The CedarBridge mould crisis is going from bad to worse.

First, it would appear that the school’s administrators ignored the severity of the situation for months when it could have remedied the problem during the summer holiday.

Now that the school has been closed and presumably the clean-up is beginning, most of the students, instead of being found classrooms elsewhere, are being sent to various islands in Hamilton Harbour in the middle of their school term.

The unexpected change of plans is an excellent opportunity for “out of the box” thinking, according to principal Kalmar Richards, who like many others is trying to put the best face on a ridiculous situation. But it begs the question of why the old Berkeley Institute, which was being used for teaching as recently as July, is not now being used on an emergency basis.

It is difficult to imagine that adjustments in terms of furniture and schedules in moving to Berkeley are more complex than arranging to transport the students to and from islands in Hamilton Harbour.

On a separate note, it is quite possible that CedarBridge, when informed of the health problems in the school, simply did not have the money for the remediation and was unable to get it from the Ministry of Education.

This is not at all unusual for schools with their own board of governors or trustees who almost always receive operating and capital grants from the Ministry of Education that are inadequate to their needs. But that question is no doubt another one that the Government will refuse to answer as they continue to stonewall their way through this sorry mess.Careful readingFriday’s Throne Speech contained two statements that do not survive close scrutiny or drastically contradict past Government statements.

The first concerns housing. Last year’s speech promised 300 homes and in 30 months to ease the housing crisis, and Friday’s speech declared that 268 homes were already under contract. These included the ten prefabricated homes at Morgan’s Point and Beacon Hill, Sandys, the 96-unit Loughlands project that is due to break ground before Christmas, and the ill-starred 100-homes Harbour View Village project in Southside which is “in progress”.

Six of 11 renovated cottages at Southside have also been sold. But the list also includes an emergency facility at Southside where 43 former Canadian Hotel residents were moved, and 16 Anchorage View Road units whose tenants were forcibly evicted and scattered in Government housing across the Island two years ago.

The layman could be forgiven for thinking that when Government promised 300 homes in 30 months, that these were new homes that were a net addition to the housing stock.

To be sure, the loss of the Canadian Hotel would have worsened the housing crisis.

But the fact is that 59 of the 286 homes “under contract” do nothing to ease the housing shortage, and it wrong to throw them into the 300 homes list.

The second statement concerned the new hospital. Former Health Minister Patrice Minors warned that any delays in the construction of the new hospital could result in disaster since the current building’s useful life would soon end. Hence opponents of the plan were putting the lives of the patients at risk. Heavy opposition arose anyway.

The Hospitals Board said it would delay a decision for six months pending a further review. And now the Ewart Brown Government says that no decision will be made until there has been a full review of the Island’s entire health care needs, a process that could take months, or even years.

So what will happen to the hospital in the meantime? Will it stop working, or were certain Ministers exaggerating? The public deserves an answer.