This is a copy of my weekly blog which I write for work and is published on the council's intranet.  The views I express in this log are my own, professional, views as the Head of Communications but do not necessarily reflect those of the authority itself.

Firstly this week a big ‘shout out’ to James Tatler who works in Civic Hall.

James told me last week that he had recently ‘discovered’ my blog and that he thought he was ‘good’.  ‘Excellent’ I thought – someone else who likes it.

Then James said he thought that I should have mentioned his birthday in it.  Obviously, I didn’t know about this important event otherwise clearly … ahem, I would have mentioned it for sure.

So James, Happy Birthday for the other day.

PS: I’m not going to give ‘shout outs’ regularly, so no requests please.

OK, to business.  I’m writing this on the train at 2130 on Monday night as I make my way home to North Yorkshire.

I’ve been out tonight for a social dinner and drinks with a former radio colleague of mine, who is now working in Leeds.

We spent time arguing about whether Chris Evans would do a better job than Terry Wogan when Sir Tel hangs up his breakfast headphones at the end of the year and we chatted about the ‘good old days’ when local radio newsrooms had team of 13 or more reporters and the adverts didn’t get in the way of the news.

Very quickly, the conversation came round to the issue of the bin strike.  My former colleague lives in Leeds and his bin is due to be emptied tomorrow.

I suspect he deeply regretted ever saying: ‘So, I guess my bin won’t be emptied tomorrow given the fact all the workers are out on strike …'

Of course, I went full-throttle into my spiel concerning the council’s position with regard to the bin strike.  The talks that have been going on, the 18th month pay protection and the whole equal pay issue etc etc.  I won’t bore you with detail.

Anyway – one long monologue later, I’d put him well and truly right!

This made me think of two things.

One - clearly, some of what we would consider to be misleading and perhaps even false claims made by the unions have made it into the mindset of Mr and Mrs Joe Public.  It would suggest the union spin machine – which has been cranked up to the max – is having an effect.  That’s worrying.

Two – I now realise I am never off-duty.  If I can defend the council I will, especially if someone’s got it wrong about us.  I even found myself explaining the bin strike to my mum the other day.

For the last three days we’ve been countering every claim made by the unions.  To be honest, it has become a bit like a ping-pong match.  Every time the unions have pinged, we’ve ponged back.

But now, I feel we’re at a bit of a stalemate.

If this was a trench war, we’d be staring at each other across no-man’s land.

Councillor Richard Brett and I went down to the Calendar studios earlier tonight for his on-the-sofa session with Duncan and Christine.  We agreed on the three key messages to get across (they were much the same for all the interviews he’s done today).  As a result it’s all getting rather repetitive.  I suspect Cllr Brett is as bored saying, as I am hearing, the same things over and over again.

But as any one of my former commercial radio sales colleagues would say: ‘repetition builds reputation’, so I suspect we’ll be banging on about on the same issues for at least the next few days.