Is anybody else bothered by the lamp-post wraps springing up around Broughton over the last year?
We’ve noticed their intermittent appearance on both sides of Broughton Street, York Place, Cumberland Street, Dundas Street and Leith Walk.
They began by advertising the Council’s green recycling schemes, and encouraging people to consider becoming foster parents. On St Stephen’s Street, oddly, there is one urging members of the public to visit Stockbridge.
And at the corner of Albany Street, the wraps have recently advertised commercial events in the privately run tent on St Andrew Square, and now feature the wonderful Lily Allen who will perform in Princes Street Garden at Hogmanay.
The Council prosecutes people who fly-post and fly-tip on our streets. In theory, at least, it requires strict planning conditions be met before a new advertisement hoarding is erected.
These lamp-posts wraps are visually intrusive – that’s the whole point of adverts – and some of them are also in Conservation Areas of architectural/historic sensitivity.
Here’s what the capital's own ‘Edinburgh Standards for Streets' (November 2006) has to say on ‘Place making and the grain of the city’:
Footways should be sufficiently spacious for their purpose and be uncluttered. People see a scene in its totality. The space between buildings, usually the carriageways and footways, is seen by visitors and residents as part of a wider townscape made up of buildings and streets. Cherished views of important monuments and groups of buildings are appreciated far more when not detracted by unnecessary foreground clutter.
In summer 2010, the Council even banned A-boards along the High Street and Rose Street in an effort to tidy up their appearance.
So what difference does the occasional virtue of these CEC lampost-wrapped messages make? And what is to stop our cash-strapped Council gradually using this medium for more and more nakedly commercial cash-raising purposes?
We’ve asked both the Cockburn Association and the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust for responses in recent months. Neither has replied.
We’ve asked the Council itself for background information on the subject, and been fobbed off with waffle about short-lived highly targeted campaigns on important issues. Really? Lily Allen?
So, to leave off where we began ... Is anybody else bothered by what looks like the thin end of a wedge? Is Spurtle having a Victor Meldrew moment, or should we pursue the matter?
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle and Facebook
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Michael MacLeod @MichaelMacLeod1
@theSpurtle I agree Lily Allen is an important issue that people should all be warned about and avoid at all costs.
@theSpurtle Would Lily Savage go down better in Spurtleshire?
@theSpurtle Please do pursue! Bad enough during Fringe (excuse: avoids flyposting) but then voter registration, food recycling, 'have your >
NewTownCleanStreets @NTCleanStreets
@theSpurtle >say in Budget'!, soon double glazing & PPI adverts. Just more tacky clutter littering our streets and taking over public realm
Robin Gillanders Pursue the matter Spurtle!. These boards are frequently on corners and obscure the view of drivers attempting to turn. Besides being an eyesore of course.
Ingrid Nilsson Thin end of wedge and scruffy beyond belief;)
New Town Flâneur @NewTownFlaneur
@theSpurtle Give up, it's finished, the commercial imperative has won. Let's hand Edinburgh over to Primark, and, with it, finally be done.
@theSpurtle Edinburgh streets get more and more unfriendly to people with disabilities, IMO. These sign boards are otally unnecessary!