The threat, if not explicit, was thinly veiled. Written in capitals, it had been left on a car parked outside the home of a waste-depot manager. The car’s tyres had been slashed. “Leave the case alone. Brakes next,” it said. “Nice dogs by the way.”
It may sound like a scene from a Sopranos-style mafia drama, but the threat was not made in mob-run New Jersey – the note was left in one of the most liberal, bohemian cities in England, where a battle over who really controls the bins is threatening to spill on to the streets.
