NOTSEP

A new year begins

2012-01-04T20:48:00.002+11:00

I haven't posted much for a while because it's been a slow three months since my last post. There's been the odd abandoned car to report and a few bits of graffiti - but otherwise, I've had little to do. Which is great - that's just the way I like it.

I went for a ride with BayBUG and our pack has to swerve around this patch of broken glass from a car crash. I reported that to Canada Bay Council, and it was gone a few days later. I found another patch of glass on the footpath around the Bay Run - also from a car crash - and Council cleaned that up pretty quickly. Cyclists are always complaining about broken glass on the road, but how many ever bother to report it?

I found a few more abandoned cars in Concord, including one that had been out of rego for 7 months and had become a holiday home for hundreds of spiders. The car looked like a total wreck, even from a distance, but none of the people living in that street had bothered to do anything about it.

Straying further from home, I got Sydney City Council to repair these bike lane dividers. There are four sets of speed humps along this section of road, and all the dividers had been knocked over by drivers wanting to avoid driving over the speed humps (and slowing down a bit). It only took a few months of correspondence, but Council replaced them in the end.

And there's graffiti - of which I've reported hardly any, as there hasn't been much to report. When I started reporting graffiti to Energy Australia back in 2009, it was normal to report 2 vandalised items per week. I've only reported two in the last 4 months - vandalism still occurs, but at nowhere like the rate it was happening 2-3 years ago. The deterrent effect of rapid and repeated removal seem to be working.

Two more abandoned cars

2011-10-03T22:01:00.003+11:00

I just can't get over the fact that I keep finding abandoned cars scattered around our suburbs. I've really got an eye for spotting them - although it's easy when you know what you are looking for. Flat tyres are a good start. Weeds growing up around or under the car are another indicator. The easiest is when the leaves are falling - if a car is surrounded by leaves or flowers, and there are none underneath, then it's a sign that the car has not moved for a while. If there are leaves under the car, it means the car was not there when the leaves fell, and was later parked on top of them. Leaves rarely seem to blow under cars. Spider webs festooned all over the wing mirrors and wipers are also something to look for.

The registration on both these cars expired in March - 6 months ago.

The ute is parked out the back of Concord West train station, and it's slowly filling up with rubbish - although some people can't be bothered tossing it in the back - they've just tossed it around the ute instead. The back of the station is already a bit of a mess - an abandoned ute accumulating rubbish doesn't exactly add to the ambience.

I've reported both to Canada Bay Council - I expect they'll be gone before long.

September update

2011-09-25T09:16:00.001+10:00

I don't know what's going on, but things have been awfully quiet around here of late. I've had almost nothing to do - which is perfect as far as I'm concerned. If I were to wish upon a star, it's that I could close this blog down and put my feet up for good.

I know that's not going to happen - human nature being what it is, a new crop of vandals will spring up, or management at the various agencies that I deal with will change, and everything will go pear shaped again. I'll just enjoy the quiet period while I can.

School holidays have just started. This is usually a peak time for vandalism and malicious damage - unless it's cold and wet. I usually don't bother to report anything during the holidays - I let the vandals do their stuff, and then I get it cleaned up when they're back at school.

Sadly, some students use the holidays to vandalise their schools. One of our local schools has been hit during every holiday period over the last few years - and in the same place each time. How sad is that?

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A reporter from a TV station phoned me during the week. Sydney City Council has an arts program called "Art and About", and it's designed to beautify the city. I've blogged about it previously - one thing they do is to get artists to put up large artworks in lane ways. It's not all to my taste, but it looks better than a dark, filthy lane way. As long as it's legal, I don't care. They can paint exploding pink alien fish heads and I won't bat an eyelid - so long as the property owner has approved.

One of their projects didn't go to plan last week - they obtained permission from a building owner to paint a lane way, and sent out an artist to do the work. Unfortunately, he ended up painting the wrong building, and word of the stuff up reached a news desk.

Because the artist put up something that looked like graffiti, they rang me for a comment. I think they were expecting me to bag the work and have a go at Council.

I declined to do so.

I think the arts program is a good idea. Not all of the art is to my taste, but that's neither here nor there. Council didn't paint the building in question maliciously, and they went through the right channels to get permission from the property owner. And then they simply stuffed up - it happens to everyone. I'm not going to go on TV and act all outraged about this, because I'm not outraged at all. If anything, I'm bemused. I just hope they learn from it, clean up the mistake and move on.

I definitely haven't given up

2011-08-07T12:46:00.000+10:00

I'm only looking at the blog about once every few weeks at present, so if you leave a comment, it might take a while to come out of moderation. That doesn't mean I've given up - each of these collages is a representation of what I reported over a two week period - each collage covers one week. Lots of abandoned cars and graffiti.

The good thing is that most of these cars have been towed away and the bulk of the graffiti has been removed. The only graffiti left is that on a Housing Commission block - I'm interested to see how long it takes to get rid of it.

The gellato in the bottom right hand corner is what I treated myself to after walking around and photographing all those abandoned cars and vandalised items.

I also attended our quarterly CSPC (Community Safety Precinct Community) meeting last week - that's a combined Police/Council affair that any member of the public is welcome to attend. What was interesting is that the Police have recently caught a few vandals, and are hoping that will lead them to catching a few more. That's great news - whether the justice system actually convinces the vandals to stop vandalising is another matter. The Police can only do so much. I had almost nothing to say about vandalism - but a representative from a local housing association had a lot more to say, complaining that they are spending tens of thousands of dollars per year cleaning up after vandals on their housing estate. Nice to know that I'm not the only one who feels that way about vandalism.

If it's not your property, don't mess with it. How hard is that to understand?

Plugging away

2011-06-13T09:25:00.000+10:00

I haven't posted much since April as I've had nothing new to say. The same old problems keep re-appearing; vandalism, abandoned cars, pot holes, flooded drains, flattened signs and the odd fallen tree. As usual, I've been plugging away at reporting them, and then following up a bit later to see if they've been fixed.

What I have noticed is that I don't have as much to report any more - after a few solid years of cleaning up, there isn't much in the way of new vandalism to worry about (although I know our suburbs will go back to a disaster area in no time if we let up). I haven't seen an abandoned car in some time either. My hope is that Council staff have gotten sick of continually dealing with me reporting these things, and have started noticing more problems themselves and getting them fixed. Canada Bay Council has 300 staff - if they have their eyes open, and are encouraged to report problems, they'll get a lot more fixed than just plain old me.

The summer vandalism season is now over - the winter pot hole season is just beginning. I'll be spending the next 6 months explaining to people that pot holes and damaged road surfaces don't magically fix themselves - if you want them fixed, you have to report them to your local council or the RTA (for major roads).

I was particularly pleased with one piece of work this week - there is a pedestrian tunnel under the railway line near one of our local stations. For years, the tunnel has been dark and vandalised - vandals spray painted over the light fittings, leaving it pitch dark most of the time. I've been going through that tunnel for five years, and in all that time, have never seen an old person using it.

Not long ago, I finally discovered that it was Council's responsibility rather than RailCorp. I contacted Council, and they cleaned it up - a fresh coat of paint and a new set of lights. I went through it yesterday, and for the first time, noticed two grannies walking through it. Either that's completely by chance that I have never seen grannies down there before and spotted them today by fluke, or they were too afraid to use the tunnel before, but are now willing to use it now that it's been cleaned up.

150 days of vandalism in 50 seconds

2011-06-13T08:38:00.001+10:00

As you can see, I go past this site fairly regularly. I've made it a habit to stop and take a photo (3 photos actually which I then stitch together) in order to track what the vandals get up to over time. Last time I reported this site to the RTA for a cleanup, I suggested that they engage an artist to paint a mural on this wall - I still haven't heard anything back from them.

A few updates

2011-04-09T14:35:00.000+10:00

We have some conflicting points of view when it comes to advertising posters on road and rail bridges.

I got a comment this week saying:

These sites under the bridges etc are legal sites. It's leased out by rail Corp for advertising.

On the other hand, I got the following feedback from the RTA (Corporate Communications):

Regarding your enquiry of 23 March 2010, the RTA does not allow posters to be displayed on over/under passes on bridges so any application to do so would be declined.

I'm going to write to RailCorp and see what they have to say. I'd be surprised if they had a different answer to the RTA. RailCorp does have legal sites - most of them are on stations facing the platforms, and are large billboards. I worked for the CityRail Marketing Manager at one stage, and he was in charge of the advertising contract. Back then, it was billboards only. They might have changed their policy - I'll soon find out.

As for abandoned cars, the Suzuki that I reported a week or two ago has gone. I was coming home last week and I spotted a bloke jump starting it from another car. The next day, it was gone. I don't care where it is now - so long as we don't have unregistered cars out on the street.

I gave the iPhone Snap Send Solve application its first test last week - it was quick and easy to use and I got a response back from Leichhardt Council the next day (I reported a fresh batch of pot holes down near La Montage in Lilyfield).

Letter to Leichhardt

2011-04-02T08:58:00.000+11:00

It will be interesting to see what sort of response I get to this letter:

Citizen Service Centre,
Leichhardt Council
Ground Floor,
7-15 Wetherill Street,
Leichhardt NSW 2040

Dear Sir/Madam

Prosecution of illegal bill posters in the Leichhardt area

I am writing in regard to the proliferation of illegal bill posters on public property in the Leichhardt area, and the prosecution by Council of those responsible.

As you may be aware, this is covered by the Protection of the Environment Operations Act. Bill posting is considered illegal because it is a form of pollution. Councils can issue fines directly to those responsible for producing the bill poster.

Bill posters can degrade and become litter. The proliferation of posters can produce a significant amount of litter, particularly where the posters are made of inferior paper products, are not protected from the elements and are left to degrade. The litter is often deposited upon land and in some instances is conveyed to street gutters where it can further go on to pollute waters. Putting up posters is environmental vandalism.

I refer in particular to the following two sites:

• The bridge over the railway line – corner Catherine Street and Lilyfield Road, Lilyfield, and
• The road underpass under the railway line at Charles St, Lilyfield (corner of Darley Road).

Posters are frequently put up illegally at both sites, and more importantly, the posters come down quite often and end up as piles of litter on the footpath and on the verge. Either they are not sticking to the walls particularly well, or passing pedestrians are tearing them down.

I am requesting that Council prosecute those responsible for putting up these posters – including the organisations and companies who have paid to have them put up. I am also requesting that Council either undertakes regular clean-ups at these sites (and others like them in the Leichhardt area), or arranges for the responsible government agency to do so (eg, RTA and/or RailCorp).

Yours sincerely

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I didn't write all that myself - I lifted some of the text from Newcastle Council and some from the City of Sydney. If that's what other councils are doing and saying, then there should be no reason for Leichhardt not to follow suit.

Snap, Send, Solve

2011-04-02T07:55:00.000+11:00

A very handy iPhone app called Snap Send Solve is now available. I've installed it, but haven't actually used it in the field yet. It won't be long now before I give it a go.

The City of Sydney has set up an arts program for brightening up the city's laneways. I've been keeping an eye on the art in Dungate Lane - it's a big improvement, but some idiot vandals have been ripping bits of it down or spray painting over the top of it. Here's a bit more art being glued to the wall.

Another abandoned car - the rego on this one ran out in January, and it's been sitting here for months. Interestingly enough, I found out recently that the Mayor lives in this area - I wonder if he's ever noticed it, and bothered to report it? It's not like this particular suburb is very large - it's about 3 streets long and 4 streets wide, and this is on the main road leading out of this small suburb. I guess he has other fish to fry...

The Greens were at it again in the closing week of the election - this time, they put up a banner on the pedestrian bridge over the City West Link. It promptly came adrift on a windy day, and was flapping across the path.

This came within a whisker of blowing into my bike wheel as I went past - which would have brought me down. That would have been rather ironic - Green banner injures cyclist. I would have thought that the Greens would put up a banner where it would appeal to cyclists (more their target audience) rather than car drivers on the road below - but what would I know? I wrote to the RTA and asked them whether this banner was authorised - you have to get permission from the RTA and book a spot on these bridges if you want to put up a banner like this.

After it blew down, the Greens tied it back up. However, they put it in a position where it blocked visibility around the corner of the bridge. When I came past the next day, I couldn't see around the corner, and almost slammed into a pedestrian coming up the path. More irony - Greens nearly cause cyclist and pedestrian to crash. I don't believe they were thinking very hard when they put this banner up.

The engineers at Leichhardt Council weren't thinking very hard when they built this bike path extension around the Bay. I wrote to both the Council and Mayor before construction started and asked them to ensure that there was sufficient drainage - the previous extension is prone to flooding as well. They read my second letter (the Mayor never bothered to respond), but utterly failed to do anything about it. The new extension floods even faster than the previous extension!

Here's the Greens posters in a rail underpass. Thanks to a comment on my last post, it's clear that these are illegal and can attract a hefty fine. I'm going to write to Leichhardt Council and ask them to take action - it will be interesting to see if they do anything, given that the Mayor is a Green and he might yet become the new MP for this area. Will they take action against their own, or will they allow them to get away with breaking the law?

Some more views of the vandalised art works in Dungate Lane in the city.

Trashing the neighbourhood

2011-03-23T06:14:00.001+11:00

RailCorp are doing work on the old goods line through Lilyfield, turning it into a light rail extension. The area around one of their worksites has been thoroughly trashed by vandals, and it appears that they broke into the worksite over the weekend and pushed the site's portable toilets over. I wrote to RailCorp about the rubbish within and around the site last week - when I went past yesterday, the area was much cleaner, and I noticed three full bin liners at the gate waiting to be picked up. It's a pity that I had to ask RailCorp to clean up their own site - someone from management should have been visiting regularly, and if they were, they might have noticed the sea of McDonalds bags, drink bottles, coffee cups etc inside and outside the fence.

The walls under the railway bridge are a favourite spot for the illegal posting of posters. Last week, posters for the Greens went up. By yesterday, half of them had been torn down or fallen down - along with several other non-political posters. The rubbish from the posters was all over the footpath, and had started washing into the street.

It's a similar story at one of the overbridges along the City West Link.

I've left a comment on Jamie Parker's website, which ironically states "Help me improve Balmain, Leichhardt, Glebe and Haberfield":

Yes, I'd love you to improve the Lilyfield area. Recently, Greens posters have been illegally put up on RailCorp and RTA bridges. Most of these posters are now lying on the footpath or in the gutter as great wads of rubbish. How about going back and cleaning up after yourself, and stop using public assets for your advertising. Stop treating our environment as a rubbish tip.

The state election is this weekend. The most common form of political advertising is coreflutes nailed onto power poles. What I've noticed from recent elections is that by the weekend after the election, Labor and the Liberals will have taken most of them down. There's always the odd one that is missed, but they manage to get 95%+ very quickly. Sometimes, most of them come down on the Sunday after the election.

I'll be keeping an eye on the Greens coreflutes to see if they bother to take them down as rapidly and comprehensively. After the 2007 federal election, I had to write to them two months after the election to ask them to clean up their rubbish. They're good at putting it up, and hopeless at taking it down.

Slightly overheated car and boat

2011-03-19T09:06:00.000+11:00

I spotted a burned out car in Lilyfield on the way home last night. When I circled around to have a closer look, I found this burned out boat as well.

The bloke in the photo was quite blasé about the wreck - his input was, "They burn them here all the time and then push them into the canal".

Where I spotted it from - it stood out pretty clearly from across the canal. Will be interested to know if anyone else bothered to report it - I emailed Leichhardt Council when I got home, and rang the Police Assistance Line.

How Green is this - not.

2011-03-17T19:53:00.000+11:00

One thing I've noticed after the last few elections is that the worst party by far at cleaning up their election material is the Greens. Their coreflutes hang around on power poles for months after the election is finished - at least Labor and the Liberals generally have theirs down within a few days. The Greens were so hopeless after the Kevin07 election, I wrote to them asking to remove their rubbish from our neighbourhoods - which they did. Goodness knows why they needed prompting. Probably memory loss from too many hits on the bong.

Someone at Greens HQ must have overindulging in the weed recently, because you'd have to be on drugs to think that illegally sticking up posters on public property is a good idea.

Especially when those posters have a bad habit of peeling off the wall and blowing around as rubbish.

We've just had Clean Up Australia Day - and straight after, the Greens do their best to trash public property and to litter the environment. What a pack of hypocrites.

Clean Up results

2011-03-09T21:55:00.001+11:00

The Sunday just gone was Clean Up Australia Day. I put my name down to help at a site in a housing commission estate. This is what we found when we got there - I'm not sure if it was ever picked up - the site organiser didn't show up, so we went and helped out elsewhere.

There wasn't much rubbish to pick up at the next site, but I did find a damaged park bench (which I've reported to Council). Here's what gets me about damage like this - Council staff or contractors visit this park every week or two to mow the lawns and empty the bins. You'd think that they'd report something obvious like damaged furniture - and in some cases, they do. But in too many, they don't. There are nearly 300 Council employees - more than enough to spot just about every maintenance issue and abandoned car in our city.

This is a systemic problem that is present in just about every government body these days. Employees only concern themselves with the items contained within their narrow function, and to hell with everything else. Leaders that have their act together look for and recognise these sorts of problems and act on them before they become big problems. If our leaders were doing what they are paid to do, I wouldn't be doing this. I don't expect the Mayor to be filling in pot holes and picking up litter and mowing the grass - but I do expect him to be ensuring that the Council is performing at maximum efficiency and effectiveness in delivering services to residents. When I see things like this, it makes me wonder if they've really got a grip on things.

Abandoned truck in Chiswick, spotted whilst walking between the two Clean Up sites.

Abandoned van, spotted whilst walking home. This is the 2nd time I've reported this one - the owner registered it last time, but hasn't moved it since, and the rego lapsed back in Jan.

This empty space is the sign of success - it used to contain two Jags that had been rusting on trailers for a decade. Council removed them last month.

This wall made it into the Daily Telegraph last week. The RTA came along and painted it on Thursday the 3rd of March. This is how it looked at 1640hrs on the same Thursday.

This is how it looked 5 minutes later after 3 kids on scooters, no older than 12, had been and gone. They might have been as young as 8. They're so illiterate, they couldn't even spell "Police" - but sadly, they knew how to spell "fuck". I've reported them to the "Poice".

And this was how the wall looked on Monday the 7th. Sadly, it looks like all this was sprayed on during Clean Up Australia Day. Oh, the irony.

Strathfield vs Canada Bay

2011-03-05T08:05:00.000+11:00

I was asked last week to write an opinion piece for the Strathfield Scene on graffiti. Before submitting it, I asked a few friends to eyeball it and provide feedback. One said, "Gee, you're pretty harsh on the Strathfield mayor, and you must really like the Canada Bay mayor".

Actually, no.

If the mayor of Canada Bay was doing his job properly, this blog wouldn't exist. I'd have nothing to do. The fact that I have spent the last three years running around trying to clean up the neighbourhood is a savage indictment on his administration.

The photo below shows his campaign office from his 2003 election bid. It's on Great North Road in Five Dock. It was vacant for a long time, and was also covered in graffiti for a long time. I finally contacted the mayor just before Christmas in 2008 and asked him to call the owner and get it removed (this was before Council changed their policy regarding graffiti removal). If he really cared about cleaning things up, surely he would have noticed that the building with his name plastered all over it was vandalised and an eyesore?

As for the Strathfield vs Canada Bay comparisons, we got lucky when the state government provided grants a few years ago to buy graffiti cleaning trucks. Strathfield didn't. What annoys me is that a very effect graffiti removal program was shutdown after just one year - if the state government was serious about graffiti removal, it would have provided grants to councils every year, and Strathfield would have its own truck by now - and the Strathfield area would be much cleaner.

I regularly say good things about Canada Bay council - but when I do so, I am endorsing the work of the front line staff that go out every day and clean things up.

Going, going, gone

2011-03-02T08:23:00.000+11:00

That pile of rubbish that I reported yesterday - as of this morning, it's gone. It took Leichhardt Council staff less than 24 hours to get rid of it. Thumbs up to the staff that had to clean up after the low lifes that dumped it.

Funnily enough, I got an email at 7.15am this morning to say that a job had been registered to pick it up - that was after it had already been cleaned up.

What a load of rubbish

2011-03-01T08:59:00.000+11:00

I spotted this pile of illegally dumped rubbish on the way to work - it wasn't there yesterday morning. I've just emailed Leichhardt Council to let them know about it. I hope Council sort through it and find something that provides a clue as to who did it.

To think that it's Clean Up Australia Day this Sunday, and people are doing stuff like this.

This load was dumped right outside one of our rowing clubs, and there were dozens and dozens of rowers using this car park this morning. I wonder if any one of them has bothered to report this as well? Or is it just somebody else's problem?

Quantity has a quality all of its own

2011-02-25T09:09:00.000+11:00

People sometimes ask me, "Why do you bother with all this trivial stuff?"

Simple - quantity has a quality all of its own (as Stalin used to say).

What I mean by that is on their own, small problems are just that - small problems. However, when you add them all up, they become a big problem. If you take care of the little problems, one by one, you stop the entire place from turning into a dump. Just look at the bedroom of your average teenager - if they go for a week without picking up their dirty clothes, throwing out their rubbish, putting clean clothes away and taking any plates and glasses back to the kitchen, it quickly becomes an absolute disaster area.

I don't want my suburb to turn into the equivalent of a teenager's bedroom, so I pay attention to the small stuff. Look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

Quick cleanup

2011-02-25T08:54:00.000+11:00

About this time yesterday morning, I emailed Leichhardt Council to let them know there was a big patch of broken glass on Liliyfield Rd.

7am this morning - broken glass was gone.

Not all clean ups are that quick, but they'll never happen at all if people don't know that something needs fixing.

I had to drop the eldest off at guitar school last night - on the way home, I noticed that a car had taken out a sign on a roundabout in Five Dock - the bumper was wrapped around the sign post, and the post was almost flat against the ground. Even though I have the memory of a goldfish, I managed to remember it when I got home five minutes later and quickly dashed off an email to Canada Bay Council before I forgot about it. Total time required - about one minute. Where's the problem, what's the problem, what needs to be done about it.

The driver of the car in question didn't bother to clean up after themselves - and I bet they certainly didn't even entertain the thought of reporting the damage that they'd done - and the bill for that damage will be picked up by local ratepayers.

Smashing fence

2011-02-24T22:16:00.000+11:00

Either this fence around the Bay Run has started falling apart from old age, or someone has come past and kicked the horizontal poles off the uprights - you can see one lying in the dirt towards the left. A few more ended up in the water. I spotted this nearly two weeks ago - only just got around to reporting it tonight. Better late than never. This report went to Ashfield Council via email - took about a minute to find the email address on their website, attach the photo and let them know where and what the problem was.

Since Ashfield Council haven't fixed it over the last two weeks, I guess I'm safe in assuming that no one has bothered to tell them that the fence is all smashed up.

Getting rid of cycling hazards

2011-02-24T09:05:00.000+11:00

I ride to work fairly regularly, and every now and then, I find large patches of broken glass strewn across a bike lane - the result of a crash causing a broken headlight, or a thief smashing a car window to break into a car. One thing is certain - when this happens, no one ever bothers to sweep up the broken glass. It is a classic case of "they will take care of it", allowing everyone else to walk away and wash their hands of it.

I've cycled around this glass every morning so far this week. I've been following another cyclist every time, and the bloke in front has always had the courtesy to point the glass out to those behind (cyclists have an entire suite of hand signals to point out hazards to each other). Hundreds of cyclists have had to swerve around this glass to avoid a puncture - but have any of them bothered to do something about it (apart from pointing to it as they go past)?

I stopped for 10 seconds to take this photo. I then wrote an email to Leichhardt Council telling them where it is, what the problem is and what I want them to do about it (ie, street name and number, broken glass, please clean it up).

I've already had a response back from Council with a job number and a note that the job has been passed to the Infrastructure and Service Delivery Division.

It took me about 10 times longer to upload this photo and write a blog entry describing what I did.

It's really not that hard.

It's all about you

2011-02-23T19:58:00.000+11:00

I've had a bit of media exposure this week, so I thought I'd better do a post for people that might have dropped in here as a result.

For starters, I am not solely focused on graffiti. I report a lot of graffiti, but that's only because there is a lot of it around to report. I also do my best to get rid of pot holes, fallen trees, abandoned cars, piles of rubbish and broken or faded signage. Yes, that sounds like a lot of work - but it isn't really. I put in about an hour a week most weeks - if I'm lucky. Writing these blog posts often takes more time than photographing and reporting graffiti, abandoned cars etc.

You may notice that my name doesn't appear anywhere on this blog - even though it's now pretty easy to find out who I am. This blog is not about me - it's about you, and what you can do to "make the world a better place". Sounds awfully sappy doesn't it - it's so corny, writing that makes me feel sick.

It's only two weeks until Clean Up Australia Day - March 6th. Hundreds of thousands of Australians will participate for a few hours, helping to clean up their neighbourhood. I applaud that, and I try and take part each year. However, what about the other 364 days of the year? Why do we turn a blind eye on every other day of the year to the mess that surrounds us? Why do we find it acceptable on 364 days of the year to ignore things that need fixing, treating them as "somebody else's problem?"

I think a big part of it is because we've been conditioned to think that "they will take care of it" - "they" being some mysterious arm of government that is all-seeing and all-knowing. Well, "they" don't exist. (If you think "they" exist, put some tinfoil on your head and remember to take your pills). "They" won't fix anything - if you want something fixed, it's up to YOU to do something about it.

Thanks to the Internet, it's pretty easy to do something these days. Here's what you do:

Take a photo of the problem
Email the photo to the responsible government department, along with a description of the location and the problem, and ask them to fix it up
Remember to say "Please"

Every single bit of government that you might need to contact has a web site these days, and every web site has a "contact us" page or an email address for you to use. Use them. They also have phone numbers - I do ring from time to time, but I find that sending in a nice colour photo and a message in writing is more effective.

Don't feel embarrased about doing that - about asking (or nagging) a government agency or your council for help. Just remember, the rates and taxes that we pay are used to pay the salaries of the people working for those government departments, and they are employed to deliver services to us. About 95% of the time, they will actually help you - and they'll sometimes amaze you with how quickly they can fix things. I've spotted a problem on the way to work, reported it an hour later, and gone past it on the way home and found that it's been fixed. (That doesn't happen very often - but it does happen).

Your Council probably has a Service Desk that has been setup solely to look after you (and the other 59,999 residents in your area). Their job is to help you with stuff like this - if you speak to them nicely and treat them with respect, they'll do their best to get the problem fixed. They are humans too - they might even live in the same suburb as you, and they'll thank you for helping to tidy up their neighbourhood as well.

There are times of course when the whole system breaks down, or you find yourself dealing with an utter roadblock. I've dealt with a few of them over the last 3 years - in almost every case, I've found a way to go around or over them. Persisence generally pays off. Just remember to put everything in writing, and try and make an argument that sounds sane and reasonable - I've posted multiple examples throughout this blog. Some of the correspondence that I've had over the years reads a bit like Fawlty Towers at times. At other times, emails or electronic forms have gone missing (eaten by the ghost in the machine) - but all I do then is send it again.

Here's one tip though - almost every government department is absolutely useless at telling you when the problem has been fixed. Most of them simply send a crew out to deal with the problem, and then never follow up to tell you that your issue has been taken care of. If you don't hear back from them, it's not because they're not doing something about fixing it - it's just that most of them don't have a system to "close the loop". The only way you'll find out that your problem has been fixed is if you go back to the site and have a look for yourself. Give it a couple of weeks - if nothing has happened, send them a follow up message and ask what's going on.

Using Twitter to clean up a city

2011-02-21T14:59:00.000+11:00

I recieved a very interesting comment from San Francisco with links to a Twitter feed and a blog dedicated to cleaning up the Mission District. I'd never thought of using Twitter for this - thanks for the tip.

Graffiti time lapse

2011-01-30T13:44:00.000+11:00

A wall over the period of less than one month. This was painted out around Christmas time by the RTA, who now regularly paint this without any prompting.

Six days later.

7 days later.

12 days later.

13 Days later.

23 days later.

It doesn't take long, does it?

Results

2011-01-24T17:58:00.000+11:00

Ask, and you shall recieve.

The RTA has painted over large slabs of graffiti along the CityWest link. They've also cleaned a number of traffic light cabinets in Drummoyne.

RailCorp have painted over bridge graffiti in Rhodes.

Sydney Water have cleaned up one of their pumping stations in Ryde.

Canada Bay Council have towed away a handful of abandoned cars and removed graffiti from some local playgrounds. Leichhardt council have also removed an abandoned car that I spotted recently on their patch.

Energy Australia have been busy cleaning their kiosks.

It's just a matter of telling them where the problem lies and asking them to fix it.

What do hippies get up to?

2011-01-11T16:10:00.009+11:00

I'll start on a lighter note for once - an amusing bit of graffiti under a road bridge in Rhodes. The caption says "Happy New Year (cause U no wat hippies get up 2)". It's nice to see a mildly amusing piece of graffiti once in a blue moon.

Unfortunately, the rest tends to be like this. "Cheers c*nts".

I'm not sure who is responsible for cleaning this up - it's a bureaucratic Bermuda Triangle. This used to be a railway bridge, but it's been converted into a cycle/pedestrian bridge. The question is - who owns it now? Is it still a RailCorp asset, or is it now with the RTA, or the Ministry of Transport, or what? I'm going to have to write a letter to get to the bottom of this one if my website inquiry gets nowhere.

This is the underside of the railway bridge - there is a new railway bridge next to the old one, and this is definitely a RailCorp problem. Issues like this can be reported via the CityRail website. There is a railway underpass near one of the stations that I use from time to time - vandals have sprayed paint over all the light fittings, so it's pitch black after dark. That makes it easier for them to vandalise the tunnel or to rob people, so I've finally remembered to report it to CityRail.

Not long now until I'll have reported 150 vandalised Energy Australia kiosks like this one.

Graffiti in Rydalmere - is it 'artistic' to say that "Fems love big penis"?

Or that "Jared is gay"?

Interesting message on this barrier - "The world is ours". That's a nice thought - now, how about keeping it neat and tidy instead of wandering around damaging and spray painting everything in sight?

This team of vandals have thoughtfully left their names on the back of the barrier. Amazing how much damage 11 teens with a few spray cans can do. The entire area is littered with their tags - and this is a new housing development that really only opened last year. They've been very busy.

The new walking track along the river has a dozen or so street lights overhead - every single one of them has been smashed. Is it the same group that's done all the tagging? Maybe, maybe not.

There used to be a plaque on this rock commemorating.... something. I suspect it's been stolen. I've let Council know.

The summer holidays are always a peak time for graffiti, vandalism and malicious damage. I've seen a number of street signs around the place that have been bent partially or fully over - some have been snapped off. That's not the result of being hit by a car - that's teenagers grabbing the pole and pulling it over. I reported the one below to Canada Bay Council via email on Sunday - they fixed it on Monday. That's another couple of hundred bucks that the ratepayers will have to pick up the tab for.

Graffiti on a Sydney Water pumping station. 2116 is the post code for Rydalmere. I've read a bit about gangs putting up tags with their post code, but this is the first one I have seen east of Parramatta. I've reported this via the Sydney Water web site.

Finally, a problem caused by engineering "vandals". A trench has been dug across the road here between the jetty on the other side of the road and the park behind where I'm standing. When they've filled it in, the crew has either run out of tar, or they've been in a hurry to get home. The surface of the refilled trench is at least an inch below the rest of the road in some places. It's not so bad if you hit that in a car, but it's an almighty crash when you hit it on a bike - and this is one of the busiest bike paths in the inner west.

I emailed Leichhardt Council this morning and asked them to put a bit more tar in the trench - they've logged it and passed it over to their maintenance division for action.

Bits and pieces

2011-01-07T07:33:00.004+11:00

Some of the members or visitors to UTS rowers take an occasional liberty with the foot path, parking right across the path. I almost ran (literally) into this one in December - I'm fed up with it, so I reported this to Ashfield Council. A ranger rang me the next day and said he was going down there to have a chat with management about it.

There's been a lot of talk about building bike paths around Sydney of late. The path around the back of Darling Harbour has recently been realigned, widened and painted. Just one problem - they didn't bother to fill in all the enormous holes and cracks in the new route before laying down the paint. I wrote to Clover Moore about this particular one before Christmas, and got a letter back saying it is somebody else's problem - in this case, the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority. That's funny - all the media attention regarding bike paths has been directed at Clover Moore. She's been taking all the credit - but doesn't want to take any of the responsibility for the problems.

This car is a "serial offender" as far as lack of registration goes. It was left on the road all last year until the rego expired. I reported it a few months after the rego expired, and soon after an orange "we're going to tow you away" sticker appeared on it, it was re-registered. The rego has lapsed again - it expired in November. I've reported it again. Let's see if it goes for good this time.

This sign in Lilyfield was bent over to the point where it was going to collect a cyclist sooner or later. I reported it to Leichhardt Council before Christmas, and came back from holidays to find it fixed.

These two Jags have been quietly rusting away in Abbotsford for about 10 years - they were last registered about that long ago. They used to have drop sheets over them - they rotted and finally blew off in a storm late last year.

I've reported them to Council - because they are on trailers, I'm not sure about the laws regarding towing them away. We'll see - it will be an interesting test case.

A few more for the crusher

2010-12-05T10:27:00.004+11:00

A short stroll around the suburb last week unearthed a handful of abandoned vehicles. I don't go for a walk looking for these things - I go for a walk to stretch my legs. I just have an eye for spotting things that look out of place - like rusting, spider web covered out of rego abandoned vehicles.

The first was a courier van that hasn't done any deliveries for 18 months - the rego expired in Feb 2009.

If I can find the rego sticker (not all abandoned cars have one visible), I photograph it and email it to Council, along with a photo of the vehicle and the street address where I found it. Council can only remove vehicles if the rego has expired, so they know you're not wasting their time if you send them evidence that the rego expired long ago. They don't want to have to do a pile of paperwork, only to find that the vehicle is still registered. (Sometimes it is registered, but the owner hasn't bothered to attach the new rego sticker - you can cop a $75 fine for forgetting to do that).

I found two abandoned cars on opposite sides of the street. The rego of one expired almost 12 months ago, and the other one about 6 months ago.

I guess this car was crashed into something, and the owner couldn't be bothered fixing it - so they just abandoned it in the street - leaving it to the ratepayer to pay for its removal. Some people have no class at all.

Art - cabinets and laneways

2010-12-05T10:16:00.003+11:00

I spotted these in a laneway in the city last week - it's a series of 5 babushka dolls that have been glued to the wall.

The lower part of each doll is a montage of photos of large dolls that someone has lugged around Sydney and photographed in iconic locations. I'm assuming this is guerrilla art of some sort - it makes a lovely change from the tags that are sometimes scrawled along these walls.

Canada Bay Council has engaged an artist to beautify a number of RTA traffic light cabinets around the Drummoyne area. Personally, I think the cabinets in Leichhardt are better - but that's just my personal taste. This is certainly much better than the graffiti tags that were there previously.

I just hope that Council views this as a success, and rolls it out across the rest of the Canada Bay area.

More of these dolls - anyone for a pie floater?

Smashing stuff - update

2010-11-21T09:00:00.002+11:00

Someone - I am assuming Council - cleaned up this smashed pay phone very quickly. I reported it after 5pm on Thursday, and by 7am on Friday, the pay phone had been wrapped in warning tape and all the glass on the footpath had been swept up.

They didn't get all the glass - some was left on the road and in the bike lane - but the turnaround time was quite amazing.

Smashing stuff

2010-11-18T20:13:00.004+11:00

A Telstra pay phone tonight - a car went over the kerb and smashed the advertising screen on the back of it. Might have been an impatient driver who didn't want to wait for someone turning right, went around them and found that the road wasn't wide enough. The police turned up, and a tow truck took the car away.

Result - broken glass all over the footpath and road.

The impact must have been fairly hard, as glass was sprayed a good 10 metres down the road.

The owner of the car isn't going to clean up all that glass. The police won't do it either, or the tow truck driver. Lot's of people had a look at the glass when I went past, but no one seemed inclined to do anything about it.

I've emailed these photos to Council, along with the location. They'll probably have it cleaned up tomorrow. If you don't tell them about it, how can they take care of it?

How a rubbish trap is supposed to work

2010-11-15T20:20:00.002+11:00

We've had good rain for the last few days - the run off has flushed plenty of rubbish down the local canals and into the rubbish traps that line the harbour. This trap in Lilyfield has come adrift twice so far this year - when it's floating around aimlessly, it isn't collecting rubbish like this.

When I see all this rubbish being scooped up by the trap, it makes the minor hassle of reporting it all seem worthwhile.

Pot holes filled - success

2010-11-15T20:18:00.001+11:00

The pot holes in Lilyfield that I reported on Wednesday have all been filled in.

See - all you have to do is report them.

Testing, testing...

2010-11-11T19:20:00.004+11:00

John Rolfe, the "public defender" at the Daily Telegraph has started a campaign to get councils to fix basic services - like pot holes in our streets.

Good on him.

Canada Bay Council is generally pretty good at fixing pot holes - if you bother to tell them where they are. When I spot a pot hole, I try and photograph it, then email it to Council along with the location and approximate size. In some cases, I've reported one I've seen on the way to work and then found that it's been fixed by the time I've headed for home. The key thing is letting Council know they've got a problem - they can't be everywhere at once.

We've had some heavy rain around here lately, and possibly as a result, at least a dozen pot holes have opened up in Perry Lane, Lilyfield (near Le Montage). Most are the size of dinner plates or larger, and a few inches deep.

By the look of all those tar patches, plenty of pot holes have opened up here previously.

I emailed the top photo to Leichhardt Council on Wednesday morning, and got a response just after lunch. The pot holes have been logged. I go past here every few days - I'll keep an eye on how long it takes them to fill them in.

Destruction of public property

2010-11-05T06:44:00.002+11:00

Vandals just love smashing up our local bus shelters. This is the 2nd or 3rd time that I've reported this particular one in Abbotsford. Last time, the glass panel was completely smashed and there was glass all over the footpath. This one is right outside a primary school and day care centre- big chunks of broken glass and little kids don't go well together.

Bus shelters are owned and maintained by our local Councils, not the bus companies. So ratepayers are paying for this damage directly.

I've emailed this photo to Canada Bay Council, along with the address of the bus shelter. Council are generally very good at getting onto problems like this - once they know about them. If there is glass all over the footpath, they'll have someone out straight away to clean it up. Replacing the glass panel usually takes a little longer.

Unfortunately, a lot of people (including bus passengers) look at the broken glass and think that somebody else will take care of fixing it up. No they won't - if you want it fixed, you need to do something about it. Something as simple as emailing Council to tell them about the problem.

Beautifying our streetscapes

2010-11-01T21:38:00.002+11:00

The Leichhardt Council area has had them for some time - artistically decorated RTA traffic light cabinets. Normally, these cabinets are a dull grey, enlivened quite regularly with a variety of graffiti tags. Rather than endlessly paint them to cover the tags, the RTA allows Councils to decorate them with public art.

There are a lot of these cabinets around Canada Bay - every set of traffic lights has one. Council made a start this week by working on half a dozen of them in an area that is high visibility (in terms of passing traffic) and high impact (in terms of the amount of graffiti applied).

It's a great start - I hope to see more of it in future.

Who does what around here?

2010-11-01T21:19:00.002+11:00

I received a response from NSW Maritime last week regarding a broken rubbish trap in Rodd Point. It turns out the trap is owned by Sydney Water, even though NSW Maritime removes the rubbish. Ah, what a tangled web our government departments weave.

The good news is that next time the trap fails, I know who to report it to - NSW Maritime were kind enough to give me the direct phone number and email address of the person responsible at Sydney Water. I suppose they are sick of me writing to the Chief Executive, and want me to annoy someone else. And I can do it for free - sending an email beats paying for a letter and stamp.

I know the courts are slow, but this is ridiculous

2010-10-28T06:16:00.002+11:00

In April this year, I emailed the people responsible for managing the Downing Centre court house and asked them to replace the flags out the front - they were completely worn out. Faded, torn and tattered. I like seeing the Australian flag flying outside public buildings - but I also want to see that it's flown properly and with respect. Those responsible for the flags at the Downing Centre appeared to have no idea about flag protocol.

I noticed last week that they've finally raised two new flags.

It's incredible that it's taken them six months to procure two flags. Six months!

How fifty cents can save the world

2010-10-25T20:53:00.002+11:00

Maybe that's just a slight exaggeration. But spending fifty cents on a stamp has helped to keep Sydney harbour clean.

Maritime NSW has installed rubbish traps on a number of canals that drain into the harbour. From time to time - either due to foul weather or foul play - the traps come adrift from their moorings. When that happens, rubbish flows straight into the harbour.

The first photo was taken on 11 October, showing the trap wide open. It had been like this since at least 29 September, when I first noticed it. I wasn't organised enough to report it straight away, although this just goes to show how many other users of the Bay Run have been paying attention to the rubbish traps (or noticing and not caring) - none!

I wrote and posted a very simple letter to NSW Maritime on 11 Oct:

Mr Steve Dunn

Chief Executive

NSW Maritime
James Craig Road
Rozelle NSW 2039
11 October 2010

Dear Mr Dunn

Reporting of broken rubbish trap on Iron Cove Creek, Rodd Point

I wrote to you in July 2010 regarding the rubbish trap on Iron Cove Creek having come adrift.

It was fixed shortly afterwards, but it has since become adrift again.

Yours sincerely

On 14 October, the trap was fixed. Last time I wrote to NSW Maritime about this problem, they fixed the trap within a day. NSW Maritime is a fairly small organisation, so the CEO doesn't need to go through a lot of management layers to get the problem fixed.

When I went past tonight, it was good to see that the trap had already collected a lot of rubbish - not that it's a good thing that a lot of rubbish is drifting down this canal, but it's good to see that at least the trap is grabbing it before it ends up in the harbour.

Downhearted

2010-10-16T09:20:00.003+11:00

The article below appeared in this week's edition of the Inner West Courier. I pity the poor property owners in parts of Strathfield that are being hammered by vandals - it's always the businesses that get hit the most.

The problem here appears to be a disjointed approach to cleaning up an entire area. Graffiti attracts graffiti, so if a number of property owners don't pull their weight and leave their premises in an appalling state, their neighbours suffer as vandals repeatedly come back to hit the cleaned areas. You need to clean an entire area all at once, and then keep it clean, rather than just hitting single points every now and then.

As for the Liberal Party policy - I like the idea of a centralised hotline for cleaning up graffiti. I've spent months wading through bureaucratic thickets trying to find out which agency or department is responsible for cleaning up certain areas - sometimes without result. Public servants love to pass the buck to someone else - a graffiti hotline will eliminate the pain of having to contact multiple agencies before you finally find someone that will take responsibility and action.

As for taking away the driving licences of vandals - I'd handover vandal's cars to people who have had their property vandalised and let the victims spray paint them as much as they like. Let vandals feel what it is like to have their property rights abused - that might change their attitude towards graffiti.

Graffiti in EnergyAustralia’s sights

2010-10-10T13:06:00.004+11:00

The title of this post comes from a press release that Energy Australia sent me back in April.

Energy Australia cleans up about 40 instances of graffiti per week, and graffiti reports are up by 50% since 2007. It costs Energy Australia (and energy consumers) $500,000 a year to remove graffiti. From the press release:

“Residents in suburbs with high reports of graffiti are doing the right thing in alerting us to the problem so our crews can remove the graffiti quickly.

“We’ve found that the quicker we remove graffiti from our equipment the more of a deterrent it is to other vandals.

“Graffiti vandalism is not only a blight on neighbourhoods but it’s a safety risk and most importantly, it’s a crime.

“That’s why we’ve doubled our efforts and appealed to the community to report graffiti to help us keep the network clean and safe.”

The table below is from the press release. Between 2008 and April 2010, there were 194 graffiti reports in Canada Bay. About 100 of those reports were from me, so it's nice to know there are others out there lodging reports. I've noticed that over the last two years, Energy Australia's turn around time has improved dramatically. They now sometimes remove graffiti only a few days after its been reported - which is great to see.

How Green is the electorate really?

2010-10-09T22:09:00.002+11:00

Balmain is supposed to be one of the greenest areas in Australia. Leichhardt Council is dominated by Greens. The state seat may go Green at the next election.

The Bay Run sits right in the middle of this Green Utopia. If Greens like to exercise like everyone else, 10% of the people who walk or run around the Bay must vote Green.

All of them walk past this rubbish trap when doing a lap of The Bay. This rubbish trap keeps an enormous amount of litter out of the harbour. It is a Very Good Thing. However, it's completel useless when it comes adrift from its moorings - like it has in this photo.

Whenever this trap comes adrift, I report it to Maritime NSW. They usually come out and fix it pretty quickly. Although this area is awash with Greens, how come none of them ever, ever bother to report it? Why are they happy to walk past it, watching rubbish drift into the harbour, without feeling the urge to do something about it?

Greens - all talk, no action.

Two more cars heading for the dump

2010-10-09T22:01:00.002+11:00

It's not a car - just a humorous amendment to a sign.

This vehicle didn't have any plates on it, and the rego expired back in April.

The rego on this one expired back in August.

I emailed all these photos to Council last week (except the "knob" photo) - they're usually pretty quick when it comes to getting rid of abandoned cars.

Three for the price of one

2010-10-09T21:56:00.002+11:00

I dropped Ashfield Council a line this week to let them know that one of their bus shelters in Haberfield had been vandalised.

About an hour later, one of their staff rang me to ask which one exactly I had been talking about - they had been to the street in question, checked all the bus shelters and found that three had been vandalised. Three for the price of one.

Nice work Ashfield - they were onto it quickly and without any fuss.

CPTED for dummies

2010-10-02T21:19:00.003+10:00

CPTED means "Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design". In other words, don't make things easy for crooks.

A classis CPTED strategy for reducing graffiti is to put plants in front of walls that are easy to vandalise. This road side noise wall is a classic example - the RTA has planted all along the side of it facing the houses, and although the wall stretches for several hundred metres, this spot here is the only one with graffiti on it. The creepers and bushes do a great job of discouraging vandals. (I've written to the RTA and suggested that they extend the trellising to cover this spot so that creepers will eventually cover it over).

The rest of the wall looks like this - green, pleasant and clean.

It's not so easy to use this strategy where there's not enough sunlight to encourage plant growth. When that happens, you end up with "art work" like this.

Quick work

2010-09-22T23:16:00.002+10:00

This van has been sitting here for months, slowly getting covered in leaves as the tyres go flat. As the rego expired last month, I finally got around to reporting it last week. When I went past a few days later, there was already an orange council sticker on it communicating an intention to tow it away. See the plastic box on the roof with beach gear in it? That's been sitting there for at least 3 months as well.

If the car has a visible rego sticker, I take a photo of that as well and email it to Council. That lets them know all the details of the car (make, model, rego and expiry date) and seems to help things along. Councils can't tow a vehicle away if the registration is current, so if you can show that the rego has expired, it makes their life easier.

Common sense appears at Sydney Water

2010-09-17T06:08:00.002+10:00

My com-padre sent me the following email earlier this week:

Please be informed that this location is currently under our Fortnightly inspection that our contractor attends the site every 2 weeks and they will remove the graffiti if there is any.

The idea is to send the message to offender that Sydney water will persistently remove the graffiti at this site until they stop.

Any question please feel free to contact me via this email address

Regards,

It's only taken a few years, but it's great to see that they've finally gotten the point. Inspect regularly, paint quickly and the problem quickly diminishes. Be proactive.

I've noticed around our area that the same idea seems to have sunk in at Australia Post, and things have much improved with the RTA. However, Energy Australia just don't appear to be interested in being more proactive. If I can convince Energy Australia to start undertaking regular visual inspections of their kiosks, I can hang up my camera and find a more interesting past time.

How to attract people to public transport

2010-09-16T06:34:00.003+10:00

Public transport is one area that cops a beating from vandals. Big graffiti murals on trains make the news, but the acres of small tags spread across all the bus infrastructure has been forgotten about. Bus shelters, seats and signage are repeatedly hit by vandals. Cleaning a shelter or seat isn't that hard, but cleaning the signage tends to result in the information on the sign being erased by the chemical cleaning agents.

Apart from being a mess, this sign is out of date. It advertises a "travelpass", which has been replaced by the "mybus" or "myzone" travel system. I guess the people in charge of marketing the new ticketing system forgot about cleaning up and updating all the bus info poles out there in the suburbs.

What continues to frustrate me is that a bus driver pulls up at this spot every 15 minutes or so between 6am and 8pm. Dozens of bus drivers would see the state of this sign (and many others like it) every day. However, none can ever be bothered to report the vandalism. The excuse from Sydney Buses is that councils are responsible for the seating and signage. Fine - but why is there no mechanism for communicating damage to that infrastructure between Sydney Buses and councils? Why do Sydney Buses just wash their hands of the matter and claim that it is somebody else's problem?

Reasons to be grumpy

2010-07-25T15:20:00.003+10:00

It took Maritime NSW the better part of a month to fix this rubbish trap on the harbour. I had to hassle them three times before they finally took action.

Here's a photo I took last year of the same trap, showing how much rubbish it collected. The trap is at least a metre deep, and they tend to fill right up between visits from the Maritime rubbish boat. Imagine how much junk flowed into the harbour during the month when it was inoperable....

Charming little sods

2010-07-25T13:01:00.002+10:00

If you do a bit of searching, you'll quickly find academics who spend their time running around at the taxpayer's expense defending graffiti. For once, I'd like to hear one of them defend graffiti like this - a dozen tags of "cum" splashed across the top of a local business. That's so erudite, so witty, so artistic - not.

Just around the corner, we have a new boy in town. There must be a war going on in graffiti-land over turf. This bloke has been going around crossing out the tags of the long established vandals, and putting his own up instead. If the two groups involved happen to meet by accident on a dark night, things could get ugly.

Here's an example of engineering vandalism being undertaken by Leichhardt Council. I describe it as that because they're currently repeating the same mistakes they made with the last section of path that they laid through here - the path slopes the wrong way, and has no drainage, so that it turns into a canal when it rains.

I wrote to Council not long ago, and got a response saying that my letter had been passed to a particular gentleman within Council. I bet that by the time he gets around to responding, the path (or canal) will be complete and it will be too late to do anything about it. If you're going to build a path, at least build it properly. It makes my blood boil to see our money spent on such badly engineered works, when it would cost no more to do it sensibly.

I emailed the Mayor of Leichhardt about this several months ago, but I guess he decided to ignore that email - the results speak for themselves.

Not so eggcelent

2010-07-19T21:40:00.002+10:00

I was having a drink with a friend last year and she told me a story about how she was running around the Bay and she had an egg thrown at her from a car.... I think. Or maybe the story was about a friend of hers that was egged. The details are lost in the mists of time.

I'd forgotten all about it until I was going around the Bay Run on Monday morning and spotted a number of broken eggs on the path. I went past three before I twigged to the possibility that some idiots had been driving along Henley Marine Drive and throwing eggs at pedestrians and cyclists. When I got to the next egg, I stopped and took a photo - the way it is streaked across the path suggests that it was hurled, rather than dropped.

I'm going to do a bit of asking around and see if anyone I know has ever been the victim of an attempted egging. I wouldn't want to get hit by an egg thrown from a car travelling at 40-50km/h.

To the scrap yard

2010-07-18T11:48:00.005+10:00

I went for a wander around the Concord/North Strathfield area this morning and found six abandoned cars - which is a record. One was only 2 months out of rego, but a few had been sitting around rotting since 2008.

Reporting abandoned cars is easy. I simply email Council with a photo of the car, along with a photo of the rego sticker and the street address. They take care of the rest.

When I photograph an abandoned car, I also photograph the nearest house number and the street signs at the nearest cross street - just so I remember where they are when I get home.

Post no bills

2010-07-17T22:42:00.002+10:00

Ever wonder where all those posters come from? From a white van like this one. It was quite a professional setup - the back was full of flat wooden racks, with the posters laid out neatly on each shelf in the racks. The two blokes putting up the posters were wearing safety vests, and looked quite legitimate.

Except that just about every Council in the area doesn't allow this sort of thing.

I saw this pair here a few months ago. They got pretty angry when they saw me taking their photo. They were also parked in a no stopping zone - a bus came around the corner from the left and the driver honked at them to move their van, which was blocking buses from turning properly. I'm going to report their registration to Leichhardt Council and see if anything happens - YLZ 461.

Success - but what a pain

2010-07-16T19:30:00.002+10:00

At last - someone from Maritime NSW has come along and fixed up this rubbish trap. It's been a month since I first noticed that it was broken and adrift, and reported it to them. I followed up again a week later. I concluded over the weekend that the message was not getting through, so I wrote the CEO a good old fashioned letter and posted it on Monday. I guess he got it on Tuesday or Wednesday and action happened shortly thereafter.

Not much rubbish was caught by this trap for a bit over a month. What a crying shame.

This is not a swimming pool

2010-07-13T19:29:00.002+10:00

I hate the fact that you can't walk or ride around The Bay when it rains without having to trudge through an endless stream of deep puddles in the Leichhardt area. The existing path has been laid down with no thought as to how water is supposed to drain away. Instead of building up the path in the middle so that water drains towards the edges, Council has instead built a concave path, so water runs into the middle and stays there.

There is only one drain grate along the entire path, and it isn't at the lowest point so it doesn't do much good. The entire path is built at or below the level of the surrounding turf, so water running off the hill on the right runs straight onto the path and settles there. The drainage is so bad, puddles hang around for days after any rain.

I sent the above photo to the Mayor of Leichhardt 3 months ago with a plea that when the next section of path was built, that drainage be factored in - he never bothered to respond. If the Romans could build well drained roads 2000 years ago, I don't see why we can't build properly drained paths today. A road engineer would never dream of building a road without thinking about drainage - why then do we spend taxpayers money on building paths without thinking the same way? Conceptually, they are the same - a ribbon of concrete. Just because one carries bikes or people rather than cars, doesn't mean that drainage should be ignored.

As the Mayor is ignoring me, and work is about to start on the next section of path, I dashed off a letter to the General Manager today. Maybe he'll take note - I asked him to ensure that his staff or contractors build a path, rather than a canal or a swimming pool.

One more Council in the mix

2010-07-12T22:15:00.003+10:00

Over the weekend, I had a look at how often the Mayor of Canada Bay, Angelo Tsirekas, was appearing in Council funded publications compared to the Mayors of other Councils in our area.

Incredibly, he appeared in 72 photos, whilst the Mayors of 4 other Councils had a total of only 43 photos between the lot of them.

I have just had a look at the publications of Ashfield Council, and can now add them to the mix.

Ashfield publishes three community newsletters. Photos of the Mayor hardly appear in any of them.

The Bulletin:

April 2009 - 0
March 2009 - 1

Ashfield Council News

June 2010 - 0
March 2010 - 1
Sept 2009 - 0
June 2009 - 3
Mar 2009 - 0

Ashfield Community Report

2008 - 1

That's a total of 6 photos in 8 publications - an average of 0.75 photos per edition. That now means that 5 Mayors have had a total of 49 photos in their Council funded publications, as opposed to Angelo Tsirekas having 72.

Here's how they rank (average photos of the Mayor per publication):

Ashfield - 0.75
Strathfield - 1
Leichhardt - 1.3
Canterbury - 1.5
Burwood - 1.9
Canada Bay - 5.5

You could say we are head and shoulders above the other Councils in our area - except that it is Angelo's head and shoulders that we are seeing so much of.

--------

Update.

I just couldn't resist the urge to check out some more Councils.

Ryde

City View

I could only access one back copy, but the count of Mayoral photos was zero.

Hunter's Hill

Council Newsletter

June 2010 - 1
Dec 2009 - 0
Sep 2009 - 0
July 2008 - 0

Holroyd Council

Holroyd Herald

Sep 2009 - 3
Apr 2009 - 1
Nov 2008 - 1
June 2008 - 2

Lane Cove

Jane 2010 - 0

Couldn't access any back issues.

So the updated league table looks like this:

Lane Cove - 0
Ryde - 0
Hunter's Hill - 0.25
Ashfield - 0.75
Strathfield - 1
Leichhardt - 1.3
Canterbury - 1.5
Holroyd - 1.75
Burwood - 1.9
Canada Bay - 5.5

However, after going through 9 Councils, I am still only up to 57 photos of their Mayor's, as opposed to 72 of our Angelo. How many Council web sites do I have to trawl through before the total of all Mayor's exceeds Angelo? 15? 20?

I give up.

NSW Maritime - 3rd time lucky

2010-07-11T10:30:00.003+10:00

Around 15 June, I used the "contact us" section of the NSW Maritime website to let them know that the rubbish trap on Iron Cove Creek was broken.

A week later, I rang their call centre to let them know again - just in case any computer gremlins ate my initial attempt at contact.

The trap still hasn't been fixed - it's now almost 4 weeks since I first tried to let them know. Therefore, I have just wasted 10 minutes of my Sunday morning writing a polite letter to the Chief Executive of NSW Maritime, Mr Steve Dunn, to ask him if my messages are getting through to those responsible for maintaining and repairing these assets. I don't care what their problems are - I just want the trap fixed!

As I was doing a bit of Googling on this topic, I found a website for Harbourkeepers, which is worth a look.

How much exposure is enough?

2010-07-10T17:38:00.003+10:00

In October last year, I wrote to the local paper regarding the incredible number of photos of our Mayor - Angelo Tsirekas - that were appearing in the Council funded community newsletters - he's appeared 72 times since November 2008.

It didn't get published.

One of the Councillors had a go at the Mayor in the paper last week for the same thing - and apparently copped a bit of flak from him at the next meeting.

I've written a followup letter to the Inner West Courier - we'll see if I get published this time.

I don't mind seeing a few photos of the Mayor in Council funded publications - but a few does not mean 10 or more photos. Out of interest, I had a look at the newsletters of five councils this week - Canada Bay (where I live), Caterbury (which employs our Mayor), Burwood, Strathfield and Leichhardt (as they are all close by). Note that every newsletter includes two photos of the Mayor as a matter of course - one photo with all the other councillors, and one over the Mayoral column. I have not counted those photos.

Incredibly, the Mayors of those four other Councils appear in a total of 43 photos, whilst our Mayor clocks up 72 just on his own!

Canada Bay publishes two newsletters - one for residents and one for business.

Bayside business newsletter:

Autumn 2009 - 11
Winter 2008 - 0
Autumn 2008 - 2
Summer 2008 - 8

Bayside Brief:

June 2010 - 11
April 2010 - 2
Feb 2010 - 6
Dec 2009 - 8
Oct 2009 - 11
Aug 2009 - 2
Apr 2009 - 1
Feb 2009 - 5
Nov 2008 - 5

That's an average of 5.5 photos per publication and a total of 72 photos over 13 editions.

Burwood:

Winter 2010 - 3
Autumn 2010 - 2
Summer 2009 - 3
Spring 2009 - 0
Winter 2009 - 0
Autumn 2009 - 0
Accent on Seniors - July 2009 - 2
Accent on Safety July 2008 - 6
Accent on Environment 2008 - 1

9 publications, 17 photos, average of 1.9 per edition.

Strathfield:

May June 2010 - 1
Mar/Apr 2010 - 2
Jan/Feb 2010 - 1
Nov/Dec 2009 - 2
Sept 2009 - 0
July 2009 - 0
May 2009 - 0
March 2009 - 0
Jan 2009 - 3

9 publications, 9 photos, average of 1 photos per edition.

Leichhardt:

Dec 2009 - 3
Oct 2009 - 4
Autumn budget 2009 - 0
Autumn 2009 - 1
Spring 2008 sustainability - 0
Spring 2008 - 0

6 publications, 8 photos, average of 1.3 photos per edition.

Canterbury:

6 publications, 9 photos, average of 1.5 photos per edition.

If the Mayor wants to publish a newsletter at his own expense, he can put 100 photos in it for all I care. However, it's a different matter when ratepayers are funding it. Most other Mayors appear on average once or twice per newsletter - that sounds about right. The newsletters are about Council business - they are not the private property of the Mayor.

Dealing with some councils is so bloody draining

2010-07-09T19:27:00.002+10:00

Here's a drain in Balmain back at the end of May. I've been going through here now for over 4 years, and every time we get a bit of rain, a big puddle forms here because the drain is blocked.

I finally did my block and contacted Leichhardt Council and asked them to clean it out. I don't know if the council does the cleaning, or whether the drain belongs to Sydney Water or whoever - if it's not their job, they should at least pass the message on, or tell me that it's not their problem.

It looks like they can't be bothered doing either - here is the same drain again tonight. Except that the puddle is slightly smaller than usual.

Is it really that difficult to lift the grate and clean out the muck underneath?

Cleaning up at UTS

2010-07-08T09:07:00.002+10:00

As I walked past one of the UTS buildings in Chinatown a few weeks ago, I noticed a lot of graffiti on the wall facing the Entertainment Centre. It took me about 5 minutes of hunting through their website to find a contact for their building maintenance people, and I sent them an email as a bit of a stab in the dark. I was pretty doubtful anything was going to happen.

Going past again this morning, I spotted this bloke using chemicals and a high pressure hose to scrub the graffiti off. UTS never bothered to respond saying that they were going to clean it off - but this is as good a response as any.

If you ask someone to clean their property, generally they will.

Following up the following up

2010-07-05T17:53:00.003+10:00

It's getting on three weeks since I first tried to tell Maritime NSW about a busted rubbish trap down our way. The longer they leave it broken, the more rubbish we'll see flowing into the harbour. Apparently today is World Environment Day, and Maritime NSW aren't doing much towards making the world a better place at the moment.

I might make another follow up phone call tomorrow. After that, it's time to start writing a proper letter to the CEO.

A rubbish example of follow up

2010-06-22T09:02:00.002+10:00

Last Tuesday, I tried to contact NSW Maritime to let them know that one of their rubbish traps was busted and no longer collecting rubbish. As their call centre closes at 4.30pm, and there appears to be no option to leave a message, I tried using a form on their web site to lodge a report.

One week later, the trap is still broken. I had another look at the contact page at NSW Maritime to see who to call. It told me to call 131256 - but when I did so, the options that the computerised voice gave me didn't match what was listed on the website. I had no idea what option is select, so I just took a punt.

At least the bloke that I spoke to seemed to have some idea of what I was talking about. We'll see how long it takes them to hook the boom back up to the trap. I wonder what happened to my first attempt at contact? Have the gremlins been attacking the Maritime computer network as well?

Rubbish collection all adrift

2010-06-15T17:00:00.003+10:00

Maritime NSW operates a number of rubbish collection traps where creeks flow into the harbour - there are two in our area. One of them has had a bad habit of late of coming adrift from one of its moorings - whether this is a result of wear and tear or foul play, I don't know.

Without the trap in place, great wads of rubbish will drift down the creek and into the harbour - not a nice thing to happen. The amount of rubbish that backs up at this point after heavy rain has to be seen to be believed. Without the traps, our harbour foreshores would be a real mess.

The Maritime call centre closes at 4.30pm, so I sent them an email this afternoon to let them know that this needs fixing.

It's a pain when the rain does not go down the drain

2010-06-04T16:13:00.005+10:00

First, the good news - Canada Bay Council has removed all the graffiti from the playground at Livvi's Place.

This is the Downing Centre courthouse in the Sydney CBD - a very impressive and ornate building (it used to be a department store). The flags were at half mast recently following the death of Jeff Shaw. And what a tatty and battered pair of flags they were. I emailed the court administrators, and they've replied that the flags are going to be replaced. I doubt they are taken down much, as the seam on one of them has split away from the flag and wrapped around the pole, meaning that it can't fly freely. If the flags were being taken down each night, I'm sure whoever was tasked with that duty would have noticed the poor state of the flags.

The rain is coming down in torrents this week, and there are flash floods being reported in some areas of Sydney. It doesn't help if the drainage system isn't maintained when it isn't raining, resulting in the drains utterly failing to remove water when it does rain.

This drain in Leichhardt has been like this for at least 4 years - I finally got around to reporting it to Leichhardt Council this week. Yes, I have been bone idle, ignoring it and hoping it would go away.

It's probably choked with leaves and litter. I was told years ago that in Perth, the councils rent those big sucking machines, and spent autumn cleaning out the drains before the rains come. That sort of pro-active, common sense forward thinking maintenance doesn't seem to happen in Sydney. Given the mindset of most of the Leichhardt councillors, they are probably more worried this week about events off Gaza than problems in their own backyard.

Closer to home, we have a silly piece of Council infrastructure. I took this photo standing on the bike path of the Bay Run. It shows a bike ramp or pram ramp leading onto the road, then across to a cut out in the road dividing concrete island (for bikes to pass through) and then linking up with the bike path on the other side.

Unfortunately, the way Council (or its contractor) has painted the lines on the road implies that it is OK to park across this bike ramp - which is a silly thing to do. However, the owner of this car has done just that - and as they are advertising the car for sale, it has sat here now (blocking the ramp) for about two weeks.

I've emailed Council and asked them to repaint the lines to remove the impression that this is a parking zone. You know it makes sense.

Just wrong in the head

2010-05-16T21:30:00.007+10:00

The Livvi's Place playground was hit again over the weekend. I've reported it to Council (as usual), and it will be cleaned up again...

Not even the trees are safe from the spray can.

There was an article in the SMH just after the first Graffiti Action Day. They managed to dredge up a couple of clowns who said:

He said the government should create more spaces for legal graffiti and give young people who tag - write basic names or signatures - the chance to develop their artistic skills.

"If you encourage more legal spaces it increases the quality of the work because kids can spend all day and improve their technique," he said. "[The government is] never going to make it go away so they should try to make it better".

Cameron McAuliffe, a fellow at the centre for cultural research at the University of Western Sydney, said he helped organise ''Keep Australia Colourful'' because he was concerned the state government's campaigns against graffiti were criminalising people who did legitimate work.

Well, here is a proper bit of art in the playground, and some "numskull" has applied a tag next to it. How this is supposed to have improved their "artistic skills" is beyond me. Maybe Dr McAuliffe can explain this to us.

The canteen and toilet block were hit as well. I can't make out the big tag properly, but it starts with "big bad". Yeah, right. Probably a puny little weed with zits and an ego problem.

Charles Purcell wrote a column on graffiti for the SMH recently and copped a lot of flak in the comments. I agree with everything he said. Here is one comment:

One of his great quotes is "Any advertisement in a pubic space that gives you no choice whether you see it is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head" (Wall and Piece)

Why is it ok for oil companies to put out unsolicited greenwashing campaigns or junk food companies to promote obesity in public space, while somebody who wants to improve society through discussion is not acceptable? I guess brick walls are much prettier than thoughtful attempts at social discourse and humour...

The only "advertising" at Livvi's Place are a number of small plaques that name the companies that helped pay for this playground. There are no billboards or hoardings anywhere near the place. So what justifies someone tagging this wall?

I know it's very non-PC to say this; but anyone who tags a playground for the physically disabled must be mentally disabled. You can't be right in the head and think that this is a good idea. It's plain retarded. I just had to say that - I don't know how else to put it.

Abandon cars, all ye who enter here

2010-05-12T11:02:00.003+10:00

I did a ride with Baybug (the Canada Bay Bicycle User Group) on the weekend and couldn't help myself when I spotted two abandoned cars in Guildford (Holroyd Council). This one was being used to store a dozen or so wheels.

Neither car was showing rego plates, and we were moving too quickly for me to stop and check for rego stickers.

I emailed Holroyd Council this morning and have already had a response saying they will look into it.

"The RTA estimates there are around 65,000 unregistered and uninsured vehicles on NSW roads".

These two don't look like they have been driven for a while - they are just eyesores on public property.

Some might call it art

2010-05-12T10:29:00.002+10:00

Once in a blue moon, I spot a bit of graffiti that is quite out of the ordinary.

99.99% of it is just mindless tagging - like this.

But very occasionally - and I mean very - something different comes along. It's quite mad. Not my thing, but quite arresting nonetheless.

Whoever did this even has a proper signature.

Graffiti can be art - but most of it isn't. To describe most graffiti as "art" is an insult to artists. Most of it is immature talentless worthless crap.

We build it, they break it

2010-05-12T10:03:00.003+10:00

If you've ever done a lap of the Bay Run, you would have passed these cabinets. They're owned by Jemena, and I reported them this week for a cleanup. Jemena don't have a web page where you can report graffiti - I just happen to have the phone number of the manager responsible for them.

I got an email recently from PushOn stating that the Parramatta Valley Cycleway was finally open. I went out and had a look, and found that all the recently installed lights had been smashed, and every light pole vandalised.

I imagine that the cycleway must have been liberally coated with glass when all those lights were smashed. The glass has been removed, but none of the lights have been fixed. I've reported it to Parramatta Council.

The poles are nice looking "heritage" style poles too - graffiti doesn't make them look any better.

Further out along the cycleway is a bridge that has been named after Bill Brewer. The sign is a nice tribute to the man, and some knuckledraggers have defaced it.

Every bridge along the Parramatta River has graffiti on the supports. As these are all road bridges, I am assuming that the RTA is responsible for them - they've all been reported. Most look like they have not been cleaned up for some time.

I also found two sets of bike lockers that have been heavily vandalised. This set, outside a ferry wharf, were also unusable due to bags of rubbish that had been dumped in front of the locker doors. I reported these to the Ministry of Transport, and they passed the messages on to Sydney Ferries and RailCorp.

Another vandalised bridge support along the Parramatta River. I'll go back in a few weeks time and see if they have been cleaned up.

Nice playground - shame about the litter and graffiti

2010-04-24T13:58:00.003+10:00

I took one of the kids to Livvi's Place in Timbrell Park this morning (you'll have to Google it as my browser is not letting me insert links today). It's a great playground, completely refurbished in November last year. It's also popular.

Unfortunately, some of those that visit the playground don't care about other visitors. There was a Jim Beam can and beer bottle at the entrance when we walked in, and as I found out soon after, a smashed bottle in the BBQ area - a girl of 2 or 3 sliced her foot open on some glass when we were playing in the sand pit. That was just the tip of the iceberg - the entire area around the playground was covered with rubbish.

A Council worker showed up just after we arrived and spent about an hour walking around picking up rubbish and putting things back where they should be. I hate to think what it costs the ratepayers to supply a worker and a vehicle on a Saturday to visit our local parks to clean up after lazy people who can't be bothered carrying their rubbish to the nearby bins. I'm glad the Council is doing it, but I wish they didn't have to. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to do the area outside the playground - that would have kept a crew busy for the rest of the day.

And then there are those that leave their mark all over the playground equipment and BBQ facilities. There are plenty of partly visible tags on the playground equipment, showing where older tags have been not quite cleaned off, so I take it that the place has been vandalised a number of times since the re-opening in November.

Cool murals

2010-04-22T17:20:00.002+10:00

More RTA traffic light cabinet murals around Balmain/Lilyfield. I like this one the best so far.

Not my thing, but better than being smothered in tags.

A school theme.

Quirky!

Imaginative.

Can't wait until our council gets a similar program up and running!

Quick work

2010-04-21T22:14:00.003+10:00

Monday - a public toilet in Ashfield. (There was no graffiti here on Friday).

Tuesday - gone. Not the greatest of cleanup jobs, but quick work nonetheless.

Someone is on the ball. Nothing to do with me.

I have just the solution for that

2010-04-21T21:40:00.002+10:00

I found this mural today on a bit of public property. This particular spot has been hit a few times before, and each time, the RTA has painted over it fairly quickly. I went past here last week and the wall was clean, so it's quite new. Hopefully, the RTA will have the painters round soon to clean it up.

The RTA could try a bit of lateral thinking and put up a mural here. It's a nice spot, and a mural would do wonders to improve a slab of boring, grey concrete. Something to think about.

Wheelie sensible use of ratepayers cash

2010-04-21T21:29:00.003+10:00

Up in Umina, the youngsters are hopping in wheelie bins, rolling down hills, crashing into trees and killing themselves. In Ashfield, it's pretty flat, so they have to satisfy themselves with throwing wheelie bins into canals. Spotted two floating by today.

Dropped Ashfield Council an email tonight to let them know where they can go fishing for their bins.

A tale of two councils

2010-04-20T19:26:00.003+10:00

Leichhardt Council has a program where they commission artists to paint the RTA cabinets at traffic lights. They've been slogging their way through the long list of traffic lights in the council area, and the results vary from fairly ordinary to pretty amazing (depending on how you feel about art).

I've asked Canada Bay Council to see if they can start a similar program next financial year. The difference between the two council areas is pretty stark, as you can see below.

One fine Sunday out west

2010-04-11T18:57:00.000+10:00

90 minutes on the road this morning. Reported 3 abandoned cars, two vandalised post offices, six graffiti'd Energy Australia kiosks, one council park strewn with rubbish from end to end, one war memorial with graffiti on it, one bridge and one grandstand with graffiti and two RTA utility boxes. Phew.

Post no bills

2010-03-29T18:37:00.003+11:00

Update - the day after I took the photo down below, it rained. Absolutely poured down. The posters that had been taken off this pole and dumped on the ground turned into a sodden mass, and when I went past a bit later in the day, they were halfway towards the drains.

------------------------

Someone - council perhaps? - has been through here and ripped all the posters off this traffic light post. However, instead of taking them away, they've left them on the footpath.

How long before they either blow around the streets, or wash into a drain and end up either in a water way or on a beach?

I wish the people who stuck these things up would think about what happens next.

Strange place to give way

2010-03-29T18:32:00.002+11:00

There are no missing signs at the intersection, so I am guessing the sign was ripped out and tossed in The Bay some time ago, and given the murky state of the water normally, no one knew where it went - until the tide went out.

Someone has gone to a reasonable amount of trouble to rip this out of the ground, concrete base and all.

Various things

2010-03-22T20:44:00.002+11:00

I love it when bone lazy people use a water bubbler in a park as a rubbish bin, instead of walking 10 metres to an actual rubbish bin. These coffees were purchased at the cafe 150 metres down the road (the Audi Five Dock advertising on them gives the cafe away), so the lazy sods were clearly capable of walking some distance. They just couldn't complete the final 10 metres to the bin.

The water bubbler is working - I tested it.

The bubbler, the bin and the seat the lazy sods were presumably reclining on.

Woe is me, what a distance to travel. It's even worse when you think that these people might be locals, and walked several hundred metres home from this park.

Another abandoned car - maybe. Reported to Council.

Either Energy Australia are getting much better at cleaning their assets, or the vandals are slowing down. I have reported 9 vandalised kiosks so far this year - but I reported 24 in the last 3 months of 2009. Maybe I'm just not traveling as far and wide anymore.

Falling apart at the seams

2010-03-07T13:32:00.003+11:00

The furniture at some of our local bus stops is looking somewhat the worse for wear. Whilst the bus shelters have to put up with unnatural damage (vandalism), the outdoor seating is suffering from years of wear and tear from the elements. A lot of seating is starting to look like the one below, on Hampden Rd in Abbotsford.

The concrete frame is fine, but the wooden slats are rotten and splitting, and the bolts holding them on are rusting away.

The seat in the foreground is in pretty good condition - the photos above are of the seat in the background. Most bus stops also have a bin - many have been sprayed with graffiti, or show signs of having been set on fire (blistered paint that has peeled off, allowing the bin to rust).

Here we have an example of the new seating that Council installed when the Wareemba shopping strip was recently upgraded - it's a fine bit of furniture.

Replacing and repairing street furniture costs money - no doubt about it. However, I wonder how regularly the seating is being looked at by Council? I can handle shabby, so long as it's safe to sit on. However, some seating is starting to look like it is ready made for a personal injury lawsuit.

Tis the season for pot holes

2010-03-04T21:17:00.003+11:00

The recent rains have had the side effect of mucking up our local roads. Pot holes have been opening up here and there, including this one on Barnstaple Road in Five Dock. If you bother reporting them to Council (which is as easy as sending them an email), they'll be fixed within a few days. If you don't bother reporting them, they'll still be there next winter.

Update - got a phone call from Council at 8.30am this morning. They said it will be fixed today.

See - all you have to do is ask, and not treat it as somebody else's problem.

Odd way of celebrating the New Year

2010-02-06T18:23:00.000+11:00

Like many people, I spent the morning of Jan 1 cleaning up after the night before. Champagne corks, beer and wine bottles, streamers, sparklers, chop bones, paper plates, plastic forks and so forth were scattered all over the back yard. However, none of it was permanent, and all the mess was on private property. Others obviously have other ideas about how the evening should be marked....

Gay taggers only?

2010-02-06T13:13:00.000+11:00

There is a small sign above the door of this garage that reads "blah-blah Rd gay taggers only".

We now have gay-friendly graffiti zones?

New graffiti advice on Energy Australia website

2010-02-06T12:54:00.000+11:00

Energy Australia has put a link on their homepage to combatting graffiti. The downside of the new page is that they want all graffiti reports to be phoned in, which in my experience, is a pain in the backside. I can enter a report via their "contact us" web page in less than 30 seconds. It usually takes 5-10 minutes to do it over the phone (once you find their number, ring it, press this and that to get through all the prompts and then wait for an operator. On top of that, the hours of their call centre are limited - I generally find myself reporting graffiti at 10pm or later, and the call centre is closed at that time - and it's shut on Sunday.

I'm going to continue with using the web page, and see how things go.

Taking a break for the school holidays

2010-01-14T20:13:00.002+11:00

The school holidays generally see a spike in vandalism, graffiti and malicious damage. An exception to this was the August holidays, which were wet and miserable. Two weeks of rain and cold weather kept the kids inside, and offered few opportunities to get out and about and cause a bit of mayhem.

The Christmas holidays have been different - nice hot weather for most of the time. The result has been a big spike in graffiti in most of the usual areas. I'm not going to bother with reporting any of it until the holidays are over - there is a good chance that if anything is cleaned over the holidays, it will be tagged before the little dears are back in the classroom. I am building up a nice file of sites to report, and unfortunately, it gets thicker by the day. Either we have grown a new crop of vandals, or the old ones have rediscovered their mojo.

The changing face of graffiti

2009-12-20T20:31:00.003+11:00

Here's a bit of old school graffiti. This is the sort of stuff that I have always thought of as graffiti - that is, spray-can based. There's nothing artistic in any of this, even though it was all done indoors and out of sight, allowing plenty of time to create a masterpiece if the vandal had any talent.

This is what it has evolved into - the spray cans in our area seem to have disappeared, and have been replaced with fat textas. Gone are the bright colours - it seems most vandals can only get their hands on black ink these days.

I don't know what is driving this - whether it is the tougher retailing laws, or tougher laws regarding juveniles caught with cans, or Police stopping and searching likely teenagers. Whatever the cause, I'm not seeing anything like the amount of spray paint that I saw a year ago.

Textas are useless on a rough surface, so the spray paint drought is restricting vandals to a small number of smooth surfaces. Can't complain about that.

There goes the teenage drop-in centre

2009-12-20T20:08:00.003+11:00

We don't actually seem to have an official teenage drop in centre around these parts. So as with all things, if one doesn't exist, fertile minds will create one.

This particular building has been abandoned and empty for as long as I have lived in the area - but just recently, the developers have moved in and demolition has commenced.

The local vandals weren't deterred by security fences or boarded up doors. As you can see, they've been plenty busy on redecorating the interior.

Most of the windows have been broken, and there is evidence in several locations of fires having been lit inside.

In a year or two, all of this will probably be replaced with modern apartments like those in the background.

I was wondering how the stone blocks were being removed - with a very big saw.

Right now, the only residents at this site are a couple of ducks.

Four for the tip

2009-12-20T18:53:00.003+11:00

Nothing to do with me - I found this abandoned car this way. The Council slapped a sticker on it recently, so it is close to being towed to the tip.

Rego expired a few months ago. Although it doesn't show in this photo, the car is well covered in leaf litter and looks like it has not moved for months.

Rego expired a few months ago. The woman who owns the car saw me photographing it and asked if I wanted to buy it! No, I just want it off the street.

Rego also expired some 6 months ago. Again, the leaf litter on this one was pretty thick, especially on the windows, indicating it has not moved in months.

These three cars were all within a few hundred metres of each other in two streets. I found all four during a short walk around an unfamiliar suburb.

Keeping track of things

2009-12-12T09:25:00.002+11:00

As the Democrats used to say, you need to keep the bastards honest. Every time you log a graffiti incident on the Energy Australia website, they should reply with an email giving you the job number for cleaning it up. Here's a sample:

A month ago, I started to wonder whether all my jobs were being logged properly, as I was noticing that some kiosks were cleaned up pretty quickly, whilst others never seemed to get done. I therefor started tracking everything I logged in a spreadsheet.

What I've found is that most of the incidents have been logged by Energy Australia within 5 days, and generally cleaned up about 2 weeks later. I haven't been back to every site to check whether they've been cleaned or not, but as I go past them from time to time, I have a look at how they are going.

Interestingly, I logged 5 incidents this week. I got two emails back yesterday - one for an incident logged on the 4th, and another logged last night. However, the three in the middle have gone walkabout. I really wonder whether their system is eating some of the incidents, or whether they are simply failing to log them.

If I don't get a response within a few weeks, I contact Energy Australia and follow up over the phone. I shouldn't need to be doing this, but unless I am absolutely certain that they are on top of things, I'm going to check and check and check again.

The good news is that the cleaning efforts of Energy Australia appear to be bearing fruit. When I first started doing this a year ago, all their substations and kiosks were a bloody disaster - coated in graffiti half an inch thick. Now, most of them are clean and green. Yes, graffiti does creep back, but in nothing like the quantities they used to attract, and the attacks are much less frequent.

Police + people who do something = action

2009-12-09T22:08:00.002+11:00

Tonight, I attended the quarterly meeting of our local CSPC - Community Safety Precinct Committee. It's where the Police, local councils and residents get together to discuss issues of concern and how to deal with them. I think this is the 4th meeting of our CSPC, and in my opinion, it's been very productive.

We saw attendance by the public go up by 100% this week - Councillor Helen McCaffrey convinced a fellow Rotarian to attend, so there was Ray and me. It was nice to not be the sole member of the Great Unwashed for once.

I get a lot of value out of these meetings - which only take an hour or so - because you find out a lot of stuff that never makes it into the paper (presumably because it is considered to be too boring or trivial to capture the attention of most readers). I've also found that if you raise a problem, and it's viewed as being legitimate, then it will get attention from both the Police and Council. Things actually get done - it's not a talking shop. Well, actually we talk a lot, but it's useful and productive talk. Pity about the lack of biscuits this time though. I must remember to take a packet of chocolate ones next time.

I'm pleased to say that a few items that went on the table at the start of the year are now bearing fruit. The Police asked for some kit that would assist them in catching crooks, and Council approved funding for it last night. We also suggested that Council take a different approach to removing graffiti (ie, remove it and then tell the owner afterwards, rather than asking permission, providing a quote blah blah blah) and that has made a huge difference to graffiti removal.

The committee also had a look at what was happening in our local parks after dark, and as a result, the Police scheduled a lot more patrols through the problem areas. Arrests have been made and charges laid and as a result, the parks aren't getting torn up this year by people who lack the self control to have a good time without smashing up everything around them.

The meeting this evening was in Concord (it gets moved around Canada Bay each time to give local residents a chance to attend) and on the way home, I spotted three vandalised Energy Australia kiosks (which have all been reported). Just goes to show that if you take your eye off the ball for a few months, things can go to hell in a big hurry.

Soon to be scrap

2009-12-03T20:00:00.001+11:00

Spotted this abandoned car about a week ago. Finally got around to reporting it today. The rego expired in early November, but it hasn't moved in months. Ta ta.

Is two weeks an adequate response?

2009-12-02T21:55:00.002+11:00

I've been keeping a rough track of how Energy Australia has been going in regard to cleaning kiosks around the inner west. I started a spreadsheet back in November, and every time I report a vandalised kiosk, I keep track of when I reported it, the reference number, address and so on - and then note the date when it is cleaned.

Not long ago, it was taking Energy Australia nearly two weeks just to get around to logging my reports, and then a further two weeks to send someone out with a paintbrush to clean things up.

Now, they are logging the reports within 4 days, and cleanup seems to happen within 10 days in many cases, giving a 2 week turnaround time.

The problem with this is that I read an anecdote not long ago that said if you cleaned a site within 2 days, there was a 90% chance it would remain clean. If you took longer than two weeks, there was a 100% chance of repeat graffiti.

What I have noticed over the last year though is that although Energy Australia kiosks are still being hit, they are being hit much less often and the volume of graffiti is much lower. Cleaning seems to discourage a lot of vandals. Not all, but many. Which is better than nothing.

Going, going...

2009-11-26T20:52:00.002+11:00

I reported this abandoned car to Leichhardt Council last week. When I went past on Tuesday, the car had gained an orange sticker on the windscreen which tells the owner that the Council intends to get rid of the car within 30 days.

A day later, the car was gone.

That was quick work. One email. Gooooooorn!

Telstra partly clean up their act

2009-11-18T19:49:00.002+11:00

For a long time, the most heavily vandalised site in Five Dock has been the Telstra exchange. It's been an eyesore for as long as I have lived here, and Telstra has been consistent in their resistance to doing anything about it. If a building is vandalised, Telstra's own internal policies say that the graffiti should be painted out once a year - but this site has not been cleaned since at least May 2008, when I first contacted Telstra and asked them to do something about it.

Imagine my amazement when I drove past it earlier this week and found that the front wall had received a coat of white paint.

It's only a single coat of thin paint, and at close range the graffiti is still visible under the paint, but it's a start. They haven't done anything about the graffiti on the building itself - they've only removed perhaps 1/3 of what needs removing. But the most egregious part is gone.

I hope we don't have to wait another 18 months for them to tackle the next bit of graffiti on the building.

It is of course possible that Telstra had nothing to do with it, and either Council or someone else got sick of it and painted the wall themselves.

The stupidity of just painting the wall and leaving graffiti elsewhere is that the remaining graffiti acts like a bit, fat tempting target to vandals. It is the equivalent of a "kick me" sign.

Scrap the car

2009-11-17T17:19:00.002+11:00

It's been a while since I've spotted an abandoned car around any of my usual haunts. Found this one today on Lilyfield Rd. The rego expired back in June, one tyre is almost flat, the windscreen is broken and it's looking very unloved.

I always take a photo of the rego sticker and email it to the council concerned - that way, they can be sure that it is worth following up on the abandoned car report. If they can see that the car is long out of rego, it means they can take immediate action to start the process of getting rid of it.

Bye bye, clunker.

Are Council graffiti strategies working?

2009-11-15T07:41:00.002+11:00

My compadre has pointed me at this fascinating report by the Department of Justice on the results of some Council anti-graffiti demonstration projects that were carried out in 2007-2008.

How typical of government that a report on projects that appear to have wrapped up in 2008 is finally released almost at the end of 2009!

It's fascinating because in all of its 29 pages, I am unable to find any conclusions as to what works and what doesn't. I was expecting to find a precise at the front which would summarise the outcomes of the demonstration projects, but that was not to be.

After wading through the report, my conclusion is that rapid removal of graffiti generally works, particularly if undertaken in conjunction with design changes that harden the target.

There. 29 pages condensed into two lines.

The challenge of course is putting those two things into action - rapid removal and target hardening. That requires a lot of basic grunt work on the ground, rather than sitting around in air conditioned offices writing reports.

Why am I not surprised?

2009-11-12T23:09:00.000+11:00

Two teenagers, suspected to be graffiti vandals, arrested in Blue Mountains as 750 spray cans found

During the search warrant at 2.45pm yesterday, police allegedly located 756 cans (40 boxes) of spray paint of various colours, 91 marker pens, tools, a circular saw and other construction items in a garden shed in the backyard.

"After the break in where items belonging to the construction company were stolen, police in the Blue Mountains area noted there was more graffiti on public and private property,” said North West Metropolitan Region Commander, Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford.

I have long wondered whether there is a link between graffiti and more serious crime. One story like this does not prove that graffiti is just the tip of the crime iceberg for all vandals, but it at least shows that for some criminals, graffiti is just part of their portfolio of criminal activities.

Battle lines are drawn

2009-11-12T08:59:00.000+11:00

The latest government proposal to crack down on vandalism draws some more letters to the SMH:

Art of the matter: is graffiti vandalism?

Kay Orchison (Letters, November 10) has a strange understanding of our system of government and law if she believes an elected legislator, in proposing legislation, is ''interfering with the legal system''. I don't necessarily agree with Nathan Rees's legislation on graffiti sentencing, but I certainly defend his right to propose it. Kay possibly thinks that function is the preserve of judges. Not yet it isn't.

Gary Howe Elizabeth Bay

I am a Sydney bus driver. Alex Dudley (Letters, November 9) wants us to ''get some perspective'' and believes graffiti vandals are angst-ridden and misunderstood. Don't ascribe any justification to this mindless, premeditated, malicious defacement of public and private property, to be expunged at taxpayers' and owners' cost.

They do it simply because they can, egged on by their peers, expressing nothing worthwhile and with little chance of being held to account for the anger and distress caused. We provide clean, modern, vehicles with qualified and courteous drivers and to find evidence of graffiti vandals' ''work'' makes me sick. It's like having them spit in your face.

Still, not many train or bus windows are ''etched'' in Coolatai, I guess. How's that for perspective?

John McLean Wentworthville

I'm with John McLean on this one. Vandals are not running around spraying things with paint because they are putting up art - they are doing it because they can, and because they have no self control, no perception as to how their activities affect others, and no sense of right or wrong. They are doing it for the rush and for the notoriety that it brings amongst their peers.

That didn't take long

2009-11-10T20:18:00.000+11:00

I predicted yesterday that the SMH would lead the charge against juveniles being locked up under proposed anti-graffiti legislation.

I was thinking that they'd get upset when the first case went to trial.

Silly me.

Writing on the wall for enforcer Rees

So Nathan Rees thinks he can buy votes by punishing children with prison sentences (''Rees cops spray over graffiti laws'', November 9). As ugly and annoying as graffiti tags are, I would rather live with every flat surface on the planet covered in them than see a single child imprisoned for six months.

Mr Rees ought to look at how zero tolerance policies have fared in the US, and how many lives have been ruined by them. He is interfering with the legal system, threatening our families and undermining his party's credibility (what little it retains).

Mr Rees said: ''I'm putting graffiti vandals on notice - we have you in our sights and the community, police and business are right behind us.'' All the people I have spoken to are part of the community. None of us agree that imprisoning children is an answer to anything.

Police and business may well be behind Mr Rees. ''The community'' is not - or if we are, he ought to watch his back.

Kay Orchison Marrickville

I heartily agree with the war on young people. Let's leave graffiti to the more mature political activists - I want messages, not mindless decoration. Ah yes, I still have fond memories of the ''Out Menzies!'' exhortations along the Sydney rail network in the 1950s.

Ron Saunders Wyoming

I would have thought that the message was pretty simple - if you don't want to get locked up, don't mess with property that doesn't belong to you. Don't break the law.

Will the government have the intestinal fortitude to follow through?

2009-11-08T20:05:00.000+11:00

According to the news today, the state government is going to get really tough on graffiti vandals.

CHILDREN carrying spray-paint cans without a legitimate reason could face six months in jail under a revolutionary graffiti crackdown by the State Government.

It's all very well passing that sort of legislation. It's another matter entirely to put it into practice. I will bet that when the first juvenile is charged and put away under this new legislation, the SMH will be at the forefront of the attack on the government for locking up juveniles.

It takes a whole chain of people to lock someone away. The Police have to be willing to lay charges, rather than issue a caution. The Prosecutor has to be willing to prosecute fully and ask for a custodial sentence, rather than wimping out. The magistrate has to follow through with ordering jail time, rather than 3 weeks of supervised finger painting.

It's very rare that all those ducks line up. Somewhere along the line, one or more of these groups bottles it, and vandals walk free to carry on their merry trade.

I am not arguing for or against jail time - I am simply saying that it is easy to talk tough; it's much harder to turn tough words into tough actions.

An interesting development is the "clean up" day, where community groups will be issued chemicals and cleaning equipment. I wonder if they'll let us clean the Telstra exchange building in Five Dock? I hope so. The clean up day will be worth it if the only thing we do around here is remove the endless build up of graffiti from the local Telstra exchanges.

Lacking in energy

2009-10-31T20:59:00.000+11:00

Yes, I've been quiet for a few weeks - because there has been little to report. Thanks to the wet weather of late, not much damage was wreaked over the school holidays. I've made my rounds of the usual trouble spots and seen nothing worth following up.

The only thing I have noticed is that Energy Australia is taking 11-12 days to process vandalism reports. It used to take them a day or so. They have no hope of removing graffiti within 2 weeks if it takes them nearly two weeks to look at their web reporting system and log an incident. I bet that before long, the following will happen.

I will report some graffiti
12 days later, Energy Australia will get around to reading my report
A week after that, I will report the graffiti again
A day later, a contractor will remove the graffiti
12 days down the track, Energy Australia will read my second report and send a contractor out to perform a clean up
The contractor will report back that there is nothing to clean - the report is a dud
Energy Australia will start to think that false reports are being logged
Trust will break down

That would be a lousy outcome.

How slow can the wheels turn?

2009-10-14T14:09:00.004+11:00

I conducted a graffiti survey of the Five Dock shopping area with a Council staff member last week. During that survey, we noticed graffiti on the signage outside Five Dock Public School. This is not the first time this has happened - I have reported graffiti on school property a number of times over the last few years. Or should I say, I have attempted to report graffiti on school property.

The Education Department makes it insanely difficult for members of the public to report graffiti. When we first moved into the Five Dock area, we were visited by the bloke that ran the neighbourhood watch scheme for the Five Dock Public School. He asked us to keep an eye on the school grounds, and to report anything of note. We were given the obligatory fridge magnet, and over a two year period, we saw two groups of vandals being caught by the Police in or around the school grounds.

I won't go into the convoluted process that the Education Department forces public schools to follow in order to get graffiti removed, because it is much too boring. I am so over it, when I saw this spate of graffiti, I didn't bother trying to follow it. Instead, I emailed these photos to the Minister for Education and told her to take care of it.

I sent that email on Thursday. It is now Wednesday, and the graffiti is still there.

Looks like even the Minister has problems getting the Department to undertake the exceptionally simple task of organising someone to wipe these signs with a rag and a bit of metho. I know that method works - I have cleaned these signs myself that way, and each took a minute at most.

What is perhaps more annoying is that there are staff at the school this week (even though it is school holidays). Some construction work is underway (Julia Gillard pouring our money into a large pit presumably), and staff are on site during the works. I can't understand why it is beyond one of them to walk around the school once a week looking for this sort of damage. The school is small - you can drive around it in a minute. Is it really that hard to drive around the school when arriving or departing, doing a quick survey as you go? Or do the teaching staff view this sort of things as somebody else's problem?