It's time to fight for Wiltshire's frontline fire services

IT’S a brave man who suggests reforms that might cost him his own job.
My instinctive reaction is to respect the integrity of someone who does that.
Take, for example, Wiltshire’s fire chief, Simon Routh-Jones, and his Dorset counterpart, Darran Gunter.
Clearly these are blokes who know what they’re doing. Lives depend on it.
And one thing they agree on is that without drastic action, their respective services will collapse in a couple of years under the weight of deficits that our government will not permit them to address by raising money through council tax.
They’ve been doing their best to economise. Under the present setup they will have little left to cut except firefighters, fire engines and fire stations.
So they’ve undertaken a great deal of work and produced a detailed consultative document that fully justifies what they see as the best possible solution – a merger producing economies of scale.
I’ve read it, and you might have done, too, if only the plug hadn’t been pulled on the public consultation.
Trouble is, there’s nothing much in the plan for Wiltshire Council, which is desperately seeking new roles for itself as the government keeps trying to slash through the layers of bureaucracy hampering our economic recovery.
Wiltshire’s already taken over some of the police force’s back office functions, and there are some who are not altogether delighted about the way that’s been working.
Now it wants the fire service’s backroom boys and girls, too.
The fire chiefs aren’t saying there’s no room for co-operation with local councils. Quite the opposite.
But first, in their combined view, there must be a merger because that’s where the big savings lie, and time is short.
Until very recently, Graham Payne was chairman of the county’s fire authority.
He said the fire chiefs were quite right, and he stuck to his guns. So he’s been got rid of by his Tory colleagues who are busy examining ‘other options’. Because of course, they know best.
They promise they will resurrect the consultation when they’ve had time to poke their noses in a bit more. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with, and whether they show any sense of urgency about it.

Wiltshire's right to build council houses but tenants' right to buy is wrong

IT pains me to admit it, but Wiltshire Council is doing something right for once.
Investing £70million (OK, some of the funding isn’t confirmed yet, but the intention is there) in much-needed houses for hard-up young families to rent and in flats to enable the elderly to downsize is exactly what’s needed.
If it encourages the construction industry to get on and develop all that land it’s sitting on, so much the better.
A building boom on designated sites, preferably brownfield, will give the council ammunition to fight off speculative applications elsewhere and protect our countryside.
So far, then, so unusually positive.
It’s a particularly remarkable turn of events when you realise that the only council housing in the county right now is what used to belong to the old Salisbury District.
The other parts of Wiltshire handed theirs over to housing associations long ago, and as I recall from the mutterings at the time, the Trowbridge generals weren’t over-keen on becoming social landlords when they first staged their bloodless coup.
So I’d say well done, and particularly to housing portfolio holder, cllr Richard Clewer.
He’s not a cabinet member because he’s from the wrong side of the tracks, i.e. south of the Plain, but he’s doing a good job.
And as Groucho Marx more or less said, who’d want to be a member of that club anyway?
However (and there always is a however, isn’t there?) something lurking just outside the spotlight bothers me, and that’s the right to buy.
Once a family have lived in one of these new homes for five years they’ll have the right to acquire it at a discount. Then it won’t be a council house any more.
So what will be available for equally deserving young couples who come along later?
Or are we committing as a county to repeating the whole exercise, and to a long-term strategy of subsidising cheap property purchases for the lucky few?
Meanwhile those who are just as hard-up but can’t get a council house in the first place and have to rent privately won’t have a hope in hell of being able to afford to buy their home on the private market.
Or am I missing something?
We all know what Mrs Thatcher’s political reasons were for wanting to create a society of home owners, but in today’s economic climate that’s about as likely to happen as me being appointed special adviser on public relations to Jane Scott.
The right to buy isn’t Wiltshire’s fault, of course. The only people who can overturn it are our elected representatives at Westminster.

Cuts, and the Orwellian world of Wiltshire Council jargon

NOW, children, does anyone know the meaning of these commonly-used words or phrases?
‘Targeted support’, ‘building stronger and more resilient communities’, ‘efficiencies’, ‘shaping services’, ‘harmonisation’, ‘synchronisation’, ‘encouraging volunteering’, ‘restructuring’.
Yes, little Johnny, you’re right. Have a house point. The answer is ‘cuts’.
They’re all prime examples, taken from recent reports and press releases, of the jargon with which Wiltshire Council (and it’s far from alone in this) seeks to control our perception of what it’s doing.
Even though it’s fooling no-one, it persists with its cynical manipulation of language. And despite having next to no money, it pays people to do it.
We’ll soon have ‘community led’ youth services, proposals for which have been ‘robustly scrutinised’ after ‘stakeholders’ (‘key’ or otherwise) have been ‘engaged with’ in an ‘open and transparent’ fashion.
The ‘drivers for change’, are, of course, cuts again – ultimately you can blame the government or the bankers, depending on your politics.
But rest assured – after all the meat has been picked from the bones, the resulting ‘community led’ skeleton services down at the shiny new ‘community campus’ will be ‘sustainable,’ ‘fit for purpose’ and in line with the council’s ‘vision for stronger and more resilient communities’ and there’ll be a whole lot of ‘safeguarding’ going on to make sure our young people experience ‘healthy and safe life outcomes’.
Phew, and to think they had me worried there for a minute!
Now I yield to no-one in my admiration for Wiltshire’s corporate communications department. Not least for their patience when I’m constantly pestering them for answers.
They are an endlessly polite, helpful, professional bunch and I like every one of them I’ve dealt with over the years.
But one has to ask: When the council says it can’t afford to keep vulnerable people with autism, physical disabilities or learning difficulties in the places they’ve come to regard as safe havens over the years, how on earth can it justify the continuing cost of churning out propaganda like this?
I certainly wouldn’t wish any of the communications team to be ‘reconfigured’ out of a job. But maybe their talents could be redirected towards teaching other staff how to write plain English?
Last autumn at the Playhouse I was spellbound by the touring production of 1984 that is currently wowing London audiences.
I read Orwell’s novel as a teenager, in that obligatory rite-of-passage way that kids do.
But I think I got more out of the play several decades further on, because I was able to draw parallels with real-life experience.
Newspeak, here we come.

Local people must have a vote on Sainsbury plan

IT’S as clear as can be that a large number of people in Salisbury don’t want to see a Sainsbury’s superstore disfiguring the green fields that have miraculously remained undeveloped alongside Southampton Road.
How can I justify that opinion?
From reading the Journal’s postbag over the last few months, from seeing the comments on its Facebook page, and from the numbers who have sent in objections to the planners, signed teenager Hamish Mundell’s petition, or taken part in cllr Richard Clewer’s survey.
And now from the Salisbury Vision’s strongly-worded letter to planners.
But what if the decision on this planning application isn’t made by local people?
What if, instead of being considered by councillors who know and love the area and understand the sensitivity of the site, the future of this unspoilt window on the city is left to the mercy of the county’s strategic planning committee, as I understand it may well be?
There are only three councillors from South Wiltshire on this body, and only one elected by residents of the city – that’s Bill Moss, who represents St Mark’s and Bishopdown.
He’s hugely experienced and widely respected, but as I say, there’s only one of him.
Some may argue that the reason we have a strategic planning committee is precisely so that large and potentially unpopular developments aren’t held up by Nimbys, softies, hippies, tree-huggers or whatever label you choose to disparage principled objectors.
One might understand, if not necessarily accept, that argument if we were talking about a new motorway, or a hospital, or some other vital facility deemed to be for the greater good of the community.
But a supermarket? No way.
Even if it does get turned down, I’m pretty sure that this will go to appeal and end up being settled by a planning inspector, because a) Sainsbury’s has invested so heavily in it and b) that’s what big business does.
I recently asked the firm whether it had made any approaches about building at Fugglestone Red, instead, since many people have suggested it as a better site.
A spokesman would not give me a ‘yes or no’ answer, but said: “Sainsbury’s chose to become part of the Salisbury Gateway project as this area of the city was previously identified by Salisbury Vision as appropriate for a gateway development.”
What rubbish. The Vision’s objections are now in print for all to see, and just to make it crystal clear, I’m told: “The Vision does not envisage improvements to this area would require or include a new large foodstore.”
This is a local issue, and it needs to be resolved locally.

Apathy rules over plan to tighten Salisbury's licensing laws

MIDDLE age doesn’t have many advantages, as far as I can see.
Like most of my fellow baby-boomers, I haven’t stopped thinking of myself as young yet.
Maybe it’s got something to do with watching the official retirement age creeping ever further away from us towards the horizon.
But in days gone by, once we hit our fifties, women like me would have settled for a cast-iron perm and an elasticated waistband.
Nowadays we just struggle harder and harder to squeeze that expanding middle into a pair of jeans.
What does change, inevitably, is that we become largely invisible to the opposite sex. Appreciative glances from passing strangers? Just a memory.
But that very invisibility does have its upside.
I can walk home alone from the city centre after a night out without feeling in the least bit threatened.
Gangs of raucous youths who congregate to show off to each other aren’t remotely interested in bothering the likes of me, thank goodness.
These reflections were sparked by a Wiltshire Council survey on people’s perception of the crime and anti-social behaviour linked to our ‘late-night economy’ – that’s pubs, clubs and takeaways, to you and me.
It was a very well-meant exercise, but I can see two flaws in it.
Firstly, only nine of those who took part were under 34.
Yet it’s overwhelmingly young lads who are the perpetrators and the victims of late-night crime.
And if a passing lout gives a teenage boy a thump as he totters home after a few pints, he probably won’t bother reporting it, because it’s pointless. I speak from experience as the mother of sons.
So I’m not sure how much weight I’d place on recorded crime figures in this context. What I am sure of is that there are many incidents of threatening behaviour and violence that don’t get recorded.
On the whole ‘the youth’, as I have heard them called, don’t get involved in councils and policy-making and I’d be surprised if more than a handful were aware that the survey was going on.
But that brings me to my second point. The same could be said of their parents’ generation.
Only 66 individuals (plus a few special interest groups) gave their views.
We simply don’t know what the rest of the city’s population think.
Do they not go out? Do they not have a way of finding out when their opinions are being sought? Or do they just not care what happens?

So many questions over Wiltshire Council youth cuts

AUNTIE Jane Scott was on her gentlest form at the cabinet meeting.
No use frightening the children. After all, instead of hanging around street corners with nothing to do they could be hanging around street corners brandishing placards and shouting: “Down with Wiltshire Council!”
But at the end of all that consultation, as they will now have realised, they haven’t brought about any meaningful change in the council’s thinking.
This is a valuable early lesson in the way our democracy works. And they’ll be none the worse off for that, even if they will be worse off without their youth workers to pat them on the shoulder (or is that forbidden these days?) and say: “Never mind, dear.”
During much of the meeting at County Hall last Thursday, almost all the cabinet members seated on the dais (Mrs Scott excepted) appeared to be paying close attention to their laptops.
The assembled young people will have had a fine view of the tops of their heads. Let’s be charitable and assume that these councillors were assiduously taking notes.
It reminded me of those times when I’m trying to prise my husband’s or son’s attention away from a mobile phone screen for long enough to ask some petty, but to my mind essential question such as what we should have for dinner of whether anyone’s seen my glasses.
Sometimes I think I might as well be on Mars. I wonder whether the kids felt the same way?
A fully-costed alternative plan that would have minimised job losses had been drawn up by a children’s committee task group but was mysteriously missing from the paperwork. Could it have been mislaid?
Absent, too, was any certainty about how many staff will be left, how much money will be available to pay them or the area boards, or any idea how the new community youth officers are going to cope with doing 26 different things at once, and all before tea.
Nobody seemed to feel that the cabinet had really grasped the difference between providing activities for young people and targeted youth work to help and guide them.
As task group chairman cllr Jon Hubbard told the cabinet:
“I really struggle to understand how stripping the county of its trained, experienced youth workers will enhance safeguarding.
“We heard time after time from young people that what they valued most about their youth workers was that having someone to talk to who would have the time to listen. Someone they could trust and have confidence in. This trust is not instant and it’s not transferrable.
“It’s a role that cannot be replaced by having a Targeted Worker available for a 30-minute appointment once every three weeks.”
Will the new set-up be up and running seamlessly by October? I don’t think so.

On a diet, and I feel like biting someone's head off

TO any regular readers who think I’ve been sounding stroppier than usual just lately, I’ve got this to say: “How true.”
And any of them who have tried the 5:2 diet will know why, as soon as they read these words.
I’m sitting here with a rumbling stomach that feels like it’s eating itself, having skipped breakfast to save my precious 500-calorie allowance so that I can ‘enjoy’ something vaguely resembling a normal lunch: a small tin of slimmers’ soup. No bread. Nothing else.
That’ll leave me (after numerous cups of tea to fend off the hunger pangs) with 350 calories to see me through till bedtime.
I’ll heat up a ready-made slimming meal for supper because I can’t be bothered to cook. If I’m only allowed a toddler-size portion, it makes me feel like throwing a toddler-size tantrum.
And that’ll be it - an early night, because if I go to sleep I’ll stop thinking about food.
It should help that my husband has gamely agreed to diet along with me, but I just get resentful when he tucks into a slice of whatever constitutes the extra 100 daily calories permitted to a bloke.
“Is it worth the trouble?” I hear you asking.
Well, I’ve lost half a stone but it’s taken six weeks and I seem to have hit a plateau, while my husband is the one being asked by friends: “Have you lost weight?”
I suppose it’s karma - what goes around comes around.
In my younger days I was one of those infuriating people who eat like a horse and remain an enviable 36-24-36 (don’t ask me what that is in centimetres, I’m completely lacking in intellectual curiosity where numbers are concerned and I haven’t ever quite decimalised my body).
And boy was I smug. But when I hit those hormonal mid-forties and quit smoking, the pounds crept on. It was probably very silly of me to be surprised.
At 50, I recall a brief flirtation with one of those slimming clubs in a church hall where you all get weighed in every week and given a bracing pep talk, with a raffle for a box of fruit.
But I missed three weeks (life got in the way) and left in a huff when I was expected to pay for them anyway.
And after that I munched on regardless, telling myself that wearing long, loose tops over long, loose skirts was actually quite a good look in a hippyish sort of way.
Maybe I fooled some of the people some of the time.
I can’t pinpoint the moment when I realised I couldn’t kid myself any more. It was probably in a Marks & Spencer’s changing room, where the ghastly fluorescent lighting would make even Kate Moss look like a wobbly white pudding. Not the way to sell clothing, if you ask me.
Anyway, I’ve set myself a target and I do intend to stick to it. Another stone to go.
I promise I will try to be cheery in the meantime and to see the best in everyone. As long as they don’t annoy me.