Where NOT to Park Your Car
Moneysupermarket has just published a list of the car crime hot-spots.
East London seems to be amongst the worst, with five in the top twenty. It’s probably because they are close to the M11 and M25 to give a good getaway. And then there are city centres in Manchester, Bradford and Leeds.
But also Wells-next-the-Sea, a charming seaside town in Norfolk features.
Who’s have thought the North Norfolk coast would have such a problem?
The Plinth Closes
I wasn’t sure how to title this post. Close is probably best, as ends sounds rather final. It won’t be the end, as there is so much recording that has been made. There is my tiny piece for a start.
Incidentally, as I write this, I’m watching the last person come down. The guy helping her is on my video as he placed me up there.
I did some up my feelings about it this morning though in an e-mail to the BBC.
Is It Art?
I had no intention of appearing on the plinth, but went to support a friend very early one Sunday morning. Someone didn’t turn up and I was asked to substitute. I refused, but eventually relented.
It was strangely invigorating and helped me very much to face the next day, which would have been my 41st wedding anniversary, but sadly my wife had died almost two years previously.
So perhaps it isn’t art in the true sense of the word, but here’s one man, who because of the plinth felt a lot better on a difficult day.
Thanks to Anthony Gormley and everybody else who gave me my one hour in the limelight!
North-South Divide
They are discussing the North-South divide on BBC Breakfast this morning.
What about the East-West divide?
Here in East Anglia, we have an economy about the size of Scotland, but we rely on much less government subsidy, we export more and we have higher unemployment.
But what do we get in return for looking after our economy and contributing to the well-being of the whole of the UK?
Not a lot really!
We have some of the worst roads and transport systems in the UK.
- The A14 past Cambridge and Huntingdon is one of the most overcrowded roads in Europe.
- Norwich is isolated from the rest of the country, by the gap in dual-carriageway of the A11 at Elveden and no proper route along the A47 to the Midlands.
- Yarmouth is in desperate need to be connected to Norwich by a decent road.
- Ipswich-Norwich links are virtually non-existent, unless you go by train
- There is the missing link of the A120 from Braintree to Marks Tey.
- Most of the trains in East Anglia are cast-offs from other networks and trains from east to west and on to the Midlands and the North are poor to say the least.
- Very few stations anyway have adequate parking places.
Many of these problems have been down to be solved for years, but they always get delayed. But then there are few Labour MPs and votes in East Anglia.
But still we manage and expand. Today, Glaxo Smith Kline has announced a large expansion of research in Stevenage and Cambridge is still growing.
We need the investment on infrastructure here in East Anglia, so that can create wealth for others in the UK.
Turkeys Vote in Time for Christmas
I have very friendly and good postmen here. They put the mail on the hall table and collect anything that needs to go. They have time for a quick chat and they check on the elderly etc.
But we’ve now got the postal unions pushing for a national strike.
The question is do we really need a postal service.
If I look at the post we get here, perhaps two letters a week are important. I get very few bills to pay and those could all be sent by e-mail. As to cheques in, I get none, as most pay their bills by bank transfer. So it would not affect my business if I didn’t get any mail at all.
I buy a lot of goods on mail order and that seems to get through pretty efficiently. In fact there has been a dramatic improvement over the last few years, as the delivery companies have improved their systems and I think the recession has given them a more intelligent and polite class of driver.
So if we had a long postal strike, I don’t think I would even notice. I certainly wouldn’t miss the tonnes of environmentally unfriendly junk mail, that is sent. Most of it incidentally to my late wife.
It is sad to say I wouldn’t miss the mail, but in a way it’s progress, as we increasingly rely on phones, e-mail and the Internet.
In a couple of years, I suspect that I could make do on a twice-weekly delivery for all the non-urgent personal stuff like cards and the very occasional letter.
The Scilly Isles
I like islands and the Scillies, along with the Aeolian Islands are one of my favourite places in the world. When we went to the Scillies, we flew direct from Ipswich in my own plane. What a landing and takeoff, as the runway is short and with a hump like a camel!
But that was a long time ago!
Today, islands like the Scillies are in the forefront of the fight against global warming, as they will be the first to go under the waves. So I was interested to see that they were taking part in an energy saving experiment yesterday called E-day. As there is just a single cable from the mainland, you can easily see how much electricity the Scillonians are using.
So did they save much electricity? Not really, as the weather was against them.
But look into the web site and it is a mine of information.
Just look at the National page and see how many tons of CO2 we emit for a start!
The Clapham Omnibus
In the previous post on the Supreme Court, I mentioned the Clapham Omnibus , and particularly the mythical man who rides it.
So who was he? Wikipedia provides an answer. Australia even has a version – “The man on the Bondi tram”.
My wife was a barrister and I don’t know whether she used the phrase in Court, but she certainly used it in real life!
The New Supreme Court
I’m not sure about the Supreme Court – Well, the building that is, even if I’m absolutely sure that we need a Court to as many lawyers have put it over the years, “Stand up for the man on the Clapham omnibus”.
An article by the eminent lawyer, Ken MacDonald, in The Times sums the Court all up very well. It looks like though they are setting out their message from this paragraph.
Now at the apex of this system of law stands the Supreme Court, open for business this morning. With deliberate symbolism, the new Justices have chosen their first case to test the limits on a government’s right to make law by executive order. The message is clear: this will be a Constitutional Court and it will take to power with ease.
I will be watching the progress of the Court with interest.
Prudence in Cloud Cuckoo Land
I’m watching Prudence this morning on BBC Breakfast Time.
He just doesn’t believe the mess he’s got us in. He even had the cheek to use the P-word.
Sian Williams isn’t one of the most forceful of interviewers, but seems to have a very different grasp of figures. She is quoting organisations like the OECD and he is saying that they are just wrong.
The sooner he goes the better!
Bonkers Babysitting Rules
I was born just a couple of years after the end of the Second World War and my friend Richard Plumb was born a week later. We were friends for years, until we went our separate ways as teenagers and my parents moved to Felixstowe from Cockfosters.
Sadly, Richard’s father had died when he was a couple of years old and as his mother had to work, there was an awful lot of sharing of child-care between his mother, his grandparents and my mother. I grew up believing that this was the way that normal people brought up their children.
Later, when our three boys were young, we often looked after other peoples’ children and they used to do the same for us. In one case, one of the kids, Patrick Ford, was one of the first coeliacs I ever came across. His mother was actually a White Minstrel! I can remember the rules that Heinz beans were good and others were bad. It’s still the same today and even their beans with sausages are gluten-free.
But now apparently, the rules on childminders now mean that all of these informal arrangements have to be registered with Ofsted. Bonkers.
I have heard elsewhere on the news that there are now another 800,000 civil servants in this country. To me that is 800,000 too many!
The Anonymous Widower 