Do Scottish Councils listen

 Living in a fairly quiet part of Scotland, where the police are more concerned with sheep rustling and suchlike means that the local council can generally do what it wants. The wee local Town, the great and the good stated needs to be remodelled and helped. All very laudable and certainly not before time that money was spent on Maybole. The dearth of shops, which is a phenomena of many Towns and Cities, small and large means the Town Centre as such is deader than the dead parrot in the monty python sketch.

Now the great and the good decided to instal a traffic calming trial which means no one can park on the High Street. Immediately the "law of Unintended Consequences" has kicked in. No one apparently spoke to the few shops that are still open. Now no-one can deliver to those shops as they cannot park near them. This means the butcher cannot get restocked, as it would be a serious health concern if delivery drivers park up in the few offstreet car parks in the Town and carry the raw meat a minimum of 250m (that is if the delivery vehicles could actually get into that car park.) Is this what we pay our Council Taxes for? Did the Works, Planning and other Council Departments actually talk to each other? Or is it a case that one Department decided that "heck we are doing it anyway and we will call it a trial so if anything goes wrong its not our fault?" Surely its not outwith the wit of man to put in temporary Loading Bays and Disabled Parking Bays for the trial? Or is that too logical?

So for a month (that the trial is scheduled for)  the shop keepers and disabled will have major issues. I seriously hope that some of the few remaining shops do not go under as the footfall is not great anyway and this "Trial" seems determined to drive the little footfall away too.

Watch this space

Mutterings continued at long last!

Well its now 2025 and time to finally reinstate this inane drivel. Seems many years ago (it was) that i dabbled with Blogger without success. Now is the time though ro resurrect the inane drivel and mutterings.

The world has become a very dangerous place, what with the political turmoil in the USA, Ukraine, Gaza and other Middle East hotspots. With the Russians, Chinese and Americans playing a realtime "Game of Thrones" one slip and we will all face extremely bad times. The world is a much more joined up place these days. However the populist politicians cannot stand that and seem to be doing all in their power to break it.

Here in the UK, nationalist tendencies appear to be on the rise if you go by the T'interweb and the wall to wall regurgitation of online news sources. The Government changed, well to be fair many people just wanted a change after many years of austerity. The population has now realised (or is coming to realise) that giving a landslide victory to a Party with no real plan to bring about change certainly is not what was wanted. So much so that the present government now has the worst approval rating ever for a new government. The more serious situation for the UK is that more people were turned off from voting than actually voted!

Trade Wars seem to be the new norm coming for the world particularly so after the recent shenanigans in the USA. I just cannot understand why one would pick and try to damage best allies and not deemed bad actors instead. Canada being hit with 25% tariffs whilst China being hit with 10% sure does not make sense. Or is there a really deep held project going on whereby the USA picks of and alienates its friends and then Russia and China step in to fill the void on the world stage? When the world oligarchs are seen to be publicly running the world instead of from behind the scenes this confidence does not bode well for nations or the world.

I can now see why many people are now aspiring to being and living off-grid!