Monthly Archives: September 2006

Barmy Britain: fined for cycling on a road

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British judges are renowned for eccentricity and inconsistency. Bruce Morgan, the judge who let off PC Mark Milton for driving at 159mph, has bizarrely found a cyclist guilty of inconsiderate cycling for simply riding along a public road in accordance with the national standard for cycling training.

Daniel Cadden was the cyclist. He was doing 20mph when two drivers overtook him, illegally crossing the double white ‘no overtaking’ lines. The police decided to ignore the illegal driving and stop Mr Cadden for riding inconsiderately for failing to use a less convenient cyclepath. The dinosaur judge swallowed this. 

This is an outrage. I’ve had abuse hurled at me by yobbish drivers for not following a local alleged cycle path. It’s nothing of the kind: it’s a marked area of the pavement on the Amersham to Watford road that gives way to every drive and side-road. It makes cyclists second class citizens. Mr Cadden would have had to cross the busy three-lane road twice on his journey had he used the cycle path. It would have made cycling far less attractive as a means of getting from A to B.

The CTC – the UK’s national cyclists’ organisation – is supporting Daniel. See the CTC website for more information. You can support Daniel’s appeal through the Cyclists’ Defence Fund.

How on earth are we going to encourage people to get out of their cars and onto their bikes when the legal system is so brainless?

Blair’s showman’s swansong

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Tony Blair has made his last leader’s speech to the Labour party conference. It was a tour de force, prompting  some commentators to ask whether Labour voters will now realise what they are about to lose.

It’s unlikely that Gordon Brown – or any other likely candidate for leader – could have delivered such a barnstorming performance. Blair’s joke that there was no chance that Cherie would run off with the bloke next door was brilliant: defusing the tension about his wife’s remarks with a genuinely funny reposte.

But conference speeches rarely have an impact beyond the hall, with rare exceptions: Kinnock’s attack on Militant in 1985, Blair’s ambush of Clause 4 in 1994. In recent years, Blair’s high octane conference performances have been like a boozy night out, giving a brief high followed by the inevitable ‘morning after the night before’. Whatever happened to the promises to solve Africa’s problems or bring peace to the Middle East?

Yesterday’s bravura show had an echo of Margaret Thatcher’s amazing display at Prime Minister’s Questions after her ousting  in 1990. No-one doubted she was a class act, but the display couldn’t disguise the fact her day had passed. Tony Blair has been the showman PM – probably the best actor-premier since Harold Macmillan. The curtain is about to fall. There will be no encore.

A political paradox: privatisation = greater state control

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Interesting essay by Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardian. Jenkins argues that Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair have rolled back public ownership of industry only to increase state control of everyday life.

It’s a theme that Jenkins examined ten years ago in Accountable to None, a book that suggested the Tory privatisation programme masked the centralisation of power. Modern prime ministers cannot bear the idea of sharing control.   

In today’s article, Jenkins also considers the crisis in local representation in Britain. Labour in 2006 is suffering the consequences of neglecting its grass roots, just as the Tories did a decade ago. Both parties have favoured central power over local influence. Yet local councillors are the lifeblood of politics and civic life. (Labour’s devolution project happened despite Tony Blair; it was a legacy of John Smith’s leadership.)

Jenkins argument is compelling. The irony is that he was one of the London bigwigs who sat in judgment on which local projects should get Millennium funding…

Gone phishing

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Barclays_phishing_email_1
I’ve had a spate of phishing emails recently. These are emails sent by fraudsters trying to trick you into revealing banking (and other) passwords and logon details.

They’re simple to spot – no bank will ever ask customers for PINs or passwords – but it’s easy to see how the uninitiated could fall for these scams. I was impressed that Internet Explorer flagged this alleged Barclays email as a reported phishing site. But even without Microsoft’s help, the fact I’ve never been a Barclays customer should have been a clue!

The Government, banks and technology companies have created a campaign called Get Safe Online, to help people protect themselves against internet threats.

BT’s listening chief executive

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Today’s Guardian carries an interview with BT’s chief executive, Ben Verwaayen, which claims that the Dutchman replies personally to emails from irate customers.

It’s true. I’ve had a few email exchanges with BT’s boss, most recently last June. We’d just got back from holiday, to discover my in-laws were at the end of their tether. Their BT line had developed a fault and as their BT home security alarm was linked to the line, it had been going off every five minutes for days. BT had proved singularly unhelpful in sorting the problem. We emailed Ben Verwaayen that Sunday afternoon, and got a personal reply within 10 minutes. His office arranged for an engineer to call the following morning and the problem was solved.

I know you shouldn’t have to contact the chief executive to get decent service but Verwaayen clearly cares about his customers.

Banana bother at Tesco

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Dsc00128_5I was reminded tonight why I stopped buying fruit in Tesco. Luckily, I spotted this rotting and furry banana as I got to the checkout.

Time to add fruit to our weekly Abel & Cole order!  

What’s a full enquiry?

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Soon after news broke of Richard Hammond’s disastrous accident, we were told that a ‘full enquiry’ would be held.

No one ever promises to hold a partial enquiry. But just as suburbs can only be leafy, and families are always hard working – even the toddlers – enquiries must be described as full.

London’s paper war

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A battle between two freesheets: hardly a price war, more a battle between two bald men over a comb?
Londonpaper
Perhaps, but the confrontation between Rupert Murdoch’s thelondonpaper and Associated’s  London Lite is deadly serious. This is arguably the greatest challenge Associated has faced since the disastrous launch of the Mail on Sunday back in 1982.

Associated revamped its Standard Lite – offered in central London at lunchtime – as an evening freesheet, London Lite. It also upped the price of the Evening Standard by 25 per cent to 50p to recoup revenue lost as readers decide a free paper is all they need.

It’s a big gamble. London Lite feels and reads like a soulless spoiler. By contrast, thelondonpaper is surprisingly compelling. Today’s front page lead – suggesting Richard Hammond was a late stand in for the disastrous Top Gear stunt – felt like a hard news story. And its features were engaging  and fun.

The big question surrounds the Evening Standard. I don’t think it’s worth 50p. I may be biased: I tend to buy it only on big news days or when I’ve nothing to read on the way home. I’ll probably still fork out 50p when a big story breaks but the rest of the time I’ll pick up a freesheet. There are certainly people who will buy the Standard out of habit every day, whatever it costs, but Associated cannot rely on them. Paid-for evening papers are in decline across Britain, and London is no exception.

In Flanders Fields

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After 90 years, the shadow of the first world war still rests heavily upon the fields of Flanders in Belgium.

Last Friday night, we happened upon Essex Farm Cemetery, north of Ieper. (Ieper is the modern name for Ypres, the town wiped off the face of the
earth by German artillery fire and better known to Great War tommies as
‘Wipers’.)

We were on our way to Nieuwpoort, our overnight stop before catching the ferry home, when we came across the sad sight of row upon row of war graves. It’s just one of countless war cemeteries in the flatlands bordering the English Channel. Yet I discovered today that Essex Farm is symbolic. For it was here, in a field hospital next to the cemetery, that the Canadian army doctor John McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields, one of the most famous Great War poems. McCrae died in 1918 after catching pneumonia and meningitis here – one of millions to die from disease during the year.

Nieuwpoort_1_1 Nieuwpoort, like Ieper, was devastated during the Great War – the priceNieuwpoort_2_2
it paid for being the last town on the Flanders coast held by the Allies. Today, its handsome Marktplein square gives little impression of being a 1920s reconstruction. The Brasserie Nieuwpoort on the square is a fine place to savour a superb steak frites while contemplating the tragedies of the recent past.

Belgium: satnav and phrase book welcome

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I like my gadgets. But I’ve always seen satellite navigation systems as an indulgence, except for professional drivers.

I’m prepared to think again after getting hopelessly lost in Belgium recently. We were heading for the German city of Aachen, after an overnight stop in Bruges. All was going well, as we followed the A3 motorway signs for Brussels and Liege. Suddenly, we saw traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. Odd sort of motorway, we thought. Then we emerged in the heart of Brussels. No sign of Liege or the A3 motorway.

We finally realised that we had crossed Belgium’s language line and all the French road signs were now in Flemish. We should have been looking for Luik not Liege, despite the fact that the city is overwhelmingly French speaking. Not hugely helpful – why can’t they put the signs in both languages? I can imagine the fuss if signs on the M4 in Wales directed drivers to Llundain and Bryste rather than London and Bristol….