Litter

Litter is an abomination.  Of all the things that piss me off, I think that wading through other people’s thoughtlessly discarded flotsam and jetsam takes the absolutely biscuit.

Litter is one of the so-called ‘petty crimes’ and is probably the most unnecessary.  There are bins everywhere.  If not, everybody has pockets, or bags or even hands to carry their rubbish away from public view to be disposed of at home.

Litter is one of those things that makes life just a little bit more unpleasant for everybody, but what to do about it and who is doing the littering and why?

 

Why

Simple.  Selfishness, that’s why.  Somebody else will clear it up.  Can’t be bothered.  When I walk away I won’t see it again.  Everybody else does it.

 

Who

It’s surprising.

·         I was watching a discussion on a news programme about the problem recently and there was a fairly heated debate between a member of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and a well-spoken, middle-class woman who said that the solution to the litter problem was to employ more street cleaners.  End of.  She admitted that she dropped her rubbish in the street if there wasn’t a bin handy.  She said she didn’t like carrying her rubbish around with her because it made her hands feel grubby.  Dear well-spoken middle-class woman:  Street cleaners cost money.  They are paid out of our council taxes.  Taking your rubbish home with you or dropping it in a bin costs nothing.

·         Some months ago I boarded a train at Havant for the one hour journey to Woking.  The carriage looked brand new.  The windows sparkled, the seats and carpets were spotless, the paintwork gleamed.  A man got on the train just after me, sat down, stuck his feet up on the seat, and started eating a baguette sandwich and spraying the crumbs everywhere.  When he had finished eating he dropped the sandwich wrapper on the floor.  There was a litter bin within his line of sight just four feet away.  This, dear reader, was not a yob in a grubby tracksuit and filthy trainers.  This was a yob in a sharp suit and polished shoes (resting on the seat in front of him).  When his mouth was finally empty, he picked up his mobile phone and spent the rest of the journey regaling the so-called ‘quiet’ (ie no mobile phones or noisy iPods thank you) carriage at the top of his lungs with the tale of his hard day at the office and how he sacked somebody because ‘someone like me don’t take no crap from no-one’.  Oooooh Big Man!  He must be a Really Important Power Person!  What a Big Willy he must have!  Tosser.

The train pulled into Woking and the Tosser tossed his empty can of cola onto the seat and got up to get off the train at the same time as me.  Standing beside him at the door I said pleasantly: “Excuse me.  You have left something behind” and pointed at the discarded rubbish.  He bridled:  “That’s not mine.”  I smiled:  “Don’t be ridiculous.  I was sitting beside you and saw you drop it.”  He said: “They pay people to clear up after me.”  I said, still smiling:  “So everybody who gets on the train right now has to sit and look at your rubbish until the train staff clear it up?  Why don’t you pass it to me and I’ll put it in the bin for you?  It’s not hard you know.”  By now the train doors had opened and I had clearly pissed him off because he stuck his face two inches from mine and snarled:  “No!  Nobody tells me what to do.  Especially the likes of you!”  He pushed me backwards off the train onto the platform and stalked off full of righteous indignation.

·         I was walking down a street in Hackney with my daughter one evening behind a small chavette dressed in her standard chavette uniform of black nylon puffa jacket and leggings and mobile phone glued to her ear.  Walking past a bin she unwrapped a bar of chocolate and dropped the paper on the pavement.  Outraged I said to my daughter: “Did you see that?” and called out:  “Excuse me, you have just dropped something!”  and picked the litter up and threw it in the bin.  The chavette turned around and said “Fuck off.”  My daughter gripped my arm and said: “Mum! No!  I entirely agree with you but Not. In. Hackney.”  She told me about a man who said something similar to someone who discarded a beer bottle in the same street and got glassed. With the same bottle.

 

What to do about it

 

A friend was having a rant about police powers the other day.  He said he thought it outrageous that people accused of minor crimes ‘such as littering’ could have their DNA and fingerprints taken.  “Good idea” I said.  If such yobbish behaviour can result in being marched to the police station, having DNA swabs and fingerprints taken and a night in the cells it might make them think twice about doing it again.  I would go further.

 

When I am in charge, anybody found littering or flytipping will be put in the stocks in an open public space and pelted with greasy pizza boxes, polystyrene fast food containers and coffee cups, beer bottles, Coke cans, sacks of cigarette butts and football-sized wodges of chewing gum wrapped in the discarded plastic carrier bags that blow around my street. Then I would make them pick it all up again.  On their hands and knees.  With their teeth.  That’ll teach them.  Form an orderly queue.  Behind me.

 

Until that glorious day, why not join the Campaign for Rural England’s Stop the Drop Campaign which aims to tackle this appalling problem which is ruining our beautiful countryside.  It is headed by the CPRE’s president Bill Bryson, a brilliant and funny author and passionate anti-litter campaigner.

 http://www.cpre.org.uk/campaigns/stop-the-drop/litter-and-fly-tipping