Where does the front line end ?

Our current Government is busy recovering the money that was spent to rescue the banks from their self inflicted crisis, and cover a fall in tax revenue from the ensuing economic downturn, by cutting public expenditure. In the UK this has had a particularly grave impact on local authority spending. However, the mantra that has gone with these cuts has been that there won't be any impact on front line services. So, there'll still be people there to sweep the streets, to help the housebound elderly get dressed in the morning and to fix the potholes down the country lanes.

But the savings still need to be made and it makes a certain sort of economic sense to cut down on the number of higher paid people who are simply there to manage the front line services. In practice what this tends to mean is that the management jobs that were done by the people who've had to leave get shared out among those that remain and with predictable consequences.

Earlier this year the one person in our local authority that knew the Cinder Track like the back of his chain saw scarred hand was made redundant. He was/is of an age where this could be dressed up as an early retirement but in reality it was redundancy. We were promised that there'd be no reduction in the quality or quantity of the service the Track received, just that it would be done by different people. 

As it turns out the person that we think was given the overall management responsibility - deciding what work needed to be done where, when and by whom - already had existing responsibilities. Not only that, but the unpredicted departure of another council officer, who had responsibility for trees - making sure that those that need protecting are protected and that those that we need protecting from are timely trimmed or felled - meant that he was given this responsibility as well.

In the 1960s a popular book was Parkinsons Law. The pursuit of progress. The most memorable conclusion from this was that work expands to fill the time available to do it. Another was that people tend to get promoted until the point at which they become incompetent. What's happening here is a variant on the same theme. Give someone too many things to do and none of them get done properly.

So whilst there might appear to be an obvious front line, the place where the jobs get done, these jobs don't get done unless there's someone there to know when they need doing and make sure that the people and stuff are available to get them done when they need doing.

Early July and there's a 2.5m wide track hidden

 under all that unpredicatable? growth.

Politics of the sedentary ?

At a basic physiological level whether or not people become overweight or obese simply depends on the balance between their energy intake and their energy expenditure. You need energy for growth and repair, to keep warm, to keep your neurons charged and to move around. Eat the same amount and do any of these things less and, if you weren't losing weight before, you'll put it on now. What's truly remarkable is how well we normally keep our intake and expenditure in balance. Over a year, adding just 25 g (about 1 oz) a day adds up to over 9kg.

The classic way of measuring someone's energy expenditure is to capture their breath and then measure the amount of CO₂ they produce. However, this can't tell what you've used the energy for only that you've used it. A more complete answer can be given by putting someone in a whole body calorimeter. Essentially just a big sealed and insulated box where you can measure the temperature, quantity and composition of the air that goes in and compare it to the temperature, quantity and composition of that which comes out - including the water vapour it contains - and you can determine not only how much energy the person in the box has been consuming but also how much they've been using to produce heat.

One of the experiments that was done with such a box was to see how much energy people used while they were doing a desk job. i.e something that doesn't necessarily involve a lot of moving around. It turned out that some people used twice as much as others. How could this be? Well, the simple answer is that some people are fidgets. Give them a problem to solve and they'll literally jiggle and squirm in their seats until they find an answer. Others will simply settle down and ponder. Guess which character types are likely to become overweight ?

It wouldn't surprise anyone that knows me that I'm a fidget and that I'm wriggling as I write. This general characteristic also seems to have a psychological counterpart in the way in which I solve problems. Give me a bit of maths to unravel and I'll harass it until it gives up a solution. 

Now, one of the side effects of being a fidget is that I'm not very good at sitting down and one of the things I dread about old age is the thought of getting stuck in a chair - besides, I've never found one that I can sit in for long without getting back ache -. You might say that if that's all I'm worried about then things are looking pretty good, and I can't really pretend not to agree, but in an increasingly sedentary society I do hope that I end up in the company of fellow fidgets so that we can at least discuss how everything is going wrong whilst wandering around rather than being stuck in one place.

A side effect of this character trait is that the urge to get up and move about is so strong that I'm a natural explorer. Find myself in a new town and I can't help but get out and wander around it. A few years ago I used to pay short visits to Johannesburg and was forever frustrated by the urge to get up and wander around in a city that white folk like me didn't wander around in. When I lived in Connecticut in the early 1980's I'd usually be the only person without a dog to use the side walks to walk along, as opposed to jogging or driving across at right angles - though I did sometimes get joined by young black men who'd chat with me in the security that they were now much less likely to get stopped by the police -.

As a result of all this, combined with a deep seated egalitarianism, I'm really fond of public space and over the past few years my politics have become focused on improving the spaces near where I live. However, one of the problems of the political process is that it involves a great deal of sitting down. All those committee meetings, selection panels, car journeys from one place to another, they all provide a selective environment that favours the sedentary, as well as the rich.

So, my challenge is how to get a naturally sedentary political class* to engage with issues relating to public space that they don't use because they're too busy sitting down.

*As a child I struggled with the idea of "the exception to the rule". If there's a rule then surely there shouldn't be any exceptions. I eventually realised that it was the identification of the exception that showed that there must be some sort of rule for it to be an exception to. In this case there will no doubt be many politicians who are natural fidgets but I'm confident that they'll be just such exceptions.

Demi etape du Tour ?

Taking the long route to the shops up Oliver's Mount the other day I had an idea.
How about looking at one of next year's stages of Le Tour de France and producing a half scale version on Oliver's Mount. Half the distance and half the climbing. There's a relatively flat circuit around the top and a hilly one that goes down the side. A suitable combination of laps of each circuit and hey presto..

Here's what it's like on a motorbike

This year's Scarborough Festival of Cycling uses the Mount for a series of closed circuit road races, including ones that are part of the youth national circuit and is extremely popular. Most of this, it seems, is down to the great big hill which lets everyone else have a laugh at the sprinters who normally take the honours on the flatter circuits.

We have the Auto 66 Club to thank for giving the circuit great surface and making it fairly simple to close it to traffic - though not without some expense -.

+ apologies for the absence of an accent on "etape" One day I'll figure out how to do it.

An aerial view

Uphill fun

Rugby Club update

In a  recent post I kept readers up to date with progress in my efforts to get a decent connection between the Cinder Track (the old Scarborough to Whitby railway line) and the recently relocated Scarborough Rugby Union Football Club. In the Rugby Club's response you'll notice that they promised to clear the path by the end of the month. As you can see from a photograph taken this morning (14th July) this hasn't happened.

So, I've been obliged to write to the Club yet again and here's the text of the letter which I've just sent (it was actually handwritten because I got bored of fighting the printer)

14/7/14

Dear Mr Jeffrey

Thank you for your letter of the 12^th of June.

I'm disappointed to note that despite your assurance that the first stage of the work to clear the pathway linking the Club to the Cinder Track would be completed by the end of the month this does not, as of today, appear to be the case.

I would also remind you that the original letter making a donation to the club made it clear that it was, I quote

“so that they could establish a fund to improve the connection to the Track.”

Can you confirm whether or not such a fund has been established ?

Yours sincerely

Andy Sharp

All fall down

In 2000 The Great Court at the British Museum, which has the famous Reading Room at its centre, was enclosed in a scheme designed by the architect Norman Foster to produce the largest covered public square in Europe. It's a delightful space, but I find one aspect of the design slightly disturbing.

The walls of the surrounding courtyard are constructed out of large limestone blocks. As all children who've ever played with bricks know, the blocks have to be arranged in a pattern that locks, or bonds, them together or they run the risk of all falling down.

Overlapping blocks that hold each other in place

However, for some presumably aesthetic reason, the blocks on the circular reading room at the court's centre appear to be unbonded with vertical joins running from top to bottom.

On the one hand this shows that they're not really structural blocks at all, just markings inscribed on a concrete coating, on the other it makes me feel that the slightest earth tremor would bring the whole lot tumbling down.

Now I've no doubt that there was extensive discussion about this very point but I do prefer it when the pretend form matches the pretend function.

Watching Le Tour go by

The oblivious amongst you might have failed to notice that the first stage of this year's Tour de France (Le Grand Depart) went through the dales (valleys) of North Yorkshire.

My parents live in a little village not far from Masham ( a small town in Wensleydale and home of the Black Sheep Brewery) and our eldest has recently got into road cycling (competing against persons unknown on a smart phone app called Strava), so it was too good a chance to miss and we went over the night before so we could cycle into Masham where they were expecting 20,000 to turn up and the playing fields down by the river had food, beer and a couple of big screens.

In the morning, to get in a bit of outdoors before watching the first couple of hours on the telly, we went out on a short circular ride up the local moor. On the way we met whole groups of cyclists - or as we call them "people on bikes" - heading for Masham. Every single one gave us a greeting. The sense of solidarity in social identity was palpable and, being particularly soft, literally - used in the correct sense - brought a tear to my eye.

Later on, when we'd had our dinner and judged we'd only have about an hour to wait for Le Tour to come through, we set off for Masham. Surprisingly we found other cyclists heading the wrong way; presumably they'd worked out there was time for a quick ride before anything much would happen.

In Masham itself, right through the town and out over the river, the route was lined with the folding chairs of the sedentary. They'd been there for hours; at least 5 according to a women Joe briefly stopped in front of when he was checking his phone and who I had to reassure that we were such fidgets that we couldn't possibly stay still for more than a couple of minutes and would be well out of the way by the time the riders came through.

So, as you rightly surmised, a mixed bunch. The professional spectators who can sit still for hours waiting for the world to go by, as long as there are enough other people doing the same thing to make it feel like a sensible thing to do, and the people who like riding their bikes - and making the world go by them -

When Le Tour did arrive, we only had a side on view and they were going so fast that all you really got was an impression of speed. My son did take some pictures on his phone and it was only later that he realised he got one of an as yet undamaged Mark Cavendish - for those not paying attention he crashed on the final sprint of the day up Parliament Street in Harrogate (the town in which he spent his early life) and dislocated his shoulder - a slightly sad end to a grand day out.

Is that Alberto Contador in the fluorescent yellow behind Cav?