komadori’s green corner

I see that whilst I have been away, quite a fight has broken out over waste and recycling collections in central Swindon.

Now that a quango has changed its guidance on alternate weekly collections, particularly in relation to food waste, Councillor Montaut has written an open letter to Mr Wren, the councillor in charge of waste and recycling, questioning the decision to collect ‘non-recyclable’ waste once per fortnight, and has then gone on to play petty politics with the issue. It is also worth noting that Mr Montaut is rather selecive in which parts of said quango’s guidance he chooses to take note of, with some of his points (e.g. about the effect of fortnightly collections on recycling rates) totally contradicting the same guidance document that he quotes elsewhere.

What Mr Montaut hasn’t questioned are the rules about who does and who does not get a wheelie bin, which seem to have been applied differently in the vicinity of the council leader’s home than the rest of central Swindon. But then, frequency of collection is, to some extent, an issue for all of Swindon, whereas the problem of where to put a wheelie bin is only an issue in the cramped terraces of central Swindon, so, as he lives in Moredon (oddly enough the ward of Councillor Wren), Mr Montaut is not personally affected.

(I note in passing that, according to the August edition of Swindon News, the start date for fortnightly wheelie bin collections has been put back from September to November, though they will be introduced over just two weeks from 5th November rather than over six months as originally advertised.)

May I recommend Windsor Castle Brewery’s Green Man beer… real ale for lager drinkers. I also commend the Hogs Back Brewery for the choice of colour for their steam-powered dray. Blogging will be light and/or inconsequential for the remainder of the week, whilst I continue an in-depth study of British beers.

The outline plans for concreting over the area around Coate Water have now been formally submitted to Swindon Borough Council. Anyone wishing to look at and comment on the plans can do so here and here.

If the government continues to believe it is doing so well on being ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, why the continuing growth in private and now semi-public security? Swindon has not only the bouncers seen on pub and club doorsteps throughout the country, and the security staff employed by the local pubwatch, but now we also have a new ‘Street Team’ employed by the inSwindon company, a company backed by Swindon Borough Council, the South West Regional Development Agency and the public-sector New Swindon Company. Any doubt as to the latter’s role is dispelled by the images used on the inSwindon website.

I was, perhaps, a little premature in my suggestions of amnesia amongst our local councillors. Yesterday’s Adver carries a story about ongoing discussions between Swindon Borough Council and universities, but about a town centre campus, not a Coate Water campus. ‘Story’ is quite an apt description in this case. The leading paragraph suggests that discussions are well developed.

PLANS for a town centre university are in the pipeline and the University of the West of England is believed to be the top choice to meet Swindon’s higher education needs.

The quote from The University of the West of England* is considerably more guarded.

UWE, along with other universities has been involved in preliminary discussions with Swindon Council to which no outcome has yet been reached.

That reads like nothing more than ‘maybe’ to me. The figurative pipeline in the newspaper story could be very long.

*Mind that initial ‘The’. It’s in their legal title and they can get very picky about it.

(Despite the palm tree, this house is in England.)

I’ve been waiting for the latest artists impressions for the updated Science Museum at Wroughton to appear on their website. They have, apparently, been three months in the making and the director of the museum has great aspirations for them

I hope these images will give people a sense of the sheer scale of the Inspired experience and the serious fun that Inspired visitors will have.

All I can say is they’ll have to be significantly more inspiring than the one picture shown in The Adver, which looks like nothing more than a big, drearily painted store room.

No sooner have I finished writing of an example of Michael Wills’ struggle with reality, than another instance comes to my attention. This time, it’s Mr Wills, as Electoral Policy Minister, commenting on the Electoral Commission’s report on the electronic voting trials in May.

The purpose of pilots is to learn lessons for the future and we will do so…. We are pleased that the evaluations point to a high level of system security and user confidence in e-voting systems tested and that the security and integrity of the polls was not compromised.

Err? Let me quote from the commission’s report. Page 4 of the Key Findings and Recommendations Summary Paper:

[T]here was insufficient time available to implement and plan the pilots, and the quality assurance and testing was undertaken too late and lacked sufficient depth. The level of implementation and security risk involved was significant and unacceptable. There remain issues with the security and transparency of the solutions and the capacity of the local authorities to maintain control over the elections.

and again, this time from page 5:

In Swindon, pre-polling day end-to-end testing of the wireless electronic polling station network did not take place at all, which exposed the pilot scheme to an unacceptable level of risk.

Just which parts of ‘security risk involved was significant and unacceptable’ and ‘exposed the pilot scheme to an unacceptable level of risk’ does Mr Wills not understand? Just in case there’s any doubt as to where prime responsibility for these problems lies (seeing as Mr Wills is so fond of piling blame onto Swindon Council), one more quote, from page 5 again.

Although the MoJ undertook its own quality assurance through a security audit, this took place far too late. In some cases, the audit was conducted too close to the count or ‘going live’ date, which meant that, realistically, there was not enough time to make any significant changes following the audit. Clearly, it was incumbent on the suppliers to ensure that their solutions met the requirements of the framework. As noted earlier, however, these requirements were not rigorously enforced by the MoJ and by the time the audit took place it was too late.

Clearly, this government’s approach to learning lessons is to bury its head deep in the sand.

Compare and contrast. The leader of Swindon Borough Council, Roderick Bluh, quoted at the beginning of July.

We have been having discussions with various universities, but this is about what is best for Swindon not what is best for developers.

And quoted today, less then four weeks later.

Before a university can be brought to Swindon there would have to be discussions with the council and MPs and as far as I know there hasn’t. We have certainly not been party to any discussions about a university and the developers should certainly be pushed on who this university is.

That looks like a bad case of amnesia to me.

Aah, it’s so nice to see that the MP for North Swindon is once again not letting reality get in the way of a quick party-political jibe.

Most of the proposed changes will leave areas of Swindon with reduced bus services despite the fact that Thamesdown Transport appear to be profitable enough to pay Swindon Borough council £250,000 a year in dividends. If the Council gave back this bonus, Thamesdown Transport might be able to keep some of the services they are planning to cut. Many constituents have already expressed their dismay about these proposals to me and I have now written to other residents affected by these changes to ask for their views. I hope that both Thamesdown Transport and Swindon Borough Council will re-think these proposals.

Hmm. The problem with that argument is that, as the council is both owner of Thamesdown Transport and provider of subsidies for unprofitable bus services, it’s all just a money-go-round. As pointed out by the bus company’s managing director, some of the services to be reduced are operated for Swindon Borough Council, not as commercial services (though some others are not). And in the bus company’s own words

Where there are growing numbers using the buses, such as in North Swindon, we propose to improve services. In other areas, where not enough use is being made of them, they would be reduced.

That’s north Swindon where the services will be improved, Mr Wills’ own constituency… just not the parts of it with a track-record of voting for his red-nest comrades.