"You're not welcome around here"

The world is a frightening place, doubly so in metropolitan areas. In fact, it’s a rock-solid certainty in these troubled times that around almost any corner a new menace could lurk, skulking in the half shadows of some neon-lit urban walkway, where toddlers chew live ammunition and housing estates compete with one another – Britain in Bloom style – for which one can smell the most like tramp’s piss.

So, it was with some surprise that residents of Bristol City Council’s public housing awoke one morning to find that the latest unspeakable threat to their safety, the agent of chaos in their midst was none other than their humble doormat.

Residents of council-owned flats in the city were asked not to leave their doormats outside for health and safety reasons, apparently because they constituted a trip hazard. Failure to comply would result in confiscation and disposal of the lethal foot-wiping equipment.

Unable to furnish exact statistics on how many serious accidents or fatalities had occurred in the name of these unwelcome welcomes, Bristol City Council sensibly withdrew its demands for most of the city’s 40,000 council tenants, choosing to crack down on the 2,000 weak and elderly occupants of its sheltered housing scheme instead.

According to delightfully imprecise information released to the Red Tape Recorder under the Freedom of Information Act, the cost of this initiative in terms of paper, printing, postage and manpower stands at “not more than a few hundred pounds”