REFUSE-COLLECTION SERVICE PRONOUNCED SUCCESS  

You heard the one about the Italian student who arrived in London to learn English?  Walking down Shaftsbury Avenue one evening, he came across a billboard bearing a poster reading ‘Pygmalion Pronounced Success’.  Shaking his head in despair, he realized that he would never learn to read a language which could be so incomprehensible and went back home.  

Some of us remember that, in the lamentably-past days of binsacks, we were told that we couldn’t have garden-waste collections in Shocklach because the roads were too narrow to accommodate 30-ton refuse vehicles.  The roads stayed the same but 30-ton vehicles magically appeared and the collections made using smaller wagons were transferred into their cavernous maws (black and pink bags alike went into the scoop: we were assured that it had separate compartments).  After that came the cancellation of services in icy conditions during March 2006 because the notion of 30-ton vehicles sliding about on the roads was not to be imagined.  

The roads were still the same in 2009 but we now have to endure the horrors of ugly, inconvenient (to many householders, that is) wheelie bins and, rather than two small wagons, two of the huge great bin-lifting, garbage-compacting monsters (that’s before you take into account that separate wagons are used on separate days for commercial waste).  So much for CO₂ emissions and, assuming you’re not an anti-science flat-Earther in Gordonbrownspeak, the planet’s chances.  Anyway, thanks to global warming, this winter is the coldest on record for 25 years (or maybe 30 years; the jury’s still out because it’s got some way to go yet) and we have the cancellation of refuse-collection services because ‘road and footway conditions .... in rural areas remain very poor and are making it impossible for refuse-collection vehicles to operate safely’ (flash bulletin of 8 January 2010 from the Senior Waste Collection Manager; is there such a thing as junior waste?).  Are we to assume that all those huge milk tankers, oil-delivery tankers and animal-feed delivery lorries (which don’t seem to be experiencing any major difficulties) are operating unsafely.  And what about the milk-delivery and courier vans and the like (even the post has come through on most days)?  Surprisingly, the difference here seems to be mainly between public- and private-sector services, one of which actually has to work to earn money.  Not only that, but if your refuse wasn’t collected this week, you won’t have a collection until the one scheduled for next week and, if you don’t get one next week, you won’t get one until the week after that and if ...... (I’m bored now).  It goes without saying that all green-waste collections have been suspended until at least the end of January.  

As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said, ‘nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory’.  However, at least I now know what CWaC’s ‘vision’ of local communities taking responsibility for their own waste means.  

Theoghinus Nuttors, 9 January 2010.