Keep Britain Tidy

Or, it's not littering if it's not on the floor, is it?

There's a set of cash machines in the Broadgate passage at London Liverpool Street that, apart from rarely having any money in them, also act as a dumping ground for cups of coffee and those promotional mini-cans of fizzy drinks.

There will be things perched on every available surface, including the little fire alarm boxes.

But not on the floor.

Never on the floor.

Unless there's nowhere else at all, and even then the litter will be tucked away furtively behind a pillar, or possibly in an architectural feature that you may be able to claim looked sort-of-like a bin.

I can only assume that as they abandon them, they're pretending that they're just putting them down for a moment and that they'll be right back, honest guv.

I do it too. The surreptitious dropping litter when and where I think no-one will notice. The empty coffee cup nonchalantly perched on the cash machine and then forgotten when I leave.

So, knowing that that's what we're doing, why don't we litter boldly?

Throw our empty cups and sandwich wrappers to the skies.

I suspect that it's because most people do want to Keep Britain Tidy, and this discrete littering is the closest we can get when there are no bins.