Now that I've become a cyclist, I have a much more accurate picture of the rubbish that is strewn along the highways and byways of our great nation. When you're zooming past at 50mph, it just looks like undifferentiated garbage, but when you are pottering along and seeing it close-up, you'd be surprised at the variety. Yesterday I noticed, for example, a whole pile of old tyres dumped in a lay-by alongside a couple of bags of general household rubbish and the usual piles of empty lager tins and bottles. Now, I can see that care for the environment has dropped some way down the chav list of priorities here in the Zimbabwe of the North but I still wonder why it is that the typical British street is so much more disgusting than the typical street in, say, Germany or Spain. I don't have any particular hypothesis to test, other than the general degradation of the population, but I'm sure there must some more accurate sociological explanation. I would call the council to complain -- goodness knows why -- and ask, but I'm pretty sure they'll tell me it is Mrs. Thatcher's fault and ask for more council tax.
[posted with ecto]
