Cabinet Member for Education needs to do her homework

In front of a packed public gallery at the RCT Council meeting on 30^th October Cabinet Member for Education Eudine Hanagan showed that the pressure is clearly getting to her. As the meeting progressed she became more and more irate and lost any semblance of the professionalism that the public have a right to expect.

So much for any pretence that RCT is a ‘member led’ Authority, when a question was posed by the Plaid leader with regard to how much notice was taken of the consultation responses - which put education as a high priority - when the nursery cuts were being discussed, she referred it to an Officer.  Surely the public have a right to expect more from a highly paid Cabinet Member who is supposedly working full time overseeing the policies and direction of the Education department?

Worse was to come as she allowed her temper to get the better of her, and let slip a few things that her colleagues may have preferred she didn’t say in public and that would surely have had the PR department, run by her son, cringing.

“There are far worse things to come” she spat out which will have everyone wondering just what the Council have in mind next that could be worse than the proposals to cut back on full time nursery education and provision for meals on wheels, libraries, youth services and day centres.

Just when will they announce these catastrophic cuts - before or after they finish the consultation on the present round? Who will they hit next?

She went on to give a prime example of the Labour party’s thinking and the motivation behind both the current proposals and others. Again in answer to a question from the Plaid leader she said

“When we wanted to close a school in your area to save money you fought against it.”

The school referred to is Caegarw in the Cynon Valley.  There was a proposal to amalgamate it with Mountain Ash Comprehensive creating a 3 to 18 through school, a proposal which was eventually turned down by the Cabinet after a strong public campaign. 

Cllr Hanagan’s comments serve to show that the Cabinet have little concern for the public or for providing first class services, it is all about saving money.