Monday 19 December 2005

The hat blogger

Last week I saw a man in Shandwick Place who was wearing a bowler hat. My late father used to wear one at the time when I was discovering Swinging London. How time flies. Anyway, now it seems that hats are a threat:
Shoppers in Paisley have been banned from entering some retail outlets wearing hoods and baseball caps.
And it's not just in Paisley:
Baseball caps have been banned from a chain of internet cafes in two Scottish cities, it has emerged.

Easyinternetcafes - owned by Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of low cost airline Easyjet - claims the headgear is linked with "deviant" behaviour.

The ban on wearing caps is to be piloted at the chain's branches in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Why just Edinburgh and Glasgow - at least to begin with? The customers in the Manchester Easyinternetcafe looked pretty scary when I was last there, but that may have been because the Championship Final was being played at Old Trafford the next evening.

Although I fully support the right of property owners to set the rules for entering their shops I am rather tempted to go to Paisley wearing this snazzy little number:



Originally uploaded by David Farrer.

Or I could even try "blogging while hatted" at the Easyinternetcafe in Rose Street just like I did before I had broadband installed in the West Wing of the Bloghouse.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comment made on previous template:

Andrew Duffin
Robert, umbrellas will be banned too - apart from the transparent sort. 
 
Go read this  
 
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/article334686.ece 
 
and then tell me I'm worrying about nothing.

22 December 2005, 12:54:58 GMT
– Like – Reply





Robert Speirs
I often wear a hat as an alternative to carrying an umbrella. Would the cameras be able to identify me more easily if I were prohibited from wearing a hat and hid my entire head under an umbrella?

21 December 2005, 19:57:16 GMT
– Like – Reply





Andrew Ian Dodge
But wearing a hat in the cold is healthy. Especially if you are bald. I will leave if someone makes me talk my hat off (course you probably should when you go inside somewhere).

21 December 2005, 12:35:45 GMT
– Like – Reply





Andrew Duffin
I'm guessing that hats make you unidentifiable to the ubiquitous (and iniquitous) snooping cctv cameras. Hence the ban, starting as usual with people whom nobody will defend.  
 
The trilby-wearing commenter will probably find the same rule applied to him before long.

21 December 2005, 12:25:15 GMT
– Like – Reply





Young Fogey
Oddly, I rarely find this is a problem as a trilby-wearer.

21 December 2005, 12:13:39 GMT
– Like – Reply





alan
Yes I have seen a few signs already appearing, for example WH smith etc, it is likely to spread to others places as well

20 December 2005, 02:27:18 GMT