komadori’s green corner

I’m sure that when the police describe something as ‘unusual for Swindon’ the impression they want to give is that it does no happen very often. With, according to recent reports, estate agents in both Stratton and Swindon town centre having been shot at using ball bearing guns, and a travel agents in Westcott Place similarly targeted, all within the last couple of weeks, I’d say that is unusual in the opposite sense. I really don’t care whether, to quote the police again, ‘The offences take place on an ad-hoc basis’ or not. Seven attacks in two weeks may be ad-hoc but is also rather frequent. It deserves a rather greater sense of concern from the authorities than is apparent at the moment.

With all the fuss in Swindon over the possible reintroduction of a canal, Wiltshire’s county town provides a good example of how not get the best value from a canal.

Trowbridge has very little to offer any passing tourists, so you might think that they’d make the most of what little they have. You’d be wrong. Access to the Kennet & Avon Canal is down a poorly signposted — just one tiny sign in the whole town — footpath through the appropriately named Canal Road Industrial Estate, about a mile from the town centre. Hardly the most attractive route to what is probably Trowbridge’s best tourist asset, and that one sign is at the entrance to the industrial estate. An alternative point of access to the canal, Hilperton Marina on the outskirts of the town, barely gets a mention either.

All the other towns along the route of the Kennet & Avon Canal seem to have benefited from its presence; Trowbridge, though admittedly with less to gain, has apparently chosen to miss out.

I just so happened to look out of the window at the right time to catch a fine sunset this evening.

Pity the poor journalists at the Adver, desperate for something to fill their pages after a quiet bank holiday weekend. What to do? How about taking a step into the past, going back to the origins of the newspaper and its title, and presenting an advert for alternative therapies as news? Not satisfied with that? How about a story on how leaking rainwater set off a fire alarm? Life threatening stuff, no? And these are amongst the top stories, rationed to no more than fifteen per day, that the Adver posts to its website as a taster of the greater pearls to be found within its printed pages. ’Tis enough to make one want to go out and buy a copy, ’tis it not?

I’ve received a survey to fill in from Swindon Borough Council, titled ‘Life in Swindon Survey’. If the opening blurb is to be believed, its purpose matches its title.

We would like to hear your views about life in your local area and about issues such as, anti-social behaviour, leisure activities and your health. Your view will help us to plan our future services around residents’s priorities.

The survey itself though has very few questions specifically about ‘Life in Swindon’: only four out of thirty two. Three of these make up the entirety of the ‘Culture & leisure’ and ‘Your feelings about your local community’ sections (one on which attractions have been visited, one on satisfaction with Swindon town centre, and one on problems in the ‘local area’) and the other (on local adult education) is in the ‘Work and skills’ section. The section titled ‘Your community’ is virtually nothing about the community and almost everything about the individual filling in the form, with two questions about individual involvement in voluntary work, another on individual ability to influence decisions and only one on the community (about how well people from different backgrounds get on). Seven of the thirty two questions are standard demographic questions used primarily for classifying respondents. Having filled it in, I feel like I’ve been answering a survey that’s more about me than it is about Swindon or ‘Life in Swindon’.

I can’t help feeling this was a wasted opportunity. Much of the survey seems to be seeking information obtainable from other government agencies. What little’s left was hardly worth the effort — and possibly not the consultants’ fee either. There’s so much more to say on ‘Life in Swindon’ than answers to three questions can tell.

If you believe the Adver, the sun’s always rising.

SWINDON police seized drugs and cash during a day of dawn raids.

It’s not even as though there was a large number of raids. There were only two. It must have been a very short day….

Just three months ago there was that most ‘innovative’ campaign in Fleet Street, using lollipops as an antidote to drunkenness. Now, in yet another great medical advance, a unit of Swindon Borough Council is reported to be attempting to fight drug addiction by handing out mugs and pens.

I think I might set up a consultancy business, advising councils on how to reduce gun crime by handing out chocolate biscuits. With councils like Swindon’s around, I’m sure I’d make a fine profit….

It must be confusing at times, working in the local public sector. The interconnections between organisations seem so incestuous at times that I’m surprised that people don’t end up spending much of their time talking to themselves. For example, I read that the Swindon Summer Festival is a partnership of Swindon Borough Council, Swindon Cultural Partnership, inSwindon and the Marriott Hotel. So that’s the council in partnership with two of its own partnerships and a hotel.

If you’re looking for a beacon of efficient organisation… this isn’t it.

If a lorry hits a house, set back from the road, so hard that it takes two hours for rescue teams to remove and afterwards the house has to be supported by six steel props, you’d suspect that something very serious must have happened to make the lorry come off the road. The police comment in the Adver’s report on such an incident in Stratton suggests not.

The lorry had to take evasive action from a parked car on the road, before it struck a lamppost and struck the house. There was also rain on the road with a puddle on the bend.

Someone in the local constabulary’s clearly striving hard to win an award for po-faced understatement.

Marks & Spencer seem to have got themselves a little confused geographically. Search for a branch near Swindon and the first three results are, not unreasonably, their not yet opened (for at least another seven weeks) Swindon Orbital Centre branch, their Swindon town centre branch and their Swindon Outlet Centre branch. Next comes Marlborough and then… Guernsey, then Cirencester! Follow the link for the Orbital Centre branch and you get a map… of Swindon town centre.

Not so much “More to explore at Your M&S”, rather a case of more to explore to get to M&S.