Making the wrong choice about where to put the clock back

So at last the great moment arrived when David Cameron could claim his place in my pantheon of true Conservative heroes by attempting to put the clock back – and not simply because it was the end of British Summer Time.

True, it was disappointing that he chose to do it by announcing the reincarnation of the British Empire Medal.

For God and the Empire. How very un-Dave

An award for those deemed rather too common to meet the Queen, abolished by John Major in 1993 in his pursuit of a classless society. With his famous cones hotline long closed, this reversal threatens to undo one of the few defining achievements of his administration.

Sadly one small step backwards counted for little in a week when a raft of other measures betrayed Mr Cameron’s continued obsession with that falsest of gods, “progress”.

These included the attempt to “modernise” the monarchy by altering the rules of succession to give equal rights to female heirs. Few seemed to question that this was a good thing. But how can you possibly hope to drag a hereditary monarchy into the twenty-first century? It is, by its nature, a mediaeval anachronism. That is precisely why some of us find it so appealing.

Once you start tinkering with the ancient rules, people will start to wonder why we have to have the first-born son or daughter when the third in line seems so much more personable. Or, indeed, why we have to have a member of that particular family at all.

Long may she reign

The Royal Standard for Australia (never let it be said that this is not an educational column)

I cannot help thinking that this great step forward will look slightly less brilliant when some of the Commonwealth legislatures invited to amend the rules of succession decide to vote for a republic instead.

As if that were not enough, there was the bold decision in principle to defy Nature and put Britain, at least for a trial period, on Berlin rather than Greenwich time.

No need to bother with any of that nonsense - we'll cave in on the time zone issue without even being asked

A piece of craziness to rank alongside anyone ever imagining that they could place a hard-working, efficient and well-governed country like Germany in a currency union with an indolent, shambolic and corrupt one like Greece, and not face major problems.

But then the people who came up with the euro were not stupid. They always knew that it was economic nonsense. But it prepared the ground for the sort of “beneficial crisis” that would advance their goal of creating a single government for Europe.

And so, behold, it is coming to pass. Just as those derided loony Eurosceptics warned it would. And very soon the siren voices of the Europhiles will be raised again, warning that Britain cannot afford to be left behind as this “inevitable” Union progresses.

In fact they are at it already, with David Banks reminding us in his column on Friday about “the £150m Brussels earmarked this year to build jobs and prosperity in the North East”. Only it’s OUR money. Britain is the second largest net contributor to the great EU racket.

Being grateful for handouts we have paid for is a bit like thanking a mugger who considerately hands you a tenner for your cab fare home after he has pinched your wallet.

Take an issue about which a large chunk of the population feel strongly, whether that be capital punishment or the extinction of our independence as a nation, and you can be sure that the reaction of the political class will be to close ranks, stick their fingers in their ears and chant “La la la not listening” until we go away.

Except that, in an attempt to put the inconvenient European issue to bed, they have already passed an act requiring a referendum on any future treaty change that hands more power to Brussels. One of the delights of the coming months will be watching them trying to weasel out of that promise as the United States of Europe emerges unmistakably from the euro crisis.

But why worry? We will all be able to enjoy an extra hour of daylight in which to polish our BEMs and pray that the Duchess of Cambridge may be safely delivered of a girl. Because otherwise an awful lot of valuable Parliamentary time will have been expended in vain.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Fulfilling a lifelong ambition

When I was a small boy I fell deeply in love with five things: my Mum’s cooking, steam trains, gaslights, trolleybuses and pre-decimal currency.

This was unfortunate because, by the time I was 16, all had vanished apart from the food. I compensated by eating far more of it than was good for me: a lifetime of self-destructive behaviour I blame on 1960s “progress”.

I often wish for a time machine to whisk me back for a 3d ride on the number 38 to Swarland Avenue, a big slice of Mum’s steak and kidney pie for lunch, then an afternoon jotting down locomotive numbers at Little Benton sidings.

Little Benton North: I did my childhood trainspotting at Little Benton South

I have grown out of trainspotting, let me assure you. I look in bafflement at those grown men one occasionally sees on station platforms, urgently whispering the numbers of passing wagons into Dictaphones in the intervals between cramming sandwiches down their throats from the huge Tupperware boxes that are the other essential tool of their trade. But I confess that a steam engine can still turn my head.

And yesterday, when I would normally be writing this column, I finally took delivery of my Christmas present from my wife and went to fulfil a boyhood ambition by learning to drive a trolleybus at the National Trolleybus Museum near Doncaster.

You probably did not know such a place even existed, and are stunned by the originality of my wife’s gift selection. Believe me, you have no idea of the number of remarkably detailed hints that were required, given that her starting point was “What’s a trolleybus?”

A Newcastle trolleybus at Delaval Road - right by my Auntie Maisie's house

The trolleybus I actually got to drive

Well, I said, it’s like a tram but without tracks, and two power wires instead of one because a tram returns current through the rails … but her eyes had already glazed over.


Bless her, she’s coming with me and bringing our son, who luckily really likes buses. I’m hoping that they will allow her to dress up as a conductress and wield the long bamboo pole that is needed to put the trolley heads back on the wires when some idiot has steered too far away from them.

Mrs Hann didn't get to do this - but I did

I have written before about the romance of the trolleybus, and received puzzled messages from readers who just did not get it. Perhaps my psyche is strangely wired. Because huge chunks of my brain are occupied by the flash and crackle of the trolleys on the wires on frosty mornings, the rumble of the overhead booms passing through junctions, the purr of the number 39 on its fast run down the Great North Road, and the swaying mass of nerds occupying the seats in front of me on the 35c from Byker to Delaval Road on the last day of operations in 1966.

All of which must be taking up many megabytes of memory that could have been devoted to subsequent triumphs in the boardroom or bedroom. Perhaps this explains why I never actually had any of those.

How it could so easily have turned out

Relaxing on the bus after my drive

Receiving my certificate of ... er ... it did not actually say 'competence'

There were training opportunities for smaller boys, too

And the coffee cake was very good

I would like to think that my enthusiasm was a sign that I was an environmentalist before it came into fashion. As well as trolleybuses, I warmed to milk floats and the whispering electric vans from Provincial Laundries. In short, clean and quiet electrically powered road vehicles struck me as a rather wonderful idea. It has only taken half a century for the wheel to come full circle and for nearly everyone else to agree with me.

Idly tapping “Newcastle trolleybus” into a search engine the other day, I was gutted to find that I had just missed my chance to bid for an original Newcastle trolleybus destination blind on eBay. Hint to Mrs Hann: I simply cannot think of a better Christmas present.

Now what can I do to convince the world at large of the merits of gas street lighting and pounds, shillings and pence?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.