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.”