Poole Council - stupidity beyond belief

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/10359488.Bedlam_as_Twin_Sails_bridge_fails_again/

I have been waiting for an opportunity to write again about Poole Council, I did not have to wait very long. Poole Council relies on a number of unqualified, unsuitable, arrogant and incompetent people to make important decisions for the town, particularly on traffic. They largely ignore the public who they are meant to serve. They cover up dangerous and wasteful mistakes and carry on making them. They are even content to lie to try to cover up mistakes, and then cover up the lie!!

Although there are a number of examples, the latest has surprised even me. It demonstrates their inability to learn so extreme that it comes across almost as a deliberate attempt to see how much public cost and disruption they can possibly cause.

The unsuitability, unreliability and inefficiency of the new Twin Sails Bridge for both road and boat users, and the danger of its road system where I was nearly killed as a cyclist, are already well known. Poole Council pushed ahead with it without considering the protest of the people of Poole and have been completely unable to provide any evidence that any kind of proper project planning was done. 

A simple valve failure a week ago knocked it out for 9 hours and it seems incredibly that no spares are readily available. Did no one think about spares? Did no one think to insist that common and readily available components should be used in the design? Or that the contractor should agree to be able to deliver spares within 24h?

So, with the new bridge limping on half a system, operating more slowly and obviously the remaining components having to work harder and more likely also to fail, here’s what Poole council decided to do: Close the other bridge for non-critical maintenance!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So guess what happened? On the first day the old bridge was closed, the new bridge broke again. This is not funny as there were reports of an ambulance (with flashing blue lights) having to turn around and find another route. What happens if the RNLI have to get a boat out? Just to add the icing to the cake, the Upton sliproad was also closed which made it slower trying to get round the long way.

I’ll say it again, the stupidity of these councillors knows no bounds, they cannot be expected to learn, they must not be allowed the responsibilities they have mistakenly been given. That’s where I would like to comment on the leader Cllr Atkinson. I have been progressing an investigation into the lie about the £300,000 saving by the Fleetsbridge traffic lights claimed by the council. They refused to comment. I raised a complaint. They refused to deal with it. I passed it to Cllr Atkinson. She ignored it. I raised a complaint with the council about Cllr Atkinson. It was ignored.

Anyone behaving in a real company like this would cause it to go bust in days and would be likely to be investigated for fraud. But Councillors can make the same mistakes over and over and over again, the bills still get paid by the long suffering public and they can just ignore failure and complaint. Just recently, Cllr Atkinson has been going on about a financial "abyss" for Poole. Is it any wonder why? Does she even know that most people in the real world operate in a competitive environment where if you do not delight the customer at the minimum possible cost someone else does and you go out of business?