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News and Comment September 2010

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24 September - Work-shy bin men. Useless officialdom part 4

Uncollected rubbish

Possibly the non-collection of rubbish in my street is too trivial to report here; on the other hand problems with rubbish collection seem to be widespread across the borough. A new problem (to me) is that the collectors are too idle to reach into the bin when a householder has recycled so successfully that the small amount that remains in the green bin is out of arms’ reach. A request for advice made six weeks ago produced an unintelligible response from Serge Poumo and when a neighbour fell foul of the same laziness a month ago I repeated my enquiry. Serge Puomo did not bother to reply. As a direct result of that non-collection the bin became overfull and so wasn’t emptied at all two weeks ago. Then the foxes got busy and spread the rubbish around.

There is a language problem at the house in question. It is used by a succession of people from Nigeria who stay for a couple of weeks, occasionally longer and are then replaced by someone else. All perfectly decent people so far as one can judge but they do not understand a system that gives them six different bins. If they can be persuaded to use them at all the colour coding is ignored. Last year the occupant merely threw all their rubbish out the door in the general direction of the front garden until a small mountain of rubbish built up. The useless Serge Poumo failed to solve that problem too and it fell to neighbours to get it taken to the dump. Something similar has had to be done to solve the latest problem too. The contents of the overflowing bins was redistributed among other nearby bins. Due to the amount left behind following a month of neglect by Bexley council it is quite possible that those doing the redistribution weren’t able to observe all the usual rules relating to what goes where, but at least the bins are all empty now. Serge Poumo, Bexley’s useless Recycling Advisor, is slowly turning me from being an enthusiastic recycler into someone who rather enjoys the thought that a group of people, fed up with having rubbish blown along the street and into their gardens should fool the collectors into taking it away - even if this week’s load is going to prove to be more contaminated than usual.

Speaking of useless publicly funded parasites brings me to the subject of Will Tuckley, the council’s obscenely over-paid and utterly useless C.E.O. I hear a group of Bexley residents has asked that his salary of around a quarter of a million pounds a year be reduced to something close to that of the Prime Minister’s £143,000 a year and failing that that his post be abolished altogether. Would anyone notice his absence? The question should be, according to my informant, on the Agenda at the council’s next meeting.


Bin Diary
13 August - Green bin put out with very little rubbish in it. Not collected. Told council that bins with very little in them were not being emptied as it is a long reach for their men and asked how they might be persuaded to reach in and do their job. Serge Poumo, Waste and Recycling Advisor replied as follows… “Thank you for contacting our department. Your property is on Enhanced Recycling Services and your green bin should be emptied on a fortnightly basis. As you are not really producing a lot of waste, we do not see a reason for why your collection frequency should be changed.”

27 August - Green bin again left unemptied because there was not much in it and reaching in is too much bother for collectors. Repeated enquiry to council. It was acknowledged but Serge Poumo lacks the intelligence to find an answer and prefers to remain silent.

10 September - Bin slightly overfull due to no rubbish collected in previous weeks. Bin men refuse to empty it. Foxes redistribute it.

23 September - Various people decide enough is enough and find spare capacity in other householders’ bins both green and brown, and fill them with the uncollected rubbish arranging the contents so that any misplaced rubbish is not visible.

24 September - All bins emptied. Serge Poumo the so called but totally ineffective Waste and Recycling Advisor who has no advice at all for those who are doing their best to recycle encourages them to dump their rubbish where they can. If he cannot give advice what is he for? Presumably just another council parasite wasting our money.

 

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