If only we could vote on Devo Max for Salisbury

WHY are hard-pressed traders having to pay a levy to prettify our city centre and lure in more customers?
It’s quite simple. Because our local authorities don’t have the money to do what, undeniably, needs to be done.
And because a sizeable majority of businesses that bothered to vote on the issue were in favour.
I never thought I’d be quoting Margaret Thatcher’s words with approval, but as the old battleaxe put it: “There is no alternative.”
Having said which, I’m aware that only a third of those eligible to take part in the poll did so.
You’d think an issue as important as Salisbury’s future prosperity would attract rather more interest among those who make their living here.
Maybe the people who didn’t participate run businesses that don’t rely on kerb appeal and they couldn’t perceive any benefit to themselves from forking out. That would be a short-sighted view in my opinion.
And if it’s the case, I’d politely suggest to Wiltshire Council that its vision of a ‘community led’ future with minimal public services is just that – a dream. Well, the decline of public services isn’t an illusion, of course. But the ‘community led’ bit might well be.
When people aren’t interested in exercising their democratic rights, do we have a community any longer? Discuss.
In the meantime, like the Scottish Nationalists, those who don’t like the outcome of a properly conducted poll will just have to put up with it.
At least the Scots, and our traders, were asked what they wanted.
Last month the Journal featured a letter from Wiltshire councillor Richard Britton objecting to my objection (bear with me) to his Trowbridge masters abolishing our youth service and leaving it to area boards to pick up the pieces.
He said I couldn’t “have it both ways”. I couldn’t complain about Trowbridge making decisions “remotely” and then complain about it devolving responsibility for the consequences of those decisions to local people.
Cllr Britton seems to think this was a generous gesture amounting to some kind of Devo Max for Salisbury. I don’t think he was being ironic when he called it a “brave move” by the Conservative leadership.
‘A piece of political buck-passing once you’ve made a complete dog’s breakfast of a viable service’ seems to me to come closer to the truth.
Anyone round here remember being offered a vote on how we wanted to be ruled?

Bare buttocks in Salisbury: there are worse outrages

A MAN has been jailed this week for baring his buttocks in Salisbury Cathedral Close and pretended to be talking out of his bottom.
“Outraging public decency” was his crime.
His behaviour undoubtedly shocked and embarrassed onlookers, among them parents with young children.
I wouldn’t begin to criticise the judge’s decision. I don’t have all the information available to the court.
But I do know that our society tolerates all sorts of things that offend me far more than this without anyone being punished.
From time to time in my youth it was my unhappy duty to cobble together a couple of corny pun-filled sentences to accompany the topless pictures in the Daily Star. (Not as easy as it sounds, by the way.)
My colleagues had to take their turn, too.
It felt so wrong, and many of us hated it, but this was Manchester in the mid-Eighties, the management didn’t give a damn about sexism, and there was nothing I could have said that might not have cost me my well-paid job.
Eventually I did the sensible thing, volunteered for redundancy, and moved to a more congenial office.
It was in London, at the ill-fated Today, founded by Eddy Shah. No boobs on display there.
But no unions, either, sadly. Shah had been in the frontline of the war on collective bargaining.
And as it intensified, the Thatcher government used our supposedly non-political police force to help crush the miners and the rebels at Rupert Murdoch’s Wapping.
That wasn’t fair to anyone involved, including the police. It certainly jarred with my notion of decency, and I’d go so far as to call it an outrage.
OK, some union leaders overstepped the mark. But when is it right to fight abuse of power with another abuse of power?
Another instance. Just lately the county’s youth service has been dismantled with what I consider indecent haste.
But at least tonight, councillors on the Salisbury area board have a chance to salvagesomething from the wreckage.
The Sound Emporium, a community organisation that combines commercial and charitable work, has thrown a lifeline to the music project Bass Connection.
I do hope our elected representatives will set aside party politics and grasp it.
Teenagers who wouldn’t touch a traditional youth club with a bargepole need support from people who speak their language to develop their talents.
Bass Connection nurtures creativity. It isn’t a luxury we can no longer afford. It’s a long-term investment in society’s future.
To allow it to die – well, that would be an outrage.

The right decision for Salisbury's tourist industry

WELL done to the planning inspector who turned down a scheme to convert Salisbury’s youth hostel to retirement homes.
As the county’s tourism body VisitWiltshire told her, there’s strong demand here for budget accommodation of a type that appeals to young people.
I don’t think Tesco Towers is going to fill that niche.
The Youth Hostel Association says, somewhat sniffily, that it will “review the outcome” of its appeal and “take any decision that best serves our organisation”.
That’s fine. But the decisions that best serve Salisbury’s economy are ones that encourage tourists to stay here for longer than the average coach party of Americans, to explore a bit more than just the Cathedral and Stonehenge, and to spend money in our shops and cafes.
There’s no doubt that we will also, in due course, require more purpose-built accommodation for older people in the city, given our ageing population. And sites will have to be found.
Not this one, however.
Although the YHA has claimed that its building is no longer viable, I’ve spoken to people who are convinced they can make a go of it, have experience of the industry, and are keen to be given the opportunity.
So perhaps the YHA would be better off concentrating its efforts elsewhere, and letting someone else get on with the job?
Meanwhile our traders ought to offer a vote of thanks to city councillor Margaret Willmot for her campaigning on this issue.

I’ll be seeing the sights of Salisbury and our surrounding countryside through a visitor’s eyes myself, soon, when my mother moves down from Essex.
I’m really looking forward to it – and not only because it’ll mean an end to nightmare stop-start journeys round the M25.
Taking her out and about will give me a chance to rediscover the advantages of living here.

One of the first places on the to-do list if the weather holds out will be New Forest Lavender down at Landford, a small family business it’s a pleasure to support.
Their cream tea with lavender scones and a pot of Earl Grey is the perfect way to round off a summer afternoon.

You don't need statistics to be affected by violence

SALISBURY may not be a hotbed of violent crime, statistically speaking.
But you only have to witness one shocking incident, or be on the receiving end of a random blow when you’re passing someone else’s punch-up, and it will stay with you forever.
Like the poor 92-year-old chap who had his arm broken outside a pub in Bridge Street last month.
At his age it’s not just physical recovery, but regaining confidence, that takes a long time.
Reading about him brought to mind the summer, a decade ago, when my family hosted foreign students for a language school.
Attracted by the low prices at the same pub, one group – and I’m talking Swedes in their thirties and forties, with a penchant for traditional Icelandic knitwear – would gather there after lessons for a quiet pint.
Until the day a bunch of oiks with tattoos on their shaven heads began jumping around in the bar, getting ever closer to the students, then ‘accidentally’ bumped into one of them, taunting him: “Nice jumper, mate.”
The Scandinavians beat a hasty retreat.
I thought at the time: What an impression foreigners must get of Britons and of the behaviour we tolerate in public because we’re too scared to intervene. I’d be too scared, too.
Two or three years ago, I was window-shopping in Catherine Street when a lad – still in his teens, I should say – came marching up the opposite pavement, phone glued to his ear, effing and blinding at maximum volume and threatening extreme violence towards someone who had failed to pay him for something. Illegal substances sprang to mind.
Shoppers averted their eyes and quietly parted to let him through. Nobody wanted to attract his attention.
He was fearless, certain that he would not be challenged, and there were no police in sight.
When I mentioned to a colleague that I was thinking of writing about this, she told me she had just witnessed a fight between two men in Exeter Street.
“They were pushing and shoving, shouting and swearing, and one of them pushed his bike into the other one,” she said.
“I had to go back up the road and cross over to come down the other side, and other people were doing the same thing.
“I checked that I had my phone handy, in case someone got really hurt. You want to fulfil your civil responsibilities, but you don’t want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Most of us want nothing more than to get on with our law-abiding lives in peace.
But we share our streets with a significant minority of anti-social yobs who seem free to cause havoc whenever they feel like it.

You have to love kitchen cupboard speedcam men

HEROES of the month for me have to be the duo who created a pretend speed camera out of a kitchen cupboard.
Fed up with motorists rat-running through their village, Shrewton residents Antony Cull and Chris Fawcett used their ingenuity to build their own deterrent.
And it worked. People slowed down.
I particularly enjoyed reading Wiltshire Council’s po-faced response to this display of cost-effective individual initiative.
The council has a “robust” (that word again) system for dealing with speeding issues raised by local communities, its officers solemnly informed us.
“Issues should be referred to the local community area board, who will work with the local community to examine what speed control measures are appropriate for that particular road.”
Beseeching residents to “follow the approved procedure”, they said it was vital that any traffic control scheme was “effective and delivers the required result”.
Which, of course, the Shrewton neighbours' scheme was, and did. Overnight. Without any meetings, health and safety reports, consultations or lengthy deliberations. Job done. Who needs the nanny state?
At a time when we’re all being exhorted to run our own community services to save money, the council might at least have tried to sound a bit more grateful. No sense of humour, that’s their trouble.
I’d like to nominate the enterprising pair for one of the Journal’s Local Hero Awards, for making me smile.
And I hope that the official traffic monitoring exercise now under way in the area surrounding the A303 leads to some positive action.
I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of the authorities using number plate recognition technology to track the movements of individual vehicles – mine, or anyone else’s.
But that’s happening across the country anyway under the new vehicle tax system, whether we like it or not.
Big Brother really is watching all of us. Given the choice, I’d prefer Mr Cull and Mr Fawcett with their kitchen unit.

Elsewhere in the wonderful world of Wiltshire waffle, there’s currently what Jerry Lee Lewis might have called a whole lotta shapin’ goin’ on.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but every other news item these days seems to be inviting us to “help shape” some service or other that’s about to be smashed to smithereens.
“Have your say” is another favourite.
“Have a heart” is my response. You already know what you want to do. Almost inevitably, it involves a reduced public service, and I don’t suppose anything we say is going to make much difference.