Sill Crazy After All These Years

By london_pjb Last edited 233 months ago
Sill Crazy After All These Years

window_box.jpgNo newspaper is happier than when it is at the forefront of a campaign.

When that campaign entails what looks like bureaucratic idiocy, you can be sure that one of the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail or the Daily Express will be the loudest in exposing another example of “red tape gone mad”.

This week it’s the Daily Telegraph’s turn to campaign for another persecuted species — the window-box in east London.

Norwich Union has told residents of the Bow Quarter that, unless the boxes are solidly secured, they constitute an “avoidable hazard” and will have to be removed from window sills unless they want their insurance to be voided.

That the buildings were Grade II listed and therefore couldn’t be drilled into willy-nilly at the request of an insurer cut no ice.

Another minor point: that no-one in living memory has ever actually been killed by a falling window box in the Bow Quarter, also failed to impress.

Norwich Union said that "generally this is about risk management. Window boxes can and do fall off..." All this was quite enough for the Telegraph, which immediately ran an article entitled “Hands off our window boxes”. We suspect that the newspaper’s only regret was that the insurer involved wasn’t French or German.

Last Updated 27 October 2004