Skuds’ Sister’s Brother

I believe I was a little sceptical a while back when our Tory council made a lot of noise about improving Broadfield Barton and made a clumsy comparison between their approach to the parade and their policies in general.

If I remember rightly it was some comment about just applying a metaphorical coat of blue paint so everything looks superficially better at a quick glance, but not actually doing anything of any substance. Of course if you are cutting budgets and getting rid of 10% of your staff then improving services is going to be hard, and you need a bit of sleight of hand to make us think things are better as long as we don’t look too hard.

So don’t look too hard at this picture. Don’t notice the litter strewn in front of the newsagents or one of the few bins crammed full and unemptied: concentrate instead on the blue-painted metalwork.

Don’t look too closely at the paintwork though, or you might notice that the rust and corrosion wasn’t cleaned off - just painted over.

Full marks, however, to the person who managed to cram that huge plastic bottle into the bin when it would have been a lot easier to leave it on the floor next to it. The Broadfield residents are prepared to use a bin, but can only bend the laws of physics so much.