Laughing all the way to the dump

Why, oh why, can't we do things properly? We have no idea of balance - it is either turning a blind eye to anarchy, or imposing confused, draconian regulations.

Do you remember when car towing started? Overzealous officers really got into that lark for a while. I was one of the unfortunates who had their car towed, even though I was on the scene to explain and got stung with a hefty fine.

My car was parked outside a garage that never housed a car. I was therefore not blocking access, which was what the fine should have been all about.

Furthermore, the owner of the garage assured me he did not report it.

Since then, of course, car towing does not seem to motivate the relevant officials as much as those heady early days.

The new fad is speed cameras, and although on the whole I think they are a good idea, they are not realistic.

It took me a while to cotton on to why drivers insisted on driving at a funereal pace on the approach to the tunnel on the Regional Road, then speeding and crisscrossing the lanes once they got inside the tunnel, then back to the funeral on the other side.

I had always driven at my normal (Regional Road) speed about 55-60 kph, slowed down in the tunnel and did not cross lanes.

Until one day the camera took a picture of my car, which it was claimed was doing 60 kph.

This was a Saturday morning, the road was empty and I was on the inside lane. I coughed up and have now joined the funeral procession.

It is not easy to keep my car going up the slight incline at 45 km and I have to play a very tricky game to ensure my car does not stall yet keep the speed indicator at below 50.

I just hope all the drivers speeding past me, which happens all the time, are also getting fined.

Now an old nuisance has come back to haunt me. It seems like years ago that I wrote that expecting people to wait for the rubbish collectors just was not on. And I had thought that that silly idea had been knocked on the head.

Apparently not. I read last week that mock fines were being given out recently, and the most reported offence was taking out household rubbish before the stipulated hour for collection.

Now my local rubbish collection time is a movable feast, and only the other day an irate neighbour was complaining that he wished they would make their mind up about what time they call.

They had called at about 2 p.m. for quite a long, steady period, but then all of a sudden the rubbish started disappearing around 11 a.m.

I don't know when this time change occurred, since I am very rarely at home at that time of the day. Come to think of it, I cannot be really sure about the steady 2 p.m. rota either.

All I can vouch for is that I take my rubbish down in the early morning and it's gone by the time I get back.

As far as I know, we had received no warning from the council of the changed time. But since I have had to remove my letterbox, because of 'excessive fan mail', I cannot be sure.

Anyway, I discovered that what was happening was that someone was collecting all the rubbish from our street and collecting it all at a corner.

This I presumed would save the collectors the trouble of driving down an extra bit of street.

Whatever, whether they call at 11 a.m. or 2 p.m., if we are going to be fined for leaving the rubbish on our doorstep on our way out to work, it would still leave me, and everyone else who leaves for work rather earlier in the day, up the smelly creek without a paddle.

But what I would like to know is this. What if a rubbish bag is left outside a block of flats, say housing six to ten or even more families, at the wrong time?

How is the warden going to identify the 'culprit'? Will s/he start rummaging through the debris for clues?

And what if someone bears a grudge towards a neighbour and decides to dump their 'out of hours' rubbish on the hated neighbour's doorstep?

But maybe that is why we now have a new breed of wardens in mufti. A sort of poor cousin of the CID.

Now everyone would like to see pristine streets, but it requires efficient management.

Something we are, unfortunately, not renowned for.

Last November, when I drove through certain streets that Queen Elizabeth would drive through an hour later, I was surprised that the rubbish had not been collected.

Surely it would not have taken too much to let the residents know that the rubbish would be collected a couple of hours earlier that day. This would have meant about 8 a.m., not the crack of dawn.

The hours of rubbish collection have to either be before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m. to make sense in today's world.

Despite Environment Minister George Pullicino's insistence that it was crucial for the system to target the core issues of dumping and littering and not verge on the extreme - such as fining somebody who took out their rubbish a couple of hours earlier, the trials have shown that that is precisely what the wardens are targeting.

Another 'littering' item that caught my eye regarded the feeding of birds in a public place.

Now first of all there are birds one should feed and birds one should not.

How can anyone fine anybody Lm100 for feeding a robin redbreast, or other small bird, breadcrumbs in a public garden? It would be outrageous.

However, I am very much in favour of fining people who feed pigeons on the streets and those people who leave smelly bits of food in the street for stray cats and dogs.

Not to mention owners of dogs who use the streets as their dog's lavatory. And worse, adults who use places such as steps down to a beach as a public convenience, or as described in the mock fines report, as "answering a call of nature"!

As I said earlier what we need is balance and common sense. So let's hope the new plainclothes wardens have more of the latter than some of the traffic wardens.

However if the fines they have been dishing out in the mock trials are anything to go by, God help us!

A reported incident claimed a warden slapped a Lm1,000 fine on someone who had washed the pavement with soapy water.

This is a clear example of what I mean by common sense. Now the fines vary from Lm25-Lm50 for littering offences and Lm1,000-Lm2,500 for illegal dumping.

So how on earth would the relevant warden have worked out that washing a pavement with soapy water amounted to dumping?

Machine oil perhaps, but soapy water!

Unless, of course, the said pavement was in a heritage site. But even then that would mean a maximum fine of Lm100.

The fines can be doubled if the littering or dumping is done in heritage sites or ecologically sensitive sites.

The main problem is that littering and dumping are two very different offences and the current breed of intellectually challenged wardens obviously cannot tell the difference.

Minister Pullicino can call for "focus on the serious offences", but will it happen?

Now either he has been misquoted or he is also confusing the two. He was quoted in one paper as saying that the new fines send a clear message that irresponsible acts will not be tolerated and that whoever litters will have to pay, in line with the 'polluter pays' principle.

Now as I understand it the 'polluter pays' principle applies to large companies who dump construction and other such waste, and on a smaller scale to people who dump cars and large domestic appliances, it certainly does not apply to littering.

So if the minister is confusing serious dumping with littering it is no good him hoping that "wardens will not focus on 'petty' dumping".

The mock exercise and the media coverage, including this column, has shown that the focus has indeed been targeted on the less serious problems, while the real polluters are laughing all the way to the dump.