Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

health and safety?

I hadn't realised how irresponsible I was being when I introduced my giant inflatable freud sculpture to the Sneinton Arts trail. It's just as well there was little or no wind or it too might have taken flight and mauled innocent bystanders.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/5208898.stm

As it was we only got away with it by the skin of our teeth, as the freuds were clearly insufficiently well anchored to their substrate. I can't see that one getting past the health and safety committee next year.

On a lighter note, the local summer music festival has kicked off again in the local park, and every evening you can hear the gentle sounds of indifferently performed jazz drifting through the shrieks of the circling swifts and parakeets. The jazz festival has been going for nigh on 20 years now, and, as with most things amateur in the borough is managed by a tight knit cabal with mates on the council. I once, out of curiosity more than anything else, asked for a copy of the tender document, and apart from certain areas being ring fenced and untouchable, it was obvious that the whole document was very carefully prepared to make certain that only one or perhaps two companies would be able to supply to specification.

This year, however, the council seems to have got a bit aereated about noise levels, and have a wee man with a sound pressure meter lurking about. I am informed that, as is commonly the case, he didn't fully understand his brief, and instead of measuring the sound levels outside the tent, on Saturday he measured the levels at the sound desk, and then insisted that they turned it all down to the level that would have been acceptable outside the venue. Oh well, these things are sent to try us. I gather that the band was less than amused.

When I worked at the Hackney Empire, we acquired a new neighbour, a lawyer no less, who immediately set about trying to have the theatre shut down, on the grounds that it disturbed his peace. There seems to be a lot of this unpleasant nimbyism going on at present, in his case I don't see how he could have failed to notice a very large theatre on his doorstep, a theatre that had been there for a hundred years more than he had, in law, apparently, this is not a reasonable defence.

posted by Lampy @ 7/24/2006 08:03:00 pm