Machines Make Work

The only reason I can think of for cutting a swathe of roadside verge in June is to make it easier for the very small number of people who choose to walk alongside the main road. But representations have been made in previous years complaining that many wild flowers are being unnecessarily chopped down reducing the roadside appeal. So it's evidently been agreed that they will only cut a narrow strip, some two/three feet or so, leaving in most of the roadsides some remaining uncut verge where wildflowers can grow.

Until a couple of years ago there had been no cutting (maintenance) at all and some excellent flowery scenes could be observed throughout the summer months. Obviously some jobsworths have decided this half and half solution is a jolly compromise. And to add a dollop of goodwill somebody planted some - guess what - daffodil bulbs along a section of the verge!

I can't pretend I like this. But anyway whatever is the excuse for what we see in the picture above? There's already a bare patch going well back from the kerb so the machine operator, frustrated to be denied his right to have something to cut has gone further beyond that and cut well back into the vegetation.

There comes a point when machines make work for themselves. Man is almost powerless to resist the lure of mechanisation from a kitchen gadget to huge JCBs. If they exist somebody just has to use them. I'm as sure as I can be that if we lived in a world free from chainsaws there would be a lot more trees in the world both in Sheffield's streets and out in our so-called 'nature reserves'.