2 October 2006

on 2 October 2006 at 05:00

Yellow lines in sinister North Norfolk plot

Following the suggestion by a reader that many road accidents may be caused by cars and not drivers, I have been informed by friends in North Norfolk that yellow lines may also have a life of their own. Apparently every time these particular friends go to Cromer, the yellow lines get longer.

An official complaint has led to research being carried out by the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia, which suggests that the paint used to create the lines is a form of life, which has a desire to expand.

“At first we were inclined to blame it on global warming,” said Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam. “But then we are inclined to blame most things on global warming.

“After we had a good look we realised there was something even more sinister afoot. So we called in consultants.”

After blaming things on global warming, calling in consultants is the second most popular reaction of businesses and water companies when faced with anything they can’t be bothered to sort out for themselves, but it is rare for a university to employ this tactic.

“We were delighted to be called in,” said Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, chief executive of Houseago Inc, who are based at Erpingham. “But then we always are. We have an excellent track record of going in, charging a huge amount of money and then leaving – but not without suggesting they employ us again should things not go well, which is often the case.

“We will probably suggest that they should change the name of Cromer to Ibiza. It couldn’t hurt, could it?”

The Houseago Report is due for release in 2010, but Prof Aufmerksam said yesterday that he was already concerned that the yellow lines would soon have the town surrounded.

“After that we believe they will invade every street and swallow up all the spare space,” he said. “Eventually the residents will not be able to breathe, or stop anywhere. They will turn yellow and shrivel up.”

He thought this might already have happened in other parts of Norfolk.

“When the report comes out, we will be urging immediate action,” he said. “Probably.”

Watchperson at crossing could start new trend

Residents of Kilverstone Heath, near Thetford, are delighted with the news that a watchperson will be stationed at the level crossing where a train was derailed recently.

A Network Rail spokesperson said the watchperson would prevent driverpersons misusing the crossing by weaving in and out of the barriers.

A survey carried out by this page revealed that more than 100 per cent of motoristpersons intended to do this.

But Mrs Hicks, Mayorperson of Little London, near Corpusty, who happened to be passing, said she had no intention of dodging the barriers, even if trains reduced their speed to under 20mph, which was a frightening prospect.

She added: “I think a watchperson is a great idea. But we could go further. Why not build a little hut for him or her by the crossing, and install gates?

“You could then prevent anyone from crossing unless he or she opened them.”

A consultantperson is being called in to examine this revolutionary idea.

Moon faces Eclipse backlash after Bung campaign

The campaign to keep Motorways out of Norfolk (Moon), together with Full Moon, its more extreme offshoot, has had a long period of unlimited success.

I would advise them not to be complacent, however. It has been revealed recently by Scenery, the in-depth television programme, that the conspiracy to get Norwich City out of the Premiership, run by the Be Unfair to Norwich Guys (Bung) consortium in 2005, was fuelled by fan discontent.

Most Premiership fans depend on motorways to make quick journeys to away grounds, but the total absence of motorway miles in Norfolk apparently made the journey seem tedious and over-long.

Norfolk people are used to that, of course, but it is hardly surprising that fans from elsewhere revolted and cheered especially loudly when their teams played Norwich. As we know this resulted in Norwich losing quite frequently.

Bung justified their anti-Canary campaign by pointing out that motorways were the safest roads in the country, and their members were being put at risk by coming to Norfolk. “You can’t even get to Carrow Road by dual-carriageway,” said a spokesfan.

Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation, said during the recently concluded National Motorway Month: “We tend to forget what life was like without motorways. Premiership fans will save the equivalent of seven matches plus two lots of extra time by sticking to motorways on their way to Premiership matches.”

A small group of Norwich City fans, who don’t even have to try to remember what life was like without motorways, start a backlash against Moon this week, when they launch their own attack against “fanatical self-interest”.

The group - Extreme Challenge to Lying in Parts of the South-East (Eclipse) - is composed of hard-core militant soccer-watchers and has already been infiltrated by detectives.

Sorry, you missed it

This year’s prize for the least helpful sign in Norwich has been won by “Car parking – previous turn right”, in Barrack Street.

It reminds me of advice given to a bus passenger who requested help many years back: “You get off at the stop before the last one.”

Well, who said life had to be easy?

Stone's throw from outside

House names which strain the credulity include such familiar lies as Hillview, Lakeview, Riverview and Seaview, so I was refreshed beyond measure last week when, during my bid to walk down every street in Norwich, I came across the wonderful Noview. It was pretty much spot-on, too.

18 September 2006

on 18 September 2006 at 05:00

Pinning down buses proves problematic

There are few greater admirers of public transport than myself, but I have to admit that it can be its own worst enemy.

I am not speaking at present of the choking cloud of diesel fumes emitted by a coach pulling away from me the other day, which would have been even worse if it had not been exceeding the speed limit and disappearing rapidly into the distance. No, what concerns me is an information problem: how do you find out which buses run where, and when?

A friend who lives in Lowestoft wanted to find out if he could travel by bus from Norwich rail station to the airport. A fairly simple query, and he called Norfolk County Council to see if they could help him.

No, they couldn’t, but they knew someone who could: Traveline. They provided their phone number.

My friend eventually reached a woman at the Traveline call centre, which is where he ran into real problems.

“She wanted to know where we were coming from, even though we had a perfectly good One timetable from Lowestoft to Norwich and knew what time we would arrive at the station. She then proceeded to route us to Liverpool Street Station and then back to Diss. We never did discover what we were to do at Diss, because my wife interrupted with gales of laughter and asked her where the call centre was.”

It was in Devon. I suppose it could have been worse.

My friend then went to the county council’s website and clicked on "Public Transport”, where, amazingly, there was a link to Traveline.

“I did give Traveline another chance,” he said, “but when I told their website that I wanted to travel from the railway station to the airport I got the ‘Route not recognised’ message.”

So here we have someone who wanted to make a simple bus journey, but could not find out from the county council, the city council (not us, mate) or Traveline whether he could or not.

I can only guess how he felt when he read in the following day’s EDP that trains from Lowestoft to Norwich were going to be cancelled for a fortnight. It’s enough to make you buy a car.

Swamped by onrushing tide of propaganda

It is soon going to be hard to know where to go for a rational discussion on climate change.

Now that all the populist politicians have adopted it as a much-loved child, we can expect a frenzy of legislation whoever gets into power. The Tories, who one might have hoped would take a more critical view, have fallen headlong into the climate catastrophe swamp, with David Cameron apparently quite content to be shoved there by his ecological chum, Zak Goldsmith.

“All must do their bit regardless of political colour,” he intones dutifully, calling – of course – for an “independent” panel of experts to scrutinise Government behaviour. One trembles to think who such experts might be, but we can be sure that anyone lacking a fundamentalist approach to climate change need not apply.

If it was not so frightening, it would be amusing to note the state that certain professors got into when a scientific discussion about the paranormal was given a platform at the University of East Anglia. Such things, they said, should not be discussed without a sceptic on the platform. Or being “properly balanced”, as Lord Winston put it.

For some reason, this argument does not seem to apply when climate change is discussed. I wonder why. Because some things are self-evident?

It is hard to say which is more deplorable – an Oxford professor saying that scientific work on the paranormal is a “complete waste of time”, or the assumption that in climate change, everything is as settled as 2+2=4.

For the poor voter, who suspects that in certain climates 2+2=5, there will soon be no means of expressing any kind of scepticism: he will be left to fall off a cliff into the onrushing tide of totalitarian propaganda.

Perfect road hazard coming into its own again

The nights are drawing in, making driving trickier, and it is time to consider what is the Perfect Road Hazard.

One of my correspondents has no doubt: it is bollards.

For him, specifically, it is those at the Mildenhall end of the A1065. He writes: “You come off a fast section of dual carriageway – probably all the way from London – on to our country roads, and within 100 metres, if you are lucky, you just miss the first of several deliberate obstructions.

“They are lethal to motorbikes, and not only have they never been lit since their installation (I presume they are not connected), but during the months of November, December, January and February especially they are for the most part covered in filth.”

This correspondent is backed up by another, who is “always amazed that local highway authorities seem to get away with siting unlit “keep left” bollards in the centre of the road. In the darker evenings they are an absolute disaster, and it would be interesting to know how many accidents they cause.”

It has become the fashion to put all kinds of junk in the road to slow people down. Sometimes it slows them down permanently – the inevitable result of an obsession with slowness, as opposed to safety.

Baptism opens unexpected doors

Down the centuries, theological arguments have raged over the meaning and method of baptism. Should it be by immersion or sprinkling? Infant or adult? What does it mean, anyway?

To those outside the church, these may seem trifling issues, but Hertfordshire County Council has acted to clarify the essential point. Apparently baptism is necessary to qualify a child at a faith school for a free bus pass.

For some reason this has escaped biblical commentators up to now, possibly because of the unfortunate lack of an equivalent to “bus pass” in ancient Greek or Hebrew. But it is never too late…

“Believe and get free bus passes” may be precisely the slogan the Church of England needs to swell its congregations. Expect a statement from the Archbishop any time.

4 September 2006

on 7 September 2006 at 18:19

Landscape problems make road works unbearable

Having just spent a couple of weeks in Scotland, I have discovered what’s wrong with road works in Norfolk. There is insufficient scenery to alleviate the tedium.

Specifically, there are no hills. All right, there is Beeston Bump. And Edgefield. And Gas Hill in Norwich. But there are no hills worth looking at for more than a moment.

I came to this conclusion while queuing lengthily for bridge repairs in Glen Coe, several miles north-west of King’s Lynn. The magnificence of the surroundings drove any frustration from our minds as we surveyed the picturesque pinnacles and ridges looming on each side of us, so untypical of Lynn itself.

The answer clearly is to import a few mountains into Norfolk – a move I have advocated on occasion in my role as president of the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team. They could be inserted almost painlessly at points where road works were planned, like Attleborough. You could then hold up as much traffic as you liked. There could be practical problems, I suppose, but if so perhaps pictures of mountains might be used instead.

The presence of so much natural beauty in the Highlands obviously generates a more sensible approach to traffic management. The motorist will quite frequently come across signs like: “Frustration causes accidents. Allow drivers to pass.” And they do.

You do not get this sort of thing in England, where the attitude is that if this tedious dawdle is good enough for me, it is good enough for you, you homicidal lunatic. I put this, too, down to the lack of mountains.

Most road signs in Scotland are worth reading, unlike their English equivalents. I particularly liked “No road markings for miles”, which seemed to work very well. In one respect, though, the two countries are as one: whenever you see a “Flood” sign, you can be sure of one thing: there is no water on the road.

Secret service cars refuse to signal

Those of us inclined to blame drivers for many of the mishaps on our roads would be intrigued to read statistics prepared by an alert EDP reader.

For legal reasons, I cannot give these here, but I can give the nub of their gist: cars themselves are to blame.

Basing her observations on newspaper reports, the reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, noticed that very rarely was the driver at fault in an accident. Instead “the car hit a tree”, “the car crossed the double white lines” or “the car failed to negotiate the bend”.

She writes: “It seems that we now have cars that not only think for themselves but also decide where they should go.”

She wonders if these are the same cars that “trundle along the middle lane of motorways at 50 mph or carry on in the overtaking lane at 65mph without any intention of overtaking anyone.

“Are they the same cars (working for MI5) that never indicate at junctions because their journeys are so secret that no-one should know where they are going?

“Are they the cars with only one speed - 40mph - for all journeys regardless of 30mph limits or wide open roads?”

She concludes with one statistic that I can reveal: 90 per cent of cars shouldn't go out in the rain. Hard to argue with that.

New planet may be home to someone, says UEA expert

Following the reclassification of several celestial bodies, the Erpingham firm of Houseago Inc has announced that it has unearthed a new planet on the outskirts of Norwich.

The discovery, which has been confirmed by the University of East Anglia’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing, has been named Hellesdon (HML200699C- Beta).

Early indications are that it has a strong gravity field that tends to force anything within its orbit to move in circles or come to a complete halt, especially on Middleton’s Lane, the romantically named crater just south of the Great Rift.

Reports of life on the surface are believed to be exaggerated, though there are a few believers.

“Most people would regard it as just another piece of rock,” said Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam late last night. “But I prefer to think of it as home to someone.”

Erpingham Inc hopes to claim ownership of the new planet and then sell it on eBay.

Newts accuse 'upstart' celebrities of wasting time

A press release from a consortium of great crested newts based in Tattersett, near Fakenham, attacks “time-wasting minor celebrities” for muscling in on their claim to be the major obstacle to bulldozers in the United Kingdom.

The newts have won large amounts of money for resettlement purposes as a result of construction projects, their victories in East Anglia being rather dwarfed by the £43,000 they won to make way for a new children’s playground in Wales in 2003. But a national newspaper survey places them only fifth in a list headed by a tiny snail that held up the Newbury bypass to the tune of £250,000.

The newts claim that this was “just highway robbery” and the snails, at 3mm long, were “practically invisible and very slow”. Nor do they have much time for the water vole, the dark-bellied brent goose and the badger.

They claimed the bog bush cricket, the “upstart” black redstart, the dunlin, the brown-banded carder bee and the Dartford warbler, also on the list, were “johnny- come-latelies who had no real talent and should be shut up in a house together for sad people to observe”.

Lack of driving saved warming 18C world

Documents recently discovered by this page have revealed an alarming trend in global warming going back to the 18th century.

Scientists in 1733, it seems, might have announced: “The UK has heated by a massive 3.2 degrees over the last four decades, to the present 10.47C. (The 2005 average was 10.45C.)

In 1779 they could have warned: “If the warming trends of the last 40 years continue, the UK could have a Mediterranean climate in the early years of the next millennium. The warming of 0.89C per decade to the present 10.4C is without precedent since records began.“

The documents, more details of which can be found at numberwatch.co.uk under Guest Papers, reveal that the average UK temperature in the year 1800 was 0.65C higher than temperatures at the end of the 17th century.

According to 18th century computer models, it could have got a lot worse, but fortunately people stopped driving cars.

21 August 2006

on 21 August 2006 at 05:00

Is that a gorilla I see before me?

Most readers of a page such as this must feel fairly confident that they would notice if a room they were standing in grew to four times its size.

Research at Oxford University, however, shows that we are easily deceived in such matters. In an experiment where a virtual room changed dimensions, subjects made huge errors about the size of things in it.

This is apparently because we have real trouble getting rid of our preconceptions, the key one in this case being that rooms tend not to move around much unless they are starring in a TV property programme or are situated in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, where time-space distortion is an accepted daily hazard.

In another experiment it was found that people failed to notice a gorilla crossing the road. This is not surprising. Gorillas do not cross roads; zebras and chickens do.

If our preconceptions are strong enough, we run the risk of missing something important. And there are people who work very hard to feed our assumptions – who don’t want us to see that some things may be moving.

It’s extremely hard to get scientific funding for research that may challenge the prevailing consensus – for instance on the causes of AIDS, the value of chemotherapy and the extent of climate change.

A professor of surgery put it like this: “Over the last 50 years government- sponsored and industry-sponsored research programmes have come to dominate scientific research.

“A totalitarian system now exists where only scientists that adhere to the prevailing orthodoxy can receive funds to conduct research. Not only will the government not fund studies on alternative hypotheses for AIDS and cancer, but this stricture applies to other areas of inquiry.

“All research on climate change must conform to the dogma of human-caused global warming, and studies on vaccines dare not criticise their safety or efficacy.”

The walls are closing in. Is anyone worried? Is that a gorilla?

Bear facts about Bob the Builder

Just north of Norwich – not far from the forests of Felthorpe, in fact - mysterious things are happening that can only be attributed to global warming.

A correspondent has sent me photographic evidence of elephants in her garden. She also tells me that she has found a large, undamaged pike there, far from any stream or river.

But much stranger than that is the case of the chair, the koala and Bob the Builder.

This stemmed from my correspondent’s quite natural practice of placing an old chair in the gateway opposite her house, so that she could sit there and crochet while waiting for transportation to her craft sessions. I guess we’ve all done it.

On this occasion, she tells me, “the chair disappeared - even though it was a broken plastic one rescued from a skip - between Saturday night and Sunday morning”, which most readers will realise is a very short time indeed.

A few weeks later she replaced the chair. The next morning she checked – and found Bob the Builder in it, holding an England flag.

After a brief telephone call, she returned to discover that Bob had gone missing, leaving his flag about five metres up the road out of the village. “I put the flag in the bush near the empty seat,” she reports.

She also put a notice on the chair: “Come home, Bob.” The following day she found not an elephant or a pike, but a large koala in the chair, holding the flag. And a notice, which read: “Bob’s Mate Ted. Where R U Bob?”

Grittily, and strangely unphased, she guarded Ted from the garden until bedtime. But some time after that Bob's Mate Ted and his chair were abducted – and thrown into a ditch. Persistently, she rescued them with her walking stick, sat Ted back in his chair, with an empty chair beside him bearing the “Come home, Bob” notice, and…

Next day, only one chair in front of the gate, with the notice “Cherchez la femme, Bob?”

Since then things have been strangely silent.

Checking in without name or age

On my last visit to the doctor I couldn’t help noticing that his receptionist - normally as cheerful as you would naturally be if you were healthier than everyone else in the room - was looking even more upbeat than usual.

It soon transpired that this was because someone had installed a computer check-in system – technology only slightly distinguishable from magic and sitting quietly to the left of her desk.

She urged me to try it, in the manner of someone introducing a favourite child which, though witty and delightful, cannot totally be trusted.

I was unable to resist. I touched the screen gently as requested, and it sprung into action, needing only to know my sex, and the month and day of my birth, before confirming my appointment.

Tactfully, it did not mention my age or name, and nor did I. These things are best left undiscussed.

I suppose one day the whole surgery will be run by computer, and I shall have to click on all my symptoms before obtaining a diagnosis. Of course, the screen will have to be a lot bigger.

One more cup of coffee for the road

I once got so frustrated during a social game of bridge that I poured the remains of a cup of coffee over one of my opponents. Since he was much, much bigger than me, I expected to leave the room in pieces, if at all.

Instead he became one of my closest friends. He died suddenly at the end of last month, aged 57, after a heart bypass operation had seemed successful. He was David Gemmell, the most successful heroic fantasy writer in the country and a man of amazing generosity, as well as a gifted storyteller and wordsmith. The BBC web page obituary quickly garnered well over 600 comments from friends and fans, many of them testifying to the way in which he had made them feel stronger, or better about themselves.

Courage, loyalty, love and redemption were at the heart of what he wrote and what he was. Yes, he was much, much bigger than me. He will be sorely missed.

7 August 2006

on 7 August 2006 at 04:45

Same old answer, whatever the question

Well, well, well. Most road fatalities in the predominantly rural county of Norfolk occur on rural roads. Whatever next?

The answer, of course, must be to reduce the speed limit. That is always the answer, whatever the question. Never mind that the safe speed for any vehicle in any situation varies from second to second, and a skilful driver will adapt.

The result of reducing the speed limits below a realistic level is always to reduce the level of skill of the driver, because it promotes lack of attention, fatigue and speedometer-watching.

Any experienced driver knows that looking away from the road, even for a moment, is one of the most dangerous things you can do. And yet here we are, encouraging drivers to do so on a regular basis.

The really worrying statistic, contrasting with the many bogus ones last week, is that only 39 per cent of drivers in East Anglia, when asked to choose the single most important safety factor in any journey, put driver ability first.

That would help to explain why so many of them apparently want to lower limits and introduce more speed cameras: it puts the blame on someone else.

Some people are so desperate to blame someone else that they will even suggest that the failure to reduce accident levels in the past speed-obsessed decade is because of the increase in vehicles on the road.

This rather fails to explain why accident levels were plunging in a pleasing way before speed camera proliferation, despite a continuous increase in vehicle numbers.

But never mind; as long as we can continue to believe that speed cameras are wonderful and everyone should go more slowly, we don’t have to worry about our own ineptitude. It’s someone else’s fault.

And so the ideal statistic –100% of drivers wanting to improve their ability – remains as elusive as ever.

Heads may roll over Bronze Age motorway find

Following the discovery of the Bronze Age equivalent of a motorway near Becdes, an inquiry has been launched into the decline of the road network in East Anglia.

“We started with a motorway and ended up with the A146,” said local activist Yvonne Carlton-Colville. “Heads must roll.”

Experts have noted the innovative construction of what has become known as the Beccles marsh highway and are looking into the use of patio decking on the planned but elusive Norwich north distributor road. It is believed that this might reduce costs significantly.

An examination of the ancient Beccles roadway has revealed that it was in use over a very long period and was repaired a number of times. Archaeologists hope to uncover the stockpiles of buried cones that would confirm this. “There must be thousands of them,” said Ms Carlton-Colville deeply.

There is some mystery over the route of the ancient highway, which ran originally from dry land, across a swamp to a spot on the river Waveney.

“We believe it was intended to run from Norwich to Ipswich,” said Ms Carlton- Colville yesterday. “But protests from environmentalists meant it had to be shifted several times. This turned out to be the only acceptable route to ensure mammoths and boa constrictors survived in Suffolk.

“But we never did get a proper road from Norwich to Ipswich.”

The inquiry report is expected some time in 2035, or shortly after.

Polar bear spotted by students on beach

Reports of a polar bear sighting on Winterton beach have been confirmed by the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia.

Several research students photographed the animal, using grants and digital cameras.

“There’s no doubt about it,” said Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam. “It was big, fairly white, considering the pollution, and seemed to be fishing.

“When interviewed by the students, it complained about global warming and the housing prices in East Anglia, which are apparently much higher than in most parts of the Arctic. It was very much in favour of nuclear wind farms.”

Asked whether he thought the polar bear should be linked with the recent sighting of a penguin at Scratby, Prof Aufmerksam said he felt it quite unlikely. “You don’t see many penguins at Scratby,” he said. “It’s quite a bizarre idea.This sort of thing should be the left to the experts.”

Confusion the key to stamp prices, says businessman

A Norfolk businesman hopes to cash in on the Royal Mail’s exciting new “Pip” scheme, whereby the price of a stamp will vary according to the size of the letter, card or package.

Pricing in Proportion is seen by Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, chief executive of Houseago Inc of Erpingham, as “a good start, but it doesn’t go far enough. My scheme will address that issue.”

He said market research had proved that people wanted post office queues to be longer, and changing the way mail was paid for would assist this greatly. He pointed out that the average wait in a post office had increased by well over a minute, and the fact that people still flocked to post offices meant this must have been welcomed.

Refusal by shops to sell stamps under the Pips scheme would undoubtedly help, but the recent removal of TV licence sales from post offices was a retrograde step, he added.

“Anything to make things more complicated is obviously the way to go,” said Mr Houseago. “Under my scheme the price of mail will vary according to the colour of the packaging and the quality of the handwriting, as well as the centimetres of Sellotape involved and the time of year.

“In the event of gifts, we may insist on opening the package to check on desirability and environmental friendliness.”

Royal Mail is spending £10 million on an advertising campaign to make its changes easier to understand - a move deplored by Mr Houseago. ”It’s a gross waste of money,” he told our fashion correspondent. “My campaign will cost £20 million - perhaps more, depending on the shape and colour of it - and people will be more confused than ever.”

Mr Houseago is in talks with the Royal Mail, and with doctors at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

24 July 2006

on 24 July 2006 at 05:00

Road casualty figures not what they seem

Devotees of speed cameras are keen to tell anyone willing to listen that the one-eyed monsters have reduced road casualties. Official figures tend to support this, but there is strong evidence that those figures are misleading.

What? Misleading statistics from Government? How can this be?

Well, if I were to be cynical, I might suggest that if you have a draconian policy to fine and eventually ban drivers who exceed speed limits, it would be helpful to have figures showing that this policy reduced road casualties. But maybe there is another explanation. Maybe it’s an accident. Maybe, unexpectedly, police accident report figures are simply not reliable.

Who defines a “serious” injury, for instance? This is quite important, because it is the serious injury figures – rather than deaths – which are supposed to be showing a marked downward trend.

Two independent university studies may have the answer, because they both show that, based on much more reliable hospital admissions data, serious injuries from road accidents are not falling at all over the era of speed camera infestation.

It is already generally admitted that over this period, deaths have shown no marked fall. In 1996 they were 3598, and although they have slipped into the 3400s since then, in 2003, as camera use spread, they were back up again to 3508. When compared to the ongoing plunge in deaths before cameras got a hold – from 5589 in 1984 to 4568 in 1991 and 3650 in 1994 – this is shamefully poor, given the improvement in car safety engineering and medical care over the last decade.

So it is clear that cameras are not making our roads safer. It is hard to see how a measure that basically targets safe drivers could possibly do so.

We all want to curb excessive speed, but not at the expense of ignoring other dangerous practices, and making people think that they are skilful drivers purely because they are “obeying the law”.

The foreword to the new Philips Road Atlas, released last month, says that speed cameras are “badly managed, confusing and ineffective”. They are not making our roads safer and should be marked for disposal.

City councillors throw another tantrum

It was quite amusing to see the way the Norwich councillors threw their collective teddies in the corner when they were outvoted again on their desperate plan to pedestrianise Westlegate.

One said it was people outside the city thwarting the legitimate desires of Norwich people. Well, I’m a Norwich person, by birth and current location, and I don’t feel at all thwarted on this issue. I haven’t met anyone who does.

Another said it was grounds for the city becoming a unitary authority, which presumably means they want their own ball, and they’re not going to let anyone else play once they’ve got it. Childish, or what?

A third said it was vital to cut traffic levels in the city centre. Why? The centre is easy to drive or walk through – it’s the approaches that are the problem. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And incidentally, how are those big delivery lorries going to get to Chapelfield if Westlegate is pedestrianised?

In fact the city hall sulkers got their way on just about everything that came before Norwich highways committee, including another unnecessary and congestion-creating road closure – St George’s Street. Once again my freedom, which hurts no-one, is being curtailed for the satisfaction of a small group of politically motivated people. But hey, I only live here.

Wobbly panel can't see the steak for jelly

You might think it reasonable to block new house-building until roads and services are in place to handle it. Of course, you are quite wrong. Building lots of houses is government policy, so it must be all right. Like flying, it emits no carbon at all.

Driving, on the other hand, is responsible for at least 110 per cent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, if not more.

So faced with a reasonable request from local authorities, the totally unelected panel of inspectors for the East of England Regional Spatial Strategy (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) has decided to make climate change emissions the “overarching objective of their transport policies”, which is a bit like making jelly the overarching objective of steak and chips.

But it means (yippee!) that they can demand over half a million more homes for the region without bothering to improve or build any roads. And this is OK because people will use cars less. The statistics they give in support of this are among the least convincing I have ever seen anywhere, for anything.

A transport professional writing to the magazine Local Transport Today nails the wooliness. He writes: “This may be possible in major urban centres – although outside London there has been little success in doing so – but it is a different proposition in more rural counties such as Norfolk, with infrequent and inconvenient bus services.”

It seems, he says, that the panel is offering the Government “a convenient way out of funding necessary infrastructure to deal with growth now”. Surely not.

Speed humps an awful mistake, says man who introduced them

The sinister Tory grandee Kenneth Clarke has admitted to an “awful mistake”. And if you’re not sure which one, it’s road humps.

He told a radio interviewer last week that, as a junior transport minister in the Thatcher government, he was responsible for introducing road humps in this country.

In fact it’s worse than that: he went so far as to suggest that local groups might club together to pay for humps in their area.

Apparently, unlike Mr Clarke, some people still think this right-wing innovation is a good idea.

To everything there is a season (tern, tern, tern)

I hear that the little tern colony in Great Yarmouth was disappointed not to get a mention in my piece about bottom-up benefits for priority groups in the area.

A reader claims that that the terns are important to the cultural life of the town and are vulnerable to aggressive gangs of kestrels, foxes and rats.

She adds: “One kestrel – feeding his growing family – did a lot of damage last year as he feasted on the baby little tens.

“Improving the outcome for one priority group often spoils the prospects of another.”

So whose tern is it? I wonder.

10 July 2006

on 11 July 2006 at 20:24

Football is about glory, not boredom

The disappointment at England’s exit from the World Cup was much more muted than might have been expected. Was this because it was exceeded by much louder disappointment at the team’s performance?

Football is supposed to be the beautiful game, but as a friend wisely remarked last week, it is only beautiful for part of the time, and that part reached minuscule proportions while England were playing.

Much has been written about systems of play, but it seems to me that the root cause is fear. Not just England, but most of the countries with footballing reputations, were more afraid to lose than eager to win, and this is not just a footballing phenomenon.

Safety has replaced adventure in our lives, and safety doesn’t inspire anyone, because it doesn’t work. Everyone dies in the end, with or without penalties.

It was undeniable that England used negative tactics, just as FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former England manager Sir Bobby Robson alleged. So did many other teams, like Argentina, whose talent would surely have triumphed if they had expressed it in an attacking, unfrightened way instead of putting all their artistry into falling over, like Portugal.

The only team who played fast, attacking football from the outset were Germany, who ironically are great admirers of the Premiership game and whose manager, Jurgen Klinsmann, is an Anglophile who won over vast numbers of Britons when he played for Spurs. In beating them, Italy showed that, to everyone’s surprise, they could do it too.

Coincidentally, it is a former Spurs captain, Danny Blanchflower, who put everyone right on how football should be played. He said: “The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It’s nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It’s about doing things in style, with a flourish – about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.”

Do transport chiefs really know what we want?

Transport chiefs seem to have less and less idea of what people actually want – or is it that they are so sure they’re right that they don’t really care?

Plans to cut speed limits in residential areas of Norwich to 20mph are supported by Lib Dems, Labour and Greens. Judith Lubbock, the LD transport spokeswoman, said (among other things): “This is what people want.”

Really? I don’t know anyone who’s actually been asked, and a poll on the EDP website not only came out 63% to 37% against, but attracted one of the highest ever responses.

Given that those in favour of such measures tend to be more vocal than those against, this is an amazing result and should give Ms Lubbock and her friends pause for thought. But it won’t, of course, because they know they’re right.

So, apparently, does Guy McGregor, the Suffolk portfolio holder for roads and transport, who reacted in an astonishing way to local MP Bob Blizzard’s complaint that signs were directing drivers away from the new Lowestoft relief road.

I hold no brief for Mr Blizzard, but friends in Lowestoft tell me that the town has been in chaos, with times from Kessingland to north Lowestoft reaching an hour and a half. No surprise that the MP is “flabbergasted”, but what are we to make of Mr McGregor’s view that such comments are “outrageous”?

Well, he’s entitled to his opinion. What should shock Lowestoft people is the Suffolk transport supremo’s thinly veiled threat that it “was not a good sign for work on future projects in Lowestoft”.

What can he mean? Do road improvements require blind and silent obedience to the fount of all spending? We should be told.

Bottom-up worry for east-coast resort

A worried reader is concerned that Great Yarmouth, home of classic sand sculptures and the 2007 British Chess Championship, is being offered a “genuinely bottom-up approach” by the Government.

Three senior ministers have made the offer to the borough council, which oversees what the ministers describe as “one of a handful of the most deprived cities and towns in the UK”. I am not sure the council would be altogether happy with this description, especially deputy chief executive Mark Barrow, who told me recently that he saw Great Yarmouth as an area “rich in culture and heritage contributing massively to the local economy”.

This is roughly how I feel about it. And if I were Mr Barrow, I would be more than a little upset at remote members of Government who not only wanted me and my colleagues to be innovative and ambitious (as if we weren’t already) but also wanted us to bid for funding to “improve outcomes for priority groups”.

Bidding for funding is one of the most iniquitous and counter-productive devices used by Government. It demands a huge waste of time and resources that are already stretched, in order to produce and then inspect reams of paper containing jargon-heavy sentences designed to appeal to politically correct ministerial ears and having little relevance to what is going on. If you doubt this, you might as yourself what improving outcomes for priority groups actually means, in English.

All this is concerning enough. But what really worried the reader I mentioned was the phrase “genuinely bottom up”. How, she asked, would she be able to distinguish this from something that was falsely bottom-up?

Happily, I can help her. Anything described by a government minister as “genuinely bottom-up” is actually falsely bottom-up. That’s what public consultation is all about.

Unexpected ridge of common sense over Norfolk

Following a series of depressions lasting years in some areas, a ridge of common sense seems to have moved unexpectedly across Norfolk.

One of these weather-affected areas is education for special needs. At last someone has realised that while inclusion is a fine idea in theory – and sometimes in practice – often it doesn’t work at all. Both the special needs pupil and those with ordinary needs have been prevented from getting a proper education.

Now there are clear signs that the mess will be sorted out, and those who need to be educated separately will be properly looked after.

Another area hit by the ridge of common sense is coastal defence. In a brave move, North Norfolk District Council has refused to sign up to “expert” advice that the sea should simply be allowed to swallow up at-risk communities in its area.

And in the troubled health zone, hit by frequent squalls, someone in a position of authority appears to have noticed that community hospitals are a very good thing.

Whether the ridge of common sense will remain in place is still uncertain. There are signs of weakening in the Acle-Yarmouth area, where it has been decided that the preservation of beetles is more important than human life, but this is put down to unusual climatic conditions. And stupidity, of course.

26 June 2006

on 26 June 2006 at 14:30

Accolade for roundabout that is Hardwick reborn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

County to claw back teaching cash

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

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

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

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

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

Pondhenge camera partnership comes clean

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

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

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

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

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

Problem communicating with web designers

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

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

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

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

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

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

12 June 2006

on 12 June 2006 at 04:30

Early clicks a hazard for driving instructors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crepuscular rabbits lose track of time

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

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

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

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

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

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

Smoke fails to clear after marking boycott

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

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

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

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

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

Game full of drama, beauty and a little violence

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

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

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

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

Praying for a stamp

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

29 May 2006

on 29 May 2006 at 05:00

Where our bright new country park falls apart

When Charles Clarke was removed as Home Secretary, one of his first steps was to walk around Whitlingham Country Park, on the outskirts of Norwich.

A sound decision. Whitlingham has been a favourite spot of mine since the 1960s, and recent developments there have much enhanced the natural beauty of the place by inserting a couple of Broads and a delightful circular footpath – though this hasn’t made its way on to the colourful information boards yet.

In fact if you were to drive in and leave your car on one of the modestly priced car parks while you wandered round the water’s edge, you would probably go away more than satisfied – if a little curious as to why no-one has made the effort to create a riverside path from the city to such a lovely spot.

But if you were to venture further, up the lane to the old Whitlingham riverside, you would probably be less pleased.

Whitlingham Lane has always been in a poor state of repair. But today the potholes, cracks and crevasses are so bad that only Royal Mail vans can take it at any speed – judging by the one that bounced merrily up behind me, anyway.

The edges of the lane are similarly neglected – given over to those drivers too mean to pay the small car park fee and happy to risk even more structural damage than would be incurred by staying closer to the centre of the road.

Given that a fair amount seems to have been spent on other areas of the park, why does the lane remain so awful? Does the Whitlingham Charitable Trust, which includes South Norfolk District Council, want to discourage drivers from going that far? If so, its members should ponder the possibility of potential damage to cyclists and walkers – even, perhaps, Royal Mail vans – from the uneven surface.

Or perhaps the Trust would like to improve the road but is being prevented from doing so. Could some pressure group be holding up the work in the interests of the environment, or planetary collapse? Or is some individual with a penchant for potholes standing in the way? Are resignations in order? Probably not, but a few smooth answers would not come amiss.

Knife recycling project fails to hit target

The current knife amnesty launched by the Home Office in an attempt to find out how many knives there are in Britain, how many entered illegally and how many are out on bail inspired a little-known pilot project in the Pondhenge area of North Norfolk.

A Green Consortium headed by radical cleric the Rev Nick Reppscumbastwick decided that it would “kill two birds with one stone” and combine the amnesty with a recycling project. Instead of the red bins authorised by the Home Office, the Pondhenge group used green, brown, blue, white and yellow bins. “It was quite simple,” said Mr Reppscumbastwick. “Knives with bone handles went in green bins, knives with unbiodegradable plastic handles had to be washed and placed in the brown bins, knives with any other type of handle but with blades between 14cm and 17cm long went in the blue bins, knives with saw blades went in the white bins, unless they were between 18cm and 19cm long, or longer, and butter knives went in the yellow bins for decontamination.”

He said he was not entirely happy with the response.

“People just will not enter into the spirit of knife recycling,” he said. “We found several knives placed wantonly in the wrong bins and had to fine several people who apparently couldn’t see the point.

“Even more sadly, a number of knives were thrown into nearby hedges, with catastrophic effects on local wildlife. One narrowly missed a member of the Green Consortium who happened to be passing.”

Efficiency testing by Norfolk 'wasteful'

What with the usual shortage of money over at Norfolk County Council, you might have thought they had better things to do with it than carry out “independent” two-year trials on renewable car fuels.

After all, car fuel is not a particularly Norfolk phenomenon, and efficiency testing of motor vehicles is carried out nationally by the appropriate Government department, as well as by motoring organisations.

You might have thought the county council should concentrate on local issues that it can do something about. One EDP reader, angered by news of the car fuels project, certainly thought so. He told me: “Last week I counted 12 pieces of street furniture between the Catton Woodman and White Woman Lane (north of Norwich) with failed lighting; four were street lamps. These have been out for the last ten weeks.

“The Spixworth to Aylsham road resembles the Leipzig to Colditz road in 1990, with little done since the war, which apparently, according to my late father, we won.

“How many hot air balloons full of gas would it take to melt the 150 double-decker busloads of tarmac needed to make this surface safe and transport-efficient?”

Difficult question. Perhaps two years of solid, independent testing would sort it out. Or maybe not.

Fear that chess players may not fit in

There has been come concern in Great Yarmouth circles at the decision to invite a shadowy group of individuals to hold an annual get-together in the town next summer.

Some see hosting the British Chess Championship as a great honour, but others view it as rubbing salt in the wound after rejection of a bid for a super-casino that would have given the resort “a bit of quality”.

“We don’t think this will do the image of the town any good at all,” said local impresario, drinker and night-spot frequenter Dave “Tiger” Dawson, 17.

“I mean, what are these guys going to do? Sit in darkened rooms moving bits of wood about? Don’t sound very Yarmouth to me.”

Mr Dawson, who has a chequered career, was particularly concerned at the attitude of the chessplayers. “I mean, they tell me they shake hands at the end of the game. What’s that all about?”

He felt the visitors would be unlikely to be “any good in a fight” and “have no staying power” in the local pubs. “They won’t fit in at all,” he concluded.

Asked if he had actually met any chess players, he replied: “What me? You kidding, mate?”

15 May 2006

on 15 May 2006 at 05:00

Alien approach to digging up the road

There is something faintly alien about the way Norwich City Council organises its roadworks. The most recent bizarre example was the decision to close the bridge on Carrow Road at the same time as resurfacing Riverside Road, thus ensuring that traffic was backed up all the way round Riverside with no alternative route to take.

Obviously road works, like canals on Mars, have to happen. But the council’s policy of permanently closing selected roads to general traffic means that when road works occur, water mains burst or any other temporary calamities strike, there are no alternative routes, and gridlock ensues. The closure of King Street, Mountergate, Bishop’s Bridge and Queen Street spring to mind, not to mention Castle Meadow. You get the impression the council enjoys this in a non-human sort of way. A letter I received warning of the impending chaos on Riverside Road said almost gleefully that there would be “disruption and inconvenience”. It came from an officer who I will not embarrass by naming him. He concluded by promising: “If you have any queries or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.”

I did not hesitate. I live in a cul de sac that emerges on to Riverside Road, and I could see that there would be at least a short time when I would not be able to drive out of it. It would be helpful to know when that would be.

Unfortunately the letter did not include a phone number or an e-mail address. It did not include a pigeon either. I concluded that, despite what they said, they were not desperately keen to hear from me.

Undeterred, I rang City Hall. The number was in the phone book, which the council had mistakenly allowed me to retain. Unfortunately the gentleman who would have been able to help me was out. “He often is,” I was told when I rang back the next day, as requested.

This was quite understandable, and sadly he had no friends who could help me. So the switchboard mistress gave me his e-mail address. I e-mailed him. He did not reply. (The road is resurfaced now, and he still has not replied.)

So I gave up and drove down my cul de sac, only to be halted by the resurfacers, who looked human. I was indignant. My wife had an appointment, I said.

You’ll only be shut in for an hour, I was told. Surprisingly, I had not allocated an extra hour for the journey. At this point I have to admit that the resurfacers were not only human but extremely helpful – and polite. They got us out within ten minutes. And did an excellent job on the road too.

And I’m not worried. Now that the Green Party holds the balance of power in the city council, I’m sure we’ll get a lot more rational, deeply thought out, philosophical measures to enable traffic to flow more easily. Something like a hyperspace bypass, I should imagine.

The art of jumping on the environment

The proposed transformation of sand into giant sculptures on Yarmouth beach this summer was greeted by the mayor with enthusiasm.

“It is environmentally friendly,” he said. “At the end you can just level out the beach again.”

This is an interesting new approach to art. Presumably the mayor would prefer Michelangelo’s David if it was smashed up and the marble returned to the ground after a month or so; your average Turner or Monet would be no good at all because it is so difficult to dispose of paint safely.

Or is it just another example of wanting to appear green – this century’s favourite colour by a long way?

Both Opposition political parties seem to think the best way they can attract votes is to turn themselves into branch offices of Greenpeace. If one leader can ride a bike to work, the other can go and look at a glacier. Or was it the same one?

Meanwhile, the Church makes climate change a question of morality, for heaven’s sake, and scientists from every discipline fall over themselves to conjure up a scenario worse than the last one. I myself am very fond of the environment – the less affected by mankind, the better I like it. I despise litter-dropping and fly-tipping and am no lover of smoke stacks, or industry that pollutes and exploits either people or the atmosphere.

But I am not at all fond of those who are obsessed at more and more superficial levels with what might be happening to our ever-changing climate, and arrogantly forcing their methods of “dealing with it” on to everyone else. Undoubtedly rising sea levels and warmer weather would have severe consequences for some people and beneficial effects for others. But if we are so concerned about vulnerable people, why not put the money frittered away on second-guessing the climate into dealing with diseases like malaria and Aids in Africa, and making sure everyone has clean water? Dealing with it now, I mean.

Not many centuries ago, higher sea levels meant Yarmouth didn’t exist, and eventually the beach may again be even more levelled out than the mayor would like. This would be a tragedy for some people.

But other people are living with tragedy now, and a party of any colour that actually did something about it would get my vote.

Too much stoicism over bumps in the road

I will never be convinced that speed humps are a good idea, but at least many of those on public highways nowadays are negotiable without pain or damage.

Some still aren’t, but our usual British stoicism has failed to produce sufficient outrage to persuade those in authority to get them right. And off-road humps are still frequently dangerous. The one at the western entrance to Eaton Park in Norwich is so outrageously bad, for instance, that even council lorries drive through the parking spaces (when possible) to avoid it.

Hotels and conference centres also tend to insert random and intrusive humps on entrance drives where they are totally unnecessary. Presumably they’re more worried about people suing them for being mown down by cars than for having their vertebrae dislodged or suspensions systems wrecked. I hope they are quickly disillusioned.

I’m thinking of boycotting hotels with humps and suggest other motorists do the same.

1 May 2006

on 1 May 2006 at 05:00

People are more than lumps of metal

The temptation to reduce road safety to a formula of some kind is one that has to be firmly resisted.

This is partly because formulae have a tendency to be misinterpreted, especially when those using them don’t understand them – like one reader who clearly doesn’t grasp the difference between speed and acceleration.

But it is mainly because people, and not just lumps of metal, are involved in accidents.

Some people may display all the intellectual qualities of lumps of metal, but even they are much more than that. They have a degree of intelligence, but they also have a wide range of emotions and character traits which will persuade them to take certain courses of action. Frustration, for instance, and fear. Scattiness and idleness too.

But all that is complicated, so those responsible for our safety on the roads prefer to go for something simple, like restricting speed, and are surprised when this doesn’t make any real impression.

Happily there are those who take road safety more seriously and want to prevent vehicles hitting each other, rather than have them hit each other at lower speeds.

They investigate the real causes of action, like inattention and fatigue. A King’s Lynn reader has pointed out that extensive US research lasting over a year and over two million miles has found that almost 80 per cent of crashes and 65 per cent of near-crashes happen within three seconds of some form of driver distraction.

Multi-tasking drivers were three times as likely to be involved in a crash as more attentive motorists who did not put on make-up, eat breakfast or – particularly – chat on mobile phones. It also found that drowsy drivers were four times as likely to have a crash or near-crash.

Much nearer to home, one driver trainer is trying to tackle these and other problems. Jackie Willis, who has recently set up a new school based near Norwich called Driver Education & Training Services (www.drets.co.uk), is concerned that the excessive use of speed limits “is actually stopping people thinking for themselves”.

Her training courses for drivers “are designed to make drivers think, not just how to control their vehicle, which is what most drivers think refresher or advanced courses are all about. My aim is to produce advanced thinking drivers.”

That is why her learner driver courses also include classroom workshops, designed to develop greater understanding of the driving task in all its facets, including driver “attitude”.

It’s good to find someone in the driver education business who doesn’t take the laziest option.

Secret plans to cover us all with grass

Leaked papers obtained by this page have revealed, shockingly, that the plan to put more Norfolk farms out to grass is just the start of a campaign to change the face of East Anglia for ever.

A source close to Pondhenge said yesterday that farmers had to be dealt with. While the Zimbabwe solution was felt to be “a little too extreme”, the farms-to-grass blueprint fitted the bill.

He added that it was not just farmers who would be affected. “We – I mean they – are planning to put several towns and villages out to grass too.”

A far-sighted pilot project at Caistor St Edmund, near Norwich, earlier last century had worked particularly well. “The Roman town has been preserved under grass for the future,” he said. “We feel Norwich could go the same way. Maybe the whole of Norfolk.”

He blamed global warming and collagen biospheres. Tory leader David Cameron is in Norway.

Peaceful wheel for coastal resort

Plans to scrap the big wheel project scheduled for The Forum in Norwich are widely believed by several people to have resulted from the exposure by me of its secret role as a weapon of mass destruction.

“We couldn’t risk UN observers getting involved,” said City Hall spokesman Len (Kissme) Hardy. “So we’ve decided to palm it off on Yarmouth.”

The well-loved east-coast resort is believed to have few designs on neighbouring countries, and there should therefore be no objections to its obtaining the “wheel”. A report that the council wanted Lowestoft wiping off the face of the earth has been largely discounted.

“I’m quite happy that they want it for purely peaceful purposes,” said Mr Hardy. “Of course if they get enough of them it could turn nasty.”

Newts angry at 'cynical' Norfolk frogs

Great crested newts from the Wymondham area have launched a vicious attack on pool frogs with Norfolk accents.

The frogs, which feature on a CD of rare British animals, have been accused by the newts of “cynically pretending to be extinct, or endangered, whatever”.

The expansionist Wymondham newts, notorious for what they describe as their consortium’s “glorious struggle” against Norfolk legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago in the battle over greenfield sites near the A11, failed to make it on to the CD, despite their fame and so-called endangered status.

“The newts are demanding a voice,” said Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam of the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing, who is acting as their agent on a temporary basis. “Recent studies reveal that almost no-one knows what they sound like.”

He admitted that claims that the newts had infiltrated most areas of local government and parts of Brundall had not been entirely discounted, but felt it was irrelevant.

Mr Houseago, speaking from his holiday home at Happisburgh, said newts could easily be detected by the nonsense they spouted, and the last thing we wanted was to have them on CD.

Crossing move targets pedestrians

The town of Whynge, which appeared from the sea following a temporary fall in sea levels and is now often on the coast, has come up with a dramatic new way to help pedestrians avoid traffic.

It is piloting a scheme to replace traditional light-controlled pedestrian crossings with ground-breaking ones that prevent anatomically normal people from seeing whether they can cross safely until they have actually crossed the road.

“In placing the green man so that he cannot be seen by someone approaching the crossing, we feel everyone will take things more slowly,” said a traffic manager last night. “We are also introducing a two-minute phase where the lights are red for both pedestrians and traffic. This will enable everyone to stop and think and maybe have a coffee.”

He said suggestions that people might cross on red were “unrealistic”.

17 April 2006

on 17 April 2006 at 04:30

Everything else is just stamp-collecting

I have to admit that science was not my favourite subject at school, but I have picked up a fair bit in the 40 or so years since then, so I was delighted to see that a reader who chided me for my allegedly faulty physics was swiftly corrected.

Someone who knows far more than me points out that not only is acceleration irrelevant when working out the impact of a vehicle at 30 and 35mph, but that the appropriate formula – kinetic energy = half mass x velocity squared – shows that for the energy at impact to be twice as severe as at 30 mph, the vehicle would have to be travelling at 42.43 mph, not 35 mph. I am grateful to John Pitchers of Coltishall for this elucidation. And to the reader who observed that there is much more involved in accidents than can be revealed by physics, which was my original implication when I commented on the misleading RoSPA figures.

Meanwhile, here is a comment from another reader to illustrate how dangerous it is to allow our lives to be governed by simplistic slogans. “On the last leg of a return journey from London recently, on the stretch of road between Swaffham and Fakenham, I found myself on the back end of a line of traffic, a couple of vans and big lorries mixed among the cars – seven vehicles all travelling at about 60mph.

“As I happened to look down along the line, I saw a green car pull slowly out of a side road right in front of the leading lorry, causing it to jam on its brakes and the rest of us to nearly run into each other. A concertina crash was only narrowly avoided.

“We all then continued at about 30mph – our speed kept down by this same car, now at the head of the queue. As we progressed and frustration grew, each vehicle took its chance to overtake, some only just scraping in before an oncoming vehicle.

“So after nearly causing one major accident, this same slow car then almost caused several more. When the last car in front of me got past him, the point being made was clear. There on the back window of the green car was a big sticker reading: ‘Speed Kills’!”

Houseago shed key to evil twin probe

A spacecraft is currently collecting information about the hostile environment on “earth’s evil twin”, as the planet Venus is now affectionately known.

According to news reports the craft, Venus Express, is the size of a garden shed – but what is not generally known is that the shed in question comes from Norfolk and belongs to Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, of Erpingham.

Mr Houseago, a local legend, revealed yesterday that Venus Express had to be the same size as his shed because much of the equipment it contains was pioneered by him in the shed on a site near Pondhenge, in North Norfolk.

He explained that the area was ideal because it had almost the same kind of hostile environment as Venus, give or take the heat. “We were able to demonstrate that climate change in the Pondhenge area was caused by great crested newts,” he said. “I expect newts to be found on Venus, unless they hide, which they probably would.”

Last week a reporter walking near Whitlingham Broad just outside Norwich found remains of dried-up frogs and toads on the path, but no newts. “That more or less proves it,” said Mr Houseago. Latest evidence shows that the surface of Venus is about 465 degrees centigrade, or roughly half as hot as a blaze that destroyed a Norfolk factory in January 1998.

Whynge beaten to exciting new traffic project

An exciting new experiment in traffic management which was to be pioneered in the Norfolk town of Whynge has been abandoned.

Whynge came to prominence as a village that emerged from the sea following a drop in sea levels. It became reclassified as a town following a visit from John Prescott, the Minister for Pointless Building.

The revolutionary traffic experiment consisted of closing off the main road into the town for a couple of weeks, or maybe more, carefully timed to coincide with the annual influx into the town of thousands of holidaying Easter People, who live in the nearby countryside.

It was also planned to erect hundreds of Diversion signs to block up the other main entry point, but without saying where people were being diverted to.

A key part of the plan was to position long-phase pedestrian crossings close to major junctions, so that they became completely blocked. This became known as the Prince of Wales scheme, to make people think it had royal patronage and thereby avert criticism.

The scheme was abandoned when it was pointed out to authorities in Whynge that the whole project had already been put into operation in Norwich, and there had been little sign of movement there for some time.

“We have no intention of playing second fiddle,” said a spokesperson.

Bird-loving policeman nailed by wardens

A few readers may not know that the 13th century Great Hospital in Norwich contains the only remaining swan pit in Britain. In former times, I am told by a holder of arcane knowledge, the Swan Man in charge of the pit had to prove himself by swimming with the swans.

It is the sort of job you might expect PC Christopher Ashton to have applied for in more enlightened days.

Mr Ashton, a bird lover who spent happy hours, we are told, watching house martins nesting at his cottage, found himself in court when he tried to remove what he thought was an empty and decaying nest after the birds had apparently flown.

Sadly, against the odds, some birds were still there, and even more sadly a pair of wardens had flown their Broads Authority nests and seen the whole thing. They also saw Mr Ashton trying to return the now homeless birds to the wild.

In any normal, healthy society two things might have happened: the wardens might have had a quiet word, pointing out that there was a not very widely known Act of Parliament forbidding the removal of even unused and unsightly nests, and he shouldn’t do it again; or they might even have stepped in and stopped him doing it.

Instead, they prosecuted him, using an Act clearly designed to protect birds from vandals and illegal collectors. Happily the magistrate employed a bucket of common sense that had gone missing from the Broads Authority and gave him a conditional discharge. I wonder if she would like a job as a Broads Authority warden.

3 April 2006

on 3 April 2006 at 05:00

No hurry to rethink speed doctrine

In this apparently irreligious age, there are still one or two doctrines that we are not allowed to question. One is that humans are causing climate change, and the other is that speed is a major cause of accidents.

When I suggested last time that many speed limits needed adjusting upwards, I expected and got the usual reaction that speed is bad, man. One reader suggested consulting the Rospa website. By all means do, but think about it as well. Do you really believe that “reducing the average running speed of vehicles by just 1 mph would reduce the number of accidents by 5 per cent”? And that “at 35 mph a driver is twice as likely to kill someone as they are at 30 mph”?

If you do, don’t bother to write in, because there is clearly nothing left for us to discuss. To my mind such nonsense eliminates any credibility the rest of the site might have had (though there is much to disbelieve). Still, by all means look, and to get a counterbalance, look also at www.safespeed.org.uk and www.abd.org.uk. The same reader assumed that I wanted to drive faster because I was in a hurry. This is a common misconception. I do not want to drive excessively fast, or to hurry. I simply want to correct limits that make me and many others drive at below the optimum safe speed and turn what should be an enjoyable experience into something dreary and hazardous.

Over 40 years of driving have convinced me that it is mainly slower drivers who cause accidents because they simply do not concentrate on what they are doing. Making people drive too slowly means making them drive badly. But then I suspect that most people who are desperate to keep speeds low are less interested in road safety than in maintaining draconian laws. As Einstein said, “unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth”.

In response to my friend Mr Durrant, who wrote to say that some speed limits are correct, yes of course they are (though I don’t agree with the example he gives). And some people – mainly young people with little experience, as the EDP correctly revealed last week – drive too fast and too close to the driver in front. But the great thing for Mr Durrant and his allies is that there is no minimum speed limit in this country. They can drive as slowly as they like, however dangerous it is. And no-one will blink an eyelid. Isn’t freedom wonderful?

Fears that Norwich may attack neighbours

Fears that the ancient kingdom of Norwich may want to eliminate some of its smaller neighbours are causing concern at international level. Diplomats fear that the current government of Norwich may be stockpiling weapons of mass destruction in an attempt to wipe Broadland and South Norfolk off the map.

An unnamed Norwich spokesperson said last night: “There is simply no reason for them to exist. They are collecting rubbish and building on land that we should be controlling.

“They claim to be creating a healthy environment, but that is our job. We know best.”

A source in a blue beret said that such talk was regrettable and showed clear aggressive intent. The proposed Norwich Eye was not, as the city suggested, an attempt to produce electricity but an obvious spy device which could probably deliver deadly projectiles.

A peacekeeping force might have to be put together, and invasion was not out of the question, he said. He blamed radical clerics at the centre of government.

Give us back our restful Sundays

I was unable to convince a financial adviser the other day that it was nonsense that her bank should be able to provide 128 different kinds of ISA, but did not have one no-strings instant access savings account. “It’s what people want,” she said.

I’m afraid I do not believe her, any more than I believe that people are clamouring for even longer shop opening hours on Sundays. It may be what the banks and the shops want, but it is of no value to the man and woman in the street.

You may have not heard about it, but the Government is consulting people on this, and the deadline for comments approaches: it is April 14.

Don’t laugh. If, like me, you hanker for those quiet Sundays before 1994, when you could actually enjoy empty roads and quiet walks through the city, plus a day of rest from all the frantic commercialism of the rest of the week, take the trouble to tell the Government what you think by e-mailing them at sundaytrading@dti.gov.uk.

You may think that like most consultation, this is a waste of time and effort. But take heart: an NOP consumer poll last year found that 87 per cent of people think it is important for family stability and community life to have a common day off each week. You are not alone.

Views from the football pitch

I know many of you are eager to hear footballers’ views on life. Happily I am able to help. A reader has sent me a transcript he has deviously obtained of an interview with a high-earning footballer (though not, of course, a Canary). The identity of both has been disguised to protect the innocent. And the interviewer.

I expect you’re looking forward to Saturday’s match.

Well, you know, I mean to say, at the end of the day, we hope to get a result.

A result is inevitable, surely?

Well, you know, I have to say, I mean I don’t know nothing about that. Me and my mates will give 120 per cent effort though, to be honest, if you know what I mean.

No, not really. Surely 120 per cent is more than a complete effort?

Well, you know, to be honest, I don’t know nothing about percentages.

So you didn’t learn them at school?

I got kicked out of school because I didn’t want to learn nothing, so I just mucked about, you know.

So you don’t know anything about algebra?

No, I don’t know nothing about him. I got a mate called Al Jones. He went to university and done sports psychology. But he didn’t get no job and he owes a lotta money.

So, would you say your brains are in your feet?

Well, you know, I mean to say, I don’t know nothing about that. My agent, he can’t play football but he makes more money than I do, if you see what I mean, to be honest. Most definitely.

Thank you for your valuable time. I shall need to think about priorities.

20 March 2006

on 20 March 2006 at 04:30

When hidden speed cameras would be all right

We live in dangerous times. It will soon be possible for scamera teams to conceal speed cameras from motorists or disguise them as penguins.

To its credit, the Norfolk partnership has said it will remain open with its cameras, but of course we have had the usual rash of comment from non-drivers and bad drivers who think concealment, mass fining, imprisonment and probably beheading is an excellent idea if drivers won’t keep to speed limits.

Here’s something you weren’t expecting: I don’t see any reason why cameras shouldn’t be concealed from drivers – on three conditions.

The first is that speed limits are revised so that they make sense. In most cases this would involve increasing them by at least 10mph, and it would certainly involve stopping the Highways Agency and rogue councils from imposing frankly silly limits around road works, especially when the road works are abandoned – which seems to be most of the time.

The second is that there is some leeway, to prevent the dangerous practice of drivers constantly looking at their speedometers.

The third is that it is proved by independent assessors that speed is a major cause of road accidents or deaths. This would involve abandoning the present system, where police are encouraged to tick “inappropriate” speed as often as possible as one of a number of factors in accidents, and a string of other causes are treated as if they were speed-related for statistical purposes.

In other words, hiding speed cameras is OK if, and only if, simply exceeding speed limits really puts people at serious risk. I don’t believe it does. Many other things do, like putting on your make-up while driving, making mobile phone calls, changing compact discs, wearing muddy wellingtons, going to sleep, or reading maps, magazines and delivery lists at the wheel in the way that so many commercial drivers seem to do. Or just not paying attention.

A closet acceptance of these facts is the reason that even scamera partnerships have been reluctant to go for deception and entrapment.

So why not come clean completely?

English, but not as we know it

The main problem with foreign call centres is the difficulty in understanding people who speak English, but not as we know it.

A relative had a striking experience of this recently when she pulled her emergency alert cord in the middle of the night and was connected not, as she anticipated, with the warden of her sheltered home just outside Norwich, but with a voice she did not recognise.

Although she was ringing because of a medical emergency, the voice found difficulty in understanding what she was saying. She in turn had problems making out what was being said at the other end, but at last she realised the voice was asking her if she wanted some shopping done.

Not entirely helpful. In the end she gave up and turned to more traditional methods of solving her problem.

An explanation came the next day, when she discovered she had been speaking to someone from Sheffield. No doubt the middle-of-the-night shopping question arose because of the different time zones.

Inland herring fleet let out of the bag

I have to apologise to a correspondent who complained about my publicising the gravel pit near Reepham where Norfolk conglomerate Houseago Inc is hoping to extract helium-3.

He writes: “It is particularly galling, when we are trying to protect one of the last remaining herring fleets to be found inland, that you have highlighted the existence of this pond. “The processed kippers and bloaters (simply know as 'kick starters') have been firing up most of the UK's atomic reactors. In fact we have just sent our latest batch via Reepham Post Office to Iran, as a precaution in case Russia's kippers don’t turn up. “We want to remain as low profile as possible, so go and find another gravel pit somewhere else.”

It will be difficult to find another pit containing exactly the same features, but I will do my best.

Two good decisions by Norwich City Council

Say what you like about Norwich City Council, they have made two good decisions recently.

One was not to go along the road pioneered by Hinckley, in Leicestershire, where a man was fined for putting litter in a bin. Admittedly this is a lot easier to do than fining people for dropping it on the ground, but still you have to wonder about the council employee who tracked the “offender” down by examining used envelopes.

The second good decision by Norwich was to select John Drake, chief executive of YMCA Norfolk, as its next Sheriff.

For those of you who know him only for his appearance (loosely disguised as Patrick McGoohan) in the mid-60s cult TV series Danger Man, I should explain that John is wearing particularly well and has been at the hub of the huge amount of good work the YMCA has done in the city.

A glace at the Norfolk YMCA’s website at www.ymca-norfolk.co.uk reveals how much the belief that “everyone deserves the chance to fulfil their God-given potential” is central to everything he stands for.

It also reveals that Norwich is one of the hilliest cities in England. I have been saying this for a long time, but no-one believed me. Perhaps they will now.

Hitting the shops may be a gender thing

The foundations of 21st century existence may be crumbling. A correspondent points out that a recent news story revealed that “women are losing interest in hitting the shops as a leisure activity”.

So bad news for all those bright news shops in Norwich, not to mention Yarmouth and Pondhenge. But there is a ray of light. The same correspondent writes: “Personally, there's nothing I like more than giving the new Chapelfield centre a good bash every time I walk by.”

Maybe it’s just a gender thing.

6 March 2006

on 6 March 2006 at 05:00

Pedestrians only? Sorry, we need it for heavy lorries

Thousands of people meant to write in after reading the article in which I suggested that traffic lights on roundabouts were an extremely bad idea. All were in agreement. One did actually write in and said that people pretty much understood how roundabouts worked (without any power supply, incidentally). He also pointed out that such lights are self-promoting: for every traffic light controlling access to the roundabout there must be another one stopping traffic on the roundabout – no doubt emitting carbon as it does so.

But of course lights are very good at annoying drivers and stopping traffic unnecessarily, so that’s all right – in much the same way that people enjoy cheap air travel, so that’s all right too, though it emits even more carbon.

Coincidentally a few months ago thousands of people were also in favour of pedestrianising the ancient and lovely Westlegate in our fair city of Norwich, on the grounds that, in the words of city councillor Judith Lubbock, it was a golden opportunity to reduce traffic in the city centre. There was much anger at evil Conservative councillors who helped to block this measure, which was backed by all the good little guys like the John Lewis Partnership and the Chapelfield development.

Bit embarrassing really, because now it turns out that the only way that big articulated lorries can get to the Chapelfield development is down Westlegate, which must be really wonderful for pedestrians. The corners on the route everyone assumed they would take – through Little Bethel Street – are too tight for the monsters to negotiate without actually killing people.

That sort of thing is very hard to spot, of course, but still there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of foresight in the area of traffic planning. If there was, someone might have avoided spending money on a big consultation about the pedestrianisation of Westlegate when it was not only unnecessary but apparently pointless. In fact if they had accidentally managed to pedestrianise Westlegate, they would now have to unpedestrianise it, or watch Chapelfield crumble into dust, starved of supplies.

As with the lights-on-roundabouts fiasco, my correspondent’s question is very much to the point: “Who makes these decisions, spends so much money and seems both invisible and unaccountable?”

It's money, Rosie, but not as we know it

I have a tendency to be sympathetic to anyone called Rosie. I don’t know why. But when health minister Rosie Winterburn’s visit to the James Paget Hospital at Gorleston was “hijacked” by a radiologist, I had to admit I was all for the hijack, even though the radiologists’s name was Eryl.

We all know the Government is pouring money into the health service, just as it is pouring money into schools. What is not so widely known is the cackhanded way in which it does so. As Dr Eryl Thomas pointed out, the Government spent loads of cash on scanners for the Gorleston hospital. But instead of supplying money to run them, it pays a private company to run a mobile scanner in the car park while the hospital’s scanners stand idle.

This is so mind-bogglingly stupid that you might think that even the Government would spot it. But no, it happens in many other hospitals too. Something strangely similar also happens in schools. Not long ago the Government poured bucketloads of money into schools to purchase state-of-the-art computer software. But the schools were not allowed to spend any of the money on hardware – which meant they ended up with lots of expensive software which they couldn’t run on their out-of-date, low-tech, fragile computers.

Never mind, the Government can go on boasting about all the money they’re giving schools and hospitals. So that’s all right too.

Sheep in midfield for low-flying Canaries

The Flying Flock – about 1000 sheep belonging to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust which have been trained to parachute into conservation sites all over the county – are scheduled to put in an appearance at Carrow Road this week.

“Recently the pitch has been falling into intermittent disuse,” said auxiliary shepherd and pilot Sven (Twitcher) Green. “We want to conserve it so that it can be used for football again on a regular basis.”

Mr Green said one of the sheep worked hard all over the pitch and could get into the team against Sheffield United. Last week some of the flock went missing in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, but were eventually located near a Scout Hut. “They were defending too deep,” said Mr Green.

Plenty of water here: just bring a bucket

Yes, it’s the season of drought warnings. As you know, it’s not only getting warmer (oh yes it is) but drier too. In fact it may well be the driest since time began. Strange, then, that when a water pipe broke in a housing association dwelling in Norwich just after 2pm last Tuesday – a fact that was quickly reported – it was not until just after 6.30pm that anyone arrived to do something about it.

Even then, the poor condition of the stopcocks meant that when I left the nearby home of a friend at after 7.30pm, water was still pouring – and I mean pouring – out on to the passageway.

Inside, six inches of water throughout was probably an underestimate.

It makes taking a shower instead of a bath seem a little pointless, somehow.

Helium-3 may have been found in Norfolk black hole

Plans by Russia to start mining on the moon for helium-3, an isotope with enormous energy potential, may be upstaged by a Norfolk company.

Houseago Inc, the North Norfolk conglomerate fronted by local legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, is believed to have located “quite a lot” of helium-3 in a gravel pit near Reepham. “We believe it’s a cosmic phenomenon linked to the nearby black hole of Norfolk,” said sales manager Len “Kissme” Hardy, of Hindolveston. Houseago Inc says it plans to remove a large number of great crested newts from the pond to enable it to get at the helium-3. “We think it’s helium-3,” said Mr Houseago from his home at Erpingham last night, “but it might only be helium-2. It’s very cold and it keeps leaking out. But then it does get very cold around Reepham.

“We’re optimistic, and we’ll get rid of the newts anyway.”

20 February 2006

on 20 February 2006 at 05:00

Reason for lights on roundabouts remains a mystery

Returning from a few days away, I suddenly realised that coming home was getting depressing.

In the past, reaching the outskirts of Norwich along the A11 meant a smooth transition from trunk road to city by means of a roundabout that functioned perfectly well.

Now drivers are faced – despite recent changes – with a ludicrous 30mph limit that is almost impossible to get down to, given the excellent road conditions. Yes, I do know where the brake pedal is, but 30mph on a wide dual-carriageway feels like slow walking pace, especially when everyone else is overtaking you.

Never mind, we have the joyous prospect of a 40mph limit in the near future, plus an array of traffic lights that make Yarmouth seafront at the height of the season look embarrassingly naked.

Why do we need traffic lights on a roundabout? No-one knows. All we are sure of is that when they aren’t there, traffic flows much more smoothly. One experience sent in by a Coltishall reader demonstrates this.

“The other Sunday morning,” he writes, “I was sitting motionless in a Norwich traffic queue, pondering the age-old question of traffic lights or roundabouts – or roundabouts with traffic lights.

“The road in question was St Augustine’s, leading down to Pitt Street and the St Crispin’s inner ring road. The queue started at the junction with Drayton Road, where the old swimming pool used to be. When we got to St Crispin’s we found that the only reason for the traffic queue was the lights on this large roundabout. Otherwise the traffic was light, as it was all the way to Carrow Road.

“If you turn left on to St. Crispin’s, there are no lights at the next roundabout. Nor are there lights on the next, large, normally busy, Barrack Street / Riverside Road / Ketts Hill roundabout.

“If we had turned right on to St. Crispin’s we would have found that there are no lights at the Barn Road roundabout. Travelling up Grapes Hill we do find the notorious roundabout-plus-lights, of which the least said the better.

“We all know how to use roundabouts; so what prompts our traffic czars to add traffic lights to large roundabouts, when we all know that they will mainly serve to cause traffic build-ups that otherwise would sort themselves out?”

My feeling is that 21st century road works in almost any area seem designed to prevent traffic flowing smoothly for as long as possible. At the Thickthorn roundabout the traffic lights will not only cause unnecessary hold-ups, they will introduce new dangers.

A block of fairly slow-moving traffic moving away from lights and on to the southern bypass is far more hazardous than individual vehicles able to adjust their speed easily to through traffic.

The eventual solution no doubt will be to slow down the bypass traffic, because highways authorities are only really happy when nothing is moving at all. They call this “settling down”.

Secret plans to remove duck threat

In the latest startling move in Martham’s contentious duck wars, a dissident duck has claimed that there is a clandestine plan to remove a number of local birds to a “secret location”. The duck, an Indian runner, alleges that the ducks are being removed to an area totally unsuited to pond life – possibly Siberia or Pluto, which I read recently is colder than expected – on the spurious grounds that they are a threat to the “infrastructure of the water” at Martham, where it is claimed the local pond can support only eight. This is roughly 170 fewer than use it at present, according to local estimates. Reports have come in of attempts to catch the birds in butterfly nets. These have so far failed, but there are fears that advanced technology may be introduced, and the ducks lost for ever. Global warming is the only hope, said an observer.

Building slippery roads the way forward?

Correspondents are getting a firm grip on the slippery roads issue. Allan Hale returned from a trip down the newly opened Thorney bypass on the A47, where he was horrified to find “slippery road” signs covering the whole length of it. “And they were not just temporary signs,” he writes. “They were the good solid permanent ones. So clearly those in authority are expecting this brand new road to be permanently slippery.

“Are the contractors purchasing inferior surfacing material, and if so, why?

“Presumably it must be cheaper. But this leads us back to speed limits and speed cameras. If we want to make the roads safer, shouldn't we be correcting this slipperiness before we start worrying about employing more and more cameras? “But no, that would cost money rather than generating it!”

Unguided regions come up with wrong transport cake

When the eight English regions put forward their wish lists for transport funding up to 2016, some 72 per cent was allocated to road building, as opposed to 24 per cent for public transport schemes. According to newspaper reports, this shocked the anti-car and pro-bus Transport 2000, which I rather admire for sticking to its name despite appearing to be six years out of date.

Spokesperson Meera Rambissoon said asking the regions was a good idea in principle, “but without proper guidance they have been trying to make a cake with no proper recipe to follow”.

No prizes for guessing exactly whose guidance the regions were lacking, and what kind of cake might have resulted.

6 February 2006

on 6 February 2006 at 05:00

Silly limits are just asking for trouble

I commented that the speed restrictions on the A11 approaching Thickthorn roundabout, just outside Norwich, were much too slow for much too long – which meant people did not take them seriously.

This provoked a Little Fransham correspondent to point out similar problems further west in the county. Bruce Carswell, who is a regular user of the A1065 between Swaffham and Barton Mills, writes: “Over the past few years the speed limits have been reduced on several sections, some of which are justified on safety grounds, such as the reduction from 40mph to 30 on departure from Swaffham and the two reductions from 50mph to 40 through Hilborough and Mundford.

“However, the sudden imposition of a 30mph restriction from the southern exit from Brandon to the end of the Lakenheath runway is difficult to understand.”

He adds that although the junction to the Viewing Area is being worked on, “this could not possibly require a two-mile stretch of formerly unrestricted road to have a 30mph limit imposed”.

Similarly, “when the bridge at Red Lodge was being repaired, there was a very long 40mph restriction imposed on a formerly unrestricted section of the A1065, and a ludicrous 20mph restriction over a temporary bridge for 150 yards”.

He asks: “Who is responsible for the imposition of these speed restrictions and what is the justification? Who pays this person, and what is the cost per year of the department?

“Of course safety is vital to all road users, but common sense must also apply.”

The trouble is that common sense rarely seems to have anything to do with it. Slower and slower speed limits are imposed for no apparent reason. It seems quite normal nowadays for perfectly good B-roads to have arbitrary 50mph limits thrown at them.

Another reader complains that on the Lowestoft-Gorleston A12, the 40 mph speed limit on the last half mile of the dual carriageway travelling towards the Gorleston roundabout is “really silly – and the 40 mph limit on the corresponding bit of carriageway travelling southwards is even sillier”.

Not long ago a correspondent revealed how complying with a pointless 30mph speed limit for some 20 motorway miles was “probably the most dangerous piece of driving I have ever done, as lorries came hurtling up behind me”.

Yes, driving too slowly for the conditions is dangerous. And if speed limits are obviously inappropriate, they bring realistic speed limits into disrepute as well, leading to further hazards.

Blindly demanding compliance with too-slow limits, instead of contesting them, is asking for more deaths and injuries as surely as driving at 80mph round a hairpin on black ice.

Confusion over slippery changes

Following remarks about the apparent slipperiness of the A12 in the Lowestoft area, Jeremy Claborn was delighted to notice that “slippery” signs on the road had been amended.

Suspecting the power of the press had improved the road at a stroke, he was prepared to see changes all down the line.

Alas, this was not so. He tells me that the distance on six of the 14 “slippery road” signs has been changed to give an impression that less of the road is slippery. The first one going south, for instance, has been reduced from eight to two miles.

Unfortunately others have not followed suit, and the results are contradictory. Mr Claborn tells me that “the overall message is now that all but 0.6 miles of the north-south route is still slippery, and that all of the south-north route is still slippery!”

He suggests that this is “a job only half (or perhaps one-twentieth?) done”. Being an optimistic kind of guy, I can only hope that the changes are ongoing, and no-one is trying to slip the wool over anyone’s eyes.

Honestly, car-haters should stop making transport policy

Ethics are all very well, but maybe you can take them too far. In Dorset, a councillor left a meeting to discuss plans to improve a holiday park because he had a prejudicial interest: he thought caravan parks were a blot on the landscape and was fed-up with getting stuck behind them in traffic.

If people who don’t like caravans are not going allow themselves to speak, we will soon be inundated with the pesky things. But I’d be prepared to put up with caravan sites if people who hated cars were ethical enough to exclude themselves from transport policy discussions. Fat chance of that.

Newts in bid to oust ducks from Suffolk ponds

The influence of great crested newts is not hard to spot in the latest pronouncement from Suffolk – that ducks are bad for ponds.

Admittedly, such an assertion is not surprising from the county that believes cars are bad for roads, but few normal human beings would try to keep ducks and ponds apart. It is like trying to split fish and chips. What next? Cows are bad for fields? Birds are bad for the air? Water is bad for the sea?

Who could benefit from the removal of ducks from ponds? Clearly, great crested newts, who would be extending their territory further and taking one more step towards the destruction of life as we know it.

“They must be stopped,” said Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago of Erpingham yesterday.

Loving and lovable aunt

Last week saw the funeral of my Aunt Dorothy, whose name you will not have seen in any obituaries, because she was a quiet person who never married, was never involved in scandal, never made much money and never hit the headlines.

She was 90. She had spent much of her life caring for her mother, but she was also known to many boys in the county as matron at Norwich School in the days when it was a boys’ boarding school. In that role, as a loving and lovable Christian, she probably had more influence than many people whose names trip off all our tongues. She will be missed.

23 January 2006

on 23 January 2006 at 12:05

Surrounded by flint, but lost in Admiration

In the Norfolk countryside it is easy to get lost – if only in Admiration, which, in case you were wondering, is near East Carleton. Maps are useful, but it’s hard to make what appears to be the distance on the map correspond with feet on the ground.

The group I occasionally walk with has introduced an added complication, in that the miles walked vary according to who is measuring them. There is the brisk Martin stride and the measured Parker step, not to mention the occasional Robinson pedometer. And they all work out differently. Nothing ever seems to quite add up.

Still, a walk is a walk. You never know what you will find, apart from mud. In the wide open fields of Admiration the other day, for instance, there were a lot of flint tools.

As far as I’m concerned, every bit of flint is a tool. I have never seen a bit of flint that is not a tool, because they are all sharp or hammer-shaped. If by some freak of nature a piece of flint does not look like a tool, you simply have to throw it in the air above a hard surface, and when it comes down it will be a tool.

I offer this observation to archaeologists: it may be a breakthrough. Meanwhile I am puzzling over the exact meaning of a solitary post discovered far from Admiration – in the forests of Breckland, to be precise.

It bore just one exciting word: THE. Pretty definite. I suspect that further posts were planned bearing words like WAY and HOME, but government money ran out. Of course, I could be wrong. Not as wrong, however, as the two friendly gentlemen in a van who pulled up next to me just outside East Carleton and asked me if I knew where Carleton St Peter was.

All sorts of Carletons flicked through my mind. Lower East Carleton just up the street; Carleton Rode, down near Bunwell; and Carleton Forehoe, the other side of the A11. But Carleton St Peter?

Confusingly, the old church at East Carleton was St Peter’s, but that’s another story. I couldn’t pin Carleton St Peter down in my ageing mind…until the van had disappeared round the corner, looking for someone who knew something. Then it clicked.

Carleton St Peter was somewhere else entirely – out Loddon way, near Ashby St Mary. Bit of a mess really. It’s time the county council did something useful and got all those Carletons grouped together tidily, or at least on the same side of Norwich. Then we’ll know where we are. Maybe.

Parking signs not exactly watertight

It doesn’t come as a surprise any more when I arrive at the University of East Anglia to find nowhere left to park my car. But I was slightly taken aback the other day to discover a new notice blocking the entrance to the car park. “UEA full,” it read. “Use Costessey Park and Ride.”

Just the sort of help you need when you’re late for an appointment. It’s not as if Costessey Park and Ride is anywhere close. In fact it’s rather like arriving at the outskirts of Norwich to find a sign reading “Norwich full. Use King’s Lynn.”

If the UEA authorities just want to put visitors off I suggest they switch to a more inventive sign, like the one I pass regularly when travelling through a town in Hertfordshire. It reads: “Hitchin Swimming Centre overflow parking.” Not exactly watertight, but lots of fun, I should imagine.

Giant squirrels blameless in speed limit fiasco

As part of my campaign to alert readers to the forces of nature, I can report that a giant grey squirrel has been spotted by a reader in Rackheath. Happily, it was not exceeding the speed limit, but the same could not be said of drivers approaching Norwich on the A11.

They are greeted by another force of nature – the local scamera partnership, who recently realised that drivers were habitually ignoring the 30mph limit and workers on the road were being “endangered”.

The mobile speed camera immediately raked in so much money that it proved to be embarrassing, and complaints were made. As usual someone wrote to the EDP and said that drivers would not be fined if they obeyed the law.

Of course this is a really helpful observation. But it is even more helpful to ask why drivers break this limit. And the answer is that the limit has been imposed in such a way that it is quite obvious to drivers that it is inappropriate.

For weeks drivers approaching Norwich were asked to drive at 30mph down a clear dual carriageway for more than two-thirds of a mile for no apparent reason. No workers, and very few giant squirrels. When you have been driving for many miles at 70mph, this feels ludicrously slow.

No good driver minds driving slowly to ensure the safety of others. In this case, a 40mph limit much closer to the roundabout might have been appropriate and would surely have been observed by most. Instead we have a limit that is much too slow for much too long.

Even a squirrel could see that. Of course squirrels don’t need the money.

How coast erosion could have been avoided

Another reader has shown interest in the ground-breaking suggestion by the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team that people bring back soil and stones from holiday to construct a hill in the area. He prefers to remain anonymous, but he writes: “When my boys were youngsters they would always bring stones and rocks back from the seaside. I realised at the time that if this was going on with other families, in time England would become a large hill.

“To rectify this I made the boys take stones and rocks back on our visits to the seaside. Had other families done this I'm sure there would have been no problem with coast erosion.”

It is hard to argue with this.

9 January 2006

on 9 January 2006 at 05:00

Volcano on Suffolk border still holds water

Following the inspirational suggestion by the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team that a mountain might be erected in their area if everyone brought home a bucketful of soil from their holidays, I received an indignant letter from Richard “Volcano” Meek, the fairly intrepid Norfolk explorer, who has been outside for some time.

He exploded: “Sir, your purportedly original idea to erect a manufactured mountain – or, as we experts say, a Montagne-Nouveau – in West Norfolk owes much to my own largely ignored proposal first aired in your very own column on April 8, 2002.

“My fully researched and costed plan is still being considered by Norfolk County Council (vertical amenities sub-group). The audacious idea – a result of thinking inside, outside and underneath the box – came to me while engaged in newt-spotting during a particularly slow ride along the A140. “The idea – which you originally described as ‘stunning in its elegant simplicity’ – involves using unemployed artisans to excavate a cave system in South Norfolk, and in turn using the spoil produced to throw up a range of mountains along the border with Suffolk.

“Benefits are as obvious now as when first hatched: a defensible border, a reduction in unemployment, pot-holing vacations, enhanced aquifers for Anglian Water and, not least, a winter sports centre in Val Diss'ere. It may in fact not be too late to bid for the next Winter Olympics.”

Mr Meek asks me to give credit where it is due, and as president of the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team I am happy to do so unreservedly. He tells me he is hoping that his plan and the attendant Lottery bid may reach the agenda of the county council sub-group within the next five years, “shortly before my bid to construct a waterfall to rival Niagara, adjacent to Reedham ferry”.

We wish him well. No, very well.

Slippery for too long

The question of slippery roads is one that remains firmly in focus, despite the temporary absence of snow and ice from this part of the world.

A Gorleston reader, Jeremy Caborn, is particularly concerned about the A12 where it passes through the delightful seaside resort of Lowestoft. Here it is “slippery to drive on from start to finish”, he writes.

He knows this, not because he keeps sliding off it, but because of the warning signs – 14 of them on the road itself over a distance of about nine miles, and others on side roads approaching the A12. He has categorised these carefully, and they make an impressive list.

He has also formulated a number of questions. Here are some of them.

Why was such an important road allowed to become slippery in the first place, and remain slippery for so long?

Does the highway authority ever intend to reduce its slipperiness, or is it fated to remain slippery for the rest of its life? Is this further confirmation of Lowestoft’s “poor relation” status?

Given that much of the northern end of this road has recently been resurfaced, is it still actually slippery? If so, shouldn’t the contractors be taken to task? If not, why haven’t many of the signs been removed?

How, in any case, are we supposed to adjust the way we drive to take account of the slipperiness, other than observe the speed limits?

How many people actually take the slightest notice of these signs? Don’t they just illustrate the danger of cluttering up the road with far too many “warnings”, which people just become immune to – causing them to pay insufficient attention to the one or two signs that really matter?

Mr Caborn has asked these questions before, but the people he asked were too slippery to reply.

Pedestrian thinking too slow for conditions

Some people seem to be taking those “Think Pedestrian” signs too seriously, if the amount of pedestrian thinking evident over the snowy festive season was anything to go by.

You ache for a bit of lively thinking, but no, the same tottering old phrases are trotted out.

Predictably, the police announced that people were driving too quickly, and I have no doubt that some people were. They should be locked up immediately. But where were the warnings that far more people were driving too slowly?

Timid, dithering driving in snowy conditions – or even conditions that look as though they might possibly become snowy soon – is much more likely to result in accidents and snarl-ups than a more positive, confident approach. If you aren’t sure you can cope with the conditions, you shouldn’t be on the roads, even if the sales are so compelling that it requires near-superhuman powers (or, outrageously, a couple of moments’ thought) to resist them.

Ironically, the pedestrian police speed warning that I heard on Anglia TV news was followed immediately by a frozen reporter standing on one road in Norwich where there had been half of all recorded collisions that day.

Clearly a racetrack? Not exactly. It was Christchurch Road, which has a 20mph limit and – ahem – speed humps.

Driving a coach and horses through Christmas

A Wicklewood man who operates a Christmas card monitoring system of some meticulousness reports that this festive season he received only one displaying the traditional scene of coach and horses in the snow.

“Is this the end of an era?” he asks.

Recent research has revealed that while coaches are prevalent in the Bethlehem area at most times of the year, they are rarely pulled by horses and almost never accompanied by snow.

But this seems a petty, nitpicking observation, typical of PR spin-doctors. Surely this is just another example of the Church of England dispensing with the essentials of Christianity in an attempt to lure people back into namby-pamby centrally-heated churches for gimmicky guitar music and ten-minute stand-up humour.

We must demand coaches and horses, as much snow as possible and a return to genuine stout-hearted, freezing cold worship with an organ, as it was in the beginning.

It is still not too late, writes Disgusted, of Little Tuddenham.