Bins matter above all else.
That was the message from communities secretary Eric Pickles yesterday in one of his biggest speeches in a local government arena to date.
Pickles called on councils to prioritise bin collections, saying the issue "fills middle England with rage".
One might think that with social care and children's services forming, by far, the biggest chunks of councils' expenditure, the areas would have made up fairly sizeable chunks of Pickles' speech.
This wasn't the case alas.
"If we don't sort [rubbish collections] out, we will set the cause of localism back by a generation, by creating an army of residents who view their council with resentment rather than respect," Pickles told the New Local Government Network.
"There is genuine anger that in the past decade their council tax bills have doubled, but their bin collections have halved."
Pickles then proceeded to give a series of examples of how Middle England families had been persecuted by the iron fist of councils.
Town hall bin police rifle through families bins without consent; Good Samaritans who pick up fly-tips are admonished for dropping it off at the local dump and pensioners face larger fines than shoplifters for not closing their bin lids.
There has been genuine anger about these issues amongst readers of the Daily Mail.
However, I suspect that even when it comes to Daily Mail readers, few have actually experienced these supposed council misdemeanours in reality themselves.
This scale of grievances about bins, whether justified or imagined, will be utterly dwarfed by grievances about the looming cuts in social care.
A council reprimanding someone for putting rubbish out on the wrong day (presumably because it fairly reasonably doesn't want to see bin bags blighting a neighbourhood's appearance for any longer than is required) pales into insignificance to some of the news it will have to tell service users in social care.
Older or disabled people are being robbed of their dignity and independence by their denial of benefits. The cutting of the mobility component of disability living allowance literally prevents people from going outside or having a social life.
But Pickles believes bins matter above all else.
I met up with contacts from my previous life as a journalist in the local government sector last night. Pickles' view of councils' priorities left people furious.
