Teetering rubbish

On many a station platform, the window ledge outside the waiting room is thronged with empty paper cups like penguins on an ice floe. Wherever a stall for newspapers aimed at Antipodean or Russophone settlers in the capital is left unattended, empty drink cans and smoothie bottles are left balancing on top, like some homage of modern art to the terracotta warriors of Xian. People plant these things so bizarrely because they don’t want to throw them on the ground to be trodden and blown about untidily. Keep Britain Tidy, noticing this “careful littering”, urges them to take it home. That is unrealistic. People don’t carry empty burger cartons into a meeting, concert or wedding. A bad turn by the IRA was to drive away the public rubbish bin. Some transparent versions are now returning. Would that there were more.