South Wales Evening Post - 13 October 2006
Hi-tech, cutting edge, state-of-the-art and world class, that is how the city council describes blueprints for the revamped Swansea Leisure Centre.
Details have been kept strictly under wraps for reasons of commercial confidentiality - police say the Taffia will try to steal them - and it was a condition of the contract that details be kept watertight.
"It was leaks about the leisure centre pool which finished off our Labour predecessors," gushed council leader Chris Holley at the signing ceremony.
Today, however, I can exclusively reveal for the first time that the blueprints for the new centre, which arrived in a plain brown envelope, in fact are strongly tinged with green.
Take heating. Out go the conventional boilers whose deterioration got councillor Lawrence Bailey and his Labour chums into such hot water, and in comes a revolutionary new system devised by the boffins at Technium IVc.
Using a ground-breaking hi-tech link between the leisure centre and County Hall - the old gas pipe they've spent months replacing - hot air will be pumped direct to the leisure centre from the council chamber.
"So long as there are councillors in the council chamber, there will be no shortage of supply," note the consultants.
In the unlikely event that back-up heating is needed, it will be provided by a special biomass boiler fuelled by mountains of unread minutes of council meetings and back copies of the Swansea Leader.
As for electricity, the centre will be entirely self-sufficient, and we're not talking about a couple of wind turbines perched on the roof, either! Thanks to the experts at Swansea's Digi-Tum, or Digital Technium IIIb, all the equipment in the fitness suites - treadmills, rowing machines, weights, exercise bikes, the lot - will connect with a series of mini-turbines to provide all the power the centre could need, with any surplus sold on to the National Grid.
And if ever there should be a shortage of willing customers to spark the leisure centre lighting into action?
"Community service orders, Asbos, curfews - the courts can provide a steady stream of treadmill fodder, as will the new compulsory slimming classes planned as part of the New Labour nanny state's war on obesity," the consultants comment, warning: "In extreme cases people will be detained indefinitely at Her Majesty's Leisure".
Throw in other refinements such as a wind-powered wave machine and a wave-powered wind machine, plus organic showers using recycled sweat, and the hush-hush new wood-burning microwaves planned for the cafeteria, and you can see why the leisure centre blueprint truly is a green light for change.
Ah, you're thinking, but where is the guarantee it will last? What is to stop it all ending in tears like last time?T
he rigorous maintenance schedules agreed under a multi-million pound contract with leading local contractor Hobble International (Dyfatty), that's what.
"Our motto tells you why we're world leaders in pro-active maintenance solutions," confided Hobble chief executive Dai Botcher.
"If it ain't broke, we don't fix it."
For complete peace of mind, there's also a new system of in-house coloured warning lights, just as there is in a car, lights that flash on all over the new-look leisure centre when (a) the maintenance backlog reaches £5 million (orange light); (b) it reaches £10 million (red light); and (c) the backlog reaches £14 million (the lights go out in a flash and the centre self-destructs along with County Hall).
Now that is world class.
