While watching the tellybox on Friday night, the bulb in the table lamp beside me started flickering. It’s one of those low-energy LED things that’s supposed to last X number of years longer than a standard one. When these things start flickering, it’s a certain sign that they’re in the throes of death…I’m… trying… to hold… out… for just… a few… more… min…. Blackness. Fucking things. Of course, what with them being so expensive, you only ever buy them when one goes. It’s rare to have a spare, unless for some reason you’ve bought one of the incorrect wattage and discovered you’re either dwelling in the light of our cave-painting ancestors, or you burn your retinas out when you turn the bloody thing on.

Anyway, while well-stocked with the smaller variety of these givers of inappropriate light, I was deficient in large screw-fit bulbs. FFS.

9 watts. I needed 9 watts to restore the calm and warming ambience of my living room. The following day, nearly six pounds lighter in pocket, I returned home with an 8W bulb. Eight, compared to nine, it should’ve been alright, but it’s so much brighter than the one it replaced. So annoying. There’s another unit that you’re supposed to look at too, but I barely scraped through physics, so I’ve no chance of understanding this crap. Why can’t 8W provide the same brightness across the board? Why do things have to be complicated with other units?

Could you imagine if this sort of thing was applied to cooking? Measure out 250g of whatever, but you also need to factor in the phase of the bloody moon because it affects the gravitational pull on your kitchen scales.

Ridiculous.

I’m now quite uncomfortable in my living room. I might as well be sitting in a Housing Units display area with harsh shop lighting rendering it a two dimensional, shadow-less hell.

But at least the spiders have nowhere to hide.

Respect my authority
I have very little respect for local authorities, especially Labour-controlled ones. They are wasteful and they establish policies that show their hatred for working people, whom they see as cash cows to fund their ludicrous lefty agendas, knowing full well that working people are too bloody tired and busy to kick up a fuss. They pander to those who keep them in a job and ignore those who aren’t numerous enough to boot them out of office.

But that’s for another time.

My beef with my local council is with its bin men. We have alternating collections here. For my £74 a month Council Tax to Bolton Metropolitan Council, I have my general waste removed one week and the recycling taken the following week. We all use wheelie bins and sometimes, after I’ve been out for a walk with my dog, I deposit his deposits in my general waste bin. For some reason though, my bin men, refuse collectors, whatever they’re called, don’t deem it necessary to empty my bin properly. So whereas everybody else’s gets put on the back of the wagon, tipped up and emptied, all they do with mine is pull out the sacks of waste and leave whatever is left to fester.

I noticed they’d done this the other week and even put my bin out on the street for them to empty it properly before going to work. On returning, my bin had been returned to its normal place and, on inspection, I found this:

Dirty, fucking, pigs. Despite it containing festering dog poo, they couldn’t be bothered to just put the bin on the back of the wagon to empty it properly. I was furious. It’d be another fortnight before it was collected again. But what on earth possesses them to even do this? Why go rooting around in bins and pulling sacks out and putting them in other bins? Why not just empty all the bins on the back of the bloody wagon?

And what would they rather me do with my dog’s poo, just leave it and not bag it up and bin it? Or maybe save it up in a pile somewhere that it can attract flies and disease until such a time that I have a pile big enough to put in a bag that the bin men see worthy to pull out of my bin.

Unbelievable.

So, here’s me: single income, no kids (SINK). I pay over the odds for council services compared to my multi-occupancy neighbours (with kids), and I don’t even get my bin emptied… and my neighbours use MY paper bin and it’s always full of their stuff when I come to use it.

I don’t ask for much, I understand that my Council Tax needs to help towards providing services and education for the vulnerable (and those pretending to be) and the progeny of breeders, but for what I do pay, is it too much to ask that my bin is emptied properly, that the street lights work and that the roads are kept in a decent state of repair? In Bolton, clearly it is.