komadori’s green corner

It seems some people in Pinehurst are surprised to discover that, if you break parking regulations, you might be punished. In one case, even after fifteen parking tickets in just over one year, the message has not got through.

It’s really irritating people now. Where are we supposed to park? If we park on our side of the road we get tickets.

Clearly, not on their side of the road, which has double yellow lines. Nor for that matter on the footpath, as appears to be the case in the Adver’s photograph.

It’s strange as well as someone seems to be blacking out these double yellow lines. Then the council comes out and paints it up again.

What do they expect? An approach where anyone with a pot of black paint and a brush can park wherever they like?

The residents on the other side of the road can park outside their homes but we can’t. I really hope a solution can be found.

Try crossing the road. This isn’t the densest area of housing and most houses in the street — including some in this terrace — have off-road parking. A quick look at some aerial photographs shows a relatively clear street, except for this little group with their cars parked up on the footpath.

Whilst browsing the local red nest’s website, I came across a page titled ‘Labour Party across Swindon’ which is ‘dedicated to the work that happens across the borough, containing news and views of members and activists who engage in important work within your community’. It seems they’re not doing very much work: the page is blank.

Car manufacturers parking-up vast numbers of new vehicles is nothing new. In previous economic downturns, many disused airfields have been filled with unsold cars. So, natually, the Adver’s reporting of Honda’s planning application to store cars at Wroughton Airfield, is a piece of calm writing about current economic problems over-the-top sensationalism.

HONDA is planning to dump nearly 7,000 cars in an area of outstanding natural beauty.

The cars will be guarded round the clock and wrapped in plastic: doesn’t seem much like dumping to me. Yes the airfield is within the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), but it hardly fits that description itself. Filling the runways with 6,600 cars will only be noticeable to those flying overhead. (The runways aren’t visible from Barbury Castle, though the hangars are.) Fifteen car transporter round-trips each day will be more apparent (about one every 24 minutes), but it’s not as though they’ll be travelling along quiet country lanes.

And in one of those bizarre outcomes that only planning regulations can produce, the portacabin where a security guard will sit is to be painted white or grey ‘to reduce visibility within the AONB’. Clearly, on a runway filled with cars — also to be covered in grey plastic — and surrounded by old hangars, the colour of one small portacabin is vital to keep the place pretty.

Once again, one story has outshone all others in Swindon this week: Swindon Borough Council’s decision to withdraw from the Wiltshire and Swindon Safety Camera Partnership. In amongst all the political ya-boo politics, it’s been noticeable that both Mr Wills and Ms Snelgrove have moderated the tone of their views, though only a little.

As it became that the council was not going to back down, that there was more to this than just political grandstanding, in addition to stating their opposition, they added something else. That it was up to the council to show that its new plans for road safety would be more effective than staying in the camera partnership. Which is what the discussion should have been about all along. And with Swindon having just three fixed speed cameras for its contribution of over £300,000, will that really be so difficult to achieve?

Full marks to Mr Martin. Not only has he acknowledged that the decoration of the hoardings surrounding the GWR barracks in the Railway Village is inappropriate.

The ‘art’ surrounding the Platform sends a wrong message,…. Clearly the work is a little close to tagging for my liking.

He’s also accepted responsibility.

I accept the blame and admit that the art work was not quite what I expected…. Maybe I should have remembered that few patrons ever get the painting that they pay for.

Mr Perkins could learn a lot from him.

It’s four months since I last posted any photographs of Swindon’s Front Garden slowly disappearing under the bricks and concrete of Wichelstowe, though I have made an extensive photographic trip around South Leaze for future reference. This weekend, whilst on my way to make some purchases from those helpful people at Old Town Hardware, I took a photograph of the low-cost housing blocks of East Wichel being built where Westlecott Farm once was. The style and housing density remind me of the dense Victorian terraces that once made up the St Ann’s area of Nottingham… which were demolished over thirty years ago as slums.

I suppose that as they’ve got rid of all their weekend presenters, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Brunel FM’s weekend output has been rather below par. For much of yesterday morning it was playing their emergency recording — which kicks in after about twenty seconds of silence — between the hourly news bulletins. The recording is a little dated: Haddaway can’t have had so much airplay for a long time!

At some point towards the end of the morning presumably someone corrected it, and a more up-to-date set of tracks was programmed, with adverts too Even then it wasn’t right, with the emergency recording kicking in at ten-to each hour. There was worse to come. Today has been nothing but the emergency recording, which lasts a little over an hour, on permanent loop. No news bulletins and no adverts either, which can’t be helping the station’s financial problems. Just to rub in the problem, the jingles are highlighting a programming policy from several years ago.

Brunel FM. Home of the no replay weekday…. We never play a song more than once during your workday.

They’ve certainly made up for that this weekend.

I’m not sure whether what has been reported is exaggeration on the part of Mr McCloud of Hab Housing or poor reporting on the part of the Adver. Either way, it smacks of spin — a mix of the ordinary and the bizarre, whipped-up to look like a luxury concoction.

The TV presenter’s fresh ideas for the Pickard’s Small Field site off Pinehurst Road also include making drains transparent so residents can see the flow of water and increasing wildlife.

I presume those last two aren’t related. Perhaps ‘transparent drain’ is developer-speak for a ditch, in the same way that a car park made from moss and reeds sounds very much like a muddy field.

And one car per home was presented as being a possible house rule of living in his sustainable homes. “I am aware that Swindon is not a bike city but a car city so we face some challenges here,” he said. “I saw some sour faces around the room when I talked about reducing the number of cars per household.”

Before Mr McCloud polishes his environmental credentials to a blinding gleam, lets not forget Swindon Borough Council’s residential parking standards that restrict the number of parking spaces per house.

Thirty per cent of the homes have been designated social housing

That’s also a Swindon Borough standard.

“In the average street in Britain, a resident might only know six or so neighbours,” he said. He advocates sharing tools and cars, as a way of bringing people together. “Sharing objects and material goods is important so people also share experiences,” he said.

Is he planning to run tool inspections? Will anyone owning more than one drill and a saw be evicted for being a member of the DIY bourgeoisie?

His company – HABS – plans to put the homes on the market for competitive prices, but McCloud says all the extra perks will come for free. “Our challenge is delivering this for the price of a three-bedroom house,” he said.

Well, there’s a surprise. The prices will be ‘competitive’… he wouldn’t be in business very long if they weren’t. And as competitive pricing means charging what the market will bear, rather than what the product costs, those ‘extra perks’ are far from free.

Communal orchards or hedgerows with food and a communal hub were also presented as likely possibilities. “We think landscaping is an important part of what we do,” he said. “The opposite is a lawn that gets mowed once per week. Biodiversity is one of our biggest objectives.”

And just who is going to pick up the tab for maintaining these orchards? A little extra on your Council Tax to pay for Mr McCloud’s utopia perhaps?

There’s no doubting that the urban environment in which people live is matters, but there are limits to what landscape and architecture can do to affect the quality of those lives. When developers forget this and imbue their creations with tasks of social engineering that are beyond their powers, they don’t create the ideal homes of the future; they create the sink-estates for the next generation.

The decline of Brunel FM seems to have been rapid and tomorrow could well mark the end of its parent company. Since the Adver first reported the departure of Dan Chisholm from the station’s breakfast show, others have followed. The weekend presenters were the latest to go. In their place was automated programming, with for much of the time the beep-beep of the feed from the news bulletin supplier audible in the background behind the non-stop music. Not that this will be totally unfamiliar to regular listeners, but at least in the past this poor quality programming was restricted to late at night — now it’s happening in the middle of the day.

Now it seems the station has just one newsreader and one presenter left, Kate Constance having been moved from the evening show, to the evening drive-time show and now to the breakfast show, as other presenters have left… and apparently doubling as advertising salesperson too. The Lime Kiln studios must seem rather empty.

With the economy in crisis and an economic and diplomatic feud with Iceland brewing, you’d think Mr Brown would be busy with the important affairs of government…. Nope, he’s been breezing through Swindon on his way to open a literature festival. Admittedly, he was in Swindon to talk about economics, but it’s hardly an efficient use of the PM’s time.