Time to map out a plan for Villa's future
- Says blogger Matthew Turvey
The Public in financial crisis
Friday 7th November 2008, 12:16PM GMT.
The gallery at the controversial Public arts centre is in financial crisis, bosses have confessed.
A statement released to the Express & Star reveals that the exhibits still do not work, no user testing had taken place and the delay in opening is putting the West Bromwich-based gallery under “financial stress.”
The Public Gallery Ltd is now set to ask for more cash from funders including The Arts Council and Sandwell Council.
The statement released to the Express & Star said: “The delay in opening The Public Gallery has placed a financial stress on the organisation and this is clearly a cause for concern.
“The Gallery is working closely with our funders to protect the project against any risks that have been incurred by the delay.”
The bill for The Public arts centre as a whole currently stands at £61.7million – which includes cash already set aside to run the gallery for the first three years.
Although the gallery has yet to see a paying visitor between December 2006 – when the company was founded – and March this year, it has shelled out £719,816 in running costs.
The company is losing more cash as the doors remain closed, while it continues to pay up to 70 staff.
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If it was open to the paying public, it would still be making a loss. There’s very few people in West Brom, who are going to pay £7 to see this rubish. Why didn’t they build a swimming pool or leisure centre or something useful? Why not use the money to clean the area up or build something the kids could use, to keep them off the streets?
There must have been some major back-handers involved, for this project to get off the ground in the first place. Heads should roll!
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Not a penny more. Why throw good money after bad?
When is the Express and Star going to name and shame all the people responsible for this fiasco? This is the biggest local financial scandal for many years and it is up to the local press to expose the guilty parties.
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To be successful in business, you need to tailor your product to the end user.
Art requires a certain level of culture. When was the last time you saw a cultured person in West Bromwich?
Maybe a bingo hall would be a better bet for these proles?
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It’s too late to lock the gate after the horse has bolted – most of the guilty have already left leaving the rest of us to pick up the bill!!!
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Paying up to 70 staff!!!! For what exactly?
The whole project is a joke; a blot on West Bromwich’s image; a complete waste of tax payer’s money….
It’s time heads roll over the handling of this project. Better to be honest and disgraced, than drag the whole issue around til voting time!!!!!!
Final conclusion – this building WILL close down even before it has been opened properly. Now is the time to start thinking what to do with it councillors – before you’re all the target for very public abuse.
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When you think about the jobs they could have created with £60m it makes you sick. Some really good projects could have used that money, engineering training schemes, brownfield site clearance, green research, industrial estate access roads etc
Isn’t it clear yet that we need competent local councillors – after Walsall Council went bankrupt in 2001, Wolverhampton Council £700m in debt and Sandwell wasting £60m on a white elephant. They couldn’t run a whelk stand.
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Face facts it will never make a surplus, close it and try and sell it, same as the Dome money was available and the arties got the money. A Leisure Centre and Swimming Pool would be used by young old but unfortunatley the general public are not cultured enough for funders who are looking for something they themselves would like.
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Bob Badham and all of the other loony Sandwell councillors who ignored local taxpayers views by voting for public money to be poured into this this calamatious waste of money should be publicly flogged outside it.
Now that WOULD be worth paying money to see.
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I would urge sandwell council not to put any more of our money into the project. Enough has already been spent, and for what?
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If this is the reaction of local people to a scheme designed to drag West Bromwich out of the stone age, then god help you all.
You are all doomed. If £70m of regeneration money can’t work, then nothing will.
Can’t we just abandon West Bromwich as a town, and ship all the proles, simpletons, alcholics, chronically unemployable and pyschopathics who make up the majority of its population be given somekind of relocation programme, dispersing them around the country, and then the town can be bulldozed. There’s no alternative.
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IN the words of dragons den
“it’s not worth investing. i’m out!”
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The audit comission should be called in to scrutinise the position of this white elephant, and the whole thing halted. Not one penny more of council tax payers money should be spent on the public. We need a sports hall, swimming pool, cinema, theatre, and youth facilities for our young people. Its about time sandwell council actually consulted with the people and started providing facilities WE want and not those that are purely for their own prestige and egos
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In reply to 3—I enjoy art.I also enjoy classical music as well as blues ,jazz and rock ,but spending this much PUBLIC money on a project for a pretentious minority of the populace amounts ,in my opinion to fraud. This is not art for the masses , it is the chance for the idiots who look upon themselves as the elite to meet and talk and look at rubbish at the taxpayers expense. If this building could be converted into a community centre for everyone to use ,and have facilities for sport, hobbies, and not have to worry about staff cuts then it would be worthwile.But the ordinary working class person does not get that ,they just seem to get the scraps that get thrown away when the elite twits have had the choice pickings.
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Too the people that are complaining about this abortion, and about the Councillors responsible for its implementation, a short while back there was a local election, the people knew what this council had spent 60miilion pound on, did they show their feelings through the ballot box?, YES they voted them all back into office, don’t complain now.
Rebecca, your exactly right, we are a bunch of Neanderthals, and we are the lowest of the low when it comes to culture, so why then did SANDWELL Council build this abortion in the first place?????
Perhaps if Sandwell councillors actually got off their backsides and communicated with Sandwell Residents, they would have known that this abortion was the last thing we wanted.
A word of advice Rebecca, keep spreading the word that we still live in caves and have trouble speaking properly, it stops those South of Watford from coming here trying to educate us.
Guys hide all the history books, don’t let her see how our industries here in the proud Black Country, kept the world supplied with goods, and made Britain the Great Country it is.
Remember Rebecca, if you need anything made you come to the Black Country, its no good going to London they are all overpaid layabouts who are afraid to get their hands dirty.
Jim of Bearwood
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This is an example how people in power are so far out of touch with the good folk of the Black Country. Indeed if look successful attractions take a look up the road at the Black Country Museum, it reflects the hardship and pride of what is good about the past. I have to question the market research in such a project – remember the Dome? We never learn. West Bromwich does need an injection of Culture but not to this extent, I’m all for educating the populace, the next generation certainly needs it. I live in a part of the world were respect & moral fiber are the cornerstone of society. So maybe if you have a spare 60 million then this could be put to better use in our education system…
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Agree with 3. The Council are trying to upgrade and regenerate West Brom, problem is West Brom is full of philistines. To me it somewhere different to go on a Saturday afternoon to cheer yourself up when the weather is terrible and your team is away from home. As for the 70 people employed, surely it’s better they’re employed than on the dole.
If these types of projects weren’t undertaken occasionally, the landscape of this country would be a very different and very boring!
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Rebecca: this is not just West Brom, every major town in the civilised world have people you described, but to a lesser degree in most. Unfortunatley they are a result of a social structure that produces people that have no respect for each other or the environment in which they live. TO put it simply it is far too easy for them to be devoid of any ambition. These people are many and whats scary they have a vote…
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rebecca would you like to enlighten us where you actually live are you the same person who tells us to find a job nearer to where we live when you post about the price of fuel not being high enough
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Surely the question is whether or not ‘culture’ should be forced upon people, or whether the opportunity to soak up a bit of culture should be offered.
We have plenty of culture in the West Midlands because we have so much history. We don’t need people to tell us what we should be interested in.
But don’t forget that it was Labour councillors with their pathetic social engineering attempts who forced this through. Who wasted taxpayer’s money. Who didn’t consult with the people and decided what they needed.
Also, don’t forget that those same Labour councillors are currently trying to block an enquiry into how so much money was wasted. To cover their own hides.
Never has so much ‘other people’s money’ been spent on behalf of so many, by so few.
What a disgrace.
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how many people are going to say i told you so this will never pay for itself probably most of the population of west bromwich no more money should be wasted on this calamity the councilors think they know what is best for the people how out of touch can they be what annoys me the most is they will never face up to what they did was wrong the people who wrote that we are not cultured enough are right but did anyone ask if we wanted to be we perhaos are happy enough with a pie and a pint and a game of bingo we have never pretended to be anything else leave us alone iys what we like and stop wasting our money
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In reply to No 16: West Brom is not full of philistines. Yes we like change but We just think that the money spent on this building is far too much and especially as the country is in ressesion.
As for it somewhere different to go on a Saturday afternoon to cheer yourself up when the weather is terrible and your team is away from home, just how often do you visit the town and building? Im sure if you read these messages we all want a lessuire centre so we can unwined and relax without it cost us too much.
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I have no sympathy for the project, don’t get me wrong it is a good idea, but it is also a waist of public money, which could have been spent on something better such as the NHS or improving some of the roads in the West Midlands.
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Maybe some of the money could be spent on grammar lessons to educate the Philistines. I would like to see Rebecca stand as a local Councillor!
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