9 December 2002
In love with pieces of paper
The newts and coypu who inhabit county council corridors really love paperwork. I mean, they’re hooked on it – to the extent that they go out looking for it even when they know they don’t need to.
Take county structure plans. The Government has made a decision to abolish them, but the legislation hasn’t gone through yet. So Norfolk County Council is going ahead with reviewing its plan anyway, and has sent out letters to parish councils and other organisations, asking them to fill in questionnaires on the Structure Plan Issues Report.
The Issues Report (in case you were wondering) is a 34-page document covering issues like transport, housing and the environment.
It contains 44 questions, all of which the conscientious parish councillor is expected to answer.
Reminder: the Government is going to abolish structure plans.
Parts of the Issues Report are quite straightforward, like “Are more wind turbines acceptable in the Norfolk countryside, and if so, where?”
Others are less clear.
For instance, the economic development partnership for Norfolk has a vision.
It is “for Norfolk to have a distinctive economy, characterised by innovative and dynamic businesses, where people are skilled and motivated with the opportunities to maximise their potential in a high quality environment”.
Bad news, then, for those of us who were hoping to live and work in dull, ordinary businesses, in a dead-end, low quality environment in an unskilled sort of way without any motivation.
But perhaps we can have an influence elsewhere and say categorically whether we would “seek to promote the designation of appropriate land for habitat recreation in advance of managed withdrawal”. Tricky. We’ll think about it.
But not long, because it doesn’t matter: the Government is going to abolish structure plans. In case you’d forgotten.
Swift solution to dump horror
I suggested last week that instead of shooting speed cameras, an even more humane solution might be to put a bag on them. There remains the question of what to do with road humps, cones and unnecessary signs.
University students already do us a service by removing a large number of cones and putting them into good homes – or at least halls of residence.
Since such students may soon be in need of large amounts of money thanks to the Government’s latest bout of madness, perhaps we could pay them for this service and ask them to extend their activities.
Bagging cameras is almost as wonderful an idea as the one conceived by the gentleman who became so frustrated by the road hump that the local council placed outside his home that he used a JCB to remove it.
Astonishing, some would say. Surely road humps are beloved by all and do harm to no one?
Not quite. The JCB driver had called his council more than 30 times to complain about the “hissing of air brakes as trucks slowed down, the banging of tailgates as they rumbled over and the revving of cars as they sped away”.
Naturally, the council’s only response was that “there will have to be a prosecution”. Aren’t we fortunate in having councils that are never wrong?
Meanwhile I understand that our own beloved council has been having fun with a “massive” hump installed on the car park outside the Adam and Eve pub in Norwich.
Presumably, having been frustrated in getting a hump installed in the Garden of Eden, they thought this was the next best thing. Snakes are like that.
A solicitor tells me he spent a few minutes one afternoon “watching people suffering whiplash as they tried to negotiate the obstacle”.
After a few weeks the hump was removed, but my correspondent’s joy was short-lived. “On my last visit I found a large but not quite so massive hump which caused me to reduce my speed from an outrageous 10mph to 2mph. What a triumph for the council,” he noted. Letter to the editor
Alert readers will have noticed that whenever I write anything about traffic, pressure group Transport 2000 demands a right to reply. To save it the trouble, I have compiled a letter in response to the above article.
Dear Sir Once again you have allowed Tim Lenton to speak freely on traffic matters. As you are well aware, we have the only possible view on these things, and our statistics are infallible; so there is no need for anyone else to say anything. Road humps are a wonderful method for cutting road accidents. The faster you hit people, the more likely they are to die. If you do not print this, we will take you to the Press Complaints Commission.
Warning - ostriches, sand and sick buses ahead
You might think that as we progress into the 21st century we would gradually be getting the hang of how to deal with our transport problems.
But no – they just keep getting worse. Anyone misguided enough to want to drive from Norwich to Ipswich is going to be faced with Suffolk County Council continuing its ostrich impersonation for the next 10 years: it has earmarked nearly £84,000 a year to make it safer, a piffling amount that might possibly pay for some sand and the odd layby.
Still, this was after extensive research, so it must be all right. According to traffic and safety manager David Chenery it reflects the council’s current transport policies, which presumably must be to stop anyone in a car wanting to come into Suffolk.
Mind you, Norwich is not much better. Roadworks grind on so slowly that citizens are bound to question whether the council and contractors can be quite that incompetent, or whether they’re doing a Ken Livingstone and deliberately making life miserable for motorists. If so, they’d better hurry up and create a genuine alternative – instead of a bus service that appears to have too few buses, too few drivers and too few mechanics. Or if not too few, in the wrong place.
The other day I stood at the university in mid-afternoon waiting for a No 25 bus into the city while no fewer than five No 25s passed in the opposite direction on their way to the hospital.
Perhaps the hospital is stockpiling buses, which raises two questions: Are they sick? And is there a huge waiting list?
The answer seems to be yes and yes. And the same goes for the passengers.
Homes shortage hits rabbits
![[Cartoon] Man with carrot at burrow](/articles/images/021209Rabbit.jpg)
Fears have been voiced by Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 103, that the shortage of homes for local people in North Norfolk is being reflected further down the food chain.
Mr Houseago, a well-known friend of local rabbits, has noticed that prime burrows are going for inflated prices to fatter rabbits from further south.
“It is too much of a temptation for a rabbit in, say, Blakeney, when it can get a huge stock of carrots for its burrow from one of these well-heeled animals,” he said. “But it’s a short-sighted view. And local rabbits are out in the fields with nowhere to shelter. Local communities are being decimated.”
A spokesman for North Norfolk District Council said it was good for the local economy.