In the movie Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) chides Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif) about the apparent social and economic regression of the Arab nations. One example he uses: street lighting was invented in the Moorish cities of Andalucia in the eight century, yet a millennium later, the Bedouin were back to living in tents.
Nowadays Lawrence would not have to travel to Wadi Rum to find examples of regression, because here in leafy, prosperous Hertfordshire, UK, street lighting is being uninvented. As part of the cheeseparing needed in times of austerity, the local council is turning off the lights on all but the busiest main roads between midnight and 6 am, for at least the next two years. Opponents of the scheme (basically everyone) have pointed out that this is almost certain to trigger an increase in crime, and that the supposed saving in carbon emissions will almost certainly not be realised because householders will choose to leave their own outside lights on all night. These arguments have fallen on deaf ears.
A story like this would, of course, have less impact if there were not an egregious example of unnecessary public spending going on at the same time. Needless to say, there is. In the main park in our city, a massive swimming pool and leisure centre is currently taking shape. There was nothing wrong with the old pool, or at least there wasn't until the council starved it of maintenance funding in order to build the case for demolishing it in favour of the new one.
More seriously, however, the park in question was the site of one of the three largest Roman settlements in Britain -- Verulamium -- in the early Christian era. Within yards of the massive and unattractive new building there are stretches of Roman walls, a hypocaust and a Roman theatre. Mind you, since the council is also allowing the same park to be used for an annual comedy festival that they hope to build into "the standup equivalent of Glastonbury" (really!), I guess we can be under no illusions about how highly they value the area's heritage.
Intriguingly, there's a possibility that once the new pool is ready, the council won't be allowed to fill it with water. We now have an official state of drought in this part of England, and restrictions on water use are looming unless the skies open in the next month or so. About 90% of the UK's fresh water supplies are in Scotland -- Loch Ness alone has more fresh water than all the lakes in England -- but no serious attempt has ever been made to develop a national water grid. Once again, we seem to be lagging behind our forebears: as anyone can attest who has seen the extraordinary Pont du Gard in France, or numerous other such structures across Europe, the Romans knew a thing or two about moving water to where it was needed.
Of course, with the UK being relatively small, you'd think it would be easy to move water around anyway. Scotland could pump surplus water to the network serving the north of England, which could pass it on to the Midlands and so on until it reached the drought areas. Not so. An interesting little column in today's Times (paywa££) by their weather expert, Paul Simons, tells us that such water trading is almost unknown, even between neighbouring water companies. Something about fear of encouraging competition, apparently. Gee, and there I was starting to believe all the guff about how privatisation of the water utilities would be good for the consumer.
Britain 2012! The Queen's Diamond Jubilee! The Olympic Games!! Darkened streets and water shortages!!! Oh well, I hear Wadi Rum's nice at this time of the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment