Skip to main content

Musings on litter

As part of my ongoing microcampaign against ugliness I turned the first dogwalk of the day into a litterpicking exercise. Yield from what is normally a 30-minute round trip through Colchester Lower Castle Park, crossing Bull Meadow and back skirting the County cricket ground: three carrierbags full of litter plus three full cans of beer (yes really!) and one soiled blanket.
About 25% of the litter was packaging generated by a single business - MacDonalds - a fact which I have added to my already long list of reasons to detest that company. Disgusting food, exploitation of children and hellish cruelty to newborn chicks are among the others. (MacDonalds are welcome to sue - is this the start of MacLibel The Sequel?) The rest was mostly assorted junk food containers, dirty tissues and lots and lots of beer cans.
Most of the empty beer cans were from Fosters lager, as indeed were the three full cans, which were under a hedge, for reasons that can only be guessed at, but the fact gives rise to certain questions, I feel, about the brain state of customers of that brand.
I have a theory that the ratio of those such as myself who are made grumpy by litter to those who don't care is probably at least three to one, so if the grumpies each picked up a few bits of litter on each outing, the uglification of our public spaces by litter would be brought under control. The place looks a lot better afterwards and it makes a change from ineffectually sighing "O Tempora, O Mores". You do have to abandon pride though.
I do sometimes wonder, assuming there are any archaeologists alive at all in a thousand years' time (a big assumption I know), what they will dig up. Layers and layers of expanded polystyrene burger cartons? I hope not. It doesn't bear thinking about, really.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Iran: the minority that will not let go

I am thinking about places in the world where women are oppressed. Iran for example. There, I gather, militia roam the streets intimidating and attacking women who behave or dress in ways of which they disapprove. In my country, such militia would be arrested and tried for public order offences. It is not that the British have no opinions about what is acceptable dress or behaviour in public and what is not. Of course we have opinions. But individuals behave in a way that is their own choice, provided that it does not contravene a specific law, and it may be a poor choice, but it is the individual's and not imposed. Live and let live, and mind your own business, are mottos here. And gangs who roam the streets trying to impose their own ideas on others tend to get arrested. So what essentially is different about Iranians? I suspect, nothing is. A minority of society suppose they have a superior social and ethical code but that is normal in any society. The trouble is tha

Clegg on school vouchers - the evidence

Did Nick Clegg endorse school vouchers or didn't he? Well, the evidence that he did is rather strong. Not only Rachel Sylvester in the Telegraph on 29 October but also self-confessed Clegg fan Jasper Gerard, writing up an “exclusive interview” in the Observer on 21 October, state that he did. Gerard writes, quoting Clegg: "'I want a sense of empowerment on a daily basis for people accessing health care and good education.' Well that's clear. But he differs from free marketeer Tories in that 'having lived in Europe and had children born in hospitals in Europe, they have a far greater sense of equity in health and education. It is not like a supermarket but the patient, pupil or parent has entitlements which the provider of services has to meet.' So according to his 'pupil premium', parents would be given a voucher to spend in their preferred school; but while a flaw in such schemes is often that the savvy middle class pack the best schools, Clegg

Forgotten Chernobyl? I haven't

It is as if the entire Government has forgotten the Chernobyl disaster - because it is too inconvenient to tell the public to contemplate a reduction in "living standards". Well, here is a reminder. From The Guardian: "When a routine test went catastrophically wrong, a chain reaction went out of control in No 4 reactor of Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine, creating a fireball that blew off the reactor's 1,000-tonne steel-and-concrete lid. Burning graphite and hot reactor-core material ejected by the explosions started numerous other fires, including some on the combustible tar roof of the adjacent reactor unit. There were 31 fatalities as an immediate result of the explosion and acute radiation exposure in fighting the fires, and more than 200 cases of severe radiation sickness in the days that followed. Evacuation of residents under the plume was delayed by the Soviet authorities' unwillingness to admit the gravity of the incident. Eventually, more tha