A cautionary tale

It was a Friday evening in winter. I shall be no more specific than that. Hayley went out for a few drinks with some friends, many of them fellow Mums from our area. All went well during the evening, though she noticed that one of their party, we'll call her Alex, seemed a bit tipsy even at the start of the evening.

Some time after the bars closed they went back to another friend's house. We'll call her Jan. By this point Alex is out of it, sitting on the floor, slumped over the sofa. Worried about her, Hayley says she will take her home in the taxi she has just ordered for herself and Sara. Jan tells her Alex's address. Hayley and Sara bundle Alex into the cab and off they go.

On arriving at Alex's house there is no answer. Hayley knocks loudly. Then, feeling sure Alex's husband is home, shouts through the letter box. After a few further shouts, the taxi driver suggests that perhaps enough is enough and that if she doesn't desist the police are more likely to appear than Alex's husband.

And so it was that at approximately 2.15am I was woken by strange noises coming from downstairs. These turned out to be Hayley, Sara and the taxi driver carrying Alex into the house and onto our sofa. I tried to go back to sleep but Alex's snoring was so loud, even through the floor, that I gave up and came downstairs to see the spectacle. Some time later Sara left and Hayley and I to headed off to bed leaving Alex snoring.

In the morning I got up with the kids and loitered a while upstairs in the hope our visitor might be gone by the time the kids came downstairs. But it wasn't to be. So Alex was woken by two inquisitive little faces at about 8am. She handled it all remarkably well and was up and playing with them in no time. I got her a cup of tea and some toast, by which time Hayley had joined us.

We recounted the previous evening's events to her, enjoying the unique and sinful pleasure of telling someone what they did when too drunk to recall anything the next day. We got to the bit about shouting through her letter box.

Alex: "What number house did you go to?"
Hayley: "Number 6. Jan told us which it was."
Pause.
Alex: "We live at number 3."
Me (laughing): "Did you get on with the people at number 6 before last night?!"
Pause.
Alex: "Number 6 is the home of your Member of Parliament."

Oh dear.

I'm sure she couldn't have been in. She's a busy MP. She'll have got the train back on Saturday morning.... Except that in reality she is normally back on Friday.

Oops.

I'm sure you aren't reading this Ann, but if you are, we all apologise humbly for any additional stress we may have caused. (Oh and thanks for the reply about Gaza.)

Historic Day

I'm writing this blog for my kids. It's a record of their lives and of my life watching them grow up. And mostly that's it. But from time to time I manage to remember to pass comment on the world around us.

Today is such a day, because today the first black president of the United States was inaugurated. OK, so it's not my country, but it's an historic moment. I was born in a year when the southern US states saw race riots. A time of segregation. A time of deep racial division.

Today Barack Obama became president and it marks out all that is good about the United States. Americans talk a lot about freedom and opportunity. Today America walked the talk.

Regardless of how successful or not he might be in the next four years, the hope of the millions, perhaps billions of people around the world stands as testimony to the human spirit, particularly as the world appears to be tumbling headlong into a financial crisis the likes of which has not been seen in most of our lifetimes.

But today was not one for thoughts of stock markets or banking. Today the world marvelled at what America has done.

And perhaps as remarkable is the fact that although this will be remembered by history as the moment America first elected a black man, for those of us watching today, our main thought was not that America had elected a black man, but simply that America had elected the right man.

If you do one thing today...

Please take 1 minute to go to the Demand A Stance website and (in 3 clicks) ask your UK (or US or Canadian) representative to take a stance to end the bloodshed of innocent children in Gaza and bring peace to the region.

Regardless of which side you might take, please speak up now.

It is only by taking individual actions such as these that we might collectively achieve peace in 2009.

Yes! (Or rather, No!)

I'd been meaning to post about the referendum on a Congestion Charge for Manchester. (Or more accurately, a congestion charge for Greater Manchester as the proposed zone includes 13 metropolitan boroughs.)

This morning as I lay in bed, knowing the result was decided as yesterdays ballot return deadline passed, I reprimanded myself for not posting about it before. Heck, I could have even set up a whole new site about it! What if the result was the wrong one when if it weren't for my laziness I could have swung the few vital votes?

I needn't have worried. The result was a resounding "No".

When I first heard of the proposed congestion charge I was entirely open to the idea. But as time went on and I saw what improvements were on offer as a result of the charge, it became clear to me that it wasn't a good deal.

Let me give you some illustrations.

The charge is designed to ease congestion caused by commuter traffic heading in and out of Manchester. To do this, an outer and inner zone were defined. Traffic passing into those zones in the morning "rush hour" would be charged, as would traffic passing out in the evening "rush hour".

So if, like our family, you live half a mile inside the outer boundary (mostly defined by the M60 motorway), you would be charged for taking your child to nursery half a mile outside the boundary as you return from dropping him off. It's only a short local journey but it is charged the same as if we've commuted 40 miles in a company car. Thankfully Oliver's nursery is now on this side of the boundary, but his old one wasn't so it's a real example.

Many years ago I moved to Stockport so that I wasn't commuting 80 miles a day to and from work. Ever since I have used my bike quite often to commute the much reduced 6 mile round trip to/from the office. (I did today as it happens.) I kept a record for a while and found that in recent years my best efforts saw me commuting by bike between 30% and 50% of the time over the year.

But we still have two cars as the demands of combining work and family life make it feel almost a necessity. We've discussed before the possibility of getting rid of one of the cars. It would need me to increase the number of times I commute by bike and let Hayley give me a lift much of the rest of the time. It's far from ideal but perhaps just about feasible.

But the congestions charge would have made that an impossibility. I work half a mile outside the outer boundary so on returning from dropping me at work Hayley would be charged.

"What about public transport", I hear you ask? Well, the cost of the journey to work is about 11 times the cost in petrol. Having to use two buses, it would also take at least 3 times as long. Quicker to walk in fact.

"What about the promised improvements in exchange for the charge?" Well, the Metrolink (tram) system wouldn't be extended to Stockport. (it was promised and then cut several years ago.) There would be no new bus routes, only more frequent services on some routes. Oh and they would refurbish the bus station. Whoop-ee-doo!

The final nail in the charge's coffin for me was the totally one-sided reporting of it - pulled up by the regulator at least once - and the patronising premise that the proposal was the only option and the only chance of getting some money to improve public transport. Poppycock!

The sad truth is that the two-ring scheme is far too clumsy an instrument with which to fairly levy a travel tax on those doing the most damage. Having made a green decision nearly two decades ago to reduce my carbon footprint, to live and work in the same community, to think global and act local, I'm not exactly jumping at the chance to pay the same as someone who drives 100 miles a day from their country pile.

It's an opportunity missed, without doubt. I hope that in years to come a fairer system can be devised. I mean we already live in a world where every other car has Sat Nav, its driver almost certainly has a mobile phone and the roads are watched by an army of cameras. Can it really be that hard to figure something out?

You can read about the congestion charge voting here (where there are also links to other relevant sites).

Hurrah for Humphries?

It's not often I find myself praising the interviewing techniques of the ever-interrupting John Humphries, but this morning he found himself interviewing a deaf man, apparently over the phone, with the aid of someone signing for the interviewee. Mr Humphries was therefore unable and/or unwilling to interrupt in his usual fashion and the quality of his interview was all the better for it.

In the interview on Radio 4's "Today" programme, the man defended his claim that he and his partner should have the right to undergo have IVF treatment and choose to have a deaf child. That doesn't mean they choose to keep the child if it turns out to be deaf, it means they actively choose through IVF to have a child that is deaf.

I thought Humphries' astutely delivered argument uncovered the interviewee's reasoning as perverse and nonsensical. You can decide for yourself by listening to the interview.

It is also the subject of this BBC News article.