28 January 2002
Statistics in chaos lead to belief crisis
The climate is changing. No argument about that: it always has changed, and it probably always will.
But so is the climate of opinion. Until recently, there was a blind acceptance that the planet was warming up, it was our fault, and it was a bad thing. Now all that is being challenged: even some journalists, into whose laps global warming stories fall like manna from heaven, are questioning whether all is as it seems.
Do all scientists say the same things, and are the data and computer models compatible? Is chaos predictable at all?
Or do we give too much respect to what seems to be authority in this and other areas? As Albert Einstein, quite a well-known scientist, said, “unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth”.
This is clearly the case in another chaotic system – road traffic – where those in authority routinely mislead about the number of accidents caused by speed, and many people simply accept it as fact. But even here, the climate is changing as the public starts to challenge false figures and ask when the real cause of accidents is going to be tackled.
But we still get dollops of bizarre statistics thrown at us under such misleading headings as “Drivers in Favour of Speed Cameras”.
Are they? According to this widely circulated report of an RAC survey, 78 per cent of drivers consider speed cameras a good way of deterring speeding. But it emerges later that 60 per cent agree that speed cameras cause people to slow down dangerously quickly, and 48 per cent think they’re just a way of raising revenue.
So at least 38 per cent must think that cameras are a good way of deterring speeding and that they cause people to slow down dangerously quickly. And 26 per cent must think that they are a good way of deterring speeding and that they are just a way of raising revenue.
These beliefs are clearly mutually exclusive, but never mind. It’s a survey of 1800 people; so it must be right.
Meanwhile we have to endure the latest pathetic TV attempt to persuade us that a car is lethal at 35mph and harmless at 30mph, when a little thought reveals that it can kill at any speed if the driver is not paying attention.
To ensure that you are travelling at 30mph and not 35mph you would have to keep looking at the speedometer, which means that on each occasion you did it (at a second a time) your eyes would be off the road for a potentially lethal 44ft.
Extra braking distance at 35mph? Less than half that, at 21ft. Elementary, my dear Einstein.
Republic adrift again after grass-roots voting
The Hingham Autonomous Republic, which was missing for some time following road works, has been found in Turmoil again.
“We find that Hingham often drifts in this direction, partly because of the well-known time distortions and wormholes,” said local expert Professor V A R Scheinlich.
Turmoil is situated just outside space and time, near Watton.
The spark for the space-shift has been revealed once more to be the old Hingham bête noir of democracy. Some historians credit the republic with inventing the form of democracy later adopted by New Labour. Others attribute it to Attila the Hun.
This time republic voting centred on the Fairlands, an area of grassland that the parish has decided to redesign at a cost of £80,000.
Unfortunately the redesign involves removing grassland from the conservation area and introducing chevron marking and a one-way scheme. People living in the immediate area are not keen on this.
Hingham Town Council, which runs the republic, faces opposition from the Hingham Society, which doesn’t – but which thinks £20,000 worth of kerbing will solve the problem. It all sounds dreadfully familiar, and further consultations are taking place.
As an outsider, I have to say that the solution is obvious: stop voting, buy a Scout Hut and install it on the grass.
Questions to be asked of new intelligent crossing
Work is in progress, I understand, on an “intelligent pedestrian crossing” for Castle Meadow in Norwich.
When I heard about it, I felt it must be a bit of a breakthrough – the first intelligent thing to be installed on the streets of the city in living memory. Citizens have become so used to stupid speed humps, idiotic road closures, inane one-way systems and empty-headed cycle paths that they had long ceased to look for anything that made sense
But after a few minutes’ thought I became suspicious. Perhaps we should wait and see exactly how intelligent this crossing is. Set it a few tricky questions – try and trip it up.
What does “intelligent” mean in this context? Can it see through the unthinking dogma spewed out by our self-satisfied highways authorities, who can reject a congestion-reducing northern relief road on the spurious grounds that “people don’t want another road”? Or will it simply lie down and allow itself to be rolled over, like most voters?
Will this allegedly intelligent crossing simplify things and make life easier, or will it create difficulties by trying to be far too clever?
Will it think the answer to pollution and congestion is to put obstacles in people’s way? Will it understand how different individuals are, or will it see things in black and white?
Perhaps we could get it to develop an integrated transport policy. It can hardly do worse than the politicians. Terror elf to stalk lanes
The mystery of the filled-in drainage ditches in South Norfolk deepens, as does the flood water afflicting an ever-widening and soggier area. Parish councils have been asked to identify the shadowy landowners who are filling in the ditches and causing the trouble, but this could prove difficult, because parish councillors of course know nothing about land-owning.
Meanwhile a network of volunteer emergency planning co-ordinators is collecting data. This is not a serious problem, as people can drive round them.
Now, in response to pleas for something realistic and meaningful to be done, South Norfolk Council has secretly appointed an Environmental Elf, whose job it will be to track down and destroy anyone found to be contributing to the flooding problem.
Terror will shortly be stalking the lanes, I am glad to say. It is no use asking the council about this. They will deny it.