Last week, we compared a bone-headed display of incompetence by the German government with a perverse form of harassment by a local government in the United States.
We have another America-v-Europe contest, but the roles are reversed. This time, the buffoons in Washington get dinged for a spectacular screw-up, and it is a local government in England that earns ridicule for a brainless decision.
Let’s start in America, where a Virginia newspaper has the gory details, including this excerpt.
They are the two ships no one wanted, almost constantly embroiled in one dispute or another for the past 25 years. The two Navy behemoths have never gone on a mission, were never even completed, yet they cost taxpayers at least $300 million. Now the vessels, the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford, are destined to leave Virginia waters for good and be scrapped at a Texas salvage yard, with no money coming back to the U.S. Treasury.
Isn’t that wonderful. A $600 million disbursement of tax dollars, getting absolutely nothing in exchange. Though I suppose that’s better than some other federal expenditures that have negative rates-of-return.
Now let’s turn to the United Kingdom, where a local government put a keep-off-the-grass sign on a plot of grass so small that it would be a challenge for two people to stand in it. Here are the key passages from a Daily Mail story.
It’s a patch of scruffy grass barely big enough to sit down on – but that hasn’t stopped one town hall making a great deal of fuss
about it. The verge measures only 3ft by 2ft but has its own ‘Keep Off The Grass’ sign. The warning has appeared as officials plan £70million of cuts. Resident Tom Beardmore, 29, said he was ‘flabbergasted’ when he saw it in Raynes Park, south-west London. …A council spokeswoman said the matter was being looked into but was unable to confirm how much the sign had cost or why it was placed there.
Maybe I’m just being jingoistic, but I think the Brits win this contest. Yes, the American government flushed a lot more money down the toilet, but there is something truly breathtaking about what happened in London.
International Liberty 
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http://www.flyfishing.co.uk/general-fly-fishing-discussion/107903-please-do-not-throw-stones-sign-thank-you.html
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Hi there i am kavin, its my first occasion to commenting anyplace, when i read this post i thought i could also create comment due to this sensible piece of writing.
[…] bizarre examples I cited was from England. It showed how a local government decided to install the most pointless sign in the history of the […]
I wonder if anyone ever thought some joker just put the sign there that he swiped from some other place?
[…] The most useless sign in the history of the world. […]
Actually the sign was put their to notify the dogs where the toilet is.
The grass patch is bigger than my yard.
well … at least the grass patch is bigger than the sign …
[…] The most useless sign in the history of the world. […]
I see no incompetence in the situation with the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford. They were constructed as single hulled oilers which became illegal with the Exxon Valdez. We as a nation made that decision and scrapping ships such as the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford are part of the price of that decision.
http://www.adn.com/evos/stories/T99032456.html
[…] The most pointless sign in the history of the world. […]
You can’t correct stupid. These examples show how far ideousy can go when it reproduces. The dumb are getting dumber and apparently the insane are running the asylum. We can’t survive the invasions of the jackass fools from la la land!
But the trash is OK ….
[…] The most useless sign in the history of the world. […]
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[…] 30% off on vaccine projections. Have you heard of the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford naval vessels? Some $600 million wasted. Most would agree the government was slow to react to the BP spill, […]
[…] was 30% off on vaccine projections. Have you heard of the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford naval vessels? Some $600 million was […]
[…] was 30% off on vaccine projections. Have you heard of the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford naval vessels? Some $600 million was […]
[…] was 30% off on vaccine projections. Have you heard of the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford naval vessels? Some $600 million was […]
Brilliant work! The whole political correctness rubbish has poisoned society. “Multi-culturalism” has utterly failed and will continue do so because it cannot be imposed by legislation from talking heads more concerned with their poll results than reality.
Get rid of the lot.
Actually, the most stupid sign I ever saw was during a visit to Texas around 25 years ago. Periodically I would spy a sign along Lone Star freeways, “Texas Roadsigns are Meant to Be Obeyed. Texas State Law.”
If they weren’t, then why did they put them up?
How are you to respond to merely directional signs like “Dallas Next Right.”?
[…] Since then, we have found new examples of brain-dead government and jaw-dropping political correctness from England, including an effort to stop children from watching Olympic shooting events and (what must be) the most pointless sign in the history of the world. […]
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@Quentin
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As a Brit, I agree with Daniel. To give the Americans the benefit of the doubt, let’s assume they thought that some benefit would derive from their decisions at the time they made them. The British decision in this instance must have been obviously stupid at all stages. There is an apocryphal story of a council in the North of England which once put up a sign saying “please do not throw stones as this sign”.
To be fair, I assume there is waste in any industry, and that naval engineering is no exception. We’re all familiar with economic decisions where going back is smarter than going forward. Considering the time-scale these kinds of projects operate on, I’m surprised to hear this kind of thing is considered especially unusual actually.
After having read that article I’m still not clear on the details, and I’m not saying that there isn’t cause for criticism, (sounds very likely), but I wouldn’t want to wind up knee-jerk thinking like a Leftist hippie douchebag who stands at the back of a factory and complains about the waste coming out the drain pipe, (as if any practical production process can, or should, result in zero waste). On a side note, they also tend to fail to notice that the total waste is less at the back end of the factory than it would be if everyone were doing the same thing individually over a wider area – but there’s no concentration of goop to point at like a sanctimonious jackass. Reminds me of how some clowns thought having some kind of foundry in every backyard was a great idea.
Okay, that kind of waste is a little different, but it’s the same mentality. You can’t make an omelette … And I’m sure those same Pinkos would complain about food going to waste in the West when there are starving kids in Africa, blah, blah … or want a planned economy because the creative destruction inherent in a Free Market can be pointed at, and the whole system characterised as “inefficient”.
Sure you don’t want ANY waste in an ideal world – just for economic reasons. But in that context, cutting a few hundred million loss on projects of that scale sounds as if it could well be one perfectly valid economic option on the table of whomever is making the decision. Didn’t Governor Christie recently get applauded for shutting down some project or other in NJ? How much money had they already spent on that?
I’m just pointing out that standing there saying, “We got nothing for our money!” would be a mischaracterisation of what’s actually going on. I’d certainly like to hear more details about how this actually happened, and who is to blame rather than just have you point and say, “Look the bureaucrats flushed a bazillion dollars!”