Attack of the Killer Swans

Hold the Press!!!

The hilarious postings about our holiday in Dorset will have to wait a while, as I bring you news of national, nay, international, importance. Never mind global warming, oil shortages or wacko extremists, the real danger, it seems, comes in the form of imitation swans.

No, it's true; read on:

Our town has a pleasingly diminutive shopping mall in its center. This mall is named Swan Walk Mall to commemorate The Swan Pub that was destroyed to make way for it, just as the pub, one must assume, was named for the swans it displaced. In 1990 a fetching bronze sculpture was placed in the central atrium, depicting three swans gliding in for a landing on a smooth plane of water, with tiny fountains squirting against the webbed feet and tail of the lead swan to give the illusion of movement.

It is a soothing and appropriate addition to the mall and for sixteen years people have been admiring it, milling around it or even standing next to it without once being killed, maimed or even happy-slapped by these placid figures. But lack of danger isn't enough to fool the Health and Safety Enforcers; they have deemed the statue unsafe and it must go.

As a final act of lunacy, they have walled the statue off to keep the public away from the danger until they find a secure place to dump it.

Has anyone given a thought as to what this is going to mean to the mall? "Empty Space in the Central Atrium Mall" just doesn't have the same ring as "Swan Walk Mall," and if these stationary swans are such a danger, what about the real ones in Horsham park? Surely they should be rounded up and incarcerated, as well.

I've wandered by these stationary bronze swans hundreds of times and they have never done so much as tease me. The fact that there is no real threat is so achingly obvious that I can't even ask, "Why?" What I want to know is, "Who are these people, these mysterious H&S Enforcers?"

It's easy to blame a government agency; somehow, saying the Liberals made you do it, or it's the fault of the Conservatives absolves the average person of responsibility, but at some time, an actual, living, breathing and, ostensibly, thinking human being stood in front of that statue and told the Swan Walk Mall Manager that it was a danger and had to go.

Why didn't the manager laugh in his face and tell him to piss off? Do these people have the ability to make your family disappear if you don't agree with them? They must, for there is no other rational explanation as to why everyone keeps going along with their lunatic judgments.

For sixteen years it sat there not harming anyone but suddenly, because some bureaucrat snaps his fingers, the danger is so real and present that walls have to be immediately erected to keep the public safe. And everyone trips over each other in the rush to obey.

And that's where the problem is, not in the weasely little bureaucrat--there will always be people who use public service to bolster their shattered self-esteem--but the people who unquestioningly go along with them.

For their part, H&S provided no real explanation (one would assume they don't feel the need) outside of "environmental factors" and "to cut down on water usage." These are smoke screens, not reasons; "environmental factors" doesn't even mean anything, and as for water, we're drowning in it at the moment; if that little trickle was really such a water waster they would have shut it off last year when we were being strangled by drought.

Clearly Armageddon is upon us, for common sense has been outlawed and the people who are in a position to exorcise it merely do what the H&S Enforcers tell them to do, then look into our slaw-jawed-with-disbelief faces and tell us they were only following orders when they should be taking a stand, or at lease posing some real questions.

But, it must be as I have surmised; that the H&S Enforcers can make life . . . difficult. Maybe people who don't go along with them are find that their businesses are suddenly subject to unfortunate accidents, or maybe they are told about others who have disagreed and then disappeared. It actually gives me comfort to believe that, because the alternative is to admit that we are living among morons.

I prefer to think people are just spineless; spinelessness can be cured.
  

Addendum ( 1 Oct) :

The swans are gone.

I find myself strangely saddened and disappointed by this, more so than I would have anticipated. I suppose I allowed myself to believe that if enough people stood up to bureaucratic lunacy and said, "Stop the madness," the voice of reason might slip through. 

Well, we stood up in droves and screamed blue murder but the swans still came down. This is a sad day, not only for Horsham, but for all of us.

Ask not for whom the swans honk . . .
    

Addendum ( 2 Oct) :

The swans are back!!

Unbelievable as it seems, after an emergency meeting with the town council, the managers of Swan Walk Mall have agreed to reinstate the swans as part of the ongoing renovations.

Could this mean that the voice of reason actually won the day?