This is a picture of the pavement outside Marks & Spencer in Banbury’s town centre.  It was taken at 5:00 pm on Sunday afternoon.  You will note the bench is surrounded by cans,  plastic bottles and the detritus of modern society and you may just spot that some items have been dumped on the bench itself.  Pigeons pick their  way carefully around, hoping for the odd piece of discarded food from McDonalds or somewhere similar.  In the background you may see a gaggle of scruffy youngsters sitting on the steps that lead up to M & S and surrounded by a lot more litter that one can only assume they have tossed to the ground.

The second photo looks to the other side of the tree in the first picture.  In the background, you may be able to see a whole row of litter bins.  They are not the only ones in this immediate area.  There is a generous supply of them all round this part of town.  We will have paid for them through the Council Tax.  What baffles me is how many people leave their litter on the ground just a few feet from an available bin.  What lazy, ignorant and dirty oiks are we supporting in Banbury?  Why can’t they be bothered to take a couple of paces and put their rubbish in the appropriate litter bin?

If you visit this spot at 6:00 am in the morning there is an army of Cherwell workers and trucks clearing away the litter from the night before so that the town starts off the day in a clean state.  No doubt we pay for them as well, through the Council tax.  Sadly, this clean and tidy state does not last long.  Clearly a scruffy and disorderly element of the town’s population either think it is fun to leave the place looking like a tip or perhaps they treat the town as they treat their own homes?  Lord knows.

I have heard a few people express the opinion that litter is important because leaving it lying around maintains the employment of street cleaners!  This is the economic illiteracy of Miliband’s labour party, finding any excuse to pump up the size and cost of the nanny state.  Banbury is not unique;  this scruffiness and the need to clean up after people is a phenomenon of most urban areas and of a failure to teach people decent standards.