First thing this morning the city council published a press release – “Parks to get even better deal from revised investment plans” – with yet another new set of figures regarding how much of our park land the Labour Party intends to sell off to developers.
By this afternoon anyone wishing to check these latest claims and the actual figures issued by the Labour Party would have been disappointed as the press release had mysteriously disappeared from the council’s website.
The Evening Cancer, however, must have seized on this brief window of opportunity – that or they been granted special access denied ordinary members of the public – because they published a story today using information from the release.
Entirely contradicting the official figures released by the council late last week for councillors to discuss this evening at a meeting, the Cancer’s saying that only £90m worth of what Labour call “marginal, surplus land” will be sold.
Whether these latest figures really stack up, we just don’t know because the information is simply not available to check at present. And we still don’t know what or where this “marginal, surplus land” actually is.
It just gets murkier and murkier …
The release is up on the council website now, Blogger – at http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/press-releases/2008/jan/parks-to-get-even-better-deal-from-revised-investment-plans.en
This looks like an update on an earlier one – it now includes an endorsement from the Bristol Parks Forum.
Of course, they say they can’t identify the land that might be sold off as ‘low recreational value’.
The Scrutiny Committee, sitting this afternoon, seemed too taken aback to form any opinion of all this! But however you look at it, it’s still selling off the family silver, and using a big slice of the proceeds to keep other services going. Not a good policy. And certainly not sustainable.
Caplan vb. To conceal, twist out of recognition in the interests of appeasing incompetent paymasters (regardless of their political colour)
Caplan n. A crude and ineloquent lie; hence ~ism n. inept Blue Square Conference-level bullshitting
The gold went years ago.
The silvers on its way.
Bronzed burnt ladscape is about all we will be left with at the rate these innepts are going.