Make hay while the sun shines, rustic folk advise. For very good reasons, you may be sure. Unfortunately, of late, the sun has not shone a lot, but "haymaking" is much in evidence.

Particularly, it has been noticed, in the Dringhouses and Foxwood suburbs of York. Another adage tells us: "Grass doesn't grow on busy streets" - a remark I make on my rare visits to a barber - but while that may be so, 'hay' - as I call it, for it is allowed to grow so tall - has been seen lying in profusion on roads and pavements. Not a pretty sight, and treacherous stuff to walk on when wet.

So, council grass-cutting contractors get with it, please: "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well." Mind you, they don't get much for cutting grass - a penny a metre, I've been told. However, if clearing up after cutting isn't part of the job, it should be.

This failing is just another indication of how sloppy some of us are becoming about how we dispose of our litter. The clearing up of which is no small task, and local authorities are spending £340 million of our taxes each year to do it. Money which could be more usefully spent on the health service, education, law and order, social services, or even on raising state pensions in line with those of most of our EU partners.

Adequate legislation is in place to deal with the offence of causing litter, but local authorities seem reluctant to prosecute offenders. Their failure to do so only encourages the litterbugs.

Prevention is always better than cure, and although it is not only children who cause litter, we should start training them as soon as they are able to throw sweet papers out of their prams. Perhaps a more responsible attitude might then be shown by future generations.

Getting caught up in the euphoria of America's Independence Day celebrations last Tuesday, I completely forgot to send a card to BBC Radio York on their seventeenth birthday on July 4. I apologise, and send belated greetings to the radio station that serves us so well.

Which reminds me, Jonathan Cowap, the genial presenter of Radio York's Mid-Morning phone-in show, is away again on one of his mysterious absences. Could he be on another of his favoured holidays across the Pond - perhaps to celebrate Independence Day with New York's Gabby Cabby? Or, is he moonlighting for Radio America? He's away often enough to have two jobs!

Harry Gration of BBC Television's Look North has been standing in for Jonathan, and has been enjoying himself clueing-up 'clueless' contestants to win BBC Radio York clocks, awarded as prizes in the popular 24 Hour Challenge competition; its answer to Channel 4 television's Countdown - a game show for numerate wordsmiths, or those who aspire to be.

BBC clocks are becoming as much sought after as Richard Whiteley's Countdown teapots, but with Harry as quizmaster, a lot easier to win. Almost as easy as Saturday Show presenter Hurley Burley's plastic blow-up radios, which hang nicely over shower-rails.

The wearing of school uniforms to help instil better standards of discipline in students is in the news again. But schoolchildren already wear uniforms: baggy Gap slacks, or overlong concertina-ed jeans; T-shirts, slogan- bearing for boys and navel-exposing for girls; expensive but scruffy unlaced trainers for boys, and hideous deep-sea diver-like footwear for girls; optional baseball caps, worn with peak to front or back; carrying obligatory drink cans - destined to become litter.

If students are to wear proper uniforms, for economy's sake make them of the same design and colours for all schools, with a badge to identify the wearer's school.

It works in other countries.