This Lot Bugs Me!

An interesting radio news item on August Bank Holiday Sunday stated that this weekend, more than a million tons of rubbish will be thrown out of cars and other vehicles onto our roads.

You know the sort of thing: crisp packets, chocolate wrappers, hamburger boxes, tissues, cigarette packets.

Of course, a lot of people don't have to wait for a holiday weekend or indeed any weekend to act as litterbugs. A certain type of pub-goer in Borehamwood thinks nothing of dropping their takeaway in the street leading from their local pub.

We see exactly that same debris littering grass verges and pavements together with cans and bottles. Bottles are dangerous items at the best of times, but lethal, particularly to pets, when broken.

I've seen many people collecting other people's rubbish and putting it in their wheelie-bin on refuse collecting day.

Why are people litterbugs? Aren't they taught about this in school? If not they should be, because it seems to me that their parents don't stop them.

*The Woodland Trail in Studio Way has Hertsmere Borough Council signs saying No Horseriding. Of course, there is always one who does.

When questioned, her answer was: "We were here long before you" and off she rode, along the trail.

The trail has been very well laid out by Hertsmere down to the play area for children aged eight and above, a picnic area -- always littered with rubbish -- a car park and many bins for dog waste.

The dog owners don't care about them, so the pathways are totally littered. It is quite disgusting but you can't blame the dogs or the horses, only the owners.

"Doggie bins" started life in bright red with a label showing what they are for, but unfortunately it was not long before the spray-can brigade decided to change their colour to green, and recently they set fire to one, turning it into a melted heap.

*The lead project manager at Eastern Electricity says there have been "supply interruptions" in the Shenley Area.

It calls them power cuts. The first was in the evening of July 6, caused by a "high voltage fault outside the Shenley Hospital site".

Before this, three faults in the area were caused by "underground cables damaged by a third party".

The power cut at 2.30am on July 20 was caused by a lightning strike and no reason has yet been given for the cuts on July 21.

On August 15, "high voltage cables were damaged by a contractor working for British Gas". Would you believe that Eastern Electricity are carrying out a major investment programme of £460million.

Never mind the future, at present it is most disagreeable when your dinner cannot be cooked and you miss Coronation Street.

*In a letter last month from Councillor Beth Kelly, she decided that a matter of great and long-lasting national importance could best be conveyed by lowering her comments to the level of football -- showing her lack of perspicuity and her obligation to toe the party line.

I do not have such a line to toe. What I believe and say are my thoughts for my country and its future. She quoted football, I will quote from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Iolanthe -- written over 100 years ago around parliament when everyone was either a Liberal or a Conservative, no socialists then.

Gilbert wrote: "when in that house MPs divide, if they've a brain and cerebellum too, they have got to leave that brain outside and vote just as their leaders tell 'em too."

Well, nothing has changed. There are a number of politicians who vote against the UK joining the EU, those who abstain are wimps.

Councillor Kelly mentioned our access to a market of 390million people. She needs to be reminded that that market has always been there as was another great market called the British Commonwealth.

Alas, when our Government of the day decided that the UK should join the European Common Market as it was then, we were told by the French that we could not belong to two clubs. If we wanted to join theirs, we would have to leave ours -- and we did.

What a stupid political decision. We should have said no to our French neighbours and stuck with our family. After all, the Anzacs as well as they Canadians, India, South Africa and every other nation in the British Empire, Dominions and Commonwealth took up the call to arms when we needed them in 1939.

And the first European country to be liberated was France.

Originally, the European Union saw the light of day as the common market, a trading zone where there was general agreement on their trade and tariffs, where there were no borders and therefore free movement from one member -- not federal -- state to another.

The concept, I believe, came from the French in order to stop the Germans invading and occupying them as they had done in 1870, 1914 and 1939. By befriending Germany and forming a trading union the chance of another war was, in their minds, nullified.

So, as you all know, the Common Market was formed. Later someone, we know not who, said that there should be a set of rules to ensure that the small countries would not be at a disadvantage.

Later someone suggested that there should be laws, which led to a European Court of Justice, a European Parliament and a European Passport. The EU has ordered the UK to drastically reduce its fishing fleet in what are, were and always have been, British waters. Our fishing fleet has been destroyed, yet Spanish trawler crews, under UK law, are entitled to obtain a National Insurance number in the UK. They also have access to our water under the European Common Fisheries Policy and the British Government has no power to stop them. The Canadians did!

Let us be absolutely clear, the consequence of all this domination by Brussels will mean that neither the Labour or Conservative parties, whichever is elected, will have the legal power to run our economy.

We have been encouraged by our politicians to sleepwalk into surrendering our nation. Yet, Ted Heath's Conservative government, when it took us into Europe said, and I quote from his white paper, "there is no question of any erosion of our essential national sovereignty."

As this nation becomes increasingly aware that it has been deceived, our leading politicians will change their tune, move the goalposts and try to mislead us once again.

The best thing for our country would be to stay out of the EU, be in charge of our own destiny, watch Europe in turmoil and remember that Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia is what we want to hear on our radios -- not Deutschland ber Alles!

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.