Monday 14 September 2009

A miraculous apology for fly tipping


Miracle: an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.

Isn’t it strange how people these days are increasingly willing to ascribe the word miracle to an event which, while rare, can be entirely attributable to natural causes or probability?

To return for a minute to the Alan Turing apology issue: whereas many gay people would like an apology from ‘society’ for the historical actions of the past (despite there being little causal linkage between the society responsible for those past acts and today’s society), I wonder if they’ve ever considered publicly thanking today’s ‘society’ for having changed the laws such that the injustices of the past can no longer be legally repeated? This pre-occupation with apologies from those not actually responsible for the initial injustice allows those demanding the apology to wallow in victimhood, an emotive state of mind I find particularly distasteful as it instils a ghetto mentality and does not encourage people to move on.

The pikies left yesterday morning, leaving the hedge clippings and tree branches from their last job piled against our hedge on the common side, along with several buckets of dog shit from their dogs and a few paper donations from MacDonald’s. Don’t think I’ll be employing them to trim our hedge in October. In fact I feel like reporting them to the police for fly-tipping. Had they asked us, we would have taken the wood waste and burned it in our field. The only saving grace is that the wood they left is biodegradable and will thus not be a long-term nuisance.



6 comments:

Alan Burnett said...

Isn't the dog shit biodegradable too? If you leave it there long enough perhaps it will all vanish. Will that be a miracle? And if you are going to restrict the word miracle for events ascribed to supernatural causes, what use is the word to someone of your beliefs (and indeed mine).

Steve Borthwick said...

"Miracle" = Anything superstitious people don't understand.

"Shit happens" = Anything non-superstitious people don't understand.

Kabbalah Rookie said...

"There are two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle" Albert Einstein.

Perhaps regarding the pikies it was a miracle that they only left wood clippings, a couple of buckets of dog shit and Golden Arches paper donations.

Anonymous said...

You are right about the overuse of "Miracle". I take my hat off to the pikies for training their dogs to crap in a bucket but I wouldn't say it's a miracle.
The real miracle is that they didn't force you to let them tarmac your drive.

Chairman Bill said...

Alan: It is that, but in the meantime you have to tread carefully. Miracles don't happen.

Steve: I entirely agree.

Kabbalah: I did have high hopes of them, but they reverted to type.

Dave: The budket was just a convenient measure. They didn't actually do their doo-doos in a bucket. Would have been better if they had.

Jennysmith said...

What a bummer! But don't talk to me about fly-tipping and that - two weeks ago we paid that bastard council to take away our matresses and that outside our new house. Have they done it - have they shite!!!

Hope you're well xxx