gay immigrant benefit cheats in your bin

In February I unpicked a Daily Express article about dawn raids to check bins with hefty fines for people who don't recycle (back on planet earth: there were no dawn raids nor any suggestion of any fines).

The Daily Mail fought back last week with a headline that surely comes from a spoof generator

Are the race Stasi rifling through YOUR bin?

What next? Asylum seekers make paedophile health and safety muslims?

Refuse collection is, it informs us, no longer about getting your rubbish and taking it away. It is now used for

an authoritarian mix of state intrusion and race-fixated social engineering.

The article delivers everything it promises. There are references to Nazi Germany, Soviet bloc authoritarianism, apartheid South Africa and 1984, all for powers that aren't going to be used to penalise anyone for anything.

Even the article concedes all that's going on is some councils have the right to search through rubbish in order to ascertain what kind of people live there so recycling campaigns can be targeted more effectively. You'll get better response explaining the recycling system in a household's first language.

Are they going to send any financial information they find to HM Revenue and Customs? Will they examine private letters for any potentially homophobic or racist content?

Er, no. Your article already told us they won't.

This is the best bin hysteria article since Grade-A cloaca Richard Littlejohn said wheelie bins were for wusses and old 70s-style binmen were

the kind of English yeomen you'd always want alongside you in a fight