I KNOW my bins. Believe me, when you’re local government reporter, you spend a lot of time trash-talking.
When there’s a problem with the refuse collection service provided by our friends at Kirklees Council, I hear about it soon enough.
Bin collection is the most universal and most obvious of the hundreds of services which a local authority provides.
And when something goes wrong, residents don’t hesitate to contact the Examiner to complain.
In the last few years I’ve received dozens of calls about missed bin collections, usually caused by either snow or industrial action.
But I can’t remember the last time someone phoned to complain about fortnightly bin collections.
I don’t recall the last occasion that a reader called to tell me the bins on their street were overflowing because the penny-pinchers at Huddersfield Town Hall did away with the weekly round.
The only logical conclusion I can draw from this is that the switch to fortnightly grey bin collection has worked well.
The policy change was highly controversial when it was introduced between 2006 and 2008, but the fears of huge rats roaming Huddersfield’s streets feeding off piles of rotting rubbish were unfounded.
I seem to inhabit a different world to that of the Daily Telegraph, which this week informed us that ministers will offer councils like Kirklees, which have “abandoned” weekly collections, a £100m package to bring them back into the fold.
The paper told us that places which have brought in fortnightly bin collections have seen an increase in fly-tipping and rat infestations.
To illustrate the lunacy of abandoning the weekly round, the Telegraph’s website featured a picture of three over-flowing bins.
“Fortnightly bin rounds are unpopular with residents,” the caption told us. Not unpopular with “some residents”, you might note, but with “residents”.
Yet there was no supporting evidence for this sweeping claim.
But what’s this? On closer inspection the three overflowing bins in the picture are clearly marked as being the property of Leeds City Council.