SOMETHING stinks around here. Looking about, there aren't any discredited Blairite ministers nearby, spouting their usual garbage, so it must be something else.

I know: it's all those un-emptied black bins and plastic bags overflowing with perishable household waste.

Councils have a legal obligation to collect household waste on a weekly basis. The refuse collectors dutifully arrive each week to take away at least one bin, but this may be either black or green, depending which week it is.

For many people, the green bin is often empty, but the council won't allow a black bin to be collected if it isn't that bin's turn.

Why is this happening? Why indeed. The Government insists that because of new landfill laws from Europe, the UK must recycle more waste and lessen landfill sites: a noble aspiration.

Surely the council has made a basic error in that the green bin should be used to collect all plastic packaging and plastic bottles. The green bin could then be collected once every month, enabling the black bin of perishable waste to be collected every week.

Garden waste should be regarded as a separate problem and should be collected to fuel biomass power stations.

OOPS! There aren't any biomass power stations near York! It appears to me that once again, Labour ministers just can't get it right.

They have once more put the proverbial rag and bone cart before the plodding horse.

They ought to be building biomass power stations, fuelled using garden waste and biomass fuel grown by farmers, financed by the Common Agricultural Policy.

I wonder if Tony Blair has weekly refuse collections, as his bin may well be overflowing this week with discarded ministers and Labour councillors.

T. Scaife,

Manor Drive,

York.

Updated: 09:54 Wednesday, May 03, 2006