Mr Slattery of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church seems not to be very media savvy.
I was a bit surprised when Ladbrokes approached me about taking on a charity bet. Of course I’m not promoting gambling, and I know the damage it has done to some families.
I wonder in what way Mr Slattery thinks that getting Ladbrokes a free mention in both local and national press is not promoting gambling. At just £50 (or £1300 if he wins), the bookies have got an advertising bargain.
Parliament has today published the expenses and allowances claimed by MPs in 2007/08. The figures for Swindon’s MPs are:
| Member | Cost of staying away from main home | Office running costs | Staffing costs | Centrally purchased stationery | Stationery associated postage costs | Central IT provision | Staff cover & other costs | Comms Allowance |
| Ms Snelgrove | £20,913 | £21,605 | £89,656 | £2,917 | £3,277 | £1,078 | £0 | £8,923 |
| Mr Wills | £20,766 | £10,216 | £100,554 | £1,732 | £5,254 | £1,328 | £2,429 | £9,406 |
| Member | MP Travel: between home/constituency/Westminster | MP Travel: Other Rail | Spouse Travel | Employee Travel | ||||
| Mileage | Rail | Misc | Spouse Total | No. of Journeys | Employee Total | No. of Journeys | ||
| Ms Snelgrove | £2,853 | £5,096 | £264 | £25 | £90 | 2 | £532 | 18 |
| Mr Wills | £580 | £834 | £0 | £0 | £39 | 0 | £0 | 0 |
Add in their salaries of over £60,000 and each of them has cost well over £200,000 a year. Mr Wills already publishes his expenses in full detail but Ms Snelgrove is more reticent. She may be proud of what she delivers for that price; I think the people of Swindon deserve a refund.
You could be forgiven for thinking that the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, visits her constituency too rarely to have even a basic grasp of its geography. The Department of Communities and Local Government has announced — as part of the government’s splurging of our money to try and fix the financial crisis it helped create — that it is providing £2.09M for the “Wichelstowe Pedestrian & Cycle Bridge, Swindon”. That’s a bridge between West Swindon and what will, at some point, be West Wichel. Ms Snelgrove’s response to that announcement is a little confused, to say the least.
The Government has recognised how vital a bridge over the railway is to Swindon’s regeneration. I’m pleased the town’s MPs, working with the council, have managed to secure this funding. It also supports the notion of a university in the centre of Swindon.
Is Ms Snelgrove thinking of tackling both obesity and the collapse in the housing market by housing students in otherwise unsellable new houses in Wichelstowe and forcing them to walk via a roundabout route to a university at North Star? Or is she just confused, thinking of the plans within Swindon Borough Council’s Central Area Action Plan for a footbridge over the railway between the town centre and North Star? That would support the siting of a university (or indeed anything) at North Star, close to Swindon’s centre. A bridge between West Swindon and West Wichel clearly — unless you’re a geographically inept MP — does no such thing.
Even if one is charitable and surmises that Ms Snelgrove was responding off the cuff to a vague question from a journalist about a footbridge over the railway, a question that wasn’t specific about where that bridge was, one thing is indisputable. If Ms Snelgrove doesn’t know which bridge it is that she’s talking about, contrary to her claim she can’t have had any part in securing its funding.
The news that Archers Brewery has, for the third time, gone into administration is, sadly, not really surprise. It’s just because of its previous struggles to stay in business. Nor the fact that at times visitors have found that they literally couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. The problem was it’s beer range. Their beers were nice enough ,but try placing a repeat order. With a total of 190 beers brewed over thirty years, outside of their core range of four beers, other beers came and went in little more than a month.
Archers isn’t the first brewery to fail through thinking that the best way to serve the guest beers market is to constantly change their range. Having failed three times, if it’s resurrected again perhaps it will finally learn its lesson and give its drinkers a more predictable choice.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, one of the less pleasant experiences when stepping out from the Brunel Centre into Havelock Square is the rather sickly smell of cooking doughnuts. That said, I wouldn’t wish to deny anyone visiting Swindon town centre their dose of doughnuts, just not in such a cramped location. Swindon Borough Council has taken a different view, refusing licenses for both the doughnut seller and a hot-dog stall.
Hot food trailers and vans tend to function as portable shop units, operating in isolation. Where it appears that they are being used (or will be used) principally to save on costs relative to competing cafes and take-aways, a street trading consent will not normally be granted.
Where the infrastructure or trading opportunities are such that a fixed retail unit could not be justified or accommodated, a fast food trailer will be considered for consent.
’Tis an odd political world where a blue-nest controlled council is opposed to competition. The change in policy comes after what was described as ‘a comprehensive consultation exercise’ — so comprehensive that only four organisations were consulted. The logic underpinning the policy is also, to be generous, poor.
In all three cases it is plain that there is a significant customer demand for their services, otherwise they would not survived over a long period. In terms of location, that suggests that the stalls are conveniently placed for their customers. The desirability of the pitches from the commercial standpoint of the traders is not in any doubt. The question remains whether pedestrianised areas within retail developments are there for the benefit of shoppers and fixed retail premises or whether they are just another resource for accommodating additional commercial activity.
If someone chooses to buy something from one of these stalls, does that not make them a shopper? If ‘resource for accommodating additional commercial activity’ is such a bad thing why bother with the town centre regeneration?
Update: within a few days the doughnut seller has been granted a new pitch in The Parade.
I find Mr Greenhalgh’s reasoning, if one can call it that, for proposing closure of the Groundwell Park and Ride odd.
We either make savings where we can or we put up council tax.
That didn’t seem to cross your mind when you voted to put up your own allowances.
While the park and ride is an excellent service we are losing a lot of money because it is simply not covering its costs.
Until last year, Thamesdown Transport ran the park and ride bus service for a fee and Swindon Borough Council kept the profit or suffered the loss, depending on how successful the service was. Then that was changed so that, like any other bus service, the bus company runs the services that are profitable and keeps the profit from them, whilst the council subsidises the loss making ones. As parking in the park-and-ride car park is free, the council have, of their own choice, changed the funding arrangement to one where by definition they are guaranteed to make a loss and the bus company guaranteed to make a profit. It doesn’t cover its costs because you’ve set-up contractual arrangements that guarantee that, Mr Greenhalgh.
The number using the service is not that great so I don’t think the effect on traffic will be huge.
That seems to contradict the assessment in the council’s own budget proposals.
“There is some risk that this proposal may impact on our Local Transport Plan assessment and the ability of the Council to secure regional/national funding for future transport schemes. There may also be some impact on general bus network as the operator will lose profit from these services.”
Translated from public sector bureaucracy-speak, that’s quite huge.
We have good parking facilities in the town centre and while this is not an ideal situation it is something we have to look at.
And I’m sure that the knowledge that you’ll make much more money from charging them to park there had no influence on your decision….
This would not be a permanent move and hopefully there will be a change in government and Swindon will be given the kind of funding it needs.
To quote from the council’s own budget proposals again.
“This proposal may impact on our Local Transport Plan assessment and the ability of the Council to secure regional/national funding for future transport schemes.”
Regardless of the colour of the government, a habit of abandoning facilities in an ill considered financial panic is hardly a way of encouraging government to spend taxpayers’ money here.
Compare and contrast.
Mr Perkins on the government’s part-funded scheme to offer teachers in failing schools extra money to stay in their jobs:
At the end of the day they are attempting to bribe teachers. I thought teaching was always about being a vocational job.
Mr Bluh on councillors voting to increase their own allowances when the council’s income is dropping:
The challenging times in which we find ourselves, especially given the low level of formula grant we receive despite the borough’s needs, call for positive leadership, not political gestures.
Clearly the local blue nest — and the red nest councillors that voted with them — are rather confused. This isn’t positive leadership: it’s hypocrisy.
I’ve no idea what an appropriate level of expenditure on public relations (PR) is for a council. Having looked at the figures from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, I can see that the level of expenditure by Swindon Borough Council on PR (over £1.4M) seems comparable with other councils of similar size: by whatever statistic is used, Swindon Borough Council’s level of PR expenditure is mid-ranking. That doesn’t mean it’s acceptable though. Nor is the council spokesman’s attempt to defend the 15% increase from last year acceptable.
Swindon Borough Council is a major employer which provides a vast range of services to more than 180,000 people. Residents expect us to give information about the services which are available to them, and the help we can provide.
Well, yes, I wouldn’t disagree with any of that, but the council does much the same now as it did a year ago, so why spend so much more telling us about it?
While we are always reviewing our costs and finding ways of doing things for less, there is still a cost.
Spending 15% more is not what many would described as ‘doing things for less’.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance suggestion that most of this is unnecessary nonsense, and shows either a complete lack of understanding about the work of local government, or it’s deliberately misleading.
Err, no. It is consistent with the council’s own figures.
recruitment cost £410,865, promotions cost £391,865, statutory public notices £44,075 and other services, including the council’s communication department, cost £619,507.
Only the recruitment costs and statutory notices seem essential. Promotions and the less than informative ‘other services’ could well contain numerous pointless or overly glossy publications.
The only thing that seems to be deliberately misleading here is the council’s defence of its own publicity.
This morning the sales signs were being cleared from the windows of the now closed Woolworths store in Regent Street. It will leave a big gap in the town centre… but probably only physically. With every passing acquisition and demerger — of which there were several — the offering and Woolworths was diminished. Much of its hardware range was lost to B&Q and much of its electrical range to Comet, both of which were once part of the same group. The Woolworths of my childhood was a store more like Wilkinson is today. In its final years, Woolworths seemed to be the home of a narrow range of overpriced low quality goods. Its one bright point was its chocolate range at Easter, but a store chain cannot survive on chocolate eggs alone.
In the end, the wonder of Woolies was that it survived quite as long as it did.
The government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove seems to think that building societies can survive without savers. The Nationwide Building Society has said that, for its tracker mortgages, it will not follow further Bank of England interest rate cuts. It is doing this to protect its savers.
Savings rates are at an historic low and this move means we will not be forced into a position where we could have to cut savings rates more aggressively than we would otherwise like to
Without savers, there can be no mortgages and if interest rates fall further, the more savvy savers will find other things to do with their money. This rather basic economic truth seems to be beyond Ms Snelgrove’s comprehension.
Should there be a further cut in interest rates I will be talking to Nationwide about what it can do to pass on the cut to customers…. It is important that lenders pass on interest rate cuts – we need to do whatever it takes to help businesses, people, and the wider economy in Swindon.
One of the reasons the economy is in its current mess — apart from this government’s profligacy with our money over many years — is that people borrowed far too much and saved far too little. Demanding that financial institutions punish rather than encourage savers will do nothing to improve the long-term health of the economy, nor will it increase the availability of mortgages.
Writing as someone who is not only one of Ms Snelgrove’s constituents, but who also has both savings and a mortgage with the Nationwide, I’d prefer further interest rate cuts not to be passed on, thank you.