imagine if
if I ruled the world
If I ruled the world for one day: to do list
1. make leafblowers illegal.
These waste fossil fuel and create pollution & noise pollution. They’re useless and they encourage blame-shifting. Communities who can afford the use of leafblowers invariably need more physical activity. Raking leaves is peaceful and calming.
2. all toilet paper to be made from post-consumer recycled paper.
There aren’t enough trees left for us to be cutting them down to wipe our bums. Anyway it’s softer: it’s been pulped twice.
3. refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants shall be placed in whichever country best suits their character and can benefit from their presence, as judged by a panel of Indigenous elders and trauma psychologists. First priority: safety and escape from crisis. Second priority: they can go anywhere they want so long as they demonstrate to the panel’s satisfaction that they can make a contribution whether social, culinary, cultural, artistic, educational, spiritual or economic. The only proviso is that after five years’ citizenship every new arrival is required to make a report of their commitment to the new country with examples of how they sustain their native culture and how they adopt the new, and how they struggle to make these two compatible. These testimonials are videoed and available in libraries and schools.
I need a sabbatical. That was tiring.
27 comments on “if I ruled the world”
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What are yours? We might need a committee here.
I want free unicorns!
I want to free the unicorns too Melissa!
You do, Chris. You do.
Least, in this unicorn’s case – if I may speak just for myself.
Quite right too. Unicorns are way too expensive as it stands.
First world problem, of course…
I feel that way about Keurig coffee makers. Why?
Is that the pod ones, Nikki? I forgot about those. Selfish monstrosities. Broke my heart to see Patti Smith’s polaroid of her beloved coffee pod landfill generator on her kitchen bench & read her paean to it. Good add!
The man who created the Keurig regrets it, and doesn’t use them. I’ve never understood them. They make small coffee pots.
Halleluljah and amen. Let’s bury leafblowers – noisy sods that just move those pesky leaves somewhere else.
And only for about five minutes, til the breeze lifts them. Hear, hear!
Oh, poor guy. Just imagine.
I agree. What does it save you? and at what cost? can it really feel worthwhile to save those few seconds of scrubbing, but knowing you are creating five hundred little vials a year that will never dissolve into soil?
Leafblowers are a symbol of all that is frustrating about suburban life. Usually operated at 730am on a Sunday morn by a humourless man wearing socks and sandals.
It’s heavy, too. Much more cumbersome than a rake.
Very good for ruining a recording as well, just when you’re near the end of a decent vocal take and are thinking ‘yeah nailed it’ there will invariably be a BRRRRMMM from next door. Bliss. ????
Take-blowers.
Jet skis. Destroyers of quiet. Killer of swimmers. I was at Women in Voice on Saturday night and Alison St Ledger sang the beautiful song A New England, and I thought of a wonderful woman whose life was stolen by an idiot on a jet ski. Hate em with a fiery hate.
I always think of her when I see them, too! Chariots of oblivion. It seems to me the selfishness of the enjoyment (my pleasure at the expense of everyone else’s peace and hearing) characterises people’s driving style, as well. Good one, Merryn. Lovely one Alison St Ledger. <3
Michael Leunig said it all some years ago!
Oh I hate them too.
Like little wind gods, scurrying hither an’ yon.
Perhaps more like hither and thither. They seem to have lost their yon.
I would make it law that hunters have to try and kill animals with their bare hands.
Well, and they could use their teeth. Fair fight.
You had my vote with #1 ! Down with the leaf-blowers Reign of (noisy) Terror! Long live the rake!
Rakes, progress.