Ongoing bin strikes across Birmingham have meant Brummies have been faced with the issue of rubbish mounting up on their doorstep.
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00:00Well there's no doubt that sort of Birmingham City Council need to save money.
00:07To give the sort of the explanation on this it's quite clearly sort of it will save money
00:11but this results from sort of the last bin strike which was in 2017 and it was actually
00:17sort of negotiated by the sort of then council leader as a way if you like of sort of ending
00:21that strike and a sort of specialist safety worker was created, it's estimated something
00:25like 80 jobs were sort of made you know became sort of impossible as a consequence of this
00:32but you know they're paid an extra £8,000 so the sort of the argument goes but of course
00:37that on its own is well it could be seen as a problem but of course what it's also about
00:42is the sort of equal pay. Well public services are paid for by the public. Now of course how
00:48that sort of money gets from us to the organisations whether it be the government or local government
00:54it's normally through taxation and council tax. Now of course what people are saying
00:59well I'm paying more in council tax, I'm paying more in sort of my general taxation, you know
01:03the services should be getting better. Of course the reality is that it's becoming a lot more
01:07expensive to deliver these services and indeed you know most particularly sort of services
01:13are sort of provided by councils and of course their budgets are shrinking as a consequence of
01:18less money coming in capital grant from the government which again comes through general taxation.
01:23Local authorities have a sort of a legal responsibility to provide statutory services and of course
01:29yeah that's things like special educational needs for children, social services, those sort of bills
01:34particularly in sort of urban authorities in the sort of big cities are going up because of course
01:39you know we live in a sort of more complex society than we sort of once did which means of course the
01:44amount of pie that they've got you know to use the sort of the Liz Trust analogy yeah it's only so big
01:49so to provide the sort of the other services becomes much more of a problem so and of course local
01:54authorities have less money anyway you know that's been cut back so they're trying to do sort of the
01:59same with less and indeed of course as a consequence you know the services then start to suffer.
02:05Residents in Birmingham have been advised to follow the council's advice when it comes to tackling their
02:11household rubbish. Advice on the Birmingham City Council's website states that residents should put their
02:17household waste out on their normal collection days if it's not collected it should be left out and
02:23it will be collected as soon as the authority is able.