Something that has been bugging me recently, is the UK obsession with signs and signposts. 

I first noticed this a couple of years ago, but have become increasingly aware of this country's seeming need to tell everybody everything in the form of a sign.  I live in a suburb of Manchester  - well technically a suburb of Salford, which means if you also live in my locality you'll now be writing a protest letter to the Salford Advertiser about this blog entry   - anyway I digress...

Where I live has a bit of a village feel, with a main road with a few of the normal types of shops, pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and estate agents and so is a nice, cosmopolitan kind of place to live.  Anyway, in recent times, there have been a number of 'improvements' made to the area that seem to have resulted in a new sign being planted in the pavement at intervals of no more than every 5m.  And rather than use the existing metal poles to hang additional signs on, there is a tendency to erect a new one everytime some new scheme comes in to force.  We have a couple of CCTV cameras, so there is a signpost for that.  There are a couple of bars to chain bikes to (although no one uses them) - there is a sign for that.  There are parking bays with restrictions - there's a sign for that.  There are permit parking zones, there are signs for those.  There's a recycling area - there are signs for that...and bizarrely the signs have been placed at the wrong road junction, and point randomly along the street.  There are pedestrian crossings, with signs for those...I could go on (if I haven't already ).

The latest scheme has been to introduce traffic calming measures along the main road, so the current pelican crossings are being upgraded to raised pelican crossings...so guess what, more signs - not only signs indicating the presence of said raised crossings, but additional signs warning the motorist that the road layout has changed.  What is it about road planners that makes them thing we don't notice these things and so need to be warned incessently?  I'm sure the overkill in road signs is actually more distracting to motorists, who should really be looking where they are going.  Anyway, I had to grin when I saw these latest additions, because owing to the diminishing amount of pavement real estate, these signs are actually obscured by the other sign posts that have already been placed along the road, and so are a complete waste of time.

Now I've mentioned this, you might also start noticing how much sign oriented vandalism is happening on our streets. 

Whilst I'm on the subject, have you noticed how many pubs, shops, restaurants, hotels and post offices also believe they can give excellent customer service by putting up tatty signs everywhere?  Don't let your children play on this, breakages must be paid for, no service here, place the shower curtain in the bath etc.  Why is it that UK businesses think they can engender a particular behaviour just because they have put up a sign?  The only other nation that is as obsessed with telling people what to do as we are is Germany - and at least they have a straightforward, to the point way of doing it.  It may come as a surprise to some people, but generally we are not stupid.  No really, we're not.

The cream and cherry and chocolate topping on this particular black forest gateaux for me though, occurred the other day when going for a walk.  There's a disused railway track that has been turned into a walk/cycleway that starts really close to where I live.  It is a single path, that goes dead straight in a single direction for about 3 miles.  Guess what...?  Yes, some bright spark has decided it needs signage.  It now has signposts every 200m to tell you that you are still on the path - even though it is perfectly straight and has few intersections.  I ask you...(at this point you should imagine me making a hrumphy kind of sound of exasperation )