Ealing council smoking police

[Harry Bloomfield]

"The 73 councils that employed a private company to issue litter fines in 2018 together issued 214,646 fines – an average of 2940 per authority.

The 230 councils that did not employ a private company together issued 36,032 – an average of 157 per authority."

Perhaps explainable by the lower average being the smaller authorities which things 'in house',

 

[crystal ball]

As MCDs have more outlet than anyone else in the UK it follows that their waste will feature heavily on our roadsides compared to KFC or Pizza Hut, blaming them for this is a bit daft, what are they supposed to do about it? They seem to be the whipping boy for many things

 

[BlueLoo]

Not too difficult was it, but thats just a snapshot of cases, another in The Mirror had another set of figures which put McD s at 5th in the list, you should get a covid test for that cough

Ah, you were actually being serious.

Merry Xmas. Have a mince pie.

 

[Deleted member 292770]

They seem to be the whipping boy for many things

But not seemingly the most important thing. The state on public health.

 

[crystal ball]

But not seemingly the most important thing. The state on public health.

Are they in charge of public health?

 

[Deleted member 292770]

Are they in charge of public health?

I don’t know ? are they? what gives you that idea?

 

[crystal ball]

But not seemingly the most important thing. The state on public health.

Admittedly that did not make sense , what did you mean?

 

[transam]

usual caper

parents with fat kids blame mac watsits and berger king or some other fast food out let

which is handy for the parents as its obviously nowt to do with them , its some one elses fault

 

[transam]

you see these fat young woman mooching around the super market with there fat over weight children

blimey I always feel like asking if there children are twins or triplets or what ever

 

[Deleted member 292770]

Admittedly that did not make sense , what did you mean?

You really are very inquisitive. One of the largest purveyors of fat sodden salt and sugar loaded filth on the planet. And no accountability.

 

[crystal ball]

You said "the state on public health" which does not make sense, secondly name calling suggest you have a mental age of about 10, now then have you ever been in a supermarket? they are chock full of sugar laden food & drink, fatty foods, alcohol, tobacco, the full works, what do you think about them? No name calling please

 

[Deleted member 292770]

You said "the state on public health" which does not make sense, secondly name calling suggest you have a mental age of about 10, now then have you ever been in a supermarket? they are chock full of sugar laden food & drink, fatty foods, alcohol, tobacco, the full works, what do you think about them? No name calling please

My apologies. I changed it especially.

 

[opps]

So does fining, or attempting to fine people for unintentionally dropping stuff. But it doesn't stop them doing this.

Oops.

I know that they are not obliged to ask you to pick up the litter. This is the problem. But the advice to them is that they ask the litterer to pick it up before they move to issuing a fine.

As to dropping cash, I beg to differ. The wording in the law is litter and that word is defined as waste products. A bank note is not waste.

With regards to asking people to pick up litter, that is the advice from DEFRA. It is advice and not a legal requirement.

Dropping cash? I might be wrong but having read both the 1990 Environmental Act and 2005 Clean Neighbourhoods Act, my lay understanding is that if you leave something behind, you have broken the law. I believe it is safe to assume that DEFRA never imagined that anyone would receive a FPN in such circumstances but, from my interpretation, it could be argued to be a crime. That said, I do not imagine that a judge would consider it to be a crime.

 

[securespark]

Don't get me started.

The food industry is an absolute crock of ****e.

One one side you have companies stuffing as much salt, fat and sugar into their products as they possibly can and on the other there are companies making low salt, low sugar, low fat high fibre high protein foods.

All of them want to make the fattest profit possible.

And shoppers have to navigate the aisles and choose the best products they can get for their budget.

To you and me, it may seem easy to check labels and look at percentages of fat, salt, sugar etc... But a lot of people don't understand. Again, it comes back to budget, as those products that are cheaper are generally not as good for you.

Some ingredients are very cheap like salt and water. Salt is used to give flavour to inferior quality ingredients and water is used to bulk out meats and low-fat products like mayonnaise.

I had a veggie pasta ready meal a good few years ago. I thought it was incredibly salty, so checked the label. In the meal (an individual portion) was 6g of salt, the whole daily adult allowance.
Salt content can be "masked" by adding sugar. The salt content can be huge, but it doesn't taste so salty because of the addition of sugar.

I cooked a 2kg pack of chicken breasts from Aldi recently. Just OOI, I weighed them after cooking and draining off the water. There was 1315g of chicken left from the 2020g after cooking.

Personally, I think the food regulation laws should be even tighter.

There was a big thing about the sugar tax not so long ago. Now, I see bottles of NAS drinks in my Sainsbury's Local and they are the same price as their sugary equivalent.

Things need to be much stricter and those foods sold with high sugar/ salt/ fat content or low fibre should have a higher tax on them.

The same taxes should be levied on tobacco and alcohol.

But, I hear you cry, what about those people you talked about who have a low budget for food?
Those on certain benefits would be issued with vouchers they can redeem for healthy food.

 

[opps]

Perhaps explainable by the lower average being the smaller authorities which things 'in house',

I see no evidence to back up your claim.

"today [2018] some 85% of litter fines are issued by private contractors"

If you follow the link above, you will see that in 1997-8 there were 727 litter FPNs issued. By 2018 that number had risen to 250,676, of which 214,648 were issued by private firms (assuming that the fine is paid- many councils have to pay the likes of Kingdom their share even if they never receive the money).

In my opinion they have become the modern day equivalent of private car clampers, the key difference being that they are approved by councils who get to keep up to 25% of the fines issued.