Last week, a man dressed as a giant rat stood up at a city council meeting in Birmingham to ask about the ongoing bin-collection strikes. He said he was the ‘Selly Oak rat’. I think it was a man. The rats rummaging amongst the uncollected 21,000 tonnes (21,000!) of rubbish in the city recently hit the ‘size of a small kitten’ stage. By the time you read this, they may have got to the size of a dire wolf. Or a big man. The response to the giant rat’s query was as expected – that a major incident had been declared and rubbish, at least some, was being collected. But the problem, that has been growing for over a month, remains.
It’s tied to bin workers’ anger at what they say is a drop in wages. The council says very few people will be impacted. Talks continue.
A local radio producer once told me that if there was a quiet time and you needed to stoke the phone-ins, go to bins and potholes. I’d imagine that local radio in Birmingham has not needed to stoke the phone-ins for a while.
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While the rest of us stare aghast at the tariff mania from the White House, focus in the Midlands is on much more mundane matters. The day to day is what, ultimately, chimes. Which is what Donald Trump is counting on. He’s speaking to the many in America who feel they’ve been abandoned, who haven’t had their metaphorical bins collected for a long, long time. The financial markets don’t matter so much to them; they’re not going to be troubled by the soaring cost of imported BMWs. And who wouldn’t like the promise of better jobs coming soon, of a nation rising.
Oddly though, Trump is getting all Mao Zedong on us – ironic considering the fight he’s picking with China. So many of Mao’s sayings and amorphisms have become so commonplace they have lost their bite. But the one about revolution feels timely – revolution is not a dinner party, it’s an insurrection. This is where Trump is shouting from. All that pain now for the greater good is the same approach – and only if the system as was is completely upended.
Also, it’s wholly one man’s vision with little input from the quivering underlings. Still, I can’t see a five-volume set of Trump’s thoughts and philosophy anytime soon. Unless there are a lot of pictures of golf shots.
