LETTER: How can school afford to employ litter picker?

I HAVE a rather puzzling train of thoughts which I would like to put forward in the readers’ letters section of the Advertiser.

My house happens to overlook the back of Ribblesdale school and I regularly observe a man in a yellow coat with a pair of long tongs going around the sports/play yards of the school apparently picking up rubbish.

Now, this may simply be an attempt to discourage the cloud of seagulls who regularly inhabit the area over the school, but then one thinks, isn’t it a fineable offence for Joe Public to drop litter in the streets? I know that when I was at our village school (many years ago), one would not dare to drop even a toffee wrapper without being disgraced with a scolding and being made to pick it up in front of everyone.

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So how, presumably out of rate-payers money, is Ribblesdale School able to employ a person to go around the school yards picking up the rubbish dropped by the pupils? The mind boggles.

Teachers, I know, have it pretty rough these days and are maybe afraid to put in the discipline that once was normal routine, for fear of being prosecuted for child abuse! What a sad, sad world. But even sadder is that maybe some parents are not bringing up their children to respect normal discipline, taught to them as a normal accepted way of life.

Happy were the days when we “village bred” kids walked to school without the aid of a minibus or bus paid for by the rate-payers. A loaf of bread cost four pence and a large bag of Smith’s crisps was tuppence and the empty bag was put in a pocket for later appropriate disposal. What does the future hold if today’s children are brought up at school believing you can drop rubbish if you want to and it doesn’t matter as someone is paid to pick it up after you?

Oh dear, a can of worms? But then maybe (and hopefully) I’m jumping to some wrong conclusions.

DORIS BROWN,

Old “Ribblesdalian”

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