Sep 09 2007
Rubbish collection - can be a rubbish service
Domestic waste collection in the UK is a public monopoly. It has all the usual characteristics of one.
In most places there is only one collection a week. it doesn’t matter how hot it is, how much rubbish you may have accumulated, you have to wait for the weekly slot. At times of public holiday when many households produce more waste there are often reduced collection arrangements.
The price is rolled up into the Council Tax. There is no difference in price for people who produce less waste, or for homes where people have gone away for a break. There is a false implied assumption that people living in larger houses generate more waste so they pay more Council Tax.
Different Councils are now producing some recycling services alongside the standard bin emptying offer. These are variable in quality and quantity around the country. Few Councils offer a comprehensive recycling service, taking cardboard as well as paper, metals as well as glass and plastics. Many only offer the recycling collection fortnightly, requiring substantial domestic storage capacity.
If government really wants to make people dislike this service, all they need to do is to insist on bin cameras, bin police, and ever more detailed rules on what items you have to place in which receptacle for collection on which date. We get the feeling that instead of trying to help us recycle, this is yet another way to raise our taxes and make us feel bad. If you make the rules complex enough, you can make unwitting bin criminals out of many a currently innocent householder. Maybe that’s what the government wants. Then it could report that it is having a higher success rate at tackling crime, drawing on its experience of catching more speeding motorists.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
They could also get many more people on the criminal DNA data base and take us nearer to the totalitarian state of Brown’s dreams!!
[Reply]
I read that a fine for putting a crisp packet in a bin designed for bottles can be higher than a fine for shoplifting. I currently have three bins. A black bin for rubbish, a green bin for green stuff anda purple bin for bottles. Three bins for the same amount of rubbish. It certainly must cost to have all those extra bins made for every house in town. On the subject of bins for green stuff, the government has overlooked a biological fact. Plastic bins make privets and bushes sweat releasing sap, flies like nothing better than to lay their eggs in sap. Any bin that is not completely closed will be a breeding ground for flies between the months of may to september. This creates a health problem, with so many bins in such close proximity in urban areas.
[Reply]
The new religion of climate change is constantly being pushed by all politicians and most of the media especially Browns Broadcasting Corporation and Sky. Many people despite the green fascists constantly shouting, still question the case put.
Why don’t local authorities burn the waste in clean burning furnaces to generate power to heat public buildings such as town halls and hospitals. As a nation we are already overtaxed and can’t afford to pay more and more as politicians think up new ways to rip us off. Mr Cameron is no more a true Conservative than I am the Queen of Sheba, please John don’t let him destroy our party I know he doesn’t allow his views to be questioned ( Just like Blair) but if Conservative MPs don’t stand up to him we shall never have a Conservative government. Mr Cameron is driving us traditional Conservatives to the BNP as we have no party to vote for. Labour and the Cameron Party are so close there is no choice and no choice means no democracy.
[Reply]
Might it be possible for those more informed than I, to look for serious ways of marketing our rubbish.
If certain items of rubbish had a market value, and I am just about old enough to remember returning “pop bottles” in exchange for a bag of chips, then this could partially offset the need for increased taxation, and the cost of investment in new recycling methods/infrastructure.
If households could seperate that which has a market value, then this was weighed on collection, it would seem perfectly fair to decrease/offset my “Rubbish Tax” by
[Reply]