Sticking to the bollards

Press, 29 June 1987, Page 20

Sticking to the bollards

The introduction at the week-end of four new bollards under the Moorhouse Avenue bridge to take posters is a welcome move. A couple of years ago Christchurch suffered a plague of poster-pasting and posters continue to be a minor, but persistent source of ugliness on the city landscape. A sub-committee of the Keep Christchurch Beautiful Committee was established to find a solution. The four new bollards under the bridge, a favourite site for poster-stickers, are part of the outcome.

It is, perhaps, a good sign that when three city councillors and a group of scouts arrived at the bridge on Saturday morning to scrape it clean of the old, unwanted posters, they

found that much of the job had already been done, apparently by the man who claims to be responsible for sticking up many of them. He has promised that he will no longer deface public amenities and will use only the bollards in future.

Other poster-pasters should follow his example. Posters are an inefficient way of reaching a’ potential audience. They are more like graffiti than advertisements, designed more to .assert a person’s presence than to convey information. All the same, even a little improvement is better than nothing. Perhaps a few more poster bollards at strategic points round the city might encourage tidier habits.