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Merry
Christmas from Belfast City Council and the UDA's
"C" Company! What do the two have in common
this time, apart from past deputy mayors prancing
on stage with their gunmen? A Norway Fir Christmas
tree, said by the Newsletter
to have cost £10,000, so massive it dwarves
the homes it has been placed in front of, put up by
Johnny Adair's men no less. Paid for by the Belfast
City Council, it has been erected in the Lower Shankill
by the UDA and adorned with Christmas Greetings from
their "C" Company. A Belfast City Council
spokesman admitted to the Belfast
Telegraph it owned the tree, which was provided
at the request of local representatives. John White,
one of those representatives, says the Council has
provided them with a tree for the last three years.
Now
I am not one to begrudge anyone - children and adults
- a spot of Christmas spirit, and if that gigantic
tree does brighten the lives of the children in the
area at least that is something. I am more inclined,
however, to think it is something that depresses the
people in the area - it certainly depresses me as
a huge waste of money. If I lived in the lower Shankill,
would I resent the money that put it there, and the
audacity that went with it? Would I feel intimidated
by it - would it put me in my place even further by
sending me a not so subtle message that even Santa
is controlled by the UDA? It just might. I live in
an area dominated and controlled by the local IRA;
I imagine the difference these days is not that great.
Living somewhere under the control of those obsessed by power
is pretty much the same thing no matter who the letters
belong to.
What
I do begrudge is the dump we live in here in Belfast,
especially when thousands of pounds are thrown away,
given freely to paramilitaries to waste on temporary
trees, when they could be given to the community the
UDA preys upon in the form of proper street cleaning.
Living in a clean environment would sure be a great
spirit lifter - might even help cut down on some forms
of crime as well. Imagine going into the Shankill
or the White Rock and seeing an absence of graffiti,
streets swept and kept clean of rubbish, emptied bins
and maybe a little (permanent) greenery. Impossible,
say you? It's not like keeping this city clean is
rocket science. Yet the Belfast City Council seems
to be dumbstruck in the face of how to clean up its
act.
Waste
management to the City Council means long term landfill
management, not picking up the rubbish off our streets.
Fair enough, but residents don't want to live in filth.
We do care where our rubbish ends up eventually, but
the first step is that it gets taken off our streets
so that is can end up somewhere - else, preferably.
Somewhere other than blown into our front gardens,
than underneath the fences along footpaths where it
appears to have collected for years, than tumbling
along the street like some post-modern tumbleweed.
Somewhere else, please, where plastic bags can mingle
freely with chippy wrappers and broken bottles and
dog shit and drunk vomit and crisp bags, along with
all the other normal household rubbish, away from
being a depressing and soul destroying eyesore, and
from causing a hazard to public health by staying
where they land, out in the open, public thoroughfares.
The
street sweeping in the area I live - revealed by the
Andersonstown News*
to be the dirtiest part of the city - is a joke, as
is the graffiti removal service. Graffiti across the
road from the local Chapel stayed for over a year
despite repeated complaints to the City Council, and
when finally addressed, the "removal" looks
just as bad as the graffiti did. The street sweepers
used are not suited to these narrow streets; with
cars parked all over the place at best they end up
blowing rubbish from one side of the street to the
other as they zigzag between them; even worse, the
drivers rush in and out of the streets, not giving
their machines a chance to do their job properly.
Regulating parking in conjunction with the street
cleaning schedule would work wonders. Sidewalk cleaners
such as those used in the City Centre would help if
they were properly used on a regular basis here, as
would teams of cleaners following the machines to
pick up any rubbish missed.
It's
not as if this is an impossible problem to solve;
many options exist that could be taken to improve
the street cleaning services, most are affordable
and only require a common-sense change in approach.
I've complained to Waste Management before about the
terrible level of service we receive. Recently it
took 3 days for them to show up to pick up a dead
animal, which is outrageous, especially in an area
where so many young children and toddlers play. This
isn't just an issue of aesthetics, it's an issue of
disease and public health as well. I've gone to Waste
Management meetings; they seem to be stuck in bureaucracy
and the civil servants more interested in long term
recycling issues than in getting the rubbish off our
streets in the first place. As always, the issue of
the budget is a hindrance more than a help in determining
what areas of Belfast get cleaned, when they do and
at what level of service. Poor areas get the short
end of the stick - they are dirtier and harder to
maintain so with limited funding the "logical"
choice for engineers is to keep them dirty rather
than take money from the cleaner areas to invest in
heavy duty cleaning of the dirtier areas to get them
up to a standard level.
Tidy
Northern Ireland's** director, Ian Close, who recently
released a report published by the group examining
the poor state of cleanliness of Northern Ireland,
says, "Perhaps the feeling is that with so many
other problems, things like litter don’t matter
- yet if people live in a poor quality environment
they feel less safe and behave in a more anti-social
way. Failing to keep our neighbourhoods tidy can result
in higher crime rates, decreased business and tourism
opportunities and even problems with vermin."
He's
right. This place is depressing. Why should anyone
care about the community here, when it is clear the
community doesn't even care about itself? The anti-social
problems we have will be with us for as long as we
don't bother to clean up our act. As long as those
who are in charge of the mechanics of cleaning up
after ourselves continue to think it's alright to
give thousands of pounds to groups like the UDA for
Christmas - instead of adding that to the waste management
budget at an immediate street level - we're being
condemned to live in a dump with rising crime levels
for a long time to come. At the end of the day, this
strategy being pursued by the City Council, politics
over common sense, and the social ills that come with
it, will end up being more expensive to eradicate
than the amount that is needed now to stop this problem
in its tracks. That's the real criminal act.
*
According to the Andersonstown News, Belfast
City Council recently released a study of the cleanliness
of the city, which found West Belfast to be the
dirtiest area. Given a scoring system where a very
clean street rates 70 points, West Belfast earned
49. The average for the city as a whole was rated
57.5. In the latest quarterly report, complaints
to the City Council have risen from 2,200 to 2,700.
The City Council passes the buck, with a spokesman
for the council saying, "The council spend
£9m a year on cleaning the entire city, which
is the equivalent of more than £26 per person.
The onus has to be on individuals who persist in
littering our streets."
**
Tidy Northern Ireland "scoured 26 local authority
areas for litter, dog fouling, vandalism and graffiti
has found that well over half of our councils have
fallen below the standards they set in a similar
survey last year. And in the case of Magherafelt,
Cookstown, Limavady and Belfast that drop has been
alarming."
Tidy Northern Ireland's surveyors also listed the
type of rubbish they found (the full report may
be found here: http://encams2.gemonline.co.uk/home.html).
"Sweet wrappers were seen at three quarters
of the areas surveyed, drinks cans and cartons were
discovered at 56.1% of streets and fast food at
29.4% of roads and 41% of other areas. Smoking related
rubbish made up of fag ends, boxes and matches is
still our biggest problem, being found at 86.7%
of the areas looked at.
"Other environmental damage - such as dog fouling
and graffiti was also examined. Vandalism was found
at 5.3% of streets, graffiti at 7.7% of roads and
9.2% of other sites and dog fouling at 10.3% of
streets and 6% of other council areas - which of
course include play areas and parks. (For details
on the best and worst in Northern Ireland, see fact
file).
"Over a thousand litter bins were also surveyed
of which nearly 10% were full. Close on half of
the rubbish that had been put out by shops and other
businesses hadn’t been bagged up properly ready
for collection."
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