Our local council spent over £30k on a crappy, knackered old rowing boat and some gravel/rocks on a roundabout.
They also refused to spend £30k on a structural crack at the theatre I was a tech at & taught/performed at.
Thanks to the utter batshittery of a court case that the council lost, with over £30M being awarded in damages (a councillor took a backhander when a shopping centre was built, breaching a contract with another developer, that twunt lived locally to us as kids & he was a mean, nasty old bastard we nicknamed ‘Flathead’).
And bingo, the theatre was pulled down to make way for flats to raise capital to pay the damages.
There is another theatre in the district (we flowed between the two), but it had well under half the seats so we never got the big names or productions in. But hey, it was attached to the council offices, in the nicer part of the district, and the bigger one was in the neighbouring ‘not middle class, rough around the edges’ town.
The smaller one was where you’d get AmDram middle class dross, whereas at the bigger one we had Motörhead, David Essex, Jasper Carrot, Rik Mayall (my fav as a teen), Norman Wisdom, Chas & Dave, touring theatre productions like Little Shop of Horrors, Rocky Horror… too many to remember, and big all out pantos with well known actors (although Bruno Brookes was an odd choice on one lol). And fabulous crew parties where I met my DH!
Not bothered if I’m outed here. I’m inconsequential in the grand scheme of life.
Sure, when our theatre was pulled down and the pantos switched to the Arty Farty theatre, it was ok just, not the same.
Less seats, smaller stage, nothing quite as grand as we could achieve.
I started there at 15 (on work experience) and at 51, our crew are still good friends (even though we’ve spread around the world).
All because some twunt got a backhander & breached a contract.
Bastards the lot.