What is this Swanage Community Strategic Plan all about? It’s just setting up more talking shops. Most of the needs they want to identify were identified years ago but have still not happened. No concrete proposals at all. No commitment to a leisure centre or swimming pool. No commitment to pedestrianisation. No commitment to more affordable housing. No commitment to improve the Mowlem. No specific commitment to youngsters. Improving holiday accommodation? Better targeted marketing of the resort? Sheltered moorings?
Please let’s just do it instead of more talking.
Posted by Anonymous to swanage view at 5:28 PM
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This needs putting in context remember:
Estimates put the current UK dog population at between 6.5 and 7.4 million, all of which produce around a 1,000 tonnes of faeces every day.
In just a week the UK’s dog population would fill 3 Olympic size swimming pools full of faeces.
"Please let’s just do it instead of more talking." Is that you volunteering to help with a project, then? None of these things will happen unless people are prepared to drive them forward.
Is this a wind up? How many swimming pools do we need? There are two here already. Is this poster really ignorant of their existence? Seems to be. in which case its asking too much to expect them to know about anything else in the town.
Let me explain. We need a long low temperature pool for people to swim/train in. Not a foot bath attached to a caravan park full of kids messing about. (nothing wrong with that). This needs to be attached to the new sports centre so that people can use the Gym, play racket sports, do five aside, arobics or whatever and use the pool during the same visit. Move the bowls club there too if you like so the wrinklies can swim too.
We will probably have to let someone build fifty houses on a field somewhere to pay for this, but I move it would be a fair bargain.
I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong.
This plan has been put together after consulting us.
It's supposed to reflect our views.
If you think it's a load of rubbish then go to the exhibition and make your point of view known and then volunteer and get INVOLVED.
Sorry Mr Postman but I disagree. There have been plenty of people trying to drive things forward over the years and they get treated like shite by the Swanage reactionaries. Take Mr. Burt for eg, Mr Durrant, Paul (the Zorb guy), and all the people who stand for council then drop out so disillusioned. The local and district councils have been elected to get on with these things, the rest of us work our nuts off to keep our heads afloat and to pay the tax to keep the system going. These consultations keep coming up to give people false hope so that the local establishment can maintain the status quo. We aren’t asking for much here, just a positive attitude coupled to a timetable. Life is good but it could be better with a little thinking outside the box by those in power locally.
is this the thing that was publicised in the four-page wraparound for the advertiser this week?
which was written in some obscure language quite unrelated to that used by most of us.
how much did that cost?
the advertiser is pretty expensive so four full pages - how many thousands does that add up to.
wouldn't worry me if it was well-spent money.
but because I didn't read it because of the way it was presented, and I doubt whether many others did, my view is that it was money down the drain.
so, it was consultation was it, you'd think then, wouldn't you, that whoever produced it would have translated it into language that was capable of being easily understood by most of the population.
I agree with 9.55am. Expensive, badly presented and not easily understood.
The community plan was produced by community organisations, i.e. those in the town partnership. The idea was that it should express the vision of the inhabitants for what the place should be like in the future. It is fatuous to ask for a timetable since the partnership does not control the various assets mentioned in the plan.
I can't help thinking some posters in this thread want it both ways. They say they are too busy to become involved in the towns affairs but criticise the efforts of those who are more generous with their time with a breathtaking ignorance of the facts and then complain that it is too much trouble to read a document not written in the infantile prose of the popular papers.
it is not very well laid out, thats all the poster was saying dont forget some people are not of the high intellect of you! And what is expressed in their is not what a lot of people asked for.
i dont think its a case of some people being more generous with their time, some simply have none spare because of work, children etc while others may have a private income, no need to work and all the time in the world.
10.02 says "The local and district councils have been elected to get on with these things" That isn't quite right! Councillors volunteer to work to help determine policies to do with the management of the town. They may do something to drive things forward, but it's hard enough just keeping things running as they are. Some councillors, like yours truly and a few others, also have to work for a living and fit doing what they can to help the town around everything else in their lives. If you rely on 12 councillors (of varying ability and stages of decrepitude) to make all these things happen, you're in for a very long wait.
Please see my 9:50 comment.
This is the Council consulting us. The ideas have come from us and are worked on by us.
If you have an idea and want it worked on, then maybe you have to give up time.
If somethings worth doing we can find time.
If it's not worth doing, then please don't moan.
As to the layout, yeah, it's government speak. Avoid the numbers, just read the text. Things like working groups are people who are trying to progress, damn, government speak, people who are trying to make something happen.
It may be slow, it may be erratic, but it is giving us a voice, if we're prepared to get stuck in.
the committee that begat a thousand sub committees
Although I am flattered at being describes as being "of high intellect" the point I was trying to make is that we should not expect to have every issue reduced to a few short and simple sound bites. When the media or politicians do this its generally to bamboozle us and divert attention away from real issues. I agree the wrapper reads like an appendix to some policy document but if that is the only way the people who worked on it were able to express the information we should make some effort to digest it. I know we are used to having everything dumbed down but would you really rather have had nothing but a few emotive slogans from a PR company?
Are there two sorts of people in Swanage? One group who complain that they have not been told what is going on and a second who complain at the amount of money being spent on telling them precisely this? I used to think it was the same people but that their gripe changed with the phases of the moon, however, this thread now has both comments at the same time so either the split personality has got worse or there really are two tendencies.
Well in my experience there are three types of people in Swanage -those that can add up, and those who can't.
Or perhaps what characterises the types of people here is that there is one group blessed with the blandest opinions who are prepared to spend endless hours in meetings and there isa second group with more trenchant views coupled with a distaste for getting themselves engaged with the amazingly slow decision making process. I have enormous admiration for anyone who is prepared to keep awake through the sort of tedium council members must endure but I have to say it must drain them of any vision they may have once possessed
I've been to a couple of meetings in Swanage and that was enough for me. The people prepared to put up with all the back-scratching and preening must have a genetic pre-disposition or incredibly high tolerance level.
Compare their personalities with those of the real shakers and makers in this town, the people who actually get things done, and you'll see what I mean.
Competitors in The Apprentice or Alan Sugars? The choice is yours!
There is now a major industry within local government, and spilling over into a number of other public-funded organisations, involving alleged consultation and community planning.
It is, sadly, almost inevitably pointless.
The people who turn up, who are prepared to "get involved" with what is a tedium-filled process, are almost always unrepresentative of the community for which they they allegedly speak.
What is the alternative to doing things by a long slow process of consultation? It is absurdly big headed for anyone to claim they know what the people of Swanage want without having to go to the trouble of asking them. What have these movers and shakers done in the last ten years?
Why do the ball kickers and splashers in water always think the public purse should cough up for their ghastly brainless leisure pursuits? I rather like opera and think listening to classical music is beneficial to everyone, however, I don't expect every one horse town like this to have an opera house provided by the arts council. The number of people who would be using sports facilities is less than the number who attend recitals when we are lucky enough to have one but they are good at making a lot of noise.
no reason why the amphitheatre shouldn't be tented over in the Summer for Swanage opera festival
the pool is necessary for kids to train every day without travelling to wareham
Hoow many kids would do this? There have been at least two serious studies of the amount of demand for sports facilities in Swanage carried out in recent years but so far as I am aware neither found anything like enough people wanting another swimming pool to justify the running costs.
Casual youth usage of the pool at the Purbeck Sports Centre was averaging about 50 a day a couple of years ago. (Google Purbeck Sports Centre usage for this.) That presumably excludes school use and organised lessons. As we have about a quarter of Purbeck's population here that works out at an anticipated use of 12 young people a day. Subtract the number who would continue to use the two existing pools and add an estimate for the number who don't or can't get to Wareham and ask yourself how many that would be. I can't help thinking it would be cheaper to give kids bus passes so they can access existing facilities rather than burden the tax payer with having to find huge subsidies to run new ones.
its just the same, nobody uses te A&E so close it????
To 10:12pm Anonymous, who said "What have these movers and shakers done in the last ten years?"
The Folk Festival, the Jazz Festival, the Blues Festival in March and now another one in October, the Carnival...
How many of these are the result of consultation? None! They are the result of action by individuals putting their money and time where their mouths are.
On the other hand, the Chamber of Commerce consults all the time and what do they do? Nothing!
That is what I was expecting to be told. The people who organise the festivals do a brilliant job but it is rather different from a multi-million pound capital project. As you say they use their own money which again is not the same as meeting the requirements for public sector/lottery funding. If a multi-use centre was as easy to organise as a weekend of Morris dancing it would have been done years ago.
One of the problems with these people who organise events is gettingthem to work together. They have very little interest in anything outside their particular sphere. That is why we have a number of disconnected activities with no overall marketing or coodination.
"One of the problems with these people who organise events is getting them to work together."
Unless you're one of the organisers, how can you say they don't work together?
I know several organisers of different events, and they're all hard-working dedicated people who have an interest in something and see it through, bringing happiness to many and revenue to the town.
Let's just say they might be interested, who would you suggest to co-ordinate their efforts? and in what way? and why should they be interested? They make sure their festivals don't clash, what else would you want?
As for overall marketing, isn't that the job of the tourist office?
6.13 pm Anonymous posits an attitude that is all too common nowadays, that of wanting to control others.
The festival organisers are having fun with the arts, and involving other people in their fun, and making it available for all at a reasonable price (see how much you have to pay for festivals elsewhere, if you think Swanage overcharges).
6.13 pm Anonymous wants to ORGANISE the festival organisers! Well, 6.13 pm Anonymous, if you're so good at organising, why not organise something yourself, rather than try to meddle with other people's efforts!
You are smug and think you know better than people who are actually doing something for the town. And you don't realise how delicate these events are - one tilt in the wrong direction and they won't exist.
The odds are, that if you tried to organise the organisers, they wouldn't want to do their unpaid jobs anymore and you'd have nothing!
You'd re-write the fables, given half a chance:
"Ooh look! There's a goose laying a Golden Egg. Let's see how I can organise it to lay more eggs of a higher carat and a different shape that fits my (until now not even considered) concept of the ideal Golden Egg!"
As it happens I have first hand knowledge of many of the "events" that we have had here for many years and when I say the organisers are interested in only their own cabbage patch I speak from experience. They are enthusiasts for one particular thing. I don't know why anyone is aggrieved at me for pointing this out as its the first thing you discover about them. There have been attempts to pull things together in Swanage aver the years, but they have been met by indifference and the usual pitiful cries of "we've never done that before in Swanage".
As for events being underfunded, thats because there is no townwide organisation pulling all the tiny groups together to get funding.
It is absolutely right to say the festival organisers need organising. Judging from what has been said in this thread they have a "my bat and my ball" mentality. Do it my way or not at all. Its no good waiting for Purbeck Tourism to do it. If there is a forceful voice speaking for all the festivals, with a calendar of events to promote they might respond. Divided they fall.
Steve Darrington, Swanage Blues, here.
As always, I am interested in the views of anybody who thinks they know a way to improve the music situation in Swanage.
You are welcome to contact me through this column or e-mail s.darrington@btopenworld.com
Thank you.
"Divided they fall" says Anonymous. Surely things have never been better?
Recent additions to the Swanage calendar include the String Festival, another Blues Festival in the autumn, and there's going to be extended live music on the seafront after carnival week this year.
Seems pretty good to me.
As for the statement that "The people who organise the festivals do a brilliant job but it is rather different from a multi-million pound capital project", you're certainly right there.
The festivals exist, the capital project is a lot of hot air!
It's been a couple of days now and I still haven't heard from the anonymous poster who wants the festival organisers to get together.
Come on, I'm waiting!
What are you waiting for? Surely you are not adopting the absurd position that anyone who has a view should be the one to implement it. You have missed the entire point of the strategic plan process which was to find out what the people of Swanage want and not to sneeringly say to them "if you want that you get on and do it."
However, I don't mind taking a lead position. If there is any interest in getting together by the festival organisers I can offer a venue for them to meet. I can even chair the meeting if they want a neutral chairman not attached to any particular festival. Tea and coffee provided. Bring your own biscuits.
Thank you for your kind offer to be a neutral chairman.
I am concerned at your suggestion that my position might be absurd, and that I am sneering at the people of Swanage. Neither is true, and I'm sure you didn't really mean them.
Now then, will you reveal yourself so I know where to bring the biscuits?
Sorry Steve - did not realise it was you. I will talk to you next time I see you, but we are already on the same wavelength on this. You are an honourable exception to my strictures. However, other festivals and organisations are rather insular. It is largely because they are run by people pursuing their interest in a particular form of culture and the more obsessive ones can never understand why anyone is interested in anything else.
What might be worth exploring is whether they can add anything to each others festivals. The film soc to show jazz related films during the jazz fest etc. My suspicion is that there are a lot of bored family members brought here by the enthusiasts or worse still people who dont come to a pastival that would interest them becise other family members would have nothing to do.
from Steve Darrington.
With respect, Anonymous, please don't lead people to think that we are in agreement over this whole matter.
Don't leave it till next time you see me. Either of us might be busy, y'know - in my case most of the time. I really would like to speak to you and hear your opinions as soon as possible.
In the meantime, if you wish to continue our conversation here, that's fine too.
I quite agree that the festivals could help each other in many ways. As for people not coming because other family members might be bored, that's down to the facilities of Swanage full-time, rather than the part-time ones afforded by putting on a temporary festival.
And surely it would be good if there's a festival of, say, jazz, for films to be shown that are specifically NOT jazz, otherwise (1) they would be in competition with the live music, and (2) if the family members are bored with the live jazz, they surely wouldn't want to go to the cinema to see a film about... jazz.
I take your point - there was a contradiction in what I was saying. It looks as if the festivals are going from being something minor that a few enthusiasts put on to being an important part of the tourism business. The hard part is persuading local businesses that it it is in their interest to support them as you know only too well.
You're absolutely right!
Now, with regard to getting local businesses to support my festival, you recently offered a venue for festival organisers to meet, so...
Have you placed an advert with me in support of the October Fest yet?!!!
(Well, if I were shy I wouldn't have got anywhere)
There is a plan in place (currently seeking funding) to provide an Events Coordinator for Swanage whos job it would be to bring all the festival/event organisers together and create and plan new events. I'm going to be applying for the post once it becomes advertised as I'm young (ish), enthusiastic and experienced in this area. No one is going to be able to please everyone but this is hopefully the start of something positive and forward thinking for the town. Good luck to anyone else who wants to apply for the post too.
Matt
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