OPINION: Falinge: Lights, camera... obfuscation

“This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded a small country.” Clint Eastwood.

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I suppose by Hollywood standards, £54,000 is not much to spend on a film. I mean, it cost $200 million to make the film ‘Titanic’ (it only cost $7.5 million to build the original ship). However, this is not Hollywood, it’s dear old Rochdale or to be more precise, Falinge.

Yes, I know, the area has had more than its share of brickbats over the years. ‘Benefits Capital UK’ or ‘The Sickest Place In Britain’ is how it is described in the Daily Mail. So it was perhaps with the best of intentions to put in some community project to inject a bit of heart into the area. All well and good perhaps.

But whose bright spark idea was it to spend a whopping £54,000 of council tax payers’ money on a film to promote the area? Not only that, whose idea was it to award the contract, in total defiance of the rules or of good, old-fashioned common sense without first obtaining other quotes or putting it out to tender?

Another question I would like to ask was why Rochdale Online was forced to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the results of the internal audit. Is this a UK metropolitan borough council or the secret service department of North Korea that we are asking questions of?

Particularly damning was the conclusion that there was no way of measuring whether the project delivered any of its original aspirations or whether it represented any value for money whatsoever. Certainly the intention of providing “film group training for residents” has not as yet resulted in a mention in the BAFTAs or the Golden Globes.

In fact, without being unnecessarily cynical, the completed result is unlikely to cause Messrs Coppola or Spielberg any interruptions to their sleep.

This is the sort of woolly, hairy-fairy thinking that was much in evidence in the trippy-hippy communes of the 1960’s. It has no place in local government in the 21st century.

The overwhelming portion of blame here rests on the shoulders of council officers who seem to have taken it upon themselves to push this one through on the QT. This does not however let the elected councillors, and in particular the Liberal Democrats, off the hook. It did, after all, happen on their watch.

Camera crews are not, by their nature, invisible. Why was nobody asking questions? Why were councillors not doing what they are supposed to and calling council officers to account?

Will anyone’s head(s) roll over this? Will the officers concerned ever be identified? Will anyone incur disciplinary action for so flagrantly breaching standing Contract Procedure Rules? Without me needing to get the Hardcastle family crystal ball out let me make a crazy prediction here and guess that the answers will be ‘No’, ‘No’ and ‘No’ in that order.

Perhaps more pertinently, the question as to whether or not something like this will happen again cannot be answered to anyone’s satisfaction. After all, if the council can continue to shroud itself in the cloak of secrecy, can operate in seeming disregard of procedural rules, and refuse to name any guilty parties or subject them to disciplinary sanctions then it is almost certain that it WILL happen again.

The bungling, the inept and the downright incompetent seem to have a charter giving them the right to operate at will within the cosy, cloistered world of RMBC.

Next time you are in Rochdale Town Hall and you happen to hear a strange sort of rumbling noise, I’m not sure exactly what it is but I can tell you as sure as eggs is eggs what it isn’t...

The sound of anyone’s head rolling!