Quote:
Originally Posted by Gayle
Please get your facts right before dragging the Civic Arts Centre into this.
For a start it was not the Civic Theatre that was due to be officially launched, it was the newly refurbished Civic Arts Centre.
The original date was the 12th not the 4th and the official launch event has been postponed - not cancelled.
The Centre is very much Open and there was an Open Day on the 22nd August. The Centre is up and running and very much open, please don't go round saying that the opening has cancelled as that implies that we're not operational and we are.
The official launch event was POSTPONED because there are three big projects happening in the run up to the event (two already happened) and the third next week. The Board and I decided that we didn't have time to do the Official Launch Event the justice it deserved so have bought our selves more time. Plus, some of the board were unable to attend the date of the 12th, so the Board of the Arts Centre made the decision to POSTPONE the event.
Peter Britcliffe will undoubtedly be a huge part of the rearranged Official Launch event (and was always intended to be) as it was he that has championed this project from day one and it's in his ward. Don't forget, the Labour Party opposed this project and voted against the capital expenditure.
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I'm always willing to be corrected, Gayle. Thank you for putting me straight.
However, it still doesn't get away from the fact that the Mayor's invite has been withdrawn so that Peter Britcliffe can open the event. Malcolm Pritchard wanted to open it, something which would be part of the duties of any Mayor.
Peter's grubby politics regarding mayorality this year are not only tarnishing the respectability of the position but also events that are linked to it and the opening of the Civic Theatre is one of them.
I'm told that a visit to the theatre on Thursday (which regrettably I had to pull out of) showed the building off as an impressive piece of work but the project had no performance standards in place , something which is a basic scientific principle on any experiment.
Whatever your side of the fence, we're talking about several hundred thousand pounds of public money and I would expect that anything on that scale to have a measure of whether it was gauged as a success or failure. It doesn't and on that point I am not best pleased.
Peter wants the Civic Theatre to be one of several monuments to his time as Leader of the Council and however good your relationship with him may be I'm afraid I cannot condone anyone who uses public money to inflate his own ego without proper regard to the consequences.