ALL Hell was breaking loose at Swindon Borough Council during the first week of August, 2002.

Or rather, it had been breaking loose for some time and carried on.

The leader of the then Labour administration, Sue Bates, became the latest on a list of high profile figures to bail out as the council suffered one public relations disaster after another.

The education service had been found by inspectors to sow “confusion, suspicion and mistrust” in its relationship with schools. More recently, the social services department had been officially assessed as one of the worst in the country. The office of deputy Prime Minister John Prescott stepped in to deal with the chaos.

Meanwhile the central library was the same sorry collection of huts it had been for decades, and the Mechanics’ Institute and various other historic Swindon buildings continued to slide into dereliction.

Education director Mike Lusty had taken early retirement in March of that year, and chief executive Paul Doherty was in the process of negotiating a severance package.

Sue Bates met an Adver reporter in the office she would shortly vacate.

“All leaders have a shelf life,” she said, “and the council is bigger than one individual.

“I had already spoken to my deputy, Kevin Small, to say I felt this was going to be my last year because I felt new blood and new enthusiasm was needed.”

Kevin Small replaced her as Labour group leader, and was council leader until the Conservatives took over in 2003.

The stalling of plans to give Swindon a new central library, which came after the council realised it wouldn’t have enough cash for the project, was a blow to book lovers and civic campaigners who believed the huts were an embarrassment.

We said: “The plans had involved replacing the existing central library – described three years ago by consultants as ‘the worst central library in the country for a town of its size’ – with a new library, art gallery and museum in Theatre Square.

“The Town Hall was to be extended to create a new community arts facility and the Wyvern Theatre was to be refurbished and extended.”

The new central library wouldn’t open for another six years and the other projects have yet to leave the drawing board.

Another major issue during that time was the widespread availability of drugs, notably heroin and crack. Having been told by members of the public that obtaining drugs in the town centre was easy even in broad daylight, we sent a reporter – a young woman – to find out.

Arriving in Regent Circus at lunchtime, she approached the first likely-looking person she saw, handed him a couple of £5 notes and received a sizeable lump of cannabis resin.

Next she approached a group of people in The Parade, who told her they were waiting for their dealer. The dealer soon appeared, sold our reporter £15 worth of crack and had the addicts line up in an orderly queue while he gave them lists of goods to steal from shops.

Our reporter’s final port of call was a beggar, who pointed her in the direction of a dealer near a pub, who sold her some heroin.

In the space of well under an hour, our reporter spent £40 and ended up with some cannabis, enough crack to make her an addict and enough heroin to kill her.

The illegal substances were duly handed to the police. Senior officers immediately swung into action – by having her summoned to headquarters, thoroughly chastised and told she was lucky not to be arrested, thrown into a cell, kept there overnight, hauled before a court and given a criminal record.

We wrote, somewhat sarcastically, in an opinion column: “We are very sorry if we have exposed a deadly trade that the police seem to know everything about but appear incapable of stopping.

“And we are very sorry if we have embarrassed senior detectives who will now no doubt be expecting a pile of letters from concerned parents demanding to know why this blatant trade is being allowed to continue.” Senior officers insisted that drug peddling in Swindon was being “fiercely fought” against.

With so much grim news on our pages that week, readers must have craved a cheery tale.

Salvation came in the form of a grey parrot who was a connoisseur of grain and grape.

We said: “Merlin the alcoholic parrot is being forced to go teetotal by his owners – for the sake of their newborn baby.

“Mark Battocchio, 35, and Denise Boden, 38, from Shaw, are concerned that the boozing bird will be a bad influence on their four-month-old son, Callum.”

“Mark said: ‘We are trying to stop Merlin hitting the bottle to save Callum from his alcoholic influence.’ Merlin’s first words were apparently “Want some wine”.

He developed a fondness for wine and spirits and learned to drink beer from cans.

Soon he turned to minesweeping, and no unattended drink in the house was safe.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Merlin’s other hobbies included chewing curtains, whistling at passers-by and poking fun at people while hanging upside down in his cage.

Another peculiar story that week 14 years ago came from Upper Stratton.

A woman called Megan Whiting saw three youths behaving suspiciously in her garden late at night and shouted at them, fearing vandalism.

She discovered that they’d been up and down the street uprooting small trees – and then carefully swapping them around and neatly replanting them.