Those in power love to claim a problem is out of their hands

BRITAIN feels broken and one council's idiotic wheelie bin policy goes a long way to explaining why.

- Sam Lister

Across the beautiful, higgledy-piggledy city of York, the ugly waste receptacles have begun appearing outside homes where they were previously deemed to be unsuitable obstacles.

Terraced houses with no front gardens now have to have them parked outside the front door. Strict rules mean they cannot be kept in back alleyways, where dustbins were once collected, but no one knows why.

What residents have been told is that high sickness rates, and the need for binmen to be able to wear shorts, is the reason once-neat neighbourhoods now look scruffy and unloved.

One councillor insisted they had no involvement in the decision or power to stop it because it was “operational” - so it is an issue left to council employees without any political involvement. Or, in other words, “nothing to do with me, guv”, which goes to the heart of why the country is so badly governed, from low-level local issues through to our ailing economy.

For decades, shrewd politicians who could sense a spot of bother ahead worked out a way of shielding themselves from the fallout.