The coming weeks will see a number of Border towns switch on their Christmas tree decorations, with bright and shiny baubles sparkling among the fairy light-festooned branches.
Unfortunately, however, that’s not all that will be festooning trees in Selkirk for this year’s season of goodwill – unless Scottish Borders Council and the trustees of a well-known local historic property do something about it.
This week we report on the bizarre situation in the ancient royal burgh, where certain dog lovers have been commendably bagging their pets’ doo-doo. But then for some less-than-civic-minded reason, they opt to unceremoniously chuck said bags over the wall into the historic Haining Estate, where a number now hang like some noxious set of smelly Yuletide decorations.
But the local authority appears to be moving swiftly into action on this with this week’s erection of notices warning people it is an offence not to clean up after their pets. However, there also seems to be a lack of dog poo bins in this neck of the woods, so to speak, so perhaps as well as a few extra public notices, a few more plastic bins might not go amiss.
Talking of bins, perhaps the council’s decision to bin its community wardens service will not seem like such a money-saving success if more cash has to be spent tackling problems like those at The Haining.