I’m not sure why it happens because we’re not a big household, but we always seem to fill our bin long before the fortnightly pick up time comes round. And that’s if the council bother to come at all. A combination of two inches of snow and some general incompetence meant we got no pick ups at all over the Christmas period. I was therefore interested to hear of a private wheelie bin service on radio this morning that’s been set up somewhere in Lancashire. For around £8 a week, the company will take your rubbish away, and you can bet that like all private services that don’t get paid if they don’t do the work, a bit of bad weather or the holiday period won’t be given as an excuse to leave your property a target for rats.

Not everyone will be willing to pay for a service they get fortnightly for ‘free’, but I can see a market for this in any upmarket area of the UK – and every town in the UK has at least one of those. People pay for private health and private education when they can have it for free, so why not waste collection?

If you decide to set one up in South Yorkshire, send me your card!