What took the police to Port Meadow?

What took a battalion of Oxford’s Finest up on to Burgess Field, by Oxford’s Port Meadow, on Tuesday? It looked, apparently, like the chorus from the Pirates of Penzance having an outing on Emmerdale Farm as they all jumped on the back of a Ranger’s truck and bumped over the track.

Was it the showdown in the turf war between the Albanian drugs dealers and their local rivals? Were they off to get the rough sleeper who craps all over the place, to the delight of the dogs and the deep distaste of everyone else? Perhaps a couple were enjoying themselves in breach of New Labour’s Public Order (Copulation in Public Places) Prevention Act 1999 or whatever it was called.

Yet another try for a skate board area

A third attempt to build a skate board park in North Oxford has apparently been all but beaten off. Two have already been repelled from Aristotle Lane Recreation Ground, between Kingston Road and Waterside. This one was actually planned for Waterside itself, at the end of Walton Well Road on a patch of rough ground known, with revolting tweeness, as The Spinney.

It was apparently promoted by Councillor Clark Brundin and Councillor Alan Armitage fuelled respectively (I would guess) by naivety and ambition. This time around, the council officers are not backing the idea – a whipped cur shuns the fire or whatever the expression is. Even council officers can get a message if you kick them hard enough – but not, apparently, some of the councillors.The first skate area was plotted between Councillor Jim Campbell and an official in the Parks department known locally as Dim Cow. It killed Jim Campbell’s reputation – someone told me, I hope correctly, that he was a “broken man” when the diggers destroyed his creation in March 2004 with £50,000 wasted.

Oxford floods keep rising

I have been watching various markers on Port Meadow, by the River Thames at Oxford. One is the wooden walkway which runs between the boats and the trees in the photographs below of Medley.

On Sunday the top of the walkway was just clear of the water. On Tuesday the surface was flush with the water. This morning it had disappeared below the water.

More alarming still is the concrete road which runs along the back of Port Meadow, away from the Thames. The water has lapped at the edge of this, as it does most winters. When we set off for a walk at 9:30 today, the concrete was clear of water.

When we came back 20 minutes later, the water had started to cross the concrete.

I don’t myself blame the Environment Agency for being unable to predict accurately the highest point of this flood. There is no recent precedent for this and the sources are wide and far away.

Those, on the other hand, who have permitted uncontrolled building on land at risk, from Two Planks Prescott to the dimmest little drone in Oxford City Council’s planning department, should be tied to a post below the water line.

Home

Signs to ignore in Oxford

The picture below was taken at Medley Weir at the end of June 2007. The bright red sign first went up at the end of January, when a boy drowned in the River Thames just behind the left-hand gate post.

The notice might arguably have served some purpose in January. The river was very swollen and over-ran the path along the river. The path itself had been neglected for years – one of those situations where responsibility was divided between several authorities so none of them did anything.

Port Meadow party rubbish

The answer to rubbish left on Port Meadow is not officiousness from council or police but more bins.

This time of year always brings parties on Port Meadow. Some are sedate affairs with chilled wine and sandwiches on warm afternoons. Others involve hordes of young people with plastic bags full of cheap plonk and beer, enjoying themselves and each other in the grass until dawn when they tramp noisily back into town.

In a heavily-regulated age, where most outdoor entertainment is corporate or state-sponsored, they are an outpost of freedom – freedom from exams, from parents and from authority. Ten years of Blair has seen a shift from the British idea that everything is allowed which is not prohibited to a world where official permission is needed for everything, with a fee to pay to a functionary – an insidious erosion of freedom which is cumulatively quite as damaging as Blair’s more defined attacks on liberty.

Thames towpath repairs at Oxford

I have been down to see the works from Medley to Sheepwash Channel where the towpath has been crumbling for years. Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council suddenly found the money to make urgent repairs, apparently as a first phase of more comprehensive strategy to restore the path.

The Oxford skyline RIP

One can deduce from Lib Dem councillor Stephen Tall’s blog and occasional letters to the local papers that he is a little brighter and more rounded than some of the other elected members.

He has a new post on one of his blogs called The Oxford Skyline with a super panoramic photograph of the Radcliffe Camera taken from the University Church. Clearly someone who cares about the Oxford skyline. If only some of his colleagues cared as much.

Come with me, Stephen, to Port Meadow, and look back at the towers and spires as they appear from outside – or rather, as they now do not appear.

The Oxford Canal – a metaphor for Oxford’s neglect

My post Oxford Canal – an alternative view – ends thus:

“This stretch of the Oxford Canal remains a peaceful and beautiful place to walk. Its slow ruin – a combination of deliberate decisions by ignorant people and gradual neglect – is a metaphor for Oxford as a whole.”

But, you might say (if you knew me) you love this city; you photograph it daily and are creating a web site extolling its virtues. Furthermore, the two councils have plans to develop the Westgate and the whole “West End”, to rebuild Bonn Square and endless other schemes to remake Oxford for the 21st Century. How can you talk of “gradual neglect”?

Thames Bank Neglect

I put up a post last night here about the 15 year-old boy who fell from his bike into the River Thames at Port Meadow. I put it on my Oxford Agenda site rather than here because, although an Oxford story, it was more about attitudes to risk than about Oxford.