So the councils and other departments are going to have to make big cutbacks in order for the country to balance the books and get us out of the mess the last government got us into. One of the things that some councils have planned, is to turn off the street lights at certain times in order to save money.
Hooray! I totally agree with this because when I was young all the street lights were switched off between 11pm and 6am. Most decent people were in bed not long after that anyway. There wasn't a huge amount of crime just because it was darker, it's far worse today, and there were not a greater number of accidents either, so I'm all for it.
Unfortunately, a lot of the population don't agree but then you will always get the whingers that grizzle when their toys are taken away. The councils are doing this to save money, that is money that has been paid by us, the public at large, in the form of local taxation and for that reason we should all be grateful that they are trying to save some of it.
As for crime and accidents, the savings will mean that they won't necessarily need to cut back on the policing of our towns and cities and as for accidents, that's down to each and everyone of us being more careful and less selfish when we are driving on roads that are unlit.
There are also a couple of other extra benefits too. Firstly it will help to reduce carbon emissions and secondly, we will all be able to see more stars when we look at the night sky with less light pollution.
When they've done that, perhaps the next step would be to introduce some new by-laws to compel businesses that don't work at night to switch their lights off too instead of leaving empty buildings lit up like Christmas trees. If they are afraid of being burgled, the money they save could be used to install state of the art burglar alarms!
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