The Council will only collect the rubbish from their own wheeled bins, and mine has been taken away, most likely by Council workmen to use as a collector for other people’s rubbish to reduce the number of bins to be emptied at the lorry. Unfortunately, they haven’t brought it back. I have scoured the local streets for it, as I doubt they’d actually take it home. If they wanted to steal a bin I’m sure they’d prefer a new one from the depot. There is no sight of it though. It’s just vanished. The Council charge £28 to replace a bin, and I had to pay that when I moved in six months ago, so if I’m only allowed to keep it six months that’s a hidden £56 pa charge to have my rubbish collected on top of the Council Tax.

I e-mailed the Council about this, only to receive an automated reply listing missing and replacement bins among things they refuse to correspond over, so I was reduced to resigning myself to buying a new one, though why I should buy a bin from the people who probably took it is morally dubious, to say the least.

The Council’s website required me to log in and select the bin from a list, at which point it told me this transaction cannot be performed on line and gave me a number to ring, so I rang the number, only to be told by the automated message that I would be put on hold for over an hour. The Council is clearly making it impossible for people to get replacement bins and refusing to collect their rubbish unless they do. That’s a de-facto refusal to perform its duty of collecting the rubbish.

This kind of nonsense is clearly unacceptable, and it is unacceptable that under the last few governments the country has been allowed to sink to this level of dysfunction. We need a party in power which’ll make things work again.

In the meantime, I’ll have to find some other way to order a bin. Maybe if I buy a plain black bin and leave it in a suitable place, a street artist will come in the night and stencil a Council logo on it... Where is Banksy when you need him?