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.