Sign language: what does it tell us?
Monday, March 17, 2008 A few weeks ago I stayed at a hotel in Oxford. In the bathroom, stuck to the wall above the bath and the towel rail were ugly and ostentatious signs warning guests that both the rail and the bathwater might get very hot. Frankly, I would have been annoyed if they hadn't. I stayed in another (very posh) hotel in London last week and the bathwater was, at best, luke warm. Perhaps I should have been warned about that, too.
Anyway, this is Britain today - a country swamped with signs warning us of every peril under the sun. The most offensive are those that order us to behave in a certain way, even if we're not committing an offence. Recently, I used a public loo and above the handbasin was a sign that screamed: NOW WASH YOUR HANDS. As it happens, I usually do - but that sign made me want to rebel and do the exact opposite.
Simon Richards, director of The Freedom Association, touched on this issue a few weeks ago on The Free Society blog. Today, Joe Jackson takes it a bit further. According to Joe, who is currently on tour promoting his new album:
In my hometown, Portsmouth, I saw NO SMOKING signs in bus stops and car parks, and no less than five signs in a phone box ... It was the same story in the rehearsal room just outside town where we prepared for the tour. The signage screamed at us even in the toilets. DO NOT THROW PAPER INTO THE URINALS. I wonder how many people go into a cubicle to get some paper, use it for God knows what, and then try to stuff it down a hole into which it obviously cannot fit. Meanwhile, in the cubicle: PLEASE FLUSH THE TOILET BEFORE LEAVING. Now, I’ve known to do this since I was maybe three, but perhaps I’m unusual.
Full article HERE.
Reader Comments (5)
You mention a smoking ban. Has a smoking ban been introduced? Has anybody not noticed this?
You should go in a train toilet where it says: don't flush toilet whilst seated. I just couldn't work out why not......???
Blad, :-) I've been on at them for years to fix that cold-flush problem.
We have a walkway alongside the Town Hall which takes us from the High Street to the Park where we can cut across to go home or visit people living on the estate.
Along this walkway there are signs put up by the Council stating that the Council have decided that it is forbidden to smoke in this walkway. As it is outside and open to the air I am afraid I just have to light up! I said to my husband I wish I had the time to spend half a day just walking up and down this walkway, smoking!
Just like National government, these petty beaurocrats are trying to control everything we do and the same time they are creating an extremely dangerous wetland area in the park alongside the toddlers play ground. All this with no proper public consultation, just apparent consultation with a few select groups, including care homes that are nowhere near the park! No-one living in the estate around the park was asked and yet they and their children walk across the park, if not most days, then certainly most weeks and the children often play there, although not for much longer if the parents I have met have anything to do with it!
Bloody dictators, the lot of them as well as being liars and cheats and I am really pissed off! Sorry for the expletives, but things have gone too far now to pussyfoot around, I believe.
This reminds me of when I was on holiday some years ago in holland and a saw a no smoking sign in the ladies toilets, I cracked up laughing, why the toilets as you could still smoke in shops, maybe someone put a fag butt down the toilet and the cleaning powder exploded.