Tag: parties

The local red nest have chosen a candidate to replace Mr Wills — if the electorate are willing, that is. So, for what does Mr Agarwal stand?

As a county councillor for Stanwell & Stanwell Moor in Surrey — of which he has been a lifelong resident —, Mr Agarwal, the self-styled Stanwell’s Voice, has expressed opinions on some topics that will be familiar to people in Swindon. He is, for example, a fan of council-supported wi-fi, unlike his Swindon colleagues.

I am currently working with Council Officers to see if it is possible that Stanwell & Stanwell Moor could have wi-fi access…. As Stanwell residents we could all work where we want to, when we want to, in the park, in the pub, in the garden…. The only city which has already done this is Seattle in America where residents have seen an enhancement to the quality of life.

Not surprisingly, he’s also no fan of blue nest dominated councils.

When you become a one-party local authority, things can get pushed through ‘on the nod’.

Rather like decisions on wifi provision? He supports the government’s national identity card scheme, which will win him no favours with Swindon’s No2ID campaigners.

He is also, apparently, committed to serving his local community in Stanwell and the Moor…

As someone brought up in Stanwell since infancy I am committed to serving my community and fellow residents.

Though obviously not quite as committed as he once was.

Some, such as Mr Montaut are taking the will of the people of North Swindon for granted.

This is a Labour town, and this is our seat.

Just what parts of ‘marginal constituency’ and ‘Conservative controlled council’ has Mr Montaut not understood? Mr Agarwal has managed to survive as Surrey’s only Labour county councillor by placing great emphasis on his long-term residence in the area. He can’t do that here; his main opponent can.

Councillors’ attendance rates continued to improve in 2009. This is the third year I’ve trawled through the record of meeting attendance for Swindon Borough Councillors. It’s pleasing to see an upward trend. On average across all councillors the attendance rate was 85% in 2009, up from 80% in 2008 and 77% in 2007.

In terms of attendance rates, the top five councillors of 2009 were:

• Mr Montaut: 26 meetings out of 26 – 100%
• Mr Morton: 20 meetings out of 20 – 100%
• Mr Ford: 12 meetings out of 12 – 100%
• Mr Perkins: 35 meetings out of 36 – 97%
• Mr Short: 31 meetings out of 32 – 97%

Another 22 councillors attended over 90% of the meetings they were recorded against, a big improvement on last year. Three of these attended over 50 recorded meetings during the year.

The councillors with the worst attendance rates in 2009 were:

• Mr Fanning: 24 meetings out of 39 – 62%
• Mr Holland: 20 meetings out of 33 – 61%
• Mr Wiltshire: 17 meetings out of 29 – 59%
• Mr Dobie: 5 meetings out of 9 – 56%
• Mr Sammels: 5 meetings out of 11 – 45%

There has been some improvement in the low-attendance tail. In 2008, 5 councillors in post at the year end had attendance rates of 60% or less and another 6 had rates of 70% or less. In 2009, that improved to just 3 attending 60% or less of their meetings and another 7 attending 70% or less. In 2009, for the first time in three years, no councillor attended less than 40% of their recorded meetings, though Mr Sammels’ previously good attendance record has taken a tumble and is now well adrift from others.

The figures are derived by taking an entry in a meeting attendance page of ‘Present’ or ‘In attendance’ as meaning the councillor was there, and any other entry as meaning that they should have been there but weren’t. Full details of all Swindon Borough Councillors’ 2009 meeting attendance rates are available in the archive.

Mr Bradshaw has recently announced the creation of over 600 publicly funded jobs to massage the unemployment figures help young unemployed people into work. The jobs are, almost without exception, in the public sector, including 142 at the National Monuments Record Centre in Swindon. According to Mr Bradshaw these jobs usually go to rich kids.

[T]hese are great jobs — jobs in sectors that can be really tough to break into, that are usually the preserve of better off children whose parents have the contacts to get them a foot in the door.

Err… so he’s saying that after twelve years of his government and all its bluster about inclusiveness, recruitment to public sector jobs is biased, favouring the wealthy with contacts, rather than recruiting on merit.

It’s nice of Mr Bradshaw to confirm that the old boy network is alive and well under New Labour.

It seems that the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, is so eager to rubbish the priorities of Swindon Borough Council that she hasn’t even bothered to read what their priorities are. According to Ms Snelgrove the council isn’t concerned about crime and anti-social behaviour.

I am appalled that the Council do not think anti-social behaviour and local crime are priorities in Swindon.

She even provides a link to the council’s priorities.

The Council sets its priorities under the Local Area Agreement (www.swindon.gov.uk/yourcouncil-laa) but crime and anti-social behaviour are not even mentioned.

Follow that link. You’ll find, as the sixth of six priorities in the current Local Area Agreement the following.

A place where the resident population can have real influence to develop a sense of community and belonging, and where reducing crimes makes them feel safe.

If Ms Snelgrove thinks that’s not even mentioning crime, she really should go back to school and take some English language lessons.

Update 23:09. I see that Ms Snelgrove has now issued an updated version claiming criteria that were used to dish out this money, though this wasn’t mentioned in the government press release.

Areas that received funding are those that either chose to include ASB as one of their Local Area Agreement priorities or were one of the areas chosen by the Home Office as having high levels of ASB.

So she’s complaining that the council didn’t make a priority out of something her own government doesn’t think is a big issue in Swindon anyway. Logic, reasoning and representing the best interests of her constituents never were Ms Snelgrove’s strong points. Clearly, they still aren’t.

Now I appreciate that for the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, listening to Mr Brown losing the support of the country’s best-selling tabloid may seem to be important. Just because it’s important to her though, doesn’t mean it’s important to the rest of us.

Today is the big one, Gordon’s speech. The auditorium will be packed and I’m sure many of you will be glued to your TV sets. The Leader’s speech is always the high-point of Conference and I hope that you will listen to the substance of Gordon’s speech to hear how he has the plans and drive to bring our country out of recession and build Britain’s future.

It seems she’s not noticed that, despite the efforts of her government, some of us still have jobs to go to. Even if I hadn’t, I’ve better things to do with my time than listen to someone preaching about building the economy when the dereliction surrounding us has been of their own making — but at our expense.

There are some things that are predictable in politics. For example, the candidates of a losing party in an election can be guaranteed to say that the winning party did badly… in comparison with predictions of success that a few hours before they would have disclaimed as nonsense. Similarly, except for those departing for health reasons, every MP that chooses not to fight an election would have us belief that this was a decision they’d been planning for a long time. The likelihood of defeat never, apparently, clouds their judgement. Thus yesterday’s news that Mr Wills won’t be hanging around for almost inevitable defeat at the next election comes with claims that he always planned it this way.

I have always believed politics is an act of public service, and that it was probably right that no MP should serve more than three terms.

On that basis, his own leader should have departed long ago, but Mr Wills doesn’t seem inclined to suggest that his boss follow his lead.

I have full confidence in the Prime Minister…. I don’t believe he has been given enough credit for helping this country to move out of recession.

Many would say the Prime Minister hasn’t taken enough credit for getting the country into this recession. But lets not let reality get in the way of Mr Wills’ musings.

This has been a good Government and history will say that this Government has changed the country for the better.

If by ‘good’ one means taking the country to war on the basis of forged evidence, then maybe. If by ‘good’ one means taking the country into its worse recession for eighty years and racking up massive debts, then maybe. If by ‘good’ one means massively restricting civil liberties with anti-terrorism legislation of limited, if any, effectiveness, then maybe. But lets not let reality get in the way of Mr Wills’ musings.

This Government has made a huge difference to Swindon and has enabled huge transformation to the town.

Forcing the town to expand its population by almost 20%, whilst saddling the town with an urban regeneration company that has almost single handedly — with a little help of the aforementioned recession — converted the town centre into a demolition site is not a transformation to be proud of. But lets not let reality get in the way of Mr Wills’ musings.

Mr Wills has been the lesser of Swindon’s two parliamentary evils. As a constituency MP, he was markedly better than the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, but then that isn’t difficult to achieve. He also published a thorough breakdown of his expenses, many months before other MPs grudgingly succumbed to pressure from the public and did likewise. But none of that makes up for a voting record that speaks for itself — though again it’s better than the record of his South Swindon compatriot.

Mr Wills says standing down was a difficult decision to make.

It was a very difficult decision…. This was not a sudden decision; it was one I have been mulling over for the past year.

Given the opportunity, his constituents would have very easily made the same decision for him.

Agreeing with Mr Feal-Martinez hasn’t been something that’s featured much in my warblings. I doubt that’ll change either but, as he’s standing down from representing UKIP in South Swindon, primarily on health grounds, I wish him well, without qualification. Which is more than the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, did, as she chose to preface her good wishes with some propaganda.

This just goes to show that UKIP is in real trouble in Swindon and I’m not surprised that Robert has found it necessary to stand down.

Hmm… seems she’s already forgotten the large increase in the vote for a certain party at the euro-elections in June.

It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that the vote at last night’s council meeting to oppose the Eastern Development Area proposals ended up dividing along party lines. It seems that the local red nest are totally ignorant of what their party’s mismanagement of the economy and distortion of the housing market has done, as illustrated by the comments of Mr Grant.

This plan will deliver much needed affordable housing to Swindon. We should be trying to make sure that the development is eco-friendly and includes green technology — we should back this development for the future of Swindon.

At the moment, just about the only building going on in Swindon’s northern and southern development areas is the construction of so-called affordable housing. And if you look at the prices of those ‘affordable’ houses, you’ll notice that most are more expensive than the equivalent allegedly unaffordable houses in other parts of Swindon. Forcing developers to make 30% of any large development ‘affordable’ just forces the average price of housing up without solving the underlying problem.

If you want to make housing affordable, the only way to do it is to ensure that supply exceeds demand. The recent collapse in the economy has done more to bring that about than market distorting government rules on affordable housing ever will.

Central Swindon’s clown councillor, Mr Montaut, has been quick to political point scoring after a tree fell during the Armed Forces Family Fun Day in Faringdon Road Park.

Coun Montaut questioned whether Swindon Council was carrying out sufficient checks on the trees after recent cuts to its ground maintenance budget. He said: “What we cannot have is this type of thing happening in a public arena especially at a time when hundreds of people attend events like this. We need to make sure people can enjoy themselves in a safe environment.”

In fact the tree surgeons from Swindon Commercial Services spent much of last week in the park, but working on the trees on the opposite side of the park from the one that fell this weekend. As the tree surgeon who was called to the scene said, trees are unpredictable.

It can still happen — the tree is in full leaf so you wouldn’t expect anything to happen. If there’s decaying trees in the area we take them down straight away, we don’t take any chances, but trees are unpredictable.

From what’s left of it, the tree was clearly rotten at the core of its trunk. But so are many trees for many years. If Mr Montaut had his way, many substantially healthy trees would be felled, just in case an accident happened. Unnecessary felling of trees is a longstanding habit of councillors throughout the country. There’s already been enough instances in Swindon without Mr Montaut encouraging more.

With nineteen boxes to choose from on the ballot paper — 89 candidates in total — I ought to have been spoilt for choice as I voted earlier today in the election for the European parliament. It wasn’t so. Perhaps I’m an electoral purist, but when I vote I do so on issues within the remit of the body I’m electing people to. So in local council elections, I vote on local issues not national ones: and in European elections I vote on issues that the European parliament can influence, not national ones.

In the run-up to the election I only received election communications from five parties. Despite supplementing that with the fairly comprehensive coverage of the candidates in the Adver, and searching the internet for the website of each candidate, if they had one, I could find little evidence of effort to propound their policies on matters that an MEP could vote on. The three mainstream parties all tried to make this a referendum on the performance of Mr Brown’s government — quite why the red nest chose to do that is puzzling but if they wish to commit electoral suicide, nobody’s going to stop them. Then there were the sixteen single issue, single policy and nutter parties plus one independent. Each either too extreme to contemplate or trying to make this a protest vote against our MPs’ troughing at our expense. I’m not happy with the behaviour of my MP, but that’s no reason for me to give my vote to some fringe party: where’s the evidence that they’d be more trustworthy?

If politicians wish — as they say they do — the British electorate to take European Parliament elections seriously, then they need to do so to, campaigning on issues that the European parliament can influence.

Thus it was that as I contemplated a ballot paper so large as to make it impossible to vote in total secrecy, with reluctance I picked up the stubby thick black pencil and used it to indicate ‘none of the above’.