The latest community use user figures for the White Elephant Enclosure have been released and they show that the spirit of the Smalltown Culture and Arts Manager (SCAM) is still very much alive.
The figures cover the two month period of February and March, with the numbers either being entered as a total for the full two months or on a per week basis.
For example, the number of attendees at the claimed by the Smalltown RocknRoll Choir is 50 members per week, whilst the Smalltown Singing Club shows a figure of 117 for the two month period which, given that each member has been counted at least eight times during this period, actually equates to 15 users per week.
The Smalltown Blue Babies Club claims 75 users over the two month period – nine per week. With similar numbers also claimed for the Smalltown Art Club.
The Smalltown Hurling Group lists the number of users at 113, but closer examination reveals that this is also over a two month period and therefore only 14 members attend per week.
Both the Smalltown Average Entertainment Society and the Re-enactment Theatre Group figures are entered on a weekly user basis, probably because listing the claimed number of users on a two-monthly basis would immediately raise suspicions, given that the user numbers are claimed to be 40 and 30 per week respectively.
When all the figures are adjusted to be on the same footing it becomes apparent that only around 160 people use the facility on a weekly basis – coincidentally around the same number of people who signed the petition to ‘Save the WEE’.
With the population of Smalltown and Dullbridge being around 20,000 this means that only 0.8 percent of residents use the WEE for a community activity.
Although each of these groups do pay a fee to hire the WEE, the facility still needs a huge injection of Council Tax Payer’s money to benefit a mere 160 people.
With so many other community facilities being available for use in both Smalltown and Dullbridge, it seems strange that the Council should continue to support this one venue. Dullbridge Community Centre, which shared the recent Dullbridge Festival of Arts events with the WEE, is particularly underused and it is to be assumed that the seven groups currently using the WEE could be easily accommodated elsewhere.
(It should be noted that in true SCAM-style the bottom of the listing confirms that the numbers have once again been supplied by a random number generator.)