imlach

Personally, I think it is quite right she was fined.....you don't change the oil filter on your car on the street, and the complain that there wasn't a proper oil disposal facility in the street. So why it is different for *** butts (which contain lots of harmful chemicals & plastics, and are not biodegradable.

She shouldn't have lit up in the first place. She probably wouldn't drop a crisp packet or drinks can in the gutter if there wasn't a bin, so why is it ok for a *** butt...



From Edinburgh Evening News Wed 20 Oct 2004

Mother fined for dropping cigarette end

JANE BRADLEY AND GARETH EDWARDS


• Woman fined £50 for litter offence
• Claims there was nowhere safe for butt
• Mum told she faced court if fine not paid

A MOTHER today hit out at the city council after she was fined £50 for dropping a cigarette butt at a bus stop.

Karen McCulloch, 35, had just dropped the finished cigarette in the gutter on Stevenson Road, Balgreen, when two council litter wardens jumped out of a nearby car and issued her with a fine.

But Ms McCulloch, of nearby Stevenson Avenue, said she had no other place to drop the burning cigarette.

She protested to the wardens but was told if she didn’t stump up she could be taken to court and fined up to £2500.

She said: "They said I should put it out in the litter bin instead, but I said I couldn’t dream of doing that.

"When I have a cigarette in the house, I don’t put it in a rubbish bin, I let it go out in an ash tray."

Ms McCulloch, who has a seven-year-old daughter, Lauren, added: "Bins are made of plastic and have a lot of inflammable rubbish in them - it would be dangerous."

She said the two female wardens had been staking out the bus stop before she was caught at 9am yesterday.

"They were there for a wee while - they stayed and watched me do it," said Ms McCulloch, who was on her way to her work at an architect’s firm.

"I was absolutely furious and I don’t want to pay the fine, but they said if I don’t, I’ll have to go to court and I could be charged up to £2500."

The council said its awareness initiative, the Keep Edinburgh Clean campaign, had highlighted the smoking-related litter problem to residents.

Director of environmental and consumer services Mike Drewry said: "The principal aim of environmental wardens is to deliver a more effective enforcement of existing laws and therefore improve both the cleanliness and the environment of the city.

"The City of Edinburgh Council introduced environmental wardens in October 2001. They have been successful in improving the overall cleanliness of the city and have also proved to be extremely popular with the public. Indeed, their visible presence is having such a positive impact throughout the city that their numbers are due to increase."

John Summers, national director for Keep Scotland Beautiful, said the group supported the council’s efforts to hammer home the message that cigarettes should not be thrown on the streets.

"Cigarettes are the most common source of litter, whether it is the butts or the packets or the wrapping," he said.

"The problem is a lot of smokers don’t consider their cigarettes to be litter, and so it becomes more difficult to get the message across."

However, a spokesman for Forest, the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, said: "We don’t condone anyone dropping litter, but there is a really serious issue here, because if the council are determined to push ahead with a ban on smoking in public places that will cause more people to smoke outside.

"It will then be up to the council to provide them with somewhere for people to put out their cigarettes if they want to cut down on litter.

"If a cigarette is put in a litter bin it could set fire to litter, and the council should look at providing bins which have a place for people to safely extinguish cigarettes."

pugoetru

Another reason to stop smoking then isn't it


How are they going to fine all the idiots that throw the *** ends out the window at 70mph though

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

But do you thrown on the carpet and tread on it? No!, so why do it in a street?

No excuse!

Extinguish ***, then throw it away!

My gran, as daft as she is carries an empty rizla tin and uses it as her portable ashtray.

StickyMicky

send her to jail IMO

r32

About time we got the real criminals like this, one guy got done for dropping a match.



Meanwhile gun crime is on the increase, nice to see we have our priorities right.

Corgi

A guy I know got fined for breathing the other day, quite right too.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Only if it was Blair, Brown or Blunkett.

Those three need stopping permanently:

Alcazar

milo

thats ridiculous...

...the fine should have been WAY more than £50!!!

milo

should be illegal in public anyway imo

letdown

Here in Japan they provide ashtrays on most corners and dotted around the place. Alas this couldnt happen in the UK because the scum would kick them over ..etc..etc.

I think as a smoker you shouldnt be allowed to drop them at all.

mad_dr

Seeing as how cigarette butts don't biodegrade and simply clutter up our scenic rubbish dumps, I think the only fair and sensible solution is one of the following:

a) Only produce cigarettes that don't have filters. The suicidal-smoker would get more cough for his cash and a 'stronger hit' so it would be a winner with them. Plus: no litter!

b) The Smoker should eat the cigarette butt. Let's face it, it's been hanging out of their gob for the last few minutes - might as well eat the ******* thing.

c) smokers should be made to carry an ashtray with them at all times. They can choose from a wide range of colourful designs such as Marlboro, Caffreys, Guinness or "Naked Woman from Tenerife".

I'm happy with any of the above really!

davegtt

Am I the only 1 who see's a business oportunity in this just too lazy to act on it. who wants to take a risk in making a sealed ashtry to collect butts in whilst on the move then you can dispose of them as and when convienient

think she should get the £2500 fine myself, might make her too skint to keep on smoking and if she does Id say she'll certainly think twice about dropping a *** butt

speedking

If cigarette butts are not biodegradable how would eating it help It will slow down the journey to landfill but still get there in the end.

mad_dr

Stomach acid should do the trick I reckon.

Besides - the aim is to get the smoker to give up smoking. I reckon it'll take a good few months for a cigarette butt to pass through the human body (although I'm not a real Doctor, despite my name). Assuming a habit of 20 a day and the average smoker's stomach capacity of, say 500 butts, it'd only take 25 days to fill em up.

OR

d) Slap another levy on the price of cigarettes (say £200 a packet). This would entitle the ***-lover to put his or her butt wherever they please. The extra revenue would fund street cleaners to dispose of the butts. For £250 we could even ship them over to France and dump them there! Problem solved!

Johnny50

Nae luck if you ask me...serves her right.

imlach

If you read the article, you'd realise it was a civil offence, and she was fined by civilians and not the police.

So, it's not taking up police time at all. So I'm not quite seeing how this detracts from the police turning their attention to gun crime?

darts_aint_sport

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/m...de/3725946.stm

Alas

What a stupid woman.
All she had to do was flick it in a passing car window/ office window/ over a hedge/ someone elses pocket etc then leg it. By the time they have the proff she'll be well gone
Alas

davegtt

bummer, good idea though I will make a million off 1 of my bright ideas 1 day

Dracoro

Whether or not the butt is stubbed out on the street or put into a bin, it still ends up in the landfill!

I'd rather a smoker throws the butt on the street and stands on it than puts it in the bin! Imagine the fire hazards!!!! Can you really trust them to stub it out PROPERLY before putting it in a bin?

I do agree that throwing butts out the car is not on (cars have ASHTRAYS FFS, use them) expecially at speed or at night. Imagine the hot butt coming out of the car in front of you into your engine bay via the front grille! doesn't bear thinking about (however unlikely).

Catwoman

Should be banned in public imho

Senior_AP

Bloody right to. Should have made her eat the stinking thing.

Abdabz

Smoking should be banned everywhere for ever - capital offenders like this cant be alowed to get away with it!!

Seriously - get a grip - this is a cig end we're talking about!!! Political correctness gone mad - again!!

Anyway - how was she caught? Surely the police must have been involved to establish it was her? How else would they get her details? Did they print her pic from cctv footage and put it on the local news or something? If the police were involved then its making a mockery of this once fine land because I'm sure pickpocketing, shoplifting etc should be the focus of the coppers eyes when doing the beat in a crime infested dump like Edinburgh???

P

Jye

She probably got cought because she didnt put up a fight or run away. As usual only the (perhaps ignorant) law abiding public will cough up (pardon the pun ). Neds and scum will deliberately fling *** ends away with even more relish now.

Leslie

That fine was well over the top of course as was that bloke who dropped the match and was fined £120 !

Les

imlach

So do you drop coke cans and crisp packets in the street?

Attitudes like that is why we have a litter problem.

Senior_AP

Exactly. If everyone dropped their peasant *** ends in the street it'd soon look like Lanzarote.

Littering is selfish and slobbish.

Dracoro

Abdabz - What on earth does this have to do with political correctness anyway?

Senior_AP

Dropping litter is wrong - f$ck her. Glad she got fined, selfish *****.

Jerome

I can't believe these Litter Inspectors (does the UK have an inspector for everything?) suggested she threw it in the bin. Total morons.

I'd like to see them try and slap a fine on me. If I'm smoking on the street I always chuck my butts down a drain.

I would like them to start fining people who spit on the pavement - fecking disgusting.