I like my local council. Hounslow always seems more down to earth and less petty than Hammersmith and Fulham. Less Londony, less extortive. They still are irksome, nevertheless, in the ways councils always are.

Like when you spend ages queuing to pay for a permit or something and they only have one of four windows open. I don’t really mind too much, at least not as much as the little old lady in front of me who was tutting like a typewriter.

However, if they cannot afford to pay the wages of enough people to man more than one kiosk, it is nice to see they had the resources to install funky new dot matrix signs above each window. Obviously someone envisaged a situation where the numbers ’1,2,3,4′ simply would not be adequate. Perhaps a council worker might be superstitious about the number 3? No sweat, the council can just change it to an 8.
THAT is foresight.

It is also good to see that, while they were at it, they stuck in another, bigger sign. It says ‘hello’ and conveys the human touch.