You know that an election is on its way when the council bulldozer, normally out of action for repairs caused by being unwise enough to start it up, is seen, not alone, but in company with the council road leveller, also usually hors de combat for similar reasons.
Not just seen as in passing the door of the council workshops…but working! Out on what are laughingly called the roads of the canton.
For the last three years the council has doughtily refused to waste public money on improving the roads….there are priorities, we are told. What those priorities might be has remained a closely guarded secret, save for a proposal to replace the current system of prowling traffic wardens with parking meters. Who is to provide these, and the relation of the firm to the sixth cousins once removed of current councillors also remains a mystery, as does the future of the current traffic wardens who must be related to someone to have got the job and so must be absorbed into the bosom of the council staff….probably to empty the meters, unless they introduce meters which only take bank cards as in San Jose, which is asking for trouble.
No! Mea culpa! I forgot…their staff have been repainting all the yellow lines in the town to improve traffic flow which was fine on the day the lines were painted and back to chaos the next day as there is little or no parking available in the centre. I solve the problem by making a small weekly contribution to the well being of the gentleman who looks after the parking lot of one of the supermarkets but most just park and hope that the traffic police don’t turn up with their crane and low loader….
A propos of parking, we have been investigating the process of having a handicapped sticker for the car…a process wrapped in mysteries like a Russian doll. I am convinced that you need a medical examination, from hints on the Ministry of Public Works website, but which institution for the handicapped delivers this remains obscure, given that their websites do not mention it and they do not answer e mails.
Seeing a gentleman sitting in a car with a handicapped sticker the other day I thought I would ask him how he went about getting it.
The process was simple, he informed me. I had to go to the MOGO print shop in town…turn right, then left and right again…and they would give me a photocopy of the sticker which would make life very simple.
The MOGO option sounds tempting….I wonder what the fine for having a false handicapped sticker might be…
Not that it is a great problem as yet…not here…but I notice that in San Jose the authorities are getting nasty with non stickered cars in handicapped parking areas so no doubt it will come here in time.
Still, roadworks are not the only sign of elections to come….the council have instituted rubbish collections for the outlying areas, not just in the town centre. We have received a leaflet detailing how to separate the rubbish into ordinary and recyclable, telling us which areas will be served…apparently on a Monday…but with no indication as to when it will start, so I suppose that we shall have to pin back our ears every Monday in the hope of hearing the dustcart’s loudhailer advertising its presence…
And, come to think of it, how come that the dustcart has emerged from hibernation, like a woolly mammoth emerging from the Siberian permafrost?
It could be because the council were threatened with an appearance before the Constitutional Court…but it might well be down to the elections.
As a friend said
‘We should elect the councils every year…that way we would get three months of action every year instead of every four years.’
Still, I bet the major political parties in the U.K. wish they only had to produce a dustcart to remove the menace of the Brexit Party and Nigel Farage in this week’s elections to the European Parliament…
The Venomous Bead 
We’ve the same problems here: bridges collapsing, roads sinking, dams bursting, a mess and politicians are busy tweeting to get anything done. I like the every one year idea.
Me too!
Just when I could make heads and tails of British politics, and heads or tails of EU, along comes The Brexit Party and Nigel Farage. Oi yoi yoi.
He is certainly about to break the mould…..
For once , our local community has elected someone who is cracking on with improvements AFTER the election. Wonders will never cease.
Crumbs! Nurture this freak of political nature!
You lucky thing, an election! That is just what your nation requires to bring peace and tranquillity to all.
Mind you a dustcart and Nigel Farage go together quite well…
Apparently 161 parties will be contesting the local elections…most of them seem to be led by people from the main three parties. Why the shift of alleigance? Cynics might say that this allows more wriggle room for election funding….
I suspect you occasionally the Miracle of Politics whereby those who succeed in attaining public office depart their careers of public service far wealthier than when they arrived. It’s quite the mystery.
The gift which gives on giving..and if it doesn’t you just take it anyway.
A moneyless world is the answer – just stop and cogitate for a moment about a world without money (or exchange), production to meet needs and not profit, common ownership of resources/production – call me an ‘impossibleist/utopian if you like but ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’ sounds about right to me.
Sounds right to me too….
Yes, similar here. Come the beginning of September we hear the road sweeper doing the rounds. Heralding the envelope with the window containing the coming year’s rates demand
And they think we don;t notice the correlation….
All along I thought hors de combat were the ladies arriving in taxis at The Neighbour’s house. I guess muh Freench ain’t much good. :snorf:
I sympathize on the traffic meter issue. In Honolulu a politician had a brain flash that the City should replace its reliable old mechanical meters with fancy new computer models that accepted credit cards, sent texts when time expired and, most enticingly, advertised through an Internet app which spaces were available. It was the last of those features that was the program’s undoing. Parking being scarcer than an honest politician, anytime the meter broadcast an open space there was a full-on road rally to get to it first. That resulted in so many traffic snarls, accidents and outright street brawls that the program never made it through its infancy. Perhaps San Jose’s officials could do even better.
Otherwise, sounds likes it’s getting rather gentrified down at the Finca.
Yes indeed…with the arrival of bottled water and soya milk in the local shops it’s probably time for us to be seeking less gentrified pastures…
I must suggest that our local officials make a fact finding visit to Honolulu….between the parking meter armageddon and a look in at itchi butt that dhould suitably confuse them…
We know when it’s election season here through all the mailers and endless phone calls asking for support. When the mayor’s office called recently asking if they could count on a vote, I immediately replied “not with a gun to my head.’ After a long pregnant pause, the ever earnest caller whispered thank you and hung up. I’m hoping I’m permanently removed from at least one list. 😈
Wonderful! I bet he or she needed a coffee break after that conversation!
More like a beer break!
It seems to be the opposite here in NI. An endless stream of contractors’ lorries digging up the pavements, doing some sort of work and then filling the hole again. What exactly they’re doing is a mystery, nobody I ask can tell me.
Of course, just print off a handicapped sticker and you’re done! Much simpler than negotiating the red tape and bureaucracy and non-responses.
The Brexit Party looks like giving the already disintegrating Conservative Party yet another kick in the teeth. Nobody has any idea how to crush their extraordinary popularity.
I gather that we haveto wait until Sunday to get the results of the MEP elections….will Teresa still be hanging on by her fingernails by then?
If we had contractors digging holes and filling them in here it would either be drug trafficking gangs burying their opposition or else those running the firms would have some family connection with whichever authority had responsibility for the roads.
Off to San Jose next week to talk to the institutions concerned…if that doesn’t work then i’m off round to MOGO!
One of our local councillors has been a treasure. He is so willing to help, so efficient and so generally lovely. I feel absolutely terrible that I didn’t vote for him. I will do so next time, if he isn’t too worn out to stand for re-election.
I read an article about how local councillors are giving up…the amount of time they need to devote to local government is proving to be just too much.
And now Nigel has gorn and done it. And we’ve the Tories’ leadership elections to come. Oh joy. I’d love to take a digger and shovel the lot of them deep into the rubbish dump.
When I think what Cameron did, unleashing an ill thought out referendum in a bid to destabilise the eurosceptics in his party I feel that unpleasant medievalisms like hanging drawing and quartering should be revived…
Even better, have elections every three months!! 🙂
Crumbs…the poor old dustcart would have engine failure!