WHEN I was at primary school, long lines of boys with their arms round each other’s shoulders, like footballers posing for a team photo, used to maraud around the playground shouting: “Who wants to play British Bulldog? No cissies!”

By which of course they meant no girls.

But somehow I was always allowed to join in. Probably because my boyfriend (age nine) was by far the fastest runner and the cleverest lad in our year.

All very well until his family moved away to Surrey.

Life had taught me an early lesson that no classroom teacher could have done.

Attaching yourself to the most powerful person around you and clinging on is a great survival technique for the 99.99 per cent of us who aren’t destined to end up at the very peak of the pile.

It explains the gang mentality we see in party politics, which in turn explains why so many bad decisions are made at all levels of our national and local government.

Speaking of which, I imagine John Glen must feel he has his work cut out defending the king of his particular heap, Chancellor Philip Hammond, after the Autumn Statement.

Perhaps that should be Non-Statement, in view of how much helpful stuff ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ could have done – particularly in terms of funding for health and social care - but didn’t.

Now I know that our MP, who is Mr Hammond’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, sympathises with those who are struggling and I intend no personal criticism of him. As I’ve said before, in my opinion he’s a hardworking, conscientious representative for our community.

But there comes a time when any reasonable adult has to hold up their hands and say: “Ok, this is the outside of enough!”

These thoughts were sparked by the heartbreaking plight of Mark Best, one of the severely disabled Salisbury residents forced to move away from everyone and everything they knew by Scope’s abrupt closure of Shapland Close last Christmas.

In a country where a charity can’t take care of the vulnerable, in a county where the health service and the unitary authority are both so hard up that they’ve been wrangling over who pays for his essential care until they’ve jeopardised the prospect of him finding another home near his mother, something is desperately wrong.

And it starts at the top.

Because it’s the government that controls the purse-strings.

anneriddle36@gmail.com