Bully-boy litter ‘Stasi’ are just cash generators
Regarding your article about the litter ‘Stasi’ in Windsor, it’s public knowledge that our council is almost bankrupt.
The streets of Windsor are littered with discarded face masks. The council insists we wear them but does nothing to encourage us to dispose of them safely. It seems these bully boys are there to make money for the council rather than to reduce the vast amount of litter on our streets.
D. Smith, Windsor
Rather than targeting minor littering, councils should direct enforcement officers to investigate the widespread blight of fly-tipping and thereby catch real criminals.
Joe Cowley, Belvedere ‘District Enforcement’ sounds as if it’s an official body when it’s nothing of the sort. I’m sure this choice of name is quite deliberate and intended to intimidate.
Tom Billesley, Birmingham
If you replace trained police officers with unskilled watchmen on the minimum wage like the ‘litter Stasi’, this sort of behaviour is what you must expect.
K. Johnson, Forfar, Angus
Surely giving a warning would have been sufficient for the 82-year-old woman your story reported was handed a £100 fine for littering. Scaring an old lady like this is not acceptable. Josephine Hoxby, Rochford, Essex
We had just this sort of loutish behaviour in Liverpool when the council employed waste disposal enforcement firm Kingdom. It was sacked after just nine months.
M. Brown, Liverpool
If the basic idea is to keep our streets litter-free, then the offender should be given the opportunity to pick up the material they dropped.
D. David, Pwllheli, Wales
I don’t know anyone who thinks that dropping litter is acceptable behaviour. In fact, most people I know wish the council would punish litterers more harshly.
Rolf Kitching, Gosport
We’ve had the same sort of nonsense from the ‘Covid marshals’ hired by our local council, who were so aggressive with a restaurant owner that he called the police to have them removed from his premises.
Any time you give a high-vis vest, a quota and a clipboard to someone who’s clearly got an axe to grind, you’ll get issues like this.
R. Jackson, Lowestoft
In my opinion people who drop rubbish are litter louts, plain and simple. Why do old people think they are above the law?
John Smyth, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire
Government guidelines state that enforcement action shouldn’t be taken if the littering is accidental, as was the case with the 82-yearold mentioned in your story. The attempt to fine her was a clear breach of those guidelines.
M. Jones, Hertford