Why......?

[Inspector Knacker]

Driving into Seaton this morning from the Tees Road, a glorious day till I drove past the bus station. The green area in front of the listed building has for a couple of years been the victim of a bizarre horticultural experiment where rows of plants are seen to emerge then go bit mad and it ends up looking like a demented weed bed. To any visitors it must just look unkempt and uncared for and badly neglected. Can't it just be grassed as it was .....?
Is it a throwback to the days when Labour Councillors claimed credit for 'Labour's wild flowers' when they were all the rage. A riot of colour for a couple of weeks followed by what looked like out of control weed beds littering the approach roads into town. What must prospective investors perceived from such an image. If they can't even keep the weeds under control they might ask themselves .....it's all about image and presentation.
Wild flowers are great in the right location, but not a cheap option or replacement for proper landscaping.

[Lucy Lass-Tick]

Weirdly enough, was at the RHS Harlow Carr gardens today. 'Meadow gardens' seem to be popular. Or is it just that I'm in the throes of moving into a house that's being worked on after an empty spell & am not ready to open as a safari park ?

[eddy]

The meadow gardens thing is probably driven by cost, they need little / any maintenance which is good for the council.  There is a tory cuts thing here too somewhere, we used to be able to afford grounds keepers for public space in the town, now we can barely afford to maintain social and mental health services, let alone some lovely Pansies

[diSme]

On a slightly different note, but along the same lines,, my street is absolutely riddled with weeds coming through the pavement spacings.

We have not yet had the herbicide sprayers around here this year, but I have seen them working in busier and more prominent areas around the town.

Anyone else having the same issue?

Also, I've just put our garden waste/brown bin out. It weighs an absolute ton. It's about time the fortnightly collections returned, especially at this time of year....

[Inspector Knacker]

The meadow gardens thing is probably driven by cost, they need little / any maintenance which is good for the council. 
The area in front of the bus station was always grassed, which was practical for visitors and far cheaper than experimenting with the latest fashion in horticultural experiments

There is a tory cuts thing here too somewhere, we used to be able to afford grounds keepers for public space in the town, now we can barely afford to maintain social and mental health services, let alone some lovely Pansies
Here we go, the paranoid nasty Tories line as yawningly usual. Well, as for ground keepers you want to get a few facts into the conversation instead of your obsessive Party mantra. Over the past 30 years  Councils liked to cut manual jobs and expand their admin staff and that happened under your Labour Govt Council/ Council glory years as well, in fact they were the worst period. I know because I was there in the front line, experiencing it.
By the way I've just lost a set of BA spanner's, anyone seen a Tory with them.... Eddy blames em for everything from tidal surges to sun spots so I thought I'd be just as ridiculous

[Inspector Knacker]

On a slightly different note, but along the same lines,, my street is absolutely riddled with weeds coming through the pavement spacings.

We have not yet had the herbicide sprayers around here this year, but I have seen them working in busier and more prominent areas around the town.

Anyone else having the same issue?

Also, I've just put our garden waste/brown bin out. It weighs an absolute ton. It's about time the fortnightly collections returned, especially at this time of year....

Just had them round our way spraying the weeds, but like you I'm not at all happy with the monthly garden waste collections nonsense. Totally impractical.

[eddy]

See there you go talking in absolutes again, painting me as some sort of anti conservative extremist, I suppose it makes it easier to diminish arguments making someone out to be a nutter.   I dont blame the Conservative party for everything, just the stuff they actually have done like cutting local authority funding and the associated impacts on their services.

Its a good put down though, seek to diminish the argument because it has been said before by many many people.  Like in someway that makes it less true.  Fair play it has been working through, blame slides off the Tories like teflon whereas it seems to become tattooed into labour. Shall we have a bout of Blair ranting again, a full 14 years after the event?  Who is Dave Cameron again?   

[Inspector Knacker]

'Absolutes'.... define.
You come over as anti-Tory, therefore I assume you're anti-Tory, it's called logic.
However I suspect you have a soft spot for the Lib Dims and any cuddly left of centre fellow travellers you encounter. You need the Tories, without them you'd have to look at politics through a whole new spectrum where Pavlovian responses of sleaze and cuts with the prefix Tory in front of them would be redundant.