Wanna live in the U.K.?

Best be careful what day you put your trash out...

The zeal shown by councils in enforcing their complicated rules about rubbish disposal, including the use of child informers to catch "bin criminals", is particularly oppressive. A woman in Manchester was fined £700 this week for putting out her rubbish on the wrong day - an offence known as "the advancement of waste". Her reason? To make more room in her backyard for her four-year-old daughter to play in.

That's approximately 1400 USD for the heinous crime of "advancement of waste." Uh, yeeeeeaaah.

If someone tried imposing something like that here, they'd be getting irate phone calls, being stopped on the street, and just generally would have their lives made miserable by irate, disgruntled, disgusted citizens, and rightfully so.

In the last year there was a big stink raised in one of the snooty suburbs of our little capitol about trash bins. There is a regulation that states no trash containers shall be seen from the street. Some poor schmuck left his beside his garage because he was already late for work. He then received a summons because someone, either a snoopy neighbor or a cop, noticed the bin and reported him. I don't know how the whole thing worked out but you can be darned sure I would be making an appearance at a council meeting and asking to confront my accusers...