Three cheers for the binmen. And not just because they have continued to work throughout the pandemic, however risky their work, and rarely get mentioned in the eulogies doled out to frontline workers.

In a recent high-profile incident, a group of binmen showed courageous leadership in going where mainstream politicians and trade-unionists have literally feared to tread. Bury Unite commercial branch in the North West, which represents binmen across the borough, passed a motion standing up for a Batley grammar school teacher who was suspended, forced into hiding and shamefully abandoned by teaching unions, for using a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson on religious tolerance.