Category: Uncategorized

As noted elsewhere, today seems to have been a slow news day in the centre of the universe (Swindon to you). So, what is there to report? Well… a local footballer has opened a field and concrete pitch (‘sports facility’ to you), and Highworth Lido is to have a roof put on it (thereby seizing to be a Lido), with the great claim to fame of being ‘the only three metre diving facility within a 35 mile radius’. Wow!

Seems that the might of the developers has been temporarily thwarted given a sideways nudge. Finches and swallows have been found (well, actually more a case of actively sought) nesting in Westlecott Farm (the white building and outbuildings in my earlier photographs). As a consequence the farm cannot be demolished until late August. The joy of the campaigners does seem somewhat sulky though, and their hopes unrealistic.

I’m a realist so understand that the development will go ahead, but all the setbacks might mean that they reconsider the size of it.

Delaying the demolition of one farm is but a minor blip in the path of a 4,500 house development.

The Adver reports that students from Swindon College set an impressive standard when given the run of the kitchens at the Chiseldon House Hotel. However, there’s no need to go that far. They provide a similar service at a restaurant in their North Star campus. Some colleagues of mine went there last week and were very impressed with both the quality and the price. Well worth making a booking for those working in the offices clustered north of Swindon town centre.

I’d not noticed until someone pointed it out to me that, in addition to the Central Area Action Plan, there is also a Core Strategy for future development of Swindon currently out for consultation (deadline for comments is Wednesday 23rd May). Apparently, Swindon has green fingers.

A significant feature of past development in Swindon has been the creation and retention of ‘green fingers’ between areas of development. This provides the opportunity for green infrastructure to be enhanced and increased as the town grows.

Slowly but surely, the planning framework is turning into a green skeleton. Next we need some green arms, to join the green fingers to the Central Action Plan’s green spine.

One bit of advice. If you’re thinking of using the online form to send the council your answers to the almost ninety questions that the Core Strategy contains,… don’t. It doesn’t work. The numbering of the questions doesn’t match the numbering in the consultation document and most of your answers will be lost. ’Tis far safer (and easier) to email your comments to the council.

It seems that one of our local politicians has not quite grasped the approach his own government takes to railway privatisation. He has put down an early day motion in the house of commons

That this House notes with growing concern that despite First Great Western train services making substantial profits and introducing significant fare increases, passengers on these services have had to endure poor levels of punctuality, cuts in services and severe overcrowding; is further concerned at reports that 12 extra trains introduced by the company to alleviate the collapse of rail services in Bristol and the West of England last winter will be withdrawn by the end of this year and that this again will result in train cancellations and amount to an astonishing 20 per cent. reduction in the number of trains since First Group took over the Greater Western franchise in April 2006; believes that the interests of passengers should come before the interests of shareholders; and therefore supports the call by passenger groups and rail unions for First Great Western services to be run in the public sector.

The problems with this diagnosis are that most of those ‘substantial profits’ will have to be paid to the Treasury in hefty franchise premium payments, and the cuts in services were as directed by the Department for Transport. It’s not the interests of shareholders that are being put before those of the passengers, it is the interests of the Exchequer. Perhaps said local politician just does not like First Group. If they are making such big profits, why does he feel the need to back throwing even more public money at them? The rail company’s reaction is rightly dismissive.

Only a little over a month since I last passed this way, and a tarmacked road now cuts across half of the Swindon front garden. No sign of new bricks on mortar yet though.

I’d have thought it was obvious that those who had chosen not to vote online and turned up on election day at the polling station would, in most cases, prefer to vote in the conventional manner. A few moments to put a cross on a piece of paper, or over a minute to work through several screens of an online system? Rather a no-brainer, isn’t it? Apparently not to those at Swindon Borough Council that were presiding over the election. Not only were some polling stations completely unready, initially, for those wishing to put a cross in a box on a ballot paper, but even when they were ‘correctly’ set-up, laptops in booths outnumbered blunt, short stumpy pencils hanging in booths by five-to-one in many cases. And the need for people to assist voters with the electronic voting added two extra staff to most polling stations compared with previous years.

Then there was the fragility of the communications system. I’m prepared to accept (just) that the unreliability of the wireless communications from the polling stations could not have been foreseen, but were wireless connections, from urban polling stations, really necessary?

After some extra checks, necessitated by the breakdown in communication, the electronic votes were finally delivered two and a half hours after the paper votes had been counted. And the benefit of all this new technology making it ‘easier’ to vote? A turnout slightly down on last year.

Apparently, Swindon was under a rather nasty cloud this evening.

THE sky above the town was filled with giant clouds of toxic smoke after a pile of 8,000 tyres caught light.
Twenty-two firemen tackled the giant pyre, which started burning around 7pm tonight at Lower Burytown Farm between Blunsdon and Highworth….
Clouds were visible for miles on the Swindon skyline, prompting onlookers to visit from as far away as Penhill.

News to me. At that time (7.40 pm to 8 pm, to be precise) I was on my way to a town-centre pub, facing towards Blunsdon as I walked, under a clear sky.

Update, 3 May 2007: The Adver has now put ‘dramatic pictures’ on its website. It’s clearly a big fire but does it show ‘the sky above the town was filled with giant clouds’? No. One big black cloud over open fields, that’s all.

A local school has just resumed serving school dinners after a gap of two years. Apparently they can afford to provide them themselves now but could not do so when the council provided the meals.

Haydonleigh Primary School shut its kitchen in 2005 because of the spiralling costs of buying in meals through the borough council.
But, with a grant from the Government’s Jamie Oliver Fund to provide better ingredients, equipment and training for school cooks, the school decided to bring in a kitchen manager and assistant of their own….
“The school couldn’t afford to keep the kitchen going with meals from the borough council”….
Although the price of meals has gone up, from £1.65 three years ago, to £1.90, Mrs Stevens feels the price reflects the better quality meals on offer and the improvements made to the kitchen.

So let’s be clear, the price has gone up by 7% per year (I make 2005 to 2007 a gap of two years, not three) and they are getting an extra subsidy, but providing the meals is affordable now whereas is wasn’t before. I hope these people aren’t teaching economics at this school.

Seems their grasp of nutrition is not wonderful either.

“I’m trying to make it with healthier brown flour, and there’s nothing really wrong with pizza if you can do that,” she said. “And I’ve hidden vegetables in the sauce.”

There’s only ‘nothing really wrong with pizza’ if you forget about the fat that the cheese contains. A school of organically grown fat children is on the way.

The TransWilts Express (Stagecoach appear not to do hyphens) is to get some new buses. Being an ‘express’, they’ll be luxury coaches then? Err… no. Double-decker buses actually. Route 49 may start off at a fair gallop from Swindon across the Marlborough Downs to Avebury (where Eric is no longer behind the shop counter to disorient tourists with his american accent), but then slows to a canter to take a detour to the well known citadel of Bishops Cannings before heading into Devizes. Then a trot through Seend Cleeve and Hilperton before reaching Trowbridge, a mere one hour and twenty three minutes and thirty miles after leaving Swindon. A stunning twenty miles per hour! More Trans-Wilts Trundle than TransWilts Express.

Still, with 147,780 passengers per year, there’ll be plenty of conversations you can listen in on to keep yourself entertained.