Thetownend.com

Dont know if anyone else had seen this? Adver have been running it for weeks and weeks. In the paper a lot and on billboards.

Guess how many people bothered voting?

125.

You have to chuckle. But being serious, is Swindon the most apathetic, laid back, place in the UK?

i was one of them

Its a good point Spence....Was speaking to a fella from Liverpool who used to work on the railways and he said he was shocked how lack of union effort didnt fight more for the railworks in Swindon when they dwindled and finally closed....apathy from the wiltshire workers was to blame in his opinion while the workers in l

hahaha yes I laughed at that.

90 online votes and 35  in the boxes.

If TEF had mobilised we could have swayed that poll to our collective desire and eventually made Rockin Robin our new mayor ???

could we get flammableBen or Spacey to run or something then rig the voting?

This is how we got devolution.

Politicians creating more well paid jobs for themselves at the taxpayers expense, then you get them created with a low turnout.

Next thing you know, Alex Salmond is holding us to ransom demanding UK cash to stop him breaking up the Union. All so Sweaties can get pills to clear those arteries clogged with battered mars bars.

There should be a rule that if you create a payed position, one gets abolished as well.

Having said all that, I couldnt be fucked to vote either.

Is it too late to be nominated? I'll run.

I've never understood the Swindon apathy thing.  The town has been growing fast since the 1800s as a result of incomers choosing to better themselves and move there for work.  How is it that their descendents have become so disinterested in the things that affect their own lives?

If the population as a whole took a little more interest in local issues, I'm quite sure that Coate and the Front Garden would be somewhat safer than they are from developers, the Mechanics Institute would not be crumbling and the town centre wouldn't be such a dump.

Im guessing because the standard of living has always been quite high in Swindon. Unemplyment is always well below the national average so people have always had the income to travel to another towns shopping centre etc

Most people do their shopping in retail parks in swindon anyway dont they?

I don't know about that. The reason we didn't get a new ground was because of an action group. The front garden got sanctioned by our PM I believe..the action group could not stop that, they just put off the inevitable. Coate has not been developed because of local concern.

The mechanics has not been developed because people don't want to see it become a hotel.

I wasn't aware of the mayoral poll, perhaps they should have canvassed or leafleted the idea.

 As Ken Livingstone once said, "if democracy changed anything they'd ban it"  Although there is an element of apathy, for many I'd call it stoical resignation.

 Take for example, the FG....a long and determined campaign was fought to keep out the developers, this went through all the legal processes available...it is by doing that you come up against how the system is stacked in the favour of corporate finance. All avenues were explored short of direct action.  Now if that is apathy then yes, but to put yourself in the position where your whole life can be ruined is asking a lot.

 As to Leefer's point about the railways, it had been evident for some years that Swindon was being run down, in preparation for eventual closure...there were efforts made by the usual coalitions of trade unions and left wing activists, to fight the closure, but many of those inside, had no stomach for a fight, preferring to take the sizeable redundancy packets on offer, which for many came from lengthy service.

 SBC, were persuaded to insist that the site would have to be developed for industry, to this end it was sold to a local consortium, who claimed this would be undertaken.

 Once the site had been empty for some years it became obvious no industrial use would be forthcoming, the locals flogged it on to a developer for a fat profit, and we ended up with houses and shops, with a couple of distribution warehouses.

I didn't even know there was a vote on :(