the big picture

and there they were protesting about having to have to pay to use the car park on the mainland among other things which i will get to, but first the car park. These people all 40 of them, now lets not forget there are 5114 of us spread over 4 islands that make up this group. There has been a meeting about this once before about this issue, on one side you have the state government and local council and on the other the community groups. I will start with the state government, our premier has said about these islands there will be no bridge, i am placing the mangroves in the national park to help fish breeding there, there will be no sewerage as the pipe might leak in the national park, islands are islands you have too expect that some things will not be available or made available on them. Our council having been pested time and time again over the car park issue put a proposal forward to turn the mainland car park into some sort of airport style parking lot user pays for it, well there was a meeting, 2 in fact one on one island in the morning and one on my island in the afternoon. Well if what we heard happened at the morning meeting happened the mayor, chancellor were threatened their kids were threatened, so i fully understand why our police service was at the other meeting in the afternoon with full riot gear at the back, the locals here said that the council was intimidating them. On the community side there are three groups all pushing in different directions all with their own agendas, i know their agendas, all three of them and i can say because of where i work that the majority of these islanders don't want what the three are pushing, but that for another time. At these meetings our mayor was told that the new car park that had been proposed was not good engouth (This car park option has the full backing of the state government) the council said to residents that they would look into it. Now remember what i said above about the state government, the council is as green as they come, anti development and will make life very hard for you if you want to build here. The plan being that you will get so frustrated that you go somewhere else. Anyway there was a state election which in a way was a referendum on the future of these islands and what did these people do, they went down to the poling booth and put this government back in office. In doing so they bent over and said please oh please keep kicking me up the back side, i like it. So the car park with its charges will be in place by June next year, whether we like it or not. Now for my big picture, the mainland car park is a mess, it is a disgrace, i for one feel for the people living around it. I remember a house being up for sale and looking up the pics, they tried to sell it as having water views, the agent photo shopped all the cars out. It was really funny how the area could look if our 5000 cars weren't parked there. It was up for sale for 12 months, it is now a rental. I have never been comfortable with the fact the the car park is next to a war memorial in a children's park it does not look good, something has to be done. I will give you my thoughts on it at another time.
discloser i am one of the lucky few that have a job on this islands and as such i no longer have a car over there.