When it rains cats and dogs, in English you can say, among other expressions, "It's raining cats and dogs". A literal translation, which makes no sense in Catalan, would be: "It's raining cats and dogs." In Birmingham, the second largest city in the United Kingdom, what is falling now are rats and cats, not cats and dogs. ,000 tons of rubbish, the result of the four weeks of uninterrupted strike by municipal service workers, which are added to the days of intermittent stoppages they have carried out since January 4. The situation is so serious from the point of view of public health that last Monday, the local authority of the capital the city of the Peaky Blindersdeclared a state of emergency. So far, nothing has been noticed; everything remains the same, residents complain. In some districts and neighborhoods—Aston, Small Heath, Witton, Acocks Green, Bordesley Green, and Allens Cross—the problem is more than evident. These are areas where residents often lack the resources to pay for a private cleaning service—it can cost up to 240 pounds a week—and where they also cannot rent construction containers to accumulate bags and more bags while waiting for the conflict to be resolved.