Ha! Now your talking...... A customer noticed someone scratching round his back yard. On going out to investigate he found a bloke in a sharp suit, armed with a very expensive camera. On enquiring what he was doing on his property without permission the bloke told him he was from the council and he was measuring the stack of cardboard waiting for the van lorry to take it to the recyclers. Aparently if it were too high (1m or something) it would constitute a health & safety hazard and the council would have to issue an enforcement notice (note this is on PRIVATE land). Our customer, very patiently, explianed that the collection was late that week as the driver was ill. After some more tosh from the "official" our customer, with exemplary restraint, left the issue by stating the obvious to the bloke - "You couldn't you get a proper job, could you?".
Meantime, on the Haregate Estate, serious social problems get ignored due to "lack of resources".
Thanks that helps to explain the enthusiasm of people who have visited New Zealand and the reason why one of my friends emigrated there. Do you have old steam trains running for tourist as well?
Not certain thats a good simile, we appeared to have added an sizeable community from most African countries thus requiring more additions to the school cultural syllabus.
The "Kingston Flyer" is a private commercial venture running an AB Class Pacific (c1915) with a train of 1890s-1910s coaches through superb scenery. There's a private line from Dunedin (Taeari Gorge) running Diseasal powered heritage trains along a route you wouldn't believe. They often substitute a steam loco.
2008 is the centenary of the North Island Main Trunk - Auckland to Wellington - and there's currently a Wab 4-6-4T running half day excursions from Fielding with the occassional Ka (4-8-4) or Ja (4-8-2) run from Auckland to meet it.
There are lots of small preservation groups dotted around the country and arguably more steam locos operable than they can maintain. Special events tend to bring them out, and just sometimes the owners or owning groups like to organise a mainline run if they think they can break even. Some of the groups specialize in logging or industrial, others the locos such as the Ks and Js that lasted to the end of steam in the
1970s.
Of course, our few remaining non-preservation passenger trains run because of tourism and scenery - you even forget there isn't a steam loco at the front!
Not so different - we get Australians escaping to New Zealand! Admittedly singing "Waltzing Matilda" is not in the school syllabus, but schools most touch on it as an example of the high point of Australian culture.
Don't tell Gordon ... he'll be after the oil. It would be good to pay US price for the refined stuff. We pay per litre what they pay per gallon, OK US gallons are slightly smaller than the UK gallon but still ......
At first our 'Brown Bin' recycling accepted anything biodegradable, grass, cuttings, dead flowers and kitchen waste etc. They even supplied a mini brown bin to collect your kitchen waste in your kitchen.
Now it's down to 'garden' waste ONLY.
Now our own garden composter eats almost anything from tea bags to paper shredding but our refuse manager with about 14 letters after his name is unable to let tea bags or anything much else 'contaminate' his composting process. Let a few of the old lads down the local allotment loose with his precious equipment and we would be all knee deep in rich compost.
As for plastic and paper recycling that's another joke. Don't leave the caps on your milk cartons, don't overfill you green bags with newspapers / mags as our poor collectors cant life them ( wimps ). They have these bin inspectors that occasionally check the contents for 'illegal' waste but do you see sight nor sound of them when the collection team leaves your bin half emptied and / or the contents of someone's bin strewn all over the road.
Now look at what you've done ! You've got me started .....
Trouble is it's all too easy with councils since they forgot who actually employs them (i.e. us)....
Anther one, on the re-cycling front, is a simple way of reducing, or even practically removing, our dependence on plastic containers in the first place - surely far better that messing around pointlessly with dealing with the consequences - and reducing our demand for oil. It would mean the supermarkets actually having to do something for the environment rather than pretending to, and would also provide a means of making sure people remember to take re-usuable bags back with them - and that's using glass containers only, with a deposit on then (a worthwhile one, say 50p). You take them back the the shop, in your re-usable bag, and get your deposit back. Ok, so the supermarket has to sort them, but the empty cages going back on the empty lorries can be used (ok a tad more fuel and the shop may have to use a member of staff or two to do the work, perhaps give them a tax break for doing so to cover it?). If every container managed three or four trips, the environmental saving would be huge and the only landfill would be broken gass - much safer than environmentally than plastic. It won't happen though, as the inflation figures would be skewed for a month or two so politics takes over, but what an opportunity to actually *do* something. And, of course, the recyling bin would be virually empty, another saving. If we went down that route, I might actually start taking the government seriously on recycling.
Oh dear, no way of increasing taxes...... that's no good then!
[snip plaintive comments on the wierdness of local government]
[...]
Just keep in mind that politicians always do what someone wants them to do. If they do something you don't want, be assured that someone else wants it done. And keep in mind that local governments are caught between the local citizenry that elected them and the senior governments that download all kinds of responsibilities onto them. Senior governments also do what's demanded of them. If the don't do what you want, that's because you have less clout than other people. That's politics.
You could of course offer to run for a council seat yourself.... ;-)
Well, that's a nice idea, and was probably true until, say, 15 or so years ago. Now however, local councils have become self-serving, very rarely, if ever, consulting their constituents or taking our needs into consideration.
An example - a pub in the Black Country had three break-ins in a year, so the landlord intsalled razor wire to protect his property. The council told him to take it down. He told the council that he would be unable to get insurance cover if he did. The council insisted. 12 people are going to be on the dole in a few days time, and the landlord homeless - you cannot run a pub without insurance. If the landlord persued the matter, assuming he could afford to do so, you can bet the council would use it's latest threat, where some some measly little git (sorry, but this really infuriates me) would say something like "If Mr Bloggs won't comply, we must bring into question his suitability to ". The council is *never* wrong, even when they blatently are, and they *never* offer alternative, practical, cost effective solutions, or make any serious effort to address the problem rather than paper over the symptoms. Politics always takes percedence over policy. I looked at a shop in a local high street to lease. Having lived there I'm well aware of what happens there in the evening. On asking if I could have shutters to provide protection for the windows I was told no, it was against council policy. I also ran into the no insurance problem - yet there are empty shops that the very same council says it's "disappointed" can't be let, but they don't seem to be able to understand that the insurers don't give a damn about what they think so those shops will be only be filled by fly-by-night tennants who have no intention remaining long term, or large organisations who can get blanket cover.
I could, but I have two traits that would not be well recieved - I speak my mind, and I will not lie, or distort the truth, to defend the undefendlable (see above). Plus I'm not photogenic, I'm not a good poublic speaker and I *never* wear suits - so I'd be a media disaster! Oh, and I believe that admitting to mistakes is no bad thing (= trouble with media). I'm affraid a spade is a spade, not an earth moving agricultural implement.
Oh, they do, they do. They just have a different notion of what those concerns are.
Yup, sounds about right. The citizens who are concerned about the aesthetics of your high street obviously have the councillors' ears. Impractical twits.
Interesting, that the insurance problem hasn't moved your council. That's seems to be about the only thing that moves ours! Our Horticultural Society decided it would be a good idea to survey the trees in the town parks after we noticed that a muckin' big branch had fallen off one near where we were planting fall bulbs. A week or so after we sent in our report, pointing out the safety issues, part of a very large multi-stemmed willow fell down in mild windstorm. A week later, the council had hired an arborist, as we recommended. usually it takes them weeks and months to act on a recommendation or request. The arborist's report essentially said the same as ours: cut down unsalvageable trees, and replace them. Which was done.
Richard, you might be surprised. Your qualifications sound just right to me. Especially never wearing a suit. If enough of your fellow citizens are as annoyed as you are, you might have enough votes to get on the council. And then you can lots of fun! Well, if sirring the pot of bovine excrement is your idea of fun. ;-)
And if you don't get elected, you would still I think pull a sizable vote, which would make some of those councillors take notice. You see, that vote would increase next time round, when you or a similar candidate offer to represent the disgruntled and annoyed.
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