Doctor Who Experience to relocate?

and Ill have anything to do with 8

Sadly, I could procure any goodies from my visit - but what a day! One reason I was given that the place is closing is that the people who own the costumes, models etc. want them back after five years! I asked a couple of people about a possible relocation, and the standard answer given was 'no decision has been made', although many attendees felt sure it would turn up somewhere else in Wales, or possibly Manchester.

I saw Mike Tucker speed past at one stage.

Finally, when we were handing over our tickets, the lovely lass at the doorway whispered something which sounded like 'Christian Bale is here, Christian Bale is here!' We were wondering quite what Batman was doing at the Doctor Who Experience - possibly attending the final day like the rest of us. But it wasn't Christian Bale at all - it was Chris Chibnall (which sounds slightly similar if you squint). What a genuinely nice bloke, but quite rightly he wasn't given anything away. I explained to my nephew that Chris was the new man behind the show, and Chris (or, 'my mate Chris', as I'll now call him), said, "Yes. It's all my fault!"

Tremendous day. They can't close it for good. I mean, even the Daleks were well mannered. One was posing for photographs and said at one stage, "Sorry, am I in the way?" (in the Dalek voice, of voice).

Excellent.

I expect you to personally relay all our future criticisms and suggestions to your mate Chris.
The bit about costumes has me a little worried that there might not be another Doctor Who Experience for a while – or at least, not in its full current form.

Doctor Who Experience 'didn't meet financial targets.' What a genuine shame. This saddens me.

Huh, this why government, national and local should not be run as a business.

So the DW Experience has cost Cardiff Council £1.1m, sounds bad right?

But councils (government in general) are not about profitable (in the capitalist sense of the word) venture, they are about creating opportunity and protecting the vulnerable, now looking at the opportunity side of that, that means building and maintaining roads and pavements, it means creating an environment that employers want to situate their business in and a place where visitors want to come and spend their money.

So it's not the case of simply saying that Cardiff Council is £1.1m in the red, in order for Cardiff to know if it made the right decision to back the DW Experience they need to understand what value it added to their local economy, how many restaurants, hotels and various tourist serving industries employed local people to do the jobs needed to look after the tourists coming to the DW Experience, and in turn how many jobs and economic activity the people doing those jobs generated in the housing market, the local supermarkets etc etc

Now, I have little to no insight into the numbers involved here, except the £1.1m short fall, but I do know one thing for certain, I would be stunned if the value to the local economy generated bt the DW experience over the 5 years it was open didn't more than make up for a £1.1m shortfall.  Lets imagine that at the Experience and in support businesses a total of 100 people were employed and are now out of work, that's a loss of £1,350 per person per year just on council tax, add in Housing Benefit of say £5,000 per person per year and the council is looking at a combined loss of revenue (from council tax) and increase in costs (for housing benefit) of £635,000 per year, and that's to say nothing of the losses in business rates.  Or the benefits of long term investment in the area by companies etc

So over 5 years that hypothetical 100 people being out of work will cost Cardiff Council at least £3.1m which makes the £1.1m lost on the Experience look like a bargain.

I'll admit the intricacies of what to support because it really does generate extra economic activity and what not keep on life support, and so take some short term pain for longer term benefit can be complex and it's easy for governments of all shapes, sizes and colours to get wrong, but to assert that the DW Experience is somehow a bust based purely on that £1.1m charge to Cardiff Council is to take a very simplistic view of how governments and economies work.

I never said it didn't have plenty of attendees. I said "If it was in London it would have had far more attendees from all over the world." I stand by that statement as a 100% fact.

If they had just extended the contract for a few more years and combined that with a Whittaker-themed reboot wouldn't that have made the money back eventually?

You have to "Admire" the BBC's need for self-deprecation

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-43159603

Regards

mark687