Friday 30 October 2009

Green power and pot holed bike tracks

Bloody greenies. If you ever take a drive around Leichhardt, you'll see that every second power pole has a sign on it saying that the council uses Green Power.

Given that Green Power is more expensive than the regular coal fired stuff, subscribing to it must put a hole in the council budget. Council rates are capped by the state government, so if the council spends our money on stupid things, it has less money to spend on sensible things.

We're lucky here in wogville - we only have one feral, insane Green on the council, so they can be safely ignored. Our council tends to spend our money on fixing tangible, useful things that are falling apart (drains, roads, paths, playgrounds etc) whilst Leichhardt blows hard earned cash on feel good schemes that add nothing of value.

Case in point. When going around the Bay Run, you'll see three classes of paving. Canada Bay has one Green councillor - pavement quality is very good. Ashfield has a few more (I think) - pavement quality is dodgy. Leichhardt has a Green Overlord - pavement quality is on par with African goat tracks. The paths in Leichhardt would make Bob Mugabe proud.

Here's an idea. If you build better bike paths, more people will cycle. That will slow the growth in the number of cars on the road (I never believe that bike usage will grow to the point where car usage goes into reverse). But if you blow all our money on stupid schemes, no bike paths will be built, and cycling will not grow sufficiently to be of any real benefit.

But you can't explain those sorts of concepts to a Green. Their brains are just not wired to accept logical inputs.

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