Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Litter and parenting
Where do litterbugs come from?
Yesterday walking down Oakfield Road I saw a mother and son coming in the opposite direction and the boy just tossed some kind of wrapping by a tree in the pavement. I watched this action and must have followed the paper descending to the ground. I think the mother must have seen me looking and she told the boy to pick it up straight away and for good measure she said, you know you don't do that sort of thing. I almost said to the mother, well done!
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Contrast this with the experience I had in Paddington Station some years ago when I was almost assaulted over litter by a feral parent. While waiting in a queue to buy a ticket, a boy picked up a brochure from a rack and just threw it on the floor. A woman on her way out, swooped down, picked it up and put it back in the rack and carried on, in a non-verbal critique of the child's conduct, in plain view of the father, who was clearly failing in his duty.
It was either the boy or the father who then took the pamplet out of the rack again and threw it on the floor again. Standing just behind the father, and having weighed up the situation, I gently suggested to the father that "someone is going to have to pick that up", meaning a cleaner.
Feral father than went into fight-mode, clenching his fists, weaving from side to side and shouting "shut up, shut up, shut up". Even though the father was significantly shorter than me, I had no wish to engage in a fight over a piece of paper, so I said evenly "ok", having made my point.
Having seen the appalling example set by the parent, that boy is likely to be a life-long litterer and probably pass his conduct on to any progeny.
Should parents not be more accountable for the conduct of their offspring?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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Loth though I be to arraign John D on a charge of blasphemy, I must point to the etymological roots of my friend Theo-phrastos as "the man spoken (of) by God (or by a god)".
As leader of a party of five (including the niece formerly known as Charmaine)among hoi polloi at Hally Pally Great Hall on Sunday, I do agree it would make an ideal venue for Liz's Litterbug Lectures. Yes, Aled Jones, the poor little Welsh boy who never grew up as there were no mines to go down - still he makes a decent enough living from Religion-lite. Being part of a Songs of Praise Golden Jubilee congregation is damned hard work, with all the upping and downing and repeating and grinning and pretend-singing in case one or other of those camera cranes is homing in to make one look and feel even more ridiculous than usual. Still, very glad that one of their many technical hitches gave us a full repeat of Katherine Jenkins, always as easy on the eye as on the ear. Beverley Knight's soulful gospel singing of I am not Forgotten was memorable, and Amazing Grace's final line, Was blind but now I see, was obviously written a long time ago for Andrea Bocelli.
Whether you're into Songs of Praise or not, have a look in at BBC1 this Sunday, 2nd October - probably around 5 or 5.30pm. I'm sure it will run more smoothly than it felt in the 2-3 hour making of it. Anyway, the Great Hall should look well.
Now what had all that to do with litter or feral parents? Yes, I'm sure there were a few of the latter present in the congregation as there was quite a lot of the former on the rather sticky floor as we left.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Clive, I did not mention committees or policies. I am concerned with the practical and do-able.
Over several years I've photographed and made observations and suggestions about the practical things which could be done. And not just by the Council, but traders, Haringey staff, and many other agencies. Local schools, sports groups and other voluntary agencies, churches, mosques and other religious bodies all have essential parts to play. As of course, do individuals.
Many other people have done the same. For example over several years I've shared ideas - and photos - with Liz Ixer. Liz's ideas for a cleaner greener borough tend to be more creative and more fun than mine. I'd also guess that her community volunteer colleagues had a lot of useful ideas too. If anyone asked them and tried out their ideas. It's a scandal that this scheme has apparently been allowed to wither away.
Your question about the "learned nature of littering" is simple to ask but complex to answer. I doubt whether between us we could come up with even a fraction of the possible reasons for how different people dispose of their waste.
Your examples related specifically to how parents and other adults set examples for children. I've also made this point. (Click on the photos to see larger version and read the comment.)
Most recently in the photo below of an educational display outside Tottenham Green Under Fives Centre.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Your question about the "learned nature of littering" is simple to ask but complex to answer. I doubt whether between us we could come up with even a fraction of the possible reasons for how different people dispose of their waste.
How about:
- laziness
- uncaring
- costs nothing
- thoughtlessness
- lack of imagination
- no sense of civic responsibility
- lack of fear of consequences or punishment
What I was getting at in the original post was, are we
(a) born litterbugs (as some would have we are natural born sinners) and either we have responsible parents who teach us not to behave in our natural way or we have irresponsible (or feral) parents who allow us to behave in our natural way; or
(b) we are born without pre-disposition to littering one way or another, with the same influences as (a) above; or
(c) we are born with neat and tidy instincts, with delinquent parents turning their children away from their natural neatness (I believe this is the least likely)
I believe littering probably stems from a failure to be taught. Whether littering is learned or unlearned, either way it is an act committed by individuals.
Litterers make the world a less pleasant place. I think one of the reasons litter has become such a problem is that the authorities won't take consistent firm action over it and the perpetrators know that its not taken seriously.
I see local authorities as compromised in dealing with litter: first, councils often don't take individual responsibility seriously themselves so they have difficulty in seeing it generally, for example decisions are made by committees and individuals are rarely accountable; corporate bodies generally feel more comfortable dealing with other organsiations rather than individuals; and there is a reluctance to use clear robust condemnatory language in dealing with this foul phenomenon. Is the truth not that litter prosecution and prevention have always been low priorities? I'm sure its destined to remain so.
It's already been observed that the council has used inaccurate euphemistic language in connection with the riots, which give the appearance of waffle and trying to minimise what happened, for reasons best known to themselves.
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Now, Clive, the Theology of Original Littering is a dogma I could really warm to. How many angles could we find on the head of a bin?
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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In your neat bullet points (but surely lacking the poetry) of some of my theories, you left out inebriation which as I have often observed is a big factor on the amount of beer cans that are left as litter in my neck of the woods.
I really don't agree that there is a lack of robustness in either the language or the desire of the enforcement department to pursue litter louts. As part of the community volunteer programme, I learned that there are frequent patrols and fines for littering (which are often described by some as 'a waste of time' and an 'easy target' when it is reported on HOL, as though the sin of casting your first cigarett butt of the day is a lesser one than casting your telly into the valley of darkness. If I was being really cheeky, I might provoke OAE by suggesting that this is a somewhat catholic approach to sin whereby sin can be tallied up and paid back in installments - perhaps LBH can start selling indulgences?- but I won't).
Meeting the officers and enforcement team, I'd say that the zeal to hunt down and deal in a robust fashion with litter sinners is positively missionary. The real reason we have seen a fall in enforcement is because there is no money to pay for officers. Recruitment was frozen a while back. This is likely to remain the case until Plan B has us all back on our feet again and rejoicing in the number of bin collections we are now granted by the right reverend Eric de Pickles.
We could, of course, find fault with LBH's failure to spend their talents wisely in the good times and build some volunteer capacity, as well as sharing and learning from zealots like Alan and myself who felt sure we could find ways to change all but the most die hard sinners. I believe they were coming to see that they needed to do that but then times got hard and they were forced to find ways to cut costs which it appears includes the volunteer programme they were slowly building up to be the eyes and ears on the street and to help with creative ways to tackle the problem.
Oh and there is that word again 'feral' *sighs* I fear that its fashionableness means we are stuck with it for a while yet being applied to everything that we don't like 'feral drivers, feral parents, feral fly tippers etc ' until it loses all meaning like the vogue for sticking 'rage' or 'gate' on the end of every news story and we can consign it to the big bin marked recycling.
Language is a powerful tool for sure, but looking at every problem in simplistic terms and filing people's behaviour under the heading 'feral' is as unhelpful to finding solutions as local council's habits of hiding behind euphemisms, jargon and buzz words ( a point, incidentally that I, and I believe, Alan are in total agreement with you about).
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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Talking of fashionable jargon, could we use the word " future " more often going forward ?
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Your list, Clive, basically suggests a "Who?" explanation, rather than asking "Why?". An approach which has severe limitations if we want to make change by understanding the causes of things. Why did someone's car breakdown? Because they are a bad person /driver. Why does someone litter? Because they are a litterbug.
Like John Major's plea for us to: "condemn a little more and understand a little less", this is a prescription for ignorance. You and - over the years - some senior Haringey staff, have been entirely in agreement on this.
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First Alan, I'm unsure whether to find it (a) pleasing to learn that there might be at least one or two sane heads at the council or (b) grossly offensive to be compared with senior Haringey staff!
Understanding the cause of things: In the spirit of scientific enquiry, I offer a hypothesis or tentative explanation for the "Why?" question of littering. It's upbringing and parenting (please see the first two anecdotes at the top and offer comment in each case).
The short man who was shouting at me with clenched fists and who was on the point of assaulting me, I make no apology for describing as "feral" or a "feral parent" and I did not recognize him as someone I could reason with, unlike yourself, on occasion.
We all agree its a problem. The collectivist approach to the problem would probably be that its a class issue or that we're all to blame somehow, or to recommend we do sociological research indefinitely.
Although litterbugs are a problem for the non-littering members of society and it is organised society who need to mount a response, it is not "society" which is to blame for litterers: it's individuals and - in my opinion highly likely - delinquent parents who are to blame.
The alternative to endless hand-wringing (which you seem to favour) over the phenomenon, is to recognize that it is individuals who drop litter, who haven't been brought up properly and where the authorities must act in loco parentis in a response that has a scale and quality that is effective and meaningful.
I won't hold my breath even if I might have to hold my nose ...
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The Powers That Be continue to introduce laws and regulations which they have no means of enforcing, eg on -
Littering
Smoking in company vehicles
20 mph speed limits
Using hand-held cellphones while driving
Urban Planning
7.5 T weight limits
When people realise that laws and regulations are not enforced and they can get away with doing as they like, they hold the law, all laws, in contempt. Is it any wonder then that someone who wants a new pair of trainers or a TV set sees nothing wrong in smashing a window to help themselves ?
We need fewer regulations but strict enforcement of the ones we retain.
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Agree John. In the same vein, if we are not going to have capital punishment (which I understand most of the public would favour, although I do not), then at least have the most severe penalty of all actually mean something.
In most cases, life imprisonment does not mean that, except in the exceptional occasions when a court qualfies it with a recommendation that it means a whole of life tariff. The next most severe version of life imprisonment is "serve a minimum of x years".
"Life imprisonment" is a term that has lost its original meaning and now only means a sentence more severe than most others. IMO the criminal justice system has been in retreat for years.
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I think I've grasped your "hypothesis", Clive.
The scientific method would be to gather objective evidence to test its reliability and accuracy.
Your method in this thread is to repeat the opinions you began with, expressing your strong "belief" in their obvious truth. Then, having rubbished any alternatives, concluding that your views and beliefs constitute the sole credible and sensible interpretation.
I am glad you feel you can sometimes reason with me. I fear this may mean that I sometimes agree with you. Can you tell us the last time your scientific enquiry led you to conclude you were wrong about something important?
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