As a former municipal councilor in a small town on Northern Vancouver Island, upon returning from provincial municipal AGMs / conventions, I suffered mental damage lasting several days. These were the farm teams of future senior government Jacobins and Bolsheviks. most had no clue how their own municipal sewage systems worked but "knew" how to save the planet.
Speaking of road signs, Vancouver has recently started replacing signs named after dead white males (the bane of cultural Marxists everywhere) with unpronounceable in any language - script created by academics (with a sadistic sense of humor) a couple of decades ago and foisted off as indigenous writing for people who had no written language until coming into contact with English.
Municipal governments in their incessant demand for more and more revenue or else “we’ll have to cut services” have become a cesspool of inefficiencies and ideologically based overspent aided and abetted by bloated bureaucracies and self interested councils whose primary goal is to get re-elected.
In my neighbourhood, close to downtown Halifax, we have signs about parking roughly every 50 feet, but the signage isn’t consistent from one to the next. There’s a 1201am to 8am ban on each side of the street, one night per week, different night on different sides, to allow for street cleaning (which rarely happens), but those signs are only on every second or third post, so you have to look up and down the block at multiple signs to figure it out, coupled with the fact that one side is now No Parking 24/7, since they put in bike lanes, so signage about overnight parking bans on that side of the street is just noise. Signs limiting parking 8am to 5pm to the left of some posts are posted above signs designating 24/7 no parking to the right of the post, leading some to think the day time limits apply both sides of the post. On top of that, most of the signs are hidden in the foliage of the trees.
They never edit or remove signage. They just add more.
Back in the 60’s, people wrote protest songs about signs. It’s a lost art form which should be brought back.
Sometimes I wonder whether the "Mr. Pine's Mixed Up Signs" book I learned to read with back in the 1960s was actually meant as a how-to manual rather than a humorous story.
Happily, however, I see that it's still available:
"implementing an expensive and, in many ways, irrational policy for no good reason" (consilium sumptuosum et rationis expers sine iusta causa exsequens) is the City of Ottawa's official motto. Ottawans are doubly blessed by the existence and ever intrusive presence of the National Capital Commission. All the self important bloviatimg and inability to stay in their lane of a regular city council but with the added bonus of zero democratic accountability.
Years ago when I lived in Ottawa, the city sent out someone to (if I remember correctly) check my pipes for lead. I told the guy that I was impressed by how fast he'd come and that the city seemed very efficient. He grunted and replied that the real reason was that they were unionized and, since they couldn't fire anyone, they had all kinds of unnecessary workers with nothing to do.
Perhaps the section of roadway between "Maximum 30 Area Ends" and the stop sign is intended to be a launch runway for future flying cars. :P
As a former municipal councilor in a small town on Northern Vancouver Island, upon returning from provincial municipal AGMs / conventions, I suffered mental damage lasting several days. These were the farm teams of future senior government Jacobins and Bolsheviks. most had no clue how their own municipal sewage systems worked but "knew" how to save the planet.
Speaking of road signs, Vancouver has recently started replacing signs named after dead white males (the bane of cultural Marxists everywhere) with unpronounceable in any language - script created by academics (with a sadistic sense of humor) a couple of decades ago and foisted off as indigenous writing for people who had no written language until coming into contact with English.
Municipal governments in their incessant demand for more and more revenue or else “we’ll have to cut services” have become a cesspool of inefficiencies and ideologically based overspent aided and abetted by bloated bureaucracies and self interested councils whose primary goal is to get re-elected.
And don't forget that they're mostly unionized!
In my neighbourhood, close to downtown Halifax, we have signs about parking roughly every 50 feet, but the signage isn’t consistent from one to the next. There’s a 1201am to 8am ban on each side of the street, one night per week, different night on different sides, to allow for street cleaning (which rarely happens), but those signs are only on every second or third post, so you have to look up and down the block at multiple signs to figure it out, coupled with the fact that one side is now No Parking 24/7, since they put in bike lanes, so signage about overnight parking bans on that side of the street is just noise. Signs limiting parking 8am to 5pm to the left of some posts are posted above signs designating 24/7 no parking to the right of the post, leading some to think the day time limits apply both sides of the post. On top of that, most of the signs are hidden in the foliage of the trees.
They never edit or remove signage. They just add more.
Back in the 60’s, people wrote protest songs about signs. It’s a lost art form which should be brought back.
Sometimes I wonder whether the "Mr. Pine's Mixed Up Signs" book I learned to read with back in the 1960s was actually meant as a how-to manual rather than a humorous story.
Happily, however, I see that it's still available:
https://www.amazon.ca/Pines-Mixed-Up-Signs-Leonard-Kessler/dp/B00073CP1W/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1
"implementing an expensive and, in many ways, irrational policy for no good reason" (consilium sumptuosum et rationis expers sine iusta causa exsequens) is the City of Ottawa's official motto. Ottawans are doubly blessed by the existence and ever intrusive presence of the National Capital Commission. All the self important bloviatimg and inability to stay in their lane of a regular city council but with the added bonus of zero democratic accountability.
Years ago when I lived in Ottawa, the city sent out someone to (if I remember correctly) check my pipes for lead. I told the guy that I was impressed by how fast he'd come and that the city seemed very efficient. He grunted and replied that the real reason was that they were unionized and, since they couldn't fire anyone, they had all kinds of unnecessary workers with nothing to do.
Sounds about right.