Tam Martin was slapped with a £150 fine
Tam Martin, 57, from Ayr. (Image: Supplied)
A Scotland fan has complained after being fined for dropping a cigarette during his visit to Liverpool this week. Tam Martin was slapped with a £150 fine after being caught dropping a cigarette down a drain near Liverpool Lime Street station on Wednesday (April 4).
Tam, 57, a bricklayer, had travelled to Liverpool from Ayr with wife Jane, 67, to see the Scottish national football team play the first international at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium on Tuesday. Tam told the ECHO: “Liverpool is brilliant.
"We’d spent a lot of money in the city and had an absolutely fantastic time. We were thinking of booking to come down again, but now I think we’ll wait.”
Tam and Jane had stayed on in the city after the Scottish loss to the African team on Tuesday night, and spent Wednesday visiting Anfield. Tam was smoking near Lime Street while taking a break from playing pool at Riley’s Bar.
He added: “There wasn’t a bin or an ashtray around. I couldn’t see where I was meant to put it, so I put it down a drain. The next thing, there’s this guy behind me, taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘you can't do that.’”
“He asked me my name, and I thought it was fair enough to get a warning or something, but the next thing I know he’s printed out a £150 fine.
“It told him, ‘there’s no cigarette there’. I can see the point if I’d thrown it on the street, but I’d thrown it down the drain.”
A Liverpool City Council spokesperson said: “Cigarettes ends should be completely extinguished and thrown into a bin. If there is no bin in the immediate vicinity, they should be held on to and placed in the next available bin.
“Cigarettes should never be thrown on to the floor or into drains – this is littering. The ends of cigarettes are made out of plastic, so are not biodegradable. When thrown into drainage systems, they can have a detrimental effect on the environment.
“Anyone caught littering in Liverpool will be issued a £150 Fixed Penalty Notice, which is reduced to £100 if paid within 10 days.”