Law and order … where did it all go wrong?

GIVEN the increasingly crude world in which we live, when he asked a motorist who had parked a car on the pavement – thus forcing pedestrians on to a busy road – to move it, Derby Telegraph reader, Dave Orford, might have anticipated a mouthful of abuse. He wouldn’t have expected to be thrown down a flight of stone stairs. He certainly wouldn’t have thought that, three months later, Derbyshire police would be telling him that they would be taking no action against “the known assailant”.
Now rewind a little over half a century. It is a Saturday afternoon in November 1956. Derby County are playing away, and I am passing a loose hour by kicking a football against the wall of our house on the corner of Gerard Street and Webster Street.
Traffic wasn’t a problem that day. Webster Street was a dead-end, and, anyway, no-one who lived there owned a car.
On the opposite corner there stood a little grocer’s shop, run by Violet Craven. I got on well with Violet, who liked a gamble. I often took her bets to an illegal turf accountant in Wilson Street. Off-course betting wasn’t allowed in those days, although the police turned a collective blind eye to the bookies’ offices that then proliferated in back street Derby.
What they didn’t turn a blind eye to, however, was a 12-year-old boy kicking a football in the street – even if the only person likely to be really annoyed was his mother, whose afternoon of classical music was no doubt being interrupted by the steady thud of the ball rebounding off that wall.
I’d been there for about 20 minutes, wondering how the Rams were doing at Accrington Stanley, when two figures in blue turned the corner.
A few minutes later, having seen my details go into the pocket book of one Constable Robert Bromelow of Derby Borough Police – funny, I can still remember his name after all this time – I was standing crestfallen before my mother as PC Bromelow familiarised her with the by-law that I’d just transgressed. There was the possibility of a criminal charge, he said. After he had reported back to Full Street, it would be up to his superiors.
Just after the policemen had departed, leaving me quaking in my pumps, Violet’s husband, Ernie, appeared. Fed up with hearing the muffled sound of my football smacking against the wall opposite, it was he who had called the police. Strangely, I never held it against him, even though he could have simply stuck his head out of his door and told me to shove off.
That teatime, my father returned from his job as a Derby Evening Telegraph linotype operator. On the assumption that I might yet have my collar felt, my mother thought it best to tell him of his son’s brush with the law. Happily for me, he seemed more concerned with the Rams’ failure to take both points at Peel Park that afternoon.
Nothing more came of it. But when I read Dave Orford’s letter last week, I wondered how, in the intervening years, life had been allowed to lurch from one extreme to another. Fifty years ago, a call to the police to tell them that a small boy was kicking a football in the street was enough to bring the boys in blue running. Nowadays, you hear tales of people with burglars in the house being told that an officer might be round in a fortnight. And that throwing a man in his late 70s down a flight of stone steps doesn’t even warrant a caution.
Where did it all go wrong?

Common sense – that's all it really takes …

YOU can put all manner of things to rights while leaning on the four-ale bar. The war on terror? Bring back our troops from Afghanistan and instead spend money and manpower on shoring up our borders. Crime? If someone is sentenced to 10 years, make sure they serve 10 years. Derby County's Championship struggle? Just nip out and buy another Dave Mackay. No problem is insoluble if you have a pint of best bitter in your hand.
Indeed, by its very definition, playing the game of If I Were In Charge is always rewarding. You aren't actually in charge. Therefore you don't have to produce the actions that would bring to fruit the solutions you've scribbled on the back of a beer mat.
Nonetheless, there are times when I wish I were in charge of Derby City Council.
I'm sure you all do (not wish that I were in charge, obviously; that you were). We all believe that we've got the answers, most of them just a matter of common sense, really. We can't understand why, these days, common sense is such an apparently rare commodity within Derby's corridors of power.
Hospital and university parking, public toilets, bus lanes, the Hippodrome – you name it and a good dollop of common sense would probably solve it, albeit one person's solution can quickly become another's problem. You can't please all of the people all of the time.
But you can please most of them. In fact, when it comes to the Hippodrome, you could probably please all of them. If I were in charge, I'd do it tomorrow.
For two years, Derby City Council has apparently sat on a suggestion from Derby Civic Society that a good chunk of the area marketed as The Lanes – broadly speaking, Babington Lane, Green Lane and Gower Street – should become a conservation area.
You'd think that the council would be sympathetic. After all, its city centre management website boasts: "The Lanes feature a variety of interesting buildings, which illustrate architectural trends from the mid-19th century through to the 1960s… making it a thriving and pleasant place to visit."
The reality is that the area is far from thriving and pleasant; in fact, it is quite run down. But it is home to several listed buildings and if conservation area status were granted, then the dear old Hippodrome would become eligible for an English Heritage grant. What a great starting point that would be towards rejuvenating the area.
The council already markets The Lanes as "Derby's hidden gems". Once the theatre was restored to its former glory, it would become the main jewel in that crown. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see families pouring out of a wonderful old theatre and into bars, restaurants and small independent shops in a revitalised part of Derby.
Why the council hasn't acted on the society's suggestion is not clear, although it may have something to do with persistent rumours that it is hoping to tempt a supermarket chain to take over the old Debenhams site. If that were to happen, then a road would be needed from the inner ring road extension to the supermarket car park. You can't go driving one of those through a conservation area.
If the area was so designated and the Hippodrome saved, everything else would almost certainly follow. The hollow marketing slogan would actually begin to mean something. Personally, I'd forget about Tesco.
But then, I'm not in charge. I'm just leaning on the bar.

Now there is a worrying statistic …

A FEW years ago, I read a worrying statistic: that the number of worrying statistics had risen sharply in the previous 12 months. A worrying statistic is one that concerns the majority of the British people, and we were getting bombarded with so many statistics predicting doom and gloom that – well, we were worrying. So much so, in fact, that one MP demanded the Government put in place stricter measures against worrying statistics.
Surprisingly, since then I’ve been unable to find any statistics – worrying or otherwise – to show if it did. But the fact remained that the increase in worrying statistics itself represented, you’ve guessed it, a worrying statistic. Which just goes to show what a load of nonsense statistics can be.
All that said, here is a worrying statistic. It appears that about 50 per cent of British children don’t walk to school anymore. Instead, more and more pupils are being driven there. Which means more cars than ever making needless journeys, and more kids than ever missing out on a bit of exercise and a lot of social bonding. You see it all the time in Derby.
The reasons aren’t clear, although one thing is for sure: some parents are just too frightened to let their offspring out of their sight (as opposed to those parents who apparently couldn’t care less that their kids are marauding the streets of our city late at night, getting all the social bonding and exercise they need as they collect their Asbos).
But whatever the cause, it is another sad development of modern life. I doubt that kids are any less safe today than they were 50 years ago. As a matter of common sense, we were told never to talk to strangers. But the possibility of us coming to harm at the hands of some weirdo wasn’t at the forefront of parents’ minds, as it seems to be these days. Somewhere, of course, someone will have statistics to prove, or disprove, that assertion.
Meanwhile, if the other statistics are accurate, then hundreds of thousands of children are losing out. Walking to school was one of the great delights of my childhood. You met your mates at various points before trooping off together. Those journeys were where some of my most enduring friendships were made.
They could also be an education in themselves. My Bemrose School pal, Arthur Auger, once found a dead spider in a packet of five cigarettes that he’d bought from a shop in Drewery Lane. Being good at English (but not much else), when we got to school I was enlisted to write a strong letter of complaint on Arthur’s behalf. He was subsequently – and richly – compensated, although I doubt that Messrs W. D. & H. O. Wills realised that they had sent a fulsome letter of apology and 50 Woodbines to a 13-year-old schoolboy. What were the chances of that? Well, statistically …
The University of Derby has a statistics team that supports staff with, yes, statistics. Which brings me back to getting to lessons. The Derby students’ union says that it is doing all it can to “educate” its members to use other methods of transport, including a free shuttle bus that allows students to park and ride instead of blocking people’s driveways with their cars.
Apart from wondering how allegedly cash-strapped students can afford cars in the first place, you do puzzle at how the university is going to educate them in things like strategic information technology management if they can’t even be taught to catch a bus.
Maybe someone has some statistics on that. Then we can all start worrying.

Before you know it, the Last Post will be sounding for another year

NICE time of year for a walk, early November. Funny sort of time, too: still Keats’s season of mist and mellow fruitfulness – but only just. The nights are drawing in fast. Next Wednesday is Armistice Day. Then, before you know it, the Last Post will sound for the year itself. Tempus does indeed fugit. It doesn’t seem five minutes since people were letting off fireworks to celebrate the dawn of a new millennium. Now we’re almost at the end of its first decade.
Come to think of it, people are always letting off fireworks. Diwali, Bonfire Night, New Year’s Eve, Chinese New Year, every Tom, Dick and Harriett’s birthday – this year, someone in the next street even celebrated the Fourth of July; the excuses for disrupting the neighbourhood with industrial strength gunpowder seem never-ending. There, that’s that particular grumble out of the way. Now back to the matter in hand.
I needed a haircut (it happens every autumn). It was still 15 minutes before nine o’clock and I had three options: wait three-quarters of an hour until the free bus pass kicked in; pay the bus fare; or walk the two and a half miles from Chain Lane to Cheapside.
I wanted to get on, but the second option wasn’t really an option at all. You don’t get much for free these days (not unless you’re a career benefit claimant), so forking out £1.90 for the sake of 45 minutes didn’t appeal.
In any case, I have decided to take more walks. And as it was one of those wonderful late autumn mornings – cloudless blue sky, slight nip in the air – I put my best foot forward, humming a selection of George Formby standards as I went forth. And yes, before you ask, quite a few people think I’m barmy.
Anyway, I’d been plodding along for about 10 minutes when a man came up and asked if I could lend him a pair of jump leads. Strange question to put to a pedestrian, especially one giving full vent to When I’m Cleaning Windows, but he was desperate. His car battery was flat, the vehicle stuck in a bus lane and, unluckily for him, I was the only one around. I suggested Kingsway fire station, then hurried on my way before he could ask for a push.
It wasn’t a particularly illuminating experience (I’m still not sure what jump leads do) but, overall, you’d be surprised at the variety of things you can learn while walking into town. For instance, I can tell you where to find abandoned Sainsbury’s shopping trolleys, what time Uttoxeter Road cemetery closes (I’m going to explore that soon), and that the big house opposite Bemrose School is all sad and boarded up. Fifty years ago, when it was in its pomp, I used to stare at that house from a chemistry lab, wondering who could afford to live there. In those days, appearing attentive while daydreaming was a particular skill of mine.
Back in the present, it was a grand day for a good walk. Nice and still. Not too warm, not too cool. Add in the leaves in their full rustic majesty, the occasional dew-jewelled spider’s web, and you can begin to see why John Keats was moved to compose that famous ode.
Of course, it was an autumnal evening walk in early 19th-century Winchester that inspired him. What he would have been come up with had he stumbled upon Derby’s inner ring road extension on a busy Wednesday morning in 2009, I can’t imagine.
It makes you think, though. I wonder if that man ever got his car started.

Strategically sited public lavatories are the sign of a civilised society

PERSONALLY, I blame the Liberal Democrats. But, first, let us consider life’s positive side. I mean, there are lots of advantages to reaching 65. A free bus pass for one. And not really caring what others thinks of you for another. Done it all, got the cardigan (as opposed to the T-shirt), nothing to prove – for the first time in a lifetime you can dawdle, smell the roses, visit places on your must-do list, read books you’ve never opened, spend long, lazy days again with friends who, like you, have been busy these last 50 years earning a living. Yes, I’m grateful for every morning that I wake up and can swing my legs out of bed.
Downsides? Well, the obvious one is that you’ve got a lot less time to live than you’ve already lived. The last 35 years have passed in a blur. I was a young man then. If I last another 35 years, I’ll be expecting a congratulatory message from King William V, or whatever our dashing young prince will be called by 2044.
What has all this got to do with politics? Well, another negative to reaching pension age is that you’re much more likely to have need of a public lavatory. And Derby’s Lib Dem-led council wants to close a good number of our city’s conveniences, replacing others with automatic flushers. That debate on the matter has been delayed does not signal victory for the protesters.
Of course, there was a time when Derby was blessed with many places in which to spend a penny, inspect the plumbing, turn your bike around, or whatever euphemism you care to use in polite company. Whenever we were in the late and lamented-only-by-some Bus Station, a pal of mine used to announce that he was “going to Cheltenham”, the gents’ lavatory being next to the stop for the Gloucestershire spa.
In those days, I could leave the Queen’s Hotel in Crompton Street on a Friday night, confident that, if nature called soon afterwards, I could take advantage of the gents’ that stood by Unity Hall at the junction of Green Lane, Babington Lane and Burton Road, next to the corporation horse trough (I wonder what happened to that).
On a cold winter’s morning, on my way to the Midland Station, there was the public facility in narrow Bradshaw Street, before they bulldozed the lot to make way for Bradshaw Way. Other Derbeians of a certain vintage will have their own favourites, all placed around the town to help the day run smoothly.
But now these “branch” lavatories have all gone. And soon, if the council has its way, so too will several others, even those that I would call “mainline” public conveniences. If they aren’t removed altogether, their replacement by automatic lavatories will do little to ease the worries of an older generation. They will surely be terrified by the prospect of one day appearing in a Derby Telegraph headline, as they star in a real-life version of the limerick. I can see it now: “One old lady locked in a lavatory.” Imagine the ignominy: council workers, a fire engine, a crowd of gawping onlookers. Would you want to come out?
It is my view that, along with safe streets, good health care and reliable public transport, strategically sited loos are a prerequisite for any society that wishes to describe itself as civilised. So, councillors, save the money on something else. Your travel expenses, perhaps?
One last thing: does anyone know why the hand dryers in the Westfield loos give off more decibels than a Harrier taking off from RAF Cottesmore?

Over the moon with council reply. For a bit. At least they said sorry

SO, the controversy surrounding our spanking new Royal Derby Hospital rumbles on. Residents complaining about helicopters clattering over their houses are told to get used to it. And highways engineers come up with a cunning plan to make street parking even worse in the hope that, one day, it might make it better.
I have mixed feelings about the air ambulance. Not because I live just out of range of actual rooftop flights, more the fact that, if I ever broke my leg on Kinder Scout (unlikely I’d ever be up there, I know, but indulge me), then I’d be thankful for the swift response of an airborne medic, no matter whose peace they were shattering.
The reality is that, once you conceive the daft idea of building a huge “super hospital” slap bang in the middle of one of the most heavily populated residential areas in Derbyshire, it naturally follows that you can’t go landing helicopters there without disturbing the neighbours.
Protesters may cite an alleged agreement that flights would approach the hospital only over a “green wedge of land”, but would that make any difference? I don’t know much (well, OK, nothing at all) about flying helicopters, but I’ve seen enough television documentaries to believe that landing them depends a lot on which way the wind is blowing. Unfortunately for those living near our fantastic new hospital, this will always be an ill wind, it seems. According to Derby City Council, when permission was granted for the helipad, it didn’t go into detail about flight paths. So helicopters – air ambulances and police – will continue to chatter over Littleover’s rooftops for the foreseeable future.
But if I were among the protesting voices, I wouldn’t give up entirely. At least, I wouldn’t take the opinion of anyone at Derby City Council at face value. And I’ll tell you why.
The day before the recent Littleover Neighbourhood Forum meeting, we received an email showing proposed new parking restrictions. There would be no parking allowed in our street from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Which, so far as we were concerned, would just about solve the problem of hospital parking overflow. As it seemed too good to be true, we asked for confirmation.
It was too good to be true. Two days later, Adrian Astle, projects officer in the Regeneration and Community Department, whatever they do, emailed. The bit about no parking in our street was “a mistake which should have been removed”. Pity we didn’t know that before the neighbourhood meeting. Still, Adrian apologised for any inconvenience caused. So that’s all right then.
Meanwhile, Councillor Lucy Care tells us that the highways engineers’ plan is to severely restrict parking in some areas in order to make the problem in others even worse than it is now. This will encourage the beleaguered rest to sign up to a residents’ parking scheme that might otherwise not gain sufficient support.
Really? It would seem simpler just to find out how far people are prepared to walk to park for free. Then, by the judicious use of a tin of yellow paint, force them beyond that point. But then I’m not a highways engineer.
As for individual councillors, it’s one thing to enjoy the photo opportunity afforded by the provision of an extra park bench, quite another, it seems, to sort out a problem that angers thousands of voters.
In the meantime, those bothered by low-flying helicopters, or by any other council-related issue, might readdress their gripe. You never know: the original answer might be a mistake. At least they’d get an apology for the inconvenience caused.

More about the givers and takers than the haves and the have-nots

WHAT a difference a day makes.
First there was the dignified 84-year-old who recalled being marched into a prison camp on his 17th birthday, and the 70-somethings who were only children when they escaped aboard the last ships to leave before the bombs fell.
Later, there were the world-owes-me-a-living layabouts of modern life, the sort that must make the others wonder if their sacrifices were ultimately worthwhile.
From dignity to despair – it takes only a few uneasy steps in today's Britain.
Scene One was a military club in Piccadilly, where a reunion of those who'd been in the Second World War's Malaya campaign was under way. The old soldier had joined the volunteer forces on the outbreak of hostilities. He was still a teenager when the Japanese put him to work on the Thai-Burma railway. Sixty-seven years on, he smiles a lot. But he still suffers nightmares.

Most of the others had been small children in 1942, the offspring of planters and civil servants working for the British Empire on a part of the map that was still solidly red. Their stories were remarkably similar. After the Japanese invasion, their fathers had spent the next three-and-a-half years – if they survived – in the dreadful Changi prison, or on the Death Railway. The children fled with their mothers as Singapore capitulated.
To be honest, I felt something of a fraud at this gathering of folk dedicated to keeping the families of the British Malayan volunteer forces in touch with one another.
I had no shared experiences. I was there simply to keep alive the memory of my own relative, cousin Fred, who'd served as a volunteer before spending the rest of the war in Changi. So it was enough to stand and listen – and in some awe, too.
Scene Two was Derby city centre, the following day. There was a time when everybody in the middle of Derby looked busy, as if they were going to, or coming from, somewhere. But now there were many who appeared to be just hanging about. Some were scruffy; others well dressed. Some looked like foreigners; others were obviously locals. Some were in groups; others alone.
They all had one thing in common, though: they didn't appear to be going anywhere, or coming from anywhere.
If I'd been a brave man, I'd have approached at least one or two, and asked a very simple question: "Excuse me, I'm dying to know – who pays your wages?" But I think that I already knew the answer: indirectly, you and me, dear reader.
I'd be very surprised if the relatively young people who can apparently afford to loll about all day in Derby, often drinking strong lager, aren't on some kind of benefit. And, here, I may differ slightly from the likes of UKIP: I don't care whether they arrived yesterday, hanging under a container lorry from Calais, or whether they can trace their origins right back to the primordial soup that once sloshed around this particular bit of Merry England.
I'm not bothered whether they are from Timbuktu, or whether neither they, nor their ancestors, have ever set foot outside the Ring Road or its prehistoric equivalent.
I'd just stop the benefits of anyone whose sole idea of a career path is learning how to fill out a claims form.
We used to say that life was all about the haves and have-nots. Today, it's more about the givers and takers.
Those Malayan veterans and their children gave a lot. Sometimes they must feel terribly let down.