'Give us a break' indeed.

Strewth!

This is at least the third time The Herald has provided an un-critical platform for John Beynon to carp about the event that will eventually be known to students of local history as 'Black Sunday', or 'The Bridge Street Slaughter of the Flower Basket Innocents', in its pages: ostensibly to demonstrate the officious un-reason of Parking Enforcement Officers.

This time we get a bit of long overdue detail. Seems the users of some illegally parked vehicles were asked to move their illegally parked vehicles. Seems it was pointed out to the motorised vehicle users that there were legitimate and free parking spaces available ten yards away from where they had chosen to park illegally, and the suggestion made they move their vehicles into those. No tickets were issued. Hardly the stuff of nightmares.

Six months on from that fateful summer morning, the Morpeth Herald grinds its axe.

Not so much flogging a dead horse as flogging no horse.

Post-traumatic-stress counselling for John Beynon, and a change of editorial direction at the Herald might give us all a much deserved break.

A town in denial

This triptych of the town centre by a Morpeth schoolgirl hangs on a wall at the rear of the Sanderson Arcade. It's bold and inventive, but there's something missing from this familiar scene.

This picture of Morpeth market, one of a bucolic series recently hung in the pedestrian walkway through to Newgate Street, shows a predominantly traffic-free town centre. Looks bloody lovely, let's go there.

This relief metalwork frieze in the bus station broadcasts Morpeth's charms. Apologies for the quality of photo. Aquatic fowl and mature trees live here among warm old stone buildings.

It's a challenge to find a photo of the town in Inside Morpeth Magazine that hasn't been timed, cropped or angled to airbrush out motorised traffic.

This promotional video,

from the official Northumberland visitor website is an absolute hoot. Chortle, 14 seconds in, at the obstructed view and curious camera angle chosen to film Bridge Street: aimed coyly up at roofs and upper floors rather than the street level motorised clusterfuck. Note that filming from a crouch on the river bed will obscure traffic on Telford bridge.

Here's the un-varnished reality. That bloke's been stuck there trying to cross the road since being sent out for some milk by his mum thirty years ago. The milk's off.

The quest for commuting bliss

It's hard to keep up with the volume of car-user friendly puff generated by the Morpeth Herald. I'm getting behind. 

There was a letter from Cllr Towns - a response I think to the suggestion that the 'Lights Out!' agitators were perhaps being a tad silly – in which he treated us to anecdote about a couple of prangs at the lights. Anecdotes which might be persuasive were they balanced against data for the incidence of prangs, scrapes, near misses, altercations, shootings of the pedestrian crossing on red by northbound traffic barrelling round at speed, for a similar period prior to the installation of the 'new' lights. Without this comparison data his anecdotes are worthless.

This week we've a real peach of a front page 'report' which stands as shabby exemplar, an essential distillation (which I promise will be the last aromatherapy pun) of the car-besotted bilge the Morpeth Herald specialises in. You can read it here .

What the Herald studiously doesn't report is that the complaining, car-dependent aromatherapist lives - a trawl through the electoral rolls suggests - in Morpeth, near County Hall, at a distance of circa 1.3 miles from her place of work. 

Josie says that the days when she's able to find an all-day space for her car in the town centre “are bliss”, she “can relax”. Let's quickly run through Josie's personal transport options for a commute journey of 1.3 miles, alternatives to grinding her four wheeled fossil fuel diffuser (I lied about the puns) into town every day, that she might always and forever enjoy the relaxed bliss of not having to fret about her motor car's whereabouts. 

We've the few dozen 'Lights Out!' protest marchers themselves to thank for demonstrating recently that a 1.7 mile walk up to County Hall from the town centre is readily do-able for anyone averagely able-bodied, even those toting kids to window dress some protest banners. The walk from Josie's home to the town is shorter. Does an overall 20 to 25 minutes each way sound reasonable? How this compares with the time it takes to drive in through peak time central Morpeth, drive around a while to find a parking space, walk from parking space to clinic, pop back several times during the day to move car if unable to find a blissful, relaxing all day space, walk back to car and grind home through peak time central Morpeth at end of day, is unclear. I doubt there's much in it, and were you to add the time it takes Josie to earn the money to pay for her car commuting - fuel, parking, parking fines and a chunk of her fixed car-ownership costs (initial purchase, MOT, VED, depreciation) proportionate to her commuting mileage - walking will be the quicker option. See Ivan Illich on the subject.

Or Josie could cycle. Downhill of a morning she'd barely need to turn a pedal, could roll into work in a comfortable 5 minutes with negligible exertion. Getting back up the gradient would require more effort, would maybe reduce her speed - until she's found her cycling legs - to an average 6-7mph and extend her journey time to something over 10, but short of 15, minutes. I will concede that the return leg stretch up Castle Bank can be unpleasant for an un-confident, novice cyclist: getting over into the right hand lane approaching the mini roundabout, to take position to go up towards County Hall, can be unnerving because of the volume and speed of people like Josie using cars to get home. To begin with it may be best to hop off shy of the roundabout, walk across, and re-mount the other side. Under 20 minute round trip doesn't sound bad for a commute though, does it? 

In addition to the bliss of not having to worry about parking, walking or cycling would save Josie money, improve her fitness and health, likely see her lose weight, free up a parking space for someone who might have genuine need of it and - if anyone cares – de-carbonise her commuting.

It used to be six but might now 'only' be five peak time buses an hour that pass the end of Josie's street down the A197 into the town of a morning. Josie's place of work is right by the bus station and the bus station closer to her clinic than any legal parking space. Little to add, really, except that a folding bike would enable Josie to mix and match her commute patterns according to her energy levels. She could coast into town on her bike of a morning, giving a cheery wave to all the single-occupant car users seething about 'traffic' in long tailbacks of broiling-tin idiocy, then decide to get herself and bike back up the hill of an evening on the bus, if feeling a bit sluggish after a day spent stacking 100gallon drums of essential oils in the stockroom.

“Morpeth is so lovely, but the council is making it a misery with the parking problems,” Josie is quoted as saying in the offending front page splash. Not even close; ill-considered personal transport choices cause the car-shafted misery of Morpeth Town. Josie is ideally placed to choose to be neither perpetrator nor victim of the traffic congestion and parking over-subscription that bedevil Morpeth. 

I'm not sure what your going rate for an aromatherapy session is Josie, but this Personal Transport consultation is my gift to you.

Car Parking #1

Car parking then. Bert's an acquaintance: congenial affable chap. Fixed my best-beloved kitchen utensil – a rice cooker – for me and would take nothing for his time and trouble. Whenever I have rice, warm thoughts of Bert mingle with the scent of fluffy beads of perfectly cooked long-grain. More than an acquaintance perhaps, but not quite a mate: we've yet to compare warts after a skinful. (Scars, surely? Ed.)

Bert's with Morpeth's 'Lights Out!' movement, something of a spokesman, photographed and quoted in the Morpeth Herald. I think Bert's misguided, if well-intentioned, and that there may be causes more deserving of his energy and abilities. We discuss transport issues sometimes. Bert says that the economic decline of Morpeth was caused by – didn't merely coincide with – the introduction of parking charges circa 12 years ago. I suspect we're at the nub of it here, and that this is the wound that will not heal in the Morpeth motorist's tortured psyche: the primal unresolved betrayal, mother's breast cruelly withdrawn, the traumatic well-spring of all subsequent dysfunctional tantrums in opposition to beastly traffic lights, nasty traffic wardens, horrid road traffic law....

Is it true that Morpeth's been in economic decline for the last 12 years? I've seen no data to support this assertion. The cars congesting the streets and pavements seem always to be getting bigger and more bling, the mobile phones with which some drivers distract themselves from the tiresome chore of controlling lethal heavy machinery in shared public space are morphing into sleek flat smart tablets. Yes, small independent retailers are struggling, but might that have more to do with a global recession, the rise of internet shopping and Tescofication, the pressures identified by Mary Portas that are squeezing traditional town centres nationwide, not just Morpeth?

Anyway Bert, says I, the Morpeth motorist has it easy. A year's municipal parking permit, access to all the Council's car parks county wide, can be had for £110 (£82.50 concessionary). £2.12 per week to rent circa 16 square meters of engineered town centre hard-standing for private machinery storage, less than the cost of provision and an annual subsidy of, roughly - depending how you measure it, and we'll have a stab at some measuring shortly - between £290 and £7390. Morpeth motorists should be toasting their good fortune, humbly grateful for this largesse from the public purse.

No, says Bert, the permit is not a subsidy because Morpeth's car parks are always full and you can't be sure of finding a space.

Now..... were you listening to this on the radio rather than reading a blog you would've heard, just there, the unmistakable scraunch of a stylus being clumsily lifted from a vinyl record. Woah, back a bit! Let's re-cap: there are more cars than ever before choking the streets of Morpeth (certainly since the A1 bypass 42 years ago): there are more car parking spaces now than at any time in Morpeth's history (Google satellite view can't keep pace with the voracious tumour of tarmac gnawing away at the town's innards). The more cars than ever before are filling the more car parking spaces than ever before, Bert assures us, beyond capacity. Yet car parking charges are crippling the town!? A startling whiff of motorist illogic: something has to give here. To make stick the claim that parking charges are scuttling the town you'd need, as a minimum, to be able to point to some under-used - because over-priced - car parking. If you can't, you need a new theory.

Morpeth does pedestrianisation.

“If you'd like to find somewhere to sit I'll come and take your order. Will you be inside or..?”

“We'll sit outside, thanks, for the car showroom vibe. We find nothing complements a slice of unusual cheese and a pot of novelty tea quite like the view of a Nissan Juke's muscled backside and shiny puckered exhaust.”

“It's a pleasure to serve such discerning customers. We like to think that of the three eateries in the Sanderson Arcade we offer a garage forecourt aesthetic and ambience second only to Barluga..”

Drivers threaten to kill wardens

Another week, another edition of the Morpeth Herald. Anything this week to fan the flames of uninformed car-user resentment? Do pigs swive enmired in their own filth?

Two headline articles on the front page, no less: traffic wardens and traffic lights. We'll return to traffic lights another time, maybe. At some point we should take a broader look at parking issues in Morpeth, and the car-user lobby mantra that there must always be more and it must always be free, but not today, eh?

“Parking fines earn town cash cow label” is the headline. The article leads with “Morpeth is being disproportionately targeted for parking fines, it has been claimed.” Note the passivised verb form concealing the identity of the claimant. Nelson Mandela was it, or a bloke in the pub? Might the Herald itself be the source of this whine? “The town has been dubbed a 'cash cow'” by similar source unidentified: Carlos Tevez, Jim Bowen? OK, so eventually, 12 paragraphs after presenting this sound-bite as disinterested and authoritative, we learn that our cash cow labeller is someone called Peter Jackson. “The Peter Jackson?!” I hear you gasp, “whose ground-breaking doctoral thesis on the uses and abuses of public space has revolutionised thinking around personal transport?” No, sadly, not him.

The gist of this bleat is that since the introduction of Parking Enforcement Officers in Northumberland, some Morpethians have been done for illegal parking. Not as many as in Berwick or Hexham sure, but more than in some other towns. Proof, if proof were needed, that Morpeth car users are unfairly victimised, bearing the brunt of the war against the motorist, a Rorke's Drift to the Council's Zulu hordes.... You can probably fill in the rest.

Curious, I took a mid-day walk into central Morpeth to discern the extent to which plucky car users have been ground beneath the jackbooted heel of the Council's “over-zealous” hit squads, into reluctant compliance with oppressive road traffic law. Not at all, is the answer. On a short stroll up Bridge Street and halfway up Newgate Street I witnessed circa twenty driving offences that would earn the car users a fine and/or points on their licence, were enforcement not so... under-zealous. Cars parked in loading bays though conspicuously not loading; cars parked in disabled spaces without displaying requisite badge; cars driven and parked on pavements; cars parked on double yellow lines; cars parked across dropped kerbs; car users on handheld 'phones; a car user texting while car using. A royal flush of car user violations observed in a few minutes within 150yds of central Morpeth street scene. Plainly, the incidence of parking fines and prosecutions for dangerous driving falls way short of the incidence of parking and driving offences committed by plucky, hard-done-by Morpeth car users.

Brazen dock-side trollops offering up their tight, aching dugs to the punter's horny handed caress, these brassy motor-strumpets must want to be milked. Why the Morpeth Herald should take such a prurient interest in this voluntary commerce between consenting adults is unclear.. 

Except it isn't always consensual.

If you can make it through the first 18 paragraphs of motorist exculpating froth in this front page report you encounter in paragraph 19 what should have shaped their headline, and has shaped mine: “abuse of officers by the public has been much worse than expected, with extreme uses of bad language and personal insult experienced regularly, and even death threats being made”. Were you familiar with the Morpeth Herald's output over the years, persistently kindling and fuelling and fanning the flames of car user resentment with slanted car-centric ooze, perpetuating the myth of private car user hegemony over urban public space as right and necessity, you'd wonder at their reluctance now to claim at least some of the credit for the thuggery encountered by council officers.

Won't the editorial team take a bow?

Car sickness

Do bears shit in the woods? Is the pope Catholic? Rhetorical questions emphasising the ordinariness of something axiomatic. Either could be applied to Morpeth's “Lights Out!” movement, but neither quite captures its rank awfulness: "Do pigs swive enmired in their own filth?” comes closer to capturing the tone.

Cynical, opportunist Tory politicians get into bed with disaffected car users aggrieved at a planning decision that doesn't genuflect in the way they would like before their bloated sense of priority and prerogative. Run of the mill stuff. You'd fret that a politician passing up such an opportunity to embarrass a sitting administration mightn't be sufficiently cynical and opportunist to be a Tory; you'd fear that in some barely viable recess of his stiffening heart there may lurk a shameful doubt as to whether society's poorest and most vulnerable really should foot the bill for the criminal anarcho-capitalist excesses of the Financial Services Sector. And you'd worry that a middle aged car user of thickening waistline not moved to direct action by a planning decision that didn't prioritise the convenience of the car user over the interests of everyone else, might not be the full Clarkson; might in some un-coarsened corner of his being still need convincing that public transport is communist privation, or that active travel is a malaise best confined to the developing world and a few un-depilated Dutch and Danish hippies.

There's much about this that is ordinarily rotten. It's only averagely weasely that pedestrian safety should be invoked as a reason to remove lights which crimp the priority of free flowing traffic through the town centre, for example. But it's the cynical use of bairns which crosses the line and takes us into something sulphurous. Observe the smiling children used to garnish the Lights Out! march in this Morpeth Herald slideshow. Reflect that in 2010, 2,502 children were killed or seriously injured on UK roads. Consider that exposure to vehicle exhaust has been shown to impact negatively on the cognitive development and pulmonary health of children. Note that in 1971 80% of seven and eight year old children travelled to school without adult supervision, which figure had fallen to 9% by 1990. In what sense does the appropriation and 'generational cleansing' of public space by car users serve the interests of children?

And the Morpeth Herald? Described by the campaign as "respected and politically independent", in fact a selective echo chamber, amplifying the banal peeves of 'me first' car users, but providing no platform for alternative views. Over the months of this campaign generous space has been given to its gripes, unleavened by anything as controversial as analysis of the group's claims, political affiliation and agenda. Happy to publish letters fulminating against the lights and the mild erosion of car user privilege they represent, from car users “incandescent with rage”, “absolutely appalled by the garbage spouted”, car users asking – revealingly and with no little melodrama - “how much more do we have to suffer before we get our town back?” (whose town?), happy to chip in with supportive editorial comment “Why, oh why, does Northumberland County Council not admit defeat over the Morpeth traffic lights?”

They wouldn't publish this:

Sir,

were I to grind through Morpeth every morning and afternoon to and from my static place of work – not shopping, merely transporting myself; single occupant of my tonnage of private heavy machinery; eschewing viable public transport options; unwilling to car share with near neighbours making much the same journey; refusing to walk or cycle over trivial distances; needlessly adding my own space-voracious blart and stench and physical threat to the congested, snarling stink that is the central Morpeth peak-time street scene - I'd count my blessings for not being hammered with a congestion charge or asbo for the privilege, instead of frothing off about traffic lights pricking my engorged sense of entitlement and priority. “Oi Morpeth, you're in my way; can't you see I'm driving here?!”

You wouldn't expect greasing my passage to take priority in every transport planning decision, any more than you would expect alcohol pricing and licensing law to be dictated by derelict alcoholics.

So more traffic lights please. And more pedestrian crossings. And home zones. And play streets. And safe routes to school. And a blanket 20mph speed limit within the town boundary. And re-distribution of street space to pedestrians and cyclists. And while we're about it, let's close the roads one day a year, that our plucky traffic wardens, heroes all, might parade through the town in their splendid uniforms to the rapturous ticker-tape reception of a liberated people..

Let's close with a picture:

  

So which mode or modes of personal transport should we do most to support in the heart of this compact and historic market town? Answers on a bumper sticker..

Yours wearily,

Why the Morpeth Herald would disallow the accurate observation that Morpeth suffers a surfeit of cars, many of them being used unnecessarily for journeys that could readily be made differently, is unclear. There's very little advertising from the motor trade in the standard edition. Perhaps the periodic (monthly?) 'Motors Today' supplement is a revenue stream significant enough to warp editorial perspective. Perhaps the editor, Paul Larkin, plays golf with Cllr Towns; perhaps he believes that trying to get a quart of cars into a pint pot of town is a worthwhile exercise. Who knows?

Other stories you may be reading soon in the Morpeth Herald:

Courageous pensioner repels burglar after violent struggle, then calls for more free parking: Rare Squacco heron sighted on Wansbeck rails against “diabolical” traffic wardens: Traffic fumes cured my asthma, wheezes 4yr old William from his oxygen tent: A man in a lion costume says “I love Morpeth and this is not about doing the town down, but promoting and protecting drivers”, before being urged to pipe down by a Tory councillor: Townsfolk rejoice as car parks emerge miraculously unscathed from worst floods in a generation: Car users call for historic building eyesore to be razed and laid to tarmac: Parents applauded for decision to lock children in the cellar until old enough to use cars: “Lights Out!” spokesman proves cars are made of cinnamon-flavoured fuzzy felt, powered by the tinkling laughter of elves...

Things you probably won't ever read in the Morpeth Herald:

“It is vital that we have policies that encourage a modal shift away from unnecessary car use and the development of a transport environment that facilitates active and public transport journeys.” British Medical Association. Healthy Transport = Healthy Lives. July 2012

"The wide scale implementation of a 20mph limit was identified in the literature search as being one of the best possible policy options. This would not just reduce road accidents but also promote healthy and active transport." Public Health North East. Improving Health in the North East through Transport Solutions. March 2009