Round And Round...

...it goes and where it stops nobody knows!

Being keen to keep abreast of developments beyond the geographic boundaries of The Wolds [for new readers, please note that this THE Wolds in Lincolnshire and not that toy-town pretender the 'Cotswolds'] and anxious not, as a rural person, to become only interested in what happens within five to seven miles of the village green [the true 'incest' of the countryside] - as well as having a naturally and restless eager-to-learn disposition - I ensure a ready stream of incoming articles and publications about and from the wider world.

One such - quite nearly my favourite for its hilarious and unquenchable enthusiasm for anything and everything that this Government does - is www.info4local.gov.uk which daily tells me absolutely everything - and I mean everything - that is done on our behalf by our great and wise political masters.

Much like - nay very much like - George Orwell's wonderful evocation of a nightmare future '1984' only good news ever surfaces. No matter how badly other independent agencies may criticise what is happening in reality, on Planet Info nothing but favourable report is given. Cutbacks and closures in the NHS? Never heard of them! "NHS takes next steps to implement modernisation agenda" - that's the True Message. Staff shortages and mass defections from social care? Not in the slightest! "Councils on course to achieve Gershon efficiency targets" - that's The Real Deal....etc., etc. You get the picture.

But among this torrent of deliberately misleading, as well as self-deluded guff, you will find the occasional gem, the odd pearl of delight that makes you glad to be alive. I refer to those oddball moments - beyond left-field and half-way across the car-park - where the ever-interfering hand of central oppression falls on even the least significant shoulder of society. "If it moves regulate, monitor, inspect and badge it; if it doesn't then publish a Code of Practice." - to borrow from the old Army motto.

It will be my pleasure from time to time to share some of these precious moments and today, as a taster, I offer you this valuable document:

http://www.info4local.gov.uk/searchreport.asp?id=31150&heading=e-mail+alert

To save your bother of reading the item let me precis. It is nothing less than a Good Practice Guidance for - wait for it - MINI-ROUNDABOUTS! Included are such priceless contributions to the furtherment of mankind as 'The definition of a mini-roundabout.' Now there were you thinking you knew a mini-roundabout when you saw one. How wrong we clearly were! We are told where to put them [roads anyone?] and how they are to be installed [some sand and cement and a bucket of white paint mostly I imagine].

Sadly, this document has come too late for the good people of Colchester. If you were to take a journey around the outskirts of that town, you would find at almost all and any junctions of two or more roads a mini-roundabout. Why so many you ask? The truth, one is told, is that some many years ago a clerk in the local Min. of Trans. was tasked with ordering Item: About, round mini-; Unit: One; Order: 10. Hapless fellow missed the crucial last element and ordered instead 100 of the things.

Bought and paid for, they lay unloved and uncared for in a Council Depot until some even brighter spark thought that as they had them they had better jolly well use them - not to mention providing suitable employment to gangs of Council labourers for a summer's length. So teams were dispatched with strict instructions not to return to HQ until they had found somewhere - anywhere! - to insert these obstacles into otherwise free-flowing traffic systems. (The ninja troops of the workforce were given the specially exciting and challenging task of inserting multiples of mini-roundaouts at particularly awkward spots, thus ensuring total chaos and confusion.)

Ah, if only they had had the benefit of Good Practice Guidance in the matter such foolish behaviour would have been thwarted at source. Half a brain might have helped too of course.