Category: Uncategorized

I find my response to this story strangely ambivalent.

A TEAM of volunteers have been giving their time to save lives in Swindon for the last two years….
Whenever the Great Western Ambulance Service receive a category A emergency call, first responders in the neighbourhood are sent out at the same time.

There are twelve of these volunteers in Swindon and according to the article they have saved the lives of three people during the last two years.

On the one hand it is good that extra lives are being saved. On the other, although I wouldn’t want the operation to be subsumed into a state-run bureaucracy, with all the money now being poured into the NHS it is strange that small but significant activities like this depend on unpaid volunteers.

Walking to work today, there were several boulders strewn around the local park which weren’t there yesterday. There was also the local BBC radio outside broadcast car there. Fortunately, the local newspaper has explained

Four giant sarcen stones – weighing a total of 21 tonnes – have been delivered to Faringdon Road Park in a bid to improve its appearance.

The huge rocks were unloaded yesterday as part of the New Mechanics’ Institute Preservation Trust’s plans to restore the park to its Victorian splendour.

Now, apart from the fact that there was nothing like that in the Park in Victorian times, so it bears no relation to Victorian splendour, it does seem to be quite a good idea — something for children to clamber over in a park which, except for the daffodils, is rather featureless. (Sadly, something for the graffiti taggers to deface too.) The source of the stones was revealing too.

The rocks were provided by Swindon Council which, it is understood, dug them up some years ago during a building project.

The giant stones were kept in storage and are now finally seeing the light of day.

Amazing the things that some people keep….

The BBC repeated several times today that the government will be providing 1000 extra trains which it will pay for. But read the speech that this is based on and it says no such thing. The exact words are

So in the High Level Output Specification this summer, we will specify that 1,000 new carriages should be targeted at the most congested routes to effectively tackle passenger demand.

In this way, if the price is right, I anticipate that we will significantly increase the number of carriages on the network by 2014.

The High Level Output Specification will be the government’s expectation for what the railway will deliver over the coming years. It does not mean that the government will pay for this. In fact, if you consider that most of the recently let rail franchises require the Train Operating Companies to pay the government a premium within one or two years rather than receive a subsidy, it is the passengers that will be paying for the trains, not the government. Methinks some people in the DfT and the Beeb must be feeling very dizzy at the moment.

Had a very good pie today at Terra Nova, which is a pub at Mermaid Quay on Cardiff Bay. It was a little lacking in gravy (just a squirt of thickish gravy around the mash) and in vegetables and the placing of the pie on top of the mash was rather too nouvelle cuisine for a meal like pie ’n’ mash, but the pie was definitely a cut above the average pub pie. Well filled with succulent meat in a beer gravy. Delicious. The pint of Brains Dark was good too.

I’ve just received the first leaflet through my letterbox for the coming local elections. It is from Derique Montaut (or is it Derique Montaur, it is hard to tell, as the spelling is different on each side of the leaflet) who is, it says, ‘working hard in central ward’. I guess that is why the ward news section of his party’s website hasn’t been updated since January 2006. The, rather small, leaflet that he left says ‘Derique Montaut called today. Sorry I missed you!’. But Derique, you didn’t, I was in. You just couldn’t be bothered to knock on the door and talk!

There’s a time and a place for anonymity, but one place that isn’t is in a shop. Now I am sure that the owner of a local off-licence from which £3000 was burgled in a distraction burglary is very embarrassed about what happened and how it happened (one of a group speaking in unrealistic foreign accents distracted the owner whilst another just walked through to the back of the shop and took the money, with it all captured on CCTV) but his wish, as reported in the local newspaper, to remain anonymous is not likely to last long. It’s a small off-licence, not part of a chain, and is both named and pictured in the newspaper article. Unless he emigrates now, most locals will know exactly who he is.

In 2001, a report to Swindon Borough Council concluded that an area near the town centre called North Star should be developed as a university campus as part of Swindon’s regeneration programme. The Swindon Urban Regeneration Company was set-up the following year, with the University of Bath having a seat on it’s board. The plan was for the site to accomodate 1,000 students along with accomodation. Then a change of heart led to the University of Bath wanting a more traditional campus, and a site near one of Swindon’s main leisure areas, Coate Water, was selected. There was much local opposition, as the plans (paid for through major housing development on the site) would encroach on the currently open landscape. As a consequence of a change in government policy (towards more workplace learning) and of the housing developers wanting too much of the site, the university has changed it’s mind, again. Now Swindon College is offering to share their campus at North Star with the University of Bath. So we are back where we were six years ago.

I seem to have gone down with the ’flu-like lurgy sweeping through this area. Doubt I’ll being posting much here for the next few days.