Many thanks to 'Joy Walker' for her fine letter ('Pick up the mess!', Review, 27 November), and my apologies for having misread her earlier letter as possibly suggesting it's OK for owners to let their dogs chase Forest wildlife. It's clear, Joy, that your two well-loved hounds are very well behaved and controlled, and are clearly great characters too, always an extra pleasure with the dogs I encounter in the woods. Long may they continue to enjoy their freedoms in our beloved greensward.
Thanks too to Joy for caring enough about animal welfare to go the extra mile by taking in rescue dogs and giving them a new chance in life, regardless of any effort this may entail in retraining them after their previous owners' neglect. Your love of our four-legged friends shines out from your letter and does you great credit.
Regrettably, not all pet owners share the same degree of care or control, but there you are. All part of the current malaise of "letting it all hang out", disregard for any form of rules or regulations, and a general drift towards yobbishness as the basic behavioural default mode that has been gathering pace for a couple of decades now, and which is making life in the Dean, and Britain as a whole, far less pleasurable than it used to be. Expect things to get worse the nearer we get to the forthcoming election and the more bitter the political squabblings become.
Re the dog mess around the place, yep, I've noticed it, and it's well apparent that dog walkers today fall quite neatly into two distinct classes: the pooper-scoopers versus the Popular Front for the Liberation of Squitting Canines! But have you noticed the recent new addition to the contest, those who do take the trouble to gather up their pets' produce into the proverbial little black bags but who then, clearly dismayed at the thought of staggering bow-legged under the unimaginable weight of their burden to the nearest litter bin (often only yards away), simply toss it into the undergrowth nearby? Weird!
Even weirder are those who go to considerable trouble artistically draping their pooh-bags on trees and bushes alongside pathways, often only inches from your nostrils. Thanks, troops.
Some of the new-build housing estates in Cinderford have rather nice shrubs and small trees decorating their walkways, but these now are often festooned with a dismal crop of dangling bags of excrement (not always of animal origin either, I suspect), soiled nappies, used condoms and tampons, along with the usual complement of drink cans and general assorted litter. All of which constitute a considerable risk to health and an open invitation to criminals (there are enough statistics linking neighbourhoods where litter is widespread with high rates of burglary and vandalism, since uncared-for areas serve as a reassuring "welcome mat" to the less than law-abiding), but do any of the inhabitants get out a pair of Marigolds and remove it? Dream on.
The people who leave their poop-scoop dangling from the vegetation are, of course, "'aving a larf". Taking the mick, "sticking it to da man", giving the middle digit to authority. Cut from the same dense lump of lard as the eejits you see driving around with a mobile phone clamped to their ear, secure in the knowledge that they ain't never gonna get caught, know wot i m-e-e-e- a-n, mate. Or who hurtle round blind bends without using their indicators as a forewarning. You'd have thought Harriet getting pulled over and facing prosecution would have served as a deterrence, but nope, Cinderford and its environs are full of these jerks. Wonder what their reaction would be if their own kids ended up with toxicaria-induced blindness or got mown down under the wheels of some fool too busy fumbling under the dashboard for their lighter to notice what's in front? Outrage, of course, coupled with the usual aggressive kneejerk attempt to find someone in authority to blame for their own shortcomings. Why didn't "they" do something? No, m-a-a-i-t-e, why didn't you do something? Perhaps the charmer who tossed two heavily-soiled disposable nappies into the grass by the northernmost of the Linear Park ponds – 20 feet and 15 feet respectively from litter bins, of course – might care to ponder what her feelings might be if her own kids caught something from someone else's similarly discarded waste.
My own take on the dog mess issue is coloured by the fact that I'm of the age-group that played in the woods and fields all day long when we were kids, and who regarded coming home with the occasional coating of pooch or "ship" muck as simply an occupational hazard. But it's a different age today: many people find it unacceptable to have to put up with such mishaps, so perhaps around the inhabited areas and park facilities it's best to try to remove your pets' output. Out in the woods in general, it's less of a problem. But collecting the stuff up into a bag and then tossing it into the greenery simply means it's still there, and the problem is now compounded by the fact that you've added litter to the equation, in the form of the bag itself.
On which final note, my warm congratulations and seasonal greetings to the prize prat who so graciously deigned to beautify the bracken verges near the Collafield road-bend recently, by fly-dumping several hundred glossy printed handouts advertising a "hedonistic" (i.e. drug-fuddled) Hallowe'en "event" at the "Kings of Funk" venue (in Kent, of all places). I don't know if you're local or not, but even so, to access your chosen site you would have passed at least two easily visible and capacious refuse bins that would have served your purpose and saved you some time, effort and petrol (hardly a cheap commodity after all). So I'm assuming you deliberately intended to spoil our Forest scenery. You'll be pleased to know these flyers have been gathered up and disposed of a bit more responsibly than you could be bothered to do. Merry Christmas, mate.
Anyone see anything? Nah, thought not. – Andrew Stephens, Cinderford.