With all the Budget talk you'd think there was no other news, but yesterday the Lyons Report was What was in it? Well lots of things, but the most important was "rubbish tax". A "pay as you throw" proposal as it were. The more rubbish you produce the more you pay for it's disposal (as well as paying your increasing Council tax which will go up even further when revaluation happens).
Not to worry though. All those low earning families hit by the budget and likely to be hit by a rubbish tax need to make one simple investment of about £50. An incinerator bin (pictured).... don't worry about the pollution, it's called the law of unintended consequences, something this Government specialises in.
16 comments:
I call mine the 'burney bin', it is brilliant for getting rid of all ones cardboard and shredded stuff! Mine was only £16 though, shop around. You local hardware store should have them.
Mine cost £22, but I brought that from a hardware shop. Theo is obviously a yank, as we don't have stores in the UK (Sorry about taht rant)
Hardware shops are rare these days but very useful.
I generaly burn wood in mine. In West Sussex our weeds grow to 15 feet if you don't keep them cut back! (That is a lot of trees)
being horribly middle class I only buy expensive ones
Benedict has obviously never visited my blog. Yank indeed.
Low-income singletons or couples won't have £50 of disposable income thanks to Macavity Brown's removal of the 10p tax band. (See Iain Dale's blog
for a wonderfully accurate portrayal of the Napoleon of Tax!)
Doubtless Local Authorities will find some EU Directive that bans the use of incinerators. Watch out for Council snoopers - they'll be equipping them with infra-red cameras to detect the heat emissions of 'enviro-criminals' burning their waste at dead of night, on top of authority to rifle through your rubbish, fine you for putting your bin out on the 'wrong' day or putting the 'wrong' rubbish in a given bin, spy-in-the-can and spy-in-the-bin devices, ... .
Roll on the day when the first of the bastards gets strung up from the nearest lamppost.
I like the idea that people pay for the rubbish they produce. It's the case where I live; it's about a dollar per bag plus 13 bucks a month. Recycling material, if properly sorted, is collected free (glass, plastic bottles, paper and card) or can be dumped for free at the recycling center (all recyclable materials). I don't have a problem with paying as I go and, indeed, such a policy is very much in tune with what American conservatives want.
As a result of living here, what I have found is that I, as a mean bastard, recycle much more and produce far less rubbish than I used to.
Drinks containers all have deposits on here (as used to be the case in the UK, when I was a kid) and the supermarkets all have machines that you can put the containers into and reclaim your deposit (or you can just throw them in recycling, of course).
This reminds me of the complaints over water meters back in the day. 'Pay for what you use' seems a fairly egalitarian to me.
There is nearly always pain associated with change, particularly with redistribution of costs, but the markets tend to adjust if the government leaves well alone (allow me to reiterate my opposition to minimum wage legislation as a piece of stupid anti-market governmental interference). Sure, some people will be poor and have sucky lives. Fire up the world's smallest violin
we already pay for rubbish disposal smug, it's called Council Tax.
Yes, but's that's distributed based on house valuation, not how much rubbish you produce (and, therefore, how much money it costs to dispose of it). Carve it out of the council tax and make people pay by the volume of rubbish they produce, is my point.
that's bollocks though, because in certain areass what you're actually going to be doing is massively penalising families that are already being screwed over already. Also the Council tax cost of waste disposal is coevring it anyway.
collect the stuff, burn it centrally to produce electrical power instead of expensive fuel,..... simple and effective. cooling water from power plant used for district heating...... even more efficient.
My point is that council taxation revenue shouldn't be used to pay for rubbish collection. People should pay for rubbish collection according to how much rubbish they have produced. Why should I, or you, or anyone else, subsidise the rubbish production of someone else? That's nuts.
If people whine about how they're being penalised by, hmmm, having to pay for the costs of their actions then, as a wise woman once said, cry me a river.
Adam said...
Yes, but's that's distributed based on house valuation, not how much rubbish you produce (and, therefore, how much money it costs to dispose of it). Carve it out of the council tax and make people pay by the volume of rubbish they produce, is my point.
At least the poll tax was based on providing services based on the number of people, rather than the value of a property.
"Carve it out of the council tax"
Of course, they wouldn't "Carve it out of the council tax". That portion will simply be earmarked for another use when any pay-as-you-go scheme is introduced - so you'd be paying twice.
Why buy one, you can always sneak into the neighbours garden late at night and burn you waste in their incinerator
.
Tonight as I was leaving my drive, I saw a macdonalds milk shake carton, rattling around in the road. We live miles from the nearest macdonalds. Middle of the countryside in fact. Someone had a snack on their way home, and just threw the stuff out of the car window. Probably, like us, their bin is full within the first week, and they couldn't be bothered to take it home and try to squeeze more crap into their already full bin.
It was a small epiphany; the future rolling around in the wind. We KNOW this is going to happen. Substituting a simple refuse system that worked for a complicated system that doesn't makes NO SENSE.
How much crap has to blow around in the wind before we stop making up stupid rules, people clearly aren't going to follow?
i stole my bin from the dead next door neighboor
Post a Comment