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Racists are pathetic little wimps

There are two groups of immigrants to this country we rarely hear about. We don’t hear about them selling drugs or running grooming gangs or randomly stabbing people in our towns and cities.

You don’t see huge groups of them getting drunk and terrorising town centres at night.

It is the Chinese New Year and apart from this one celebration which is becoming bigger every year, you rarely hear much else about the Chinese people of Swindon or the UK. They are quiet, hard working and live in very close-knit families who respect their elder relatives - the complete opposite to most British people.

The other people I’m thinking of are the Nepalese, another quiet and gentle race but with a fierceness and loyalty that made the British army decide to encourage them to volunteer for the East India Company.

For over 200 years these elite soldiers have been some of the most deadly and highly decorated warriors in history with 13 our of the 16 Victoria Crosses being awarded to the regiment going to native Gurkhas.

The selection process to become a member of their regiment is as hard, or even harder than the one to join the SAS. After much campaigning the retired Gurkhas who had served in the British army were finally allowed to settle in the UK and receive proper pensions, something they have earned with every drop of blood and sweat spilt.

To hear then that the Nepalese people in parts of Swindon are being racially abused and threatened by gangs of lowlifes makes me furious.

Pathetic little wimps who cry when they lose their phone signal and wouldn’t say boo to a goose unless they outnumbered it fifteen to one. Scrawny little idiots who think pulling a hood up over a baseball cap whilst in a big gang makes them “hard”.

These puny little babies wouldn’t stand a chance against a Gurkha soldier if he was allowed to retaliate, but he would be the one arrested whilst an army of counsellors, social workers and outreach softies would be there to mop up the tears for the poor little darlings. This is exactly what is wrong with this country and why our streets aren’t safe. You can spend years in a gang being violent and abusive and anti-social in Britain and completely get away with it. But as soon as someone stands up to the gangs they are the ones prosecuted and punished because it’s easier than trying to control the yobs.

Let’s just hope on one dark night somewhere in Swindon a Ghurka or two finally decide to stand up and defend themselves against the gangs and teach them a proper lesson. That’s the only justice the little wimps might be afraid of.

Roger Lack, North Swindon

EU didn’t invent homelessness

In response to Steve Halden’s letter regarding EU to blame... for Britain’s homeless, that homelessness was created by the EU. Steve seems to have a poor grasp of history when one considers Victorian workhouses, vagabond, tramp, words of common usage as I grew up in the sixties.

“Shelter” was founded in 1966 in response to Britain’s “homeless crises” if it wasn’t such an important issue it would be laughable that someone with such poor command of the facts can hope to represent others in the community.

Homeless people are the responsibility of the member state not the EU, financial support is available from the EU for regional development, funds for deprived areas and social investment packages. These will be lost and we shall all be the poorer for it. Just who is Steve going to blame then?

Malcolm Salmon, Bevisland, Eldene

This was mistake, so just admit it

The council spokesperson quoted in the Advertiser (Official figures confirm ‘nearly £1 million lost rents’ through empty homes in Swindon) is simply making excuses for a management failure.

Initially they denied the amount that Councillor Bob Wright quoted for lost rent, even though it was their own figure which they had supplied the government with.

Now we are told that it’s not all ‘proper’ empty properties lost rent because it includes George Gay Gardens which is being demolished. In fact rent has been lost previously because of properties empty awaiting demolition; Sussex Square for example.

Yet the amount of lost rent came nowhere near last year’s level. In 2017-18 rent lost was more than double the amount of any year of the previous six.

The average time taken to re-let a ‘void’ was 64 days as compared to the previous year’s 30 days and the more usual average of 25 days.

We are told that the contractor in question passed all the pre-contract tests. What difference does that make? It sounds like “it wasn’t our fault”.

But it is your fault if you give the work to a contractor who cannot fulfil the contract. The decision to give all the work to a single contractor without a base in the town, nor a workforce, proved to be a mistake.

Why can’t the management admit this? It was a very risky thing to do. We have had previous experience of problems with contractors who use sub-contract labour.

The council “had to step in” we are told when the contractor withdrew. So they took a dozen of their repairs team and put them on ‘voids’ work to tackle the backlog. An in-house ‘voids’ team is fine. We would like to see more work come back in-house.

However, because it was done in a crisis situation it meant that the repairs team lost these staff overnight. Hardly any wonder that a big backlog of day to day repairs work built up, which means tenants have to wait longer for repairs than they should do.

The department had to replace the staff lost to repairs. In order to try to deal with the backlog it is employing (more expensive) agency staff as well.

Instead of trying to spin something positive out of what has proved to be a disastrous mistake the management should accept their responsibility for what was a failure of judgement.

In life everybody makes mistakes. The key question is whether you learn from them otherwise you are apt to repeat them. How can tenants trust a management which refuses to accept responsibility for such an obvious mistake?

Martin Wicks, Secretary, Swindon Tenants Campaign Group