Through my letterbox this week dropped a set of five documents which should help future historians to understand why, some time before the end of the present century, prosperous Britain was relegated to the Third World.
They came from my local Labour council, Lambeth in South London, and they neatly illustrate the complete failure of officialdom and the political class, cut off in that dreamy little bubble of their own, to grasp the nature or scale of the crisis threatening our children’s future.
All five documents concern a proposed traffic-calming scheme in my area, which appears to be forging ahead despite all the wails of anguish from Labour and the BBC about how this wicked Government has left local authorities without a penny to spare for essential services to vulnerable children, old folk, etc.
The first is a questionnaire, headed ‘Your chance to have your say!’, which purports to solicit my views on the plan — of which more later.
The second is a glossy leaflet, headed ‘Lambeth Road Danger Reduction: Your Questions Answered’.
This preaches, in patronising language, about the virtues of 20mph zones (‘Twenty’s Plenty’) and offers a tip or two on how we can all play our part in ensuring road safety.
For example: ‘Every one of us can help make Lambeth’s roads safer by recognising our responsibility for the safety of other road users whenever we drive or ride.’
Well, who would have thought of that, without the council’s guidance?
And if you’re worried that some people may miss out on such pearls of wisdom, I can put your mind at rest.
For Lambeth has thoughtfully made the leaflet available in large print, Braille, audiotape and a wide range of languages, including Portuguese, Bengali, Yoruba and Twi.
Documents three and four are a multicoloured map of my area, showing the suggested locations for the traffic calming measures, including one slap outside my house, and an illustrated brochure showing examples of the options available.
These include speed lozenges, chicanes, ‘echelon parking with build-out’ and ‘splitter island with tree’.
But document five is the real gem. Headed ‘Some information about you’, it explains: ‘To make sure that we are hearing from all of Lambeth’s diverse communities, it is important that we ask you a few questions about yourself.’
Assuring me that my answers will be used only in relation to the traffic-calming consultation, it goes on to ask: ‘How would you describe your ethnic group?’ (16 options); ‘Which of the following best describe your religion?’ (nine options, including ‘no religion,’ ‘atheist’ and ‘don’t know’); and of course the inevitable ‘Which of the following best describes you?:
‘I am heterosexual/ straight; I am gay or lesbian (homosexual); I am bisexual; Other; Don’t know; Prefer not to say.’
Yes, I know what date it is today. But Lambeth Council really does say that before I unburden myself of my views on speed humps, it’s ‘important’ that I should reveal whether I fancy men, women, both or neither.
I’ve been racking my brains to think what conceivable bearing my sexual tastes, race or religion could have on my attitude to traffic-calming measures, and I’m completely stumped.
Yet presumably Lambeth employs an official, at my neighbourhood’s expense, to send out these questionnaires and collate the answers — always assuming he or she is not too busy recording audiotapes for Twi speakers, explaining that driving carefully can contribute to road safety.
This is not just mildly disturbing. It’s actually mad.
‘I say, Mr Witherspoon, the bisexual Buddhist community, of mixed white and Asian ethnicity, seems to be coming out pretty strongly against speed lozenges in St Julian’s Farm Road. We’d better abandon the scheme.’
In fact, it’s quite clear that Lambeth is determined to press ahead with it, no matter what anyone says.
There’s a clue to that in the statement: ‘Your views will help us to develop this scheme, which is aimed at reducing danger on the roads.’
And anyway, new sleeping policemen have already begun appearing just up the street, where no real policeman has ever ventured.
Yes, I know that views are sharply divided about speed humps, and some people like them.
But surely we can all agree that in the depths of this catastrophic debt crisis, with food prices spiralling and libraries and meals-on-wheels services being cut back everywhere, it’s hardly a priority to install new ones, at some £15,000 each — or many hundreds of thousands for my local scheme alone.
Certainly, they’re not needed in my quiet road, where I’ve lived for more than 20 years, bringing up four small boys to adulthood without ever once being troubled by speeding traffic (though I’ve often been troubled by soaring council taxes).
I’ve never heard a neighbour complain about speeding, either.
Indeed, most of us have been moaning about the opposite, since the freezing winter left the streets full of potholes.
So how ironic that no sooner does George Osborne set aside £100 million in his Budget for filling them in, to ease the flow of traffic, than along comes Lambeth with its infuriating humps to slow it down again.
Most striking of all is that in all the literature about my local scheme, there’s only one mention of the cost, which isn’t specified.
I quote it verbatim from the idiot’s guide: ‘Q. Do 20mph zones use up valuable council funds? A. Funding for most 20mph zone schemes in Lambeth is provided by Transport for London (TfL) to reduce road collisions and injuries across the borough.’
So there you have it. Never mind that all the money for these schemes comes from taxpayers’ hard-earned wages.
Since it doesn’t come directly from the council’s budget, Lambeth thinks it not worth mentioning (not ‘valuable’, to use its own word) and feels it has a duty to spend it as fast as it can.
Indeed, this is a guiding rule of the public sector: spend right up to the limit of the cash available to you — whether on exorbitant salaries for executives or unnecessary traffic-calming schemes — because otherwise people will think you won’t need quite so much next year.
Oh, and better to cut essential services than waste, because otherwise the dangerous impression will get about that spending cuts needn’t be all that painful.
Here, in microcosm, is the blight affecting the entire country. As the national debt approaches £1 trillion — and there are no plans to cut it, remember, but only to reduce the rate at which it’s increasing — the state continues to squander our money, as if nothing untoward is happening.
Ninety million pounds here, for a stupid referendum on the voting system, which may end up costing us £250 million if the Yes campaign wins; God knows how much there, for yet another foreign military intervention, which once again shows every sign of causing more bloodshed than it spares.
When I watch the antics of our government, local and national, the image that springs to my mind is of one of those cartoon characters, suspended in mid-air after they’ve run off the edge of a cliff, their legs still working feverishly as if they’re still on terra firma.
When will they get real? Do they suppose that in India and China, the countries with which our children will have to compete, employers are saddled with ever more burdensome rules on maternity and paternity leave, disability access, carbon emissions and statutory rights to jobs for life?
Do they think we can survive for ever like this, shelling out well over 60 per cent of our earnings to ensure that the country retains its full complement of health and safety inspectors — and that Twi speakers are kept fully informed about plans for speed lozenges in the Lambeth area?
If my great-great grandchild, scavenging for food on a rubbish tip in the year 2111, should happen to come across a 100-year-old questionnaire about a traffic-calming scheme in Lambeth, he should hand it to the nearest historian. It will explain a lot.
They came from my local Labour council, Lambeth in South London, and they neatly illustrate the complete failure of officialdom and the political class, cut off in that dreamy little bubble of their own, to grasp the nature or scale of the crisis threatening our children’s future.
All five documents concern a proposed traffic-calming scheme in my area, which appears to be forging ahead despite all the wails of anguish from Labour and the BBC about how this wicked Government has left local authorities without a penny to spare for essential services to vulnerable children, old folk, etc.
Speed bumps: Symptomatic of what is wrong with Britain
The second is a glossy leaflet, headed ‘Lambeth Road Danger Reduction: Your Questions Answered’.
This preaches, in patronising language, about the virtues of 20mph zones (‘Twenty’s Plenty’) and offers a tip or two on how we can all play our part in ensuring road safety.
For example: ‘Every one of us can help make Lambeth’s roads safer by recognising our responsibility for the safety of other road users whenever we drive or ride.’
Well, who would have thought of that, without the council’s guidance?
And if you’re worried that some people may miss out on such pearls of wisdom, I can put your mind at rest.
For Lambeth has thoughtfully made the leaflet available in large print, Braille, audiotape and a wide range of languages, including Portuguese, Bengali, Yoruba and Twi.
Documents three and four are a multicoloured map of my area, showing the suggested locations for the traffic calming measures, including one slap outside my house, and an illustrated brochure showing examples of the options available.
These include speed lozenges, chicanes, ‘echelon parking with build-out’ and ‘splitter island with tree’.
How ironic that no sooner does George Osborne set aside £100 million in his Budget for filling potholes in, to ease the flow of traffic, then along comes Lambeth with its infuriating humps to slow it down again
Assuring me that my answers will be used only in relation to the traffic-calming consultation, it goes on to ask: ‘How would you describe your ethnic group?’ (16 options); ‘Which of the following best describe your religion?’ (nine options, including ‘no religion,’ ‘atheist’ and ‘don’t know’); and of course the inevitable ‘Which of the following best describes you?:
‘I am heterosexual/ straight; I am gay or lesbian (homosexual); I am bisexual; Other; Don’t know; Prefer not to say.’
Yes, I know what date it is today. But Lambeth Council really does say that before I unburden myself of my views on speed humps, it’s ‘important’ that I should reveal whether I fancy men, women, both or neither.
I’ve been racking my brains to think what conceivable bearing my sexual tastes, race or religion could have on my attitude to traffic-calming measures, and I’m completely stumped.
Yet presumably Lambeth employs an official, at my neighbourhood’s expense, to send out these questionnaires and collate the answers — always assuming he or she is not too busy recording audiotapes for Twi speakers, explaining that driving carefully can contribute to road safety.
This is not just mildly disturbing. It’s actually mad.
‘I say, Mr Witherspoon, the bisexual Buddhist community, of mixed white and Asian ethnicity, seems to be coming out pretty strongly against speed lozenges in St Julian’s Farm Road. We’d better abandon the scheme.’
In fact, it’s quite clear that Lambeth is determined to press ahead with it, no matter what anyone says.
There’s a clue to that in the statement: ‘Your views will help us to develop this scheme, which is aimed at reducing danger on the roads.’
And anyway, new sleeping policemen have already begun appearing just up the street, where no real policeman has ever ventured.
Yes, I know that views are sharply divided about speed humps, and some people like them.
But surely we can all agree that in the depths of this catastrophic debt crisis, with food prices spiralling and libraries and meals-on-wheels services being cut back everywhere, it’s hardly a priority to install new ones, at some £15,000 each — or many hundreds of thousands for my local scheme alone.
Certainly, they’re not needed in my quiet road, where I’ve lived for more than 20 years, bringing up four small boys to adulthood without ever once being troubled by speeding traffic (though I’ve often been troubled by soaring council taxes).
I’ve never heard a neighbour complain about speeding, either.
Indeed, most of us have been moaning about the opposite, since the freezing winter left the streets full of potholes.
So how ironic that no sooner does George Osborne set aside £100 million in his Budget for filling them in, to ease the flow of traffic, than along comes Lambeth with its infuriating humps to slow it down again.
Most striking of all is that in all the literature about my local scheme, there’s only one mention of the cost, which isn’t specified.
I quote it verbatim from the idiot’s guide: ‘Q. Do 20mph zones use up valuable council funds? A. Funding for most 20mph zone schemes in Lambeth is provided by Transport for London (TfL) to reduce road collisions and injuries across the borough.’
So there you have it. Never mind that all the money for these schemes comes from taxpayers’ hard-earned wages.
Since it doesn’t come directly from the council’s budget, Lambeth thinks it not worth mentioning (not ‘valuable’, to use its own word) and feels it has a duty to spend it as fast as it can.
Indeed, this is a guiding rule of the public sector: spend right up to the limit of the cash available to you — whether on exorbitant salaries for executives or unnecessary traffic-calming schemes — because otherwise people will think you won’t need quite so much next year.
Oh, and better to cut essential services than waste, because otherwise the dangerous impression will get about that spending cuts needn’t be all that painful.
Here, in microcosm, is the blight affecting the entire country. As the national debt approaches £1 trillion — and there are no plans to cut it, remember, but only to reduce the rate at which it’s increasing — the state continues to squander our money, as if nothing untoward is happening.
Ninety million pounds here, for a stupid referendum on the voting system, which may end up costing us £250 million if the Yes campaign wins; God knows how much there, for yet another foreign military intervention, which once again shows every sign of causing more bloodshed than it spares.
When I watch the antics of our government, local and national, the image that springs to my mind is of one of those cartoon characters, suspended in mid-air after they’ve run off the edge of a cliff, their legs still working feverishly as if they’re still on terra firma.
When will they get real? Do they suppose that in India and China, the countries with which our children will have to compete, employers are saddled with ever more burdensome rules on maternity and paternity leave, disability access, carbon emissions and statutory rights to jobs for life?
Do they think we can survive for ever like this, shelling out well over 60 per cent of our earnings to ensure that the country retains its full complement of health and safety inspectors — and that Twi speakers are kept fully informed about plans for speed lozenges in the Lambeth area?
If my great-great grandchild, scavenging for food on a rubbish tip in the year 2111, should happen to come across a 100-year-old questionnaire about a traffic-calming scheme in Lambeth, he should hand it to the nearest historian. It will explain a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment