Swindon Elections : Welcome to your Rotten Parish

The hopes of the new Swindon parishes being a haven from traditional party politics were dashed, as the usual battles were fought last night.

The only things to note :

- The uncontesting of many wards by the Tories, are they afraid of Labour in their traditional strongholds?

- The number of independents that ran and won.

- The level of 'gotta get a double seat' by candidates who now have the bizarre, but self-inflicted situation of representing the same ward as a local Borough councillor and now as a Parish councillor, surely a conflict of interest and pointless ultimately. Are they going to disagree with themselves?

- The return of the previously politically dead former local Borough councillors that were persuaded by HQ to return as a parish councillor as they can do it while they sleep the sleep of the undead.

- The very unwelcome return of the disgraced former Mayor.

- The family affair of many candidates, often in the same seats, husbands and wives, mothers and sons, partners, you can imagine it must be a riot in those households of an evening.

So parishing has done exactly what people feared, created an entirely unwanted and unnecessary new layer of administration, with, mostly, the same people in charge of the biggest parts of the town (bar the independents) and a lack of imagination, especially from the Tories, with the wheeling out of undead former councillors to fill the gaps.

Onto the general.

Swindon Elections : The Truth, In Shadow Parish Form

When is a a Tory election leaflet not a Tory election leaflet?

When it's accurate and honest!

No change with Swindon's Tories and their election leaflets, even for the imposed and unwanted parish council elections tomorrow it seems.

The leaflet for the new West Swindon Parish is one simple case in point. It makes two claims that are blindingly wrong on a list of achievements the shadow parish has already completed.

Claim number 1 :

- Contributed 16 more hours for the West Swindon library. 

Misleading, as the library, was, until the start of April, open 50 hours a week, which the Tory Borough Council (which includes all the shadow parish councillors as they are all Borough councillors too) cut to 15 hours a week and the West Swindon Parish chose to divert money from the closing of toilets at West Swindon District Centre to pay for an additional 16 hours, bringing it down to 31 hours. So an accurate achievement would have been :

- Cut library hours from 50 to 31 (we're only paying for 16) and cut West Swindon's only public toilets.

Claim number 2 :

- Created a local services hub by using the library for the Parish Council office. 

This is wrong, there is no parish council office in West Swindon Library.

So one misleading claim and one untrue. What other hideous gems are there out there?