Oh come on you bunch of boring sods - let's have some audience participation here shall we? :|
I wonder how long this will survive intact before the inevitable happens......
Not content with chopping down over half of the trees in this park that lies just on our doorstep (Hollywood Park, Edgeley, Stockport) over the last couple of years, I now present you with some definitive photographic evidence of just how much further Stockport Council's agenda for needlessly wasting council tax payers' money continues to plumb unimaginable depths.
Sure, the council likes to pride itself on "presentation" and "community brownie points" at every available opportunity. But to me, so much of this claptrap merely amounts to nothing more than pathetic cosmetic exercises that serve no real purpose or point whatsoever. Every so often, the buffoons who run the parks and leisure division within this increasingly clueless organisation (I can start a further thread picking to pieces their laughably useless and inept garden waste recycling "service" - based on a traumatic and infuriating experience I have just had to endure just a week ago - but I might save that for a later rainier day) come up with some bright idea that to them seems pretty damned clever but to the rest of us [who have to pay through the nose each month to fund their stupid impractical fantasies and whims] seems ever so slightly Crackpot (yes, that is Crackpot with a capital C).
And that is to erect this garishly incongruous "public information panel" in this elevated park overlooking the Mersey Valley - on a small plot of land where once a very large and proud elm tree stood (before it was needlessly pulled down about 12 months ago).
Here:
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Just look at it! Have you ever seen anything like it? I mean, do they not realise what sort of an area Hollywood Park actually is - much less the sort of people who [ab]use this area? I mean, only 18 months ago, the nearby flight of steps were painstakingly restored and rebuilt only to be sprayed with graffiti two days after completion...and some of the new lighting columns put out of action. Several new steel benches that were also placed along the path around the same time were variously sprayed in a similar way.
And now, they decide that what Hollywood Park really needs to improve its barren emptiness is a daft-looking information panel stuck in a rather silly exposed position that is literally begging to attract the attention of the knobhead contingent and the all-too-inevitable orgy of vandalism that will soon be wreaked upon it.
Okay - so this is actually technically a partnership between the council and the recently set up "Hollywood Park Environmental Action Partnership" or whatever it is called, who are merely endeavouring to put the "heart" back into the area and improve the community. But to me this sort of tactic is just futile and doomed to failure, because, judging from past experiences elsewhere (Vernon Park, Marple, Woodbank Park, etc etc), there remain a minority of people who would derive great pleasure from undoing whatever good work is put into these community landscaping projects.
Seriously, I will give this thing a few more days and I'm sure that the first defacing scrawls and cigarette burn marks will make their appearance..... Bearing in mind the hordes of scrotes that usually descend on this park in the evenings on an almost ritualistic basis (I swear you could almost set your clock by when they always appear you know!), I suppose this act of folly is basically "cruising for a bruising" as they say....
Sure, the council likes to pride itself on "presentation" and "community brownie points" at every available opportunity. But to me, so much of this claptrap merely amounts to nothing more than pathetic cosmetic exercises that serve no real purpose or point whatsoever. Every so often, the buffoons who run the parks and leisure division within this increasingly clueless organisation (I can start a further thread picking to pieces their laughably useless and inept garden waste recycling "service" - based on a traumatic and infuriating experience I have just had to endure just a week ago - but I might save that for a later rainier day) come up with some bright idea that to them seems pretty damned clever but to the rest of us [who have to pay through the nose each month to fund their stupid impractical fantasies and whims] seems ever so slightly Crackpot (yes, that is Crackpot with a capital C).
And that is to erect this garishly incongruous "public information panel" in this elevated park overlooking the Mersey Valley - on a small plot of land where once a very large and proud elm tree stood (before it was needlessly pulled down about 12 months ago).
Here:
Just look at it! Have you ever seen anything like it? I mean, do they not realise what sort of an area Hollywood Park actually is - much less the sort of people who [ab]use this area? I mean, only 18 months ago, the nearby flight of steps were painstakingly restored and rebuilt only to be sprayed with graffiti two days after completion...and some of the new lighting columns put out of action. Several new steel benches that were also placed along the path around the same time were variously sprayed in a similar way.
And now, they decide that what Hollywood Park really needs to improve its barren emptiness is a daft-looking information panel stuck in a rather silly exposed position that is literally begging to attract the attention of the knobhead contingent and the all-too-inevitable orgy of vandalism that will soon be wreaked upon it.
Okay - so this is actually technically a partnership between the council and the recently set up "Hollywood Park Environmental Action Partnership" or whatever it is called, who are merely endeavouring to put the "heart" back into the area and improve the community. But to me this sort of tactic is just futile and doomed to failure, because, judging from past experiences elsewhere (Vernon Park, Marple, Woodbank Park, etc etc), there remain a minority of people who would derive great pleasure from undoing whatever good work is put into these community landscaping projects.
Seriously, I will give this thing a few more days and I'm sure that the first defacing scrawls and cigarette burn marks will make their appearance..... Bearing in mind the hordes of scrotes that usually descend on this park in the evenings on an almost ritualistic basis (I swear you could almost set your clock by when they always appear you know!), I suppose this act of folly is basically "cruising for a bruising" as they say....
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The local pond life were much less likely to have vandalised a mature tree than this - something to do with a primeval respect for nature I suppose. So this does seem very ill conceived.
However nobody wants to see the vandals win, and when you get situations were public art is refused planning permission because people are worried it will be a magnet for trouble - you do wonder where it will all end.
Of course this can't really be classed as public art, but I do appreciate the sentiments - and I hope there is room for projects like this in our towns and cities.
Furthermore there are a couple of similar boards, on a walk around North London along an old railway line, the last time I saw them they were still fighting fit.
So you never know!
However nobody wants to see the vandals win, and when you get situations were public art is refused planning permission because people are worried it will be a magnet for trouble - you do wonder where it will all end.
Of course this can't really be classed as public art, but I do appreciate the sentiments - and I hope there is room for projects like this in our towns and cities.
Furthermore there are a couple of similar boards, on a walk around North London along an old railway line, the last time I saw them they were still fighting fit.
So you never know!
Precisely three days........and here is the all-too-predictable, tedious truth for you all to see - taken today at around 1pm [as I passed through the park on the way to the bus station to head into Manchester to catch some of today's Futuresonic events].
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Fucking pathetic innit?
If anything, I'm more pissed off with the fucking clueless council than the dickheads who did this as I cannot see how ANYBODY could be so staggeringly naive as to assume that this blatant waste of council tax payers' money would actually benefit the area at all in any way whatsoever. I mean, most of these silly idiotic gestures from the council - which amount to nothing more but cosmetic fannying around - are just futile and completely pointless. THEY know damn well what happens to ANY sort of signage or fencing or lighting or benches or whatever the **** they care to spend money trying to install only for the brain dead elements in our society (sadly forever on the increase thanks to Blair's Britain) to wreck them within days or even hours...so why do they constantly do it? Why the **** can't they just leave it unfurnished if all their attempts to try and improve the landscape are forever in vain? Even the new trees that they keep trying to plant constantly get vandalised and the metal cages bent and pulled away - as has been the case as well.
Needless to say, a letter will find itself being sent to the editor of the Stockport Times with this point of view raised in no uncertain terms - complete with photographic evidence. And I am going to relish laying into our local authority for being so foolish in the first place to assume that such a pathetic exercise is really going to mean callow youth are going to respect our surroundings more in future - pah! Stupid fucking Stockport Council - how out of touch are they with reality, I ask you?
Fucking pathetic innit?
If anything, I'm more pissed off with the fucking clueless council than the dickheads who did this as I cannot see how ANYBODY could be so staggeringly naive as to assume that this blatant waste of council tax payers' money would actually benefit the area at all in any way whatsoever. I mean, most of these silly idiotic gestures from the council - which amount to nothing more but cosmetic fannying around - are just futile and completely pointless. THEY know damn well what happens to ANY sort of signage or fencing or lighting or benches or whatever the **** they care to spend money trying to install only for the brain dead elements in our society (sadly forever on the increase thanks to Blair's Britain) to wreck them within days or even hours...so why do they constantly do it? Why the **** can't they just leave it unfurnished if all their attempts to try and improve the landscape are forever in vain? Even the new trees that they keep trying to plant constantly get vandalised and the metal cages bent and pulled away - as has been the case as well.
Needless to say, a letter will find itself being sent to the editor of the Stockport Times with this point of view raised in no uncertain terms - complete with photographic evidence. And I am going to relish laying into our local authority for being so foolish in the first place to assume that such a pathetic exercise is really going to mean callow youth are going to respect our surroundings more in future - pah! Stupid fucking Stockport Council - how out of touch are they with reality, I ask you?
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