INTERESTING that such a major retail player as Dunelm Mill is moving in to Salisbury.
As a near neighbour of Matalan and Homebase, it’ll give them a run for their money in the competition for customers who fancy jazzing up their homes with the latest accessories.
Arriving, as it does, hot on the heels of the TK Maxx offshoot HomeSense, it’ll have shoppers at the bargain end of the market spoilt for choice.
Waitrose and Tesco have been busily revamping their stores to ensure that they each maintain their appeal and their market share.
With the thousands of new homes springing up around the city, all of them needing to be kitted out, Dunelm bosses have rightly spotted a golden opportunity.
And a rival for our established stores can only be a good thing when it comes to keeping prices low.
With luck, it will also mean that fewer of us feel the need to drive to Southampton and tramp miles through the horrendous maze of bizarrely named furnishings that is Ikea when all we really need is half a dozen wine glasses and a couple of candle holders.
By the time we’ve paid for our petrol and possibly a plateful of those puzzlingly popular meatballs, we’re not exactly quids in, are we?
Retail is already Salisbury’s biggest source of employment, accounting for almost one in five jobs. And the newcomer will create 65 more.
The downside is that it will lure yet more custom away from the city centre, where there’s already lots on offer for those of us eager to freshen up our décor.
Size does matter in this context, I admit. Many of our quaint old buildings are simply too small to display enough stuff to offer us the choices we demand these days.
I don’t particularly enjoy shopping in soulless retail parks full of mammoth warehouses.
But Southampton Road is what it is. It isn’t going to go away, and it looks less hideous when its buildings are bustling with life than when they’re vacant, staring at us with blank eyes as we drive past.
And for many, many people, the free parking there is understandably a major consideration.
Let’s hope Wiltshire’s Tory leaders – who, by and large, are not short of a few bob – bear that in mind in the coming weeks when they’re mulling over the level at which they’ll set the city’s new parking charges.
But don’t hold your breath. What they give with one hand, they’ll take away with the other because they insist that the final result must be ‘cost neutral’.
In other words, they seem to have already ruled out the possibility that if they reduce the costs for everyone, more people will come.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Aren't we lucky, Wiltshire's such a brilliant council?
IF Wiltshire really is the fifth best council in the country, there’s only one question to ask, isn’t there?
What on earth are the others like?
The council has been glorying in the solemn judgement of the Daily Telegraph that homeowners here enjoy “the benefit of good local service”.
Hoots of derision appear to be the taxpaying public’s response.
“A tidal wave of negativity” was how one reader accurately summed up the comments on the Salisbury Journal’s Facebook page about the Telegraph’s verdict.
Another asked whether the survey had been carried out by the Chuckle Brothers.
Actually, the Telegraph article amounted to nothing more than a couple of sentences of risible editorial providing a figleaf for high-end estate agents advertising some extremely pricey properties.
“It is a fabulous area,” gushed Rupert Sturgis of Knight Frank Chichester, according to the paper.
Chichester? Note to Telegraph editor: That’s in West Sussex. Mr Sturgis is based in Cirencester. That’s not in Wiltshire either.
“The county council has worked closely with Malmesbury (two-bedroom terraced houses in the town sell for under £160,000) council and surrounding villages to draw up a plan for future development,” Rupert burbled on in his efforts to interest us in a Grade II-listed six-bedroom farmhouse for a mere £2.25million.
Well, he should know, since his dad is based in Wiltshire, and is the cabinet member in charge of strategic planning and development management.
I don’t have space here to repeat the reasons I’ve given in previous columns for my opinion that the unitary authority hasn’t done us much good in the south.
But I will just draw to your attention the fact that Wiltshire’s about to unleash another of its so-called ‘public consultations’ on us.
What’s it about this time? New parking charges.
I wonder whether the day will ever come when parking charges are listed in a national newspaper under the heading ‘All the good things Wiltshire’s done for its taxpayers’?
OH joy! Oh bliss! This is better than Strictly!
I can barely contain my excitement. As I write, I’m also watching the first live internet broadcast of a Wiltshire Council meeting.
I shouldn’t mock. Webcams do at least offer us a way of keeping tabs on what they’re up to in Trowbridge without having to make the epic journey across the Plain.
Now the members are settling into their seats. Now Cllr Roy White is telling them that this is “history in the making” which will “help enhance the transparency” of decision-making and that if the fire alarm goes off it won’t be a practice drill, it’ll be the real thing.
Do you know, if you are unavoidably detained by urgent business and don’t want to miss an episode of this enthralling entertainment, you can watch it on catch-up for six months afterwards?
And you can shout at them from the privacy of your own home.
What on earth are the others like?
The council has been glorying in the solemn judgement of the Daily Telegraph that homeowners here enjoy “the benefit of good local service”.
Hoots of derision appear to be the taxpaying public’s response.
“A tidal wave of negativity” was how one reader accurately summed up the comments on the Salisbury Journal’s Facebook page about the Telegraph’s verdict.
Another asked whether the survey had been carried out by the Chuckle Brothers.
Actually, the Telegraph article amounted to nothing more than a couple of sentences of risible editorial providing a figleaf for high-end estate agents advertising some extremely pricey properties.
“It is a fabulous area,” gushed Rupert Sturgis of Knight Frank Chichester, according to the paper.
Chichester? Note to Telegraph editor: That’s in West Sussex. Mr Sturgis is based in Cirencester. That’s not in Wiltshire either.
“The county council has worked closely with Malmesbury (two-bedroom terraced houses in the town sell for under £160,000) council and surrounding villages to draw up a plan for future development,” Rupert burbled on in his efforts to interest us in a Grade II-listed six-bedroom farmhouse for a mere £2.25million.
Well, he should know, since his dad is based in Wiltshire, and is the cabinet member in charge of strategic planning and development management.
I don’t have space here to repeat the reasons I’ve given in previous columns for my opinion that the unitary authority hasn’t done us much good in the south.
But I will just draw to your attention the fact that Wiltshire’s about to unleash another of its so-called ‘public consultations’ on us.
What’s it about this time? New parking charges.
I wonder whether the day will ever come when parking charges are listed in a national newspaper under the heading ‘All the good things Wiltshire’s done for its taxpayers’?
OH joy! Oh bliss! This is better than Strictly!
I can barely contain my excitement. As I write, I’m also watching the first live internet broadcast of a Wiltshire Council meeting.
I shouldn’t mock. Webcams do at least offer us a way of keeping tabs on what they’re up to in Trowbridge without having to make the epic journey across the Plain.
Now the members are settling into their seats. Now Cllr Roy White is telling them that this is “history in the making” which will “help enhance the transparency” of decision-making and that if the fire alarm goes off it won’t be a practice drill, it’ll be the real thing.
Do you know, if you are unavoidably detained by urgent business and don’t want to miss an episode of this enthralling entertainment, you can watch it on catch-up for six months afterwards?
And you can shout at them from the privacy of your own home.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Why is Salisbury's tip sending useful goods to landfill?
AM I alone in finding it tricky to reverse into a parking space at the Churchfields tip – sorry, household recycling centre?
And before anyone makes any tired jokes about women drivers – don’t, because my sense of humour has been severely strained by repeated trips to this ‘facility’ during a major clearout.
I don’t know when it was built, but it wasn’t with the modern 4x4 in mind.
My car’s not one of those nippy little numbers that turns on a sixpence. When the world and his wife are emptying their garden rubbish, there’s precious little room to swing round and back into a narrow space between other vehicles.
Here’s a tip for Wiltshire from me – build a bigger one!
While we’re on the subject, we’re all supposed to ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’. So why can’t tip users take away other folk’s unwanted belongings?
Several times lately we’ve been to a tip in Dorset. It’s small.
But it has an area where people can leave surplus stuff for others to help themselves. Recipients make a token payment which I believe goes to good causes.
If things aren’t rehomed after a day or two, they’re binned.
In Salisbury I’ve seen loads of small items that someone might appreciate just chucked into the landfill skip.
The Trussell Trust has cottoned on to this, and I’m sure its shop, cannily sited on the corner of Stephenson Road, diverts lots of furniture.
It looks like there’s an arrangement in place at the tip, too, for someone to pick up the bits and pieces stacked alongside the staff hut.
But there’s still so much waste.
In summer, we sit on metal garden chairs ‘liberated’ from the tip, with a matching table, in district council days (with permission, I should add).
Painted green, after several years of benign neglect they’ve acquired that fashionable ‘distressed’ look.
Another time I picked up a wood and chrome bar stool. After a spell as a perch in a guitar-player’s bedroom, it’s used in the Harnham Handyman’s shed.
A few months ago I waylaid a lady approaching the landfill skip bearing a wicker basket with leather straps.
“Excuse me,” I said, “don’t you want that? It would make a lovely sewing basket for a girl I know who doesn’t have much money.”
She handed it over with a smile. It turned out to be a retro picnic set. “I didn’t know what else to do with it,” she told me. “I’ll be really glad if someone can use it.” And someone does.
Last week a sweet little raffia basket, containing thread, tape measure, etc, was about to be chucked into the skip by an attendant.
I asked if I could have it (for the same someone).
“People aren’t allowed to take things away,” he replied. Those are the rules. Big notices say so. Why?
YOU have until Monday to respond to the consultation on whether Wiltshire’s fire service should merge with Dorset’s, an option both fire chiefs recommend.
Ignore the ludicrous questions about sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity.
Just help save our fire service at wiltsfire.gov.uk/strengtheningourfrs.
And before anyone makes any tired jokes about women drivers – don’t, because my sense of humour has been severely strained by repeated trips to this ‘facility’ during a major clearout.
I don’t know when it was built, but it wasn’t with the modern 4x4 in mind.
My car’s not one of those nippy little numbers that turns on a sixpence. When the world and his wife are emptying their garden rubbish, there’s precious little room to swing round and back into a narrow space between other vehicles.
Here’s a tip for Wiltshire from me – build a bigger one!
While we’re on the subject, we’re all supposed to ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’. So why can’t tip users take away other folk’s unwanted belongings?
Several times lately we’ve been to a tip in Dorset. It’s small.
But it has an area where people can leave surplus stuff for others to help themselves. Recipients make a token payment which I believe goes to good causes.
If things aren’t rehomed after a day or two, they’re binned.
In Salisbury I’ve seen loads of small items that someone might appreciate just chucked into the landfill skip.
The Trussell Trust has cottoned on to this, and I’m sure its shop, cannily sited on the corner of Stephenson Road, diverts lots of furniture.
It looks like there’s an arrangement in place at the tip, too, for someone to pick up the bits and pieces stacked alongside the staff hut.
But there’s still so much waste.
In summer, we sit on metal garden chairs ‘liberated’ from the tip, with a matching table, in district council days (with permission, I should add).
Painted green, after several years of benign neglect they’ve acquired that fashionable ‘distressed’ look.
Another time I picked up a wood and chrome bar stool. After a spell as a perch in a guitar-player’s bedroom, it’s used in the Harnham Handyman’s shed.
A few months ago I waylaid a lady approaching the landfill skip bearing a wicker basket with leather straps.
“Excuse me,” I said, “don’t you want that? It would make a lovely sewing basket for a girl I know who doesn’t have much money.”
She handed it over with a smile. It turned out to be a retro picnic set. “I didn’t know what else to do with it,” she told me. “I’ll be really glad if someone can use it.” And someone does.
Last week a sweet little raffia basket, containing thread, tape measure, etc, was about to be chucked into the skip by an attendant.
I asked if I could have it (for the same someone).
“People aren’t allowed to take things away,” he replied. Those are the rules. Big notices say so. Why?
YOU have until Monday to respond to the consultation on whether Wiltshire’s fire service should merge with Dorset’s, an option both fire chiefs recommend.
Ignore the ludicrous questions about sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity.
Just help save our fire service at wiltsfire.gov.uk/strengtheningourfrs.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Free-range pigs are not a blot on the Old Sarum landscape
DRIVING past Old Sarum, or walking up on the monument itself, I always enjoy seeing the pigs rooting around on the fields alongside the A345, living as free-range a life as it’s possible for farmed animals to do in our industrialised society.
I certainly don’t tut-tut and say to myself: “What unsightly agricultural activity!”
Apparently, though, some people do - among them Feilden & Mawson, the architects who have drawn up a proposed management plan for our historic airfield.
That’s how their document classifies the pig farm: “Unsightly agriculture.”
In an earlier draft they also called it “intensive”, despite the fact that free-range is exactly the opposite of the inhumane factory farming methods which are still permitted by some, otherwise civilised, European nations.
The architects say: “The visual impact of pig arks in the fields around the airfield is a major negative factor on the setting of both the airfield and the Old Sarum Scheduled Ancient Monument.”
Luckily for the pigs, and for all of us who like our free-range bacon - the kind that doesn’t turn to water the minute it hits the frying pan - the architects acknowledge that their little huts are “outside the control of the owners of the airfield”. However, they add helpfully: “They are on council controlled land which could be managed in the medium term.”
Ominous, that word “managed”. I rather thought the land was already managed – by a farmer.
Or do they mean tidied up? How do you tidy up free-range pigs, I wonder?
I also wonder why they might be proposing this course of action.
Is it simply to improve the setting of our First World War airfield?
Or is it because someone wants to build houses (470 is the figure I’ve seen mentioned) round the edges? And because buyers might turn up their noses at the prospect of porcine neighbours happily wallowing in the mud?
According to Laverstock and Ford parish council this “conservation management” scheme would destroy 65 per cent of the airfield’s surviving perimeter, one of the things that makes it so special in conservation terms.
English Heritage agrees. Both bodies regard the plan as “not fit for purpose”. The parish council says it would be more apt to call it a “development framework”.
We all recall the childhood tale of the Three Little Piggies who build their homes of straw, wood and brick respectively. Only the brick one survived the huffing and puffing of the Big Bad Wolf.
What chance have a few rows of rustic arks, do you reckon, against the ferocious wind of change that’s howling through towns, cities and green spaces the length of Britain, blowing in the diggers, the concrete mixers, and the big money?
I certainly don’t tut-tut and say to myself: “What unsightly agricultural activity!”
Apparently, though, some people do - among them Feilden & Mawson, the architects who have drawn up a proposed management plan for our historic airfield.
That’s how their document classifies the pig farm: “Unsightly agriculture.”
In an earlier draft they also called it “intensive”, despite the fact that free-range is exactly the opposite of the inhumane factory farming methods which are still permitted by some, otherwise civilised, European nations.
The architects say: “The visual impact of pig arks in the fields around the airfield is a major negative factor on the setting of both the airfield and the Old Sarum Scheduled Ancient Monument.”
Luckily for the pigs, and for all of us who like our free-range bacon - the kind that doesn’t turn to water the minute it hits the frying pan - the architects acknowledge that their little huts are “outside the control of the owners of the airfield”. However, they add helpfully: “They are on council controlled land which could be managed in the medium term.”
Ominous, that word “managed”. I rather thought the land was already managed – by a farmer.
Or do they mean tidied up? How do you tidy up free-range pigs, I wonder?
I also wonder why they might be proposing this course of action.
Is it simply to improve the setting of our First World War airfield?
Or is it because someone wants to build houses (470 is the figure I’ve seen mentioned) round the edges? And because buyers might turn up their noses at the prospect of porcine neighbours happily wallowing in the mud?
According to Laverstock and Ford parish council this “conservation management” scheme would destroy 65 per cent of the airfield’s surviving perimeter, one of the things that makes it so special in conservation terms.
English Heritage agrees. Both bodies regard the plan as “not fit for purpose”. The parish council says it would be more apt to call it a “development framework”.
We all recall the childhood tale of the Three Little Piggies who build their homes of straw, wood and brick respectively. Only the brick one survived the huffing and puffing of the Big Bad Wolf.
What chance have a few rows of rustic arks, do you reckon, against the ferocious wind of change that’s howling through towns, cities and green spaces the length of Britain, blowing in the diggers, the concrete mixers, and the big money?
Monday, October 6, 2014
Food festival shoppers failed to spot a free parking bargain
PRESSED for time, I paid only a flying visit to Salisbury’s Food & Drink Festival a couple of weeks ago.
It was a shame, since the event is a great favourite of mine, and eating (too much) could be classed as one of my hobbies. But the sun was shining and the stallholders seemed to be doing very well without me!
Now among the things that aren’t great favourites of mine, as regular readers may have gathered, is Wiltshire Council. Its unpalatable parking charges have provided me with fodder for many an article.
So naturally I drove to Culver Street where, it being a Sunday, parking was free thanks to an arrangement negotiated with the council by the Salisbury BID team.
Halfway through the morning, the multi-storey was still two-thirds empty.
But, I was astonished to see, Brown Street – where motorists must part with their hard-earned cash for the privilege of saving themselves a walk of perhaps 30 seconds from Culver Street – was packed.
I wondered whether this was an indication that we have turned into a nation of lardies who are too idle to use our legs, or whether people simply weren’t aware that there was somewhere close by where they didn’t need to pay.
If they’d read their local paper, of course, they would have known, as the Journal has given the initiative plenty of coverage on its news pages.
But if they hadn’t, they probably won’t be reading this column either.
So may I suggest that more effort is made by the BID to publicise the bargain?
Nobody’s going to look on websites unless they know there’s some reason to do so. So that’s not an option for reaching out to the masses.
What, then? Giant placards around the city centre, maybe? Someone dressed up in an outsize dragon costume (to reflect our historic connections with the St George legend) handing out flyers in the Market Place on a few Tuesdays and Saturdays?
I’m sure it wouldn’t take much more ingenuity than that for the word to get out – after all, everyone loves a freebie.
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