EXACTLY a decade ago, Swindon Advertiser readers were treated to the latest version of the town’s destiny, complete with a futuristic artist’s impression.

In a series of features called Visions of Swindon, various local VIPs set out their plans and concepts.

One of the earliest articles began: “A new town centre, Swindon on the shopping map and the town’s heritage questions sorted out are all part of council leader Roderick Bluh’s vision for the future.

“Coun Bluh (Con, Dorcan) has promised to reconnect the people with their politicans.

“Among the plans for Swindon is rebuilding the Granville Street car park and surrounding area into a shopping centre, which dovetails with the New Swindon Company’s plans to regenerate the Regent Street, Princes Street, Fleming Way and surrounding areas.

Coun Bluh told us: “We are expecting to deliver on Granville Street by 2010.

“By 2010 we will deliver a new town centre. The major works will be done.”

A decade and a global recession later, the accuracy of that prophecy is debatable to say the least.

Coun Bluh, who led a Conservative council, blamed the previous Labour administration for Swindon’s ills. The Adver, ever conscious of the need for balance, ran a joint article by Swindon’s two Labour MPs, Michael Wills and Anne Snelgrove, who seemed to blame the current Conservative council for Swindon’s ills.

They wrote of a Commons brainstorming meeting organised by Mr – later Lord – Wills with the council’s leadership and various VIPs including representatives of the Tate Gallery and the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The MPs added: “Michael produced a record of the meeting and sent it to the council, offering to help take these ideas forward in any way they wanted.

“He never received a substantive reply. Whether or not the ideas would have turned out to be practicable, a truly ambitious council would have, at least, explored the visions of some of Britain’s leading experts in their field.”

One issue on which people from just about all points on the political spectrum agreed was the disgraceful plight of a Swindon boxer and trainer called Islan Eltuyev.

Three years earlier Islan and his family had fled torture in war-torn Chechnya. He and his wife, Zarina, and their three children wanted nothing more than to settle permanently and contribute to society.

Unfortunately some Home Office officials decided that he hadn’t gone through the asylum process correctly and warned that he could be thrown out by force at any time.

We said: “Since his arrival Islan has been working as a volunteer at the Walcot Boxing Club and members of the boxing community are determined to see him stay.”

They weren’t the only ones. A petition in support of his application was signed by hundreds of people, and more than 1,000 Adver readers signed forms we printed bearing the same message for the bureaucrats.

Michael Wills also called for the decision to be overturned, and made the family’s case in several meetings with Immigration Minister Tony McNulty.

Fortunately good sense eventually prevailed and the Home Office didn’t have its way.

Another person at the centre of a controversy, albeit one of a completely different kind, was Swindon councillor Dr Owen Lister.

An investigation had been launched into his conduct at a meeting the previous September of the council’s Children’s Act task group.

It was reported that during a debate about the council sending children with severe disabilities to a care home in Cornwall, he had called for such children to be guillotined.

Coun Lister, 79, vehemently denied saying any such thing. He told us: “What I suggested was parents would be unlikely to see the children often, and that any bonding the children might have with the mother would be gone.

“They could be in the home until they perished. I thought this was appalling that they should be shipped off in this way.

“I suggested it would not be dissimilar to guillotining them."

Refuting any suggestion that he had advocated death, he added: “Such a plan would be against all I have worked for all my life. It would be quite unthinkable, which is one of the reasons I am disappointed in the certain people because they must have a strange idea of what motivates a doctor.

"I was appalled by what was being suggested."

Two years later he was sacked from the Tory group on the council after he was revealed to have joined UKIP.

Another story that week took us to what was still Wootton Bassett, where resident Josie Lewis showed us glasses of what looked like bicarbonate of soda or something else both fizzy and opaque.

Alarmingly, it was fresh from her taps. Even more alarmingly, Thames Water was demanding that she pay for it and threatening to send in bailiffs if she didn’t.

Thames Water insisted there was nothing wrong with the water, even though at least one of the glasses we photographed contained something resembling slightly diluted milk.