Let’s bin Britain’s TRASH ZOMBIES
The carnage of rubbish strewn around the country this week proves that in the great landfill of our national life there are only two kinds of people: those who litter and those who don’t. Those who dump their junk for someone else to pick up and those who would rather die than discard even a paper coffee cup in anything but the correct recycling receptacle.
After all these months inside, one might have thought people would respect the outdoors a little more, but not a bit of it. One single sunny day was all it took for the cork to pop on a geyser of garbage.
The resulting images of mass littering across the country this week were dreadful to behold, just overwhelmingly depressing.
Parks encrusted with crud, beauty spots ravished with plastic, no end in sight to the piles of waste and desecration of public spaces.
It is understandable that people wanted to enjoy themselves after these grim months of lockdown. Who could blame anyone, especially the young, for rushing out to picnic and party with friends on the hottest March day in more than 50 years? The restorative power of nature and fresh air was there for all to enjoy — before the widespread degradation and rubbishing happened. how can so many be so selfish? What are they, trash zombies?
Please don’t argue that it was just a few venal individuals who despoiled it for the rest. From Brighton to leeds, and Cardiff Bay to Glasgow, it was the same sea of trash all over. Nottingham has closed two of its parks after appalling scenes of drunkenness and littering. Angry residents in Sheffield are pleading for police action over mass gatherings and littering at the Bolehills beauty spot.
POLICE in Newquay were called out on two nights this week, when more than 100 youths started fires and littered on protected sand dunes. The dopes even managed to set a skip ablaze thanks to the ‘ inappropriate discarding of disposable barbecues’. Doh.
And it is not just the casual degeneracy that is so depressing, it is the lack of humanity, too: the blunt disregard not only for the environment, but for the welfare and comfort of fellow citizens. You have to wonder how so many woke twentysomethings reconcile their worship of eco- campaigner Greta Thunberg with their propensity to leave 20 empty beer bottles and a stack of burger boxes under a park bench.
Not all youngsters are litter louts of course, but the problem does seem to be a generational one.
Younger generations of Brits are europe’s largest consumers of food and drink on the move — and obviously don’t hesitate to leave a trail of empties and rubbish in their notso-woke wake. These transgressors have grown up in a throwaway society — perhaps it is no wonder they have a tendency to dispose, but their environmental wantonness is still unforgivable. That is why millions — including me — have signed up to join the Great British Spring Clean, a venture in which the Daily Mail and Keep Britain Tidy are teaming up for another year to bring communities together to clean the litter blighting our beaches, beauty spots and streets.
Someone has got to make an effort to change the culture of consumption and waste. For if this country ever breaks down into anarchy and civil warfare, it is not going to be over race or class, independence or poverty — it will be over litter.
That is why we will fight them on the beaches over the food containers and old nappies left there, we will skirmish in the parks over the sandwich wrappers and dumped beer cans. This eastertide we will battle on with our litter-picks until the savages who leave trails of filthy insolence repent and henceforth dispose of their rubbish responsibly. By thine crushed Fanta can shall thy be known, sinner!
Oh lord, I must try to calm down, but I can’t help it. litter louts make me furious.