Tatty Old Britain

Another thing I’ve seen is, letting a listed building degrade to such a state that the local authority asks the owner to demolish it, on the grounds of safety. Much cheaper building new than renovating a listed building.

Another one that the likes of Tesco etc do, is buy up the other potential supermarket sites around their stores, to stifle their rivals. These sites are often left derelict and neglected.

Another thing I’ve seen is, letting a listed building degrade to such a state that the local authority asks the owner to demolish it, on the grounds of safety. Much cheaper building new than renovating a listed building.

Often the older building has outlived its usefulness – look at an old farm, loads of old buildings rotting as they’re no use anymore for machinery etc.

Cost-wise, we had to renovate an old barn rather than just knock it down and build a bungalow instead, twice the price.

At least in the Netherlands, you receive 0.15 euros for every empty plastic bottle that goes into the machine.

its still only 5p at Lidls. Well, it’s a start.

In Queensland we have a returns scheme. Bottles and cans are all 10c return and there are several ways to return them. I have a local depot so every few months I take them there load them onto a conveyor belt which counts them and gives me cash. We don’t use many because we don’t buy soft drinks and I brew beer and serve from a keg but it’s quite horrific to see the thousands of cans some people get through. Lots of charities also ask people to donate them so they can collect the money. Plus you see people cleaning up the road verges to make a bit of cash.

The one that pissed me off yesterday – riding up the main road from Hathersage to Sheffield, there was a load of domestic waste dumped in a layby.

I will become rich once I invent a kind of landmine that somehow only targets flytippers.

One particularly egregious pile of crap I had to go around on my bike had obviously come from a restaurant/takeaway in the nearest big town being refitted out, as it also included some old menus. I thought it only fair to leave a Google review.

On the subject of overflowing bins – I read somewhere that you get less rubbish if you don’t have bins at all than if you have them but can’t keep up with emptying them. If there’s no bin, the majority of people will take it home. If there is a bin, and its full, a large proportion of the population will dump their rubbish next to it, as “its not their fault the bin is full”.

Another thing thats been bugging me – last year the council didn’t clear the autumn leaf debris, resulting in filthy slippy pavements and blocked gutters and drains, the overflow from which then starts tearing up the road surface and that plus vehicles = potholes galore. (the speed pillows down our road are stacked up with gravel on the uphill sides from the disintegrating tarmac). I keep the drain outside our house clear, and sometimes the one across the road too, but its easy to end up digging out a wheelbarrow full of shit out of them that you then have to dispose of somehow.

The same story is true outside town – one of the faster main roads into Sheffield from the Peak doesn’t get the drains cleared, resulting in a year round flood across the road on a poor visibility corner. A couple of years back a pothole opened up and a roadie went down on it and then bounced off a car coming the other way, with “life changing” results. The pothole got filled PDQ, but the drains still didn’t get cleared so the hole is back again. I did have a go at a couple of those drains myself, but working solo on a blind bend on a 60mph road is equally likely to have lifechanging results… You can guarantee that drain cleaning is one budget and road fixing is another and never will the two talk to each other, but its just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

For me it was more a case of noticing a lot maintenance not getting done during the pandemic for obvious reasons and me thinking it would go back to normal. This hasn’t been the case with many local authorities taking full advantage to turn it into further budget cuts on top of the already shoddy run, skeleton shift, shambles, can’t wait to fine people given any opportunity we have foisted on us by our wonderful governments.

Nobody voted for it or asked for it.

Fly tipping has got worse because the government has allowed private sector operators (a few years back now) to use bouncers at tips (introduction of permits) restricting access. They have made the problem worse and we get to pick up the pieces and shoulder the burden, sound familiar!?!

You can guarantee that drain cleaning is one budget and road fixing is another and never will the two talk to each other, but its just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

It’s a weird mix of factors – the council contract out the work to whichever private company they use (cos obviously all their in-house people have been sacked to save money). The private contractor does exactly the work listed in the permit, not one iota more or less. So if it says “fill this pothole”, they will do exactly that but ignore the other pothole 5 yards away.

No-one ever creates a work permit that says “investigate why there’s a pothole here, fill it and make sure it doesn’t come back” cos that costs more money and everything at the council is cut to the bone so they can’t get permission to spend £5000 on that, they can get permission to spend £2000 on filling the hole. Except the hole comes back every 6 months so in 18 months, it’s already cost you more than just doing the job properly in the first place.

So much for austerity and short-term thinking.