Complete bollards.
I wrote last week of the incredible decision on the part of Newcastle City Council to announce £500,000 worth of expenditure on a load of bollards – on the very day that the BBCs Experian report appeared, showing that the North of England would be hardest hit by the spending cuts.
Councillor Nick Forbes of Newcastle City Council said: “We live in uncertain times and unfortunately these measures have to be taken in order to protect the public.”
“I am sure we would all much rather we could rely on people to behave in the way we would expect but we have seen the devastation that can be caused by determined terrorists and it is important we take whatever steps are necessary to ensure this never happens in Newcastle.”
I was bothered by that quote. It implied that there was a terrorist threat to Newcastle of all places. It niggled away in my brain until I was forced to do some more digging.
Will you be surprised to learn that there are more holes in that quote than a whore’s fishnet tights?
Many commentators popped up to point out that a suicide bomber could still walk through the bollards, as could a mobility vehicle. So why was Newcastle so worried about cars – had they received some specific threat alert?
My first point of call was Newcastle Town Council itself. What were these bollards made of that they cost £5,000 each?
The Town Council were keen to point out that they didn’t cost £5,000 each. What had happened was that they had received a ‘government directive’ to take anti-terrorist precautions back in April, which applied to all major towns, and that the government was contributing £150,000 towards the coast. The remaining £350,000 was the cost of their employees digging up the street and installing the bollards.
They did give me the name of the company making the bollards. ATG Access Ltd.
‘Directive’ could mean something originating from European Law; it could mean any order or instruction issued by central government. Which was it; did the council have the reference of this directive to hand? No, they didn’t. All they could tell me was that it has arrived in April, and that M15 had advised them as to what they had to do. Whoa, serious stuff.
I turned to the Home Office. They couldn’t lay their hands on such a ‘directive’ either.
Unsure whether I had stumbled over a serious terrorist alert that we knew nothing about, or an example of New Labour directing work towards companies that possibly contributed to their coffers, I started a two pronged attack.
First of all, ATG Access Ltd, ‘The Bollard People’ as they style themselves. Their CEO, Glen Cooper, is certainly an enterprising businessman. He freely admits that he knew ‘nothing about bollards at all’ when he took over the business in 2006. However, he foresaw a future full of bollards, and now says ‘We’re growing above trend. We’re probably globally number two across our market. High-security bollards are the fastest-growing product, with ATG doubling turnover in this segment every year.’
More determined diggers than me will discover whether Mr Cooper has any particular links with New Labour; suffice it so say that I stumbled across none.
However, he has done spectacularly well out of New Labour’s obsession with ‘citizen control’, invariably combined with the fear factor of ‘the terrorists are coming to get you’. Since they exhibited at the ‘Counter-Terror’ 2001 Expo, they have supplied bollards across London, in the City of London, outside Parliament, and naturally, their bollards will be springing up in the most surprising places anywhere under the auspices of the Olympic committee.
I still hadn’t tracked down that ‘directive’ though. Back to Newcastle Town Council.
They were back peddling over the word Directive. Along with the now ubiquitous ‘it wasn’t just us, Guv’.
“This is a response to guidance from the Home Office which every major city in the UK received last spring and is acting on with government funding to improve safety in ‘crowded places.”
Approximately 95-110 bollards will be installed in the following streets:
Northumberland Street (4 Locations)
Brunswick place
Lisle Street
Saville Row
Northumberland Road
Ridley Place
John Dobson Street
Newbridge Street West
They even gave me a quote:
Wendy Taylor, Newcastle City Council’s executive member for Environment, Sustainability and Transport, said: “These measures will improve public safety as the city centre becomes busier with extended shopping hours at Eldon Square and ensure that only vehicles on legitimate business are allowed access to Northumberland St.”
Right on cue, the Home Office finally replied.
Hi Anna,
I’ve looked into this for you. Just to be clear, there is no Home Office directive – the department provides advice to local authorities but does not direct them to undertake work.
During 2009 the Home Office invited bids for grant funds from Local Authorities and the Third Sector to enable them to undertake works to reduce the vulnerability of crowded places. Successful applicants received a ring-fenced grant towards the work.
“In working to protect crowded places, site owners should consider measures to reduce the vulnerability to an attack. Local Authorities are offered advice on how to increase resilience but it is their decision whether to introduce protective security measures.”
So let us reword the ‘Terror threat’ to Newcastle.
In the dying days of the New Labour Government, New Labour was offering ‘ring fenced’ money to Town Councils to be used for the purpose of crowd control. Part of the ring fencing was that they should also consider how best to protect themselves from attack. To this end they were advised to ask M15 for advice.
This had the happy spin-off of enabling Town Councils to equally ‘ring-fence’ a tump of money to pay their favoured contractors for doing the work.
By now it had crossed my mind that whilst the average ambulatory suicide bomber might be a few sandwiches short of a picnic, their handlers surely had the brains – if they wanted to bomb Newcastle – to get one of their imbeciles a job with ‘Chav Supplies’ delivery company, and arrange to stop the van for the few short minutes it would take to remove the boxes of night dresses for nine year old girls printed with ‘F**k me, but shush don’t tell Mummy’ and replace them with boxes of Semtex or whatever they use these days. They could then proceed with impunity into Newcastle City Centre. Come to that, they could load up a mobility car with sufficient supplies to make Christmas shopping go with a bang.
In fact the only people who are likely to be inconvenienced by the bollards (apart from the odd ambulance speeding to the aid of a shopper collapsed from the strain of walking so far) (and the odd fire engine, whoops) are the humble ratepayers and taxpayers who are paying for it all. They won’t be able to get anywhere near the shops.
Indeed, if they do happen to be bumbling along behind the bus, with their forward view obscured, unaware that the bollards have sunk to allow the bus to pass – and they hit the bollard, the councils are proposing to charge them for the damage to the pesky bollard. Anyone finding themselves so fined, might like to produce this piece of film in evidence.
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September 15, 2010 at 13:24 -
A ring- fenced grant for bollards? Is there a bollarded grant for ring-fences as well? And why should charidees, aka the third sector need anti-terrorist protection?
Wouldn’t robust seats be more useful than bollards?-
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September 15, 2010 at 15:25 -
Important point this. If you don’t spend all of the money your department is allocated, then you wont be allocated as much next year. Ditto with central govt grants. If you don’t spend it, you don’t get offered so much next time. . You couldn’t make it up, could you !!!
The last three houses sold round here have all gone to retired civil servants from ‘up country’. How can it be right for an nhs accounts manager to retire at 53 on a full pension ??? Local kids will be 53 before they’ve saved enough for the deposit on a house.-
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September 15, 2010 at 16:23 -
As a redundant Civil Servant I agree entirely with your points about departmental budgets (or Votes as they were called when I first joined). The name is important because that money was voted by Parliament in the Finance Bill to fund the department’s activities. If money was not spent, questions would be asked in the House to the Minister regarding what the department was not doing. Ministers like a quiet life that only involves good news so they can concentrate on their careers.
I’m amazed that an NHS accounts manager could retire at 53 on a full pension. The Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme to which I belonged paid out a maximum of half of final salary after forty years service so the NHS must have a very generous scheme (possibly a higher contribution rate).
When I joined the Civil Service in the late eighties my salary enabled me, after season ticket, food and rent, to take £10 from the cashpoint per fortnight for incidentals. Due to the annual increment salary system I was paid just over 6p per week after tax to manage two staff. Luxury!
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September 15, 2010 at 13:30 -
Why do town councils require measures for crowd control ? I know most councils are work shy jobsworths but hardly ever likely to get the populas storming their offices.
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September 15, 2010 at 13:52 -
If this sort of thing keeps up, don’t bet on it!
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September 15, 2010 at 21:54 -
“Why do town councils require measures for crowd control?”
They are preparing for the day when the rioting starts, they know they cannot do to the public what they intend to do without some repercussions.
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September 15, 2010 at 13:43 -
As ever, an excellent post!
‘if they do happen to be bumbling along…and they hit the bollard’
Spare a thought for the young son of friends, who discovered recently – the hard way – that such bollards existed, while following a dustbin lorry in an unfamiliar town. The no entry signs are clearly visible – but only if the vehicle in front of you doesn’t have men on the footplate leaning out on both sides.
The whole thing looks like traffic control given a veneer of pseudo-significance by the word ‘terrorist’ – somebody in Newcastle – probably with an executive toy on his/her desk – is doubtless enjoying a lovely glow of self-importance.
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September 15, 2010 at 13:51 -
Top blogging!
“The remaining £350,000 was the cost of their employees digging up the street and installing the bollards.”
Wha..? Who the hell are they employing, supermodels? Hollywood stars? How can this sort of cash be splashed on digging a few holes?
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September 15, 2010 at 15:07 -
Presumably retractable bollards are not the cheapest means of stopping members of the self detonating community – as has been pointed out elsewhere on the thread, they are primarily aimed at that anti-social majority, the motorist.
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September 16, 2010 at 11:14 -
Weerl, now. You’ve to issue the closure notices, if appropriate, that means lawyers….there’s barriers, traffic control, insurance, materials, possibly the hire or purchase of specialized digging equipment, surveys of existing electrical, gas and drainage installations, planning procedures – you don’t just dig holes in the road, you know, you’ve got to issue proceedings – any conservation standards have to be complied with, have you any idea of the cost of granite sets in a fan pattern? That’s specialized surface treatment which has to comply with new mobility standards and the colours have to match or your streetscape goes to pot, don’t forget street lighting which might have to be relocated and, if the bollards include integral illumination of a non-solar source, there is electric to the installations themselves and possibly timers and control panels somewhere. You’ll training for the installers – you don’t just unwrap these babies and plant them like bulbs – and then the whole shooting match has to be checked by up to three inspectorates, not including the H&S inspectors during the build. You have to put up signs saying “Mind the bollards” in five languages and Braille.
£350,ooo is cutting their own froats.
Still, look on the bright side. The next time we need plenty of scrap metal to build cast-iron Spitfires, we’ll have all the materials in packets above ground. I’m surprised our enterprising metal thieves haven’t already taken to harvesting them.
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September 15, 2010 at 13:51 -
Another piece of film you might find interesting:
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September 15, 2010 at 14:05 -
You completely misunderstand the objective Anna.
They’re not to prevent to miscreants getting into the city centre, they’re to prevent them leaving:-
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September 15, 2010 at 16:31 -
Unfortunately, applying logic to security theatre such as this, nudey scanners and all the rest never seems to work in the public’s favour.
This is an example of political Chinese whispers. A vague notion that councils should give thought to security becomes advice from the security services which morphs into central Government making funding available and ends up being purported to be a directive from on high. It is a form of inertia that relies on no one at the sharp end of the system checking the facts like Anna has.
Of course, the suicide bombers would have to be vehicle borne in Newcastle. Nobody wears coats or jumpers so a semtex smoking jacket would stick out like a sore thumb.
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September 15, 2010 at 18:11 -
The big question is, what happens if someone squirts super glue at the base of these retractable bollards?
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September 16, 2010 at 11:25 -
You get your hand stuck to it in the prescribed comedy fashion and spend the next three hours going up and down as the unit malfunctions. Then the person who tries to help you gets stuck etc. In an ideal world it should end up with a formation of French clown acrobats jabbering with arms and legs stuck out like a funky monkey tree and shrieking as it rises in the air.
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September 15, 2010 at 21:12 -
Fantastic posts recently
Gildas the Injured Monk -
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September 15, 2010 at 22:04 -
My Dear Child,
Your posts lately have been most inciteful and well INFORMED. Of course, whilst Gildas and I are most UNCONVENTIONAL in our views, we are also wise in some the ways of the World, and recognise VIRTUE when we see it.
Gildas sends his blessings of peace. Although he is an old fool in some ways, he is not in others, and he is not always quite what he seems. And there are some who say that he is not wrong, even though he is poor, and his high opinion is sparingly given. He says he gives it to you.
Kisses
Sister Eva Longoria -
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September 15, 2010 at 23:12 -
Half a million quid’s worth, eh? What are they doing, surrounding the whole of Newcastle with bollards?
If a piece of equipment can malfunction, at some point it will malfunction. Retractable bollards were installed on a couple of streets in my home town a few years ago. After a spate of speared road vehicles, they were removed again. We payed twice to get back to where we were in the first place. Don’t suppose Newcastle will be any different.
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September 16, 2010 at 06:32 -
Ah yes. Bollards. The ones in my old stamping ground that used to break down twice a day to need a manual reset, trip over a cyclist at least once a week and be down for ‘maintenance’ at least twice a month for three days at a time.
It would have been cheaper to send a man in a van round to chain off the streets twice a day.
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September 16, 2010 at 08:36 -
The cost was so high on account of the fact that the bollards are fitted using a three-man team. One to dig the hole, one to situate the bollard, one to fill the hole back in.
Unfortuntately the guy putting the bollard in went off sick, so you had one digging the holes followed by the other filling them back in. When the guy who was meant to situate the bollard resumed from sick they had to do the whole thing again … plus compo for disruption to surrounding businesses.
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September 16, 2010 at 08:57 -
Lovely photograph of the exterior of St. Pancras station, that glorious new monument to shopping and surveillance which accidentally has trains as well. While those bollards work a treat for keeping marauding cars off the forecourt, they work equally well to block suicide wheelchair users and those who insist on packing their entire lives into humungous suitcases (cue much swearing from certain nationalities of tourist).
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September 16, 2010 at 10:31 -
I have no sympathy with tailgaters : they should be removed from the road permanently and deserve any ill that befalls them.
On the other hand, the proliferation of signs and road markings, each devaluing all the others, along with the proletarian tendency to switch all a vehicle’s lights on and then leave it to every-one else to get out of the way, makes the driving environment ever more confusing. This places demands upon the average driving-licence holder, not a true driver and therefore with little skill in the activity, that far exceed his capacity.
Still : if following at a safe distance, one has time to read the ‘all traffic prohibited’ signs.
Automotive Darwinism in action.
ΠΞ
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September 16, 2010 at 22:19 -
Perhaps Newcastle council along with deterring terrorism, are trying to combat the child obesity epidemic, by providing miles of leapfrogging play areas.
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