Council notices city's fly posting problem (From Worcester News)

Council notices city's fly posting problem

9:20am Friday 16th January 2009

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CONGRATULATIONS to Worcester City Council for a successful clamp-down this week on ugly fly-posting around the city centre.

More than 60 illegal adverts were torn down from lamp-posts, benches and other public places by the council's excitingly-titled 'litter hit squad'.

“These signs distract motorists, obscure vital signs and generally add to urban clutter,” warned environmental protection officer John Bond.

Cabinet member Allah Ditta added: “These people stick these notices on lamp posts and buildings and ultimately it just makes the place look untidy.”

But now one of our eagle-eyed readers has spotted a new wave of offences - small, ugly, laminated notices attached to lamp posts all over the city..

They bear the mysterious legend 'Planning Notice', and have apparently been stuck around the city by a covert group calling itself “'Worcester City Council'.

“Are they exempt?” our reader wonders, pointing out that even after the offending notices are removed, the plastic ties which attached them are often left in place “They have long pointed ends which are often at eye level and, in my view, are a serious hazard,” he writes.

Sounds like a job for the litter hit squad to me...

ANOTHER trip to foreign lands for Worcester's jet-setting MP, who is clearly thriving in his role as minister for international development.

Following his recent mission to Nepal, Mike Foster returned to Asia this week to visit parts of China devastated by last year's horrific earthquake.

But it's not just the foreign trips that come with a ministerial post. Mr Foster now has a full team of staff working for him - secretaries, speech writers and even his own driver.

Mr Foster's driver, it seems, is something of a Whitehall stalwart. Indeed, it appears the good chauffeur was once driver for none other than the Secretary of State for Energy during the mid-1980s – one Peter Walker MP, Conservative member for Worcester!

And in a beautiful twist of fate, he can apparently even recall one occasion when he gave the MP's young son Robin a lift in the ministerial car.

So there you have it, Robin Walker and deadly rival Mike Foster sharing the same seat – now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write...