Back2sq1: June 2006

You have probably been wondering what connection there is between great crested newts and the ever-growing threat to the British way of life. How have coypu infiltrated every level of government, and what is the real reason that speed cameras are breeding at such an alarming rate? Is global warming really caused by breathing? Can the answer to life, the universe and everything be found in children's stories, and does poetry have a role to play? Who is Henry (Fred) "Shrimp" Houseago, and does it matter? The answers to almost all of these vital questions will occasionally be found here.

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26 June 2006

on 26 June 2006 at 14:30

Accolade for roundabout that is Hardwick reborn

The revamped Thickthorn roundabout, at the junction of the A11 and the Norwich southern bypass, has received a major accolade from the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing.

Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam announced yesterday that the brave new roundabout was “without doubt a huge step forward” in road safety and “pretty much on a par with the justly famous Hardwick roundabout at King’s Lynn”.

Those leaving Norfolk by the western back door, as Lynn is sometimes known, were for years familiar with the frisson of excitement as they emerged at the other side of the Hardwick roundabout, having negotiated it successfully against all the odds.

“All the key elements of the Hardwick have been absorbed at Thickthorn,” said Prof Aufmerksam excitedly. “There is the surprise of having to change lanes when you least expect it, the nagging doubts about which lane you should actually be in, the pointless traffic lights, and the sudden convergence of narrow lanes which may or may not be an illusion.

“If you were to go round Thickthorn with your eyes shut – which is probably your best bet – you would be convinced you were at King’s Lynn.

“You could almost say that Thickthorn was the Hardwick reborn – or reloaded!”

He admitted that the dual carriageway flyover at Thickthorn was a bit disappointing compared with the exciting single-carriageway one at King’s Lynn, but he hoped this could be rectified at some point in the future. He pointed out that many dual carriageways were in fact being downgraded, with cross-hatching, cones and laughable speed limits making them little different from single-carriageways.

“It can only get better,” he said. “I just hope whoever designs it gets the knighthood he or she deserves – or at least a private room in hospital.”

County to claw back teaching cash

A leaked document reveals that, in an exciting breakthrough in children’s services, Norfolk County Council has decided to claw back from schools money that has been allocated to teaching.

According to the document, a lot of time is being wasted in setting up classes of children and giving them lessons. This is described as a “gross waste, when we could be questioning them closely to see if they’re happy, sorting out their family life, prescribing a correct diet and stopping them indulging in dangerous activities like playing”.

Spokesman Len “Kissme” Hardy, a former comet chaser and wholefood chef from Hindolveston, said that many people were under the illusion that schools should teach children academic things, like maths.

“Children know best what they need to learn,” he said. “They can pick most of it up from television. We need to give them life skills, so that they can reduce their carbon footprints, drive extremely slowly and drop litter more selectively.

“We especially want them to spend money as soon as they’ve got it. You can get into an awful lot of trouble by saving for the future.”

Pondhenge camera partnership comes clean

Following news that the Greater Manchester speed camera partnership has been slammed by the Advertising Standards Authority for publishing a booklet containing inaccurate information and denigrating legitimate critics, the Pondhenge Speed Camera Partnership, based somewhere in North Norfolk, has received an award for a totally accurate leaflet about its activities.

“We thought it was about time we came clean,” said PSCP chief executive the Rev Nicholas Reppscumbastwick, a radical cleric. “The cameras were a fantastic deal financially, and there didn’t seem any harm in getting people to slow down. Admittedly hardly any accidents are caused just by people exceeding the speed limit, but if there were, they would obviously cost the NHS something, though we don’t know what.”

The leaflet, entitled We Know Where You Live, admits that 90 per cent of accidents are caused by driver error, and motorists are not entitled to a fair trial. “Where would we be if they could get a fair trial?” asked Mr Reppscumbastwick.

The leaflet suggests that drivers pay close attention to what they are doing, avoid making eye contact with passengers and, preferably, stay awake.

But it falls short of changing its basic tactics. “If you exceed the speed limit for any reason we shall do our best to catch you,” it says. “It’s what we do.”

Problem communicating with web designers

Unlike readers of a more nervous disposition, I do occasionally buy things on the Internet. As a rule I have no problems, but the other week I ran into the kind of computer response that almost convinces you that the world of website designers has been infiltrated by aliens, or possibly great crested newts.

I attempted to buy someone a present. All the gaps were filled in successfully, including my credit card details, and I pressed “Submit”.

There was a short, not very exciting pause, and then the following message appeared, in red: "Problem communicating with bank during authorisation.”

This, of course, is exactly what you want to see. It is also undoubtedly one of the more memorably useless messages I have ever received from a computer in English.

It might tell me what had happened, but I didn’t need to know that. What I needed to know was what I should do next. Wait? Try again? Reboot? Make a cup of tea? Call my bank? Call their bank? Play Minesweeper? Throw something?

In the end I decided to abort, but then I thought … maybe I had bought something by mistake? Or not bought something by mistake? I contacted the company whose website it was, and luckily, my e-mail was received by a human being, who could not have been more efficient. Shortly afterwards, the owner of the company e-mailed me to apologise. That’s what I call service. I knew what to do next.

12 June 2006

on 12 June 2006 at 04:30

Early clicks a hazard for driving instructors

In order to justify their existence, all branches of government – central, local and quangos – have to do things. We would all benefit if they did as little as possible, but if you give a linesman a flag, of course he will want to wave it.

In government circles, flags are “new initiatives” – a phrase that I used to think was tautological, but now I’m not so sure. Branches of government come up with so many initiatives that they lose track – as happened last week when an agency had to hastily redraw an exciting scheme because it had the same name as one they created earlier.

It’s people like this – bright young things surviving in carefully regulated think tanks with an atmosphere quite foreign to the real world – who come up with the absurd measures with which we have become so familiar. The world of education is awash with them.

An example: driving instructors will not be allowed to operate unless they pass a computer test designed to measure their hazard perception.

Of course anyone except a government official or computer expert would know that actual hazard perception is a world apart from computers. Never mind: the computer is carefully set so that hazards are spotted at the right time and irrelevant clicking of the mouse is excluded.

What they didn’t grasp was that experienced instructors would spot potential hazards much earlier than your average driver. The result was that their early clicks were excluded by the computer as being “random”, and an experienced and highly regarded instructor ended up with 58 out of 75 (pass mark 57), whereas his obviously inexperienced 17-year-old pupil achieved 68!

Consistently similar results should have revealed to the government geniuses that they were on the wrong track. Unfortunately, the worst thing about government is not that it has an unending supply of flags, but that it is never wrong.

Crepuscular rabbits lose track of time

Rabbits are undeniably confused. All right, I know people are confused as well, but somehow you expect more from rabbits.

As one perceptive reader has pointed out, rabbits – once believed to be nocturnal creatures – are now to be seen “everywhere at all times of day and night”. I can back this up: I have observed a healthy colony close to the new residence blocks at the University of East Anglia whose members don’t seem to have any idea of what time of day or night it is, and munch away happily at noon, while lectures are going on.

I assumed at first they were mimicking student behaviour, or were perhaps part of an experiment being carried out by the innovative School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing, but I have been disabused of this by the respected Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, who claims incidentally that rabbits are not nocturnal but crepuscular.

This may be accurate (though I have always considered them sort of oblong), but it is hardly relevant.

The reader who drew the peculiar behaviour of rabbits to my attention suggests that they might be suffering from time distortion originating in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, but for this to be true, abnormally long burrows (or wormholes) would be required.

Her second theory, that they are illegal immigrant rabbits, and the Government is training them to slow down traffic following the discrediting of speed cameras, seems far more likely. It would also explain the confusion.

Smoke fails to clear after marking boycott

Now that the university lecturers’ marking boycott is over, one would expect the smoke to have cleared. In fact, many issues remain clouded.

Despite some media reports, for example, large numbers of the students supported the lecturers, who were justifiably angered by the employers’ blatantly breaking a promise to use top-up-fee money to reverse years of decline in lecturers’ salary levels.

There was never any risk of students not getting their degrees. Only the last semester’s marking would have been affected, and this would almost never change the level of degree awarded. Lecturers were happy to write letters to prospective employers making this point.

The precise role of the unions was also lost in the fog somewhere, since the final agreement was no better than that offered some weeks before. It left the lecturers with in some cases less than a week to catch up on a full semester’s marking – a demand which I understand was made forcibly by the employers at the University of East Anglia even before the agreement had been communicated to the lecturers.

This hardly leaves the lecturers over the moon. But what really rubbed salt in the wounds was news that nationally the vice-chancellors, who put strong – sometimes ruthless – pressure on the lecturers, have awarded themselves a much, much larger pay rise. According to the Times Higher Education Supplement, 33 vice-chancellors earn more than the prime minister, and 18 of them earn £200,000 or more. So no problem there.

Game full of drama, beauty and a little violence

I’m sure all my chess-playing colleagues realised I was not suggesting that chess was a dull game for dull people, despite one reader’s reaction on the letters’ page to my piece on the British chess championships being scheduled for Great Yarmouth. No doubt the satire passed him by.

Norfolk chess is full of entertaining characters, not least the irrepressible county captain Johnny Danger; the editor of the county chess magazine, John Charman; and the excellent chess author, David LeMoir – among many others.

Chess is a beautiful game – even more than football, though possibly not so accessible – and it attracts beautiful people, like Maria Mankova – as cited – or the possibly even more striking Russian, Alexandra Kosteniuk, who is also a much stronger player.

Yarmouth people may be relieved to hear that one attractive Australian player, Arianne Caoili, even provoked a recent dance-floor fight involving a leading Briton and world number three grandmaster Levon Aronian, from Armenia. Sadly, they are not likely to feature at Yarmouth, but I am beginning to see how chess might fit in very well on the east coast.

Praying for a stamp

I was delighted to see that Newton Flotman parish church hopes to open a post office in its tower. This is one way of getting people into church, and there is plenty of opportunity for prayer and meditation while waiting in the queue for a first-class stamp. A few strategically placed pews wouldn’t go amiss.

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