Sargon's Swindon Video

 

What is Swindon famous for? Railways, traffic roundabouts and... that's about it; or is it? One of Swindon's favourite sons in today's world is Carl Benjamin, usually know by his nom de guerre "Sargon of Akkad". He has made a video in which he takes us on a tour of his hometown and points out various features that signifty the decline of the Western world in general. Shops boarded up, vandalism and security measures on shops and public buildings because of high crime rates. Despite doing his tour in daytime, the shopping streets are deserted. Sargon and his cameraman are literally the only people in sight. He compares it to a zombie apocalypse and I have to agree. The new bus station has finally opened, in fact I was in Swindon the week before, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2025/08/hpanwo-show-601-podcast-warminster-60.html; but it is a very bland construction with metal shelters being the only things above ground level. Why did it take so long to build? Entire streets were shut for several years. The main shopping centre is also a ghosttown. Despite the lack of retail outlets the mall still has an entire platoon of security guards to deal with lawlessness; they also order Sargon to stop filming. One shop that has survived is a comic shop. There is a stereotype associated with grown men who read graphic novels, but the proprioter, a friend of Carl's called John, is one of the few success stories in all of Swindon. The rent on Carl's own office where he produces Podcast of the Lotus Eaters has increased enormously. One of the nonconformist folk art galleries is on hoarding for a building site. The fact that building works in the town are so slow is the very thing that makes the boards such a fertile canvass. Like all other large urban areas, Swindon has been forced into hosting vast numbers of recent immigrants and these people have established their own communities centred in geographical areas; Kurdish, Polish, Pakistani, Romanian, Albanian. In those districts British people often feel like we are the aliens. Historical buildings like the Mechanics Institute are deserted and derelict. That's sad because it was home to the railwaymen's health scheme that was the blueprint for the NHS. There is a defiant mural on the boards sealing the place off with some very effective historical scenes. They remind me of the political agitation street art in Northern Ireland or South America, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2025/03/oxford-graffiti-11.html. According to Carl, the Covid lockdown was the cause of much of the decay and Swindon is still suffering because of that, see: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/02/coronavirus-portal.html. I have made many of the same observations that Carl did, except that I quite like some of the graffiti he didn't, see my HPANWO TV video Town of the Pigs in the background links below. His tour reminded me very much of my own experience of Swindon. It's a good video worth watching. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufq00nrey0o; and see here for the Lotus Eaters: https://www.lotuseaters.com.
See here for background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2024/08/town-of-pigs.html.
And: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2025/07/ben-emlyn-jones-live-at-swindon-rabbit.html.