Because some things
they do rather well!!

Am new to this blogging thing, but have done a few posts now, and was looking though what I have written and got a bit concerned that some of it was a bit too negative. Thought I might be coming across a 'ANGRY' of Plumstead Common. I also thought that, what with a link to

Greenwich Watch

on my blog and some of the comments I have made, people might mistake me for an obsessive Council hater. The reason that I have Greenwich Watch as a link is two fold. firstly they very kindly put a link to my blog on their site and secondly, as we do live in a one party state in Greenwich it is a good outlet for an alternative point of view.

Greenwich Council has only ever been controlled by Labour and that concentration of power has dangers. I do not make this as an anti Labour comment, but a general one. look how power corrupts it it stays in the same hands too long. Margaret Thatcher got so out of touch with reality that she introduced the Poll Tax, New Labour's obsession with ID cards looks like doing the same for them and Ken Livingstone (who I really admire) will, if he stays as Mayor for too long, eventually raise tax rates so high that no one will bother to work, because he is addicted to spending.

Nevertheless just because power corrupts, it doesn't mean that everything goes bad (with the possible exception of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe!!). Margaret Thatcher's Government which I personally loathed with a passion unmatched by anyone before or since, did brilliant undogmatic work in controlling the Aids epidemic, the effects of which can still be seen today in the relatively low infection rates found in this country. New Labour has guided this country to the longest period of uninterrupted growth in its history, a period in which every other major industrialised country has had a recession. And Greenwich Council..................Well to get to the point, I resolved to write about what the Council does well.

So this got me thinking, I need to write about things I have some experience of, being that I do not have children, am fortunate enough to be working and earning enough not to need benefits, and I buy books rather than borrow them! This gets me down to I walk and drive round the borough and I get my bins emptied. About the same time as I was musing away to myself I was getting ready to do the ironing while watching a few episodes of 24 on DVD.

So I turned on the TV and caught most of

Tonight with Trevor McDonald

It was rubbish, sorry it was about rubbish, and was actually rather good. This got me thinking that my experience of the council waste collection service is actually 1st class.

I have lived her for 20+ years and to my recollection they have never missed a collection. If I have more rubbish than can be fitted in the bin they have always taken it all away without complaint. They have never asked for money at Christmas. They still collect general refuse weekly, despite having introduced 2 weekly recycling collections. The recycling is really easy as it all goes in one bin so no one has an excuse not to do it.

When I see programmes like 'Tonight' and hear of experiences of people living in other Boroughs like Croydon (where the Refuse service sounds like it is run by the Gestapo, but with the efficiency of a failed state, and the recycling system seem to have been thought up by the people who write the instruction leaflets for cheap electrical goods).

I say thank you Greenwich Council for a Rolls Royce service and long may it continue.