17 December 2007

on 17 December 2007 at 04:30

Scepticism the healthy option

My article last time on our drift into an Orwellian society was proved right by an immediate accusation from one reader – that the figure I gave for the percentage of accidents caused by exceeding the speed limit contradicted government statistics.

Well, if she chooses to believe the spin put on statistics by a Government heavily committed to speed cameras, that is up to her. I believe scepticism to be the more healthy option.

Other analysts have shown that the Government crunches together different accident causes under the heading of speed for dramatic effect; and that the five per cent for exceeding the speed limit – as opposed to excessive speed, impatience, losing control and driving too fast for the conditions, for example – is accurate. In 2003 the chief constable of Durham, an obvious anti-Orwellian, put the figure even lower at three per cent, and very recently the chief constable of Lincolnshire admitted that “simply driving above the speed limit” could not cause an accident.

But there will always be those who like everyone to agree with the Government. Presumably anything else makes them nervous.

They should take care that they are not like Sir Thomas More – at least as portrayed in The Tudors on BBC – who always sounded very reasonable until his belief structure was threatened. Then he started burning people.

Other recent Orwellian symptoms:

• Yellow and red tags are coming to rubbish bins near you if you throw the wrong thing away. How long before people are asked to inform on neighbours who are rubbish at recycling? I put plastic bottles in my green bin last week – encouraged to do so by the council’s own magazine – and my entire green bin was rejected. No sign of a tag, but my neighbours are looking at me oddly. Admittedly, that is not much of a change.
• A road safety website aimed at young people invites them to inform on their friends and hand them “deadly” speeding tickets. Can’t think of any way that might be abused.
• The Prime Minister signs a treaty that he knows most of the electorate are opposed to and refuses to let them vote on it.
• And (in Australia, admittedly), there is a suggestion that parents who have more than two children should pay a hefty climate change tax to offset the effect of their greenhouse gas emissions.

To cross or not to cross, that is one question

After declaring rashly that I would rather move to an Undecided area of Norfolk than remain in what might become a cash-wasting unitary authority, I was alerted by a correspondent to the peculiar goings-on in the shadowy borderlands where Norfolk, Suffolk and the coast meet.

Here the Government had declared that no unitary authority would be created that crossed county boundaries – thus ruling out the creation of a Yartoft authority – or as I prefer to call it, Lowmouth.

But the stone this was carved in now seems to be unexpectedly fragile, and Ministers have hinted that a brave new cross-border unitary council is still on the cards.

The cost of it all could be higher than you might imagine. What will happen, for instance, to the planned £50 million Waveney Campus, planned for the shores of Lake Lothing in Lowestoft as a joint home for 1000 staff from the Centre for the Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Sciences, Waveney District Council and part of Suffolk County Council? Rumour has it that the compulsory purchase orders going through are going to cost Waveney council tax payers £3 million, for a start.

My correspondent writes: “Obviously, not until after this building is completed and occupied will a unitary authority for Yarmouth and Lowestoft be announced, and plans for a new building somewhere in the Gorleston / Hopton area - between Yarmouth and Lowestoft - started. All this will of course be heralded as the most efficient solution for the area.”

Surely some mistake? Or is the European Union involved in some way? Or both?

Stonehenge no, Pondhenge yes, if we could find it

If I ran a satnav company, I would think twice before promoting a survey designed to expose people’s lack of geographical knowledge.

The other day I was being driven from Norwich to Wymondham town centre by someone who possessed a satellite navigation system. Admittedly German (we give the directions), it was correctly programmed but took us most of the way to Attleborough on the A11 before turning back and entering Wymondham from the south, adding at a guess about five miles to the journey.

Most of us have a better idea of geography than that, even if some think Leeds Castle is in Yorkshire (forgiveable, in view of the obvious deception) and Hadrian’s Wall is in Scotland (right direction, and it was supposed to be the boundary at one time).

The survey also revealed that about 200 people (a tenth of those surveyed) think Stonehenge is in Norfolk. Well, it would certainly be more convenient if it was, but surely that’s also an understandable mistake. After all, we do have the original site of Seahenge at Holme and the equally inaccessible Pondhenge, somewhere in North Norfolk.

I would be more worried if people did not know that Norfolk sometimes contains the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, a beautifully formed area that displays some of the most intriguing time-space distortions in the known universe. Apparently, this was not included in the survey.

A bridge too far away

Not that I think Lottery grants are the best way of creating and distributing money for deserving projects, but I was delighted to see that the plan to connect Norwich city centre with Whitlingham Country Park was awarded £900,000.

Charles Clarke says, for some reason, that this is a “victory for sustainability”. I would have said it was a victory for common sense, until I read that work was scheduled to start – yes, start – in four to five years. Now I see what he means: we have to sustain our interest even longer. Or shall we cross that bridge when we come to it, if we’re still alive?

3 December 2007

on 3 December 2007 at 04:30

Orwellian vision sneaks past our defences

Not many people would vote for the Orwellian vision of constant surveillance, citizens informing on each other, and laws covering what we say and think.

But you don’t have to vote for it: it sneaks by in a thousand small ways, and if there seem good reasons for it, you just let it happen. In a Norfolk school, for instance, children are being encouraged to spy on their teachers and expose their failings.

We are told that “gangs of diligent children patrol classrooms to make sure all televisions and computers are switched off” - and if a teacher has left one on, he or she gets a red card.

This may seem harmless and in a good cause. After all, no-one is being locked up and tortured. But in a society where so many children have no respect for teachers, it sets a bad precedent.

It also presents as fact what is conjectural – at least as far as the effects are concerned – but of course we’re used to that.

Elsewhere children are dangerously encouraged to see cars as evil, and no doubt it is just a question of time before they hand out red cards to drivers who they don’t think are parking properly.

Already unqualified adult volunteers are encouraged to gang up and use radar guns to catch drivers exceeding speed limits – and this at a time when exceeding the speed limit has been shown by government figures to account for fewer than five per cent of accidents, with most of those caused by the driver being drunk, on drugs or engaged in criminal activity.

This is an open invitation to people who want to impose their own prejudices on others, as are most Orwellian innovations.

Most of these wheedle their way in because people are frightened – usually unnecessarily. Last week, for instance, a professor of philosophy made it clear that he wants us to be “scared stiff” – so scared that he wants us to stop using accurate language and use scary words instead.

He suggests that the precise term “climate change” should be dropped, and we should start using terms like “climate crisis” and “climate catastrophe”.

He may be convinced that we are in dire straits atmospherically speaking, but many of us are not convinced. He calls us “climate-deniers”, which I presume means we think there is no climate at all.

He calls his own belief “telling the truth”, and he would like to impose his own “life-improving” lifestyle – which coincidentally would fit in nicely with tackling a climate crisis – on everyone else.

This man is not a scientist: revealingly his UEA colleague Prof Mike Hulme, who is, has written at least twice to the EDP correcting wild assumptions on “catastrophic” climate change.

The philosopher is already a politician locally and would like to be on the national stage. He thinks we should speak honestly. I think we should too. So I have to say that I believe he would be not a change but a catastrophe. Of course, that’s only my view.

Meeting the challenge of throwing money away

A conservation charity I know has recently built itself a bright new meeting room. I can see it from my bedroom window, and I’m very happy they hold meetings there.

If they didn’t, they might do what the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority does and book expensive hotels. In 18 months the QCA spent more than £4.2 million of taxpayers’ money on top hotels and conference centres to host meetings in the course of a wide-ranging review of the secondary school curriculum.

This, in case you were wondering, is equivalent to the annual salary of about 150 fully qualified teachers, but hey – who need fully qualified teachers when you can enjoy reviewing the curriculum instead?

Of course. the education sector is not alone in spending far more than it needs to on the comfort of its employees – or its consultants. The EDP reported last week that Defra, which has spent over £1bn on consultants over five years, booked staff tackling a bird flu outbreak into the luxury Ickworth Hotel, near Bury St Edmunds, where the lowest bed and breakfast rate is £185 a room.

Still, at least they’ve taken foie gras off the menu at City Hall. That’s not a financial saving of course, but no doubt the reorganisation of Norfolk councils into three unitary authorities will be. Or might there be some slight cost involved in rebranding, restaffing and completely changing everything?

Happily there are two areas still marked “undecided” on the brave new county map. I think I’ll move there. It’s bound to be cheaper.

Narrow escape for radar gun police

I hear from an unimpeachable electronic source that two traffic patrol officers from a few miles north of Norfolk were involved in an unusual incident while trying to catch motorists exceeding the speed limit on the A1.

One of the officers was using a hand-held radar device to check the speed of something approaching over the crest of a hill, and was surprised when the speed was recorded at over 300mph. The machine then stopped working and the officers were unable to reset it.

The radar had in fact latched on to a Nato Tornado fighter jet over the North Sea, which was engaged in a low-flying exercise. The chief constable fired off a stiff complaint to the RAF and received the following reply: "Thank you for your message. You may be interested to know that the tactical computer in the Tornado had automatically locked on to your hostile radar equipment and sent a jamming signal back to it.

“The Sidewinder air-to-ground missiles aboard the aircraft had also locked on to the target. Fortunately the Dutch pilot flying the Tornado responded to the missile status alert intelligently and was able to override the automatic protection system before the missile was launched.”

Wonderful things, Tornadoes. We should have more of them.

Wrong place, wrong time

Shortly after being mistaken for a small town by the BBC, Norwich has emphasised its city status by being voted second-best small city in the world, though how it could be beaten by Ipswich (even Ipswich, Australia) is hard to comprehend.

Not many people know that Hingham was on the long list for best small autonomous republic but was sadly disqualified for time and space distortion.

“Same old story,” said local expert Prof V A R Scheinlich. “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

19 November 2007

on 19 November 2007 at 04:30

Breakthrough discovery could be cause of Hingham woes

It is well known that the delightful Autonomous Republic of Hingham, situated on most days between Watton and Norwich, is subject to severe time-space distortion.

That may be connected with its pioneering of an unusual form of democracy, which could be summed up as asking everyone what they want to do, and then not doing it. This was subsequently taken up by New Labour and various local councils, but it originated in what has become known as the Scout Hut Sale Scenario, which happened so long ago that nobody is interested any more, or if they are, no-one is going to do anything about it.

Now a shocking suggestion had been made by local expert Prof V A R Scheinlich - that Hingham contains within itself a basic element that breeds what he calls “confusion of the democratic process and occasional wormholes”.

He has named it fairlandium, after Fairland Green in Hingham, which is at the centre of the most recent controversy, involving both contorted democratic process and time-space distortion.

Two small areas of grass where the main Norwich-Watton road meets the Attleborough-Dereham road are used for random parking, which has not only done little for the grass but also created a hazard to emergency vehicles, in the view of most inhabitants (the word “most” being itself dangerous in this context).

So the town council produced a consultation document that suggested exchanging the two small bits of grassed area – created originally where tracks crossed the historic green, but now out on a pointless, tarmac-surrounded limb - for a bit of highway that would become part of the larger Green area. This transaction would involve provision of a proper, safer 18-bay car park.

That was eight years ago. The consultation paper was described by the county council as “an excellent example of village democracy”, which was asking for trouble.

The whole thing could then have gone forward, but a vociferous minority campaigned against the idea. As a result an inquiry was held over five days at a cost of £25,000 (to the county council). The inquiry gave the go-ahead for the original plan, and indeed the exchange of land ownership went through. But in the meantime a new town council had been elected, which didn’t like the plan. It voted 6-5 against it.

Of course it was too late: only the physical work remained to be done, with grass and tarmac suspended in a time-space wormhole. But the town council would not accept the fait accompli – and as a result the embarrassed county council has threatened to charge the town £25,000 for the cost of the original inquiry. What now? I would suggest taking a vote of the electorate, but I know where that sort of thing can lead. There would be lots of spoilt papers, and the response would be just short of the minimum required.

“I believe fairlandium is to blame,” said Prof Scheinlich. “It doesn’t seem to occur naturally anywhere else.”

He is currently trying to track down the source in the hope that it can be neutralised.

Surface meaning of new signs may be deceptive

Users of the A140 between Norwich and Long Stratton will know that a new road surface has been laid recently between Swainsthorpe and Newton Flotman.

It is now smooth, quiet – and slippery.

At least it is if you believe new signs that have been installed every few hundred yards, which show the familiar logo and the added explanation: “New road surface”.

A concerned reader wrote saying he would have thought “a newly laid surface should in fact be just the opposite to slippery”, which is a reasonable view.

But maybe the road is not slippery at all. He has an alternative explanation for the signs: “Could it be that a surplus of funds had to be used before the end of the tax year, so it was thought best to pay for dozens of new signs, just in case they got sued by some errant motorist who skids on a wet road?”

A far-fetched theory, you may think, but it is in line with the familiar ploy of putting 5mph signs out after you’ve put chippings on country roads – knowing that no-one on earth is going to go that slowly but it will give you a cast-iron defence in the event of bodywork damage. “Well, we did tell you…”

The same correspondent also has his suspicions about signs warning of approaching speed limits, which he thinks excessive.

He writes: “It occurs to me that if the speed limit was moved to the beginning of the warning zone, it would save a lot of signs. And by the time motorists react, they would be travelling slowly enough when they reach the point where the limit should really apply.”

So why not? He has a theory, and I have a reservation.

His theory is that Norfolk County Council is starting up a sign company. My reservation is that if you put his solution into effect, someone would plant a speed camera in the area before the limit was really needed.

Unlikely, I know. But possible.

Decision not to alarm flood victims applauded

The decision not to sound warning sirens at Walcott when the sea overtopped defences has been warmly applauded by the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia.

Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, who is also the university’s emergency planning officer, said last night that resisting the appeal of the sirens on the grounds that they might alarm people was “humane and in the fine traditions of endangered species everywhere”.

He said research carried out by his department revealed that people would rather be extremely wet than alarmed. And if they were to be deprived of their homes, pets and in some cases their lives, they would rather this was done in a non-alarming way.

Prof Aufmerksam said he wanted to ban all kinds of burglar and car alarms, as well as warning notices of any sort. People were easily upset, he said. He had had to send several students for counselling when a “This Door is Alarmed” notice was put up in the lower common room.

5 November 2007

on 5 November 2007 at 04:30

Sleepwalkers in Norwich linked to shopping

Some may have been surprised to read that more people sleepwalk in Travelodges in Norwich than in any other city in the United Kingdom.

Those of us with experience of pedestrian activity in the city will not have been surprised at all, because the city is full of sleepwalkers. Most of them have just come out of shops and ground to a halt in the middle of the pavement.

The only difference between them and the Travelodge sleepwalkers is that the ones on the street are rarely naked and are not attempting to check out. A study undertaken by the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing confirms that many Norwich shoppers are in the grip of Oliver’s Syndrome, named coincidentally after my five-year-old grandson, who walks into any shop and says: ”I want to buy something.”

Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam said yesterday: “This of course reverses the normal procedure, which is to become aware of the need to buy something and then walk into a suitable shop. Our research reveals that Oliver’s Syndrome, a form of sleepwalking, is reaching epidemic proportions, possibly as a result of climate change, or Approaching Festive Season Disorder.”

He added: “None of this is really surprising. What we are really interested in is why all the sleepwalkers in Travelodges appear to be naked. Do they take their clothes off before attempting to check out, or do they sleep naked – an activity hitherto thought to be confined to students?

“We need to look at this much more closely.”

Unexpected truffle windfall for Norfolk town

Unexpected excitement struck the Watton area last week when it was designated a truffle hotspot.

It had long been thought that Norfolk was totally unsuited to growing the delicacy, hence the common dialect phrase “that hent no truffle, bor”.

Now an expert has said that the county is surprisingly ideal for truffles, and the answer lies in the soil – specifically the chalky, well-mixed earth that most readers will have noticed in the fields around Watton.

That area is already famous for its pingos, which have been used since the latest ice age to give a distinctive flavour to locally brewed real ale and whisky. A nearby restaurateur, Len ”Kissme” Hardy, formerly of Hindolveston, is already offering pingo and truffle canapés to discerning pupils of Wayland High School, who are said to prefer them to chips.

Meanwhile entrepreneur and general legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago said last night he was “up and running” in the race to supply the huge number of pigs that were expected to be needed to unearth the Watton truffles. His company, Houseago Inc of Erpingham, is in the process of diversification.

The much simpler Highway Code

While checking on the Poetry Vending Machine in Borders bookshop, Norwich, I couldn’t help noticing the chunkiness of the new Highway Code, which is on sale there.

Reprehensibly, I didn’t actually check the numbers, but I’m told the latest edition has reached 133 pages, which is enough to put anyone off driving. Perhaps that’s the idea.

In any case the Safe Speed campaign, which is concerned for road safety generally, says that this “bloat” is causing the essential safety messages to get lost, and so it has produced its own 100-word version of the Code. It goes like this.

“Drive on the left. Make sure you can see and be seen. Keep a constant look out all around. Be aware of signs and regulations and why they are there. Be predictable.

“Recognise and anticipate danger and keep clear space from it. Always ensure that you can stop within the distance that you know is clear. Develop your skills.

“Give courtesy, co-operation and space to others. Don't obstruct them. Never take risks, drive unfit or compete with others. “Safety is paramount and far more important than priority. Take personal responsibility for your safety and the safety of those nearby.

“Enjoy.”

I suspect it’s the last word that most safety experts would have problems with. But if you enjoy driving, you’re more than half way to doing it well. If you don’t, you’re dangerous. Expert anxious about effect of elephants on city streets

News that life-size baby elephants will soon be lurking in the streets of Norwich as part of a public art event has alarmed local scientist Professor V A R Scheinlich, who spends much of his time protecting the citizens of the Autonomous Republic of Hingham from unwanted effects of time and space distortion.

The republic, near Norfolk, is particularly prone to these effects, and Prof Scheinlich has made an in-depth study of them. “One of my achievements is to have eliminated unusual animals from our streets,” he said late last night. “Coypu, for instance.”

His device for protecting Hingham from elephants had worked particularly well, and he was concerned that Norwich was “asking for trouble”. He added: “So far Norwich has been relatively free of time and space distortion, apart from the buses. But this could change everything.”

He urged the council to consult him immediately. His fees were very reasonable, he said.

Crossing patrols not always the victims

I have no time for drivers who intimidate school crossing patrols or shout abuse at them, and I certainly have no problem with the campaign to inform drivers that they are legally obliged to stop for lollipop men and women.

But as always there is another side to it. A close friend who I know to be a good and considerate driver approached one such patrol at a zebra crossing in the city. No-one was waiting to cross, and the lollipop woman was standing with one foot on the crossing but with her back to it and talking to someone on the pavement.

My friend approached extremely carefully and, with no-one apparently interested in crossing, proceeded to drive through – at which the patrol woman turned and yelled abuse at her.

Consideration and respect are not a one-way street. Paying attention is the first rule of the road, and of the crossing.

22 October 2007

on 22 October 2007 at 04:30

Secret plan to keep holidaymakers at home

During the postal strike a pigeon alighted on my desk. Someone was clearly relying on tried and tested methods. It turned out to be Richard “Volcano” Meek, noted Norfolk explorer and author of the widely acclaimed Walking over Bishy Barnabees, who has recently been, in his own words, seeking a challenge.

His pigeon post revealed that he had recently “explored the upper reaches of the Acle Straight, seeking the legendary city of Yarmuff, fabled to be constructed – like Petra – from solid rock”. I thought it was sand, but there you go.

He writes: “A less observant traveller might well have missed a number of subtle changes taking place on the marshes flanking the A47 causeway.

“I can now reveal that a hitherto top secret project designed to encourage holidaymakers to stay local and reduce their carbon footsteps is being trialled in our region.

“All signs have been removed or obliterated. A white donkey and a herd of black cattle have been drafted in. Herons are being rounded up and dyed pink. Clearly the plan is to convince holidaymakers that they have arrived in the Camargue – or Camarcle, as insiders know it.

“Planes taking off from Norwich International are being equipped for crop spraying, early warning of nuclear attack and deliveries of local post. They will circle several times before landing at a secretly constructed airfield in Halvergate.

“Locals have been undergoing clandestine training as extras in this farce. It appears that disembarking passengers will be met by Len "Francoise" Hardy, Freddie Maisonyva and Dorothea Bon-Enfant before being taken to their gites in nearby Grand Yarbouche.

“Where will it end? Beeston Bump re-profiled to serve as Table Mountain? Gondoliers in Potter Heigham? Fruit bats being liberated in Loddon? Fruit cakes in Fakenham?” Almost unbelievable.

Free car parking the best option

I suggested last time that the simplest way to make car parking consistent throughout South Norfolk was for it to be free.

Council leader John Fuller tells me that this solution was indeed considered, but several problems arose, and they stemmed partly from changes in political domination of the council.

Apparently the maintenance of car parks has fallen behind – and £300,000 is needed to put them right. Meanwhile, machines that should have been collecting fees have been allowed to remain out of action from some months, costing the council about £40,000.

The council also faces a new problem. “On-street parking will no longer be enforced by the police from April, risking gridlock in the market towns next year unless we do something about it,” says Mr Fuller.

Taking over an essential service in mid-stream is undeniably difficult, but I still think car parking is so central to what happens in market towns that it should be financed by everyone, and not just car drivers.

This means temperamental machines would not be necessary, and maintenance would get the priority it deserved.

People are willing to pay for what they see needs to be done. What they are not willing to pay for is machines that don’t work and the consequences of essential repairs not being carried out, followed by a consultation process.

And if car parking were free, the problem with street parking would disappear – or at least be manageable. Or am I just a hopeless optimist?

Nobel judges not swayed by newts

A Norfolk man claimed yesterday that there had been a mix-up, and the Nobel Peace Prize should have been awarded to him instead of obscure American Al Gore.

Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, who has a long history of exposing the insidious activities of expansionist great crested newts in his home county, said that it was widely expected by people he knew that his fight for peace, literature and physics would catch the eye of the Nobel judges.

He admitted that much of the science on which he had based his anti-newt activities had been contested, but this did not matter as long as people became aware of the newt menace, for which they themselves were to blame. Ponds should have been abolished years ago. Now only heavier taxation, digging up roads and erecting monstrosities around the countryside would avert the danger.

Asked whether his campaign had anything to do with peace, Mr Houseago commented: “Probably not. But that doesn’t seem to matter. Anyway I could do with the money.”

Washed-up dog walkers anger bottle users

A large number of dog walkers washed up on a Norfolk beach has angered users of plastic bottles who frequent the area.

They believe that the dog walkers were thrown into the sea by a local enthusiast in the hope that they would reach Europe and spread the dog-walking gospel there. But the tide turned, and the dog walkers were washed up.

A newspaper columnist, when asked, said he would rather see plastic bottles than dog walkers on a beach, because they were cleaner and quieter, and tended not to write semi-literate abusive letters to him. In fact, messages in bottles tended to be quite uplifting.

When challenged, he admitted that many dog-walkers did not send him abusive messages and were quite friendly, although they tended to jump up too often, run around a lot and lick unnecessarily.

Eyes down for a new hazard

Readers will know how keen I am on low speeds, but it is hard to see how using average speed cameras to police 20mph limits in towns can be beneficial.

Law-abiding drivers will be determined to stay within the limit and therefore pay very close attention to their speedometers. However good they are, this means less attention paid to what is going on around them in what must be high-risk areas.

One road safety expert describes driving within the area covered by average speed cameras as “driving in fog”. While I would not put it quite like that, I do see what he means.

Mysterious marking

Taking an exam in RE nowadays seems a little bit less strict than it might be. The examiner will, I understand, mark super-positively, which is nice, and the exact mark you need to get a C grade, for example, is about as mysterious as the ways that the Almighty works in.

“We often get a call from on high asking us to push it down a bit,” a senior examiner reveals. “And I do mean the Government, not God.”

8 October 2007

on 8 October 2007 at 16:23

True science, or a tidal wave of mush?

Al Gore’s film on climate change can be shown to children in schools, despite being described in court as containing “serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush”. But High Court judge Mr Justice Burton said the Government had to rewrite its guidance material and will rule this week that the film does contain partisan political views.

Is this a victory or a defeat for the concerned parent who brought the action? If that is not clear, the facts about climate change remain even less clear, despite the eager acceptance of one extreme version by what has been described as the soft left, soft green majority in the media, universities and politics.

Proper discussion is inhibited by the attitude of scientists and fellow-travellers who think it simplest to abuse sceptics, who they describe as “malicious” and “climate change deniers”, though neither description is remotely accurate.

No-one in their right mind denies climate change. You might as well deny rain. What is questioned by many people is that global warming is out of control, has been caused almost entirely by human activity and can be prevented by changing our behaviour.

Many have a fundamentalist religious zeal for this idea. They would like to compel other people to both believe it is right and act on it - a position that even God rejected, with his slightly greater grasp of what is right than climate change activists.

To assist them in this they suggest that the sceptics do not understand the first principles of science, which is not only a distortion of the truth: it is the opposite of the truth. It is those non-scientists who blindly follow the activist line on climate change who don’t understand the science. To be a genuine sceptic you have to research the subject: when in the past I have presented scientific evidence against the majority view, the activists invariably don’t have time to look at it.

I question their naivety, not their motives. It is disturbing that Avaaz, a growing global e-mail group that does excellent work in drumming up support to make politicians act on key issues like Darfur and Burma, has swallowed the climate majority view hook line and sinker. As a result, petitions signed by the innocent and gullible will no doubt continue to be presented to assorted summits with an appropriate side salad of moral indignation.

They and others like them think the science is settled, but this is far from the case. It has been described as “the most complex field of science ever tackled”, and many questions remain to be answered.

For example, is there any reply to the argument that ice cores always show CO2 following warming periods, rather than causing them?

Could the so-called amplification of the effect of CO2 by other gases actually reduce it? A senior scientist says the jury is out.

Why are solar scientists predicting a global cooling period by 2020, if not before, and calling it the major climate threat to the world?

Could our climate really be governed by cosmic rays and low cloud cover?

Is the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere logarithmic? If so, it means it would become smaller and smaller over time.

How is it that the 1930s were so warm, and in the USA 1934 was the warmest year on record? And how is it that the oceans have not warmed at all over the past five years?

We don’t like questions like this because so many of us have bought into the climate catastrophe model. Councils are now paying out £102 million a year for an army of officials to work on “green” issues. The number of companies set up to take advantage of new rules and laws on emissions is already beyond calculation, and few politicians nowadays would be brave enough to resists such a tidal wave.

But does that make it true? Or just mush?

Last refuge of the unimaginative

South Norfolk Council wants to charge motorists to park in Harleston and Loddon because you have to pay in Diss and Wymondham, and “charging should be consistent”.

Oscar Wilde said consistency was the last refuge of the unimaginative, which doesn’t seem to have got through to most councillors. I wonder why?

What also doesn’t seem to have got through to them is that if you just want to be consistent, you could make parking free in Diss and Wymondham.

But that wouldn’t do, apparently, because the cost of maintaining car parks shouldn’t fall on the general council tax payer.

Why not? I happily pay for schools and swimming pools, though I don’t use either. If we pay for everything we use individually, what’s the point in having a council?

Mystery surrounds short stretch of road

Most mind-boggling comment of the past two weeks came from the chief executive of Great Yarmouth Port Company, who pronounced that “for all but one short stretch, the road to the Midlands is dual carriageway”.

I suppose it depends where you start and finish, but clearly Yarmouth is not an option. There are two single-carriageway stretches before you reach Norwich, and if you persist with the natural route to the Midlands – the A47 – you soon come across more. Many more, and not short at all.

So is there another way? Well, yes there is. You could go down the A11 and take the A14.

This would give you three single-carriageway stretches, only one of which could really be described as short. But it would also mean piling another great clump of lorries on to two of the most hideously congested roads in East Anglia – the stretch between Cambridge and Huntingdon and the much-loved Elveden traffic lights feature.

So, obviously a completely new meaning for the words “short”, “dual” and “carriageway”. Oh, and possibly “Yarmouth” too.

Alternate-week collection is rubbish

I see that the main aim of the alternate weekly rubbish collections planned for Norwich soon (you may have missed the road shows) is “to reduce the amount of waste we collect and dispose of”.

Of course, not turning up at all would reduce it even more. I wonder how long before someone suggests that.

The second aim is to increase recycling rates. Why this should happen is a complete mystery. “Oh, they’re not collecting my rubbish this week. I’ll recycle it instead.”

I don’t think so.

24 September 2007

on 24 September 2007 at 05:00

Norfolk way of handling a crisis

If you were wondering where all the police in North Norfolk were last Sunday afternoon, I can tell you. They were guarding me.

That may be slightly misleading. But I was with a group of North Walsham people, about 100-strong, gathered in a field, and there was a hefty police presence - including a dozen vehicles, which surprised me. I didn’t know they had that many. I should hasten to add that I was completely innocent on this occasion.

My wife and I had been visiting friends who have lived in North Walsham for about 100 years, relatively speaking, when we were asked by a fireman to evacuate the house. Fortunately we had just had a cup of tea.

After checking that he was really a fireman and his engine was not a cunningly constructed fake, we retired to the nearby football club and its hastily opened pavilion. Fortunately the weekend weather was unaccountably warm and sunny. Meanwhile, the police and fire service attempted to remove a man from a gas-filled house a couple of streets away.

The spectre of North Walsham losing dozens of houses to an explosion never seemed real, but then I suppose it never does, right up to when the explosion happens. In this case the police operation was successful, sanity was restored and after a couple of hours we were allowed back into the house – from where we made a quick exit to the safety of Norwich.

Two things struck me about the whole incident: the quiet good humour of the community and the relaxed attitude of the police, several of whom were known to the locals.

There were a couple of riot shields disappearing in the direction of the gas-filled house, but in our field all was calm – no barriers, no rough handling of people who got too close, no officiousness. You could actually talk to officers as if they were human beings, as indeed they seemed to be.

All in all, a very rural Norfolk way of handling of something that could have turned nasty in so many different ways.

Courtesy is the answer on the road

Pointing out the supposed shortcomings of other drivers is a hazardous undertaking, since no-one is perfect - not even me. Well, not all the time. So instead of continuing the ongoing dispute about lorries, white vans, dual carriageways, lily, rosemary and the jack of hearts, I shall pass on the wise counsel of a reader, who tells me: “When I learnt to drive, I was always being told to be courteous towards other drivers.

“In fact there used to be something in the Highway Code about driving with courtesy. It really doesn't take up much of your time - just a bit of thought.” She asks us to imagine what the roads would be like if everyone drove with courtesy:

• There would be no tailgating
• Parents wouldn't park close to school entrances
• Everyone would indicate
• No-one (not even disabled drivers) would park on double yellow lines
• No-one would park in disabled spaces when not entitled to
• No-one would hog the middle lane
• Slow drivers (tractors, HGVs, cars towing caravans or horse boxes) would pull over on country roads to allow the “tail” to get past
• “Thou shalt not pass” would be a thing of the past
• Everyone would acknowledge every act of consideration
• Everyone would keep to their own side of the road, particularly on bends.

She concludes: “We'd all get there just as quickly, and probably in a better temper!” I’m still trying, but I’m not quite sure I can imagine it yet.

Dog walker with a difference

There was no tremendous response to my suggestion last time that it might be possible for people to go for a walk without dogs, but one gentleman from the east of the county came up with something quite unexpected.

His name is Bob, and he tells me that he once worked for a coal delivery firm whose boss was a dog lover.

“He raced greyhounds,” said Bob. “I don't think he ever beat one, as I am sure we would have heard. But being an entrepreneurial type of a person, he got his chief engineer to construct a dog-exercising machine.

“This was done very secretively and in scientifically cleaned laboratory conditions. When the day came to try out this machine, a large crowd was assembled, slightly in awe and ever so bemused by the sight of what was being brought out into the open.

“The dog was led out and placed on the machine with all due pomp and circumcision. The machine was switched on, there was a shower of sparks from the motor - the belt going backwards with said dog attached.

“The dog flew off in a northerly direction and headed towards Hickling.”

This sounds to me an admirable device. It is a pity no-one had the foresight to put it into full-scale production.

Slow progress into the new millennium

It has recently become clear why anti-car campaign group Transport 2000 was always in favour of slow driving. It is in fact a very slow-moving organisation. Noticing that its name was going to become pretty embarrassing in the new millennium, it decided eight years ago to change it. But no-one could agree on what the new name should be. So nothing happened, and things went quiet.

Eventually, however, they did agree to set up a sub-group, which also turned out to be slow-moving. It took 18 months to agree that the group should now be called Campaign for Better Transport.

Not surprising, I suppose, when you have to cope with all those speed cameras and road humps. One point in their favour, though: they didn’t call in a consultant. Unless of course they did, but he hasn’t arrived yet.

Road safety policy in the wrong box

The justification for speed cameras has been called into question after the Government at last admitted that its casualty calculations had been flawed, resulting in wrong conclusions being drawn about cameras’ effectiveness – or lack of it.

The Met’s former head of traffic confessed: “We have put our entire road safety programme into a box marked speed cameras.” And one road safety expert said it meant the so-called speeding problem did not exist.

Maybe now we can tackle what really causes road accidents – and get a few speed limits back up to realistic and safer levels.

10 September 2007

on 10 September 2007 at 05:00

Lorry responses at different speeds

Four weeks ago I made a small complaint about the way many heavy lorries behaved on dual carriageways.

I observed that they signalled and pulled out without any regard to what was coming up behind and then took an eternity to pass the HGV in front, thus dangerously disrupting traffic.

As I might have anticipated, I received quite a response from readers. Amusingly, the quickest of them shot in at speed from car-driving supporters of my views, while the complaints from the heavy lorry drivers took a bit longer to reach me – presumably hampered by speed limiters of some kind.

More than one person, in fact, pointed out in defence of HGV drivers that their engines were speed-limited, which prevented them overtaking more quickly. Fair enough. But surely they are aware of this, which means they know very well that it will take ages to overtake - so they must be being deliberately obstructive.

There is still a way round it: the lorry being overtaken could easily slow down slightly to allow the overtaker to get past. Instead, the intention invariably seems to be to make it as hard as possible – in some cases forcing the frustrated overtaker, after three or four miles of blockading the outside lane, to drop back.

But no-one likes being overtaken, do they? One lorry enthusiast seemed to feel that it was OK to block cars because they were exceeding the speed limit. But the self- appointed speed-limit-enforcer is to my mind one of the most dangerous characters on the road, whatever he or she drives. “They shall not pass” is a killer attitude. Literally.

I had a great deal of sympathy, though, with one lorry driver who wrote to me, no doubt representative of very many others. He pointed out the commercial pressure that lorry drivers were under - ”nearly all subject to time-sensitive deliveries…they receive abuse and wait for hours to get unloaded, hence they have to go like hell to play catch-up”. He blames “rich developers and greedy investors”, with a resultant emphasis on quantity instead of quality. I would not want to argue with that. The menace to road safety does not even have to be on the road.

Nor would I want to restrict my criticism of inconsiderate driving to lorry drivers. Drivers of cars and vans (especially white ones) have been quick to follow suit. On journeys to and from Scotland in the past month I saw countless drivers of all vehicles who seem to think that as long as they indicate, they can pull out, and it is up to the driver behind to make room.

This is kamikaze driving. How about a national campaign to expose it?

Mystery animals slow down traffic

Still on the lookout for strange road signs, I was much taken by one I came across on two different motorways recently. It flashed from one of those huge LCD displays that give warning of temporary hazards: “Animals on the road.”

It certainly made people slow down – largely, I think, because of the uncertainty as to the nature of the animals. What were we being faced with? Escaped hippopotami? Horses? A couple of coypu and a stray squirrel?

In the end, of course, no animal was visible. I could picture the sign-operator gurgling with delight and trying to think of something even more bizarre to slow down traffic. “Birds crossing sky”, for instance.

I am happy to report that my favourite Scottish road sign is still there: “No double white lines in centre of road.” But it has been superseded in pointlessness by one on the M6 toll: “This sign not in use.” Almost as good as the legendary “Do not throw stones at this sign”.

BBC steps back from climate bandwagon

I was delighted to see that the BBC has decided not to jump full-square on the global warming bandwagon. It has dropped plans to broadcast Planet Relief, described as a TV special on climate change, following comments by senior editorial staff that it was not the BBC’s job to save the planet or to lead opinion on the subject.

This is a refreshing stance at a time when so many parts of the media have abandoned all pretext of objectivity. Whatever climate change enthusiasts may say, there is still a great deal of work to do on establishing how our climate is changed, and even more on predicting its future. Those who prepared for a really, really hot summer this year will know what I mean.

The sole function of conclusions in this area is apparently to be leapt to, but awkward data keep cropping up. The only UK September heatwaves (over 90F) in the twentieth century occurred in 1906, 1911, 1919, 1926, 1929 and 1949, and there have been none this century, according to expert Philip Eden. Wait for it…

It's OK to walk without a dog

Having incurred the wrath of lorry drivers, I’ve decided to go the whole hog and annoy a completely new group of people by backing the move to ban dog-walking in wildlife conservation areas.

Apparently dog-walking causes a dramatic drop in the number of birds, even if the pets are kept on a lead.

As a big bird enthusiast (I know what you’re thinking) I would like to see all dog- walking banned everywhere, but this is not a popular position to take. After all, dog-walkers now have those delightful little transparent plastic bags in which to carry round their pets’ poo so that we don’t have to tread in it.

Aesthetically, however, this is not much of an improvement. I sometimes think I would rather it were on the ground.

But dogs have to be walked, don’t they? If so, I prefer it to be done in private. Up and down the stairs is good, or round and round the patio.

I suspect that the real reason people own dogs is to give themselves an excuse to go for a walk.

I have good news for them: it is perfectly OK to go for a walk on your own. If enough of us do it, we won’t be mistaken for flashers, cruisers or potential rapists and it will become a socially accepted practice. Then there will be no need for dogs at all.

27 August 2007

on 27 August 2007 at 05:00

Street-cleaning is rubbish

When I spent a few days in a small coastal town in Normandy last month, I was quite surprised – but delighted – to see that the beach was cleaned every morning. And I was astonished to discover that domestic rubbish was collected every day.

In this country the authorities seem to think that once a week is a bit excessive. It’s all part of the general tendency not to do anything that people actually want.

Living in the city of Norwich, I was delighted to hear of the council’s emphasis not long ago on cleaning up litter. But nothing much seemed to happen, so when a Green Party campaigner called on us, we mentioned the litter problem in our road. Now I have received a letter saying they took the matter up and found that there is a “litter pick” in our road regularly – or to be slightly more precise, every eight weeks. So once every two months our road is clean. If you come to see us, please choose your day carefully.

In addition to this exciting development, I can reveal that it’s “mechanically swept” every 16 weeks. Yes, that’s about three times a year.

I would like to know the name of the person who thinks this is remotely satisfactory. If the council can’t even keep our streets clean, what are we paying it for?

No doubt there will be those who think that I should go out and pick up the litter myself. Well, on occasion my wife and I do exactly that. Perhaps we should also service the street lighting, resurface the road (it certainly needs it), take all our rubbish down to the tip (where some of it will be rejected), charge our neighbours for parking and campaign to become a unitary authority.

Blindfold chess

Holding the British Chess Championships at Great Yarmouth was an iconoclastic masterstroke. I turned up for the last two days at Yarmouth College and was impressed almost as much by the facilities as I was by the variety of participants – from fashion-conscious teenage girls to the occasional smartly dressed but sockless grandmaster.

The excitement and beauty of chess is clearly getting through to a wide cross- section of society, even though certain parts of the media still greet it with that supercilious face they use when confronted by something much deeper than they are.

The only strange thing about the whole event was that there were no road signs to guide occasional visitors through the warren of streets to the college. I would have thought that if the horse-racing merits copious AA directions signs, an event of this magnitude certainly does. At the very least they could have effected a small change to those “For the Broads follow Yarmouth” signs so that they read “For the Boards follow Yarmouth”.

This is what is known in chess as a useful transposition.

Too much information, too little knowledge

That marvellous poet T S Eliot asked many good questions, and one of the best was: “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

We have now reached a stage where we are presented with so much useless information that what we know disappears into a kind of background swamp, where it sinks. Here are three quite different examples.

The first – “This unit has been disconnected electrically for your safety” – appeared on a towel rail in a motel near Hull. Presumably it simply means that it deliberately doesn’t work, which makes you wonder why it’s there. The kettle didn’t work either.

The second is from an aircraft and must have been used untold thousands of times: “Your life vest is either under your seat or in the panel above your head.” Don’t they know which? Surely the last thing you want to be doing in an emergency is be looking for something that might be in one place or possibly another.

The third is quite simply not true: in fact it is almost the opposite of the truth, but I guess that the betting company that uses it must assume that if you say something often enough, you will create an assumption that it must be right.

“It matters more when there’s money on it,” they say. If we believe that, we might as well give up now.

Cakes and death in the country

Rural readers will be familiar with the strange and bizarre rites that are still practised in the wilder parts of Norfolk.

I was wandering around one such part (which I cannot name in case of reprisals or wicker man incidents) when I thought I had stumbled on one such ancient ceremony. There, attached to a post, was a weathered notice bearing the words “Mother’s Day Cake Tomb”.

What could it mean? Perhaps cake makers in this part of the world were hampered by poor local ingredients, and the tomb was where their cakes were consigned to die – rather like an elephants’ graveyard.

Unlikely, I decided. Much more probable that innocent, unsuspecting strangers were lured to a graveyard vault by a tempting cake and then subjected by local mothers to unspeakable experiences. I kept an eye open. It could happen, and I didn’t want to miss out.

In the end, however, after close examination of the notice, I was forced to the reluctant conclusion that it might have read originally “Mother’s Day Cake Tombola”. How weird is that?

It's still called propaganda, Al

Ernest Benn said that “politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy”.

I understand he was not talking about climate change, but it’s a pretty apt description of most politicians’ response to a phenomenon that has always been with us.

Al Gore, patron saint of global warming, says this month that “what used to be called propaganda now has a major role to play in shaping public opinion”.

Actually I still call it propaganda, and the more it pours forth, the more likely impressionable people are to vandalise 4x4s in Germany, disrupt innocent holidaymakers at airports and brainwash children. There’s a word for that too.

13 August 2007

on 13 August 2007 at 05:00

Heavy lorries biggest hazard on the roads

What is the single biggest hazard that motorists face? The never-ending roadworks? The constant diversion signs? Boredom caused by the streams of fatalistic, slow- moving traffic crawling along perfectly serviceable major roads, apparently under the illusion that this is all they can do?

I am a bit suspicious about the roadworks, largely because they always take so long, so few people seem to be working on them, and the coned-off sections tend to be three times as lengthy as they need be.

Is there a conspiracy to make use of our roads so unpleasant that we will avoid using them as much as possible?

Ridiculous, you say. Still, one of the inspectors to the Secretary of State for Transport recently recommended refusal of the planned Thames Gateway Bridge because “it might encourage people to travel”. Perhaps this is an example of a more general principle at the heart of Whitehall.

The diversion signs are more of a mystery. They are everywhere, and proliferate even on the rare occasions when you are not being diverted. I can only assume that someone made far too many of them, and they were sold to highways authorities on the cheap.

The other week my esteemed colleague Charles Roberts, now resident in France, pinpointed the dangers caused by heavy lorries tailgating him aggressively when he was going as fast as he was legally allowed to.

This is a problem here too, largely because the speed limits are hopelessly out of sync with what is safe. Here the tailgater is less likely to be a heavy lorry than one of those oversized vans that know exactly where the speed cameras are.

There is a different problem with heavy lorries in this country, and after driving over 500 miles in a couple of days last week it is my nomination for Single Biggest Hazard.

It manifests itself most often on dual carriageways. A heavy lorry comes up behind another HGV, which is going very slightly more slowly. It signals and pulls into the right-hand lane. This is done regardless of what may be coming up behind in the faster lane, how dangerous the manoeuvre is and – critically – how long it is going to take to overtake the other HGV.

When I was taught to drive, and for many years afterwards, we did not overtake if someone coming up behind was moving faster than us. It was not only dangerous but inconsiderate.

The result of the dramatic change of attitude is that the right-hand lane of dual carriageways becomes packed with vehicles that would like to go faster but are blocked by an HGV struggling to overtake another HGV.

The lorry being overtaken could slow slightly to ease progress, but I have never seen it happen. Mile after mile they drive along, blocking both lanes until one manages to edge just enough in front to go back into the slower lane – if you’re lucky.

To make matters worse, because a queue develops in the outside lane, waiting to overtake, other drivers undertake and then try to slip into the outside lane, causing further delays.

As well as being extremely irritating and thus provoking accidents through frustration, this whole procedure is highly dangerous of itself. But why should HGV drivers worry? If they collide with a car, they’re not very likely to get hurt.

I apologise to considerate lorry drivers if this upsets them. But there seem to be fewer and fewer of them about. The defining mark today is selfishness – and rank bad driving. If we were serious about road safety, this sort of behaviour would be top of the list for elimination. But we’re not, are we?

Ambitious blackboard scheme to revitalise resort

Following the fiasco over Great Yarmouth’s giant hi-tech street screens, described as a “catalogue of errors” by councillor Trevor Wainwright and in more graphic terms by many other people, it is believed that the town is going for something even more ambitious.

A secret working party is working secretly on a plan to install large blackboards in place of the screens. This will enable important messages to citizens and visitors to be chalked up on a regular basis by dedicated blackboard operatives, as they would be known.

Len “Kissme” Hardy, a consultant, said this would avoid all the problems inherent in anything hi-tech. There would be no batteries needed, and they were going to be using state-of-the-art chalk that was eco-friendly and virtually carbon-neutral.

Asked if there might be difficulties for the blackboard operatives in reaching the screens, Mr Hardy said they also had the latest ladders, although there were obviously health and safety issues. “Of course we won’t be able to use them in the rain,” he added. “But I don’t see that as a problem. We will have insurance.”

Mr Hardy said the real attraction of the scheme, apart from its simplicity, was the fact that it could be set up in such a way that no-one would be able to find out who was responsible if it went wrong. “Of course, that’s been done before,” he said. “But it’s tried and tested. You have my personal guarantee.”

Corporation denies involvement in warehouse shock horror

A spokesman for Houseago Inc, the world-famous Norfolk diversification corporation, said last night that the discovery near Erpingham of warehouses full of suitcases packed with holiday wear and sun cream were “nothing to do with us”.

He admitted that while it was true that millions of items of luggage went missing from airlines every year, there was no connection between that and the lucrative secondhand clothes operation recently included in the Houseago portfolio.

“We have our own suppliers,” he claimed. “Some of the items are very high quality – almost new. We’re also moving into making and distributing our own sun protection lines, though our supply line on that is a bit shaky at the moment. But our sealable clear plastic bags go down very well.”

Investigation into ownership of the Erpingham warehouses is planned, but has not taken off yet.

30 July 2007

on 30 July 2007 at 05:30

Improbability drive, with mobile phones

One of the most compelling inventions in that wonderful and extremely useful book, The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is the improbability drive.

It powers a spaceship and is too complicated to explain here, but to give you a flavour, I will tell you what happened to my son, his family, my wife and me in between Legoland and Reading.

We were in two cars: I was following my son who, as well as his family, had the directions to the hotel we were aiming for. He had told me the name of the hotel, but being 62, I had forgotten it.

Well over 90 per cent of the journey had been completed, when my son made an unexpected right turn. I attempted to follow, but another car cut in, and I had to abandon the manoeuvre. By the time I had sorted myself out and turned round, he had disappeared.

We followed in what we thought were his footsteps – or tyre tracks, if you want to be pedantic about it. After quite a long time, we more or less gave up. We were lost. We didn’t know the name of the hotel or where it was, and anyway, they had the reservation details, without which we could not check in.

So far, so unlikely. In these days of mobile phones, a simple solution was available. My wife had a mobile phone, and so did I. So did my son.

My wife attempted to ring him, only to be told that she could not use her phone because we hadn’t paid the bill – a small matter of £9, which in any case is paid automatically by credit card. Only something had gone wrong, and the company had chosen this precise moment to block the phone.

I did not attempt to ring my son on my phone, because when I was in Ireland someone had rung me and used up all its outstanding top-up credit – coincidentally, also about £9. An iniquitous system, in my view, and because I had had no time since returning to rectify the situation, it made my phone as useless as a lump of coal.

So why did my son not ring us? This is where it gets really improbable. When he turned right, the hotel was on our left, and he did a full circle to enter its car park. He thought we had seen this, or had at least noticed the hotel which, to be fair, was big.

He dropped his wife and two children outside reception and went round the back to park the car. In the course of unloading, he dropped his car keys down the side of the seat and spent some time looking for them.

He assumed we had made contact with his wife. She in turn assumed we had made contact with him. So no phone call – until they eventually met up and found that no- one knew where we were, least of all us.

We had been driving round the galaxy for a while when we eventually received his call, and found we could see the hotel from where we were.

Fortunately, like Planet Earth in the essential Guide, we are mostly harmless.

If California were in Norfolk...

The American pronunciation of Norwich as Nor-witch is usually ascribed to the rather literal approach to life characteristic of our transatlantic cousins.

Visitors to Connecticut will know that the New England Norwich is pronounced Nor- witch, just as their river Thames is pronounced Thayms.

But a writer to the National Post, a newspaper that was picked up by an alert EDP reader in Vancouver, suggests that the man to blame is lexicographer Noah Webster.

As well as being morocco-bound, his dictionary and other work emphasised the value of phonetics in teaching children to read – an approach not unknown to our own dear Government, not to mention thousands of teachers.

The Canadian letter-writer suggests that it was this method, applied pedantically, that caused Americans to change their pronunciation of places like Norwich and Warwick and rivers like the Thames.

While it is nice to have someone to blame, I am not so sure. It may just be a question of imagination – pronounced Ingoldisthorpe. After all, if California were in Norfolk, it would be pronounced Scratby.

Sheep a bit muddled and slow on the break

Now that there’s scarcely a break between football seasons, it was no surprise to see a team of sheep practising on a pitch outside our Irish hotel during a recent holiday.

However I was a bit doubtful about some of the tactics, especially the positional play. At first they appeared to be going for a diamond formation, then for a moment it was 4-2-4, with a black sheep in the hole.

But this disintegrated quite quickly, and some alarming gaps developed in midfield. There was a lot of bunching and what might easily have been interpreted as ball- following, if there had been a ball.

All in all they seemed strong in defence, but with the best will in the world you couldn’t describe them as quick on the break. It was also a little disturbing how their heads went down.

Still, the pitch was looking surprisingly good.

Poles apart

Lenton’s First Law: where two people, one male and one female, arrange to meet in a few minutes’ time, this arrangement will not work, however simple it is.

This applies to groups as well as individuals, and is closely connected to Lenton’s Second Law: every woman has the innate ability to disappear completely in a supermarket, however small the supermarket.

An example: my wife and a friend were going to do a little food shopping while the friend’s husband and I walked down the road – a matter of 50 yards – to see a small photographic exhibition involving railway stations and snow. Whoever finished first would walk to meet the other two.

We finished looking at the exhibition and walked back to the supermarket. No sign of the other two. Aware of the Second Law, we examined the supermarket thoroughly, but to no avail. (I should mention that it was not in Hingham.)

In this situation, as in so many others – despite what politicians say – doing nothing is not only an option: it is essential. The women would eventually materialise, and they did. They had gone somewhere else instead.

Lenton’s Third Law: there is always a really good reason for this.

16 July 2007

on 18 July 2007 at 17:45

Essential difference between fact and opinion

One of the basic principles in writing or presenting news is that you should make it easy for the reader to distinguish between fact and opinion.

It’s particularly important when contentious issues are being reported. So I was disappointed to read the other day in a news story in the online Telegraph about a climate change survey that “the UK is in denial about the consequences of global warming”.

The phrase “in denial” implies a refusal to believe something that is self-evident. In fact the consequences of any global warming are so many and various that there is plenty of room for discussion and differences of opinion. The causes of climate change, which is probably what the reporter was really talking about, are also unsettled.

Bad enough, but worse is to come. Lower down the story comes the sentence: “The survey found that more than half (of those who responded) thought scientists were divided on climate change when in fact there is a scientific consensus.”

This is the reporter’s view, and not one shared by more than half the people surveyed. It is certainly not undisputed fact.

In truth there is not a scientific consensus: in this country there is pretty much a political consensus and even more a media consensus, and if that doesn’t worry you, it probably should. But plenty of distinguished scientists harbour significant doubts. Some have resigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; others have stayed on it but disagree with its conclusions; still others have had nothing to do with it.

Some scientists, of course, have no doubts at all. For example, the man from the UEA who appeared on Look East a while back and responded to a question about scientists who didn’t agree with him about global warming by replying: “They aren’t really scientists.”

It says much for the way journalism is going that the TV presenters simply let this arrogance pass. In fact they almost encouraged it.

Time was when reporters asked meaningful questions, but that’s consensus for you. No wonder people are suspicious of it.

White lines safer than cameras

The usual definition of an accident is something that happens unintentionally or unexpectedly. So it is not entirely clear why the Norwich coroner is unwilling to use the word in referring to fatalities on the road. People rarely intend to have accidents, and despite their relentless occurrence, they are not usually expected.

The coroner argues that they are not really accidents because someone causes them, but everything that happens has a cause, even if it is not obvious. Perhaps we should not use the word at all. Shall we start referring to home collisions or factory crashes?

Surely just about every accident is avoidable one way or another. The coroner may wish to spare the feelings of victims of road accidents, and it is kind of him to do so, but calling accidents something else is not going to change anything.

Only proper driver education and sensible road safety policies will do that. If only the coroner could make that kind of change.

Coincidentally, a survey of UK road casualty figures has just found that painting in white lines on the road to indicate right or left turns is eight times more effective in cutting crashes than using speed cameras. Just renewing old markings is well over three times as effective. White Line Partnership, anyone?

Where there's equine residue, there's even more brass

You have to get out into the countryside to arrive at a proper perspective on life. I was taking a short walk down Marriott’s Way just outside Reepham not long ago when I paused to peer over a parapet. There below me at the side of the road was the following notice:

Horse muck 40p Equine residue 50p Poo des chevaux £1.00

As my very wise father-in-law used to say, you get what you pay for.

No sign of sense yet

The introduction of No Smoking notices into places where no-one ever smoked anyway – such as churches – has encouraged Norfolk legend and druid Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago to diversify yet again.

His company Houseago Inc, based at Erpingham, has started producing a wide range of notices that he hopes the Government or some other busybody will make compulsory.

“I can see a trend as soon as the next man,” he said. “People don’t want to make up their minds any more. They want to be told, even when it seems obvious.”

Areas he has already identified for his signs are: No sex – churches and supermarkets No swimming – high streets Do not open umbrellas – phone boxes No sleeping – discos No dancing – libraries No cycling – swimming pools No combine harvesters – woods or forests No flying – railways No picnics – public conveniences.

A research department, headed by Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston, is believed to be investigating a wide range of other possibilities, such as “No democracy” for the Autonomous Republic of Hingham and “No penguins” for the UEA.

“We are extremely optimistic,” he said late last night.

Our boys done good again

In a cricket match held at Jokingapart, near Ludham, an all-East Anglian team selected by radical cleric the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick was narrowly beaten by a foreign team.

After winning the toss and choosing to bat, the East Anglians scored 11, with Mr Repps-cum-Bastwick out for what is known in Norfolk as a Wymondham duck. In reply the foreign team took more than two balls to reach 12 for 0.

Asked if the result was a total disaster, Mr Repps-cum-Bastwick said his young team would learn from experiences like this.

He added: “There has been a lot of hard work put in behind the scenes. We will learn from our mistakes.”

Pushed on exactly when they would start learning, he added: “We lost today, but there were a lot of positives. No-one got injured, and most of our bowlers didn’t bowl, so they are very fresh. We will come back from this.”

The interview was abandoned at this point because of bad light.

2 July 2007

on 2 July 2007 at 05:00

You can't stop unhappy accidents

The hearts of everyone, I hope, went out to the family of the young lad killed tragically by a falling beech branch at Felbrigg Hall last week. It was reassuring to hear of the measures that had been taken by the National Trust to ensure that the 500-acre wood was as safe as possible. But it was slightly less reassuring to read that the police and Health and Safety Executive were “combing the area to work out why the bough fell”.

They should listen to the boy’s grandfather, who refused to blame anyone. “It was a freak accident,” he said. “It was a one in a million chance. You cannot stop it.”

It is a sad fact that beech trees sometimes lose their branches without warning. What can we do about it? Send in gangs of tree surgeons to do weekly checks – a kind of National Tree Service?

Keep away from beech trees? Sadly, nine out of ten urban families would not be able to tell a beech tree from a gooseberry bush, so perhaps we should label them, or surround them with palings? Maybe we should avoid woods altogether: most children are told that nasty things lurk there, and of course they do.

Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to happy, fun-loving, intelligent 11-year-olds. No amount of safety measures, risk assessments and allocation of blame is going to stop it.

As a grandfather of two lovely, innocent and promising under-fives, I really do wish it were possible to guarantee their safety at all times. But I know it isn’t.

The truth is we could waste an awful lot of time, and stop an awful lot of fun and enjoyment, by pretending it is.

Mystery of tourist bus spotted at Fakenham

Alarming news from Fakenham: a reader tells me that he saw a Norwich open-top tourist bus passing through the town, heading in the direction of King's Lynn.

“I find it hard to describe the looks on the faces of the occupants,” he said, “but mystified comes close.”

It may be, as my informant suggests, that the strange bus misplacement is linked to the “home rule for Norwich” campaign. But I think it far more likely that the bus driver took a wrong turn and became attracted to a wormhole in the Hingham area, which is well known for time and space distortion.

Either solution would explain the mystification, which is quite common anyway around Fakenham. Locals tell of ghostly buses passing through the town containing the shades of passengers past. When the moon is full and the traffic is right, strange voices can be heard pleading not to be let off.

These are not the only strange sounds to be heard in Norfolk nowadays. Walking across Cley marshes between showers last weekend, my companions and I were buzzed by a very large bird that circled noisily for some minutes. Or maybe it was a helicopter. It seemed to be looking for food.

Top local explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek tells me that everything in the sky is getting louder, especially in the twilight of early morning and late evening, when birds of all kinds “twitter and screech away”.

He suggests that this behaviour may be the cause of the freak weather conditions we have been experiencing, not to mention rising sea levels. “I reckon it’s all down to Gloaming Warbling,” he concludes.

Stand back: the shingle's moving

I was a little disturbed to find a notice by the beach in Cley which revealed that the shingle bank is moving inland at about a metre a year.

We kept well clear of it after that: no-one wants to be mown down by a shingle bank, even when it is as unimposing as the one at Cley, which looked as if it would have trouble holding back a strong ripple.

I hope for the sake of the splendid new Norfolk Wildlife Trust visitor centre that I am wrong about this, because it would be a shame to lose it, together with all those lovely oyster catchers, avocets, marsh harriers and spoonbills. I see the penguins have already gone.

Clampdown on speeding tractors

A friend who is keen to spot bizarre roadside objects when visiting Norfolk tells me that he came across a speed camera pointing into a field.

Happily I was able to reassure him that this was quite normal: it was directed at preventing reckless driving by tractors and combine harvesters, which can be a real problem in the west of the county.

That is why there was very little support in Norfolk for last week’s Scrap Speed Cameras Week. No-one likes to be overtaken by a tractor when they’re trying to change a CD or drive across a field, or both.

There was widespread laughter near Themelthorpe at the 28,000 people who signed a national petition to scrap speed cameras, though apparently this was directed not so much at their muddleheadedness as at the response from the Prime Minister, whoever he may be.

Or maybe not. While travelling one of my favourite escape routes from Norwich to Holt recently, I came up against a driver who thought 45mph was a bit on the excessive side for a good straight road, and downright audacious if it bent a bit. Then on the Reepham autobahn, only days later, I was stuck behind someone who felt 35mph was just about possible, closely followed by three others who agreed with her.

I would like to say the four of them were overtaken by a combine harvester, but this would be misleading. They could have been, but they weren’t.

Tenuous grasp of energy issues

Attributing suspect motives to people who disagree with you is a common method of getting your own way. So it is not surprising to see it surfacing in the vicinity of wind turbines, against which there are substantial and genuine arguments.

There are also vociferous and well-meaning promoters, one of whom was reported as saying that he had faced a complete spectrum of opinion – from an architect who sees them as “industrial desecration of a rural landscape on a gigantic scale” to “families with a real grasp of the energy issues” .

Right, so the architect has no grasp of the energy issues? And of course families do. Must be all that eco-propaganda they’re pumping into schools nowadays. Very deep.

18 June 2007

on 18 June 2007 at 05:00

Waiting for the wrong decision over hospital beds

Some people believe that the Norfolk Primary Care Trust is in the process of agonising over the closure of community hospitals and community care beds in the county.

Others are pretty sure the Trust has already made up its mind, and the recent public consultation was a cynical waste of time and effort, and an unsuccessful bid to pull the wool over people’s eyes.

Whatever the truth of it, pretty much everyone who is not an accountant or a politician is sure that any closures will be wrong and totally misconceived, rather on a parallel with Dr Beeching’s axing of rail lines in the 60s – only worse.

More than 97 per cent of people polled by a patients’ watchdog organisation were against the closures. Increased home care, advocated by the Trust, is not better for most and will make life unbearable – almost impossible – for an unacceptable number of people.

Hospitals such as Aylsham are full to the brim, and every morning the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital phones in search of non-existent free beds. Cutting the number of beds will be disastrous both there and elsewhere.

At the same time we read that a doctor who introduced an innovative operating regime that cut waiting lists is leaving the NHS – and the country – because no-one was interested in his methods.

It is much easier to cut beds and close hospitals than to do things in a more effective way. One can imagine the Primary Care Trust saying: “If you carry out changes, there are going to be winners and losers, and in the end the winners have outnumbered the losers.”

In fact that was Guy McGregor, Suffolk roads and transport supremo, talking to Lowestoft shop-owners who have been refused compensation for months of disruption resulting from roadworks.

If the PCT – egged on by the Government – can do no better than echo such a self- satisfied and blinkered view, they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Up and down approach to road safety

The Norfolk new town of Whynge, which emerged from the sea recently, has decided to reduce speed limits on all its roads to five mph.

Consultant Len “Kissme” Hardy told reporters that many councillors favoured a lower limit, but this was not considered feasible at the moment. However, if anyone died in an accident, two or three mph limits would be “inevitable”.

“This is in line with national road safety practice,” he said. “If accidents go up, speed limits go down. You don’t have to think at all.”

Meanwhile in Portsmouth, south-west of Norfolk, it has been revealed that the 20mph limits planned for all residential roads except major through routes will not be backed up by speed humps – because humps “inconvenience emergency service vehicles and aggravate people”.

Alex Bentley, a real person who is executive member for environment and transportation, added: “When given the chance, the population behaves responsibly.” Mr Hardy said last night that this was not a view the road safety industry wanted to encourage.

Volcano to crack down on chip joints

Regular readers may have been concerned at the lack of reports recently from Richard “Volcano” Meek, the intrepid Norfolk explorer. I am happy to reveal that ever since the Government engaged the services of Jamie Oliver and declared war on beef dripping, he has been operating as what he calls “a sort of undercover Lardy- Czar”.

In the same way that prohibition in the States spawned illegal drinking clubs, the clampdown on chip fat and lard-based products has apparently led to illicit rendering plants up in the Ringland Hills, just outside Norwich.

“My mission,” Mr Meek told me, “has been not only to intercept souped-up dripping runners, but also to crack down on the illegal chew-easys springing up in laybys all over the county.

“With names like Fat Dicko's, The Gutbuster Burger Bar, Betty's Big Baps and Nobby's Nosh, these jelly joints are drip-feeding saturated fat and fortified grease to those desperate souls out of their heads on hot sausage and ketchup.

“Along with my colleagues, Albert Ness and the Inedibles, I hope to report the eradication of these cheap chip joints in the very near future.”

More grease to his elbow.

Poor memory over Norwich road?

The Liberal Democrats, who I like to encourage whenever possible, are concerned about drivers “rat-running” on Rosary Road, Norwich.

Some would say that using Rosary Road to reach Thorpe Road from Riverside Road instead of taking up residence in a queue to the Foundry Bridge traffic lights and turning left – which is not only much further, but adds to congestion – was the intelligent thing to do, and not especially ratlike.

What made the situation so bad was the highways authority’s decision to ban a right turn at the Foundry Bridge traffic lights from Thorpe Road into Riverside Road, and to erect a large sign directing traffic along – you’ve guessed it – Rosary Road instead. So what was always a steady flow in one direction is now met by a similar flow in the other direction.

Let me see now, who was in charge of the city council when that happened?

Signs of a bad driver

Traders in Swaffham who are asking for better signposting for town centre car parks may be out of step with the average motorist, if we are to believe a survey carried out by the Vauxhall car company.

High up on the Vauxhall list of signs wanted by motorists came such vital ones as “urban foxes crossing” and “wi-fi hotspot”. Drivers also wanted updated “children crossing” signs showing more up-to-date clothing and – unbelievably – signs warning them to be green by switching off their engines while waiting to pick up their children from school.

I just hope no-one takes this seriously. If you are stupid enough to need a sign to tell you to turn your engine off while waiting, or too dim to recognise children in slightly outdated clothing, you shouldn’t be driving a car at all.

4 June 2007

on 7 June 2007 at 13:34

Sitting in a factory, surrounded by beauty

I’m writing this in a disused factory. Although it’s the end of May, spring and summer are not words that come to mind. A brisk, chilly and extremely soggy bank holiday wind is rattling the metal roof above the wide open spaces below.

Now and again a couple, a family group or a lone hiker wanders past, pausing perhaps to look at a painting. Occasionally I walk round the factory’s selling floor – a circuit that I can assure you measures almost exactly one thirteenth of a mile. This is my exercise for today and yes, you’ve guessed it, it’s Norfolk Open Studios 2007.

I belong to a group called InPrint, which consists of four poets and five visual artists working in collaboration. And I’ve found that putting on an exhibition is an esoteric experience much removed from what you might guess by the calm, colourful catalogue.

First, you have to move the screens, which have been carefully constructed to make shifting them – or indeed doing anything with them – as difficult as possible. I guess there must have been a competition of some kind.

Then there’s the other heavy work: hanging the pictures. One particularly striking piece in which I have a vested interest consists of three weighty vertical items that have to be hung exactly level. Not easy: how about a step formation? The artist quite rightly, demurs, and gradually it comes together.

The real pleasure of course is seeing visitors come and view the various works of art – but even then it’s not plain sailing. Do you engage them in conversation and feel like a car salesman, or do you leave them to their own devices and appear stand- offish?

Visual art is a curious thing. If you measure the amount of work put in, and add the creative vision, the prices (with the exception of the top-of-the-range models) are tiny – probably less than what you’d pay a management consultant for a day’s work. But of course most of us don’t employ management consultants, and splashing out the cost of a couple of dishwashers – or even a small TV – when you can’t actually do anything with what you’ve bought except put it on display gives pause for thought.

Do we need it? It reminds me of something Stephen Donaldson, the fantasy writer, put in the mouth of a visitor from this world to one where beauty was a vital part of everyday life.

He said: “We have beauty too. We call it scenery... It means that beauty is something extra. It’s nice, but we can live without it.”

Or can we?

www.inprintartsandpoetry.co.uk

Out of step with the unholy brotherhood

I have a soft spot for Professor James Beck, who died last week. He was an authority on the Italian Renaissance who found himself out of step with what he called “the official art establishment, which appears to be composed of an unholy brotherhood of influential critics, powerful galleries, prestigious collectors, leading newspapers and magazines and the major museums”.

Anyone who has questioned the established views on climate change will know exactly how he felt. They will also understand why his views on the restoration of paintings met the reaction they did.

He was a minimalist when it came to touching the old masters, but found himself opposed by those who favoured thorough cleaning and restoration work. He pointed out that modern restoration projects, in the words of his obituary in the Daily Telegraph, “were very often funded by major sponsorship and, as such, under pressure to produce spectacular results”.

Naturally, within the art world, “scientists, conservators, curators and scholars all have a vested interest… a light going-over with a feather duster offered little in the way of employment or kudos for them”.

A lighter touch on climate change would have a similar result for the thousands of people whose future is invested in the dogma of catastrophe, of course – just as admitting the ineffectiveness of speed cameras would have disastrous consequences for those making money out of the road safety industry. Presumably this is why the Government cancelled research into the negative effects of cameras.

In almost any area you look you will find an unholy brotherhood whose livelihood depends on maintaining a particular spin on reality. That is why Albert Einstein said: “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” It is also why Al Gore is doing very well, thank you.

Europe imposes muntjac quota

Following the rescue of three muntjac deer from the sea off Lowestoft, the European Union has acted swiftly.

A quota has been imposed on the number of deer caught, and the size of the nets used to catch them has been restricted.

Spokesperson Annette Rotwild said yesterday: “If we do not impose these measures, the traditional stock of muntjac in the sea off Lowestoft will simply disappear. It will be an ecological disaster.”

But radical cleric the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick said the move was distinctly fishy. It could have dire consequences for the thriving deer-catching industry in Lowestoft, and he hoped the Prime Minister, whoever he might be, would intervene to save the town.

Deer and chips was a popular local delicacy, he added.

Hingham democracy lives

Those with long memories will recall the notorious Scout Hut incident in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham towards the end of the last century, in which a new form of local democracy was invented by the council. This involved asking people what they wanted, and then ignoring them.

Readers will be glad to hear that Hingham democracy, taken up enthusiastically by the Government of the day, is thriving. Here are two examples:

A huge majority of ordinary people and 93 per cent of Norwich GPs are against the loss of community beds and cottage hospitals across Norfolk. Under pressure from the Government, the Primary Care Trust is making plans to lose both beds and hospitals.

In Norwich, members of the highways committee have approved changes to residential parking permits which favour smaller cars – after carrying out a consultation revealing that 52 per cent of residents were against and only 35 per cent in favour.

No, it’s not dictatorship. In a dictatorship, I would not be able to write this.

21 May 2007

on 21 May 2007 at 05:30

Problems with perforations may soon be over

Latest reports indicate that counting votes in the local elections is nearing completion at Whynge, the Norfolk new town that appeared from the sea following a temporary fall in water levels and is now often on the coast.

Whynge has been pioneering cutting edge technology to ensure speed and accuracy and has reacted strongly to suggestions that the parish council count is taking too long.

“We feel sure that everything will be sorted out within three weeks,” said special consultant Len (Kissme) Hardy, of Hindolveston. “We had a few problems with perforations, but obviously that couldn’t have been foreseen. And there were software problems, plus some incompetence.”

Asked if the 300 laptops brought in to facilitate the count were a bit over the top when there were only 200 votes cast, Mr Hardy said that it was better to be safe than sorry, generally speaking. If everyone had gone to the polls, there could have been up to 275 votes cast, which would have been a different kettle of fish. Asked how long that would have taken, Mr Hardy declined to comment in view of the “unknowables” involved.

He agreed that it would have been quicker to count the votes by hand, using primary school pupils, but said speed was not everything. He had high hopes that the technology employed at Whynge would be used in the next General Election. “Gordon Brown is very interested,” he enthused. “And the Scots love it.”

The seven candidates backing a bypass for Whynge have accused the parish council of deliberately delaying the result of the count.

“That’s preposterous,” said Mr Hardy. “A bit of congestion is quite normal. They should get on their bikes.” Amazingly old refrigerator found

An extremely old refrigerator has been unearthed on the outskirts of the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, in a house owned by Professor V A R Scheinlich, a local expert.

“I was digging in the cellar, looking for buried wine,” said Prof Scheinlich, “when I noticed an eerie, white light glowing very faintly.

“I dug deeper and discovered that it was a refrigerator – and it was still working. It contained several yoghurts, some cheese that had seen better days and a rather crispy Sauvignon Blanc.”

Researchers from the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing have dated the fridge to “around 1523”. Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, who headed the team, said it was fairly unusual to find a 1523 fridge in working order. He would quite happily install it in his own house and continue to use it.

Prof Scheinlich said this would not be possible unless he removed the Sauvignon Blanc first. And he was a bit worried about the fridge’s carbon footprint, which he might find if he dug deeper.

“I would not want the UEA to get involved in stuff like that,” he said. “You don’t know where it might lead.

“Then there’s the whole question of wormholes and time distortion, which is a can of … well … worms. Probably.”

Missing poem does exist

Claims that the winning poem in an international competition does not exist have been refuted by a reporter for this page.

Visitors to the Fish Publishing website (www.fishpublishing.com) alleged that although I had been named as the winner of their 2007 competition, there was no sign of any poem.

However a reporter found a copy at a secret address and was able to confirm that a poem of that name did in fact exist and would probably continue to do so. There was every chance, according to a source, that despite widespread disbelief it would eventually be published in this year’s Fish Anthology.

New Norfolk bat could rescue cricket

Following news that Australian engineers are developing a high-tech cricket bat that will enable its big hitters to strike the ball further, a Norfolk company has retaliated. Houseago Inc, which is based at Erpingham, is developing a bat that will not hit the ball nearly as far.

“Cricket is rubbish nowadays,” said owner Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, an entrepreneur, left-arm spinner and druid. “You just take a swing, and you only have to touch the ball for it to fly off for a six. If you want that sort of thing, you might as well watch baseball. Or rounders, which is more or less the same.”

Asked whether a team that adopted his bat would be at a disadvantage, Mr Houseago said this might be true at first. “But when people saw they were playing real cricket, where good bowling counted for something and you had to play decent strokes to get runs, the spectators would come flocking back. Everyone will want our bat in the end.”

So far orders for the Norfolk bat are slow, but Mr Houseago said he was confident that good sense would prevail. He was approaching a Mr Boycott for an endorsement.

Smoking ban on drivers thin end of wedge

Plans to make smoking while driving illegal are the thin end of the wedge, according to campaigner and radical cleric the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick.

“It may seems a good idea,” he warned yesterday. “Hot ash on the thigh does make controlling the car a little more difficult. Or so I’m told.

“But if they can fiddle the statistics convincingly, it won’t be long before any kind of distraction is banned.

“How soon do you think it will be before tapes and CDs are kicked out of cars? Then it will be children – followed by pets and passengers of all kinds. And what about speedometers, fuel gauges and heaters?

“It’s a terrific buzz fiddling around with air conditioning while you’re trying to negotiate a speed hump, eat an apple, make a phone call and keep an eye out for cameras. That’s real skill. They can’t just ban that.”

Mr Repps-cum-Bastwick, a former boy racer, added that he could see the day when it became illegal for a driver to reach for a chocolate bar in the pocket of the opposite door, or retrieve a map from the back seat.

“Before we know where we are, no-one will have anything to do but concentrate on driving. And we all know how boring that is,” he revealed.

7 May 2007

on 7 May 2007 at 05:30

Birds flock to see rare North Norfolk visitor

Large numbers of birds flocked from all over the country at the weekend to see an extremely rare human visitor to East Anglia.

Bed-and-breakfast nests in the North Norfolk area were almost unobtainable as an unprecedented number of birds descended on Cromer, on the North Norfolk coast, to view a family of speckled, dark-eyed waders who were feeding near the pier.

A landlady, Mrs Crow, said she had been counting, and she was fairly sure that every nest in the area was occupied. Some birds were sleeping on the beach.

She added that to see these particular speckled waders in North Norfolk in early May was unprecedented. She was not sure where they had come from, but believed they had arrived on a rare bus from somewhere up north.

“I saw the man in the water, and two of the children,” she said. “But the woman was just standing on the beach. It was a terrific opportunity for the birds to get a good view of them, and some snaps.”

An expert from the Norfolk Tame Life Trust said there was some uncertainty whether these were genuine speckled waders, since the unseasonal sun might have affected their skin. The dark eyes could have been a result of late-night revelry, although this was unlikely in Cromer.

But a spokesbird refused to accept that there was any doubt. “This is totally amazing,” he said. “Absolutely incredible. We thought they were extinct. I’ve got some great pictures.”

Local police were introducing security measures to ensure that no-one attempted to fly off with any of the children, who were vulnerable in unfamiliar surroundings. An osprey was held for two hours yesterday and then released without charge.

A police spokesman said: “You can understand the excitement. We normally only get elderly people here. They’re very common. This is something totally different.

“But we’re sure the birds will be sensible. No-one wants to frighten these visitors away. There’s a chance we might open the putting green if they stay.”

Washing your hands of chaos

That most formidable of lobbying groups, “a number of prominent climate scientists”, is campaigning to prevent Channel 4 releasing its iconoclastic Great Global Warming Swindle programme on DVD.

No surprise there. But in the New Forest, something is stirring. A group of parents is considering a legal challenge against the Government’s decision to give copies of Al Gore’s alarmist film, An Inconvenient Truth, to secondary schools across the country.

I know which one I’d be more worried about, but why not let everyone see both films? Bit dangerous, of course. They might like the wrong one.

Still, a bit of openness would be refreshing. In that spirit, I am happy to publicise the fact that Mark Constantine, the Lush cosmetics chief executive who admits to “really hating” cars, has promised to give all the money taken for his new Charity Pot hand lotion to environmental or humane causes, many of which are admirable.

One of the beneficiaries of this, however, will be anti-car groups such as Roadblock, and Mr Constantine is particularly enthusiastic about this.

“When you think how much mischief you can do with a thousand here, a thousand there, it’s great,” he said. ”If we get a million out of the Charity Pot, we could create absolute chaos.”

So if you want to create absolute chaos, you know what lotion to buy. It may also help you to wash your hands of the whole thing.

Save a life: adopt an artist

One of the many underestimated spin-offs of the London Olympics in 2012 is a cutback in grants and funding for less nationalistic ventures, like art.

Despite their benefits to the community, most artists live on very little and are becoming a more and more endangered species – so much so that a local arts organiser, who prefers to remain anonymous, has come up with a radical way that ordinary people can give their support.

She feels that it is time to introduce an Adopt an Artist system – along the lines already used for horses, giant pandas and small African children.

“It’s a kind of 21st century system of patronage,” she said. In return for regular cash, the donor would get reports on the progress made by the artist and his or her current project and state of health. They would also get personal works of art at regular intervals and opportunities to watch the artist at work.

If this does not catch on, it will not be long before visitors to exhibitions will find artists making exhibitions of themselves, with labels like “Artist: please feed”, “Artist in hibernation” and “An artist is not just for Christmas”.

Visitors to the Open Studios later this month should keep their eyes and options open.

Norfolk and not even trying

It was not hard to predict that there would be complaints about the Norfolk accents in Kingdom, Stephen Fry’s new drama vehicle, which is based in Swaffham-on-Sea.

Personally I am rather proud of living in a county whose accent is so esoteric that it is almost impossible to fake. And I don’t blame actors for failing to get it right.

The effort that goes into a natural Norfolk accent is minimal. As soon as you strive to get it right, you’re doomed to failure – as Kingdom occasionally reveals.

I love the Norfolk accent, but I love the landscape of the county even more – and I really don’t want producers and directors to shun us as a drama setting because of carping from a few “purist” mawthers.

Voting against the greatest evil

In the run-up to last week’s elections we were advised as usual that not using our vote was the eighth deadly sin.

But how to use it? In our ward, only two of the four parties communicated with us in any way; the one that made the biggest effort had a key policy that I profoundly opposed, and the other ran a television advertisement campaign that was irritating in its superficial and irrelevant approach.

Neither of the other two had much chance of success, and neither of them had a manifesto which aroused much sympathy.

If I am to believe my friends, my opinions are not bizarre or reactionary (some readers will disagree), but they are not shared by any of the main parties.

In short, no-one will represent me. So I have to vote against who I think is the greatest evil. It may be democracy, but not as we would like to know it. Hardly surprising that so many don’t vote at all.

23 April 2007

on 24 April 2007 at 11:17

Green Party gets to grips with submarines

I was talking to that nice Rupert Read the other day – he’s the transport spokesman for the Green Party in Norwich, which is a bit like being the flight spokesman for submarines.

Mr Read told me he was against road-building because it had been scientifically demonstrated, by scientists, that building new roads created new traffic. This is an amusing idea, but only to statisticians. My own research indicates that new traffic is created by rain, especially in the afternoons.

However, the traffic creation idea is a handy one if you just don’t like roads – if, for instance, you don’t drive a car. It might also encourage you to want to close roads to cars, because that would mean you are actually reducing traffic – at least on the roads that are closed. And of course if you don’t drive a car, it doesn’t bother you at all.

The Green theory, as I understand it, is that if they close roads, then we will all rush out and use buses. Don’t you just love them?

Or maybe they think we’ll all start cycling. “Additional staff time for supporting the needs of cyclists”, plus “making the road network cycle-friendly” stand beside “closure of more roads to motor vehicles” in the party’s manifesto.

I wonder how many Green Party members are actually cyclists. Well, nothing wrong with looking after your friends. Just in case, like most people, you use four wheels in Norwich, the next two roads on the Green closure hit list are Westlegate and St Augustine’s. Which brings me to house-building. I think we should stop it, because no sooner is a new house built than someone moves into it. Scientific evidence shows that new houses encourage new occupants, and of course new carbon emissions. Mr Read, who lectures in philosophy at the University of East Anglia, is something of an expert on Ludwig Wittgenstein, which is good to hear. Everyone should have an area of expertise.

But I feel that there are a couple of quotations from Ludwig that he may have overlooked: • “It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions that do not concern him.” And • “A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inward - as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.”

For balance, here’s one that he has clearly embraced fully: “I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”

Chance of a weekend break on the moon

I met a friend who told me she had bought some land on the moon. I was delighted. If there is anything better than owning land on the moon, it’s having a friend who owns land on the moon, and I envisage calling in for the odd weekend there when things get unbearable down here, which doesn’t seem too far off.

The advantages of living on the moon are fairly obvious. You don’t have to worry about rising sea levels or lunar warming, and there are hardly any speed cameras. There are also surprisingly few politicians, though that could change. Best of all, there are no wind turbines.

Funny things, wind turbines. They have a strange effect on people’s minds – presumably it’s the humming.

Take Hempnall, for instance. A company which wants to erect a windfarm there staged a public exhibition to put the villagers’ minds at rest, only to run into substantial opposition. A campaign group asked villagers whether they wanted the windfarm, and 83 per cent of those who replied said they did not.

The company’s reaction? “There is a large silent contingent who support what we want to do.” Naturally, they’re pressing ahead.

Isn’t it wonderful, living in a democracy? Next time a party loses an election, a large silent contingent will have supported them, and therefore they will be justified in ignoring the fact that only two people actually voted for them. Dictatorship, coming soon to a democracy near you.

Solution possible for city full of holes

Norwich residents have come to terms with the fact that the city is full of holes. Most of them are in council policies, but some are caused by old chalk mines subsiding.

The fact that my house could suddenly disappear downwards is a minor worry compared with, say, the weather getting warmer next year, but it is always in the back of your mind, so I was tremendously reassured to read that the city’s facilities and buildings maintenance manager has gone on record as saying: “It could happen again and could be catastrophic.”

She thinks it’s unlikely, though. That’s why the council isn’t doing anything about it, which is fair enough. It’s so unconcerned that it doesn’t even keep records of where subsidences have happened, unless “ it involves a road or one of our properties”.

Such altruism is always good to hear. Meanwhile, an Erpingham company has offered to deal with the holes.

Houseago Inc, owned by entrepreneur and legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, has offered to fill them in with a “sustainable substance”, possibly chalk. He claims to have an extensive map of the city underground, which he got off the Internet.

“If the chalk idea is unacceptable, we plan to build apartments and night clubs in them,” he said last night. When asked, he said the carbon footprints would be almost invisible, mainly because it was so dark down there.

Climate of incompetence

A Foreign Secretary I know was roundly condemned for her handling of the Iran hostage situation – and indeed, it did seem particularly inept. Nevertheless, there she was, a few days later, chairing the first UN Security Council debate on climate change.

At first I thought it was strange that someone who was so incompetent one day could be given such an apparently important role the next.

Was it true, as someone suggested, that uttering the words “global warming” or “climate change” immediately pushes up the IQ by 20 or 30 points? Or is it that having shown herself to be totally out of touch with reality in Iran, she was felt to be the ideal person for the job?

9 April 2007

on 9 April 2007 at 16:38

Hamster wheel comes to grief in grey area

The tricky line between art and an April Fool’s joke is one that few people can locate with any confidence.

Many locals will define art as anything containing a view of the Norfolk coast and feel fairly content. Others plump for Old Masters, or Colin Self. Last week a French girl gave us some guidance in the grey area.

As a student at the Norwich School of Art and Design, she created an arts project that involved building a giant hamster wheel and piloting it herself (in the absence of giant hamsters) from Norwich to Happisburgh – which she said “looked like the end of the earth”.

She didn’t say which end. She was right, however, in envisaging a tortuous journey, because most of the hamster wheel came apart in Magdalen Street, at a point where the distance from her starting point would be measured in yards rather than miles. I’m not sure if this disqualified it as a work of art, but it does seem as if the technical aspects were somewhat lacking – assuming that traffic calming was not a factor.

However, I understand that very little modern art is built to last ¬– an artist friend tells me that few people even understand how to prepare a canvas properly nowadays.

Nevertheless, we were reassured by the enthusiastic student that her hamster wheel was a “metaphor for the human condition”, perhaps because it started off as a wheel, became a hoop, turned a into a square, then a coffin shape, and ended up as sea defence when it was tipped off the end of the world.

This pretty much describes most people’s life, I suppose, but then so does waiting for a bus that never arrives – and I wouldn’t call that a work of art.

Come to think of it, the hamster wheel, for all its failings, may be a more reliable mode of transport.

Song thrushes do well out of climate change

Here is a worrying quotation from a serious national newspaper: “The varying birds visiting our gardens is one example of the impact climate change is having on the natural world.”

I don’t mean the grammar, though that is worrying enough. I would also like the birds to be more consistent in their character, but that is a minor point.

What really worries me is the emptyheadedness. “The varying number of birds visiting our gardens” could be replaced in that sentence by so many other phrases – “number of blue skies last year”; behaviour of great crested newts in relation to major roads”; choice of holiday destinations for stockbrokers”; “movement of sub- atomic particles in second homes” without any loss of integrity or meaning.

There is more to worry about when we discover who said it: the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ head of climate change policy. This means that not only does the RSPB have a climate change policy, but it has a department dealing with it, of which someone is head.

I have no idea what such a policy could be – perhaps to persuade birds to emit less carbon dioxide – but the policy head’s next observation is that song thrushes are doing rather well in the countryside, though “as changes to our climate become more extreme, many birds will struggle to cope with the altered weather patterns”.

That’s birds other than thrushes, presumably. The words “non” and “sequitur” come to mind, but so do the words “goodbye RSPB”.

You can't take the adder away from me

Following my recent mention of adders, I discovered that someone was trying to track down sightings of the poisonous snakes to compile a record of where they used to be found.

It so happens that I have only seen one adder, but you can’t take that away from me. It was at Hemsby, in the late 1950s, which I have to admit is a long time ago.

When I was a child we often had holidays at Hemsby – in a community of bungalows called The Marrams, which I am delighted to see has largely survived the despoliation of the rest of the road to the beach.

It was a pretty magical place in those days. All right, I did visit the first very innocent amusement arcade, where they played the latest pop songs – I remember fondly repeated plays of Diana and Last Train to San Fernando, but I don’t talk about it.

I watched the Norwich bus arrive and turn round, I devised extraordinary games in the dunes, and I played football and cricket on the short, sheltered grass of The Valley, which stretched up to Winterton – not that we ever went there.

We were warned about adders in the Valley but I never saw one. Mine was in the hedge outside the bungalow we were staying in – and to my relief, it made a quick exit.

Interestingly, the Old English for adder is naeddre, which could be part of the derivation of Saxlingham Nethergate. Snakes in such an exclusive spot? Surely not.

Volunteer surgeons may be next on list

I see that the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital has been reduced to using volunteers to man its outpatient reception desks.

These volunteers used to walk the corridors, offering assistance in a relaxed way to visitors confused by the mysterious medical signage. Now they are tied to one spot, where they enjoy the enormous benefit of unrewarded responsibilities and the opportunity to be abused by tense visitors without the correct change for the car park.

Two questions: how soon will they run out of volunteer receptionists, and when will they start recruiting volunteer surgeons?

High risk of traffic calming in distortion spot

Most traffic calming has been described by a road safety campaigner as “a form of appalling vandalism”. To introduce it in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, as is proposed by the local Traffic Action Group – a title to make the heart plummet rather than simply sink – adds a new element of danger.

Time and space distortion in the Hingham area is well documented. Expert Professor V A R Scheinlich said last night: “We are on a knife-edge. Introducing humps, ramps and chicanes would be not only pointless but extremely disturbing.

“People could die, or at least disappear into another dimension.”

26 March 2007

on 26 March 2007 at 09:22

Very simple guide to climate change

Thousands of people have written to me to say they are confused about global warming. Or they would have written to me if they were not too confused to do so. To help them, I have prepared the following simple guide.

The climate is changing. It always has changed, and at the moment it appears to be getting warmer. Unusual weather is not a reliable indicator of this, as we have always had unusual weather. Unusual weather is quite normal.

A quite large group of scientists believe that at least some of this warming is probably caused by humans, emitting carbon dioxide in various ways. A smaller group of scientists believe that it isn’t.

In the historical record, an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has always been linked with global warming – but irritatingly, the warming has always come before the carbon dioxide.

Most politicians like the idea of human-induced global warming because it means they can raise taxes, dictate to people, convene crisis meetings, order inquiries of various kinds and avoid doing more urgent and important things. This is why Labour’s David Miliband said he would be refuting the TV programme “The Great Global Warming Swindle” before he’d actually seen it.

The national media like global warming predictions, especially if they’re catastrophic, because it makes a good story. And of course they’re completely unbiased, which is why Mr Miliband likes to “highlight the work of the parliamentary press gallery essay competition in taking forward the message on climate change”. Hmm.

The large group of scientists say the small group are heretics who are probably getting paid by the oil or coal industries. They would like them to be gagged.

The smaller group say they wish they were getting paid by the oil or coal industries, but they aren’t. In fact, they say, all the money around is going to the larger group through government funding: the words “global” and “warming” function rather like “open” and “sesame” where cash is concerned.

Powerful people like Al Gore and big business are making, or will make, a lot of money out of global warming.

Poor people and small businesses are likely to lose money and quality of life, not so much through actual warming, which might even help some of them, but through regressive taxes, government demands for carbon reduction measures and the blocking of development in the Third World.

The large group of scientists say the research of the smaller group is obviously untrue, twisted or outdated.

The small group of scientists say the research of the larger group is untrue, twisted or outdated.

They are both wrong. And, possibly, right.

Mike Hulme, founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, admits that “scientific knowledge is always provisional knowledge” – in other words, it will constantly be supplanted by new knowledge - but adds frighteningly that this knowledge “can be modified through its interaction with society” and that scientists (and politicians) “must trade truth for influence”.

Sorry, that’s a bit complicated. Let’s just say you can’t rely on the current state of scientific knowledge, because it will change completely in ten years’ time. Either that, or the earth is flat.

I hope that’s cleared things up.

Rare sighting of democracy possible in North Norfolk

The chance of a freak outbreak of English democracy is on the cards at Cromer, where a referendum may be called on whether car parking should be included in the revamping of the delightful North Lodge Park historic clifftop area.

A 2000-name petition opposes the idea, and the town council has now gone further, successfully demanding a town poll – although North Norfolk District Council, for reasons best known to itself, ruled the first attempt out of order on a technicality.

This worthy petition stands more chance of succeeding than petitions put up on the 10 Downing Street website – the most recent of which is for dualling the Acle Straight.

The feeling that such petitions are little more than an attempt to placate a disillusioned populace refuses to go away – perhaps because of an exchange reported in a national newspaper on the subject of road charging.

Apparently the Minister of State for Transport, Dr Stephen Ladyman, had let slip in the presence of an undercover reporter that road charging legislation had been delayed because of the petition – but only until after the local elections in May, when things would have “quietened down”.

Meanwhile Tony Blair was telling people who had signed the petition: “Let me be clear straight away: we have not made any decision about national road pricing.”

So probably best not to hold our breath there. The Norwich scheme to create congestions is forging ahead, of course, with more roads being closed to ensure that there will be plenty of traffic queues on the few remaining routes in and out of Norwich when the Blair-Ladyman master plan comes to fruition.

Taking over humanity by stealth

I can’t help noticing, as I wander the Norfolk beat, the increasing number of people who have machinery growing out of their ears.

Sometimes this is combined with talking to themselves.

I can only conclude that the Borg, after frequent defeats by the Starship Enterprise, are taking over humanity by stealth instead. If the machinery spreads, we shall know, but by then it will be too late, and we shall all have numbers instead of names and stop thinking for ourselves.

The process may already have started. Soon, Seven of Nine may not be the only stunning figure on show. Just call me 14 of 40.

Road safety disappears with a smirk

A motorcycling acquaintance stopped in Happisburgh to allow children to alight from a school bus safely.

After the bus had departed, with all but one student having dispersed, he put the bike into first gear and had just begun to move when with what he describes as a “spiteful smirk”, the remaining girl stepped suddenly into the roadway so that he had to make an emergency stop.

I wonder who would have been to blame if the child had been knocked over. TV road “safety” ads that blame the driver or rider when a girl steps out in front of them and is killed? Or the motorcyclist, for existing? Place your bets now.