Is my imagination playing tricks on me? Something doesn't make any sense. I am trying to comprehend the new set of local laws being presently designed and I wonder how this actually happens. How those local laws come about?
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Who, for instance, is responsible? Who, for instance, comes up with these bright ideas? Who suggests them and in what form of consciousness are they brought to the table? Are they pulled out of a hat by a group of uncreative bureaucrats? A hat titled: "suggestions of unrealistic ideas for council local laws". Or, worse still, is there maybe a group of people from outside the shire, with maybe a city mind, who, for an exorbitant fee make suggestions for outrageous local laws that go against everything the people who live in the shire believe in and have lived by for all their lives.
But to what purpose? Why is this happening?
What concerns me the most is the fact that these local laws kill the creative spirit which so abundantly exists and creates colour in our shire.
Creativity for which the shire has become well known. Creativity which celebrates life as it should be lived and not life based on a set of laws, or rules, which like a noose around creativity's neck will eventually choke it to death. Creativity which creates happiness in the everyday. Creativity which in an act of generosity created the beautiful poetry and apple tree public sculpture, around the library corner, which under these local laws wouldn't allow the fruit to be harvested.
And how celebratory of life is it to take an apple from the tree and enjoy it as a poetic gift.
Or what happens to the community garden. Can't the produce which once again was created as an act of pure generosity be harvested without a permit.
And don't get me going on the concepts of permits.
An artist's warning. As we have seen from history, life without the expression of the creative spirit of poetry and art becomes brutal and soul destroying. Nazi Germany is the most glaring example of this.
If the group of concerned local people who organised the Tuesday evening community meeting around the local laws hadn't smelled a rat, these bad ideas would now be written into law and when that happens you can say goodbye to spontaneous, great ideas.
Ideas such at Stuart's who, with found materials from the dump, built a solar powered machine which delivers water uphill when the sun shines, all for free. Plus, don't forget what was saved from landfill.
It is in the same generosity of spirit that created the repair cafe. I recently brought a broken kitchen appliance I was about to chuck out. The genius and generosity of Julian fixed it and saved me a heap of money, plus I learned a valuable lesson - consider repairing something before tossing it out. And now I wonder if this activity maybe has created another shire crime.
Are you, dear reader, clear about what is going on and what could happen as a result? Your hands will be tied, you have no say and will be unable to do something as ordinary as planting something in your nature strip.
Now, here is the good news. The "permit" comes to the rescue. For this concept, you can buy, as it were, a favour from the council and for many dollars do what you used to do as normal. Paying for a permit apparently makes these bad things which are about to befall us, and for which these local laws are designed to protect us, all of a sudden OK and safe. If it wasn't so terrible it would be a joke. However, it isn't.
Have you ever come across such waste? You didn't know you ever would, but here it is for real. The normal everyday of creating common sense ideas has fallen in the hands of the local laws where they are taken through the wringer and cleaned up of all the creative generous niceties that we have enjoyed in the our community.
What I am afraid of is that if they get away with this what more do they have in store?
If you want to find out more go to: hepburncommunity.org the hepburn community website
