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Fireworks Fiasco
November 21, 2011 8:30 PM
Once upon a time Lambeth Council offered residents three annual Fireworks displays held at Clapham Common, Streatham Common and Brockwell Park. These events were really, really popular and regarded as a small Thank You gesture to parents and children boroughwide in return for all the horrid nasty taxes they levied.
Then mean-minded Labour - freshly re-elected - cut the three lovely and popular pyrotechnic displays (ooh-ah) down to just one last year (boo) as a so-called cost saving measure, while promising to save £35,000 along the way (oh?).
Of course in Labour-run Lambeth, where almost everything is not like normal councils, the facts never quite fit the way that they are initially presented. In 2009, for instance, three gorgeous fireworks displays cost £87,000 and 90,000 happy smiling families attended - and went home, we suppose, even happier.
This year's stingy single display should have at least only cost £52,000 to stage by factoring-in the promised cost-savings, but in fact cost the best part of £105,000. What's more attendance was down to 80,000, so that the both the overall cost and the critical cost per person value-for-money indicator actually rose.
So that's Labour Lambeth in a nutshell - half the fun for twice the cost. What should have been a right little sparkler turned instead into a proper old damp squib. We were promised more bang for our bucks but instead the costs simply sky-rocketed.
Let's hope Labour doesn't come up with more brilliant ways to save our money.