SO, it’s all going on — or not — in the town centre.

As the Kimmerfields project hits the buffers, the Tented Market proposal grows and grows, quite literally from the original two storeys to a whopping 15.

Which is a shame, because from some angles, it will ruin the view of the iconic David Murray John Tower.

There has been much debate on our website about the newest set of plans for the once revolutionary Tented Market.

Many of our readers have made the extremely important point that chucking money at the latest pretty vision is pointless if the new buildings aren’t going to be of a good enough quality.

If we don’t build things to last Swindon will forever be the building site it is now.

Our councillors do seem to behave like kids in a sweet shop — we’ll take half a pound of lemon sherberts and a cherry fizz bomb, please.

And while the bag of sherberts is left to congeal in the back of a cupboard somewhere, they’re off again with their pocket money buying up all the rhubarb and custards.

So Kimmerfields has fallen through since the council and developer Muse decided to go their separate ways.

Never mind — let’s shift focus over to the Tented Market.

Meanwhile, other than a health centre to replace our health centre and a multi-storey car park to replace our multi-storey car park, several years of hard work and well-meant but ultimately meaningless promises have left a wasteland where our shiny new town centre development was meant to be.

One of our website readers made the following comment this week: “I predict the DMJ will get listed status one day as from its era there’s very little that looks as good in the whole country and also it’s a rare development containing shopping, social housing and offices. I think it’s under appreciated in the town currently.”

And he or she has a point.

The DMJ is an excellent building, admired by architecture experts and Joe Public alike, and it has stood the test of time.

I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping that the council chooses one project and one project alone to focus on next.

I hope they oversee it carefully from start to finish and I hope they insist on the very best quality.

Then, and only then, should they be allowed to nip back to the shop for some chocolate mice.

If they just calm down and focus, they might manage to work their way through the whole sweet shop one day.

Well, it’s one way to up doctors’ pay

THE health service has got itself caught up in a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, the Adver revealed this week.

The GWH has been struggling to recruit doctors training for certain specialities and currently has 16 vacancies across areas such as paediatrics and emergency medicine.

The reason for this? Across the border in Somerset, Health Education South West has been offering £20,000 to medics who train there as GPs.

This apparently came about because Somerset was having difficulty attracting recruits.

Now, doctors tend to be pretty clever — if you could train in Wiltshire or train in Somerset for £20k more, which would you choose?

Perhaps what we need to do now is offer candidates £30,000 to train here in Wiltshire.

And then somewhere down the line when Somerset’s in dire need again, it could offer £40,000.

And we could carry on like this, back and forth, until we get to the point where our junior doctors are paid a decent wage for the gruelling number of hours they work.

Cop a load of this

WE’VE certainly come a long way since the dark days of the not-so distant past when police officers used to hang around public conveniences trying to entrap men on the look-out for male company.

Joe Orton would be spinning in his grave to know that forces across the land — including Wiltshire — are adopting rainbow epaulettes for those officers who want to wear them.

It is all part of an effort on behalf of the police to promote and support a more inclusive society.

Good on them, I say — anything that might help is worth a shot.

I just hope these LGBT friendly officers don’t meet more trouble than normal in the form of bigoted thugs who want to beat seven shades of something other than a rainbow out of them.