Litter . Keep Britain Tidy ?

'Daisyboots'. Did you know head lice can cause anaemia in children and adults. It's horrible. I've seen it when working in GPs surgery.

I am an early retired teacher and we gave litter picking duties instead of detentions. Very clean school

A lot of you don’t seem to realise that Keep Britain Tidy never went away. Having been started by the Women’s Institute in the 1950’s it’s a registered charity, always been a bit white and middle class but has always tried hard with campaigning and work with local authorities, schools, other NGO’s and companies, with precious little support from government. And yes, I worked for KBT for 20 years, during which time the wheel was regularly reinvented but there were some major successes eg getting people to pick up dog poo, improving beaches and water quality but never managing to alter the yobbish British mindset of “I don’t care. Someone gets paid to pick up my c#@p.”

Ilovedragonflies the post you are referring to did not happen in Japan but here years ago. An earlier poster's father used to wash a pupils hair because of nits. At my childrens village school in the 90s the teaching assistant finally treated 3 siblings hair with nit lotion because they were forever full of nits. All the parents were fed up with their children having nits time after time. Their mother had been asked many times to do something about it but she just ignored it. So no one was going to report the teaching assistant for assault. What made it worse was the that the mother who had long blonde hair was a rolypoly strippagram. I wonder how many men took nits home to their family after she had been all over them. The mind boggles.

This is one filthy country !
You could eat of the streets/roads in Singapore and you won't find filth at bus stops or anywhere for that matter. The people take a pride in their lovely country and don't have slobs like we have disrespecting everywhere. Spotless transport---and the best airlines in the world. SIA.

I saw the mounds of rubbish left behind by the slobs, in parks and on beaches it's an utter disgrace. These dirty people then get on public transport ! Then we wonder why there are so many germs lurking about.

Just saw pictures of the horrible litter left on Jurassic Beach in the past few days! This was a purposeful act by a crowd celebrating the end of the lockdown. What could possibly have made their acts okay in their minds?

[anger]]
My biggest hate now are disposable BBQs.
Reports from around the UK of these causing untold damage to moors/woodland/parks/beaches by ignorant and thoughtless people.

They should be banned. [anger]

This reminds me of my daughter when she was about 5. We were in our local park and a large tattooed man with half his head shaved was walking a little way in front. He was eating a sandwich in a package from a supermarket and threw the carton to the ground and continued to munch on the final sandwich.
My daughter pulled her hand from mine and picked up the carton and ran after the man shouting Excuse Me, Excuse Me until he turned around She said I think you dropped this by an accident [one of her sayings at the time!] She beamed up at him. He looked at me then looked at her and said Thank You and stuffed it in his pocket. We still laugh about it now.

I am a litter picker in my village and my 'patch' covers a section with housing and one stretch on the edge of the village up to the boundary with no houses. The minute I get to the section out of sight of homes the litter level skyrockets, so clearly most of it is being flung out of moving cars. I find this utterly perplexing since its much easier to carry litter home if you are already in a car. Rather worryingly the most common litter is empty beer cans, hopefully not being drunk by those driving the cars, plus of course food wrappers of all kinds and fag packets. I also regularly get empty water bottles filled with urine and the cap screwed back on and fairly frequently baby nappies bursting at the seams with you know what. Fly tipping as well and we are only half a mile from a very large Council recycling and waste centre.

ps Her Mum was a school cleaner.

Our eldest daughter's first teaching job was in a central London comprehensive - late 90s. She saw a girl dropping her empty crisp bag on the floor so she told her to pick it up .
The cheeky madam replied "Do you want to do my Mum out of a job?"
Can't remember what the outcome was.

It smacks of a general lack of respect for other people, your environment and your Country.
We raised these last two generations so we bear a measure of responsibility. Not enough discipline, too tentative parenting.
A Mc'D's car park is a case in point... they sit in their vehicles, finish a bagged meal and toss the debris out of the window. Lazy filthy bastards...usually teens/young adults. The bin is 10 steps from their car.
Truck drivers chuck pee filled pop bottles from their cabs rather than empty it into a drain. You can see yellow bottles laying by the roadside regularly. A council workers have to pick these up??? This country and the people are a disgrace.

@Rumpunch. My DD used to be SO untidy, just like yours. I was tired of going on at her. Now that she has her own house she is fanatically clean and tidy, and berates me, jokingly, for not being up to her standards.
Her daughter is following the same path, and drives her mum to distraction with her untidy tip of a room, and leaving the kitchen in a mess. When she complains to me I just tell her, “What goes around comes around.”

I forget who said that we have become a nation of ‘browsers’, but it’s true. Years ago people had their meals, and rarely ate in between them. It wasn’t the ‘done thing’ to walk along the road with food in your hand. Now many people can’t go an hour or two without putting something in their mouths, even feeling the need to stop for coffee when out shopping.

Is it because people have more disposable income, or just that there is so much on offer now, compared to years ago?

It’s really sad that some people are so scruffy & leave their rubbish for someone else to clear up.I was always taught to take my rubbish home with me & my children do the same,my little grandson who is 3 wouldn’t dream of throwing rubbish down & he even wants to pick other peoples litter up & put in the bin.Where I live we have two large playing fields & recently the litter has increased dramatically.....I know it’s youngsters but why do they have to just throw bottles,cans,crisps & sweet wrappers on the ground,their parents are probably the ones who fly tip over our beautiful countryside.They should be made to pay for the damage that is done to our countryside & livestock.

I live in Lancashire and we used to have a slogan :
No Litter In Lancs Thanks .
It disappeared a while back.The streets and pavements are getting worse and Litter bins seem to be getting less and less. We've been to many countries and the majority were cleaner than the UK .Perhaps we need a Litter Minister.

Froglady France may be comparatively a lot less littered than some of the UK but the same can't be said for the picking up of dog crap. A couple of years ago we did a canal boat trip for a week. Often we'd moor up and go for a wander round the canal-side villages and towns and were horrified at how much dog poo there was all over the pavements. We saw hardly any people and even fewer dogs, which was even more mystifying!

Thanks for that. I will look it up. ?

Worth reading (or better still, hearing if you can find it) David Sedaris on litter picking. When he lived in Sussex he became quite obsessional about it, walking miles every day with a bin bag and a pick-up stick-thing. He's very funny about it - a delight to hear/read, always.

In the USA the low risk prisoners clear the rubbish and in some countries the unemployed have to keep a specific area tidy in order to get state benefits. Unfortunately in this country we do not do this.

It's so easy, set your youngsters a good example and they will soon learn to either put rubbish in the bin or take it home with them. I think a lot of the problems stem from councils not emptying rubbish bins more frequently and the amount of packaging that takeaways produce. A piece of greaseproof paper, page of a newspaper was all that was needed for fish and chips, plus a sprinkling of salt and vinegar which would be eaten at home. Now its polystyrene containers, wooden utensils and plastic ketchup sachets, plus cola bottles and cans. Funny the fish and chips used to taste so much better then, oh, the good old days!

Since McDs drive through has been allowed to open I have seen an increase in the paper bags, cups and napkins strewn on grassy edge of the road near me. I cannot understand why folk can't take their rubbish home. Seems to becstabsard now to open the window and chuck it from the car. Making other sectors of the population clean up litter just encourages the litterlouts to carry on as someone else will clean it up.

@ExD
We live in Cumbria , it's been shocking !
Went to Buttermere on Monday and also saw blackened rocks ( taken from stonewalls) to be used as bbqs , beer cans , and lots of other unmentionable s everywhere.

When I was a teacher we had parents complaining that the children were asked to pick up litter!

Wasn’t there a Keep Britain Tidy day recently ? Everyone was encouraged to clean up their own patch. Let’s bring it back.
I thought the lockdown would have been a good opportunity for a cleanup . Not the reverse.