Unlit route through gardens is no joke

To adapt a well-worn joke: How long does it take a fix a light? Two months is the unfunny answer if you live in or use the Dane John Gardens in Canterbury. The lights there have not been working for more than a month – with a 25-day wait until the repairmen arrive. This might not seem the greatest issue facing Canterbury in a week when the Mountfield Park development in south Canterbury is determined.

But it comes against a backdrop of serious offending in the Dane John Gardens – most recently the attempted rape of a student.

Darkness provides cover for miscreants, but even putting whatever they may get up to to one side, we cannot overlook the fact that the gardens are effectively a residential street. Many people of many ages know this as their home.

For it to be unlit – especially in the darkest period of the year – is hugely unfair.

More to the point, we’re not talking about some cul-de-sac on a housing estate. This is Canterbury’s showpiece garden, open 24 hours a day, and used by people going to the city centre, to Wincheap, to the east station and elsewhere besides.

The delay in repairing the lights rankles even more when we learn that Canterbury City Council has responsibility for them, but only so far as to instruct Kent County Council to do the work.

With that in mind, here’s a joke: How many councils does it take to fix a light?

Two. One to repair it and one to be told by the other to repair it. That’s not funny either.

‘How many councils does it take to fix a light? Two. And that’s not funny’