@cee-dee wrote:
That might have been true in times past but we know better now.
Having tasted the benefits of drainage, decent roads and rubbish removal, communal activities would go some way to achieving those aims if we had the need.
Even crude drains are better than none and they're simply trenches filled with stones. Roads used to be maintained locally and some localities had better roads than others. "Rubbish" consisted of "hard" items, "soft" rubbish was composted. Even old clothes were cut up to make rag rugs. Other "rubbish" was burned.
Today, those communities I'm criticising have many modern items to make up the conditions in which they choose to live. There's plastic bags flying everywhere and the sort of rubbish I mentioned above is simply thrown outside to get ground in to the mud. It seems incredible that they have electricity with wires everywhere but live surrounded by a filthy mud-hole.
So what would you suggest that the locals in those sort of communities do with the 'plastic bags flying around'?
Remember the local government strikes back in the '70s. Not many examples there of community action to take care of the rubbish which piled up in the streets - and that was after just a few weeks, not years!.
How many examples of locals mending pot holes in roads can you come up with? If anything we have become far less self reliant than those living in third world countries. The slightest little problem and and someone, somewhere, (most often a politician), has to be to blame and 'someone' needs to sort it out - always someone else of course!
Small village communities do of course carry out the sort of improvements you talk about but that sort of action simply cannot be transposed onto large urban communities - there is far too much self interest and too little self gain in community action. Proof of that in this country can be seen in the reception to David Cameron's "Big Society" speech!
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r9)c!s!BMe7Sm0zi!~~_7.JPG "electric*mayhem*band"){kind=avatar}
