2 February 2004
Houseago Report clears councils
The Houseago Report has cleared all local and central governments in East Anglia of any form of incompetence, it was announced yesterday.
Lord Houseago blames journalists, and the EDP in particular, for failing to praise Norwich City Council and Norfolk County Council for everything they are doing, and for suggesting that councils are less than perfect.
He cites an infinite number of instances of journalists being totally unfair to both councils. Local councillors have suggested that several journalists should resign, if not more.
In paragraph 40768 of his report Lord Houseago of Pondhenge says that it was quite reasonable of Norfolk County Council not to expect that in the bad weather last week a lot of people would want to access its emergency line for school closures, which unfortunately became unavailable, and equally reasonable for their bad weather website to have gone down because people were trying to access it.
“It is not part of my remit to speculate on whether the snow actually existed,” he said. “I was shocked that journalists should criticise the council for totally unforeseeable problems.”
He was equally scathing in paragraph 98723 about journalists who attacked Norwich City Council for not suspecting that a lot of people would be trying to get home at the end of the day on January 28.
“The gridlock in the city was entirely the fault of people using cars,” he said. “It would have been far worse if people were turning right down Riverside Road, which the council has wisely prevented.”
He said the claim that people were able to get home in 45 minutes at the height of the snowfall had been written by the security men on the front desk and was totally justified. It was not a late insertion by the council leader. Where people started from and where they lived were irrelevant, he said.
Lord Houseago said he was especially shocked that journalists should suggest that recycling boxes supplied to residents in Thorpe Hamlet should be emptied as the council promised. The fact that they had been left at the side of the road for over a month was totally understandable, he said, and a splash of plastic would probably benefit the environment.
In his conclusion, Lord Houseago said the world would probably be a better place if the EDP building was burned to the ground and the editor and his deputy hung, drawn and in some cases quartered. Councils, like governments, should be left to do what they liked without any form of criticism.
Little Nell wants to go further
Following my enthusiastic welcome of Mr Blunkett’s ground-breaking idea to make motorists responsible for just about everything except the BBC, a Dickens enthusiast who wishes to be known only as Little Nell wrote in to say she would like to go further still.
She said: “I think we may soon see a return of the Victorian debtors’ prisons, but this time they will be motorists’ prisons.
A modern Charles Dickens will write empathically of being clamped for months in a dingy prison courtyard while waiting to atone for Every Crime Committed by Anybody at Any Time. “His Oliver Twist will plead for 'more speed cameras' and his Barnaby Rudge will narrowly cheat death in spite of being implicated in a rebellion against speed humps. “In Great Expectations, Pip will not so much be expecting a mysterious fortune as expecting a speeding fine, and in David Copperfield, Little Em'ly's disgrace will be going at 31 mph in a 30 limit.”
I think Little Nell has something.
Mistletoe clue to druid influx
An influx of druids in suspected at Saxlingham Nethergate following the discovery by extreme walkers of several outcrops of hard-to-find mistletoe on trees in the area.
Celtic druids are well known for cutting mistletoe from a holy oak tree with a golden sickle, as well as other strange practices. They believe it has protective qualities, especially when hung over doorways.
Druids – as well as the Church of England – are known to have connections in South Norfolk, and a broken horseshoe was found on the nearby Boudicca’s Way.
“This is very exciting,” said Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam of the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing. “It could be a link to the Iceni. The roads out there are very uneven.”
Plans to build a voluntary controlled druid school in the village have been attacked by a local atheist, who fears the appearance of mistletoe on school sweat shirts would amount to “fundamentalist indoctrination” and too much love.
North American Indians also used mistletoe to cure toothache, measles and dog bites, but it is felt unlikely that North American Indians would move into Saxlingham Nethergate, except on a very temporary basis.
Keep technology out of Poohsticks
Although Poohsticks has been banned temporarily from the Olympics because of rumours of excessive water speed, a search has been going on in a bid to bring world Poohsticks back to Norfolk.
A site near Shotesham has been earmarked for a trial run, and representatives of the Federation Poohstix d’Europe are believed to be impressed. “C'est un rivulet pas trop rapide avec un petit pont intéressant,” said one.
An insider said cameras might be introduced to measure the speed of the water and to adjudicate on offside decisions, but Len “Kissme” Hardy, a Norfolk Poohsticks aficionado, said that technology should be kept out of the sport. He pointed out that the site was almost on a bus route (itinéraire d'autobus), which made it well-nigh irresistible, except in bad weather.