The Mirror has the story:
Gardeners are so furious with their council they feel like throwing in their trowels. The growers have been banned from using barbed wire to deter allotment vandals – in case they hurt themselves.
Property at the Muddy Bottom East Allotment is being damaged up to three times a week. In one attack 15 sheds were smashed, water butts were overturned and taps were left running.
But when allotment holders asked Southampton council to put up the wire, it said no for fear of being sued. … Lib Dem environment spokesman Tim Farron said the decision was “ridiculous”.
Bizarrely, the council has allowed the old barbed wire around the allotments entrance to stay, because it is “historic”.
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8 Comments
Apparently the one word question “Farrant?” is too short to be listed so I will try again:
Are you sure his name is Farrant?
Hopefully this comment will be long enough.
Otherwise I will be annoyed.
Very annoyed.
Long enough now?
The comment lengthifier thingy may have been a blessing in disguise though, because if you had asked the one-word question “Farrant?” and I had then changed the article (as I now have) your comment would have appeared most strange and inexplicable, and perhaps give the impression that you were offering to take on allcomers at an obscure whist-related card game. (“Anyone for farrant?”)
I gather Liberal History-themed sets of Farrant cards are sold in the gift shop at Doctor Pack’s Bitter World of Bile.
As I remember the threat of barbed wire was half the fun when I was a kid! Although to be clear, I at no point damaged anyones allotment.
Had I just seen James write, “Farrant” I would have assumed he was starting a one-man campaign to restore to public attention Colonel Farrant, our ambassador to Iran in the mid-nineteenth century and is surely deserving of wider publicity.
While I am tempted to call the council a bunch of idiots it occurs to me that they’ve probably adopted this seemingly bizarre policy due to fear of the ambulance-chasing brand of lawyer (and speaking as a lawyer I despise these people and the bad reputation they bring on the profession). “Have you been stupid enough to cut yourself on some barbed wire? Why not sue your local council?”
Leases signed in the 1950’s between allotment associasions and my council stipulate no bared wire. There are ‘green’ alternatives to barbed wire in the form of some prickly plants.
BTW rusty barbed wire is banned by the Geneva Convention – hence the invention of razor wire!
Whenever an ambulance-chaser approaches me in the street and asks :
Have you had an accident in the last three years?
I reply – No, I look like this naturally.
I’ll get my coat.