4 April 2005
Triumph for newts in Blair's constituency
It can be no coincidence that the latest high-profile court case involving great crested newts stems from an area not unadjacent to the Prime Minister’s constituency of Sedgefield, slightly north of King’s Lynn.
Mr Blair is obviously intending to make newt protection a major issue, despite the absence of any intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction on the land belonging to Peter Dennis, who was fined £1000 and ordered to pay £500 costs after being found guilty of offences against endangered and protected amphibians.
This is clearly what is known in the trade as “a result” for the notoriously expansionist newts, who are known for their devious infiltration of local and central government as well as European institutions – with the help of their notorious allies, the Austrian cave salamanders.
Mr Dennis cleared some weed from a pond allegedly housing newts in March last year, with the result that newts were apparently tangled up in it. This is an irony that the newts would clearly have enjoyed, since their speciality is introducing a particularly virulent and entangling version of red tape into government offices.
Mr Blair is believed to be about to campaign on behalf of the newts, particularly in the National Health Service, where intensive care ponds are being introduced as we speak. Some sources claim that he will promise a referendum on the issue when he is sure that he will get the result he wants.
In Sedgefield, the newts are said to be particularly pleased with the “great deal of time and effort” put in to get the case to court – time which could so easily have been wasted on catching criminals.
Suggestions that the Prime Minister’s long-term aim in Sedgefield is regime change have been denounced as “amphibious”. Home Secretary Charles Clarke is expected to introduce newt-inspired control orders in Norfolk soon.
Exclusion principle is fair enough
Ground-breaking research last week revealed that children with lenient and permissive parents are more likely to use ecstasy. The same researchers are now examining the theories that fish swim and birds fly.
They may also have been involved with the Norfolk County Council working group which found that children excluded from school run a higher risk of getting into trouble with the law.
Unfortunately members of the group in question seem to have leapt to the conclusion that the legal trouble stemmed from the exclusion, when if they had any experience of classrooms they would realise that a child is excluded precisely because he or she exhibits the kind of behaviour that is likely to result in breaking the law: attacking children or teachers, destroying property and refusing to learn.
The misapprehension probably stems from the weasel words “learning difficulties”. Children are not excluded because they have learning difficulties: schools exist to solve learning difficulties. Exclusion comes when a child has no intention of learning and disrupts the class to such an extent that no-one can learn.
It may not be the child’s fault. I once commented on a girl’s appalling behaviour at a Norwich school, only to be told: “If you met her mother, you’d understand.”
It is certainly not the teachers’ fault. They have been ludicrously stripped of all reasonable methods of dealing with aggressive children until just about all they can do is stand and watch.
Children who are eager to learn should not have to endure constant disruption. Different provision must be made for children who are unable to deal with a normal classroom environment.
Just can't build vehicles the right size
Reports last week that Norwich would not be getting exciting new fire engines because they were too wide for the “thin roads” represent a welcome change in normal transport policy – which is to accept vehicles as big as possible, regardless of the capacity of the system to accommodate them.
The bizarre situation at Ipswich, where a tunnel had to be rebuilt to accommodate outsize freight trains, was just one example.
Hundreds of Norfolk lanes are too narrow for the buses and lorries that use them, and the streets of Norwich and several market towns are too narrow not just for fire engines, but for those same buses and heavy good vehicles. Many are the occasions on which traffic is held up at junctions in the city because a large vehicle is blocking two approach lanes and preventing a huge queue from filtering left or proceeding straight ahead. King Street-Bracondale and Riverside Road-Thorpe Road in Norwich are two glaring examples, and pedestrians are at constant risk.
Perhaps it’s time we did as the Romans did when they found their towns congested two thousand years ago – and ban large wagons from the centre altogether. If only we had the technology to build vehicles the right size.
Anti-road groups should pay for fat rabbit
The cost of the Norwich northern distributor road is spiralling out of control, claim its delighted opponents.
The Norwich and Norfolk Transport Inaction Group were delighted to pull this particular rabbit out of the hat last week. The supposed astonishment at the shockingly fat animal was a little overdone, however, as it was the same objectors to the vital road that placed the rabbit in the hat in the first place – and kept on feeding it.
There are far too many groups, parties and individuals who not only have a say but are able to keep on delaying construction. The longer the delay, the bigger the costs.
For the sake of the residents of north Norwich, the road has to be built. I suggest we split the bill for the increased costs between everyone who contributed to delaying the building of it.
Not getting a clear picture
Police have been complaining about the poor quality pictures they obtain from CCTV cameras designed to catch criminals in the act. Some of the blurred and shadowy images of criminals displayed on television are little more than a joke.
But doesn’t it seem odd that while we can’t afford to buy cameras good enough to nail thugs, thieves and vandals in the act a few yards away, we can afford to buy speed cameras that give a sharp picture from half a mile of a driver doing no-one any harm at all?
This is a sense of priorities that in other society would be regarded as irretrievably bizarre.