Tag: parties

One might think that, with politicians, rightly, getting such a bad press at the moment, they might make some effort to appear to be working purely in the interests of their electorate. But no, of course not. They’re politicians: playing politics comes first.

Thus it is that within a month of the leaders of the local red and blue nests making conciliatory noises about trying to work together more, they’re back to squabbling. Predictable squabbling, with exactly the same accusations as they make every time there’s a similar situation. The council applies for extra subsidy, and each side claims it was entirely down to them and that t’other party was a hindrance. Just what is it about applying for subsidy that they think is worth crowing about? Especially when the conditions attached to the application are such that if the application is unsuccessful we’ll be left worse off than if the application had never been made. And now Mr Montaut has reverted to slinging political jibes, accusing the blues running Swindon Borough Council of being arrogant.

The Tory administration in Swindon is becoming increasingly arrogant in the way that it runs the council…. People feel disconnected from politicians at the moment and it is vital that we show we want to listen to the people who have put their trust in us.

It seems to have escaped Mr Montaut’s attention that at the moment almost nobody is putting any trust in politicians. If they want some of that trust back, not only do they need to get their snouts out of the tax-payers’ trough, they also need to stop indulging in vacuous political point scoring.

It’s a pity that, with there having been such a good response to how the Radio 1 Big Weekend in Lydiard Park was run, the blue nest on Swindon Borough Council have rather spoilt things by indulging in some troughing. In case they’ve not noticed there is a certain amount of public concern at the moment about politicians helping themselves to greater rewards than they deserve. You’d think that only the most arrogant, selfish or naïve local politician would not realise that it’s at best indulgent and at worst downright greedy to use complimentary tickets to attend an event when many of their electorate were unable to do so. Step forward the current Swindon Borough Council cabinet.

Swindon Council’s cabinet has defended the presence of about 15 to 20 Conservative councillors in the VIP area…. Coun Phil Young, the council’s lead cabinet member for culture, said the councillors needed to act as ambassadors.

Just how many ambassadors does one park need? Fifteen to twenty is enough ambassadors for a whole continent.

All of the cabinet and West Swindon councillors had tickets. Cabinet members are the civic leaders of this town and I wanted them to take the lead in hosting. They had to perform a hospitality role and welcome guests.

Hosting whom? From the Adver’s photo they seem to have been busily hosting themselves. Nor does coverage elsewhere show evidence of cabinet members at work.

With the current political furore over MPs’ expenses, the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, is in no position to be giving sermons on this sort of thing. But neither should the council’s cabinet be worshipping at the altar of self-indulgence.

With the economy in trouble and Swindon seemingly suffering particularly hard, it would be nice to think that our councillors are concentrating on steering the town through the economic storm. Perhaps considering options to get the regeneration of the town centre back on track, or looking for ways encourage some of what little investment is available to be made in Swindon.

Sadly, the reality is that our politicians are instead busying themselves with the pettier side of politics. From the blue nest there are rumours of infighting. From the red nest come shallow gestures aimed more at getting publicity than having an economic impact — ’tis odd that the red nest now feel they could live without big councillor allowances, when just three months ago they voted in favour of them, and still have their snouts in the trough at the local police authority.

With there being no local election this year, it’ll be another year yet before our local politicians get a necessary reminder that they’re elected to represent the people of Swindon, not just themselves.

I can’t help but feel that the local red nest is trying to distract my attention from something… the economy perhaps. The day after Mr Darling announced the worst government debt in over sixty years, along with cuts in services — or ‘efficiencies’ as he called it — and increases in tax, I received a letter from the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove. This letter told me what the government is splurging my money on, and expected me to be grateful for that. Increases in child tax credits, building Children’s Centres and building more government buildings may be good for construction workers with young children, but are not much use to anyone else.

Just a couple of days later, another leaflet from the local red nest dropped onto my doormat. This one talked about a budget where you pay more and get less in return, but they were referring to Swindon Borough Council’s budget, whereas I was thinking of Mr Darling’s.

In these tough times Labour is helping people and investing in services.

Ruining the economy and running up government debts of £1,185bn by 2013 is an odd way of helping.

As I’ve said before, Mr Montaut puts political posturing above representing those in Central ward where he is a councillor. Mr Greenhalgh has suggested putting up cameras at road junctions to catch those jumping red lights. Mr Montaut’s response? He claims speed cameras would be more effective.

The idea of red light cameras is an interesting one and I’m sure it would have an effect but the problem is that they will not be situated in the areas which are accident blackspots, which is where we need to be focusing our attention. The fixed speed cameras were put in positions which were accident blackspots in order to make those areas safer.

I’ll leave aside for the moment that it’s an odd belief that the only way to make an accident blackspot safe is to put up a speed camera. I’ll also let pass the wasteful idea that cameras should be placed where most accidents happen rather than where they will be most effective.

For the moment, just think about the roads in central Swindon. Most of them are slow speed — the traffic is too heavy for anyone to get anywhere near the speed limit for much of the day. However, there are a large number of traffic light controlled junctions, some of which already have cameras installed. By following his party’s line, Mr Montaut seems to value the safety in the ward he’s meant to represent less than he does in the suburbs in which he himself lives.

The government has recently announced that it is giving Swindon Borough Council an extra £428,873.52 — yes, the figures are calculated down to individual pennies — of tax payers’ money (or more accurately, given the way the government has squandered our money, of tax payers’ debt). According to the government press release, there are no strings attached to this money.

Local Government Minister John Healey has today confirmed that 360 councils will receive their share of £100million within the next few days, to be used as they see fit to help meet local needs and priorities – particularly helpful in this difficult economic climate.

Naturally, the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, has been quick to comment.

I am calling on Swindon Borough Council to use this money to save Old Town and Walcot Libraries and look at how the Groundwell Park & Ride can be kept open…. I will be asking the Council for full details of how they intend to spend this money and to make sure it isn’t swallowed up within the Council.

’Tis an odd choice that. Now, as I’ve made clear, I’m no fan of the proposals to close the Park & Ride service. I don’t find Mr Edwards’ latest argument for not supporting the service convincing either, as it’s far better to seek a long term future for the service with it still running than with it closed. However, though both it and the library closures have received plenty of publicity, they affect relatively few of Ms Snelgrove’s constituents — particularly the Park & Ride service which is in Mr Wills’ patch. Something that affects far more of her constituents but has received far less publicity is the sharp increase in the cost of Residents’ Parking Permits. On that, Ms Snelgrove has nothing to say. And I say that as someone that neither lives in a Residents’ Parking zone nor owns a car.

It really shouldn’t surprise Ms Snelgrove that she’s known as the government’s representative in South Swindon when she chooses to support issues for their political point scoring value rather than for their impact on her constituents.

Mr Greenhalgh seems to be long on knock-about yaa-boo politics and short of eyesight. He’s quick to criticise Mr Montaut.

I’m disappointed that, as with the Christmas Tree on the Magic Roundabout, Councillor Montaut believes that the people of Swindon are going to damage something just because it’s there.

Look around you, Mr Greenhalgh. Have you not noticed the graffiti tags that deface much of our town? Have you forgotten your statement to Council in April of last year?

Councillor Peter Greenhalgh responded that, in relation to Graffiti, evidence had been provided in 15 cases resulting in 7 convictions, a number of cautions and other cases remained on going.

Mr Montaut may often seem to be a bit of a joke and more interested in the concerns of the residents of north Swindon — where he lives — than with those of central Swindon — which he is meant to represent. But that doesn’t mean those residents’ concerns should be glibly dismissed.

There appears to be a difference of opinion in the local red nest on whether or not Swindon Borough Council should dip into its reserves to keep council tax down. On the one hand, there’s the Snelgrovian view, expressed last November, that it’s good to spend some reserves to keep council tax low.

I don’t know how much Swindon Council has in reserves but I do know that the council needs to be thinking how it can do this [cut council tax]…. We all have to make sure that people are helped so I think that Swindon Council should be looking at its capital reserves and seeing if it can do something even if it is a one-off.

Then there’s the view of Mr Small, adamant that use of reserves is a bad thing.

There seems to be a £1.8m gap between the 3.5 per cent increase and what is needed to balance the budget. Some of that will be paid for with one-off monies. This budget is going to give us a debt of at least £2m because of the use of one-off monies. That will have to be carried over into next year’s budget.

Perhaps Mr Small should give his friend Mr Brown some advice about keeping out of debt.

The oddest thing about the visit by Mr Brown to a Swindon school was the claim by the school’s headteacher that the visit was non-political.

I would like to point out that the Prime Minister’s visit to Isambard this morning was not a political event but was a celebration of our new school, attended by politicians of all parties.

Really? The attendance of politicians from all sides doesn’t stop an event from being ‘a political event’ and on the school’s own website evidence of politicians from other nests is distinctly absent. If Ms Mattey still believes this was not a political event, then she should take a look at the spin about the visit on the red nest’s website.

Labour’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and the Schools Minister, Jim Knight, are visiting Swindon to open a new secondary school and celebrate the transformation underway in schools across the country as a result of Labour’s investment in education.

Clearly, that’s not political in much the same way that water’s not wet. Isambard Community School is a Private Finance Initiative school so there has been no ‘Labour investment’: this school is being paid for, by us, on credit. Admittedly, that’s just a tiny fraction of the £70 bn the current government has run-up.

Mr Brown may only have been at the school for a little over half an hour — he didn’t stay long last time — but hopefully that was long enough for the pupils at the school to recognise when they’re being used for political gain. Perhaps one day their headteacher might recognise this too.

In a similar way that I did for last year, I’ve trawled through the record of meeting attendance for Swindon Borough Councillors during 2008. Taking an entry in the attendance page of ‘Present’ or ‘In attendance’ as meaning they were there, and any other entry as meaning that they should have been there but weren’t, I get some interesting results. Note that I have considered all meetings for which councillor attendance is listed on the council’s website, except for one committee. That exception is the Wiltshire & Swindon Joint Police Committee for which there is no attendance record for most meetings and, for the couple where there are, the record does not appear to be reliable.

At the moment, the information for five meetings is not available. This will be added when the information becomes available and if appropriate the figures and lists below will be updated.

In terms of attendance rates, the top five councillors of 2008 were:

• Ms Tomlinson: 31 meetings out of 31 – 100%
• Mr Tomlinson: 19 meetings out of 19 – 100%
• Mr Parry: 16 meetings out of 16 – 100%
• Mr Montaut: 9 meetings out of 9 – 100%
• Mr Cherry: 9 meetings out of 9 – 100%

Two councillors that stood down in May, Mr Lister and Mr Barnes, also attained a 100% record in 2008, tho’ for only three meetings. Another 10 councillors attended over 90% of the meetings they are recorded against.

The councillors with the worst attendance rates in 2008 (60% or less) were:

• Mr Edwards: 18 meetings out of 30 – 60%
• Mr Baker: 12 meetings out of 20 – 60%
• Ms Duff: 13 meetings out of 22 – 59%
• Ms Martin: 7 meetings out of 13 – 54%
• Mr Sharp: 2 meetings out of 4 – 50%
• Mr Wiltshire: 10 meetings out of 27 – 37%
• Mr James: 2 meetings out of 8 – 25%
• Mr Thompson: 0 meetings out of 3 – 0%

Of these, Messrs James, Sharp and Thompson are no longer councillors. Of those that are still councillors, Mr Wiltshire’s record stands out as being particularly poor.

The overall attendance rate in 2008 (80%) was slightly better than in 2007 (77%). Full details of all the Swindon Borough Councillors’ 2008 meeting attendances are available in the archive.

Update, 17 January 2009: The figures above have now been updated. Attendance records for two meetings remain unavailable.

Update, 15 February 2009: The records are now complete. The full data is available in comma delimited text (csv), OpenOffice and Excel format files.