Making monkeys of us all

In nature monkeys spend hours mutually grooming each other, and once again a similar exercise is planned for Boston. It's called the Big Boston Clean-up, and it's looking for 500 volunteers to tackle the borough's "grot spots."
This is, in itself, a challenge.
There are many (and we number ourselves among them) who regard most of Boston as a grot spot.
Apart from the town centre, which is kept moderately clean - most probably for the benefit of visitors, as locals count for very little - the condition of the rest of Boston is deplorable.
Any area that is regularly trafficked on foot is regularly littered - despite the presence of litter bins.
Any area within the town that is faintly bucolic, becomes a repository for animal faeces, and when the grass becomes cluttered with them, the pavements will do.
Most of these animals are allowed to run loose (no pun intended) by their owners - in fact they are often encouraged to do so by being released unattended - usually after dark - so that their owners cannot be identified and punished.
And if you think that's harmless, remember: doggy poo, as most people call it to make it sound less of a problem, contains roundworm, giardia, campylobacter, leptospira, tapeworm, cryptosporidium, e.coli and fecal coliforms. It can kill people.
In some ways, things like the big clean up serve a purpose - last year's event won the Community Engagement Project of the year award at the Environment Agency’s Communications Awards But any element of community spirit is rapidly lost because the event is a once a year affair.
The litter problem is underlined by the fact that every time the gung-ho Placecheck scheme erects its tent in a neighbourhood to waste another shedload of taxpayers' money all that most people want is the rubbish removed from their streets.
We are paying once through our council tax to keep our borough tidy.
We are paying again through the Big Boston Clean-up.
We are paying again through the Placecheck scheme.
And what do we get?
For a few days, the streets of Boston are like they should all year round.
Then the litter louts return them to the state we see them in most of the year round.
We don't need tokenism to fight litter and dog fouling.
We need PCSOs and dog wardens, and members of the host of uniformed armies that have bred like flies all around Boston, out on patrol looking for offenders - and when they find them, punishing them.
Let's not forget the downside to this littapickathon.
Many young people are going to be involved in this, and where there's litter there is danger, in the form of broken glass, or worse, discarded hypodermic syringes - and we've already spelt out the risk of coming in contact with Bonzo's biggies.
What safeguards and precautions are being taken to protect litter pickers from the litter itself?
At the end of the day the fact is that once again, Boston Borough Council is getting the townsfolk to do its job for them, when it should be doing more to tackle the litter and fouling problem and stamp it out.

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