Sir – We are rightly exhorted to recycle as much as we can (most recently by councillor Tanner as reported in your issue of September 16).

Because I recycle all my compostable rubbish, I do not have an enormous amount of general rubbish; nor would I physically be able to manage a wheelie bin.

Since I moved here over three years ago I have always had my lilac bag rubbish collected from a small black bin kindly left by the previous owner.

However the lilac bags were not collected on September 7, and when they were not taken in the next fortnightly collection on September 20 I telephoned the city council’s refuse department to ask about it. (My paper collection in the green bins had been taken on each occasion.) I left a message, and later had a call from an official telling me that the lilac bags would be collected the next day. The bin was not collected.

I had to be away in the latter part of that week, but called the department again on September 28, when I was promised an investigation. On Friday, October 1, an official telephoned and spoke in my absence to my partner to say that I was “very naughty” to have put the lilac bags in the black bin, and the crew would not collect them: no explanation was given as to why the bags had previously been taken from the bin, nor was any reason given for its unacceptability now.

This oppressive behaviour by employees of a council whose members we elect seems more characteristic of tyrannical government than representative democracy.

Nor is such intransigence likely to encourage the co-operation from the public which it needs for its policies to be effective.

Wendy Mantle, Oxford