I’ve been fairly annoyed to see that London Underground have removed all of the bins from the network over the last few weeks. For the first few years that I used the underground there were no bins around – and so I’ve left many fast food drink containers, stella cans and various other bits and pieces on top of chocolate machines in my time. Slowly but surely, bins were introduced: wall mounted lids, with clear plastic bin bags hanging beneath. A happy compromise between ‘security’ and basic civil infrastructure. All hunky dory.

But now ‘security’ is prevailing once more, and the bins have been removed. I hope they reconsider, and the fact that so the metal wall-mounted frames remain is a good sign. But it’s once more quite annoying to cart rubbish around the network – I used to nip off of trains to leave my orange peel behind; now I need to clutch it till I get outside.

At East Putney this morning, I was heartily cheered to see that someone had tied a supermarket bag to the empty frame, and there was a bin once more, full of coffee cups and such. I think if the people were to speak, we would say ‘we’d rather have the bins back, thank you’.