Wouldn't it be fun to have a flea market in Salisbury?

ON Sunday I took the puppy to a flea market. Luckily she didn’t come back with any.
Go on, groan if you feel like it, I know it’s a terrible joke but I couldn’t help myself.
My future daughter-in-law and I are in search of retro wedding decorations, and the tremendous array of stalls on the Bath & West showground at Shepton Mallet proved to be a very happy hunting ground.
I wouldn’t normally take a dog into the middle of such an enormous gathering – there were thousands and thousands of browsers, and just watching them carting their weird and wonderful purchases around was entertaining enough – but no-one was free to look after her at home all morning.
Apart from nearly pulling my arms out of their sockets as she tried to make friends with anyone and everyone, she coped very well.
As did my husband when he got home just after us, reacting with commendable calm to the delivery of two French barn doors, in a state of romantic decay, in the back of a large van half an hour later.
I hadn’t told him what I’d bought (I thought they could be a decorative garden feature, like the ones you see in all those impossibly perfect lifestyle magazine photo-shoots), but made him wait for the surprise.
The surprise being that they had nothing to do with what we’d gone out looking for, I just fell in love with them.
With a slightly world-weary air, but no audible grumbling, he stacked them in the garage to await further attention.
The guy who sold me them was a fascinating character. He lives in France and buys his stock there, but has a business unit in Kent.
He has a collection of 22 cars and more than 800 teddy bears.
He also has a home in Goa, and cooks authentic curries on a little burner in the back of his van when he’s at markets and fairs. What a great life.
Anyway, I hear you ask, what’s the point of this story?
Well, I was wondering whether we could have a flea market in Salisbury.
The city council wants, quite rightly, to make greater use of our expensively revamped Market Place, and has been advertising for extra staff to help make it possible.
The occasional vintage markets are pretty and popular, but I’m visualising something on a larger scale, maybe every couple of months, occupying the whole of the Guildhall and market squares, with dealers offering furniture, kitchenalia, vintage clothing, architectural antiques, old books, you name it ….
More upmarket than a car boot, but still a place where you never know what treasures you’ll find.
It could even have an indoor section for delicate stuff, in the Guildhall.
Judging by the crowds I saw at the weekend it would be a massive attraction.
Just the thing to fill that wide, empty space on an otherwise quiet Sunday.

Let's go to the drive-thru on the park and ride bus!

MAYBE I should take up a new career as the patron saint of lost causes.
During the lifetime of my Salisbury Journal column I’ve championed quite a few of them.
I fear that the next addition to the list will be the battle to save Old Sarum airfield from being reduced to a ‘heritage attraction’ marooned amid a sea of new housing estates.
But coming up fast on the outside is the plan for a drive-through McDonald’s and 65-bedroom Premier Inn on the little plot of wild land between Tesco and Southampton Road.
This scheme has resurfaced (apt phrase, given that the land floods every year!) and I love it that McDonald’s has submitted a Travel Plan which begins: “If we can all modify our travel habits, even slightly, we can start to make a difference.” This for a drive-through (sorry, ‘drive-thru’, I tend to forget we’re all part of the American empire now) restaurant!!
But of course the plan is only intended to show how staff will be encouraged to car-share, cycle, walk or use buses.
What about the stream of extra traffic this development is likely to attract to the most clogged-up pinch point of the city’s overloaded road system?
In fact, at one point the supporting paperwork suggests that the development will “reinforce the park and ride location and will support its use” thereby “reducing congestion on the A36”. Oh yes, let’s go to the ‘drive-thru’ on the bus!
Sadly, I’ve seen nothing to suggest that this type of development on the site is unacceptable in principle to our planners. Eventually, I am sure, it will happen – or something like it will.
So while it may sound dull, it’s great news in fact, that the Wiltshire Core Strategy was finally approved and adopted on Tuesday.
It means that after much horse-trading, Wiltshire Council has convinced Whitehall it has allocated enough space for all the new homes and businesses it is required by officialdom to accommodate.
Whilst it’s a very far from perfect document which dictates that in a decade’s time our city will have doubled in size whether we like it or not (maybe it will be big enough to merit a unitary authority of its own?) it will make it much easier for council planners to turn down speculative planning applications on unsuitable sites.
In the meantime, what a ‘gateway’ to southern Salisbury we are likely to have. Golden arches and – who knows? - a supermarket on stilts. Very classy!

P.S. Irritating things. Why do comedians, at the end of their routine, say things like “I’ve been Dara O’Briain, thanks for listening”?

Do they imagine the audience don't know who they've come to see?

Airfield protesters need an old-fashioned hero like Biggles

SOME of my old Biggles books turned up in the attic while I was searching for the Christmas decorations.
How I thrilled to the adventures of the World War One flying ace, passed down by my father’s cousin, when I was a child. The illustrations looked dated even then.
Biggles, Pioneer Air Fighter was one I loved. Biggles of the Camel Squadron was another. Whilst checking online that I recalled the titles correctly, I was amazed to see you can still buy a box set.
Well, if the fictional hero’s creator, Captain WE Johns, could see what’s been happening at Old Sarum, at the very time we’ve been paying national tribute to the heroics of his generation, he wouldn’t just be turning in his grave, he’d be looping the loop.
In the next few weeks an application will land on a planner’s desk to build 470 homes around the edges of our historic airfield, which is a conservation area because it is a unique relic of those glory days.
Opposition has been growing, not only to the principle of development on parts of this site, but to the sheer scale of it.
There’s a Facebook group, called Save Old Sarum, with almost 800 members, and an online petition is taking off at change.org. with nearly 700 signatures.
Laverstock and Ford parish council says a conservation area management plan should be in place before any application is approved.
The Wiltshire core strategy says that, too. It talks about development only being allowed if it ‘enhances the historic environment’, ‘protects the amenity of existing residents’ and ‘retains and safeguards flying’.
Residents of Ford certainly don’t feel their amenity is being protected. They are extremely unhappy about the threat to the rural character of their settlement.
The operators argue that development money is needed to sustain the future of flying at the airfield. I haven’t seen a figure put on it.
But the volume of building they are talking about will do far more than keep a dwindling band of weekend pilots (facing stricter controls to minimise noise) airborne. It will make some people exceedingly rich.
And what if Wiltshire Council, in accordance with its own policy, insists that 40 per cent of the new homes are affordable?
If the occupants of social housing have no choice about where they live, how long before they complain about aircraft nuisance?
All three of the main parties’ general election candidates are now taking an active interest in this proposal at the behest of the residents.
My fear is that if this becomes seen as a party political issue it will go to the strategic rather than the southern planning committee, where councillors will divide along tribal lines, a Tory majority from outside the area will nod it through, and the rights and wrongs of this highly contentious issue will never be properly considered.

What would be worth paying more council tax for?

WE’RE being softened up for a rise in council tax along with more service cuts.
Wiltshire’s cabinet member for finance, Dick Tonge, warned in last week’s Journal that even if Trowbridge imposes compulsory redundancies, we’re likely to have to cough up more.
I’ll be watching with unholy glee as the council’s hapless communications staff try to put a positive spin on this one.
They are usually required to adopt a ‘first, the good news, then the bad news’ approach, burying details of cuts or failed inspections and other disasters in the tenth paragraph of a press release in the hope that we won’t notice.
They are a great bunch, but the endless stream of inanity that they are ordered to spew forth is one aspect of the council’s spending programme that’s well overdue for a review.
Here’s one recent prime example from my inbox:
“Drivers are being urged to keep safe on the roads this winter by slowing down and following precautions for the cold weather conditions.
“John Thomson, cabinet member for highways, said: “While it is tempting for us to try and get to our destinations as quickly as possible, when conditions are bad there is nothing that cannot wait a few more minutes.”
Ask yourself: Do we really need to be paying for the production of this patronising drivel? Does anyone honestly believe that it will have saved even one life? Has Mr Thomson nothing better to do?
It reminds me of the spendthrift days when some authorities, in particular inner-city ones, employed ‘five a day officers’, on salaries well above the national average, to exhort us to eat more fruit and veg.
Interestingly, there’s one thing that people wouldn’t mind paying a bit more council tax for, and that’s free car parks. Well, free at the point of use, at least, like our health service.
There was strong support for the idea at the recent public meeting about parking charges organised by our area board.
And just think of the administrative savings…



ON a completely unrelated subject, I take my hat off to our cathedral’s clerk of works, Gary Price, after seeing the frankly terrifying photos of him dangling from the top of the spire in last week’s papers.
Heights don’t worry me unduly, but I’d need a substantial platform under my feet before I’d be able to enjoy the breathtaking views from up there.
I chatted with Gary a couple of times in the summer, when he was keeping a protective eye on the peregrine falcons’ nest at the top of the tower, and I was struck by his enthusiasm.
His job is clearly a lot more fun than its title might suggest.

An open and shut case for our police and crime commissioner

WELL, I never! If only successive governments over the years had realised there’s a way to cut crime figures at a stroke.
How? Simples! Just shut the police station.
How proud we should be that the Wiltshire force is leading by example, with 40 per cent fewer arrests in the Salisbury area between July and October.
I understand Inspector Dave Minty’s explanation that three-quarters of this fall is accounted for by the loss of the local nick where most arrests used to take place.
So presumably there’s a corresponding increase in arrests at Melksham, or wherever our ne’er-do-wells are taken to be interviewed nowadays, and where they answer bail? Do we have any statistics for that?
And what about the other quarter? Arrests are down in the Bemerton Heath, Harnham, city centre, Friary and Southampton Road, Castle Road and Bishopdown beat areas, we’re told.
Pretty much everywhere, in fact.
Have we experienced a sudden outbreak of good behaviour and model citizenship, or could there be some other explanation?
Inspector Minty says it’s “a normal variation” and “not statistically significant”.
And in case you harbour any doubts, the Crime Commissioner himself has stepped in to reassure us that the lack of custody facilities is having “no effect” on policing in the city.
In fact, Angus Macpherson says, there has been “no diminution” of arrests in Salisbury. “No change,” as he stresses.
How can this be? Has he not seen the same figures as Inspector Minty?
Well, I suppose it’s easy to make fun.
But Mr Macpherson doesn’t help his own cause when he expresses disappointment that our local judge, MP and solicitors have all revealed how fed up they are with the way plans for a new custody unit have been put on hold.
Does he think they don’t know what they’re talking about?
Then he patronisingly tells us that turning the police station into a University Technical College is a Good Thing because “good employment and education is a good way of reducing crime”.
Oh, so that’s why they did it. If they hadn’t shut the police station they couldn’t have built the college and of course, once young people are properly educated and gainfully employed they won’t do anything wrong any more and then – hey presto – we really won’t need a police station.
Of course, I see it now.