Have you noticed how much litter there is around and about our lovely county? Travel along some of our major roads, from Dover towards Folkestone and Dover towards Canterbury, for example, and you will see the verges and hedgerows festooned with paper, plastic, cans and bottles.
The area around the retail park at Whitfield is particularly dreadful with large amounts of packaging decorating the roadside. Companies that trade on the park should surely bear some of the responsibility for such a mess.
Imagine that you are a foreign visitor arriving in Dover – not an inviting prospect in itself – and travelling onwards to London or other parts of the country, perhaps visiting historic Canterbury; your first impression is of a dirty and untidy country that its citizens do not care about.
When we drive from the port in Calais onwards into France there is never litter at the roadside like there is here. What is the reason for this? Many people would say that the French pay more taxes so that councils have more money to spend. Much more care seems to be taken even in the smallest villages to make the drive through a pleasant experience.
Is this again an example of our councils’ short- sightedness when it comes to spending our council tax? Why is it not obvious that when creating pleasant and tidy surroundings for people to live in, they are encouraging pride in communities? Economy in the wrong place now will cost far more in the future.
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