A gadget too far

MY struggles with a new mobile phone struck a chord with many readers, and with women in particular.

Now there’s a new challenger in the Riddle household for the title of Most Irritating Gadget. It’s called a YouView box.

 “Search our galaxy of content using your remote control” says the blurb.

Which remote control would that be, then, out of the three now lined up on my coffee table, all of them apparently indispensable?

I don’t want all this technology, let alone an entire universe of programmes to eat up all my spare time.

I don’t care much if I can’t record three programmes at once and rewatch an entire series six weeks after it was broadcast.

It’s television, for goodness’ sake. Moving wallpaper.  Apart from half a dozen favourite shows, it’s what we do when we haven’t got anything better to occupy our minds.

The more of these gizmos we acquire, the less I understand, and now I find that if my husband’s not home to juggle between the screen menus I rarely bother to watch at all.

I’m sure younger people feel differently, and that’s fine. But I just feel disenfranchised.

NOBODY could ever mistake me for a member of the Wiltshire Supporters’ Club.

Other than in the financial sense, that is, since I have no choice but to pay my council tax.

However, hooray!  For once its leaders have done something right, so it’s only fair to point it out.

They’ve foregone the loot they hoped to rake in through flogging off their old depot in Coombe Bissett to developers of ‘executive’ homes.

And they’ve listened to parish councillors’ pleas for much-needed affordable housing to rent to local people.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this long-running campaign, and to Wiltshire’s cabinet for showing that ‘localism’ need not be just an empty buzzword.

City under siege

I HAVE yet to meet a single person who wants a hotel and drive-through McDonalds squeezed onto the tiny wild space between Tesco and Southampton Road.

Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, though.

People who actually live here can see in an instant how idiotic it would be to plonk a traffic-generating dining destination alongside the city’s worst bottleneck.

Or to expect weekending tourists to hop on a park and ride bus and join the queues into town.

Some have joked that at least there’d be something to eat in the jams.

But judging by the time it takes to creep from Tesco’s car park onto the main road, a hungry trucker could demolish a Big Mac and fries before he even edged off the fast-food forecourt. I suppose that would make for safer driving.

I’m not saying there’s no place for a ‘drive-thru’ in Salisbury, though. Just not this place.

By the way, I stand corrected. The site in question is not flood plain, as I said last week. Not officially.

It is, however, currently – and frequently - under water. So maybe the official definition of flood plain needs revisiting.

Sure, the land level could be raised. But all flood water’s got to go somewhere.  Into the Sainsbury’s car park opposite, perhaps?

Why, when the South Wiltshire core strategy provides more land for new building than most of us thought could ever be required, do developers persist in piling into Southampton Road?

And why had they been discussing the hotel scheme with council planners for more than a year before bothering to ask the public about it? Of course they won’t want to see all the effort they’ve invested go to waste.

But the madness doesn’t stop there.

Now another supermarket chain wants to snap up the Old Manor site, following the authorities’ failure to ensure the construction of much-needed housing for the elderly.

Oh my, that’ll work wonders for the rush-hour traffic on the ring road.

No doubt the architects will churn out some faux-folksy design, a sort of shoppers’ Poundbury, to ‘blend in’ with the surrounding listed buildings. But does Salisbury need four giant supermarkets – and not one of them near all its new homes?

Does nobody have any plan for any part of our lovely city that doesn’t involve ‘sympathetically designed’ retail sheds, fast-food restaurants, and high-density housing estates the size of a small planet?

anneriddle36@gmail.com

Save our natural flood protection

I STAND corrected. The proposed  hotel site on Southampton Road is not on an official flood plain, I am told by those in authority. 
Well, all I can say is that there must be something wrong with the official definition of flood plain because every time the meadows across the road from this site flood - and they are officially part of the flood plain - so does this piece of land.
So objectors to the development need to photograph it when it's inundated if they are to convince a planning inspector at any future public inquiry that this scheme is completely barmy.
Cameras out, guys!

Southampton Road: It gets worse ....

QUESTION: What is going on in Southampton Road?

And what is our publicly-funded system of planning controls worth?

First, we’ve got Sainsbury’s daft plan for a superstore complete with built-to-flood car park on the fields next to B&Q.

Despite some 150 objections and the fact that the site is outside the city’s agreed development boundaries, the supermarket chain is intent on pursuing this scheme, and is presumably prepared to take Wiltshire Council through an expensive appeal process if necessary.

And I imagine there are plenty of people who would enjoy seeing Tesco face a powerful challenger on its own out-of-town doorstep.

I wouldn’t bet against the plan succeeding, given the track record of the final arbiter, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles - unless our MP John Glen, who’s his Parliamentary Private Secretary, also happens to be a miracle-worker.

Now there is an apparently serious proposal to build a 65-bedroom hotel opposite this mad megastore, between Tesco and the main road.

This site is also flood plain which, the last time I looked at it a few days ago, was doing its job – i.e. storing flood water which might otherwise inconvenience nearby residents and businesses.

But if the planners approve Sainsbury’s scheme, I can’t see any argument that would prevent them approving a hotel, too. So maybe they’ll feel they have to turn them both down? Who knows? We can only hope.

Meanwhile, do you think we should give up trying to protect our little green wildernesses on the basis that they’re a lost cause?

Is yet more chaos on Southampton Road inevitable?

What do you think local democracy actually amounts to?

With elections to Wiltshire Council and Salisbury City Council fast approaching, these are questions worth considering.

Consumer revolt

I DON’T like being called a “consumer”.

OK, I’ve been called a lot worse things in my time. When you’re a journalist, it goes with the territory. But I prefer to think of myself as an individual who goes shopping when the need arises.

I’m not being holier than thou. I admit I’m prone to random fits of self-indulgence where clothes and shoes are concerned.

But I’m fed up with our media and politicians harping on about the need to get us “consuming” more in order to revitalise the economy.

It implies that we’re mindless servants of the great god Growth, rather than rational human beings getting on with our lives, making informed choices for our own benefit.

In my experience, the reasons that we aren’t shopping quite as madly as we used to are:

a)  that we can’t afford it, or

b) that we’ve already got one and we’ve realised that we don’t need another, newer, shinier version just for the sake of it, thank you very much.

We do not exist purely to “consume” whatever stuff someone is hoping to make money from.

I’m also turning into a grammar grump.  I find myself repelled by windows plastered with posters boasting of bargains “instore” or “in branch”.

Whatever happened to the definite article? And what’s wrong with that good old-fashioned English word “inside”?

I’ve never parked my car and collected a trolley whilst remarking to my husband: “Oh look, there’s a special offer instore.” Or headed for the bank thinking: “I’ll just go in branch and get some cash out.”

If these businesses want to use their ghastly jargon among themselves, that’s fine. But don’t inflict it on me. I’m not buying it, and they can BOGOF.

Park and get taken for a ride

LET me make something clear. Unlike many people, I can afford to pay £1.50 to park my car for an hour. In that respect I’m lucky, and I know it.

But I don’t do it. Or at least, I do it as infrequently as possible.

I can’t exactly say why. Some psychological barrier has gone up.

It used to be that if I had an errand in town on a day off, I’d happily pay £1 to park for an hour, or even stretch to two hours, and spend any leftover time browsing, possibly buying the occasional frock or pair of shoes on impulse. To my husband’s relief, I don’t do that any more.

Since I retired as a Journal reporter I have more leisure time than I’ve ever had in my life. But do I use it to boost city centre trade? Sadly, I confess, I do not.

Let’s take an example. Once a month on a Wednesday morning I buy a chicken from Tom and Mark at the farmers’ market (best chicken for miles around, by the way).

To collect it, either I nip in to a bay on Milford Street and pay 20p for 15 minutes, or, if I’ve got two or three small errands like a trip to the bank that have piled up, I pay for half an hour – again, on a meter.

Anyone who’s had dealings with a traffic warden knows that means that you don’t hang about, let alone mosey round the shops.

What I do much less often than in the past is go into any car park – whether owned by Wiltshire Council or by the Old George Mall, which hikes its charges in line with the council’s but doesn’t seem to get lambasted for it in the same way by the general public, possibly because it’s a more convenient base for a shopping trip and you don’t have to decide in advance how long you’ll stay or risk a fine.

I know some people may argue that I have an axe to grind after being very heavily involved in the Salisbury Journal’s Show Some Sense campaign, which reflected public anger at enormous increases in the cost of parking.

But it’s not simply bloody-mindedness that keeps me out of town and my money in my purse.

I can’t explain it other than to say that the charges just feel like too much. And I suspect that’s why the campaign struck a chord with so many people.

The right Vision for Salisbury?

I'M starting to question whether it’s wise to build more shops on the central car park.

With so many stores closing locally and nationally, and with customers deserting traditional town centres for the internet, does it make long-term sense?

From the soundings I’ve taken, there’s certainly an appetite for a few more fashion outlets in Salisbury.

And we know the big chains don’t like our little olde-worlde shops because they can’t display their merchandise in bulk, as they do in every clone town in Britain.

But I don’t want to live in a Basingrad.

It’s these funny, inconvenient buildings, so full of character, that form the city’s heart and soul, just as much as the Cathedral and its swankier environs.

While the retail giants aren’t interested in occupying them, local independent traders struggle to afford them.

Commercial rents in Salisbury, even in our secondary shopping streets, are punishingly high for anyone thinking of setting up in business.

And it would seem from the evidence all around us that landlords can afford to leave shops vacant for months on end, rather than reduce their demands.

Add to all this the general reluctance of the paying public to walk more than a hundred yards from their cars, and I feel uneasy.

Don’t we risk parts of our city centre – i.e. those furthest away from the new development – degenerating into retail wastelands, just as the Marlands in Southampton did after West Quay was built?

With wages around here so low, there’s only so much shopping that the population of South Wiltshire can do.

And the world’s moved on from those heady days when a credit card and a day out at a mall were seen as the answer to all our woes. I don’t believe we’ll be going back there again.

In terms of what Salisbury actually needs, I think there’s an arguable case for the central car park to be developed in another way - for affordable homes for sale to first-time buyers, if possible with some kind of covenant to prevent private landlords snapping them up.

And maybe some housing aimed at older people, too, to take advantage of the level walk to all the central facilities.

More people living in the city centre would help support the traders we’ve still got, and maybe we wouldn’t need to build on quite so many green fields.

And while I’m on about it, what about some incentives for the owners of our existing shops to turn their empty upper floors into homes? There are a lot of them.

Well, that’s my Salisbury Vision.