anyone else instantly think of another northern town who would love to do this?
Sunny Scunny. :D
The northern council of Rochdale has scrapped its plan to fine people £100 for swearing in the town. Despite being the home of Co-operation, Gracie Fields and Lisa Stansfield, business in Rochdale's town centre has gone downhill in more recent years, and the council said it proposed the blue-word ban as part of efforts to …
Probably not, but one of the things that upsets me about local government is the tendency to focus on the minutiae and not the stuff that's their job. They've got them selves some publicity, which is lovely for them, but I'm sure the people of Rochdale would prefer them to spend some time filling in some pot holes, that sort of thing.
If you had read "The Peter Principle", you'd know why this is.
I can't remember the category, but I recall the example of promoted headmaster who made it his lifes work to organise movement about schools, with arrows, lanes, priority systems, and stopwatches. (Meanwhile the school ticked along nicely thanks to the competent underlings).
If I had to recommend *one* book to anyone interested in IT, that would be it.
I think some ne'er-do-wells screaming obscenities is already well covered by actual laws.
Rather than bringing in local laws to fine why not have a word in the shell of local plod.
They might have a rather loud word back about priorities and resourcing but that's something for you fucking politicians to sort out isn't it?
Any news on the Nativity play? I heard they were still having trouble finding three wise men and a virgin.
That seems to be a common problem in a lot of places.... particularly the "wise men" part in government... from local to national.
Disclaimer: Here in the States. We have one wise man. Ask him, he'll tell you how wise he is.
Define obscene. One person's f**k is another's sh*t! One person's c**t is another's...You get the idea.
My Mum used to hate me using the word "shite" but she happily called people "twats" despite being very well spoken and never swearing. I suspect she never knew what it actually meant and we never corrected her as we found it funny when she said it!
Can't do that. More government is always better. More rules are always better.
If we ban or inconvenience cars from areas of dubious utility, people certainly won't drive a bit further to more useful places - they'll spend 2 hours on the bus to potter around the charity shops.
bring back free parking
That's what they said around here, when roadworks scheduled to last a year at a well-known choke-point pretty much gridlocked the town centre.
No, what would help in this instance is not taking 12 months to do a job that really shouldn't take longer than 12 weeks. Oh, and not scheduling to do it in the run-up to Christmas!
M.
"...bring back free parking .."
A good few years ago, out local council sold off land to be built on and shut down the park-and-ride because that's where the ran it from.
So fast forward to a few years ago and they decided for a couple of months over the Christmas period to make all the council-owned car parks free.
You couldn't move. Even more than the usual Christmas rush.
After the free period ended, they rather sneakily increased parking from 90p per hour to £1 and since then it's gone up to around £1.50 on average.
And funnily enough, even around this time of year you never seem to struggle to get parked. Even at weekends.
Of course, they've had other great ideas like pricing market stall holders out of bothering to come as they can't make enough to afford the pitch.
Seems like they are utterly clueless for the most part about things like this.
"bring back free parking if they want to attract more people to the town centre"
Northumberland did that a couple of years back, with mixed results.
"Paid-for parking is damaging our businesses by discouraging people from coming into town and buying stuff from us" said the local traders.
The council introduced a parking disc system (buy a disc for a one-off quid and use it every time for free-of-charge parking).
The local traders then complained "Free parking is damaging our businesses - people come to town, park for free all day and jam up the car parks, so there's no flow of people during the day."
Damned if you do, damned if you don't
"If they were to bring in this rule then people will simply use alternate swear words"
Or alternate languages entirely! I already do that as a way to threaten and disparage computers in front of my users. I found too many who knew what the common French or German cusses meant. So now I unleash the vilest rants imaginable in Hungarian and Russian and nobody is the wiser. Except for two of my users who asked to learn a few choice phrases for personal uses, gotta love 'em.
Anti-social parking? I assume that means parking illegally? Isnt that what you have parking inspectors for? Oh wait, you cut them from the last Budget didnt you? Hmmm... Well I'm sure the Police wont mind being parking inspectors as well. What they want paying for doing that too? And they cost more then a parking inspector? hmmm lets just pass some more laws that doesnt cost any Money does it?
Based on their canned response to that guy (presumably you Brits know who he is, because I sure don't) who said he was going there, I think this was a media exercise all along.
Councilor 1: How do we get more people to visit our fucking town?
Councilor 2: We need to advertise ourselves and the huge goddamn investment we've made in our town centre.
Councilor 1: That costs too fucking much, our bloody citizens won't let us raise their taxes to advertise the town!
Councilor 3: What we need is free publicity, what can we do that will get us on the fucking news?
Councilor 2: I know, we should make up a crazy law that everyone will think is bollocks!
Councilor 3: But won't that just make people think we're cunts and stay away?
Councilor 1: Not if we later drop the plans and get even more free fucking media!
Councilor 2: But what the fuck kind of shitty law can we pass that will guarantee we get that fucking attention?
Councilor 4, also the local vicar: I have an idea...
Trouble is I can't think of any reason to go in to Rochdale (or remain there). It's close enough to nearby Bury, Bolton, Salford, Trafford Centre and of course you can just go into Town ( Manchester). Rochdale was pretty much left behind by the economic tide a generation or more back. Even when I lived near there, in my younger years, I seldom went there. The swimming baths used to be decent though. And it has heritage - in the shape of the Rochdale Pioneers and the Co-op.