National litter disgrace is our fault; don’t blame Ministers – Bernard Ingham

The debris left by the liberated lockdowners on Bournemouth beach, and by Leeds United and Liverpool supporters after their respective promotion and championship celebrations, are just recent examples.

Lest anyone suggest I am one of
those old fogies shaking his head at
the decadent ways of the modern
world, I am well aware this is an old problem.

The National Federation of Women’s Institutes were on to it in 1954 when they passed a “Keep Britain Tidy” resolution. The movement they inspired became a charity in 1960 and by 1971 we had the Dangerous Litter Act with fines of up to £100.

I had meetings with the campaign when Margaret Thatcher, returning
from visits abroad, used to do her nut in the car from the airport about Britain’s mess. She even swept part of Downing Street for the cameras in support of Westminster City Council’s clean up London campaign.

Sadly, it has only got worse, even though a war is being waged against plastic which is polluting rivers and sea life. It’s a regular chore picking up litter from around the house, including that left, dammit, by binmen who can be far from meticulous in clearing up after themselves.

Incidentally, one of the great ironies of this world is that the drive to recycle rubbish has ruined the urban environment with the variety of plastic rubbish bins outside every home.

But then I have long concluded that ardent environmentalists are aesthetically dead from the neck
upwards when wind turbines and
solar panels wreck land and seascapes, and sterilise acres of productive 
land.

Worse still, wind and solar power are entirely unreliable and cannot by any stretch of the imagination alone drive Britain back to prosperity.

Why Britain has become a tip – a singularly accurate consequence of utterly anti-social fly-tipping – is less than clear. In my young days we were ordered to pick up our litter and either put it in a bin or take it home.

Fish and chips wrapped in newspaper were the then staple diet and it may be that lengthmen, employed to keep road verges spick and span, gave us a false impression of our tidiness.

There is now vastly more packaging than then and online shopping has done nothing to reduce cardboard waste. The massive use of tin cans and plastic bags and the rise of the fast food industry have played their part.

But my diary records my mystification on a visit to an England v Australia match at Old Trafford in 1985 over the relative good humour of cricket compared with soccer crowds even though the consumption of ale during the day was phenomenal, leaving us ankle deep in cans.

About the same time I went to a baseball match in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and found the Yanks no better.

In Zanzibar Mrs Thatcher met her soul-mate – a highly intelligent guide
who was distraught over the green plastic bags that the locals had discarded for all to see.

In short, this is a long-standing international problem with some countries worse afflicted than others. But this is our land. It is our responsibility. And it too often looks an absolute
 mess.

It is no use blaming the generous use of packaging, fast food outlets or local authorities and police for doing so little to stamp on littering.

We, as Britons, either take pride in our environment or we don’t. And we manifestly do not.

Worse still, we are immensely hypocritical about it all. Concern about the environment – even if concentrated on eliminating fossil fuels and reducing plastic pollution – has never been greater. Why Greta Thunberg, the schoolgirl evangelist, is courted by statesmen.

Moreover, some politicians have the cheek to talk of austerity when the Glastonbury festival – though mercifully not this year – leaves fields of rubbish and discarded tents.

Only recently, campers elsewhere left not only their tents but a barbecue in the bargain. And we are supposed to be hard up!

The inevitable conclusion is that something has gone seriously wrong with personal responsibility. We are preoccupied with rights not responsibilities.

But our responsibility as human beings is surely to prevent the pollution of the world we live in.

Only parents and a reformed education system can sort this out. We can’t leave it to government.

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