OPINION
Sir Bob Jones
There’s no better example of an overstaffed government Department with time on its hands and thus becoming “creative”, than the Health and Safety mob and their ludicrous road cones excesses. Nowhere else in the world does this occur, nor was it ever deemed necessary in New Zealand hitherto.
Minor works on the side of a road which once would have been enclosed by fencing tightly around them, now feature hundreds of metres of cones, before and after the works, often narrowing traffic into a single lane causing totally unnecessary traffic jams.
At each end an understandably bored red jacketed employee holds a stop-go sign and a radio to communicate with his or her opposite number, two or three hundred metres down the other end of this farce. Parked off the road are several trucks, their drivers sitting all day inside gazing at their cell-phones. Their function is to deliver the bloody cones in the morning and pick them up at day’s end.
This ludicrous nonsense is causing unnecessary chaos and hold-ups right across the country, and not just in our cities. Furthermore, it involves thousands of workers who could be gainfully employed in something sensible.
A recent survey of tourists’ impressions of New Zealand revealed their shock on encountering this cone farce, as their only negative impression.
Knocking it on the head is one measure the government can safely take as the whole country is furious about it. Do it and I’ll wager they’ll immediately soar in the polls with huge public gratitude.
As an amusing aside, the only cone one encounters in Glasgow, typical of that city’s zany spirit, is on the head of a very large 1844 statue of the Duke of Wellington sitting astride his horse. That cone has been there for three decades and recently gained listing status. It’s fittingly located outside the city’s Modern Art Gallery, filled as it is with bogus alleged art. Google it and see for yourselves.
The day will inevitably come when our museums feature a cone room containing photos of the current madness and explanatory material, as a record of a crazy period in our history. Visitors will gaze in disbelief, much like they do now at displays of past eras lunacy.
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