Squander Two recently wrote about a bizarre bit of council nonsense: for reasons tenuously connected with recycling, his local council is no longer collecting rubbish every week. Now, my council’s at it too: from April, rubbish will be collected fortnightly rather than weekly, “to encourage recycling”. It’s got sod-all to do with recycling, of course, it’s cost-cutting by a council that’s spent thousands on bizarre red pavement things on some of Scotland’s most pock-marked roads.

What’s really annoying about the move is that I’m already a good little recycler – so much so that I got an extra recycling bin, because I’m just recycling crazy, me. But unfortunately my non-recyclable rubbish fills a dustbin once a week, so under the council’s new wheeze it looks like I’ll have to fill my car with bin bags every second week and drive eight miles to the nearest tip – a completely wasteful journey. But I’m a good little environmentalist so rather than undertake a sixteen-mile round trip to get rid of my rubbish, I think I’ll dump it in a local councillor’s garden. Much more environmentally friendly.