I've seen the future ... and it's utterly predictable

DO you think I’m psychic?

I suspected all along that the talk of co-operation between political parties after our inconclusive city council election results would turn out to be so much hot air.

It gives me no pleasure at all to say I was right.

Deputy leader Jo Broom has switched to the Tories just six weeks after 385 people in Fisherton and Bemerton Village elected her as their Liberal Democrat councillor. I wonder whether those voters feel their trip to the polling booth was worthwhile?

It seems to have happened because the LibDems, who lost their majority, didn’t want to be seen as agreeing to a coalition with the Conservatives. Given the way the LibDems nationally have become David Cameron’s fall guys, you might think they had a point.

But what we have here, as I’ve stressed repeatedly, is a parish council, not Parliament, and it desperately needs to find a unified voice to represent the city’s interests to our Wiltshire overlords.

You have to wonder why, when Ms Broom felt the need to resign from her party, she didn’t just carry on as an independent. If only my crystal ball could have shown me the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring in the Guildhall ….

Fortunately, one good thing has come out of this daft episode, and that’s the choice of Andrew Roberts, a widely respected independent thinker, as leader.  

Mystic Annie predicts he will prove to be the right man in the right place at the right time.

NOW here’s something it didn’t take paranormal ability to foresee.

Speaking of getting what you didn’t vote for, Sainsbury’s are at it again.

Having been inundated with objections to their proposed superstore on our Southampton Road flood plain, they withdrew it. Democracy in action?

Not likely. Having let things cool down a bit, they’ve now promised to come up with a new, improved plan for …. a superstore on our Southampton Road flood plain.

According to their spokesman, “residents, community organisations and council officers have had their say on the detail of our proposal” and “changes have been suggested”.

Well, the overwhelming majority of the 150-plus residents’ letters that I read on the Wiltshire Council website were against the whole idea, not some footling detail of design. As were the city council, Highways Agency and Environment Agency.

People weren’t just saying no for the sake of it. As well as voicing environmental concerns, many urged Sainsbury’s to build a store to the north or west of the town, where one is really needed.

But what ordinary folk want doesn’t seem to matter.

If at first you don’t succeed, try again and again and again and again until resistance is worn down and you get what you were after in the first place. That appears to be the guiding principle of our planning system for those who can afford it.

Save our verges from the mowers and save wildlife

I SYMPATHISE with the reader who wrote to Postbag in distress after seeing a bank of cowslips alongside the A338 casually massacred in the name of tidiness.

I know we’re a military community, but that doesn’t mean that every blade of grass needs a No.1 haircut and every flowerbed has to be planted with geometric precision like a regiment standing to attention.

It’s a pity that the pretty crocuses on the Harnham gyratory that used to spell out ‘Welcome Spring’ have died out.  When my sons were small, the whole family used to look out for the annual reappearance of this cheery little message as we drove by. Just thought I’d mention that in passing.

But the city’s naturalised daffodil displays remain a delight, and one thing I’ve been enjoying in recent weeks has been the sight of longer grasses left to wave in the breeze along the sides of the ring road while the spent bulbs die down.

I’ve noticed that wild flowers have started to show their heads on our roundabouts, too, and if Wiltshire Council is looking for ways to save money under its new £150million highways maintenance contract with Balfour Beatty Living Places, it could try leaving all these areas alone until the end of summer every year.

To my mind, verges look so much lovelier in a semi-natural state where they offer cover for birds and small mammals, and where the flowers provide food to help support our endangered populations of bees, butterflies and other insects.

I realise that there are some junctions where it is necessary to keep vegetation in check to allow sufficient visibility for motorists. But there are whole stretches of roadside where that’s not an issue.

These little strips of green are a world in themselves if they’re left to get on with it, without being menaced by mowers.

Salisbury City Council has shown imagination and done us all a favour by planting wild flower areas and community orchards in our parks and public spaces. Vandals permitting, these will be just the start of a wider network.

Let’s hope that any little green oases alongside our roads can be allowed to flourish, too, forming wildlife corridors around our city for the benefit of future generations.

While I’m on about it, why do the Harnham water meadows need to be managed to within an inch of their lives?

My husband and I watched recently as a rotten limb of an ash tree on the meadow across the river from us was reduced to a stump.

It was perfect for woodpeckers, and there was no danger of it falling on anybody, given that the public are excluded “by order of the trustees”, except on strictly supervised group visits.

Dead wood is a vital habitat for many species. But there’s none on the meadows these days. It’s all ‘tidied up’ as soon as it falls.

Pay cuts and dearer parking won't lure nurses to Salisbury

IF I had to go into hospital (touch wood) I’m pretty sure that the main thing preoccupying me wouldn’t be the nationality of the nurses.

As long as they were kind and competent and not too busy to talk to me, I’d be grateful.

So it’s welcome news that Salisbury District Hospital has managed to recruit 47 Portuguese nurses to bring its staff up to strength.

But it does beg the question why we aren’t able to train or retain enough healthcare workers in Britain for our own needs.

As taxpayers, you and I are forking out money that we can ill afford to keep young people, bored out of their minds, doing nothing.  In February the national NEET conference heard that there are more than a million 16-24 year olds who are not in education, employment or training.

And that’s not the full picture. What about the hundreds of graduates working in shops and bars while they spend months searching for employment commensurate with their qualifications?

Obviously, not all of them would have what it takes to work in the NHS. That demands a special type of person.

But the mismatch of supply and demand suggests such woeful workforce planning that somewhere in the Departments of Health and Education, whole legions of heads should surely roll.

Just six years ago NHS vacancies were so scarce that according to the BBC, one-third of newly-qualified nurses hadn’t found work after six months.

That same year – surprise, surprise - the Royal College of Nursing reported that 5,000 British nurses were planning to move to Australia.

This week the Nursing Times tells us that the number of district nurses nationally has been cut by 42 per cent in a decade.  Those who remain are overwhelmed. Yet these are the people who can prevent our increasingly elderly population becoming ‘bed blockers’. So, more pressure on our hospitals. Joined-up thinking doesn’t seem to come into it.

But what do we do about it? And how can we make working in the NHS a more appealing option?

It’s no time at all since SDH bosses were talking about joining a cartel to force through pay cuts - possibly not the best way to make employees feel valued. Now they are raising the cost of workplace parking, and there have been plenty of grumbles about that on the Journal website.

I don’t know what the answer to the problem is, but I know what it isn’t.

There's no need to play party politics on city council

THE best news I’ve heard in a while (well, that’s a slight exaggeration) is that no one political party has an overall majority on Salisbury City Council.

Last week’s Journal reported that the members were negotiating with a view to forming a ruling coalition.  Er, why?

What on earth does a parish council (that’s what it is, despite the grand-sounding name) need a political majority for?

Its responsibilities include running the market, crematorium, Guildhall, information centre and the Bemerton Heath Centre, not to mention parks, allotments, public conveniences, and a couple of small car parks where it is obliged to set charges fixed by Wiltshire Council.

It is consulted on planning applications but can’t veto them.

It organises the gardens competition and the Christmas lights, the carnival and various other parades, and plants community orchards and wildflower areas.

Its staff are very good at all these things, and I hope that doesn’t sound patronising because it isn’t meant to be.

Controversial things may happen from time to time, such as the Queen Elizabeth Gardens refurbishment, but these are not really party political issues.

If all the city councillors fell prey simultaneously to some incapacitating lurgy, I’m sure Salisbury would keep calm and carry on with no discernible difference for as long as it took them to recover.

But I wish them well, especially if they can make all-party co-operation the new name of the game.

Shame it can’t happen at Wiltshire level.  I couldn’t help noticing that there is no representative of Salisbury, Amesbury or indeed anywhere else in South Wiltshire on the new Trowbridge cabinet, though we do have some ‘portfolio holders’ which I suppose must be the next best thing.

Bit sad, isn’t it, considering the economic importance of the city?

ON a lighter note, I was one of the lucky 1,000 packed into the City Hall last Tuesday for a recording of BBC Radio 4’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

The £5 tickets sold out within three hours and what a bargain they were.

Chairman Jack Dee was a deadpan delight, and the audience loved the show’s local references, including a missing words round featuring Salisbury Journal headlines.

Another memorable game had the panellists pretending to be Druids wanting to extend Stonehenge, and Wiltshire Council planning officers telling them that they couldn’t.

Their combination of quick wit and silliness made for the kind of entertainment you could take your granny to without fear of embarrassment, but there were plenty of young people enjoying it, too.

I think the old-fashioned phrase ‘good, clean fun’ sums it up. Not enough of it about these days.

Loving those boot sale bargains

WANDERING round the car boot sale at Salisbury fire station on Sunday last week, I overheard an elderly lady at one stall chatting to a buyer.

“In my day everyone used to go to church on Sunday mornings,” she was saying. “Now they’re all at boot sales.” She wasn’t complaining, simply making an observation about how busy it was.

The Bank Holiday weekend sunshine had brought the crowds out like flies, buzzing around the leftovers of other people’s lives.

I got there too late, incidentally, and all the best bargains were long gone. The advert in the Journal said it opened at 9am but one seller told me customers had started turning up at seven.

This, in double-or-triple-dip-recession world, is how many of us are making our money go further.

Not in town centre stores that have to factor in hefty rents and business rates when setting their prices, but in fields the length and breadth of Britain, sifting through mounds of outgrown clothing, stocking up on 20p paperbacks, and haggling to get 50p off a £1 computer game, a cushion, or a frying pan. You name, it, it’s all out there.

Even, on one memorable occasion at the cattle market, a beautiful handmade patchwork quilt which now adorns my spare bed, snapped up for £7. Embroidered on the underside are the maker’s name and the words “Won at Ringwood Quilters Christmas Party”. It will become a family heirloom.

I love boot sales, even if they do start horribly early. I like talking to people, and you never know what’s going to turn up next – just like journalism.

Some folk I know feel genuinely uncomfortable in that environment, having other people grubbing about in their stuff, and arguing over a few pence.

But everybody loves to get something for next to nothing.

Once upon a time, we all wanted the latest ‘designer’ gear. Most of it wasn’t really ‘designer’. Not like the stuff the seriously rich buy.

It was ‘designer’ for the masses – trainers, jogging bottoms and handbags awash with tacky logos, produced in Third World sweatshops and marketed at hugely inflated prices via ad campaigns suggesting an entirely bogus exclusivity.

Now, I think we’ve seen the hollowness of all that, and we’re no longer beguiled by it. Getting up at crack of dawn to bag a real bargain is far more satisfying.

Where it leaves the churches, I’m not sure.

Two out of three didn't vote, so did we get what we deserve?

AFTER all the election ballyhoo, has much really changed?

Not around here, it hasn’t. Sadly.

UKIP’s success nationally may have traumatised all three main parties, but they didn’t make much of a breakthrough in Wiltshire.

There’s obvious interest in them locally. A talk by their leader, Nigel Farage, packed out the Guildhall in December 2011.

And although they fielded candidates in only 12 of the 27 Wiltshire divisions within the Journal’s circulation area, almost 4,000 people here voted for them.

They gave Conservative stalwarts John Noeken and Fred Westmoreland a run for their money in Amesbury. Yet they gained only one seat in the county, in Melksham.

Sorry if I sound disappointed. I’m not banging the drum for UKIP, or any party in particular.

But I’d have liked to see the county’s Tory administration, supremely confident in its unassailable majority, given more of a wake-up call by voters.

Despite widespread public dissatisfaction over issues such as parking charges, the market revamp and our potholed roads, all but one of Trowbridge’s ruling cabinet have been re-elected.

Even more depressing than the prospect of four more years of the same elected dictatorship is the fact that two-thirds of us didn’t bother to vote at all. So maybe we got the leaders we deserve?

Although to be fair, in half a dozen divisions, five of them in our area, there wasn’t anyone to vote for anyway. Nobody felt like wasting their time standing as a candidate against a Conservative.

I quite understand that it made sense for other parties to concentrate their resources where they had some chance of success, but this is an appalling state of affairs.

There are people giving their lives in the Arab world right now in the fight for a democratic voice. Our complacency as a nation about our lack of a properly representative system - one in which every vote counts, makes me ashamed.

Anyway, we’ve chosen our leaders – at least, some of those among us who had a choice have done so.  And we’ll just have to live with their long-distance diktats, Heaven help us.

Spring - better late than never

DO you remember the grand opening ceremony at the Millennium Dome? It was all trapeze artists and Tony Blair’s grin.

The unveiling of the Riddle family’s Millennium Shed was a far more modest affair, attended only by the Riddle family, my friend Fiona from over the road, and the dog.

Still, it didn’t cost us millions of pounds, and it’s been infinitely more useful.

After a decade-long policy of benign neglect, this unassuming little structure even developed something akin to a green roof.  Very eco-friendly.

At the moment, sadly, that roof looks more like a mini-moonscape, with spoon-size craters gouged out of the moss by birds eager to line their nests.

But at least it’s proof that spring is here at last. And that’s something to celebrate.

Three or four weeks ago, when warm weather still seemed an impossible dream, we were astonished to see a duck hop out from under a bush close to our back door, followed by 11 ducklings. She led them down to the end of the garden, where they tumbled in to the river.

We were enchanted when they returned on three successive afternoons to sunbathe on the lawn. We counted them out, and we counted them in again – who can resist counting ducklings, I wonder?

Then, next day, there were none.  I guess the freezing wind and rain, the crows, the buzzards and the pike all took their toll.

Now there’s a lone female duck standing patiently beneath our bird table most mornings, waiting for the sparrows, tits and pigeons to dislodge bits of nut and seed from their holders, so she can gobble them up. We don’t know if it’s the same one. I’m probably daft for caring.