Why I Became Active In Charlton

Last winter I went shopping down by the Industrial Estate (sometimes known as New Charlton, other times the Cable Industrial Estate) and, walking along its Woolwich Road perimeter, I was appalled and fascinated by - what you may forgive me for construing as - entirely new genuses of trees and bushes which blossomed with plastic carrier bags.

A tree of plastic bags. A tree of plastic bags scrooping and whipping about in the winter winds beneath grey skies and before grey industries as if conspiratorial in their greyness - where the weather and the architecture marry as fittingly as that of the Stalinesque Soviet.

It was both the pathos and bathos of this small attempt to beautify this area that got to me: How could the trees and bushes along Woolwich Road by the Industrial Estate be left in garlands of plastic, like Hula girls whose leis are substituted for rags, and no one seem to care?

And neither was it only plastic bags, but cans of carbonated drink nestled between naked twigs, cigarettes and cigarette boxes - all the excesses and privileges of our lifestyles.

I thought about those plastic bags flapping about in the branches. I recalled a statistic about plastic taking to biodegrade. I wondered if anyone would do anything to clean up this rubbish, or would it be four-thousand years after the birth of Christ before these plastic carriers rot away into the soils and drift into the aether?

It occurred to me that I could take photographs of the rubbish and ask of the council that something be done about it.

A nano-second after this thought, I reminded myself the maxim If you want something doing, do it yourself.

And so I endeavoured to find out how I could involve myself in local politics and make a tangible contribution to local quality of life.

I had always been a Conservative, so I was excited when I was chosen by the Greenwich Conservatives to be a member of the Conservative Action Team for Charlton.

As a local resident, and as an active Conservative, I would like to see - and will work towards - a cleaner environment in Charlton*, so as to improve life-quality for all its residents. The memory of last winter's plastic-bag trees spurs me on.


*NB. To avoid accusations of geographical inaccuracy: The part of Charlton I refer to is in Woolwich Riverside ward, not Charlton ward. The point is no less relevant as we have serious litter problems in many parts of Charlton.