WATCHING the Last Night of the Proms on TV, it’s hard not to get carried away on a tide of patriotism by the musical hardy perennials.

A bit like being swept up in the chanting fervour of a football crowd, only instead of a goalscorer idiotically baring his torso there was the wonderful soloist Jamie Barton brandishing her rainbow Pride flag like a challenge to bigotry everywhere.

What struck me most, though, was the number of starry blue EU flags being waved by the overexcited throngs bobbing up and down in the Albert Hall and assorted parks throughout the land.

Not quite as many as Union Jacks, but a significant presence.

I found that encouraging. There’s no reason one can’t appreciate the best of the British way of life whilst accepting that we have some terrible failings, too, and that we have much to learn from co-operating with our neighbours.

Just a few random things that currently make me feel ashamed of our nation:

The continuing, cruel deportations of people who’ve lived here all their lives but don’t fit the Home Office’s ideal racial profile;

The government’s failure to take effective action to halt the slaughter of endangered birds and mammals on grouse moors owned by and managed for the exclusive benefit of their rich and powerful cronies who think killing is fun;

And closer to home, the silent acquiescence of the majority in the hugely extended massacre of Wiltshire’s badger population on the basis of some very dubious science indeed.

Did you know that in the original two pilot zones where culling has been in force for five years, in Gloucestershire and Somerset, the proportion of herds of cattle affected by bovine TB fell initially but is now increasing again?

(Wiltshire Against the Badger Cull could do with donations to help with the cost of fuel for their patrols aimed at disrupting this disgusting spree. See their Facebook page.)

Without Europe, we wouldn’t have half the environmental protections that we do currently enjoy.

So had I been home at the weekend I’d have liked to support Salisbury for Europe’s anti no-deal rally. Well done to those who did make the effort.

n I SEE the bypass plan is ‘back on the table’. I suspect that’s where it will stay.

Unless it takes through traffic miles away it won’t work, because an outer ring road will simply attract infill development.

Yet constructing new trunk routes costs the sort of money that isn’t lurking around down the back of any ministerial sofa, and destroys swathes of irreplaceable countryside inhabited largely by Tory voters.

I don’t believe that Highways England and the Department for Transport were unaware of Salisbury’s clogged-up roads prior to receiving a presentation from business leader Andy Rhind-Tutt about the effects on the local economy.

I just don’t believe there’s the political impetus to find an environmentally acceptable solution to the problem. I’m not even sure such a thing exists.

anneriddle36@gmail.com