Thursday 3 May 2012

For Whom the Tolls Bell ?

"Today I ..." wanna post a view on the latest bureaucratic rent-seeking being suggested for the once fair CBD of Pert.

They wanna put a toll on car access.

(sigh)

Aside from a crap road system as it is (shouldn't a riverside road follow the river all the way in both directions ? shouldn't a coast road actually follow the coast all the way ?), the city is basically already DEAD compared to how it used to be back in the late 1970s early 1980s.

Back then, the city was the Place To Be near every night and especially on Thursday nights.

Rather than lifeless malls we had things called ROADS and PARKING SPACES where everyone would cruise in on/in their hotted up cars and motorbikes and park all in a row. The first bikers in on the evening would reserve half a dozen bays and before long there would be 30 or more motobikes backed in against the curb and angle parked.

There were people everywhere doing a strange thing called TALKING with each other. Lasses would be displaying/modeling their latest clothing purchases to leather and denim clad blokes and everyone would turn to watch the latest polished chromed and crimson red painted V8 hotrod to burble past in one of endless "bog laps".

There were Hari-Krishnas to harass as they gave out vegan books with weird art-worked covers and Potter's House God Botherers to troll, uh, argue with as they frothed in your face about hell. There was a smell of a couple of dozen different food places in the air and the sound of buskers and laughter.

The city was alive and useful.

Then the bureaucrats got in with their endless and ever expensive to administer "regulation".

The city died.

People like me eventually just gave up on the place ... and these days we are all far more inclined to plug into the world of skyrim or halo or an ipod.

Pert needs LESS regulation and MORE reasons to actually go to it.

Trying to make people pay to drive into the city is neither of those things.

It is just more bureaucrat cholesterol slowly choking the heart to death.

And what a healthy, vibrant, and beautiful heart it USED to be. ... but no more.

Still, Pert-ites, do yourselves a favour and get yourselves up to Kings park one early evening.  While you are still somewhat easily and freely able to, that is.

It is kinda a shadow of how things used to be in the city centre once upon a time. IE, there are just people walking around doing nothing in particular.

Just Being.

Kinda like how it used to be once upon a time in the actual city before they took away Murray Street and made it a soul-less mall.

Oh, and has it really been over a year since my last post ?

Wow. My how time flies when ya having fun.

So, until around the same time next year ...

regarDS