Gulls: 1, Council bin department : 0

Some cloud and a slight sea mist this morning. The forecast is for this to burn off and be replaced by yet another sunny day .

To deal with the litter scattering seagulls the council has installed ( probably at great expense ) new waste bins. The old ones had a swing lid which the birds were able to push open and extract whatever caught their fancy inside. The new bins are solid affairs that have small gull proof slits for inserting rubbish.

The problem is that on busy days the bins are soon overflowing with visitors waste. The volumes have been way higher than the sanitation team expected as the recent hot spell has given us a lot of busy days on the beach. With the new design the bins fill up quickly, the slots become jammed and the ever hungry gulls can pull out partially eaten fish suppers and spread their contents far and wide. Polystyrene containers decorate the beach by the sandwich shop. The new design also leaves half the bin for plastic bottles and cans and this means that  space for general waste has shrunk dramatically. The bottom line is that the councils new bins have design shortfalls which enable the gulls to continue to create litter mayhem. Being a university town I expect the local paper to soon have a slew of letters calling for public consultation and a new bin 'strategy'. 

The church is still decorated for  V E Day. Among the flags of the nations strung up on the bunting outside the porch are those of North Korea and Iran.

On the beach small piles of rose petals mark the spots where a photographer and his assistant have been taking photographs of todays bride to be. There are piles of rose petals every 50 yards so. The pursuit of that 'perfect' photograph must have been difficult to obtain.

For the last four years the Catholic Chaplaincy had a life size cardboard cut out of a smiling Pope Francis  in its window. This has now been replaced by a smaller version of the new Pope. Presumably a larger version will soon appear. The Catholic chaplain is having a new kitchen installed and the chaplaincy is swathed in scaffolding. From the old Formica kitchen units piled up on the pavement I'd reckon the place hasn't had a makeover since the 1960's.

This took all of an hour to read and left me none the wiser.

I always liked his writing in The Economist and now he's started a substack :https://substack.com/home/post/p-163204681?source=queue

95% of Dunkin Donut outlets in Chicago and the Midwest are owned by Indians . 90% of Baltimore liquor stores are owned by Koreans :https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/non-linear-ethnic-niches

Who has the real power ? :https://www.willsolfiac.com/p/does-trump-understand-the-true-nature

History of a house in Edinburgh :https://threadinburgh.scot/2025/03/26/the-thread-about-wardie-house-from-16th-century-fortification-to-20th-century-cul-de-sac/