Smoker? You dirty, disgusting chucker!
Tuesday, April 8, 2008 The war on tobacco just got really dirty. According to Keep Britain Tidy, "we are literally swimming in a sea of cig butts". (Literally? Swimming?) Launching the organisation's biggest ever anti-smoking litter campaign, chief executive Phil Barton says:
"Since the smoking ban was brought in nine months ago, the number of discarded butts on our streets has soared. We applaud the cigarette ban as it has made our pubs and restaurants more pleasant environments to be in. But unfortunately we are now seeing an epidemic of smoking related litter on our streets. The message is clear: dumping fag stubs on the ground is disgusting and people responsible will face fines."
As of today:
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Thirteen councils will issue on-the-spot fines to anyone caught chucking their cig (sic)
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10,000 posters and banners will go up warning "Dirty Chuckers" of £80 fines. These will appear in bus shelters, phone boxes, pub toilets and lampposts.
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50,000 beer mats will go to pubs across the land to "highlight the problem"
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Says Barton:
"Now is the time for smokers to change the dirty habit which is staining our streets, particularly in town and city centres. Almost half the councils in England have received serious complaints from the public and this is simply not acceptable."
Forest's response:
"We support any responsible campaign that encourages people not to drop litter. But this campaign is grossly offensive and irresponsible. Targeting smokers in such an aggressive fashion will do nothing to help the environment. It is far more likely to alienate smokers who won't appreciate being singled out for special attention.
"Keep Britain Tidy say they applaud the smoking ban but complain that the number of discarded butts has soared since it was introduced. They can't have it both ways. The obvious solution is to support an amendment to the legislation that would allow licensed smoking rooms, and encourage local councils to install cigarette bins in the nation's high streets.
"Instead, Keep Britain Tidy wants to vilify and insult smokers and create a culture of intolerance. It stinks."
Note: the "Dirty Chuckers" campaign is also backed by the portable ashtray company, Ashcan, and Tesco - something you may care to remember the next time you visit your friendly neighbourhood superstore to buy, er, cigarettes. (And while you're there, check out the number of cig bins on the premises.)
Simon Clark
CSR Solutions, which promotes ButtsOut ("the smart solution for cigarette ends), welcomes the campaign - which, it says, will "generate some shock value that will build awareness and recall - but the company is concerned that "it may serve to vilify the smoker as opposed to engage ... We are correspondingly dubious that it will have the desired effect of encouraging responsibility and changing behaviour".
Referring to the "Don't be a tosser" campaign in Australia, CSR says, "That campaign reported very high levels of consumer recall but we aren't aware it had a big impact on levels of cigarette litter". In other (less diplomatic) words: it was a turkey. And turkeys (like chickens) come home to roost.
Reader Comments (19)
What are the odds that if two people are seen simultaneously creating litter, one, an empty can, the other, a cigarette butt it will be the smoker who gets nabbed? Negative, I feel.
There was a press report some time ago about a jobsworth, obviously terribly keen to do his bit for our happy, shiny society, who issued a fine to a smoker who hadn't dropped her butt because he thought that she was going to!!!
BTW Simon, sorry to be pedantic but I hope that the typos were corrected before going to press: the stereotype peddled by the antis is that all smokers are dirty, irresponsible, ignorant and yobbish chavs and, what could be taken as spelling errors, coming from an organisation that defends them, only re-inforces that myth.
Campaigns like this may help the general public to see that the crusade against smokers is NOT about health, but about vilification from an overbearing state.
As much as these campaigns are extremely irritating, they may well help to get people on our side.
On another note, although I abhor pollution etc. I have to admit to discarding cigarette butts on the streets. Yes I regret it but the other half of me thinks: "what are street cleaners for? Surely so that the public have the convenience of dropping tiny bits of litter?!"
After all, we pay enough bloody tax.
Thanks, Joyce, that was just me typing in haste! I stand corrected.
James Mayhew was stunned by the two fines
A FELIXSTOWE teenager has been slapped with nearly £200 of fines for NOT littering - but after contacting The Evening Star at least one of his fines has been cancelled.
James Mayhew, 19, received parking fines for obeying the law and using a rubbish bin in the car park shared by Staples and Fitness First gym, on Russell Road.
This sort of vilification campaign against smokers just reinforces the old adage "Give them (ASH) an inch and they will take a mile".
Regardless of the nature of any further restrictions on smoking/ smokers from whatever quarter - the answer should be NO - THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER. Then we have the long struggle to gain some equility with these diabolical anti's.
I attempt to avoid littering as it's very anti social and makes places look messy. However, every time I now go to Tesco's, I shall make a point of dropping my butt on the ground in their car parks and outside premises. I shall also stub them out in the middle of nosmoking notices. Ah what fun we shall have, Mr Pip!
At least a cigarette butt can be swept up. The mess created by chewing gum cannot and really is the scurge of our streets. During the summer the gum heats up and sticks to shoes and is then transferred inside. Carpets and floors are damaged and the councils spend a fortune on machines to try and keep the streets clean.
This is plainly another attempt to demonise smokers and should be treated with the distain it deserves. I do not throw litter but things like this make me want to chuck all my rubbish into the carpark at my local Tesco's and they can stuff their 'Keep Britain Tidy' campaign.
Blad, your point may be better made by actually dropping your butt into Tescos's bins....
I have written them an email criticising their tone, you can too on:
http://www.encams.org/contactus/index.asp
Encam state.
According to Keep Britain Tidy, since the ban on smoking in public places came in last July, we are literally swimming in a sea of cig butts.
'Literally swimming' Was this written by ASH?
Keep Britain Tidy?
Whatever for?
Now if someone advocated to Keep Britain Free, I would defend that stance whole heartedly, but when we have a Government like we have, that wants to strip us of all our rights and traditions. A Government that has taken the Brit out of Britain, then what right do they have to even ask us to do anything for this country?
Give us back our country, and we will look after it, and we'll keep it tidy, just like we used to, but since they took it away from us and ruined what was left of it, I say tell them to f*****gwell keep it tidy themselves.
I thought so many bans were pushed through because there were no possible side effects?
Either that, or they saw something obvious like this coming that they could demonize, and they realized it was the next available step.
When the bans passed I thought about this and said "Oh, they wouldn't..."
...and they did. Rather quickly.
Peter Thurgood just read your post and i couldnt stop laughing good on you for saying what you think and i agree with you. Good luck
Well that's nice off them! fine us for a problem that government created, and Local councils exacerbated.
My wife knows one of our street cleaners, and he let her play with his little pick up stick, she was struggling to pick up a cig end with it, when he told her "Oh! we don't have to pick them up".
To further back up this comment, a While back I followed a "litter picker" (formally street cleaner) from one end of a busy shopping centre to the other, I watched him pick up buss tickets, receipts, Mac wrappers, I watched him struggle for quite a while trying to prise a wet receipt of the pavement. But you guessed it, not one cigarette end was collected.
So why are are streets swimming in butts... Cos they don't clean them up thats why.
Very interesting, Peter J, that councils now seem to have a deliberate policy of not picking up cigarette ends. I've always carried an empty fag packet to put my ends in - done it for years. Also, once during a visit to Amsterdam, I bought a fetching little spring loaded portable ashtray. It flicks open to become an ashtray then closes firmly with the cig ends inside. Caused a bit of merriment among my children when I showed it to them. They pointed out a very pretty leaf pattern engraved on the lid! I've always been a bit against all drugs, be they prescription or recreational, and preached this hard at them. Sorry folks - my personal freedom of choice.
Very interesting, Peter J, that councils now seem to have a deliberate policy of not picking up cigarette ends. I've always carried an empty fag packet to put my ends in - done it for years. Also, once during a visit to Amsterdam, I bought a fetching little spring loaded portable ashtray. It flicks open to become an ashtray then closes firmly with the cig ends inside. Caused a bit of merriment among my children when I showed it to them. They pointed out a very pretty leaf pattern engraved on the lid! I've always been a bit against all drugs, be they prescription or recreational, and preached this hard at them. Sorry folks - my personal freedom of choice.
Why should smokers care about butts on the street or anywhere else for that matter. What do the fascists expect when they kick smokers out on the street to smoke. Since the smoking ban I make a point of stubbing my butt on the footpath in a silent protest, but surreptitiously of course in case a do gooder sees me.
Does anyone know whether the Encams' intended 30 foot high cigarette butt was unveiled in Trafalgar Square? What a lovely sight that will be for tourists to view as they eagerly enter London to see our world famous traditional heritage.
A few years ago, I went to Luxor in Egypt for a holiday. It is a fabulous place, full of history and charm.
Our hotel faced directly onto the Nile, and at sunrise and sunset, the whole vista used to turn a beautiful golden red hue, which caught the sails of the falukas as they sailed slowly by along the river.
There was one thing however, which at first, did put me off somewhat. My wife and I got ready to go out on our first evening. We decided to walk, so that we could take in the various temples and monuments along the way. The moment we left our hotel however, we both looked round at each other, and said the same thing, "what on earth is that smell?"
The smell turned out to be horses dung, as they use horse and carriages there quite a lot, and horses, being the creatures they are, do their smelly business whenever and wherever they see fit.
The smell to us townies, was overpowering, and when you looked, every kerb and gutter was full of the stuff. Needless to say, after a day or so, you just got used to the smell and thought no more about it, and road sweeps constantly swept the offending manure, and shovelled it into their handcarts.
The reason I am recalling this, is this whole stupid fuss about a few cigarette butts in our cities in the UK. Considering that we probably get about 100 time more rain than Egypt does, which obviously sweeps the offending butts down the drains, and that there are perhaps 10,000 times more chewing gum blobs stuck all over our pavements, what on earth are these jobsworths going on about? Also, you might well bear in mind that cigarette butts do not smell, unlike the horse dung in Egypt.
But of course, Egypt isn't the only country, that one sees horse dung on the roads. Even where I live, near Blackheath in London, we have regular police patrols, who use horses, and they always leave their scented trails in the road for all to see, and smell.
There are obviously no calls for this to be binned, no posters on bus shelters, showing a police horse with its latest offering, about to be dumped, and the policeman being warned that he should shovel it up and bin it, or face a heavy fine.
Other countries learn to cope, why can't we? A rhetorical question of course, we all know why we can't. It has nothing to do with smells, or the environment, or keeping things tidy, it is purely a vindictive action against smokers, full stop.