The recent Clean For The Queen exercise attracted 30 local volunteers and deemed a huge success in Burghwallis, perhaps not all for the reasons you might think.
The 39 volunteers assembled in the Burghwallis car park on March 5th. After the welcome and thanks were given by Kath Walters the Parish Council Chair the group were given a safety talk by local resident Craig who is also a health & safety expert in his job, issued with litter pickers, gloves, and high viz. jackets kindly supplied by Doncaster MBC then split into groups to cover the five lanes of Burghwallis.
After about 2 hours, 87 bags of rubbish had been removed from the hedgerows of Burghwallis, the volunteers congregated back at the Burghwallis pub for a free pie and peas lunch. It was a great atmosphere – and the team included five volunteers from out of the village who said they just liked to take walks through the area. Many said that they would like to be included in the next litter picking exercise so we should hopefully get a good team together for the ongoing litter clearance routines.
This nationwide exercise may appear a strange tribute to the Queen, her association with litter is possibly as distant a connection as can possibly be conceived. Yet there was a hidden rationale. Local government cutbacks have removed all but town centre cleaning. Getting local people to wise up to accept litter clearance as a local issue for the foreseeable future is essential, and a clean-up would also benefit local residents as much as the Queen.
Apart from more stringent application of legislation against fly tippers the outpouring of people’s rubbish is set to continue. On 6th February a volunteer team of 11 people cleared 40 bin bags full of rubbish from Abbe’s Walk. Thanks to the activities of the Bogans that can be seen below, on March 5th the Clean For The Queen team gathered 62 more, the stark evidence of a problem that is set to last. Although the team of Burghwallis volunteers demonstrated, and enjoyed the ‘Dunkirk’ spirit it is a great shame they could not have been engaged in a task that was entirely devoted to mankind’s depraved ability to dump litter.
