A n d r e w s G u m W o r l d

 
PHOTO: Councillor Peter Goody, Croydon Guardian

We’ve not often included gum poetry in these posts; it turns out to be a fairly specialized field (although the writer and poet Roald Dahl famously included a gum chewer, Violet Beauregarde, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). However, our friends in Croydon, UK, who take their gum clean-up fairly seriously (we’ve visited the village before with its gum cleaning efforts, including in one of the very first posts of AndrewsGumWorld) — see one of the anti-gum tossing campaigns by the Redbridge Council above which involved gum targets — ran a competition last fall which offered local residents to wax poetic about gum.

There were three winners in the campaign coordinated by the Croydon Business Improvement Disrict (BID), and they were featured in a fall issue of This is Croydon Today. The winners included Penelope Boxall, Tamara Isted and Pamela Pope.

As the newspaper reported, the winners were pleased by the results of her first time at poetry:

Winner Penelope said: “I am absolutely delighted, as well as surprised as this is the first poem I have written.

“It was great fun to write something positive about Croydon. I may have to write some more now.”

Tamara has little time for inconsiderate people saying: “I do hate the way people drop gum on the streets. It gets all over my trainers.”

Without further ado or poetic desonctruction, here are last year’s three winning entries:

P E N E L O P E  B O X A L L

Finished gum ain’t your chum!

Sometimes, there’s bad press about Croydon

and this can be very depressing.

So let’s start with the small

though we think it nothing at all,

and make Croydon the best place to be in.

Sure, gum might be tiny and small

but it’s a real pain and mess for us all.

For when stuck on your shoes,

it’s a like a strong glue

and picks up all manner of things!

So when you have gum

and the flavour’s all gone,

and you want to get rid of it quick.

Wrap it to scrap it including the packet

and find it a home in a bin.

A bin is your friend, not your foe

as it tries to keep Croydon litter-low.

So in making our BID

we’ll save on our quids

and be the gum-free-est borough on show!

T A M A R A   I S T E D

On the pavement, on the roads,

on your trainers, on your clothes,

in the playground, in the park,

you don’t see it after dark.

Chewing gum is not a sin,

but put the goop in the bin.

Spitting it out is so not cool

so be good and follow the rule!

P A M E L A   P O P E

Spitting out chewing gum is a devilish sin,

PLEASE be an angel and put it in the bin.

For it clings to our shoes and sticks to the street

And often it’s found on a table or seat.

So come on you chewers, please have a heart,

And let’s keep our Croydon looking smart.

 
PHOTO:  Dumfries Civic Pride

Our friends (you can see some of them above) who make up the Dumfries Civic Pride group are, according to their website:

a group of Doonhamers who are proud of Dumfries, the historic town that gave rise to the names Bruce, Burns and Barrie.
We give up our spare time to make sure that you can be also be proud of your town.

We do this, in association with the Dumfries and Galloway Council, by promoting a well cared for environment, which provides businesses, tourists with the right message.

Our work includes:

…Clean-ups - Undertake litter and graffiti removal.

The latter goal that this group has set for itself has led to an audacious suggestion made earlier this week in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard, and that is to ban gum altogether from the UK, much as Singapore has done. As their frustrations increase in cleaning the town centre from discarded gum (yes, ’tis the season for AndrewsGumWorld stories on gum removal in the UK) has led them to write to their MPs to encourage them to take what the group sees as a necessary step.

In the article, group member Morris Service (a most excellent name for a group of this sort) explained the reasons behind their call for the criminalisation of the dropping of chewing gum to The Standard:

“The majority dispose of chewing gum responsibly but there were still those who left their discarded gum on the street, benches or on the back of seats on public transport.”He added: “While this seems a far reaching proposal, it comes with an increasing frustration at the impossible task of cleaning the sheer amount of chewing gum accumulating on our streets and pavements.

“Despite the efforts of Dumfries and Galloway Council employing contractors to remove chewing gum from parts of Dumfries town centre, at considerable expense, the problem has only been temporarily dealt with.”

The council has spent more than £1million on a major repaving project of Friars Vennel in Dumfries, which according to Mr Service is becoming littered with gum already.

In the same piece, a local MP, Russell Brown agreed with the challenges highlighted by the group, and called for local stores to carry biodegradable gum, recently introduced in England:

“I know gum stained pavements in Dumfries are a massive source of frustration for proud Doonhamers. But equally I know it is only the small minority who have no respect who throw their gum on the floor for someone else to come along and unknowingly tread it into the pavement.

“Last month an organic, biodegradable gum hit the shelves of supermarkets in the UK. So an alternative to banning gum – which could be difficult to enforce – could be to encourage local retailers to stock this natural substitute which does not stick to clothing or pavements.”

IMAGES: Chewing Gum Action Group

While our friends in the Chewing Gum Action Group in Britain are gearing up for the 2009 campaign, we thought we might include a couple of their gum wraps/posters from last year’s campaign that are part of the group’s most creative and ongoing efforts to address the challenges of discarded gum throughout the villages and on the streets of the UK (we’ve reported on their efforts elsewhere in this blog).

As their site notes, the group was established with the following goals:

The Chewing Gum Action Group (CGAG) is a joint initiative for local authorities aiming to change the behaviour of gum-droppers through local campaigns.

This website introduces CGAG and explains how we are making this behaviour change happen, as well as giving you the opportunity to get involved with the campaign.

You can see more of their campaigns and read about their worthy efforts, including some of their initial plans for the 2009 campaign by clicking here.

PHOTO: Trevor Ashby, Barnoldswick

Yesterday’s The Citizen, from Burnley, UK, reported that the Pendle Borough Council has spent 450.2 hours removing gum from streets in Nelson, Colne, Brierfield, Barnoldswick (you can see one of the bus shelters that been the object of cleaning efforts in Barnoldswick, part of a nice page of photos of the town by Trevor Ashby), Barrowford and Earby.

The article noted that a request through the Freedom of Information Act showed that the Council’s efforts since May 2006 have represented nearly three months of work to remove gum from the streets and town centres of the villages listed above.

John David, leader of the Borough Council, suggests that the effort is worth it, but also frustrating given the time, money and prevalence of available litter bins and the £75 [US$110] fine for disposing of gum on the streets:

Councillor John David, leader of Pendle Council, said: “We do have a problem with gum in Pendle and we take a lot of time and effort scraping it off our pavements.

“No-one wants to get gum on their shoes and it looks a mess on our pavements too.

“People need to remember that gum counts as litter.

“They risk having to pay a £75 fine for dropping it.

“What they need to do is use a litter bin – and we provide plenty of those.”

PHOTO: The Straits Times

While Jackie Chan’s recent comments on political control of the Chinese have gained him a certain level of notoriety (see this Opinion piece from the New York Times for an in-depth review of those comments), he also took on the gum chewing policies of Singapore in the same speech, as reported in The Straits Times this past weekend.

The newspaper noted that Chan suggested the following about gum and Singaporeans during the speech:

…he also lashed out at Singaporeans’ lack of social graces, The New Paper reported on Saturday. “Sometimes, I wonder why I can’t eat chewing gum in Singapore. Then, I think it’s actually right not to eat chewing gum,” he was reported as having said.

“If I let you eat chewing gum, those people will leave them on tables and chairs. They have no self-respect at all.”

PHOTO: Bubblegum Math, Oak Park District 97

WebMD reports this week that a recent research project headed by Dr. Craig Johnston, an instructor of pediatrics nutrition at Baylor College of Medicine found in the Wrigley’s funded study that chewing sugar-free gum brought statistically significant increases in standardized math scores and final math grades.

They presented the results of their study at a recent annual meeting at the American Society for Nutrition’s Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology 2009.

Here’s who and what Dr. Johnston’s studied, and found out:

Johnston and his team enlisted 108 eighth-grade students in four math classes, randomly assigning them to two groups: one group chewed Wrigley’s sugar-free gum during school, while doing homework, and also while taking a standardized test; students in the control group didn’t chew gum.

Johnston tells WebMD that students who chewed gum showed an increase in standardized math test scores after 14 weeks of chomping in class and while doing homework, compared to those who didn’t chew.

Gum chewing was associated with a 3% increase in standardized math scores, which Johnston terms small but still “statistically significant.”

The youngsters who chewed also had final math grades that were “significantly better” than those who didn’t chew, Johnston says.

The WebMD piece also notes that other researchers not connected with the study tout chewing gum’s stress reducing properties, noting that “it’s likely that chewing gum can reduce stress, leading to enhanced concentration and thus better academic performance.”

Late in July, one of AndrewsGumWorld’s very first posts was a video of a lady blowing a world-record sized bubble on a Spanish television.

That lady’s name was Susan Montgomery Williams, and yesterday’s Fresno Bee reported on her untimely death last week at the age of 47.

As the earlier video attests, Williams’ bubble-gum blowing feats made it on to a number of television shows both throughout the United States and the world, and she also had her own website which chronicled some of those appearances, and describes the 19 1/4-inch bubble that brought her the world record in 1994 (and how she later broke it by blowing a 23-inch bubble on television).

As her obituary notes, she received notoriety not only for her record-making bubbles, but for the noises they made when they popped, which also led to arrests at a Smokey Robinson concert and outside a Fresno murder trial.

She will be best remembered, though, for blowing amazingly large bubble gum bubbles, far beyond those than most of us can ever imagine…or attempt.

Our condolences to her family and those who loved her.

Here are the opening lines of yesterday’s obituary:

Susan Montgomery Williams, a Fresno woman with a talent for blowing enormous chewing gum bubbles, parlayed that skill and a keen understanding of the news media’s enthusiasm for superlatives into eccentric international semi-celebrity.

Mrs. Williams, 47, died Wednesday of an aneurism after suffering a stroke the week before, apparently unrelated to her hobby.

She had painstakingly inflated her bubble gum abilities into appearances on the Johnny Carson and Jay Leno late-night television programs. Her talent won her travel for appearances on broadcasts in Spain, Germany, England and Japan.

Today’s The Peninsula, from Qatar, reports that many in that Emirate are frustrated with a growing practice by hypermarkets of giving chewing gum (or sweets), instead of actual change.

Here’s how the article describes the dilemma:

There is no shortage of 50-dirham (about US14¢±) coins in Qatar. This is contrary to what some hypermarkets and grocery store officials say to justify giving away cheap candies and chewing gums instead of the small denomination change.

Based on the Second Quarterly Statistical Bulletin for 2008 released by the Qatar Central Bank, there was QR11.52m worth of 50-dirham coins in circulation as of June this year. In other words, there were 23.04 million units of such coins in the country.

A recent post in Qatar Living (QL) entitled ‘Fifty Dirhams Robbery’ has solicited dozens of reactions from concerned residents with one respondent calling the act of giving out sweets that don’t sell instead of the 50-dirham change a ‘gum selling strategy’ of some hypermarkets and grocery stores.

 Last Friday’s Hospitality Magazine website in Australia reviewed a biodegradable stain removal product, Lift Off, invented by chemist Gregg Motsenbocker for removing stains, including the ongoing challenge of discarded gum.

As the magazine notes, the product has no ammonia or solvent smell and “…it can be used on any surface without damaging or degrading the surface or the environment.”

There are three different varieties available, but when it comes to gum, it’s the second variety that you want:

Lift Off 2 removes oil and petroleum-based stains such as oil, grease, labels, chewing gum and candle wax, all of which will disappear from areas such as metal, plastic, wood, glass (labels), hair (chewing gum), carpet and fabric.

 Our friends at Wrigley Airwaves are the official chewing gum sponsors of the FIA World Rally Championship, and are also now supporting FSTi (Fiesta Sporting Trophy International), as reported today on the Italian website DueMotori.com.

This is good news for those who win, as Emre Yurdakul of Turkey discovered after coming in first in this weekend’s Rally RACC Catalunya – Rally de España.

Besides the fame and glory of winning this round, there’s gum to be had, and lots of it:

Following the recent announcement that Airwaves® has become the Official Chewing Gum Sponsor of the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC), the brand (who also count Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Rally Team’s Matthew Wilson amongst their ‘Airwaves® Pro’ line-up), increased their involvement in the WRC this weekend by supporting FSTi and awarding Yurdakul the Airwaves Award of a year’s supply of Airwaves chewing gum for his victory.