Streets across Britain are being choked with weeds as councils abandon a chemical spray they claim harms wildlife.
Numerous roads which have been well cared for decades have grown into mini jungles over the summer as some councils have stopped using the chemical glyphosate and say other treatments are less effective.
Other councils blame the rainy summer, which restricted spraying, and admit they stopped weeding to trim costs.
Yet middle-class homes have been hit by massive hikes in council tax, pushing the average Band D bill exceeding 2,000 a year.
Some fed-up residents have formed their own weeding patrols.
Yvonne Wright, who’s formed a Civic Pride Team of pensioners to do the job of council contractors in Tottington, in Bury, Greater Manchester said that these plants taking over feels like a scene from The Day of the Triffids.
They use their gardening instruments to eliminate the weeds.
Ms Wright said that their town used to look fantastic but the spread of weeds had been dreadful, and there was a lot of anger because people have highly rated homes for council tax.
Bury Council said weed treatment was expected to get back on track this month after the wet summer made spraying impossible.
In the adorable Victorian terraced streets of Merton, south London weeds are growing up to waist height in places.
Mother of two Laura Montero, 47, said that everyone takes it on themselves to do something about the weeds.
Fellow resident Daisy Laramy-Binks, 37, added that with a lot of the nettles, you’ll get out of your car and sting yourself.
Only 200 yards down the road, which is in the neighbouring area of Wandsworth, residents have spruced up weed-strawn streets by planting flowers around the bottom of trees outside their homes.
In Cambridgeshire, Tory councillor Simon Bywater said he’s had more complaints about weeds than any other issue over the last decade.
He said that people expect councils to look after roads and pavements. It’s one of the basic services for which they pay their taxes.
In Suffolk, accounts clerk Annabel Young, 27, said streets near her Ipswich home look like ‘something from a post-apocalypse disaster movie in which plants start taking over’.
Councils don’t need weed killers, there are plenty of prisoners or those on probation who could do the work. These people could be used to cover these tasks the council say they can’t afford to carry out. The list is infinite.
The trouble is they don’t have enough staff to take prisoners to do their day-to-day tasks, and they’re slammed up for 23 hours a day – another area that’s a governmental disaster zone.
Councils are now attempting to save money, that’s what it’s all about, and then they go on to spend that money on diversity projects.
Our government are happy to support the war going on in Ukraine, but they can’t mend the potholes and cut the weeds.
What they don’t realise or they’re just very stupid is that it’s going to cost the council a fortune in trips and falls as paving slabs start to lift and become uneven.
They may save money now, but in the long run, the roots of some of these plants will destroy the paving, so that when the roads really need to be done, it will cost councils much more and be much more harmful to the environment, with new materials required, lorries coming and going, heavy equipment for the rebuilding of roads.
Yes, of course, we have to protect the wildlife, but we can’t be plagued with weeds either, especially when they’re blocking the view of roundabouts and junctions.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 