While we were on holiday there was a hell of a lot of press coverage about the Iran elections saga and all the protesting both in Iran and around the world using the media and the internet… but not in the inexplicably popular (I blame stupidity) Daily Mail who had a much more important issue for their readers to take to the streets over:
Let’s get uppity about wheelie bins! From what I could ascertain from the simmering rage of the Fail, it appears that some (invariably middle class) home owners do not like wheelie bins because A) they are not pretty and B) they let passers by see that the home is owned by people who make mess. Oh yes. Cue the “not in my back yard / front yard” humourz. Never mind Iran’s democracy kerfuffles or even the Romanian-bashing happening in Northern Ireland (and of course in the oh so unfunny Littlejohn column this week), this was the real hot topic:
Wheelie bins are often parked outside front doors because many families have nowhere else to put them and binmen want to reach them easily from the road. The rise of recyling has left some residents with as many as three wheelie bins – one for household rubbish, another for recyclables and a third for garden waste. There can also be boxes for glass and tin.
Parked outside by the road for collection day? Yes.
Last night Doretta Cocks, an environmental campaigner who opposed fortnightly bin collections, said: ‘People are fighting back. There is growing anger among residents. We’ve become too complacent in recent years – too used to the sight of wheelie bins in towns, cities and villages but they are an eyesore and people are beginning to realise that. This wave of anger will undoubtedly spread. People are fed up with the sheer number of wheelie bins they have been given and the expectation that they will simply accommodate them. Some people have nowhere else to put them other than in their front garden or on the pavement and are being prevented from enjoying the small space they actually have. Others simply can’t sit outside any more because of the bins and the great number of flies that follow.’
The totally unbiased weekly rubbish collection campaigner Ms Cocks (titter) sadly did not come up with any alternatives for these plastic “eyesores” (not that there is anything wrong with them in the first place), which was a bit of a shame. I wish I knew who the people that cannot sit outside due to bin-related flies are. Any ideas?
In South Oxfordshire, residents plan to march on Henley-on-Thames town hall next month in protest at the wheelie bins delivered to terraced properties and apartment blocks earlier this month. They say the bins are ugly, unmanageable and damage the scenic town’s image.
That’ll be the Tory-run Henley council then. Strange that the article omits that little nugget of information. One Henley resident explained their problem:
‘Many of the houses in Henley were simply not designed to cope with wheelie bins. They are actually bigger than my mother, who is in her eighties.’
The houses are bigger than their octogenarian mother? Whatever next?
Do YOU have a wheelie bin horror story? Contact the Mail on news@dailymail.co.uk or phone 0207 938 6063.
What? Why? Whaaaaat?
I was impressed when my comment got published… unedited too:
Oh indeed. Mail readers require a trivial issue to get their knickers in a twist about. Nothing too complicated or foreign though.
Well done my internet son Stephen. I raised you well, shame you appear to be talking arse to the readers. Frank from Australia had a much better received solution:
Frank for PM (after Littlejohn and Clarkson turn it down of course).
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