levelling up? yeah right

Our wonderful government in Westminster has embarked on a programme it calls "Levelling Up" whereby money is funnelled into the more deprived areas of the UK to create better jobs and environments in those areas.

It's utterly flawed of course, with more money seemingly going to the south east of the country where admittedly there is social deprivation but certainly not to the levels elsewhere in the UK which are left with some scraps.

Wales, being a largely poor nation received its "share" of this fund and Welsh Government has recently announced where it will be spent.

So, in the ravaged former mining valleys then?  North-east Wales which has more than its fair share of problems?  Former steel towns decimated by the closures of factories?  Sports and community centres across the country to help improve the general feel of especially poor areas?

invest here...

Nope.

It's all (£50 million) going, along with a further £50 from Welsh Government itself to the already affluent capital to provide a metro link from the city centre to the seat of "power" in the bay where a massive new indoor arena is also being built and will obviously benefit massively from this new infrastructure.

It really does make me cross, but I'm not in any way surprised.  It seems like it's always a case of what the capital wants, the capital gets and screw-you to the rest of the nation*.

This money isn't meant for vanity projects.  It's supposed to genuinely improve the lives of people in under-developed, poorer regions and not on shiny new trains and stations in an already very rich part of the country.

Sour grapes on my part?  A little maybe, but since the formation of a deveolved government here in Wales, the whole country has had to watch on while millions after millions of taxpayers money has been ploughed into the capital city, while our hospitals are overcrowded and educational standards are among the worst in the whole of Europe.

I, along with 2.5 million other people would love to see some of that money spent wisely and prorpely, and not on yet another shiny tower block in Cardiff Bay

Levelling up?  yeah, rightio…

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* there is the rather funny story of their swimming pool though.  When a national swimming centre with olympic standard 50 metre pool was granted to Swansea, councillors in Cardiff immediately lobbied Welsh Government saying that it's not fair as everything for Wales should be built there.

don't be so silly

Somehow a large sum of money was found down the back of a sofa somewhere to placate said councillors and their pool was built in their "International Sports Village" (yes they wanted and got one of those too). 

Anyway, after the pool was constructed, it seems that the contractor got things monumentally wrong, measuring the pool's 50 metres without allowing for the width of the pool tiles.  So the whole (ludicrously expensive) thing is a complete white elephant.  They'll probably have another one in a couple of years 

though so don't worry!!

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Also there's no need to worry about there being no video to watch this week.  My latest offering, all about a lens (how terribly exciting) is just down here: