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.

Time for Salisbury to take back control?

TAKE back control. That was the catchphrase that did the trick for Boris.

I wonder whether it would work the same magic for Salisbury?

Because what we don’t have here is control. Not a shred of it, or not when it matters.

The destiny of our city is almost  totally in the hands of Wiltshire Council up at Trowbridge.

Schemes for ‘improvements’ are dreamed up at County Hall, or in cahoots with the business-led Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership.

Any government dosh that comes our way tends to be doled out on preordained projects through these channels.

‘Consultations’ garner a pathetic number of responses. Many people aren’t even aware of them. If they don’t read the local paper, and aren’t among the handful of ‘usual suspects’ who sit through area board meetings, they are highly unlikely to scroll through Wiltshire Council’s notoriously impenetrable website on the off-chance that they might find something interesting there.

And then we’re lambasted as ‘ungrateful’ when we finally put our collective foot down, and everyone warns us that we won’t get offered any more sweeties if we don’t say thank you nicely.

Take the People Friendly Streets fiasco, for example. It needn’t have gone so wrong, if only anyone had taken the time to ask local people to help draw up a scheme in the first place.

Our parish council, grandiosely housed in the Guildhall, resplendent on ceremonial occasions in its red robes and civic regalia – a sad reminder of the glory days when the city managed its own business - gets what it’s given and seems unable to wean itself off its addiction to party politics.

Several of its members are ‘dual hatted’, i.e. they are Wiltshire councillors, too. How can that be right? There must inevitably be conflicts of interest. 

It’s time all this nonsense came to an end.

It’s more than time that Salisbury regained some of its former powers as the heart of south Wiltshire.

But since we’re smugly assured by those who benefit from the present system that it won’t happen, what would be the next best thing, do you think?

An independent city council? Made up of members chosen for their ability, not their party allegiance? Free to think as they will, but united by an undertaking to work collaboratively on key issues to get the best possible deal for Salisbury from the unitary authority, regularly consulting residents and businesses and reflecting their opinions?

Pie in the sky? It doesn’t have to be. 

Surely there must be a few public-spirited,  free-thinking individuals out there who will  stand for election in May and undertake to pool their talents for the greater good?

And a few voters willing to set aside their usual a) party loyalty or b) apathy to get them into office?

 

No-one bothered to tell city council the money for People Friendly Streets was gone

 NOW it appears that the city council had no chance of getting Salisbury’s People Friendly Streets experiment reinstated.

Even if they’d all voted for it on Monday, it wouldn’t have happened.

Because Wiltshire Council had already announced the indefinite suspension of the People Friendly Streets package to ‘green up’ Salisbury, and the SWLEP, the fund-awarding body, had consequently taken its money elsewhere. After all, if it couldn’t be spent in Salisbury by March, there were bound to be others with ‘oven ready’ deals on offer. Deadlines work against genuine democratic decision-making? Sorry, them’s the rules!

If only someone had thought to tell the Guildhall Gang. I wonder why they didn’t and I do wish Wiltshire Council would be a bit more forthcoming with its version of events.

Given the number of city councillors who double up as members of Wiltshire, it’s surprising no-one appears to have known that they were wasting their time, along with blood, sweat and tears of all those members of the public who sent in letters and the 10 of us who laboriously and nervously prepared statements to read out to the assembled online throng.

Is it any wonder that the voting public becomes more disenchanted with the political class by the day?

Who do they think they are? An extraordinary city council meeting over the ban on through traffic

GETTING more personally involved in a local controversy, rather than standing above it and pontificating as an independent journalist, has been an educational, wholly preoccupying and draining experience.

While social media can reach and inform sections of the British public that our normal democratic processes can’t, and it’s a great thing that they can do this, I hadn’t realised quite how much hard work is involved in policing a Facebook page.

There are all sorts of fallings-out among people who apparently support your cause but then get cross with each other and start trading insults and using language that would earn them a punch on the nose in real life. That Private Eye column taking the mickey out of online commentators on newspaper websites is hilarious but hideously realistic.

There are all sorts of sly tactics, and outright lies, used by your opponents to try to discredit your group and your cause, which I’m not used to. Given that I’m hardly a shy violet, it astonishes me that I’m so astonished by this dishonesty. I’m exhausted by it, frankly, as I write this.

But hey ho, we have to work with the world we find ourselves in, and deprived of the relatively civilised berth of a newspaper column, I’m enjoying where life’s taking me.

In this case to SOS - Save Our Salisbury, a campaign set up by a few bloody-minded individuals in response to the imposition of two initiatives in Salisbury - a Low Traffic Zone which went under the inappropriate title of People Friendly Streets, and a cycle lane, complete with bollards, in one of the most unsuitable parts of our historic road network. 

I truly find it difficult to believe that Wiltshire Council thought they had a mandate for anything other than the broadest principles of any such schemes, but Plonk! There these things suddenly were, and there we were, having to like it or lump it. 

Because politically motivated Funding From On High had suddenly become available (cheers, Boris!) and if they didn’t use it, they might lose it. Couldn’t have that happening, now, could we? It’s a cycle lane. It must be green, mustn’t it? Yes, OK, it’s empty. But green. Definitely green.

Within six weeks SOS had attracted 2,400 members and it’s still growing. Fantastic.

But it appears that this type of expression of public opinion cuts no ice with our ‘democratically elected’ leaders, who are quite happy to carry on as they are, thank you very much, and would much rather not be disturbed or questioned about what they’re doing in our name.

Here’s what happened. 

Under the Low Traffic Zone restrictions, people learned that they’d be fined if they drove through their town centre without a permit which they’d need to apply online for EVERY SINGLE TIME they wanted to go there. No more spur-of-the-moment visits to dear old Mum in her McCarthy & Stone flat, then, without a scenic trip round the ring road jams in order to approach from the officially approved angle.

Signs sprouted all round the ring road warning people to stay on the A36. In which case no visitor to a city that relies on tourism would ever find their way in.

Carers visiting the elderly or disabled had to spend half their time driving the long way round when they could have been tending to their vulnerable clients.

A long-established and highly-regarded furniture store reportedly couldn’t get permits for stock deliveries outside its premises and was having to use a public car park to unload and carry sofas  through the street.

Traders already struggling with the combined effect of the Novichok attack and the pandemic were warning that they might have to close or relocate, while one business publicly declared that they had been deterred from investing.

Grudgingly, Wiltshire Council scrapped  the Low Traffic Zone and took its bus gates away.

So last night Salisbury City (parish) Council, led by a Conservative group who are split down the middle and fresh from a leadership coup, considered the matter. And decided by 12 votes to 10 that they wanted the restrictions reintroduced. 

I understand that those members who are dual-hatted - i.e. who are members of both Salisbury and Wiltshire councils, which shouldn’t be allowed  - received a text message telling them what was expected of them.

Not that city councillors have the power to reintroduce the Low Traffic Zone.  Because no, the unitary authority system has deprived an ancient cathedral city, the commercial centre of the whole of south Wiltshire, of any powers other than those graciously granted by the Remote Controllers in Trowbridge. At one stage we even had to be granted permission to run our own public toilets. Yes, really.

But they can make the gesture, and hope that the Big Boys Up North will come back and play nicely.

Anyone watching the meeting online could have been forgiven when they sat up, goggle-eyed, three and a half hours later, for wondering why they’d bothered.

But they’d have been right to bother. It really was educational.

I wish I could bring you better news.

Sorry for the silence

 Apologies for the recent lack of posts. I’ve been preoccupied and very busy with the SOS Save Our Salisbury campaign on Facebook. There’s an important city council meeting this Monday at which I will be speaking, and I’ll report back after that.