Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Finsbury Park - Easter Saturday
I'm aware that the number of staff for our parks has been (or is about to be cut). Judging by the state of Finsbury Park over the last couple of warm weekends the staff have already gone. The litter problem seems to be worse nearer the Seven Sisters/ Blackstock Rd gate, perhaps because of the traffic to and from the funfair.
So here are a couple of radical ideas for the council to cope after the staff have gone:
1/ Tax. I had a discussion with a couple of HoL members on Twitter this week about taxing fast food outlets for the cost of clearing up. If it's a problem with funding for litter clearing them surely the cause of the problem should contribute to the clear up.
2 Parking Charges. It costs 50p to park for 2 hours in Finsbury Park. This seems too cheap - how about increasing this to £2 an hour with the money invested in clearing the park.
3. Encourage the people organising the funfair to run a litter sweep. It's part of the licensing agreement for music events in the park that the event clear litter so why not the funfair ?
4. Close the park. Seriously, it's a lovely park ruined by people. Close it and you remove the need for staff and reduce the litter. Problem Sorted.
Tags for Forum Posts: finsbury park litter, litter
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gordon Keenan on
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Well, it seems like we're all agreed on the problem and the lack of common courtesy among our fellow citizens but i think ii is worth making two points
1) I have to seriously question Adrian from Oz's simple solution that we should 'Fine People for Littering' . Exactly who should fine whom ? the Police won't do it. They don't even enter homes which have been broken into and are occupied ! PCSO's do not have the power of arrest or fining. Are we proposing Park wardens even Privately hired ones should/would put themselves in harms way and approach a couple of young haringey men/women and ask them to handover Ten Pounds on the spot for throwing a bag of empty lager tins ? I think we can all imagine the response that will get !!
NB. Parking Attendants do not take money off people on the street - they are effectively levying a fine and/or threat of fine against a much more important piece of someones property & identity - ie. their car which is generally the giveaway evidence of who the owner is. But Litter Fines ? What risk is a person , 'un-named', taking by telling you to Bug... off ? Lets get practical not physical ?
2) I genuinely believe the dirty habit of leaving and throwing away rubbish without care is not a trait inate to anyone...it is a learned habit. One learned over the last 30 years & actively encourgaged by commerce, esp the supermarkets & allowed by our sad politicians who are afraid of business and prefer to blame the people. People are at fault but hey lets see our place in the big picture. we're the seagulls on the edge of this this landscape and we take what the environment dishes out. Quick and fast. Cheap and nasty.
As kids we used to return milk bottles and lemonade bottles because there was a payment for doing so. If we really want to stop the scandal of litter the answer I believe is a simple return to that former private/public arrangement.
For me, It's the supermarkets and shops who should be responsible for returning all of the packaging of goods that they sell. If they sell 1000 cans of bear and 10 boxes of crisps then should they not be expected to take back the equivalent empties and have them take responsibility for the waste caused. If not they should get heavily fined. It does happen in other countries I believe - notably Switzerland.
This is a problem our politicians can do something about. And I'm sure that, if implemented, after not very long the shops would stop either dstributing the toxic plastic bags et al and/or they would find recyclable replacements and pay customers to return their tinnies of alcohol, crisps, fag packets etc.
This is a business & environmental solution that can work. The cost to the individual comes at product purchase time & can be tied by the product sellers into those products normally dumped and they have the option as in the past to incentivise everyone to take the rubbish back to the place of purchase or similar.
So endeth the sermon..Apologies for that but yes i do think its that easy. GK
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Permalink Reply by Protheroe O'Shea on
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Nice sermon and i agreed with much of it. but dont the police help ticket inspectors catch fare dodgers on the busses. I dont see why the same coppers could not help the parkies hand out fines to bin dodgers.
on a positive note the Islington side is a lot worse than the haringey side
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Permalink Reply by Ruth on
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Yes, we consume too much. A picnic 30 years ago would have been home made sandwiches in a lunchbox which was taken home to use again and again. And a flask of tea, things like that, not all these purchases from supermarkets. We have become so lazy. We eat too much, too often. And alcohol is sold too cheaply in the supermarkets and shops.
It's very depressing to think about how culture and life style.
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Permalink Reply by Abi on
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Same story in my local park, Paignton Park. I had planned on a nice walk through there earlier today but ended up just getting depressed by all the mess and strewn rubbish (which was exactly the same as in these pics - crammed into too-full bins and piled up next to it, escaping in many cases).
As others have said this suggests that the majority are at least not chucking litter at random, but are being thwarted in their good intentions by inadequate litter bin provision/collection.
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Permalink Reply by JD on
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I share everyone elses concerns re the rubbish and agree with many of the suggestions. In the years I have lived here I have never seen the park look so terrible, & rubbish still remains piled up near Endymion Road entrance (also other problems of damage to park remaining un fixed e.g the playground near The American Gardens has been totoally vandalised and is a hazard for children now due to ripped up/ poorly maintained play surface) .
On previous bank holidays there have been staff working in the park, including at weekends and I believe extra used to be employed over the summer months, yet instead we now have cuts (I saw only one overwelmed worker on Friday and no other Park staff on other days). It is a public park used by thousands of people representative of all members of our community, so surely adequate staffing should be employed despite the current economic climate? Finsbury Park has improved so much over the years down to the hard work of Park staff, additional funding and increasing numbers of responsible families/community members using the park facilities, but without adeqate attention the park will quickly deteriorate to its previous condition and cost more in the long run to manage
Unfortunately there is only so much that Parks Staff can do, so much rubbish was left strewn across the park by lazy members of the public who I guess feel it is someone elses job to clear up after them. Once the park starts to look a mess, others I believe, just follow and don't bother either and the problem escalates.
Aside fron ensuring adequate day to day staff, I strongly feel that any events on the park eg festivals, fairs etc should only be allowed if additional litter pickers are employed and paid for by the organisation holdingthe event. There was a huge amount of litter due to the increase in visitors going to the fair over the weekend and masses of rubbish and damage to plants after the recent Kurdish New Year celebrations but i did not see any extra staff working during either events.
Surely the cost of employing temporary litter pickers is not so huge considering the bigger issues at stake?
I also feel there needs to be some form of local/community action taken to try and educate people using the park to take some ownership of the space and take responsibility for not leaving rubbish. This needs to be combined with the Local Authority taking action against offenders (would have been quite a money earner for the council over the weekend). Any ideas for changing litter dropping culture? I was in Golders Hill Park on Sunday and it was full of picnicing families but no litter.
I hope that some of our local councillors see the concerns expressed on the forum and offer some suggestions for improving the situation as its only going to get worse during the summer months
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Ditto you thoughts.
I was in Richmond over the weekend absolutely no rubbish strewn around the parks and green spaces. Why?
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Labour councillors haven't yet heard which "cabinet" member will be responsible for parks. So I've emailed Cllrs Kober, Reith, Canver and Dogus asking them to read this thread on HoL. And to arrange for officers to give councillors and members of the public an assessment of the success (or otherwise) of current arrangements for monitoring and cleaning our Parks and green spaces across Haringey. What steps are being taken or new ideas tried out to ensure adequate standards in the short, medium, and longer term?
I've asked for a full and frank reply - avoiding the use of phrases such as "challenging issues", "addressing the problem" and suchlike. If the Coalition's hacking of councils' budgets means that our own Parks are now unable to achieve minimum standards within the budget we've set, then we need honesty about this.
Tottenham Hale councillors have had complaints about litter and unemptied bins in Hartington Park. My partner Cllr Zena Brabazon passed on complaints about Ducketts Common last week.
But it's also fair to add that when Zena and I went to Chesnuts Park on Sunday morning (24 April), it looked great! It was clean and every litter bin looked like it had been recently emptied and had a fresh new bag. I don't know what it looked like at the end of the day.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Dilek Dogus is away until 12 May.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I spent my Saturday in Highgate Wood and it looked sparkling. Lots of people around and they all must have picked up their own litter. I was also going to point out on here that I noticed a lot of street cleaning going on... Really, the problem is that we're a bunch of filthy litterers over here in the East.
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And run by the City of London Corporation which is so short of dosh these days that its squirrels can be seen throwing themselves off the tallest oak trees.
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Good to hear CHestnuts Park was cleaned on Sunday - I was there just after 8am and there was a lot of litter around then. Someone was working there that day.
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Permalink Reply by Omotn on
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Some boroughs are proposing to charge individual fitness trainers for the use of parks. I understand British Military Fitness already pay something. Perhaps the energies of these energetic people could be directed to litter clearing "last one to the next bin does 20 press ups" "that man there - your black bags not full" "aten -shun - pre=zent brooms"
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