We need new legislation on cycling. Something that lays down stiff penalties for grown men who buy expensive bikes and funky Lycra gear, then ride on the pavement.
Unfortunately this is not what Eric Martlew put forward last Friday. Instead the MP for Carlisle gave us the Protective Headgear for Young Cyclists Bill. This would make it an offence to allow a child under 16 to ride a cycle without a helmet on the road or “in any park, garden or recreation ground to which the public have access without payment”.
You can imagine how well this plays on daytime television. “Well, Esther (sob), if it saves one child from injury I think it will be worth it.” “Wonderful, Eric. And in part two: ‘My grandmother stole my fiancé’.”
Martlew, certainly, was convinced of his own righteousness. Anyone who opposed him had base motives. “The Association of Cycle Traders seems more interested in selling bicycles than in the safety of children.” Yet the debate reinforced the impression that no one is sure how great the safety benefits of helmets are.
The bill foundered when Eric Forth moved that the House should sit in private. He lost by 25 votes to nil but proved there were fewer than 40 MPs present. So the Commons moved on to next business.
People who oppose Martlew point out that where helmets have been made compulsory fewer children cycle to school. This is an odd thing to be advocating when childhood obesity in this year’s hot political issue.
They are right, but Martlew’s bill goes deeper into contemporary neuroses than that. It reinforces the idea that the outside world is a dangerous place. Better to stay at home, to watch it on television. And if you have to go out, then wear protection.
It also reflects our lack of confidence in ourselves as adults. No doubt children who cycle on busy roads should wear helmets. Equally, it is hard to believe that a child riding a fairy cycle in the park needs to wear one.
Who is to make this judgement? You might say parents, but they could get it wrong or think differently from the majority. Better to leave it to the likes of Eric Martlew and pass a law.
Charles Kennedy was missing on Monday. Not from the Commons – he was there to hear Tony Blair describe how well things are going in Iraq – but from Blaby Road Park, South Wigston.
He had been due to visit the Harborough constituency until events at Westminster got interesting and forced him to cancel. But we still had a television crew, Bill Newton Dunn and several local councillors.
They were there to mark the success of the district council (Liberal Democrat-run Oadby and Wigston) in reclaiming the park from underage drinkers. It is a thoroughly modern initiative involving anti-social behaviour policies, alcohol bans and community support officers.
In essence, councils are reinventing park-keepers. They were got rid of 20 years ago because the right wanted to cut taxes and the left believed they were crypto-fascists.
The South Wigston project also involved the building of a skateboard park. What a photo opportunity that would have been for Charles!
Skateboard parks mean bare concrete. And bare concrete means graffiti, which poses a dilemma for officialdom. These days it is too self-doubting to say graffiti is a bad thing but not relaxed enough to let events take their course.
The solution? Official graffiti. The council employed professionals to write on the concrete before anyone else got at it. You need a Masters in Graffiti Studies before you are allowed near a spray can these days. (“Who painted you this then? Bloody cowboys.”)
I had expected to have naughty libertarian doubts about the Blaby Road scheme. But it seemed a sensible idea and I liked the municipal flowerbeds.
After leaving the park I walked into Leicester down streets of council housing. You could tell they were council houses because of the tall metal columns topped with CCTV cameras. The scene was a cross between the old East Germany and a work of science fiction.
And at Westminster there is now a screen across the public gallery, supposedly to protect MPs from gas attack. You could call them cowards, but they seem to have had little to do with it. It was an initiative from the security services. Conspiracy theorists will believe they put it up to keep MPs in a state of fear.
If you listen carefully, you can hear Bin Laden laughing.
Newspaper headlines are written in a foreign language. They are full of words no one uses that way in real life: bid, probe, swoop, boost, blitz.
You never hear a teacher say, “I am going to rap you, and if it happens again you will be slammed.”
In the twenty-first century the commonest word in political headlines is “crackdown”. It can describe anything from a massacre to the most nannyish extremes of New Labour.
Judging by the papers from the past few days, the Chinese government’s slaughter of protestors in Tianeman Square was a crackdown. And they also say that a Norfolk gangmaster has supported a crackdown on illegal firms trading in immigrant labour.
A US crackdown has killed 40 rebels in Fallujah mosque, and the Department of Health has launched a crackdown on superbugs. Two opposition leaders in Guinea have been barred from travelling abroad in a government crackdown, and youths are being targeted as part of a crackdown on rail crime in Buckinghamshire.
Meanwhile in Kent, as part of a “crackdown on nuisance yobs” parents are being warned that any children involved in anti-social behaviour could be arrested or fined up to £80.
Not only that, according to a police spokeswoman. “We will take people’s details, we will monitor their behaviour and we will if necessary refer them to the Joint Family Management Programme (JFMP). The JFMP is a multi-agency managed approach to a person’s anti-social behaviour and includes police, education authorities, social services, housing authorities and local councils.”
I suspect this is not a crackdown but its more insidious cousin the clampdown. Another related term, used to describe action against drunken behaviour in the Republic of Ireland, is “craicdown”.
It is easy to dismiss headline language as the work of lazy journalists, but our real problem is lazy politicians. Somewhere in these different uses of crackdown is the central idea of doing something nasty to a small, easily identifiable and unpopular group.
So when David Blunkett announces “fresh crackdowns on bogus students and sham marriages,” it really means that a few wretched individuals will have their lives ruined so the government can give the impression that it is doing something to sort out a confused policy.
Or, to put it another way: Lib Dem blasts bogus bride ban bid.
How do you make an Essex MP’s eyes light up? Shine a torch in his ear. (Except Bob Russell, of course.)
Why don’t you give Essex MPs coffee breaks? It takes too long to retrain them. (Except Bob Russell, of course.)
Why do Essex MPs support VAT? Because they can spell it. (Except… well, you know what I mean.)
Essex Man was out in force last Thursday as the Commons broke up for Easter. Four MPs from the county spoke in the adjournment debate.
John Cryer does not count as he is the son of two Yorkshire MPs – Ann Cryer and the late Bob Cryer. His politics are what you would expect from a former Tribune and the Morning Star journalist. “First past the post is the nearest to a perfect system that we have.”
Nor was there much of the Ford Escort and fluffy dice about Alan Hurst. The Labour MP gave a wistful account of the decline of local government.
Real Essex Man was represented by two Tories: Bob Spink and David Amess. I recently read a description of the breed by Vivian Bendall, who held Ilford North until 1997. (He deserves our gratitude for defeating Tessa Jowell when he gained the seat from Labour at a by-election in 1978.)
Bendall wrote that Essex Man likes law and order. Spink proved him right, calling on local police to “show no tolerance of antisocial behaviour, youth nuisance or straightforward thuggery”.
But Essex Man is keener on some laws than others, and Amess complained about the speed cameras in his constituency. What Essex Man really likes are laws that control other people.
The same is true of public spending, which Bendall tells us Essex Man is against. Spink wanted more spent on the police, and both he and Amess had their share of good causes they wanted government to support.
Indeed, Bendall's article says that one way for the Tories to win back Essex Man would be to support spending on the infrastructure in the East London Corridor. Again, what they want is spending cuts for other people.
Essex Tories are probably no more confused than the rest of their party, but it does suggest another joke.
How do you make an Essex MP laugh on Sunday? Tell him a joke on Friday.
When I was at university in York we would gather in the television room on nights when an English football team was playing in Europe. There was always a group of supporters from the club involved, and Animal was there too.
Animal – named after the drummer in the Muppet Show house band – had a black beard and an impenetrable Black Country accent. He made it his business to cheer on whichever foreign club was playing and revelled in the disappointments of the other viewers.
The Commons has its equivalent of Animal in Eric Forth. Each Friday bright-eyed backbenchers bring their bills to the House. These win wide support, only for Forth to point out their deficiencies and use his mastery of procedure to see they go no further.
Last week it was the turn of Kevan Jones and his bill to prevent large shops from opening on Christmas Day. Already a couple of chains have experimented with the idea, and if some stores start doing it regularly the others will feel obliged to follow.
Forth was in good form. What about people who aren’t Christians? What about people in other industries? “I have given some flavour of my reservations. I look forward very much to returning to them in the Bill’s subsequent stages, which I think will, if anything, be even more interesting” he finished, with the sort of glee with which Animal used to greet a late equaliser by Borussia Mönchengladbach.
I was in York the other day. I have been back before, but this time I was struck by how much it has changed. It’s not so surprising, as Jim Callaghan was prime minister when I first went there. (Or it may have been Mr Gladstone: at my age you forget.)
There was a big branch of Borders where I spent so much that I did not dare look for the Waterstone’s. But of the independent bookshops I used to know – Godfrey’s in Stonegate and Pickering’s in The Shambles – there was not a trace.
It was a vision of a world where Eric Forth has had his way and the big stores have triumphed. But we still need our sacred days and sacred places – maybe that is why I, a confirmed unbeliever, ended the day by going to Evensong in the Minster.