Lord Mayor's Column 23 October 2019

The 24th event in our celebration of Swansea's 50th anniversary of becoming a City, featured another birthday. This year is the 60th since the formation of the 1st Cwmbwrla Brownies. To commemorate this occasion, we invited all of the brownies, together with the younger rainbows and their adult leaders, up to the Mansion House on Monday.

On Tuesday I welcomed the Swansea Over 60s Carers Club to the Mansion House for a fundraising afternoon, while today the Penllergaer Crafters are joining me there as part of the Swansea 50 celebrations.

The Swansea Bay Young Achievers Awards recognise and reward special young people in our community that have truly made a difference in the fields of business and entrepreneurship, training and education, the arts, sport, volunteering and much more. It is one of those events that really make you proud and I look forward to attending at the Towers Hotel this evening.

As well as the city’s 50th anniversary, it is also Loughor Lifeboat’s golden anniversary. They are one of roughly 63 independent Lifeboats set up around the country, who are not part of the RNLI and receive no funding from them, although they work together on exercises and call-outs.

The service started in 1969 with a small, second hand 12 foot flat bottomed inflatable boat, and a second hand outboard motor, given to them by the Ferryside Inshore Rescue Service, another St. John Ambulance Unit, 25 miles further along the coast.

Today’s Inshore Lifeboat is a modern Ribcraft class B boat. It carries the latest in communication and satellite navigation equipment, together with all the other lifesaving equipment you would expect to find on an inshore lifeboat.

I will be inviting the volunteers of this essential service to the Mansion House on Friday to celebrate our joint 50th anniversaries.