Years ago, when rail privatisation was looming, I took a very senior civil servant out to lunch and we discussed the likely timetable.

“I suppose the key date is the Queen’s Speech,” I suggested. My guest smiled. “No,” he said, “the key date is the Party Conference.”

You may have found yourself wondering about the cut-off date for consultation with the District Council about where to build several thousand new homes over the next 18 years. The consultation “must end”, as they say on TV ads, on Sunday April 27.

Why then? Simple. The council’s detailed proposals must reach Whitehall by the end of May for inclusion in a national master-plan. This then becomes the poolside August holiday reading for Sir Humphrey in the Seychelles, before a minister makes a triumphant announcement to the Party faithful at Manchester on or about September 22.

I think this is deplorably fast. I think we need a lot more time and much more strategic thinking. And I’m not sure about some of the core options suggested by the Council.

For instance, I notice that one of the preferred options suggests building 800 new houses at Old Sarum. Residents of Ford and Laverstock will hate me for saying this, but (as you can see from my photo) it seems to me there’s room for many more than that. OK I know it’s a designated conservation area, but its aviation history only goes back 90 years (it was originally called Ford Farm airfield), and we’ve simply got to find more space.

Apart from silencing the vociferous critics who dislike aircraft (so why choose to live near an airfield, I wonder?), I see three advantages to expanding Old Sarum.

First, Firsdown would no longer have to grow by order of magnitude - Old Sarum is just as handy for housing Porton scientists. Secondly, it would justify reviving the plan for a Northern bypass linking the Southampton Road with the A36 somewhere north of Death Valley. And thirdly, the bigger Salisbury becomes, the more likely it is that the absurd Unitary Authority will be scrapped.

Maybe these ideas are wildly impractical; I don’t know. Maybe others have got some useful thoughts. But it’s a pity that we’ve been given so little time to decide so much.

… Tidying my desk this weekend I came across a postcard with four scenes – a church I didn’t recognise, a canal lock, a chalk down white horse, and Stonehenge silhouetted. And in the middle was the slogan: “Wiltshire – where One Council makes sense”.

On the back it invited me to tell some Secretary of State or other that I either supported or rejected the WCC’s view that we needed a unitary authority.

The County Council was in no doubt. “It would be: Affordable; Good value for money; Would keep local government local; Would provide strong effective leadership; Would bring easy access to services countywide.” Well, I thought a bit about what I knew of them and then ticked the “I disagree” box. Unfortunately I neglected to post it.

A pity: if I’d done so I might have had a significant statistical effect. (I’m not kidding; if I’ve read the Vision for Salisbury document correctly, less than 300 people registered their opinion. Which hardly justifies the 81% popular support currently being claimed by its advocates).

So maybe I’m partly to blame for this ludicrous insanity. It’s just that - like a lot of others I guess - I never thought for a second that such a daft concept would ever come into being. How wrong can you be…

<li>Nice to see Alan Forshaw as the new Cathedral Close Constable. He used to be one of Ted Heath’s minders; but we originally met years before at Lippitts Hill, the Metropolitan Police firearms training centre.

I was one of a group of reporters inveigled into spending the day playing armed cops. It involved exercises such as getting two armed suspects out of a flat and living to tell the tale (I failed miserably); and firing double-taps into projected images of gunmen. (Or not: I hesitated too long when a target photo showed a naked lady’s companion had a sawn-off shotgun, but for some reason I hadn’t noticed him.)

I remember Alan getting us stressed-up by making us run a couple of hundred metres in heavy body-armour. The ceramic plates bouncing on one’s unprotected sensitive bits brought tears to the eyes. By the time we stopped running I was ready to shoot anyone, especially those laughing at us.

See last week’s Journal letters-page? There was one to treasure from the “Project Director Salisbury Vision” (PDSV). In it he described the Market Place as “probably one of the most important public spaces in Europe”.

Hang on: in Salisbury maybe, but in Europe??? Our modest square’s comparable with the elegance of those in Paris or Brussels, or Venice, or Madrid or 20 other cities I could name? I thought it was just somewhere handy to go shopping.

But there’s more to his letter than mere wild over-statement. This “renaissance” to attract new businesses and tourists involves architects and landscape designers competing to create “…a public space of the highest quality. Somewhere green with attractive seats, lighting and signing; a water feature perhaps and public art…”. Translation: the developers are circling.

The last time people mucked around with the Market Place was when local councillors decided to line it with continental-style street cafes. A little bit of Merrie England, we were told, with cheerful tourists sipping wine whilst morris dancers cavorted around them. (It’s supposedly what we’ve got now.)

Well, the sad result was that Jim Crouch reluctantly closed our only proper greengrocery because he was restricted to just one delivery a day instead of five (and that before 8-00 am.)

However, declares PDSV, 81 percent of those surveyed support the Salisbury Vision plans. Only ten percent oppose them. (The other nine percent? Dunno.)

I instinctively mistrust such polls. Remember the Bristol University traffic survey organised by those against an A36 Salisbury bypass? (“It will ruin a Constable view”, they claimed.)

That reported that 95% of all drivers entering the city stopped here. (Eight major roads entering South Wiltshire’s major choke-point and only five percent of cars and lorries were through-traffic? Oh, come ON.)

Nonsensical perhaps - but that ridiculous claim enabled campaigners who wouldn’t know a Constable View from Dixon of Dock Green to block the project, and it’s one reason why people are still killed in Death Valley.

Still, I could be wrong. Maybe our little market square really is one of the most important in Europe. But if so shouldn’t it become a World Heritage site like Stonehenge? Come on, PDSV: think big!

…used to be a builder. Now I’m not so sure. I think that in pole position is the estate agent who recently told me why house prices will “bounce back” later this year.

First, Salisbury’s chronic housing shortage (something I hadn’t noticed), will keep prices up. Secondly, because we’re beyond practical rail-commuting distance to London, our prices are already lower. And finally, as people retiring here are rich cash-buyers who don’t need mortgages they’ll pay higher prices anyway (I think that’s the argument).

One advantage of age is that you see events repeat themselves. So I thought those who don’t remember the last property collapse might like to know what actually happened.

It started with the Chancellor announcing in his 1988 budget that joint mortgage tax-relief for couples would end on August 31. That triggered an astonishing buying-spree, with strangers getting together to share multiple mortgages, and people buying homes off the drawing-board. And prices skyrocketed.

But it all stopped dead on September 1. At first people stopped selling because they thought the good days would return. But they didn’t. And prices fell and kept on falling.

How far? Well, try 50 percent. In 1992 a house in Wilton advertised for £210k was bought for clients by a friend of mine (a London property lawyer) the following week for one hundred thousand. Brand-new executive houses in Harnham marketed at £275k sold for £160,000. And my friend’s own house in Bournemouth – bought for a quarter of a million in 1987 – was repossessed and fetched £120k at auction.

Prices didn’t recover until 1997. Since then we’ve seen a decade of growth, but what happened then could happen again.

So a word of advice to today’s buyers. Before completing, get a “forced-sale valuation” (the absolute rock-bottom sum you’ll get if you have no choice but to sell on immediately). The difference between that and the price you're paying is what you are risking.

And don’t listen to those saying Salisbury is a special case, and that prices won’t fall far. That’s what we thought last time. It isn’t, and they did.

… (after “If something can go wrong then sooner or later it will”) is “Things can always get worse”.
It’s a year since I started writing this blog, and I can’t see much that’s changed for the better.

OK, we were treated to the spectacle of city councillors (who’d arrogantly decided to authorise pre-election contracts for the Bourne Hill project) being put up against a wall and shot by indignant voters. Although we also saw a misleading electoral campaign that local Liberals have yet to explain.

Otherwise Murphy was right. The insane idea of having a unitary authority seems to be a done deal and we will suffer accordingly. The Stonehenge tunnel plan has been buried, but without a Plan B that means even worse congestion at Amesbury. Our divisional police chief has based himself in Melksham; our Primary Care Trust (responsible for Salisbury GPs) is in Devizes; Salisbury College is now twinned with Chippenham; and emergency calls for Salisbury ambulances are handled in Bristol.

And oh yes, we are getting new offices at Bourne Hill, but more expensive because that is what we really, really want.

Happy new year, everybody.

***Recently I attended the Salisbury Rotary Club’s joint charity concert given at the City Hall by the Community Choir and the Community Band. It was a very enjoyable occasion ...but...

Could the management of the City Hall (and the Arts Centre for that matter) please get rid of those high tiered wooden barriers (see my photo)? They cause excruciating discomfort to anyone of average height because you cannot move your feet. The obvious solution to prevent coats and handbags falling down is to lower the planks and make them footrests.

Or am I fussing about nothing?

… military occasions. For example Beating Retreat by ten infantry battalions in Nicosia in 1960, marking the end of British rule in Cyprus. (I was in Army PR, doling out brandy sours to Fleet Street – one reason why their reports were so emotional.)

There was the Trooping the Colour when I almost dropped a telephoto lens on HM’s charger from a Horseguards office window. (I know they train police horses to ignore gunshots, but would it have been impassive to heavy Zeiss hardware hitting its flank? We nearly found out.)

There was the Queen’s Own Highlanders’ mess dinner on trestle tables in a damaged Port Stanley school-house when, after dining on compo-rations, the pipe-major marched in and played for us. As the candles flickered on the 1875 silver figure of a kilted soldier I remember wondering how many hot-spots that centrepiece had seen.

And other memories, some tense, some funny. Standing (armed) with the Irish Guards in a moonlit jungle clearing on the Mozambique border when ZANU fighters suddenly and silently emerged as the Rhodesian War officially ended.

Filming HMS Ark Royal’s wardroom piano (captured from the RAF) being catapulted off for burial at sea during her final voyage.

And midnight in Boogis Street in Singapore with some Commando officers when we… but enough reminiscing.

What prompted this was stewarding at the cathedral service celebrating the safe return from Iraq of 1 Mechanised Brigade. There were about a thousand soldiers present in desert kit. Most of these youngsters now have that indefinable edge that comes with combat.

For me the highlight was the address given by the senior chaplain, the Rev. Angus MacLeod. He drew a word-picture of torch-lit farewells to comrades in body-bags at the Basra Palace, and reminded those who’d survived constant attack to remember how they’d prayed under fire, and what they’d promised to do if and when they got home.

“You’ve been to a place of extremes,” he told them, “now is the time to do some living.” And he quoted their Iraq motto: “Don’t count the days; make the days count.”

Something else I shall remember.