Banned

Banning or cancelling stuff is absolutely all the rage at the moment. Or at least trying to cancel stuff. It’s the trendy thing. It must be remembered that most cancellation-type noise is made by empty vessels who live on the extremes and achieve nothing. But still, trying to ban stuff is the latest fad and I feel some strange sense of moral obligation to jump on the cancellation bandwagon and put forth one of my own pet hates in the hope that it will be exterminated by social outrage.

I can’t say that I’m terribly impressed by most claims of ‘cancellation’. For example, getting booted off Twitter for posting racist nonsense or inciting violence is perfectly in keeping with the T&Cs that ones agrees to when signing up. And anyway, for those who fall foul of Twitter’s rules, there’s always Gettr. Which has become the favoured social network for right wingers to share their bigotry. And jihadists to share their beheading videos. And pedos to share their porn. Gosh, have three groups of people ever deserved each other more?

So what would I like to see done away with? A few candidates come to mind. Could we ban the Trump family from high office? I think that option is too obvious, unoriginal and the process is well under way. Gambling! We should definitely ban gambling. It’s a social abomination. Meh, a ban wouldn’t work. But we should ban gambling firms from advertising. Or just ban advertising altogether. Except some adverts are actually rather good. And ads pay for the upkeep of WordPress blogs. I don’t want to be one of those folk who ‘self-cancel’.

Getting shot of the antivax/conspiracy protest mobs is very tempting. I don’t want them banned though. Rounded up, packed into ovens and gassed? Oh yes. But banned, no. Oops, did I just type that out loud? Ok, I appreciate that this might seem harsh, but these folk walk around with yellow stars pinned to their shirts, constantly invoke the holocaust and are calling for doctors to be executed after new Nuremberg trials. Yes, they are all howl at the moon mad. But they will genuinely not be truly happy till they have a lungful of Zyklon B. Martyrdom and self fulfilling prophesies are closely related themes.

I suspect that such a policy would be difficult to pass through parliament though. I would hope so, anyway. So I’m going to pick something that is a little less controversial and a lot less likely to bring out anyone’s inner Hitler. Here it is. I’d like to ban the ‘For Sale/To Let’ signs that estate agents thump into the ground to let the property buying public know that another home has come onto the market.

What is the point of those signs? No one ever gets in their car and tours a neighbourhood to house hunt anymore. We open up Rightmove or Zoopla on a computer or tablet from the comfort of home and perform a precision search for the home of our dreams. We can specify virtually every last detail of what we are looking for, and the results from miles around are provided in an instant.

And yet. The sale signs still go up, even though they’ve got nothing to do with actual sales. Estate agents are behaving much like dogs, cocking their leg up every other gate post to mark their territory. The signs are a tool to promote brand awareness and improve their market credibility. And they’re ugly, an unnecessary use of resources, environmentally unfriendly and rarely seem to be taken away once the property has actually sold.

I’ve noticed on more than one occasion that a block of flats has more sale signs by the gate than actual flats. At which point, one does wonder if the forest of signs might even deter potential buyers. ‘Is fraud afoot? Why do all the current residents want to leave? What are they fleeing? Perhaps I should skip this one and go see the next on my list…’

I’m tempted to start an online petition to get the ball rolling on this important topic. To actually get something done. Less talk, more action. But truth be told, I’d also quite like to ban online petitions. So I won’t. No one likes a hypocrite. And anyway, it seems that it would be easier and more effective to just spend a few hours on conspiracy theorist websites, letting them know that the uberfuhrers are now disguising the covid activating 5G masts as property signs…