Spruce up for Stan

As one of the councillors for Town ward I decided that we need to give the street furniture a bit of a spuce up as a lot of it is in a very delapidated state. I walked around looking at the Lamposts and general highway signage and found very few that you could say looked in good condition. I brought this to the council, with lots of photos, last week. The whole of the Council agreed that we are in need of somebody with a pot of paint and a brush to smarten up the centre of town. The lamposts are owned by something called the highways agency, and in a reply to my request to refurbish the posts I recieved a reply. They said there was no money in their budget for this kind of work. So it looks like we're stuck with scruffy street furniture. And here's the rub; even if Ulverston town council had any money to carry out this work we wouldn't be able to as we don't own them. So how are we to get round this impasse?

I suppose the only way is to kick up a big fuss. We can't allow this rediculous situation to continue where we, as a council, can't get our lamposts painted because they don't "belong to us". We, that is the council, must be able to take charge of painting its own street furniture, otherwise what's the point of the town council. That's what the electors will think and I think they would have a point.
We need a "spruce up for Stan" campaign, and not be fobbed off by some faceless hack in the highway agency. Spruce up for Stan, YES WE CAN.