The March of Progress

For more than 100 years the alleyway at the rear of VVB Towers has been used to service the back-to-back Victorian terraces that make up the street. It is a simple yet effective way of dealing with waste - the shiny stuff comes in via the front door, the rubbish leaves by the rear, something of a metaphor for the human body, if you will.

Now, the eminent councillors at Eastbourne Borough Council have decided that the service alleyway should cease to hold its long held function. Like most of the town (if popular belief is to be endorsed, which it shouldn't), the waste alley is to be retired and put out to pasture. No longer will it be home to dustmen as they go about their noisy and messy toil, manhandling rubbish sacks in such a manner as to cause eighty percent of the contents to spill out into the gutter. No more nipping out in one's underpants, under cover of the midnight darkness, upon realising that the dustmen will be wreaking their special brand of havoc the following day, refusing to take anything that looks like it might fall slightly outside their remit for fear that it might be industrial waste from Sizewell B. No, dear reader, the service channel has fallen to the cruel hand of progress.

EBC, in their collective wisdom, have determined that the residents of this thriving yet genteel seaside town need better value for money from their refuse service. Naturally, using pure unadulterated Reaganomics, the best way to acheive this laudable aim is to contract out refuse collections to the private company that managed to get itself sacked by the neighbouring City of Brighton for alleged incompetence.

EBC's tenacious negotiation team have managed to agree with SITA that all residents, regardless of whether they live in a house built in 1903 or 2003 must present their rubbish to the refuse engineers at the front of the house. Small beer one might think, particularly if one lives in a 4 bedroom detatched house with an alleyway that leads to down the side of the house to a purpose built refuse area at the rear. Not so ideal if you are a terrace dweller who is either (a) lazy, (b) a pensioner (and there are still some of those), (c) pregnant (and there is a surprising amount of that), (d) disabled, or (e) someone who is intent on re-enacting the way the street was in Victorian days, albeit minus the squalor and the need to cover table legs with stout hessian. All these groups will have band together to wheel their bin from the back garden, through the gate at the back, along the long back-alley, up a road that they do not live on, all the way up the street that they do reside on, drag the bin up a step or two, and present it to SITA at the front of the house. There are also going to be problems for the forgetful amongst us as there will clearly be legal ramifications for those who are trying to undertake these activities at the midnight hour, dressed the in aforementioned underpants.

Naturally, the Reaganomics bit of this all means that the cost of collecting rubbish has reduced significantly. This is not, unfortunately represented in the council tax bill which has increased by 23.6% with the improvements to the refuse collection service often cited as a reason this hike though, in fairness, probably only by pensioners / lazy people / the disabled / pregnant ladies / Victoriana enthusiasts etc in angry letters to the Eastbourne Herald.

If I did not fall into the 'lazy' category then I would probably launch a campaign to "save the tradesmen's entrance". Luckily, the inevitable misunderstandings need not now occur.

This complaint has been brought to you in association with a baby suffering from a verbose bout of overnight colic.The net result has been this post and a 5 week old child finally sleeping safely, though unusually, in his changing area. His exhausted father fell asleep on the floor "for a couple of minutes until he wakes up", and both father and baby finally rose some four hours later, with VVB Junior looking considerably more comfortable and amused by the whole situation.