The story of a fly tip: a tale of neighbourhood pride

Wednesday:


Well, why not just leave it in the street?
After all, it will get carted away for nothing whereas if they made an arrangement for a collection, it would cost money. Sure you risk a fine if caught, BUT WHO IS EVER CAUGHT?


Saturday night:



Some time after the big storm that delighted and awed the residents of Harringay, someone nipped out and moved the chairs.
Was the thought something like this?

'Hmm, I must have fly tipped those in the wrong place. I had better move them to the usual spot or else the local busybodies might not realise I don't want them and call the council for me. After all that old dumped window disappeared last Friday...'

On Sunday afternoon,


our neighbourhood philanthropist My F Ly Tip decided he really didn't need that old bed any more and added it to the old chairs.

The busy body is conducting an experiment. She's not reporting it to Enterprise (although she did request a visit from enforcement) but waiting to see how much more junk her neighbours are going to pile outside her house.

Epilogue:
No more junk was added overnight and the tip was removed on Monday afternoon. The guys clearing the rubbish had to put up with some furious horn honking and yelling by some young lady in a car, inconvenienced for a whole 2 minutes because she had to queue behind the vehicle that they were piling the rubbish into. They ignored her, personally I would have parked the van there and gone off to the cafe for half an hour. Maybe that's why I don't work for the council...

Checking up on Green Lanes

If you walked down Green Lanes last Monday morning, you may have been struck by the amount of rubbish and the fact that the waste wasn't collected.

Well, being nosey, when I spotted that there were guys with clipboards walking down and checking the rubbish, I went to ask them about the apocalyptic state of the road.

The waste collection had been suspended that morning so that enforcement and waste management could do a check on the traders, what residents were doing and the state of the street cleaning.

By the looks of it, what they found was not pretty and they had copious notes about what they discovered. I mentioned the cigarette litter and it was one of the things that they had picked up on, especially around the unkempt tree bases.

Let's hope that they can start find solutions to these problems.

The waste was collected late morning and Green Lanes looked pretty tidy by lunchtime, shows just how much work the street cleaners and bin men do to prevent the road turning into a giant landfill site.

A Fair Deal for Haringey Kids

Haringey schools receive £1000 less per pupil than other councils with similar costs such as Hackney and Islington.

Gathering support from all sides, there is now a campaign to get a fair deal for Haringey children.

You can find out more here

and

Sign the petition

Go on holiday and not photograph the bins? I think not!

Okay, so I went on my holidays (which is why there was no update last week) but you don't really want to know about beautiful old towns and gorgeous beaches now do you?

The burning question is...what are the bins like?

Well, the recycling bins collect plastics, paper and card and glass and are situated in just about every spare little nook and cranny:



but what drew my eye were the dog waste measures. There was very little dog mess about even in the towns. Prominent in the pretty beach side resort of St Martinho do Porto were these dog waste bag dispensers:



The streets as you can see were spotless but I wasn't sure what happened to the poo once it was picked up. There seemed to be no designated bins.

However in Leiria, these stylish dispensers and bins were in the pretty little jardim in the old town:



Made of reflective stainless steel they blended well with the environment and had quite a classy look about them. Much better than cheap looking plastic primary coloured bins on lamp posts.

Owners are gently reminded to take a bag and keep their pooch on a lead (and no big signs warning of fines):


Okay so you do get some funny looks taking pictures of bins but I'm used to it now and its all part of a bid to collect good ideas from anywhere and everywhere be they Portugal, Portsmouth or Pimlico that can help us to improve our little patch.