Boycott the Beach

Mr Mustard noticed a fly posted poster advertising a 'Beach' at Brent Cross (let's put to one side the definition of a beach requiring the sea or a lake etc alongside) as he was passing through his local High Street the other day. This followed him having observed a number of them attached to the railings on the A41 when he was on his way to a Barnet Council committee meeting.

He went back and walked the High Street, EN5 from end to end and found lots more posters. Some iterations are probably there with the permission of the shop keeper but others clearly aren't, the ones on empty buildings.

adjacent to a closed shop so permission unlikely

adjacent to the closed pancake eaterie so no permission

After Office Hours - the building of one of Mr Mustard's twitter followers, he thinks

did Boots the Chemists really agree to this? probably not

Butchers Hook which has closed. Posters dropped in through the gap above the door

& then sellotaped in place - inside the window may technically not be fly posting?

at the top of Bells Hill, perhaps with permission

The garage opposite Ravenscroft Park

Some of those posters have doubtless been put up with permission of shopkeepers but not all by any means.

Think, shopkeepers. Is this a good idea? You may get a couple of freebie tickets to go to the Beach but will you even bother to use them?

Secondly, ask yourself, what is your shop window for? It is in order to advertise items that you sell, on which you hope to make a profit, and to attract customers to the store. Does this garish poster earn its keep in your shop window? No.

Thirdly, does this sort of scattergun approach to advertising an event which is nowhere near Barnet's High Street really make it a more attractive place to visit? We are on the cusp of watching TfL & Barnet Council lob £200,000k at your High Street to, supposedly, in the weasel words of some overpaid council puff writer, 'to create a safer and more pleasant environment for users' and a number of you are, swapping the chance to sit on a non beach near to a large shopping centre and the North Circular Road (pollution levels must be pretty high there) for the visual pollution which is Barnet High Street today. People aren't going to visit such a flea pit as Barnet High Street appears to be with all these posters everywhere, or if they do they sure as hell aren't going to come back. 

Perhaps it is time traders to start saying no to these inconveniences in your shop window and go back to basics and make your shop window great again. Make it novel, make it interesting, make it relevant.

If you want to go to the beach, please choose your favourite seaside resort & go there. Mr Mustard was in Cromer at the weekend, it is well worth a visit (Cromer Crab, lovely). This bogus beach at Brent Cross costs £3 to get in (access to the beach is free at Cromer, they have a lovely pier with a theatre on it & very reasonably priced beach huts for hire) but that isn't what the Brent Cross 'Beach' is really about. They want you to buy tokens for the adjacent funfair at £2 to £5 a ride, so the 'beach' is merely a sprat to catch a mackerel & you won't find either at Brent Cross, except smoked in Waitrose.

At a real seaside beach, you will find the sea & sand, places to eat and other things to do (Visit Cromer) not a not so cheap imitation.

Barnet Council are letting NSL do virtually what they like in enforcing environmental crime. That includes giving £400 fixed penalty notices to bona fide businesses who have not fly tipped but whose name has appeared on items left in the street, but not by them. 

Since July 2016 when a 6 month trial began (which doesn't seem to have come to an end) how many fly posting penalties have NSL managed to give out? By the end of April 18 it was 8, yes 8, not one of them in High Barnet and only 3 have been paid. NSL aren't tackling real problems like fly posting, they are concentrating their resources on easy money, as profit for NSL is their motivation.

If you thought they must be concentrating on dog fouling (not fouling of dogs but fouling by dogs which isn't cleared up by the owners) then you would be wrong. Just 4 Fixed Penalty Notices since July 16 despite the obvious problems of nasty deposits on pavments everywhere.

Will Barnet Council instruct NSL to issue fly-posting Fixed Penalty Notices at £400 a time to the 'Beach' organisers. Mr Mustard doubts it as they don't really care.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard