Regeneration of Thames, and Everything Else

A general theory of environmental maintenance follows - faced with a beautiful environment, you will work hard to maintain it. Faced with a neglected environment, you will not work hard to maintain it, but will do the bare minimum to keep it functional.

Forget this green and pleasant land, London is one of the worst kept environments in the world, and I wonder why Councils are (relatively) happy to pay money to clean up, remove graffiti, sweep up dirt, fix broken installations or smashed windows, bus stops and telephone boxes. I claim that if we collectively made the effort to raise the bar and improve and clean our surrounding environment - indeed, at greater short-term cost - we would see a long-term sustainable improvement (and saving), as a result of greater respect and care for our environment embedded into our society.

I can't verify this with quantitative data, but I am building evidence.

II)
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/corp/hs.xsl/10115.htm