You can't make people know what they don't want to know

Written August 2023

IT was 13 years ago. My son, a first-year physiotherapy student, was home from uni for the weekend.

“I think our family must be weird, Mum,” he said. “When I told them we talk about the news at dinnertime, my flatmates were amazed. None of them even knew who the Prime Minister is!”

Gobsmacked? I was. These were intelligent kids, undergraduates. They hadn’t been taught and didn’t care about that stuff.

Fast forward to Tuesday. I was manning a Market Place stall with some fellow councillors and our clerk.

We were asking about people’s priorities for our next budget. After the parish poll furore, I’d expected a barrage of criticism.

Without exception, those I spoke to had grumbles. About the Fisherton Street improvements, River Park disruption, commercial waste bins and bin stores, proposed and ongoing housing developments ….. the trouble being that none of these fall within the remit of the City Council.

When we explained what we are responsible for, the majority had few complaints.

Fourteen years after the district council was replaced by a unitary Wiltshire, leaving Salisbury demoted to parish status, it’s clear that large numbers of residents still don’t understand who does what.

Hence the leaflet we’ve posted to every household within our boundary this week, explaining just that, and how we spend our share of their tax, and inviting them to take part in a survey on whether we should do it differently.

The folk I spoke to were pleased and interested to be asked for their views. But even with our friendly Giant, valiantly manned by Cllr Paul Sample and his band of volunteers, to attract their attention, an awful lot of passers-by just glanced sideways and quickly looked away in that classic British ‘Oh, please don’t ask me to speak to a stranger’ way, before walking on. You can’t tell me they were all tourists.

At the risk of sounding rude, you can consult till you’re blue in the face, but you cannot make people want to know.

Despite lots of publicity, our evening session in the Guildhall attracted just one visitor.

All I can take from this experience so far is that people can’t be that dissatisfied with the service they get from us, or they’d have said so.

However, if you disagree, there are more consultations on Saturday and Tuesday, and online. Details on that leaflet, or our city council website.