Why even Edinburgh’s conservation areas are starting to smell – Helen Martin

IT’S upsetting to stroll around Edinburgh, picking one’s way through litter as illustrated recently in the Evening News. People who chuck or abandon bottles, plastic, cans, barbecues or any other garbage should be fined.

Litter strewn around bins in Princes Street Gardens

The first problem is that we don’t have a sufficient number of litter wardens. Then there’s the lack of bins.

Those of the mature generation will recall when bus stops and lamp-posts carried rubbish baskets, augmenting big street litter bins. Now the baskets have gone and the bins have been cut.

One more council shortcoming? The remaining bins are not emptied frequently. When the weather is hot, an aura of rot and excrement wafts around the conservation area where we live.

Close to us is a bin below a local monument, next to a public bench where folk sometimes stop for lunch. It’s also next to a bus stop, a lane leading in and out of town, and it’s in a popular dog walking area.

Only when poo bags, pizza boxes, plastic bottles, beer cans, fruit skins and chip wraps are bulging and tumbling from the openings, piling on top and have been scattered around the base for a week, is it emptied. So, even our conservation areas stink.

Where are those wee bus buggies of yesteryear?

A NEW controversy in the Capital is buses versus buggies, a local rebellion with mums (and dads) complaining that there simply isn’t enough buggy room to take wee ones on the new 100-seaters.

I tip my hat to Labour councillor Scott Arthur who took the time to check out modern buggies. They are wide, high, solid, pram-sized wheelies with shopping shelves, hoods and sticky-out handles. We used to use similar things for local walks. But for buses, we had an extra little buggy which folded down to golf brolly size once the kid had been taken out and cuddled for the journey.

We knew there was no room for big baby “transporters” on buses, trains, or anything else.

Why have child kit manufacturers and retailers stopped providing such a necessary product?

Jamie’s books are full of ‘junk’

THANKS to Sadiq Khan, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a ban on junk food ads on London Transport to reduce childhood obesity has knocked back a Wimbledon ad for strawberries and cream. Along with cream, butter and eggs have also been included as “junk”. Doesn’t chime with the recipes in my Jamie cookbook!