Wednesday, March 05, 2008
The Dangers of Lamposts
Have you ever been wandering down the street, texting away merrily on your "Raspberry", when suddenly you find yourself walking into a lamppost?
Have no fear, you need injure yourselves no more.
Nanny has come up with the perfect solution to the menace of lampposts.
She is going to wrap them in padding.
Yes, that's right, she will pad them for your safety and comfort!
It has finally come to this, Nanny really does wnat to wrap us up in cotton wool!
A pilot scheme has been launched in Brick Lane (London), after it was found to have the highest number of "walking and texting" injuries in the country.
Seemingly 10% of people have hurt themselves while focused on their mobile phone screen, that at least is the finding of a survey conducted by 118 118 (the phone directory service). Quite how reliable this "statistic" is I have no idea.
The charity Living Streets has teamed up with 118 118, to test a scheme to pad lampposts.
A poll will be carried out on Brick Lane to gauge the response of locals.
If successful, the concept will be rolled out in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool.
This sounds like complete bollocks, and I can only assume is a rather a lame PR stunt by 118 118.
The cheaper solution to these "walk and text" injuries is simple:
LOOK WHERE YOU ARE GOING!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ken:
ReplyDeleteReading this, I thought I must have been in a coma for a month and that today was really April Fool's Day.
If Nanny is going to wrap up lamp posts, then it must follow all other street furniture should have the same treatment....Oh and people,....we might bump into each other....Nanny is loosing it....she needs to go into a home....for her own safety of course.
Tonk, I thought it was April Fool's too:)
ReplyDeleteOf course they're not being hurt by the lamp posts, they're been enlightened into the merits of taking responsibility for paying attention when out and about. Presumably it'll be cars next that'll have to be wrapped in protective padding for when they stumble out into the road.
ReplyDeleteWill the padding be absorbent?
ReplyDeleteEr ... you know ... dogs and things.
Should ripen very quickly.
Beautiful word verification in context: doogdq
I have the same problem when jogging through the woods while texting. Can we have padding in the woods as well, please?
ReplyDeleteRemember Gene Kelly swinging on lamp posts "Singing in the Rain"? Doubtless Nanny would have slapped an ASBO on him.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a great idea; sometimes, when staggering back to my car, too pissed to walk home, and trying to juggle a Kentucky Fried in one hand and a cigarette and a can of lager in the other, I have been known to come into unplanned and painful contact with walls, lamposts (and pavements).
ReplyDeleteI think that EVERYTHING should be padded and that, in future, I should be able to sue any Council that neglects to ensure my personal safety in this way.
Wouldn't it be easier to issue a bubble wrap jacket with every mobile phone, and insist users don said item before leaving the house?
ReplyDeleteKen,
ReplyDeleteyou mentioned 'Lame PR Stunts' - which particular member of the Goverment were you describing?
I have never heard of anything so ludicrous in all my life! I learnt at a very young age that, if I didn't look where I was going, I might injure myself by walking into a lamp post or some other object harder than me and, if this happened, no one was to blame but myself. Therefore, if some dozy twat walks into a lamp post, whilst texting or whatever, not looking where they are going, I fail to see why anyone should be to blame but themselves.
ReplyDeleteI blame the person who invented the lamppost.
ReplyDeleteCan we sue him/her?
Padding lamp posts would take away one of the few bits of joy I have left. Namely watching 'mobile muppets' knock themselves flat as I walk home of an evening. I usually get to see at least one come into painful contact with posts or pillar boxes as they jabber away about the minutiae of their pathetic lives so all can hear. There is something perversely satisfying in the sound of:
ReplyDelete"So yeah I said to 'chelle that..." (THWOCK!)
Slightly less amusing are the ones that seem to think that texting renders them invulnerable to those large steel boxes known as buses. Oh how they are proved wrong.
Thanks for the song Ken.
ReplyDeleteRather than padding I would like to see the lamp posts provided with good stout lengths of rope so that it is much easier to string up Nanny's pompous gauleiters, officious officials and assorted uniformed goons when the time comes to liberate ourselves from the second age of the Nazis.
ReplyDeleteAnd that time is coming.
So, as anonymous hinted, the alternative is, surely, a padded cell phone!
ReplyDeleteUseful for the protection of lamp posts everywhere.
Grant,
ReplyDeleteforget 'the...padded cell phone!'
How about just 'the padded cell'?
Anyone foolish enough to seriously injure themselves while texting will hopefully disfigure themselves enough to limit their chances at breeding.
ReplyDeleteIs this not natural selection in the modern era.
grumpy wrote:
ReplyDelete"Grant,
forget 'the...padded cell phone!'
How about just 'the padded cell'?"
Indeed. I deliberately left the punctuation free so that people could make what they wished of the phrase ...
Perhaps one of the last freedoms we have under Nanny.
;-)
Watch a game of rugby and you'll see the posts are padded.
ReplyDeletePadding things people will hurt themselves on makes sense.