TOMORROW Swindon Council will consider ways of saving on its annual £1.2m street lighting bill.

Among those options is dimming or even switching off certain lights entirely during periods officially deemed quiet.

If any of the decision makers happen to be reading this, I urge you choose any option but that one.

By way of illustrating why, I’d like to point out some of the things being done by councils running other communities across our nation.

Or rather, not being done.

Liverpool City Council has not enacted a bylaw saying everyone within the city limits must wear a curly wig, a stick-on moustache, say “eh-eh-eh” and wave their hands about.

Nor has the council ordered citizens to steal any unstolen car hub cap they come across. It has not ordered those without work to react to the offer of work like Count Dracula being offered a swift dousing in Holy Water.

Councils in Yorkshire have not made it mandatory for everybody there to preface their every utterance with “’t” and end it with “’appen.”

There is no Yorkshire bylaw saying people must possess one whippet, one euphonium and use their bath only as a storage receptacle for coal.

Nor are Yorkshire people forbidden to take more than three steps while not wearing a flat cap. They are not forced to have only two spectator sports – cricket and watching a vet insert his or her arm in a cow. You will note that the councils in charge of various small communities in the far south west have not ordered locals to say “Arrrrr” a lot, wear smocks and lean against five bar gates while chewing bits of straw. Nor have the citizens of those small towns been ordered to choose their life partners only from first cousins for the next nine generations.

 

So, we are all in this together are we?

WITH terrorists subjecting us to the threat of bestial savagery, we must cherish anything that brings a smile to our faces.
For me, it’s the assurances from our politicians that we’re all in this together.
Today, tomorrow and every day, we ordinary people will go about our business calmly, decently, and with all the humanity we can muster.
We will travel to work, do our shopping, socialise with friends, spend time with those we love and are loved by.
We will share meals and companionship, benefit from the help of colleagues and neighbours.
We will do all of this in full knowledge of and defiance toward bestial murderers who would have us hide and cower. We are fully exposed to them.
Politicians who tell us we’re all in this together, meanwhile, will leave their heavily-guarded homes, travel in bullet-proof, bomb-proof limousines, work in heavily-guarded facilities and have their aides do their shopping.
As I said, thanks for the laughs, you politicians. In a way, though, you are sort of ‘in it’ with us.
After all, without your sterling efforts there might not have been any power vacuums for the terrorists to fill. You useless balloons.

They have not been told their goal is to breed swathes of people with at least 19 fingers, 23 toes and their heads on the wrong way round.

On the subject of relationship choices, people in Hull have not been set a goal of ensuring their descendants within no more than two generations share at least 35 percent of their genetic material with cod.

Nor have city and town councils in Wales told their citizens something similar with regard to sheep.

People in Glasgow have not been told by their city council that a large vodka and Irn Bru is just the thing to put in an infant’s bottle to put it safely to sleep, or that a liquidised battered pizza makes a fine substitute for conventional baby food.

Nor have they been ordered to carry straight razors and use them to settle friendly disputes.

There is a reason why none of this has happened. It is because each of these behaviours is an unfair and lazy generalisation, something outsiders say to get a cheap laugh.

Just like they say Swindon is the sort of place where the council switches the street lights off at night. Good luck portraying us as a go-ahead high-tech powerhouse if that little wheeze goes ahead.