NOT JUST ANOTHER BROKEN BRICK IN THE WALL

By Mark Cooney

DESPITE Edinburgh Council’s protestations, the collapse of a school wall that killed 12-year-old Keane Wallis-Bennett could and should have been avoided.

The dangerous state of the girls’ changing rooms at Liberton High School had been reported by pupils, but nothing was done to repair it.

It is a tragedy that leaves a loving family in despair, but one that is sadly indicative of the consequences of wasteful and even immoral spending by our councils. 

They have spent many millions, and sometimes billions, on needless vanity projects, while our towns continue to fall into disrepair at an alarming rate. Walk around the less salubrious areas of our communities and you are compelled to ask yourself; “where’s the money going?”

Keane’s school needed £1million of repairs but council budget pressures meant it was not deemed a priority.

One Liberton pupil claimed she had warned a teacher some months ago that there was an unstable wall in the girls' changing room. She said: “I told staff that the wall had moved when I leaned on it, but nothing was done. I think they should have done something.”

And, in February, the Council was fined £8,000 after a pupil received serious injuries when she fell down a lift shaft at the same school.

When it comes to dilapidated facilities, Liberton High School is not alone. This week, schools in Perthshire were also in the headlines because of council neglect.

On an island of health and safety fanaticism, surely every council has a legal and moral obligation to ensure school structures are at the very least safe, if not modern and child friendly. Risking children’s safety is never an option and the wall should have been repaired immediately as a matter of course after being reported.

Why it wasn’t we don’t yet know, but it may have been attended to had Edinburgh’s Council not burned a billion notes on a tram system that the majority of the city’s residents neither believed was needed, nor wanted.

The project was originally costed in 2003 at £375 million.

Most would agree that Edinburgh has an excellent bus service that did not require an additional tram network, but the then Liberal Democrat-led council ploughed ahead, regardless of the feelings of local taxpayers.

I suspect that improvements to crater-laden roads, litter collection, public health and school safety were higher on the public’s agenda.

Keane’s grandmother this week revealed similar feelings when she told a Scottish newspaper that the trams budget had come at the sacrifice of school kids’ safety.

My contacts, some of whom were in senior positions on the Edinburgh tram committee before they departed with generous payoffs, speak of a bemused and rudderless group of social workers ‘working’ on a complex subterranean engineering project of which they had zero experience.

One would think it would have been better to hire more engineers, or maybe even experienced professionals who understood building contracts. But I understand the council panjandrums were instead enjoying their junkets, visiting the world’s great cities and their tram networks at public expense.

This is not a demonisation of trams, which can offer frequent, efficient and cheap public transport, but more the monstrous mismanagement of contracts and a spectacular failure of supervisory diligence. And the utter disregard for the public purse.

Since coming to power in Scotland in 2007 the SNP has repeatedly berated the plan to spend a billion pounds on the trams. The kerfuffle finally took its toll on the Liberal Democrats when the party was all but wiped out at the 2012 city council elections.

Edinburgh Council is now led by an SNP/Labour coalition, but the trams project goes ahead as planned.

Well, not really as planned. More than two years late, significantly truncated from the original routes - because they had run out of money - and still several hundred million pounds over budget. 

Serious money, indeed - money that should have been spent on public buildings, housing, schools, pavements and streets. Surely there is a strong case to be made that council neglect and budgetary incompetence attributed, at least in part, to a child’s death.

This week it was revealed that expenditure on footpath maintenance in Scotland is down 20% since 2009. This offers more clear evidence that money, our money, is being spent elsewhere.

And here’s another fiscal factor. How much compensation is Edinburgh Council paying out each year to victims of accidents caused by poorly maintained pavements, roads, walls and buildings? And will the accident payouts increase as trams and cyclists vie with each other for space on the road?

Are they really managing and spending our money how we want them to?

Just where is these councillors’ moral compass?

One would presume the council is applying some serious time and thought on how to recoup that billion pounds. Or will the city’s public servants continue to ignore taxpayers’ opinions while letting those accountable for the tram sham depart with golden goodbyes without as much as an apology?

It’s all so sadly predictable. And so are the consequences.

* At the time of publication, no one from Edinburgh City Council was available to comment, but we will publish any replies when we receive them.

Fergie and Keane: no fairytale finale to this relationship

By Andy Ritchie

　

BROADWOOD, January 8 2006. Roy Keane’s glorious career was suffering more than mere signs of distress: it was falling apart in front of the sad eyes of a sell-out crowd.

He’d joined Celtic - the club had always dominated his boyhood dreams - and had taken part in the famous huddle. But the narrative was short of a Hollywood script writer.

I mean, if you were looking for a superstar on this day, you’d be sorely disappointed. The superstar of yesteryear had been left at Old Trafford. This vintage model was struggling very badly against a young and very energetic Clyde side in the Scottish Cup.

You remembered better times when Keane was robust, physical and appeared to have all the athleticism in the world. You knew that these attributes had disappeared, and that he was never going to get the ball down and stroke it around the middle of the park.

I was watching all this and attempting to analyse how I felt. I was going to say sad, but truly I wasn’t sad, because before me was this multi-millionaire who’d had a decent run round the racetrack. In your heart, it’s hard to feel sorry for rich men.

Besides, having been a footballer myself with Celtic and Morton, I knew you’ve got to be man enough to face reality: when your best years are over, that’s it. Nothing can recreate them. Cancel all thought of fairytale finales.

No, this wasn’t the Roy Keane I saw charging through the middle of Bayern Munich’s midfield, causing mayhem in German ranks. Nor the same Keane who stared down the big Arsenal boy, Patrick Vieira, saying: ‘Come on, you and me, we’ll sort it out on the big green bit.’

But I also knew another thing. When Fergie saw that incident in the Highbury tunnel, he would have had a great big smile plastered all over his face. For this was the Fergie modus operandi - the way he wanted men like Keane to be. It was all part of the master plan of domination for Manchester United.

So you can imagine my surprise this week when I saw Sir Alex, publicising his new book, turn round on television interviews and take more than the average length of stick to the character that Keane became. I don’t think it was really on. It was a bit tacky.

You imagine he should have been saying: ‘He was my leader. He was the guy who pulled me clear of the compost heap so many times.’ Instead, here was him savaging him, calling him a bully and insisting that the other players were frightened of him.

It may have been a bit more prudent if he’d just relegated that particular matter to a few inconsequential words - much like his version of the Rock of Gibraltar affair. He said that his row with John Magnier had been a misunderstanding. Some misunderstanding. It almost brought the club to its knees.

But rejoining the Keane debate, I’ll never forget the contribution he made to United’s glory years, or, for that matter, how quickly Ferguson forgot.

To bite the hand that fed him so consistently was somewhere over the top. When Keane was in the team, half of Fergie’s job was being done for him. And if I remember it right, the manager defended him tooth and nail when his skipper was putting himself about. Fergie wanted it that way. If he didn’t he wouldn’t have had him there in the first place. Hey, Fergie was the top man and he could have had him out of there as quick as manure off a hot shovel.

At his peak, any club in Europe would have taken Roy Keane. I’ll bet Arsenal would have taken him. But think on it: would you sell a Trident submarine to Iran, or North Korea? No, you wouldn’t want to be doing that unless your head was residing in your nether regions. So Keane stayed and his gaffer prospered.

Ferguson shares a lot of similarities with Jock Stein, my old boss at Celtic. The latter bullied players, without question. There were big personalities in the Celtic dressing room, but they weren’t bigger than Big Jock. Yes, there was fear at times and apprehension. But there was another factor: to be praised by him was something else. And see if he smiled at you. Haw! Bloody hell! You felt about 8ft tall, almost on equal terms with King Kong.

I saw him do it when I was a wee boy. Smiling and putting his arm round wee Jimmy Johnstone and others. These guys were great players, but you could take a tape measure and confirm that their chests were swelling with pride.

Now you could take that to the other extreme. When he went for you, it was like an early form of cage fighting - and there was no chance that you were going to exit that cage in one piece. There again, he could bring you down to an area when you could inspect snakes’ bellies. It only took one statement from him to do it.

I got a bit of Stein at the end, not the best years. But the aura was still there. And I imagine it was with Ferguson. He is a man with a phenomenal record and it’s been glory all the way with him, except for those first few years when his feet were encased in Old Trafford quicksand.

No doubt just one encouraging word from him would put the cap on a very satisfactory day. It would have driven players on. And I’d imagine that Keane, as his captain, was there to do just that: drive and cajole the team on to new platforms.

Keane, of course, has responded on television by questioning Ferguson’s interpretation of loyalty. I suppose he feels a bit betrayed and thinks his contribution has been diminished.

After all, can you imagine Ferguson going into the dressing room and telling him to pull out of tackles, encouraging him to let someone else boss the midfield?

Listen, when Fergie got out of that dug-out, came romping down the touchline and put his fist up, he wasn’t doing it to Olly Gunnar Solskjaer. He was doing it to Roy Keane. You can listen to the snarl if you indulge your memory.

There’s no getting away from it: he’s dumped on his first lieutenant. Which begs the question: would he have said the same about another of his great lieutenants, Bryan Robson? I think not.