SO a new campaign has been launched with the aim of improving Swindon’s reputation and promoting all that is good about the town, writes GILL HARRIS.

It’s not the first time such an initiative has been dreamt up and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

But anything that counteracts the verbal beatings Swindon is so sadly prone to from outsiders — and even some insiders — is worth supporting.

So let’s all throw our weight behind Switch On To Swindon and bang the drum for our town.

I’m not Swindon born and bred, but I’ve lived here for 10 years.

It won’t come as a great surprise if I say it’s not the prettiest place I’ve ever lived — but I can honestly say it’s the friendliest and the biggest-hearted. So let’s all celebrate what we have in our little corner of Wiltshire.

Shock, denial, anger... we're in mourning

FRIENDS of mine lost their cat recently. They found him lying dead in a patch of sunlight, perfectly peaceful. It was probably a nice way to go, but still a shock for the family who loved him.

“I’m not a cat person,” my pal sobbed down the phone. “I didn’t think it would affect me like this, I can’t stop crying.” (Or I think that’s what she said through the racking sobs.)

Everyone knows loss is one of the hardest experiences we ever have to face, and all too often it catches us unawares and affects us in ways we weren’t expecting.

And this is something we’re seeing across the globe at the moment — people mourning the loss of the world as we knew it.

As Gunter Grass said: “Homeland is something one becomes aware of only through its loss.”

We live in a world where multitudes of people have been driven out of their homeland.

That was bad enough but, oh! for those halcyon days, because now we’ve hit new heights of despair with the US ban on a whole raft of people from various Muslim-majority countries.

Never take the world as we know it for granted because you never know when it’s going to get worse.

And it’s all down to one man with a florid orange complexion and a hairdo that looks like it’s been thatched from the stuffing out of an old sofa.

You only have to talk to friends, or random strangers for that matter, or have a brief scamper through Facebook to see the entire world (or most of it, at least) is going through a grieving process.

A quick Google search tells me that we’ve got seven stages to work through, so here we go.

Step 1 - Shock and denial: This is when we reacted to Trump’s election victory with numbed disbelief and remained convinced we’d entered a parallel universe and all would soon return to normal.

Step 2 - Pain and guilt: We should have done more to prevent this situation. I’m not quite sure how, but surely there was something?

Step 3 - Anger and bargaining: Yep, so far so good. Of course if anyone tries to bargain with Trump he just fires them, as acting attorney general Sally Q Yates will tell you.

Step 4 - Depression and reflection: Yep, I reckon we can definitely tick the glum box.

Step 5 - The upward turn: I’m looking forward to this one. This is when everything settles down a bit and we carry on as normal and wonder what all the fuss was about. Hopefully.

Step 6 - Reconstruction and working through: The time will surely come when we get our brains into gear and come up with practical ways to curtail the damage caused by the big orange lunatic. Again, hopefully.

Step 7 - Acceptance and hope: We may still be a bit frazzled by the whole experience but we should at last be able to see light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully we won’t have to wait the full four years until America gets to vote again.

So although it’s all rather dispiriting and it feels like the whole world is going to hell in a handcart, at least we know we have a schedule for getting over this.

I think personally, I’m still at Step 4, listlessly mulling over the shocks that keep raining down on us ever since the kind and saintly Barack Obama left the White House and trying to decide whether it will all blow over or whether the end of the world is nigh.

If I’m going to be optimistic about our situation, in which we have a racist, sexist, xenophobic gung-ho billionaire in charge of the most powerful nation on the planet, I’d have to turn to Snoop Dogg:

“Sometimes a loss is the best thing that can happen. It teaches you what you should have done next time.”

Amen to that, brother.

However, I must confess I am really struggling to see the positives. My pessimistic side is more inclined to listen to Nostradamus, who said: “There will be a great loss of learning before the moon’s full cycle is completed. Fire and floods will be fomented by ignorant rulers; much time will go by before it is rectified.”

Do your share

WE live in taxing times. Ever since the economic bubble burst in 2008, we’ve seen our wages frozen, numerous high street stalwarts roll over and die and the cost of living continue to rise.

It’s your classic the rich get richer and the poor get poorer scenario.

Now Swindon Council is joining in, with proposals for a five per cent council tax rise, which our merry band of representatives will vote on next week. If they give it the big thumbs up, the average household will have to pay an extra £59.47 a year.

The money is needed, apparently, because of the rising costs of social care, particularly for the increasingly large number of vulnerable adults in our society.

I have no problem paying more for the benefit of the community as a whole. Who knows when any one of us may need such services in the future?

But I do object to local politicians complaining that they can’t balance the books while at the same time awarding themselves a whacking great pay rise. Show you really care, councillors, and do your bit by giving it back.