’Tis odd that where I work, a contractor managed to make his way in to work all the way from Gravesend in Kent, yet several schools in Swindon, where there’s been far less snow, were closed. In some cases, apparently, this was despite both teachers and pupils lived locally.
The aforementioned contractor only gets paid if he works. For him taking the day off would mean a pay cut, not a holiday.
If you’re a bureaucrat in charge of one of Swindon’s numerous partnerships, what would be the best way to justify your cost to the local taxpayers? Do something worthwhile perhaps? On second thoughts perhaps not. Do something worthless instead and write a piece in the Adver, claiming that everything in Swindon is within your remit. That’s the approach of the head of the Swindon Cultural Partnership.
What does the ‘C word’ actually mean?… As far as the Government is concerned, culture means just about anything that isn’t working or sleeping…. So, yes. According to that broad definition of culture, anything goes…. Culture may be all the things that the government say it is, but it is something else too. It is us.
If culture is ‘us’, then we don’t need this bureaucracy to tell us what culture in Swindon is.
The news that Sovereign Housing is to invest £ 48M in social housing in East Wichel and Priory Vale is really nothing to boast about. Step forward Mr Renard.
We welcome any investment in Swindon, especially during these difficult financial times. It just goes to show companies are still willing to invest here.
Sovereign Housing Group is a charitable company and gets most of its money for house buying from government grants. If the site of Woolies in Regent Street was occupied by a charity shop, would the council claim that as evidence of a booming town centre?
As already noted by Swindon Centric, the Adver has yet again managed a new low in its reporting. You’d think that if you’re going to attack other journalists for over-the-top reporting, you’d take a balanced approach with a calm headline. No, that’s not the way things seem to work at the Adver. Their first attempt was relatively staid.
BBC report labels Swindon as ‘town going nowhere fast’
Not happy with that, an hour later exactly the same story was re-published on their website, now headlined in full hysteria mode.
BBC jibe at town causes uproar
Uproar? Really? They quote three local politicians, all of whom seem quite calm. If Mr Wallin thinks that an MP saying ‘I thought overall the piece reflected quite well what is going on in Swindon.’ indicates uproar, he’s clearly led a rather sheltered life.
And it’s not as though Mr Easton’s BBC report was the only one to speak of Swindon in that way this weekend. His ‘A town going nowhere fast’ mirrored Ms Buckley’s ‘Swindon risks getting caught on the road to nowhere’ in the Times the day before.
As in much of Britain, there are many things going nowhere fast in Swindon at the moment… and journalism in the Adver is definitely amongst them.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, one of the less pleasant experiences when stepping out from the Brunel Centre into Havelock Square is the rather sickly smell of cooking doughnuts. That said, I wouldn’t wish to deny anyone visiting Swindon town centre their dose of doughnuts, just not in such a cramped location. Swindon Borough Council has taken a different view, refusing licenses for both the doughnut seller and a hot-dog stall.
Hot food trailers and vans tend to function as portable shop units, operating in isolation. Where it appears that they are being used (or will be used) principally to save on costs relative to competing cafes and take-aways, a street trading consent will not normally be granted.
Where the infrastructure or trading opportunities are such that a fixed retail unit could not be justified or accommodated, a fast food trailer will be considered for consent.
’Tis an odd political world where a blue-nest controlled council is opposed to competition. The change in policy comes after what was described as ‘a comprehensive consultation exercise’ — so comprehensive that only four organisations were consulted. The logic underpinning the policy is also, to be generous, poor.
In all three cases it is plain that there is a significant customer demand for their services, otherwise they would not survived over a long period. In terms of location, that suggests that the stalls are conveniently placed for their customers. The desirability of the pitches from the commercial standpoint of the traders is not in any doubt. The question remains whether pedestrianised areas within retail developments are there for the benefit of shoppers and fixed retail premises or whether they are just another resource for accommodating additional commercial activity.
If someone chooses to buy something from one of these stalls, does that not make them a shopper? If ‘resource for accommodating additional commercial activity’ is such a bad thing why bother with the town centre regeneration?
Update: within a few days the doughnut seller has been granted a new pitch in The Parade.
I find Mr Greenhalgh’s reasoning, if one can call it that, for proposing closure of the Groundwell Park and Ride odd.
We either make savings where we can or we put up council tax.
That didn’t seem to cross your mind when you voted to put up your own allowances.
While the park and ride is an excellent service we are losing a lot of money because it is simply not covering its costs.
Until last year, Thamesdown Transport ran the park and ride bus service for a fee and Swindon Borough Council kept the profit or suffered the loss, depending on how successful the service was. Then that was changed so that, like any other bus service, the bus company runs the services that are profitable and keeps the profit from them, whilst the council subsidises the loss making ones. As parking in the park-and-ride car park is free, the council have, of their own choice, changed the funding arrangement to one where by definition they are guaranteed to make a loss and the bus company guaranteed to make a profit. It doesn’t cover its costs because you’ve set-up contractual arrangements that guarantee that, Mr Greenhalgh.
The number using the service is not that great so I don’t think the effect on traffic will be huge.
That seems to contradict the assessment in the council’s own budget proposals.
“There is some risk that this proposal may impact on our Local Transport Plan assessment and the ability of the Council to secure regional/national funding for future transport schemes. There may also be some impact on general bus network as the operator will lose profit from these services.”
Translated from public sector bureaucracy-speak, that’s quite huge.
We have good parking facilities in the town centre and while this is not an ideal situation it is something we have to look at.
And I’m sure that the knowledge that you’ll make much more money from charging them to park there had no influence on your decision….
This would not be a permanent move and hopefully there will be a change in government and Swindon will be given the kind of funding it needs.
To quote from the council’s own budget proposals again.
“This proposal may impact on our Local Transport Plan assessment and the ability of the Council to secure regional/national funding for future transport schemes.”
Regardless of the colour of the government, a habit of abandoning facilities in an ill considered financial panic is hardly a way of encouraging government to spend taxpayers’ money here.
Compare and contrast.
Mr Perkins on the government’s part-funded scheme to offer teachers in failing schools extra money to stay in their jobs:
At the end of the day they are attempting to bribe teachers. I thought teaching was always about being a vocational job.
Mr Bluh on councillors voting to increase their own allowances when the council’s income is dropping:
The challenging times in which we find ourselves, especially given the low level of formula grant we receive despite the borough’s needs, call for positive leadership, not political gestures.
Clearly the local blue nest — and the red nest councillors that voted with them — are rather confused. This isn’t positive leadership: it’s hypocrisy.
I’ve no idea what an appropriate level of expenditure on public relations (PR) is for a council. Having looked at the figures from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, I can see that the level of expenditure by Swindon Borough Council on PR (over £1.4M) seems comparable with other councils of similar size: by whatever statistic is used, Swindon Borough Council’s level of PR expenditure is mid-ranking. That doesn’t mean it’s acceptable though. Nor is the council spokesman’s attempt to defend the 15% increase from last year acceptable.
Swindon Borough Council is a major employer which provides a vast range of services to more than 180,000 people. Residents expect us to give information about the services which are available to them, and the help we can provide.
Well, yes, I wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but the council does much the same now as it did a year ago, so why spend so much more telling us about it?
While we are always reviewing our costs and finding ways of doing things for less, there is still a cost.
Spending 15% more is not what many would described as ‘doing things for less’.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance suggestion that most of this is unnecessary nonsense, and shows either a complete lack of understanding about the work of local government, or it’s deliberately misleading.
Err, no. It is consistent with the council’s own figures.
recruitment cost £410,865, promotions cost £391,865, statutory public notices £44,075 and other services, including the council’s communication department, cost £619,507.
Only the recruitment costs and statutory notices seem essential. Promotions and the less than informative ‘other services’ could well contain numerous pointless or overly glossy publications.
The only thing that seems to be deliberately misleading here is the council’s defence of its own publicity.
The oddest thing about the visit by Mr Brown to a Swindon school was the claim by the school’s headteacher that the visit was non-political.
I would like to point out that the Prime Minister’s visit to Isambard this morning was not a political event but was a celebration of our new school, attended by politicians of all parties.
Really? The attendance of politicians from all sides doesn’t stop an event from being ‘a political event’ and on the school’s own website evidence of politicians from other nests is distinctly absent. If Ms Mattey still believes this was not a political event, then she should take a look at the spin about the visit on the red nest’s website.
Labour’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and the Schools Minister, Jim Knight, are visiting Swindon to open a new secondary school and celebrate the transformation underway in schools across the country as a result of Labour’s investment in education.
Clearly, that’s not political in much the same way that water’s not wet. Isambard Community School is a Private Finance Initiative school so there has been no ‘Labour investment’: this school is being paid for, by us, on credit. Admittedly, that’s just a tiny fraction of the £70 bn the current government has run-up.
Mr Brown may only have been at the school for a little over half an hour — he didn’t stay long last time — but hopefully that was long enough for the pupils at the school to recognise when they’re being used for political gain. Perhaps one day their headteacher might recognise this too.
I’ve been looking at the new maps of reported crime on Wiltshire Constabulary’s website. What have I learnt? I’ve been reminded of the public sector’s inability to produce good interactive sites — the only way to get the maps to show different statistics is to repeatedly toggle their display on and off, and navigation is painfully slow — but have learnt very little about crime levels.
I’m left wondering just what the statistics cover. For example, there is, according to the maps, very little violent crime in Swindon Town Centre, so does that mean that the drunken violence in Fleet Street that is so often reported in the press is not significant, or is in some other category? There’s nothing on the Wiltshire police website that explains, and the explanation on the Home Office website is less than helpful. Then there’s the matter of how much reported crime actually gets recorded….
It may not have cost much (though given the record of public sector computing projects, I doubt that) but I’d rather the time and money wasted on producing these uninformative maps was spent on actual policing.