The answer is in your wheelie bin

Great Dustbin Debate exposes flawed politics

Janet Daley:

Why is rubbish collection (specifically the reduced frequency thereof) of such huge significance to voters? Because it is a totemic symbol of the Great Public Services Scam in which you are consistently charged more and more for less and less. Because the efficient removal of household waste should be the most minimal expectation of a competent society, given our modern understanding of hygiene and communal health. Because it is one more facet of the political tendency to make people feel guilty for things over which they have no control (in this case, the amount of superfluous packaging they must dispose of) and to use this putative guilt as a ruse for raising tax revenue through additional charges. Rubbish is, in other words, the final straw: it is the ultimate outrage which captures the essence of what people feel to be wrong about the way they are governed.