ONCE again a local news story reminds we ordinary people that we are simply not in the same intellectual league as those in overall charge of our community.

I refer, of course, to the decision to dispose of 130 surviving items from the Coate Agricultural Museum.

The rest went up in smoke when the museum itself suffered the same fate back in 2016, having been closed and shuttered for years.
The objects found their way into the collection, and were at one time displayed to the public, because they are fascinating, emotive relics of eras when only the back-breaking toil of farmers and farm workers put food on tables and filled storehouses to guard against winter scarcity.
Storing them has so far cost the borough council £40,000.  

We learned a while back that with the exception of items deemed relevant to Swindon - I’m not sure of the criteria involved in judging that - the surviving pieces are to be offered to other museums.

Swindon museums are apparently welcome to get in touch, but museums anywhere from Barnsley to Birkenhead or Cornwall to Carlisle are also in with a shout should they wish to have a look.

At first I, like many other people, was utterly horrified by the decision, but I’ve since come to realise that I must be missing some profound truth which can only be appreciated by folk in the upper echelons of local government.

That’s the only possible explanation; my ordinary-person brain is simply incapable of appreciating the nuances of the situation, and any notion I have that there are better potential solutions is hopelessly wrong.
For example, one of my laughable, low-IQ ideas was to repair the old building or create a new one at Coate or on a brownfield site, house the collection there and open it to the public. In my foolishness, I thought a sturdy prefabricated unit might be used, with the cost to be met over time by charging a modest admission fee and running heritage events and workshops.

Another of my hare-brained notions was that if putting up a new building, even a prefabricated unit, were too expensive or time-consuming, there are any number of large companies and organisations in Swindon who like nothing better than to display interesting objects in and around their premises.

I wondered whether one or several or many of these companies might be approached and asked to take some of the objects on a long loan, with the location of each object carefully catalogued.

This, I reasoned idiotically, would at least ensure that the items remained in the town, as well as reducing or - ideally - eliminating storage costs.
I also wondered whether, if all else failed, as many of the objects as possible could be lodged with trusted individual local people until a permanent solution could be found.

That would not be an ideal answer, of course, as it would carry the risk of objects being misplaced in house moves and whatnot, but I thought it would be a lot better than potentially sending them hundreds of miles away.
 In my naivete, I believed any one of my solutions, or perhaps a combination of them, would be a better proposition than the one on the table.
I was wrong of course, and the people in charge know better.


I believe that and I have to go on believing it.
You see, if I didn’t believe it I might think that I was right to be horrified when the original announcement was made, and that the official plan really does consist of nothing more or less than hiving off part of our heritage to anywhere that isn’t here.
That would be heartbreaking.

Well at least they are being open and honest

AN appeal has been launched against the rejection of plans for a garbage gasification plant with a huge chimney at South Marston.

I don’t know about you, but for me the announcement was about as surprising as there being a bit of a whiff at a pig farm.
Developer Rolton Kilbride is making the bid on behalf of Legal & General Assurance Society Ltd.

Apparently that organisation’s code of ethics says it will always be honest, open and fair in its dealings with communities and treat them with respect.

This is perfectly true, but only up to a point.

The applicants have been completely honest and open in thoroughly disregarding the near-total opposition to their scheme, as expressed time and again by revolted and disgusted local people.

They have been completely open and honest in disregarding the stern and comprehensive opposition voiced by elected representatives and local officials on behalf of those people.

They have been completely open and honest in engaging a lawyer who threatened at a public meeting: “The last thing I want to do is return with an appeal and put the council through a mincer, but I will do.”

Now, having been told in no uncertain terms that nobody wants them or their garbage processing plant or their chimney or anything whatsoever to do with them, they are being completely open and honest in saying they’re going to press ahead anyway.

Whether this amounts to being fair to the community or treating it with respect is open to question. What is not open to question is that every member of our community has it within our power to find out about companies and their products - and boycott them.