I've seen the future ... and it's utterly predictable

DO you think I’m psychic?

I suspected all along that the talk of co-operation between political parties after our inconclusive city council election results would turn out to be so much hot air.

It gives me no pleasure at all to say I was right.

Deputy leader Jo Broom has switched to the Tories just six weeks after 385 people in Fisherton and Bemerton Village elected her as their Liberal Democrat councillor. I wonder whether those voters feel their trip to the polling booth was worthwhile?

It seems to have happened because the LibDems, who lost their majority, didn’t want to be seen as agreeing to a coalition with the Conservatives. Given the way the LibDems nationally have become David Cameron’s fall guys, you might think they had a point.

But what we have here, as I’ve stressed repeatedly, is a parish council, not Parliament, and it desperately needs to find a unified voice to represent the city’s interests to our Wiltshire overlords.

You have to wonder why, when Ms Broom felt the need to resign from her party, she didn’t just carry on as an independent. If only my crystal ball could have shown me the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring in the Guildhall ….

Fortunately, one good thing has come out of this daft episode, and that’s the choice of Andrew Roberts, a widely respected independent thinker, as leader.  

Mystic Annie predicts he will prove to be the right man in the right place at the right time.

NOW here’s something it didn’t take paranormal ability to foresee.

Speaking of getting what you didn’t vote for, Sainsbury’s are at it again.

Having been inundated with objections to their proposed superstore on our Southampton Road flood plain, they withdrew it. Democracy in action?

Not likely. Having let things cool down a bit, they’ve now promised to come up with a new, improved plan for …. a superstore on our Southampton Road flood plain.

According to their spokesman, “residents, community organisations and council officers have had their say on the detail of our proposal” and “changes have been suggested”.

Well, the overwhelming majority of the 150-plus residents’ letters that I read on the Wiltshire Council website were against the whole idea, not some footling detail of design. As were the city council, Highways Agency and Environment Agency.

People weren’t just saying no for the sake of it. As well as voicing environmental concerns, many urged Sainsbury’s to build a store to the north or west of the town, where one is really needed.

But what ordinary folk want doesn’t seem to matter.

If at first you don’t succeed, try again and again and again and again until resistance is worn down and you get what you were after in the first place. That appears to be the guiding principle of our planning system for those who can afford it.