Red Tattoo Ink in Wales: You won’t believe what UK taxpayers are funding

National Review ^ | 08/13/2014 | Katherine Timpf

[SeekAndFind]

The Welsh government is defending a program that spends taxpayer money on free tattoo-design classes, saying they are “carefully structured to help people develop confidence.”

“The ‘design your own tattoo’ session should not be taken at face value, as it is carefully structured to help people develop confidence and important skills,” a spokesman for the Bridgend council, which is hosting the class, said in an interview with the Guardian.

The confidence-building tattoo class is definitely ridiculous — but no more so than many of the country’s other job-creation efforts.

In fact, the class is just one part of a £75 million ($126 million) government program called ”Communities First,” intended to “narrow the economic, education/skills and health gaps between our most deprived and more affluent areas,” and Bridgend is certainly not the only Welsh city to spend that money questionably.

Ebbw Fawr has used Communities First funding to offer a “Guitar Making Workshop” that is intended to create “aspirations and self-esteem.” Conwy is using it for an “arts and craft funding and development clinic.” Denbighshire is spending it on something it calls “Step-Up Bus,” which has perhaps the most vague non-description ever: an “information service that works to inform, involve, engage and empower the local community.” What?

Even worse, Communities First is just one small piece of the country’s large problem.

Andy Silvester, a spokesperson for TaxPayers’ Alliance, an independent British grassroots campaign for lower taxes, tells National Review Online that it is common for Wales to “come up with schemes with bizarre names and [leave] the fundamentals of the economy lagging.”

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Has all the coal been mined out ?