I see that thirty odd councils are starting to fit microchips in their wheelie bins.
More than 30 councils are fitting microchips to wheelie bins in advance of a possible “pay as you throw” scheme for landfill waste, it was reported today.
Local authorities do not have the power to charge householders according to how much rubbish they produce, but many have invested in technology capable of weighing the contents of a bin to within 500 grams.
According to a report for the BBC1 programme Real Story, some are activating the technology to pinpoint areas with low recycling rates.
I can’t claim to be surprised by this. After all Croydon council was doing it some while back. However, the desire to encourage more recycling is simply an excuse to indulge in yet more surveillance. There are simple methods of separating waste and – should it be the way forward – to operate a pay as you throw system, without intrusive surveillance.
“If you were going to go to a system of charging it is a fair assumption that you would need to a way of doing this without having someone read it and jot it down,” he said.
This is a perfectly reasonable and cheap method of doing it. Spying on people is not.
I don’t have any objection to a pay as you throw system providing that there is a substantial reduction in council tax to offset it. Then, people may seek to reduce their outgoings by composting and such.
A spokeswoman for the LGA said such a scheme would not mean extra charges for homeowners.
“If a ‘pay as you throw’ scheme were introduced, that would mean a reduction in council tax and a separate charge for waste collection and disposal,” she said.
And we believe her because? In reality, any reduction will be grabbed back with subsequent increases in the main tax so we will pay both the old rate of tax and the pay as you throw within a year or so of its introduction. Am I cynical? I don’t think so. Politicians of all flavours lie; it’s what they do. When it comes to grabbing our money, the fuckers aren’t going to let us have any back, so used have they become to squandering it.
People may seek to reduce their outgoings by fly-tipping but the bods in the town halls don’t seem to have given much thought to that possible outcome of their pernicious little scheme.
However the idea of microchipped bins has so far proved unpopular with homeowners.
According to recent newspaper reports defiant householders have been removing the microchips and either dumping them or posting them back to their local town hall.
In Bournemouth, councillors estimated that 25,000 “bugs” – one-third of the total – have been unscrewed.
Just when I was giving up hope; just when I thought that the great British public had lost its spunk, a heart-warming story of rebellion against the state shows that all is not lost.