David Burrowes and his floating dog hit the headlines

Enfield Conservatives were no doubt hoping that a press release that they sent to the Enfield Independent would help them in their bid to recapture control of Enfield Council in Thursday's elections.  But I doubt whether they were expecting the amount of publicity that the paper's report and accompanying photograph would bring them - two further reports on the local paper's website, one in the Evening Standard and headlines on the national news website Huffington Post.  Not to mention several threads on Twitter.

A bit of explanation for those who've missed this story:  The picture sent to the paper had been "photoshopped".  David Burrowes and his dog had been inserted into a picture of a crowd of people protesting about a dangerous junction in the Meadway Estate.  It seems he'd turned up late and had missed the photo opportunity, so before the image was sent to the paper his omission was rectified.  The probability of anyone spotting this was presumably assessed as being low.  However, one of the people who'd actually been there did spot it and complained because he didn't want to appear in the same photograph as David Burrowes.

To cut a long story short, what had happened was picked up by Twitter users and spread.  There was great amusement at the fact that the dog appeared to be levitating, with all four paws off the ground.  What's more, the dog's stance bore some resemblance to that of a widely published photograph of the new home secretary.  And various spoofs of the photoshopped photo started appearing on Twitter, such as the one below.

One of several images posted to Twitter featuring David Burrowes and his dog

Judged by the standards of recent very serious occurrences of Fake News, was the fuss about the insertion of David and his dog into the photo nothing more serious that a "storm in a dog bowl"?  Should there be "zero tolerance" of any sort of manipulation of facts,  however petty?  Not sure, personally.  However, if it has distracted attention away from the important issues about the future of Enfield, then that's not good.

And what about the subject of the original press release?  The protest was about the failure of Enfield Council to do anything about the extremely wide junction of Meadway and Greenway.  This is a junction that I know well, as it's on my (relatively) low-traffic walking route from PG to Southgate.  Pedestrians have to cross an absolutely huge expanse of tarmac roadway, hoping that a car isn't going to suddenly appear and mow them down at high speed. Changes to this junction surely ought to have been included in the Fox Lane Quieter Neighbourhood scheme, but weren't even in the original consultation.  Why not?

This image from Google Maps shows the huge expanse of roadway that pedestrians have to cross

Though I'm a firm supporter of the Quieter Neighbourhoods concept, I'm frankly dismayed at the haphazard way that the proposals have been developed.  Why no measures to stop the dreadful rat-running along Connaught Gardens and Oakthorpe Road, same question applies to Tottenhall Road and Wolves Lane?  All those roads are in Quieter Neighbourhood schemes but have been ignored.

The original version of this article was a spoof and has been replaced as some readers found it offensive.