So after all the fuss, the protests and the near-the knuckle hatred, North Wiltshire District Council has decided it doesn't want to be the one to make a decision over where to put gypsy sites in the district.

Instead, after stirring up a hornet's nest, it will leave the new unitary authority to take all the flak.

You might wonder why it has come this far down the road, only to step aside at the last minute.

It is probably because a great many of the councillors now representing the district will want to be part of the new council but don't want their campaign tarnished with the memory of imposing gypsy sites on their constituents.

They completely underestimated the reaction from the public. I was a bit taken aback by the strength of feeling myself.

When a march through Chippenham was proposed I thought it was just bravado and was genuinely surprised to see so many take part.

Then when 800 people turned up at a meeting in Calne last week (where it was always assumed the sites would end up) I think the council was really rattled.

There were real fears about how many would descend on Chippenham for the meeting to make the final decision and I think there were some public safety concerns.

When it comes to house prices and stereotypical prejudices people can get very ugly indeed.

If you think I am exaggerating you should see some of the comments I've had to remove from this web site on gypse stories. I had no idea the depths of peoples' bigotry.

We had a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with the district council over when the council would release the report that contained its proposal over where the gypsy sites would go (or as it turned out, non-decision).

We obviously weren't going to be allowed to publish the contents until it was in the public domain. So first we agreed we would see the report at 9am but not publish anything until midnight.

But then the council asked us not to interview anyone else about the decision until tomorrow, which was obviously no good for this week's paper.

Next it decided to put it out at 2pm so we could get our interviews doen before going to press at 5pm and then it just put it up on its site before then anyway.

It is almost as if someone was making it up as they went along, which might be an accurate description of the whole consultation process.