WHAT’S HAPPENED TO JOHN TAYLOR – OUR MAN OF LETTERS?

I scanned the Tameside Reporter from cover to cover last week, but alas; there’s been no sign of him!

Could it be he had nothing to preach? Or could it be that he was attending the 87th birthday anniversary of his revolutionary hero Che Guevara?

Either way, I’m sure he’ll soon be back gracing the letters page with more kernels of coprolite knowledge and frequent walks down memory lane which he liberally spreads before us.

But, hang on, what is this? Page 11 of the Manchester Weekly News has just been dropped on my lap and sure enough, there's a letter, ostensibly flowing from the ubiquitous pen of ‘Baird of Dukkie’ concerning his chosen subject ‘Litter’

Now, don’t get me wrong. I too deplore people who wantonly discard their unwanted crap all over our streets, but reading the councillors letter, one wonders whether he really wants littering to stop!

In his letter he claims that in Tameside they spend more than £1million per year picking up after litter louts and was positively drooling over the fact that the Government is to allow councils’ to increase their fixed penalties for littering to £100.

Now here’s where the figures start to worry me. We already know that this council is not what one could call numerate, and if proof was needed, we’ve all heard claims from the councillor himself how he considers the recent local election results to be ‘fair and democratic’ even though a vast number of those entitled to vote, didn’t!

I would be interested to learn how the councillor arrives at his assertion that littering costs Tameside council £1million per year! After all, those that are paid to pick up litter in our streets are paid a set wage to do the job. And they’ll get paid the same whether they pick up 1 ton or 20 tonnes of litter.

You’ve also got to question the wisdom of this career Labourite councillor, when he declares that because of the ‘massive cuts’ that have been imposed upon them, they have less enforcement officers to issue fines! Which is a great example of typically backward politically biased economics.

No one in their right mind would contemplate cutting the numbers of those who not only have the job of bringing in more money, but are actively engaged in working towards building a cleaner and more attractive environment which new businesses and those looking to put down family roots might find attractive.

So, let’s look at his figures again.

With the £1million plus, he says it cost them, one could employ 100 persons per year on £200 per week to pick up litter and I’m sure Tameside don’t employ more than a dozen or so operatives, specifically for that purpose.

It would make far more sense to double or even treble the ‘under-cover surveillance and enforcement officers’ in order to hand out more fines to replenish the council’s coffers!

For instance, let’s assume each town within Tameside has 5 litter enforcement officers who have a conservative target of finding 5 litter droppers per day.

(Even I could catch more than 5 people dropping cigarette butts, toffee wrappers, Food containers and all manner of other rubbish in a day!)

At £100 handed out for each fine, that’s £2500 per day, per town.

There are 9 towns: Ashton-u-Lyne, Audenshaw, Denton, Droylsden, Dukinfield, Hyde, Longdendale, Mossley and Stalybridge which offers a potential £22,500 per day.

Now let’s assume a 5 day working week; Tameside’s front line heroes could be issuing £112,500 worth of fines for dropping litter per week.

Gross that up by 52 weeks and you get a staggering income of over £5.85million!

So instead of littering ‘costing us money’ if those responsible were in any way efficient; even if we assume it does cost over £1million to finance the ‘litter squad’ they could be well over £4.5million per year in profit. 

Now just think how much they could knock of the Parking fees, the Council Tax, Licensing fees for social events, and all the other underhand expenses they subject us to over the course of the year or invest in schemes that encourage businesses to flourish!

So you see why our intrepid councillor loves ‘litter’ so much? The plain fact is he simply can’t afford for Tameside’s litter louts to stop dropping it. Otherwise, instead of shovelling the political nonsense about littering and paying lip-service to the problem and subjecting 'volunteers to grace his photo-opportunities, he would take off the kid gloves and get ruthless!