THE Telegraph & Argus today exposes the shocking state of fly-tipping on some of the railway lines in the Bradford district and, to put it frankly, it is quite disgraceful.

A short trip between Shipley and Frizinghall revealed a disgusting amount of waste of all kinds, including household goods, rubbish bags, cans, paper and even a door and a window, lining the route.

And a walk along parts of the line from Bradford to Pudsey close to the city shows similar amounts of detritus and waste simply dumped on the side of the tracks.

The immediate responsibility lies with the landlord - in this case Network Rail - and as a public organisation they should perhaps be doing more to deal with this problem. But it is those who wantonly and shamelessly throw their rubbish where they shouldn't who are the real culprits.

It would be nice to believe they will feel some sense of guilt when they see the full extent of the state of the two main rail gateways to Bradford. But the sad fact is, if they were concerned about civic responsibility, they would simply not do it in the first place. The time has come, though, to say enough is enough. CCTV cameras need to be put in place at the worst blackspots to catch these offenders in the act, and the courts must then act strongly – and what better punishment could there be than a community sentence to make them clean up the mess.

The vast majority of people in the district would not contemplate dumping rubbish like this, so why should they have to put up with this unsightly, unhygienic blight created by a tiny minority?