It's not just the cost, which also, apparently, includes a few benches and sculptures on the nearby Morfa Wetlands, it's a dangerous distraction to drivers along the busy and accident prone A40.
Also, by any stretch of the imagination, it looks bloody awful. The result of some brainstorming session that went horribly wrong. That's just my personal opinion, and I'm not averse to public art, but as 'gateway signage' goes (the terminology is used to justify the enormous expense), I've seen better.
And if nothing else, the timing is not great.
Sensing something of a backlash over the cost, Emlyn Dole and the press office have been hurriedly spinning the yarn that it's part of a wider scheme and part-funded from EU community grants, Rural Development funds and section 106 money, as if it all just fell out of the sky, hoping no one realises that it's all public cash. The rest of it is coming from council funds. This does nothing to enhance or help the local community, by any EU standards, and using Section 106 money? From where?
Playgrounds, school facilities please, not a vanity project and a photo opportunity for Emlyn Dole.
They're currently being shy with the actual cost breakdown.
It has, naturally, been several years in the making, involving consultants, designers, artists, manufacturers etc, none of which, I notice, come from anywhere near Carmarthenshire. The designers are from north Wales and the company making the letters resides in Yorkshire. It is, apparently, a sculpture, not just a sign.
Under construction
Artist's impressions of finished sign
Pics from Carmarthen Journal
The finished sign! Oh dear....and it runs parallel to the A40
(Pic source; Media Wales)
All views welcome.
Update 1st June
As per my comment below, the council have finally said that this sign cost £136,000. Or that's how much they'll admit to anyway. Absolutely shocking. Whoever signed this off, and decided it was a great use of public money needs to be relieved of their duties immediately.
25 comments:
So, you drive from Johnstown in Carmarthen, join to the A40 to be reminded your taxpayers money has been spent on a sign informing you that you are where you started.
Thank God for that! For a moment I was in a parallel universe where my tax money was being used wisely but woke up and was reminded I'm still in the wild wild west where fools and money are easily parted, particularly when its not their money.
I don't mind public art either, but £350,000 for something that looks like a soggy carboard school art project in the midst of falling down seems like taking the p!ss, when there's so much more pressing stuff to spend money on...
Were the constituents in Carmarthen asked for their input on this massive amount of funding. When is The Plaid Leader of this Council going to face reality and actually act in the best interest of all, not just a boost for his own already enlarged ego?
Please can you confirm the rage is against one sign? There are other signs, information boards and even seats placed around the wetlands area. Rob James is promoting his own message on Facebook triggered by this sign.
Yes it is a travesty they didn't work with more local artists, sign makers.
@william price
It appears to me, given the 300+ comments on the Carmarthen Journal social media posts that the rage is against this sign. Or bemusement, from some, at the very least. It's not just the cost, it's how it looks.
As I made clear in my post above the cost apparently included some benches etc around the wetlands area, although I suspect, given the designers, artists and engineers involved, the main expense was this sign.
In any event, knock off a couple of noughts and you get somewhere near what it should have cost, including a few fancy benches.
For £350,000 you could eliminate parking charges in Carmarthen for a couple of years, a far more welcoming gesture to motorists, and retailers, in my opinion!
Please, Oh Please can we have a simple sign (an arrow will suffice) indicating the gateway to the Amman Valley.
All projects appear to go towards Carmarthen and Llanelli.
Covid vaccinations for Amman Valley residents were in Llanelli, Carmarthen, Jersey Marine, Gorseinon and other distant venues (there were a few at local surgeries though) and I believe one or two further afield.
Amman Valley this way ->->-> (cost around £250 max).
Wake up councillors, do the job you are paid for - support the constituents that selected you. If you don't do so then builders merchants will run out of plywood.
Private Eye?
The Carmarthen Journal are reporting that two Plaid county councillors, Alun Lenny and Gareth John are 'dismayed' with the location of the sign, it “has not turned out as anticipated” and did not reflect the artist’s impression.
In the understatement of the year, it appears they will try and get it moved. I've no idea where.
They stopped short of saying it looks awful, it’s clearly too expensive to go back to the drawing board.
A total PR disaster.
The Plaid duo, sensing the unfolding disaster, are grandly calling for an ‘enquiry’, led by chief executive Wendy Walters and Plaid Council Leader Emlyn Dole into what went wrong.
Good luck with that.
While they’re at it, you'd think they'd call for an ‘enquiry’, or better still an ‘inquiry’, as to how the former chief executive Mark James accepted £mms in personal bribes and rigged the Wellness Village tender, right under their very noses.
Alun Lenny was defending this sign on Facebook in discussion with me this weekend. Only after the outcry did he change his tune.
I mean, 'Don't worry, the sign only cost £11K to erect, we spent £339K on the rest of the scheme and here >> Insert map & pretty pictures of dozens of benches, paths, etc << is what you got for the money' would be a good response to this. That they didn't offer that defence suggests that they couldn't, & they spent £15K on a couple of overpriced benches that will be overgrown with brambles & the rest went on that sign...
Crazy cash waster from a Crazy Council.
Even in the artist's impression the sign looks like it has fallen backs in the wind into the bushes !
There is a good piece of public art in ammanford - the boars but its in the wrong place should be in town instead of the brick wall outside Home Bargains
Thats local knowledge for you !
Give it 6 months and it will have disappeared into the undergrowth, or as council likes to achieve with problems it cannot deal with, ie into the long grass.
A shocking waste of tax-payers money, none of which were consulted. Misappropriation of funds, should be paid for out of the pockets of the idiots that approved this nonsense. When will they realise who exactly they work for?
Further to 28th May re Mark James and the Wellness scandal - there are rumours that Andrew Rowe CEO of Swansea UNi is moving on - no link yet to the dismissals of the Wellness scandal and the lack of any prosecution
Anon 10:49
I think you mean Andrew Rhodes, the Registrar and Chief Operating Officer at Swansea Uni. He announced he was moving on a few days ago. He was excellent at the Uni, and instrumental in exposing the Wellness scandal.
This is what happens when the electorate vote in councillors of very limited ability and sense of public awareness and duty, who have an insatiable appetite to spend and waste other peoples money utterly recklessly - particularly when there are other very much more necessary, deserving and needy causes crying out for funds.
Perhaps if they were called upon to fund these projects out of their own pockets and (over-generous) allowances and expenses the outcome would be different and far more sensible!
They all need to be put on the dole and "out to grass"!
This was a type of project that gave European funded projects such a bad name
These are coming to an end now via Brexit what will replace them will be in the hands of the Tory Govt in Westminster and you will need to vote in a Tory MP before you get any funding for your area as seen in the NE of england
As its our money they should invite us to vote on their vanity projects. Sadly they wont as they know what the outcome would be.
Says it all.
On the point of location, who decided that? Surely it would have been more appropriate on a site westbound into the town, ie the M4, A48, ie the majority of the UK....or was it just to impress the motorists from Pembrokeshire?!
Would have been better on the other side of the bridge to point the quickest way out.
Where were Highways ? Were they informed of the location ?
After a week the council has come up with a figure of £136,000 for the sign alone. The cost of a modest family home...
B&Q is only just across the road, they could have done it for 1% of that price had they shopped there.
Disgraceful waste of money, irrespective of where it comes from. Its still public money and would have been better spent re-investing in the community.
Never mind, wont be long before the weeds take control and it disappears for good. Wish most of the morons in charge would do likewise... Lets face it, they couldn't run a tap without bringing in consultants.
Holy ****!
If you count the 35 letter panels, including the many that are blank so could accurately be described as 'bits of wood', & allow that the letters were cut out of other bits of wood by a bit of software on CNC router table probably using a standard off the shelf font as character design, that's £4000 a panel...
Those panels made from Stainless Steel and Laser cut would cost in the region of £100 per letter (max).
We need names on this deal - it stinks.
I bet on plywood, but it could also easily be plastic or fibreglass, just because I don't believe those posts could support that area of signage if it was made of decent gauge steel, but who knows! Even if it was good quality decently thick stainless steel, I still can't see it coming in at much over £400 a 'letter'. If it's - say - painted, coated or galvanised mild steel, less than that. Clearly you have to pay the 'creative', but I'd very much want to see the brief the council gave them before I accepted that their 'work' here was ever worth a 6 figure sum...
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