This week we hear that Birmingham City Council has made a policy decision to spend their taxpayers' money on going round painting out the apostrophes on the road signs for such places as Acock's Green and King's Heath. In future no road signs will be allowed an apostrophe. At a stroke the Council has decided that it knows better than the rest of the country how the King's English is to be spelt (Kings English!).
The official reason for this stupidity and monstrous arrogance is, apparently, that the Acock family no longer own the green and the king no longer owns the heath. So what? You can't just change the national language because ownership changes. It is part of the area's heritage that the king once owned the heath and the Acock family once owned the green. Are they suggesting that any road names that don't reflect current reality should be changed? I can think of many examples of a "Cambridge Road" which doesn't lead to Cambridge or a "High Street" which is no longer the main street in a town.
I suspect the real reason for this decision was that the councillors thought so little of the intellectual capabilities of their residents that they assumed most of them wouldn't know what an apostrophe was. How arrogant can you get?
Many local government staff, myself included, have been on quality assurance courses to try and improve the quality of local government and the services it offers to its residents. One of the definitions that sticks in my mind is that "Quality assurance is about getting it right first time" rather than trying to correct mistakes once they are made. A council that deliberately formulates a policy to ensure that they get it wrong first time and flatly refuse to correct it thereafter is completely outside the fraternity of other councils who are doing their best to improve things. I can only pity the residents of Birmingham if this is the quality of councillors they elect.
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