Thursdays - nearly the end of the week. Our monthly meeting with the unions this morning. We discussed the Christmas refuse collection arrangements and the forthcoming building works to give us a new street cleansing depot. Not too much whinging - sometimes it can be quite a negative environment. At the moment, lots of money is being poured into the waste management services, with heaps of capital investment - improving services, creating jobs, savingthe planet. It is then quite dispiriting when some arsy refuse driver sits there whining that they have to queue for the vehicle wash while the building work is going on.....

Spent the afternoon ploughing through my to do list. We have a system called Comino which we use to manage our correspondence - it's very good. Some of the letters (to Cllrs, MPs etc... ) come to me for approval before they go out. It is a constant battle to get the correspondence completed within the official deadline. Usually the work is done, but people do not always sign off the electronic form to indicate this, leaving the complaint overdue. As a manager, I can view other people's Inboxes, which means I can then chase those who are hanging on to things unnecessarily. Had a chat with D, our Enforcement Manager, about his Cominos and related issues. Other departments often try to push work our way, as we deal with it rather than make excuses not to. Some of this is good. We took all fly-tipping including on private land from April this year, and dog fouling enforcement will soon be coming our way. A case popped up today which indicated that Trading Standards might be trying to get us to take on Nuisance Vehicles (on street, unofficial car sales and repairs) but I think for the moment we are safe. In the fullness of time we could take this, but I would want to raid their budget for the accompanying resources. Funnily enough, that's often where other departments shuffle their feet and look at the floor. Ah, that budget... Um, well, we have other plans for it.

My boss then phoned me later in the afternoon - he had a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel. We are currently trying to create a secondment to look at the issue of smoking related litter in the run up to the ban next year - hurrah!! I was planning to use our litter fine income to fund this. However, P, who is a man of truly wonderful intelligence, had an even better idea involving the sideways move of C, trusted colleague into a post covering this and more as part of his overall management restructure. It will undoubtedly mean all kinds of headaches with HR, but hey, we can live with that. P has one of those interesting brains that you just sometimes think "Wow". He's not afraid of thinking big (and I do mean very big, in terms of projects, capital etc) and I like the way he goes for the important stuff without being bogged down in trivia. He has a mind like a knife when it comes to going after the essentials - quite ruthless, but also with a huge streak of mischief. I have no doubt that he got up to no good in school but was probably too smart to be caught. He also has an impressive tactical brain in the snakepit of corporate politics - very instructive to watch. He is a very blunt Northerner who supports Manchester United. However, one of my favourite ex-colleagues also does so I count that as being acceptable ( I am allergic to football generally).

C is now thinking over the offer, hopefully over a lubricating glass or two. Tomorrow, I have a meeting to discuss pedlars (another issue being palmed off on to us) and a meeting with some Tourism people who want to publicise the fact that we are in the final for Britain's cleanest city. We are also looking at using a pressure washer to improve our litter bin cleaning - the ones in the city centre get quite disgustingly dirty very quickly, with sauces from burgers, vomit, fag ash, spilt Coke and all kinds of other items forming a kind of sticky, dusty coating. Also tomorrow the rep is bringing some samples for our new staff uniform. All our operatives wear ballistic trousers but we want an improved top half, so there will be better "branded" polo and sweat shirts, as well as fleeces. There is a choice of styles for hi-vis jackets, and the supervisors are getting a uniform too, with Oxford style shirts and smart trousers. With so many street workers wearing hi-vis these days, it's important to distinguish our staff from cleaners in private malls, building workers, etc... We have a constant battle to find really good wet weather gear. If they keep you dry on the outside, they are often really sweaty on the inside. Or they breathe, but they leak. But life would be very dull if we could solve all our problems..