NOISES OFF
Philip Goodhart finds
himself accused of trying to put deaf people in ghettoes
A FEW days before the local elections I went canvassing on a housing estate a few hundred yards from the Beckenham Con- servative Party headquarters. The houses there had attracted a considerable number of first-time home buyers when they were built, and in these austere times it was not surprising to find a rash of 'For Sale' signs decorating every road.
A few houses clustered at the end of the estate were not on the market. They backed onto a railway line which may have to carry a substantial part of the freight traffic running between the Channel Tun- nel and the Midlands. It seems dotty that the bulk of the rail-borne freight moving between the Continent and our industrial heartlands should run along such a narrow, heavily used railway line wending its way through West and South London; but unless British Rail's plans are substantially altered, that is exactly what may happen.
The occupants of these blighted houses were gloomy. They knew their homes were unsaleable at the moment and British Rail has never been generous with the com- pensation that it has paid to people living alongside existing railway lines whenever there has been an increase in traffic.
As I drove to Bromley in order to do an interview on the local hospital radio prog- ramme, I thought about the dire predica- ment of those householders, if trains were going to rumble past their bedrooms throughout the night. These properties clearly could only be sold at an enormous loss on the open market but perhaps there were people less vulnerable to noise who would not find living there a problem. Perhaps some deaf people might not be worried by the sound of the trains. When I was discussing our Channel Tunnel prob- lem during the broadcast, I said then, perhaps some deaf people might actually be given some financial assistance to live in such a noisy place.
A few days later, I was rung up by a reporter on Today newspaper who told me that the British Deaf Association was accusing me of trying to set up deaf ghettoes and that my proposal 'would deny deaf people a basic freedom — the right to choose where to live'. I expressed mild astonishment at the idea that my casual comment could be interpreted in such a dramatic fashion. I told the reporter that I lived in a particularly quiet area but that at the bottom of the road there was a noisy café with bright lights in the window. At the moment, I would not have enjoyed living over or opposite the café but as I grew older and both my hearing and my eyesight failed, I would not be so bothered by the light or the noise and might be perfectly happy living next to the café. It was really a matter of market forces, I explained. Houses built near the end of a runway at a major airport clearly had a lower price because of the noise problem. I expect that if one did a survey, one would find that a higher than average proportion of the houses had been bought by people who were deaf and who were relatively invulnerable to noise pollution.
The next morning my secretary, who reads Today, pointed to a headline which said: 'Pay the deaf to live by airport. Deaf people should be paid to move near noisy airports, an MP said yesterday.' Various volleys of abuse from a number of pressure groups for the hard of hearing embellished a short article.
A number of local broadcasting orga- nisations were soon on the line. Patiently, I tried to point out that some people who were hard of hearing were less troubled by noise than some people with acute hearing. I pointed out that I was slightly deaf in my left ear and that when I was staying in a noisy hotel, I sometimes found it easier to get to sleep if I buried my good ear in the pillow. I was not claiming that all deaf people were immune from noise pollution but some of them might be. Down the telephone I could hear shrill, angry voices denouncing me for wanting to force deaf people to live in noise ghettoes.
Within hours, the storm had subsided but on the following Sunday I came across an item in the `Atticus' column of the Sunday Times — a column which I had helped to write with Ian Fleming 35 years ago:
Sir Philip Goodhart, Tory MP for Beck- enham, is unrepentant about the furore caused by his suggestion that deaf people should be paid to live near airports and railways on the ground that they would be less upset by the noise than people with normal hearing. Atticus offers a few more barmy ideas in the same vein. Like blind people being paid to live near eyesores. Or feeble-minded people being subsidised to live close to the House of Commons.
I am not sure that it is altogether barmy to suggest that blind people might not be bothered too much by living in rooms overlooking a particularly unattractive view and there are, indeed, a number of helpful proposals that never get made because they can so easily be twisted.
Here is another barmy hostage to for- tune: How about a Positive Pothole Poli- cy? Cars speeding down residential side streets are a great cause of death and injury to pedestrians. These speeding cars can now be checked by putting in road humps and I am glad to say that since Cecil Parkinson became Secretary of State for Transport, there has been a relaxation in the rules governing the installation of these humps. But the humps are expensive.
Some months ago, the Water Board, the Gas Board, and the Electricity authorities all seemed to combine their forces to dig up a road opposite my home. When they left, there were large potholes which slowed me down almost as effectively as road humps would have done. There are constant complaints about the poor condi- tion of the side roads but perhaps it would make sense to let potholes get deeper on our side roads (with liberal dollops of warning white paint) while the money saved by letting potholes survive. in our side roads was spent on round-the-clock repair work on our main roads where unattended roadworks caused so many unnecessary delays.
I am only deterred from recommending a Positive Pothole Policy by the thought of having to listen to the harsh reproving tones of the Secretary of the Toddlers Tricycle Association angrily complaining that all tricycle riders are particularly vulnerable to potholes. Silence is easier.
Previous page
