to wish I could dump my rubbish at Edinburgh Council HQ?

[LeftMyRidingCropInTheMortuary]

Second fortnight in a row my street's landfill bins have been left. So 6 weeks since they were last emptied! Even though we trundle the bins half a mile along the road for the convenience of the bin workers. (They are very heavy when full).

And they are redoing all the recycling arrangements so we now have a bewildering array of bins and boxes and colour coded calendars. It's hard enough for me to follow but no wonder the elderly people can't be bothered with it!

I remember the good old days when the bin men would load heavy bins on their backs and whistle cheerfully. Now they are a bunch of pansies with a "computer says no" attitude. Well, I suppose I save the money my mum used to spend on giving them a Christmas gift.

So, instead of piling up my car with stinking rubbish and taking it to the tip, should I dump it at the door of their HQ? They are dreadfully rude on the phone as well!

Particularly grating as I spend £100+ per month and hardly use any council facilities! (Yeah, yeah, I know it's not pay per use).

Have you contacted your councillor?

Always good to get a homophobic dig in, regardless of necessity.

Oh for goodness sake Barbarian! I highly doubt that poster meant it in a homophobic way. Lots of people use it to mean a wimp. Completely unnecessary and goady post.

Why on earth do you think recycling waste is not recycled? That's one of those urban myths that started donkey's years ago when it was all new and no council could recycle 100% of its waste. Nowadays there are whole industry's based on using that waste material - your council gets paid for recycling it.

Your attitude towards binnies and recycling in general undermines your main pissed offness. You sound entirely U on the subject!

They've already done the playground building at floras, but I think the rooftop bit got cancelled because of the residents in the retirement flats next door moaning. So the kids lost out.

Pansy (def): A sissy, fag, fairy, or one that is generally unmanly.

Related words: pussy wuss sissy wimp bitch gay fag loser homosexual queer

It is a commonly used derogetory term for gay men. I hate homophobia, so I'm challenging it. OK?

It's also used in the way I said: with no homophobic undertones. Unless the poster says otherwise, I'll assume they meant it like that. Benefit of the doubt not looking for homophobia everywhere and all that.

It's so bad here a lot of residents no longer separate recyling and general rubbish and just use both bins as general but make sure cardboard is on the top of the recyling so it gets emptied. Fly tipping is a huge issue its only going to get worse as they restrict collections and bin sizes more. I pay a man £20 a van load to take away my crap I make sure it has no personal details in bags and he can take it wherever he sees fit.

OFFS! No I did not mean it in a homophobic way! (Didn't even know it was such a word!)

Good to know I am BU though, expecting my bins to be emptied.

And pardon me for being a bit cynical about recycling - the council haven't done much to reassure me of their competence about the most basic matters.

Chatty - it's flipping outrageous isn't it? You should bill the council for that £20.

I want to lead a mass litter dump at the HQ. In the manner of one of those sudden breastfeeding sit-ins.

Many, many years ago, dh was having a similar problem with his local council, and rang them to say that, unless it was collected, he'd be bringing it to the Council Offices and leaving it on the chief exec's desk. It was collected the next day.

And YY to the PP who mentioned about their vans squeezing past cars.

The way they chuck the bins back as well, doubtless they are damaging cars.

YANBU OP.

6 weeks in between bin collections is not on. Edinburgh Council is a bloody disgrace. All that tram mismanagement and now I hear the city is in danger of losing its UNESCO status due to dodgy developments given the nod by the council.

YANBU - for a lot of people, waste collection is the one tangible thing you actually see that you are getting in return for your council tax, and it's really annoying when councils try to cut corners with it. Rubbish isn't collected and opening hours for tips are reduced, which leads to fly-tipping. Which is a loit more expensive to deal with. I fail to see why councils can't grasp this.

Absolutely to the vans squeezing past, the house opposite us has a lot of corner scrapes which I'm pretty sure are from the bin lorries - no pavements here.

Someone came out to investigate our complaint the other day so waiting to see if anything happens

You've nail it, Anotherusername. They are too focused on all their fancy new initiatives and can't get the basics right.

I don't ask for much - just my rubbish to be taken away. And I recycle everything I can (despite my cynicism). But it's the ATTITUDE that stinks. Like we're doing something wrong by having ANY rubbish and they're deigning to take it away.

A bit like the police in some areas, they forget they are a SERVICE that we PAY for. They think the public are the ENEMY.

This is the sort of thing that really bloody winds me up. I wish I were an eccentric old lady and I WOULD spend my time writing green ink letters and doing crazy things like dumping waste at the council HQ.

"so waiting to see if anything happens".
Don't hold your breath!
Cunts the lot of them. Should be charged with theft for taking my money for no service in return! I hope they all get fired (the beaurocrats and the binmen) and have to get jobs in the real world run by private companies.

Do you know what else bugs me?!! The red recycling boxes which are now redundant. Will they pick them up? Will they fuck! They say we can keep them and use them (er, for what? It's a stinking dirty old recycling box!) or take them to the dump ourselves. And what about people who don't drive? And what about the petrol for the half a million residents of Edinburgh to all drive to the tip?

I'm surprised they are taking the old landfill bins away - that they didn't encourage us to turn them into an outside bath or something stupid.

We still have our old landfill bins - but they're now our recycling bins instead.

Edinburgh Council launched a new customer service twitter today @edinhelp. Might be worth tweeting this thread?

(not a very glamorous first post, sorry...)

Oh yes, you're right, statistically! I forgot about that!

Hmmm...yes I might use the Power of Twitter!

Thanks!

I actually had a ding in my last car that I'm almost certain was due to the bin lorry. Sometimes they mount the pavement on the other side of the road to give themselves room, sometimes they just see it as a challenge to reverse down the road without using it.

Can I also moan about the fact the recycling guys come up 6.30am on a Monday morning and think nothing of shouting across the road to one another. Given that our bedroom is right on the street and essentially about ten feet from where they decide to bellow, it really boils my piss.

I've just sent them a bunch of tweets to their fancy new twitter thingy!
I'll probably be banned!

DH emailed our local councillor about another issue when we were living in Edinburgh (have thankfully moved to East Lothian; it's heavenly) and copied in the local MSP. The problem was fixed pretty quickly so that might be worth it too?

Re Twitter: contact people like Edinburgh Reporter, any news outlets, that kind of things, as well as ECC.