Putting Salisbury's pigeons on the pill is our least worst option

IF there’s ever a good time to be a pigeon, it certainly isn’t now.
For weeks they’ve suffered the unwanted attentions of the Cathedral’s breeding peregrine falcons.
The excited racket the young family make as the parents come screaming back to the spire with their latest kill carries loud and clear across the meadows to Harnham.
Natural pest control, I’d call it, and I don’t mind it at all.
Far preferable to the arsenal of toxic chemicals mankind has cooked up to wipe out unwanted neighbours on this planet, be they bugs or persecuted ethnic minorities.
The hot summer weather has taken a toll, too, and apparently the city’s pigeon population is already plummeting faster than a peregrine diving on its prey. (They can reach 200mph, according to the RSPB.)
Now the beleaguered birds face all-out war from Salisbury City Council.
I know they poo on people’s heads at Fisherton railway bridge – the pigeons, that is, not the council - and pedestrians can feel they are running the gauntlet. That’s Network Rail’s fault, for failing to install sufficient deterrents.
I know their droppings are said to carry disease. But the expert consensus is that the risk to humans is slight. The Department of Health said last year that it was “not aware of any cases of human infections” arising in this way.
On the other hand it is indisputable that these droppings, because they are acidic, damage our ancient buildings, so people who encourage pigeons to hang about the city centre by feeding them are ill-advised, however good their intentions.
What to do, though?
Since we can hardly have hunting parties stomping round the shops, picking them off one by one, it does sound to me as if the cunning plan of building nice, welcoming pigeon lofts is a good one.
There, the unsuspecting guests can be fed contraceptive seed mix, or their eggs can be taken away or unobtrusively spiked to prevent them hatching.
Labour-intensive, possibly, but undoubtedly humane.
Which pleases me, because I rather like pigeons, and their lovely soft cooing is one of the sounds that say ‘summer’ to me.
Whether this measure alone will be enough, I have no idea. But it has to be worth a try.
Now then, about those deer at the crematorium ………….

Salisbury's cemetery and crematorium shouldn't be killing fields for deer

MANY moons ago, we lived briefly in an isolated moorland cottage in the Peak District.
I remember the day we absent-mindedly left our five-bar gate open.
We came home to a garden denuded of flowering plants, including the white lacecap hydrangea I’d nurtured from one home to another, ever since my husband bought it for me on our first anniversary because it reminded me of the tiny beads on my wedding dress.
You have my permission to sigh sentimentally.
Sheep, you see, are sadly lacking in understanding when it comes to the concept of private property.
I wasn’t happy, believe me. But I didn’t actually need that plant to conjure up fond memories of our big day. They were still there – still are.
All of which brings me neatly to the vexed question of the deer nibbling their delicate way through the city’s crematorium grounds and the adjoining cemetery.
In the past I’ve had to report on vandals damaging families’ precious memorial trees in our parks, and I’ve felt the same mixture of anger and sadness as any right-thinking person would.
If the oiks responsible for this wanton destruction were ever caught, I’d like to see them paraded through the streets to face the court of public opinion. People ought to know better. There’s no excuse.
But culling - one of the options under consideration to deal with the deer - is killing, under a slightly more palatable name.
We can’t say it’s achieved its aim where the nation’s badger population is concerned.
Do we now want our places of quiet remembrance sullied with the corpses of gentle creatures, slaughtered because they eat to stay alive?
Nature poses constant challenges to our human desire to impose orderliness and the rule of law on every last corner of the wonderful wilderness that is this world. And it always will.
Despite my disappointing early experience I remain a keen (fair weather) gardener, and I’d be as upset as the next rose lover if I found Bambi and his pals chewing on my William Shakespeare or my Gertrude Jekyll, or, heaven forbid, my Great Maiden’s Blush.
But at the same time I’m enough of an urbanite to still feel thrilled and privileged when I catch a fleeting glimpse of one of these shy animals in a field alongside some roaring hell of a motorway.
Admit defeat graciously, city councillors, if you can’t afford to fork out for fences. You know it makes sense.

Nobody asked Salisbury folk where they'd like to shop

WILL it be Asda? Will it be Sainsbury’s? Will it be Aldi? Could it even be Morrisons? (Or have they gone off the boil?)
Does it actually have to be any of the above? Who asked us?
Some people, it turns out, are no more chuffed about Asda’s proposal for a London Road store than they are about Sainsbury’s Southampton Road eyesore.
Asda does seem to have considerably more support than its rival (well, it couldn’t really have less, could it?).
Then again, Aldi’s notion of transforming the derelict Autecnique site has attracted far less criticism than either of its gigantic competitors.
I confess that my first unworthy thought, when I heard of Asda’s plan, was “Whoopee, that’ll scupper Sainsbury’s!”
But there are legitimate concerns about the London Road neighbourhood’s ability to cope with the extra traffic.
They may not be game-changers but they ought to be addressed by our planners in handling this application.
After all, the objectors have to live with the inadequacies of their local infrastructure.
And here’s one problem with our local government system.
The unitary authority, i.e. the one with all the power, is run by people from the other parts of the county.
Salisbury and South Wiltshire still don’t boast a single cabinet member between them to lobby for our interests. And there is a strategic planning committee, with a huge majority of members from outside this area, to take decisions that may upset the natives.
Our city council has got much better organised in its response to planning applications over the last year or two, but it only has the power to advise Wiltshire, which doesn’t have to listen if it doesn’t want to.
So while the Salisbury Journal is deluged with protests about controversial planning applications, how do we know who’s listening Up There where it counts?
What we really should have had by now is a city-wide debate to reach a properly thought-through consensus about what facilities we need, including whether we need another supermarket at all, and if so, where it should be.
Instead, we’re playing chase-the-chain-store along our A roads, firing off responses to one application after another, forced to weigh up the relative merits of sites chosen by the big players to suit themselves.
If localism (and I suspect David Cameron is by now wishing he'd never heard that word) is to have any meaning at all, it surely means that genuine local community planning, of a kind that we have not yet been invited to take part in, should be the first priority.
P.S. I remember Amesbury people wanted an Asda on Solstice Park a few years ago. They got a Tesco on their London Road instead. And now the Co-op’s closing because everyone goes to Tesco. Be warned.