Whenever I meet anybody who is new to Swindon, I’m curious to know what they think of us.

That’s why I was drawn to a fascinating interview, in this paper, with Peter Boucher, the CEO of Excalibur Communications.

Peter said he has “spent the last few years getting to know the area”, and added: “The first and main thing I noticed was that most of the locals spent their time apologising for the town, and for no real reason… it has a lot going for it.”

He then went on to list some of Swindon’s assets, starting with “a rich history”.

Let’s think about that for a moment: a businessman who is new to Swindon, putting heritage first on his list.

What Peter might not realise is that heritage no longer feels like a right to Swindonians, but rather something we are obliged to fight for.

A few years ago I co-founded and edited a magazine called Swindon Heritage that we hoped would showcase the town’s history well enough to not only to boost local pride, but also its flagging image, further afield.

We think we did Swindon proud, but the magazine folded after five years – not because we were short of readers or inspirational stories to fill it (far from it), but rather because I lost the willpower.

In the end, most of my energy drained into trying to stop Swindon’s heritage being undermined by a local authority that just didn’t get the idea that if you make a town proud of its past, pride in its present is bound to follow.

The more we tried to celebrate Swindon’s heritage, the more we were drawn into frustrating, demoralising and exhausting campaigns to head-off threats to a succession of assets: the agricultural museum (which was lost), Lydiard House and Park, the Health Hydro, the Corn Exchange/Locarno and various other key buildings.

And don’t even get me started on decades of councillors’ apathy over that jewel in the heritage crown, the Mechanics’ Institute.

There is only so much energy one can muster to promote local assets when those in power are treating them as liabilities.

And still it goes on.

At the same time that Peter Boucher was voicing his disappointment over attitudes in Swindon, this paper carried news of the latest battle to preserve some of that rich history he was talking about, which is the campaign to reopen the Oasis, and try to give it a future.

Although relatively new, the Oasis is still considered by many Swindonians to be as much a link to their past as anything else, so yet more heritage under threat.

So long as politicians downgrade and disrespect our past, and take it out of our hands, they are never going to convince us to be positive about the present.

So there is a simple reason why I think most Swindon folk have a downer on the town, and I frankly don’t blame them.

We are sick and tired of having to fight to keep what we already had.