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Waste management? Send for the
Sopranos
Richard Littlejohn
UK
Daily Mail
Tuesday April 17, 2007
"It is not the job of our waste teams to collect wheeled
bins from driveways... However, in this instance and as a gesture
of goodwill, as long as the bin contains only appropriate waste
and has its lid closed, we will return to collect it."
There you have the authentic voice of local government in Britain
today, in this case one Dennis Pennill, who styles himself "waste
service manager" of Rochdale council, in Lancashire.
He was attempting to justify the refusal of his dustmen to empty
the bin of Mrs Patricia Pilkington, on the grounds that it was all
of 12 inches from the pavement and therefore classified as "not
out for collection".
Mrs Pilkington, 64, saw the dustmen discussing her bin before they
drove off. She suffers from arthritis in both knees and was unable
to chase after them.
When she rang the council to complain, she was told it was her
own fault. The bin should have been put out on the pavement, not
left a foot within the boundary of her property.
And as Dennis Pennis, or whatever his name is, explained: "It
is not our job to collect wheeled bins from driveways."
What the hell does he think is the job of a - dustman?
It's bad enough that Rochdale council, like so many others, has
refuse collections only every fortnight. Now they're looking for
any excuse, any loophole, not to collect the rubbish at all.
In the time the dustmen spent measuring the distance of Mrs Pilkington's
wheelie bin from the road and debating whether it complied with
the council's official definition of "out for collection",
they could have emptied the damn thing and been on their way.
Forget, for a moment, the fact that it's far more sensible to leave
your bin just off the footpath.
If she had shoved it into the middle of the pavement, no doubt
Mrs P would have had the 'elf 'n' safety nazis down on her like
a ton of hot horse manure for obstructing the carriageway, posing
a hazard to pedestrians, wheelchair users and mothers with prams.
When did emptying the bins become a "gesture of goodwill"?
That's what we pay our increasingly extortionate council taxes
for. It's about the only universal "service" we all use.
Even then, the graceless Dennis Pennis couldn't just admit his
men screwed up. The proper thing to do would have been to send round
a special collection team, with a nice bunch of flowers to apologise
for any inconvenience.
Instead, he started muttering dark threats about ensuring her bin
contained "only appropriate waste" and that its lid was
shut. Then, and only then, might he deign to empty it.
Dennis Pennis's disgraceful attitude is typical of the contempt
in which government, at every level, holds the paying public.
As council tax has doubled under Labour, so- called "services"
have got worse.
Local authorities devote their energies to dreaming up new ways
not to do their job, while at the same time inventing exciting rules
and regulations with which to punish, intimidate and fine the rest
of us.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in refuse collection. This used
to be a pretty simple task. We'd leave the rubbish out; they'd collect
and dispose of it.
Now we are expected to sort our household waste into half a dozen
different boxes, coloured sacks and bins, and leave them out on
the right day in exactly the correct spot, no doubt determined and
monitored by GPS from a command centre at the town hall.
They're already installing microchips in dustbins to spy on us.
More than 30,000 householders have been fined for putting out their
bins on the wrong day, or depositing the wrong kind of rubbish in
the wrong sack.
Throw your junk mail in a litter bin on your way to work and you'll
end up with a criminal record.
I read recently of a householder in North London who woke in the
early hours of the morning to find two men clattering around by
his dustbins.
Assuming they were burglars, he was about to call the police when
he noticed from the back of their donkey jackets that they were
members of the local council "environmental protection team"
checking that he hadn't put plastic or paper in the box for bottles.
It's come to this. Councils would rather pay people to sort through
our dustbins in the dead of night than empty them.
As I've written before, we are all happy to do our bit towards
recycling, but this is nothing short of monstrous - the Punishment
State in full cry.
And the Number One enthusiast for all this is David Miliband, the
man who so many people think should be Prime Minister.
It was his environment department which sent out the circular advising
councils to scrap weekly collections in the name of saving the planet.
They would rather leave an arthritic pensioner with a bin full
of stinking household waste for a month, just to serve their own
sense of selfimportance and righteousness.
It's well documented that most of our carefully recycled refuse
ends up being put on barges and towed to China, where it's burned,
thus adding to global carbon emissions.
This has got nothing to do with the environment, it's about showing
us who's boss.
Will any candidate at the forthcoming local elections have the
guts to stand up and promise a return to weekly collections and
an end to all this petty punishment culture?
Don't bank on it. The only answer is to remove government from
rubbish collection altogether and let us deal directly with private
contractors, who would do the whole job more cheaply, more efficiently
and without any of this pathetic, political posturing.
It's time to send for the Sopranos. They're big in waste management.
Perhaps, while they're at it, they could ensure Rochdale's garbage
gauleiter, Dennis Pennis, ends up at the bottom of a remote landfill
site in a wheelie bin with the lid firmly secured.
As a gesture of goodwill.
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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