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April 10, 2025 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
37:25
Look at What's Been Done to Us

You won't believe me, but Swindon used to be a lovely place.

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Right, this, as you can see, is supposed to be some sort of new bus stop or bus station.
It's not exactly the world's greatest building.
It's not exactly a massive monument to anything impressive.
This has taken about two years.
This is the product of two years' worth of labor.
And look at it, still not goddamn well done.
And it's barely above ground level.
What is the point of this?
This is the entire problem of this entire town, is that everything is done really poorly.
Everything's been turned into flats.
This is quite a nice old-looking building.
It's been dilapidated for years, just as long as I can remember.
Apparently, it turned into flats.
Incredible.
Of course, it's turned into flats because so many people are crowding to move here.
So this is the bottom end of town.
Obviously, there is a barber.
That's actually where I get my haircut.
They're actually not bad.
But look at this building here.
You'd never believe that was a restaurant if I didn't tell you.
It's blacked out.
There's never anyone in there.
But there's never any clientele going in and out of it.
And it's got blacked out windows.
What kind of restaurant has blacked out windows?
Like, how do you attract customers?
Oh, yeah.
Look at the state of this as well.
So this is the bottom end of town, right?
This used to be a bar called the Lavalnes, but before that was Walkabout, and before that was something else.
In fact, that used to be a bar.
All of this and nightclubs, all of this down here, this was a massive nightclub that everyone used to go to.
The last one still remaining is at Wetherspoon's there because they serve food.
But all of this, if you look down this street here, all of this was nightclubs.
This is where everyone used to go on like Friday or Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights to go drinking.
You meet up with your mates, right?
It's all gone.
It's all like it's just recently.
This facade has just been rebuilt, presumably for flats.
I don't know why.
But all of this down here, it's like living in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city.
Like, something in fallout.
Obviously, a Polish shop, but again, the bars in particular, these were all really nice bars too.
You know, they were really, really nice.
Like, well-to-do bars.
And they're heaving.
They used to be heaving.
And then the crap one at the end there was remix.
That building was up for sale recently for 300k.
Don't think anyone bought it.
I think it's still up for sale.
But yeah, all of this, like this takeaway, we'd all go to at the end of the night.
If you had like a tenner left of your pockets, get a burger.
They're all right, but like, you know, it was exactly as good as you'd expect them to be.
But again, like, these massive buildings that used to be huge nightclubs that used to be completely populated, just totally dilapidated.
So this place is a ghost town now.
Obviously, no one comes here.
That used to be a Wilco's.
You know, massive, for anyone who doesn't know, massive home store.
Gone.
Everything's gone.
So this was the party area of Swindon.
And I spent many a night down here being drunk with my mates and having a good time.
And now, this town is falling apart.
So you can see here, like, gambling, huge amounts of gambling.
Not so many vape shops.
There are some vape shops.
So this butcher's Kenya Butcher's got shut down because people discovered raw meat on the floor in there.
And so the health agency came down and shut it down.
So great, disgusting, but they're gone.
So never mind.
British Heart Foundation is pretty much the only fixture here that survived anything.
You know, Qtopia, Powerlands.
These are a couple of bars that have managed to survive it.
But then you've got, you know, the gold reselling ones.
That was a vape shop.
God only knows what that was up there.
You can see like half the high street has just died.
And the things that have remained are gambling.
Like, there's literally two We Buy Gold slots, Paddy Power there, and then a kebab shop.
Oh, and another resale shop there.
It's like this is this is shit.
This is what happens when a town is dying.
You know, the lowest class industries.
When all of these were actually really like that, Broadwalk was lovely.
Broadwalk's a really, really nice pub back in the day.
And this is just what we have to live through and walk past every single day.
Pawnbrokers, bingo slots.
What a shithole.
Oh, it's Thursday, so we get the market, by the way.
Look, another slot thing.
So that's like five, six slots on this one street.
Who the hell uses them?
Benefits scroungers.
That's who uses them.
So this is the very main center of Swindon.
There aren't normally sirens.
Normally it's actually relatively peaceful.
But Thursday, I guess, we've got a little market.
I mean, if you like a whole leg off and you get shanky alander and I just cut the rest of the leg lamp.
We did a double lot of bananas in two pounds.
We're doing a double lot of bananas in two pounds.
Or unless you want to believe.
a Damascus falafel.
As you can see Swindon's quite a diverse place these days.
It's just everywhere.
Diversity.
Obviously.
Diffrigrillators that have popped up for some reason.
After COVID, they were put in for some reason.
Couldn't tell you why.
The authentic culture of the UK.
It's total shit.
Anyway, I'm getting to the Brunel Center, so that'll be nice.
So the Brunel Centre was the heart and soul of Swindon shopping ever since I've been here.
I've been here 25 years, and this was where all of the shops were.
Let me show you the outside before I show you the inside.
You're going to really enjoy this.
So, I mean, as you can see, just walking down, there's a huge amount of foot traffic, right?
This is the middle of the day, it's 11 o'clock in the morning.
There's people just wandering back and forth through it.
So this is a prime location in Swindon because, of course, there's loads of residential housing over there.
You come through the car park, you can see this is a desirable place for foot traffic.
But look at it, right?
That used to be an Argos.
And that used to be like, you know, that's been multiple things actually.
But now at the moment, now at the moment, you can see that these are all just shut down right up until the McDonald's, which is the American embassy because people actually go there.
But look at it.
Why would you not want a space there, right?
Why would you not want to have your shop there?
You've got plenty of foot traffic going on.
And then on the other side, again, these were all useful, full shops.
But look at them.
They've just been closed down and paved over like they never existed.
And the insult of insults is to put the best of Swindon on it.
Like, I'm sorry, the best of Swindon are closed down, boarded up shops, aren't they?
That is just disgraceful.
How have we come to this point?
That used to be the Argos.
All gone.
Again, I can't remember what that was.
But look at it.
All boarded up, all closed over.
The only thing left is the defibrillator and the McDonald's.
Like, it would be understandable if there was no one here, right?
If there was no one wandering around.
But the place is busy.
You can see that the place is busy.
So this is the car park.
It used to be relatively nice, actually.
They used to have, I mean, it used to be painted, and it used to have a massive screen up there so they could show things to people walking past.
The screen is now gone and broken.
It looks completely run down.
It looks disgusting.
And they've painted some insane esoteric mural there that means nothing to anyone.
And it's like, why is this happening, man?
Like, why are we doing this?
This used to be the house of Fraser, that's gone.
Hashtag best of Swindon, boarded up.
But the worst part about this, and this really, really bothers me, is that for some reason, they decided to put a mirror.
Share your selfie at Best of Swindon.
Why would you want to?
Why the hell would you want to do this?
What's the incentive?
Good things happen here, the heart of Swindon.
Sorry, it's all boarded up.
It looks like the people who lived in this place have moved somewhere else, except they're still here.
They're just living now in their post-apocalyptic civilization, wondering why things have ended up this way.
And no one knows.
Because the problem is so abstract that they can't put their finger on it, and yet it's affecting everything around them.
Anyway, let's go in the Brunel Centre.
This would be lovely.
you really enjoy this see I used to walk through these streets just 10 20 years ago And I would bump into family members, I'd bump into friends.
Now I don't ever see anyone that I know.
Ever.
Like, there's lots of my family and I had loads and loads of friends around here.
But they've had to go.
They've moved away because it's not worth it.
But those two Indian guys, oh, they knew each other.
They bumped into family and friends.
Don't call it a replacement.
I'm not even sure if we're allowed if the Brunel sent to you.
But this was supposed to be the main entrance.
But I guess it's all closed.
Yeah, it's closed off.
Unbelievable.
Okay, well, let's go in this way and see if we can go around the top.
So that was the main door into the sort of east wing of the Brunel or whichever side it is.
And it's just closed now.
I mean, obviously, the Polish shops are still open.
Yeah, we are.
Well so the Sainsbury's over there that's closed down that closed in COVID and we'll go there.
Yeah yeah but this is a public area.
We're allowed to film here.
Yeah but you're not allowed to film in here.
Yeah we are.
We're allowed to film in here.
No, not in here.
Outside is okay, but not in here.
Okay we'll go outside.
Yeah, we're going to stop filming, don't we?
Yeah.
Alright, well stop filming.
Yeah, okay, we'll stop filming.
How ashamed of the place do you have to be?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably.
So those guys aren't following us.
Because obviously they're not doing their job.
So this is the sort of other side of the Brunel Centre.
We've blocked it off now but so yeah I can't even show you how that's a massive area of the shopping centre.
It's all just gone.
Everything's closed down.
There is one thing left in there which is a gym.
I'm actually not sure how to get to it but doesn't matter.
What's weird is everyone seems ashamed.
Like they don't want to film it.
Why not?
What's wrong with filming?
If you're proud of the place you lived you'd want everyone to fit right but that's the point isn't it?
No one's proud of where they live.
Everyone's ashamed of what's happened to us.
It's terrible.
It's absolutely terrible.
So this is the tent market.
This is where small business used to get it started in Swindon.
As you can see looks like a bomb site doesn't it?
Let's go and have a look.
So basically for a few grand in this place you'd be able to get a, you know, a shop front and because this was quite concentrated.
you know you have lots of small startup businesses here there'd be reasons for people To actually come here, so you'd have access to a customer base.
And if you had something that people wanted, well, then your store would grow and you'd be able to eventually get a proper rental place somewhere else.
As in fact, a friend of mine called John, who runs something called the Incredible Comic Shop, did.
And in fact, he's a great example and success story that I personally have been involved in because I'm a customer of his.
I used to buy Magic the Gathering cards from him.
I used to deliberately go to him and not someone else because he was a friend of mine who ran Magic the Gathering tournaments.
And we'll go see him in a minute.
Hey guys, so this is an old friend of mine called John who runs the Incredible Comic Shop.
And I've been shopping at John's shop for well, probably 15-20 years, something like that.
Because John used to run Magic the Gathering tournaments.
And I used to come to his shop in the tent market to get my magic cards.
So, John, basically, I'm using you as the example of a genuine homegrown success story.
How possible do you think it is for young people now to follow in your footsteps?
Not as possible as it was when I did it.
I mean, people could have a go at it.
People could definitely attempt something like this.
They just probably wouldn't be able to do it on the budget that I had back then.
Can I ask what kind of budget you had?
Less than 10,000 when we started the shop.
I know.
So I remember your shop just thriving in the tent market because you had something that people wanted.
And look at you now, you're in a massive store that I assume is doing pretty well.
I mean, there's customers constantly coming in and out, so I assume you're doing great.
I mean, you know, this is the quietest day of the week.
Thursday is always really quiet.
And this is Thursday morning, so you know, you'd expect it to be really quiet.
It's actually been quite busy already for a Thursday morning, to be honest.
So it's not like there aren't the people who want the things you've got, and someone else could do exactly the kind of thing you did, assuming they had the startup capital to do it because the barrier to entry is higher, right?
I can tell you that our overheads are almost exactly 10 times what they were back then.
Jesus.
10 times.
Exactly that.
So when I started, what I was paying then times that by 10 is what I'm paying now.
My God.
And that's in 15 years.
That's crazy.
For someone to get that kind of foot in the door now, it's tricky.
I can't think of anywhere that they're going to get the same kind of opportunity that we had to do that.
And do you think that explains why half of the Brunel Centre is just empty?
It has some reasoning to it.
It's not the definitive reason to it, you know.
There's many reasons why half the Brunel is currently empty, or more than.
Could you list some of them?
Well, I mean, obviously, COVID did nobody any favours.
So that was a rough time where I think a lot of people assumed that we got some kind of breaks.
There was always talks about tenants giving breaks to retailers and things like that.
There was none of that.
There was nothing.
We paid for everything throughout, even though we couldn't trade.
That obviously left a lot of people in a rough situation where they couldn't feasibly carry on a business.
We were fortunate.
We sell collectibles.
And during COVID and lockdown, the one thing that thrived was collectibles.
People kind of were bored at home, so we were able to just rummage through a storeroom and pay our rent off of a couple of bits that we found that are worth a fortune all of a sudden.
So we were able to survive that.
A lot of people weren't.
That had some things to do with it, but also another reason for the Brunel is they have a, I believe it was a lot of lengthy contracts with a lot of the big tenants that came to an end over the last five to ten years.
And they chose that as a time to move out and find someone new.
I mean, we've lost Waterstones that was directly opposite us.
They're now out in the main high street.
Sainsbury's are gone.
Mars and Spence is more recently.
House of Rays is gone.
There's all of the big chain stores, even in, I mean, the restaurant on the other side of Boswell's, they moved out into the high street.
Yeah.
So I think.
And you think, what, the Brunel Centre, the people who own it just are not giving them decent contracts, so there's not worth, it's not worth renewing them.
I guess they just didn't have the means to offer what they could before.
That's a contributing factor, definitely.
That is crazy, man.
So when I first moved here, this was all very, very busy.
There were huge amounts of job opportunities, not enough people to fill them.
And now it's the complete opposite way.
I mean, for local seasons, the rent, when we first moved in, was unbelievably low.
Unbelievably low.
And it's because it's such a competitive market because no one's starting businesses here, no one's keeping businesses here.
And so you can see this just, you know, look, to let grade eight officers 86,000 square foot of office space.
It's like, okay, yeah.
In every building.
In the building we're in, there are dozens of empty offices.
And the buildings have just walked past dozens of empty offices in these ones.
And I looked at these ones when we were setting up.
You know, it could have gone there, and that was during COVID.
it's just it hasn't come back to life so you can see this is where there was a huge car park which is a useful thing to have And now it's just waste ground with stuff that apparently I guess will be built on at some point.
But like with all construction projects in Swindon, they're very, very slow.
And nothing seems to happen.
And like I said, it must have been, it must have been eight, nine years ago, something like that, that this car park was torn down.
It's a long time ago.
And now, nothing's been done with it.
Absolutely nothing.
Yeah, we're just documenting Swindon.
All right, okay.
How's it going?
You're right.
You from around here, right?
You from around here?
No.
No?
Oh, sorry.
Sorry.
You came to us.
Yeah, I just wanted to sort of work it easy, so I just wanted to go.
Yeah, well, with your HV cables in.
Right, yeah.
Well, basically, I'm just complaining that they've not built anything on top of where the old car park was.
They've just sold it to do that.
Yeah, oh, great.
But they pulled it down like eight years ago.
You know what I mean?
It was a long time.
And it's the same with everything this town.
You know, stuff just is left fallow for years and years and years.
And it's just, you know, the entire place is just.
So it's empty now.
So everything's just so slow, that's the problem.
Yeah, everything is.
Yeah, and basically I'm making a video complaining about this, right?
Because it's just got to the point where it's just pissing me off.
You know, I'm just sick of it.
It's just like, come on, I live here.
You know, I've lived here for decades.
Why is it crap?
You know, I don't want it to be crap.
But yeah, it's not about you guys or anything that you're doing.
I'm glad to do it.
You know, my God, can we please get more people doing more things?
You know?
Yeah, no worries.
Take care of yourself, man.
It's interesting how prickly everyone is.
Nobody's happy to be filmed, are they?
so if you want to film this sort of stuff thank god we've got the Paddington Bear mural there Don't want to go against the things that Paddington stood for.
At least there's talent.
You know, it's not bad.
It's good.
At least it's not like just diversity propaganda as well.
Okay, I don't even know what that's going to be.
I mean, you know, it's at least kind of cute and irreverent.
I've seen so many worse examples, and we'll see some later on, you know.
So we're approaching Manchester Road, which is historically the diverse area of Swindon.
Swindon never had a very large immigrant population, and it was basically confined to this road until the Boris wave arrived.
And now I'm sure that you've been aware that, well, all of the town center has been pretty diversified.
Let's cross what we can.
There's so many barbers around.
That's the
state of everything.
It's full of barbers.
So there's a general sense of degradation in much of Swindon, especially where near the town centre.
And I mean, just look at it.
You can see why people aren't exactly enchanted to live here.
And it's not that there's anything wrong with the place.
And there's certainly nothing wrong with the people.
People of Swindon are good, hard-working, law-abiding, and taxpayers.
They're decent folks.
And I've been here for 25 years.
I know lots and lots of them.
But it's just for some reason there's not much pride taken in the place.
And so it ends up looking old and run down.
So this is the Mechanics Institute.
This should be Swindon's pride and glory.
Because this is the precursor to the NHS.
Now, in Britain, if you're not aware, the NHS has taken on the aspect of a religion.
And it was the Mechanics Institute that inspired this.
Because what this was was a service that was contributed to by the railway workers who in the 19th century all worked and lived in these rows of houses around us.
And so they'd all contribute a small amount of their wages to the Mechanics Institute.
And that would provide a free health service, free at the point of delivery, to these people.
So it was privately run, but it was publicly accessible for the people in this area.
And this was a very popular and productive form of healthcare.
And so this became the template for the National Health Service itself.
And look at the state of it.
Look at the absolute state, the decay of this building.
I mean, not only is this probably, or would have been, the nicest building in Swindon, but it's also part of Swindon's heritage and contribution to the country.
And so you think nationally, the government that is constantly banging on about the NHS would be interested in preserving something like this.
Why not turn it into a museum or a library or something?
Just spend a few million pounds renovating it, restoring it, and then open it to the public so people could come and have it as the museum of the NHS.
If you really care about the NHS that much, this is really not a very big job.
But as I understand it, something like 20 years ago, it was purchased by a chap for a few million pounds who has done nothing with it.
I think it's been purchased a couple of times, and the council have never been able to get any motion on it.
And so it's just left here to do nothing, apart from the very depressing murals around, which remind us just how bad things can be.
I don't know why they would choose these dour black and white, sallow-faced people over there to be the positive representation of Swindon.
I mean, preserving what matters in our community.
How is this being preserved?
This is being left to decay.
And if I have five million pounds, I'd buy it and do it.
Why not?
It'd be a lovely thing.
And again, you can't see the full extent of the issue, but it used to be gorgeous.
Let's go around.
I'll dig up some old photos of it to put alongside this.
Let's see.
The blueprint for the NHS.
Okay, then why are we leaving it like this?
Just have some government intervention.
Sort this out.
if you're so proud of the bloody nhs do something about it just look at the the quaintness of the build Like, this is a lovely thing.
And it's disgusting.
I just can't believe we have allowed this to be the case.
And it's going to be through various bureaucratic issues that people are just like, oh, it's just too much work.
It's just too much effort.
and I'm sure that it'd take forever to get done anyway.
You can see the stoneworks all lovely and quaint.
And you can imagine that when this was in its prime, this was a genuinely pleasing thing to have around.
I mean, you can see the bell tower over there with the traditional scaffolding.
I don't ever remember a time when this building didn't have scaffolding on it.
But nothing ever gets done.
Nothing ever changes.
I like the fact that they've actually put some sort of corrugated roof over there, so I'm like, okay, we've got to do something to keep the rain out because the roof of that, prior to this scaffolding being up, had rotted through and was just bare beams.
And so, okay, brilliant.
I guess this keeps the rain out, but if we're just going to leave it here to moulder, well, then it's just going to moulder slightly less quickly than it was otherwise, won't it?
Anyway, like I said, I don't know what the legal status of this is at the moment.
It's constantly being held up for various reasons, but the council aren't getting any motion on it, and it never will.
For some reason, we're just trapped with this building in limbo when it would make sense for the government to just come in and say, look, we'd like to buy it and have it as a heritage site because this is part of England's heritage.
Given how much we would go out and clap for the NHS, you could probably spend 10 million in total buying this and doing it up.
And then it'd be a little jewel in Swindon that people would come here to see.
You could advertise it.
The Museum of the NHS.
Get people to actually want to come here.
Get people to actually want to spend money here.
Have BBC documentary shot here about it, whatever.
See, look, like the Mechanics Institute gets like central billing in the mural, and yet we just let it crumble in the background.
It drives me mad.
Who's playing cricket?
Irrevisant box shops.
Amazing.
Wonderful hope resembles gratitude.
let's see you see here the old victorian clock facing I'm sure this would have been lovely, had we seen it in its prime, had we seen it working.
And the thing is, all of the buildings around, all the railway village, these are lovely little buildings.
Notice that these buildings are built with at least the eye to making the place look nice.
Like when you come out of the immediate city centre or town centre of Swindon, it's not bad.
It's just for some reason there's no pride taken in it.
Anyway, let's go see what the council's actually spending money on.
So this is Farrington Park in the sort of west side of Swindon.
I lived around this area for more than a decade, just some of the streets down there.
It's always been fairly quiet and nice.
It used to be normal and just full of English people.
It's not quite so full of English people now.
It was always quite nice in the summer, you know.
You come out with everything we bring some beers, play some football, throw frisbee or whatever, do whatever.
But I mean, it's still not in bad nick, to be fair.
There are definitely other parts of Swindon that are not as nice, but I think this is the bit of Swindon that really annoys me the most because this is where the modern day has come into it.
International Mother Language Day monument.
This monument celebrates the many languages which the people of Swindon speak.
It's part of a worldwide idea to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and promote multilingualism and a world where everyone has the right to speak whatever language they choose.
Swindon was built by people from many different places and has thrived as a community which welcomes people from all over the world.
They are Polish, Italian, Goan or Welsh, and whatever their mother language is.
Amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
So we've got a monument to diversity here.
As it says over here, this memorial project was established September 2019 by the Bangladesh Association Swindon to celebrate International Mother Language Day by the President Mr. Abul Kaha.
The special thanks to Mohammed Ali Tal Ukdar, Foyjul Bari, Councillor Saleh Ahmed, M. Zaman Chowdhury, Abdus Salam.
And it just keeps going down.
They're all Muslim names.
They're all Muslim Bangladeshi names.
The Bangladeshi community here has apparently erected a diversity monument for us.
Thank you so much.
It's what we all wanted here.
Swindon wasn't anything until we had this.
And this is something that you can see about Swindon.
It has been rapidly diversified.
I mean, notice that was put up in 2019.
But before COVID, it really wasn't very evident that Swindon was going to be diversified.
It was only with the advent of COVID and the Boris wave hit.
And now when you walk through the centre of Swindon, you can see it's very diverse.
And you can look on the census map and see that, yes, the centre of Swindon is now about only half English.
And this creeping change is spreading outwards towards the outer boroughs.
And there's nothing that can be done to stop it.
And people just move away because they don't want this for themselves or for their children.
And so the place changes just like everywhere else has done, just like Luton has done, just like London has done, just like Birmingham and Manchester and various other towns and cities around the country.
And Swindon is going to be no different in this regard.
And wherever you're living, this change is coming for you too.
It's going to happen to you as well.
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