Bin bag collection! How difficult can it be? You stick on a pair of thick gloves, lift neatly tied bag "A" from outside my back gate "B", hoist into the jaws of the dustbin cart "C" three feet away and then move on to the next gate "D" along. Simple enough for even an American president to undertake, you'd think. In fact, there's actually more brain power and more physical work involved in tying the bag up in the first place, lifting it out of the bin in my kitchen, carrying it down the garden path, unlatching the gate and depositing it outside.

So, I ask you, why can't the gibbons who work for Wyre Borough Council fucking manage it without ripping the bags open and spreading my old bills and bank statements all over the alley?

It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't cost me £90.00 a month in council tax for this littering of my ginnel. £90.00 a month...and for what? I've been asking myself that same question over and over again for the last twenty years. One lousy lamppost at the end of the road that continually throws an epileptic fit (and has done since the great storm of '87 when it was hit by lightening and had its neural-system damaged), thirty seconds a week of some orang-utan in an orange boiler suit casting my rubbish to the four corners of Fleetwood, three hanging baskets outside the lighthouse and the local bobby who spends all his life drinking tea down at Mrs Henthorpe's house on Caldwell Crescent. By my reckoning that amounts to approximately £3.50's worth. So where's the rest of it going?

I have decided to investigate.

There is a story, possibly apocryphal, possibly not, about the civic centre in Poulton-le-Fylde...the hub of all council inactivity. You can't miss the building. The solid marble interior and the jewel-encrusted porch make it stand out even during a blizzard. According to the story, when the Lord Mayor walked into his brand new offices some years ago, far from being taken aback by the genuine Queen Anne chairs and the handprinted carpets, he frowned, said, "It won't do," in his best Arch Chancellor voice, and had them scrap the whole lot in favour of something more expensive.

Anybody out there who can verify this tale...along with the countless other 'alleged' abuses of Wyre Borough's council tax...please let me know and I'll be glad to pass the facts along to the local magistrate. After all, the council has been somewhat over-zealous in the past about taking me to court for 'none-payment of council tax' even when I'd paid it fair and square. On one occasion they ran me through court without telling me (I only found out three dates after the trial), fined me ten pounds for the privilege, and then asked me to pay the 500 and odd quid that I'd already paid and had the receipts to prove it.

Perhaps that's where all the money's going...on legal bills for cases against people who have actually paid but the council computer can't come to terms with. Stupid bastards.

In the meantime...and on a sort of related note...Members of Parliament have been asking Geoff Hoon when they're going to have a proper debate about 'The war against Iraq'. Geoff Hoon, in response, stated that, "I can't let you know when we'll have that debate because it might give the game away to Saddam." Considering that, under such conditions, the only time Parliament will be able to debate whether to go to war or not will be shortly after the war has started, the whole thing seems academic.

Democracy isn't dead. It's just being suffocated by a homicidal maniac in a nurse's uniform.