h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

TC:

>> If they can't work out how paper works, and how boxes work, and how roads and pavements work, and are thereby enforcing something onto me, which makes walking down the street nearly impossible for me, and which requests of me that I leave my bank details and credit card details in full public view... then so be it..


I don't quite see your problem. What's to stop you getting your own worm composting system? It's hard to read bank details once they've passed through a worm.

And shredders are pretty inexpensive.

Or are you relying on the State to do all the work here.

The recycling boxes are all open, with no lids.
My house opens straight on to a main street, onto the pavement, no garden, no private 'outside area'.
I can't compost in my house. there is no room. There is no where outside to do so either, as I have explained.
We get letters from the council telling us not to leave bins outside on the street when not due for collection, yet, they insist we have at the last count, eight or more bins outside. This is a contradiction which cannot be resolved by logic. As, previously described, there is no private, outside space, nor any suitable inside storage area.
I can either shred bank details, personal mail etc, and put it in the open boxx; its windy here due to tthe shape of the buildings and the road alligment; it would just blow away.
I don't wish to add to the already filthy street by putting things outside my door which will just blow away into the street; especially as there is no longer any street-cleaners in the city.
Most of the other recycling boxes are for very strange items; there is, for example, no glass recycling, unless you drive a car, this makes no sense whatsoever.
One of the boxes I have is for plastic drinks bottles; I do not buy any drinks which come in plastic drinks bottles.
The one time I attempted to recycle a huge quantity of cardboard I had, I called the council, to be told yes, I could recycle it if I drove it about twenty miles from where I live, I don't, and can't drive. Their only other alternative was to charge me, to collect it, which of course i did; after colelction it went to landfill, despite their obvsiously having some kind of way to recycle it through this recycling centre handily placed miles outside the city.

Yet. Behind these houses, is a now never used, carpark area, which would be perfect for communial, large, recycling bins, which instead is just left empty...

Its also a fairly regular occurance to have drunks, druggies and general yobs, just tip bins over in the street, I guess for fun; sometimes they set alight to them too, sometimes they don't. I can't see the advantage in giving htem more things to set fire too and disrupt.

My neighbour on one side is a dustbin man. Its a good example where he doesn't have a single recycling box outside his house.

Being blind, 'street furnature', sandwich-boards/A-boards, cycles, mis-parked motorbikes, cars, dusbins, rotting piles of rubbish in the street, etc., make my life quite awkard, and means I can't walk up my road in one direction as there is just too much clutter on the pavement, I really, really, don't wish to add to this clutter myself, that would just be insane.

There are, obviously, easier, better, more effective and totally more suitable methods for rubbish collection and recycling collection, whcih the council could have used, I know this, as in other areas of the country they have schemes which would work fine here, I don't understand why they went for a scheme that doesn't work, which is not effective and which does not actually achieve what recycling schemes should...

One of the reasons given, for going to fortnightly bin collection, and recyclables collection was I think, to reduce the number and frequency of bin carts; we have bin carts up my road 6 days a week, and on one of those days there is either two or three dustcarts, so... nope again it makes no sense whatsoever, yet, despire the number and frequency of bin carts, it is only emptied, once a fortnight... I've seen better schemes in villages, and small towns, so I certainly find it supprizing that a university town/city can't come up with something that works, when other places seem too They appear to have a differnt scheme, to the one where I live, depending on whereabouts you live... again seems very odd, as taht would imply that maybe they'd put a differnt scheme in place, depending on location and geographical constraints, so it were suitable for the area concerned, but... well apparently not...

I just removed a recycling box from outside my front door; can't quite rmeember when this new one appeared, and, of course, there is nothign to indicate what it might actually be for; as it was mainly being used by drunks and druggies to sit on, I thought I'd just remove it, and now I've absolutely no idea what to do with the damn thing

<>

Fill it with ice and use it as a beer cooler.
Fill it with water and keep goldfish in it (drill holes in the side first to let them see out)
Fill it with soapy water and run a hose from your cooker to create gas bubbles and a jacuzzi for your feet.
Line it with tinfoil, drill a hole in the bottom and use it as a lampshade.

Set light to the recycling box yourself!
- It'll save the local youths the bother.
- It'll disguise your personal details.
- It'll make the box lighter for the binmen.
- You can always blame it on the youths anyway.


If you want to be really, really safe, you might have to use double encryption. Gather up the ashes, stuff 'em into a rocket...WHOOSH!

Put a political party's freepost label on it and post it to them.

ooo! yes! it probably is just the right size for putting warm/hot soapy/bubbly/nice-smelling/fancy stuff in and then using to put my feet in! actually... its quite a big box, this one... bigger than the recycling box in the loft where I store spare audio cables, and the other recycling box in which I store computer cables, and the other one, used for storing power/other electric cables maybe I could use it as a 'toy box' at the moment its blocking the door onto my balcony... Its also very filthy, and stinks of wee. actually most of the area outside my front door, where the alco-druggy-homeless-tramps-yobs-whatever like to hang out and smoke dope and knock back cans of specj, seems to smell of wee, and cigarette ash, and, strangely, of sugarpuffs... Maybe I could decorate it with hyperdermic needles and wee-smelling cigarette ash, and try to submit it to the tate modern...

Combining swl's suggestions 2 and 3...
- Fill the box with water and fish.
- Pull up a chair and stick your feet in.

Ideally you should do this in the middle of a shopping centre so that everyone else can watch. Just think how much money you'll save! At £5 for a few minutes, you'll soon have enough for something nice.

Have you tried the fish thing? It's quite nice ... in a toe curling way.

I always knew you were a closet metrosexual, swl.

oo I remember reading about that fish foot thing... here on Hootoo... and well, I had* to check what the wider internet revealed, and found a few places.... (or should that be plaices? (groan away ad lib)), quite near where I live which do it
I really must try it one time... it just sounds... so intriguing..
And, no... I might be many things, but I doubt metrosexual...

I was just thinking... about 'recycling'.... and how I've recycled all my recycling boxes, now, cept this one, to other purposes... mainly involved with cable/electrical-stuff storage all I need now are some really* small recycling boxes to appear for smaller item storage

Well I did my first thing today to help solve the problem, and brandishing my newly purchased supermarket-finest, (err well cheapest probably),, stiff bristled broom, cleaned up all the assorted mess from outside my front door, (which is swept there daily by the nextdoor Chinese and added too by the down-and-outs and various-other-near-do-wells, who sit on the recycling box... and gave it all a damn good clean up outside.

As part of this, I also emptied the contents of my vacuum cleaner (yes, I know, I probably should own a hoover), into the dusbin, plus the 12 or 15 dustpans full of crap off of the area outside the house... anyone mental enough to want to sort through that little... big lot in order to potentially find something of interest in my bin, is clearly two and a half herrings short of a full david Bowie statue...


Stage 2 is already in force. and will involve my removing, by whatever means necessary, anyone who sees fit to be within the area immediately outside my door without a valid reason (valad reason will be, that they're looking at the menu for the Chinese, which the Chinese takeaway stuck on the side of my house, without asking me)

stage 3, if I do not see any improvement, will involve moving the chair and table from my balcony, into the hallway, and placing this outside the front door, at night,and sitting at it, wearing my gorilla costume. Or... I may just sabbotage the bin

Metrosexual? I'll have you know I'm married and thus anything s*xual is but a distant memory.

Ah, yes. As an old friend used to say,

'That's about as interesting as marital sex.'




(as it happened he once appeared on Kilroy with his wife, talking about Sex and Sexual Satisfaction')

but... maratal sex can be interesting... oh. you mean, like the actual marreid couple, not extra-maratal don't you?

My aplogies to those who can*t view Teh Intertubes but here is a Youtube demonstration of your solution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=057Jp5KtUyI