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| ...first, choose a town with a plethora of bronze statues.. |
According to Kieran Quinn’s personal Blog, The Council’s
Enforcement Panel; which is so vital to the community it now meets once every 13
weeks, have held discussions, on, amongst other things, whether or not the council
will hit residents with littering fines if they are caught feeding pigeons!
Not a man who could ever be accused of thinking laterally,
it would appear that rather than look to innovative ways of utilising and
creating a benefit whilst still controlling the feral pigeon population, the
mighty Quinn's enforcers are looking to introduce yet another spurious way to screw even
more money out of the Tameside populous!
This, Cllr Quinn tells us, is ‘just one of a few examples’
of the excellent work being carried out on behalf of the borough’s residents!
So, these charming birds (The Rock Dove), which have been a
common feature of urban life for the last 100 years and have long drawn the
crowds in tourist hotspots such as London’s Trafalgar Square and Venice’s
Piazza San Marco are suddenly not welcome in the newly created urban deserts of
the North (once thriving markets, now empty civic squares) that the Tameside
Taliban, have, in their infinite wisdom recently created.
Of course, this is not a problem that is unique to Tameside.
Many UK-based councils’ have attempted to address the problem by using
hard-hitting and aggressive campaigns threatening pigeon feeders with large
fines or imprisonment and some have even undertaken deeply unpopular culling
operations at the same time.
However, in each and every case these campaigns have failed
due to the fact that the council concerned has failed to understand the
underlying reason why people feed pigeons. The ‘problem’ cannot be dealt with
as a littering offence or an anti-social act; it must be dealt with by
education and persuasion rather than by threats and legislation. – This is the usual hurdle where Tameside council often
falls down.
Now this might sound like an obvious suggestion, but maybe
at the next Enforcement Panel Meeting, they be directed to look-up ‘Dovecotes’ and
the use thereof (At this point someone may have to explain to certain
councillors that these are not to be confused with ‘winter coats’ for our
feathered friends) which, if planned, built and positioned properly, could not only become
an educational money-spinner and possibly provide a number of job opportunities, but are a time served, proven method of successful pigeon
control.
One common error, often made by our current cabal of council officers and career councillors
is that they confuse their own inability to imagine entrepreneurial (rather
than state-imposed) solutions to most given situations. In other words, they can’t see the wood
for the trees!
They suffer from a form of ‘naive pessimism’ which basically
translates as a breed of persons who can't imagine entrepreneurial solutions to
simple everyday problems.
TAMESIDE ENFORCEMENT PANEL MEETING:
If a committee is allowed to discuss a
bad idea long enough, it will inevitably decide to implement the idea simply
because so much work has already been done on it.
