I am gemused to read that the council of my old university town of Edinburgh have recently become a tad worried about the wind.
This is rather surprising, as anyone who knows Edinburgh knows full well that it is a windy city!
Anyhoo, the council have got bees in their bloomers over the possible danger of gusts of wind blowing away street parasols and other street furniture etc erected (can I say "erected"?) by pubs, cafes etc.
It seems that the council is so worried that they have requested pubs, cafes etc with outside parasols etc to conduct regular "wind checks" using an anemometer; and to compare the readings to a specially prepared chart which warns when the gusts may be strong enough to blow the parasol etc away.
In the event the wind reaches the "red zone", the parasols are meant to be "de erected".
All very nice I'm sure. However, the size of the parasols needs to be taken into account plus the fact that 99% of cafes/pubs who have parasols are wise enough to have already tethered them to the ground with massive concrete blocks.
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I wonder whether cafe owners on the continent, where parasols, tables, chairs and similar street furniture are far more commonplace than in Britain, have to face this kind of bull s***? I also wonder, since this is the council's idea, whether they will pay the cost of these anemometers, or are the individual cafe owners expected to stump up the money? Yes, I thought so, KERCHING! Presumably, anyone who does not comply with this dictat will have their premises closed down by some hi-viz wearing council enforcement officer, and be taken to court as well?
ReplyDeleteLocal Nanny loves to throw her weight around. "Officers"(sic) love to empire build and seem to get some perverted satisfaction from bossing others about or making other's lives a misery.
ReplyDeleteI often feel Local Nanny is a bit like an attention seeking kid is so much as, they like to keep reminding you they're there.
I wonder if any of the "officers"(sic) have shares in a company that make these wind measuring devices?
"De-erected"??? Together with their other multifarious failings, so-called council "officers" obviously lack a basic English education. What's wrong with "Dismantled".
ReplyDeleteOf course after a lifetime of hiding their inadequacies by inventing management bullshit words I'm not surprised they can't write or speak the Queen's English. "Trialling" instead of "try" and so on ad nauseam.
The use of the word "De-erected" was my attempt at "humour"..evidently not a good one:)
ReplyDeleteIt's a well-known fact that pavement cafes are a source of existentialist angst and dangerous radical thinking amongst the Gitanes-smoking classes.
ReplyDeleteKen said:
ReplyDelete"The use of the word "De-erected" was my attempt at "humour"..evidently not a good one:)"
Sorry Ken, I didn't realise. However that is just the sort of term that one could read in Council documents!
I am a parasol in the community enforcement officer and I feel that my slary of £67,000 plus pension is well earned when you consider that no one has been killed by a flying parasol in Edingburgh thanks to my department's hard work.
ReplyDeleteIn this time of austerity it is great to see the council pumping money into essential services such as mine.
What was wrong with "Eric, the winds getting up, could you take the umbrellas down mate?"
ReplyDelete"(can I say "erected"?) "
No you can't. There was a famous case when a solicitor e-mailed a formal Objection to his local council complaining about his neighbours planned "erection of a gazebo" (or somesuch). He heard nothing but said gazebo was duly erected. Upon further complaint he found that his e-mail had been filtered out as spam because of "erection".
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ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that old grannies don't need wind checks to make sure they don't blow away. I love this country - NOT.
ReplyDelete