04/04/07 - Peter Heaton-Jones, Vote Conservative!

Peter Heaton-Jones presented the Breakfast and Morning programmes on BBC Radio Swindon from 2000 to 2006. 

When I first moved to Swindon, the place was such a Labour stronghold that you half expected to see the hammer and sickle fluttering over Euclid Street and Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book being handed out in the Brunel Shopping Centre.

We had a solidly Labour-controlled council and two newly-elected Labour MPs: Swindon was a Labour town and that was that, brothers.

But then slowly, surely, Swindonians came to realise that Labour just wasn’t working.  Council taxes increased by more than 40% in three years while public services went downhill fast.  The council’s performance had fewer stars than Celebrity Big Brother.  And the idea of a new central library was, well, just fiction.

And so the people’s revolution began.  Soon the Labour stranglehold was broken and the Conservatives had taken control.

The result?  Council tax rises have been stripped right back, services have improved, the council now earns accolades for its performance, and the new library is so close you can almost hear the cries of “sssshhhh” already.

And there’s been one further change over the years: I don’t have to be impartial any more.