David Smith, an elderly disabled man of 78, has been left with rubbish piling up at his home in my home town of Croydon.
Why?
It seems that is just "too dangerous" for binmen to collect it?
Why?
Does he have a dangerous dog?
No!
Does he threaten them with a shotgun?
No!
The bin men have to climb the four steps to the house to collect it.
Mr Smith has lived at his current address for over 20 years, and has always put his rubbish at the top of the steps on a Monday morning ready for collection.
Herein lies the problem, the entrance to his house is four steps up from the street level and down a walkway.
The binmen and our local council don't seem to like that.
As much as Mr Smith would like to make their lives easier, he suffers from diabetes, heart disease and has difficultly walking. Therefore he has always left the bin bags at the top of the steps for the binmen.
However, the other week, his rubbish and many other residents' waste was not picked up for health and safety reasons.
Mr Smith said:
"I walk with two sticks and it is very difficult to get to the end of the walkway and now they are refusing to even come up the stairs.
What is frustrating is that they just haven't bothered telling anyone about the changes and we have all done this for years without having any problems.
But on Monday I saw that the dustman hadn't taken it so I asked him why and he said he had been told it was too dangerous for them to collect it from where they had been in the past. I couldn't believe it."
There are more than 100 houses in the street, and Mr Smith believes a third of them have steps - none of which have had their rubbish collected.
A Croydon Council spokesman said:
"Several health and safety issues have been identified by the council's contractor with regard refuse collection in a number of roads.
The council is currently investigating alternative methods of collection and the affected residents will be notified."
Pass the sick bag someone!
Could Croydon council tell us why we pay council tax?
Could Croydon council tell us why they think that the "health and safety" bullshit, that they follow, outweighs the very real threat of disease and vermin from rotting uncollected rubbish?
Health and safety will be the death of us all!
Email the leader of Croydon council here, and give him my love mike.fisher@croydon.gov.uk
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I have seen similar cases in the Peoples Republic of Brighton.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day, many of these self serving local authorities/tax collecting agencies, just want people to take their own rubbish to the tip where they can charge by the pound.
Who is to blame for this crazy situation? We are, for sitting there and taking it!! It would never happen in France.
The loonies really are running the asylum.
Do what the French do.
ReplyDeleteAll get together, have a collection to hire a bin lorry and crew for the day (evening). This bin lorry then goes around the town collecting all the uncollected rubbish for that day. Once they've got it all, tip the rubbish at the front entrance to the town hall with a fuck-off-big poster on a stick stuck into it, telling the world that this is that day's uncollected rubbish.
Sign off the poster with "see you again ... soon.
Direct action is needed. Take the trash down to the town hall (remove all incriminating personel evidence etc) and then chuck it all over the steps.
ReplyDeleteNaturally Nanny will have CCTV etc in action so do make sure to wear that most fashionable 'yoof' accessory the hoody.
If we do not start taking direct action such as these 'dirty protests' we are just whinging and get all we deserve.
You've got to play them at their own game!
ReplyDeleteHe should apply to the council for a home-help whose specific duties include putting the rubbish out.
Then he can take the council to court for allowing the rubbish to build up...under the H & S laws of course.
I am guessing at 78 that Mr Smith must have fought for this country against the Nazi invasion.
ReplyDeleteHow proud he must be to see this country go to the dogs since then.
Nice way to treat these veterans.
If H+S were a force in 1938 we wouln't have defended the country in case someone got hurt
In actual fact, all he has to do is go to the local TV station.
ReplyDeleteOnce the Brighton Council was named and shamed on the local TV news, and not for the first time I must add, they suddenly solved the problem.
They did a similar U-Turn over a parking ticket they issued a disabled person while her elderly husband carried her out of a car into a hotel. The council would not budge over this until they were featured on the news, then as if by magic, a refund was forthcoming.
Local authorities seem to see the fine system as a new revenue stream that they can use. If they make rubbish collection more and more difficult for people, more are likely to illegally fly tip, I suspect councils would secretly like this as fines can then be issued....Kerching.
This seems to be an ever more common problem.
ReplyDeleteThe obvious answer is that the local Social Services should provide people with help in advance of collection day so that properly trained staff who have qualifications in negotiating steps can be provided to those who need them for the purpose of presenting their rubbish to the correct place at the correct time.
A skilled job it may be of course, but so be it. As long as the operatives are paid more than the bin men I se no problem.
Grant
The answer is in the voters hands on May 1st....
ReplyDeleteA good portion of your blog entries,Ken, seem to be about garbage pickup. Too bad for the rubbish collectors that they seem to be Nannys little yes men. THey might otherwise be able to share in the bounty of garbage collecting. Last summer I was residing my garage (I live in the US) and when the garbage truck came by, I slipped the guys $20 each to let me throw my old siding in the truck. No problem...happens all the time.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 2:33 PM
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! What you say is one simple way of dealing with the issue. It does assume scope for empowerment of the individual and initiative by the binman, shopkeeper, school teacher or whomever, but coming up with on-the-spot local arrangements has always been an effective and traditional way of solving problems in this country.
The trouble is that nowadays a concerted effort is being made to stop it happening - all for the sake of some extremely-artificial and distorted notion of equality.
The story goes that such an action might give one individual an advantage over another; so whether it’s healthcare, children’s education or rubbish collection, "rules is rules" and Nanny goes to greater and greater lengths each year to increase the number of rules and reduce the scope for acting contrary to them.
The result is a state of mediocrity based on the lowest common denominator in which life has become flat, and natural differences and initiatives suppressed. The tightening of the straightjacket really can be felt in this country with every month.
Anon US,
ReplyDeleteOur dustmen (garbage men) used to make a few bob on the side by doing just that - chucking all manner of crap into the back of the truck for some beer money.
Alas, Nanny does not like private enterprise intruding into her little fifedom and most dust carts (garbage trucks) have nanny's favourite little monitoring device, a digitial camera, installed to ensure staff do not load the truck with trash that nanny does not allow such as old furniture, wood etc etc.
The cameras are used as a local binman when I lived in London lost his job for taking in some 'illegal' rubbish from the back of a shop.
The poor old sod was a few months from retirment but Nanny could probably stuff him out of his pension for breaking the rules as well, so double plus good for Nanny.
I do H+S for a living, and I am ASHAMED of the actions of some who would call themselves my professional colleagues.
ReplyDeleteIn reality of course, they are cowards who want something to hide behind, instead of justifying their own decisions. My approach? If we have a problem here, how are we going to provide the service safely? But stopping the service is not an option, unless someone is truly about to get killed.
My suspicion is that there is a row between Council and Contractor (renewal, contract extension, failure to meet the service level agreement, or some such) and that one side has decided to play what they think is a trump card.
It is this abuse of H+S that does us no good at all.
"The council is currently investigating alternative methods of collection"
ReplyDeletesuch as digging an enormous pit in the road and issuing each resident a trebuchet with aiming instructions.
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More than forty years ago, trash left at the curb (er, "kerbside"?) was not picked up at our house. When my father asked why he was told that anything over twenty pounds would not be handled, to which he replied that if his thirteen-year-old daughter could carry it a hundred feet from the back yard surely the grown men collecting could lift and carry some four feet to the back of the truck.
Our trash was always collected thereafter.