Posted on 05/14/2008 1:25:19 AM PDT by PotatoHeadMick
A council refused to collect rubbish from a 95-year-old war veteran who is nearly blind - because he put a ketchup bottle in the wrong bin.
Lenny Woodward, a former Desert Rat who has lived in the same house for 58 years, was confused by a new regime of fortnightly collections and rigid recycling rules.
Residents have a blue wheelie bin for cans and cardboard, a green box for glass and a black bin for other waste.
Mr Woodward made the mistake of putting the ketchup bottle and a coffee jar in the blue bin when they should have gone in the green box.
When binmen inspected the blue bin, they refused to empty it and attached a tag to it warning him not to break the rules again.
And when his daughter rang Norwich City Council to explain that he was baffled by the new regime, she was told that "rules have to be obeyed".
Mr Woodward, who lives alone following the death of his wife Hilda three years ago, said: "I'm very sorry it happened. It's just I'm confused. I don't know which bin is which so I put the wrong things in the wrong bin.
"They could have knocked on my door and spoken to me about it instead of putting a note on the bin saying they would not empty it.
"It all seems very childish. I've never broken the law before. I haven't even had a parking fine or speeding ticket."
His daughter, Vicky Marshall, 46, added: "I was really angry about what happened and rang the council to complain.
"You would think they would take into account that he's 95 and could make some concessions. But I was told these were rules and they had to be obeyed."
Mrs Marshall's husband, Rob, 49, said: "There were only about five other items in the bin, including a newspaper, a tin and a couple of bits of cardboard. "The council should find other things to do than frightening an old man. The streets around here are a mess but you never see a road sweeper."
Mr Woodward was a railway worker for nearly 50 years but spent five years as a gunner in the Desert Rats, serving in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War.
He had never fallen foul of council rules before fortnightly collections were brought in last October.
A football-style yellow and red tag warning system was introduced for residents who fail to correctly sort their rubbish or overfill their bins.
Mr Woodward, who uses a walking stick, had received a yellow tag before binmen boycotted him last Wednesday - but he couldn't read it because of his poor eyesight.
The bin was emptied two days later after the local paper became involved.
Norwich City Council said an officer would be visiting Mr Woodward to explain the system.
A spokesman added: "We can help residents move heavy bins on a regular basis if they are unable to do this. We are not able to sort rubbish for them."
Last month, bus driver Gareth Corkhill, 26, from Whitehaven in Cumbria, was given a criminal record and fined £210 because the amount of rubbish in his wheelie bin left the lid open by a few inches.
Really, these civil “servants” should be paraded naked through the town, whipped, tarred, and feathered. If they do it again, they should be hung by the neck until dead.
“I’m very sorry it happened. It’s just I’m confused. I don’t know which bin is which so I put the wrong things in the wrong bin.”
It’s very strange how men who in their youth were as hard as nails and who have killed other people during the war seem to be so meek and mild in their old age. There was a family friend who was decorated for bravery for taking out a German machinegun in France single-handed with his rifle, but seeing him in his 80s you would never have guessed, there didn’t seem to be an ounce of viciousness in his entire body...
Mr. Orwell would love it.
In '97, we lived in Germany for 4 months, and had to live by strict rules. We had 2 tiny cans for "general" trash - each maybe 3 ft tall and a foot in diameter. And we were warned that if the garbage men found anything in them that wasn't supposed to be there, they would refuse to empty them.
None of the recyclables were picked up at our door either. We had to maintain separate piles in our cramped home and drive to different types of recycling centers periodically. Some people with little room to spare in their dwellings used their cars as storage places. Better to be cramped in your car a few minutes a day than in your house many hours.
Anything organic had to be put onto the compost pile in our tiny back yard, and man, did that ever stink! I dreaded going out there, because no matter how slowly you opened the lid, a huge host of fruit flies and other misc. insects came swarming out into your face and all over your upper body, making you feel like a stuntman in the movie "Willard". After dumping the gross, decaying contents of your organic waste, you had to stick around and pour all over the top of the pile this powder that was supposed to facilitate the composting process.
The newspaper and green glass and brown glass and white glass could be dropped off at a small unmanned center a half mile away. All the other glass colors and every type of other recyclable had to be driven 10+ miles away to a really large manned center with a gate only open during a limited number of business hours. Plastics had to be separated into at least 5 or 6 different types. Metals had to be segregated, meaning you had to always be able to tell if something was tin or aluminum or steel or something else (not always instantly determinable). There were even bins for different types of batteries.
All the Germans I knew would complain about the draconian system, and would regale you with tales of elderly people they knew (or had read about) who had to make multiple trips by bus or cab to local dumps, since they were too frail to carry everything at once.
What I never did figure out is, if every single one of them I talked to was angry at the system, why did it remain the way it was without any changes? Just who DID support this awful system anyway?
F****** commie ass socialists. Can you imagine how many slugs with no real work to do are on the public payroll in the UK? This guy fought in WW2 and gets no respect from the petty tyrants who have taken over. What is in the water over there?
Soon coming here if Obama the African style (like his dad) socialist gets elected. McCain will give us global warming style socialism
There is no such thing as a ‘small’ bureaucrat. Neither will you find one being kind, considerate nor understanding, if you do they are neither a bureaucrat or a long term job holder in government. Remember the start of “Hitchhiker’s Guide” where the home was being demolished and the notification was posted in the basement of the government office? Sounds like the same chaps...
People get rulers they deserve. As someone who still enjoys the ancient medicinal plant tobacco, despite horrendous financial extortion and social oppression by the elected thieves and their bureaucrats, I hope to see the majority electing them every couple years reap what they have sown.
Same thing goes on in the conservative bastion of Fort Worth, TX. My roommate and I got a couple of notices for a civil servant to come by and educate us on what goes where in regards to the trash bin and recycle bin. We had been putting pizza boxes in the recycle bin since that is where cardboard items go. But evidently the grease or something excluded pizza boxes from the recycle bin. We look at the city’s website closer and the list of what goes where is just insane. It is clear what materials go in the recycle bin, but certain specific items are exclude for one stupid reason or another.
I love the apartment complex where I live now. Everything goes into the trash bag and the trash bag goes in the dumpster. Easy and simple.
I don’t smoke, but I noticed a generic brand at a convenience store the other day for under a dollar. I’ll check it out next time I’m in there and let you know what brand it was.
Not strange at all....
bravery doesn't require “viciousness”.
First they disarm you...
And I'm especially disgusted by the useful idiots like McCain who accept the premise that man is destroying earth and needs to be controlled.
They are Nazis and Marxists rapped in a green flag and green tunic.
That is what life would be like the world over if Algore and his leftist, econazis had their way.
Actually, it would be worse. All the products that you had to recycle would disappear, as they are the last vestige of a free-market economy. Under their eco-Nazi regime, all those containers would be replaced with a few sets of containers that citizens are forced to reuse, only to discard at a great replacement cost.
Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with political, despotic control over behavior. Just think how many man-hours were spent enslaved to government regulation in Germany every year because of those absurd, and, quite honestly, fruitless regulations.
Maybe one of his neighbors could stop by and say, “Lenny, I’ll check your recycling for you. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
He should just fling it out in the street when no one is looking and claim it was hooligans.
Democracy in decline due to fanatical left-wing socialist/communist/progressives around the world. I am so sorry for him and all of us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.