Will Penis Road Painting Campaign Encourage Authorities To Fix Potholes?
From the archive: published Apr 29, 2015, 11 years ago. Details may have changed since.
When it comes to driving around the roads of Bury in the UK, there is nothing more frustrating for drivers, particularly those with new cars, than unsightly potholes, which often cause damage to tires.
As such, an activist and self-styled artist has taken to the roads of Bury spray can in hand and has drawn pictures of penises around the offending potholes in the hope that Bury Council will do something to fix them.
The anonymous artist said to reporters about his campaign, “They [potholes] don’t get filled. They’ll be there for months. People will drive over the same pothole and forget about it. Suddenly you draw something amusing around it, everyone sees it and it either gets reported or fixed.”
To his mind, the offensive drawings have had some real results, although Bury Council says that they already have a proper plan in place to rectify the holes as part of their road maintenance responsibilities.
A spokesman for Bury Council said the “artist” should stop spray painting the penises, “The actions of this individual are not only stupid but incredibly insulting to local residents. Has this person, for just one second, considered how families with young children must feel when they are confronted with these obscene symbols as they walk to school?”
The spokesperson continued, in no uncertain terms, “The naked body is a thing artists have painted for years. There are sculptures that don’t wear clothes. It’s artistic expressions. To be offended by that, you must be very prudish. People are entitled to express their grievances to the council, but offending the public and wasting their council tax is not the way to resolve the situation.”
As far as Bury Council is concerned, “We understand and accept that residents are unhappy with the number of potholes in the borough, and we have a programme of scheduled works to fix them. We have also invested substantially in new machinery which is enabling us to carry out repairs more rapidly. Painting obscenities around potholes will not get them repaired any quicker, but simply waste valuable time and resources.”
