SLIPPERY SLOPE OF FIASCOES

Columnist - 04 May 2005

It is a curious fact of local life that here in Swansea we never seem to get anything right. There is a terrible, crushing inevitability about the catalogue of errors that have plagued the city in recent years, from the political hokey-cokey which surrounded the closure of the leisure centre and the "will-they-won't they" saga which led up to an eventual (and costly) reprieve right through to the Slip Bridge fiasco, the irretrievable loss of David Evans which has since been transformed into a pound shop, and even the state of the central bus station, a place so unimaginably horrific that some people wait for a bus from inside the doorway of Debenhams.

And now we are told that a sloping playground at Swansea's showpiece £3.5 million Sketty Primary School (above) has been deemed unsafe because children have been falling down and hurting themselves on it.

The local education authority says that the closure of the playground is "not an embarrassment". No? Well, let me tell you, speaking as an expert to whom embarrassments of one sort or another are a daily occurrence, I have to say it seems pretty embarrassing to me.

Playgrounds, of course, are subject to health and safety guidelines just like everything else but this seems like a classic example of bureaucracy which has not only gone mad but is running around gibbering in its pyjamas with a pair of underpants on its head.

When I was a pupil at Mayhill Junior School (since when it has been ludicrously renamed Seaview Community School) I remember breaking through a sizeable gap in the railings in order to scramble about in the old bomb craters that were scattered on the grassy hillside sloping away from the building.

Now that was what I call a slope.

Try running down that hillside and the chances were you would not stop until you hit the wall of Dyfatty Flats.

And anyway, if health and safety is such a big priority, would someone please mind explaining to me why the council seem to think it is perfectly fine to place a hugely incongruous and potentially dangerous climbing frame on the promenade near the Cenotaph?

I refer of course to the metal span of the Slip Bridge, which - mark my words - will be attracting not only children and youths but drunken daredevils, vandals and graffiti artists when it is finally put in place on the promenade.

And what of the stone abutments which still stand on either side of Oystermouth Road without the metal span which once bridged the gap?

They are to become a new home for a kiosk and toilet facilities, with viewing platforms placed at the top.Hang on a minute - viewing platforms at the top? If replacing the span in its original position was supposedly flying in the face of new legislation regarding access for the disabled, then surely the same argument applies to the proposed viewing platforms which could only be reached by ascending the stone steps.

Unless, of course, those who are physically disadvantaged, elderly or otherwise unable to negotiate the climb would be expected to levitate to the uppermost level like the all-new "flying Dalek" in Doctor Who?

Back to the drawing board, folks - but try not to poke yourself in the eye with your pen or give yourself a paper cut: given the scope of today's health and safety laws, the consequences could be very costly indeed.