Gotta love the way the BBC always seeks an angle to undermine the CONSERVATIVE government. Earlier today, BBC Radio 4 Today ran a story about ..
A girls’ secondary school in south London has won the Riba Stirling Prize, the UK’s leading architecture award. Burntwood School in Wandsworth was rebuilt between 2011 and 2014 at a cost of £40.9m, to a design by architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.
Seems innocuous. It then interviewed one of the guys behind this project who pointed out that under the current Government, this school would not be built. Subtle subtext – evil tories! As ever…
That’s funny. The rebuild started in 2011 and finished in 2014. I seam to remember that the conservatives won the 2010 election. Perhaps they meant to say that it was not rebuilt under the last Labour government.
Typical BBC timelines. If something bad happens due to a left-over labour government policy they say the the government in {year} implemented…. or if anything bad happens due to any government anywhere in the world, they say “the government” without ever making it clear that it is due to the labour or a foreign government.
However if anything bad happens due to tory government policy, they BBC will make it very clear it is a conservative government policy, and get half a dozen other politicians, charities, NGO’s on to complain about it and hold a vox pop to ram the message home.
No mention of the cost of PFI that labour used to rebuild schools during their term. I do not expect the terms not to be as erroneous as the PFI NHS deals.
The last Labour government encouraged schools to bid for redevelopment; if they wanted a £10 million project they were told to go for something much bigger, £40 or £50 million. When it finally dawned on the socialists that the country was deep in the financial fertilizer, Ed Balls summarily cancelled many of these projects, leaving schools and colleges with bills running into millions for planning, public consultations and the like; in some cases, demolition of the old buildings was actually underway.
So, just as Callaghan began cutting three years before Mrs. T came into office, so Brown put the kibosh on new school buildings. But why let the facts spoil the BBC narrative?
A secondary school can be built for about £20-25 million, according to a friend who project manages them, and a local seconday school near us has been awarded £3m to expand by 20% suggesting a figure of £15m for a complete school.
Do the Maths. Who sanctioned such an enormous pile of cash to be spent on one school?.
Sounds like a new labour vanity project which slipped under the wire.
I sincerely hope the tories would not build such a school.