The mote in thy brother's eye.

Bit of a hoo-hah going on around where I live as a result of the local council demanding that shops remove advertising boards and other "street furniture" from the pavement in front of their premises or face a hefty fine. Their logic is that such things are an obstruction and therefore a danger to pedestrians. Shopkeepers are not surprisingly up in arms about this. I can see both sides of the argument, but it seems to me that if the council want to take this attitude, they should put their own house in order first. By far the most common and widespread obstruction to the pavements is caused by wheelie bins which, having been emptied, are then abandoned willy-nilly all over the place by the bin men.