Tag: parties

Just a day after Mr Wills’ hypocritical outburst over post office closures, Ms Snelgrove has been talking on the very same subject in parliament. Did she take the opportunity to express concern over the closure of post offices in Swindon, or to express surprise that, despite representations to the ‘consultation’, all the Post Office’s closure plans in this area remained unchanged? Of course not. Instead she chose to repeat Mr Wills’ attack on the local council.

I share concerns about the consultation process, but does he share my anger about the fact that Tory-controlled Swindon borough council has not taken part in the consultation exercise, and did not attend any of the meetings held by Postwatch or the Post Office? The Conservatives in Swindon are now jumping on the bandwagon, but have made no representations to the Post Office or to Postwatch about the closures in my constituency.

And just what did Ms Snelgrove do for the post offices in her constituency, apart from having her photo taken in one of the doomed post offices? Although she sent out a letter inviting people to sign a petition against the closures, she has, since then, been remarkably silent on the subject. Clearly, she’s far more keen to attack the opposition than do anything for her constituents. It’s no wonder Ms Snelgrove is often referred to as The Government’s representative in South Swindon.

When yesterday given the opportunity again to express their opposition to the post office closures:

• Mr Wills voted in favour of the government’s programme of post office closures;
• Ms Snelgrove voted in favour of the government’s programme of post office closures.

With duplicitous behaviour like this, it’s no surprise that politicians are held in low esteem.

It seems that Mr Wills is having difficulty with his memory. His local red nest colleagues seem to have similar similar problems too. They may be keen to blame the local council or the post office management for the impending closure of local post offices, but let us not forget a couple of facts.

• Mr Wills voted in favour of the government’s programme of post office closures;
• Ms Snelgrove voted in favour of the government’s programme of post office closures.

According to Mr Wills,

Instead of trying to help the people of Swindon the council is just trying to make a party political point

Perhaps he should have thought of helping the people of Swindon before casting his own vote last January and before opening his mouth now just to make a party political point himself.

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.

Yesterday I received a letter through the post from Ms Snelgrove. Not the most local affair, having been printed in London and with a return address on the envelope in Newcastle upon Tyne. Apparently, she’s had an

Action Team in Central to listen to your concerns about anti-social behaviour and the mounting rubbish on your streets.

The letter even solicits for volunteers to her ‘Keep Central Clean and Safe Team’. Ms Snelgrove seems not to realise that listening is not itself action. Even if it were, her ‘team’ have been most noticeable by their absence. The rubbish is now subsiding, especially since the council started putting little orange ‘Council aware’ labels on bags of rubbish left for days on the streets. The rubbish was ‘mounting’ on the streets several months ago, when Ms Snelgrove’s ‘Keep Central Clean and Safe Team’ didn’t even exist… not that there’s any evidence it exists at all. There’s no evidence of in on the local red nest’s website, nor on Ms Snelgrove’s.

The only things that are mounting now are the local election campaigns… and Ms Snelgrove’s hypocrisy. Real action speaks much louder than words.

Prompted by Mr Thompson’s antics, I’ve been trawling through the record of meeting attendance for Swindon Borough Councillors during 2007. 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: some of these committees are described as ‘independent’, but presumably are closely related to the council’s business otherwise why would they be listed?

In terms of attendance rates, the top five councillors of 2007 were:

• Mr Montaut: 7 meetings out of 7 – 100%
• Mr Holland: 29 meetings out of 30 – 97%
• Mr Moffatt: 44 meetings out of 46 – 96%
• Mr Tomlinson: 22 meetings out of 23 – 96%
• Mr Shaw: 38 meetings out of 40 – 95%

Another 15 councillors attended over 90% of the meetings they are recorded against. The five councillors with the worst attendance rates were:

• Mr Short: 12 meetings out of 27 – 44%
• Mr Baker: 7 meetings out of 20 – 35%
• Mr Thompson: 8 meetings out of 24 – 33%
• Mr Dobie: 5 meetings out of 15 – 33%
• Mr Wiltshire: 9 meetings out of 38 – 24%

Two other councillors had attendance levels of less than 50%, one of whom stood down at the last elections.

The full set of data on which this analysis was based, including links to the meeting attendance records, is available as a comma delimited text file. Please mention komadori’s green corner when referring to this data.
Update, Sunday 24 Februrary 2008: OpenOffice and Excel files of the full data now uploaded.
Update, Wednesday 5 March 2008: Data now published as pages on my website. There’s also a lively discussion going on the TalkSwindon forum.

As I read of Ms Snelgrove and Ms Howard attempting to defend Mr Thompson’s behaviour of remaining a councillor whilst he was residing in Spain, I can’t help wondering why they are doing this. Presumably out of some odd sense of loyalty that puts the interests of their colleague ahead of those of their constituents… and ahead of their electoral interests too. To defend, as they do, an elected representative who took payments from the public purse whilst not fully performing the duties those payments were for, gives the impression that they put politicians’ own interests before those of voters. Whilst contempt for voters amongst politicians is nothing new, it is disappointing to see so solid a show of such contempt from Mr Small and his colleagues.

It’s so nice to see Mr Small and the local red nest putting their electoral convenience before the interests of the people they represent. As first reported on the TalkSwindon forum, Mr Thompson has been in living in Spain since January and hasn’t attended a council meeting since July last year. You’d think that if you’re too ill to represent your people, the best thing to do, for both councillor and those they represent, would be to resign and rest in the hope of making a quick recovery. Apparently not, according to Mr Small.

There is no secrecy about the fact that Barrie is going to resign. I would expect him to step down by around mid-March. We want to save the council taxpayers extra expense by not calling a by-election.

What carefully chosen words. There was plenty of secrecy: there is no secrecy now only because others have revealed what is going on. I also don’t recall the red nest having such a level of concern for taxpayers in the past when members of their own party flew the nest to the opposing side. It’s difficult to see this as anything other than political self-interest masquerading as concern for the people.

I find it rather puzzling that Mr Small can convert the Audit Commission’s recent ‘comprehensive performance assessment’ that Swindon Borough Council is ‘improving strongly’ into something completely different.

I would also remind Nick Martin of the comments made last week by the chair of the audit commission, who described Swindon as a stagnant authority.

I’ve searched the Commission’s whole report for the word ‘stagnant’ — it’s not used once. If the chair of the Commission spoke these words, they seem not to have been recorded. The only mention I can find of Swindon being a ‘stagnant authority’ is Mr Small’s.

The leader of the red nest seems to have forgotten that, when his group were in charge, the council was, by the Audit Commission’s analysis, one of the worst performing councils in the country.

The only thing that seems stagnant in all of this is Mr Small’s contribution to political debate.

With a little flurry of leaflets (three in fact) from our local blue egg, it seems that the local election campaign is off to an early start. As is traditional in Swindon election leaflets, there’s a couple of photographs of the candidate standing in front of some graffiti tags. (I wonder if the taggers get a buzz from having their handiwork feature in election bumf.) In addition, there are mentions of the canal (nice idea but concerns about the local impact), town centre redevelopment (though I’m not quite sure why Central will be the ‘envy of the rest of Swindon’ when the vast majority of the development is in Eastcott), an invitation to sign a petition against post office closures (which is a little late seeing as the consultation period has just ended) and an oh-so-toned-down comment about the problems with waste collections.

I’m sure if I just replaced the photographs and the colour of the ink, I’d get a close approximation of the leaflets I’ll be getting from the other parties over the coming months.

Some people must have a strange life, only enjoying those things that others hate. Take Mr Newman, for example, who is concerned about plans to stop leafleting in Swindon town centre.

I have no problem in restricting leaflets from companies promoting goods or services for profit. But they need to build in exemptions and safeguards for trade unions, political groups and religious organisations, who contribute to the vibrant life of the town.

Take away all the companies promoting goods and services from the town centre and… there’d be no town centre. There are many groups that make life in Swindon vibrant. Trade unions and political groups are not amongst them.

I look forward to being able to walk through the town centre without having to dodge those attempting to thrust pieces of paper with inane political or commercial advertising into my hand. I suspect most others will too.