This document makes the case for the introduction of New legislation to set minimum requirements of standards for house signs across the UK.
Clearly such legislation is currently in the early discussion stage but the strong social economic and environmental factors make the introduction of new laws to compel home owners to install adequate high quality house signs, just a matter of time.
Let me at once declare an interest. I am a house sign maker and as such it may seem that I have a vested interest in promoting such legislation but I assure you my motives are completely altruistic. I simply want Britain to be at the fore-front of international signage. Honest!
The most compelling argument is the economic one. Bad house signs are the cause of millions of lost man hours every year as parcel delivery drivers search in vain for badly signed houses and are forced into dumping the parcels at any old address and forge the recipients signature. Royal mail services are also even slower and less efficient than otherwise. Parcels and letters are mis-delivered or carefully stored on the sorting room floor for days or even weeks before being re-directed by boot or declared as lost.
Legislation forcing home owners to purchase a new house sign would also provide a much needed fillip for the domestic economy, creating a flood of new orders for house sign makers. A vibrant and growing house sign industry would incontrovertibly be a valuable asset to the UK., injecting new cash into the economy and providing badly need work for old stonemasons!
The social case is even stronger. There are many delivery drivers in Britain who really care about the job, (no really! perhaps as many as twelve!) and they are frequently driven to drink by the frustration of searching for that elusive house sign. Another group that often suffers from drink problems caused by the lack of house signs and certainly suffer traumatic stress are the army of company reps who spend hours in trying to find that rarest of species, a potentially paying customer. As each anonymous house passes by, the poor rep can hear his commission pouring down the drain.
If we can make bad and missing house signs a thing of the past we may be able to put alcoholics anonymous out of business!
The National Health service is also adversely affected by the poor UK. house sign stock. Babies are inadvertently born at home and heart attack victims have time to buy personal defibrillators on the internet as the ambulance men search in vain for the right house. Firemen have learned that is more effective to simply wait in the vicinity of a call out and look for the rising smoke rather than waste time looking for non existent house signs!
Our police also suffer from the lack of adequate house signage. It is probably the main reason why emergency response to burglaries and murders often takes days rather than hours as the patrol cars frantically cruise up and down the roads looking for the right house and though statistical evidence is thin, the high proportion of wrong doors kicked in during police raids is almost certainly due to badly signed houses!
All in all the case so far for introducing new house sign laws has been overwhelming but to finally nail the thing down one has only to consider the environmental case. All those vans and lorries ambulances and police cars driving about lost, are generating thousands of tons of unnecessary carbon emissions. The hot air and foul language generated by countless frustrated and furious drivers, postmen, policemen and fire-fighters creates Co2 on a vast scale. The burning of large numbers of kicked in doors thrown on the bonfire heating up the atmosphere simply adds to the problem. Bad house signage is clearly a major contributor to global warming.
If you find these arguments as compelling as I do, please write to the chancellor expressing your support for the new legislation, only whatever you do don’t mention my name!