Give fly tippers a taste of their own medicine

9:59am Tuesday 8th July 2008

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Hazlemere crossroads is an interesting junction. At the busiest times, what little good manners drivers have these days evaporates completely.

Everyone races to get across the two roundabouts and nobody pays any attention to the Keep Clear signs on the roads, so blocking all exits. As a result there is much tooting of horns, mouthed swear words through windscreens and various signs heartily given using either one finger or two.

Consequently, I try to avoid this motorists' gladiatorial arena going to and from work.

Indeed my route will take me on a pleasant drive through Penn Woods and up Common Wood Lane to Tylers Green. Dappled roads give way occasionally to views of rolling fields and I can arrive at Loudwater in an altogether much more relaxed frame of mind.

I don't even get wound up when someone who clearly wants to hurtle along these twisting lanes at a ridiculous speed is driving so close to me that we really ought to consider getting married.

Anyway I was shocked one day last week when driving along Gravelly Lane to find a mess at the side of the road. It wasn't the usual sort of mess. You know, a muntjac dear that was too slow crossing the road, branches that had fallen from the overhanging trees or bits of car wreckage after one of the muppets who had been driving too quickly had crashed into the bank.

This was an unsightly pile of around half a dozen large white plastic bags bulging with rubbish that had been dumped at the roadside in Penn Woods.

Fly tipping is a nasty anti-social business.

Before moving to Hazlemere we lived in Colnbrook for a few months and there the practice was rife.

It wasn't just bags either. Everything was dumped in or alongside the brook from old bikes, beds, fridges, televisions and bits of furniture and the council was continually fighting a losing battle. It left you feeling you were living on the edge of a tip. Seriously, it was that bad.

In comparison a few bags seems laughable. But it isn't, especially as it doesn't happen very often in Penn Woods.

People do get caught of course, though I'm not sure how many, but the penalties are woefully inadequate. A court appearance and measly fine just doesn't cut the mustard for this highly unsocial activity.

Far better in my view is to open the culprit's gardens for fly tipping over a period of a month, complete with garish signs outside their gates advertising the fact. Then get them to pay for a skip - or probably skips - to eventually remove the whole stinking and unsightly pile.

Frankly, I think that it is a far more creative deterrent.