We have all been here before

Back in 2012 we had a look at Morpeth's fantasies about itself.

Plus ca change..

Hannah Slater's original triptych painting has been replaced with another picture, by Sarah Farooqi this time, of cental Morpeth. Or Morpeth as it might appear were Morpeth a town in the Netherlands, or a town in a benign parallel universe.

Wow! Traffic absent and tamed. Two tiny cars nosing gingerly along flanked by running, unaccompanied children, kids with balloons, mums with pushchairs, pets. Visionary shared space scenario, person-centred street-scene. Safety. Peace. Clean air! War is over if you want it. Let the bells ring..

So has Morpeth's Bridge Street changed at all over the last seven years? Has it buggery: still four lanes for cars; two for moving machinery, two for stationary machinery.

We have all been here before.

Ash to ashes..

In a departure from my usual transport themed excursions we've a guest contributor denied column space on the letters page of the Morpeth Herald. We badly need an e-zine alternative to the Herald as a platform for progressive thinking in the town. Morpeth Matters, the facebook page moderated by the right wing local politicians who fronted the wretched Lights Out! campaign, does not serve.

Sent: Sunday, 3 November 2019, 18:14:33 GMT

Subject: Letters

Dear Editor,

Last week Morpeth lost an old, much loved and highly valued friend: the beautiful and historic ash tree, which had stood in Dawson Place for well over fifty years, was cut down and removed.

To describe this as an act of both civic and environmental vandalism would not be an exaggeration: the tree had graced the square for generations, and was greatly loved by the local residents and also enjoyed on a daily basis by the many schoolchildren who passed it by on the way to Middle and High schools. It was a valuable wildlife habitat, and in its lifetime must have also removed significant amounts of C02. 

And this was a healthy tree: despite being an ash, it bore no signs of ash dieback, nationally an increasing worry, and was as a result even more valuable. And it was removed under instruction of Karbon Homes without any advance warning or notification, without any discussion or consultation with Dawson Place residents. 

To describe this as an outrage is not an exaggeration: we cannot take the moral high ground and lecture others elsewhere in the world, for example those in Brazil, about the cutting down of trees when we continue to do so ourselves here. 

I called the tree a friend: that is certainly how it has felt to those of who have lived with its generous company for decades. Its loss feels like a bereavement, but it is not one that can be allowed to pass without holding to account those who were responsible. Karbon Homes have serious questions to answer for their act of wilful environmental and cultural vandalism.

Yours, 

P__ S__  

PS I have enclosed before and after photos of the tree taken only this Summer and what was left of it on Friday morning. 

The Joy of Surveillance

Perhaps for Morpeth's local polity the fictional village of Sandford, setting for the film 'Hot Fuzz', isn't a wretched dystopia but an exemplary community to be emulated. How else to explain this front page headline story, remarkable even by the standards of the Herald?

You can't not take a swing at drek like this, so:

Sir,

you report "Delight at new CCTV system for town". Only "delight"? Nowhere a spasm of disquiet or curiosity about this beefing up of surveillance in the places where we live and work?

Oughtn't surveillance in public space to be conditional on the consent of the community being subjected to it, a community first persuaded of its necessity and proportionality? Were Alison Byard and David Bawn elected to their respective positions on manifesto pledges to extend surveillance: have they a mandate? Perhaps they could clarify? 

£2,500 from the Chamber of Commerce: what was the total cost? Were there any other private contributors or was all the balance public money?

In whose office do the monitors sit: who is it that has us under surveillance? Does the harvester and processor of all this personal data have GDPR compliant structures, procedures and safeguards in place? Who should we approach with our 'subject access requests'?

And is there no flinching, anywhere, at the glib, unexamined conflation of "the common good" with the business interests of the Chamber of Trade? Might there be metrics of "the common good" in a community other than the solvency of its commercial landlords?

Faithfully

Fuelling your passion for cars..

The Morpeth Herald feels it's its job to fuel our passion for cars. Which is strange, considering. The automotive industry isn't short of a bob or two and can perhaps afford its own advertising. Anyway, the editor didn't like this:

Sir

You report (Jan 3rd) that activity levels of children in Northumberland fall well below the CMO's minimum recommendations, with damaging implications for their future health and well-being.

That motorised traffic in the places where we live suppresses levels of walking and cycling is undisputed. In 1970, 80% of 7 and 8 year olds made their own way to school unaccompanied, which figure had fallen to 9% by 1990, parents justifiably loathe to expose their children to the danger brought to our streets by rising traffic densities. Car use by adults effects a 'generational cleansing' of the street scene, for which service Morpeth rewards the car user with free parking worth - steering by figures that appeared on your pages - circa £650 per space per year. 

Given the negative health consequences of car use on children - reduced independent mobility and activity levels being just one - what should we make of the Herald's decision, in the same Jan 3rd edition, to fluff its coverage of matters automotive with a picture of a laughing child ecstatically hosing down a car?

Is this cheeky editorial sass, or disingenuous cheer-leading for car-hegemony by a sclerotic local paper? Or are you implying that children might achieve the required levels of activity by being set to work energetically scrubbing and valeting our cars?

Mind, she seems cheerful enough, unperturbed by the existential challenges to her generation posed by climate change, legacy of her forebears' feckless fossil-fuel frenzy. Perhaps she knows something we don't.. 

Faithfully