The Red Paint

LM has been keeping an unobtrusive ear to the student’s views of the college’s future. The more pessimistic see no future. The optimists are unsure. His abstract of this puts the continued existence of the institution at 50/50.

A feature of life here at the moment is the red paint on buildings by the roadside. The buildings get the red paint, and suddenly the police and bulldozers move in and there’s only rubble where a supermarket or car showroom once stood. The Leader of the country has said that even if the country’s prestige city centre development gets the red paint then it will go. The Men With the Red Paint have his full backing and blessing. The reasons are not clear, with several given, perhaps all of them have some validity: a no-nonsense enforcement of planning-permission breaches; road widening; a ruthless green-belt policy. Whatever.

This college is on the main road to the Airport, only half a kilometre south of the Leaders own residence. When the students heard a bulldozer in the grounds, here to help with clearing up after some refurbishment, they were sure our time for demolition was here.

Apart from the Red Paint, there is the fact that the project no-longer enjoys direct ministerial patronage – all ministries having recently been subsumed into a single committee. All of the former ministers are now apparently attending Leadership and Management courses in London, so they might be sympathetic on their return, L&M being this college’s raison d’être. And there is another rumour that the Leader’s son, no less, will take it under his wing...

We shall see. With the demise of TOHH, and news I got this morning that there are playgroups for my little girl out here, I’m content to stay for the foreseeable future – a couple of years, anyhow. If the college or The Bungalows aren’t bulldozed meanwhile.