Sunday 9 February 2014

Learning from Dawlish


The UK Environment Agency has been taking a lot of stick in the last few days, and apparently deservedly so, given its evident role in the causation of the disastrous floods in Somerset. The only dealings I have had with this body, over a trivial matter a few years ago, revealed an astonishing level of incompetence and bureaucratic absurdity (and that was in dealing with just one person – so think what an entire organisation can achieve !). I had written to point out that an information board provided by the Environment Agency not far from where I live contained several gross factual errors. The initial response I received thanked me for my Freedom of Information request, and supplied details of how to proceed. So I wrote again, trying to explain my purpose – which was to help the Agency improve its educative service to the public, by providing correct information. The reply came back that the board was nothing to do with them, so I then supplied photographs which showed the words “Environment Agency” plastered all over it. The next reply was that the matter would be forwarded to the appropriate person, but was immediately followed up by a letter from the same person, telling me that the board was not their responsibility – and seemingly unaware of our previous correspondence. At this point, deciding that sarcasm, anger or even humour would be lost on this witless minion, I gave up. I would like to think that today she’s up to her eyes in it in Somerset, but I’m very confident that she’s somewhere far more comfortable.

If you’re going to provide information as a public service, it’s important to get it right. If you can’t believe the Environment Agency when they’re dealing with establishable, uncontroversial, and fairly trivial facts, why should you believe their stories about climate change, or follow their advice when you have reason to believe you are  threatened with flooding? Oh no, you mustn’t object; they’re the experts you see, they understand these matters. The Environment must at all costs be protected, even if submerged by water or forested with wind turbines. No, not the countryside; The Environment. Sorry, you’re not getting it, are you. Not the land, not that place where some people live and work and find beauty, as they have done for many generations, no, not that, that isn’t important, but The Environment. That’s what matters. Being green, being sustainable, being carbon-footprint-guilt-free, protecting the rights of newts, rodents, and unusually brass-necked tits.

But enough of Lord Whatsisname. One of the most memorable images from this disastrous week in the West Country has been of the wrecked main line railway at Dawlish. This has resulted in the loss of rail services from Plymouth and Cornwall to and from the rest of the country, a situation which is likely to pertain for some time. Inevitably suggestions have arisen concerning the resurrection of lines long closed – in particular the direct inland cut-off between Exeter and Newton Abbot – while other comments have questioned the relevance of current discussions about HS2 when parts of the existing network are so in need of attention. I hope these suggestions and arguments will bear fruit, inevitably after the present crisis has subsided.

One thing we appear not to have is a national railway strategy (or indeed any kind of national strategy as far as I can see, other than for self-destruction), although doubtless there are think tanks, working parties (another fancy cake, dear ?), focus groups and quangos all expensively beavering (or, indeed, quangoing) away at such things, well insulated from reality and from each other, as well as local groups and rail professionals who know their history and are cognisant of the issues. I’ve recently been reading books on railway art and architecture, and on closed branch lines and stations, and the thing that struck me was that – even until well into the 1960s – there was so much stuff – so many tracks, alternative routes, stations, locos, carriages, personnel. There was a sense of safety in numbers; if something went wrong, there was always something you could do about it, someone nearby who would help, something else available  – well short of having to call in what’s left of the military or disturbing some fatuous slob in Westminster. Go to some other countries today – Belgium is a good example – and you’ll see how it used to be here, plenty of spare stuff, extra tracks, other routes, alternatives. Call them old fashioned? I wouldn’t. Here, however, ruthless efficiency (oh yes ?) has been achieved so completely that when disaster strikes there is no alternative, no resilience, no built-in redundancy to call upon.

Cornwall may have been cut off by exceptional weather conditions, but if you look at a railway map of Britain you will see that there are only two routes across the Anglo-Scottish border (so, then, only two sets of customs posts, minefields and guard dogs needed after 18th September), and only two major routes between England and Wales. Post-Beeching the network is so skeletal that major incidents – floods, other types of weather damage, accidents, terrorism – can have a paralysing effect across large areas. There are many pinch points in the network that are highly vulnerable to these sort of events; a glance at a map will readily identify them.
One of the precursors of the internet, the US Darpanet, was built with the idea that if any part of it got knocked out, e.g. by a nuclear strike, information could easily be re-routed. When planning HS2, or other improvements to the network, it will be as well to bear this kind of strategic thinking in mind. Sadly, it takes a meteorological  calamity to make the point.

Sunday 2 February 2014

Why Cinders did not go to the Hôtel


There’s a certain character who is ubiquitous on the telly these days. Allegedly he’s suffered personal misfortune in recent times, so I won’t name him or be too hard on him. The Beeb is evidently trying to find something for him to do, something that he can do. Some time ago he did a history of the railways of Great Britain that included a lot of film of  himself doing various things, like pretending to be a navvy and being in Canada, while managing to omit both Brunel and Beeching; more recently he’s appeared on quiz shows looking like a spare part, and the last time I had to switch him off was when he announced that Hitler came to power in 1934. I get heartily sick of being warned about news items containing flash photography; this particular individual should come with a “faulty fact” warning.

At the beginning of the year this hapless soul was scheduled for some other worthy venture at exactly the same transmission time as the new mini-series of “Sherlock”. What a shame. This mischance does, however, provide a link to a discussion of other factual errors. “Sherlock”, starring The Cumberbatch, with Martin Freeman as Dr Watson, is hugely enjoyable television, albeit baffling at times, and the episode featuring Holmes’s best man speech at Watson’s wedding was simply wonderful. The initial use of “postmodernist” cut-and-paste techniques, head-up displays, tag clouds, vast data bases and other I.T. references was inspired and compelling, and not incompatible with the original Holmes. Sadly, by the time of the last episode in the most recent season, the fast moving exhilarating irreverence had degenerated into a load of self-referential, nod-and-wink, smirking metafictional tosh. Amusing, but tosh all the same.

The first episode in the recent series featured a “lost” Underground station between Westminster and St James’s Park stations on the District and Circle lines. “Lost” tube stations are a well researched niche fascination, much is known about them (York Road, City Road, Down Street and South Kentish Town among many others) and one would not have to be particularly fanatical to know that such a station – supposedly directly beneath the Houses of Parliament - does not exist. Never mind, it might do, for that is in the nature of this slightly paranoid transport specialisation. Fair enough.  Holmes and Watson were indeed shown on location in the splendid concourse of Westminster station. As one would expect, other locations, perhaps the disused Aldwych station, were used for filming. Fine. What was unacceptable, and something that millions of people would have spotted, was that on the supposed CCTV images, a deep level tube station was shown – I don’t know which one it was, but it was definitely not a District Line station. Presumably it would have been possible to film in the correct location. Viewers of “Sherlock” are not likely to be stupid; one felt insulted. Apparently there is an entire website devoted to the glaring errors in this episode.

OK, that was fiction, and the annoyingly evident inaccuracy perhaps doesn’t matter very much. Errors in supposedly scholarly works are less excusable. I’ve recently been reading a biography of Napoleon, which refers to the exhumation of the well-preserved body in St Helena, then the transfer of ashes to and through Paris, and finally the re-burial of the body under the great dome of the Hôtel des Invalides. In passing the author, a proper historian, not the hapless TV presenter, refers to the Invalides dome as one of the world’s great domed spaces, like Westminster Abbey. Oh, not St Paul’s Cathedral then? I wonder what line he was on (I suspect him of being an American).

Confused, I read and re-read the section. Was the mighty emperor buried or cremated or what? The impression I formed was that the author didn’t actually know, was copying from some other confused source, and wasn’t taking any chances. I mean, it’s kind of important, and it would be embarrassing to get it wrong. I looked at the English language version of the official Hôtel des Invalides website, which – astonishingly – said much the same thing: body, ashes, body. Recourse to Wikipedia and several other sources established that it was a body throughout, but that the French expression “La retour des cendres” refers specifically to this postmortem Napoleonic homecoming, and that “cendres” refers not to cremated ashes or cinders, but to mortal remains. “The Return of the Ashes” is something quite a few people would like to see ! It would have helped if the biographer had bothered to unpick the details for us.

Some people like to slag off Wikipedia for supposed inaccuracies; used sensibly, I think it’s wonderful, and I’d like it to get even more wonderful, more detailed, more comprehensive in its coverage. Though, you would kind of expect errors in a resource like that. What is more worrying, though, is when supposed authorities – the makers of would-be convincing fictions, historians and biographers – are seemingly happy to allow errors and very doubtful assertions through in this way.