Friday, January 22, 2010

Council of Perfection

I don't for one instant suggest that the following are representative of what happens in Glasgow City Council, but then again, you never know.
The first tale is quite mundane in its application.
A plumber, working for the Direct Labour organisation within GCC, whenever he went home at night simply took 4 cans of paint out with him.
And stored them in his back bedroom on the third floor of a tenement flat he lived in.
This went on for quite a long time.
Until one night, he was sitting watching the TV when he heard the most almighty roar and the whole building shook as if it had been hit by an earthquake.
Getting up to investigate ( the noise was from the back of the house) he open the door to the back bedroom to discover there was no longer a bedroom.
Nor a back wall.
The weight of the paint had finally broken the joists all the way down, which had simply collapsed the back of the flats.
The second tale is far more complex.
GCC over the years has done several upgrades to its housing stock.This consists of people in a block moving out and a complete upgrade, including eg turning 3 flats into 2 giving both internal bathrooms.
So when the workmen came to start work on a particular premises they were told that there had been a gents toilet behind a certain wall, that had been blocked up many years previously after a fire.
Now it was to be knocked through to provide a fire escape, and work duly started. A hole was made and the navvy stuck his head through to see if there were any problems.
He drew back slowly.
" Er, I'm into a kitchen."
What had happened was that when the next door building was being done up, the old toilet had been Incorporated ( there was a wall after all) and that one flat had a super big kitchen which none of the others in the block had.
Needless to say, it was one of the flats that had been sold off by the Council.
I'm told it cost them more than £250,000 to sort out the problems they had created for themselves...

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