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.