So, you know the story about how the road has just been repaved and then the bloody electricity board comes along and digs a new hole in it five minutes later, that's an urban myth right?
I mean nobody could be as daft as to forget to put the ducts in for the new lighting columns - after all, lights surely don't need an electricity supply?
Because that level of cock-headedness is surely reserved for dim individuals who don't know their arses from their elbows?
I guess there's a very slim chance that it might happen on a £2 million project - which with that level of spending will surely be planned and managed by experienced professionals? - but it would only occur if for some utterly spectacularly moronic reason the lighting columns were being installed by one company working to its own schedule, and the highway resurfacing was being done by another company. And that they didn't talk to one another, even though they were working cheek by jowl.
What kind of idiotic system would that be? No-one could be that stupid of course.
It would not only be disruptive and embarrassing, it would be a complete waste of money if the lighting contractor put the lighting columns in with no ducts, and the paving contractor paved right up to the lighting columns, and then they had to take up all the new paving again just to put the ducts in so that the lights could be plugged into the electric, and the paving contractor had to lay the paving again, getting paid to do the same work twice.
Nah, of course it's just an urban myth. It couldn't happen here.
12 comments:
Just wish they would hurry up with the no parking signs and very large bollards.
DD, are you sure that this just isn't a case of UKPN coming to make the electrical connections? Electrical connections can rarely be made at the same time as other works because UKPN won't always programme works until they have confirmation that a piece of furniture is ready for connection. Sometimes this is a while after the furniture has been installed and installing paving can sometimes be desirable in the meantime.
Of course, this might not be the case at all!
@anon if that was the case, they could have put the ducts in and just pulled the cables through the ducts when the time came. As it is there were no ducts installed.
I prefer the East London Lines version of this story.
@anon it's a free world so you're entitled to your opinion, however you'd be a bit more convincing if you tried to justify why. Otherwise you just sound like the person who wrote it, or one of their mates. In my opinion the person who wrote the East London Lines version took a good opportunity and made a complete hash of turning it into a proper news story. Mine is a tongue in cheek blog post written with a massive dose of sarcasm. I was contacted (separately by two different writers working for the East London Lines website) and asked for permission to use my photographs to accompany a story, which I agreed to. I appreciate this. However the writer then just rehashed my article into something that's neither a news story nor an opinion piece, didn't ask the council for comment, nor try to get a response in terms of the cost of the cock-up or who will have to pay for it. There was much potential to make a hard-hitting news piece out of this. I don't mind my stories being lifted - although I was also rather pissed off not to be given proper credit as the source of the story - and I have no objection to journalists picking up stories off Twitter and local blogs and developing them further. This was not a good example of such.
My personal favourite cock up on the High Street is the drainage. They left the old street drains in position, so that they are now a third the way onto the pavement, where they serve no earthly purpose. However, the actual lowered road sections, where the punters have to walk on market days, have no drainage at all. On rainy days sections of it look an extension of the swimming pool.
I just wanted to clarify that I (the 10.23 anon) am not the 7.47 anon. I don't usually post anonymously but he site doesn't always interact well with my ipad! John.
You should check out the water leak by St Nicholas's Church created by workmen. Been going for two weeks at a pretty fast rate. The road is no springy
@anon 9.38 the drainage will eventually be provided (in theory) by the slot drains that run along each edge of the roadway but they won't be working till the final asphalt is in place, making the surface level, and the rest of the road is finished so that they can be jetted clean. Of course to keep them working properly, they need regular jetting....
Hi
I am responsible for www.EastLondonLines.co.uk and just wanted to apologise. We do ask students to follow-up stories and it shouldn't have been published as it was. But she did credit you and link to you so no reason to be pissed off about that I don't think. If our students don't get things right we are always happy to be told. Its the best way to learn so next time it would be great if you could comment on the site. The students get that straight away. We promise to be more careful next time.
@angela thanks for your comment and apology. In some ways it's very unfortunate that it's so easy to publish stuff on the internet these days - happily of course it's also easy to delete it, not like pulping printed matter. But I still believe journalists should give the same amount of consideration to what they are publishing before they do so; it's a valuable discipline to have and one which is central to building a reputation for well-written, properly researched and reliable content.
As to giving proper credit for stories, I would expect clearer acknowledgement that my blog was the source of the story (as in 'as revealed by the Deptford Dame' or some such) rather than just 'here's what a local blogger had to say' which could imply my post followed on from ELL story. It was an exclusive story that came from a conversation I had with someone, not something followed up from a press release or another news story. If I follow up an exclusive revelation from another blog or reproduce a story from a local paper, I would credit it the same way. That's just my take on it of course, I know not everyone has the same approach.
Having said that I probably wouldn't have been so pissed off if the story had been any good.
deptford markets new layout
is absolute rubish
especially on douglas way.
they got rid of the anchor to hopefully stop the drunks congregating around it, now every other pitch has a bench which are often sat on by street drinkers
complete waste of money
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