Neutral territory where it’s safe for rats to live

Our local councillor Jeremy Adby produces a quarterly (I think) document called Focus. This is distributed door-to-door and highlights various matters which he feels will be of interest to his constituents.

In the most recent issue there appeared a piece condemning the practice of fly-tipping.

He asked that anyone being inconvenienced by fly-tipping should get in touch with him.

I sent Mr Adby an email informing him of an amount of rubbish which had been dumped in an alley running between Apsley Street and another whose name I’ve never bothered to find out.

This is where the thing becomes interesting. The alley in question is, like a number of others around the town ‘unadopted’. That is, it is owned by no one; neither by the council nor by the householders behind whose property it runs.

On a previous occasion, when rubbish had been dumped there, I had informed Cllr Galpin, who was at that time the chap dealing with town centre matters.

He told me that, as the alley was unadopted, the removal of rubbish there from was not a matter for the council. Nevertheless, he sent the T-CAT chaps along to see what could be done.

They not only cleared away the rubbish in exemplary fashion,

‘Since council members deny any responsibility for removing the rubbish, it would seem that anyone feeling the urge to do a spot of fly-tipping may come along and do it here with impunity’

they also cut down the weeds growing there. Cllr Galpin told me that this was a one-off operation.

Returning now to Cllr Adby. His reply, copied the Cllrs Galpin and Shorter (the current town centre supremo), made clear that, as the alley was unadopted, rubbish dumped there was not a matter for the council.

He also made the curious statement that the alley, being unadopted, is ‘private’ land.

Since council members deny any responsibility for removing the rubbish in question, it would seem that anyone feeling the urge to do a spot of fly-tipping may come along and do it here with impunity.

The rat I saw yesterday emerging from a black rubbish bag clearly felt himself to be safe from persecution, claiming he was living in neutral territory.