komadori’s green corner

Are you impressed by the Brunel Centre’s new canopies? Does the town centre look transformed? I’d be amazed if anyone — apart from Mr Beaumont-Jones, the centre’s director — answered ‘yes’ to either of those questions, but that is was the aforementioned Mr Beaumont-Jones claimed the new canopies would do.

In appearance the new canopies are a definite improvement; in their ability to protect shoppers from the rain, they are virtually useless. A definite victory for style over purpose.

The ducks on the canal near Kingshill are running short of places to swim, with most of the canal frozen over. They seem unaware of the freely flowing Swinbourne and River Ray just a few flaps away nearby.

This morning the sales signs were being cleared from the windows of the now closed Woolworths store in Regent Street. It will leave a big gap in the town centre… but probably only physically. With every passing acquisition and demerger — of which there were several — the offering and Woolworths was diminished. Much of its hardware range was lost to B&Q and much of its electrical range to Comet, both of which were once part of the same group. The Woolworths of my childhood was a store more like Wilkinson is today. In its final years, Woolworths seemed to be the home of a narrow range of overpriced low quality goods. Its one bright point was its chocolate range at Easter, but a store chain cannot survive on chocolate eggs alone.

In the end, the wonder of Woolies was that it survived quite as long as it did.

The government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove seems to think that building societies can survive without savers. The Nationwide Building Society has said that, for its tracker mortgages, it will not follow further Bank of England interest rate cuts. It is doing this to protect its savers.

Savings rates are at an historic low and this move means we will not be forced into a position where we could have to cut savings rates more aggressively than we would otherwise like to

Without savers, there can be no mortgages and if interest rates fall further, the more savvy savers will find other things to do with their money. This rather basic economic truth seems to be beyond Ms Snelgrove’s comprehension.

Should there be a further cut in interest rates I will be talking to Nationwide about what it can do to pass on the cut to customers…. It is important that lenders pass on interest rate cuts – we need to do whatever it takes to help businesses, people, and the wider economy in Swindon.

One of the reasons the economy is in its current mess — apart from this government’s profligacy with our money over many years — is that people borrowed far too much and saved far too little. Demanding that financial institutions punish rather than encourage savers will do nothing to improve the long-term health of the economy, nor will it increase the availability of mortgages.

Writing as someone who is not only one of Ms Snelgrove’s constituents, but who also has both savings and a mortgage with the Nationwide, I’d prefer further interest rate cuts not to be passed on, thank you.

Old and new

New and rotten

In a similar way that I did for last year, I’ve trawled through the record of meeting attendance for Swindon Borough Councillors during 2008. Taking an entry in the attendance page of ‘Present’ or ‘In attendance’ as meaning they were there, and any other entry as meaning that they should have been there but weren’t, I get some interesting results. Note that I have considered all meetings for which councillor attendance is listed on the council’s website, except for one committee. That exception is the Wiltshire & Swindon Joint Police Committee for which there is no attendance record for most meetings and, for the couple where there are, the record does not appear to be reliable.

At the moment, the information for five meetings is not available. This will be added when the information becomes available and if appropriate the figures and lists below will be updated.

In terms of attendance rates, the top five councillors of 2008 were:

• Ms Tomlinson: 31 meetings out of 31 – 100%
• Mr Tomlinson: 19 meetings out of 19 – 100%
• Mr Parry: 16 meetings out of 16 – 100%
• Mr Montaut: 9 meetings out of 9 – 100%
• Mr Cherry: 9 meetings out of 9 – 100%

Two councillors that stood down in May, Mr Lister and Mr Barnes, also attained a 100% record in 2008, tho’ for only three meetings. Another 10 councillors attended over 90% of the meetings they are recorded against.

The councillors with the worst attendance rates in 2008 (60% or less) were:

• Mr Edwards: 18 meetings out of 30 – 60%
• Mr Baker: 12 meetings out of 20 – 60%
• Ms Duff: 13 meetings out of 22 – 59%
• Ms Martin: 7 meetings out of 13 – 54%
• Mr Sharp: 2 meetings out of 4 – 50%
• Mr Wiltshire: 10 meetings out of 27 – 37%
• Mr James: 2 meetings out of 8 – 25%
• Mr Thompson: 0 meetings out of 3 – 0%

Of these, Messrs James, Sharp and Thompson are no longer councillors. Of those that are still councillors, Mr Wiltshire’s record stands out as being particularly poor.

The overall attendance rate in 2008 (80%) was slightly better than in 2007 (77%). Full details of all the Swindon Borough Councillors’ 2008 meeting attendances are available in the archive.

Update, 17 January 2009: The figures above have now been updated. Attendance records for two meetings remain unavailable.

Update, 15 February 2009: The records are now complete. The full data is available in comma delimited text (csv), OpenOffice and Excel format files.

komadori has been lucky enough to attend two works Christmas meals this year: one at The Old Bank Brasserie and one at Fletchers Restaurant.

Venues are rarely at their best when preparing food for Christmas parties, with the large numbers to be served resulting in something more akin to mass production than quality cuisine. This was definitely the case at The Old Bank. The ‘Cream of Carrot and Coriander Soup with a hint of ginger and garnished with garlic croutons’ tasted more like cream of cardboard, with the ginger and garlic indiscernible. For the main course, the turkey had been cooked into submission — it was stodgy and lacked texture. And whilst the stodgy meat was plentiful, the serving of vegetables was miserly. Worst of all was the ‘Rich Baileys bread and butter pudding, mixed with toasted almonds, cooked until golden brown and served with vanilla ice cream’. Well, yes it was cooked until golden brown and it was served with vanilla ice cream. There were also a few bits of almond. But it was neither rich, nor matching the description of ‘bread and butter pudding’. As the photograph shows, it was little more than a single slice of toast. At over £30 for three courses (excluding drinks), I expected far better.

In contrast, Fletchers provided a reasonable meal at a much more reasonable price (£18.50). Pork, apple & Calvados pate with toast starter was fine if unremarkable. For the main course, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, vegetables and roast potatoes was tasty though not overly tender. However, the meal ended on a high with ‘Chocolate Box Shortbread base topped with an indulgent Belgium chocolate mousse with a cream caramel centre’. That chocolate mousse was exquisite.

It seems Ms Snelgrove has been a little forgetful when it comes to paying her internet bills.

From a comparison of the fines reported today for a driver convicted of careless driving after a fatal accident and another convicted of fly-tipping three bags of rubbish, the answer to that question appears to be 2½ bags of rubbish.

If there’s one thing you can rely on from the Swindon Community Safety Bureaucracy Partnership, it’s stupidity. The economy’s nose-dived, bookings for Christmas parties are heavily down, yet Mr Palusinski from the Bureaucracy Partnership is not sure why yesterday evening seemed to be just like any other Saturday night.

Considering that some people in the national press were calling it black Saturday, it was relatively calm in the town centre. I am not sure why the numbers were so average but they were.

A quick search reveals that just about the only person referring to yesterday as Black Saturday is Mr Palusinski.

Whether the message we are putting out there is being heeded by revellers, or whether it is the current financial drought that is resulting in people drinking less, I am not sure.

Hint: it’s the economy, stupid.

I consider the operation a success.

I consider the operation a waste of the public’s money.