A sunny day and a trip to Norwich. While standing in the W.H.Smith’s in the market, an item in the Norwich Evening News catches my eye.
Norwich City Council faces an ongoing battle to preserve the much-loved walls, with water, road salt and plants causing damage throughout the year.
Now officials at City Hall are in talks with English Heritage about making it easier to patch-up the early 14th century structures.
It is hoped the deal, known as a heritage partnership agreement, will prevent permission being required from English Heritage every time the council wants to carry out repairs on the walls.
Officials say this can be a time-consuming and costly process. …
He said: “We would like to make sure that the money from the city council is delivered to where it really needs to be – maintaining the monument so it survives.
“That’s the important thing rather than spending on paperwork and management. I think that’s a good aspiration.”
(emphases mine)
You could have no finer illustration of why Great Britain is ceasing to function; that an annual process of routine maintenance is snarled in pointless paperwork taking a year to process, and that the council has to have talks simply to do its job.
This, friends, is what the Third World looks like.