FIFTEEN HUMPS on the road at Blair Atholl? It must
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make life very uncomfortable for the Duke of Atholl when he leaves his newspaper work in London and makes for the ancestral Scottish castle.
Not that His Grace has been complaining, at least not in the House of Lords, where he is more likely to be heard defending the natural life of Scotland.
It was Lord Lucas of Chilworth who told at these hazards on the A9, adding for good measure that there were a further eleven al Kingussi (sounds more like an African township than a place in Scotland).
True, Lord Lucas was not speaking from personal experience for, as he admitted, he had found out about them only a short while before. But he understood that the Blair Atholl bumps had been there for about four years.
The Earl of Avon, however, knew all about them, as any self-respecting Government spokesman should, however new he may be. They were apparently illegal. And they were not road humps. They were, in fact, "something delightful called a rumble strip".
Fellow Peers were not, alas, allowed to share in that delight. For the Earl did not explain the mysteries of rumble strips.
Lord Torpichen, for one, was in no mood to be delighted anyway. As far as he was concerned, to speak of rumble strips — at least those on the approach to Glenfarg as one came off the M90 — was some civil servant's bit of double talk.
But all this was by the way, as indeed was the whole debate on the Highways (Road Humps) Bill. For it all centred on an amendment by Lord Airedale saying that humps could not be constructed on any road where no speed restriction was in force.
And, as as was soon pointed out to him, there ain't no such thing. As the owner of the simplest Aston-Martin or Lamborghini will tell you, restrictions apply whetever you go.
Lord Airedale admitted his mistake, and with becoming but unjustified modesty observed that most of the amendments he had moved over the last 20 years had probably been defective in their drafting. But he was not dismayed — all he would have to do was amend his amendment by inserting the words "30 miles an hour".
So that was that. Except for those humps at Blair Atholl. And here a thought occurs — could they be tank traps erected by the Duke's own army, the only private force in Britain?