Making a map of Leicester

As I've previously pointed out, geography is in a very unsatisfactory state, due largely to the poor arrangement of tectonic plate boundaries (see link).

However, there is a more immediate problem on a more local scale. As you cannot failed not to have missed noticing, maps are seldom an accurate reflection of local features. Clearly, this is not a fault of the map-making in most cases. The good officers at the Ordnance Survey, for example, have produced exquisite renderings of the United Kingdom, showing exactly how it ought to look. There are contour lines, clearly-named roads, and consistent symbols for things like escarpments, churches, tumuli, historic battle sites and the like. Such maps are a joy to read.

Yet the English countryside is, at best, a sloppy and incomplete representation of these maps. Many churches, for example, are a completely different shape to that represented on the maps.

This cannot be allowed to stand.

MaxCo Geographical Rectifiers, Inc. (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Buchanan Hand-Cream and Tyre) is seeking public funding to expand its ongoing scheme of geographical rectification. Work has already begun in Leicestershire, and we hope to begin operations at several other sites in the UK.

As a first step, gridlines have already been excavated across an area of almost 7000 square miles. Each line is quality- controlled for width (50.4 metres, this being a scale representation of the 0.2- point line thickness used on the reference maps), straightness and spacing. Work is underway to have all gridlines filled with slate chippings of the appropriate blue- grey colour.

The road-painting scheme is also well advanced, with all motorways and A- roads, and the majority of B-roads, now the correct colour. Dashed trenches have been dug along almost 2300 linear miles of footpaths and bridleways. Although some local archaeology groups have raised objections, excavation of standard 500- metre five-pointed stars at 23 tumuli, and of crossed 800-metre-long sabres at 17 historic battle sites, has gone largely without a hitch.

Greatest effort, of course, has gone into the lettering. Although it has taken longer than first hoped to train and deploy the necessary teams of calligraphic earth- moving contractors, lettering is almost complete for all towns with populations above 25,000. In those cases where lettering overlaps major roads, there has of course been some disruption, but this has been kept to a minimum. (The typographical error at Thurmaston has been blown out of all proportion by the local press, of course.)

The regularization of churches, as expected, was a major sticking-point but, with appropriate incentives, most communities have accepted the inevitability of the remodelling, and have managed to add their own personal touches to the standard square-and- cross design. We are also particularly proud of the completion of a series of over 25 public telephone symbols, whose excavation (often deep into bedrock) was particularly difficult at times.

Contour-lining, and the correct colouring of urban areas and farmland, of course, will represent an order of magnitude increase in the workload, and will place heavy burdens on our resources. Nevertheless, a few pilot areas have been completed already; over 670 acres to the south east have, in fact, been completed in all respects.

Given what has been achieved so far on limited funds, I trust that you will not hesitate to lobby for government funding to enhance and extend this scheme. Tomorrow, the world...