Delingpole;
The scene is like the aftermath of a tsunami: splintered timber, shattered glass, broken sofas, scattered clothes, plastic bags, smashed furniture, fridges and TV sets, all piled up as though tossed ashore by some mighty wave and strewn for over a mile along the water’s edge.
But this ugly photograph doesn’t show any far-flung tropical disaster zone and the cause of the mayhem certainly isn’t natural.
It was taken this week at Cory’s Wharf in Purfleet, Essex, on a stretch of council-owned land by the Thames and now ruined by the modern curse of fly-tipping.
Once, this would have been a pleasant enough spot to walk your dog, with views across the river and scrubland, dotted with bushes and ponds, to explore. Not any more. […]
You’d think that with a problem so widespread, so expensive and so upsetting to so many of us, more would be done to stop it. But that would be to reckon without the bureaucracy and institutionalised chaos that have done so much to make it possible.
Yes, of course some travellers are partly to blame. So, too, are the organised criminal gangs that now find fly-tipping almost as profitable as drug dealing. But the real problem is the system itself. On closer scrutiny, this epidemic of illegal waste-disposal is not happening despite our stringent environmental laws. It’s happening because of them.