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Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

theguardian.com

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Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#91

Post by rsynnott »

memsom wrote: post #14

It is worth stating (because the word bylaw is not always understood) that a bylaw (by- is the Scandinavian word for "city", "town" or "village" depending on which modern Scandinavian language you use as your source) is basically a local law. It is not universal. It exists in a single place, and although they can be similar in many locations, they are strictly only applicable in the specific municipality that has the…

Though to confuse the issue... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/railway-byelaws

(These are actually a part of national law, but scoped to railway travel.)

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#92

Post by dugmartin »

gadders wrote: post #19
walthamstow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you've ever been to London, Rome or Kyoto, but Americans actually fucking love old stuff

They should visit our thousand (nearly) year old door: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/history/explore-our-histor... I'm a Brit and didn't realise until recently that England is one of the world's oldest countries (927 AD).

I think the best we have is a 300+ year door here in Massachusetts, USA that has scars from a Native American raid on the town:

http://1704.deerfield.history.museum/popups/artifacts.do?sho...

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#93

Post by saalweachter »

harimau777 wrote: post #75
derbOac wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a criticism of the practice but I did think it might be more effective to use something in safety green or orange, maybe with reflective surface, or maybe blinking lights. But I'm not an expert with this, and I can see how a straw bale might also catch your attention.

This is 100% pure speculation, but I wonder if, at the time that the bylaw was made, a straw bale was the happy medium of being relatively soft (in case someone passing under the bridge ran into it) but also relatively cheap.

I would also speculate the height of the bale would be significant -- lower the bale to the new safe height of the bridge, and if you can't go under the bale, you can't go under the bridge.

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#94

Post by dale_glass »

Karellen wrote: post #85
dale_glass wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because a clock is an easily changeable thing, but a schedule or an announcement is less so. Putting a "Opens at 8:00" on sign on your door involves a fair amount of effort of buying a physical piece of equipment. Changing an appointment may have required walking somewhere and talking to the right person. Before modern luxuries a million of such tiny adjustments would have required a lot of time and effort.

One clock may be an easily changeable thing, but is it really that much easier than changing one sign? Besides, if you knew you'd be changing your opening times throughout the year, then when you ordered a sign you'd just order both signs at the same time, or maybe get a sign with replaceable numbers, or a sign with washable/writeable numbers for your opening times. Or you could just not bother, and pick a time that…

> One clock may be an easily changeable thing, but is it really that much easier than changing one sign?

Mechanical clocks are imprecise and so need periodic adjustment. If you need good timing, then adjusting your clock periodically would be already baked in. Adjusting it differently would be essentially free.

Communicating that you've changed your schedule though, that's a lot more work. Phones are a new tech not everyone has. Telegrams and letters cost money and labor.

Plus there's an issue of synchronization. Imagine a whole bunch of people changing their schedules at different times. The barber changes schedule one day, the bakery the next, and the post office decides to wait until next Monday. It'd be pretty rough.

> But changing all the clocks, in a whole country (or on a whole continent), on the same day? You think that's easy? You've never got that wrong, or known anyone who got that wrong?

It's far easier and more reliable for a government to make a big announcement (radio, newspapers) and make a single, global change than for a lot of people to communicate with everyone else.

In modern times this is a lot more practical, but communication used to be a lot harder.

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#95

Post by kwhitefoot »

hobo_mark wrote: post #28
hbossy wrote: post #25

Reminds me of the tradition of topping out a finished roof. You often see 100m+ skyscrapers with a pine wreath hanging on top as if we were still worshipping some forest gods.

> You often see... Where in the world is such a thing a frequent enough sight to say that?

All over Northern Europe surely.

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#96

Post by BoxOfRain »

dwroberts wrote: post #52
suprjami wrote: post #24

Daylight Savings Time was first proposed to save candles, everything after is a forced retcon. This equally anachronistic law fits with that quite well. We are all very good at being modern humans.

It might have been proposed for that reason but it was actually enacted in England (in 1916) for war time productivity during WW1. It’s not really clear if it ever would have been adopted if it were not for the war. Edit: really interesting snippet I happened upon: > This Bill, as your Lordships know, will have effect only while the war lasts. It may therefore be regarded in the light of an emergency measure, and as…

I believe income tax in the UK was a wartime measure during the Napoleonic Wars that never got removed, and the national speed limit of 70 mph was another 'limited' measure after someone hit 185 mph in an AC Cobra during the 1960s.

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#97

Post by lazide »

Karellen wrote: post #85
dale_glass wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because a clock is an easily changeable thing, but a schedule or an announcement is less so. Putting a "Opens at 8:00" on sign on your door involves a fair amount of effort of buying a physical piece of equipment. Changing an appointment may have required walking somewhere and talking to the right person. Before modern luxuries a million of such tiny adjustments would have required a lot of time and effort.

One clock may be an easily changeable thing, but is it really that much easier than changing one sign? Besides, if you knew you'd be changing your opening times throughout the year, then when you ordered a sign you'd just order both signs at the same time, or maybe get a sign with replaceable numbers, or a sign with washable/writeable numbers for your opening times. Or you could just not bother, and pick a time that…

Cascading scheduling is really hard, especially when some of the things won’t need to change and others will. Which is inevitable. It can take months for things to stabilize again.

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#98

Post by rsynnott »

relaxing wrote: post #64
defrost wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh, that's a bit over a thousand years. How do you define country? Continuous occupation and law? I remember talking to David M as a kid about the works he kept touched up and the stories that went with them. https://www.magabala.com/products/yorro-yorro https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/australia-s-oldest-k... https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21416

> How do you define country? Not having anyone say you're a different country, aka sovereignty.

I don't think that one works for England; see W. T. Conqueror.

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#99

Post by rsynnott »

tomaytotomato wrote: post #53

I wonder what the cost of implementing this bylaw was on the tax payer, here is a guess: - Health and safety assessment by specialist HSE officer - £10k - Procurement of organic sustainable hay bale - £2k - Consultation with local community to ensure hay bale is not offensive to straw bale enthusiasts - £5k - Transportation costs - £500 - Lawsuit from worker hurting shoulder when mounting the hay bale over bridge sid…

Yes; this is HN, and not the letters page of the Daily Mail, to which this sort of content is traditionally addressed.

Re: Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered

#100

Post by dfxm12 »

dale_glass wrote: post #48
jimnotgym wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother always said, 'why can't people just do the things they were going to do 1 hour earlier/ later rather than changing the clocks' Sometimes the obvious is too sensible.

Probably because a clock is an easily changeable thing, but a schedule or an announcement is less so. Putting a "Opens at 8:00" on sign on your door involves a fair amount of effort of buying a physical piece of equipment. Changing an appointment may have required walking somewhere and talking to the right person. Before modern luxuries a million of such tiny adjustments would have required a lot of time and effort.

I wonder, what business/appointment would even need the extra hour of daylight? Not many. Many businesses already have seasonal hours that aren't affixed to the clocks changing.

Compare this to the deaths due to the confusion, loss of sleep, deer not realizing way more cars are going to be on the road, etc.

Changing the clocks has a serious price. The benefits are not apparent though.

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