Another sad chapter in the Nanny State

By Gareth Parker | View Archive October 23rd, 2009, 10:39 am

British public intellectual Charles Landry could not have been more correct in 2007 when he identified Perth as "the city that says no".

To the list that reads no shopping after 6pm, no shopping on a Sunday, no daylight savings, no pubs open after 10pm on a Sunday, no innovative new architecture, no mid-rise buildings near the beach, no new football stadium and countless other examples, you can now add "No jumping off the Cottesloe pylon".
Renovations of the iconic structure, beloved by generations of beachgoers, were finished today after $122,000 of Federal taxes and a $50,000 Lotterywest grant were tipped into the project.
Yet we find out today that the concrete pylon, originally constructed as part of a failed shark-proof fence, has been deliberately angled and covered with a slippery surface so that swimmers will not be able to climb it.

I guess in ten years’ time we’ll be able to tell our kids “Back in my day, we used to climb that bell and jump off it.” One benefit? We won’t have to witness guys in the nuddy climbing it in the moonlight.