Biscuits for birds
Any species can become a pest. But some species are more pesty than others. Sea gulls, for instance. It can be expensive and tricky to deal with such a problem, but councillors in Bristol are willing to make sacrifices. How? They're giving up the annual biscuit budget of 25K to go most of the way towards the 30K it will take to reduce the sea gull population humanely.
Effective community consultation?
I've blogged before about graffiti and community engagement. And I've just seen a Chinese example that's a corker. Chinese local government bodies paint slogans on the side of buildings to discourage "anti-social" behaviour among residents. Messages like "Stay away from drugs and AIDs" might not be winning any creativity awards, but it's hard to argue with them. Others are a bit more dubious - such as "If kids set a fire, their father will go to jail" (no doubt part of a better parenting campaign) or downright scary like "Destroy a line of trees and your mother will die first." See these and more at the China Digital Times.
Campaign convenience
Via Governing's 13th Floor, the US State and Local government blog, I read that Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley's campaign headquarters have been broken into. Mayor O'Malley has visited London before to work with Westminster City Council and he's been a pioneer in using CitiStat performance management approaches for local government. So did someone break in to steal campaign information - or maybe a PM report? Nah -
The guy was apparently intoxicated and looking for a bathroom," a police spokesman told the Baltimore Sun. "That's all there is to it. There's nothing sinister, as far as we can tell. He apparently had no idea what office he was in."
Governing's take on it:
Let's put the blame back where it belongs: on O'Malley. Let's have some public
toilets, Mr. Mayor!
Busman's hols?
I'm off on holiday for two weeks from today. Where am I off to? Well, here's an image of a town hall in the region.
Photo credit Enro
You won't be getting the daily doses of my doubtful wit and wisdom, but you never know, I might do a little mobile blogging on holiday.
Back to main page
No comments:
Post a Comment