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In the wake of the recent news about the possible demise of Nirah, Bedfordshire on Sunday has delivered a blistering attack on the County Council:

 

Bankrupt authority loses last shred of credibility

It is Bedfordshire County Council not Nirah that should be wound up. It is the county council which is bankrupt of ideas and moral authority.

If the county council was a private organisation it would have been consigned to the financial knackers yard long ago.

It is less than a year ago that the county council, through its own folly, had to pay more than £7million to get rid of the underperforming Hyder Business Services (HBS) to which it had sub-contracted many of its duties.

Unless a miracle (such as an outburst of competence) occurs, it will have thrown another £1.5million of council taxpayers' money after it, about £52 for every single home within its administration in the past year alone. This in an organisation which is already the third highest council taxing shire county.

Unlike HBS, Nirah would bring only benefits to the area: thousands of jobs – many highly skilled – millions of tourists, tens of millions of pounds, iconic buildings, replacing one of the brickpits which disfigure the middle of the county.

Familiarly, the county says it's all for the scheme while placing obstacle after obstacle in its way. It is all too reminiscent of the history of Willington Rowing Lake which the council publicly supported even while working behind the scenes to scupper it. Now it wants a dust and noise assessment on what is presently a quarry.

Nirah is fed up to the back teeth with the county council and is likely to give up on Bedfordshire and take the scheme to America where it already has indications of interest from Harvard University.

It is not just Nirah that Bedfordshire stands to lose. At the beginning of the Nirah project, civil servants from the Government east of England department (GO East) said that they had almost given up on Bedfordshire because nothing ever seemed to come to fruition here.

They have enthusiastically supported Nirah, and the East of England Development Agency put in another £1.5million of public money.

While EEDA is not without responsibility for the debacle, it is fair to say that as far as GO East is concerned it will have proved that Bedfordshire is not an area into which it is worth investing time and money for the forseeable future.

Is this what we want? And do we want to be represented by people who allow officers, no matter how well-intentioned, to make up their minds for them.

In the darkest days of World War II, a backbench MP quoted the word of Oliver Cromwell to Neville Chamberlain's administration: ‘You are too long sat here for any good that you do. Be gone and let us have done with you.

In the name of God, go', Is there anybody at County Hall with the courage to do likewise? "