I am desperately trying to avoid ranting like an opinionated small-mined pedant, but my exasperation is reaching uncontrollable levels. So now I have no option but to share my burden. All of which has come about because of a bucket. Or rather, many buckets, all of which are useless.

In the olden days, say 2001, buying buckets was a simple process. You could buy cheap black buckets for 99 pence, knowing that they would lose their handle, split or get holed in the near future. But there was an outside chance that the bucket for a quid might just last a couple of years. The alternative was the yellow bucket. Considerably more expensive, maybe five or six pounds, but it was advertised as indestructible and almost was. Perfect for dragging up and down scaffold, chucking tools in, mixing muck, anything and everything.

Over the last few years, a sneaky change seems to have taken place. I partly blame this transition on B&Q because they introduced orange buckets for 99 pence in store and made them available as shopping baskets. I assume the unsubtle ploy was customers use the bucket, and when they get to the checkout decide that a new bucket might be handy. Hey Presto! They have an extra pound from every customer. And we all fell for it until we realised that the orange buckets were even worse than the black buckets. Incredibly brittle, they would shatter if you looked at them the wrong way.

The next change was the emergence of a yellow bucket the same price as the black bucket. The good news for the builder was he could now have a bucket in a choice of two colours. The bad news was he had no choice in the respective quality of his buckets because they were now both rubbish. Cutting costs, especially when set against rising oil prices, means a plastic bucket must have less material or a lower grade of construction. The net result is all buckets now seem to be worse, but they are still trying to trick us into thinking yellow buckets are better.

I realise buckets do not make the world go round, but for all those people who like to buy decent kit and rely on it for a living, it is frustrating to see something manufactured worse than it was a decade ago, all in the name of price. This feeling towards the evil bucket making industry has been festering for some time, but it all came to a head this week. Exactly five weeks ago I bought two brand new yellow buckets (£3.99 each) instead of the slightly cheaper black ones. I was delighted that I had found decent yellow buckets again. But how disappointing. The first one shattered a week ago for no particular reason and today the other one developed a leak all of its own accord. Of course, I didn’t notice until there was a small lake on the floor. The buckets were clean and had not been worked hard, so their performance is frustrating.

Like many consumer items, quality is being downgraded in favour of cost. I am sure if I returned the two buckets they would be replaced, just like all the TV’s, fridges, computers, lights, tools etc that are broken when they leave the factory. It is cheaper to replace a badly made product with another one and hope for better luck, than to build every unit to a higher spec in the first place. Ultimately the end consumer must shoulder the blame, it is our thirst for cheap goods that has created the market. For me though, please, can someone make a yellow indestructible bucket? I will pay handsomely for the privilege of not spilling water all over my clients’ floors.