A sad good-buy
Saw this re-posted earlier by Stephen Fry, and not sure where it is (although I'd hazard a guess at the States) but how nice, and how sad.
Perhaps one day we'll see them for our own telephone poles... but not in my time.
Too late for the pole outside the gate here, that was replaced a few years ago with a shorter, fatter model, not that I'm complaining about that, except Openreach didn't tell anyone it'd be happening and we were all without phone and internet for a few hours, gotta love a communications company that doesn't communicate... 
I'd guess at Pennsylvania, given the license plate on the bimmer to the left says "Pennsylvania" on it......... 
@Anonymous wrote:
@twocvbloke
That's a dealer plate surround, they're often used over there, but the plate underneath is a Pennsylvania one (see below), if the owner moved from one state to another, they have to re-register that car in the new state, so it gets a "local" plate, and the owner can re-apply any plate surround they have on hand... 
No hope of being made into furniture or toothpicks. Soaked in too much preservative. Still they don't last forever. Never forgotten the pole that broke near where I used to live. The overhead lines came down on to the road with the pole mounted transformer left hanging in mid air, luckily still attached to the other pole. One reason they like to replace them.
They burn well on the wood burner but whether you can still do that in these more enlightened times, haven't a clue.
Here in our part of Wales there are no restrictions on what you can or cannot burn as far as I know, but I'd not fancy putting wood from a telegraph pole on the fire. Gawd knows what chemicals are on it and besides, won't the tar/creosote clog up the flue?
Think I stick to my free fuel allowance. 
Most of the overhead power cables here are held up by thicker-than-telegraph poles, though rarely does anyone feel the need to drive into them thankfully...
.... and let's be fair, what a stupid place to put them right alongside the road! 
Well, where else should one tie up their two horses?
@wotsup wrote:
They used to have two kings of wooden street poles in Australia - the normal telegraph poles and what they called 'power poles' (mainly because they carried electrical power cables, which were then spliced off to houses at high level, going into houses up by the roof). The power poles were telegraph poles on steroids, if you hit one in a car it didn't move far, but your car bodywork moved a lot .....
I remember them well - unsightly things, almost .everywhere, often with fried possums under next to them.
Many of them in urban areas appear to carry power lines at different voltages as well as some also supporting telephone cables and street-lighting.
I'm sure their elf and safety rules must be of a high standard, but I remember a few years ago being told by a relative about a power worker making repairs up a pole in the middle of the town where he lives being electrocuted, and the mans body left hanging there for a while in full view of people, until the power was turned off and the body removed.
Electrocuted power worker dangled from electrical wires
Edit: That was indeed a sad goodbye. 