Published: 22 September, 2011b
by PETER GRUNER

BRITAIN’S green and pleasant land – not to mention every town and city – is being disfigured by tons of ugly litter.

So writes Theodore Dalrymple in his timely and angry new book, Litter: How Other People’s Rubbish Shapes Our Lives, published by Islington-based Gibson Square.

He’s talking about a scourge that afflicts the entire country, but his words strike home with particular force in Camden, Islington and the West End, where London’s “throw-away” society is all too evident on many streets and pavements.

He compares today’s litter louts – like the motorist who winds down his or her window in order to dispose of rubbish out onto the street – as not unlike our medieval ancestors, who chucked their chamber pot contents from an upstairs window.

However, at least our decedents had the decency to call out, “gardez l’eau!” to anyone passing below.

Labour candidate for London mayor, Ken Livingstone, may or may not have read this book, but has promised that if elected he will clean up the capital and provide more litter bins.

He spoke about the city’s “squalor” on a visit to north London last week.

Dalrymple, a psychiatrist and regular columnist with The Times and the Daily Telegraph, despairingly doubts that even Ken, with his can-do philosophy, can change people’s habits.

“The reason I do not throw litter in the street is that my mother told me not to do it,” he said. “But young people growing up these days don’t seem to be getting the same message. Anything goes, it seems.”

The book, he admits, is not scientific research but a perception of modern times. But the grimy picture he paints is one that will find resonance with many.

He writes that he drove 400 miles from London to Glasgow and found virtually every yard of the roadside filled with litter. He describes trees along the way hung with plastic bags or tattered remnants of polythene sheets that “flapped in the wind like Buddhist prayer flags.

“Mile after mile of grass verge was dappled with detritus – a few pages of newspapers, occasional hubcaps, but overwhelmingly the plastic packaging of refreshments taken by drivers and passengers along the way and thrown out of the window when finished with.

Most worrying is that litter appears to be a peculiarly British problem.

“I have driven long distances through France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, Belgium and other countries in Europe,” Dalrymple writes. “But I have seen nothing comparable there.”

He blames part of the problem, naturally enough, on take away food that people eat on the streets, discarding what’s left, plus the container.

However, he points out the contrast with one American university town he visited, where students, despite devouring a lot of fast food, managed to dispose of it in bins.

Dalrymple points out that we have laws against littering, including penalties of up to £2,000, but few people are ever penalised for the offence or brought to court. Perhaps we could learn from Singapore?

While not wanting to particularly promote the city, he adds: “Within a few short years, Singapore has become one of the cleanest in the world.

There is little doubt that the strict enforcement of laws prohibiting various means of fouling the streets quite quickly changed the behaviour, and eventually the character, of the inhabitants.”

Dalrymple is not optimistic that London will clean up its act.

“It would help if there were more bins and more messages to people to deposit their litter responsibly,”

he writes. “Perhaps every shop keeper could have a litter picker and be responsible for his or her area.”

• Litter: How other people’s rubbish shapes our lives. By Theodore Dalrymple. Gibson Square Books £9.99