Reply With QuoteScotland is no different. When central government squeezes council funding, things like litter collection are the first to get the chop.
I drove up the A1 yesterday and couldn't believe the amount of rubbish and litter by the side of the road and stuck in trees it was like driving through a land fill tip in contrast I drove through Germany 4 years a go and there wasn't a piece of litter in sight, when did the UK become sutch a dump ?
Scotland is no different. When central government squeezes council funding, things like litter collection are the first to get the chop.
Not just a reflection on the sad state of budgets, but also on the people who have no issues throwing their rubbish out of the car window. I watched the other day a scummy individual just walk along the street and casually throw their rubbish on the pavement. Even if it's a minority that has that mindset, you end up with streets that look filthy.
Litter breeds litter, and (usually) a clean environment encourages better behaviour.
I travel a lot in Europe and they put us to shame in many areas these days, litter and road surface condition being just two. This country is in serious decline.
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Depresses me to see the amount of litter on the grass verges when I'm out cycling.
It’s about to get much much worse, in Essex as of the 13th of March you have to make an appointment to go to the tip/civic amenity site, their are no same day appointments, the ditches are going to be overflowing
Exactly this. Every aspect of the nation’s management and delivery of services is now in significant and rapid decline across the board.Originally Posted by Scepticalist
So clever my foot fell off.
That's loopy, it doesn't excuse flytipping but flytipping being the result is obvious.
Just been this morning as it happens and given a leaflet - will need appointment and proof of address.
To save queues apparently…
I'm pretty sure that in London you could spend a fortune on street cleaning and you would still get plenty of people dumping matresses in the street, throwing their litter everywhere and letting their dogs crap and walk away without picking it up. Maybe I'm cynical, but I feel it's an attitude firmly baked into society at this point. I used to live in a flat closer to the centre and there was a spot outside that people continually fly-tipped. When we were looking to move slightly further out into a house, top of the list of priorities was finding a neighbourhood where the residents cared about the surroundings beyond their property boundary.
Maybe but I think people who litter would care if they were in a clean environment or not’
, they’ll still drop that crisp packet regardless
Does seem strange to not be able to book on the day.
My local authority implemented this during Covid times and made it permanent. I like it, I have never not been able to get a spot and I only tend to book it a couple of hours before, no queues quick in and out. I do feel for people without internet access who have to ring for an appointment though.
Ross
It’s not all bad we’ve had it for some while - at least you turn up and dump- previously I’d been sat in a queue for 30mins - that said they do charge £4 pr bag or rubble or earth here - crazy because that’s actually something that can easily be recycled
Hogwash . I find France , Germany and Italy significantly dirtier and litter strewn than London or other large UK cities .
And don’t start me on the graffiti … my god what a mess that is especially Rome and Berlin . Paris as much as I enjoy it is one of the filthiest cities I’ve been to and I include India in that comparisson.
South Ayrshire Council started this in June/July last year. It used to be that the Recycling Centre always had cars dropping off whenever I passed by. Not now, though.
Scarcely a layby locally without mattresses, couches, bags of whatever.
______
Jim.
i live near areas of natural beauty and national parks.
people come walking and hiking, mostly people from away.
they arrive is fancy BMW`s and Audi`s, come well dressed in all the latest high end adventurer gear.
and then you go for a walk after they have left and they have left litter all over the place.
they may be well off but they still act like chavs.
Athens and Rome are covered in graffiti and dog muck. Paris stinks of urine (or large chunk does)
London is pretty scummy in places, but not as bad IMO. It’s the bleedin’ chicken boxes and chicken bones the wind me up. Lazy b@stards usually next to a bin as well.
Last edited by Sinnlover; 20th February 2023 at 13:52.
Agree...Paris is worse than London. In terms of graffiti, we also seem to be better at removing it than France or Italy, who are happier to leave it. Graffiti is an issue you'll never get rid of - there is a huge following for not just the artisitic stuff but also the 'tagging'.
https://www.ft.com/content/45a184ee-...2-71def32ccf98
Most shocking city I've ever been to? For me it was Frankfurt. Our hotel was near the station and the city's liberal attitude to drugs has definitely left its mark. We were stepping over discarded needles all over the pavements, which stank of urine.
That'll be the Broken Window Theory. Isn't New York supposed to be a good example of how it can work?
My brother was one of the volunteers out with others on Sunday litter picking in Chelmsford. Within a couple of hours or so and along a stretch of verged road not more than 1/3 mile long 40 bin bags were filled plus a flatbed's worth of unbagables. The City Council provided the bags, pick-up tools and took the collected rubbish away, the volunteers provided the manpower. One discarded soft drink can had a use by date of 2005 on its base...
If I can I'll also volenteer for the next group pick organised by Chelmsford Litter Wombles.
There should be zero budget for litter collection…. It’s not the fault of council funding cuts. It’s the morons who litter that are the problem.
Not ideal (would rather there be no litter) but nice one for you and your bro for volunteering
Well done, but it’s about to get worse, they will only let people visit the top so many times a month, now they have a mechanism to refuse them.
Until recently I travelled from Sawbridgworth to Witham through Chelmsford most days, there is always lots of rubbish tipped into ditches, lay-byes and farmers fields.
In India I drove past a car with boot lid open and all sorts of rubble and paint cans in car half emptied onto the road side. I could not see the drivers or passengers and assumed they might have gone for a coffee break whilst unlawfully unloading. I say unlawfully but doesn’t appear anyone cares. It was broad daylight.
It is a real shame when you drive past vast colourful fields lined with trees to then see such a mess.
It's always been the same.
I've seen Keep Britain Tidy films from the 1960's but public information films won't change certain people's minds.
Filthy people will always be filthy. It's ingrained in their mentality and they expect people to go round cleaning up after them.
Cheers,
Neil.
Back in the real world: You either put in draconian policing or you collect it.
Oddly enough that has never had any bearing on me wanting to throw rubbish out of my car window.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Go to Japan; there is no litter anywhere; plus there are no litter bins in public spaces. If you take it out ... you take it home. It's not hard.
One of my regular walks goes past the entrance to a local carp fishery ... so fishermen go there to enjoy the country side. I regularly litter pick the rubbish thrown out of car windows of leaving fishermen; beer cans, RedBull, Campinggaz cans and all the stuff a night fisherman may want to fry up during their visit, it makes no sense to me why someone would destroy their own space ...
Personally I am in favour of draconian laws to heavily fine anyone littering ... seems the only way to change peoples behaviours is through their wallets.
The end of the day it comes down to the type of person, there's a lot of people out there who will throw crap out of the car window, dump rubbish on a back lane rather than go the council tip etc etc.
Some people just can't be educated and will see it as someone else's problem rather than their own, others will put rubbish in a bin or take it home with them...
I pick up any litter I see in the road where I live; most of it gets blown in, and there is always a bit on rubbish collection days. My pet peeve is fag-ends, nasty stinky things.
It helps that the road is only 16 houses, and is a dead-end too, so no through traffic. At least this bit of England is litter free.
I live on the outskirts of Leicester (about 6 miles from the center) and apart from the main roads in my area (which have filthy verges) I travel around the country lanes often and the amount of rubbish in the ditches etc is shameful.
Awhile ago I was stopped at traffic lights in the center of Leicester, there was a Fiesta stopped in front of me with two lads in it and while it was stopped the passenger threw out a load of Mcdonalds drink and food containers in broad daylight and this on a main thoroughfare :(
I don't think "draconian" and UK policing will ever go together. We seem to view all forms of anti-social behaviour and lower level crime as a societal problem to endure rather than an individual one to punish. In practical terms, theft has effectively become a civil matter to take up with your insurer rather than treated properly as a crime, other than getting a crime reference number to prove you aren't making it up. So I can't see us being effective at tackling litter.
I suspect if we paid for an force of litter wardens, you'd find the easy targets were the ones that took the brunt of the action...those that feed bread to ducks or accidentally leave their receipt poking out of the cashpoint. People who don't care still won't care and will be a much harder target to chase up.
Sadly all true ... retiement overseas has attractions ...
I agree with all this. There is a widespread sense of decay and degradation pretty much wherever you go in England.
The litter alongside the A27/A23 around Brighton simply beggars belief.
And it do think it's much worse here than in Europe. I've just returned from Northern Germany and there seems to be a sense of pride in their environment and a public intolerance towards litter and those who drop it. In Mallorca, hardly litter free, is also much, much better then here. A Spanish builder friend was stunned at the decay he saw on a recent trip to the UK.
As I understand it it's the council's responsibility to collect litter, but they receive no funding to do so, and require permission from the Highways Agency to actually do it. The Highways Agency, meanwhile, strim the verges shredding the litter and making it much harder to collect.
It's all profoundly depressing.
This is exactly the situation where, if there is a local problem with litter, one should be raising it with your local councillors IMHO. It's their job to look after the voters who elected them. If they can't even do that what use are they? I've certainly raised local litter problems with my local councillor, and it made a difference. If your local councillors can't be bothered working on the voters behalf for local issues, time to organise an alternative representative.
A
As the father of a local councillor I would remind you that the problem is caused by an anti social lout who scatters litter and junk seven sheets to the wind without any remorse or conscience.
You can complain to your councillor and they will almost certainly get things put right, but that is done at a cost when councils are struggling for every penny. Your councillor had to rob Peter to pay Paul.
I am saying this in defence of all councillors of every political party.
Too busy spending time in nice restaurants to worry unduly about trash.
Agreed, fines are the answer along with a long term public information campaign to turn sentiment against litterers.
Australia did this very successfully in the 80's, litter is not a problem and the fines for getting caught can be massive. It varies by state but in WA the highest fine is nearly £6k.
The UK countryside is the best anywhere, why its occupants treat it as a large bin baffles me.
Still, it's moot with no police to enforce fines.
Oh yeah that's going to work...
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
That is why more cameras are being installed.
My aforementioned brother is a Ward Councillor, the financial issues the City Council he works within are very real indeed.
I could go on, not within the G&D though.
Surely you twigged that he meant theoretically? In which case a fair point has been made.
I wonder what it costs to provide and empty public litter bins, plus the costs of public litter collection services.
A cost which Japanese councils simply don’t have.
Just think of all that budget redirected to other public services, and all you need to happen is people take their litter home.
A lot of litter isn’t purely the result of scroty people dropping stuff. Bins get blown over, rubbish bags rip, stuff falls off lorries, public bins aren’t emptied frequently enough and it overflows…over time this detritus gets blown by the wind and it builds up.
So clever my foot fell off.
This is true. Ironically, our waste collection company Veolia generates litter when the bin men accidentally drop rubbish from the bin when emptying and just leave it there rather than picking it up.
Out in the countryside it always seems to be empty McDonalds wrappers and beer cans mostly. And discarded underwear, from time to time.
I used to play "spot the litter" on long distance runs through West London. The most prevalent litter by far was the metal nitrous oxide cannisters. You'd quite often find huge piles of them. Nowadays, people seem to "buy in bulk" and you see more Fast Gas industrial sized cannisters. Must be cheaper.
The other most common item I saw were those toothpick/dental floss sticks. I have no idea why people felt the need to floss at bus-stops but it appears it is a very common thing to do.
A returns deposit scheme is being planned for cans and plastic bottles apparently. I litter pick daily on my cycle to work and if I could get 20p for every bottle and can I pick up I’d be a millionaire by now.
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Many European countries have done this for years. I’ve no idea why we haven’t.
So clever my foot fell off.
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