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dues. Not sure what else you get for your money. Live down a lane and you have to wheel your big black monstrosity of a bin to the end of it, with the ultimate aim of ensuring some grumbling git in a neon vest attaches it to a lorry and flips the shit out of it. What, you’ re an 80 year old with a bad heart? Who gives a shit? You’ ll be expected to push the bin while your oxygen tank slams back off your big black cargo and against your varicose veins, to get the job done.
You may be an arthritic octogenarian with blood pooling in your lumen but at least you’ re one with a roof over your head. The homeless in this city are less street dwellers and more like urban nomads. They get pushed, pulled and moved on, eventually retreating to scale some barbed wire fence for a bit of peace, or climbing on to the roof of a building to avoid being dragged away by council Stasi because they were lowering the tone. Taking some poor bastard to court is much cheaper than investing in any kind of social housing for them you see. I’ m waiting on the announcement of a‘ cull’ policy when they will be categorised with zika-infected mosquitos and some poor fucking badger incorrectly branded with the tag of tuberculosis, who never did anyone any harm but wound up getting gassed in his own home on the edge of the marshes. Council can’ t even stick to the metropolis. The pies are too many and their fingers are too long.
The traffic system, that’ s my favourite. You can’ t drive where you drove last week, because some town-planner’ s itchy trigger finger ran out of patience and squeezed down hard on the driver. He’ s got‘ his men’ to put down some of those blue signs on a road you’ ve used all your life. Now it takes an extra hour and a half to travel a hundred yards to the shop
You may be an arthritic octogenarian with blood pooling in your lumen but at least you’ re one with a roof over your head.
because you have to do a tour of the city behind some confused commuter who knows even less about the bus lanes than you do. That said, if there’ s a warning sign in place you can count yourself lucky. Sometimes the council rely on the crystal ball method, whereby you instantly know via the spooky phenomenon of electro-kinetic energy that the road you always used is now restricted for half-empty, diesel-guzzling nerdtanks.
Put the wheels of your precious hatchback in it and you’ ll be treated like the love child of Hitler and Myra Hindley. You’ ll get demands, red-letter-warnings, court summonses. If you have the temerity to challenge your indiscretion you’ ll be subject to a kangaroo court of circus proportions, masquerading as some kind of neutral process where the adjudicator is supposedly non-partisan but in actuality is shagging your local council exec silly. Don’ t misconstrue who will end up getting screwed here.
Do not cite impecuniosity after the council’ s decision on your guilt is ratified. You’ ll be dragged off to some dark hole where you’ ll have to fill your time by using sheets to write rants in your own blood. Here in this dungeon you will stew until you can gather up enough cash to unlock your shackles. Meanwhile a council member will procrastinate on whether or not he has the legal authority to fit all the public toilets in the city with coin-activated turnstiles so they can squeeze a few quid off you while you spend your pennies. A new way for the councils to make your city flush.
Colin Braniff
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