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Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Competition No 3847
Set by Gavin Ross, 30 August
The mayor of Bedford is saving money by using filtered petrol from abandoned cars in his official vehicle. You were asked for even more creative suggestions.
Report by Ms de Meaner
Hmm. There are one or two ideas here that could be taken seriously. In particular, I was rather taken with R J Pickles's thoughts on additional duties for buses ("Attach road-sweeping mechanisms to buses so they can sweep roads as they go"). There's a certain elegance there. However, that was his only good idea, so an hon mensh for you, my lad. £15 each for the rest. The best of the best (for the pencils) is Ian Birchall, who also gets the Tesco vouchers.
l Future spending on education to be reduced by handing out free condoms to the public.
l The mayoral chain to be purchased from the plumbing department of B&Q.
l The public requested to bring their own books to the library to read.
Michael Cregan
l Reduce theft from municipal libraries by stocking only books no one wants to read.
l Cut down on the time devoted to complaints by providing a customer helpline number that does not exist.
l Allow local residents to immortalise themselves by paying for a street to be renamed in their honour. Perhaps £10,000
for a cul-de-sac; £100,000 for the high street.
Paul Brummell
l Make voters bring their own pencils on election days.
l Don't clean up graffiti; simply announce an exhibition of street art.
l Collect newspapers and magazines left on buses and trains and put them in public library reading rooms.
l Issue Freedom Passes only to elderly people who are prepared to admit publicly that they are past it sexually.
Ian Birchall
l All paper clips to be reused until metal fatigue sets in.
l Close all libraries, schools, sports facilities, etc.
l Suspension of all pavement repairs, and their replacement by legal notices warning pedestrians that they use pavements at their own risk.
l "Twinning" arrangements to be had only with towns easily accessible by Ryanair, easyJet, etc.
G M Davis
l Scrap any committees with the words "restructuring", "policy", "governance", "audit" or "committee" in their titles.
l Replace officers on the council noise team with a man in a van delivering earplugs.
l Use children's roundabouts for generating electricity.
l Turn underused council properties into crack dens.
Geoff Horton
l We declare all our parks jungle areas and hire out our (now unemployed) park keepers as private gardeners.
l Our traffic wardens offer "valet parking" services for a fee.
l Speed bumps are never popular, so let's save on tarmac and on road repair bills: we simply dig the existing holes deeper and inaugurate pilot "speed dips" schemes.
l Lengthen the delays at traffic lights and encourage our traffic wardens to fine motorists for stopping too long in the traffic-lights queue. Simultaneously, we install meters so that the lights change on demand.
l Switch off our streetlights at night - after all, our citizens should be sleeping peacefully.
Shirley Curran
No 3850 Set by Brendan J O'Byrne
Most students entering university today will have been born in 1986, the year the Challenger space shuttle exploded and Chernobyl had its meltdown. In its seventh annual Mindset List, Beloit College in Wisconsin reminds its professors that as far as their freshers are concerned, Desi Arnaz, Orson Welles, Cary Grant and Ayatollah Khomeini have always been dead, computers have always had viruses and Cher hasn't aged a day. How about a Mindset List for 2022?
At least ten ideas by 30 September. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
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