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Millennium Bridge workers hang straw bales after ancient bylaw triggered
- GeoAtreides 3y agoAh, yes, England and its innumerable traditions; turns out, Gormenghast is actually a documentary.
- jjgreen 3y agoUp to 1973, London Taxis were required to carry a bale of hay (for benefit of the long absent horse). https://www.ludlowthompson.com/property_news/searching-for-a-london-taxi-in-a-hay-stack-its-crazy-but-true-526 https://www.ludlowthompson.com/property_news/searching-for-a...
- jayelbe 3y agoIs that really true? Section 51 of the London Hackney Carriage Act 1831 (to which the article refers) doesn't seem to require that; it (among other things) forbids a taxi driver feeding another driver's horses with anything other than corn or hay - but doesn't say anything about requiring them to carry hay for this purpose. There is no other reference to "hay" in the act. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1831/22/pdfs/ukpga_18310022_en.pdf https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1831/22/pdfs/ukpga_1831...
- jjgreen 3y agoI think you're right, the relevant part is actually forbidding feeding your own horse with anything but hand-held hay or corn, implicitly requiring carrying the same, but if you don't have a horse, that's moot ...
- traceroute66 3y ago> Section 51 of the London Hackney Carriage Act 183 I think its one of those cause and effect things. You have a horse-drawn taxi. You wish to feed your horse at some point during the day. The law says you can only do so with either (a) your own hay or (b) hay or corn held in your hands. So the restrictions of the law push you in the obvious direction of keeping a stack of hay on your carriage.
- INTPenis 3y agoWell, how would you alert boat traffic of work going on under a bridge? I got to thinking and a bale of straw isn't a bad idea. My first thought was a flag on a rope, but wind can make it blow up and become less visible. So it needs to have weight in order to hang down and be visible at the right height. It needs to be disposable and cheap. And it can't damage boats. So a bale of straw is not a bad idea even in 2023.
- chankstein38 3y agoThis is what I was thinking as well. Everyone is kind of "teehee"ing about this but it seems like a pretty damned good solution. PLUS if a boat accidentally hits it, it's relatively soft and not going to cause any damage which something like a barrel full of water could (plus that'd weigh a lot more)
- jack_riminton 3y agoIt'd also make a nice soft but loud bump on a boat for any skippers that didn't see anything
- gpvos 3y agoI'm from the continent and it doesn't seem particularly strange or quirky to me. Just a practical thing that hasn't changed since many centuries ago because why would it.
- tjrgergw 3y agoBritish people love old stuff like Americans love cars and guns.
- walthamstow 3y agoI don't know if you've ever been to London, Rome or Kyoto, but Americans actually fucking love old stuff
- breakfastduck 3y agoOnly because they're so deprived of it in their own country.
- gadders 3y agoThey should visit our thousand (nearly) year old door: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/history/explore-our-history/britains-oldest-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).
- kypro 3y agoOr world's oldest "cat flap", https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-66665613 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-66665613
- arethuza 3y agoAnd as a Scot I should point out that Scotland is about a century older at 843 AD - but then neither have really existed as separate countries for centuries. ;-)
- dwighttk 3y ago927 - 1066 doesn’t seem that old to me ;)
- gadders 3y ago
- esquivalience 3y agoThis isn't just an old tradition. It's a coded signal - and one that the river users can be assumed to understand. There's no principle difference between this use of straw to caution navigators on water, and the use of (for example) " 300 status codes to signal redirection to to navigavators of the internet.
- hermannj314 3y agoAncient website still uses archaic human-centric deci-mal number 301 to redirect traffic. Early humans believed these were powerful and called them "magic[al] strings".
- sgarland 3y agoThey also apparently communicated the need for a hot caffeinated beverage with the sequence 418. It is unknown how the receiver of this code would communicate their intent to fulfill the request, leading historians to ponder if sending such a signal might result in a torrential flood of the beverage.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoincorrect implementation of the protocol AFAIK > The HTTP 418 'I'm a teapot' client error response code indicates that the server refuses to brew coffee because it is, permanently, a teapot. A combined coffee/tea pot that is temporarily out of coffee should instead return 503.
- derbOac 3y agoThis 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.
- harimau777 3y agoThis 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.
- dghughes 3y agoThe news the next day "Barge worker injured by a straw bale falling from a bridge."
- memsom 3y agoIt 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 them on the "books". They are usually boring things like "dogs must not foul in the streets" and "cyclists may not ride on the pavement (sidewalk in US usage)"... but some are really weird. I guess the US does use bylaw, but it seems to always be rules and regulations that companies make. This is very much an actual law that will see you fined and potentially in court if you break them.
- efitz 3y ago> I guess the US does use bylaw, but it seems to always be rules and regulations that companies make. In the USA we call local laws “ordinances”. In US English, “by-law” relates to a set of rules associated with a contractually-created body, like a homeowners association.
- werdnapk 3y agoIn Canada, it's bylaws and not ordinances made by local government.
- kalupa 3y agoand they're called by-laws when set by a condo or strata, too! (in Canada)
- colanderman 3y agoThe US (New England) town I live in calls them bylaws.
- red-iron-pine 3y agothe state and local level can call them whatever they want, which is why a lot of older, eastern states in the US have definitions for things like hamlets. the Dillon Rule lets the states define that however they want, and the FedGov ain't setting local HOA rules.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 3y agoOne of the linked articles is also pretty esoteric. The bale is hung because the bridge is being cleaned, as part of the cleaning project discarded chewing gum will be removed, a process objected to by an artist who paints tiny pictures on the gum [1] 1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/05/artist-ben-wilson-paints-on-chewing-gum-save-millennium-bridge-pieces https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/05/artist-ben-w...
- bshimmin 3y agoHere's the charity responsible for this bridge and several others in London: https://www.citybridgefoundation.org.uk/about/history https://www.citybridgefoundation.org.uk/about/history Founded in 1122, which is quite something!
- ajb 3y agoThey used to obtain funds by renting out space on the bridge, so the old bridges used to have houses and shops on them - cantilevered or to the sides.
- hbossy 3y agoReminds 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.
- hobo_mark 3y ago> You often see... Where in the world is such a thing a frequent enough sight to say that?
- PLenz 3y agoThe US for one, where it evolved into a Christmas Tree at the top upon "topping out".
- arethuza 3y agoIs that done just at Christmas or all year round?
- relaxing 3y agoYear round. And it's just a pine tree. It's not decorated for Christmas or anything.
- arethuza 3y agoThe town in Scotland nearest to where I live, Burntisland, has docks and they have a huge crane there - at Xmas the company puts a Christmas tree on top of the crane about 65m or so up. It's quite bizarre as when it's dark (and days are quite short in Scotland at Xmas) you can't see the crane just this lit up Xmas tree hanging in space above the town. It's very cool.
- steanne 3y agothe US. not just wreathes: whole-ass trees and specially-painted beams. i can speak for the mid-atlantic region; basically, any building that has a ground-breaking ceremony might also have a topping-out one. https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/12/why-do-construction-workers-top-building-sites-with-undecorated-christmas-trees.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/12/why-do-construction... https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Topping_out https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Topping_out
- suprjami 3y agoDaylight 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.
- HPsquared 3y agoAs electricity gets more expensive, that purpose may become more relevant again. Every 5W LED counts!
- Retric 3y agoWhy do you think electricity is increasing? Inflation adjusted electricity costs have been steady or even falling. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000072610 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000072610 In August 1990 average retail rates where the equivalent of 20.49c/kWh (8.7), and 2010 18.35c/kWh (13.0), but in 2023 it’s only 17c/kWh.
- tiernano 3y agomine is closer to 30c/kWh currently... and thats cheaper than it was before...
- jimnotgym 3y agoMy 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.
- dale_glass 3y agoProbably 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tomaytotomato 3y agoI 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 side - £80k - Admin and project management costs - £12k Did I miss anything?
- jack_riminton 3y agoYes, a sense of proportion
- rsynnott 3y agoYes; this is HN, and not the letters page of the Daily Mail, to which this sort of content is traditionally addressed.
- beardyw 3y agoI thought this was a more interesting story https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/05/artist-ben-wilson-paints-on-chewing-gum-save-millennium-bridge-pieces?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/05/artist-ben-w... Painting dropped chewing gum (600 works on the bridge) seems heroic to me.
- ljf 3y agoYears ago I worked in Soho and watched him paint a piece of gum outside my office - it was stunning and real piece of art. I got a few photos that evening. The next morning it had already been scrapped out - I imagine by an art collector of sorts, as the rest of the gum on the pavement hadn't been touched. Shame to see it go, but interesting while it was there.
- philposting 3y agoI met him on this bridge once, he was polishing an old work. He told us that he had the blessing of the owners of the bridge. Other places where he worked, he didn’t have permission.
- DrBazza 3y agoThe ianvisits site is the go-to for this sort of thing, from 5 days ago, the Grauniad is always a bit slow on the uptake: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/an-ancient-law-requires-a-bundle-of-straw-to-hang-from-the-millennium-bridge-66457/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/an-ancient-law-requires... Want to build a new market? Oh, there's a 775 year old bylaw about that... https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-city-of-londons-market-plans-run-up-against-775-year-old-law-60624/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-city-of-londons-mar...
- paulette449 3y agoGrauniad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25922703