A recent article in the Evening Telegraph revealed that council litter patrols in Dundee have handed out on-the-spot fines totalling over £15,000 since last year, in what officials describe as a "zero tolerance" approach to enforcement action.
Sounds like quite a lot of cash, and just the kind of thing to have some shouting about "losing our civil liberties" and suchlike, which was in fact one of the complaints during a crackdown almost three years ago.
However, while the figures reveal a significant increase in fines - at the back end of 2005 or thereabouts less than two tickets were issued each month, but during the middle part of this year almost one ticket per day was handed out - as regards the number of offences committed the enforcement action is still effectively negligible. For example, most of the fines relate to cigarette-related litter, but walk past any Dundee pub or club on all but the quietest nights and you're likely to find dozens of cigarette ends - and indeed hundreds in many cases - which are either tidied up by the licensees at the end of the night, swept up by council orderlies the next morning or perhaps left to accumulate for several days.
Which begs the question, what's the point of handing out fines? There are clearly not enough to act as any significant deterrent, and to that extent the recipients of such penalties perhaps feel they're subject to arbitrary punishment - no doubt they're of the 'easy target' variety - and thus the whole exercise achieves little more than breed resentment, while doing nothing to tackle the overall scale of the problem.
Of course, the action does make the powers that be look as if they're doing something about the problem, and the revenue must defray some of the costs of providing the patrols but, other than that, this and other similar action smacks of mere tokenism, and is nearer to zero enforcement rather than the official spin of zero tolerance.
Meanwhile, another report in the Evening Telegraph this week (not online) highlights a Dundee couple's anger at the litter left lying here, there and everywhere by school pupils on their lunch break - another issue that regularly rears its head in the local press.
Equally predictable is the published response from the city council: "The school regularly reminds pupils to be good neighbours and treat the area around the school with respect...integral part of local community...build links with neighbours..uphold the school's reputation...blah, blah...
Seems little real point in that either.
Two bald me fighting over a comb
3 hours ago
2 comments:
Hi Stuart
Got a bit of gossip on this one.
Apparently this litter campaign is being run nationally. 'Hit squads' target a specific area - they're coming to mine next week, although I'm not supposed to know - and will be issuing on-the-spot fines on one hand, and auditing the town to ascertain whether or not they need to keep a presence there to continue issuing on-the-spot fines or not.
Don't know how accurate this info is but I'll find out soon. I was told that cigarette ends would be a focus for the hit squad.
Thanks for the information, Andrew.
Interesting that if it's a national campaign then it hasn't been publicised, since it seems the kind of thing that they would try to highlight in the press, since that certainly seems to be what's done at the local level, if what I've read in the local/regional press is anything to go by.
Anyway, if it's so low profile then it just seems little more than a national and glorified version of what's going on in Dundee, thus I can't really see the point.
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