FRIENDS have informally brought two separate incidents to my attention concerning Salisbury district council's ambassadors.

These are both indicative of the council's unpublished wish to turn Salisbury into a ghost town, devoid of anything other than chain shops, such as you find in every other town the length and breadth of this country.

The proprietor of a small independent shop had been loading her car in the town early in the morning, she went back into her shop to collect her personal belongings, came out, saw the ambassador' who ignored her explanations and gave her a ticket.

Another lady saw a pile of receipts spewing out of the inadequate litter bin provided by a bank below its ATM machine, they were littering the street. In a community-spirited move to be applauded she picked them up to deposit in a litter bin close by.

As she walked to the litter bin some dropped from her grasp. A litter warden challenged her, accusing her of causing the litter, again would not believe her protestations of innocence, he also would not check the litter bin to verify her claims and issued her with a penalty notice.

These people must be on some form of incentive scheme, or brainwashed into being the antithesis of an ambassador.

Voters of Salisbury, the elections come around next May. I urge everyone who is sick of Salisbury being turned into the sort of place no one wants to visit, for fear of getting a penalty notice, to get involved.

Ensure the councillor you vote for agrees that we have gone too far in this direction. It seems we have a council that is closing essential facilities, while at the same time building itself a wonderful new HQ against many residents' wishes - and hiring scores of over-zealous penalty notice-issuing wardens, that they call ambassadors.

The council either does not know the meaning of the word ambassador, or maybe we have entered the Orwellian world of doublespeak.

ADAM WOODS, Amesbury