Beam me up, Scotty - resistance is futile

SALISBURY area board organised a very constructive debate on Salisbury’s parking charges last week.
The trouble was, only about 50 people turned up. And several of those were city or Wiltshire councillors.
Four years ago, when we faced a massive hike in our charges, a protest petition organised by the Journal amassed 7,000 signatures.
It led to an admission by Wiltshire leader Jane Scott that her administration had “let the city down”.
So what’s changed? The new proposals include a whopping £9 all-day rate and a derisory 10p change to some (not all) central short-stay tariffs when our businesses have been begging for serious reductions to revive the city’s fortunes.
So why the low turnout?
As the board chairman Ricky Rogers rightly put it, people have ceased to believe that anything they say will make any difference. The public’s mood, as in so many political matters, is one of sullen acceptance of our own impotence.
“Resistance is futile,” as those nasty old Borg were fond of saying in Star Trek. “Your culture will adapt to service us.”
Of those at the meeting, 55 per cent admitted they hadn’t even bothered to fill in Wiltshire’s parking review questionnaire. And these were the public-spirited few who had taken the trouble to turn up!
One commonly expressed view was: “If Wiltshire really wants our views, why didn’t they ask us first, rather than presenting us with a package for the whole county and expecting us to pick it apart?”
Others pointed out that the questions were phrased in such a way that they couldn’t give the answers they wished to. They called it “cynical” and “patronising”.
We didn’t even get round to talking about parking meters and the big increase in takings that the council expects when it gets rid of convenient 15-minute and 45-minute slots and raises the price of half-hour stays.
We know our city contributes more than half the parking revenue of the county, and is the only place that makes a profit.
And the feeling of the meeting was that while Wiltshire insists on any changes to its regime being ‘cost neutral’ it’s not going to forgo this nice little earner.
Making people in other towns pay more doesn’t seem to be on its agenda. But why should Salisbury folk subsidise the rest of the county?
We’re a low-wage economy and most users of the car parks are locals, not tourists, who tend to arrive in coaches.
Someone at the meeting suggested free parking countywide, funded by an increase in council tax. Would that be an idea worth exploring?
Another asked: “What about a cut-price parking season ticket for local people?” Worth a try?

Comfort and joy for Salisbury's 'late night economy'

CHEERS! Wiltshire councillors have decided we don’t need a tougher licensing regime to clobber anyone planning to open a bar, club or restaurant selling alcohol in the city centre.
Whilst there is a regrettable amount of drink-fuelled yobbery in Salisbury, I don’t believe such a crackdown would prevent it. Rather, the problem would move a few yards outside the boundary of any newly-introduced ‘cumulative impact area’.
The idea will be reviewed in a year’s time, i.e. it’s been kicked into the long grass. Let it stay there.
I do sympathise with those residents who have found unwelcome deposits or even overnight guests on their doorsteps but these are matters for the police, not excuses to load what is euphemistically called our ‘late night economy’ with regulatory burdens.
That being said, the Police Federation is telling us that “substantially” fewer arrests have taken place since the closure of the Wilton Road station because detainees have to be carted off to Melksham.
So we may have good reason to fear an increase in anti-social behaviour.
The Wiltshire force, on the other hand, says the numbers have remained stable.
We need facts and figures. We shouldn’t have to choose whether to take the word of one side against the other when it appears that an internal battle is raging over such an important issue.
After all, it’s amazing the way you can spin an argument depending on your point of view.
It’s easy, for instance, to say, as was reported this week, that most people “unless they’re directly affected” are in favour of the development of hundreds of houses around the perimeter of Old Sarum airfield.
What about those who are directly affected? Not just neighbours, pilots, plane-spotters and history buffs but those manning our struggling public services.
And more importantly, what about English Heritage’s view that this unique little survivor from World War One needs to be preserved in its entirety? That’s a lost cause now.
I may be idealistic, but I’m not naïve. I wasn’t shocked by the way this development site was shoehorned into the South Wiltshire Core Strategy at the last minute, without proper public consultation. But I was disgusted and continue to be so.

No fairytale ending for Pixie, or for Salisbury

WELL now, I haven’t been so shocked since Sunday, when head judge Len booted the lovely Pixie – the best dancer on Strictly - off the show.
He was, apparently, less than cha-cha-charmed by her illegal lifts.
Still, he could have let her off with a caution.
I, for one, won’t be watching the rest of the series because it can no longer maintain any pretence of being a serious competition.
But even that earth-shattering departure pales into insignificance compared with Monday’s announcement that the city may never get the new custody suite that was promised when we were being told not to worry our little heads about the loss of our old police station.
As Craig would say: “It’s a disaaaaster, darling.”
I find it very sad, quite frankly, that the poor old Chief Constable, Pat Geenty, was the one who had to make this announcement, rather than the Police Commissioner, Angus Macpherson.
It may have been, as Mr Macpherson states, the Chief Constable’s decision to review the location of the county’s custody units.
But it looks odd, given that Mr Geenty threatened as recently as April to resign if the city wasn’t allowed to keep one.
Now he’s having to execute a tricky reverse fleckerl, claiming he didn’t understand quite what a parlous state the force’s finances were going to be in.
He can only afford two custody units across the county instead of three, it seems, and one of those has to be in Swindon.
But sure as eggs is eggs, Mr Macpherson and his political masters must have known this.
Or did no-one at the top have a proper understanding, just eight months ago, of the savings required from all our public services over the next three years? It almost beggars belief.
Unfortunately we can’t vote off the Commissioner.
Of course this announcement is equivalent to a ‘Ten from Len’ for Wiltshire Council, which owns the land at Churchfields earmarked (alas, so briefly) for the cells and has always wanted to see it developed for lucrative housing.
Oh me, oh my, and they say journalists are cynical!
Officially, at least, there’s still a shred of hope that the review will come down in favour of Salisbury rather than some more northerly nick, saving our miscreants and their lawyers a 36-mile far-from-quickstep home.
But I fear that’s about as likely as any normal woman being able to stand up, let alone prance about, on heels the height of those sported by Tess, Claudia and Darcey.
Or Bruno managing to get through an entire show without parting company with his chair.
As they’re fond of saying on my (ex) favourite programme: It’s the moment of truth.

Behold St Nick, the saviour of Stonehenge!

SADLY, there aren’t many shepherds abiding in the fields around Stonehenge these days but if there were, they’d have been treated to two visitations from on high this week.
Nick Clegg must have thought he was bringing glad tidings of great joy with his announcement that on/off tunnel project will finally go ahead (I’ll believe it when I see it).
But the season of goodwill proved short-lived for the Deputy Prime Minister when local LibDems made it clear they wouldn’t be forming an angelic chorus of approval.
Actually, their parliamentary candidate Reeten Banerji told the media, the £1.1bn* hole in the ground wasn’t ‘just what he’d always wanted’.
Embarrassingly for his leader, he then called for a local referendum on a range of improvements to the A303 instead, thereby handing a political gift to his party’s opponents.
Running the Liberal Democrats has always looked a bit like herding cats to me, and whilst independent thinking in the politically-inclined is always to be admired, I do feel a little bit sorry on this occasion for Westminster’s would-be ‘St Nick’.
To cap it all he was upstaged within hours by the Prime Minister, who couldn’t resist ‘doing a Barack Obama’ and striding masterfully across the prehistoric landscape for a photo-opportunity whilst pronouncing impressively that the tunnel is now an “unstoppable force”.
It’s a wonder Ed Miliband wasn’t discovered lurking behind a standing stone, hoping to tiptoe into shot for a share of the glory.
He really can’t win, can he? Mr Clegg, I mean. Or do I mean Mr Miliband? Or come to that, Mr Cameron? Gosh, aren’t we voters spoilt for choice?
Our little city, on the other hand, is onto a real winner with its Christmas market.
This year more than 120 coachloads of day-trippers from as far afield as South Wales and the West Midlands are dropping by to soak up the twinkly atmosphere and gluhwein and splash out on stocking-fillers.
I don’t know how much extra cash the market attracts to the rest of Salisbury, but wouldn’t it be nice to see a few more stalls in the High Street or the Maltings to spread the benefits more widely?
Incidentally, I’d love to know whether we have posters promoting our market in Winchester, to match their cheeky ad at the Castle Road roundabout.
For me, though, what really gets that festive feeling started every year is the totally delightful St Thomas’s Church Christmas tree festival.
In the same way that we treasure the tinsel-and-glue-smudged decorations our children bring home so proudly from school, we should nurture and support this homespun charmer of an event that gives so much pleasure to the creators and admirers of the trees, and raises so much money for good causes, too.
It’s what Christmas is really all about. (Yes, clichés are acceptable at this time of year.)

*Figures courtesy of the Department of Guesswork