Trouble with Rats

By Clive Wakley. The recent news that a rat had bitten a bedridden 80-year-old Reading woman has highlighted a growing vermin infestation problem in Britain’s towns and cities.

At the same time a six-year-old girl living in the house next door to the old lady woke to find two rats on her bed.

Both families have been provided with emergency accommodation whilst contractors put down poison and the local council investigates the outbreak which, it is claimed, is affecting the entire neighborhood.

This follows the recent news that Belfast City Council’s environmental health staff had to close their own eating facility as a result of rat infestation.

Furthermore, only last month, the residents of a Cheltenham block of flats providing sheltered accommodation, were reported as up in arms over an ongoing rat infestation resulting from the insufficient capacity of their communal bins, following a switch to fortnightly bin collections by their local authority.

Worryingly, recently published figures suggest that Britain’s rat population has swollen to over 80 million – meaning that we have far more rats in this country than people.

Figures also reveal that rat numbers have increased by a staggering 39 percent since 2000, and higher still when compared to the 1980s.

Pre-2000, the increase was commonly blamed on post demarcation disputes between recently privatised water companies and local authorities over who was responsible for vermin control.

People who reported infestations were frequently passed from pillar to post as these bodies argued over whose responsibility vermin control really was and, more to the point, who carried the financial burden.

This led directly to a decrease in the laying down of poison and, not surprisingly, to an increase in the size of the rat population.

However, the current increase is said to be the inevitable consequence of the generally unpopular switch by local authorities to fortnightly domestic bin rounds.

According to the statistics local authorities serving some 18 million people have now abandoned weekly rubbish bin collections, in a bid to reduce costs.

Yet, according to experts, Britain is facing a rat epidemic of “plague-like” proportions due principally to food waste being left out for extended periods. This has provided a readily available source of food for enterprising and adaptable vermin such as rats.

This is particularly the case where food waste is deposited in overflowing bins or left out in the open in black plastic refuse sacks, both offering vermin easy access.

In addition, the explosion of fast food outlets in our urban centres is also considered a significant factor in the growth of the rat population.

A common problem is encountered with hot fat and unsold food being dumped down drains and compounded by the discarding of uneaten food by customers on streets or in non-secure bins, in the vicinity of such establishments.

Every year sanitary workers have to remove literally tons of congealed fat from our sewers to prevent them from clogging up, nearly all of which originates from fast food outlets.

The threat to human health from rats cannot be overstated. They  are responsible for the spread all sorts of diseases including Weil’s, salmonella, tuberculosis, E.Coli, foot-and-mouth and, most historically notorious of all, plague.

It may well be true that local authorities can save substantial sums of money through bi-weekly bin collections – they could, of course, save even more by switching to a monthly round – but what price do you put on public health?

Local authorities need to get their priorities straight; public health is a necessity not an optional extra.

If local authorities really need to make cuts to save money then, surely, councillors allowances and expenses, and grants to minority “cultural associations”, should be top of the list.