It's a Balls-Up!

The staggering and public humiliation piled on the Medway Conservatives this week over the bus station 'balls-up' shows the wheels are coming off this clapped-out administration

Everything that could go wrong with the white elephant of a bus station has gone wrong. It has been a horrible week for bus users, and one which serves to highlight the feeble and incapable Tory cabinet, but also the emasculated and weak Tory backbenchers who have so little backbone they feel obliged to support a cabinet of total second-hopers.

This has been a monumental screw up at all levels.

Not only is the bus station 5 months late but at a cost of £7.3m is £2.3m overbudget. A sum that represents £30 for every man, woman and child in the Medway Towns, and staggering when added to the net sum of waste over the regeneration on the Brook, Woodlands, Walderslade, the Ridgemeadow closure, Civic Centre and countless other failures.

We have an endemic problem of poor political leadership at the very heart of our Council. A cancer of Tory failure which corrodes and eats away at public good-will.

Remember this has been ongoing for months. The Tories knew the bus station was overbudget and badly managed but deliberately obfuscated on public questions in the Full Council chamber from the Labour opposition, led by Councillor Vince Maple. They shamelessly colluded to cover up the truth from the public prior to the local election.

Omens were poor last week when the Council press office, or the politburo or pravda (depending on which paper) as its known in local media circles, started sending out press about the new facility that was due to open. The Council, according to sources, sent out shocking photo's of the previous Pentagon Centre whilst exaggerating the 'butterflies' and greenery of the new facility. Alas, the Council forgot to read the statement and included a reference to not even knowing the companies who were to use the facility in the first place. The irony wasnt lost given this was the exact issue debated in the Emergency Council meeting in September

So it opened and on site were Tory cabinet members in pinstripe. Unfortunately all was not well...

Key parts of the facility were either missing or seemingly forgotten. We have no seats for elderly residents, no toilets for families with kids, no shelter for the majority who now have to fight the elements every winter, waiting for a bus service which has been rated amongst the worst in the country by resident polling. Most importantly we have no zebra crossings, which were presumably a key part of the contract (!?).

The bus station was incomplete - which is now exactly why despite being opened we still have workman finishing the job; whilst the public stand by and watch.

The politics of this situation have been bungled - The Council were seemingly unaware of the status of the bus station before it opened; or if they were not have kept surprisingly silent... I say unaware, because if you knew parts were incomplete or not working you would not send in your political cabinet to umm, take the credit. The Tory cabinet surely been advised by somone with a brain-cell, that perhaps attending an incomplete bus station was a bad idea. You would think...

It reached eye-wateringly painful levels when Cllr Wicks, the man whose utter incapability are legend across the towns, decided to visit the Bus Station. A decision which must stand at the pinnacle of political incapability. A truly stupid move...

Yes, the very same Councillor Les Wicks, who has bungled programme after project; whose stock is so low amongst the public it makes Liam Fox look like a paragon of capability, should have been kept well away... instead he swaggers down to tell concerned travellers that the facility is 'unsafe' to use after being cornered by a fella who thinks the whole thing is a 'balls-up'.

Cllr Rodney was there of course citing a few, eer, 'teething problems' which even in the Chamber's lexicon of low impact, of which he excels, is laughable.

It was a travesty of shocking management and bungled leadership - his bungled leadership.

The other protagonist, always the politician, saw the danger and kept well away. Silent hath the Jarrett been; no wonder, grubby fingerprints of poor financial scrutiny are all over it. His inability to work with the opposition in a constructive manner and heed warnings says it all.

This bus facility was 5 months late and £2.3m over budget. Plans were bungled from day one and rushed and rammed through Planning without listening to the public. Delays have seen months of congestion and pain added to the commuter and whose cost of £7.3m could have been better spent on a better bus facility with full public consultation. The result; a facility opened with no seats, toilets, working signs or crossings...

Update

It appears that the Tories had also planned for the Pentagon bus station to become a Council Staff car park... outrageous really, but are you that surprised?

The bus station isnt finished; neither politically or indeed in reality