In a previous episode of my long and colourful life, I found myself in Libya, not, as you might suppose as a mercenary or soldier of fortune but as part of a British company looking at reafforesting local areas of the Sahara Desert to control erosion. When travelling from Tripoli to Misrata, we drove along the modern highway which links the capital with Benghazi, 1000 miles to the east. Owing perhaps to some oversight of Ghadafi's administration there was absolutely no household rubbish collection and for the first twenty kilometres the road was festooned on both sides with rubbish: domestic sacks, white goods, car tyres and a whole panoply anthropogenic dross.

These memories began to intrude whilst travelling around Radstock last week. Certainly not on the scale of Libya, but it seemed if every field gate, every woodland glade had become an unofficial reception area for rubbish. Thanks to the efforts of local groups, the centre and grassed areas of Radstock are relatively free of rubbish. It's the perimeter, the green belt which has fallen victim.

What to do? In the first place it must be assumed that these are deliberate acts of rubbish vandalism since the goods are clearly brought by car. Quite apart from despoiling the countryside, piles of rubbish encourage rat infestations and these can have a detrimental effect on the local ecology. There is really no need for nocturnal rubbish depositing; we have an efficient and wide-reaching recycling system already financed by the Community tax. Let us subscribe to the existing arrangement and not assume, like the residents of Tripoli, that the provision did not exist.