24 September 2001

on 24 September 2001 at 08:00

Cherokee glimpse into the skyscaper

When the end of the world knocks at our window, our first instinct is to find someone who can explain what is going on. All the certainties of daily life disintegrate, and panic sets in – not so much from the fear of death or injury as from the unknown. Where can we go from here?

At such a time there are always people who can tell us. The trouble is, they are all telling us different things.

There are bucketfuls of prophecies about the end of the world. Some of them seem to involve New York itself. Others are more general, more obscure, or just silly.

Perhaps the two most interesting are a Cherokee Indian prophecy and one from an American Romanian Christian called Dumitru Duduman, who died as recently as 1997.

Duduman described one vision this way: "There were a handful of comets in the sky which looked to be peaceful. Suddenly three of them, all different sizes, began to head toward the earth. When they hit the ground, there was total devastation.

"As I looked up, the sky turned black and I saw thunder. The thunder was also black. A dark cloud lifted up and it began to rain. When I looked closer I saw that it was not rain but drops of blood." Even more striking is a Cherokee Indian prophecy, which talks about the "sign for the Third Shaking of the Earth".

This apparently comes after mankind "will build a house and throw it in the sky. When you see people living in the sky on a permanent basis, you will know the Great Spirit is about to grab the earth.

"When this house is in the sky, the Great Spirit is going to shake the Earth a third time, and whoever dropped that gourd of ashes, upon them it is going to drop".

It doesn’t take much to identify the house in the sky as a skyscraper, and the ashes as the result of bombs or explosions.

After talking about villages of stone growing up from the ground – and people living there not being able to see beyond the village – the prophecy concludes: "There’s going to come a time when in the morning the sun is going to rise, and this village of stone will be there, and in the evening there would just be steam coming from the ground."

Of course the ironic thing about prophecies is that they are so much clearer looking back.

Target: get rid of league tables

Recovering from the general election fiasco in which she polled no votes, Mrs Hicks, Mayor of Little London, is putting together a manifesto that she believes will receive overwhelming support from the electorate.

Through links with her marketing organisation, Hixdotcom, we have been able to obtain a copy of the manifesto, on condition that we do not mention the general election fiasco, in which she polled no votes. We have agreed to this. We have also agreed not to name Mr Fox, with whom she allegedly attended a late-night Pondhenge barbecue party (pictured).

The main plank in the manifesto is the abolition of league tables. And the second is like unto it: the removal of all targets.

Mrs Hicks told a reporter yesterday: “League tables for schools, hospitals and similar organisations are a shocking waste of time and energy. They tell us nothing worth knowing, and they encourage manipulation. It is a victory of design over content – a gigantic illusion.”

She added: “Targets not only camouflage stupidity in management: they distract attention and effort from what needs to be done and encourage fairy tales. “You might as well give everyone a toffee apple.”

Mrs Hicks also aims to abolish mission statements, which she describes as “a toy for the self-satisfied”, and is looking closely at equal opportunity statements and health and safety policies.

“People are spending all their time recording pointless rubbish instead of taking action,” she said.

She has trialled the manifesto, which she also intends to abolish, at Corpusty, near Little London, and has received an overwhelmingly favourable response, well above target and at the top of political league tables.

'Not an option' not an option

As councillors get elected to the city council, some strange genetic operation must take place, deep in the bowels of City Hall – possibly conducted by newts and coypu bent on distorting life as we know it.

The operation transforms ordinary humans into creatures who are deluded into thinking they know better than anyone else. It also removes any tendency they may have to listen to the people who elected them.

A by-product of the procedure is a compulsion to act. How often have we heard councillors intone "Doing nothing is not an option"?

Of course doing nothing is an option. It should be the first option under consideration. But not for these genetically-modified men and women who are obsessed by implanting green spines into innocent cities, and diverting cyclists into the paths of helpless pedestrians.

"Traffic in the city centre is enormous," says Norwich highways committee vice-chairman Harry Watson. So the solution is obvious: close a road and cause an additional delay at a busy junction.

How do they justify it? Of course, there was a consultation exercise.

I wonder what the question was. "Would you prefer us to close Queen Street to traffic or demolish the cathedral?" I’m only guessing.

Happily, though, Mr Watson is able to reassure his electors: "It is not going to be a great in-convenience to cars." So that’s all right then.

Picture this: on second thoughts, don't

Words create pictures in our minds; so a good choice of words is important. I still haven’t recovered from the mental image bodged together by an item I glimpsed last week about an "indoor baby and child car boot stall sale".

Try not to think about it.

Hidden danger in buying caravan

My item last time about natural childbirth and the five-birth tent prompted reader Moya Leighton of Coltishall to be on the alert as she looked to purchase a small camper van.

Her eye was drawn to a newspaper advertisement that promised a caravan that was not only "six birth" but had a "twin wheel". Fertile ground indeed, and firmly resisted by Ms Leighton.

"I am looking for extra freedom to enjoy retirement – not the responsibility and expense of sextuplets," she said.

10 September 2001

on 10 September 2001 at 08:00

Problem with priorities for councillors

These are strange times on the streets of Norwich. Empty spaces at the side of the road, and our expensive solar-powered parking meters clearly worried (you can tell by the way they stand) by the prospect of shutting down through a lack of sun, like some of their colleagues in Nottingham.

Meanwhile the city council is planning closure of city centre car parks such as Unicorn Yard and Oak Street, which will presumably force drivers back on to the roadsides – except, of course, that people who use car parks want to stay longer than the meters will allow them to.

So they will have to use public transport, where they will face another rise in bus fares and a projected increase in park-and-ride fares too. This must be what they call an integrated transport policy: force people on to public transport and then fleece them.

Then there is the new bus station – or rather there isn’t the new bus station, because city councillors have carried out consultation on that and, according to transport portfolio holder Harry Watson, it was “low on the list of priorities for most passengers”.

You may think that strange, until you realise that this is the city council consultation method in action. Why did it come only fourth on the city list? Because ahead of it were irresistible options like reliable services and affordable fares.

This is rather like carrying out a survey on my life priorities and finding that I don’t like making love because I placed breathing and eating ahead of it. It enables the council to ignore real rather than manipulated public opinion – in this case a petition from hundreds of pensioners.

Even the county council is unconvinced by the city’s plan for handling buses – but the county too behaves in strange ways. It has managed to arrange things so that “a 21st century hospital is accessible only from a network of country lanes”.

These are the words of council leader Alison King, who describes it as “ridiculous”. She has also announced that the county will be putting to a reluctant Highways Agency three options for accessing the hospital from the A47 southern bypass.

Fair enough, but she also says that “each of these three options for the first time will be backed up with a properly reasoned case for a direct access from the A47”.

For the first time? What on earth has the county council been doing up to now on this vital issue? Throwing out wild suggestions with no supporting arguments?

Perhaps the planning and transportation department could shed some light.

Alert in Sprowston as newts are found in ditch

Rumours that great crested newts had abandoned Norfolk and were consorting with Austrian cave salamanders in an attempt to take over Europe were thrown into confusion at Sprowston last week.

The newts’ attempts to distort life as we know it and substitute a pseudo-totalitarian half-life controlled by government nominees have been fought by Norfolk hero Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 102, for years. He was distraught to discover that an influx of newts had been discovered in a ditch dug as footings for a new garage by a Sprowston man. “There were hundreds of them,” he exaggerated. “They’re back.”

When pressed, he exhaled sharply and admitted that the newts in question were probably not great, or even crested, but he insisted: “They’re an advance guard. We’re in a for a real fight this time.”

He pointed out that the newts were notoriously anti-car, and so would not want the garage to be built. Certain frogs also found in the ditch were “just pawns in the game”, he said. “Frogspawn, in fact.”

Other experts were not as convinced as Mr Houseago about the newts’ motives. One felt that it might have been raining newts and commented: “Hallelujah!”, but time distortion expert Prof V A R Scheinlich, on holiday in Sprowston from his home in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, suggested that the newts might have hitched a lift under the Sprowston man’s car as he drove through the republic.

“They are undoubtedly asylum- seekers,” he claimed. A community power forum is believed to be investigating.

Family size matters

Over the years, the reduction in family sizes in this country has become somewhat marked. My father had seven brothers and sisters; my mother had four sisters. I myself had only two brothers, and – never one to buck a trend – I restricted myself to one son, with a little help from my wife.

Nowadays, of course, the desire of infertile couples to have a child has occasionally led to treatment that produces a brood far exceeding expectations. And the desire for natural childbirth – or birth in a natural environ-ment – has also blossomed.

All of which, presumably, explains the advertisement spotted in an Aylsham shop window: “For sale: Five birth tent. Used once in back garden.”

Watch out, we're on our way!

Sirens on emergency vehicles are becoming more and more intrusive for city dwellers, who sometimes wonder if their use needs to be so widespread or so prolonged. For police cars they surely must be counter-productive a lot of the time: one obvious result of turning up at the scene of a crime with sirens blaring is that the culprits will have ample warning to get away. Of course another result is that no arrests will be made, and thereby a huge burden of paperwork will be avoided. I personally would never subscribe to the view that sirens are an anti-paperwork device, but I know some people who do. They are not policemen.