Rubbish.

There was a bit of a discussion about recycling in the comments of this post a while back. At the time, I said:

Something that pisses me off about recycling is the way it's sold to us as a chargeable benefit. So the local council used to sort your rubbish; now they force you to sort it for them and they up your council tax because they're "giving" you recycling facilities.

Well, in grand I-told-you-so fashion, I've been proven right by events. Imagine my excitement. Ooo.

Our council gave us a new blue bin a few months ago, to go with the grey one. (I might add that they gave us this bin at about seven on a Saturday morning, very noisily, the inconsiderate bastards.) With the blue bin came a list of things that Thou Shalt Recycle, and we were to put it out for collection ('cause, you know, actually coming and getting the bloody bins is beneath them these days) every two weeks. So far, not so annoying.

Turns out, though, that this was a mere testing of the waters of laziness. Now they've seen how much people round here are recycling, they've changed the bin-collection rotas accordingly, and, as of a few weeks ago, the blue and grey bins are collected on alternate weeks. In other words, our non-recyclable rubbish, which used to be collected every week, is now collected every two weeks. Since it's collected on a Monday and they don't work on bank holidays, our rubbish will sometimes not be collected for a month — including over next Christmas, a time of year when, traditionally, no-one throws anything out at all. So the council are now forcing us to do some of the work that they used to do, and they're collecting our rubbish half as often as they used to.

Council tax is being increased by 5.3%.

We hear that green and brown bins are planned. Joy.