Let ME!!!

Last Sunday. That’s the first we had been able to do a much-needed litter pick from early December when the winds revealed just how much trash the so-called highest level of the food chain had dropped, ditched and dumped. I have zero tolerance. If it’s possible…my 9-yr. old has even less.

We live next to a protected woodland at the foot of a national park. From December of last year when it appeared, the weather was not conducive for task; lots of rain and more rain to make muddy, slippery conditions unsafe to move about in. So, all we could do was watch with loathing as plastic bags lay wedged in bare hedges and trees engaged in the sacred slumber of winter. It was nothing short of sacrilege as this area is home to everything from foxes to pheasants.

Stupid people.

The first and last time I called the relevant department to remove large material waste dumped too heavy and dangerous for my family to extract, I recognised immediately how tremendously overwhelmed this lone worker was as I showed him the areas of concern. He apologised to me, knowing how delayed he was going to be with areas too gargantuan to finish in a day on his in-pile, and as I look now at the grocery carts and other such waste dumped in the stream, I wonder how much longer I will be able to live around such shameless and wanton carelessness.

During our first litter picks, I told my children that we did not move halfway around the world to live in a dump. It wasn’t so bad when we first arrived, but it became progressively worse as the years went by, with the waste material acting as fuel for very young miscreants in the neighbourhood to start fires which destroy whole areas of grassland habitat out of lack of something better to do in the when the weather was pleasant.

Previously, I had done the ‘bureaucratic process do’ of documenting up to the nines; according to procedural complaint guidance, about the issues (euphemism for idiotic retarded morons) to the relevant departments again, but nothing really happens quickly in the land of administrative bureaucracy, and my approach to dealing with the issues would not mesh with the established so called laws of the land.

Should the powers that be wish to institute an education programme about litter, pollution, fire damage etc. as one agitated letter-writer to the editor of the local daily suggested (I believe he was just as fed up as I am), I say, “Let ME!” Let ME put together a complete, politically incorrect, shock and awe, in-your-face campaign that says, “If you litter, you’re worse than scum! (and here’s why…)”, and “HEY YOU jackass dumping industrial waste in the dead of night___I hope you know that the carcinogens that you’re putting in the environment will end up causing carcinomas in your future granddaughter when she’s 4 years old” (cue pics of beautiful children amidst the rubbish).

Let them call ME ruthless for my directives that spare no one despite rank, age or class because they have no right to destroy the home on which we ALL live. Let ME be all up in faces and show the images that are hidden away; the dark under belly of human existence. Let me show the children in all of your schools, so that they will shame YOU (parents, teachers, policy makers, manufacturers, lobbyists and all the people in a position to do something ad infinitum) into looking at the legacy you are leaving; so-called adults set the behaviour patterns and the children…they just obliviously follow your ridiculous and destructive example through misguided socialisation. If they can be shown a better way, perhaps there is hope.

Town, city, county guidelines and policies are restricted by soooo many legalities and protocols. Pure stupidity if you ask me____that you can’t because of violation of privacy, civil liberties etc. blah-blah-blah while we and all the wildlife stew and choke and die because of this totally preventable and immediately resolvable stench!

And don’t even get me started on lack of biodegradable packaging and excess packaging PERIOD on products. But I’ll gladly cut through all the B.S. and absolve you of all politics, procedure and politeness. Hell yeah I mean to sound indelicate, because it’s my planet too dammit____and SOMEBODY needs to grow a pair, so…if you can’t then LET ME!!!