komadori’s green corner

I see that Ms Snelgrove has been assisting her red nest colleagues in tidying my local area. The reasons given are all very laudable. Ms Snelgrove:

The problem is that litter attracts more litter. We want to make sure the canal walk is free from litter and we think it is part of our civic duty. We want to set an example and help keep Swindon a lovely place to live.

Mr Montaut:

We want to make the public aware that communities need to work together to keep areas clean. The cost of cleaning waste is high and there needs to be a cycle of change to keep areas clean.

Mr Wright:

We can all do a small part to help put things right. It is as simple as that.

All good stuff and nothing anyone could disagree with… except I’m not sure it is quite so simple. Canal Walk is one of the better maintained parts of Westcott, with regular visits from the council’s cleaners. If their intention was to encourage the community to keep the area clean, why so little publicity in advance of Saturday’s outing? Were they frightened of being joined by members of the public other than party activists? And if she regards it as part of her ‘civic duty’, can we expect to see Ms Snelgrove back cleaning the streets when the cameras aren’t around?

If they really wanted to make an impression on the area, rather than seeking a photo opportunity, their time would have been much better spent encouraging those whose garages face onto Canal Walk to take up the council’s offer of cleaning off the graffiti that defaces Canal Walk to a much greater extent than litter ever does.

Politicians have a poor reputation when it comes to being honest and truthful. So you’d think that any politician keen to improve their credibility would, when they have to go back on a commitment made earlier — to ‘secure’ playing fields for community enjoyment after a school closes, say — try to show some real regret and to explain carefully the reason for abandoning their earlier commitments. I guess Mr Sammels cares little for his credibility.

It was out of our control. The plans have changed, as since then there has been further consultation. I am glad we are keeping the leisure centre at the site but it is a shame they are building on that part of the land. But it is the only land they can use.

To say that ‘The plans have changed’ is stating the obvious and explains nothing. If by ‘our’ Mr Sammels is referring just to himself and his fellow St Philips ward councillors, then that is a rather narrow interpretation that few will accept. Mr Sammels is from the nest that controls Swindon Borough Council and this is land owned by the council being sold to fund school development for the council. The economics may have changed since last year; control of the council has not.

Behaviour like this deserves all the ridicule it has received.

Perhaps it’s just been poorly presented, but the plan by the inSwindon company to run a remembrance event in Wharf Green at the same time as the main remembrance ceremony at the memorial in Regents Circus seems inappropriate. If it is, as inSwindon claim ‘a very simple event’ then it might be reasonable — an opportunity for busy people to take some time to remember, without the formality of a normal remembrance ceremony. But that’s not the way it appears. An event with bagpipes, poetry readings and a parade is beyond being ‘very simple’.

Remembrance events should be primarily for remembrance, not to promote the latest town centre redevelopment.

Whilst researching my last posting, I noticed that the forthcoming cabinet meeting of Swindon Borough Council has as the final item on its agenda ‘University at North Star, Swindon’ including site plans. It will be discussed behind closed doors.

It seems strange that, when police and public are becoming increasingly paranoid about anyone with a camera in any urban location that’s not a tourist trap, 24/7 CCTV surveillance is regarded as essential in protecting Swindon from terrorists. A consultants report for Swindon Community Safety Partnership — the organisation that brought us lollipops as a remedy to drunken brawls — has raised concerns about the uncoordinated approach to CCTV. A report to the next cabinet meeting of Swindon Borough Council concludes

The Town Centre systems that exist are not currently monitored 24/7. The effect of this is that there is no pro-active CCTV cover at peak times. Similarly, if a major incident occurred in the Town Centre, coordination of the existing systems to monitor the incident and response is likely to be difficult.

Hmm… and permanently monitored CCTV would solve that? To quote another part of the same report,

Government’s national CCTV strategy identifies that an estimated 80% of data from CCTV is of questionable quality.

So the report is recommending investing in a central control room, to monitor at all hours CCTV footage that is acknowledged to be of questionable value. It makes as much sense as hiring a conductor for an orchestra where all the instruments are out of tune. It’ll look impressive and coordinated, but the overall result will be barely distinguishable from the chaos that went before.

It’s received plenty of press coverage, but there’s an ingredient missing from the Development Agreement announced on Wednesday amidst a flurry of press releases. Dates. Modus Properties may well have committed to spending £215M on the Regent Place development but, without an indication of when that might be — and Mr Bluh was at pains to say that it wouldn’t be soon — it all looks like a rather empty publicity stunt.

I’m a little puzzled about what the significance of Swindon Borough Council’s StreetSmart initiative really is. The puff for it in the Adver gives the impression of a great coming together of services: parts of two departments merged into one.

Until now, the services grouped under the StreetSmart banner operated separately in two council directorates – transport and environment and leisure.

As far as I can tell, they still do. What’s changed, according to the StreetSmart page on the council’s website, are the arrangements for contacting some of them.

StreetSmart brings together, under the StreetSmart team at the Swindon Direct Contact Centre, all the services which keep the Borough’s streets and open spaces looking tidy and well tended. It also provides just one point of contact for those services

So that’s a bit more co-ordination of the teams, a lot of rebranding — addresses and titles of pages on the website renamed to include the new brand and a main page with a pretty little logo at the bottom and a not-so-pretty logo at the top — but still two separate departments. And if it’s taken this initiative to provide a single contact number for these services, just what has Swindon Direct been doing since its creation earlier this year?

Swindon Direct was meant to provide a single point for council services. It was already the one number you could call about all the services now covered by StreetSmart. And the ‘new’ number for StreetSmart has been in use since Swindon Direct was created, but as the direct dial number just for waste & recycling. If your problem is with car park maintenance, do you now call the StreetSmart number or the Car Parking number of Swindon Direct?

It seems the council has already recreated the problem that Swindon Direct was meant to solve.

Having bought his own house through Halifax Estate Agents, komadori notes with some sadness — though not much — the imminent departure of said company from Swindon. And this isn’t just any estate agent that is leaving. It’s one of the few that was prepared to market some of the houses of pre-fabricated concrete construction in Swindon’s three Ps that other agents would not touch. Whilst some might cheer at this, for those hoping to buy or sell a cheap (very cheap), if risky, property, things are about to get much harder… which will do nothing for those estates nor for the general prosperity of Swindon.

No, I’m not being serious… but consider the bit of health & safety lunacy allegedly behind the postponement of the opening of the pool at Highworth Recreation Centre.

The temperature of the pool, which is supposed to be 28 degrees celsius had dropped to 22 degrees overnight. According to Mr Baker children under eight are not allowed to swim in water below 27 degrees for health and safety reasons.

On that basis, children should never be allowed to swim in the sea off Britain’s coasts.

I see that the railway village has been kitted out with new black boxes to replace the original orange recycling boxes. I presume it’s been done to reduce their visible impact in this historic area, but a pair of large black boxes are just as obvious as a pair of orange ones. As they seem to have been specially ordered for the area, I wonder if anyone considered making them a pale brown colour to better blend with the stone facades of the houses?