John Woodhouse: Would 'chip wrapper netball' help the council cut waste?

I WAS saddened to see so many people misunderstood Stoke-on-Trent City Council's placing of a bin seven feet up on a lamppost. People rushed to the conclusion that it was an act of buffoonery.

I, however, could see that, in these times of cutbacks, the authority was simply trying to combine leisure and waste disposal activities. At present the chief legal officer is trying to patent chip wrapper netball.

The authority, as viewers of The Year The Town Hall Shrank – a programme which has done for the image of Stoke-on-Trent what mildew does for a shower curtain – will know, is keen to slash its budget wherever it can. Councillors, for example, no longer have biros laid out for them at meetings. Rather they're offered a roadkill duck quill and an 'inkpot' of yesterday's gravy from the canteen.

For the purse-keepers of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, no saving is too big or too small. They've worked out, for example, that it makes sound economic sense to let £20m of unpaid council tax swill around the city rather than pay someone to collect it.

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Similarly, while criticism rings loudly in their ears of their decision to knock down the Civic Offices just 20 years after it was built, they've silkily redeemed the situation by revealing Stoke town's rebranding as new family visitor attraction The Blitz Experience.

I'm no expert on demolition – yes, there was that incident with the gas valve in the caravan, but the wife's eyebrows grew back after a while – but to me demolishing a vast public building 20 years after whoever it was who opened it – Basil Brush I think – is unlikely to be seen as a source of celebration to those who paid for it.

It's like when my son tells me he's lost his coat, again, only about 15,000 times worse.

It seems, however, there's no alternative. These days buyers for mothballed Civic Offices are thin on the ground. It was never going to work cutting a deal with Wolverhampton City Council to move in.

There was talk of Staffordshire University having it for accommodation, but even students draw the line at bedding down for the night in the members' urinal.

My own idea, for the building to be transformed into a workhouse for former public sector workers, has, arrogantly in my opinion, been dismissed out of hand.

Unlike many, I don't mind the look of the planned new Civic Offices in Hanley.

I think to design a building that looks so much fun on the outside and yet is home to so much misery on the inside shows a real architectural flair.

I think, along with the new bus station, it should help cement Hanley's reputation as the home of some of the world's most outlandish structures. It's just a shame that when they built the Potteries Shopping Centre they didn't follow the blueprint of the Sydney Opera House.

Of course, we're left with a situation now where a great swathe of Stoke is up for sale. I've been looking at the various plots and wondering if, should you join them up, there isn't an argument for an all-weather racetrack.

A place has to move on and, while the pottery industry has declined, there'll always be those wanting to put a fiver each way on Lucky Jim.

I can't honestly see what else could happen down there. I mean, how many supermarkets can one city take? I like a discounted Wagon Wheel as much as the next man, but, really, it's getting out of hand.

If only I could work off this frustration with a game of chip wrapper netball.