00:00Collection of rubbish on the streets is a different matter.
00:03The council themselves and cabinet member for environment on the council,
00:07Councillor Majid Mahmood, admits that it could be three or four weeks still
00:10before that kinds of levels of rubbish left on street corners that we've seen is collected.
00:15But a better sign this morning that bin lorries have been out and about.
00:19We also know that Birmingham City Council are paying a commercial rate
00:22for Litchfield District Council bin lorries to come and also help them out
00:26with collecting those wheelie bins and rubbish from around the city.
00:31So there is a better sign there for residents.
00:34And as we've seen, as I've been at the past couple of days,
00:37mobile waste collection centres where people can try and bring their rubbish.
00:41Your writer mentioned the 21,000 tonnes of litter and rubbish that's been left uncollected
00:46because of these all-out strikes now in its fifth week.
00:50Negotiations continuing between Birmingham City Council and Unite.
00:54A couple of days ago said that those talks were intensive.
00:58Birmingham City Council called them productive.
00:59But seemingly yesterday, no agreement reached as so far.
01:03And so these strikes continue and those concerns around public health continue as well.
01:09But as all of these people around this city deal with the bins,
01:13the MP for Hodge Hill and Solihull North, who's also chair of the Business and Trade Committee,
01:19Liam Byrne, he's been in Japan for a fact-finding mission with seven other MPs at the end of last month.
01:27But rather than returning with the rest of those MPs, he's stayed out there for a personal trip.
01:32Now, a spokesperson for Liam Byrne says that that part of the private trip is personally funded.
01:37But he is in Japan and there's been a lot of anger, as you can imagine, from residents that they are dealing with a bin crisis
01:44and their local MP has not returned to the area in order to try and push the likes of Birmingham City Council and Unite
01:51to come to some kind of agreement to help out his constituents.
01:54Funny enough, I was in Hodge Hill yesterday.
01:56I got reaction from those residents about how they feel about these bin strikes.
02:00And here's what they told me.
02:01I'm absolutely furious.
02:03This has been going on for many, many weeks now, a couple of months.
02:06I shouldn't have to be, after paying council tax, making my way to empty bins.
02:11And there's a service that's provided to do that.
02:13Well, I think it's disgusting.
02:14It's been going on, well, for a month or so now.
02:17It happened, what, seven, eight years ago.
02:19And the council hasn't learned and the electorate hasn't learned.
02:23It's clearly people elect the same old people who are incompetent
02:26and they don't really care about the local community or the city.
02:29It's all a game plan.
02:30This is just training the public to do it.
02:32They're doing it on purpose.
02:34Slowly, four weeks, two weeks, this week.
02:36This is just training for the future.
02:38What do you make of the state of Birmingham at the moment, the bins on the streets?
02:41It's diabolical, third-world countries are better.
02:45You can hear there a lot of anger from residents just at the state of the streets.
02:49They're finding in residents in Hodge Hill there, part of Liam Byrne's constituency.
02:54And as those concerns continue, those concerns around public health increase as well,
02:59as Unite and the council once again head into negotiations.
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