Don’t make pensioners fly-tipping scapegoats

WHATEVER Coun Nigel Murphy might attempt to claim about council refuse policy (‘Small bins are not to blame for fly-tipping,’

Viewpoints, March 13), the truth is we have gone from weekly collections with little limit on the amount a householder was able to leave to be cleared, to a current twoweekly cycle with numerous conditions and limitations on this provision. This means at any given time households are actually warehousing rubbish.

Consequently, as in so much of our social and infrastructural provision, residents are actually getting a worse service than their grandparents received. Hardly surprising some of our confused and nostalgic pensioners are resorting to litter bins only to be scapegoated as ‘fly-tippers’ by Mr Murphy and other members of the council.

This reduced service is often camouflaged by re-labelling parts of household refuse as recyclable material. However, this is largely packaging and leftover products generated by the corporate retail industry. How is it they’ve managed to internalise the profits from these products but externalise the costs of the environmental damage they’ve caused onto the rest of us?

It’s not just the issue of environmentally managing the refuse that is the problem. Pick up a household cleaning product from your local supermarket or pound store and it likely cost about 50p but will have come all the way from Indonesia, China or India etc. The massive amount of environmental damage this globalised process causes and the economically unviable low price being offered is due to oil prices that are much too low for the good of the planet.

If corporate retailers were made to pay for their environmental damage and their fair share of tax, we could not only return to properly resourced public services such as refuse collection, but economic logic would also bring back these manufacturing jobs and industries.

Sadly, circumventing the influence of vested interest might prove difficult. So presumably the scapegoating of pensioners using litter bins will continue. Gavin Lewis, Manchester

Here’s a new angle on the Arndale Centre car park, courtesy of Ben Calvert. If you have a stunning picture, then we’d love to see it. Send your photos to us at viewpoints@ men-news. co.uk, marking them Picture of the Day