City and Suburban
By JOHN BETJEMAN It seems almost incredible that the town coun- cil of so glorious a city as this should deliberately plan to murder its greatest asset as it is going to do on January 9, unless wiser counsels on the council prevail, by diverting heavy traffic such as buses and lorries through the quiet streets of the New Town from Randolph Crescent (near the Waters of Leith village) to London Road via Ainslie, Moray and Drummond Places. The first step in this programme is the destruction of the trees in Randolph Crescent. Local protests have been made by Moray McLaren, Sir Compton Mackenzie and Mr. Fenwick, who is a member of the Randolph Crescent Proprietors' Com- mittee. This scheme really amounts to taking all the quiet, the dignity and the character from a residential quarter. It is the equivalent of making Regent's Park in London open to buses. But the traffic problem in Edinburgh is nothing like so great as it is in London. And I would advise those who think Edinburgh traffic is great to come down to London before Christmas next year and see what real traffic blocks are like. More than Bath, Cheltenham, Brighton, Strat- ford-on-Avon, Ludlow, Bristol, Dublin or Cork, Edinburgh is the most beautiful town in these islands. It is unique in having in its centre acres of magnificent Georgian residential streets whose charm conies from the very fact that they are exempt from buses and heavy traffic. Perhaps the Edinburgh Town Council may even now decide to preserve a chief part of their city from such disturbance, for noise and out-of-proportion buses and lorries are every bit as much murderers of landscape as are concrete lamp standards and ill-shaped buildings.
PEERS AND COMPLEXES I am very interested in peers. I always have been. I like them very much. This may be because I am a snob, but I don't think that it can entirely be that, for I really prefer obscure peers to well- known ones and I don't mind at all about whether they are old or new creations. And in consider- ing the debate about whether or not there should be hereditary peers I thought of one point, and it is an important one which the peers themselves will be too modest to mention. A man born to be a peer, whatever people may say about the disadvantages of titles, starts with an asset. Most people like to know a lord and then to be in- different to his title, but they aren't really. And a peer or a peer's heir is definitely someone so long as we have a monarchical system in this country. Therefore, all peers and their heirs start with an asset. There is not such a thing as a superiority complex, but there is such a thing as an inferiority complex, and peers have no need to suffer from that. There is, therefore, every chance that they will be pleasanter and more balanced people than ambitious com- moners. The analogy is the same with girls---a good-looking girl has a better start in life than an ugly one.
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