THE abiding image of many workplaces such as garages, small workshops and factories is of workers happily listening to the radio or music CDs as they work.

Not any more. The music police, the Performing Rights Society, are cracking down on music being played in the workplace.

While the days are long gone of everybody gathering around the radio to listen to Simon Bate’s Our Tune, this latest issue is just a prime example of insensitivity to small businesses already struggling in the current climate having to fork out for a licence.

The ordinary working man is being penalised to pay a bunch of whingeing overpaid rock stars who are complaining that they are not being paid enough. Well now if people are not going to be able to hear their records they won’t be buying them either, double whammy I think

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THE increase in litter being dumped in the hedgerows of Cornwall is a subject close to my heart.

The amount of litter dumped in the countryside has increased 500 per cent since the 1960s.

Most of the litter found lying on our streets and in the countryside is from fast food outlets with McDonalds litter being branded the most prevalent.

The number of times I drive along country lanes and find fast food wrappers lying on the verge obviously having been thrown from passing cars. Groups of youngsters hanging out on the street together have no thought whatsoever to dropping drink bottles or sweet wrappers on the road as they chat.

But it’s not just young people who are the cause of the problem. There seems to be a prevailing attitude of couldn’t care a less in Britain.

Perfectly respectable people allowing their dogs to foul the pathways, smokers, now driven outside by the public places ban, dropping their butts on the ground.

Perhaps we should adopt the Singapore model where you can get heavy fines, community service orders or even eviction for dropping any litter on the street.