Shabby Barnet Special

Today was a bank holiday and the weather was fine. As a result we decided to go for a nice walk around Mill Hill. I must confess I was really disappointed at the state of our parks and open spaces. It seems to me that people are just too lazy to bother putting litter in bins. Both Arrandene Open Space and Mill Hill Park were awash with discarded litter.

It seems that people seem to think its OK to simply discard your empty tins of beer and Coke, your takeaway food containers, plastic bags where you like. I find it really disappointing and depressing to see just how lazy and anti social people can be. All of this mess adds to the cost we, as tazpayers, have to pay for cleaning. It costs you and it costs me. It also spoils the ambience of open space. Some of this disgarded rubbish can be fatal for wildlife. Do we collectively no longer care.

We have a council election coming up and none of the candidates are even talking about the state of our parks and open spaces. It is not  a mystery why Barnet is looking shabby. The budget cuts mean that cleaning these spaces up are not a priority. Personally I'd rather solve the problem at source. I think we should try and educate young people to be responsible citizens. We have a "whatever" philosophy, where it is almost seen as a badge of honour to be as destructive to our environment as possible. More or less every day I see young people in Mill Hill Broadway casually disgard rubbish, often when standing two feet from waste bins.

I'm not sure when we gave up on trying to get people to take a degree of civic pride in our community, but we have. Given the ever greater cuts, I can foresee a nightmare Barnet where we are simply awash with disgarded litter everywhere. I find it all rather depressing.