The country lanes where rubbish bags pile high after doorstep collections are scrapped
This article talks about a new approach being pioneered by one Council it explains: “The council has decreed that that just under 700 households in the borough’s outlying areas should lose the doorstep service and take their refuse to one of 100 new “collection points” up to a mile away from their homes. Mrs Patmore, her eight neighbours in Lodge Lanein Bacup, and residents all over the rural borough of Rossendale, are appalled and angry.
“We pay a high council tax and this is just another example of the way they are chipping away at basic services that we are paying for,” she says. Like many residents, she is concerned that the bags will be ripped open by foxes, badgers and rats, posing a public health risk as well as being unsightly. The new “dumping points”, as locals call them, will also attract fly-tippers, she says.”
I am old enough to remember the Conservative Party Election Broadcast about the Winter of Discontent and this article made me recall the thousands of bin bags rotting in a large heap featured in that attack on the Jim Callaghan Government. I am sure there are two sides to this story and I don’t want to rush to judgement here. It does seem to me that in these hard time difficult issues for Councils leading to these approaches plus the closure of civic amenity sites run the risk of our rural landscapes becoming litter strewn. In relation to the article this week about valuing landscape assets I wonder what the negative value of a bag of dumped rubbish is?