The Wait

I've been watching this crisp packet for several days now sitting lonely and forgotten on the railings.  Some thoughtless brat, most likely male, has dumped it on the railing and wandered on dreaming of adolescent girls and football fame.  I hope he gets mumps instead!  I took this pic to see just how long the bag sits there.  I did this once before as a similar bag sat there for seven days before disappearing, possibly owing to the wind.  I wait to see how long this one lasts.  The skatepark beyond is naturally a place excelling in litter.  Several new bins were put in place, notices regarding fines for littering abounded, and the gardeners cleansed the place once again.  All this much to the derision of many of us.  The council folks cleaning the park next morning commented on how nothing had changed!  It made no difference to their habits.

Incidentally friends have been hosting one of their grandsons during his break from University.  This is typical of them and typically of the young male he has never been house trained.  Their house is of course spotless, even the son now living with them keeps their house as it should be, bar his room obviously!  The grandson has never been taught little things such as how to use a bin, tidy up or make the bed.  If he has been taught, and his mother was keen on tidiness  he has quickly forgotten all he has learned.  This of course is normal for a male of his age, men see no reason to fuss unless it is required, and cleaning is not that great a requirement.  Women however have a nasty habit of dusting when there is no dust to be seen, hoovering neat, clean, floors and demanding people who know better to remove their feet from the table.  Some girls even insist on washing the dishes every day!  Surely once a week is OK?  

Not all women as so keen of course.  Friends I used to visit shared a flat, my job was to clear a space in the living room in an effort to find the chairs!  Quite how a small room could be hidden, daily, by the detritus of daily life I could never understand.  Another local hero had built bookshelves at the recess by the fireplace, these were bereft of books and were well hidden from view - behind the books once taken from the shelves and never returned!   A visit to the loo meant searching for the bowl, all was hidden under drying washing.  It may still be this way!  My residence is as always perfectly clean, neat, tidy, and at least as clean and tidy as I myself.  What's that you say....?


Jings! The bag has gone!  The wind must have returned!

Litter

Travelling to bigtown by luxury, high speed rail, I noticed as we trundled along the vast amounts of rubbish on the trackside. Most of this comes from the people living alongside chucking their rubbish over the fence rather than putting it out for the binmen. Quite why these folks feel the need to do this when there is an efficient rubbish collection available I do not understand. There again we are not just talking about normal waste, plastic bags and bottles and the like, but large items such as bedsprings or old tables, things that cost money to have the council collect. Near here they just dump them on the street corner often enough anyway, but huge amounts of junk are flung onto the railway embankment and lie there for months. The bridges over the railway are similarly strewn with litter, newspapers, take away cartons and chip wrappers and so on, jettisoned by those unable to consider taking their litter home with them. Now we have all done it in one form or another but there is a limit surely? Why, I ask, are the British such slobs?

It's a feature of life in this country that litter is true be thrown away rather than placed in litter bins or taken home and disposed off. Much better to fling it from car windows, throw it onto the street or railway line, or just drop it carelessly anywhere. The skatepark opposite me is cleaned every morning by a couple of council workmen because the brats who hang about there are too pig ignorant to use the bins provided, except when they are setting them on fire that is!

During the last 30 years the IRA took to placing small bombs in rubbish bins and many were removed because of this. However today bins have reappeared but the filth habit has not changed.This litter habit is not confined to the UK of course. While we hear or clean trains in Germany and no chewing gum found on the streets of Singapore it is clear the majority of the world cares nothing about removing litter, just recently a swathe of the Atlantic fifty miles wide was strewn with vast amounts of plastic litter chucked from boats and blown into the sea from the land. Imaging how much floats around amongst those bottles with telling messages? It's not just the UK that is a mess, the whole planet is.

Have you noticed the increase in spam regarding quick loans and money deals? While most probably come from similar sources there does appear to be an increase of these sharks on the lookout for desperate people to rip off once more. The media, in particular the tabloids, feature many adverts from financial companies willing to give loans to almost anyone. Digging a new hole to get out of the one you are in is not a good idea, or at least that is what I have found! Far too many vulnerable people, not just those who spend thoughtlessly, will be caught out by such sharks. Surely something should be done about such spam, difficult though this is as there are billions of spam daily. There again, as legitimate financial organisations can rip us off so easily, look at credit card APRs for instance, maybe these folks are no worse than the crooked, money grabbing bastards in the banks?