Twenty million households in council tax bands A-D will receive a £100 "household energy payment" this winter, paid directly into bank accounts for help with rising energy bills.
However, with the energy price cap set to rise by a massive 27% in January, rather than turn the heating on, it might actually be cheaper and warmer to take the £100 out the bank and set fire to it.
With councils across the country making cuts to refuse collections across the board, it's making working out when the black bin is due to be put out difficult to anyone without a working knowledge of combinatorial mathematics. Probability theory and Riemann diagrams help, especially when factoring in the green waste, which is on a different periodicity to the black bin, and glass, which alternates with paper, which occurs every other plastics collection.
Universities are running post graduate courses to their maths degrees, with the PGBB (Post Graduate studies in Black Bins) being the most popular, with the ABGVR (Advanced Black Green and Various Recycling) course in Council Refuse studies being a popular undergraduate option.
'Really, anyone who can work out what stuff to put in which bins correctly, to identify the various acceptable recyclable plastics and reject or set aside the specialist recycling should be able to ace either of these courses,' said Professor Jenkins of the Maths and Recycling department of York University. 'Plus, most councils now issue a four dimensional table clearly showing when to put the bins out anyway,' he added.
As councils throughout the land struggle to cope with their duty to provide refuse collection services now that the majority of their truck drivers are now working for retailers, Tesco has been keen to address the impending disaster by adding refuse collection to the range of services it offers its customers.
To launch this service, the supermarket is giving a time-limited offer of refuse collection three times for the price of twice. Details of how this will work out in practice remain vague at this time, but a Tesco spokesperson was keen to point out that Clubcard points would be earned on every occasion that Tesco took away the contents of its customers' waste bins, which most likely contain unnecessary packaging and uneaten ready meals.
The spokesperson went on to say: It's a well known fact that Colman's made more money out of the mustard left on the side of the plate than was made from the mustard consumed, so we're very keen to learn what we're doing right for the sake of our shareholders.
'Collecting our customers' waste will allow us to analyse in a way that wasn't previously possible. We can establish in more detail what it was we were flogging that our customers didn't actually want, meaning we can focus our marketing to sell them more of it.
One customer, Deirdre from Wandsworth, thought it was the best thing she'd heard of in years. 'I'm really looking forward to having my bin emptied three times on the day the dustcart comes round, even if it costs twice as much. The bloody council wouldn't have dreamed of offering a service like this.'
First published 27 Oct 2021
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