10 September 2001
Problem with priorities for councillors
These are strange times on the streets of Norwich. Empty spaces at the side of the road, and our expensive solar-powered parking meters clearly worried (you can tell by the way they stand) by the prospect of shutting down through a lack of sun, like some of their colleagues in Nottingham.
Meanwhile the city council is planning closure of city centre car parks such as Unicorn Yard and Oak Street, which will presumably force drivers back on to the roadsides – except, of course, that people who use car parks want to stay longer than the meters will allow them to.
So they will have to use public transport, where they will face another rise in bus fares and a projected increase in park-and-ride fares too. This must be what they call an integrated transport policy: force people on to public transport and then fleece them.
Then there is the new bus station – or rather there isn’t the new bus station, because city councillors have carried out consultation on that and, according to transport portfolio holder Harry Watson, it was “low on the list of priorities for most passengers”.
You may think that strange, until you realise that this is the city council consultation method in action. Why did it come only fourth on the city list? Because ahead of it were irresistible options like reliable services and affordable fares.
This is rather like carrying out a survey on my life priorities and finding that I don’t like making love because I placed breathing and eating ahead of it. It enables the council to ignore real rather than manipulated public opinion – in this case a petition from hundreds of pensioners.
Even the county council is unconvinced by the city’s plan for handling buses – but the county too behaves in strange ways. It has managed to arrange things so that “a 21st century hospital is accessible only from a network of country lanes”.
These are the words of council leader Alison King, who describes it as “ridiculous”. She has also announced that the county will be putting to a reluctant Highways Agency three options for accessing the hospital from the A47 southern bypass.
Fair enough, but she also says that “each of these three options for the first time will be backed up with a properly reasoned case for a direct access from the A47”.
For the first time? What on earth has the county council been doing up to now on this vital issue? Throwing out wild suggestions with no supporting arguments?
Perhaps the planning and transportation department could shed some light.
Alert in Sprowston as newts are found in ditch
Rumours that great crested newts had abandoned Norfolk and were consorting with Austrian cave salamanders in an attempt to take over Europe were thrown into confusion at Sprowston last week.
The newts’ attempts to distort life as we know it and substitute a pseudo-totalitarian half-life controlled by government nominees have been fought by Norfolk hero Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 102, for years. He was distraught to discover that an influx of newts had been discovered in a ditch dug as footings for a new garage by a Sprowston man. “There were hundreds of them,” he exaggerated. “They’re back.”
When pressed, he exhaled sharply and admitted that the newts in question were probably not great, or even crested, but he insisted: “They’re an advance guard. We’re in a for a real fight this time.”
He pointed out that the newts were notoriously anti-car, and so would not want the garage to be built. Certain frogs also found in the ditch were “just pawns in the game”, he said. “Frogspawn, in fact.”
Other experts were not as convinced as Mr Houseago about the newts’ motives. One felt that it might have been raining newts and commented: “Hallelujah!”, but time distortion expert Prof V A R Scheinlich, on holiday in Sprowston from his home in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, suggested that the newts might have hitched a lift under the Sprowston man’s car as he drove through the republic.
“They are undoubtedly asylum- seekers,” he claimed. A community power forum is believed to be investigating.
Family size matters
![[Artwork] Tent](/articles/images/tent.jpg)
Over the years, the reduction in family sizes in this country has become somewhat marked. My father had seven brothers and sisters; my mother had four sisters. I myself had only two brothers, and – never one to buck a trend – I restricted myself to one son, with a little help from my wife.
Nowadays, of course, the desire of infertile couples to have a child has occasionally led to treatment that produces a brood far exceeding expectations. And the desire for natural childbirth – or birth in a natural environ-ment – has also blossomed.
All of which, presumably, explains the advertisement spotted in an Aylsham shop window: “For sale: Five birth tent. Used once in back garden.”
Watch out, we're on our way!
Sirens on emergency vehicles are becoming more and more intrusive for city dwellers, who sometimes wonder if their use needs to be so widespread or so prolonged. For police cars they surely must be counter-productive a lot of the time: one obvious result of turning up at the scene of a crime with sirens blaring is that the culprits will have ample warning to get away. Of course another result is that no arrests will be made, and thereby a huge burden of paperwork will be avoided. I personally would never subscribe to the view that sirens are an anti-paperwork device, but I know some people who do. They are not policemen.