\n<\/p>\n
E<\/span>ven if you\u2019ve never been anywhere near it, the Mumsnet message board is legendary. Since it launched in 2000, it has changed the vernacular \u2013 \u201cam I being unreasonable?\u201d is not just a question, it\u2019s a shorthand for the type of person who asks it \u2013 and introduced us to the penis beaker (one maverick husband\u2019s postcoital hygiene regime, made infamous). It\u2019s a screenshot of society, a cultural thermometer; if it\u2019s happening on Mumsnet, it\u2019s big news. And one of the most popular recent threads is about bins.<\/p>\n The post that kicked it off was written by a woman who lived opposite an empty house where tenants had moved out. The landlord popped round late at night to drag the bins out for collection, and the next morning, at 6.45am, she could hear the lorry approaching. The coast was clear, and she still had a backlog of rubbish from Christmas. Deciding it was a victimless crime, she slipped one of her bags in their bin, which easily had room. Enterprising? Without a doubt. Moral, though?<\/p>\n The woman\u2019s husband decreed definitely not, and was appalled by her \u201cembarrassing\u201d actions. Mumsnetters in their hundreds debated back and forth, eventually deciding that she was NBU (not being unreasonable), but more importantly proving that, as a nation, us Brits are obsessed with our bins. The etiquette. The schedule \u2013 often so confusing that one resident ends up inadvertently becoming the \u201cbinfluencer\u201d everybody copies. We take pride in our bin, mark it with stickers matching our door number to make sure we get it back, even though it couldn\u2019t otherwise be picked out of a particularly dull lineup.<\/p>\n Our refuse receptacles\u2019 reach is incredible; they\u2019re the new great leveller. James Corden is now doubling down in a dispute with his neighbours and local council about paving he laid over his front garden without permission. While at first we might roll our eyes at the seeming entitlement and audacity \u2013 his \u00a311.5m mansion is in a strict conservation area \u2013 he is instantly transformed into relatable everyman once we discover he only laid the slabs to make it easier to roll his bins out. Who\u2019s BU now?<\/p>\n Polly Hudson is a freelance writer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even if you\u2019ve never been anywhere near it, the Mumsnet message board is legendary. Since it launched in 2000, it has changed the vernacular \u2013 \u201cam I being unreasonable?\u201d is not just a question, it\u2019s a shorthand for the type of person who asks it \u2013 and introduced us to the penis beaker (one maverick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[1726,336,15569,860,364,1127],"class_list":{"0":"post-42267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-bins","9":"tag-british","10":"tag-hudson","11":"tag-obsessed","12":"tag-people","13":"tag-polly"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}