Elephant in the room... (possibly two)

[perseus]

Hartlepool, try as it might, has never truly been a haven for tourists. With our power station, landfill sites and dying town centre, it hardly cries out to be visited. Add to that, large housing estates within the town that look like they've been evacuated, and, chasing the tourist dollar does seem futile.

The North East coast does not bless us with the best of weather either, making a beach side resort an even unlikelier magnet.

Ironically, it was that harsh, sometimes brutal North East weather, which over 100 years ago destroyed the one thing that WAS capable of pulling in tourists to our town.

In 1891, the 'Elephant Rock' was washed into the sea during a storm, and with it, we lost the one natural attraction that, in its day, pulled in tourists from all over Victorian England.

In the 120 or so years that have ticked by since the Elephant Rock was washed away, various things have been tried to tempt back the tourists; a golf course, a marina and most notably of all, a race involving some 'Tall Ships'.
All attempting to do, what, a century before them, was achieved by an unusually shaped lump of limestone.

Now, although I stand by the expression 'God Loves a Trier', and all in all I applaud anyone who tries to take Hartlepool forward socially and economically, recent comments from HBC do draw similarities with another elephant.

Specifically, the elephant on 'Blue Peter' that famously strutted around for a bit, then shat all over the studio floor.

This week we've had to stomach Christopher Akers-Belcher attempt to distance himself from a Tall Ships over spend of a reported £700,000. He basically suggests that it would never have happened on his watch.

Whilst nobody expects anything less from a 'politician', what is perhaps most surprising is that he puts the shortfall ran up by the Tall Ships at just £700,000.

He seems to have forgotten about another notable 'elephant'.

The difference being of course that this particular elephant didn't fall into the sea during a storm,
and it didn't crap on a TV studio floor either. This particular elephant ommitted by Councillor Akers-Belcher when doing his Tall Ships sums is WHITE.... and it cost 4 Million quid. 

[steveL]

. . . and the man running the show was one Dave Stubbs who has just been appointed Chief Executive as a result of James/Akers-Belcher/Wells insisting that the 'strong recommendation' of the Peer Review team, to seek out stronger external candidates, should be ignored.

Dave Stubbs is a canny bloke, by all accounts, but the Peer Group, recognising the weaknesses of the present management team, thought it essential to search out the best Captain possible to steer what was clearly a rudderless ship with a mad woman at the wheel, away from the rocks.

There was a slight-of-hand sentence in the recent Mail coverage of of this particular part of the interim review findings in that The Mail suggested that the reason this advice was ignored was that the findings were published after the selection had taken place. This is true, of course, because HBC did everything possible to prevent publication and it took a FOI request to get them to publish the findings at all.

What The Mail forgot to mention was that when the 'interview' for the Chief Exec job took place, (there was only one candidate), all members of the appontment team had already attended the private PowerPoint presentation made by the Review Panel and were therefore well aware of all of the recomendations, include the one related to the Chief Exec vacancy, well before the selection took place.

Incidentally, it has always amused me that the infamous 'transport interchange' took longer to build than the period between Kennedy's famous 'man on the moon' speech and July 1969 when it actually happened.

I fear if Dave Stubbs had been put in charge of the Apollo programme, Apollo 11 would still be waiting at the launch tower 'for legal reasons'.

[Lucy Lass-Tick]

To quote SteveL ' I fear if Dave Stubbs had been put in charge of the Apollo programme, Apollo 11 would still be waiting at the launch tower 'for legal reasons'.

Why does that make me think of the film 'Capricorn One'?