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Heroes and Zeros
Sadly a lot more zeros than heroes in evidence in recent wheelie bin related news.  A nice thoughtful and considerate couple rushed out into the ice and snow and used wheelie bins to barricade a road to stop cars sailing down the sheet ice hill. 

Now on the zero side we have the nutters who stole a wheelie bin full of someone garbage, neither the bin or the garbage to be seen again. Then if we are to believe what we read, the “jobsworth” nutters from certain councils have been out in full force again. Like a £1,000 fine for a poor lady (well she is now) who put her wheelie bin 12 inches over some line.  Not to be out done another council tried to charge every student in the house £80 for a wheelie bin their neighbour put out.  Somewhat higher up the nutter scale, and rightly getting convicted, was the guy who tried to stuff his girlfriend into a wheelie bin after a drunken row in a pub. 

By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
Bin Battles
We’re an island nation, cunning aggressive up for a fight, sometimes for the highest of motives and sometimes the lowest.  Somehow, our relationship with the ubiquitous wheelie bin captures us in all our glory.  We have some cunning, brave and totally immoral Manchester kids who decided to ambush a fire engine.  They lured it in to a tight space with a wheelie bin fire and then attacked. Indefensible behaviour, of course, but cunning nevertheless. 

A few notches up the morality scale and we have the good residents of Pilton, fighting the righteous fight by, dumping their wheelie bins in front of the Edinburgh town hall.  A messy noisy, and apparently honourable, protest against bureaucratic incompetence as the council botched their move to fortnightly collections. 

Then we have the wheelie bin battle of the councillors.  Who slighted who and which rules were broken. Heady stuff indeed, from the Malvern Gazette.

By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
Symbiotic Wheelie Life
The dance between “jobsworth” officials implementing their bizarre take on health and safety regulations and the outraged “Little Englander” reporters in the Daily Mail seems to be endless.  The latest incarnation of this symbiotic two step is in Durham where its apparently clear that wheeling wheelie bins is far too dangerous for bin men but quite safe for little old ladies.  Naturally the Daily Mail was outraged but who knows if this wheelie bin story is all that it seems.


Still the sun is finally shining and so it’s a time for optimism.  One family has won their year long fight to get there wheelie bin replaced after the council trashed the old bin.  Another Cambridge community is proud to get their £9m underground bin system. 


By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
Whinging Week
It must be something to do with the rain, or maybe the great British combination of rain and drought at the same time.  We have one person complaining that people spend all their money on, shock horror “drinking and cigarettes” when they should be spending money on wheelie bin services. 

Then we have someone moaning about the wheelie bins being the wrong size and the potential consequent rat problem and how her kids are going to get poisoned.  They are evening wining in Australia about wheelie bins, where the British raining/drought surely can’t be to blame.   

But finally to lift everyone’s spirit we have a brilliant good news story. A man recued a puppy from a wheelie bin and after ”a tense month of waiting” he was finally able to keep it.  With any luck that is an omen, perhaps either the rain or the drought will end one day. 

By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
It Makes You Proud To Be British

Some great British stories this week.  The Daily Mail, who always helpfully seem to confirm my carefully nourished prejudices about them, is again bashing the “elf and safety” culture because the wheelie bin men are not allowed to cross a minor suburban road with wheelie bins.  In this case I have to agree with them of course, over feeding third class ambulance chasing lawyers is a luxury we can no longer afford. 

On the bright side we have super hi-tech bins, ok not wheelie bins but litter bins, appearing in London with built in plasma screens giving news and travel info and presumable adverts.  Also in the entrepreneurial vain, we have an inventor who converted his wheelie bin into a super-efficient composter.  But best of all are the 10 year old wheelie bin entrepreneurs from the Isle of Wight who are going into competition with us producing wheelie bin numbers – all power to them.


By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
British Spirit
With all the economic doom and gloom we forget that actually the UK is a substantial economy and that the British go stoically on. We have this week a guy who’s going to live in a Wheelie Bin for charity; an entrepreneur and who like us, has decided to tie commercial destiny to the world of wheelie bins. 

In the spirit of “Have I got News for You” Packaging News proudly awarded the Bin Buddy (which we sell) an award for best packaging of a new product for their wheelie bin inspired packet, they must have been so proud. Finally it’s clearly all happening is Sleaford a fence fire which damaged a wheelie bin made the news – how British. 

By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
Down Under

In honour of the Rugby world cup we have a bunch links to wheelie bin stories from down under.  The antipodean general craziness certainly gets adequately reflected in their news worthy wheelie bin antics.  

We have a guy, who might have had a couple of beers, throwing his wife’s $50,000 of jewellery into their wheelie bin.  She’d put them in bags to hide them from thieves.  Hopefully more sober, but you can’t be too sure, someone put a wheelie bin on top of a huge communication mask in a fit of bonza revelry no doubt.




By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
Council’s Curtailed
Somewhat hidden in all the political mud that has been flying recently is the coalition’s policy of taking sides in Britain’s wheelie bin wars.  The little local Hitler’s can no longer use the terrorism act to go after citizen’s who have committed the heinous crime of not closing their wheelie bin lid completely.  That’s a real shame for the Daily Mail who have filled acres of print having fun with this subject.

Nice to see the royal wedding celebration inspired wheelie bin art in Bristol, somewhat more positive than trashing the local Tesco.

By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down. 
Wheelie Bin Pimping and Rubbish Wars
The wheelie bin war of middle Britain continues.  I’m not sure who is most ridiculous, the Daily Mail accusing councils of Gestapo tactics or the Chelmsford council sending two people to a house twice to impose a fine for putting a black bag beside a wheelie bin. We should be grateful that we are such a wealthy peaceful society that we can play such games.  We are truly fortunate that we don’t have to deal with the natural disasters or tyrannies that others are currently facing.

On a lighter note Southampton is encouraging everyone to pimp their wheelie bins, which I think is an outstanding idea.
Life Goes Happily On
It is supposed to be the most depressing time of the year with doom and despondency all round, although actually the study quoted in the press was completely made up.  Anyway, the world of wheelie bins would be the last place you would expect to find a bit of optimism.  But wait, we have the pride of the wheelie bin men of St Albans getting through, whatever the weather to keep their customers happy.


Then we have the bin men heroes from Veolia, yes I did say heroes from Veolia, they sorted through 7 tons of rubbish after a lady dropped her iPhone into her wheelie bin with all her kids Christmas pictures on it.  The IPhone was eventually reunited with its tearful owner.   


And best of all we have 91 year old Flt Lt Alan Cresswell who tows his own wheelie bin on an hour round trip to the dump on the back of his mobility scooter.  There is a great picture of this hero and his eponymous wheelie bin. 

By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
Wishing you a Banksy Christmas
Not surprisingly the weather is the big story in wheelie bin world this week. Wheelie bins not collected, wheelie bin sledging etc. However the story we like best was Banksy distributing a 1,000 pieces of wheelie bin art to the impoverished and deserving populace so that hopefully they could sell them for serious dosh and fund a cheerier Christmas. You have to love the guy, a true revolutionary. 

By the way, it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
Time of Austerity

George has spoken and the debt fuelled party that Gordon encouraged for us all is going to be slowly tuned down over the coming years, poor Gordon he only wanted to be loved.  So what’s all this got to do with wheelie bins you may well ask?  Well it’s about the direction of travel maybe, Gordon’s munificence has resulted in NHS consultants getting paid twice as much for far less hours but it’s had little impact on the sink estates, where as we see this week the local lads threw bricks at the firemen trying to put out wheelie bin fires they had started.

Hopefully this change in direction will also tone down the petty rule based mentality that has pervaded the provision of public services from parks to recycling.  We hear this week from the august Express (so it may or may not be true) that the bin men refused to empty a wheelie bin because two tea bags and six baked beans went astray.  The extraordinary outcome was the council defended the wheelie bin men for making the right decision.  Let’s see how Cameron’s big society impacts these kafkaesqe denizens. 
Cameron's Big Society and the Wheelie Bin

Summer has bought more existential angst into the world of wheelie bins.   The Economist, nicely using BritishBins as its title, concatenated Cameron’s  big society concept with the ongoing war over wheelie bins between the “little Hitlers” in the councils and the “slightly” right of centre Daily Mail cohort.  The Economist’s conclusion, as might be expected from this hallowed organ, was to use the financial carrots of the capitalist genre rather than the Stalinist sticks preferred by Mr Brown and his cronies.   So you get a Marks and Spencer’s voucher if you recycle nicely and put everything in the right wheelie bin.   However, as M&S don’t sell deep fried Mars Bars, this may not be the greatest encouragement to the denizens of the sink estates.

Of course, being British, what has caused a much greater furore, is the video of a respectable middle aged lady dumping her neighbour’s kitty into a wheelie bin.  This is a crime clearly more heinous than that of lighting up a wheelie bin next to a house full of kids which, as we know, is also a popular pastime in the places that Cameron’s big society is going to find hardest to reach.
Hazy Crazy Wheelie Bin Racy Days of Summer

It wasn’t so long ago that we commented on inebriated boy racers (apparently happily) terminating themselves racing wheelie bins down the local village incline.  Now it seems to be turning into an international sport with wheelie bin races reported from Germany and Kent this just this week.  The Germans, being Germans are taking it all very seriously, with illegal go-faster tweaks.  I hope these guys wear crash helmets.

Wheelie bins, as ever prosaic objects, also feature in the world of crime again this week. One brave lady fought off her knife wielding attacker with her wheelie bin.  Another felon’s luck ran out in a more gruesome way.  He hid in a wheelie bin in a jail break and got squished in a compactor; a relatively common event, even excusable for alcoholics, but not the smartest move if you’re sober. 
Beauty and the Bin
So the crunch is coming, Gordon blew the wad, most people did pretty well on his largesse in the naughties and now it’s time to pay. Except not, well not according to DEFRA who bought the £148 wheelie bin option rather than the normal twenty odd quid that councils normally pay. So what’s in a couple of bins you may well ask, well it wasn’t a couple it was £32,000 worth. Ah but they argue, the ones that they bought were prettier. Now I’m a sucker for the point that man cannot live of bread alone. No question South Africa is right to build monumental stadiums for the world cut while there is still extreme poverty and deprivation in many parts of the country. I also doubt that Ryanair’s headquarters and much fun with Michael O'Leary’s love for worn out carpets and penny pinching shabbiness. But even though we like a stylish wheelie bin, £148 for a few thousand could probably have been better spent.
Wheelie Bin Election
I can’t understand it, for some reason the party leaders didn’t mention wheelie bins in their debates even though they are represent the clearest of differences between the parties. Labour we are told will introduce four wheelie bins per household if they are allowed to continue in their profligate ways. No surprisingly the Conservatives dogma machine lashes out at the Liberal Democrat’s idealist pay as you throw proposals and even bemoans the Lib Dem objective of monthly wheelie bin collections as Stalinist. 
Meanwhile Newsbiscuit claimed that the wheelie bin role out in the Isle of Wight provoked fears of alien attack, still they also claimed Greece was reopening as Poundland so we can maybe question the acuity of their insight. 

 And finally Daniel Woolman did well to get his wheelie bin “BiniFresh” system, which we proudly sell, into the illustrious Telegraph.
Not Exactly the Crimes of the Century
So this week we have one householder who committed the heinous crime of not putting his Wheelie bin round the right way and for that his charming bin men refused to collect his rubbish.

Then we find that some poor guy in Letchworth has had his council wheelie bin nicked half a dozen times. It’s a strange piece of property a wheelie bin. The wheelie bins supplied by the council are normally embossed, so they can’t be sold to anyone so what are these guys steeling bins for – water butts maybe. Anyway it’s getting to be such a problem that some councils are using the chips in the bins, which were originally put there for pay as you throw schemes, to identify the provenance of the humble wheelie bin. Just like your pouch.

Sadly we’ve not been immune from this wheelie bin crime, some little twat’s scammed us out of a load but I’m happy find that the police are taking it seriously and hopefully we will get a result.
Wheelie Bin Art

I’m into modern art, so I’m going to bang on about it a bit, after reading about Michael Landy’s Art Bin. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the picture of him posing in his Wheelie Bin.  You might have heard of Landy before, he’s the guy who shredded his whole life a couple of years ago in a shop window.  I mean literally everything he owned, photos, clothes, passport, tax records - in the shredder.  His point I think was quite clear, even if some of the people that gave him stuff weren’t too impressed. 

Now his latest idea with his wheelie bin is to sow some seeds of confusion in the self aggrandising contemporary art world by getting big name artists like Emin and Hurst to throw big money pieces into his wheelie bin to be destroyed.  I like it the concept.  It passes my personal “is it art” test, although I imagine the Daily Mail might be bemused. 

Also passing the “is it art” are the lads from Hemel who borrowed everyone’s wheelie bins and placed them very artistically in the middle of a local roundabout.   

As to other wheelie bin world view stories, the election campaign is getting going, more of that at a later date.  Much more interesting is the man who got so disgruntled with way the Brisbane suburban Bowen Hills brothel treated him that he threw a wheelie bin through the window of the brothel – love those Aussies.      
Prince William, Ian Rankin, Mangoes and Sabre Tooth Tigers
So while all the Newspaper editors were in the Bahamas, the lowly hacks had to make do, finding Prince William was sleeping amongst the Wheelie Bin living the down an out thing (well for one night anyway)and Ian Rankin “investigating” his very own wheelie bin torching. The Daily Mail, of course, couldn’t pass up on the old boy who was said to have been fired for picking up rubbish beside a wheelie bin. My favourite story for the bleak mid winter though, comes from Brisbane down under. There the mango crop has been so overwhelming the people have been throwing mangoes away by the ton – well almost. Wheelie bins have been rejected for being slightly overweight – 170 kg of rotting mangoes to be precise.

Had a lovely email today from a lady who’d been bumped on the bonce by a wheelie bin lid. I thought it was funny at first until it was clear what happened. The wind had got under the lid of a 4 wheel bin which wasn’t fully closed and had flipped in over with such force onto the poor lady walking behind it, that she was knocked unconscious as, well as getting whip lash and other neck strains which took weeks to recover from. She’s wondering who she could blame – perhaps we could sell stickers saying “Don’t walk behind half open wheelie bins on windy days” I thought being a mercenary sod. But even with all the new age health and safety Nazis, real accidents do happen. At least she wasn’t mauled by a sabre tooth tiger.
Seasons Cheer
It’s a time of typical good cheer in the weird world of wheelie bins, which seems to expose the nether regions of modern Britain.   We have councils forbidding bin me from accepting seasonal tips in one borough and the council funding a party to celebrate the successful role out of wheelie bins in another. 


Up in Scotland we have two guys ending up in court fighting over wheelie bins and in London a neighbour from hell getting done for breach her ASBO for leaving her wheelie bin open on purpose, so that rubbish blew into her lucky neighbour’s garden. 


Finally we learn that all the wheelie bin torching is not about the excitement of the arsonist but that kids are trying to get high on the fumes – I guess X-factor can only provide so much excitement in their lives.

Happy New Year to Everyone :-)
Wheelie Good Crime Reduction
Nice story this week about the law on unintended consequences.   A local council was getting tired of footing the bill for lost wheelie bins so they said to their residents that they had to have a crime number before they could be replaced.  Well, a good number of people call the local police to get the crime number for the missed wheelie bin - no big deal as no one was expecting actual police investigation.  So everyone was happy, except that each a crime number is issued it adds to the list on unsolved crimes and this made the cops look bad.  So apparently they have refused to treat stolen wheelie bins as a crime, needless to say the police performance has improved markedly.  
It's Better Than Burning Catholics
November the 5th again and all over the country kids are burning wheelie bins to celebrate. I kid you not, in the Leeds area they replace 30,000 wheelie bins a year and a quarter of these disappear around bonfire night as the local lads pile them high and torch them to honour the solstice, except they're just 'avin a laugh.  

In Lewis of course they haven't quite moved with the times and instead of burning Wheelie Bins they cremate effigies of the pope.  This is a hangover of initiatives long past by the controlling elites and I guess that taxing the Leeds populace a bit more to let the lads let off steam is in the same vein. 
'Alan Cookman: Freedom of bin choice could turn us into a rainbow nation ...'
It's heartening to know that we can rely on the great British middle classes to voice what should obviously be a nationwide concern about the introduction of electric blue wheelie bins to Meir Park, Stoke-on-Trent. They clearly have their priorities straight - they could be setting up soup kitchens for the legions of unemployed workers, but, cultural sensibilities to the fore, they're vehemently protesting against blue bins. So much for being a rainbow nation
'Bin police rummage through rubbish at dawn'
A friend of mine had a trailer stolen with £30,000 worth of products, and the police response was 'It's not worth the effort of investigating; you can claim on your insurance.'

And now we see the Home Office spending untold resources trying to cover their own incompetence and threatening the elected member of parliament, Damian Green, with life imprisonment. It makes you wonder who's serving who.

The reason we're pondering this question is that our friends from Lancashire Council are spending £60,000 per year on wheelie bin police. So tell me again, who is that bureaucracies are supposed to serve?
'Drunk threw bin on to A50'
Vicky Wood, the beverages marketing manger of the Co-Op, should be proud - she's caught on to a little-known trend about the enthusiasm of alcoholics for recycling. Vicky has triumphantly introduced a plastic vodka bottle that weighs only 40 grams.

Daniel Bryson, below, who got so drunk that he attempted to wheel his recycling down the highway, will undoubtedly be grateful for the massive reduction in weight in future.
'Met police tell Britons: look in rubbish bins for terrorism'
Type text and format itThree interesting facts about government spending caught our attention this week. We have the Met spending money on posters telling people to look in neighbour's wheelie bins to see how much drain cleaner they are throwing away. In case they might be about to build an unconventional weapon of mass destruction, and put the evidence for all to see in their wheelie bin.

We also have the Waste Resources and Action Programme (WRAP) being part of 3,000 separate publicly funded "business support schemes". To give them their due the government is trying to reduce this number, but you can bet that the bureaucracies will just recycle themselves, possibly into a new wheelie bin inspectorate.

And finally, we have Jacqui Smith's husband charging his porn expenses on her government expense account. We do appear to live in an Alice in Wonderland world.  using the toolbar.
'Revenge of the Bin Men'
Type text and format it usinWe hope your saw what Channel Four had to say on 'Revenge of the Bin Men' on Monday March 2nd. It was a classic of its kind, portraying the most extreme eccentric little Englanders through the optic of the world of wheelie bins. The producers were merciless, cutting the mildly mad to make them look utterly bonkers. 

The sanest protagonist was a former teacher who spent £475 for the pleasure and privilege of emptying his wheelie bin in Dewsbury Town Hall. While we admire his crusade against the bureaucracy, we wonder if he was the guy who taught the bankers economics. g the toolbar.
'Rogue binman' accused of sending abusive postcards to residents'
According to the Daily Mail, the binmen of Brighton are fighting back, threatening any residents who complain or forget to tip them at Christmas with heinous revenge.

So I guess the Daily Mail has gotten tired of telling us that we're all going to be murdered in our beds by mad knife men or that the wheelie bin police threaten our fundamental freedoms, and have progressed to the revenge of the binmen.

Next they'll be telling us we can't trust our servants...
'Tough times for foxes in the UK'
We learn this week that, unfortunately and unintentionally, the introduction of wheelie bins throughout the country has resulted in a severe downturn in the dietary standards of foxes, who were previously free to rip open black plastic bin bags and dine to their hearts' content. The most obvious solution to this problem is to take the zealous bureaucrats, undoubtedly rendered delicious by Michelin-starred entertainment (as long as they weren't gorging at the Fat Duck) and feed them to the much-maligned foxes. This would be a neat solution to everyone's problems - not least those of Cumbrian Gareth Corkhill mentioned in 'Has Britain become obsessed with petty-minded control...'
'Waste row binmen are barricaded'
We admire Jason Bilton's stand against the bloody-minded bureaucratically inspired jobs-worth binmen as he barricaded the street with wheelie bins in a community-spirited attempt to get them to empty his neighbour's rubbish.

At least he stayed home to fight for his neighbourhood rights instead of trying to save the world at the G20 summit demonstrations, where he might have ended up a hapless victim like Ian Tomlinson, with his reputation and termination, subject to the Met's powers of creative writing.
'Why Peppy Grove is too posh to push'

We have to learn from our antipodean friends how council services should really work. Peppermint Grove is lucky enough to benefit from a wheelie bin valet service, where wheelie bins are gently extracted from their resting place and loving positioned on the curb side.

Sadly this council, which seems to have money to burn, has finally decided that this luxury is beyond even their considerable means. Of course, being Australians, the residents' response to the impending removal of this privilege was to threaten to riot.
Aspiring for a Darwin Award

There seems to have been a spate of inebriates who have decided to make their nests in wheelie bins recently. Unsurprisingly, several of them have woken up to the sound of their ribs being cracked one at a time by the garbage compactor.

It must be bad enough to wake up with their particular variety of hangover. Hopefully the pain in their bones is dulled by comparison.

Actually, I'm really glad that none of them, at least from this batch, have succeeded in getting a wheelie bin death on to the Darwin Award website. With any luck, they will continue to survive their binging boozy days of summer.
Pay As You Throw – The Surveillance Society – Not The Only Cost
From a selfish commercial perspective, I’m totally in favour of pay as you throw.  We supply gravity locks and demand for these grow dramatically when it costs you money if other people put rubbish in your wheelie bin.  At the moment, mostly gravity locks are used to help prevent arson in areas where wheelie bin arson is a problem. 

From a personal perspective though, I’m far from comfortable with local authorities collecting ever growing amounts of data on individuals and households. The first law of bureaucracies is that they will take any “reasonable” regulation and apply it in the most mendacious way possible. Actually that’s not the first law, the first law is more Darwinian, a bureaucracy’s primary objective is to continue its existence.  The initial problem with pay as you throw schemes will be the cost. Just imagine all those millions that we be paid to “IT consultants” to implement the systems.
Pay-As-You-Throw Failure
Anyone who is interested will have seen that no council in the land has applied to carry out one of the five “Pay-As-You-Throw” wheelie bin pilots that the Government wanted to initiate.

Not a surprise really, the Daily Mail has demonised the whole project as a wheelie bin tax from the start. The councils and the Defra between them are blaming each other with the councils saying the Government didn’t tell them how the schemes are supposed to work. The only sensible proposal we have heard is to increase the council tax a tad and then pay it back to everyone who keeps below an average per person weekly wheelie bin rubbish load, via a discount. 
Recycling Causes Global Warming?
So Mr Peter Jones, the Government Recycling Advisor says that recycling is contributing to global warming. His thesis is that it’s better to burn garbage locally than to send it to China for recycling. I wonder if he included the cost of extracting the raw materials to make the replacement items in his calculation.

Actually, if global warming (well release of CO2) is the only criteria then of course the best thing is land fill. The NIMBY’s hate landfill but even in the congested UK, it only takes a tiny fraction of one percent of the land to store all the waste for hundreds of years.              
The intrepid reporter
Rather like Pol Pot, the speed fascists are getting the children young and convincing them that Jeremy Clarkson and his ilk are the spawn of the devil. In retaliation, they're plastering their anti-speed sentiments all over innocuous wheelie bins.

Of course, what they don't mention is the 99.9% of situations where people go faster than the bureaucratic rule and no ensuing mayhem occurs.

Whereas we see Jeremy Clarkson as one of the great journalists of our age, sadly we can't say the same for the hack who was dragging her way though Amy Winehouse's wheelie bin, trying to get some dirt on that tormented soul.
Wheelie bin entrepreneur

What to say about those Dragons? As successful self made entrepreneurs, you have to admire the skilful way they've ridden their luck to get where they are. I'm not quite so enamoured by their participation in the current egomaniacal celebrity culture, but each to their own.

So, what has this all got to do with wheelie bins? Well, Peter Jones  showed his risk taking daring-do when he invested fifty grand in a pensioner's patented wheelie bin 'Lid Lifter'. Let's hope, for Mr Jones' sake that Joe Public has got his gullibility. Don't get me wrong, I love potty inventions, but the first USP of this one is it opens the wheelie bin lid for you when you have a garbage bag in each hand. Does anyone ever take two garbage bags to the wheelie bin?

The second USP I guess is that it saves you time. Like how many thousand times would you have to open a wheelie bin to equal the time it takes to unstring and restring this gadget each time to bin men come? Good luck Mr. Jones.
Wheelie Bin Traffic Signs
Type text and formWe hear that Cumbria's Cockermouth Council has issued stickers so that all the residents can put 30mph speed limit signs on their wheelie bins. This supposedly means that speeders will be encouraged to slow down on the days that bins need emptying.

If this scheme is introduced throughout the country then motorists will be encouraged to slow down for at least one day a week. Why stop there? Perhaps as wheelie bins can now be used to house speed limit signs, this is only the beginning of a new advertising opportunity - the era of the sponsored wheelie bin is upon us.at it using the toolbar.
Wheelie Bin Wars
So the rejuvenated Telegraph decided to justifiably go to war against the incompetence and excess of our ruling elite, and how was The Daily Mail to respond to the loss of their patriotic readership?Of course, thought some enterprising sub-editor, we will create a wheelie bin war, and take on the local council "Bin" Ladens. 

As it happens, in spite of our position as the leading online wheelie bin vendor, we have to admit the Daily Mail has a point about the aesthetic inelegance of serried ranks of wheelie bins.However, having a war between the little Englanders of The Daily Mail and the bureaucrats of the councils over wheelie bins is a bit like the factions of the Mullahs in Tehran, fervently fighting over a domain of influence but somewhat missing the larger picture.
More Wheelie Bin Art
Recently I talked about Michael Landy’s art bin where the great and the good of the British art scene to throw away their works into his wheelie bin. Ever since Duchamp’s urinal the contemporary art world likes to think it enables society to discern a great meaning by offering a new perspective on the every day and the latest incarnation of this is Craig Ellis’ outstanding collection of 31 sculptured wheelie bins on show in Aberdeen. There is also a great video of Craig talking about his artists appreciation of the intricacies of wheelie bin design. Brings a whole new appreciation to the wonderful world of wheelie bins. 

Sadly the weekly news brings us the story of the demise of yet another night time reveller who went to sleep in a wheelie bin – not a nice end.
RUBBISH SNOOPERS ASK TO SEE BIRTH CERTIFICATES
Express.co.uk
By David Scott HOUSEHOLDERS who ask for a bigger wheelie bin are being told to present birth certificates to prove they have growing families. And some council snoopers are rifling through rubbish to see if families are recycling everything they can.
Wheelie Manic
I remember when I was young and people still used phone boxes that one single nutter was responsible for vandalising several hundred phone boxes in South London. I’m wouldn’t be surprised if it is the same today with wheelie bin arson where the firemen have been called out to 171 wheelie bin fires in Dumfries this year.  Sounds like a disturbed boy, with a wheelie bin mania, on a mission.

In a different, somewhat more formal, wheelie bin mania East Lothian Council is so trusting of its citizenry that it is demanding to see birth certificated of everyone in the house.  Apparently to determine how much rubbish they should be allowed to make and therefore how big their wheelie bin should be.  Not a huge surprise to find this wheelie bin story in the Express.  They’re probably got dozens of them lined up to be “exposed” when they have some space to fill.  

Finally a much more uplifting wheelie bin mania story.  A wonderful man called Kenny Bean has turned his wheelie bin into a pinhole camera and is taking really beautiful pictures with it.  There’s hope in the world of wheelie bins after all. 

By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.

News Archive
Nottinghamshire dad killed in bust-up over wheelie-bins
This is Nottingham
A SIMMERING feud over a patch of land where a Notts pensioner put his wheelie bins ended in a deadly confrontation.Grandad Ray Tindall had once been ...
Council U-turn on Trowbridge family's new bin
This Is Wiltshire
A family of six who had their wheelie bin crushed in error have battled for two months to get a like-for-like replacement.
Why £9m underground bins will be wheelie good choice
Cambridge News
Plans for a £9 million network of underground bins at a new development have been approved after councillors were reassured children would be unable to climb in. Instead of having wheelie bins, residents of the 3000 homes on the North West Cambridge ...
After 60 years council say alleyway lined with bins are 'too dangerous' for thei
Daily Mail
Council binmen have been banned from collecting wheelie bins from back alleys - as bosses fear going the extra distance could give the workers back injuries. Local authority officials in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham say health and safety rules mean ...
Dusty stays with Jason
Bury Free Press
A MAN who rescued a puppy from a wheelie bin has been allowed to become his full time owner. Jason Bloomfield, 40, of Creeting Mills, discovered Dusty the dog apparently dumped in a roadside bin on the A14 in March. But after a tense month of waiting, ...
Rats are now a problem
This is Somerset
However, I live in a small community, on a hill, where small 'wheelie bins' are difficult to manoeuvre. In consequence, we are obliged to use two of the larger wheeled bins that are parked in our community car park and, because this car park is small, ...
Chronicle letters: £2 a month is good value
ChronicleLive
I WISH to make a comment on the collection of the brown bins which collect garden waste. In the Evening Chronicle, (Monday, April 9) the paper states that about 40000 people are refusing to pay £2 a month to have their brown wheelie bins emptied.
'Wheelie bin tax will hit you'
The Queensland Times
RATEPAYERS have been warned they face a minimum $40 'wheelie bin surcharge' as a result of the incoming carbon tax. Councillor David Pahlke has hit out at the carbon tax, saying it is deeply unpopular with residents and will cost the Ipswich City ...
Former Sage executive launches HotBin composting invention
nebusiness.co.uk
Initially building a prototype from an old wheelie bin in the garden, he eventually created an aerobic composting bin which keeps its temperature at a constant 60C. The heat makes the HotBin 34 times faster than traditional composting bins and ensures ...
Primary School Has A 'Wheelie' Good Idea
Isle of Wight Radio
A primary school on the Isle of Wight is taking advantage of the new wheelie bins. Pupils at Godshill primary came up with the idea of raising money towards buying their school a minibus. They're selling pre-cut numbers and street name letters so ...
What's bin going on? New network on the streets of London broadcasts news to ...
Daily Mail
Costing £30000 to build and install the bins are large enough to contain a typical household wheelie bin making it easy for binmen to collect and empty them. Over the course of their 21-year contracts they will cost Renew £500000 each.
'Elf 'n' safety bans binman from crossing the road
Daily Mail
... spot the workers in their high visibility jackets and trousers if they are allowed to carry the wheelie bins from one side of the street to the other.
Darwen dad to spend two days and nights in a wheelie bin
Lancashire
Telegraph
By Dan Clough » Reporter DARWEN dad Ted Mountain will live in a wheelie bin for two nights to raise cash for Children In Need. The unemployed former canopy fitter, who has three children, Ben, 22, Coby, 20, and Dillon, 15, will be based at the ...
UK Packaging Awards 2011 winners: Best Packaging of a New Product
packagingnews.co.uk
Shaped like a wheelie bin and floats like a bee; the judges were impressed by this new brand of insect repellent and its lovable packaging with superb stand-out on shelf. The product is designed to kill and repel flies and other insects from consumer's ...
Steven plans to turn trash into cash
Manchester
Evening News
It has been founded by Steven Donoghue, who has invested £25000 in a fleet of former council bin vans and hundreds of wheelie bins. He believes there is a gap in the market between 'man with van' operations and large waste collection firms. ...
Fire destroys hedges and wheelie bin
Sleaford
Today
Crews from Brant Broughton and Sleaford attended the fire on Main Road where fire had damaged around 50 metres of hedging and fencing and a wheelie bin, said to be caused by careless disposal of smoking materials. A telegraph pole was also moderately ...
Man throws out $50000 of jewels with the rubbish
gulfnews.com
The man, who only wanted to be known as Geoff, said the uninsured haul was stored in plastic bags to fool potential robbers but they were mistakenly tossed into wheelie bins outside his house last week in a pre-move clean-up. "We're moving house, ...
Kermit has wheelie bad day
Sunshine Coast Daily
Kermit, the green tree frog, is on the road to recovery after being run over by a wheelie bin. But being run over by a wheelie bin without your best “bear” friend or your pig girlfriend to help is just bad luck.
Wheelie bin caps tower hijinks
Timaru Herald
ADDED DECORATION: A wheelie bin has joined the road cone atop a lighting and communication tower in the Timaru railway yard. Last week it was a road cone adorning a lighting tower in Timaru's railway yard. This week a full-sized wheelie bin has taken ...
Doorstep rubbish collections scrapped after 130 years
Telegraph.co.uk
Some urban councils, including Manchester, Bristol and Brighton have recently introduced, or started trials of, giant communal bins placed about 100 yards apart in residential roads, replacing individual households' wheelie bins in an attempt to cut ...
Dire Times?

There’s a saying that when politicians start to see the light at the end of the tunnel they order more tunnel.  The financial drama in Europe and the USA this week seems to confirm the point. Back in the lowly world wheelie bins we have Bedford council picking thousand pound fight with anyone who leaves their wheelie bin on the street.  Then we have residents in Manchester, whose wheelie bins have been removed by that august council in favour of communal bins, who are demanding their return.

Fortunately as much as the bureaucrats and politicians play their seemingly unavoidable societal games, we have great examples of fanatical entrepreneurs using wheelie bins to make their fortune.  The fact that they are both eccentrics, in the great British tradition, is irrelevant. 

By the way it’s not just egomania that generates these little wheelie bin missives, although it helps. It appears that having changing written content on our front page assists our search engine position, keeping our volumes up and thus our wheelie bin prices down.
Biggin Hill entrepreneur starts wheelie bin cleaning service after reading ...
News Shopper
By Michael Purton and Connor Findlay » AN ENTREPRENEUR had a wheelie good idea for a business after reading a letter in the News Shopper. When Michael Barrett, aged 69, read a letter from reader Maggy Bater suggesting someone start a wheelie bin ...
Longsight residents want their wheelie bins back
Manchester Evening News
People living in the Mackenzie Street, Acomb Street Patey Street and Parkin Street area of Longsight are demanding the return of their individual wheelie bins. Jane Hardy, Jackie Ford and Barbara Walker led a team of residents who spent three years ...
Bedford council threatens householders with £1k wheelie bin fine
Daily Mail
By Steve Doughty Householders have been threatened with £1000 fines if they leave their wheelie bins out for too long. The penalty would be the largest ever imposed on those who fail to remove their empty bins from the pavement after they have been ...
VIDEO: Recycler collects over 11000 cans
BBC News
Adrian Ablett, 38, patrols the city's West End with a modified wheelie bin up to four evenings a week, keeping his eye out for discarded cans. He then takes his stash to be recycled at a local supermarket, earning points on his loyalty card in return. ...
A petty bin thief
Newcastle Herald (blog)
Just a bin, a wheelie bin, hardly worth complaining about! Perhaps the fellow who stole it a week ago didn't even see it as theft, perhaps as he loaded it onto his ute he thought of it as picking up a piece of fallen fruit from under a tree. ...
Residents' fears over new Flintshire wheelie bin service
The Leader - Wrexham & Flintshire news
RESIDENTS in Queensferry fear a new wheelie bin service will spell trouble for their narrow street. And pensioners on Glynne Street fear they are too frail to push a wheelie bin up their drive when the service is introduced in September. ...
Banksy's Osama gift to 1000 families
The Poke
Art News: One thousand of Britain's poorest families woke up this morning to find the wheelie bins outside their homes had been turned into 'Osama Bins' – original pieces of Banksy art worth thousands of pounds. The Osama Bins appeared in London, ...
DECORATED wheelie bins, a street swap shop and a party organised for just £16
Bristol Evening Post
"We decided to hold a "decorate your wheelie bin" competition because everyone has one and we're hoping it will inspire a bit of creativity." Catherine Hyde, 69, another of the street's residents, decorated her bin with pictures from Queen Elizabeth's ...
Bin Replacement Costs £10,000 a Year
Arbroath Herald (press release)
Figures released by the authority show that the majority are damaged while being emptied, but vandalism and wheelie bin thefts are also on the increase. A total of 779 bins were damaged or stolen last year, a substantial increase from the previous year ...
Chelmsford Council 'rubbish gestapo' fine nurse £75 for black bag next to ...
Daily Mail
By Daily Mail Reporter A nurse has been fined £75 and threatened with a criminal conviction by the 'rubbish gestapo' after leaving a black bag next to her wheelie bin. Sally Singh, 34, said two uniformed workers from Chelmsford Borough Council ...
Echo readers show how they would 'pimp their bin'
This Is Hampshire.net
We asked Daily Echo readers to come up with their own wheelie bin ideas. Since launching our competition to decorate your wheelie, entries have been piling in from across the age ranges. Ideas include mocking up the bins as a Doctor Who Tardis or ...
Fine of up to £1000 if you leave your wheelie bin out too long
Sunderland Echo
Leaflets have been posted through the doors of hundreds of homes in Dawdon urging householders to take in their wheelie bin after they have been emptied. However, the rule – which is in force across the county and has previously been hailed a success ...
London 2011: Homeless men forced to sleep in bins
This is London
Every night they slide down rubbish chutes into huge wheelie bins and then spend the night huddled in sleeping bags on the floor. Labourer Pirthy Sandhu, 39 ...
It's snow problem now for St Albans binmen
Herts Advertiser
St Albans council is putting the fact that the collection of wheelie bins was maintained as well as it was in the snow and ice in part down to the use of ...
If you want a job doing well... retired pilot tows wheelie bin to tip on 8mph ..
Daily Mail
The retired Second World War RAF pilot ties his wheelie bin to the back and trundles off on an hour-long round trip to the tip. Who needs binmen? ...
Crackdown on Westcotes street wheelie bins
BBC News
Residents in Leicester are being warned they could be fined £110 if they leave wheelie bins on the street. Around 4000 properties in the Westcotes area are ...
Binmen find lost iPhone after sifting through seven tonnes of rubbish
Mirror.co.uk
Mum Anna Weald, 37, accidentally dropped the iPhone 4 into a wheelie bin as she put the rubbish out for collection. By the time she realised her mistake, ...
Banksy's Xmas gift to 1000 families
The Poke
One thousand of Britain's poorest families woke up this morning to find the wheelie bins outside their homes had been turned into 'Osama Bins' – original ...
Watch Your Waste: Reduced bin collections in Redland over festive period
Redland People
Bristol City Council has launched a campaign to encourage residents to 'watch their waste' and avoid over-feeding their wheelie bin this Christmas. ...
Recycling load overtakes rubbish
Stuff.co.nz
Recycling volumes have been up 80 per cent since July, after a kerbside recycling system involvingwheelie bins replaced a system of putting recyclables in ...
Wirral woman walks her wheelie to the tip after council bin collection failure
Wirral Globe
Justine Robinson walked her wheelie bin to Bidston Waste Recycling Centre on Friday to show Wirral Council she will not wait any longer for her bins to be ...
Firefighters attacked by village yobs
The Star
The missiles were thrown at the fire appliances when they were parked on Kenworthy Road, Worsbrough Common, Barnsley, after two skips and a wheelie bin were ...
Wheelie bin kitten returned to owner
Animal Friends Pet Insurance
A kitten found trapped in a wheelie bin has been reunited with her shocked family, pet insurance customers might be pleased to note. ...
Five complaints an hour on bins
Bristol Evening Post
Weekly food and recycling collections have also been introduced, along with a series of new wheelie bins and containers for people to dispose their rubbish ...
RUBBISH! DUSTMEN WON'T TAKE TEA BAGS
Express.co.uk
By Peter Barrow A BUILDER is mounting a council tax protest after dustmen refused to empty his wheelie bin because they say it was “contaminated” by two tea ...
Video: Woman caught dumping cat in wheelie bin on CCTV
Coventry Telegraph
ASTONISHING footage has been revealed showing a woman dumping a cat in a Coventry wheelie bin. The cruel act was caught on camera in Bray's Lane, Stoke, ...
Four rescued following Nottingham wheelie bin fires
BBC News
Four people have been rescued in two separate fires involving wheelie bins in the same part of Nottingham. Fire crews were called to Spruce Gardens and ...
Binmen refused to pick up rubbish from disabled man's Dagenham home
Barking and Dagenham Post
He cannot lift heavy rubbish bags up into a wheelie bin. But bin men have apparently refused to take his rubbish 28 times. "The council promised that this ...
Bagehot: Don't mess with British Bins
The Economist
Bagehot: Don't mess with British bins