10 January 2005
Jolly jangle of guards locking up the city
In one of his songs, Bob Dylan wrote that sometimes it seemed the whole world was one big prison yard – “some of us are prisoners and some of us are guards”.
You can tell the guards by the way they love their keys – and the way they always know best. Many of them are Liberal Democrats. Norwich city councillor Judith Lubbock, for instance, who was quoted recently as saying rather revealingly: “You can’t drive your car through the city when you want to.”
She is not alone. As well as her colleagues in City Hall, most of the money-hungry big shops are on her side: John Lewis, for instance, who have recently started opening on Sunday to snatch even more of your money and now don’t want you to be able to drive past any day without spending.
I like John Lewis as a shop, but clearly someone is getting much too greedy, and it is not the car-drivers. What is at issue here is the pedestrianisation of Westlegate, a key city centre street. The move has been blocked for a while by Tory county councillors, but it will keep coming back, especially in view of the highly dubious “facts” that are being trotted out. Sixty per cent of people in favour? Must be a very carefully selected bunch of addicted shoppers.
Five per cent or less effect on traffic elsewhere? Who are they kidding? To paraphrase another Dylan song, it’s not that they’re pulling the wool over our eyes that’s so insulting: it’s that they’re doing it so obviously.
And don’t for one moment think that this would be “an experimental closure to see what effects it would have on traffic levels”. Remember the “experimental” closure of Castle Meadow to cars.
Meanwhile, chaos starts today in the city, with more ill-thought-out street closures and banned turns. I’m sure the pedestrianisation will be very pretty, but do we want a pretty prison yard while the elderly and infirm are kept inside their cells? Or do we want to be able to get from one place to another? I hear the jolly jangle of keys.
Whale of a time in the road
Whales are being used to slow traffic down in New Zealand. You might think this would be a real problem for the environmental mafia. It must certainly reduce speed, which obviously would keep the world comfortably cool for another million years, but on the other hand, doesn’t it damage those cuddly marine mammals that we all love? They must be like fish out of water.
Happily the real prospect is brighter on almost every count. The speed humps tend not to be alive: they are just in the shape of sperm whales – though they are understandably known in this form as humpbacks. And they are much more user-friendly than the ugly monstrosities that get plonked aimlessly around Norwich and its unsuspecting villages.
The reader who spotted these whales suggests that we use a bit more imagination in our road hump designs – and while I would rather see them all dug up and taken to New Zealand, I suppose a second-best option would be to create a bevy of coypu, great crested newts and bitterns to grace residential roads, as long as they don’t get above themselves. My correspondent even goes so far as to propose customising the humps: swans in Swannington, apples at Appleton and crows at Cromer.
Another New Zealand innovation that could be adopted here: a large sign reading “The Coroner thanks you for being a careful driver”. It would never happen, of course: it doesn’t take pictures, doesn’t fine you and doesn’t mention speed.
Newts moving in to net compensation cash
The latest consultation on the Norwich northern distributor road has now ended – and thousands, maybe even hundreds, of us will have selected our favourite and least favourite route options. These now go forward to the next delaying mechanism until someone, somewhere is forced into making up his or her mind. I can’t help noticing that all the western routes bar one go very close to colonies of great crested newts, which can only mean two things: first, they have moved in deliberately; and second, we are spoilt for choice. Seasoned road watchers have noted that great crested newts promptly appear near every proposed road improvement in the county and cause massive expense since, despite this ubiquity, they also claim, bizarrely, to be endangered. This is a great chance to get rid of loads of them at once.
Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 105, a world renowned expert on newts, commented last night: “This is a great chance to get rid of loads of them at once.”
Meanwhile Dr Rupert Read, who lectures in philosophy at the UEA when he is not writing letters to the editor – and is a vigorous campaigner against the road – gave a public lecture recently entitled “How to change your life while leaving everything as it is”. Sadly I was unable to attend, so I am not sure how much of it was devoted to roads in Norfolk, but I understand it did mention Wittgenstein and Zen, both of whom are known to be newts.
Space-time distortion in Irmingland area
Apologies to the inhabitants of Irmingland, which I said last time was near Corpusty. According to a handy reference work entitled “How to find over 700 Norfolk villages”, I see it is in fact five miles north-west of Hunstanton, which is a neat trick.
A new DVD, Irmingland: the Venice of East Anglia, is being produced by Prof V A R Scheinlich of Hingham in his Space-Time Distortion series. It is believed to be ground-breaking.
Doors of perception
Some time back I suggested that a road sign “Concealed farm entrance” ruined any chance the farm had of remaining concealed. While displaced in Suffolk over the festive period, I came across another gaff-blowing exercise outside a pub: “Secret garden through door at back of bar”. What next? “Narnia through wardrobe”? Wonderland down rabbit hole”? Must be something to do with this new Freedom of Information Act. I knew it would all come to no good.