Coatham Protest

I received a phone call from a friend of mine this morning telling me about the election newsletters that he had received from both the Labour group and the Lib/Dems as the bi-election for Dormanstown hots up. He told me that he had called the man who was promoting the Labour candidate in Dormanstown, Ray Goddard, to air his opinion and I must say, that after collecting a copy of the Labour election letter, he was quite right to do so.

It was peppered with half truths and cherry picked facts that totally misled the reader and painted a picture that is quite different from the full truth. What a shame it is headed "Marian Fairley...A woman who cares for Dormanstown" because after reading the rubbish that the letter contained, the Labour group can't really care that much about Marian Fairley. If they did, they wouldn't put out such misleading tripe in her name, so leaving her open to so much ridicule and criticism.

In a box headed £4.5 MILLION FOR ARTS/MEDIA CENTRE, it goes onto say " Children from across the Borough worked with council officers to bid for an arts, performance and media centre for young people. They chose to have it in the new COATHAM LINKS development in REDCAR and their bid was successful. It will be a great asset for Dormanstown children"

Where do you begin to pull this misleading rubbish apart? Firstly, lets appalaud our young people for doing something that the overpaid officers of RCBC haven't been able to do, ATTRACT FUNDING for something that they set out to. But if you look at the description of this facility now, compared to how it was being described last November when the story first made the news, you cannot believe that they are the same facility. Lets remind ourselves of that story from last November, just four months ago.

http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/local-teesside-news/cleveland-news/2008/11/06/5m-bid-to-give-teens-a-place-84229-22196078/

See how it is described accurately as a youth centre with arts and media equipment as opposed to the description now of a youth and arts and media and performance centre for young people? How can it metamorphosis into some amazing facility that contains more wonderful elements now than when the story was first printed, when the amount of funding has not increased? Where has the performance centre part suddenly come from?

Well...it's not so difficult to work out when you learn, as regular readers of this site will know already, that this new youth centre is to be built on the site of the visitor centre which isn't now happening but which was, according to the councils spin doctors, set to include a dance floor, iconic tower, performance centre blah de blah de blah.
After Mark Hannons email to me showed that this youth centre is to be built on the site of the visitors centre because the visitors centre had only ever been and I quote "an aspiration" ( not what they've been telling people for five years is it? ) and we made this fact public, it is obvious that the council are now desperately trying to con the public by trying to include as many elements of the visitors centre into the description of this youth centre, so as to give the impression that the visitors centre and all of its ingredients are still happening.

I believe that they are also doing this in order to try and deceive funding bodies that they have approached, into believing that the visitor centre which was to be the main feature of the Coatham leisure scheme and the thing that was to make the Coatham scheme " a visitor destination of regional importance" their words not mine, is still happening because without it, the Coatham scheme is just a housing estate with a baths that is being provided with borrowed money that the public will pay back through council tax and that isn't something that the funding bodies that the council have gone to, will back financially.

But there are also two other amazing issues to address in the Labour election letter. First is that it says that young people chose to have this centre as part of the Coatham Links development, but this centre isn't part of the Coatham plan or scheme and wasn't agreed at the Coatham Planning meeting? There has also been no consultation whatsoever which you think there would be especially when the new youth centre is to contain a DRUGS COUNSELLING CENTRE, something that is mentioned in the original story but somehow fails to make the Labour election leaflet?

I wonder how the people living in the surrounding area would feel if they actually knew that this drugs counselling centre was going to be sited so close to them?

I wonder what the funding bodies would think if they knew?

I mean a drugs counselling centre is a hardly going to make the Coatham scheme a visitor destination of regional importance is it? You can almost hear the mums and dads in Scarborough and Newcastle calling their kids to the car, " Come on kids, we're all going to Coatham in Redcar to look at 359 houses, and have a swim in the pool".
"Oh but daaad, can't we just go to Wet and wild or the Sands centre?
"No we can't, we can go to Redcar's normal 25m pool surrounded by all of them houses! Look, if you're good you can have a go in the drugs counselling centre when we come out!"
"Can't we go on the beach instead?"
"No you can't because the council sold the family silver in order to let Persimmon build those bloody houses and the beach is restricted use on a seasonal and spacial basis!"

But to add insult to injury further down the 'informative election leaflet', there's a heading that states LAST HURDLE FOR REDCAR SWIMMING POOL?? It then goes onto say "The protestors have applied to the House of Lords to appeal the High Court decision to reject their village green application- If this is refused the new Redcar Leisure Centre could be on its way by the Summer"

Notice how once again the word 'could' is used? But more than this once again, statements have been made that are as misleading as they are cherry picked. Because not only do they have to overcome the legal hurdle of going to the House of Lords, they have to overcome 47 planning conditions not least the construction of a multi million pound sea defence which has to be built as part of the Coatham scheme. This hasn't even been agreed to by Persimmon yet, let alone had work started on it! But then again, they did only say 'could'.

But what they aren't telling anyone is that the amount of borrowing that the council want to undertake in order to provide the leisure centre and pool, has now I believe, risen to FOURTEEN MILLION POUNDS!!! And what they aren't telling people is that borrowing this money to build the pool and leisure centre isn't dependant on Persimmon building houses. It never has been and as such, it shows that not only have the council lied about having to have the houses to have a pool, it shows that this pool should have been built way before now, not used to dangle some carrot to the people of Dormanstown and the rest of the town!

Cherry picked half truths and misleading statements...

Which brings me onto the Lib/dems who try and attach, in their election letter, all the woes of the council to the Labour group, but who conveniently omit to tell people that this council were DOWNGRADED TO A TWO STAR AUTHORITY BY THE AUDIT COMMISSION LAST SEPTEMBER BECAUSE OF THE WAY THAT THE OLD LIB/DEM LED COALITION HAD BEHAVED AND HAD ALLOWED THE OFFICERS TO BEHAVE, WHILST THEY WERE IN CONTROL. LET ME REMIND CLLR CHRIS ABBOTT AND CLLR GLYNN NIGHTINGALE IT WAS THE LIB/DEM LED COALITION WHO WERE IN CONTROL OF THE COUNCIL WHEN SENIOR OFFICERS OF THE COUNCIL SURPRESSED AN AUDIT REPORT WHICH SHOWED THAT THE COUNCIL WERE NEVER A FOUR STAR AUTHORITY IN THE FIRST PLACE AND COLLUDED INDIVIDUALS WITHIN WITH THE AUDIT COMMISSION TO REPLACE IT WITH ANOTHER REPORT WHICH THEN SHOWED THAT THEY WERE!

Cllr Abbott and co. may have hoped that these facts would just go away, but I can assure them that they won't.