Westgate Plods duff up Green woman

You may like to watch the video of Oxford’s finest trying to arrest Oxford councillor Deborah Glass Woodin as she protested about the felling of trees at the Westgate Centre.

The Greens and the police are the front-line troops in the war occasioned by the cock-ups of greedy developers and the supine, acquiescent little men from Oxford City’s planning department. If either of the latter had approached this problem properly, a much-needed development would be half-built by now and new trees would be growing away. As it is, the police and protesters are left to slog it out on the ground.

‘Pride in our city’ gets a gutter cleared

It now appears that it was Oxford City Council who weeded the 30 foot stretch of gutter illustrated in my post No grass in Oxford except in the gutters . I had surmised in A gutter gets weeded in Oxford that a resident had done it in frustration, perhaps on their way back from posting their Council Tax payment.

Kevin Penpusher of Oxford City Council said: “After 14 phone calls of complaint and the Oxford Inciter article, we knew we had to act to avoid a serious threat to the public perception of our competence. We don’t have the resources within Oxford City Council to deal with major gutter clearances like this, but we were lucky to have Maczysz Kosciuszko seconded to us by Wallsall Council (are you sure he said “Wallsall”? Ed) to lead the team for the operation”.

Oxford models Health and Safety nonsense

“We have them here in droves at Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council. The councillor who chopped down the willow trees of Osney with no warning or consultation (or, as it turned out, any evidence of actual danger from most of them) is a good example. The officer who plastered the banks of the Thames with big red notices after someone drowned is another. Oxfordshire Highways is entirely staffed by people like this.

When they plead health and safety, what they usually mean is that they are scared of being blamed, too thick to analyse likely patterns of cause and effect, too dim to distinguish between hazard and risk, too idle to take anything but the safe course which allows them to to ignore all arguments. “Elf ‘n safety” they say. “Get a life”, said Bill Callaghan once.”

This is an extract from a post on our sister site Oxford Agenda. Called HSE buries its towels slip it reports on the oft-reiterated claims by Sir Bill Callaghan, the Chairman of the Health and Safety Commission, that the “negative stories about…over-bureaucracy” derive largely from over-empowered and under-brained little prats in local authorities, not from the Health and Safety Executive.

He may be right about the relative stupidity, although the post shows that the HSE has its own share of wasteful intervention in non-issues. Oxford provides some examples of what he is talking about.

Home

Signs to ignore in Oxford

The picture below was taken at Medley Weir at the end of June 2007. The bright red sign first went up at the end of January, when a boy drowned in the River Thames just behind the left-hand gate post.

The notice might arguably have served some purpose in January. The river was very swollen and over-ran the path along the river. The path itself had been neglected for years – one of those situations where responsibility was divided between several authorities so none of them did anything.

Swim at your own risk

A correspondent suggests that the garish red sign of which I complained (Signs of danger in the University Parks) might be less offensive if it read “Swim at your own risk”.

Indeed it would, though a literal-minded pen-pusher (and all pen-pushers are literal-minded, if “mind” is the right word) would object that some might construe this as an encouragement to swim, or even a command.

Signs of Danger in the University Parks

The University Parks in Oxford are looking particularly lovely this year, after several years of intensive work. Not a thing jars or looks out of place…. until you reach Rainbow Bridge, or High Bridge as it is properly known.

There you find that Health & Safety have been at one of their job creation schemes. A garish red and white notice, adorned with little prohibition symbols, proclaims that there must be:

No Diving or Swimming