22 October 2001

on 22 October 2001 at 08:00

Hurtling on towards destruction

It's a great time to own a car in Norfolk. The county council and the Highways Agency are making sure you can’t get to hospital, the city council is doing its best as usual to make you uncomfortable in the city, and the police are putting film back in their speed cameras.

At the same time the Norfolk Coast Partnership is about to host a conference on transport which unbelievably has as its opening and closing speaker a representative of the fiercely anti-motorist Transport 2000. This in North Norfolk – an area where public transport is meagre at best, and no one appears to be speaking for car drivers.

Meanwhile, anyone who has changed lifestyle in response to the ubiquitous anti-car propaganda can relax in the knowledge that park-and-ride fares are going up by a whopping 17 per cent. This has been justified by comparing it to the sharp increases in car parking charges in Norwich, which is interesting logic: we’ll hit you because other people have hit you.

What can you say? Not a lot, according to a reader who attended a public meeting of the county council planning and transportation committee when the proposed Sprowston park-and-ride was discussed. His conclusion: “The decision had already been taken, and the meeting was a formality. Arguments and suggestions were dismissed out of hand.”

No change there, then. One change with the speed cameras, happily, is that you can now just about see them – but the obvious temptation to put them in revenue-generating spots, rather than dangerous ones, continues to be worrying.

And the same flawed back-up figures are being rolled out. All drivers, apart from the odd lunatic, are in favour of reducing accidents and casualties, but there were 2684 fatal or serious-injury accidents on Norfolk roads last year, and only 657 of these were caused by excessive speed or loss of control. No one mentions that speed and loss of control are not at all the same thing, or that excessive speed is not the same as exceeding the speed limit.

Last month the 10 most dangerous road junctions in Norfolk were surveyed. Of the 59 injury accidents reported, the main cause of only one was excessive speed. By far the most common causes were inattention and ignoring road signs.

I wonder how many accidents are caused simply by exceeding the speed limit. Any at all? And is anyone doing anything to tackle the cause of serious accidents definitely not caused by speed? In Norfolk last year these must have numbered anything between 2027 and 2683. That’s between 75 and 99 per cent.

Feeling on the tilt as showers gang up

The sneaking suspicion that the world is falling apart stems not from huge international events, but from indications nearer home.

The ability of spin doctors to bypass democracy, for instance, is depressingly obvious, but in the background is an even bigger spin: the imminent reversal of the earth’s magnetic field as predicted by those ancient and knowledgeable central Americans, the Maya. This is scheduled for 2012, I am reminded by regular reader John Salthouse.

I am already checking my compass. I have been feeling on the tilt, but had put it down to global warming – a view strengthened by the peculiar behaviour of rain recently. Here I rely not on my own observations, but on the pronouncements of weather forecasters, who are constantly talking about showers “ganging up” and “getting organised”.

Admittedly it is risky to put one’s faith in people who get excited by precipitation, but the phenomenon of shower organisation is clearly one that could shake our lives. Unless we can negotiate with them, we could be in for regular soakings.

Meanwhile, on a much lower level, I was in a city store the other day when I noticed a file labelled “Manual Handling Operations Regulations”. I don’t know what was more disturbing: discovering that staff had to be told how to handle something manually, or that there were rules about it (wash hands manually first, for instance).

This sort of thing can tip you over the edge, if you happen to be standing close to it in the first place. Unhappily I was right on the brink, having just discovered that 25 out of 40 applicants who wanted to be journalists had scored less than 50 per cent in an English test.

I don’t blame them. They had probably been taught how to handle manually, and you can’t cover everything.

Still in the dark there

Sometimes you don’t see things that are in front of your nose. Literally, in this case. Friends from Nottingham pointed out when arriving for the weekend that they had been unable to phone us from their car and warn us of their imminent arrival because of the lack of roadside illumination.

Apparently the occasional street lamps at roundabouts did not illuminate the numbers on their mobile phone long enough for them to dial before they were plunged into darkness again.

This is clearly a serious problem, and one that I had never considered, largely because I don’t have a mobile phone – or maybe because I just accepted that Norfolk was dim and dark, just as I accept that it’s slipping into the sea, as another “foreign” friend would have it.

There is a rumour going round Nottingham that Norfolk is short of electricity. Could it be true? I have put consultants Houseago Associates on the case, but I am not optimistic. And lowest priority comes last

Overheard on an early morning local BBC television news broadcast: “Tickets will be sold to priority groups before any other tickets are sold.” Yes, I suppose they would be.

Peddar's Way

A stretch of the Peddar’s Way that has been missing for over 200 years has been photographed by a Norfolk man.

Bruce Robinson, who is an authority on the Peddar’s Way, the Norfolk Coast Path, Poohsticks and a number of different stiles, took this ground-level picture in late autumn last year, on a day when it was raining and the field was being ploughed.

Although the missing stretch, no longer walkable, has been revealed on occasions in aerial pictures, the pale cropmark visible in this photograph is a rarity.

Mr Robinson tells me: “The missing link at Ringstead runs roughly from the Docking road to the Holme road, to the east of the village, from East End Farm to the houses at the junction of the Holme road. Again, to the east of the parish church and the Gin Trap pub.”

The picture, together with many startling revelations about the 2000-year-old road, will be found in his new book, The Nowhere Road, which is due to be published by Elmstead Publications in mid-November at £12.99. As a keen walker, ever keen to get out of my car, I shall be forming the nucleus of a queue.

8 October 2001

on 8 October 2001 at 08:00

People fall behind in race for best value

There are a number of irritating buzz phrases that enjoy a period of fashion in corporate and government circles before going belly-up and being brushed under the skirting board. Among the more recent ones are total quality and employee empowerment.

As one commentator observed, why bother to employ such phrases if quality is already good and employees can make meaningful decisions? You wouldn’t even think about it – unless of course it was in fashion.

The current buzz phrase is “best value”. This usually means simply cheapest, but it can be adapted to justify all kinds of disruptive changes – the most obvious of which at the moment is Norfolk County Council’s plan to dispose of its 32 residential care homes to the private and independent sector.

The reasoning behind this is that the private sector would run them more cheaply and free up money for other exciting schemes.

Norwich City Council would understand that. It wants to lose community development workers to fund a jolly summer play scheme. But is it best value? The county plan has already caused sinking hearts around the county among people with experience of compulsory competitive tendering – the brave new (now old) scheme to allow private firms to bid for council contracts like school cleaning with the aim of saving money.

The result of compulsory competitive tendering is too well known to be stated. But it certainly did not result in increased staff satisfaction and better cleaning.

Some private care homes are excellent, but there are obvious fears that corners are cuttable and staff exploitable. However, this is not really the point.

The point is the value of the people involved. When councils speak of “best value” they do not think of people at all.

In the homes are committed staff who see the changes as a threat to their security; and the residents themselves – people who towards the end of their lives cannot deal with change, who are physically and mentally affected by uncertainty and who deserve to live in a secure, loving environment.

Councillors say they must go for “best value” to save council taxpayers’ money. What they mean, presumably, is that they don’t want to antagonise voters, or perhaps their Whitehall masters. What they should be concerned about is the happiness and security of the people involved.

It is people that count. Newts, coypu and councils only measure cash.

Culture confidence hits Norfolk

Two new contestants will be trying to thwart Norwich in its heroic quest to be European Capital of Culture for 2008.

While Norwich will be the obvious cultural choice of every right-thinking Briton and city councillor, Hingham and Little London, near Corpusty, will be pushing it hard.

Mrs Hicks, Mayor of Little London, was confident yesterday. “We have everything Norwich has except the nightclubs,” she said. “And the traffic congestion. And the Castle Museum, the Millennium Library, the cathedral, the bypass and a red light district. I don’t see how we can lose.”

While Little London is well known for its culture and vote-rigging, Hingham too has many backers.

“We don’t rig votes, but we can sell things,” said culture rep Professor V A R “Varry” Scheinlich. “And since we are familiar with time distortion, we can probably get in first.”

Hingham has attracted attention in recent years for the famous wormhole effect, which produces odd experiences for most visitors. However, since it is an autonomous republic with indigenous coypu, some doubt whether it would qualify for the contest.

“Really Norwich is the obvious choice,” said Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam of the UEA. “You only have to walk down Prince of Wales Road on a Saturday evening to soak up the culture – and possibly a few punches as well.

"The costumes are great too. We’re unbeatable.”

Scapegoat voles not reason for dualling rejection

Most astonishing story of last week was the news that the A47 Acle Straight is not going to be dualled.

Well, to be honest, it was not quite the most astonishing: it came in 5493rd.

I blame the voles. That’s not quite true either: the voles, whose habitat might be affected by building a new carriageway, were very close to the weakest excuse put forward for not making improvements that would undoubtedly save lives.

The real reason, as usual, was money. And, of course, that is far more important than lives.

When it comes to making absurd decisions, the Highways Agency has a great track record. The words “new” and “hospital” spring immediately to mind. But this time they have an answer: to save lives, they are going to reduce the speed limit to 50mph.

Brilliant. I don’t remember the last fatal accident on the A47 caused by excess speed. A reduced speed limit is more likely to cause accidents than stop them, because it will create the potentially fatal conditions of tiredness and tedium.

Never mind, if they install speed cameras, they can make some money out of it.

Happily there is public consultation before all this is implemented. The next most astonishing story will be the ignoring of everyone’s objections. Well, maybe not most astonishing: say about the 5493rd most astonishing that day.

Effective front moving in

The great thing about global warming, if you like that sort of thing, is that it is a wonderful source of media stories.

Think of something that happens in summer now and consider the likelihood of it happening in winter soon – cricket . . . sunbathing . . . mowing the lawn – chuck in a couple of dire warnings and Bob’s your uncle, or at least a very close relative.

And so we have instant propaganda for the scary faction, fulfilling the avowed aim of distinguished global warmer Scary Stephen Schneider: “We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

His approach has obviously convinced my favourite weather presenter, Isobel Lang, who was quoted as saying we would probably see a rise in temperature of six degrees in the next century.

This is roughly four times what the scientists reporting for the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change say is likely, but never mind. It is the figure that the politicians put about, for their own dubious reasons.

And who do you trust? It’s hard enough to get the weather for the weekend right.