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Stop the museum

STOP the lunacy! Please, please, please would someone at SBC come to their senses and stop the new museum project before it wastes any more of the local taxpayer’s money.

Yes, in theory we would all tick the box that asks, ‘would you like a spangly new museum in your town’ but the reality is nowhere near that simple.

Aside from the £22m capital investment, £5m of which comes out of our pockets, it’s the massive issue of the minimum of a quarter of a million pounds it will cost each year to subsidise for years and years to come.

Believe me, I’m a big museum fan and have visited many throughout the world, but this is Swindon, and as much as I love the place it will never have enough visitors to justify the museum project that is currently on the table.

I wonder if Rod Hebden would be quite so keen to extol the virtues of the project if he wasn’t receiving a large remuneration for doing so, almost three times the annual salary of a hardworking bus driver I understand.

The Carriage Works would be ideal for a museum (static and temporary displays) and would keep our heritage together in one area thus supporting each other.

And let’s get rid of Forward Swindon, a ridiculous arm of the council that achieves little and costs us a massive amount.

Why can’t SBC celebrate the amazing heritage that we already have in our town?

They leave it to rot year after year. Please put our money towards saving the Mechanic’s Institution and the Health Hydro, to name but two.

These really are important historic buildings worth spending money on.

In a town that boasts the headquarters of both The National Trust and English Heritage the demise of our historic buildings is a very sad irony.

ANNA GREEN, Old Town, Swindon

Try fighting back

I WONDER if anyone can help. Hearing about the huge number of historical sexual cases of late, I have a dilemma.

I appreciate that a few could be very serious but I have my doubts about why adults leave things so long.

They talk about what happened many years ago: “I was subjected to this disgusting approach etc, but I have starred in 25 films, have five properties in various countries and have amassed a £30m fortune, it is time though that I brought it into the open to protect others”

About 59 years ago, when I was 16, I went to a local shop and the lady assistant put her arm around my shoulder and said: “How are you my darling, what can I get you?”

It is only now that I think I should bring it into the open.

Not long after that, my friends and I were sat in the Savoy Cinema in Regent Street and, although there were plenty of seats, a fellow male came and sat by me.

A while later I felt his hand on my knee. I uttered a few expletives, jumped up and planted my fist on his nose.

A bloody nose ensued, plus inquiries from management, but the male had absconded.

He was, though, twice my size! Maybe we should resort to more of that.

CHRIS GLEED, Proud Close, Purton

More crashes likely

YET more statistics. I find the latest hard to believe – though I am sure they are ‘official’.

In your article “Slow down and stay safe on the roads” (SA November 17) we are told “Forty-eight collisions have occurred on Wiltshire’s roads over the last year”.

That is less than one per week. And that is for the whole of Wiltshire.

I would have thought that there would be more than that in Swindon alone.

So, how do they collect and collate these figures? Is Swindon excluded?

The next sentence states “Fifty-eight casualties were reported”; so, does this mean that the police ‘count’ (or record) only those collisions in which people are injured?

Obviously such collisions are the most serious; but even those collisions where nobody is hurt can cause damage to cars and/or property – which can cause considerable inconvenience and expense to those involved.

As the purpose of the article was to try to persuade us all, particularly motorists, to be more careful in the run-up to Christmas, I would have thought that there surely must be some statistics (such as the total number of people killed and injured on the roads every year – and every week) that would scare us more than those quoted.

But, regardless of the figures, drive safely.

MALCOLM MORRISON, Retired trauma and orthopaedic surgeon, Prospect Hill, Swindon

Message to OAPs

IN RESPONSE to Mr A Collins’s letter of November 7 “The old are to blame” I issue to all Old Age Perishers like myself the following orders: Arm yourselves with your free bus pass board a bus that goes to Marlborough Road, get off at Broome Manor Lane, ask someone where a Mr Collins lives.

There collect your cyanide tablet, you can either take it home to swallow or do it there, Mr Collins will arrange for you to be buried in a mass grave that has been dug ready.

Just one thing Mr Collins; you might, if you are lucky, reach old age yourself and perhaps someone might ask your opinion or your thoughts as you have lived a full life.

One thing you did not mention in your letter, we old age persons must not get ill or require attention on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night because the police, paramedics, ambulance crews and hospitals are all working at full stretch dealing with the fights, the drunks and the junkies that spill out into our streets at that time of night.

JH OLIVER, Brooklands Avenue, Swindon