We need to drive the whole community forward including businesses, partners and residents. We all have to play our part in meeting a global challenge. The town’s growth agenda doesn’t play into sustainability. We have an even bigger challenge to make sure it does. We have the vision and the low-level detail. Now we need to get it embedded into everything we do.
Really? And the meaning of that pile of twaddle is what? Mr Bluh may think he has ‘vision’ but what he’s saying is just a fog of tired, content-free phrases. If he does have ‘the vision and the low-level detail’ then why within the same article is one of his council officers quoted as saying.
This council recognises that it doesn’t know enough at the moment. It is about being an example, but at the moment we are not.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Mr Bluh has just slung together several sentences of imprecise waffle to try and sound impressive, without knowing anything about which he speaks.
The failings in the publicity for Swindon Borough Council’s new fortnightly waste collections are now getting some news media coverage, from both the BBC and the Adver. The tone of both, though, is that this is just a temporary problem, that once people realise their waste will only be collected once a fortnight, the problem will go away. I don’t believe that. In streets with wheelie bins, some have a long way to go to bring their waste down to the one-wheelie-load per fortnight limit. It’s the same in blue bag streets, where many houses have put out several blue bags (I counted five outside one house in Westcott Place this morning), rather than just two as prescribed by the council.
The council say they’ll collect black bags for just one more week (this one). Unless there’s a big education effort on increasing recycling and reducing waste, it looks as though the streets of Swindon are going to be foul with uncollected waste for many weeks or months to come.
Looks like Swindon Borough Council may have forgotten to maintain the payments for their website. Since the beginning of the weekend at least, it’s been showing the holding page from Netnames, the council’s domain registrar.
Update, Tuesday 13 November: the site is back to normal now.
I feel I should apologise for overstating how obvious the ‘no black bag collections after 5 November’ statement was. Looking out in my street a few minutes ago, there was not a black bag in sight (our traditional collection would have been tomorrow morning), but Westcott Place and the Railway Village are very much black bag ago-go areas. I thus deduce that the little-yellow-label-on-plastic-bag’ communication method was not uniform across the town and other less fortunate souls may have had this important communication via more obscure means.
I also note that some in the Railway Village have taken the ‘there will be no collections from the alleyways’ message to heart, and have moved their wheelie bins to the fronts of their houses.
I’m not aware of there being a ‘Most incompetent communications exercise’ competition for local councils, but it seems that the current administration would be the unchallengeable winners if there were.
It may not have been demolished yet, but WestlecottFarm is now surrounded by development work. Further east, with only a few months to go before the first houses in East Wichel are meant to be ready, there’s no sign of even foundations being laid yet.
It is with sadness that we note today the passing of weekly rubbish collections. Born in the Victorian era as a health measure, weekly rubbish collections had an honourable, if un-noted, life maintaining the general sanitation of Swindon’s streets. Weekly rubbish collections leaves three younger siblings (weekly recycling collection, fortnightly garden waste collection and fortnightly plastic bottle collection) and two children (fortnightly wheelie bin collection and his exclusive brother weekly blue bag collection).
Weekly rubbish collections’ funeral was held early this evening at a landfill site in Wiltshire. At the request of his ‘guardian’ Mr Wren, no flowers please.
I arrived home today to find my new wheelie bin waiting for me. Now I’m content enough with the small wheelie bin that, as I requested, I have received. It’s a little difficult to manœuvre around the narrow space between my gate and the front of my house (how I would have managed with a full size bin I’m not sure), but apart from that it’s fine. What annoys me is the nonsense contained in the leaflet that came with it.
Where and when should my bin be left for collection? Your wheelie bin should be put at a point on your own property that is nearest the public highway,
That’ll be right in by my front door then.
where it is visible and accessible to to the collection crews.
As the bin is about twice the height of my front wall, it should be pretty difficult to miss, though given the record so far of the bin-men emptying my orange recycling boxes, I may need to train it to do a song and dance routine to get them to notice it. As to being accessible, at the moment the binmen hoick a black bag out of my dustbin ove the brick wall, without coming through the gate. WIth the wheelie bin, it is too deep for them to reach in and it will be difficult for them to manœuvre out of my gate.
Why change to a wheelie bin? It reduces the amount of rubbish that is sent to costly and environmentally-damaging landfill by encouraging recycling
What? Just where did that demonstrable bit of nonsense come from? A wheelie bin does not of itself have any impact on the level of recycling, as anyone who lived (as I did) in a city where wheelie bins were introduced over eighteen years ago, way before doorstep recycling was introduced, would know. In fact, as the standard size wheelie bin is about four times the size of an old fashioned dustbin, if anything it could be said to encourage the throw-away society. By Mr Wren’s own admission, the biggest impact on the level of recycling in Swindon has been the introduction of separate doorstep collection of plastic bottles. The main influences on the level of recycling are making recycling easier by providing separate doorstep collection, and restricting the amount of ‘non-recyclable’ waste that the council will collect. The means by which that ‘non-recyclable’ waste is collected (be it by wheelie bin or for the anointed few by blue bag) is an irrelevance. It is bad enough that the council have foisted this change upon the residents of central Swindon with a sham consultation: it is an insult to the intelligence of the Swindon electorate that councillors and council officers continue to attempt to confuse the two issues of increasing recycling and the method of waste collection.
Earlier this evening, I took a few moments to vote in the council’s Pride of Place poll for people to chose their favourite tourist attraction in Swindon. I was only the sixth person to do so. However, as a government idea to encourage people to connect with their council it seems rather trivial. If the government really want people to connect with their council they should consider giving back to local councils the many powers they have transferred to ministers for the last ten years.
From the latest comments from Mr Wren, it would seem that the most significant factor in increasing the level of recycling in Swindon is nothing to do with the frequency with which ‘non-recyclable’ rubbish is collected, nor is it related to the introduction of wheelie bins. What matters is the council making it easy to recycle what wasn’t recycled before.
Since introducing the new plastic bottle recycling scheme we have experienced a surge in the amount of waste being recycled rather than just sent to landfill.
Lets hope that the success of this ‘carrot’ influences future policy in this area, so that their is rather less emphasis on the ‘stick’. It’s nice too to see that Mr Montaut has finally finally caught-up on the primary issue of concern to his electorate in relation to the new waste collections.
However, the biggest concern is the blanket view taken over which residents will be required to have wheelie bins.
I see that wheelie bins have even arrived in the back-alleys of the railway village now.
I have previously commented on others’ experiences of the student-run restaurant at Swindon College. Last Thursday I sampled their offerings for myself. Whoever devised the menu clearly had an obsession with orange. That apart, the chicken and bacon salad starter with chive dressing was a succulent start. The dressing in particular was a pleasant change from the vinegar or oil based dressings in which salads are often drowned. The main course of gammon steak was good but nothing exceptional. The dessert of apple and ginger crumble in caramel cream was a delight, with just the merest hint of ginger, the only disappointment being a less than generous covering of caramel cream. These three dishes were rounded off with a pot of tea.
At just £5 for a midday meal, the restaurant appears popular with the local pensioners. I recommend not waiting quite so long.
