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See the whole picture
IT’S all very well David Renard clutching the Cities Report for a photo opportunity, but if you want to make an objective assessment of the state of the town you have to look at all of it, rather than picking out a few tables which can be used to show the brilliance of our municipal leadership and the ‘success’ of the town.
He seems to have missed the fact that Swindon was designated by the report as a ‘low wage, low benefit’ location. What does high productivity and low wages tell us? That levels of exploitation are high. Isn’t high productivity supposed to give us high wages?
The last year for which figures are available from the HMRC for personal earnings is 2013-14. However, it gives you an indication of the earnings structure of the population. The average earnings from employment was £26,900. However, the median showed that half of employees earned less than £20,800. Half of those in self-employment earned less than £11,500. Half of those with a pension had an income of less than £12,200. This gives an indication of the levels of inequality in the town.
The Cities Report also put Swindon in the top 10 for increasing house prices which are outstripping earnings. Check the government figures for the ratio between house prices and earnings and you find that prices for the lower quartile (cheapest) properties were 6.66 times the lower quartile earnings. This was the figure for 2015 and we know that house prices have continued to rise since then. No wonder that we have a town in which we have seen the emergence of phenomenon such as ‘beds in sheds’ and people living in garages.
Let’s have a rounded picture of the town and not propaganda which is directed at the self-aggrandisement of the anti-democratic clique which runs the town. The picture painted by the occupants of the Euclid Street bunker clashes with the real life experience of much of the population.
MARTIN WICKS
Welcombe Avenue
....
Keep quiet, Mr Speaker
JOHN Bercow holds the position of the Speaker of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. No easy task, as you are deemed to be impartial, a hard task for any human being with an independent mind.
What right does he have, to even attempt to stop the democratically elected President of the United States of America?
To come to this country and not be respected with honourable British diplomatic historical sensibility, as others have been, is wrong.
Make no mistake about it, Donald Trump’s advisers as well as the American nation will have watched this as I did. I was shocked at the damage this could to our country during such a turbulent time in our history.
What shocks me more than anything is the fact that Bercow has attained such high office in the mother of parliaments, and is still there.
BILL WILLIAMS
Merlin Way
Swindon
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