Strict rules at tip won’t help fight against fly-tipping...

RE. ‘Tip workers face daily abuse as trashy behaviour leads to trouble’ (M.E.N. on Sunday, May 1). My brother was moving house and had rubbish to dispose of. He has a customised people carrier which had seats in (i.e. not a beat up, rusty old van).

So that he could get all the rubbish in, we removed the seats and loaded the vehicle with the rubbish, all sorted so it could just be put in the relevant places at the recycling centre.

We arrived at the gates only for a staff member to come strolling out of his office with a road cone which he placed in front of the vehicle.

He came round to the driver’s side and asked what we wanted to dispose of so we told him.

He asked if the seats had been taken out and we said yes – to get the stuff in.

He said we could not go in to leave the rubbish, we had to go home, unload the vehicle, put the seats back in, re-load the vehicle and then go back to the tip.

We were astounded at this, to say the least. The rubbish wouldn’t have gone in the vehicle with the seats in.

He would not budge and turned us away, saying we would need a permit.

My brother has now moved and has had no problems at all dumping any rubbish at a recycling centre/tip in the area in which he now lives.

When queues to the recycling centres/tips are long, in Manchester you are not even allowed to walk in to save a long wait in a queue of traffic.

I have met several people who have also had problems with taking rubbish to their recycling centres, both driving in and walking in.

Is it any wonder there is so much fly-tipping when people are being turned away from trying to take their rubbish to be correctly and legally disposed of at the appropriate place.

Whilst it’s not acceptable to attack the recycling centre workers, I can appreciate how people would get annoyed.

Manchester council is certainly not helping with the war on fly-tipping – they could even be encouraging it.

Yet that same council is happy to fine people for dropping a few crumbs for pigeons – crumbs don’t usually have chance to hit the floor as pigeons are so quick!

The fly-tipping situation will not improve any time soon if the current rules and regulations at recycling centres are anything to go by. Manchester resident, via email

RE. ‘Family’s fury as soil dumped on grandad’s grave’ (Manchester Evening News, April 30) – this is awful and should never happen.

I have had my own problems elsewhere preventing a family grave being allowed to be hidden by brambles after many years, so can sympathise from experience, but in this case the death is so recent, the insensitivity is hardly believable both from the gravediggers and from the cemetery staff when the complaint was made.

It is not only disrespectful to the deceased but shows incredibly bad treatment of a family in the earliest stages of grief.

It should be a part of the job of both gravediggers and cemetery staff to treat bereaved families sensitively (at any stage even after the passage of years), and as far as I am concerned if they feel unable to do this, they are in the wrong job.

There is also the point that use of a grave plot is extremely expensive in financial terms, a consideration which should not be completely ignored. As far as being legal, it should not be necessary to legislate for sensitivity towards people recently bereaved.

Janet L. Danels, Sale

Graves should be respected