Why is Birmingham so dirty?

I left Birmingham Airport at 9:00 and boarded the 97X bus up to Digbeth Coach Station - 52 stops for £2.90. I sat upstairs and just watched for about an hour. There is rubbish, piles of it, all around the bus stops, despite the bins being…right there and empty. The stuff is flying around like leaves in fall. I saw a couple of drivers throw wrappers out the window, which is not an uncommon sight in the UK - however, it sometimes is stuff that you can’t throw out the window. No excuse for wrappers, orange peels, cigarette buds, and Lidl bags lying on the sidewalks to not be in the rubbish bin 3 meters away. 

I reached Digbeth and had a walk around. There’s a prevailing theme in today’s British cities - homeless people, tents, and overall sadness in the periphery of the city center. Sometimes even in the city center. Times are tough, and people fall into deep depressions - things don’t work out, and they spiral. Their lives go with it. We have a relatively good social welfare system in the UK (at least compared to most of the world), and we can do better - but for the purpose of this particular rant, I won’t moan about poor, unlucky, and troubled people struggling. 

I will moan about all the rubbish on every corner, despite plentiful and very well-placed bins. High Street, Rea Street, Milk Street, Bradford Street, through Edgbaston Street, all the way up to Station Street - tons and tons of rubbish. I wanted to think that visiting on a Sunday morning is a bit uncouth, as the weekend goes, but some of it crusted in - it’s been there for weeks if not months. 

Walking around the immediate area of New Street and within it is a bit of a relief - kudos to the cleaners. It’s like stepping into a different city.

No pictures. I think they are not needed. Birmingham has a reputation for this - it’s no badge of honour - I’ll inevitably visit again and promise to retract my accusations if things improve. 

Brummies can and should do better. Just drop your dairy milk wrapper and Starbucks shake in the fucking bin.