Month: September 2009

Now I appreciate that for the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, listening to Mr Brown losing the support of the country’s best-selling tabloid may seem to be important. Just because it’s important to her though, doesn’t mean it’s important to the rest of us.

Today is the big one, Gordon’s speech. The auditorium will be packed and I’m sure many of you will be glued to your TV sets. The Leader’s speech is always the high-point of Conference and I hope that you will listen to the substance of Gordon’s speech to hear how he has the plans and drive to bring our country out of recession and build Britain’s future.

It seems she’s not noticed that, despite the efforts of her government, some of us still have jobs to go to. Even if I hadn’t, I’ve better things to do with my time than listen to someone preaching about building the economy when the dereliction surrounding us has been of their own making — but at our expense.

I’ve been waiting for a couple of days to comment on the recently reported complaint statistics for Wiltshire Police. The figures quoted by the Adver don’t seem to add up.

The number of people making complaints against police in the county rose to 284 in 2008/09 – up from 234 the year before…. However, allegations made against police in Swindon fell from 175 to 148 over the same period…. Out of the 483 complaints made against Wiltshire Police, just over half (53 per cent) were locally resolved, which is the third highest nationally.

So is that 284 complaints or 483? Unfortunately, the Police Complaints Commission report to which the Adver refers has gone missing from their website: the links on their statistics page go nowhere for the 2008/09 statistics. What I can see, from last year’s report, is that the Wiltshire police were then subject of 234 complaints and 433 allegations. So it appears that in reporting the latest statistics, the Adver’s Ms Hilley has got a little confused between allegations and complaints. That’s despite writing in her report

People who complained made 1.7 allegations each on average.

To be clear: one complaint can cover several allegations. But then one can hardly blame Ms Hilley for being a little confused, as the press release — a fairly bland bit of whitewash — does its best to blur the distinction too.

As in previous years most complaints are about ‘neglect of duty’ (24%) and ‘incivility’ (21%), essentially being rude and late. The proportion of all allegations that are substantiated is 10%.

There, in just two sentences, they heave a large dollop of mud into the already less than crystal clear statistical waters. With complaints nationally rising steadily in recent years, it’s no doubt something the government would rather not be that clear about.

I’ve spent much time recently completing my comments on Swindon Borough Council’s Core Strategy. It was pleasing to see that many comments on the earlier draft seemed have been taken into account.

Whilst the council’s officials may be responsive to the comments they receive on their strategies, there seems to have been little effort to make it easy to submit those comments. The online response form remains as poor as last time. And unlike last time where any means, within reason, of submitting comments was accepted, for this final stage of consultation only comments on the official forms were accepted. Unlike a printable form, where one can see what’s coming next, with this online form that’s not possible. So just copying the words from the printable form onto the online form — which is what’s been done in this case — doesn’t work. It was a case of filling in one screen of the form, moving onto the next screen, only to find it asking for something I’d put on the previous screen, resulting in lots of clicking back-and-forth to cut-and-paste material into the right section of the form.

It’s also noticeable that in all their consultations, Swindon Borough Council’s Forward Planning Group give little publicity until the final round of consultation. So in the earlier rounds — where the planning rules allow people to have real influence — there are few comments, with many of those that might have something to say unaware until the final stage where the rules are very restrictive. And the Adver played along with an almost continuous drip–drip of stories based on this version of the Core Strategy, but was almost silent during the earlier rounds, even though the proposals now highlighted were in previous versions of the strategy. It’s good that they’ve covered the story, just unfortunate that they left it so late.

Finally, two predictions for the next round of the process, examination of the strategy by a planning inspector. The first is that the Save Coate campaigners will try to make it a one-topic examination, in much the same way as the New Mechanics Institute did with the Central Area Action Plan. The second is that, like them, they’ll again be unsuccessful.

There are some things that are predictable in politics. For example, the candidates of a losing party in an election can be guaranteed to say that the winning party did badly… in comparison with predictions of success that a few hours before they would have disclaimed as nonsense. Similarly, except for those departing for health reasons, every MP that chooses not to fight an election would have us belief that this was a decision they’d been planning for a long time. The likelihood of defeat never, apparently, clouds their judgement. Thus yesterday’s news that Mr Wills won’t be hanging around for almost inevitable defeat at the next election comes with claims that he always planned it this way.

I have always believed politics is an act of public service, and that it was probably right that no MP should serve more than three terms.

On that basis, his own leader should have departed long ago, but Mr Wills doesn’t seem inclined to suggest that his boss follow his lead.

I have full confidence in the Prime Minister…. I don’t believe he has been given enough credit for helping this country to move out of recession.

Many would say the Prime Minister hasn’t taken enough credit for getting the country into this recession. But lets not let reality get in the way of Mr Wills’ musings.

This has been a good Government and history will say that this Government has changed the country for the better.

If by ‘good’ one means taking the country to war on the basis of forged evidence, then maybe. If by ‘good’ one means taking the country into its worse recession for eighty years and racking up massive debts, then maybe. If by ‘good’ one means massively restricting civil liberties with anti-terrorism legislation of limited, if any, effectiveness, then maybe. But lets not let reality get in the way of Mr Wills’ musings.

This Government has made a huge difference to Swindon and has enabled huge transformation to the town.

Forcing the town to expand its population by almost 20%, whilst saddling the town with an urban regeneration company that has almost single handedly — with a little help of the aforementioned recession — converted the town centre into a demolition site is not a transformation to be proud of. But lets not let reality get in the way of Mr Wills’ musings.

Mr Wills has been the lesser of Swindon’s two parliamentary evils. As a constituency MP, he was markedly better than the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, but then that isn’t difficult to achieve. He also published a thorough breakdown of his expenses, many months before other MPs grudgingly succumbed to pressure from the public and did likewise. But none of that makes up for a voting record that speaks for itself — though again it’s better than the record of his South Swindon compatriot.

Mr Wills says standing down was a difficult decision to make.

It was a very difficult decision…. This was not a sudden decision; it was one I have been mulling over for the past year.

Given the opportunity, his constituents would have very easily made the same decision for him.

komadori spent much of yesterday at the Science Museum Festival of Innovation at Wroughton. The mix of old the museum’s old — and sometimes not-so-old — artefacts, a small number of exhibitors showing off their new technology, a location with fine views, plus excellent weather all made for a thoroughly enjoyable day.

One other thing that made the festival enjoyable was that it was busy, but not crowded. There was space to stand back and admire the exhibits; the place was bustling but not thronged. As others have pointed out, the event didn’t get a great deal of publicity. An article in the local newspaper, a page on Facebook, a video advert a few twitters from the museum’s senior curator, and that was it. Of more conventional advertising there was, seemingly, very little. That really doesn’t match the event manager’s stated aspirations.

We want people to know that this amazing facility is on their doorstep and it is the first and only time this year that it is open to the public. We want everyone in Swindon to come along and get involved.

In the run-up to the museum’s bid for lottery funding, the museum opened several times in the year. Now that’s passed, they seem to have given up somewhat. That said, if they had really promoted the festival, I doubt they could’ve coped without shipping in staff from other branches of the museum or volunteers. As the museum’s senior curator has said,

stored collections – where there is a will to open them up, there’s a way.

Lets hope they find both the will and the way more often in future, and shout rather louder about it when they do.

Agreeing with Mr Feal-Martinez hasn’t been something that’s featured much in my warblings. I doubt that’ll change either but, as he’s standing down from representing UKIP in South Swindon, primarily on health grounds, I wish him well, without qualification. Which is more than the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, did, as she chose to preface her good wishes with some propaganda.

This just goes to show that UKIP is in real trouble in Swindon and I’m not surprised that Robert has found it necessary to stand down.

Hmm… seems she’s already forgotten the large increase in the vote for a certain party at the euro-elections in June.

The Swindon Local Studies Collection at the Central Library have been busy over recent months putting images from their collection onto Flickr. As they’ve recently added several of the local area, komadori has been out-and-about to photograph some of the same views today.

(Archive images below are Swindon Local Studies Collection; 2009 images are © komadori.)

Joseph Street looking towards Albion Street in 1954…

and Joseph Street today.

Marlborough Street looking towards Wescott Place in 1954…

and Marlborough Street today.

Wilts & Berks Canal in 1914…

and Canal Walk today.

Swindon Borough Council’s latest ‘scores on the doors’ news release has received plenty of publicity. But whilst the complacency of some of those in receipt of a zero star rating is to be deplored, the criticisms of the scoring by some more highly rated* cannot be ignored. The criticism is that the inspection regime is too paper based: an establishment can fail for not filling in the right paperwork, but can pass with poor hygiene if the paperwork is fine.

The information about what contributes to a restaurant’s star rating is rather well buried on Swindon Borough Council’s website. The criteria set-out by the government’s Food Standards Agency for assessing a ‘food business’ are:

• type of food and method of handling;
• method of processing;
• consumers at risk;
• level of current compliance with food hygiene and safety procedures;
• level of current compliance with structure of premises;
• confidence in management and control systems;
• risk of contamination of food.

But of those, the only three that contribute to the ‘score on the door’ are:

• level of current compliance with food hygiene and safety procedures;
• level of current compliance with structure of premises;
• confidence in management and control systems.

Oddly, ‘risk of contamination of food’ — logically the most important to the consumer — does not contribute to the score. Which might explain why the official definition for a zero-star rating is

Serious non-compliances found but no imminent risk to public health.

Until there’s an inspection regime that’s concerned more about food hygiene than it is about correct paperwork, my choice of restaurants will remain undisturbed.

* At which point I would have liked to have linked to their five star rating, but the council’s search result was broken.