Round our way, which is quite a lot of countryside, there’s quite a lot of fly-tipping (which, if you’re not familiar with it, it the illegal dumping of rubbish.) Basically ‘people’ rock up in cars or vans and push their unwanted’s in the hedge or wood or field entrance, usually because they can’t be a̶r̶s̶e̶d̶ (sorry, bothered) to take it to recycling centre.

There’s quite a lot of the same kind of nuisance in this line of business as well.

Heaps of leftover thoughts and recycled advice that frankly would better left in the trash, but instead we have to pick through the detritus of ’Six Simple Tips to Maximise Your Productivity’ and ‘These Five Life Hacks will Rescue Your Creativity.’

Fly-tipping usually takes a couple of forms. The first being the ‘life-advice’ type which can be wheeled out, well, whenever (which puts my in mind of the weather forecast clipping Bill Bryson kept – bright and dry, cooler later with some showers – which he observed could happily be run every day forever and hardly be wrong.) And the other, of the (insert gimmick of the moment here) Will Change Everything, type.

There’s a neat little simile for it (hat tip to the amazing Marina Hyde’s column which features lots of dumping on the state of modern life, all of it caustically hilarious. Journalist sketch-writer par excellence) – weathervaning. Which is basically to call out opinions (or advice, which now is a better word to describe policy) favourable to whichever way the prevailing wind happens to be blowing.

All the blowing-about is fine, as most of it’s pretty harmless until you discover a bunch of this unwanted (or un-needed) stuff has swept across the desk or your next project and suddenly the good work you’ve been engaged on can’t been seen for a bunch of wind-blown bin bags full of the next big thing.

If you want my advice, always recycle it responsibly.

PS The header image – via #midjourney – is supposed to be a horse fly in the shape of a bin. Rubbish fail there.