Let’s bin Britain’s trash zombies: After repulsive litter scenes blighting beauty spots, JAN MOIR says these louts are truly the trash of our society
The carnage of rubbish strewn around the country this week proves that in the great landfill of our national life there are only two kinds of people: those who litter and those who don’t.
Those who dump their junk for someone else to pick up and those who would rather die than discard even a paper coffee cup in anything but the correct recycling receptacle.
After all these months inside, one might have thought people would respect the outdoors a little more, but not a bit of it. One single sunny day was all it took for the cork to pop on a geyser of garbage.
Rubbish was seen strewn around the country this week after crowds of people went outside to enjoy the rising temperatures. Pictured: Litter left at Potters Fields Park next to Tower Bridge, London
The resulting images of mass littering across the country this week were dreadful to behold, just overwhelmingly depressing.
Parks encrusted with crud, beauty spots ravished with plastic, no end in sight to the piles of waste and desecration of public spaces.
It is understandable that people wanted to enjoy themselves after these grim months of lockdown.
Who could blame anyone, especially the young, for rushing out to picnic and party with friends on the hottest March day in more than 50 years?
The restorative power of nature and fresh air was there for all to enjoy — before the widespread degradation and rubbishing happened. How can so many be so selfish? What are they, trash zombies?
Please don’t argue that it was just a few venal individuals who despoiled it for the rest.
From Brighton to Leeds, and Cardiff Bay to Glasgow, it was the same sea of trash all over. Nottingham has closed two of its parks after appalling scenes of drunkenness and littering.
Angry residents in Sheffield are pleading for police action over mass gatherings and littering at the Bolehills beauty spot.
Police in Newquay were called out on two nights this week, when more than 100 youths started fires and littered on protected sand dunes.
The dopes even managed to set a skip ablaze thanks to the ‘inappropriate discarding of disposable barbecues’. Doh.
Pictured: A park in Nottingham is covered in huge amounts of litter after a late-night party
The resulting images of mass littering across the country this week were dreadful to behold, just overwhelmingly depressing
And it is not just the casual degeneracy that is so depressing, it is the lack of humanity, too: the blunt disregard not only for the environment, but for the welfare and comfort of fellow citizens.
You have to wonder how so many woke twentysomethings reconcile their worship of eco-campaigner Greta Thunberg with their propensity to leave 20 empty beer bottles and a stack of burger boxes under a park bench.
Not all youngsters are litter louts of course, but the problem does seem to be a generational one.
Younger generations of Brits are Europe’s largest consumers of food and drink on the move — and obviously don’t hesitate to leave a trail of empties and rubbish in their not-so-woke wake.
These transgressors have grown up in a throwaway society — perhaps it is no wonder they have a tendency to dispose, but their environmental wantonness is still unforgivable.
That is why millions — including me — have signed up to join the Great British Spring Clean, a venture in which the Daily Mail and Keep Britain Tidy are teaming up for another year to bring communities together to clean the litter blighting our beaches, beauty spots and streets.
Someone has got to make an effort to change the culture of consumption and waste. For if this country ever breaks down into anarchy and civil warfare, it is not going to be over race or class, independence or poverty — it will be over litter.
That is why we will fight them on the beaches over the food containers and old nappies left there, we will skirmish in the parks over the sandwich wrappers and dumped beer cans.
This Eastertide we will battle on with our litter-picks until the savages who leave trails of filthy insolence repent and henceforth dispose of their rubbish responsibly. By thine crushed Fanta can shall thy be known, sinner!
Oh Lord, I must try to calm down, but I can’t help it. Litter louts make me furious.
Norton won’t get into double-O heaven now
Get ready for some first- class, first-world problems from the first man on the (007) moon.
Actor James Norton was in the frame to be the next James Bond — until he declared that he doesn’t want to bare his botty any more because he believes that sex scenes in films ’cause trauma’.
Some of them certainly do, Mr Norton.
Actor James Norton declared that he doesn’t want to bare his botty any more because he believes that sex scenes in films ’cause trauma’
Many of us are still traumatised after Daniel Craig slipped uninvited into Severine’s shower in Skyfall, although I firmly believe he was only trying to be helpful and gentlemanly when she lost her shampoo.
But now that he has said this, there is simply no way that J. Norton can be the next Bond.
If he is really traumatised by the prospect of bedding the likes of Pussy Galore, Plenty O’Toole or Honey Ryder, perhaps he is just not the right man for the job?
Presumably, he won’t be able to shoot baddies, either — he’ll just send them a stern note instead.
Daniel Craig slipped uninvited into Severine’s shower in the James Bond film Skyfall
Sean Connery and Ursula Andress in the 1962 James Bond film Dr No
How sad that the killing of Sarah Everard continues to be used and abused by pressure groups, vested interests, axe-grinders, feminists, anti-feminists, Metropolitan Police haters and even the Met themselves.
The latest unattractive conflict is a row over whether or not the Duchess of Cambridge broke the law by attending the Clapham Common vigil held in remembrance of the dead woman. Please, can’t we move on from this?
It must be so distressing for Sarah’s grieving family.
Many of Miss Everard’s friends said that they avoided the vigil in the first place because her ‘tragic death has been hijacked’ by those who were ‘blaming men or police for the actions of one individual’.
Perhaps those who continue to wage their inappropriate ideological war over this tragic incident could think again.
Please give Sarah some dignity and respect, instead of fighting over some imagined legacy that is not yours in the first place.
Three cheers for the Queen – and her bonnet
The 94-year-old Queen looked sprightly in her lime-green coat and marvellous Easter bonnet
How cheering to see the 94-year-old Queen out and about again, sprightly in her lime-green coat and marvellous Easter bonnet. Adorned with life-sized yellow tulips, it was a splendid sight.
Who else could wear such a thing? Not Grayson Perry, not the Easter Bunny, not even Dame Joan Collins.
HM seemed in good spirits as she visited the Air Forces memorial in Runnymede to mark the centenary of the Royal Australian Air Force. Look at her!
You’d never imagine her 99-year-old husband was recuperating at home after four weeks in hospital with heart problems, or that her sulky grandson had let off a bomb of utter stink under her family’s international reputation.
Maskless and fearless, one tiny buckled foot in front of the other, on and on she marches.
She looks a dear, old sweet pea under that flower-bower of a hat, but there is a stem of pure steel there, too.
Mandy’s just the perfect date…
Amanda Holden is to be the host of a revamped version of the dating show Blind Date
Amanda Holden is to be the host of a revamped version of Blind Date. She is a marvellous choice — for who has had a more chequered dating history than darling Amanda, who even appeared on the show aged 19 (inset)?
Girlfriend, wife, mistress, girlfriend, wife — she has been there and got the plunge-front T-shirts.
However, dating has changed a lot since the innocence of the original show, hosted by Cilla and launched in the winter of 1985.
Back then, a Dick pic was a publicity shot of Richard Whiteley from Countdown, and there was no sexting and swiping right, only telephone calls and proper dates when you had to talk to each other.
Blind Daters today can know nothing of the joy and torment of the answering machine, of only sporadic telephone contact, usually with your parents listening in from the next room.
However, dating has changed a lot since the innocence of the original show, hosted by Cilla and launched in the winter of 1985. Pictured: Amanda Holden appearing on the show in 1991
Not to mention the bliss of discovering someone anew. What’s ya name and where d’ya come from?
After checking out social media, lovebirds today know everything about a putative first date, with all expectations informed by the peep-hole of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
It’ll be tough to keep the magic alive, but if anyone can do it, Amanda can.
We can help… for £2,750
Oh hello, what is this? A new organisation called Noon has been formed, aimed at encouraging midlife women to believe that being in your 40s and 50s is not the end of the road professionally or personally — but whoever said it was? Absolutely no one.
On the Noon agenda is a four-night ‘restorative retreat’ in June at gorgeous Broughton Hall Hotel in the Yorkshire Dales.
Star attraction will be Susannah Constantine, sharing her recent experience of giving up alcohol.
She has recently appeared on Woman’s Hour and written in the Daily Mail on this very subject, but apparently some people still want more.
‘Susannah will walk with us, swim with us and be a part of the retreat for the full four days,’ say Noon excitedly, as if they had just signed up some celestial being, instead of the Spanx-wearing former presenter of TV reality show What Not To Wear.
Still interested? The cost is a rather gasping £2,750 per person, even though it does include a goody bag of toiletries (!) and a lecture from someone called Dr Kati Taunt (!!).
The more penurious sober-curious can instead pay £20 to Zoom in on Susannah’s introductory talk. Tempted to be Taunted and further haunted by Susannah? No, me neither.
While one admires the efforts of women to help other women going through difficulties, one wonders why it always has to be so goddam expensive.
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