Letter from Des Morgan (From This Is Wiltshire)

Letter from Des Morgan

11:01am Friday 30th July 2010 in

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COUN Bluh’s column of July 22 contains some quite amazing pronouncements, not least the assertion that his administration will ‘ensure service delivery is tailored to meet local needs’.

This is such an unachievable aim as to be quite meaningless as a proposition. Decisions on ‘service delivery’ cannot be taken in isolation to the needs of the whole town, nor can service delivery be based solely on need, there must of necessity be consideration of aspiration and expectation. Equally, in times of austerity promises to ‘ensure’ service are hardly likely to be kept. Coun Bluh’s administration is promising ‘five years of very uncomfortable decisions’ as it seeks to establish where spending cuts are to be made; to suggest that a localism agenda will alleviate the need for elected councillors to make those decisions is naive.

Coun Bluh boasts that ‘Swindon is using transformational methods to bring about real differences in people’s lives’ - might I suggest that this is so much psycho babble and will hardly resonate with many of the residents of the town who will be wondering whether the leader of the council has read a text book too many. In talking about ‘better understanding why people behave the way they do’ the councillor promulgates the view that this is a new way of dealing with families with significant problems; I suggest he visits the new reference library where he will be able to acquaint himself with numerous works on this very subject, many of which are over 20 years old, indeed the subject matter is covered very well in the current GCSE syllabus and hardly constitutes new thinking.

I know that Coun Bluh is well intentioned and has a true civic passion for Swindon; however he needs to come down from his ivory tower and engage in the act of connecting with real people.

DES MORGAN Caraway Drive Swindon