[Bell Historians] Comical Reporting

[Robert Lewis]

At 18:23 15/02/2007, Alan Birney wrote:
>            And I can think of several cases in addition to the one
>you've mentioned we have been to where "The Son of a Preacher man"
>is proud of the (bad) work and had even mentioned
>these "restorations" (and I use the word loosly) in the Comic!

I suppose it is inevitable that when stories about 'restorations' are 
written-up for public consumption they tend to be "all sweetness and light".

That may be because the people writing them have no interest in drawing 
attention to failures in projects that they may have had a big hand in 
managing on behalf of a parish (and its dedicated fund raisers).

We rarely hear (in print) about the projects that have been plagued with 
problems or, indeed, the projects where a really unsatisfactory job by one 
bell contractor has had to be "put right" a short time later by another.

That is a shame for all sorts of reasons - not least because it makes it 
difficult to form a reasonably balanced and objective view of the general 
(and relative) quality of work being carried out by various sectors of the 
trade. It probably means that valuable information about commonly occurring 
problems is not shared to everyone's benefit.

No doubt if problems were more freely reported and discussed then that 
would help to keep a lot of people in the trade 'on their toes'. Maybe we 
would all be a little bit wiser into the bargain!

RAL