THE GOOD AND THE VILE

Pride and anguish, determination and despair.

The people of our village sweated under a cloudless sky cleaning up the mess, the dire human detritus, left by mindless arses. It was a typical rural community coming together to counter one of the worst and most upsetting failings of the selfish.

Who in their right mind thinks it is alright to wind down a car window and lob out rubbish? If you do that you are far beyond stupid. And while I am at it, why bring your rubbish to a collection centre and then leave it for someone else to sort out or put into appropriate containers? You need shaming. I have raised this topic once before, years ago now. But it clearly needs more volume, more humiliation heaped on the cretins. Allow me.

I could not get out of my car fast enough to confront the Frenchman at the motorway services just south of Barcelona who opened his door and shovelled out masses of waste on to the tarmac before roaring off. I gave him every hand signal I could muster but he didn’t look the type who would ever look in his rear view mirror to see the damage he must always leave in his wake. Idiot stupide.

We can be a vile, unthinking species. We have the intelligence and the damning proof that we are trashing our planet, yet a significant percentage of people still – STILL - don’t give a rat’s arse to the point they will poison their own environment without a second thought. Demented. Criminal.

The good women and men of Marçà loaded the village pick-up with sacks of debris collected over several hours from the verges on the bypass and in the surrounding area. It was a clean-up prior to the village crafts fair. There was so much litter the vehicle doubled in height.

The local council is working to make recycling far easier, with almost daily collections from colour-coded bins, as are other communities. They, naturally, want change, to somehow flick a switch of responsibility within the community, but the issue is more about those who breeze past and lob.

For example: it irritates us and our lovely wine making neighbours, also a business address, that they keep coming and digging holes on our farms to work on the internet cable feed to the next village: You know, the superfast fibre optic whizz-bang service. But, of course, while it runs across our fields and they never ask permission for access or to leave their mark, neither we nor our neighbours can have the service. They will not connect us. But what is far far worse is the debris. Plastic packaging, drink tins, bits of discarded tape, an astonishing amount that the workmen laying a new cable don’t think twice about leaving. Naturally, I challenged one of them. Sorry he said. Later the rubbish I handed to him was lying at the bottom of a hole waiting to be filled.

The time is long overdue to name, shame and prosecute perpetrators, and if it takes street cameras and dash cam footage to do it, so be it.