Swindon is Britain’s most average town. The conclusion we must draw from this is that Britain is broken, and not worth saving.
Once it was proud of its huge railway works. That was closed down and some workers found alternative well-paid manufacturing jobs at Honda. That’s gone too, but never fear – a huge Amazon warehouse has appeared so you can slave away there on minimum wage until they build a cheap enough robot to replace you.
Most people here, though, don’t work locally. All the towns with good jobs and money are overpriced for housing, so people are drawn to Swindon as a cheap place to doss down before their long commute to Bristol, Reading or Oxford.
The “county lines” drugs supply business model could have been invented for Swindon. Eldene, Pinehurst, Penhill and the Parks are full of hoodies on stolen e-bikes delivering drugs and occasionally stabbing one another to death. The whole place stinks of dope; even passing cars do.
The town centre has long had its lifeblood sucked away by the designer outlet (parking and traffic hell) and the Orbital shopping park, and is now a post-apocalyptic, boarded-up, wasteland of tramps and drunks screaming at each other. A new precinct was opened 7 years ago and is now mostly empty, with some units never having been occupied.
Swindon voted Brexit and has a streak of racism, publicised when the resident founder of National Action was recently sent down for 8 years.
Oh well, it has six McDonald’s.
