Bin laden...

This is fast becoming the world's most reliable portal for Hull-based waste collection and dustbin news. Taking on board my suggestion that our new experimental brown bins will be used as vehicles in the near future, the loutish youngsters at the end of the street seconded a stray bin this morning and were using it as a carriage and hiding place. It did look like good fun but I noticed that they had managed to destroy the hinges on the lid at the same time as the bin's new owner, who was banging like a possessed deevil on his window trying to stop any further damage. Like a photographer in a war zone, I was a mere observer who didn't intervene. It's not my bin, why should I care (if we all use our brown bins for garden waste that would otherwise decompose anyway it would save the planet, you fool!- Live Earth ed.) And I also know from personal experience that the loutish youngsters at the end of the street don't respond to a mere knock on the window - instead you have to shout and swear at them, just like their mummies and daddies do. Usually just before telling them to get out of the house and play in the street with other people's new bins.

The city is falling apart. On my way to Asda this merry morning I noticed that huge chunks of an overhead rail bridge (part of some drainage system, I think) had fallen on to a main arterial road and its adjacent pavement in east Hull this morning. There to defend travellers were two Community Support Officers and their walkie talkies, who stood about not telling anybody anything and allowing traffic and pedestrians to just come and go as they pleased. There probably was no cause to close the road but, as I walked beneath the bridge and round the fallen cast iron I shifted a bit faster than normal. Repair costs can probably be added to the bill that Gordon Brown's taking care of.