Well, if we want to talk voice activation;
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From episode 3 of Road Quest (which, off-topic, is delightful and you should watch it).
In the words of Beej, “this is very friendly, and there’s no reason to be afraid of this.”
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I’m mildly vandalizing something right now.
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The hilarious if not incredible part of that scene while Scotty naively talks into the mouse he somehow is a master typer/keyboard operator.
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And familiar with 1980’s software.
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The university I went to had a sign in front of the “International House” that had “of Pancakes” spray painted on it so frequently that they just gave up trying to keep it off during the school year.
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Reminds me of this classic tale.
I don’t think I’ve previously perused the artist’s other work. Remarkable!
http://www.mobstr.org/photography
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Such an act of mild vandalism was the inspiration for the title of the “Futility Closet” podcast.
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Stewart Lee did a bit about Shilbottle/Shitbottle:
I used to live near a road called “Low Jobs Hill” that occasionally gained a preceding ‘B’.
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I think I’m too old to find this kind of thing funny anymore. Even the innocuous ones, like the light graffiti: the money used to pay the guy who has to come out and clean or repaint the vandalized wall or hydrant could have gone to a few meals or a spot in a shelter for a homeless family.
That’s a good way to get shot.
Over the years I’ve had car emblems stolen, antennas broken off, a window wiper taken the night the night before a rainstorm, my bike’s caliper pads taken while it was parked at the top of a hill. One punk’s yucks are someone else’s major hassle or even hospital bill.
The UK can do better than that. We have a politician actually called Dick Braine who used to be the leader of the far-right UK Independence Party until he was kicked out for stealing data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Braine_(politician)
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That’s…not how budgeting works. The city/county/council/state/federal department budgets for maintenance and public support separately. The worker who comes out to clean the walls is salaried, and the equipment used is otherwise sitting in a maintenance shed for just such an occasion.
If the government entity runs short of meals or shelter, it’s because it wasn’t budgeted. And you can guarantee that no low-level bureaucrat is going to shuffle funding from homeless shelters and soup kitchens towards graffiti removal even if they could, because their boss’ boss doesn’t want that particular kind of PR nightmare.
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But it comes from the same pool of tax revenue.
What happens in my city – and most of the other places I’ve lived – is that the mayor puts together a budget, apportioning available money according to his priorities, then submits the budget to the city council, who revise it and send it back. This usually takes several iterations. The budget does sometimes include new revenue proposals, but those are usually just for emergencies or major new initiatives. There are some things for which the budget must allocate funding, such as salaries and benefits for employees as negotiated by their unions, but we don’t just have workers sitting around with nothing to do, the guys who remove the graffiti are the same guys who fill the potholes, and we have lots of potholes.
Money is not unlimited, at least in my city, and when people go to the city council to ask for more money for shelters they have to fight the narrative that we cannot afford it.
It doesn’t matter whether it comes from the same pool of tax money. If the city follows GAAP, they can’t just spend money allocated for shelters on maintenance. There would need to be several steps of proposal, review, and approval before it could be re-allocated that way. It would probably need to be done in the public eye, and the blowback would be considerable.
Your last point simply reiterates mine; if there’s lack of funding for community support and outreach, it’s because it wasn’t budgeted, not because someone graffitied a fire hydrant.
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Absolutely agree, but budgeting is based on the money in the pot. If the dollars used to clean a wall today aren’t spent on that wall, then tomorrow or in the next cycle there can be more for the shelter. And if there is a need for shelter funding today and the emergency fund hasn’t already been spent on vandalism, then it is available today to be shifted in that direction.
If you live in a town where shelters have a higher priority than urban beautification (and pothole maintenance) then you are lucky.
That’s still not how it works.
In order:
- Budget proposal
- Budget review & amendment
- Budget approval
- Taxation
- Spending
- Go to 1
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It is here, and I’ve explained how.
You’re treating it like a government body gets a lump sum, then figures out how to spend it on a whim as they go. In fact, that’s the opposite of how civil funding works.
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The signs for Estes Park, Colorado, are frequently adjusted to read “Testes Park”
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I understand how my city’s budget process works. If you read my post above and interpreted it as saying that spending is whimsical then I can’t help that.
Also – to get back on topic – for those cities with unlimited ability to repair vandalism without cost, for example because they have workers sitting around twiddling their thumbs and toes and warehouses full of cleaning products and fresh paint that they would otherwise dispose of, then sure, there’s not much societal cost to the mild vandalism.
