This Australian city wants to charge people to work on their cars

[Citroënbender]

My personal hobbyhorse is environmental amenity. Seeing roadsides, reserves and cultivated parks infested with thistles, lantana, privet and aqueous weeds (a few examples) makes my blood boil. Plants which dominate inhospitably, cause allergies, choke waterways, foster vermin… But if you press a council on noxious weed control, they try to shirk accountability.

I don’t believe councils in Australia have particularly strong coercive powers on private property, if you cover the number plate area of unregistered vehicles parked on your land they likely can’t compel you to provide more detail.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

My personal hobbyhorse is environmental amenity. Seeing roadsides, reserves and cultivated parks infested with thistles, lantana, privet and aqueous weeds (a few examples) makes my blood boil. Plants which dominate inhospitably, cause allergies, choke waterways, foster vermin… But if you press a council on noxious weed control, they try to shirk accountability.

I don’t believe councils in Australia have particularly strong coercive powers on private property, if you cover the number plate area of unregistered vehicles parked on your land they likely can’t compel you to provide more detail.

We've got blackberries and willows all over the shop, and grass along the roads 1M tall in a bushfire area, they can't be ****ed doing anything about that but god forbid if a cafe puts out an A frame on the side of the road advertising their cafe, or you have more than X m2 of advertising on your business fence line, if you do have advertising signs on your commercial property you better not light them up, oh and don't forget you also need a permit for your alfresco seats and tables out the front of your cafe.

Local government is meme government clown world

[aussiblue]

My personal hobbyhorse is environmental amenity. Seeing roadsides, reserves and cultivated parks infested with thistles, lantana, privet and aqueous weeds (a few examples) makes my blood boil. Plants which dominate inhospitably, cause allergies, choke waterways, foster vermin

I have to say my local city council, Cockburn, is pretty well on top of this sort of stuff with lots of well managed park, nature reserves and wetlands within the council's jurisdiction. I just wish they could do something about by neighbour welding and grinding next to my bedroom window nearly every Monday to Friday. They also get a lot of complains from those in that part of the shire (thankfully not close to me) about the dust coming from the Cockburn Cement factory. Air quality management is seemingly where they fall down. Probably as the area around Cockburn Sound was the home of a lot of noxious industries founded in the 1960's (the now closed oil Refinery and chemical plants etc).

No bite on my 29 Hope Road Bibra Lake WA comment CB?

[Citroënbender]

Is it Peter Fosselius (AKA 2CViking)? Go around and see if you can smell Surstromming.

[CyberWasp]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

Local government is meme government clown world

I thought I would quickly generate an AI Picture off your quote.

This picture would sum up a lot of Local Councils.

Please Insert your Council Area Name to the top of the image.

[Tonz]

your being sexist theres no females and inbetweeners

[aussiblue]

Peter Fosselius

Nah; my wife knows the lady and that's not her surname.

[Crazy Dazz]

For a while we lived in a street in Old Wanneroo.
Council finally got around to redoing the bitumen on our street, which I would wager had not been done since the 60's. AFTER they had completed the work, they erected signs at each end of the street to TELL us that that the road had been upgraded. Then, because I guess they thought the first sign might be ambiguous, they added a second sign to tell us that it as in fact the Council that had done the work.

We had in our street a beautiful park, original to he subdivision. It had some aging, but robust play equipment, and beautiful shade from a lot of mature trees. The downside is that it was a "dry" park, so no grass would grow there, being too shaded in winter, and too dry in summer. As a result it was 99% dirt. The horrid grey dirt present in most older suburbs.
For some time, I (and I guess others) had written to the council, requesting that it be upgraded to a reticulated park (common in Perth due to our hot & dry summers). Finally the council allocated funds, and I as invited to be part of the "steering committee" for the upgrade.
We came together with much enthusiasm, thrilled that the council was finally listening. But alas.
Apart from the predictable muppet who wanted the park to somehow "celebrate multiculturalism and Inclusivity" there was immediate consensus. We wanted grass, reticulation, picnic tables, and bbq facilities. But no.
We were only permitted to discuss and vote on options already approved by the council. Amongst the thrilling choices we got to make were:

• Construction Material for the new Park Sign. We went wih Limestone
• A choice of Sand or Wood Chips for the playground.
• Selecting from the list of pre-approved play-equipment modules. But no swings, seesaws, or slides higher than a metre.

Local Councils are just a waste of space and money.

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by Crazy Dazz

For a while we lived in a street in Old Wanneroo.
Council finally got around to redoing the bitumen on our street, which I would wager had not been done since the 60's. AFTER they had completed the work, they erected signs at each end of the street to TELL us that that the road had been upgraded. Then, because I guess they thought the first sign might be ambiguous, they added a second sign to tell us that it as in fact the Council that had done the work.

We had in our street a beautiful park, original to he subdivision. It had some aging, but robust play equipment, and beautiful shade from a lot of mature trees. The downside is that it was a "dry" park, so no grass would grow there, being too shaded in winter, and too dry in summer. As a result it was 99% dirt. The horrid grey dirt present in most older suburbs.
For some time, I (and I guess others) had written to the council, requesting that it be upgraded to a reticulated park (common in Perth due to our hot & dry summers). Finally the council allocated funds, and I as invited to be part of the "steering committee" for the upgrade.
We came together with much enthusiasm, thrilled that the council was finally listening. But alas.
Apart from the predictable muppet who wanted the park to somehow "celebrate multiculturalism and Inclusivity" there was immediate consensus. We wanted grass, reticulation, picnic tables, and bbq facilities. But no.
We were only permitted to discuss and vote on options already approved by the council. Amongst the thrilling choices we got to make were:

• Construction Material for the new Park Sign. We went wih Limestone
• A choice of Sand or Wood Chips for the playground.
• Selecting from the list of pre-approved play-equipment modules. But no swings, seesaws, or slides higher than a metre.

Local Councils are just a waste of space and money.

Ours, we got all the businesses together in our industrial estate to complain about a couple things

One road in and out of the industrial estate
Lack of town knowledge/advertising of the industrial estate
Shitty infrastructure/internet that stopped working when kids came home from school

When they extended the estate they didn't even put phone lines in the ground, so all the new businesses were paying redirect fees from their new land line numbers that didn't have a phone line, took 3 months before that happened.

Then when we got finally our phone lines our ADSL maxed out at 3mbps.

One of the other businesses spent $30,000 trying to fix it to no avail, and they had thousands of dollars a month of mobile internet services for the office and 30 people to try mitigate it.

Anyway, after 3 years the big improvement the council made was the sign on the industrial estate changed from 'New Gisborne Industrial Estate' to 'Gisborne Business Park'.

That was it, three years of meetings with the council and they got a new sign

Still got one road in and out the joint and no one knows what's in there, no effort from the council to promote local businesses, except they confiscated and fined everyone for putting A frame signs out advertising their businesses.

They wouldn't even help us lobby for their rate payers with trying to deal with issues outside of their scope, pick up the phone to the local MP, for their ratepayers.

but joining the fight against nuclear weapons, they'll go all in on that one, I'm sure Kim Jong-Un is shaking in his boots.

[Sprintey]

You see Daz the way you could have played that is planted a lawn that comprised of more than one species of grass, say blue cooch and santa ana and buffalo - diverse. Then get it reticulated: the same water waters all the grasses - inclusive. And put up a sign to say so.

I know that grey dirt - nothing whatsoever of nutrition in it, wax content sees the water slip away on the surface.

[aussiblue]

For a while we lived in a street in Old Wanneroo.

Well Dazz, at least it wasn't Gosnells or Armadale per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZXrEYpGciA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyICxY4WEZg

[Citroënbender]

I planted citrus trees on my grass verge, they’re absolutely non-native but don’t seed or sucker and the fruit is a conversation point - if people stop to talk about it, I encourage them to take a piece home. These plantings are totally against the local government rules for nature strips but add variety and slight transpirational cooling. It’s part of my notional “payback” with something amenable, for fixing my cars in the street.

[Sprintey]

Us too on the fruit trees, tho they overhang the fence. Get all the shade, excellent nutritious fruit that the birds like and pre school kids grab on their walks. A huge passionfruit tree too, plenty for everyone. And climate/soil here means just put it in and it grows, very close to zero maintenance required. Hooray for volcanic and moisture retaining soils.

[Franco Cozzo]

Someone's got a fruit tree on the nature strip in the industrial estate in Campbellfield, they were even netting it as well

[Sprintey]

We were slow to net the cherries this year, the Currawong had a nice time picking them by the stem and flying off to add them to his stash. Then when we covered it we did leave a few out on the fence for him anyway.

[CyberWasp]

Originally Posted by Tonz

your being sexist theres no females and inbetweeners

Do you know how hard it is to get AI to generate female clowns.

Clown World Mk2

Image has been updated and is representative of a local council meeting.

[Sprintey]

Scary stuff!

[mad2]

Originally Posted by Sprintey

A huge passionfruit tree too,

funny i don't remember growing trees??. i do remember the passionfruit vines tho..... along the side fence & partly around our back verandah [which was the width of a 3 bedroom house & maybe [?] 10 foot wide??] and side of verandah.

[Sprintey]

Ha, yeah it was mental and the vine had a decent trunk, took over one side of fence and half of the other, hundreds and hundreds of fruit.