More Futile Ways of Spending Our Money

When the grant funded local conservation officers are scratching around for something to do with their time in the office they often return to a favourite activity: designing posters that patronise the visiting public.  Often these are directed at dog-walkers telling them to control their pets which at times challenge their key management targets and practices.  One of the most cringingly patronising of all appeared last year causing a serious outbreak of nausea and revulsion in many who saw it:

A previous incarnation of this type of notice was used for many years and exhorted dog walkers to Get A Grip!! It too featured a crass cartoon.

A new version has arrived on gateposts etc this year. It takes a different line, more restrained less bossy and less dumbed down, obviously a response to the feedback from last year's and this time without any low-grade childish cartoon.

It would be interesting to know how much public money goes into designing, redesigning and printing these posters. I can imagine officers sitting at desks or even in meetings saying "if only we could get the presentation right all would be fine". Unfortunately for them it's not just the presentation. The message itself is flawed. People have seen through it and like many other aspects of their management it's unsustainable.

Their problem with dog walkers arises from their decisions to create an artificial farmed landscape instead of a more natural and unexploited landscape. While I have reservations about the behaviour of some dog walkers, I have even more about the conservation officers in Sheffield Moors Partnership. They create and continue a largely treeless landscape by crushing the will of all the natural inclinations; in short, it's gardening. In order to do this they bring in a contingent of livestock enforcers. The debased and limited vegetation that results appeals mainly to a narrow range of wildlife that doesn't like dogs. Just as they shoot foxes and deer and persecute other predators, they would like to shoot visitors' pets. Perhaps one day their farmer allies will do just that. What a legal action could start then!