May 24 2007
Bin wars - the EU and government decides to fight us again
The Dispatches programme tonight spent a long time and a lot of money coming to three obvious conclusions:
1. Most people want weekly, not fortnightly collections
2. After a fortnight rubbish has 30 times as many bacteria and spores as rubbish kept for a week
3. The rubbish stinks far more after two weeks than one, and the gases given off are unpleasant chemicals
RSS Feed
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Will there be many Conservative MP’s signatures on this EDM ?
Will we see your name there ?
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=33387&SESSION=885
They don’t see it like that, they see people who have the audacity to utter such obcentities as a nuisance. They’ve been scheming about fining people for not recycling for years. To the sort of people that staff these sustainability units it’s the worst crime there is.
This issue highlights a wider problem of bureaucracy gone crazy in the UK and the EU. The consequence of this as happens so often is worse services, which cost more. The sight of someone being paid (out of tax payers money of course) to knock on doors to ‘advise’ people that they have put rubbish in the wrong bin signifies everything wrong with our ‘public services’…
The public services are too big a business and has for years been as arrogant as large companies can be. Cutting the size of the public sector to only provide few services is the only answer.
I think you’re wrong on this issue, and wrong for an interesting reason. I have the great good fortune to live in Ryedale, a local council in N Yorks which alternates regularly between being a council run by Conservatives, and a council run by independents who generally think the Conservatives are a bit wishy washy and possibly opportunistic. Anyway, some time ago Ryedale went for the recycling & bi-weekly collections route. It’s worked well, and I now seperate out paper, cardboard, bottles, cans, plastics, and compost all my vegetable waste. About once a month, I load up the car and take all that stuff down to the local tip (civic amenity). As does everyone else. Crucially, the civic amenity is just that - close, a place where we all meet each other, and politely and efficiently run. In other words, in Ryedale, it, and the policy, have become “ours”.
I think the problem lies less in the pros or cons of recylcing and biweekly collections, than in the feeling - no, the knowledge - that this is just another opportunity for politicians to boss around the electorate, intimidate them with technology (could anything be more sinister than “chipping” your bin?), and ultimately to take from them ever more money for doing ever less. And frankly, if my local council was run by NuLab, or the Libs or even predictably and forever the Cons, I’d feel the same. The revolt over rubbish is in fact a revolt over the erosion of democracy and freedom. Where democracy functions, the electorate ‘owns’ the policy, and everyone cooperates to get the job done.
Mind you, as I said, I live in N Yorkshire, where the local police force has refused to instal speed cameras, and where there’s still a breath of freedom left. Message to the Conservatives: it’s about freedom and democracy, or it’s about nothing.
Cleansing was one of the original purposes of local government. Roads, police & later schools & water supply being the others. They have expanded so far & now want to charge us extra for their basic purpose.
As my local council have forced a fortnightly collection scheme on us using the “excuse” that it brings about more recycling, I for one now totally refuse to recycle anything in protest.
If more followed suit in this matter, the councils imposing this totally uncivilised collection regime will be unable to meet their recycling targets and will be compelled to think again.
I am taking this action reluctantly as I recycled everything I could before this system was imposed on us, but I see no other way to influence the council as letters to the local press, to the council and to my MP have fallen on deaf ears.
Please will those reading this think about doing as I am doing, and spread the message to others in their area.