So how can anyone justify this unfair voting system?

FIGURES. I know they’re boring. But please, do read these ones. Because they’re actually mind-boggling.
And if I had voted for the Green Party in the recent city council elections, I’d be pretty cross right now.
Their candidates received just over 6,600 votes – that’s more than a fifth of all the votes cast in the city - but not one of them was elected.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, lost a gobsmacking 5,000 votes from their 2017 tally, to just over 8,000.
Yet although that cost them overall control of the Guildhall, they still have 11 councillors. 
Look at those outcomes. They are totally out of proportion. You cannot possibly argue that they fairly reflect the opinions of the Salisbury public.
Meanwhile Labour lost 900-odd votes, and the LibDems, despite the stonking victory of Paul Sample in the St Edmunds ward, pretty well stood still. 
The LibDems, on just over 7,400 votes, got roughly 2,000 more than Labour, yet each party has six councillors.
This is not really meant to be a complaint on my own behalf, but independents, I’d like to point out, gained 2,763 votes and sadly only one councillor (moi). So why don’t independents deserve one-third as many council seats as the Tories, when we got one-third as many votes?
The system is nuts. On this occasion it hasn’t even delivered what some argue is its big benefit, i.e. a clear mandate.
The sooner that government adopts some form of proportional representation, both locally and nationally, the sooner we will be able to  feel proud that our democracy really does represent the will of the people.

Can we make better use of the Boathouse?

MIGHTY relieved I’ve made it on to Salisbury City Council, but mighty sad that more of my fellow independents weren’t successful.

With all that’s been going on electorally – not least the costly shambles over the choice of the next Police & Crime Commissioner - the deadline for commenting on the plans for Salisbury’s proposed River Park glided quietly under the bridge today, and I have to admit that I forgot.

I’m sure a lot of other people will have done so, too. Not, however, the doughty Salisbury Area Greenspace Partnership and our ever-vigilant environmental campaigners Pam Rouquette and Margaret Willmot, to all of whom we residents owe a debt of gratitude.

While they and I are supportive of the scheme in principle, I’ve been struck by some of their concerns.

The first is what might become a missed opportunity to use the Boathouse pub – lease currently up for sale, freehold owned by Wiltshire Council  – as a welcome centre and cafe for visitors arriving at the coach park and as an information centre on the river and its ecology.

There appears to be no money set aside to cover the £275,000 purchase price quoted by the agents Savills although the council says it “recognises the potential” of the site and is “exploring its options”.

This rundown but charming building is such a crucial part of the riverside scene that surely something more than the “exploration of options” is required at this stage? Fingers crossed.

There are also misgivings about a proposal to replace the Millstream Approach road bridge with one four metres wider, capable of taking two lanes of traffic, in an area where much has been made of the intention to give priority to pedestrians and cyclists using the enhanced riverside path. No explanation of the need for this widening has been offered.

There’s much more to learn from these thoughtful comments, and if you’re interested, it’s planning application no. PL/2021/03601 on the Wiltshire website.

The city council, while also supportive of the project, has asked to be involved in all aspects of its design and delivery.

Here’s one city councillor who will be taking a keener - and much better informed - interest from now on.

It's such a luxury being free to say what you like

THERE’S a tremendous luxury about being retired.

It’s that sense of freedom. I love it.

I don’t mean the freedom to jaunt off on a world cruise (assuming you can afford it). Even if we were allowed, with things the way they are pandemic-wise.

I mean the freedom to say what you really think and to pursue what you believe in without being beholden to anybody and without having to keep one eye on your future prospects.

And that's what our former MP Robert Key is doing with great gusto, by issuing a series of well-informed and hard-hitting videos online that ought to be required viewing for every student old enough to understand.

Because this lifelong Conservative really nails what’s wrong with our current unitary and parish system, via subjects ranging from housing, roads, cycle lanes, traffic regulation, the vexed issue of the Salisbury bypass … all of which boil down in essence to this: a load of stuff that’s being done to us and decisions being made for us without our consent.

It’s insulting and absurd, as Robert says, that our city has been demoted to parish status, and it’s had a disastrous effect in terms of local democracy, with so many people now so disillusioned they can’t be bothered to vote. 

I’m talking about intelligent people I’ve met on my walks round Harnham. They’ve just given up. “It doesn’t make any difference what we think” is what they say. 

It's shown, too, by the fact that none of the Big Three parties has been able to muster a full slate of candidates for every ward in the May elections. Traditional party supporters have had their arms twisted (metaphorically) but have declined to stand for office. Yet the party leaders show no sign of recognising why this might be.

What people like, as Robert points out, is to feel that they have a say in their local community and are listened to. But it ain’t happening because Trowbridge is too remote.

Unitary government for Wiltshire is a failed experiment, and he sees no reason why it can't be changed.

 To find out more and follow the unfolding series of interviews, go to the SOS – Save Our Salisbury group on Facebook. 

Why the sheer nastiness in this local election campaign?

SOME of you may have the idea that all journalists are cynical. That it goes with the territory.
But I can tell you from a lifetime’s experience that most journalists start out as idealists. They just see a lot of stuff that very quickly knocks the idealism out of them!
They probably experience more of the unpleasant side of life than the average citizen – other than emergency service workers, social services or the military, of course.
Now, I set out on the current election campaign to encourage a more independent, non-party political city council in Salisbury full of idealism, believe it or not.
While there are individual councillors from all parties doing their genuine best for our community and motivated only by a desire to serve the public, I thought we all deserved better than to be led by a divided Conservative group mired in bitterness, dictated to by their own Trowbridge elite.
I thought people like us deserved more of a say in what happens around here, well before it actually happens. They deserved to be asked their opinions and have someone listen and take notice. They deserved to feel involved, as if they wouldn’t be ignored once their votes were counted.
They deserved openness and transparency about the long-term plans being hatched for our city by those who control the purse-strings, most of whom have nothing to do with Salisbury. 
Some might think those were admirable aims, and I have pursued them honestly and openly.
But some people with their eyes on a bigger prize have chosen to take a more negative tack. 
I have been appalled by the mud-slinging and sheer nastiness aimed at some non-Conservatives. The desperation to hang on to every shred of power at all costs.
It doesn’t upset or surprise me – I’ve been around too long for that - but it does sadden me and make me fear for the future of our lovely Salisbury, when all that some people care about is controlling everything between here and Westminster.

What Salisbury means to me

THIS is an extract from something I wrote several years ago now, when life suddenly changed unexpectedly. We were unsure about whether we’d have to move, and we decided we needed some time out, somewhere sunny, before making any big decisions.
I started a blog about that trip, Home Sweet Motorhome, by trying to encapsulate how I felt about the city I might be leaving behind.
And I just thought I’d share it here now, as it still sums up what I feel is precious about Salisbury and why I’d like to do my bit as an independent councillor. Here goes:

“I find myself standing, staring out of the bedroom window in the dying afternoon over the water meadows to Salisbury Cathedral silhouetted beyond. A thin layer of mist has already risen from the river and sits suspended above the heads of the sheep, otherworldly against the darkening sky. I love this place. 
“How fortunate we have been to have this glorious backdrop to our daily lives, changing with every passing cloud.
“This is, after all, the town – it calls itself a city but it’s on a much more human scale   – where we chose to base our lives with our young children. A place I plumped for in preference to Bath because, as a colleague of my husband’s put it when I sought his advice, ‘Bath is all fur coat and no knickers, but Salisbury is real.’
“I wanted for our boys something I never felt for the London suburb where I grew up – I wanted them to have roots. 
“When people later in life asked them where they came from, I wanted them to know the answer in their hearts. Somewhere that gave them a standard against which they could compare everything they encountered as they set off to explore the world. 
“Not too big, not too small, a self-contained community with some of the finest architecture in the country, with a wonderful cultural heritage.”

And I’ve never regretted it.

Why I'm standing as an independent candidate for our city council

FOR years, as a columnist and blogger, I’ve been banging on about how disastrous Wiltshire Council has been for Salisbury.
How the switch to a unitary authority, and our city’s demotion to a humble parish, has left us at the mercy of a political clique miles away in Trowbridge.
Whether it’s sky-high parking charges, ill-advised cycle lanes and bans on cars, massive green belt housing developments feeding into our ring road jams, a lost police station, a disastrous University Technical College, unease over what’s happening to our City Hall, our library, our art gallery …. the list goes on, and I’m sure you could all add to it.
The feuding among the ruling Conservative group at the Guildhall has done nothing to help and much to hinder this degradation. 
Recent city council meetings, conducted online, about the doomed Low Traffic Zone and the housing sites proposed in the Local Plan review, were verging on chaotic.
And all the main parties have had trouble putting up a full complement of candidates for the local elections in May - largely, I think, because people are disillusioned and ask: “What’s the point?”
Now I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and try to do something to help our community by standing as an independent candidate for the city council in Harnham.
Along with a few other hardy (or perhaps foolhardy!) souls, I want to contribute a sense of common purpose, optimism and unity to a body that, while woefully inadequate in terms of its powers, is all we’ve got. And fight for what’s best for Salisbury. For people, not party politics.
Having been roped in several months ago as an administrator of the hugely popular SOS – Save Our Salisbury group on Facebook, I’ve seen that there is a real appetite for change. It’s just that so many  people don’t engage with the current system, and it’s hard to persuade them to do so when it patently doesn’t work for them.
However, out of this project has emerged a small band of campaigners who think it’s still worth having a go at making things better. We’re not a party. We don’t have a manifesto. We call ourselves Understanding Salisbury (or ‘us’ for short) Independents.
Please do consider supporting us at the May local elections.
You get three votes in each ward. So even if you usually vote for one of the big parties and don’t want to change, you can still use your other votes for us. It would be a shame to waste any of them.
Give us a chance to make things better and we’ll do our level best to listen to you, and not to let you down.

Tories say it's council officers who rule Wiltshire

I’M still as fed up as ever with party politics in local government and the damage it does to Salisbury.

But from two leading lights on the local political scene, here’s another explanation for a lot of what goes wrong. They sound so disillusioned that I almost feel sorry for them.

Incidentally, I’m loving the effect our Facebook group, SOS – Save Our Salisbury, is having in stimulating debate like this.

I posted on SOS about the Handforth Parish Council debacle and pointed out that whilst we all howled with laughter at that, Salisbury’s grandly-titled city council is actually just a parish council, too.

It drew the following responses from the chairman of Salisbury Conservative Association, Kevin Daley, and one of his predecessors, John Brady. I’ve slightly edited them for reasons of clarity.

Firstly, former Wiltshire cabinet member and ex-district councillor Mr Brady, reflecting on how greenfield housing development alongside Netherhampton Road came to be permitted despite hundreds of protests.

“The real power does not lie with parish/town councils or with the unitary councils,’ he wrote. 

“It is the officers who make the decisions (recommendations). They know that councillors are transient and as with Harnham, where councillors persuaded them to take a proposed development off the Strategic Plan, officers reinstated it as soon as they could when dealing with a different councillor (cabinet member). 

“All the ‘consultation’ that has to be done is a complete waste of time as I know that this is merely a way of allowing locals to let off steam.”

Sounds very much like ‘Yes Minister’, doesn’t it? 

“Even if a planning committee goes against an officer’s recommendation and refuses a new development, experience shows that nearly in every case, this is overturned on appeal with costs being awarded against the council,” added Mr Brady. “There are notable exceptions but they are few and far between.”

And here’s what current Wiltshire and city councillor Kevin Daley replied.

“Well said. Councillors are frequently undermined and circumvented by the officers. 

“People become councillors because they see what is wrong and what they can do to make a difference, but after four years of banging your head against a brick wall you just give in.”

Of course there could be a fair bit of blame-shifting going on here, what with local elections coming up and some pretty unpopular decisions in Trowbridge having affected Salisbury again lately.

But what a devastating critique of our system.

Now SOS is trying to persuade people to stand as independent candidates for our humble parish council. But a lot of people, reading this, will shake their heads and ask: “What’s the point?”

Like Messrs Brady and Daley, I believe the unitary authority has been a disaster for our city and the communities that depend on it.

The asset-stripping that’s gone on makes it hard to see how  Salisbury could ever return to its former status as the administrative centre of south Wiltshire. 

But it could certainly do with a strong, independent voice to represent all its residents and businesses.

For me, it boils down to this: “If you feel strongly about something, do something about it.”