It’s all very well David Renard clutching the Cities Report for a photo opportunity, but if you want to make an objective assessment of the state of the town you have to look at all of it, rather than picking out a few tables which can be used to show the brilliance of our municipal leadership and the ‘success’ of the town. He seems to have missed the fact that Swindon was designated by the report as a ‘low wage, low benefit’ location. What does high productivity and low wages tell us? That levels of exploitation are high. Isn’t high productivity supposed to give us high wages?
The last year for which figures are available from the HMRC for personal earnings is 2013-14. However, it gives you an indication of the earnings structure of the population. The average earnings from employment was £26,900. However, the median showed that half of employees earned less than £20,800. Half of those in self-employment earned less than £11,500. Half of those with a pension had an income of less than £12,200. This gives an indication of the levels of inequality in the town.
The Cities Report also put Swindon in the top ten for increasing house prices which are outstripping earnings. Check the government figures for the ratio between house prices and earnings and you find that prices for the lower quartile (cheapest) properties were 6.66 times the lower quartile earnings. This was the figure for 2015 and we know that house prices have continued to rise since then. No wonder that we have a town in which we have seen the emergence of phenomenon such as ‘beds in sheds’ and people living in garages.
Let’s have a rounded picture of the town and not propaganda which is directed at the self-aggrandisement of the anti-democratic clique which runs the town. The picture painted by the occupants of the Euclid Street bunker clashes with the real life experience of much of the population.
Martin Wicks
A letter to the Swindon Advertiser
Martin Wicks 