Safe Speed Forums

In the Telegraph this morning.

Link

Surely if the council wanted to make an issue out of it, a warning wouldn’t have gone a miss.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

You would have thought that a quiet word would have been much more sensible, but of course there are TARGETS to consider. I am so glad that our taxes are being spent so wisely.

Personally I hate litter louts, but some sort of distinction should be made between types of litter. What is the difference between a Whatsit (or any other crisp) and bread thrown to the ducks in the local park? While the crisp is full of chemical nasties, the birds will be just as happy to eat it, and all evidence will be gone before the following morning. If the crisp packet had followed it then that is a quite different issue.

Surely rubbish that is quickly bio-degradable should be treated differently to things that will not degrade in the next 100 years?

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

Yeah they didn't even stop her, they just sent the notice through the post.

This is another example of a well intentioned law being administered in a heavy-handed manner.



Wot a jumped-up halfwit.

So what would you prefer? The driver coming towards you to throw his biodegradable cigarette butt out of the window while watching the road, or for him to be looking down to make sure that he is actually stubbing it out in the tiny excuse for an ashtray as he drifts over the white line into the oncoming...

Before someone jumps on me, I know that doing it into the face of the following motorcyclist is not a nice thing to do, but as with anything, a little thought and observation before you act is all that is required.

I will admit that I smoke, (roll-ups using legally imported tobacco - up yours Gordon), but I have never smoked and driven - it just doesn't feel safe to me. I will always stop and get out and stretch my legs, but others have no problems with it - the act of smoking is not a conscious thought process and doesn't interfere with their driving.

The current ramping-up of anti-this type of driver and anti-that type of driver is all about general persecution of motorists (a stated aim of the Labour party), and should be minimised on this site: we want drivers that think about their driving are considerate to others, and always try to improve, we don't care what they drive, how fast they drive or what they do in situations where there is minimal risk to themselves or others.

I can see this thread becoming schizophrenic with a litter discussion and a smoking discussion...

If she simply refused to pay and went to court, I wonder where their evidence would come from. A council official in a following car and that's all. One person's word against another one might think. One might ask how he/she saw it in detail if he/she was watching the road and paying attention to his/her safe driving. How easy was it to see that it definately came from her car and not a different car? Think of the fun of cross-examining the council official in court.
Personally I would go that route just to be as awkward as possible and not because I condone littering the streets. A bio-degradeable 'Whotsit' is hardly a major source of littering and it would disappear within a very short time leaving no trace, unlike sweet wrappers, fag packets, coke cans, etc.
What a lot of petty-mindedness there is in Luton.

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

Me too - just come back from abroad with my supply of fags (personal consumption only) and saved myself £737.50...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Not in my lifetime...

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

Yep. I can well imagine innocent trees getting similar tickets in autumn.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

So what defines litter? Is it it's 'bio-degradableness? (Does that word exist?)

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Pecunia Prius Equitas et Salus

I blame Golden Wonder for not printing the half-life of their maize products on the packet.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

My reading of the story is a bit different. At no point does the council say it was a Wotsit. They saw her throw something out, that was similar to a cigarette butt.

Littering of any kind is pretty foul, and cigarette butts are particularly foul - a nasty cocktail of chemicals etc. on a substrate that takes years to break down.

We only have her word that it was a Wotsit.

Granted I feel a warning would be better, but it wasn't a fine for throwing a Wotsit out, it was a fine for littering. The fact it was a Wotsit is immaterial.

In my view, the real point here is that she was only prosecuted because she was a motorist in a registered car and could be traced. If she had been a pedestrian the "official" would have had to approach her personally and ask her identity. She could then have cried "rape" or "assault" or just punched him in the face and walked off.

Why is it OK for the DVLA to release identity details of registered keepers to all and sundry for any dubious purpose? What if she had maintained it wasn't her driving? Is this an S172 type offence where you would be obliged to identify the driver?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Good point. Also she would have had the opportunity to say "It's a Wotsit, not a fag end"

A shredder is very useful for that sort of correspondence.
Just keep on ignoring all correspondence from them and deny everything at all times
It would then all just stop for everyone if we all did this.

This sort of reasoning scares the hell out of me.

Are we to become so concerned about the letter of the law that we forget all about the original objective? Oh, wait a minute - we have - and that's why we're here.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Are we reading two different versions of the article?




Cigarette butts *are* nasty yes, and I'd support action taken against anyone dropping any kind of litter which hung around for any length of time (butts, plastic bags, newspapers - biodegradeable they may be, but they can be lying around in a pretty intact state for some time, especially in dry weather, before they get mulched up). Taking the *same* level of action against someone dropping something that will disappear practically without trace in a very short length of time, and which leaves no harmful residues behind, seems quite inappropriate on the other hand. For all we know, the busybody council worker could have run over the wotsit and crushed it into dust within seconds of it being dropped, destroying all evidence of the "littering" offence before it had even been reported.

Now, if you support the idea that dropping *anything* is littering, should we fine every smoker for the ash they drop, everyone eating something for the crumbs they drop, anyone who brushes a bit of fluff or hair off their clothes... What about someone who throws the half-finished contents of a cup of coffee onto a patch of grass/vegetation, but not the cup itself (e.g. most picnic-goers/hikers at some point in their life), is that littering too?

Also, where's the proof that the littering took place at all - do we all now live in fear of some jumped up council drone making false accusations about us, with seemingly their word alone being sufficient evidence to see us hit with a fine? Could be a nice little money-making scam for a council running low on funds.




It's entirely material, unless you do believe that the punishment for all dropped items should be the same, no matter what the item is or how it interacts with the environment.

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Chris

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Q. Are you a stupid fascist with limited reading skills or are you just a retard?

So to be clear - in LBC do not feed the ducks as discarded foodstuff such as stale bread is covered.

Do not throw your apple core into a bush or anywhere else that it can bio-degrade in the traditional manner.

Instead you must put it into a litter bin where it will still rot away, but somebody has to then collect it and shove it into a landfill instead.

Just as well that it isn't London then, as in public places such as railway stations they removed all of the litter bins on security grounds as the IRA were putting bombs in them. When I last visited it was incredibly annoying to be forced to throw rubbish on the ground for the sweepers to pick up.

Can we have some consistancy please????