The grumpy thread

[Zelandeth]

3 hours ago, omegod said:

Even wheelie bins aren't perfect, I spotted some bint binwoman  elbow deep rummaging in my recycling desperate to find something non recyclable to save her having to empty it 

To be fair that would bother me far less than pretty much every week having to pick up the bits of next door's used nappies that the wildlife has shredded and liberally distributed around my front garden.

Don't really care if it has wheels or not, *any* bin is a vast improvement on just dumping bags at the kerbside.

[paulplom]

On 5/17/2022 at 10:48 AM, horriblemercedes said:

My sunglasses were in their case on the storage part of the dashboard. Somehow they came out of the case (I guess I didn't close it properly) and each lens has a nice scratched area at the peak of the convex part where it was resting on the hard plastic of the dashboard.

 

Very annoying. I think I'll try some kind of polishing but expect to be buying new lenses

I paid £160 for some Oakleys recently under duress from gf because I never treat myself. I haven't worn them yet in case I drop them or someone pinches them off my face.

Not one of my best decisions. I still wear my £3 work ones when ever I go out.

[paulplom]

They are cool af though. I might just get them set in a display case for the mantle piece.

[Lacquer Peel]

4 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

So the council (or equally likely Serco who actually do the waste collection) have decided to stop picking up unbagged cardboard.

This is a royal pain in the ass as it means I'll have to waste a bunch of recycling bags to get rid of it.  

This wouldn't be a problem if we actually had bins like every other civilised place has had since the early 1990s, but noooooo... Milton Keynes requires rubbish to be put out in black bags (they won't take it if the bags are anything other than black), and recycling in clear bags that you have to get from the council.  Which come in stupidly small rolls which last us about a month a shot, and usually take about a month to be delivered.

This also means that without fail the bags all get shredded every week by cats/foxes despite us putting no food waste in ours.  It's just daft.  Everywhere else I remember before wheelie bins became the norm you put the rubbish out in a metal or plastic bin...that was then picked up and the contents dumped into the wagon...nope, not allowed to put it in any receptacle here, has to be the bare bags on the kerbside.

Then they wonder why there's a litter problem.

There was talk of us potentially finally getting wheelie bins, but it sounds like that's been delayed yet again.

They've always just taken cardboard provided it was neatly bundled together (I usually fold everything save for the biggest box and have everything contained within that) as the recycling bags are small enough (and have about the structural integrity of pound store cling film) that you'd end up using about four of them for the cardboard alone.  So I'll definitely wind up going through them faster than I can get them.

It's a stupid tiny thing in the grand scheme of things, but is just *annoying* because it's so avoidable.

They are collecting waste in plastic bags, what the fuck? My mum's general waste wheelie bin in the middle of the Highlands was delivered in 1997. 

[Zelandeth]

19 minutes ago, Lacquer Peel said:

They are collecting waste in plastic bags, what the fuck? My mum's general waste wheelie bin in the middle of the Highlands was delivered in 1997. 

Yep.  There was one at our house in Fisherford when we moved in there, and that was 1993.

They have to be the right colour bags too.  White, or even really dark grey bags they will just leave at the side of the road - so about half our waste ends up double bagged too because I can't find bags the right size for two of the bins that are black...

It's utterly ridiculous.

Only thing we have an actual bin for is garden waste, date code on that bin is 2010, so presumably that's when they arrived.

Well that's not strictly true...we *have* a general waste and a recycling bin outside...Just we have to dump the bags out of them onto the kerb on collection day!  Or more accurately, the evening before as the crews can arrive anywhere from 0600 to 1500.

[High Jetter]

4 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

So the council (or equally likely Serco who actually do the waste collection) have decided to stop picking up unbagged cardboard.

You think that's bad? All our collections have stopped as the GMB say the Biffa workers need more £££. Fine, they've been offered the same increase that they accepted recently in a neighbouring council area, but rejected that stating “we mustn’t start negotiating until the rubbish piles up in the streets.” That same increase (8-20% depending on role) was described by the union regional organiser as a  “whopping pay deal”.  If they don't come this Friday it will be 4 weeks (and counting) since our last rubbish collection, and they aren't even attempting to collect recycling or garden waste (which we pay £50 pa for!)

[Wack]

Fucking hermes 

I sent some railway track to a guy 

Wrapped in 3 layers of card with the ends protected 

This is how it got there , cunts 

 

[Fumbler]

1 hour ago, High Jetter said:

You think that's bad? All our collections have stopped as the GMB say the Biffa workers need more £££. Fine, they've been offered the same increase that they accepted recently in a neighbouring council area, but rejected that stating “we mustn’t start negotiating until the rubbish piles up in the streets.” That same increase (8-20% depending on role) was described by the union regional organiser as a  “whopping pay deal”.  If they don't come this Friday it will be 4 weeks (and counting) since our last rubbish collection, and they aren't even attempting to collect recycling or garden waste (which we pay £50 pa for!)

We've only had the general waste get collected here- nothing else has been collected so I'll probably be sorting all the recydling rubbish out and making a journey to the tip... Provided they aren't still running on an appointment-only basis (and sometimes close at 1PM if they're feeling lucky).

[AnnoyingPentium]

Our council now charges £30 per brown bin (garden waste) a year. On top of that both it and the grey/green general waste bin are only emptied every three weeks now. Plus they gave us these caddy things to replace our blue paper and cardboard bin (which we would really benefit with), the black box for cans, glass, and small electricals, and done away with the bigger red box for plastics.

TL;DR - EAC couldn't run a fucking bath.

[RoverFolkUs]

We've got a blue, black and optional green bin. Think they're pretty self explanatory, blue is for all mixed recycling (glass, paper, plastic, but absolutely no bags) black is for general rubbish, and anything electrical smaller than a microwave gets taken on black bin day as long as it's not in the bin. 

Green bin is optional, costs £70 per year and for that you get upto 25 collections, bi-weekly apart from Christmas, of light garden waste. 

All seems to work pretty well

But I've noticed the newer bins they issue are much, much smaller which is a bit unfair as it's a lottery over which bin you get given. 

[High Jetter]

Yea, but at least they're being emptied 

[sheffcortinacentre]

Don't forget they only do this "recycling" if it makes them a profit!

Think I'm kidding check up.

[High Jetter]

It will, if they do it right.

[Metal Guru]

8 hours ago, omegod said:

Even wheelie bins aren't perfect, I spotted some bint binwoman  elbow deep rummaging in my recycling desperate to find something non recyclable to save her having to empty it 

Edinburgh bin men won’t empty wheelie bins if the lid is more than 1/2 in open. What do they think it’s going to be like next week? Also if it’s more than 6in from the kerb they ignore them.

[New POD]

15 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

So the council (or equally likely Serco who actually do the waste collection) have decided to stop picking up unbagged cardboard.

This is a royal pain in the ass as it means I'll have to waste a bunch of recycling bags to get rid of it.  

This wouldn't be a problem if we actually had bins like every other civilised place has had since the early 1990s, but noooooo... Milton Keynes requires rubbish to be put out in black bags (they won't take it if the bags are anything other than black), and recycling in clear bags that you have to get from the council.  Which come in stupidly small rolls which last us about a month a shot, and usually take about a month to be delivered.

This also means that without fail the bags all get shredded every week by cats/foxes despite us putting no food waste in ours.  It's just daft.  Everywhere else I remember before wheelie bins became the norm you put the rubbish out in a metal or plastic bin...that was then picked up and the contents dumped into the wagon...nope, not allowed to put it in any receptacle here, has to be the bare bags on the kerbside.

Then they wonder why there's a litter problem.

There was talk of us potentially finally getting wheelie bins, but it sounds like that's been delayed yet again.

They've always just taken cardboard provided it was neatly bundled together (I usually fold everything save for the biggest box and have everything contained within that) as the recycling bags are small enough (and have about the structural integrity of pound store cling film) that you'd end up using about four of them for the cardboard alone.  So I'll definitely wind up going through them faster than I can get them.

It's a stupid tiny thing in the grand scheme of things, but is just *annoying* because it's so avoidable.

I put all sorts of shite at the bottom of the general bin. Then, on bin day, I open the bin bag from.the kitchen, so it looks like a fucking massacre in there. If they want to sort through to the bottom, they'll be sorting through the most hideous mess. 

 

[myglaren]

2 hours ago, New POD said:

I put all sorts of shite at the bottom of the general bin. Then, on bin day, I open the bin bag from.the kitchen, so it looks like a fucking massacre in there. If they want to sort through to the bottom, they'll be sorting through the most hideous mess. 

 

Our bin men are very accommodating, very rare that they refuse to empty a bin or take anything left in bags.

Next door are fairly useless with their recycling.  Fail miserably to squash pop bottles etc so the bin is always overflowing and their crap blows all over the street.

Last week they had half a dozen large boxes and some sheets of cardboard.  They were ignored so still outside for next week.  Be interesting to see how that is going to work.

I have told them previously that if the boxes are collapsed and bound that they will be taken.

One of the boxes was full of dinner plates.  A roaming mob of teenagers set to and smashed them on the footpath.

He came out yelling at them, then sent her out to clean up the mess.

They always seem to have problems with unwanted items, that can be left outside for weeks.  They have two cars and the local recycling centre is three miles away.  The council will also collect bulky items, up to six large items, for a tenner.

Just spotted this re: school traffic -

Parent traffic banned from Newcastle school drop off area

Show it to your local councillor Zel.

[Wack]

43 minutes ago, myglaren said:

Just spotted this re: school traffic -

Parent traffic banned from Newcastle school drop off area

Show it to your local councillor Zel.

Round here quite a bit of the the school traffic appears to be grandparents picking their grandchildren up , because people are having kids in their 30s now some of them are quite elderly and may live nowhere near the school, there are a lot of lazy people though, neither of my kids were taken the 1.5 miles to their high school , it was bus or walk

[goosey]

One of the things I won’t miss about the last company I worked at was working on bin wagons, food waste was especially unpleasant.

Working on the wagons that were tipping at the Anaerobic Digestion Facility was probably the worst, that smell would stay with you for the rest of the day.

[MorrisItalSLX]

Jesus wept, I have never heard of such picky, pedantic bin services.

Australia has a (predominantly) standardised system of wheelie bins, Red lid for general waste, Yellow lid for recycling and Green lid for garden waste.

When bin day comes you put your bin out by the kerb and it gets emptied, I’ve never had any bother about what I put in my bin or how I put it in there. The truck simply pulls up outside, the arm swings out, grabs the bin and tips it in the back. Simple.

It just goes to show that there is no need for waste collection to be such a song and dance.

[myglaren]

1 hour ago, Wack said:

Round here quite a bit of the the school traffic appears to be grandparents picking their grandchildren up , because people are having kids in their 30s now some of them are quite elderly and may live nowhere near the school, there are a lot of lazy people though, neither of my kids were taken the 1.5 miles to their high school , it was bus or walk

We have been quite lucky with schools.  All were only half a mile at most.  when we moved here, they built a new school in the field at the back of the house we had lived in.  Just jump over the fence and they would have been in.

The one here is ¼ mile straight up the road, or to avoid the road two alternative routes, through the houses or beside the park, all roughly equal distance.  And when they went to secondary school, 0.6 miles through the park.

Still have neighbours who take their kids to the two schools in cars though.  Next door takes son to the secondary at 08:35, returns and takes daughter to primary at 08:45.  They are 15 and 9.

[Wack]

36 minutes ago, myglaren said:

Still have neighbours who take their kids to the two schools in cars though.  Next door takes son to the secondary at 08:35, returns and takes daughter to primary at 08:45.  They are 15 and 9.

Ridiculous isn't it

 

1 hour ago, MorrisItalSLX said:

The truck simply pulls up outside, the arm swings out, grabs the bin and tips it in the back. Simple.

It just goes to show that there is no need for waste collection to be such a song and dance.

Or not so simple

 

[RoverFolkUs]

11 hours ago, sheffcortinacentre said:

Don't forget they only do this "recycling" if it makes them a profit!

Think I'm kidding check up.

My lot only recycle when they feel like it... We have two huge communal bins (supplied and collected by council, but the size of a biffa bin) and the recycling gets emptied with the general rubbish once a fortnight... Almost like they've been told to cut down on how much "recycling" gets collected on recycling day. 

Of course if they announced they were reducing recycling collections then it would upset the green agenda people whom fill the village. (The sort that buy pasta loose from refill shops and take it home in a reusable bag that was wrapped in single use plastic) 🤦

[RoverFolkUs]

38 minutes ago, myglaren said:

We have been quite lucky with schools.  All were only half a mile at most.  when we moved here, they built a new school in the field at the back of the house we had lived in.  Just jump over the fence and they would have been in.

The one here is ¼ mile straight up the road, or to avoid the road two alternative routes, through the houses or beside the park, all roughly equal distance.  And when they went to secondary school, 0.6 miles through the park.

Still have neighbours who take their kids to the two schools in cars though.  Next door takes son to the secondary at 08:35, returns and takes daughter to primary at 08:45.  They are 15 and 9.

Much the same here, except it's a small village. Predictably there are hundreds of these things littering the roads and blocking zig zag lines to drop Tommy off to school half a mile up the road: 🤦

It's usually those 4 vehicles exclusively, but four rings of success also applies...

[J W Pepper]

7 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Much the same here, except it's a small village. Predictably there are hundreds of these things littering the roads and blocking zig zag lines to drop Tommy off to school half a mile up the road: 🤦

It's usually those 4 vehicles exclusively, but four rings of success also applies...

I don't get why there is a need for such big cars, you only need a 4x4 if you intend in going off-road, most of the time they are driven by people who can't handle the size of them, near me people take their kids to school when they live a 2 minute walk away and double park on blind bends, blocking the pavement and cause absolute chaos, totally unnecessary, the previous headmaster of the primary school who was there for years, used to walk to each house and if he couldn't easily walk to the house in a reasonable time he didn't allow the children to attend the school.

[AnnoyingPentium]

27 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Much the same here, except it's a small village. Predictably there are hundreds of these things littering the roads and blocking zig zag lines to drop Tommy off to school half a mile up the road: 🤦

It's usually those 4 vehicles exclusively, but four rings of success also applies...

I have one of the oldest cars that's down at the school in the morning when doing the school run... well besides the 'City Red*' 51-plate Corsa. Most other cars are brand-spanking-new.

[Zelandeth]

3 hours ago, myglaren said:

Our bin men are very accommodating, very rare that they refuse to empty a bin or take anything left in bags.

Next door are fairly useless with their recycling.  Fail miserably to squash pop bottles etc so the bin is always overflowing and their crap blows all over the street.

Last week they had half a dozen large boxes and some sheets of cardboard.  They were ignored so still outside for next week.  Be interesting to see how that is going to work.

I have told them previously that if the boxes are collapsed and bound that they will be taken.

One of the boxes was full of dinner plates.  A roaming mob of teenagers set to and smashed them on the footpath.

He came out yelling at them, then sent her out to clean up the mess.

They always seem to have problems with unwanted items, that can be left outside for weeks.  They have two cars and the local recycling centre is three miles away.  The council will also collect bulky items, up to six large items, for a tenner.

Just spotted this re: school traffic -

Parent traffic banned from Newcastle school drop off area

Show it to your local councillor Zel.

Not a chance of that happening here.  Also I find myself asking how it would be enforced?  Especially having worked in local government, in the field of traffic management, so know it's really hard to legally make it so only certain vehicles can use a road.  If it's done in a way that technically can't be enforced, it'll take 2.4 nanoseconds for word to get round and that will be the end of that.

Given they make zero effort to deal with the illegal parking as it is, not a chance.  If they can't stop people double parking *on a roundabout* the odds of them checking that a car's meant to be there are zero.

Plus my local council, councillors, MPs and community councillors haven't ever responded to attempts to contact them in any way shape or form beyond the automated "we've got your message" reply.  

[3VOM]

17 minutes ago, J W Pepper said:

I don't get why there is a need for such big cars, you only need a 4x4 if you intend in going off-road,

and getting over speed bumps and parking on grass verges, of course.
See also old Catherine Tate sketches where all mums drive silver BMW X5s.

[omegod]

Quick tale of my friend who was on the bins in Kirkby, a rather rough area of Liverpool. He grabbed a wheely bin and if felt rather heavier than normal so he flipped the lid expecting it to be full of bricks or summat, instead he was rather surprised to find a very large and very rigor mortised German shepherd dog looking back at him 😌

[horriblemercedes]

2 hours ago, MorrisItalSLX said:

Jesus wept, I have never heard of such picky, pedantic bin services.

Australia has a (predominantly) standardised system of wheelie bins, Red lid for general waste, Yellow lid for recycling and Green lid for garden waste.

When bin day comes you put your bin out by the kerb and it gets emptied, I’ve never had any bother about what I put in my bin or how I put it in there. The truck simply pulls up outside, the arm swings out, grabs the bin and tips it in the back. Simple.

It just goes to show that there is no need for waste collection to be such a song and dance.

I've never heard of it being any more difficult than you describe (until I read this thread). I put the bin out, the rubbish is taken. Never any more than that

[New POD]

1 hour ago, omegod said:

Quick tale of my friend who was on the bins in Kirkby, a rather rough area of Liverpool. He grabbed a wheely bin and if felt rather heavier than normal so he flipped the lid expecting it to be full of bricks or summat, instead he was rather surprised to find a very large and very rigor mortised German shepherd dog looking back at him 😌

Iong Before the binmen destroyed my  food waste bin, i disposed of a frozen guinea pig in it.  Children have asked why we didn't have a memorial service and funeral for "Strawberry"