Today instead of covering the story, I became it after being stuck in the snow for four hours. I left the newsroom prepared for the cold weather (see left) and headed to Hulland Ward near Ashbourne to do a radio car story for the breakfast show. I parked the vehicle in a drive off the main road and after doing the interview decided to head to Ashbourne to report live on the effect of the snow there. What I didn't realise was that from where I'd parked - on a gradient - and despite desperate attempts by myself and the friendly people who lived there, I was going nowhere.
Every few days I receive press releases from Cardiff Council as it's quite a useful way of keeping apace with Council activities. However, an email press release I received yesterday shows how Cardiff Council's press office is both incompetent and involved in making up quotes before an event has actually happened. This, for a service funded through taxation!Have a read of the press release (let me remind you that Portsmouth beat Cardiff in yesterday's FA Cup final)...
'17/05/2008 For Immediate Release PR 3439
WELCOME HOME BLUEBIRDS! Cardiff is ready to welcome home the Bluebirds in style after their epic win against Portsmouth at Wembley yesterday and fans are being urged to come out to show their support for the team and their amazing victory.
The capital is ready to celebrate with manager Dave Jones and his team as they bring world football's most famous club trophy back to Cardiff tomorrow.
Cardiff Council in partnership with the club and South Wales Police, has arranged for a victory bus tour through the city on Sunday, May 18 should the team triumph.
To celebrate the achievements of the team, Cardiff residents and City fans will have the chance to see the famous trophy and welcome the players home as they ride around the city on an open-top double-decker bus.
The tour will begin at Roald Dahl Plass in Cardiff Bay at 2.30pm when two blue and white decked buses, one carrying the players, the other their wives and families, will make their way through the city.
The tour will head for the city centre along Lloyd George Avenue, Callaghan Square and up through St Mary Street and High Street, Duke Street, Kingsway, Boulevard de Nantes and concluding at City Hall.
There will be no full road closures but a rolling road closure will be in place and the buses will be escorted by police vehicles.
The Lord Mayor elect of Cardiff, Kate Lloyd will accompany the team on their bus tour throughout the city. Kate Lloyd said: "I know that the people of Cardiff will want to thank the city players for ending the 81 years drought and bringing the FA Cup back here. "This is the chance for all fans and residents to see the cup and the team. I'm sure the atmosphere will be wonderful."
(ends)Cardiff Council Press Officer Andrea Currie.'
This email was promptly followed by another from the sender with the correct 'Cardiff lost, come and meet the team' press release.
Surely a press office getting quotes before the event is unacceptable and amounts to deceiving the public. Perhaps I'm a little naive and this sort of thing goes on in all press offices, but I do hope not.
Here's a TV news report that my coursemate Dan and I put together. 3 minutes of TV takes a surprising amount of time to create and we spent the equivalent of two and a half days on it. We had to negotiate carefully with the headteachers of the two schools whether they were willing to let us film the schoolchildren and interview them. Dan is presenting the news here and did the filming of the story.
School reorganisation is a massive issue in Cardiff at the moment with some parents passionately against, and some (less vocal) in favour of the changes the Council are proposing. Put simply, there is a surplus of school places in the English-medium sector and not enough room for the children of parents who want them to go to Welsh-speaking schools. On top of this, there are a number of schools in the capital in desperate need of repair.
I'm glad I'm not one of the politicians having to try and sort this one out!
I was daunted before we started the 3 minute TV news story task but thanks to Dan and I working really well together and with the cooperation of the headteachers, we created a story I'm proud of.
This is a radio programme feature about Cardiff Council's proposal to build a school in the Llanrumney recreation ground - I also covered the story as an online feature (below). It is an assessed part of my course and is intended for 'Good Morning Wales' on BBC Radio Wales for broadcast on Friday 14th December. The piece starts with an intro from a presenter:Here's my online article that I discussed in a blog a few months ago.
My video intro to the story
Cardiff Council is locked in a heated clash with a group of local residents in the east of the city over a proposal to build on an extensive green open space. The Council wants to knock down Rumney High and Llanrumney High Schools and build one new school and leisure centre where the two schools geographically meet – on the Llanrumney recreation ground.
The proposal is part of a plan to deal with long-standing problems in Cardiff’s school set-up. Councillor Bill Kelloway (pictured below) is in charge of Education in the Cardiff and is adamant that major changes need to be made to the organisation of Cardiff’s schools: “We have far more places in our schools than we have children to fill them - and a fifty to sixty million pound repairs backlog”.
The proposal has been met with indignation as the recreation ground has over five hundred trees and a number of football and rugby pitches. Eight thousand people have signed a petition launched by the Rumney Recreation and Eastern Leisure Centre Action Group to stop the development. The group organises popular campaign meetings at the local British Legion club and distributes leaflets to all the houses in the locality. During a recent meeting Don Taylor, the group's chairperson (pictured below), rallied his hundred and fifty troops to oppose the Council’s proposal. He explained to me why he is so passionate about holding on to the green space: “We’re in the middle of an urban sprawl, we need the open space. It’s our jewel in the crown, our oasis”.
Councillor Kelloway however wants people to remember that a significant proportion of the recreation ground would still be open for public use: "There would still be plenty of space there for pitches and for people to walk their dogs”. In fact around a third of the recreation ground would be taken up by the new school and leisure centre, which you can see in the Council’s diagram (below).
I decided to have a good look round the recreation ground and bumped into Joan Lathen (pictured below), a resident of Llanrumney, on her daily dog walk. She has been walking her dog round the rec for around thirty years and is angry with the Council: “I think it’s terrible, because so many people use the recreation ground, from children to pensioners. Everybody uses it all day long. It’ll be chaos if the school is built with the traffic and everything”.
(Click here to listen to my interview with Joan)
The Council has put its schools plan out for public consultation which ends today. Whether the Llanrumney proposal goes ahead or not will partly depend on the public’s response. As part of this consultation, a public meeting was organised to discuss the Llanrumney proposal. Two hundred disgruntled residents turned up with placards (pictured below) to let the Council officers and Councillor Bill Kelloway know their thoughts on the proposal. One of the first points from the floor summed up the sentiment in the room: “We’re all going to be fighting this, you won’t take our land off us”, and later in the two-and-a-half hour meeting, a lady shrieked to mighty applause: “We’ll demonstrate and say enough is enough, you're not going our parklands away from us!” .
However this meeting, like the Rumney Recreation and Eastern Leisure Centre Action Group meetings, was dominated by people in their sixties and above - you do wonder whether everyone in the community would agree with the campaign to stop the development. How about the parents of the children who would benefit from the new school on the site? I spoke to Bill Kelloway at his office in County Hall and this was the point he wanted to get across to the community: “Don’t be blinkered. Look at the advantages to the community, particularly to the schools communities, who at present are operating in pretty sub-standard conditions.”
But Don Taylor and the rest of the campaign group believe the new school and leisure centre would not only take away precious green space but also cause serious problems for the community with the inevitable increase in traffic that a new school would bring. They are determined to get their voice heard: “We will fight it; they have to listen to us. They have to respond to the voice of the people.”
If the controversial proposal goes ahead, by September 2012 there will be a new school and leisure centre for the Rumney and Llanrumney community on their beloved recreation ground.
A new school here in 2012? The Llanrumney recreation ground
I would like to look at the fierce debate currently taking place between Cardiff Council and a group of local residents.
