It is no secret that the building of the shitting concrete path in the park has given me the screaming irrits. Today saw the completion of the 'JOB'. And boy have they ever done a 'job' on the rates payers!
Yep 2 and a half weeks of mostly 5 blokes a day to lay a couple hundred metres (ball park figure), of unnecessary concrete. Private contractors would have eaten the job in a day, 2 at most, but for them they are working to the price, not looking to fill in their days as best they can without looking too much like the slacker public purse poncers we all think they are.
Today, their final day saw only a skeleton staff of 3 blokes. They took turns hosing a bit of grass. Apparently this was necessary so that RSI didn't become an issue, I made that bit up. Gotta love a bit of the old 'Elf and Safety huh?
The site hut and the porta-loo were taken away and now we are left with the length of cement already being marred by boy racer rubber marks.
So everyone knew how this was gonna play out. Except that I have been asking questions since the off, and the forthcoming answers have lacked consistency - yeh that's a teacher euphemism for great big fucking lies being swung about, in the hope that no-one would notice.
I have been asking the Councillor about the costing and the process and the initial request and the need, and how come there was no notice given or advice taken from the locals.I sort of figured that as he was 'The Man', he was the bloke to go to.
Turns out he should have auditioned for Schultz in Hogan's Heros - you remember that big fat guy whose most repeated line was, 'I Know Nothing!!'
But today a woman who works at the Council rang me, because the Councillor had finally forwarded my list of questions to her and I suppose she thought I might easily be fobbed off with a Chatty Cathy few minutes, even though I had asked for a response in writing. Yeh no-one wants to put anything in writing anymore cos whilst it is all chatter boxy they can pretend that Joe Public was too stupid to understand and must have gotten it all wrong. If there is something in writing then it's less refutable.
So she said that the Councillor had requested the path and that he had used his little slush fund money to pay for it.
Did you know that the Gold Coast City Councillors get paid a rock bottom price of $150000 a year and that's without any 'expenses' they might run up. They get an office and clerical staff and just as a little bonus, cos they are such good honest reliable hardworking folk, the GCCC gives them $50000 EACH, a year to spend in their little area in anyway they see fit.
They don't, it seems need to justify how they spend it or explain why they spent it the way they did. They just have to spend it and as there is a council election this March the spending of it needed to be sooner rather than later, just in case they are not re-elected.
So My Councillor told me that the Parks People had decided that the park needed to be made accessible to Wheelies. Now I am not sure but perhaps the truth is that a Wheelie friend of his asked for the path and the Councillor had some unspent Public Money and so he thought, 'Why the fuck not? Gotta spend it somewhere!' Except that I don't believe that either, cos a couple of years ago it seems that someone local asked for a dropped curb to be built outside our place, supposedly for women with strollers, but local scuttle said it was more about skate board access than anything else.
And now this little dropped curb footpath thing has been linked up to the concrete elephant that runs across the park. This is some coincidence huh?
And the Wheelie thing just sounds dodgy anyway. I have a friend in chair. Her good husband pushes her everywhere, cos there is no room at home for a hulking motorised jobbie. My friend still has no access to the park facilities. If she popped in at all we would have to leave her on the path as we took off to the rotunda or the viewing area, cos there is no pathway to these areas and even the smallest bumps are excruciating for her, so she can't go cross country. We could, I suppose, leave her out in the sun on the path and wave to her from a distance and shout out the local gossip, so she could feel included, but she might well not be best pleased.
Noo I don't believe that path was built for wheelies.
The wheelie bike marks already in evidence tell me, who might have really wanted the path.
The number of stories from people who all have their noses in the public trough, increases everyday. Some of the yarns are unlikely, some are contradictory and some could be sprouted by little green men wearing lopsided purple hats, for as believable as they are. All are designed to be arse covering and responsibility shedding.
A couple of times recently, readers have suggested that as this has so clearly given me the shits, that I should run in the election, which would be a reasonable reaction, except that I just don't have the stomach for it. I would speak without a filter and would not protect other Public Money feeders. I have a bucket mouth and a very short fuse and all too quickly the 'workers' would be advised not to take any of my calls. I would refuse to be a party to spending up $50,000 of other people's money on a personal whim, or to fund the bidding of friends. I would call things as I see 'em and as we all know that just cannot be allowed in politics on any level.
What's the biggest Lie you have heard recently?
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