Have you heard the GOOD NEWS about Haringey branding?

Since I am sure that Mr. Stanton would be supremely indifferent to a call for God to bless him, I don’t suppose I would be going against my principles to issue such a plea, because he has bequeathed to me nearly half an hour of good solid fun in his request to Haringey for details of the ‘rebranding’ which was recommended last October.  

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/haringey_new_logo_rebranding...

As you will see, these were furnished to him by the "feedback review officer", an employment category which in itself conjurs up images of what you might be forced to appraise on the pavement outside a kebab joint on a Saturday night.  

Anyway, I scraped through the bigger bits and discovered that Haringey is not only "edgy" but it is not in fact a place.  According to the Brand Guidelines is is an Attitude.  So, not a borough, then.  We are the Attitude of Haringey.  According to the Collins Dictionary, an attitude is at best a physical orientation and at worst a hostile manner.  Judging by the colour of the letterheads and signage it is also permanently in a red mist.  From ID cards to care homes, all is red—including the cards that Councillors have to hand to their parishoners.  Even the LibDems have to hand out red cards to people, so whatever it is and whoever hands it to you: STOP THAT AT ONCE!

Apart from the graphics, there are also instructions about language.  Employees of the Attitude of Haringey are urged to “create energy with short sentences” rather than being “staid, stuffy or formal” (note the use of three words meaning the same thing, right after the request for brevity) and to write as if talking to a good friend.  Oh us cuddly folk at Haringey Attitude.  We are just so ….LOVABLE.

But the best is probably in the letter heads.  

There are two versions for use with the residents, customers  …um… Good Friends.   The letterheads come in  “good news” and “bad news”.  Surprisingly, someone has realised that the bouncing buffoonery that now spells out the name of our borough in a font which looks as if a serial killer has scrawled it on the wall in blood, might not be the best thing to put on the top of a letter telling your dying grannie that she is about to be locked out of her flat by Haringey Social Services.  I am impressed by their sensitivity.  Good news letters, btw, have the bouncing bloodstain at the top of the page, while the bad news ones have “Haringey" in black and at the bottom of the page, so as not to associate our edgy Attitude of Haringey with anything negative.

Since the Attitude now has double designs of stationery, instead of just the one, this means double the number of trees turned into pulp to communicate council wafflings.  Oh, and all of us Council Tax payers have double the expense, of course,  Which theme should they use to give us *that* information?

That, by the way is not the end of it because there is special stationery for use only within the Council—good news, bad news and something called a “partner” letterhead which has its own category.  All of these add to the different stacks of stationery to be printed and wasted but by this time I have lost count of the multiples.  You’ll have to work out the trees for yourselves.  

Sod the trees, though.  It’s the council workers I feel sorry for.  Can you imagine the nervous stress of trying to decide in which category they should form their communications?  Can you imagine the discussions over every letter to determine whether it qualifies as good news or bad news?

Even with committee discussions about the right stationery dragging on into the small hours, there will still be problems because any fool knows that good and bad news is often a matter of opinion.  The continued printing of "Haringey People", for instance: good or bad?  A ten-day rock festival in Finsbury Park: good (wow! free music for over a week!) or bad: (how the hell do I get the kids to sleep)?  Permission for your neighbours to build a huge and looming loft extension: bad (there goes the light) or good (great! that means I’ll get permission for my basement swimming pool)?  

Perhaps some sort of mnemonic would be useful.  As they (almost) recite in Full Metal Jacket — “this is for sober-speak and this is for farces, this is for Kober’s clique and — “ ….oh shucks, I can’t think of a rhyme for the rest of it.