Health and Safety Silly Bunt
Firefighters banned from using ladders - News - Bedfordshire on Sunday
Firefighters have been told they cannot use their ladders to take down festive bunting because it is too dangerous.
Ampthill held its annual Gala Day in July and to mark the occasion the historic market town was festooned with colourful bunting.
In previous years fire brigade officers have pitched in after the event to help remove the decorations.
But this year, nearly four months later and the bunting is still in place.
Former Mayor Cllr Mark Smith said: 'The reason the festival bunting is still up arises from the fact that due to local health and safety advice the local fire brigade is unable to take the bunting down.'
Disgruntled resident Charlie Garth said: "What the blazes. I'm sure our brave firemen aren't frightened about falling off a piddling little ladder. They have never looked afraid of heights to me.
"After all they are used to climbing giant turntable ladders with choppers in their hands and rescuing cats from the tops of tall trees."
Deputy chief fire officer Graeme Smith said: "Yes it sounds like the world has gone mad. Firefighters will climb ladders to rescue people from burning buildings but not to remove bunting after a festival.
It isn't just that "it sounds like the world has gone mad" - it has. Don't they ever do training exercises of climbing ladders, couldn't they do that in the high street....
*Silly Bunt? The Monty Python origionation is below as an educational service
Agent: Ah Hello, I'm Bounder of Adventure.
Customer: Hello, my names Smoketoomuch.
A: What?
C: My names Smoketoomuch, Mr. Smoketoomuch.
A: Well
C: I'm sorry?
A: You'd better cut down a little then.
C: Oh I see, Smoketoomuch so I'd better cut down a little then.
A: Yes
your name all the time.
C: No actually. It never struck me before. Smoketoomuch. Tahaha
heh heh.
A: Anyway, you're interested in one of our holidays are you?
C: Yes that's right, I saw your advert in the bolour supplement.
A: The what?
C: The bolour supplement.
A: The colour supplement?
C: Yes that's right. I'm afraid I can't say the letter B
A: C?
C: Yes. Its all due to a trauma I suffered when I was a
Schoolboy. I was attacked by a bat.
A: Ah, a cat?
C: No a bat.
A: Well can you say the letter K?
C: Oh yes, Khaki, Kettle, Kipling, Kuwait, Kings Bollege Bambridge.
A: Well why don't you say the letter K, instead of the letter C?
C: What, you mean spell bolour with a K.
A: Right.
C: Kolour.
A: Yes.
C: Ah that's very good. I never thought of that before. What a silly
bunt.
A: Now then, er, about the, er, about the holiday.
C: Yes well I've been on package tours many times before and so
your advert really baught my eye.
A: Good, good, jolly good.
C: Yes, you're quite right, what's the point of going abroad if
you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded
by sweaty miners sons from Kettering and Boventry with their
bloth baps and their bardigans and their transistor radios
complaining about the tea, ooh they don't make it properly here
do they - and stopping at endless Majorcan bodegas selling fish
and chips and Watneys Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and
sitting in their cotton sunfrocks squirting Timothy Whites sun
cream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh cos they
overdid it on the first day.
A: Absolutely, absolutely.
C: And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevueses
and Bontinentals with their International luxury roomettes
and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German
businessmen pretending to be acrobats forming pyramids and
frightening the children and barging into the queues. And if
you're not at the table spot on 7 you miss your bowl of
Campbells Cream of Mushroom soup - the first item on the menu
of International cuisine.
A: Absolutely, well what we'd like....
C: And every Thursday night there's bloody cabaret in the bar,
featuring some tiny emaciated dago with 9 inch hips, and some
fat bloated tart with her hair Brylcreamed down and a big tits
presenting flamenco for foreigners. And then an audio-typist
from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying
to pick up hairy legged wop waiters called Manuel.
A: Will you be quiet!
C: And once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman remains
where you can buy Cherryade, and melted Ice Cream and bleeding
Watneys Red Barrel.
A: Please....
C: And one night they take you to a typical restaurant with local
atmosphere and colour and you sit next to a party of people
from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, Torremolinos".
A: WILL you be QUIET!.
C: And complaining about the food.. ooh its SO greasy isn't it.
You get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with
an Instamatic camera and Dr Scholl sandals and last Tuesdays
Daily Express and he drones on and on and on about how Mr Smith
should be running this country, and how many languages
Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up all over the
Cuba Libres. Then sending tiddly postcards of places they don't
realise they haven't even visited.... to all at number 22,
weather wonderful, food very greasy, but we have managed to
find this tiny little place hidden away in the back streets
where you can buy Cheese and Onion crisps and Watneys Red
Barrel. And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport
on a five day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA
type sandwiches and you cant even get a glass of Watneys Red
Barrel cos you're still in England and the bloody bar closes
every time you're thirsty. And the kids are crying and vomiting
and breaking the plastic ashtrays and they keep telling you
it'll only be another hour although you know damn well your
plane is still in Iceland and it has to come back and take
a party of Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can come back and load
you up at 3am in the morning. And then you sit on the tarmac
for four hours because of 'unforseen difficulties', ie. the
permanent strike of Air Traffic Control; and when you finally
get to Malaga airport and everyones swallowing into Vioform
tablets and queueing for the bloody toilets and queueing for
the bloody armed customs officers, and queueing for the bloody
bus that isn't there waiting to take you to the hotel that
hasn't yet been built. And when you finally get to the half-built
Algerian ruin, called the Hotel del Sol, by paying half your
holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi; there's no water
in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in
the bog, and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet!
And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway
cos of the permanent 24 hour drilling of the foundations of
the hotel next door. You play while appalling apprentice
chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class
stockbrokers wives from Esher, busily buying identical holiday
villas and suburban development plots just like Esher, because
the Labour Governments got in again.
Meanwhile the Spanish National Tourist Board......< fade out>
