I was, (and remain), chuffed for Matt Holland, his family and visitors to Lower Shaw Farm and, although I haven't commented on this outcome since it was last reported, it is still making me chuckle, especially this quote from Shaw ward Councillor Garry Perkins, who may be more familiar to readers in his other roles as Deputy Council Leader and Digital City Director:
“This is a positive for the town. Lower Shaw Farm is something different and unique and we recognise how important it is to Swindon’s community and culture. Whenever I visit I’m always struck by the range of activities and how the farm attracts people from both West Swindon and all over the town. Most importantly there is a very strong sense of community ownership. Over many years Swindon has taken Lower Shaw Farm to its heart and this agreement gives the trustees the opportunity to invest in and develop the property for the long term good of the town.”
For more than 5 years Cllr Perkins, his cabinet colleagues and other West Swindon Conservative Councillors wanted Matt Holland and his family evicted from their home and the land it sits on re-developed as 'executive housing'.
During the early years of their pogrom against Lower Shaw Farm I personally heard members of Mr Bluh's cabinet describe the visitors and inhabitants of Lowers Shaw Farm as 'ferking Hippies', as being 'Hazardous to the health of local residents' and 'Spaghetti weavers', usually opined within long diatribes about Lower Shaw Farm and anyone connected to or supportive of it.
The strongest repeating theme throughout the Conservative campaign to turn public opinion
against Lower Shaw Farm was "Swindon council tax payers are subsidising Matt Holland to live in a mansion", which was supported by sub-themes hinting heavily of official 'health and safety issues', 'public health concerns' and even suggestions of 'I don't think he pays income tax and VAT'.
Now, it is probably a given that most Swindon residents will be well aware of the WiFi fiasco and Councillor Perkin's role in the total loss of £400,000 (plus unpaid interest) of public money which was loaned,
by him and his cabinet colleagues, to a company of which he remains a Director - Digital City (UK) Ltd.
The business 'expertise' of which Swindon's Conservatives often boast is of such quality that Digital City Ltd
still owes Swindon Borough Council more than £400,000 but it is not trading, has no money, no paying customers and assets of arguably very little monetary value.
To add insult to the injury to the public purse, Cllr Perkins and his Conservative cabinet colleagues have arranged for Swindon Borough Council, (that's us again), to pay several thousand pounds to prepare the accounts for the private company. Accounts for which he, Councillor Perkins, is legally responsible for preparing at his own expense.
But the WiFiasco is just one measure of Cllr Perkins and his colleagues fiscal competence, political thinking and forward thinking..... so I hope the residents of Shaw ward, (formerly Shaw & Nine Elms), Lydiard & Freshbrook, (formerly Freshbrook and Grange Park), and Mannington & Western, (Formerly Toothill & Westlea and the Western wards) will consider the following when considering how to cast their votes.
Is their 180 degree about-turn on their previous attitude to Lower Shaw Farm indicative of Swindons Conservative Councillors suddenly beginning to listen to the opinions of the general public, or does the late-in-2011 announcement regarding Lower Shaw Farm, and Cllr Perkin's 'glowing' recommendation of the same, have much more to do with the mid 2011 confirmation that the 2012 local elections in Swindon would be 'All-Out', and that every Conservative Councillor in West Swindon would be up for election?
Has Matt Holland and Lower Shaw Farm been saved, not so much by a sudden change in Conservative hearts, but by an electoral bell which has triggered a personal political survival instinct in each of West Swindons Conservative councillors?, you see I have considerable difficulty accepting the notion that Conservative Councillors across the rest of the Borough absolutely refuse to reconsider their decisions on issues like Coate, Croft, Wichelstowe, WiFi, WhaleBridge and Pickards Field, despite all of them attracting considerable public opposition......yet they have quietly done so with Lower Shaw Farm and, (this is quite surprising), have singularly not mentioned their decision in any political leaflets which I've seen. This is unusual isn't it?, normally anything and everything is spun as a good news story, so what's different about Lower Shaw Farm?, well, I'll tell you....
....The Lower Shaw Farm issue possesses enough supportive public opinion and public opinion-formers, (literature festival anyone?), that it has the socio-political momentum to flatten any Councillor stupid enough to stand in its path. Even Mr Bluh maintained a minimum safe distance from the epicentre of this piece of Skullduggery in Shaw.
Anyway, it's worth thinking about and considering against current issues in other wards. The Conservatives won't re-think their placing of Pickards Field into the hands of a private developer because they have nothing to lose there politically, (except Cllr Janet Heenan - who is on a Tory shit-list anyway), and they certainly won't re-think Croft because it's the latest WiFi'esque incarnation of the way Mr Bluh's administration makes 'commercial decisions' behind a facade of educational 'need'.
If Conservative plans for Croft and Pickards Field fail, then the entire 'innovative' Conservative fiscal 'plan' will fail with them. That Mr Bluh may have been led into an electoral slaughterhouse by a pair of Judas Goats, (in the forms of Cllr's Bawden & Foley), is quite interesting and may be quite entertaining to those of us that wish to see him removed from office, but it is of little comfort to any of the lives of residents blighted by Bluhliganism and the policies enacted through their own selfishness.
In the light of the above, I'm not really surprised that West Swindon Conservative Councillors have quietly abandoned their plans for Lower Shaw Farm, even though doing so absolutely contradicts the justifications they repeatedly use in other wards when blighting the Borough with unsuitable and unpopular developments. When public push came to political shove, and helped by a change to ward boundaries forcing an all-out election, West Swindon's Conservatives found their Italian legs at Lower Shaw Farm and have been wobbling backwards towards electorally higher ground ever since.
