SMOKE

Jeremy Grimaldi’s great article in Saturday’s Adver about surveillance cameras at the GWH drew attention to two important issues.

Surely it cannot be sensible for the NHS to spend £30000 to prevent individuals who want to smoke from smoking, outside and away from any non smokers who might object. It is not as if being prevented from having a cigarette during the brief time they are on the GWH site is going to be sufficient stimulus to persuade anyone to quit smoking. The NHS is correct to draw attention to the dangers of smoking, and provide help to those who want to stop, but adults should be allowed to make their own mind up whether they want to take that advice.

Even more bizarre is the idea that the hospital should use surveillance cameras! Why should people engaged in completely lawful activities be filmed? Our society is on a dangerous path towards assuming that any social non-conformity or different lifestyle choices, need to be monitored, filmed and eradicated.

AN ENGLISH JOURNEY

Photographer  John Angerson is making a pictoral odessey around England to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of J B Priestley’s “An English Journey”. Here are his photos of Swindon.

Carpeo Ltd is a 2500 square foot Call centre with 130 employees, Swindon © John Angerson

Lish Fernandes, call centre worker and finalist in the Miss Wiltshire Beauty contest, Swindon © John Angerson

SWINDON TORIES – NOTHING TO OFFER ON THE ECONOMY

David Cameron’s reaction to yesterday’s budget was chilling: “We need to move from an economy of borrow and spend to an economy of save and invest. … we need spending restraint now, and an Office of Budget Responsibility for the future. … If they don’t have the courage to deal with the debt and take the difficult decisions, why don’t they make way for a team that can”

Of course the conservatives are feeding on the mass popular revulsion against the fat cat bankers, and disquiet at the huge bail outs that have been necessary to prevent the banks from collapsing. The Tories are clearly pitching their stall on very tight monetarist ground of massively reducing public services to seek a balanced budget in the medium term. 

Justin Tomlinson, Tory candidate for North Swindon says that the Tories will pursue a balanced budget at all costs, even if this costs millions of jobs. In response to the budget Justin says: “The amount of debt Labour are building up means Britain’s books won’t balance for at least ten years. ” One  area where the Tories are saying they will make savings is by a huge attack on public sector pensions.

Last week, Tory Shadow Chancellor George Osborne was explicit that the Tories would seek public expenditure cuts, rather than increased taxes or borrowing, as their primary tool for deficit reduction. He also confirmed that no areas of public expenditure would be safe, and cuts could be expected both on the schools budget, and the defence budget which would hit manufacturing jobs hard.

Swindon Tories are all at sea with this. Robert Buckland, Conservative parliamentary candidate for South Swindon, says: “”The much-vaunted car-scrapping scheme will make very little difference in the car industry which is such an important part of Swindon’s economy. The thousands of workers at Honda who’ve been hit by Labour’s recession have a right to be angry that this Labour government has forgotten them.”

But what are the Tories promising to do differently? Obviously the car scrapping scheme will persuade some people to buy a new car, and that can only help UK based car manufacturers like Honda here in Swindon. The Tories are promising to dampen demand and pursue fiscal prudence – the very last set of economic conditions that would help the car industry.

Exploiting the luxury of unaccountability that goes with opposition, the only detailed policies in the Conservative’s alternative proposals for the budget are ALL tax reductions!

TORIES – SOFT ON CRIME, SOFT ON THE CAUSES OF CRIME

Swindon is particularly blessed with fine Victorian parks, that are well used and maintained, and should be a great source of civic pride.

 

However it has long been noticeable that Old Town Gardens and Queen’s Park suffer much less from vandalism and misuse than Faringdon Road Park. One simple reason being that Faringdon Road park was not locked at night.

 

I live just around the corner from Queen’s Park, and I have noticed the increase in graffiti since the Tories decided no longer to lock it, in a pathetic attempt to save a few pennies.

 

What is especially ludicrous is that last year the Adver reported how the council spent huge sums on covert filming in a vain attempt  to try to catch Graffiti artists, using powers granted to them with the purpose of fighting terrorism and serious crime!

 

I wonder if the Tory councillors who made the decision to stop locking the gates would advise us to stop locking the doors and windows of our houses! Prudent securing of your assets is the most cost effective way to protect them, and it is much cheaper to prevent vandalism than repair it.

 

So the same councillors who have removed cameras to catch speeding motorists breaking the law has now provided the perfect conditions for vandals to ruin our parks.

 

The Tories used to boast that they are the party of law and order, it seems they prefer now to be seen as the friends of speeding motorists and spray can artists.

TORIES HAVE A CHEEK TO TALK ABOUT MORAL COMPASS

Here is a letter from me in the Adver about the “Smeargate” scandal involving Derek Draper and Damian McBride. There is a more substantive article by me about it here, and the background is well explained by Sunny Hundal at Liberal Conspiracy.

COUNCILLOR Colin Lovell (letters 21st April) has a tremendous cheek getting on his high horse about the so-called smeargate scandal, concerning Derek Draper and Damian McBride, and moaning about the “moral compass” of Labour Party members.

The whole story was broken by two pro-conservative bloggers, Paul Staines and Iain Dale, neither of whom would know a moral compass if it hit them on the head. These bloggers have themselves – for example – pushed the nasty innuendo about Gordon Brown being autistic.

We do need politics to be cleaner – concentrating on real issues; but sadly none of the mainstream parties has clean hands, and I find it particularly galling to be lectured by the Conservatives after the Tory press has spent decades pillorying any left of centre politician that campaigns against their wealth and privilege.

MUSLIM CENTRE WILL BENEFIT GORSE HILL

The article in today’s Swindon Advertiser talking up opposition to a Muslim Centre in Gorse Hill is irresponsible.

 

The Al Habib charity has put up £440,000 to buy the former Gorse Hill Working Mens Club, which is a tremendous gesture of confidence in Gorse Hill. They will renovate and preserve an historic building, and the resources of the proposed Islamic Centre, including a conference centre, meeting rooms, and a dance floor will be a resource for the whole community.

 

We heard all of the same objections when the Sikh community built their temple in Gorse Hill, but that has proven a big success.

 

Objections about car parking are particularly ridiculous because the same issue would apply to anyone purchasing and using the Working Men’s Club, for whatever purpose. In fact the building has limited car parking of its own, and Gorse Hill is one of the parts of Swindon with the most underused car parking capacity. Where did the patrons of the Working Men’s club used too park previously? Many people came from all over Swindon to use their facilities, for example, I understand that Swindon Folk club used to meet there, which attracted as many people to the area as Friday Prayers will do.

 

There are five thousand Muslims in Swindon, and they make a welcome contribution to the diversity and cultural and business life of the town. It is important that we marginalise the extremists that want to stoke up tensions between different parts of Swindon’s community.

JACQUI SMITH DOES THE RIGHT THING

I must applaud the statement by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on Friday: “The Government has absolutely no interest in spying on law-abiding people going about their everyday lives. I don’t want to see these powers being used to target people for putting their bins out on the wrong day or for dog fouling offences.”

This is a literally Churchillian quote by the way, with a nod to the language used by the former Prime Minister’s opposition to ID cards – I hope that Jacquie Smith thinks through the logic of her pronouncement and rethinks ID cards herself.

The Home Office has called for local authorities to be reigned in from secretly filming the population. Last July I was interviewed by the Swindon Advertiser about the use of surveillance cameras by Swindon Borough Council.

Andy Newman, a spokesman for Swindon Stop the War Coalition, says Swindon Council should think twice before they create a culture in the town where the local authority criminalises youths by spying on them.

He says he decided to speak out after reading an Advertiser investigation that found the council had used a law passed under anti-terror legislation, called Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), to conduct 13 separate spy missions on suspected tagging teenagers last year.

He believes that because the council passes on photographic and video evidence of teenagers onto police they are unnecessarily putting children on the ‘wrong side of the law’.

He reckons the strategy may end up making things worse for everyone by turning ‘teenage hijinks’ into criminal behaviour.
He said: “Everyone does bad things when they are kids but it is a phase most grow out of.

“But now the council seem to be criminalising these kids by trying to catch them in the act and turning them over to the police.

“This isn’t a deterrent like speed cameras, because these cameras are not visible – it seems like they are more about catching people in the act.

“The question is, as a society do we really want to be putting our children on the wrong side of the law by spying on them?
“A lot of the things like graffiti that the council are spying on kids for were considered teenage hijinks 10-years ago but now we are trying to convict teenagers in the criminal justice system for it.

“These civil rights infringements are being justified by telling us they are there to protect society from bombers and terrorists.

“But look at our local authorities, now they are using them to hide cameras around town in an attempt to catch teenagers spraying paint on walls.”

The powers granted under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). RIPA was enacted to provide councils with powers to combat terrorism or to help investigate serious crime.

But instead some councils, including Swindon Borough Council, have been using it for investigating graffiti and fly-tipping. There is of course a massive contradiction that Swindon Tories have voted to remove speed cameras that try to prevent unlawful dangerous driving, but advocate using cameras to spy on people to prevent the rather less serious social problem of grafitti.

For example, Tory councillor Peter Greenhalgh, head of highways, transport and strategic planning for Swindon was quoted by Virgin Media last year saying:

“I think enough is enough. There are much more important things we as a council should do instead of acting as a law enforcement arm of this Government.”

To be fair to Peter, he is not a hypocrite here, as I understand that he personally doesn’t support the use of surveillance cameras under RIPA either. But his conservative colleagues who voted to scrap speed cameras, but who also support covert filming of Swindon’s citizens are indeed hypocrites.

The intrusion here is that the surveillance is indiscriminate: they site cameras so that they film everyone in view including law abiding citizens going about their legitimate business, in order to try to catch a minority of anti-social people.

It should not be the role of the state in a liberal democracy to spy upon the private but lawful activities of citizens, unless there is an overriding public interest in doing so – such as protection of public safety.

This is another example of how poorly drafted legislation rushed through on the back of public panic about terrorism has led to an erosion of civil liberties far removed from terrorism or public safety.

STARTING UP AGAIN

The Swindon Roundabouts blog has been on the back burner for awhile, as I have been concentrating on the national blog I edit, www.socialistunity.com, which received a staggering 2.2 million unique visits during 2008.

I quite regularly write about Swindon there, and you can look back at older articles by following this link.

Previous posts have been about:

Speed cameras (Again!!!)

Dennis Skinner MP visiting Swindon Labour Party

Town winning the League Cup in 1969

Letter to Anne Snelgrove MP from Wiltshire GMB

War in Sri Lanka

BNP fire bomber out on parole

Possible strike at Thames Water

Swindon Gaza protest (pictured above)

AN EVENING WITH DENNIS SKINNER

Tonight we have a party of us from the GMB going to “an evening with Dennis Skinner”, a fund raiser for the two Swindon CLPs. We have all the officers of Wiltshire and Swindon W15 branch going, and all the Full Time Organisers from the Swindon office

Following a 2008 Congress decision all GMB branches are expected to affiliate and play an active part in their local Labour Parties; and this policy was unanimously endorsed by the Southern Regional Council. Indeed this policy is seen not as unconditional support for the government, but as a long overdue and serious attempt by a major union to try to restore the social democratic soul back into the party.

It has taken a while for our branch to put this into operation due to a lack of  members of our branch eligible to be delegates to the CLP General Committee, (because that also requires individual membership of the LP), but after a bit of arm twisting we have overcome that obstacle.

Myself and the branch president had a meeting with Anne Snelgrove MP just before Xmas, and it was agreed that non-LP members were also welcome to their social events, which gives the GMB branch networking opportunities, for example the chance for us to point out informally to local Labour councillors areas where we as a union branch feel they might be able to help us. The branch has 800 of our 3000 members in Swindon, so we should try to punch our weight.

There is clearly a debate within the union between those who believe that working with the Labour Party is flogging a dead horse, and those who believe that GMB can still achieve benefits for our members through the party. It would be tempting to say that the nearer people are to the lay membership the more sceptical they are about the Labour Party. 

Personally I believe that the important issue is that the union is taking very seriously the need to play an active political role, and independently articulate policies that would be of benefit to our members, and to the wider working class. Given the history and make-up of the union, then that political role has to take place primarily through the Labour Party, and that is unlikely to change in the forseeable future.

There are serious contradictions here, for example that very, very few members of GMB are actually LP members nowadays, and that even extends to some full time officers. It is also true that the Labour Party is much less susceptible to trade union influence than it used to be. And with the Labour vote close to collapse in local elections in Swindon, there is very little scope for improving the composition of the Labour group on Swindon Borough Council.

But GMB has started a process of trying to become more independent in the political arena, and that is entirely a good thing.

FORTY YEARS ON – TOWN SLAUGHTER THE GUNNERS IN LEAGUE CUP FINAL