From the Daily Mail:
Council binmen (EDITORIAL NOTE FOR UNWANTED BLOG READERS: “binmen” is apparently Englandlanderese for “garbage men”) refused to empty a recycling box containing a maggot – claiming it amounted to livestock.
Homeowner John Harlow, 60, was told it was against council rules for contractors to handle ‘live animals’.
…
‘It’s ridiculous. I pay nearly £2,500 per annum to the council for services. When am I going to get any?‘It is hardly surprising the odd maggot gets into the rubbish when they only collect the bins every two weeks.’
Errr… first, there’s the obvious bureaucratic nonsense involved with considering maggots to be “livestock.” Second, but perhaps more importantly, is the notion of paying £2,500 per year to have your household garbage hauled off (along with other “council sevices,” the nature of which can only be guessed at. Water? Electricity? Gruel? Daily Queen polishings?). Back when I paid for garbage removal, it cost me something like $30-$40 per month. Now, it costs me one of these:
Here’s a hint: save yourself the equivalent of $4100 a year or so, and just torch the garbage. Plus, it’s much more interesting and entertaining, and if you do it right, you can make a religious thing out of it. Ain’t nuthin’ better on a chilly autumn evening than a good old fashioned pagan garbage bonfire.
5 Responses to “There are two things wrong with this story…”
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Hi again, Scott!
I’d like to give you some background on this, too. First, yes, “binmen” is british for “garbage men” – the name derives from the era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth (ie, my childhood!) when these guys would come round the back of your house and actually carry your dustbin (garbage can to you!) out to the dustcart (garbage truck). This changed when it was decided that these men could no longer be expected to lift heavy bins, and we had to leave our refuse in black plastic bags in our front gardens to be collected. Then the whole recycling thing started, and we (in my South London borough – it differs in details elsewhere) were issued with green plastic boxes for our waste paper. They later gave us red and black boxes for plastic bottles and cans, and glass, respectively, and brown “wheelie” bins for garden waste, then central government came up with the idea of AWC, or Alternate Weekly Collections, for non-recyclable refuse. You see, under European Union regulations, local councils are fined if they send too much waste for landfill, because of the carbon emissions from landfill. AWC is supposed to encourage people to reduce the amount of waste that they produce, and to reduce the number of journeys that refuse lorries make. Of course, people have to throw out the same amount of rubbish, but it now hangs around for up to a fortnight, which in summer can be somewhat malodourous! Some councils go a bit – well – enthusiastic on fining people for putting out recyclable refuse in the non-recyclable bin (they gave us a wheelie bin for that, too!) putting out refuse too early, leaving their bins out too late, putting it out on the wrong day – I don’t know how one official could keep a straight face when saying “We make no excuses for getting tough on people who put out refuse on the wrong day” – over-filling your bin so that the lid is open by a few inches – “We all have a duty to reduce the amount of waste we produce” – it’s the sort iof thing that happens when a Labour government has been in power for too long! Since the “Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act”, some strange things have happened: One elderly man (not in my area!) rang the Police when two men used a stepladder to climb into his garden at night. They turned out to be local council officials, checking that he wasn’t using an unauthorised waste bin! Oddly enough, my own local council, Conservative-run, and who don’t go in for these silly fines, are the nationwide champions for recycling – we recycle 51% of our waste! We also have a lot of the “Jobsworth” syndrome in local council staff; this is British slang, a “Jobsworth” is one who says “Ooh, that’d be more than my job’s worth!”, that is to say, “I would be fired if I broke regulations like that!” One crew of binmen refused to collect an elderly lady’s refuse because she had left it more than two feet from the edge of her property!
Now, as to that £2,500 pa: Long ago, local councils were funded by “the rates” – house owners were charged an annual sum dependant on the value of their property, and businesses were charged a business rate, both being set by the local council. “I pay my rates!” was a phrase that meant “I am an upright citizen!” However, those in rented accomodation, unless the tenancy agreement specified otherwise, did not pay rates. This meant that Labour councils, who hated the middle classes and business, could levy large “rates”, with the less well off induced to vote Labour to keep council largesse flowing. Mrs Thatcher brought in the “Council Tax”, otherwise known as the “Poll Tax”, which everyone would pay, so that people could see if their council was a high-spending one, and thus induce them to vote Conservative. This was hugely unpopular, leading to riots, and so local councils are now funded by a mixture of government grants (Labour favour their “grassroots” areas over the largely Tory south) and the “Community Charge”, which is again set by the local council.
The Community Charge pays for refuse removal, street cleaning, drain clearance; it also pays for “town twinning”, the local “race relations industry”, libraries, social workers, schools, hospitals, and so on. Unfortunately, with all the extra stuff that this government has piled on to local councils, and with their obsession with “targets”, the average Community Charge has doubled in the twelve years that Labour has been in power – and we don’t get more for this, we get less!
Again, I hope this hasn’t bored you, but I thought you might as well know some of the details!
Grif Ingram.
Public burning of trash is illegal up here in Jamestown N.D., so it’s either the garbage men or build your own landfill.
Burning the trash was always fun as a kid, particulrly the waxed paper that things like crackers used to be wrapped in, as that burnt really well.
Best though were birch tree leaves in fall, as they went up like napalm.
I don’t know how the pagan dieties are going to react to you offering them garbage as a sacrifice, but I wouldn’t advise trying it on a stormy day. 🙂
> Grif Ingram
Great googaly moogaly! That’s… nightmarishly bureaucratic, like “Brazil” brought to life and covered with trash.
Sounds like where the US is headed, though.
>Pat Flannery: I don’t know how the pagan dieties are going to react to you offering them garbage as a sacrifice
Who said anything about offering it to *them?* The purpose of such things has always been to provide entertainment or enlightenment to the people actually there. Just as funerals aren’t for the dead, but for the living.
Out here, it’s currently 7th Level Of Hell Season. It’d be odd for someone wo complain about garbage bonfires when the farmers are busy burning off thousands of acres at a time.
Besides: it’s one of the best things you can do for the environment when it comes to garbage disposal. instead of having trucks driving hither and yon wasting fuel, and bulldozers constantly scraping at landfill, just burn the stuff. This transforms the bulk of the garbage into water vapor and carbon dioxide, two substances that life on Earth craves. Of course a better system still woudl be to burn the garbage in a system that would turn the thermal energy into electricity, but one does what one can with what one has.
To Grif Ingram; you’ve got your wires crossed slightly, the Community Charge was the ‘Poll Tax’.
The idea was, you paid it if you appeared on the Electoral Roll, don’t want to pay it, then simply don’t register to vote.
The Scam was, Mrs Thatcher and her men calculated that it was more likely that Labour voters would prefer not to pay the Community Charge, and thus voluntarily, and legally, disenfranchise themselves.
It’s a bit like a reverse Boston Tea Party;
‘no representation without taxation’.
Of course, once the Left figured this out, the jig was up, we had the riots, and the Community Charge was replaced by the Council Tax, (so named as to put the ‘blame’ on Labour Councils) which we still have.
However, this only covers a small amount of Local Government funding, the vast majority is, as you say, provided by Central Government.
This, then, gives HMG direct control over Local Government, because councils the Government doesn’t like, get less funding.
Oh, almost forgot, in most parts of the Uk, it’s against the rules to have a bonfire, upsets the neighbours, you know…