A gadget too far

MY struggles with a new mobile phone struck a chord with many readers, and with women in particular.

Now there’s a new challenger in the Riddle household for the title of Most Irritating Gadget. It’s called a YouView box.

 “Search our galaxy of content using your remote control” says the blurb.

Which remote control would that be, then, out of the three now lined up on my coffee table, all of them apparently indispensable?

I don’t want all this technology, let alone an entire universe of programmes to eat up all my spare time.

I don’t care much if I can’t record three programmes at once and rewatch an entire series six weeks after it was broadcast.

It’s television, for goodness’ sake. Moving wallpaper.  Apart from half a dozen favourite shows, it’s what we do when we haven’t got anything better to occupy our minds.

The more of these gizmos we acquire, the less I understand, and now I find that if my husband’s not home to juggle between the screen menus I rarely bother to watch at all.

I’m sure younger people feel differently, and that’s fine. But I just feel disenfranchised.

NOBODY could ever mistake me for a member of the Wiltshire Supporters’ Club.

Other than in the financial sense, that is, since I have no choice but to pay my council tax.

However, hooray!  For once its leaders have done something right, so it’s only fair to point it out.

They’ve foregone the loot they hoped to rake in through flogging off their old depot in Coombe Bissett to developers of ‘executive’ homes.

And they’ve listened to parish councillors’ pleas for much-needed affordable housing to rent to local people.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this long-running campaign, and to Wiltshire’s cabinet for showing that ‘localism’ need not be just an empty buzzword.

City under siege

I HAVE yet to meet a single person who wants a hotel and drive-through McDonalds squeezed onto the tiny wild space between Tesco and Southampton Road.

Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, though.

People who actually live here can see in an instant how idiotic it would be to plonk a traffic-generating dining destination alongside the city’s worst bottleneck.

Or to expect weekending tourists to hop on a park and ride bus and join the queues into town.

Some have joked that at least there’d be something to eat in the jams.

But judging by the time it takes to creep from Tesco’s car park onto the main road, a hungry trucker could demolish a Big Mac and fries before he even edged off the fast-food forecourt. I suppose that would make for safer driving.

I’m not saying there’s no place for a ‘drive-thru’ in Salisbury, though. Just not this place.

By the way, I stand corrected. The site in question is not flood plain, as I said last week. Not officially.

It is, however, currently – and frequently - under water. So maybe the official definition of flood plain needs revisiting.

Sure, the land level could be raised. But all flood water’s got to go somewhere.  Into the Sainsbury’s car park opposite, perhaps?

Why, when the South Wiltshire core strategy provides more land for new building than most of us thought could ever be required, do developers persist in piling into Southampton Road?

And why had they been discussing the hotel scheme with council planners for more than a year before bothering to ask the public about it? Of course they won’t want to see all the effort they’ve invested go to waste.

But the madness doesn’t stop there.

Now another supermarket chain wants to snap up the Old Manor site, following the authorities’ failure to ensure the construction of much-needed housing for the elderly.

Oh my, that’ll work wonders for the rush-hour traffic on the ring road.

No doubt the architects will churn out some faux-folksy design, a sort of shoppers’ Poundbury, to ‘blend in’ with the surrounding listed buildings. But does Salisbury need four giant supermarkets – and not one of them near all its new homes?

Does nobody have any plan for any part of our lovely city that doesn’t involve ‘sympathetically designed’ retail sheds, fast-food restaurants, and high-density housing estates the size of a small planet?

anneriddle36@gmail.com

Save our natural flood protection

I STAND corrected. The proposed  hotel site on Southampton Road is not on an official flood plain, I am told by those in authority. 
Well, all I can say is that there must be something wrong with the official definition of flood plain because every time the meadows across the road from this site flood - and they are officially part of the flood plain - so does this piece of land.
So objectors to the development need to photograph it when it's inundated if they are to convince a planning inspector at any future public inquiry that this scheme is completely barmy.
Cameras out, guys!

Southampton Road: It gets worse ....

QUESTION: What is going on in Southampton Road?

And what is our publicly-funded system of planning controls worth?

First, we’ve got Sainsbury’s daft plan for a superstore complete with built-to-flood car park on the fields next to B&Q.

Despite some 150 objections and the fact that the site is outside the city’s agreed development boundaries, the supermarket chain is intent on pursuing this scheme, and is presumably prepared to take Wiltshire Council through an expensive appeal process if necessary.

And I imagine there are plenty of people who would enjoy seeing Tesco face a powerful challenger on its own out-of-town doorstep.

I wouldn’t bet against the plan succeeding, given the track record of the final arbiter, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles - unless our MP John Glen, who’s his Parliamentary Private Secretary, also happens to be a miracle-worker.

Now there is an apparently serious proposal to build a 65-bedroom hotel opposite this mad megastore, between Tesco and the main road.

This site is also flood plain which, the last time I looked at it a few days ago, was doing its job – i.e. storing flood water which might otherwise inconvenience nearby residents and businesses.

But if the planners approve Sainsbury’s scheme, I can’t see any argument that would prevent them approving a hotel, too. So maybe they’ll feel they have to turn them both down? Who knows? We can only hope.

Meanwhile, do you think we should give up trying to protect our little green wildernesses on the basis that they’re a lost cause?

Is yet more chaos on Southampton Road inevitable?

What do you think local democracy actually amounts to?

With elections to Wiltshire Council and Salisbury City Council fast approaching, these are questions worth considering.