A new communal bin hub in Edinburgh sees frustrated resident take action with angle-grinder – John McLellan

Touted as the greatest improvement to waste collection in decades, as if it’s Edinburgh’s equivalent of the invention of the flushing toilet, the city’s new bin hubs continue to hit difficulties.

An artist's impression shows what the community council thinks a communal bin hub in the New Town would look like

Highlighted in this column and elsewhere, problems are particularly acute in the New Town where Edinburgh World Heritage has come out against then, but also in Piershill.

Those living near Jock’s Lodge might not be able to call on the might of the conservation lobby to rally to their cause, but passions are running just as high because of where they have been sited.

So high, in fact, that one resident has taken an angle-grinder to the “bike stands” where the bins are meant to sit so they can be moved to a different location.

And in times when protestors are being cleared for demolishing statues or disrupting public transport to make their points, it should be no surprise that more people might see direct action as a legitimate short-cut to achieve an aim.

Criminal damage to council property cannot be condoned, but when otherwise law-abiding people feel they have been backed into a corner or their reasonable requests ignored by a stubborn authority, then they might be tempted to take the law into their own hands.

Something has gone badly wrong when something as basic as the position of a communal bin hub descends to this kind of action, and having raised it with officers this week I too have heard nothing so far.

What we have here, as the warden said in Cool Hand Luke, is failure to communicate.

John McLellan is a Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston

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