Cutting bin collections is a sure-fire route to anarchy
They are experiencing what you could call 'every householder's nightmare'. After two months of strikes by the Unite union, the city's rubbish has continued to pile up in the streets, attracting attention from reporters around the world eager to illustrate Britain's demise and, more importantly, an army of grateful rats.
As the great Birmingham bin war becomes ever more bitter, millions more of us are experiencing a taste of what is to come, with councils around the country reducing bin collections and driving paranoid residents – me included – to anger then despair at the thought of our rubbish not being removed. The prospect of collections becoming monthly brings me out in hives. Bins just seem more important the older you get, like slip-on shoes or Wheeler Dealers.
It was bad enough already for those of us of a pernickety disposition. Last year, my weekly collection began to appear without warning at 5am, so unless you remember to position your bins where the boys from the trucks prefer them the night before, you can forget it. This has led to several occasions on which I have stormed out into the night in my dressing gown on hearing the 'beep beep' of the van. This week a letter arrived informing us collections were being reduced to once a fortnight. Why this should provoke existential angst I am not entirely sure, but I am confident many others also feel 'bin derangement syndrome'.
This is all in the context of our Council Tax rising year after year. It was pointed out to me that if you are single, employed and healthy, pretty much the only service your hard-earned cash avails you from the extortions of the Council Tax is regular refuse collections. If 57p in the pound goes on social care you are paying for but don't use, the least you can expect is to have your leftovers taken away. This is why it is so important in local politics. A Southend councillor once told me on election night that bins were always in the top two issues during canvassing – it's the battleground where voters are won and lost.
If the slow steady deterioration of this service fills us with dread – perhaps suggestive that our national downfall is inexorable – how much worse is it for the people of Birmingham being forced to walk around pyramids of black bags filled with putrifying waste? It's inevitable that comparisons with the dreaded 1970s will follow, from the London-wide strikes of 1970 to the Winter of Discontent in 1979. If you want a symbol of a society in crisis, you've come to the right place.
Nobody wants to live among visible proof of decline or breakdown, so there is something triggering about any inconsistency. Worse still, when, without explanation, they just never come at all, you are left to stare out of the window muttering, 'But why? What are we to do?'
It will reach the point when waiting for the bin men will be like waiting for Father Christmas. Maybe we should leave out a pie and a shot of whiskey to encourage them. It wouldn't surprise me if my last words on this earth are 'Don't forget… to put… the bins out'. Modern life really is rubbish.
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