Blogfromthebarn

The Powerpoint approach to policing


I noticed some signs on the London Underground which suggest that the British Transport Police are looking out for our safety, these feature a helicopter, which to be honest doesn't appear to me be be the optimal way to deliver plod to the depths of the Piccadilly Line.

Whilst musing on the amount of signage produced by our brave boys in blue I've discovered that I'm more than a little annoyed at the number of big bold signs in almost all public spaces advising, no, commanding me to "leave NOTHING" in my car. This makes stopping at the gym on the way to the bottle bank quite a noisy (and frankly, embarrassing) proposition.

I'm guessing that rather than spending our taxes on employing coppers to catch car thieves it's a good deal more cost effective to put up signs advising us on cunning ways to disappoint the ungodly. In fairness having spent separate chunks of my life both catching criminals and designing posters, I'm quite sympathetic, designing posters is much less risky, much warmer and allows one to employ those creative skills which are rarely exercised in the process of arresting a villain.

I particularly dislike the signs announcing that "Thieves operate in this area", It's all changed since my day, back in the seventies there were no dedicated zones, thieves pretty much operated anywhere they felt like it, the upside was that so did we of the thin blue line. Somehow it seems that if you know where to put the signs up why wouldn't you use that information to catch the thieves ?

What about putting up signs, maybe held by police officers, announcing, "Policemen operate in this area"?

posted by Stuffy @ 1:00 pm 0 comments

Signs of the times, revisited


I was walking through a shopping centre recently, just passing through as opposed to the indescribable hell which is "I need some shoes to go with this dress".

As I approached the bank of glass exit doors there was, predictably, a queue of sportswear-clad inbreds, too idle or obese to physically push a door open, lined up to be recognized as infirm or disabled by the infra-red beam and enabled to escape through the automatic doors.

No such easy option for me though, I'm emotionally uncomfortable with the concept of queuing and I'm in reasonable physical shape for an overweight man who's endure the gulags and 75 years of hard physical labour.

I strode manfully toward the doors, arm outstretched to thrust boldly against the aluminium plate marked 'push', expecting to emerge, like Orpheus from the underworld, like Gandalf from Khazad-dum, like Mole from the spring cleaning, blinking into the watery sunshine.

Sadly it was not to be, I stopped dead, I recoiled, the vibrations traveled through my rigid outstretched arm and noticeably loosened both of my remaining teeth. The door was locked, obviously I'd missed a clue, indeed as my eyeballs regained the ability to focus I discovered an A4 sign, power-pointed, laminated and sellotaped to the glass.

Did it say "This door is locked"? No, (although it obviously was).

The sign announced in bold capitals, in big block letters, that

"THIS FACILITY IS NOT CURRENTLY FUNCTIONAL".

Gentle reader, unlike the painfully verbose and erudite author of that piece of public informative signage, for once, words failed me.



More signs of the times here

Labels: signs morons verbosity management-speak

posted by Stuffy @ 11:49 am 2 comments