Dumbing down street signs

Frequent commenter "Da Wife" sent me this link with the comment "Are you sure these people were not educated in the Canadian school system?" and "Everything is [being] dumbed down so the stupidest do not feel left behind":

It may soon be a little easier to mind your pea's and queues in Birmingham.

Or so think the British city's politicians, now that they've decided to ban all apostrophes from street signs, on the grounds that they're fussy, old-fashioned and confusing.

For decades, apparently, residents have been embroiled in heated debates around punctuation in signs for such local landmarks as St. Pauls Square or Acocks Green.

A verbal donnybrook on whether Kings Heath should be rewritten with an apostrophe proved to be the last straw for Councillor Martin Mullaney. "I had to make a final decision on this," he says. "We keep debating apostrophes in meetings and we have other things to do."

It's sad, really. The idiot politicians probably feel they're doing the right thing . . . if they're spending time in their meetings debating fine points like whether an apostrophe is required, wouldn't it make sense to consult an expert? Does the council not have access to English teachers?