Update on the Bike Of Three Wheels
Some of you may remember a previous blog called “A Tale of a Bike with Three Wheels” if not, here’s a refresher: https://thealternativecouncil.blog/2023/09/11/a-tale-of-a-bike-with-three-wheels/
That blog was written somewhat “tongue in cheek”, now however things have moved on apace and become somewhat more serious.
Not satisfied with a £30,000 grant to buy a ‘Bike of Three Wheels’ The Shropshire Cycle Hub” not only retained ownership of the ‘Bike’ but came back for another bite of the very lucrative cake to the tune of a further £14,000, a cake lest we forget is owned by the people of Oswestry, and not, as some people think totally for the benefit of Members of Oswestry Town Council .
Now we hear that the Shropshire Cycle Hub has closed its Shrewsbury shop, leaving the Oswestry site their only outlet. And now rumour has it that Oswestry Town Council are in an advanced stage of negotiation to award the building lease (currently handled by agents Bowens) and on the market for £25,000 per annum, to someone else as yet unknown.
All this under the governance of Councillor Duncan Kerr and his Green Party cronies.
What is going on? Perhaps we may be allowed to see evidence concerning the due diligence exercise conducted by Councillor Kerr.
We also had the £3,000 consultancy fee for the ill-fated “Puddle in the Park” that suddenly was found to be in the wrong place (after the consultant had been paid of course).
They also suddenly discovered that the charges envisaged by Severn Trent for the water used for the “Puddle” was far in excess of their first estimate.
I think the taxpayers of Oswestry are entitled to question their seemingly boundless talent for financial mismanagement.
The Alternative Town Council successes to date:
On 15th May Council meeting we had established the right to video record ALL Council meetings despite an objection from Councillor Sian Wadey
who had the temerity to interrupt Councillor Duncan Kerr whilst he was in full flow presenting yet another of his eternal Motions. How he likes the sound of his own voice.
Although the Clerk Arren Roberts rather tetchily suggested I was standing too close, the irony of how one can avoid standing anywhere in the Council chamber without being close to anyone seemed to escape him; but I suppose he had to say something lest he risk the charge of being biased by the Green Party members.
So, the premise is set, the Council do not now have an argument against installing video recording equipment for all meetings.
The fight for transparency goes on.
More recently we had the priceless woke of the week comment (I think I might make woke comments a regular feature) made by Councillor Sam Chadwick
when she objected to the terms “Honorary Freemen and Freewomen”.
After a debate that seemed to go on for an interminable time, our sagacious Councillors finally decided to go gender-neutral and settled on “Honorary Oswestrian”.
The jury is still out on that one!
The mysterious disappearance of Kinokultures cinema projector
In the last few weeks, it has been reported in the local press of the trials and tribulations of Oswestry’s only cinema, until recently run from 9 Arthur Street in Oswestry.
There was yet another ego driven Motion by Councillor Duncan Kerr wanting to spend even more of the Morrison’s windfall on buying the old Regal cinema in Leg Street and converting it back to the cinema of its “glory days” of yesteryear.
The way Duncan is spending it, there cannot be a lot of money left. But you can always rely on the Green Party to spend other people’s money, seemingly unaware of the consequence.
Our story begins back in 2009 When the company was first incorporated, its address at the time was in Llanfyllin. A small town over the border in Wales.
The directors of the company were Ian Garland, Jenifer Trythall and Ruth Carter. Ruth Carter resigned in the same year leaving Garland and Trythall as the sole directors, although I am told that Ruth was still involved.
The company was registered as Kinokriminalitat Ltd, strange name, almost Teutonic, and what does it have to do with Kinokulture the cinema? There is a simple explanation really; Kinokriminalitat Ltd was the company name and Kinokulture was its trading name, simple, why two company names? Who knows? And like a lot of things Teutonic difficult to pronounce. (for me anyway)
Total assets in their first set of accounts was £143 – still, out of little acorns etc.
It was in 2011 that the company applied for a grant from the Market Towns Revitalisation Programme (MTRP), the infamous organisation of Legacy Grant fame.
MTRP an acronym guaranteed to make Shropshire Council officers, past and present, pale of face and to grimace like constipated rabbits.
A report prepared by Glenys Davies the Facilities Manager for the Finance and General Purposes Committee of Oswestry Town Council (OTC) to consider the funding bid by Kinokulture:
Council Members voted in favour of the grant. Thankfully, this time they managed to steer clear of State Aid Regulations unlike previous dips into the financial pockets of Shropshire Council.
Note the clever interchange of company names from Kinokriminalitat Ltd to Kinokulture; well, would you give funding to a company whose name you couldn’t even pronounce?
Little was known about the company in its early days other than it occasionally used the Attfield Theatre situated in the Guildhall to provide film nights.
But there was a fly in the proverbial; Kinokulture wanted to show the latest films, and these films were no longer available in 35mm film. Also, it would seem logical to want their own cinema.
And so, a move from the Attfield Theatre to No 9 Arthur Street was engineered. Hence an MTRP grant, try that one now and you will send council officers putting their collective heads under the blanket until the nasty ghost of Christmas legacy past has passed by.
Kinokulture had to go digital. Or Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) compliant projection equipment to give it its proper name, and this cost money. Enter MTRP with £2.5 million sloshing around in their trousers. And we all know from experience that if you give money to the Council is like giving them new laws: they will spend it, mostly unwisely.
The project, backed by approximately £50,000 of public funds, was scheduled for completion in 2012. Fast forward to 25th April 2015, and KINOKRIMINALITAT Ltd morphed into KINOKRIMINALITAT CIC (Community Interest Company)—a quicker route than becoming a charity.
And all went well until the dreaded Covid reared its ugly head.
The plot thickens when KINOKRIMINALITAT Ltd recently encountered trouble with their landlord, The United Reformed Church (West Midlands) Trust Ltd and had to vacate the premises.
This prompted the next mystery: what happened to the £50,000 worth of equipment owned by Oswestry Town Council? No one seems to know, or they’re not saying.
Extracting information from Oswestry Town Council is a Herculean task at the best of times, but on this matter, they are even more tight-lipped.
And never forget, a condition of the MTRP Grant was conditional on the ownership of the equipment remaining with Oswestry Town Council, although mysteriously the equipment has yet to appear on the Asset Register.
The plot thickens when we find out that KINOKRIMINALITAT CIC is still an active company, having filed new accounts on 4th April 2024 at a time when they did not have any premises. A new company was incorporated, KINOKRIMINALITAT Ltd, but they have yet to appoint any directors.
However, it has been registered with the Financial Conduct Authority as a Community Benefit Society. One prerequisite of such a society is having at least three founder members, thus the arrival of Councillor Alison Layland, a Weston Rhyn parish councillor and erstwhile member of Extinction Rebellion (XR).
Well at least they won’t be troubled by protests by Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil.
Then the pièce de résistance: on 15th May 2024 meeting of Oswestry Town Council, Councillor Duncan Kerr proposed a Notice of Motion, which reads as follows:
“I am sure that Members will join me in thanking Ruth and Ian for their years of dedication and commitment over the last decade and equally wish the film club well in showing classic films at various venues around town. The benefits of a cinema are well understood by Shropshire Council, who are planning to build a brand new cinema as part of their Shrewsbury shopping centre refurbishments using money provided by the government from levelling-up programmes. It is extremely disappointing, and a contradiction to the aims of this programme, to see money used to increase provision in an affluent town that already has several film venues, in preference to provision in the more economically deprived second-largest town in the County. Recognising that the Council still has the legacy of a windfall capital receipt and has determined that this should be used to revitalise the town centre economy, it is moved that the Council instruct the Clerk to commence negotiations with the owners of the Regal to acquire the freehold of the building so that the Council can then work with operators to re-establish it as a multiscreen cinema. This may mean a readjustment of work programmes to free up resources.”
“Economically deprived”? Makes our beautiful town sound like The Seventh Ward, New Orleans, for those of my friends that don’t know, Seventh Ward is probably the most dangerous place to live or visit in the city. But Oswestry being described as “Economically Deprived” is a insult.
I may be a cynical old so and so, but if we join the dots, we see a cinema company without a home, and a councillor proposing to use taxpayers’ money to provide them with a new refurbished building that used to be a cinema.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
I don’t think this will end well with this Council’s seemingly boundless talent for financial mismanagement.
The Alternative Council 