A short while back I covered a story that highlighted the sort of wasteful virtue signalling that too many local councils are engaging in. It involved the painting of a pedestrian crossing in the London Borough of Camden in the colours of the ‘transgender flag’ on a street near to the controversial gender identity clinic The Tavistock.
It turns out that this virtue signalling and wholly unwanted monstrosity has cost Camden taxpayers a lot more than many people might have expected it to cost. The cost for Camden’s pro-trans virtue signalling is not a couple of hundred pounds for paint, it’s not even a few thousand pounds, it’s £25,000! The idea for this crossing was bad enough as not just does it pander to an aggressive and increasingly violent trans activist minority, but is also likely to cause problems for those with disabilities especially those with impaired vision as it may be difficult for them or their Guide Dogs to be able to ascertain whether this crossing is indeed a crossing.
Someone has sent the blogger Guido Fawkes information that relates to the cost of the tranny crossing and who has paid for it.
Guido said:
Documents sent to Guido reveal the total taxpayer-funded cost of the crossing was £25,000. £15,000 coming from the Camden Community Infrasture Levy (Bloomsbury Ward) and £10,000 from Camden’s Diversity Budget. The report also reveals that, far from the pro-equality platitudes of the woke council, the body was warned by the Royal National Institute of Blind People they have “major concerns” with the crossing on grounds that:
“Designs and colours used on pedestrian crossings which are not consistent with traditional designs could cause confusion and risk safety. The use of black and white in traditional pedestrian crossings offer high contrast which is essential for people with low vision to detect them and stay on course when crossing roads.”
£25k is more than a person working for the minimum wage would earn in a year if they did a 48 hour week. It’s money that could have been spent on something more worthwhile than pandering to the tranny community. As Guido says, Camden has a worryingly high child poverty rate of 37% of its child population and I wonder whether Camden is throwing money at virtue signalling guff that should really have been better spent on dealing with some of the borough’s many problems. What this story does show to the public is that wherever there is a ‘diversity’ section or employees tasked to worry about ‘diversity’ then there will almost inevitably be disgraceful waste like this.
Such things are common, our council hikes the council tax but has spent our money on an exhibition of Chinese lanterns in the council building. On one occasion I was in the building when they had an “electro magnetic listener” giving a display and pretending their ears could hear electro magnetic sounds in the building. When I spoke up and said the place would be swamped with 50 hz mains hum I was told to keep quite. Could that sort of thing explain the ever rising council tax?
You are right there. For a short while I worked in Community Arts around the late 1990’s in a particularly bent local council. I saw humungous levels of waste from the council, the closing down of good people’s theatre groups in order that the funding could be shoveled into architectural wank projects favoured by particular councilors, an accountant given a pay off and a massive pension because he uncovered financial mismanagement that the council didn’t want uncovered and arts funding used as a weapon to promote various ‘woke’ style projects that benefited certain parties electorally in areas where they were weak and to undermine sitting councilors who were not with the inner council clique. I was reading something earlier about the Loony Left councils in the 1980’s and although some of this nuttery came about because there were younger more radical councillors entering local politics in order to use it as a springboard for national politics. what caught my eye was that the 1973 Local Govt reforms that did away with Aldermen also destablised local govt and made it more prey to political manouvering by well organised political groups. Whilst there were disadvantages democratically with Aldermen, it might have been the case that they kept the radicals of all stripes in check.
Yes of course, but if we’re going to argue from a rational centrist position there are several questions to be answered…..
1) The trans crossing in Camden came as a response to the numerous rainbow crossings that have been painted. Were they ok and the trans ones not, for some reason?
2) The first trans crossing was in Sutton, not Camden……
3) The Bloomsbury trans crossing in Camden is not close to the Tavistock Institute which I think is still up in the Swiss Cottage area.
My personal view is not to paint roads and pavements for any reason, there is one in Tottenham Court Road in London for instance which is apparently ‘art’ with no agenda but equally confusing to visually impaired people and especially if they have Guide Dogs.
As to expense, £25,000 sounds eye-watering and we tend to think indivualistically but realistically it might pay for one extra librarian or in an area with a population of say 50,000 50p off the Council Tax for ons year.
Council accountability is a very interesting issue, I can only really speak for London where we had the 1965 reorganisation which abolished the Urban District councils in favour of wider Borough Areas with much less understanding of local issues. We can’t turn the clock back of course, we have to just
consider where the hands are pointing now. A turnout for instance averaging around a third in local elections?
Personally I’d abolish all of the special crossings both because they are too often put in to push political views and they could have a negative road safety impact. As for the expense, there are a lot of people for whom an extra fifty pence or a pound on their council tax is a problem. Also it’s not just this one off 50p, there’s a great deal of other virtue signalling and other guff spending in councils that also needs to be curbed.
I agree with you about council accountability and how bigger councils in terms of geographical area doesn’t always mean better. The turnout issue is a big one. I now live in a rural area but once lived in London and even here where councilors are more visible and approachable turnouts are quite low. London is a prime example of how low turnout gives us bad politicians. Sadiq Khan nearly got kicked out last time but low turnout and the anti Khan vote being split meant that he got back in. If another 5 or ten percent had turned out and voted against Khan by voting for the Tories then he might have been defeated.
How can it possibly cost £25,000 to paint a crossing? Could it be that £24,950 found its way into the pockets of various public sector parasites?
Quite possibly
I did a 4yr stint as a Councillor in a north London borough. The amount of waste is astronomical, some of it is down to a lazy attitude to taxpayers money and the mostrous sense of entitlement by so many officials. Worse are councillors who want a “legacy”, and hang the cost, practicality or whether it’s actually desirable to the residents.
You will be pleased to know that I refused to be “whipped” and said so at the first group meeting, to the intense irritation of the leadership.
As a result I stopped a wasteful PFI that would’ve cost taxpayers over £150million over 25yrs, plus a huge increase in energy costs.
I took issue with the police on the level of local policing and together with a colleague, forced the issue to put matched finding to find a dedicated town centre police team that resulted in crime falling dramatically.
I insisted on roads being fixed as opposed to paying out damages to cars & cyclists. Got funding to get the path through the park lit, following a couple of sex attacks.
Forced the resignation of a director for serial foul-ups in a family case.
Needless to say, the bureaucrats didn’t like me. Apart from those who O got elected, fellow thinkers, I got on better with the some of the opposition.
Also, when others tried playing silly buggers, using “standards” to enact little vendettas, I was on the standards board and refused to allow these silly sideshows when there was a borough to run.
Needless to say, when the next election came, the party put no effort o to my ward and I was out, that’s democracy and I can live with that. What made me finally tell them to go fuck themselves (my exact words) was the next time they wouldn’t even let me stand in my own albeit highly marginal ward, putting me in an unwinnable one.
I difnt take kindly to this and declined the offer.
Next year I will be standing as an Independent, for residents and intend to be a damned nuisance on their behalf.
Sounds like you were the sort of councilor that many people would like to see.