THEY'RE ugly, they smell, they are a horrible blot on an otherwise beautiful garden and they're a real pain if you've got little if any space in front of your home.
Public enemy number one, it seems, has transferred from MPs and their ridiculous expenses claims, to that dreaded wheelie bin.
Personally, I don't dislike wheelie bins – for two reasons, I've got space at my home so that they are not in our and ev
eryone else's face, and they enable me to do my bit for the environment.
There's also the important issue that it's far easier for bin men to empty a wheelie than the old fashioned dustbin, and that was one of the main driving forces in their introduction. Health and safety and reducing costs.
There is, of course, the burning question whether all the stuff I put in my blue recycle bin is actually recycled.
I can understand the anger up and down the country over the wheelie, expecially if you happen to live in a terrace of houses, or a flat, or have a distance to walk to get to your bin.
They're particularly annoying, too, if you live in a Grade II listed building with little frontage and have umpteen government-inflicted rules and regulations over its grand appearance, spoiled by ugly wheelies. But that's our wonderful government muddled thinking for you.
One Worthing man is planning to take his wheelie to Holland and put it on a train to Germany – because that's where most of them have been made.
A bit extreme, perhaps, but it does show some people's strength of feeling.
With the wheelie hate campaign, raging here I was fascinated to see what's going on where we have our apartment on the Costa Blanca in Spain.
Over there, they have just introduced even larger street containers which are placed every 100 yards or so along the road.
Every night the dustcart comes along the road and stops beside the bin. The driver (often a woman) presses a button and sensors operate an arm, finding the lifting points on the bin, and within a couple of seconds it's high in the air, turned upside down and the contents are dropped into the top of the dustcart lorry.
In other spots are the recycling centres for cardboard, plastics and bottles, which, unfortunately, are not so regularly emptied.
The system does away with all those wheelie bins and also ensures a daily collection. No time for food waste to go off and smell. No fortnightly collections which are being inflicted in some parts of the UK.
However, the biggest issue by far I have with the wheelie bin system is the big brother aspect with which successive governments have inflicted the British public.
Apparently 44,000 "rubbish" fines were imposed by councils on erring households in 2006 (the last year statistics were available).
We've just got too much interferring government in Britain whatever party is in control.
Could this be why so many people are turned off politics in the UK and just don't bother to vote, no matter how angry they are with politicians' antics?
If only the government review which is promised would sweep away much of the government we're inflicted with, some of the rules, regulations, the bureaucrats, the council staff, and much of our taxes.
Just seen a flock of flying pigs!
