WHY have we become so inured to litter that we allow our communities and public areas to be blighted with it and an annual bill for Bolton of around £3 million?

If a visitor to our homes chucked his fag end on the floor and ground it out with his shoe into our new textured cut pile carpet, it’s unlikely that we would smile indulgently and accept the burn mark.

Yet, if some numpty spits out his chewing gum in Victoria Square and allows it to become part of the unusual design on these expensive paving stones or chucks his Coke can onto the war memorial grass, we just turn away.

Of course, today any chastisement or attempt to erode another person’s “human right” to disfigure the landscape can realistically end in receiving a black eye or at the very least a mouthful of vitriol. But you get the point.

Bolton Council employs 74 staff specifically to pick up 4,500 tonnes of litter in the town every year — money that could be spent on improving the area and amenities where you live.

It is no surprise to learn that 78 per cent of that litter is cigarette ends because you only have to watch people walking around Bolton town centre to see that very few smokers bother to find a bin, even though there are plenty around.

Now the council is launching a “behavioural change” crackdown on smokers dropping butts in the street. This includes posters and handing out portable ashtray pouches for people to cleanly dispose of stubs.

The campaign will cost taxpayers £20,000 and, though I personally begrudge spending any more on the terminally selfish, I can see something has to be done.

Imposing £75 on-the-spot fines for littering goes some way to helping the bills, although if 91 fines have been made for littering since January the annual imbalance shows we’ve still got a long way to go.

Unfortunately, the reality of this latest campaign means that there is simply now likely to be a new type of litter being picked up by the long-suffering council employees — discarded portable ashtray pouches.