Local Blogger The Last Bus Home has been to a meeting of the Charlton Central Residents Association, read about it here.
I did hear about this group a while ago when Councillor Gary Parker mentioned that he had addressed them in an email that he sent to me.
However they didn't seem to have a very active web presence, I only found a holding page, and I soon gave up on them.
Well it turns out that they do exist, but they're only for residents of a very small number of streets in west Charlton. So why do they call themselves central? Surely "central" is the old bit around the Church? No idea...
Anyway apparently excluded, and so is the Last Bus Home despite living much closer to them than I do.
Councillor Parker was addressing them again and he admitted the problems with the new bin scheme and blamed them partly upon "management of the services".
Well the manager of the services is Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services. So if there's a management issue isn't it his fault? If so what the hell were the Council doing sending him on a free holiday out to China? Well I say free, the chances are that we paid for it.
Also bear in mind that the Neighbourhood Serivices team that deals with waste collections is severely understaffed and wants to tackle the residents that foul our streets but can't as it's "political".
So the Council understaff them, send their boss away on a holiday, tie their hands when it comes to enforcement and then seemingly blames them for it.
Nice.
Still it's easier than admitting that, in the end, it's the fault of the Council and the Councillors themselves.
We'll soon be entering our second year of the new scheme and sites like the one below are still a weekly occurrence.
True enough after a week or so of it being like that it does get cleaned up but they're still not talking to the people who are doing it. They would rather spend what cannot be an inconsiderable amount of money doing extra collections than really get to grips with the problem.
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