“Fitting speed-limiting devices in cars could prevent up to 29% of injury accidents on the roads, a report by a Government advisory body has said.”

 

This statement is based on flawed and incomplete research and a number of faulty premises.

 

The simplicity of the statement gives it an obvious appeal but I consider it to be at best misguided and most likely wrong.

 

If 2 cars collide head on and each one has been travelling at 30mph, within the speed limit, the joint collision speed of 60mph will lead to the occupants of the cars being injured seriously. If the limit is 60mph the collision speed will be 120mph, serious injury and death are likely results. If the speed limit is 50mph the joint speed is 100mph or 70mph, joint speed 140mph. So how is a speed limiter that keeps a vehicle to the speed limit going to help?

 

Additionally, a burst of acceleration can often get a driver out of trouble when braking would result in collision or some other injurious result. If the speed of the car was limited this option would not be available to a driver and collision and or injury might result. So, how does the advisory body know that the correct use of speed has not decreased the number of injury accidents?

 

The flaw in the research is that though there may be ways to measure causes of injury accidents, there is no way to measure the reason injury accidents did not happen. Without such knowledge any simplistic solution, such as “Fitting speed-limiting devices in cars could prevent up to 29% of injury accidents on the roads”  could cause more injury accidents than it prevents.

 

 

 Tony Morris

www.tonymorrispoet.com

 

SONG FOR ROSIE

 

Pink Rosie down the back lane in your new peach coat

When I was just eighteen

Kissed me then,

Kissed me again

Down the back lane,

In the doorway,

Where they can’t see,

The screws that walk the wall.

As Adam fell

You made me fall.

 

Come again

Now I’m forty,

Well a little more,

That’s what this is,

What life’s for;

Love when young,

Love comes again.

Sunset and Rosie

Where are you now?

 

I know.

You’re here,

Down the back lane.

 

Now I’m older

You’d think there ‘ld just be memories

Of bolder times

But times are bolder now

And last year,

Suddenly again,

You were there.

They don’t call you Rosie anymore

But it was you,

First love, the morning dew,

Lovin’ for

Sunset Rosie.

 

 

But this year

Your coat is green,

As I was then,

Am now again.

Kissin’s what you meant

And always mean

Rosie kiss me,

Kiss me,

Kiss me….

 

©TONY MORRIS 26/4/84

 

 

 

GILDED VIRGIN

 

By the Cathedral,

The gilded virgin,

Motionless

Among the throng of milling tourists,

Enthroned,

Photographed.

 

Occasionally a chorus of small coins

Sings in her not-a-begging-bowl.

 

All day she sits, silent, still,

Transfixed by Midas.

 

Truth comes late in the day,

When school is out.

A small boy, a small girl

Come in a whirl of laughter

Round the sombre stones,

Clean off their Mother’s gilt,

Reveal the wheelchair,

Propel away the actress

Whose long legs

No longer ………

© Tony Morris  1995

Here is a poem from 2000 (across over from the old Millenium to the New) so nothing changes.

CUTTING EDGE

To be at the cutting edge you’ve got to be ‘urban’,

Live in a town, write about going down the ‘Soce’,

Spit and sawdust pubs, working men’s clubs,

Discos, lager, copping off, getting laid,

Fashion, grunge and retro, going on the Metro,

Muggers, buggers, teenage tarts.

Urban is smart, politically with it,

At the writing edge.

Rural is out, all that mud and smells, Ecoli on your boots

And other effluentials that dwell in fields and trees.

It’s O.K. to say you want it all conserved, fossilized,

As long as it’s gardened rather than farmed.

You don’t want it harmed by pesticides or houses,

Windmills for electricity or roads or anything that

Makes it less than pretty if you want to look,

Though you prefer it as a photograph in a book,

Televison programmes, the odd sound effect on radio.

Oh, no, it’s definitely the blunt edge of the knife

To be rural and at peace with life. ‘Rustic’ is

Neither ‘nice’ nor acceptably nasty, not worth

A word in a poem, not worth writing about,

It’s not ‘real’ so get real, get ‘urban’.

Suburban is half a step but so middle class,

Muddle class, not inner city, ain’t life shitty,

Whingeing with something to whinge about,

Out of work, depressed, messed up by drugs.

Compared with this what’s the price of pigs

Or failing farms to do with the price of bacon.

No, you’ve got to be ‘urban’ to be

At the cutting edge of poetry.

©Tony Morris 2000

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

In 2005 I discovered that one of my maternal great-grandfathers had been incarcerated in the North Riding Lunatic Asylum at Clifton for 27 years being locked up at the age of 48 and dying there aged 75. I wrote the poem below which I read on the BBC Radio York North Yorkshire Folk Programme where I was, at the time, Poet in Residence. It was only in 2007 that I examined his case notes at The Borthwick Institute of Historical Research at the University of York and discovered that my 2005 poem touched on what happened to him with considerable accuracy.

ANOTHER STORY

 

I stared out of the window.

I saw the walls of other lives.

I thought of my life.

I began to cry.

 

The road I had travelled was rutted mud and ice,

The road to travel was full of stones to be broken.

Even when the sky was blue and the gulls soared

I saw only the road behind, saw only the road before.

 

My body was weary with walking.

I carried a pack of troubles, mine and others.

The weight bowed my back like an old man.

Old before I was old. I was never young.

 

When I cried for my never youth

When I cried from the weight of my burden

When I cried and could not stop crying

They said the Moon was my mistress and I cried for her.

 

They took me away arms fast about me.

They shut me in a place of screams in the night

And shouting all day, day after day

For twenty-seven years I did not know.

Then death freed me.

 

Tell my story my shamed children never told.

Tell my story of times long past.

Cry a little for a lost life, as I cried.

Now, they will not imprison you for crying for me.

©Tony Morris 2 March 2005

TIME FOR MUSING

 

Leaning against the men that built the wooden ships,

Berries bright on the leafless bushes,

I watch the crows above the Abbey

And gulls in flight.

 

Male mallard still pursue females on the water

When not huddled

Facing the wind that blows downriver.

 

Activity in the shipyard

And few visitors.

Shops with irregular hours.

A town sighing with relief.

Winter in Whitby.

 

©Tony Morris 29 November 2006

Seasons Greetings to one and all.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

My myspace site devoted to my music on Native American Style Flutes is now up and running with 6 tracks from my new Album ‘Sprites - Water and land’ with two tracks that you can download at www.myspace.com/tonymorrisflutes

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com  

As I sit at my desk I can see a Football field and watch the gulls paddling the ground to bring up the worms.

ONLY A GAME

 

On the football field

The gulls play ‘footie’,

Fool the worms to think it’s raining.

Beguiled by fancy footwork

Up they go to where the gulls are waiting.

Down gullies gullet wormie goes.

 

Gulled again.

The game goes on.

ãTony Morris 21 December 2009

Just sent a number of Yorkshire Songs off to Yorkshire Garland for its Phase 2 which is to put up 40 Yorkshire songs by modern and contemporary folk song makers.

I’ve also sent a selction of my songs of the sea to a new shanty group in the North East, ‘Boomalot’.

The stock of the new flute album ‘Sprites - Water and Land’ is steadily decreasing, email me soon if you want a copy.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com