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Where’s the money?

With reference to your lead article in SA Wednesday March 11th about the council collecting £2.5million from people using the bus lane on Penzance Drive by the Outlet Shopping Centre.

I would like to know where that money has gone and what it has been spent on because it certainly has not been spent on the hundreds of potholes.

It’s probably been spent on a lost of the hair brain schemes this council keep thinking up. For goodness sake spend money on getting the roads mended.

Mrs Townsend, Redcliffe Street, Swindon

Time to dredge again

Having seen along with so many others, the devastation and heartbreak all the folk have suffered with the floods I think its about time the Environment and Councils started doing more.

The councils should go back to cleaning out the street drains, so many are full with soil, much and growth. Where is the rain water supposed to go?

As for the Environment they have less brains than our ancestors, who used to always dredge the rivers. We all know there was a reason, even the Romans who settled here 2000 years ago dredged the rivers and deepened the ditches.

Ok I’m not saying that will cut all the flooding but those poor folk wouldn’t get flooded so quick or so deep maybe.

I have phone the Environment several times over the past few years, once, when the back fell into the river Cole under the road bridge at Wagtail Close, which cut the river in half. Was it cleared? Was it hell.

Last year I told them someone had thrown a large white tub, open brolly and a bike. Twice I phoned them, someone came to look, left the bike and brolly, said they only clear in the winter, the bike was still there a month before Christmas, now sinking in the mud, lord knows where the brolly went.

Now there are road cones near the same place. Why does the public think our rivers are a waste disposal facility, have these folk no pride? Also so many houses are being built on floodplains, so many trees have been got rid of, large trees take 40 gallons a day, combining all these things may, just may, have saved those poor souls a lot of misery and heartbreak.

Mrs J Skeels, Wagtail Close, Swindon

Prescription pain

I wonder how many readers have experienced what I have recently.

Before the POD. Prescription Ordering Direct system started I never had any problems with getting my prescriptions .

On Monday about 1.30 pm I phoned them. I was number forty two on the waiting list. I waited almost half an hour to get through. Not to mention the cost of the phone call. I quote their leaflet. Ordering your repeat prescription will be a quick and simple telephone call.

The lady who answered my call was polite and explained I had picked a busy time, and that there is a call back procedure before mid day.

I have also experienced communication problems between the doctors the pharmacy and the POD.

But honestly I never had any such experiences with the old system. There is an old adage. If it is not broken why fix it.

Bill Williams, Merlin Way, Covingham, Swindon