27 November 2006

on 27 November 2006 at 10:50

The lights don't work, so why not turn them off?

I see that the Anti-Highways Agency has struck again, by declining to do anything about the bottleneck Gapton Hall junction at Great Yarmouth except install more traffic lights at entrances to the roundabout.

In a near-brilliant coup, their managers added that the only way this would be possible in the less-than-distant future would be to get a contribution to the costs from new developers – in return for planning permission.

New development, of course, would make the junction even more congested. Clearly Catch-22 is high on the reading list at the Anti-Highways Agency. Perhaps something on improving roads would also make good reading, but I suspect that has all been thrown out.

It would be nicely ironic if the agency’s inertia, coupled with its crazy obsession with combining traffic lights with roundabouts, were to coincide with some really radical highways rethinking somewhere out of their reach.

How about a city like Norwich, for example, getting rid of nearly all its traffic lights, together with a hefty number of its signs and road markings?

As one reader reminds me, this innovative idea has been tried in Holland, in a town called Drachten, with surprising results. Where there had been a road death every three years, since the removal of the lights seven years ago there have been none.

The logic behind the scheme is compelling. The organiser, one Hans Monderman, is reported as saying that taking the lights away enabled motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to co-exist more safely.

It worked well precisely because it was potentially dangerous, he said. “It shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk to the driver being responsible.”

As a result everyone is much more careful and tailbacks are reduced considerably. He claims not to have found anywhere that traffic lights were actually useful. I imagine if such an idea were mooted seriously in Norwich, the usual suspects would be up in arms instantly, demanding more, not fewer, obstacles to the progress of traffic. But maybe I’m wrong. I frequently am.

Could it be time someone started treating motorists – and other road users – like responsible human beings? Lateral thinking, anyone?

Anyone?

Objections to sinister roof-squatter

This year’s Christmas postage stamps are religiously offensive, says Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, of Erpingham.

He wants them withdrawn immediately.

“I am amazed at the Royal Mail,” he said. “It has been more or less proved that Santa Claus didn’t exist – and if he did, he didn’t have a beard, and it wasn’t that long. In the stories, his treatment of elves is probably racist and certainly exploitative, not to mention the animal welfare problem. Reindeer are a threatened species.

“I do not believe in this sinister, roof-squatting figure. His exploits are obviously exaggerated and couldn’t have happened, and I object to seeing him every time I want to send a card or letter.

“Some people may worship him, but I object to being forced to join in.”

Asked if he was happy with the second-class stamps, Mr Houseago said he was not. “Many stories of snowmen are bizarre and obviously inserted by later writers. I am glad they’re portrayed as second-class, but would rather they weren’t there at all.”

He described the reindeer and tree cards as “unconvincing” and almost Japanese. “They are bound to offend people of non-tree faiths,” he said, “as well as people who are allergic to snow.

“The Royal Mail should show more sensitivity at this time of year.”

Curious affair of the disappeaing payphone

A more suspicious person than me might find certain elements in the case of the “lost” Norfolk village of Drymere a trifle curious.

You will remember that Drymere, near Swaffham, disappeared temporarily from BT maps at the same moment that the village’s payphone vanished.

Coincidentally, this was one of four rural payphones that BT had threatened to remove a couple of years ago, but which were reprieved after a campaign by local councillor Ian Sherwood.

On hearing about the disappearance of the phone and BT’s failure to locate the village, Mr Sherwood kindly supplied his own map to BT, together with a photograph of where the phone used to be. A spokesman then admitted the phone had been the victim of a “theft attack”, which is presumably different from a simple theft in that the thief wraps up the end of the wires after taking the equipment. Normally only a telephone professional would bother to do this, or a compulsive wire-wrapper.

Prof V A R Scheinlich of Hingham, who specialises in space-time distortion, suggests that a wormhole may be involved, or possibly a phone collector with access to BT maps.

“It’s easy to get your lines crossed in that area,” he said.

Residents of Swacking Cuckoo, near Cromer, are said to be “concerned”.

Jail depends on who stands where

I have no sympathy at all with habitually careless drivers. But everyone who is human – and this may not include one or two of my correspondents – will admit to having a momentary lapse of concentration while at the wheel.

The consequences of such a lapse are usually tiny, if measurable at all; occasionally they will be more serious; and very, very occasionally they may be fatal. The lapse is the same in all cases, but the consequences are different.

The Government plans to make jail likely for those drivers whose lapse causes someone else’s death, and I can understand the relatives of victims feeling this is justice. But is it?

Last week an elderly driver made an error of judgement in an unfamiliar car, and it shot forward off a wall and on to a busy street in Thetford. A mother and child had to take evasive action: if they had not, it could have been a double fatality.

Under the proposed law, if the “victims” had not been alert, the driver could have been jailed. As they were, he couldn’t. Making the punishment fit the crime is one thing: making it fit random circumstance is no justice at all.

13 November 2006

on 13 November 2006 at 05:00

Queuing up to jump on catastrophe bandwagon

Predictions of catastrophe are always good value: if you prove to be right, you can remind survivors that you said it would happen. If you’re wrong, no-one will remember.

I’m sure one University of East Anglia professor didn’t have that in mind the other week when he repeated the familiar warning that where freak weather events “might have occurred once in a generation, they may now happen every decade, and in the not-too-distant future that could be every two or three years”.

But he is part of a growing band of people willing, if not eager, to make such remarks. Some are climatologists, but many are not.

Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the Government, is a chemist, but he is to the forefront of politically correct climate alarmists. John Prescott is a politician: his association of increased hurricane activity with global warming (possibly not his own idea) fell rather flat this year when no hurricanes at all made landfall during the season.

Sir Nicholas Stern is an economist, but he had no trouble impressing politicians with his forecasts of catastrophic climate change. Of course politicians are easy to impress, particularly when doom scenarios give them the excuse to increase taxes and restrict freedom. Other economists were not so enthused by his report.

Richard Tol, senior research officer at Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute, commented drily: "It assumes that society will never get used to higher temperatures, changed rainfall patterns, or higher sea levels. This is a rather dim view of human ingenuity.

"The Stern Review can therefore be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent."

More significant locally, however, is the fact that Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the UEA, is concerned by the bandying about of catastrophe scenarios.

While sticking to the view that human activities are heavily involved in climate change, he says: “The language of catastrophe is not the language of science. To state that climate change will be ‘catastrophic’ hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions that do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.

“Is any amount of climate change catastrophic? Catastrophic for whom, for where, and by when? What index is being used to measure the catastrophe?”

A welcome burst of sanity from an unimpeachable source, but he would certainly not go as far as Dr Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, who with many others feels there is still “no scientific proof of causation between the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 and the recent global warming trend” – a hypothesis, he says, that “has not yet been elevated to the level of a proven theory”.

Is there still room for an alternative explanation? A little-reported but significant new Danish study published by the Royal Society has recently provided definite experimental evidence that cosmic rays may be a major factor in climate change.

The figures fit, and the implication is that humans may have had little or no impact. Now that’s what I call a catastrophic theory – for politicians.

Driving hazards in Cape Town

The two Norfolk enthusiasts who are planning to drive to Cape Town to raise money for the East Anglian Air Ambulance may find that one of the most dangerous parts of the journey is Cape Town itself.

During a recent stay there I was driving along a mountain road when I was faced with a car proceeding merrily towards me round a corner on my side of the road. Fortunately I was able to swerve to avoid it, largely because I wasn’t watching my speedometer at the time.

But that was only one hazard: people wandering across motorways was another, and then there were the taxis.

Cape Town “Kombi” minibus taxis have their own highway code. While I was in line for traffic lights – or robots, as they are excitingly called over there – I was a little disturbed to note a series of Kombis shooting past on my inside, mounting the kerb and swerving round trees to beat the queues. Tourists are advised not to challenge these innovative drivers, as many of them carry guns.

Maybe bus lanes aren’t so bad after all.

Whales in unlikely places

Just south of Cape Town there is a stunning surfers’ bay called Llandudno. While walking among the huge boulders there we caught sight of a couple of whales only a hundred yards or so offshore. Yes, Llandudno. Yes, whales. What can I say?

Death off the roads and out of churches

My Scilly correspondent informs me that the Isles of Scilly Council has been criticised for not doing more to implement the Government’s proposals for keeping death off the roads.

The inaction of the council may have something to do with the fact that no-one has ever been killed in a road accident in the Scilly Isles. I wonder what their target is.

In Norfolk we are much more compliant. At Ranworth Church a safety bar was installed so that people could continue to climb the church tower. In 600 years no- one had ever fallen from the tower.

Speed up the paths and bridges

When I wrote about the need for paths and footbridges to bring city people easily to the recreational areas at Whitlingham, just outside the city, I was unaware of the persistent work done by the Norwich Rivers Heritage Group to open up much of the area involved.

They tell me that a big consultation is in progress to clarify the situation and to expedite the necessary amenities. I just hope it’s not too big: asking everyone is often an excuse for not doing anything, and in this case there seem to be simple things that could be done very quickly – or at least before I die.

The NRHG website is at www.norwichrivers.co.uk. It’s worth a look.