Henry would have been proud

THERE'S a story that Henry Ford once said: "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." It was a bit like that a few months back when the council's general manager told assembled councillors they had three colour choices for the repainting of the bollards and fence panels in High St.

The faded blue railings are certainly long-overdue for a tidy-up but the colour choices were fairly uninspiring (some might say restrictive). I'm sure these aren't the official names but they can be safely described as shiny black, dull black and mottled black.

As is so often the case, most of your councillors had little to say about this although several thought black was a better choice than the original blue. I'm not so sure about that, especially given the amount of damage that has occurred in the form of scrapes, bumps and occasional knockdowns by cars since the fixtures were installed in 2002. Black would seem to be potentially worse from a visibility point of view, particularly at night.

The work is now under way and it has been announced via a media release that the chosen colour is called Hammertone Black.