komadori’s green corner

I’d subconsciously thought that graffiti is mainly the work of disaffected, disadvantaged youth, and is difficult to remove. Seems I was wrong, on both counts. If the first places the police target in a crackdown on the taggers are in the more affluent estates of North Swindon, and a man in his seventies can keep twenty bus shelters clean of graffiti, then all, in the fight against the taggers, is not as it seems.

’Tis Friday, but there was no battered fish on offer in the canteen today. Breaded fish and poached fish, but not battered. Very disappointing. So disappointing that I had to resort to the ‘vegetable and lamb pie’, the filling of which was rather thin. The canteen gravy contributed more lamb flavour than the pie. I think that is all that need be said on this poor offering. They could definitely learn from the Terra Nova in Cardiff.

The chocolate and strawberry sponge pudding was a little more satisfying. Suitably moist, but rather an all or nothing affair when it came to the strawberries — they would have been better chopped rather than whole.

All-in-all a bad day rounded off with a poor culinary offering and England losing their first match in the cricket world cup.

Walking to work today, there were several boulders strewn around the local park which weren’t there yesterday. There was also the local BBC radio outside broadcast car there. Fortunately, the local newspaper has explained

Four giant sarcen stones – weighing a total of 21 tonnes – have been delivered to Faringdon Road Park in a bid to improve its appearance.

The huge rocks were unloaded yesterday as part of the New Mechanics’ Institute Preservation Trust’s plans to restore the park to its Victorian splendour.

Now, apart from the fact that there was nothing like that in the Park in Victorian times, so it bears no relation to Victorian splendour, it does seem to be quite a good idea — something for children to clamber over in a park which, except for the daffodils, is rather featureless. (Sadly, something for the graffiti taggers to deface too.) The source of the stones was revealing too.

The rocks were provided by Swindon Council which, it is understood, dug them up some years ago during a building project.

The giant stones were kept in storage and are now finally seeing the light of day.

Amazing the things that some people keep….

It’s nice to see that my local MP has such a good grasp of a significant issue in her constituency. According to the local newspaper, she said

Alan [Johnson, Education Secretary] echoed my disappointment and Michael Wills’ disappointment, and of course the council’s, that the university is not coming here and has decided to pull out.

And I think he explained his scepticism that the university is quoting the Stern report on climate change as the reason why it should not come here.

Err… climate change affecting university development? Not quite. In fact, nowhere near. Neither of the University of Bath’s recent press releases mention climate change nor the Stern Report. They do mention

the Government’s priorities for the future development of higher education are shifting towards increased opportunities for study whilst in the workplace.

as set out in a letter to HEFCE from Alan Johnson and the government commissioned Leitch Review of Skills. But nothing to do with climate change (except for the political hot air quoted here).

The BBC repeated several times today that the government will be providing 1000 extra trains which it will pay for. But read the speech that this is based on and it says no such thing. The exact words are

So in the High Level Output Specification this summer, we will specify that 1,000 new carriages should be targeted at the most congested routes to effectively tackle passenger demand.

In this way, if the price is right, I anticipate that we will significantly increase the number of carriages on the network by 2014.

The High Level Output Specification will be the government’s expectation for what the railway will deliver over the coming years. It does not mean that the government will pay for this. In fact, if you consider that most of the recently let rail franchises require the Train Operating Companies to pay the government a premium within one or two years rather than receive a subsidy, it is the passengers that will be paying for the trains, not the government. Methinks some people in the DfT and the Beeb must be feeling very dizzy at the moment.

Had a very good pie today at Terra Nova, which is a pub at Mermaid Quay on Cardiff Bay. It was a little lacking in gravy (just a squirt of thickish gravy around the mash) and in vegetables and the placing of the pie on top of the mash was rather too nouvelle cuisine for a meal like pie ’n’ mash, but the pie was definitely a cut above the average pub pie. Well filled with succulent meat in a beer gravy. Delicious. The pint of Brains Dark was good too.

I visited Cardiff today. Between the city centre, where there is a lot of regeneration going on, and the rejuvenated Cardiff Bay is Butetown (tho’ you’ll miss it if you follow the signs), an oasis of deprivation.

To walk from the city centre to the bay, the quickest route is down Bute Street, though the signs direct you under the railway embankment to the parallel Lloyd George Avenue through the Atlantic Wharf area. The two roads are separated by less than a hundred yards (in places they are immediately alongside opposite sides of the railway embankment) but are miles apart economically. Atlantic Wharf is surrounded by modern, expensive apartments. Butetown is a former Council Estate (it looks like it was built in the 1970s), with a rundown appearance and several boarded-up houses visible from the main road.

Now admittedly the affluence of Cardiff Bay in places looks wafer thin — many of the new shops behind the Bay front are unlet and Mermaid Quay already has the tawdry look of many Victorian seaside resorts. But the difference in life on either side of the railway line is remarkable an probably not what the planners hoped for. It does rather show that if you build estates for the socially deprived and have policies that continue to concentrate the most deprived in those estates then however much is spent on the surrounding areas they will, not surprisingly, remain deprived.

Having taken my parents for a walk yesterday (which has only a few similarities to the same with a dog), I have noticed some planning applications and building works that are filling in some of the few unused spaces around here. Visible from my front window, two flats are being built at the end of a Victorian terrace. Progress, if  you   can    call     it      that,       is        very         slow. No more than one course of bricks per day.

From my rear window, I can see an old car repair business and bungalow. Both are now vacant with the latter boarded up and the garden wall recently demolished (either the work of vandals or a sign of preparatory work) and the walls of the former smothered with graffiti tags. Not pretty. The planned 22 flats will be, in some ways, an improvement, if they are ever built — it is almost two years since outline planning permission was granted with a string of conditions to mitigate against the risk of flooding. The Environment Agency charts show the risk of flooding to be less than once every 100 years.

At a corner nearby, there’s a planning application for three new houses. Having thought “They won’t fit!” I have checked. They will fit, but only because the gardens of the Victorian terraced houses behind (long since walled off when the houses were converted to flats) have been added to the plot. So three new houses complying with current housing regulations, but only at the expense of ensuring that four older houses never will.

I’ve just received the first leaflet through my letterbox for the coming local elections. It is from Derique Montaut (or is it Derique Montaur, it is hard to tell, as the spelling is different on each side of the leaflet) who is, it says, ‘working hard in central ward’. I guess that is why the ward news section of his party’s website hasn’t been updated since January 2006. The, rather small, leaflet that he left says ‘Derique Montaut called today. Sorry I missed you!’. But Derique, you didn’t, I was in. You just couldn’t be bothered to knock on the door and talk!

There’s a time and a place for anonymity, but one place that isn’t is in a shop. Now I am sure that the owner of a local off-licence from which £3000 was burgled in a distraction burglary is very embarrassed about what happened and how it happened (one of a group speaking in unrealistic foreign accents distracted the owner whilst another just walked through to the back of the shop and took the money, with it all captured on CCTV) but his wish, as reported in the local newspaper, to remain anonymous is not likely to last long. It’s a small off-licence, not part of a chain, and is both named and pictured in the newspaper article. Unless he emigrates now, most locals will know exactly who he is.