29 March 2004

on 29 March 2004 at 09:37

Initial problem with ancient wood

The attempt by Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek to lead an expedition of intrepid nonagenarians into the unexplored depths of Foxley Wood in search of the original Norfolk man has evoked a response from the almost equally intrepid Norfolk Wildlife Trust, whose headquarters are so remote that I can only just see them from my Norwich bedroom window. PR and communications manager Val Bowers writes: “NWT Foxley Wood, near Dereham, is a remnant of the wildwood that once covered most of Norfolk. This wide swathe of ancient woodland was formed about 8000 years ago when the ice sheet which covered the UK at that time retreated slowly northwards, but now remains only as isolated pockets scattered around the county. “Mr Meek is therefore technically incorrect to call Foxley Norfolk's oldest wood. But at 300 acres, it's certainly the largest. We at NWT regularly lead working parties of willing septuagenarians and octogenarians into the heart of NWT Thursford Wood near Fakenham, which at only 25 acres is a much less daunting prospect than NWT Foxley Wood.

“Foxley's massive size precludes even us, its owner, from beginning to contemplate an exploration of the interior – even if it does indeed harbour surviving members of Homo Norfolkus. So we await with bated breath the outcome of Mr Meek's investigation.”

Not the least intriguing aspect of this whole thing is how Foxley Wood became NWT Foxley Wood. Presumably because we and Mr Meek need reminding who owns it, but I don’t like the trend.

I could end up driving down the HA A11 before cutting across on to the NCC A140, heading up to the NT Felbrigg Park and HI Pondhenge, then paying a later visit to the RSPB Snettisham Reserve, possibly by way of the CC Peddars Way and FC Thetford Forest. And all within what could soon be the EU UK, if we’re not careful.

Cash coup for trounced water dragons

Having been trounced in Norfolk by the stout and rigorous endeavours of county legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, expansionist great crested newts are making a comeback in Wales.

The newts, who through misinformation got themselves placed on the endangered species list, were able – despite Mr Houseago’s overall triumph – to infiltrate certain areas of local government in Norfolk, which have as a result lost all credibility. But in Wales they have managed to spend public money without going to those lengths.

Shortly before a hi-tech business park was built in Denbighshire the newts moved on to the site and achieved a PR coup by getting themselves described in the press as “endearing little blighters” and “miniature water dragons” – a particularly ingenious touch.

They then demanded 12 new ponds and four miles of fencing, plus a relocation fee of £2 million – roughly £6000 per newt. They are being carefully moved in an operation featuring roughly ten times as much care and attention as is spent on moving elderly humans into new care homes when their old ones are closed for no good reason.

While admittedly elderly residents of care homes are not as good as newts at destroying gnats, they are sometimes both endearing and dragon-like, and Mr Houseago has called for an equal amount of money to be spent on them, or at least some. Mr Houseago is 105.

Whales must be on Mars, says UEA man

The sad demise of the latest whale to beach itself off East Anglia is further evidence of life on Mars, according to Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, of the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing.

Whales are well known for their rejection of logic and all available evidence – rather like Suffolk transport policy makers and certain HGV drivers – which is why they constantly try to swim in water that is too shallow for them. Reports of very small amounts of water on Mars are “more or less proof that there must be whales there too”, said Prof Aufmerksam yesterday.

He was backed up by renaissance man Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston, who said his ground-breaking theory of the way in which Mars probe Beagle 2 slips between different space-time dimensions could easily be applied to whales.

“It would explain everything,” he added.

Brave new plan to simplify mail delivery

Imminent cutbacks in the much-better-than cars Norfolk bus service have been put down by the owners to “lack of profitability”. Curiously the same reason was given last week for the cancellation of a second postal delivery.

Doesn’t it make you nostalgic for the good old days when you put on a bus service to take people to places, and ran a postal service in order to get letters to people? Nowadays there are no bus companies or mail companies: there are just money companies. The next brave new plan from the Royal Mail is Mail Collect, which is absolutely free: all you have to do is turn up at the sorting office and pick up your mail.

My spies tell me that further breakthroughs are in the pipeline. The “big one” is a plan whereby your friends ring you up and tell you they have a letter for you: you then go round and collect it. The Royal Mail will again be making absolutely no charge.

Biggest week of the year

You may well have missed Science Week this year. If so, it was careless of you, because it was the biggest week of the year – March 12 to 23, which is 12 days, if the leaflet sent to me by a reader is to be believed.

Many people are hoping that this will start a trend, because another five days each week would come in very handy.

But there are sceptics. Have scientists really cracked the time barrier? I am totally convinced. How else would they known what the weather was going to be like in a hundred years’ time? They have obviously been there.

And then there is the City Hall clock, stuck at 11.25 again. It can’t be a coincidence.

15 March 2004

on 16 March 2004 at 19:30

Speed: the lorry anomaly

After being aroused from my slumber by Breakfast TV every morning, the first thing that comes to my consciousness is often news that a lorry has overturned and is blocking a major route. If it has not overturned, it has jack-knifed or hit something, often in perfect weather at a time when few other drivers are on the roads.

In a crash, it hardly needs saying that being hit by a lorry is far worse than being hit by a car. And frustration caused by lorry accidents often leads to further accidents elsewhere. What is being done to combat this clear and present danger?

We are constantly told that speed is the major cause of road accidents. If this were really true, why are no attempts being made to enforce HGV speed limits? Readers may be surprised to hear that on a single carriageway this is 40mph; on a dual carriageway, 50mph.

Cynically, speed cameras are not set to catch lorries speeding. They are set to catch the safest drivers on the road: experienced people driving well-appointed cars.

It may be true that most people would not want lorries to process down single carriageways at 40mph or below, because of the congestion it would cause. But we cannot say that and maintain at the same time that exceeding speed limits is the prime cause of accidents.

In fact that regular early morning chaos caused by rogue HGVs does not happen because of speed. Like almost every accident, it happens because of tiredness, incompetence or inattention by the driver.

What is being done to combat this clear and present danger? Practically, nothing.

Excitement for older people

Famous Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek has become concerned about the lack of exciting opportunities for older people in the county. He writes: “I watched that programme on TV where Jamie Oliver took 15 school leavers and trained them to run a restaurant. Great idea, but once again the needs of an older group have been neglected. I am tired of hearing people talk about the problems young people face finding jobs, when we have a group in our midst with an even higher rate of unemployment. “Who is looking out for the interests of the over-90s? Few of these are gainfully employed. They are too old even for the police or fire service and are often barred from tree surgery by prohibitive insurance premiums.”

In the spirit of Jamie Oliver, Mr Meek is now offering 15 fit nonagenarians a chance to join his next expedition into the remote fastness of Foxley Woods, not far from the mysterious village of Guist.

He says: “This being the oldest natural woodland in Norfolk, we hope to contact the surviving members of the original indigenous inhabitants of Norfolk, who are said to live there in small nomadic family groups.

“The expedition is being sponsored by a well known manufacturer of denture fixative, and applicants should not only be fit and able to breathe unassisted but be capable of chewing a Norfolk Biffin for publicity purposes.

“Interviews will be held on the first Thursday in April at our Fustyweed base camp.”

Making life difficult for strangers

I wrote a few weeks ago about the bizarre banning of a right turn from Thorpe Road, Norwich, into Riverside Road.

No-one has been able to explain why this is a good thing, but one reader did point out how difficult it was for anyone but a local to follow the diversion signs through a residential area – perhaps because the council doesn’t really want extra traffic using it. So what does the council want?

You might think it would want to help strangers find their way round the city, but apparently not. Imagine a couple of people – say the parents of a university student – attempting to leave Norwich by driving down Unthank Road, away from the golden triangle, where many students live.

They reach the ring road, where they should turn left so that they can join the A11 out of town. Only one problem. There is no way of telling it is the ring road, or a way out. So of course they continue straight ahead and eventually reach the A11 – at a point where they cannot turn right on to it and have to head back into the city again.

All it needs now is a sign saying “Byroad”, and it will be in line with the rest of the county.

1 March 2004

on 1 March 2004 at 11:28

Time to think road safety out again

The proposal by Suffolk County Council to put a ridiculous 50mph limit on the only half-decent road link between Norwich and Ipswich is typical of that county’s blinkered approach to road management.

It may be significant that whereas Norfolk’s roads supremo, Adrian Gunson, has the title of cabinet member for transport and planning, his Suffolk counterpart, Peter Monk , is the portfolio holder for public protection. Presumably Suffolk is not specifically interested in traffic and planning, but it is not very good at public protection either.

The county is well known for introducing blanket 30mph limits through all its villages in 1995, without any regard for whether such a limit was appropriate. All the statistics since then show that it was a mistake: before, casualties were reducing by an average of 171 per year; since the change, they have increased by an average of 51 per year. What about fatalities? The trend is similar. In fact last year 59 people died on Suffolk’s roads, compared to 43 the previous year. Mr Monk admitted when those figures were released: “The fatality figures sadly do not reflect the continued efforts by the county council and the police to reduce the number of deaths on our roads.”

Yet in considering the 50mph limit for the A140, he says: “It will, as we’ve proved with other measures across the county, reduce the number of accidents.”

You may think this thinking is not entirely consistent. But he is not alone. Simon Stevens, of Suffolk police, seems not to be aware of the poor safety record in Suffolk. He says: “Once new speed limits or traffic restrictions are set, we will enforce them. Our main aim in Suffolk is to make the county the safest it can possibly be.”

Commendable. So why continue with a policy that obviously doesn’t work?

It is not simply Norfolk pride that makes me praise Mr Gunson’s view that “I don’t think that more lower speed limits will solve their problem.

“I believe a lot of the accidents are caused by right-turning traffic and overtaking, due to frustration with the tailbacks caused by heavy traffic and by slow-moving cars, lorries and farm vehicles.

“In my view, roads like the A140 – and similar roads in Norfolk as well – need right-turning lanes put in at the junctions for the villages and dual carriageway bypasses for the bigger communities, such as Stonham, Thwaite and Stoke Ash.”

It’s just common sense, as was the welcome remark last week by Michael Edney, casualty reduction officer for Norfolk police, when he reported that traffic police were tackling nine accident blackspots in the county. Speed was not a major issue at any of them, he said. “It’s all down to driver error.”

Common sense costs money, of course, but lives are more important than cash or dogma. It’s time that Suffolk reviewed the situation and came to the same conclusion as Fagin in Oliver Twist: “I think I'd better think it out again!”

Council digs up free parking

Last time I suggested that the distinguished ladies and gentlemen responsible for transport and highways in Norwich had completely lost the plot in their so-called improvements to the central part of North Park Avenue, and were drifting in a different galaxy.

Now they have returned and have found a way to retrieve the situation – in the sense of getting some of the money back.

Where is it coming from? You guessed it – from the residents who are already infuriated by the way the changes were made. The council is planning to introduce permit parking in the area.

This is fine at the Bluebell Road end, where university overspill cars are a blight, but in the central section it simply means that residents who could previously park perfectly safely off road for nothing now have to park on the road and pay the council. It is no safer and no more attractive. Just more expensive. Wonderful. Who says the Liberal Democrats don’t have a coherent transport policy?

Recycling empty gestures

As a keen environmentalist, I welcomed the city council’s decision to give me a recycling box in which to insert newspapers and bottles. These, I was told, were to be emptied every fortnight – and to begin with, they were. Since Christmas they have been emptied once. And on the one occasion that the elusive emptiers put in an appearance they managed to drop a bottle and smash it. An attempt was made to clear the glass up, but when this proved less than successful, the rest of the glass was side-footed under a nearby car.

To the council, this may seem like recycling. To the residents of the street where I live, surrounded by waste paper and empty bottles, it seems more like an empty gesture.

War identification problem

You may have heard that our D-Day heroes are going to receive lottery funding to return to the beaches of Normandy this year – the 60th anniversary of the landings.

An excellent idea, but some of them are beginning to suspect that accessing the funding might require heroism of a rather different nature.

One veteran who rang up found he needed to quote his registration number – not a number that most people would be able to turn up easily. He told the young man on the end of the phone: “I have a war pension.”

“Oh?” responded the youth. “Which war was that?”

Beagle linked to whales in knot theory

The recent discovery near Reepham of the missing Mars explorer Beagle 2 has caused consternation in the world of cosmologists.

Len “Kissme” Hardy, from Hindolveston, an expert in unusual technology and some pies, claims that several interstellar vehicles have turned up in mid-Norfolk. This has not been widely publicised in order to avoid embarrassing scientists, who tend to stick to the same story through thick or thin.

“Beagle 2 got there as a direct result of the Big Bang,” said Mr Hardy. “And you know what caused that. Or maybe you don’t.”

Unfortunately the Mars explorer vehicle has since gone missing again. Professor V A R Scheinlich explains: “Knot theory – my version of string theory which is now widely accepted in Hingham – reveals that vehicles such as Beagle 2 contain a secret device that enables them to move from one dimension to another.”

He believes that Beagle 2’s movement through space-time is linked to the sudden appearance of a number of whales on the North Norfolk coast.

“It’s excessive for the time of year,” he said. “I believe that whales will soon be discovered on Mars. It’s the only explanation.

“It’s certainly nothing to do with global warming. That’s just ridiculous.”