WHAT is it about beautiful England that seems to irritate so many people?

According to Keep Britain Tidy, it costs almost a billion pounds a year to clear more than two million pieces of litter a day dropped here.

Just how obscene is that?

It’s often the irritating things that can give a town an unworthy reputation and litter, especially in the shape of fast food throwaways, has to be the worst blight.

As someone who used to arrive at work at some ungodly hour in the morning, I am very aware of the hard work that goes in to cleaning our streets of the mess cast to the wind by the previous night’s revellers.

But when it comes to our main roads – the conduits through which thousands of impressionable visitors travel each year, especially in summer – there is much work to be done.

Today’s spotlight on Dorset Way is a prime example. A busy dual carriageway linking Bournemouth and Poole, indeed the east and west of our glorious county. Yet parts of this road are an utter eyesore, dotted with discarded and wind-blown litter and as a regular traveller down this road, this is not an isolated snapshot in time.

The Bournemouth Spur Road has been similarly blighted in the past and hopefully today’s photos will act as a wake-up call.

We live in a beautiful county, but let’s not make that first sight a jaundiced one.