[Philip Hanson]

I have lodged the following complaint with The Bristol Evening Post (part of the Western Daily Press Group) regarding an article it printed on the 8th of December.  Unfortunately, this article is probably not limited to Bristol, and you may see it in your own local newspaper soon enough.

I would urge anyone else who is similarly annoyed by this article to also complain about it.  PM me and I'll provide you with the email and postal address to write to.

Dear Bristol Evening Post,

I write to complain about an article which you published on
the 8th of December in the "Devil's Advocate" column,
discussing the establishment of a training facility for the
window cleaning industry known as The British Window
Cleaning Academy.  (The text of the article is quoted
below, along with a hyperlink to the webpage)

Firstly, the sentiment that only stupid people become window
cleaners is not only untrue, but totally indefensible.

Secondly, training for the window cleaning industry is not,
as was suggested, unnecessary.  Approximately 10 window
cleaners die every year in the UK, and the only way to
combat this poor safety record is by means of appropriate
training.  This is now provided by the BWCA primarily in
response to calls from the HSE for a recognized standard of
training, but also as a result of phenomenal demand from the
window cleaning industry.

The British Window Cleaning Academy Ltd, far from being as
was suggested "just a sinister front for teaching criminals
the latest house-breaking techniques" is well respected in
the window cleaning industy. A registered City &
Guilds NVQ Centre, the BWCA has recently established a new
training facility in Wiltshire.  The courses it offers
cover working-at-height safety, fall-arrest equipment, the
use of powered-access plant, compliance with regulations,
rope-access techniques, water-fed poles, maintenence of
water-purification plant, the control of legionella and
many other subjects besides which are greatly relevant to
the window cleaning industry, and in many cases could
potentially save lives.  I have personally attended several
of the BWCA's courses and found the standard of training to
be excellent.

I would argue that the portrayal of the window cleaning
industry in your article, and in particular the vicious
attack on the BWCA was irresponsible, unjustified,
factually inaccurate and commercially damaging.  I would
suggest that the author of the article take the time to
attend some of the BWCA's courses before expressing an
opinion on these.

I know that the company behind the BWCA has gone to
considerable effort, not to mention expense, to establish
the Academy as a credible source of training for the window
cleaning industry, and I am both dismayed and puzzled as to
why its efforts should be attacked in this manner.  I have
informed the BWCA of this matter, and I will be reporting
on the results.

I am also shocked by the question raised in the article :
"And anyway, what are window cleaners apart from off-duty
burglars?"

I would like to know how such a sentiment can possibly be
justified.

Philip Hanson
Editor
Professional Window Cleaner Magazine
www.professionalwindowcleaner.co.uk

Link to original article page:HERE

Devil's Advocate 8th December 2004, Bristol Evening Post :

"I know it's hard to believe, but there are some kids so
stupid that they can't even get a place at one of Mr Blah's
special thicko universities. These youths go off to be
window cleaners.

But even there, with only a bucket of water, a ladder and a
chamois leather to co-ordinate, they're not safe from the
degree-dispensing NuLabour social engineers.

I am indebted to a reader of this column for sending me the
following advert for … wait for it … the British Window
Cleaning Academy where, for a small fee of £95, aspiring
chamois-wielders can take a one-day intensive course
resulting in the award of a Level 2 NVQ in Window Cleaning.
No, really.

"Learn to squeegee like a pro", they urge, promising
detailed instruction in "Waterfed Pole Use and Basic Health
and Safety".

Now call me elitist, but how thick do you have to be to need
an intensive course in window cleaning? "Dip rag in bucket,
rub window, do not fall off ladder" seems to be about it.

And anyway, what are window cleaners apart from off-duty
burglars? The whole thing is probably just a sinister front
for teaching criminals the latest house-breaking techniques.
I think Officer Dibble should take a look."

==========================================

[replacement]

Things like this dont help for Wc's Image.



Justin

[Duke]

Disturbing, that. I feel quite insulted...I've never been a burglar and I went to University, got a few bits of paper from there...I just like cleaning windows, because I set my own hours and income, I'm out getting excersise and fresh air...AND I meet lot's of interesting people....what a nerve !

[Craig_Mawlam]

The article in Bristol Evening News is an insult to all professional Window Cleaners as well as those who support the industry. As an important business sector we must join to combat the stereotype image portrayed in the press, who seem to have declared open season on Window Cleaners. I will be writing a formal letter of complaint from the BWCA and will urge the Federation to do likewise on behalf of its members who have declared their status as a condition of membership.

Likewise I urge all professional Window Cleaners who feel degraded by this article to take the time to send a letter of complaint to the editor.

Taking no action at all simply confirms the articles view that we are all thicko's and housebreakers!

In disgust...
Craig Mawlam
BWCA C&G NVQ Centre

[gaza]

WHY DONT WE WRITE TO THE"CRIME REDUCTION OFFICER INVOLVED"
crime reduction my ,,,, Ive spent nearly£10,000 on my tools of my trade,bet hes running around in a car weve paid for to do his job...

[EDITED : I understand this is an emotive subject, but lets not veer off the topic.  We certainly don't want to begin to slag off the police.  As Craig says, the way to respond to this article is to complain to the editor, lets do just that! - Philip Hanson]

[matt]

its outragous

part time burglars indeed

im not part time, im full time, today i just climbed through a window and took a 32" widescreen TV, DVD player and surround sound kit

the best part of it is, i cleaned the windows, and will be calling in thursday evening to collect my 11 quid

11 quid and a TV system, what more can i ask

---- for the record, the above was a JOKE, i will only get paid 10 quid ----

NB. the above was alos a joke, i am a professional window cleaner and DO NOT steal TV's, especially the BUSH TV they had 

[Old_Master]

The Article is Satire another name for a joke!

A Chill wind blows through the trophy-lined corridors of Beelzebub Mansions, due mainly to the fact that we are entering December without a roof over our heads. Have I mentioned that we've had the builders in of late?

It has long been the ambition of the Beelzebub dynasty to rebuild the transept of the East Wing, so cruelly destroyed by a rabble of Roundheads in 1643 after Colonel Bartholomew Beelzebub unwisely offered their wenches a job at his prototype lap-dancing establishment.

And now, thanks to an extremely profitable booze cruise excursion and the soaraway success of my man Whittaker's EasyCat business (release stray cats with 0898 numbers on their tags and then wait for old ladies to phone up), we have finally amassed sufficient funds to fulfil this family obligation.

It also helped that Mrs Beelzebub required a new Shoe Room, her own shrine to Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik, after running out of space in the old one. I was happy enough with this proposal and planned to install a bar, a juke box, a 42-inch plasma TV and a full-size snooker table in the space that formerly housed her collection. And maybe a five-a-side pitch as well.

I wrote a couple of weeks back about how difficult it is to find qualified tradesmen in the building game now that Mr Blah has encouraged every thick kid to demand their own place at university.

(Where, instead of learning a valuable trade, they spend three years picking their noses and watching Countdown and then drop out just before their exams.) Let me tell you, the real difficulty starts once the so-called tradesmen have been located. In recent weeks the East Wing has had nincompoops of varying degrees of stupidity swarming all over it, each one claiming to know what they were doing while singularly failing to achieve anything of note. It has not been a happy experience for anyone concerned.

Mrs B, who was overseeing the extension of the kitchens with a hawk-like eye and a ruthless spirit level, had ordered in sufficient limestone and granite to build a replica of Fred Flintstone's quarry.

(We will not mention the gold-plated Aga that arrived on a crane. Well, I presume that it's gold-plated, having just written a tear-inducing cheque.) She, quite reasonably, expected the floors and worktops to be installed to a reasonable standard. Reasonable standard does not, in her book, mean cracked, scratched and generally buggered up.

Similarly the carpets for the hallway and spiral tower. Woven from wool plucked by hand from specially-reared Merino sheep, these do not come cheap. It would have been marginally less expensive to have made a carpet out of used fivers. It would surely have been reasonable then to have them fitted so that they were adjacent to the skirting board in places. And that the fitter might remove his muddy boots before commencing his task.

Never, in the history of human conflict, have I come across so much indolence, idiocy and idleness. And if dumb insolence was a civil offence, a certain Welsh plumber would now be doing seven years with no parole.

Deciding to meet fire with more fire, Mrs B has taken to addressing the mumbling, drooling assembly each morning in stentorian tones, threatening dire consequences should another spanner come into contact with a piece of Spode or welding torch set fire to a Whistler. Not since the Blessed Dame Margaret's time have the working classes been so abused.

It has had an effect. One by one, they've all cleared off - probably to go to university to watch Countdown for three years. Consequently, we have no roof and the transept of the East Wing looks rather worse than it did when the Roundheads had finished. It's going to be a long, hard winter.

IT'S NOT as if I could even attempt to finish some of the work myself. In another Nanny State missive, we are informed that from January 1, any electrical work we might desire to carry out in the privacy of our own homes will have to be inspected by a Man From The Council or will have to be undertaken by a qualified electrician.

For a start, this is just a thieves' charter. They already try to charge you £1,000 for installing a gold-plated Aga; now it's going to be £100 for changing the fuse on the vibrating foot spa. The alternative is to submit yourself to a brown-coated, clipboard-carrying jobsworth, who will suck his pencil, shake his head, condemn the property and also probably shop you to the Powers That Be for being in possession of a lit cigarette during daylight hours.

And anyway, isn't electrical DIY a kind of Darwinesque natural selection process? Those who know what they're doing survive and prosper; those who don't eventually fry and spend the rest of eternity haunting the high-voltage junction box section of B &Q.

[Old_Master]

Part 2 of the satirical piece

I KNOW it's hard to believe, but there are some kids so stupid that they can't even get a place at one of Mr Blah's special thicko universities. These youths go off to be window cleaners.

But even there, with only a bucket of water, a ladder and a chamois leather to co-ordinate, they're not safe from the degree-dispensing NuLabour social engineers.

I am indebted to a reader of this column for sending me the following advert for . . . wait for it . . . the British Window Cleaning Academy where, for a small fee of £95, aspiring chamois-wielders can take a one-day intensive course resulting in the award of a Level 2 NVQ in Window Cleaning. No, really.

"Learn to squeegee like a pro, " they urge, promising detailed instruction in "Waterfed Pole Use and Basic Health and Safety".

Now call me elitist, but how thick do you have to be to need an intensive course in window cleaning? "Dip rag in bucket, rub window, do not fall off ladder" seems to be about it.

And anyway, what are window cleaners apart from off-duty burglars? The whole thing is probably just a sinister front for teaching criminals the latest house-breaking techniques. I think Officer Dibble should take a look.

SO WHAT of my man Whittaker, I hear you ask. Well, he's still living in a bush in the Lower Meadow, naked apart from camouflage paint and a bandana, but there have been signs of improvement in his condition of late.

Mrs B bumped into him while she was setting fire to a joiner's van the other morning and he told her that he was going to make an effort to adjust his lifestyle, which, seeing as he was skinning a rabbit with his bare teeth at the time, might be a good idea.

Yes, he might have been driven semi-loony by the Government's decision to ban hunting with dogs, but democracy had spoken and he would do his best to comply. So he was going to try one of the suggested alter natives.

I should have know it would end in tears. Two days later I saw him trotting up the drive on his trusty steed wearing fishnet stockings and a mini skirt, and with two grapefruit thrust down a second-hand Wonderbra. A jaunty feather hat sat above his hideously made-up face. He looked like a cross between Les Dawson and Paul Burrell.

His bottom lip, painted blood red (with blood, probably) quivered with humiliation. A tear rolled down a rouged cheek. He'd been sent home early. . . from the drag hunting.

I WOULD have mentioned this last week, had I not been busy bailing Mrs B out of the nick after an unfortunate bricklayer/trowel incident, but how can Mr Blah have the sheer gall to turn up at Ken Bigley's memorial service when he can't be arsed to attend the funeral of a single soldier who died in pursuit of his politically-motivated jaunt to Iraq?

Do you think the self-serving, hand-wringing, egotistical creep can actually sleep at night?

The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this newspaper, of anyone who doesn't think Paul Burrell needs a kick in the Jacobs, of anyone who's ever taken a lie detector test on Trisha , or of anyone who doesn't fervently hope that most of the 3,000 jobs to be axed by the BBC come from local radio. It's the broadcast version of the Valium trolley in an old folks' home

[Old_Master]

Part 3 see above

Thank God
We are not Estate Agents, Builders, Police officers or Traffic Wardens or we would be prompted into writing complaints all the time to the press, television producers and other forms of media every time they produced a satirical piece.

[marcinos]

off -duty burglars?
so why then they let us in into their 750k houses and dont even bother to check while we leaving?
it is trust ,isnt?

[UBA1]

A few of things here...1) I ain`t a burglar 2) I`m a fully qualified sparky 3) Window cleaning is repeat business, many savings on advertising 4) How can i be stupid when i`m in a job earning as much as a doctor AND doing less hours!! 5) If you said black folk are stupid, you`d get penalised, so why be ignorant and prejudiced to WC`S!

[sham33]

Guess it must have been a quiet week for news up there. This person comes across as rather stupid and seems not to have done any research for writing this dribble.

 "Dip rag in bucket, rub window, do not fall off ladder" seems to be about it.


Says it all really doesn't it?
This person probably has the same mentality as some of my customers who got jealous because I got a new work van  :

[Neil]

I have to agree with Old Master on this one,
It was obviously written tongue in cheek and to respond shows a lack of a sense of humour.
I agreed with Phillip until I was shown the WHOLE thing. 
Personally I think its quite funny 

Neil

[Craig_Mawlam]

Now that I have read the whole thing I see that it is indeed a satirical piece (thanx Glyn), however it does perpetuate the stereotypical image of Window Cleaners portrayed by the press that is damaging to professionals.

Just as well that I haven't had time to write to the editor just yet. So now instead of a complaint perhaps I shall take the opportunity to persuade the editor to publish an article about the BWCA and highlight just how professional the Window Cleaning industry really is.

Its interesting though, we've had an influx of training enquiries as a result of the article  just goes to show there's no such thing as bad publicity!

Best regards

Craig Mawlam

[poleman]

Think I would agree you do have to take it on face value & sense of humor in this Industry helps and its only local newspaper, but how does he know details of the BWCA? And national news papers catch on to local article, you just don’t know how reads theses article, maybe someone handing out a W/C contract? Maybe or maybe not, how knows?  Personal I would not like it in my local rag.

Andy

[Terry_Burrows]

 :)I have learned over the years there is no such thing as bad publicity fink about it : while they are talking about us window cleaners,there leaving some other buggers alone and whos get the publicty at the end of the day,good luck m8s its a great pity I did not know sooner about this ,I have done a bit with the guardian its in today or thursdays or fridays paper,I could have had a pop back : er thats talking about traffic by the way and my m8 ken 8 quid
congestion coming up next year,great,er coming to a town near you by the way,for those who think they may be safe...

[tom_currie]

philip editor pwc
your fast response to the paper without doing any research etc must have given the paper a little chuckle as editor of professional window cleaner and advocate for bwca
i am sure you now have learned a very valuable lesson
 

[Philip Hanson]

On the contrary Tom,

I linked to the article in my original post, so I had read the entire piece.  I always knew and understood the context.  Satirical or not, call me humorless if you will, but I do not think it appropriate for window cleaners to be joked about as burglars, and my complaint stands.  The fact that Craig is willing to take it as humor and use the opportunity to promote the BWCA is perhaps a testament to his good nature.

I wonder if you would be so willing to laugh it off if it were your company mentioned by name in the piece as the question "what are window cleaners apart from off-duty burglars?".  Satire or no satire, I certainly would not.  And I object to our industry being referred to in this way.

-Philip

[tom_currie]

well philip laugh and the world laughs with you and the piece must be taken in context and you have decided to take it out of context.
your letter to the editor from your position as editor of pwc only went on to defend bwca and not the professional window cleaner or the little man out there trying his best at his business. so craig could look at it in context and many readers did the same then went on to find out more about bwca and its courses.
and the real proof is they were not sued or threatened with that as we know many have been.
having been many years at this profession no one has ever went into print to say anything about me that could be called slander as the courts are open to us all for that action not just the chosen ones 

[tom_currie]

another detail you forgot to mention in your letter to the editor was that is that craig and bwca are the sponsers of pwc and therefore your views could be seen as  a little clouded

[Craig_Mawlam]

Tom,

I think you will find that what both Philip and I share in common about the article is our disgust about the way the window cleaning industry is portrayed as burglars, and that includes you. Philip is working hard on a publication that will strive to promote professionalism within our industry. In 1997 I established the BWCA to do the same, for us its a way of giving something back to the industry that we have dedicated our careers too. When you put so much effort into taking the industry forward it is dissapointing when others try to pull it backwards.

Though I choose to laugh this one off, I still feel that the item is derogatory to all of us. Hiding behind satire is a poor excuse to defame an entire industry and I for one am not happy that people like you are branded as burglars.

The author was careful not to use the Prime Ministers name, using Mr Blah instead clearly marks the item out as satire. The author could have done the same thing with the BWCA, he/she could have simply refered to the existance of a training centre for window cleaners.

Perhaps (and this is satire) window cleaners who think its funny to be branded as burglars have a darker side to their past?

Rgds
Craig

[Philip Hanson]

Bristol Evening Post's Response
======================

Interestingly, the Bristol Evening Post did not have "a little chuckle" at my email, but instead have taken my complaint seriously and printed it in its entirety in its "Feedback" column.

To give credit where due, the paper (which is Bristol's main paper, and a good-quality daily) has shown a balance by printing my letter, and I will be thanking them for it.

Also, perhaps the BEP may be a bit more sensitive to publishing derogatory comments, even satirically, with regard to window cleaners.  If this is the case, then my complaint has been well worth the effort.

In response to my complaint being printed, the person who originally sent "The Devil's Advocate" the BWCA information, a man named John Boucher, has himself written to the paper to give some background as to why he did so, and his letter holds a very important lesson for us window cleaners, and especially those among us who are seeking commercial contracts.

(This man is a Facilities Manager for a commercial building, and the BWCA came to his attention as a result of an approach by a window cleaner using a pole system)

His letter is basically explaining the background in a "take it as a joke and don't get so worked up about it" kind of way, fair enough, but also he now has an appreciation for the issues important to window cleaners (Notice what it was that caused him to doubt the accuracy of the leaflet):

"To be honest, I did not consider the health and safety aspects of window cleaning, nor did I consider the cleaning of windows on large office blocks. My mind contained images of domestic window cleaners with ladders, chamois and bucket, and the thought of an NVQ for this filled me with mirth - so much so that I passed it on to Mr Beelzebub as it struck me that he might also be amused, along with his readers.

Speaking purely personally, I do not doubt that the BWCA is an excellent and honourable institution.

Nor do I believe that window cleaners are all off-duty burglars."

You can read his whole letter HERE

Now to be reasonable, I can take a joke, and I know "The Devils Advocate" column probably better than anyone else on this forum as it appears in my local paper, I know its not intended to be a serious kind of thing.  But what really sticks in my throat is that window cleaners are too often portrayed as criminals or stupid people, even when its done in a jokey fashion.  And the idea that training for us might be some hilarious joke too, is something that I find hard to swallow.  I have (and will continue to) do all I can to try to get people to think of our industry in a professional way, and I don't mind taking some stick for doing that (even from other window cleaners!)

This man now has a better understanding of how important professional standards are to our industry, and that training for window cleaners is not a joke.  I'm very glad about this.

-Philip

[matt]

Philip i agree with you on this one

what would have happened if the article had read something like this

whilst stopped at triffic lights, i saw 2 BLACK MEN getting out of a BMW, the proceded to carry a parcel to the front door of a house, they must have been Drug dealers, afterall arent all black men in BMW's drug dealers

would the editor of a newspaper have let this article, satire or not ?? ?? ?? ??

[mickeyfat]