Climate of despair

I HAVE just had to walk away from the News At Ten after 15 minutes. So, halfway through the bulletin.
The major part of what I’ve just watched focused (quite rightly) on the way we can’t really tackle humanity’s headlong hurtling towards climate doom without the presence of India, China and Russia at the Cop summit.
Next up, the sepulchral tones of Orla Guerin (an incredibly brave journalist for whom I have the utmost admiration) on how deforestation is dooming us all.
"Yes but," is all I could say as I literally went from sitting room to kitchen with my fingers in my ears to save myself from further distress.
Yes but, what can we do about it?
There is nothing, despite the daily diet of hand-wringing fed to us by our TV sets, that we ordinary, relatively comfortable Western folk can do that will have the slightest effect on the really big causes of these problems. 
Sure, as individuals we can eat less meat. We can recycle more. We can buy less tat. We can buy a packet of wildflower seeds and feel good about planting them.Yes, I do all that.
BUT
We don’t even have a planning system in the allegedly enlightened UK that can force developers to include climate-friendly measures such as solar panels, heat pumps, EV charging structure, on homes that are being built right now, despite everything we know about the damage we are inflicting on the planet.
Tell me why I shouldn’t despair.

The unitary system leaves Salisbury unable to defend itself

REDUCING a city like Salisbury to parish council status is like forcing someone to fight with one hand tied behind their back.
It’s the main service centre for smaller towns and villages for miles around. It’s got a hospital that serves an even wider area.
It’s where so many roads converge, as we know to our detriment.
Yet developers can blithely work up plans that will have a massive impact on our community and our lifestyle and ‘explore’ them informally with Wiltshire Council without the people of Salisbury even being informed, let alone having any input.
If not for social media, it could have been ages before we heard about proposals so large in scale that they would effectively join Salisbury to Amesbury.
And by then it might well have been too late to exert any real influence over the outcome. 
I’m talking about 1,200 homes at Vineys Farm alongside the A345, opposite Archer’s Gate.
I’m talking about a huge new 146-acre extension to the business and light industrial development at High Post.
And I’m talking about another scheme for business development and 500 homes on an enormous 355-acre site running south from there to a point opposite the new Longhedge housing estate.
Amesbury town councillors did know about the Vineys Farm plan. Most city councillors didn't have a clue. Because none of these greenfield sites lies within the Salisbury parish boundary, arguably they are none of our business. 
Patently, any one of them alone would have a significant impact on the city’s inadequate infrastructure, particularly on our roads. Their combined impact is mind-boggling.
We can’t say no to all development and expect it to go away.
But bearing in mind Salisbury's role at the heart of south Wiltshire its residents, via their city (parish) councillors, ought to be involved - or at the very least informed - right from the word go when a major site allocation right on its doorstep is contemplated, and not just 'consulted' once it's effectively a fait accompli.
As should other neighbouring parishes that may be affected. It's simple courtesy.

For all I know these schemes, which are not yet on any official shortlist, may come to nought in the end.
But right now, the south of the county (indeed, the whole of southern England) is looking like a very happy hunting ground for the volume building industry.

And if any of this land does find its way onto Wiltshire’s list of  strategic sites, important decisions on how it is developed will be taken not by local people, but by a strategic planning committee in Trowbridge made up of councillors from all over the county who meet in the middle of most normal people’s working day, because that’s a) the most efficient way to get things done or b) the easiest way to discourage pointless protests, depending on your point of view.

Where do we go from here?

POSSIBLY the most frustrating thing for all of us who care about Salisbury is the number of good ideas and good intentions that we hear about, followed by ….. not a lot.

Nothing seems to really change. Or if it does, it takes an absolute age.

Take the Maltings and central car park, for example. Crying out for some creative regeneration. Vision after vision after framework after strategy. But fate always gets in the way.

Or the old British Heart Foundation site. No sign now of a budget hotel or a relocated library, let alone a new home for the poor old Young Gallery.

So, off I went last night to the college – where, to be fair, something has actually happened, and the rebuild is a huge, ongoing improvement.

I was there with a hundred or so well-meaning others for a Civic Society/Royal Society of Arts meeting to discuss the city’s recovery from the twin shocks of Novichok and Covid.

It was great to hear from speakers about how the college is focusing on fitting students for the world of work, about how our businesses are faring, about the need to bring back live performance and encourage wider participation in the arts, and about the Future High Streets funding to be invested in making our city centre more attractive.

There needs to be more consultation with the people of Salisbury in how best to spend this money before it becomes a fait accompli, warned the Civic Society’s Peter Dunbar. And it was pleasing to hear a Wiltshire Council officer acknowledge that they “could do consultation better”.

But it was our MP John Glen who hit a couple of nails on the head for me.

He senses people’s frustration that there is no single plan for improving Salisbury, he told us. (Perhaps there’s because the city needs to be allowed to ‘take back control’ of its destiny from Trowbridge, I thought, but I was too polite to say it.)

There are three outstanding challenges, as he sees it. 

First, to put the much-discussed ‘cultural quarter’ back atop the agenda, with a strategic look at how we use space in the Maltings. This, he feels, is something that would give Salisbury a distinctive ‘offer’ to visitors.

Second: Provision for young people. There are “significant inequalities’”in the city and there’s “levelling up” to be done locally. Too true.

And thirdly, to reconcile the future distribution of housing with green space and transport infrastructure. 

Well, as you can imagine, I was very happy to hear that.

At present we have a “diffuse set of strategies that have evolved over time”, he said. We have to work collectively with communities across South Wiltshire to decide where it will make sense to develop more housing, how we preserve green space, and how we improve our transport infrastructure.

Quite how we do that when a 'divide and rule' policy has deliberately left the parishes in our district with no formal means of joint working, I don’t know. But at least he sees the problem.

The Mayor, Cllr Caroline Corbin, made a pertinent point about the lack of diversity among those at the meeting and wondered what could be done to get members of our minority communities involved.

And Cllr Paul Sample pointed out quite rightly that we can’t rely on market forces to provide enough affordable housing for young people in an area of high prices and low wages.

But at the end of the evening – frustration, again. The same old problems had been given an airing. I'm not being rude. Everyone meant well. Everyone cared.

But no solutions. As John Glen said, no single overarching plan. And no mechanism that I can see under our present system for creating one.

What a ridiculous way to plan for the future of Harnham

IT was a long haul for the city’s planning committee last Monday.

From a packed agenda, two key items stood out, both of which mean irrevocable change to the leafy character of Harnham.

On both of them, city councillors from all parties and none (me!) stood up for our residents and spoke out YET AGAIN against the inexorable advance of greenfield development.

First it was the 106 homes on land at Waldrons Farm - the first field on the right as you head out of Harnham towards Wilton.

Now it just so happens that the previous weekend I found myself chatting to someone who has reliable connections at Vistry Homes, the would-be developers of this field, who already have permission to erect 640 homes alongside the cattle market.

And I learned that what I’d feared was true. They want more.

In something called the SHLAA (strategic housing land availability assessment) carried out by Wiltshire Council a few years ago the larger site was actually reckoned to be capable of taking 1100-plus homes. And that’s what’s on their minds.

Just think of all the water run-off from that sloping land once it’s under concrete. 

Anyway, you’ll be pleased to hear that we objected to the Waldrons Farm plan on grounds of overdevelopment, lack of pedestrian and cycle paths to the station and city centre, poorly designed access to the main road (a mini roundabout would be better), the fact that the land lies under water for at least part of every winter, its potential archaeological value, its ecological value, and the impact on neighbouring properties.

I think you get the idea. Not a lot in its favour, really. And that’s without mentioning the combined contribution of the traffic these developments will generate to the jams at the Gyratory and Park Wall and to the rat-running through Quidhampton and up past the racecourse. We are obliged to consider only the effects of this individual application.

But what can we parish councillors do, up against a Tory-controlled Wiltshire Council struggling to meet targets dictated by its own party in government – a party that’s heavily dependent on donations from the construction industry?

Plus, when we consider these applications, we often have to do so without the benefit of reports by the specialist officers employed by Wiltshire. They aren’t ready in time, or at least they aren’t posted online in time. This means we have no idea whether these experts are going to back up our own concerns, which are based on our local knowledge.

So anyway. We asked for reports from the Environment Agency and from archaeologists.

We asked for a pedestrian and cycle path to the station and city centre.

Worried about the ecological impact so close to the river, we asked for foul water drainage to be dealt with by way of an engineered solution, rather than a ‘financial contribution’.

Then we had to go through the same exercise all over again.

This time it was 101 homes on the field between Odstock Road and the Rowbarrow estate.

The developers here, Bellway, have had to redraw their plans for archaeological reasons. 

So now they want to build right up to the magnificent belt of trees on your left as you go up to the hospital. Slap opposite the Lime Kiln Down county wildlife site.

Vehicles would access the housing estate from Odstock Road, competing with the hospital traffic and speeding ambulances, and cutting across the route where staff currently walk and cycle to work.

So we’ve got ecological impact – no more ground-nesting skylarks, the risk to the ecology of the beech tree belt, planted to mark the Coronation in 1953, including white helleborine orchids which are listed as a vulnerable ‘red list’ species. We’ve got NO community facilities included, we’ve got no properties for key workers despite junior doctors crying out for affordable rented grown-up housing, we’ve got YET MORE traffic feeding straight into the Harnham gyratory with no strategy to address this.

But what can a mere parish council do?

We’ve asked for the road access to be through Rowbarrow instead.

We’ve endorsed all the environmental concerns of Salisbury Area Greenspace Partnership, who want the chalk downland around the city skyline safeguarded as country parks.

But this is why governments both Labour and Conservative have favoured unitary authorities. Because they take power away from communities like ours, and make it harder for local voices to be heard.

We are left racing against the advancing diggers and bulldozers to come up with a Neighbourhood Plan to try to influence the decision makers. The same decision makers at Trowbridge who totally failed in their declared intention of relocating Churchfields businesses and developing that land for housing, which is what left us in this mess in the first place.

As if Salisbury is a ‘neighbourhood’, no more complex than any tiny village. It’s the only option we’ve got.

And that’s a disgrace.

So please, bear in mind that your city councillors are doing their best, but our best may not always turn out to be good enough. The system is stacked against us.

 

 

 

 

Would you use this car park? It's an embarrassment

IMAGINE you’re a day tripper keen to experience the delights of Salisbury. 
Just what the city’s economy needs.
“Ah, there’s a convenient car park,” you say to yourself as you spot the Culver Street stack next to the ring road. “I’ll pull in there.”
Well, this is the sight that will greet you, as it greeted me on a mercifully quick tour of inspection on Wednesday.

Graffiti, litter-strewn stairwells, windows covered in green slime, and an overwhelming stench of wee.
Presumably not helped by the fact that anyone wishing to use the facilities would have found them locked, and the doorways so filthy that only the truly desperate would have tried to open them anyway.
And acres of desolate, empty space. Not a soul was parked on the top floor despite the fact that it offers a wonderful view across the city’s old rooftops to the Cathedral.

                   

You do get people up there, though. Yobs. One of them peed on a passer-by down below the other week. For a laugh, I suppose. Fortunately the intended victim dodged out of the way in time.
Wiltshire Council owns this dump, collects the takings and is responsible for its maintenance. 
There was talking of tarting it up as part of the People Friendly Streets scheme but those in charge of the cash flow (it’s complicated) didn't like it when residents said no to a ban on through traffic. 
Wiltshire Council leaders promised massive 'savings' when they took over control of our city. Well, they're certainly saving a few quid here.

Jam tomorrow

I’VE lost count of the number of people who’ve come up to me,  before and since the local elections, with real concern in their voices and asked: “Can you do anything about this housing development up the road?”
They mean the 740 homes that'll be going up on the outskirts of West Harnham, along both sides of Netherhampton Road.
And my explanation has had to be: "Sorry, no. Wiltshire Council has already given permission. Salisbury City Council doesn't have the power to do anything about it.”
Despite the fact that these housing allocations were stitched up  some time ago, they remained by far the biggest issue on the doorsteps. I don't think anyone outside Harnham truly appreciates how much the impact of the extra traffic queuing for the jammed-up Gyratory is dreaded.

Now I hear the sound of gears slowly grinding into motion. Noises are being made about 'improving' the junctions at Park Wall, Harnham Gyratory and Exeter Street, and I hope to be able to tell you more after a briefing from Wiltshire later this month.

I suspect any investment will have far more to do with the increasing number of juggernauts thundering past our homes since this suburban road was designated a major route to the ports than it does with our parochial worries. I also suspect it won’t alleviate residents’ concerns about living in the middle of a constant and ever-increasing stream of traffic, albeit one that’s moving a bit faster. 

But you know me, I’m just an old cynic.

So how can anyone justify this unfair voting system?

FIGURES. I know they’re boring. But please, do read these ones. Because they’re actually mind-boggling.
And if I had voted for the Green Party in the recent city council elections, I’d be pretty cross right now.
Their candidates received just over 6,600 votes – that’s more than a fifth of all the votes cast in the city - but not one of them was elected.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, lost a gobsmacking 5,000 votes from their 2017 tally, to just over 8,000.
Yet although that cost them overall control of the Guildhall, they still have 11 councillors. 
Look at those outcomes. They are totally out of proportion. You cannot possibly argue that they fairly reflect the opinions of the Salisbury public.
Meanwhile Labour lost 900-odd votes, and the LibDems, despite the stonking victory of Paul Sample in the St Edmunds ward, pretty well stood still. 
The LibDems, on just over 7,400 votes, got roughly 2,000 more than Labour, yet each party has six councillors.
This is not really meant to be a complaint on my own behalf, but independents, I’d like to point out, gained 2,763 votes and sadly only one councillor (moi). So why don’t independents deserve one-third as many council seats as the Tories, when we got one-third as many votes?
The system is nuts. On this occasion it hasn’t even delivered what some argue is its big benefit, i.e. a clear mandate.
The sooner that government adopts some form of proportional representation, both locally and nationally, the sooner we will be able to  feel proud that our democracy really does represent the will of the people.

Can we make better use of the Boathouse?

MIGHTY relieved I’ve made it on to Salisbury City Council, but mighty sad that more of my fellow independents weren’t successful.

With all that’s been going on electorally – not least the costly shambles over the choice of the next Police & Crime Commissioner - the deadline for commenting on the plans for Salisbury’s proposed River Park glided quietly under the bridge today, and I have to admit that I forgot.

I’m sure a lot of other people will have done so, too. Not, however, the doughty Salisbury Area Greenspace Partnership and our ever-vigilant environmental campaigners Pam Rouquette and Margaret Willmot, to all of whom we residents owe a debt of gratitude.

While they and I are supportive of the scheme in principle, I’ve been struck by some of their concerns.

The first is what might become a missed opportunity to use the Boathouse pub – lease currently up for sale, freehold owned by Wiltshire Council  – as a welcome centre and cafe for visitors arriving at the coach park and as an information centre on the river and its ecology.

There appears to be no money set aside to cover the £275,000 purchase price quoted by the agents Savills although the council says it “recognises the potential” of the site and is “exploring its options”.

This rundown but charming building is such a crucial part of the riverside scene that surely something more than the “exploration of options” is required at this stage? Fingers crossed.

There are also misgivings about a proposal to replace the Millstream Approach road bridge with one four metres wider, capable of taking two lanes of traffic, in an area where much has been made of the intention to give priority to pedestrians and cyclists using the enhanced riverside path. No explanation of the need for this widening has been offered.

There’s much more to learn from these thoughtful comments, and if you’re interested, it’s planning application no. PL/2021/03601 on the Wiltshire website.

The city council, while also supportive of the project, has asked to be involved in all aspects of its design and delivery.

Here’s one city councillor who will be taking a keener - and much better informed - interest from now on.

It's such a luxury being free to say what you like

THERE’S a tremendous luxury about being retired.

It’s that sense of freedom. I love it.

I don’t mean the freedom to jaunt off on a world cruise (assuming you can afford it). Even if we were allowed, with things the way they are pandemic-wise.

I mean the freedom to say what you really think and to pursue what you believe in without being beholden to anybody and without having to keep one eye on your future prospects.

And that's what our former MP Robert Key is doing with great gusto, by issuing a series of well-informed and hard-hitting videos online that ought to be required viewing for every student old enough to understand.

Because this lifelong Conservative really nails what’s wrong with our current unitary and parish system, via subjects ranging from housing, roads, cycle lanes, traffic regulation, the vexed issue of the Salisbury bypass … all of which boil down in essence to this: a load of stuff that’s being done to us and decisions being made for us without our consent.

It’s insulting and absurd, as Robert says, that our city has been demoted to parish status, and it’s had a disastrous effect in terms of local democracy, with so many people now so disillusioned they can’t be bothered to vote. 

I’m talking about intelligent people I’ve met on my walks round Harnham. They’ve just given up. “It doesn’t make any difference what we think” is what they say. 

It's shown, too, by the fact that none of the Big Three parties has been able to muster a full slate of candidates for every ward in the May elections. Traditional party supporters have had their arms twisted (metaphorically) but have declined to stand for office. Yet the party leaders show no sign of recognising why this might be.

What people like, as Robert points out, is to feel that they have a say in their local community and are listened to. But it ain’t happening because Trowbridge is too remote.

Unitary government for Wiltshire is a failed experiment, and he sees no reason why it can't be changed.

 To find out more and follow the unfolding series of interviews, go to the SOS – Save Our Salisbury group on Facebook. 

Why the sheer nastiness in this local election campaign?

SOME of you may have the idea that all journalists are cynical. That it goes with the territory.
But I can tell you from a lifetime’s experience that most journalists start out as idealists. They just see a lot of stuff that very quickly knocks the idealism out of them!
They probably experience more of the unpleasant side of life than the average citizen – other than emergency service workers, social services or the military, of course.
Now, I set out on the current election campaign to encourage a more independent, non-party political city council in Salisbury full of idealism, believe it or not.
While there are individual councillors from all parties doing their genuine best for our community and motivated only by a desire to serve the public, I thought we all deserved better than to be led by a divided Conservative group mired in bitterness, dictated to by their own Trowbridge elite.
I thought people like us deserved more of a say in what happens around here, well before it actually happens. They deserved to be asked their opinions and have someone listen and take notice. They deserved to feel involved, as if they wouldn’t be ignored once their votes were counted.
They deserved openness and transparency about the long-term plans being hatched for our city by those who control the purse-strings, most of whom have nothing to do with Salisbury. 
Some might think those were admirable aims, and I have pursued them honestly and openly.
But some people with their eyes on a bigger prize have chosen to take a more negative tack. 
I have been appalled by the mud-slinging and sheer nastiness aimed at some non-Conservatives. The desperation to hang on to every shred of power at all costs.
It doesn’t upset or surprise me – I’ve been around too long for that - but it does sadden me and make me fear for the future of our lovely Salisbury, when all that some people care about is controlling everything between here and Westminster.

What Salisbury means to me

THIS is an extract from something I wrote several years ago now, when life suddenly changed unexpectedly. We were unsure about whether we’d have to move, and we decided we needed some time out, somewhere sunny, before making any big decisions.
I started a blog about that trip, Home Sweet Motorhome, by trying to encapsulate how I felt about the city I might be leaving behind.
And I just thought I’d share it here now, as it still sums up what I feel is precious about Salisbury and why I’d like to do my bit as an independent councillor. Here goes:

“I find myself standing, staring out of the bedroom window in the dying afternoon over the water meadows to Salisbury Cathedral silhouetted beyond. A thin layer of mist has already risen from the river and sits suspended above the heads of the sheep, otherworldly against the darkening sky. I love this place. 
“How fortunate we have been to have this glorious backdrop to our daily lives, changing with every passing cloud.
“This is, after all, the town – it calls itself a city but it’s on a much more human scale   – where we chose to base our lives with our young children. A place I plumped for in preference to Bath because, as a colleague of my husband’s put it when I sought his advice, ‘Bath is all fur coat and no knickers, but Salisbury is real.’
“I wanted for our boys something I never felt for the London suburb where I grew up – I wanted them to have roots. 
“When people later in life asked them where they came from, I wanted them to know the answer in their hearts. Somewhere that gave them a standard against which they could compare everything they encountered as they set off to explore the world. 
“Not too big, not too small, a self-contained community with some of the finest architecture in the country, with a wonderful cultural heritage.”

And I’ve never regretted it.

Why I'm standing as an independent candidate for our city council

FOR years, as a columnist and blogger, I’ve been banging on about how disastrous Wiltshire Council has been for Salisbury.
How the switch to a unitary authority, and our city’s demotion to a humble parish, has left us at the mercy of a political clique miles away in Trowbridge.
Whether it’s sky-high parking charges, ill-advised cycle lanes and bans on cars, massive green belt housing developments feeding into our ring road jams, a lost police station, a disastrous University Technical College, unease over what’s happening to our City Hall, our library, our art gallery …. the list goes on, and I’m sure you could all add to it.
The feuding among the ruling Conservative group at the Guildhall has done nothing to help and much to hinder this degradation. 
Recent city council meetings, conducted online, about the doomed Low Traffic Zone and the housing sites proposed in the Local Plan review, were verging on chaotic.
And all the main parties have had trouble putting up a full complement of candidates for the local elections in May - largely, I think, because people are disillusioned and ask: “What’s the point?”
Now I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and try to do something to help our community by standing as an independent candidate for the city council in Harnham.
Along with a few other hardy (or perhaps foolhardy!) souls, I want to contribute a sense of common purpose, optimism and unity to a body that, while woefully inadequate in terms of its powers, is all we’ve got. And fight for what’s best for Salisbury. For people, not party politics.
Having been roped in several months ago as an administrator of the hugely popular SOS – Save Our Salisbury group on Facebook, I’ve seen that there is a real appetite for change. It’s just that so many  people don’t engage with the current system, and it’s hard to persuade them to do so when it patently doesn’t work for them.
However, out of this project has emerged a small band of campaigners who think it’s still worth having a go at making things better. We’re not a party. We don’t have a manifesto. We call ourselves Understanding Salisbury (or ‘us’ for short) Independents.
Please do consider supporting us at the May local elections.
You get three votes in each ward. So even if you usually vote for one of the big parties and don’t want to change, you can still use your other votes for us. It would be a shame to waste any of them.
Give us a chance to make things better and we’ll do our level best to listen to you, and not to let you down.

Tories say it's council officers who rule Wiltshire

I’M still as fed up as ever with party politics in local government and the damage it does to Salisbury.

But from two leading lights on the local political scene, here’s another explanation for a lot of what goes wrong. They sound so disillusioned that I almost feel sorry for them.

Incidentally, I’m loving the effect our Facebook group, SOS – Save Our Salisbury, is having in stimulating debate like this.

I posted on SOS about the Handforth Parish Council debacle and pointed out that whilst we all howled with laughter at that, Salisbury’s grandly-titled city council is actually just a parish council, too.

It drew the following responses from the chairman of Salisbury Conservative Association, Kevin Daley, and one of his predecessors, John Brady. I’ve slightly edited them for reasons of clarity.

Firstly, former Wiltshire cabinet member and ex-district councillor Mr Brady, reflecting on how greenfield housing development alongside Netherhampton Road came to be permitted despite hundreds of protests.

“The real power does not lie with parish/town councils or with the unitary councils,’ he wrote. 

“It is the officers who make the decisions (recommendations). They know that councillors are transient and as with Harnham, where councillors persuaded them to take a proposed development off the Strategic Plan, officers reinstated it as soon as they could when dealing with a different councillor (cabinet member). 

“All the ‘consultation’ that has to be done is a complete waste of time as I know that this is merely a way of allowing locals to let off steam.”

Sounds very much like ‘Yes Minister’, doesn’t it? 

“Even if a planning committee goes against an officer’s recommendation and refuses a new development, experience shows that nearly in every case, this is overturned on appeal with costs being awarded against the council,” added Mr Brady. “There are notable exceptions but they are few and far between.”

And here’s what current Wiltshire and city councillor Kevin Daley replied.

“Well said. Councillors are frequently undermined and circumvented by the officers. 

“People become councillors because they see what is wrong and what they can do to make a difference, but after four years of banging your head against a brick wall you just give in.”

Of course there could be a fair bit of blame-shifting going on here, what with local elections coming up and some pretty unpopular decisions in Trowbridge having affected Salisbury again lately.

But what a devastating critique of our system.

Now SOS is trying to persuade people to stand as independent candidates for our humble parish council. But a lot of people, reading this, will shake their heads and ask: “What’s the point?”

Like Messrs Brady and Daley, I believe the unitary authority has been a disaster for our city and the communities that depend on it.

The asset-stripping that’s gone on makes it hard to see how  Salisbury could ever return to its former status as the administrative centre of south Wiltshire. 

But it could certainly do with a strong, independent voice to represent all its residents and businesses.

For me, it boils down to this: “If you feel strongly about something, do something about it.”

Make democracy work for every citizen

A REALLY constructive online event on the subject of Citizen Democracy has left me feeling both inspired and daunted by the scale of the task.
Organised by our local LibDems (I am not a member), it consisted of a talk by the very impressive Dr Ian Kearns, co-author of Citizens’ Britain, followed by a question-and-answer session.
Basically it was about how to transfer as much power as possible from elected elites to communities.
It involved educating people about how councils and the machinery of government work, and how they can participate and make their voices heard.
We live in a state that doesn’t know what to do with people when they want to be more than just ‘subjects’ or ‘consumers’, he said.  We’re not set up to cope with hundreds of thousands of people wanting to get involved.
Perhaps we need a Citizens’ Assembly, like the one that finally managed to achieve abortion law reform in Ireland.
Or something along the lines of Taiwan, which recruited computer hackers to help spread information about where people could get Covid masks, by creating a ‘mask map’, and enlisted ordinary people to help challenge misinformation about the pandemic online.
Or Better Reykjavik, an open online forum used by the Icelandic capital’s authorities to discuss ideas about projects and policy.
We SOS admins have been saying among ourselves that maybe what an independent non party political city council could become, or could set up as an extra, is a kind of citizens’ assembly, where everybody’s voice could be heard.
It’s happening elsewhere in the county. Check out Open Westbury’s website. We are not alone in feeling disenchanted. We need to reconfigure local government so that it represents us all, and not just one majority party.

Where the People Friendly money went

TRAFFIC schemes may stop and start but the consultancy gravy train rolls on.
An investigation by Auto Express has found that £412,000 of our money was invested (or wasted, depending on your point of view) in closing the city centre to through traffic.
Of that, £250,622 – yes, a quarter of a million of our hard-earned pounds – went on ‘consultancy and monitoring’ fees. When anyone living or working in Salisbury could have told them for free that the project was poorly designed and ill-timed.
We’re following a predictable and costly outsourcing pattern in public spending here.
Unitary councils such as Wiltshire are put in charge of huge, diverse areas but are kept on such a tight rein that they can’t handle big projects in-house, and have to hand over Boris’s handouts to private companies to help them sort things out.
The results, as we see from our recent experience, can be less than impressive. 

I gather that the Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership are covering the council's losses. But it's still public money wafting around.
Now I come to think of it, doesn’t that just about sum up the handling of the coronavirus pandemic? 
A massive redistribution of public money, yours and mine, to private sector cronies of the current administration. Look how successful that’s been!
And apart from that 60-odd per cent, what happened to the rest of the LTZ money? 
According to Auto Express, £64,800 was spent on construction (must have been those barriers), £4,328 on road signs (presumably including the ones that told potential visitors to stay on the A36 and head straight on past Salisbury) and £92,250 on enforcement cameras which will at least come in handy when the scheme – hopefully in a much more people-friendly form – is inevitably resurrected.
Because there’s nothing wrong with trying to make Salisbury greener and more people-friendly. You just have to ask local people what that might mean, before you fritter away their taxes.

Oh, and by the way, suspending the project cost another £10-15,000.

Salisbury needs an independent democratic voice

WE seem to be inundated with “public consultations” all of a sudden.
You name it, Wiltshire Council is asking what we think about it.
Whether it’s sites for new housing development (a foregone conclusion), cycle lanes (a load of old bollards), or a River Park which will reduce the city’s future flood risk while handily creating a much more attractive waterfront to tempt developers, this is the moment to speak your mind.
So much is going on that I hope the members of our recently-formed Facebook group, SOS – Save Our Salisbury, don't feel they're suffering from information overload!
I'm really pleased that so many people have seized the opportunity to air their views on our page.

And in helping to force the withdrawal of the unpopular Low Traffic Zone, for the time being at least, they’ve already chalked up one success.
At a time when everyone's forced to spend so much time indoors, what we've created is a widely accessible channel of communication with a remotely-based local authority that now has to conduct all its business online. 

Somewhere for people to say proactively what they really think, rather than simply ticking boxes in questionnaires designed to produce one particular answer. And we can make sure they aren't ignored.
It's not perfect, of course, and it never will be while some people don’t have the tech to take part, but it's easier for people to see what's going on than back in the day when everything important was discussed and rubber-stamped miles away at Trowbridge in front of the proverbial one man and a dog.
It is, of course, election year, and there’s nothing like the possibility of being booted out of office to concentrate the minds of councillors on keeping in touch with their voters.
But how much does it achieve to consult people once the options have already been pared down to one?
I’m not saying don’t do it, but just don’t pretend that by doing it, you’ve covered all the bases. This is one reason why there’s such a disconnect between politics and the general population.
As life gets more and more complicated, we need to evolve ways of ensuring that the Average Joe (or Joanne) doesn’t feel left out, or left behind. Communities have got to be involved with developments before plans are worked up and before so much has been invested that there's no turning back.
And this is why I’m so proud of what SOS is already achieving. A revival of local grassroots democracy is our aim. It’s a big ask, but an awful lot of people are responding very positively.

Lesson of the Laverstock monolith

IT was only an obelisk on the Laverstock downs. 

Just like dozens that have suddenly appeared the world over.

I’d hazard a guess that its creators were simply copying the original that created such a stir when it was  discovered in the Utah desert. Maybe a better way of expressing that thought is that they were inspired by it, and thought it would give us all a bit of fun.

And in these depressing times it did just that, creating a little buzz of excitement, something to marvel at, something to get out in the fresh air to visit and yes, to touch it, to take in a little piece of its magic, because we love to think that there is something out there that we don’t instantly understand. 

Much the same phenomenon was at work with corn circles. Although people have shown time and again how it can be done, there are still some people who refuse to believe that they are created by humans. And there’s still a part of many more of us, that wishes these astounding works of art were  truly otherworldly.

Because once we’ve analysed and dissected everything in that horrible way that humans have, in our insatiable quest for knowledge, there’s something in our psyche that still yearns for the unknown, the unknowable.

Especially when what we do learn is so grim at the moment.

So to the miserable toad or toads who uprooted the monolith, dragged it downhill, and took with it a small joy for so many people, I hope you have a bloody rotten 2021.

To the runners who tried so gallantly to rescue it, thank you, and well done. You’re on the side of the angels.

Please, whatever happens this year, grab small moments of happiness like this wherever you find them. Be hopeful, and feel sorry for those who don’t know what it means.