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