City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) undertake to clear main routes of snow and ice, whilst – not unreasonably – expecting citizens themselves to make more effort to clear minor routes and pavements.
Back in January, they actively encouraged members of the public to use kerbside grit bins for this purpose.
On 30 November, Spurtle contacted the Council and asked for a map showing all grit bin locations in the Broughton area. A little later the reply came that no such map existed.
Spurtle next requested a list of their locations, helpfully appending a list of relevant postcode areas and a link to the map of 'Greater Spurtleshire' on our website. Since then, we have heard nothing.
Is this a genuine display of ignorance/bureaucratic incompetence, we wonder, or are there hidden agendas at play? Are CEC afraid of wholesale theft, or do they perhaps worry that if people know where their grit bins are they may actually use them and so expend precious Council resources? Alternatively – as some conspiracy theorists now suggest – is it the fact there are only 3 filled grit bins in Edinburgh, and that these are regularly moved from place to place like police speed cameras to create an impression of adequate provision?
We request that readers email us details of any relevant grit bin locations they have spotted so that we can start compiling our own map as a public service.
While Spurtle continues to seek answers to these slippery problems, readers may take comfort in the fact that one man's kerbside clutter is another's pavement pot pourri. We recommend The Grit Boxes of Scotland, an offbeat page in an offbeat Californian website offering travel advice to frightened Americans. We can only marvel at the author's attention to detail since he claims not to understand the boxes' purpose.
We also admire his diffident optimism, encapsulated in the suggestion: 'And by the way, if this sort of pointlessly detailed catalogue of infrastructure appeals to you for some reason, then you might also enjoy my Toilets of the World collection'.