So what they’ll keep on doing is suckering in investors from all over the place to keep building these new “quarters” and “zones” with grandiose sales pitches about what a booming city this is. Then when the wrecking balls start swinging, the planning committee will push through compulsory sales of surrounding premises to friends for friends to build things like car parks to cope with the “overflow” caused by the new constructions (Derek Rapport and The Vulcan).

The idea that the creative industries in Cardiff can make any money and are sufficient is a joke. It’s a world almost entirely filled with talentless bottom feeders trying to figure out something to do with their lives while producing crap with government subsidies. This isn’t a London or a Bristol that grew organically with multiple balanced sectors and thriving local creative industries, it’s a different animal; a force fed pig, bloated with offal that in the end produces bad cuts.

The vision they have for this place is to keep on building new and snazzy developments off the back of promises of the undeliverable and then watch as they become derelict and depreciate, then move to demolish everything every 10-15-20 years to start again. One day that cycle will break down and most of the City will look like the docks did 25 years ago.

1) The only thing it’s preventing being built is more of the same car park.

2) Far from standing out like a sore thumb, I think it looks beautiful where it is. That whole area, thanks to The Vulcan remaining has actually inadvertently become a large art installation that tells us a great deal about the society we live in. It’s vulnerability and its resilience are brought out in equal measure.

3) If you go to the docks, you will see plenty of buildings and people that look increasingly vulnerable and out of place. Derelict old men and derelict old buildings with plenty less purpose than The Vulcan litter the place. Shall we sweep them away because they haven’t worked out too?

Developments like Porth Teigr in Cardiff Bay are promising and I believe that work started on the second phase – which will house space for creative industries – started recently. (Cardiff Bay site would house city’s creative industries)

Local Authorities don’t have the power (or the capital) to do things like build a suburban rail network, or even “create” new industry.

Programmes like ThinkArk are great, but their work could be so much more focussed if they had some government strategy to back them up.