The issue of grooming gangs has been a major subject of debate in recent weeks. One figure that has been repeatedly cited is that 1 in 73 Muslim men in the town of Rotherham has been prosecuted for grooming gang offences. While technically true, this figure is slightly misleading.
Its source is a 2020 paper by Kish Bhatti-Sinclair and Charles Sutcliffe. These researchers collected data on prosecutions of grooming gangs between 1997 and 2017 by reviewing over 2,000 media reports. They identified 498 accused perpetrators, of whom 83% had Muslim names. The researchers then calculated, for each local authority where there had been at least one prosecution during the relevant time period, the number of Muslim men per Muslim prosecuted for grooming gang offences. For Rotherham, the number was 73.
Why is this figure misleading? There are two reasons.
The first is that it is the second highest fraction out of all the figures in Bhatti-Sinclair and Sutcliffe’s table. For example, in Slough (which had the second lowest fraction) the number of Muslim men per Muslim prosecuted for grooming gang offences was 10,874. Is this because there is something fundamentally different about Slough? Perhaps. More likely is that the rate of prosecutions for grooming gang offence is a noisy measure of the true, underlying rate of grooming gang offences.
Overall, Bhatti-Sinclair and Sutcliffe estimated that 1 in 2,200 Muslim men in England was prosecuted for grooming gang offences. This figure is arguably more informative than the one for Rotherham, since it averages out a lot of the noise. The true underlying rate could, of course, be higher than 1 in 2,200 if many cases are not recorded. And it could vary between smaller towns like Slough and Rotherham, and larger cities like Birmingham and London.
The second reason why the figure for Rotherham, and indeed all the figures in Bhatti-Sinclair and Sutcliffe’s table, are misleading is that they were computed by dividing the number of Muslim men in a single year by the number of Muslim men prosecuted over 20 years. This is not normally how crime rates are computed, and for good reason: it’s not comparing apples with apples.
Crime rates (or prosecution rates) are useful because they tell us how many crimes were committed relative to the total number of potential opportunities for crime. For crimes committed over multiple years, the total number of potential opportunities is much larger than the number of people who were alive in a single year. Assuming for the sake of simplicity that the population is stable, the total number of potential opportunities is equal to the number of people multiplied by the number of years (i.e., the number of person-years).
To see why this is right, note that if we used an arbitrarily long time-interval for the number of crimes, we could eventually conclude that every single person in the relevant category had been prosecuted! But this would be meaningless.
We therefore need to multiply the denominator of Bhatti-Sinclair and Sutcliffe’s figures by 20. In other words, the least misleading way to present the numbers from their table would be to say that: in the period 1997–2017, Muslim men in England and Wales were prosecuted for grooming gang offences at an average rate of 1 in 44,000.
Once again, this could well be an underestimate of the true underlying rate if many cases are not recorded. But the statement itself is accurate, since it refers to prosecutions not actual cases. It’s also worth noting that Bhatti-Sinclair and Sutcliffe found evidence that Pakistanis specifically, rather than Muslims in general, were dramatically overrepresented among grooming gang offenders.
An earlier version of this article referred to “potential criminals” rather than “potential opportunities for crime”.
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Our local recycling centre has been open the whole time (I think apart from the very first period of lockdown in 2020) and it has always seemed pretty normal to me other than the odd lunatic masker (customers rather than staff).
I know lots of people in the private sector who are lazy slackers and true covid believers, though probably this is more true of the corporate sector rather than small businesses. I think it’s counterproductive (and inaccurate often) to try and identify trends as far as covidianism goes, but certainly in terms of safetyism, adherence to the narrative and virtue signalling, the corporate sector has been as guilty as the public sector. And let’s not forget that big tech, big pharma and most of the MSM is private not public.
Everyone in the public sector has been recycling the same Covid rubbish for 18 months
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The charity sector is also bad for it – not laziness in this case, I don’t think. More a mix of genuine true believers in the cult and wokeism meaning that they have to conspicuously demonstrate how much they care by implementing silly rules which inconvenience others (and sometimes themselves!).
Our tip did the whole appointment nonsense, which is still in place. Then they decided to consult the public on whether to keep this in place. The answer was a resounding NO! But I fully expect it to remain in place, whilst our country lanes become impromptu dumps.
Give it a few months and the councils will be scratching their heads and wondering why there’s been a significant increaase in fly-tipping!
Funny you should say that. I’ve noticed a lot more crap lying around town. To be fair the council does deal with it fairly quickly but I know our local tip has also been operating under covid-friendly rules.
I live on the very edge (for now) of a large growing town. The country lanes nearby have always been used by flytippers. Now however, several of the farm fields in the area have been filled with junk. It’s not just the odd mattress or bit of rubble (usually from cowboy builders) but sacks full of domestic rubbish.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/broken-windows-theory
The broken windows theory states that visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment encourage further disorder and misbehavior, leading to serious crimes. The principle was developed to explain the decay of neighborhoods, but it is often applied to work and educational environments.
We used to get that when I lived in Surrey back in thr 90s, offten a whole load from a small tipper dumped in a field gateway.
One load had papers with a name and address. I rang both the Police and the council and neither wanted to know. Pity because they could have identified who the people employed. The joke is that the address was literally across the road from the recycling centre yet these cowboys drove miles away to tip it in a ditch.
I also reported a van which towed a car and left it in a layby. They didn’t want to know about that either. They only got involved when they came back and set light to said car, a hedge, a tree and half a field of wheat.
Round here not so much fly tipping, mainly just beed cans and “food” wrappers.
Thank you for that sane view, Julian. The Covid side has enough political opportunism to share – in spades.
Possibly true in big companies- anywhere with lots of staff you will always get some slackers frankly- but how many public sector types have lost a single penny in wages or pension benefits over the last 18 months? That would be a big, fat zero. They even got a bonus for working from home in difficult circumstances FFS! Meanwhile, in the productive sector we’re struggling to deal with petty, pointless rules that cost us time and money and trying to keep enough work going on to pay the taxes that pay for all this. I’ve asked people in the public sector that moan about their jobs how they would feel if they had to find the money to pay for whatever it is they think they deserve- not had an answer yet.
I think this must depend on the tip management (like so much else at the moment). The local recycling centre to me in Chorley (not far from the Farington one in the article picture) has been open the whole time. There were restrictions such as only being able to bring one waste type, but you didn’t need to book unless you wanted to bring a van or trailer. I think all those restrictions have now been removed, although the workers still couldn’t help when I went a few months ago.
‘the workers couldn’t help’. May I make a slight but important correction?
‘the workers WOULDN’T help’.
No – the stupid ‘social distancing’ rules are imposed. Having used several tips in the (normal) past, the workers have always been helpful beyond the bare minimum.
Again – generalised mythology.
I guess it varies – in the city where I used to live they were rarely helpful at the local tip. I remember one day we took a whole car load of paper (old pamphlets, etc) and two of us spent ages taking them out of their boxes and posting them through the slots. A bloke in the cabin watched us do this, then when we’d finished and were about to leave he came out and said “if you’d asked we could have opened the door in the end and you could have tipped it all in”. Thanks…
I learned long ago that people do what they can, and there are people who will make life harder for others if they can. You have the satisfaction of knowing that sitting in a portacabin and watching others struggle unnecessarily is all that man can do. Could he make a useful contribution to society he would be doing so. As things are, he’s just another useless eater resentful of those more capable than he.
My own experience of council workers at tips is that they have been unfailingly helpful, if sometimes a little rough in their manners.
They were generally heplful at the tip we used to use, but on the other hand they once crushed someone’s head with a JCB.
Lol, I haven’t been to the main tip in my area in the last 18mths but the staff were previously always very helpful there, especially if they spotted something they liked the look of!
We have a booking system for our local dump. I hope they keep it independent of Covid. Before the booking system you might well wait 30 minutes in a queue to get in. Now you can pretty much guarantee to drive in at your allotted time. It is doesn’t matter if you miss your slot – you just book another – and it is trivial to change the slot beforehand.
Ours only allows one visit a week, and 2 in a month…..great if you’re renovating a flat and have a small car. 😡
You can choose a less busy time to avoid queues.
How do you know when the less busy times are though? We don’t need to visit our tip very often but it seems busy whatever time and whatever day you go. It’s a victim of its own success!
Ask the staff? I’d imagine first hour after opening and weekday mornings. It’s not rocket science, nor is the tip there for your convenience alone. Please give some thought to other people who have different circumstances.
What part of ‘it seems busy whatever time and whatever day you go‘ don’t you understand? It’s not rocket science.
Try it whens it’s raining. Never fails at ours. People still seem to like a nice run out to the tip in decent weather.
WRT to staff helping, at our local they are not allowed to, but do when you really need it and are not at all wedded to social distancing. The users are still pretty much scared of eachother’s shadows and there are, disappointingly, still a few masks to be seen even though it’s obviously all outdoors.
In general it was very hard to predict when it was going to be busy. There were some more predictably slack times – but that was because they were inconvenient.
If you need to use the dump more than once a week I suggest you hire a skip.
Great, so to stop you having to queue for a few minutes, or work out a less busy time, my son who’s renovating an ex-council flat on a very tight budget (and has nowhere to put one) should hire an expensive skip to chuck out a few carpets and bags of wallpaper? Seriously, some of you on here are very short sighted. Municipal facilities are there for everyone, not just to be of maximum convenience to you personally.
It was not a few minutes. It was highly unpredictable but could easily be 20 or 30 minutes and even then when it was busy it was highly competitive finding a good spot.
I am sorry if it works out badly for your son but he is the exception. The solution doesn’t have to be a return to a free-for-all. All that is needed is some system for someone with an exceptional requirement to make apply for more frequent slots.
Our place has a webcam online showing the queue, so as long as you’re not really far away from it, it works pretty well in terms of allowing you to know how long you’re going to have to wait.
It’s also brand new and well designed so even when there is high demand the flow is pretty good.
Obviously if the dump is capable of keeping up with peak demand that is ideal. Round here we were a very long way from that and I don’t see how they could improve capacity very much.
The webcam could help a bit but it is a fairly rural area here, so many people live some distance from the nearest dump. Also I like to know in advance (and by that I mean at least a day or two) that I will be able to go to the dump and easily get rid of the stuff – I don’t think that is an unusual or unreasonable requirement.
In truth this is a fuss about very little. Different councils will come up with different solutions based on local resources and demand. It is just kind of interesting that lockdown forced/stimulated the council to come up with a new approach that works well here.
Since when has any council come up with anything resembling a ‘solution’ that helps us rather than them?
You appear to lead a charmed life. You like to know a day or two in advance that you will be able to go the dump without being inconvenienced- bless! Some of us simply do not have such luxuries. It’s a pain to queue of course, but in 40+ years of using these places I’ve never known it to be the massive headache it is now. Some of us just like to get on with things.
‘Some of us just like to get on with things.‘
Why don’t you shut up and get on with them then?
Many, many apologies- I believed I was allowed to comment. But you’re right- I really do have better and more productive things to do than debate petty, pointless bureaucracy.
Clearly the facilities are inadequate then and they need a larger tip or more tips. The reality is that both long queues every day and booking systems are going to lead to an increase in fly tipping, which is overall quite likely to cost the council more to deal with than having adequate facilities, especially where hazardous waste such as asbestos is involved.
I am struggling with your argument. We had long queues. Now we don’t and for most people the system is more convenient. How does that lead to an increase in fly tipping?
In order to make an appointment in our area you have to have a residential council tax account, for that area. So everyone using the tip who hasn’t now fly tips instead. Obviously they ought to be paying council tax/going to their local area/paying for business waste disposal but if you aren’t bothered about these things then you aren’t bothered about fly tipping.
Well that’s a shame. However, I don’t think appeasing fly tippers by letting them use dumps without contributing to the cost is a brilliant solution.
In any case that is an idiosyncrasy of your area. The local booking system has made life better for most people in our area and doesn’t seem to have any effect on fly-tipping.
The tips are paid for out of taxation. Whether somebody happens to live in that council tax area is fairly irrelevant – it’s likely to balance out overall if people from neighbouring areas use each other’s tips.
You still haven’t provided any evidence for the “most people” claim.
You still haven’t provided any evidence for the “most people” claim.
I am sorry. I only just read the comment where you asked for evidence. I admit to using “most people” informally. The current system is so much more convenient unless you need to take multiple loads in one week it seemed obvious. It is really easy to get a slot – by sheer coincidence I booked one for Thursday this morning. I could get pretty much any time I wanted.
I am stopping this particular debate which strikes me as rather unimportant.
“Most people”? Done a survey of all local residents, have you?
If people can’t get an appointment at a time convenient to them, and especially if it happens repeateldy, a proportion of them will be tempted to fly tip – surely that’s not a difficult concept?
Exactly, although it does seem to be a difficult concept…
Because the people that aren’t queueing are fly tipping instead! Get in the real world!
You seem to antagonised the brainless brick throwers here.
He isn’t the exception- lots of us are in this position and hiring a skip for something like £200 assuming you can get permission to put one near enough to you. These places are paid for by us, so telling us to hire a skip on top of this is a bit rich.
Menopause?
Civil servant?
What if you’re working and find you need to dump something at short notice? It’s fine if you have time for all this and booking when you know you’re going is great- assuming you can get a convenient slot- but it isn’t always possible.
Public sector, seemingly with governments encouragement, view their role as much more important than the customer. They have little sense of how their wages are paid via taxes and are full of entitlement with the idea they serve the public gone. They dictate how things are to be with customer an inconvenience. Public sector and its unions are also still wedded to zero covid. It’s going to be a long struggle. (All my working life I was a public sector employee so I have an insider view).
Do you have an increased problem with fly tipping? I’d be astonished if not.
The tip booking system is actually one of the few useful things to come out of lockdown. We used to have the huge queues but now rarely wait more than 5 mins.
See my response above.
Booking systems for tips are like cracking a nut with a sledgehammer.
The only “restriction” at my local tip is one person at a time using the steps to each container. Almost none of the staff are masked.
I’ve noticed this with libraries. The other day we popped into a library in a town nearby, and there was still one-way systems marked out in tape on the carpet. There were signs up saying “please consider wearing a mask in this enclosed space”.
Why would anyone want to go to a library in those circumstances?
And why is it libraries and other public spaces which seem to retain the most draconian restrictions?
The word is ‘seem’ : the eye of the beholder grinding an axe.
Of the odd confrontations I’ve had, there is no distinction between private and pub(lic) sectors.
Indeed – a shop local to me still has the one person at once rule (despite huge open space to queue inside) and you have to wear a mask. They have lost my business until they relax these rules. This one is pure fear driven by the MSM brainwashing. It’s rather depressing 🙁
In our area the libraries are the main places the old and the lonely go for a bit of human interaction. Many of our libraries have been farmed out to local groups so the restrictions are a bit more… Sensible.
Just ignore it all.
You can add railways to the list where many staff now seem to regard the public as an inconvenience and would prefer that the government continues to pay them to run nearly-empty trains around all day. It’s not quite as bad as it was during the lockdowns (at least they now can’t enforce muzzles), but the attitude is definitely still there.
ScotchRail engineers are just after striking over demands for more pay and job security, while numbers fail to rebound, fewer trains are being run, and there’s literally nothing for them to do, or money to pay for it.
But when has reality been an impediment to unions?
So the unions are doing what they are there for. Criticize them for not putting the boot into covid policy. That makes sense.
So – as said – the private sector shows no virtuous distinction. The variation is related to particular circumstance.
The railways aren’t private (apart from freight operations and the few open access operators) – they are oursourced government operations which seem to think the government will prop them up indefinitely at the current level, without job losses.
It is- along with patronizing on a loop about ‘respecting others’ by wearing a mask- not sure how that works. About 4 different messages, posters, screens on the trains all exhorting us to muzzle up ‘to protect others’ – not one of them gave a rational reason for wearing one, all of them were pleas to emotion, guilt, etc.
I think this issue is part public sector organisations wanting to continue the draconian COVID regs because it cuts down on the work they are able to do and then ‘justifies’ (in their opinion) extra salary and resources generally to do a normal amount of work, thus further cementing their control of the population.
The other reason is that councils (and their contractors) are incompetent and rarely remove things like temporary signage unless they need it elsewhere or members of the public complain sufficiently.
They rely on us grumbling to ourselves only to have a ready-made excuse. Bad publicity will get them to do something, and even then they may try and portray the person complaining as a ‘moaning Minnie’ or suchlike.
My local dump operates exactly the same rules which Will describes here, and for doubtless the same reasons. Talking to a worker there, he expects the booking system to be kept in place for ever.
My neighbors are emptying their elderly relatives house so that he can move in with them. It’s at a distance and they can only book one appointment a week for the tip. The whole idea is beyond ridiculous.
Might be easier to get a skip?
always good to donate goods, clothes, furniture for recycling, much better for the environment
Some tips sort out and resell the good stuff. As do some house clearance people. When I moved mother out of the house where she lived for 60 years the house clearance guy charged a fee and subsequently sent us a cheque for some of the stuff he sold on.
After she died I took a lot of her stuff to the charity shops.
Until some believable time & motion studies are done, then I’m on the fence re booking. On one hand, it feels like it will reduce the number of people who can get through but on the other, by spreading visits out over the whole day, it might help. Personally the 10-15 min wait I’ve had at our local tip is no hardship so a booking system would be extra hassle.
Local charity shop had a booking system for dropping off donations. Still there but you can also turn up. This is now actually more work…
The points about whose benefit this is all for is well made. Can’t help but think of the GP access problems as already mentioned.
This overplayed pandemic is causing a lot of collateral damage and issues like employees now thinking they have the right to work from home. Hardly saving the planet to heat up 100 individual homes AND the office as well.
I’m on the border between BANES (Bath and NE Somerset) and Mendip council areas. BANES tips near me are like this, Mendip are pretty well normal. But then, BANES requires you to register your vehicle and use number plate recognition, Mendip you just roll up. I think there is a deeper Little Hitler thing at play here.
In Germany vehicle number plates indicate which local authority you live in.
At the height of Lockdown the police stopped people from Hamburg going to Schleswig Holstein. For a lot of people the local supermarket was 2 minutes away, but across the border, the other one 10 minutes. Already one cannot use another parishes dump, they check your addresses. My father has an allotment in another parish than his home address, if he wants to use the dump for allotment rubbish, he also has to show proof where the allotment is. Crazy!
“BANES requires you to register your vehicle and use number plate recognition”
This goes way back before Covid in a lot of LA areas. It used to be done simply by automatically issuing permits to residents in order to obviate some of the problems of crowding in certain tips.
It’s inconsistencies like this that really annoy. Assume different councils? To see this on steroids, just look at the thousands (millions) of different processes in the NHS and medical practises.
West Yorkshire
All of our household waste recycling centres are open but you’ll need to book a slot to visit on a weekend or bank holiday.
To keep everyone safe, we’re asking you to:
Our staff will not be able to help you dispose of your waste.
Wear a muzzle outside of your car -are they mad?
Yes.
At my local centre, the good old boy who directs the traffic, does it from from a beaten up armchair, usually with a fag in his mouth. I think most of the guys working there have probably worked out that, working in an environment with dust and debris from everyones homes flying about, social distancing and hygiene measures are a bit of a joke.
In other words, you found the difference between the private sector which has to work for a living in order to convince people to give them money in exchange for services, and the public sector which gets paid no matter what because if you don’t pay your taxes, the government stomps all over your face…
Our recycling centre is very similar. You need to book in advance and provide proof of address, and the slots are very limited. If they were getting paid by the drop, they’d be much more interested in taking in as many people as possible. But since they’re getting paid even if they sit around doing nothing full time, they’d much rather sit around doing nothing.
And this is the biggest issue with tax funded services: the people working in them have zero incentive to do a good job, other their conscience.
Precisely.
Really stupid restrictions – just a pity that the article uses it to bang a propagandized drum about ‘private’ v. ‘public’ sectors. ( GPs are private contractors; the hospitality sector has been ‘allowed’ to do certain things by government, and the key pressure in all this has been from private corporate global finance).
I think the distinction is more between those who think their jobs are at risk and those who don’t – so people in government-funded roles and many in large businesses (apart from a few industries such as travel) think they are relatively safe, whereas people working in smaller businesses know that they aren’t so are more likely to be keen to get back to normal as quickly as possible.
GPs may well be private contractors- but their pay and pensions come straight out of the public sector money pit. I know- we work with loads of them.
It’s true that a lot of big companies have cumbersome working practices and stroppy staff, but the issue for most with the public sector is that is is completely divorced from reality financially. I’ve worked for 45+ years and probably got a fair few to go before I can even think about retirement- meanwhile plenty of people my age have already retired from public sector jobs on nice final salary pensions that are gold plated funded by the tax payer. When has anyone in the public sector ever woken up wondering if their job is safe, if the company might have gone bust, if the bank will call in the OD, if payrolls can be met, if the customers will pay their bills, if the pension fund is doing well enough, whether they might get fired for misconduct, and on it goes. Instead, they generally think they are hard done to and seem to think that ‘comparable’ jobs in the private sector are much better paid without the slightest evidence that they even exist.
At busy tips, have a few days when booking is needed. See if there’s a demand for any more than that.
At small ones, abandon it. The household waste site I use (built 2015) is vast and spacious vs. others in the county but far fewer people use it (low population density). No queuing or holdups … ever.
Result: booking makes no sense at all.
Yet you’re turned away if you haven’t booked (I tried once).
Or maybe bookable slots in morning and turn up in afternoon?
From what you describe, it is clear to me that this is another one of those examples that the Brits are very good at, not learning from best practice.
We, in my rural Welsh county, have a system that also uses booked slots, but staff are friendly and helpful, and it functions far better than in the pre-slot days when queues of tip-goers stretched out of the gate and down the road, engines running.
I am hopeful that this is one innovation that remains after ‘normal’ returns.
Will, I think your difficulties at the local tip may by symptomatic of a bigger, non-Covid problem for Lancashire’s Council Tax Payers. Certainly, there are no similar issues at my local facilities in Wakefield, which are running very smoothly. Over 15 years ago, Lancashire County Council entered into a disastrous PFI arrangement with an Australian-based waste company, Global Renewables. The council committed about £2 billion for 2 recycling plants, at Farington and Thornton, neither of which ever operated as planned. As a result, Lancashire’s waste has had to be transported outside the county for “recycling”, at vastly increased cost. To cut a long story short, the more likely reason why your local recycling centre has its gates closed is because it’s far cheaper to leave you to deal with your own rubbish!
I’m public sector, have been for most of my working life but now trying to get out asap. A little insight: I have always found these organisations to be overly risk averse and cautious, always looking for ways to close gaps in procedures in case of legislation. Staff and managers are rarely well trained so policies and procedures have to be very narrow, which results in the ‘computer says no’ approach.
Unfortunately I appear to be the only person in my team who isn’t on board with the whole covid debacle, the rest are fully signed up unless restrictions get in the way of something they want to do. Of course there’s also pressure to visibly cheerlead the Public Health message to friends, family, enemies, on social media etc.
In terms of workload, when we were in the office it was always unreasonable for me, and that’s only got worse since March 2020. However, they haven’t quite got the hang of sharing things out equally, so there are indeed people doing next to nothing…
If the local tip is closed just take your rubbish round to the nearest pikey encampment and leave it on the ground there – the council is only too happy to clean up after these vermin.
The globalists rely on the fact that most people are lazy. I’m not. There’s good news and there’s bad news: the good news is my ‘business cards’ arrived today. The bad news (for the globalists, their lackeys and collaborators) is that there’s a *real* hunger out there for an alternative narrative. The ‘hits’ on my website today have been huge… simply after handing out a few cards to willing (mask-free) pissed off employees and members of the public. Old school meets hi-tech. The truth will always succeed over the lies. FIGHT. BACK. BETTER. https://www.LCAHub.org/
So glad!! Great need
Thank goodness for my local tip. None of that covid nonsense there. Freedom day arrived and they lost the protective perspex screen around their patio table and chairs and got back to normal.
Walking in with a wheelbarrow? No problem. Walking in with an armful of rubbish? No problem.
Just how much extra have all those perspex screens cost plus increase petrochemical usage???
Plus I hope they put them to one side and not in the tip – ready for the next lockdown?
😂😂😂😂😂your article made me laugh. Thank you. Yes the tip is just one of those places that will do anything to avoid helping their customers. My husband had the pleasure of walking up a full flight of stairs to empty an old microwave into a skip. He is 78. He injured his leg and back. When I called to complain, I was told all about all the health and safety rules in place for the employees.
Secondly, our Practice nurse announced, it was always going to be a move to telemedicine. And Covid just brought it forward sooner than expected. There is no way gp’s are going back to “the way we were”.
I wonder if their computerside manner will be any better than their bedside manner?
I was hospitalised recently and when a mask wearing surgeon condescendingly raised his eyebrows at a comment of mine I verbally eviscerated him for hiding behind the damn rag. The next time he turned up he was maskless.
We parted on the best of terms though as he went out his way to discharge me on my terms (about two hours) not the hospitals, (about two days).
I hope he learned a little lesson. As I pointed out to him, we are constantly lectured about taking responsibility for our own health so, when we do it’s his job to respect that.
So many lazy people using Con-vid as an excuse not to work…they can’t all be bedwetters!
Simple solution to a closed tip – fly tip outside the gates with a sign “fly tipping will stop once you lazy bastards get back to work”.
Yes pressure is needed – pity about the potential of cameras
The staff at our local recycling centres are the rudest, most unhelpful people I ever encounter. Even before Covid, they wouldn’t help me, woman, aged 68, with large items like white goods – I was moving after 30 years – even though there is a sign saying assistance would be given with large items. Luckily I’m strong and fit but even so….
Sounds quite area-specific to me. Our local refuse tip was busy throughout and there were no mask mandates either. There were cones in places to keep cars well spaced from each other and only one person at a time could climb the stairs to put their rubbish in a skip but apart from that nothing really. They’re not the friendliest bunch I’ve ever met and sometimes they ask you to open a black plastic bag but on the whole they’re OK. The only time I was asked to wear a mask was by another customer telling me to put my mask on. I didn’t.
We have the same farce at our local tip, except we also have to turn up half an hour before our allotted time and drivers are not allowed to open their car windows whilst queueing up – great when the temperature yesterday was in the 30s.
I have only been to our tip once during the shamdemic and that was to offload rubbish that would not fit in our wheelie bin and could not be burnt in our brazier. The pingdemic gave the council employees a brilliant excuse for additional fully paid holidays this summer and therefore, due to staff shortages, the collection of our recycling bins was extended from two weekly to four weekly. I am all for recycling, but if they don’t collect it and they make it budensome to drop it off, it’s going straight in the normal rubbish.
The local authorities that still operate this rule at refuge dumps need to be challenged. Fortunately my own local council never adopted such a ludicrous system in the first place. It was all about milking the system in the name of Covid safety. This is by no means the only example either.
Our tip in Dartford has maintained its booking system. It suits my wife who is an organised type but not me.
The answer might appear to be two queues, one for booked appointments and one for those arriving without a booking and prepared to wait.
Our site has a 15 minute booking window but there is little doubt most people spend only a couple of minutes emptying their boot. Waiting ‘dumpers’ could be allowed in to fill the gaps.
But petty council bureaucrats love to organise their environment so it’s more ‘efficient’ for them……..
Does anyone else remember when bin men used to walk round the back of houses to actually empty the bins, with no inconvenience to the public that pay them, and when legions of plastic receptacles didn’t litter the streets.
Most people even left a ‘tip’ for them at Christmas.
I remember!
Sums up the public sector perfectly- regardless of Covid. Now us producing types might have do ‘donate’ more of our hard earnt to keep all this rolling along. Still, it’s a hard life, bless ’em.
You are wrong about pubs. I only know one where you can order at the bar and even drink there, idly chatting to strangers. The pub I visited in Buttermere this week has a rope across the entrance to stop admission.