(Ralphie Milne played for Manchester United and is widely seen as having been Ferguson’s worst signing ever).

These have now been added to by a crop of “Viva Ken Barlow!” stickers and across Paris (I was there recently) it’s “Dolphin’s rape perople”. Stickers seem to be the new Facebook.

Or something.

I’d ride it once just to put it up, sniffing from all the purists notwithstanding.

When the Greater London Authority was created by the Blair Government (with its directly elected Mayor, first Ken Livingstone and subsequently Boris Johnson), a new body called “Transport for London” was created under the powers of the new London government to run transport in the city. The previous body was actually London Regional Transport (LRT), which was run directly by the national government, and had been since 1984, when Mrs Thatcher took responsibility for transport away from the Greater London Council . There was never actually an organisation called “London Transport”, but the London Transport brand was used by LRT and a whole series of predecessor organisations since 1933. There was no reason whatsoever why TfL could not continue using the “London Transport” brand, other than that Ken Livingstone felt the need to be pretentious. The Mayor of London and the greater London government didn’t (and doesn’t) actually have much power over anything, so it is reduced to being pretentious in lieu of actually doing things.

Sure. But some people don’t have much of a sense of humour. And they’re entitled to enjoy their property and their liberty nonetheless. By all means poke fun at anyone you like, but leave their stuff, and their persons, alone.

And even people who do have a sense of humour will find that it fails them when someone else’s joke puts them to trouble and inconvenience.

RobF : “In the case of London Underground, unravelling any sensible notion of property just seems too difficult and uninteresting a problem.”

No. Unravelling a sensible notion of property is easy. The property belongs to Transport for London. Government property is still property and there are very good reasons for treating government property with the same respect as private property – society does not benefit from the theft and vandlisation of government property. Certainly it’s harder to see whose (ie which humans’) moral rights are being abused, to any significant extent, in the case of theft or vandalisation of government property, but from a practical point of view, a relaxed view about government property leads directly to the tragedy of the commons.

Rob F : “It is really the nagging signs that need fun poked at them”

Poke away. With your stuff.

It is really the nagging signs that need fun poked at them. I’d like to see more of that, specifically. The other day at a train station I heard an computer voice announcement explaining that people should be careful because trains might go past.

Laird — I can’t even tell if the photographer made the signs or someone else. Perhaps we will never know.

Ted, there was a fad in the Blair era for making everything “for”: Transport for London, the Department for Education, etc. I’m convinced this was primarily so they could use a lower case “f” in the initialisations to make them look all foreign and continental because that’s, like, totally cool.