TO my certain knowledge people have been moaning about Swindon Council's wheelie bins plan for at least a year and a half.

So you might have thought that by now the gremlins who beaver away around the refuse collection would have got things sorted by now?

But have they? No!

Complaints are now stacking up higher and more odorously than piles of decaying rubbish would in a midsummer binmen's strike.

Countless people claim the information - or lack of - they've received from the council about the mechanics of the new scheme has left them feeling confused and even downright misled.

Many of them put out black bags, which were not collected. They claim phone calls to the cleansing department weren't returned.

Requests for a pick up of the offending bags went unanswered.

Doubtless the gremlins would like us to believe such problems are merely teething troubles.And that, once we all get used to stowing away in our new, big and ugly wheelie bins the black bags that used to be collected every week everything will proceed like clockwork.

Well, believe that if you are silly enough.

Swindon's refuse collecting department has a long and inglorious history of attracting justifiable complaints.

So I can't see that fortnightly, instead of weekly, collections of garbage that cannot be recycled is likely to improve its efficiency.

Or that things will be better for my neighbours and me now that we have to trundle a large, hard-to-steer container on wheels up a rough, unsurfaced lane instead of lugging heavy black bags to the same collection point about 150 yards away.

And I would just like to say to Lester Barnes of Gable Close, Abbey Meads, who wants a wheelie but has been told he can't have one because his street isn't suitable for the big collection lorry, that he can have mine, with pleasure.

The gremlins who introduced this scheme before having time to iron out its likely wrinkles should be named. We deserve to see their faces!

And the same applies to the councillors who pushed them from behind. They should all be red with embarrassment.

Meanwhile, can somebody please tell me how I can tastefully decorate the hideous wheeled receptacle that has to stand near my back door because the house fronts on to the lane and has no garden?

There's a bottle of wine from me waiting for the sender of the best idea.

Prince of boozers

Oh no, not again. Prince William was seen in the early hours of Sunday emerging from a posh nightclub with girlfriend Kate in a state that indicated that within a few hours he would be experiencing a whopping alcohol-induced headache.

And she - yet again - was smiling adoringly at him.

This time he had been downing champagne at the 30th birthday bash of his cousin Peter Philips.

If he thinks he can go on soaking up this mixture without ruining his pretty boy exterior he's in for a nasty shock. And so, I guess, is she.

Still looking good?

WHILE we're on the subject of good looks, did you hear that 65-year-old actress Britt Ekland, has been telling women that using anti-ageing creams is pointless and that we should face up to the inevitable. It's all very well for her. Just look at the raw materials she started with.

Clearly she has never heard about the conflict that most of the rest of us have between hope and reality.

10:50am Wednesday 21st November 2007

Print

Email this