What's wrong with the world today

[silentC]

I recently spent several hours in a car with my old man. As you do on these long trips, we went into a long discussion on what is wrong with the world today. The topic turned to the local council and the problems they are having. It occurred to me that there is a good reason why they and so many others are in such strife.

Our council is pleading broke. They are currently preparing a submission to the state government for a rates hike of 14% this year, then a few percent more each year for the next 4 or 5 years. The rates already went up substantially last year (30-50% in some cases), and yet they want more money.

Meanwhile, the footpaths are breaking up, the public facilities are falling apart. The whole town is crumbling around our ears. Every week there are letters to the editor complaining about the state of things. They want more services (or the old ones back again) but they don't want to pay more rates. Why can't the council do it's job with the money it already gets?

My own belief is that there is too much regulation. Most of this is imposed by the state government but is administered by the local council.

A case in point: Most will remember the fires in Canberra last year (or was it the year before?) As a result of that, the NSW state government has given the NSW Rural Fire Brigade the power to regulate building in bushfire prone areas. To identify these areas, the task of mapping was given to the local councils. The council must produce a map of the area under their control shaded to show the areas that are bush fire prone. All proposed developments in the shaded areas must complete a bush fire assessment which will determine which level of construction applies to the development.

When these maps were collated, it turned out that something like 80% of the existing residences in NSW were now in bush fire prone areas. To try to quell the rising panic, the NSW Rural Fire Brigade quickly added that the mapping technique had erred on the side of caution and so a large percentage of the houses so marked were in fact not in a bush fire prone area at all. The upshot of this is that a very large percentage of proposed developments in rural NSW now have the added expense of having to do a bush fire report when one is probably not needed and very probably having to use special materials and construction methods as a result.

What has this got to do with the local council? Well, apart from the cost of the mapping exercise, they also now have a permanent bush fire consultant on staff. That's an extra salary that they have to provide for as a result of this legislation. This guy's job is to maintain the map, to liase with the fire brigade, consult to developers, and generally enforce the legislation. I don't know what he gets paid but I would imagine it would be in the middle to upper management level of council remuneration.

The question is, who is paying for him? Did the state government give the council another $60,000 per year to pay for him, or did they say "this is now your responsibility". I think I know the answer to that one.

This is only one of the regulative roles now imposed on the council. You also have the EPA, the Waterways, and soon we will have BASIX. All of these things cost money to administer and in lieu of funds from other sources, the council has to spend the money it would otherwise spend on community services.

Is there such a thing as too much regulation? Would we be better to let people self-regulate and mop up the inevitable messes when they occur? I think that insurance companies might have something to answer for here too...

[kiwigeo]

One major problem I see with alot of local governments is an almost total lack of accountability to the people who provide a large proportion of the money they spend..the rate payers. Add in an air of arrogance on the part of many local governments when dealing with rate payers and its not hard to understand why people get p****d off with them.

The solutions? I dont know. Looking at the 24% voter turnout at my local council's last elections I cant help but think that most of the ratepayers in my area are either an apathetic lot and dont really give a toss how their rates are spent or they feel completely powerless to change things with their vote.

[Barry_White]

That is an interesting thing about the State Government intervention. In my area I lived in a donut council and this council had the one of the lowest rates in NSW. The council had $9 million in reserves and by and large ran fairly effeciently with 9 councilers.

About two years ago the state government forced it into amalgamation with the City council along with 3 other councils. These 3 other councils were running fairly effeciently apart from one that had a million dollar compensation claim against it and was caught up in the HIH debacle.

Now after the amalgamation the 9 million has been spent by the city council and they are in debt. There garbage fees have gone up and I have no doubt over the next couple of years they will be putting the land rates up to be equivilant to what the city council rates are.

And the state government says this is to make it more effecient. In my eye it is.

[silentC]

I suppose what I am saying is that the local councils are increasingly having to devote resources to new regulations that didn't exist years ago and are consequently neglecting what they were elected to do.

Another example is regulation of the use of public land. In the past, the local mob were pretty lax about letting people use public land for various purposes. For example, a local business conducts a surfing school during the holiday season. They are using public land, to wit the beach, to earn an income. Council has now decided to charge them for this, which is fair enough I suppose. They have also raised the charges for all the people who were already being charged for use of public land, such as cafes with outside dining etc.

However, due to the clamp down, they now have to devote resources to administering and enforcing the policy. They have revealed that the extra revenue will not cover the cost of administering it, so there will be even more public funds disappearing on regulatory activities.

Why are they doing it then? To protect them (us) from liability in the event of an accident happening on public property. They believe that by charging a fee and requiring the tenant to have public liability insurance of $4 million, they are protecting themselves from exposure. What they don't seem to realise is that it wont make any difference in the event of an accident because the 'victim' will sue anyone and everyone they can think of.

On the subject of electing council members, I don't believe that the elected councillors have any real power anyway. My Grandfather found that out years ago when he was elected as a councillor. He went in thinking he could change the world but soon found out that getting support for his ideas was very difficult when other councillors thought that it might upset their own plans. The council is run by its administrators and the councillors are simply there to provide the illusion of democracy and to act as a buffer between the permanent staff and the whinging public.

[bitingmidge]

Is there too much regulation?

Nah....80% of the population of the country would be unemployed without the friggin' regulators.

Yesterday I was on our construction site after a Workplace Health and Safety Inspection of all plant and machinery. We have this big sucker of a crawler crane on site for the duration of the project (see pic) and the WH&S Officer was obviously a bit peeved because it was in perfect working order, and all records were immaculately in place.

With all it's tracks removed it travels on an over-width low loader with an escort, and of course is not able to be road registered.

Somewhere under the cab, is an unused plate holder not unlike a number plate bracket.

Blithering Idiot Inspector wrote a defect "improvement" notice because "number plate light inoperable".

Over-regulated????? No, just overpopulated with persons whose heads bear amazing resemblance to genitalia.

Cheers,

P (Sorry if this isn't what you were getting at Silent!)

[Wood Borer]

Remember back when you were at school and there were those who were good at sport, there were those who were good at maths and science, those good at music, good at art, good at woodwork and metal work, there were those who were popular, there were those who were tough …

Then there were the wimps. The wimps learnt parrot fashion on badly taught subjects like History, Geography and they prided themselves on memorising great bulks of useless information. They never got top marks but never the lowest marks, they never played sport or got into fights or even mildly defended themselves. If they were offended they would almost cry and report the offender to the teacher. They were the goody goody neatly dressed wimps.

Most of us had nothing to do with them on account of them being a waste of space. If they came from a farm, they would probably bring the morning tea to the shearing shed for the shearers when they were 16!!! They certainly would not have been up at the crack of dawn preparing the woolshed or pestering their old man to give them another go at shearing themselves. No, they would have been studying their Economics text on the exciting topic of GDP or perhaps penning a letter to their school principal asking if they can do needlework instead of metal work because the metal is a bit rough on their hands.

These wastes of space have sought and found revenge. They have squirmed their way into administration, law and politics. They assume everyone else is as useless as themselves and they make laws accordingly. They also assume everyone else is as dishonest as themselves and make regulations accordingly.

It is the revenge of the nerds. The weak and stupid have seized control.

Apologies to students of economics, I’m sure it is important but not to the exclusion of living.

[ndru]

I’m sure it is important but not to the exclusion of living.

Tell that to those who have lived through hyperinflation or double digit unemployment

[B.J.Honeycut]

Remember back when you were at school and there were those who were good at sport, there were those who were good at maths and science, those good at music, good at art, good at woodwork and metal work, there were those who were popular, there were those who were tough …

Then there were the wimps. The wimps learnt parrot fashion on badly taught subjects like History, Geography and they prided themselves on memorising great bulks of useless information. They never got top marks but never the lowest marks, they never played sport or got into fights or even mildly defended themselves. If they were offended they would almost cry and report the offender to the teacher. They were the goody goody neatly dressed wimps.

Most of us had nothing to do with them on account of them being a waste of space. If they came from a farm, they would probably bring the morning tea to the shearing shed for the shearers when they were 16!!! They certainly would not have been up at the crack of dawn preparing the woolshed or pestering their old man to give them another go at shearing themselves. No, they would have been studying their Economics text on the exciting topic of GDP or perhaps penning a letter to their school principal asking if they can do needlework instead of metal work because the metal is a bit rough on their hands.

These wastes of space have sought and found revenge. They have squirmed their way into administration, law and politics. They assume everyone else is as useless as themselves and they make laws accordingly. They also assume everyone else is as dishonest as themselves and make regulations accordingly.

It is the revenge of the nerds. The weak and stupid have seized control.

Apologies to students of economics, I’m sure it is important but not to the exclusion of living.

Tell us what you really think I must say I can't agree with alot of what you say. I'm a "nerd" computer systems administrator and yes we will take over the world. However I also play a number of sports on a weekly basis, have a couple of non nerd hobbies like woodworking, metalworking, go-kart racing etc. At school I also enjoyed woodwork/metalwork as much as maths/English and got really good marks in both. Oh yeah and I grew up on a dairy farm too. So I can fix your computer, m ilk your cows and build the table that your coffee is sitting on.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't blame the NERDS they aren't all as pathetic or stereotype bound as you may think

[silentC]

Tell that to those who have lived through hyperinflation or double digit unemployment

What, and you think economists have any power over that, or indeed anything of value to contribute?

[adrian]

The councils aren't the problem, we are.
We're slack and we don't give a damn. We complain about the state of our roads, schools, hospitals etc and then an election comes along and we put pressure on politicians to lower taxes. Where do people think the money comes from for roads, schools and hospitals.
Unfortunately we live in a country with almost the same land area as the lower 48 states in the US with a population almost the same as New York state.
You can imagine what level of taxes for infrastructure you need to raise to serve a population of 19 million people in an area of 128,000 sq kms compared to a population of 20 million in an area of 8.5 million sq kms. We are highly taxed because it's impossible to have it any other way. If you want significantly lower taxes then we are going to have to increase our population by up to 100 million. Who among us wants the problems that that sort of population brings with it.
As for efficiency, it's up to us to change things. I heard of a junket not so long ago by councillors to California to study their wine industry. Has anyone tasted Californian wines? You could get a better drop by licking the urinal (sorry moderator). How many ratepayers challenged that junket. Every person on this forum lives in a district where such waste goes on but how many people have stood for council or been to a council meeting or written letters to council.
The problem is we all care but not enough to give a damn.

END OF RANT. PART ONE.

[outback]

Changing the topic a bit, sorry.

Our local council went broke.

An administrator was apponted, it was then forced to amalagamate with two other councils. The administrator stayed in his position, we have no duly elected councillors until later this year.

In the last 6 - 12 months more has been done on our local roads, infrastrucure etc than in any time in living memory.

Whilst many will be happy to see him leave so we may once again be ruled by a duly elected group of our peers. I will be sorry to see him go, and have the back biting, faction groups return to send us broke again.

[Iain]

My own personal hate is for the social workers and their amazingly useless contribution to social engineering.
Ever noticed that the number of people in a given community in need of help is directly proportional to the number of social workers available.
I had to work with these cretins and watch them in court offering 'expert' advice to magistrates or judges, usually dressed in jeans and T , not bad for someone whose salary exceeds $40k.
Their reasoning was that it allowed them to talk to the crapheads in court at their own level.
I always maintained that I was to be treated with respect and was NOT on the same level, but then I was not a social worker.
Rant off.

[Iain]

Has anyone tasted Californian wines?

Yes, and I think you being extremely unfair, urinals are vastly superior
We have a local council who have junkets to China to visit the sister city every 12 months 'to improve business and trading strategies within the shire with China'.
12 years so far and no imports/exports but the is the hefty travel and accommodation bill for the 'new' councillors who attend every year.
And the councillors who attend generally have no business background.

[Zed]

Elect me as God of australia and I promise I will enforce that :

1) all profits from the TAB & govt sanctioned/subsidised betting agencies will be used to top up govt coffers
2) every 2nd govt employee will be dismissed
3) all prisoners will be forced to work on public projects as part of thier punishment - any bludging, slack or substandard work will incur additional sentance time
4) work for the dole will be mandatory - any bludging, slack or substandard work will incur lower pay
5) fat ***** corporations who feed at the public trough will be taxed at 90%(heheheh....)
6) a flat GST on ALL goods, services and products of 35% will be levied. As a compromise all payroll and hidden taxes will be abolished.
7) black marketeers (including "cash jobs" by contractors) will incur rules 3 & 4 be applied
8) medical insurance will be mandatory & no double dipping will be allowed by doctors and medical insurance companies (I hate !!! that!!!)
9) corrupt officials will be executed
10) media Ar$eholes will be forced to clarify/be truthful/not chase ambulances for a quick dollar
11) cigarrettes will be banned. tobacco companies will have thier assets seized.
12) corrupt, polluting, evil, profiteerring, lying,conniving cheating companies/individuals will have assets seized and rule 4 enforced.
13) customer service must not be outsourced OS
14) industry will be encouraged so as to bring it back to australia
15) all govt elected officials will have thier assets frozen for the term of thier elected duration. cheats will incur rule 9
16) desalination and reforestation will become mandatory projects in all coucil areas.
17) recycling will be carried out correctly
18) rock spiders, murderers, evil criminals, rapists will incur rule 9. no appeals.
19) lawyers will be forced to be honest, non ambulance chasing varieties
20) national service will be compulsory
21) religious orgs will be forced to pay taxes

I will come up with more - trust me....

these are the promises of my candadicy. So help me, me.

[Wood Borer]

BJ,

I'm not talking about Computer Nerds, I am talking about those who have no skills at all apart from making life a misery for others due to their ineptness. Not everyone who works with computers is a Nerd.

What was I really saying? I don’t think we should be given directions from idiots. We should be taking directions from smart people. The majority of people I know making and enforcing local council, state and federal laws are not suitable for the job. I’m not talking about the cops, I’m talking about the politicians, clerks and their management.

I think you will find Nerds were around long before computers. In fact when I typed that post computer people didn’t cross my mind. It was the title of a film that prompted the words Nerds.

ndru,

I am not sure I follow your argument which suggests that if some people have unfortunately suffered due to poor economic management then reading a book on economics becomes one of life's most exciting and important activities. Perhaps the manager of the economy where you suffered had their head stuck in a text book to the oblivious to people suffering around them.

I think you may have misunderstood me. I studied economics as a subject for one year and yes, I had to study the boring dry content but I didn't make it the focus of my life or study it without living. Thank goodness I never studied economics again.

I have been fortunate to have studied but I also socialised and had interests way beyond my areas of study. Isn't there a saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. (no reference to any Jacks on this BB).