WITH Worcester City Council still £5.2 million short of being able to afford the swimming pool it ultimately wants, it’s time to think outside the box for help.

The University of Worcester, NHS, county council, you name it, they’ve all been name-checked in the desperate hunt for the extra money needed to make a £13.5 million pool a reality. But one politician reckons he’s got the best idea yet.

Councillor Paul Denham, the city’s deputy Labour group leader and a man who likes to travel, has just returned from a holiday in Iceland.

Over there he says “90 per cent” of pools are actually outside, and benefit from none of the expensive costs of these sheltered UK facilities.

“I’ve just returned from Iceland, a country considerably colder than ours, and they have managed to build them outside, which I understand is cheaper,” he said. “Why not look at it?

It’s just a thought.”

In Iceland the southern parts average about freezing during the winter, while northern areas hover about -10C, although it often plunges far lower.

In the current, erm, climate of austerity it may well be councillors have to carry on thinking of weird and wacky ideas like this to make a breakthrough.

I look forward to seeing Duncan Sharkey, Simon Geraghty, Jabba Riaz and the rest of Worcester’s great and good shivering over cocktails at the launch of Worcester’s new (freezing) pool in February 2016. Brrr.

 

LORD Heseltine’s review into growth was largely accepted by the Government last week, apart from the suggestion district councils be scrapped in favour of unitary authorities.

Welcome news for councillors, but also for Worcester MP Robin Walker.

It’s little known that his father, the late Lord Peter Walker, hated the creation of the old Hereford and Worcester Council in 1974, and spent many a year around the dining table with his then young son lamenting it as a terrible mistake.

 

TAKE a look at this new Twitter picture of West Worcestershire MP Harriett Baldwin. What is she looking at? It’s probably a pie in the sky. A bit like Dave’s chances of remaining PM beyond 2015