Fined in the UK for dropping a cigarette butt. Do I have to pay?

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sherlocksue@hot

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I was fined 150£ for dropping a cigarette but on pavement in Manchester city, while on a 2 day city break.i live in ireland.do I have to pay fine.seems unreasonable to me as there is people lying everywhere in sleeping bags with rubish all around.
 
I walked up Djouce in County Wicklow today. I had a plastic bag and gloves with me, so I picked up the litter on the way down.

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A lot of tissues - well I hope that they were tissues as I did not stray from the path. I presume that the tissues will eventually decompose but not for some time and why drop them beside the path?

Bottles. chocolate wrappers.

Some orange and banana peels. I don't mind them so much but they could have thrown them a good distance from the path.

I wonder could we subcontract litter control to the guys from Manchester as they seem to take it seriously.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I presume that the tissues will eventually decompose but not for some time
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theroundup.org

Is Tissue Paper Biodegradable and Eco-Friendly? - TheRoundup

Most people don't think about the environmental impact of the products they use every day. But, when it comes to tissue paper, there is a lot of debate about
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Most tissue papers dissolve fast and do not take very long to biodegrade. If it is placed in a compost pile, it will break down in about two to four weeks.

However, if tissue paper is thrown away in a landfill, it can take much longer to decompose because it is often buried beneath other waste material.

In these conditions, it can take up to five years for tissue paper to fully decompose.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
I walked up Djouce in County Wicklow today. I had a plastic bag and gloves with me, so I picked up the litter on the way down.
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Well done @Brendan Burgess. You shouldn't have to do it but great that you did.

I also regularly pick up litter on my walks - lately mainly Phoenix Park and Bull Island but sometimes further afield. Mainly dog excrement which someone has gone to the bother of bagging only to throw it on the ground, sweet wrappers, coffee cups, takeaway food packaging, bottles/cans (made a few bob off those :)), tissues as you mention, nappies, and other miscellaneous stuff. Condoms and sanitary towels also turn up but I tend not to pick them up as I don't usually have gloves. It's shocking how irresponsible some people are.

I do this in my own area and environs too but it's usually a pointless exercise elsewhere going closer to Dublin city centre because that would be a full time job. :confused:

A few people have complimented me and it's nice to get some positive feedback rather than the more common funny looks :D but it would be nicer if people just didn't litter so much.

(And, no - as I was asked recently - that wasn't me on Liveline recently about the dog excrement in the Phoenix Park ;)).
 
sherlocksue@hot said:
I was fined 150£ for dropping a cigarette but on pavement in Manchester city, while on a 2 day city break.i live in ireland.do I have to pay fine.seems unreasonable to me as there is people lying everywhere in sleeping bags with rubish all around.
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Of course you have to pay, you broke the rules and you were caught.
If you broke something in a shop would you walk off and not pay for it?

Why do people have such an issue with taking responsibility for their own actions!
 
Brilliant idea. If we tried that here we'd have people on the wireless whinginh' about us takin' jobs offa de council and corpo workers.
 
tomdublin said:
If you get caught doing this in Singapore your sentence is a week of street cleaning wearing bright yellow uniform inscribed with "I'm a litter bug.." Singapore is the cleanest city on earth.
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I've been to Singapore. Despite popular myth, it's very from being the cleanest city on earth.

(Which makes sense. There's a reason they need very tough anti-littering laws, and that reason is that there's a lot of littering. Nobody passes laws to control problems that they don't have.)
 
TomEdison said:
I've been to Singapore. Despite popular myth, it's very from being the cleanest city on earth.
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I'm just back from the far east where I spent time in Beijing and a few cities in Japan
It took me by surprise at how clean Beijing is now compared to when I was last there 18 years ago, I don't recall a single bit of litter or cigarette butt on the ground and there were plenty of bins around, like one every 50 meters and they had recycling bins as well
But it was Japan that truly shocked me, apparently after the 1995 Sarin gas attack the Government made the decision to remove all street bins for fear of another terrorist attack and the country is spotless also in Osaka and other cities they have banned public smoking everywhere except in designated smoking rooms
We could all learn a lot if we stopped looking west and instead focused our attention on how they do things in the east!!

For the OP, yes it's a pain in the "butt" that you got caught and fined and your reaction is one that I feel most of us have when we break the law like parking tickets, speeding fines etc etc, we all feel like we've been delt an injustice despite our actions
My advice is accept the consequences of your actions, pay the fine and move on :)
 
Cervelo said:
We could all learn a lot if we stopped looking west and instead focused our attention on how they do things in the east!!
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In this regard, what they do in the east is spend a lot of money on cleaning the streets and other public spaces.

That, rather than flogging people for dropping cigarette butts, is how they keep the place looking neat.

(See also: Paris.)

On edit: Look at where this thread started. Manchester has a fine of about €180 for dropping a cigarette butt, and yet by the OP's account the streets are filthy. Swingeing fines don't work on their own, people; you need a multi-pronged approach.
 
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