16 May 2005
Journalists behave worse than anyone
I was fortunate enough to accompany the witty and erudite Norfolk delegation to the National Association of Head Teachers annual conference at Telford this month.
At one point the conference was addressed by three representatives of the main political parties. You may have read about it.
The Sun said the heads “acted like children by booing and hissing a government minister” and were “worse than unruly pupils”. The Mirror said it was “pathetically childish that head teachers jeered a government minister” and added: “If they don’t know how to behave, how do they expect the children under their control to?”
Other reports nationally said the heads prevented the minister from speaking.
The effect of these remarks will have encouraged parents and children in their lack of respect for teachers – as no doubt was intended. But if so it is the Sun and the Mirror (and others) who are encouraging bad behaviour in schools, because their reports were inaccurate, unbalanced, ignorant and lazy: they portrayed the minister as a teacher and the heads as pupils, which is a false comparison, and revealed a surprising lack of knowledge of what unruly pupils do.
What really happened? The government minister, Derek Twigg, gabbled a bad speech, which was heard in complete silence. When he was asked a question about financing the latest government schools initiative, he said flatly and unreasonably that there was no more money – and it was this that drew understandable but brief expressions of disapproval. The Conservative spokesman, Tim Collins, on the other hand, gave a fluent and knowledgeable speech which was applauded at several points by an audience not known to be Tory-friendly. The only reference to him in the BBC report I saw was a hostile question put to him about the unpopular Chris Woodhead, and he even fielded that one well. I could not find any other report of his speech anywhere. Of course I may have missed it.
Ironically, Tim Collins lost his seat at the Election, and the unimpressive Mr Twigg waltzed in with a huge majority. Isn’t democracy wonderful? Almost as wonderful as our national media.
Would you like to be my lunch ticket?
Delegates to the recent NAHT conference wore name tags in plastic sleeves, which also held the tickets entitling people to refreshments. These folded neatly so that your name appeared uppermost, while on the back was your latest unclaimed goodie, like “Lunch ticket” or “Glass of wine”.
Of course, the physics of plastic name tags meant that they often swung back to front, leaving the occasional handsome head labelled as “Lunch ticket” and sophisticated lady as “Bottle of wine”.
It left room for idle conjecture during the less riveting speeches, but it could have been even more interesting, had they included such natural items as “Nibbles”, “Sweet” and “Breakfast”.
Temporary wolf not home at the moment
Where exactly is Felthorpe going? The dispute continues. Last week Lindy Platten-Jarvis claimed, among other things, that the village sign anticipated global warming in its depiction of the African elephant, with a furry coat to protect it from Norfolk winds. Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek remains unconvinced.
He claims the “so-called African Elephant with a nice furry coat is obviously none other than the famous West Runton Elephant – and only adds weight to my hypothesis that the village has drifted far inland”.
He adds: “Presumably the tree farms are to provide employment for the tree fellers whom I saw sat outside the Mariners car park?” Perhaps the whole wider area north-west of Norwich is in need of further exploration. Not far away the village of Lenwade has split apart from itself, sometimes being called Great Witchingham and sometimes not. Within its schizophrenic borders – or maybe not – lies the strange Norfolk Wildlife Park, where apostrophes run wild and frequently affix themselves misleadingly to name tags.
This is also the home of the temporary wolf, which is believed to be a totally Norfolk phenomenon. When I visited, it was absent. I checked in the temporary wolf enclosure, and it was not there. Nor were the badgers, but that was less surprising. Like coypu, they are hard to track down, as related in the prize-winning Norfolk partial arts film, Crouching Badger, Hidden Coypu.
It all makes the Autonomous Republic of Hingham seem quite straightforward – unless, of course, the famous space-time distortion is slipping sideways. Prof V A R Scheinlich is looking into it.
Mysterious behaviour of polling station
The following letter was received from John Timpson, of West Norfolk. It is clearly if serious import for the structure of Norfolk as a whole, and I make no apology for printing it in its entirety.
“As a student of strange phenomena in rural Norfolk, you may be interested in the curious movements of Weasenham’s polling station prior to the election.
The official poll cards first notified the electors that they should vote at the Community Room, Lambert’s Close, in Weasenham St Peter. It so happens, however, that the Community Room is in a building currently surrounded by high wire fencing, making it completely inaccessible to the public. It has always been assumed locally that this was because of building work, but subsequent events suggest it may have been erected to prevent the Community Room from escaping before the election.
“It was later revealed that the Community Room had indeed rematerialised in a bungalow across the road, and assurances were given that it would remain there. However, when the final list of polling stations appeared on the parish noticeboard, there was further confusion. The Community Room was still in 10 Lambert’s Close, the number of the vacant bungalow, but Lambert’s Close had apparently been transported from Weasenham St Peter into the neighbouring parish of Weasenham All Saints. A similar notice appeared in All Saints.
“To the human eye Lambert’s Close was still in St Peter’s, but when voters arrived at the Close on polling day they were greeted by a rather alarming sign on the noticeboard. It said “Polling Station” – with a large arrow pointing directly towards the ground. Had the elusive community room been swallowed up, or had it finally made its escape, perhaps to Australia? The official reaction is that the sign lost a drawing pin, but in rural Norfolk one can never be certain…”