21 February 2008

on 21 February 2008 at 18:07

Scientists, journalists and sheep research

The climate change bandwagon depends for its progress on an engine powered by journalists and scientists. Unfortunately, both professions have taken a bit of a knock recently.

Under the headline "The myth of the noble scientist", an article by Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, suggests that peer review in key journals  can easily become a closed shop. "If a well-known scientist submits a paper, it will probably be accepted; if an unknown submits one, it will probably be rejected."

He cites the case of Barbara McCliintock, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1983, who could not get her original research on gene jumping published in prestige journals because she could not get peer reviewers to accept it.

Establishment science tends to be conservative: once a theory is accepted, it is stuck to like glue - hence the difficulty in getting radical ideas about the climate in print. "Peer review was always an illusion," says Mr Kealey.

Philosophically, this is probably because scientists, like the rest of us, behave rather like sheep. An experiment carried out by researchers at Leeds University found that people will blindly follow "one or two individuals who seem to know where they are going".

Even if they don't.

Journalists are like that too - perhaps even more than most people, and much more now than used to be the case.

Young people want to become journalists because they like the idea of investigating to find out the truth. But of course it's not like that. As Sam Leith reminds us in a review of Flat Earth News, by Nick Davies, "Untruths pass into common currency not because journalists are liars, but because they simply do not know whether what they are writing is true and do not have time to find out."

The quote is from Mr Davies, who says that journalism has become "churnalism". As such it is "exceptionally vulnerable to manipulation". This, of course, suits the green machine down to the ground, because it knows how to make something sound right, and how to paint opponents as demons.

As so often, the wise cannot get their wisdom across, and would-be dictators get a ready audience.

Cold enough to stop a bus

The EDP's environment correspondent, never one to avoid a cliche, tells us that four "intrepid travellers" are visiting six countries on the "trip of a lifetime" with "one topic on their minds - climate change".

Bravely emitting carbon as they go, they will take in America, Brazil, Mexico, Bhutan, China and Japan. I hope they notice that China is in the grip of its worst winter for 100 years, and parts of America have just had 70 inches of snow.

Maybe they could take a couple of detours and register that sea ice between Canada and Greenland is the most voluminous it has been in the last 15 years, Iran has had its  worst snowfall in living memory, and Greece and Turkey are under several feet of snow.

It's been a bit chilly here in England, too. Not really, really cold, but cold enough to stop a bus. If the bus is running on biodiesel, that is.

Eleven Norwich buses were put out of action when the temperature crept below freezing, which doesn't bode well if the global warming enthusiasts are wrong and the chilling stars scientists are right.

But reassurance is at hand. A spokesman for the producers of the biodiesel said it was OK - they knew that cold "does have a specific effect". I wonder if they told the bus company what the specific effect was.

Anyway, not to worry.  "People certainly shouldn't be put off using biofuels. They have a number of very good properties." Bit vague, isn't he? I wonder if the good properties outweigh the fact that the buses won't actually start when it gets chilly. We might try doing surveys at a few bus stops. The promised compensation should do it. Coupled with the increased fares to pay for it.

I made that last bit up. I'm sure the bus company won't be increasing fares.

12 February 2008

on 12 February 2008 at 18:04

Laga law comments welcomed in North Norfolk

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prime Minister, the Queen, the Chief Rabbi, the Pope and some druids have suggested that laga law will soon have to be accepted in this country.

Their comments have been welcomed by the Rev Nick Reppscumbastwick, a radical North Norfolk cleric to whom as many as a couple of dozen activists are sometimes loyal.

He said: "We are not in the business of throwing up barriers. In fact laga law, which is followed religiously by many of our young people, specifically states that barriers must be torn down - and thrown into either hedgerows, shop windows or the nearest river.

"Some of us may be disturbed by the frequent and very loud calls to prayer involved in laga law, particularly after the nightclubs close, but I think this should remind of us of our need to call out to God."

He added that although some people found the mutilations prescribed for certain offences a little radical - such as glassing someone who looked at a woman in the wrong way - they were easy to understand, and the lesson was quickly assimilated if the victim survived.

He personally found the sport-centred ceremonies extremely moving in an almost spiritual way, and thought the Church of England could learn from them. "If only Anglicans could attract crowds like that," he said.

He expected laga law to be assimilated into English common law very soon. "It will hardly affect our way of life at all," he promised.

Lies, damn lies, tits and statistics

The annual survey to discover how many birds visit our gardens may not be all that accurate, in view of the spotting ability of those who fill them in.

My five-year-old grandson's version is likely to be more accurate than most, because he was closely supervised. On the other hand, do I really know the difference between a hedge sparrow, a dunnock and a female chaffinch - and if so, why?

A few days after we had dutifully filled in the form, our garden was invaded by half a dozen long-tailed tits, which had not dropped by at all during the form-filling,  perhaps because they knew it was happening. So much for statistics.

Speaking of tits - sorry, I mean statistics - one reader of the Eastern Daily Press is on constant standby with an armful of them to attack anyone who suggests that road humps may not be a good thing, or that speeding is not the cause of every evil on earth.

But even if you accept that government statistics are accurate and in no way reflect the Government's prejudices and policies, he has tripped himself up. Replying to Malcolm Heymer's observation that "in the sorts of roads that humps are installed accidents are rare", he trots out statistics on the number of accidents in built-up areas.

Of course "the sorts of roads that humps are installed in" is in no way synonymous with "built-up areas". Is he bluffing, or does he really not know this? And does the EDP not know this?

It's all right, they're only motorists

We are all too familiar with council chiefs apologising for snarling up traffic. The most graphic example occurred when the Elveden traffic lights were installed on the A11 and someone set them to give priority to the minor road crossing it.

This caused such a huge snarl-up that you would expect someone to lose his job over it, but so little are the needs of motorists regarded that I suspect it was seen as a bit of a joke.

This week some work had to be done on the traffic lights at the junction of the Trowse bypass and the ring road in Norwich - one of the busiest entry points to the city.

I say "had to be done", but according to the EDP, it was to reset the lights to give pedestrians more time to cross. I use this road regularly, and I have never seen a pedestrian attempting to cross there. But of course it could happen, so let's hold everyone up in case it does.

Anyway, the first step was to cone off a lane unnecessarily. I suspect this happens because the councils in Norfolk have overstocked with cones and have to get them out now and again. Have you noticed how quickly lanes are closed on dual carriageways? If we can fix things that go wrong on a single carriageway without closing it, why do we automatically start closing lanes on a dual carriageway?

The other amusing thing about this incident (if you weren't caught up in the mess) was that council chiefs seem to think that there is less traffic in school holidays. There may be less in the rush hour, when council chiefs are on the road, but there is much more during the day, as carloads of families pile into the city in a vain attempt to find something to do to fill the time.

But of course the key to it all is that councils don't care about drivers. All their strategies and plans start by making life easier for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport. Cars are just in the way and can be inconvenienced in whatever way they like. One day someone will spot that most voters are motorists  and devise a policy that includes them. As a pedestrian, cyclist and bus and train user, I'd vote for whoever that was. Wouldn't you?

 

7 February 2008

on 7 February 2008 at 18:03

EDP announcement

Thanks to deputy editor Peter Waters, my EDP farewell page has now been put on the EDP website at http://new.edp24.co.uk/content/commentary/TimLenton.aspx

A brief announcement that the page would no longer be appearing in the paper was made in the Eastern Daily Press this morning.

6 February 2008

on 6 February 2008 at 18:01

Speed humps letter – unexpurgated version

Letters to the editor of the Eastern Daily Press are frequently cut, ostensibly to get more of them in. But this policy can easily prevent a writer from getting the full force of an argument across. It is especially annoying when a reader writes a full response to someone else’s argument, and only part of it is used.

Malcolm Heymer, of Dereham, recently suffered this fate in an exchange about speed humps. He has given me permission to publish the full version here:

""In response to D Denham’s letter in favour of speed humps (Jan 31), it is certainly true that they reduce speeds. Whether they produce an overall benefit to road safety is another matter altogether.

""In the sorts of roads where humps are installed, road accidents are rare and subject to random variations from year to year. Humps are often installed after an upward blip in accidents, which would have fallen again anyway, with or without the humps. In addition, drivers try to avoid roads with humps when they can, so traffic often diverts to other routes. Claims about the safety benefits of road humps do not take account of these factors, which is why the claimed accident reductions are not reflected in county-wide or national casualty figures.

""Speed humps do not just slow emergency vehicles, but can also cause accidents. In a recent case in Bolton, a police van took off after hitting a hump, hit an oncoming car and crashed into a garden, injuring six people who were standing in the garden, including an eight-year-old boy. Miraculously no-one was killed, but it could have been a disaster.

""I am aware of the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) report claiming that speed humps do not damage vehicles. What must be realised is that TRL conducted its research on road humps constructed with great care to comply with the required dimensions. This does not happen in the real world, where humps that are supposed to be identical can differ in height and shape of the approach ramps. Humps do not just damage vehicles but also people, especially those with back problems or with suspected spinal injuries being carried in ambulances.

""There are alternatives to humps where speeds are too high. These include types of “psychological” traffic calming and the shared-space idea, where the segregation of vehicles and other road users is deliberately blurred to make everyone take more care.

""It is possible to reduce traffic speeds in residential areas without punishing the majority of responsible drivers for the actions of a minority.""

Bishops jump on to carbon bandwagon

Watching the Church of England jump on to a bandwagon where angels fear to tread is nothing new. This year it’s climate change, of course.

It’s Lent – time to fast - and the Bishops of London and Liverpool have come up with a splendid green idea: why not give up carbon for Lent? Of course if we did that we’d all die immediately, since we are carbon-based life forms, but never mind, we can give up some of it.

The EDP, of course, reports this enthusiastically and comes up with a few tips, many of which make sense and some of which are really trivial and  silly. For instance, “when you do drive, drive skilfully” – as opposed to the rest of the year, when we can drive like idiots, I suppose. Driving skilfully apparently involves “minimising the amount of breaking (sic) and accelerating”: not sure about the accelerating, which is often a useful safety feature, but I certainly try to avoid breaking things when I drive.

We are also advised, of course, to “keep speeds down”, which means that Norfolk roads will be full of crawling fellow-Anglicans for 40 days. This could be good for developing spiritual control, so I probably shouldn’t grumble.

But why the Church has to get involved in all this, I don’t know. Energy-saving and avoidance of waste are praiseworthy, but those of us who do our best in these areas do not take kindly to being treated like primary school children, and those who couldn’t care less are even further alienated.

Christianity is about transformation on a spiritual level. This must  translate to lifestyle alterations, but by starting with the effects and omitting the causes, the Church has once again presented itself as paddling in the shallows instead of plunging into the deep. As for walking on water, forget it.

Maybe it's not surprising that where baptism is concerned, Anglicans go for sprinkling instead of total immersion.

5 February 2008

on 5 February 2008 at 17:58

Human-induced accuracy is biggest problem for the Press

More than 70 per cent of the complaints made to the Press Complaints Commission concern a lack of accuracy. That is according to the most recent figures. There are no figures for lack of balance, or failure to give both sides of an issue. Maybe we don’t expect it. Certainly we don’t expect it when it comes to climate change issues. Most national and many regional papers, including the Eastern Daily Press, have environmental correspondents, and most of them do not seem to think it important to give both sides of a story. Indeed, some of them might be described as propagandists rather than journalists. It is becoming increasingly evident to those who research such issues elsewhere that more and more scientists are dubious about the sweeping politicised pronouncements coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those who have discovered the methods employed by the IPCC in producing its summaries will not be reassured. My namesake at the University of East Anglia has just published new researched about “tipping points” – critical thresholds of changes in human activity that “can have long-term consequences for the planet”. The EDP reports this at some length without giving any indication as to how many scientists support or oppose it. Of course the paper does not have enough reporters to research stuff like this in detail, but why not report opposing political views, like the “chilling stars” theory of imminent cooling, and the rarely mentioned fact that any CO2-induced warming is logarithmic and not linear? I have written now and again about these things – without anything I have written being refuted - and I do not propose to go over the same old ground. Thanks to the Internet, there are many websites that do give the information not supplied by newspapers. One that has recently been recommended to me, and seems quite thorough as well as easy to understand, concerns the accuracy of the press on this issue and can be found at http://www.aim.org/special-report/will-media-expose-global-warming-con-job/ Worth a look, surely?

Hang on a minute, let's not be too hasty

The Roman town at Caistor, south-east of Norwich, has been buried since archaeologists decided that exposing it to the elements would risk swift deterioration. Arguing against total excavation, an EDP reader from Nottingham (clearly circulation is improving) who happens to be a lecturer in Roman Archaeology explained: “Archaeologists are getting better, so sites are better left untouched for future generations.” This is an interesting viewpoint, rather out of kilter with the politically correct mantra for all occasions: “The status quo is not an option.” Clearly for Roman towns it is an option, and I wonder where else it is being secretly applied. It might explain, for instance, why the road system in Norfolk is so poor: road-builders might improve, so the present system is better left untouched. In fact this is a really good argument for not doing anything that we might get better at. Norwich City should not try to score, because they might get better at it in future. We should not operate on seriously ill patients, because a better operation might come along – maybe two or three. I should not be writing this, because my writing might improve soon. That would put me out of work – and I would be joined by quite a few other people, archaeologists among them. But being out of work might improve soon, so perhaps we had better not act hastily.

The first shall be last, possibly

I was glad to see that the EDP has been promoting the exciting food available in one of my favourite spots, the Autonomous Republic of Hingham. I should add that the town has very good public conveniences, and if my old friend Professor V A R Scheinlich is to be believed, the best wormholes in the United Kingdom. Prof Scheinlich’s groundbreaking work on time-space distortions in the Hingham area is well known, and many American tourists seeking their ancestors go to him first. Or last, depending on time-space distortions.

1 February 2008

on 1 February 2008 at 14:11

Last chance to party with life as we know it

A farewell party was held last night to mark two things: the withdrawal of financial support for UK ground–based facilities for solar–terrestrial physics – the area of astronomy concerned with our planet's connection to the sun – and the final appearance of this page in the EDP after more than 11 years.

The party was held at the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia. Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam said it was sad to see the end of something so important and critical to the future of the country, but his research indicated that he could probably get another job somewhere.

Prof Aufmerksam is known for explaining why there is so much slow–moving traffic on the A146, though no–one can remember the reason.

His colleague Professor V A R Scheinlich, usually based in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, was concerned that his ground–breaking work on wormholes and time–space distortion would be hit, though he was not sure when or where.

He was glad the Hingham tradition of neo–democracy was being continued by Norwich City Council, whose public consultation on varying permit parking charges for cars of different lengths (52 per cent against, 35 per cent in favour) showed that “most people weren’t actually bothered” and the scheme would go ahead. He felt this kind of democracy was set for a long run, and Hingham would always be remembered, possibly in the future.

Guest of honour was Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 108, who has led a lengthy and surprisingly ineffective campaign against the expansion plans of great crested newts, who have successfully infiltrated many government departments, local councils and non–governmental organisations, leading to vast increases in paperwork and dehumanising processes, as well as targets.

He was accompanied surprisingly by his former fiancée Dorothea Goodchild, who had been believed dead for some years. She said she felt “reinvigorated”, although this was denied by wholefood chef and comet–chaser Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston, who said he had been “barged into” by the Rev Nicholas Reppscumbastwick, a radical cleric and protest organiser.

Mrs Hicks, Erpingham–based mayor of Little London, near Corpusty, said she was delighted to have been invited, though she was not entirely clear what was going on. She suspected that the withdrawal of funding was a device to prevent connections between the sun and the earth’s climate being established, but could see no link with 11 years of “meandering trivialities and bizarre opinions which were of no interest to her electorate”. However, the wine was good.

“Harmless” Nelson, of the Empty Quarter, agreed, but could not remember why he was there, or indeed anywhere.

A representative of La Fédération Poohstix d’Europe said it was the end of an era, and it would be a long time before the Olympic sport of throwing pieces of wood off bridges attracted such publicity again. He was pessimistic about its inclusion in the London Games, though many excellent bridges were in the immediate vicinity. He added that he had seen a coypu in the Lower Common Room, although it might have been an Austrian cave salamander.

After a superb speech by Richard “Volcano” Meek, the well–known local explorer, most people moved on to an after–party event held at Whynge, a new town which emerged a few years ago from the North Sea and is now sometimes on the coast. A few stragglers, including the Wymondham duck, took a wrong turning and ended up at nearby Pondhenge, where they drowned their sorrows.

A newspaper columnist, who said he was hoping to retain his position as president of the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team, added that he had enjoyed writing the page and thanked almost everyone who had responded to what he had written over the years. The page had appeared in the first tabloid edition of the EDP and had survived “an unexpectedly long time”.

Masochists would still be able to find it archived on www.back2sq1.co.uk, where future commentary articles might also be posted, if he could be bothered.

Robins see off coaches

My Cardwatch correspondent, who has recently relocated to Sheringham, informs me that he failed to track down a single “coach and horses in snow” on last year’s Christmas cards.

It is sad to record the apparent demise of a species like this. Concerned readers may or may not be relieved to hear that the coach and horses appears to have been replaced by a ubiquitous robin.

I suspect that the lack of coaches may have something to do with carbon footprints, first left by “Good” King Wenceslas in the deep and allegedly even snow of the Little Ice Age.

Pig of a year

Last year was a bad one for teddy bears. To protect pigs from a similar fate, I suggest that any teacher aiming to ply his or her primary trade in Europe should be made aware that in France it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon.

14 January 2008

on 14 January 2008 at 06:00

Goodbye to all that after 11 years

The last Tim Lenton page of 2007 in the Eastern Daily Press has proved, unexpectedly, to be the last of all. Published continuously for more than 11 years - at first weekly, but then fortnightly - the page has now been discontinued.

A final special one-off farewell page should be appearing in the EDP later this month. When it does, it will also appear here.

I will be hoping to spend more time with my family and am open to offers of lucrative lecture tours and book deals.

Many thanks to all those who have read the page, either here or in the EDP, and the many who responded to it. Please continue to visit this website.

31 December 2007

on 3 January 2008 at 20:23

'Harmless' Nelson, the great campaigner

One of Norfolk’s most distinguished explorers, Richard “Volcano” Meek, has asked me to settle an argument between him and a good friend, who disagree over the significance and dedication of the Nelson statue in Great Yarmouth.

He tells me: “She thinks it’s that sailor in Trafalgar Square who did something very brave and clever like saving us from the Armada, whereas I tend to think it’s dedicated to that even bigger star, Willie Nelson, whose CDs are so readily available along Regent Road and whom so many of Yarmouth's citizens feel moved to emulate in attire.”

I am afraid they are both wide of the mark. I feel fairly sure the dedication in question is to Willie (Horatio) “Harmless” Nelson, the well known wherryman and bittern-hunter. He still lives, as far as anyone knows, in a cottage or sub-station in the Empty Quarter, south-east of Halvergate.

He is a determined campaigner against all kinds of wind farms, which he calls "shamefully subsidised concrete, and a betrayal of humanity”. He is also against the European Union, especially France and Spain.

Mirror, mirror

One of the big success stories of 2007 was the achievement of perpetual motion by a Norwich chess player. He managed it not through moving his king backwards and forwards but by the use of a mirror – well, several mirrors, as it turned out.

Keen to purchase a glass that would fit perfectly into a certain spot in his home, he visited a well-known home improvement emporium, where he saw just what he wanted. Unfortunately he couldn’t take it away: he had to order it. It would come from Taiwan.

And eventually it did. It was packed carefully in cardboard, and as you might expect, when it arrived it was broken.

The chess player contacted the call centre, which was up north, and not in India. They were very helpful and ordered him a replacement mirror. It came from Taiwan, wrapped in cardboard, and when it arrived it was broken.

He got back to the call centre, who were sympathetic and ordered him another one. In due course it arrived, wrapped in cardboard. It was broken.

The chess player pointed out to the call centre that this was happening – not surprisingly, since cardboard is poor protection for a long, thin mirror. They grappled with the problem - and ordered another one. This time he had to go up to the shop to collect it. I don’t know why, but he asked for it to be unwrapped before he took it away. It was broken.

This sort of thing is known to chess players as a series of blunders, but there is no sign of it ending. Why should it? The call centre don’t sell mirrors, so they’re not bothered. Taiwan presumably keep getting paid for new mirrors, so they’re not bothered. The parcel depot does what parcel depots do.

Time for a little reflection, I think. Or a new year resolution.

Deadly phrase, and there's a reason for it

My exhausting survey of most annoying phrases of the year has come up with a deadly top three:

1. There’s a reason for it 2. We’re making real progress 3. The status quo is not an option.

Why are these phrases so annoying? In the second and third cases because they’re hardly ever true. “Real progress” may be defined as “nothing visible to the naked eye” and the status quo is always an option, because it’s worked up to now, often quite well, and as Daniel Webster said: “A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.”

“There’s a reason for it” however wins the Worst Phrase of 2007 Award because it’s a little more subtle: yes, there is always a reason for it. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good reason, and where the phrase is used by a politician, you can be fairly sure the reason is not what they’d like you to think it is.

Arts organisation fails to win marathon

I must declare an interest. The best theatrical experience I’ve had this year was Under Milk Wood, put on by the Oxfordshire Touring Company at Bergh Apton Village Hall under the sponsorship of Creative Arts East. It was stunning, and packed out.

Nearly five years ago I became involved in a poetry and visual arts touring exhibition, also put on by Creative Arts East. This very successful enterprise (there were other similar ones) eventually led the poets and artists involved to form InPrint, a collaborative group that is still going strong.

So I am hardly objective when I say that axing Creative Arts East’s funding is a short-sighted move that is bound to hurt the Norfolk villages where it has opened so many high-quality artistic doors.

How is this linked to the London Olympics? Maybe not at all, but when money is taken away from successful groups, you can’t help wondering where it’s going. And if there’s something massive on the horizon that eats money…

Unconditional giving: there's a season for it

At the end of the gift-giving season comes the thank-you season.

One woman wrote to a national paper saying that if she was thanked by e-mail, the offending e-mailer would get no more presents from her. She wanted proper letters.

Shame on her. The right attitude to gift-giving is to expect nothing in return. Giving is only giving if it is free of any strings - and that includes checking to see if your tastefully chosen ornament has pride of place on its recipient’s mantelpiece, or that your grand-daughter is wearing the delightful but old-fashioned dress you chose for her.

Thank-yous don’t work if they are demanded on pain of punishment or deprivation. They should be as freely offered as the gifts themselves. One of the problems with this post-Christian society is that we’re always trying to balance the books. We won’t give unless we receive. Fortunately, God is not like that. Heaven help us if he was.

Road safety expert will be sadly missed

Most missed in 2008: road safety expert and campaigner Paul Smith, who did so much to challenge received wisdom and those with axes to grind, and who died this month at the tragically early age of 52.

Final comment: "British road safety was the best in the world. Now it is institutionally incompetent at the highest level."

17 December 2007

on 17 December 2007 at 04:30

Scepticism the healthy option

My article last time on our drift into an Orwellian society was proved right by an immediate accusation from one reader – that the figure I gave for the percentage of accidents caused by exceeding the speed limit contradicted government statistics.

Well, if she chooses to believe the spin put on statistics by a Government heavily committed to speed cameras, that is up to her. I believe scepticism to be the more healthy option.

Other analysts have shown that the Government crunches together different accident causes under the heading of speed for dramatic effect; and that the five per cent for exceeding the speed limit – as opposed to excessive speed, impatience, losing control and driving too fast for the conditions, for example – is accurate. In 2003 the chief constable of Durham, an obvious anti-Orwellian, put the figure even lower at three per cent, and very recently the chief constable of Lincolnshire admitted that “simply driving above the speed limit” could not cause an accident.

But there will always be those who like everyone to agree with the Government. Presumably anything else makes them nervous.

They should take care that they are not like Sir Thomas More – at least as portrayed in The Tudors on BBC – who always sounded very reasonable until his belief structure was threatened. Then he started burning people.

Other recent Orwellian symptoms:

• Yellow and red tags are coming to rubbish bins near you if you throw the wrong thing away. How long before people are asked to inform on neighbours who are rubbish at recycling? I put plastic bottles in my green bin last week – encouraged to do so by the council’s own magazine – and my entire green bin was rejected. No sign of a tag, but my neighbours are looking at me oddly. Admittedly, that is not much of a change.
• A road safety website aimed at young people invites them to inform on their friends and hand them “deadly” speeding tickets. Can’t think of any way that might be abused.
• The Prime Minister signs a treaty that he knows most of the electorate are opposed to and refuses to let them vote on it.
• And (in Australia, admittedly), there is a suggestion that parents who have more than two children should pay a hefty climate change tax to offset the effect of their greenhouse gas emissions.

To cross or not to cross, that is one question

After declaring rashly that I would rather move to an Undecided area of Norfolk than remain in what might become a cash-wasting unitary authority, I was alerted by a correspondent to the peculiar goings-on in the shadowy borderlands where Norfolk, Suffolk and the coast meet.

Here the Government had declared that no unitary authority would be created that crossed county boundaries – thus ruling out the creation of a Yartoft authority – or as I prefer to call it, Lowmouth.

But the stone this was carved in now seems to be unexpectedly fragile, and Ministers have hinted that a brave new cross-border unitary council is still on the cards.

The cost of it all could be higher than you might imagine. What will happen, for instance, to the planned £50 million Waveney Campus, planned for the shores of Lake Lothing in Lowestoft as a joint home for 1000 staff from the Centre for the Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Sciences, Waveney District Council and part of Suffolk County Council? Rumour has it that the compulsory purchase orders going through are going to cost Waveney council tax payers £3 million, for a start.

My correspondent writes: “Obviously, not until after this building is completed and occupied will a unitary authority for Yarmouth and Lowestoft be announced, and plans for a new building somewhere in the Gorleston / Hopton area - between Yarmouth and Lowestoft - started. All this will of course be heralded as the most efficient solution for the area.”

Surely some mistake? Or is the European Union involved in some way? Or both?

Stonehenge no, Pondhenge yes, if we could find it

If I ran a satnav company, I would think twice before promoting a survey designed to expose people’s lack of geographical knowledge.

The other day I was being driven from Norwich to Wymondham town centre by someone who possessed a satellite navigation system. Admittedly German (we give the directions), it was correctly programmed but took us most of the way to Attleborough on the A11 before turning back and entering Wymondham from the south, adding at a guess about five miles to the journey.

Most of us have a better idea of geography than that, even if some think Leeds Castle is in Yorkshire (forgiveable, in view of the obvious deception) and Hadrian’s Wall is in Scotland (right direction, and it was supposed to be the boundary at one time).

The survey also revealed that about 200 people (a tenth of those surveyed) think Stonehenge is in Norfolk. Well, it would certainly be more convenient if it was, but surely that’s also an understandable mistake. After all, we do have the original site of Seahenge at Holme and the equally inaccessible Pondhenge, somewhere in North Norfolk.

I would be more worried if people did not know that Norfolk sometimes contains the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, a beautifully formed area that displays some of the most intriguing time-space distortions in the known universe. Apparently, this was not included in the survey.

A bridge too far away

Not that I think Lottery grants are the best way of creating and distributing money for deserving projects, but I was delighted to see that the plan to connect Norwich city centre with Whitlingham Country Park was awarded £900,000.

Charles Clarke says, for some reason, that this is a “victory for sustainability”. I would have said it was a victory for common sense, until I read that work was scheduled to start – yes, start – in four to five years. Now I see what he means: we have to sustain our interest even longer. Or shall we cross that bridge when we come to it, if we’re still alive?

3 December 2007

on 3 December 2007 at 04:30

Orwellian vision sneaks past our defences

Not many people would vote for the Orwellian vision of constant surveillance, citizens informing on each other, and laws covering what we say and think.

But you don’t have to vote for it: it sneaks by in a thousand small ways, and if there seem good reasons for it, you just let it happen. In a Norfolk school, for instance, children are being encouraged to spy on their teachers and expose their failings.

We are told that “gangs of diligent children patrol classrooms to make sure all televisions and computers are switched off” - and if a teacher has left one on, he or she gets a red card.

This may seem harmless and in a good cause. After all, no-one is being locked up and tortured. But in a society where so many children have no respect for teachers, it sets a bad precedent.

It also presents as fact what is conjectural – at least as far as the effects are concerned – but of course we’re used to that.

Elsewhere children are dangerously encouraged to see cars as evil, and no doubt it is just a question of time before they hand out red cards to drivers who they don’t think are parking properly.

Already unqualified adult volunteers are encouraged to gang up and use radar guns to catch drivers exceeding speed limits – and this at a time when exceeding the speed limit has been shown by government figures to account for fewer than five per cent of accidents, with most of those caused by the driver being drunk, on drugs or engaged in criminal activity.

This is an open invitation to people who want to impose their own prejudices on others, as are most Orwellian innovations.

Most of these wheedle their way in because people are frightened – usually unnecessarily. Last week, for instance, a professor of philosophy made it clear that he wants us to be “scared stiff” – so scared that he wants us to stop using accurate language and use scary words instead.

He suggests that the precise term “climate change” should be dropped, and we should start using terms like “climate crisis” and “climate catastrophe”.

He may be convinced that we are in dire straits atmospherically speaking, but many of us are not convinced. He calls us “climate-deniers”, which I presume means we think there is no climate at all.

He calls his own belief “telling the truth”, and he would like to impose his own “life-improving” lifestyle – which coincidentally would fit in nicely with tackling a climate crisis – on everyone else.

This man is not a scientist: revealingly his UEA colleague Prof Mike Hulme, who is, has written at least twice to the EDP correcting wild assumptions on “catastrophic” climate change.

The philosopher is already a politician locally and would like to be on the national stage. He thinks we should speak honestly. I think we should too. So I have to say that I believe he would be not a change but a catastrophe. Of course, that’s only my view.

Meeting the challenge of throwing money away

A conservation charity I know has recently built itself a bright new meeting room. I can see it from my bedroom window, and I’m very happy they hold meetings there.

If they didn’t, they might do what the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority does and book expensive hotels. In 18 months the QCA spent more than £4.2 million of taxpayers’ money on top hotels and conference centres to host meetings in the course of a wide-ranging review of the secondary school curriculum.

This, in case you were wondering, is equivalent to the annual salary of about 150 fully qualified teachers, but hey – who need fully qualified teachers when you can enjoy reviewing the curriculum instead?

Of course. the education sector is not alone in spending far more than it needs to on the comfort of its employees – or its consultants. The EDP reported last week that Defra, which has spent over £1bn on consultants over five years, booked staff tackling a bird flu outbreak into the luxury Ickworth Hotel, near Bury St Edmunds, where the lowest bed and breakfast rate is £185 a room.

Still, at least they’ve taken foie gras off the menu at City Hall. That’s not a financial saving of course, but no doubt the reorganisation of Norfolk councils into three unitary authorities will be. Or might there be some slight cost involved in rebranding, restaffing and completely changing everything?

Happily there are two areas still marked “undecided” on the brave new county map. I think I’ll move there. It’s bound to be cheaper.

Narrow escape for radar gun police

I hear from an unimpeachable electronic source that two traffic patrol officers from a few miles north of Norfolk were involved in an unusual incident while trying to catch motorists exceeding the speed limit on the A1.

One of the officers was using a hand-held radar device to check the speed of something approaching over the crest of a hill, and was surprised when the speed was recorded at over 300mph. The machine then stopped working and the officers were unable to reset it.

The radar had in fact latched on to a Nato Tornado fighter jet over the North Sea, which was engaged in a low-flying exercise. The chief constable fired off a stiff complaint to the RAF and received the following reply: "Thank you for your message. You may be interested to know that the tactical computer in the Tornado had automatically locked on to your hostile radar equipment and sent a jamming signal back to it.

“The Sidewinder air-to-ground missiles aboard the aircraft had also locked on to the target. Fortunately the Dutch pilot flying the Tornado responded to the missile status alert intelligently and was able to override the automatic protection system before the missile was launched.”

Wonderful things, Tornadoes. We should have more of them.

Wrong place, wrong time

Shortly after being mistaken for a small town by the BBC, Norwich has emphasised its city status by being voted second-best small city in the world, though how it could be beaten by Ipswich (even Ipswich, Australia) is hard to comprehend.

Not many people know that Hingham was on the long list for best small autonomous republic but was sadly disqualified for time and space distortion.

“Same old story,” said local expert Prof V A R Scheinlich. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

19 November 2007

on 19 November 2007 at 04:30

Breakthrough discovery could be cause of Hingham woes

It is well known that the delightful Autonomous Republic of Hingham, situated on most days between Watton and Norwich, is subject to severe time-space distortion.

That may be connected with its pioneering of an unusual form of democracy, which could be summed up as asking everyone what they want to do, and then not doing it. This was subsequently taken up by New Labour and various local councils, but it originated in what has become known as the Scout Hut Sale Scenario, which happened so long ago that nobody is interested any more, or if they are, no-one is going to do anything about it.

Now a shocking suggestion had been made by local expert Prof V A R Scheinlich - that Hingham contains within itself a basic element that breeds what he calls “confusion of the democratic process and occasional wormholes”.

He has named it fairlandium, after Fairland Green in Hingham, which is at the centre of the most recent controversy, involving both contorted democratic process and time-space distortion.

Two small areas of grass where the main Norwich-Watton road meets the Attleborough-Dereham road are used for random parking, which has not only done little for the grass but also created a hazard to emergency vehicles, in the view of most inhabitants (the word “most” being itself dangerous in this context).

So the town council produced a consultation document that suggested exchanging the two small bits of grassed area – created originally where tracks crossed the historic green, but now out on a pointless, tarmac-surrounded limb - for a bit of highway that would become part of the larger Green area. This transaction would involve provision of a proper, safer 18-bay car park.

That was eight years ago. The consultation paper was described by the county council as “an excellent example of village democracy”, which was asking for trouble.

The whole thing could then have gone forward, but a vociferous minority campaigned against the idea. As a result an inquiry was held over five days at a cost of £25,000 (to the county council). The inquiry gave the go-ahead for the original plan, and indeed the exchange of land ownership went through. But in the meantime a new town council had been elected, which didn’t like the plan. It voted 6-5 against it.

Of course it was too late: only the physical work remained to be done, with grass and tarmac suspended in a time-space wormhole. But the town council would not accept the fait accompli – and as a result the embarrassed county council has threatened to charge the town £25,000 for the cost of the original inquiry. What now? I would suggest taking a vote of the electorate, but I know where that sort of thing can lead. There would be lots of spoilt papers, and the response would be just short of the minimum required.

“I believe fairlandium is to blame,” said Prof Scheinlich. “It doesn’t seem to occur naturally anywhere else.”

He is currently trying to track down the source in the hope that it can be neutralised.

Surface meaning of new signs may be deceptive

Users of the A140 between Norwich and Long Stratton will know that a new road surface has been laid recently between Swainsthorpe and Newton Flotman.

It is now smooth, quiet – and slippery.

At least it is if you believe new signs that have been installed every few hundred yards, which show the familiar logo and the added explanation: “New road surface”.

A concerned reader wrote saying he would have thought “a newly laid surface should in fact be just the opposite to slippery”, which is a reasonable view.

But maybe the road is not slippery at all. He has an alternative explanation for the signs: “Could it be that a surplus of funds had to be used before the end of the tax year, so it was thought best to pay for dozens of new signs, just in case they got sued by some errant motorist who skids on a wet road?”

A far-fetched theory, you may think, but it is in line with the familiar ploy of putting 5mph signs out after you’ve put chippings on country roads – knowing that no-one on earth is going to go that slowly but it will give you a cast-iron defence in the event of bodywork damage. “Well, we did tell you…”

The same correspondent also has his suspicions about signs warning of approaching speed limits, which he thinks excessive.

He writes: “It occurs to me that if the speed limit was moved to the beginning of the warning zone, it would save a lot of signs. And by the time motorists react, they would be travelling slowly enough when they reach the point where the limit should really apply.”

So why not? He has a theory, and I have a reservation.

His theory is that Norfolk County Council is starting up a sign company. My reservation is that if you put his solution into effect, someone would plant a speed camera in the area before the limit was really needed.

Unlikely, I know. But possible.

Decision not to alarm flood victims applauded

The decision not to sound warning sirens at Walcott when the sea overtopped defences has been warmly applauded by the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia.

Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, who is also the university’s emergency planning officer, said last night that resisting the appeal of the sirens on the grounds that they might alarm people was “humane and in the fine traditions of endangered species everywhere”.

He said research carried out by his department revealed that people would rather be extremely wet than alarmed. And if they were to be deprived of their homes, pets and in some cases their lives, they would rather this was done in a non-alarming way.

Prof Aufmerksam said he wanted to ban all kinds of burglar and car alarms, as well as warning notices of any sort. People were easily upset, he said. He had had to send several students for counselling when a “This Door is Alarmed” notice was put up in the lower common room.

5 November 2007

on 5 November 2007 at 04:30

Sleepwalkers in Norwich linked to shopping

Some may have been surprised to read that more people sleepwalk in Travelodges in Norwich than in any other city in the United Kingdom.

Those of us with experience of pedestrian activity in the city will not have been surprised at all, because the city is full of sleepwalkers. Most of them have just come out of shops and ground to a halt in the middle of the pavement.

The only difference between them and the Travelodge sleepwalkers is that the ones on the street are rarely naked and are not attempting to check out. A study undertaken by the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing confirms that many Norwich shoppers are in the grip of Oliver’s Syndrome, named coincidentally after my five-year-old grandson, who walks into any shop and says: ”I want to buy something.”

Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam said yesterday: “This of course reverses the normal procedure, which is to become aware of the need to buy something and then walk into a suitable shop. Our research reveals that Oliver’s Syndrome, a form of sleepwalking, is reaching epidemic proportions, possibly as a result of climate change, or Approaching Festive Season Disorder.”

He added: “None of this is really surprising. What we are really interested in is why all the sleepwalkers in Travelodges appear to be naked. Do they take their clothes off before attempting to check out, or do they sleep naked – an activity hitherto thought to be confined to students?

“We need to look at this much more closely.”

Unexpected truffle windfall for Norfolk town

Unexpected excitement struck the Watton area last week when it was designated a truffle hotspot.

It had long been thought that Norfolk was totally unsuited to growing the delicacy, hence the common dialect phrase “that hent no truffle, bor”.

Now an expert has said that the county is surprisingly ideal for truffles, and the answer lies in the soil – specifically the chalky, well-mixed earth that most readers will have noticed in the fields around Watton.

That area is already famous for its pingos, which have been used since the latest ice age to give a distinctive flavour to locally brewed real ale and whisky. A nearby restaurateur, Len ”Kissme” Hardy, formerly of Hindolveston, is already offering pingo and truffle canapés to discerning pupils of Wayland High School, who are said to prefer them to chips.

Meanwhile entrepreneur and general legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago said last night he was “up and running” in the race to supply the huge number of pigs that were expected to be needed to unearth the Watton truffles. His company, Houseago Inc of Erpingham, is in the process of diversification.

The much simpler Highway Code

While checking on the Poetry Vending Machine in Borders bookshop, Norwich, I couldn’t help noticing the chunkiness of the new Highway Code, which is on sale there.

Reprehensibly, I didn’t actually check the numbers, but I’m told the latest edition has reached 133 pages, which is enough to put anyone off driving. Perhaps that’s the idea.

In any case the Safe Speed campaign, which is concerned for road safety generally, says that this “bloat” is causing the essential safety messages to get lost, and so it has produced its own 100-word version of the Code. It goes like this.

“Drive on the left. Make sure you can see and be seen. Keep a constant look out all around. Be aware of signs and regulations and why they are there. Be predictable.

“Recognise and anticipate danger and keep clear space from it. Always ensure that you can stop within the distance that you know is clear. Develop your skills.

“Give courtesy, co-operation and space to others. Don't obstruct them. Never take risks, drive unfit or compete with others. “Safety is paramount and far more important than priority. Take personal responsibility for your safety and the safety of those nearby.

“Enjoy.”

I suspect it’s the last word that most safety experts would have problems with. But if you enjoy driving, you’re more than half way to doing it well. If you don’t, you’re dangerous. Expert anxious about effect of elephants on city streets

News that life-size baby elephants will soon be lurking in the streets of Norwich as part of a public art event has alarmed local scientist Professor V A R Scheinlich, who spends much of his time protecting the citizens of the Autonomous Republic of Hingham from unwanted effects of time and space distortion.

The republic, near Norfolk, is particularly prone to these effects, and Prof Scheinlich has made an in-depth study of them. “One of my achievements is to have eliminated unusual animals from our streets,” he said late last night. “Coypu, for instance.”

His device for protecting Hingham from elephants had worked particularly well, and he was concerned that Norwich was “asking for trouble”. He added: “So far Norwich has been relatively free of time and space distortion, apart from the buses. But this could change everything.”

He urged the council to consult him immediately. His fees were very reasonable, he said.

Crossing patrols not always the victims

I have no time for drivers who intimidate school crossing patrols or shout abuse at them, and I certainly have no problem with the campaign to inform drivers that they are legally obliged to stop for lollipop men and women.

But as always there is another side to it. A close friend who I know to be a good and considerate driver approached one such patrol at a zebra crossing in the city. No-one was waiting to cross, and the lollipop woman was standing with one foot on the crossing but with her back to it and talking to someone on the pavement.

My friend approached extremely carefully and, with no-one apparently interested in crossing, proceeded to drive through – at which the patrol woman turned and yelled abuse at her.

Consideration and respect are not a one-way street. Paying attention is the first rule of the road, and of the crossing.

22 October 2007

on 22 October 2007 at 04:30

Secret plan to keep holidaymakers at home

During the postal strike a pigeon alighted on my desk. Someone was clearly relying on tried and tested methods. It turned out to be Richard “Volcano” Meek, noted Norfolk explorer and author of the widely acclaimed Walking over Bishy Barnabees, who has recently been, in his own words, seeking a challenge.

His pigeon post revealed that he had recently “explored the upper reaches of the Acle Straight, seeking the legendary city of Yarmuff, fabled to be constructed – like Petra – from solid rock”. I thought it was sand, but there you go.

He writes: “A less observant traveller might well have missed a number of subtle changes taking place on the marshes flanking the A47 causeway.

“I can now reveal that a hitherto top secret project designed to encourage holidaymakers to stay local and reduce their carbon footsteps is being trialled in our region.

“All signs have been removed or obliterated. A white donkey and a herd of black cattle have been drafted in. Herons are being rounded up and dyed pink. Clearly the plan is to convince holidaymakers that they have arrived in the Camargue – or Camarcle, as insiders know it.

“Planes taking off from Norwich International are being equipped for crop spraying, early warning of nuclear attack and deliveries of local post. They will circle several times before landing at a secretly constructed airfield in Halvergate.

“Locals have been undergoing clandestine training as extras in this farce. It appears that disembarking passengers will be met by Len "Francoise" Hardy, Freddie Maisonyva and Dorothea Bon-Enfant before being taken to their gites in nearby Grand Yarbouche.

“Where will it end? Beeston Bump re-profiled to serve as Table Mountain? Gondoliers in Potter Heigham? Fruit bats being liberated in Loddon? Fruit cakes in Fakenham?” Almost unbelievable.

Free car parking the best option

I suggested last time that the simplest way to make car parking consistent throughout South Norfolk was for it to be free.

Council leader John Fuller tells me that this solution was indeed considered, but several problems arose, and they stemmed partly from changes in political domination of the council.

Apparently the maintenance of car parks has fallen behind – and £300,000 is needed to put them right. Meanwhile, machines that should have been collecting fees have been allowed to remain out of action from some months, costing the council about £40,000.

The council also faces a new problem. “On-street parking will no longer be enforced by the police from April, risking gridlock in the market towns next year unless we do something about it,” says Mr Fuller.

Taking over an essential service in mid-stream is undeniably difficult, but I still think car parking is so central to what happens in market towns that it should be financed by everyone, and not just car drivers.

This means temperamental machines would not be necessary, and maintenance would get the priority it deserved.

People are willing to pay for what they see needs to be done. What they are not willing to pay for is machines that don’t work and the consequences of essential repairs not being carried out, followed by a consultation process.

And if car parking were free, the problem with street parking would disappear – or at least be manageable. Or am I just a hopeless optimist?

Nobel judges not swayed by newts

A Norfolk man claimed yesterday that there had been a mix-up, and the Nobel Peace Prize should have been awarded to him instead of obscure American Al Gore.

Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, who has a long history of exposing the insidious activities of expansionist great crested newts in his home county, said that it was widely expected by people he knew that his fight for peace, literature and physics would catch the eye of the Nobel judges.

He admitted that much of the science on which he had based his anti-newt activities had been contested, but this did not matter as long as people became aware of the newt menace, for which they themselves were to blame. Ponds should have been abolished years ago. Now only heavier taxation, digging up roads and erecting monstrosities around the countryside would avert the danger.

Asked whether his campaign had anything to do with peace, Mr Houseago commented: “Probably not. But that doesn’t seem to matter. Anyway I could do with the money.”

Washed-up dog walkers anger bottle users

A large number of dog walkers washed up on a Norfolk beach has angered users of plastic bottles who frequent the area.

They believe that the dog walkers were thrown into the sea by a local enthusiast in the hope that they would reach Europe and spread the dog-walking gospel there. But the tide turned, and the dog walkers were washed up.

A newspaper columnist, when asked, said he would rather see plastic bottles than dog walkers on a beach, because they were cleaner and quieter, and tended not to write semi-literate abusive letters to him. In fact, messages in bottles tended to be quite uplifting.

When challenged, he admitted that many dog-walkers did not send him abusive messages and were quite friendly, although they tended to jump up too often, run around a lot and lick unnecessarily.

Eyes down for a new hazard

Readers will know how keen I am on low speeds, but it is hard to see how using average speed cameras to police 20mph limits in towns can be beneficial.

Law-abiding drivers will be determined to stay within the limit and therefore pay very close attention to their speedometers. However good they are, this means less attention paid to what is going on around them in what must be high-risk areas.

One road safety expert describes driving within the area covered by average speed cameras as “driving in fog”. While I would not put it quite like that, I do see what he means.

Mysterious marking

Taking an exam in RE nowadays seems a little bit less strict than it might be. The examiner will, I understand, mark super-positively, which is nice, and the exact mark you need to get a C grade, for example, is about as mysterious as the ways that the Almighty works in.

“We often get a call from on high asking us to push it down a bit,” a senior examiner reveals. “And I do mean the Government, not God.”

8 October 2007

on 8 October 2007 at 16:23

True science, or a tidal wave of mush?

Al Gore’s film on climate change can be shown to children in schools, despite being described in court as containing “serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush”. But High Court judge Mr Justice Burton said the Government had to rewrite its guidance material and will rule this week that the film does contain partisan political views.

Is this a victory or a defeat for the concerned parent who brought the action? If that is not clear, the facts about climate change remain even less clear, despite the eager acceptance of one extreme version by what has been described as the soft left, soft green majority in the media, universities and politics.

Proper discussion is inhibited by the attitude of scientists and fellow-travellers who think it simplest to abuse sceptics, who they describe as “malicious” and “climate change deniers”, though neither description is remotely accurate.

No-one in their right mind denies climate change. You might as well deny rain. What is questioned by many people is that global warming is out of control, has been caused almost entirely by human activity and can be prevented by changing our behaviour.

Many have a fundamentalist religious zeal for this idea. They would like to compel other people to both believe it is right and act on it - a position that even God rejected, with his slightly greater grasp of what is right than climate change activists.

To assist them in this they suggest that the sceptics do not understand the first principles of science, which is not only a distortion of the truth: it is the opposite of the truth. It is those non-scientists who blindly follow the activist line on climate change who don’t understand the science. To be a genuine sceptic you have to research the subject: when in the past I have presented scientific evidence against the majority view, the activists invariably don’t have time to look at it.

I question their naivety, not their motives. It is disturbing that Avaaz, a growing global e-mail group that does excellent work in drumming up support to make politicians act on key issues like Darfur and Burma, has swallowed the climate majority view hook line and sinker. As a result, petitions signed by the innocent and gullible will no doubt continue to be presented to assorted summits with an appropriate side salad of moral indignation.

They and others like them think the science is settled, but this is far from the case. It has been described as “the most complex field of science ever tackled”, and many questions remain to be answered.

For example, is there any reply to the argument that ice cores always show CO2 following warming periods, rather than causing them?

Could the so-called amplification of the effect of CO2 by other gases actually reduce it? A senior scientist says the jury is out.

Why are solar scientists predicting a global cooling period by 2020, if not before, and calling it the major climate threat to the world?

Could our climate really be governed by cosmic rays and low cloud cover?

Is the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere logarithmic? If so, it means it would become smaller and smaller over time.

How is it that the 1930s were so warm, and in the USA 1934 was the warmest year on record? And how is it that the oceans have not warmed at all over the past five years?

We don’t like questions like this because so many of us have bought into the climate catastrophe model. Councils are now paying out £102 million a year for an army of officials to work on “green” issues. The number of companies set up to take advantage of new rules and laws on emissions is already beyond calculation, and few politicians nowadays would be brave enough to resists such a tidal wave.

But does that make it true? Or just mush?

Last refuge of the unimaginative

South Norfolk Council wants to charge motorists to park in Harleston and Loddon because you have to pay in Diss and Wymondham, and “charging should be consistent”.

Oscar Wilde said consistency was the last refuge of the unimaginative, which doesn’t seem to have got through to most councillors. I wonder why?

What also doesn’t seem to have got through to them is that if you just want to be consistent, you could make parking free in Diss and Wymondham.

But that wouldn’t do, apparently, because the cost of maintaining car parks shouldn’t fall on the general council tax payer.

Why not? I happily pay for schools and swimming pools, though I don’t use either. If we pay for everything we use individually, what’s the point in having a council?

Mystery surrounds short stretch of road

Most mind-boggling comment of the past two weeks came from the chief executive of Great Yarmouth Port Company, who pronounced that “for all but one short stretch, the road to the Midlands is dual carriageway”.

I suppose it depends where you start and finish, but clearly Yarmouth is not an option. There are two single-carriageway stretches before you reach Norwich, and if you persist with the natural route to the Midlands – the A47 – you soon come across more. Many more, and not short at all.

So is there another way? Well, yes there is. You could go down the A11 and take the A14.

This would give you three single-carriageway stretches, only one of which could really be described as short. But it would also mean piling another great clump of lorries on to two of the most hideously congested roads in East Anglia – the stretch between Cambridge and Huntingdon and the much-loved Elveden traffic lights feature.

So, obviously a completely new meaning for the words “short”, “dual” and “carriageway”. Oh, and possibly “Yarmouth” too.

Alternate-week collection is rubbish

I see that the main aim of the alternate weekly rubbish collections planned for Norwich soon (you may have missed the road shows) is “to reduce the amount of waste we collect and dispose of”.

Of course, not turning up at all would reduce it even more. I wonder how long before someone suggests that.

The second aim is to increase recycling rates. Why this should happen is a complete mystery. “Oh, they’re not collecting my rubbish this week. I’ll recycle it instead.”

I don’t think so.

24 September 2007

on 24 September 2007 at 05:00

Norfolk way of handling a crisis

If you were wondering where all the police in North Norfolk were last Sunday afternoon, I can tell you. They were guarding me.

That may be slightly misleading. But I was with a group of North Walsham people, about 100-strong, gathered in a field, and there was a hefty police presence - including a dozen vehicles, which surprised me. I didn’t know they had that many. I should hasten to add that I was completely innocent on this occasion.

My wife and I had been visiting friends who have lived in North Walsham for about 100 years, relatively speaking, when we were asked by a fireman to evacuate the house. Fortunately we had just had a cup of tea.

After checking that he was really a fireman and his engine was not a cunningly constructed fake, we retired to the nearby football club and its hastily opened pavilion. Fortunately the weekend weather was unaccountably warm and sunny. Meanwhile, the police and fire service attempted to remove a man from a gas-filled house a couple of streets away.

The spectre of North Walsham losing dozens of houses to an explosion never seemed real, but then I suppose it never does, right up to when the explosion happens. In this case the police operation was successful, sanity was restored and after a couple of hours we were allowed back into the house – from where we made a quick exit to the safety of Norwich.

Two things struck me about the whole incident: the quiet good humour of the community and the relaxed attitude of the police, several of whom were known to the locals.

There were a couple of riot shields disappearing in the direction of the gas-filled house, but in our field all was calm – no barriers, no rough handling of people who got too close, no officiousness. You could actually talk to officers as if they were human beings, as indeed they seemed to be.

All in all, a very rural Norfolk way of handling of something that could have turned nasty in so many different ways.

Courtesy is the answer on the road

Pointing out the supposed shortcomings of other drivers is a hazardous undertaking, since no-one is perfect - not even me. Well, not all the time. So instead of continuing the ongoing dispute about lorries, white vans, dual carriageways, lily, rosemary and the jack of hearts, I shall pass on the wise counsel of a reader, who tells me: “When I learnt to drive, I was always being told to be courteous towards other drivers.

“In fact there used to be something in the Highway Code about driving with courtesy. It really doesn't take up much of your time - just a bit of thought.” She asks us to imagine what the roads would be like if everyone drove with courtesy:

• There would be no tailgating
• Parents wouldn't park close to school entrances
• Everyone would indicate
• No-one (not even disabled drivers) would park on double yellow lines
• No-one would park in disabled spaces when not entitled to
• No-one would hog the middle lane
• Slow drivers (tractors, HGVs, cars towing caravans or horse boxes) would pull over on country roads to allow the “tail” to get past
• “Thou shalt not pass” would be a thing of the past
• Everyone would acknowledge every act of consideration
• Everyone would keep to their own side of the road, particularly on bends.

She concludes: “We'd all get there just as quickly, and probably in a better temper!” I’m still trying, but I’m not quite sure I can imagine it yet.

Dog walker with a difference

There was no tremendous response to my suggestion last time that it might be possible for people to go for a walk without dogs, but one gentleman from the east of the county came up with something quite unexpected.

His name is Bob, and he tells me that he once worked for a coal delivery firm whose boss was a dog lover.

“He raced greyhounds,” said Bob. “I don't think he ever beat one, as I am sure we would have heard. But being an entrepreneurial type of a person, he got his chief engineer to construct a dog-exercising machine.

“This was done very secretively and in scientifically cleaned laboratory conditions. When the day came to try out this machine, a large crowd was assembled, slightly in awe and ever so bemused by the sight of what was being brought out into the open.

“The dog was led out and placed on the machine with all due pomp and circumcision. The machine was switched on, there was a shower of sparks from the motor - the belt going backwards with said dog attached.

“The dog flew off in a northerly direction and headed towards Hickling.”

This sounds to me an admirable device. It is a pity no-one had the foresight to put it into full-scale production.

Slow progress into the new millennium

It has recently become clear why anti-car campaign group Transport 2000 was always in favour of slow driving. It is in fact a very slow-moving organisation. Noticing that its name was going to become pretty embarrassing in the new millennium, it decided eight years ago to change it. But no-one could agree on what the new name should be. So nothing happened, and things went quiet.

Eventually, however, they did agree to set up a sub-group, which also turned out to be slow-moving. It took 18 months to agree that the group should now be called Campaign for Better Transport.

Not surprising, I suppose, when you have to cope with all those speed cameras and road humps. One point in their favour, though: they didn’t call in a consultant. Unless of course they did, but he hasn’t arrived yet.

Road safety policy in the wrong box

The justification for speed cameras has been called into question after the Government at last admitted that its casualty calculations had been flawed, resulting in wrong conclusions being drawn about cameras’ effectiveness – or lack of it.

The Met’s former head of traffic confessed: “We have put our entire road safety programme into a box marked speed cameras.” And one road safety expert said it meant the so-called speeding problem did not exist.

Maybe now we can tackle what really causes road accidents – and get a few speed limits back up to realistic and safer levels.

10 September 2007

on 10 September 2007 at 05:00

Lorry responses at different speeds

Four weeks ago I made a small complaint about the way many heavy lorries behaved on dual carriageways.

I observed that they signalled and pulled out without any regard to what was coming up behind and then took an eternity to pass the HGV in front, thus dangerously disrupting traffic.

As I might have anticipated, I received quite a response from readers. Amusingly, the quickest of them shot in at speed from car-driving supporters of my views, while the complaints from the heavy lorry drivers took a bit longer to reach me – presumably hampered by speed limiters of some kind.

More than one person, in fact, pointed out in defence of HGV drivers that their engines were speed-limited, which prevented them overtaking more quickly. Fair enough. But surely they are aware of this, which means they know very well that it will take ages to overtake - so they must be being deliberately obstructive.

There is still a way round it: the lorry being overtaken could easily slow down slightly to allow the overtaker to get past. Instead, the intention invariably seems to be to make it as hard as possible – in some cases forcing the frustrated overtaker, after three or four miles of blockading the outside lane, to drop back.

But no-one likes being overtaken, do they? One lorry enthusiast seemed to feel that it was OK to block cars because they were exceeding the speed limit. But the self- appointed speed-limit-enforcer is to my mind one of the most dangerous characters on the road, whatever he or she drives. “They shall not pass” is a killer attitude. Literally.

I had a great deal of sympathy, though, with one lorry driver who wrote to me, no doubt representative of very many others. He pointed out the commercial pressure that lorry drivers were under - ”nearly all subject to time-sensitive deliveries…they receive abuse and wait for hours to get unloaded, hence they have to go like hell to play catch-up”. He blames “rich developers and greedy investors”, with a resultant emphasis on quantity instead of quality. I would not want to argue with that. The menace to road safety does not even have to be on the road.

Nor would I want to restrict my criticism of inconsiderate driving to lorry drivers. Drivers of cars and vans (especially white ones) have been quick to follow suit. On journeys to and from Scotland in the past month I saw countless drivers of all vehicles who seem to think that as long as they indicate, they can pull out, and it is up to the driver behind to make room.

This is kamikaze driving. How about a national campaign to expose it?

Mystery animals slow down traffic

Still on the lookout for strange road signs, I was much taken by one I came across on two different motorways recently. It flashed from one of those huge LCD displays that give warning of temporary hazards: “Animals on the road.”

It certainly made people slow down – largely, I think, because of the uncertainty as to the nature of the animals. What were we being faced with? Escaped hippopotami? Horses? A couple of coypu and a stray squirrel?

In the end, of course, no animal was visible. I could picture the sign-operator gurgling with delight and trying to think of something even more bizarre to slow down traffic. “Birds crossing sky”, for instance.

I am happy to report that my favourite Scottish road sign is still there: “No double white lines in centre of road.” But it has been superseded in pointlessness by one on the M6 toll: “This sign not in use.” Almost as good as the legendary “Do not throw stones at this sign”.

BBC steps back from climate bandwagon

I was delighted to see that the BBC has decided not to jump full-square on the global warming bandwagon. It has dropped plans to broadcast Planet Relief, described as a TV special on climate change, following comments by senior editorial staff that it was not the BBC’s job to save the planet or to lead opinion on the subject.

This is a refreshing stance at a time when so many parts of the media have abandoned all pretext of objectivity. Whatever climate change enthusiasts may say, there is still a great deal of work to do on establishing how our climate is changed, and even more on predicting its future. Those who prepared for a really, really hot summer this year will know what I mean.

The sole function of conclusions in this area is apparently to be leapt to, but awkward data keep cropping up. The only UK September heatwaves (over 90F) in the twentieth century occurred in 1906, 1911, 1919, 1926, 1929 and 1949, and there have been none this century, according to expert Philip Eden. Wait for it…

It's OK to walk without a dog

Having incurred the wrath of lorry drivers, I’ve decided to go the whole hog and annoy a completely new group of people by backing the move to ban dog-walking in wildlife conservation areas.

Apparently dog-walking causes a dramatic drop in the number of birds, even if the pets are kept on a lead.

As a big bird enthusiast (I know what you’re thinking) I would like to see all dog- walking banned everywhere, but this is not a popular position to take. After all, dog-walkers now have those delightful little transparent plastic bags in which to carry round their pets’ poo so that we don’t have to tread in it.

Aesthetically, however, this is not much of an improvement. I sometimes think I would rather it were on the ground.

But dogs have to be walked, don’t they? If so, I prefer it to be done in private. Up and down the stairs is good, or round and round the patio.

I suspect that the real reason people own dogs is to give themselves an excuse to go for a walk.

I have good news for them: it is perfectly OK to go for a walk on your own. If enough of us do it, we won’t be mistaken for flashers, cruisers or potential rapists and it will become a socially accepted practice. Then there will be no need for dogs at all.

27 August 2007

on 27 August 2007 at 05:00

Street-cleaning is rubbish

When I spent a few days in a small coastal town in Normandy last month, I was quite surprised – but delighted – to see that the beach was cleaned every morning. And I was astonished to discover that domestic rubbish was collected every day.

In this country the authorities seem to think that once a week is a bit excessive. It’s all part of the general tendency not to do anything that people actually want.

Living in the city of Norwich, I was delighted to hear of the council’s emphasis not long ago on cleaning up litter. But nothing much seemed to happen, so when a Green Party campaigner called on us, we mentioned the litter problem in our road. Now I have received a letter saying they took the matter up and found that there is a “litter pick” in our road regularly – or to be slightly more precise, every eight weeks. So once every two months our road is clean. If you come to see us, please choose your day carefully.

In addition to this exciting development, I can reveal that it’s “mechanically swept” every 16 weeks. Yes, that’s about three times a year.

I would like to know the name of the person who thinks this is remotely satisfactory. If the council can’t even keep our streets clean, what are we paying it for?

No doubt there will be those who think that I should go out and pick up the litter myself. Well, on occasion my wife and I do exactly that. Perhaps we should also service the street lighting, resurface the road (it certainly needs it), take all our rubbish down to the tip (where some of it will be rejected), charge our neighbours for parking and campaign to become a unitary authority.

Blindfold chess

Holding the British Chess Championships at Great Yarmouth was an iconoclastic masterstroke. I turned up for the last two days at Yarmouth College and was impressed almost as much by the facilities as I was by the variety of participants – from fashion-conscious teenage girls to the occasional smartly dressed but sockless grandmaster.

The excitement and beauty of chess is clearly getting through to a wide cross- section of society, even though certain parts of the media still greet it with that supercilious face they use when confronted by something much deeper than they are.

The only strange thing about the whole event was that there were no road signs to guide occasional visitors through the warren of streets to the college. I would have thought that if the horse-racing merits copious AA directions signs, an event of this magnitude certainly does. At the very least they could have effected a small change to those “For the Broads follow Yarmouth” signs so that they read “For the Boards follow Yarmouth”.

This is what is known in chess as a useful transposition.

Too much information, too little knowledge

That marvellous poet T S Eliot asked many good questions, and one of the best was: “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

We have now reached a stage where we are presented with so much useless information that what we know disappears into a kind of background swamp, where it sinks. Here are three quite different examples.

The first – “This unit has been disconnected electrically for your safety” – appeared on a towel rail in a motel near Hull. Presumably it simply means that it deliberately doesn’t work, which makes you wonder why it’s there. The kettle didn’t work either.

The second is from an aircraft and must have been used untold thousands of times: “Your life vest is either under your seat or in the panel above your head.” Don’t they know which? Surely the last thing you want to be doing in an emergency is be looking for something that might be in one place or possibly another.

The third is quite simply not true: in fact it is almost the opposite of the truth, but I guess that the betting company that uses it must assume that if you say something often enough, you will create an assumption that it must be right.

“It matters more when there’s money on it,” they say. If we believe that, we might as well give up now.

Cakes and death in the country

Rural readers will be familiar with the strange and bizarre rites that are still practised in the wilder parts of Norfolk.

I was wandering around one such part (which I cannot name in case of reprisals or wicker man incidents) when I thought I had stumbled on one such ancient ceremony. There, attached to a post, was a weathered notice bearing the words “Mother’s Day Cake Tomb”.

What could it mean? Perhaps cake makers in this part of the world were hampered by poor local ingredients, and the tomb was where their cakes were consigned to die – rather like an elephants’ graveyard.

Unlikely, I decided. Much more probable that innocent, unsuspecting strangers were lured to a graveyard vault by a tempting cake and then subjected by local mothers to unspeakable experiences. I kept an eye open. It could happen, and I didn’t want to miss out.

In the end, however, after close examination of the notice, I was forced to the reluctant conclusion that it might have read originally “Mother’s Day Cake Tombola”. How weird is that?

It's still called propaganda, Al

Ernest Benn said that “politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy”.

I understand he was not talking about climate change, but it’s a pretty apt description of most politicians’ response to a phenomenon that has always been with us.

Al Gore, patron saint of global warming, says this month that “what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion”.

Actually I still call it propaganda, and the more it pours forth, the more likely impressionable people are to vandalise 4x4s in Germany, disrupt innocent holidaymakers at airports and brainwash children. There’s a word for that too.

13 August 2007

on 13 August 2007 at 05:00

Heavy lorries biggest hazard on the roads

What is the single biggest hazard that motorists face? The never-ending roadworks? The constant diversion signs? Boredom caused by the streams of fatalistic, slow- moving traffic crawling along perfectly serviceable major roads, apparently under the illusion that this is all they can do?

I am a bit suspicious about the roadworks, largely because they always take so long, so few people seem to be working on them, and the coned-off sections tend to be three times as lengthy as they need be.

Is there a conspiracy to make use of our roads so unpleasant that we will avoid using them as much as possible?

Ridiculous, you say. Still, one of the inspectors to the Secretary of State for Transport recently recommended refusal of the planned Thames Gateway Bridge because “it might encourage people to travel”. Perhaps this is an example of a more general principle at the heart of Whitehall.

The diversion signs are more of a mystery. They are everywhere, and proliferate even on the rare occasions when you are not being diverted. I can only assume that someone made far too many of them, and they were sold to highways authorities on the cheap.

The other week my esteemed colleague Charles Roberts, now resident in France, pinpointed the dangers caused by heavy lorries tailgating him aggressively when he was going as fast as he was legally allowed to.

This is a problem here too, largely because the speed limits are hopelessly out of sync with what is safe. Here the tailgater is less likely to be a heavy lorry than one of those oversized vans that know exactly where the speed cameras are.

There is a different problem with heavy lorries in this country, and after driving over 500 miles in a couple of days last week it is my nomination for Single Biggest Hazard.

It manifests itself most often on dual carriageways. A heavy lorry comes up behind another HGV, which is going very slightly more slowly. It signals and pulls into the right-hand lane. This is done regardless of what may be coming up behind in the faster lane, how dangerous the manoeuvre is and – critically – how long it is going to take to overtake the other HGV.

When I was taught to drive, and for many years afterwards, we did not overtake if someone coming up behind was moving faster than us. It was not only dangerous but inconsiderate.

The result of the dramatic change of attitude is that the right-hand lane of dual carriageways becomes packed with vehicles that would like to go faster but are blocked by an HGV struggling to overtake another HGV.

The lorry being overtaken could slow slightly to ease progress, but I have never seen it happen. Mile after mile they drive along, blocking both lanes until one manages to edge just enough in front to go back into the slower lane – if you’re lucky.

To make matters worse, because a queue develops in the outside lane, waiting to overtake, other drivers undertake and then try to slip into the outside lane, causing further delays.

As well as being extremely irritating and thus provoking accidents through frustration, this whole procedure is highly dangerous of itself. But why should HGV drivers worry? If they collide with a car, they’re not very likely to get hurt.

I apologise to considerate lorry drivers if this upsets them. But there seem to be fewer and fewer of them about. The defining mark today is selfishness – and rank bad driving. If we were serious about road safety, this sort of behaviour would be top of the list for elimination. But we’re not, are we?

Ambitious blackboard scheme to revitalise resort

Following the fiasco over Great Yarmouth’s giant hi-tech street screens, described as a “catalogue of errors” by councillor Trevor Wainwright and in more graphic terms by many other people, it is believed that the town is going for something even more ambitious.

A secret working party is working secretly on a plan to install large blackboards in place of the screens. This will enable important messages to citizens and visitors to be chalked up on a regular basis by dedicated blackboard operatives, as they would be known.

Len “Kissme” Hardy, a consultant, said this would avoid all the problems inherent in anything hi-tech. There would be no batteries needed, and they were going to be using state-of-the-art chalk that was eco-friendly and virtually carbon-neutral.

Asked if there might be difficulties for the blackboard operatives in reaching the screens, Mr Hardy said they also had the latest ladders, although there were obviously health and safety issues. “Of course we won’t be able to use them in the rain,” he added. “But I don’t see that as a problem. We will have insurance.”

Mr Hardy said the real attraction of the scheme, apart from its simplicity, was the fact that it could be set up in such a way that no-one would be able to find out who was responsible if it went wrong. “Of course, that’s been done before,” he said. “But it’s tried and tested. You have my personal guarantee.”

Corporation denies involvement in warehouse shock horror

A spokesman for Houseago Inc, the world-famous Norfolk diversification corporation, said last night that the discovery near Erpingham of warehouses full of suitcases packed with holiday wear and sun cream were “nothing to do with us”.

He admitted that while it was true that millions of items of luggage went missing from airlines every year, there was no connection between that and the lucrative secondhand clothes operation recently included in the Houseago portfolio.

“We have our own suppliers,” he claimed. “Some of the items are very high quality – almost new. We’re also moving into making and distributing our own sun protection lines, though our supply line on that is a bit shaky at the moment. But our sealable clear plastic bags go down very well.”

Investigation into ownership of the Erpingham warehouses is planned, but has not taken off yet.

30 July 2007

on 30 July 2007 at 05:30

Improbability drive, with mobile phones

One of the most compelling inventions in that wonderful and extremely useful book, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is the improbability drive.

It powers a spaceship and is too complicated to explain here, but to give you a flavour, I will tell you what happened to my son, his family, my wife and me in between Legoland and Reading.

We were in two cars: I was following my son who, as well as his family, had the directions to the hotel we were aiming for. He had told me the name of the hotel, but being 62, I had forgotten it.

Well over 90 per cent of the journey had been completed, when my son made an unexpected right turn. I attempted to follow, but another car cut in, and I had to abandon the manoeuvre. By the time I had sorted myself out and turned round, he had disappeared.

We followed in what we thought were his footsteps – or tyre tracks, if you want to be pedantic about it. After quite a long time, we more or less gave up. We were lost. We didn’t know the name of the hotel or where it was, and anyway, they had the reservation details, without which we could not check in.

So far, so unlikely. In these days of mobile phones, a simple solution was available. My wife had a mobile phone, and so did I. So did my son.

My wife attempted to ring him, only to be told that she could not use her phone because we hadn’t paid the bill – a small matter of £9, which in any case is paid automatically by credit card. Only something had gone wrong, and the company had chosen this precise moment to block the phone.

I did not attempt to ring my son on my phone, because when I was in Ireland someone had rung me and used up all its outstanding top-up credit – coincidentally, also about £9. An iniquitous system, in my view, and because I had had no time since returning to rectify the situation, it made my phone as useless as a lump of coal.

So why did my son not ring us? This is where it gets really improbable. When he turned right, the hotel was on our left, and he did a full circle to enter its car park. He thought we had seen this, or had at least noticed the hotel which, to be fair, was big.

He dropped his wife and two children outside reception and went round the back to park the car. In the course of unloading, he dropped his car keys down the side of the seat and spent some time looking for them.

He assumed we had made contact with his wife. She in turn assumed we had made contact with him. So no phone call – until they eventually met up and found that no- one knew where we were, least of all us.

We had been driving round the galaxy for a while when we eventually received his call, and found we could see the hotel from where we were.

Fortunately, like Planet Earth in the essential Guide, we are mostly harmless.

If California were in Norfolk...

The American pronunciation of Norwich as Nor-witch is usually ascribed to the rather literal approach to life characteristic of our transatlantic cousins.

Visitors to Connecticut will know that the New England Norwich is pronounced Nor- witch, just as their river Thames is pronounced Thayms.

But a writer to the National Post, a newspaper that was picked up by an alert EDP reader in Vancouver, suggests that the man to blame is lexicographer Noah Webster.

As well as being morocco-bound, his dictionary and other work emphasised the value of phonetics in teaching children to read – an approach not unknown to our own dear Government, not to mention thousands of teachers.

The Canadian letter-writer suggests that it was this method, applied pedantically, that caused Americans to change their pronunciation of places like Norwich and Warwick and rivers like the Thames.

While it is nice to have someone to blame, I am not so sure. It may just be a question of imagination – pronounced Ingoldisthorpe. After all, if California were in Norfolk, it would be pronounced Scratby.

Sheep a bit muddled and slow on the break

Now that there’s scarcely a break between football seasons, it was no surprise to see a team of sheep practising on a pitch outside our Irish hotel during a recent holiday.

However I was a bit doubtful about some of the tactics, especially the positional play. At first they appeared to be going for a diamond formation, then for a moment it was 4-2-4, with a black sheep in the hole.

But this disintegrated quite quickly, and some alarming gaps developed in midfield. There was a lot of bunching and what might easily have been interpreted as ball- following, if there had been a ball.

All in all they seemed strong in defence, but with the best will in the world you couldn’t describe them as quick on the break. It was also a little disturbing how their heads went down.

Still, the pitch was looking surprisingly good.

Poles apart

Lenton’s First Law: where two people, one male and one female, arrange to meet in a few minutes’ time, this arrangement will not work, however simple it is.

This applies to groups as well as individuals, and is closely connected to Lenton’s Second Law: every woman has the innate ability to disappear completely in a supermarket, however small the supermarket.

An example: my wife and a friend were going to do a little food shopping while the friend’s husband and I walked down the road – a matter of 50 yards – to see a small photographic exhibition involving railway stations and snow. Whoever finished first would walk to meet the other two.

We finished looking at the exhibition and walked back to the supermarket. No sign of the other two. Aware of the Second Law, we examined the supermarket thoroughly, but to no avail. (I should mention that it was not in Hingham.)

In this situation, as in so many others – despite what politicians say – doing nothing is not only an option: it is essential. The women would eventually materialise, and they did. They had gone somewhere else instead.

Lenton’s Third Law: there is always a really good reason for this.

16 July 2007

on 18 July 2007 at 17:45

Essential difference between fact and opinion

One of the basic principles in writing or presenting news is that you should make it easy for the reader to distinguish between fact and opinion.

It’s particularly important when contentious issues are being reported. So I was disappointed to read the other day in a news story in the online Telegraph about a climate change survey that “the UK is in denial about the consequences of global warming”.

The phrase “in denial” implies a refusal to believe something that is self-evident. In fact the consequences of any global warming are so many and various that there is plenty of room for discussion and differences of opinion. The causes of climate change, which is probably what the reporter was really talking about, are also unsettled.

Bad enough, but worse is to come. Lower down the story comes the sentence: “The survey found that more than half (of those who responded) thought scientists were divided on climate change when in fact there is a scientific consensus.”

This is the reporter’s view, and not one shared by more than half the people surveyed. It is certainly not undisputed fact.

In truth there is not a scientific consensus: in this country there is pretty much a political consensus and even more a media consensus, and if that doesn’t worry you, it probably should. But plenty of distinguished scientists harbour significant doubts. Some have resigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; others have stayed on it but disagree with its conclusions; still others have had nothing to do with it.

Some scientists, of course, have no doubts at all. For example, the man from the UEA who appeared on Look East a while back and responded to a question about scientists who didn’t agree with him about global warming by replying: “They aren’t really scientists.”

It says much for the way journalism is going that the TV presenters simply let this arrogance pass. In fact they almost encouraged it.

Time was when reporters asked meaningful questions, but that’s consensus for you. No wonder people are suspicious of it.

White lines safer than cameras

The usual definition of an accident is something that happens unintentionally or unexpectedly. So it is not entirely clear why the Norwich coroner is unwilling to use the word in referring to fatalities on the road. People rarely intend to have accidents, and despite their relentless occurrence, they are not usually expected.

The coroner argues that they are not really accidents because someone causes them, but everything that happens has a cause, even if it is not obvious. Perhaps we should not use the word at all. Shall we start referring to home collisions or factory crashes?

Surely just about every accident is avoidable one way or another. The coroner may wish to spare the feelings of victims of road accidents, and it is kind of him to do so, but calling accidents something else is not going to change anything.

Only proper driver education and sensible road safety policies will do that. If only the coroner could make that kind of change.

Coincidentally, a survey of UK road casualty figures has just found that painting in white lines on the road to indicate right or left turns is eight times more effective in cutting crashes than using speed cameras. Just renewing old markings is well over three times as effective. White Line Partnership, anyone?

Where there's equine residue, there's even more brass

You have to get out into the countryside to arrive at a proper perspective on life. I was taking a short walk down Marriott’s Way just outside Reepham not long ago when I paused to peer over a parapet. There below me at the side of the road was the following notice:

Horse muck 40p Equine residue 50p Poo des chevaux £1.00

As my very wise father-in-law used to say, you get what you pay for.

No sign of sense yet

The introduction of No Smoking notices into places where no-one ever smoked anyway – such as churches – has encouraged Norfolk legend and druid Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago to diversify yet again.

His company Houseago Inc, based at Erpingham, has started producing a wide range of notices that he hopes the Government or some other busybody will make compulsory.

“I can see a trend as soon as the next man,” he said. “People don’t want to make up their minds any more. They want to be told, even when it seems obvious.”

Areas he has already identified for his signs are: No sex – churches and supermarkets No swimming – high streets Do not open umbrellas – phone boxes No sleeping – discos No dancing – libraries No cycling – swimming pools No combine harvesters – woods or forests No flying – railways No picnics – public conveniences.

A research department, headed by Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston, is believed to be investigating a wide range of other possibilities, such as “No democracy” for the Autonomous Republic of Hingham and “No penguins” for the UEA.

“We are extremely optimistic,” he said late last night.

Our boys done good again

In a cricket match held at Jokingapart, near Ludham, an all-East Anglian team selected by radical cleric the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick was narrowly beaten by a foreign team.

After winning the toss and choosing to bat, the East Anglians scored 11, with Mr Repps-cum-Bastwick out for what is known in Norfolk as a Wymondham duck. In reply the foreign team took more than two balls to reach 12 for 0.

Asked if the result was a total disaster, Mr Repps-cum-Bastwick said his young team would learn from experiences like this.

He added: “There has been a lot of hard work put in behind the scenes. We will learn from our mistakes.”

Pushed on exactly when they would start learning, he added: “We lost today, but there were a lot of positives. No-one got injured, and most of our bowlers didn’t bowl, so they are very fresh. We will come back from this.”

The interview was abandoned at this point because of bad light.