Why the streets of Edinburgh are covered in crap

Once upon a time, men got paid more than women. It seemed normal and natural and, other than a few crazy feminists, nobody took any notice.

This changed. Women started taking their employers to court, pointing out that they should get paid the same for doing the same job. Over time, things improved and the gender pay gap decreased fairly steadily. But it didn't go away, and nobody was more afraid of the bad press that this could bring than Local Government, especially the City of Edinburgh Council whose nemesis, the Edinburgh Evening News, took immense pleasure in decrying any perceived misstep the Council might take.

Across the land local authorities went into action, each trying in their own ways to create equality between the sexes. And in Edinburgh, the Modernising Pay scheme was put into action. Every Council employee was interviewed to ascertain what exactly it was that they did; time passed, along with the deadline, and still they worked away in the background trying to put the world to rights.

Then one day, years later, they went to the Unions with a proposal. The Unions then jumped the gun and told their members what was going to happen and that's where it all went wrong. You see, in the intervening years, sweeping changes had occurred across the Council and many people - especially the Little People - had vastly different jobs, leading to much gnashing of teeth when the proposals were released.

Once of the largest discrepancies between the sexes was found amongst the so-called 'manual workers', people like bin men (almost all men) and home helps (almost all women). For reasons now shrouded by the mists of time, bin men get a regular bonus on top of their official wage; the home helps, on similar salaries and performing tasks requiring rather more training, received no bonuses. This is now deemed to be Not Allowed.

So here we see exemplified the gender pay gap. And here also we see the only people in the Council (other than Teachers and their ilk) who a)Can make much of a visible difference by striking and b)Are actually threatening to. Furthermore, rumour has it that the ballot on whether to strike will be held amongst only the union members in male dominated area - a nice nod to equality!

And that's why we're heading into the largest arts festival in the world with rubbish on the streets. Say goodbye to the Fringe, people!