Tag: Swindon

I recently lunched at the Spag Bowl on the corner of Holbrook Way and Bridge Street. It is more a cafe than a restaurant, offering breakfast as well as lunch and dinner, and has prices to match. The food though is definitely of restaurant standard, and quite a good restaurant at that. The Pesto & tomato ciabatta for starter was pleasantly rich and light. The sauce on the main course of Amatriciana was equally rich, yet not heavy, being perfectly done and a fine savoury combination of bacon, onions and tomatoes lightly seasoned with herbs and spices. This is an establishment that clearly takes its olive oils seriously, it being the source of the richness mentioned and with over five being offered with their caprese. I’m not a connoisseur of Italian coffees, but that too seemed high quality to me, with a fine flavour and not over-roasted as is often the case in cheaper Italian restaurants.

If you should find yourself in a queue awaiting entry to Cosmo just across the road, abandoning the wait and making the short journey to the Spag Bowl would be a wise choice. If you’re interested in fine food, you’ll not regret it.

I’ve commented before about the antiquated appearance of the houses being built on Swindon’s front garden and its potential for creating a run-down appearance. Now it seems that the public buildings within Wichelstowe will be taking that concept to new depths.

A primary school with ‘community facilities’ and nursery proposed for ‘Parcel 36’ of East Wichel has a very Victorian looking front. Behind that is tagged on something looking like a cheap 1970s extension. The overall effect of the design for Swindon Borough Council is a ramshackle building that appears to have been starved of funds before it’s even been built.

Actually, given that this expansion of Swindon has been imposed by central government with little, if any, financial support, that last thought might not be far from the truth.

Some children had a very late night, waiting for the Children’s Fete to finish with a bang.

To the quiet accompaniment of the Wiltshire Wanderer fairground organ, today is the Children’s Fete in Faringdon Road Park. With possibly the highest density of tombola stalls ever assembled in one place, plus a few other stalls, some small fairground rides and other entertainments, the event is tame in comparison with other events targeted at children. A revival from a calmer era… and none the worse for that. From the number of people there, it clearly fulfils a need. Long may it continue.

As an aside, the event has also generated the earliest mention of Christmas amongst Swindon bloggers. It must be winter soon….

Another thing to happen during my unscheduled absence from the internet is that Swindon Borough Council planning committee has, at its latest meeting, yet again rejected proposals for replacing the tented market with an ugly slab pavilion of restaurants. Having previously commented at length on this proposal I’ve little more to say, apart from noting my satisfaction with the committee’s decision, and wondering yet again at how the planning officer manages, still, to find these plans so much more attractive than almost anyone else does.

One of the common features of pressure groups and campaigns is their one-tracked pursuit of their goals, impervious to whether the approach they are taking is so inappropriate as to actually prevent them being taken seriously, ultimately reducing the likelihood of them achieving their goals. So it is with the New Mechanics Institution Preservation Trust. They will be making representations to the planning inspector who is currently assessing Swindon Borough Council’s Central Area Action Plan. The plan covers many things and the Railway Village is a relatively small part of that… and the Mechanics Institute an even smaller part still.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly appropriate for the Mechanics Institute to be a topic for discussion during the inspector’s examination of the action plan, but her remit is limited to issues of planning policy and strategy. Who owns individual properties is not a planning policy matter. Using the examination, as they are, as a means for yet again peddling the Preservation Trust’s view that the Mechanics Institute should be in their their ‘community’ ownership for community use is way beyond what inspector’s remit. Wasting everyone’s time making arguments that aren’t relevant just annoys and detracts from the small smattering of arguments in the Trust’s case that the inspector can consider.

If they want to yet again be labelled as vexatious, the New Mechanics Institution Preservation Trust seem to be going the right way about it.

I find Swindon Borough Council’s approach to fly-posting both half-hearted and inefficient.

The cost of removing a poster zip-tied to a tree or lamp-post is about £20 while a poster fixed to another surface could cost up to £200…. Mr Palacio said: “We are keen to stress that we are not trying to ban anyone from putting up posters – we just want to make sure that they are not left lying around for ages after the event is over.”

I can see that something that is very firmly glued in place may be expensive to remove, given the staff time and equipment needed — steam cleaning, for example. But £20 to remove a poster tied to a tree? Even if this includes the cost of someone at the council’s contact centre dealing with a report first, there must be a very inefficient process between the first report and the final snip to remove the poster to run-up a bill of £20. And why wait until after the event to get tough with the culprits? Fly-posting of the type shown in the Adver’s story is unsightly from the moment it is posted, not just several months later.

Having lost their website for a few days last year, Swindon Borough Council is now having problems with the part of their site that gives access to planning applications. This is supplied by a different company from the main site and consistently does not work outside of normal office hours. Most weekends for the last few months it has suffered from frequent out-of-memory errors if you try to access the document linked to an application or, as it has since at least Friday, just refuses to give access at all. According to the software suppliers, their software

is designed to provide Planning & Building Control departments with an efficient means of realising e-government targets quickly, whilst taking the stress and risk out of administering applications, both online and offline. It is a ‘hands off’ approach, so that case officers can get on with value-added work – not ‘pushing’ paper.

Perhaps it’s time the council took a rather more hands-on approach and pushed their suppliers to provide a service that delivers what it is meant to and what we, through the council tax, are no doubt paying for.

If you’re reporting a story that does little more than regurgitate some press releases, you’d at least try not to make any errors in what you copied, no? Step forward the Adver which, in publishing a story based on a press release from Wiltshire Criminal Justice Board, has managed to misquote the figures from an Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) press release.

The number of youths cautioned for criminal offences has grown 12 per cent in the last six years. The number convicted of a crime rose by three per cent since 2002.

What the IPPR figures actually stated was that the number of youths cautioned or convicted for criminal offences has grown 12 per cent in the last six years whereas for adults the rise is three per cent.

The Wiltshire Criminal Justice Board’s response to the IPPR report is to claim that the number of youths cautioned or convicted for criminal offences has decreased by 13 per cent in the last two years. In a later press release they go even further.

In the past three years we’ve seen a fall of nearly 40 per cent in the numbers of young people entering the youth justice system.

Well, that’s comforting isn’t it? No mention of detection rates or of the numbers of crimes being reported. As long as convictions are dropping, everything’s fine.

On the basis of the analysis done by the Wiltshire Criminal Justice Board, we’d be far safer if the police were abolished, because then no children would be convicted or cautioned. And regardless of what has happened in the last two years, by the boards own measure, youth crime is 12 per cent higher than six years ago. Just two years of figures are hardly evidence of a downward trend.

Yesterday I attended the inaugural meeting of the Swindon Local Involvement Network (LINk), which has been created to monitor and comment on public-funded health and adult social care in Swindon. It has limited powers: just the right to ask questions of NHS services and the council’s scrutiny committee and to insist they answer within a set time.

The meeting was an odd affair. I had signed up in response to a flier enclosed with my annual Council Tax bill. Until yesterday I knew nothing of the history behind its creation. LINks replace, though with a wider remit, Patient and Public Involvement Forums, which had been created then abolished by the government in the space of five years. All but three of those that turned up to the inaugural meeting — a grand total of thirteen — had been members of those forums, several with fairly blunt axes to grind about the re-organisation. Others seemed almost as interested in setting-up a complicated committee structure and what the procedure would be for their travel and subsistence claims than they were in health and social services. Almost all were retired: apart from the officers from Swindon Borough Council and Voluntary Action Swindon there in support, I was the youngest person. Hardly a representative group. There is a target for 2000 people to be involved. So far, only thirty have expressed an interest. It has a long way to go.

The first thing the Swindon LINk has been asked to provide an opinion on is the new ‘GP-led health centre’ to be built in central Swindon. One can only hope that it has become a larger and more representative group before it gives a response.