Fewer rules on our roads will make us better drivers

The problem is that drivers no longer inhabit a real world but instead a virtual one in which it's the signs that tell them what to do. In London, drivers are constantly champing at the restrictive bit: revving at the lights, menacing pedestrians at pelican and zebra crossings, accelerating between speed bumps, and generally doing everything they can to squeeze the last iota of forward motion out of their overpowered machines. That's the reason why they hate cyclists who break the rules quite so much - they lust for the same liberty.

Well, why not let them have it? The theories of Hans Monderman, the pioneering Dutch traffic engineer, are definitely the way forward for London. Monderman's idea is simple: if you treat people like idiots, they'll behave like them. So instead of signing everything in the environment, force people to work it out for themselves. No signs, no speed limits, no "traffic calming" but instead full mixed road use for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. In such an environment the driver is forced to take his cues from the actual world around him - and in London that's an emphatically social world, full of real people.

When Monderman first tried out his ideas in a Dutch village he thought he'd be lucky to get a 10kph reduction in car speeds. In fact, they fell so much he couldn't measure them with his radar gun. The Netherlands has some of the lowest road fatality rates in the developed world and in part this has to be because of the way Monderman's ideas have been implemented. British "traffic calming" measures result, I'd argue, mostly in creating suppressed rage in drivers.

The city's chief planning officer is interested in Monderman's ideas and would like to trial them - the Mayor is also said to be sympathetic. It would take a very bold politician indeed to go against the vested interests of all those police, wardens, traffic engineers and signage manufacturers but what's the alternative? If we carry on reducing the speed limit any more we may as well abandon our cars altogether and - gulp! - walk.

Gordon cooks his own goose

According to Restaurant magazine, Heston Blumenthal is up, while Gordon Ramsay is KOed. Yes, it's celebrity chef round-up time again, when us normal noshers are expected to tilt our heads back and stare up at these heavenly bodies as they twirl around their celestial kitchens. Bah! Was there ever anything more absurd than the cult of the stellar egg-flipper and doesn't all that attention paid to what goes in one end of the human organism seem unspeakably fatuous now that the economic proverbial has hit the fan? Yes, there are great restaurant chefs out there — I count some of them as friends — but it's notable that the better they are, the quieter they seem to be.

No cigs, no dogs, no daffs

To Grasmere in the Lake District, former home of our pre‑eminent balladeer of the natural and unadorned, William Wordsworth. Now all that remains of the great man is a museum, several car parks, the haunting beauty of the surrounding fells and a riverside snacking establishment dubbed "William's".

We halted the carriage so that we might take tea and were struck forcibly by the great quantities of signage adorning William's; there were "no smoking" signs inside, outside on the terrace, and actually incised into the railings — lest some opium-deranged Coleridge fan dream of sparking up. There were also "no dogs" signs aplenty and various others admonishments.

Now I know how the good burghers of Grasmere pick upon the crowd of human daffodils, the next time I see a sign for the place I think I'll just wander on by. Lonely as a cloud, possibly, but blissfully free from such hectoring.