Signs of the Times

Guest Article by Andy Mac

A short drive from my house is one of those quintessentially British (and highly irritating) road management markings – the double mini roundabout. It lies on the brow of a hill and is indicated by a mix of signs including some large rectangular red warning signs reading ‘Double Mini Roundabout Ahead’. The position of this particular feature in itself warrants additional warning signs precisely because it lies on the brow of a hill. If you’re a driver unaware of my local area, it would be very easy to drive across this feature without realising it.

Back at the beginning of October, after a period of gusty winds, I noticed one of the red signs had been blown 180 degrees around the pole to face the opposite direction. Being a civic-minded person, I telephoned the UK’s most inept council (Calderdale) and reported the matter. A few weeks passed without any action. I then submitted an online report to have the sign correctly repositioned. After seven weeks, and with no sign that the council’s road department would do anything other than sit on their indolent arses doing absolutely nothing, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Eleven weeks after making the aforementioned telephone call, I packed my car with a small stepladder, a broom handle, a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. On the Friday before Christmas, at 10:30pm, I was up on my stepladder using the broom handle to knock the sign back to its correct position (I thought a hammer might damage the sign). Using the pliers and screwdriver, I tightened the brace at the back of the sign. I deemed it best to make my move under cover of darkness, lest the local Stasi take a brief break from policing Twitter violations (or, indeed, telling fibs about Jewish visitors at the behest of the local Muslim militia) and come and arrest me for suspected vandalism. Voila! One repaired sign with not a penny of cost to the Labour Politburo at Halifax Town Hall. They can now return to passing motions about Palestine and making donations to riparian conservation on the Serengeti.

I don’t know how many rules and regulations I broke that night. There’s probably an ancient clause dating back to Henry VII’s mum about tampering with municipal property. That’s to say nothing of the omnipresent Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Am I bothered? Nope! I’m so sick and so demoralised at having to live in a country were everything seems broken and nothing ever seems to get repaired or replaced, that I’m past caring. A couple of weeks after Christmas a friend of mine from Northern Ireland, whom I had told about my late evening escapades, referred me to this story in the Belfast Telegraph. Now, anyone who knows Northern Ireland will be fully aware North Down is generally a very wealthy area – a sort of Santa Barbara but without the sunshine. We’re talking very large detached houses, rich retirees and a hefty wad of cash for the council coffers. Despite its relative prosperity, the council couldn’t even keep the local road signage in a decent condition. It’s beyond shameful! How about Suffolk! Another relatively prosperous area of the UK where motorists are potentially endangered because of council ineptitude.

Since doing my bit for my fellow man, I’ve taken much more notice of the condition of road signage in Britain. As a disability outreach worker, I cover a lot of ground and visit many places. My verdict? It’s bloody dire! The next time you take a walk or drive your car in the UK, have a gander at the road signs around you. They’re beyond a joke! If the signage isn’t blown into a position where it becomes irrelevant to the motorists it’s supposed to inform, it’s bleached by the sun beyond readability. If there aren’t important letters missing from them, the light atop the sign – designed for nocturnal illumination – hasn’t worked since the days of George Osborne. If they aren’t covered in sap from nearby trees, they’ve been knocked over by careless motorists and never righted. What is the point of devoting pages of the Highway Code to recognising and understanding road signs when half of the country no longer has signs fit for purpose!?

Every year we have a story about the scandalous plethora of potholes, and rightly so. We never have a topical discussion about the state of road signs in Britain, despite their being just as important to the concept of road safety as the surfaces themselves. It wouldn’t be so bad if we had a system of local government less concerned with virtue-signalling minority causes and more preoccupied with actually carrying out their remit. But no! Report a defect to council property and the world could experience five revolutions and nine South American governmental coups before anything is actually done – if it is done at all. It doesn’t matter what it is. For example, if safety railings around pelican crossings are hit by stupid speeding motorists, they’ll still be a twisted mass of metal (like some homage to an obscure Anish Kapoor sculpture) seasons later. The council seem to thing lining the railing with five or six traffic cones as a near-permanent substitute will protect pedestrians until such time as we – coterminously – reach the end of eternity or a council committee agrees to release the money needed for rectification.

Do you ever get the impression we live in a Britain where huge swathes of those in authority no longer give a sh*!? Whether it’s about our personal safety as citizens; our entitlement to be treated promptly for genuine health conditions; our inalienable right to drive on roads fit for the money we supposedly pay towards them in taxation; or the preservation of our culture and values systems, the stock (and quietly muttered) response seems to be: “F**k you! We’ll continue to take more of your hard-earned cash, whilst striving to ensure you receive less in service and quality for your trouble.” One of the most memorable lines in the recent Robert Jenrick defection speech

was when he compared Britain outside the south-east to being closer to Bulgaria economically than Germany. For me, nothing illustrates the absolute decline of our country more than the state of our roads (signs, rubbish, surfaces, faded paintwork), and nothing signals the unwillingness of authority to halt the decline more than the same!