18 April 2005

on 18 April 2005 at 04:00

Flat threat to idyllic edge of Cromer

Last weekend my small grandson learnt to pedal a tricycle in a children’s play area. He was watched by his great-grandmother, who had come by wheelchair from her home up the road.

Some months earlier, he had sailed his first boat on the pond about fifty yards away, again watched by his great-grandmother, his grandparents and parents, who were sitting outside an unpretentious small café in a lovely clifftop setting, close to bowling and putting greens and round the corner from quite presentable toilets.

It would be nice if he could come back in a few years to see where he did these things. The odds are against it, however, because North Norfolk District Council ambitions may mean it is lost for ever.

This is because it is part of the grounds surrounding the lovely North Lodge – Cromer Town Council headquarters. The district, which owns the Lodge, would like to sell it to developers for no doubt vast sums of money and the unwelcome prospect of more luxury flats.

Diligent EDP readers will know that locals are up in arms against it, and formed a human chain round the Lodge a week ago in protest. More recently, the district has said it will not sell the Lodge in secret, which is somehow not totally reassuring.

Go-ahead councillors of all colours do not like the status quo. They no doubt look at this area and see no entrance fees, no sophisticated 21st-century leisure facilities, no flashy electronics and a disturbing lack of rules and regulations. They ache to get at it.

Under pressure, they are willing to talk first. The Liberal Democrat leader of the district council is so eager to talk that he is willing to put off a decision until after the General Election – not that there is any ulterior motive there. He has said so, and I certainly believe him. Oh, yes.

The North Lodge area is a quiet haven for people – many of them elderly – living in the roads on the east side of Cromer. It is a haven that costs almost nothing. It is also a lovely spot for those of all ages who prefer old-fashioned ways of enjoying themselves.

It would be nothing short of criminal if the district council destroyed it in order to rake in cash, or for some other unpardonable reason – whether before the Election or, coincidentally, after.

Folk memories at Felthorpe?

There was some discussion on this page many months ago about the disappearance of the hill that gave Morton-on-the-Hill, near Lenwade, its name. I believe I suggested that it could be a victim of Norfolk Drift – like Continental Drift, only slower.

Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek, who was associated with this theory, recently stumbled across the nearby settlement of Felthorpe while leading an expedition into the interior. He reports: “The local people obviously make a living by selling produce to passing travellers, and I could not help but notice the hand-written sign offering ‘Crabs – fresh boiled daily’ and nearby a sign for the Mariners car park. “Do these people retain some sort of folk memory of the time when Felthorpe nestled between Cromer and Sheringham?” It makes you think.

Council may insist on kerb-crawling

Kerb crawling used to be discouraged in Norwich. But if the Liberal Democrats have their way, it will soon become compulsory.

Two of the widest streets in the city, Rouen Road and Ber Street, are coincidentally also in what is inaccurately known as the Red Light district, where young ladies look for lifts. The city council has plans for us to drive at a maximum of 20mph down these streets.

This is obviously far slower than would be required to ensure safety, so what is the council up to?

Slow, slow drift into the ditches

A correspondent informs me that when travelling in Suffolk “on those long dreary stretches of the A140 restricted to a wholly unnecessary 30mph”, she is often tempted to see how far she dare drive with her eyes closed, or without her hands on the wheel.

She may be joking (I hope so), but the point she makes is valid: speed limits that are too slow make you lose concentration. And losing your concentration is dangerous.

Driving needs to be demanding enough to make us keep our minds on it. Police traffic officers know that, which is why for years they advocated progressive driving – that is, driving as quickly as is safe and legal.

This has been undermined in the past decade by the misguided emphasis on speed as a major cause of accidents. It has resulted in an increase in road deaths (which had formerly been falling) and the introduction of totally unrealistic speed limits in many places.

North Wales Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, who is also the road policing supremo for the Association of Chief Police Officers, has been one of the biggest advocates of speed cameras. But he recently admitted to a national newspaper that 6000 speed cameras placed in so-called accident blackspots had failed to cut road deaths. He called for a rethink.

He has also told the Institute of Advanced Motorists that some speed limits are “barmy” and should be changed, because they have no credibility.

If someone as committed to speed cameras as Mr Brunstrom is urging us to think again, we can hardly argue against the response of the much-abused Association of British Drivers that “if he thinks the limits should be higher, he cannot credibly use safety as a justification for their indiscriminate enforcement”.

It adds: “The failure of the ‘speed kills’ policy to reduce road deaths over the last ten years means that he has to deal with the fundamental problem - the road safety industry has got the relationship between speed and accidents completely wrong.”

We're not talking about this at all

Here’s a perfect model for party spokespersons who want to avoid talking about sensitive issues during the Election campaign. It’s none other than Peter Williams, a US Defence Department spokesman, who was asked about the use of missiles in the Gulf War.

He said: “We don’t discuss that capability. I can’t tell you why we don’t discuss it, because then I’d be discussing it.”

4 April 2005

on 4 April 2005 at 04:00

Triumph for newts in Blair's constituency

It can be no coincidence that the latest high-profile court case involving great crested newts stems from an area not unadjacent to the Prime Minister’s constituency of Sedgefield, slightly north of King’s Lynn.

Mr Blair is obviously intending to make newt protection a major issue, despite the absence of any intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction on the land belonging to Peter Dennis, who was fined £1000 and ordered to pay £500 costs after being found guilty of offences against endangered and protected amphibians.

This is clearly what is known in the trade as “a result” for the notoriously expansionist newts, who are known for their devious infiltration of local and central government as well as European institutions – with the help of their notorious allies, the Austrian cave salamanders.

Mr Dennis cleared some weed from a pond allegedly housing newts in March last year, with the result that newts were apparently tangled up in it. This is an irony that the newts would clearly have enjoyed, since their speciality is introducing a particularly virulent and entangling version of red tape into government offices.

Mr Blair is believed to be about to campaign on behalf of the newts, particularly in the National Health Service, where intensive care ponds are being introduced as we speak. Some sources claim that he will promise a referendum on the issue when he is sure that he will get the result he wants.

In Sedgefield, the newts are said to be particularly pleased with the “great deal of time and effort” put in to get the case to court – time which could so easily have been wasted on catching criminals.

Suggestions that the Prime Minister’s long-term aim in Sedgefield is regime change have been denounced as “amphibious”. Home Secretary Charles Clarke is expected to introduce newt-inspired control orders in Norfolk soon.

Exclusion principle is fair enough

Ground-breaking research last week revealed that children with lenient and permissive parents are more likely to use ecstasy. The same researchers are now examining the theories that fish swim and birds fly.

They may also have been involved with the Norfolk County Council working group which found that children excluded from school run a higher risk of getting into trouble with the law.

Unfortunately members of the group in question seem to have leapt to the conclusion that the legal trouble stemmed from the exclusion, when if they had any experience of classrooms they would realise that a child is excluded precisely because he or she exhibits the kind of behaviour that is likely to result in breaking the law: attacking children or teachers, destroying property and refusing to learn.

The misapprehension probably stems from the weasel words “learning difficulties”. Children are not excluded because they have learning difficulties: schools exist to solve learning difficulties. Exclusion comes when a child has no intention of learning and disrupts the class to such an extent that no-one can learn.

It may not be the child’s fault. I once commented on a girl’s appalling behaviour at a Norwich school, only to be told: “If you met her mother, you’d understand.”

It is certainly not the teachers’ fault. They have been ludicrously stripped of all reasonable methods of dealing with aggressive children until just about all they can do is stand and watch.

Children who are eager to learn should not have to endure constant disruption. Different provision must be made for children who are unable to deal with a normal classroom environment.

Just can't build vehicles the right size

Reports last week that Norwich would not be getting exciting new fire engines because they were too wide for the “thin roads” represent a welcome change in normal transport policy – which is to accept vehicles as big as possible, regardless of the capacity of the system to accommodate them.

The bizarre situation at Ipswich, where a tunnel had to be rebuilt to accommodate outsize freight trains, was just one example.

Hundreds of Norfolk lanes are too narrow for the buses and lorries that use them, and the streets of Norwich and several market towns are too narrow not just for fire engines, but for those same buses and heavy good vehicles. Many are the occasions on which traffic is held up at junctions in the city because a large vehicle is blocking two approach lanes and preventing a huge queue from filtering left or proceeding straight ahead. King Street-Bracondale and Riverside Road-Thorpe Road in Norwich are two glaring examples, and pedestrians are at constant risk.

Perhaps it’s time we did as the Romans did when they found their towns congested two thousand years ago – and ban large wagons from the centre altogether. If only we had the technology to build vehicles the right size.

Anti-road groups should pay for fat rabbit

The cost of the Norwich northern distributor road is spiralling out of control, claim its delighted opponents.

The Norwich and Norfolk Transport Inaction Group were delighted to pull this particular rabbit out of the hat last week. The supposed astonishment at the shockingly fat animal was a little overdone, however, as it was the same objectors to the vital road that placed the rabbit in the hat in the first place – and kept on feeding it.

There are far too many groups, parties and individuals who not only have a say but are able to keep on delaying construction. The longer the delay, the bigger the costs.

For the sake of the residents of north Norwich, the road has to be built. I suggest we split the bill for the increased costs between everyone who contributed to delaying the building of it.

Not getting a clear picture

Police have been complaining about the poor quality pictures they obtain from CCTV cameras designed to catch criminals in the act. Some of the blurred and shadowy images of criminals displayed on television are little more than a joke.

But doesn’t it seem odd that while we can’t afford to buy cameras good enough to nail thugs, thieves and vandals in the act a few yards away, we can afford to buy speed cameras that give a sharp picture from half a mile of a driver doing no-one any harm at all?

This is a sense of priorities that in other society would be regarded as irretrievably bizarre.