Whoops another SNP pledge has already run out of time to be completed.
Having promised to match the Labour/Lib Dem executive school building programme 'brick for brick', having scraped PPP/PFI whilst dithering over Scottish Futures Trust (SFT), there is no time left. The school building has stalled since May 2007 when the Nats took control but the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Spice) says that the minimum time from commission to completion of a new school was 3 years in East Lothian but the average was three and a half.
The Nationalist Government has promised to commission its first new schools by later this year but as of yet with no SFT the question has to be where is this funding coming from. So when will they be able to go ahead with laying its first brick before it even thinks it can match as promised?
Therefore there is not enough time for the SNP to get any new school commissioned and built before the next elections in 2011. So we have another SNP fail.
You're right there. The last lot signed the new school here in 2002 and it's just been opened so, at that rate, the SNP will need 7 years from start to finish and that's nearly two terms by my calculations.
ReplyDeleteWhat would you rather have, schools built by sensible funding policies or schools built and to hell with how much they're going to cost further generations? The latter seems to be your preference, the former is mine.
Yes it's taking a long time to find the right style of funding but it's worth the wait in my opinion.
I'm couldn't give toss if some manifesto pledge has been broken, which is just as well, because the libdem/labour admin broke far more than they made.
I admit that PPP/PFI was far from perfect. But anything is better than nothing. There are schools that need replacing or major overhauls which look like they will not get carried out in the immediate future.
ReplyDeleteAs for Lab and Lib Dem pledges there were a fair number of those acheived. Yes even the Lib Dems as junior partners. Now I admit that neither party acheived everything, that was the point of power sharing but many of the key ones were acheived. The SNP are laying off of the key ones one after another. LIT, SFT, class sizes. All to the front and fore not hidden away in the small print just for starters.