Tag: parties

As mentioned in the comments to the Adver’s story and as apparent in the Beeb’s photo gallery of the launch of the big screen in Wharf Green, the crowd was small. Some may say that’s because of the timing (Friday afternoon) or the lack of publicity. However, both the small crowd and lack of publicity suggest that the town’s people have not been deceived by the hype that continues to follow the big screen.

This will instil a sense of civic pride in the people of Swindon.

There are many that criticise Swindon and its people. The lack of interest in this event shows that the aspirations of the people of Swindon and their perception of what would instil civic pride are above what the Beeb’s Mr Burnett-Godfree, and others who have over-promoted the big screen, would have us believe.

I also note from the comments to the Adver’s story that someone with pretensions (albeit fanciful) to represent South Swindon in parliament, has obviously not visited the town centre for a long time, nor followed the local news on which he chooses to comment.

With the counting in the election now over, there’s hardly any change. The red nest regain a total grip on Central, taking the seat vacated by Ms Darker who has successfully run away to St Philips ward, but the blue nest have gained one of the two seats in Parks. I also see that the council leader Mr Bluh came second in Dorcan, where two seats were on offer, so he’ll be back up for election in two years’ time. ’Tis hardly a ringing endorsement of his performance, as a self-styled leader with vision, to be beaten by a novice.

Well, there ends one of the most lacklustre local election campaigns that I can remember. The blue and red nests have seemingly put all their canvassing efforts put into Parks ward, with the voters in the rest of the town almost been taken for granted.

With it being a couple of years since I last voted at a polling station there were a couple of things that struck me as I cast my vote this morning: the first polling station official didn’t ask me to confirm my name and address when I handed over my poll card; another didn’t bother to stamp the ballot paper with an official mark, just tore it from a pad and handed it over (perhaps they were pre-marked); yet another official sat reading a newspaper and didn’t even bother to look up to see what it was that I was putting into the ballot box. It’s little checks such as these that stop this week’s shaggy dog story being nothing more than a tale of naïve stupidity.

In their first — and possibly last — offering of this year’s election campaign, the leaflet stuffed hurriedly through my letterbox this evening is, like their manifesto, long on what the blue nest have done, but short — very short — on what they intend to do in the future. It tells of things done and things being done, but nothing of things yet to be done… from which I can only conclude that they are intending more of the same. (Guess they’re not called Conservative for nothing.) They also seem to be struggling to distinguish their positives from their negatives.

Since the Conservatives took control of the Council in June 2004, we have ended Labour’s unacceptable Council Tax hikes,… We believe in positive campaigning and are the only party that will set out a positive agenda.

Their three-year-old agenda may be positive, but in a deteriorating economic climate some of it, particularly town-centre redevelopment, is looking less than realistic.

In his latest election leaflet, Mr Ali seems to be having difficulty remembering what has been the work of his red nest colleagues.

The Tories have introduced a waste and re-cycling scheme that has failed to address the needs of Central’s multiple-occupancy homes. After over a year of campaigning for recognition of this problem your local labour councillors have an agreement that a specialist waste warden will visit the multiple-occupancy homes.

Whilst not disputing the failings of the waste collection scheme, I could have sworn their had been others more active on this issue.

Swindon needs a road system to match the Labour Governments town regeneration project.

Strange… as I recall, one of the main features of the town centre regeneration planning has been the unwillingness of the government to contribute to improving transport infrastructure.

The Tories solution is to narrow key roads and increase traffic volumes on Central’s residential streets.

Err… that’s the canal that is part of the regeneration plan is it? Who did you claim that project for? Being a bit selective in what you claim as your own perhaps? Lets not forget either that the impact of the canal on traffic is much more complex than Mr Ali and his colleagues would have us believe. Yes it would increase traffic at the Broadgreen end of Central ward, but traffic at the Kingshill end would be decreased. He also seems confused over schooling.

They have also failed to… provide sufficient local primary education, forcing parents and children to undertake unnecessary costly journeys.

Yet on the red nest’s website he says something different.

I am proud of Labour’s huge investment in new schools.

Contradictions like this hardly give an impression of a reliable, trustworthy person.

It’s nice that Mr Ali alone among this year’s election candidates has made any attempt at communication in the run-up to the election. It’s unfortunate that so much of that communication is untrue.

After a long absence — and very little presence even then — the red nest’s Action Team (sic) have made a reappearance, though their ‘action’ amounts to no more than dropping a leaflet through my letterbox. They have a strange concept of ‘working hard’. They have, apparently, been

working together to keep the Westcott Place Post Office open.

They’ve clearly not been working very well, as their colleague Ms Snelgrove has consistently voted in favour of post offices being closed. One of their other claims is rather odd too.

Stop the diversion of town traffic onto Central’s residential roads.

Being a rather narrow ward reaching into the town centre, do they really expect the main roads in Central not to carry town centre traffic? There are very few side streets offer any diversion into the town centre either, so this just reads like scaremongering. Perhaps they’re thinking of the impact of the proposed canal, which would lead to greater traffic in Broadgreen, but less at the Westcott end of the ward. Is it too much to expect that a ward candidate might one day campaign as if there is more to Central than Broadgreen?

As for their other claims of action, they’re indisinguishable from claims made by the other parties.

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.

It’s not just the recent weather that has been unseasonal. The run-up to this year’s local elections has also been unusually quiet. But at least we have the list of candidates now (and despite having ‘2004’ in the link it is for this year). It looks a little more local than usual, with three of the Central ward candidates living in the ward itself: Kevin Leakey, David Cox and Eric Bagwell. The other two are a little more remote: Hannah Pajak from Old Town and Junab Ali from Freshbrook. Apart from that all we have to judge the candidates on are a couple of manifestos, from the blue and red nests. The blue nest are long on what they have done, but short on what they will do in the future. The red nest accuse the blues of wasting money on a canal… only to suggest spending on investigating whether trams should be introduced into Swindon. Now that’s far more likely to cause ‘traffic chaos’ than a canal down one road ever will.

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.

I’m not sure who’s in charge at the Adver but just a day after Mr Brown launched the red nest’s local election campaign emphasising increases in community policing, the Adver has chosen to highlight the very same thing. However, much though the red nest like to crow about how much of our money they poor into various activities and gimmicks, what matters are results. The evidence at the moment is that all the extra money spent on Police Community Support Officers has had no tangible benefit.

Spending our money and getting nothing as a result is something I would hope no local politician would be proud of. I fully expect to be disappointed over the coming month.