Eideard

Council bosses have admitted scoring an “own goal” after a fence was built through the middle of football goalposts in a park in York.

The new fencing was installed at a cost of £6,000 on playing fields in Heworth…

Dave Meigh, City of York Council’s head of parks and open spaces, said: “We recognise that the failure to relocate the goalposts is a real own goal.”

It has left local people who use the park to play football confused. Local residents said it was “unreal” and a “waste of money”.

Jane Hannon wrote on the BBC Look North Facebook page: “Typical example of too many chiefs and not enough Indians, one doesn’t know what the other is doing. What a waste of time and money.”

OTOH, this demonstrates there is plenty of local talent in the UK ready and qualified to take over leadership of the FA and FIFA at a moment’s notice.

Thanks, honorarynewfie

Baghdad municipal workers remove US blast walls
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Iraq’s capital wants the United States to apologize and pay $1 billion for the damage done to the city not by bombs but by blast walls and Humvees since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The city’s government issued its demands in a statement on Wednesday that said Baghdad’s infrastructure and aesthetics have been seriously damaged by the American military. “The U.S. forces changed this beautiful city to a camp in an ugly and destructive way, which reflected deliberate ignorance and carelessness about the simplest forms of public taste,” the statement said.

“Due to the huge damage, leading to a loss the Baghdad municipality cannot afford…we demand the American side apologize to Baghdad’s people and pay back these expenses…”

Baghdad’s neighborhoods have been sealed off by miles of concrete blast walls, transforming the city into a tangled maze that contributes to massive traffic jams. Despite a sharp reduction in overall violence in recent years only 5 percent of the walls have been removed, officials said.

The heavy blast walls have damaged sewer and water systems, pavement and parks, said Hakeem Abdul Zahra, the city spokesman.

If you know the least amount of history you’d already be aware that we helped rebuild cities we destroyed in just about all of our wars since 1941. The big one, of course, being a war where we were attacked.

Staying up-to-date, we should at least declare a special war tax on everyone who voted George W. back into a second term in office.

A cold wind whipped down the Texas plains on the night last month that Sharon Smith, 68, and her husband, Bill, 73, arrived here to be work-campers.

In the dark, they had trouble setting up their camper. But Ms. Smith, a former teacher’s aide from Sioux Falls, S.D., said she looked up at the starry sky, shook off a few of the burrs she had picked up lying on the ground working on their truck, and told herself it would get better.

It did.

The life of a work-camper, volunteering in places like Falcon State Park in deep South Texas in return for free rent, is not without its bumps. But as Ms. Smith also quickly discovered, the rewards can be deep as well — like making cinnamon rolls as part of her job at the camp recreation center, where she and Mr. Smith are working as hosts through the end of March.

“We’re here for three reasons,” she said, as she spread sugar on the dough. “No. 1, we like to travel. No. 2, we like people. And No. 3, we’re on a budget.”

An itinerant, footloose army of available and willing retirees in their 60s and 70s is marching through the American outback, looking to stretch retirement dollars by volunteering to work in parks, campgrounds and wildlife sanctuaries, usually in exchange for camping space.

Park and wildlife agencies say that retired volunteers have in turn become all the more crucial as budget cuts and new demands have made it harder to keep parks open.

RTFA. Reflect on the nation which to all intents and purposes invented national parks for the recreation and education of the people – now ruled by beancounters who care only for columns of profit and loss marching in obedient fashion through their budgets.

We have parks with no funds, retirees without adequate healthcare and a new generation left to fill out their American dreams with nonsense television and online myths.

Toronto wanted to charge them to walk in the park

City Hall appears to be backing down on a draconian policy that requires organized walking groups to get a permit to stroll through city parks…

The review comes after a group of 12 Etobicoke seniors — first revealed in the Sunday Sun — were accosted by a bylaw officer on Sept. 21. That officer, Tony Pacheco, demanded to see their city permit for using the public trails in Humber Bay Park.

When they couldn’t produce a permit, pictures were snapped of the group.

He then followed them to the neighbouring Polish Alliance Hall — where the group participated in an hour-long exercise class — and took more pictures of vehicle licence plates…

Ward councillor Mark Grimes, who originally told the Sun the woman running the seniors group must have a $30 per hour permit, is now asking for the review as well, according to the statement.

While there may be “excellent reasons” for requiring some parks users to purchase a permit, Green acknowledged that “discretion and flexibility” must be exercised.

There also are excellent reasons to kick stupid politicians and bureaucrats out of office.

Peckham Rye in south London has just become home to the country’s latest outdoor gym. The equipment in the park is green and shiny and huge. So they’re a vast improvement on the wooden parallel bars that have been a feature of the park since for ever and made you look like you’re exercising in a Carry On film.

Free outdoor gyms began appearing in Britain’s parks and public spaces last autumn and are steadily spreading across the country. They were inspired by gyms installed throughout China, to ready the nation for the Beijing Olympics, and have been developed over here by the Great Outdoor Gym Company, whose Georgie Tarrant and Matt Delaney were formerly of Sport England.

Most of the outdoor equipment requires you to push against gravity or your own bodyweight, so there are no weights to select. Charlotte Tarrant explains: “The load is gauged to be 30-40% of your bodyweight, so it would never be too strenuous for anyone…”

Different councils throw the gyms up for different reasons – London’s five Olympic boroughs all have one to prove that they are taking 2012 seriously, I guess. Strathclyde police organised one in an area rife with gang membership, hoping to combat antisocial behaviour, and have seen an 8% drop in crime.

Eric Firth, the councillor who was the driving-force behind the outdoor gym in Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, wanted something specifically for older users, and indeed, there’s a picture of an old person, heartily enjoying the facilities in the gym company’s promotional literature. In Peckham, I would say that the mean age was nearer 13. Smith and Reese, both 13, said that they use the stuff on their way to football. They both really liked it; they would both like free gym membership, too. They are profoundly sociable young men, but that must, surely, predate their resistance workout.

Some communities it will never work. The city of Albuquerque has put up systems which – unfortunately – were flammable. Local gangbanger idiots put paid to that.

OTOH, I’ve seen systems in steel with concrete roots. Kids love ‘em. So do adults. Ain’t going to do anyone any harm to exercise in their neighborhood park.