The Daily Express carries a Dalrymple piece on litter, promoting his new book on the subject, Litter: How Other People’s Rubbish Shapes Our Lives.
Chewing gum is trodden into the pavements of even the most exclusive areas and it sometimes seems as if we think that what a beauty spot really needs is an empty, glaring-orange Lucozade bottle. Britons often drop litter without awareness of the alternative. Sometimes, though, they are not so thoughtless: they give the matter some thought and then decide to drop the litter anyway.
Oh Dr Dalrymple, you spoilsport, people are just expressing their inner Tracey Emin.
“Are these people deliberately defying society or is it just that they know that bins have something to do with litter but cannot quite work out what it is?”
Tragic but funny… it seems the State has had a similar effect on humans as humans have had on dogs – have you noticed how often dogs, after pooping on the grass, responding to some vague primal memory, they do half a turn and kick up a few blades of grass behind them completley missing their target. But that’s not fair on dogs.
“The thieves, I learned, were able to restrain them- selves from smashing the windows of parked cars during the rain or cold but if it was warm as many as one car per 100 yards had been broken into, leaving shards of glass to shine on the kerbside in the sun. But it was the litter that interested me most.”
Some years back I saw a police officer on TV, this was in the city of Washington USA, he was explaining how crime was a lot worse in summer than winter but didn’t know why.
I’d hazard a guess it has a lot to do with attractive ‘unattainable’ women in skimpy summer clothing – stupid men.
“Some years back I saw a police officer on TV, this was in the city of Washington USA, he was explaining how crime was a lot worse in summer than winter but didn’t know why.”
It’s not difficult.
The delinquents generally can’t be bothered to go out in bad weather — it’s amazing how criminal damage around here explodes when the weather’s nice. Destroying people’s property matters is merely a whim — certainly not worth getting wet for!
I think you’ll find that it’s a global problem. Google ‘space debris’.