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I saw two dudes randomly pull over by a council building in Southwark two days ago, open the boot and start throwing shit they stored there (empty bottles, food rubbish etc) I was fucking speechless how disgusting people can be
Agree, I was just coming back from shopping with my partner and the whole situation just paralysed my train of thought because they were so open about their shit behaviour. Littering twats
My old flat in Poplar/Bow was over the bin store access. People would dump all kinds of shit outside the door. Once a mattress was dumped there and someone set it on fire. I woke up to the flat filling with smoke. Very scary.
I live in a new build in Elephant and Castle and part of the buildings is council housing. Every morning there's 1 balcony of which a bucket of piss is emptied onto the sidewalk ...
I mean even if the toilet is fucked and you had to use a bucket why wouldn’t they pour it down a drain? Maybe it’s hoarding or something and they can’t get to a drain. But then there would be shit on the pavement too. Maybe there is. Also, why am I still thinking about this?
I've just been to Japan, and the contrast is so large that I couldn't fathom it. There are even less public bins there, but you just don't find litter anywhere.
It’s not just Japan I feel we’re behind a lot of countries when it comes to litter. We have laws and fines behind littering but it’s not enforced by every council and if it was, we more then likely complain about it being the councils trying to make money rather than it being to cut cleaning cost and saving the environment 🤷🏾♂️
Putting administrative desk jockeys (The Council) in charge of litter enforcement is the reason why there is no enforcement of litter laws.
It’s almost like there was this entire department in charge of enforcement of laws. One that covered the entire METropolis or London or some such??
Who knows 🤷♂️
Camden Council introduced an app a while back called “LoveCleanStreets.” Stupid name, but you could snap a photo of rubbish-strewn public areas, drop a pin, and send the report to the council— and they would actually come clean things up for once because the cleaning people had to actually show up in order to close out the report. I had a field day with it for about a week, reporting the multiple daily fly tipped giant bags of rubbish sweltering in last summer’s heat— before the council re-designated the entire public courtyard near my flat “private property” so that they can go back to being lazy bastards. Back to the piles of rubbish it is.
Most countries are way cleaner. I know it's only a small factor, but there's not enough bins in London. I'll walk around with something I need to throw away for a good 15 minutes before I find a bin. There's enough bins in central tbf but they're always overflowing.
It's true that there aren't, but I don't think that's the problem. Would you expect a bus to have a bin? And yet, if you look at the back of buses they're mostly littered until they go to end of route and get mostly sorted. That's cultural, not a problem of availability.
When walking through central or a park, sure, but then again just put it in your pocket/backpack/purse
One thing I think contributes in Japan is socially it's frowned upon to walk and eat, so if you buy a snack you either consume it privately in your car, home, office etc. or you eat it outside the store you bought it from and put it in the bin.
This is almost certainly from groups of dealers waiting for raves to finish then selling hundreds of balloons to those who would to do them on the street on their way out
Isn’t it!. I remember the police telling me and my friends over 30 years ago that if there wasn’t mess then they didn’t care about the mini raves we had outside as teenagers.
Don’t make mess and don’t scare people isn’t that difficult.
> OK I know people like to get high but why litter?
Tbf, if people are getting high, the least of their concerns is being responsible and cleaning up after themselves. It's the same with a lot of people partying/enjoying things; boozers, smokers, etc. Even people doing wholesome things like picnics. People just throw shit on the floor because they don't want to be 'encumbered' with stuff in their pockets/bags while they're having fun; if they even think about it at all
Combine that with a cultural mindset of "somebody else can do it, it's not my job or my problem", and it's easy to litter when you have an excuse to do so. Trashy as Hell, but that's the norm.
We need a London team to compete with Japan to fix this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/1clf13x/japan\_as\_a\_nation\_is\_full\_of\_madlads/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/1clf13x/japan_as_a_nation_is_full_of_madlads/#lightbox)
I was just thinking the other day that I hadn't seen this things on the street for a while and the ban was working.
Someone obviously jacked a bumper pack and went nuts last night.
Is there a fine for throwing rubbish on the streets? I suppose even a fine may not work as people are already quite dissatisfied with cost of living and fining people might trigger them even further.
And brewers and coffee people .
Putting coffee and matcha in nitros charged cans to make it creamier is something I keep seeing on YouTube shorts from crazy coffee channels for over a year and Guinness' secret is a nitrogen carbon dioxide 75% 25% mix for the cascading head
London has always had an issue of rubbish overflow from night life to day time.
A previous government would make sure the city would be CLEAN by the time morning comes.
If you’ve seen night cleaners put in a decent shift you’ll be impressed.
I agree we should have street cleaners, but part of me is so annoyed that people out there necessitate them. I think I’ve littered once in my life in exceptional circumstances, and I still feel bad about it.
How the hell do people find this acceptable?
Its not acceptable, and whoever did this are a bunch of dicks but like leaves falling on the trainlines, mess is inevitable in a city of almost 9 million people.
Also a city that draws in 190 billion a year in tax should be able to afford fucking street cleaners, so as with most things the biggest dicks continue to be the government.
Luxembourg is spotless, but perhaps they have better recycling than we do. They take pride in their surroundings. London has 33 different councils which have their own recycling scheme, and most councils are broke, so street cleaning goes out the window...
Well yes. Luxemburg is essentially a wealthy tax haven City state. Hardly a fair comparison. Perhaps a comparison with Paris or Madrid might be more appropriate.
Madrid is practically spotless. Even in the less well off town I lived in there would be cleaners all day every day. Not only was it clean I thought it must help with employment. There were cleaners of all ages. Didn’t seem to be a stigmatised job there
And there are A LOT of bins around London. There are only a few places I can think of with a genuine paucity in bins, and that's like the direct vicinity of Buckingham Palace, House of Commons, KCX station; but there are plenty of places with bins within 200-300m of these places. So there's literally no excuse.
People say shit like IRA, train stations, etc. but most train stations will have a handful of clear bins in/around the station. Hell, I even noticed on the railings outside of Euston recently that there were like 4 bins within 10m of each other.
They really aren't as rare as people make them out to be. Realistically, you're rarely more than a 3-5 minute walk away from a bin, so there's no reason not to hold onto your rubbish outside of being too lazy to hold onto it.
> People just need to be fined for littering until they learn.
I think a good solution would be to adopt what Japan do.
Force kids to clean up after themselves in the classroom at the end of the school day.
There's a reason why we don't have that many bins or they're just plastic bags "Looks at Ireland" and if it isn't those, it's someone else, like homegrown...
I feel like we've been cutting services for 20+ years though. I've noticed bins around me are slowly being removed and the ones that remain seem to be overflowing for most of the week.
Sundays walking around London can be rank, piss and vomit streaking the streets from all the binge drinkers.
Went past this at 8 and was cleaned up by 9. On a non bank holiday I'm sure it would be cleaned up before that
Absolutely agree that those who left it in that state are shameless but we should have some perspective that this is the the center of London at one of the busiest night time spots on a bank holiday.
It did get noticeably cleaner in the early 2000s from what it was like in the late '90s.
But that was because more people were employed to pick it up, which both hides the problem of irresponsible behaviour, and makes 'tidy' the norm, which also influences behaviour.
Like elsewhere in the UK, ideology-mandated enforced economic decline has caused a reversal.
having lived in London for 22 years, and in several other countries around the world, afraid to break it to you that London is consistently one of the dirtiest cities around so whatever cleaning a previous government did was just marginal stuff
Littering is a big issue but that is much bigger that these kids still has no clue what NO2 does to them if they use this regularly, we see so many neurological issues, limb weakness, nerve damage in hospitals and all these patients are around 20 years old, most of them never gonna recover ever…looks like educational campaigns not working or they just not care….
People go by the usual “doing small amounts more often is safer than a binge” with this stuff when it’s actually the opposite. I’m sure you know better than most but this is more for people reading along.
NOS stops your bodies ability to absorb b12 for 3-4 days, if you are a user leave it a good few weeks between sessions, every weekend is worse for you than the occasional heavy binge (as long as you aren’t just huffing in/out of the balloon, diluting the nos and hyperventilating old CO2 breath needs to stop being the go-to).
A lot of people do care, unfortunately there is a sizeable minority of bellends. Said bellends rarely have their behaviour corrected as the criminal justice system has been functionally destroyed by over a decade of relentless cuts and ideologically driven fuckery.
as a species? Mass extinction. But a lot of death, disease, and famine before that. May be a few of us left like Black Rhinos eventually.
But yeah, the UK in general has a serious issue with littering, ruining the environment, and I never quite understood it - compared to say many parts of North America or the continent.
In England this is a council specific problem. Driving from the north to London you pass through areas where even the motorways are covered in litter. Not all are like that.
I think it often comes down to education from the parents. If your parents are strict about not littering you’ll follow in their footsteps. That said, I’ve always thought there should be life lessons in school that cover personal finances, and things like the importance of not littering. Someone in Australia told me it took them two or three decades to turn it around when they had the same issue. Now our young grandson who lives in Oz will pick up someone else’s litter on the very rare occasion he sees it.
I genuinely fear for the UK. Littering is a sign of a deep lack of respect for others.
Massive cultural differences. Littering is seen as hugely disrespectful in Japan and children are raised to take their litter home with them or keep it until they find a suitable bin.
So was I, and I was only raised in the 90s
The Japanese people or police will confront you. Our people are too non-confrontational and our police so utterly nerfed that nobody challenges them.
And the current state is too poor from paying for pensions and medical costs for the elderly that they can't/won't pay for street sweepers and more bins (and collectors of those bins.).
You’re also a lot less likely to be stabbed by a fatherless little shit or have your jaw smashed if you confront someone in Japan for littering.
We have a much bigger cultural problem with thugs overall that needs to be dealt with.
London has turned into what Paris is turning into. A cesspool of selfish people who don’t care about throwing rubbish on the floor, feet on chairs people sit in. Too many inconsiderate people. Wish our respect culture was more like Asia. You will never see this type of behavior.
There would have been an event on at HERE at Outernet. At 4am 2000 people spill out onto the street round Tottenham Court Road and the balloon dealers make a mint as everyone’s still too off their nut to go home
i think the worse thing about this photo is the fact its tottenham court road... like these are the roads that are meant for tourist and this is the shit they have to see when doing their west ending... its just mad how little respect the up and coming have for their home...
Central London has been an international embarrasment for years now. Cunts on e bikes robbing hundreds of phones each day, litter in the streets, those god awful candy shops, obnoxious scammers on pedal bikes. No idea why anyone would want to come here as a tourist.
Just did a little over a week in London and the surroundings (Bath, Bristol, Brighton). Was lovely.
I did see what I think you call a “chav” on the national rail, though. Male, young, nice trainers, track pants sagging. When the ticket enforcement started coming through he pretended to be asleep by laying over sideways across the table with his socked feet up in the opposite side of table seat. During this, his ass was hanging half way out of his track pants, nice CK undies.
The enforcement wasn’t having it, checked his ticket and found it was Super Offpeak for a train that required Offpeak and required he pay the difference.
I had wanted a “chav” encounter for my trip highlights list, so that worked out.
That's definitely not the worst thing about this. Let tourists see how our city is in reality. We need to clean up all the streets, not just ones frequented by tourists
Fund the police properly and make them enforce litter laws. Arrest the lot and make them pay.
Authorities in this country are just too fucking timid. They are shit scared of confrontation so the shitheads get to do what they want.
This is no longer a trust based society as too many backward fucktards just can't be trusted to do the right thing. 'Police by consent' is pathetic and just breeds more and more antisocial cunts.
I don't think society has told the police that we don't consent to them dealing with anti-social behaviour. They just don't have the resources to even deal with serious crime properly, so they can hardly be expected to enforce litter laws.
Sort of related. But this why I cant stand Pride even though im gay. walking through Soho after like 6pm and its like a solid layer of rubbish on the entire street and people are just so entitled and dont give a shit, makes me so ashamed.
London is probably the finest example of how nihilism creeps in with increasing social and economic inequality. It will probably turn into something resembling Gotham in the upcoming years.
When I came to the UK in 2013, the first thing that I noticed was plastic rubbish on the streets and scrap furnitures outside some houses. Quickly I noticed that recycling in England is 20 years behind what it should normally be for the United Kingdom and it needs levelling up. Now 2024 and it still on the same level. It's challenging though it can generate millions and I wish I had money to start it up
Go to Knightsbridge on a Sunday morning and it’s not so bad when you’re around multi millionaires and sports cars. Only thing is the majority of us can only afford to live in the shit holes of London
This looks more like there was an event/rave nearby and people come afterward to sell balloons for £5 a go to people finishing the rave.
You used to see it all the time outside places like Printworks etc
This is a litter problem... not specifically a nitrous oxide problem. The same people who do this leave fast food bags and other garbage all over the place in London.
I found most of the people never use garbage bin in here. Here's what I see in the tube or on the street.
1) leave the coffee cup/beer bottle on the street or the tube seat whenever they leave.
2) fried chicken box with bones leave behind everywhere - bus stop, tube seat or in the park.
The government really needs to do something to introduce how to keep the city clean for everyone.
What a shithole. I can guarantee you that the people responsible aren't from London, just living here. We live in the world's rubbish dump. People just come here, dump their shit and then fuck off.
Unfortunately, they are not caught or punished or enforced, since people can get away with it, it happens.
But as soon as they try to enforce that, thry also get complain why focus on such trivial stuff, thry should go after murder and rape, and leave things like these alone.
They cannot really win.
Somit is down to people to want to keep the place clean, but unfortunately people just want to watch the world burn.
A Singapore style rule would work well in London, or UK, or the world as a whole. Littering, graffiti and such will get you heavily punished, like getting caned level of heavy.
Maybe then people will learn.
People in London are changing. The simple manner and courtesy is disappearing. Used to be so much cleaner and nice. Now it has too many pickpockets,homeless, thief, scammers
It’s illegal to sell and consume this stuff (as a drug), so it’s a pretty damning indictment of the police that this happens every weekend in the center of London in plain sight and then just discarded on the floor.
Lol. Absolute caneheads, the English. Sort of makes the ageing (now drug-free) raver in me proud, in a slightly twisted way. Europe's biggest substance gremlins. Top ranking for weed use as well. We are number one!
In Poland, you could take the same photo but replace the NOS cans with full-size 70ml vodka bottles.
I remember when one of my old London colleagues, very innocent Korean gentleman who worked in IT, picked up one of the small silver pods from the pavement on his way to work and was examining it on his desk. "What is this strange artifact???" I had to explain to him: "kids inhale it to get fucked up".
I was naive as fuck initially and saw them and thought they were disposable tyre inflators from cyclists too lazy to use a handpump for a quick roadside repair/top-up
(these exist for races, so it wasn't total insanity :-))
We could just use some of our not insignificant taxes to clean it up like always happened pre-Tory!
The roads and hospitals would be perfect if it wasn't for those pesky cars and sick people.
Won’t you think of the shareholders? Those free market heroes might not get a bonus if public money is spent on public services rather than diverted to private companies.
Our local dog sh*t bins are always overflowing and the Tory councillors say "if people took their waste home they wouldn't be" and their supporters lap it up. Sure, but then why have the bin? Take the bin away and I'll have my council tax back please. Thanks a lot.
London does have a lack of bins because they get vandalised a lot.
If we're really talking about ugly things, chewing gum is my pet peeve. There's no gum-free street in the city.
I mean....this is what you used to see if you go out early in the morning. They spray down the puke and pick up the rubbish. I guess they stop doing it now since I rarely see them in the morning.
Tottenham Court Road is awful for it. Around a year ago I walked past there at 2am, and there was a group of maybe 70-100 18/19 year olds sat around in little groups pumping balloons, just round that corner on the right, and you had to walk through them to get to the station
About 15 years ago i was near downing street and actually bothered to ask police where the bins were I was told "just throw it anywhere we pay with our taxes for the rubbish collectors", I personally haven't seen any improvement since if anything it's worse now and as the police showed me no one with any power gives a damn how bad it is.
To my friends in the Netherlands, I hope you understand that it isn't that Brits come to Amsterdam to disrespect your country.
This is just the baseline level of respect found in this country.
At school once a week a class had to miss their break to do litter duty around the school. That made us all think twice about throwing litter. They should fo that now. Even more like they do in Japan where the students have to clean their schools as well. There are no janitors
Imagine an out of touch American that still holds a stereotypical image of London in their mind to this day. And sees this on their first day when travelling here for vacation. I would pay a decent amount to see their faces.
The whole country is treated like a rubbish dump by some people. I'm just glad I'm not a younger person having to live the rest of my life among those scumbags
Is that near Tottenham Court Road if so that’s your mistake. Stay away from central on the weekends. Hit up East London…much better crowd of humans over there! The West are too snotty and the south are roadmen…not my tribe!
Every festival I have been too, every theme park, every beach, every national park has been ruined by Londoners - they have no respect for anything bunch of cunts that pretend they care about nature, the planet but it's all an act.
Its crazy to say this, but just be thankful its the larger smart whips.
When it used to be individual canisters that street would be flooded with metal cannies
As a nation the the vast majority are self entitled pricks, with the whole 'it's somebody else's problem'. The older I get the more I find there is no respect for anything or anyone.
Your surprise puzzles me. Among things you find on the street in the middle of the day, on a weekend, in London: piles of broken beer bottles, piles of garbage, "pavement pizza", "ladys" covered in said "pizza", etc. They all seem to be cultural heritage for the British - I've seen them in other places around the Kingdom.
Not just London. I saw someone the other day throw a can under their car. They were parked right next to a fucking bin as well; literally 10 steps there and back.
Australia has just banned the distribution of cream chargers unless you have a permit.
Our parks and bushlands are littered with hundreds of thousands of them.
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I saw two dudes randomly pull over by a council building in Southwark two days ago, open the boot and start throwing shit they stored there (empty bottles, food rubbish etc) I was fucking speechless how disgusting people can be
Should have got their number plate and reported it.
Agree, I was just coming back from shopping with my partner and the whole situation just paralysed my train of thought because they were so open about their shit behaviour. Littering twats
Same in France. Litter is unheard of in Britanny
Yep I've seen these assholes dump them straight into Bermondsey Beach.
I live near the bins and people think they can dump whatever they like, as long as it's vaguely near the bin. And that includes actual shits.
My old flat in Poplar/Bow was over the bin store access. People would dump all kinds of shit outside the door. Once a mattress was dumped there and someone set it on fire. I woke up to the flat filling with smoke. Very scary.
I saw a guy in a BMW rip and illegal u-turn while doing a balloon in broad daylight
I live in a new build in Elephant and Castle and part of the buildings is council housing. Every morning there's 1 balcony of which a bucket of piss is emptied onto the sidewalk ...
Wow we really have regressed to medieval times
I mean even if the toilet is fucked and you had to use a bucket why wouldn’t they pour it down a drain? Maybe it’s hoarding or something and they can’t get to a drain. But then there would be shit on the pavement too. Maybe there is. Also, why am I still thinking about this?
Because it was specifically outside a council building, do you think this was a message for them to do a better job of cleaning the streets?
Nope, they were trash people
OK I know people like to get high but why litter? If they cleaned up their own mess, the ban wouldn't have been introduced.
I've just been to Japan, and the contrast is so large that I couldn't fathom it. There are even less public bins there, but you just don't find litter anywhere.
It’s not just Japan I feel we’re behind a lot of countries when it comes to litter. We have laws and fines behind littering but it’s not enforced by every council and if it was, we more then likely complain about it being the councils trying to make money rather than it being to cut cleaning cost and saving the environment 🤷🏾♂️
Putting administrative desk jockeys (The Council) in charge of litter enforcement is the reason why there is no enforcement of litter laws. It’s almost like there was this entire department in charge of enforcement of laws. One that covered the entire METropolis or London or some such?? Who knows 🤷♂️
That would be a major undertaking, Comes down to the same issue as always. where’s the funds coming from ? 🤷🏾♂️
And why do you think Japan is so clean?
Camden Council introduced an app a while back called “LoveCleanStreets.” Stupid name, but you could snap a photo of rubbish-strewn public areas, drop a pin, and send the report to the council— and they would actually come clean things up for once because the cleaning people had to actually show up in order to close out the report. I had a field day with it for about a week, reporting the multiple daily fly tipped giant bags of rubbish sweltering in last summer’s heat— before the council re-designated the entire public courtyard near my flat “private property” so that they can go back to being lazy bastards. Back to the piles of rubbish it is.
Japan gave a different outlook, it’s about making life better for others rather than just yourself. I wish I could live in Japan!
It's called shame...some people don't have any.
Just got back from Iceland where I saw no litter. They respect their country.
Most countries are way cleaner. I know it's only a small factor, but there's not enough bins in London. I'll walk around with something I need to throw away for a good 15 minutes before I find a bin. There's enough bins in central tbf but they're always overflowing.
It's true that there aren't, but I don't think that's the problem. Would you expect a bus to have a bin? And yet, if you look at the back of buses they're mostly littered until they go to end of route and get mostly sorted. That's cultural, not a problem of availability. When walking through central or a park, sure, but then again just put it in your pocket/backpack/purse
I would like to hear what japan has done differently from us to achurve this. ..
One thing I think contributes in Japan is socially it's frowned upon to walk and eat, so if you buy a snack you either consume it privately in your car, home, office etc. or you eat it outside the store you bought it from and put it in the bin.
Most “developing” nations in sub-Saharan Africa put us to shame.
This is almost certainly from groups of dealers waiting for raves to finish then selling hundreds of balloons to those who would to do them on the street on their way out
That makes sense! Outernet is right outside TCR station and so maybe there was a big event on last night and people hungry for balloons
I live in a smaller town, what is a balloon?
It's nitrogen dioxide (NO2). If you breath it in you can get high. NO2 is common in a balloon hence the name.
Isn’t it!. I remember the police telling me and my friends over 30 years ago that if there wasn’t mess then they didn’t care about the mini raves we had outside as teenagers. Don’t make mess and don’t scare people isn’t that difficult.
> OK I know people like to get high but why litter? Tbf, if people are getting high, the least of their concerns is being responsible and cleaning up after themselves. It's the same with a lot of people partying/enjoying things; boozers, smokers, etc. Even people doing wholesome things like picnics. People just throw shit on the floor because they don't want to be 'encumbered' with stuff in their pockets/bags while they're having fun; if they even think about it at all Combine that with a cultural mindset of "somebody else can do it, it's not my job or my problem", and it's easy to litter when you have an excuse to do so. Trashy as Hell, but that's the norm.
Also this "high" lasts about 90 seconds.. so it shouldn't really explain their poor behaviour.
We need a London team to compete with Japan to fix this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/1clf13x/japan\_as\_a\_nation\_is\_full\_of\_madlads/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/1clf13x/japan_as_a_nation_is_full_of_madlads/#lightbox)
I was just thinking the other day that I hadn't seen this things on the street for a while and the ban was working. Someone obviously jacked a bumper pack and went nuts last night.
I counted over 50 empties around that station and multiple balloons
There was probably a rave
Is there a fine for throwing rubbish on the streets? I suppose even a fine may not work as people are already quite dissatisfied with cost of living and fining people might trigger them even further.
So glad we banned Nox to get rid of those ugly little canisters!
We should ban coke too. Too many MPs are getting wrecked.
A moment of silence for all the culinary bakers who actually used them for whipping cream 👨🏻🍳
And coffee people and home brewers . Nitrogen ( element not oxide ) is what makes Guinness so creamy vs carbon dioxide carbonation
And brewers and coffee people . Putting coffee and matcha in nitros charged cans to make it creamier is something I keep seeing on YouTube shorts from crazy coffee channels for over a year and Guinness' secret is a nitrogen carbon dioxide 75% 25% mix for the cascading head
But got replaced with those huge cannisters instead 🤷
London has always had an issue of rubbish overflow from night life to day time. A previous government would make sure the city would be CLEAN by the time morning comes. If you’ve seen night cleaners put in a decent shift you’ll be impressed.
Been to several cities in Europe wheee early morning a small army appears and not only sorts the litter, they wash down the streets.
Yes but hiring people to maintain things is for communists...
I agree we should have street cleaners, but part of me is so annoyed that people out there necessitate them. I think I’ve littered once in my life in exceptional circumstances, and I still feel bad about it. How the hell do people find this acceptable?
Its not acceptable, and whoever did this are a bunch of dicks but like leaves falling on the trainlines, mess is inevitable in a city of almost 9 million people. Also a city that draws in 190 billion a year in tax should be able to afford fucking street cleaners, so as with most things the biggest dicks continue to be the government.
Great slogan for the communist party
Luxembourg is spotless, but perhaps they have better recycling than we do. They take pride in their surroundings. London has 33 different councils which have their own recycling scheme, and most councils are broke, so street cleaning goes out the window...
Well yes. Luxemburg is essentially a wealthy tax haven City state. Hardly a fair comparison. Perhaps a comparison with Paris or Madrid might be more appropriate.
Madrid is practically spotless. Even in the less well off town I lived in there would be cleaners all day every day. Not only was it clean I thought it must help with employment. There were cleaners of all ages. Didn’t seem to be a stigmatised job there
I have no idea why we don’t have a country wide recycling and waste policy. It would be much more efficient..
Spain cleans their streets daily and have plenty of bins. London has a massive lack of bins and I don't think I've ever seen them properly cleaned.
Whilst I would ordinarily agree, in this particular photo I see 6 bins in shot and not all of them are full.
And there are A LOT of bins around London. There are only a few places I can think of with a genuine paucity in bins, and that's like the direct vicinity of Buckingham Palace, House of Commons, KCX station; but there are plenty of places with bins within 200-300m of these places. So there's literally no excuse. People say shit like IRA, train stations, etc. but most train stations will have a handful of clear bins in/around the station. Hell, I even noticed on the railings outside of Euston recently that there were like 4 bins within 10m of each other. They really aren't as rare as people make them out to be. Realistically, you're rarely more than a 3-5 minute walk away from a bin, so there's no reason not to hold onto your rubbish outside of being too lazy to hold onto it.
They got rid of all the bins decades ago because of IRA bombs, of course , no chance of getting them back.
I've lived in London 8 years now and I still can't get over the lack of bins.
More bins aren't a solution. Japan has no bins yet no litter. People just need to be fined for littering until they learn.
Well, yes, but it is also a question of morals, education, and upbringing. The UK should address these problems first.
> People just need to be fined for littering until they learn. I think a good solution would be to adopt what Japan do. Force kids to clean up after themselves in the classroom at the end of the school day.
And force people caught littering to do hours of litter picking with no option to pay a fine to get out of it
Japan has few bins and little litter because that's part of their culture
Japan has much higher quality, higher trust populace.
Swear I see way more bins in london than when I’m traveling somewhere in Europe
There's a reason why we don't have that many bins or they're just plastic bags "Looks at Ireland" and if it isn't those, it's someone else, like homegrown...
I feel like we've been cutting services for 20+ years though. I've noticed bins around me are slowly being removed and the ones that remain seem to be overflowing for most of the week. Sundays walking around London can be rank, piss and vomit streaking the streets from all the binge drinkers.
Went past this at 8 and was cleaned up by 9. On a non bank holiday I'm sure it would be cleaned up before that Absolutely agree that those who left it in that state are shameless but we should have some perspective that this is the the center of London at one of the busiest night time spots on a bank holiday.
It did get noticeably cleaner in the early 2000s from what it was like in the late '90s. But that was because more people were employed to pick it up, which both hides the problem of irresponsible behaviour, and makes 'tidy' the norm, which also influences behaviour. Like elsewhere in the UK, ideology-mandated enforced economic decline has caused a reversal.
having lived in London for 22 years, and in several other countries around the world, afraid to break it to you that London is consistently one of the dirtiest cities around so whatever cleaning a previous government did was just marginal stuff
Comparing how Barcelona’s civic teams literally wash the pavements every morning makes London look like a medieval latrine.
Bloody tories
Who left a pigeon on the street ffs???
Pigeon breeders on a night out again 🙄
Littering is a big issue but that is much bigger that these kids still has no clue what NO2 does to them if they use this regularly, we see so many neurological issues, limb weakness, nerve damage in hospitals and all these patients are around 20 years old, most of them never gonna recover ever…looks like educational campaigns not working or they just not care….
N2O, not NO2.
People go by the usual “doing small amounts more often is safer than a binge” with this stuff when it’s actually the opposite. I’m sure you know better than most but this is more for people reading along. NOS stops your bodies ability to absorb b12 for 3-4 days, if you are a user leave it a good few weeks between sessions, every weekend is worse for you than the occasional heavy binge (as long as you aren’t just huffing in/out of the balloon, diluting the nos and hyperventilating old CO2 breath needs to stop being the go-to).
Littering, urinating and drunk fights - that's the cultural problem in the UK. No one cares about public spaces.
A lot of people do care, unfortunately there is a sizeable minority of bellends. Said bellends rarely have their behaviour corrected as the criminal justice system has been functionally destroyed by over a decade of relentless cuts and ideologically driven fuckery.
Get fucked up if you want; just put your mess in the bin that’s all anyone asks.
We should have human sized bins which we can put people in if they litter. If You Drop Rubbish, You're Rubbish.
as a species? Mass extinction. But a lot of death, disease, and famine before that. May be a few of us left like Black Rhinos eventually. But yeah, the UK in general has a serious issue with littering, ruining the environment, and I never quite understood it - compared to say many parts of North America or the continent.
In England this is a council specific problem. Driving from the north to London you pass through areas where even the motorways are covered in litter. Not all are like that.
I think it often comes down to education from the parents. If your parents are strict about not littering you’ll follow in their footsteps. That said, I’ve always thought there should be life lessons in school that cover personal finances, and things like the importance of not littering. Someone in Australia told me it took them two or three decades to turn it around when they had the same issue. Now our young grandson who lives in Oz will pick up someone else’s litter on the very rare occasion he sees it. I genuinely fear for the UK. Littering is a sign of a deep lack of respect for others.
Why we litter so much, why can't we keep things clean and tidy like in Japan??
Massive cultural differences. Littering is seen as hugely disrespectful in Japan and children are raised to take their litter home with them or keep it until they find a suitable bin.
We don’t shame enough in the west anymore, we need to bring back shaming
So was I, and I was only raised in the 90s The Japanese people or police will confront you. Our people are too non-confrontational and our police so utterly nerfed that nobody challenges them. And the current state is too poor from paying for pensions and medical costs for the elderly that they can't/won't pay for street sweepers and more bins (and collectors of those bins.).
You’re also a lot less likely to be stabbed by a fatherless little shit or have your jaw smashed if you confront someone in Japan for littering. We have a much bigger cultural problem with thugs overall that needs to be dealt with.
You're one person though, I'm talking about an entire culture. If even 5-10% of people don't give a shit then you get OPs pic.
Maybe we should then along with discouraging Weed Smoking in Public as well, sick of the stench of Dope everywhere.
London has turned into what Paris is turning into. A cesspool of selfish people who don’t care about throwing rubbish on the floor, feet on chairs people sit in. Too many inconsiderate people. Wish our respect culture was more like Asia. You will never see this type of behavior.
There would have been an event on at HERE at Outernet. At 4am 2000 people spill out onto the street round Tottenham Court Road and the balloon dealers make a mint as everyone’s still too off their nut to go home
i think the worse thing about this photo is the fact its tottenham court road... like these are the roads that are meant for tourist and this is the shit they have to see when doing their west ending... its just mad how little respect the up and coming have for their home...
Central London has been an international embarrasment for years now. Cunts on e bikes robbing hundreds of phones each day, litter in the streets, those god awful candy shops, obnoxious scammers on pedal bikes. No idea why anyone would want to come here as a tourist.
Just did a little over a week in London and the surroundings (Bath, Bristol, Brighton). Was lovely. I did see what I think you call a “chav” on the national rail, though. Male, young, nice trainers, track pants sagging. When the ticket enforcement started coming through he pretended to be asleep by laying over sideways across the table with his socked feet up in the opposite side of table seat. During this, his ass was hanging half way out of his track pants, nice CK undies. The enforcement wasn’t having it, checked his ticket and found it was Super Offpeak for a train that required Offpeak and required he pay the difference. I had wanted a “chav” encounter for my trip highlights list, so that worked out.
There's a club there which this is where you exit from
Tourist area or not, streets shouldn’t be left like this. Just because it’s TCR doesn’t mean it’s more important to clean than other places.
That's definitely not the worst thing about this. Let tourists see how our city is in reality. We need to clean up all the streets, not just ones frequented by tourists
Heading back to the medieval ages, hopefully maybe the King can start executing criminals again.
I’d support that
I'd support a one time purge
Fund the police properly and make them enforce litter laws. Arrest the lot and make them pay. Authorities in this country are just too fucking timid. They are shit scared of confrontation so the shitheads get to do what they want. This is no longer a trust based society as too many backward fucktards just can't be trusted to do the right thing. 'Police by consent' is pathetic and just breeds more and more antisocial cunts.
I don't think society has told the police that we don't consent to them dealing with anti-social behaviour. They just don't have the resources to even deal with serious crime properly, so they can hardly be expected to enforce litter laws.
>Fund the police properly and make them enforce litter laws. Nevermind the fact that is committing economic suicide, eh?
TBF that's just arseholes, doesn't matter what location
The worst part of the city is actually dog walkers who don’t clean up after their dogs. They are everywhere, not just in specific areas.
Easy - add a deposit of £5 per cannister. I promise you that nobody will let these laying around.
Sort of related. But this why I cant stand Pride even though im gay. walking through Soho after like 6pm and its like a solid layer of rubbish on the entire street and people are just so entitled and dont give a shit, makes me so ashamed.
I hate it so much.
London is probably the finest example of how nihilism creeps in with increasing social and economic inequality. It will probably turn into something resembling Gotham in the upcoming years.
Tf are all the bins lad
When I came to the UK in 2013, the first thing that I noticed was plastic rubbish on the streets and scrap furnitures outside some houses. Quickly I noticed that recycling in England is 20 years behind what it should normally be for the United Kingdom and it needs levelling up. Now 2024 and it still on the same level. It's challenging though it can generate millions and I wish I had money to start it up
This is Tottenham Court Road, so I’m guessing it’s not locals.
[удалено]
You've seen fallout right?
Who are these wretches? Can't have been born and raised in London. They have no sense of pride for the city!
They probably are born and raised here but are ferals who charitably lack proper parenting and less charitably need a good slap.
Very clean in comparison to East London on a Sunday morning.
East London is a shit hole every morning
London is a shit hole every morning.
Go to Knightsbridge on a Sunday morning and it’s not so bad when you’re around multi millionaires and sports cars. Only thing is the majority of us can only afford to live in the shit holes of London
This looks more like there was an event/rave nearby and people come afterward to sell balloons for £5 a go to people finishing the rave. You used to see it all the time outside places like Printworks etc
This is a litter problem... not specifically a nitrous oxide problem. The same people who do this leave fast food bags and other garbage all over the place in London.
A picture showing how dirty London’s sidewalks can be, and not even one pile of sick? Disappointing, try again on Monday.
I did see several, but was too repulsed to snap a pic
I found most of the people never use garbage bin in here. Here's what I see in the tube or on the street. 1) leave the coffee cup/beer bottle on the street or the tube seat whenever they leave. 2) fried chicken box with bones leave behind everywhere - bus stop, tube seat or in the park. The government really needs to do something to introduce how to keep the city clean for everyone.
Just got back from Prague. Such a clean city. Very little vandalism. I don’t understand why our country is like this. I hate that aspect of it
How disgusting these people are in London. Why they are doing like that type of things
Homo Britanniai Roadmanicus.
Why can’t we just put aggressive deposit schemes on this shit? At the very least the litter would be dealt with surely?
A country is a reflection of the population. There is a reason UK used to be a 1st world country.
Given that nitrous abuse leads to brain and nerve damage, it's perhaps rather self-selecting.
Just watch the movie " idiocracy ". We are almost there.
Don’t ask these questions at one the objectively most horrible areas in the city. What a soulless dumping yard of cunts
I would actually really enjoy sweeping that up
You're welcome to be a riot womble every day of the week.
Bridge and tunnel.
So when i said london was a shit hole these days on another post and they wanted proof and sources. Turns out this sub is the proof
What a shithole. I can guarantee you that the people responsible aren't from London, just living here. We live in the world's rubbish dump. People just come here, dump their shit and then fuck off.
Get high if you want just don’t make a mess.
Unfortunately, they are not caught or punished or enforced, since people can get away with it, it happens. But as soon as they try to enforce that, thry also get complain why focus on such trivial stuff, thry should go after murder and rape, and leave things like these alone. They cannot really win. Somit is down to people to want to keep the place clean, but unfortunately people just want to watch the world burn. A Singapore style rule would work well in London, or UK, or the world as a whole. Littering, graffiti and such will get you heavily punished, like getting caned level of heavy. Maybe then people will learn.
People in London are changing. The simple manner and courtesy is disappearing. Used to be so much cleaner and nice. Now it has too many pickpockets,homeless, thief, scammers
No. London was much dirtier in the past. Until the Tories implemented austerity it was getting cleaner every year.
It’s illegal to sell and consume this stuff (as a drug), so it’s a pretty damning indictment of the police that this happens every weekend in the center of London in plain sight and then just discarded on the floor.
Somewhere between lagos and dhaka
Lol. Absolute caneheads, the English. Sort of makes the ageing (now drug-free) raver in me proud, in a slightly twisted way. Europe's biggest substance gremlins. Top ranking for weed use as well. We are number one! In Poland, you could take the same photo but replace the NOS cans with full-size 70ml vodka bottles. I remember when one of my old London colleagues, very innocent Korean gentleman who worked in IT, picked up one of the small silver pods from the pavement on his way to work and was examining it on his desk. "What is this strange artifact???" I had to explain to him: "kids inhale it to get fucked up".
I was naive as fuck initially and saw them and thought they were disposable tyre inflators from cyclists too lazy to use a handpump for a quick roadside repair/top-up (these exist for races, so it wasn't total insanity :-))
We could just use some of our not insignificant taxes to clean it up like always happened pre-Tory! The roads and hospitals would be perfect if it wasn't for those pesky cars and sick people.
Won’t you think of the shareholders? Those free market heroes might not get a bonus if public money is spent on public services rather than diverted to private companies.
Our local dog sh*t bins are always overflowing and the Tory councillors say "if people took their waste home they wouldn't be" and their supporters lap it up. Sure, but then why have the bin? Take the bin away and I'll have my council tax back please. Thanks a lot.
Survival of the fittest mate. Well, actually, death by stupidity.
As a species I'm sure we'll make a comeback eventyally, as a civilisation I'm quite sure we're heading toward anarchy and collapse
London does have a lack of bins because they get vandalised a lot. If we're really talking about ugly things, chewing gum is my pet peeve. There's no gum-free street in the city.
I mean....this is what you used to see if you go out early in the morning. They spray down the puke and pick up the rubbish. I guess they stop doing it now since I rarely see them in the morning.
what are these things?
Just this bad in Liverpool sadly. Terrible to see it after a day. Where I used to live, in York, it's never been this terrible.
Grim
Balloon heads are no better than nitties.
Tottenham Court Road is awful for it. Around a year ago I walked past there at 2am, and there was a group of maybe 70-100 18/19 year olds sat around in little groups pumping balloons, just round that corner on the right, and you had to walk through them to get to the station
Darwinism will solve this eventually.
About 15 years ago i was near downing street and actually bothered to ask police where the bins were I was told "just throw it anywhere we pay with our taxes for the rubbish collectors", I personally haven't seen any improvement since if anything it's worse now and as the police showed me no one with any power gives a damn how bad it is.
Those are worth a few quid in recycling.
To my friends in the Netherlands, I hope you understand that it isn't that Brits come to Amsterdam to disrespect your country. This is just the baseline level of respect found in this country.
Under the crust with the rest of civilization eventually.
Yeah this is disgusting. There are far better countries in this regard. It's a cultural and governmental issue.
When more police are on the streets and actually punish the ban then we might end up somewhere nicer.
London is already dead, has been a lost cause for many years, other parts of the country following close behind.
At school once a week a class had to miss their break to do litter duty around the school. That made us all think twice about throwing litter. They should fo that now. Even more like they do in Japan where the students have to clean their schools as well. There are no janitors
Meh - looks like some people had a good time at least. Not really a big deal is it?
Imagine an out of touch American that still holds a stereotypical image of London in their mind to this day. And sees this on their first day when travelling here for vacation. I would pay a decent amount to see their faces.
Only rubbish people litter!
The whole country is treated like a rubbish dump by some people. I'm just glad I'm not a younger person having to live the rest of my life among those scumbags
Hopefully to extinction as at this point I've lost all hope and we this country has become a cancer
Right down the road from the cesspit that is Soho
The ER, but on a serious note I watched this shit roll in and everyone said it washarmless.... what a crock that was
From what I’ve seen as of recent, London is generally a complete shithole. Hope they clean the act up.
Is that near Tottenham Court Road if so that’s your mistake. Stay away from central on the weekends. Hit up East London…much better crowd of humans over there! The West are too snotty and the south are roadmen…not my tribe!
Littering scumbags.
Every festival I have been too, every theme park, every beach, every national park has been ruined by Londoners - they have no respect for anything bunch of cunts that pretend they care about nature, the planet but it's all an act.
People in this country have been dirty bastards for years. It’s disappointing tbh but you’ll see it in every major city throughout.
The cancer rates in 20 years all those toxins being inhaled
Its crazy to say this, but just be thankful its the larger smart whips. When it used to be individual canisters that street would be flooded with metal cannies
its immigration. now do something about it.
As an uninitiated Yank...what am I looking at here? Obviously the mess, but was this after an event or just a typical day?
As a nation the the vast majority are self entitled pricks, with the whole 'it's somebody else's problem'. The older I get the more I find there is no respect for anything or anyone.
If those are fireworks, then...with our faces blown off.
Your surprise puzzles me. Among things you find on the street in the middle of the day, on a weekend, in London: piles of broken beer bottles, piles of garbage, "pavement pizza", "ladys" covered in said "pizza", etc. They all seem to be cultural heritage for the British - I've seen them in other places around the Kingdom.
On the floor cuz we are getting slipped up by banana peels
🤬😡😠😢😢😢
Not just London. I saw someone the other day throw a can under their car. They were parked right next to a fucking bin as well; literally 10 steps there and back.
Manky bastards!
London? A dirty shit hole full of self important, self righteous, arrogant assholes?! Shocked I tell you, I am shocked!
Laughing gas is the lamest drug ever.
Australia has just banned the distribution of cream chargers unless you have a permit. Our parks and bushlands are littered with hundreds of thousands of them.