It seems that Mr Bradshaw, on his recent visit to Swindon, has a rather inflated view of what constitutes historic significance.
I told them Swindon would achieve an historic milestone this year – a maximum waiting time of just 18 weeks from GP referral to treatment.
Somehow, I can’t see that minor milestone making it into the history books.
Methinks the local blue nest may have got themselves a little confused over their own party’s policies. There’s a motion on the agenda for the coming week’s council meeting supporting the election of police chief constables.
10. Motion – Elected Chief Constables
Councillor Nick Martin will move and Councillor Peter Greenhalgh will second:This Council supports the concept of a local, directly elected chief constable or commissioner of police. This Council ask the Leader of the Council to write to
a) the Home Secretary to offer Swindon as a location for a pilot scheme.
b) the chair of the Wiltshire Police Authority to see if the Authority would support the application for a pilot scheme.
Which is a little odd, because the one thing their party’s policy makers have explicitly excluded is the election of chief constables — directly elected commissioners to replace appointed police authorities yes, but not directly elected chief constables.
I’d prefer the local police to be concentrating of reducing crime, not on fighting elections.
Just a day after I received a letter from Ms Snelgrove, I am now in receipt of a letter from Mr Buckland. Today’s letter from is slightly longer that yesterday’s letter from Ms Snelgrove. It naturally goes into more detail about the ‘cause’ of the proposed closure: a government initiated review. Rather unnaturally, it says rather little about what one might think of as a good conservative principle of running services profitably where possible. The local post office in Westcott Place only last year received a significant facelift and the branch would not, presumably, be a candidate for closure if that had been a success in bringing in greater custom. Not that this is a case for closure of itself: the Post Office are quite inflexible in their business model and the thought of paying sub-postmasters entirely on commission rather than having them salaried seems to be something they reserve for the likes of WH Smith.
Mr Buckland’s letter also brought to my attention that Ms Snelgrove’s letter is dated the day before the official announcement. Very speedy work.
Compare and contrast — letters to the left, forms to the right:
In a rare burst of like-minded thinking, both Mr Buckland and Ms Snelgrove say they are campaigning to save the local post offices that are threatened with closure. I’ve even had a letter from Ms Snelgrove. The difference between the two at the moment seems to be that Mr Buckland offers some reasons why the offices should not close on his website, whereas Ms Snelgrove offers ‘solid arguments’ against the closures only if you’re willing to give her your contact details first, thereby giving her the right to contact you for political purposes rather than ‘non-political’ constituency purposes. Nice.
With it being less than a month since Swindon Borough Council introduced weekly kerbside recycling, it’s far too early to draw conclusions as to its impact… unless you’re Ms Snelgrove that is. We can, as always, rely on Ms Snelgrove to jump in with a bit of cheap political point scoring.
Figures I have seen have Swindon Council’s recycling and composting rate at 32 per cent, and it is excellent that they are doing what they are doing. But when you look at Wiltshire County Council it is recycling 38 per cent of the waste it collects. So although it looks like we’re doing okay what we need to be doing is exceeding our targets. MPs need to keep the pressure on our councils so that they beat their targets quickly and we can all reduce our carbon footprints.
Recycling is about re-use of materials; reducing carbon footprint is about reducing energy consumption. Ms Snelgrove isn’t the first to assume the two are inextricably linked, but for her to restate it does highlight her ignorance of the issues.
Mr Bluh, leading the defence for the council, has, presumably, seen some more up-to-date figures than Ms Snelgrove has.
We’ve already achieved 38 per cent currently, and that will climb once the new service has settled down.
You may also recall Ms Snelgrove’s previous statement that she always puts the concerns of her electorate first. Compare and contrast.
One of the big problems we have in this town is that the main recycling point we have is in the northern part of the borough. I think we need a new facility in the south of the borough. It could be a one-off capital project. Once up and running it would not cost too much to maintain and it would make a huge difference to the amount we recycle. We all know the council is receiving a fair amount of cash from building works – I cannot think of a better issue to put money into.
All the changes we’ve made this year have cost the council an extra £2m to introduce, yet we’ve had no financial assistance from the Government to do it…. When we consulted residents about what they thought our priorities for waste should be, they placed a comprehensive kerbside recycling service for the whole borough, including plastic bottles, above a second waste site. We’ve now delivered that.
I suppose it should come as no surprise really that Ms Snelgrove is trying to spend more of our money and would no doubt be the first to complain if council tax had to rise to deliver her plans. That said, there couldn’t be a more apt monument to Ms Snelgrove than a centre for collecting and recycling rubbish. I trust she’ll be at the front of the queue when it opens, with copies of most of her press statements and parliamentary speaches.
The introduction of the new recycling service may have been incompetent, but in picking her latest target for petty political point scoring, Ms Snelgrove has totally missed the main concerns of her electorate.
Today I have been the recipient of part of Ms Snelgrove’s £144,330 annual expenses spend: her parliamentary report. Being paid for with tax payer’s money, the criticism of the local blue nest is more subdued than usual, but it remains pure classic snelgrove.
Whatever I do in my work at the Houses of Parliament, I always think ‘how would this affect Swindon?’
Really? I presume she next thinks ‘What do the party whips want me to do?’ and the answer to that always takes precedence over the effect on Swindon. It’s nice to see her concern for the rural areas around Swindon too.
Constituents in rural areas often feel their concerns are not as high on the council agenda as those of more urban communities. Smaller villages need to retain their individual identities and I want to make sure that they are not ‘lumped in’ with other areas.
Well, perhaps she could make a useful contribution by opposing her own government’s imposition of 34,000 extra houses around Swindon over the next twenty years. Or would that be too much like putting the interests of Swindon before her attempts to crawl up the political ladder?
It’s nice to see that Mr Montaut hasn’t lost the ability to grab every photo opportunity that presents itself. Admittedly, it’s also nice that he actually makes his presence known within the ward, which is more than can be said for some of our representatives, who seem to be following an established tradition of showing more interest in places elsewhere. It’s just a pity that whenever he chooses to talk, so much hypocritical garbage pours out.
Central ward councillor Derique Montaut said that the clean-up was a step closer to a happier community. He said: “This kind of activity is essential to promote good feeling in the community and the work that’s been done over the recent months in other parts of the town has been superb.”
Hmm… I could have sworn he put a leaflet through my door when campaigning for election just six months ago claiming
But we need an active Council that will use its anti social behaviour powers to curb yobbish behaviour, vandalism and graffiti. The Tories have failed to do this…. Since taking control of Swindon the Tories have regularly cut and under invested in the important issue of street cleaning.
I wonder how long it will be before his party is suggesting that this was all down to his personal effort and money from central government, and nothing to do with the current council administration. Nor the local community.
Jean, the director of children and families at Swindon Council, said: “I am not denying there has been any litter but it’s been a lot lower than we had expected, which is great news…. It’s something that residents should take real pride in and if they have helped clear the streets themselves, they have made an investment in the community.”
The announcement yesterday of a reduction of 200 posts at Swindon Borough Council has received very little comment beyond the Adver and BBC articles that carried the story, and rightly so. Two hundred out of 4,500 jobs is less than 4.5%. Even if everyone worked from the age of eighteen to retirement without ever changing jobs, natural wastage in one year from just retirements would be almost 2.4% In the modern world where, even in the public sector, a ‘job for life’ is very much a thing of the past, unless these reductions are very concentrated it is difficult to see that there would be any need for compulsory redundancies. So Mr Small’s comment
I would be very surprised if they managed to shed these jobs with voluntary redundancies.
seems to be a very bad case of crying wolf. As for the comments of Ms Snelgrove, well where to start.
I am deeply disturbed that so many hard-working members of staff are threatened with redundancy and I question how the council can be more efficient by cutting jobs.
Well, no actually the council have said they will look at ‘remov[ing] posts which are currently vacant, and reduce the numbers of short-term contract staff.’ Redundancy is never pleasant for anyone (and having once worked for a company that shed 70% of its staff in one year I speak from personal experience), but this is more a case of ‘so few’ rather than ‘so many’. Ms Snelgrove also seems to have an over-inflated view of her own importance.
I am extremely surprised at this and there has been no discussion with the town’s MPs.
I can think of no reason why there should have been. For once, in comparison, Mr Wills’ comments seem quite rational!
One would hope that someone who once worked in education would know a little about the effect of demographics on school numbers. It would seem not. Our illustrious MP, commenting on Swindon Borough Council’s plans for eleven new schools in new housing developments.
I ask has the number crunching been done correctly we don’t want a situation as in West Swindon where too many places were created that weren’t necessary, I’m not entirely persuaded that three are necessary.
Err, no. They were necessary, but not anymore. To quote from the council’s Core Strategy.
It is a feature of major new residential areas that initially they are composed primarily of younger people – families with children. Future development proposed at Swindon is considerable, and includes several major new development areas. There will an early requirement for schools, nurseries, and health centres in these areas…. At the same time, the needs of the existing urban area will need to be protected, as the ageing population causes a reduction, or change, in the need for schools in some areas.
Seems as though Ms Snelgrove could do with some more time in the classroom herself.
I have been the ‘lucky’ recipient of the local blue nest’s Special Residents’ Survey. In practice, it’s nothing special at all —political point scoring masquerading as a questionnaire. If the statement on the first page of this little rag is to be believed they
firmly believe in positive campaigning, which is the best way to encourage people to get involved.
Really? Lets turn to page two.
Gordon Brown is part of the past not the future.
My, what a positive statement that was! Lets move on to the survey itself, question two for example.
Following a 42% hike in Council Tax in just 3 years under a Labour Council
Nice to see them choosing such positive words as ‘hike’ to get their message across.