It's carnage out there. Christmas cards, however could be personalised and picked up two weeks after purchase Now that's a holiday miracle.. Unfortunately it takes eight weeks."At John Lewis, the salesman in furniture said, "No way, not by Christmas". I picked up garments and said, "hmm," but still no service.In the bed department it happened I sat on a modern Japanese futon, and a salesman approached. "Can I help you?""Yeah, can you deliver by Christmas?"Sadness filled his eyes as the sale slipped away "Not until mid-January," he said "Everything here is made to order. Staff seemed to match shoppers at a one-to-one ratio, but again, all available sales people were attached to telephones.I stared at big-screen televisions - no service I pushed buttons on stereo systems - no service. As I walked away, she realigned the purse I touched to its original 68.7 degree angle.In the furniture department I lingered in the modern-design section.

After 20 minutes of running my fingers up Eames and down Le Corbusier chairs, I still hadn't attracted the attention of the staff.At DH Evans the only shoppers appeared to be grandmothers, slowly heading for clearance bargains. I perused some of the clothing items without a cursory glance from the salespeople. When I made eye contact with the saleswoman at the Miu Miu purse display, she felt obliged to say "Hello".Sensing her disdain, I thought, "Well, you're not getting my 150 quid". I don't look like a Selfridges shopper, dressed in khakis and trainers, but I pump up my spirit by reminding myself: "They don't know. I could have Daddy's platinum card tucked away in my back pocket." It wouldn't have mattered. As an American accustomed to helpful salespeople, prompt deliveries and Christmas presents that are routinely wrapped for you in the store, I put it to the test last week First stop - Selfridges.

hy can't British shops offer the same levels of service as you get in New York or other US cities? So runs the refrain. No 10 policy advisers have been reading tabloid editorials rather than the evidence from the Home Office crime and disorder audit. If they consulted that they would discover that 86 per cent of people think road safety is as important as mugging and burglary.Roger Harrabin is transport correspondent of BBC Radio 4's `Today' programme.. "But most politicians don't realise that, and neither do enough medical professionals."As politicians wrangle, the savage irony is that there is a groundswell of support for greater road safety. "Transport is the single biggest issue in preventive child health," he says.

Some senior Tories fear that the party of law and order will be labelled hypocritical if it tolerates middle-class motorists breaking the law.Dr Ian Roberts, director of the Child Health Monitoring Unit at the University of London, estimates that if speeds were cut in residential areas, around 2,000 children every year could be spared serious injury or death. But Bernard Jenkin, his number two, who had a close friend killed in a car crash, fears this policy will backfire if the Government climbs down from safety plans, and more people are killed as a result. Mr Redwood has been happy to harness speed as a weapon against the Government's transport policy. By Monday morning John Prescott confirmed on Today that speed enforcement would be left to local forces to prioritise. Yet some forces have poor records on road safety, and experts say that the police need a clear lead from central government.The Tories are also split over safety. The statement was portrayed in some newspapers as an attack on motorists' freedom, and the following weekend Alastair Campbell briefed journalists that this would not be government policy.

There would probably be a national outcry if this sort of thing happened on the railways. Much more of what the Government takes from the motorist should be spent on safety."So how has all this come about? Labour's speed and safety plans were bullish until Charles Clark, the Home Office minister, said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that drivers in 30mph zones should stick to 30mph. Edmund King of the RAC Foundation said: "We would like to see government and local authorities spending more on road safety improvement. Both support slow-speed areas such as 20mph zones if they are demanded by local residents, but insist that the zones should be self-enforcing with physical barriers like chicanes to slow down drivers. They have been told that little extra will be available from the Chancellor, and are hoping that councils will be able to carry out low-cost traffic-calming measures by painting signs on the road.This plan has been condemned by the RAC Foundation and the AA. Publicly it says it is impossible to quantify how much is spent on preventing crashes, because the budgets come under separate headings.But privately ministers admit that the Government is spending between pounds 2bn and pounds 3bn. Governments have got away with doing far too little."This Government's economists say the cost of road crashes amounts to pounds 14.8bn a year.