Local Rubbish

I’m now of an age when many, many things annoy me - but I’m sure that I’m not alone in feeling that Stockport is one of the dirtiest towns in the UK.

I am constantly appalled by Wellington Rd as I walk into the town. The litter starts by the church spire and gets worse so that the area just before Debenhams is chockablock with fast food wrappers, plastic containers, and sundry items.

On a Sunday morning the bus shelters at the bottom of the hill are awash with detritus, but at least there are some bins to overflow whilst further up the hill there are not.

Just how bad the problem is can be seen when one goes abroad to Germany, France or Spain. The latter two countries have been traditionally perceived by Brits as on the dirty side. Not any more. Both Spain and France provide a model for how litter can be kept under control even in a very built up area. The streets are not just tidied up, they are also washed down with water. It’s embarrassing to show guests around from other countries. I try to avoid the ‘grot spots’ which disfigure our otherwise quite nice northern town.

So I was a little surprised to see in The Civic Review, the regular news sheet from the council, that the number one priority of the ‘Cleaner, Greener, Safer, Stronger’ council is a ‘Cleaner Stockport’.

I have lobbied my councilors - nice public spirited people - to put pressure on the council for months now. But the ‘grot spots’ persist and offer a reproach to the stated aims of our elected officials. What does one have to do to poke them into some kind of action?

The Looney Council

One of the things that sends me into a civic rage is the visual pollution of our streets and highways by the absurd decisions of local council planning departments. Number one is meaningless road markings - such as those politically correct but completely useless cycle paths which go nowhere and no sane cyclist would use. Or how about those huge white stripes to indicate bus lanes which are only operational for a short while in the rush hour. [And since almost all bus companies are now completely commercial, why should they be given any priorities?] Another which I am going to start photographing is the sprouting of income-generating commercial advertising on roundabouts, adding to the visual clutter the motorist has to decipher.

In Heaton Moor I boggle and fume each morning when I walk across the completely meaningless red ochre box painted onto the road just before the Savoy (outside the electricity sub-station). It includes inward-facing chevrons, now rapidly fading with abrasion. Do you know what it is for? No - and neither did the contractors who painted it there - because I asked them.