Two years ago this very day, after a 3 week stress related illness brought on by my concerns about bridges and my earlier initial whistle-blowing being ignored, I returned to work on the Monday morning only to be confronted by a blinking message light on my phone even before I saw down. It turned out to the first report of 8 aluminium bridge parapet thefts, carried out by by our metal moving community who are with us from time to time.
I have some photos which I'll add as soon as I can find them, or if not, I'll go and take some more.
Tinkers Bridge Canal Footbridge MKC no.87369 is a footbridge over the canal which had an expensive refurbishment in early 2009 which included jacking the deck up to fit new bearings, re-painting the steel beams (already rusting in places), re-surfacing, replacing some of the aluminium parapets previously stolen some 4 or 5 years previously and fitting (badly, as it happens) some aluminium extensions to the parapet to make it higher for the protection of cyclists on the bridge. I have never heard of a cyclist crashing off a bridge because the parapets were too low, have you? No doubt some further piece of Brussels imposed legislation thrust upon us. MKC spent £130,000 some years ago fitting these extensions to 10 bridges, that's £13,000 for each bridge. One of these was stolen within months of fitting.
The cheeky metal moving thieves came to this bridge 4 times to progressively steal more. Working with the police to try and prevent further thefts all over the place, they installed a camera near the site, sadly not a closed-circuit camera which would have been effective, but a static one. Well they even stole the camera as well as the rest of the 1 year old parapet extension. I was later criticised by my "management" for the time I spent trying to secure these other bridges and working with the police to prevent further thefts and consequent detriment to the public safety and purse.
In my despair, I wrote this poem.
An Ode To Six Bridges -
(Beware the Odes of March!)
Tinker’s
Bridge is where it started,
The Bridge
Engineers are so down-hearted.
A lady
rang, she said “It’s gone!”
“Tell me
Madam, what is wrong?”
“They
came at night, and no-one saw,
They
think they are beyond the law.
The
fixing bolts have gone,
Hand-rand-rails
sold for a pretty song.”
The Bridge
Inspector checks in vain,
The parapet
thieves have struck again.
Thames
Valley Police have been told,
But the
information leaves them cold.
The aluminium
price has gone insane.
This just
won’t do, that much is plain!
It puts the
public in many dangers,
Watch out
for light-fingered strangers!
So far,
they’ve been to six,
And it
takes so very much to fix.
Fishermead
and Simpson make it three,
Hodge-Lea
and two on the A5D!
Railings too,
by the old Grand Union,
With a
scrap-yard make communion.
However can
we make it stop?
We really
need a Super-Cop.
An Eastern
gang or home grown criminal?
The
difference is really quite subliminal.
So think
hard on what all this means,
It’ll cost
us dear in Milton Keynes!
Another verse for my friends only:
Three weeks off with too much stress,
He has come back to such a mess!
Now this nonsense has been started
Methinks Bridge Inspector’s too down-hearted!
