In the UK, things are a little different. In the outer reaches of Nottingham, there seems to be no schedule, no organisation. A wagon comes seemingly when the City Council feel like sending one, and the street is cleaned all in one go. If a car is parked, the cleaners go round it. If one side of a street is cluttered with vehicles, the gutters are still as foul as they were in the morning, whereas the middle of the road may be pristine.

There is no "Tuesday I can't park here" - only a couple of blokes with brooms who will attempt to shift the clutter from the roadside underneath the cars into the maw of the sweeper.

The worst of it is that the drains, which invariably are filled with sludge, rarely get cleaned - the wagons have a 'sludge gulper' - a kind of super-vacuum attachment to clear the residue from storm drains, to allow rainwater to clear. The lack of clearance means that each time it rains, the puddles build up, and passing drivers then exercise their 'right' to drive through them and soak the poor pedestrian with the filth built up in the gutters.

Please, don't talk to me about the benefits of street cleaning, we seem to live in the Augean stables.