7 December (Part 1) - The uglification of Bexley
My
two new bins arrived last Tuesday, three days ahead of schedule and are now inconveniently parked in my back garden store of never likely to be used bins. The
brightly coloured lids are particularly unsightly. They were
supposed to come with a Guide Book but not in my road they didn’t. That probably
explains why lots of bins were out on the road on Friday awaiting a collection that isn’t due for another week.
Without a Guide Book most people will be unaware that Bexley has lost its weekly recycling service except for food waste.
Almost
needless to say, the driving force is money. Collecting on alternate weeks only will
save £450,000 a year.
I attended all the Council meetings that discussed the revised recycling
service. It seemed a reasonable enough change overall. I heard Cabinet Member
Peter Craske say that he needs every last bit of recyclable material collected even
down to the humble toilet roll core. It all adds up.
I heard numerous Councillors say that too many people still ignored the recycling
rules and more than 50% of what goes in the rubbish bin could have been
recycled. I heard the Director of Bins say that the government does
not allow Councils to penalise those who break the rules.
What
I never heard was anyone say that large cardboard boxes would no longer be
collected. Maybe that is included in the missing Guide Book. It has certainly
not been mentioned anywhere else.
Phil in Ennerdale Road (photos from his Twitter feed) certainly didn’t know and Bexley Council let him down on
his very first paper bin collection day. They left him with a bin full of
material with which they could have made some money and sent him away with a rather dismissive Tweet.
Councillor Craske speaks with a forked tongue and it would appear that
Councillor Stefano Borella (Labour, Slade Green and Northend) was not so wrong after all.
(See Tweet from last March above.)
Why are large cartons no longer welcome? They went in the bin lorries easily
enough before. It can only be due to the petty bureaucracy of a sometimes stupid
Council which has been getting something between £10 and £90 a tonne for paper in a fluctuating market.
Taking nothing because of an oversized piece of cardboard is just plain spiteful and exactly
what one has come to expect from Councillor Craske. A clear case of
cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
The
Recycling Guide Book is not the only Council publication that fails to reach me.
I almost never get the Bexley Magazine.
Ever since Bexley Council
decided to privatise magazine distribution I’ve almost never received one. I
complained into the friendly ear of a Council officer a couple of years ago and
the next two did arrive but then they stopped again.
I resorted to begging from Councillors but for the current issue my Councillor
hadn’t got one either, she told me that she had conducted a mini-poll and found
that most people didn’t get one.
Bexley’s website said if the Winter issue was not delivered by 2nd December the
Communications Department should be advised so I did that. Two days later one arrived
in the post thanks to Communications Manager Jane Parsons.
It is good to see Bexley Council standing by their promise
to publicise Abbey
Wood’s Christmas Market (Page 26) to be held in the Abbey Arms Car Park on Sunday 15th December.
Note: After writing the above I found a rather wet Guide
Book in my neighbour’s front garden lying in the old paper box of all things! When
questioned he admitted to not reading it and told me I was welcome to take it.
The Book does say that only items placed inside the wheelie bin will be collected thereby confirming Craske’s forked tongue.
He doesn’t really want your toilet roll core after all.