Double yellow peril for unwary parkers

NOT a lot of people know this.

But if you live alongside a road with double yellow lines, and you have a driveway that crosses the verge or the pavement to your front gate, you are not allowed to stop on the driveway. Not even for ten minutes.

If you do, you are likely to get not one, but THREE traffic wardens arriving at once to issue you a ticket.

It happened to a friend of mine just recently on the Downton road.

With another vehicle already parked in the front garden when she arrived, she’d pulled in temporarily, facing her gate, in the gap where her drive crossed the verge, taking care not to block the pavement. The chief thing on her mind was keeping her three-year-old granddaughter safe because it's a busy road.

She had no idea, and I didn’t either, that double yellow ‘no parking’ rules applied to driveways and pavements right up to the front boundary of a house.

She found out the hard way, with a fine that Wiltshire Council has refused to reconsider and if she doesn’t pay up now, it’ll double.

Why three wardens, by the way?

Safety in numbers, apparently. Because some people have spat at them.

And of course people shouldn’t spit at them. But neither is there any need for them to go around targeting well-meaning, otherwise law-abiding citizens like my mate who aren’t really causing any problems.

I know the council’s short of cash, to put it mildly. But alienating harmless members of the taxpaying public isn’t going to win it any sympathy.

 

An otter in the High Street. What a great summer for wildlife!

THE old jokes are definitely the best. Here’s one of my favourites:

In the curry house. “I’ll have a chicken tarka.” “What’s that?” “It’s like a chicken tikka only otter!”

Yes, it’s a groan a minute in the Riddle household!

Brought to mind, of course, by the adorable CCTV footage of an otter making its late-night way along the High Street, and apparently doing a bit of window-shopping en route.

Well done to the sharp-eyed volunteer camera operator who spotted that!

Presumably it’s the peace of lockdown in the city centre that’s emboldened the otter to venture so far into the built-up area.

I’ve only seen one live otter before, in the river in Harnham. A very brief glimpse, before it disappeared underwater.

Journal readers may remember I found one run over on the side of the Netherhampton Road a few years ago, probably after it had gone prospecting for fish in someone’s garden pond.

I’ve also seen another dead one, in the Winterbourne Valley.

 I’m very jealous of a neighbour who’s spotted an adult swimming with cubs in our area.

But I do have to report a marked decrease in the number of ducks and moorhens, and a complete absence of coot along our stretch of the Nadder these days.

Foxes can’t be helping in that respect. It’s not always easy for to sit back and watch Nature Red in Tooth and Claw playing out before our eyes without wanting to interfere.

But we must. Particularly since all these creatures are simply trying to make a living in a man-made landscape.

The wildlife in our garden has been a joy as we’ve hunkered down here during the pandemic. 

With two feeding stations on the go, we’ve had the privilege of watching great spotted woodpeckers feeding their baby on our shed roof. 

Starlings, absent for a number of years, have made a comeback, breeding in a hole at the front of the house whether the fascia board fell off, and I love to hear their twittering. We've been spying from afar on the spire's thriving peregrine family.

As I speak, a squadron of sparrows are flying back and forth between the ivy and the shed, trying to hurry up the squirrel that’s attached itself to the nut feeder and is performing the most extraordinary contortions trying not to fall off!

We’ve even spotted a grass snake slithering into a flower bed, and that’s because we’ve let the lawn run wild this year and just mown a path around the edge.

This enforced period of idleness has done me a big favour, as I’ve discovered the benefit of spending some time just sitting and watching the world go by. Note to self: Never get too busy again!

Pedestrianising Salisbury? Nice idea, but won't it make the ring road worse?

THERE is a reason why motorists use the city centre as a through route. It’s called the ring road.

Wiltshire Council acknowledges this on its website.

Churchill Way can get so clogged up that for me, for example, to take rubbish to the tip from Harnham, it’s far easier to go via Exeter Street, New Street and Mill Road than to queue at the gyratory and then at four successive roundabouts.

It doesn’t work wonders for the air quality in town, but then neither do those queues all around the outskirts.

Easier, too, to head down Netherhampton Road and rat-run past the beleagured inhabitants of Quidhampton.

That’s the truth. Unpalatable, but it’s what happens.

Likewise, if I’m heading for Waitrose and I see motionless cars all the way from the Exeter Street roundabout to the College, I turn off into town and cut through the central car park. Who wouldn’t?

So whilst the benefits for public health of pedestrianising large chunks of the city centre on an experimental basis are obvious, and whilst traders seem OK with giving it a try, I’m sure that every resident has a perfectly good excuse for doing their level best to avoid the jams on the Seventh Circle of Hell which will only get worse as a result.

Having said which, I wish this trial scheme all the best, and there are plenty of opportunities promised for the public and businesses to feed in their early reactions so that it can be ‘tweaked’ if necessary.

Given that we appear to be stuck forever without a bypass and with an industrial estate that’s in the wrong place, the council’s got to do something. And this seems to be the only thing within its control.

Well, aside from relocating the tip. If it had any money. Which it did have, once, back in the day when the previous administration wasn’t in any mood to listen to the taxpayers of Salisbury.

 

 

 

The lockdown shambles and the state of my feet

MY feet could do with a bit of TLC.

I don’t buy cosmetics or indulge in ‘pampering’ spa days, but in normal times, every six weeks I like to get my hair cut and have a pedicure (an arthritic knee makes it a bit painful to twiddle with my own toes too much).

That’s it. Both extremities dealt with, I feel reasonably smart, and the bit in the middle won’t really matter. Or that’s what I tell myself!

Except that due to what I can only call the government’s continued cackhanded management off the Covid crisis, a pedicure is not allowed. A haircut, on the other hand, now is.

Can anyone tell me how it’s safer to have a hairdresser in a visor hovering around my face at a distance of six inches than to lie outstretched while a beautician in mask and gloves tends my toenails from a distance of more than 5ft?

Apparently, meanwhile, it’s perfectly acceptable to give the gasping hordes permission to head for the beach where they can ‘cool off’ and hobnob at a social distance no longer than a tube of suncream.

And oh! Surprise, surprise! There are no toilets, no cafes, the rubbish bins are overflowing … and even more surprise, I’m sure, when a second wave of infection sweeps the nation in a few weeks’ time.

I have to say, my anger is not helped by the behaviour of an ignorant local minority.

Walking in Harnham cricket field over the past fortnight I’ve twice been dragged by the curious dog towards piles of human faeces ‘covered up’ by a single sheet of toilet roll. Because, of course, the pub loos are shut and kids are being ‘caught short’ when their parents take them to play in the river.

Dog owners have to ‘bag it and bin it’. Why can’t other people? Or even better, pick up their offspring’s excrement in one of their empty picnic carrier bags, take it home and flush it?

There’s no excuse for this selfish, antisocial behaviour.

But there’s even less excuse for the government making such a hash of the precautions we need to ‘squash the sombrero’ of disease.

All the people (like beauticians) who are prevented from earning a living must be feeling sick as a case of sunstroke when they watch this debacle unfold with the compliance of an elite, very few of whom have ever done a self-employed day’s work.

 

 

 

 

City needs safe bike storage to foil thieves

A FEW days ago I opined on social media that I wouldn’t take my bike into Salisbury unless there was safe, supervised parking for it.

I didn’t necessarily mean it had to be manned, but certainly it would need to be monitored by cameras.

I said cycle theft was rife, and had been for years. (Quite apart from the fact that I’m a very wobbly rider and I don’t want to get ticked off for hogging the pavement!)

I was responding to campaigners who are understandably keen, as I am, to see more cycle paths created to encourage residents to leave their cars at home.

Their response online was that my concerns were exaggerated and unjustified and I should just invest in a lock and all would be well.

Yet days later on the Salisbury Journal website there’s a warning from the police about a spate of thefts involving bolt croppers being used to cut through cable locks.

They say we should be buying ‘D’ locks instead, because they’re a safer bet. Obviously they’re tougher, and opportunist crooks will opt for easier targets. But they won’t deter the determined.

I’m very glad officers are working with our CCTV volunteers to trace the parasites involved, but even if they catch them I don’t believe the courts will impose truly deterrent sentences.

I happen to have a sentimental attachment to my old bike.

So for the time being, it’s not going out.

 

Novichok drama trolls highlight the ugly side of British life today

WHY on earth would anyone presume that they know another person well enough to pick their character to pieces when all they’ve seen of them is a televised re-creation of a sensational interlude that tore their life apart in a way no-one could have foreseen?

I speak, of course, of the lowlife who’ve criticised Nick Bailey’s wife, Sarah, on the basis of having watched the BBC’s The Salisbury Poisonings and assuming they now know everything about the real people at the heart of the tragedy.

They are so stupid they cannot tell a drama series – a very gripping one, I have to say - from reality.

Det Sgt Bailey has had to take to social media to hit back at these ‘armchair experts’ and their negativity.

But it should have come as no surprise. We see this kind of gratuitous nastiness online all the time.

This is why, as I’ve said before, website and social media commentators should not be allowed to post anonymously. It emboldens the cowards who’d never dare put their names to the cruel rubbish that they spout.

When the BBC announced the project last year, I warned that it might be too soon for the people most closely affected by these events, and for our tourist trade, given the difficulty we were experiencing in persuading people to come here again.

Now, of course, every town and city in the country is experiencing financial difficulty, for another reason entirely, so perhaps this show couldn’t really do much more damage to our economy. Look on the bright side!

The programme provides an excuse for conspiracy theorists to spread their fake news all over again, although I do not believe, by any means, that we have been told the whole truth about this terrifying episode. There are still many questions hanging in the air.

One fact there’s no doubt about. The air ambulance charity still hasn’t been compensated by the government for the £100,000 costs it incurred, which is shameful.

 

 

The Maltings Mystery explained ... after a fashion

MYSTIFIED by the lack of progress on the new Travelodge/temporary library where the British Heart Foundation used to be?

Me too, especially since a ‘To Let’ sign appeared on the hoarding round the silent building site a few days ago. 

So I did a bit of asking around.

Apparently - and understandably, due to the Covid pandemic - Travelodge is reviewing all its sites and plans across the country.

Wiltshire Council, meanwhile, has a duty to get a firm valuation for the proposed library area downstairs in the new building before it can commit to a lease.

But the crisis has also made it almost impossible to get a realistic valuation for a site such as this, since no-one is sure what the future holds for town centres and high streets.

So investment company Nuveen, which owns the freehold of the land, is testing the water by seeing if anyone else might take it on. If someone does, it would put the kibosh on the council’s plan to move the library there until a more permanent home can be found.

I do sympathise to some extent with Wiltshire in all this. Every time they get their act together and come up with a plan to regenerate the Maltings/Central Car Park, someone or something comes along and moves the goalposts.

Events, dear boy, as Macmillan did or didn’t say, depending on where you look it up on the internet.

Not helping at all – although of course it will help the city as a whole – is the revised flood modelling carried out by the Environment Agency.

Flood alleviation work must – repeat, must – be done before the council’s planners can finalise their ideas for the whole regeneration project.

And that includes the library. Which to my mind, therefore, looks likely to stay exactly where it is for the time being.

No-one, as it was pointed out to me, is making investment decisions right now.

Add to that the fact that virtually every local authority in the country, Wiltshire included, is facing bankruptcy come August if – and it’s a big IF – the government allows that to happen.

And what have you got? A big headache, that’s the only thing for sure.