Tag: Swindon

Yet another bright idea from Swindon Community Safety Partnership has been announced today, just a week after their last act of genius. Their latest idea is to give revellers boozing themselves to oblivion on Friday and Saturday nights a pack containing a bottle of water, a lollipop, a personal attack alarm, condoms and flip-flops. This ‘survival kit’ will, if the title of the news item on Swindon Borough Council’s website is to be believed, increase said inebriated revellers’ awareness of the effects of alcohol. According to Mr Lovell,

This project is a demonstration of the holistic approach we take when dealing with the night time economy in Swindon to ensure it is a safe place to enjoy.

I have an alternative suggestion for making the Fleet Street area of Swindon safe. The pubs could, as licensing law requires, stop serving those that are clearly drunk, and the local judiciary could take a more serious approach to those found guilty of drunken violence. Just those two things would be far more effective in making people feel safe than a lollipop and bottle of water ever will.

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.

The latest planning application for one of the affordable housing blocks in East Wichel includes a revised design for the noise bund (or mound of earth) that is meant to reduce the noise from motorway traffic for residents in the boxes houses of the new development. The new design, in the words of the report supporting the application,

uses a steeper aspect ratio, enabling the crest of the bunding to be moved slightly closer to the M4 motorway.

Of course, in doing so it allows the foot of the bunding to be moved closer to the M4 too, allowing a bit more space to cram more houses in. Fortunately for the residents of Wroughton, they are going to get rather wider (and more attractive) sound protection.

Some of the documents in Swindon Borough Council’s budget consultation (which closes on Wednesday 6th February) give the distinct impression of knitted garments of ovine origin being used as a visual impediment. Having only looked at the summary, I’m already feeling distinctly dizzy.

In addition, the Council has identified a further £2.5m of savings that have no adverse impact on services received by the public.

These include:

• securing alternative funding sources for services (mainly from health and schools)
• Increased income levels (e.g. from increased leisure charges or specific Government grants)

If, instead of paying for a service through the council tax, I now have to pay everytime I use said service, whilst still paying the same, if not more, council tax, is that not an ‘adverse impact’? If a service is to be provided, someone, somewhere has to pay for it. In suggesting that it has become cheaper, a ‘saving’, when all that’s happened is that the point of payment has been shifted, the council is being rather economical with the truth.

Today komadori sampled the lunchtime offering from the new all-you-can eat ‘pan-asian’ restaurant in Swindon, Cosmo. At just £5.90 per person (plus £1.30 for whatever beverage one chooses, alcoholic or not), this is certainly not the highest quality authentic oriental cuisine. But for the price it is very good, as evidenced by the fact that by 1 pm the restaurant was full. The lunchtime menu is not as extensive as the evening one (the ‘5 live cooking stations’ that their website boasts were distinctly dead), but there was a good range of ‘Chinese’ food and assorted curries. There was a good range of vegetarian options too, though some that, on face value, one might have expected to be vegetarian were not marked as such. There was also a good range of desserts, though these were not sampled, as after a full plate for starters and a plate-and-a-half for main course, komadori had already reached his all-he-could-eat limit.

Given its proximity to Swindon’s warehouse boozing establishments in Fleet Street, prices are higher on Friday evenings and Saturdays, when the atmosphere is also, apparently, more disco than family-meal-out. As their website suggests, advance booking is advisable, and at the busiest times don’t expect to be allowed to sit and relax after you’ve finished your meal: the staff will be anxious to see you on your way to make space for the next group waiting to be served.

Mr Bluh, in his obsession to bring a canal back into the town centre, is reaching the point of delusion.

It could make Swindon a destination of choice.

Really? That’s like suggesting that having a violin playing a few chords in a pop song makes it classical orchestral music. Also, I don’t recall many reports recently of Woking being inundated with tourists visiting the canal that runs through its town centre.

The green corridor would be a popular attraction, not just for tourists but the residents of Swindon as well.

The canal walk that runs along the old canal route from Kingshill to the town centre is already fairly green and certainly comparable to what the council’s central area action plan proposes for the green spine in terms of the amount of vegetation. I haven’t noticed many tourists there.

It’s about looking at the vision and seeing the issues involved, then seeing if it’s sensible to fulfil the vision.

It should also be about ensuring that the fog of exuberant enthusiasm doesn’t obscure reality.

It’s nice to have a leader with a vision for Swindon, but in believing, as he seems to, that of itself a canal will turn Swindon into a tourist attraction, Mr Bluh is forsaking vision for fantasy.

I’ll say more on this when Halcrow’s report has been made public, but for the moment I have two observations on the plans to bring a canal back into Swindon that were presented to yesterday’s meeting of Swindon Borough Council’s cabinet.

1. Nobody but the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust and the cabinet of Swindon Borough Council have so far seen the Halcrow report: it has been kept secret and we’re having to trust our local politicians. To me it looks like they’ve something to hide.
2. To say, as they do, that
   

   Of the hundreds of people who came in, only three were against the canal. One was drunk, the second one just opened the door and shouted obscenities and the third person spoke to us for an hour before coming back the next day wanting to know more.

   is a blatant lie. In my one visit to the Canal Trust’s Regent Circus premises, there were more opponents to the plans that came in than that. Admittedly, they were outnumbered by those in favour, but there were more than three in just one hour.

I like the idea of a canal being re-introduced to Swindon, but I want it to be done on the basis of honest and open discussion, not through secrecy and lies.

It seems I may have been a little harsh in my criticisms of the Swindon Front Garden Action Group’s claims about the wetness of the Swindon Front Garden. Today, after a week of fairly continuous, and at times very heavy, rain, the area eventually to become West Wichel (but for the moment still called South Leaze) contained four large expanses of water. ’Tis rather unfortunate, given that the plans only include one. The access-road embankment will make a fine viewing point for the water below. Rather than seeking a developer who is

Someone who doesn’t just deal in the bricks and mortar of sustainability but someone who knows how to create sustainable communities.

I suggest Mr Bluh would be wiser to seek out a good boat builder.

The plans for some of the affordable housing blocks of East Wichel recently submitted look positively Victorian. Whilst some of the earlier Swindon Front Garden planning applications had that semi–fake-victoriana look that is becoming so familiar in the infilling of every vacant space of Old Town, these look, from the ‘street scenes’ (developers’ fantasies to you) that the developers are obliged to include with their plans, much closer to the real thing. Previous plots show a lack of scale, with steep rooves and three or four storey houses, to pack as many houses into as small a space as possible. ‘Parcel 18’ is the lucky winner of rows of victorianesque two-storey terraces.

komadori suspects it is only the proximity of this plot to the M4 motorway that has prevented the developers being more greedy: taller buildings would not have been effectively protected by the ‘sound barrier’ (big mound of earth to you) that is being constructed between these houses and the motorway.

Whilst I have expressed my concerns about the information presented to the recent Licensing Panel of Swindon Borough Council, and find the licensing section of their website aimed more at applicants than objectors, to say, as the New Mechanics’ Institution Preservation Trust does that.

Only as things moved along did we come to understand what was permitted by the Licensing Act. It was our first effort to deal with licensing under the Act.

is no defence. The trust is a campaigning organisation. It has played the planning laws more many years; it knows how regulatory bodies in this country work. If you want to object, you read up on the rules about what you are allowed to object about first. That the owners of the GWR Mechanics’ Institution were successful in their licensing application comes as no surprise.

And for the Trust to claim that they are a ‘similar business’ to that proposed for the Institution by its owners suggests that the Trust have forgotten about all those differences they objected to so vociferously in the earlier planning applications.