Sabbatical, unplanned.

Not entirely intentional, but when you spent time writing about local issues for a living, doing it for fun gets a bit old.

In the meantime head over to my new business writing blog, which should at least get more regular updates.

I am, of course, mortified that Kate didn't cross-post this from her personal blog.

I'll blame her forthcoming wedding...

Burning issue

Looks like Woking's waste incineration woes are going national

Crikey

Three miles or so due east. I can't help wondering what this is doing in such a built up area.

Holey potholes, Batman

The roads around St Albans are a bit crap - well, a lot crap - mostly due to the breathtaking incompetence of Hertfordshire Highways. Trips to Woking and its environs make me mildy jealous.
Since 'tis the Season and all that, shopping trips are wider ranging. In practical terms this means the Big Tesco at Watford, or the Big Tesco at Hatfield and, in the case of Hatfield some B-Roady goodness to remind the driver of Herts Highway's capicity to not repair a pothole.
You would think, therefore, that Herts would be mercifully free of the Lead Foot Brigade, but no. Now, there are some stunningly silly speed limits around the place (as in any other place, I suppose). But I have to say that the tendency of habitual speeders to blame anyone and everything but there own Lead Foot Syndrome for the fact that they just got a tug from Mr Plod has moved from being a midly entertaining raw material for satire to, well, tedious bollocks.
So shut up. If you don't want a tug, don't sodding speed. Then go here and click on the picture.

Big business, small minds

Cafe Monsoon was a restaurant in St Albans that specialised in a fusion of north Indian and Mediterranean cuisine. It was a nice place where the proprietor, Moh Sayid, tried to create an arts venue off the back of top clase nosh. And very well it was going too.
A St Albans Writers Group, yoga instructors, cookery masterclasses, music and dance packed the place out.
Then the local water company did mains renewal outside. During this work water started to seep into the the basement of Monsoon and eventually Moh was pumping out 600 gallons before he could open. Early in 2004 Monsoon closed so that repairs could happen. Then the problems really began.
Are all insurance companies utter, utter scum? Many of you will be familiar with the story: We've got big lawyers; you've got big debts. The insurers pulled every trick they could to avoid paying out, most risibly accusing Moh of not doing enough to mitigate his losses.
Despite this, Moh didn't give up and eventually re-opened the repaired restaurant in time for Christmas. But the momentum was lost, trade was slow to return, it was hand-to-mouth stuff and still the insurers stalled. Then the flooding returned. Monsoon struggled on for a month or so, but last week the dreaded 'legal notices' appeared on the doors.
The cause of the flood was established and liability clear; the restaurant was flying when it was first forced to close. But sickeningly bureaucratic jobsworth insurers would rather drive one of the city's most interesting venues into oblivion that do the right thing.

Poll of poles

Strictly unscientific sampling suggests that the Lib Dems will win this not-especially-safe Labour seat. They have more estage agent-style boards-on-a-post outside houses than Labour and the Tories combined.

Either that, or the orange shows up better.

Crime and punishment

OK. So this is going to make me sound a right old fart, but....
The other day I was in the local Co-op and overheard a conversation in which Mother A was lambasting Mother B for having the brass bound audacity to tell off Mother A's mutant offspring loveable rogue. "I said: "It's not your place to tell him off'," she said (obviously this was behind Mother B's back).
Now, when I was a kid if someone else's Mum told me off, the last person I wanted to find out wass my mum.
Memo to modern parents: Your little lambywammykins is not an angel and, sometimes, a little street justice is both necessary and appropriate. Support it, don't make it even harder to keep the little bastards under control.

Election observation

I don't know what it is like elsewhere, but I've just had a Tory election flyer through my door. I can't remember the last time the Tories were even organised around this way, never mind bothering to pound the streets in an area that returns three Labour councillors without fail.
A rune to read? Who knows.

The (pot)hole story

Kate and me both live in St Albans. Rob Harris, who will hopefully be making his debut post in the not-too-distant future, lives in Woking, Surrey. From time to time I have occasion to drive down to Rob's neck of the woods. The two areas are fairly similar. Subtle differences in geomorphology mean that Surrey is significantly more wooded than Hertfordshire; there are some differences in the local vernacular architecture, but mostly they are two areas of mainly small towns and cities and a bunch of villages linked by single carriageway roads. So, apart from the extreme annoyance that is the Heathrow section of the M25, going from one place to the other offers few surprises.
Except that Surrey does not have Hertfordshire Highways. I know that might sound obvious, but you have to experience the breathtaking inability of HH to keep the roads of the county in anything like acceptable order to fully appreciate its significance. A few months back someone had her axle wrecked by a pothole and was told she was not eligible for compensation because fewer the 13 (that's THIRTEEN) weeks had passed since the pothole was reported. Doesn't that seem a long time to let an axle-wrecker fester?
Then, last Christmas, I was driving home on the A5 just past Redbourn. There was a fair bit of traffic about, so I had my lights dipped most of the time. I hit mainbeam on instinct and avoided running straight off the unlit road thanks to the joys of ABS and traction control. No functioning cat's eyes. No reflectivity in what passed for white lines.
I was coming from my brother's in Northants. May I suggest that Hertfordshire Highways takes a night time trip up there, to see what proper roads look like?

Back to the garden window

I was going to post the second half of the comment about the view from my garden window, but things have change in a most encouraging way. The street has come to life - just a bit, but a hopeful bit. Street football is back.
All the stereotypes are present and correct:

• The serious players (stepovers and flashiness, poor finishing)


• The cheeky chappie (more enthusiasm than skill, but always with a smile)


• Billy Big Bollocks (has to show how hard he can kick, so loses the ball quite often).

Curiously they play across the road rather than along it, like we did. Quick enquiries revealed that this was because the goalies could use the grass verges. Apparently that don't have the bottle to dive on tarmac, like we did.
Ah, well. Can't have everything.

Water bore

Bloody typical. You wait months for a post, then three come along at once.
So anyway: Three Valleys Water sticks a note through the door saying. "Your water will be off while we lay nice new plastic mains. Oh, by the way, your electrical earthing may no long work, but that's not our problem, call your electricity supplier" (OK, so they may not have worded it quite like that).
Powergen: "Not our problem, guv. Talk to EDF."
EDF (formerly 24-7): "Not ours. Talk to Powergen".
So, in this post-privatisation age, what the sodding hell does one have to do to get someone to take responsibility for things?
Had I asked for the mains to be replaced it would, of course, have been a slam-dunk "my problem". But I didn't, so why is administration being delegated to me?
Rant over.

Memo to Sat Nav makers...

...and indeed the makers of other route finding aids such as this: when giving directions to people going to St Albans don't sent them through the middle of the City. A bod from the council once told me that 75% of traffic on St Peters Street is through traffic.
It's bad enough having so many people who are lost - or who just don't care - coming through, but to have your software forcing people in is a bit much.
This isn't London - we have a finite number of streets. Teach your software to use them better.

Since elections are pending....

When I first moved back to St Albans the local paper, the Herts Advertiser ran a letter from one of the governors of my old school.
The council wanted to relocate the fire station to part of its playing fields and the letter said that a councillor had told the governor that the school would have to cave in or the council would compulsory purchase (CPO) the site for a 10th of its real value.
This was a lie. The rules of CPO are that an open market value must be paid. The Herts Ad - which is well capable of spinning a news story out of a letter - did not think this lie worthy of a story, probably because these days local hacks lack the expertise to spot something like that. I did toy with the idea of phoning the paper, but had many, many other things on my mind.
The new fire station is now under construction. Local governance: can't beat it.

Real life

I'm mindful that this hasn't been updated for ages, as Kate Allan pointed out to me. Real life huh?

The garden window

Shortly after moving back to the house in which I grew up I found myself looking out of the back bedroom window wondering what to do about the garden.
It is a big garden of the kind that they do not give to council houses anymore and, but for Margaret Thatcher, it would not now be mine. Twelve years ago I worked out that mortgage repayments would be lower than council rents and my parents exercised their right to buy. In due course, I inherited the house.
As I leaned on the window sill of the room I had shared with my brother nearly thirty years ago Nihal, my next door neighbour’s 7-year old, kicked a football around with some of his friends in their garden.
Twice the ball came over the fence and Nihal looked up at the window to ask permission to climb the fence and fetch it. The third time I was not there, but in the garden picking up the ball. I carried it to Nihal and said: “Good footballers play with the ball on the ground and pass to the feet.” It is a useful trick, which I recommend. The ball did not come over again that weekend. I returned to the bedroom window to ponder how a single man could maintain a 70ft by 30ft garden.
Two gardens further down from Nihal, another family group was playing in their back garden. I could not see anything because some privet hedges, of the kind that are the hallmark of a certain era’s council estates, obscure this garden. It was loud and joyous and I could hear the father fully engaged in the play, managing shrieks of delight and at least one major tantrum with equal ease. I listened, enjoying the scene for ages. I was mourning my mum and it made me feel better. But I could not work out what was wrong with what I was seeing and hearing.
I little while later – perhaps the same day, perhaps a few days after – I recalled a conversation that mum had related to me. She had been waiting at the bus-stop chatting with some of the other old folk who populate the mid-morning bus services. Damilola Taylor cropped up in conversation and one of the group had wondered out loud what a 10-year old was doing out that late. “Ian, it was barely going dark,” said my mum. She did not need to explain the full meaning of her statement. What should be wrong with a 10-year old heading for home just as the night is falling?
This is what niggled me about the idyllic back garden scene. When I had been a 10-year old in this house there were sixteen similarly aged kids in my road. I would guess there is a similar number now, maybe a few less. But we very rarely played in the back garden, and generally were not allowed to for fear of ruining the flowerbeds. We were not allowed out to play, we were sent out to play.
I started to pay a little more attention when I strolled up to the Co-op or tried to clear the front garden borders.
A few days later, the woman opposite was cleaning her car. Her son – I would guess around 12 or 13 years old – weaved around on an expensive looking bike. And never went more than 50 yards from the house.
I never saw a kid younger than around 12 without an adult nearby.
On the various playing fields that came with the estate, only occasionally did I see groups kicking a football around. One Sunday, when I wandered up to my old primary school a group of early-teens eyed me suspiciously, assuming that I was about to throw them out of the teacher’s car park, which they had shanghaied for a kick about. It was already obvious that kicking a ball about in the street was out of the question, because there were too many parked cars and a lot more traffic than when I was ten.
Over the full summer school holiday I did not see a single game of hide-and-seek, tag, hopscotch, French cricket, cricket, Wembley, Follow-The-Arrows or skipping. There were no cops-and-robbers, much less cowboys and Indians. I saw no evidence of willow branches being stripped to make a bow and arrow set.
I could see little evidence that one of these three things was being used creatively:
*A ball or ball substitute (tin can, stone)
*A piece of chalk
*A toy gun, or appropriately shaped twig.
A friend with kids assures me that all that I have described above still happens in school playgrounds. The evidence of my own eyes and ears tells me that at least some of it happens in back gardens. The private – or at least supervised – realm seems full of joy. But the public realm is empty.
More, another time.

Anti-social housing?

At PMQs yesterday the MP for Eltham (I didn't catch his name) asked a long question that amounted to "Will you let councils build more council houses?" the Prime Minister talked at some length, but never answered that question, which I suspect we can take as a 'No".
Meanwhile, the plots of land are still available to those who can afford them (no consent remember) and on various sites the council gets into a merry bait trying to get schemes through in a way that won't cost them control of the council.
But that's OK because there are still opportunities. Take, for example, a perfectly decent 1930s built semi-detached house.
Demolish it.
Build two detached houses with a gap of about 5 feet between them. After all, who need building or planning standards these days?
Measure the increase in value by being able to call them detached.
Good game, isn't it?

A very sub Post Office

I went to renew my car tax today. Once it would have been an easy stroll up to the local shops and the sub-post office. Then such good stuff was removed from sub-post offices. Then the sub-post office itself was removed.
The drone from the Post Office said that the closure was necessary in order to keep other sub-post offices open. That is garbage. Utter, utter garbage - exactly the same garbage it used the last time it had a round of closures. Lies.
Soon, it seems, there will be only the one Post Office - on Trafalgar Square - with nine counters (six open) and a queue half way up Pall Mall.
The despicable death-by-a-thousand-cuts manner in which the Post Office is abandoning small town Britain is a national disgrace.

Ribbon development returns?

Just up the road is a plot of land that once-upon-a-time was the corner of a farmers field. It is in the greenbelt, but that has not stopped an outfit called Property Spy from selling house-sized plots at £80,000 a time. Without planning permission and - theoretically at least - without the prospect of planning permission.
The UK government's Barker Review into housing provision provides the signal that Property Spy might be onto something. It does so by recommending the "introduction of flexibility at the local level through the allocation of additional land in Local Development Frameworks, with the release of this additional land triggered by market signals".
That's what you get when you ask an economist to do a geographer's job. What Barker is recommending is the return of ribbon development (where do you think these 'market signals' will point?) and the throwing away of 50 years of holding the line against urban sprawl.
Greenbelt policy has many problems, but it is hard to deny that it has done an exceptionally good job of protecting the countryside. And in much of the country working class people[*] have benefitted, because new and expanded towns had protected countryside within easy reach.
Hmmm. Let the greenbelt fail next to an edge of town former council estate, or let it fail near a nice cosy village with a well-organised resident's association? Tricky.
[*]I apologise. We're not allowed to call them working class any more, are we? They are 'key workers'.

And another thing....

OK, so this isn't exactly a small city post, but sometimes one needs to vent.
Tried buying a TV (or any other electrical item) lately?
I bought one not so long ago and found myself relying more on shop staff than I like to for advice. Try looking up reviews for consumer goods on Google. What you get are loads of links to other search engines and loads of links to people trying to flog you the kit.
But trying to find a proper, impartial, review site is a different matter. "What Hi fi" is pretty good, but I found it more by luck than judgement. Again, the corporate seems to win out over the individual.
Surely it' not too much to ask that when you ask for reviews, you get review sites not selling sites. Is it?
And yes, I am aware of the irony of using blogger to make these observations.

"St Albans writers groups"

So here is how it started: someone was setting up the website for Verulam Writers' Circle, a St Albans writers group. It is one of only two writers groups in the city, the other being Ver Poets.
Setting it up was quite straightforward because there was no need for anything fancy and dynamic, just a lot of information packed stuff for existing and prospective members. Then a real headache set in.
Verulam Writers' Circle has been around for a good few years and the name is rather stuck. But it doesn't take a degree in symbolic logic to realise that prospective punters will search on the string 'st albans writers groups', only without the quotes.
The trouble is that local papers and loads of assorted pointless directories contain those words, and because many of these sites are commercial, loads of people link to them - and page rank prioritises these, even if the string 'st albans writers group' does not appear anywhere on them. At least, I think that's what's happening. The net result is getting a humble local group to show for up to people who would be interested in it has proved a bit of a 'mare.
Google, it seems to me, is biased towards the corporate in a way that other search engines aren't.
I actually think it is worse than that. But more on that another time.