Never Mind The Bollards

- it's the roadsigns and mobile phone masts that annoy me.

It is in my village anyway. Bollards don't seem to cause me any inconvenience, they intrude onto pavements ("sidewalks" if you're American) a lot less than parked cars which I found a nuisance in narrow areas back in my pram-pushing days.

The Government have been banging on today about how Councils should look at reducing the number of bollards, signs, bins, benches and other obstacles making our pavements and roads cluttered up.

This monumental monstrosity on the right is by far and away the worst. It appeared after an amazing piece of incompetence by our local Council.

They are also responsible for a plethora of bins and benches but I don't see why anyone would complain about them - I'm completely in favour of less litter and of more places for old people to have a rest.


These combined rubbish ("trash" if you're American) and recycling bins (below) have recently started to appear and I'm all for these too. As a committed petrol ("gas" if you're American) burner, I can feel a bit better about myself when I put my Iceland receipt into one of these.

If the mobile ("cell-phone" if you're American) mast wasn't such a crime, I'd be really annoyed at these signs that appeared all over the Wirral last year...

I dread to think what all that aluminium is worth ("aluminum" if you're American) but in a time of savings and cuts, it can't have been justified. This particular one is particularly an eyesore because it has been placed right outside The Coach and Horses - a fine-looking Mock-Tudor-style public house that always appears on postcards of the village.

So, I am in favour of selective clutter removal, but surely, at cost-cutting time, there must be much bigger priorities. Unless you are going to employ more people specifically to do this - a good left-wing idea but not something I'd have thought this Coalition would be advocating.