27 June 08

Older readers of this column will undoubtedly recall the Tardis, which was Dr Who's chosen method of time-travel.

 

What made this object particularly delightful as a symbol of ultra-high-technology was its quaint and ancient appearance.  Even to the eyes of a child like me in the 1960s, this phone box looked pretty antiquated.  But one step inside, and you were suddenly transported with the good doctor to who knows where – thereby proving that solid English Victorian engineering was capable of more miracles than Brunel ever imagined.  Forty years on, I fear that our friends at Ofcom are not showing quite the same degree of imagination. 

 

We are all very aware of the disappearance of village schools, village pubs and village shops.  And, of course, many of us are at work trying to save as many as possible of our village post offices.  But we now face a new onslaught.  This time, it is the phone boxes that are under threat.

 

All over West Dorset, there are phone boxes scheduled for closure. 

 

Ofcom does have rules about this, and (at least at first sight) the rules sound pretty good. 

 

Ofcom has stated that:

 

1.            BT must not take boxes away from deprived and rural areas;

2.            it must keep them in busy areas; and

3.            it will only be allowed to take away a call box where there is more than one on the same site.

 

But, if these rules really mean anything, I am at a loss to understand why we are seeing so many of our rural phone boxes come under threat.  As far as I can see, almost all of the boxes which are scheduled for closure actually fall into the categories that are meant to be protected.

 

The fundamental problem, I suspect, is our old friend, rural-blindness. 

 

If you spend your working days in an office block in London, it seems almost inconceivable that there should be anyone anywhere in Britain who lacks access to mobile phones and a dozen other speedy and convenient forms of telecommunication. 

 

But, if you live in many West Dorset villages, you can't properly access broadband, and you have to go outside and take a long walk to get a mobile signal.  So there are – however unimaginable this may seem to people in the Ofcom office block – people living in West Dorset villages who are elderly and vulnerable, and who can be completely cut off if their phone line goes dead for some reason and there is no call box in the village.

 

Surely, what we need is the spirit of Dr Who.  Let's re-christen these ancient Victorian edifices.  Let's call them "Multi-Modal and Emergency Rural Communications Centres" (or MMERCCs for short).

 

I admit the MMERCCs don't sound quite as futuristic as the Tardis – but they could contain proper satellite broadband, a computer screen for internet access and, of course, emergency telephone access.  We might then have a 21^st century version of the payphone happily installed in rural West Dorset.

 

Worth a thought?

 

20 June 2008

Time is drawing in for our rural post offices.

Not many days from now, we will hear where the axe may fall in West
Dorset.

Luckily, the County Council and our District Council are more than
willing to play their part in trying to find community solutions which
will keep all or most of the threatened post offices open.

Of course, we shouldn't have to be doing this. The whole closure
programme makes no real sense, and it isn't the right way to be going
about reducing costs at post office headquarters.

But at least we should be able to help a phoenix to arise from the
ashes in many cases.

In villages where I have attended public meetings about this in recent
weeks, I have been struck by the enthusiasm that local people have for
their post office and for finding solutions that will keep the thing
going while cutting the costs for post office headquarters.

I have also been encouraged to find that the headquarters management
team seem to be more than willing to work with our councils and
parishes to establish such solutions.

This whole episode is also interesting proof that the cynics who say
people aren't interested in politics or local government any more are
just plain wrong. In the three villages where we have so far had open
meetings about this subject, the average turn out has been something
between a quarter and a fifth of all the adults in the village. One
has to remember that this is equivalent to a public meeting attended
by about two million people in London.

I suspect that even the cynics would regard that as demonstrating a
high level of public interest.

What is it that brings people out when a topic like this is on the
agenda?

The answer seems fairly clear: it surely has a great deal to do with
the fact that this isn't about some abstruse political argument. It's
about a concrete reality that everyone can see for themselves. And
it's about taking practical steps that can bring about change.

My conclusion is that people aren't apathetic in the way that the
cynics imagine: they just reserve their enthusiasm for topics where
they feel they can make a real difference.

This, surely, ought to lead us to a further conclusion: namely, that
we would have more real democratic involvement if we gave people more
power and opportunity in their own lives by giving communities more
control over their own affairs.

The real enemy of participation isn't apathy; it's centralisation.
Take power away from people, and they will naturally react by staring
at you glumly – at least until they are angry enough to revolt. But
if you give people a sense that they really can take part in shaping
the way they live, they will turn up and they will take part.

Let's just hope that the outcome of the post office saga in West
Dorset is sufficiently positive to justify all that enthusiastic
involvement.

16 June 2008

I don't know whether any readers of this column are regular attendees at the Chelsea Flower Show.  But, to judge by the amount of time that people in West Dorset (including my wife) spend in cultivating their gardens, I guess that there may be quite a number who make the annual pilgrimage to see what the Royal Horticultural Society can surprise, delight or shock us with.

For those locals who do go to the Show, it must be a pleasure to see gardens that have also come to the Show from Dorset.  There's nothing like making a long trip and finding yourself at home when you arrive.

Anyone who made the trip this year would have had exactly this experience - with a bonus - they would have been able to eat what they saw.

Why?

Well, because the item that not only got a gold medal but also won the Best Courtyard Garden award at this year's Show, was none other than the edible playground developed by our very own Dorset Cereals.

Just to make a point, the plants for the edible playground were grown in Poundbury.  The wheat was brought in from  Sherborne.  The playground was designed by a local guru.  And the whole thing was constructed by a local firm.

The great thing about the edible playground is that it has what the managers of the 2012 Olympics call "a legacy".  The idea is that, by going to www.edibleplaygrounds.co.uk, schools can find all the information they need to set up their own playground vegetable gardens, so that children can cook with the food they grow.  As the organisers say: "it is all about teaching children where food comes from and sharing the fun and satisfaction of growing - and cooking - your own".

And, of course, the edible playground doesn't just feed the stomach, it also feeds the eyes.  A little apple tree, a fan-trained plum and a topiaried bay tree add structure and shape. The violas and pansies, marigolds, blue and white borage and day lilies (all, amazingly, edible) contribute colour, alongside the alpine strawberries, the Oregon thornless blackberries, the grape vines and the cherry tomatoes. Meanwhile the herbs - rosemary, chives, thyme, Corsican mint and chamomile - give texture.  This in short, is not just a food factory; it is a work of art.

For anyone reading this column who has the ambition to start such a garden, I strongly recommend a visit to the web-site where I understand there is a competition, offering the chance of winning a "grow-your-own garden set".

I do hope that we will shortly see these edible playgrounds sprouting up in schools all over West Dorset. And I hope we will see a generation of little vegetable gardeners sprouting up as a result.

6 June 2008

I don't know how many readers of this column are or once were fans of the novelist, C S Forrester. Those who were or are may remember a remarkable book of his called something like 'The Gun'.

Unsurprisingly, it's about a gun -- a massive  wrought iron eighteenth century engine of destruction captured by Iberian guerrillas in the early nineteenth century and turned against the troops of the regular army that once owned it.

The vast power of the gun, and the vast effort that the guerrillas have to put into pulling it round the rough terrain, become the centre-piece of a magnificent story of courage, vanity and betrayal.

For some reason, this story -- half remembered from reading it forty years ago -- came back into my mind as I found myself hunched next to the Mayor of Sherborne, incongruously turning the handles that released the sluice-gates of the Castleton water-pump.

Below, as we turned the handles,  the water came through the gates with increasing force. And above, slowly at first, but then with increasing speed the vast iron wheel of the pump began to turn. Its mass, the unstoppable force of its turning weight, and its threatening rumble as it turned on its axis, all echoed the power of the gun.

But of course the wheel had, from the start, a benign purpose. I am told it was installed in the 1830s, when the drinking of polluted river-water had become a national scandal. For ninety years, it contributed to the pumping of clean water from boreholes to the townspeople of Sherborne -- a monument to the durability and solidity of Victorian engineering.

And, of course, it was a monument to sustainability, using the renewable supply of river-water to pump an unending supply of clean water from the bore-hole without the use of fossil fuels -- all virtually without cost once the great wheel was engineered and installed.

What, you may ask, were the Mayor and I doing twiddling the knobs? And what had happened to the wheel between the early years of the twentieth century and today?

The answers to these two questions are connected with one another.

The mayor and I were twiddling the knobs because we were officially reopening this great pump after decades (almost a century) of disuse.

This act of reopening was made possible by a truly remarkable group of local, volunteer  engineers and enthusiasts, who came together over thirty years. They rebuilt the fine stone housing of the wheel and pump. They restored equipment. They raised enormous sums of money. And finally, almost unbelievably, they lovingly recreated the great wheel itself.

There they -- or most of them -- were. Some now ancient, all now justly proud of an extraordinary work of re-creation.

As we listened to the wheel rumbling away. I reflected not only on the connection of ideas and feelings with its near-contemporary, Forrester's great gun of the Peninsular War, but also on the way in which history repeats itself. I wondered how long it would be before the scarcity, costs and risks of fossil-fuels drive us back to some modern version of these grand Victorian schemes for harnessing the renewable power of nature for the improvement of our quality of life..

2 June 2008

Regular readers of this column will be aware that I am not hopelessly in love with public authorities.

But just occasionally, I think we ought to say thank you to a public body that does something well.

This thought came upon me as I walked with my family around the new gardens at the sea-front in Lyme Regis.

I know that the new gardens were only a by-product of the works needed to drain and stabilise the hill-side on the west cliff of the town. And I know there was a lot of disruption while they were built. And I'm sure that everyone who goes there has their very own suggestion about how to make them even better.

But the fact is that, as you traverse the gardens, using the carefully constructed by-ways and high-ways with their changing views of Lyme Bay and the beaches below, you really can't fail to be struck by the loveliness of the thing. The planting (carefully orchestrated by the local voluntary gurus) is appropriate to the hillside and the heritage coast -- wholly unlike the insipid municipal gardening so often found in seaside resorts the world over. Even the lamp-posts bear ammonite-emblems -- an apt and charming reminder of Lyme's heritage.

And all of this, dear reader, was created by our very own district council in cooperation with the town council and local groups, using funds that came from our dearly beloved friends at DEFRA. Astonishing and vastly encouraging, is it not, that beauty has actually been built into a public works project?

These, at any rate, were my thoughts as we wandered to and fro on the hillside.

But then we descended to the Cobb -- and I read again the inscription on the Cobb wall  itself, with new eyes.

Who, you may ask, was the genius that designed this world-famous, enormously useful, hugely reassuring and splendidly good-looking monument? Was it a great architect in the employ of some potentate? A budding Michelangelo, imported from some foreign shore? An early progenitor of the Arts Council?

No, it was a team of military engineers. They knew, of course, how to build something solid. I suspect that is still true of our military engineers -- the armed services being one of the things in Britain that actually works.

But these military types of yesteryear knew more than just how to build something effective and durable. They knew how to build something splendid and sublime. They concerned themselves not just with how it would work, but also with how it would look. And they went to the trouble to build into it steps to vantage points from which the splendours of the bay (including, now, the splendours of the gardens) could be viewed.

As I stood there, gazing at the Cobb, I reminded myself that this was, once, nothing unusual. Here was a reminder of a time, now almost a time out of mind, when 'public works' suggested, not something ugly, but something grand -- something to please the heart and spirit, not just the Audit Commission.

How appropriate that the gardens opposite should bear testimony to the fact that this greatness of soul has not entirely deserted our public works programmes. Long may that continue to be the case in West Dorset.

 

3 May 2008

What would you do if you had been given two tests for the same disease, and one had shown that you were ill while the other showed that you were well?

I bet you would go and get some more tests, to see which of the two was right and which was wrong.

But this is not, it seems, the view taken by our friends in DEFRA (the much loved ministry for agriculture).

In DEFRA, if you had two contradictory test results on your health, you would not conduct a third test.  Instead, you would assume immediately that the test that showed you were ill was right.

Surely, I hear you say, some mistake?  Can this really be what a DEFRA official would do under these circumstances?

Oh yes.

I know this because that is exactly what this glorious ministry is doing when it comes to cows and bovine TB.

In case you don't believe me, I should just explain that there are two different kinds of tests currently used to determine whether cows are suffering from bovine TB.  One is a skin test.  The other is called a "gamma-interferon" test.

I certainly cannot pretend to know what the science is behind either of these two tests, and I have even less idea how accurate either of them really is.

But, even without any such scientific knowledge, I can absolutely confidently tell you that one or other of them is definitely wrong - at least sometimes.

For years, farmers in West Dorset have been discovering that the skin test is far from perfect.  But we are now faced with much more dramatic proof that somebody has got something wrong - because there are examples of these two different tests being applied to the same herd of cows. In some cases,  one of the tests (the so-called "gamma-interferon" test) diagnoses fifty times as many of the cows as having TB than the other (skin) test.

You must admit that this is a fairly significant difference.  I mean, if one thermometer showed that fifty times as many people were suffering from a deadly temperature than another thermometer, you really would want to know, wouldn't you, which one of the two was inaccurate? 

But  no.  Not if you were DEFRA.  This great department of state now intends to slaughter all the cows which are diagnosed as having TB by the test which is fifty times more sensitive - and is steadfastly refusing, after court action, to carry out another test.

What will make you sick as a duck, dear reader, is that our dearly beloved friends at the ministry are also going to spend just over £1,000 per cow of your money and mine on compensating the farmers who own the cows.  And, just in case that isn't enough, the farmers also stand to lose rather more than £500 per cow because the compensation doesn't equal the cost of buying a new cow and doesn't cover the cost of lost milk.

I am currently talking to the minister about this, in the hope that I can persuade him to ask his splendid department what on earth they are up to. I am not holding my breath for a sensible reply.

25 May 2008

What is the connection between bees, Brussels and British bureaucracy?

Unfortunately, the answer is that Brussels + British bureaucracy = disaster for bees.

As every child learns early in life, the humble bee performs an awe-inspiringly important ecological task.  Without bees, no flowers - or, at least, not nearly so many of them.  And, while we are at it, not nearly so many of anything else that grows and needs pollination.

But bees, like the rest of us, are prone to disease.  And, when the disease gets bad enough, the whole intricate social world of the hive apparently implodes.  I am told that you can fairly quickly get to a stage which is gruesomely described as "colony collapse".

To prevent this dire state of affairs, great experts - I gather we have some of the world's greatest experts in Britain - study bee disease and work out ways of averting it.

Or, at least, this is what they used to do, with a small grant from our beloved friends, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

This was a classic case of using taxpayers' money wisely.  A little injection of public  support for such research, which no one bee keeper could possibly afford, used to provide for work that helped to keep all bees healthy, with huge ecological benefits for us all. 

But now, dear reader, this expertise is no longer being properly funded. 

Unless you are a political anorak like me, or a bee expert, or profoundly interested in these matters for some other reason, I will take a very considerable bet that (1) you didn't know that the money was being spent in the past, (2) you didn't previously know - even if you now believe me - that the money has been cut, and (3) you are, therefore, part of the very large number of people for whom this particular action by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been entirely invisible.

Why, you may ask, has the decision been made to reduce the funding?

This is where the toxic mixture of Brussels and British bureaucracy comes in.

The cause of the problem is a shortage of funds within the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 

What, you may ask, is the cause of the shortage of funds within the Department? It  is the fine which has been levied on the Department by the European Commission.

And what is the cause of the fine?  It is the Department's astonishing bureaucratic incompetence in failing to distribute Single Farm Payments on time.

Strange, isn't it?  

We all pay taxes.  The taxes go through to the EU.  The money comes back in the form of Single Farm Payments destined for British farmers.  The British bureaucracy fails to distribute the money on time.  The Commission in Brussels fines the British bureaucracy.  And, hey presto, our bees are under threat.

And, as if this weren't depressing enough, I learned last week from West Dorset farmers that we are due for another round.

It seems  that, despite all the valiant efforts by Lord Rooker to improve the so-called Rural Payments Agency (perhaps more aptly entitled the Rural Disappointments Agency), we are once again going to miss the final date for some payments this year. So there will be further fines, less money for research, and more threat of colony collapse for our bees.

I don't suppose it ever occurred to the gardeners of England that the proliferation of their flowers might be inhibited by a lack of bureaucratic skill in manipulating government computers. But that is the world we now inhabit.

19 May 2008

Imagine yourself as a guest in a farmhouse B&B.

The farmer and his wife are already ensconced, together with their children in their beamy farmhouse kitchen.   There is an irresistible smell of bacon coming from the AGA.

I hope, dear reader, that you are salivating happily.

Now comes the question.  Would you expect to find also in the kitchen, the farmer's dog?

Picture the dog.  A wiry and intelligent animal on the floor in front of the AGA, hoping (probably vainly) for a small snippet of bacon to polish off a satisfactory early breakfast. 

So far as I am concerned, at least, the dog represents an addition to the scene.  No farmhouse kitchen complete without one. 

But I much regret to tell you that this is now a  thing of the past -- a mere nostalgic fantasy.

The Health and Safety inspectors have determined that dogs and farmhouse kitchens are not compatible with one another.

Goodness knows what appalling disaster these dear, well-intentioned inspectors imagine will flow from the canine presence in the farmhouse kitchen.

But, whatever the reason, it must certainly be deep.  For the rule is absolute.  Faced with the prospect of such a beast in such a place, the inspectors have reached for the regulatory gun.

I know this because one farmer who runs a B&B was recently asked to confirm in writing that their dog would not at any time enter the kitchen.  If no such assurance could be given - no B&B.

The interesting point, of course, is what all this implies about the attitude of our esteemed regulators towards the customer.

Naturally, one would accept a ruling from the health and safety gurus that you wouldn't expect a dog in the kitchen of the Ritz. But, unless they regard the potential customer as a complete idiot, they would presumably assume that the customer in a farmhouse B&B is aware that he or she is not dining at the Ritz.

I mean, if you were having breakfast in a farmhouse would you be unaware of the likelihood that there might be a canine presence? Would it not occur to you, when planning your stay, as in general terms likely that a holiday in a farmhouse might involve coming into contact with..............animals?

And wouldn't you take it as a rather comforting sign that you were sharing breakfast with a family that presumably doesn't want to poison itself?  After all, in the Ritz, the kitchen is occupied by people who may never eat its products. But the farmer and his family are right there, so you might think they were confident about the helfansafety of the situation -- unless, of course, you were a helfansafety inspector.

My conclusion is that this particular aspect of the world has gone stark, staring mad.

25 May 2008

Readers of this column will be aware of my scepticism about the
effectiveness of huge centralised bureaucracies.

One of the reasons for my scepticism is the tendency of such
bureaucracies to deal with individual "cases" on the basis of rules
and regulations, rather than on the basis of human needs, sensitivity
and commonsense.

Of course, this isn't because the people working in centralised
bureaucracies are any less kindly or conscientious or sensitive than
those working in the voluntary sector or in community-based
organisations of various sorts. The problem is not the people, but
the culture that surrounds them.

Once kindly and sensitive people are put in a large office somewhere
far from the scene of the action, and are told to run things according
to rules that are "fair" and "orderly", they quickly learn that the
only route to a tolerable life is to apply the rules in a rigorous way.

But there are, of course, exceptions – particularly when the
bureaucracy is local rather than central and a lot nearer the scene of
the action.

I came across a case like this last week when I visited Dorset's youth
offending team. The remarkable thing about this team is that it
doesn't exist within one particular bureaucratic silo. Instead, it is
a mixture of a large number of services and authorities, each of which
has something to do with young people in Dorset who get into trouble
(or who might get into trouble later).

The County Council are there; but so are the police, the Probation
Service, the magistrates, the Connexions Service (which used to be
called the Careers Service) and the Primary Care Trust from the NHS.

Why all these different people? Well, because young people in trouble
with the law tend to have a whole heap of reasons for behaving badly,
usually starting with their family background and going on to things
that have gone wrong in school, with alcohol or drug abuse, inability
to get a job, and so on.

So the youth offending team bring together people with a range of
skills and powers locally who can together deal with the young person
in question as a human being in the round. As I sat listening to the
tough but sensible and kindly way in which the people who do this work
explained what they were up to, I had the wonderful sense that in this
little corner of the bureaucracy, the tendency to deal with cases
rather than people had actually been, at least to a considerable
extent, overcome.

I suppose that everyone has a piece of poetry which first caught them and became 'theirs' at an early age.  For some, it may have come in the form of a song or a hymn. For me, it was Gray's elegy.

Why? Who knows? 

But I am quite clear about the bit that really struck home. It wasn't the famous description of the rural scene with "the  lowing herd" winding "slowly o'er the lea". Instead, it was the idea that, buried in Gray's country churchyard, there were "village Hampdens" -- people of courage and conviction and energy, who might, like the Hampden of seventeenth century ship-money fame, have helped to bring down an errant King, if circumstances had conspired to call on their heroism.

In France, years later, I met heros of the resistance -- people who sprang from commonplace occupations to organise guerrilla warfare against an invading army at appalling risk to themselves, before returning after the war's end, invisibly, to 'ordinary life'.  These were village Hampdens who, for a moment, had been snatched into history. 

But what about the heros whom circumstance doesn't bring into the history-books even for a moment? People who, in Gray's phrase, "along the cool sequester'd vale of life", keep "the noiseless tenor of their way"?

Strangely enough, I met some of them last week, in my own village of Thorncombe.

We were celebrating the tenth birthday of the Thorncombe First Responders.

Who, you may ask, are the Thorncombe First Responders? Answer: invisible heros of our time who, entirely voluntarily and without the slightest reward (at least in this life) provide a para-medic service. The big thing is that their service gets to you in about five minutes, instead of the half hour or more that it takes for the ambulance to reach our far-away village.

I talked to one of my fellow-villagers at the birthday-party and asked innocently how she had got involved. Oh, she said, it was because they saved my life when I fell through a glass roof and would have died of lost blood by the time the ambulance arrived.

That tells you just about everything you need to know about how useful these guys are.

But I also know, from long personal experience, the huge amount of time and emotional energy that the organisers of this life-saving service have invested in it, the minor but persistent battles with bureaucracy which they have had to fight, and the unfailing good humour and determination with which they have undertaken the task.

Yes, it is only a small thing in a very large world. During the lifetime of the Thorncombe First Responders, there has been (thank goodness) no civil war to fight, no Nazi invasion to resist, no great, defining historical moment in which to participate. But these people, all the same, have shown something of the mettle that would have been needed to overcome great obstacles if we had encountered them.

So Gray was right. Buried in country churchyards all over England -- and in the burial-grounds of our cities, too -- there are the remains of individuals whose names are not known to us, but whose works and characters were well known and properly appreciated by those close around them. "Large was [their] bounty, and [their] souls sincere, [they] gained from Heav'n ('twas all [they] wish'd) a friend".

 

SOUTH STREET POST BOX

28 April 2008

I don't know whether any reader of this column happens to recall a cartoon from the 1960s in which a publican is standing irately at the bar of his pub, saying to a customer: "How many times am I going to have to tell people the reason I don't stock that beer is that there is no demand for it".

You wouldn't expect to see a cartoon of the same sort today.  On the whole, British businesses - especially small businesses - are now highly responsive to customer demand, and genuinely seek to provide what their customers and prospective customers want.

I'm afraid, however, that the same is not yet really true of some of the biggest suppliers of services.  A particular case in point is our friend, the Royal Mail.

Across quite a lot of its activities, the Royal Mail is no longer a monopoly - since it is challenged by couriers and parcel delivery firms of various kinds.  And, although the Internet has created a huge explosion in home delivery, it has also turned e-mail into a powerful competitor to the old snail-mail.

Whether all of this vast communication actually improves the quality of our lives, I really rather doubt - but it has certainly become a fact of life and one with which the Royal Mail presumably has to wrestle on a daily basis.

So you might expect the Royal Mail to concern itself with retaining customers, and hence with meeting their needs and demands responsively.

But the saga of the post box in South Street, Dorchester has led me to wonder whether this is quite the case.

The story is simple. The post box in South Street was removed. After some correspondence and agitation from various quarters, I was given assurances that it would be replaced in due course. Then the Royal Mail decided to put it somewhere else instead. A popular outcry followed; and - though I am still checking this - I think we are now on the verge of getting it reinstated in a broadly similar place.

The amount of trouble that has had to be caused before the Royal Mail puts the post box roughly where people want it, suggests an organisation that has not yet completely adapted itself to the idea that the customer is king. 

But, dear reader, just in case you were in any doubt about the underlying motive, witness a recent conversation between one of my constituents and the Royal Mail about this issue. 

The constituent rings up and is delighted to be told that the box will be put roughly where customers want it after all.   Then the Royal Mail official at the other end of the phone line adds that it is altogether probable that this will be a very popular location and the box may, therefore, get filled up quickly - too quickly, perhaps, to be emptied on time.

I would say that the spirit of the 1960s is alive and well in the headquarters of the Royal Mail today.