necessary.

However, it became apparent that no firms were willing to stump up the cash for catering equipment.

And after a Swansea City game was postponed because of a frozen pitch, club bosses recommended undersoil heating.

These cock-ups took place on the watch of the same cabinet members who oversaw the rundown and eventual closure of the Leisure Centre. The result was that the new Administration had to step in to ensure the stadium's future by fitting out the catering facilities and installing the undersoil heating.

It was Swansea taxpayers who ended up paying for this because Labour had failed to include them in the original plans. Many other short cuts were taken as well, not least with the highway arrangements. The Swansea Administration also had to sort out the management structure of the stadium as well.

Labour often seek to portray the present Administration as incompetent however all the evidence lies with view that it was their mismanagement that left the Council in such a mess and that we have been left to pick up the pieces and put them back together again.

Out of touch at Swansea

Just how much of a faux pas local Councillors for Blaenymaes committed when they slagged off their own area at the last Council meeting seems to have passed by the brothers and sisters over at Inside Out.

However, if this letter from Robin Lowe is anything to go by then the consequences for them may be far reaching. It is worth quoting in full and maybe by the time Labour have re-read they might be able to accept the startling fact that Chris Holley is in touch with public opinion on this issue after all.

Once again we see councillors showing how misinformed they are (Row over plans to move kids home, Post, November 13).

They claim Blaenymaes is a notorious place, crime-ridden and not a place for a children's home.

This may have been true in the distant past. However, the truth is that it is a tight-knit community which has won awards for tackling anti-social behaviour and standing up to louts (many of whom don't live in the area) who blight our community.

Residents, together with the many agencies - such as Police Community Support Officers Constable Barry and Constable Phillips, Gwalia, the 104 Project, Spark, Councillor Gren Phillips and members of the community centre, the ARC, Blaenymaes and Portmead schools, the family centre and the community development team, to name but a few - have ensured that the vast majority of people living in the community have a reasonable quality of life.

Although I agree that looked-after children are the most vulnerable of children in society, I am sure that the professionals working at homes would ensure their safety and ensure that there, residents would not become a nuisance.

Ray Welsby, in saying that Blaenymaes is one of the most notorious areas in Great Britain, is wrong.

Perhaps he should visit a really notorious area, such as Moss Side in Manchester where gun crime and drug gangs have sadly become the norm.

Robin Lowe
Cwm Cadle,
Portmead,
Swansea

Making political capital

The death of Vicky Clement on Manselton Road was a tragedy but it did not take long for Green Party candidate, Rhodri Griffiths to jump on the bandwagon.

At the beginning he undoubtedly helped local residents focus on the need for action in the area and how to achieve that, however by the time he wrote this letter in yesterday's Evening Post, it had become clear that his main motovation was party political advantage.

As Mr. Griffiths knows full well a set of proposals for Manselton Road has been worked up and consulted on. These are on the verge of being implemented. There have been legal processes to go through as well as amendments made as a result of the consultation as Peter Black's letter in the same paper made clear.

However, for Rhodri Griffiths to feign ignorance of this process really takes the biscuit. He has been involved in talks from the start and has been kept informed about progress throughout. A more cynical person might conclude that he is now seeking to use this tragedy for political reasons. We could not possibly comment.

A proper business plan

Work is steadily progressing on the Labour party's Achilles heel. As the new concrete sets we can be assured that attractions like the Master blaster and Lazy river have been included in the price and not been Value Engineered out. Lessons have surely been learnt from the catastrophe of Labour's attempt at a Stadium business plan. Yesterday it slipped out that they had only factored in £11,000 to maintain the stadium.