Tag: minister

Now both the main parties are at it. Just a few days after the red nest brought in yet another minister to meet and greet in the town, now the blue nest have brought in a shadow minister, again to meet and greet, in Parks ward where most of the ministerial visitors have spent most of their visits.

Perhaps I’m old fashioned but, when deciding which candidate to vote for in the council elections, I couldn’t care less what ministers and their shadows have to say. This is a local election, not a national one, and, for once, there are quite a few local issues to be debated, such as waste and recycling services, town centre regeneration, and the canal proposals.

It seems that the parties are so busy showing their parliamentary colleagues around Parks ward that so far they’ve had little time to enter the local debate on the doorstep in the rest of the borough. If parties concentrate campaigning effort on ‘key’ marginal wards and take the elctorate elsewhere for granted, they shouldn’t be surprised if the result is voter apathy.

The flow of ministers to prop-up the local red nest’s election campaign continues. This time ’tis Mr Dhanda who, like his Swindon colleagues, is a committed hypocrite, campaigning against his own party’s post office closures. He’s also a practitioner of the red nest habit of making glib claims of their achievements, when all the facts show the opposite.

Tackling problem behaviour is something the Labour Government is committed to. We are on the side of hard-working families and that is something clearly visible here in Swindon.

Releasing convicted criminals early after only half their sentence, as introduced by the red nest government’s early release scheme, is an odd approach to ‘tackling problem behaviour’. And in case Mr Dhanda hasn’t noticed, one thing the Broadgreen area is lacking is families (hard-working or not), having the highest density of houses in multiple occupation (i.e. bedsits) in Swindon. The hard-working single people that frequently occupy those bedsits are neglected by politicians of all colours.

The latest in a string of red nest ministers to fly into Swindon to prop-up their Swindon colleagues ahead of the May local elections, Ms Flint has not made quite the impact on the Adver that she might have wished.

HOUSING Minister Caroline Fleet made a flying visit to Swindon during a tour of the south west to talk about affordable housing.

Caroline Who? The mistake is repeated twice more in the story: only the photograph caption has her correct name.

Ms Flint’s own comments about Swindon Borough Council are hardly faultless either.

The current administration has failed to meet its own housing targets

Aah… smell the hypocrisy. According to her ministerial biography, until January,

Her ministerial responsibilities included the labour market, welfare to work and child poverty.

Clearly, Ms Flint is someone very familiar with missed targets.

Apparently, Councillor Glaholm has had a little dig at one of the ministers from the national red nest. Not quite the ‘grilling’ it was headlined as, but certainly stronger stuff than either of the local MPs have been heard to say.

Ms Kelly: We have a Government initiative to build more homes and £60,000 homes for first-time buyers will be available in Swindon.
Cllr Glaholm: She may have said affordable homes costing £60,000 were coming to Swindon, but I think that’s rubbish. Where are they? I can’t see any.

Either a piece of clever politicking, just before polling day, or a rather rash outburst. Difficult to tell.