I see that Toby Sturgis, cabinet member for planning and waste on Wiltshire County Council has a rather poor understanding (i.e. virtually none) of the science on which some of the decisions within his remit are should be made. On the council’s trial of food digesting bins, he is reported to have said
It’s not sustainable to keep on burying this rubbish in the ground. It is expensive and it produces green house gases
Err… so what do these food digesting bins produce? To quote from the Wiltshire Waste Partnership’s website, describing one of the two designs of food digesting bin being offered.
The patented design ensures the total breakdown of all food waste into its natural components of water and carbon dioxide, thus producing minimal residue.
Ah, good old CO2, one of the main green house gases.
Mark Gregson, owner of the Royston Hotel in Victoria Road, said the bigger chains could afford to squeeze local businesses out of the area. He said: “When the Travelodge opened for business I think we reached the limit of beds to customers, and if another comes along I think it will have a negative impact. The big companies have an advantage because they can afford to cut their prices by half for six months. They can run at a loss due to their financial backing and that’s something we just can’t do.”
Well… yes… that’s all true. But Jurys Inn is not really in the same market as The Royston Hotel, in which I stayed for almost a month when I first came to Swindon. Even at half-price, a room in a Jurys Inn would still be more expensive than the equivalent in The Royston. This is a little like M&S complaining of competition from Woollies — there’s a little overlap in what they offer, but not much.
Central ward councillor Derique Montaut said the problem was similar to the dominance of big supermarkets. “While we recognise the positive side of this for Swindon, attention has to be given to the local traders who could be forced out of existence.”
No Derique, not at the prices Jurys Inn charge. And whilst there has been a recent local casualty to increased hotel competition, that one was part of a national chain.
Oh, one other thing. The Royston Hotel does a very nice full english breakfast. I strongly recommend it.
What’s the best way to ensure that troublesome drunks, loitering around a bus station, don’t cause any more trouble? Apparently, it’s by giving them a conditional discharge and ordering them to pay £46 costs. Not even a hint of ordering them to attend a rehabilitation course. I hope the District Judge concerned felt he was making good use of his time.
A lot has already been said about the case of a child starved to death in Swindon. I’m not going to comment on what could or should have been done… I haven’t followed the case in enough detail to do so. However, the response of the agencies involved to theirownreport is odd, but sadly familiar.
HEALTH workers followed procedure when dealing with the heart-rending case of 11-month-old Kimberley Baker.
This is the message from the woman in charge of protecting the welfare of Swindon’s youngsters.
Hilary Pitts said midwives and health visitors kept to protocol, despite failing to pick up on the baby’s maltreatment….
The 16-page review outlines 20 recommendations to the agencies that dealt with the family, including Social Services and Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust….
“It is difficult to think any system is perfect, but I think the procedures and practices were in place.’
That there are twenty recommendations in the report suggests there were at least twenty instances where procedures and practices were not in place. How someone could conclude otherwise is difficult to understand.
I doubt it. Almost certainly delusions of importance, if the words of the independent candidate in the recent election have been correctly reported. His former colleagues in the red nest may be annoyed that he chose to stand against one of their elders but, as an independent, he was hardly a threat.
A FORMER mayor who chased two youths who had just smashed his car window says he thinks that yob culture has taken hold…. Mr Cox… was an independent candidate standing for Central Swindon at last week’s borough council elections.
Before travelling to the Oasis leisure centre to wait for the results to come in, the rear window of [his partner’s] white Mazda was smashed.
He said: “I’m very angry this has happened. I don’t know if this was a political act or not, but even if it wasn’t it’s stupid and pointless…. We are quiet people who are peaceful and enjoy our garden. We have done nothing to provoke this.”
It is not known what the two teenage assailants used to break the window as no brick or heavy object was found by the car…. Police are looking for two youths, who are about 15.
With less than a third of the ward electorate voting and our ex-mayor getting less than 5% of the votes, it would be a miracle if the two youths even knew of his past, or his present ambitions.
I’ve been reading through the latest version of Swindon Borough Council’s Central Area Action Plan which is now out for consultation. It’s nice to see that, as hoped for, the Green Spine now has a bit more body to it, looking a little like a headless running stickman (though I think I detect a green football and a green sombrero in there too).
The plan includes some masterpieces of thoughtful insight. An observation on page 27 is the epitome of this erudition.
[Crime] hotspots remain and concerns about crime and anti-social behaviour are still evident in Central Swindon, and in particular in the Bridge Street and Fleet Street Area. In this area, the peak times for violent offences, is in the evenings and at weekends, which suggests a strong link with alcohol misuse.
Only suggests? Move on to page 65.
The dominance of drinking establishments in the Fleet Street area has by a large margin given rise to more crime in the area than at any other location in Swindon.
Aah… a little bit of realism at last. More seriously, this unclear thinking goes deeper than just presenting the obvious as thoughtful observations. When considering the not-so-obvious, some of the statements are, with a little thought, just plain wrong. Move on to page 94.
A significant proportion of these private rented properties are Houses in Multiple Occupancy (HMOs). This high proportion of private rented accommodation is to a large extent a by-product of the exodus of families from Central Swindon.
To confuse ‘cause and effect’ with ‘supply and demand’ is a serious mistake in a document whose prime purpose is to regulate the supply of property over the next twenty years.
I’d have thought it was obvious that those who had chosen not to vote online and turned up on election day at the polling station would, in most cases, prefer to vote in the conventional manner. A few moments to put a cross on a piece of paper, or over a minute to work through several screens of an online system? Rather a no-brainer, isn’t it? Apparently not to those at Swindon Borough Council that were presiding over the election. Not only were some polling stations completely unready, initially, for those wishing to put a cross in a box on a ballot paper, but even when they were ‘correctly’ set-up, laptops in booths outnumbered blunt, short stumpy pencils hanging in booths by five-to-one in many cases. And the need for people to assist voters with the electronic voting added two extra staff to most polling stations compared with previous years.
Then there was the fragility of the communications system. I’m prepared to accept (just) that the unreliability of the wireless communications from the polling stations could not have been foreseen, but were wireless connections, from urban polling stations, really necessary?
After some extra checks, necessitated by the breakdown in communication, the electronic votes were finally delivered two and a half hours after the paper votes had been counted. And the benefit of all this new technology making it ‘easier’ to vote? A turnout slightly down on last year.
A local school has just resumed serving school dinners after a gap of two years. Apparently they can afford to provide them themselves now but could not do so when the council provided the meals.
Haydonleigh Primary School shut its kitchen in 2005 because of the spiralling costs of buying in meals through the borough council. But, with a grant from the Government’s Jamie Oliver Fund to provide better ingredients, equipment and training for school cooks, the school decided to bring in a kitchen manager and assistant of their own…. “The school couldn’t afford to keep the kitchen going with meals from the borough council”…. Although the price of meals has gone up, from £1.65 three years ago, to £1.90, Mrs Stevens feels the price reflects the better quality meals on offer and the improvements made to the kitchen.
So let’s be clear, the price has gone up by 7% per year (I make 2005 to 2007 a gap of two years, not three) and they are getting an extra subsidy, but providing the meals is affordable now whereas is wasn’t before. I hope these people aren’t teaching economics at this school.
Seems their grasp of nutrition is not wonderful either.
“I’m trying to make it with healthier brown flour, and there’s nothing really wrong with pizza if you can do that,” she said. “And I’ve hidden vegetables in the sauce.”
There’s only ‘nothing really wrong with pizza’ if you forget about the fat that the cheese contains. A school of organically grown fat children is on the way.
The saying the camera never lies may no longer be true, but it certainly seems to be more reliable that the written and spoken word in the hands of local journalists. The headline may say ‘rush hour chaos’, the voice-over may say that traffic was ‘brought to a stand-still’, but the video shows traffic moving freely. I bet the learner driver at the end of the video will be very wary of accident recovery vehicles in future.
Either it’s been a slow news day or there’s an election in the offing for this to be worth attention.
RAMBLERS and cyclists in Swindon should find the way forward a little clearer as they pursue their leisure activities.
In three years’ time, the council hopes that 90 per cent of the town’s footpaths and cycleways will be easy to use.
At the moment 86 per cent of the 211 miles of public rights of way in Swindon meet the Government standard.
So an extra 4% of 211 miles will be easy to use. Hmm…. If the quote in the Adver from a personage in the local branch of the Ramblers’ Association is correct
“I haven’t noticed a dramatic change over the years – perhaps the overgrown footpaths that exist do not lead anywhere in particular.”
then perhaps I won’t bother to seek out those extra eight miles.
