23 September 2002

on 23 September 2002 at 08:00

Fine time for coypu, newts and clowns

The discoveries of Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek are getting more and more bizarre. During his excavations near Mount Beeston in North Norfolk, he has uncovered the remains of a clown, complete with red nose and baggy trousers.

Since this was adjacent to the Runton Elephant, his first thought was that it was part of an early Roman circus, but he revised this opinion after a dating check.

He then wondered whether it had escaped from a nearby local authority, but a quick inquiry revealed that none of theirs were missing.

At this point I was able to help by pointing out that although many people thought local authorities were run by clowns, my own extensive research over several years had found that they were staffed largely by coypu and great crested newts.

Since the Battle of Wymondham in the mid-1990s, the newts have been running an underground campaign designed to eliminate anything recognisably human from our way of life. By infiltrating councils, they have been able to introduce distortion and disruption of normal behaviour, usually by means of huge loads of unnecessary paperwork.

Their allies, the coypu, aid and abet them by creating confusion everywhere. This is not difficult for them, since they are both extinct and not extinct, and it has helped especially in the development of traffic policies, which are inevitably contradictory.

In the Norwich area, for example, you might think they want to discourage cars. If so, obstacles like the projected closure of Tombland and the end of easy on-street parking might make some sort of sense.

But at the same time we have the encouragement of congestion and pollution in the positioning of the Castle Mall car parks and the Big W; the increase last week in park-and-ride fees; the ongoing Grapes Hill roundabout disaster; and the strange case of Silver Road.

Silver Road used to be a fairly quiet road, issuing on to the inner link road at a spot where you could only reasonably turn left. Instead of rationalising this by inserting a no-right-turn sign for the benefit of the occasional idiot, the coypu thought it would be a wonderful idea to introduce what my mother-in-law – a wise woman – calls “one of those silly little roundabouts”.

This encouraged far more drivers to use Silver Road, because they could now turn right and enter the city. Result: extensive hold-ups on the inner link road and complaint after complaint from Silver Road residents about traffic. No doubt this will eventually be solved by introducing speed humps.

So we have expense, irritation, congestion and pollution, when all that was needed was one signpost.

Another triumph for the coypu. Bring back the clowns.

Not another boring piece about climate change

The real danger of global warming is not in its possible effects, but in its power to distract us from what we could be doing to help needy people.

Sceptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg calculates that if the Kyoto Protocol were brought fully into effect, it would delay the effects of warming by only six years over a century.

But for the same amount of money that would be spent in just one year on implementing the Protocol, we could provide the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation – something that would avoid two million deaths and prevent half a billion people becoming seriously ill every year.

But you can judge how interested politicians and many environmental activists are in doing effective good when you realise that the 60,000 delegates at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg enjoyed four- or five-star accommodation, plus tons of lobster, oysters, filet mignon, salmon, caviar, pate de fois gras, champagne, fine wines and mineral water.

And hundreds of trees were cleared out to accommodate delegates’ limousines.

Meanwhile, an estimated 60 African children a day die from contaminated water, and poverty in Africa has increased 35pc since the last such summit, 10 years ago.

As Noam Chomsky so eloquently put it on another occasion, “you need something to frighten people with, to prevent them from paying attention to what’s really happening to them”.

Shock plans to smarten East Anglia revealed

Following suggestions that Cromer’s crab boats are too scruffy for such an up-market resort, it has been revealed that plans are afoot to smarten up other parts of East Anglia for the benefit of discriminating holidaymakers.

Consultants Houseago Inc have been called in to look closely at beaches, broads and peripheral paraphernalia. Preliminary findings are that much of Blakeney is pointless, and Holkham beach is “nothing more than empty space, suitable only as a film set”.

Wroxham, like Cromer, would be better off without boats, says the report, which however praises it for its shopping facilities. Yarmouth is lauded for having “everything you could possibly want”, but Houseago Inc suggests moving the sea out a bit to create more space. Southwold is “beyond hope”.

Meanwhile the Government is intending to set targets for resorts, followed by examinations. A spokesman said: “These will be equivalent to A-levels. At first. Later we expect to downgrade them.”

Do not read wrong way round: start other end

Translating directions is always a problem, but when you’re dealing with a product that combines a compass with improving the smell in a car – as shown me by a friend recently – the difficulties tend to multiply.

Users are told that “the reek in the car can be changed to the natural fresh fragrance”, which is encouraging, and “you can stick it on everywhere you want in the car after sticking on two-faced tape”.

So far, so good, maybe. But there is a word of caution: “Don’t use other way than right uses” and “Keep out from the children”. Presumably just in case you had been intending to insert one wrongly in a child.

But I feel the prize must be awarded to one sentence that is in perfectly good English: “Please assemble product the other way round.”

Probably best not to think about that at all.

Owners follow dogs' lead

Most recreational areas in our fair neck of the woods are sadly soiled to some degree by what dogs leave behind. But Mattishall appears to have an additional problem.

According to the parish council minutes – to which my attention was directed by a correspondent – “queries were raised re the length of footpath adjacent to the infants school, and its being fouled by one or more dog owners”.

I’ve heard of owners growing to look like their pets, but apparently the pooches’ behaviour is catching too.

9 September 2002

on 9 September 2002 at 08:00

Elderly and infirm get poor deal from city

Those of us who switched our votes at the last city council elections were hoping that a change of power at City Hall would make a difference.

But the streets are still full of litter, and the council continues to risk law suits by discriminating against the poor, the elderly and the infirm, and in favour of the young and healthy.

And this discrimination is about to get worse: the council is going to install more speed humps and make life more difficult for anyone who drives a car.

How is this discrimination against the old and sick?

Well, anyone who is young and/or healthy can walk or cycle. Cyclists, although they are fine people, are the most dangerous of road users, but they get specially built tracks, and no one takes any notice when they routinely jump lights and ignore no-entry signs.

The ill or elderly rely on cars: increasingly these cars have to negotiate various obstacles to reach their homes, the worst being humps in the roads that cause considerable pain to drivers or passengers with joint or back problems. (Of course, they can stay at home.)

What about the poor? They are likely to have older cars that will suffer most from being jolted over deliberately engineered suspension-breakers.

But none of this matters if it stops accidents, does it? Well, I could stop all accidents involving cars by shooting their drivers. Perhaps that is what the city council would prefer.

A civilised society should be preserving mobility for its less able citizens. We have that mobility, and if the best way we can think of to stop accidents is to screw up the road, then I suggest we start employing people with more than one brain cell.

Pictured in a secret testing ground in South Norfolk, this prototype vehicle is the most advanced in a series of suggested improvements in car design from the workshops of a well-known anti-car pressure group.

The T2000 includes several features that the pressure group feels will be essential on the roads of the future, including the large tube (top) for processing statistics, and the refined exhaust (left) which cools the atmosphere.

Critics have pointed out the restricted visibility, but this is not felt to be a major factor. Much more important is the absence of wheels, which should cut down on speed slightly, though maybe not enough. On its trial run the driver dozed off, and the T2000 was involved in a collision with a traction engine that attempted to overtake it. This accident was blamed on excessive speed.

Signs of a new approach

Complaints about the upbeat “Norwich: a fine city” signs have led to tests being made on alternative approaches.

This picture from a reader shows one of the possibilities, inspired by the increasing problems within the city, particularly on weekends.

Its inventor, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: “It may be a bit ahead of its time, but I think it will fit the bill eventually.

New village may have emerged from the sea

The recently discovered Norfolk village of Whynge could be the result of longshore drift, coastal experts have suggested.

Earlier theories centred on the possibility that no one had noticed it before because it had been signposted variously Quarry, Landslip and Common. But this is now felt to be unrealistic.

A coastal spokesman said: “We feel by far the most likely explanation is that it emerged from the sea because of sand and shingle building up. We know that the coastline changes over the years, and this is just one manifestation of it.

“The fact that Whynge contains speed cameras, chicanes, phone masts, a composting centre and 15 giant wind turbines is simply a sign of the times.

“That is the way things are going.”

He felt that in the circumstances it would be perfectly all right to let older, less well equipped villages like Happisburgh be swallowed up by the sea.

“It’s the survival of the fittest,” he said. “The unfit go under, and villages that adapt come out of the sea and evolve on dry land. The possibilities are endless. It’s all very, very exciting. Eventually Whynge may develop a bus route.”

Ancient forecasters much more accurate

Although we are told we can predict the climate for the next hundred years or so, we still seem to have trouble forecasting the weather for even a day at a time, especially if that day happens to be a bank holiday.

As to the BBC website’s five-day forecast, I am at a loss to understand why they bother, since it always changes after three. I did mention it to them, but they said they changed it when they had fresh information, which rather missed the point.

Weather forecasting is just one of the sciences that appears to have deteriorated over time, as ancient-Norfolk expert Richard “Volcano” Meek has demonstrated in his ground-breaking work on the slopes of Mount Beeston, near Sheringham.

He writes: “I came across a stone tablet which carried the earliest known weather forecast: ‘It wille be a bitte parkye’. This was absolutely spot on for about a quarter of a million years – often dismissed by non-meteorologists as The Ice Age.”

Some may dispute Mr Meek’s precise figures, but it is marvellous, as he says, that “these early Pre-Fyshites could provide such an accurate forecast when in this age of genetically modified seaweed we can hardly predict the week ahead”.

Mr Meek is currently investigating the primeval soup, which he suspects is still being served in some Norfolk guesthouses.

Norfolk driving advice is breath of fresh air

One of the nice things about living in Norfolk is the occasional outbreak of intelligent behaviour. A correspondent tells me that on driving into Deopham, near Wymondham, he was greeted by an official speed restriction sign bearing the legend beneath it, in the local language, “Drive you steady”.

Much more effective than a thousand sour-faced humps and hysterical “Speed kills” signs.