Hobson's choice for local voters

IT was Henry Ford, that pioneer of motoring for the masses, who stated back in 1909 that purchasers of the Model T could have “any colour they like as long it’s black”.

In one respect, it seems, consumer choice hasn’t moved on in the intervening 104 years.

Across large swathes of South Wiltshire, voters can have any colour they like next month as long as it’s blue.

Residents of Tidworth, Winterslow, Netheravon, Fovant or the Chalke Valley needn’t bother trekking down to the polling booth because the only Wiltshire Council candidates standing in these areas are Conservatives.

Carlton Brand, the council's chief returning officer, told the BBC sadly that this state of affairs was "not democratic" and disenfranchising.

Oh, really? What a surprise!

The other parties in these electoral divisions have sensibly decided the result is a foregone conclusion. They won’t get in, so what’s the point in persuading some doomed unfortunate to invest time and effort in putting up a token fight?

I suspect that’s the way it’ll stay while our present ‘first past the post’ system continues.

I’ve looked at the results from last time round, and found that in some of the areas listed above, almost 50 per cent of voters backed candidates who weren’t Tories.

They, too, are probably now thinking “Why bother?”

I’m not making a party political point here. My personal view is that there should be no place for party politics in local government.

But I do wonder why we expect people to believe that they live in a democracy where their voice counts, when they can go through a whole lifetime of dutiful voting without managing to elect a councillor or Member of Parliament who represents their views.

I’m only surprised there aren’t more divisions with only one person standing.

A nice warm covered market? Yes, please

I WAS intrigued by the proposal drawn up by a trio of local architects for a covered market, with budget hotel rooms overhead, on the site of the bus station.

It’s the kind of imaginative thinking that could give Salisbury a new lease of life.

Which probably means it’s doomed, and we’ll get another block of ‘sympathetically designed’ flats.

I don’t know whether or not the current market traders would welcome an opportunity to move to a cosy, all-weather home.

I realise that some of them have invested a lot of money to be where they are right now.

As an occasional customer, however, I know I’m less likely to buy my veg in the Market Place when it’s freezing and the wind is whipping round my ankles – ie most of the time.

Which is why I’ve always had reservations about a great deal of public money being invested in the whole ‘café culture’ makeover scheme. Lovely when the sun shines – but how often is that?

Anyway, even if our regular stallholders aren’t interested, a covered market could include spaces to rent to all manner of craftspeople and creative start-up businesses that can’t afford our shops.

Just look at the way the excellent Vintage Quarter is attracting a new breed of customer to Wilton shopping village.

I dropped in to the Easter Monday vintage fair there, and the place was buzzing despite the cold.

The girl in the tearoom (lovely carrot cake, by the way) said they’d prepared for a busy day and still been run off their feet. They’d had ten coachloads of visitors, and the car park was packed.

In my opinion, the shopping village was looking a little jaded and old-fashioned a few months ago, and I wouldn’t have chosen to shop there.

But broadening the mix with vintage and Art Deco has certainly made it a happy hunting ground for me.

Which just leaves one question.

If our shivering stallholders did fancy a move indoors, what would happen to the super whizz-bang new-look Market Place then?

Disabled parking, anyone?

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.