Once again, we bemoan the fact that the council has to spend money – our money – clearing chewing gum from the pavements. It’s not as if there were no nearby litter bins; we have umpteen of them in the town centre.
But at least the cleaning is done!
A tedious habit
The Camberley Eye 
Start fining people like they do in Singapore. No chewing gum or litter on the streets there!
I also noticed a difference a couple of days ago….no black old chewing gum marks, so one point to the council for presumably commissioning a machine that deals with the,. However – and with this council there’s always a however – not too close examination reveals the black marks are already being replaced by fresh white gum detritus. So….this cleaning effort will have to continue at least weekly. Dare we ask for that assurance?
Several years ago the council acquired a special machine. It looked like a combination of steam cleaner, pressure washer and vacuum cleaner (or maybe it ‘froze’ the offending stuff to make it easier to remove). I’ve not seen it in action for a while, but I think the cleaned patches are the result of it in use. But it’s a laborious and probably expensive process. It would be much better if it wasn’t needed in the first place.
A carrot would be preferable to a stick, of course. But maybe the grubby nature of our pavements (not the fault of those who clean them, but of the choice of materials) ‘encourages’ some people to make it worse.
I hope the council cleaners are not just removing lichen Lecanora muralis and Aspicilia contorta which looks like chewing gum and is common and prevalent on stone surfaces.
Who knows? Maybe ask the councillor whose role includes bins and cleaning.
Spitting out gum is a filthy habit we could do without anyway, especially with so much Covid about. I hadn’t realised chewing gum was still so popular.