14 November 2005
City in two minds about car parking
Norwich City Council can’t work out why its beautiful new St Andrew’s car park isn’t full, so perhaps I should drop a hint.
Making it difficult to drive into the city and then positioning an exciting new car park at one of the least accessible points in the city centre is not traffic planning: it’s schizophrenia.
The council needs to make up its mind which voice in its head it’s going to listen to: the one that tells it that cars are evil monsters and must be kept as far away as possible, or the one that says it should seduce cars in and then charge them lots of money for staying – the Chapelfield Protocol, as Robert Ludlum might call it.
I know parking is a problem. A few days ago I wanted to drop something off at the UEA. The main car park was full and shut; the one I was directed to instead was also full. I drove around a bit, polluting the atmosphere and getting in people’s way, and then went home – well, not directly home. I drove to the sorting office to post a letter, but all the spaces there were taken too.
Of course even when there are plenty of spaces, some people just hate paying. Instead of springing for the very modest fee to park in the new Whitlingham car parks on the outskirts of the city and adjacent to quite striking views if you forget about the gasholder and the pylon, many drivers brave the appalling surface of Whitlingham Lane and churn merrily on to the verges instead.
A similar phenomenon was apparent at the stunning Sheringham Park the other weekend: to avoid paying the £3 that seems a good deal for access to such idyllic surroundings, a number of drivers had parked on the roadside grass outside. If I was to judge arbitrarily by the condition and type of the vehicles, their owners were not short of a bob or two. It is surely reasonable to charge a modest fee for well-appointed parking places. But what about the “barbaric” charges levied in Norwich? This is the word used by a correspondent who, although living a little north of Norwich, would rather travel 92 miles to Bury St Edmunds and back for shopping than “tamely submit to parking robbery by green pirates” in his own fine city.
The cost of parking in Bury? £1 “per occasion” in a town centre car park. I can’t believe Norwich City Council’s preferred solution is to send shoppers to Bury. But maybe it is.
Beastly bid by heads to nail down informant
Following my article last time about the mysterious movements of head teachers, secondary heads across Norfolk are meeting to put together a plan to track down my secret informant. This will be called a COW meeting (Catch Our Whistleblower), in the tradition of naming key educational initiatives after animals. Insiders will be familiar with the dreaded performing PANDA, now a threatened species, and the OFSTED, which is believed to be evolving into a kind of duck.
More recently the SEF, a form of green werewolf, has appeared – first at Sunnydale, close to the mouth of hell in America, and now crossing the Atlantic in an attempt to create a similar environment for itself in English schools generally. I have it on good authority that we should be very afraid.
The heads’ meeting will take place in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, but the time is as yet uncertain. “This is understandable,” said Hingham expert Professor V A R Scheinlich yesterday. “I believe the heads will also be looking at space-time distortion, and whether this is spreading from Hingham into the schools system, affecting half-terms as well as health and safety. They will need to make a risk assessment and a mission statement. So it is appropriate not to be too precise.”
The heads have issued a statement saying the meeting will be invaluable, but they may not be able to get back to school afterwards.
Radical move to safeguard pub-users
The Pod and Serpent, a popular pub-restaurant in parts of North Norfolk near Pondhenge, is taking radical steps to eliminate any kind of danger to its customers.
“We will no longer be serving food,” said landlord the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick, a radical cleric. “Excessive food can almost certainly cause cancer, and of course there is the choking problem, and the obesity scenario.
“But much more serious is the risk to passive eaters. Research shows that being close to people who are eating can have serious, unexpected effects in later life, or afterwards.”
Mr Repps-cum-Bastwick is also banning the sale of drink of any kind. “I don’t have to tell you how risky drink is,” he said. “You can drown in water, for instance, and there is a chance – very slight, I grant you – that it could turn into wine.”
Asked how he would keep the Pod and Serpent going without serving food and drink, he said he was thinking of charging people to come in and sit around while he talked about global warming. He was installing a pulpit as an experiment. People could sing, too, he suggested.
“I may apply for a grant for the upkeep of the fabric - I mean painting the walls,” he expounded. “And we will have money-raising events, like fetes. W may even pass a plate round and see what people put in it.”
Country people can't figure the city out
We Norfolk boys are all familiar with the problems faced by Londoners and other incomers to rural and coastal areas – the sweet smell of seagulls, fish, fertiliser and oilseed rape; the sight of big, scary skies without a scraper in sight; and the merry morning sounds of cockerels, beet lorries and church bells.
But country people moving to the city have their problems too. Not so much the traffic, the crowds and the congestion charges, but little, unexpected things like going to the post office.
It is of course common in friendly Norfolk villages for the post office to keep a list of PIN numbers behind the counter to help out forgetful customers. This service is totally unavailable in the cities, which is obviously outrageous.
Do they think country people – the salt and pepper of the earth – have nothing better to do than memorise strings of figures?