COVID Jobs Bloodbath

According to new figures, nearly 190,000 jobs have been lost and more than 15,000 stores were forced to close in the retail bloodbath since the first national lockdown a year ago.

The Centre for Retail Research has unveiled that 188,685 retail jobs in the United Kingdom disappeared between the start of the first lockdown on March 23 2020 and March 31 this year in exclusive data for the PA news agency.

The figures come less than two weeks before non-essential shops reopen their doors to customers in England after the long third lockdown.

However, customers will find high streets and town centres have been hit hard by the pandemic, with thousands of stores closing their doors for good.

The numbers unveiled that 83,725 jobs lost in the period were due to administrations, including major collapses by Debenhams and Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group.

Meanwhile, about 11,986 jobs were cut during Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) restructuring processes.

Another 92,974 jobs were axed through rationalisation programmes, which included supermarkets Sainsbury’s and Asda cutting thousands of positions.

The figures also unveiled that the overwhelming impact of the pandemic resulted in 15,153 store closures in shopping destinations across the United Kingdom, and according to real estate adviser Altus Group, up to 401,690 stores are currently shuttered around the country and could reopen in the next step of the Prime Minister’s road map out of lockdown.

Retail bosses have raised concerns that the high street will still be extremely challenging for retailers despite the easing of restrictions, as business rates payments return for many.

Robert Hayton, UK president of property tax at Altus, warned that the current business rates regime could cause further destruction, and he said that come July 1, large retailers in England will effectively be returned to full business rates liabilities, calculated by reference to rents being paid six years ago, with the basic right to appeal to seek valuation adjustments being retrospectively withdrawn.

A Government spokeswoman said that they’ve continued to help the retail sector during the pandemic, including their new £5 billion Restart Grant scheme, extending the furlough scheme and the VAT cut, providing 750,000 businesses in retail and other areas with business rates relief and a £350 billion package to support jobs and livelihoods.

And it was said that as they build back better from coronavirus they want to see the high streets flourish, and that they’ve put in place an accelerated £1 billion Future High Streets Fund, a £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund and are working with local leaders through the High Street Taskforce, all to support town centres, high street regeneration and drive growth across the United Kingdom.

Sadly, the world has changed, and the High Streets have become a particularly expensive place to trade, with greedy landlords and business rates that have added another 60 per cent of the rental value on top, and it’s far too late to address the expense.

And the High Street will now have to evolve, offering more modest boutique type premises, leisure and socialising establishments to become relevant once again. This may even mean changing some premises to residential, while specialist larger stores will still flourish on the edge of town retail centres and online, and we may have to accept this and deal with it.

Or do they just want everyone to stay indoors, with no town centre recovery, and with killjoy councils and dog robbing landlords that will see to this. Turning towns into flats for immigrants and migrants, or perhaps posh ones for middle-class people. With the common people becoming too poor for lattes, fine dining and clubbing.

Or is this all part of the Great Reset Plan? With no plan to replace these jobs, turning high streets into blocks of flat with takeaways at street level.

DWP Staff Admit Inflicting Psychological Harm On Claimants

A shocking new testimony has shown that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff and managers intentionally inflicted psychological harm on benefit claimants, engaged in unofficial sanctioning targets, and pushed disabled people into work, despite the risk to their well-being.

The evidence comes from new interviews with 10 civil servants who worked for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and its contractors under the coalition government between 2010 and 2015.

They spoke, on the condition of strict anonymity, to academics from Sheffield Hallam University, who have now revealed how the introduction of a more disciplinary social security system, with more rigid benefit sanctions and conditionality, inflicted years of institutional brutality on claimants between 2010 and 2015.

The authors, Dr Jamie Redman and Professor Del Roy Fletcher think it’s the first time that research has demonstrated how DWP workers have been able to commit such brutal acts on benefit claimants in vulnerable and precarious situations.

The two academics built on the work of the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who explained how modern bureaucracies can produce psychosocial factors that empower ordinary people to carry out destructive practices.

And they illustrate how a shift in DWP policy through the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government elected in May 2010 pressured DWP staff to refer more claimants to have their benefits sanctioned.

The policy reforms also saw the performance of jobcentre staff measured by off benefit flows, the number of claimants who stopped getting an out of work benefit, even if those people hadn’t secured a job.

This helped lead to an enormous rise in sanctioning rates between 2010 and 2013, reaching more than one million sanctions in 2013 and rising about 345 per cent above their 2001-08 average level.

For their research, Redman and Fletcher interviewed a JobcentrePlus (JCP) manager, three JCP front line staff members, one Work Programme front line worker who had previously worked for JCP, one DWP decision-maker, and four Work Programme front line staff.

They were told how top-down pressure on staff, through sanctioning tables and off flow targets that were legitimised by the government, acting as a moral anaesthetic which made invisible the needs and interests of the claimants they were sanctioning.

This enabled workers to view their caseloads with what Bauman called ethical indifferences, and one JCP worker explained how staff would usually treat claimants with disrespect and use psychological abuse as a technique to decrease the number of people claiming benefits, pushing them until they either just cleared off because they couldn’t take the pressure or they got sanctioned.

The thing is, we were raised by our parents to question authority and follow our inherent curiosity about the world.

Top-down management destroys curiosity and ownership, it’s antiquated, and most importantly, it doesn’t work, and this management culture doesn’t just put an unimaginable amount of stress and pressure on people, it also smothers individual capability and interest and then people don’t feel like they want to do anything at all.

And because I said so isn’t an effective way to stimulate and align people, and people despise being told what to do, or think without understanding the logic behind it, and we all know how unsatisfying it feels to have our ‘why’ questions ignored, and be told, ‘because I said so.’

Sadly, this ‘because I said so’ management technique is common in top-down. It shuts down interest, and limits people from utilising their knowledge and experience to improving the status quo, and instead of increasing employment, the ‘. I said so’ method, lowers the employment rate because people then just don’t see the point of working.

Primary School Teacher Won £155,000 After Student Savagely Attacked Her

A primary school teacher has been awarded more than £150,000 in damages after a student attacked her for asking him to get on with his work.

The six-figure payout was amongst cases in which education workers were awarded settlements for damages and discrimination suffered in schools.

Overall, the NASUWT teaching union obtained more than £11.7 million for its members across the United Kingdom over the past 12 months, and the latest compensation figures show that in one case, a couple was awarded approximately £50,000 after they were fired by an independent school in London when one of them fell sick and was temporarily unable to work.

The figures were released ahead of the NASUWT’s yearly conference on Friday, which will be held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

A teacher in a primary school in Cheshire secured just over £155,000 after she sustained severe injuries to her hand and wrist after being attacked by a student, simply because she asked a student, who was misbehaving, to get on with his work.

When she turned her back, he sprang up and grabbed her neck and then her right hand, twisted her wrist and then dug his finger into her arm.

The attack left her with ligament damage to her wrist, hand and fingers.

The NASUWT also secured more than £48,000 for a couple from Dyfed, Wales, who were dismissed from their positions at an independent secondary school in west London after one of them became unwell.

The pair were never presented with a formal contract of employment by the school, but they were employed on an ongoing basis as timetabled teachers.

In August 2018, they advised the employer that due to one half of the pair being unwell, she would be unable to return to work from the start of term but she would do so as soon as she recovered.

Her partner also advised the employer he would have to stay at home in Wales to look after her. The school then refused to employ them any further.

The NASUWT brought claims of unfair and wrongful dismissal on their behalf and they were awarded £28,935.99 and £19,220,20 each in 2020.

In another case, £60,000 was obtained for a deputy headteacher in the North West of England who was sacked after growing concerns about her school, including bullying and intimidation of staff and child protection concerns.

The union successfully lodged claims for unfair and wrongful removal, as well as maintaining the dismissal was automatically unfair due to whistleblowing.

The principal thing here that astounds me is that this child dared to attack his teacher and that pupils believe they have the license to attack their teachers, and really, how did it get to this? And it makes me question who raised the people that raised today’s generation.

When I was a girl, you only talked to a teacher to answer a question, and you’d daren’t even look them in the eye, and if you’d been in any trouble at school involving a smack or the cane, my parents would have given me worse back at home – the threat was enough, we just didn’t misbehave.

Numerous schools now turn a blind eye to the bullying of children and teacher abuse, and this needs to change.

Schools were once an establishment of learning, teaching, and encouraging children to be better human beings, but now teachers just teach and don’t believe that they are there to babysit or bring up your children, and this is where it’s all gone wrong.

And now some teachers, particularly in the US are being asked if they’ll wear a stab vest, as children are being identified as dangerous, and they’re using pencils, pens, or anything that comes to hand, and they’re only six years old.

No discipline equals no respect, and teachers should be allowed to discipline children that have no respect, and that respect should be developed at school as well as at home.

Now we have the softer education and the worst education and attitude in this system – the cane, detention, expelling and discipline. It was all taken away and everything just got worse, with pupils thinking that they can do as they want, and it’s time to bring back discipline in schools, or do people think that this is wrong?

But this is what happens when our nation’s become a soft touch, and it’s the school’s responsibility to provide a safe place, not just for the children, but for the people that work there as well, because this is what you get when you remove the ability to discipline a child.

NHS Doctor Who Admitted Injecting Drugs She Stole From Work To Give Her Energy

An NHS doctor remains suspended from work after stealing drugs and needles to give her an energy boost but initially blagged that they were to clean her fish tank.

Dr Suzy Ling was last year suspended for 12 months for foraging equipment stocks and injecting herself while on duty at Salisbury District Hospital in Wiltshire.

A Medical Practitioners Tribunal has now extended her stay for another year as she displays only limited insight into the gravity of her wrongdoing.

The doped-up paediatrician was first discovered when a registrar noticed purple discolourations on Dr Suzy Ling’s hand, before finding a brown paper bag with used cannulas and sharps in her coat pocket.

The registrar told the tribunal that Dr Ling had been behaving oddly that day and appeared lethargic and kept rubbing her face.

Another doctor told the tribunal that she was extremely pale and waxy in appearance and her hand looked odd as it was purple and enlarged.

Initially when confronted Dr Ling insisted her haggard appearance was down to a loss of fluids, saying she used to drink too much Diet Iron Brew and while attempting to cut down had not had sufficient water as a replacement.

She then even tried to claim she’d only stolen the needles to clean her fish tank.

In a bizarre statement given to the hospital and read out to the tribunal, she said that on one occasion, after discussing it with the nurses on shift, she took a few of the small orange, sharp needles, and some small syringes.

She said that she took them home to use in her marine fish tank, as she needed to draw up, and inject a type of pest anemone.

Dr Ling was barred by the hospital in 2017 and police ransacked her house and questioned her, although they eventually dropped the case.

However, when Dr Ling was interviewed by the General Medical Council (GMC) in 2019, she admitted self-injecting to keep her focused during her work.

She said that she’d made an enormous mistake and took an unnamed drug, needles, syringes and cannulas, from the paediatric ward, of Salisbury District Hospital, and she said that she self-injected the unnamed drug, on more than one occasion, usually whilst working.

And that she did this because it gave her an energy boost, and focus, that helped her cope with long, and variable hours, and that she knew this was wrong, and that she accepts that it was her own fault and no one else’s.

She should, of course, be fired because she was on drugs whilst on duty, and there’s no excuse for that, and now she needs help with her addiction, and she should never be able to get a job as a doctor again because she can’t ever be trusted again.

She will, of course, probably get fired because theft of medications is extremely serious. However, physicians and nurses are human, they’re not robots, and they do make mistakes.

A Baffling Brain Disease That Resembles Deadly Mad Cow Disease

More than 40 cases of a baffling brain illness that resembles mad cow disease has been reported in Canada, and according to CBC, the illness has similarities to the rare and fatal brain disorder known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and its variants, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which is also known as mad cow disease.

But even though it’s comparable to CJD, officials say it’s not the same disease.

Health officials in New Brunswick, Canada, are now struggling to understand how 43 people got the illness and what the obscure neurological disease is, and officials have confirmed that five people have now died.

According to CBC, the first diagnosed case in the area occurred in 2015, but the cases have proceeded to grow over the years, and in 2020, there were 24 recorded cases and so far in 2021, there have been six cases.

Bertrand Mayor Yvon Godin told the news site that residents are extremely concerned about the disease.

Godin said that residents are worried and that they’re questioning if it’s moose meat, is it deer or is it contagious? And that they need to know, as quickly as possible, what’s causing the disease.

As the investigation and research continue to figure out what the disease is, neurologist Dr Neil Cashman has offered some insight into what it’s not.

He says there’s no evidence that points to it being a prion disease like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and he told the CBC that there’s no evidence, not a hint, even in the three post-mortems that have been completed, of a human prion disease, and that came as a surprise to him.

And he said, so in reality, this is something different, and they need to get on the stick and figure out what it is, and as Dr Neil Cashman and a team of experts continue to search for more answers, he says due to the cases being restricted to specific areas, the illness fits with the notion of an environmental toxin.

And he said that a lot of scientific understanding will be needed to pin it down to a cause, adding that it’s unknown when they will have a more detailed explanation for the public.

He maintained that it was likely continuing investigations would give them the cause in a week, or it was possible it would give them the cause in a year.

And it wouldn’t be a surprise if they didn’t blame it on the AstraZeneca vaccine, but somehow, somewhere, someone will eventually say it’s down to the AstraZeneca vaccine – quick perhaps Canada should be locked down, and will these scare tactics never end?

Blame it on Brexit, well, let’s face it, everything else has!

AOC Claims Over-Worked Amazon Staff Are Forced To Defecate In Bags

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has waded into a dispute over Amazon’s handling of its workers, claiming that a relation of hers left the company amid unimaginable performance pressure and that defecating in bags was a common approach to manage work activity.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke out as almost 6,000 Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama were deciding whether they want to form a union, the biggest labour push in the online shopping giant’s history.

The organising in Bessemer could set off a chain reaction across its operation nationwide, with more workers rising up and demanding more favourable working conditions. Vote counting started on Tuesday and could take several days.

AOC joined Democrats including Bernie Sanders and Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan who are demanding multimillion tech giant allows workers to form unions to be able to push for better conditions.

The New York congresswoman tweeted that on Tuesday night a loved one of hers that worked at Amazon delivery last year left because of how vulnerable it made them feel, working for a company that also puts so much preference pressure on their workers that defecating in bags is a regular enough occurrence that there are internal memoranda about it and that her complaint was frequently made.

And the practice of peeing in bottles to maintain workflow in Amazon warehouses was fairly well documented.

Even delivery drivers claim to be under such pressure that relieving oneself couples with threats of joblessness, and last week, Rep Pocan made a comparable claim to Ocasio-Cortez and he said that paying workers $15 an hour doesn’t make them a progressive workplace, when they union bust and make their workers pee in water bottles.

And Amazon replied, on their official Twitter account: ‘You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?” And that if that was true, nobody would work for them, and they said that the truth was that they have over a million incredible employees around the world who were proud of what they did and that they have great wages and health care.

According to Brookings, Amazon and Walmart combined raked in approximately $10.7 billion in profits throughout the pandemic, signalling a 56 per cent rise in business, something the institute attributed to Americans spending more on home delivery rather than venturing out to the shops to circumvent exposure during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Not sure about defecating in bags, but the bottle thing does sound like it could be real, and it wouldn’t be difficult for a delivery driver to hide out in the back of his delivery van to pee, and then dump the bottles in the garbage containers around the parking area before driving off.

Anti-Maskers In Aisle Twelve

An anti-mask demonstration in a busy supermarket has been branded a slap in the face to NHS workers after dozens of people mocked COVID restrictions and descended on a Tesco store in Essex.

The protestors disregarded social distancing and rules surrounding face coverings.

Customers are required by law to wear masks inside all stores unless they’re exempt for medical reasons.

Footage of the gathering was recorded at the Tesco store in Princess Road, Chelmsford, on Saturday after the demonstration was posted on social media, and an image was posted on Twitter that invited participants to join them for a spot of maskless shopping, describing it as the perfect way to peacefully protest while buying their weekly groceries.

At least 34 people were understood to be involved in the planned protest.

Police were called out to the incident and spoke to the maskless customers, with many insisting they were exempt from wearing face coverings.

A joint investigation has now been launched by city chiefs, police and Tesco to evaluate how this transpired.

The demonstration comes just two months after officials were forced to open a makeshift morgue in the city where more than 12,000 people have tested positive for COVID.

Clips show a red-headed woman roaring ‘come on warriors’ in the Tesco car park as a gathering walked out of the store clutching baguettes, shopping bags and bottles of wine.

One video also highlights a bizarre melody playing in the background with lyrics about indoctrination camps, vaccine scam, Technotronic sham and depopulation plan.

Officials have blasted the group for compromising locals just as the nation can again see family and friends.

NHS Million, a grassroots campaign managed by NHS workers to highlight gratitude of the health service said that it was a slap in the face to all NHS staff who’ve worked themselves into the ground and jeopardised their own lives to keep people protected, and they said that organising a maskless shopping excursion was not big, it was not smart, but that it was illegal.

A spokesperson for Chelmsford City Council said that Chelmsford City Council were very disappointed that a small number of people chose to shop without masks in the city centre supermarket on Saturday.

The Government want us to all wear masks, that way it conveys a message that this is a killer virus and that it will get you and your family. However, the effectiveness against the virus is nil, and if they did give protection, that is negated because people fiddle with the front of them all the time, so they get the germs on their fingers which they then can transfer to food, and they wear these masks all the time, where they inhale the fibres into their lungs, which is also bad.

Face masks only decrease the spread of droplets, and they can reduce the spread of the virus, but the masks won’t dull it altogether, and they only offer minimal protection.

These face-coverings or green face nappies will only protect minimally, but the droplets can also be picked up from surfaces when touched, and then subsequently from touching the face, and this is why hand hygiene is essential as well, but wearing a face mask will only benefit to a point, so if you want to wear one, that should be up to the individual, and it shouldn’t be forced upon a person.

Masks really don’t help, and they’re filthy unhealthy things, and even if you put four on it probably wouldn’t help, or you could just go and hide behind your sofa.

Unbelievable Moment Teenager, 18, Who Was Pronounced Brain-Dead Blinks And Begins Breathing On His Own

An 18-year-old who was pronounced brain dead after being hit by a van blinked and began breathing on his own hours before his organs were due to be donated.

Lewis Roberts, from Leek, Staffordshire, was hit by the vehicle in his hometown on March 13 and sustained catastrophic head injuries.

He was rushed by air ambulance to the Royal Stoke University Hospital where his family were told four days later he’d lost his fight for life and to say their last goodbyes.

They agreed to donate Lewis’s organs to help seven other people, but just hours before the surgery the teen started to breathe again on his own.

His sister Jade Roberts, 28, posted an extraordinary video with her brother from his hospital bedside on March 18.

She was recording the machine monitoring his breathing and said: ‘Are you ready Lew, one, two, three breathe.’

The device then showed a brown line and she yelled out in shock, adding: ‘Have a break, clever boy.’ Someone added through tears: ‘He’s just twitched.’

Later in the clip, after several futile attempts to get him to breathe on his own – Jade said: ‘One, two, three, and a big breath.’

The machine again turned brown and his sister said: ‘I’m telling you, Lew, you’re amazing, you are amazing.’

And in an update, Jade said on March 26 he’d managed a whole day without using a ventilator, but she said on March 28 he had to use it again due to what could be a chest infection which is being looked into.

Jade Roberts added in a Facebook post last week that after taking out various tests the hospital informed them that Lewis had given up the fight, no response and had suffered brain stem death.

She said that they signed forms you wouldn’t even believe and conversations you’d never believe, and that they were planning to say their last goodbyes, and that her brother was officially certified as dead last week, and that his death was even reported to the coroner.

Jade said that she headed up at midnight to hold her brother’s hand and she asked him to breathe after one, two, three, and she said that they were waiting for a brown line to register for numerous days, to confirm he’d taken a breath for himself but they had nothing.

She said that when she said breathe the brown line showed and he took a breath, but they were told it must be a mistake and that it was impossible.

And the hospital said that they were sorry and that they realised it was a difficult time for the family, and they agreed that Lewis could no longer hear them.

She said that she got back home to a phone call that Lewis was breathing and that his eyes were dilating, which before there was nothing, yet they’d been told he was brain dead and had suffered brain stem death and was declared as dead.

The hospital family can’t even believe the miracle and they said they’ve never witnessed this and that Lewis was the second person in the whole wide world to do this, but where there’s life there’s hope, and it just proves how cautious we must be about turning off the machine and declaring those who are in a coma beyond recovery, and medical ethics mustn’t be allowed to slip away in our increasingly utilitarian society.

Prince Andrew Is Seen Amid Increased Pressure For Him To Speak To The FBI

Prince Andrew was seen departing Windsor Castle as he was pulled into the US court battle engulfing Ghislaine Maxwell after she was charged with new crimes connected to Jeffrey Epstein at a time when the paedophile was socialising with the royal.

The Duke of York is now facing renewed calls to be questioned by the FBI after developments in the child sex inquiry overnight expanded the breadth of the investigation.

Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and former girlfriend, faces further charges of sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor in the eight-count indictment, as well as earlier charges that include perjury.

An amended charge against Ghislaine Maxwell now covers alleged offences stretching from 1994 to 2004 in New York and Florida, including allegations that she paid the girl, known as Minor Victim 4, hundreds of dollars for each sexual act with Jeffrey Epstein. The indictment said that the girl was 14 when the grooming started.

She’d previously pleaded not guilty to helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit and groom three teenage girls for sex between 1994 and 1997 in New York. Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, has been jailed in Brooklyn since her arrest last July.

The time frame of the new accusations has expanded to between 1994 and at least 2004, which includes the time where Jeffrey Epstein was associating with influential men like Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton.

During this time Prince Andrew became friends with Jeffrey Epstein and purportedly had sex three times with one of his victims, Virginia Roberts, accusations the Duke denies, but neither Prince Andrew nor Bill Clinton was named in the court documents but it significantly raises the possibility of them both being brought up at Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.

The indictment also reveals that prosecutors plan to seize Ghislaine Maxwell’s assets if she’s convicted, and during a bail application she revealed that she and her husband Scott Borgerson were worth $22.5 million.

The new indictment dramatically increases the legal peril faced by Ghislaine Maxwell, who’s pleaded not guilty to all the accusations so far.

The 24-page document says starting at least in or around 2001 Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein lured and recruited, and caused to be enticed and recruited, minor girls to visit Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach home to engage in sex acts with Epstein, after with Epstein, Maxwell, or another employee of Epstein’s would give the victims hundreds of dollars in cash.

And it appears that Prince Andrew is skulking behind his mother’s petticoat because there’s no prospect of him going back to the US now. Or perhaps he’s not dodging US officials, but that he’s just a tad busy now for the next twenty years – he’s also discovered he can sweat again.

The US authorities don’t just want to talk to him, they want to question him to see if he’s got any link to these crimes, and he knows that if he goes back, he will be eaten alive, but this is never going to go away because there will always be uncertainty in the back of people’s minds.

And will Ghislaine Maxwell ever stand trial, will it happen? Because she knows too much about too many top people. And that photo of Prince Andrew and that girl will never go away, and it makes you wonder who owns the copyright.

Tax Cigarette Giants To Stub Out Littering

Even as many smokers kick the habit, cigarette stubs remain the most prevalent form of litter blighting in our towns and countryside.

The scourge is so extensive that the bill for cleaning up the mess is precisely calculated at around £40 million a year.

With the burden of that cost falling mainly on already strained councils, ministers are now considering forcing tobacco firms to pay an additional tax to help finance the cleanup but attempts to get the industry to voluntarily take fiscal responsibility for the disposal of butts and other rubbish have been unsuccessful.

Other possible solutions such as encouraging smokers to carry around portable ashtrays have, unsurprisingly, also never taken off.

Cigarette filters are particularly damaging because of their high content of plastic fibres and the toxic chemicals from the cigarette itself, and butts can linger in the environment for numerous years and deliver these chemicals into the air, soil and water, harming plants and wildlife.

Imposing a tax on single-use plastic, which a cigarette butt effectively is, would be made possible by a novel power currently being legislated for in the Environment Bill.

This would require the tobacco industry to fund the full disposal costs, with the Government leaning towards a tax to ensure that the industry takes sufficient fiscal responsibility for the litter created by its products.

The move mirrors endeavours to tax chewing gum, which also costs millions to clean off streets every year.

And it comes as Keep Britain Tidy launches the Great British Spring Clean, proudly supported by the Daily Mail, the national litter picking effort which takes place between May 28 and June 13 this year.

Environment minister Rebecca Pow said that cigarette butts are a scourge on our communities, dirtying our streets or ending up washed down the drain and contaminating our waterways and oceans.

She said that we must all take action to preserve the environment and that they’re committed to making sure that the tobacco industry plays its part, and that was why they were exploring how cigarette companies could be held fully accountable for the hideous scourge of litter created by their products.

Public health minister Jo Churchill added that they’re making remarkable progress in their ambition to be a smoke-free nation by 2030 and that while this is making a real impression on public health, the environmental repercussions of smoking due to cigarette stubs and package littering was still a significant issue.

But it’s not only tobacco companies that are at fault, it’s other companies as well that manufacture foods with plastic coverings et cetera. And what about forcing a fine on those companies when people throw away crisp packets or coke cans on the street, so this is a stupid idea.

You could, however, penalise the person that throws the item away, but then councils should make sure there’s enough cash in the pot to put more waste bins in so that people can throw their waste away in the first place, that way there wouldn’t be any abdication of personal responsibility by manufacturers or councils, only the person who casts the item on the ground without any consideration for anyone else or the environment itself.

If they make cigarette companies responsible, then are mask makers going to have to pick up their trash – will take out places have to pick up their boxes and containers, because you can’t make one company responsible and not another, but then that’s what litter pickers are for, and it keeps them in a job, where they certainly don’t get enough money for what they do!

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