A Don’s Life

Congestion charge. What did the Romans do?

Will Cambridge have its own traffic congestion charge? It looks likely. A bit different from the London version, it would charge you (£3-£5) for driving around between 7.30 and 9.30 am; after that it would be free. One notch up from the London scheme, there would be no concessions for residents within the zone – and in fact the plan is that you will get charged even for driving out.

I’m all for this in principle, but can’t for the life of me see why someone should get charged for driving from where I live OUT of the city, and so relieving congestion.

What’s puzzling is exactly who is backing this. All the leaflets from the three main parties that have dropped through the letterbox in advance of the City Council elections on May 1 have come out against. The Lib Dems say that it is being introduced by the Conservative County Council, and object (like me) to the driving out charge, and to the fact that the profits are to be spent on a road in Ely, rather than improving cycling facilities etc in Cambridge itself.

The Labour leaflet had the nerve to complain about the civil liberties implications of all the cameras required to operate the scheme. There may well be a point here, but when the Labour party has enthusiastically spread CCTV cameras across the nation to make us the most photographed part of the planet, what idiot (or dissident) in the local Labour party thought we wouldn’t notice the inconsistency?

The Tory, on the other hand, claims that it is all being driven by the Labour party. And with a charming classical reference reassures us that “like all cities since Rome in 70AD, Cambridge suffers from congestion. It is part of being a city.”

So what would the Romans have done?

Ten excellent blogs

I was chuffed to be nominated as an “excellent blog” by Heresy Corner (an excellent blog itself). So, according to the rules of this game, I must now nominate ten more excellent blogs.

Here goes in no particular order  (not all are on my links list yet, but they will be soon).

One: BLDG BLOG is a real queen of blogs. Hosted by Geoff Manaugh in California, it’s mostly about architecture, art and urban (and other) spaces. A book of the blog is coming next year.

Two: Clive Davis' Spectator blog. The Spectator isn’t Beard’s natural home, but when I discovered he was reading me I gave him a go (OK -- how self-regarding can you get?). He picks up lots of good things – and has a nice wry take on them.

Three: Soleil en tête is one to catch for the francophone. A French Canadian writer and history teacher blogs about writing, teaching and her brain tumour. Not the usual illness-blog-cliché and not mawkish at all. She posts, for nice classical reasons, under the name of Danaee.

Four . . .

Old-fashioned mortgages

I am beginning to feel some nostalgia for the old-fashioned mortgage. I’m sure that some readers of this blog must remember what it was like borrowing money to buy a roof over your head in the old days. The old days? I mean a quarter of a century ago,  which is when I bought my first flat, overlooking the main railway line just north of Euston. Jolly nice it was too; but jolly noisy.

Anyway, the old system went something like this. First of all, you had to show you were a ‘regular saver’.  That usually meant picking a Building Society some years before you thought you would ever want to buy a house, and paying 50 quid or so into a savings account. Unless your Mum and Dad were going to help out, you’d need to do that anyway, because 100% mortgages were quite unheard of. If you were very lucky, you might get 90% -- so my £27,500 flat needed £2750 from my own little nest egg of savings.

Then there was the basic rule of thumb that you could have two and a half times your annual salary, which JUST about worked for me. But more than that there was the scary interview . . . all about financial responsibility and being part of a mutual building society. Patronising and paternalistic it may have been. But this was not a questions of banks and shareholders and profits; this was about membership, and the symbiosis of investors and borrowers.

So I had a quick check on the Halifax’s mortgage calculator website, to discover that the rule of thumb was now FIVE times your annual salary.

Travel sick?

I know that tales of travelling misery rarely touch anyone else’s heart. The obvious answer is: well if you must go off jet-setting around and spoiling the planet, why should the rest of the world feel sorry if you are delayed/your flight is cancelled/you lose your luggage…

All the same, I am going allow myself a moan about my latest trip to the States. It’s been huge fun in all sorts of ways: I gave a lecture on the triumph at Rutgers, talked to a great group of US high-school teachers in Cambridge Mass., and had a fantastic two days in Seattle at a wonderful conference on Roman Art, which had been timed to coincide with a loan exhibition of Roman art from the Louvre at the local museum. A long way, you might say, to go to see art from Paris, but the display in the Seattle Art Museum was brilliant – and actually made me see all kinds of objects afresh.

But, nice as the whole trip has been, every single leg of travel has gone wrong in some way or other. I’ll pass over the more trivial problems: the almost missed connection in Chicago on my way from Boston to Seattle (I got the plane by 30 seconds as it was closing its doors, and it took me most of the flight to get my breath back); the suspicious package on the railway line, which held up the inappropriately named Acela Express from New York to Boston,  in New Haven station for over an hour. (OK, I know: better safe than sorry – but it doesn’t always feel like that when you’re not moving).

One of the worst bits was arriving in Newark “Liberty” airport – which had the effect of making me feel rather benign towards Terminal 5.

Feminism now: should boys play harps?

Last week the main BBC news (plus the Today programme) was full of a piece of research which demonstrated a gender bias  in choice of musical instruments.  Whereas 90% of young harpists are (apparently) female, almost 80% of young tuba players are (apparently ) male – and even more  electric guitarist. Indeed kids are encouraged in those choices by friends, teachers, society . . .you name it.

While parts of the planet were in melt-down, while Zimbabwe tottered, Kenya  simmered and  too few people were  killed in Iraq to be newsworthy . . .THIS was transmitted as a piece of gender discrimination akin to the revelation (the sort of news we faced when I was a kid) that more girls than boys were encouraged to become doctors and vice versa.

After a short time, feeling a bit bad about this, as I was obviously supposed to, I found myself reflecting….do I care really  if tuba players are largely male?

Doctor Who -- Up Pompeii

There were enough good jokes to keep even the meanest classicist amused in Doctor Who’s visit to Pompeii on Saturday night.

For a start, when Donna and the Doctor emerged from the tardis, they immediately assumed that they were in ancient Rome. Well actually they were. Any keen follower of historical movies can spot the “ancient Rome” built at Cinecittà in modern Rome a mile off (it’s actually very like the “ancient Rome” built in modern Tunisia, except the whole thing is a bit bigger and the extras tend to have a slightly lighter facial colouring).

But just a few minutes into the plot, the table were nicely turned when we saw an unmistakable Vesuvius looming at the end of the street. The penny quickly dropped for us and for the Doctor. This must be Pompeii.

And it turned out to be August 23 AD 79: for those in the know (like the Doctor) the day before the final eruption. At least that is the usual date: an alternative school of thought, based on the traces of pollen found in the volcanic ash and on the heavy clothes worn by a number of the victims thinks it must have been later in the autumn. (I’m not convinced by the clothing argument. I always imagine I might put on my winter woollies in the middle of an eruption.)

A good start. And hopes that the writers actually knew something about the history of Pompeii and even knew a little Latin were not disappointed.

Meeting the military

Writing on the Roman Triumph has opened some very unexpected doors. I’m hoping to be able to report from the Emmy awards in Los Angeles in September (courtesy of the Triumph). But meanwhile, on Friday, I’m off to talk at RUSI (the Royal United Service Institute for Defence and Security Studies, founded by none other than the Duke of Wellington).

As a bit of a wobbly pacifist, I’m slightly surprised at myself for having invested (so apparently sympathetically) into the dilemmas of Roman warfare. Indeed I must also confess to having a bit of a soft spot for intellectual soldiers (the sort that end up as Bursars of Cambridge colleges). They  always seem to have better moral credentials when it comes to warfare than I do (a bit like the atheist clerics who end up as chaplains of Oxbridge colleges – a worthy tradition stretching back at least to the eighteenth century).

This is a romantic sensibility I must have inherited. For I also have a cousin who was once married to frontline member of the SAS, who managed to charm my mother (a far more hard-line pacifist that I am). Even she would somehow manage to overlook what this guy had done in the Iranian embassy siege, because he could intellectualise the moral problems so nicely (and help with the washing up).

The trouble is that smart generals and clever SAS boys are one thing; most other aspects of the military seem not so appealing.

Disabled access

I know it’s all too easy to knock Health and Safety rules, and the like. I’ve done it before and – yes – that smirky cynicism will be knocked out of me, if ever I get trapped in a blazing building because the Evac chairs have not been properly installed, or the emergency lighting isn’t working.

All the same . . . try this story.

The Classical Faculty building in Cambridge (where I tend at the moment, finishing my Pompeii book, to spend rather more hours of my life than I do at home) has just installed disabled access: (semi-)automatic front doors. This isn’t anyone’s fault. We were obliged to do this to be “compliant” (and, as one of my senior colleagues put it, to be “transparent” and “robust” too, no doubt).

So, until two weeks ago we had perfectly manageable front doors : a double set - one pair of outside doors plus another pair the other side of a small lobby. They were very easy to handle. The outside pair were heavy-ish, opened one way only and were still just about possible to manage if you had a large pile of books in your arms. The inner pair swung both ways and were easy to push or pull from whichever way you approached.

They have now been “up-graded’ to disabled use, and are almost unusable by the rest of us.

Yes please, Socrates

The result of the great debate was, as I predicted, that a rather large majority of the audience decided that they would accept the invitation. As Tom Holland said in the moments after our defeat: that’s democracy for you…but, of course, Socrates, wasn’t exactly a fan of that.

All the same I thought our side made as good a showing as we could, so didn’t feel especially pissed off. It’s a bit like doing an exam. You don’t mind doing not so well as you hoped, if you think you did as well as you could.

In fact, once the Taplin/McCabe side had trailed the idea that one might be having dinner not just with Socrates, but Hippocrates, Sophocles, Pheidias, Euripides, Hegel and Wittgenstein too – honestly I thought the audience would rebel. But they didn’t.

Anyway, everyone can listen to the podcast and see what you think.

I had the feeling that, zany silliness that it was, some more substantial ideas were bubbling under the surface.