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Packing houses in, that is. With even the ever-optimistic Mr Bluh admitting that residential development around Swindon is slowing, you might think that the pressure to concrete over the area around Coate Water might have eased. Not so. The Swindon Gateway Partnership (Persimmon and Redrow) is back with revised plans for 1,550 little boxes houses and a mystery university. It’s good to read that the council don’t intend to let the developers get their way until there’s evidence that the prospect of a university occupying the site is reality rather than fantasy. With public funding of universities stagnating (apart from what looks like a pre-election spending binge during the current financial year) that’s shouldn’t be too soon.

The developers Clarebrook and their interior designers architects Pennington Robson are back with revised plans to replace Swindon’s tented market with what they rather fancifully describe as a ‘pavilion’.

Now, credit where credit is due, the revised plans are an improvement on their last ones. That’s not a great endorsement. Their last design was incredibly ugly. So ugly that the planning committee deferred decision on them. The appearance from Commercial Road in the new plans is improved. However, anyone approaching from Farnsby Street — which, as a result of the one-way system, many do — will see a building remarkable only for its drab ugliness.

The plans are open for comment until 3rd July.

The Adver seems to be trying to out-do Mr Bluh’s extreme optimism. In his words,

It would be very easy to sit here and be full of doom and gloom about the year to come. But I think we have got grounds to be optimistic. We are on a long journey and it doesn’t matter how much flood water there is we will keep on that road. We are focussed on business as normal but we have to be realistic about the challenges that will face us.

To me that reads as though he believes regeneration will continue but not at the same pace as was originally hoped. To the Adver, it translates as ‘full steam ahead’. You don’t need to have listened to much political spin to know that when a politician talks about a ‘long journey’, the journey will be longer than they originally predicted. With the forthcoming signs of progress being yet more demolition — this time at the former Swindon College site — rather than construction, Mr Bluh’s ‘optimism’ is little cause for excitement.

Not to play bowls though. A meeting had been called for the street where I live to meet with local councillors, Mr Wright and Mr Montaut, and with the Kingshill neighbourhood policing team. The topic for discussion was anti-social behaviour in the street and surrounding area. There is, apparently, a problem with juvenile and late night drinking in nearby open ground and with drug dealing, not that I’ve ever noticed either of these. Lesser problems are late night revellers making a noise as they follow the cycle path from the town centre to West Swindon, children buying milkshakes in glass bottles from a nearby dairy and then smashing the bottles on the paths and in a children’s play-area, repeated vandalism of cars, overspill parking from a local restaurant and from a tyre shop, and cyclists (particularly large groups going to and from Iceland’s depot) cycling too fast and without lights.

My impression of the meeting? That some of my neighbours have very sensitive hearing, and that Mr Wright is, if his actions live up to his words this evening, quite a good councillor. Throughout the meeting it was primarily Mr Wright who was suggesting courses of action that might lead to a reduction in the problems. He also made a point of acknowledging the efforts of Ms Darker, now departed to a bluer ward, in bringing the meeting about.

In February, I reported, both here and on the TalkSwindon forum, councillors’ attendance rates for 2007. Today, the Adver has finally caught up. They’re only three months late!

Mr Hudson of Allen & Harris estate agents seems to have a very short memory, less than three days to be precise. On Friday, he seemed to be worried that supply is exceeding demand and house prices are falling.

Allen & Harris manager Steve Hudson said: “This month we saw 20 people agreeing to reduce their house prices in order to create more activity and get moved. Some people are also looking to sell and then rent while waiting to buy later to pick up a bargain.” He has seen a drop of around £7,000 from houses priced at the Swindon average of £149,000.

Today, his worries have reversed and he fears that demand might exceed supply.

Manager Steve Hudson, from Allen & Harris, fears that cutbacks [in new house building] could mean demand is not met. “The last thing we need is a housing shortage.” he said.

If people want house prices to rise, then what they need is a housing shortage. If they want prices to drop, they need over-supply. ’Tis the simple economics of supply and demand. If one considers the large numbers of people who wish to buy but can’t in the free market, and so are dependent on social and ‘affordable’ housing, that suggests there is a real need for house prices to fall, for everyone’s benefit. (Every ‘affordable’ house built — 30% of all major new-build in Swindon — has to be paid for by the profits made on all the other houses built.) So, in that respect, Mr Hudson is correct and a housing shortage is not in the nation’s best interests. However, I suspect his motives are far less altruistic….

The first houses of the Wichelstowe development are now being built, near the site of Westlecott Farm. Even at this early stage, it is easy to see that the houses are being tightly packed, with very little space between the terrace almost completed and the one just started construction behind. With the fake-Victorian design, you could be forgiven for thinking that this might end up looking like one of those areas in the northern industrial cities that were cleared as slums during the 1970s.

A success of Swindon Borough Council that goes relatively uncelebrated is the carrying forward of elements of the corporate games held in Swindon in 2006, so that there has, since then, been an annual sporting event, the Challenge Swindon Festival of Sport. The most visible, and fun, of the sports within the festival has to be the dragon boat racing on Coate Water which took place today. If nothing else, the frantic paddling of some teams, apparently oblivious to the beat from their drummer, provides some amusement for spectators. Hopefully the Festival of Sport will outlive the two-year funding for Challenge Swindon.

With all the fuss in Swindon over the possible reintroduction of a canal, Wiltshire’s county town provides a good example of how not get the best value from a canal.

Trowbridge has very little to offer any passing tourists, so you might think that they’d make the most of what little they have. You’d be wrong. Access to the Kennet & Avon Canal is down a poorly signposted — just one tiny sign in the whole town — footpath through the appropriately named Canal Road Industrial Estate, about a mile from the town centre. Hardly the most attractive route to what is probably Trowbridge’s best tourist asset, and that one sign is at the entrance to the industrial estate. An alternative point of access to the canal, Hilperton Marina on the outskirts of the town, barely gets a mention either.

All the other towns along the route of the Kennet & Avon Canal seem to have benefited from its presence; Trowbridge, though admittedly with less to gain, has apparently chosen to miss out.

Pity the poor journalists at the Adver, desperate for something to fill their pages after a quiet bank holiday weekend. What to do? How about taking a step into the past, going back to the origins of the newspaper and its title, and presenting an advert for alternative therapies as news? Not satisfied with that? How about a story on how leaking rainwater set off a fire alarm? Life threatening stuff, no? And these are amongst the top stories, rationed to no more than fifteen per day, that the Adver posts to its website as a taster of the greater pearls to be found within its printed pages. ’Tis enough to make one want to go out and buy a copy, ’tis it not?