Nottingham City Council really are a bunch of idiots.
Over the last couple of weeks, Domino’s Pizza has been using human billboards (known as wobble-boarders) to advertise its products.
Basically, they get a bunch of cash-strapped students to wear giant pizza boxes with a special offer price on it to stand on corners. Depending on how extrovert the respective student is, you may get a dance or a wave as you drive by.
Quite frankly, they’re not doing any harm, so it comes as a major surprise (or maybe not, when you think about who the council are) to discover that this activity is actually very, very dangerous on several levels:
…degrading and exploitative.
They were a dangerous distraction to drivers and obstructing the highway.
So dangerous, in fact, that Domino’s has been threatened with a community protection notice and £20,000 fine:
…detrimental effect, of a persistent or continuing nature, on the quality of life of those in the locality.
What a bunch of arseholes they really are. No one wearing a wobble-board was forced to do it, so the “degrading and exploitive” nature of the scheme exists solely in the minds of people who couldn’t get a real job themselves and so ended up working for the council. And as for affecting “the quality of life of those in the locality”… absolute bollocks.
It reminds me of a similar scheme a few years ago where Kennelgate (I think it was) had paid students to dress up in animal costumes and do pretty much the same thing. In fact, they must have recruited their students exclusively from the performing arts colleges judging by the antics they got up to, and I can remember me and my pupils saying what a good idea it was (we’d never seen anything like it before). I don’t recall reading any stories about how that was banned (though with hindsight it probably was)
The average cyclist is a million times more dangerous than a Domino’s wobble-boarder.