Learning That Two Lanes Good Four Lanes Bad in Belgium

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert

October 4, 2024

Off I went to Belgium. Belgian roads are at least as busy as UK ones but the etiquette is completely different, and much more efficient. Most of the motorways I used are 2 lane and the way they use them takes a little bit to adapt to. The main thing is that everybody leaves the overtaking lane immediately after they passed another vehicle. Which is fine, but they come out into a fairly narrow gap when they want to overtake again. This is actually also fine, but the first time someone did this I was a little bit alarmed.

Coming back to the UK I find myself on a typical UK 4 lane (each way) motorway. The left hand lane is virtually deserted, the second lane sparsely occupied, the third and fourth fairly busy. Most people never go into the first or second lanes. Do they think it makes them doubt their virility (or more unusually femininity)? I tried to drive like a Belgian on the way home and had somebody angrily flashing at me because I ‘cut in’ to the second lane leaving a gap in front of him (or her) of only say 100 metres. It makes me think creating motorways of more than 3 lanes (and in most cases 2 lanes) is a waste of money in a country where we don’t know how to drive properly.

Enough already. A different etiquette rules a race track, especially when old single seaters are involved. The circuit I visited is known as Spa-Francorchamps. In my youth it had a fearsome reputation and claimed the lives of 10 drivers in the 1960s.

My memory (I find) extends to 1960 when two British drivers were killed on the same day. One was called Chris Bristow and I find he was very young (22) and inexperienced and seen as fast but wild. The other was called Alan Stacey who was no veteran at 26. He had the considerable complication of having only one leg and used a hand throttle.

To me this illustrates the approach to motor racing in the 1960s, where drivers’ fathers may well have fought and fell in the Second World War. Drivers were less daunted by danger. In Stacey’s case, he dies after he was hit in the face by a bird whilst going at 120mph so nothing to do with wildness and little with excess courage. This is his car after the accident.

In about 1970 the drivers got fed up of everybody dying and Spa was cut drastically from nearly 9 miles, all on public roads, to about 4 miles of dedicated race track with safety features like run offs and barriers (and ambulances etc!)

On a more positive note, I spied a man who I was in school with – didn’t know him as he was a couple of years ahead – in his Alexis Formula Junior car in gorgeous orange.

I suppose Duncan must be about 75 now and said in 2021 he had done 628 races in that very car which I think counts as persistence. Here he is, demonstrating some of that etiquette.

Spa has steep hills that you don’t realise when you see it on TV, and are very hard work for a fat old man on foot, but it is a beautiful place in the Ardennes hills (especially between showers) which the French thought would stop the Germans invade that way in 1939.

I am banging on about this but it is quite an experience. I have I think never seen a field containing 80 cars – that’s the back part of the starting grid, which had 10 Ford GT40s in the first 10 positions.

Back in Brentford I had a relaxed day on Monday, until the evening when I was off to Hounslow for the Children and Youth Scrutiny Panel. This is my first time on a scrutiny panel though I have been to a few in the past as a Cabinet member. I’m quite out of touch with the yoof. It will surprise you to hear that I do not any longer qualify as a yoof and even my daughter has just got half way to her three score and 10 allocation so my memories of turning up at the school and managing children parties are a bit hazy.

The main thing we talked about was children not attending schools. This increased for obvious reasons in the lockdown and has not completely recovered. It was an interesting discussion. Non attendance is quite strongly linked to deprivation and is therefore an important factor in people from poor households having poorer prospects of better results later in life. Councils have little in the way of powers (and budgets) to try and improve this. There is some optimism that the change of government will find a way to help with this. It is really important for improving how our country works, and something that has been ignored for the last 14 years, like so many other things.

On Tuesday morning I was back in Hounslow trying, with a colleague, to open a bank account. My opinion of banks is not overly complimentary and was not helped by the fact that the manager with whom we arranged an appointment last week was not there! We will get there in the end, if I have to open my own bank. As my father used to say to me I’ll repeat it to my affluent readers – if you have any money you need keeping safe don’t hesitate to give it to me to look after. Particularly if it’s a large sum.

In the evening, it was the AGM of the London Museum of Steam and Water. Always a pleasure to attend the Museum – truly a jewel in the crown on Brentford – and I am a member. Largely run by volunteers and very short of money but there are heroes on hand who are keeping it going. Need to attract grants from mainly the lottery and the Arts Council and they are on the case. They need lots of members and lots of contributions because they are also important evidence when funds are applied for.

Wednesday was mainly a day off, though there is plenty going on at the Hounslow Community FoodBox which is grabbing my attention. But I was up in Covent Garden for a lunch of health food – steak pie, chips and several pints of beer to try and balance the portion of broccoli which it was impossible to avoid.

Talking of health, this morning Thursday I was up in the pharmacy in South Ealing Road, just over the border in enemy territory, getting jabs for flu and COVID. It was a bit like a crowded cattle market, with all of the cattle over 70 getting our health insurance. A new experience for me, with a jab on both sides so I have beautifully symmetrical arms with a bit of cotton wool and a plaster each side.

Home for another FoodBox conversation then off to W Middlesex to see the Ear Nose and Throat posse. I stress there is nothing terribly wrong with my nose or throat but my ears are a different matter. I went through all the traditional tests and a couple of consultations with the consultant. In the end she said there’s nothing the NHS can do for me other than some recalibrated ear trumpets. She was unable to offer a head transplant on the NHS which I have been arguing for and she claimed she has nothing to make me 30 years younger. Thank the Lord we now have a Labour government and things can only get better.

That is all the wisdom I am giving out this week, other that observing that all the bad congestion in the High Street this afternoon was, for once, not caused by cyclists.

This lorry was parked outside Morrisons, naturally with the engine running for the diesel engine to keep his toes cosy, whilst his mate was in the shop getting – well I didn’t check that. When chum returned he stayed there for a while doing something on his telephone – Sudoku, or perhaps investigating tractors. It was all legal and above board though, because he had his hazard flashers going. Some people see scaffolding and think of a scaffold, but not me, obviously, and they are Helping Heroes.

Councillor Guy Lambert