28 November 2005

on 28 November 2005 at 05:30

Slow, slow, slow results of public consultation

Another interesting example of public consultation is due to come to fruition next week, when Suffolk County Council will decide speed limits on the A140 where it passes through their territory.

Over the past 18 months an experimental maximum speed limit of 50mph has been imposed, with fascinating little sections at 40mph and 30mph. Some would say this is obviously nonsense for what should be a trunk road between the two centres of population in Norfolk and Suffolk. Suffolk County Council, on the other hand, wouldn’t. They think slower is safer, despite solid scientific research which indicates that people driving slightly faster than average are the safest on the roads, and the slowest drivers – together with those who speed excessively – are the most dangerous. In an attempt to get popular backing for their shaky position, they carried out a public consultation exercise – only to find that about four out of five people who responded wanted the 60mph limit reinstated. You want precision? All right, it was 79 per cent.

Overwhelming enough, but if what a correspondent told me is true, a good number of those voting to retain the experimental limits were rounded up by her to bolster the council’s case. So the “true” 60mph vote may be a little higher.

No surprise there, especially when you consider the words of an experienced traffic policeman who spent 30 years dealing with accidents on the A140. He describes the experimental limits as unnecessary and frustrating for drivers – which must be risky, since he puts virtually all the accidents he has dealt with down to human error.

The slower speed limits, he says, “are part of what is seen as a policy to reduce vehicle speeds throughout the county regardless of the need for them to be reduced”. And he should know. He is an expert.

He goes on to say that what is really needed are bypasses and dual carriageway stretches to enable safe overtaking – something that should have been done by the Highways Agency before it abdicated responsibility and detrunked the road.

As another expert – a former transport operations and traffic planner – puts it: “All around regulations are being tightened almost to the extreme to ensure only the qualified can build, repair, modify and teach, in most instances to protect life and limb. Yet the untrained and often biased can influence, set and modify almost at will any speed limit in the land without regard to the consequences.”

If the public consultation is to mean anything, on December 8 Suffolk County Council will reinstate the 60mph limit. But don’t hold your breath. What has become known as the Hingham Principle of local democracy – ask the public and then ignore them – is very tempting for would-be dictators.

Even if they one day have the problem of explaining to their electors why they bothered spending money on consultation at all.

Sail or return? Birthright at stake

Just because the people of Cromer seem to be almost 100 per cent hostile to the exciting new sail-shaped apartment building planned for their clifftop by developer Richard Davies, we should not assume that they are in some way lacking in aesthetic appreciation – or standing back from the cutting edge of archaeological innovation.

The point about this proposal is not love or hate for the proposed design, as Mr Davies and others seem to imagine. The crux of the issue is something quite different: the demolition of the universally loved building which it would replace – the beautiful flint-faced North Lodge.

Of course the listed North Lodge has drawbacks: you can’t fit lots of rich people into it and persuade them to either buy or rent the space. But to many generations of Cromer residents and visitors this pleasant and peaceful part of the town is something to be treasured.

It is a birthright of Cromer people, and not one that should be thrown away for what the Bible calls a mess of pottage –later reworded brilliantly by a perceptive poet as a pot of message. The mess or pot in this case is money; the temptation is the free accommodation offered to the town council by Mr Davies.

To retain their integrity councillors must stand firm for the views of their electors and not be lured like lemmings to the soft ground of the glittering edge, or no-one will mourn when they collapse – or leap – into the sea.

Steady on, Mr Starling

Residents of Worstead, in North-East Norfolk, may be interested to hear that it is exactly 130 years since a Reading Room opposite the church became “an accomplished fact”.

The Parish Chronicle for November 1875 reports that the Daily Press was one of the papers available for perusal, and that there was a good fire. (Probably no connection.) The parish, we are told, was “striving hard to cater for the intellectual wants of her children” while recognising their graver and more material needs.

Closely involved in this venture was a Mr Starling – undoubtedly the same man who the following month who was involved in opening the Manor Court of Worstead St Andrew by “sonoriously enunciating O yea, O yea”.

Sadly one or two old ladies were “somewhat scandalised” by this behaviour, but the Chronicle rushes to Mr Starling’s defence. “We hasten to place on record our emphatic contradiction of the slander,” it says. “Mr Starling was talking French.” Whatever next?

How to save money painlessly

Lisa Christensen, Norfolk County Council’s director of children’s services, is about £50,000 short on a savings package she is trying to deliver. What to do?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? A spending squeeze: staff must cut down on photocopying, paper, travel costs and letters – oh, and home-to-school transport rules must be rigidly enforced. Just the kind of pettyminded things that raise morale and get people working enthusiastically. Not.

I have another suggestion. Why don’t the county council’s ten most highly paid officers each give up £5000 of their salary? I’m sure they wouldn’t notice the difference, and the frontline staff would enjoy it so much they’d probably save another £50,000 without even meaning to.

Shock ingredient of Skye salmon

You may have read recently about the dangers of contaminants in some Scottish salmon. I did not take this too seriously until I was preparing to eat a packet of Skye smoked salmon the other day and caught sight of the allergy advice: “Contains fish.” But I ate it anyway.

14 November 2005

on 14 November 2005 at 09:09

City in two minds about car parking

Norwich City Council can’t work out why its beautiful new St Andrew’s car park isn’t full, so perhaps I should drop a hint.

Making it difficult to drive into the city and then positioning an exciting new car park at one of the least accessible points in the city centre is not traffic planning: it’s schizophrenia.

The council needs to make up its mind which voice in its head it’s going to listen to: the one that tells it that cars are evil monsters and must be kept as far away as possible, or the one that says it should seduce cars in and then charge them lots of money for staying – the Chapelfield Protocol, as Robert Ludlum might call it.

I know parking is a problem. A few days ago I wanted to drop something off at the UEA. The main car park was full and shut; the one I was directed to instead was also full. I drove around a bit, polluting the atmosphere and getting in people’s way, and then went home – well, not directly home. I drove to the sorting office to post a letter, but all the spaces there were taken too.

Of course even when there are plenty of spaces, some people just hate paying. Instead of springing for the very modest fee to park in the new Whitlingham car parks on the outskirts of the city and adjacent to quite striking views if you forget about the gasholder and the pylon, many drivers brave the appalling surface of Whitlingham Lane and churn merrily on to the verges instead.

A similar phenomenon was apparent at the stunning Sheringham Park the other weekend: to avoid paying the £3 that seems a good deal for access to such idyllic surroundings, a number of drivers had parked on the roadside grass outside. If I was to judge arbitrarily by the condition and type of the vehicles, their owners were not short of a bob or two. It is surely reasonable to charge a modest fee for well-appointed parking places. But what about the “barbaric” charges levied in Norwich? This is the word used by a correspondent who, although living a little north of Norwich, would rather travel 92 miles to Bury St Edmunds and back for shopping than “tamely submit to parking robbery by green pirates” in his own fine city.

The cost of parking in Bury? £1 “per occasion” in a town centre car park. I can’t believe Norwich City Council’s preferred solution is to send shoppers to Bury. But maybe it is.

Beastly bid by heads to nail down informant

Following my article last time about the mysterious movements of head teachers, secondary heads across Norfolk are meeting to put together a plan to track down my secret informant. This will be called a COW meeting (Catch Our Whistleblower), in the tradition of naming key educational initiatives after animals. Insiders will be familiar with the dreaded performing PANDA, now a threatened species, and the OFSTED, which is believed to be evolving into a kind of duck.

More recently the SEF, a form of green werewolf, has appeared – first at Sunnydale, close to the mouth of hell in America, and now crossing the Atlantic in an attempt to create a similar environment for itself in English schools generally. I have it on good authority that we should be very afraid.

The heads’ meeting will take place in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, but the time is as yet uncertain. “This is understandable,” said Hingham expert Professor V A R Scheinlich yesterday. “I believe the heads will also be looking at space-time distortion, and whether this is spreading from Hingham into the schools system, affecting half-terms as well as health and safety. They will need to make a risk assessment and a mission statement. So it is appropriate not to be too precise.”

The heads have issued a statement saying the meeting will be invaluable, but they may not be able to get back to school afterwards.

Radical move to safeguard pub-users

The Pod and Serpent, a popular pub-restaurant in parts of North Norfolk near Pondhenge, is taking radical steps to eliminate any kind of danger to its customers.

“We will no longer be serving food,” said landlord the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick, a radical cleric. “Excessive food can almost certainly cause cancer, and of course there is the choking problem, and the obesity scenario.

“But much more serious is the risk to passive eaters. Research shows that being close to people who are eating can have serious, unexpected effects in later life, or afterwards.”

Mr Repps-cum-Bastwick is also banning the sale of drink of any kind. “I don’t have to tell you how risky drink is,” he said. “You can drown in water, for instance, and there is a chance – very slight, I grant you – that it could turn into wine.”

Asked how he would keep the Pod and Serpent going without serving food and drink, he said he was thinking of charging people to come in and sit around while he talked about global warming. He was installing a pulpit as an experiment. People could sing, too, he suggested.

“I may apply for a grant for the upkeep of the fabric - I mean painting the walls,” he expounded. “And we will have money-raising events, like fetes. W may even pass a plate round and see what people put in it.”

Country people can't figure the city out

We Norfolk boys are all familiar with the problems faced by Londoners and other incomers to rural and coastal areas – the sweet smell of seagulls, fish, fertiliser and oilseed rape; the sight of big, scary skies without a scraper in sight; and the merry morning sounds of cockerels, beet lorries and church bells.

But country people moving to the city have their problems too. Not so much the traffic, the crowds and the congestion charges, but little, unexpected things like going to the post office.

It is of course common in friendly Norfolk villages for the post office to keep a list of PIN numbers behind the counter to help out forgetful customers. This service is totally unavailable in the cities, which is obviously outrageous.

Do they think country people – the salt and pepper of the earth – have nothing better to do than memorise strings of figures?