Six days after the start of fall, the Zurich will decide on the question of how sensitive of the use of leaf blowers – “the symbol of all the ills of humanity (and) the most stupid invention of all time” writes the NZZquoting actress Cate Blanchett. The outcome of a war of the leaves which has lasted for almost two decades, and a story with delicious details. “This is one of the beauties of direct democracy: even the most curious questions can be decided by the ballot boxes,” said the Zurich daily.
On September 28, therefore, the inhabitants of the first Swiss city will have to decide if they abound in the direction of the executive and the legislative. Worn by the Rose-Vert Camp, the latter wish to ban any petrol aircraft, and authorize their electric pendants until October to December, like what is done in Geneva. A decision to which the UDC, the PLR, the Center and the Evangelical Party oppose, at the origin of the referendum.
A hair dryer at the municipal council
However, at the beginning of this War War, it was the UDC, by the voice of the municipal councilor Ruth Anhorn, who denounced 20 years ago the “noise and bad smells” of these polluting devices which “disrupted the concentration of students when they were used within the school”. His colleague PS then opposed such an idea – “a world upside down,” said the journalist. The Great War of Souffeuses will be revived in 2010 by two elected environmentalists – the city will then reduce their use – then in 2022 with the motion of the Greens and the PS.
The jousts between pro and anti-souffliers led to funny scenes. As in March, when the city councilor Albert Leiser drew his own blower on the council, or when his colleague Karin Rykart brandished his hair dryer to minimize the noise of his horticultural equivalent-“which brings Carla Reinhard, liberal greens, to wonder what type of hairdryer Mrs. Zürcher can well have. A general laughter bursts out, ”retraces the journalist greedily.
Other fighters joined the war of the sheets, the association of merchants of Zurich having claimed a large no to the text, when the association of masters gardeners plans a legal action. In the opposing battalion, “we react calmly”, “a confidence that could be justified”, judges the journalist, stressing that “if the exact density of leaf blowers in the city of Zurich is unknown, it can be assumed that the lobby of leaf blowers is not particularly powerful”.
