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SINKING SHIP?
It looks as though Derby City Council is getting
set to walk out from another of Derby's
magnificent buildings, namely the Council House,
before it falls down on top of them. Under the
management of one administration or another,
Derby has gone from being a fairly dynamic area
to an unco-ordinated urban sprawl, with nothing
at the centre and, most certainly, no-one capable
of administrating the place. In a similar vein to
the way in which the county council has allowed
Elvaston Castle to fall into rack and ruin and
without fully explaining what has happened to
that portion of taxpayers' money that was
supposed to pay for its upkeep, Derby City
Council has continued the rot through every
aspect of civic heritage.
There no longer appears to be anyone who is
enough of a statesman to be able to represent the
place properly. Everything - from hospital
services to the name of the local airport - has
either gone or is going to Nottingham. Derby City
Council does not even appear to be able to
successfully negotiate the settlements it seems
to value above all else, those with private
developers. The Roundhouse scheme is just one
that has fallen through and it is by no means a
measure of success when every building that is
knocked down and every space that becomes
available is filled with housing or offices.
Many of the "rescue" suggestions put
forward are for the building of a prestige hotel.
For such a thing to be warranted, there has to be
somewhere with prestige to visit. Thanks to
profligate spending by one administration after
another, Derby has fallen quite some way down the
ladder. The only thing that the council does seem
to be highly professional about is their total
ineptitude when it comes to balancing the books
and planning for the successful future of Derby.
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