Litter, litter everywhere, who cares?
I've just spent a little while perusing the internet and happened upon a blog post about litter by liverpool09.com that caught my attention.
Liverpool09.com states:
Property regeneration is an obvious manifestation of that change with Liverpool One, The Arena, hotels, offices and apartments leading the way. But to me one of the most striking changes is the feeling of safety in a city that once upon a time did have a bit of a problem with car crime and petty theft...
But, and a very large but. The one thing that hasn't changed much in those twenty years is the state of streets in and around the city centre. Vomit, half eaten food, empty drinks bottles and cans, grease, chewing gum, litter, cigarette ends and other detritus still mark most pavements and roads outside the prime commercial core.
The picture above stands as a stark reminder that you are leaving the filth of Liverpool behind and entering the surreally clean world of Liverpool One. Cleaning appears haphazard and random - but I assume we all pay for it whether it happens or not. Until the city can get on top of its basic housekeeping the perception will remain that this is a city that simply doesn't care.
The problem is particularly bad around Central Station and Bold Street. And as liverpool09.com points out in many ways it does not matter if you get all the other things right (good as they are in their own right for improving life for everyone) because the perception of a littered city is that no one cares, which is plainly not the case. Maybe bigger bins are needed? Maybe aggressive handing out of fines? Who knows, but it really needs tackling.
For the uninitiated a bit about liverpool09.com: The site was set up to "explore how people feel about the legacy of 2008".
And as to prove what I have said before that he may be gone but not forgotten, here is the quote that adorns the top of every page on the site:
"It's a momentous day for Liverpool because it's about looking forward," David Henshaw, June 4, 2003.
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Dale Street Associates
David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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Well yes, David Henshaw was always looking forward - to clearing off with ã300,000plus of our money for his pension that he threw one of his little hissy fits about, until he got as much as he could for himself. Then he was off on the way to the two highly paid government jobs he had lined up for himself.
Litter. Unwanted paper blowing down the street like the proverbial tumbleweed in a ghost town. In Post-modernised Liverpool we should not have to put up with this rubbish. It's like an echo from the past.
Wasn't it Bill Bryson who christened Liverpool as the Capital of Litter rather than the Capital of Culture? There are always lots of letters in the newspapers about this too. It is clearly a very big issue, perception is very important.
No Louise, he didn't say that. What he did say in his book Notes from a Small Island (which was written in 1995, long before the city ever bid for Capital of Culture, and at a time when your party were in control of the council) was that when he arrived at Lime Street the city seemed to be having a Festival of Litter. Subsequently, he has been back and praised the progress the city has made in tackling the issue, as have Tidy Britain.
Good find David, and there's one or two other pieces about litter from the articles linked down the right of the site. It's obviously getting to someone, but it's not hard to understand why when you walk around many parts of the city. Aggressive handing out of fines seems the best idea to tackle the problem. There are fines for drinking in public, and the council already has an aggressive approach towards issuing parking fines. Why isn't there more done to be tougher on those littering our streets too?
@Neil - far from getting tougher on litter louts, it looks like Councils will have less powers of surveillance if this report is to be believed
http://bit.ly/Vsftg
One missing link however is that people need to become less 'up-themselves' about the abuse of public space. Throwing waste all over the street is simply a coarse and selfish act by coarse and selfish people. There are limits to what any Council can do to remedy the matter if a sufficient number of citizens are determined to vandalise public spaces with litter, verbal abuse or oafish behaviour. Cities are largely the sum of their citizens. We make it, so we tread in it. Or we smarten ourselves up.