Tony Blair’s Britain

Great Moments In Socialism 78 Comments

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and oh, my aching head….

Britain’s first ‘Safe Text’ street has been created complete with padded lampposts to protect millions of mobile phone users from getting hurt in street accidents while walking and texting.
Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a “walk ‘n text” street injury in the past year through collisions with lampposts, bins and other pedestrians.
[…]
Given the apparent dangers of “unprotected text”, over a quarter of Brits – 27 per cent – are in favour of creating a ‘mobile motorway’ on Britain’s pavements.
Texters could follow a brightly coloured line, which which would act like a cycle lane, steering them away from obstacles.

I checked the date of the article twice. It appears to be the real deal.

78 Replies to “Tony Blair’s Britain”

  3. Well, I’m a fairly tall guy, so the idea of padded lamposts is actually quite appealing. But this is a little…er…well, no. This isn’t right.

  4. Are you sure this is real? I was up pretty early today, and things were a little fuzzy when I read this, but come on. Oh, it’s in Britain. Never mind.

  5. “The blame was placed on the large amount of street furniture such as lamp posts and bins and a growing number of pedestrians attracted by the area’s curry houses and bars.”
    Blaming the object in the best British traditions.
    And only second place is given to the day dreaming dorks who isolate themselves from reality.
    Somebody else has to pick up the tab for their addiction. The more I live, the less faith I have in humanity. Oh, weird times…

  6. What real boils my blood here is that these same idiotic bureaucrats who come up with this stuff:
    a) cry and complain that they don’t have enough money to solve other real problems.
    b) have protection from any real recourse by the taxpayer, this stupidity is almost never punished.
    Maybe we should duct tape bureaucrats to lamp posts, that way at least they could shout verbal warnings to text-monkeys who are about to run into them. If they fail at this simple job, then at least they too will suffer from the impact.

  8. For any sane Britons … these must be days of pure hellish embarrassment in the devolution of their once Great society!
    It is a good object lesson to those of us who like NOT to go down that path.

  10. Britain has gone off the deep end.
    Listen up you silly kippers. You can not protect people from being stupid or doing stupid things. If you walk with your head down and don’t watch where you are going you will no doubt walk into something.
    Next they will be padding cars and the road so that when you walk into the street without looking you won’t get hurt when you get struck by a car.

  15. This from the country that sent sailors off into the great unknown in little wooden boats.

  16. This is really gonna mess with the quality of the British gene pool. It used to be that if you weren’t watching where you were walking, you’d end up at the bottom of the Thames and your stupidity gene was removed from the species.
    Is there such a thing as an opposite to the Darwin Awards?

  17. Like wheels on suitcases, I can’t believe its taken this long to come up with this. I guess it took texting to bring it to the fore, but I’ve been walking in to crap for years.
    I’m reminded of the arguement against the constitutionality of mandatary seatbelt laws in Alberta way back when. Perhaps the public portion of health care costs of these injuries would be offset by padding on street lamps…..

  18. Well, here’s a better and cheaper idea. Walking around helmets. Make it the law.

  20. I’m pretty sure Mercer did a skit on walking around helmets not too long ago… The truth is stranger than fiction.

  21. Actually they should have a helmet law for those text messagers types. It is unsafe to text and walk without helmet. Something must be done.

  22. Perhaps they should reopen armour making shops.
    Have everyone walk around in a full suit of armour.
    Oh wait some idiot would probably try to go swimming in one. OK let’s go with irwin daisy’s idea.

  24. What real boils my blood here is that these same idiotic bureaucrats who come up with this stuff:
    a) cry and complain that they don’t have enough money to solve other real problems.
    Amen to that. As my history here would predict, I’m now going to give an example from sixty kilometers or so up the road from here – San Francisco. San Francisco has non-standard fire hydrants. My guess is that this is because SF’s fire hydrants were installed before there were standards; in any event, I’m not going to blame the current SF government for that. What this means is that, if there’s a fire in SF that’s so big that it would be in order for, say, the Brisbane or Daly City fire department to help, somebody has to bring adapters. The cost to install an adapter on every fire hydrant in SF is approximately $100,000 (US). SF doesn’t have the money for that. It does, however, have money to pay for sex change operations for employees of its city and county (SF is its own county, for which many of us are grateful) governments.

  25. Western Canadian with all due respect your forgetting the basic premise when it comes to governments of the left and human beings – you must view every individual with a cardboard sign hung around their neck saying “I’m Retarded”.
    It’s the new way of being nice seeing people without any means of building an understanding on anything, even their own welfare, even when its not true. We have been doing it with our kids for years
    I’m with you nobody is really stupid, but sadly society at large doesn’t seem to think so, in Britain or here we just lag behind them a little.

  28. Nelson and Wellington must turn over in their crypts at St. Paul’s when stories like this come out.

  29. It has to be true. You just can’t make material like this up out of thin air. Either that or Candid Camera is alive and well in Britian.
    Oh, rue Britannia…

  30. Daryl, if this were like seatbelt laws they’d be making people pad the lamp posts themselves.
    In principle though, its all on the same continuum. Seatbelt laws to bike helmet laws to padded lamp posts is a straight line.
    Its like Mugs said, one of the founding principles of the Left is that people are stupid and have to be controlled.
    One of the founding principles of the right is that there are a few stupid people who have to be controlled.
    Lefties please take note, these two statements are not the same and lead to different conclusions.

  32. The constant stream of mind boggling spinelessness and political correctness that continues to spill out of Britain should not be an occasion of humor or derision for Canadians.
    It should be a sober reminder of what Canada could quickly become should “Canada’s Natural Governing Party(c)”, likely propped up by Taliban Jack, ever occupy the PMO again.

  35. Just for fun, image turning these lamp posts into taser-loaded touch sensitive ‘hot’ poles.
    (hee hee)
    Text away mates!
    ;P

  36. I swear that most the ambitious and smart Anglo-Celts have emigrated to the lands of opportunity overseas during the last few hundred years. Those still residing on the Sceptred Isle are the decedents of the inbred landed gentry and those from the lower strata that were content with their crust of bread.
    One of the main characteristics of Anglo-Saxon culture is seeking out better opportunities and reveling in the conquest of the “bumps” along the way.

  37. how about you run straddling a picket fence ?

    He did that already. How do you think he started believing leftist propaganda? Lose your balls and that’s what happens.

  38. The British government could have simply issued a single press release saying “Watch where yer bleedin’ goin”
    Of course, this would mean giving people responsibility for their own actions. And that, of course, would not be cricket.

  39. Years ago, Edmonton added beepers at certain pedestrian crosswalks, to assist the vision impaired who couldn’t see the crossing control lights. However, there was a button to push to activate the beepers, so that constant beeping wouldn’t drive the locals insane.
    A friend was at the meeting touting the wonderous new (and expensive) installations , and asked how the total blind would be able to find the button.
    “Next question please.”

  40. The safety of text massagers is the pitch – the sale is for the millions of burka clad women with limited visibility and their husband’s who’s eye’s remain glaringly fixed on the remaining brits.
    A crystal ball of things to come.

  41. Is there a tradition of in-breeding in Britain that I am not aware of?
    Seriously though, is there?

  42. When I think of padding, I think of a padded cell.
    Yeah, seems about right.

  43. Eric-Vancouver:
    I was commenting to one of my colleagues last year while we were in Europe about how I noticed that English women on the average were rather large-breasted.
    His comment was that it was genetic and due to inbreeding. I laughed, and he said he was serious and spouted off something to the effect that “it is an island you know and historically it was more difficult for new genetic material to get there”.

  47. “Is there a tradition of in-breeding in Britain that I am not aware of?
    I was trying to get you an answer and googled across this:
    “……69 per cent of the acreage of Britain is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population.
    ….158,000 families own 41 million acres of land while 24 million families live on four million acres.”
    It’s from a Lefty magazine but if these facts are correct it helps explain why ambitious Britons have skedaddled to greener pastures over the years.
    http://www.newstatesman.com/200409200005

  49. Is Brick Lane in an upper class neighbourhood? There’s a Monty Python skit lurking in here.

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