According to families living in a squalor neighbourhood, a neglected town in Birmingham is so dirty that heaps of litter can be seen on Google Maps.
Photographs of Newton, just north of the city centre, show plastic bags, crisp packets and takeaway boxes strewn across roads and pavements while bins overflow.
According to Birmingham Live, Matt Bond, who has lived in the town with his family of six for 20 years, fears nothing will be done as he says people are dumping unwanted litter all over the place.
Venting his frustration at a local ward meeting, Mr Bond said: ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever gone on Google Maps and Googled our area from an aerial point of view. It looks like a waste ground, it really does.
He said that it was absolutely disgusting and embarrassing.
He added that people are just dumping stuff down the alleyways and all sorts, and he said what goes on in people’s minds.
Mr Bond claimed the extent of the rubbish left lying around was devaluing his property, adding that this was the frustration. It was communication. That they’ve been there for 20-odd years and still they can’t get anything done.
Another resident, Valerie Simpson, said that they weren’t even emptying the bins, they were just overflowing. That the bins weren’t emptied at all, and that there was rubbish everywhere.
She added that they live there and they have to live around squalor. That there was fly tipping everywhere and it was the first thing she speaks about every month at the meetings and nothing is happening about it.
She said they’ve got money there but they don’t put that to good use and they want the place tidied up.
In answer to the residents’ complaints about the litter and fly-tipping in Newton, councillor Ziaul Islam said that he was aware of all the problems surrounding fly-tipping and the rubbish on the streets and he was working with the authorities to put a stop to it.
He said that he was doing his best but that it was the same across several parts of the city.
He said that he was also fighting to restore the community centre and he would be in dialogue with the council leader, John Cotton.
Most Brummies that were born and bred there were brought up to be hard-working, decent, respectful people, they don’t choose to live like this, but between the dirty younger fast food generation and the most useless council in history, the once great city has become a rubbish tip.
Sadly this is happening in places with a considerable influx of non-native people and a once posh part of the city has now become the biggest slum area, largely due to new people who like to leave their filth everywhere, and it’s only going to get worse as our councils and government aren’t doing anything anymore.
Councils need to aggressively target those causing the littering and need to enforce a cleaning programme with bins that are emptied regularly. However, it’s also for the residents and businesses to play their part, rather than expecting the council to do everything, but the councils need to take the lead, play their part and demand that locals play their part.
It’s the same in certain parts of Bradford, Blackburn and Luton is no better.
Sadly, the UK is filthy, yet we pay the highest taxes of all. There’s no authority over the companies that are paid to clean the streets, no checking their work, and counsellors in charge are never held to account and nobody is ever fined. We have anti-littering laws in the United Kingdom which are never enforced and it’s disgraceful.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 