It's all just rubbish (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

It's all just rubbish

3:28pm Wednesday 26th November 2008

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Six months on, the Kier street sweeping row rages on.

The council keep blaming the public. The public keep blaming the council. Both are accountable to some degree. There is no denying that something needs to be done - but what? And by whom?

Kicking out Kier would only be a temporary solution - campaigners would rejoice for maybe a week or two, but there's the inevitable waiting period for the service provider to be replaced, during which time things would presumably get much, much worse.

The average Mr John Q. Citizen probably doesn't fly-tip. He might drop the odd crisp packet or orange peel, but nothing more, and this, to his mind, is infinitely more forgivable. He feels he is not directly responsible for the problem - why should he have to put up with it?

The council, on the other hand, have the amorphous, faceless blob that is the Fly Tipper to contend with. There doesn't seem to be a specific profile for this person. He or she is simply generically Bad and the council Will Not Stand For It. But until such time as the Fly Tipper stops fly-tipping, the streets will inevitably be covered with the filth the Fly Tipper leaves behind. How do you fix a problem that won't go away?

We are therefore at something of an impasse. No way forward. No way back. It's like banging one's head against the proverbial brick wall. Things, quite literally, are a complete mess.

Meanwhile, the level of hysteria in the office seems to be reaching new heights. While there is a pretty much constant low-level hum of febrility in the newsroom - rewriting incoherent press releases and trying to wade through the relentless mire of statistics and PR-speak will do that to you - this week saw a spike in the fever.

The phrase "not for the blog" has been uttered more times than I can count in the last couple of days alone and I wonder if we're all on the point of some cataclysmic implosion into utter mania. It's not even worth giving an example - some things are just too bizarre for public consumption.

Part of the problem is that it's been rather a slow news week, which tends to drive people more than a bit batty. This time yesterday, we didn't have a front page, or a page three or five - i.e. the three main news pages in the paper - and we had a job to bring it all together this morning.

Or maybe it's just getting too close to Christmas and everybody wants to go on holiday.