Clean for the Queen

[Rhiannon]

It's that nobody noticed that it's so anachronistic that baffles me. 'Let's go back to the 1950's!' Er, no thanks.

Great look from the Tories then - not just stuck in a different decade, but a different century.

I also agree about the stupid short-termism of focussing just on one day.

[Shaker]

It's that nobody noticed that it's so anachronistic that baffles me. 'Let's go back to the 1950's!' Er, no thanks.

Great look from the Tories then - not just stuck in a different decade, but a different century.

Tory Party at prayer ... http://goo.gl/74YkAn

[ProfessorDavey]

A lot of these campaigns and incentives are like that - well-intentioned (perhaps) but engineered to make people think that once they've done their bit, that's it and they needn't bother with it again "because I've done it."

But this one is particularly problematic on that front.

So round my way there are regular litter picking sessions on the local cycle path that is on a disused railway. Now it would be better if everyone did a bit constantly, but still OK to have a session every few months, and although there might be some people who do one and think 'that's my bit done' its pretty obvious that a few months later it needs doing again and others are doing it.

Linking cleaning to a 90th birthday is bonkers, because it really is a one-off and doesn't in any way align to a view that keeping your neighbourhood tidy is something that needs to be done year round, year in, year out - not just for the monarch's 90th birthday.

It's a bit like having a campaign that says 'A dog actually is just for Christmas'.

[L.A.]

The Queen is a great example to us all and a class act. I am not particularly a monarchist. But you guys know that as you probably entertain the idea that I would prefer, the rule of the Bishops and believe that bananas were created to fit the hand of man.

There is of course only one long sumptuous thing that was created to fit in the hand of man as antitheists frequently put to the test.

What you do with a banana in the privacy of your own home is entirely up to you Vlad (though I'm not sure that I want those images in my head just before lunch)

[Gonnagle]

Dear Trent,

Tis yer duty as a Loyal subject, God Bless her and all who sail in her, Rule Britannia, God save her Majesty and little children waving Union Jacks.

Gonnagle.

[Brownie]

We could always let several thousand migrants through, plop them into the cities, towns and countryside, give them a brush and cart and bingo-bongo problem solved.

Also, bring back bins. The IRA stopped bombing city centres decades ago!!

We have bins in the Royal Borough of Greenwich Thrud!  If we didn't, the foxes would pull the rubbish bags apart and then there would be REAL rubbish, reminiscent of the dustmen's strike of the 1970s (maggots, ugh).

I hadn't heard of the Queen's-90th-birthday-incentive for-picking-up-litter until I came on here this morning (though maybe Kirstie Allsop said something yesterday).  It sounds like a five minute wonder to me.  No-one has to do it, it isn't the law so why worry?  I've already said I don't intend to do any more than I already do, the Queen doesn't enter into it.  No offence to the Queen who wouldn't have thought this one up anyway.

[Ricky Spanish]

There are not enough bins in most city/town centres. Hence the littering...

I agree with this chap on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/j4kn9zg

[Brownie]

He's just saying he will clean/tidy up for the environment but not for the Queen.  Fair enough, he doesn't have to.  I doubt she thought of all this!  She probably wants to celebrate her birthday with a family party and maybe some official photographs.  It's others who want to make it a national event.   

If there aren't sufficient bins, residents can petition the council.  If enough people do it, bins will be provided.

(This morning the milkman left me a tub of Country Life spreadable butter - with a union jack print on it!  I couldn't work out why, thinking it wasn't World Cup or anything like that. Then I came on here and was enlightened.) 

[OH MY WORLD!]

Isn't that wonderful, you have children running around saying the Queen can piss off. YIKES!

https://storify.com/calgaryparks/48th-annual-pathway-river-cleanup

[Brownie]

Kids will be kids OMW, particularly when they start giving opinions. Being 'bolshie' is part of it. They are a work in progress.  I cringe when I remember some of the things I said, and my attitudes, when I was a kid  .  Hopefully, we all learn to be a bit more polite, considerate of others and quieter as we get older.

[Rhiannon]

I don't consider what my (young adult) daughter said to be either impolite or bolshie. We were at home; she knows I won't be offended.

[Brownie]

I don't know what she said Rhiannon - you may have mentioned it in a previous post.  I'll read back.

My 36 year old would probably say (of all this Queen/tidy up business), "What a load of tosh", or "Why?", and then think of it no more.

Edit:  Found it, page 1.  Well she only said it to you, I doubt she'd go around shouting the odds in public; when I read OMW's comment above I pictured gangs of yobs screaming in the street, the stuff of which documentaries are made!  OMW, get things in proportion. 

[Rhiannon]

She said exactly what OMW says she did.

[Brownie]

I found your post on page 1 and added to my post above.

[Rhiannon]

I found your post on page 1 and added to my post above.

Thanks, Brownie. It was a dry comment made over the kitchen table, nothing more.

[Brownie]

Guessed that when I re-read your post.  OMW was making a mountain out of a molehill!

I might just ask mine tomorrow what he thinks about the Queen/tidying up business and will report back.

[Hope]

I get ya Trent. However I don't think the taxpayers can afford the cost of the thousands of enforcers it would take to make a dent on the polluters. Every spring my sisters and I have a stretch of the river bank and path that our gang hauls out all the trash that has built up over the year. That actually would be a good thing to do for some, instead of standing there listing to the moaning of the wind and being cloaked and all that.  I wasn't thinking of you Trent. But here in God's country, Alberta, we send the prisoners out in gangs to remove graffiti. They look so happy in their orange overalls.

Check this out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHM8TV8AAQw

In fact, a lot of the scrotes may well be cleaning stuff up.  It used to be called Community Service - but its now referred to as Community Payback, I believe.

[OH MY WORLD!]

Well dummy up the rude, nasty and disrespectful, comments about the Queen and go out clean up a river bank. Shouldn't need an occasion to do it. Or ya can just sit at your kitchen table and bitch at the Queen. Whatever rocks your rubber dingy.

[Maeght]

Well dummy up the rude, nasty and disrespectful, comments about the Queen and go out clean up a river bank. Shouldn't need an occasion to do it. Or ya can just sit at your kitchen table and bitch at the Queen. Whatever rocks your rubber dingy.

I don't see many such comments on here, rather a feeling that associating cleaning up with the one off event of the Queen's birthday to be inappropriate - and basically saying people should always want to clean up and not drop litter.

[Hope]

Whilst I would agree that the title of the campaign might be a bit misleading, it ois often this kind of 'one-off' campaign that can trigger a longer-term commitment to a process as opposed to a project.  As such, I would see the idea behind the campaign as an excellent one - it is up to us as individuals, no more or less than society in general, to encourage people to treat our environment more humanely.