You'll like Swindon Council's finances... not a lot

It is the only explanation I can find for the authority’s need to make £20m of cuts in this year’s budget and its sudden ability, on the other hand, to consider awarding councillors a rise of 17.5 per cent.  Someone somewhere has performed a dazzling sleight of hand and turned some loose change from down the back of the sofa into mountains of moolah. Perhaps the ghost of Paul Daniels has been seen wandering the corridors of power down at the Civic Offices.

The rise, if approved, would leave council leader David Renard with a annual allowance of £32,880. It’s not an outrageous amount of money, for sure, but a rise of £4,893 seems rather generous given our recent experiences in Swindon.

Even though council tax went up four per cent, it was all doom and gloom, we were told, and the local authority could barely afford paper clips or Biros, let alone pay for public services.

Our five remaining children’s centres have gone for a burton, the budget for our libraries is to be slashed by an astronomical £1.5m over the next four years and £200,000 needs to be clawed back out of community bus services.

Grass cutting, street cleaning and those other basic necessities of life have also been earmarked as a good place to save a handy £5m.

Oh and Lydiard Park, surely the jewel in Swindon’s crown, is up for grabs to whoever fancies doing something with it.

Then there’s the parishing proposal, of course, which means we’ll pay council tax twice over for two tiers of local government while they pass the buck back and forth, blaming each other when things don’t get done. We could call the phenomenon flipping responsibilities, a bit like the good old days when our MPs used to have fun flipping their houses.

If Swindon Council’s double standards haven’t already made you hopping mad, the council actually spent time and energy getting in a team of experts called the Independent Remuneration Panel.

Coun Renard told a cabinet meeting the panel had been called in to “do a piece of work for us and see how the allowances of other authorities compare with those in Swindon... I know they spent a lot of time doing the comparisons and interviewing members and other relevant witnesses.”

I don’t know for sure how the set-up works but I imagine it’s something like this...

(In a pub, after a lengthy and arduous council meeting) First councillor: “I think some councillors at other authorities get paid more than us.”

Second councillor: “That’s not fair. Let’s get the Panel in and sort it out. I want as much money as I can feasibly get.”

(A little while later, at council HQ) Head of Panel: “Tell me, Councillor, do you think you get enough money?”

Councillor: “No. I deserve more.”

Head of Panel: “Okily-dokily — 17.5 per cent enough for you? You’ll have to scrap numerous vital services and you’ll be derided by all the people who voted for you.”

Councillor: “Just show me the money.”

The only bit I can’t imagine is when the Panel spoke to witnesses. Who were these people? Friends of councillors who could vouch for the fact that their buddy never had more than a couple coins in their pocket and desperately needed a whacking great increase?

Or were they one of the ordinary citizens of Swindon?  For if so, surely the response would have been: “If they can’t afford to keep the town running properly there’s certainly no way they should be getting paid even more for it.”

Put your 17.5 per cent into the services this town desperately needs, not into your own pockets. Now that would be magic.

• I’VE come over all nervy and keep getting butterflies at the moment. It started as I was preparing the Adver’s pages for our referendum coverage.

It occurred to me that when we joined the Common Market in 1973, I was two. I was probably busy smearing my face with food, ruining any chance my parents had of a good night’s sleep and gurgling at The Wooden Tops and Parsley the lion. Ooh, and crayoning the sofa (yes, Mum, that was me).

When we had our last referendum on the matter in 1975, I was four and my only memories are childhood ones: the evil kid in the house behind ours who stamped on my finger; asking my mum if I was four or five, because it’s easy to forget your age when you’ve been so long on the planet; working out that you could tell the difference between boys and girls because boys wore grey socks and girls wore white.  I remember plenty from my childhood. Old 5p pieces were huge and a lot of them were still actually shillings. You could buy 1/2 p sweets and 10p a week was more than enough pocket money. I remember realising if I saved my pocket money for 10 whole weeks (which I duly did) I would actually have my own one pound note.  I remember my mum being in hospital some time not long after I’d started school, and Dad burning everything he cooked and not knowing where the cutlery went in the cutlery drawer. I remember pink custard on school dinner puddings (astonishing and disgusting).

I remember loving the strikes of the late seventies because we got to light candles in the sitting room every evening and it looked all pretty and twinkly (health and safety hadn’t been invented yet).

You gather a lot of memories over the course of a lifetime, but there’s one thing I don’t remember - and that’s not being part of Europe. It is all I’ve ever known.  And tomorrow I might wake up to a new world I’ve never lived in before... There go the butterflies again.