Bad advice

It’s a long time since the jokers at the Swindon Community Safety Partnership have given us anything to laugh about, but now they’re back to their old habits. A bit of advice I was given many years ago — not by the Swindon Community Safety Partnership — was that one should always be cautious about using a mobile phone in a public place, particularly so in those locations, such as the entertainment zone of a town centre, where the risk of theft is high. Alas, it seems that the Swindon Community Safety Partnership may be about to encourage behaviour that’ll lead to a wave of mobile phone thefts. The partnership is going to send messages via bluetooth to clubbers’ mobile phones, giving them safety advice.

Bluetooth is a great, cost-effective way to reach lots of people with relevant bite-size community safety messages…. [I]t will be used selectively to support key awareness campaigns… and people can opt to decline messages, although we’d urge them to pick up the free advice.

I wonder if that advice will include ‘Keep you mobile phone out of sight when in an unsafe crowded area.’

From lollipops to messaging, the record of the Swindon Community Safety Partnership in dealing with Friday night revellers is consistently daft.

Bradshaw admits public sector recruitment bias

Mr Bradshaw has recently announced the creation of over 600 publicly funded jobs to massage the unemployment figures help young unemployed people into work. The jobs are, almost without exception, in the public sector, including 142 at the National Monuments Record Centre in Swindon. According to Mr Bradshaw these jobs usually go to rich kids.

[T]hese are great jobs — jobs in sectors that can be really tough to break into, that are usually the preserve of better off children whose parents have the contacts to get them a foot in the door.

Err… so he’s saying that after twelve years of his government and all its bluster about inclusiveness, recruitment to public sector jobs is biased, favouring the wealthy with contacts, rather than recruiting on merit.

It’s nice of Mr Bradshaw to confirm that the old boy network is alive and well under New Labour.

Annie fails to see crimes

It seems that the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, is so eager to rubbish the priorities of Swindon Borough Council that she hasn’t even bothered to read what their priorities are. According to Ms Snelgrove the council isn’t concerned about crime and anti-social behaviour.

I am appalled that the Council do not think anti-social behaviour and local crime are priorities in Swindon.

She even provides a link to the council’s priorities.

The Council sets its priorities under the Local Area Agreement (www.swindon.gov.uk/yourcouncil-laa) but crime and anti-social behaviour are not even mentioned.

Follow that link. You’ll find, as the sixth of six priorities in the current Local Area Agreement the following.

A place where the resident population can have real influence to develop a sense of community and belonging, and where reducing crimes makes them feel safe.

If Ms Snelgrove thinks that’s not even mentioning crime, she really should go back to school and take some English language lessons.

Update 23:09. I see that Ms Snelgrove has now issued an updated version claiming criteria that were used to dish out this money, though this wasn’t mentioned in the government press release.

Areas that received funding are those that either chose to include ASB as one of their Local Area Agreement priorities or were one of the areas chosen by the Home Office as having high levels of ASB.

So she’s complaining that the council didn’t make a priority out of something her own government doesn’t think is a big issue in Swindon anyway. Logic, reasoning and representing the best interests of her constituents never were Ms Snelgrove’s strong points. Clearly, they still aren’t.

A gullible partnership

The naïvety of the Swindon Community Safety Partnership continues to amaze. This week the Partnership’s leader, Mr Palusinki, is claiming that invisible marking of property reduces burglary by over 85%.

Effective property marking has reduced burglaries in other areas by up to 85 percent. Goods are less attractive to thieves if they can be easily identified.

Mr Palusinki is guilty of believing the manufacturer’s advertising material. The evidence on which those claims are based is weak.

An area containing approximately 500 homes was identified as being suitable for a pilot test to allow Police to assess the effectiveness of forensic property marking which is based on the principles of human DNA…. Within the ‘hot-spot’, 95% of the properties used the forensic marking ‘kits’, which included a large number of repeat victims, to mark their property. Signage, posters and window stickers were then used to deter criminals from operating in the area as well as significant media coverage…. The pilot was a huge success, with an incredible 85% reduction in domestic burglary, 60% reduction in theft from vehicles, and 50% reduction in theft of vehicles.

So in reality, it wasn’t the marking of property that caused the reduction in burglaries, it was the publicity that accompanied it that had the effect.

Mr Palusinki, it seems, is an advertiser’s dream customer.

Bags of complaint

It must be hard being a large retailer. You put lots of effort into cultivating an ‘environmentally friendly’ image, replacing plastic carrier bags with paper ones that proclaim their virtues, only to find that these marketing efforts are ineffective with your customers.

Now, you might think that if — as the person stood in front of me yesterday in a cashiers’ queue was — you’re buying clothes made entirely of synthetic fibres, clothes that have been transported at least half way round the globe, then the least of your environmental concerns should be the material of the carrier bag into which your purchase is being placed. Not to the aforementioned customer ahead of me in the queue. She looked at the cashier packing her polyester paradise into a brown paper bag and said “Paper? Oh well. Why not waste another tree?” For a style-conscious cheap-fashion junkie, only plastic bags for plastic clothing will do, I suppose.

Naïve

Mr Slattery of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church seems not to be very media savvy.

I was a bit surprised when Ladbrokes approached me about taking on a charity bet. Of course I’m not promoting gambling, and I know the damage it has done to some families.

I wonder in what way Mr Slattery thinks that getting Ladbrokes a free mention in both local and national press is not promoting gambling. At just £50 (or £1300 if he wins), the bookies have got an advertising bargain.

Fantasy worlds

It’s difficult to decide which is least believable. First there’s LDA Design making over-the-top claims for Wharf Green (You can either read the original press release, or its recycled form in the Adver).

The square has given a real boost to the town centre and its ambitious long-term plans for regeneration.

Or the even more ridiculous claims in their submission to The Civic Trust’s awards.

Wharf Green provides a first impression for many visitors, and this scheme has redeveloped the area to provide a new town centre square, meeting and public performance space. A large scale timber façade serves to both integrate a large TV screen and conceal an unattractive car park, making the area more welcoming. The landscaping has softened a large space and encourages people in to make use of this improved public space.

The only visitors for whom Wharf Green would provide a first impression of Swindon are those arriving by parachute, blindfolded. And in what way has digging up the old flower beds and replacing them with an uninterrupted expanse of paving stones ‘softened a large space’? Developer hyperbole, one; reality nil.

But move to the edge of town and the claims, this time by the campaigners, are no more realistic. There, the Jefferies Land Conservation Trust has wild claims for the potential that a few stones indicate for the area near Coate Water.

There is a real chance here to create almost a mini-Avebury…. Whilst not on the scale of Avebury, it is so exciting to know that Coate is steeped in similar pre-history…. It would be criminal to surround these ancient relics of the past with modern buildings.

That’s not on the same scale as Avebury in the way that Swindon isn’t on the same scale as London, or that Coate Water isn’t on the same scale as Lake Windermere.

Developers and environmental campaigners are often opposed to each other, but when it comes to having a grasp on reality, both are equally out-of-touch.

Listen to the children

Whilst reading about a councillor from Haydon Wick Parish Council bewailing the poor road access to the proposed Oakhurst School, it was difficult to come to any conclusion other than that he is totally out-of-touch.

The proposal is aspirational and assumes that everyone will be walking their darling children to school. That is just not realistic in this day and age. We would like better traffic management and allow for the fact that people take their kids to school by car.

The comments in the article from parents all suggested they would walk their children to school. Most of the comments posted said the same.

It was also difficult not to notice, at the top of the list of Student Adver articles one headlined ‘Look After The Environment’. Mr Pike should spend more time listening to the children — and, if he’s any sense, his parishioners.

Not-so-black Saturday

If there’s one thing you can rely on from the Swindon Community Safety Bureaucracy Partnership, it’s stupidity. The economy’s nose-dived, bookings for Christmas parties are heavily down, yet Mr Palusinski from the Bureaucracy Partnership is not sure why yesterday evening seemed to be just like any other Saturday night.

Considering that some people in the national press were calling it black Saturday, it was relatively calm in the town centre. I am not sure why the numbers were so average but they were.

A quick search reveals that just about the only person referring to yesterday as Black Saturday is Mr Palusinski.

Whether the message we are putting out there is being heeded by revellers, or whether it is the current financial drought that is resulting in people drinking less, I am not sure.

Hint: it’s the economy, stupid.

I consider the operation a success.

I consider the operation a waste of the public’s money.

Lies, damned lies and tax debt statistics

Swindon Borough Council’s Mr Martin is clearly no statistician. His social analysis skills aren’t too hot either. According to Mr Martin, a league table of wards based on levels of outstanding council tax debt will help them to ‘identify areas that may have problems’

The idea of breaking it down into wards is to help us identify areas that may have problems and see what we can do to help.

He does seem to have a few doubts though.

We have to look more carefully at these figures because for example, Abbey Meads is not one of the places with a lot of benefit claimants

Quite. As Mr Martin clearly hasn’t bothered, I’ll do the analysis for him. Here are the figures – and spin – from the Adver.

Abbey Meads comes in at fifth in the league of council tax dodgers – with over £572,000 owed from 904 court orders. The worst area is Central ward, which is £688,000 in the red with 1,390 court orders. Gorse Hill & Pinehurst, Eastcott and Parks are close behind, each owing in excess of £600,000. The most punctual payers evidently live in Ridgeway ward, where just under £44,000 is outstanding from 71 court orders.

Let’s concentrate on just the three wards for which full figures have been given. In the council’s chosen ranking, they are:

• Central — £688,000 from 1,390 court orders
• Abbey Meads — £572,000 from 904 court orders
• Ridgeway — £44,000 from 71 court orders

I can’t find figures for how many taxable properties there are in each ward. The best indicator of ward size I can find is the electorate (i.e. those registered to vote) at the last local elections.

• Central — 7777 electors
• Abbey Meads — 10,713 electors
• Ridgeway — 2464 electors

With the population of Abbey Meads four times as large as that of Ridgeway, any analysis based on totals per ward is going to be heavily skewed in favour of Ridgeway and against Abbey Meads. There are various sums one can do to try to remove that effect.

Ward	Debt per elector	Court orders per 1000 electors	Debt per court order
Abbey Meads	£53	84	£632
Central	£88	178	£494
Ridgeway	£17	28	£619

From that analysis you could say that it’s not the wards with high numbers of benefit claimants that have the problem, but the more affluent ones, as there the amounts owed – the last column in the table – are, on average, much higher.

Of course, if you pick the other columns in the table, the conclusion is different… but not more correct.

Worthless debate from a worthless MP

With the economy in trouble and signs that the local economy could suffer soon, you’d think that how the government spends billions of our money as it attempts to prop-up the economy would be worthy of serious debate. The government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, thinks otherwise and can contribute no more than petty point-scoring to the debate in parliament.

Ms Snelgrove

Is it bad judgement to oppose Government action to protect small savers’ money in banks and building societies, or just another example of social justice from the perspective of the Bullingdon club?

Mr Speaker

Order. The honourable Lady really should cut that behaviour out.

Ms Snelgrove often berates Swindon Borough Council for not talking to her first before bidding for money from central government. With the infantile approach to politics that she displays, it’s amazing that anyone would waste their time talking to her at all.

Freezers to replace wheelie bins

Just a week after Swindon Borough Council suggested doubling the number of plastic bags used for throwing away rubbish, we now have an even less efficient suggestion from a local resident: freeze your rubbish, then put it in your wheelie the night before collection. Ms Harris, whose idea this is, seems to be rather proud of her ‘logic’ in coming up with this idea.

I’ve done it ever since I’ve had a wheelie bin and I’ve never had maggots. It was an idea I just came up with myself. My husband says I apply logic to everything and it doesn’t always work, but this does.

It’s such a great idea, I’m thinking of buying an industrial freezer and providing, for a reasonable fee, maggot protection services to my neighbours…. On second thoughts, perhaps not. Let’s examine Ms Harris’ logic.

It’s simple. Instead of throwing away old plastic containers, that you get things like strawberries in, keep them. Put all your scrap foods and bits and bobs from your plate into the container…

That assumes you buy sufficient amounts of overpackaged food to store the scrap food in. It also assumes that the problem waste is sufficiently dry not to leak out of the container.

then put them in the corner of the freezer.

The corner of the freezer? Just how big a freezer is this? Someone cooking meals daily could easily generate more than just a ‘corner’ of waste in one fortnight. Those not doing serious cooking but reheating pre-packaged food are likely to have large amounts of bulky soiled packaging even less suitable for this treatment. And placing waste in proximity to waste: I’m sure the Health & Safety wonks would have a fit about that. Freezing significantly slows the decay process, it doesn’t totally stop it.

Anything frozen will not attract vermin or maggots or anything.

In a fortnight, true, but until it freezes you’ve got waste potentially oozing whatever contamination it already has over food in the freezer.

I’ve done it ever since I’ve had a wheelie bin and I’ve never had maggots.

There’s as much sense to that as there would be to burning all food just to avoid the risk of it being undercooked. Admittedly, the council’s own suggestion of double-wrapping rubbish is not much better.

According to Swindon Borough Council’s own figures, each week’s rubbish collection costs less than 75p per household.* Anything that costs more to prevent the maggot infestations is a step backwards in efficiency from the well-known Victorian solution to the problem.†

*Up to 1 tonne of rubbish per household per year with the cost of collection in 2004/05 (in the era of weekly collections) £38.62 per tonne.
†Yes, I know just a minority of households have suffered wheelie bin infestation, but the council’s advise is to everyone, not just the afflicted few.

Cheesy advice

The combination of health advice and commercial promotion is never a happy one. The joining of the Dental Health Foundation and the British Cheese Board for National Smile Month is no exception. The intended messages, from the dental professionals side, seem to be that, if you must snack, then cheese is better than something sugary, and that consuming milk based food, such as cheese or yoghurt or milk itself, at the end of a meal will help reduce tooth erosion. But these have got rather lost in translation with the cheese marketing message taking precedence. The reported comment from a local dentist, who has been handing cheese out to child patients, suggests that she has swallowed the whole of the marketeers’ message.

It’s highlighting the fact that cheese is good for you. One piece is not going to reduce their decay, it raises awareness and informs people.

Quite. Oxygen is good for you too: without it, you suffocate; get too much of it and it is poisonous. Similarly water is good for you: too little and you dehydrate; breath vast quantities in and you will probably drown. In the simplistic view being presented, cheese ‘is good for you’ because it helps reduce tooth decay, and fruit juice is bad because it is sugary. It seems they’ve forgotten that there’s more to good health than just healthy teeth. The high levels of saturated fat and salt in cheese have been ignored (as has the contribution of fruit juice to a healthy intake of fruit and veg).

The dentists should stick to dentistry and leave the food marketing to others.

How many government ‘partnerships’ does one town need?

The answer, apparently, is quite a lot. A quick trawl through the web came up with the list below.

• Swindon Local Area Agreement (Swindon Borough Council, the Government Office for the South West, Swindon Strategic Partnership and other quangos)
• Swindon Strategic Partnership (Swindon Borough Council, parish councils and voluntary groups, with observers from the South West Regional Development Agency and the Government Office for the South West)
• Swindon Strategic Economic Partnership (Swindon Borough Council, the South West Regional Development Agency, the New Swindon Company, Swindon Learning Partnership, other quangos and local companies.)
• New Swindon Company (urban regeneration company owned by Swindon Borough Council, the South West Regional Development Agency and English Partnerships)
• Great Western Community Forest (an unincorporated association of Swindon Borough Council, other local councils and the Forestry Commission)
• inSwindon (town centre management company, set-up by Swindon Borough Council with town-centre companies on the board)
• Swindon Learning Partnership (seemingly not a partnership at all, just an office of Swindon Borough Council but with over 120 ‘members’)

Now, I’m sure some of these do worthwhile work but, looking at that list, it does seem rather incestuous, with partnerships forming further partnerships, all with the added cost of yet another bureaucracy. A bit of digging on these organisations’ websites reveals that they are all a consequence of one or other central government ‘initiative’, wherein getting hold of some extra money for Swindon from central government (or stopping central government taking money away) is dependent on setting up a new quango.

If national government thinks that a way to improve local participation in democracy is to add multiple layers of bureaucracy, then its understanding of democracy is clearly very wrong indeed.

Whatever happened to business travel?

If the press are to be believed, there’s no such thing as business travel. The 12% increase in bookings reported by Holiday Inn is just from holiday makers and not business travellers…. Hmm… I guess that explains why, even for a summer booking, they charge less for a weekend booking than for a mid-week one at either of their Swindon hotels.

Shopaholic

Mr Tomlinson has clearly been stocking up on sand recently, enough to thoroughly bury his head. His response to the announcement that Marks & Spencer will open a branch at the Orbital Centre in north Swindon is shockingly naïve.

This is absolutely fantastic news for my residents. There have been rumours of this coming forward for quite some time. And during that period residents have been asking me to support it – which I am delighted to do. It is an excellent addition to the Orbital Shopping Park and I’m sure it will prove very popular. But the Orbital centre will never replace Swindon town centre. It will work alongside the town centre to improve Swindon’s offer to shoppers.

Decades of experience of ‘out-of-town’ shopping centres in towns across the country demonstrate that the reality is highly likely to be the opposite. You don’t need to be a genius to realise that anyone from North Swindon who is currently a customer at the town centre branch of M&S is unlikely to be one once the new branch opens. It’s hardly likely to lead to an increase in business at their Outlet Centre branch either. With people like Mr Tomlinson at the council leading the town centre redevelopment, the future for Swindon town centre looks bleak.

A council leader in search of a meaning

I see that Swindon Council leader, Mr Bluh, has been drinking at the fountain of verbal garbage again. To quote.

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.

An inconvenient town

It’s strange the approach Swindon Borough Council is taking to regeneration of the town centre. Its latest proposal seems aimed at closing all town centre public toilets that it maintains and paying retailers, pubs and restaurants a £500 subsidy per year to open their customer toilets to the general public. The idea is to be trialled in Old Town, where the council also propose to close the public toilets. Now, I haven’t done an in-depth study, but as far as I am aware, very few of the shops in Old Town have customer toilets. Which means that outside of the times that the local pubs and restaurants are open, there would be no facilities available. And with a subsidy of just £500 per year for allowing anyone to wander through their premises, I can’t see many retailers or restaurants taking up the offer. If this inconvenient approach spreads, shopping for the weak bladdered could be limited to afternoons and evenings only.