For many, Michelle Obama is a role model for public service. As she once said to a class of graduates entering this post-pandemic world, ‘you can climb a long way up the ladder selling falsehoods and blaming others…but that is a heavy way to live. It deadens your spirit and it hardens your heart’. 

Reading the response from the administration leaders to my quote in last week’s article about the parish poll enacted the same response.

It is unfortunate Cllr Riddle suggested that Cllr Hocking and I are not seeking a better working relationship. The priority has always been to deliver for residents.

What Cllr Riddle does not mention is that, within hours of our joint meeting last week, administration councillors were already being allowed to put posts on social media criticising us over the cost of the poll, undermining the détente we were happy to form. 

I was also disappointed to read Cllr Charleston’s comment that ‘some hard choices will now have to be made’.

After deliberately not promoting a valid, democratic poll, this comment ignores the harder choices local people must make.

Salisbury residents now pay the highest council tax in Wiltshire. It also ignores the poor financial management of Salisbury City Council under the current administration and does not transparently explain that paying for this unexpected and unfortunate bill is exactly why councils have reserves in the first place. 

Obama’s speech, defining the spirit of resilience for a new generation, ended with the words ‘don’t ever, ever let anyone tell you that you’re too angry, or that you “should keep your mouth shut”.’

Politics, in any form, is about building trust and being honest about what you think, to move forward. I believe residents now have a clear choice as to what kind of change they want to see in Salisbury. 

Cllr Eleanor Wills

Harnham West Ward Councillor

Leader of the Opposition, Salisbury City Council