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In 2012, I wrote about the car window washers and their problems. This problem has not gone away. I took this photo from my reflection mirror because I was afraid this washer might turn nasty on me.
Bottom photo: courtesy New Zealand Herald.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11196789
The washers are already banned under a bylaw, and offenders can be fined up to $20,000.
But
the council says the sanctions are costly, complex and ineffective, and
it wants the Government to change the law so it can issue infringement
notices - possibly in the form of spot fines.
Under the present law, it must get police to confiscate washers' equipment or prosecute them.
Councillors
yesterday unanimously backed a proposed law amendment that would allow
the council to specify bylaw breaches that would result in an
infringement notice.
My 2012 blog post.
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You can't see clearly the woman
in the rear mirror. I had been wanting to do this post for a very long
time. But it was very hard to take the photo, as I didn't want her to
know. When I eventually took the photo last Saturday, the news article
was published on Tuesday. A very timely thing.
I don't
know if this happens in other places, in many of our busy road
junctions, at busy times, men and women come without being asked, and
they have a long brush and clean your windscreen. It is a symbolically
clean as it is haphazardly done, ( 2 cars before the lights changed,
because I actually stalked them today). Then they tap your window. Some
people don't give them any money. The cleaners are always polite, and
don't insist you give them money. I always give them, not because they
clean well, but I appreciate their willingness to be out there,
especially in the cold winter evening.
A friend from
South Africa who lived during the Apartheid times, told me, to her, it
is an automatic reflex to wind up her window when she sees someone with a
stick approaching her. Other friends say they are a nuisance, and dirty
the windscreen rather than clean it.
The trouble, is
these people dress like riff raffs, smoke while cleaning. I like to give
them some pocket money for being in the cold. Better than just begging.
However, not many people think like me. What do you think?
***I
looked in the photo carefully, she was bending down, she could have
dropped her water bottle of detergent. She could have been drunk. I
actually had told her, that on my way over, the man at the other side of
the road had cleaned my window. She proceeded to clean my front window
and said she and the man was competing. Before I could find some small
change, the lights had changed, and I had to drive off without giving
her any money. But not after I managed to take the photo.)***
Drunks terrorise suburban shoppers
MICHAEL FOX
Last updated 05:00 10/04/2012
Mt
Albert residents fed up with "menacing" transients who they say are
scaring people have vowed to rid the suburb of the problem.
Community
leaders are urging residents and business owners to bombard authorities
with complaints while they also putt pressure on police to do more.
Locals
say the vagrants have been driven out of the central city and were
congregating at the Mt Albert shops where they were drinking, begging,
busking, "hustling locals", cleaning windscreens at intersections and
sniffing glue in public.
"These people are quite intimidating," Albert-Eden local board spokeswoman Pauline Anderson says.
Sometimes in groups as big as 12, they were scrimping together enough money to buy booze then drinking it in public.
"Then
of course during the day it progressively gets worse because they get
more high and more drunk to the point where they're dodging traffic and
just being a menace and people in Mt Albert are crossing the street to
avoid them," she said.
Police could take several hours
to respond to calls which often had to be made several times but she
said police patrols had increased lately at the board's request.
Anderson said they wanted people to be more proactive.
"There
is a little bit of apathy which I believe is a big part of the problem,
that people think that because they call and then police take the
details and then nothing appears to happen then people stop calling and
that is the worst thing that you can do."
The council
ran a campaign with business owners about four months ago outlining the
options available and providing phone numbers to call to report the
issues.
If all the incidents were reported they would have the statistics to back up their complaints, Anderson said.
"All we can do is encourage people to keep on at the police, to keep ringing, reporting everything they see, every incident."
The
aim was to try to draw people back to the shopping centre because "the
more we go there, the residents, the less these people will feel
comfortable going there".
"It's not about we don't
want them in Mt Albert, we just want them to behave in a socially
acceptable way and it's up to us to show them that really, it's
unacceptable what they're doing. We don't want them in our faces doing
what they do."
http://jennymatlock.blogspot.co.nz/
