Time for corporate Antisocial Behaviour Orders?
Oscar Wilde made the remark "youth is too good to be wasted on the young." I wonder if the same applies to ASBOs whose application round here seems to be restricted to rude and licentious youth. A couple of cases elsewhere make me wonder whether a wider range of antisocial activities could be dealt with in this way.
A farmer was in the news this week when he was hauled off by the police after his pigs escaped for what looked like the zillionth time in breach of an ASBO (on the farmer, not the pigs, in case you wondered). In another case a few months ago Camden obtained ASBOs against two large music companies for covering parts of the borough with flyposters advertising records on the grounds that the posters made the place look run down and depressed. The pig farmer's case looks a bit medieval and will surely cost him a groat or three, if not a ducking in his own pig slurry.
What is antisocial in Swanage and district? I am not getting into the perennial dog mess question but there are a few other matters. Every summer parts of the town are covered in discarded takeaway food wrappings. There is no doubt that this gives a highly adverse appearance to much of the seafront and as far as the pier. Takeaway food businesses should be held responsible for the litter their customers create. They have chosen to run their businesses in a way which results in a deterioration in the appearance of the area close to their premises. No doubt they would all claim that what happens to packaging after it leaves the premises is nothing to do with them is nothing to do with them. This is not acceptable. The line "am I my brothers keeper?" received its rebuttal quite some time ago.
All of us who do business in the town are responsible for running our businesses in a way which does not damage the place. Refusing to accept this is antisocial behaviour and should be so treated.
The matter of campervans parking on the ferry road is causing concern. I am all in favour of anyone being able to get a cheap holiday but there is a substantial fire risk from having so many so close together. Imagine the consequences if there was a heath fire there and a few camping gas cylinders exploded. Its our firefighters and other emergency workers who would be over there first and at risk and it doesn't seem right to expose them to this un-needed hazard.
The ferry company own the verge and if they permit the situation to continue its hard to see how they could escape liability if there was a disaster. Cynics may claim that they are tolerating a mess in the hope that they will be permitted to put their parking meters back into use on the ferry road. If so that sounds like antisocial behaviour to me.
That might lead us into a discussion of highly visible old buildings being allowed to deteriorate in the hope that this will pressurise the planning authority into permitting redevelopment. Theres a thought.
(Posted by K Roker 16 December 2004)
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3 comments:
This is an anonymous letter received in reply to a letter on this topic published in the Advertiser.
What a stupid letter. How can you compare fast-food companies with commercial fly-posting companies? Do you suggest that customers eat their burgers etc. with nothing to put them in but instead use their bare hands?!! Of course the food outlets should not be responsible for what customers do with their wrappings. If a dealer sold a car to a customer and the customer then crashes it into a tree is that then the responsibility of the dealer? This logic is as daft as yours. Swanage like everywhere else suffers from litter louts (often the visitors you refer to!) but efforts are made to reduce this by putting out rubbish bins (ugly to you or not) and street cleaning. That is all that can practically be done. As for ASBOs, I think you shoul put your brain into gear before before spouting such and making yourself look such a fool
I have often though that more could be done to keep the town clear of rubbish from fast food establishments. It is not good enough to just blame the consumer if they are given so much packaging with the food; it becomes a problem to dispose of. I think the blame does have to go back to the outlets that sell it when the food is so over packaged with polystyrene trays and several sheets of paper. I do accept that some packaging is necessary, but more thought should be put into it. I was quite impressed with a chip shop in Wareham. It sold chips in plain double thickness paper bag which seem to be more than adequate and would take up less room in the bin. Perhaps “Put me the bin Thank you,” or “Keep the Plaice Tidy “ could be printed on them. Also paper bag are not as attractive to float in the bay as the Polystyrene boxes. I don’t think paper bags would be such a problem to the wild life in the bay as Polystyrene.
This is just the first suggestion. I am sure if a bit of research into packaging was done the problem of litter in Swanage would improve as know one want the mess of all those overflowing bins.. Why blindly keep using the same packaging, if there is something better, just because we have always done it that way. The packaging that the fast food shops use is the problem[ it’s the choice of the fast food shops so the buck stops there
I think if the four or five main takeaways around the Square were approached, by say the Mayor, an agreement could be made to employ a fulltime litter picker operating from the clock tower to the quay, at the shops’ expense. An advert-uniformed person would show Swanage takeaways really care about keeping our front clean and tidy.
Meanwhile the beach wardens could give up a little of their strolling and coffee drinking time to support the effort!!!
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