Reports this morning have all said that the Government, after the intervention of Gordon Brown, has dropped the idea of a "bin tax" on the amount of refuse people keep create. Meanwhile, DEFRA has said that the reports are absolute nonsense saying, "[i]t is pure hysteria and nonsense coming from somewhere and we are going to unveil the scheme to MP’s when we feel ready to."Then this lunchtime, the Government publishes its response to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee on the matter of refuse collections and charging seemingly saying that the scheme is alive and well but there will give the power to Local Authorities to implement it, rather than impose it on them as a duty.
So let's see. They were for it, then they were against it, then they were for it again in the sapce of 24 hours? I think not! There has been no cave in from the Government, they've just spun the story to make it look like Brown scrapped it when in fact it's just been tweaked so the Government has plausible denial over who decides who pays.
Interesting too that the news in today's papers should come on the same day that the Goevrnment should respond to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee indicating that the scheme was anything but scrapped. News management at its most shamelessly transparent?
3 comments:
The problem is that they've not banned bin tax at all - they've just kept it as a stealth tax. Landfill tax will still go up massively and LATS fines will be equally vicious. It's just now, instead of having a system where people are responsible for the cost of their own rubbish, we'll have a system where people who make an effort to keep waste down are forced to subsidise the lazy, via stealth increases in council tax.
It's amazing that Conservatives are actually welcoming this!
"News management at its most shamelessly transparent?"
No Dizz, news management at its most shameless.
It's better that each council can choose isn't it? Unless they are effectively forced into it anyway.
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