5 September 2005
Stressed out with stars on their plates
The compulsion to force everything into league tables – together with the accompanying targets, stars and stress – has now spread to restaurants.
It’s a pity the system could not be applied to something useful, like weather forecasts (no stars) or rubbish collections: one star for turning up on the right day, another for removing some of the rubbish and minus three for leaving the street in a worse state than it was before. But wait, I hear you say. Isn’t it a really worthwhile thing to sort out the good restaurants from the ones that give you food poisoning?
Yes, it would be, but I can’t see the star system helping. Either a restaurant serves edible food, or it doesn’t. What does two stars actually mean? Food poisoning only likely on Thursdays? If a restaurant is serving dodgy food, I want to see it closed down, not have a twinkle extracted, with or without anaesthetic.
I suspect that what is really involved here is bureaucratic procedure. Like Ofsted inspections, which are supposed to be about teaching but are in fact about writing interminable policy statements, maybe these inspections are about staff training, checking food hygiene certificates, ticking boxes to demonstrate that freezer temperatures are monitored (whether they are or not) and fulfilling a thousand other legal requirements that plague the life of anyone who sets up a business nowadays. If not, why is the council’s website full of that stuff?
Judging by the two long-faced inspectors I spotted leaving an excellent city restaurant the other day, I suspect they may be under just as much stress as the owners. The chief constable of North Wales, Richard Brunstrom, has ludicrously told his traffic police that they must arrest at least eight drivers a month or be disciplined: are the food inspectors under similar pressure to award the dreaded “no stars” to a minimum number of fooderies? Surely not.
Meanwhile we shall all pore over the stars awarded and make misleading judgements based on them, like clueless parents scanning school league tables.
It will all end in tears. Meanwhile, a small mystery remains: why have the inspectors completely omitted their own City Hall canteen from the list? We should be told.
Failure to dip blamed on space-time distortion
Most of us have been annoyed at some time or other by approaching cars failing to dip their headlights at night.
A recent survey has shown, somewhat surprisingly, that this occurs most in an area known as the Wicklewood triangle, where it abuts the Autonomous Republic of Hingham.
The study found that on the B1108 there are many bends, but although “fore-glow” enables you to see other vehicles coming towards you at night well before you confront them, very few drivers dip their lights early enough – markedly fewer than in other parts of East Anglia.
Researchers blame this on the space-time distortion common in the Hingham area.
“Maybe light waves are affected,” said radical cleric the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick, who is on the team. “At first the cars seem to be going across the field, and then they are in front of you. It’s as if they’ve gone through a kind of wormhole.
“Some people might say it was a miracle, but of course that is theologically dubious. Or it would be anywhere else.”
Professor V A R Scheinlich was unavailable for comment.
Hickling puddle worries McCorquodales
John and Wendy McCorquodale, who arrived in Hunstanton from parts of London recently, have now moved to Hickling – but are still disappointed at their surroundings.
“There’s this massive great puddle dominating the village,” said Wendy. “It’s big enough to sail a boat on.
“If I’d known the drainage was this bad, we would never have come here.
“It’s a nightmare for the children – and birds get caught up in it too. I’ve seen no end of them floating about.”
Explorer struck by big energy problem
Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek is having energy problems.
He is particularly concerned, he tells me, about the recent report in the EDP which mentioned a pensioner “hit by a huge energy bill” and wonders if some gas companies are resorting to strong-arm tactics.
His second suggestion, that it might be something to do with an atomic duck, is clearly fanciful, especially as it did not happen anywhere near Wymondham, home of the only duck worth mentioning.
But the energy situation is worrying. I myself have been approached on several occasions by women in my local supermarket. Normally I would welcome this, but they seem unusually interested in who my gas supplier is – information I am reluctant to reveal unless the woman in question is particularly persuasive.
Meanwhile the intrepid Mr Meek has decided to go prospecting for “both natural and unnatural gas”. He has been inspired by the earlier news story of the Chinese woman who keeps a fortnight’s gas supply in a large bag after liberating it from the local well. Wishful thinking, I call it.
But if I was in charge of Bacton, I would be keeping a careful lookout.
Blackmail added to northern distributor mess
I see that Labour MP and Home Secretary Charles Clarke has added a spot of political blackmail to the disgraceful hotchpotch that is the ruins of the northern distributor road. As if being offered traffic calming instead of a dual carriageway were not bad enough for long-suffering residents and drivers, the all-powerful Mr Clarke will not back the road, he warns the Tory-controlled county council and the Lib-Dem controlled city, unless there is an integrated green transport system in Norwich. Let me see, now. What was the perfect opportunity to put an integrated system in place, with bus station and rail station side by side?
Yes, it was the Riverside project. And who was in charge of Norwich City Council when the blank-slate opportunity was irrevocably bungled? Oh, yes. It was Labour.
Someone should jog Mr Clarke’s memory.