Lidl Logic

I WAS AMAZED AT A POSTER FOR LAMPS  SPOTTED IN A LOCAL SUPERMARKET.

Double left click on the image to enlarge — as ever

In case you cannot see the picture, it states:

Philips
Energy Saving
Light Bulb
* Bayonet Cap
*Screw Cap
49p each.

Under this, on a yellow background, it states:

5 for 50p

Now, this is pretty amazing when you stop to think about it; one costs 49p, but FIVE  costs just ONE PENNY more!  Who on Earth would ever buy just one?

Things are getting worse when a shop will allow someone to buy a single lamp at a comparatively extortionate price — why couldn’t the shop just sell the lamps for 10p each and be done with it? People who just need one could buy just one, and people who want 5 could get 5, and everyone pays the same price. It’s not rocket science.

Packaging Ironic

WE WERE SENT THIS PICTURE BY E-MAIL RECENTLY, AND THOUGHT IT QUITE IRONIC.

What do you think?

If you double click on the image, it will enlarge — it shows a device that helps you open stubborn hard plastic sealed packing — but the device itself comes in stubborn hard plastic sealed packaging!

Are things getting worse, or is this an attempt to be “funny”?

Police Exemptions

BAG IT AND BIN IT is the law — and if you do not pick up your dog’s poop, you can get fined on the spot… unless you are the police.

Police Dogs and Police Horses can poo anywhere — check out the picture (click on the thumbnail to enlarge), and no-one has to pick up their droppings!

On top of that, as evidenced by the photographs, they seem to think they can use the red lane sectioned off for the exclusive use of Buses, Taxis and Bicycles!

Apart from the obvious flaunting of many laws, look at the danger this shit represents to the poor bicyclist.  Not just in attracting flies for them to swallow, but they present an obstacle or slipping hazard.

Things are getting worse when the police think they can do whatever they want.  It seems to be a case of one law for them and another law for the rest of us!  They are literally riding roughshod over us, and crapping on us from a great height! How ironic!

Rain Drain

TRAFFIC CALMING MEANS NARROW ROADS. Narrow roads mean widened pavements, which in turn mean new drains that do not work. Drains that do not work mean puddles, and this makes for even more traffic calming. Genius!

Click on the picture to enlarge — can you see the new drain under the puddle? You may also see where the new pavement widening starts (along with new but redundant double yellow lines). Parking there might require a pair of Wellington boots or a good sense of balance and a deftness in the skipping department. No wonder people prefer to keep their brakes dry and park on the pavement – it’s safer all round.

Sometimes, the drain is sited in a random daft location. What is the point of a drain that is NOT at the lowest point?

For such a rain-soaked country, I am amazed at the inconsistencies in managing rainwater. Just look at this picture of TWO drains, side-by-side, on a pavement (not even on the road), that is next to rain-absorbing grass! At the very least, you have to ask why there are two.

However, then you may notice the paranoia the designers clearly faced on the ill-fated “squinty bridge” or Clyde Arc . I have taken the trouble to number the drains on the picture — just click on it to enlarge for a better view. You will note the closeness of each drain to the others, but note too that the entire bridge is sloped in every possible way — is this not drain overkill? Could they not have just used holes to let water through and down to the river below?

Yep. Things are getting worse!

The Big Rubbish Scam

GLASGOW COUNCIL HAVE FINALLY REALISED THAT THEIR RUBBISH REMOVAL SCHEME IS RUBBISH.

We have posted many articles here about this, check them out…

• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/litter-to-the-council/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/what-a-dump/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/sofa-so-good/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/litter-bugs/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/rubbish/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/streetlitter/

Unfortunately, instead of doing anything constructive or positive about all the rubbish we have to put up with, the city’s answer is to put up posters!

And these posters carry a threat – we could actually be fined if we do not put rubbish out on proper days, and if we do not keep everything neat and tidy!

The responsibility is ours – not the city council’s! What do we pay council tax for?

There is always a let out clause with the council rubbish uplift — it’s called Health and Safety. If there are rats, they can refuse to uplift. What then? According to an article in Glasgow’s Evening Times:

“Patrick McManus, 34, an architectural technician who lives in a nearby block in Calder Street, said:

‘It’s starting to look like Paddy’s Market.
‘There are rats everywhere and notices up in the back court warning people about them. It’s a health risk. I’m just sick of it. I’m trying to sell my house and am paying my council tax, so why can’t they sort it out?’”(Evening Times 30 July 2007)

Glasgow City Council even has a web page dedicated to the rat problem:

• Pest Control: Rats

There is also a 24 hour telephone number: 0141 287 9700 and select option 3.

“Do not expect instant results. Rats are naturally wary of new food sources and it may be some time before they are comfortable eating the bait. Once they start to feed on the bait it can take between 3 to 10 days for the poison to be effective. You must make sure that children and pets never get access to any rat poison”

The British pest Control Association can provide a list of exterminators on-line — it’s very short and simple form:

• http://www.bpca.org.uk/

The BBC warned about rats back in 2002 when all this rubbish on the streets began — see:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2164999.stm

By the way, rubbish, vermin, filth and litter is not a local problem, it is countrywide one:

• The One Show

This BBC TV program shows that even though people are paying council tax, they are having to resort to picking up litter themselves.

Amazingly, this approach is actually a formal and official procedure in Glasgow!  As part of the “Clean Glasgow” Campaign, volunteers are encouraged to collect litter in their spare time — and for no pay!

• Volunteer Litter Picking — organised by the city council

The Glasgow evening newspaper took the amazing step of printing lists of names of people convicted of littering — to a good deal of controversy! Check out their defence and the readers’ comments:

• Litter Louts Dropped Us in This Mess

The”Clean Glasgow”campaign is costing an estimated £4 000 000 this year. In my opinion, four million pounds is a lot of money to supply bin bags for volunteers, rat poison, rat helpline and some posters. The Evening Times naming and shaming campaign printed lists in blocks of 500 — that means each list represents a block of income of on-the-spot fines of £50. So one list would bring in 25 grand!

The council are making mugs of us.  If you drop a cigarette butt, you are fined £50 on top of your council tax.  Meantime, the putting the rubbish out front policy is leading to health and safety issues, which in turn means that rubbish cannot be uplifted until somebody calls the 24 hours rat helpline, the poison takes effect and then perhaps the volunteers can arrive to do the work (bin bags supplied, of course).

The only way out of this is to have the city council change policy back to placing rubbish in lanes and away from the pavements.  That would encourage people to refrain from dropping litter, and make everywhere better and cleaner. Admittedly, the problem will have shifted round the back — but is it not better to have the rats there instead of where we all walk?

More rubbish bins and better collections would be good too — and could be paid for from the vast profits of the on-the-spot fines.

It is adding insult to injury to ask volunteers to pick up rubbish and remove piles of fly-tipped goods.  At the very least this should be a punishment meted out to people with ASBOs — perhaps a form of community service?

Things are getting worse, when we put up with this scam, and when we allow councils to shirk the community responsibility tat is the reason for their very existence!

Litter to the Council

THE LITTER EPIDEMIC IN SHAWLANDS IS GETTING WORSE!

I walk past a lane on Kilmarnock Road almost every day, and I cannot ever recall a time when it has been free from rubbish — but it is getting worse lately, and I know the area is suffering a serious rat problem. Click on the picture to enlarge, and bear in mind that this is on the busiest road/ shopping street south of the river – the lane is, in fact, between two rows of busy shops. Imagine the scene when it has been raining!

In recent years, the council (in a silly attempt to encourage “recycling”) refuse to uplift from back lanes and courts, insisting instead that everyone dump stuff on pavements out to the front of their homes for uplift on specific days.

The result is unhealthy, ugly and dangerous. In the past, when people were having minor works carried out on their flat, rubbish would be immediately removed and dumped out back in the lane or at the bins for uplift. It is reasonable and perfectly understandable to me that people would not want to store the rubbish inside their newly renovated homes until a special rubbish uplift day — but that is what the council seems to want us all to do nowadays!

The idea that you dump stuff out the front depends on the dumping only being done on specific days — and that is just unworkable! The result is that people dump their rubbish as and when they want, and it can lie there until it is uplifted on it’s special day.

I wish someone would realise the truth about human nature, and admit that the scheme has failed — then we can resort to putting the rubbish out in the back lane where it can lie until uplifted at a time that suits the council.

Related Articles and pictures:

• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/what-a-dump/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/sofa-so-good/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/litter-bugs/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/rubbish/
• http://gettingworse.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/streetlitter/

Wet Bools

BOWLING GREENS ARE FAMOUSLY WELL-KEPT.

Greenkeepers take great pains to ensure a carpet-like finish to the grass lawns used for bowling — what a shame no-one at Pollok park thought to design in some drainage!

All that manicured turf and hard work gone to waste. Things are getting worse when this sort of thing can happen; it is not as though the rainfall has been particularly heavy, there have been no severe weather warnings, no flash floods, no emergency — just the normal drizzly Scottish wetness that we really ought to be able to cope with by now!

Bin Caught Obstructing

IT IS DIFFICULT ENOUGH to negotiate bollards, fences, dimpled pavements, pot-holes, overgrown hedges, dog fouling, cafe tables and chairs and cigarette smokers — but what is going on with all the large black wheelie bins on the main roads of Shawlands (Shawlands is in Glasgow, by the way — not Lanarkshire)?

We’ve all heard of traffic calming, is this now about calming the number of pedestrians as well? maybe they want to dissuade shoppers from using the area — after all Silverburn and Braehead do not have rubbish and bins in the mall for people to avoid!

I was told that it might have something to do with shops having no access at the rear of the shop of uplifting bins — but that’s poppycock; for more years than I can remember there have been shops on this road, and refuse collection was never before such an issue as it seems to have become today. We did not have to live with such rubbish and such massive bins on our pavements for all these years!

In the pictures shown here, these ugly and unhealthy wheelie bins are at Shawlands Cross, opposite each other. Notice that there are fences, so the pavement is narrowed and people are channelled along them. The crossing presents a gap in the fence — that is where these bins are! Exactly at the wrong place — a place where people stop, stand and wait to cross! People NOT wanting to cross have to stand behind wheelie bins, next to a fence until the pedestrians have crossed the road (and before the arrival of the folk from the other side).

It beggars belief, it really does! Left to the council and the interferers and busy-bodies, Shawlands will choke and die — just like Victoria Road, Cowcaddens, and much of the West End. Oh to roll the clock back 7 years to when Shawlands was happy and carefree!

Yes, things are getting worse. No doubt.

Daftest Bin

THE PLANNERS REALLY GOT IT WRONG HERE.

In my earlier post (The Daftest Bus Stop) I showed a bus shelter to be far away from the bus stop — and pointed out that planners had spent a fortune on this stretch of road, and still managed to make a hash of it, well, I thought my dear readers would enjoy the location of the litter bin (click the picture to enlarge). They really expect people to trek all the way from the bus stop (or even further, from the bus shelter), to then slip across the muddy grass to use the bin? Yes, things are getting worse!

This is a particularly bizarre piece of road, to be perfectly frank. On the other side of the road there are two short pieces of fence — and yet there is no evident rhyme nor reason for them to be there! Not only that, but folk have managed to drive their vehicles into them, for they are all bashed — must be buses and taxis, for I don’t see bicycles doing that kind of damage.

What a Dump!

“DUMB DUMPERS”? — WHAT ABOUT CHEEKY DUMPERS?

If you were thinking of dumping an old refrigerator, you might think that with the wide-spread publicity about new powers to fine on the spot, threats of jail and cctv everywhere that it would be easier just to call the council to uplift the fridge. But not for Glaswegians, no sir!

The average Glaswegian is not going to take the easy route. But not satisfied with just dumping on the street and in broad daylight, why not actually find a “No Dumping”sign, and dump everything there?

Superb! The sign even says the site is monitored!