27 December 2004

on 27 December 2004 at 04:00

The fundamental thing about Christianity

When you see Mary portrayed by a pop star with an image and a mansion, or an unsavoury television family posing for the Last Supper, the problem is not blasphemy: it is a lack of imagination.

And it is a problem that goes some way to defining the society we live in.

It is a society that thinks, for some incredible reason, that it doesn’t matter what we believe or what is true, because everything is accidental and aimless – and then is astonished that so many people lack self-esteem.

It is a society that thinks the highest good is not causing offence, but that bullying in the work place is a perfectly normal method of management.

It is a society that will not accept any discipline in schools, but believes that anti-social behaviour orders are the answer to the inevitable chaos that ensues. And that this works on pigs too.

It is precisely this lack of imagination that is challenged by Christmas, and we can be thankful (we should always be thankful anyway) that in this country it can still be celebrated in the traditional way without resorting to anodyne greetings like “Happy Holidays”.

But how long will it last? We know that ludicrous over-sensitivity already infests the USA, supposedly the most Christian nation on earth. We may soon have an Act of Parliament that will make it difficult to distinguish critically between religions, as if such basic things do not matter.

And everyone regards fundamentalism as the biggest evil of our times, almost a synonym for terrorism. But what is fundamentally true about something is what makes it live – for good or evil. The fundamental thing about Christianity is unconditional love. Anything that calls itself Christianity and is not radically loving is faking it. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to make that clear.

West Norfolk mountains' proud safety record

It has been a quiet year for the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team, of which I have the honour to be president.

Few rescues were attempted, and the only ongoing project is chairman Mr D Everett’s attempt to get soil from the Cairngorms analysed to see if it originated from sugar beet grown in Norfolk.

Other members have allowed themselves to be distracted. One is investigating militant squirrels in parts of Brundall, and another is publishing an article attacking “the current fad for washing rubbish before it is recycled”. He says the whole point of throwing something away is to avoid having to wash it, which makes sense to me.

13 December 2004

on 13 December 2004 at 14:15

Funding problems? You're getting warm

One has to admire the sheer effrontery of Norfolk environmentalists. Not only have they ganged up to try to stop the Norwich northern relief road at a time when the county has been discriminated against yet again in its attempts to get a decent trunk road system; some of them even have the nerve to attack scientists sceptical of global warming because they had funding from an oil company.

So pure scientists who promote the idea of human-influenced climate change get no funding at all? Well, not exactly. They are totally dependent on funding, and some of it comes from the Government, which loves global warming.

If climatologists got no funding, they would have to find other jobs. So it is rather to their advantage to have people panicking about the climate.

This may not affect their research at all. But then receiving funding from an oil company may not affect other scientists’ conclusions. In the interests of balance, a distinguished professor of geology has just said he finds the current debate over global warming “difficult to fathom”. Dr Martin Keeley, visiting professor at University College London, has just pointed out that climate always changes. “If the global climate were not getting warmer, it would be getting cooler; stasis is not an option. We know from the geological (and archaeological) record that weather variations and extremes are the norm. “Such extremes occur gradually and rapidly, and obviously were not human-induced. How then can they represent a threat greater than that of terrorism, as the UK's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, maintains?”

But wait a minute – he’s a professor of petroleum geology. So no need to listen to him.

The real problem with our obsession with global warming is not so much politicians’ misuse of figures, or the arrogance of people who think they can affect the climate of a planet by changing their mode of transport. It is that the money wasted on futile reduction of carbon dioxide emissions could go a long way towards wiping out world poverty, giving everyone clean drinking water, cancelling Third World debt and eradicating Aids. All real and immediate problems.

Disturbing voice in West Norfolk car park

Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek, who has been lost in West Norfolk for some time, has found something disturbing in a car park in King’s Lynn.

He reports: “As I fed coins into the ticket machine I was startled to hear a disembodied Dixon of Dock Green voice telling me: ‘Do not leave henny value-haybles in your vee-hicle’.

“This prompted me to wonder whether this technology could be adapted. For example, manufacturers could be compelled to install a tamper-proof box in all new cars which could be programmed to give good advice. “As you get in the car in the morning and switch on, the helpful voice might say: ‘Now...are you sure you can't go by bus? Tell you what...I'll take you to the bus stop, and if a bus doesn't come within 30 minutes I'll take you into town. OK?’”

Mr Meek was reluctant to share this revolutionary idea with readers in case someone in authority commissioned a study, but I have assured him this is unlikely, unless the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing gets to hear of it.

Drawing a line under speed cameras

Norfolk’s widely respected chief constable, Andy Hayman, would like to “draw a line under the controversial speed camera issue”, according to recent reports. This was after the cameras had “delivered cuts in the accident rate that the county should be proud of”. Presumably he was not referring to the 46 people who died on Norfolk’s roads in the first eight months of the year, compared to 42 in the same period last year. Better draw a line under that too.

Fat chance of more rail passengers

Attacking earlier John Prescott predictions on transport, Conservative Tim Yeo reminded MPs in the Commons at the end of last month that the Deputy Prime Minister had said “rail passengers were to increase by 50%”. This had clearly not happened, Mr Yeo pointed out.

Maybe he has not heard the Government announcements on obesity. Or does he think they are an attempt to prove Mr Prescott right?

Moving tale of bus stands

The buses may not be going where you want them to, or often enough, but apparently the bus stands on Castle Meadow in Norwich are moving around quite nicely. I am reliably informed that a notice there recently informed customers that "from Monday Stand D will be back in its usual position between stands C and E". Bit of a relief, really.

29 November 2004

on 29 November 2004 at 04:00

Lemming failing to jump is condemned as negative

Let me say something positive about taxi drivers. Many of them are friendly, on time and don’t jump the lights. Some of them are extremely good chess players.

Let me also say something positive about Norwich. It is my favourite city in the entire world.

Being such a positive person, I was surprised to notice that a taxi driver had written to the editor, complaining of my negative outlook as a “doom and gloom merchant”. He also said he had come across many people like me, which seems an extraordinary run of bad luck. He has my sympathy.

All this because I pointed out how difficult it was for someone from Lowestoft to drive to the Theatre Royal in Norwich. The taxi driver said he could find the Theatre Royal with no trouble, which I am relieved to hear. It would be embarrassing if he couldn’t, especially as the city goes out of its way to help taxi drivers by allowing them to drive where mere mortals and doom and gloom merchants cannot go. I personally have no trouble finding the Theatre Royal, but then I was born in Norwich, and I usually walk.

The fact remains that a non-taxi-driving friend from Stafford (yes, I have friends in places other than Lowestoft) visited the city for the second time last week, and out of the blue, with no prompting whatsoever from me, asked: “Isn’t anyone in charge of traffic planning in Norwich?”

And she was not even trying to find the Theatre Royal.

Another gentleman, on reading my article last time, wrote: “Until this morning I couldn't work out why it took Moses 40 years to find the Promised Land. Could it be he had a Norwich traffic planner plotting the course?”

If being against traffic humps and convoluted road systems is negative, I guess I sometimes am. But then, to a lemming, everyone who doesn’t jump off a cliff is negative.

Pondhenge head welcomes disruptive minister

The acting headmaster of Pondhenge Grammar School, Professor V A R Scheinlich, has welcomed the Government’s plan to introduce disruptive pupils into previously well-ordered schools.

He said last night: “The Secretary of State for Education is man of wit and insight. It won’t be long before the schools system is totally revolutionised.

“At Pondhenge we look forward to having our lessons disrupted superbly by this new intake of pupils that Mr Clarke is sending to us. We have had enough of pupils learning things and getting good exam results and generally making a success of their lives. What fun is that?

“My teachers have been saying that they want a new challenge, and I myself have been despairing at the lack of paperwork from Whitehall recently.”

Asked whether he would be able to offer the disruptive pupils a good education, Prof Scheinlich said: “I understand they have already been offered a good education, but have declined the offer. No doubt they will be able to offer us a new educational experience.”

Prof Scheinlich is retiring at Christmas.

Newts aim to make schools as good as social services

A consortium of great crested newts that has been running the social services department for Norfolk County Council has received a reassuring one-star rating from the Government, which a spokesperson described as “not very good really”.

Encouraged by this, the consortium is moving swiftly on to take over the education department, recently bolstered by the exciting collapse of its PFI scheme – described on this page two weeks ago as the most widely predicted disaster in the history of the county.

“Clearly the two departments will fit together perfectly,” said a spokesnewt. “We expect to do just as well in education as we have in social services.”

He denied that there was any connection between his consortium and the newt consortium whose bid to take over the school building programme is being looked on favourably by County Hall. “We have never met each other very much,” he commented.

Customs down on tits, complains bird

The only Norfolk great tit to have travelled to Lithuania complained last night about the difficulties she encountered in getting through Baltic customs.

“I am only a straightforward bird,” she told our reporter. “I have been described as a stick-in-the-mud, which I find frankly offensive. Not many birds can do what I can with a bag of peanuts.

“But the suggestion that I was smuggling is ridiculous. Apparently I was supposed to have a visa, but I don’t believe in credit cards, especially near Christmas. They obviously thought I should have stayed in Norfolk. They said I wasn’t built for migration, which is blatantly sexist.”

The great tit, who asked not to be named but said she was a Eurosceptic, added that many inferior birds were just waved through while she was detained. “There were a couple of northern shovelers that were obviously up to no good, a very common goldeneye, and if I say lesser spotted woodpecker, I think you’ll get my meaning,” she said. “There was even a really dozy Ural owl, which to my mind didn’t know where he was. None of them had any trouble with Customs.”

Back home in Fakenham, the tit, who said she “had just been visiting a mute swan in Klaipeda, or possibly Butinga”, has decided not to travel so far again. “Maybe Hemsby for a bite to eat,” she said. “If I’m feeling peckish.”

Meanwhile she would probably sit around for a while, and ring a few people.

“I was feeling quite pale in Lithuania, and I’m still feeling a bit blue,” she said, “which is confusing.”

Baltic customs officers were unavailable for comment.

Taverham woman defends French

Suggestions that the recent loud bang in the sky over north-east Norfolk was caused by a French aircraft are far-fetched, according to a Taverham woman. Diane Taverham said yesterday that in her experience the French were quiet, artistic and considerate people, but she had heard several similar sounds while on holiday in parts of Italy – despite the absence of Liberal Democrats, who “tend to provoke that kind of thing”.

15 November 2004

on 15 November 2004 at 04:00

Cultural deprivation result of traffic management

Living in the city of Norwich means that after a while you get used to all the bizarre attempts at traffic management. More were announced last week, and they made as little sense as ever. I was rather less than reassured, for example, by the observation from someone close to the traffic managers on what will happen when the new Chapelfield complex opens: “It’s a total unknown.” Happily I can be more definite: it will be a colossal mess, just like Rose Lane and the Riverside complex.

One of the hidden effects of the road contortions is cultural deprivation: it’s devilishly difficult to get to the Theatre Royal by car, and even harder to park when you get there. A friend who lives in Lowestoft discovered this recently. He could not travel by train because the last train back to Lowestoft left only ten minutes after the performance ended – so much for integrated transport. How to reach the theatre? His first idea (he used to know Norwich when it did make sense) was to turn right into All Saints Green from Queen’s Road, go down Westlegate and straight across. Unfortunately there was an early problem. No right turn into All Saints Green.

His next attempt, logically, was down St Stephen’s and left into Rampant Horse Street. Sadly, no left turn. Advised by a helpful sign, he proceeded along Red Lion Street, up Farmer’s Avenue, along Golden Ball Street and then down Westlegate – reaching the point where he started – and across. That’s four extra streets’ worth of unnecessary pollution, bang in the middle of the city.

It was getting late. He followed another sign to the Malthouse and Assembly Rooms car parks, only to find building work blocking the road. He then tried the Chantry car park. It was full.

One of his passengers then spied the car park under the Forum. Unfortunately the only way of getting to it was to drive way out to the inner link road, go round the Chapelfield roundabout and come back again along Cleveland Street and Bethel Street.

His ordeal was not over: a barrier at the Forum was broken, and there was more, which space does not permit me to relate. He reached the theatre half an hour late. He is a gentleman, not one to start a row or create a fuss. He asks: “Are these simply ordinary everyday occurrences for those who come to the theatre often?”

The answer, sadly, is that people are going to come to the theatre less often. There is only so much drama you can sit through.

Throttling all the love out of life

Helen Keller said: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.” Because we do not believe her (after all, she was deaf and blind), we have the health and safety industry, which throttles all the love and enthusiasm out of life on a routine basis.

For several years, friends of mine have been paying weekly visits to elderly people in a Norwich residential home. Obviously they are nice people, or they would not be doing it.

A couple of weeks back, they were told that the home had had an inspection, and as a result they had to stop visiting until they were checked by the police. This would take a few weeks.

Result: the elderly people have been deprived of their visitors for perhaps a couple of months. The friends, being determined, are getting their police checks – others might easily have been put off completely. It means paperwork and proves very little.

The home didn’t want this, nor did the residents, nor did my friends and, I suspect, nor did the police.

But the health and safety people are happy – if that’s not too risky an emotion – because all the boxes will have been ticked, and that’s what health and safety people like. Ticking boxes is death, and nothing is safer than death. Sorry, Helen.

Brave new schools scheme from newts welcomed

Following the collapse of the county schools PFI scheme – perhaps the most widely predicted disaster in the history of Norfolk – a consortium of great crested newts has come up with a project which it promises will “give the county a whole range of cutting-edge school buildings”.

The consortium, which is based in old railway sidings at Melton Constable, pledges to do all the necessary work in about three months or so and to use only the best materials if possible. It says the paperwork will easily be completed by head teachers within three weeks “unless they have to teach, or want to sleep or something”.

The newts say they will be responsible for all the upkeep of the new buildings if they are still in business and have the time to fit it in. They will also devise a curriculum and appoint staff and tell councillors what to do.

A spokesman for the county council said: “This is a fantastic offer. We can’t see anything wrong with it at all.”

Radical advice from Pondhenge for crime victims

The advice by top police officers to run away and hide if you see a burglar has been enthusiastically supported by Pondhenge Police, in North Norfolk.

Retired Acting Chief Superintendent Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago said last night: “We see this as a big step forward in reducing crime. There will be far fewer people in court.”

He wants the Association of Chief Police Officers to go further and issue advice to the public on other crimes.

“If you are being murdered, we suggest you lie back and let it happen,” he said. “It avoids all those irritating additional injuries that come from resisting. We are also urging banks to leave their doors open so that robbers don’t need to damage the paintwork. And to avoid being attacked by drunken yobs, we suggest you buy them a drink.”

He agreed these were radical ideas but felt sure the public would respond.

Gentle dig

Which literary group described the Assembly House in Norwich on its leaflets as having a gentile atmosphere? I couldn’t possibly comment, but if you’re interested in comparisons, try Wensum Lodge, the older part of which is in premises formerly owned by Isaac Jurnet, a wealthy non-gentile. Quite a different atmosphere, I’m sure you’ll agree.

1 November 2004

on 1 November 2004 at 12:34

Secret plans to transform centre of a fine city

Most citizens of Norwich are still almost prostrate from shock at learning that councillors have been considering secret plans to concrete over the historic market.

Apparently some members were hankering after the creation of a magnificent civic space in front of their palace – sorry, I mean City Hall.

Now a local expert, Professor V A R Scheinlich, claims that he has uncovered plans to transform other parts of Norwich. He says the council is looking at ideas to • knock down the Castle and build a gold-encrusted tower that will reach to heaven, based partly on the Tower of Babel and partly on the European Parliament building in Strasbourg; • turn the Cathedral and Close into a giant stadium as part of a bid for the Olympics in 2020; • drain the Wensum to create a huge bus and cycle lane combined with a futuristic sea defence scheme.

Prof Scheinlich says these ideas are intended to “bring Norwich into the 22nd century well before anyone else even gets close”. He denies an allegation by father-of-one the Rev Nick “Nick” Reppscumbastwick, 48, that the relative flatness of Norfolk itself resulted from an ill-conceived medieval scheme to build a land bridge between Northampton and parts of Dieppe.

What you missed while you were looking at the speedometer

In all the excitement about replacing the Norwich Grapes Hill speed camera with something even more technologically scintillating, you may not have noticed the Department for Transport announcing research which revealed that speed was much less of a factor in road accidents than had been previously maintained.

Given that badly advised Ministers have striven to keep this figure as high as possible, its admission that the number of death or serious injury accidents in which excessive speed was involved is a maximum of 18 per cent is highly significant. It could mean the true figure is considerably less.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for scamera partnerships, certain chief constables and many councillors to reduce their own amateur estimates from nearly twice or three times that. And don’t expect wide publicity for the news that pedestrians have been advised not to cross the road near speed cameras, because drivers are likely to be looking at their speedometers and not at road hazards there. A coroner in Manchester said cameras diverted drivers’ attention from pedestrians and other hazards, and this was backed up by the police accident investigator in the case.

It seems undeniable that drivers who are concerned about their precise speed are not going to be concentrating on real dangers, but that will not do for certain speed-obsessed groups. In this particular case, the spokesman for Brake said thoughtfully: “I think it is extremely doubtful that the speed camera was a factor.”

So that’s all right then.

Queues starting for Sunday worship

Sometimes it takes a bus driver to show you the way.

As half-term last week signalled the start of the cold Christmas shopping season, and the queues started forming on Sundays to worship blindly at the Big W, more and more people were getting nostalgic about the Sabbaths of Christmas past, when department stores were refreshingly shut and the streets wonderfully quiet.

Norwich bus drivers have said they don’t want to carry shopaholics around on the day of rest, and for once I will be delighted to follow them – but without much hope.

Closing shops for a day would restore a bit of sanity to our weeks, and probably bring with it a hefty portion of health benefits. But of course the lemming-like shopowners and shareholders won’t let that happen: it might affect their profits, for heaven’s sake. If that’s the right phrase.

Less and less chance of getting through

Exhausted by Energy Efficiency Week, on the road and desperate to contact a friend? Well, unless you have a mobile phone, the prospects are getting dimmer and dimmer. BT seems determined to discard its lovely phone boxes in easy stages because – you’ve guessed it – they’re not making money. This is bad luck for all those people living in dead spots in North Norfolk – not near the cemeteries, but in the many places, like most of Cromer, where there is no mobile phone signal at all. Not BT’s fault, perhaps, but what chance shall we have of warning the rest of Norfolk when the warming sea, full of melted Arctic ice, spills over the Red Lion?

Bit of a remote chance, you may think. Students at UEA have a more immediate problem. They were promised payphones in their new residence at Colman House, but when they poured in to occupy it, payphones were notable by their absence. BT, I am told, is unwilling to fund them. Age of communication? Yeah, right.

Professional view of obstacles in road

As part of the drive to increase pollution, damage to vehicles and discomfort to residents, a plague of road humps continues to be inserted into what used to be a lovely city. You may hate them (or not), but what do professional drivers think?

Peter Hammond, a private hire car driver, writes: “I recently had to replace a steering drag-link on my Vauxhall Omega at a cost of well over £100, because of wear inflicted by over-100mm humps placed just into side roads where the compression load on the steering is exacerbated by the sideways load of the corner.

“With five people plus luggage on board, even the most careful driving doesn’t prevent the increased wear on the drag-links. I find that on most humps, less than 10mph is the normal operating speed for passenger comfort  how I enjoy taking up to 10 minutes longer per journey!

“This is effectively a reduction in pay, as private hire vehicles get a set fare per journey.

“When driving disabled people in wheelchairs in a Transit Minibus I cannot, however hard I try, give them a smooth enough ride over Norwich humps to prevent at best discomfort and at worst some pain. My Omega is a top-of-the-range vehicle with load-levelling suspension and is reckoned by the trade to be the best of its type for the job. If I can’t ride over humps above 10 to 15mph in that, then I am being deliberately impeded in my legal right to free passage on the highway. “It causes damage, pollution and extra costs for any bus, taxi, service vehicle or emergency vehicle. What gives the council the right to do this?” Good question. No doubt there’s a very bad answer.

18 October 2004

on 18 October 2004 at 04:00

Leg length crisis could end life as we know it

Scientists have discovered that since 1982 the average length of an 18-year-old female’s legs has increased by almost an inch. The legs of 18-year-old men have grown by just over an inch in the same period.

Alarmed by the implications, which are clearly linked to increased car use, the Government is proposing to pour funds into the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia, providing it sets up a research unit which will predict disaster within the next century.

Computer models and statistics have already been devised which will reveal that people will be too tall for most buildings by 2050 unless we start using public transport, however erratic, noisy and polluting that may be.

Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam said: “There is a clear consensus in the scientific community that this astonishing leg growth can only have been caused by the use of cars and, possibly, electricity. Nothing like it has ever happened before. We must act immediately. Excuse me, you’re standing on my bike.”

Internationally, the increase in leg length has caused so much concern – especially in the fashion industry – that a summit conference is being held in Japan to impose stringent constraints on the developed, or long-legged, nations which are failing to use leg-warmers in any way.

At home a Government spokesperson said: “We intend to impose huge taxes on people who do not comply with scientific recommendations. We have already redirected cash that was going to be used for aid projects to finance this work and counter lengthening legs – the biggest threat to civilisation as we know it.”

Dissenting scientists claim that longer legs will be of greater benefit to mankind because it will enable them to walk further, but this has been dismissed as a “minority” view and “similar to fundamentalists who believe the earth is flat and kill people”.

Signs of a mutating virus

Alerted by my comments last time about the mysterious 10mph speed limit at roadworks near Brooke, a perceptive friend has spotted a 10mph sign before the level crossing just north of Thetford on the A1075. She observed: “Curiously, there is then nothing to indicate that you can stop driving at 10mph before the 50mph signs begin a few miles later at Wretham. “And it seems you only have to slow down to 10mph if you are going north. Perhaps it's a cunning county council plot to discourage Thetford people from escaping.”

This is certainly a possibility, since statistics show that Thetford people are safest in Thetford. But I wonder if these 10mph signs are what they seem.

I understand that a new form of life has been discovered in Bradford – a kind of giant virus “so bizarre and unlike anything else that perhaps it should be placed in its own category of living things”, according to genetic analysts.

It does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that these 10mph signs, which seem to sprout of their own accord for no good reason, are a similar new form of life, perhaps feeding on tarmac, roadside plants or deer.

Some analysts, such as Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston, have suggested that the ever-expanding 20mph signs, already established to plague levels in many habitats, are also like giant viruses, and are now mutating.

More work clearly needs to be done on this before we are overrun in our beds.

Anger at Pondhenge over Whitehall name game

The University of Pondhenge, in North Norfolk, has reacted angrily to Government attempts to compel it to recruit more students whose names begin with the letter X.

Vice-chancellor Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 105, said last night: “Apparently we, like Oxford and Cambridge – to whom we are often compared – are alleged to be deliberately aiming our recruiting at people whose names do not begin with X.

“This is ridiculous. I will admit that our current student list is very short of people whose names begin with X, but this is a freak occurrence. We are open to everybody.”

The Government has set up a regulator – the Office for Fairness to Every Name (OFTEN) – to ensure that all universities, especially Pondhenge, recruit more students whose names begin with X. According to statistics, such people have been deterred from applying because of perceived discrimination and the wrong choice of school or parents.

Universities who do not comply will have to pay a large fine to the Government, or supply a goose for the Whitehall Christmas party.

Threat of reprisals over clocks move

Forces loyal to the radical Anglican cleric, the Rev Nick “Nick” Reppscumbastwick, are threatening reprisals in East Norfolk if plans to put the clocks back go ahead.

A statement issued to the minority radio channel, Broadland, which has long been recognised as a mouthpiece for radical Anglicans, said: “It is sacrilege to even consider moving clocks. Clocks must be allowed to stay where they are. If they were moved back, most church towers would fall down. “We have spent all summer pinning down the powers of darkness, and although they are expanding rapidly, we know exactly where they are. If clocks go back, there is no telling where the darkness will be. Even Lowestoft could be at risk.”

The statement continued with veiled threats of congregations rising up and boycotting Sunday shopping, but a police spokesman said he thought this was unlikely to happen, as congregations only rose up when the liturgy required them to.

Nevertheless the chief constable is taking the threat seriously and has deployed several speed cameras to the area. “You can never tell with Anglicans,” he said.

Newts may have mole inside authority

Reader John Pitchers suggests that the Broads Authority’s apparent campaign to convert its area to kilometres independently of the county council or anyone else may have been inspired by the notoriously expansionist great crested newts.

The newts, possibly influenced by their cousins – the Austrian cave salamanders, to whom kilometres are second nature – have long been known for their desire to interfere with normal human life in an attempt to destroy it.

They may have a mole inside the Broads Authority. Mr Pitchers points out the clinching clue that newtons are a metric measure of weight.

4 October 2004

on 4 October 2004 at 04:00

Sad end to woman's battle against bureaucracy

A prominent Norwich businessman who has also been a councillor in another place told me a few weeks ago that councils could get away with almost anything – because people were intimidated by them.

They had two main methods of dealing with criticism: one was to ignore it, and the other was to attempt to confuse the critic through red tape and dense procedures.

Neither of these worked with Betty Distill, a 75-year-old former probation office administrator, who died suddenly when she fell downstairs two weeks ago and was cremated on Friday.

She had been fighting a long and vigorous battle with Norwich City Council over their unnecessary and mishandled changes to part of North Park Avenue. Widening the road in a hamfisted way had removed the off-road parking and created danger where none existed before. During a fruitless correspondence with the chief executive, she had at one point been sent a leaflet in Bengali. No doubt the council thought this quite funny – or perhaps it was a mistake.

We kept in touch, and days before she died she rang me, distraught that the council had now installed Permit Parking directly outside her home, which meant that the local authority was going to benefit financially from its incompetence. Mrs Distill was an impressive woman: intelligent, determined and, to start with, amused at the antics the council adopted to avoid responsibility. She came from a background of office management – she had also worked at Boulton & Paul – and was appalled at the way the clear levels of responsibility that once existed had faded away in councils and businesses generally. This was not the first time she had come up against a brick wall when trying to probe impenetrable local government mismanagement.

The city council can hardly be blamed for Mrs Distill’s death. But this is the second case I have come across – the other was outside the city – where a pensioner’s last months and years, which should be a time for relaxation and peace, were spent in a frustrating battle against faceless bureaucracy.

It would be a fitting tribute to Mrs Distill – and if you want to hear other tributes, ask her neighbours and prominent city figures like Rory Quinn and David Bradford – if the city council reformed its procedures so that legitimate queries from the public were dealt with fairly, quickly and responsibly, and the first question on receiving a complaint from a member of the public was not “How can we protect ourselves?”

Violent language against minority views

When the science and the statistics are unclear on contentious issues, we have to resort to other methods to establish the truth.

One is common sense, but a useful test is to look at the attitude of those espousing the different ideas. Regular readers will know that I believe the almost exclusive concentration on speed as a cause of road accidents is both misleading and dangerous. I have explained why on many – perhaps too many – occasions.

They will also know that I have doubts about the widely circulated “establishment” theories about human-induced global warming, as do many scientists, most of whom rarely get quoted in the media.

What has struck me is the linguistic violence directed at those who express such “minority” views. These can be found on various websites, but in the past fortnight I have received e-mails expressing themselves in similarly violent terms.

One, from a scientist and prominent media activist in the global warming doom-monger mould, revealed that he did not know the meaning of words like endorse, propaganda and sceptic, and had a poor memory. He concluded that I was either “similar to terrorists with fundamentalist views” or a “blithering idiot”. Readers may concur, but to resort to such methods must reveal a considerable lack of available logical argument, as well as some desperation.

The other, on the subject of road accidents, expressed disappointment that the EDP allowed space for minority views. Banning minority views has been tried, I believe. There is a word for it.

He went on to produce a mountain of violent and offensive language, including the following – sod you, dishonest bluster, dangerous crank views, ignorant, offensive, blustering bigot, racist, bare-faced lie, dangerous nonsense, death threats, reckless garbage, utter rubbish, barking mad, disgrace and downright dishonesty.

We don’t have to ask if this sort of thing is desirable: it clearly isn’t. What we might ask is what sort of person resorts to it.

All the best people are sliding off barometers

A regular correspondent was intrigued by the comments of a senior policeperson following a court’s mystifying failure to jail a habitual thief.

Chief Inspector Sarah Francis said: "I can't predict the future, but he's someone who we wouldn't be expecting to slide off our barometers."

The clear implication is that law-abiding citizens do slide off police barometers. But where does this happen? And how? We should be told.

Richard “Volcano” Meek (for it was he) responded bravely: “I would like to be among the first to demonstrate my upstanding nature...although doing it standing up doesn't sound wise to me.”

If I were Richard, I would be careful. He could end up behind millibars – or even isobars, which as well as being colder, can be quite close together, if it’s windy.

Red flag on the horizon as downward trend continues

Travelling home the other Sunday in the Brooke area of South Norfolk, I came across roadworks. This is not unusual, of course: they are all essential, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.

These particular ones featured lights governing a short single-carriageway stretch of the B1332. Needless to say, no-one was actually doing any work, or even in the vicinity, but the speed limit was set at a staggering and totally pointless 10mph.

Clearly there is a downward trend. First to the very rarely needed 20mph (originally seen as ridiculous and abandoned in the 1920s), now to an even more bizarre 10mph. What next? The passenger must get out and carry a flag? Or cars must remain stationary until the roadworks are complete?

20 September 2004

on 20 September 2004 at 04:00

Concern about effects of not smoking

I don’t smoke. I never have smoked, unless you count the time I was at Birkbeck College, London, and was friendly with a girl named Jane.

After evening lectures we used to walk down to the Embankment, sit by the murky river and discuss German noun declensions, and she gave me one or two of her cigarettes.

So I have only smoked for a short time in a well-intentioned cause – and probably not all that convincingly. But I understand that some people feel compelled to do it, and can’t go very far without it.

It was with mixed feelings, therefore, that I heard the dulcet-toned One-Anglia announcer say he was introducing a brave new era – I paraphrase – in which no smoking would be allowed on his trains, even the minty new long-distance ones that go through tunnels.

On one level I was quite glad: stale smoke is unpleasant and lingers. I know this well, having accepted – late at night and with little option – an American hotel room designated mysteriously as “optional smoking”. (I drew the line at the compulsory smoking ones.)

On another level, I did wonder what all those railway smokers were going to do. Could they possibly last from Norwich to Liverpool Street without a drag, or would Ipswich station’s Platform 2 become a haven for puffers bursting from their pristine carriages for a short break?

Worse, might they all switch to cars, making the A140 even more hazardous, with drivers not only watching their speedometers instead of the road, but taking one hand off the wheel to pollute their lungs every minute or so?

And that’s without the coughing, which hardly bears thinking about. Ah, well, if disaster should befall, it will be because they were going too fast. That often happens when you smoke, I understand.

Reassuring statements about speed and rape

Revealing comments of the past week include one by the former manager of the apparently faultless Norfolk camera speed trap partnership, which seems likely to reinstate the ludicrous Grapes Hill camera in Norwich.

While recognising that the camera is unpopular, he adds: “Whether we believe the speed limit is the correct one or not is immaterial.”

Call me unreasonable, but I would have thought that believing the speed limit was incorrect would be a good reason for an organisation with integrity not to put a camera there. Of course that would mean getting rid of a few others too, and we all know how likely that is to happen while the money rolls in.

Meanwhile a statement that was almost as reassuring came jointly from a Westminster school and its local education authority following the rape of a newly qualified 28-year-old teacher by a 15-year-old boy. It read: “The school regards this as an unacceptable but isolated incident.”

Well, that’s obviously a timely and hard-hitting reminder to everyone who thought it was acceptable for a pupil to rape a teacher. But if raping a teacher is just unacceptable, what in the scale of anti-social behaviour is acceptable? Mugging, grievous bodily harm, everyday sexual assault?

And what would be outrageous? Fiddling the league tables, I suppose.

Snatch harvests and early hurricanes

Suddenly, in the middle of that bright week of late summer, there was a cooler, overcast afternoon with quite an uppity wind.

The weather woman had forecast another sunny, warm day. Glorious, I think she said. So I checked the BBC’s weather website for Norwich.

Strangely, it was still sunny and warm. Was this an attempt to fool me, or a flat refusal to look out of the window or get up on that roof?

Weather people sometimes prefer not to look. Once, when I had more time, I e-mailed the BBC, asking in my innocent way why they bothered giving a five-day forecast when it was always wrong.

They responded briskly, pointing out that they changed the forecast as it got nearer the day, to make it more accurate. And that’s what worried me. They didn’t seem to realise that this was not an answer, but a restatement of the question in another form.

Forecasts are tricky, of course. But sometimes our memory of weather gone by – especially bad weather – is equally inaccurate, as demonstrated by the panicky reaction to adverse weather this year and a remarkable ability to forget the appalling hurricanes of the 1940s. A reader with a better memory than most writes: “Bad summers are not new. In the early fifties I worked for a local firm of agricultural engineers specialising in harvest machinery – self-binders and later combine harvesters.

“Many times during these harvests I got home at the end of the day soaking wet through where I had been caught in thunderstorms. It was not unusual to get wet harvests and have to use grain lifters to get the combines to lift the straw which had been flattened by heavy rains. “We used to refer to these wet times as ‘snatch harvests’, as you had to wait until the standing crop was dry enough to be able to ‘snatch’ a few hours’ cutting time.

“Needless to say you never heard a mention of ‘global warming’.”

Council loses plot by targeting cyclists

A south coast council has completely lost the plot by introducing a mobile camera to catch cyclists speeding down its promenade and endangering pedestrians.

First, it is warning them and not fining them: so that’s one of the main objectives of speed cameras up the spout.

Second, cyclists are goodies and not evil monsters, like car drivers. They must therefore be allowed to do what they like, even if everyone else is put at risk.

Someone should put Bournemouth right. I suggest the council gets a visit from Transport 1650, who can show them how to put speed cameras to good uses, like stopping earthquakes. More revealing statistics from Transport 1650 at www.transport2k.com.

6 September 2004

on 8 September 2004 at 16:32

Balancing the climatological books

Popular science is a wonderful thing. If we had enjoyed a long, dry, hot summer, there are no prizes for guessing how many articles we would have seen in the papers claiming it as proof of human-induced global warming, and warning us we had better start putting lids on saucepans quick.

But we had a very wet summer. What did this show? Surprisingly, it was proof of global warming again. And all the usual knee-jerk suspects rolled out the familiar doomsday scenarios. I have nothing against doomsday scenarios: I suspect that that there will be a major natural catastrophe, probably volcanic, within the next few years, because one is overdue. And the climate is undoubtedly changing. It always does.

But to suggest that we can affect this by making tiny, prescribed alterations to our lifestyles is like suggesting that we can affect the orbit of Venus by wearing dark glasses.

What is the evidence this time? There was a disastrous flood in Boscastle. We can expect many more like this, say the doomsday boys. But Boscastle, though tragic, fades if compared with the similar Devon flood at Lynmouth in August 1952, when 34 people died and 93 buildings were destroyed – or damaged so badly that they had to be demolished.

This was followed by the calamitous North Sea floods of January 1953, but no-one spoke of global warming then: I seem to remember that a new ice age was the doomsday boys’ prediction around that time.

What about the landslide in Scotland? Experts warned that we could expect many more of these – another worrying new phenomenon. But what was found when geologists investigated the landslide area? “Evidence of lots of old landslides.” So no change there. We simply have very short memories.

Does our soggy summer have any significance? Or will it be next year’s sizzling season that spills the climatological beans? In 1875 the Worstead Parish Chronicle reveals (and you don’t get this kind of research just anywhere): “The total rainfall of July in our parish has exceeded eight inches; and on the 20th and 21st days fell the enormous quantity of nearly four inches and a half. When it is borne in mind that an inch of rain represents the quantity of 80 tons of water to each acre, and that two inches a month form the average rainfall in this part of England, we shall be able to realise the immensity of the recent downpour.”

August 1875 dawned glorious and sunny. August is often dry: the two driest Augusts on record were 1742 and 1747, presumably caused by too may lidless saucepans in the late 1600s.

All this is part of the fascinating diversity we enjoy in this country, and from which some of us sometimes suffer. Rather than simply use every opportunity to cook up what is a thinly disguised political message, we should accept that, in the words of weather expert Philip Eden, it is “just another example of Mother Nature balancing the books”. Newt scheme to keep people quietly desperate

A Norfolk campaigner has uncovered a far-reaching plot to confine as many people as possible to their homes.

Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 105, who was instrumental in preventing great-crested newts from taking over Wymondham some years ago, believes that the “endangered” amphibians have resurfaced with a fresh attempt to destroy the quality of human life.

“It’s incredibly subtle,” he said at Erpingham yesterday. “They have infiltrated so many organisations that no-one suspects it’s co-ordinated.

“They want services to be so bad that no-one will dare venture out into the world. And then of course they can take over completely.”

Mr Houseago pointed out that toilets were being closed all over Norfolk, as were public phone boxes. “They want us to be desperate and unable to tell anyone,” he said.

At the same time post offices were being shut, and the few that remained open were being swamped and used as police stations. Bus routes were being discontinued, but car journeys were being made as difficult as possible, and any sensible attempt to improve the situation – such as the northern distributor road for Norwich – was being sabotaged by a group of newt-influenced extremists. “It’s quite clear that they want everyone to stay at home and watch Big Brother,” said Mr Houseago. “Why do you think they want to introduce postal votes?”

A newt was unavailable for comment.

Song thrushes live in confusing times

If we have problems knowing who to rely on when it comes to climate, surely birds are more straightforward. After all, you can actually count birds, if they sit still long enough.

Unfortunately they seem to have been moving about. Which would explain why I read that the song thrush was on the “red list” and declining dangerously – and at the same time showing signs of recovery and “increasing”, all on the same day. On the same page, in fact.

Confusing for me, but even more confusing for the song thrushes. I shall keep a close eye on the ones in my garden.

Tourist attraction gathers dust

Congratulations are clearly due to whoever had the brilliant idea of creating a new Norwich summer tourist attraction in front of the Forum by digging up the Millennium Plain and making lots of dust. Almost no-one was using the space anyway, and the last thing we want visitors to our fine city to have is a clear view of the Forum. They must enjoy the challenge of the construction maze, looking for the entrance to a ₤65 million building which in its naked state has a much too striking frontage.

And of course the Plain was getting very old and tatty. I can’t remember whether it was medieval or Victorian. Certainly about time it was replaced. Who wants open space anyway?

Let’s make it an annual event! We could get rid of that church building next. It’s a bit in the way.

23 August 2004

on 27 August 2004 at 16:42

Signs of a far different culture

I took a last chance to holiday in America this month, before it becomes not worth the effort to break through the bureaucracy barrier at the border. And my trip to New England held a few surprises. Not just the kind you get when you walk on the pavement (hit by truck) or say you are staying for a fortnight (total incomprehension). Nor the even more mysterious linguistic conundrums that leave you wondering what on earth, for instance, “native ice cubes” might be.

No, the big surprise was the trees. Of course even I had heard that autumn in New England is spectacularly bright because of the gloriously technicoloured leaves heading for a fall, but I was unprepared for quite how many trees there are. Even the 4000-foot mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont are completely covered by them, so that the only view a climber can hope to get is at the top.

Don’t get me wrong – I love trees, and I loved New England, but there were times when I yearned for the majestic bleakness of a Scottish Munro.

The other big surprise came on the stunning shoreline of Maine and Massachusetts, where I made a few fruitless forays down side roads before I realised that the vast majority of it was privately owned. In the land of the free, beauty has a price. We should be grateful that much of our own compelling coast is open to anyone.

But because I spent so much time travelling, what really made an impact on me was the road signs, some of which I would like to see introduced into Norfolk. “Watch for moose in roadway”, for instance.

Then there was the brutal frankness of “Wrong way”, which sounds a lot more helpful than it is. Perhaps Norfolk County Council could use it to replace the much less useful “Byroad”.

More in the Norfolk style was the mid-highway “Bump”, which made you wonder why they didn’t spend the sign money on smoothing the road.

I enjoyed “Thickly settled”, which I took to be like Brundall, and the pretty well essential “Bridge freezes before road” – for some reason quite common in Vermont, where people freeze before bridges.

I can think of a number of prominent Norfolk citizens who would appreciate “Give way to Rotary traffic”, though they might be bemused by the healthy “Reduced salt area”.

But perhaps my favourite was the reassuring “No tolls ahead”. I don’t know why this should be especially noteworthy. There were no elephants either. Moose, of course, are another matter.

Ways to keep traffic flowing

What a joy to drive hundreds of miles through Ontario, Quebec, New York State and New England without seeing a single speed camera or road hump.

Ontario, of course, abandoned its cameras after finding they did not reduce road deaths, as indeed they haven’t in this country. And for some reason putting obstacles in the middle of the road has never caught on across the Atlantic.

Two things common in most areas, though, are worth introducing here. One is the ability to overtake on both sides, which might help avert the frustration caused by slow drivers religiously avoiding the inside lane.

It will do nothing, unfortunately, to avoid the real plague of driving in the United Kingdom, which is selfish lorry drivers overtaking other lorries painfully slowly on dual carriageways – clots causing clots, as it were.

The other innovation across the Atlantic is the simple proviso that, after stopping, you can turn right on a red light if the road is clear. Don’t panic; that would be left in this country, and it would also be a safe, cheap and easy way to keep traffic flowing.

So no chance of that happening.

Making exploration much easier

I am delighted to be able to report another breakthrough by intrepid Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek, who has discovered why most people have trouble finding the source of rivers.

He writes: “Most explorers seem, somewhat perversely in my view, to spend a lot of time and trouble looking for the thin end of rivers – the bits where they are little more than a damp spot in a field of mangolds. “It should be obvious to all that the easiest bit to find is the thick end, which is bigger, wetter and usually marked on a map. I set out about two weeks ago and followed a well-marked trail along the banks of the River Nar from Gressenhall to King’s Lynn.

“Lo and behold, there was the mouth of the river – stuck on the side of the Ouse, just as the helpful notes supplied by the Setchey and Upper Wormegay Tourist Board said that it would be!

“May I commend this method to other would-be explorers as a far more productive and reliable way to actually find something after all that hard work?”

We are all grateful to Mr Meek for his ground-breaking excavations in so many areas; so it was sad to hear that he was confined to hospital for a few days after his latest adventure. He attributes his recovery to “the Angels of Necton Ward”, an organisation so obscure that I have not managed to uncover anything about it, except that it is probably underpaid.

Impediments up for abolition

While I was away, I see that a reader suggested to the editor that when speed cameras are abolished I might turn my attention to the removal of “other irritating impediments to the motorist”, like traffic lights, keep-left signs and zebra crossings.

These are interesting ideas. Keep-left signs would often be unnecessary if the obstruction put up to support the sign was removed, and zebra crossings would be redundant if motorists had the respect for pedestrians that they should have: some countries make do with simpler indications of pedestrian priority. Unfortunately many Britons seem to collect a rather pathetic aura of superiority every time they get in a car, much as they do when they drink a can of beer, so I could not support abolition of zebras.

Traffic lights are a moot point. They often keep you waiting unnecessarily and thus cause frustration. I seem to remember that a former Transport Secretary said that traffic lights caused most of the delays in London (that was before Ken Livingstone, of course).

He may have been joking. I personally would love to see the idiotic lights on the Trowse bypass replaced by a roundabout, but it is probably too late for that, as it is for so many things.

9 August 2004

on 9 August 2004 at 04:30

Unhelpful, but is it true?

George Orwell may not have quite hit the target with his predictions for 1984, but he would certainly have no difficulty recognising the attempts to manipulate society 20 years on through the misuse of statistics, “expert” analysis and half-truths.

Use of the word “unhelpful” is often a key clue that this may be going on. The first question we used to ask was whether something was true or not. Now this does not seem to be so important; we ask instead whether it serves to push people in a certain direction.

So when a few weeks back a study warned that fruit and vegetables are now less nutritious than they used to be, this was denounced as not wrong but “unhelpful…because we are trying to get people to eat more fruit and vegetables”. When Colin Powell went to the United Nations to try to persuade them to approve war in Iraq, Picasso’s anti-war picture, Guernica, was covered up, no doubt because it was unhelpful.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is against parents smacking their children because it is unhelpful for professional child care workers – quite astonishing arrogance.

And now a Norwich headmaster is attacked because he had the nerve to point out, quite accurately in many people’s view, that a lot of university courses were lightweight.

This was “deeply unhelpful”, he was told by Jonathan Whitehead, of the Association of University Teachers – not because it was not true, but because “lots of academics are working hard to encourage people to go to university”.

I wonder why they are doing that. Sorry, that’s extremely unhelpful. Clearly, we mustn’t discuss it.

MP in custard is good food policy

Our dictatorial government likes nothing better than to tell us what to say, do and think.

And schools – as if they don’t have enough to do – now have to make sure they are turning out thousands of little Identikit kiddies who all do, say and think the right things. Schools have a policy on almost everything. It is not their idea: they have to. Like almost every part of institutional or business life, they are drowning in a sea of rules and regulations.

A financial manager told me recently that he employed people from Eastern Europe who had fled Communism to escape from the ever-present rule-book without which they could do nothing. And – you’ve guessed it – it’s now even worse here.

Not long ago Labour MP David Kidney said in the House that “every school should have a food policy” covering not just school meals but the content of children’s lunch boxes. He wanted to “embed good attitudes to food”.

In my view a good attitude to food would be tipping Mr Kidney into some custard, and I am sure many head teachers would back such an idea.

In a similar spirit and as part of a national scheme, Norfolk is providing some schools with free fruit for children next term. Let’s hope we don’t get to the stage reached in another county where teachers speak of the specially bred School Fruit Tree, which produces distinctively soft, tasteless apples.

Bumping along in a bouncy way

If speed humps are the answer, we are asking the wrong question. But sadly, it doesn’t matter how ludicrous a proposition is; if enough people get behind it, it will gradually become accepted.

In this case, a conglomeration of power-hungry parish councillors, bad drivers, joyless individuals and, presumably, hump-makers have got behind the crazy idea of putting obstructions in the road to make them safer, to such an extent that the authorities have abandoned all responsibility and complied in a particularly mindless way.

I don’t intend to go again into the reasons why humps are such a ridiculous idea. If you can’t see it, you can’t see it. But when I am told by everyone I meet that they are hated, and that they are so bad in some areas that parents “have to use a 4x4 to get to the nursery”, it must be time to think again. If the policy-light Tories want an issue on which to sweep back to power, I suggest that roads and transport is it.

But is it too late? My small grandson, without the slightest prompting by anyone, pushes his toy buggy along the pavement and periodically bounces it over imaginary bumps. Sadly, he may never find out what proper streets were like.

Better treatment of humans demanded

A newly formed branch of BETH (Birds for the Ethical Treatment of Humans) is planning a number of demonstrations in Norfolk in a bid to prevent exploitation of humans by animals of all kinds.

One of the organisers, who wanted to be known simply as the Pondhenge Goose, said: “It is shocking the way some animals exploit humans for their own selfish purposes. Crocodiles, for instance.

“But nearer home, cats and dogs shamelessly demand constant attention, feeding, pampering and in some cases totally disrupting their owners’ holidays.

“I was told only yesterday of the appalling case of a woman who had to come home three days early from the South of France because she was concerned about her dogs.”

The Goose claimed that thousands of innocent humans were forced to sleep in the same rooms as their pets, and some particularly demanding canines had been seen pulling their owners along on what could only be described as leads, while at the same time fouling up the pathways that children had to walk along.

“If something isn’t done soon, they will take over,” the bird warned.

Not grasping the fundamentals, part 53

When it comes down to it, the real cause of most accidents is bad driving – but maybe it’s bad teaching too. I came across a gentleman the other day who passed his test some time ago but has not quite grasped one or two basic points. He still thinks, for instance, that putting his vehicle in a high gear will enable him to pull away from a junction more quickly.

Given that pulling away from junctions is one of the most dangerous moments on the road, you might think that someone would have felt the need to put him right.

26 July 2004

on 26 July 2004 at 04:30

Wonderland vision of a bizarre future

Not long ago a letter appeared in the Eastern Daily Press, Norwich (UK), portraying two visions of Norwich in 2040. Without repeating it here, it is hard to convey the sheer unreality of it. But let’s try.

One vision included the city surrounded by a motorway and two three-lane ring roads; most people with two cars; respiratory disease rampant; smog; and tornados resulting from climate change. This, we are told, is what will happen if we opt for a northern distributor road.

You may laugh. I hope you do.

Why should anyone want two cars? If for some reason they do, they can only drive one at a time; so it is irrelevant. There may be an increase in respiratory diseases, but this is nothing to do with cars, and nor is smog, which was far, far worse in my childhood when cars were far, far fewer. Perhaps it’s global warming? That has nothing to do with cars, either: even proponents of man-influenced global warming accept that if we all stopped driving tomorrow it would make no perceptible difference. And even if Norfolk gets noticeably warmer, there is no reason at all that this should produce more tornados than we get now.

As for a motorway and two three-lane ring roads around Norwich, this is the same bizarre vision that the letter-writer would no doubt have produced for 2004 if he had been writing in 1970. The only major difference from that date is the southern bypass, which is scarcely mentioned by anti-road campaigners because it is so obviously successful: it is not crammed full of cars and it is not surrounded by ugly development. It just makes travelling easier.

Roads alarmists like to put about wild-eyed predictions which even they must realise are far from the truth. What they do not say is that less than one per cent of our still lovely countryside is covered by roads – and that includes London. Even if you include wildlife-inhabited verges, it is still a long way under two per cent. Compared to other European countries, we are failing abysmally to provide enough motorways – let alone other roads – to cope with increased traffic. In terms of numbers of inhabitants, we are third lowest after Greece and Ireland. In terms of area, we are sixth lowest. Holland, often praised for its cyclist-friendly streets and certainly not covered in tarmac, has four times as many motorway miles as we do.

If we had been just competent in this area, we would not have to be scrabbling around now looking for methods of road-charging to prevent gridlock. I suspect that the dossier that advocates this has rather less intelligence behind it than came out of Iraq before the war. It is noticeable that some of the most vociferous opponents of the northern distributor road are from places far removed from it, like the Suffolk border. People to the north of Norwich need it: it will make their environment cleaner, quieter and friendlier.

Why anyone should be against this is beyond me. Why they should exaggerate the effects to such an Alice-in-Wonderland extent is unfortunately fairly clear.

Council keeps quiet over 'appalling shambles'

In this brave new era of public consultation, the last thing that many local authorities want to do is talk to a member of the public. Systems are in place to prevent this wherever possible.

This is what a Norwich woman, Betty Distill, found when Norwich City Council spent £137,000 on making her street more dangerous, installing high kerbs and preventing safe parking – a process described by a former city councillor as “the appalling North Park Avenue shambles”.

She was so frustrated at the lack of any intelligent response from the council to her repeated letters that she withheld £87.41 council tax in protest – and ended up in Norwich Magistrates’ Court in February, where her case was postponed until the council’s scrutiny committee had looked at the issue.

She was back at court again, as requested, recently, by which time the scrutiny committee should have met. Strangely, it hadn’t, and the council was suddenly more than eager to forget its £30 costs if Mrs Distill would pay her outstanding tax.

Being a law-abiding person – she is a former probation office administrator – Mrs Distill had no intention of withholding the tax permanently. But she used the opportunity to tell the court about the council’s reprehensible behaviour in robbing residents of “what was pleasant and peaceful living”, as well as its arrogance, mismanagement and failure to follow proper procedures.

The council did not respond to this.

But in the end it may have to, because Mrs Distill’s complaints are now being investigated by local MP, Education Secretary Charles Clarke. Perhaps the council will condescend to talk to him.

Draconian bid to restrict bird movements

Norfolk campaigner Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, who has moved to Cromer following a fall, has hit out at a new European directive restricting the activities of certain birds.

Mr Houseago, now 105 and a veteran of the Wymondham Newt Wars, has access to a number of leaks from the European Commission and has as a result become a member of the United Kingdom Independence Party (Vicarage Road Division).

“One document left me fuming,” he reported yesterday. “It stated that restrictions would be placed upon certain birds so that they could be more accurately identified by European observers.

“Reed warblers would in future be confined to reed, whereas sedge warblers would only be allowed to inhabit sedge.

“House sparrows must at all times be within reach of a house (as the crow flies), whereas hedge sparrows have to stay close to field edges. I don’t have to tell you how difficult that is. As for Arctic terns, they are going to be banned from the United Kingdom altogether, except in very bad weather.

“The only good thing is that if the directives go through, our commons are going to be covered with birds of many different kinds.”

A twitcher was unavailable.

Quote

There is now a multi-million-pound revenue stream that depends on the indiscriminate infliction of unreasonable laws by unreasonable people on largely law-abiding motorists who are punished disproportionately for what are predominantly minor indiscretions.

Philip Johnston, Daily Telegraph

12 July 2004

on 13 July 2004 at 08:58

Flyover snails set normal pace

Unsurprisingly for a society that thinks speed is a major social problem, we seem to have more and more difficulty getting things done on time.

The notorious flyover snails in Norwich were a prime example. Masquerading as a construction company, they managed to exceed the stated time for completion of renovation work on the Magdalen Street crawl-over by a period so ludicrously large that in the end people just laughed – or cried.

Even though motorists don’t normally count, the city council was embarrassed enough to say it wouldn’t happen again. And it hasn’t, quite. Admittedly the Prince of Wales Road jigsaw puzzle was supposed to be finished in April, but hey, it’s only July. The city council hasn’t even worked itself up to slightly indignant yet.

The schools PFI scheme for Norfolk, involving that exciting company Jarvis, is now to no-one’s surprise (except possibly certain County Hall officials) two years behind schedule and possibly on the brink of falling through completely.

And out in the county and beyond it’s becoming quite normal to see road works scheduled for 38 weeks, or some other number so huge that it would be quicker for normal human beings to build several new roads instead.

As I write, Saxlingham Nethergate, south of Norwich, is closed to through traffic for at least 12 weeks for drainage work, inconveniencing huge numbers of people. And that’s the crux, isn’t it? People don’t matter any more. It’s easier for the construction company to shut off miles of country roads, and so they do.

Even Norwich Cathedral has been hit by a variation of the plague. Its much-heralded, sparkling new library was due to be in full use by now. It was officially opened by the Bishop in May, and librarian Gudrun Warren – as well as a large number of potential users – must be frustrated by various delays that mean the earliest it will now be actually open is September.

The usual problems of slotting square workmen into round holes are cited, and one sceptic suggested that the cutting-edge shelving was discovered not to fit well on to medieval flint walls. I’m sure that can’t be right.

On stepping out of the delightful new refectory and peering through the library’s forlornly closed glass doors the other day, I was struck by two things: a worryingly vague sign saying it would be open “in due course” and a notice affixed to an inside wall, headed “Divine Inspiration”. So it’s come to that.

That green, green feeling

Following my piece a month ago on the deceptive double-standard green badge system for disabled parking in Norwich, I received several letters from people who were extremely angry at the city council’s inflexible attitude. One suggested that the “fine city” tag was “something of a sick joke to the elderly and disabled people I have spoken to”. She suggested that “Norwich – the Exclusive City” might be more appropriate.

Following the recent election, the Greens may be rejoicing at a greener council for the city, but until this system is ended, the word “green” will continue to leave a sick taste in many mouths.

Looks like a police car, maybe

It is quite surprising that speed cameras are catching any drivers in Norfolk, if we are to believe information supplied by the annual report of Norfolk Police, published as a supplement in this paper recently.

According to this document, speed is calculated by using the formula “time over distance travelled = speed”. This would come as a surprise to Mr Wardrop, my maths teacher at the City of Norwich School in the 1960s, as well as to most of his pupils, who were taught that time = distance over speed, and so speed = distance over time. Perhaps this is part of the chief constable’s “mature debate about speeding”. Ah, well. I don’t suppose they’re too worried about details while they’re trying to increase vehicle-related crime detections to the heady heights of 9.3 per cent. Yes, I did say to 9.3 per cent. It doesn’t say what from.

Of course there is much encouraging information to be had as well. I now know, for example, that a highway patrol car is basically white and is a “medium-sized vehicle”. In case I am still confusing it with a Transit van, there is a picture, which is reassuring, because I haven’t seen a patrol car for some time.

Not so glorious Waveney

The remains of a couple of hippopotamuses found stranded halfway up a quarry wall in South Norfolk were originally thought to be 700,000 years old, give or take a week.

But local expert Len “Kissme” Hardy claims that they look very like a pair introduced unsuccessfully into the Waveney in 1975 in an attempt to cut down on rats. Unfortunately they turned out to be vegetarian, and escaped. A later “sighting” of them in Diss Mere by Mr Hardy was discounted by scientists.

28 June 2004

on 28 June 2004 at 21:28

Time to campaign against real causes of accidents

It is not unusual to be criticised for something I have simply not said. But it was bizarre to peruse the EDP letters page last week and find I was criticised for saying something I could not possibly have said.

The widely misreported figures on speed cameras nationally hit the streets on June 16: my last page appeared on June 14 and was as usual written a few days earlier, so I could not, as one reader seems to think, have queried which lives were supposed to have been saved by them.

The confusion may have arisen because I did ask (satirically, in case anyone else was wondering) which 44 lives were supposed to have been saved by Suffolk’s speed cameras – a claim made earlier this month.

In fact this is interesting, because it illustrates how people will bandy figures around wildly in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable. The national report claimed 100 lives saved nationwide: Suffolk seems to have done extraordinarily well if it alone managed 44 of them. One might well ask for the names and addresses.

As others have pointed out, the whole thing is a sham. The same “independent” report that made the claim also revealed that accidents had gone up at many camera sites, and it is a matter of record that since the speed-obsessed brigade got their teeth into our drivers, road fatalities have been going up nationwide following a long downward trend.

The reduction in accidents at some sites is hardly surprising. If you erect cameras in places where there have been a high number of accidents, it is not at all unlikely that they will fall in succeeding years, since accidents are random events. There is a scientific reason for this, which if you are interested you can access on www.safespeed.org.uk/pr126.html – a useful site for those sceptical of scameras and interested in the facts.

So if we installed garden gnomes instead of cameras we would get roughly the same results – without the generation of huge cash income, from which I understand the Treasury swallows 20 per cent.

Why do so many people think speed cameras are a good thing? Often because they don’t think at all. Another reader rightly diagnosed major causes of accidents as carelessness and impatience – and then called for more cameras and higher fines. But speed cameras do not film carelessness and impatience, most of which takes place well within the speed limit. It is about time the Government had a campaign against the real causes of accidents, if that is what it really cares about.

Quite nice trees on horizon

Most of us have been familiar for a long time with AONBs and, in some cases, SSSIs. Just in case you haven’t, they are Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites of Special Scientific Interest, and they perform a useful function in preserving landscape from people who might want to turn it into an urban wasteland. You know the sort of people: they view beauty as an optional extra in life and can live quite easily in the hell portrayed by Big Brother and its cousins, the angst-ridden soaps. There are a few of them about; so I’m grateful for any sensible attempt to preserve the wonders of the natural world. But I am a little worried about one designation that I came across for the first time recently: an Area of Attractive Landscape (AAL).

I am not sure what effect this has on planners, but it frightens me. It’s far too bland – rather like saying that a person is interesting (AIP). It wouldn’t put off the wastelanders for a moment.

What are we to expect next? Areas of Quite Nice Trees (AQNTs)? Sites of Fairly Presentable Hedges (SFPHs)? Reasonably Pretty Rivers (RPRs)? These are not suggestions.

Destination of cats' eyes unclear

A number of visitors to Norfolk have been asking me about our policy towards pets, following encounters with a number of signs reading “Cats’ eyes removed”.

I was able to disabuse them fairly quickly of the notion that these were actual cats – so no hard felines there. But I was surprised to be informed that such notices were peculiar to Norfolk and left a disturbing impression. They may be right: I have since seen signs elsewhere referring to “missing road studs”, which hardly seems to be an improvement in the ambiguity department but does sound slightly less painful.

My visitors were not, however, prepared to let it go at that. Why, they wanted to know, were so many cats’ eyes being removed? Where were they storing them? Was someone putting together a museum of cats’ eyes that would become part of our national heritage? Were they going to be used to illuminate the Great Whelk destined for Stiffkey marshes? Was Lottery funding involved?

Perhaps an EU directive had been issued.

I was not really able to help. I suggested that it might be part of the grand plan to make driving so unpleasant that no-one would want to do it, or possibly a road safety ploy, preventing drivers from seeing where they were going. (I know it sounds ridiculous, but so does putting lumps of concrete in the middle of the road and calling them traffic calming.)

Can readers suggest anything?

Over-the-shoulder look at road safety

The installation of vast numbers of pedestrian crossings on the most dangerous road in the northern hemisphere – Prince of Wales Road, Norwich – is presumably based on the interesting idea that the more opportunities you give people to cross the road, the safer they will be.

But are those cutting-edge crossings really so well planned? One reader suggests that a rather important safety principle has been overlooked: looking where you’re going.

He writes: “I like to look at the road I am about to cross, but on these new crossings the red and green man on the other side of the road is not there.

“He’s been moved to a display on your own side next to the push-button. So at the same time as checking the road you have to look over your left shoulder (and hope no-one is in the way).” Tricky. But no doubt the trusted old method has been proved defective in some way. We should be told.

Surely it could not simply be that the new method is cheaper?

14 June 2004

on 16 June 2004 at 10:13

Green badge ploy nets disabled

Of all the bureaucratic, misleading and misconceived systems operating in the city of Norwich (and there are a few), the green badge scheme must come near the top of the list.

Let us say that you are a disabled person – a holder of the national blue badge which enables you to park on yellow lines and in certain designated bays. You do not have a green badge and have probably never heard of it.

You drive round the city and eventually spy a disabled parking space. It says so in big white letters, and you confirm it by checking a nearby lamp-post, which has a blue badge on it. You park for two hours.

On your return, you find you have a parking ticket. Why? Cunningly, the council has placed a green badge bay next to the blue badge bay, and you have inadvertently slipped into it. On searching further, you find that a green badge adorns a second lamp-post which you had neglected to spot. After all, you are disabled, and have no desire to carry out a survey of nearby lamp-posts.

Is this a deliberate ploy by the council to fleece the disabled? We know that the council favours fit people, because of its strenuous efforts to help cyclists and pedestrians, but working on the principle that one should not attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The green badge fee is £5 a year, and it generates the usual ton of paperwork – all to no purpose, because anyone with a blue badge would almost certainly qualify for a green one if they applied. And anyone rejected has the right to an independent doctor’s examination, at a cost probably slightly in excess of £5.

So why does the council persist with it? Chief executive officer Anne Seex admits that bringing the scheme to an end would save money and reduce bureaucracy. The 22 spaces reserved for green badge holders would be available for blue badge holders, and the shame felt by people receiving a ticket unfairly would be removed.

I understand a consultation process is taking place. I wish this did not worry me as much as it does.

Giant whelk on Stiffkey marshes

I have received a call from world-famous local explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek, following publication on this page of his plans to distract tourists from the over-visited western part of North Norfolk and lure them into the Empty Quarter, east of Cromer.

This, he says, “may appear to sit uncomfortably with my plan to open Whelk World – a leisure complex involving 1000 glass fibre boat-like holiday chalets on Stiffkey marshes and a giant illuminated whelk visible from Holland on clear nights”. But in fact he intends to make this a magnet for the more discerning and artistically sensitive visitor, taking a lead from the success of the Millennium Dome and the Lowestoft kipper. And he has further plans for the so-called Empty Quarter. He adds: “I am in negotiations with the owners of Blackpool's Golden Mile and hope soon to be able to announce that each year after the illuminations are switched off, they will be transferred to Bacton and used to adorn the terminal which is currently little visited in December.”

You knew where the Vikings stood

Viking hordes pitched their tents near Cow Tower on the banks of the Wensum in Norwich over Whit weekend and behaved in such an eco-friendly way that I suspected they were city councillors in disguise. They certainly had a Lib-Dem look about them, despite the absence of road humps. Maybe it was an election ploy, but if so I am afraid it failed to fire my enthusiasm for a politically united Europe, Viking or otherwise.

Despite this late evidence of greenish tendencies, you knew where the Vikings stood – for the kind of rape and pillage not yet disguised as EU directives. The problem with politics nowadays is not that the public is apathetic, but that the parties have no distinctive principles – just a series of half-baked ideas lumped together in response to market research. The result is that you don’t really want any of them. Hence the stubborn support for fringe groups with a narrow but sharp focus. All three major parties are so seduced by the idea of being politicians on a bigger stage that they don’t seem to grasp the fact that most people don’t want to be part of a Europe that has a totally different legal basis and tradition, without UK freedom safeguards.

Some of you may think we’re already way down the road in that direction, but perhaps it’s not too late. After all, the Vikings have moved on.

Don't slow down: we need the money

The anti-car lobby continues its campaign of quarter-truths and misinformation – something we can only expect to continue with the Government’s appointment of a programme assurance officer at a salary of £35,000 a year to help manage speed cameras.

I know a number of people who would love to manage speed cameras for nothing, but their methods might not suit the Government. Meanwhile we have the police in Hampshire to thank for making it as clear as it can possibly be that money, and not road safety, is what they are after.

A man of 71 put up a placard warning oncoming traffic of a speed trap at a danger spot. As a result, everyone slowed down, which must be good, mustn’t it?

The police didn’t think so, because they weren’t getting any money out of it. They took him to court, and the glove puppets who pose as magistrates nowadays found him guilty – and bizarrely banned him from driving! Not only that, they refused to suspend the sentence pending his appeal, which some might say was admitting the injustice by making sure it was administered before it could be put right.

But it doesn’t matter, because speed cameras increase road safety, don’t they? Well, road deaths in Norfolk are up by a third so far this year. They are also up in Suffolk, which doesn’t stop them claiming that cameras have saved 44 lives. Perhaps they could tell us which 44.

7 June 2004

on 8 June 2004 at 15:46

D-Day postponement shock

The articles scheduled for today were held over by the Eastern Daily Press to permit comprehensive reporting of D-Day anniversary celebrations. They should now appear on June 14.

24 May 2004

on 24 May 2004 at 07:00

Lady Julian meets the Pink Panther

I have never thought of Norwich as a noisy city, but the Literary Walk arranged as part of the Norwich Festival changed my mind.

It was not the excellent actors, popping up during the procession to illustrate various events in a vigorous fashion, who left my ears ringing. Nor the different narrators who imparted their vital information stoutly in the face of adverse circumstances. It was those adverse circumstances themselves that got under my skin.

Some of the proliferating noises that interrupted the proceedings were so unexpected that it seemed someone had set out deliberately to produce as many unwanted decibels as possible.

The unpleasant grinding of diesel-spewing lorries and buses could have been anticipated, I suppose, and the cars making heavy weather of getting in and out of the car park off Elm Hill were typical of the rather inept driving that seems to have become the norm in recent years.

But the passing aircraft that interrupted one discourse was unexpected, as was the motor mower in The Close that shattered the cathedral calm. Strangely that was not the only interruption in what might have been thought as a haven of silence: as the actor spoke some lines from Julian of Norwich, she was interrupted by a trumpeter from an open window playing the theme to The Pink Panther – not the happiest of juxtapositions.

In Castle Meadow we had the threatening approach of a motorised street cleaner (happily diverted at the last minute), and somewhere along the way we had the usual emergency sirens and then a barking dog. What are the chances of that happening?

And then of course there were the people who thought they had every right to make as much noise as possible while passing by on the other side – notably Adam’s mother, who felt the need to call repeatedly for her errant offspring in a voice which would have made me think twice before getting back into the Garden of Eden.

Happily, the noisiest item in Norwich – the police helicopter – did not put in an appearance. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies.

Parrot of mass destruction

It is hard to say which of two alarming news stories in the EDP recently is the more worrying. The first revealed that Japweed – not hi-tech smoking material, but an invasive seaweed – is colonising the East Anglian coastline, with damaging consequences for the ecosystem. The second is that an African parrot was seen driving a car down the A47 towards Yarmouth.

Now I suppose I should be concerned at four-metre-long weed that can overpower kelp, but I have never felt that overpowering kelp was very difficult. It usually just lies there.

So I have to go for the parrot. This is despite the fact that compared with most drivers on the A47, the parrot probably comes near the top of the scale in terms of intelligence, though not in terms of reaching the pedals.

There is a slight suspicion that this particular parrot, spotted perched on the steering wheel, was not actually driving the vehicle, but as the police wisely pointed out, it could have been distracting.

Given that most Norfolk drivers find an empty car distracting and a passenger almost impossible to cope with while attempting to drive safely at the same time, the parrot must be a weapon of mass destruction.

I suggest that some of the speed cameras which have at last been given the push should be relocated in order to pin down the bird. If not, I suggest we invade Africa.

Move to lure tourists into the Empty Quarter

Richard “Volcano” Meek, the world-famous local explorer, has been researching the tourism hot spot of North Norfolk, and is deeply concerned at the lack of balance there.

He says: “I notice that the western half is being sold as the Saltmarsh Coast. This disturbs me, as I feel that saturation point has been reached and more should be done to encourage people to visit the Empty Quarter from Cromer round to Caister.”

This is a radical suggestion, since there is very little in the Empty Quarter but sand and desolation, and many travellers have become disorientated there. But Mr Meek feels we have no alternative.

“Clearly the west cannot take much more,” he says. “Witness my own planning application for a mobile home park and the associated development of Whelk World on Stiffkey marshes. I intend to set up a Tourist Misinformation Office in Fakenham to redirect trippers towards the currently under-visited areas.”

One of his groundbreaking ideas for achieving this is to make certain name changes. “I feel that potential visitors idly perusing the map would be less likely to head for Browncrusty (formerly Brancaster) or Wells-Nowhere-near-The-Sea, whereas Scratocobana or Bactokiki or even Happyboro would prove so much more alluring,” he believes.

“This is clearly not a new idea, as someone has obviously tried before with California and Ostend. I would like to finish the job.”

Suffolk call centres rejected

Houseago Inc, the North Norfolk conglomerate headed by anti-newt activist Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 105, has decided against using offshore call centres.

Recent research has revealed a strong tendency for customers of banks and insurance companies to switch from companies using foreign call centres, and Houseago Inc says it understands the problem.

“We were planning to set up a call centre in north Suffolk, near Halesworth,” said spokesman Len “Kissme” Hardy, “because it would be much cheaper, and Suffolk people happily put up with worse working conditions and an inferior football team.

“But our customers have told us that they would not be able to understand what Suffolk people were saying. So we will continue to answer any queries and take orders from our well-established base at Pondhenge.

“We have a very good offer on garden gnomes this week.”

Hot air fails to impress

With the advent last week of summer weather, some of you may have had difficulty breathing and put it down to high pollen counts or global warming.

Sadly, the problem is more radical, but I have not seen it widely advertised. In fact, the only notice warning the public appeared to be at a garage in Ipswich Road, Norwich. It read: “Sorry air not working.”

Sorry air indeed. It should get its act together.

10 May 2004

on 12 May 2004 at 11:38

PM chief suspect as president disappears

When the president of the National Association of Head Teachers disappeared mysteriously from the platform in the middle of the Cardiff conference last week, it did not take a Ruth Rendell or a P D James to work out who done it.

In this case it was not the butler, but the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Tony Blair, MP. He was an obvious suspect, because although he was not scheduled in the conference papers to speak – the Government was to be represented by a decoy minister, David Miliband – word had got around early in the proceedings that he would be lurking in the wings. His weapon? A speech. His alibi? None.

The evidence was indisputable. Popular NAHT president Dr Rona Tutt had indeed vanished from the platform to greet the guest speaker, and the conference was left in supposed ignorance – which is difficult when you have a room full of detectives.

Of course they knew. Head teachers know everything. And if they didn’t, there was the very subtle hint of a hefty dollop of policing outside, together with barriers, obviously unobtrusive men in suits and the kind of walk-through machine that always goes off when I approach it in airports. Happily on this occasion it missed all my hidden metal.

Inside the conference hall, things were tense, because the president had come back, but there was no sign of her guest. So they did what head teachers do best: they got everyone to stand up, then sit down again. The second time they got up there was an announcement: “Ladies and Gentleman, the Rt Hon Tony Blair.” Which was a bit of a giveaway, because he still loitered in an offside position, out of sight but not out of mind.

They sat down again. I have to say this was done really well, as if they had done it before somewhere. And then at last, the real thing – or was it? Mr Blair was announced again, and from the shadows to the podium stepped … veteran general secretary David Hart, with a brief but witty introduction.

The tension was getting to some people, but they were mainly journalists. The heads endured more stress in an average day at school, and the Blair speech quickly dissipated any that remained. After dignified applause, the PM departed as swiftly as he came. But what about questions? Well, happily we had the lumbered but youthfully optimistic Mr Miliband, who quickly won delegates over by admitting that he had not long ago been described as a “Year 8 in a suit”. Not entirely appropriate, I thought. You don’t get many Year 8s with a sense of humour who can not only answer questions but also do what they’re told.

Parents with flimsy grasp on reality

Charles Clarke may want to see closer co-operation between parents and teachers, but this will require considerably more movement from many parents than from the teachers.

His boss, Mr Blair, was right to say last week that when he and I were at school if you got in trouble with the teacher you would get in trouble with your parents too: now things are very different, as can be seen from the rash of ridiculous court cases brought against teachers, instigated by parents with only the flimsiest grasp on reality.

I once expressed astonishment at the behaviour of a child in a city school that I was visiting, only to be told: “If you knew her mother, you’d understand.” This was not an isolated case.

Only a few days ago I was speaking to a man who has spent a large part of his life voluntarily coaching East Anglian boys aged eight to 14 in soccer skills, and running teams to develop their ability. He has now stopped doing so because over the years the atmosphere changed completely: in the end he received constant abuse from the boys, many of whom were totally lacking in discipline – and appeals to their parents to back him up fell on stony ground.

Of course there are good mothers and fathers, and I know many of them. So it is sad that children who have all the basic equipment to be delightful human beings can get lumbered with parents who are so dense that they think angst-ridden soaps and bolshy downmarket tabloids reflect the way life should be lived.

Coming clean over apple laundry

I may have been misled about the precise nature of the clothes peg crop that I came across in the Norfolk-Suffolk wilderness recently.

I naturally assumed that it was part of a clandestine operation – disguised as an apple orchard – to grow vast quantities of pegs in a free-range situation. But a regular reader has put me right.

“What you actually stumbled on was an apple laundry,” she writes. “This is a new idea from America, where ‘air-dried sheets’ are a popular boast of hotels.

“Everybody knows you should wash fruit before consuming it. Naturally, when washing large numbers of apples, one needs to hang them out to dry afterwards – using clothes pegs. “Potato laundries may follow, although they will obviously be harder to hang on washing lines, as they have no stalk to peg them on by.” I am happy to set the record straight.

Companies have no street cred

More pedestrianisation in the centre of Norwich may or may not be a good thing. Walking in traffic-free streets is pleasurable enough, but buses and bikes tend to creep up on you unawares, which is probably more dangerous than constant traffic. Then there is the question of where cars and lorries go if you close streets to them. Events in the winter have demonstrated that when you remove alternative routes, you get gridlock, and there is much to be done before the inner link road works smoothly, even without traffic overflows from elsewhere.

But while it is unfortunate that transport policies are decided by political parties with axes to grind, it is even more unfortunate that they should be heavily influenced by companies that are clearly self-interested.

We read that Lend Lease, the company behind the massive Chapelfield development, wants more roads in the centre of the city to be pedestrianised. I do not wonder why this should be, but I do wonder why we should take any notice.

It is probably even more obviously absurd than hocking the future of our schools and hospitals to private companies.

26 April 2004

on 26 April 2004 at 07:56

No-brain method of slowing traffic

I suppose if you asked a small bucket of cement if it could suggest a method of reducing traffic speed, it would advocate putting bumps in the middle of the road.

But it comes as something of a surprise when people who should have slightly more brains than cement come to the same conclusion.

You might think that they would take other things into account – things that never find their way into the one-dimensional statistics that “prove” speed humps work.

• Things like the deaths caused by the inability of emergency services to respond efficiently: the London Ambulance Service says that in its area this could amount to up to 500 deaths a year, which is surprising even to me. • Things like routine pain caused to elderly and infirm passengers in cars, buses and taxis.

• Things like vehicle suspension damage, which Norfolk police says is a minor problem but which could affect vehicle handling and lead to crashes elsewhere.

• Things like noise pollution to nearby residents. Last autumn a builder was driven to digging up a hump with his JCB because it was depriving him and his wife of sleep. Many without access to JCBs would like to do the same.

• Things like injuries to cyclists and pedestrians: I am currently suffering from sprained ankle ligaments and abrasions caused by a bump in the road created during traffic calming operations in the city. I may sue.

All this – my injuries apart – has made the London Assembly recommend ripping out all the capital’s speed humps. But Norfolk is not following suit because (wait for it) “issues that affect London would not necessarily be comparable to Norfolk”. Well, we all know London folk are a breed apart, but can they be all that different? Trowse residents, about to have the humps inflicted on them, may not be convinced.

Speed bumps may reduce accidents, but so would shutting the road completely, putting sugar in cars’ petrol tanks or employing cyclists to slash everyone’s tyres. None of these would be acceptable to most of us.

Just because something has a desired effect, it doesn’t mean we should ignore all of the undesirable effects.

Traffic can be slowed in several ways, if indeed it needs slowing and the bumps don’t appear as a kind of allergic reaction during a bout of political correctness. Even the dreaded chicane pox is much better, and rumble strips and illuminated warning signs are better still. They have been proved to work too.

But speed bumps have become such a knee-jerk reaction that no-one tries to think of anything better. Even hotels have them flung all over their driveways – which has become so irritating that I am planning to check whether they are installed before booking in. “Speed humps? Sorry, I’ll go elsewhere. Give my regards to the cement.”

Secret clothes peg growing fields revealed

Many readers have asked me where clothes pegs come from. I am happy to say that I solved the problem on a recent country walk in the notoriously under-investigated border area of South Norfolk and North Suffolk, where you can go for miles without seeing any signs of sentient life, or even people.

It was here that we stumbled upon an orchard which was cunningly disguised – using apple trees – to look as if apples were grown there. In fact, through the alertness of one of my companions we discovered a cunningly placed wooden tub full of hundreds of clothes pegs, just coming to maturity. We were able to pluck one or two in an environmentally sound sort of way, and they were extremely tasty.

I wonder if readers have come across similar crops in remote parts of East Anglia.

Shot at stopping whales dropping in

Recent speculation on this page concerning beached whales, time-space distortion and the missing Mars probe Beagle 2 has prompted noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek to remind me that his own theory concerning the whales is much more likely.

I will leave readers to decide. Are they aliens in disguise, attempting to drop on us gently but aggressively by parachute (and failing), and were they really responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs? Mr Meek demands to be taken seriously and urges the powers-that-be to investigate more fully his plans for a Blakeney Point super-gun.

Insurance companies go up against God

The decision to flatten headstones in church graveyards at St Nicholas Church in Dersingham is the tip of the iceberg, our church correspondent writes.

It happened as a result of a health and safety audit, part of a risk assessment for insurance purposes. Future demands by insurance companies are likely to involve taking down spires and towers and removing any wall more than 50 years old. Some tall and unstable vicars may also be at risk.

“The entire Anglican church could be laid low,” said churchwardens’ spokesman M F Umbrage yesterday. “And I am not alone in suspecting the motives of the insurance companies.

“Clearly if you believe in a loving God you are less likely to pay huge insurance premiums. God is a competitor for these people.”

Mr Umbrage pointed out that that the church would not have got off the ground if insurance companies had existed 2000 years ago. “Pentecost would have been extinguished by sprinklers,” he said. “They will be banning baptisms next.”

Shock as birds take newt advice

Alarm was expressed last night by Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago at a report that great crested newts had joined forces with certain birds in a campaign to make life more difficult for people.

The newts, who have been successful in gaining huge relocation expenses in return for allowing roads to be built in some areas, are believed to be advising stone curlews and nightjars around Brandon.

As a result, the birds are claiming that a badly needed bypass for Brandon is a “threat” to their habitat in nearby Thetford Forest.

“It’s absurd,” said Mr Houseago. “Birds can fly, can’t they? Some people just can’t get things into perspective.”

12 April 2004

on 12 April 2004 at 05:00

In search of a country car park

I sallied forth on a glorious day at the end of March to take in the newly created boardwalk at Barton Broad, which I was told is a thing of beauty. Happily, I can report that it is indeed stunning. Finding the car park is something else again.

No trouble at all if you’re disabled. You follow the bright orange AA sign in the centre of Neatishead and after a brief worry about whether it can really be this far, you arrive at a bright new, unmistakeable disabled car park on the road to Irstead, where you park.

Being fairly able, of course, I couldn’t. I was directed by a tasteful sign to go back the way I had come for 1.2 kilometres, a handy measurement that I find only slightly less useful than cubits and furlongs. But since my instinct is to do what I’m told, I turned round, searched for the car park for people like me and … eventually arrived back at Neatishead.

Just to show you how able I am, I then proceeded all the way to Barton Turf, where I had encountered Barton Broad before. It was still there – but no bright new car park, and no boardwalk. So I turned round again and did the whole journey in reverse.

And then it happened. Out of the corner of my eye, only eight furlongs and the odd cubit or so from the disabled area, by a freak chance I spied the sign as I passed it. It was in a tasteful light wood designed to blend in with the landscape, and it directed me up a lane on the opposite side of the road to the Broad, and behind a hotel.

I understand about tastefulness and the desire to blend in with the countryside, of course. But didn’t it occur to anyone that a driver might have difficulty in spotting an understated beige sign on the wrong side of the road, directing him to a car park he couldn’t see at a place where he wasn’t expecting it?

Unless it’s just me (which I suppose it could be), what you actually end up with for all your planning is additional pollution and traffic, plus drivers whose skill quickly decreases in direct proportion to their growing frustration. And then of course the toilets were shut, and the two prime spots in the able car park were restricted to disabled people too. I was so annoyed I went and parked in the empty forbidden zone. Go on, sue me.

Roundabout bid to nationalise page

Calls to nationalise this website have been made by a Wicklewood man.

“Too much attention is being paid to market forces, which are highly unreliable,” he said. “It’s about time real issues were tackled, like the sudden appearance of so many mini-roundabouts in Norwich’s medieval road system.

“Everyone knows that in the distant past there were many mini-roundabouts in the area, but the Normans removed them to make the Castle Mound. Now that the Mound has been hollowed out, it seems they are trying to put the mini-roundabouts back without thinking about how traffic has increased.

“That’s the sort of thing we want to know about. Who cares where Dorothea Goodchild is? And as for Professor V A R Scheinlich, I don’t believe he exists, any more than the Liberal Democrats.

“What use is all that to anyone? When do we get an update on garden gnomes and an investigation into why the Green Party has tons of reasonable policies and one idiotic one?

“Worst of all, it just rambles on. Nationalise it, I say. That’s the only way you’ll get any sense out of it.”

Mr Wicklewood, who prefers to remain anonymous, claims he did not say hardly any of the above, which is true enough.

Minding other people's business

In a recent poll on bicycle safety helmets, 62.7 per cent of people who responded said they did not ride a bike. Yet, when the same group were asked if there should be a campaign to make cyclists wear safety helmets, over 85 per cent said yes.

This means that at least 47 of every 100 people questioned did not ride a bike and so knew nothing about safety helmets, but despite that, they wanted cyclists to wear them. Does this mean (a) we are a nation of busybodies? (b) we like a good laugh? (c) we enjoy making pronouncements on things we know nothing about?

I might worry more about this particular example if I wasn’t aware of the large number of non-driving cyclists who have very firm views on how cars should be driven.

Fall-off of buses feared

A perceptive correspondent reports that the sudden deletion of all buses going to Yarmouth from Norwich earlier this month is almost certainly a response from the bus company to the prospect of coastal erosion.

Apparently the bus company says global warming calculations reveal that Yarmouth and all villages between it and Acle will have fallen into the sea by June because of the rising temperatures, sometimes known as “summer”.

The bus service has been withdrawn to avoid losing any vehicles. “It will also reduce carbon emissions,” said a concerned spokesperson. “We are putting lids on our saucepans too.”

Huge surprise on speed cameras

Well, there’s a surprise. Only two months after the Norfolk Speed Camera Promotion Partnership releases exclusive front-page figures showing that its devices work and cut road deaths, a police investigation finds that the partnership is “secret and unaccountable” and that the data used to decide camera sites is either questionable or missing.

This will come as no great shock to motorists who already know that road deaths in Norfolk have increased considerably since the creation of the partnership and who have enough common sense to spot that the positioning of certain cameras cannot be for anything other than fund-raising.

Meanwhile, the delusion that speed is responsible for most accidents continues, despite recent government figures revealing that it is way, way down the list. The Green Party wants to increase 20mph zones and traffic “calming” in Norwich under the mistaken belief that this reduces “noise pollution, emissions and fatalities”, and in Lowestoft the mindless machine that is Suffolk County Council wants to impose a 20mph limit and road humps on the A12 through the town.

Shredder, anyone?