WITH no meaningful head of Government at the moment all the craziest plans seem to be finding their way out of the woodwork as frequently as terrorist suspects abscond from control orders.

Many will affect the lives of people to an alarming extent. Firstly, there was fiasco over the Home Information Packs which will make it almost impossible to buy and sell our homes in ition to as creating a whole new army of bossy energy efficiency inspectors which nobody wants snooping round their loft.

Then there are the new planning regulations, which, when taken together, will allow your next door neighbour to build a hideous extension without planning permission and the nuclear industry to build a power plant at the end of your street on the say so of some faceless sinecure who has never even visited Ilkley in his or her life before.

Tony Blair is probably demob happy, and Gordon Brown isn't in power yet so he can blame the ensuing lunacy on the previous administration. The most worrying development of this new avalanche of crack-brained schemes is the new drive to let local authorities force us to separate even more of our rubbish.

Instead of simply dumping everything in the kitchen flip-top, we will end up having discreet receptacles for paper, cardboard, clothes, shoes, plastic, wood, metal, electrical items, vegetable waste for compost, meat waste for swill, glass and one for waste where we cannot make up our minds what it is, such as plastic covered metal wire or plastic brushes with wire bristles. Apparently, we will have to make only one minor mistake, chuck something in the wrong receptacle and we will be hit with yet another Government fundraising fine.

Is it really all worth bothering about anyway? It would not be surprising, given the over complex collection arrangements, if Bradford Council neglected to take away any of our rubbish at all.