Inner City Pressure… part one

For your enjoyment I thought I’d document some of the weird, annoying and downright ridiculous shit that goes on in lovely London town, (actually a city, in case you live under a rock… or are a sub-mental). And as a homage to the fantastic Flight of the Conchords I’ve dubbed this series ‘Inner City Pressure’.

Part one features the gauntlet of free paper and free leaflet, (because let’s face it, a leaflet you had to pay for would be supremely rubbish) ‘handers’ I have to run nearly every day walking to and from my office.

Now firstly let’s get one thing straight – I’m not having a go at the leaflet distributors themselves… well not all of them, (there is the odd far-too-enthusiastic individual). Most of them I’m sure are fine upstanding citizens who are just trying to get by the best they can in this crazy world… by handing things to people. Although I do think this level of employment is one step up from, ‘sign holding guy’ who in turn is one step up from, ‘shop-DJ’.

But that’s not the point, the point here is that couldn’t these people be replaced by, er… I dunno… boxes. Boxes perform the same function without, a) blocking busy pedestrian thoroughfares b) shoving unwanted poorly written rubbish in peoples busy faces. Also I’m quite sure that in the long run a brightly coloured box would cost less than the salaries of the currently employed fleet of ‘handers’.

Now, obviously I’m aware that they probably have an positive impact on readership, or at least ‘takership’ and that they get around the issue of not being allowed to places boxes in some locations. But still they are an unpleasantness I’d rather not have to deal with on a day to day basis. It offends my English sensibilities, forcing impoliteness by ignore these people, but honestly if I said ‘no-thanks’ to all of them I’d lose my voice on a daily basis.