Bring on the car-wreck bulldozers

I WAS driving down one of our country’s major motorways the other morning when a Czechoslovakian lorry driver 100 yards in front of me drifted across two lanes and smashed a passing BMW into the central reservation.

So I did what any other good citizen would do. I put the hazard lights on, pulled over, called the cops and ambulance, and then went to see if I could help. The emergency services duly turned up, cut the BMW driver free, started going through the documents of the lorry driver, and that was that … 40 minutes or so from start to finish. And that is where it all started going pear-shaped.

We had an articulated lorry parked up on the hard shoulder; we had a BMW wedged into the central reservation; but at least two lanes of the motorway were clear and free. So perhaps we could press on with our important journey? Err, no.

It turned out that we (that’s me and the other 2,000 or so vehicles behind me) weren’t simply held up while the victims were processed. We were part of a “crime scene”, and as such wouldn’t be going anywhere very soon.

The traffic cops took statements from those who had witnessed the accident. That took about another 30 minutes. And then the men in white overalls turned up. They had string, chalk and those surveyors’ things on tripods. They paced, measured, photographed and took tarmac samples. Overhead, a helicopter hovered, videotape running. This wasn’t looking good.

After two hours, I politely inquired of a policeman as to when I might be able to resume my journey. His response was brusque. My equally abrupt reaction was apparently sufficient for him to threaten me with arrest if I didn’t “Shut the fuck up and get back in the car”.

Dear reader, we sat there for over four hours. Businessmen on their way to crucial meetings, lorry drivers delivering essential parts to industry, families heading to their holiday flight (now long departed), innocent commuters who now had to explain to the boss how a simple accident meant that they had missed an entire day’s work. It was an utter, utter farce.

I understand that in the event of an accident that might possibly result in a fatality (in this case, perhaps the poor BMW driver), the police reserve the right to treat the incident as an unlawful death or, presumably, a possible murder. This then requires the attendance of Dr Amanda Burton and her various spooks. It also means that the motorway in question will remain closed until the overalls have completed their investigation.

Wouldn't it just be easier to bulldoze the wreckage into the ditch and let the rest of us get on with our lives?

I’ll tell you what I’m going to do in future. The next time an inarticulate articulated lorry driver falls asleep at the wheel and takes out a lane of innocent traffic, I’m going to swerve past the wreckage and keep on driving. The Plod might be happy spending the day dancing around in their high-visibility jackets. I actually have a living to earn.

I REALLY didn’t want to have to return to the “passenger profiling” row of last week, but a bloke from the Muslin Council so aggravated me on the radio this week that I threw a strop worthy of Nikki off Big Brother (face of a 70-year-old, mind of a seven-year-old).

If you pop down to your local airport, what will you find? A rugby team heading for Dublin, a 12-strong hen party off to Prague, someone’s Granny on the way to meet the new baby, dozens of nuclear families (mum, dad and 2.4 children) off to Spain for their summer holiday, me and Mrs B heading for a romantic weekend in Paris (if I can get her out of the shops). And two single Asian lads, aged between 19 and 30, travelling alone on one-way tickets.

That’s a pretty average plane-load. So who are you going to subject to the strictest of security checks? Good, right answer. But why are you also going to inconvenience, embarrass and aggravate the other 150 people who are no more of a terrorist threat than Thora Hird?

I DO fear that when the Sunday supplements start looking for their icon of the year 2006, it will turn out to be the Clear Plastic Bag.

It says it all: how our society was reduced to organisational rubble by the mere threat of a terrorist attack; how hundreds of thousands of people had their holidays ruined or their business trips cancelled on the whim of a jittery government; how the ineptitude of the authorities made things 10 times worse than they needed to be; and how the jobsworth mentality is always ready to occupy any vacuum of common sense.

It used to be an old traveller’s trick to pack a spare set of clothes in your hand baggage. Then, if your case was lost, you could at least survive until it turned up. Passengers caught up in last week’s lunacy were denied even that opportunity. And worse – into their main luggage went their car keys and house keys as well.

How reassuring then that British Airways should have to announce that they’d managed to separate 10,000 people from their luggage during the terrorist crisis, and that a week later 5,000 were still awaiting their bags. This is just horrific. It means that some poor people have been away for a week’s holiday without ever seeing a change of clothes, and have then had to return, abandon their cars at the airport, and then go home to break into their own houses.

I happen to think that Michael O’Leary, boss of Ryanair, is a complete twat. I also think that he is probably right when it comes to the inability of BAA to cope with the current crisis.

THOSE WACKY Chinese have built a new town to accommodate 8,000 people just outside Shanghai that mimics the English equivalent.

There are Regency terraces, Georgian mansions and mock Tudor rows of shops. There’s a village green, a pub, a duck pond and a church. But one serious omission means that the whole plan is fatally flawed. There’s no Chinese takeaway.

HAVING BEEN irritated for ages by those “Baby on Board” labels you see on cars (What am I supposed to do? Decide not to crash into you?), this week I came across a people carrier with a sticker reading “Princess on Board” in its rear window.

I steered well clear of that one, assuming that the driver was probably drunk, working for MI5 and likely to crash in the nearest tunnel at any minute.

NANNY STATE update: The local council has installed a “noise-limiter” in the village hall at Waltham-on-the-Wolds in Leicestershire. The device has a red light that starts flashing should noise approach the set level. If it exceeds that, all power to the hall is shut off.

As well as hosting wedding receptions, Women’s Institute and scout troop meetings, the hall is also used by primary school children whose recent performance of the Jungle Book was rudely interrupted when parents started clapping too loudly. And, as doors and windows have to be kept closed at all times, four guests at a recent wedding passed out in the heat.

Brilliant! You really could not make it up.

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone voting for the ginger-headed, cottage-burning, militant Welsh idiot on Big Brother, of anyone not scandalised over that snatched kiss between Clarrie Grundy and Mike Tucker, or of anyone who hasn't broken one of the 3,023 new laws NuLabour has introduced in the past nine years. I always thought Socialists valued the freedom of the individual ...