Rob's Blog

Some signs from a recent trip to Scotland. Most of these you can click on to see them in Flickr, where they are also geotagged so you can see where they were taken.

Here are some people ignoring a sign telling them not to go on the beach. There was some earth moving equipment parked up nearby. Apparently there was a project underway to move sand around. But sand was not being moved around right then, so people ignored the sign. This is evidence that the general public are still able to think for themselves, which is good.

Here, someone official has decided it would be a good idea to ask everyone to drive efficiently. As a friend wrote on Flickr, “Define ‘efficient’ Time-efficient works for me.”

Probably the same people responsible for the sign above, advertising themselves. Once again I find myself asking: what am I supposed to do with this information?

This is a refreshing change. Because we were out of season, there were no tourists, so the car parks were empty. So they were free. It would be so easy to charge anyway, but someone somewhere has decided not to.

In a world where all property is private, would there still be parks? I think so. Perhaps they would be like this park, where you must rent a key to able to open the gate and access it. I imagine that in this park it is allowed to take a bottle of wine to your picnic, unlike some London parks where picnicing couples get in trouble for drinking wine because wine is not allowed because of the winos, and of course rules must be enforced equally…

Two notices seen in a hospital. The first:

I like “due to health and safety”. It’s not a reason, it’s heath and safety made into a person; a god even. And that full stop: it implies, “don’t question Health and Safety”. Why not be honest and say, “we can’t be bothered”, or, “we are afraid of the litigation that might result when your baby gets food poisoning”? Maybe that’s not it; I’m quite baffled about what the real reason might be.

Here’s an outrageous lie:

Perhaps someone got annoyed that people were ignoring the pleas not to use mobile phones and exaggerated the consequences. Perhaps the lift did fail and someone blamed it on phones, and someone else believed them. This notice was only on the one lift. Very odd.

I find these sorts of hand-made notices interesting. There must always be a story behind them. Someone is tired of answering the same question every day, or having to correct some behaviour. Exasperated, they Print a Sign. That will tell people! I wonder if these signs ever have the desired effect.

Mrs Rob’s Blog bought this card:

And noticed something strange about it:

No doubt there is an EU commttee behind this somewhere.

I like collecting funny signs. Here are a couple I saw while travelling around. The first is from the Singapore subway system:

No durians

Singapore is known for being a bit strict. At least you don’t get fined for the durians. A friend once had me try durian sweets; they tasted okay — if you could get over the smell.

There were no signs forbidding photography on the Singapore subway. On the Rome Metro a policeman wagged a finger at me when I tried to take a photo; in Koh Samui a (presumably bored) official told me not to take photos of a plane I was boarding (I took photos of the neighbouring one out of the plane window once on board instead); on the London underground I once heard an announcement that photography was forbidden to respect the privacy of the other passengers. I had to LOL at that one…

Officials in different places percieve different problems. On the Bangkok Skytrain they see another problem that can be solved by a sign:

Seat for monks

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