26 December 2005

on 26 December 2005 at 05:30

Slippery roads and slippery thieves a bad sign

At this time of year many readers will be worried by slippery roads. I know the police place them high on their list of priorities, because when a Norfolk farmer spilled some mud on the road they turned up in force, whereas they showed no interest when he reported that some of his machinery was stolen.

The more cynical readers might suspect that this was because they knew where the farmer was and so could catch him easily. The thieves, on the other hand, could have been anywhere, and probably were. It would have been hard work to track them down. After all, there is so much farm machinery on the road.

One of my correspondents is well aware of this. He has also noticed other vehicles performing similar functions. He writes: “We have long since understood that the numbers of tractors on the roads are a result of the EU subsidies that are dished out to farmers under ‘traffic calming’. Why has this system now been extended to include Tesco lorries? “At the head of most of the traffic queues these days there is a slow-moving Tesco lorry. Why do they have to travel at a speed which is lower than that of the average cyclist?”

Allan Hale of Beachamwell (for it is he) also has views on slippery roads, as it happens. He points out that there was “a veritable rash of signs erected to this effect a few years ago, and the signs still remain”.

He wonders: “Are the roads still slippery, and if not, why are the signs still there? If they are still slippery, how have the authorities managed to keep them that way after resurfacing?”

These seem to me to be excellent questions. I suspect that the highway authorities care very little about signposting. “Flood” signs rarely hold water, and speed limit signs are often wildly inappropriate. Many temporary warning signs remain long after the reason for them has passed. Obviously it’s boring and tedious to remove them – particularly if they have to be put back a couple of days later – but after a certain number of silly signs, motorists have little respect for signs generally. It is hard to blame them.

Mr Hale is particularly concerned about signs that read “Give Way - 142 yards”. He asks: “Why 142 yards, for goodness sake? Does anybody know? Is it related to rods, poles or perches?”

Sadly, I am unable to answer these questions, as I have had too much turkey. Maybe someone else could help.

Red shift horror as newts lead Santa astray

There was anger in parts of Norfolk yesterday when it was revealed that Santa Claus had been deceived by great crested newts as he crossed the Autonomous Republic of Hingham. The area has long been regarded as risky for anyone wearing scarlet, because of a peculiar effect of the time-space distortion encountered there. Called red shift, it can result in confusion and unpredictable changes of role, according to local expert Prof V A R Scheinlich, who studied the phenomenon when he was someone else – possibly radical cleric the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick. Taking advantage of an incidence of red shift, the ruthless newts persuaded Mr Claus that he was in fact a reindeer and harnessed him to his sleigh. One of them then took his place in the sleigh and pretended to be Santa, distributing fresh fruit to local government officers across the county as bribes.

Thousands of children were distraught when it was discovered that the toys Santa had been carrying – largely X-boxes – had been buried in a black hole near Reepham. This was described as “singular” by PC Amy Thirdelf, a spokesperson. Very little trace of the reindeer can be found, but Norfolk police have asked them to give themselves up.

Bridge too far for collision-happy motorists

Motorists who enjoy driving into things will need to be careful in future that their chosen object of impact is not a railway bridge – because if it is, they will be fined £5000 and docked six points.

Those who are careful enough to drive into other things, like speed cameras, will not face these draconian penalties – although, of course such actions are not to be encouraged. The bridge problem is apparently getting worse. One bridge in Lincolnshire has been hit 151 times, which must mean that Lincolnshire people are very determined, short-sighted or hate trains.

But if we are to penalise people for the effects their actions have, and not for the actions themselves, why don’t we start inflicting heavy fines on all those lorry drivers who keep shedding their loads, catching fire or jack-knifing and blocking major routes just in time for the morning rush-hour?

After all, the expense, inconvenience and human misery caused must be much the same as what happens every time a railway bridge has to be checked. It may be worse.

Diversion gets humans to Cromer 200,000 years early

So humans were in Cromer 200,000 years before we thought they were. Clearly the A140 was better in those days.

But what were they doing there? Very recent research suggests that they were part of a team engaged in diverting the course of the River Glaven so that it would reach the sea. Being a very early river, it had not at that time understood what was required of it.

Diverting rivers became less popular as time went on, and it is only recently that it has been taken up again. Readers concerned at why on earth it could be taking so long to complete work at the Thickthorn roundabout near Norwich may be relieved to hear that they are trying to divert the River Yare. No-one knows where to, but the Wymondham duck is believed to be involved.

A spokesman said it was essential work, and they should be finished in well under 200,000 years.

Mountain rescue team goes back to basics

At the annual meeting of the West Norfolk Mountain Rescue Team – of which I have the honour to be president – it was suggested that one of the major problems facing the team could easily be met.

As a result, each member has been asked to take a bucket on holiday, fill it with earth and deposit it on a site to be found in West Norfolk. It is hoped that – if the idea spreads – West Norfolk will soon have its first mountain. EU cash may be available, as the minority in the area is believed to be ethnic.

12 December 2005

on 12 December 2005 at 05:00

Paperweight planners just waste everyone's time

Exclusive: I can reveal precisely what is wrong with the NHS, the social services and education. And we do this without a fee, or even a weekend conference in a smart hotel.

It is paperwork. And not just paperwork, but silly paperwork, devised by people whose only role in life is to waste other people’s time. If I were to go into hospital shortly, how happy should I be to know that this year the NHS introduced 24 core standards and 10 developmental standards covering seven key areas?

I will tell you. Not very, because I know how much time is likely to be taken up by people “proving” through endless paperwork that these targets have been met. Even if they haven’t.

If improvements are made to an old person’s flat, how pleased should we be that the hard-pressed people who did it have to fill in forms predicting whether this improvement has avoided the necessity of admitting the old person to hospital at some later stage? Not at all, because there is no way of doing this other than guessing.

But then the impossibility of knowing something never stops these paperweight planners. Head teachers, for instance, are not only required to predict what standards their pupils will reach in two years’ time; they are asked to predict the percentage of absences in 2008. Yes, 2008. Really.

It must be very tempting for schools (advised by local authorities) to tailor these guesses to fit government targets. You can hardly blame them, but what’s the point of it all?

The answer is simple: to give the Government statistics that it can distort to justify its actions. Then it can do something really useful, like introducing a breakthrough system of teaching children to read that, I am reliably informed, is already in use in just about all of Norfolk’s primary schools.

If all the paperwork required by the Government were used by children to draw pictures on, we would be a lot better off.

High cost of living down Memory Lane

A North Norfolk estate agent has called on the district council to change local roads and streets into lanes, following reports that people will pay up to £50,000 more to live in a lane.

Spokesman Len “Kissme” Hardy told our reporter: “We are already encouraged by the number of Quiet Lanes around here, although it must be confusing for mailpersons.

“And it’s not a very fun name. We would be looking for something a little more funky, like Dylan Lane or Counting Crows Lane – or Penny Lane. Memory Lane would probably go down well. Even Nelson Lane, seeing as I believe Nelson was local.”

Mr Hardy said he was sure homeowners would be keen on a change of address, if only to avoid receiving so much junk mail, but a council officer was more cautious. “We think this is a really silly idea,” she said.

Norfolk to get its own offshore call centre

Following the huge success of call centres in India, local legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago last night opened the first offshore call centre in Norfolk – at Happisburgh.

“It’s not exactly offshore yet,” he said. “But it will be soon. And I’ve got the ideal people to man it – sorry, impersonate it.

“All of them have lived in Norfolk all their lives, so they know exactly what’s going on in London, where our mother ship – sorry, parent company – operates.”

Asked whether they would be qualified to answer the calls they got, Mr Houseago said they were all highly qualified, as far as he could make out. “Sometimes it’s hard to understand what they’re saying, because Norfolk is a really pure dialect. But they can understand each other.”

He was sure the venture would be a huge success. It is backed by Mrs Hicks, the mayor of Little London, near Corpusty; and by a Taverham woman.

No surprise: public consultation ignored again

The most laughably predictable decision this year duly happened last Friday, when Suffolk County Council agreed to continue the snail-like speed limits on the A140 through its little kingdom, despite massive opposition to it in its public consultation.

The excuse for this decision is the alleged decrease in serious accidents during the period of the temporary limits. We all know how easy it is to manipulate such figures by moving the goalposts through space and time, but I would suggest that even if they have some basis in fact, it may be because so many people are sick of driving on the A140 that they have shifted on to country roads instead. If that is what the county council wants, fine, because it is likely to continue.

I myself live in Norfolk and rarely use the A140, so I shall not lose any sleep over it. You may say it is none of my business. But if I lived in Suffolk I would want to know why the council used my money to finance the public consultation, if it never intended to take the slightest notice of it.

Usual targets could cast their net wider

The campaign by the usual suspects to rid Norwich of 4x4 vehicles comes as no real surprise, because the usual suspects (disguised on this occasion as the Norwich Alliance Against Urban 4x4s) have no expertise in this area. For one thing, almost any car can be obtained in a 4x4 version: they really mean the large-wheeled off-road specialist vehicles which I have to admit I am not too fond of either. But we can’t simply demand the removal of things we’re not too fond of, or not many of us would be left.

If they wish to exclude from the city vehicles which pollute and obstruct, they should perhaps start with buses and lorries. And, as taxi driver Peter Hammond astutely puts it, “if the Alliance wants machines that are not designed for urban use off our streets, there go the mountain bikes!”

He also points out somewhat mischievously but quite accurately that off-road vehicles are “ideally suited to our poorly maintained urban roads. They cope well with the raised and sunken manhole covers, the badly mended potholes and the pothills that we call speed humps”.

28 November 2005

on 28 November 2005 at 05:30

Slow, slow, slow results of public consultation

Another interesting example of public consultation is due to come to fruition next week, when Suffolk County Council will decide speed limits on the A140 where it passes through their territory.

Over the past 18 months an experimental maximum speed limit of 50mph has been imposed, with fascinating little sections at 40mph and 30mph. Some would say this is obviously nonsense for what should be a trunk road between the two centres of population in Norfolk and Suffolk. Suffolk County Council, on the other hand, wouldn’t. They think slower is safer, despite solid scientific research which indicates that people driving slightly faster than average are the safest on the roads, and the slowest drivers – together with those who speed excessively – are the most dangerous. In an attempt to get popular backing for their shaky position, they carried out a public consultation exercise – only to find that about four out of five people who responded wanted the 60mph limit reinstated. You want precision? All right, it was 79 per cent.

Overwhelming enough, but if what a correspondent told me is true, a good number of those voting to retain the experimental limits were rounded up by her to bolster the council’s case. So the “true” 60mph vote may be a little higher.

No surprise there, especially when you consider the words of an experienced traffic policeman who spent 30 years dealing with accidents on the A140. He describes the experimental limits as unnecessary and frustrating for drivers – which must be risky, since he puts virtually all the accidents he has dealt with down to human error.

The slower speed limits, he says, “are part of what is seen as a policy to reduce vehicle speeds throughout the county regardless of the need for them to be reduced”. And he should know. He is an expert.

He goes on to say that what is really needed are bypasses and dual carriageway stretches to enable safe overtaking – something that should have been done by the Highways Agency before it abdicated responsibility and detrunked the road.

As another expert – a former transport operations and traffic planner – puts it: “All around regulations are being tightened almost to the extreme to ensure only the qualified can build, repair, modify and teach, in most instances to protect life and limb. Yet the untrained and often biased can influence, set and modify almost at will any speed limit in the land without regard to the consequences.”

If the public consultation is to mean anything, on December 8 Suffolk County Council will reinstate the 60mph limit. But don’t hold your breath. What has become known as the Hingham Principle of local democracy – ask the public and then ignore them – is very tempting for would-be dictators.

Even if they one day have the problem of explaining to their electors why they bothered spending money on consultation at all.

Sail or return? Birthright at stake

Just because the people of Cromer seem to be almost 100 per cent hostile to the exciting new sail-shaped apartment building planned for their clifftop by developer Richard Davies, we should not assume that they are in some way lacking in aesthetic appreciation – or standing back from the cutting edge of archaeological innovation.

The point about this proposal is not love or hate for the proposed design, as Mr Davies and others seem to imagine. The crux of the issue is something quite different: the demolition of the universally loved building which it would replace – the beautiful flint-faced North Lodge.

Of course the listed North Lodge has drawbacks: you can’t fit lots of rich people into it and persuade them to either buy or rent the space. But to many generations of Cromer residents and visitors this pleasant and peaceful part of the town is something to be treasured.

It is a birthright of Cromer people, and not one that should be thrown away for what the Bible calls a mess of pottage –later reworded brilliantly by a perceptive poet as a pot of message. The mess or pot in this case is money; the temptation is the free accommodation offered to the town council by Mr Davies.

To retain their integrity councillors must stand firm for the views of their electors and not be lured like lemmings to the soft ground of the glittering edge, or no-one will mourn when they collapse – or leap – into the sea.

Steady on, Mr Starling

Residents of Worstead, in North-East Norfolk, may be interested to hear that it is exactly 130 years since a Reading Room opposite the church became “an accomplished fact”.

The Parish Chronicle for November 1875 reports that the Daily Press was one of the papers available for perusal, and that there was a good fire. (Probably no connection.) The parish, we are told, was “striving hard to cater for the intellectual wants of her children” while recognising their graver and more material needs.

Closely involved in this venture was a Mr Starling – undoubtedly the same man who the following month who was involved in opening the Manor Court of Worstead St Andrew by “sonoriously enunciating O yea, O yea”.

Sadly one or two old ladies were “somewhat scandalised” by this behaviour, but the Chronicle rushes to Mr Starling’s defence. “We hasten to place on record our emphatic contradiction of the slander,” it says. “Mr Starling was talking French.” Whatever next?

How to save money painlessly

Lisa Christensen, Norfolk County Council’s director of children’s services, is about £50,000 short on a savings package she is trying to deliver. What to do?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? A spending squeeze: staff must cut down on photocopying, paper, travel costs and letters – oh, and home-to-school transport rules must be rigidly enforced. Just the kind of pettyminded things that raise morale and get people working enthusiastically. Not.

I have another suggestion. Why don’t the county council’s ten most highly paid officers each give up £5000 of their salary? I’m sure they wouldn’t notice the difference, and the frontline staff would enjoy it so much they’d probably save another £50,000 without even meaning to.

Shock ingredient of Skye salmon

You may have read recently about the dangers of contaminants in some Scottish salmon. I did not take this too seriously until I was preparing to eat a packet of Skye smoked salmon the other day and caught sight of the allergy advice: “Contains fish.” But I ate it anyway.

14 November 2005

on 14 November 2005 at 09:09

City in two minds about car parking

Norwich City Council can’t work out why its beautiful new St Andrew’s car park isn’t full, so perhaps I should drop a hint.

Making it difficult to drive into the city and then positioning an exciting new car park at one of the least accessible points in the city centre is not traffic planning: it’s schizophrenia.

The council needs to make up its mind which voice in its head it’s going to listen to: the one that tells it that cars are evil monsters and must be kept as far away as possible, or the one that says it should seduce cars in and then charge them lots of money for staying – the Chapelfield Protocol, as Robert Ludlum might call it.

I know parking is a problem. A few days ago I wanted to drop something off at the UEA. The main car park was full and shut; the one I was directed to instead was also full. I drove around a bit, polluting the atmosphere and getting in people’s way, and then went home – well, not directly home. I drove to the sorting office to post a letter, but all the spaces there were taken too.

Of course even when there are plenty of spaces, some people just hate paying. Instead of springing for the very modest fee to park in the new Whitlingham car parks on the outskirts of the city and adjacent to quite striking views if you forget about the gasholder and the pylon, many drivers brave the appalling surface of Whitlingham Lane and churn merrily on to the verges instead.

A similar phenomenon was apparent at the stunning Sheringham Park the other weekend: to avoid paying the £3 that seems a good deal for access to such idyllic surroundings, a number of drivers had parked on the roadside grass outside. If I was to judge arbitrarily by the condition and type of the vehicles, their owners were not short of a bob or two. It is surely reasonable to charge a modest fee for well-appointed parking places. But what about the “barbaric” charges levied in Norwich? This is the word used by a correspondent who, although living a little north of Norwich, would rather travel 92 miles to Bury St Edmunds and back for shopping than “tamely submit to parking robbery by green pirates” in his own fine city.

The cost of parking in Bury? £1 “per occasion” in a town centre car park. I can’t believe Norwich City Council’s preferred solution is to send shoppers to Bury. But maybe it is.

Beastly bid by heads to nail down informant

Following my article last time about the mysterious movements of head teachers, secondary heads across Norfolk are meeting to put together a plan to track down my secret informant. This will be called a COW meeting (Catch Our Whistleblower), in the tradition of naming key educational initiatives after animals. Insiders will be familiar with the dreaded performing PANDA, now a threatened species, and the OFSTED, which is believed to be evolving into a kind of duck.

More recently the SEF, a form of green werewolf, has appeared – first at Sunnydale, close to the mouth of hell in America, and now crossing the Atlantic in an attempt to create a similar environment for itself in English schools generally. I have it on good authority that we should be very afraid.

The heads’ meeting will take place in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, but the time is as yet uncertain. “This is understandable,” said Hingham expert Professor V A R Scheinlich yesterday. “I believe the heads will also be looking at space-time distortion, and whether this is spreading from Hingham into the schools system, affecting half-terms as well as health and safety. They will need to make a risk assessment and a mission statement. So it is appropriate not to be too precise.”

The heads have issued a statement saying the meeting will be invaluable, but they may not be able to get back to school afterwards.

Radical move to safeguard pub-users

The Pod and Serpent, a popular pub-restaurant in parts of North Norfolk near Pondhenge, is taking radical steps to eliminate any kind of danger to its customers.

“We will no longer be serving food,” said landlord the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick, a radical cleric. “Excessive food can almost certainly cause cancer, and of course there is the choking problem, and the obesity scenario.

“But much more serious is the risk to passive eaters. Research shows that being close to people who are eating can have serious, unexpected effects in later life, or afterwards.”

Mr Repps-cum-Bastwick is also banning the sale of drink of any kind. “I don’t have to tell you how risky drink is,” he said. “You can drown in water, for instance, and there is a chance – very slight, I grant you – that it could turn into wine.”

Asked how he would keep the Pod and Serpent going without serving food and drink, he said he was thinking of charging people to come in and sit around while he talked about global warming. He was installing a pulpit as an experiment. People could sing, too, he suggested.

“I may apply for a grant for the upkeep of the fabric - I mean painting the walls,” he expounded. “And we will have money-raising events, like fetes. W may even pass a plate round and see what people put in it.”

Country people can't figure the city out

We Norfolk boys are all familiar with the problems faced by Londoners and other incomers to rural and coastal areas – the sweet smell of seagulls, fish, fertiliser and oilseed rape; the sight of big, scary skies without a scraper in sight; and the merry morning sounds of cockerels, beet lorries and church bells.

But country people moving to the city have their problems too. Not so much the traffic, the crowds and the congestion charges, but little, unexpected things like going to the post office.

It is of course common in friendly Norfolk villages for the post office to keep a list of PIN numbers behind the counter to help out forgetful customers. This service is totally unavailable in the cities, which is obviously outrageous.

Do they think country people – the salt and pepper of the earth – have nothing better to do than memorise strings of figures?

31 October 2005

on 31 October 2005 at 05:30

Mysterious movements of head teachers

The mysterious movements of head teachers have long been an interest of mine, so I was delighted to receive a message from a teacher in a secondary school who has made a study of the subject.

He prefers to remain anonymous to prevent publishers – or indeed head teachers – from beating a path to his door. But he teaches in one of the more testing parts of Norfolk.

One of his more pithy observations is that in the secondary sector at least, the term “head teacher” is a bit of a misnomer, since they don’t. Maybe the all-purpose “team leader” should be substituted.

But what he is really interested in is the meetings they attend – and what happens as a result of them. He has quantified the outcomes quite carefully, using computer models and statistical analysis, and has come up with a figure as close to zero as makes no difference. To be fair, he is looking at this from the point of view of teachers and children, and not filling in forms, which is the main activity of heads now that the Government has decided to make Ofsted inspectors’ lives easier by unloading tonnes of paper on to schools so that they can inspect themselves. (This is a bit of a secret; so don’t tell anyone.)

But what goes on at these meetings? Is it just a question of learning how to fill in forms? Surprisingly, my research indicates that this is by no means a small factor, but surely there is more to it.

My informant is concerned because his head “has only been in school once this term on a Friday afternoon, and in the whole of last year managed just three Fridays”. Maybe heads should wear tags, or homing devices, as featured in the reality TV programme Spooks.

More research is clearly called for, and one method would be to run a competition. My correspondent suggests asking for the most impressive responses to the following: 1. Which school can boast its head out at a meeting on the most consecutive days? 2. The best excuse for a head being at a meeting. 3. The best name of a group meeting they attend. 4. The most consecutive days a head is in school.

I would give his own answers to all four, but I fear it would give him away. So I will restrict myself to his answer to Question Two, which is, almost inevitably, “A meeting to see if further meetings are necessary”.

For personal reasons I have to restrict this competition to the secondary sector. I have it on the best possible authority that primary heads are beyond reproach, and always there when you need them.

Hyenas to make comeback on Kelling Heath

Revelations that the climate of Norfolk was once much warmer and supported animals such as hippos, hyenas and elephants were welcomed yesterday by newt war veteran Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, who refused to give his age.

Mr Houseago, whose company Houseago Hicks is based at the home of a Taverham woman, is planning to reintroduce these exciting animals into Norfolk “as soon as it gets hot enough”.

He said: “Global warming means we are nearly there, so I have ordered a job lot of used hyenas, which I hope to release on to Kelling Heath next Thursday. I am already in talks with certain African government representatives about elephants, though no-one seems to have the West Runton brand that I’m looking for. And trying to find any mammoth, let alone a Mundesley one, is a thankless task.

“My top agent, Len 'Kissme' Hardy, has been scouring the world.”

Asked where he would place hippos, he suggested that Pingoland, near Watton, would be ideal. “The waterholes are already there,” he said. “The Broads Authority wanted me to put them in the Broads, but they hadn’t thought it through. It would make tacking very difficult. This is much more sensible.”

Mr Houseago was also keen to reintroduce sharks into rivers like the Yare, Wensum and Tud, although he was not convinced that they had entirely disappeared from Norfolk. “What other explanation is there for speed cameras?” he asked.

Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, of the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing, is researching the implications with help from Professor V A R Scheinlich of Hingham, who is concentrating on the possibility of space-time distortion.

QMD risk keeps Ministers out of East Anglia

Fears that the Government might invade parts of East Anglia were discounted last night after the leak of an intelligence document suggesting the presence of Questions of Mass Destruction in coastline areas of Norfolk and Suffolk.

Spokesman Eric “Smally” Small said that ministers had no intention of entering parts of the country where they might encounter QMDs, since these were believed to be particularly virulent and could blow a hole in certain policies, with unforeseeable fall-out.

He felt that the best plan was to wait and see if the QMDs, which were thought to be located in areas where the coastline was being eroded, would collapse into the sea or be overtaken by waves of apathy.

“We do not want to go anywhere near them,” said Mr Small. “They are far too dangerous to handle, and we have no answer to them.”

Asked if it might be possible to dismantle and dispose of the QMDs, he said the risks involved to people whose only mistake was to live and work in certain areas – like Central London – were just too great. He urged everyone to stay clear of anything that looked like a cliff.

God in prison shock

Nothing a bishop does surprises me any more, but I must admit to being taken aback by a headline in the Church of England Newspaper the other day.

It read: “Serving six years for armed robbery, God spoke to me in my cell.”

It was not so much that God would commit an armed robbery – though finding a motive must be tricky – but that someone somehow managed to catch and convict Him. Clearly a frame-up, but it makes some of the plots in Waking the Dead seem almost convincing.

17 October 2005

on 17 October 2005 at 08:40

Worshipping the shopping and soccer way

My suggestion that the spire-and-gravestones Chapelfield mall in Norwich provided fresh evidence that shopping was the new religion provoked an indignant response from a Thetford reader. He claimed that the national religion was in fact football, with “Jesus lagging far behind, even at Christmas”.

There has it is true been some confusion between football and Christianity: many will recall the old slogan “Jesus saves, but Dalglish nets the rebound”. But is soccer really a religion? And if so, is it more of a religion than shopping?

Maybe you could see shopping as the Church of England, with a set way of processing down the aisles, assistants (priests) to act as intermediaries between you and the creators and a choice of liturgy published as catalogues. It is obviously necessary to know the correct responses, which is why men find it harder to deal with than women. Significantly, the proportion of women to men in shopping malls and churches is roughly the same.

Smart clothing is important, together with incense. And then there’s the music: all the old favourites, played on what might very well be an organ if you could hear it clearly enough, and sung by someone else – a kind of choir.

Football, on the other hand, is unashamedly non-conformist. Like all non-conformists, its devotees do the same thing every week and prefer brash choruses that they can sing along to. True, they use traditional chants – but in a new and charismatic sort of way.

They are unafraid to move their arms in worship and always enjoy the sermon – or match report, as it is sometimes called. Praying is often extrovert and passionate, sometimes desperate. Stewards (sidesmen) have a key role in keeping order.

Meanwhile Christianity has become confused, with some Anglicans behaving like nonconformists, or shoppers at a sale, when anything could happen.

Since this is more like the original Church, you could call it Back to Basics. One city church calls it Developing Consciousness: not a bad idea, and no chance at all of confusing that with shopping and football.

Christmas without any problems

Apologies for mentioning the C-word so early in the year, but I have been receiving shopping brochures with it on for some weeks now.

This always upsets me, but one in particular gave me pause for thought. It was titled boldly “Christmas Made Easy”. I didn’t read any further, but I suspect it goes something like this.

Mary and Jesus are relieved to find that the census has been cancelled and they can stay in familiar surroundings while Mary has her baby. She decides on a home birth, and a midwife and doctor are in attendance in case of complications. There aren’t any.

Some jolly shepherds who knock at the door are turned away for health and safety reasons, and reported music and singing in the nearby hills are attributed by the local council to boisterous but well-meaning teenagers. The family wins expensive gifts in the Jerusalem lottery, some asylum seekers are turned away at the border, and later King Herod decides not to kill any children at all. Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus decide to take advantage of a special offer short break in Egypt for a few years.

“Easter Made Easy” is even better.

Martians take climate change seriously

Environmentally minded Martians are concerned about climate change, following the discovery that for three summers in a row deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the planet’s south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size.

Fears that this could lead to canals overflowing, new impact craters, strong winds and a reddish hue to the sky have prompted Martians to make dramatic reductions in the number of cars being driven, planes being flown, power stations being brought on line, binge drinking and passive smoking.

So much so, in fact, that the Mars Global Surveyor, now in its ninth year orbiting the planet, has shown that almost none of this is now happening at all.

Up and down driving could improve concentration

Anyone with any experience of driving in Norfolk might think that the last thing you would want to tell most local drivers is to slow down – unless of course you wanted them to stop altogether.

Last week I followed a queue of cars from Saxlingham Nethergate to Stoke Holy Cross headed by someone doing between 20 and 30mph on a road where 50mph is quite reasonable – and below the legal limit. I would call this selfish, inconsiderate and dangerous driving, but perhaps the offender had simply been viewing the speed camera partnerships’ recent “See More – Slow Down” advertisements.

The idea that if you slow down you will react more quickly to danger is a bizarre one. I prefer the much less weird idea of vibrating the bottoms, hands and feet of motorists.

This could help cut what is by far the most common type of accident – caused by lack of concentration, not speed – by up to 15 per cent, according to a study by Dr Charles Spence of Oxford University.

Studies on vibrating drivers are also being done by the Transport Research Laboratory. I can’t wait for the advertisements.

Shock twist in murder mystery

Previews of television programmes are not often innovative or even surprising, but I was taken aback by the lack of ambition displayed by whoever wrote the summary in a national newspaper for the second episode (of two) last week of Waking the Dead – a programme that features murder investigations by the police. “The identity of the killer is uncovered,” it read. What will they think of next?

Joker or Master Card

I rarely comment on people’s names, in case I’m leant on. But the Company of Makers of Playing Cards have left me little option, for their Master at present is none other than Mr J Card. The only question remaining is whether he pays by Mastercard or plays his joker.

3 October 2005

on 3 October 2005 at 05:30

Making a comeback after the Crucifixion

Some think that public consultation is a wonderful thing. Of course one of the earliest examples resulted in the Crucifixion, but it was such a good idea that this minor setback was overcome, and it was resurrected.

It is an unusually flexible tool. You can use it when you don’t want to make a decision, as with the Norwich northern distributor road. This might have come in handy slightly earlier, when Jesus asked the powers-that-be what authority they thought John the Baptist had. “We’ll put it out to public consultation” would have sounded so much better than “We don’t know”. (Matthew 21, since you ask.)

You can also use the public consultation tool when you have no intention of taking any notice of the results. This method was pioneered long ago in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham and is now being used to good effect in Norwich, where it has been decided to amalgamate two schools on the Northfields site despite only three out of 50 responses from parents favouring it – and a 200-strong petition from local residents against it because of traffic congestion and road safety issues.

You can simply talk a lot about public consultation and then not use it at all. This happened when traffic planners in Norwich decided to ban right turns from Thorpe Road into Riverside Road without mentioning it to local residents who had to go round in circles as a result.

And then of course, there’s the A140.

After I mentioned some objections to a 50mph limit on the former trunk road between Norwich and Ipswich, I received a message from a woman with an engaging e-mail address that started “OBEYTHELAW” (capitals hers). So clearly a warm human being, but she has the advantage of coming from Suffolk, which, as she pointed out, I don’t.

What has this to do with public consultation? In response to my comments last time Ms OBEYTHELAW (she has another name, but I don’t want to embarrass her) has “got about 40 people to e-mail the council pleading with them to keep the 50mph limit”.

So democracy and independent thought are alive and well in Suffolk.

I’m not sure which category of public consultation that falls under. You’ll have to make your own minds up.

Always use a graceful arc when stoning martyrs

The transition from Christianity to shopping as the national religion went a step further with the opening of the Chapelfield complex in Norwich.

Observant readers will have noticed that it not only attracts people on a Sunday, but it also has a spire. Is this intended as an open challenge to Norwich Cathedral, or is it something more subtle or symbolic – like the gravestones bordering the entrance walkway?

Chapelfield, being a modern sort of place, also has artwork – specifically artwork commemorating the stoning of St Stephen. The stones appear in what we are told is a “graceful arc” – the sort of thing Stephen would certainly have appreciated as the missiles whistled towards him.

“Wow, that’s a really graceful arc,” I can almost hear him say.

One can only imagine how delighted he would have felt if he had known that his sacrifice would have been worth a passing glance from aesthetically-minded martyrs to shopping in the 21st century.

Key to erosion control in gardens near Wymondham

An alert reader has spotted what might be the answer to the ever-growing problem of erosion on the North Norfolk coast.

He points out that there are many chunky concrete blocks – originally designed to hold up German tanks if we were invaded during the last war – simply lying about in people’s gardens.

“When I drive from Hethersett to Wymondham on the B1172 there is one of them in nearly every front garden. There must be thousands of them in East Anglia,” he tells me.

Used judiciously, they would clearly perform a useful function in holding up coastal erosion.

I am a little nervous about mentioning this, as if they are not used for such a purpose, Norwich City Council will quickly buy them up and use them for traffic calming.

My informant tells me that most of the blocks are carefully preserved. Some are even painted, with house numbers on them.

McCorquodales confused by redundant fans

The confused McCorquodale family, who gave up on Norfolk after finding sand all over the place and extensive flooding round the edges, have returned to parts of London, where they came from.

Before leaving, however, they took a trip to the east coast, where they were amazed to find giant fans in the centre of the still-widespread flooding.

“We couldn’t get very close because of the drainage problems,” said John (Corky) McCorquodale last night. “But what on earth do they want huge fans out there for? It’s windy enough already.”

He also felt that it “must be risky plugging them in”.

If you need just the right material, ask an artist

I had always thought of artists as people who sat around painting, in an other-worldly sort of way. Some small involvement for the second year running in the Fringe at the Factory exhibition at the Bally Shoe Factory in Hall Road, Norwich, has reminded me again how far this is from the truth.

Artists are people who spend hours cleaning and scraping walls and floors. They are people who construct vast pieces of work using esoteric materials and then face the problem of actually transporting them from place to place – in some cases actually putting the whole huge thing together on site. They drive large vehicles, or hire vans. Never mind DIY enthusiasts: if I ever need to know how to fix things together, precisely what materials are suitable for what conditions and where obscure but precisely the right items are obtainable, I shall ask an artist. Fortunately, I know quite a few of them now. Incidentally, the exhibition – on till October 9 – is well worth a visit: a massive array of amazingly varied art of all shapes and sizes. Oh, and some other-worldly pictures, too.

19 September 2005

on 19 September 2005 at 07:00

Out of the jolly buses and into the slow fire

As I write, there is a bus strike in Norfolk. On the letters page of the Eastern Daily Press are two letters complaining about bus services – one concerning overcrowding and charging for a child’s journey that should have been free, and the other a familiar story about waiting for a bus that never came.

A third reader points out that her car is essential because there is no bus service to her village, and a fourth complains about a plan to close Cromer bus station.

So we can assume that public transport is in a less than satisfactory state in our fine county, despite the rather stylish new bus station in Norwich and the pretty new teletubby buses.

And as we approach winter, the disadvantages of bus travel come into focus: long, cold, frustrating waits at bus stops; the sweaty exchange of coughs and sneezes when on board; and the manhandling of awkward parcels and whimpering children.

Yes, there is something romantic about a bus: the community spirit, the risk-taking, the introduction to new places that comes with circuitous routes, and of course the jolly drivers. But when it comes down to it, it is quite nice to use a mode of travel that takes you painlessly from where you are to where you want to be at a time to suit you – if the journey is short, that may be walking or cycling, but for any distance, it’s a car.

What about petrol shortages? Well, we all know there weren’t any. I suspect the panic was triggered by the same anti-car factions that scuppered the Norwich northern distributor road.

Unfortunately the same factions seem to be in charge of speed limits. When I drove back to Norwich along the A11 last weekend, I encountered two laughable speed limits: 40mph along the Attleborough bypass, where there was no encroachment on to the road whatsoever by adjacent road works (which in any case were inoperative); and 30mph for the last mile or so into Norwich, purely because the two lanes did not spread into three or four at the final roundabout.

It is hard to explain how absolutely ridiculous this is unless you have actually tried to drive on a clear dual carriageway at that speed.

Such idiocy does not help convince drivers that other speed limits are appropriate, such as the 50mphs that are sprouting at an alarming rate on roads around Norwich where 60mph is perfectly safe.

Suffolk County Council, which has imposed entirely inappropriate temporary 50mph limits on most of what was not long ago a trunk road – the A140 between Scole and the A14 – is now asking us whether it should be made permanent.

A correspondent writes that “the usual case in long-drawn-out 50mph limits is that all too many drivers become so frustrated by official negativity that they indulge in very hazardous bunching, reckless overtaking and mindless tailgating”, and this is what happens on the A140.

If you would like to tell Suffolk County Council so, go to www.suffolkroadsafe.net/a140.htm

Mysterious movement of the unpegged abbey

Following my remarks last time upon the mysterious undipped headlights phenomenon on the road approaching Hingham from Wicklewood, I received the following letter.

While it makes no direct mention of the well-known time-space distortions in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham – or indeed the notorious mineral, anchor, that holds certain Norfolk towns and villages in place – the experienced reader will be able to draw his (or indeed her) own conclusions.

Sir

I was alarmed by your story about the Wicklewood Triangle, not for what you wrote, but for what you left out. Never mind the foreglow, there is something even more worrying and strange about the Wicklewood chicane (as some locals call it).

Everyone around here knows – and the chicane (much beloved by boy racers, incidentally) helps to prove it – that Wymondham Abbey actually moves. Driving towards Wymondham, and upon entering the chicane, the Abbey is clearly on the right; upon emerging, the Abbey has moved to the front. Why has no-one ever mentioned it before? Has anyone actually seen it in the process of moving? Have the Abbey tried using tent pegs? What is the meaning of it all?

Yours sincerely,

Befuddled of Wicklewood

PS I have come across this phenomenon before. I have repeated almost identical journeys along almost identical routes only to find that both Kerdiston, and for that matter Tibenham airfield, are never in the same place twice.

Inquiry into time phenomenon on Breakfast TV

An official inquiry has been launched to find out why time regularly runs out on breakfast television.

Alert viewers will have noticed that whenever a topic threatens to get even mildly interesting, one of the presenters announces that they have “run out of time” and moves quickly on to something else.

Inquiry chairman Prof Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, who heads the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia, said that several theories had already been put forward. The most attractive was that there was a kind of black hole through which time escaped from any kind of discussion of the news – rather like a puncture – especially early in the day. It later reappeared in reality shows where it expanded rapidly until there was a kind of explosion in many people’s heads.

Prof V A R Scheinlich of Hingham, who has been co-opted on to the inquiry because of his expertise in time-space distortion, said he felt the kind of repetition involved in breakfast news programmes created delusions in the minds of the participants, so that they felt mistakenly that something important was always about to happen.

“In fact there is almost no risk of this,” he added.

Appalling waste of space criticised

The McCorquodale family have had enough of Norfolk and are planning to move back into parts of London, where they came from.

Disappointed by the huge areas of uncontained sand and expansive flooding at Hunstanton, and by the poor drainage facilities at Hickling, which they found to be dominated by a large puddle with floating birds, they have been visiting other parts of the county in the hope of finding a properly organised modern way of life – without success.

“One fellow had loads and loads of turkeys running around,” said Wendy McCorquodale last night. “It’s ridiculous. Why can’t he get them from the supermarket, like everyone else?”

Her husband John was equally disturbed by what he called the “appalling waste of space” everywhere.

“There are hundreds of fields full of funny-coloured grass, or weeds or something,” he said. “Why on earth don’t they cut it all down and build houses – or at least turn it into playing fields? It’s so uncivilised.”

5 September 2005

on 5 September 2005 at 16:15

Stressed out with stars on their plates

The compulsion to force everything into league tables – together with the accompanying targets, stars and stress – has now spread to restaurants.

It’s a pity the system could not be applied to something useful, like weather forecasts (no stars) or rubbish collections: one star for turning up on the right day, another for removing some of the rubbish and minus three for leaving the street in a worse state than it was before. But wait, I hear you say. Isn’t it a really worthwhile thing to sort out the good restaurants from the ones that give you food poisoning?

Yes, it would be, but I can’t see the star system helping. Either a restaurant serves edible food, or it doesn’t. What does two stars actually mean? Food poisoning only likely on Thursdays? If a restaurant is serving dodgy food, I want to see it closed down, not have a twinkle extracted, with or without anaesthetic.

I suspect that what is really involved here is bureaucratic procedure. Like Ofsted inspections, which are supposed to be about teaching but are in fact about writing interminable policy statements, maybe these inspections are about staff training, checking food hygiene certificates, ticking boxes to demonstrate that freezer temperatures are monitored (whether they are or not) and fulfilling a thousand other legal requirements that plague the life of anyone who sets up a business nowadays. If not, why is the council’s website full of that stuff?

Judging by the two long-faced inspectors I spotted leaving an excellent city restaurant the other day, I suspect they may be under just as much stress as the owners. The chief constable of North Wales, Richard Brunstrom, has ludicrously told his traffic police that they must arrest at least eight drivers a month or be disciplined: are the food inspectors under similar pressure to award the dreaded “no stars” to a minimum number of fooderies? Surely not.

Meanwhile we shall all pore over the stars awarded and make misleading judgements based on them, like clueless parents scanning school league tables.

It will all end in tears. Meanwhile, a small mystery remains: why have the inspectors completely omitted their own City Hall canteen from the list? We should be told.

Failure to dip blamed on space-time distortion

Most of us have been annoyed at some time or other by approaching cars failing to dip their headlights at night.

A recent survey has shown, somewhat surprisingly, that this occurs most in an area known as the Wicklewood triangle, where it abuts the Autonomous Republic of Hingham.

The study found that on the B1108 there are many bends, but although “fore-glow” enables you to see other vehicles coming towards you at night well before you confront them, very few drivers dip their lights early enough – markedly fewer than in other parts of East Anglia.

Researchers blame this on the space-time distortion common in the Hingham area.

“Maybe light waves are affected,” said radical cleric the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick, who is on the team. “At first the cars seem to be going across the field, and then they are in front of you. It’s as if they’ve gone through a kind of wormhole.

“Some people might say it was a miracle, but of course that is theologically dubious. Or it would be anywhere else.”

Professor V A R Scheinlich was unavailable for comment.

Hickling puddle worries McCorquodales

John and Wendy McCorquodale, who arrived in Hunstanton from parts of London recently, have now moved to Hickling – but are still disappointed at their surroundings.

“There’s this massive great puddle dominating the village,” said Wendy. “It’s big enough to sail a boat on.

“If I’d known the drainage was this bad, we would never have come here.

“It’s a nightmare for the children – and birds get caught up in it too. I’ve seen no end of them floating about.”

Explorer struck by big energy problem

Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek is having energy problems.

He is particularly concerned, he tells me, about the recent report in the EDP which mentioned a pensioner “hit by a huge energy bill” and wonders if some gas companies are resorting to strong-arm tactics.

His second suggestion, that it might be something to do with an atomic duck, is clearly fanciful, especially as it did not happen anywhere near Wymondham, home of the only duck worth mentioning.

But the energy situation is worrying. I myself have been approached on several occasions by women in my local supermarket. Normally I would welcome this, but they seem unusually interested in who my gas supplier is – information I am reluctant to reveal unless the woman in question is particularly persuasive.

Meanwhile the intrepid Mr Meek has decided to go prospecting for “both natural and unnatural gas”. He has been inspired by the earlier news story of the Chinese woman who keeps a fortnight’s gas supply in a large bag after liberating it from the local well. Wishful thinking, I call it.

But if I was in charge of Bacton, I would be keeping a careful lookout.

Blackmail added to northern distributor mess

I see that Labour MP and Home Secretary Charles Clarke has added a spot of political blackmail to the disgraceful hotchpotch that is the ruins of the northern distributor road. As if being offered traffic calming instead of a dual carriageway were not bad enough for long-suffering residents and drivers, the all-powerful Mr Clarke will not back the road, he warns the Tory-controlled county council and the Lib-Dem controlled city, unless there is an integrated green transport system in Norwich. Let me see, now. What was the perfect opportunity to put an integrated system in place, with bus station and rail station side by side?

Yes, it was the Riverside project. And who was in charge of Norwich City Council when the blank-slate opportunity was irrevocably bungled? Oh, yes. It was Labour.

Someone should jog Mr Clarke’s memory.

22 August 2005

on 22 August 2005 at 04:30

Living in the best world possible

Among the people who spend much of their time living outside what some might call the real world are philosophy lecturers and Green councillors with responsibility for transport. So Dr Rupert Read, who is both, has a particular problem.

He has a “utopian view of life”, according to one of his fellow transport specialists – and this is to be welcomed in a world where psychologist Dr Susan Blackmore says we are “just evolving creatures in the midst of a pointless universe”.

If the Blackmore scenario is true, why bother? Why not pollute, destroy, use up and throw away? The Greens, Dr Read and I share an abhorrence for such a philosophy, as I hope would many EDP readers, but there is evidence that many others go along with it. Just look at the litter.

Dr Read would like us to walk or cycle wherever we can. So would I, and as rail travel gets ever less reliable and buses become incoherent and increasingly expensive, it is not surprising that he views public transport as a less desirable option.

Walking and cycling are fine if you are “well fit”, as one of Dr Read’s friends might describe him. But the hills of Norwich are not exactly conducive to indiscriminate cycling, and neither walking nor cycling can cope with the loads many people have to carry. Age and ill health hinders many.

He should therefore admit that cars have an important role to play. And if he considers the evidence in as objective a way as he looks at many other things, he might be forced to admit that the pollution caused by them is minimal, that their value to the less fit and able is out of all proportion to the hazards, and government and councils would do well to make the use of them as easy and safe as possible.

I don’t want to put words into Dr Read’s mouth. He probably has different views on these things. But I have little doubt that our desire to live carefully and purposefully in a beautiful world is the same.

MPs vote to retreat and save Happisburgh

Following the publication of a new study showing that the River Thames is eroding its banks in the Westminster area, MPs voted yesterday to take no action.

There was unanimous agreement that the best solution to the problem was “managed retreat”. The Houses of Parliament are predicted to be swallowed up by the Thames within the next decade, and Downing Street by 2050.

Meanwhile in Norfolk, a village threatened with destruction will be protected by an extensive series of sea defences. “It will be worth every penny,” said a Whitehall spokesman yesterday.

“We had a meeting, and someone explained where Norfolk was.

“They also pointed out that Haisbro is spelt Happisburgh. The last time anyone looked at this, someone said Haisbro was a sandbank, and so it was all right to let the sea have it. It appears that Happisburgh is actually a village.

“We did send a minister to have a look, but he turned back for some reason.

“Obviously we couldn’t allow people’s houses and businesses to disappear, could we? It would be outrageous.”

It has also been revealed that there is a colony of great crested newts on the cliffs at Happisburgh, and this is believed to have clinched the argument, as they are a protected species, unlike humans.

“I don’t know where they came from,” said a resident. “They weren’t there last … ouch, stop kicking me.”

He added: “They’ve always been there. Ever since I can remember.”

Well, you can dream, can’t you?

Why new speed camera boss is so hard to find

I see that Norfolk police are having trouble finding a new speed camera boss – a position that pays up to £35,500 a year.

Some might say this money would be better spent filling in some of the potholes on Norfolk roads, thereby making a real instead of imaginary contribution to road safety.

No such luck. Instead the criteria for applicants have been changed: they will no longer need to have experience in criminal justice or casualty reduction.

Installing a boss who knows nothing about casualty reduction might certainly be amusing – even ironic – and probably make little operational difference.

But why are genuine road safety experts so reluctant to come forward? Perhaps because they have all realised that speed cameras do not contribute to road safety.

Maybe they have read Transport Research Laboratory report number 595, commissioned by the Highways Agency and delivered in early 2004, but for some reason never made public.

It found that speed cameras at motorway road works increased the risk of personal injury accidents by 55 per cent.

Equally disturbing, it revealed that speed cameras on open motorways increased the risk of injury crashes by nearly a third.

It also found that, while conventional police patrols reduced the risk of crashes significantly, speed cameras were associated with an increase in crash severity, with fatal and serious crashes being 32 per cent more likely where speed cameras were in operation.

Why the figures on East Anglian roads should be any different from those on motorways must be one of the first questions tackled by the new Norfolk speed camera boss – if they ever find one.

Shock for incomers to Norfolk town

A family who moved into a house at Hunstanton last week are angry about the environment they have to live in.

“It’s way out of order,” said John (Corky) McCorquodale, 36, who arrived in Norfolk from parts of London. “I was told the house had great views, but there’s all this sand. It’s like a huge sand-pit or something.

“Every time you go outside, it’s there.”

Mr McCorquodale added that he was less than happy about what he described as “widespread flooding” in an area beyond the sand. He had already seen people who had been forced to swim to escape from it.

His wife Wendy said she was concerned at the effect it might have on the children, especially after their abortive move to Scotland earlier in the year.

“It was hopeless there,” she said. “No-one had even tried to level the ground out properly. It’s as if no-one is bothered any more.”

8 August 2005

on 8 August 2005 at 04:00

Asking those questions that just needn't be asked

Even outside the letters pages of the Eastern Daily Press, there is a “great debate” about English going on. You may have been lucky enough to miss it.

It was launched by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, a quango with an annual budget of £100 million, which, together with time itself, clearly weighs heavily upon it.

What is this great debate all about? Some big questions are being asked. For example: • Will reading and writing still be basic skills in 2015? • Will the printed book disappear? • If most screen reading is in short chunks, how important is stamina in reading?

You may think these questions are easily answered in three words: yes, no and very. You may even ask why a debate of this kind is even necessary, bearing in mind that in the 1980s, it was quite widely believed that newspapers would be history by 2000, and computers would lead to a paperless office.

We are not very good at making predictions. Things we forecast confidently do not happen, and we fail to foresee the things that do.

Still, we love predictions, which is why we love research, even when it is into the blindingly obvious, and the result is what the Americans call a no-brainer.

Results like this, for instance: • university students drink more alcohol than they think they do; • employees work less well when cold; and • it is easier to recognise someone close to you than someone 450 feet away.

I can reveal that in their spare time researchers who uncover gems like this work on TV quiz game shows.

One of them must have been responsible for the viewers’ question I chanced on the other day, which consisted of constructing the word “sunblock” from four groups of double-letters (possibly nb, ck, lo, su).

There were several – yes, several – clues, of which the most difficult was “You use this on your skin to stop the sun burning you”.

A breakaway group led by Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston, concerned that all this is far too obscure, is busy creating a new TV game called Insult to the Intelligence. It will supply the questions and the answers to the contestants, who simply have to say “yes”.

That’s a word signifying agreement, which is made up of the letters y,s,e – but not necessarily in that order.

Underground project unaffected by consultation

Following a report that a project to transform Yarmouth’s Golden Mile had been thwarted by “exhaustive and costly public consultation” – described by the borough council’s Labour leader as a public relations disaster – Mrs Hicks, mayor of a hamlet near Corpusty, has announced that similar problems will leave a scheme to build an underground rail system to all corners of Little London almost unaffected.

“We were able to obtain millions of pounds from European sources,” she said, “and after employing three firms of consultants and sending out an 18-page questionnaire to everyone in Norfolk and parts of Holland we still have a four-figure sum in reserve.

“I have no doubt that we shall be able to build at least one station, though it may be above ground.

“Meanwhile we are applying to Europe for more money. There seems to be plenty of it around.”

Mrs Hicks said she was particularly grateful to a Taverham woman for her suggestions.

Sapping the vitality from a community

Sad news from Wymondham, home of the famous duck. The town has been hit by the Great British Red Tape Plague.

Contractors who have put up Christmas lights over the past years – at cost – have declined to do so this year, because of all the paperwork and health and safety regulations involved. And voluntary groups cannot step in because they are disempowered by lack of insurance cover.

British people are traditionally more than happy to contribute their time and energy for the good of the community, but more and more often, bureaucracy and greed sap the vitality from them, leaving them not so much in the dark as in a thick grey fog.

Anyone care to vote for freedom? Or is it too late?

Why winning at cricket would have been a mistake

Shortly after Australia were triumphant in the First Ashes Test, I happened on these words from the Worstead Parish Chronicle of 1875:

“On this day our cricket club played its first match with its neighbour at Happisburgh. Of course we were unsuccessful, for, had the club won, what would have been left to achieve in after struggles? The completest victories are always born of defeat.”

Suddenly the English strategy becomes clear.

Are 750 litter bins enough, or should we empty them?

There are about 750 litter bins in Norwich. Is this enough?

Well, it’s promising, but I was disappointed to hear from friends visiting the city centre one Sunday recently that they were unable to find one that was not overflowing. This did not seem to quite tie in with the council’s high profile anti-litter policies, or with its website statement that “litter bins are emptied before they overflow”.

Clearly there will be occasions when the odd bin will reach its limit, but this seemed a general problem and one that, unusually, could not be blamed on motorists. I understand that tests involving litter humps, litter lights and one-way litter have been disappointing

25 July 2005

on 25 July 2005 at 04:00

Off-target policies could be fatal

Targets undoubtedly have their place, but the places they are forced into often seem to be the wrong ones.

How can it possibly be right for the efficiency of a police force – or, worse, individual officers – to be measured by the number of convictions obtained?

It must be well-nigh irresistible to go for the easy option and leave difficult crimes untackled – the kind of mentality that leads to ineffective, unjust but cash-rich measures like speed cameras.

It’s just as ludicrous that councils should measure the efficiency of traffic wardens by the number of tickets issued. But this happens in many areas, as a report to the Department for Transport made clear last week.

Why should wardens be penalised if everyone parks legally? Surely they should be rewarded if they encourage correct parking. But that would not bring in money. So confrontation and “offending” are promoted.

It’s all part of the fashionable Persecution of Motorists Scenario (PMS), of course, as are measures like long-phase pedestrian lights in places such as Norwich.

It’s fun, if you’re a certain kind of traffic planner, to make drivers wait for thin air – never mind the pollution and congestion that is an inevitable by-product. But it turns out that this apparently pro-pedestrian measure has a downside for walkers. It could kill them.

If traffic is stopped on red in all directions, pedestrians tend to think they can cross – even if the lights are red for them too. And the longer they stay red, the more likely they are to risk it, thinking that the lights must be about to change in their favour.

Unfortunately they are sometimes about to change in the traffic’s favour. Even Norwich can’t make motorists wait for ever.

A more realistic phasing of the lights would, unsurprisingly, be safer for everyone. Now that’s quite a sensible target to aim at.

Exactly what were these lights for?

Motorists unfortunate enough to drive into Norwich from the wrong direction are just starting nine weeks of even more disruption than usual, as workmen remove the traffic lights on the Grapes Hill roundabout.

A bit of road widening and painting will bring the cost up to a cool £¼ million. We are told the result will be to reduce congestion and help improve air quality – both admirable objectives.

It does however make one wonder why the much-criticised lights were put there in the first place: was it to create congestion and worsen air quality?

Part of the current work includes “converting the pedestrian crossing on Chapelfield Road to pedestrian and cycle use”, which must be the ultimate money-wasting project. Standard pedestrian crossings around the city are used constantly by cyclists without any conversion at all.

There must be a tiny amount of sympathy for planners who are faced with the unanswerable question of how to cope with the traffic that will be generated by the Chapelfield Shopping Extravaganza.

But there was a time when the question wasn’t unanswerable. It was just that no one liked the answer, because there was no money in it. The words “short” and “sighted” spring irresistibly to mind.

Going wrong on the distributor road

There are three major wrong decisions that could be made about the Norwich northern distributor road.

• The first is not to build it: only the blind, those who will not see and those who don’t live or move in the north of the city could imagine that an increase in the current congestion there is a viable option.

• The second is to build it too far west, where it completely fails to serve the purpose for which it is designed. • And the third – possibly most bizarre of all – is to make it a single carriageway. Show me someone who wants it built as far west as possible, single carriageway, starting in 2020, and I’ll show you someone who thinks you should “have what you need rather than what you want”, and whose idea of what you need is strangely lacking in human understanding.

Beware of people who think they know what you need. As H L Mencken put it, “the urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule”.

Difficulties of driving while lulled to sleep

A survey this month tried to persuade us that certain music is safer to drive by. The limitations of the survey are demonstrated by the fact that easy listening music got safe-drive approval, despite its propensity for sending people to sleep. Only a few people, most of them from Norfolk, are able to drive in this condition.

But the most obvious danger of music in cars has nothing to do with melody or lyrics. It’s to do with changing the CD (or tape), which is quite hard to achieve while controlling the car efficiently. Strangely this is almost never mentioned in road safety campaigns.

11 July 2005

on 11 July 2005 at 04:00

Brave new system will make league tables even more meaningless

In a brave bid to make school league tables even more meaningless than they are now, the Government has brought in a system of assessing children that involves making a complete record of everything a child does after entering the school system.

In the process, a swathe of personal data is created that makes identity cards look wishy-washy and liberal in comparison. The aim may be to improve children’s education, but even without the big-brother element, there are huge flaws.

The better a child does when he or she is tested for the first time, the worse it is for the school, because all comparisons in future will be made against that. Any “falling back” will be disastrous, even if it is still to a level above average. But even more ridiculous, simply maintaining the high level will be regarded as less than satisfactory.

The obvious effect will be to make head teachers mark down their pupils at the earliest stages, so that they look as if they are improving. Anyone pushing children towards excellence at an early age will be penalised later by misleadingly low places in the league tables.

In the interests of statistics and paperwork, genuine teaching and aspirations will go out of the window.

Not that there is much chance of excellent teaching with the paperwork now demanded of schools.

The new Ofsted system may involve fewer and shorter visits, but the binfuls of paper already demanded are due to increase. Schools will have to have written policies on everything from fox-hunting to paving stones, and it will all have to be cross-indexed so that it can be located at a moment’s notice. This is clearly regarded by the Government as more important than actually teaching, and therefore more important than children.

Not surprising, really. Children, who tend to learn at different speeds at different times and in different ways, cannot be manipulated half as easily as numbers and ticks in boxes. And manipulation is what politicians need to do.

Perfect spot found for speed cameras

Interesting quote from the Norfolk scamera spokesman the other day: “People realise speed cameras work and they want them.”

Partly true: I would like all of them, because I have somewhere I could put them. It is extremely deep. It is called the North Sea.

He continued blithely: “They are generating more and more support.” Easy mistake to make. What he meant to say, of course, was that they are “generating more and more cash”.

Not surprisingly, when your livelihood depends on speed cameras, you can get a little blinkered. A Metropolitan Police chief superintendent writing to a national newspaper sees more clearly: “The police service is being driven down a policy route that does too little to catch dangerous drivers, fails to target persistent offenders and is unduly influenced by speed.”

He concludes: “What is needed is fewer speed cameras, more traffic police and a proper recognition of the skill and importance of their work.”

No chance of that happening, of course. It doesn’t generate cash.

Computer models predict increase in global warming reports

The fact that an area north-east of Thetford is hit more often by lightning than anywhere else in the UK was blamed on global warming last night.

“A computer model showed that by 2050 lightning will be hitting Thetford several times an hour,” said Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam of the UEA’s School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing. “Of course this may not be a bad thing, unless it’s under water too.”

He revealed that reports attributing widespread disaster to global warming were also likely to increase, according to satellite observations. “It’s important that people do what they can to prevent these reports happening,” he said. “They have been increasing hugely in the last 20 years and are clearly anthropogenerated. They can be very damaging at critical points, and take people’s minds off things we can actually do something about, like tackling HIV/Aids, abolishing poverty, controlling malaria and getting clean water to everyone on the planet.”

Prof Aufmerksam was last night blamed on global warming.

Poohsticks Olympic campaign water under bridge

A bid to bring the Poohsticks Olympics to Norfolk failed when they were awarded to a small village in the South of France yesterday.

“We are extremely disappointed,” said Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 106. “We took a VIP delegation to somewhere in the Far East and made a first-class presentation, though I say so as shouldn’t.

“We had Prof V A R Scheinlich, the Hingham expert; Mrs Hicks, the mayor of Little London, near Corpusty; the Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick, the progressive cleric; and even Len “Kissme” Hardy, from Hindolveston, who won a gold medal in the 1960s, he tells me. They are all expert Poohsticks players.”

Plans to build a Poohsticks Stadium to revitalise an area south of Reepham will now fall by the wayside.

“I can’t help feeling that we got the backlash from Paris failing to win the other Olympics,” said Mr Houseago last night.

La Federation Poohstix d’Europe was unavailable for comment.

Spare beds sign of healthy society

When my mother-in-law was dying in Cromer Hospital, there was a bed free in the next room. My wife was able to make use of this to stay with her over the critical three nights.

In the sort of society some accountants would like, this would not happen. They do not like to see any beds going spare, because it means wasted money.

It’s not actually wasted money, of course – just wasted in the spurious way that they calculate such things – the sort of process that ends up with £1,312,260 as the cost of each death on Norfolk’s roads, and other equally meaningless and offensive figures.

Happily, the staff in Cromer Hospital are not accountants. In my limited experience, they are an exceptionally caring group of people.

A healthy and caring society is one that is happy to see excess beds in small hospitals, because you never know when they will be just what is required. And if they do have a cost attached, just hand us a list of costs attached to the NHS. I am sure we could all quickly find savings we would much sooner make. Extra managers, for instance. They are almost never needed.

27 June 2005

on 29 June 2005 at 12:37

Drivers' fault for wanting to go shopping

Sensitive readers have been shocked to discover that the new Chapelfield shopping development in Norwich, due to open in three months’ time, may cause traffic problems in the city.

You might think that it would have been possible to predict this some time ago, but no, it seems to have come as a surprise to Norwich City Council. And of course it’s not their fault.

Whose fault is it? Well, as usual it’s the drivers, just as it was when the city gridlocked in a bit of snow, and everyone took what seemed the sensible decision to leave for home early. Now it will be the drivers’ fault for attempting to drive to Chapelfield when they could walk or take a bus.

The 1000-space car park at Chapelfield has of course been designed to encourage bus use. Why can’t car drivers see that?

If Chapelfield turns belly up it will be a disaster for Norwich, and one way of courting such a disaster is to make it highly undesirable to use. Presumably the retailers like cars, because you can pile more purchases into cars than you can get under your arms, so you would expect the city council and their colleague on the joint highways committee to make sure that cars could be used easily.

But no, of course not. The city council is renowned for making car use harder and increasing congestion by closing alternative routes in the city. What are they doing about Chapelfield? Not a lot.

“I am sure it will sort itself out,” said city councillor Judith Lubbock – presumably her slogan when she stands for re-election. Tony Adams, chairman of the highways committee, was not convinced by this. “It’s going to be bad whatever you do,” he said last week. But it’s going to be a damn site worse if we do nothing.”

A retail development expert said some time ago that “Chapelfield might drown in its own success and blight its own profitability by causing traffic gridlock, giving many drivers another valid reason to avoid the rest of the city. “We need action to have an alternative and quickly implementable traffic plan in place.”

Various methods of fiddling while Norwich burns have been suggested, including rephasing the lights on Grapes Hill roundabout and drawing yellow boxes on the roads. This is not enough, and it may be too late to put things right, even given the will that city councillors clearly do not have.

They will just wait until the city grinds to a standstill or people just give up and go elsewhere to shop. What will they do then? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Put up the car park prices.

Removal of cats' eyes: the real explanation

Almost thousands of people have been asking me why so many cats’ eyes are being removed from roads across the county.

In the past I have speculated on the cruelty of such measures and the names of the cats involved, but so persistent were the inquiries that I thought I would take a revolutionary step and ask someone who knew.

It turns out that it is all to do with the route hierarchy review, a fascinating document which I imagine would be a big seller, given the right impetus.

The idea of the review is to channel traffic on to the more important roads, so that all the congestion happens in one place. The less important roads then lose their cats’ eyes, which are not thrown away but recycled on to new major routes, such as bypasses.

So we should end up with safety features such as cats’ eyes concentrated in places where they are most needed, and I am told that efforts are being made to ensure everything is in good order by next winter.

Some readers may feel that they would like cats’ eyes retained on as many roads as possible, but as with so many road safety measures, the money is not available. I expect it was all spent on speed limit signs.

Time and jumbo problems at North Walsham

Following the recent revelation that there is a lost mammoth herd roaming in Felthorpe Woods, it comes as little surprise to find relatives of the woolly beasts in other odd places. Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek tells me that he has spotted “Jumbows” in North Walsham Market Place, on an egg stall.

This is not altogether surprising, since North Walsham sometimes rivals the Autonomous Republic of Hingham in its disregard for the normal niceties of reality. Even time and space vary, as was apparent from a recent notice on the Cromer road, which read boldly: “Afternoon car boot 11am today”.

A lovely woman

My mother-in-law died a fortnight ago. She was not famous: she had rarely travelled outside her native Norfolk and never outside the UK. Born in Hempstead in 1920, she moved to Banningham when she was still a young child, and eventually settled in North Walsham when she married. She lived there the rest of her life, apart from a year or so in Cromer at the end.

Her name was Dorothy Cousens, and she was one of the very, very few really good people that I have met: loving, self-effacing, eager to put others first and always seeing the best in everyone. Other than marrying her daughter, one of the most fortunate things that has happened to me was to be her son-in-law.

Since she died, many people have remarked on “how lovely she was” – the sort of obituary that most of us would die for, as it were. It’s not likely to happen to a newspaper columnist, of course. My wife, who has many of her mother’s qualities, is in the habit of moving things around the house and leaving them in odd places. When questioned, she says: “It’s on its way somewhere.”

This, I have decided, is the best I can hope for on my tombstone: “He was on his way somewhere.” It’s unlikely that Norfolk’s road system will improve enough for me to actually get there.

13 June 2005

on 13 June 2005 at 04:00

Going over the top in the transport war

There are no winners in the transport battle: just miles of trenches containing grim-faced soldiers in for a long slog, ready to go over the top at the slightest provocation. Such is the animosity that even a football match in no-man’s land seems out of the question.

Sometimes ground that has been fought over, won and lost has to be fought over again. Park-and-ride, for instance. This was meant to keep cars out of cities, and it did: but what was the cost?

Bang! More buses in cities, for a start – and buses are bigger and dirtier than cars. Bang, bang! Some said park-and-ride encouraged greater car use, because people who had been taking a long, meandering bus ride from their home town into the city would find it more convenient to drive directly to the fringe and get a quick-fix ride in.

Bang, bang, bang! Others realised that there was huge scope for cashing in, once people had got used to park-and-ride and abandoned the alternatives.

But most people in and around Norwich grew to accept the jolly, bright-coloured teletubby buses, and many found them useful. There was a temporary ceasefire.

Now someone has noticed that these huge car parks on the edge of the city actually look pretty ugly, rather like those dreary caravan parks west of Cromer and Lowestoft’s grey industrial coastline. Bang! The Campaign to Protect Rural England is concerned that countryside is being eaten up and green belts are disappearing.

One is tempted to ask what they expected from a scheme that required people to leave their cars outside cities? Did they expect them to magically disappear? Or is this yet another case of environmentalists demanding something without working out the obvious implications?

During the early exchanges someone who saw rather more clearly than most suggested that park-and-walk would be a better idea, with smaller car parks closer to the city centre But this was brushed aside, and car parks that would have fit the bill were closed. At the same time the Castle Mall was built, encouraging drivers into the very heart of the city, and now Chapelfield will do the same. It’s all a bit of a mess, rather like the first world war. Does anyone know what’s going on?

Not the road sign we really wanted

The problem with most of our road signs is not that they’re unnecessary, but that they’re boring.

A friend on holiday in Australia was delighted when she came upon a sign that read “This is not the road to Crystal Bay” and found that indeed, it wasn’t. I feel sure that East Anglia could benefit from that kind of approach.

“This is not the road to Hemsby” is an obvious winner, although environmentalists might object that it would attract new traffic. Readers may want to suggest other possibilities, though I hesitate to invite this, as the response when I asked for film titles that could be used by Norwich City Council was rather lacking in imagination.

Not as lacking in imagination, though, as Norfolk County Council’s well-worn “Byway”, designed to confuse rural motorists into giving up trying to find any small village not on an A-road. They could replace that with “This is not the road to Nutwood, and if it was we wouldn’t tell you, so there. In fact it may not be a road at all”.

And if you think motorists wouldn’t have time to read all that as they flash past at up to 25mph, try reading one of those yellow rectangles that tell you “This road will be closed for 35 essential weeks from June 23 except alternate Sundays from 2pm till 4.30am, even when there are no workmen here, so you’ll have to go 20 miles out of your way but it serves you right because you’re driving a car”.

Of course, not being boring isn’t everything.

Want to speak to the police? Sorry, long number

Norfolk police are anxious that we should not dial 999 unless there is a real emergency, and in case we are not clear what a real emergency is, they have explained that it is “a crime happening now or someone in immediate danger”. Helpfully they give examples of things that are not emergencies, like “a noisy gang of teenagers outside”. This probably fails their test on both counts, but you can’t blame them for trying to stop us hassling them. After all, who wants to rush out and confront a crowd of yobs when you could be taking non-urgent phone calls?

Finding a dead body is presumably not an emergency either, which is bad news for Morse, Frost, Holmes, Creek, Marple, Dixon and Dalgliesh, among many others. It is understood that Michael Buerk is planning a TV programme called 0845 456 4567 which, in case you had neglected to stick it to your phone, is the Norfolk police number for non-emergencies.

For those not mathematically inclined, I can reveal that this is very nearly four times as long as 999. Perhaps they think we’ll give up in the middle.

Newts reject referendum for Erpingham

Asked whether they planned a referendum in Erpingham on the controversial scheme to forge a super-state out of the disparate communities of North Norfolk, a consortium of great crested newts said last night that this would not happen, because the super-state idea had been rejected by both Cromer and Sheringham.

But this move was attacked by local legend Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, 106, who said the people of Erpingham had a right to be heard, and in any case he did not trust the newts, who would probably bring the super-state in by the back door, side window or cellar.

A newt spokesamphibian said this was not their intention, though there were elements of the super-state that would sit very well in Erpingham, and these should not be “thrown out with the bathwater”. Demands that Erpingham should be allowed to vote were dismissed by the newts, who are believed to be forging an alliance with the Liberal Democrats. “Of course, if it’s pretty certain the villagers would vote yes, then we would certainly have a referendum,” they added. “We call it the Blair approach.”

30 May 2005

on 30 May 2005 at 04:00

Warning: school may suddenly re-open

Anyone concerned at how Norfolk County Council spends its money will have been bemused by the recent repainting of yellow warning signs outside a school at Rackheath, near Norwich, that was closed almost two years ago.

Admittedly the council does not seem to care much whether schools are open or not – which is why speed cameras and 20mph limits operate outside schools 24 hours a day – but this seems particularly wasteful. Adrian Loades, chairman of Rackheath Parish Council, observed that if any of the May Gurney workers had walked down the short drive outside the school they might have noticed that it was not only shut but boarded up.

In fact, they did not even have to put themselves to that trouble, because as they were at work a former pupil at the school stopped and told them that it was shut and had been replaced by another school elsewhere in the village. He reports that they did not appear worried by this: muttering something about the school being re-opened, they worked merrily on, at a cost of hundreds of pointless pounds to the taxpayer. The former pupil concerned was retired garage proprietor and motor cycle expert Philip Basey, whose time at the former school in the 1920s and 30s coincided with the time my mother was teaching there and who is writing his autobiography. He told me of a fellow pupil called “Jump” Jim Crow, who was a bit more perceptive than your average workman.

Jim was a bit of an aeronautical expert, and when an R101 flew over the village in 1930 he told his impressed audience of fellow boys and girls that it was in fact a Zeppelin disguised as an R101, and it was taking pictures of Norwich industrial areas in case of war. Such a perceptive lad would have had no trouble spotting that the school was closed down – or would he have diagnosed that it is in fact a secret coypu farm? That would explain the warning. Only the county council really knows.

Dead seagulls may not be nailed to perch

Intense research is taking place into Norfolk seagulls following a shock revelation by a noted naturalist last week.

Criticising a scheme by the Port Authority at Yarmouth to shoot gulls that were causing a nuisance in Southtown Road, he said: “Killing the gulls will only make them go away for a little while. They will soon come back.”

Reincarnation among seagulls is not a widely understood phenomenon, but scientists hope that closer investigation may be helpful in a rare bid to understand the origins of life. Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, of the School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia, said yesterday that the first step was to log the gulls in and out.

“I’m not sure whether we’re dealing with reincarnation or resurrection,” he said. “That’s the first thing to settle. Do dead gulls fly on the third day, or are they simply recycled, as it were? And if so, do they remember past lives?

“Of course, seagulls’ lives are pretty much the same anyway. They may not be able to tell.”

Initial problems centred on the difficulty of distinguishing one bird from another, though this was easier after they had been shot, he said. “They also tend to move about less.”

So far no single gull has been identified as reincarnated or even resurrected, but Prof Aufmerksam is hopeful. However, a large number of lifeless birds stored in the Lower Common Room have so far shown no sign of activity, despite loud music being played.

Newts and dolphin see off dual waterway

Plans by the Broads Authority to construct a dual carriageway down the River Yare to make boating safer have been thwarted by a consortium of great crested newts. The expansionist amphibians, who have achieved huge successes in preventing road safety measures in Norfolk by the expedient of taking up residence in key spots and seducing gullible environmentalists, decided to act when it seemed that lives might be saved and passage made easier on the river.

“That was the last thing we wanted,” said a spokesnewt. “So we sought legal advice from Fish & Co, and obtained an excellent lawyer in the shape of a dolphin who was, of course, more intelligent than anyone else involved.

“He had a bagful of tricks.”

Last night newts and dolphin were celebrating.

Scientists melt in face of global funding

There was wild rejoicing the other day when Oxford University's climate change research centre was allocated more than £3.5 million in government funding over the next five years.

This does not mean that the scientists involved will be instinctively disposed to find that climate change will have a big impact on this country. I’m sure they would get just as much money if they found the impact would be minimal or uncertain. Well, fairly sure.

That is quite unlike the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, an international organisation of more than 30,000 scientists which has rejected the view that human-influenced factors are the main drivers of global warming. They of course are in the pay of the oil industry. And we all know the oil industry is quite happy if we fry tomorrow, as long as they make profits today. After all, they don’t have grandchildren.

Of course the AAPG does have a strict Code of Ethics which stresses “honesty, integrity, loyalty, fairness and impartiality” and states that “members shall not make false, misleading, or unwarranted statements, representations or claims in regard to professional matters”. But hey, they’re Americans and probably right-wing liars.

So whose opinions do you value: a consortium of politicians, amateur environmentalists and pop stars who haven’t researched the subject, or a professional, scientific body with a strict code of ethics?

Of course. Silly question.

Runway scheme in the wind for Hingham

A disturbing dispatch from the Autonomous Republic of Hingham suggests that the new runway for Stansted airport is to be built within the Fairland village greens area, not far from the site of the notorious scout hut. A correspondent tells me that tarmac the width of a three-lane motorway is to be laid there as part of an “enhancement” scheme. What else could it be for? Time-space distortion within the republic is well documented.

16 May 2005

on 16 May 2005 at 04:00

Journalists behave worse than anyone

I was fortunate enough to accompany the witty and erudite Norfolk delegation to the National Association of Head Teachers annual conference at Telford this month.

At one point the conference was addressed by three representatives of the main political parties. You may have read about it.

The Sun said the heads “acted like children by booing and hissing a government minister” and were “worse than unruly pupils”. The Mirror said it was “pathetically childish that head teachers jeered a government minister” and added: “If they don’t know how to behave, how do they expect the children under their control to?”

Other reports nationally said the heads prevented the minister from speaking.

The effect of these remarks will have encouraged parents and children in their lack of respect for teachers – as no doubt was intended. But if so it is the Sun and the Mirror (and others) who are encouraging bad behaviour in schools, because their reports were inaccurate, unbalanced, ignorant and lazy: they portrayed the minister as a teacher and the heads as pupils, which is a false comparison, and revealed a surprising lack of knowledge of what unruly pupils do.

What really happened? The government minister, Derek Twigg, gabbled a bad speech, which was heard in complete silence. When he was asked a question about financing the latest government schools initiative, he said flatly and unreasonably that there was no more money – and it was this that drew understandable but brief expressions of disapproval. The Conservative spokesman, Tim Collins, on the other hand, gave a fluent and knowledgeable speech which was applauded at several points by an audience not known to be Tory-friendly. The only reference to him in the BBC report I saw was a hostile question put to him about the unpopular Chris Woodhead, and he even fielded that one well. I could not find any other report of his speech anywhere. Of course I may have missed it.

Ironically, Tim Collins lost his seat at the Election, and the unimpressive Mr Twigg waltzed in with a huge majority. Isn’t democracy wonderful? Almost as wonderful as our national media.

Would you like to be my lunch ticket?

Delegates to the recent NAHT conference wore name tags in plastic sleeves, which also held the tickets entitling people to refreshments. These folded neatly so that your name appeared uppermost, while on the back was your latest unclaimed goodie, like “Lunch ticket” or “Glass of wine”.

Of course, the physics of plastic name tags meant that they often swung back to front, leaving the occasional handsome head labelled as “Lunch ticket” and sophisticated lady as “Bottle of wine”.

It left room for idle conjecture during the less riveting speeches, but it could have been even more interesting, had they included such natural items as “Nibbles”, “Sweet” and “Breakfast”.

Temporary wolf not home at the moment

Where exactly is Felthorpe going? The dispute continues. Last week Lindy Platten-Jarvis claimed, among other things, that the village sign anticipated global warming in its depiction of the African elephant, with a furry coat to protect it from Norfolk winds. Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek remains unconvinced.

He claims the “so-called African Elephant with a nice furry coat is obviously none other than the famous West Runton Elephant – and only adds weight to my hypothesis that the village has drifted far inland”.

He adds: “Presumably the tree farms are to provide employment for the tree fellers whom I saw sat outside the Mariners car park?” Perhaps the whole wider area north-west of Norwich is in need of further exploration. Not far away the village of Lenwade has split apart from itself, sometimes being called Great Witchingham and sometimes not. Within its schizophrenic borders – or maybe not – lies the strange Norfolk Wildlife Park, where apostrophes run wild and frequently affix themselves misleadingly to name tags.

This is also the home of the temporary wolf, which is believed to be a totally Norfolk phenomenon. When I visited, it was absent. I checked in the temporary wolf enclosure, and it was not there. Nor were the badgers, but that was less surprising. Like coypu, they are hard to track down, as related in the prize-winning Norfolk partial arts film, Crouching Badger, Hidden Coypu.

It all makes the Autonomous Republic of Hingham seem quite straightforward – unless, of course, the famous space-time distortion is slipping sideways. Prof V A R Scheinlich is looking into it.

Mysterious behaviour of polling station

The following letter was received from John Timpson, of West Norfolk. It is clearly if serious import for the structure of Norfolk as a whole, and I make no apology for printing it in its entirety.

“As a student of strange phenomena in rural Norfolk, you may be interested in the curious movements of Weasenham’s polling station prior to the election.

The official poll cards first notified the electors that they should vote at the Community Room, Lambert’s Close, in Weasenham St Peter. It so happens, however, that the Community Room is in a building currently surrounded by high wire fencing, making it completely inaccessible to the public. It has always been assumed locally that this was because of building work, but subsequent events suggest it may have been erected to prevent the Community Room from escaping before the election.

“It was later revealed that the Community Room had indeed rematerialised in a bungalow across the road, and assurances were given that it would remain there. However, when the final list of polling stations appeared on the parish noticeboard, there was further confusion. The Community Room was still in 10 Lambert’s Close, the number of the vacant bungalow, but Lambert’s Close had apparently been transported from Weasenham St Peter into the neighbouring parish of Weasenham All Saints. A similar notice appeared in All Saints.

“To the human eye Lambert’s Close was still in St Peter’s, but when voters arrived at the Close on polling day they were greeted by a rather alarming sign on the noticeboard. It said “Polling Station” – with a large arrow pointing directly towards the ground. Had the elusive community room been swallowed up, or had it finally made its escape, perhaps to Australia? The official reaction is that the sign lost a drawing pin, but in rural Norfolk one can never be certain…”

2 May 2005

on 2 May 2005 at 04:00

Range wars break out in North Norfolk

The right to roam may be the brave new clarion call in most of the country, but in North Norfolk things are not quite so advanced. Range wars have broken out again, and fences are being erected.

Hanworth, near Cromer, may not have quite the ring of Dodge City, Deadwood or Tombstone, but the age-old struggle being re-enacted there is evoking the kind of Western anger that brought in gunfighters to settle matters.

One complication in this 21st century face-off is that the farmer and the cowman are the same person – Robert Harbord-Hammond, who also, apparently, has his eye on a neighbouring piece of open land at Roughton.– and the big guns are deadshot solicitors Farrer & Co. The free rangers are the villagers of Hanworth, who claim the land in question is common land and should be open to all. Mr Harbord-Hammond says it is his and wants to graze his cattle on it. Naturally he does not want them to stray off to Arizona or be rustled by Indians, so he has erected a barbed wire fence.

Ownership of the land will have to be settled legally, but my heart warms to the sheriff, in the guise of Graham Bull, corporate director of North Norfolk District Council, who has come riding in and had a shot at removing the barbed wire, which he says should not be there whoever owns the land. I also find myself drawn to the outlaw who lifted out the barbed wire and then turned himself in to “test the water”.

Barbed wire is one of the most unsightly things in the countryside, and while it may sometimes be necessary, I would like it to be restricted to absolutely essential use. I also have a soft spot for open village commons.

Things could be worse, of course. Not so long ago, the head teacher at the school in neighbouring Erpingham was one Wyatt Earp. He would probably have felt compelled to deputise a few teachers and mosey over to take a look.

Make my day, Teletubby

The employment of an image from the film Reservoir Dogs to encourage people to use a new Norwich park-and-ride service showed an unexpected splash of humour, as well as perhaps a glimpse of how hard-line the authorities would like to be about it.

I expect this trend to continue, possibly with adapted clips from Dirty Harry (“You want to drive through Norwich? Make my day, punk.”), Speed (buses hurtling through the city, trying to keep above 50mph while motorists doing 35mph are caught by speed cameras) and Unforgiven (when you park in a restricted area by mistake). Readers may have better ideas, in which case I would like to hear them. Meanwhile the thrill-a-minute Liberal Democrats would, according to their transport spokesman on the council, have preferred Teletubbies, which – curiously – are barely coherent, witless blobs. He also objected that the colours of the Norwich buses did not correspond to the colours used by the characters in Reservoir Dogs, which is a rare oversight on the part of Mr Tarantino.

Felthorpe has furry eye on the future

A resident of Felthorpe, north of Norwich, has taken issue with the theory put forward last time by noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek, who suggested that Felthorpe was once on the coast and moved inland because of slow Norfolk drift.

Lindy Platten-Jarvis is less than convinced. She says: “You've got it wrong. Felthorpe is future-focused and anticipating global warming and the Norwich northern bypass.

“Did Mr Meek travel along Beech Avenue? Did he notice Beech Tree Farm? Felthorpe is well into energy renewal. Did he notice lots of Tree Farms in Felthorpe, such as Yew Tree Farm? Did he notice all the home names with a tree theme? Does he know about the famous Felthorpe Woods – and did he see the Shoe Trees there? “One of the early exotic species to invade Norfolk has been blossoming in Felthorpe for several decades already.”

Convincing enough, but she has a clincher: “Did he notice the village sign that anticipates global warming to the extent that it features the future northern advance of the African elephant – with a nice furry coat to withstand the cold winds from Siberia that Norfolk knows only too well?”

Mr Meek was unavailable for comment.

Dangerous bunches avoid road improvement

Interesting how studiously all political parties have eschewed an obvious vote-winner: roads and transport. Drivers all over the country are sick and tired of the mercenary pretence that speed is a major cause of accidents.

As one correspondent puts it, “considering the percentage of the population that are motorists, if the Conservatives would come up with a sensible plan for taxation for the roads, spend the money on the roads, make sensible laws and apply them sensibly, they would win the Election in a landslide”.

Presumably the politicians are afraid of all the bullying that would descend on them from the usual suspects if they took up the drivers’ cause. If so, they have miscalculated badly.

In 2003 there was a 44 per cent rise in “speeding” offences, with nearly two million drivers being caught by scameras. We shall no doubt see more of the same – and more digital cameras like the one that netted £4 million at the expense of 76,000 motorists. We shall continue to put up with deliberate congestion engineered by anti-car councils, and poor quality roads delayed or obstructed by any ill-informed or ill-motivated individual who feels like it.

We shall watch the authorities ignore common sense by putting speed cameras on the M4 and causing “dangerous bunching”, just as every experienced driver predicted.

Suffolk County Council will go on pretending that its ludicrous speed limits on the A140 make sense, despite a traffic officer’s observation that they induce frustration and “no-one is happy”. Suffolk says there has been a “small drop in accidents and a reduction in speed”. If this is the best they can come up with (speed limits causing a reduction in speed, for heaven’s sake), the true effect must be poor indeed.

Going ahead on red

You may have noticed that a great deal of time is wasted and pollution caused when drivers are held up at light-controlled pedestrian crossings where there are no pedestrians in sight.

A possible solution to this unnecessary congestion presents itself when you realise that pedestrians quite happily cross on red when there is no traffic coming, as do cyclists. It must be logical, then, to allow drivers to cross on red when there are no pedestrians around.

Obviously they should do this only at walking pace and no faster – certainly not as fast as cyclists do it, which could be dangerous.

18 April 2005

on 18 April 2005 at 04:00

Flat threat to idyllic edge of Cromer

Last weekend my small grandson learnt to pedal a tricycle in a children’s play area. He was watched by his great-grandmother, who had come by wheelchair from her home up the road.

Some months earlier, he had sailed his first boat on the pond about fifty yards away, again watched by his great-grandmother, his grandparents and parents, who were sitting outside an unpretentious small café in a lovely clifftop setting, close to bowling and putting greens and round the corner from quite presentable toilets.

It would be nice if he could come back in a few years to see where he did these things. The odds are against it, however, because North Norfolk District Council ambitions may mean it is lost for ever.

This is because it is part of the grounds surrounding the lovely North Lodge – Cromer Town Council headquarters. The district, which owns the Lodge, would like to sell it to developers for no doubt vast sums of money and the unwelcome prospect of more luxury flats.

Diligent EDP readers will know that locals are up in arms against it, and formed a human chain round the Lodge a week ago in protest. More recently, the district has said it will not sell the Lodge in secret, which is somehow not totally reassuring.

Go-ahead councillors of all colours do not like the status quo. They no doubt look at this area and see no entrance fees, no sophisticated 21st-century leisure facilities, no flashy electronics and a disturbing lack of rules and regulations. They ache to get at it.

Under pressure, they are willing to talk first. The Liberal Democrat leader of the district council is so eager to talk that he is willing to put off a decision until after the General Election – not that there is any ulterior motive there. He has said so, and I certainly believe him. Oh, yes.

The North Lodge area is a quiet haven for people – many of them elderly – living in the roads on the east side of Cromer. It is a haven that costs almost nothing. It is also a lovely spot for those of all ages who prefer old-fashioned ways of enjoying themselves.

It would be nothing short of criminal if the district council destroyed it in order to rake in cash, or for some other unpardonable reason – whether before the Election or, coincidentally, after.

Folk memories at Felthorpe?

There was some discussion on this page many months ago about the disappearance of the hill that gave Morton-on-the-Hill, near Lenwade, its name. I believe I suggested that it could be a victim of Norfolk Drift – like Continental Drift, only slower.

Noted Norfolk explorer Richard “Volcano” Meek, who was associated with this theory, recently stumbled across the nearby settlement of Felthorpe while leading an expedition into the interior. He reports: “The local people obviously make a living by selling produce to passing travellers, and I could not help but notice the hand-written sign offering ‘Crabs – fresh boiled daily’ and nearby a sign for the Mariners car park. “Do these people retain some sort of folk memory of the time when Felthorpe nestled between Cromer and Sheringham?” It makes you think.

Council may insist on kerb-crawling

Kerb crawling used to be discouraged in Norwich. But if the Liberal Democrats have their way, it will soon become compulsory.

Two of the widest streets in the city, Rouen Road and Ber Street, are coincidentally also in what is inaccurately known as the Red Light district, where young ladies look for lifts. The city council has plans for us to drive at a maximum of 20mph down these streets.

This is obviously far slower than would be required to ensure safety, so what is the council up to?

Slow, slow drift into the ditches

A correspondent informs me that when travelling in Suffolk “on those long dreary stretches of the A140 restricted to a wholly unnecessary 30mph”, she is often tempted to see how far she dare drive with her eyes closed, or without her hands on the wheel.

She may be joking (I hope so), but the point she makes is valid: speed limits that are too slow make you lose concentration. And losing your concentration is dangerous.

Driving needs to be demanding enough to make us keep our minds on it. Police traffic officers know that, which is why for years they advocated progressive driving – that is, driving as quickly as is safe and legal.

This has been undermined in the past decade by the misguided emphasis on speed as a major cause of accidents. It has resulted in an increase in road deaths (which had formerly been falling) and the introduction of totally unrealistic speed limits in many places.

North Wales Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, who is also the road policing supremo for the Association of Chief Police Officers, has been one of the biggest advocates of speed cameras. But he recently admitted to a national newspaper that 6000 speed cameras placed in so-called accident blackspots had failed to cut road deaths. He called for a rethink.

He has also told the Institute of Advanced Motorists that some speed limits are “barmy” and should be changed, because they have no credibility.

If someone as committed to speed cameras as Mr Brunstrom is urging us to think again, we can hardly argue against the response of the much-abused Association of British Drivers that “if he thinks the limits should be higher, he cannot credibly use safety as a justification for their indiscriminate enforcement”.

It adds: “The failure of the ‘speed kills’ policy to reduce road deaths over the last ten years means that he has to deal with the fundamental problem - the road safety industry has got the relationship between speed and accidents completely wrong.”

We're not talking about this at all

Here’s a perfect model for party spokespersons who want to avoid talking about sensitive issues during the Election campaign. It’s none other than Peter Williams, a US Defence Department spokesman, who was asked about the use of missiles in the Gulf War.

He said: “We don’t discuss that capability. I can’t tell you why we don’t discuss it, because then I’d be discussing it.”

4 April 2005

on 4 April 2005 at 04:00

Triumph for newts in Blair's constituency

It can be no coincidence that the latest high-profile court case involving great crested newts stems from an area not unadjacent to the Prime Minister’s constituency of Sedgefield, slightly north of King’s Lynn.

Mr Blair is obviously intending to make newt protection a major issue, despite the absence of any intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction on the land belonging to Peter Dennis, who was fined £1000 and ordered to pay £500 costs after being found guilty of offences against endangered and protected amphibians.

This is clearly what is known in the trade as “a result” for the notoriously expansionist newts, who are known for their devious infiltration of local and central government as well as European institutions – with the help of their notorious allies, the Austrian cave salamanders.

Mr Dennis cleared some weed from a pond allegedly housing newts in March last year, with the result that newts were apparently tangled up in it. This is an irony that the newts would clearly have enjoyed, since their speciality is introducing a particularly virulent and entangling version of red tape into government offices.

Mr Blair is believed to be about to campaign on behalf of the newts, particularly in the National Health Service, where intensive care ponds are being introduced as we speak. Some sources claim that he will promise a referendum on the issue when he is sure that he will get the result he wants.

In Sedgefield, the newts are said to be particularly pleased with the “great deal of time and effort” put in to get the case to court – time which could so easily have been wasted on catching criminals.

Suggestions that the Prime Minister’s long-term aim in Sedgefield is regime change have been denounced as “amphibious”. Home Secretary Charles Clarke is expected to introduce newt-inspired control orders in Norfolk soon.

Exclusion principle is fair enough

Ground-breaking research last week revealed that children with lenient and permissive parents are more likely to use ecstasy. The same researchers are now examining the theories that fish swim and birds fly.

They may also have been involved with the Norfolk County Council working group which found that children excluded from school run a higher risk of getting into trouble with the law.

Unfortunately members of the group in question seem to have leapt to the conclusion that the legal trouble stemmed from the exclusion, when if they had any experience of classrooms they would realise that a child is excluded precisely because he or she exhibits the kind of behaviour that is likely to result in breaking the law: attacking children or teachers, destroying property and refusing to learn.

The misapprehension probably stems from the weasel words “learning difficulties”. Children are not excluded because they have learning difficulties: schools exist to solve learning difficulties. Exclusion comes when a child has no intention of learning and disrupts the class to such an extent that no-one can learn.

It may not be the child’s fault. I once commented on a girl’s appalling behaviour at a Norwich school, only to be told: “If you met her mother, you’d understand.”

It is certainly not the teachers’ fault. They have been ludicrously stripped of all reasonable methods of dealing with aggressive children until just about all they can do is stand and watch.

Children who are eager to learn should not have to endure constant disruption. Different provision must be made for children who are unable to deal with a normal classroom environment.

Just can't build vehicles the right size

Reports last week that Norwich would not be getting exciting new fire engines because they were too wide for the “thin roads” represent a welcome change in normal transport policy – which is to accept vehicles as big as possible, regardless of the capacity of the system to accommodate them.

The bizarre situation at Ipswich, where a tunnel had to be rebuilt to accommodate outsize freight trains, was just one example.

Hundreds of Norfolk lanes are too narrow for the buses and lorries that use them, and the streets of Norwich and several market towns are too narrow not just for fire engines, but for those same buses and heavy good vehicles. Many are the occasions on which traffic is held up at junctions in the city because a large vehicle is blocking two approach lanes and preventing a huge queue from filtering left or proceeding straight ahead. King Street-Bracondale and Riverside Road-Thorpe Road in Norwich are two glaring examples, and pedestrians are at constant risk.

Perhaps it’s time we did as the Romans did when they found their towns congested two thousand years ago – and ban large wagons from the centre altogether. If only we had the technology to build vehicles the right size.

Anti-road groups should pay for fat rabbit

The cost of the Norwich northern distributor road is spiralling out of control, claim its delighted opponents.

The Norwich and Norfolk Transport Inaction Group were delighted to pull this particular rabbit out of the hat last week. The supposed astonishment at the shockingly fat animal was a little overdone, however, as it was the same objectors to the vital road that placed the rabbit in the hat in the first place – and kept on feeding it.

There are far too many groups, parties and individuals who not only have a say but are able to keep on delaying construction. The longer the delay, the bigger the costs.

For the sake of the residents of north Norwich, the road has to be built. I suggest we split the bill for the increased costs between everyone who contributed to delaying the building of it.

Not getting a clear picture

Police have been complaining about the poor quality pictures they obtain from CCTV cameras designed to catch criminals in the act. Some of the blurred and shadowy images of criminals displayed on television are little more than a joke.

But doesn’t it seem odd that while we can’t afford to buy cameras good enough to nail thugs, thieves and vandals in the act a few yards away, we can afford to buy speed cameras that give a sharp picture from half a mile of a driver doing no-one any harm at all?

This is a sense of priorities that in other society would be regarded as irretrievably bizarre.