Bins: Fact finding

There is a parallel campaign going on that is specific to Marchmont Crescent only. The council put those big black bins on the house side of the street when they could much better have been placed away from us. Setting aside the fact that they moved them from taking up pay and display spaces to block out residents' parking spaces, it is pretty annoying that they have chosen the worst possible place to put the things.

Well, I had been phoning the council and had received a response along the lines of "Well, we told you all we were going to do it. You had your chance to complain and if you think we're going to change it now just because residents ask us to, you've got another thing coming!" In fact the woman had gone on to say that hundreds of people had complained about the bins being introduced at all and, well, they hadn't listened to them, what the hell made me think they'd listen to me?

I hope that will turn out to be a mistake on their part; you shouldn't antagonise a graduate student who has way too much time on his hands and free access to a photocopier! Time will tell.

I was also told that the reason the bins had been placed on our side of the street is that the lorry needs enough room to lift them and the trees are in the way. It seems to me that whoever decided this all would be a good idea can never have even visited our street. I can just see them in their office on a rainy day saying, "Marchmont Crescent? Oh, yes, that's the one with the trees, isn't it? No need to actually visit it on a day like this." There are huge, and I really mean vast, gaps between the trees. I've seen the lorry do its thing. It's just not that big.

Anyway, that was all a while back and it was got me so incensed as to start this whole campaign thing up.

Last Friday, though, I had a meeting with Jonathan James in the waste management department down in Waterloo Place. Mr. James is the guy there in charge of Road Traffic Orders which are needed to change any line markings on the road. I wanted to find out what I was asking these people to do. After all from my perspective, I thought all they'd need to do was get one person out to check that the lorry could pick up under the trees, one to check any safety issues, one to write it up and that would really be it. How naïve.

No one down at the council knew who Mr. James was which didn't fill me with confidence. When he was tracked down eventually I spoke to him on the phone and he had completely forgotten our meeting. Fair enough, it happens, but I didn't feel as though I was being treated as the most important person on the planet.

And, what did I find out? Not a lot really. Getting a Road Traffic Order can take between 6 and 18 months! It involves every council department under the sun and is not really something that mortals should expect their masters to enter into lightly. Every ounce of body language said that this thing has less chance of happening than George Bush does of being my favourite political character of all time.

I couldn't tease out of him how much actual labour was involved. After all, even if a year and a half goes by before it's done that could still only mean a few hours of actual work.

What I did learn, however, is that to get a Road Traffic Order started you have to get a councillor to order an investigation first. Right, that's the next step then.