Thetownend.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/8400854.stm

Oh well thats ok then .............. not to worry, we are officially twinned with Main fucking Street USA !!!!


Bunch of cunts !


Its saddens me when I go to the likes of Bristol and Cardiff and see the money being spent there

Entirely predictable. Our council is truly a joke.

swindon is a laughing stock.
a mental canal idea.the magic roundabout.that god damn awful xmas tree last year.twinned with fucking disney land.the town centre a fucking shit hole with no signs of improvement.

 but despite all that there are loads of worse places to live

Laughing stock, yes... but the Magic Roundabout is brilliant, and the Canal idea at its core is a good one. There are a few details wrong with it, but the principal is interesting, and more outside the box than the usual 'more shops/restaurants/apartments' that they usually come up with.

the canal idea wont ever happen.the amount of work needed would be massive, and it would take years to do.
if they cannot come up with a half decent town centre,how on earth will a canal through the middle of it come to fruition?
nice idea for cloud cookoo land but not swindon

Ahh, but maybe the reason they can't come up with a half decent town centre is because nobody ever gives an ambitious idea like the canal a go.

FWIW, after the piss taking most of my colleagues in Brizzle reckoned the Disney thing was a major coup for Swindon and were quite put out by it. Maybe Disney could lend us some of these to ride up and down the canal in?

[url width=645 height=484]http://babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/smallworld%20boat.jpg[/url]

Blimey,you people seem genuinely angry about this.Im suprised because I couldnt give a fuck,its some shops.. who cares!

i really don't think swindon town centre is that bad, it could do with a few cosmetic improvements and a few less pigeons but it's still nicer than a lot of places i've seen.

but then i guess i don't live there

Maybe so but its Modus that have gone into administration !

was always going to happen. Just like the old College will just sit there to rot and look even more of an eyesore with the Town Centre surrounded by grafity riddled white boards around sites htat have been knocked down and not replaced. I got an idea why not build flats or a hotel in these places.. oh wait...

just build walls round the outside ;)

It's OK. We are trying to preserve our highstreet so in 100 years time people will come to Swindon to see "the way we were in the 70s/80s". Then who will be laughing. Not Bristol that's who.

Im not really bothered. Shops are for girls and gays anyway. What we really need is an Ikea

We could do with a Council that doesn't think it's running a village. We could also do with a council capable of thinking for the town's future not the town's present. We need to be ran by radicals with vision, not idiots who strangle the town. We need people running the town who just build what they want, when they want it regardless of the idiots that oppose forward movement.

I know not whether most of our current problems are down to the council, but it'd be hard to imagine it being down to any other party, judging by their previous record. I'm also feeling saddened by the state of our town and the complete and total disregard by most of the population to embrace or believe anything will ever happen to improve things.

makes our doomed bid for City status a fucking joke

you can understand why we cannot entice new business into the area

They've been talking about that re-development for the best part of 10 years and its not the first scheme to fall through. Not sure you can really blame the council though if no one wants to make the investment.

I still think our biggest problem is the lack of a university. It would bring shit loads of money to the town, a more educated work force, more companies and more lots of other things. Would make the town a lot more investable.

we already have the companies though dont we? we were always told that swindon was europes fastest growing town.trouble is we grew, but nothing was done to improve the town.out of town shopping centres but the town centre more or less left as it was.now it's lagging behind other towns for that reason.

Someone might want to merge this thread with the one below.

http://thetownend.com/index.php/topic,31343.0.html

Deeply depressing.  Swindon really is the town that missed the boat...and the implications will be felt not just for years, but for decades.

Most of the employers that moved to the town in the 1980s boom are still there but the danger is that, over time, they will drift away.  (Why would you stay?  Dilapidated town centre, no local undergraduate population.)  When that happens, Swindon could quickly become the kind of town that young people feel they will need to leave to get on in life.  And then the downward spiral will accelerate alarmingly.

I assume the indoor snow slope etc will never happen either - thats gone very quiet. I went to Xscape in MK at the weekend, and although not perfect, it's a centre to be proud of. Cinema, ski slope, bowling alley, shops, restaurants, a pub, indoor sky-diving all under one roof.

Not so sure about the arguments over a university. Whilst it would potentially bring extra trade to the town, I'm not sure that having an offshoot of another university would actually make the population of Swindon more educated. There are universities in Bath, Bristol, Reading and Oxford which most people will go to if they are bothered about getting Higher Education. And let's face it, who would actually go to university for 3 years in one of those places and actually choose to STAY there?!

they should just demolish all the town centre and build this

http://www.malloftheemirates.com/en/Default.aspx

best shopping place i have ever experienced

Why is "all under one roof" a good thing? I actually think places like that are horrible, soulless places.  Everything you could ever need without going outside - presumably based on the assumption that going outside is a bad thing.  I always thought the only (and I mean only) benefit to going in to town was getting a bit of fresh air - these places even take that away.  

There is also nothing about MK to be proud of.  Nothing.

To be fair I think it aways been...

It's a good option to have, when the weather is atrocious and stuff. Anything that can get the kids away from the PS3 is beneficial...

ITV summed it up with their headline about Swindon being twinned with Disney World on the 10 o'clock news last night: "Why Swindon really is a bit Mickey Mouse".

If its raining, kids should be outside, getting wet.  As I recall that was great fun, lets not teach them that a bit of rain makes life stop.

Even a relatively small university would bring 10,000 students, lecturers and other staff to the town. Which equals a shit load of money being spent in bars, clubs, shops and other places (maybe even at football clubs) all of which would give the town a big boost.

But its all the other things you get as well; libraries (potentially open to everyone), evening classes, music events, cheap accommodation in the summer, conferences, better educated population, cheap university option for local teenagers, cheap summer and evening workforce, loads of fit 18 year old birds to shag and a million other things.

I don't blame the council too much for the fucked up re-development. But they have royally fucked up countless times over the university. They should be focussing on it and kicking up with the government until they sort it out. I don't see why it needs to be part of another university either, why not a medical college tacked on to the hospital or a technical college supported by all the local hi-tech companies (Intel, Honda, BMW, Motorola, Nationwide etc).

That isn't what i'm saying at all, but feel free to continue to argue against my point in your irritatingly condescending way...

OK, apologies if I misunderstood your point.  What I'm trying to say is the "all under-cover" option isn't, from my point of view, the way to go.  I think you get more of a feel for a place and its identity in a proper town centre rather than a "mall" style place.  Its just a general thought - I don't want to comment too much about Swindon in particular as I haven't lived there for seven years so I don't think its really my place.




I'm right though...

Fuck it! The council should sell Swindon to Disney and become DisneyWorld Swindon - we've got shit loads of land available now just waiting for a developer to draw up plans and having our own disneyworld would at least mean it's not just a mickey mouse council anymore

What type of person would choose to go to University in Swindon? There would be better, more established Unversities in more exciting towns and cities.

To be fair most of you are fully grown adults you have a choice,if the town is that bad fuck off and live somewhere else.

From the inside living here yes it may seem shit but people from the outside don't see it as bad as we do. We are not the only town that seems to have just stopped in its tracks.

I have visited enough Towns and Cities to realise this place is nowhere as bad as the actual peolpe from swindon think it is.

Agreed. Take Reading for example. Sure they have more shops and a nice town centre down there these days with a better nightlife you could probably argue. But at the end of the day the rest of the town is a complete dive. The town centre is indeed in need of a facelift but when you look at the rest of the town it's nowhere near as bad as some of the places i've been in this country. If people really want to live the high city life then why not just piss off to London? It's only 80 miles down the road.

Swindon as a place isn't bad at all but the Town Centre is an absolute dump.

The problem IMO is that there are so many here who weren't brought up here, just moved here that there almost seems to be a lack of respect for it.

i agree with the above.
add that to the pipe dreams from the council that never materialise, or they make a mess of

Spot on.

Spot on Luc


I love where I live in Stratton, but if I had a choice I would never venture into town..........its a shite hole


Oh and fuck off DRS

You basically agreed with me you stupid cunt.Fuck off to Manchester if you don't like it

Going to


better prostitutes up there anyway

 :bye:

Not better fred just cheaper with less teeth.

Sutcliffe drove the price down

No he hammered the price down

Natch.

I have laboured the point so many times before and I will do it again. Here.

Swindon is the average UK town in all respects. Bombed out town centre or not. There are better places to live and worst ones.

Right on, DRS. As the man said, if you don't like it then fuck off.

Oh and don't blame the council for all of the town centre woes. They were on the right track until our fucked up government decided to join in with the economic crisis and scare investment away. Duh.

Alan


I am 4th generation Strattonian, Jenna is 5th

I do not want to move, my family has so much history here

I want my town to get its head out of its arse and give the populus something to be proud of and that will attract visitors here

So please do stop being so condesending

Don't try the guilt trip sunshine

Andy - you don't live in the town centre. I bet you rarely go there. That's not what I am talking about - it is Swindon in the wider sense. If you are happy in the bit you live in then great (like me, I love Sparcells). I just can't stand people moaning about 'Swindon'. It is a great and varied place to live, perfectly situated in the wide rolling expanse of the Wiltshire countryside, brilliant communication links, good pubs, good local music and a superb football team...

Fuck the visitors to be honest. I don't want them in my town. It's for us  ;D

Alan I agree whole heartedly, I love where I live

But if I wanted to take someone I had met off of a dirty internet dating site/porn site Xmas shopping then it would not be here

I love Swindon but get pissed off with the apathy....ware like fukin Lemmings just going along with what a few elected dickheads decide.
The town needs more commmunity groups with a real say in what happens when things change.
That said we have alot more than alot of places...went to Newport last week...absolute hole,been to Thurrock and Gravesend,i could make a big list.....Swindons not bad.....but it ait great either.

Why the fuck would you be taking them shopping rather than 24/7 banging?

They got the new cavendish square for that now

As I said - it is 'average'.

Fine by me.

I have always thought of the town as "average" - I was very happy living there when I did, and would consider going back if work and personal life threw up the opportunity.  As Talk Talk said, there are better places and there are worse places.

I never much liked the town centre, but loved Old Town.

keep em sweet mate

 :D

If you were any sort of man they would be unable to walk after six hours if you got them off a porn site.

Pop them in a wheelchair and cart them round Coate Water instead. Far cheaper.

AND BUMP INTO mUM AND dAD ? ................NO THANKS

What's wrong with introducing them to your latest shag monster? I am sure that they would be proud if you had almost hospitalised her with your manly prowess?

Nah, I think he meant take them on a dogging trip to round off the weekend

 :D

That could well be Andy...