HINDSIGHT is a wonderful thing. So it's easy to be scathing about our council today. And boy, are we going to be.

Who would have thought that the planners behind the Steam museum would come up with and reject a proposal to include a full-size moving exhibit, only to be told three years later that this is what might attract more visitors to the heavily subsidised venue?

And who could have predicted that when a group of councillors were sent away a year ago to come up with solutions to the town's graffiti problem that they would return to report, er, that they had nothing new to report.

Laugh? Cry? It's hard to know how to react any more.

The revelation that Steam could have started life with a moving exhibit is sure to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of its supporters. This flagship initiative deserves to succeed, but has been dismally undermined by lack of imagination, overblown predictions of visitor numbers and poor marketing.

The result is that Swindon's taxpayers are propping it up to the tune of £575,000 this year and, let's face it, once you've been there once or twice, what's going to take you back, unless you are the most rabid of train buffs?

As for our graffiti task force as they were known, they were formed with the intention of cracking down on the spray can artists who have reduced parts of the town to an eyesore. A year on, residents will be consoled to know that they've looked at some hard-hitting solutions and rejected the lot.

The disturbing conclusion to be drawn from these two examples of dithering and ineptitude are that, collectively, our local authority lacks guts, creativity and the will to see important projects through to completion.

There are many excellent individual councillors doing a wonderful job in their wards, that's for sure. But put them all together as a unit and they couldn't organise a stag night in a brewery.

Not a month goes by without a task force, working party, proposal or feasibility study being announced that implicitly promises to solve one of the major issues affecting the town. The problem is that nothing ever seems to come out the other end.

It was good to see a crop of new talent being voted in at the last council elections. We can only pray that they are the first of many, across all parties. Because on past evidence, we need some fresh blood at the wheel if we are to really drive this town forward in the years ahead.

In the meantime we can only ask: Where is the drive, where is the vision, where is the will from our local politicians to actually get something done for a change?

And why are they so indecisive on just about every issue they seem to approach?

The answer, probably, is that they're not at all sure, they'll have to form a task force to look into it and they'll get back to us in a year or so.