WORCESTER'S great wheelie bin battle has reached boiling point as the city's MP and council leader square up to each other.

Labour MP Mike Foster says the city council should be introducing weekly collections of food waste.

Tory council leader Simon Geraghty says doing so would cost an extra £633,000 a year to run.

Mr Foster says the figures have been calculated on "the back of a fag packet". Councillor Geraghty stands by the numbers and says other services would have to be cut to pay for the weekly collections.

What a way to run a city.

It strikes us that one of the key impediments to Worcester's progress is that its MP and council seem to be continually at loggerheads. This issue is a classic example.

Our stance on the bins battle is simple and we have explained it in this column on a number of occasions. If you recycle all you can, a fortnightly bin collection should not be a problem. Reports of plagues of rats, flies and maggots tend to be scare stories or the result of people not bothering to recycle and, therefore, over-filling their bins.

We accept, however, that there is growing unease over the collection of cooked food waste. It should be remembered, incidentally, that raw food waste can be composted.

The people of Worcester want a definitive answer on the subject, not a political slanging match.

Would it be too much to expect our MP and council to work together on this?