Literally nowhere else in the world are the roads lined with cones as in New Zealand.
A week back as a research exercise, with one mate driving and a senior professional and me observing, we drove 60 miles up the new state highway, turning back once we’d recorded 70 alleged “workmen”. Here are our factual findings.
- Of the 70 red vested “workers”, four were actually doing something, if in the case of those four, the two holding a shovel constitutes activity.
- Of the remaining 66, eight were watching the spade-holders and 56 were either staring at, or talking into cell-phones.
- Parked along the road there were on average 3 large pieces of machinery for every red-vested pretend worker. A fifth of them had flashing roof-top lights. One in every 12 had a cell-phonist sitting in them.
- Our estimate was that each collection of “workers” had cones on both sides of the road extending circa 500 metres.
When people malign Muldoon as an interventionist I point out it wasn’t all bad. There is absolutely no way Rob would have tolerated this ludicrous situation without putting a stop to it.
Not just our highway but our CBDs are littered with cones and their associated cell-phonists. Even crazier, drive into empty country roads and everywhere they too have miles of cones narrowing the roads, only nearly always with no associated “workers”.
This is unbelievable madness and further testimony to the sheer hopelessness of the government in turning a blind eye to it.