Thinking positive

My London borough, I swear, has no self-awareness whatsoever. (Perhaps, on reflection, I can reveal the borough I live in without compromising my internet anonymity*… What the hell; let’s live on the edge! I live in Newham.)

I was checking the Newham website before we moved here, to find out how much our Council tax would be. Just as context, I will say that there seems to be a definite vogue at the moment in Britain, for government departments and agencies, and other for not-for-profit organisations to have a catchy strapline.

So the Metropolitan Police will remind you, every time you see their logo, that they are ‘working together for a safer London‘ (just in case you suspected that they were trying to make it less safe, obviously).  The National Patient Safety Agency, admitedly a little less snappily, explains that it is ‘improving the safety and quality of care through reporting, analysing and learning from adverse incidents and ‘near misses’ involving NHS patients‘. Trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? Ofsted assures you that they stand for ‘better education and care’. I mean, reallly. One can only imagine the confusion that prevailed before Ofsted agreed on this strapline. The thousands of people who went about their daily business convinced that Ofsted in its school inspections was actually militating hard in order to drive standads down. The mind boggles.

But I digress…

Newham’s website says (and this is not a word of a lie) :

By 2010 Newham will be a place where people choose to live and work

The not-very-veiled message behind this rather jaunty strapline being, ‘Of course, at the moment, it’s such a hellhole, no one would live or work here unless forced to do so under duress’.

The link for their website is http://www.newham.gov.uk, so you can go and check this, if you don’t believe me.

I found this unspeakably hilarious. But assumed it was a lone example of an ill-thought through slogan. That is, until I was tugging out my Newham wheelie bin for collection, and noticed that on the top of it, where I had always thought it said ‘Keep Newham tidy’, it actually said no such thing. It said ‘Make Newham tidy’. I mean, why not just come out and write ‘Please help to make Newham just a  little better than the rat-infested nightmare of a borough that you currently have the misfortune to live in’.

But isn’t it great to live in a world that is so consistently amusing? The only thing better than this, I can assure you, is having just bought your own house. But more on that later….

For now, as ever, take care. And I should add that this diary entry is for perfect circle, in the hope that it will make her smile.
(in fact, while I’m delivering personal messages to open diary-ers, I should add, "Fred! I am too stupid to know where to type in the password that you gave me to your diary! Please email me! My email is myfirstnamemylastname@another.com … so to speak)
with love
therumtumtugger
xxx

*The fact that ‘anonymity’ is pronounced ‘an-a-mim-itty’ is one of my favourite things. What a pointlessly great word.