IN 2012, YourThurrock pointed out that the Olympic rings garden, by the side of Blackshots Park, looked a bit scruffy. Basically, one ring did no look like it had bloomed properly.
To be fair, the council did respond and a few months later it looked much better.
But with Rio 2016 now just a few months away, Thurrock’s Olympic legacy has become Thurrock’s shame and may, just may, sum up the the utter lack of civic pride that there appears to be in the borough.
Before, we go any further, there are, we grant you , small dedicated groups such as Stanford’s Blooming Marvels, the Pathway Project, the Phoenix Project, to name just a few, who do their bit but, whoever takes on the mantle of Environment and Communities in Thurrock, has a huge challenge in front of them.
We don’t know if anyone voted against Labour on the basis of the rubbish strewn around the borough but it cannot have helped that the borough that tries to project itself as the borough of regeneration is the borough of utter squalor.
But the reality might be that local government has been cut back and cut back so much that there is simply no money left.
We thank our good friend Rob Seaman who was on his Saturday morning walk for photographing the utter disgrace that is the Olympic rings at Blackshots.
