Last October I wrote the following:
"I see that Dunster, a well preserved medieval village complete with cobbled streets, has fallen foul of Nanny's obsession with health and safety.
A council working group has decreed that the worn out cobbles in the Old Yarn Market are a tad "dangerous", and is proposing replacing them with smooth surfaced roads at a cost of over £100K."
I am sad to say that despite the media furore, the council have gone ahead with their act of vandalism (all in the name of health and safety) and are ripping up the cobbles.
As I said at the time..Knobheads!
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Why can't these elf'n'safety jobsworths keep their unwanted noses out of people's business? I thought Cameron was going to put a stop to this sort of thing? Or was that an empty promise?
ReplyDeleteThis is, to my mind, a combination of 'Elf'n'Safety dictators on the one hand and the council covering their arses from the no win no fee parasites on the other.
ReplyDeleteHaving visited Dunster and indeed the castle there, it is my opinion that the "Land time forgot" look of the place was the main attraction and much of this look would be destroyed by new paving.
Speaking as a disabled person myself, I find the whole "disabled access" argument crass; I accept that there are many places that I cannot go because of my lack of mobility and other disabled people should accept the same.....I do not expect to have a disabled access ramp to the top of Everest nor Snowdonia just as I don't expect to have access to slippery rocks at the seaside.
I think our "street scene" has really gone down hill since we have plastered it with hundreds of signs and access ramps etc not to mention the cost. I use the crass term street scene because we have a street scene manager here in my town.
My own council took all the cobbles away in our town center; I live in an old Tudor market town. They replaced the cobbles with block paving. To be fair, it looked nice, but it took away the soul of the town. It then became apparent that there was a problem; we have many pigeons in the town nesting in the nooks and crannies of the old buildings, these birds crap everywhere and when the crap is rained upon, the nice new block paving turns into a skid pan; we had people slipping over and breaking limbs. The council then started to put up nets and spikes to discourage the pigeons but had little success. They then hired a guy with birds of prey to patrol the area; this had some success. The people that like to call themselves officers at the council, then decided that the cost of the birdman was too high, so we now fund bird food laced with contraception through our council tax(Rip off tax.) You really couldn't make it up!!
There wouldn't be a market for old cobbles, would there?
ReplyDeleteKerching!
DTW;
ReplyDeleteIt appears you are on to something......Just googled it and found that "Old granite setts" or cobbles to you and me are worth £95-00 + VAT a ton. I doubt you get many to the ton so to speak;-)
Kerching indeed.
Disgusted:
ReplyDeleteYou beat me to it. They'll be sold off at a huge profit. Folks up in Yorkshire have been know to sell their own roofs. I kid you not.
Our idiots in Nottingham elected to ask the residents if they would like to keep the road as it was (tarmac with speed humps), or revert to the cobbles underneath.
ReplyDeleteThe "twoc"'ers won. We kept the tarmac. Consequently we still get woken up middle of the night with cars bottoming out over the hump outside our house, plus they now feel a need to restrict us to 20mph outside the primary school.
The decade old system kept the cars off the primary school by nothing more than no-entry signs. It also stopped us being used as a rat-run.
Good title Ken!
ReplyDeleteAbsolute bastards.
ReplyDeleteTry getting planning permission for anything and you will invariably get turned down and be told to alter and resubmit your plans.
If you are unlucky enough to own a listed building they make you jump through expensive hoops to make any alterations, regardless of the fact that nobody other than some council jobsworth will ever see any of your work.
But when they decide to vandalise a part of history there is no problem.
Pardon me for being pedantic. "Cobbles" - or "Cobblestones" are naturally rounded large lumps, set into sand or mortar and protruding to give an intentionally uneven surface,(rough to walk or drive cars on, but affording reasonable grip for horses).
ReplyDelete"Setts" - of whatever stone - are quarried, shaped and dressed to give a more-or-less even surface when laid in closely arranged patterns as a road surface or 'pavement'.
The usual way of overcoming slipperiness (largely caused by the 'polishing' effect of rubber tyres)- was to take them up, re-dress the surface, and replace.
Guildford (Surrey) High St still has a good length of these, but the lower/steeper parts are now tarmac - In the 60s, increasing traffic polished the stones to a beautiful gloss, with a slick varnish of oil & rubber. After rain it wasn't unusual for lorries to lose traction, and even slide back down the hill!
[Personal knowledge - I was a copper there, and had to sort out the resulting traffic chaos on a number of occsaions]
Anyhoo - my only recollections of Dunster (1990s) are a continuous vista of 'Antique Shops' and Cream tea parlours.
I think it would only be improved by a nice thick layer of asphalt, embellished with cheerful double yellow lines.