It’s a bale of straw dangling from London’s Millennium Bridge, part of an ancient tradition to warn river traffic that repair work is going on. The 900-year-old City Bridge Foundation, the charity responsible for looking after London’s river crossings, explained on X (formerly Twitter) that the longstanding practice was demanded by Port of London Thames Byelaws, adding, “we’re not making this up, honest”. And they’re not. Clause 36.2 requires that during maintenance work, the person responsible must suspend “by day a bundle of straw large enough to be conspicuous and by night a white light”
Quote from Wiki…
The term is now used for gas discharge lamps, which produce light by an arc between metal electrodes through a gas in a glass bulb. The common fluorescent lamp is a low-pressure mercury arc lamp.[3] The xenon arc lamp, which produces a high intensity white light, is now used in many of the applications which formerly used the carbon arc, such as movie projectors and searchlights.
You’d think they could change that. Straw falling under the bridge seems unnecessarily messy. I bet someone will claim it’s a biohazard to get that law changed.
