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[Captain America]

Originally Posted by Stripey

It's a good idea, but they should go a step further and ban the drunk human trash that fills up the city center at nights and makes the place look even worse than it already is.

Human rights. Freedom of choice etc. No?

[HairyScaryMark]

Originally Posted by pogofish

No shortage of bins IMO & there have been plenty new ones put-in recently. If you can't hold-on to your crap till you get to one now, I'd wonder if you should really be out on your own?

I didn't see one in Belmont street last Friday. There was quite a lot of people who were maybe obscuring my view of them. I walked into a takeaway to find a bin at the door so used that one.

[Jake Wifebeater]

Suits me, I'd be quite happy to walk through town without some little shit trying to hand over a flyer for the shitty club they want me to spend money in. I'm not interested in your poxy little titty bar either, if I was going to pay for it I'd go down the harbour. Leave me alone.

[soundian]

Typical bloody council thinking, sledghammer/nut and in this case they even aim at the wrong nut.
If they really want to address the litter problem they should be looking at the detritus from fast food first, I see far more of that than I do discarded flyers. Unfortunately the only way I can see to do that is to get the fast food outlets in the city centre to pay a licence fee and use the money to get some street cleaners. Cost to us taxpayers-nil, cost to the people who buy fast food-minimal, cleaner streets, everybody's happy.
If they really want to address the flyer problem they should ban advertising of cheap booze out with the premises and the "cheap/free entry with this flyer" flyers, most of your flyers will disappear overnight because it will leave most places with nothing to advertise unless they are providing some sort of entertainment other than cheap booze in a crowded cattle market with nobody DJ's playing generic pop shit . That would be a double whammy for the council as well, they address some of the litter problem and are seen to be trying to tackle the "binge-drinking culture".
Oh well, I don't know why I'm surprised, it's not as if I expect the council to actually sit down and think about a problem rather than grasping at the first solution that presents itself.

[Thomas Banacek]

Originally Posted by soundian

Typical bloody council thinking, sledghammer/nut and in this case they even aim at the wrong nut.
If they really want to address the litter problem they should be looking at the detritus from fast food first, I see far more of that than I do discarded flyers. Unfortunately the only way I can see to do that is to get the fast food outlets in the city centre to pay a licence fee and use the money to get some street cleaners. Cost to us taxpayers-nil, cost to the people who buy fast food-minimal, cleaner streets, everybody's happy.
If they really want to address the flyer problem they should ban advertising of cheap booze out with the premises and the "cheap/free entry with this flyer" flyers, most of your flyers will disappear overnight because it will leave most places with nothing to advertise unless they are providing some sort of entertainment other than cheap booze in a crowded cattle market with nobody DJ's playing generic pop shit . That would be a double whammy for the council as well, they address some of the litter problem and are seen to be trying to tackle the "binge-drinking culture".
Oh well, I don't know why I'm surprised, it's not as if I expect the council to actually sit down and think about a problem rather than grasping at the first solution that presents itself.

Umm, fast food outlets are required to have a licence, and so pay a licence fee already.

I fail to see the problem here. It seems like some folk are using it as a convenient excuse to have a whinge about the council. Change the record folks, the council is there to look after the wider interests of Aberdeen, not the narrow interests of certain individuals or establishments.

If someone is seriously suggesting that flyers are the only way to ensure a crowd at gigs or punters in a club, then perhaps the people running those establishments need to take a long hard look at themselves.

Viable establishments which can offer decent quality entertainment should have nothing to fear.

[Addi]

I think most of this discussion just misses the point. The problem isn't fast food places and it isn't people flyering. It's people being inconsiderate. If you get a takeaway, put the rubbish in the bin. If you have a flyer you dont want then put it in the bin.

It's sad that I will probably be thought of as naive for thinking people should be expected to act conscientiously and leave places in a nice condition.

[Wax]

I think the problem here is that the council's approach in general can reek of inconsistency most of the time. The licensed trade is a very easy target. Initiatives that have been discussed or implemented in recent years include the smoking ban, banning of flyers, disallowing the advertising of irresponsible drink promotions (supermarkets??!!), fly-posting crackdowns (look at Edinburgh in the height of festival season) and extra policing funded by the licensed trade.

Here's a prime example of inconsistency, this sums up what we have to work with on a regular basis: Last New Year, we were invited by the council to join in the street party instead of being fenced off like the year before. We would have to agree not to sell advance tickets, since the council couldn't guarantee entry if the street party was at capacity. Considering we could have sold quite a few tickets before the night, guaranteeing us income, this was a major concession. We agreed however. Secondly we were asked to bring our pricing in line with the other premises within the boundary of the street party. The pricing policy the council adopted? Vodkas for £1.25. They chose Archibald Simpson's pricing policy and asked the other venues to reduce their's in line with this. We refused. One of the biggest nights of the year for underage drinking and drunk and disorderly morons let loose on the streets and we were asked to reduce our prices by 50%?!

I wonder where the staff of St. Nicholas House go for their afterwork drink?

[soundian]

Originally Posted by Thomas Banacek

Umm, fast food outlets are required to have a licence, and so pay a licence fee already.

Maybe they should pay more then.

Originally Posted by Thomas Banacek

I fail to see the problem here. It seems like some folk are using it as a convenient excuse to have a whinge about the council. Change the record folks, the council is there to look after the wider interests of Aberdeen, not the narrow interests of certain individuals or establishments.

Maybe they can serve the wider interest by actually thinking about problems and identifying the "good" from the "bad" before making blanket bans.

Originally Posted by Thomas Banacek

If someone is seriously suggesting that flyers are the only way to ensure a crowd at gigs or punters in a club, then perhaps the people running those establishments need to take a long hard look at themselves.

No one is suggesting that, I don't think flyering for gigs is very effective although it works better for clubs. I'm obviously talking about clubs that put on "name" DJ's, not the cattle markets, flyering is the lifeblood of cattle markets.

Originally Posted by Thomas Banacek

Viable establishments which can offer decent quality entertainment should have nothing to fear.

But why should they have their rights reduced when it's the places that are not offering decent (any) quality entertainment that produce the vast majority of discarded flyers. (Apart from the fact that the litter problem lies more with discarded fast food wrappers etc).
Anyway, if it was me making the decisions I'd try it my way first and see what the effects were and if there was still a perceived flyer problem after a couple of years, go for the total ban. You never know, it may make those pubs/clubs that aren't viable without mass flyering take a long hard look at themselves without infringing on the rights of people who are trying to offer entertainment rather than just a place to get bladdered cheap.

In saying all that though, maybe they've already investigated the legalities of restricting a ban to cheap booze advertising and found they can't so this is their second best option to target these places. Maybe their using the litter excuse as a smokescreen so the brewers/licensee's don't see what they're really up to and mount a legal challenge. Maybe that's crediting the council with too much intelligence and cunning.

Oh, and they're spending my money running this city so I'll reserve the right to piss and moan about them until they stop lightening my pocket every month.

[Lucky Rathen]

I'm pretty sure I've never gone into a pub or club on the back of being handed a flyer. They usually get tossed as soon as I get them since I generally know where I'm going to when I walk down Belmont Street. I'm not a lost lemming wandering around aimlessly hoping to get inspiration from some twat in a blue bomber jacket.

[pogofish]

Originally Posted by HairyScaryMark

I didn't see one in Belmont street last Friday.

Originally Posted by Teabags

but I still think theres not enough bins, especially on places like george street. Even walk from triple kirks to the Belmont and see how many bins there are.

Just counted them. Belmont St/Back Wynd is served by @20 public bins (nb, I am not counting the similar number of private bins for individual biz waste/bottles).

George St had the same provision of street bins as my old st nearby & I don't think you need to go more than a few seconds before you pass one.

So, if you can't find one, should your carers be letting you out unescorted?