Express & Star comment: We must plant a nagging fear in the heads of flytippers
The environment and the green agenda have moved centre stage, but if you visit some of our country lanes and quiet secluded spots you may be confronted by the activities of those who could not care less about the environment.
Old sofas, fridges, mattresses, wheels, detritus from DIY projects, litter, business waste, and much more, are the unpleasant crop among hedgerows and glades. The offenders look at the countryside and see it as a tipping opportunity.
For them this form of waste disposal has advantages. It involves no permits and no costs. And while it is illegal, they are highly likely to get away with it, as figures across our region underline.
While incidents of flytipping have increased, which will have partly been driven by the closure of official tips during lockdown, very few people are brought to book for doing it. In comparison to the scale of this environmental disaster, the number of fines issued is minuscule.
And the cost of councils to clean up the mess runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds, which means that it is the public which is paying for it.
The difficulties councils face in catching offenders and gathering the evidence against them is obvious. It can't take long to pull up in an isolated spot, open the back doors, send everything tumbling out, and then drive off again leaving somebody else to deal with the mess.
Sometimes they get careless and there is something in the waste which connects it to the culprits, but even then that might not be enough to pin the crime on them to the required evidential standard.
The scale of this besmirching of the environment shows that the measures being taken so far are not effective, and so the issue is whether we are prepared to put in the resources and effort to make the odds less attractive for the flytippers.
In our surveillance society there is surely a case for spy cameras in spots which have been repeatedly used as dumping grounds.
The flytippers will always have the advantage, as there is a big, big, countryside out there for them to spoil, but if we are to be serious about tackling the problem a nagging fear needs to be planted in their minds that they might be caught after all and made an example of.
You can win Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? with a lot of diverse knowledge, as Shropshire’s Donald Fear demonstrated.
But knowledge is not the same as wisdom, and Mr Fear has also demonstrated wisdom and generosity.
Since winning his cool million, he has given away 70 per cent to members of his family, and has settled for some relatively modest treats. He still lives at the same place in Telford, and is still driving his old car. There is no Bentley on order.
In fact, he says, his life hasn’t changed that much, and the pandemic has meant that his plans for worldwide travel are on hold.
A lot of people dream of winning a fortune and there have been well-publicised cases in which the arrival of large amounts of money has not equated to happiness.
Years ago a tabloid newspaper sought to overturn the anonymity of a big lottery winner as it said it wanted to “share the joy.”
Mr Fear has shared the joy, achieving that measure of true wealth which we can all envy, with a comfortable retirement, personal contentment, and helping his family.
