|
I don't think these guys care if they cause a traffic jam.
|
So exactly when would you all like your bins collected? How about over night - oh, no, sorry that might wake you, how about only between the hours of 10 and 3, which would require 2 or 3 times as many men and collection vehicles which would put quite a bit on our council tax bills, but I don't think you would want to pay for that and even if you did you would complain that the council workers only do 5 hours a day!!!!!! You people are all the same, you want something but dont want the inconvience of it - the "Not in my backyard" syndrome. If you know that on a certain day at a certain time your route will take 2 minutes longer why dont you leave earlier or later, funny how all services have to revolve around your busy lives dropping jonny off at school and then rushing home so you can watch daytime tv. If any of you can think of a better way of collecting the rubbish then please feel free to print it. No doubt you are all the same people who moan about the "Tesco, Sainsbury's or Asda" trucks you get stuck behind, yet without them how would you all be able to eat. Please think before you put such dribble into print.
Rant over, normal service can resume ;o)
|
Truckersunite, you're displaying a great deal more sympathy for the dustmen than I think they deserve.
I have no problem with dustcarts, we all create rubbish so we all live with the consequences of collecting it.
But what logic is there in planning a route that takes a large vehicle along a main road at less than walking pace during the rush hour? Doubly ironic when it is the councils who control the rubbish collection who also dictate when companies such as the one I work for can disrupt traffic - your crack about "only between the hours of 10 and 3" is frequently very true. But hey I can live with it, I know it happens and I leave home earlier on Thursdays to deal with it.
You probably don't know the village I'm talking about but there is only a main road through it with lots of residential streets on either side. Yes, it is possible to cut through the side streets but why should these be used as rat-runs with all the associated risks to pedestrians, etc?
I have no problems with lorries or most other drivers generally. I DO have a problem with the kind of pea-brain who allows his vehicle (whatsoever type it may be) to cause major disruption to numerous other people when the application of two brain cells would provide an alternative.
|
Residential streets are still roads. You pay road tax to use the roads, so what is the problem with using them? Are pedestrians banned from the main road?
Rubbish collection is probably more useful to society than brain surgery in terms of overall health. Gas mains need to be replaced only occaisionally, the two have coincided. It won't be for ever, will it?
|
|
|
duchess - whilst i agree with your frustration, and disagree with the stance taken by truckersunite, i think the blame for the disruption lies elsewhere.
the dustcar driver is not allowed to use his common sense, whether he has got any or not. you see, in the state sector, most people are paid to follow rules and instructions to the letter. they are not paid to think for themselves.
if the dustcart driver had done anything different to his usual duties, he would have been liable to be disciplined.
the blame lies with the manager of the roadworks, and his/her inability or lack-of-power to make alternative arrangements (or temporary traffic controls) for the rubbish collection.
last week, at a level crossing near me, the barriers jammed on one side. the police patrol car sent to the scene went to the open side of the barrier and blocked it from use - possibly justified in view of rail safety. however, traffic jams built up on either side for miles around for two hours, and no one bothered to set up information or diversion points at junctions a mile away to stop people from adding to the jams.
|
the dustcar driver is not allowed to use his common sense, whether he has got any or not. you see, in the state sector, most people are paid to follow rules and instructions to the letter. they are not paid to think for themselves.
Actually, I would be quite surprised if the dustcar driver was a public sector employee. Most refuse collections have long since been privatised.
When they privatised my refuse collection, the difference in staffing was immediately noticeable: gone were the friendly and helpful men, replaced by a bunch of surly and unhelpful jobsworths. They had been on the job two weeks when I found a group of them amusing themselves by peering in the window of my downstairs bathroom -- luckily not when I was actually in the bath.
Trying to complain about their behaviour was a nightmare -- the council had signed the contract, but seemed to have very little control over how it was implemented. The contractors were supposed to process their own complaints, which they did -- by simply ignoring them.
So I guess that if duchess's binmen had been part of the council workforce, the roads department could have phoned and asked them to reschedule their round. The same call to the privatised contractor would be a very different matter: when I talk to folks working in these sectors, they all tell the same story of how it becomes near-impossible to organise that sort of routine communication. It's now supposed to pass all the way up the council's management chain, where it is relayed to the contractor at a high level, and passed down again. All of which is so much hassle (and so often ineffective) that the council staff don't bother.
|
now supposed to pass all the way up the council's management >> chain, where it is relayed to the contractor at a high level, >> and passed down a
>>
as it is getting away from motoring, i will just make one closing response.
has anyone not explained that the reason this communication chain has evolved is as follows:
private contractor's staff are empowered to take action whenever their "customer's" staff at any level request it.
however, the council bosses then say who told you to do that? the council employee who you claim to have authorised the work is not in empowered to make those requests.
council has to have everything done in an accountable fashion. it must be minuted or written down on a memo or authorised by the manager's manager. etc. then they ask the contractor "where is the evidence of a paper chain authorising that change?".
all becasue the private sector is seen as money grabbing, get rich quick, fleece the council,up to no good but dirty tricks. communism is the answer, i say.
let us all drive trabants. scrub that. better still, force us to take the communist bus.
then we will not be held up in long traffic jams behind dustcarts, after all the jam would not happen if there were no by private motorists in their own cars.
|
all becasue the private sector is seen as money grabbing, get rich quick, fleece the council,up to no good but dirty tricks.
Sadly it is sometimes the case. When my rubbish collection contract was given to a private sector company (Spanish, as it happens) it went to a total shambles. Old bin men were sacked and new bin men were recruited on three month contracts at minimum wage - and lots of rubbish dropped in the middle of the street etc. Thankfully, after two years of complaints, the company was 'sacked' and we now have a different provider - Scandinavian I think. They seem much better.
Its amazing that as a country we no longer have our own mass car manufacturer, most of the rail companies are foreign owned, as are many of the utility companies. Privatisation seems largely to have meant selling off the country to foreigners without much of the way in improvements for customers. I suppose I'm just very old fashioned about these things, but it just doesn't seem a good idea to me. We even seem to need foreigners to run our rubbish collection. Sad, isn't it?
|
|
|
|
|
No doubt you are all the same people who moan about the "Tesco, Sainsbury's or Asda" trucks you get stuck behind, yet without them how would you all be able to eat.
Dunno about others, but I'd eat the same way as I do now: buying my food from smaller locally-owned shops, run by people who know their products and their customers. It saves me a lot of money too.
The biggest reason I avoid the superstores is their manipulation of the consumer (lighting which gives me headaches, psychological tricks in layout) ... but one of the reasons is their dumb and destructive policy of setting up hugely centralised distribution systems which generate zillions of miles of unnecessary truck journeys.
Please think before you put such dribble into print.
Please engage brain before you assume that ever-growing fleets of long-distance trucks are the only way of feeding people.
|
>>Please engage brain before you assume that ever-growing fleets of long-distance trucks are the only way of feeding people.
Believe me when I say that I agree with you, I see wasted miles everyday, I refuse to shop in Tesco due to the way they treat their suppliers and hauliers. The other day I went from Southampton to Avonmouth with 300 empty pallets, and I returned with 300 empty pallets, all they did was offload and reload another 300 of exactly the same type!!!!!!!! No one could tell me what it was all about, they all just shrugged their shoulders.
But getting back onto the original thread, it has been said that the driver would not have been able to change his route, this is very true, It is no doubt preplanned down to the last 1/10 of a mile and any variation would have been noticed, In todays penny pinching economy all the autonomy we once had as drivers has all but gone.
|
I went from Southampton to Avonmouth with 300 empty pallets, and I returned with 300 empty pallets, all they did was offload and reload another 300 of exactly the same type!!!!!!!!
Crazy. You'd never get that sort of inefficency if they privatised it.
O, errr, I see ... ;-)
|
|
|
The other day I went from Southampton to Avonmouth with 300 empty pallets,and I returned with 300 empty pallets, all they did was offload and reload another 300 of exactly the same type!!!!!!!! No one could tell me what it was all about, they all just shrugged their shoulders.
Reminds me of the story of a BRS driver in the late 60s early 70s. Left Cardiff docks with a load of tomatoes for Southampton, got to the market, was redirected to Birmingham because value of load was better there. Arrives in Brum and gets redirected yet again. Yes you guessed it, to Cardiff.
Happy Days
--
Alyn Beattie
I\'m sane, it\'s the rest of the world that\'s mad.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
