21 February 2005

on 21 February 2005 at 08:35

Putting the horse in front of the cart doesn't help

A large number of drivers seem happy to fall in with the dangerous myth that slowing down will keep death off the roads. Dithering along, they habitually carry on eye-contact conversations with their passengers, gesture fondly at the passing countryside, delve around in the glove compartment or try to placate mewling infants at the same time as attempting, in a vague sort of way, to control their vehicles. They are a hazard to themselves and those they spend their lives obstructing. But of course no-one ever tells them. They crawl smugly past speed cameras, scowl at anyone who overtakes them and think they are the safest thing on four wheels.

They would surely be happier with a horse and cart. The same would no doubt be true of the equally deluded local academic who thinks that driving a car is roughly equivalent to invading Iraq. But retreating to horses and carts is far from the safe solution we might nostalgically suppose. Just 130 years ago, the railway came to the village of Worstead, just outside North Walsham. The village Chronicle hoped bullishly it would lead to “less absolute stagnation and lifelessness”. No doubt that explains the current liveliness and enthusiasm in the area.

Other than the new-fangled train, the horse and cart was the normal mode of transport in the mid-1870s, and the same issue of the Chronicle that welcomed the railway reported two serious local road accidents. In one a young girl – Alice Long – died after falling from a donkey cart in a collision with a cart and horses that had emerged from a field. Another girl was seriously injured.

Strange – or maybe not – that emerging carelessly and too slowly on to a faster road is still a major cause of accidents.

The previous week a man had been badly hurt when his cart was in collision with another one “driven at a very rapid rate” at dusk on the way back from Norwich. Horse-and-cart experts at the University of East Anglia will be able to tell us how fast this was likely to be, but no further information is available. Had the driver of the slower cart dozed off? Was either driver changing a cassette? Were their lights on?

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Weather changes bin happening

Strange phenomena are abroad again. One reader who lives near Wymondham has noticed that the weather seems to be better on those days designated for green wheelie bin collection than on those designated as grey wheelie bin days.

“Grey bin days,” he adds, “are usually wet and, well, grey.” He feels that yellow wheelie bins might bring brighter weather, albeit with a risk of global warming. It seems to me, however, that such a theory would lead to very patchy and localised weather. Here in Thorpe Hamlet, we are stuck with black bags and green boxes, and weather that just can’t make up its mind.

Another correspondent has observed black, rectangular markings on some roads. My immediate assumption was that these were the black lids of the green recycling boxes, carelessly flung down by the collectors, who always seem to be in a hurry, and punched into the asphalt by passing HGVs.

But my correspondent is much more suspicious: he feels they are “obviously a detecting device designed to find out (a) where we're going; (b) where we've been; (c) who or what we are carrying; and (d) whether we are up to date with road fund licences and/or MOT effectiveness”.

He adds: “Call me paranoid if you like.” This seems a good idea. Thank you, Mr Paranoid.

Dark designs on border village?

The citizens of Shelfanger, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, had better be careful. I was walking near New Buckenham the other day, trying to work out how to ford the moat and storm the castle, when I noticed that the road sign at Dam Brigg – a popular local junction – had been tampered with.

The word “Shelfanger” had been carefully painted over in white. What can this mean? The road in question – not a quiet lane, but a wide and often straight B-road – does indeed go directly to Shelfanger. I checked. From Dam Brigg there is no reasonable alternative way.

So why must this fact be kept from us? Is Shelfanger due for demolition? Is it about to be flooded out of existence? Has it upset the county council? Is it being sent to Coventry? Or is it just part of the normal highways campaign to keep us all driving desperately around, causing as much pollution as possible?

£xciting grant for advertising breakthrough

A £1m lottery grant has been awarded to the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing to carry out research into using the surface of roads, or possibly the City Hall clock tower, as an advertising medium.

“We are really excited about this,” said Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam. “It was a close-run thing between us and some campaign to help carers, whatever that means. Our knowledge of chess and penguins enabled us to explain our proposals in black and white, with a bit of orange for colour.

“We were able to lay down some very sharp guidelines, and we had our criteria in place.”

Prof Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, from the University of Pondhenge, who acted as consultant for the bid, said he felt roads were ideal for advertising purposes, because “drivers aren’t really doing anything”. Prof Houseago admitted he had shares in a company that makes radar speed guns, but said this was “a side issue”.

Newts back cuckoo campaign

A consortium of great crested newts has launched a campaign to get cuckoos into the red. The newts have had a great deal of success in placing themselves and other creatures, like cyclists, on the endangered species list, which they find brings many benefits – such as special pathways under and along major roads, plus occasional feeding stations, and fines for anyone who disturbs them.

The cuckoo’s increasing rarity is on the brink of putting it on the red list of highest conservation importance, and the newts are right behind it.

“It won’t be long before they have a legal right to use any bird’s nest they like to lay their eggs in,” said a spokesnewt. “And why not?”

7 February 2005

on 7 February 2005 at 04:00

Living between cataclysms

Just as a red sky at night tells us that the next day will be wonderful for shepherds, the warm glow of an approaching February 16 means it has been a delightful few weeks for alarmist climatologists and their political friends. Yes, next week the Kyoto treaty comes into effect. It will make no difference to the climate, but it means we have been treated recently – and will no doubt continue to be treated over the next month or so – to any number of dire predictions from Exeter and elsewhere.

Most of these predictions, if you listen carefully to responsible scientists, will be on the impossible side of highly unlikely, but those are the ones seized on by the media, who love a good scare story. They are the people who, if you remember, told you that the Asian tsunami was caused by global warming, or if it wasn’t, the next one would be – as blatant a piece of rubbish as you are likely to hear. You will have heard, no doubt, that Antarctic ice is pouring into the sea and the Greenland icecap is melting at an alarming rate. Polar bear numbers are falling and the sea level is rising.

In fact Arctic temperatures fluctuate naturally in cycles about 40 years long. The warming phase now happening in the Arctic is similar to one between 1900 and 1940. The near-surface Arctic air temperature was higher in 1940 than now, despite all the greenhouse gas emissions since. Interestingly, the ice caps on Mars are retreating, which presumably means that Martians are burning more fossil fuels than we thought they were.

Polar bears are plentiful, and in a study published this year Dr Nils-Axel Morner of Sweden, using observational records and satellites, found that sea level rise hysteria is overblown. He said: "There is a total absence of any recent 'acceleration in sea level rise' as often claimed by IPCC and related groups."

Scientists at UEA have also cast doubt on the famous hockey stick graph used to convince us that global warming is a recent phenomenon, with no allowance made for the well documented medieval warm period and the later Little Ice Age. The graph and its scary supporters assume that the climate in northern Europe over the past millennium has been roughly constant, but Timothy Osborn and Keith Briffa conclude that the true variability is likely to be much greater, and if it is, “the extent to which recent warming can be viewed as ‘unusual’ would need to be reassessed”.

The tsunami should not be overlooked, however. What it actually tells us is that nature is a gigantic force that we can have no effect on. As a writer in an Asian paper put it, “ecologists have created the myth that nature represents a harmonious equilibrium threatened by human excesses. In fact nature's apparent harmony is a short-term illusion between cataclysms”.

Principle of plenty overlooked again

The recent pronouncement from the National Audit Office that there are too many surplus places in Norfolk schools is yet another example of accountants missing the point completely.

It is essential that there are surplus places, just as it is essential that there are surplus beds in hospitals – a rather obvious need that was overlooked when the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital was built.

It is equally vital that there should be more hospitals than would be assumed if you worked on financial principles alone, and closing small hospitals in Norfolk is just as huge a mistake as axing the railway network all those years ago. There is no way we can calculate exactly what we need, and so we have to make provision for our needs to increase. We need space. This is just as essentially human an argument as the equally valid though paradoxical one that small – in the case of schools and hospitals – is beautiful.

The principle of plenty, reflecting what we see in nature, is one that we reject at our peril when it comes to the key areas of our lives.

Astonishing interest in Irmingland

My passing mention of the elusive non-coastal hamlet of Irmingland seems to have excited more interest than I anticipated.

Reader David Little of Old Catton reveals that noted Norwich School artist John Sell Cotman stayed at the hall in 1841 and sketched his bedroom by candlelight. The drawing – “Oliver Cromwell's bedroom at Irmingland and my bedroom Oct 10/11 1841” – is in Norwich Castle Museum collection.

At the time the hall, although owned by the Rev S Pitman, was rented by Cotman's wife’s niece, Katherine, the wife of local farmer George Cross. Katherine was the daughter of Anna Maria and John Hicks. Anna Maria was one of six Miles sisters; others included Ann – who married John Sell Cotman – and Elizabeth, who married another Norwich School artist, John Thirtle. A different correspondent, Tony Foulke, was interested in the booklet that was my source for placing Irmingland five miles north-west of Hunstanton, a rather wetter spot than the banks of the Bure.

He and a colleague had read the same booklet some time ago and spotted the anomaly. “Initially we thought it something to do with ley lines or the Peddar's Way magnetic field,” he writes. “But after religiously checking every place name, we found many more hamlets either slightly adrift or even a long way from where they should be.”

Apparently a second edition corrected the errors, but the original is highly collectable.

Mr Foulke, who no longer has his copy of the booklet, wonders whether the Autonomous Republic of Hingham is accurately placed. Astonishingly, it is. I can only put this down to space-time distortion.

Move to keep everyone out of city

A shock report leaked from City Hall this week reveals that Liberal Democrat plans for Norwich city centre go much further than anyone thought.

It shows that a blueprint is in place for erecting substantial gates at all the entrance points to the city centre, joined together by a substantial wall, “possibly of flint”.

The gates would be closed most of the time. “People cannot expect to drive into the city centre whenever they want to,” said a spokesperson. “We have the keys, and we will decide who can come in.”

Buses will be issued with electronic devices to open the gates, but police cars will be kept out because of the risk of collision. “We will have cameras everywhere,” said the spokesperson. “For safety reasons.”

Apparently a scheme to allow no-one but councillors into the city has been put on one side temporarily “while practical problems are sorted out”.