It is strange that Americans often view Britain as a place of stuffy old reactionary conservatives and the British often view the Americans as a more-modern society. The truth is that American politics are much more conservative (I am not implying any value-judgements in making this comment).

I think much of the UK is over-developed and am now rather pleased when I hear that UK econcomic growth is slowing. They need to pause and think and work out ways of (1) improving the quality of the urban environment (2) letting the rural environment change without being wrecked. In fact I rather envy Japan and East Germany for their declining populations. You can put it down to old age if you wish but I have a youthfull zest for keeping on the grass and cycling through parks, pedestrian areas, one way streets in the wrong direction etc etc. My hope is to follow in the tyre-prints of this young man’s cycle tour of Scotland http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj6ho1-G6tw
With regard to the general state of UK landscape architecture, Sir Colin Stansfield Smith is quoted in the Summer 2011 issue of Landscape that the day of the architect was over and that the day of the landscape architect is today. He is wrong, of course, but the scope of landscape architecture continues to widen.

Lawrence, I am sorry to hear about the inevitability of shouting and wonder if I have been wrong in not shouting at students: perhaps it leaves them un-prepared for professional experience.
Christine, I 100% agree that signs should explain risks but wonder if the courts would agree. I can imagine a barrister arguing, after someone had been injured, that ‘if you knew of the risks involved, why didn’t you put up a sign stating that entering the water was forbidden’. And with regard to the hateful reference to Parks Police, if the sign merely said ‘Do not enter the water’ , could they argue that this information without effective enforcement constituted negligence by the park managers?

So perhaps it might be more efficient to specify the danger to people’s safety on the sign [ http://www.health.qld.gov.au/goodhealthintnq/topics/jellyfish.asp ] and the consequences for ignoring it [ http://www.care2.com/c2c/photos/view/51/599329650/Sharks/coaster4.jpg.html ] if you can’t design out access to the water.

I think that if I was having discreet sex in a public place I would be very irritated to have someone taking photographs of me. I would always let my partner do the shouting in this circumstance, women are very much better at the kind of low abuse that both wounds and humiliates the male recipient, while making everyone else laugh out loud.