Signs of our times

From Times Online

Cable Street, scene in 1936 of one of Britain’s most infamous civic confrontations when Sir Oswald Mosley attempted to lead his Blackshirts through the East End of London, is today a quiet, rather safe, modern road.

But you wouldn’t think so by the signage that’s erupted along its path. Along with all the parking permit signs and bus stops, a huge lurid green cycle lane stretches out for half a mile or so in both directions from Shadwell Underground Station. Blue lollipop signs alert you to the fact that the cycle lane is for cyclists and the pavement for pedestrians. The message is reinforced with pictures of bicycles on the green asphalt just in case you thought it might be, say, a six feet by 3,000 feet tennis court. Bus stands and black railings, speed limits and “CCTV in operation” signs complete a hideous array of paraphernalia that dominates just this one street in London.

We are assaulted by signs telling us to slow down; signs telling us to speed up; signs telling us not loiter; not to take photographs; not to park; not to sit on the wall; not to smoke; not to play golf (really); that we are being spied upon by cctv cameras.

“Kids cook quick” is the illiterate notice on a poster board at my children’s school, just in case parents had never considered sunburn before. They might have added: “The sun is a big yellow thing in the sky; don’t look at it or you’ll go blind.”

Across London we are introduced to similarly illiterate signs such as “Help us keep your Tube safe” (as if a Tube train is suddenly going to leave its depot and get beaten up by a mainline thug that has strayed from its Euston terminus for a spot of aggro), designed to “reassure passengers” and “boost” security on public transport. Then there’s “Less road traffic emissions: The Charge is making it happen”. A glance at the stationary traffic belching out fumes as they wait at traffic lights – almost permanently on red – will tell you this is a lie. Or here’s another from Transport for London urging us to leave our desks at lunchtime and “get out more” – give use half a chance and we poor wage slaves would be “out” for half the day.

Isn’t there something Stalinist about this crude propaganda? Although we’ll never again witness posters of smiling workers wielding their sickles, it would come as no surprise to see billboards of outreach workers at play, riding their bicycles alongside bendy buses, setting forth to non-smoking riverside cafés captured on a grainy video installation by Tracey Emin. Our functionaries have gone beyond offering useful information such as the fact that there’s a very busy main road at the end of the lane and if you cycle into it you’ll get your block knocked off. They are telling you to behave yourself. What possible use is there for “cctv in operation signs” other than to say, “We’re watching you, so don’t you dare be naughty”?

At Clapham Junction railway station there is a sign telling us to: “Be safe. Take care on the stairs” – as if stations users have never before had to grapple with that most dangerous of urban phenomena; the staircase.

If we need to be told how to use a staircase, then surely these signs have lost all meaning. At another station – Harrow on the Hill – a sign has broken so it now simply reads: “Avoid Risks.” Well, here’s an idea. Given that most signs – even those telling us to stop at a main road – are about avoiding risks, why not change them all to have the same message. Imagine: “Avoid risks” repeated 1,000 times over across the country; at every junction; at every staircase; at every cycle lane. Perhaps then it will sink in that, unless you’re going to spend your days slumped in front of the shopping channel, life is a risk. And we should be thankful for it.