23 June 2003
Norfolk is government guinea pig
Secret documents leaked to this page reveal that Norfolk has been chosen to pioneer a new form of government.
Hints were dropped last week when deputy prime minister John Prescott announced that there would be no referendum on elected regional government in East Anglia because “public interest is so low”.
In fact the papers reveal that Norfolk will shortly be selected to pioneer the new “direct decision” government which New Labour hopes will catch on in the country as a whole. It cuts out the entirely the time-consuming and embarrassing need for local elections, as well as other irrelevancies like planning inquiries, public consultation and various kinds of appeals.
In the first instance this will be achieved by the expansion of quangos, on which people who already earn lots of money will be able to earn much more, simply by making occasional decisions about areas they have no affinity with.
This is described as “obvious modernisation” by the government, which will introduce targets and invent statistics.
It is believed that the golden opportunity for Norfolk – in which everyone can play a vital part without doing anything at all – stemmed from the ground-breaking form of democracy achieved in the nearby Autonomous Republic of Hingham.
This demonstrated that public consultation need not affect anything, and was therefore pointless.
Because Hingham has since won the Le Mans 24-hour race with its home-grown Bentley cars, this is regarded by New Labour as vindication for the cutting-edge system of government.
Eventually it is hoped that Norfolk will be governed by one person selected by Whitehall, and opinions will be distributed among the population to avoid any necessity for the development of home-grown ones that might not fit in with the overall plan.
Asked whether such a system might not be in the spirit of democracy, a government spokesman said: “There is very little interest in this, which is the way we feel democracy is going. It's all so much simpler. This way, we feel sure that the trains will run on time.”
Humps in flying objects?
A regular reader reports a mysterious encounter with flying objects at Long Sutton, just outside the Norfolk border.
The peace of the charming market town (he writes) was shattered by four enormous and ponderous aircraft flying in stately procession one behind the other. One was clearly an AWACS radar plane, as the mushroom on top was plainly visible. All four were flying relatively low, as if they had recently taken off, and were heading roughly west. All were under heavy fighter escort.
Who would need such high security on leaving Norfolk? George Bush was back in Washington (unless he has a double, of course). So was it Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice?
Perhaps it was Norwich City's manager on a signing mission. Or more likely a cache of Norfolk speed humps being moved in secret to the States as suspect weapons of mass vehicle destruction.
Perhaps it was Charles Clarke's wallet, or the money missing from the education budget. Or David Beckham, wanting a close look at the Fens. The nation, I think, should be told.
Tea ban to save planet
The revolutionary discovery that we are drinking less tea because of global warming has inspired Norfolk veteran Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 104, to launch a “no tea” campaign.
He has already ordered a carton of No-T shirts from entrepreneur Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston and has commissioned the School of Chess, Penguins and Road Surfacing at the UEA to design a logo.
“I am really excited about this,” he told our reporter yesterday. “If we could get people to stop drinking tea altogether, we could save the planet. Especially if they put lids on saucepans as well.
“I have a dream,” he added. “Everybody drinking good old Norfolk water, and the planet getting colder and colder, particularly near Brancaster.”
Blown up out of all proportion
Inspired by the news not long ago that a large inflatable church was available for purchase or rent in areas where the church was no longer the centre of the community, a reader has come up with a brilliant idea to solve KLM's overbooking problems.
She suggests that the airline, beset by complaints and criticisms from customers, “should issue every potential passenger with an emergency inflatable seat that could be erected in the gangways of their planes if necessary”.
Clever. But I do have a slight worry about what might happen to inflatable seats in a pressurised cabin. And if the stewards could not reach the passengers with their in-flight meals… no, on second thoughts, that wouldn't be a problem.
However, I suspect that a blow-up church in the airport boarding area might serve a more useful function.
Gnomes bid to cut road deaths
Concern that the widespread introduction of speed cameras has coincided with an increase in road deaths throughout the country has led Mrs Hicks, Mayor of Little London, near Corpusty, to introduce what she calls a control scheme.
She said yesterday: “We are planning to put garden gnomes by the side of the road – only at accident black spots, of course. We shall then measure the effect on the number of accidents over twelve months.
“Our experts expect that it will roughly match the effect of speed cameras. Personally I believe the gnomes will do much better and bring road deaths down again.”
Asked whether the gnomes would be carrying fishing rods or nets, she said she was unavailable for comment. But they would definitely not be flashing.