FIRSTLY, let me state that the council’s clean-up teams do a sterling job, working miracles early every morning clearing up the filth left behind on our beaches, on the streets and in the parks by the anti-social morons who are too damned lazy to pick up their litter and walk a few paces to a litter bin, or, if the bins are already full, take their rubbish home and dispose of it there.

Increasing the number of litter bins will not solve the problem.

There could be a bin every 10 feet along the beach and these ignorant clowns would still leave their litter behind for someone else to clear up.

I regularly use buses and not a day goes by when I don’t come across a bus shelter littered with cans, plastic bottles and fast food containers left on the seats - when there are litter bins right next to the bus stop.

And if people think the beaches are a mess, they should take a walk along Old Christchurch Road between Horseshoe Common and the Lansdowne roundabout (especially on a Saturday or Sunday morning before the clean-up teams have worked their magic) - it is like walking through a garbage tip.

Pavements are knee-deep in filth left behind by drunken yobs.

Walking through the Square a couple of weeks ago, a young woman deep in conversation with her friends dropped a plastic bottle, I retrieved it, ran up to her and said “Excuse me, Miss - you dropped your drink”. To which she replied “Yeah! I’ve finished with it”.

Unable to stop myself, I swore and shouted at her to stop being anti-social and put it in the bin.

Surprisingly, she took the bottle from me and did so!

But the fact is that providing bins and cleaning up after people whose homes must be like pigpens is treating the symptoms of the problem - not the cause.

On-the-spot fines for littering would certainly help, but we need to educate people from a very early age that littering is a filthy, irresponsible and offensive habit.

ROBERT READMAN

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth

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