I’ve heard that one of the reasons New Zealand is that a lot of people of low skills have entered the workforce over the past 5 or 6 years. Things have been pretty good, so all kinds of dopes have been getting jobs when they may well have been unemployable before. But, they get hired on lower wages. When thousands are employed like this, it drags one measure of productivity down.*
This is my only rational explanation for the idiot who likes to use a leaf-blower outside our place early on the weekends.
Now, leaf-blowers by themselves can be a fairly effective means of street-cleaning. I’ve used them myself to tidy up gardens and the like. The trick though, and you can probably guess this one, is that there are a couple of situations where they don’t work particularly well.
The first is when the leaves are really wet. They stick to the ground, and no amount of cold air being blasted at them will move them.
The second is when it’s really windy. All you’re doing is moving the leaves out into the wind to be blown christknowswhere.
This leaves me wondering then what kind of idiot the Wellington City Council is contracting to street clean? This moron is out there, on a number of occasions, with a leaf-blower, at FIVE AM, in a half-gale?
WTF.
I’ve taken to calling noise control. One day he was out there after a howling storm, and I’d seen paper and assorted crap all over the street when I’d walked home the previous night. So after working on the street for about an hour, you’d think he’d tidied it real sweet.
Nope. Worse than the night before.
Again, where the hell the City Council finds these munters is beyond me. So I say, BRING BACK BRUSHES AND SHOVELS!!
*No economics arguments in comments… this explanation will do.
17 January, 2009 at 10:52 am
I’ve seen the council people with big leaf vacuum cleaners out and about in the morning. Maybe it’s one of those you’re hearing.
17 January, 2009 at 4:48 pm
nah, seen the bastard working. definitely a completely useless blower.
20 January, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Che, are you foreshadowing Dilbert cartoons now? lol
14 February, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I used to live in London where in the local square, old Chinese women would do tai chi early in the morning, while old council workers would rake the gravel paths with birch brooms. Very Zen. And relaxing.
Now replaced by Westminster Council with idiot men with leaf blowers and dressed in Hi-Vis vests (like they’re a construction hazard, and we can’t bloody HEAR them?). They just blow the leaves around the park, blow the gravel onto the lawn, and have completely blown the old Chinese ladies away.
I think it takes them longer too.
So: totally agree with you “well-respected and erudite blogger” when you say: “where the hell the City Council finds these munters is beyond me. So I say, BRING BACK BRUSHES AND SHOVELS!!”