The Sunday Mail reports Brick Lane in East London is rolling out padding on all its lampposts in an effort to stem the growing tide of injuries resulting from pedestrians walking into the posts while texting on their mobile phones. In a similar vein, bright coloured lines are being considered to guide texters around various obstacles such as lampposts, bins and recycle points said to be “cluttering” British streets.
To be clear, this, like the oh so paternalistic British proposal to ban ‘pointy kitchen knives’ and infinitely dangerous airguns, is real. Part of me wants to visit the UK so I can experience for myself what it must be like to have big brother guiding the fork to my mouth at every meal, assuming of course, forks are still illegal by the time I get there. Hopefully there isn’t a spate of ‘fork related’ incidents before that time arrives.
I get the increasing feeling the UK is developing into a prison/mental asylum where all the sharp bits are padded and you work for an income solely to earn your sustenance so you can work again tomorrow. When will the British people realise that a free society is built on trust. Trust for your fellow man not to shoot or stab you just because he can. Trust in the rule of law. If you are so ignorant of the safety concerns of walking without looking where you are going, perhaps you deserve to run into a post or a bin. Maybe next time you won’t be so damn careless. Padding posts creates the impression that society in general is somehow responsible for the actions of absolutely careless idiots. What if the padding falls off? Will the government’s acknowledgment of the danger (wrapping the post in padding) be seen as accepting liability for every idiot that runs into an object?
This is another example of the government avoiding the root of the problem. People run into posts because they are not looking where they are going, and somehow a conclusion is drawn there are too many lampposts. A sex offender rapes a woman in the park, it is because the media objectifies women too much. A junkie on crystal meth stabs his girlfriend of 5 years in a domestic dispute, the problem is the pointy kitchen knife. A man shoots a random person on the street, showing a complete lack of empathy for his fellow man, and the gun is the problem.
I try to keep the rhetoric to a minimum when I can, but seriously, the theme of society’s and academia’s solutions have to start centering more around ‘individual responsibility’. Acknowledgment that in the vast majority of instances, the inappropriate actions of an individual is the core problem.
I keep up with news from Britain on a regular basis, never been there and am glad when i read what goes on there. It’s sad what’s happening to that place.
Apparently they have the highest number of CCTV cameras in the world in that country. It should surprise one that they’re putting padding on lamp posts, but it doesn’t. It’s an indication of a society that simply does not want to grow up.
For every single thing, they whine at the state, hopefully not all of them but too many do.
“…44 per cent of those surveyed wanted pads placed on lampposts…”
What else can the state do but install more cameras and more laws and now padded lamp posts to placate the whining children.