THE unravelling of Britain's resources-starved public services is exemplified in countless ways.
There was the time it took to get an ambulance to stricken pensioner Doreen Goodman – two hours, as reported yesterday, instead of the "Green Two" requirement of 30 minutes.
There is the concern in West Bridgford and Arnold about the withdrawal of their local fire engines. Fire service management may protest that the cuts will not put the public "in any significant risk" but if I lived in either of those neighbourhoods I'd rather have a jolly red appliance parked in the parish than rumbling in from distant parts.
And remember, to get to an emergency on time – or even 90 minutes late – our fire and ambulance crews face another hazard: the symptom of public service cuts most readily identified by road users – the dangerous proliferation of potholes.
Take what were once the best-maintained roads in Europe, add decades of short-sighted patch-up "maintenance", two savage winters and now the evaporation of highways budgets and you have crumbling tracks that might be acceptable to hardy Masai drovers but are a bit embarrassing in the northern hemisphere in the 21st Century.
I wonder how local authorities' attitudes to fly-tipping will survive this seemingly eternal public spending crisis?
I could be wrong but I detect an increase in fly-tipping in my neighbourhood, which may in part have been occasioned by the county council's daft decision to cut costs by closing its surburban recycling centre at the old Gedling Colliery site and ask the bulk of the population to spark up their internal combustion engines, break out their road maps and take their household waste across country all the way to Calverton.
Possibly for that reason, or possibly because he is not the sharpest blade in the armoury, some anti-social specimen dumped a sofa in the exposed stairwell leading to my flat.
I reported this fly-tipping to Gedling Borough Council but its retainers considered the matter and concluded that the item was on private property – it would therefore not be collected and my neighbours and I, the innocent parties, would have to remove the wretched thing ourselves or pay to have it removed.
Like the borough council (which in every other respect I am happy to commend) I am a tightwad, so the sofa is still there.
Disabled pensioner Helen Dawson will know how I feel. As reported in yesterday's Post, a halfwit toe-rag dumped an unwanted flat-screen television in her Arnold front garden and she got the same response from the same council: "Cough up £13 and we'll take it away."
The best the council could come up with is a limp: "When the waste is on private property, the owner has to take responsibility."
In the current financial situation I doubt if the council will grow up and adopt the much more responsible policy of neighbouring Nottingham City Council, who will remove unwanted household goods by appointment and at no charge.
Until that happens, however, people like Hazel Dawson and me are left to conclude that our local authority is happy for us to be at the mercy of law-breaking fly-tippers.
You can't balance a sofa on a supermini's roof and it's a bit much to ask a disabled 75-year-old to shove an Odeon-sized flat-screen under her arm and mount a bus expedition all the way to Calverton.
It's also a bit much to ask law-abiding people who are already affronted and inconvenienced by the excesses of fly-tippers to peel off £13 to deal with a problem they didn't cause.
Is there not a case for prosecuting fly-tippers more vigorously, increasing the penalties and reserving some of the revenue for a socially-responsible policy on the clearance of bulky waste – be it legitimately or illegally created?