An App for the Righteous
I came across a nauseating little item today.
The Environmental Protection Agency has produced an “app” for mobile phones so that the Righteous can report their neighbours for polluting.
What kind of world do we live in where neighbours are actively encouraged to “inform the authorities” if they feel their righteous standards have been infringed?
For a start, my hackles rise at the word “authority”. My council may be an authority in name but I do not recognise it as having any authority over me. I would also question their right to dream up laws an impose them on me. By what right do they write laws and impose fines? I always understood that the only people who can create laws are those in central government, and I would have very serious questions to ask even about that. As far as I am concerned, my council is subservient to me and I will not accept any bullying from them.
One of the items mentioned in the article is “backyard burning”. I presume they mean “bonfires” but they prefer what is obviously a Merkan word. I don’t have a back yard. I have a garden, a plot or an estate depending on my mood and on who I am trying to impress. What’s more, it is my fucking garden and no one is going to tell me what I can do in it. I have a lot of trees that need pruning and trimming, and that is apart from the pruning and trimming a high wind can do. As a result I have a lot of wood which has to be disposed of.
The council’s website tells me I should Reduce, Reuse, Recycle or Compost. I would indeed reduce if I could, but the trees and bushes have an unnatural habit of growing bigger all the time, so unless they can tell me how to stop trees growing and how to stop the wind blowing down branches…? I’m not sure quite how I am supposed to reuse a mountain of old branches and twigs? build a fucking shed out of them? The same goes for recycling. How do you recycle a branch? Glue it back on the tree? My answer to that is that you burn it. As for composting, well that’s a joke. Have they ever seen how long it takes for a four inch thick branch to compost?
I have always used bonfires as did my parents and their parents before them. It’s only a recent thing that the Righteous have started fussing about pollution and dioxins, but modern bonfires don’t produce anything that they haven’t produced for the past hundreds of years.
So the Righteous can go fuck themselves.
And if anyone tried to photograph my bonfires, then we shall see how well their mobile phone burns.
Heh!
Isn't it amazing that after man's utilisation of fire for tens of thousands of years; that it's only in the past thirty years or so that the Earth's ozone layer is in "danger"? Coincidence? I think fucking well not.
Listening to all these self righteous environmental knobheads has them right up there on my 'to euthanise' list with the established political class.
Apparently it's only after the discovery of such things as dioxins that they became dangerous. It's just like cigarette smoke – totally harmless for years until they discovered it?
I think I see another Waco on the horizon. As for the continuing American influence in Ireland; are the schools having 'proms" yet. I know they do in England. Hundreds of quid for a fucking dress for little Miss Muffit. Can't believe the Brits fell for the prom scam. Surely the Irish are smarter?
Sadly I think they do have prom nights here. I'm ashamed to admit I have even seen a "stretch-limo" or two in my day. Fucking sickening.
By the way InisEanna that's the dumbest fucking post I have ever read. The rest of the world had the industrial revolution and bought cars and trucks and power stations.
Isn't it you lot in Merka who are creating most of the problems with your love affair with the car?
Actually, no it isn't. Right now it's up for bids between China and India as to which is the biggest polluter. Compared to those two, "Merka" is a complete piker when it comes to polluting the air.
'Nuff said.
Don't be so pedantic, Kirk. If I want to have a swing at Merka then piffling details don't matter. I'm in that kind of mood.
Oh all right then. In the interest of fairness, India and China are a bunch of wankers too.
Now that's better!
Well said GD and InisEanna.
tt not included in there? Maybe not……
What kind of world do we live in where neighbours are actively encouraged to “inform the authorities” if they feel their righteous standards have been infringed?
Well we know exactly in which World "neighbors are encouraged inform the authorities".
Welcome, 3×2! [any relation to 4×4?]. Stalin must be laughing in his grave!
There has never been a shortage of informers in this little country. Some people come from a long lines of informers.
Just a suggestion…why not download the app and have some fun with it, e.g find the address of every self-serving MP, Cllr, Environment Agency Loon, Council Execs etc..and get to work reporting them. Dirty Bastards.
Now that is a fucking excellent idea! We can get them under the "objectionable odours" clause.
Oh, I think an app like that could be lots of fun. I'd make a long list of all the jobsworth busybodies and bansturbaters that pollute our public institutions, and gradually work my way through them. I'd let my imagination run riot with their transgressions. It would be a hoot!
Can we have an app like this in England? It might be worth buying a mobile phone for..
All my neighbors have smoke coming out of their chimneys… should I report them for indoor backyard-burning?
GD
At risk of having it cut off, I stick my head above the virtual parapet here.
I am all in favour of a good rant every now and then, but cannot agree on a number of issues.
You really lost me to your argument when you have difficulty with the use of word ‘authority’. I parked my anarchistic tendencies many years ago when it dawned on me that the selfish nature in many will always overpower the community spirit of the few. I am glad to have an authority to call upon when someone parks outside the box or on double yellow lines preventing me from exiting my house or using the road as designed and intended. If that authority lifts the car or fines the owner, I don’t care.
I am guilty of submitting forms to local council complaining of breach of planning laws. Two alternatives existed. Let someone build what they want or rely on local council to spot within 6 years that an illegal development was constructed. I think I prefer live with the title of righteous rather than risk planning being achieved by default after 6 years.
It appears that the offence was establish by way of a Statutory Instrument signed by a Minister in exercise a function granting by the Dail – but you probably knew that already.
As for recycling, a small bit of thinking outside the bonfire. Branches can be chopped up for burning in open fire or solid fuel stove, yours or someone else's. I suspect that you also knew that.
As a confessed righteous, I’ll now duck under the parapet and go away to do something beginning with ‘f’ to myself as suggested………..
My problem with authority is simple – I have had a bellyfull. In years gone by it was fine as there were few regulations but it has reached the stage now where one has to check with a lawyer before doing anything. Rules and regulations seem to cover every aspect of our lives and I have had enough. I am just sick and tired of being told what I can and cannot do.
So the Righteous can go fuck themselves
Quite…..
And if everyone took this approach, the bastard prodnose useless bastards might get the message and fuck off and leave people alone.
Wait…wait. This app was developed by some Irish company for the EPA? The United States Environmental Protection Agency? Whose jurisdiction includes only includes the 50 states of the USA? Not Ireland, Not the UK, not any other country in the entire world except the USA? So the EPA couldn't go to an American software company to write this damn app, they had to go to an Irish software company to get it done? Oooohhh, I get it. The entire Silicon Valley must have told the EPA to go stuff themselves. I bet every software company in the US told the EPA to fuck off, we don't need to give these nosy, self righteous asshole neighbors yet another way to make our lives miserable. Yeah…that's what they told 'em! So they came to Ireland. They know Ireland just hates us Americans and Fusio said what a great idea! It's better than heavin' a harf-brick at a tourist! Now we can screw their lives on a wholesale basis.
Lovely. Just lovely. 😉
I can't burn the old branches lopped from an overgrown shrub in my front garden without my county council (in Ireland, not in China) calling in the marines. Life in western Europe is getting either fascister and fascister, or communisticer and communisticer with all these blasted environmental Directives being handed down to all us plebs by the Brussels Commissionariat and its apparatchiki. Aux barricades mes amis!
Sounds like you will have to hold your bonfires in the front garden from now on.