Tag: Annie

I’m not sure what Mr Glaholm is on, but it is clearly strong stuff. His suggestion on how to solve the problems with waste and recycling collections is pure fantasy.

I think what we need now is for Anne Snelgrove to call for a public meeting on this. She’s the one person with the connections that could make it happen and who could be viewed as independent by both sides.

There are many things Ms Snelgrove may be but, as her ignominious voting record in the House of Commons and her many partisan interventions in local politics show, she is neither independent nor seen as such. She’s already had her say on this topic, and it was little more than a party-political jibe.

Mr Glaholm’s other thought on this subject, that the change in waste and recycling collections would have been much more successful if done area by area is also based on an assumption which, for this council, is just plain wrong.

When I was on that working party I suggested that rather than a blanket roll-out we should do it slowly, but I was told the council had the bins in West Swindon and knew what would happen. But it was a mistake. Rolling out everywhere at the same time meant that we learned as we went along – instead of looking at areas where we could learn from best practice.

The evidence so far is that the council has no interest in learning anything from its mistakes and prefers to flatly deny that any mistakes were made.

Just a day after I received a letter from Ms Snelgrove, I am now in receipt of a letter from Mr Buckland. Today’s letter from is slightly longer that yesterday’s letter from Ms Snelgrove. It naturally goes into more detail about the ‘cause’ of the proposed closure: a government initiated review. Rather unnaturally, it says rather little about what one might think of as a good conservative principle of running services profitably where possible. The local post office in Westcott Place only last year received a significant facelift and the branch would not, presumably, be a candidate for closure if that had been a success in bringing in greater custom. Not that this is a case for closure of itself: the Post Office are quite inflexible in their business model and the thought of paying sub-postmasters entirely on commission rather than having them salaried seems to be something they reserve for the likes of WH Smith.

Mr Buckland’s letter also brought to my attention that Ms Snelgrove’s letter is dated the day before the official announcement. Very speedy work.

Compare and contrast — letters to the left, forms to the right:

In a rare burst of like-minded thinking, both Mr Buckland and Ms Snelgrove say they are campaigning to save the local post offices that are threatened with closure. I’ve even had a letter from Ms Snelgrove. The difference between the two at the moment seems to be that Mr Buckland offers some reasons why the offices should not close on his website, whereas Ms Snelgrove offers ‘solid arguments’ against the closures only if you’re willing to give her your contact details first, thereby giving her the right to contact you for political purposes rather than ‘non-political’ constituency purposes. Nice.

With it being less than a month since Swindon Borough Council introduced weekly kerbside recycling, it’s far too early to draw conclusions as to its impact… unless you’re Ms Snelgrove that is. We can, as always, rely on Ms Snelgrove to jump in with a bit of cheap political point scoring.

Figures I have seen have Swindon Council’s recycling and composting rate at 32 per cent, and it is excellent that they are doing what they are doing. But when you look at Wiltshire County Council it is recycling 38 per cent of the waste it collects. So although it looks like we’re doing okay what we need to be doing is exceeding our targets. MPs need to keep the pressure on our councils so that they beat their targets quickly and we can all reduce our carbon footprints.

Recycling is about re-use of materials; reducing carbon footprint is about reducing energy consumption. Ms Snelgrove isn’t the first to assume the two are inextricably linked, but for her to restate it does highlight her ignorance of the issues.

Mr Bluh, leading the defence for the council, has, presumably, seen some more up-to-date figures than Ms Snelgrove has.

We’ve already achieved 38 per cent currently, and that will climb once the new service has settled down.

You may also recall Ms Snelgrove’s previous statement that she always puts the concerns of her electorate first. Compare and contrast.

Ms Snelgrove:

One of the big problems we have in this town is that the main recycling point we have is in the northern part of the borough. I think we need a new facility in the south of the borough. It could be a one-off capital project. Once up and running it would not cost too much to maintain and it would make a huge difference to the amount we recycle. We all know the council is receiving a fair amount of cash from building works – I cannot think of a better issue to put money into.

Mr Bluh:

All the changes we’ve made this year have cost the council an extra £2m to introduce, yet we’ve had no financial assistance from the Government to do it…. When we consulted residents about what they thought our priorities for waste should be, they placed a comprehensive kerbside recycling service for the whole borough, including plastic bottles, above a second waste site. We’ve now delivered that.

I suppose it should come as no surprise really that Ms Snelgrove is trying to spend more of our money and would no doubt be the first to complain if council tax had to rise to deliver her plans. That said, there couldn’t be a more apt monument to Ms Snelgrove than a centre for collecting and recycling rubbish. I trust she’ll be at the front of the queue when it opens, with copies of most of her press statements and parliamentary speaches.

The introduction of the new recycling service may have been incompetent, but in picking her latest target for petty political point scoring, Ms Snelgrove has totally missed the main concerns of her electorate.

Today I have been the recipient of part of Ms Snelgrove’s £144,330 annual expenses spend: her parliamentary report. Being paid for with tax payer’s money, the criticism of the local blue nest is more subdued than usual, but it remains pure classic snelgrove.

Whatever I do in my work at the Houses of Parliament, I always think ‘how would this affect Swindon?’

Really? I presume she next thinks ‘What do the party whips want me to do?’ and the answer to that always takes precedence over the effect on Swindon. It’s nice to see her concern for the rural areas around Swindon too.

Constituents in rural areas often feel their concerns are not as high on the council agenda as those of more urban communities. Smaller villages need to retain their individual identities and I want to make sure that they are not ‘lumped in’ with other areas.

Well, perhaps she could make a useful contribution by opposing her own government’s imposition of 34,000 extra houses around Swindon over the next twenty years. Or would that be too much like putting the interests of Swindon before her attempts to crawl up the political ladder?

The announcement yesterday of a reduction of 200 posts at Swindon Borough Council has received very little comment beyond the Adver and BBC articles that carried the story, and rightly so. Two hundred out of 4,500 jobs is less than 4.5%. Even if everyone worked from the age of eighteen to retirement without ever changing jobs, natural wastage in one year from just retirements would be almost 2.4% In the modern world where, even in the public sector, a ‘job for life’ is very much a thing of the past, unless these reductions are very concentrated it is difficult to see that there would be any need for compulsory redundancies. So Mr Small’s comment

I would be very surprised if they managed to shed these jobs with voluntary redundancies.

seems to be a very bad case of crying wolf. As for the comments of Ms Snelgrove, well where to start.

I am deeply disturbed that so many hard-working members of staff are threatened with redundancy and I question how the council can be more efficient by cutting jobs.

Well, no actually the council have said they will look at ‘remov[ing] posts which are currently vacant, and reduce the numbers of short-term contract staff.’ Redundancy is never pleasant for anyone (and having once worked for a company that shed 70% of its staff in one year I speak from personal experience), but this is more a case of ‘so few’ rather than ‘so many’. Ms Snelgrove also seems to have an over-inflated view of her own importance.

I am extremely surprised at this and there has been no discussion with the town’s MPs.

I can think of no reason why there should have been. For once, in comparison, Mr Wills’ comments seem quite rational!

One would hope that someone who once worked in education would know a little about the effect of demographics on school numbers. It would seem not. Our illustrious MP, commenting on Swindon Borough Council’s plans for eleven new schools in new housing developments.

I ask has the number crunching been done correctly we don’t want a situation as in West Swindon where too many places were created that weren’t necessary, I’m not entirely persuaded that three are necessary.

Err, no. They were necessary, but not anymore. To quote from the council’s Core Strategy.

It is a feature of major new residential areas that initially they are composed primarily of younger people – families with children. Future development proposed at Swindon is considerable, and includes several major new development areas. There will an early requirement for schools, nurseries, and health centres in these areas…. At the same time, the needs of the existing urban area will need to be protected, as the ageing population causes a reduction, or change, in the need for schools in some areas.

Seems as though Ms Snelgrove could do with some more time in the classroom herself.

This doesn’t really come as a surprise. Today my local MP was amongst the hypocrites that voted to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act.